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Full text of "The Catholic world"

THE 



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*. ltt|! , 



CA!fHt>LIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE? 



PUBLISHED BY THE PAUUST FATHERS. 



VOL. LXXXVIII. 
OCTOBER, 1908, TO MARCH, 1909. 



(j!) H t ti i 



NEW YORK : 



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




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122 West 6ot 




ork City, 



CONTENTS. 



Arnoul the Englishman. Francis Ave- 

ling, D.D., 25 

Babylon, By the Waters of. Jeanie 

Drake, 735 

Between the Sandhills and the Sea. A. 

Dease, 634 

Bosnia, The Fate oi.Ben Hurst, . 513 
Catania. Joseph McSorley, C.S. P., . 810 
Catholic Women in Italy To-Day. 

Virginia M. Crawford, i 

Chesterton, G. K. JV. E. Campbell, . 769 

Columbian Reading Union, The, 142, 286, 

430, 573, 717, 862 

Constantinople, Impressions of Islam in. 

Maiste Ward, .... 759 
Coppee, Francois. Virginia M. Craw- 
ford, 182 

Current Events, 132, 277, 423, 564, 709, 853 
Eucharistic Congress, Some Lessons of 

the. Francis Aveling, D.D. , . 172 

Foreign Periodicals, 120, 266, 412, 555, 

698, 841 
Four Celebrities Brothers by Marriage. 

Wilfrid Wilbtrjorce, 203, 290, 480, 

721 
Grafton, Bishop, and Pro-Romanism. 

Lewis Jerome CPHern, C.S.P., . 622 
Holcombe, The Legend of (West-Coun- 
try Idylls). .#. E. P., . 800 
Hopkins, Gerard. Katherine Brtgy, . 433 
Irish History, New Light on. A. Hil- 

liard Atteridge, . . . .671 
Irish University System, The. Bertram 

C. A. Windle, LL.D., F.R.S., . 57-7 
Is it the Turn of the Tide ? Cornelius 

Clifford, . ' . . . . .783 
Joan of Arc," Anatole France's " Life 

of./. Bricout, 234, 341, 523 

Lavergne, Madame Julie. Mary E. 

Mannix, . . . . . .74 

Literature and Morality. R. L. Man- 

gan, S.J., . . . . .745 

Manning, Henry Edward. Wilfrid 

Wilberforce, 203 



Messina. Joseph McSorley, C.S. P., . 652 

Monachism. Cdrnelius Clifford, . 90 

Nearest Place to Heaven, The. Alfred 

Young, C.S, P., . . . . 378 

Neighbors in Modern Society. William 

/. Kerby, Ph.D., . . . 323, 607 

New Books, 99, 249, 392, 538, 679, 820 

Old Forge, The (West-Country Idylls.) 

H E. P., 500 

Penance of Richard Luff, The (West- 
Country Idylls) H. E. P., . . 330 

Rider, George Dudley. Wilfrid Wil- 
berforce, . . . . . . 480 

Scepticism the Philosophy of Lord 

Bacon. Michael Hogan, S.J., . 52 

Secret of Roland York, The. H. A. 

Hinkson, ..... 221 

Sequestrated French Convent, A. 

Katharine Tynan, .... 660 

Shelley, The Mysticism of. Edmund 

G. Gardner, . . . .145 

Shell House (West-Country Idylls). 

H.E.P. 193 

Sicily, In. Joseph McSorley, C.S. P., 

652, 8 10 

Sierra Madre, In the. Christian Reid, 156, 

309, 448, 590 

Tauler's Sermons in English, . . 641 

Temperance Movement in Ireland, The 

" Pioneer," . . . . 466 

To Men of Good-Will. Jeanie Drake, 356 

Village School, The (West-Country 

Idylls).^. E. P., . . . .65 

West Country Idylls.^. E. P., 65, 193, 

330, 500, 800 

Who is My Neighbor ? William J. 

Kerby, Ph.D., ' . . 323, 607 

Wilberforce, Henry William. Wilfrid 

Wilberforce, . - . . . 290 

Wilberforce, Samuel. Wilfrid Wilber- 
force, 721 

Wisdom, The Habit and Gift of. 

Thomas J. Gerrard, . . 363 

With a White Stone. Jeanie Drake, . 13 



POETRY. 



Carol of Gifts, A. LJUISC Imogen 

Guincy, 289 



Divine Friend, 
Guiney 



The. Lou ise Im ogen 



89 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Alabama and the Floradas, A Catholic 

History of, . 

Allen, Cardinal William, the Founder 

of the Seminaries, .... 

Ambroise, St , , 

American as He Is, The, 



394 

823 
in 
542 

205 



American Student in France, An, 
Angleterre Chretienne Avant les Nor- 

mands, La, 692 

Apocalypse, Essays on the, . . . 2.49 

Atlas Biblicus, 265 

Bible Studies, 254 

Bible, The Old English; and Other 

Essays, "5 

Buddhism and Immortality, . . . 693 
Campion, Father Edmund, and His 

Companions, A Brief History of 

Twelve Reverend Priests, . . 399 

Carrington's, Sydney, Contumacy, . 551 

Catechism in Examples, 1 he, . . 838 

Cathedrals of Northern Italy, The, . 410 
Catholic Encyclopedia, The, . . 99, 546 
Catholic Life ; or, '1 he Feasts, Fasts, 

and Devotions of the Ecclesiastical 

Year, ..'.... 553 

Christ Crucified, We Preach, . . 115 
Christian Science Before the Bar of 

Reason, ...... 263 

Coming Harvest, The, . . .258 
Conventionalists, The, . . . 684 
Conversion and a Vocation, A, . . 252 
Cruzada de la Buena Prensa, La, . 840 
Discourses and Sermons for the Sun- 
days and Principal Feasts of the Year, 820 
Discourses, Short, for All the Sundays 

of the Year, 821 

Economics, History of, . . . 263 
Eglise de France, La, et les Catholiques 

Francais, ...... 833 

Kspousales y el Matrimonio, Los, . 697 

Fate's a Fiddler, ..... 407 

Feltre, Vittorino da : A Prince of 

Teachers, ..... 392 

Flowers of the Dusk, .... 550 

Freemasonry, American, A Study in, . 108 

Greece and the /Egean Islands, . . qcg 

Greek Fathers, The, .... 553 
Happy Half-Century, A; and Other 

Essays, 256 

He Can Who Thinks He Can ; and Other 

Papers on Success in Life, . . 824 

Helladian Vistas, ..... 693 
Histoire des Commandements de 1'Eg- 

lise, 554 

Holy Eucharist in Great Britian, A 

History of the, ..... 393 
Holy Scripture, A Textual Concordance 

of. ....... 397 

How I Came to Do it ; or, The Celibacy 

of the Clergy, ..... 683 

Ideals of Charity, , 395 
Iglesia y el Obrero, La : The Church 

and the Workman, .... 695 
Immortality, New Light on, . . ; 687 
Immortal Soul, An, .... 681; 
Inner Life of the United States, The, . 688 
Jeanne d'Arc, The Maid of France. Be- 
ing the Story of the Life and Death of, 826 



Lendemains d'Encyclique, 

Lepers of Molokai, The, 

Little Land and a Living, A, 

Long Odds, ...... 

Lord's Prayer, The, and the Hail Mary, 
Lourdes, A History of its Apparitions 

and Cure?, 

McLoughlin, Dr. John, the Father of 

Oregon, 

Maiden Up-to-Date, A, ... 

Manning, Henry Edward. The Car- 
dinal Democrat, .... 

Mannister, The Long Arm of, 

Man's Hands, The ; and Other Stories, 

Man Who Ended War, The, 

Mariage, Discours du, .... 

Marotz, ....... 

Meditations for the Use of Seminarians 

and Priests, ..... 

Messianic Philosophy, .... 

Missioner, The, 

Modern Spiritualism, Sermons on, 
Moral Instruction and Training in 

Schools 

Moral Theology for English-Speaking 

Countries, A Manual of, . 
Moreno, Gabriel Garcia, Regenerator 

of Ecuador, , 

Naval Administration and Warfare, 
Nizra, the Flower of Parsa, 
OZuvres Sociales desFemmes, 
Old Mr. Davenant's Money, 
Orthodoxy, ...... 

Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land, 
Paschal of Baylon, St , Life of, the 

Saint of the Eucharist, 
Patrology, ...... 

Pilgrim Walks in Franciscan Italy, 

Pitman, Sir Isaac, The Life of, 

Poe, Edgar Allan, .... 

Power Supreme^The, .... 

Presse Centre 1'Eglise, La, 
Priestly Vocation and Tonsure 
Princes and Princesses, The Book of, . 
Principles of Logic, .... 

Provence Mystique au XVIIe. Siecle, La, 

Psychologie de PIncroyant, 

Rand, Lewis, ..... 

Religion, A Short Defense of, 
Religiosas, Las, ComentariosCanonico- 

Morales, ...... 

Religious and Monastic Life Explained, 

Republic, Ideals of the, 

Roads to Rome, ..... 

See of Peter, The, and the Voice of 

Antiquity 

Spain, Sun and Shadow in, 
Spiritual Life, A Treatise of, 
Ten Personal Studies, .... 
Thomas of Canterbury, St , The Holy 
Blissful Martyr, .... 

Thompson, Francis, Selected Poems of, 
Trial of Jesus, The. From a Lawyer's 

Standpoint, 

Untrodden English Ways, 
Van Rensselaer, Henry, S.J., Life and 
Letters of, 



822 
nz 

409 

411 

254 

102 
262 

835 
408 

392 
55^ 
114 
III 

411 

261 

839 
250 

401 
401 

406 
39& 
551 

53 
831 

400 
829 

837 

III 
408 
690 
117 
407 
830 

"3 

691 

259 
264 

696 
410 
405 
694 

694 

549 
411 
679 

392" 
54* 

545 



826 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD, 



VOL. LXXXVIII. OCTOBER, 1908. No. 523. 

CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY. 

BY VIRGINIA M. CRAWFORD. 

#HEN the Women's International Council held its 
quinquennial congress in Berlin some years ago, 
it came as a surprise to all the foreign delegates, 
and perhaps most of all to the English and Amer- 
icans, to observe how high a level of activity and 
organization prevailed among the women of Germany. The old 
idea of the German hausfrau, absorbed in domesticity, held 
firmly in marital subjection and wholly cut off from intellectual 
pursuits, had to be abandoned forthwith, and a fresh conception 
of our Teutonic sisters in closer conformity with the reality had 
to be evolved. It seems probable that were the International 
Council to hold its congress next year in Rome or Milan in- 
stead of in Toronto a somewhat similar process of enlighten- 
ment in reference to Italian women would be necessary for 
many who have not been in touch with the recent growth 
of feminism in the peninsula. They would once again be 
filled with admiration for the activity and resourcefulness of 
which an ever- increasing number of women in Northern Italy 
are showing themselves capable. They would be amazed at 
discovering the extent to which all the social and economic 

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

IN THE STATE OP NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. I 




$ 
2 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY [Oct., 

problems in which the position of women is involved are dis- 
cussed and understood, how extensive a feminist literature is 
in existence, how keenly alive many Italian women are to the 
importance of the questions involved. And they would find 
this interest, not confined to a few cultivated women of the 
upper classes, but spreading downwards among the wage-earners 
of the nation and crystallizing into a national and popular de- 
mand, if not as yet for women's suffrage, at least for greater 
equality before the law, wider facilities for self-education, and 
for a recognized means of making known the aspirations and 
claims of their sex in the councils of the nation. 

Something of all this has been made manifest to observers 
by the national congress of Italian women that assembled in 
Rome in the last week of April. The attendance was unex- 
pectedly large and representative, the Queen graced the open- 
ing meeting with her presence, and the popular Queen- mother 
gave a garden party in honor of the delegates. Judging from 
the Italian newspapers and magazines which devoted many col- 
umns to describing the proceedings, the level of speaking was 
remarkably good, and the discussions practical and to the point. 
They covered a very wide field, over two hundred written pa- 
pers being submitted to the congress; and the women discussed 
subjects as diverse as illiteracy and the white slave traffic, the 
means of fighting tuberculosis and the need of improved hy- 
giene. They demanded the recherche de la paternite, the right 
of married women to their own earnings, and various reforms 
for teachers and post-office employees and telephone clerks. 
They passed resolutions in favor of inculcating thrift in schools 
and of improved technical training. They expressed the opin- 
ion that feminine literature should be chaste and moral, that 
women writers should be inspired by high and serious aims, 
and that more books should be written for young people. In 
short, it might well have been said, in spite of some exaggera- 
tion of thought and of language, that the congress proved a 
triumph for the women of Italy, had it not been for one inci- 
dent as surprising as it was unfortunate. This was the vote on 
religious education. On the proposition of Linda Malnati, a 
well-known Socialist leader from Milan, the congress, by a large 
majority, after a hasty and excited debate, declared itself in 
favor of a system of purely secular education in the elementary 
schools of the country, " out of respect for the liberty to which 



1908.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY 3 

a child's conscience is entitled." And this but a few weeks 
after the Italian Chamber, as the outcome of a prolonged con- 
troversy and a ten days' debate, gave a decisive vote in favor 
of teaching the catechism wherever the parents desired it. 

Needless to say this lamentable expression of opinion pro- 
duced much excitement throughout the country. The Catholic 
women delegates were loud in their protests, so much so that 
the President of the congress, Countess Spalletti Rasponi, and 
some others tried to explain away their vote as being less anti- 
Christian in its intention than people assumed. Others have 
attributed their protest against religious teaching in the schools 
to the extremely unsatisfactory manner in which apparently it 
is often imparted in Italy by state teachers, who have little or 
no faith themselves. These explanations, however, do not carry 
one very far, and many of the best friends of the feminist 
movement in the peninsula, such as the well-known Rassegna 
Nazionale, have hastened to dissociate themselves from a vote 
which may go far to discredit the whole agitation. The Civilta 
Cattolica, which has always been an unsympathetic critic of 
emancipated womanhood, drew up and issued a vigorous and 
effective protest against the Malnati resolution, as being "anti- 
Christian, anti-patriotic, and anti-educational," and was enabled 
to publish in its next issue (May 16) a long list of signatories 
containing an imposing array of Roman patrician names. As 
far as I have been able to ascertain, the vote, the outcome of 
skillful engineering rather than of any widely spread convic- 
tion, has met with openly expressed disapproval in all save 
Socialist and definitely anti-clerical organs. 

Personally the moral I draw from this regrettable incident 
is the urgent need for the active participation of Catholic women 
in all that concerns women's life and interests. It is a familiar 
spectacle to see deliberate absentees wringing their hands over 
what has been done in their absence. They usually forget that 
they are responsible for what occurs only in a less degree than 
the actual participants. Why were they not present to oppose 
it? The days are gone by in Italy as elsewhere when women 
could be content to be mere onlookers of contemporary poli- 
tics; and if Catholics are not prepared to organize and educate 
themselves for the defence of their ideals and beliefs, they will 
undoubtedly witness the triumph of doctrines they detest. It 
is at least a hopeful sign of the times that a magazine so con- 



I 

4 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY [Oct., 

servative and orthodox as the Civilta Cattolica should, at this 
juncture, have published an article from the pen of Pere Pavis- 
sich, SJ. (June 6), emphasizing just this aspect of the problem. 
No one will accuse the learned Jesuit of minimizing the impor- 
tance of those very points on which the utterances of some of 
the ladies assembled in Rome gave cause for alarm. But brush- 
ing aside mere exuberance of language, and making allowances 
for an occasional violence of denunciation due in part to the 
excitement of the occasion, he has discerned the real importance 
of the congress, and the value of much of the work accom- 
plished by it. He has the courage to welcome what is, to 
Italians, the innovation of a women's congress, and acknowl- 
edges freely the need for women's co-operation in the solving 
of social problems and their entire competency to pronounce 
on many of the topics under discussion. He applauds all that 
women have to say concerning thrift and co-operation, the need 
for labor legislation and the special dangers of emigration for 
women and children. He has nothing but praise for their treat- 
ment of all subjects connected with maternity, with domestic 
hygiene, with infant mortality, with the prevention of alcohol- 
ism and of the spread of tuberculosis. Even on the more de- 
batable ground of legal rights, he acknowledges that modern 
Italian legislation has unfortunately adopted some of the worst 
features of the Code Napoleon where women are concerned. 
He admits the justice of the demand for the recherche de la 
paternitc, for a single moral standard for men and women, for 
a woman's right to her own earnings, and for a mother's right 
to the guardianship of her children. 

In a word, Pere Pavissich admits the essential reasonable- 
ness of a feminist movement in all its fundamental claims, al- 
though he doubtless differs from women as to the best manner 
of enforcing necessary reforms. Where he rejects utterly the 
views so widely expressed at the congress is in regard both to 
religious education and to certain so-called moral teaching as- 
sociated with the name of Ellen Key, the Swedish feminist 
leader, to be imparted to young people. These are the very 
subjects, he considers, on which Catholic women are bound to 
make themselves heard, not only privately and in their indi- 
vidual capacities, but publicly and collectively ; to oppose, as 
Pere Pavissich expresses it, "action by action and congress 
by congress," in order to demonstrate that Christian faith and 



1908.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY 5 

Christian morality can alone secure to woman her rightful po- 
sition and inspire her to the heroic fulfilment of her mission to 
the home and to society. The congress, then, in spite of its 
regrettable features, has served the useful purpose of accentu- 
ating the situation as far as Catholic women are concerned, and 
making it plain just why and how their collective action is 
needful. It has excited so much controversy in the Italian 
press that the questions at issue can no longer be ignored by 
any one, and there are already signs apart from the article 
quoted above that Catholic women are being roused to a ful- 
'ler sense of their national responsibilities. I am, however, far 
from wishing to imply that hitherto they have wholly neglected 
the wider religious interests of their country, or are lacking 
competent leaders. Those who have followed at all closely the 
development of events in Italy will testify to the very marked 
increase in recent years of social and religious activity, more 
especially in the cities of the north. A vast number of new 
ceuvres of every kind have been established; a great impetus 
has been given by women of the upper classes to the revival 
of the peasant industries for which Italy in the past has been 
so famous, such as lace-making, straw-plaiting, and the beau- 
tiful drawn linen thread work ; much has been done to open 
up new careers for girls as well as to improve their domestic 
and industrial training; an effort is at length being made to 
provide skilled nursing for the sick, and, in a general way, a 
more intellectual appreciation is being shown of both the moral 
and material needs of the working classes. The splendid work 
due to the initiative of Mgr. Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, 
on behalf of Italian emigrants of the navvy class, for whose 
spiritual and educational welfare no one had labored, and in 
which women have taken their share, is but one example of 
the new progressive spirit that is informing Italian philanthropic 
endeavor. Another is afforded by the growing importance of 
the Italian sections of the international federations for the 
abolition of state-aided vice, and the infamous white slave 
traffic. Indeed, one has only to look through the pages of the 
new illustrated magazine for women, the Vita Femminile Ital- 
iana, which, in spite of certain tendencies one must deplore, 
possesses many admirable and useful features, to realize with 
how much vitality women's work is endowed and how varied 



I 

6 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY [Oct., 

and numerous are the fresh departures that every month seems 

to bring forth. 

At the present time, too, a new Circolo Femmimle di Col- 
tura or study-circle is being organized by Catholic women in 
Rome with the express sanction of the Holy Father. To quote 
from the preliminary programme, it is being started "in re- 
sponse to the wishes of many Catholic women who have re- 
mained hitherto outside the social feminist movement, but who 
now realize the duty of taking part in it in an effective man- 
ner. The Circtlo aims at unitiag all the sober energies of those 
women who wish to defend and support the principles of Chris- 
tian faith and morality and to participate on an intellectual 
basis in the social movement of our day." The organizing 
committee includes many well-known Roman patrician names, 
and it is hoped that the Circolo will open its doors next Novem- 
ber with a full course of lectures divided under three sections, 
the religious, the social, and the legal. 

The Roman ladies are clearly beginning in the right way, 
by educating themselves, and this new organization, should it 
prove successful, may exert a very real influence over the des- 
tinies of the women of Italy. 

Another hopeful sign is the improvement in girls' educa- 
tion. It seems strange that in Italy it should ever have fallen 
upon evil days and have grown both cramped and superficial, 
when it is remembered that in the past the women of Italy 
have been the most learned in Europe, and that lecture halls 
and university honors and professorial chairs were open to 
them long before their sisters of northern Europe had even 
dreamt of knocking at college doors. Moreover some of the 
most learned women that Italy has been delighted to honor 
have also been the most devout: witness Elena Lucrezia Cor- 
naro Piscopia, who conversed in seven languages and took her 
degree at Padua in philosophy and theology and followed the 
rule of St. Benedict in her father's house; or the later Maria 
Gaetana Agnesi, who was urged by Pope Benedict XIV. to ac- 
cept a mathematical professorship at Bologna, but who relin- 
quished her public career in order to devote herself to the 
poor of Milan. No one in their day ventured to assert that 
learning in a woman was incompatible with true piety, or that 
public lecturing was in any way destructive of feminine mod- 
esty. It was the sinister influence of the French Revolution, 



1908.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY To- DAY 7 

with its reversion to the theories and ideals of ancient Rome 
always inimical to the high status of woman that is the root 
cause of the inferior education and restricted sphere of activity 
accorded to the women of Italy from the close of the eight- 
eenth century. It is only at the dawn of the twentieth cen- 
tury that any real educational progress was achieved. To-day 
the " gymnasiums " in various large towns, notably Rome and 
Florence, throw open their classes to young people of both 
sexes and are widely frequented by the girls of the middle 
classes, while lycees and professional schools for older girls have 
been opened in several cities. Year by year girl graduates are 
more frequently met with, and if professional careers are still 
difficult of access, an ever- increasing number of women are 
studying medicine and surgery and even jurisprudence. Indeed 
it would seem as though they were already taking possession 
once more of those professorial chairs they once filled with so 
much distinction, for quite recently Signora Rina Monti was 
appointed professor of zoology at Sassari, after holding impor- 
tant appointments both at Pavia and at Siena. 

A natural outcome of the growing desire for educational 
efficiency for girls is the revolt of some mothers against the 
hitherto universal custom of consigning girls of the upper classes 
to convent boarding schools for the whole of their education, 
often allowing them home but once a year. It is hardly neces- 
sary to emphasize for American readers the ill- effects of a sys- 
tem that makes brothers and sisters strangers to one another, 
and that keeps children for so many years away from the 
parental roof, that when at length they return to it, they come 
to no rightful place, no natural duties. Among those who are 
taking the lead in this movement may be mentioned Countess 
Sabina di Parravicino, one of the most distinguished women in 
Milan to-day, herself the mother of daughters and an active 
apostle of Christian feminism. She rightly holds that, however 
admirable convent schools may be as aids to Christian education, 
they cannot fulfil, and were never intended to fulfil, the whole 
of a mother's duty towards her children. It is pleasant to 
know that Pius X. has expressed himself strongly in favor of 
home education under suitable circumstances. It must not be 
forgotten that it is the worldly mothers who are the most de- 
sirous of ridding themselves, in what is apparently an edifying 
manner, of the responsibilities of motherhood, for children may 



I 

CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY [Oct., 

be highly inconvenient witnesses of what happens in an ill- 
regulated household. It is thoughtful, conscientious women 
who want their little daughters under their own eye, and this 
new tendency, far from springing from any indifference to re- 
ligious education, is really an index of a purer and more whole- 
some home life. 

These, it may be said, are but side issues, and do not take 
us very far in the direction of that active, independent career 
that a Scandinavian or Anglo- Saxon woman can achieve for 
herself. It is true that in Southern Italy, and more especially in 
the smaller provincial towns, women of the upper and middle 
classes still lead what to American and English women would 
appear lives of almost oriental seclusion, scarcely venturing in 
the streets unaccompanied by their husbands, and with inter- 
ests limited to the most trivial subjects outside a purely do- 
mestic range. Social conventions such as these are hard to 
break down. Yet in all the great towns of the North much 
has been accomplished, and ladies in Milan, Turin, and Genoa 
are at least as free as their Parisian sisters. It is precisely in 
these towns that there has been of recent years so remarkable 
an outburst of philanthropic activity, so much real social effort 
based on an understanding of actual economic conditions. And 
it is too among the women of these cities that we find the be- 
ginnings of a definite Christian feminist movement. They have 
come in contact with the women workers in the Socialist camp, 
they know the special dangers to faith that await the inex- 
perienced novice in her first plunge into the controversies of 
the day, and they have realized the need of providing a sound 
platform from which Catholic women can speak out boldly to 
the world. Some are developing practical social work on thor- 
oughly Catholic lines; others, more tentatively, are pleading 
with their pens for a fuller recognition of women's powers and 
formulating the principles of women's activity in the social 
and economic sphere. I have already mentioned the name of 
Countess Sabina di Parravicino, who presided at the first con- 
gress of Italian women held in Milan last year, and whose pen 
does valiant service in the feminist cause. This congress was 
organized in the main by an energetic group of Catholic women 
in Milan, who issue a fortnightly publication, Pensieto e Azione, 
and who seek to promote the co-operation of women in all 
that bears upon their moral and economic progress. They 



1908.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY 9 

carry on an admirable educative propaganda among working 
women on definitely Catholic lines, their most able spokes- 
woman being perhaps Signora Adelaide Coari, who moved an 
amendment in favor of religious instruction at the Rome con- 
gress. Another name frequently to be met with in magazines 
at the end of thoughtful articles on the woman question is that 
of Teresita Friedmann-Coduri. The woman, however, who more 
than any other is responsible for the rery existence of a fern 
inist movement on Catholic lines, and whose name, well-known 
to her countrymen, commands universal respect, is Luisa An 
zoletti, a poetess of much charm, the biographer of Maria 
Gaetana Agnesi, and the author of numerous books and pam- 
phlets dealing with various phases of women's progress. 

Luisa Anzoletti takes her stand boldly on her dignity as a 
Christian woman, on her equality with man in the sight of 
God, on the teachings and examples of Holy Scripture. If 
she is a feminist it is because of, not in spite of, her creed, 
and she advocates nothing that cannot be brought into har- 
mony with orthodox Catholicism. Her devotion to the Church 
is fully as intense as her devotion to the progress of her own 
sex. Her teaching is reiterated through a vast number of con- 
tributions to the newspaper press during the last fifteen years, 
but in its main features it is summarized for us in a little 
volume La Donna net Progresso Cristiano, first published in 
1895 and since translated into French. At once penetrated 
with Christian sentiment, and keenly sympathetic to the vary- 
ing needs and aspirations of women to-day, the book aims at 
showing that within the boundaries of Christian doctrine there 
is ample scope for the intellectual and social emancipation of 
women, whilst the assumed dangers of immorality, of neglect 
of family duties, of scorn for the old-fashioned virtues of re- 
nunciation and unselfishness sink into insignificance wherever 
Christian teaching is firmly grasped, and devotion to our Lord 
in the Holy Eucharist remains the active center of worship. 
It is a mere agitation for rights, carried on in a materialistic 
spirit, that is to be feared, not the insistence on a wider recog- 
nition of women's duties and responsibilities, with a demand for 
greater facilities to fit herself for them. In this book, written 
some thirteen years ago, Signora Anzoletti notes the active 
and intelligent propaganda carried on even then by women of 
the Socialist party, and chronicles with grief the disorganized 



I 

10 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY [Oct., 

condition of Catholic women in comparison, their lack of any 
coherent policy, of any wide progressive spirit. Happily in the 
eloquent address, published under the title " Le Finalita Civili e 

11 Femminismo," that Signora Anzoletti delivered before the 
Milan congress last year, she is able to adopt a more buoyant 
tone. She rejoices in the marked change that has come over 
not only the position of women in Italy, but of public opinion 
towards women, and is able to claim that both the power of 
ideas and the power of practical experience are on the side of 
her sex in their striving for freedom and equality. I have 
seldom read a more ably reasoned plea for the emancipation of 
woman, or one more impregnated with the idealism that reli- 
gion alone can inspire. To possess a leader such as Luisa 
Anzoletti is a source of incalculable strength to the cause of 
Christian feminism in Italy. 

What first brought her name prominently before the pub- 
lic was her action in reference to the reiterated attempts of 
the Government, some six or seven years ago, to impose a 
Divorce Act on the country. It is difficult for American or 
English women to realize how much courage was needed for 
an Italian lady to fling herself into a political agitation of that 
character. But religious feeling throughout the peninsula was 
profoundly stirred, and women felt that their home life was 
imperiled and that it was their duty to defend it. Signora 
Anzoletti placed herself at the head of the women's protest, 
and held a series of conferences against divorce in many of 
the chief towns of Northern Italy Milan, Florence, Bergamo, 
Pisa, Lucca, and others conferences that were subsequently 
summarized in a pamphlet that had a very wide circulation. 
This pamphlet is an appeal not only to sentiment and religious 
belief, but to justice and common sense, and sums up at once 
with eloquence and moderation the whole Christian position. 
The author is profoundly convinced of the practical evils that 
a relaxation of the marriage-tie would entail, of the social 
demoralization that would ensue, and the special hardships it 
would inflict on women and children. One feels, as one reads, 
that she flung herself into the controversy in much the same 
spirit as that which urged Mrs. Josephine Butler, forty years 
ago, to inaugurate her campaign against the state- regulation of 
vice. There is the same shrinking from the subject to be 
overcome only by a deep sense of the necessity for fighting a 






1908.] CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY n 

gigantic social evil. " It is," she writes, " the voice of religion 
and of patriotism that summons us imperatively from the 
peaceful domestic hearth, and an irresistible impulse which 
springs from the depth of our hearts and fills us with a burn- 
ing zeal." The Divorce bill was dropped at the time, and the 
success of the agitation against it may be gauged from the 
fact that not only has the proposal never been seriously re- 
vived by the Government, but that although every conceivable 
reform, desirable and undesirable, was urged at the recent con- 
gress, not one woman ventured to lift up her voice in an at- 
tack on the existing marriage-laws. 

In administrative matters also, Luisa Anzoletti has set an 
example that her Catholic countrywomen will do well to fol- 
low. At Milan the Municipality is responsible for three large 
historic institutions, an orphanage for boys, another for girls, 
and the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, a hospice for old people, to 
which Maria Agnesi devoted her declining years. These were 
managed by a committee composed wholly of men, and it was 
only when the Socialists some years ago obtained a majority 
on the Town Council, that it was decided to place a woman 
on the committee of management. The Socialist choice fell on 
Signora Malnati, whose name has recently been so prominently 
before the public in connection with religious education. No 
regular religious instruction was given at that time to the 
orphans, and certainly Signora Malnati did nothing to encour- 
age it. When, some three years ago the Catholics returned to 
power, they resolved to continue the presence of a woman on 
the committee, but to select one from their own party, and 
their choice fell on Signora Anzoletti. She accepted at once, 
in spite of a natural shrinking from a post that requires much 
tact and hard work, and frequent contact with councillors and 
officials with whom she could have little in common. It was 
an opportunity for work at once religious and civic, for it 
gave her a controlling influence over the education of hun- 
dreds of children. Since her election not only has she been 
able to introduce regular religious teaching under the supervi- 
sion of a priest, but she has carried on much-needed reforms 
in the food and clothing of the orphans as well as in their in- 
dustrial training. It is administrative positions such as this 
that Catholic women should aim at filling, if they would save 



I 

12 CATHOLIC WOMEN IN ITALY TO-DAY [Oct. 

the rising generation from materialism and religious indiffer- 
ence. But they can only be filled by women of recognized 
experience and a thorough understanding of municipal affairs. 

Concerning the whole position of women, much to Ameri- 
can readers will appear obvious and elementary that still 
strikes the Italian as daring and even perilous. To judge of 
the religious and social conditions of a country one must, for 
the time, try to see things from that country's standpoint. 
Catholic women in Italy have, in a measure, been brought by 
recent events to the parting of the ways. Are they going to 
form an active party of progress and strive by all lawful and 
peaceable means for the triumph of their ideals and their faith, 
as the women in the Socialist ranks are striving for theirs; or 
are they going to stand aside, timid and helpless, as in a back- 
water, while the stream of life flows irresistibly onwards? I 
believe they are choosing the nobler alternative, and that they 
will be cheered and helped by knowing that their efforts are 
followed with sympathy by the women of other nations whose 
easier lot is only to reap where their mothers have sown. 




WITH A WHITE STONE. 

BY JEANIE DRAKE. 

[HERE was at least an elevator of sorts in the 
Eyrie, so that tread-mill climbing of ten mys- 
terious and musty staircases need not lay the 
last straw to a wearisome day. " It is a mercy 
to be thankful for," breathed the young man 
who at his own landing slipped out of the little cage which 
had crawled with him aloft; and he waved his hand in friendly 
acknowledgment to a mostly unappreciated elevator boy. 

This hireling of indifferent and discouraged aspect yet mut- 
tered on his upward way with a trace of feeling: "That there 
Mr. de Longy, now, he's kind o* sunshiny in this here black 
old pit." 

The subject of his eulogy had stopped before reaching his 
especial doorway. A rapid survey ascertained that the length 
of the dingy corridor was quite deserted and he leaned wearily 
against the wall, closing for a moment his bright dark eyes 
and stretching his slight figure to the extent of its inconsider- 
able height. Then he went through a few physical culture 
exercises, bending his lithe frame backward and forward, waving 
his arms up and down, breathing deeply, his hands at his waist. 
"Ha, that refreshes! I am myself again once more elastic," 
he said in French; and with buoyant step and smile he en- 
tered the door. 

Within was a studio, well lighted enough but chillingly 
bare. The occupant, a tall, squarely built man, stood near an 
easel, and as he stepped backward to regard his work, waved 
a hand holding palette and mahl-stick towards the newcomer 
without looking at him. 

" How goes it ? " asked the latter cheerily. " Well ? Su- 
perbly ? A merveille ? " 

"Marvelously enough," said the artist grimly. "The jani- 
tor's robustious wife, whom you wheedled into ordering this 
portrait, gave me her last sitting to-day. You may observe 
the addition of three rows of gilt beads, the pendant ear-rings, 
some extra green in the gown, some extra red in the cheeks, 



I4 WITH A WHITE STONE [Oct., 

with a fatuous smile such as you and I have never seen her 



wear." 



"Ah well, the poor woman! We are rather slow pay. 
But-except the smile-it is Rosanna herself, her very counter- 
feit. She looks for once benignantly upon us, as who should 
say : ' Be easy, mes beaux gaillards, when Michael announces 
that the rent is long overdue, this gorgeous picture shall plead 

for you/ " 

"Gorgeous, indeed," agreed the painter, with disgust, 
it not sickening to have to degrade one's art ? I beg your 
pardon, old fellow. I'm none the less grateful for a way to 
meet the rent; but let's cover the thing. I'll feel better when 
it's out of my sight." 

"Forget it," advised his friend airily, "and recuperate 
yourself with that delicious little landscape, or that admirable 
full-length of the great Anatole de Longy as Mercutio ; in 
short, with any of the treasures for which one day art-collect- 
ors will scramble. Meanwhile your gloom, if not due to Puritan 
ancestry, is, perhaps, from hunger. Have you lunched ? " 

"Not consciously." 

"And it is late afternoon!" 

" Luncheon is not an everyday affair with yourself." 

"You have not reckoned, my good fellow, with the new 
play. Our manager is a realist of realists. There is a sump- 
tuous banquet in the third act to which no guest did greater 
justice than your Anatole. If the manager's eagle eye was 
upon me, I fancy he was appalled. But what would you after 
no supper and a breakfast of caviare and hope ! The perish- 
able props were 'perishable' and 'props 'in every sense. You 
shall try for yourself." Whereupon, with gravity, he pro- 
duced, from this inner pocket and that, some cold pate and a 
broken yard, more or less, of crisp bread-stick. " There is 
still a bottle of beer left in the cabinet and there you are." 

" Upon my word, de Longy," said the artist, relaxing into 
an unwilling grin. " What sort of prank is this for a gentle- 
man ? I wonder what your picture gallery of ancestors down 
in New Orleans would say to such a tramp affair." 

" Since they left their sole and graceless survivor to build 
the family fortunes anew," said the ther unconcernedly, " the 
gallery may frown. I smile, myself, to know that their illus- 
trious name is regarded by the dear public as too obviously a 



1908.] WITH A WHITE STONE 15 

nom de theatre. Meanwhile, I wear what is my own, worthily, 
I hope, if work may count." 

"Nothing better yet?" Joyce stopped in his pacing to ask 
with interest. 

" Not yet," Anatole admitted. " If the leading man had 
his appetite sharpened by my frequent fasts he might contract 
in its satisfaction a gout which would be his understudy's 
chance. But he is exasperatingly moderate and drinks water 
only; and mine continues to be largely a thinking part." 

"It can hardly be said," commented the painter, with 
abrupt bitterness, " that things go very well with either of us, 
waifs and strays from South and North, in the great city's howl- 
ing wilderness. This monstrosity of a portrait my one sale 
within the month pays something on account; but the bill to 
the color-man swells, and your salary goes mainly for cos- 
tumes in a high-flown, absurd drama, which gives you no 
opening for talent or hard work. To-day is nearly over. 
Even you cannot call it fortunate." He crossed the room to 
where a bronze vase stood upon a table and dropped into it 
a black pebble taken from a bowl beside it. 

Anatole followed him, deliberately abstracted the black 
pebble and calmly substituted a white one. "When we made 
that agreement," he observed with serenity, " so to mark our 
days as black or white in classic manner, it was certainly not 
to be without duly remembering such mercies as came. To- 
day, for instance, you finished Rosanna's picture, smile and all ; 
and, it being your eyesore, it will be removed and, inciden- 
tally, paid for. As for me, I heard the great critic remark of 
my lines: 'Not so rotten bad considering the stuff.' Also I 
lunched royally; and shall again to-night, God willing, sup 
with Lucullus," he waved his hand dramatically at the bread 
and pate. 

"Optimist!" 

"Pessimist! I hurl the epithet at you!" 

" Hurl away; but we cannot live on air." 

" Admitted. Therefore let us try the beer." 

The heavy-browed , serious-faced young painter grinned 
again, laying an affectionate hand on his companion's shoulder. 
" One mercy I freely acknowledge. That to a sober-souled 
fellow like me is granted a comrade with his forebears' Pro- 
ven9al sunshine in his veins." 



I6 WITH A WHITE STONE [Oct., 

"'A merry heart goes all the day, 
A sad one tires in a mile a," 

chanted Anatole, overcoming the last of such fatigue and dis- 
piriting as his friend had not guessed. " I drink to better 
times, when the jade Fortune shall pipe to our dancing. Mean- 
while we laugh at her, work hard, and drink beer when we 
can get it. Come in," he added, as the clink of their glasses 
chimed with a tap on the door. 

A lady, young, graceful, gracious, was framed there hesita- 
ting. Inconspicuous in dark street attire, the only points swiftly 
to attract were the waving mass of chestnut hair snooded with a 
black velvet ribbon, and the frank appeal of wide blue eyes. 

" Mr. Joyce's room ? " she asked. 

And " Miss Tredway ! " de Longy exclaimed at the same 
moment. "You know Mr. Joyce?" 

"Oh, a long, long time," she smiled; and Joyce already re- 
alized that to have met a risen star behind the scenes where 
she had been courteous, preoccupied, inaccessible, was quite 
another thing from seeing Veronica Tredway in his own sur- 
roundings such as they were. He regretted the bareness and 
bleakness as never before; he was internally conscious of the 
crumbs and glasses; he deplored the fact that the cover had 
slipped from the janitor's wife's picture. Yet both men received 
her and her companion with entire simplicity and absence of 
excuse. 

"I am not sure," she said, "that it is permissible to in- 
trude on a genuine work-room. But a fellow-worker, like my- 
self, of scant leisure, cannot defer too much to straight-laced 
convention." 

" Except in the matter of a venerable chaperon," Anatole 
jested, bowing to the silent, veiled figure beside her. "Shine 
forth, little Isabel, from that matronly disguise and be an in- 
genue once more." 

The laughter of the two girls Miss Tredway was but twenty- 
fourmade pleasant music through the rooms. " She would in- 
sist, the baby, upon dressing the part in my interest," declared 
Veronica, looking kindly at the pretty, childish face and form, 
now relieved of cumbrous veil and wrap. 

The ice so broken, she turned to Joyce, delightfully at ease. 
"Mr. de Longy has said so much to me of your work that I 






i9o8.] WITH A WHITE STONE 17 

am impatient to see it. You have not yet exhibited ? No, it 
takes time in a swarming city for recognition of gifts. You 
will show me what you have here -but especially his portrait, 
will you not ? He says it is a masterpiece." 

"Allow for friendly prejudice," said Joyce. "Though if I 
am to attain at all, it will be in portraiture. You know your- 
self, in another way, of the fascination of studying and depicting 
human nature as one sees it through outward manifestations." 

Her glance fell on Rosanna's picture and she repressed a 
smile. She went murmuring and admiring though the room ; 
but before de Longy's portrait she stood long and absorbed. 
"It seems almost alive," she said at last. "What a delight- 
ful Mercutio ! Some day, Monsieur de Longy, some day." 
The young men watched her as she wound her boa about the 
firm white throat which carried her head so finely. " Your art, 
Mr. Joyce ah, that endures. You leave proofs of greatness; 
but we play-actors shall bequeath nothing but an ever-fading 
tradition; and must have present cheers and hand- claps to keep 
us in heart. Come, little Isabel, it is time to dress and dine and 
prepare for the evening's mumming. We have had our treat 
here thanks to Monsieur Anatole." The great, lucent eyes 
of quick sympathy which held her audiences, had divined the 
meaning of their scanty belongings, of the flamboyant Rosanna's 
portrait, of even the thin, sallow, distinguished woman's photo- 
graph, with its cheap knot ot violets in front, glimpsed before 
Anatole closed the inner door. And now they met Joyce's 
gaze intent upon her in a long, unfathomable instant. Then 
she had laughingly drawn Isabel with her in a backward curt- 
sey through the doorway, reciting: 

" ' Ce sont des marionettes qui font, qui font 
Trois petits tours, et qui s'en vont.' ' 

" Fresh justification for to-day's white stone," exulted Anatole. 

"Your kind contrivance once more, my dear fellow," said 
the artist quietly. He was carefully re-covering Rosanna's ear- 
rings. " If your star were a capitalist, now " 

" She is better. She is an artist and a charming woman ; 
and, above all, a lady. It was an accident the stage for her ; 
a happy one, since she has success. But how she works ; and 
for the sake of a paralyzed father whose home, after bank- 
ruptcy and illness, is now assured. That is the household 

VOL. LXXXVIIL 2 



1 8 WITH A WHITE STONE [Oct., 

simple, quiet, almost bourgeois. Lately she has included Isa- 
bel, that she may keep an eye on a thoughtless, unprotected 
girl in her teens, subject to much dangerous dalliance. I hear 
that the gilded youth, when not of Miss Tredway's adorers, 
call her ' The Fair Dragon/ on account of Isabel. " 

" It does her honor/' said Joyce after a pause ; but de 
Longy within was already preparing for the theater while he 
whistled: " Sur le pont d* Avignon" 

To one of them the memory of this visit, to the other daily 
association with the visitant, were for long the only reasons for 
the white stone which Anatole ceremoniously deposited in their 
urn each evening, to the accompaniment of the painter's scoffs. 
Obstinate cheerfulness disclaimed need for discouragement in 
lack of histrionic opportunity, in scarcity of picture-buyers, in 
accumulating debt, in precarious dependence on " perishable 
props," in the janitor's returning unfriendliness. The grayer 
the skies, the more debonairly he whistled : " Sur le pont 
d' Avignon" 

" I am of Democritus' school," he explained. " Thus one 
creates an enlivening atmosphere. Does not the primer of my 
childhood say : 

" * Quand un gend'arme rit 
Dans la gendarmerie. 
Tons les gend'armes rient 
Dans la gendarmerie, ' 

"Kindly laugh, mon gros gendarme" 

Now and then he triumphed in bringing some modest order 
to his friend, the purchaser anonymous. " I only exact as 
commission that you come and see me in this ridiculous play, 
which Miss Tredway has made the vogue." 

Joyce, acceding to this, was amazed that he had not oftener 
availed himself of the passes at his service. "You should 
mount high in your art," he told de Longy later. "With your 
star as inspiration, a man could do almost anything." 

"Avail yourself of her rays, then, when you will/' said de 
Longy, but he spoke abstractedly; and it seemed an echo of 
his thought when the painter presently inquired: 

" Who was the stout, florid man that claimed Miss Tred- 
way's every moment between the acts. Since when has she 
been so smilingly tolerant of distraction from her part?" 



1908.] WITH A WHITE STONE 19 

" You must know Percy Chadwell man about town, pluto- 
crat, art-collector." 

" By reputation only." 

"Oh, well," in answer to the unexpressed, "one cannot tell 
a woman everything. She only knows that his Barye bronzes 
are the finest in the world, and that he refused twenty thou- 
sand last week for a Mir- Saraband rug. But" a sudden red 
mounting to his fine temples " he is likewise an animal whose 
presence in the same room is profanation to her. Yet he has 
been all over the world, is immensely clever, and has a tongue 
to wile the birds off the bushes. Also he is intently pursuing 
her, and would even marry her. It would be only to get a di- 
vorce on one pretext or other in a year or two ; and, voila, he is 
free again. But what about her who has no place in her 
maidenly thoughts for indiscriminate marrying and unmarrying 
and re-marrying ? Do you know, Joyce, that that lovely child 
is as devout as was my venerated mother. Because work hours 
interfere with attendance at the early morning Mass at our 
church, she slips in unobtrusively for daily devotions in the 
quiet afternoon which I know by merest chance. You may 
fancy that when he speaks of ' la belle Veronique ' to me and 
others, with just the faintest suggestion, how I long to strike 
him across the face." 

" Why not do it then ? " Joyce asked very softly and with 
downcast eyes. 

" Because I should put myself hopelessly in the wrong, 
even with her." 

"Yes"; the artist agreed after a pause. Then he straight- 
ened his shoulders and threw back his head. "See here, de 
Longy, you disquiet yourself without cause you may believe 
me. She being what she is, and of fine and delicate percep- 
tions, is perfectly safe in virtue of what shall we call it a 
heaven-born instinct which will divine him vaguely but suffi- 
ciently. In proof of which conviction, I deposit the stone to- 
night." 

He was at work alone a few days later when Miss Tred- 
way once more illuminated his studio. " We are fortunate to 
find you, Mr. Joyce. You have, perhaps, met Mr. Chadwell. 
Isabel, I am sure you have. I very much want Mr. Chadwell 
to see your work. He is, you know, one of the directors; as 
well as a noted connaisseur" 



20 WITH A WHITE STONE [Oct., 

Joyce saluted gravely and placed chairs; but the art- col- 
lector chose to roam about the room, peering at this or that 
picture or portfolio, with small, half-shut eyes, while he tapped 
his silk hat with a glove. Meanwhile Isabel yawned a little, 
caring nothing at all about art for art's sake ; and Veronica, 
after a few words with Chadwell under de Longy's portrait, 
spoke to Joyce with soft precision, that he might not know 
how her heart was beating. 

" Since I have seen your Mercutio, Mr. Joyce, I have 
dreamed of being immortalized in the same way ? Would you 
care to undertake it? Should I be a troublesome subject? 
Would it need many sittings ? " 

He answered the last question first, and very slowly, that 
she might not guess how his heart in its turn had leaped. 
" One cannot say decidedly how many sittings a subject will 
need. It depends upon a variety of things. But, no; you 
would not be troublesome." He could not keep a change out 
of his tone. "It would be a wonderful chance for me." 

Chadwell at this turned and joined them. He said in an 
uninterested, monotonous way, which, curiously, held attention : 
" Your Mercutio, Mr. Joyce, convinces me that Miss Tred- 
way's design is excellent. In fact" he peered again at the 
portrait " if it should prove equal to that, I have some in- 
fluence with the Committee and can insure its being hung on 
the line, perhaps; but we shall see. For the present, I should 
like to know your price for this marine." 

Joyce stepped apart with him, discussed, made courteous 
acknowledgment, while an inner voice warned of the Greeks 
bearing gifts. 

"I know the great news, you need not tell me," said de 
Longy, after the visitors' departure. He was a little pale, 
even while he heartily congratulated. 

I owe this chance to you, too. I wish it was your own." 

" All in good time," with cheerful confidence, " that will 
come. But what sticks in my throat is that he was advising 
her, when I passed them and masterfully in which role she 
might best be painted." 

" He need not trouble," said the painter drily, " I will at- 
tend to matters of detail, myself. It was her own arrange- 
ment, however, that the sittings shall be at her home. The 
light is good a certain high-backed chair, effects of costume 



1908.] WITH A WHITE STONE 21 

easily accessible, and so on. But you may like to know my 
belief that it was intended to exclude that man." 

" Her inflexible rule," assented de Longy thoughtfully, " is 
to receive no one there. Yet I heard her say that she wished 
the portrait's perfection to be a surprise to him." 

The painter said no more, but he pondered silently on the 
connection between her recent marked graciousness to the mil- 
lionaire, the munificent price she had casually mentioned for 
the picture, and the place promised for it to an artist yet un- 
known by the collector and probable purchaser. He was daily 
troubled during these sittings, where her beauty and charm 
fed his growing passion. " It would not be fair, it would not 
be right, it would be monstrous ! " he thought. " If I had but 
the ghost of a chance but who am I ! I could even give her 
up to de Longy but this creature ! A brute ! " He spoiled a 
bit of drapery and had it to do over. 

De Longy had long ago, with Gallic quickness, leaped to a 
conclusion and he could have kissed the fairy princess* hem ; 
yet he was disquieted, not knowing into what ensnaring in- 
debtedness generous intention might lead. Between the friends 
nothing was exchanged on the subject but an occasional : " How 
goes it?" and its answer: "Well enough." 

" You will come, Monsieur Anatole," at last Miss Tred- 
way commanded, " to the Very Exclusive View which precedes 
the Private View. And you must find my picture delightful. 
For it is to make your friend's fortune." It was a shadow 
of his thought when she added : " Mr. Chadwell desired very 
much to see me pictured en grande tenue even offered the 
loan of his world-famous rubies; but I am sure Mr. Joyce's 
choice was wiser." 

The artist's choice, indeed, had been simplicity itself; yet 
it was a wonderful study which gazed at them standing under 
where it was to hang on the Academy's wall. In compelling 
beauty of tint and line she confronted them, clad in filmy, 
clinging white against the high-backed chair, with no ornament 
but the roses she held, these being also white. The little group 
gazed silently, isolated almost, amid bustle and din of hurrying 
artists and their intimates and workmen hammering. If Percy 
Chadwell had been irritated at opposition to him in the matter 
of costuming he showed nothing now but an almost arrogant 
satisfaction. It was he who spoke first. 



22 



WITH A WHITE STONE [Oct., 



"Admirable, admirable, quite admirable!" He stepped 
backward and forward, contracted his eyes and narrowed their 
vision with hollowed palm. " I thought it wonderful when I 
saw it last week; but it has reached absolute perfection since 
then. I congratulate you, Miss Tredway, and you, Mr. Joyce, 

and myself, .above all, for you have, of course, known me for 

the owner. The public should know it, too in your interest; 
a certain prestige I am supposed," raising his eyebrows, " to 
be something of a judge of such work." He took the green 
ticket already in the frame and added some words, returning it. 

Veronica read in large and clear letters: "Sold to Mr. 
Percy Chadwell." She was very still for a moment or so, then 
raising her eyes they encountered those of Joyce, and he, like 
herself, had paled and was breathing quickly. 

The millionaire, exulting in his acquisition, descanted in lei- 
surely manner on line and color, on background, light and sha- 
dow to Anatole de Longy, who watched Veronica. She was 
in pale spring costume and carried a fluffy parasol of the same 
delicate tint. She used it now to point to a Dutch interior 
being hung just above where her picture leaned; and her move- 
ments struck him as unusually abrupt. She made now a sud- 
den turn, wheeling, and: "Take care !" he cried; but too late, 
for the sharp ferule had gone through the portrait, gashing the 
canvas across the face. 

"Oh! Oh!" shrilled Isabel; and " Ah h ! " said Chad- 
well very slowly. 

The young actress went straight to Joyce. "Will you for- 
give me? Can you forgive me? Do you forgive me?" she 
pleaded with outstretched hands. 

" I will I can I do," he assured her firmly. 

Chadwell had set his teeth savagely for the moment; but 
already his stolid composure was the same and he continued 
to tap his hat with his glove. " It was a most unfortunate- 
accident," he then said deliberately, "by which I am the chief 
loser. Though Mr. Joyce "with slow significance " might 
also be so to a very considerable extent. But to prove to the 
fair subject that I am assez bon diable, as you might say, Mr. 
de Longy in other words, a good loser we need not with- 
draw Mr. Joyce's name or give his space to some one else. We 
can substitute your picture as Mercutio. If you will excuse 
me, I will see some of the Committee now here about it." He 



i9o8.] WITH A WHITE STONE 23 

went off heavily, but undoubtedly with some of the honors of 
war. 

While de Longy led Isabel on a perfunctory tour of the 
rooms, the artist and Veronica had opportunity for sentences 
together, few, low, disconnected even, yet such as sent him 
home with an uplift of the heart and a light in the eye which 
he fancied to be unobserved. 

" It is curious," said Anatole, speaking heavily, " how little 
a woman counts the cost where she sacrifices for some cher- 
ished interest. But she will not always pay the price ; no, she 
will not always pay the price, in the end. All the better for 
you, my fine fellow," and he kissed his hand with a factitious 
gayety to the Mercutio, which was to be moved in the 
morning. 

It had hung on exhibition some days before the original ran 
into his manager among a discerning crowd beneath it. "I see 
you are gloating upon the beauty of one of your troupe," ob- 
served Anatole. 

" I am admiring the workmanship," said the manager, who 
knew something of art himself; " also, the green ticket. I hear 
it has brought a fine price, and much talk about the artist. 
He has, probably, arrived." He drew de Longy to one side. 
"The costume becomes you sufficiently well, and it has sug- 
gested " He did not mention that Caustic, the great journal's 
dramatic critic had just left him. "What should you say to 
trying the part in a revival before long ? Now, don't go too 
fast and imagine the part a stepping-stone to Romeo's. The 
gifts that make Mercutio do not belong to great passions." 

"You really think so," said de Longy lightly " that a sense 
of humor cannot consort with a deeply-buried, hopeless, unre- 
lenting pain about the heart ? Perhaps you are right ; yet there 
be men I have known them who laugh at everything, even 
themselves." 

He ran fleetly down the Academy steps, humming: " Sur 
le pont d* Avignon." Obstinate hopefulness was justified. His 
name identified with this noted picture should be so with the 
part, if work could do it. And he knew himself capable of 
fine work; had heard that Caustic said so pertinaciously and 
sometimes aggressively. What a horizon of opportunity recog- 
nition of good work would open up. His olive cheek warmed, 
his dark eyes glowed. "For these and all Thy mercies," he 



I 

24 WITH A WHITE STONE [Oct. 

murmured, in a long-forgotten memory of childhood ; and he 
started to cross the mid-street babel. 

And then a huge, clanging automobile bore down upon him. 
He could have escaped, perhaps, but in its direct path faltered 
a tiny, ragged, bewildered child, and in seizing and throwing 
her to one side he was struck down and crushed. When once 
more conscious, he was lying inert and bandaged upon a hos- 
pital bed, and Joyce was near him. 

"They found your address on a card," the artist explained 
with effort, " and I was, luckily, at home." 

" I remember," whispered Anatole, " but the mother's pic- 
ture there, on the table and all those violets?" 

"Veronica's thought," said Joyce. "She is below." 

He did not know he had said "Veronica," but the injured 
man was silent for a space. " It is serious, then," he said. 
" How long have I ?" 

"They they cannot say. Not very long. She she also 
thought there is a priest with her a Frenchman." 

" Yes, I will see him." Afterwards he slept, and when he 
waked asked for Veronica. He called her that himself now, quite 
assuredly and very tenderly. " It was a little girl, I think ? " 

"Yes"; she said softly. 

" I should like to believe that she had been saved for 
something good." 

" It shall be so if I can " her voice broke. 

" Why "unconquerable cheeriness still in the faint tone 
" it is well worth it, then. Did you know I was to have a fine 
part soon my chance ? " 

" Arrington has been to inquire," said Joyce, not trusting 
himself further. 

" No more perishable props, eh, old boy ? It was great fun, 
though." 

He wandered for awhile, muttering: "A pity, too, that 
cut across the sweet face not so deep as a well nor so wide 
as a church-door, but it served." 

When himself again, he smiled upon Joyce : " Promise, prom- 
ise me faithfully, that to-night of all nights a white stone is 
put in." 

His comrade nodded. "With faith, hope, and some love," 
murmured Anatole, "the passage is not hard the readiness is 
all. Remember, Joyce, a white stone." 




ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 

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

CHAPTER XXXV. 

JHREE mounted travelers were slowly making their 
way towards the old port at Houlgate, from which 
their Norman ancestors, two hundred years be- 
fore, had set sail to the conquest of England. 
They were traveling slowly, apparently because 
one of their party was infirm ; for, though all three rode armed, 
his hood was unstrapped and lay back upon his neck. Also, 
he leaned forward painfully in his saddle, as though unable to 
sit erect upon his horse. Two rode together behind, the sick 
man, and another, whose nasal helmet hid what otherwise might 
have been seen of his visage through the opening in his hood. 
At his saddle-bow hung the helmet of the other. The man 
who rode ahead was clothed in a leathern jerkin over which hung 
a loose vest with arms, made of rough hempen stuff diapered 
all over with stout twine knots. His hood was of padded cloth 
under the low cylindrical headpiece. This was Roger equipped 
for travel. The two who rode behind him were the knight, 
Sir Sigar, and his squire, de Valletort. 

They had journeyed through France and Normandy from 
Paris, and were drawing near to their journey's end. Only a 
few leagues lay between them and the sea; for already they 
had left Evreux in the rear and were making towards Caen. 

All along the route they traversed they had found the 
castles being fortified, as if for war. This, they learnt, was by 
order of the King of France. Masons and armorers and vic- 
tuallers they had met in plenty, together with bodies of soldiers 
on the march. But, avoiding for the most part castles and 
fortresses, they had lodged where possible in the guest-houses 
of the monasteries and friaries they had passed. Everywhere 

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



26 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

they had been well and kindly received, with the ready hos- 
pitality that made the religious establishments of the time so 
famous. And indeed, but for the guest-house and the hos- 
pitable cloister, traveling would have been almost as generally 
uncomfortable as it was often dangerous. Besides, what with 
the bustle and activity of the army of workmen at every cas- 
tle, village, and town, accommodation of even the poorest kind 
would have been scant. The old knight preferred the quiet and 
peace of a Franciscan or Dominican house, or the more stately 
lodging of some great monastic establishment, to the precari- 
ous chance of an honest landlord and a sober crowd in an inn. 

Many of the monks or friars at the religious houses where 
they stopped had heard of Vipont and his pilgrimage to Rome, 
for there was an almost constant stream of people crossing be- 
tween England and France, and news of all sorts passed rap- 
idly from place to place. Doubtless those who had heard ot 
the murder or remembered it, had expected to see a murderer 
of a very different type from that which Sir Sigar presented ; 
and many were the glances of pity and commiseration bent 
upon the aged and feeble old man as, having thanked his good 
hosts for their hospitality, he rode away, bowed and dejected, 
from the convent door. 

Now they had reached a desolate tract of country. There 
seemed to be no building of any kind in sight, and the sky 
lowered threateningly. The road, too, was deserted and the 
beams of the sun, filtering through the murky, piled-up clouds, 
warned them to press on if they would find lodging within walls 
either sacred or secular before the threatening storm broke 
upon them. 

Arnoul was doing his best to animate the flagging spirits of 
the sick knight and urge him onwards towards some place of 
shelter ; while Roger, faithful scout as he was, forged ahead 
to discover some sign of habitation where they might find re- 
freshment and a bed for the night. In less than an hour the 
sun would have set, and the road was not altogether a safe one, 
even for three armed travelers. A peasant, who had pointed 
the way out to them a few leagues back, had warned them of 
the danger. Marauding bands of robbers were not infrequently 
to be met with on the way to the coast. In particular he bade 
them be on their guard when they reached a certain wood, the 
features of which he described minutely to them. For here 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 27 

the road passed near the castle of a lord who found it more 
profitable to waylay and rob small parties of travelers than to 
grind the faces of his own unfortunate serfs and tenants. The 
peasant had spoken bitterly doubtless with reason and had 
repeated his warning when their paths sundered. 

By Amours computation they should not reach the wood 
in question at the rate they were traveling for a good two 
hours ; and he hoped to find shelter long before that. Roger 
was on the lookout in advance. So his chief preoccupation was 
to cheer his companion, and to draw his mind from the mel- 
ancholy brooding that had settled upon it. 

" Hasten ! We must hasten, my lord, if we would find a 
harbor from the night and the weather," the young squire was 
saying, as he tried to stir the jaded spirits of his companion. 

The knight looked up vacantly. " Aye ; we must make 
speed," he said. But his horse jogged ahead as before, and he 
made no effort to spur it on. Then he fell to musing aloud. 

"Bethink you, de Valletort, are we right, thou and I, thus 
riding together side by side I who slew thy brother and thou ? 
Have I not done thee a further wrong, joining thee thus in 
the company of one who is blood-guilty?" 

" Peace, peace, I pray you, Sir Sigar ! " pleaded the young 
man. " Have I not forgiven thee ? Has not the Holy Father 
loosed the bonds of thy sin ? Did not Brother Thomas bid 
me take service with thee as thy squire ? " 

"Yea; yea and nay. Oh, accursed sinner that I am ! I 
repent me of my evil deed. God wot, I would wipe it out in 
my own blood my own blood ! But hither ride we together, 
thou and I thou the victim and I the slayer; and the price 
of thy service is my daughter Sibilla. Oh, de Valletort, re- 
lease me of my promise ! I cannot, I dare not buy thy recon- 
ciliation thus ! " 

" Release thee ? That will not I ! " said Arnoul through 
set teeth. " I have forgiven thee fully and from my heart. 
But thou hast promised, my lord. Thou hast promised upon 
thy knightly word. I hold thee to it. I serve thee for thy 
daughter's hand. For a year will I serve thee for two, three 
years if thou wilt, and until I have found a lord to make me 
knight. But I shall not go back. Thou would'st not have me 
go back upon my resolve. Nay, lord; thou thyself would'st 
not break thy engagement, cost what it may ! " 



J 
2 8 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

"True words! True words!" the knight murmured as if in 
pain. "I have pledged my knightly word. I, who am an out- 
cast and an accursed being, have given my promise. I will 

hold to it." 

" Then away with these sick fancies, my lord ! Set spurs 
and let us ride apace ! There is Roger hurrying back towards 
us. Doubtless he has discovered a place of refuge for the 
night. And the storm is on the point of breaking. See, yon- 
der, how the tongues of lightning flash ! Even an outhouse or 
a cavern were something in this waste ! " 

The knight lurched yet further forward in his seat, silent 
and brooding. He took no interest, so it seemed, in the find- 
ing of shelter. During all the time that de Valletort had been 
his squire he had not seen him so depressed. So he rallied 
him with cheering words as they jogged forward to meet the 
returning Roger. 

It was soon apparent that he brought other news than the 
discovery of a building where they might take refuge. He 
sat low and rode hard, galloping up to them through the 
gathering storm-darkness. 

"Master Arnoul ! Master Arnoul ! " he shouted along the 
road. " For the love of God make speed forward, an you 
wish to win your spurs ! Travelers in distress. And two of 
them mere lads ! Set upon by a band of ruffians ! " 

He drew a short sword as he panted out the words and 
turned his horse in the direction from which he had just 
come. 

"What is that you say, Roger?" cried Arnoul sharply, un- 
hooking, as he spoke, Sir Sigar's helm from his saddle bow 
and passing it over to the knight. 

Vipont sat up in his saddle with a strange glare in his 
sunken eyes, and commenced fumbling at the strap of his 
hood in preparation to putting it on. The lightnings were 
playing fast now, and great, sparse drops of rain fell heavily 
upon the frightened horses and their riders. 

"What is it, Roger? Who are these travelers? How far 
off? How know you they be attacked by villains?" 

"Parley not, good master, for the love of Christ, but 
come!" cried the man, with difficulty reigning in his panting, 
trembling steed. "Or, ere you can reach them, they are 
done ! I saw the party riding, as we, for shelter. A band of 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 29 

armed cutthroats sprang sudden from the thick wood by the 
roadway. They are close at hand. The spur, Master Arnoul ! 
The spur, for God's love; and to the rescue!" 

Even Sir Sigar was stirred. He shook off the melancholy 
that possessed him and urged de Valletort on. 

"Go! I shall follow; and if any fight be left in these old 
bones" 

But at the word Arnoul was off and at full gallop down 
the road. The lambent flashes flickered on his drawn blade 
and seemed to ripple like water up and down the bright steel 
rings of his mail. 

"England!" he shouted, "and Vipont ! " whirling the 
sword above his head and changing his buckler from its sling 
to his left arm. Roger, shouting out advice, lumbered heavily 
at his' side. 

" There are four of them, master two sturdy knaves and 
two striplings." 

"How many against them?" Arnoul shouted back. 

"I could not count. Six or seven, they seemed. The 
knaves had reined in and drawn sword. I saw no blazon." 

" They were hard pressed ? " 

"The assailants some mounted, one or two on foot bore 
iron maces, glaives, and daggers. A felled trunk blocked the 
passage." 

"Forward then!" cried Arnoul. "Press forward!" 

A sh'arp turn in the road brought them suddenly in sight 
of the attack. One of the men was dismounted his horse fly- 
ing riderless down the road. Setting spurs, Arnoul took the 
low barrier and was at once in the thick of the unequal com- 
bat, Roger still at his side. The assailants turned, with fierce 
oaths, to the newcomers. Now the fight was closer matched 
six armed men to nine, two of whom were on foot. One of 
these had closed with the unhorsed knave. The leader of the 
attack, a huge man clad in rusty black armor, wheeled sud- 
denly and made for de ValJetort, whirling a spiked iron club 
high above his head as he came at him. An unsheathed dag- 
ger glinted at his waist-strap as he sawed with his left hand 
at the shortened reins. Arnoul raised his buckler to intercept 
the descending blow, his arm bent at the elbow to lessen the 
shock. A sharp clang of metal upon metal and the arm fell 
limp and powerless at his side. The edge of the buckler had 



J 
3 o ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

turned the heavy mace aside, but it was bent and crumpled 
like a piece of paper. 

But the squire had not only been on the defence. As his 
opponent swung the heavy weapon up for a second blow, he 
stood up in his stirrups and brought his sword down with a 
sickening crunch upon the other's arm. The good steel quiv- 
ered with the force he put into it, and the mace fell harmless. 
Again the arm was raised to strike, and a second time the 
sword descended on it, this time breaking off short in Arnoul's 
hand with the violence of the impact. The man, with a yell 
of pain, dropped the mace from his nerveless fingers. It hung 
dragging by its rawhide thong from his wrist. 

In the meantime, a second man had crept up, knife in hand, 
and crouched near the prancing horses. He was awaiting an 
opportunity of hamstringing de Valletort's charger. But Roger, 
seeing him, shook himself free from his assailant and, leaning 
over, drove the point of his sword into the back of the scoun- 
drel's neck. There was a wrench, a jerk, and the body fell 
forward under the hoof-beats, the head nearly severed from its 
trunk. 

" One ! " shouted Roger grimly, wheeling back upon his 
former combatant with dripping sword. But the two men of 
the original party had already accounted for another, while a 
third, catching sight of Vipont riding up, made off into the 
thick tangle of the woods. 

De Valletort and his assailant were now both crippled. 
Only, the life was coming back again now into the younger 
man's arm. The other shook himself clear of the useless mace 
and, dropping rein, caught at the dagger and lifted his left 
arm to strike; but, as Arnoul reached for the short, pointed 
sword that hung at his saddle bow, the great horse slipped and 
he found his opponent fighting on the ground. 

Quick as thought he saw his danger. He could never cope 
with it as long as he was mounted. So, with a glance to see 
that all were occupied in a hand to hand fight, he slipped from 
the saddle and rushed at him. The point of his weapon glanced 
harmlessly off the other's armor as he cut and thrust. Both 
men slipped and slid in the rain-beaten clay. It was as much 
as he could do to keep his footing, and parry the lightning- 
like strokes of the gleaming dagger upon his shield. The man 
in rusty armor seemed to possess the strength of ten. He was, 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 31 

for all his huge bulk, as agile as a cat, springing hither and 
thither over the greasy clay and directing a perfect rain of 
blows upon the squire's shield and mail. Arnoul pressed for- 
ward and drew back again warily, his breath coming sharp and 
quick as he summed up his chances. There was one at least, 
he thought, that might bring the struggle to a speedy end if 
he could but make it serve him. The man wore a helmet with 
a nose piece of bars shaped something like an open fan. At 
all other points he was invulnerable to a dagger thrust. Here, 
at least, he might be wounded. Drawing back for an instant 
he let his adversary press on, holding his round shield the 
while before his face and evading, rather than parrying, the 
stabbing weapon. Then, with a hiss of indrawn breath, he 
lifted his short steel blade to the level of the man's head and, 
heedless of blows, rushed at him. The dagger struck the steel 
bars of the nose piece, glanced off, and found an entry. The 
man screamed with pain ; but Arnoul, getting his shield up 
close against his breast so that his adversary was powerless to 
strike other than sideways at him, thrust his dagger again and 
again between the bars. Twice thrice it struck steel; but 
something warm trickling down its blade and soaking through 
his gauntlet, warned him that his enemy was wounded. At 
last the point pierced deep. With a shriek the man fell, tear- 
ing the dagger, wedged tight between the bars, from Arnoul's 
hand. The point had gouged the eye and entered his brain. 
He was dead. 

De Valletort was unarmed. His sword was broken, his 
dagger wedged by the hilt between the bars of the dead man's 
helmet. And the fight was not yet done. In the struggle he 
had worked his way to the side of the road ; but Roger, he 
could see and hear, was giving battle yet manfully to two as- 
sailants, and the strangers were still hard pressed man to man. 
He stumbled across the roadway. On a sudden he caught 
sight of the fallen mace. Seizing it, he hurried up to Roger's 
assistance and, coming behind one of the two men, brought it 
down with a crash on the back of his steel cap. He rolled off 
his horse and fell like a log. 

"Two! Well struck, my master!" shouted Roger. "Go 
you now to the rescue of the others. God's blood! but I can 
settle a score here. Get your horse, though, first; or else 
mount this one." 



' 

32 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

The man's words came in gasps. He had been fighting hard, 
and blood was running down his face. 

But Arnoul remained on foot. The rain had ceased now, 
and the lightnings came fewer and fewer. The roadway was 
aplash with greasy mire. It was safer on foot. 

Before him he saw the dismounted man throw up his arms 
and fall with a groan. His assailants made off to help his 
fellows. They were five now two on foot and three mounted 
against three. De Valletort pressed on towards them, whirl- 
ing the mace. A high pitched shriek rang out as one of the 
riders went down ; and a muttered oath was cut short by the 
heavy thud of his ponderous weapon. Four to three! No; 
four to four, for there was Vipont himself riding with his 
sword drawn. Before the knight could come to close quarters 
Arnoul had disabled another man who was in the act of drag- 
ging the unhorsed rider towards the woods at the side of the 
road. He stooped down and laid his hand over the man's 
heart, but the armed hauberk effectually prevented his feeling 
the beats. 

"Saints!" he exclaimed, astonished, as he perceived the 
loose set of the mail upon the figure. "'Tis a child, at most, 
they have wounded. The brutes! To set upon children in 
this guise ! " And, picking up the inert body in his arms, he 
bore it away from the plunging horses to a place of safety 
near the barrier. Then, without more ado, he turned to re- 
join his companions. 

But the fight was finished. Of the sixteen who had en- 
gaged in it five were lying stretched upon the ground. Roger 
had his steel cap off and was wiping the blood and sweat from 
his face. Sir Sigar sat proudly in his saddle as he thrust his 
sword there was a stain on it, too into its sheath. A man 
sat stupidly in the roadway rubbing his head. All the assail- 
ants who were not wounded or dead had run away. 

"Here is a fine thing!" said Vipont with a smile. "We 
set out to make our way peaceably to England and we meet 
with the adventures of the knights errant ! Bravely done ! 
Nobly fought, my son! I watched your blade make pretty 
work of yonder carcass. Would to God I could have come to 
your assistance ! Nay ; glad am I that my horse would not 
take the barrier, since you have thus knightly acquitted your- 
self alone ! For this deed you shall have your golden spurs. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 33 

It is worthy of knighthood. Though, indeed, even I worked 
one small work. That man " he pointed to the fellow sitting 
in the middle of the road and grinning stupidly " will have 
cause to remember my sword. Come, scoundrel, who are you 
and who are these gentlefolks that you have attacked ? " 

The man rubbed his head, getting his scattered wits to- 
gether. His had been a shrewd blow. He gave no very in- 
telligible answers at first, but Arnoul and Vipont gathered 
that they had fallen upon the very lord Fuld his name was 
against whom the peasant had warned them, in the act of at- 
tacking another band of travelers. Fortunate for them was it 
that they had come upon him and his murderous retainers al- 
ready occupied. Otherwise, thought Arnoul, the issue would 
have probably been quite other than it was. 

The man sat in the road, answering Vipont's questions. 

"And this Fuld where is he?" 

" There/' the man made answer, pointing at the same time 
to the body in the rusted armor, the haft of the dagger still 
protruding from the helmet. 

"Hell's curse upon him!'* began Vipont shrilly. And then 
lowering his voice almost to a whisper: "Nay, nay, Sigar; 
those days are over, please God ! God rest him ! God assoil 
him ! Arnoul, methinks thou hast killed the man ! " 

" Aye ; he is dead right enough," grunted Roger, awkwardly 
undoing his jerkin, so that he might get at his wound. 

"Where lies his castle? Is it near by?" pursued the 
knight judicially. 

" A half league through the woods," the man muttered. 

*' These for his soul though he deserve it not ! " Vipont 
threw a handful of coins before the dazed man. "See that 
Masses be read for him, fellow. It sickeneth me to see dead 
men. Come away, Arnoul ! Come away ! Not but that it was 
in fair fight and a brave deed, lad," he added. 

But de Valletort was attending to Roger's wound. He 
stayed where he was as the knight turned away, and ques- 
tioned in his stead. 

" Is there shelter to be had nearer than thy master's cas- 
tle?" he asked. 

Nay; nought closer than Houlgate." 

Who are these, then, with whom you fought ? Are they 
ring towards the coast?" 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 3 



34 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

"Nay, lord; they ride inlands from Caen." 
"We cannot leave them here in this plight, master," said 
Roger. "Either must we remain here, er they turn back 

with us.' 1 

"We shall see. We shall see. How is that, Roger? Is it 

more easy now ? " 

"Thanks to you, Master Arnoul. For a day or two I shall 
be stiff, doubtless. I am not used to steel thrusts. But 'twill 
be no more than a scratch." 

As they spoke together to the man, de Valletort attending 
to Roger's wound, a sound half groan, half sigh came from 
the barricade. Then they noticed that one of the rescued had 
slipped from his horse and gone to the rider whom Arnoul 
had carried senseless from the fight. They went over to the 
pair. One was on his knees unlacing the other's headpiece. 

"My father! My father! I shall never reach him !" came 
from beneath the mail in a childish voice. 

" Yes, mistress ; indeed you will. See ! we are rescued and 
the villains put to flight," whispered the kneeling figure. 

" Mistress ! " echoed Arnoul. " Then it is a woman ! Sir 
Sigar, methought these two were children. The one I carried 
weighed light as feathers. They are women we have rescued." 

And then, as the unlaced hood fell back and the dark hair 
escaped on each side of the pale face, he started in amaze- 
ment, seizing Vipont's arm. 

"What is it?" asked the knight, laying his hand upon his 
sword hilt. " Are there more thieves to destroy ? I would I 
were but young again, and I should pursue those cutthroat 
villains to the death ! " 

" Look ! Look ! " gasped Arnoul. " 'Tis your own daughter, 
Sibilla, we have saved from capture. That is Sibilla lying on 
the roadside !-~Sibilla, I tell you, Sibilla ! " 

His voice came high and hysterical. What with the sud- 
den action of the fight and this discovery, he was excited and 
unnerved. Vipont turned his horse's head, and then slowly 
climbed from the saddle. He moved over to the prostrate fig- 
ure, not realizing at once what Arnoul had said. But de Val- 
letort was before him and, kneeling, passed his mailed arm 
under the girl's head. 

" Sibilla ! Sibilla ! " he cried in a rapture, as he gazed down 
upon her beautiful, pallid face. " It is I, Arnoul, Arnoul de 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 35 

Valletort. Do not fear ! We have put your assailants to flight. 
Look up ! Look up, my beloved ! 'Tis I, Arnoul, and your 
own father, Sir Sigar, who have come to you ! " 

He pushed his helmet back from his head as he spoke and 
discovered his features. 

The girl lifted her eyes to his face with a sigh of content. 
She put her arm, covered with its unwieldy chain armor, up 
towards him in a gesture of trust and abandonment; and then 
quietly fainted. Sir Sigar stood, looking down upon the two 
of them, Roger staring, eyes and mouth open, over his shoulder. 

"Sibilla!" exclaimed the knight in wonder. "Sibilla! And 
here ? Thank God we were in time ! And this ? This is 
Blanche in man's attire. Loosen the strappings of her armor 
and give her air ! Thank God ! Thank God ! " 

Then kneeling too and uncovering his head he addressed 
the squire and the unconscious girl. 

" My son de Valletort, worthy to be a knight, worthy of 
my daughter Sibilla ! What said the friar ? ' Let him win the 
maid/ And, forsooth it is indeed a providence ! he has won 
her, won her at the sword's point ! A valiant fight ! A noble 
prowess ! Daughter, you hearken ? This is my son my son, 
I tell you, de Valletort. He makes suit for your hand, Sibilla. 
He loves you ; and, by God's grace, he has rescued you from 
these dogs of robbers. I give my consent, my full consent. 
What say you? What ?" 

But Arnoul interposed. " Sir, your daughter is in a swoon. 
She hears you not. Neither can we stay here all the night. 
The darkness grows apace. We must forge ahead and find 
some shelter, or else push on to the harbor. Roger, get the 
horses and the men together. One poor fellow is dead or 
wounded. If he be dead we must perforce leave him where 
he lies; but, wounded, you must make shift to take him on 
your mount. My lord, to horse ! I shall carry the maid. To 
horse all, and forward ! " 

He pressed his lips upon the brow of the unconscious girl 
and lifting her in his arms, approached the horse that Roger 
led forward by the bridle rein. Quickly he swung himself 
into the saddle ; and bent his arm around the motionless form. 

Then, with Sir Sigar at his side, and the others following, he 
rode forward, in the fast gathering gloom, towards Houlgate. 



36 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

It had all happened in this wise. The Franciscan friars 
had brought it all about when they trudged, begging, to Exe- 
ter and made their way to the convent. There were many 
comings and goings at the Benedictine house of Exeter. The 
Lady Abbess was something of a celebrity in the land and a 
power, certainly, to be reckoned with in things ecclesiastical. 
And so, not only the grave Cistercians who journeyed to and 
fro between England and France, but Premonstratensians and 
Cordeliers and Blackfriars as well, sometimes found that their 
business compelled them to take this same good lady into their 
counsels. 

So it was that one, a Franciscan friar, Elias by name, who 
had, though he did not mention it, been some four months in 
voyaging from his convent in France into Devon, bore her 
tidings of her brother, Sigar Vipont. 

He was a doleful man, this friar Elias, with a woebegone 
countenance and a lachrymose voice. His ungloved ringers, as 
well as his bare feet, were swollen and blue with cold and ex- 
posure, for he had come on foot with his companion, as beg- 
ging Minors should, on a quest for his convent and order. 

Of the two, he ought assuredly to have been the compan- 
ion, for his fellow was plump aud well-favored, with a ruddy 
face and a twinkling eye, to whose fingers and toes the cold 
weather brought no chilblains, and from whose jovial counte- 
nance no amount of hardship or care could smooth out the 
perpetual smile. 

Still, Brother Elias was the superior, and it was for him to 
address the Lady Abbess. He did so without so much as 
raising his eyes to her face Brother Leo the while letting his 
gaze range about the apartment and taking good stock of 
the sister at the same time. The business that had led this 
strangely assorted couple to the Exeter nunnery completed, 
Brother Elias hummed and ha'ed. 

'There is one other thing I ought, perchance, to tell your 
ladyship. I am lately come from Paris and That is to say, 
Brother Leo here and I have crossed the ocean Good Saints ! 
how the barque rocked in the crossing. We happened upon a 
certain knight in the convent of St. Jacques, it was sorely 
afflicted, forsooth the hand of the Lord lies heavy upon him, 



I908.J ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 37 

for he has slain a priest of God one Sigar, Lord of More- 
leigh. This same lord," the friar continued, not noticing, since 
his eyes were fixed upon the oaken planks of the floor, the 
Abbess' change of color, "this same knight, his name is 
Vipont is not your name, Lady Abbess, Vipont? he lay sick 
of an incurable disease. He " 

" For heaven's sake, man, speak your mind if you have 
anything to say ! " the impatient lady broke in upon him. 
"What of my brother? Is he dead, too?" 

"Dead? The good saints send not! I did not say that he 
was dead, did I?" the Minor whined and drawled. "I said, 
forsooth, that I that my Brother Leo here and I had seen 
the knight in Paris, ill and " 

"And what said he?" 

"Said? I did not say that we had spoken with him. We 
saw him only, in the convent of St. Jacques." 

"What news have you of him, then?" snapped the abbess, 
losing patience. 

" That he is ill." 

" Of what ? A podagra or a melancholy humor ? Is he 
choleric or has he been stricken with the leprosy ? Speak, 
friar, and tell me what you know ! " 

" I know naught, Lady Abbess. I did not say that I knew 
aught. But he assuredly looked ill as one nigh to death's 
door. Did he not look ill, my Brother Leo ? " 

Thus addressed, the rubicund friar let loose the flood gates 
of his pent-up eloquence, and poured out, without once stop- 
ping to take breath, a circumstantial account of the appear- 
ance of Sir Sigar. As Brother Elias was painfully accurate 
and kept to his facts, so Brother Leo, ignoring fact, put his own 
interpretation upon what he had seen, and gave the good Lady 
Abbess so detailed and harrowing a picture of her brother's 
state, that even that self-possessed lady lost countenance. 

"So he is indeed nigh to death?" she questioned sadly, 
when a pause came in the torrent of words. " Poor Sigar ! " 

" Nigh to death ! " exclaimed the friar, wreathed in smiles 
and rubbing one plump hand comfortably over the other. " Nigh 
to death, of a surety, if he be not already dead. At the least, 
from his appearance, he must be stricken with the fevers of 
Italy, with phthisic and with rheumatic caught in the moun- 
tains, with " The sentence finished in a catalogue of maladies. 



38 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

"Good St. Scholastica ! " The Lady Abbess was much 
moved. " What a calamity ! " 

The intentions of the abbess were of the best, and she only 
told the prioress what she had heard. She did this merely to 
ease her own feelings. The prioress gave it, in strict confi- 
dence, to the cellarer. The cellarer kept her counsel and said 
nothing. But in convents, sometimes, notwithstanding the mani- 
fold rules and regulations, of which the practice of silence is 
one and not the least, news seems in an inexplicable manner 
and with incredible swiftness to get abroad. Before vespers 
even the lay sisters had heard that Sir Sigar was in extremis, 
as a result of falling over a precipice in the Alps. When com- 
pline was over Sibilla had learnt that her father was -lying 
seriously ill in Paris. She went straight to her aunt the ab- 
bess. 

"Well, child," said the good lady, catching sight of the 
girl's pallid face, " what is the matter that you seek me after 
compline ? This is not the time for breaking the silence of a 
religious house with idle chatter.*' 

"Dear aunt," Sibilla said piteously, "they tell me that fa- 
ther is dying." 

"Tut, tut, child; nothing of the kind! Who has been tell- 
ing you such nonsense ? " 

"Who has told me? I don't know. I don't remember. 
Every one seems to know all about it. But it is not nonsense, 
Aunt Matilda. I see in your face that it is true. Dear aunt," 
she pleaded, " tell me the truth. What ails my father ? Is he? 
Is he?" 

The brown eyes brimmed over with tears. 

"No, he is not"; the Lady Abbess was emphatic. She 
drew Sibilla towards her and put her arm about the girl's slight 
form. " He suffers from an ague, child, or a chill, or a twinge 
of the gout, perhaps. Take my word for it, it can't be any- 
thing serious, or I should have been advised of it." 

'Still, he is ill, and alone in Paris?" 

" Unwell, possibly ; but hardly alone. He will be in some 
-house or lodging where he will be well attended to. 
The leeches of France are as good and better than those of 
England. Do not fear for him, Sibilla. Come, weep not, child ! 
Tut tut ! a Vipont and tears ! Blessed St. Scholastica, what 
a sight ! " 



9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 39 

The good lady's own eyes looked suspiciously bright as she 
spoke, comforting and mothering the weeping girl. 

At last Sibilla dried her eyes. " I am going to him," she 
said simply. 

"Are you out of your mind, girl, to think of such a thing ? " 
her aunt asked almost roughly. 

" No, aunt, I am not mad, but I go to Paris to my father." 

"You shall do nothing of the kind. You are in my care; 
and I forbid anything so foolish and so absurd. The idea ! A 
slip of a girl like you to talk of crossing into France and mak- 
ing your way to Paris alone ! " 

"Yet I shall certainly go." 

" I forbid you to dream of such madness ! It is prepos- 
terous impossible! Come Sibilla, I am truly sorry for you, 
but you must see that you can do nothing. Say your prayers 
and be off to bed ! Poor Sigar will come back safe and sound 
never you fear. That's a good child, now ! " 

The abbess kissed the girl upon her brow, and dismissed her 
with cheering words. Then she 'sat back in her chair and 
wrinkled her old forehead and thought how much easier it was 
to manage a whole abbeyful of sisters than one Vipont, and 
that a girl. 

Sibilla, meanwhile, went to her room. But she did not obey 
her aunt's advice. She, too, sat far into the night thinking. 
At last she rose and went into the adjoining room. 

" Blanche ! " she whispered, shaking her sleeping maid. 
" Wake up, Blanche, and listen to me ! " 

" What is the matter, mistress ? " asked the woman sleepily, 
rubbing her eyes. 

Without the dawn was just beginning to stir in the sky. 

"Hush! Do not speak so loud, Blanche ! Someone might 
hear! Are you ready to do me a great service? Listen ! My 
father is ill in France ; and I am going to him. You will help 
me, Blanche, won't you ? " 

" Help you, mistress ! of course that will I. But why all 
this suddenness and secrecy ? " 

" Hush, Blanche ; do not speak so loud ! My aunt prevents 
my going ; so I must steal away. I want you to slip out and 
make your way over to Moreleigh. See Pigot and tell him my 
plan. You will get money from him and two of the castle 
men. Also, we shall need four horses for you will come with 



40 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

me. Then go yourself and find one of the page's suits one 
that will fit me and a jack or a light suit of mail from the 
guard-room. If Pigot makes any objections tell him that it is 
my will. You must get arms, too, and man's clothing for your- 
self. And to-morrow, by nightfall, be you with the two men 
at the mouth of the river. We are sure to find a ship sailing 
for France. They come and go every day. Pigot had better 
come with you or go to-night to see about the ship" 

"But, mistress," broke in the bewildered maid; "how can 
all this be done in the time? And what will Pigot have to 
say to it all?" 

"Hush, Blanche! Hush! it must be done, as I say. And 
Pigot must do as I tell- him. Say nothing about this to any 
one n ot to a living soul in the convent ; but as soon as ever 
you can, get away and make for Moreleigh. Do everything as 
I have told you. Pigot must hand over to you enough money 
for any emergency. Show him this ring if he questions or re- 
fuses ; and tell him that it is my bidding. And, Blanche ?" 

"Yes, mistress?" 

"You are a faithful creature. You love me, Blanche?" 

"And have I not loved you ever since I held you in my 
arms as a baby ? " 

"And you would do much for me?" 

" All I might do, dear mistress. There is nothing I would 
not do for you." 

" Then see you fail me not to-morrow at dark. Make all 
the preparations for the journey. See that Pigot gives you 
two strong men and used to arms both of them mounted on 
good horses and with provision. They will both ride armed. 
Find yourself a light hauberk, too; and we had both better 
have large hoods to them to hide our hair. But fail me not, 
Blanche ! As you love me and I know you do love me do 
not fail me." 

" I shall not fail you, Mistress Sibilla. Upon my life, all 
shall be done as you have said. And if that cross-grained 
Pigot refuses Ah ! So much the worse for Pigot ! " she 
concluded. 

The impulsive girl threw her arms about the serving woman 
and hugged her. She knew that her plan would not miscarry. 
With what results it was carried out the reader is already ac- 
quainted. 



1908,] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 41 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Moreleigh Church was nearly built. The old knight saw 
the walls rising with a great satisfaction and content, knowing 
that his penance was all but accomplished. With his own 
hands he labored at the growing pile of masonry, carrying the 
rough blocks of stone and setting them in their places, bearing 
the mortar to the masons on the scaffolding, trying, even, with 
his unskilled hands to chisel the squared stones that were to 
serve as corner-pieces for the angles of the building. 

From the late springtime, when he had come back to Devon, 
and on through the summer months until the russet of early 
autumn took the place of the soft greens and the flowers began 
to fall from the yellow gorse, he had hardly missed a day at 
Moreleigh Church. He had grown to love it as a part of him- 
self. It was no longer as a penance that he built. Rather was 
it in fulfilment of a vow, but a vow, none the less, that spelt 
his release. 

And so, as the days shortened and the walls ever grew 
higher from the greensward, his tall, bent form could be seen 
going in and out among the workmen, to whom his kindly words 
and sad, sweet smile had endeared him no less than his pa- 
thetic story. He was no more the fiery Sir Sigar of More- 
leigh Castle, with a harsh word or a blow for all who crossed 
him, but a patient, broken old man, with bowed head and 
gentle speech and kindly smile, ready to undertake the rough- 
est and the meanest work beside his own servants. 

And so Moreleigh Church was built a body waiting for its 
soul, for as yet it had not been consecrated nor had Mass 
been offered within its walls. It was a little church. A man 
could measure it from end to end in twenty paces. But surely 
never church was built with so great love and care. The short, 
square tower rising sheer and solid amid the surrounding trees 
towards the blue sky, the tiny sanctuary carrying on the lines 
of the narrow nave, the south aisle all were planned and exe- 
cuted with a minute detail of proportion and decoration that 
made the church, small as it was, a perfect example of art and 
skill. The south wall was pierced by an archway giving ac- 
cess to a chantry chapel. "That," said Vipont to himself, "I 
shall provide for my own soul. When I am gone and for- 
gotten a priest shall read the holy Mass there for me too. 1 ' 
And he smiled his sad smile as he thought of his prudence. 



42 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

Truly a wondrous change was wrought in the heart of the 
Lord of Moreleigh. 

The lovers, too, Arnoul and Sibilla, were frequent pilgrims 
to the spot. He had come back with his golden spurs, for 
Vipont had insisted upon going straightway to the royal court 
at St. Alban's upon their landing in England and craving the 
boon of knighthood for his squire. He himself had stood 
sponsor for the lad with no less a person than Baldwin de 
Redvers, the Earl of Devon. Together they had kept vigil in 
the great abbey church through the long silence of the night, 
broken only by the chanting of matins in the far-off choir. 
Sir Sigar had insisted on keeping the fast with Arnoul, and, 
shriven and houselled also, had led him to the king. The 
abbot of St. Alban's had blessed the sword that hung about 
the lad's neck. And King Henry, always ready to honor 
bravery, had repeated the formula of knighthood and the ad- 
monition with a merry smile lurking in his eyes. 

" To what end do you desire to enter into this order ? If 
it is that you may be rich, repose yourself, and be honored 
without doing honor to knighthood, then you are unworthy of 
it, and would be to the knighthood you should receive what 
the simoniacal priest is to the sacerdotal office. But we know, 1 ' 
he added, glancing towards Sibilla, "what your purpose is, and 
we have heard of your valor and chivalry. Clothe him, sirs 
and ladies, for the accolade ! " 

The knights and the ladies brought his knightly dress and 
put it on him in place of the white tunic, the red robe, and 
the black doublet that he wore. The golden spurs were tied 
on at his heels with scarlet leather thongs. The chausses were 
strapped in place at waist and knee. The shining hauberk was 
slipped over his head and girt about his middle, and the brace- 
lets were fastened at his wrist to hold the gauntlets in place. 
Then, last of all, the sword was girded on, and he knelt be- 
fore the king. 

" In the name of God," spoke the monarch, rising to his 
feet and touching him lightly with his drawn sword. "In the 
name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I make thee knight. 
Be thou brave and loyal." Then the king struck him gently 
with the hand upon the cheek and raised him from his knees. 

Thus was Arnoul the Englishman, sometime clerk of Paris, 
dubbed a knight by Henry III. of England at the Benedictine 
House of St. Alban's. 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 43 

But there was more than this. The king had other ways 
of honoring bravery than conferring knighthood ; and Vipont 
and Redvers had doubtless arranged it beforehand. Before he 
left St. Alban's, de Valletort had the title deeds of the king's 
grant of the manor of Harberton in his possession. He was a 
lord as well as a knight. 

So Sir Arnoul and the Lady Sibilla were frequent visitors 
at Moreleigh Church. They were hardly less interested in the 
building than Vipont himself ; and many were the gray stones 
that Arnoul set in place in the walls and tower, Sibilla watch- 
ing him with her great, dark eyes. 

But what he loved the best was to sit beneath the trees on 
the rising ground behind the church and watch, through the 
leafy screen, the steadily rising courses and the busy workmen 
at their toil, with the bowed figure of Sir Sigar moving to and 
fro among them. There they would sit like happy children, 
playing with the woodland flowers, whispering words of love 
into each other's ears, and looking into each other's eyes. Or 
they would wander through the woods, by the banks of the 
stream, listening to the singing of the birds, drinking in the soft 
scents of summer, telling each other the wonder of their love. 

So went their wooing ; for Vipont had given his consent, 
and Arnoul was a knight. And the violets and yellow prim- 
roses faded and gave place to wild hyacinth and daisies in the 
woods and hedgerows, while they spoke ever the self-same 
words. Sir Arnoul would ride from Buckfast, straight and 
strong on his great bay horse and doff his plumed cap as he 
threw a kiss to her before dismounting. Or he would come 
up on foot from Avon Mouth, striding along, clean-limbed and 
vigorous, in a simple dress of homespun from Cistercian looms. 
But his greeting was ever the same: " Hey, sweetheart! and 
how fares the building?" as he took her in his arms. And 
she would make answer, her heart beating against his bosom, 
her blushing face turned up towards his : " It grows apace, my 
beloved. It will soon be done." 

For the consecration of Moreleigh Church was the term 
towards which all things seemed to move. Vipont yearned for 
the fulfilment of his penance and his freedom. Arnoul 'and 
Sibilla were to be united once the church was built and blessed. 

And so at last, when the cornflowers were paling before 
the upstart Michaelmas daisies, one early morning Arnoul rode 
to Moreleigh. He wore a light chain mail of Saracen make 



44 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

under his surcoat of rich sendal. The long golden spurs of his 
knighthood shone at his heels. His cheeks were flushed under 
their healthy tan, and his eyes sparkled as he thought of the 
purpose of his riding. A squire followed him bearing his shield 
vert, with three mullets, gules, upon a bend, argent. 

By all the roads, from all the villages, the peasants flocked 
to Moreleigh. The Bishop of Exeter, accompanied by his es- 
cort of dignitaries, was already there in the castle with the 
Abbot of Buckfast and his monks. His Lordship of Exeter 
was fasting since the day before, for he was going to perform 
the ceremony of the consecration of a church. 

Vipont was talking earnestly with the abbot as Arnoul 
rode into the courtyard and dismounted. He flung his bridle 
rein to a page standing by and, with greetings right and left 
to all, hurried across to the hall. He had caught a glimpse of 
Sibilla standing at the head of the steps waiting for him where 
she had so often waited for her father in the old days. 

"Beloved!" he cried. "The day has dawned at last! 
The church is finished. The penance is done. And you are 
mine, Sibilla, mine until death and beyond it ! In a few short 
hours the bishop will have consecrated Moreleigh Church to 
God, and you will be my wife, sweetheart." 

" My beloved! " the girl murmured, yielding to his embrace. 

"Think how the knots have been cut away, sweetheart. 
Think how the tangled skein has been straightened," he said, 
smoothing her hair back from her brow and kissing her upon 
the lips. " The poor clerk of Paris mating with a Vipont ! It 
is passing strange ! " 

" Hush, Arnoul ! Where is there in all the world a knight 
such as thou ? Oh, beloved, my beloved ! 'Tis I who should 
thank God and wonder! When I think of poor Sir Guy " 

The knight raised her downcast face to his and kissed her 
again upon the brow. " My brother is with God," he said sim- 
ply. "Brother Thomas of Aquin comforted me with that word. 
He watches us in spirit, dear heart, from beside the throne." 
And Brother Thomas" faltered Sibilla. 

' Yes, heart of my heart, Brother Thomas told me I should 
win you. But for him but for your sweet image in my heart 
-I should- See, Sibilla, all these years have I worn thy 
relic in my bosom. Do you remember the day you placed it 
there, sweetheart ? " He drew out the golden case with its faded 
ribbon from beneath his mail and raised it to his lips reverently. 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 45 

" My beloved ! " the girl murmured again, nestling yet 
closer to, his side. 

" Come, sweetheart, they are moving in the courtyard. The 
bishop is making for the church. We must go now with the 
rest. Bravely, my own beloved, bravely ! In one short hour 
we shall come back hither man and wife." 

As Sir Arnoul and Sibilla appeared together at the head of 
the low steps leading to the courtyard, a cheer went up from 
the crowd of retainers aud guests. They had been bidden for 
the consecration, but they divined that it was not for that 
alone, and that the day's ceremony was to end with the wed- 
ding of de Valletort and the heiress of Sir Sigar. Every head 
was turned towards where they stood side by side, at the en- 
trance to the hall. Old Bishop Blondy, still rubicund and port- 
ly, though his age was beginning to tell hardly upon him, 
smiled his approval of the pair and waved his bejewelled hand 
in cordial blessings from the castle gate. The abbot raised his 
eyes and smiled too, while Vipont straightened himself and, 
walking over towards them, joined their two hands and held 
them for an instant in his own. It was a graceful act, and 
shouts of approval burst from the assembly. 

There they stood, the three of them, framed in the gray 
stone doorway of the great hall. The old lord, smiling his 
pathetic, yet supremely happy smile, as he looked proudly from 
the one to the other, the young knight, the sunlight playing 
on the rich colors of his silken surcoat and glinting from the 
close- woven links of his mail. Bareheaded he stood, the short 
locks of his recent knighthood crisping on his brow, his mien 
noble, his visage determined, yet lit with the light of a great love. 
He had no eyes save for Sibilla, as he clasped her little hand 
in his great brown one, looking down upon her as though to 
proclaim his worship to the whole wide world. And she, clad 
in some clinging, flowing stuff of simple white, shaped to the 
contour of her form by every breath of the breeze, the hood 
thrown back and her wondrous hair held by a plain golden 
fillet such as he remembered it she had first worn at Buck- 
fast for Abbot Benet's feast, the color coming and going in her 
face and bosom, tears of sheer happiness and love trembling 
upon the long lashes that veiled her downcast eyes, she drew 
closer, to him and her little hand trembled in his as she heard 
the shouts of joy and welcome uprising from the packed court- 
yard of the castle. 



46 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

" Long live Sir Arnoul de Valletort and the Lady Sibilla ! " 
A stentorian voice made itself heard above the rest; .and Ar- 
noul, turning for an instant, caught sight t of Roger hurling his 
headgear high above the throng. 

As the crowd took up the acclamation, good Bishop Blondy 
waved his plump hands above his head and turned to pass 
through the gate towards the church. 

But at the moment there was a stir under the archway and 
confusion. The bishop was shot violently to one side, as a 
white mule trotted through, followed in a moment by four 
others ambling more decorously. On the foremost beast sat 
or rather, hung the Abbess Matilda, puffing and panting, her 
veil awry, her rosy cheeks redder than ever, her eyes rolling 
wildly and closing alternately. When she managed to get 
breath and saw the devastation her beast had wrought, she cried 
aloud, speaking with great rapidity and gesticulating violently: 
" Don't stand staring there, you dolts! Blessed saints! have 
you never seen a nun before, or a mule, that you look as 
though I were a ghost ? Hold this beast, some one, and get 
me down. Oh, St. Scholastica ! the brute is possessed by seven 
devils!" 

"My Lady Abbess!" the bishop exclaimed, regaining his 
countenance with his equilibrium as the nun slid to the ground. 
"My Lady Abbess! This is hardly" 

" Oh, my Lord Bishop ! My lord ! Think you that I ? 
But you ! I am covered with confusion ! You are not injured, 
my Lord Bishop ? Blessed saints ! What a calamity ! Where 
is Sir Sigar? Where is Sibilla? My lord, it was in this 
wise. Purposing to come to the consecration, I bade them sad- 
dle the mule the sedatest of mules, my lord, a very paragon 
of mules! But to-day it is of a surety possessed by the evil 
one. Scarce could I urge it from our cell hither. It crawled 
at a snail's pace. When I beat it with my wand it turned its 
head to look at me, wagging its ears. Methought the sacring 
would have been done ere I reached Moreleigh." 

" Natheless, you are here, my Lady Abbess," the bishop 
remarked, smiling. 

" Here ! " she panted. " I had near been in purgatory by 
now ! At the top of the hill I heard shouting. Straightway 
the devil entered into the mule. I could not hold him. My 
arms cracked with the strain. And ere I could breathe a prayer 
to my patron, St. Scholastica, I had jeopardized the life of your 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 47 

lordship as well as my own. I crave your forgiveness, my 
good lord; but it was the mule's fault." 

"There is naught to forgive, my Lady Abbess. But see to 
it that you ride not a mule possessed, or we shall soon be hav- 
ing an election at the Abbey of Exeter. But come ! We 
must to the consecration! I had like to faint with hunger." 

The bishop gave his blessing to the abbess and her nuns 
and passed on, followed by the crowd, to the church ; and the 
good lady, catching sight of the group standing upon the steps 
of the hall, crossed the courtyard and joined them. Last of 
all, they passed out of the now deserted castle. 

And so the church was consecrated. A tent had been pitched 
for the holy relics near by the western door, and in this tent 
vigil had been kept all the previous night, for the consecration 
of a church is the burial of a martyr, and on the bier within, 
surrounded by burning tapers, lay the tiny splinters of bone 
from a martyr's tomb. 

The bishop entered the building. Fixed at intervals upon 
the walls were twelve crosses before which were stuck twelve 
unlighted tapers. He gave orders that these should be lighted 
and then, accompanied by his clergy, retired to the tent where 
the first part of the service was to take place. After the 
penitential psalms had been recited, the bishop meanwhile 
vesting in his pontificals, the procession returned to the 
church. All round it they circled thrice, sprinkling the walls 
with holy water, before they entered. Then, as the deacon 
who had been left alone in the empty church opened the door 
to them, the Pax ceterna was sung and bishop and clergy 
went in. The crowd gathered in a group about the door, 
waiting until the alphabets, Greek and Latin, had been traced 
upon the ashes with which the floor was strewn in the form of 
a cross, from corner to corner. The salt and the water, the 
ashes and the wine were exorcised and blessed. The altar, the 
walls, the pavement, were aspersed ; and all was made ready 
for the entombment of the relics. Even the mortar that was 
to seal up the cavity in the altar that represents the tomb was 
mixed by the bishop. And then, once more, the church was 
left empty, as they went to bear the relics to their final rest- 
ing place. The procession came back, with lighted tapers and 
incense, and wound round the church. The voices of the 
priests repeated again and again the words Kyrie eleison! 
Kyrie eleison ! as the relics, almost hidden in a cloud of in- 



4 8 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

cense, were borne, shoulder high, immediately before the 
bishop. When they had once more reached the main door his 
lordship took his seat upon a faldstool and addressed the Lord 
of Moreleigh, founder of the church, according to the ap- 
pointed custom. 

"'You are aware, dearly beloved brother, that the Sacred 
Canons do not allow the consecration of churches that are 
destitute of endowment and ministers. We would therefore 
know, dearest brother, the number of priests and clerks, and 
the appointments you purpose allowing them, and what en- 
dowment you intend to settle on the church.'" 

Sir Sigar hung back. Surely, in this case, when the work 
was a penance imposed by the Lord Pope, the usual formula 
of address was unnecessary. But the bishop continued, re- 
counting the priviliges and claims of founders in a monotonous 
tone. The day was wearing. It was already becoming hot. 
The bishop wore full pontificals and a heavy miter. Besides, 
he was fasting, so there was some excuse for his reading with- 
out over-much eloquence this purely legal part of the cere- 
mony. A notary stood ready, waiting with the deed of gift. 
Vipont hung back; but Arnoul, who stood near him, whis- 
pered in his ear : " It is only a formality, my lord. You 
must acquaint the bishop with the nature of the provision you 
have made." 

The old knight cleared his throat nervously. " My lord 
bishop," he said, " I have done that which our lord the Pope 
has commanded me. I do hereby give the church that I 
have built to Holy Church, craving the prayers of the faithful 
that it may indeed be an acceptable penance in the sight of 
God for my great wrongdoing. I have provided for the main- 
tenance of three priests one to read Mass, day by day, for 
the eternal repose of the soul of Sir Guy de Valletort; an- 
other to minister to the good people living hereabout; the 
third, my lord, I purposed I desire that he should read the 
Holy Mass for me. Your lordship has said that the founders 
of churches have the first place of honor in the processions on 
the anniversary of the dedication. My lord, it is an honor 
that I shall never claim. This church is a penance for a sin. 
I give it, my lord, and I give it freely. But I cannot forget 
the occasion of its building, and I could not I You have 
said also, my lord, that if a founder of a church should come 
to want, the Church gives proof of her grateful remembrance 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 49 

of the founder's liberality. So be it. But, my lord, it is a 
penance and not a liberality. Besides, there is little I shall 
want. I am an old man, my lord. The days of my pilgrim- 
age are nearly done. I crave of the Church of all good, 
faithful people the boon of their prayers." The knight's 
voice faltered. He drew humbly to one side, scarce hearing 
the bishop's gruff: "Sir Sigar! Sir Sigar! You have done 
well. I' faith, more than our lord the Pope has commanded 
you. And as to prayers, methinks we could now ask you to 
pray for us ! " 

The words are set down in no known variation of the rite 
for the consecration of a church, but the good bishop, moved 
beyond his wont, used them none the less. The service of the 
hallowing continued. The sacred relics were borne to their 
temporary resting place within the building, while the altar 
tomb was prepared for them by the unction with the chrism. 
Then they were reverently laid within it, and solemnly in- 
censed by the bishop. The tomb was closed and sealed. The 
unctions of the altar, with the oil of the catechumens and the 
oil of chrism, of the walls, where the twelve crosses marked 
the places of anointing, with the chrism alone, were completed; 
and the five litttle fires of wax and incense were lighted at 
the four corners and in the middle of the altar. Lastly came 
the cleansing of the holy table and its adorning with fair linen 
for the celebration of the sacred mysteries. The church was 
consecrated. Vipont's penance was accomplished. 

And then the Mass began, old Bishop Blondy himself sing- 
ing it, with the monks from Buckfast for a choir. 

And when the Mass was over Sir Arnoul and the Lady 
Sibilla were married. They knelt before the newly hallowed 
altar while the good old bishop blessed the ring and pro- 
nounced them man and wife. The monks craned their necks 
the better to see Sir Arnoul ; and Abbot Benet, leaning back 
in his stall, shut his eyes and let his mind run back to the 
day when the handsome, stalwart knight had first come, a little 
lad, holding his brother's hand, to the Abbey of Buckfast. 

So it was done. A great shout rent the air when Sir Ar- 
noul and his bride came forth once more into the sunlight. 
Roger was beside himself with joy as he helped the peas- 
ants to strew the path to the castle with autumn leaves and 
flowers. So bereft was he of his senses that when he found 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 4 



50 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Oct., 

himself beside Blanche he even whispered to her that an- 
other wedding might be arranged in which he and she should 
play the leading part. He got a box on the ear for his pains, 
but her blush and giggle paid him well for his venture. 

At the castle there was feasting to follow. Sir Sigar sat in 
the great hall at the head of the board with Sibilla and Ar- 
noul beside him. He was at peace with all the world and 
smiled gently to himself as the guests enjoyed the good cheer 
he had provided. 

And in the courtyard below the retainers and peasants 
feasted and made merry in honor of the bride and groom, un- 
til once more Sir Arnoul stood before them upon the steps 
with Sibilla hanging upon his arm, Vipont and his guests 
pressing forward behind them. The slant sun wrapped them 
both in its glory, flashing back from the golden reliquary up- 
on his breast and the fillet in her hair. Together they stood 
before the retainers of the house and the peasants from its 
broad lands, acknowledging their joyous greetings, smiling back 
upon the throng of happy, smiling faces. 

Then Sir Arnoul took the Lady Sibilla's both hands in his 
and drawing her towards him, kissed her sweet face before 
them all. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The bells of the Abbey of St. Mary at Buckfast were ring- 
ing for Solemn Mass. On the high altar of our Lady the tall 
tapers were lighted. The monks, choir brethren and lay, were 
slowly filling up the choir, four ranks of them, two on each 
side, of white-cowled figures and brown-cloaked forms, kneel- 
ing motionless in the stalls. The abbot was in his place facing 
the altar, and away from him, on either hand and then at 
right angles in lines towards the altar, knelt the brethren. At 
the far end the ragged thatch of Brother Peter struggled out 
from under the hood of his habit. His little, wizened face was 
bent down. His eyes were closed, and his weather-beaten, 
knotted hands folded in prayer. He had come from the moors 
to the abbey to prepare himself for the last great day of shep- 
herding. On the other side of the choir, opposite him, knelt a 
solitary form, clothed in a plain tunic of white wool, girt with 
a leathern girdle. It was time for the Mass to begin. 

In the body of the church few people were gathered a 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 51 

knight and his lady, a little knot of the dependants of the 
abbey, a handful of neighboring peasants. They were all watch- 
ing, close as might be to the choir, for the sacred ministrants 
to approach the altar. 

But before they came from the sacristy, and the brethren 
set to singing the introit of the Mass, the abbot rose in his 
stall and moved to the middle of the choir. The white-robed 
figure rose, too, and approached him. What words were spoken 
the watchers could not hear, but they saw the postulant fall 
upon his knees and they caught the rapt look of utter peace 
that shone in his face, as with hands meekly folded, and eyes 
uplifted, he received the black scapulary at the hands of the 
Lord Abbot. It was the sign of his reception into the Cis- 
tercian family. 

With tears streaming from his eyes he took his place, 
among the youngest of the novices, and the abbot went back 
to his stall. 

Sir Sigar Vipont, Lord of Moreleigh, was a Cistercian novice 
of the house of St. Mary of Buckfast. 

The Mass began. The monks chanted the strange old melo- 
dies of Gloria and Credo. The incense clouds rose aloft before 
the altar, and drifted back into the nave. Sibilla's eyes were 
brimming as she knelt beside Arnoul ; and he, as he let his 
glance stray from the altar and the new novice to the dear 
one at his side, felt a tear start unbidden to his own. 

" My own beloved," he whispered to her as, Mass finished, 
the abbot came out into the nave, leading the novice towards 
them to take his farewell. " Sweetheart, Brother Thomas bade 
me know how wonderful are the ways of God. Meseems 'tis 
He who has had us all within His keeping. And He has 
given thee to me, even as Brother Thomas said." 

" Aye, dearest " ; and Sibilla lifted her dewy eyes to his. 
" God has given thee to me and me to thee." 

" And to St. Mary of Buckfast has He given a most worthy 
son " ; added the abbot, overhearing her words. " All are 
blessed by Him; and may His blessings rest upon us all!" 

" All but Sir Guy ! " the novice murmured sadly. 

" To His priest, Sir Guy, has He given the paradise of His 
eternal love," said the abbot. 

(THE END.) 




SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BACON. 

BY MICHAEL HOGAN, SJ. 

fE have already examined some of Lord Bacon's 
\ assertions about the science of psychology, and 
! have found them to be equivalently an unquali- 
fied denial of the existence, and even of the 
possibility, of such a science.* There can be 
no doubt about his meaning when he tells us that " no knowl- 
edge of the nature of the rational soul can be had from phil- 
osophy," and that all speculations regarding its origin, or its 
final destiny, are " subject to deceit and delusion." We have 
but to put faith in these assertions of the Lord Chancellor 
(and if we accept them at all it must be on faith, for he gives 
no reason for them), and we are already in hopeless scepticism 
in all that pertains to the world of the soul. 

But he has told us, moreover, that it is not alone in en- 
deavoring to give itself a satisfactory account of its own na- 
ture, its origin, and its ultimate destiny, that the human soul 
is helpless. He has assured us that, apart from Revelation, it 
cannot know anything of the origin of the created universe, 
or of Him Who called it out of nothing another assertion as 
untrue as it is unwarranted, and leading once more into the 
maze of scepticism with regard to the existence of God, His 
attributes, and the Providence which He exercises over the 
works of His hands. Finally, he has told us that " the doc- 
trine of religion, as well moral as mystical, is not to be attained 
except by inspiration and revelation from God." ^And thus he 
would again bring us out into the dark night of scepticism about 
man's duties to his Maker, to his fellow-man, and to himself. 
There is now left for man's cognitive faculties, very little 
material to work upon, save physical nature the fair child of 
the Lord Chancellor's adoption. And this, at least, we might 
expect him to pronounce the one grand object of the mind's 
unaided, infallible, and irresistible conquest. Not so, however. 
Such a background would not suffer his " method " to stand 
out in bold relief, nor show how much it was needed, and 

* Cf. The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, for February, 1908 : ' ' The Psychology of Lord 
Bacon." 






1908.] SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BACON 53 

how well adapted to the emergency. He must represent the 
human intellect as drowning in the ocean of universal dark- 
ness, with that " method " as the last plank after shipwreck. 

And first he tells of the shipwreck. " The doctrines," he 
says, " of the human understanding and of the human will are 
like twins; for the purity of illumination and the freedom of 
will began and fell together" (Adv. of Learning, Book V. 
Chapter I.) It is plain that Bacn is here giving us a part of 
the doctrine of the Reformers concerning the condition of fal- 
len man. " Profundissima corruptio," says Luther, " totius 
naturae et omnium, imprimis vero superiorum animae faculta- 
tum." And Quesnel : " Voluntas quam gratia non praevenit 
nihil habet luminis nisi ad aberrandum, virium, nisi ad se vul- 
nerandum." That the Lord Chancellor, like the Reformers, 
attributed this imagined wreck of man's -faculties to the fall 
from original justice, is placed beyond all doubt when he as- 
sures us that the purity of illumination and the freedom of 
will " began and fell together.* 1 Moreover we find him a mo- 
ment later bent on "restoring the senses to their former rank." 

He next proceeds to recount the sad consequences of that 
shipwreck of man's faculties of cognition, even in their rela- 
tions to physical nature. On the very first page of the Novum 
Organum the work in which his so-called method is ex- 
pounded he says : " The subtlety of nature is beyond that of 
sense or of the understanding, so that the specious meditations, 
speculations, and theories of mankind, are but a kind of insanity, 
only there is no one to observe them* This assertion differs in 
nothing from the fundamental tenet of the philosophy of 
Pyrrho, the most thorough-going sceptic the world has ever 
seen. " Things are inaccessible and incomprehensible to our 
knowledge," says Pyrrho, " and it is our duty to abstain from 
all judgment regarding them." Again Lord Bacon says: "The 
testimony and information of the senses bears always a relation 
to the man and not to the universe, and it is altogether a great 
mistake to assert that our senses are the measure of things. 
We attribute but little, then, to their immediate perceptions" 
Compare this passage with the following from Sextus Empiri- 
cus, one of the later sceptics: "There is a relativity in all 
our notions, since the object appears different according to the 
consitution of the individual perceiving it, and according to its 
relations to other objects." 

* The italics occurring in the citations from Lord Bacon's works, are the present writer's. 



54 SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON [Oct., 

These and many other similar expressions of the Lord 
Chancellor are not very hopeful beginnings, nor likely to end 
in a reformed philosophy in the best sense. And yet he pro- 
poses, in the face of these difficulties and many others with 
which we shall afterwards meet, to put the old philosophy on 
the anvil and hammer it into a system that will insure cer- 
tainty in everything pertaining to external nature. " Our 
method of discovering the sciences," he says, "achieves every- 
thing by the most certain rules and demonstrations." 

But, as we have already said, the difficulties are all of his 
own making. After the manner of a juggler, he weaves about 
him the web of scepticism, until he is completely enveloped in 
its folds, and then by a pretended application of his "method," 
appears to shake it off in an instant as if by magic. " Our 
method," he says, " and that of the sceptics agree in some 
respects at first setting out, but differ most widely and are com- 
pletely opposed to each other in their conclusions. For they 
roundly assert that nothing can be known ; we, that but a 
small part of nature can be known by the present method. 
Their next step however is to destroy the authority of the 
senses and understanding, while we invent and supply them 
with assistance" (Novum Organum Book I. Aph. 37). In say- 
ing that his method and that of the sceptics "agree at first 
setting out," he speaks the truth. In saying that they "differ 
most widely and are completely opposed to each other in their 
conclusions," he also says what is true. But there is some 
truth still left about which he says nothing. The "conclu- 
sions" of the sceptics if, indeed, they can be said to draw 
conclusions are in harmony with their premises; his conclu- 
sions are not. The sceptics are consistent, at least to the ex- 
tent of remaining sceptics; Bacon starts out from scepticism, 
and at the end of his traveling, finds himself in dogmatism. 
But he does not give and cannot give any reasonable account 
of the journey. It is certain that he did not travel over the 
road of logic. Between scepticism and dogmatism there lies an 
unfathomable chasm, and he does not tell us how he bridged 
it over. He simply says that he began on one side of it and 
made his ground good to the other side. Dr. Jekyll tells you 
that he is now Mr. Hyde. But he has already undergone 
before your very eyes, the violent convulsions necessary to 
effect the transformation. Bacon says: "I was a sceptic, and 
by a method all my own I passed over to dogmatism." But 



i9o8.] SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BACON 55 

the method all his own was in operation behind the scene. 
None of his hearers saw or understood how the transition was 
effected. They were told simply that it was an accomplished 
fact and that ended it. No one, however, is bound to make an 
act of faith in the story. That system of philosophy which 
starts out and journeys part of the way in company with 
scepticism, and then suddenly takes leave of every form of 
doubting, is a real curiosity, at least from a logical standpoint. 
The experiences of Descartes must be a warning for all time 
to those who would dally with scepticism, believing that they 
may part company with it whenever they choose. With rare 
gifts of genius and a sincere disposition in his search after the 
truth, he was yet unable to disengage himself from the iron 
grasp of his "Methodic Doubt," as long as he was encumbered 
by the laws of inference. If he wished to be logical, he had 
either to dismiss his doubt at the outset, or stand still for the 
remainder of his days. To go forward was impossible with 
that " Doubt " blocking the way. 

But the Novum Organum abounds in absolutely sceptical 
assertions about our unaided cognitions, though, in almost 
every instance, the author of these assertions is careful to ap- 
pend an assurance that all reasonable grounds for doubting are 
removed, when once his method has come to the assistance of 
the faculty concerned. In the preface we find the following : 
" Logicians rest contented with the mere information of the 
senses if well directed. We, on the contrary, have many ways 
of sifting the information of the senses, for the senses assuredly 
deceive" However harmless this statement may appear at first 
sight, in ultimate analysis it is unadulterated scepticism. For 
if the information of the senses be not reliable, then man has 
no reliable knowledge, for he has no knowledge save that 
which he receives in some way or other through his senses. 
" Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu." This 
is sufficiently proved by the significant fact that persons blind 
from their birth have no idea of color except that which they 
get from one who has had the power of seeing ; those born 
deaf have no idea of sound except such as they get from one 
who has had the power of hearing, and so of the ideas corres- 
ponding to each of the other senses. If, then, we have no 
knowledge that is not derived from the senses, and if at the 
same time our senses " assuredly deceive," our position is plain 
enough. If the fountain itself be poisoned, the stream is not 



I 

56 SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON [Oct., 

likely to be very wholesome at any point of its course. A 
flaw in the first link diminishes, if it does not entirely destroy, 
the straining capacity of the whole chain. 

Here, however, as in many another storm raised by Lord 
Bacon and those of his school, ancient philosophy comes to 
our rescue. That philosophy denies that "subtlety of nature 
is beyond that of sense or of the understanding'*; that "the 
testimony and information of the senses bears always a rela- 
tion to the man and not to the universe." It denies that 
man's natural knowledge of the moral law is merely "sufficient 
to check vice," but not sufficient "to inform duty"; or that 
such knowledge is had through an "inward instinct," a faculty 
distinct from reason. It denies that our senses deceive, that 
their information has any need of being sifted, or that such a 
sifting process is even possible. That philosophy starts with 
the supposition which neither requires nor admits of proof 
for it is sufficiently recommended by common sense namely, 
that many truths can be known with certainty by unaided 
reason, and this supposition implies the veracity of our senses, 
just as the bringing about of any other result implies the 
placing of all the indispensable conditions. The boy of twelve, 
for instance, has very little doubt that the father who is whip- 
ping him, and the instrument of torture with which the whip- 
ping is administered, are stern realities. That there are such 
people as Russians and such people as Japanese, and that they 
met not long since in a place called Manchuria, seems to have 
some truth in it. It is a little more than highly probable that 
there was a presidential campaign in the United States in the 
fall of nineteen hundred and four, and that, as a result, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt and not Judge Parker, is the present incum- 
bent of the White House. The man who wagers that San 
Francisco was on fire some time ago cannot be said to be 
taking a very great risk. 

And so there are thousands of other truths connected with 
the affairs of everyday life, of which we are certain beyond 
the shadow of a doubt. Now such certainty would be impos- 
sible if the testimony of our senses were open to deception. 
If while listening to an account of the fall of Port Arthur, re- 
lated by an eye-witness, my ears failed to give me a correct 
report of his words, or if when I read the account of it in the 
newspaper my eyes did not receive a true impression of the 
printed record, how could I have become aware at all of the 



1908.] SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BACON 5 7 

fact that was narrated, much less be certain of it ? And if it 
be true, as Bacon claims, that " the testimony and information 
of the senses bears always a relation to the man and not to 
the universe," how comes it to pass that all who read tke 
same paper, and all who listened to the same account, went 
away with exactly the same conviction ; namely, that Port 
Arthur had capitulated ? Why do the senses of all deceive 
them in just the same way, and why do the different senses of 
the same individual deceive him in exactly the same way ? 
Why or how is it that what he hears does but confirm the 
deception of what he has seen ? Besides, to doubt about the 
veracity of your senses would be to render the first step 
towards reasoning impossible. If you doubt about your height 
you may measure yourself with a rule, and if you doubt about 
the correctness of the rule, you may have recourse to the gov- 
ernment standard. But if you doubt about the correctness of 
the government standard, you had better stop the investiga- 
tion then and there. There is no measure in existence that 
can give you a reliable account of yourself in feet and inches. 
Ancient philosophy, then, does well to begin by supposing 
that some truths may be known with certainty. The fact suf- 
ficiently establishes the possibility. It does well, too, when it 
supposes that our senses do not deceive us. It is a necessary 
condition of our certainty, and our certainty proves that the 
condition has been realized. To Lord Bacon is due the credit 
of reviving the philosophic quackery, which, by doubting the 
testimony of the senses and the judgments following immedi- 
ately upon them, would make of our simplest and most rudi- 
mentary notions, monstrosities more at variance with reason 
and common sense than the story of Aladdin's wonderful lamp 
or the legend of the Golden Fleece. As a result of such doubt- 
ing we have Fichte rejecting everything but the ego, which for 
the sake of becoming conscious of itself, by its own uncon- 
scious activity posits the non-ego ; we have Schelling deriving 
the ege and the non-ego from a superior principle, which is not 
the one and not the other, but yet a fusion of both, and 
which he calls " the absolute " ; and we have Hegel making 
thought the essence of all things, and arriving at external na- 
ture by a simple process which he calls " the heterization of 
the idea." 

Nor is it the senses alone that Bacon would inoculate with 
the infection of error. The human intellect too must go. 



I 
58 SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON [Oct., 

"There are innate prejudices," he says, "inherent to the very 
nature of the understanding which appears to be much more 
prone to error than the senses." Senses that assuredly deceive, 
and an understanding still more deceptive, and that by its very 
nature ! Behold the sad plight to which the " Father of Phy- 
sical Science" has reduced the cognitive faculties of him who 
was made to the image of his Creator, and who retains the 
resemblance even in the fallen state ! But listen, meanwhile, 
to some of the reforms he proposes to work in senses that are 
deceptive and an intellect that is, by its inherent nature, even 
more deceptive. "Our method," he says, "consists in determin- 
ing the degrees of certainty, whilst we, as it were, restore the 
senses to their former rank, and open and establish a new and 
certain course for the mind." One is curious to know what 
the process might have been by which he was to "restore the 
senses to their former rank." A pair of spectacles is the 
nearest approach that has yet been made to such restoration. 
And if the understanding has, "inherent in its very nature," 
a proneness to error, how is he or any one else to "open and 
establish a new and certain course " for it, unless by going to 
the root of the evil and changing that nature. Nothing short 
of this will rid it of its inherent proneness to error. Was 
Lord Bacon aware of the task he was undertaking when he 
set about restoring the senses to their former rank and open- 
ing " a new and certain course " for a faculty prone to error 
by its nature ? One can hardly think so. The philosopher of 
poetry who, strangely enough, has come to be regarded by 
many as no other than Lord Bacon himself tells us that it 
were "wasteful and ridiculous excess" 

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 

To throw a perfume on the violet, 

To smooth the ice, or add another hue 

Unto the rainbow, or with taper light, 

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish. 

And yet the gold, the lily, the violet, the ice, the rainbow, 
and even the orb of day itself, shall all return to the nothing- 
ness out of which their Creator called them. Perfect with a 
perfection that mocks at human skill, they are wanting in the 
image and likeness of Him Who made them, and therefore in 
that enduring destiny which is an attribute of the human soul. 
That soul the nobler and more perfect specimen of the Cie- 






1908.] SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON 59 

ator's handiwork is destined, together with all its faculties, to 
be one day ravished with the brightness of the beatific vision. 
The senses too, through which the soul operates, shall enjoy 
each its own peculiar object, and to the full measure of its 
capacity. And yet these are the senses which this sophist is 
going to " restore to their former rank " ; this the intellect for 
which he proposes to "open a new and certain course." The 
fabled giants of old attempted to scale heaven, and the mighty 
Caesar proposed to drain the Pontine marshes and change the 
course of the Tiber. But never, until the time of Lord Bacon, 
did any one conceive the grand project of procuring such as- 
sistance for the senses and intellect, that truth and certainty, 
hitherto impossible, may henceforward be easy of access, with- 
out any room for doubt or error. The sceptics of the Gre- 
cian Academy doubted the testimony of their senses and all 
the operations of their intellects, as well as he. But they did 
not set about supplying the deficiency with the same apparent 
seriousness that he does. "That which you think you see," he 
would say, " you really see not, and that which you think you 
hear or feel, you really do not hear or feel. Moreover, things 
about which you regard it as absurd to doubt, nevertheless de- 
serve to be doubted of, for the faculty by which you judge is, 
of its nature, erroneous. But I, Francis Bacon, will furnish 
you with an instrument, by the right use of which you can al- 
ways be sure that you do really and actually see and hear and 
feel that which you think you see and hear and feel, and that 
you judge correctly, despite the erroneous character of your 
understanding." 

And this is the precise result which Bacon persistently claims 
as the fruit of what he repeatedly calls his "method." It is 
surprising that he should have been ignorant of the absurdity 
of the claim. For what would be his answer if asked about 
his own senses and understanding? Before he had yet evolved 
that magic method from his inner consciousness, did his own 
senses assuredly deceive him, and was his own understand- 
ing by its very nature " prone to error " ? If so, how did he 
construct the Novum Organum, that wonderful machine which 
was to " level all capacities " and " achieve everything by the 
most certain rules and demonstrations " ? He had no innate 
nor infused knowledge wherewith to correct the deceptive re- 
ports of his senses or the errors of his understanding, any more 
than any other human being. As one of the race, he was 



6o SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON [Oct., 

bound by a law of man's nature, to acquire even the begin- 
nings of knowledge through his senses, just like other men. 
What happened then when he awoke from the unconsciousness 
of infancy and became aware for the first time that he saw or 
felt or heard something ? Did his senses or his understanding 
deceive him? If they did, he must remain deceived for the 
present, for he has as yet acquired no knowledge with which 
to correct the error. Did his senses or his understanding again 
deceive him the second time that something acted upon them ? 
If they did, he is again in the same difficulty as before. He 
is still without any knowledge wherewith to judge whether his 
senses or his understanding are deceiving him or not. And 
the same will happen the third time that he received a sensa- 
tion and formed a judgment, and the fourth time it will be 
still the same. It will be the same with regard to every sen- 
sation and every judgment of his life, until one is reached 
which was not deceptive. His knowledge can begin only when 
he has had a sensation and formed a judgment which were 
not a deception, and his " method," if it is to be of any 
value, must be founded on knowledge previously acquired. 
Previous knowledge, then, is indispensable for such a method, 
and a sensation and a corresponding judgment which were 
not deceptive, are equally necessary for such previous knowl- 
edge. Did the Lord Chancellor experience such a sensation 
or form such a judgment previous to the formation of his 
" method " ? If he did not, his method was impossible. He who 
is lost in the labyrinth himself, is unable to furnish another 
with the thread wherewith to effect his escape. If he did, his 
method was unnecessary. A true sensation was experienced prior 
to and independently of the sifting process of that method. His 
unaided faculties of sensation were not deceptive. Neither was 
his intellect in the judgment that immediately followed. 

Coming now to some of the operations of the intellect he 
says: "There is the same licentiousness in forming axioms and 
in abstracting ideas. The syllogism consists of propositions, 
propositions of words, and words are the signs of ideas. If, 
therefore, the ideas which form the basis of the whole, be con- 
fused and carelessly abstracted from things, there is no solidity 
in the superstructure," Now for any one who understands what 
an idea is, and how it is derived from an object, an idea " care- 
lessly abstracted " has just about as much meaning as a sleep 
carelessly taken. Care is as unnecessary in the one case as it 



1908.] SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BACON 61 

is in the other, and equally impossible in both. Any ideas ab- 
stracted from an object, must have a corresponding reality in 
that object, for otherwise how could they be abstracted from it ? 
Hence the idea, as such, cannot be false. The abstracting pro- 
cess may be repeated, and additional characteristics noted in 
the object, but the idea thus obtained is a new one, nor is it 
any truer than the former, though it is more comprehensive, 
and therefore a more adequate representation of the object. 
My idea is equally verified in the man about whom I am think- 
ing, whether I think of him as a rational animal or merely as 
a living being. Moreover if the process of abstracting ideas 
were subject to error, we should have to face once again the 
same insuperable barrier to knowledge, that would follow from 
the deception of the senses, since a true idea of the object is 
as necessary a condition of the beginning of knowledge as a 
true impression upon the senses. Nor must Bacon be inter- 
preted as meaning by " ideas carelessly abstracted " judgments 
carelessly formed, for he distinctly says that "propositions are 
made up of words, and words are the signs of ideas. 1 * The 
idea therefore, according to Bacon, must share the fate of the 
sensation and the judgment. It may be deceptive. 

But the havoc is not yet complete. Though man's senses 
" assuredly deceive," though his intellect has error " inherent 
in its nature, 1 ' and a " carelessness in abstracting ideas," his 
faculties must be dwarfed still further. His soul has yet one 
grand characteristic left, in which above all others it resembles 
its Creator the power of self-consciousness and this, too, Ba- 
con is resolved to destroy. Indeed we have already witnessed 
one of his efforts to destroy it. We have already heard him 
declare that " no knowledge of the nature of the rational soul 
can be had from philosophy." This is the same as saying that 
no knowledge of the operations of the human soul can be had 
from philosophy, for it is a principle confirmed by experience, 
that as are the operations, such is the nature. To say then 
that the soul cannot know its own nature is to say that it can- 
not know its own operations. But lest we should fail to draw 
this conclusion for ourselves, and thus be ignorant of his teach- 
ing on this all- important point of doctrine, he is careful to 
leave us an explicit statement to the same effect. " It is solely 
in the interpretation of external nature" he says, "that the hu- 
man soul shows its strength, but when it returns upon itself and 
seeks to apprehend itself, it is like a spider, that can merely 



62 SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON [Oct., 

draw from itself fine, delicate threads, which, however, have no 
solidity or user This is as near as he dares come to saying 
what he wants to say. But the implication is evident. If he 
were to admit that the human soul is a spiritual and not a 
material substance, how could he deny either solidity or use- 
fulness to the act of self-consciousness ? Notice he does not 
say "when it apprehends itself," but "when it seeks to appre- 
hend itself." He would make it appear, a little while ago, that 
he was going only half way with scepticism, by telling us that 
his method and that of the sceptics " agree at first setting out, 
but differ most widely in their conclusions." We have seen 
however, that logically he went, and had to go, the whole way. 
Theoretically he now goes only half way with materialism and 
the consequent scepticism regarding the truths of consciousness. 
But in practice he goes the whole way as before. He would 
have the soul avoid seeking to apprehend itself, since the re- 
sults are neither solid nor useful. The act of self-consciousness, 
too, is a deception one more added to the many deceptions 
we have had to contend with ! Man is capable of knowing ex- 
ternal nature, but such knowledge cannot itself become an ob- 
ject of thought. Man knows, but he is not capable of knowing 
that he knows, or of knowing what he knows. 

Locke, who was born six years after Bacon's death, finding 
in this philosophy only the shadow of a spiritual soul the 
semblance without the reality reduced intellectual cognition to 
a mere operation of the senses. He constructed the Philoso- 
phy of Sensation out of the raw materials which he found in 
Bacon's workshop. Then by the application of the so-called 
"critical method" to the philosophy of Locke, there sprang 
into existence a host of new systems, all equally grotesque, yet 
all retaining the name of philosophy. Some of them admitted 
the subjective element in cognition, but denied the reality of 
the object ; others denied the reality of object and mind alike ; 
while not a few identified the one with the other, making the 
human mind a mere phase or function of matter. And thus 
we have the sensism of Locke, the idealism of Berkeley, the 
scepticism of Hume, and the materialism and atheism of Dide- 
rot, Voltaire, and Rousseau, all the legitimate offspring of the 
philosophy of Bacon, the philosophy that was to "open a new 
and certain course for the mind " and decrease the number of 
" wanderings and wanderers." 

But is not such a doctrine of self-consciousness refuted by 



1908.] SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BACON 63 

the self-conscious act which Bacon endeavors to disprove? 
Are we not sometimes self-conscious and at the same time con- 
scious that we are self-conscious ? What prevents one from 
thinking about himself, and while he thus thinks, becoming 
aware that he is doing so ? Once more, the possibility of self- 
consciousness is proved by the self-conscious act. Moreover, 
if the act whereby the soul "seeks to apprehend itself," has 
no solidity, how is it ever going to become aware of its own 
errors? No amount of investigation of external nature can 
make it aware that it is or is not conformed to its object. If 
it be capable of no solid introspective act, how is it to distin- 
guish the " idols of the tribe " those errors which it has in 
common with the rest of men from the "idols of the den," or 
those which are peculiar to itself ? Furthermore, what becomes 
of moral obligation if the act of self-consciousness be once ad- 
mitted to be unreliable ? How can every man be " a law unto 
himself" (Rom. ii. 14) if his intellect has no "solidity or use" 
except in investigating external nature ? Why should the law 
have been written by the Creator in the hearts of the Gentiles, 
if they were unable to look within and read it, and how could 
their consciences "bear witness to them" (Ibid. ii. 15) if they 
were incapable of listening to their dictates? "If our immedi- 
ate internal experience could possibly deceive us," says Leib- 
nitz, " there could be no longer for us any truth of fact nor 
any truth of reason." 

And now we are come to the end of Lord Bacon's scepti- 
cism. He does not mention any other deception, but it is only 
because no other deception is even thinkable. He has doubted 
every report of every sensitive faculty ; he has doubted the 
truth of every idea abstracted from every object by the act of 
simple apprehension ; he has doubted the reliability of every 
judgment and every process of reasoning; he has doubted the 
" solidity " of every act of self-consciousness. There is one 
thing, however, about which he has no doubt, namely that the 
human soul is incapable of acquiring any knowledge of its own 
nature, origin, or destiny, of the God Who created it, of crea- 
tion itself, or of the moral law; nor is it even capable of ac- 
quiring any knowledge of physical nature independently of his 
" method." The incapability is for him beyond all doubt. 

And if we suppose him to have been sincerely convinced 
lat all this was so, does he not deserve our pity rather than 



64 SCEPTICISM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LORD BA CON [Oct. 

our ridicule, when we find him cherishing, throughout the 
greater part of a long lifetime, the deluded hope that he 
should succeed in changing it all by the magic influence of his 
"method"? That "method " is to sift the information of the 
senses and restore them to their former rank ; it is to open and 
establish a new and certain course for the mind ; it is to level 
men's wit and genius, and leave but little to their superiority; 
it is to " establish forever the real and legitimate union of the 
empirical and rational faculties, whose sullen and inauspicious 
divorces and repudiations have disturbed everything in the 
great family of mankind " (Preface Novum Otganum). But 
whatever may have been his convictions, and whatever may 
have been his purpose, the influence of his philosophy has 
been strikingly at variance with the project he has here set 
forth. He has led many others to doubt as he did. He has 
disestablished forever, in the minds of many, the real and legiti- 
mate union of the empirical and rational faculties.* 

Of what avail is his solicitude that " reason yield to faith 
the tribute due to faith," when his philosophy would wreck 
the foundations of all reason and of all faith ? To what pur- 
pose do his pages teem with pity for the bodily ills of man- 
kind, when he would plant in their souls the deeper and 
deadlier maladies of materialism and scepticism and atheism ? 
Anxious that " what is human should not prejudice what is 
divine," he would do away with every reality both human and 
divine. He would destroy human nature, by denying to man 
everything that raises him above the brute. He would destroy 
all belief in the existence of the Divinity, by making Him un- 
known and unknowable to the world which He created. 

" I trust in Nature for the stable laws 
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant, 
And Autumn garner, to the end of time. 
I trust in God the right shall be the right, 
And other than the wrong, while He endures. 
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive 
The outward and the inward Nature's good 
And God's." 

* " It has been," says Cardinal Newman, " and is to this day, the tendency of Bacon's 
philosophy to depreciate and trample on theology." And Lecky speaks in the same strain. 
"It was from the writings of Bacon and Locke," he says, " that Voltaire and his followers 
drew the principles that shattered the proudest ecclesiastical fabrics of Europe." 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

VI. 

THE VILLAGE SCHOOL. 

YEW-TREE with a pond beneath it, and beyond 
the tree a low, straggling house with a thatched 
roof a wide, hospitable door protected by a porch 
containing seats, a stretch of gravel which leads 
from the door to the garden gate, skirting the 
pond on its way such is the old schoolhouse. Built for a farm, 
perhaps two centuries earlier, the farm in time was swallowed 
up by some greater landlord, and the house too big for a cot- 
tage, and too inconvenient for anything better seventy years 
ago became the only school in the village. 

The chief room during the Jays the place was a farm, was 
just as useful when the house was a school. The flag-stoned 
kitchen, with its great fireplace, not only held all the children, 
but teaching went on while the dinner was being cooked. The 
teaching in those days was scanty and expensive. Twopence 
for each subject was a price that sadly limited the learning, 
when wages were eight or ten shillings a week, and the 
children at home about as numerous as the shillings. Boys 
learnt addition and reading, girls sewing and writing or read- 
ing, rarely the two latter together. When one of these arts 
was acquired, the other might be begun, but not till then, for 
the school-fees were generally limited to fourpence. It was 
only the better class, such as farmers' sons and daughters, who 
could indulge in the luxury of three subjects at once, and bring 
a silver sixpence Saturdays. 

The children sat on forms or chairs according to their size 
in the kitchen. There were no classes with titles, and the 
word " standard " was not born till forty years after the time 
of which I write. The teaching was of a domestic nature, be- 
ing mixed up with the housework and cookery, and sometimes 
even with the baby, when the schoolmistress happened to pos- 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 5 



66 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Oct., 

sess one. The idea that the teaching of cookery or washing, 
or housewifery in school, is a modern development, is a com- 
plete mistake, for these subjects were taught in a most practi- 
cal, if not a very scientific, manner seventy or eighty years ago. 
The fireplace in the great kitchen was a continual source 
of wonder and mystery to the children. It went back deep 
into the wall, so deep that on either hand was a seat built 
in the masonry, wide enough to let two persons sit side by 
side and warm themselves. The fire itself was down on the 
hearthstone, and two roughly made iron " dogs," something like 
door-scrapers, stood out from the back, and supported the 
ends of the wood logs, which sent their blaze up into the great 
black cavern above. Down the middle of the chimney there 
came but hanging from what was a mystery a huge sooty 
iron chain, ending in a hook, which held the kettle or pot in 
the flames. But the thing of all others that delighted the boys 
was the "smoke-jack." Somewhere far up the huge old chim- 
ney was a fan that revolved with the draught. In the kitchen, 
near the ceiling, a wonderful piece of machinery protruded from 
the wall above the fireplace. Now and then, on account of old 
age or want of oil, it would utter dismal sounds. Some of the 
squeaks came down the chimney, and then the children thought 
that the Old Man up there for his existence was firmly be- 
lieved in was tired, or else the smoke or heat were too much 
tor his feelings. Old Mrs. Luff, the teacher, would on these 
occasions make the scholars get out of their places, and when 
they had moved their forms and chairs to one side of the kit- 
chen, call them to assist at moving the great table across to 
the chimney place. Then a chair was put on the table, and 
the old lady, taking a wooden skewer with a dab of lard on 
the end of it, would mount on the chair, and insert the skewer 
deftly in some vital part of the machine, when the groans would 
get easier, and finally cease. 

The climax of joy was reached, when there was really 
something to roast with the smoke-jack. This didn't happen 
often, for in those days persons of the working class rarely -or 
never ate meat, with the exception of bacon. But when the 
parents of one of the children sent the teacher a chicken, that 
was the chance. "Will he be roasted or biled ?" was a ques- 
tion debated with suppressed excitement ; and the child who 
was privileged to pluck the feathers off instead of doing sums, 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 67 

was the one who generally conveyed to the rest the final fate 
of the fowl. If the operation was roasting, an apparatus was 
set down before the fire which consisted of a long steel spit, 
having a wheel at one end, and a sharp point at the other. 
Everything had to be spitted so that it would balance, and 
this was an art. With a fowl it was comparatively easy, 
but with a leg of mutton, or a lop-sided piece of beef, it was 
often difficult to secure a balance that was perfectly true. 
The spit, when in use, was fixed between two heavy iron 
blocks which stood on the hearth before the fire. From the 
big wheel hung a curious and rather greasy black leather 
strap. On roasting days this strap was taken down, and Mrs. 
Luff, with many twists and jerks and shakes, would throw it 
up until she got it over the big wheel, and well into the 
groove that ran round it for that purpose. The other end of 
the strap would be placed round the wheel or the spit, and 
when tightness was secured by forcing the spit down into the 
blocks, the chicken would begin to revolve in front of the 
flames. 

Before these final preparations were made for the day's 
dinner, the children were arriving for school. It is a damp 
morning perhaps one of those days when, without exactly 
raining, a "Mendip mist" wets everything through and through 
in the gentlest and most unsuspecting manner. The children, 
damp with the " misk," as they call it, stand inside the old 
fireplace. Three or four make a group on either side, some 
of the bigger ones standing on the stone seats at the back, 
and the girls spreading out their "pinneys" with both hands, 
hold them to the blazing wood to dry. When a sufficient 
number of children has arrived, Mrs. Luff, with a great swing- 
ing motion of her arms, drives the children from the fireplace 
to their forms, much as if they were a flock of hens. The 
girls get their needlework, the boys their slates, and teaching 
begins. A certain amount of poetry has to be learnt by 
heart, but this is reserved till later in the morning. Many in- 
terruptions of the work take place, and they have the merit of 
preventing it from becoming monotonous. Mr. Luff puts his 
head in at the door, and requires help with a new sack of 
meal for the pigs, and Charlie Moon, one of the biggest boys, 
is told off to give the necessary assistance. Ten minutes later 
a tramp knocks and asks for food. Mrs. Luff hands him out 



68 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Oct., 

the solid bottom crust of a home-baked loaf, and shuts the 
door with a suddenness which shows she is not pleased. Then 
the class goes on. 

The teacher looks at the clock, and decides that it is time 
"to put the fowl down," as the roasting operation is described. 
That being determined on, the children are set to learn poetry, 
which always meant that for a while household cares were 
about to occupy the teacher's attention. Then the fowl, hav- 
ing been previously spitted, is set before the fire to roast, in 
the manner already described. As soon as it begins to turn 
in a satisfactory way, Mrs. Luff comes back to hear the 
poetry. Most of it has been learnt for some time, and only 
the final verses need to be got by heart. " Lucy Burge, begin 
the 'Farmer's Son/" says the teacher. The child stands straight 
and prim. Closing her eyes, and having her hands joined be- 
hind her, she begins to recite without the least shade of into- 
nation : 

"A farmer's son so sweet, 
A keeping of his sheep, 
So careless fell asleep 
While his lambs were playing.* 

" A fair young lady gay 
By chance she came that way 
And found asleep he lay, 
Whom she loved so dear." 

" Go on, Polly Watts and don't say it like the last." 
The girl appealed to stands up, folds her hands, and in a 
subdued voice continues: 

" She kissed his lips so sweet, 
As he lay fast asleep. 
I fear my heart will break 
For you, my dear. 

" She said, Awake, I pray, 
The sun is on the hay : 
Your flocks will " 

" Please, mum, he be stopped," calls out one of the boys, 
alluding to the fowl, which had ceased to revolve. 

* Somerset Folk-Song; 



1908.] WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS 69 

" Go and start 'un again, then, and watch what do make 
'un drug [catch]. Take thee slate over there the while," says 
Mrs. Luff; and adds, addressing the poetry class: "Now go 
on, Lizzie Stock." 

"Your flocks will go astray 
From you, my dear. 

"He woke with great surprise, 
And saw her handsome eyes; 
An angel from the skies 
She did appear." \ 

" He be too heavy underside, mum," is the verdict of the 
boy who had been set to watch the failings of the chicken. 
"Wants a bit t'other side." 

Mrs. Luff appears not to hear. " Now say the two new 
verses, and don't spile 'um. Next maid." 

" For your sweet sake alone 
I wandered from my home. 
My friends are dead and gone; 
I am missed by none. 

" His flock he laid aside, 
Made her his gentle bride: 
In wedlock she was tied 
To the farmer's son." 

Having started the last two verses, the teacher goes to the 
larder and returns with a lump of bacon, which she pins with 
a skewer where the boy suggests, and then waits to see the 
effect. Yes, the balance is right, and the fowl revolves without 
further hesitation. 

Things being thus happily settled, the scholars can do more 
serious work. Mary Ann James has her sampler and Mrs. 
Luff gives directions. The sampler is an extraordinary work 
of art, beginning at the top with all the capital letters. These 
are followed by the humbler forms in cross-stitch, and the use 
of the two kinds, combined, is illustrated by a verse which says : 

Mary Ann James, aged Eleven, 

Is a good girl And hopes for Heaven. 



70 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Oct., 






On either side of the verse is a tree in a pot. The branches 
grow with wonderful regularity, this result being caused more 
by the requirements of the canvas than any desire to improve 
on nature. Below the verse is an array of fancy stitches, and 
these are followed by the Doxology. Some final flourishes 
bring the piece to a close. The sampler had been in hand 
many weeks, perhaps months, and it was looked on as one of 
the greatest works ever produced in the school, or, perhaps, as 
some of the children imagined, in any other school. It had 
cost many tears, and much red and black marking cotton, and 
was to be framed when finished, and hung up at home as a 
trophy for all time. This was not the only sampler in the 
school, for Susan Jones was working one as well. But hers 
was very ordinary. There were no flowers and no fancy stitches, 
only the letters great and small, and no poetry. Her father 
was a farm laborer at ten shillings a week, and the wages 
would not run to red and black marking cotton. So Susan's 
sampler was a humble affair and excited no attention. 

It is not easy, after a lapse of sixty or seventy years, to 
find out exactly what the children, particularly the boys, really 
did learn. Some boyish prank seems to stick in the memory 
better than lessons. " I do mind she, she beat I shameful," 
said an old man to me one day, when I was trying to restore 
some early memories, and had asked him about Mrs. Luff. 
" But I paid she out," he added, " least in a sart of way. 
You see, Father, she'd locked I up in the cupboard under the 
stairs, for summat I'd ha' done, and there wur a little keg o' 
porter there, and I thought I'd turn the tap and let 'un run 
a bit, and there wouldn't be so much in he next time she 
corned to drar her supper's beer. It wur martal dark under 
them stair, but the light corned in through the cracks betwix 
the boards, and presently I could see enough for me mischief. 
Back beside the keg wur a jar, mabbe he'd hold two gallon or 
so. ' Wonder what she keeps in thic 'un,' I says to mysel', 
and I pulls he up to the door. You see, Father, there wur 
more light come through under the door, and I could see a 
bit plainer there. I outs wi' the cark, and spills some of the 
stuff on the floor, and I'm blessed if it ain't porter agen. 
'The old girl's fond o' porter,' I says, 'but she won't see thic 
lot agen.' The jar wur only half full, so I puts 'un under the tap 
in the keg, and fills 'un up to the cark. Then I ha' got to 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 71 

get out. The kay corned through the door, and I tries to 
turn the end of 'un wi' me fingers, but he wur too shart. 
Well, Father, I weren't a gwoin' to bide there, so I pushes 
the kay out, and he falls on the floor t'other side. I get me 
fingers under the door, and I soon has hold of that there kay, 
and it ain't a minute afore the door's onlocked. I gets me jar, 
locks the door agen after me, and goes out tiptoe, so she 
shouldn't hear I from the kitchen, and I crumps down when I 
passes under the winder, and puts the jar in the lavendar bush, 
just by the teacher's gate. Afternoon school comes, and I wur 
there along wi' the rest. Teacher wants to know who let I 
out o' jail, and I says I turned the kay from the inside which 
wur true enough and she says as how I'll live to be hanged, 
and that ain't happened yet, Father, and I be seventy. Even- 
ing comes, and the chaps wur all stood top of the lane talking. 
I goes up to them, and asks them if they wants a couple o' 
gallon o' porter, for I know'd for some. They didn't want 
much asking neither, and one of 'um goes in home and gets a 
mug, and we takes the jar to the conqueror tree [horse-chest- 
nut] in Farmer John's paddock. The chap as had the mug 
held 'un up, and we filled 'un out o' the jar, and blowed the 
froth arf and filled 'un up agen, so he wur full. 'Twur Charlie 
Dark drank 'un arf him as I told you as come wi' we when 
we got them rabbit wires from the old manor house and you 
should ha' zeed he ! He was up on his legs in a minit, roar- 
in* and shoutin' and hollerin', and saying he wur pisin'd and 
wur agwoin' to die, and then he'd throw hisself down on the 
grass and roll over and over, and hold hisself, and then start 
roarin' and hollerin' agen. The rest of the chaps wur about 
scared, and we wur all asking what wur the matter, when we 
sees old Parson Torley you do mind he, Father, he wur very 
old when he died coming across the paddock from his house. 
I 'spect he'd ha' zeed we wi' thic jar under the tree, and wur 
acoming to stop we. When we zeed the parson, we all runned 
out of the paddock 'cept the chap as a ha' had the porter, and 
he wur too rough [ill]. What do you think I ha' done, 
Father ? I ha' drar'd a gallon o' porter on top of a gallon o' 
the school ink, and Charlie Dark ha' had a pint o' the mixture, 
and next day he wern't none the worse, neither." 

Other memories crowd in, and one by one the details of 
hose simple school days live again, and I learn of the diffi- 



72 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Oct., 

culties of' the much-enduring Mrs. Luff. Her mathematical 
powers seem to have been limited, and as boys were apt to 
be unruly if over pressed, sums occupied but a small place in 
the educational system. 

Mrs. Luff had a husband who took a useful, if somewhat 
secondary part in the teaching work of the establishment. 
When some boy had become more than ordinarily out of hand, 
it was Mr. Luff who was called in to meet the emergency. 
The correction took various forms, for it depended on what 
the old gentleman was doing at the time. If he was working 
in the garden worst of all, if he was putting sticks to the 
peas or beans he generally had something to hand that would 
meet the requirements of the situation. If he was sweeping 
the stable, he arrived with the broom or the whip at the 
school door, in response to Mrs. Luff's call of " Richard ! " in 
a tone of voice that neither he nor the culprit ever misunder- 
stood. Strangest of all was when he was in his little bake- 
house across the yard at the back he baked bread for others 
besides himself, for the neighbors thought no oven so good 
as the one in the old farmhouse and was sent for suddenly 
to quell a riot that had taken place among these bigger boys. 
The heads of a couple of the most deserving chosen more by 
reputation than from actual guilt would show marks of floury 
fingers, and then the baking was resumed. Sometimes, when 
unforeseen difficulties arose in the boys' sums, and Mrs. Luff 
was not equal to them she was not intended to be the slate 
was ordered to the bakehouse for solution. If the visit was 
well-timed, and the hot loaves were just out of the oven, 
there were steaming pieces of soft crust to be deftly picked off, 
while Mr. Luff, slate in hand, was busy explaining the rules 
of subtraction. 

Such was this old-world school, and such its simple ways 
and teaching. 

I am sorry the history of Mrs. Luff's teaching establishment 
has to end in a cloud, but some fifty years ago, the disappear- 
ance of her husband was one of our village tragedies. Richard 
Luff had set out on a December morning, with his old pony 
and cart, to go to Coleford. I am not going to tell the story 
now it will do for another time but towards four o'clock, 
when it was getting dark, the pony and trap came slowly into 
the yard at the back of the house, and it was some half-hour 



I908.J 



WES T- CO UNTR Y ID YLLS 



73 



or more afterwards, that Mrs. Luff discovered that they had 
come alone. From that December day Richard Luff disappeared 
totally and entirely. His wife tried to keep up the school, for 
she had nothing else for her support, but it slowly failed. The 
numbers grew less and less, as the teaching became poorer and 
poorer, and at last the four or five children that remained did 
not return when the school opened again after the following 
summer. Mrs. Luff had never recovered the loss of her hus- 
band, and she was mentally unfit to teach, or indeed to look 
after herself, as her health and strength were failing. When 
the great landlord found that she no longer paid her rent in 
the forty years she had lived in the farmhouse she had paid 
for the old place over and over again he gave her a month's 
notice, and Mrs. Luff had to give up her home. The pigs and 
the cow had long ago been sold, and neighbors had bought 
odd pieces of furniture from time to time, and on the proceeds 
the poor old lady had managed to live up to the present. 
Now with the home gone, and everything of value sold off, 
there was only the workhouse left. Thither they carted Mrs. 
Luff in an open cart, one November morning, with her box 
containing the salvage from the wreck and her feather-bed 
rolled in a bundle. The beech-trees shed great brown leaves 
on her like tears, as she passed down the dear old familiar 
Green Lane, out on to the Bath road, on her way to exile for 
the crime of being lonely and poor and old. 

Under the strain of workhouse life her mind gradually grew 
more feeble, and amid the poor creatures clustered there, she 
lived her few remaining years in childishness. Sometimes, when 
she happened to see half a dozen old cronies sitting in a row 
knitting or talking, Mrs. Luff would think she was back at 
her school, and had a class of little village maids before her. 
Sitting in front, she would bid them say their poetry, and when 
some aged dame had mumbled out a verse or two she had 
learnt as a child, Mrs. Luff would say: "Next," in the same 
tone of voice as of old. And when these pupils were tired of 
playing school, or the mistress thought them idle, she would 
hobble across the room, and opening the door, put her head 
out, and shout : " Richard ! " 




MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE. 

BY MARY E. MANNIX. 
I. 

|T. FRANCIS DE SALES is the patron of story- 
tellers. It was his delight during recreation 
hours to amuse those about him with charm- 
ing little anecdotes and sprightly narrations, each 
of which a gem in itself bore, like a sparkle 
of light, a moral concealed within its bosom. Many, and of 
infinite variety, are the stories which have been told and are 
still in the telling since his day ; but, alas ! the right kind of 
stories are rare. Stories that are short yet to the point dra- 
matic, yet wholesome full of the little tragedies and ironies oi 
life, yet lacking the luridness which French writers, especially, 
seem to consider necessary to success. 

Stories like those of St. Francis, while sparkling with 
vivacity and brilliant with color, carry a moral which lin- 
gers as long as their delicate tracery lasts. Stories in which 
each line and each word count for much ; a simple phrase 
which fixes the background in our minds two or three strokes 
of a practised pen, and the characters seem like old friends; 
then, lo! with a step, a word, a gesture, the story is finished. 
To be able to write thus is a fine art; it is also a gift. If 
it has not been granted us, no study, no apprenticeship, no 
labor can teach what must be inborn. Such a gift was given 
to Julie Lavergne. 

Cecile Josephine Julie Ozaneaux was born at Paris, Decem- 
ber 19, 1823. Her father, Jean Georges Ozaneaux, was Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy in the College Royal Charlemagne, and 
also a native of Paris, while her mother, Catherine Lucie Sproit, 
was born at Lille. M. Ozaneaux took entire charge of the 
education of the children. The system which he followed con- 
sisted in addressing himself to the reason of the child and, un- 
like that usually followed, trusting in the least possible degree 
to memory. Grammar or history lessons were never learned 






1908.] MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE 75 

by heart. They were related by the master, and the pupil was 
obliged to show by her observations and responses how atten- 
tive she had been to the recital and how much of it she had 
understood. 

He desired his daughter to pay special attention to com- 
position ; style being the object of his particular care. Having 
been appointed Inspector General of Schools, M. Ozaneaux was 
often obliged to be absent from home. On these occasions 
Julie wrote to him every day, giving an account of what she 
had seen and done. When her letter was especially good the 
father, who had wonderful talent with the pencil, would make 
a picture of the scene of the recital, which was placed in her 
album by the delighted child thus recompensed for her liter- 
ary talent and success. 

The religious instruction was also given by the father, who 
composed and had printed at Toulouse a small book entitled 
Religious Instructions and Prayers for My Children. The dedi- 
cation is as follows: 

Julie, Clotilde, Lucien. 

This little book has been made for you. Preserve it with 
care as a souvenir of your parents meditate upon it as the 
most important among the lessons you will have to learn. 
And if some day you should have children, put it into their 
hands. God grant that they may profit by it, as I desire that 
you will also. 

Be good, my children, and you will be happy. 

G. O. 

This little book comprises in seven chapters the principal 
doctrines of the Catholic Church. It also contains morning, 
evening, and Mass prayers; to the latter explanatory notes are 
added. It is worthy of re-publication. It has at least, unlike 
many others of the same kind, the merit of being easily learned 
and intelligible to childish minds. 

- It was in such an atmosphere, sheltered by the love and 
solicitude of her parents, that Julie passed the first period 
of her life. After many years of strenuous mental labor M. 
Ozaneaux, whose advancing age relegated him to duties less 
arduous, securing leisure for him during the greater part of the 
year, finally installed himself at Versailles. He lived there from 
1838 to 1844, occupying himself with the education of his chil- 



76 MADAME JULIE LA VERGNE [Oct., 

I 

dren and the composition of several important works, such as the 
History of France in two volumes which was crowned by the 
Academy and a French-Greek Dictionary. The distinguished 
author, Casimir Delavigne, was his intimate friend, and both 
found amid the splendors and historic interest of Versailles 
sources of unfailing inspiration. 

His daughter Julie shared in his appreciation of the place 
and its legends. She knew and admired Versailles so intimately 
that she embodied her feelings and her knowledge in the cele- 
brated Legends of Trianon. Life in the Rue Mademoiselle, 
Versailles, was the simplest possible. M. Ozaneaux went alone 
to the State balls and ceremonial functions of the Court or the 
Ministry. Occasionally in the evenings a few friends would 
drop in, or they would go abroad, where the amusement con- 
sisted of dancing and charades. These were the only distrac- 
tions of the family. 

At home [writes Julie Ozaneaux in 1843] every one is 
occupied with his or her duties my father in his office, en- 
trenched in a double rampart of books and papers, Lucien at 
school, Clotilde and I with Mamma. In the evening the 
whole family gather around the brightly lighted table ; we 
read, work, and chat happier than if the time were passed at 
the noisy soirees. Nevertheless an invitation came last week 
to disturb the uniformity. We were bidden to the Royal play 
at Trianon. My father went with Clotilde and on their re- 
turn, they delighted us with an account of the ravishing 
beauty and wonderful toilettes of the young princesses. 

We may have some idea of the intellectual progress of 
Julie by the following extract from a letter written to her be- 
loved father, when she was little more than seventeen : 

I love to vary my occupations. It multiplies my pleasures, 
and thanks to this habit of changing from one thing to an- 
other I listen with delight, now to a serious conversation, 
now to a foolish one. 

After having reasoned and exchanged opinions with my 
elders, I run around with the children and play with the cats 
and dogs. I look with admiration on a beautiful picture, I 
listen to a musical composition with the greatest pleasure, 
and that does not hinder me from being delighted with a toy 
flute and laughing with all my heart. I can accommodate 



1908.] MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE 77 

myself to circumstances; having serious books on hand I 
study them with those of lighter vein I laugh happy even 
when alone. However I will confess, that I like to mend 
stockings better than to read some of those musty, dull old 
books. Still, wherever I may be, I am always able to occupy 
myself. 

There is only one thing which I cannot endure the society 
of stupid and ignorant persons. What I like best in all the 
world is to be in the company ol thoughtful, intelligent, edu- 
cated people. This privilege has thus far been accorded me, 
and, in as far as in me lies, I resolve always to possess it. 

Julie had the intellect of a man with the heart of a 
woman. In all things essentially feminine gay, lively, amia- 
ble, and attractive at the same time, she had resources within 
herself which were not shared by other girls, who, as she ap- 
proached womanhood, were her acquaintances and occasional 
companions. Society could never fascinate her, nor its multi- 
farious claims and exigencies ever hold her in thrall. Her 
spirit was an independent one, as we shall learn through the 
following extract from a letter, written in 1817 to her father: 

. I am going to tell you of the disappointment of my 
life the only lasting and irremediable regret I have ever had. 
I am a girl (there it is) and I can never be a boy. Alas! if 
I were, my studies would now be completed, and I assure you 
they would have been honorably finished. Proud of the suc- 
cess of my examinations, proud of the name I bear, I should 
have seen a hundred careers open before me. I would have 
chosen yours, my father. I would have been a professor and 
perhaps gone to Colmor, as you did, to begin my new life. 

But as I am only a girl what have I done since ? What is 
there for me to do? I have been happy, I am so still; but 
I have done nothing to earn happiness. As a boy I would 
have been a scholar I would have attained an honorable 
position, where you would have been prond of me. 

As a girl I pass my time in various trifling occupations. I 
know nothing thoroughly. Latin and the sciences I loved 
have been laid aside ; I have renounced them, yet feeling all 
the time I must resume them. But I am a girl, and I have a 
dislike to " blue-stockings." . . . 

I^ove me always, my dear father, even though I am only 
that stupid and inconvenient person denominated a "mar- 
riageable daughter." If I cannot find a husband such as I 



78 MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE [Oct., 



desire, I shall remain single. I shall never leave you, and 
with the passage of time, I shall study I shall learn, and 
when I am old I shall be a savantc! That is a consolation. 

Greet beautiful Alsace for me. Tell your friends that I 
love them because they love you. Write to me, I beg, and 
love me always as well as if I could sign myself 

Jui/ES OZANKAUX. 

But Julie was not destined to comb St. Catherine's tresses. 
Shortly after the preceding letter was written, the family be- 
came acquainted with M. Claudius Lavergne, a young artist of 
Lyons who had come to Paris to reside, after having spent 
some time in Italy. He was a friend of the illustrious Abbe 
Lacordaire, and for a time had serious thoughts of entering 
the Dominican Order. The future husband and wife were at 
once attracted to each other, and only a short time elapsed 
until, with the hearty consent of Julie's parents, the couple 
were engaged. At this period Claudius Lavergne was more 
pious than his future wife and, on the threshold of marriage, 
instead of pouring forth protestations of love and admiration, 
we find him writing to her in terms which drew forth the fol- 
lowing ingenuous response : 

Blushingly I confess to you, that though short has been the 
time I have passed in the world, it has enfeebled the pure 
faith and trust ol my earlier youth. 

But in loving you I have renewed them, and nothing can 
better explain the happiness I feel in having found them 
again than to tell you that all at once I feel myself worthy to 
pray, and to pray for you. Be my guide, my friend; make 
me good and pious like yourself; and, above all, never doubt 
that I love you. 

Serious and reserved though the young artist was by na- 
ture, he unfolded his soul when among his friends. Hand- 
some, amiable, a good conversationalist and a fine singer, his 
presence in the Ozaneaux household served to increase the 
peace and joy that always reigned there. Travel and inter- 
course with the world had broadened his mind without injur- 
ing the faith of his soul. Julie. could not understand what had 
attracted him to her. But he could very easily have ex. 
plained that. It was the charm of her manner, as well as the 
simplicity and transparency of her soul. They were married 



i9o8.J MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE 79 

on the ninth of November, 1844, in the parish church of St. 
Louis-en-1'Isle, where Julie Ozaneaux had been baptized. The 
Abbe Lacordaire performed the ceremony, and finding himself 
in the presence of a large assembly composed for the most 
part of university men who did not often hear a sermon he 
profited by the occasion to give a masterly explanation of the 
Catholic religion. 

Ten months after their marriage their first child, Lucie, was 
born. She was baptized by Father Lacordaire in the same 
church where her mother had been baptized and married. Mme. 
Lavergne writes of the joyful event as follows: 

The moment the child was born the mother made the sign 
of the cross on her forehead. Then her father placed a medal 
of the Blessed Virgin around her neck. It was four o'clock 
in the morning a brilliant star glittered above Notre Dame, 
which can be seen from our windows. Stella Matutina ! 
Dawn of joys maternal, first prelude of sacrifice, the child 
whom Thou gavest me was later to bear Thy name ! 

Seventeen years later this child became a religious, and a 
most saintly one. Her star still watched over her she was 
given the name of Sister Marie Stella. 



II. 

From her youth Julie Lavergne was impressed by the say- 
ing of St. Paul : " The mother shall be saved by the children 
she brings into the world." She had nine in the maternal nest 
and the last was as welcome as the first. On the occasion of 
the birth of the ninth she wrote : 

This dear child was welcomed as joyfully as would have 
been a first-born son his brothers and sisters surrounding 
his cradle with a joyousness of expression worthy the shep- 
herds of Bethlehem. The number of these pensioners of the 
good God does not affright us. He is rich enough to take 
care of them, good enough to lead them in the right way, and 
who knows but He may honor us by reserving one entirely 
for Himself. 

And finally, I love them all too well not to be persuaded 
that they will grow up to be respectable men and women 
something greatly needed in our day. 



8o MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE [Oct. 

In 1 86 1 she wrote to her sister: 

How I wish I could show you my children ! You cannot 
imagine how glad I am to have seven, and how deeply I 
mourn the void that my two angels in heaven have left 
behind. Claudius would have been thirteen Marie-Rose 
twelve. I am always seeing the places where their dear 
heads would have lain. How a mother suffers in losing a 
child ! They had hardly drawn a breath and yet I shall 
never forget them. 

As long as her children were small they were taught at 
home by their mother, or under the maternal eye. Later, at 
convent or college they completed their education. Then came 
the time when, having sheltered them as long as possible under 
her wing, she was obliged to see them face alone the realities 
of life. 

In 1873 a new military law obliged the eldest son, Noel^ 
artist and painter like his father, to serve for a year in a regi- 
ment of the line. Of the most intense artistic temperament, 
eminently sensible, and pure as an angel, Noel Lavergne was 
singularly disinclined to, and unfitted for, military life. The 
contrast between the home and associations he had left and 
the surroundings in which he found himself caused him a good 
deal of discouragement. In this moral distress he had re- 
course to that never-failing friend and sympathizer, his mother, 
who was not, however, a weak mother in any sense of the 
word. Two extracts from letters written by her at this time 
will be sufficient to indicate the character of the advice she 
gave her son, to part from whom had been a veritable cruci- 
fixion : 

You say the soldiers are vicious brutes. Alas ! my son, are 
civilians any better ? You do not know the world, my child ; 
you believe, perhaps, that all vice is centered in the regiment. 
In civil life it is even worse there hypocrisy and an elegant 
exterior often conceal crimes the most hideous. All that is 
not Christian is almost diabolical. L,et us thank God He has 
preserved us from the like ; thank Him and tremble, for He 
will demand from each one according to what he has received. 
In the place of these evil-doers we would, probably, have been 
as wicked as they. We should learn to admire that which is 
superior, and compassionate that which is beneath us but 
before God let us never be satisfied with ourselves. 



1908.] MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE Si 

Well, my dear boy, Sursum Corda ! St. Francis de Sales 
says that in imagination we combat and conquer the monsters 
of Africa, while in reality we permit ourselves to be van- 
quished by the little beasts we meet on the roadside. 

Keep yourself unspotted, first of all ; and that done, take 
care that your piety be of the kind that bears fruit. Put ob- 
stacles, trials, and sufferings under your feet, and sing the 
song of the hussars. For, after all, that is the real French 
gaiety the true song of France. 

These innumerable regulations are very wise. It is neces- 
sary to be arbitrary in order to command sustained attention 
and obedience. You see all that disgusts you in one quick 
glance, as it were; curses and blasphemies revolt you and 
you judge everything accordingly. Apparently nothing 
could be more absurd than the following counsel given by 
St. Pacomius to his disciple, but mark the sequel : 

Said the saint : " Plant this dry stick, go and draw some 
water from the Jordan a league from here, and water it. To- 
morrow do the same, and so on, till the stick blooms and blos- 
soms." The little novice obeyed, and at the end of three 
years the dry twig was covered with flowers but the novice 
had become a saint. 

It is likely your corporal no more resembles St. Pacomius 
than your broom resembles the palm of the desert ; you must 
water the twig of grace and good humor, and, raising your 
eyes, acknowledge that all which oppresses and wounds us 
in this world has been ordained by the will of God. 

Such lessons were not long without fruit. The young sol- 
dier took courage and was advanced to the rank of corporal, 
and later that of sergeant and lieutenant. Death came early 
to this ardent, faithful soul, and his comrades often bore wit- 
ness to the joyous enthusiasm and military spirit of the artist, 
poet and soldier, Noel Lavergne. 

Mme. Lavergne was called upon to give up five of her 
children. Her eldest daughter became a religious at the age 
of seventeen, dying at twenty-seven. Although she had been 
parted from her loving mother for ten years, the affection 
which existed between them had never diminished, as will be 
seen by the following extract to Dom Jehan Solesmes. She 
wrote : 

I am going to ask you to pray for me, that I may be en- 
abled to carry my cross courageously. My daughter, Sister 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 6 



82 MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE [Oct., 

Marie Stella, was the eldest the only one of my children 
whom my mother had known. She left me for God only, and 
since her entrance into religion it appeared that our mutual 
affection was greater than before. I was proud and happy to 
see her so good a religious, beloved and appreciated by all 
who knew her. 

She was as beautiful as she was good, and I have seen her 
die in the flower of her age. My tears will not cease falling. 
I see her constantly before my eyes, and it is very hard for 
me to submit to the will of God. I must try, nevertheless, to 
be worthy of rejoining her in heaven. 

My other children are all with me, caressing, embracing, 
trying to console me. I am a happy mother I know it, I 
feel it and yet I can do naught but weep. 

Still later she wrote : 

Lucie is constantly before my eyes ; I cannot accustom my- 
self to the dreadiul thought " She is dead ! She is dead ! " 
I spend hours weeping in the chapel of Sion (the convent 
where her daughter had been a religious) . 

Mtne. Lavergne had scarcely begun to recover from the death 
of her daughter when a new trial awaited her. Marie Lavergne 
had been with her sister during her illness; she had seen her 
suffer and die, and as the pure soul of one sister took flight 
into paradise, the mantle of earthly sacrifice and sanctity that 
had enveloped it fluttered to the shoulders of the weeping 
survivor. At that dying bed she resolved to take the place 
and name of Sister Marie Stella "to live and to die as she 
had lived and died." Thus germinate the flowers of the tomb. 
The sorrowing mother wrote : 

Marie is about to leave us. She will enter Sion as a postu- 
lant, on the eighth of September. She obtained her father's 
consent before asking mine. I would have liked her to wait 
until Noel had returned from his regiment, and she had 
reached the age of twenty. I wanted to keep her a little 
while longer this sweet and lovely child. But she is de- 
termined to go. No ; I cannot tell you the pain I feel, but I 
ought not to complain she has chosen the better part. 

Sister Stella has left so sweet a memory at Sion that all the 
house regards the arrival of her sister as a blessing from God. 
If she perseveres, Marie will take the veil the sixth of Janu- 
ary and will have her sister's name. She will be Sister Marie 



1908.] MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE 83 

Stella II. She will be twenty on that day. She is radiant 
with joy, making all her little preparations like Lucie. Her 
good health makes me believe that the double sacrifice will 
not be asked of me, and that God will take me out of this 
world before giving me the sorrow of surviving her. 

Alas ! such was not to be the case. Nine years later the 
second Star rejoined the other in heaven. 

In the spring of 1882 Sister Marie Stella, teacher of draw- 
ing and painting in the convent, was sent by her Superior to 
the house at Royan for much needed rest, where she died on 
the second of June of that year. 

Warned of her danger, her mother and younger brother 
hastened to her side, where they remained during the last 
fourteen days of her life. Days of inexpressible anguish they 
were for the mother who, watching the least sign of hope or 
improvement, was yet to follow the inevitable progress of the 
malady that was destroying her daughter. 

The dear child herself had but one complaint; from time to 
time she would say to her companions : " Poor mamma ! How 
long is her martyrdom ! " But the heart of the mother, though 
tortured beyond description, was still strong and courageous 
enough to hide the tears that welled up from her bosom. Poor 
mother! she had no illusions. She wrote from Royan: 

My child is dying. You know how I love her how worthy 
she is of being loved. God gives us wonderful strength. I 
cannot understand the peace I feel in the midst of such 
anguish. It all comes trom her example. She is resigned, 
patient, always smiling, entirely abandoned to God, without 
a murmur, without a regret. As she lies there, surrounded 
by her family and her companions, she assures us that she 
does not suffer, but her sweet face, formerly so beautiful to 
look upon, is no longer recognizable as hers. 

Pray for the poor child, dear friends, and ask for us also 
entire submission to the will of God. 

After all was over she wrote to a friend : 

Last Friday, at three o'clock in the afternoon, within the 
shelter of the Royan she loved so dearly, my dear angel began 
to enjoy the vision of heaven. She thought she saw the 
angels, the Blessed Virgin, and her sister, Lucie, awaiting 
her and she said: "How happy I ieel! I am going to 



84 MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE [Oct., 

$ 

heaven! As soon as I am gone, sisters, begin to sing the 
Magnificat." 

God has plucked this flower in all its beauty, and in doing 
so has ordained for us another sacrifice. May His Name be 
blessed ! 

My husband is wonderful in his faith and resignation. I 
was with her during the last fortnight of her life, and I can 
affirm that she bore her intense suffering and long agony 
without a murmur always praying, always blessing God, 
and endeavoring to console the mother who was watching 
her die, and who could hardly say " Amen " to her constant 
"Fiat." 

I did not want her to die. She had so often and so joyously 
said to me : " I am going to heaven," and yet I would have 
retained her in this miserable world. Finally, on the First 
Friday of the Month of the Sacred Heart, at Holy Communion, 
I understood what our L,ord desired of me, and I said to Him : 
"Lord, take her ! To-day, at three o'clock!" And He 
did it the Lord Jesus, infinitely kind ! I cannot understand 
how I had the strength to say that. All Sion weeps with us ; 
but no one doubts her happiness. That is what we must 
think of. 

This morning at the Mass which was sung for her, her poor 
father recited the Magnificat \ then he silently passed me the 
book. I read it, but could not pronounce the words with my 
lips. That will come later. 

Our old friend, Mgr. Mermillod, who is in Rome, tele- 
graphed us at once : " The Holy Father blesses you in your 
sorrow. My heart is with you." Sursum Corda ! 



III. 

Mme. Lavergne, whose graceful and prolific pen has left 
France a legacy of stories that may well be called literature, 
had long been a wife and mother before she put her thoughts 
to paper to be given to the world. 

It was not until she had passed middle-age had lived, 
loved, sorrowed, and suffered, had experienced all the horrors 
of the Revolution of '48, and those ot the Commune many 
years later that she began to follow what had always been 
her dearest inclination. After the events of the Franco-Prus- 
sian war had altered the face of Paris and changed the old 
conditions, and the success of her husband accorded her leis- 



1908.] MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE 85 

wre, she permitted herself the luxury of perpetuating the 
thoughts and fancies which had occupied her mind from her 
earliest youth. Born and educated in a very intellectual at- 
mosphere, her natural gifts were fostered and encouraged by a 
wise father himself learned and unusually talented. As a 
child she possessed the art of inventing and relating little 
stories; her style is sufficient indication of the ease with which 
she handled her pen. 

Apropos of the beginnings of her literary work she wrote 
to a friend in 1871 : 

My heart is so full of anger against the enemy, of shame 
and regret lor our unfortunate country, that I cannot read, 
coolly, a single line which tells of our disasters. The very 
word " Alsace " makes me weep ! I leave that cruel past to 
the mercy of God, and the dreadful future to Providence, and, 
tired of hearing and reading frightful things, I am like the 
old mariners, who, between times, employ their leisure in the 
recital of fantastic tales. 

She writes thus to her daughter of some of her stories: 

I hope these tales will amuse you as 'well as worldlings. 

M. X is scandalized because, out of the ten stories, there 

are five that end in marriage. He would wish, he says, that 
I did not mention it. I took his critique in good part and re- 
plied, laughingly, that the Holy Ghost was not of his opinion, 
because He had admirably related to us the histories of Re- 
becca, of Rachel, of Tobias, of Esther, and Ruth matri- 
monial histories But the good man is so fearful his daugh- 
ters will marry that he will not permit the wicked sacrament 
to be mentioned in their presence ! 

Later she writes to Mme. Laporte, the only daughter of 
Frederick Ozaneaux : 

You ask me, my dear Marie, where I find those stories 
which you love to read. Where do I find them ? Wherever 
I can get them, my child ; in a song, in a cloud, in a flower. 
The one I intend to dedicate to you Henriette de Laubespine 
I plucked at Versailles, in that clump of white anemones 
which bloom in your garden. 

That day I had been at Chesnay, and in going through the 
village at the golden hour when the setting sun empurples the 
woods, my husband had bought an old fauteuil of the style of 
Louis XV. of a most elegant design, the back finished with a 



85 MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE [Oct., 

carved bouquet of anemones. . . . And after that, when I had 
spent several hours with you, Marie with your two mothers, 
your husband, and the dear little child and the image ever 
present of Frederick Ozaneaux everything around me 
breathed of affection, devotion, passionate love of duty, and 
of precious memories. It all formed a harmony, and even as 
a single note is reechoed without the touching of an instru- 
ment, the imagination of the story-teller spreads its wings 
and is lost in the world ideal. 

In that world, as through a mist, you see passing the dim 
uncertain shades of other beings who have preceded us in this 
life knowing, as we know, fugitive joys and lingering sor- 
rows, lyittle by little those phantoms are endowed with vi- 
tality, their voices grow distinct, a light more and more vivid 
discloses their features, and after that the story they whisper 
to us fixes their images in our mind and endows them with a 
misty immortality. 

Prophets have the second sight of the future ; story-tellers 
the second sight of the past. It is a gift but do not envy it, 
Marie. It is rarely accorded to youth. It is an aftermath of 
autumn, like the flowers that spring up in August among the 
garnered fields like the last smile of the fading day as the 
cart rattles slowly homeward. 

During a period of five years Mme. Lavergne wrote only 
for the distraction and amusement of her children, of the 
things which interested her most. In a letter in which she 
avows her intention of publication Mme. Lavergne formulates 
her profession of literary faith: 

I shall never write a line which I might not read to my 
daughter, who is a religious, but I shall write no more for 
children. It is to grown persons that I shall address myself 
in future, and though a moral lesson may often be found in 
my writings, I never preach and never shall. 

I write to amuse, and possibly divert, people of refined 
taste, and I do not intend to make my stories excuses for 
sermons. I do not pose as a teacher, but on the whole I shall 
strive to make my romances antidotes to those which are 
fashionable at present. 

I hope to make them as touching and interesting as possi- 
ble. . . . And I wish that the French language could 
always be as simply and purely written as I hope to write it. 
I detest the involutions, the languors, and the horrors of ro- 



1908.] MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE S; 

mancers. I would like to be able to write like St. Luke. He 
is my model. The story of 7 he Disciples of Emmaus, for in- 
stance, is perfection ; and I am persuaded that the reading 
of the Gospel is the best lesson in literature that can be given 
to children. When persons advise me to lengthen my stories 
I reply: "On the contrary, the more I retouch them, the 
more I abridge them." 

Once fairly launched on the sea of literature, Mme. La- 
vergne's work was wonderfully prolific. Having chosen her sub- 
ject and, when necessary, consulted authorities (for she was very 
particular to be accurate in everything historical), she sat down 
to her sketch or story and wrote, one might say, without lift- 
ing her pen from paper, until her task was accomplished. 
Thoughts flowed as rapidly as she could write them ; there was 
no hesitation, no lagging, no searching after ideas they were 
all there, at the point of her magic pen. At the same time 
she did not neglect any of her domestic duties. She writes in 
one of her letters : 

I never have an hour to myself, and I write like a wind- 
mill called away twenty times a day, but always taking up 
the last word without the least trouble. Seated at my little 
table, I forget the Republic, the devil and his train, and set 
out for the land ideal. It is good for me to have some house- 
hold cares ; I would write too much if I had more than three 
hours a day at my disposal. 

It was under the trees in her garden in Paris, that Mme. 
Lavergne wrote the greater portion of her books. It was there 
that she brought from the storehouse of her memory for any- 
thing once read she never forgot those charming souvenirs of 
Mme. de Lafayette, Madeline de la Vergne, Mme de Sevigne, 
La Rochefaucauld, Mme. Scarron, and others that have so de- 
lighted her readers. She had formulated various plans in her 
mind the portrayal of various historical events and characters 
of certain types, and in the main she had completed them, when 
death stayed her busy hand and brain. 

Her French readers know and acknowledge the debt they 
owe her, but among the English and Americans who have read 
in translation innumerable sketches and stories of Mme. La- 
vergne, more or less faithfully translated or adapted, few are 
aware of their authorship. Enough to say, however, that no 



88 MADAME JULIE LAVERGNE [Oct. 







one ever read anything that came from her graceful, facile, and 
accurate pen, without being charmed and fascinated without 
longing to make her further acquaintance. 

Her writings number between twenty and thirty volumes, 
comprising more than two hundred stories and narratives, many 
of them quite long little books in themselves. And each is a 
gem. 

In 1882 her health began to fail. In 1884 she was obliged 
to submit to an operation, which gave only temporary relief to 
her sufferings. In the grasp of a cruel malady she continued 
to work as long as she was able, and preserved the wonderful 
patience, resignation, and entire cheerfulness which had always 
characterized her. During the long, sleepless nights when her 
suffering was almost intolerable, she passed hours in composing 
verses, which were so beautiful that there is no doubt, had 
she given her attention to poetry or one might better say 
rhyming she would have excelled in the art. In a broad sense, 
every work of hers was a poem. 

She died March 16, 1886, at the age of sixty-three. Her 
whole life had been a consecration to the comfort, education, 
and welfare of others. For others not only her immediate 
family but all who came within her sphere of love and useful- 
ness she lived and worked, giving of her substance, her time, 
and her spirit to any or all who would ask or receive. And in 
the midst of her practical, everyday existence there blossomed 
thoughts so sweet, so pure, so holy, such flowers of poesy as 
are seldom generated in the garden of this humdrum world. 

There have been other story-tellers and other poets who 
have delighted the world with their dreams, yet few with a 
grace so modest, so persuasive, as that of this noble woman 
whose books show what was the ruling spirit of her life piety, 
purity, charity love of all things beautiful and good, replete 
with sentiment the most delicate and the most ideal. 

The poetry of her books but images that of her heart, the 
goodness of her life, the charm of her personality, winning, se- 
rene, indescribably attractive. Hers was a mission, the mem- 
ory and influence of which shall long endure. 

It is to be hoped that some one capable of the task, and 
loving it, may give to the world an English edition of her col- 
lected works. Such a one would confer a blessing on litera- 
ture, religion, and the English-speaking Catholic world. 



THE DIVINE FRIEND.* 

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINET. 

I aaid : " Though death or life would stay me, 

My thoughts pursue Thee, and adore. 
If self and folly still betray me, 

Towards Thee I only sigh the more. 
Thou hast me captive in Thy power 

When far I stray and long forget, 
And when there comes the lonely hour, 

Through secret tears I know Thee yet. 
The flash that probes the midnight ocean 

Can thrill not like one look from Thee ; 
Nor Nature, in her whole bright motion, 

Doth so caress and compass me ; 
No dove's note in the wood-recesses, 

While dark and dreams are over all, 
Had ever half such tendernesses 

As, deep within my soul, Thy call." 

And then Thou saidst : "I love thee. listen. 

Thou shalt in Me full joy regain. 
Why flee away? Is doubt uprisen ? 

Who else to save thee were so fain ? 
I am the more than brother-hearted 

Whose Name and home thou knows't. O break 
Whatever bond would keep us parted, 

Nor when I plead, let ' No ' awake ! 
Fear nothing : pledge Me faith securely : 

I walk beside, unweariable. 
But strain thy wing to reach Me surely, 

For in Eternity I dwell." 

* From the Preach of C. Olitir. 




MONACHISM. 

BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD. 

iHE feeling of Catholicism for the cenobitical life, 
which it has done so much to promote in the 
pursuit of its own spiritual ideals, is not an easy 
thing to describe. On the one hand, there is 
the sum of its transmitted teaching, supplemented 
and reduced to definite practice by a sacramental system in 
which both laity and pastorate meet in the historic fullness of 
the Mystical Body of Christ for the work of sanctification in 
every legitimate walk of life ; and, on the other, there is the 
cloistered world of its " counsels " where the relatively few 
seem to labor austerely apart from the many whom Baptism, 
Penance, and the Eucharist, and, it might be added, Matri- 
mony and Orders, too, as the case may be, have already made 
holy to the Lord, Is there any real opposition for so the 
question might conceivably be put between the sanctification 
which the ordinary layman must achieve if he submits to any 
least obedience of the Church at all, and the perfection which 
the monk works out at such expense of spirit in the enjoined 
renunciations of his often heroic Rule ? 

That a difficulty of a very serious kind exists for many 
honest souls in this apparent anomaly of Catholicism will scarce- 
ly be denied by those who have had experience of current pre- 
judices in the matter prejudices, it might be noted, not always 
restricted to the Protestant mind. Yet if Catholics have some- 
times been found among that great cloud of hostile witnesses 
who have looked askance upon the monastic state in every age, 
their temper of mind will be discovered on analysis to be very 
different from the more elusive and yet more radical mistrust 
of Protestantism. They have stood out against the monk in 
the concrete rather than against his more sacrosanct state. 
Their opposition has been inspired by the chance urgency of 
issues peculiar to their own eccentric personality or local to 
their immediate environment. They have been scandalized by 
his tonsure, forsooth ; they have been irritated by the cut 
or color of his garment ; they have mourned over the novel 



1908.] MO N A CHIS M 91 

accent of his psalmody. If they have sometimes found quarrel 
in straws more considerable than these, again, it has been the 
man rather than the ideal that has given substance to their 
grief. They have resented the spiritual disturbance in the ac- 
cepted order of things which the monk's advent seems inevi- 
tably to involve, whether he fix his abode in a wilderness or 
in a populous town ; they have felt obliged to withstand him 
because of certain supposed encroachments on long- established 
custom or right ; they have denounced him, Gospel-creature 
that he is, and pledged by the soul, if not by the letter, of 
his Rule to all the higher obediences of Catholicism, with re- 
sistance to episcopal authority, and Paul has been sometimes 
flouted out of humor, that Peter, possibly by way of time's re- 
venges, might all the more abound. The graver attacks of 
which he has been the object at various critical periods of ec- 
clesiastical reform, as in the lampoons of the orthodox Mid- 
dle Age, or in the unfriendly legislation of certain remote 
synods, have really tended to emphasize the religious value of 
the ideals aimed at in his vows; and few, even among the Gallic 
and Spanish bishops who accused him of a Manichaean bias 
while he was struggling for recognition in the West during the 
harassed years of the fifth century, ever seriously thought of 
challenging his claim to embody, in the substance of his pro- 
fession, at least, nearly all that was noblest and most difficult 
in evangelical teaching. 

Nor can the case of Cardinal Manning in our own times be 
said to furnish a more classic instance of mistrust that points 
vaguely the other way. Manning's contention, as we know 
now, was for the inherent holiness of the priestly state as such. 
For him the sanctity of Orders was indissolubly bound up with 
the sanctity of the Eucharist. His quarrel was not with mona- 
chism ; but with secularism. He denounced the false standards 
and the essentially un-Tridentine point of view which could 
look upon the Christian priesthood as belonging in any true 
sense even to that portion of the world which essays to live 
on easy terms with the Church. The instinct which led him to 
protest against the curiously inappropriate term by which the 
diocesan clergy are distinguished from their religious fellows 
who live under vows was neither as unsound nor as quixotic 
as some have too hastily supposed. No priest could rightly 
be called secular, the great churchman seemed to argue in effect, 
who came forth from God with the election of Apostolicity 



92 MONACHISM [Oct., 

upon him and the mark of our Lord's own priesthood stamped 
indelibly upon his soul. Such a man belonged to the Church ; 
he belonged to his bishop and to the faithful to whom his 
bishop sent him to minister; he could not belong to the world; 
and it was only by a pedantic and most uncatholic perver- 
sion of technicalities that the obediences of such a life could 
be accounted less precious in the sight of heaven than the 
monk's, seeing that they were so radically sacramentalized by 
the mystery of its Orders, and set irretrievably apart for ser- 
vice in a series of self-immolations that could hardly be dis- 
tinguished on analysis from so many vows. Whether the Car- 
dinal's expression of his views was always above criticism is a 
matter which need not greatly worry us now ; but so far was 
he from being out of sympathy with the deeper instincts of 
Catholicism on this score that he might easily have been ac- 
cused of confounding in practice the responsibilities of an 
archbishop with those of a superior in a religious order. In 
spite of his noble bias for ideals, he was a great stickler for 
diocesan statutes and rules. 

Now it is this very idea of Rule, with its twin notion of 
aloofness, as implying a hard and somewhat too supra-hu- 
man reading of the Gospel message, which has furnished the 
inspiration of much that has been written on the subject of 
monachism by the better- informed modern mind. That there 
is, on the whole, a lack of sympathy between that mind and 
the more conservative exponents of Catholic opinion in these 
days, hardly needs proving at the present stage of our argu- 
ment ; and it ought scarcely to be matter for surprise that the 
monk should be called upon to bear a portion of the general 
misunderstanding consequent on this overcast condition of things. 
It is not so much that he has become an inconvenient and 
most tell-tale anachronism in a generation which is determined 
at all hazards to let the dead past bury its dead ; it is rather 
because he is discovered to be a scandal and a portent in a 
sense that has little to do with those private Corals of his 
which were once fondly alleged to supply the disedifying data 
wherewith he could be pelted out of the society of decent Evan- 
gelical folk in the old plain-spoken and undiscriminating days. 
If the claim which his apologists have invariably made for him, 
and the position which he has come to occupy in Catholicism 
after fourteen centuries of development, be any sure index of 
his religious value to the Church of which he now forms more 



1 908. ] MONA CHISM 93 

than an integral part, then we Catholics are driven upon the 
horns of this most uncatholic, most cruel dilemma: either that 
the best of our Lord's religion was not offered to the multi- 
tudes in the beginning; or that the communities calling them- 
selves Evangelical and Protestant during the past three hun- 
dred years have entered with a surer instinct into the real 
secret of the Gospel than the old historic body that calls itself 
Roman and magisterial and hierarchical. 

Is a monk, however sincere or self-denying his daily obedi- 
ence to his Rule may be, the highest type of character that 
Christ has to offer to mankind? Are we all called to be celi- 
bates ? And must we, as the condition of sharing, supremely 
and without any thought of after-rapine, the mystery and 
holocaust of that Life, surrender, not the ties of kinship and 
country merely, but our own rights and responsibilities of sex, 
and our powers of individual initiative as well. Must we, 
indeed, hand ourselves over unreservedly to the keeping of a 
Rule as interpreted by a mortal endowed with no special 
charisma of infallibility, if we wish to find Christ as uniquely, 
say, as a man is thought to find his own soul in the unstint- 
ing self- dedications of honorable conjugal love? That is how 
the difficulty formulates itself to-day to the more educated 
Evangelical mind. No doubt there is a sense in which it may 
be said to betray a monotonous and too familiar note. The 
objection is not new, as the jaded student of an ti- monastic 
literature only too well knows. What is new, however, is the 
controversial courtesy or shall we call it charitableness ? 
which waves the old irrelevant and sweeping charges about 
monkish degeneracy and fastens its attention upon what is of 
good report in the institution itself. Not for his hypocrisies 
and misdemeanors, but for his very virtues and often heroisms 
is the monk to be condemned. His religion may be good 
Stoicism or good Manichseism ; but it is not aboriginal Catho- 
licity, and most certainly it is not the ideal set before us in 
the New Testament. 

Such in substance is the view taken by Professor Harnack 
in that most popular, yet most seriously analytical, of his minor 
historical studies, the lecture known to us as Das Monchtum, 
in which the genius of Latin Christianity is boldly inter- 
preted in the light of its own consistent treatment of the re- 
ligious orders. "If we ask either the Roman or the Greek 
Church," he writes, "wherein the most perfect Christian life 



94 MONACHISM [Oct., 

$ 

consists, both alike reply: In the service of God, to the abne- 
gation of all the good things of this life property, marriage, 
personal will, and honor; in a word, in the religious renuncia- 
tion of the world; that is, in monasticism. The true monk is 
the true and most perfect Christian. "* 

With Professor Harnack's theories on the extraordinary 
and diversified development of Latin, as contrasted with Greek 
or Oriental, monasticism, we have no immediate concern in the 
present article. His positions are in many respects helpful 
and stimulating in what they affirm; though often enough 
misleading, or worse, in what they ignore. If his reading of 
events is wide and profound, if his sense of causality is sure, 
his outlook, we feel, is slightly vitiated by the jaundiced eye 
of the Evangelical. This man, in spite of his great weight of 
learning, is an apriorist. He sees, moreover, too many things, 
Latin, ecclesiastical, and especially Papal, from the peculiar angle 
of Berlin ; and he is entirely out of sympathy with what may 
be called the Catholic or full-orbed aspect of history. His con- 
tention that " the true monk is the true and most perfect Chris- 
tian," is one that no Catholic, Latin or Greek, we imagine, will 
be disposed to quarrel with. It is true as far as it goes. Re- 
membering the unsavory, not to say ungenerous, connotations 
which have been added to the word monk in past controver- 
sies, however, some of us might prefer to state the truism in 
more abstract terms. 

Charity, as distinguished from the unlovely thing that we 
call Pharisaism, is the true note of the Gospel. It is the bur- 
den of our Lord's religion ; His persona] note, so to say. It 
is also the theme of St. Paul's theology, the under-song of St. 
John's divine iteration of "the things that his eyes had seen 
and his hands touched," the very Alpha and Omega of the 
Word of Life. And what Scripture so unmistakably affirms, 
Catholicism reaffirms. For on its loftier and more affirmative 
side it has ever claimed to be Scripture and history in one. 
The charitable life has always been the goal of its effort, even 
of its political and secular effort, scandalous as the saying may 
seem ; and in the writings of its saints, and more especially in 
the various machinery it has employed throughout the centu- 
ries to emphasize the note of her children's saintship and give 
it canonicity as it were, it has taught the self-same lesson. 

* Monasticism : Its Ideals and History. [Kellett & Marseille's translation.] London : 
Williams & Norgate, 1901, p. 10. 



1908.] MONACHISM 95 

From the very beginning the "way of the counsels" has been 
set, if not over against, at least above, far above, the "way of 
the commandments. 1 ' If the story of the " rich young man " 
proves anything, it proves that. Indeed, one might safely say 
that, in practice, Catholicism has staked much, if not all, on 
that incident, and discovered in it a way of life which is be- 
yond life. And of what other religion of the West, claiming 
to be Evangelical or Catholic or historic, can so glorious a 
boast be uttered ? There is, then, a religion of the command- 
ments; and there is also religion of the vows; and the New 
Testament in its fullness furnishes both the philosophy and the 
instance upon which the hard dichotomy stands. 

Nor can it be objected that an argument of this character 
presupposes altogether the essential validity of the traditional 
or Catholic view of our Lord's consciousness of His divine 
Personality and of His divine mission. Even if we take the very 
small nucleus,* of authentic "doctrine" that Professor Hainack 
and his school will allow us, there will still be a remarkable 
group f of "sayings" which will be intelligible on no other 
hypothesis than that implied in the old-fashioned Catholic dis- 
tinction between the few who aspire to "perfection" through 
the graces of intimate discipleship by a complete renunciation 
of the good things of the world, and the " many " who are 
content to inherit "eternal life" by a sincere, but not essen- 
tially heroic obedience to the "commandments." One may 
decline with Professor Harnack, if he will, to describe either of 
these admitted alternatives as proofs of a "message of world- 
denial" preached by our Lord to His hearers; but they em- 
body none the less two very different varieties of "followers," 
to each of which the kingdom of heaven is open under certain 
conditions of self-abnegation. Whether we are to discover the 
vestiges of a true askesis in so broadly graduated a scale of 
religious character, would seem to be a negligible issue. The 
point that matters most is that we have here two unmistakable 
presentments of just that portion of our Lord's teaching which 
the professor concedes to be "of permanent validity"; and it 
coincides appositely enough in the sense, at least, that we 
have claimed with the traditional grounds for the Church's 
encouragement of the monastic ideal, early and late, in her 
various contact with an unheroic world. 

It would, surely, be too large not to say, too unfair a 

* Das Wesen des Christentums, s. 8 ; ss. 50-56. t v. g. Luke xviii. 18, etc. 



96 MONACHISM [Oct., 

j| 

contention to hazard, however, were one to suggest, as the 
Berlin professor and certain writers of the extremer Evangeli- 
cal wing seem disposed from time to time to maintain, that the 
" perfection " towards which the monk struggles up, through 
the elaborate and wearing discipline of his daily Rule, were, in 
the Catholic view of it, a thing to be sought nowhere else but 
in the cloister. The Latin Church has never countenanced any 
such narrowing doctrine ; as witness, for instance, her immiti- 
gable claim about the " perfection " of the episcopate and the 
sacramental holiness which she has invariably attached to her 
conception of the priesthood. St. Thomas, whose explanation 
of this often obscured point will scarcely be open to the charge 
of seeking covertly to rebuke the undoubted prejudices, so to 
call them, of every good Catholic for the heroisms of the clois- 
ter, has outlined the whole matter for us in a series of arti- 
cles* in his incomparable Summa t \\\ which the least analytical 
mind, Lutheran, Evangelical, or crudely Anglo-Saxon, will be 
enabled to apprehend as in a kind of inchoate Porphyrian tree, 
what may be called a true hierarchy of Catholic notions on the 
subject. Charity, or the love of God for His own sake and of 
all mankind for God's sake, is, he tells us, in effect, the su- 
preme goal of the "perfect life." To love with a supreme 
love God, our Father, whom we do not see, and to devote our- 
selves unselfishly to His children, whom we do see, that, in 
the intention of our Lord, ought to be the master end of all 
Christian endeavor. Everything else is a question of means. 
Even the "counsels" themselves are but certain obvious in- 
struments indicated in the New Testament for the realization- 
of this highest of prepossessions; and we must be careful not 
to think of them as ends in themselves. f 

These "counsels" are, in the ordinary providence of Christ, 
and so far as the "perfection of the religious state" is con- 
cerned a phrase not quite convertible, be it observed, with 
that other phrase, the religion of the perfect state poverty, 
or the renunciation of one's rights and hopes in the matter of 
earthly goods; chastity, or the renunciation of one's rights and 
hopes in the more difficult business of wedded love; and obe- 
dience, or the renunciation of one's proper will for the sake of 

* 2a 2ae, QQ. 184-188. 

t Per se, quidem, et essentialiter consistit perfectio Christianae vitse in charitate. . . 
Secundario, autem, et instrumentaliter, perfectio consistit in consiliis : etc. aa 2X, 184, 5 
in corp. art. 



1908.] MONACHISM 97 

Christ, who did not His own will, but shaped His course through 
every day of His hard human life in obedience to the behests 
of His Father. These are the appointed instruments of the 
higher evangelicalism of the cloister according to St. Thomas; 
and it is from their habitual and confluent efficiency in the 
inner life of the heart, especially when panoplied by a minute 
discipline and made still more holy and lasting by dedicated 
vows, that the monk furnishes the best guarantee to his own 
conscience and to the Church at large that he is walking in 
the more excellent way. That there are other ways, indeed, 
more perilous, if you will, not so carefully charted but true 
ways, none the less, the saint distinctly affirms when he tells 
us * that there is no anomaly in finding perfect souls outside 
of the state of perfection ; just as there is none in meeting 
with the imperfect within its borders. He is dealing with estates 
and conditions of men on their permanently visible and objec- 
tive side ; with the machinery, ecclesiastical, cenobitical, or 
quasi-secular, by which our Lord's followers habitually seek 
entrance into the kingdom of heaven through the doorways of 
this world. He is not discussing the spiritual worth of the 
individual will, or the ultimate value that God sets upon the 
secret sacrifices of the heart. His point of view is, if we may 
so style it, a purely human or critical one: secundum ea qua 
exterius aguntur . . . sic nunc de statibus loquimur, he 
writes. Pope, or bishop, or priest, solitary, or friar, or nun, 
devout secular or unabashed worlding, we are what we are, in 
the last resource, as the divine eyes behold us. Our several 
" states " may help or hinder ; they cannot save or damn us, 
when all is said and done. 

These considerations ought to help one to formulate, at 
least in outline, something like a real metaphysic for that un- 
grudging cult which Catholicism has paid to the monk from 
the beginning. Like the undying priesthood to which he is 
linked to-day in a score of ways, he is more than a symbol; 
he is an instrument, an institution, a spirit made palpable, 
whose victories only the purest and most robust faith in our 
Lord's Incarnation can hope adequately to understand. That 
is why, in spite of the comparatively meager bulk of scandal 
in his otherwise inspiring history, it has ever been a note of 

* Et ideo nihil prohibet, aliquos esse perfectos, qui non sunt in statu perfectionis, et 
aliquos esse in statu perfectionis, qui tamen non sunt perf ecti. aa ase, 184, 4 in corp. att. ' 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 7 



9 8 MONACH1SM [Oct. 



orthodoxy to think well of him and, what is often difficult 
enough in the inevitable clash of supernatural interests in a 
misjudging world, live well with him, for the true peace of the 
Church. Of the theology of his vows this is not the place to 
speak. The details of these grave and intricate matters may 
safely be left to the canonist; but, surely, their essential de- 
cency or should we not say sanctity, rather ? can give no 
offence to the God-fearing. St. Ignatius of Loyola laid his 
finger on a deep truth when he reminded the men of the six- 
teenth century that the habit of speaking well of a monk's 
vows engendered in the soul a kind of noble loyalty towards 
the hierarchic Church. And the argument that inspired that 
fine utterance is not less profound for being so magnifi- 
cently, so humanly, simple and everyday-like. Vows clothe 
us with a divine seriousness; they purge us of futility and 
prove to our halting wills that God and His Godhead are, 
indeed, all in all. Why, then, should we, especially when they 
are to be pronounced under due safeguards, start at the thought 
of them, or, through a spurious reverence, which may turn out 
on analysis to be Pelagianism after all, speak as though a nig- 
gardly and cheese- paring will were the best offering to make 
to Him whose every word and gift are alike without repent- 
ance? The lover's oath, the bridegroom's troth, the friend's 
serene assurance of his unchangeableness are these things not 
parables in their order of a loyalty which bravely reaches up 
to God in a very human way and proves itself of one mind 
with what we know now to have been the " mind of Christ 
Jesus Himselt " ? Why should the monk's conscience, then, be 
thought to be of sorrier fiber for trusting so unselfishly to in- 
stincts which the sense of healthy human nature has approved 
in every age, and which the fellowship of saints has twice blessed 
as being big with Scriptural promises that give them almost a 
Sacramental grace ? 

If this represents, however crudely, the true theory and 
sense of the cenobitical life as Catholicism has fostered it 
throughout its long life-story, it ought not to be difficult to 
see how in its manifold development through the centuries a 
fresh note and evidence have been created, so to speak, which 
prove it to be of one piece with the Way which leads back 
through Christ to God. 

Seton Hall, South Orange, N. J. 



Bew Boohs. 

The second and third volumes of 

THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLO- the Catholic Encyclopedia* are 
PEDIA. O f a quality to sustain the expec- 

tation created by the first, that the 

work when completed will be a valuable asset of the Church 
throughout the English-speaking world. The unexpected ra- 
pidity with which these three have followed one another offers 
the pleasing prospect that we shall have the entire series at 
our service within a much shorter period than was usually as- 
signed to the undertaking. 

The recent volumes, on the whole, are, in point of scholar- 
ship, on the high level set by the first. They improve upon 
it in respect to the conformity of the contents to the professed 
scope of the work. A more systematic selection of subjects, 
and a juster appreciation of their claims, has prevented the 
appearance of any articles on extraneous matters. No topics, 
generally speaking, have been assigned more than their fair 
share of space. This is especially apparent in the biblical de- 
partment, where the first volume sometimes assumed the char- 
acter of a Biblical Dictionary, by dwelling in extenso on names 
and things that have but little bearing on the constitution, 
doctrine, discipline, or history of the Catholic Church. 

In these volumes, however, biblical matters of moment have 
received due attention; one of the most interesting articles is 
that on Biblical Chronology. 

Among the many fine articles which appear in these volumes, 
it would be invidious to single out a list for special commenda- 
tion; and there is no single one standing out in pride of place 
above its fellows. Guided rather by the interest of the subject 
than by any comparison of the merit of the writers, one might 
mention a few of the more prominent. They are : Athanasius ; 
Augustine; Benedictines; Babylonia; Assyria; Buddhism; Cal- 
vin, and Calvinism ; and some of the group under the caption, 
Byzantine. Among the philosophical articles we have Cause; 

* The Catholic Encyclopedia. An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, 
Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church. Edited by Chas. G. Herbermann, 
Ph.D.; Ed. A. Pace, Ph.D.,D.D.; Conde" B. Fallen, Ph.D.; Thomas J. Shahan, D.D.; John 
J. Wynne, S.J. Assisted by numerous collaborators. In Fifteen Volumes. Vol. II., Assize- 
Bro; Vol. III., Brow-Clancy. 



IOO 



NEW BOOKS 



[Oct., 



Certitude; Association of Ideas; Categorical Imperative; and 
an excellent brief one on Biology. We venture to add a com- 
mendatory note to this one, because we must say that another 
from the same pen on the important question of Biogenesis is 
very imperfect, inasmuch as it contains no appreciation of the 
history of the question. 

The information supplied concerning countries, cities, and 
towns of ecclesiastical importance is remarkably full, both on 
what regards the past, and the actual religious conditions. 
Of this class, China might be cited as a splendid specimen. The 
article on the Calendar places a great deal of technical, useful 
information within the grasp of the popular reader. Another 
from the same learned pen, on Celibacy prompts a regret that 
the writer has not composed a refutation such as he could give 
us of the baneful work of Dr. Lea on that subject. Among 
the hagiological biographies that of St. Charles Borromeo is of 
conspicuous excellence. 

A few more articles, which for one reason or another have 
suggested the taking of a note or two as one perused them, 
may be referred to. The name of Las Casas has fared very 
badly at the hands of his biographer, who passes a decidedly 
depreciatory judgment on the man and his achievements. In- 
deed the writer roundly asserts that Las Casas did nothing to 
deserve the title of " Apostle of the Indies/' which posterity 
has conferred upon him. We have a strong picture of a vio- 
lent, self-willed visionary, a truculent agitator, unjust towards 
his opponents and ungrateful towards his friends. A man who, 
having failed egregiously everywhere, grew more rancorous with 
advancing age, and used his pen to perpetuate, after his death, 
his unjust judgments and pernicious activity. Is not this a 
too severe arraignment of the man who, with many faults, is 
the one to whom we must point when Catholicism is re- 
proached for the merciless and cruel treatment meted out to 
the Indians by Spanish conquistadors, adventurers, and their 
descendants ? 

Speaking of Spanish cruelty recalls the article on Bullfights. 
It is marred by a misplaced, feeble attempt to absolve the 
sport from the charge of cruelty. The reason for this charge 
is, says the writer, " utter ignorance of a game in which man 
with his reason and dexterity overcomes the brutal strength 
and ferocity of the bull." " Foreigners, as a rule," continues 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 101 

the writer, " think that the Spanish populace go to the bull- 
fight to witness the shedding of human blood. This is false. 
Generally there are no casualties ; and when an accident oc- 
curs no one derives any pleasure from it; on the contrary, all 
deplore it." "The sport," triumphantly concludes the writer, 
" is less brutal than prize-fighting; and, unlike the modern the- 
ater, does not stir up anti-social or immoral passions." Not a 
word about the goading and torturing of the bull with barbed 
darts! Not a word about the wretched "old and otherwise 
incapacitated horses " that are gored by the bull till their en- 
trails fall out ! The tenor of this defence is an eloquent argu- 
ment to prove that some Spanish minds possess no idea corre- 
sponding to that which we express by the term cruelty to 
animals. 

Owing to the peculiar scope of their work, and the lack of 
any precedents, it must be a continual problem for the au- 
thors to decide on what is to be admitted and what excluded. 
One sees evidence here and there of the omission of what seems 
to us an important subject. For example, if Betting and 
Bankruptcy receive recognition, why not the equally live ques- 
tion of Boycott? Brown to illustrate from another depart- 
ment Bedford, and Cavanagh were fighting men whose claim 
to a place here rests purely on the fact that they were Cath- 
olics. Why, then, omit Sir William Butler? "But they are 
dead ! " Yet many living people are included. 

The host of small biographical notices, if it is open to criti- 
cism at all, is so because it is too large. Yet there are some 
strange omissions; for example Shades of Chivalry! Bayard, 
the knight without fear and without reproach. Then, too, it 
seems the irony of fate that the prince of booklovers and col- 
lectors, Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, Chancellor of Eng- 
land, author of the Philobiblion, is left out. The name of 
Cauchon ought to have been recorded in order to dissociate 
the Catholic Church from the infamy that clings to his memory. 

A question that might be worth the consideration of the 
editorial board is whether there are not too many biographical 
notices of obscure and insignificant persons, whose names will 
never be of any interest except to the scholar, or the student 
engaged in historical research and he will have other resources 
than the Encyclopedia. The space that might be saved in this 
direction could be usefully employed in another, where the En- 



102 j NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

cyclopedia is weak. That weakness is in the matter of places 
and persons that have been concerned in events in modern his- 
tory which have had a grave bearing on the interests of Catho- 
lics and Catholicism even up to our own day. The Encyclo- 
pedia will be consulted for the correct history of these mat- 
ters by both Catholics and outsiders. For example, though 
the insignificant little town of Athenry is noticed, because of 
its ancient ecclesiastical importance, Aughrim is passed over. 
Yet the battle of Aughrim served to bring about the reign of 
the penal laws in Ireland. Again, Charlemagne, Charles Martel, 
and Charles V. rightly receive long notices. But there is noth- 
ing about Charles II. of England, around whose name clusters 
a number of points intensely interesting to English-speaking 
Catholics. 

Four names renowned in literature have been fortunate in 
the assignments made for them Chaucer, Cervantes, Calderon, 
and Bossuet. The last mentioned is one of the best written in 
the volume ; though, singularly enough, it fails to refer to that 
episode in Bossuet's career which has the most vital interest 
for the intellectual world to-day. There is a touch ot pathos 
in the fact that the next volume records the death of the bril- 
liant author of this article Brunetiere. The carefully composed 
article on Betrothals, which is already out of date, is an elo- 
quent warning of how quickly the most carefully prepared en- 
cyclopedia may become obsolete in some respects. We cannot 
take leave of these two volumes without mentioning two arti- 
cles on account of the special importance of the subjects and 
of the special merit of the treatment. The one is on the Church, 
which is a model of lucidity and condensation. The other is 
that on Charity and Chanties, which presents an admirable state- 
ment of the Catholic principle of benevolence and its develop- 
ment throughout the ages. THE CATHOLIC WORLD sincerely 
congratulates the management of the Encyclopedia on the qual- 
ity of its work and hopes soon to welcome another volume. 

The name of McLoughlin is as 

THE FATHER OF OREGON, closely associated with the rise of 

the State of Oregon as are the 

names of Boone and Houston with the States of Texas and 
Kentucky. During the Lewis and Clark Exposition, in 1905, a 
day was set apart as "McLoughlin Day" to honor a memory 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 103 

which deserves to be preserved as that of a noble man who 
has merited all the praise, though it is somewhat rhetorically 
expressed, lavished on him by his biographer : * 

Like many others of the world's great men, Dr. John Mc- 
I/oughlin had many characteristics, apparently conflicting, 
but making in the aggregate a wonderful and harmonious 
whole. He was the autocrat of the early Oregon country, yet 
all his feelings and political sympathies were for a republican 
form of government, for rule by the people, and for personal 
liberty ; he was a trader with the training of a trader, yet he 
gave credit without security to the early pioneers, because he 
was a humanitarian ; he was quick-tempered and impulsive, 
yet he was courteous and kind ; a strict disciplinarian, yet he 
had a sympathy like that of a woman and a heart as tender 
and susceptible as that of a little child. 

As his name indicates, McLoughlin, born in 1784, was of 
Irish blood. His father settled in Canada and married a daugh- 
ter of Malcom Fraser, an officer in the famous Scotch Fraser 
regiment. Both parents were Catholics, and their son was 
brought up in their faith. That he drifted from it in the course 
of his active life is evident from the fact that, prior to 1842, 
when he was governor of Fort Vancouver, it was his custom to 
read the services of the Church of England on Sundays to a 
congregation of officers and employees. About 1842, however, 
a copy of Milner's End of Controversy fell into his hands, with 
the result that, although no step could have been more im- 
politic at the time from a worldly point of view, he returned 
to the faith of his baptism. McLoughlin's first association with 
Oregon took place when in 1824, as a factor of the Hudson 
Bay Company, he arrived at Fort Vancouver as its chief super- 
intendent or governor. Immediately he began to display in 
his dealings with the motley population, rival traders, white 
adventurers, hostile and friendly Indians, the qualities of a 
leader of men, whose dominant motive was the welfare of all 
who fell within his sphere of influence. 

When he first came to Oregon it was not safe for the com- 
pany's parties to travel except in parties heavily armed. In 

* Dr. John McLtughlin, the Father of Oregon. By Frederick V. Holman, Director of the 
Oregon Pioneer Association and of the Oregon Historical Society. Cleyeland, Ohio : The 
A. H. Clark Publishing Company. 



io4 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

M 

a few years there was practically no danger. A single boat 
loaded with goods or furs was as safe as a great flotilla had 
been when he arrived on the Columbia River in 1824. It was 
Dr. John Mcl/oughlin who did this by his personality, by his 
example, and by his influence. 

When McLoughlin came to Oregon the country was, in 
virtue of the Conventions of 1818 and 1827, under the joint 
occupancy of the United States and Great Britain. About 1840, 
however, there began a steady movement of Americans towards 
it. This influx of Americans was viewed with disfavor by the 
British officials and occupants. The Indians, too, were intensely 
hostile to the " Bostons," as they called the American immi- 
grants. But McLoughlin used all his power to see that the 
newcomers were not molested ; and, besides, he actively assisted 
many of them by lending or bestowing on them necessaries 
and supplies, without which they would have perished. When 
the anti-American feeling had become acute, McLoughlin was 
accused before the Company and the British Government of favor- 
ing the American invasion. He repudiated the charge, declar- 
ing that he had acted solely from the dictates of humanity. 
When his superiors issued orders that he should cease to assist 
the immigrants, his answer was that he would serve them no 
longer and he resigned his post with its salary of twelve 
thousand dollars a year. 

Meanwhile there had arisen the question of McLoughlin's 
land claim, a question which, unfortunately, besides developing 
deplorable religious bigotry, illustrates the unscrupulous methods 
by which American adventures, through the help of Congress, 
have, in numerous cases, cheated and robbed the owners of 
lands whose titles antedated the establishment of American 
sovereignty. About 1829, McLoughlin took up a land claim 
according to the established forms of the settlement at the 
time. Some Methodist ministers, in 1840, disputed McLoughlin's 
claim. 

The Methodist Mission, as a mission, did not officially at- 
tempt to deprive Dr. McLoughlin of any of his land. There 
were some of the missionaries who opposed any such action. 
But others of them said that if the mission obtained any of 
Mclaughlin's land claim, it would belong to the mission or 
the church ; so they readily proceeded, as individuals, for 
their own private gain. 






1908.] NEW BOOKS 105 

Legal proceedings were begun, characterized by misrepre- 
sentations, falsification of documents, charges that McLoughlin 
was a British subject, after he had declared his intention of 
becoming an American citizen, and all kinds of legal chicanery. 
Legislation was enacted whose direct purpose was to wipe out 
McLoughlin's claim. The matter dragged on with varying suc- 
cess until 1849, when Governor Lane took possession of the 
territory for the United States. In 1850 Congress passed the 
Oregon Donation Law, granting to every adult American, on 
condition of occupancy, one thousand acres of Oregon land ; 
and McLoughlin's land was declared to be public property. 
A chief figure in the promotion of this bill was one Thurston, 
a member of the House of Representatives. His methods and 
character may be understood from a brief quotation from one 
of his congressional speeches: "This company (Hudson Bay 
Company) has been warring against our government for forty 
years. Dr. McLoughlin has been their chief fugleman, first to 
cheat our government out of the whole country, and next to 
prevent its settlement. He has driven men from claims and 
from the country, to stifle efforts at settlement." Yet it was 
proven on indisputable evidence that McLoughlin's generosity 
towards a great number of Americans, including the Methodist 
missions, had been princely. The Donation Act, passed through 
Thurston's influence, was received with great satisfaction, and 
Thurston was regarded as a hero; for, as the biographer re- 
marks, man is selfish, and this law converted every settler's 
squatter title into a legal title, except McLoughlin's " Every 
settler except Dr. McLoughlin could now have his land claim 
for which he had waited so long. A great university was to 
be built, without cost to any one except to Dr. McLoughlin 
and his heirs." Later on, however, the public changed its 
verdict and admitted both the injustice with which McLoughlin 
had been treated and the claims of McLaughlin to public 
gratitude. It is pleasing to find that, in 1862, the Legislative 
Assembly of the State of Oregon passed a bill restoring the 
greater part of McLoughlin's lands to his legal heirs. 

This biography is not, perhaps, a fine specimen of smooth 
or systematic narration; and it makes no pretention to literary 
finish. But it possesses the first quality of a biography it 
places the living man before us, just as he must have appeared 
to those who knew him. And Mr. Holman's enthusiasm for 



106 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 



his hero, as well as his severe condemnation of the doctor's 
enemies, are beyond the suspicion of being colored by relig- 
ious prejudice; for he is not a Catholic. He says: 

All my ancestors have been Protestants. I was brought up 
under the auspices of the Old School Presbyterian Church, 
of which my parents were members from my earliest child- 
hood until their death at an advanced age. I have never been 
a member of any church, but my feelings and sympathies are 
Protestant. 

Worn out by a long persecution of " robbery, mendacity, 
and ingratitude," Dr. McLoughlin died as a good Catholic dies, 
in 1857, and was buried in the churchyard of the Catholic 
Church in Oregon City. He deserves to be enrolled among 
our distinguished Americans, and can claim the higher honor 
of being remembered as a strong, noble, Christian man. We 
may close this somewhat lengthy notice of this interesting bi- 
ography by quoting a suggestion of the author which is nota- 
ble rather for his naivete and feeling than for its practical 
character : 

Under the canons of the Roman Catholic Church no one 
can be canonized until he or she has been dead at least fifty 
years. If I may do so with propriety, I suggest that when 
the fifty years have passed, those in proper authority in that 
Church cause Dr. John McL,oughlin to be canonized if it be 
possible to do so. But the people of Oregon as a people are 
not bound by this canon. Already the memory of this grand 
old man is enshrined in their hearts. To them he is now the 
patron saint of Oregon, without regard to canon or rules, re- 
ligion or sect. 

The biography of Poe,* written by 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. Mr. John Macy for the " Beacon 

Series," is true to the aim of that 

collection, which is "to furnish a series of brief, readable, arid 
authoritative accounts of the lives of those Americans who have 
impressed their personality most deeply on the history of their 
country or the character of their countrymen.'* Brief enough 
it is; for it is packed into one hundred small pages. Yet 
it contains everything that the busy man or woman wants to 
know about the author of "The Raven" and "The Bells." 
From the preface the reader may gather that he is going to 

* Edgar Allan Poe. By John Macy. Boston : Small, Maynard & Co, 






igoS.] NEW BOOKS 107 

be spared any long-drawn disquisitions on the private character 
of Poe, and that he will not be vexed with any tedious indi- 
cations that Mr. Macy holds a brief on one side or the other, 
in the long-standing literary suit of Virginia versus New Eng- 
land. "Poe," he remarks, "paid a posthumous penalty for his 
sins by furnishing a moral issue in biography over which there 
is, even to this day, unprofitable conflict." And he somewhat 
sarcastically accuses New England with attempting to discredit 
the rival of her own poetical lights by asking whether a bad 
man can be a good poet. "But," to this attitude Mr. Macy 
replies, " if the starker ethical theories will not retreat from 
biography, certainly geographical considerations may be per- 
suaded to do so." 

The present biographer offers no new information on the 
poet and his works; and it is not very probable that anything 
of importance concerning Poe will see the light till the papers 
of John P. Kennedy, Poe's benefactor, which by Kennedy's will 
are sealed till 1920, shall be made public. One letter of Poe's 
is given which is not to be found in earlier biographies, as it 
was first published only five years ago. It was written to 
Colonel Thayer, the Superintendent of the Academy, a few days 
after Poe's dismissal from West Point : " Having no longer any 
tie which binds me to my native country no prospects nor 
any friends I intend by the first opportunity to proceed to 
Paris, with the view of obtaining, through the interest of the 
Marquis de la Fayette, an appointment, if possible, in the 
Polish army." A certificate of standing in his class was, Poe 
said very correctly, all that he had any right to expect. 

Mr. Macy dissents from the view common to Poe's admirers, 
which presents him as a brilliant youth going gradually down 
to ruin and an early death: "We more fairly discern him as 
plunged by ill- luck and faults of temper into a bad hole at the 
beginning of his manhood, and fighting his way out of it, with 
considerable pluck, towards renewed social recognition and suc- 
cessful industry." Poe, he believes, had fallen, in 1831 and 1832, 
as low as he ever did in fortune and habits. 

The book contains some brief occasional criticisms on Poe's 
work which are worth reading. Too much importance is at- 
tached to the metaphysical essay " Eureka," which is very crude 
metaphysics indeed, and depends for its value much more on 
the beauty of its language than on its philosophy. The mys- 



io8 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

tery that hangs over the poet's doings in the last days of his 
life Mr. Macy does not attempt to solve : 

He took steamer from Richmond the last of September. 
The possibility that he had money may account for the dis- 
aster in Baltimore. On October 3 he was found in one of the 
ward polls by a printer who wrote to Dr. E. J. Snodgrass 
that Poe was "the worse for wear," and " in need of imme- 
diate assistance." He may have been robbed all trace of 
his baggage had been lost or he may have come to the end 
of his strength or suffered from exposure after drinking. It 
may be that he was a victim of the political habit of the 
time to " coop " strangers on the eve of election, drug them, 
and then send them obediently dazed to the polls to vote. 
If he was thus treated his captors had tampered with a deli- 
cate subject, a body at the end of its slender power to resist 
drugs. He was taken to the Washington Hospital in Balti- 
more, and there died on Sunday, the yth of October, 1849. 

Mr. Macy recounts with an even pen, nothing extenuating 
nor aught setting down in malice, this story, in which pathos, 
glory, and sordid vice, brilliant intellectual gifts and mean, as 
well as grave, moral weakness are so tragically mingled. 

The substance of this somewhat 

FREEMASONRY. bulky volume* has already ap- 

peared in the author's magazine. 

A more liberal exercise of compression, pruning, and elimina- 
tion would have made the book more compact and, therefore, 
more readable. Mr. Preuss draws up an indictment, not against 
freemasonry in general, but against American freemasonry in 
particular. He challenges its claim to be essentially different 
from the atheistical, anti-religious freemasonry of France and 
Italy. There are, so his thesis runs, masons who, because they 
have never reached the arcanum of the brotherhood, see in the 
organization but a means for furthering good fellowship and 
fraternal charity parrot masons, knife-and-fork masons who 
are only adepts in the exoteric. There is, however, despite 
the honest assertions of such men, an esoteric masonry, to which 
only the elect are admitted, which has for its sole object the 
subversion of Christian faith and Christian morals. The exis- 

* A Study in American Freemasonry. Edited by Arthur Preuss, Editor of the Catholic 
Fortnightly Review. St. Louis : B. Herder. 






1908.] NEW BOOKS 109 

tence of this distinction in the bosom of masonry Mr. Preuss 
establishes by quotations from an eminent masonic notable, Dr. 
Mackey, author of a work on freemasonry of recognized au- 
thority among the brethren. Dr. Mackey says : 

A mason who commits to memory the questions and an- 
swers of the catechetical lectures, and the formulas of the 
ritual, but pays no attention to the history and philosophy of 
the institution, is commonly called a parrot mason, because 
he is supposed to repeat what he has learned without any 
conception of its true meaning. In former times such super- 
ficial masons were held by many in high repute, because of 
the facility with which they passed through the ceremonies 
of a reception, and they were generally designated as " bright 
masons." But the progress of masonry as a science now re- 
quires something more than a mere knowledge of the lectures 
to constitute a masonic scholar. 

On this passage, combined with some others, Mr. Preuss 
comments as follows : 

A parrot mason is, therefore, one of the exoteric brethren, 
never of the esoteric. He is talkative, they are secretive. 
He is ready to tell us all about masonry, all that he knows, 
so he says ; and we are willing to believe him sincere. Per- 
haps like the bird, his namesake, he is proud of his knowl- 
edge, and is ever ready to display it. But, like a parrot, he 
is merely repeating what he has heard " without any concep- 
tion of its true meaning " ; he is the possessor of exoteric, 
not of esoteric knowledge ; the heart, the inner mysteries of 
masonry, are shrouded from his eyes. Dr. Mackey waxes 
indignant that such brethren should be satisfied with the 
shell and not feast on the kernel. 

Elsewhere Mr. Preuss quotes another eminent masonic au- 
thority, Albert Pike, as stating that the esoteric fraternity de- 
ceive their brothers of the outer circle to make the latter be- 
lieve that they have the key to the secret of the masonic sym- 
bolism, while, in fact, they are entirely ignorant of it. These 
two accounts of masonic policy are scarcely compatible. 

It is on the authentic works of the two above-mentioned 
lights of masonry, Dr. Mackey and Albert Pike, that Mr. Preuss 
relies to draw up his exposition of the inner secrets of the or- 
ganization. His method is to cite from some of their works 



i io NEW BOOKS [Oct., 



and then, by reading between the lines, by interpretation, by 
inference, to reach his conclusions as to the real, carefully con- 
cealed, nature and aims of freemasonry. One of his strongest 
chapters is that which handles the masonic claim that the re- 
ligious views which the organization officially professes is com- 
patible with Catholicity. This claim is easily and peremptorily 
disposed of. Elsewhere Dr. Preuss seems to weaken his case 
now and again by unduly pressing some inference based upon 
some passing remark from a masonic source ; and he does not 
sufficiently refute the claim of many American masons that Al- 
bert Pike, whose works he so frequently had recourse to as 
authoritative, was a firm believer in the God of the Old Testa- 
ment. Again, it may be observed, that he has not sufficiently 
protected himself from a taunt which masons have frequently 
addressed to writers who undertook to expose the inner secrets 
of the brotherhood. "You declare," they have said, "that we 
exercise a diabolical and successful ingenuity in concealing our 
secrets from, not merely the world at large, but also from even 
a great number of our own members, who are misled and blind- 
folded so that they never come to know our real meaning and 
purpose. Yet, through the help of books which masons, deep 
in the inner circle, devoted heart and soul to the order, and 
men of consummate astuteness, have issued for public circula- 
tion, you profess to have found, writ so large that he who runs 
may read, our innermost secrets ! " 

Mr. Preuss argues, very forcibly, that American and Euro- 
pean masonry is at bottom one; and the fact that the masons 
of other countries have disowned the Grand Orient of France 
on account of its atheistical professions, does not, he warns 
us, carry much weight as proof that American masonry is not 
anti-religious. He concludes with a note of warning against 
a possibility which, it is to be hoped, never shall be realized : 

As for us Catholics, if we remain longer in ignorance of the 
true character and aims of American esoteric freemasonry, 
and neglect to take the proper precautions, in obedience to 
the oiten repeated warnings of our Holy Mother the Church, 
it will serve us right if the masons succeed in obtaining the 
balance of power in the United States, as they hold it to-day 
in France, and treat us in America as our poor brethren are 
treated in that beautiful but unfortunate land. 



1 908. ] NEW BOOKS \ \ i 

This novel,* in the life and sur- 

MAROTZ. foundings with which it deals, re- 

By Ayscough. ca ll s those of Marion Crawford ; 

though there is little similarity 

between the style or methods of the two authors. Marotz is 
the beautiful daughter of a noble Sicilian family, of which no 
fewer than four generations are represented in this drama. She 
makes a trial of conventual life; but soon, finding that she has 
no vocation, returns home and marries then Rome, the Vatican, 
Leo XIII. ; discovery that her husband is a rascal; annulment 
of her marriage ; return to her home ; and but we must not 
disclose the climax. 

The book is rich in characters of high and low degree, and 
the author knows the Italians intimately. It is, besides, to use 
a phrase from the publishers' notice, " steeped in Catholicism." 
Indeed the insight into some things with which few educated 
lay Catholics are familiar is remarkable. For example, he sets 
forth the superiority of the contemplative life over the life of 
the active religious in a way that would do credit to a theolo- 
gian ; and, with just a little twinkle of malice, he allows us to 
learn how the active sister and the contemplative sister regard 
each other; also, how the sister with solemn vows from which 
only the Pope can dispense, feels that, not herself but her order 
is incomparably grander than the communities with simple vows 
from which any mere bishop can dispense. 

Marotz herself is a noble character, drawn with life and in- 
dividuality, and her story is one that will fascinate. The novel 
is strong and striking, with one structural fault it is poorly 
knit together; containing many incidents and people that, 
though interesting in themselves, contribute little or nothing to 
the development and rounding-out of the story. But, even with 
this fault, it stands high above the average of the year's fiction. 

The study on St. Ambrose,! by 
ST. AMBROSE. P. de Labriolle in the " Pensee 

Chretienne " series, is worthy of the 

high academic reputation of the Fribourg professor. In his 
introductory sketch the author outlines with a few firm strokes 
the chief characteristics of the great archbishop of Milan ; and 
to emphasize their distinctiveness sets them in contrast with 

* Marotz. By John Ayscough. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
t St. Ambtoise. Par le Pere de Labriolle. Paris : Bloud et Cie. 



ii2 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

II 

the spiritual and intellectual physiognomy of St. Augustine 
and St. Jerome. In his selections from the writings of Ambrose 
he is guided by the fact that Ambrose was a man of action 
rather than a speaker, or writer; that the chief interest and 
influence of his life are to be found in the part he played in 
political affairs under the emperors Gratian, Valentinian, and 
Theodosius during the period when Christianity, triumphant in 
the Empire, was making its decisive struggle for the extinction 
of paganism. The greater number of the pieces selected for 
embodiment in this volume fall under the caption, Political. A 
sufficient number of other extracts, grouped under the heads, 
Exegesis, Moral, and Dogmatic, are included to represent very 
fairly the individuality of the saint, and his standing as an au- 
thority and guide in these various lines of Christian thought. 

Besides the luminous critical guidance which he gives us 
in the biographical sketch, Father de Labriolle accompanies 
each excerpt with copious notes and a preliminary commentary 
which puts the reader in possession of the information required 
to understand the question at issue ; and he then leaves the 
saint to speak for himself. The space allotted to specimens 
of the work of St. Ambrose in exegesis seems at first sight 
scarcely in proportion to the renown and authority which the 
saint enjoyed as an expounder of the Scriptures during his 
own lifetime and in the succeeding centuries. But as one in- 
spects the pieces chosen for reproduction, he perceives that 
the editor's purpose, which is amply achieved, has been to draw 
attention to the high consideration which St. Ambrose has as- 
signed to the allegorical interpretation. 

In days when few, even among ecclesiastics, are willing to 
pay the price in time and labor required for a first-hand knowl- 
edge of patrology, the editors of this series are conferring a 
genuine benefit on religion by the publication of such excellent 
volumes as this one, which presents, with scholarly apparatus 
and in attractive form, the best thoughts of the great doctors 
of the Church. 

To many a weary toiler in the 

A LITTLE LAND AND A city factory or the store, the pros- 
LIVING. pect unrolled by Mr. Bolton Hall 

By Bolton Hall. will seem a per f e ct elysium, 

" Leave the crowded street, the 

fetid tenement; come and enjoy the fresh air and the blue 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 113 

sky ; be your own master ; and by a fair portion of industrious 
labor, in the most healthful of occupations, earn a decent, com- 
fortable livelihood for yourself and your family." This is the 
invitation of Mr. Hall's latest book,* which is, we hasten to 
say, in order to disarm prejudice, entirely unrelated to any of 
the economic or social theories which that gentleman has ad- 
vocated elsewhere. 

A good living, Mr. Hall maintains with a strong show of 
statistics and examples, may be made by the cultivation, on 
the intensive plan, of a small piece of land in a favorable situa- 
tion. He urges workingmen and employees living on meager 
wages, to obtain a small piece of land near a good city market. 
Then, if they proceed according to his instructions, they will 
find that they have improved their position; not alone finan- 
cially but also from the social, hygienic, and moral point of 
view. Another class to whom he addresses himself is that of 
farmers who till more acres than they are able to cultivate 
properly ; thirty acres well farmed are more profitable than 
three hundred cultivated on the miserable, slipshod plan which 
is everywhere so common. Some of the statements are likely 
to excite a little scepticism. Yet there are figures in plenty to 
back them up, drawn from divers parts of the country, from 
New York City lots and from Florida lettuce farms where, be- 
tween September 23 and the first of January following, the 
profits of half an acre amounted to $295. The effort to turn 
towards the land the superfluous population of the cities of 
which this interesting and persuasive book is an outcome is 
one that deserves all encouragement not alone for economic 
but also for higher interests. 

In the lives of these two Proven- 

TWO SEVENTEENTH CEN- 9 al s , Antoine Yvan and Madeline 
TURY FOUNDERS. Martin, M. Bremond has found a 

subject that responds to his special 

aptitudes and literary qualifications^ They were mystics, they 
were saints, one of them was the most unconventional of saints ; 
and the atmosphere which clings to both of them is redolent 
of Proven9al idibsyncracy which no writer can appreciate, or 
do justice to more thoroughly than Henri Bremond. 

* A Little Land and a Lwing. By Bolton Hall. With a Letter as an Introduction by 
William Bordosi. New York : The Arcadia Press. 

t La Provence Mystique au XVIIe. Siecle. Antoine Yvan et Madeline Martin. Par Henri 
Brdmond. Paris : Plon-Nourrit et Cie. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 8 



114 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

Antoine Yvan was born in the same year as St. Vincent 
de Paul, 1576. At an early age he was ordained priest, and 
soon became noted for his lofty piety, for the brusqueness of his 
manners, and for a tendency to break out into bizarreries, that 
might well be called eccentricity. When considerably advanced 
in years he became acquainted with Madeline Martin, a young 
woman who, under his direction, rose to high levels of the re- 
ligious and spiritual life. Together they founded the order of 
the Sisters of Mercy, which, after an initial period of external 
opposition and internal dissension that recall early Franciscan 
fortunes, attained to a flourishing life in France. 

A French critic has said of this biography that were it not 
for the documentary and other testimony which the author in- 
vokes, one might easily believe that the adventures of Antoine 
Yvan and Madeline Martin no more belong to history properly 
speaking than does George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life, or the 
romances of Ferdinand Fabre. It is not that these adventures 
contain anything extraordinary ; but they seem to be invented 
and put together for the purpose of illustrating some of the 
most interesting chapters in religious psychology. The humor- 
ous character of Pere Yvan, his unconventional ways, and his 
peculiar methods of directing Madeline, whose character pro- 
vides a foil for his, suffers nothing at the hands of a writer so 
accomplished and a psychologist so acute as M. Bremond. But 
there is no indication anywhere that he tampers with facts or 
overstrains a situation to make an incident more picturesque 
or an antithesis more striking. Needless to say, though M. 
Bremond does not disdain to entertain, and, sometimes, even 
to amuse, his dominant aim is edification. 

That firm believer in the aposto- 

DISCOURSES ON MAR- late of the press, Abbe Klein, has 
RIAGE. collected a number of discourses 

which he has delivered at mar- 
riages of friends and acquaintances in France. In them, taken 
collectively,* is set forth the ideal of Christian marriage, and 
the home, with exhortations suitable to the newly married 
to prepare them to meet the trials of the married life. 
The serious instruction, as befitted the occasions on which it 
was delivered, is wrapped in liberal allowance of poetic senti- 

Discours du Mariage. Par Abbe" Felix Klein. Paris : Bloud et Cie. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 115 

ment and oratorical flowers. What an exquisite touch,' for ex- 
ample, to entitle a discourse delivered at the marriage of a 
widow : " An Autumn Rose ! " All the pieces show signs of 
having been carefully polished to meet the exacting standards 
of good French society. If we may believe the sighs and 
groans and other manifestations of distress emitted by some of 
those who find themselves called upon to speak at a wedding, 
this function must be one of the most trying of all that fall with- 
in the scope of the pastoral office. To any unfortunate contem- 
plating with dismay the approach of an occasion when he will 
be called upon to discharge this trying role, we recommend 
Abbe Klein's present volume as a treasury of excellent models 
and useful suggestion. 

The instructions, about forty in 

SERMONS FOR BOYS. number, which compose this vol- 
ume,* were delivered to students 

of Stonyhurst College. They are pitched in the note proper 
to the conference and lecture chair rather than in that of the 
pulpit. They are not arranged in any systematic order of 
topics; but they form, nevertheless, a correlated group; and 
there is not a single one that is not direct and practical in its 
aim, carefully thought out, and couched in language to please 
an intelligent audience. Though professedly for boys, they 
are, both in matter and form, well suited to the needs of others 
who have long left the immaturities of boyhood behind them. 

At length we have a new edition 
THE OLD ENGLISH BIBLE, of Dom Gasquet's book of essays 

in English religious history which 

has become celebrated under the very inadequate, truncated 
title of The Old English Bible^ Although scarcely more than 
a decade old the first edition was exhausted long ago. The 
new edition contains no new material. One regrets that the 
author was not persuaded to carry out a design which he at 
one time entertained " of adding a third essay to the two on 
The Pre- Re formation English Bible, which were much discussed 
at the time they first appeared, and the conclusions embodied 
in them were challenged in various quarters." 

* We Preach Christ Crucified. Considerations and Meditations for Boys. By Herbert 
Lucas, SJ. St. Louis : B. Herder. 

t The Old English Bible; and Other Essays. By Francis Aidan Gasquet, D.D., Lon- 
don : G. Bell & Sons. 



116 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

It might seem somewhat belated to offer to our readers, at 
this date, any information on the nature of this well-known 
work. Yet one may question whether it is as general a con- 
stituent of our Catholic libraries as it ought to be; and cer- 
tainly it is far from having among Catholics the wide circula- 
tion it deserves. This may be due in part to the fact that its 
title, borrowed from two of the most important essays, has led 
many to presume that it is exclusively devoted to a topic 
which makes but a slight popular appeal. Its scope, however, 
is not confined to the question of the authorship of the ver- 
sion known as Wycliffe's Bible. By the way, we may observe, 
Dom Gasquet tells us that further study of the subject has re- 
sulted in bringing to his hand material which, he believes, 
strengthens his contention as to the Catholic origin of this 
Version. Besides the essays on this topic, there are a number 
of others which depict some of the characteristics of religious 
mediaeval life among the people, and within the monastery, and 
one carries us down to the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth. 

Dom Gasquet does not belong to the- Dryasdusts; he is not 
content to exhibit only the dry bones which he has disinterred 
from ancient records notebooks, parish sermons, parochial rolls, 
monastic chronicles ; he clothes them with living flesh and blood ; 
and has the knack of rendering his pages realistic by the fre- 
quent introduction of some homely detail, or incident that, more 
than the most eloquent dissertation, makes the past live again 
for us. The abbot, in a passage of the essay entitled "The 
Notebooks of William ot Worcester," takes us into his confi- 
dence, and allows us to see him at his loved work of extract- 
ing his material from the old time-stained leaves in which it 
lies mixed with much that is worthless : 

Above all, there is much pleasurable excitement to be got 
out ot an old notebook. There is something of the nature of 
a " lucky-bag " about it. You may thrust your hand in and 
bring to light very little worth the trouble ; but it may come 
out with some item of precious information which will repay 
with interest the time spent in turning over its pages. If you 
get nothing else for your pains you will have at least got 
some insight into the period covered by the notebook, and 
into the manners and customs of the people living when the 
original owner made his jottings. 

We are prepared to learn that: 




1908.] NEW BOOKS 117 

To get this, however, out of the book requires a good por- 
tion of patience and perseverance. No scribble must be ac- 
counted too insignificant to be read, no scrap of paper too 
small to be regarded. It is wonderful how much a little 
scratchy scribble may tell one ; and how great a tendency 
precious letters and memoranda have to hide themselves 
away in the leaves of notebooks, and sulk away there until 
some one has proved himself to possess patience enough to 
seek them. 

Thus, by attending to every little scratchy scribble no less 
than to more pretentious and generous sources, and by "liv- 
ing wisdom with each studious year," this Benedictine, loyal 
to the traditions of his order, has done wonders towards rec- 
tifying slanderous misrepresentations which Protestant prejudice 
had thrown upon the Church of Pre- Reformation days in Eng- 
land. 

This little book * has no rival in 
PRIESTLY VOCATION. our language. It is written for as 

pirants to the priesthood, to im- 
press them with a proper sense of the dignity they aim at, a 
proper understanding of the clerical state, and of the first step 
which they take to it in the reception of the tonsure. Two 
chapters are devoted to "The Spirit of the Priesthood and the 
Sanctification of the Seminary Life." Of the practical charac- 
ter of the work it suffices to say that it was written by a dis- 
tinguished Sulpician of long experience in the Sulpician work 
of forming the clergy ; and, besides, its value has long been 
tested favorably in its original tongue. The writer of the Fore- 
word, which is dated from Brighton Seminary, so justly indi- 
cates the particular need which there is for this book here in 
America that we cannot do better than repeat his words : 

In our country, where aspirants to the priesthood make a 
goodly part of their training in colleges where the influence 
is rather worldly than ecclesiastical, it is the exception that 
he has anything but a hazy notion of his calling. In fact, it 
is not of rare occurrence that the student learns of tonsure 
and the character of the clerical state for the first time only 
after entering the seminary. The development of a true 
clerical spirit is, however, of absolute necessity ; and oiten 
this means a radical change. 

* Priestly Vocation and Tonsure. By L. Bacuez, S.S. New York: The Cathedral Libra- 
ry Association. 



n8 NEW BOOKS [Oct., 

Certainly no aspirant to the priesthood can read this little 
volume without understanding clearly what is expected of him 
when in sortem Domini vocatus. 

A curious little pamphlet of 123 small pages,* written by 
one who obviously prides himself upon being a Modernist of 
the deepest dye, yet who does not let his enthusiasm for his 
cause betray him to write over his own name or, should it 
be said rather that, after the fashion of Modernist productions, 
it is issued anonymously ? The pen-name " Catholici " sug- 
gests something of a puzzle, one that becomes the more ob- 
scure as the pages of his (or is it their? " quelques-uns de 
leurs humbles freres," he calls himself, though later he uses the 
first person singular) lucubration are read. Is he a Modernist, 
after all; or one of those dreadful, orthodox " intellectuals " at 
his old game of "falsifying" history in order to show up the 
Modernist heresy in more than its most brazen and shameless 
nakedness? Or is he a Protestant trying to make a large 
capital out of a regrettable schism that, for all its bluster and 
noise, is really a very small one ? Or an agnostic ? a ration- 
alist ? a sceptic ? Any one, from Anglican to Universalist, 
seems to claim the right to call himself Catholic now-a- days ; 
why not these ? 

There are, to help on the argument of Catholici, quotations 
from writers of all these " Catholic" persuasions. The author 
of the brochure, writing from Paris to " all the best people," 
begins by informing his readers that Pius X. is really very 
frightened and very angry, though (he takes care to add) to 
no purpose, on account of the intellectual progress of the 
world which he is powerless to stop. The usual reflections, 
familiar to readers of Modernist productions, are made and re- 
iterated: the colossal ignorance of the Pope: "La foi agreste. 
et toute pratique de celui dont la volonte de TAllemagne a 
fait le successeur de Leon XIII., son ignorance tranquille et 
fiere des ' etudes profanes,' sa confiance de vicaire de cam- 
pagne," etc. : the backstairs authorship of the Encyclical Pas- 
cendi, the discrepancy of " Papal " Modernism and that of the 
Modernists, with others of the same tenor. Even the phrases 
and terminology of the document are carped at, in one place, 
with a brilliant scintillation of caustic wit: " Trente ans durant, 

* Lcndemains d' Ency clique. Par Catholici. Paris : Nourry. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 119 

Toeijvre etincelante de Renan n'avait pas trouble le bon som- 
meil du clerge superieur ni non plus celui du ' clerge inferieur ' 
comme ecrit apostoliquement Rex." 

The very bad- faith bracketing of orthodox and questionable 
names, a favorite trick of writers of the stamp of " Catholici," 
occurs more than once Duchesne and Loisy, Newman and 
Tyrrell, for example. But what betrays the character of Len- 
demains d* Ency clique is the treatment of the dogmatic magis- 
terium of the Church. "Dogma and a dogmatic Church are the 
logical outcome of the history of Catholicity. But it was not 
always so. There was a time when Jesus preached the coming 
of the kingdom and the necessity of preparing oneself for it 
by living aright and repenting of wrongdoing." This, as drawn 
out in the pamphlet, sounds like Protestantism pure and sim- 
ple. It certainly is not Catholic. Renan is quoted : " Un seul 
dogme abandonne . . . c'est la negation de 1'Eglise et de 
la revelation." Can not Modernists see that Renan is right in 
this point at least? Or is the Constitution De Fide of the Vati- 
can Council dogmatic and therefore to be cast aside. After 
all, the main issue is clear and distinct, no matter how Mod- 
ernists of the stamp of " Catholici " distort it. Either the Catho- 
lic Church is the divinely appointed guardian of an external, 
God-given revelation or not. If so, perish Modernism with all 
the other private-judgment .heresies that have ever convulsed 
and distracted the religious world. If we do not accept such 
a truth, then let us be honest and say so. Let us leave a 
church that has no claim on our allegiance, that can speak with 
no certain voice on things of the spirit, that by necessity, of 
its very nature, must condemn all that Modernists hold most 
dear, since its first preoccupation must be to keep and teach 
inviolate "the faith once delivered to the saints." 

Of course " Catholici " has fears as to the effects of the 
Pope's legislation. It will result in " un clerge inculte, presque 
un clerge illettre un clerge negre ou papou un clerge de popes 
et de sacristains." We shall see. Such prophecies have been 
heard before; and, somehow, the Catholic Church manages to 
survive them. 



periobicals< 



The Tablet (25 July): Deals with "The Quebec Pageant," 
showing that though Quebec is still essentially French, 
it is still essentially Catholic, its people having little in 
common with the spirit of the France of Voltaire and 

M. Combes. The second part of the article on "The 

Pan- Anglican Congress " is called a case of Episcopal 
Inflation. Why, the writer asks, should the Episcopal 
Church in the United States, which does not include 
more than a million souls, have eighty- three bishops, 
being one-third of the whole episcopate of the Anglican 
Communion? "The Catholic Settlements Associa- 
tion," gives an exhaustive account of the work of this 
society, its aims and objects, special reference being 
made to the retreats which have been instituted recently 
for workingmen. 

(i August): "The Irish Universities Bill" has passed its 
third reading. Owing to the parsimony of the govern- 
ment, the new University in Dublin is not to be a resi- 
dential University ; its students are to be scattered about 
in lodgings. The Catholic Church in touch with so- 
cial life is depicted in the description of the Vie Nou- 
velle, a paper published in France devoted to farming, 
industrial enterprises, and all questions touching upon 
labor. The purport of the paper is to keep Catholics 
abreast of the social life of their time and actually lead 

in it. Under the heading "The Roman Courts," is 

given the gist of the matter contained in the recent Bull 
Sapienti Concilio, which redistributes the business of the 
Roman Spiritual Courts and simplifies their procedure. 
(8 August): "Parliament and the Establishment," deals 
with the recent conflict between the civil and religious 
authorities over the Act known as "The Deceased Wife's 
Sister Bill." The Church of England has long claimed 
that such marriages are incestuous, and repelled the 
parties contracting them from the Communion Table. 
Recently, however, Sir Lewis Dibdin, Dean of Arches, 
has decided that they are legal by act of Parliament, 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 121 

and the contracting parties entitled to receive Commun- 
ion. It is but another proof that the Establishment is a 
creation of Parliament, and that the latter may dictate in 

matters of faith and morals. " Utrecht and Canter- 

bury," recalls a fact but little known in the present day, 
that in 1890 the Anglican Bishop of Salisbury wrote the 
Archbishop of Utrecht asking for a recognition of An- 
glican Orders. The Jansenist Church, however, refused 
(as did afterwards Leo XIII.) to accept the Anglican 

Ordinal. Among reviews is that of the recent volume 

of The History of the German People, by Janssen. It 
touches upon the baneful influence of the Reformation 
on art. Architecture, sculpture, painting, church music, 
became mirrors of the lowered and debased standard of 
the life of the times. 

(15 August): Reports a " Great Falling Off in the Foreign 
Trade of England/' amounting, according to the Board 
of Trade returns, to many millions of pounds. Atten- 
tion is drawn to the utter lack of anything like doctri- 
nal pronouncement in " The Lambeth Encyclical." The 
Anglican bishops have assumed an attitude of deplorable 
compromise in dealing with the marriage question in its 
various aspects. Permission has been given Anglican 
missionaries to have a wineless Communion, in what are 
called cases of necessity. One of them, it appears, had 

already used cocoanut milk. " The Abuse of School 

Neutrality," shows how that neutrality is being observed. 
Cases are given where the teachers have denied the ex- 
istence of God. One case is cited where a certificate of 
study was refused to any child who should attend Mass. 
The Government in every case has upheld the teacher. 
"Religious Equality," says the President of the Board 
of Education, "is the only basis for the settlement of 
the Education difficulty." If this be true, then the pres- 
ent Bill will have to be altered beyond all recognition. 
The Month (August): Opens with a double article on "The 
Pan-Anglican Congress," accentuating the good deeds 
done and the wise words uttered ; lamenting, on the 
other hand, the almost entire exclusion of the super- 
natural from any of its deliberations. " Catholics and 

the Italian Universities " tells of the work of the Church 



122 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct., 



in the building of the Pensione Universitaria at Padua. 

" A Bogus Biography," from the pen of Father 

Thurston, is mainly occupied by the exposure of a par- 
ticular piece of imaginative history. He begins by re- 
ferring to an article which appeared in the Rosary Maga- 
zine on "A Typical Tertiary the Blessed Euphemia, 
Daughter of Edward III., King of England," who, he 
says, is utterly unknown to any English historian. He 
then passes on to the story of the Scottish missionary, 
Father Archangel, commonly known as George Leslie, 
which appeared in The American Catholic Quarterly for 
January, 1908. This he denounces as a bogus biog- 
raphy, and urges that in such cases we should adhere 
to a scrupulous accuracy of historical statement. 
The National Review (Sept.) : Following " Episodes of the 
Month," an appreciation of the important part played by 
Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords is presented by 

"A Peer." "The Cult of Cant," by J. L. Garvin, is 

a charge and protest against the pharisaical arguments 
put forth by the Free Traders at the recent Free 
Trade Congress at Caxton Hall. In his article "Bel- 
gium in the Grip of Germany," R. H. Feibelmann re- 
views circumstances which indicate that sooner or later 
Germany will acquire a free hand in Belgium. The 
writer asks whether or not the other Powers, who guar- 
antee the independence of Belgium, will, through neglect 
and ignorance of facts, permit themselves to be the in- 
voluntary accomplices of those who are working for the 

slow Germanization of Belgium. " Motor Traffic on 

the King's Highway," discusses the great evils arising 
from the inconsiderate driving of motor cars, and how 

such evils may be mitigated. "The London Season," 

by Domino, is a discussion of social life in the great 
capital, and a consideration of the moral lessons which 

the question of entertaining provides. The writer of 

" The Country Parson and the Village School " advo- 
cates Church of England teaching to the children of 

village schools. Thomas Bayne, in his article "Mr. 

Andrew Lang and Robert Burns," takes exception to 
the trustworthiness of the guidance afforded by Mr. 
Andrew Lang in his editorship of Burns poems. 



i9o8.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 123 

'The Hindu Conception of Man/' by Mme. Jean De- 

laire. "The Future of Japan," is a second study of 

the Far East from the pen of W. T. R. Preston. 

The International ^August): A new industrial condition is out- 
lined by the editor in his article "The Technical Age." 
Some countries lend themselves to an unlimited indus- 
trial development as, for example, the United States, 
which are a world in themselves. In the struggle the 
older countries must of necessity fall behind, among 

them being France and England. That the time is 

near when aerial navigation will have become a general 
means of locomotion is maintained by the writer of 

"The Present and Future of Aerial Navigation." 

" The Progress of Polar Exploration " deals with the 
attempts to reach the North Pole, from the date of 
the first expedition, in 1553, up to the present year. 
The palm of merit so far belongs to the Americans, and 
the race now lies between Peary and Amundsen, the 

Swede. " Railroad Regulation in America " suggests 

four ways of dealing with a much- vexed question. Gov- 
ernment ownership would appear to be the logical con- 
clusion. Among other articles are " Old Age Pen- 
sions in Australia." And " Present-Day Slavery in 

Mexico." " The Aims of Indian Art " goes to show 

that the philosophy of the subject is contained in the 
one word meditation. 

The Seven Hills Magazine (Sept.): M. O'R. writes on "The 

New Constitution of the Roman Curia." " Scenes 

and Shrines in Palestine " are described by Rev. Regi- 
nald Walsh, O.P. The celebrated Rev. Charles O'Con- 

or, D*D. (Columbanus) is the subject of a sketch by M. 

O'R. An article of particularly timely interest is "The 

Blessed Eucharist in England in the Days of King 
Henry VIII.," by the Rev. D. F. McCrea. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (August): Contains several con- 
tinued articles. The first by Rev. P. Coffey, Ph.D., 
" 'Appearance* and * Reality/" deals with the half-truths 
of Modern Philosophy, among others that we can only 
know the Phenomenon and that the Noumenon is un- 
knowable. "The Causality of Creatures and Divine 

Co-operation," by Rev. D. Coghlan, D.D., reviews ad- 



124 POREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct., 

versely the theory of an essay entitled, " The Flow of 
Motion," which claims that motion is a "form" which 
can pass from subject to subject without losing its indi- 
viduality, and that creatures do not originate action 
with God's concurrence. The reviewer disproves this 
theory by arguments based on the sanctity of God, ac- 
tion of Free-will, and the causality of the Sacraments. 

" Steps Towards Bethlehem/' by T. Frederick Willis, 

gives reasons for leaving the Anglican Communion; 
among them being the impossibility of believing in the 
reality of their sacraments. At best, he says, it is only 

an opinion; and opinion is not faith. " Dialogues on 

the Pentateuch " is concluded in this number. 

Le Correspondant (10 August): Cardinal Mathieu, in "A Dip- 
lomatic Success of the Holy See," tells of the intelli- 
gence, moderation, and allowance for human weaknesses 
shown by the Papal Court in dealing with involved po- 
litical questions. The case cited is that of Mgr. Sala- 
mon, in the troublous period following upon the down- 
fall of Napoleon and the accession of Louis XVIII. 

Under the caption "The Origin of the Port of Bizerte" 
is given an account of the building of a modern arsenal 

in Northern Africa. "The Parisian Domestics" deals 

with the vexed question "The Servant Problem." In- 
crease in wages, indifferent service, tipping, are among 
the difficulties discussed. Various societies have been 
established for the protection and benefit of servants, 
having as honorary members some of the most promi- 
nent men in public life. A descriptive account of 

"The Franco-English Exposition," tells how it resulted 
from a visit to London of the Parisian Chamber of 
Commerce in 1905. It touches upon the Olympic games 
and gives some causes for the great dissatisfaction felt. 

"The Stage," by Paul Acker, shows the place the 

theater has in the life of the people. "What excites 
Paris?" he asks; and answers, "the stage." 

Etudes (5 August): "The Action of Catholics in Public Life" 
is concluded. The first thing to establish is that there 
is a code of Christian principles which should govern 
politics, and the business of Catholics is to uphold this 
code. Chanoine Dunand writes on " The Sanctity of 



i9o8.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 125 

Joan of Arc." As it appears in history, it is, he says, 
unique. Her condemnation is spoken of as a scandal to 
the English. Twenty years afterwards the proceedings 
were declared null and void and her character fully reha- 
bilitated. "The Herzog-Dupin Question," as reviewed 

by Eugene Pertalie, is a statement of the charge made 
by M. Saltet that the lucubrations of Dupin, Herzog, 
and also Lenain, are nothing but shameless plagiarisms 
from the same source, and that source the manuscripts 

of the Abbe Turmel. Lucien Rouri, in " Mysticism," 

selects three representative mystics, taken from different 
epochs and under different circumstances. St. Theresa, 
Mme. Guyon, and Suso. The Blessed Marguerite-Marie 
is not selected, as she is not persona grata to profane 
psychologists. 

La Democratie Chretienne (August) : Gives a full account of 
"The Social Week at Marseilles," and the various ad- 
dresses dealing with religion and social life. The week 
has proved an enormous success for both organizers 

and lecturers. "The Spanish Letter" records the 

foundation in that country of the Institute for Social 
Reform in 1903, its aims and objects, also the success 
obtained by the Catholic Socialists in the election of 
their members. 

Revue des Questions Scientifiques, Vol. XIV. (July) : Opens 
with a biographical sketch of the late Albert de Lap- 
parent. He was a learned man and a splendid Chris- 
tian, the greatest authority on geology in France, and 

the champion and supporter of all generous works. 

" Responsibility, Normal and Abnormal " is a continued 
article by L. Bouli. It distinguishes between the various 
grades of mental weakness. Cases bearing upon each 
phase of the disease are presented ; while erotic impulses, 
dipsomania, epilepsy, hysteria, are shown to be fruitful 

causes. " Ports and their Economic Function " takes 

a survey of some of the most important seaport towns 
and harbors in the world. Valuable charts and statistics 

accompany the article In "The Unity of Matter," 

Georges Lemoine describes it as one of the most im- 
portant and most difficult questions in chemistry. Is it 
absolutely certain that what to-day are called simple 



126 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct., 






bodies are different entities? On the other hand, all 
that can be said from a strictly experimental point of 
view is that it is not impossible that all matter may be 
one. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i August) : In his essay on 
" Systematic Apologetic " J. V. Bainvel deals with the 
subject under four heads subjective, pragmatic, moral, 
and as affecting faith. The teaching of the Modernists 
on Immanence and the appeal to conscience is vigorously 

assailed. " The Esthetic Sentiment in the Education of 

Children " the work of education is a work of elevation, 
and all that is esthetic tends to uplift the nature of the 
child. Beauty of form suggests interior beauty and pre- 
pares the way for the child's acceptance of a higher life, 

moral and spiritual. "The Teachers without Faith* 

Family, or Country." A review of the secular schools 
by Fenelon Gibon. The teaching given, he says, often 
aims at the overthrow of the Catholic religion. Parents 
are called upon to resign the care of their children into 
the hands of the masters ; while under the name of in- 
ternationalism, love of country is destroyed. 
(15 August): A. Moulard writes on "The Catholic and 
the Coercive Power of the Church/' a subject much un- 
der discussion at the present moment, and one always 
misunderstood by the enemies of the Church. We might 
expect the Church to have the power of self-protection, 
this must necessarily involve the right of correction, the 
power to judge and to punish. "The Esthetic Senti- 
ment in the Education of Children " is concluded in this 

number. A. Durand, S.J., has a continued article on 

" Loisy and the Synoptic Gospels." He mentions the 
two schools of criticism, the Historical, at the head of 
which is Harnack, and the Higher Critics, represented 
by Loisy, Wellhausen, and Cheyne. So far as the re- 
sults arrived at by Loisy are concerned, namely, the 
denial of the supernatural, they differ in no essential 
from those put forth by the leaders of radical criticism 
in Germany for the past thirty years. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (i August): The first chapters of 
a continued article on " Modernism " treats of the Bible 
stripped of all authority and regarded merely as a human 






I908.J FOREIGN PERIODICALS 127 

document. The Pentateuch and the Gospels occupy po- 
sitions of first importance as revealing to us the begin- 
nings of the Jewish and Christian religions. These are 
just the parts of the Bible Modernists refuse to accept 
and empty of all authority. " Studies on the Revolu- 
tion " is brought to a close. The works of the Abbe of 
Bonneval show him to have been a determined enemy 

of Napoleon and a wise counsellor of the Bourbons. 

Under Science and Romance " The Empire of Man " is 
considered. Man has a power which he cannot acquire, 
it is just this power which enables him to gain the mas- 
tery over nature. We call it intelligence. Evolution 
may be the process of this development, but it is cer- 
tainly not the cause. "The Historical Sketch of Works 

Executed by the Grave-Digging Christians of the Cata- 
combs" Jis still continued. As is also "The Apoc- 
alypse Interpreted by Holy Scripture." 
(15 August): "The Secret of the Woman Question" is 
a continued article by Theo Joran, who regards it as a 
new apple of discord, affecting the national character, 
utterly opposed to the true relationship existing between 
the sexes, ending in divorce and free- love, with a con- 
sequent degradation of the woman. "Science or Ro 

mance," by J. d'Oryle, is a review of M. Clodd's The 
Story of Creation, which professes to be an accurate state- 
ment of the theory of evolution. " Modernism," a 

continued article by Ch. Beaurredon, points out the vi- 
ciousness of the system and the false hypotheses on which 
it is conducted. The writer takes the Gospels one by 
one and illustrates the Modernistic method of proving 

them untrue. Among other continued articles is the 

"Princess Louise of Conde," by Dom Rabory. 
Revue Thomiste (July-August): Fr. Reg. Garrigon-Lagrange, 
O.P., writes a continued article on " Common Sense, the 
Philosophy of Being, and Dogmatic Formulas." The 
theory discussed is that of the Conceptualist-Realist 
School. Common sense, as distinguished from the good 
sense, is common to all. It perceives in the light of 
" Being " the truth of the principle of the reason of Be- 
ing. By it we arrive at the principles of causality and 
finality, and by the aid of these the common sense rises 



128 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct., 



to God. "The Nature and Value of Induction," by 

T. Richard. The ancients, he tells us, say very little 
about induction. Aristotle dwells much upon the syl- 
logism, but we search in vain for any course on induc- 
tion and his commentators have followed their master's 
example. " The Twenty-Fourth Question in the Sum- 
mary of Theology," by Fr. Th.-M. Pegues, O.P., treats 
of the procession of creatures, and God as the pri- 
mary cause of all being. Four articles are discussed : 
I. Is it necessary that all being should be caused by 
God ? II. If original matter is caused by God ; III. If 
the cause is something outside God ; IV. If God is the 
final cause of all things. 

Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (7 August) : O. Zimmermann, S.J., 
writes on "Experiencing Religion." The writer shows 
how illogical and absurd are the assertions of the theos- 
ophists. Man desires to experience religion, but only on 
the basis of sound Christian and Catholic doctrine, then 
will he be able to " taste and see that the Lord is sweet." 

A. Breitung, S.J., ends his article on " Evolution 

and Monism " by giving a survey of the discussion on 
this subject by P. Wasmann and Prof. Plate in Berlin. 

St. Beissel, S.J., gives a short history of the origin 

and development of the crosier. The present serpentine 
shape of the crosier originated probably in Ireland, where 
snakes and dragons played a conspicuous part in almost 

all ornaments. K. Schlitz, S.J., in the conclusion to 

his paper on " The Panama Canal," thinks this canal 
will exceed that of Suez in natural beauty, grandeur, and 
importance, and will give to the United States the po- 
litical and commercial supremacy of the world. 

Die Kultur (III.) : Albert Wimmer writes on "The Modern 
Knowledge of Natural Sciences and its Relation to Chris- 
tian Apologetic" an epilogue to the lectures of P. 
Wasmann, S.J. The writer contends that the natural 
sciences are destined to become a powerful support for 

the belief in God. P. Reginald Schultes, O.P., in an 

article on " Thomism and Modernism," treats of the 
theological value of St. Thomas' philosophy and of the 

relation between theology and philosophy in general.- 

Dr. Jos. Brzobohaty contributes a biographical sketch on 



1908.] 



FOREIGN PERIODICALS 



129 



"Sebastian Brunner," the brave champion of God, who 
began in Austria, in the middle of the last century, the 
fight for the freedom of the Church from political servi- 
tude. Articles on "The Fall of Vienna in 1809" 

" Prince- Archbishop of Vienna " " Count Hohenwart's 

Conduct " and " The Marriage of Archduchess Marie 

Louise to Napoleon " relate, in a lively manner, the 

events and concerns of Vienna of a century ago. 

La Civilta Cattolica (i August): "The Criticism of the Modern- 
ist/' its gospel is agnosticism, immanence, and evolution, 
as opposed to the supernatural, miraculous, and divine. 

The continued article on " Liberty of Instruction " 

is brought to a close. After all, the Church, so often 
accused of intolerance and tyranny, furnishes the best 
teaching, reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion ; and 
the most necessary of all is religion. Reference is made 
to the enormous sum spent by the Catholic Church in 

the United States on the education of her children. 

" Christian Conditions in China,'* gives an account of the 
various revolts and rebellions since the war of 1840, and 
the treaties which followed, noting their effects upon the 
status of Christianity among the people. 
(15 August): " National Character and Catechism," defines 
a nation as a true political union of a varied population 
associated naturally by geographical situation and arti- 
ficially by language, custom, tradition, law, morals. 
These varied interests go to form national character, and 
to these education must address itself. The article is to be 

continued. A new study in the matter of Pope Li- 

berius is brought to a close. "Athens and Rome," 

contrasts the old classical education with the modern 
scientific and technical one which has helped so much 

to commercialize life and destroy high ideals. " The 

False Notion as to the Narrowness of Aristotle and the 
Scholastics." It is so often charged that the study of 
scholastic philosophy tends to narrowness, but the ques- 
tion is, Wherein does true liberality consist ? Not in 
the free-thinking of the day. 

Revista Internet zionale (July) : " The Improvement of the Eco- 
nomic Social Conditions of the People," by Dante Mune- 
rati. To love the worker, and not to hold him in a state 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 9 



i 3 o FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct., 



of bondage, but to lift him to higher things, is the true 
solution of the social question. " The Mutual Co- 
operative Society and the National Society for the Pro- 
viding of Pensions for Sick and Infirm Workmen/' shows 
how far this somewhat socialistic plan has worked in 
Italy. The first is a private association, providing pen- 
sions for its own members, while the latter is a State 

institution. "The Parliamentary Record of Insurance 

for Unfortunate and Sick Workingmen in Switzerland," 
is another instance of changed social conditions, and the 
recognition by the State of its duty to protect its work- 
ing people. 

La Scuola Cattolica (July): "Our Enthusiasm for the Pope" is 
a glowing tribute of affection prompted by the approach- 
ing Jubilee. "The Marvelous Cures at Lourdes as 

Viewed by Science." An illustrated article, giving diag- 
noses of cases treated, with an analysis of the water, 
and furnishing instances of cures which cannot possibly 
be accounted for on the theory of suggestion. Physicians 
are unable to afford an explanation. Why not regard 
it as a part of the magnificent Catholic revival which 

has marked the end of the nineteenth century ? 

" Modernists and the Fact of the Resurrection of Jesus 
Christ." A criticism of the views put forward by M. 
Edward Le Roy and Abbe Loisy considered theologic- 
ally and philosophically. " The Apologetic Value of 

the Christian Martyrs." Rationalists have endeavored 
to destroy the argument for the divinity of the Church 
built upon the testimony of the martyrs. The writer 
shows the objective value of their deaths and how they 
demonstrate the divine revelation working through Jesus 
Christ. 

Razon y Fe (August) : According to L. Murillo, Moses wrote 
his cosmogony, primarily, to give an historical sketch of 
the Creation ; incidentally, to enlighten the Hebrew peo- 
ple as to the divine attributes. " From Neutrality to 

Atheism in the School," by R. Ruiz Amado. The au- 
thor contends that in Spain the school which does not 
teach Catholicity is practically identical with an openly 

atheistical school. " Christian Morality in the Spanish 

Constitution," by P. Villada. "Rivalry Between the 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 131 

Spaniards and Portuguese in the Far East during the 

Sixteenth Century," by P. Pastells. " Strikes/ 1 by N. 

Noguer ; a few facts about strikes and lockouts in vari- 
ous countries. 

Espana y America (15 July): "A Comparative Study of St. 
Thomas and Lally on the Science of Universals," by 

Father P. M. Velez. "Chinese Teachings on Heaven 

and Hell, by Father J. Hospital. " The Philosophy 

of the Verb," by F. Robles. Father De Mugica con- 

tinues in this and the following number his articles on 

the Spanish theater. Father A. Blanco writes again 

in this and the mid- August number, about " Weights 
and Measures." 

(i August): "Godoy and His Age," by Father B. Mar- 
tinez. " Modernistic and Traditional Theology," by 

FatherS. Garcia. "Venezuela and the Great Powers," 

by F. Pedrosa. 

(15 August): " Chinese Ancestor- Worship," by Father J. 

Hospital. " The Popularity of Gregorgian Chant," by 

F. Olmeda. "The Philosophy of the Verb," by F. 

Robles. 



Current Events. 

The people of France have been 
France. occupied mainly in holiday-mak- 

ing. Parliament is not sitting, and 

the ministers have dispersed to various places. The Premier, 
M. Clemenceau, went to Bohemia, and there he met King 
Edward and the Russian Foreign Minister, M. Isvolsky. What 
they said in the course of their conversation the papers have 
not reported, but it is thought that everything possible was 
done to promote the maintenance of peace. King Edward had 
previously met the Kaiser and the Emperor of Austria, to the 
latter of whom he had paid a visit in celebration of his Dia- 
mond Jubilee. 

The Ministry, however, has not been without its anxieties. 
Various strikes have taken place, and it was found necessary 
to have recourse to the help of the military ; in one case the 
soldiers found it impossible to avoid the use of their arms, and 
four men were killed and some fifteen wounded. There exists 
in France an association called the Confederation Generale du 
Travail, a body of affiliated Trade Unions. While nominally it 
has for its object the benefit of workingmen in their relations 
with their employers, in reality it is a hotbed of revolutionary 
Socialism, and a laboratory for the cultivation of strikes. To 
the activity of this body the recent labor disturbances were 
due, and the motives for suppressing this pernicious organiza- 
tion were strong. It had, however, a legal right to exist, al- 
though it had not made a good use of its rights. The govern- 
ment, wisely wishing to avoid even the appearance of arbitrary 
action, has refrained from taking so strong a measure as the 
suppression would have been, and has sought to put a curb 
upon the confederation, without proceeding to the last ex- 
tremity, by arresting most of the leaders and proceeding against 
them in the Courts of Law. In revenge the Confederation 
called a general strike, but no response was made to this call. 

As in England so also in France many Socialists and 
representatives of the interests of labor are opposed to holding 
any intercourse with the Tsar on account of the oppression 
which is carried on in his name and the blood shed to enforce 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 133 

that oppression. But policy is policy, and the basis of French 
international action is the alliance with Russia. The interests 
of France and the interests of peace require co-operation, and 
a blind eye must be turned to internal affairs. The visit of 
M. Faliieres to Reval was accordingly made, with the consent 
and approbation of all the established parties. The visit was 
marked by extreme cordiality ; the Foreign Ministers of France 
and of Russia held a prolonged conference, the result of which, 
we are told, was to bring about a great improvement in the 
international situation. We are not told what the Kaiser really 
thinks of its effect. The correspondents of the German Press, 
however, who were present at Reval, returned home profoundly 
impressed with the conciliatory character of the meeting and 
at the entire absence of anything calculated in the least to 
offend German susceptibilities. They could not find any signs 
of an attempt to hem Germany in ; in fact, Prince Biilow has 
recognized that he was mistaken in saying that the Powers 
had ever had such an object in view. 

The affairs of Morocco have again attracted attention. For 
some time the two brothers who are claiming the Sultanate 
stood apart and seemed to decline the one way of settling the 
question which remained open to them a decisive battle. At 
length Abdul Aziz set his army in motion to return to Mara- 
kesh. But on the way tribes that had accepted the rule of 
Mulai Hafid fell upon the invaders and in an instant Abdul 
Aziz was deserted by the tribesmen who had only a few days 
before sworn unalterable fidelity. He fled with a few followers 
to a place under the control of the French. His defeat was 
regarded as decisive by the Powers, although it would seem 
that the late Sultan has not even yet given up all hope. 
France has maintained, so it is claimed, complete neutrality 
between the rival claimants, although it seems as if she had 
leaned rather to the actual holder of the throne, while Ger- 
many leaned to Mulai Hafid. 

On the defeat of Abdul Aziz the duty fell to France and 
Spain as the organizers of the police force under the Act of 
Algeciras of learning from the new Sultan what attitude to- 
wards that act he intended to assume, and not to recognize him 
unless he accepted its provisions. In the event of such recog- 
nition, his own recognition by the Powers would be given. 
This was considered to be the normal procedure, and consid- 



i 3 4 CURRENT EVENTS [Oct., 

arable criticism and even some apprehension followed upon the 
action Germany took in sending its Consul to Fez, to Mulai 
Hafid, before any steps had been taken by France or Spain 
and before the new Sultan had accepted the Act. 



The powers that be in Germany 
Germany. had not called forth much comment 

by any word spoken or deed done 

for some little time, until the Kaiser addressed his soldiers at 
Strassburg at the beginning of September. It is well under- 
stood that Ministers are either taking " cures " or preparing the 
scheme of new taxation which has been rendered necessary by 
the increase of the Navy recently decided upon. The news- 
papers, however, have been discussing the possibility of a re- 
duction of armaments, taking as their text the remarks made 
by the British Premier at the recent Peace Congress held in 
London. So much was written upon the subject that hopes 
were beginning to be entertained that serious proposals were 
being made by responsible parties for this so-much-to-be-de- 
sired reduction. The speech of the Kaiser at Strassburg has 
dashed these hopes to the ground, for it indicated that, how- 
ever much he desired the maintenance of peace, there was no 
intention to discontinue or to diminish the provision of ade- 
quate strength for war both by sea and on land. In other re- 
spects, however, the speech of the Kaiser was reassuring ; for 
he affirmed his deep and sincere conviction that peace was 
secure. The princes and sovereigns of Europe had too keen 
a sense of the awful responsibility they would incur if they 
provoked war, except under the conviction of an imperious 
moral necessity. 

Airships, aeroplanes, and dirigible balloons fill many col- 
umns in the papers, but afford in themselves nothing appro- 
priate for these notes. The destruction of Count Zeppelin's 
airship, however, called forth a demonstration which was of a 
political character and afforded such an indication of the atti- 
tude of large numbers of Germans towards one of their neighbors, 
that it deserves being mentioned. Messages of condolence were 
sent to him by the Kaiser, the Chancellor of the Empire, and 
others too numerous to mention ; and a subscription list was at 
once opened to reimburse the Count and to enable him to make 



1 908. ] CURRENT EVENTS \ 3 5 

a new ship, while a large grant of money was given out of the 
public funds. There was nothing less than a national demon- 
stration of sympathy. Doubtless to some extent this was 
largely personal; but there is no less doubt that it sprang from 
the hope, which had been entertained and publicly avowed, that 
by Count Zeppelin's airship a death-blow would have been given 
to Great Britain's supremacy on the ocean, and that a whole fleet 
of Dreadnoughts had been rendered useless. The Crown Prince 
declared the object of the subscription to be that Germany 
might maintain the lead in the fight for the command of the 
aerial seas. 

Among the minor items of news must be included the re- 
lease, after serving twenty months of the sentence of four years' 
imprisonment, of the "Captain of Kopenick," Wilhelm Voigt, 
the hero of the ever- to-be-remembered exploit in the outskirts 
of Berlin. So great has been the sympathy excited by the 
comical audacity of this misdeed, that he has not only found 
employment but to him has been granted also out of subscriptions 
a monthly allowance. 

The Orthodox State Church of 

Russia. Russia is generally supposed to be 

entirely amenable to the control of 

its Head, the Tsar. At the Missionary Congress recently held 
at Kieff, however, it has proved refractory. It was summoned 
for the purpose of making regulations enabling the Church to 
adapt itself to the new conditions established by the Ukase, on 
freedom of conscience, of April, 1906. It had been, heretofore, 
a criminal offence for a member of the Orthodox Church to leave 
its fold. The Congress has refused to recognize the freedom 
which the Tsar has ordered, and it still declares to be unlawful 
that which its Head declares to be lawful. Most of the Russian 
prelates, it is said, have taken part with the most violent of 
the organizations in support of the reactionary regime of the 
past. With influences such as these on the wrong side, it can- 
not be wondered at that there should be many who despair of the 
future prospects of the Russian people. On the other hand, 
this fact is a ground of hope to the more sanguine; if, not- 
withstanding these influences, real progress has been made, then 
there is hope for greater progress in the future. But has real 
progress been made ? Mr. W. T. Stead, who has a fair knowl- 



136 j CURRENT EVENTS [Oct., 

edge of Russian affairs, declares that, after an absence of three 
years, the change for the better is almost incredible. Russia 
has found the man her circumstances demand. M. Stoly- 
pin is trusted by all, and is worthy of the confidence both of 
the Tsar and of the nation. He is honest, conscientious, has 
ideals, is incapable of intrigue. By the reactionary he is looked 
upon as a revolutionist, by the revolutionist as a reactionist. 
He recognizes that absolutism has utterly failed, and wishes to 
save the country from anarchy, whether in high or in low 
places. The Cabinet system of Great Britain he looks upon as 
the means of effecting this salvation. 

The progress already made, however, disappointing as it may 
be, seems substantial. On the one hand the revolutionary fever 
has gone, most likely, for good; hopes are, therefore, entertained 
that the extraordinary measures for the maintenance of order, 
which have been in force so long, may be abrogated altogether, 
as has already been done in part. A Bill has been prepared 
with the object of reforming the whole system and of limiting 
the authority exercised by the police and military, and this 
Bill will be laid before the next session of the Duma. 

Progress has been made in the settlement of the agrarian 
question. The communal ownership of land, known as the 
Mir, is being abolished, and the peasants are being converted 
into freeholders. Those who are interested in projects for the 
nationalization of land should study the lessons which Russia 
can afford them of its practical results. The substitution of 
private for public ownership of land is the foundation stone 
of the present agrarian policy of the Ministry. Great quantities 
of land, that formerly belonged to the government, have been 
transferred to the peasants, as well as much that was part of 
the Imperial appanages. The Land Bank is making large ad- 
vances, and sometimes the whole amount is repayable by small 
annual installments. By these measures the agitation of the 
peasants has been brought to an end. The young people have 
gone back to school and college and are now studying their 
lessons instead of making revolutionary speeches. Notwith- 
standing the manifold abuses which still exist, there is reason 
to rejoice that so much has been done, and to hope that much 
more will be done in the near future. In particular the Duma, 
limited though its powers may be, seems to have become an 
established institution. 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 

After seemingly interminable de- 
Belgium, bates the Belgian Chamber unex- 
pectedly voted the Treaty of an- 
nexation of the Congo and the Colonial Law under which it is 
to be administered. Should the Senate concur and there is 
no reason to think it will not Belgium, one of the smallest 
of European States, will become possessed of an extent of ter- 
ritory as large as the whole of Europe, and, it is to be hoped, 
an end will have been put to a most dismal career of mis- 
government. Started as a philanthropic attempt, under the 
auspices of the chief Powers, it soon eventuated into a sordid 
oppression. It will have served one good purpose if it affords 
yet another demonstration of the impotence for good of auto- 
cratic methods of government. The Powers who signed the 
Berlin Treaty, under the provisions of which the Free State 
was inaugurated, will have to pass upon the annexation before 
it can be brought into effect, and, if necessary, may require 
such modification and securities as may be essential for secur- 
ing the rights of the natives. 



Not the least of the many note- 
The Near East. worthy features of the revolution 

which is taking place in Turkey is 

the startling suddenness with which it was brought about, and 
the complete ignorance which had existed in the European 
Press as to the likelihood of such an event. Although for a 
score of years every class of people and every nationality had 
been groaning beneath the oppressive yoke of the Sultan, yet 
the bonds which he had so skillfully riveted showed no signs 
of breaking. All power had become concentrated in his hands, 
hosts of spies and informers were in his pay throughout the 
Empire, no man dared to call his soul his own, the usual min- 
istrants to an autocrat a gang of unscrupulous dependents 
upon his bounty seemed destined to rule unchecked for no 
one knew how long; for the rest of the people were complete- 
ly at the mercy of the palace camarilla. 

But the very success of the Hamidian policy was its own 
undoing. Those who rally round the throne of a despot are, as 
a rule, inefficient and incapable, for no self-respecting man of 
character and capability would accept such a position. At all 



138 CURRENT EVENTS [Oct., 

events, it so happened in this case. The world has been ac- 
customed to hear of the sufferings to which the various races 
professing to be Christian have been exposed. These races had, 
however, protectors among the various Powers of Europe, not 
very efficient indeed, but in a measure sufficient to screen them 
from the full exercise of the tyrant's power. But the Turks 
themselves had no protector, and they felt the full weight of 
his arm. Excessive taxation, the arbitrary rule of the Sultan 
and his favorites, corruption of every kind; these they had to 
endure, and there was no one to whom they could appeal. The 
soldiers had to bear even more, for they were called away from 
their homes, and had to serve without pay, and oftentimes al- 
most without clothes. From patriotic motives they had hither- 
to been willing to endure all this; but recent events have made 
their patriotism the very reason for shaking off the tyrant's 
yoke. The concessions which the Sultan has been forced to 
make in Macedonia to the Powers, and the expectation that he 
was on the point of being forced to make even greater con- 
cessions, made clear his impotence as the defender of the Em- 
pire; the last bond which held them to him was broken. Hence 
it was that in secret for several years, and especially during the 
past three, the Committee of Union and Progress, made up of 
young Turks, has been at work. Its organization had spread 
far and wide in every part of the Empire, and had won over 
to its side the only support upon which tyranny can rest the 
army. The whole country was prepared; but, it is said, the 
Committee was not quite ready to act, and that the revolution 
was precipitated by the fact that the Sultan's spies had revealed 
their plans to the officials at headquarters. A commission was 
being sent from Constantinople to make arrests. It was neces- 
sary to act at once and word was, thereupon, sent to the Sul- 
tan that it the Constitution which had been granted in 1876, 
and which had been arbitrarily suspended within a year or two 
of that promulgation, were not restored, the Third Army Corps, 
made up chiefly of Albanians, would march upon Constanti- 
nople. The Sultan, rinding that the rest of the army insisted 
upon the same demands, had no choice but to yield. The res- 
toration of Midhat's constitution was not, nor could it be ex- 
pected to be, spontaneous, and we may be quite sure it will 
not continue in existence should power to overturn it be re- 
gained by the Sultan. 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 139 

A question arose as to whether he should be deposed ; but 
the Committee which is now the controlling power seem to 
have come to the conclusion that he would be more danger- 
ous in the position of a pretender to the throne than as a 
monarch under the control of law, and that his experience 
might be even beneficial to the nation. 

The Sultan has taken his oath to abide by the Constitu- 
tion. A ministry was formed, with a man of great experience 
at its head, Said Pasha. But in the very formation of the 
ministry, a violation of the Constitution, as well as of the re- 
sponsibility of the Cabinet as a whole, was committed : the 
Sultan had been allowed to reserve to himself the appointment 
of the Ministers of War and of Marine in derogation of the 
rights of the Head of the Ministry. This led to the fall of 
Said Pasha after a few days of office, and a new ministry, 
under Kiamil Pasha, a more advanced Liberal, has been formed. 
Elections have been ordered which are to take place in time 
for the meeting of Parliament in October. The cumbersome 
method of indirect election has been adopted. That is to say, 
those entitled to vote are to elect what is called a college of 
electors, and this college is to choose those who are to make 
up the actual Parliament. The Turks will dominate the new 
Parliament, having by far the largest majority ; the Bulgarians 
will have only seven representatives, while the Greeks will 
have some fourteen or sixteen. 

The Parliament, when it meets, will have questions of the 
utmost difficulty to solve. Absolute rule has resulted in bank- 
ruptcy and impoverishment, and money must be found by 
some means or other. A still greater difficulty will be the re- 
lations of the various nationalities to the governing power, and 
to one another. As is well known these nationalities hate each 
other more than they hate the Turk, and although in the 
moment of joy, after the Constitution had been proclaimed, 
they fraternized, their mutual jealousies have broken out again 
and conflicting demands are being made. Moreover, it must 
be remembered that the revolution has been made by Turks 
in the interests of Turkey, and not for the benefit of Christians, 
except in so far as Turks may consider fair treatment of 
Christians of advantage to Turkey. The young Turks aim at 
a strong Turkey, and the demands for autonomy and Home 
Rule, which have already been formulated by both Greeks and 



140 CURRENT EVENTS [Oct., 

Bulgarians, may not in their judgment be compatible with the 
aims which have animated the Committee of Union and Prog- 
ress. Education too, the character which it is to have and 
the language in which it is to be given, is another question, 
the solution of which will present many and great difficulties. 

That the revolution should have taken place at this pre- 
cise time seems almost providential. If Austria and Russia 
had been acting together so exclusively and whole-heartedly 
at the time when it broke out as for some years they have 
been acting, and had not the rapprochement between Great 
Britain and Russia been brought about, there seems good 
reason to think that intervention might have taken place ; for 
their mutual interests and long-cherished ambitions have been 
seriously affected, and there is a wondrous sympathy between 
autocrats. A " holy " alliance might have been formed be- 
tween the Emperor, the Tsar, and the Sultan. But Russia 
and Great Britain, in consequence of the recent rapprochement, 
had just taken the lead in making proposals for reform in 
Macedonia, to which proposals Austria was barely acquiescent; 
and for very shame Russia could not go back in the course 
upon which she had just entered. 

The carrying into execution of these proposals has, indeed, 
been suspended, but all the Powers have agreed not to inter- 
vene, and to wait to see whether the Parliament about to as- 
semble will carry out the reforms that are necessary. The 
young Turks would, it is true, like to see the departure of the 
European officers whose efforts for improving the country have, 
for the past few years, met with so little success; and if the 
revolution continues to have the peace-making effects which 
have for a short time resulted from it, it is possible their wish 
may be gratified. But they must make the presence of those 
officers unnecessary, by themselves effecting the reforms which 
are essential to peace and good order. A great deal will have 
to be done before such an event takes place. But so much 
has been done already in so short a time, with so little blood- 
shed and so much moderation, that there is reason to hope 
that light has permanently arisen upon one of the darkest re- 
gions of the earth, and that the absolute domination of one 
of the worst of tyrants with his parasitic crew has definitely 
come to its end. Even the strikes at Constantinople, which 
followed so quickly upon the establishment of the new methods, 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 



141 



may be taken as an indication how quickly and completely 
Western ideas are being assimilated. 

It is worthy of note that the young Turkish movement, 
while it found in the army its instrument, derived its impulse 
and its ideas from civilians, and that the Committee of Union 
and Progress, which is its organ, does not aspire to mastery 
and control. It acts, indeed, as a board of advice to the min- 
istry, but only until Parliament meets. At least, such are its 
sentiments at present. 

At the present time there is pre- 

The Middle East. sented to view a series of politi- 

cal permutations and combina- 
tions which is, to say the least, interesting. Last year Persia 
obtained a constitution, while Turkey still groaned under its 
master's yoke ; this year it is Persia that is groaning under 
the yoke, while Turkey has a constitution. The Shah, oblivi- 
ous of his solemn oath, declared that what his fathers had 
won by the sword, he would keep by the sword, and pro- 
ceeded to batter down the house in which the Parliament was 
assembled. He promised indeed to call a new Parliament ; but 
he has deferred issuing the summons for so long a time a 
promise being less binding than an oath and the disorder in 
consequence has become so great, especially in the important 
city of Tabriz, that Russia, of all countries in the world, to- 
gether with Great Britain has called upon him to keep fidelity 
towards his subjects. It is suggested that he should issue with- 
out delay the promised proclamation ordering new elections. 
The date even for the meeting of Parliament is indicated. 
Times have, indeed, changed when the Autocrat of all the 
Russias sends to admonish the King of Kings to keep his 
plighted word and to submit to the reign of law and that a 
law dictated to him by his subjects. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

DURING eleven weeks, ending September u, the Catholic Summer- 
School, at Cliff Haven, N. Y., presented a varied programme of lec- 
tures. Many forms of self-improvement were discussed, and plans arranged 
for winter reading in the home circle. In conjunction with some of the lead- 
ing subjects, a bibliography is given to encourage mature study. Members of 
Reading Circles were stimulated to persevere in their efforts ; and the practi- 
cal instructions for Catechists, arranged by B. Ellen Burke, have never been 
surpassed at any gathering in the United States. The crowning joy of the 
session came with the blessing sent by Pope Pius X., through Cardinal Merry 
del Val, in a special letter to Bishop Gabriels. Financial aid for a broader 
development is now the most urgent need of this intellectual center for 
Catholics on Lake Champlain. 

* * * 

The Ozanam Association was organized with the object in view of bet- 
tering the social and physical conditions of Catholic boys and young men, as 
well as inculcating the moral and religious teachings of the Roman Catholic 
Church in a manner that is thorough in method and permanent in result. 

Mr. Thomas M. Mulry, the founder of the Association, is the president 
of the Irish Emigrant's Bank, and has for over a decade been actively inter- 
ested in philanthropic and benevolent works in Roman Catholic circles ; he 
is the originator of the plan for establishing a chain ot boys' clubs located in 
New York City, which would be sufficiently attractive to the rising generation 
to draw them into the club rooms from the streets and more unattractive sur- 
roundings. Gymnasia and baths are to be installed at every club room. 
Competent physical directors to be in charge and every effort made to bring 
the Roman Catholic youth of the city to the higher standard of physical, 
moral, and spiritual well-being. 

The spiritual director of the association is Mgr. James H. McGean, rector 
of St. Peter's Church in Barclay Street. This movement, which is fostered 
by the Roman Catholic clergy of the city, was greatly strengthened by the in- 
creasing influence of some of the college settlements, which are believed by 
Catholics to be weaning their growing boys away from the faith of their fa- 
thers, the Roman Catholic Church. 

Mr. Mulry, who is at the head of this movement, is a man who has lived 
a full life. He was for years a successful contractor, and is thoroughly fa- 
miliar with the labor situation in its every aspect, and the assisting of the 
boy who works for his living is one of the main objects of the association. 
Mr. Mulry is also the head of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in New 
York, whose central organization is at Paris, France. 

Archbishop Farley, who is in full accord with the movement, sent the 
following letter to the meeting at which the Ozanam Association was organ- 
ized: 



1908.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 143 

ARCHBISHOP'S HOUSE, 452 MADISON <AVE., 
NEW YORK CITY, July 15, 1908. 

MY DEAR MR. MULRY : I heartily approve of the suggestions made by 
you in the matter of caring for the Catholic boys of the city. The formation 
of a society such as you have in mind under the patronage of the exemplary 
and the saintly Ozanam is bound to accomplish much good, and will carry 
with it God's choicest benedictions. 

Under the special supervision of the Rt. Rev. Mgr. James H. McGean, 
who is appointed spiritual director, this association will make strongly for the 
spiritual welfare of our Catholic youth, and will by its very nature tend to 
counteract the many baneful influences that constantly surround them and 
will shield them from the dangers that await them in a great city like ours. 

Praying for the society every success and blessing, I am faithfully yours 
in Christ. JOHN M. FARLEY, Archbishop of New York. 

The Association has acquired the Club House, which was founded by the 
priests of Father Drumgoole's Mission, in West 56th Street, between Ninth 
and Tenth Avenues, and there are buildings in Sullivan Street, and in i6th 
Street, near Eighth Avenue, which are to be made over by the Association 
into model and attractive club rooms for the boys. All this, however, is 
only the beginning of what should prove one of the greatest movements ever 
undertaken for the uplifting of the youth of the Catholic Church, and the 
co-operation of the entire clergy of the city will be asked, although it is 
probable it will not be necessary to install a club house in each parish. 

The Ozanam Association requires the co-operation and support of all 
good Roman Catholics in the city, and believes it is entitled to it, for the 
future of the Church in New York depends upon the boys who are growing 
up to-day, and who later on will be the power that moves for good or evil. 

Although the Association is still in its infancy, it is apparent, that it will 
receive the hearty support of the Catholic laity. One man of wealth has 
volunteered to support at his own expense one of the boy's clubs, and many 
other offers of assistance have been made. The Society of St. Vincent de 
Paul has pledged itself to supply any deficit which may arise until such time 
as the Ozanam Association shall be self-supporting. 

To join the Association it is not necessary to be a member of any society, 
as any one who is interested in the welfare and progress of the Roman Catho- 
lic boys (our future men) will be welcomed. The annual dues are $5.00, 
and those who wish to extend their support, but do not wish to be active 
members, may become contributing members. 

The officers of the Ozanam Association are: E. J. Cornellis, President; 
Joseph P. Grace, First Vice-President; J. D. Underbill, Second Vice-Presi- 
dent; John E. O'Brien, Secretary, and John G. O'Keefe, Treasurer. 

Those composing the Board of Directors are: Patrick H. Bird, Edmond 
J. Butler, Tenement House Commissioner, E. J. Cornellis, J. J. Deerey, 
John J. Falahee, J. J. Fitzgerald, Joseph P. Grace, of Grace & Co., Henry 
Heide, a well-known manufacturer, Thomas H. Kelly, George B. McGinnis, 
James McGovern, Thomas M. Mulry, John E. O'Brien, Harold O'Connor, 
Richard O'Gorman, John G. O'Keefe, Edward H. Peuguet, John J. Pullcjr, 
J. Delmar Underbill, and John B. White. 



144 BOOKS RECEIVED [Oct., 1908.] 

ji 

The forwarders of this Association are bending every effort to make 
these boys' clubs finally the finest organization of its kind and are studying 
the various associations of like character, such as the Young Men's Christian 
Association, et al, with the intention of adopting the best features of these 
clubs and associations that would be of value to the Ozanam Association. 

This Association really means so much for the Catholic youth of this 
city, and will be such a powerful factor in maintaining the strength and 
purity of the Roman Catholic Church, that it should receive the support of 
all good Catholics, and every one who has the means should become a con- 
tributing member at least, thus helping in a work that will strengthen the 
very foundation of their religion. The address of the Secretary, Mr. John 

E. O'Brien, is 375 Lafayette Street. 

M. C. M. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York: 

The Coming Harvest. By Rene Bazin. Translated by Edna K. Hoyt. Pp. 347. Price 

$1.25. 
ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, New York . 

A Practical Course in Touch Typewriting. Oliver Edition. A Scientific Method of 
Mastering the Keyboard by the Sense of Touch. By Charles E. Smith. Price 75 cents. 
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York : 

Essays on the Apocalypse. By James J. L. Ratton. Pp. 177. Price $i net. Vittorino da 
Feltre. A Prince of Teachers. By a Sister of Notre Dame. The St. Nicholas Series. 
Illustrated. Pp. 173. Price 80 cents. 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York : 

Flower of the Dusk. By Myrtle Reed. Pp. iv.-34i. Price $1.50 net. 
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York: 

A Treatise of the Spiritual Life. Translated from the Latin. By the Rev. D. A. Dono- 
van, O.C. Second Edition. Pp. x.-sis. Price $i. 
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York : 

A Catholic Historv of Alabama and the Floridas. By a Member of the Order of Mercy. 

Vol.1. Pp.373. 
J. SCHAEFER, New York: 

Little Manual of St. John Berchmans' Altar-Boys' Society. Pp. 48. Paper. Price 10 cents 

per copy ; 50 cents per dozen. 
CATHOLIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, New York: 

The Teachings of the Fathers on the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. By the 

Rev. P. Pourrat. Pp. 48. Paper. Price 15 cents. 
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, Fordham, New York: 

The Catholic Mind. April 8 : Science and Her Counterfeit. July 22 : Status and Prop- 
erty Rights of the Roman Catholic Church. Published Fortnightly. Price $i per 
year ; 5 cents per copy. 
ITALIAN-AMERICAN PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK: 

What the Settlement Clubs Stand For. By the Rev. James B. Curry. Pamphlet. Pp. 12. 
INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Brooklyn, N. Y.: 

Religious Unrest: The Way Out. Pp.48. Paper. Price 10 cents. 
GOVERNMENT PRINYING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. 

Education in F< rmosa. Pamphlet. Bibliography of Education for 1907 . Pamphlet. 
HENRY PHIPPS INSTITUTE, Philadelphia, Pa.: 

Fourth Annnal Report of the Henry Phipps Institute for the Study, Treatment, and Preven- 
tion of Tuberculosis 1906-1907. Edited by Joseph Walsh. Pp. 430. 
CATHOLIC UNIVERSE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Cleveland, Ohio: 

Prayers at Mass for School Children. Pp. 30. Paper. Price $3 per 100. 

A. PlCARD ET FlLS, PARIS: 

Pie VI. Sa Vie son Pontifical (1717-1799). Par Jules Gendry. Tomes I. & II. Price 
15 francs. 




THE 

s CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVIII. NOVEMBER, 1908. No. 524. 

THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY. 

BY EDMUND G. GARDNER. 

JTUDENTS of English poetry have been profoundly 
interested in the recent publication, in the Dub- 
lin Review, of an essay by Francis Thompson on 
Shelley. It was indeed fitting that the author 
of "The Hound of Heaven " and the "Ode to 
the Setting Sun " should have paid so eloquent a tribute to the 
poet of "Prometheus Unbound" and "Hellas." Nor was he 
the first Catholic poet to do this. An exquisite critique of 
Shelley by Aubrey de Vere is too little known. And even 
the theologians have not left him unnoticed, as we may see in 
the little volume De Dante a Verlaine, in which the French 
Jesuit, Pere Pacheu, ably vindicates for the poet his place 
among the idealists and mystics. 

To me Shelley has always stood as the supreme [representa- 
tive of pure poetry, and as something more. Robert Browning 
well defined Shelley's " noblest and predominating characteris- 
tic " to be "his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in 
the absolute, and of Beauty and Good in the concrete." For 
him Shelley's poetry was " a sublime fragmentary essay towards 
a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity, 
of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal." 
I have always read Shelley in the light of Browning's essay. 
The juvenile atheism of " Queen Mab " may well be ignored. 
What Professor Dowden says of the " Revolt of Islam " is 
of far wider application : " Shelley's illusions were such as 

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

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 10 



146 THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY [Nov., 


could now deceive no thinking mind. His generous ardors, 

the quivering music of his verse, the quick and flamelike beauty 
of his imagery still bear gifts for the spirits of men." Let it 
be granted that his "passion for reforming the world" led 
Shelley into many errors of theory and of practice ; that a cer- 
tain crudeness and immaturity, inevitable, perhaps, from the 
circumstances of his life, a remoteness and ethical impracticabil- 
ity in his work, made him fall below that supreme height to 
which in modern times only Dante and Shakespeare have at- 
tained. The fact remains that, apart from the merely artistic 
value of his poetry, Shelley was essentially a mystic; working 
on a different plane from that upon which Dante habitually 
moved in spirit, he gave expression to certain tendencies and 
aspirations, which present striking analogies with those of many 
of the mystics of the Catholic Church. 

In his prose essay, " A Defence of Poetry," Shelley speaks 
of "evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes as- 
sociated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own 
mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing un- 
bidden." " It is," he says, " as it were the interpenetration 
of a diviner nature through our own ; but its footsteps are like 
those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, 
and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which 
paves it." His own shorter poems are the records of such 
moods, such " evanescent visitations of thought and feeling," in 
verse. Two of them, the "Ode to the West Wind*' and "To 
a Skylark," are probably the most beautiful and most perfect 
lyrics in the English language. They are not transcripts from 
nature, but mystical interpretations of her phenomena. Wind 
and bird alike become one with the poet's own yearnings. The 
wind sounds " to unawakened earth the trumpet of a prophe- 
cy " ; the lark, "like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun," 
is an unconscious symbol of the soaring of the human spirit 
from the fetters of material things to gain the liberty of eternity. 

There are two lines in the " Epipsychidion " which give the 
key to Shelley's philosophy, and, indeed, to all mysticism : 

" The spirit of the worm beneath the sod 
In love and worship blends itself with God." 

"Tell me, my soul," says Hugh of St. Victor in his " So- 
liloquium," "what is it that thou lovest above all things? I 



1908.] THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY 147 

know that thy life is love, and I know that without love thou 
canst not exist." Love, for the mystics, is the guide in their 
quest of absolute truth and absolute beauty, to a state in which 
the soul is permeated with the divine. Mysticism is the love- 
illumined quest of the union of the soul with the suprasensible 
with the absolute with that which is. The Christian mystic 
finds the ultimate goal of this quest in the possession of the 
Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence in eternity ; he attains 
temporarily to an anticipation of it, in rare moments of spirit- 
ual exaltation and ecstatic contemplation, in that half hour 
during which there is silence in heaven ; in a foretaste of that 
vision of God (such as came to St. Augustine and St. Monica 
when, leaning in the window which looked into the garden of 
the house at Ostia, they spoke together of the joys of the 
blessed, or to Dante as he approached the end of all desires 
at the close of the " Paradiso ") ; or in the spiritual espousals 
of the soul with Christ, which St. Catherine of Siena and St. 
Teresa experienced. The pantheistic mystic strives to reach 
an analogous goal in the union of the human mind with the in- 
forming spirit of love and beauty which he recognizes in na- 
ture; when (in Wordsworth's phrase) the "discerning intellect 
of man " is " wedded to this goodly universe in love and holy 
passion." 

Dante tells us in the " Convivio" (III. 2) that " Love, taken 
truly and subtly considered, is nought else save spiritual union 
of the soul with the thing loved ; to which union, of her own 
nature, the soul runs swiftly or tardily according as she is free 
or impeded. And because it is in the excellences of nature 
that the divine principle reveals itself, it comes that the human 
soul naturally unites herself with these in spiritual fashion, the 
more swiftly and the more strongly in proportion as they ap- 
pear more perfect." 

Now these " excellences of nature " are united, as it were, 
to form the deity of Shelley's creed. He conceives of a power 
in nature, external to man, a power which is spirit, and which 
he identifies with love and beauty, with light and benediction : 

" That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 



148 THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY [Nov., 



Which through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst." 

This " awful Loveliness," whose shadow " floats though un- 
seen among us," Shelley formally invokes in the " Hymn to 
Intellectual Beauty," the poem which marks the great spiritual 
crisis of his early life, and which indicates his conversion from 
the crude materialism and cruder pseudo-spiritualism of his 
youth. As ideal beauty and divine love, she is given anthro- 
pomorphic form in the great allegorical poems of his maturity, 
from "Alastor" to "The Triumph of Life." It is to her, 
personified in Asia, that the wonderful hymn of mystical long- 
ing is addressed in "Prometheus Unbound": 

" Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between them ; 
And thy smiles before they dwindle 

Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 
In those looks, where whoso gazes 
Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

" Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning 

Through the vest which seems to hide them; 
As the radiant lines of morning 

Through the clouds ere they divide them ; 
And this atmosphere divinest 
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

"Fair are others; none beholds thee, 

But thy voice sounds low and tender 
Like the fairest, for it folds thee 

From the sight, that liquid splendour, 
And all feel, yet see thee never, 
As I feel now, lost forever ! 

" Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 

And the souls of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! " 



I9Q8.J THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY i 49 

It is only after death that man can be perfectly " made one 
with Nature," and become (like Keats in "Adonais") "a por- 
tion of the loveliness": 

"The One remains, the many change and pass; 
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; 
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die, 
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! 
Follow where all is fled." 

Yet man apparently can anticipate this even in life. The 
whole fourth act of " Prometheus Unbound " shows us the 
earth and the moon and all creation united to celebrate the 
marriage of Prometheus and Asia, the union of man's soul 
with this spirit of love and beauty in nature, as a state that 
can actually be attained when evil is expelled from the uni- 
verse as Shelley believed that, theoretically at least, it could 
be by the power of the human will and " Love untainted by 
any evil becomes the law of the world": 

" Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 

Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 
And folds over the world its healing wings." 

Certainly, there is much in such a creed that would need 
but a slight modification to transmute it to the phraseology of 
Catholic mysticism. But I would not attempt to minimize the 
vast difference between a mysticism of which the goal is prac- 
tically the annihilation of individual personality, or at least of 
self-consciousness, and the mysticism according to which, when 
the end is attained, consciousness of self is absorbed in the 
vision of God, in which individuality is not destroyed, but 
rendered perfect in the full realization of all its capacity of 
knowing and loving.* It is true, of course, that in " Adonais," 
though the soul becomes "a portion of the Eternal" and "is 
made one with Nature," the poet assures us that " the splendours 
of the firmament of time" are not extinguished, and the per- 

* Catholic readers need not be reminded of the classical treatment of this theme in St. 
Bernard's " De Diligendo Deo." 



150 THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY [Nov., 

I 

sonalities of "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown" are pre- 
served on their thrones, " far in the Unapparent " ; but Francis 
Thompson, not unjustly, remarks on Shelley's " inexpressibly 
sad exposition of pantheistic immortality," even though the 
closing stanzas are " implicitly assuming the personal immortal- 
ity which the poem explicitly denies." 

We know how Dante found the divine love and the divine 
beauty mirrored in the love and beauty of Beatrice; and how, 
at the last, her spirit led his purified soul up through the nine 
successive stages of illumination until he found the end of all 
desires in union with the Divine Essence. Shelley wrote of 
his " Epipsychidion " : " It is an idealized history of my life 
and feelings. I think one is always in love with something or 
other ; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased 
in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal 
image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." The "Epi- 
psychidion," avowedly based in part upon Dante's philosoph- 
ical love-poetry, is an attempt to put Shelley's mysticism into 
practice; to identify the spirit of ideal beauty, which the high- 
est part of his soul loved, with a living woman as its most 
perfect earthly symbol, and ascend through her to the pos- 
session of that spirit itself: 

" There was a Being whom my spirit oft 
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves 
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 
Paved her light steps ; on an imagined shore, 
Under the gray beak of some promontory, 
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory 
That I beheld her not. In solitudes 
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, 
And from the fountains, and the odours deep 
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep 
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, 
Breathed but of her to the enamoured air; 
And from the breezes whether low or loud, 
And from the rain of every passing cloud, 



i9o8.] THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY 151 

And from the singing of the summer-birds, 
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words 
Of antique verse and high romance, in form, 
Sound, colour in whatever checks that Storm 
Which with the shattered present chokes the past; 
And in that best philosophy, whose taste 
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom 
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; 
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth." 

The result is one of the most beautiful love-poems ever 
written ; but, as mysticism, the attempt breaks down, and the 
poet acknowledges himself baffled : 

" The winged words on which my soul would pierce 
Into the height of Love's rare Universe, 
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire 
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! " 

Herein Shelley failed, however nobly, where Dante had 
albeit not unscathed succeeded. No man may attain to the 
last mystical heights of the paradise of Love who has not first 
passed in spirit through hell and purgatory. And of the sym- 
bolical purgatory, in the ecstatic pilgrimage of the soul through 
time to eternity, Shelley never recognized the need. 

It is, indeed, obvious that the spiritual ideal expressed in 
the noble lines with which the "Prometheus" closes, setting 
forth the "spells" whereby man is to retain the freedom that 
he has won by the annihilation of evil in love's victory, com- 
bines the passive virtues of Christianity with a perceptible 
element of the pride of a Lucifer: 

"To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; 
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; 

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; 
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory." 



i$2 THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY [Nov 

We can trace the development of Shelley's views on Chris- 
tianity from " Queen Mab," the first of his philosophical poems 
(which was, to some extent, repudiated by him in later years), 
to " Hellas," the last of his poems published in his lifetime. 
In " Queen Mab," the worship of the God of the Christian 
creed is represented as the chief cause of the evil in the world. 
We are given a parody of biblical history and teaching, cul- 
minating in what can only be described as a blasphemous 
caricature of the most sacred event in history. Shelley's whole 
conception of Christ has altered in " Prometheus Unbound," in 
which the Crucifixion is treated with all the reverence of which 
the poet was capable. Christianity, "the faith He kindled," is 
denounced because it has apostatized from the spirit of its 
Founder, and the chief agony suffered by Him upon the Cross 
is the knowledge of the evil deeds that Christians will perpe- 
trate in His name.* In the " Ode to Liberty," written early 
in 1820, Christianity is still "the Galilean serpent." f But in 
"Hellas," which was composed in the latter part of 1821, the 
poet's attitude has undergone a complete transformation. In 
the wonderful unfinished prologue, Christ is triumphing over 
Satan and Mahomet alike ; and in the famous chorus of the 
Greek Captive Women, " Worlds on worlds are rolling ever," 
hymning the "Promethean conqueror" and "the folding-star 
of Bethlehem," the poet bids us note that " the popular notions 
of Christianity are represented as true in their relation to the 
worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they 
will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation 
more universal": 

" A power from the unknown God, 
A Promethean conqueror, came ; 
Like a triumphal path he trod 
The thorns of death and shame. 
A mortal shape to him 
Was like the vapour dim 

Which the orient planet animates with light ; 
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, 
Like bloodhounds mild and tame, 

* Cj. Act I., 546-555. 597-6i5. 

t There is, however, no shadow of foundation for Mr. Swinburne's conjecture that in line 
212 Shelley originally wrote " Christ," where the Boscombe MS. reads : " Oh, that the free 
would stamp the impious name of KING into the dust ! " 



i9o8.] THE MYSTICISM OP SHELLEY 153 

Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; 

The moon of Mahomet 

Arose, and it shall set: 
While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon 

The cross leads generations on. 

" Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep 

From one whose dreams are Paradise 
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, 
And Day peers forth with her blank eyes; 
So fleet, so faint, so fair, 
The Powers of earth and air 
Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem ! 
Apollo, Pan, and Love, 
And even Olympian Jove 

Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them; 
Our hills and seas and streams, 
Dispeopled of their dreams, 

Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, 
Wailed for the golden years." 

Yet, even in "Hellas," we have but to turn to the conclud- 
ing chorus, anticipating a period of regeneration for humanity 
in a new golden age, and read the poet's own note upon it, 
concerning "the sublime human character of Jesus Christ," 
"this most just, wise, and benevolent of men," to see that he 
was still a long way from a full intellectual appreciation of 
the religion of Christ : 

"Saturn and Love their long repose 

Shall burst, more bright and good 
Than all who fell, than One who rose, 

Than many unsubdued: 
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, 
But votive tears and symbol flowers." 

No doubt, there were many things in Shelley's somewhat 
nebulous creed that separated him from Christianity ; but 
among them, more particularly, was his conviction that evil 
was something purely external to man, "a mere accident that 
might be expelled," that he could do away with by the sim- 
ple exercise of his own will. As Mary Shelley puts it: 



154 THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY [Nov., 


"Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there 

should be no evil, and there would be none." All attempts to 
fetter the free impulses of the human spirit were thus tyranny 
or superstition. There could be no such thing as sin (in the 
Catholic sense of the word); and, therefore, theoretically at 
least, "neither to change, nor falter, nor repent," was a duty. 
The soul unaided could reach her natural state of perfect liberty 
and innocence the state to which Dante only attains at the 
end of the "Purgatorio," after he has passed through the purg- 
ing fire of the last terrace of the mountain. 

There is always a certain temptation to a student of letters 
to find the influence of one of his two favorite poets reflected 
in the work of the other. It has, indeed, been not unreason- 
ably suggested that the reading of the " Divina Commedia" 
(in which Shelley must have come into contact with Catholic 
philosophy for the first time) had the chief part in modifying 
his earlier views of Christianity; his admirable criticism of the 
" Paradiso," alike in the "Defence of Poetry" and in the 
" Triumph of Life/' shows how well he had comprehended the 
spirit of Dante's divinest work. The "Triumph of Life," the 
sublime poem upon which Shelley was engaged at the time of 
his death, though modeled upon the "Trionfi" of Petrarch, is 
far more Dantesque than Petrarchan in tone, and its abrupt 
ending opens many questions as to the possible ultimate de- 
velopment of the poet's views on man and his destiny. 

Like the "Divina Commedia" itself, the "Triumph of 
Life " is an allegory in the form of a vision. It describes how 
Life a terrible and mysterious figure throned in the car of 
which blinded Destiny urges on the winged steeds triumphs 
over man when overcome by passion or by error. Not only 
have the slaves ef carnal vice become subject to its cruel yoke, 
but even "the wise, the great, the unforgotten," are chained to 
the car, men mighty once in thought or in action, whose "lore 
taught them not this, to know themselves." In vain does the 
mystical spirit of the poet's creed, that personification of ideal 
love and ideal beauty, appear to man "in the April prime"; 
she is obscured in life's pageant, eclipsed by the icy coldness 
of its tempestuous splendor, when he has drunken of her cup 
and yet turned away from her. A vast cloud of phantoms and 
shadows, symbolizing the conceptions of men's minds, darkens 
all the grove wherein the pageant is enacted, quenching hopes 



J9o8.] THE MYSTICISM OF SHELLEY 155 

and aspirations, working misery in young and old, and becom- 
ing ever more terribly distorted as the course of time proceeds 
until joy dies away and the victim, grown weary of the 
struggle, falls exhausted by the wayside. And upon this pic- 
ture the poem abruptly closes: "Then, what is life? I cried." 
It is but a fragment; but its magnificent music, its lofty 
thought, and the beauty and splendor of its imagery, make it 
one of the greatest fragments in all literature. And, with this 
question on his lips, the poet passed into the other world. 

Two diametrically different interpretations have been given 
of the "Triumph of Life." According to the one, Shelley's 
opinions were quite unchanged, and his philosophy of man un- 
shaken; it is "a recognition of the price that even the great- 
est idealist must pay to reality; it is the cost, not the failure, 
of the ideal philosophy that is here allegorically represented."* 
According to the other (with which I find myself in general 
agreement), the poem represents a complete, albeit it might 
have proved but temporary, abandonment of the poet's former 
philosophical position. It is a poem of disillusion. Experience 
has taught him that man cannot get rid of evil by the simple 
exercise of will; unaided, he falls, and has to acknowledge 
defeat, not through the mere agency of external circumstances, 
but by deeper defects within himself : f " I was overcome by 
my own heart alone." 

For the first time in Shelley's poetry, we find in this, his 
last work, a recognition of the possibility of something analo- 
gous to the Catholic conception of personal sin, and a place 
seems left in his philosophy for the need of a Redeemer. 
Speculations, like those of Browning and Matthew Arnold, as 
to the direction in which his thoughts on religion might ulti- 
mately have tended, are, after all, very bootless. "The Spirit 
breatheth where he will." Yet those of us who have fallen 
under the spell of the unique fascination of Shelley's poetry, 
who have felt our sense of the spiritual no less than the ma- 
terial beauty of the universe quickened by his words, may, 
perhaps, be pardoned for the attempt to bring it and them 
into some sort of harmony with la verita che tanto ci sublima.\ 

*H. S. Salt, Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Pioneer, pp. 119-120. 

tC/. Dr. J. Todhunter's essay on the "Triumph of Life," and his excellent Study of 
Shelley. 

t Dante, " Par." XXII. 42 : "The truth that doth so much exalt us." 




IN THE SIERRA MADRE. 

BY CHRISTIAN REID. 
I. 

N the western side of Mexico, in the midst of the 
great dominating mountain range, which stretches 
its lordly length in an unbroken chain from north 
to south, lies one of the few regions of primeval 
wildness and grandeur still remaining on the face 
of the earth. High uplifted in crystal air, and bathed in mists 
from the bosom of the vast Pacific, it is a marvelous world of 
greenness, freshness, and delight, of hanging woods and singing 
waters, where no wheel has ever rolled, where the traveler 
journeys on horseback or muleback along precipitous mountain 
sides, with verdure-filled gulfs far below, across great highland 
plateaus, covered with majestic forest, level and open as a royal 
park, or down rock-strewn quebradas, where the tumultuous 
rivers rush from their birthplace in the clouds. And through 
these scenes he may journey from sunrise to sunset without 
encountering any one save perhaps an occasional horseman, or 
a few trains of pack- mules with their arrieros dark, sinewy, 
Arab-like men, who follow the laden animals on foot, and whose 
whistles, admonitions, and cries alone break the silence of the 
mighty hills. 

Such a traveler was a man who had been riding in the Si- 
erra for three days, exchanging only the salutations of the road 
with these occasional wayfarers. By his dress he appeared to 
belong to the country, but by his face to another nationality, 
and the farther he plunged into the wonderful wilds, the more 
a certain somber shadow lifted from his countenance and his 
aspect became that of one at peace with himself, as if the great 
peace of nature which encompassed him, soothed some inward 
sore and hurt, and calmed his spirit. He was mounted on a 
fine mule, and his equipment would have indicated a person of 
importance, but for the fact that in Mexico persons of impor- 
tance do not ride on long journeys without attendants, and he 
was entirely alone. 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 157 

This loneliness evidently caused him no concern, however, 
not even on the third day, when having turned from the trails 
which lead between the cities and towns of the east, and the 
villages and mining camps on the western side of the great 
range, he found himself in a region where not even pack-trains 
and arrieros were to be met, where no sight or sound of man 
broke the deep spell of the solitudes which encompassed him. 
Through the long day he had ridden, with an ever deepening 
content in the Sierra, in its ineffable remoteness, its austere 
majesty, its high upliftedness; and the approach of sunset found 
him in an arroyo between great heights, where the trail led 
along a narrow shelf of granite across the face of a towering 
cliff. Sheer and steep the mountain dropped hundreds of feet 
below, and in the dark green depths, which no ray of sunlight 
ever pierced, a cataract poured its unseen waters, filling the 
mighty chasm with a sound like thunder. A single misstep on 
the perilous path would have sent mule and rider crashing down, 
never to be seen or heard of again. But if the latter gave a 
thought to this possibility, there was no sign of it in his in- 
different glance at the tops of the tall pines far below, which 
hid even so much as a glimpse of the thunderous waters. Pres- 
ently he spoke aloud to his mule : 

" If it were not for thee, amigo, I should halt for the night 
as soon as we reach the end of this arroyo ; but I know thy 
stomach craves something more than grass to fill it, and, un- 
less I have missed my way, the house I am in search of must 
be near here." 

The mule, planting his feet with great care on the narrow 
ledge, pricked up his ears, as if to indicate that he understood, 
and when he finally found himself on safer ground, stepped out 
with a quickness which for once was not due to the spur. 

And then, turning around the great flank of the mountain, 
the traveler saw opening before him a small valley, surrounded 
by steep heights densely clothed with forest. Here was a lit- 
tle cultivated land, and here also stood a house that he had 
little doubt was the one of which he was in search. It was a 
rough structure, built of logs, as all houses are in the Sierra, 
with a ramada thatched with pine boughs in front, under which 
a woman was milking a cow. 

As he rode up, she rose and stood before him, draped in 
the picturesque folds of her reboso. She was young, tall, vig- 



158 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 

ji 

orous, supple yet straight as an arrow, a true daughter of the 
native races, undiluted by a drop of white blood. Her com- 
plexion was of a soft olive-brown tint, her features were clear- 
cut, her eyes dark and lustrous, and her whole expression of 
blended gentleness and dignity. The man who looked at her 
was familiar with the fine type of the Mayas, who are the orig- 
inal race still inhabiting this region ; but he thought that he 
had never before seen a human creature whose appearance 
seemed so perfectly in harmony with her surroundings, as that 
of this daughter of the Sierra. It was as if the scenes through 
which he had been passing, with their freshness, their remote- 
ness, their ineffable sylvan charm, all found expression in this 
woman with the form of a Greek goddess and the eyes of a 
woodland fawn. 

" Buenos dias, senorita," he said. " Is this the house of 
Miguel Lopez ? " 

"Si, senor"; she replied in a voice the softness of which 
matched the softness of her eyes. 

"And you are " 

"His daughter, Ramona Lopez at your service, senor." 

" My name is Trescott, senorita. I met your father some 
time ago at San Andres, and it was arranged that when I 
came into this part of the Sierra I should stop at his house. 
Is he at home ? " 

"Not now, senor. But he will be here in a short time, and 
meanwhile his house is yours." 

Trescott, who had had many houses presented to him in 
Mexico, murmured his thanks, dismounted, placed his blankets 
under the ramada and then proceeded to unsaddle his mule, 
the tall girl showing him where to find some of the dry fod- 
der which serves for the food of animals. Several other women 
mother, sisters, sisters-in-law now appeared, attended by a 
number of children ; and presently Miguel Lopez and his stal- 
wart sons arrived from the hills beyond, where they had been 
cutting timber. The old Mexican greeted the stranger with 
cordial hospitality, and made him welcome to the family tor- 
tillas and frijoles, as well as to a corner wherein to spread his 
blankets on the floor. 

"Who is he?" Miguel said when questioned concerning 
him. " How should I know more than that he is one of the 
Americanos who are in the Sierra looking for metal ? When I 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 159 

met him in San Andres thou knowest, Pedrito, it was when 
we took in the madera for the Santa Catalina Mine he asked 
me if in my work I had ever seen any traces of gold. I told 
him that I knew of a ledge rich in gold, which no one but 
myself had seen, and no man had yet touched. He wanted 
muestras from it, and I sent him some by Jose Chavero when 
he went to San Andres. They were fine muestras, and so he 
has come to see the mine for himself." 

" But if thou hast really found gold, why shouldst thou show 
the mine to him?" asked Pedro, the eldest son. " Thou know- 
est what gringos are. If it is of value, he will go and denounce 
it, and we will have nothing." 

"Pedrito, thou art a fool!" returned the father. "Even if 
I have found a mine, what can I do with it ? Only eyes are 
needed to see the metal in the rocks, but to tell its value one 
must know much, and to find the money with which to take 
it out that is a task too hard for a poor woodman of the 
Sierra. I have carried muestras to San Andres, to Topia, and 
to Canelas, but no one has thought enough of them to come 
here to seek the mine. Now at last this Americano has come, 
so I will show him the ledge and will only ask a half interest 
in what he finds." 

" He will not give it to thee," observed another son. 
" We shall see," Miguel replied. " But whatever he gives 
will be more than we can make without him. For they love 
gold much, these gringos, and they work hard to get it." 

This being an incontestable general truth, there seemed no 
reason to doubt its accuracy in the present particular applica- 
tion, so even Pedro the sceptical, was silenced, and Miguel was 
left to conduct his negotiations with the newcomer as he thought 
fit. 

But in the course of a few days the old Mexican became 
aware that fate had sent him a very strange gringo indeed. 
With the usual variety of the species alert, sharp men who 
possess no manners worth speaking of, who exhibit a rough 
contempt for all habits and standards which differ from their 
own, and who search with fierce intensity for the precious 
metal which they hold at a value far transcending that of their 
souls he was familiar. It is a variety very well known in 
Mexico, and considered to be representative of the genus 
Americano. But here was a man of a totally different type 



160 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 

* 

quiet, gentle, courteous as any Mexican, with a singular air of 
indifference towards everything, even the gold which he had 
come so far to seek. He agreed without chaffering to the 
terms which Miguel advanced, and when the latter conducted 
him to the ledge of rock from which he had broken the speci- 
mens of ore, and where signs of free gold were plain to a 
practised eye, there was none of the excitement about him 
which such finds usually produce, even in those most accus- 
tomed to them. 

" It will do," he said. " It is a good prospect. I will open 
it, and if it proves to be what it promises, we will take out a 
title." 

" It is rich metal," said Miguel, holding out on his brown, 
toil-worn palm some fragments of the disintegrated quartz. "I, 
too, have been in the mines ; I worked in the patio of the 
Santa Catalina when I was a boy, and I know good metal when 
I see it." 

" I believe that every Mexican is a born miner," Trescott 
said. " If you and your sons can do some work here under 
my direction, there is no need to bring any one else into the 
matter." 

" There is no need at all," replied Miguel. "We will do 
the work ourselves. Have I not known of this ledge for two 
years, and have I not waited for some one who could help me 
to open it, telling no man, not even my sons, where it was ? 
And now that I have found you, senor, shall I risk the loss 
of the mine by letting anybody know of it, until it is de- 
nounced ? No ; tell us what to do, and we will do it, my sons 
and I." 

" Very good," said Trescott. " We can go to work at 
once." 

But he said it without eagerness, and indeed his listener 
almost fancied there was a tone of disappointment in his voice. 
He directed the work, however, as one who knew thoroughly 
what he was about, and in a short time the result fully justi- 
fied his judgment. The vein laid bare was wide and promis- 
ing and carried free gold in large quantities. But if the pros- 
pect thus opened elated him in any degree there was no sign 
of such elation. While old Miguel and his sons worked with 
what, for Mexicans, was feverish energy, he looked quietly on, 
or strolled away for hours into the Sierra, or else remained 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 161 

near the house, stretched out under a tree smoking, while his 
gaze followed Ramona as she moved about her tasks, or sat 
at work under the pine-thatched ramada. 

Yet in this persistent gaze there was not only nothing im- 
pertinent or bold, but little of what is usually termed admira- 
tion. The tired eyes simply rested on her as on a sight full 
of infinite suggestions of repose. Her noble beauty, at once 
gentle and stately, and the naturalness which in its perfection 
is only found in very young children and primitive races, made 
her aspect as soothing as the wild freshness of nature itself to 
the world-weary man. Now and again her fawn-like eyes met 
his own with a wondering regard ; but for the most part she 
seemed either unaware of, or perfectly indifferent to, his scru- 
tiny. And this unconsciousness was in itself a charm. As he 
watched her, some lines, long dormant in memory, ran through 
his mind like a haunting melody : 

" And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
And hers the silence and the calm 
Of mute, insensate things." 

It was perhaps because he feared to break the spell of this 
"breathing balm "that he made no effort to converse with her, 
for he knew, or supposed he knew, that the pleasure which her 
appearance gave him was not likely to be increased by anything 
she might say. And on her side, Ramona did not manifest the 
least desire to say anything at all. But one day when he came 
in from the mine, she brought him a cup of agua fresca a 
general name for many refreshing drinks which Mexican wo- 
men prepare and as he drank this while she stood before him, 
he felt a sudden desire to hear the soft tones of her voice. 

"You are very kind," he said. "I am afraid that I give 
you much trouble." 

" No, senor " ; she answered simply, " you give us no trou- 
ble. I am only sorry that we can do so little for your com- 
fort. I know that you are not used to live as we live here in 
the Sierra." 

"Don't be sorry," he said, "for it is what I like, to live 
as you live. I am never so well satisfied as when I am out in 
the Sierra, sleeping under a tree, with my saddle for a pillow 
and my mule picketed beside me." 

Ramona looked at him for a moment without replying, and 

VOL. UCXXVUI. II 



1 62 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 

then, with the same grave simplicity, she said : " The sefior has 
perhaps some great sorrow." 

He glanced at her surprised. " Why do you say that ? " 
he asked. 

As her eyes met his own, he saw in them the best of all 
intelligence, that which springs from pure compassion. 

" Because," she answered, " the sefior seems sad and to care 
little for anything. It is so, I know, with those who have had 
great trouble." 

" I have brought trouble on myself," he said ; " and when 
a man has done that, he has no right to complain." 

"You do not complain, senor; but one can see that you 
are sad." 

" More bitter than sad," he replied. " And yet less bitter 
now than for many a long day before. The Sierra has done 
much for me and you are a part of the Sierra." 

" I wish," she said with wistful gentleness, " that I could 
do more." 

He smiled at her gratefully. 

" You have done more than any one else," he said. " And 
you are doing it still. You are still breathing balm into my 
wounds, although you know nothing about them and it is not 
necessary that you should know." 

" I have no wish to know," she said earnestly. "What I 
should like would be to help you to forget them." 

" And so you do you and the Sierra," he said. " Here 
among the mountains and the forest, the world of my old ex- 
istence seems far away, and I feel as if it were possible that 
life might be again something besides a curse. But I must not 
talk in this way to you/' he added, as he saw the gathering 
wonder in her eyes. "You don't understand, and God forbid 
that you ever should. Yet, to make you understand a little 
don't you think that if a soul from hell could come and wander 
in these cool, green, silent woods it would be glad, and even 
forget somewhat the flames in which it had lain?" 

"Yes, senor "; she whispered fearfully, crossing herself for 
truly this was dreadful talk "I am sure it would." 

" I know it for I am that soul," he said. " Hell itself has 
no flames worse than some memories. But here I forget a 
little. Here nature soothes me with her great peace ; and you, 
Ramona, speak with her voice and look at me with her eyes. 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 163 

Have you anything to do just now? No? Then sit down and 
talk to me. It has been long since I have had the least desire 
to talk to any one before." 

II. 

In this manner was laid the foundation of an association 
which, strange and incongruous as it appeared, had in it the 
only vital principle which can cause any association to endure, 
and that is sympathetic comprehension. Ramona did not talk 
very much, habitually indeed she inclined to a silence which 
Trescott found as restful as everything else about her, but when 
she spoke it was always with simplicity and good sense, and 
sometimes she startled him by an altogether unconscious poetry 
of feeling and expression. He on his part, who had long been 
so silent that his countrymen spoke of him as " morose/ 1 while 
the Mexicans called him El Mudito (the dumb one), now as- 
tonished himself by talking much, and if it was in a strain and, 
frequently, on subjects which Ramona only partially under- 
stood, her interest, at least, never varied and her sympathy 
never failed. The last her dark eyes always spoke eloquently, 
and the man who thought he had outgrown the need, as he 
had lost the hope, of this divine solace, was like one who find- 
ing a crystal spring after long, thirsty journeying can scarcely 
be satisfied with drinking of it. He knew that she compre- 
hended only a portion of all that he expressed, and that there 
was unexpressed within him a whole world of thought and 
emotion which she could not comprehend at all; but this con- 
sciousness did not lessen his pleasure in her companionship. 
What he longed for was, as far as possible, to forget every- 
thing complex, and bathing his spirit in the great peace of 
nature and, in this association with one who knew only what 
nature had taught, to become himself the primitive man, living 
only in simple, primitive things, instead of the uneasy heir of 
a worn-out civilization. 

So the days went on, as days go on in the Sierra, marked 
only by the rising and setting of the sun behind the great, 
forest-clad heights, until it was two months since Trescott had 
ridden up to the door of the mountain dwelling and Ramona 
had risen from her milking to greet him. During this time the 
work on the mine had been carried on by Miguel and his sons, 
and the vein so increased in width and richness as they opened 



1 64 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 

it that there was no longer any excuse for deferring that pro- 
cess of acquiring title which is called " denouncing.' 1 Trescott 
acknowledged this with reluctance, for the rinding of such a 
mine had been far from his expectation when he made Miguel's 
muestras an excuse for plunging into the remote wilds of the 
Sierra. But the unexpected had happened, that which he had 
ceased to desire had fallen into his indifferent grasp, and now 
the steps to be taken in regard to it rendered it necessary for 
him to return to those haunts of men which his soul abhorred. 
There was, however, no alternative to doing so, for his delays 
and procrastinations at last roused the suspicion of Miguel, who 
plainly demanded the fulfilment of their agreement. 

" You are right, amigo" Trescott admitted. " You have 
worked hard, and it is time that you should have the reward 
of your labor. I will denounce the mine and then see what 
can be done with it. But I am sorry to leave the Sierra." 

"There is no reason why you should not return to the 
Sierra, senor," returned the other, " but with the vein exposed 
as it is now there is great danger of losing the mine if it is 
not denounced." 

" It lies in a place so remote that there is hardly a possi- 
bility of any one rinding it," Trescott remarked. 

The Mexican shook his head. "Who can tell?" he said. 
" Some arriero searching for a stray mule might any day come 
across it." 

" But there are few trails, and therefore few pack-trains 
passing in this part of the Sierra." 

" You are mistaken, senor. There are trails, known only to 
the arrieros, which shorten the way between Santiago Papas- 
quiero and San Andres or Topio, and some of them pass very 
near us. Often when I am out in the Sierra I meet the trains, 
and there is one arriero who seldom fails to spend the night 
with us when he is on the road. That is Cruz Sanchez. He 
comes to seek my daughter, Ramona." 

"Ah!" said Trescott. "He comes to seek Ramona?" 

"He has sought her long," Miguel went on, "but she is a 
fool and will have nothing to say to him." 

" A woman is not always a fool because she will have 
nothing to say to a man," Trescott observed. " It is best to 
leave her to decide for herself." 

He spoke carelessly enough, but as he walked away he was 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 165 

astonished at the indignation with which he recalled the words, 
"He comes to seek my daughter, Ramona." And yet he knew 
well that there was no reason for indignation. It was not only 
natural that any one should seek Ramona, but it was also en- 
tirely suitable that the daughter of a woodman of the Sierra 
should be sought by an arriero. But when he thought of the 
girl as he knew her, of her beauty of form which was but an 
index to the beauty of spirit which, he felt sure, he alone had 
ever discerned, it seemed a thing little short of sacrilege that 
there should be even a question of her passing into the pos- 
session of such a one as he knew the man spoken of must be. 
"A common peon!" he said to himself angrily, and then gave 
a short laugh at his own folly. For what prospect was there 
for Ramona Lopez but to become the wife of a common peon, 
either this man or another? 

It was one of the coincidences of life that when Trescott 
returned somewhat later than usual from the mine that even- 
ing he found a pack-train camped near the house, and leaning 
against one of the rough supports of the shed, talking to 
Ramona, as she knelt grinding the meal for tortillas^ was a 
man whom it was not difficult to identify as the suitor to 
whom, according to her father, she would have nothing to say. 

At present certainly she was in a literal sense saying noth- 
ing, but, with her rafostf-covered head bent, was apparently 
intent on her task. To make amends for her silence the man 
was talking vehemently, but as Trescott drew near he suddenly 
ceased speaking, cast a look of animosity towards him, and 
stalked away to his mules. 

Trescott sat down on the section of a tree-trunk which 
served for a chair, and looked at the kneeling figure, grinding 
corn on the metate as the Aztec women were grinding it when 
the first white man entered the land. Presently he saw the 
end of the blue rebozo used to wipe away a tear. 

"Ramona," he said, "what is the matter?" 

She lifted her face towards him, but shook her head instead 
of answering, and then resumed her work. 

"Tell me," he said, after waiting a moment. "You know I 
am your friend, and that I will do anything in my power to 
help you." 

"Yes, senor"; she answered, speaking very low, "but there 
is nothing you can do nothing at all." 



1 66 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 

"Let me judge of that/ 1 he returned. "Only tell me what 
troubles you." He paused again for an instant, but she kept 
silence, so he went on: "I can guess what it is. The man 
who was talking to you when I came has been annoying 



She glanced up quickly now, with a frightened expression. 

"Be careful, senor," she whispered. "If he heard you he 
would be very angry, and he is a dangerous man, one whom 
it is ill to anger." 

"I can well believe that," Trescott replied. "But because 
he is a man of the kind is all the more reason that he should 
not be allowed to trouble you. Tell me," he repeated a little 
impatiently now, "is it that he urges on you a suit for which 
you do not care?" 

" Yes " ; she answered sadly, " and it is more than that. 
My father says that I must marry him." 

Trescott was conscious of a shock. "Why does your father 
say that?" he asked. "Have you ever promised to marry him?" 

"Never"; she answered with the same air of sadness. "I 
have always refused, and for that my father has often told me 
that I was a fool. But now he says that he will have no 
more of such folly, that it is time for me to be married, and 
that I must take Cruz it is Cruz Sanchez, the arriero, sefior 
at once." 

"Your father " Trescott paused abruptly. "Well, we 
won't talk of him ! Only tell me do you care for this man 
at all?" 

She looked at him again, and he read absolute truth and 
sincerity in her eyes. 

"No, senor"; she answered earnestly. "I have never loved 
him and now I would rather die than be his wife." 

" Then, by God, you shall not be ! " said Trescott and the 
words were less an oath than a solemn affirmation uttered in 
the highest of all names. " I will speak to your father." 

"No, senor"; she cried quickly. "You must not do that. 
It will be of no use. My father will not change, and if Cruz 
knew" 

But Trescott was already gone. He had caught sight of 
Miguel on the farther side of the house, and striding up to 
him plunged at once into the subject of the compulsion he was 
exercising towards his daughter. "There might have been some 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 167 

excuse for it some time ago," he said, " but you know that in 
the mine out yonder there is gold enough to provide for all 
your family, and that your daughter can do much better than 
to marry this arriero" 

"That may be true, senor"; Miguel replied, "but it will 
be a Jong time before we handle any of the gold of the mine, 
while Cruz has been seeking my daughter for many months; 
and she is foolish and does not know her own niind " 

"On the contrary/' Trescott interrupted, "she knows her 
own mind perfectly, and it was only to-day that you told me 
she would have nothing to say to the man. Yet now you want 
to compel her to marry him." 

" And why not ? " returned the other quietly. " After a 
woman is married it is all the same, one man or another. 
And there are reasons why I must do as Cruz wishes." 

" Ah, now we come to it ! " said Trescott. " And pray 
what are those reasons ? For there are pretty strong reasons 
why you should do as / wish, and I certainly do not wish, 
and do not intend, that your daughter shall be treated in this 
manner." 

The masterful tone made Miguel for the first time show 
signs of irritation. He looked at the speaker from under bent 
brows. 

" And what is my daughter to you, sefior ? " he asked 
significantly. 

" Nothing," Trescott answered. " But she has been kind to 
me, and I am determined that she shall not be forced against 
her will to marry that man yonder." 

Miguel was silent for a moment, looking at the blazing 
camp-fire a hundred or so yards distant and at the figures 
moving around it, busy with the packs and mules. Then his 
glance returned to the American. 

" If you must know the truth, senor," he said, what I feared 
has happened. Cruz has seen the mine." 

" How do you know ? " Trescott asked. 

" From himself," the other answered. " When he came this 
evening he spoke to me again about my daughter, and I told 
him that he must talk to her, for that I had nothing to do 
with a woman's whims, so he grew angry and said that I was 
putting him off because I was expecting to be rich and look 
higher for her. Then I laughed at him, and he said I need 



1 68 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 






not laugh for he had seen where I was at work at something 
beside cutting trees out in the Sierra, and that he had taken 
muestras to Topia and showed them to the senor who assays 
for the Madrugada Mine, and that he said they were rich in 
gold." 

"Your friend Cruz is very much the rascal which I judged 
him to be from his face. And then ?" 

" Then he said plainly that if I did not let him have Ra- 
mona, he would give information to the authorities that I was 
working a mine in the Sierra without denouncement. I did 
not wish to have trouble, and there is no reason why Ramona 
should not marry him, so I told her that she must do so." 

" You are a contemptible coward," said Trescott, " to let 
yourself be bullied by a scoundrel, in the first place ; and to 
be willing to sell your daughter to keep him quiet, in the 
second. Well, he shall not have the girl; and as for the mine, 
I will start for San Andres to-morrow and file my application 
for title at once. Meanwhile you understand that it is very 
much to your interest to keep me for your friend, and if you 
wish to do so you must tell him that you will not force your 
daughter to marry him." 

Miguel looked as if he did not at all relish complying with 
this imperative command. 

"Cruz is an ill man to cross, senor," he said slowly. "It 
will be well to wait " 

" And leave your daughter to be annoyed by him ?" Tres- 
cott interrupted. "No; you must send him about his business 
immediately. I insist upon it." 

" Miguel shrugged his shoulders. "It is to make an enemy," 
he said, " but I will do as you wish." 

No more than this was said, but Trescott was not long left 
in doubt how much of an enemy he, at least, had made. It 
was an hour or so later that, as he sat outside the house smok- 
ing, the arriero approached him. There was a certain insolence 
and also a certain dignity the dignity which his race seldom 
lacks in the man's manner as he paused before the American, 
who, on his part, did not stir as he looked up at the dark, an- 
gry face. 

" I am told, senor," Cruz said, " that you have forbidden 
Miguel to give his daughter to me, and I want to know what 
right you have to interfere in the matter ? " 



i9o8.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 169 

"That is a question easily answered," Trescott replied cool- 
ly. " I have the right which every man possesses of protecting 
a woman from a brute." 

"A brute, senor?" 

" A brute undoubtedly. What else can one call a man who 
tries to force a woman to marry him when he knows that she 
is unwilling to do so?" 

The anger on the arriero's face deepened. 

" She was not unwilling before you came," he said. 

" That is a lie," Trescott returned with unmoved coolness. 
"You know that she was always unwilling; and because you 
could not win her like a man, you have tried to gain your end 
by working on her father with threats, which are those of a 
fool as well as those of a scoundrel." 

There was a moment's silence. It was doubtful in that mo- 
ment whether or not the knife for which Trescott was looking 
would appear. Although he did not move a muscle, he was 
ready for it had it appeared ; and the Mexican was probably 
aware of this. Therefore he contented himself with saying sig- 
nificantly : 

" I am not so much of a fool as to be unable to fulfil any 
threat I make. Miguel shall know what it is to break his word 
to me at the bidding of a gringo and others shall know, too." 

Trescott rose. 

"If Miguel is no more afraid of your threats than I am," 
he said, " he will sleep soundly. Go back to your mules, horn- 
bre, and know your place. This is simply insolence and folly." 

He turned and walked away, disdainfully careless of the blade 
which might have found its way so readily into that fatal spot 
between the shoulders which the Mexican peon knows so well. 

But he had not gone far while Cruz, with a curse sincere 
and deep, returned to his mules when a figure emerged from 
the darkness in the immediate neighborhood of the house and 
laid a hand on his arm. 

"Senor," Ramona whispered, "I have heard what you said 
to Cruz. " It is good of you to try to save me; but if in sav- 
ing me you go into danger, it is more than I can bear. And 
there is danger, senor, in angering him. He would put his 
knife into you as soon as not." 

" He must be very quick with his knife if I am not quicker 
with a bullet," Trescott answered lightly. "There is no dan- 



1 70 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Nov., 






ger of anything of the kind, Ramona. I have spoken to your 
father, and he has told this man that he must take your an- 
swer. He will trouble you no more." 

" I would rather he troubled me than that he was your 
enemy, senor," she returned earnestly. " To marry him is not 
what I desire, but I would sooner marry him than that he 
should perhaps kill you " 

" Bah ! " Trescott interposed with a laugh, which did not 
spring entirely from his desire to reassure her. He was hon- 
estly scornful of a peon's enmity, when directed against him- 
self. " He will not kill me, and you shall not be driven by 
threats to marry him. You are far too good for him, or any 
one like him." 

" It is you, senor, who are good to think so well of me," 
she said. " But no one else ever thought such things, and if 
you had not come I must have married Cruz at last, so why 
should I not marry him now, rather than that you should put 
yourself in danger for one so humble as I ? " 

" There is no possible reason why you shouldn't marry him 
to-morrow if you want to do so," Trescott answered shortly ; 
"but why on earth you couldn't have said so at first, instead of 
making .me believe that you were averse to him, I don't see ! " 

" Senor ! " The girl's voice had a frightened note in it, for 
he had never spoken in the least degree roughly to her before, 
and that he should do so now seemed more than she could 
bear. " I would sooner die than marry him, but it would be 
better for me even to die than that he should murder you." 

"But I don't intend that he shall murder me," Trescott 
repeated. " Set your mind at rest about that. And if he 
should try by means of such threats to work upon you after 
I am gone " 

She drew back as from a blow. 

" Senor ! you are going away ? " 

" Only to San Andres to denounce the mine. But re- 
member that I shall come back soon; and if they attempt to 
force you, don't give way." 

Ramona did not seem to hear the last words. "You will 
ride to San Andres alone through the Sierra?" she gasped. 
" Oh, if you do, you will never come back. Think of the 
crosses along the way, to tell where men have been killed ! 
And Cruz knows every path and short cut through the hills " 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 171 

" Cruz also knows very well that if I did not shoot him, 
he would be shot by the rurales within ten days, if he mur- 
dered me," Trescott said coolly. " Have no fear, I shall come 
back safely enough." 

" No, no " ; she cried, and she suddenly sank on her knees 
at his feet. " Oh, senor, do not go do not go ! You will be 
killed and for me ! " 

"And if I were, I could not be killed in a better cause," 
he said, as he bent down to raise her. " Come, Ramona, this 
will not do ! " for she resisted, and he heard her weeping as 
if her heart were breaking "you must listen to me. See 
now, you are the only person in the world who cares in the 
least whether I live or die, so do you think I will go away 
and die and leave you to Cruz ? " 

" Let me go to him ! " she whispered between her sobs. 
" Let me go to him, and tell him that I will marry him ! It 
is the only hope. For else he will kill you I am sure of it." 

" No " ; said Trescott, deeply touched, " you shall not go 
to him. It is only after I am dead that he can have you. 
For I want you myself. I understand that now. I will not 
give you up, either to this man or to any one else. You are 
what I need and what I want. Will you come to me, querida ? " 

She looked up at him, and he was startled by the flood of 
amazement and rapture which shone in her widely-distended 
eyes. 

" Senor ! " she grasped. " You do not mean that you want 
me f " 

" You and no one else," he answered. " If you are willing 
to come to me, I will be faithful and true to you, and nobody 
can ever threaten to take you away again." 

" Oh ! " she cried, " there is nothing I could ask better on 
earth than to be your servant as long as you live. But you 
cannot stay in the Sierra always, and when you go away what 
will you do with poor Ramona, who knows nothing ? " 

" She knows all that I desire," he said tenderly. " It is 
because she has learned only what nature and God have taught 
that I want her. And for myself, I have no more part in the 
world out yonder. It has done its worst to me, and I have 
found all that I now seek, here in the Sierra with you, Ra- 
mona." 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




SOME LESSONS OF THE EUCHAR1STIC CONGRESS. 

BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

|F Lord Macaulay were still alive, and had been 
present in London during the week of Septem- 
ber 6-13, he would have been privileged to see, 
not only his solitary traveler from New Zealand, 
but pilgrims from nearly every one of the British 
Colonies, to say nothing of the vast numbers gathered together 
from the nations of Europe, Asia, America, and Australia, met 
with one accord to celebrate one of the greatest religious 
triumphs of the twentieth century the International Euchar- 
istic Congress held at Westminster. His pilgrim one out of 
these many thousands would not have gazed upon ruined edi- 
fices and empty fanes; though in a sense even this might be 
considered true, for he would certainly have been struck by 
the absence in more than one historic abbey or cathedral of 
that divine Guest and Master for whom in the ages of faith 
its walls were raised. He would have had the other side of 
the prophecy more strongly borne in upon his mind. For the 
first time in over three hundred and fifty years has a Legate, 
a latere of our Holy Father the Pope, been seen in England. 
For the first time since the memorable days of Tudor perse- 
cution have the gray streets of Westminster glowed with the 
colors of the Roman Curia. Never in the history of the ancient 
Church in this country not even in the palmy days when it 
merited its proud title of Our Lady's Dowry has so noble, 
so magnificent, so stirring a series of religious ceremonies been 
held in this Island. Our New Zealander would have noted 
this and, as a matter of fact, he did and marked how quickly, 
after all, the best and truest part of Macaulay's rhetorical fore- 
cast has been realized. The seeds of the second spring, wakened 
by the tears and blood of persecution and strengthened by the 
prayers of the remnant of English Catholics in the dreary 
years of penal law, have born flower and fruit. The Church 
in England may point with a justifiable and holy pride to the 
fact that, of the nineteen International Eucharistic Congresses 
already held, none has been so notable as that of Westminster. 



i9o8.] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS 173 

To speak fully of only the gorgeous external ceremonies 
that drew the eyes of all England, Protestant and Catholic 
alike, upon the Eucharistic Congress would require more space 
than is usually allotted to an article in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. 
The secular press of London devoted columns, day by day, to 
descriptions of the religious functions and to reports of the 
various papers read, in French and English, at the sectional 
meetings. To attempt to sum up the spiritual effect that the 
Congress has produced would be impossible. It has drawn our 
fellow- Catholics from all quarters of the globe to unite with 
us in a solemn act of homage, worship, and reparation to Jesus 
Christ in the Sacrament of His Love. It has knit the hearts 
of many thousands together in one mind and one will. It has 
brought out the hospitality and the tolerance of the great ma- 
jority of our non-Catholic fellow-countrymen, and made evi- 
dent to what a large extent the old spirit of ignorance and 
bigotry is giving way before at least the beginnings of a knowl- 
edge of what Catholic Truth is, and a consequent respect for 
the faith of Catholics. Even the incident that led to the 
abandoning of the especially Eucharistic character of the great 
procession unfortunate and regrettable as, in a way, it was 
has only served to enhance and intensify the already very 
general good feeling. By far the greatest number of the " letters 
to the editor " on the subject that have lately occupied so prom- 
inent a place in the newspapers have been in favor of an ample 
liberty for Catholics and against the narrow-minded bigotry 
and intolerance of fanatical sectarians. 

Six cardinals, nearly one hundred archbishops, bishops, 
mitered abbots, canons, provincials, and heads of religious houses, 
in the robes and insignia of their high dignities and orders, 
made the sanctuary of the Metropolitan Cathedral and the 
route of the procession, as a mere pageant, indescribably mag- 
nificent. Never before, perhaps not even in that home of regal 
splendor, the Eternal City, had any of those who were for- 
tunate enough to find a place in the Cathedral or in the densely 
thronged streets, gazed upon such a scene. Few, certainly, of 
the two millions (for at this enormous figure it was estimated) 
who lined the roadways had ever witnessed a demonstration, 
of any kind whatsoever, to equal it. Within the stark walls 
of the great, unfinished Cathedral of Westminster the throngs 
that gazed upon the High Altar, with its noble baldachino 



174 THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS [Nov., 






and the rich marbles of the sanctuary, the cardinals seated 
upon their thrones under a dais upon the Epistle side, the 
long lines of bishops in the stalls of the presbytery, as the 
Holy Sacrifice was being offered, or the Monstrance raised in 
Benediction, felt the outgoing and uplifting of their hearts to 
Almighty God, there present, to Whose greater honor and glory 
all the beauty and majesty of the Church's ceremonial con- 
spired. 

Many were the lessons that the religious exercises of the 
Eucharistic Congress without one accessory word of explana- 
tion brought home to those who assisted at them. It would 
have been impossible for any one member to look upon the 
vast assemblies and not to recognize the Catholicity of the 
Church of God. There were men representative of many na- 
tions and tongues met together in one common faith, for one 
common aim and purpose; bishops, priests, and people joined 
in one great and solemn common act of religion. The Holy 
Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated according to both the 
Latin and the Byzantine Rite a circumstance that furnished 
a singularly striking reminder of the universality of the Church. 
On the first day his Grace Monseigneur Amette, Archbishop 
of Paris, was the celebrant; on Friday the Archbishop of 
Utrecht; on Saturday the Archimandrite, with his concelebrants, 
and assisted by Greek Assumptionists from Constantinople; 
on Sunday the Papal Legate, Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli. 
The unfamiliar nature of the " Greek Mass " Dr. Adrian For- 
tescue has reminded us that the term is wrongly used for the 
" Byzantine Liturgy," that of St. John Chrysostom to us who 
are accustomed to that of Rome served to emphasize the note 
of Catholicity that was dominant throughout all the proceed- 
ings of the Congress. The curious dresses and headgear of the 
celebrants, the weird music of the chant, the melody rising and 
falling over a single, long- sustained note, the mysterious sepa- 
ration of the altar from the faithful by the iconostasis, the 
elaborate ceremonial processions, the loudly intoned Words of 
Consecration: " Touto esti to Soma Mou" " Touto gar esti to 
Aima Mou " all these things intensified the feeling of universal 
brotherhood ; and, far from laying stress on the division of 
East and West, the diversity of rite seemed to bridge over the 
centuries and bring both together. But, while Catholicity was 
both obvious to eye and ear Westminster, for the week, was 



1908.] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS 175 

truly cosmopolitan a no less valuable object lesson was that 
of the essential Unity of the Catholic body. There was no 
mistaking this any more than the Catholicity. It was promi- 
nent in the religious services and in the conferences alike. 

Notwithstanding the variety of nationality, character, lan- 
guage, and custom, that stamped it, the Congress, as one man, 
was united in faith and practice. Its primary aim, of course, 
was publicly to pay homage to our Divine Lord, and to " dis- 
cuss all that appertains to the cultus of the Holy Eucharist and 
endeavor to find out or improve the best means to promote 
an intelligent devotion to our Lord immolated on our altars 
and ever abiding with us in the Sacrament of His Love." 
(Abbot Gaudens, C.R.P.) It goes without saying that there 
was nothing like " opinion " in the mind of any one of the 
members of the Congress as to the doctrine of the Church 
concerning the Holy Sacrament. The Real Presence, Transub- 
stantiation these are among the commonplaces of Catholic 
faith, sublime commonplaces that condition all Catholic cer- 
tainty and color all Catholic action. The Blessed Sacrament 
is the sun and the center of all Christian worship, just as the 
truth touching it is the sun and center of all Christian dogma. 
But the Unity that the Eucharistic Congress manifested was 
not merely a unity with regard to one specific doctrine nor a 
concerted testimony of love and worship of one though that 
the supreme object of religion. It is conceivable that we 
might gather about our altars, in a unity of such a kind, even 
those alien to our holy faith as a whole. 

The Catholic Truth is incapable of division or piecemeal 
separation into truths. Take one dogma away from the teach- 
ing of the Church, and all falls into confusion. The fact is 
one which differentiates faith from opinion. Moreover, what 
is not infrequently forgotten, each dogma and each devotion 
of the Church is interrelated with all the rest. Our separated 
brethren are slow to realize this. They may take up a book 
treating of the invocation of saints or of prayers for the 
dead, they may hear a sermon upon devotion to our Lady, and 
come to the conclusion that we Catholics teach an exaggerated 
and false doctrine with regard to one or other of these things. 
It is their lack of perspective that is at fault. They are un- 
able to correlate not being in possession of the whole of Cath- 
olic belief the one doctrine isolated from the rest. And in- 



i ;6 THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS [Nov., 







deed, from their point of view, doubtless it is exaggerated, ap- 
pearing even monstrous, as it is distorted by their unavailing 
efforts to relate it to what they themselves know. For it is 
only, and can only be, in strict conjunction with the Catholic 
belief and teaching as to Almighty God Himself, the Blessed 
Trinity, and the Incarnation, that the other truths of our holy 
religion have any meaning at all. It has been said that the 
non-Catholic has rarely the Catholic idea of God, to begin 
with ; and, to judge by the controversial statements that we 
sometimes hear, there is probably some truth in it. We are 
often accused of worshipping the Blessed Virgin, of giving to 
our Lady the honor that should be paid to God alone. And 
if a tender and childlike devotion, a great trust in the efficacy 
of her prayers, and a reverence towards her as to the highest and 
purest in the whole universe, that is not God, be worship due 
to the Creator and to none else, of course we are open to the 
accusation. But, what is far more probable and at times quite 
obviously the fact, it is not we but our separated brethren who 
are blameworthy. Their worship of God seems to stop short 
at a devotion, a trust, and a reverence, that may be paid to a 
creature of God. Our idea of God, without which our devo- 
tion to the Blessed Virgin or the saints would be meaningless, 
is infinitely more than this ; and doubtless, if they worship 
God anthropomorphically, and fail to grasp what Catholics 
really mean by their worship of Him, they will have but a 
distorted and wrong conception of our other doctrines. 

But here, in the Eucharistic Congress, there was no separ- 
ating even the supreme worship of God Himself in the Blessed 
Sacrament, no entire isolation of the doctrine a thing that 
non-Catholics might be fairly presumed to understand from 
the entirety of Catholic faith and practice. The two great 
meetings held at the Albert Hall, the second of which was at- 
tended by men alone to the number of some 15,000, pledged 
themselves in the resolutions that were passed to affirming and 
propagating the cult of the Blessed Eucharist and to stanch 
allegiance to the authority of the Holy See. It was indeed an 
inspiring sight in these days of general religious indifference 
and apathy to witness the earnest enthusiasm of such repre- 
sentative gatherings, and to hear the thunders of applause with 
which they welcomed the addresses of the distinguished speak- 
ers. Among these were his Eminence the Legate, and his 



1908.] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS 177 

Grace the Archbishop, as well as Cardinal Mercier of Mechlin, 
the Archbishops of Melbourne, Glasgow, and Montreal, the Duke 
of Norfolk, Sir Charles Santley, and Mr. Hilaire Belloc, M. P. 
Only one disturbing element interrupted the spirit of the 
men's meeting, though even this accentuated its perfect unanim- 
ity. It had been arranged, counsel having been taken of the 
civil authorities, to carry the Blessed Sacrament in the great 
procession at the end of the Congress. The route by which 
the Cardinal Legate was to pass was carefully chosen, and lay 
in that part of the City of Westminster which is mainly Catho- 
lic and altogether away from the principal thoroughfares. All 
English Catholics, and with them, no doubt, all the Catholic 
world, was anticipating with joy the day on which it would be 
seen, once and for all, that the ages of intolerant bigotry had 
passed, that the penal clauses of the Act of Emancipation had 
fallen into desuetude, that Catholics could practise their religion, 
without let or hindrance, in the capital of a country that boasts 
its religious large-mindedness and fairness. At the beginning 
of the proceedings on Saturday night, a sudden hush, premoni- 
torily anticipant, fell upon the crowd as Archbishop Bourne rose 
to make a statement. He told the meeting how he had re- 
ceived an unofficial and private letter from Mr. Asquith, the 
head of his Majesty's liberal government, asking him to abandon 
the procession in honor of our Divine Lord in the Eucharist. 
There is no doubt that Mr. Asquith was prompted to action by 
the extraordinary narrow-mindedness of the Protestant Alliance 
and kindred bigoted bodies. But the manner of his attempt 
was neither dignified nor honest. The Archbishop replied that 
he could take no action upon a communication of the kind, 
that many thousands would be prevented from taking part in 
the Congress if the procession were abandoned, since no church 
or hall in London could possibly accommodate them. He 
argued the lapse of the law which had been invoked against 
the procession, and claimed the same rights to public demon- 
strations of this kind as are allowed to the Salvation Army or 
to Anarchists. He also warned Mr. Asquith of the extreme deli- 
cacy and gravity of the position, and put it upon him to con- 
sider seriously the points involved. The reply was a communi- 
cation expressing the opinion of "his Majesty's Government " 
that the ceremonial of the procession "the legality of which 
was questioned " should be abandoned. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 12 



1 78 THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS [Nov., 

I 

All this was at the eleventh hour. The procession was to 
take place on the following day. During his statement, his 
Grace was frequently interrupted by the angry cries of those 
present ; and it was only at his personal request as their bishop 
that their intense and righteous indignation could be kept in 
hand. But Mgr. Bourne, with that great tact and wisdom in a 
difficult situation for which he is distinguished, had already 
answered the government The Blessed Sacrament should not 
be carried by the Legate, neither should the " Mass Vestments " 
be used. These were the points "the legality of which is ques- 
tioned." The procession should, none the less, take place ; and 
he asked their Eminences and the bishops to return to the 
cathedral on the following day by the route through which the 
original procession was to have passed, in their court dress. 
As a matter of fact, the arrangement thus made by his Grace 
brought about a far greater demonstration than could ever have 
been allowed had the Blessed Sacrament been present. The 
route was lined ten and twelve deep with people, who kept up 
one continuous cheering as the clergy, religious and secular, the 
abbots, bishops, and archbishops, the cardinals and the Legate 
passed, clothed in the gorgeous violets and scarlet of the Ponti- 
fical Court. As a mere pageant, it was far more splendid than 
it could have been in any other way ; and it loosened the tongues of 
two millions of people. It was a veritable triumph, not only for 
that Lord, in Whose honor it took place, Whom the bigoted 
invocation of an iniquitous and half-forgotten law prevented 
from being borne in it, but also for the dignity and authority 
of the Roman Pontiff, whose Legate walked through the throng 
receiving the plaudits of the multitudes. It was a manifesta- 
tion of a Catholicity as virile as it was enthusiastic. 

Moreover the action of the Archbishop of Westminster, in 
deference to the expressed wishes of the Government, while 
it brought out the fine sentiment and noble ardor of English- 
speaking Catholics, while it braced them up to remember that 
their Church alone, in this land of liberty, is not yet free, and 
to resolve that their labors should be strenuously devoted to its 
complete emancipation (as witness Mr. Belloc's address in the 
Albert Hall, in which a member of Parliament and a Liberal 
does not scruple to say what he, with all Catholics, feels in this 
matter), also provided a most admirable occasion for the prac- 
tice of that eminently Catholic virtue, obedience. Surely ii 



1908.] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS 179 

nothing but this had been the result of the Eucharistic Con- 
gress, it would have been amply justified ! For it has given us 
an opportunity of self-control and repression to which we have 
risen. It has shown our fellow- citizens that the Church of God 
has not allowed the "Fear God; honor the King" to become 
a dead letter ; that she stands always for law and order, even 
when she herself has to suffer for it. What a striking object 
lesson to disabuse our non- Catholic friends of the hoary preju- 
dice and ancient libel that Rome is against the powers of Civil 
Government. 

The regrettable action of Mr. Asquith, and the admirable 
tact and courage of the Archbishop, have gone far to bring 
out the sentiment of right-thinking people in this country. 
The columns of the press have been full of communications con- 
demning the hopeless bigotry and illiberal intolerance that have 
been the occasion of both. But, it may be asked, apart from 
the immediate inferences that are drawn from the affair, what 
does this mean ? Is it that the writers are learning to respect 
what they are beginning to understand ? No doubt some 
perhaps many of them are. Is it the expression of a sympa- 
thy for the doctrines and practices of Catholicism ? A sympathy 
certainly but neither for our doctrine nor for our worship. It 
is the spirit, I fear, of fair play and no more. The same sym- 
pathetic tolerance and urbanity would equally well be advocated 
and meted out to Buddhists or Atheists. These men have a 
right to think and act as they see fit, provided they do not 
inconvenience their neighbors. So have Catholics. This is a 
free country. Let us see that it is free for all. 

It is a religious indifference that is at the bottom of the 
sympathy. England, from all the signs that lie open to be 
read, is no longer a believing land. It is tolerant, in so far as 
it is tolerant, because it no longer cares. It is sympathetic, 
to the point that its sympathy reaches, because it is civil, cor- 
rect, " the right thing," not to worry about what any one be- 
lieves. The Protestant Associations, notwithstanding the fact 
that they are chiefly political, at least make profession of be- 
lieving something. Their belief, it is true, goes little further 
than to deny all that Catholics hold. The people at large, be- 
lieving nothing, and caring less than nothing for the faith of 
others, are tolerant. It is a sad spectacle; but one to which 
we are daily becoming more accustomed. The Protestant Ref- 



i8o THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS L Nov -> 



ormation " The Glorious Reformation " has almost run its 
course. It began by denying, and protesting against, Rome. 
It is coming to an end by denying, and protesting against, it- 
self. Its original doctrines if doctrines they may be called 
are abandoned : all save one the doctrine of hatred of Cathol- 
icism. It is split up into almost innumerable jarring and con- 
tradictory sects. There is no unity, cohesion, or purpose left 
in it. It has done its evil work; and, having weaned people 
from the Church, it is weaning them from Christianity as a 
natural consequence. 

In happy contrast to such a sad state of religion as is shown 
by non Catholic bodies, and indeed made more apparent by this 
last exhibition of the unsavory nature of their much vaunted 
liberal Protestant principles, is the unanimity of the Catholic 
Church. Would Catholics have been tolerant, asks one of the 
writers to a London daily paper, were it a question of a 
Protestant manifestation in a Catholic country ? Would a Prot- 
estant Alliance procession, for example, have been permitted 
in Rome ? Tolerance, as has been pointed out, is in such a 
connection no more than an equivalent for indifference. What- 
ever the conditions that obtain at Rome may be at present, no 
Catholic worthy of the name would wish to see the public 
celebration of what he considers to be error at the expense of 
truth. But the case is not altogether a parallel one. The 
Catholic has a higher notion of the meaning of religion, and 
sets a higher value upon truth than seemingly does his non- 
Catholic brother. The most fundamental position of Protestant- 
ism is undoubtedly that of private and, therefore, fallible 
judgment. That Protestantism has become hidebound in vari- 
ous dogmatisms, as a matter of fact, can never alter its pro- 
fessed Magna Charta of individualism in religious belief. And 
if the Catholic Faith, God-given, and God-guarded as it be- 
lieves itself to be, is suspicious and intolerant of falsehood, 
Protestantism, on its own confession, must respect the convic- 
tions of Catholics. The Catholic has a right, upon the most 
Protestant of Protestant principles, to believe what his private 
conscience dictates ; and, even it that be the doctrine of the 
Pope of Rome, Protestantism, to save its face, must in all logic 
allow it. 

Truly the Church is a monument of unity. As Mr. Belloc 
said in the Albert Hall, there is no other contemporary insti- 



I908.J THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS 181 

tution that has survived the tooth of time no one of those 
great powers of antiquity to which the infant Church must 
once have seemed a puny affair and one of no promise. If 
any human cause for so august a history as it has had were 
to be assigned, what better could be found than that intensely 
corporate spirit of union that animates its members ? In a 
notorious passage of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
the historian Gibbon brings together what he considers to be 
the reasons for the triumph of the Catholic Church over the 
pagan civilization of old Rome, and from the infinitesimal be- 
ginnings of its swift aggrandizement to the unparalleled posi- 
tion it occupied in the Middle Ages. The Eucharistic Con- 
gress furnishes a far better reason than any advanced by Gib- 
bon. It is the unity of the Church that is its strength, and 
the secret, humanly speaking, of its success, a unity that gives 
a true meaning to Catholicity, a unity that has its root in the 
intensest convictions of which human nature is capable. 

More even than this the unity of faith is no mere product 
of the purely natural ; it is a something divine, superhuman, 
just as the faith that calls it into being is divine and super- 
human. What else could have made the Eucharistic Congress 
at Westminster the extraordinary event it was ? Nothing but 
faith in the Blessed Sacrament, the Catholic Faith, unchanging, 
unwavering, as it has always been. The same faith that gave 
the Early Church its martyrs, and passing through its baptism 
of blood, raised its temples upon the ruins in which its perse- 
cutors worshipped. The same faith that has withstood through- 
out the centuries the onslaughts of the powers of evil error, 
hatred, violence. The faith whose great practical object of 
worship is Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, whose touchstone of 
truth and right is the word of Jesus Christ, perennially living 
in the Church indefectible that is the faith, and no other, of 
which the Eucharistic Congress was at the same time the effect 
and the manifestation. That it has shown so marvelous a vital- 
ity in this twentieth century is a proof that it is yet unchanged, 
that it is able to accomplish now, and in the future, what it 
has been accomplishing for the past nineteen hundred years. 
Indeed, how could it be otherwise, when God Who gave it 
said : " Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consum- 
mation of the world " ? 




FRANCOIS COPPEE. 

BY VIRGINIA M. CRAWFORD. 

attractive and much-loved personality in literary 
France passed away last May with the death of 
Fran9ois Coppee. Years of ill-health, combined 
with membership of the Ligue de la Patrie 
Franfaise, and his sudden participation during 
the affaire Dreyfus in bitter political strife for which he had 
few qualifications, brought him in his last years out of touch 
with the mass of his fellow-countrymen; but for thirty years 
he had been perhaps the most popular man of letters of his 
day. As poet, as dramatist, as story-teller, he had captivated 
the great French public, and possibly he had captivated it still 
more by his character, by his simple goodness of heart, and 
his intuitive understanding of the sorrows of the poor and the 
humble. An undaunted idealist when the world around him 
was steeped in nationalism, a psychologist quick to discern the 
purer impulses of human nature even at its lowest, his unsought 
influence on the life of his generation was always a refining 
and a wholesome influence, sometimes even an ennobling one. 
And when it is remembered that in his later years he bore 
open testimony to the faith that had long remained dormant in 
his soul, and that flamed up afresh with a sudden brightness as 
he lay on a bed of sickness, so that he too had a share in that 
spiritual revival that is one of the most noteworthy character- 
istics of contemporary French literature, it would seem fitting 
not to allow his death to pass without some tribute of rever- 
ence and affection. 

Coppee had no history apart from his writing. A Parisian 
born and bred, he rarely left the capital; he never married and 
lived a quiet life, first with his parents at Montmartre in some- 
what straitened circumstances, and later with his unmarried 
sister in a pavilion of the rue Oudinot. As a boy his fragile 
health, and afterwards his absorbtion in literary labors, cut him 
off from the more robust joys of life. Like many other French 
men of letters, he began his career as a clerk in a government 



1908.] FRANCOIS COPPER 183 

office in Coppee's case it was at the Ministry of War, where 
his father had served before him but after 1870 he resolved 
to trust his fortunes wholly to his pen, though for a time he 
also filled the posts of assistant-librarian to the Senate, and 
librarian to the Comedie-Frangaise. 

Very early in his career the delicate boy with literary 
tastes was received as a welcome recruit in that select cenacle 
known to fame as the Parnassc, which included much of the 
brilliant literary talent of the Third Empire. Here the shy 
clerk from the War- Office fraternized, among his more imme- 
diate contemporaries, with Verlaine, Anatole France, Sully Prud- 
homme, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, and Heredia, and sat at the 
feet of Leconte de Lisle, Baudelaire, Theodore de Banville,and 
Theophile Gautier, the revered leaders of the younger men. 
Catulle Mendes, the original founder of the Parnassians, at whose 
rooms in the rue de Douai the frequent gatherings took place, 
himself described Coppee at this period as "very young, thin 
and pale, with a refined air and timid eyes, something gentle 
and a little sad in his appearance, and wholly Parisian." The 
meetings of the coterie continued until the fall of the Empire 
and the horrors of the siege of Paris dispersed the brilliant 
friends and, for Coppee, brought to a close the first tentative 
period of his literary activity. 

That Coppee, living among poets, should have made his 
debut with a volume of verse, goes without saying. It was 
natural too that his early poems should be largely influenced 
by the ideals prevalent among his Parnassian friends. It was 
due in part to them that from the first his verse possessed such 
perfection of form, such exquisite flexibility, as to enable the 
young poet to take at once a foremost place even among his 
highly-endowed contemporaries. In his choice of themes his 
Catholic readers at least will think him less happy. The ten- 
der singer of humble joys and sorrows first came before the 
public as the writer of verses at once sceptical and pessimistic. 
Le Rehquaire, a slim volume dedicated to " my dear master 
Leconte de Lisle," professes to contain the thoughts of one 
who, having suffered much through woman, renounces life 
"without hope and without faith." Among the poems is a 
sonnet "Solitude," admirable in form, in which the poet com- 
pares his own soul, filled with remorse, to a desecrated and de- 
serted chapel, closed to worship since the suicide of a priest 



1 84 FRANCOIS COPPEE [Nov., 



- 



within its walls. In the light of La Bonne Souffrance, published 
just thirty years later, the sonnet is significant of much. Two 
years later followed Intimites, a cycle of love-songs, rich in ex- 
quisite harmonious lines and prefaced by a poem of languorous 
and morbid beauty. If these early lyrics delight by their high 
poetic promise, and M. Jules Lemaitre, one of the sanest and 
most trustworthy of contemporary critics, speaks of their tech- 
nique in enthusiastic terms, the mood of the poet, blase, self- 
complacent, scornful, certainly fails to attract. Only here and 
there, in " Une Sainte," a poem dedicated to his mother and 
revealing some dawning appreciation of the beauty of a life of 
renunciation and prayer, and again in " Les Aieules," some 
charming lines on the pathos of old age among the French 
peasantry, do we find some promise of what was to follow. 

It is often said that it is only poetry of the highest order 
that appeals to any but its own generation, and in looking 
through the many volumes of Fran9ois Coppee's collected works 
and seldom was there a more prolific writer both in prose 
and verse one is compelled to realize that some at least of 
the poems are already out of touch with the aspirations of our 
twentieth century. A good deal of the narrative poetry is what 
we in England should term early-Victorian in sentiment, a sen- 
timent that has affinities in some of Tennyson's narrative poems 
such as " Dora " or " The Lord of Burleigh " ; or, to name 
a still greater poet, the sentiment of Coventry Patmore's " Angel 
of the House." One chief reason of this is that the ideal of 
womanhood presented by Coppee is always of the angelic, cling- 
ing, maternal type, a type that never breathed in youth the 
bracing atmosphere of the modern high-school, that knows 
nothing of games and athletics, and has no legitimate interests 
outside the home. Coppee's children too, both in his poems 
and his prose tales, are apt to be somewhat sickly and morbid 
little creatures, the single sons of widows, as in " Un Fils," 
" Le Defile," and the little patriotic play " Fais ce que dois," 
written just after the war; or orphans left to the care of old 
people as in the " Marchande de Journaux," or in that really 
exquisite little idyl " En Province" never the healthy, normal 
offspring of large and noisy families. They are all somewhat 
of the type of the " Enfants Trouvees " he describes so charm- 
ingly in their black frocks and big white collars : 



1908.] FRANCOIS COPPER 185 

" De loin on croit des hirondelles ; 
Robes sombres et grands cols blancs ; 
Et le vent met des frissons d'ailes 
Dans les legers camails tremblants. 

" Mais quand, plus pres des ecolieres, 
On les voit se parler plus bas, 
On songe aux etroites volieres 
Ou les oiseaux ne chantent pas." 

Even the well-known and much-praised "Angelus," telling 
of the love of the aged cure and the aged sexton for the lit- 
tle foundling boy who pines away and dies of one of those 
vague, nameless maladies so dear to romantic writers in pre- 
scientific days, will be held deficient in robustness by most 
readers of to-day, and possibly indeed slightly grotesque. Le- 
maitre writes in one of his essays of the poet's " subtle sensi- 
bility " ; and indeed one feels that it is a hyper-sensibility un- 
related to the facts of real life that inspired this pathetic fan- 
tasy of a child dying of the love of two pious old men. 

What saves the whole series of poems published under the 
title of Les Humbles, and others of the same class, from a sim- 
ilar reproach is the permanent human charity that inspires them. 
The poet's love for the poor, his intuitive understanding of the 
beauty and the pathos of their lives, even under apparently 
prosaic circumstances, knows no limitation of age or nationality. 
His pictures are true for all time; they are, in a very actual 
sense, realistic representations of popular life, all the more true 
that their moral significance is never ignored. No one in France 
before Coppee dared to bring august poetry to the service of 
humble domestic themes; no one introduced into it so much 
picturesque simplicity. That Coppee approaches at times per- 
ilously near to the trite and the obvious cannot be gainsaid, 
or that here and there he lends himself to caricature. It is cer- 
tain that without his marvelous lightness of touch, his unfail- 
ing dexterity of language, success in so hazardous an experi- 
ment had been unattainable. As it is, he has enriched the 
French language with a whole series of vivid word-pictures : 
emigrants starting for America, motherless children on the way 
to school, the retired tradesman pottering in his garden, the 
cheerful coffin-maker whistling over his work, the impoverished 
old maid of good family, whose only romance is her life-long 



1 86 FRANCOIS COPPER [Nov., 

friendship with the humbly-born village priest, the nourrice who 
returns home to find her baby dead, and, last but not least, 
the tout petit epicier de Montrouge who, childless himself, finds 
his only happiness in serving little children with ha'porths of 
sweets across the counter: 

"II donne le bonbon et refuse le sou." 

It is his treatment of themes such as these that has endeared 
Coppee to the many. Yet it would be doing the poet and 
academician a grave injustice to assume that his poems appeal 
only to an undiscriminating audience. Among poets and critics 
of his own day he was held in very high estimation. Verlaine 
declares, in " Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui," that his three early 
works are of themselves sufficient to place their author in the 
first rank, " works for which he ought to be forgiven every- 
thing, if indeed there were anything to forgive." A. Albalat, 
discussing Coppee's position as the poetic successor of Victor 
Hugo, Nouvelle Revue, September i, 1897, asserts that " Prom- 
enades et Interieurs" would alone suffice to establish his claim 
to be a great poet. Jules Lemaitre, always discriminating and 
judicial, does not hesitate to extol his friend as an impeccable 
virtuose, a delicate dreamer, a writer of verses of crystalline 
limpidity. 

Assuredly, if Francois Coppee is scarcely the inspired 
prophet, carried away by his own gifts of the imagination, he 
is, in a very high degree, the poet-artist, endowed not only 
with an indefinable power of touching men's hearts and of ap- 
pealing successfully to their spiritual consciousness, but pos- 
sessed of a supreme talent for versification, an exquisite ear 
for rhyme and rhythm. As a poet he has followed in the 
footsteps of Victor Hugo in his free treatment of hexameters, 
ridding his lines of some of the pedantic restrictions of French 
classicism, while displaying an amazing skill in the construction 
of long and harmonious periods, and in the discovery of new 
and unexpected rhymes. Nor is it only in tender lyric verse 
and in simple narrative poems that he excels. Quite early in 
his career the young author showed that he had a strong dra- 
matic sense, and was capable of sounding a virile note, by his 
well-known poem " La Benediction," telling of a ghastly episode 
of the Peninsular war, and again in the still more celebrated 
" Greve des Forgerons." Both incidents are told with a fine 



1908.] FRANCOIS COPPEE 187 

terseness of language and a vigorous rhythm that conveys ad- 
mirably the sense of swiftly passing events. 

A little latter the poet made his first bid for dramatic suc- 
cess with a one-act comedy in verse " Le Passant." It may 
well be that his ultimate fame will rest largely on this little 
chef d'ceuvre. Produced at the Odeon, in 1869, with Sarah 
Bernhardt in the role of Zanetto, the play enjoyed one of those 
instantaneous successes that make a man's reputation. Since then 
it has been acted all over France and in many foreign capitals, 
and for readers at least has lost nothing of its beauty. In 
brilliant, graceful verse the little incident is unfolded of the ar- 
rival at night of the young troubadour on the terrace of the 
villa of the Lady Sylvia, outside Florence, and of how, touched 
for once by boyish innocence, she resists his pleading and sends 
him gently and firmly on his way, " du cote de Vaurore" before 
he should have fallen beneath the dire spell of her beauty. 
Only Sylvia and Zanetto appear upon the scene, and the dia- 
logue between the two, rapid and incisive in phrasing, has yet 
an undercurrent of sadness and poetry. Both the wanderer 
and the great lady the play takes place in the days of the 
Renaissance crave for something that life, with all its beauty, 
fails to give them. And the chaste denouement, with its pathe- 
tic farewells, coming so unexpectedly, confers a rare distinction 
on the little romance. 

Fran9ois CoppeVs collected plays fill a large octavo volume, 
but I do not think he ever repeated this first success. Of his 
more ambitious five-act plays " Severo Torelli," an historical 
drama founded on the rivalry between Florence and Pisa, alone 
enjoyed a permanent popularity. It is a fine play of the Victor 
Hugo school, admirably written and rich in dramatic scenes, 
but lacking in that tender poetic atmosphere that one has come 
to expect in everything that bears Coppee's signature. A 
patriotic play in one act, " Le Pater," belonging to the author's 
more Catholic days, and having as its central incident the shoot- 
ing of the priests in the rue Haxo during the Commune, has 
been much admired, but I confess to finding it somewhat melo- 
dramatic. He found a theme far more suited to his talents in 
his little one-act comedy in verse, " Le Luthier de Cremone." 
With less languorous beauty than " Le Passant," it is yet full of 
charm and gaiety; and has, in addition, an unexceptionable 
moral. Filippo, the talented but hunchbacked apprentice of a 



1 88 FRANCOIS COPPER [Nov., 

Cremona musical instrument maker, wins the prize offered by 
the podesta of the city for the finest violin, and thereby be- 
comes entitled to the hand of the fair Giannina, his master's 
daughter. But Giannina loves Sandro, his handsome fellow- 
apprentice, and Filippo's one thought is to make Giannina 
happy. In this romantic little play all vie with one another in 
generosity, and the self-sacrifice of Filippo supplies a happy 
solution of the dilemma. In charm and simplicity of treatment 
the comedy recalls in various ways the earlier plays of Alfred 
de Musset, and it still enjoys a well- deserved popularity. 

I have written so far of Franois Coppee only as poet and 
dramatist, and must not forget that by foreign readers he is 
probably better known as a novelist. He shared to the full 
the characteristically French talent for writing the perfect short 
story, and his contes, collected under various titles, fill several 
volumes. Even his few longer novels, such as Henriette and 
Une Idylle Pendant le Siege, are rather expanded short stories 
than solid novels in the English or American sense. Whether 
long or short, however, the contes all partake of the distinctive 
qualities of the narrative poems: tenderness, optimism, and a 
sense of the poetry and pathos of life. To some readers they 
may appear over-sentimental; but I think they are saved from 
the charge by the style, so limpid and vivacious, so entirely 
free from pomposity or over-emphasis. 

A number of the stories deal with popular life, and many 
of them contain charming and lifelike studies of the French 
work-girl. Indeed on this point Coppee has affinities with M. 
Rene Bazin, though he usually selected for his heroines frailer 
types of feminine nature than those of his younger confrere. 
They are drawn, however, as a rule, without either coarseness 
or cynicism, and with a very real sense of pity. Coppee's 
most frail women are all good-hearted and affectionate, driven 
by an inexorable fate rather than by any vicious propensities. 
Even Melie, in the Vitrioleuse, is led to plan her sinful revenge 
through heartless desertion, and is turned from it by the sight 
of a child. A typical example is the heroine of Henriette tell- 
ing of the boyish passion of a carefully guarded only son for 
a little work-girl employed by his mother. There is no trace 
in Henriette of the scheming intrigante ; under the author's 
skillful, sympathetic treatment the vulgar intrigue becomes at 
least partially purified, and the sufferings that Henriette brings 



1908.] FRANCOIS COPPER 189 

upon herself are even more poignant than those of the widowed 
mother robbed of her son. 

Those who do not read French have the opportunity of 
making acquaintance with one of Coppee's most delightful and 
characteristic prose works in an English translation published 
some years ago by Messrs. Heinemann, with a preface by Mr. 
T. P. O'Connor, M.P. Les Vrais Riches, which has been ren- 
dered as Blessed are the Poor, contains two separate stories, 
both of which are intended to preach the blessings of poverty. 
The first one, " Restitution," might almost be described as a 
Christmas carol. By a highly improbable supposition a wealthy 
ex-convict returns from America on Christmas Eve, and re- 
quests an aged priest, the Abbe Moulin himself a delightful 
creation to repay forthwith certain large sums that are still 
owing to four of his principal victims. The old abbe starts off 
in his cab through the snow, and, very deftly, the reader is in- 
troduced in turn to the four households, celebrating Christmas 
in varying ways, to whom the good news is conveyed. 

The intention in each case is to, show how loss of fortune 
has been a blessing in disguise, and this is done so lightly and 
so humorously that the moral never becomes obtrusive. Quite 
charming is the sketch of the old maid, Mile. Latournure, whom 
her despoiler had described as a selfish malade imaginaire, but 
whom the abbe finds energetically dispensing roast turkey to 
a merry throng of children from her little day-school. The 
second story, "The Poverty- Cure," is less distinguished, dealing 
as it does with an impecunious young man who grows suddenly 
rich and misspends his wealth. It contains, however, a sugges- 
tive picture of a penniless youth brought up on the classics 
and left to starve as a bachelor of letters, a type with which 
the author was doubtless familiar on the streets of Paris. And 
in the menage of Zoe Bouquet and her mother he has given 
one of his photographic impressions of Paris working-class life, 
drawn with an exquisite tenderness and with the fullest appre- 
ciation of the beauty of the girl's life of toil and self-sacrifice. 

Les Vrais Riches was published in 1892, some half dozen 
years before La Bonne Souffrance, and yet in the light of later 
events it is not too much to say that, unknown to himself, the 
author's feet were already set to borrow Brunetiere's phrase 
" sur le chemin de la croyance" To be so near Christianity in 
feeling and sympathy, and yet to reject all dogmatic expression 



190 FRANCOIS COPPER [Nov., 






of Christian faith, was an anomaly that could scarcely continue 
indefinitely, more especially in the case of a Frenchman, for 
whom there usually appears to exist no half-way house between 
a full acceptance of Catholic teaching and a creed of unrelieved 
materialism. Coppee never was a materialist, never even in 
any serious sense a scoffer, much less a blasphemer. Yet he 
had lived outside all practices of religion for some thirty- five 
years, partly from indifference, partly from reluctance to sub- 
mit to the Christian yoke in matters of conduct. How he came 
to a different frame of mind is told by himself in the preface 
to La Bonne Souffrance with all his wonted lucidity and direct- 
ness. The story would be banal, if sincerity of soul could ever 
be banal : faith not renounced but neglected for years, a severe 
illness, the fear of death, a time for reflection and prayer, and 
a gradual re-acceptance of the dogmas and observances of the 
Church, Coppee was no more able than Huysmans was to 
analyze the process of his soul's growth. He could but testify 
to the change wrought in himself by grace. 

" How should I not believe henceforth in miracles and mys- 
teries/' he wrote, "when so profound and mysterious a transfor- 
mation has just taken place in myself? For my soul was blind 
to the light of faith and now beholds it in all its splendor ; 
it was deaf to the word of God and now listens to it in all its 
persuasive sweetness ; it was bound down by indifference, and 
now stretches heavenwards with all its strength, while the im- 
pure spirits that possessed and tormented it are driven out 
forever." 

Good health was never again to be the poet's portion, but 
we know from his own pen that his soul was resigned and 
calm, and that sickness and old age had ceased to have any 
terrors for him. All through his long illness he had continued 
to write week by week his accustomed causerie in the Journal, 
an article in which he was allowed a free hand, both as to 
subject and opinions. It is a selection of these articles, in 
which his change of religious attitude is touched upon with a 
candor a little surprising to the more reserved Anglo-Saxon, 
that appeared under the title La Bonne Souftrance, and one 
can trace a continual growth in his spiritual perceptions even 
in his running commentary on events of the day, and can note 
the serenity of mind with which his sufferings were borne. 
There is a charming episode recently related in detail in 



1908.] FRANCOIS COPPER 



191 



the pages of the Revue General* (July, 1908) by Armand 
Praviel, which, it is pleasant to think, was not without its in- 
fluence in preparing the way towards the poet's conversion. 
In May, 1896, shortly before his dangerous illness, he was the 
honored guest at the quaint and brilliant Jeux-Floraux of 
Toulouse, an annual celebration dating from the fourteenth 
century, at which the Academy of Gay-Scavoir bestows guer- 
dons on local poets, and the half -mythical Clemence Isaure, 
the restorer of the games, is solemnly eulogized by a distin- 
guished Maitre-es-Jeux, nominated for the occasion. Coppee 
had been invited many years previously to preside at a func- 
tion at which some of his most celebrated literary confreres 
had been proud to officiate; but it was not till 1696 that he 
found himself in the ancient home of the Langue d'Oc. Cop- 
pee, so Lemaitre has declared, was the only poet of his day 
who could be relied on to write really good verse to order ; 
and on this historic occasion the poem was not only charming 
in itself but was faultlessly recited by the poet, resplendent in 
green academic coat and all his orders. He carried by storm 
the hearts of the impressionable meridionaux. Among the 
many men of letters whose acquaintance he made on this fes- 
tive occasion was the Abbe Jean Barthes, priest and poet, a 
man of much talent and charm. Before returning to Paris an 
afternoon was spent by Coppee, who still at that date pro- 
fessed agnostic opinions, with his new friend in his village 
presbytery, and the outcome was a touching poem addressed 
by the priest to the celebrated poet, appealing to his higher 
nature, and promising his daily prayer to Christ : 

" Qu'il vous rende Chretien, lui qui vous fit poete." 

So we know that during all the months of illness and hesi- 
tation and mental travail that followed closely on the visit to 
Toulouse, the Abbe Barthes was praying for his friend from 
his distant presbytery in the Haute- Garonne. Later he had 
the happiness of adding an epilogue to his poem in which, 
while rejoicing in the poet's conversion, he implored him to 
use his high gifts on behalf of his faith: 

" Toi que Dieu visite dans sa misericorde 
Dis-nous tout haut ce que vous vous dites tous bas 
Et fais a ton luth d'or, sous tes doigts delicats 
Vibrer une nouvelle corde." 



i92 FRANCOIS COPPER [Nov. 






The titles of some of Coppee's later volumes of verse, Dans 
une Eglise de Village ; Dans la Priere et dans la Lutte ; and Priere 
pour la France ; demonstrate sufficiently that the Abbe Barthes 
did not make his appeal in vain. 

Coppee's closing years were, indeed, darkened by public 
events, first by the bitter scandal of the Dreyfus case, then by 
the scattering of the religious orders, the rupture of the Con- 
cordat, and the gradual and deliberate dechristianization of the 
official State. His hatred of politicians, as a class, and his 
deep distrust of all democratic movements, so curious in one 
whose sympathies for the poor were both keen and true, un- 
fitted him for the role of nationalist leader which, for a mo- 
ment, he aspired to fill. The intensity of his patriotism was 
only second to the ardor of his faith ; and to see his beloved 
France governed by a Combes and a Clemenceau was bitter 
indeed. Yet he had at least the consolation of knowing that 
literature had not bowed her head before the ruling powers, 
and that if France was to be saved at all from materialism 
and irreligion she would be saved by her men of letters. 

His own reconciliation to the Church had closely coincided 
with those of Ferdinand Brunetiere and of Huysmans, both of 
whom he survived by but a few months. That men of talents 
and character so diverse should have been moved almost sim- 
ultaneously to declare themselves on the side of Christian 
dogma and Christian ethics could not fail at such a period to 
make a profound impression on the country. Brunetiere, au- 
stere, aloof, philosophic, his whole life regulated by his intel- 
lectual conceptions " no one can accuse him," wrote Coppee, 
"of being a neurotic poet"; Huysmans, learned, misanthropic, 
at once mystic and materialist, drawn as it were in spite of 
himself from a veritable slough of despond ; and finally Cop- 
pee, the brilliant, versatile, popular poet, with his quick emo- 
tions and warm human sympathies, following in the path that 
Verlaine had trod some years earlier. No three men could 
offer more marked contrasts to each other, yet together they 
were largely responsible for the recrudescence of the Christian 
ideal which has been the most striking characteristic of French 
literature at the dawn of the twentieth century. 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

VII. 

SHELL HOUSE. 

parish does not boast of many who belong to 
the " quality." When the railway line was made 
from our neighboring city through these parts, 
it passed wide of the village. Hence its devel- 
opment, which had progressed but slowly since 
the Norman Conquest, was finally arrested. As a consequence, 
the two or three good houses the village possessed were split 
up inside, and given over to cottage folk. The Manor House, 
of which I have already told the story, was one of these. A 
place, however, which escaped this fate, was that locally known 
as Shell House, on account of a great stucco shell over the 
door, which formed at once an ornament and a porch. It was 
not a large house originally, and hence the temptation to get 
a bigger rent by a ruthless internal subdivision, was not so 
strong. Then, too, it had been tenanted for the last sixty years 
by the same family, and they had paid the rent so regularly, 
that the landlord had let the place alone. Some iron railings, 
painted white, divided the little lawn from the highroad, and a 
flagstone path, with moss in all its joints, led to the front door. 
The knocker belonged to a bygone age, and unless it was used 
with care, roused the quiet street. The entrance hall was low, 
with black beams in the ceiling. There was nothing, perhaps, 
of much interest in the house, for it was only one of the old 
places you could find in any village in Somerset, but it was 
picturesque and comfortable. 

The two ladies who lived in it were much more interesting. 
When I first knew them they were the last of the gentry whom 
the village contained and were as old-world as their house, as 
homely, and the pride of the place. The Misses Stocker had 
seen much better days, and so they were always spoken of 
VOL. LXXXVIII.- 13 



194 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Nov., 


locally as "the ladies." There was a space of nearly ten years 

between them, the younger being well over sixty. 

On the afternoon of which I write, Miss Joan had seen me 
come up the little flagstone path, and had opened the door be- 
fore I could get hold of the great knocker. 

" Good afternoon, Father, I am so glad to see you we 
want cheering up; prithee, come in," and she opened the door 
on my left, which is that of the chief room of the house. Miss 
Betty is sitting at the far end of the table. In front of her, 
and piled up like a mountain of snow, is a huge heap of calico, 
on the edge of which she is hemming. All I can see of the 
old lady is a cherry-colored bow, obviously the summit of a 
cap, nodding this way and that. I round the pile of stuff and 
shake hands with the elder sister. " Sit thou over there, my 
dear Father," she says, waving a fresh needleful of cotton 
which she had just taken, in the direction of the armchair. 
" I'm as busy as usual, and you won't mind if I don't stop 
working while we talk." The little nimble old lady, who is 
always busy, so busy that she seems in a perpetual hurry, 
threads her needle with the cotton she had waved at me, and 
begins her task again. 

The two sisters are a great contrast. Miss Joan is a huge 
woman, and looks more than her size by the side of her sister, 
who is so small. But although Miss Joan is well-nigh a giant- 
ess, she is in the most perfect proportion, and there is some- 
thing so staid and stately in her carriage, that were it not for 
the sweetness of her manner, she would be a rather terrifying 
personage. But the smallest child in the village loves Miss 
Joan, and, far from fearing her, knows that she is a friend to 
be trusted in every need. Her head is adorned with a wealth 
of beautiful gray hair, which is brushed up high in front, quite 
in the old style, and makes the lady look even taller than she 
really is. The dark brown eyes, beneath the gray eyebrows, 
give the face that strangely kind look that makes you feel at 
home with her at once, and as if you had known her for years. 
Her dress is perhaps eccentric, and yet it suits her. The day 
when I am calling is in July, and the afternoon is hot. Miss 
Joan's gown may have been one of her mother's, for their very 
reduced means made the ladies careful of every penny which they 
spent. The gown is a ripple of little flounces in a gaily 
flowered muslin, and it has great puffed sleeves. Round her 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 195 

neck is some charming old lace, which is crossed in front 
and kept in place by a brooch that I had often noticed, 
but which I never liked to inquire about. It held one per- 
fect golden- red curl of hair, and the hair was coarse like a 
man's. 

Miss Joan struck a match with which to light the spirit 
lamp beneath the little copper kettle, for all things were pre- 
pared for tea before I came, as the ladies cannot afford a maid. 
The first match goes out, and is followed by the second. Miss 
Betty jumped suddenly round in her chair, for her back was 
towards the fireplace where these experiments were proceeding, 
and then as suddenly turned back again, and went on with her 
sewing. 

" Now, Granny darling " Miss Joan always called her sister 
by this name, and it seemed a term of endearment when she 
used it. " Now, Granny darling, I won't waste the matches, 
and really they are cheap enough if I do"; she added. 

" I suppose they are, my dear, but it is difficult to believe. 
You know, Father," said Miss Betty, addressing me, " I never 
can remember that I am a very old woman. It seems only 
yesterday that we used a tinder box and a flint and steel, 
when we wanted a light, and when we engaged a maid we 
always asked if she was handy at getting a light. Some girls 
were so stupid, you know," she continued, " they would strike 
and strike, and let the sparks fall anywhere but on the tinder. 
On a dark winter's morning they would forget where they had 
put the flint and steel over night, and would upset everything 
in the kitchen feeling about for them, waking up the whole 
house with the noise. If you complained about it, they had 
the same excuse always that their hands were so cold they 
couldn't get a light, try how they would." 

Miss Joan, who has lit the spirit lamp by this time, now 
joined in relating these old-time memories. " Do you remem- 
ber the maid we had, Granny darling, who always got the 
light so quickly we could never make out how she did it ? " 

" I do," the elder lady replied, "the wicked young hussy. 
You see Father, in those days we made our own candles, as 
every one did who had a house of any size. They were not 
the best candles, but those wanted for the servants' use. When 
enough material had been saved up from the cooking, there was 
a grand melting day, and the candles were made. This par- 



196 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Nov., 



ticular girl was fond of staying in bed in the morning as long 
as she could ; so she stole a quantity of tallow and put it in 
a flower-pot, with a rush wick in the middle. This she hid in 
the coal cellar, and kept it burning night and day for weeks; 
and whenever she wanted a light there was one ready to hand 
and all to give herself a few minutes more in bed." 

I ventured to say that I wondered so simple a plan was 
not more often adopted, but it seems I had evidently not un- 
derstood the whole situation. 

" In those days/' the old lady continued, " we never went 
to bed without being sure every light in the place was out. 
The fire grates were raked, and every candle and the few lamps 
we had were all carefully extinguished, because we were so 
afraid of fire. This is why we thought it wicked of the girl 
to keep a light hidden away like that. I'm sure it was a mercy 
we were not all burned in our beds every night," added Miss 
Betty. 

" My dearest, how could we be burned every night ? Why, 
if we had been burned one night, that would have been the 
end of us, wouldn't it ? " asked her sister, laughing at the de- 
scription of the problematical calamity. 

" My dear Joan, the light was there every night for weeks, 
and so every night we might have been burnt in our beds"; 
and the stitches were put into the hem with increasing vehe- 
mence. 

The kettle was boiling by this time and the tea was made 
in the old silver teapot. " Granny, come and have thy tea 
the work must wait a little"; and the busy needle stopped in 
deference to Miss Joan's call. We sit at the table and Miss 
Betty does most of the talking, for when her fingers are not 
busy, her tongue is. Miss Joan, quiet and reserved, puts in a 
word now and then. 

" Talking about the tinder-box, my dear, reminds me of the 
first box of lucifers I ever saw. It had been bought at the 
chemists for half-a~crown, and the lucifers had long wax stems 
like church tapers. They were considered such a curiosity that 
if any one called to see us, we used to strike one, to show them 
the new way of getting a light. They had a horrible smell, and 
they didn't always go off put some more hot water in my 
tea, my dear and the tin box they came in was painted 
green." 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS i 97 

"I don't remember that they cost as much as half-a- crown. 
I thought the first we bought were about sixpence a box," Miss 
Joan remarked to me. 

" Half-a-crown, my dear, and it was paying so much that 
caused Mrs. Dredge's husband to be transported; for didn't 
they discover he had set fire to the farmer's mows at Neigh- 
bourne, by the fact of his paying two and six at the chemist's 
for the matches?" The old lady rattled on, and I gathered 
that the man had been mixed up in the machine riots that took 
place in the district, when the farmers gave up threshing by 
hand and began to use the threshing machine. 

" I've often wondered about that Mrs. Dredge," I said, " she 
seems such a silent and morose woman. I suppose the losing 
of her husband in that way told on her spirits. Had she any 
children ? " I wasn't speaking to either of the ladies in par- 
ticular when I asked the question. 

" And don't you know that story, either, Father ? " said 
Miss Joan, looking me full in the face, and with the nearest 
approach to anger in her voice that I had ever heard. " Have 
you known us all these years and never heard that?" 

Miss Betty was back at her needlework, and I could see the 
cherry-colored bow jerk up and down above the snowy moun- 
tain at a rate that showed she was sewing swiftly. She, too, 
was angry. 

Then we talked across the tea tray and the empty cups, and 
this is what Miss Joan told me. She had had a half-brother, 
Raymond, twenty years younger than herself; for her father 
had married again in his old age. By the time the child was 
six both his parents were dead, and Joan took his mother's 
place. The village school, and old Father Hurder one of my 
predecessors managed his education, and when he was sixteen 
he was the handsomest and liveliest youth in the village. His 
head of red-brown curly hair earned for him the name which 
every one called him ; his winning ways made him the spoilt 
darling of his sister Joan, who devoted her life and her little 
all to his happiness. He had said from the time he was a child 
that he wanted to go to sea, and Joan was too wise and too 
fond of him to offer any objection. So Curly enlisted in the 
Royal Navy. 

He came home for his first leave, and Joan was enraptured 
with the change. His bluejacket's rig made him look ten times 

'flth&d ; Sranchi 
"I* 123 twi:^ Street, 



198 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Nov., 

' 

more handsome than before, and he seemed just as simple and 
as joyous and as winning. His second leave came, and his third. 
Each time he made more friends and broke more hearts before 
he went to sea again. His fourth leave came. He had written 
to Joan to say his ship was going abroad for five or six years 
and he was coming home for some weeks. His holiday passed 
quickly enough. The boy at first was the same as ever, but 
a week or so before the leave ended a cloud seemed to settle 
on his spirits. The last day but one came, and Curly was 
sadder than ever. 

" Come, Joan, I want you," he said, " come into the gar- 
den for a bit." He wished, it seemed, to be away from Miss 
Betty. Joan came, and, taking his sister's hand in his accus- 
tomed way, the two began to walk up and down the box- 
edged path in the old-world garden. "Oh, Joan, Joan, I've 
done something for which you will never forgive me. I'm 
afraid it will break your heart and after all you have done 
for me ! " He laid his curly head on his sister's shoulder as 
he spoke and burst into tears. 

" My darling boy, what matters about me, as long as it is 
nothing that hurts you ? But only tell me what it is," she 
said, and her kind and gentle voice, her self-forgetfulness, 
quieted and soothed him. 

" Joan " and he paused, till they were half-way along the 
path again " I am married." 

" Father, we walked up and down till the September even- 
ing closed in, and he told me all," said Miss Joan, and at times 
I could hear her voice was not quite firm. " He had married 
Mrs. Dredge's daughter, Keziah, a week before. She was ser- 
vant at the village inn a white-faced, coarse creature, and her 
family anything but respectable. I don't know if it was right, 
but I tried to make my boy think that his act was not such 
a very terrible one, and that I did not feel it as bitterly as he 
thought I would. You see I did not want him to go away in 
sadness, and so I made the best I could of it. Then Ray told 
me that the girl insisted on coming to live here with us, as 
he could not provide her with a home. 

" Father, I was proud, very proud I suppose, and the thought 
of being linked with that Keziah Dredge crushed the life out 
of me, but I would not let my brother see how much I felt. 
The next morning early Ray left us. He had not been gone 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS i 99 

half an hour before a great knock at the door told me Keziah 
had come. 

'"I'm corned, Joan, to bide wi' thee, till me 'usband's a cap- 
tain and can take a better 'ouse nor this for we.' 

" I suppose I must have stood somewhat on my dignity, 
but the girl was rude, and I'm afraid she meant to be. 

'"Oh, you needn't be giving yourself none of your airs 
wi' me, we be sisters-in-law now, and I be as good as thou. 
Where's t'other?' 

"She pushed past me and came in here where my sister 
was at work. There was a scene, of course, for Betty could 
not put up with the girl's insolence. We calmed things down 
after a time, and when I took Keziah upstairs and showed her 
a room that she could have, she became somewhat gentler in 
her manner. I said I would do what I could to make her com- 
fortable, and I hoped she would be happy. She only stared at 
me, and said she didn't want to be taught to be a lady by 
me, for she knew as much about that as I did. Father, I can- 
not tell you what we suffered during the next three or four 
months. No kindness seemed to have any effect on Keziah's 
character and God knows I was kind to her nor would she 
try in the least to mend her coarse manners and speech. Im- 
agine what it was to sit at table with her to have her in the 
room constantly. And added to all this, we had to entertain 
her friends as well. At first every one she knew came to see 
her. She would watch them come up the path outside, and 
then go to the door and show them in. We did not mind her 
mother coming, but some of her friends were terrible. There 
was the son of the landlord of the ' Feathers,' the place where 
Keziah had been servant. He was constantly hanging round 
the place. He would get into the garden of an evening, over 
the side gate, and whistle till the girl joined him there. When 
we wanted to go to bed, and told her so, she would give some 
impudent answer she would ' come when she was a mind.' 

"Months passed in this way. It was getting near Christ- 
mas, and the wet days and long evenings gave us a great deal 
of Keziah's company; and at times I wondered how much 
longer I could endure it. One day, towards the end of Decem- 
ber, Keziah spent the greater part of the afternoon in her 
room. When she came down to tea I could get no answer to 
any remark I made, no matter how kindly I spoke. About 



200 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Nov., 

seven o'clock, when my sister and I were alone, we heard a 
man's step in the passage outside. I threw the door wide 
open, and there was Keziah in the hall with her outdoor things 
on, and there, too, was the landlord's son from the ' Feathers/ 
and they were carrying a box between them. 

" ' Good-bye, Joan, I be going away ; don't ye break thee 
heart for I,' she exclaimed, seeing she was caught. 

'"And where are you going, Keziah?' I asked as quietly 
as I could. 

" ' She be coming along wi' I, mum/ said the man, answer- 
ing for her. ' That there curly-headed brother o' thine never 
wur no husband to she ; and as he be garn arf, she be gwoin' 
to bide wi' I. Come along, Keziah/ he said, as he pulled 
box and girl through the front door, out into the night. 

"By the next mail I wrote and told Ray what had hap- 
pened. 

" And now, Father, this is the most dreadful part of it all. 
I never had an answer to that letter, and I never saw my boy 
again! His ship was in Australia, and when I wrote for 
official information, I had the one word back: 'Deserted/ and 
the date. No, I will never believe it, I will never believe it/' 
Miss Joan exclaimed, and tears she could not keep back were 
in her great brown eyes. " The man who was with Ray, 
his friend," she continued, " when they went up country to- 
gether on this leave, never came back either, and his people 
say that he was not the kind of man to desert ; so something 
must have happened to them both, and my boy must be dead." 
Miss Joan buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud. 

" This is foolish of me, Father, but I had looked forward, 
selfish woman that I was, to this boy and I living together 
through all the years when I should be growing old. I did 
not see that I was loving him only for my own sake I 
thought only of the sacrifices I had made for him when he 
was a child, how I had spent the little money that I had, and 
often gone without, that he might have what he wished. I 
spent my life for him, and now he is gone, he is gone my 
boy is dead ! " 

It is a year and a half since Miss Joan told me the story 
of her sailor brother. It is winter time, and she has been 
very seriously ill. The day before I had given her the last 
Sacraments, and an hour later she had died. 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 201 

I am coming out of my house into the quiet village street, 
that I may inquire how Miss Betty does to-day. At this mo- 
ment Mrs. Box, a kind-hearted, motherly creature, rushes up 
to me and says: "Father, did you hear what poor old Miss 
Betty done to-night [last night] bless her poor soul?" 

I had to plead ignorance. Miss Betty was capable of any- 
thing queer, for her mind, which had always been flighty, was 
considerably shaken by her sister's death. "Why, Father, Mrs. 
Tucker come to I after she had laid out Miss Joan, and she 
says : ' Mrs. Box, do ye come in now Miss Joan be laid out, 
she be a pictur'.' So I went in, and she did look lovely. She 
wur as white as white, and she looked like a very grand lady 
asleep. You mind how upstanding she was, and you mind her 
white hair. Mrs. Tucker, she took ever so much time over 
that there hair. Miss Betty stood by and made she. And when 
'twere done, Miss Betty, she did cry bitter. 'Twere the fust 
time she cried, for she said as how Miss Joan minded she of 
her mother, when she wur laid out, when she were a little 
maid. She put one snowdrop in her gret [great] hand, wi' a 
leaf, 'cause her mother had one too, so she told Mrs. Tucker, 
and she told I. An* her ol* rosary that one wi' the green 
card [cord] runnin' through Miss Betty, she puts that down 
by she, and her hand on it, as nat'ral as nat'ral. Many's the 
time, Father, when I wur little, I've watched Miss Joan in 
church wi' them big beads. She'd take 'em one by one, so 
reverent, wi' her long white fingers, and drop 'em down the 
string so slow she wur a real lady in everything she did. 
Do you mind them long black lace wails [veils] she used to 
wear? They corned down all round her shoulders, and wur 
beautiful lace, they wur. When I wur a little maid about twelve, 
she wur talking to I very kind like one day, so I made bold 
and I says to she, I says: 'Please, Miss, why do you wear 
them long black wails al'ays volk don't wear 'em now.' 'For 
modesty, my dear,' she says, so gentle and so sarft oh, she 
wur a real lady in everything she said. But, Father, I wur 
going to tell you about to-night [last night]. At one o'clock 
poor Miss Betty goes over to Mrs. Tucker's and knocks she up. 
It's a wonder if Miss Betty don't catch her death, for she had 
nothing on but her old silk gown, and he be warn pretty thin 
b' now. ' Mrs. Tucker,' says she, ' Miss Joan ain't comfortable, 
come thou over at onst.' 'Ain't comfortable,' says Mrs. Tucker, 



202 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Nov. 

I 

'why she be dead, rest her soul; please God, she be com- 
fortable enough b' now, for she wur good enough. 1 'Do thou 
come, and come at onst,' says Miss Betty, like ordering Mrs. 
Tucker. So Mrs. Tucker she goes over not that she wanted 
to look at a carpse at one o'clock in the night, but she zeed 
Miss Betty 'ouldn't take no, and so up they goes to the room 
a top o' the stair, whur Miss Joan wur laid out. Miss Betty 
holds the candle, and points to Miss Joan ; and when Mrs. 
Tucker zeed she, she gave a gret screech as you could 'a 
heard here. 'She bain't dead, she bain't dead at arl,' says 
Mrs. Tucker, when she corned to herself a bit, for she was 
main scared, 'she have moved,' says she. 'No, she hav'n't'; 
says Miss Betty, ' I moved she, for she do al'ays sleep thic 
way nights, and I put she so afore I went to bed.' What do 
you think she had a' done, Father ? She had put Miss Joan's 
left arm under her head, and had a' opened one eye. 'T'other 
won't keep open,' says Miss Betty, ' I've tried and tried. She's 
been long enough thic way, too/ says the old lady, ' and I 
wants to put her arm down agen, or she'll be tired if he bides 
like that, but he be that stiff I can't ply [bend] 'un noways ; 
do ye come and help.' Mrs. Tucker, she had to farce poor 
Miss Joan's arm back to whur he wur afore, but she can't shut 
that there eye nohow," said Mrs. Box, lowering her voice, 
" and she'll have to be buried wi' un open ain't it dreadful, 
Father ? " 







FOUR CELEBRITIES-BROTHERS BY MARRIAGE. 

BY WILFRID WILBERFORCE. 

this series of articles it is proposed to present a 
short sketch of four brothers-in-law, the men 
who married the four daughters of the Rev. John 
Sargent, Rector of Lavington, Sussex. Two of 
these men had distinguished careers, hence only the 
early part of their lives will be dealt with here. The public 
history of Cardinal Manning and Bishop Wilberforce is so 
familiar, or at least so readily accessible, that no good' end 
would be served by a repetition of it. On the other hand, the 
after lives of Henry William Wilberforce and George Dudley 
Ryder are known for the most part to few beyond their im- 
mediate circle (though a short memoir of Henry Wilberforce 
appeared soon after his death from the pen of his great friend, 
Cardinal Newman). To Catholics especially, three of these lives 
will appeal, as those of notable men who gave up lands, fortune, 
home, and dear friends for conscience 1 sake. 

I. HENRY EDWARD MANNING. 

On the 3d of January, 1833, Henry Edward Manning be- 
came curate to|the Rev. John Sargent, Rector of Lavington and 
Graffham. Henry Wilberforce, Mr. Sargent's favorite pupil, 
who was very shortly afterwards engaged to marry his daughter 
Mary, had been promised the curacy. He was expecting to be 
ordained at the following Easter or midsummer, and to fill the 
place during his absence he had suggested to his future father- 
in-law the name of his Oxford friend, Henry Manning. The 
present writer well remembers hearing how the Sargent sisters 
peeped through the blind to catch a first glimpse of the new 
curate as he walked up the drive at Lavington, a thin, ascetic 
figure, with pale face and small brown, mousey whiskers. This 
was the future Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and one of 
the Fathers of the Vatican Council. 

Golden days those must have been, in one of the loveliest 
spots in Sussex, with everything that could contribute to happi- 



204 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 

ness, a united home-circle, of which by the rector's special re- 
quest Manning became an inmate, intellectual society, broad 
acres, and, above all, religious earnestness and peace. In such 
pleasant conditions the new curate could scarcely have found 
time hang heavily on his hands. Besides his Lavington curacy 
he held a similar office at Upwaltham, a small town on the 
Sussex Downs about two miles away. Here his flock numbered 
some hundred souls, chiefly shepherds and agricultural laborers, 
of whom about a dozen were accustomed to assemble to listen 
to the polished but earnest preaching of the young Oxford 
graduate. 

The little church of Upwaltham was a twelfth- century build- 
ing, interesting enough to attract visitors. Among them were 
the Lavington sisters, who used to be glad enough to walk 
over the Downs with Henry Wilberforce on his frequent visits 
to the family of his future wife, and the little party used to 
listen to Manning as he enlarged upon the beauties of mediaeval 
architecture. 

The happiness of the Lavington home was in that very year 
rudely broken by the illness and death of the father, Mr. John 
Sargent. The influenza had visited England in 1833, much in 
the same way that it now appears annually in nearly every 
country, and the rector of Lavington was one of those who 
succumbed to it. 

He had been in many ways a man of mark in his time ; 
intensely earnest and religious, having come under the influence 
of Charles Simeon at Cambridge. He had originally been in- 
tended for the Bar, and his undoubted talents would probably 
have secured for him success in that profession. It was Simeon 
who persuaded him to take Orders, just as some twenty years 
later Newman persuaded Henry Wilberforce to sacrifice a bar- 
rister's career for the life of a clergyman. 

Thus, in 1806, to John Sargent was given in succession the 
family preferments, in his mother's gift, of Graffham and Lav- 
ington, which he retained till the end of his life. 

Among the Evangelicals to whose school Sargent belonged, 
the family of a clergyman was expected to observe a higher 
standard of life than others. This was the somewhat pathetic 
and surely blameless survival of the belief in the sacred charac- 
ter of priesthood, from which all idea of sacrifice and absolving 
power, except in articulo mortis, had long ago disappeared. An 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 205 

essential feature of the Evangelical creed, the saving leaven 
which raised it above the narrow groove of fanaticism, and res- 
cued it from the grim sourness of Puritanism, was the intense, 
vivid, and personal love of our Lord. In this love, and in the 
hope that i Drought that their sins were blotted out by His 
atoning Blood, was centered the joy and peace of those men 
who, so long the scorn of the world, became by the very reason 
that they believed and practised this truly Catholic doctrine, 
the spiritual progenitors of those who, in the next generation, 
cast aside wealth and position for the sake of belonging to the 
one true Church. Mr. Sargent himself was asked on one oc- 
casion what he would say to our Lord, if He were to appear to 
him. " Can you doubt for a moment ? " was the reply. " I 
should instantly implore Him to tell me whether He had for- 
given my sins." So far removed were the sentiments of these 
God-fearing men from the odious cocksureness of "predestined" 
Calvinism. The quasi-sacred view of a clergyman's position, 
caused the Sargents to look upon themselves as debarred from 
certain amusements which the daughters of a layman might in- 
nocently enjoy. This way of regarding life by no means les- 
sened the cheerfulness and merriment of the Lavington home- 
circle, but it checked anything in the way of purely worldly 
distractions, such as theater- going and the like. 

Manning was precisely a curate after Sargent's own heart. 
His early training, indeed, had been of the usual "high and 
dry " description ; " strictly Church of England of the old high 
school of Dr. Wordsworth, Mant, and D'Oyly. The first and 
last were rectors of Sundridge; and behold they were very dry," 
to quote Manning's own words. But by the time of his coming 
to Lavington he had undergone a great change. He had be- 
come Evangelical. 

He had left Oxford too early to be influenced by the preach- 
ing with which Newman was just beginning to electrify the 
university; and before he had in any way fallen under the spell 
of that mighty personality, his "conversion," as he called it, 
was wrought by the influence of a devout Evangelical lady, 
Miss Bevan, whose brother was one of his intimate friends. 

At Trent Park, the home of the Bevans, Manning used to 
spend the greater part of his vacations, and such was Miss 
Bevan's influence over him that he always spoke of her with 
reverence as his "spiritual mother." 



206 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 



Her guidance indeed came at a time when it was sorely 
needed. Manning's overmastering ambition had been to enter 
Parliament and to rise by its means to the highest positions in 
the State. Nor was this ambition ill-grounded. His experi- 
ence at the Union Debating Society at Oxford had proved that 
he was gifted with that indefinable faculty, that subtle magnet- 
ism transcending mere oratorical power, which moves audi- 
ences, quells opponents, and crowns its happy possessor as a 
leader of men. The dullest and most unpromising themes flamed 
up into subjects of burning interest under his potent spell. 
Like Gladstone, who could breathe life into the dreariest fig- 
ures and entrance the House of Commons with financial details 
which any other speaker would have expounded to empty 
benches, Manning could turn into burnished gold the most hope- 
less matters of dull, sordid routine, investing them with color, 
brightness, and life. This, of course, is mere truism to those 
who knew him in later times, but even in those early days it 
came to be recognized and fully acknowledged by the critical 
audience of the Union. 

Mozley has told us of a striking occasion when Manning's 
powers as an orator shone out in a way which placed him at 
once over the heads of all competitors. The subject of debate 
was as dreary as the speaker was brilliant. It was simply a 
question of reducing the number of the American newspapers 
taken in at the Union. To almost any other man this would 
have seemed a mere dry matter of business detail, to be settled 
by some hard-headed, practical member of the committee. But 
to Manning the subject opened out a wide vista of politics, 
learning, history, and racial, nay even religious, considerations. 
" Do we know too much about the United States ? " he asked. 
"Do we care too much for them? It is the order of Provi- 
dence that we should all be as one. If we cannot be under 
the same Government, yet we have a common blood, a common 
faith, and common institutions. America is running a race with 
us in literature, in science, and in art. Some day we shall find 
ourselves behindhand." And thus he raised a mere question of 
club management into regions of lofty thought. As Mozley tells 
us, "his hearers were bewitched," with the polished periods 
which were poured forth by this " very nice-looking, rather 
boyish freshman." 

It is natural, in weighing his influence at the Union, to com- 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 207 

pare it with that exercised by Gladstone. But the comparison, 
attractive as it is, is really impossible to make. True it is that 
when the genius of Gladstone dawned upon the Union, Man- 
ning's star was on the wane, but these facts, though coincident 
in point of time, were not related to each other as cause to 
effect, for at the time of Gladstone's first appearance at the 
Union, Manning was just going into the Schools, and necessa- 
rily took but scanty part in the debates. 

However this may be, we may confidently affirm that Man- 
ning's ambition to run a brilliant political career was justified 
to the very full, and that, immensely as the Catholic ' Church 
was enriched by his Episcopate, England lost in him a great 
minister. It was the will of God that the fond dreams of these 
earlier days should come to naught, and in the very winter of 
1830, in which he gained his bachelor's degree, all hope of a 
Parliamentary career came to a sudden end. 

His father, for many years one of the Directors of the Bank 
of England, and highly respected in the city, became bankrupt. 
His son, Henry Edward, was with him in New Bank Buildings 
when the fatal announcement of financial failure was made. " I 
heard him say to one of the correspondents of the house who 
came for business that, 'the house had suspended payments," 1 
Manning tells us. "After that," he continues, "all went into 
bankruptcy, and I went with my father to Guildhall, before a 
Commissioner in Bankruptcy, and saw him surrender his last 
possession in the world, his gold watch, chain and seals, which 
he laid down on the table. It was returned to him as the cus- 
tom is. After that I took him away leaning on my arm. I 
remember some time before his saying to me with much feel- 
ing : ' I have belonged to men with whom bankruptcy was sy- 
nonymous with death.' It was so to him ... he declined 
from that time. Combe Bank was sold. He lived for a while 
at 12 Gower Street; after that at a little cottage at Tillington, 
near Petworth; but in the year 1835 he died in Gower Street." 

Manning clearly recognized that " public life without a penny 
is," to use his own words, " a hopeless trade," and his father 
could no longer provide an income for his youngest son. An 
appointment in the Colonial Office was, therefore, obtained for 
him through Lord Goderich (the father of the present Marquis 
of Ripon), who was at that time Secretary to the Colonies. 
But the salary of this office was slender enough to make its 



2o8 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 



holder anxious to increase it, and Manning accordingly spent 
his spare time in Oxford, in order to canvass for a fellowship 
then vacant at Merton. He found at once that his being a lay- 
man was a serious, though not a fatal, obstacle to his success. 
And his friends began to urge him to take Orders. 

Now, this idea was most distasteful to him. In those days, 
indeed, he hated the prospect of a parson's life, partly for its 
own sake no doubt, but chiefly, perhaps, because it put a sum- 
mary end to his great ambition a Parliamentary career. Much 
has been written about this critical juncture in Manning's life, 
and a certain amount of scorn has been thrown upon Man- 
ning himself, because he regarded his resignation of a subor- 
dinate position in the Colonial Office, as a renouncement of a 
political career. Even the great name of Gladstone has been 
invoked, and his testimony quoted, to prove that a clerkship 
in the Colonial Office was no stepping-stone to Parliament. 
Not by any means a necessary one certainly. A rich patron 
with a pocket-borough was a far better one, as no one knew 
better than Gladstone. But the real kernel of the matter is 
that Manning, with his intense desire for public life, hoped 
against hope that he would somehow be able to accomplish it. 
The clerkship indeed was in itself no step to it, neither was 
the resignation of the clerkship an obstacle to it. But a resigna- 
tion of the clerkship for the purpose of taking Orders, was the 
creation of an impedimentum dirimens, and Manning was there- 
fore abundantly justified in claiming that his abandonment of 
the Colonial Office was the equivalent to the sacrifice for the 
service of God of his heart's desire. His own words are con- 
clusive. " I was met," he tells us, " at the moment of my as- 
pirations, with the ruin of my father's fortunes. Public life 
without a penny is a hopeless trade. I do not think that this 
in any way slackened my desire for public life. It was the 
only thing I longed for. I shrunk from everything else es- 
pecially from the life of a clergyman. . . . Nevertheless, 
there was growing up in me a feeling or a thought that I must 
save my own soul, and that I ought to try to save others. I 
would have willingly preached in the open air. . . . This 
feeling that God was calling me worked continually. I spoke 
of it to no one. I could not lay it. Every day it grew upon 
me and I found myself face to face with this choice. To 
leave all that I was attracted to, and to take all that I shrunk 



i9o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 209 

from. If I ever made a choice in my life in which my su- 
perior will controlled my inferior will, it was when I gave up 
all the desires, hopes, aspirations after public life at the die- 
tate of my reason and my conscience." 

In face of a declaration so clear and so solemn, where is 
there room for doubting that Manning's acceptance of a cler- 
ical career was the result of a conscientious desire to serve 
God and his neighbor? 

The life of a clergyman indeed was no longer for him a 
career but a vocation, "a call from God, as all that He has 
given me since. It was a call ad veritatem et ad Se Ipsum" 
to quote his own words, and he resolved " not to be a clergy- 
man in the sense of my old destiny, but to give up the world 
and to live for God and for souls. I had been praying much, 
and going much to churches. It was a turning point in my life." 

This change, or " conversion," was due, as we have seen, 
to Miss Bevan's influence. She found him in a state of ex- 
treme depression, his ideals shattered, the ambition of his life 
at an end. With the avenue to public life barred by his father's 
bankruptcy, there seemed to him nothing left to live for. It 
was the hand of her whom he came to regard as his " spirit- 
ual mother " that pointed to that higher life which was ever 
after to be Manning's ideal and goal. " The Kingdom of 
Heaven is still left," she told him, and then she and her equally 
religious brother joined with Manning in those spiritual exercises 
and Scripture studies which were to make that Kingdom his own. 

To an Evangelical so devout as John Sargent, a curate 
such as Manning was exceedingly welcome. At the Union he 
had left the reputation of an orator, in the Schools he had 
gained an Honors degree, but his heart nevertheless was fixed 
upon the Eternal World. It was most natural that Sargent 
should recognize in him not only an efficient curate but an 
acceptable son-in-law as well. By the time that Henry Wilber- 
force was ordained Manning was engaged to Caroline Sargent 
and his residence at Lavington, which had originally been 
temporary, became permanent. "You old cuckoo ! " was Henry 
Wilberforce's laughing reproach to his friend; and this was the 
hardest word spoken between them. 

If self-effacement had not been, as it assuredly was, one of 
the prominent notes of Henry Wilberforce's character, the in- 
cident might well have occasioned some heart-burning, for the 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 14 



210 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 

jp 
curacy was but the stepping-stone to the living. When Mr. 

Sargent died the patroness of Lavington was glad enough to 
appoint Manning as rector, and thus, at the age of twenty- 
five, he found himself in possession of an important living such 
as many hundreds of first-class Oxford men never attain to, 
with an ample and settled income, a well equipped home in a 
country of idyllic beauty, with work dear to his heart among 
people who loved and revered him. 

Never surely has life opened more brightly upon any young 
clergyman. 

The death of Mr. Sargent postponed Manning's marriage 
with Caroline Sargent for a time, but it took place neverthe- 
less in this very year, 1833, and that the center and source 
of his happiness were in her whom he had chosen as his wife 
is clearly shown by the allusions, rare and few, which he made 
to her. The very fact that on the subject of his married life 
he preserved an almost Sphinx-like reticence invests the very 
few words to which he did give utterance with paramount and 
convincing weight. 

A few of these references were given by the present writer 
in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of July, 1907, and they need not there- 
fore be repeated here. They were references, clear and evident, 
to his wife and her beloved memory, written in private letters 
to her only surviving sister; and, few as they are, they testify, 
in their extreme reticence and tenderness, to the intense affec- 
tion which united Manning to his wife, and to the sorrow, too 
fresh and sacred to allow of many words, in which he held 
her memory. Happily, too, we have the testimony of one eye- 
witness who was a frequent visitor to that happy home. This 
is Richmond, the celebrated artist, whose pencil has left for us 
the features of so many of the giants of those massive days 
of Newman, Keble, Marriott, Pusey, and Manning himself. 
Of Newman's portrait Richmond used to say that, were his 
house on fire, that was what he would first save. It was 
Henry Wilberforce who got Newman to sit for it and Rich- 
mond to draw it. For some reason the artist omitted to 
sign his work, and many years afterwards, when Richmond 
was an old man, the picture was taken to his house that he 
might supply the omission. It was touching to see Richmond's 
joy at once more beholding his beloved work. He begged the 
owner to leave it for a few days in his studio, that he might 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 211 

feast his eyes upon that glorious head, and those noble feat- 
ures, with that strange blending of tenderness and iron strength 
which taxed the genius of Millais when he depicted it in later 
years.* 

Richmond and Manning were friends in the thirties. The 
artist describes Lavington as a model parish. "The gentle 
influence of the rector was everywhere felt," writes Purcell, 
giving his summary of Richmond's words. " His administrative 
skill was apparent in every detail in the management of the 
parish as in the order and arrangement of the church. His 
kindness of heart and sympathy drew, by degrees, almost the 
whole parish to the little church." This eye-witness, who, in 
those far-off days, was a frequent visitor at the rectory, speaks 
with high appreciation of the aid offered to the rector of La- 
vington by his wife in tending to the wants, spiritual and tem- 
poral, of the villagers and shepherds, in visiting and comfort- 
ing the sick or the afflicted, and in looking after the village 
school. Daily morning prayers were the rule in the little church. 
" It was a picturesque sight/' says this friend of Manning in 
his Lavington days, " to watch the zealous and stately rector, 
vested in surplice, himself tolling the bell, whilst in the gray 
of a winter's morning the straggling villagers hurried to morn- 
ing prayer before going out to their daily toil in the fields." 
Richmond actually began a portrait of Manning's wife. She 
gave him one sitting, but died before she could give him an- 
other. This was in the spring of 1837. Richmond tells us that 
he could easily have completed the sketch from memory, so 
well had he studied her features, but the picture disappeared 
mysteriously. Can it be that Manning himself destroyed it? 
We know what his attitude was towards great sorrow. "Bury 
it," he would say, "and mark it with a stone." And it is 
quite likely that a picture of that lost face would be more than 
he could endure to look upon. 

"His grief," as Richmond tells us, "was great and abiding 
too great for words ; he never spoke of her. I was a fre- 
quent visitor at Lavington in those days of sorrow, and often 
found Manning seated by the graveside of his wife, composirg 
his sermons."f " The great thought," wrote Manning himself 

* " I have painted strength and I have painted gentleness, but I never saw these qualities 
combined in such a degree as in the Cardinal's face. It makes it a very difficult portrait to 
paint." This is the substance of Millais' words. 

t Life of Cardinal Manning. By E. S. Purcell. Vol. I., p. 123. 



2i2 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 

j 

to Newman, a month or two after his wife's death, "is before 
me night and day, but I have long since become unable either 
to speak or write of it. ... All I can do now is to keep at 
work. There is a sort of rush into my mind when unoccupied, 
I can hardly bear." " A sort of grapple with what was crush- 
ing me," was another description he gave of this heavy sorrow.* 

The sermon which Manning preached in the church at Lav- 
ington, on the occasion of his wife's death, contains passages 
relating to the proper attitude of those who mourn which I 
cannot refrain from quoting, as they seem to supply substantial 
means of comfort for the sorrowful. 

" Had you not rather bear yourself all the affliction of anx- 
iety and grief which clouds a season of death ? 

" The hopes, fears, blights, faintings, and recoils of cold 
blood on the overwhelmed heart, the quick step, sudden mes- 
sage, hasty summons, the agony of lingering expectation, some- 
body must bear, for it is appointed unto all men once to die, 
and you must die too at the last. Would you not that they 
should be spared all you suffer ? 

"Is the solitude of bereavement afflicting? Would you not 
rather endure it and let them enter into the fellowship of 
saints and angels? The heavy days, long evenings, leisure 
changed into loneliness. The sad nights and sadder days when 
the reality of our bereavement breaks in upon us. Sleep, much 
more dreaming, puts us back where we were, but waking 
thrusts us again into the present, f 

" Is death terrible and its avenues rough ? Will you not 
rejoice for them that they have got their trial well over, and 
that now there remains for them no more suffering and sick- 
ness, because no more sin ; that the spirit is now enfranchised, 
the body laid up for renewal? They shall be restored, not 
with the hollow eyes and sharp, severe crisis of distress, but 
in a transfigured perfection of all that they once were. Death 
has dominion only while we are dying. They are born to a 
new life when the spirit passes forth. 

" Is it blessed to enter rest ? Then do you not rejoice that 
they have entered, aye, so soon ? Would you not give way to 
them, and yield any greater blessing to them ? And will you 

not rejoice that they have entered into that rest at the cost of 

* ibid. 

t We are reminded of Milton's lines describing how, in his dreams, he was no longer 
blind : " And then I woke, and day brought back my night." 



i9o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 



213 



your sorrow and solitude ? This is only the greatest act of 
self-denial you have ever been called to for their sakes." 

The time of Manning's widowhood must have been a cruel 
contrast to the brightness of his short married life. On her 
deathbed, indeed, Caroline Manning had besought her mother 
to " take care of Henry," and Mrs. Sargent was faithful in ful- 
filling her daughter's request, until Samuel Wilberforce's wid- 
owed home and motherless children called even more urgently 
for her help. 

Manning, when left alone, was almost ludicrously unable to 
attend to the comforts of a home, absorbed as he was with 
his parish and his books ; and many were the stories told by 
Mary Wilberforce, his sister-in-law, of the funny incidents in 
the widower's household. 

"Roast the leg," was the utmost that he troubled himself 
to say by way of ordering dinner. At last the housekeeper 
suggested that perhaps some other joint might be substituted, 
upon which her master seemed surprised, exclaiming: "By all 
means ! I did not know we could have another ! " No doubt 
there was a playful pretence of ignorance in this, but there 
was a foundation of truth as well. Fate had given him a 
housekeeper, oddly enough, named Mrs. Mannings. She had, 
of course, grown used to the final S, and used to put it on her 
master's bills. " Is your name spelt with an S at the end ? " 
asked the rector one day, as he sat at his table, pen in hand, 
with the weekly books before him. "Yes, sir"; replied the 
housekeeper. " Mine is NOT," retorted Manning, drawing his 
pen through the offending letter. 

When Henry Wilberforce and his wife paid him a visit they 
were confronted daily with a dish of rice-pudding. Mary one 
day mentioned that she had seen some jam in the pantry, and 
that she was willing, if her brother-in-law liked, to try her 
hand at making a roly-poly pudding. Manning took some that 
day and was delighted. " Mary," he said, " if I had tried for 
forty years I should never have thought of this." 

Manning, in the peace and quiet of his Sussex home, was 
for a long time outside the arena of controversy. He was in 
no sense a Tractarian, though of course his ultimate conversion 
was due to the Oxford Movement. " I was a pietist until I 
accepted the Tridentine decrees," he said of himself, and the 
sentence illustrates the case very fairly. 



214 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 






Another witness of Manning's Lavington life is Mr. Glad- 
stone. He was, of course, one of Manning's early friends, and 
until he thought fit to attack the Catholic Church in such un- 
chastened and intemperate language, in 1874, the friendship 
remained, on Manning's side at least, unimpaired, though of 
course Gladstone was grieved at what he termed the loss of 
his two eyes, the conversion of Manning and Hope Scott in 
1851.* In the peaceful Lavington days, before the shadows of 
controversy fell between them, the affectionate intimacy which 
united the two men was darkened by no cloud. The future 
Prime Minister noticed that " Manning's devotion to his pastor- 
al work had the most successful results. The population of the 
parish was small, but Manning on one occasion told me that 
almost every parishioner was a communicant. " That," added 
Mr. Gladstone, "was as it ought to be."f 

Manning's own account of his religious views, at the time 
when Newman and Hurrell Froude were beginning the Oxford 
Movement, is worth quoting. It seem to describe, in part at 
least, with sufficient accuracy, the belief which the Evangelical 
school at that time professed. 

"The state of my religious belief in 1833 was profound 
faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, in the Redemp- 
tion by the Passion of our Lord, and in the work of the Holy 
Spirit, and the conversion of the soul. I believed in baptismal 
regeneration, and in a spiritual, but real, receiving of our Lord 
in Hoty Communion. As to the Church, I had no definite 
conception. I had rejected the whole idea of the Established 
Church. Erastianism was hateful to me. The royal Supremacy 
was, in my mind, an invasion of the Headship of our Lord. 
In truth, I had thought and read myself out of contact with 
every system known to me. Anglicanism was formal and dry, 
Evangelicalism illogical, and at variance with the New Testa- 
ment. Nonconformity was to me mere disorder. Of the Catho- 
lic Church I knew nothing. I was completely isolated. But I 
held intensely to the 'Word of God/ and the work of souls. 
In this state I began preaching to the poor in church, and in 
their homes." 

The curious inconsistency of this profession of faith becomes 
clear at once if we analyze it. It opens with the expression 
of a belief (borrowed of course from the Catholic Church), 

* Life of Cardinal Manning. By E. S. Purcell. Vol. I., p. in. \ Ibid. 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 215 

which I suppose would have been endorsed by every member 
of the Evangelical school. And yet, a few lines further on, 
the writer finds Evangelicalism illogical and contrary to Scrip- 
ture. Further, he belongs to the Established Church, while at 
the same time, "rejecting the whole idea.' 1 And yet Noncon- 
formity was " mere disorder." 

No wonder that, in a mind so sincere and logical, the ques- 
tion arose : " What right have you to be teaching, admonish- 
ing, reforming, rebuking others? By what authority do you 
lift the latch of a poor man's door and enter and sit down and 
begin to instruct or to correct him ? This train of thought forced 
me to see that no culture or knowledge of Greek or Latin 
would suffice for this. That if I was not a messenger sent from 
God, I was an intruder and impertinent." 

Side by side with Manning's opinion as to Evangelicalism 
being illogical, we must record the curious fact that he came 
to London in 1835, two years later, for the express purpose of 
supporting it against Archbishop Howley and his friends. 

A meeting had been called to rescue the management of the 
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge from the influence 
of the extreme party among the Evangelicals. Gladstone was 
on his way to the meeting with Lord Cholmondeley (a leading 
man among the Evangelicals, but not a factionist), intending to 
support the archbishop. In the street they ran against Manning. 

"What brings you to London?" asked Gladstone. "To 
defend the Evangelical Cause against the attempts of the arch- 
bishop," was Manning's reply. " This shows," added Mr. Glad- 
stone, " that Manning belonged at that time to the section of 
the extreme Evangelicals." And Mr. Purcell suggests that 
Caroline Manning, on whom the shadow of death was even 
then falling, had pleaded with her husband to defend the cause 
and traditions so dear to her heart* 

But the progress of events at Oxford could not fail to bring 
about a change in Manning's views. When 1839 came, he had 
begun to hear confessions, and at the very outset he was dis- 
turbed by penitents who were tempted to " go over to Rome." 
From that time forth, and for some years afterwards, till 1851, 
he was engaged in the task of keeping people back from the 
Catholic Church. As Newman admitted in a letter written to 
Manning in 1839, the High Church party were "raising long- 

* Ibid. Pp. 115-116. 



216 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 

ings anci tastes which they were not allowed to supply," and 
that until the " bishops and others give scope to the develop- 
ment of Catholicism externally and wisely, we do tend to make 
impatient minds seek it where it has ever been, in Rome." f 

The year 1841 opened brightly for Manning. In the pre- 
vious summer the See of Chichester had become vacant by the 
death of Bishop Otter, with whom the rector of Lavington had 
been on terms of friendship. To the dismay of the Tractarians, 
and to Manning's well-wishers among them, the Government had 
appointed Shuttleworth, the Low Church, anti-Tractarian War- 
den of New College, Oxford, to fill the vacant see. It was con- 
fidently expected that under such a diocesan no promotion could 
be looked for by Manning. Nay, many doubted whether he would 
be able to retain his position in the diocese with any comfort. 

Great, therefore, was the surprise of all his friends at learn- 
ing that, on the resignation of Dr. Webber, the Archdeaconry 
of Chichester had been bestowed upon him. It was said at 
the time that in making this appointment Bishop Shuttle- 
worth was prompted by a desire of adding balance to Man- 
ning's mind, which was probably understood to mean that it 
was to counter-balance his Tractariau tendencies. 

The new post naturally extended Manning's circle of friends. 
The extraordinary fascination of his manner, his refined and 
graceful bearing, his well-stored mind, made him everywhere 
a welcome guest. He renewed acquaintance with the leading 
Oxford men, and more than once occupied the University 
pulpit. As Archdeacon, too, he had to pay many visits to 
London, leaving his parish to the care of his curate, Laprim- 
audaye, a zealous and efficient substitute. On these visits 
Manning was the guest of his sister, Mrs. Carey, who lived at 
44 Cadogan Place, Chelsea. This house was the scene of cer- 
tain curious events which will be spoken of in their place. 
His appointment to the post of Archdeacon made a difference 
also in Manning's Lavington life. Up to that time his guests 
had been very few. Even his great friend S. F. Wood seems 
never to have visited the rectory, and a letter from Gladstone 
is still extant, written within a few months of Mrs. Manning's 
death, remarking that he had never met her. But in these 
later days we read of "a carriageful of people from London 
just arrived "; and how, "last week I had a houseful. Among 

t Ibid. Pp. 232-233. . 



i4o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 217 

others the present Master of Trinity (Cambridge) and Mrs. 
Whewell." Keble too visited Manning, as well as Carter of 
Clewer, Frederick Denison, Maurice, and Trench. Besides this, 
Manning's mother-in-law, Mrs. Sargent, frequently received 
visitors at the Manor House, among them of course her mar- 
ried daughters, Mary Wilberforce and Sophia Ryder, of whom 
we shall hear more in a subsequent article. 

It was in 1844 that Manning sat to Richmond for the head- 
and shoulder portrait which has since become so well known 
in engravings. "The sittings were most delightful," Richmond 
has recorded, " for Manning was always full of charming talk, 
and had always ready at hand an appropriate anecdote or 
legend. I remember once complaining of being much annoyed 
by a terrible hammering that was going on outside my studio. 
Manning thereupon related a charming legend about angels 
beating out gold for the purpose of making saddles of gold 
and golden stirrups. I think it was but I really quite forget 
now, for it is nearly fifty years ago yet I think it was for 
the horses which were to bear Elias in the chariot of fire to 
heaven. At any rate for years afterwards, whenever I was dis- 
turbed by the noise of hammering, I always remembered Man- 
ning's legend, and my nerves were soothed."* 

It seems curious to read that Manning, whose mind was so 
much taken up with spiritual and theological matters, was 
nevertheless a very good judge of horses. In those days a 
horse was an almost indispensable adjunct to a country par- 
sonage, and for a dignitary whose jurisdiction extended over a 
large tract of country, and whose office necessitated constant 
interviews with his bishop, the possession of a good strong 
roadster was nothing short of a necessity. It must have amused 
as well as somewhat flattered Manning to overhear, as he once 
did, a discussion carried on between two hostlers in the court- 
yard of a Chichester hotel where he was a passing guest. The 
dispute concerned the merits of a certain horse. At last one 
of the hostlers exclaimed : " Go upstairs and ask the archdeacon. 
He be the best judge of horseflesh in the county." 

During his sojourn at Lavington, Manning had to witness 
the departure of many whom he loved from the Church of 
England into the Catholic Church. Among the earliest of 
these were his wife's sister, Sophia Ryder, and her husband, 

* Ibid. Pp. 443-444- 



218 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov., 



who were received in Rome. The conversion of Mrs. Lock- 
hart, too, seems to have grieved him. She was the mother of 
William Lockhart, whose reception caused Newman to resign 
his preferments and to cease teaching in the Church of Eng- 
land, on the ground that he was unable any longer to claim 
that his teaching did not lead people to Rome. William Lock- 
hart was afterwards well known in London as one of the Fathers 
of Charity. Very shortly before his death, which occurred in 
the same year as Manning's, he published some interesting 
memorials of the cardinal when he was still Archdeacon ol Chi- 
chester. He gives us a graphic description of Manning's per- 
sonal appearance as it struck him when he saw it for the first 
time. He notes " his grand head, bald even then, his digni- 
fied figure in his long white surplice, occupying the arch- 
deacon's stall in the cathedral. . . . His face was to me 
some first dim revelation of the supernatural in man. I have 
never forgotten it. I see him as vividly now in my mind's 
eye as when I first beheld him. ... I at once connected 
his face with those of the old churchmen of Catholic times 
that I had seen in stained glass windows, and in the portraits 
of the whole line of Catholic bishops painted in long order on 
the walls of the south transept of the cathedral. They began, 
I think, with St. Richard of Chichester, and ended with the 
last Catholic bishop in the reign of Mary Tudor."* 

It would be out of place in an article of this sort to ana- 
lyze the various processes of thought and study which at last 
brought Manning to the portals of the Catholic Church. The 
last months of his Anglican life were spent in the home of his 
sister, Mrs. Carey, who, though much attached to her brother, 
was in no way in agreement with his religious views. 

It needed all the tact and delicacy of which Manning was 
a past master to avoid any friction with his kind hostess. In 
his state of anxiety, perplexity, and doubt, it necessarily hap- 
pened that many visitors, among them priests, came to the 
house to consult with him, and Manning was naturally careful 
not to confront such visitors with his sister. Now it happened 
that a man-servant ot Mrs. Carey, Peter Murphy by name, 
was possessed with a certain diablerie and love of teasing, and 
in the person of his mistress he found a ready means of in- 

* " Personal Reminiscences of Cardinal Manning." By William Lockhart, Dublin Rt- 
view, April, 1892. 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 219 

dulging his whim. "The Archdeacon had a visitor to-day, 
ma'am," he would say. " And what of that, Peter ? " Mrs. Carey 
would ask. " Well, ma'am, I think it was a priest." " What, 
Peter? A priest, did you say?" "Yes, ma'am; and," in a 
subdued whisper, "I rather imagine it was a Jesuit!" "A 
Jesuit?" exclaimed the horrified lady. "A Jesuit, in my house ?" 

But, by a curious irony of fate, Peter himself was the unwill- 
ing occasion of the visit of yet another priest, and probably a 
Jesuit. He was taken very ill one day, and the chance remark 
of a fellow-servant made him fear that he was about to die. 
He sent an urgent message to Manning, begging him to visit 
his room. The kind-hearted archdeacon immediately went and 
took his seat at the bedside. " I want to tell you," said Peter, 
"that I believe those people are right after all." "What peo- 
ple do you mean, Peter ? " " The Roman Catholics, sir." 

Now Manning was very nearly convinced by this time that 
they were right, but with his habitual caution and dread of pre- 
cipitate acts he warned Peter against haste. " Peter," he said, 
"don't be in a hurry." 

"But, sir," replied the man, "I am a Catholic, and I want 
to see a priest!" Here was, indeed, a dilemma. There was 
nothing for it but to send for a priest, who reconciled Peter 
to the Church. The sick man recovered and for many years 
was in Manning's service in his house at Bayswater. " Peter, 
don't be in a hurry," became a stock phrase among Manning's 
intimate friends, who used playfully to remind him in later years 
that he had once warned a sick Irishman not to be in a " hur- 
ry " to send for a priest! 

When the winter of 1850 came, many a clergyman had re- 
signed his benefice and entered the Church, but Manning still 
hesitated. Each convert of course has to go through his spe- 
cial and personal trial. With some it is loss of home and friends, 
with others it is poverty. To Manning, one of the sorrows, 
though not of course the greatest, of his great sacrifice was his 
turning his back upon Lavington. It had been his home for 
many years, the scene of his happy married life, the vineyard, 
as he loved to regard it, which God had given him to till and 
cultivate. In 1838 he had written: "Till the last six months 
I have never known what it is to have irresistible local affec- 
tion. Once a little self-denial would make all places alike ; for 
all that makes one place differ from another would have fol- 



220 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Nov. 







lowed me like a shadow. Now, there is only one place unlike 
all others, and that is unchangeable." 

To the last day of his long life he never lost his affection 
for Lavington and its people. And now this, among many 
other things, had to be given up. 

But the call of Qod was urgent, and no consideration of 
earth could withstand it. Never, I verily believe, did Manning 
do any act which he knew to be contrary to God's Will. In 
the spring of 1851 it became clear to him that it was God's Will 
that he should be received into the Catholic Church. 

He has himself recorded the last occasion on which he wor- 
shipped in the Church of England. There was at that time, 
close to the Buckingham Palace Road, a small chapel which was 
dear to the hearts of Tractarians. Here it was that Manning 
performed his last devotions as an Anglican. " I was kneeling 
by the side of Mr. Gladstone," he records. " Just before the 
Communion Service commenced I said to him : ' I can no longer 
take the Communion in the Church of England/ I rose up 
f St. Paul is standing by his side' and laying my hand on Mr. 
Gladstone's shoulder, said : 'Come.' It was the parting of the 
ways. Mr. Gladstone remained ; and I went my way. Mr. 
Gladstone still remains where I left him." 

In March he resigned his office before a notary, according 
to law. This was in the city. He returned over Blackfriars 
Bridge, went to St. George's, the Cathedral of Southwark, and 
knelt before the Blessed Sacrament. " It was then and there," 
he tells us, " that I said my first Hail Mary." 

On the 6th of April, 1851, he and Hope-Scott (one of the 
leading lawyers of the day) were received into the Church by 
Father Brownbill, SJ. " So ended one life," wrote Manning, 
" and I thought my life was over. I fully believed that I should 
never do more than become a priest; about which I never 
doubted nor ever wavered. But I looked forward to live and 
die in a priest's life, out of sight." * 

" I feel as if I had no desire unfulfilled," he writes to Hope- 
Scott, on the day after their reception, " but to persevere in 
what God has given me for His Son's sake." 

How well he persevered, and how little, happily, his expec- 
tation of living " out of sight," was fulfilled, is written in the 
Church's history for all men to read. 

* Life of Cardinal Manning. By E. S. Purcell. Vol. I., p. 628. 




THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK. 

BY H. A. HINKSON. 

|F any of those who knew him had been asked to 
name the luckiest man in the world they would 
unhesitatingly have answered Roland York. It is 
better to be born lucky than rich, since wealth 
is only an incident of luck; and that Roland 
York's luck should need nothing to perfect it, a distant admir- 
ing relative left him a coal mine which developed into a very 
satisfactory gold mine. 

Roland York's luck began in his cradle, because he was 
such an admirable, good-tempered, and good looking baby that 
his nurse instantly loved him, and did not cease to love him 
when he attained to a dignity exceeding that represented by 
long clothes and short petticoats. 

His luck followed him to school, where he was too big to 
be bullied, too amiable to be disliked, too clever to be despised. 
His physical strength made his gentleness respected as a strange 
and uncommon thing amongst schoolboys, and though he had 
never been known to fight, his reputation for potentialities suf- 
fered no diminution thereby; rather was it enhanced. 

As a senior boy he excelled as an arbitrator, and few com- 
batants could resist his suave advice. "What's the good of 
fighting, boys, let's talk it over." Generally they did talk it 
over and peace was the result. When he went to Oxford with 
a scholarship, for he had brains as well as good looks, he left 
behind him a tradition of which Burland's House is still proud. 
"One of the best influences the School has ever been fortunate 
enough to know," was a well remembered sentence in the Head's 
parting speech. 

At Oxford he was known as "Handsome York." He got 
his Blue for batting and in the long field he was a certain 
catch. He rowed, too, in his college eight and won several 
prizes for swimming. His friends complained that he would not 
exert himself sufficiently, and his college grumbled when he left 
with his cricket Blue and a First in Classics, which were deemed 
far below his capacities. 



222 THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK [Nov., 

He was a good though somewhat nervous speaker, and he 
took to the law naturally, since he came of a family of lawyers. 

" He'll lose his case unless he loses his temper," said old 
Morehead, K. C. f in whose chambers York read. " I never knew 
a man so incorrigibly good-tempered in my life, and the fel- 
low has so much brains, too. I never knew brains and good- 
temper to go together before." 

" He'll do no good, I believe," remarked Jerry Rideout, a 
hard-worked junior, " until he loses his money, is sued by a 
creditor, and sees his sweetheart carried off by a rival. Then 
maybe he'll turn." 

But, without being absolutely brilliant, York was successful 
enough as a lawyer. His personal charm counted for a good 
deal both with judge and jury, and he impressed his colleagues 
with a sense of latent, undeveloped power. 

But Lady Treston, Roland York's aunt, was frankly dissat- 
isfied with her nephew. She was a childless widow and had 
lavished on Roland all her unsatisfied maternal longings. When 
a girl of twenty she had married Sir Wilfred Treston, because 
all the world was talking of his splendid diplomatic achieve- 
ments. When he appeared before her young eyes at the Rus- 
sian Ambassador's ball, resplendent with decorations, she forgot 
his sixty years and only remembered his handsome face and 
distinguished bearing, and the quick smile which rewarded her 
girl's homage. 

The world still rang with his name when he carried her off 
and mdiried her. But before Lady Treston recovered from her 
bewilderment, and before there was any possibility of disillu- 
sionment on her part, Sir Wilfred was carried home to her 
from a public banquet, given in his honor, dead, and with all 
his orders on his breast. They remained to her sacred relics 
of a personality which, as time passed, became more and more 
mythical ; and as it became more mythical, so it became more 
superhuman, until it became a divine inspiration. 

The good looks of her sister's boy attracted her as they 
attracted others. Her personal ambition had been long buried 
in the grave, now it sprang to life. The boy might become 
something, if not all, of what her husband had been. Hence- 
forth her hopes and ambitions were centered on the boy. 

Up to a certain point she was satisfied, even abundantly 
satisfied. But when it came to a point appreciably near the 



1908.] THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK 223 

standard of her ideal she experienced a slight chill of disap- 
pointment. As a schoolboy Roland York was perfect. She had 
had no misgivings during that period. At the University he 
had done only a little less well than she had hoped, but she 
was satisfied with his tutor's assurance that bigger things were 
to come. After five years' practice at the Bar, she became un- 
easy at the delay in the coming of the bigger things. 

Once or twice she had attempted delicately to suggest to 
him the things that he might have done and might do. But 
the result of such attempts had deterred her from rashly taking 
the same risk again. Into the face, which seemed formed to 
resist all the hostile forces of the world, had suddenly flashed 
a look of abject, hunted fear. 

It was she, not he, who changed the subject of conversa- 
tion, and then she was left wondering why she found so much 
satisfaction in the society of little Larminie. 

Larminie, clever, well-nigh briefless, and humanly envying 
his better circumstanced friend, instanced the case of the vol- 
canoes concealing latent energy. But the reference made Lady 
Treston angry. 

" The latent force of a volcano is only ascertained after it 
has burst forth," she exclaimed; "no one would believe in it 
otherwise." 

" I think people believe more implicitly when there is no 
evidence than when there is conclusive evidence," rejoined 
Larminie, "the lay mind so often discounts the importance of 
evidence. York has so much at his back that he need not 
care much what is in front of him. The past is a great enemy 
of the future, whatever way you take it." 

He spoke with a certain suggestion of bitterness which was 
not lost on his hearer. She looked with a newly awakened in- 
terest at the thin, sallow face and the dark, eager eyes of 
Larminie. She knew little of him but just enough to know 
that what he had achieved he had achieved of himself. His 
words implied a criticism of her nephew, and she was vaguely 
angered by them. 

"The past is beyond our reach, but the future is in our 
own hands to make or mar," she answered somewhat coldly. 

Larminie's face twitched, his lips parted an instant as though 
he would reply, then they closed suddenly in a kind of proud 
silence. Lady Treston remembered and did not forgive his 



224 IHE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK [Nov., 

criticism of his friend and her nephew, and since she did not 
forgive she remembered the better. 

Roland was endowed with all the qualities essential to suc- 
cess, except the will to grasp it. An incentive must be found 
to stimulate him, and what incentive so great, so impelling as 
the incentive of a woman. 

By a flash of inspiration she remembered Helen Brewster, 
a distant cousin of her husband poor, proud, handsome, am- 
bitious, and discontented Lady Treston rapidly summed up her 
qualifications and found them all satisfactory, including her pov- 
erty, for Lady Treston was not a worldly woman in the sense 
of overvaluing riches, and after all Roland would have enough, 
if things turned out as she meant them to do. 

To make things easy for Cupid a house- party was arranged 
at Foxford Manor, to take place in the middle of August when 
Roland York would be free. The meeting between Miss Brewster 
and York was auspicious enough and Lady Treston was satisfied. 
They had met some years before at a garden party at Oxford. 
They came together naturally of themselves by reason of that 
first meeting, when York was leaving the University and Helen 
was a girl of twenty with her head filled with what she after- 
wards characterized as rubbish. 

She was now twenty-five an age when a woman begins to 
be differentiated more clearly from the others of her sex and to 
reveal her own proper character free from the haze of convention. 

"Do you find me changed since that stupid garden-party, 
ever so many years ago ? " she asked as they stood together 
on the lawn facing the old Manor House. 

He looked down at her face, carefully noting the broad, 
narrow brow, with the thick cluster of dark hair lying low above 
it, the well-shaped nose with its delicate, sensitive nostrils, the 
rich, olive-tinted coloring of her cheeks, and the full pouting 
lips, rebellious and expressive of hardly concealed discontent. 

" Yes, you are changed " ; he answered slowly and judici- 
ally. " And, if I may say so, I think you seemed happier five 
years ago." 

" If to be ignorant was to be happy, perhaps I was," she 
returned, " as you remember it was five years ago, and I am 
now twenty-five, that makes a difference." 

" There is no essential reason why twenty-five should be 
less happy than twenty," he said with a smile. 



1908.] THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK 225 

"There is no essential reason for anything/' she broke out 
impetuously, " but yet you have guessed or discerned the 
truth I am less happy ; or, say, less satisfied now than I was 
at twenty. I suppose to be happy a woman must have her 
heart set upon a man or a child, unless she become a propa- 
gandist of some sort; and I am mediaeval enough to hate wo- 
men in men's garments." 

" I think I understand at least partly," he said. " Last 
winter I was at Oxford at my old college, and if I had not 
been a man, I should have wept, because the place was the 
same and yet so different. But you see I am older than you." 

She laughed a little bitterly. 

" I am obliged for the reminder, but it is too soon for 
either of us to choose our coffins or compose our epitaphs." 

A peal of childish laughter came from behind the shrubbery, 
which lay between them and the tennis court. 

" They are the little Fosbrookes," she said. " Come and let 
us renew our youth in their company." 

As they emerged on the greensward, a dog suddenly yelped, 
and one of the players, throwing down her racket, ran and 
picked up a little King Charles spaniel, which had been struck 
by the ball. 

" Sweet, sweet/* she cried, in a high-pitched, piping voice, put- 
ting the dog's head against her neck, " and was my darling hurt ? " 

Two little girls and a boy followed her, calling out "Sweet, 
sweet, and was he hurt ? " 

" That's Marjory Marjory Mayhew, the daughter of one of 
the county families," Miss Brewster explained to York. " She 
comes to play with the children, and she's the biggest baby 
of them all herself." 

Having consoled Rufino the absurd name given to the 
dog Marjory, still holding him against her neck, came up to 
Miss Brewster. 

41 Oh, isn't he sweet?" and she held out the dog to have 
his head patted. 

"Miss Mayhew finds everything sweet from a chicken's heart 
to a full-grown pig," said Miss Brewster. "She even finds 
children sweet at all times and under all circumstances. She is 
to be envied, is she not ? " 

" Much, indeed," York answered watching, with more than 
a casual interest, the girl holding the spaniel against her neck. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 15 



226 THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK [Nov., 

She was uncommonly tall and generously proportioned, but she 
moved with an easy, springing gait. The hand which lay 
upon the spaniel's back was large, even disproportionately large, 
but her feet were, to York's relief, small and shapely. Her 
features were regular, her lips mobile, with a somewhat full 
curve under the chin, ominous for the future, her hair abundant 
and fair with a streak of red in it. Standing between the other 
two, Miss Brewster appeared dwarfed almost to insignificance, 
as Lady Treston emerging upon the tennis lawn noticed, and 
was grateful to the young Fosbrookes when they dragged Miss 
Mayhew away, shouting: "Come back and play, Margy." 

" She is twenty four, though but for her size she might be 
only fifteen," explained Miss Brewster. " I doubt her head 
will ever develop any more, though there's no saying where 
her bodily development will end. She has a wonderful influ- 
ence on children." 

In this wise Helen Brewster created about herself an atmos- 
phere the direct opposite to that diffused by Marjory Mayhew. 

During York's stay at Foxford Manor, he came but little 
into personal contact with Marjory. When he did, he was 
conscious of her charm, not a subtle charm, indeed, but a 
charm sweet, restful, and in a degree unaccountable. She was 
still a child, she spoke to York with the same frankness as 
she spoke to Dicky Fosbrooke, and with the same unconscious- 
ness of the quickly awakened interest which lurked in his dark, 
wistful eyes. 

As he drove to the station he contrasted the two farewells 
the conventional expression of hope that he would have 
good sport, accompanied by the almost negligent pressure of 
three fingers, and the large, warm, generous handgrasp with 
which Marjory accompanied the reminder that he should not 
forget Dicky Fosbrooke's peg-top. 

Her lack of appreciation of him irritated him, it even hurt 
him. Had she in some mysterious way seen into his heart, and 
unconsciously appraised him at his true value ; or was she, as 
people said, an undeveloped baby interested solely in peg-tops 
and content with children's kisses ? 

For the moment he felt angry enough to prefer the self- 
conscious Helen Brewster ; but swiftly following upon his anger 
came the desire to kindle in Marjory's heart a love for himself. 

Early in December York received a letter from Lady Tres- 



1908.] THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK 227 

ton reminding him of his promise to spend Christmas with 
her. The hunting was very good and though the nights were 
frosty the scent was excellent. She added incidentally that she 
was recovering from an attack of influenza and the dear, sweet 
creature Marjory Mayhew had nursed her through it, " just as if 
I had been her own mother and not an ill-tempered old harri- 
dan. She makes an ideal nurse, and I know no other profession 
for women in which there is so much honor to be gained." 

At Victoria station he met Larminie, who had also been 
invited ; and the two traveled down together. Larminie was 
anxious to know who the rest of the house party were, but 
York could tell him nothing except what Larminie only cared 
to know, that Miss Brewster was to be of the party. On re- 
ceiving that information Larminie's rather careworn features 
brightened visibly. York wished that he could be equally as- 
sured of Marjory's presence. 

When the two men were ushered into the drawing-room at 
Foxford Manor Lady Treston was seated before a huge log 
fire and Marjory sprawled not ungracefully on the hearth. 

44 This child has been so good to me/' explained Lady 
Treston, "that I have begged a further loan of her. Dear 
Roland, how kind but how extravagant of you," as York pre- 
sented his hostess with a great bunch of lilies of the valley. 
" What Egyptian have you been spoiling for these ? " 

" Oh, sweet, sweet," piped Marjory, bending over the flowers. 

" Does the thrush sing here so soon ? " asked York laughing. 

"No; but the jackdaw does, because he has only one note 
to his voice and that he cannot spoil," Marjory answered, show- 
ing her white teeth. 

Her face was flushed with the heat of the fire and the 
dimple under her chin was a trifle deeper than York had re- 
membered it. Helen was perhaps right technically Marjory's 
beauty was more of to day than of to-morrow. 

Helen was the last to appear and she made a strikingly hand- 
some figure. She was beautifully dressed and jewels sparkled on 
her white, slender neck. Beside her Marjory looked a simple 
country girl, and even York confessed that she looked best on 
the green turf amidst trees and flowers. 

Larminie was enraptured ; his pale, eager face was flushed 
with pleasure, for he had the honor of taking Miss Brewster 
in to dinner. Yet though she talked with him, and talked well, 



228 THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK [Nov., 

he was cfonscious that her eyes watched York ; and the con- 
sciousness aroused some bitterness in him, especially as he was 
only too conscious of his own physical defects in comparison 
with York's splendid endowments. 

He watched York and noticed that his eye turned often to 
the obscure corner of the table where Marjory Mayhew sat. 
With a certain jealous anger he perceived that Miss Brewster's 
eyes followed the direction of his own. 

"A life without ambitious effort is absolutely ignoble," he 
said to his companion. " I had rather be dead than a drone 
or a sleeper." 

" I cannot fancy you as either/' Miss Brewster answered, 
looking with a certain sympathy at the restless, impetuous face. 
" Then, neither am I a drone or a sleeper at least, not willingly." 

" We have at least that bond of union," he returned with 
a laugh. " It is something to begin with. Perhaps later we 
shall find others." 

"I hope we shall," Helen returned as her hostess rose from 
the table, "but at least it is a good beginning." 

The evening ended in the usual way of house parties with 
music in the drawing-room, bridge in the card-room, and pool 
and billiards in the billiard-room. 

Helen was a devoted bridge-player, and played well; so 
did Larminie, who continued to be her partner. 

York and Marjory joined a party of pool players. He 
watched the girl play with a sense of physical pleasure. De- 
spite her height, she was as graceful as a fawn and her light- 
hearted gaiety caused a positive atmosphere of buoyancy. 

York was away all the next da s n did not meet 

him till the dinner gong rang. After dinner the guests were 
distributed much as on the preceding evening. But after the 
first rubber Helen complained of a recurrence of her familiar 
headache and retired to her room. 

A few minutes later she entered the billiard- room, her face 
white and her eyes very wide. As though she saw no one 
else, she went straight to York. 

"Mr. York," she said, putting her hand on his sleeve and 
looking up into his eyes, "just now I went to my bedroom. 
At the door I heard a noise and, peeping in, I saw a man 
trying to open one of my boxes ; there was the shadow of 
another too. I am sure they are burglars." 



1908.] THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK 229 

The color fled suddenly from York's face and a look of des- 
perate and hunted fear came into his eyes. 

" Burglars ! " he repeated. 

"Yes"; she replied impatiently. "Come quickly or I shall 
lose my jewels." 

But York stood motionless, a figure of mute and abject ter- 
ror. At last he moistened his dry lips. " The police " he 
began in a stammering voice. 

Helen had watched his face with a terror almost equal to 
that revealed there. 

"Police," she exclaimed, her eyes riveted upon his with a 
horrible fascination. 

A contemptuous laugh roused her. 

" Come along, Miss Brewster," exclaimed Larminie, snatch- 
ing up a poker from the hearth; "if the burglars get away 
with your jewel case there will be little use in crying police." 

Helen turned a last appealing glance at York ; then, with a 
sigh that was almost a moan, she followed Larminie from the 
room, the others crowding behind. York stood staring blankly 
before him, the billiard cue still in his hand. 

Suddenly he felt soft, strong fingers grip his wrist. 

" Mr. York, Miss Brewster's window looks on the shrubbery," 
whispered Marjory, " let us be quick and cut off their escape." 

He would have resisted, but she drew him firmly with her. 
The cue fell to the floor and he followed her. The dull fear 
left his eyes, giving place to a sudden light. With her hand 
on his arm he must go, and so together they went out into the 
darkness. 

Half an hour later the party again assembled in the billiard - 
room, most of them filled with pleasurable excitement. The 
burglar had shown little fight, when he was surprised on his 
knees, and that little was quelled by a timely blow from Lar- 
minie's poker. When he was bound hand and foot, he was 
carried to the kitchen to await the arrival of the police. But 
through the open window his mate had escaped. 

As they were discussing the situation Marjory entered. Her 
hair was disheveled and there was a dark bruise under her left 
eye. 

Lady Treston rushed to her. 

" What has happened you, my darling ? " she inquired. 

" Oh, nothing," the girl answered. " Mr. York and I tried to 



230 THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK [Nov., 






catch the man, but he was too quick for us. Mr. York has 
gone in pursuit of him." 

" But your eye, dearest ? " 

Marjory put her hand to her eye. 

"I must have knocked it against a tree," she said, " but it 
is nothing." 

But Marjory was not clever at evasion, and no one believed 
that York had tried to capture the burglar any more than that 
he was now in pursuit of him. Larminie smiled indulgently. 
He could be indulgent now since he was the hero of a thrill- 
ing adventure. 

When the lights were out, two women sat together miser- 
ably regarding one another. Helen's face was stained with 
tears of shame, anger, and disappointment. 

" He is a coward, a craven coward," she said bitterly, "and 
every one knows it." 

Lady Treston thought of her dead husband with the orders 
on his breast and her ambitions for Roland York. She suffered 
more than Helen, since for years her hopes had been centered 
on York. That such physical strength and beauty should 
harbor the heart of a coward was almost beyond the power of 
belief. And he had fled out into the night and sent the girl 
to lie for him. He should never come to Foxford Manor again, 
never again. 

The next day being Christmas Day most of the party went 
to church. In York's presence nothing was said of the events 
of the preceding night, though in his absence nothing else was 
spoken of. If he noticed the coldness of his hostess and the 
furtive looks of Miss Brewster he did not show any sign of 
recognition. He appeared to be affected by a kind of sup- 
pressed excitement, as if some latent energy had been sudden- 
ly called into activity. 

The ice on the lake was reported to be in good condition 
and a skating carnival was arranged for the afternoon. The 
trees were hung with Chinese lanterns and torches were sup- 
plied to the skaters. Dancing and races on the ice went on 
merrily, the sounds of laughter echoing sweetly on the frosty 
air. But York, though the most accomplished skater, took no 
part in them. He skated by himself, his eyes fixed on one 
figure, which came and went brandishing a torch, and with 
frequent cries of delight. 



1908.] THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK 231 

It was now Marjory's turn to race Larminie, the goal being 
a willow tree on the south side of the lake. They started level 
and for a time kept together, then Marjory went swiftly ahead, 
amidst shouts of laughter and encouraging cheers. The noise 
was followed by a sharp silence. The leading torch wavered 
amid an ominous crackling and sank. Larminie had only just 
time to skirt the hole through which Marjory had disappeared. 
Behind the suddenly terrified crowd of watchers broke a heart- 
rending cry of " Marjory," and past them with lightning speed 
went York towards the dark place, near which Larminie's 
torch blazed fitfully. Straight to the hole he went, whilst the 
watchers held their breath, then, with the raucous sound of 
breaking ice, he too disappeared into the darkness. 

The awful silence was broken by the voice of Larminie 
calling for ropes and ladders. Torch holders surrounded the 
hole, at a safe distance, and from it emerged the head of York, 
one hand gripping the unbroken ice while with the other he 
clutched Marjory. Again and again the ice broke beneath his 
weight and he sank with his burden. His strength was failing, 
his fingers numbed with cold; his brain began to reel, there 
was no thought any longer of rescue, only one thing was clear 
to him, that he loved Marjory and that unless he could save 
her, it was best to die together. 

When at last by means of ladders and ropes they drew them 
out York was only half conscious. With some difficulty they 
disengaged his arm from about Marjory's waist. His limbs 
were so numbed that he could hardly stand, and he watched 
with wistful eyes Marjory being carried away to the house. 

A servant brought him a glass of hot brandy and water, 
and when he had drunk it the numbness passed sufficiently to 
allow him to walk back. All the while he seemed like one in 
a dream. 

"I shall be all right when I have had a hot bath," he said 
smiling. " One ought not to mind a ducking." 

When he reached the house they told him that Miss May- 
hew was quite comfortable and had almost recovered from the 
shock. A hot bath and a change of clothes completely restored 
him and he came downstairs laughing at his hostess' anxious face. 

There was a strange air of mystery and bewilderment about 
them all; but in the faces of Lady Treston and Miss Brewster 
a certain remorseful surprise. 



232 THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK [Nov., 

" I am very proud of you, Roland/ 1 Lady Treston said tremu- 
lously. " Marjory owes her life to you." 

" And I," he said, " owe her more than I can ever repay. 
How much that is I will tell you to-night if you can find time 
to hear me." 

"You shall command my time and anything else," the lady 
answered with grateful relief. 

"He risked his life to save her," said Helen bitterly, "for 
me he would not even risk a scar." 

That evening after dinner, when most of the party were dis- 
cussing the strange events of the two nights as they affected 
York's character, York sat in Lady Treston's boudoir and made 
his confession. 

" All my life since I was a boy I feared pain and tried to 
avoid it. I never fought because fighting implied pain. Be- 
cause I was strong, I was able to escape fighting and conse- 
quent pain. I became a man without ever having fought or 
struggled as a boy; so I grew to fear the idea of fighting more 
and more. The possession of physical strength gave me no 
consolation, beyond the fact that it deterred people from quar- 
reling with and hurting me. 

" Last night, as you all saw, I was terror-stricken at the 
suggestion that I should face a burglar. Marjory drew me out 
into the shrubbery to waylay the men if they should escape 
from the window. One of them did escape whilst I cowered 
in the shrubbery. When Marjory tried to hold him he struck 
her. It was then I forgot my fears. I sprang after him and 
caught him in the snipe bottoms about a mile off. I vented all 
my fury on him and until I heard from the police this morning I 
thought that I had killed him. Since last summer I have always 
been thinking of Marjory. Last night when every one deserted 
me, as they were justified in doing, Marjory understood and 
came to me and stood by me. It is no boastful thing to say 
that for Marjory I would face all the dangers of the world. 
To her I owe the manhood that has been so long in abeyanofe. 
I love her, but of love she herself knows nothing. Help me 
to win her so that I may keep my manhood; for without her 
I shall be in even worse case than when I was a coward." 

Lady Treston stroked his hair affectionately. 

" I will confess, Roland, that you have disappointed me by 
your want of ambition as well as other things, and I never 



i9o8.J THE SECRET OF ROLAND YORK 233 

thought of Marjory as your wife. She is a dear, sweet child 
and very gentle and good. Whether she knows anything of 
love I cannot tell. Yesterday I should have said she did not. 
To-night I am not so sure. She is triumphant because she 
has proved all the rest of us wrong, and for the moment you 
are her hero. To-morrow it may be otherwise. Come, I will 
take you to her. Ask her to love and marry you, and if she 
consents give her this she loves pretty things." 

Lady Treston drew a handsome sapphire and diamond ring 
from her ringer and gave it to York. 

Marjory was lying on a couch in her room, swathed in a 
handsome dressing gown and her long, fair hair hanging about 
her shoulder. 

The color rose in her cheeks when she saw York. He knelt 
and kissed the large, shapely hand. 

"How are you now?" he asked. 

" Oh, ever so well, and more grateful than I can tell," she 
answered. " You have saved my life." 

" I come to ask my reward ? " he whispered. 

" What reward would you have ? " she asked, turning her 
head away. 

" I want you to love me and be my wife," he said passion- 
ately. "You know all my faults, my weakness " 

" There are none, and I knew it somehow always," she 
whispered. 

He buried his face in the tangled masses of her hair. 

"Then you will love me and marry me, and we shall face 
the world together ? " he said. 

" I will love you and marry you and we shall face the world 
together," she repeated, laughing joyously. 

"Then this is a pledge of our love," he went on, slipping 
the ring upon her finger. 

And Lady Treston, returning after a discreet absence, heard 
Marjory's voice piping: " Sweet, sweet," and knew that Roland 
York had pleaded his cause and won it. 

"It's a pity for Helen," she said to herself, "but she was 
too ready to join in condemning him." 

In this way Lady Treston salved her own conscience ; and 
when Helen Brewster married Larminie she expressed the opin- 
ion that it was a most suitable match in every respect, since 
they both were admirable bridge players. 




ANATOLE FRANCE'S " LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC." 

BY J. BRICOUT. 

|HIS is not the first time that Joan of Arc has been 
the subject of extremely sharp debate. Men have 
been quarreling about her for a long while. Men- 
tioning a few out of many, we have such well- 
known names as Richer, Voltaire, Quicherat, 
Michelet, Wallon, and Marius Sepet. Still it is no exaggera- 
tion to say that Joan has been discussed more ardently in our 
own days than at any other time since those thirty years of 
the fifteenth century in which she stirred the souls of men so 
deeply and roused in them such diverse feelings. Above all, 
ever since Pope Pius X. proclaimed her virtues heroic, and the 
Church began active preparations to raise her to the altar, 
militant freethinkers have redoubled their hatred for her mem- 
ory, her life, her personality, and her acts. Many journalists 
and many professors of the University of France have won an 
unenviable distinction by heaping insults on her; and the Free- 
masons, no longer hoping to suppress, have dreamed for a mo- 
ment of "laicizing " her. How vain their efforts ! Joan is more 
popular than ever. Those for whom religion and native land 
remain always worthy of their greatest love; those also who 
are neither Catholic nor French, but whose hearts are stirred 
at the sight of heroism joined to youth and misfortune in a 
word, all those who are not blinded nor perverted by hatred 
of religion are more and more filled with admiration for the 
young girl who died unhesitatingly at the stake to save her 
country and to accomplish her mission. Will Joan of Arc be- 
come the patron saint of patriotism ? Will the Church regain, 
through her, some of its lost popularity ? 

It is chiefly to retard the triumph of the Church that Ana- 
tole France has published his Life of Joan of Arc, and our 
enemies have worked to secure for it the noisy, widespread sale 
we know it has enjoyed. The excitement has already died 
out to a considerable extent in France, but not elsewhere. It 
is opportune, therefore, to prove that this new life of Joan of 
Arc has no scientific value. Moreover, there is nothing to keep 






i9o8.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 235 

us from profiting by this examination to remind our Catholic 
and non-Catholic readers of some doctrinal truths that are too 
commonly overlooked. There will be three parts to this essay. 

In the first, we will tell what the Church was to Joan of 
Arc; and, in turn, what Joan was and is to the Church in 
opposition to what France asserts or insinuates. 

In the second, we will show that our author does not set 
a right value on the documents we have at hand for writing a 
life of Joan. 

After that it will be easy to prove, in the third part, that 
Anatole France's Joan of Arc is decidedly nothing but a cari- 
cature. 

I. 

"Voltaire," so France writes,* "makes fun of knavish monks 
and their dupes, because of their dealings with Joan." In this, 
France is Voltaire's faithful disciple. It is not too much to say 
that his chief desire is to have his readers believe that the 
Church has always used Joan for her own interests. She used 
the Maid once to end a war that was ruining her; she uses her 
now to regain prestige. What makes matters worse is that the 
Church basely condemned Joan during life while the English 
had the upper hand, and restored her good name after death 
when the French had gained the victory. f Worse yet, the 
Church stubbornly misrepresents her, and sets before us an un- 
real Joan, in the hope of profiting thereby. Joan often and 
unhesitatingly declared on solemn occasions that she trusted 
her own conscience rather than the heads of the Church ; yet 
she is pictured as a very humble, docile Catholic, a believer 
in the Papal claims, an Ultramontane. Joan gave no proof of 
military talent; she was very weak during her last days; she 
was never anything but a wretched victim of hallucinations ; 
yet people speak highly of the part she played and of her cour- 
age, and try to make her out an envoy from God. 

Anatole France's Joan of Arc will have nothing divine in 
her ; in fact, she will have but few of those extraordinary qual- 
ities that many freethinkers have extolled in the real Joan. 
He writes: 

Freethinkers of our times, impressed as most ol them are 
by Spiritualism, refuse to recognize in Joan not only that 

* Vie de Jeanne d'Arc, t. I., p. 62. fT. I., p. 20. 



236 ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov., 

auto-suggestion which determines the acts of a seer like her, 
and the influence of a perpetual hallucination, but also the 
suggestions of the religious spirit. What she did through 
sanctity and devotion, they attribute to a reasoning state of 
ecstasy. We find such tendencies in the honest and learned 
Quicherat, who unwittingly throws a great deal of eclectic 
philosophy into Joan's piety. This point of view has its diffi- 
culties. It leads freethinking historians to form an absurdly 
exaggerated estimate of this child's intellectual faculties, 
ridiculously to attribute to her military talents, and to substi- 
tute a polytechnic phenomenon for the artless marvel of the 
fifteenth century. Catholic historians of our day are closer to 
nature and to truth when they make the Maid a saint. Un- 
fortunately the idea of sanctity has greatly degenerated in 
the Church since the Council of Trent, and orthodox his- 
torians are very little inclined to acquaint themselves with 
the vagaries of the Catholic Church|through the ages. As a 
consequence, they set the Maid before us as at once a saint 
and a modern. So far do they go that if one were asked to 
point out the most strangely travestied of all the different 
Joans of Arc, one would hesitate between their miraculous 
protectress of Christian France, the patron of officers and 
subalterns, the inimitable model of Saint Cyr cadets, and 
the romantic druidess, the inspired soldieress, the patriot 
gunneress of the Republicans, if a Jesuit father had not come 
along to make an Ultramontane Joan of Arc for us.* 

M. Anatole France is neither an Ultramontane nor a pro- 
fessional patriot. Far from it ! Consequently, he is right at 
home in bringing Joan down to the level of the sad reality 
the reality set before us, according to him, by history and 
science. 

We will see that he has not succeeded in his self-chosen 
task. But, alas ! how many of his readers have had their ad- 
miration of our saintly heroine sorely shaken by M. France's 
talent and great cleverness ? 

The considerable success which his work has rapidly achieved 
is partly due to public curiosity and to his anti- clericalism. 
His freethinking friends, all-powerful at present, and the in- 
ternationalists, with whom he willingly coquets, have given him 
a hearty welcome, so ably does he labor in the cause of irre- 
ligion and so skillfully does he minimize the " saint of patriot- 
ism." On the other hand, the world was very curious to know 

T. I., pp. 37-38. 



i9o8.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S i( JOAN OF ARC:' 237 

how M. France, the Dreyfusard academician, the satirical and 
plain-speaking novelist, would conceive and paint the Maid whom 
the Church is about to canonize. 

All this is true. But it is just to add that M. Anatole 
France's success may be still further explained by his artful way 
of flattering his readers and by his literary ability. 

How many charming descriptions he gives, and how well he 
says things ! There are no interminable controversies, no weari- 
some notes in his book, but an unbroken story, judiciously en* 
riched, in a way that can be felt "with the form and the sub- 
stance of ancient texts," * a story in which the utmost care has 
been taken to preserve the " tone of the times," without ex- 
aggeration or affectation, and the "archaic forms of language 
have been preferred," f lli so * ar as tne y are intelligible. What 
an artist M. France is ! 

And how skillfully he makes the supernatural and the mi- 
raculous vanish. Our little Joan, with her visions and voices 
and success he seems to explain them all very well. He re- 
minds one of Kenan's Life of Jesus. Renan was more " reli- 
gious," more edifying. He broke out into soul-stirring passages 
about the "sweet Master" or the "melancholy Giant" of Pal- 
estine ; he addressed delightful apostrophes to the young Prophet 
of Nazareth, to the "Son of God." Despite his air of candor 
and kindliness, M. France is more given to mocking, to jesting, 
and also to broad speech. Yet he is no less pleasing and en- 
tertaining. At times he tells unsavory anecdotes which are not 
necessary to his story, for the sole purpose of gratifying his 
readers' spirit of levity. How many pages, otherwise almost 
wholly worthless, are written with undeniable skill for the very 
same purpose ! 

M. Anatole France has succeeded in having himself read 
and also believed by those who are caught, held, and seduced 
by a fine phrase, a charming description, a flash of wit, or an 
elegant trifle. For most of them the case is settled. To the 
Church Joan has always been merely a means, an instrument 
for extricating herself from difficulties and for establishing her 
authority. M. France has proved it. 

These superficial, unthinking people do not see that there 
is at least an apparent contradiction in what M. Anatole France 
has written. On the one hand, Joan allows herself to be led 

TI., p. 80. fTI., p. 81. 



238 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov., 

about like* a fool ; on the other, she prefers her own feeling to 
that of the Church. I do not wish to insist on this point, nor 
to examine whether the contradiction is real. It is better to 
show without delay that Joan was not the proud egotist she is 
pictured, nor the dupe of unscrupulous clerics. 

Her judges at Rouen tried to draw out of her some word 
of rebellion against the Church. Was not that the best way 
to ruin her? It seems very probable even, that when she was 
in prison, many pretended friends advised her to refuse sub- 
mission to the Church. One thing, at any rate, is certain. In 
speaking to her they used words which she did not understand 
at first. The Church militant was, she believed, the judges 
who were trying her that is, her persecutors. She boldly re- 
fused to submit to their judgment. She had a right to do so. 
Even after it was explained to her that the " militant Church " 
meant all the Church authorities, she persisted the more fre- 
quently in appealing from them to God, to our Lord, to our 
Lady, and to all the saints in heaven. The reason why she 
acted thus was because she felt that so far as she was con- 
cerned, her judges and enemies had reduced the Church mili- 
tant to the Bishop Cauchon and the vice-inquisitor whom 
Cauchon controlled. The proof is that when she was asked : 
" Do you think that you are bound to give full, complete 
answers to the Pope, the Vicar of God?" she replied: "Take 
me before him and I will answer all I ought to answer.'* It 
is true that under other circumstances, she declared, on March 
31, 1431, that she wanted to obey God before all else. "Our 
Lord God being first obeyed." These spirited words are in no 
wise contrary to the docility required by the Church. This was 
well understood by her enemies. When Joan again and again 
declared at the cemetery of Saint-Ouen that she left her cause 
in the hands of God and the Pope, they were content with re- 
plying : "It is impossible to go to the Pope at Rome." Her 
appeal to the Pope and a council, from the judge who was 
also her mortal enemy, does not prove her unsubmissive. The 
bishop is not, as they told her, sole judge in his diocese. Ul- 
tramontanes are not alone in saying this; every Catholic be- 
lieves it. 

Joan of Arc, then, was not the rebellious individualist they 
try to make her out. Was she the unconscious dupe her latest 
historian imagines ? M. Anatole France is sure that the court 






I9Q8.J ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 239 

and the churchmen who were partisans of Charles VII. skillful- 
ly made use of her to further their mutual interests. He writes 
as follows : 

I have not questioned Joan's sincerity. She cannot be 
suspected of lying ; she believed firmly that she had received 
her mission from her voices. It is more difficult to know 
whether or not she was unconsciously guided by others. 
What we know about her before her arrival at Chinon 
amounts to very little. We are led to believe * that she had 
undergone certain influences. It is the way with all visionar- 
ies an unseen director leads them. It must have been so with 
/oan. At Vaucouleurs she was heard saying that the Dau- 
phin had the kingdom " in commendam." She did not learn 
that phrase from her village folk. She was reciting a pro- 
phecy which she had not invented herself, but which had evi- 
dently been made up for her. 

She must have been with priests who were partisans of the 
Dauphin Charles, and were anxious to have the war ended. 
Abbeys had been burned, churches pillaged, divine worship 
abolished. These pious people who sighed for peace, seeing 
that the treaty of Troyes had not brought it about, placed all 
their hope in the expulsion of the English. t 

. . . Sufficient attention has not been paid to the fact 
that the French party was very clever in setting her at work. 
The clerics of Poitiers set her off to advantage by examining 
her in a leisurely way concerning her habits and her iaith. 
These clerics of Poitiers were not religious, unacquainted with 
the ways of the world. They were the Parliament of the law- 
ful king, exiles irom the University, men deep in the affairs 
of the kingdom and very much concerned in revolutions, 
men stripped of their property, ruined, and extremely im- 
patient to return unto their own. The ablest man in the 
Council, the Archbishop-Duke of Rheims, chancellor of the 
kingdom, was at their head. By the length and solemnity 
of their questions they centered on Joan the curiosity, the in- 
terest, and the hopes of the astonished crowds. J 

. . . What were the true relations between the royal 
Council and the Maid ? We do not know. That is a secret 
which will never be revealed. The judges at Rouen thought 
they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael. It is 
possible that her simple faith was sometimes abused. We 
have reason to believe that the march on Rheims was not 

* We have put in the italics in this and subsequent passages. 
tT. I., pp. 38-39. t T. I., pp. 41-42. 



240 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov., 

suggested to her in France, but it is certain that the Chancel- 
lor of the kingdom, Messire Regnault de Chartres, Arch- 
bishop of Rheims, was very anxious to be seated again on the 
throne of the Blessed Remy, and to enjoy again his benefices.* 

It must have been so. . . We are led to believe. . . . 

// is the way with all the visionaries. . . It is possible, 

etc. Give us proofs, my good sir, something besides insinua- 
tions and suppositions, f 

That the interests of certain churchmen, of Mgr. Regnault 
de Chartres in particular, coincided with the mission of Joan, 
or that their conduct helped the Maid, is not a proof that they 
suggested this mission to her or that they turned her to their 
own account. Why is the assertion made that Joan could have 
learned the term " in commendam " only from clerics who were 
whispering to her what to say and do ? " She was reciting a 
prophecy, which she had not invented herself, but which had 
evidently been made up for her." What are such assertions 
worth ? What are we to think of this argument on which M. 
France continually relies ? 

Joan seems to have applied to herself a certain prophecy 
which declared that " France would be ruined by a woman 
(Isabel of Bavaria) and then restored by a virgin from the 
Marches of Lorraine." Whence does this prophecy come ? Or, 
to broaden out our inquiry, whence come the varied prophecies 
which were current at that time, and which were falsely ascribed 
to Merlin the Enchanter J and to Venerable Bede ? Merlin is 
made to say that a wonder-working .virgin would come from 
Boischesnu, and Bede that this virgin would come in 1429. 

Joan knew nothing of Merlin's prophecy until she reached 
Chinon. Bede's was not in circulation until she was in Orleans. 
Again we ask: Who made up those prophecies and set them 
agoing ? M. France writes : 

If this revised prophecy of Merlin's is not the one that Joan 
heard at the village, saying that a maiden would come from 

*T. L.p.44- 

t " One would have to know very little about human nature," Michelet once wrote, " to 
think that when her hopes were thus shattered, she (Joan of Arc) still retained an unshaken 
faith. It is not certain that she uttered the word (of recantation) but I assert that she thought 
it " (History of France, Vol. VI., p. 208). Michelet trusted his intuitions. M. France does the 
same. They are of the same school the school in which imagination and conjecture often 
take the place of the documentary evidence. 

\ The prophecy found in the Historia. Britonum makes no mention of Boischesnu, etc. 
Bois-Chesnu (bois de chenes) was about a mile and a half from Joan's paternal home. 






i9o8.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 241 

the Marches of Lorraine to save the kingdom, it is a first- 
cousin to it. They bear a family resemblance ; they were both 
launched in the same spirit and for the same purpose. We 
must see herein an indication of an agreement between the 
clerics of the Meuse and those of the Loire to focus attention 
on the miracle-worker of Domremy.* 

A little further on M. France adds the following: 

These false prophecies give us a glimpse of the means by 
which Joan was brought into action. Doubtless they are 
somewhat too artificial for us. Those clerics considered only 
the end the peace of the kingdom and of the Chnrch. The 
way had to be paved for that miracle. Do not be overmuch 
annoyed by the discovery of those pious frauds, without 
which the Maid's miracles could not have been effected. 
Some art and even a little trickery is always required to win 
a hearing for innocence. t 

These phrases, Renanesque in the highest degree, clearly 
indicate M. France's thought. "Pious frauds; agreement be- 
tween the clerics of different parts of the country; the clerics 
made up the false prophecies." But why, we ask, does he 
accuse the churchmen rather than others? 

Who acquainted her with the prophecy which said that 
France would be re-established by a maid from the Marches 
of Lorraine ? Was it a peasant ? We have reason to believe 
that the peasants did not know this prophecy, and that she 
was always with religious. Furthermore, to be perfectly cer- 
tain of the truth in this matter, we need only take note of the 
fact that Joan had heard a special version of this prophecy 
a version plainly cut out for her, for it specifically stated that 
the restoring maiden would come from the Marches of Lor- 
raine. The mention of this locality could not be the work of 
a cowherd ; it betrays a mind skilled in the guidance of souls 
and the control of conduct. Doubt is no longer possible. 
The prophecy thus rounded out and set at work, comes from 
some cleric whose intentions are easy to see. Thenceforth we 
catch glimpses of a thought which lies heavy on the young 
visionary and drives her on. This churchman from the 
banks of the Meuse, while out in the quiet fields, thought 
over the lot of his unhappy people, and, in the hope of turn- 
ing Joan's visions to account for the good of the kingdom and 
the bringing about of peace, he went so far in his pious zeal 

- *T.I. ,-p. 204. fTX I.,p..ao7. 

VOL. LXXXVTU. 16 



242 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov., 

as \o gather up some prophecies concerning the safety of the 
lilies of France, and to fill them out with details suited to his 
purpose, He was a priest or religious, from either Lorraine 
or Champagne who suffered severely from the public misfor- 
tune.* . . . Joan associated a great deal with priests and 
monks. She was in the habit of visiting her uncle, the Cure 
of Sermaize, and of calling to see her cousin, a young pro- 
fessed religious in the abbey of Chaminon, who was soon to 
follow her into France. Thus she found herself connected 
with many ecclesiastics who were very quick to recognize her 
singular piety and the gift she had received of seeing things 
which were invisible to the crowd. If the talks they had with 
her had been handed down to us> they would doubtless reveal to 
us the sources of her extraordinary vocation. One of those 
men, whose name will never be known, prepared an angelic 
defender for the king and the kingdom of France. t 

" If they had been handed down to us" That shows they 
were not. Consequently, they are made up purely and simply 
out of the imagination. M. France admits also that our knowl- 
edge of Joan's uncle and cousin, whom he mentions, rests on 
very sharply suspected genealogical documents. In that case, 
all we have had from M. France is pure hypothesis, and he 
does not prove that the prophecies in question are the work 
of churchmen. Beyond all this, even if it were certain that 
some clerics had craftily helped Joan to accomplish her mis- 
sion, it would not follow that they had suggested it to her. 
For us this is precisely the essential point. Joan had already 
seen and heard her angels and saints before she knew any- 
thing about the prophecies. Now we will see that her voices 
and her visions came from heaven. Why not her vocation of 
liberatrix as well ? There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to 
prove the contrary. 

We must also call attention to this that a few clerics do not 
constitute the Church, and that even when some of them are 
guilty of pious frauds, one has no right to blame the Church. 

This elementary distinction must always be borne in mind 
when one speaks of Joan, of the Church, and of their mutual 
relations. Joan is unwilling to submit to certain Churchmen 
she does not thereby refuse to submit to the Church. Certain 
clerics this is a gratuitous supposition, for it has not been 

* T. I., pp. 51-52. t T. I., p. 54. 



1908.] AN ATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 243 

proved played on the simplicity of Joan and on the credulity 
of the crowd no one has a right to say that the people were 
deceived by the Church. The bishop, Cauchon, the vice-inquis- 
itor, Jean Lematre, the judges at Rouen, the University of 
Paris, together with a few Italian and German ecclesiastics, are 
not the Church, the Church in its entirety, the Universal 
Church. M. France ought to remember that such forgetful- 
ness is hardly excusable in the uneducated and unthinking. 
Why then are people so ready to charge the Church with the 
fault of some among her members? Why, again, are they so 
dreadfully scandalized because priests, bishops, and popes are 
not all saints ; and because some of them made mistakes in 
grave circumstances ? Alas, we are all weak and although the 
clergy as a body is still the most virtuous class of men, no 
one of its members is without sin. Truly I am astonished to 
have that considered a crime in us. As for infallibility the 
Pope himself possesses that prerogative only in doctrinal matters 
and when he speaks as Supreme Teacher of the whole Church. 
Do freethinkers dream of a Church whose chiefs would all be 
infallible and impeccable, always and in all things ? 

For that matter, we have no great reason to blush for the 
attitude of the Church or of churchmen towards Joan of Arc, 
whether in the fifteenth century or in our own. To read M. 
Anatole France, one would think that the clerics of Poitiers, 
those who took part in the process of condemnation or in that 
of rehabilitation, as well as those who recently prepared the de- 
cree which proclaimed the heroic character of Joan's virtues, 
together with the Pope who signed it, had all, or nearly all, 
of them nothing in view but their own personal interest or the 
interests of their Church, and that hardly one of them cared 
for either justice or truth. They are all fools or knaves. To 
be sure, M. France, who is not a M. Homais but a very thor- 
ough gentleman, does not use such low phrases ; but at heart 
he would be very well pleased to have his readers form such 
a judgment of us. 

Are we in truth such rascals or fools, such self-seekers, 
such egotists ? Does Joan's past or present history show us 
in so hateful a light ? 

M. France has two chapters on the Maid at Poitiers. He 
makes the clerics who examined Joan there appear simply 
grotesque. Yet, when we take up a truth-loving book, which 



244 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov., 

does not aim, like M. France's, at making the clergy ridicu- 
lous and odious, and read the story of the inquiry at Poitiers, 
we find not a single fact to the dishonor of the priests who 
examined the Maid. The conclusion reached by those vener- 
able doctors breathes prudence and wisdom: 

The king, taking into account his own and the country's 
needs, and considering the continual prayers offered up to 
God by his unhappy people and by all who love peace and 
justice, should not dismiss or reject the Maid who says she 
has been sent by God to help him, not even if those promises 
are merely human ; nor, on the other hand, should he believe 
in her lightly or speedily. But, in accordance with Holy 
Writ, he should try her in two ways. 

Now Joan, the doctors continue, has been proved in the 
first way and " no evil has been found in her, but only good ; 
humility, virginity, etc." As for the sign asked of her, the 
Maid declared she would give it before the city of Orleans. The 
king, then, should not keep her from going to Orleans with 
his troops, but, hoping in God, he should have her brought 
thither in fitting fashion. To be afraid of her, or to put her 
away when there is no sign of evil in her, would be to fight 
against the Holy Spirit and to render himself unworthy of 
God's help.* No decision, surely, could be wiser. 

In telling the story of her condemnation, M. Anatole France 
wants to make a two- fold impression on his readers. First, 
that Joan was not so brave as has been said; and that, on 
several occasions, she doubted her voices and her mission. 
Secondly, that most of her judges, while they respected the 
forms of law, listened only to their hatred, their prejudices, 
their prepossessions, their ambition, or their interests ; while 
Joan's friends, who should have defended, basely abandoned her. 

Let us lay aside for the moment the question of Joan's 
courage. So far as the judges are concerned, the appearances 
are very much as M. France says, and the facts fit in, to a 
certain extent, with the appearances. Still, even here we must 
guard against exaggeration. For, as has been very justly 
written: "It was not merely to obey the English and to sat- 
isfy Cauchon that so many doctors condemned Joan of Arc. 
They were not all bought. Many sincerely believed that the 

* T. I., p. 247-248. 



1908.] ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 245 

firmness of the accused was resistance to the authority of the 
Church. Cauchon very skillfully seduced the credulous by 
means of this argument, just as he won over the clear-headed 
by other means. Everything, money, threats, promises, cor- 
ruption, and even scruples were used to destroy the victim. 
The judges were not all equally infamous. Many were merely 
blinded by prejudice. To say that does not greatly relieve 
the dignity of human nature, but we must for all that grant 
it the benefit of that slightly extenuating circumstance." * 

In the same way I am willing to grant that the clerics of 
Poitiers and the Archbishop of Rhiems, to whom Cauchon, 
Bishop of Beauvais, was a suffragan, as well as Charles VII., 
did not do their best to save Joan of Arc. But, alas! it is 
only too easy to understand how her reverses and, later on, 
her condemnation, had disturbed her friends. What were they 
to think of her very victories ? Had there been sorcery in 
her achievements? or chance? or illusions? Doubt had en- 
tered into their hearts. Embarrassed and downcast, they took 
refuge in silence, as if they thought in their hearts : " It is 
God's place to defend her, if He sent her." f 

Twenty years later, when victory had settled down on the 
banners of Charles VII., when the English had been driven 
out of France, and the final triumph had vindicated Joan, her 
friends did not fail to press for her rehabilitation. M. Anatole 
France has not the slightest suspicion that there is anything 
more than a self-seeking policy in all that, but we have as 
much reason to find a generous feeling in it. It is astonishing 
to me that M. France, who has worked with such hot energy 
for the revision of the Dreyfus trial, sees nothing but comedy 
and self-seeking in the trial for the rehabilitation of Joan. 
Truly there is nothing like the fanaticism of irreligion to make 
a man unjust. To quote Petit de Julleville again: 

Joan had been condemned by a bishop and by theologians 
whose legal right to try her is open to debate, and whose in- 
iquity, both in the course of the trial and in the twofold sen- 
tence with which it ended, is perfectly evident. She was 
cleared of this libelous sentence by the decree of a higher and 
wholly disinterested tribunal. The King and the Pope had 

*L. Petit de Julleville, La Venerable Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 171-172. L. Petit de Julleville, 
who died recently, was a professor of the Faculty of Letters in the University of Paris. His 
life of Joan of Arc appeared in 1900 in the justly valued collection, The Saints (Gabalda, 
Paris, 90 rue Bonaparte). t Petit de Julleville, op. cit., p. 105. 



246 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov., 

nofhing to gain by this act of justice and of reparation. The 
king reminded all that he had been long ungrateful or at least 
forgetful. The Pope in reversing so slowly the unjust de- 
cision of an ecclesiastical court, declared that he had been 
deceived for a long time by the false reports he had received 
from the University of Paris. Both the King and the Pope 
must be praised all the more that they thought only of justice 
in rehabilitating Joan of Arc.* 

Precisely so ! 

Finally, is it very hard to understand the present attitude 
of the Church towards Joan of Arc, without having recourse to 
the hypothesis of self-seeking calculations ? 

In 1869 Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, and twelve 
other bishops, addressed a petition to Pius IX., with a view 
to bring about the Maid's canonization. A first inquiry was 
held at Orleans. Its conclusions were ratified by the Sacred 
Congregation of Rites, and in consequence thereof, on January 
27, 1894, Leo XIII. declared Joan a Venerable Servant of God 
and introduced the cause of her beatification. Then after a 
ten years' conscientious and minute examination, Pius X. pro- 
claimed on January 6, 1904, that Joan " had practised the the- 
ological and cardinal virtues, and those annexed to them, in 
a heroic Jegree, so that from this point of view, there is noth- 
ing against her beatification." There is every ground to hope 
that we will not have to wait long to have her beatified and 
finally canonized. 

It must be admitted that the Church does not involve her 
infallibility in the process of beatification, for her judgment is 
not yet definitive. But let us suppose, for the sake of clear- 
ness, that the last step has been taken, that the Church has 
solemnly and definitively pronounced judgment as to the sanc- 
tity of Joan ; let us suppose, in other words, that Joan has 
been canonized. Our enemies, who are unwilling to see in this 
slow procedure and these preliminary inquiries anything more 
than a sham examination intended to dazzle and to deceive 
the unreflecting, will cry out, as they have already, that now 
more than ever Catholic historians will be obliged to picture 
the Maid to themselves according to the ecclesiastical type, 
without taking account of evidence or of science. How igno- 
rant they are of the Church's teaching on this subject ! 

* Op. cit. t pp. 187-188. 






1908.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 247 

When Joan of Arc shall have been canonized, every Catho- 
lic will have to believe that she is really in heaven and that 
she practised virtue in a heroic degree while on earth. And 
since Joan's heroic virtue can mean only heroic fidelity to her 
mission, a Catholic will have to admit "a certain reality in that 
mission ; then, a divine intervention ; and also a certain reality 
in her visions and revelations taken as a whole."* Every Cath- 
olic will have to believe this much, but nothing more. At the 
same time Catholic historians and savants will enjoy a great 
deal of liberty in treating of Joan. 

' There is no reason why a heroic soul should not be liable 
to passing, accidental illusions. Many canonized saints were 
notoriously deceived in particular cases concerning interior 
words, prophecies, and even visions." f Perpetual hallucina- 
tions are incompatible with what the Church means by heroic 
virtue. The divine mission of Joan also implies a certain real- 
ity in her visions and revelations as a whole. She could not, 
then, be the victim of perpetual hallucinations, as M. France 
imagines. It is possible, however, that she sometimes had pass- 
ing, accidental illusions. She may have taken imagined words 
and imagined visions for exterior words and exterior visions ;f 
she may have thought that she saw and heard outside of her 
what though real and supernatural she saw and heard only 
within herself. Her temperament finally, and her surroundings, 
may have had some influence on her visions and her voices. 

In another way also Catholics have full liberty in writing 
about Joan. She practised virtue in a heroic degree. Heroism 
of virtue, of innocence, is incompatible with any grave fault, 

y J. V. Bainvel, professor of Theology in the Catholic Institute of Paris, apropos of a 
Life of Joan of Arc in the Revue du Clerge Frangais, May 15, 1908, p. 462. Letouzey et And. 
Paris, 76 rue des Saints-Peres. 

t J. V. Bainvel, op. cit., p. 460. 

$ " Exterior or audible words are heard by the ear like natural words. One hears sounds 
which are produced supernaturally. The imagined words, or messages, are likewise formed 
of words, but are received directly without the help of the external organ of hearing. It may 
be said that they are perceived by the imaginative sense. . . . Exterior, called also ocular 
visions, are perceived by the eyes of the body. A material being takes shape or seems to take 
shape outside of us, and we perceive it like everything around us. Imagined visions consist 
also in seeing a material object but without the help of the eyes. It is perceived by the 
imaginative sense." Aug. Poulain, S.J. Des Graces d'Oraison. 5th ed. 1906. Pp. 293- 
295 (Retaux, Paris, 82 rue Bonaparte). In both cases there is a supernatural action. 

Father Poulain's work, Des Graces d'Oraison, may be read with profit in the study of 
these interesting and difficult, but generally unknown, questions. The fourth part deals with 
visions and revelations. The twenty-first chapter, "Illusions to be Feared," is especially 
suggestive. 



248 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Nov. 

and, therefore, Joan was not guilty of grave faults. Let all 
that be granted. How many questions remain to be cleared 
up by the findings of history or of the moral sciences ! Is not 
heroic virtue compatible with a transient and somewhat blame- 
worthy weakness ? Let us admit that the Church might refuse 
to beatify or to canonize Joan if it were proved, after a due 
consideration of the gravity of the circumstances, that she was 
weak in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen, though the weakness 
were but slightly culpable. For all that, one could not say 
that the historical question of the abjuration in the cemetery 
was settled by the mere beatification or canonization of Joan. 
That would be going too fast. For there are many solutions 
besides that of grave sin, or of a pardonable weakness, or of 
the falsity of the charge.* " She might have signed it, for ex- 
ample, without any thought of wrong- doing, under the influ- 
ence of her treacherous advisers, or out of deference to eccle- 
siastical authority, etc. We might perhaps admit a moment of 
hardly conscious weakness, immediately atoned for by a heroic 
disavowal." f 

This shows that criticism may still be applied in the study 
of Joan's life, and that Catholic historians of the Maid are not 
bound to paint her for us in exactly the same way.| They 
will go on viewing her in quite different lights, according to 
their scientific opinions; and, above all, according to the faith 
they put in this or that document or page of a document. 
That will be their right. What is essential is that the Maid 
they set before us be always the holy young girl who deserves 
our esteem and veneration. It is essential, too, that their Joan 
have nothing about her of the hateful caricature that M. France 
substitutes for her. 

We will show in our next article that when the documen- 
tary evidence is carefully examined with reference to these, the 
only essential points, it is with the Church and against M. 
France. 

* It is very probable, as we shall see later on in detail, that the formula of abjuration 
found in the official reports of the trial, is not the one that was read to Joan, nor even a sim- 
ple development of it. 

t J. V. Bainvel, art. cit., p. 463. 

J As a matter of fact, the biographies of Joan by Petit de Julleville, M. Marius Sepet, and 
Wallon are not like those written by M. 1'Abbd Dunand, M. le Chanoine Debout, and Pere 
Ayroles. 

(TO BE CONTINUED ) 



flew Books. 



It is so rare nowadays to find a 

ESSAYS ON THE APOCA- layman equipped in any of the 
LYPSE. ecclesiastical sciences, that the ap- 

pearance of a volume of exegesis 

from the pen of a gallant colonel in the service of Great Britain 
is, independent of the intrinsic quality of the book, a pleasing 
surprise. The subject of the work is the Apocalypse.* "Ah !" 
you say knowingly, " I understand; another fantastic key to 
the number of the beast, and the whereabouts of Armagedon, 
the identification of Anti- Christ, evolved from the consciousness 
of the interpreter." Not at all. This is a serious work, de- 
serving of consideration. Some time ago the author published, 
under the nom de plume of J. J. Elar, a study on the Apoca- 
lypse which met with favorable appreciation. The present pub- 
lication is an amplification of the former. 

The first question the writer poses for solution is to fix the 
authorship and date of the work. He argues for the date 67 
A. D., relying chiefly on internal indications which show, he 
holds, that the motive of the work was to sustain the Chris- 
tians during actual persecution. The argument drawn from 
Dionysius of Alexandria, by those who would fix the date in 
the reign of Domitian, is put aside on the ground that, in the 
passage relied upon, Dionysius is not dealing with the date of 
Revelation, but with the beast of the Apocalypse, whom he 
took to be Anti-Christ: "He assumed, in passing, without ar- 
gument or comment, that the Apocalypse was seen in Domi 
tian's reign." "He wrote of when the book was seen, not of 
the date of its writing." The authorship is ascribed, without 
reservation, to St. John the Evangelist. 

The next question considered is the identification of the 
beast, and the reason why the key to the Apocalypse was so 
early lost. There is no reference, the author holds, to a per- 
sonal Anti-Christ in the Apocalypse; this idea is a growth of 
subsequent times. The beast is the Roman Government. The 
key was lost through the very cryptical character of the writ- 

* Essays on the Apocalypse. By James I. L. Ratton, M.D., etc. New York: Benziger 
Brothers. 



250 NEW BOOKS Nov., 

ing. This style was adopted by St. John in order that the 
document, which was of a highly political and secret character, 
might evade the scrutiny of Roman officials, and yet be intel- 
ligible to the brethren for whose comfort it was intended. The 
second beast, or "the false prophet" the writer argues, is the 
pagan hierarchy ; and Armagedon is the battle of Chalons-sur- 
Marne, in which Attila overthrew an immense Roman army, 
opening to himself the road to Italy and Rome. In the "Seven 
Churches of Asia/* Colonel Ratton finds a prophetic presenta- 
tion of the history of the Catholic Church. " Knowing what 
we know now of the Seven Churches of Asia, can we suppose 
that the awful and magnificent visions and predictions of the 
Apocalypse were specially intended for them ? The answer to 
that question is this. Those churches ran their short course 
and died out centuries ago, without succeeding in interpreting 
the Apocalypse. It was a sealed book to them, and they re- 
jected it. If we apply these messages to the seven ages of 
the Catholic Church, they correspond with the facts of history 
in a very remarkable way; and what is more, they strengthen 
the divine claim of the Catholic Church on all serious students 
of the Apocalypse." The author's essay to work out this ap- 
plication is ingenious, rather than convincing ; especially where 
he finds that the Church of Sardis, the Church of the Refor- 
mation, came to an end about the Victorian era, and out of it 
has grown the Church of Philadelphia, the present age, when, 
throughout the English-speaking world, there is a mighty move- 
ment towards the Catholic Church. 

The conviction is growing among 
SPIRITUALISM. many who observe the signs of 

the times that Spiritualism is be- 
coming a real and active danger to the faith of many Catho- 
lics. That this opinion is entertained in high quarters may be 
inferred from the fact that a gentleman whose publications have 
conferred on him the authority of an expert on the topic has 
been charged by one of the highest officials of the Curia to 
come to America and deliver, if possible, in all our seminaries, 
a course of lectures on the nature and the dangers of spiritual- 
ism. An English priest, in the course of a series of sermons,* 
which attracted so much attention that he has been induced to 

* Sermons on Modern Spiritualism. By A. V. Millar, O.S.C. St. Louis: B. Herder. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 



251 



publish them, declares that this religion for a religion he de- 
clares it is has made great inroads on the Christian faith in 
England. 

As a matter of fact, a little attention and inquiry would 
show that Spiritualism is, at the present time, full of vitality 
and activity, and that its vigor and growth is daily increas- 
ing. Perhaps we Catholics hear less about it than non- 
Catholics. . . . Nevertheless, there is always danger of 
unfervent and unwary Catholics being drawn into the meshes 
of this snare, and once within the snare either the fascination 
of imagining themselves to be in communication with the 
dead, or the relentless tyranny of the spirits makes it a mat- 
ter of extreme difficulty to recover themselves. There is 
abundant evidence to hand that many Catholics are thus en- 
trapped. 

The gist of Father Millar's sermons is to present the nature 
and dangers of Spiritualism in much the same light as they 
appear in Mr. G. Raupert's book The Dangers of Spiritualism. 
After all reasonable deduction is made for fraud and charlatan- 
ism, so runs the preacher's burden, there remain a mass of 
well- attested facts that can be ascribed only to preternatural 
agencies. These agencies, according to the Spiritualist claim, 
are disembodied spirits of the dead ; the fact is that they are 
diabolical. Their purpose is, by lying and by deceitfully play- 
ing on the susceptibilities of the men and women who put 
themselves in communication with them, to destroy their faith 
in God, future punishment, and all the other truths of Chris- 
tianity. These spirits parade under false names; they make 
false and often contradictory statements on religious subjects; 
if they sometimes give utterance to noble or pious sentiments, 
this is done only to inspire a confidence which they mean to 
abuse. Father Millar draws an appalling picture of the tyran- 
ny which the spirits establish over their victims. The sitter at 
the spiritualistic seance is required to hold his will in a state 
of "passivity. This passivity constitutes a very grave danger. 
By suspending the exercise of our free will frequently in this 
manner we may induce a habit, with the result that we shall 
no longer be able to resist the spirits, and we shall pass under 
their domination to the ruin of our health, our peace, and, in 
many cases, ultimately of our reason. 



252 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

For these assertions Father Millar brings forward a thick 
array of proof. On the subject of insanity as the outcome of 
spiritualistic practices, he quotes many authorities, among them 
the eminent alienist, Dr. Forbes Winslow, and one of his own 
acquaintances : 

Only a few weeks ago I was speaking to a physician who 
had been himself in charge of an asylum, and he had exactly 
the same story to tell, viz., that a considerable proportion of 
those who are confined in our asylums are there in conse- 
quence of dabbling in Spiritualism. He added that in his 
own practice, during the previous six months, he had had 
quite twenty cases of insanity arising entirely from this 
cause. 

Father Millar's denunciation of these dangerous and per- 
nicious practices is strong enough to be an efficacious deter- 
rent to any Catholic who might be tempted to make experi- 
ment of Spiritualism. Evidently, however, a promiscuous dif- 
fusion of his book might easily do as much harm as good ; 
and the same may be said of preaching sermons on Spiritual- 
ism. Where, as is the case in most instances, Catholics be- 
lieve that Spiritualism is nothing but deceit and delusion, why 
take pains to convince them that they are wrong, and thereby, 
perhaps, evoke a dangerous curiosity that may lead them to 
the mediums and the seance parlors ? 

While the literature of the results 

SOPHIA RYDER. of the Oxford movement is rich 

in the biographies of men who 

came to the Church in the wake of Newman, very few women 
have obtained a similar celebrity. It is pleasing to find the 
name of one who well deserves the honor recorded permanently 
in a modest and charming biography.* Sophia Ryder, who 
was born in 1817, was a daughter of the Honorable and Right 
Rev. Henry Ryder, Bishop, first of Gloucester, and afterwards 
of Lichfield and Coventry. Her brother, who married the 
sister of Archdeacon Manning's wife, was a friend of Manning 
and James Hurrell Froude; and when he became a rector drew 
attention to himself by his ritualistic innovations. Sophia be- 

* A Conversion and a Vocation. Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart. Westminster: Art & 
Book Company. 



1908.] 



NEW BOOKS 



253 



gan, in 1845, to pass through the great conflict that was then 
trying the souls of so many ; and, shortly after, in company 
with her brother, went to Rome. Here light grew apace, as 
she came in contact with many Catholics. Her brother ex- 
acted a promise that she would not take any decisive step for 
some time. Then he fell sick, and during his illness under- 
went a heart-searching that transformed him. 

A long and restless night was spent in a serious review of 
his own position. " What," he asked himself, " would I do 
if I were sure I was going to die of this illness ? ' ' Then he 
thought over the consequences that would follow such a step ; 
the martyrdom, not indeed of the sword like the martyrs of 
the catacombs, but one hardly less real, of bitter words and 
contempt, and loss of home and house, of the means of edu- 
cating his children, and hardest, perhaps, of all, of providing 
for their delicate mother in anything like the way she had 
been accustomed to. 

But the maxim " Seek first the Kingdom of God " pre- 
vailed. 

Next morning he awoke well, got up as usual, and his 
morning greeting to his sister was : " Well, dear, are you 
ready to enter the Church of Rome the Holy Catholic 
Church?" Sophia could hardly believe her ears. She had 
just come from Mass, and had been wondering in our lord's 
presence how she was to tell her brother that she dared not 
put off asking to be received into the Church any longer. 

Sophia was received very soon after, and in a short time 
entered the novitiate of the Order of the Good Shepherd near 
London. As a Sister of the Good Shepherd the remainder of 
her long life was passed in various places Bristol, Malta, 
Liverpool, Glasgow till at length she died at Finchley Con- 
vent, near London, at the age of eighty-four. The story of 
these years is briefly told ; for the incessant sacrifice of a Good 
Shepherd nun offers little to the chronicler except those recur- 
rent scenes of grace and repentance brought about by her 
labors for the outcast. Of these there are some touching in- 
stances in this little volume. 



254 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

This volume* is adapted to the 
BIBLE STUDIES. wants of the Sunday- School. It 

consists of a series of biographies 

of the most prominent teachers and leaders of ancient Israel, 
of St. John the Baptist, the Apostles, and the Evangelists. 
Each story is an amplification of the Bible history, accom- 
panied with elucidating observations and edifying reflections. 
The narrative flows easily in a simple, clear style ; and is in- 
terspersed with information that helps the pupil to understand 
the history. Dr. Mullany sticks stanchly to traditional exe- 
gesis, and does not perplex the pupil by even suggesting any 
of tlie debatable questions that are discussed by the most or- 
thodox Scriptural scholars. This book might do a great ser- 
vice outside the Sunday-School if it could find its way into 
the hands of the laity at large, where there is but little knowl- 
edge of the Bible. 

In many respects the history of 
LOURDES. Lourdes and its cures, by Dr. 

Bertin, f which has been trans- 
lated into English for the Westminster series, is the most sat- 
isfactory work that we possess on the subject. In many others 
an excess of emotionalism spoils the value of their evidence 
to the miraculous. 

On the other hand, Dr. Bertin, though not lacking in fer- 
vor and piety, does not allow the expression of his faith to 
interfere with his main purpose. This purpose is to set forth, 
with invincible clearness, the evidence that exists to prove, in 
the first instance, the indisputably miraculous character of the 
visions of Bernadette; and, in the second place, the equally 
miraculous nature of some of the most remarkable cures which 
have taken place at the Grotto of Lourdes, and, in one in- 
stance, at a shrine of our Lady of Lourdes in Belgium. His 
method is to state the facts that are known to have occurred, 
to cite the eyewitnesses who testified to them, and then to 
take up successively the various explanations offered by those 
who refuse to believe in any miraculous intervention. He draws 
up his case with the care of a lawyer for the laws of evidence, 

* Bible Studies. By Rev. John F. Mullany, LL.D. Syracuse : The Mason-Henry Press. 
f Lourdes. A History of Its Apparitions and Cures. By Georges Bertin. Translated by 
Mrs. Philip Gibbs. New York: Benziger Brothers. 






1908.] NEW BOOKS 255 

and with a scientist's scrupulous devotion to facts and nothing 
but facts. After relating the history of Bernadette's experi- 
ences, in the first chapter, he proceeds, in the next, to exam- 
ine it critically in order to show that she was sincere and 
could not have been the victim of hallucination. 

In the selection of cures, .all doubtful and insignificant ones 
are set aside ; such only are chosen as from the nature of the 
case compel attention. The evidence, usually that of medical 
men, witnessing to the patient's preceding condition, usually 
judged an incurable one, is first stated ; then the fact and cir- 
cumstance of the cure ; and finally, testimony from persons 
who examined the patient after the miracle had been performed. 

He disposes of the various theories that unbelievers have 
resorted to in order to gainsay the miraculous character of the 
cures suggestion, auto-suggestion, and the natural therapeutic 
quality of the water. The diseases of those patients whose 
cases he has selected, and the manner of the cures, he shows 
to be a sufficient answer to these allegations. 

No open, unbiassed mind can resist the force of this book. 
As a contemporary witness to the supernatural it is worth car 
loads of dialectic apologetics, for a certain type of mind. Ag- 
nostics, who are impervious to the classic arguments for the 
existence of God, will find here reasons for belief which, if 
they are true to their own principles, they cannot set aside. 
The supernatural character of Lourdes challenges the investi- 
gation of scientists. Yet, contrary to the first principle of their 
scientific creed, sceptical scientists refuse to examine. As the 
author of the Preface to this volume says : 

We ask that the miracles of Lourdes should not be denied 
without examination, but should be submitted to a careful 
and searching examination ; but Science, as represented by a 
very considerable number of learned men, declines to investi- 
gate at all. This refusal, this easy method of setting aside 
evidence, is so utterly unscientific as to deserve the strongest 
reprobation even of men who pretend to nothing beyond that 
amount of common sense which is supposed to be the very 
basis of all Science. 

The sceptical man of science who exhausts the vocabulary 
of contempt in scoffing at the blind prejudice of the theologian 
shows himself to be completely dominated by prejudice and 



256 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

jl 

prepossession when asked to examine the proofs of miraculous 
intervention. A striking and typical instance of this truth is 
to be found in Huxley's verdict on Lourdes. In the Life of 
Huxley there is a letter of his friend, Sir Joseph Hooker, re- 
lating to a tour they made together in France in 1873. At 
that time Lourdes was the most talked of subject everywhere 
in that country. Huxley became interested in it. Did he go 
to examine for himself, as a true scientist ? No ; " He got 
together all the treatises upon it, favorable or the reverse, that 
were accessible, and, I need hardly add, soon arrived at the 
conclusion that the so-called miracles were in part illusions and 
in part delusions." His opinion on the apparitions was as fol- 
lows : " It was a case of two peasant children sent in the hot- 
test month of the year into a hot valley to collect sticks for 
firewood washed up by a stream, when one of them, after stoop- 
ing down opposite a heat reverberating rock, was, in rising, at- 
tacked with a transient vertigo, under which she saw a figure 
in white against the rock. This bare fact being reported to 
the cure of the village, all the rest followed." Thus, with a 
wave of the hand, the apostle of fact and personal verification 
dispenses himself from living up to his professions and falls 
into the slough of apriorism. 

Since we, and everybody who 

A HAPPY HALF CENTURY, reads, welcomed Miss Repplier's 
By Agnes Repplier. delightful account of the harmless 

necessary cat, so many years have 

elapsed without any successor to the Sphinx of the Fireside, 
that one was beginning to ask whether Miss Repplier had not 
made up her mind to discontinue her pleasant, personally con- 
ducted, tours through the byways of literature. This want of 
trust is rebuked by the appearance of a little volume of essays* 
which confirms the judgment of the critic who declared that 
Miss Repplier possesses and monopolizes the almost lost art of 
essay writing. 

Her present theme is the taste for platitudes, the care of 
the commonplace, the pharisaism, the affectation and prudery, 
the turgid rhapsodies, the fripperies and frumperies, which, 
during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter 

* A Happy Half Century ; and other Essays. By Agnes Repplier, Litt.D. Boston : 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 257 

of the nineteenth century, obtained, for a number of literary 
ladies of mediocre merit, a fame which their admirers believed, 
mistakenly, would be immortal. Miss Repplier seems to have 
steeped herself in the literary history of the period. She knows 
what everybody said or wrote about anybody ; and draws out 
apposite illustration, epigram, incident, and anecdote from the 
least expected quarters. 

At her hands very badly, indeed, fare the poor friends of 
our youth, Hannah More, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Hemans, Letitia 
E. Landon, Miss Porter, " The Swan of Litchfield," and many 
lesser lights of the scribbling sisterhood to whom one of them- 
selves awarded " the proud pre-eminence which, in all the varie- 
ties of excellence produced by the pen, the pencil, or the lyre, 
the ladies of Great Britain have attained over contemporaries 
in every other country in Europe." 

This mischievous iconoclast has taken an unholy delight in 
stripping the shades of these fine writers "who delighted our 
grandmothers" of the prerogatives and perfections assigned to 
them by their contemporaries. She does not keep her irre- 
verent hands off Mrs. Montagu or even Hannah More. That 
supreme authority on literature, religion, and morality for the 
refined circles of English society, comes in for particularly dis- 
tressful handling. She says: 

Mrs. Montagu, an astute woman of the world, recognized 
in what we should now call an enfeebling propriety her most 
valuable asset. It sanctified her attack upon Voltaire, it en- 
abled her to snub Dr. Johnson, and it made her, in the opinion 
of her friends, the natural and worthy opponent of Lord 
Chesterfield. She was entreated to come to the rescue of 
British morality by denouncing that nobleman's "profligate 
letters " ; and we find the Rev. Montagu Penmngton lament- 
ing, years afterwards, her refusal "to apply her wit and genius 
to counteract the mischief Lord Chesterfield's volume had 
done." 

Then comes the turn of Miss Hannah and her admirers : 

Hannah More's dazzling renown rested on the same solid 
support. She was so strong morally that to have cavilled at 
her intellectual feebleness would have been deemed profane. 
Her advice (she spent the best part of eighty years in offering 
it) was so estimable that its genuine inadequacy was never 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 17 



258 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

ascertained. Rich people begged her to advise the poor. 
Great people begged her to advise the humble. Satisfied 
people begged her to advise the discontented. Sir William 
Pepys wrote to her in 1792 imploring her to avert from Eng- 
land the threatened dangers of radicalism and a division of 
land by writing a dialogue " between two persons of the low- 
est order," in which should be set forth the discomforts of 
land ownership, and the advantages of laboring for small 
wages at trades. This simple and childlike scheme would, 
in Sir William's opinion, go far towards making English 
workmen contented with their lot ; and might, eventually, 
save the country from the terrible bloodshed of France. 

And this incomparable tribute paid to Hannah was all ow- 
ing to her "triumphant propriety/' and because she happened 
to live in a happy age when unprofitable pietism was revered, 
and there was a universal willingness in what supposed itself 
to be the literary world to " accept a good purpose as a sub- 
stitute for good work." 

Miss Repplier feigns regret that her lines were not cast in 
those goodly times : 

A new era, cold, critical, contentious, deprecated the old 
genial absurdities, chilled the old sentimental outpourings, 
questioned the old profitable pietism. Unfortunates, born a 
hundred years too late, look back with wistful eyes upon the 
golden age which they feel themselves qualified to adorn. 

In a strain of genial satire, enlivened with an unfailing flow 
of humor, Miss Repplier discusses the literary fads of the pe- 
riod correspondence, album-making, annuals; the parental 
pride over infantile precocity ; the narrowness of the education 
supposed to be proper for a well-bred young lady ; the taw- 
dry nature of what were then called fashionable accomplish- 
ments. Miss Repplier is an omniverous reader, and a tireless 
gatherer of all sorts of unconsidered trifles which she knows 
how to weave into an entertaining essay. 

In The Coming Harvest* M. Ba- 
THE COMING HARVEST. zin draws a picture o f some as- 

pects of peasant life in France to- 

* The Coming Harvest. By Rend Bazin. Translated by Edna K. Hoyt. New York : 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 259 

day. In his own restrained, forcible manner, with a realism 
that convinces but never descends to the repulsive, he allows 
us to see with our own eyes the narrow, hopeless, sordid view 
of life which unbelief and materialism has forced upon the 
humbler rural class in France; the hate of the laborer for the 
man of family and for the man of wealth ; the unreasonable 
demands which socialistic agitators have taught him to make. 
Besides laying bare the evil, M. Bazin indicates the manner in 
which those who would strive to fight against it the aristocrat 
and the priest may best achieve their purpose. The French 
title Le Ble qui Leve offers the interpreter a choice of alter- 
natives it may mean that the present strife of classes will 
continue to grow; or, that there is a hope that, beginning to 
see their folly, the peasantry are showing some signs that they 
will return to religion. The chief character, an honest, upright 
pagan, after a varied experience of injustice and disloyalty at 
the hands of his fellows, of ingratitude from his child, is, when 
he has almost fallen into despair, drawn to religion, where he 
finds peace. 

As the light began to fade, he embraced with his glance 
the whole round hill where he was going to begin his work 
again on the morrow. The grass was beautiful. The fallow 
lands were waiting for the plough. In many a place above 
the broken lands, the grain lifted up its green point. Gilbert 
uncovered his head and he said : " It matters little now to 
live with others. Heat, cold, fatigue, or death matter little 
now. My heart is at peace." He felt a great living joy 
spring up of itself in his regenerated heart. And again he 
said : " I am old, and yet I am happy now for the first time." 

There is scarcely anything that might be called a plot; 
but M. Bazin's art renders him independent of that resource 
to woo the interest of the reader. The translation is correct 
and idiomatic. 

Again Miss Johnston takes her na- 

LEWIS RAND. tive State for the scene, and a 

By Mary Johnston. stirring phase of its political his- 

tory for the thread of her story.* 

* Lewis Rand. By Mary Johnston. With Illustrations by C. F. Yohn. New York : 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 



260 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

The time is that when the struggle was on between Federal- 
ists and Republicans; Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr flit 
across the stage, though they are not among the chief actors. 
The political situation is but an occasion to develop the main 
motive, which is to trace the influence of heredity on the char- 
acter who gives the name to the story. Lewis Rand is the 
son of a rude, violent tobacco roller, and the grandson of a 
still more questionable person. Through the kind assistance 
of Jefferson he is enabled to study law ; and his talents and 
strength of character soon raise him to eminence in legal and 
political life. He becomes the leader of the Democrat-Repub- 
licans in his county, and finds himself the successful candidate 
for a political office when he defeats a member and represent- 
ative of the aristocratic party. He falls in love with a girl of 
one of these families, and, against the violent opposition of 
her relatives, marries her. His strength of character, his suc- 
cess, his commanding position help him to maintain himself 
against the persistent hostility of his wife's aristocratic friends 
and their associates. Nevertheless he finds that he can never 
be their equal not in Virginia can the tobacco roller's son ever 
hope to stand the acknowledged social equal of the Careys and 
the Churchills. Laboring under this depressing conviction he 
falls into the temptation presented by Aaron Burr's plot. He 
will go out to the West where, in a new empire or kingdom, 
he will find an ample field for his abilities ; and where no so- 
cial distinctions, nor birth's invidious bar, shall any longer be 
a hindrance to him. The plot is discovered ; he is detained by 
a ruse ot one of his opponents from starting on the day he 
had planned. Unexpectedly, while writhing under the upset- 
ting of his plans, he meets the man who had been his wife's 
destined suitor, and who had contrived to detain him. A 
murder, and the career of Lewis Rand is over. 

Miss Johnson, rightly enough, does not believe that the 
novelist is bound to stick slavishly to history. She gives us 
some picturesque scenes of public and private Virginian life; 
she brings out with striking effect the strength of caste and 
social prejudice, as they existed a hundred years ago in the 
Old Dominion. The tragedy of Rand's life is cleverly worked 
out; though he occasionally indulges in a display of senti- 
mentality that scarcely fits the strong man's character and tedi- 
ously delays the march of the action. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 261 

It seems to us that the title of 

MESSIANIC PHILOSOPHY, this work* might have been more 

happily chosen ; but when that is 

said, we have spoken our only adverse criticism. In all the 
range of literature there is no more attractive subject to the 
professional scholar, or to the amateur, than the personality, 
the career, and the historical importance of Jesus Christ. And 
if any man is honestly asking himself the question, which the 
present author says all men are forever asking, " What am I 
to believe ? " he can adopt no surer way of coming to a sat- 
isfactory conclusion than by concentrating his attention upon 
the Christ-question. The reply to the query "What think you 
of Christ ? " is the keynote to every man's creed. 

The purpose of this book is to persuade the reader, if he 
needs persuasion, or to confirm his belief, if he already pos- 
sesses belief, that Christ is God. The method, as indicated in 
the sub -title, is not theological, and decidedly not metaphysical, 
but historical and critical. The groundwork of the argument 
is the testimony, not of the New Testament, but of the Church. 
The appeal is primarily to history ; secondarily, of course, the 
gospel data of the life and death of Christ are made use of, 
but only in their capacity as human documents; and, as a fur- 
ther concession to the critics, only those parts of the gospel 
narrative which are of undoubted authenticity are utilized. 

Such is the programme indicated by the author. He re- 
mains scrupulously faithful to it. And he has produced a 
volume which will command the attention and maintain the in- 
terest of any sincere reader endowed with ordinary intelligence. 
Unless a man have made an implicit vow within himself to es- 
chew all literature of religion he can hardly fail to fall captive 
to the fascinating simplicity and clearness of this exposition of 
the historical argument for the Divinity of Christ. If the re- 
maining volumes of the series of Expository Essays in Chris- 
tian Philosophy be as well done as this, there will remain no 
excuse for the Christian who is unprepared to defend his faith, 
or for the non- Christian who will not consider the reasonable 
grounds of Christianity. 

* Messianic Philosophy. An historical and critical examination of the evidence for th* 
Existence, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. By Gideon W. B-, 
Marsh. London and Edinburgh : Sands & Co. ; St. Louis : B. Herder. In the series of 
Expository Essay sin Christian Philosophy. Edited by Rev. Francis Aveling, D.D. 



262 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

41 

It is not always a pleasant, albeit 

A MAIDEN UP-TO-DATE, a wholesome, thing to see ourselves 
By Genevieve Irons. as others see us, and, if the Ritual- 

istic party in the Anglican Church 

could only see themselves as Miss Genevieve Irons sees them 
in her latest venture, A Maiden Up-to-Date* it might afford 
them food for profitable reflection. 

Our authoress is not unknown in the literary world, her 
previous ventures being Only a Doll and other stories for children, 
besides Leaves from a Torn Scrap Book. In her present novel 
she essays a higher flight and deals, as she says, with questions 
up-to-date. 

Miss Irons is a convert, the daughter of Prebendary Irons, 
who for many years was rector of the Anglican church adjoin- 
ing the London Oratory. She is steadily coming to the front 
as a writer who wields a facile pen in behalf of the Church of 
her forefathers. The plot of the story centers around a brother 
and sister brought up in the atmosphere of a Catholic home, 
who afterwards, through fortuitous circumstances, are obliged 
to mix with Protestant friends. As might be expected, the 
writer is thoroughly conversant with English society and the 
pictures she draws are true to fact. We are introduced to the in- 
terior of an Anglo- Catholic Ritualistic church, which looked 
so much like the real thing, yet something was lacking. Out- 
ward show and inward emptiness. " What are Anglo-Catholics ? " 
the girl asks her brother. " People who like everything in the 
Church except obedience to the Pope," he explained. Among 
up-to-date questions dealt with are The New Old Catholic 
Jansenist Church, Corporate Reunion, and Modernism. Of the 
last our heroine says: "The Devil started it in the Garden of 
Eden." 

The charm of the story is the subtle human touch with which 
the characters are drawn Lord Harleydown, the head of the 
Reunionist party, the French Abbe, who has a belief in the 
validity of Anglican Orders, the Jesuit playing with Modern- 
ism, the Westminster Abbey Dean with Broad Church proclivi- 
ties, and the Correspondent who, although a Catholic, is earn- 
ing a livelihood by besmirching a.nd belittling, for the benefit 
of English Church papers, the spiritual mother who bore him, 

* A Maiden Up-to-Date. By Genevieve Irons. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



I908.J NEW BOOKS 263 

suggest characters not altogether unfamiliar; indeed one might 
almost go so far as to identify some of them at least with 
well-known personages. If this resemblance was intended by 
the author, she can scarcely avoid stricture for havirg ascribed 
to Lord Harleydown a much less measure of probity and sin- 
cerity than he merits. 

The book will repay perusal and bear transplanting on 
American soil, for hole-and-corner meetings and coquetting with 
Catholic clergy to further the cause of Corporate Reunion are 
not unknown even in this land. 



The purpose of this handbook* is 

HISTORY OF ECONOMICS, to draw the attention of the young 
By Rev. J. A. Dewe. student to the play of economic 

causes as they have operated in 

the rise and fall of nations. It will be of service as a com- 
panion to the ordinary text-books in which, especially in the 
older ones, this feature is almost entirely neglected. Covering 
the ancient, mediaeval, and modern world in a little over three 
hundred pages, its presentation of the matter is too super- 
ficial and sketchy to qualify it as an introduction to the scien- 
tific study of economics. It will, however, awaken the young 
student's attention to the importance of economic forces ; and 
thereby help him to study his history in an intelligent way. 

Some time ago the publication in a 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. Catholic newspaper of a letter from 

a representative of Christian Sci- 
ence in defense of that belief led to a correspondence between 
the writer and the editor, Dr. Lambert, of Ingersoll fame. The 
substance of the correspondence has been edited and arranged 
in book-form. f Assertion after assertion of the Christian sci- 
entist is taken up, examined, and criticized, till its falseness, 
emptiness, or its incompatibility with other tenets of Mrs. Ed- 
dy's followers is thoroughly exposed. Many of the absurd and 
grotesque contradictions of the doctrine, and the preposterous 

* History of Economics ; or, Economics as a Factor in the Making of History. By the RCT. 
J A. Dewe, A.M. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

\ Christian Science Before the Bar of Reason. By the Rev. L. A. Lambert, LL.D. New 
York : Christian Press Association. 



264 NEW BOOKS [Nov., 

I 

abuse of the Scriptures perpetrated by Mrs. Eddy in Science 
and Health, are brought out in sharp relief. If logic had any 
sway over the followers of this lady, Dr. Lambert's book is 
sharp enough to cut off her entire party and leave her solitary 
as the sparrow on the house-top; but the Christian scientist 
is impervious to logic. 

The task undertaken by Father Bal- 
APOLOGETIC. lerini * is no easy one. It is to 

compress within the limits of a 

medium-sized volume the entire case for natural and supernatu- 
ral religion; to establish, argumentatively, the three pillars of 
theism God, freedom, and immortality ; and to set forth air- 
ply the evidences of Christianity ; besides refuting the chief 
assailants of religion. Father Ballerini's plan is excellent; and 
includes everything of moment. He writes, too, with his eye 
fixed on contemporary infidelity ; so, wasting no time upon 
ancient errors, he addresses himself to those of to-day. He 
strengthens the position of truth by refusing to defend as vital 
to Catholicism some obsolete theological views that are to be 
found in some of his predecessors. For example, on the an- 
tiquity of man he makes his own the following passage of Fa- 
ther Matiussi: "Faith tells us nothing on this matter; nor can 
we say that Scripture contains a true chronology of the human 
race. The time that elapsed from Adam to Noe, and after- 
wards from Noe to Abraham is not determined. The exact 
round number of ten generations from Adam to Noe, and of 
as many more from Noe to Abraham, gives reasonable suspi- 
cion that there was a desire to signalize some more famous 
names without descending step by step from father to son, as 
certainly St. Matthew did, counting three times fourteen gene- 
rations from Abraham to our Lord Jesus Christ." 

In the philosophical part the best of the volume Father 
Ballerini displays rare skill in putting an argument with 
lucidity and force into the smallest possible space. And when 
he makes a choice among several available arguments he usu- 
ally selects the most effective. 

* A Short Defense of Religion, Chiefly for Young People, Against the Unbelievers of Our 
Day. By Rev. Joseph Ballerini. Translated from the Italian by Rev; William McLoughlin, 
Moiuit Melleray. Dublin : Gill * Son. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 265 

If "author's translation "* signifies 

AN AMERICAN STUDENT origin and not merely approbation 

IN FRANCE. or acceptance, we must congratu- 

By Abbe Klein. Jate t h e abbe on the excellent 

English into which he has done 

La Decouverte du Vieux Monde. Our readers will perhaps recall 
a notice that appeared some months ago in these columns of 
that very entertaining little book, giving the experiences and 
impressions of a young American college man in France, 
where, under the guidance of some charming friends, he made 
close acquaintance with some of the scenery and the social life 
of France. The abbe is lively, witty, and observant. He has 
a fund of erudite information on every historic topic that turns 
up; he possesses a high talent for description. And when the 
objective is exhausted, he has an inexhaustable well of emo- 
tions which he places at his readers' disposal. His acquaint- 
ance with American ways and manners enables him frequently 
to lend an added piquancy to his descriptions of French life, 
by contrasting the Old World with the New. 

The Atlas Biblicus^ with twenty-two maps and accompany- 
ing index, by Martino Hagen, S.J., is unquestionably a most 
valuable, instructive, and useful work, and probably much the 
best of the kind that has ever been published. The index is 
not merely one of names and locations on the maps, but con- 
tains, under almost every head, valuable information concerning 
the place located. It hardly needs to be said that the mapg 
are most excellently engraved and full of detail. 

*A American Student in France. By Abbe" Felix Klein. Author's Translation 
Chicago: McClurg &. Co. 

\Atl*s Bitlicus. Edited by Martino Hagem, S.J. Paris : P. Lethielleux. 



jforeujn periodicals* 



Jhe Tablet (5 Sept.): " The Eucharistic Congress" gives a 
forecast of the great meeting. Never before outside 
Rome has there been such a gathering and in a way, it 
may be regarded as the public and official return of our 

Lord to England. " Our First Legates," by Mgr. 

Moyes, carries us back to the period of the Seventh 
General Council and the visit to England of the two 

legates. " History of the Holy Eucharist in Great 

Britain," by the late Fr. Bridgett, C.SS.R., now re-edited 
by Fr. Thurston, S.J., is spoken of as the literary monu- 
ment of the Congress. It is a mine of curious and edi- 
fying information. " The Byzantine Liturgy," by Rev. 

A. Fortescue, says that something will have been gained 
if only people stop calling it the Greek Mass. 
(12 Sept.): "The Number of the Unemployed " was 
one of the burning questions at the recent Trade Union- 
ist Congress in England. It is 8.2 per cent as com- 
pared with 3.7 per cent of last year. This refers only 

to skilled labor. " Marriage and Population in France," 

reports that the dark cioud is pierced by a gleam of hope. 
The marriage rate of last year reached a figure touched 
only three times within the century. It remains to be 
seen if the birth-rate will show a proportionate increase. 

"The Archbishop of Canterbury on the Pan- Anglican 

Congress." " The Eucharistic Congress " is dealt with 

at great length and a full report given of the four 
papers reads at the sectional meetings. 
(19 Sept.): "Lotteries and Indecent Advertisements." 
The select committee on this subject has issued its re- 
port. Legislation is needed, they think, to deal with 
prize competitions in newspapers and periodicals, while 
the vendors of indecent literature should be summarily 

punished. Under "Topics of the Day," Mr. Asquith's 

action in stopping the procession of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment at the eleventh hour is discussed. Apparently it 
was a case of stage fright suggested by the threats of 
some valiant Orangemen in the papers. The great organs 



i9o8.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 267 

of public opinion have heaped wonder and scorn upon 
him and have done something to redeem the credit of 

the nation. " The Speeches and Sermons at the Eu- 

charistic Congress " are reported in full. 

(26 Sept.): Reports a "Serious Strike in the Cotton 

Mills of Lancashire." "The Task Before Us." As a 

result of Mr. Asquith's appeal to the penal clauses of 
the Emancipation Act in forbidding the procession of 
the Blessed Sacrament, Catholics in England are called 
upon to take the field and never rest until they have 

won full liberty of public worship. " Gleanings from 

Lambeth," is a series of friendly criticisms on the action, 
or rather inaction, of the Anglican Bishops in meeting 

assembled As a "Protest Against Mr. Asquith" the 

Catholics of Newcastle have decided to vote against his 
candidate. "The Pope and Missions to Non- Catho- 
lics," gives the contents of a letter written by his Holi- 
ness to Cardinal Gibbons, approving of the non-con- 
troversial methods adopted in the holding of missions 
for non- Catholics. 

The Month (Sept.) : " The Jubilee of Pius X." gives an inter- 
esting account of the Pope's life from early childhood. 
As a priest he set himself to enkindle the religious spirit 
among the people. As a bishop he was able to carry 
this aim to a higher stage of development. As Pope 
his work, during the five years he has been on the throne, 
bears witness to this same endeavor. " To restore all 
things in Christ " is the phrase he put forth, in his first 
Encyclical, as the motto of his pontificate. In "So- 
cial work in Catholic Schools," the need is pointed out 
of teaching boys what may be called social consciousness ; 

or, in other words, the duties they owe to society. 

"The Detection of Archibald Bower, ex- Jesuit and His- 
torian," by J. H. Pollen, recalls the career of one who 
for many years, trading upon Protestant prejudice, posed 

as a martyr, only to be at length exposed Fr. Thurs- 

ton's " Mass of St. Gregory " is an explanation of Du- 
rer's well-known wood engraving. 

The Crucible (Sept.): "The Personal Note in Music," deals 
with the methods employed in teaching music in schools. 
Art for art's sake spells illusion. Art partakes of the 



POREIGN PERIODICALS [Nov., 






essence of life; and in music, which has its roots deep 
down in emotion, the personal note must be allowed ade- 
quate expression in both teacher and pupil "The Wo- 
man Question/' by Dom Lambert Nolle, O.S.B., is a 
resume of Father Rosler's book. What is the funda- 
mental position of woman in relation to man ? The ques- 
tion is answered by an appeal to Nature, History, and 
Revelation. " The Need of the Modern Catholic Woman," 
admits a " Woman Problem." Can Catholic women ig- 
nore this question ? In response the Catholic Women's 
League came into existence, having as its object the 
progress of the individual woman, the sex, and the State. 
Stanch Catholicity as opposed to Secularism is its domi- 
nant note. " An International Congress on Home Edu- 
cation," gives the programme of the forthcoming Con- 
gress to be held in Brussels and points out the part 
which Catholic women can and ought to take in it. 
The Expository Times (Sept.) : Opens with a review by the ed- 
itor of Dr. Wallace's article in 1 'he Contemporary on "The 

Present Position of Darwinism." Another review by 

the same pen is that of Dr. Schichter's " Studies in Ju- 
daism," in which he discusses the charge that Judaism 
has never produced a saint. Is it true ? Dr. Schichter 

denies it. That faith and science need not be kept in 

distinct non-communicating chambers of the mind is the 
gist of Dr. Hanzinger's pamphlet "The New Apologet- 
ic." Other articles are : " Man's Spiritual Develop- 
ment as Depicted in Christ's Parables," by R. M. Lithow. 

The "Advent of the Father," by Wm. Curtis. 

(Oct.): "Note? on Recent Exposition" includes the in- 
teresting question as to the date of the Exodus. A so- 
lution offered is that it took place when Ramses XII. 
was reigning, about 1125 B. C., some^three hundred years 
later than is generally supposed. "TheKeswick Con- 
vention " and its teaching is discussed by the editor. 
An anonymous correspondent charges it with making too 
much of the emotions ; as a result, hysterical symptoms 
are produced and insanity is not an infrequent occur- 
rence. "The Jesus- Paul Controversy" is an exami- 
nation of Wrede's work on this question. The author 
claims that there are real and important differences be- 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 269 

tween the teaching of Jesus and that of His Apostle. 

Of the historical Christ St. Paul knows nothing. A 

very favorable review is given of " The Epistle of Jude," 
by Von. F. Maier. The conclusion arrived at is that 
from internal and external evidence the Epistle is gen- 
uine. Other books reviewed are Deissmann's Light 

from the East and Dr. Alois Musil's archaeological and 
ethnological discoveries in Moab. 

The International (Sept.): "The Future of Marriage" is the 
subject of the opening article by the editor. In Teutonic 
and Anglo-Saxon countries monogamy is being under- 
mined by the enlarged possibilities of divorce, especially 

in the United States. In " The Problem of Divorce 

in France " the writer says that in France adultery takes 
the place of divorce, and is tolerated indulgently. In 
this instance the Church acts as advocatus diaboli. Mar- 
riage, he says, should be terminable at the will of the 
parties, and the details left to the jurisdiction of the 

Courts. " The Macedonian Question," ever a troublous 

one, has assumed a new aspect in the light of the recent 
revolution. Among the contemplated reforms is the in- 
stitution of a parliament. The ultimate success of the 
constitution is still doubtful, but the decision of the 
Great Powers is to give the young Turkey party a free 
hand. 

The International Journal of Ethics (Oct.) : " The Morals of An 
Immoralist," by Alfred W. Benn, is an attempt to show 
that Friedrich Nietzsche, though habitually posing as an 
immoralist, was in reality Germany's truly ethical genius, 
and that when he speaks of " moralin " as a deadly 
poison, it is only his paradoxical way of expressing him- 
self. The article is to be continued. "Savonarola" 

is one of a series of lectures delivered by the late Tho- 
mas Davidson. It begins by giving a picture of the 
mental and moral condition of the people among whom 
the friar was called to labor. His day witnessed a new 
movement toward personal liberty, and Savonarola, the 
lecturer says, tried to bring this about under the guid- 
ance of the Church, hence his failure. There is no 

great word of which the content has altered more than 
the word "justice"; so says Miss Stawell in "The 



270 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Nov., 

$ 

Modern Conception of Justice." As a result two new 
ideas have emerged; the first, that suffering by the in- 
nocent is not "unjust," when it is necessary; and the 
second, that the reward the good man works for is the 

justification of the many. Other articles are "The 

Dramatic Elements of Experience," by Professor Baillie. 
" Ethics and Law," by Charles D. Super. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Review (Sept.) : R. Fullerton's article 
on " The Origin of Morality " goes to prove that, apart 
from revealed religion, we have no right to predicate mo- 
rality for man. "' Appearance ' and 'Reality/" part 

II., by P. Coffey, examines the sources of the Agnos- 
ticism and Phenomenism of the Modernists, and answers 
the question, Can the human mind know with certitude 
the nature of a Material Universe distinct from itself? 

" The Tabernacle in the Middle Ages." The idea 

connected with reservation in the Middle Ages was that 
of viaticum not of worship ; so we find the place of 
reservation always separate from the altar, sometimes 
in the form of the Ambry, or again suspended over 
the altar in a hanging pyx. As the practice of frequent 
communions began to increase the custom was intro- 
duced of providing a receptacle for the reserved Sacra- 
ment on the altar itself. 

Le Correspondant (10 Sept.): Religious Affairs and the Civil 
Constitution of the Clergy passed by the French As- 
sembly on July 12, 1790, are treated in the article "Pius 

VI." "In the Crimea," apropos of the fifty- third an- 

niversary of the capture of Sebastopol, Prince Bariat- 
insky, an eye-witness, gives a vivid account of that 

memorable struggle. "The Insufficiency of Positivist 

Morals" is discussed by Clodius Piat. He regrets that, 
after the moral conditions have been studied for so many 
years, the world is no more enlightened than it is. 

" The Masters of Oceanica," which treats of the 

struggle of the Japanese for the mastery oi the East, is 
concluded in this number. 

(25 Sept.): "The Eucharistic Congress" is treated from 
three points of view. The work accomplished; Its value 
as a Catholic manifestation ; and The opinion it created. 
"The General Confederation of Labor," which the 









1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 271 

writer, H. de Laregle, claims is hostile to the social 
order, has as its object the uniting of the various social- 
istic bodies. The C. G. T. is not organized like the 
English labor unions on economic grounds. It is a rev- 
olutionary organization. "Austro- Hungary and Rus- 
sia and the Eastern Question/' pictures the present con- 
dition of affairs brought about by the coming into power 

of the new Liberal party in Turkey. "The Pure Food 

Congress," which met last September in Geneva, is but 
the first of several such conferences, having as their 
object the protection of the public against fraud and 

adulteration in articles on sale for food or drink. 

" The Sale of the Church's Property in the Revolutionary 
Period,' 1 is shown to have been in the long run dis- 
astrous to the State. 

Etudes (5 Sept.): "The Teaching of Scholastic Metaphysics," 

by Paul Geny. Eugene Portalie, "The Herzog-Dupin 

Question and the Criticism of M. Turmel," in the His- 
tory of the Papacy considers five absolutely anti-Catholic 
conclusions arrived at by M. Turmel upon the papacy to 
the end of the fourth century. The author next takes up 
"Special Studies of Many Dogmas." The Trinity and 

Original Sin are treated. "The Sanctity of Joan of 

Arc and Her Place in History," by Chanoine Dunand. 
The article is comprised chiefly of extracts from writers 
of the sixteenth century down to our own day. The 
object of the article is to mark with precision the place 
which the sanctity of La Pucelle occupies in history." 
(20 Sept.): "The Pan- Anglican Congress and the Lam- 
beth Conference," by J. de la Serviere. The author, 
after a short introduction on the opening of the Con- 
gress, considers the work done in the various sections. 
He then enters into a lengthy discussion of each of these 
questions in detail. The conclusions to be gathered from 
the work of the Congress are to form a separate article. 

" The Herzog-Dupin Question and the Criticism of 

M. Turmel," by Eugene Portalie. The matter under 
discussion is the future life and the eternity of hell. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (i Sept.): In the second of a series 
on the "Secret of the Woman Question," Theodore Joran 
treats the subject from a social and economic standpoint. 



272 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Nov., 

i 

The writer's conclusion is that feminisme is anti-social 

and retrogressive. In " Science or Romance," J. 

D'Orlye criticizes the opinion recently advanced by Mr. 
Clodd and Grant Allan that it is impossible for the 
human mind to rise to the invisible, or that man can 
attain to no truth other than that of the material order. 

Dom Rabory contributes another article on " Princess 

Louise of Conde." The life and deeds of "Bishop 

Freppel of Angers*' are given an extended notice. 

"In the Eucharistic Fast" Ch. Bujon urges the miti- 
gation of the discipline of the fast before Mass and 
Communion. 

(15 Sept.): Under the caption "Towards the Abyss," M. 
Arthur Savaete criticizes the recent celebrations at Que- 
bec. He maintains that there are evidences of European 
Liberalism in the ranks of French Canadian politicians. 
The " Secret of the Woman Question " is con- 
tinued. In " Science or Romance " we are shown how 

futile are the efforts of those materialists who strive to 

replace religion by science. In " Modernism and the 

Church " Ch. Beaurredon outlines the position of Mod- 
ernists towards the Gospel of St. John and the Church. 
"The French Apologists in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury." One of the noblest of them was Fr. de Ravig- 
nan, whose life and labors are published in this number. 
Revue Pratique d ' Apologetique (i Sept.): In "The Herzog- 
Dupin Question " A. Baudrillart comments briefly on the 
publication in one volume by M. 1'Abbe Saltet, of the 
controversy concerning the authorship of two Modernis- 
tic works published over the psuedonyms Herzog and 

Dupin. In "Science and Religion After a Recent 

Book " J. Legendre writes of a recent work by M. Bou- 
troux entitled A New Recoil in Independent Criticism. 

P. Cruveilhier, on the question of " Monotheism in 

Israel," reviews the theory of Baintsch, a professor in 
Jena, on the evolution of Monotheism among the Israel- 
ites. A. Durand continues his review of M. Loisy's 

" Synoptic Gospels." 

(15 Sept.): The first twenty. five pages contain the con- 
clusion of T. de Grandmaison's articles on "The Devel- 
opment of Christian Dogma." Under the general head- 



I908.J FOREIGN PERIODICALS 273 

ing of "The Prophetic Argument/' J. Touzard discusses 
the " Messianic Preparation," especially in the light of 

present-day apologetics. Under "Information" are 

found, apropos of a conference by M. Thureau-Dangin, a 
few words on the providential design in the fact that 
Pusey and Keble should be left to die outside the unity 

of the Church. "The Philosophic Chronicle" contains 

a review of a work by C. Sentroul on The Object of Meta- 
physics According to Kant and According to Aristotle ; of 
one by Emile Boutroux entitled Science and Religion in 
Contemporaneous Philosophy ; and of one by Harold Hoff- 
ding on the Philosophy of Religion. 

Annales De Philosophic Chretienne (Sept.): "The Physical Theory 
from Plato to Galileo," by P. Duhem, brings this con- 
tinued article to a close. " Religious Experience and 

Contemporary Protestantism," a continued article by D. 
Sabatier. Modern Protestantism distinguishes between 
faith and creed; the first is an act of the heart and 
will, the second an act of the intellect. That which 
saves the soul is faith not dogma. Instead of saying 
that dogma makes the Christian, rather should we say 
that each Christian makes his own dogma, and that in- 
terior experience is the source and essence of religion. 

Apropos of a recent book, M. Duchemin writes on 

"The Religious Problem in Literature." The book in 
question is Books and Questions of To-Day, by M. Giraud, 
who maintains that although the principal writers of to- 
day are not interested in religious questions, still the 
religious problem, properly presented, is the most im- 
portant that can appeal to the human conscience. 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach (14 Sept.): J. Bessmer, S.J., writes 
on " The Morbid Impediments to Freedom of Will," and 
explains of what assistance modern psychopathology may 
be to moral theology. He proves that the moralists' 
division of impediments to the freedom of will into four 

classes is in perfect harmony with modern science. 

H. A. Krose, S.J., discusses the "Project of Garden 

Cities," as exhibited by Ebenezer Howard. M. Mesch- 

ler, S.J., "Asceticism of St. Ignatius." H. Pesch, 

S.J., criticizes Malthus' doctrine on the "Principle of 
Population." He shows his fears as to the over- increase 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 18 



274 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Nov., 

of population to be without foundation. V. Cathrein 

S.J., in an article on " Punishment of Animals," refutes 
Ed. Westermark who, in a recent publication, main- 
tained that primitive man esteemed animals as his equals, 
charged with the same moral responsibility. Wester- 
mark's reasoning is shown to be contrary to common 
sense. 

La Democratic Chretienne (Sept.) : " Montalembert and the So- 
cial Question," discusses Montalembert's attitude towards 
the relation of economic liberalism to liberty. If he 
decried existing conditions in his day it was not because 
of any anti-social motive, but for the purpose of apply- 
ing a remedy. A controversy carried on by two So- 
cialist deputies, as to what extent Socialists should par- 
ticipate in elections, is reprinted from the Reveil du 

Nord. " The Resolutions Passed by the Tertiaries of 

St. Francis," at their recent convention, are given in 
full. 

La Civilta Cattolica (5 Sept.): Contains "The Encyclical of 
Pius X." addressed to the entire Catholic Clergy. In 
it he extols both the " passive " and the " active " vir- 
tues, and warns the clergy, while working for others, 

not to neglect the virtues which perfect the man. 

" The National Character and the Catechism." The war 
to-day is against the Catechism as being destructive 
of the national character in Italy. It is an old accu- 
sation revived by the adversaries of Catholicism, that 
the action of the Church has always been contrary to 
the spirit, the character, and the principles of the nation, 
seeking, by its very nature, to suppress all that is indi- 
vidual. Machiavelli attributes their spirit of depression 
to the want of patriotism in the ancient Italians, and 
also to their political divisions, fomented by the Church 
to impede the national unity. Prof. Harnack says Cathol- 
icism is the continuation of the Ancient Roman Empire 

and the Pope the successor of Caesar. "The Human 

Element" in Sacred Eloquence. A description of the 
splendid and well marked difference in pulpit oratory 
when art and zeal are properly united, and artificial ora- 
tory, which charms only the ears and stirs the imagin- 
ation, but leaves the heart cold and the will uneffected. 



FOREIGN PERIODICALS 275 

"The Russian Church," a story of that church and 

various manifestations of its life in the brief period of 

reform during the two years 1905 and 1906, after which 

it seemed to return to the ancient political and religious 

servility. 

(19 Sept.): "The First Centenary of Bettinelli" an 

Italian author, a description of his life, his works, and 

their influence. Born at Mantua, July 18, 1718, died 

Sept. 13, 1808. " Modernism, Critical and Historical," 

is continued at length in this number. " Vanven- 

argues and the Social Question/' is a continuation on 
the study of the moral problem. " Preaching Chris- 
tianity in China," is concluded in this issue. "The 

Enchiridion." There is a new edition just out which 
makes the tenth of this most celebrated work. 

Revista Internazionale (August): "Political Interests of Italy 
in the Transportation of Emigrants," by R. Pesciolini. 
Three interests enter into consideration: those which 
concern the emigrants, the State, and the mercantile 

marine. In the first installment of the article, " Slavery 

in the Modern Age," F. Ermini takes as his theme 
the enslavement of the Indians of America and of the 
Negroes of Africa. He lays particuiar stress upon the 
cruelty of Christian peoples in their dealings with the 
natives of America and Africa. Other articles: "The 

Example of Our Ancestors," by M. Libelli. "The 

'Social Week* of Marseilles," by V. Bianchi- Cagliesi. 

Razon y Fe (Sept.) : L. Murillo writes about the Genesis nar- 
rative of the Creation. He asserts that Moses did not 
share the common opinion of his day, which looked on 
the firmament as a solid structure separating the waters 
on earth from vast bodies of water above the earth. 
According to our author, Moses meant the atmosphere 
when he wrote of the firmament, and the moisture in 
the rainclouds when he wrote of the waters above the 

earth. E. Ugarte de Ercilla writes again about 

Modernistic Philosophy, criticizing its psychological tenets 
as the offspring of Kantian and Spencerian philosophy. 
Its psychology is, in his judgment, the heart of Modern- 
ism. E. Portillo continues his study of the eighteenth 

century difficulties between the Church and Spain. 



276 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Nov., 

l 

Joaquin M. de Barnola gives a sketch of the commission 
recently established in Spain for the study of animal 

life in the ocean. Saj. pays an excellent tribute to 

the personal character of the artist Monasterio. 
Espana y America (i Sept.): Anacleto Orejon discusses Father 
Prat's " implicit quotation " theory, and explains certain 
apparent contradictions in Scripture in such wise as to 
withdraw their support from that theory. When Gene- 
sis, vii. 10, says that the deluge began seven days after 
Noah and his family entered into the Ark, and verse 
13 says that the deluge began on that very day, one is 
confronted with a difficulty ; but it vanishes when one 
stops to realize that it must have taken seven days to 
get all the animals into the Ark. The different state- 
ments as to the duration of the flood (Genesis vii., 4, 
12, 17, and 24; viii. 3) are not really contradictory, for 
the sacred text does not say that the flood abated after 
forty days. By holding that the rain fell continuously 
for forty days, and that it was 150 days before the 
waters began to subside, we reconcile both texts in a 

most reasonable fashion. " The Esthetic Ideas of St. 

Augustine" are discussed by Father Negrete. "The 

Art of Romero de Torres," by Fray Meliton. Arti- 
cles on " Godoy and his Age," and on " The Needs of 
the Spanish Stage," are continued from previous num- 
bers. 

(15 Sept.): "The Actual State of International Law," 
by Father Jose Maria Alvarez. This discourse was de- 
livered at the opening of the academic year of 1908 in 

the University of Cuzco. Father Hospital writes about 

Augustinian missions in the Far East. Felipe Robles 

and Father A. Blanco respectively continue their arti- 
cles on " The Philosophy of the Verb," and " The Early 
Systems of Weights and Measures." 



Current Events. 

It will be remembered that some 
France. time ago a law was passed by the 

French Assembly to secure a day 

of rest for the workingman, who had been deprived of it for 
so long a time by the effects of the Revolution. The enforce- 
ment of the law has encountered a good deal of opposition, 
but little by little its observance has been secured. The va- 
rious interests of the different trades had to be consulted ; but 
the result has been so satisfactory that the Paris Sunday, so 
far as life and movement in the streets is concerned, is now 
almost as dull as the London Sunday. Tourists, it is said, do 
not like it, but those who formerly had to work all the week 
appreciate the change, as they experience its beneficial effects. 
The government has once more formulated its policy with 
reference to the labor questions, which have been causing so 
much trouble. The General Confederation of Labor has been 
the chief source of trouble advocating, as it has done repeat- 
edly, the use of violence for securing what it deems the rights 
of the workingmen. Frightened by the proceedings of the con- 
federation, pressure has been put upon the government to sup- 
press this noxious body altogether, to take away the right to 
form unions at all, and to make strikes unlawful. Between 
these two courses the government has taken the middle way. 
They will enforce the law against all who have recourse to vio- 
lence; and, on the other hand, they will leave intact the right 
of combination and the right to strike, the only weapon of the 
working classes. The advocates of violent methods form, it is 
said, a very small minority of the people, the mass of whom 
are patient, yet still working quietly for the amelioration of 
their position. 

The officer who, it may be remembered, shot Major Drey- 
fus on the occasion of the transfer of the ashes of Zola to the 
Pantheon, has been brought to trial and, strange to say, ac- 
quitted. He pleaded that the act was purely symbolical of his 
love of the army and of his dislike of its being obliged to take 
part in the ceremony. " It was for the moral salvation of 
France, it was for her honor that I acted," he declared before 
the Court. The jury, by acquitting him, seems to have en- 



278 CURRENT EVENTS [Nov., 

dorsed this strange method of working for the moral salvation 
of the country. The loud cheers with which the acquittal was 
received may or may not indicate the judgment of the people 
in general. 

It is now asserted that when King 
Germany. Edward VII. met the German Em- 

peror at Cronberg, in August last, 

definite proposals for the limitation of armaments by interna- 
tional agreement were made by the King ; and that the Em- 
peror replied that, so far as Germany was concerned, no such 
proposal could be accepted. " Peace but no limitation of arm- 
aments " was the declaration made by the Emperor subse- 
quently at Strassburg. This decisive utterance has cleared the 
air; for, if Germany will not consent, it would be foolish even 
to propose a limitation to any other Power. 

That source of unrest for the whole of Europe, the Pan- 
German League, has been holding its annual Congress. With 
the exception of the Polish Expropriation Law, and the Law 
which makes it obligatory to use the German language at all 
public meetings, the President of the Congress found little to 
commend in the action of the government. In particular its 
foreign policy was condemned as unworthy of a nation which 
numbered sixty- three millions, its diplomats were incapable and 
ought to be superseded. Of this inefficiency Morocco was a 
striking example. Great Britain, France, and Russia were called 
Germany's enemies and neighbors. While the German people, 
he declared, did not desire it, in a good cause a war would be 
welcomed by them as a valuable antidote to the enervating 
materialism of a long period of peace. Such a good cause 
would be the attempts which it is said are being made to put 
Germany in the background. 

The Social Democrats have also been holding their annual 
Congress. It does not speak well for a quiet life under a So- 
cialist regime, should one ever come, that even at present, when 
still in face of the enemy, the Socialists cannot maintain peace 
among themselves. Their meetings are largely devoted to the 
attempt to settle internal squabbles. The recent Congress gave 
most of its time to the condemnation of the Socialist members 
of the Bavarian and Baden Diets who had taken part in divi- 
sions on the year's Estimates. The traditional attitude has 



i9o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 279 

been one of abstention of not touching the unclean thing 
and many of the Socialists are as ardent defenders of tradi- 
tional methods and of the maintenance of discipline as it is 
possible to desire. The innovators were accordingly condemned. 
The Congress, sad to say, wound up in the wildest uproar, 
amidst shouts of "sneak," "spy," "tale-bearer/ 1 "blackguard." 
Are these the prophets of the coming era ? 

The German Navy League also has its own troubles. A 
conflict has arisen between the extreme supporters of the for- 
mer President, General Keim, and the leaders of the Bavarian 
section. This has not prevented, however, a united demand 
for a still further extension of the Navy and a consequent in- 
crease of expense. An agitation is to be undertaken for the 
building of another battleship as well as of six new cruisers of 
the most modern type. 

But where is the money to come from ? This is, perhaps, 
the question that causes the greatest anxiety to the powers 
that be in Germany. They recognize that no less than 125,- 
000,000 of additional annual income must be provided. This 
is the question which will occupy the attention of the approach- 
ing meeting of the Reichstag. Various foreshadowings of the 
government proposals have seen the light; but until they are 
laid before the Parliament they are more or less conjectural. 

It would seem that Alsace at all events large numbers of 
Alsatians have definitely accepted its incorporation into the 
German Empire. The Emperor has recently paid a visit to 
the Reichsland, and so great was the enthusiasm displayed 
by the population that it was like a triumphal progress. In 
every town and hamlet the bells rang peals, decorations were 
put up, and immense offerings of flowers and of the products of 
the country were made to him. 

One of the smaller countries of 
Denmark. Europe, and one generally con- 

sidered to be in a remarkable de- 
gree the abiding place of honest, frugal, and industrious people, 
has been brought prominently into public notice by misdoings 
which were thought to be characteristic of larger countries, 
that need not be mentioned. A person who, until last Jan- 
uary, held the position of Minister of Justice in the Danish 
Cabinet, has been arrested for forgery and the sum involved 



2 8o CURRENT EVENTS [Nov., 

j 

runs into the millions. The victims of this highly- placed 
scoundrel are found chiefly among the peasants. 

The Parliament of Portugal has 
Portugal. been holding prolonged sessions, 

but the debates have, as a rule, 

been about sordid questions which have but little interest to the 
world at large. There seems little reason to doubt that the 
unpopularity of the late King was largely due to his desire 
to increase his wealth. The present King, profiting by exper- 
ience, is acting in a spirit of generosity towards the nation. 
He has transferred to the State, for national purposes, the Royal 
residences of Belem, Caxias, and Queluz, and has acquiesced 
in the limitation of his civil list to a thousand dollars a day. 

The prospect for a settlement of 
Morocco. the Moroccan question is fairly 

bright. If Germany ever intended 

seriously to raise the question again, she has thought better 
of it. The return of her Consul to Fez was declared to spring 
from no desire to separate herself from the rest of the Powers, 
and the somewhat hasty announcement of her wish that Mulai 
Hafid should be promptly recognized did not indicate any in- 
tention of superseding France and Spain as the representa- 
tives of Europe under the Algeciras Act. The two last-named 
Powers accordingly have been left to take the necessary steps. 
They have sent a circular letter laying down the conditions 
upon which the new Sultan will be recognized. The most 
important of these conditions is that he shall accept all the 
obligations which his deposed brother, Abdul Aziz, had ac- 
knowledged under the Act which now not only regulates the 
relations of Morocco with the rest of the world, but which 
also forms the guarantee for the integrity of his Empire. This 
Mulai Hafid did before any demands were sent to him. To 
one of the proposed conditions, however, he may not be will- 
ing so easily to give his consent. His success in his conflict 
with his brother was, in a large measure, due to the fact that he 
was able to make the Moors believe that Abdul Aziz had given 
up the country to the enemies of their religion, and was, 
therefore, a betrayer of their most sacred interests. It was 
this, more than anything else, that led them to flock to his 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 281 

standard. One of the conditions laid down by France and 
Spain is that he should formally and officially disavow this 
Holy War to which he owes his success. That Germany, in 
the consent which she has given to the proposals of the two 
Powers, should suggest a modification of this demand, and thus 
make it easier for Mulai Hafid to accept the conditions, does 
not indicate any hypercritical spirit on her part. France and 
Spain demand the payment of the expenses which they have 
incurred; to this also Germany consents. Abdul Aziz seems 
to have recognized the fact that he is hopelessly beaten, and 
to be willing to retire into private life. He, perhaps, deserves 
a better fate, for he was one of the very few rulers who was 
more anxious to effect reforms for the benefit of his people, 
than were the people to receive the benefit of the reforms. 
He had not, however, energy sufficient to resist the all-powerful 
corruption which formed an effectual bar to all his efforts. 

The loyalty of France to the engagements she has entered 
into, not to seek her own ends in Morocco and to retire as 
soon as order has been restored and the police force organ- 
ized, has been manifested by the fact that the evacuation of 
Casablanca has already begun, and unless some untoward event 
happens will soon be completely accomplished. All Europe, in- 
cluding even Germany, appears now to recognize the good 
faith of the government. Unfortunately the prospect of a 
settlement may be blighted by " incidents " such as the one 
which recently took place at Casablanca; but where good will 
exists, a way will be found. 

The important events which have 
The Near East. more recently taken place in the 

Turkish Empire should not put 

out of remembrance an event of a less sensational character 
which took place before. The opening of the Hedjaz railway 
has brought one of the holy cities of Islam into short com- 
munication of Damascus, and when the gap has been filled be- 
tween the latter city and the railway which now extends 
through the greater part of Asia Minor, railway communication 
will be open with Constantinople, and consequently with the 
rest of Europe. Hitherto the city of Medina, the present ter- 
minus of the railway, has been almost as secluded from the 
Christian world as Lhassa itself. Its minarets have, so far as 



282 CURRENT EVENTS [Nov., 

is known, been seen in modern times by only one avowed 
Christian not in Moslem service. In fact, in the making of 
the new railway, while the larger part of the line was under 
the supervision of a German, the part in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of Medina was made by Turks exclusively. What 
will happen after this railway is opened and under the new 
regime no one can tell. 

The circumstances under which the railway was made are 
scarcely less remarkable than the fact of its having been made. 
Its course lies for hundreds of miles through a desert. The 
funds were raised not with a view to gain, but by the sub- 
scriptions of devout Moslems, its initiator being the Sultam 
himself, who made the appeal for funds as for a holy and 
sacred object. The circumstances attending the celebration of 
its completion were perhaps the strangest of all, at least to the 
Sultan. Every station along the line was decorated with ban- 
ners bearing the device strange to Turkey : " Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity," as a sign of rejoicing for the advent of constitu- 
tional goverment. One of the speakers at the opening ceremony 
declared that it was the Prophet himself who had not suffered the 
railway to reach the Holy City before the Khalif had granted a 
Constitution to his people. The inauguration took place on 
the ist of September, and a long telegram describing it ap- 
peared in the London Times on the 3d. This telegram was 
the first ever sent from the burial place of Mahomet to a jour- 
nal published in a Christian land, and most probably the first 
ever sent to any newspaper. 

The future will reveal the effects of the railway. Soldiers 
assert that it will increase the power of the Sultan, enabling 
him to bring easily to the front the Arabs who dwell in the 
peninsula, A more pleasing prospect was presented by one 
of the speakers at the opening ceremony. He declared that 
the line would transform the ruined towns into rich oases, 
civilize the wild nomads, and enrich the fatherland with new set- 
tlements. 

Unless the indefensible conduct of Austria and Bulgaria 
drives Turkey back under despotic rule an event which at 
first seemed all too probable the elections will be taking place 
for the new Parliament during the present month. These elec- 
tions will be controlled by the same Committee of Union and 
Progress to which the restoration of the Constitution is due, 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 283 

and which numbers no fewer than 80,000 of the best educated 
of the Empire. The proceedings of this Committee have been 
characterized by so great a degree of wisdom and moderation 
as to astonish the whole world, especially in view of the pro- 
vocation with which it has met. In only one respect did it 
pass due bounds. One of the many curses of Turkey under 
the absolutist regime was the almost innumerable host of officials 
who lived upon the people. Vast numbers of these were dis- 
missed in the first days of the revolution ; so many indeed, that 
they were becoming a rallying point for the disaffected. The 
Committee, however, wisely staid its hand in due time, and 
has left the Executive to manage things in its own way. One 
of the most remarkable things about the change of regime in 
Turkey has been the fact that, with a single exception, only one 
of the many malefactors has lost his life, although a number of 
them are awaiting trial and due punishment, it is to be hoped, 
for their misdeeds. The Sultan himself has voluntarily dis- 
gorged a large amount of his ill-gotten gains. 

The declaration by Bulgaria of her independence and the 
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria have, of 
course, surpassed in interest and importance every other recent 
event. How long behind the scenes these transactions have 
been in preparation we do not yet know; but it may be well 
to give a resume of the facts that are known. Upon the grant- 
ing of the Constitution Turks and Bulgarians fraternized as cor- 
dially as did the other races. A series of visits, in fact, took 
place of Bulgarians to Constantinople and of Turks to Bul- 
garia. The first step in the wrong direction was taken by 
Turkey. To a dinner given by the Foreign Minister to the 
representatives of the Powers the Agent of Bulgaria was not 
invited. This was contrary to the custom which had existed 
hitherto, and was said to be intended as a clear indication that 
Bulgaria was to be treated, as in fact she was, as a vassal state. 

Bulgaria keenly resented this treatment, and when the strike 
broke out upon the Oriental Railway, a part of which passes 
through Eastern Rumelia on its way from Vienna to Constan- 
tinople, that part was seized by Bulgaria to be worked by the 
railway staff of the army ; and when the strike came to an 
end, she persistently refused to restore the railway to the Com- 
pany. This was nothing less than robbery on a large scale, 
for the railway's rights in Bulgaria were legally secured ; and 



284 CURRENT EVENTS [Nov., 

as its owners were largely German, and its managers largely 
Austrian, it brought from their governments public remon- 
strances. With reference to Austria, at all events, it may be 
doubted in the light of subsequent events whether these re- 
monstrances were sincere. Betore Prince Ferdinand declared 
himself Tsar of the Bulgarians he had been received at Buda- 
pest with regal honors by the Emperor Francis Joseph, and it 
can readily be believed that, as is now said, a secret treaty 
had been concluded between the Prince and the Emperor. A 
few days afterwards Bulgaria's independence was declared, and 
almost simultaneously Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed. 

Both of these transactions are flagrant breaches, not merely 
of the somewhat vague provisions which are called international 
law, but of the express stipulations of the Berlin Treaty, which 
forms the basis of any rights that Austria or Bulgaria can 
claim to possess. Of late sympathy and respect have been 
accorded to the Emperor- King on the occasion of his Diamond 
Jubilee. It is almost a pity that he has lived to see this 
event, for he has brought a stain upon his old age which only 
revives the memory ot many like stains upon the house of 
Habsburg. The worst of it is that of late these attempts at 
unjust aggrandizement have been failures, so much so that 
Austrian shortsightedness has become proverbial. The present 
annexation does but add to the number of the Serbs which 
are already comprised in the Empire, and has driven to ex- 
asperation the neighboring kingdom of Servia. 

But what seems to us the worst feature of all is the time 
which has been chosen. The grant of a Constitution to Turkey 
was just giving good ground for hope that the millions of the 
human race who had so long been groaning under a heartless 
despotism were to receive some relief from their long-endured 
misery. The action of Austria and of Bulgaria was the best 
means that could possibly have been taken to overturn the 
new regime and to restore the old. Fortunately the good 
sense of the Young Turks restrained them from declaring war, 
and the support which has been given to them by France and 
Great Britain render such a declaration improbable. The con- 
ference of the Great Powers, which it is expected will take 
place, will tax all the statesmanship existent at the present 
day to find a definite and peaceful settlement of the many ques- 
tions which have been raised. 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 285 

The advent of freedom seems long 
Russia. deferred. Notwithstanding all the 

assurances which have been given 

by M. Stolypin, repression is still the normal practice. Thou- 
sands of girl students have been summarily excluded from the 
Universities, and all the professors who belonged to the Con- 
stitutional Democratic Party have been dismissed. The news- 
papers which presumed to criticize these gentle methods have 
been fined. A severe outbreak of cholera has revealed the 
criminal inefficiency of the constituted authorities. 

The annexation of the Congo has 

Belgium. become an accomplished fact by 

the vote of the Senate on the 9th 

of September. All difficulties, however, are not yet surmounted. 
Other Powers, particularly Great Britain, claim the right to 
recognize the transfer of the Free State, and as a condition of 
recognition to pass judgment upon the adequacy of the safe- 
guards provided for the well-being of the natives. The Congo 
State, it is argued, was the artificial creation of the Acts of 
Berlin and Brussels; the stipulations of these Acts have been 
systematically violated under King Leopold's personal rule. 
Belgium must {give security that such violations will not take 
place in the future. There are Belgians who demur to this; 
who maintain that all that Belgium will have to do will be to 
announce the fact that the Congo State has ceased to exist as 
an independent political community, and has become a Belgian 
colony. The government itself has so far not given more tha 
general assurances, and whether a conflict will arise when more 
definite conditions are demanded, remains to be seen. 



t. 

A 



- THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

ABBOT GASQUET took tor his subject at a recent lecture in Rome: 
"The Literary Life of Blessed Thomas More." As a master of 
English his works are properly regarded as models of the language. Many 
of the colloquialisms in daily use not to care a fig, not worth a button are 
traced to his writings. To Utopia, the most popular of his works, a special 
interest is attached, in view of modern theories concerning the rights of 
property. The late William Morris, the well-known Socialist, art writer, 
and poet, thought he saw in Utopia a defence of some principles approved 
by modern writers. 

Regarding the attitude of the Church towards intellectual progi ess at 
the time of the so-called Reformation, Abbot Gasquet said that a great deal 
of misconception had arisen even among educated people. It is charged 
that the Church was opposed to the new learning. Certainly it was ; but 
what was meant by the new learning? Any real acquaintance with the 
literature of the sixteenth century is sufficient to place beyond all manner of 
doubt that the meaning given to the term in the days of More was alto- 
gether different from that which it has to-day. It meant at that time the 
new doctrines of Luther, which were then being introduced into England. 
It had absolutely nothing to do with anything else. 

To say that the Church was opposed to the new learning, is simply an- 
other way of saying that the Church was opposed to Lutheranism. Blessed 
Thomas More himself lost his fortune and his life in opposing it, and no 
Englishman of his day could compare with him for intellectual gifts. His 
friend Erasmus, \ihom many regard as one of the pioneers of the Reforma- 
tion, was equally against it. Blessed Thomas More tells us how he exam- 
ined the writings of Erasmus, and failed to find anything which would indi- 
cate that he was on the side of the Reformers. To say, therefore, that the 
Church was opposed to intellectual progress, because it was in opposition to 
the new learning, is to display an ignorance of the terminology of the time. 


The following statement appeared in the final number of the New York 
Review : 

With this issue, which concludes Vol. III., the New York Review ceases 
publication. 

At its inception three years ago its editors promised to present the best 
work of Catholic scholars at home and abroad on theological and other 
problems of the present day. It is the keeping of that promise, not the 
breaking of it, that is the cause of the suspension of the Review. For the 
number of Catholics interested in questions which are deemed of importance 
by the thinkers of the present generation and which will be of vital conse- 
quence to all classes in the next has been found to be so small that it does 
not justify the continuance of this publication. It would be possible, per- 
haps, to treat the same topics in a more popular style, but the editors are 
strongly ot opinion that new and difficult problems should be discussed in a 
way that will attract the attention of only trained and scholarly minds. Or 
the scope of the Review might be changed, but this would bring it into need- 
less competition with other Catholic periodicals which are doing excellent work 
in their chosen departments. 



[Nov., 1908.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 287 

A newspaper report which has obtained wide circulation renders it neces- 
sary in justice to our ecclesiastical superiors and to ourselves, to make a fur- 
ther statement. Neither the New York Review, nor any issue of it, nor any 
article published in it has ever been made the object of official condemnation 
or censure by any authority, local or general, in the Catholic Church. It is 
now suspending publication not by command of authority, but by the deci- 
ion of its editors, and for the reasons set down. 

It only remains to return sincere thanks to the subscribers who have 
given their loyal support to the enterprise ; and especially to the contributors, 
who have given of their best so generously, with little or no recompense, 
save the consciousness of doing their duty in the cause of religion and learn- 
ing. 

* * 

James Bryce, the British ambassador, delivered the principal address at 
tfce recent convocation of the University of Chicago. 

The ambassador opened his address by commenting upon the fact that 
production and transportation all over the world, had been transformed by 
science, and pointed out that the effect of science had also been strongly 
felt in education. 

Sixty years ago science was not given a prominent part in the curricu- 
lum of schools and universities, and now it was trying to relegate the study 
of language and literature to a secondary place. In some parts of the world, 
indeed, it was becoming necessary to insist upon the importance of the 
kuman, as opposed to the natural or scientific subjects. He then developed 
his thought as follows : 

I ask you to join with me in considering the value and helpfulness to the 
individual man of scientific studies, and of literary studies, respectively, not 
for success, in any occupation or profession, nor for any other gainful pur- 
pose, but for what may be called the enjoyment of life after university edu- 
cation has ended. 

All education has two sides. It is meant to impart the knowledge, the 
skill, the habits of diligence, and concentration, which are needed to insure 
practical success. It is also meant to form the character, to implant taste, to 
cultivate the imagination and the emotions, to prepare a man to enjoy those 
delights which belong to hours of leisure, and to the inner life which goes 
Qn, or ought to go on, all the time within his own heart. 

* * * 

The Newman Club of the University of California in its attractive Cal- 
endar announces the subjects of its lectures during the Fall Term as fol- 
lows: 

I. The Philosophy of Religion; II. Religion and Morality; III. Reli- 
gion and Philosophy; IV. The Demands of the Will; V. The Psychology 
of the Act of Faith; VI. The Psychology of Conversion; VII. The Psy- 
chology of the Religious Character; VIII. The Ideals of the Religious Life; 
IX. Neo-Platonic and Christian Mysticism. 

Addresses: Ethical Standards in Public Life. By James D. Phelan. 
The Liturgical Beginnings of the Modern Drama. By Professor Martin C. 
Flaherty. M. C. M. 



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THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD, 



VOL. LXXXVIII. DECEMBER, 1908. No. 525. 



A CAROL OF GIFTS. 

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 

Three without slumber ride from afar, 
Fain of the roads where palaces are ; 
All by a shed as they ride in a row, 
"Here! " is the cry of their vanishing Star. 

First doth a graybeard, glittering fine, 

L/ook on Messias in slant moonshine: 

" This have I bought for Thee ! " Vainly : for lo, 

Shut like a fern is the young hand divine. 

Next doth a magian, mantled and tall, 

Bow to the Ruler that reigns from a stall : 

" This have I sought for Thee!" Though it be rare, 

L/oth little fingers are letting it fall. 

L/ast doth a stripling, bare in his pride, 

Kneel by the L/over as if to abide : 

' ' This have I wrought for Thee ! ' ' Answer him there 

L/augh of a Child, and His arms opened wide. 

Copyright. 1908. THB MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THB APOSTU 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 19 




FOUR CELEBRITIES-BROTHERS BY MARRIAGE. 

BY WILFRID WILBERFORCE. 
II. HENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 

'ENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE was born on 
September 22, 1807. He was the youngest son 
of William Wilberforce, M. P. for the County 
of York, and in the year of his birth his father, 
after spending many Sessions of Parliament in 
trying to induce the House of Commons to destroy the in- 
human traffic in flesh and blood known as the African Slave 
Trade, had the happiness of seeing his Bill to abolish that in- 
famy pass into law. With a father so deeply religious it goes 
without saying that Henry was brought up to regard religion 
as his highest ideal. At that time piety in England meant 
either Evangelicalism or Methodism. Indeed it was very com- 
mon for Evangelicals to be called " Methodists*' by those who 
scoffed at religion altogether. It was intended, of course, as a 
term of reproach, but it was, in truth, an honorable tribute to 
a man's earnestness. The Church of England had sunk into 
that sleep which had almost become death, and Wesley in his 
attempt to rouse her had been driven like an alien and an in- 
truder from her fold. The spirit of Charles Simeon, however, 
had leavened some of the Cambridge men among others John 
Sargent (sometime a Fellow of King's College), Rector of 
Lavington and Graffham, to whom Henry Wilberforce was sent 
as a resident pupil when he was quite a small boy. In Sar- 
gent's house he found an atmosphere of religion as fervent as 
in his own home, and the training which he there received was 
supplemented by the letters which William Wilberforce wrote to 
him with tolerable frequency. At Lavington Henry remained 
during the greater part of his boyhood, sharing his studies 
with one of Mr. Sargent's sons, and forming a friendship with 
the four " celebrated Miss Sargents," to use Mozley's expres- 
sion. With one of these sisters, Mary, the friendship then made 
led eventually to Henry's most happy marriage. 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 291 

When the time came for him to be specially prepared for 
the University, he was removed from Lavington and placed 
with a clergyman named Spragge, who took private pupils at 
Little Boundes near Tunbridge Wells, whence, at Michaelmas, 
1826, he went to Oriel College, Oxford at that time the lead- 
ing college in the University so far as learning and culture were 
concerned. The Common Room of Oriel contained at or about 
that time a unique assembly of genius and talent. Head and 
shoulders above all of course was John Henry Newman. Keble, 
too, was there, destined later on to be the Poet of the Oxford 
Movement ; William James, who taught Newman the doctrine 
of Apostolical Succession in the course of a walk round Christ 
Church meadow; Arnold, already beginning to show his genius 
as an up-bringer of boys; Whately, who, Newman tells us, 
"emphatically opened my mind, and taught me to think and 
to use my reason"; Hawkins, who taught him to weigh his 
words, and to be cautious in his statements; last, but not least, 
there were two probationer Fellows, Robert Isaac Wilberforce, 
Henry's elder brother, called in all seriousness the Encyclopaedia 
of the Church of England, a man whose learning was only 
equalled in depth by his extraordinary humility, and Richard 
Hurrell Froude, to whom immortality has been bequeathed by 
his friendship with Newman. Frederic Rogers was also at 
Oriel, as well as S. F. Wood, George Dudley Ryder, William 
Froude, F.R.S., and Thomas Mozley, with each of whom Henry 
Wilberforce formed a warm friendship. At that date Oriel 
was the only college which threw open its Fellowships to the 
whole University. It thus drew to itself the choicest spirits 
and the most charming personalities of every other college, and 
made for itself a name and a position which no other college 
has possessed before or since. Consequently an Oriel Fellow- 
ship had come to be regarded as the blue-ribbon of the Uni- 
versity. 

Though never formally his college tutor, Newman allowed 
Henry Wilberforce to become acquainted with him almost im- 
mediately after his matriculation at Oriel, and as time went on 
the acquaintance thus begun ripened into lifelong intimacy and 
friendship. In an exquisite but all too brief Memoir of his 
friend, the great Cardinal describes him on his first arrival at 
Oxford as, " small and timid, shrinking from notice, with a 
bright face and intelligent eyes/ 1 and he adds that, "partly 



293 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

from his name, partly from his appearance, I was at once drawn 
towards him," and certainly Henry felt a corresponding attrac- 
tion towards Newman. For part of four long vacations he read 
with him as his private tutor, and Newman allowed him frequent 
access to his rooms, so that the two soon became very intimate. 
Little playful touches in Newman's letters show the closeness 
which this friendship had reached between the Fellow and the 
young undergraduate. For instance, writing to Hurrell Froude 
under date June, 1828, before Henry had been two years at the 
University, Newman says: "I should have sent you more of a 
letter, but that plague, Henry Wilberforce, has been consuming 
the last half hour before ten by his nonsensical chat." And 
to his mother, to whom his friend was paying a visit, he writes, 
in 1832: " H. W. perhaps will try to worm some of my ser- 
mons out of you to carry out of Oxford do not let him." 

Newman himself has described a scene which seems to have 
made a great impression at the time in the University. Wil- 
berforce was twice President of the Debating Society called the 
Union, which has been the oratorical nursery of some of our 
greatest statesmen, prelates, and lawyers. Gladstone, Manning, 
Roundell Palmer, Hope-Scott, Tait (afterwards Bishop of Lon- 
don and Archbishop of Canterbury), to mention only a few 
names, were in their day distinguished members of the Union, 
and to be elected President, and that twice over, was no small 
tribute to a man's popularity and oratorical powers. On one 

occasion, Lord , an undergraduate, who had been dining 

well but not wisely, entered the Hall in the course of a de- 
bate. He insisted upon his right to address the House, and he 
proceeded to do so with such a ludicrous mixture of sense and 
nonsense that the assembly was thrown into confusion. The 
debate threatened to collapse altogether, when Wilberforce rose 
from the President's chair and calmly said: "Has the noble 
Lord no friends here ? " The effect was instantaneous. Friends 
came forward and led the offender from the room. Newman 
has referred in his Memoir to Henry Wilberforce's gift of speak- 
ing. "He had," writes the Cardinal, "an oratorical talent so 
natural and pleasant, so easy, forcible, and persuasive, as to open 
upon him the prospect of rising to the foremost rank in his 
profession had he been a lawyer." At one time indeed he seri- 
ously thought of adopting a legal career, and he had entered 
his name at one of the Inns of Court. There is a letter ex- 



i9o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 293 

tant from William Wilberforce on this subject written to New- 
man, which it may be of interest to quote : 

"I need scarcely assure you," he writes, "that your testi- 
mony in my dear Henry's favor is not a little gratifying to 
me. And I can truly assure you that the pleasure it gives me 
is much enhanced by the high respect for the principles, the 
judgment, and the means of information of the individual by 
whom that favorable opinion was expressed. I believe I had 
been led to underrate the probabilities of Henry's succeeding 
in his competition for the Fellowship, and therefore I was less 
disappointed. I know not your opinion as to the profession to 
which he should devote himself. You probably have heard that 
he has entered into one of the Inns of Court, though declaring 
it is contrary to his inclination. I leave the decision entirely 
to himself." 

Whether inclined or not, Henry Wilberforce used always to 
say that, but for Newman, he would have gone to the Bar. 
This was very likely quite true, but as Newman said : " We 
are blind to the future, and are forced to decide, whether for 
ourselves or for others, according to what seems best at the 
time being." But it is not at all unlikely that but for his cler- 
ical profession Wilberforce would not have been introduced to 
those realms of thought and study which led him at last to the 
Catholic Church. 

He took his degree in the same year as Manning, 1830, and 
was placed in the First Class in Classics and the Second in 
Mathematics. His natural aptitude was for the latter branch 
of study, and he had, in consequence, paid all the greater at- 
tention to Classics. It was exactly the reverse with his brother, 
Samuel, whose tastes lay more with classical studies. He there- 
fore worked hard at Mathematics and gained a First in them, 
being placed in the Second Class for Classics. Henry Wilber- 
force remained at Oxford for nearly a year after taking his 
degree, leaving the University for good on April 30, 1831, 
though it was not until two years later that he became Master 
of Arts. 

Some time seems to have passed before he finally decided 
upon taking Orders. Newman, in a letter to an intimate friend, 
complains in a joking way that he hears that " that wretch, 
Henry Wilberforce, instead of settling to some serious work, 
has been falling in and out of love in Yorkshire." The very 



294 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

charm which made him everywhere a welcome visitor inclined 
him in turn to be susceptible, but it may be taken as certain 
that he was never unfaithful to his first affection for Mary Sar- 
gent, whom he had got to know so well during his sojourn at 
Lavington and his subsequent visits there. His brother Samuel 
was already married to Emily Sargent, which brought about 
even more intimate ties between the two families. 

I suppose I am safe in saying that Newman disliked hear- 
ing of clergymen marrying. At least he regretted it in the 
case of those who shared his views and were likely to work 
upon his lines. So fully does Henry seem to have known this 
that he shrank from telling his friend of his engagement, though 
he had actually gone to Oxford for that very purpose. In 
January, 1834, writing to Frederic Rogers, in later days Lord 
Blachford, Newman warns his friend not to "believe a silly 
report that is in circulation that he (H. Wilberforce) is 
engaged to be married. Not that such an event is not 
likely, but I am sure it cannot be true as a matter of fact; 
besides he has been staying here (Oriel), and though we often 
talked on the subject, he said nothing about it, which I am 
sure he would have done were it a fact, for the report goes 
on to say that he has told other people. For myself, I am 
spreading my incredulity, and contradicting it in every direc- 
tion, and will not believe it, though I saw the event in the 
papers, till he tells me. Nay, I doubt whether I ought then 
to believe it, if he were to say he had really told others and 
not me." 

This letter shows clearly that Newman would have felt it a 
distinct breach of friendship between them if Henry had al- 
lowed any one but himself to inform him of his engagement. 
Rogers, who knew that the "silly report " was certainly true, 
hastened to send Henry Wilberforce the substance of Newman's 
letter. 

"I have no wish whatever," writes Henry in reply, "to 
deny the report in question. Indeed though I did not tell 
Neander* (as who would?) yet I did tell his sister and gave 
her leave to tell him. Whether Neander will cut me I don't 
kno\v. I hope my other Oxford friends will continue my 
friends still. It is, I am sure, very foolish of Newman on mere 
principles of calculation if he gives up all his friends on their 

* Henry Wilberforce's occasional playful name for Newman. 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 295 

marriage ; for how can he expect men (however well inclined) 
to do much in our cause without co-operation ? I suppose, 
however, he will cut me. I cannot help it. At any rate you 
must not. . . . Nor, again, am I without a feeling of the 
danger, as you know, of married priests in these days of trouble 
and rebuke, but I have taken my line ; and after all I am very 
certain that men, failing of doing their duty, oftener find an 
excuse than a cause in their circumstances." " Neander," it 
need hardly be said, did not cut Henry Wilberforce, and he 
even became godfather to his first-born and remained on terms 
of intimacy to the end. Probably it never even occurred to 
Newman to break with his friend, but it is a fact for which I 
can vouch that he never wholly forgot that Henry had not 
told him the news of his engagement. The reply of Frederic 
Rogers to Newman is in itself so interesting that, even apart 
from its subject, it is worth quoting here. Under date Janu- 
ary 20, 1834, he writes: " Many thanks for your letter in which 
however I must say you do not use your judgment. How can 
you possibly suppose that after your way of treating perditum 
ovem, H. Wilberforce, you would be his first confidant? The 
fact obviously is that he came to Oxford with the intention of 
breaking the matter to you ; but when he came near, and saw 
how fierce you looked, his heart failed him, and he retreated 
dpraktos. And now at this moment he is hesitating about the 
best way of breaking it, and hoping that some one else will 
save him the pain. As for me I cannot consent to join you 
in your unbelief; particularly as I have heard it from a person 
who professed to have been told it as a great secret by Mrs. 
H. M. [probably Mrs. Henry Manning] with divers circum- 
stances, the satisfaction of Mrs. Sargent in it, with sundry other 
particulars. If I could think, as you seem to do, that any in- 
credulity on my part could avert, or even retard, the catas- 
trophe, perhaps that might alter my way of going on. As it 
is, I have just fired off a letter of condolence, which I was en- 
gaged on when your letter reached me." 

From this it would seem that Rogers also disliked the idea 
of clergymen marrying", unless indeed his language about " avert- 
ing the catastrophe " was merely a joking agreement with New- 
man's view, for on every other ground the marriage was most 
desirable on both sides. That it was ideally happy, no one 
who knew Henry Wilberforce and his wife could feel a mo- 



29 6 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

merit's doubt. The late Father Coffin, the Redemptorist, who 
became in his old age Bishop of Southwark, always used to 
say when consulted by people about marriage: " If you can be 
as happily mated as Henry Wilberforce well and good, but 
very few people are. 11 In June, 1834, a month before the mar- 
riage took place, Newman writes to Hurrell Froude, using the 
word that Froude himself was so fond of applying to those 
who abandoned the party. " Henry Wilberforce engaged to 
marry Miss Sargent last December. Was afraid to tell me and 

left Oxford without; spread abroad I had cut R for marrying. 

Yet he has not ratted, and will not (so be it). Marriage, when 
a crime, is a crime which it is criminal to repent of." 

It would seem that William Wilberforce was so far from 
sympathizing with the views which Newman and Froude were 
beginning to formulate that he had been inclined to forbid 
his son taking orders. His deeply-rooted Evangelicalism was 
shocked at what he probably regarded as dangerous novelties. 
Mr. Gladstone's testimony on this point is interesting. He 
says: "On one occasion Henry Wilberforce told me in his 
abrupt fashion that he was a High Churchman. I certainly 
was surprised that one bearing his name had given up Evan- 
gelicalism. His father, the great philanthropist, was indignant 
beyond measure, and, fearing that the name would be degraded, 
was about to forbid his son Henry taking Orders, but, having 
a high opinion of Manning's piety and good sense, consulted 
him on the point. Manning said : ' Let him become a clergy- 
man; work among the poor, and the visiting of the sick and 
dying, will soon knock such High Church nonsense out of his 
head!' This was of course at a time when Manning still 
believed in "the blessed results of the Reformation." It was 
not until much later that the waves of controversy broke upon the 
peaceful shores of Lavington and harassed the soul of its rector. 

So by the summer of 1834, a year after his father's death, 
Henry Wilberforce was married and a clergyman, with what 
was then known as a " Perpetual Curacy," at Bransgore, a typic- 
ally English village on the borders of the New Forest. The 
idyllic beauty of the spot, the simplicity of the people, the 
character of the work, filled the hearts of the young couple 
with happiness. Occasional visits from Oxford friends brought 
them tidings of the outside world, but these, welcome as they 
were, were mere accidents, not essentials, of happiness. Life 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 297 

was quite full enough, with the villagers to be taught, the 
sick to be consoled, and the wanderers to be reclaimed, in some 
of which ministrations Mary Wilberforce took her part. A 
few years ago the present writer was exploring the New For- 
est and came upon Bransgore. There was a white-headed old 
cobbler with a patient face and busy hand. Did he remember 
a clergyman named Wilberforce ? His eyes seemed to light up 
at the name. "Oh, yes, sir; indeed I do. And Mrs. Wilber- 
force used to teach us children the Catechism." Her gracious 
memory had endured with him through sixty years of a life 
of toil. Nor was the zeal of the young curate satisfied with 
the limits of the village. In the neighboring hamlet of Burley 
he managed to build a church, taking upon himself a great 
part of the cost. His purse indeed was in the ordinary routine 
too narrow to allow of much expenditure on brick and mortar, 
but just as the Burley Church was in course of construction 
there came a windfall. 

He had always been a ready speaker and writer, but he 
never wrote so well as when he was under pressure. To know 
that the "printer's devil" was waiting for "copy" was a stim- 
ulus to him, and at such a time the reading of the past few 
weeks would pour from his pen in uninterrupted flow. In 1836 
the Denier's Theological Prize a considerable sum of money 
was offered by the University of Oxford for an essay on " Faith 
in the Holy Trinity." Henry had been reading up the subject, 
storing his astounding memory with facts, dates, and authori- 
ties. But now it would seem as though he had put off the 
writing too long. It was Friday evening. The essays were to 
be dropped into the Vice-Chancellor's box on Monday ; the 
Sunday duty had to be got through, and Henry had not set 
pen to paper ! But it happened that his friend, Thomas Moz- 
ley, was in the neighborhood. Hearing of the dilemma he of- 
fered to take the Sunday duty. Thus freed, Henry set to work 
at once and managed to finish his essay in time. The prize 
was awarded to it, and the Burley Church fund was the richer 
by 200. 

This service of Mozley was a return for something which 
Wilberforce had been able to do for him seven years before. 
At the Oriel Fellowship election of 1829, there was one un- 
doubted vacancy caused by the death of William Churton, 
"who had passed away" to use Mozley's words, "in the prime 



2 o8 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

I 

and sweetness of youth." For this vacancy Mozley had no 
thought of standing. But if another vacancy occurred he de- 
termined to become a candidate. It depended upon whether 
Pusey remained Fellow or not. Ten days before Passion Week 
Mozley learned that there would be no second vacancy, and 
he had given up all thought of standing. He was then tutor 
to the son of Lord Doneraille, a representative peer of Ireland 
and a Master of Hounds. The family seems to have valued 
him greatly, and much hoped that he would not leave them. 
They were then at Cheltenham, but a little later on they all 
started northwards in the big family coach, which was then the 
method of traveling with people of means. They were on their 
way to the family seat in County Cork, but in no hurry to 
get there, and they stopped at all sorts of places on the way, 
exploring towns, examining churches, castles, city walls, and 
ruins. Chester and its arcades were visited, Wrexhsm Church 
tower was duly ascended and the quaint market admired. 
Shrewsbury, with its historical and Shakespearean associations, 
was seen at leisure, as the party became guests there of Colo- 
nel Leighton, a kinsman of Lord Doneraille. At last they 
moved on to Norton Priory near the Mersey, just within sight 
of the shipping of Liverpool Docks. Thence they were to 
cross the channel to Ireland. Meanwhile they were to be 
entertained by Sir Richard Brooke, who had assembled a 
large party in their honor. There was to be a grand ban- 
quet and a performance of music. 

Throughout this journey, all unsuspected by Mozley, Henry 
Wilberforce was hot upon his track. 

Cardinal Newman once lent the present writer a long itin- 
erary, written by himself, giving all the details of this notable 
journey. It was a sort of Evangeline experience. Henry would 
arrive, tired and dusty, at some hotel, only to be told that the 
travelers had left two day before. Fresh horses would be or- 
dered, a hasty meal snatched, and the pursuit continued. An- 
other hotel would be reached and the tidings given that the 
family had been there some twenty or thirty hours before. 
At last, after much hard day-and-night travel, Henry ran his 
quarry to earth at Norton Priory. He was the bearer of an 
urgent message from Newman to the effect that Pusey's Fellow- 
ship had been declared vacant and that Mozley must hasten 
back to Oxford at once. 



i9o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 299 

It is not easy to realize what an Oriel Fellowship meant in 
those days, but it was a very great prize, and Mozley owed 
its possession entirely to Henry Wilberforce's friendly act in 
chasing him almost along the length of England a journey 
which then occupied several days. 

Mozley, starting from Liverpool as he did on the afternoon 
of one day, was able to reach Oxford on the morning of the 
next. But his, of course, was a direct journey. He came too 
late for some formalities and for the first part of the exami- 
nation, but under the circumstances this was excused, and he 
was duly elected Fellow of Oriel. 

The peaceful though busy life at Bransgore was varied by 
occasional visits to Lavington, the beautiful seat of which Mary 
Wilberforce was one of the co-heiresses. When Mr. Sargent 
died, his son who would have succeeded to the estate had al- 
ready predeceased him, and the question arose among the four 
sisters as to the disposal of the property. Should it be sold 
and the money divided among them ? With one voice they 
protested against this. Nothing could reconcile the sisters to 
such an act of sacrilege. No, let the eldest sister, Emily, with 
her husband Samuel Wilberforce, make it her home. The close 
affection which united the sisters to one another would make 
the place their home as well. Whether any kind of compen- 
sation was made to the three younger sisters I am unable to 
say. Some arrangement of the kind must, I should think, have 
been come to. Certain it is, however, that when religious es- 
trangement came to divide the family, Lavington, so far from 
being a home to the two surviving sisters who committed the 
unpardonable sin of embracing the ancient faith, became, if not 
absolutely tabooed, at least only a place where for some ex- 
ceptional reason they were permitted to stay for a limited time. 
Indeed I very much doubt whether Sophia Ryder, the young- 
est sister, ever set foot within Lavirgton after her conversion 
in 1846. She died in 1850. As for Mary, the sole survivor, 
she paid one or two visits, and she and her husband were in- 
vited in 1861 to spend a holiday at Lavington, where George 
Ryder and his motherless children joined them. But Bishop 
Wilberforce took care to be absent, and carefully stipulated 
with his brother and brother in-law that his Catholic relations 
should never go to Mass at Burton Park, which was the near- 
est chapel. They unwillingly submitted to this absurd and un- 



3 oo FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

reasonable condition, and drove each Sunday, at considerable 
expense, to Slindon, seven miles away. 

The Bishop used to tell his brother that he disliked invit- 
ing him to be his guest because, as a Catholic, he could not 
join in family prayers, and " the servants will see that there is 
some difference between us." 

"So there is," retorted Henry, "I belong to the true Church 
and you do not." 

On another occasion the Bishop was speaking in sad tones 
of the estrangement between them. " I can't let my children 
mix with yours as I should otherwise have liked to do." 

" Quite right, my dear Sam," was Henry's unexpected re- 
ply, "the truth is much more infectious than scarlet fever." 

But this is anticipating, for in those early days at Brans- 
gore Henry's ideas of the truth were very different. He often 
used to say that till he was a grown up man he was convinced 
that had he been able to talk for half an hour with a Catholic, 
he could, with the Bible in his hand, have converted him to 
Protestantism ! 

It was during his sojourn at Bransgore that he learnt, to 
his unspeakable dismay, that his great and venerated leader, 
John Henry Newman, had received a blow which, temporarily 
at least, had shaken his full confidence in the Church of Eng- 
land. This was in the beginning of October, 1839. Newman 
had, from the middle of June until the end of August, been 
studying the history of the Monophysites. It was during this 
course of reading, he tells us, " that for the first time a doubt 
came upon me of the tenableness of Anglicanism. ... By 
the end of August I was seriously alarmed." While he was 
thus engaged a friend drew his attention to an article by Wise- 
man in the Dublin Review on the "Anglican Claim." In this 
article the writer had quoted the words of St. Augustine, 
' Securus judicat orbis terrarum," and these words and their 
significance as great now as when they were first penned 
kept ringing in his ears. 

Originally, indeed, they had been written against the Do- 
natists, but they applied with equal cogency against the Mono- 
physites. Newman had looked to antiquity as his special, nay, 
his only support, and his Via Media "was to be a sort of re- 
modelled and adapted Antiquity." And, in the words of St. 
Augustine, he saw "Antiquity deciding against itself." "By 



i9o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 301 

those great words of the ancient Father, the theory of the 
Via Media was absolutely pulverized." 

It was when walking in the New Forest that Newman made 
to Henry Wilberforce the " astounding confidence, mentioning 
the subjects which had inspired the doubt the position of St. 
Leo in the Monophysite controversy and the principle Securus 
judicat orbis terrarum in that of the Donatists. He added that 
he felt confident that when he returned to his rooms and was 
able fully and calmly to consider the whole matter, he should 
see his way completely out of the difficulty. But he said : 
'I cannot conceal from myself that, for the first time since I 
began the study of theology, a vista has been opened before 
me, to the end of which I do not see. 11 '* 

The form of his expression was borrowed from the surround- 
ing scenery. Henry Wilberforce was horrified and thunder- 
struck by Newman's words. He had, of course, at that time 
the fullest confidence in the Church of England, while Newman 
he regarded as one of its strongest pillars. And here was the 
great leader himself expressing doubt of its being a part of 
the Catholic Church. 

How Newman dealt with this " ghost " as he calls it, this 
" shadow of a hand on the wall," how it again unexpectedly 
appeared to him, and how he finally acted towards it, is fully 
recorded in his own matchless way in the pages of the Apo- 
logia, and need not be further spoken of here. 

Henry Wilberforce remained at Bransgore until 1841, when 
he was presented to the Perpetual Curacy of Walmer in Kent. 
Here he was delighted to number among his parishioners the 
sea-faring population of Deal. There is something extremely 
attractive in the hearty, straightforward bluffness of sailors, and 
Mr. Wilberforce's earnestness won for him their respect in a 
remarkable degree. There is a tradition about his life at Wal- 
mer which is worth repeating here. Among his parishioners 
was the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, who resides in 
Walmer Castle. At that time the office of Warden was held 
by no less a personage than the great Duke of Wellington. 
No one knew the value of discipline better than he, and no 
one held more rigid views of duty. But he was, of course, ac- 
customed at that time of his life to command rather than obey. 
There is an old story to the effect that a clergyman on one 

* See the article by Henry Wilberforce in the Dublin Review for April, 1869. 



FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

- 

occasion asked his Grace about what he would like the sermon 
to be. "About ten minutes/' the Duke is reported to have 
answered. But Mr. Wilberforce was a clergyman of a different 
sort. Something or other was being done by him in the par- 
ish of which the Duke did not approve. He told Wilberforce 
that it must be altered. 

"You are the great Duke of Wellington/' replied the Per- 
petual Curate, "but I am the clerg>man of this parish." 

It was probably this incident that Cardinal Ntwman had in 
mind when he wrote of Henry Wilberforce that " gentle and 
unassuming as he was at first sight and in his ordinary be- 
havior, and averse to all that was pretentious or overbearing, 
he had the command of plain words and strong acts when the 
occasion called for them ; and could with fearlessness, direct- 
ness, and determination speak his own mind and cany out his 
own views of duty." 

It is extremely likely that the Duke's respect for his clergy- 
man was increased rather than diminished by this little en- 
counter. 

There is, however, another and a pleasanter incident con- 
nected with this period. Wilberforce's two elder sons were one 
day walking out with their nurse. They were met by an old 
gentleman who stopped them and inquired their names. After 
talking for a few minutes and finding that one of them was, 
like himself, named Arthur, he put a ribbon round the neck 
of each boy one red and one blue to which a shilling was 
attached, and said : " You must remember that these were given 
to you by the Duke of Wellington." 

Many years afterwards one of these boys, Arthur Wilber- 
force, became a priest of the Dominican Order and a celebrated 
missioner. A friend who knew that he was in the habit of 
losing everything he possessed, except the grace of God, asked 
him one day what had become of his shilling. He looked at 
his questioner with a smile. " I suppose I lost it," he said. 
Then he added: " But what does that matter if I have not lost 
the Image of the Heavenly King from my soul?"* 

Mr. Wilberforce's sojourn at Walmer was not extended be- 
yond two years. In 1843 he was presented to the valuable 
living of East Farleigh in Kent, of which his brother Robert 

* See The Life and Letters of Father Bertrand Wilberforce, of the Order of Preachers, by 
H. M. Capes. Sands & Co. 1906. 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 303 

had been Vicar before him. At this period of his life his means 
were greater than at any other before or after, and yet visitors 
were struck with the absence in the parsonage of anything be- 
yond necessities in the way of comfort. To be in any sense 
parsimonious was utterly impossible to him, and he was the 
very soul of hospitality ; but of his own personal comfort he 
was conspicuously heedless, and it was with the utmost diffi- 
culty that he could be induced to spend money upon himself. 

" His parsonage/' writes Cardinal Newman in his Memoir, 
"in its domestic order, its frugality, its bountiful alms, and its 
atmosphere of religious reverence and peace, was, as it ought 
to be, the mainspring and center of that influence which he ex- 
ercised upon the people committed to him. To them, and to 
their needs, temporal and spiritual, he gave himself wholly* He 
had an almost overwhelming sense of the responsibilities which 
lay upon him as the pastor of a parish; and his habits and 
ways, his words and deeds, his demeanor, his dress, and his 
general self neglect all in one way or other spoke to my in- 
formant of that simplicity of mind and humility which I recog- 
nized in him when he was a youth at Oxford." His residence 
at Bransgore and at East Farleigh was marked by the birth of 
eight out of his nine children; but it was also marked by the 
death of three of the number. But, as his friend Cardinal New- 
man observes, " this trial, acute as it was, has been the only 
trial of his domestic life." Indeed, the home at East Farleigh 
was an ideally bright and beautiful one a fact which enhanced 
Henry Wilberforce's merit in sacrificing it when God called 
upon him to do so. 

The hop-fields of Kent are visited every year by numbers 
of poor Irish laborers who make a scanty living by gathering 
in the hops for the neighboring farmers. Of late years the 
Franciscan Friars have organized missions for the benefit of 
these poor people, and many Catholic laymen generously de- 
vote a large part of their summer holiday to helping on this 
good work. 

But in Mr. Wilberforce's time, though the Irish pickers made 
an annual invasion into his and neighboring parishes, there were 
no facilities for the practice of their religion. In 1849, when 
the hop harvest was in full swing, a terrible outbreak of Asiatic 
cholera occurred among the pickers. Many lay dead or dying 
in the fields and lanes around, and the resources of the par- 



FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

i 

sonage were strained to the utmost to supply the needs of the 
poor sufferers. Regardless of danger Mr. and Mrs. Wilberforce 
nursed and tended the cholera-stricken patients and provided 
them with every material comfort and medical help. They 
turned the parish schoolroom into a hospital, and in deference 
to the religion of their guests they fixed a holy-water stoup 
over each bed. 

But there was one thing that Wilberforce could not do, and 
that was to give spiritual consolation to these poor Irish hop- 
pickers. The priest at Maidstone did all he could, but what 
was he among so many ? In this dilemma Henry Wilberforce 
sent to London for help. Father Faber and one or two other 
Oratorian Fathers came to assist the sick and dying Irish. 
Two nuns of the Good Shepherd also came, and their services 
as nurses were much appreciated. The result of Henry Wil- 
berforce's kindness was that very many souls received the Sac- 
raments which in some cases had been neglected for years, and 
many died fortified with the Holy Unction. During the worst 
part of the outbreak of cholera Mr. and Mrs. George Ryder, the 
latter being Mary Wilberforce's youngest sister, were guests at 
the Vicarage, and it was through the medium of George Ryder 
that the priests and nuns were obtained. 

One day Mrs. Ryder and her sister were watching one of 
the priests giving Extreme Unction to a dying man. Mrs. Ry- 
der was at this time a Catholic, having been received in Rome 
three years before. "Mary," she said very earnestly, "what- 
ever you do, do not die without that." Six months later Mrs. 
Ryder died. Her death was very sudden and unexpected, as was 
also that of her sister, which took place nearly thirty years later. 
It was God's Will that both should die without the Holy Unc- 
tion, but from no fault of theirs, and after such lives as they 
had led no death, however sudden, could be unprepared. 

The Irish who were the objects of the kindness of Henry 
Wilberforce and his family had prayed fervently for their 
benefactors, and these prayers were answered to the full. As 
Cardinal Newman wrote: "Every act of charity done for our 
Lord's sake has its reward from Him; and Mr. Wilberforce 
used to call to mind with the deepest gratitude that on the 
day of the year on which he had' received our Lord's servants 
into his house, he and his were, through our Lord's mercy, 
received into the Everlasting Home of the Catholic Church/' 



1908.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 305 

The family went in the autumn of 1850 to Malines, and 
thence Henry Wilberforce often went to visit the Jesuit house 
in Brussels. Here he made a retreat, at the end of which he 
was received into the Catholic Church. Mrs. Wilberforce had 
been received three months earlier, just before the birth of her 
youngest son. 

To resign a genial, successful, and lucrative career in middle 
life, to say farewell to home and friends, and to sacrifice the 
prospects of one's family, are acts that need no common measure 
of grace and fortitude. In the middle of last century such an 
act of abnegation involved peculiar suffering. The ruin of one's 
career and the loss of one's income were bad enough, but a 
convert in the fifties had no mercy to expect from his friends; 
by common agreement he was to be given no quarter. " Noth- 
ing but conscience," said Henry Wilberforce on one occasion, 
"could have reconciled me to the loss of my friends"; and 
so utterly were the motives of converts misunderstood that one 
of Mary Wilberforce's intimate friends suggested that, as she 
was dissatisfied with the English Church, she might join the 
Wesleyans, on the ground that "they at least believe in our 
Lord." 

After a period spent at Rugby, during which he published 
a clear and convincing account of his "Reasons for Submitting 
to the Catholic Church," Mr. Wilberforce crossed over to Ire- 
land, where he labored in defence of Catholics who were suf- 
fering from the attacks of "souper" proselytism. In one parish 
alone he helped to starve out no fewer than four Protestant 
schools established to pervert the Catholic population. In his 
visits from cottage to cottage, he urged parents to undergo any 
degree of poverty and loss rather than sacrifice the faith of 
their children. As Cardinal Newman says: "His very pres- 
ence preached, though he had no ecclesiastical position ; for it 
spoke of a man who, at the call of Christ, had left his nets 
and fishing, and all his worldly surroundings, to follow Him." 

On property which at this time he owned in one of the 
islands off the Galway coast, he succeeded in establishing a 
resident priest, where hitherto Mass had been said on only 
ncertain and comparatively rare occasions. 

From 1854 to 1863 Mr. Wilberforce resided in London, 
where he acted as proprietor and editor of the Catholic Stand- 
ard, or, as he afterwards named it, the Weekly Register. During 
VOL. LXXXVIII 20 



3 o6 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec., 

* 

these years he paid two visits to Rome, the first in the winter 
of 1859 60 and the second in 1862 on the occasion of the 
canonization of the Japanese Martyrs. The letters which he 
wrote describing the solemnity were published in the Weekly 
Register. 

The incidents which occurred in Jamaica in 1865, under 
the governorship of Edward Eyre, raised in Henry Wiberforce 
the noble spirit that had actuated his father. His articles on 
the much discussed negro question were greatly admired by 
John Stuart Mill, Richard Hutton, and other authorities. But 
towards the close of his life his chief occupation was the con- 
tribution of articles to the Tablet and the Dublin Review. 
Father Herbert Vaughan, afterwards Cardinal, was then the 
proprietor of the Tablet. He told Mr. Wilberforce that if he 
knew how many families had been converted by his articles, it 
would be a grievous trial to his humility. 

For the last six years of his life he lived at Woodchester, 
in Gloucestershire, close to the Dominican Priory, where his 
eldest son had a few years before been through his novitiate. 
Many still live who remember the life of piety which Mr. 
Wilberforce led. He himself unconsciously threw light upon 
the devotion which possessed him, in a letter written to Mrs. 
Wilberforce during a brief visit she paid to London. " I do not 
in the least boast of it," wrote Mr. Wilberforce, " but, much as 
I miss your company, I feel as though it would be impossible 
to be dull, as long as I am able to visit the church and kneel 
before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament." His nephew, Sir 
George Lisle Ryder, after a visit to Mr. Wilberforce and his 
family in their Woodchester hcme, observed in his quiet, im- 
pressive way : " I think it must be a favorite haunt of the 
angels." 

In 1871 he made a voyage to Jamaica, accompanied by his 
youngest daughter. They went with the best introductions, 
and were received with the utmost hospitality by the Governor, 
Sir John Peter Grant, and by the Chief Justice, Sir John Lucie 
Smith, and during the winter up in the hills by Mr. Justice 
Ker. The journey was undertaken at the instance of his doctor, 
for his health was at that time failing sensibly. 

And he wrote to his wife: "Feeling how much older I am, 
makes me feel ' the time is short/ The generations of men 
are like 'the leaves/ as the Greek poet says; but our Lord 



i 9 o8.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 307 

Jesus is 'the Resurrection and the Life. 1 " And, conscious that 
his long, happy married life was drawing to a close, he wrote 
to his wife: "May God keep His Arm over you for good, and 
unite us hereafter in His Kingdom." 

I cannot do better than bring this article to an end by 
quoting the words of his old friend, Cardinal Newman: 

"He set out (for Jamaica) with a strong hope that his 
health would receive real benefit both from the voyage and 
from a climate so genial and so new to him. Yet his hope 
was tempered by those dominant sentiments which, I believe, 
never for an instant were absent from his mind. . . . He 
was amazed and enchanted by the beauty of the island, and 
for a time he really did gain good by going thither. The im- 
provement, however, did not last; he returned home in July, 
1872, to suffer a gradual but visible decay all through the fol- 
lowing winter; and when Easter (1873) came, eternity was 
close upon him." 

During these sad but peaceful months some of his few sur- 
viving Oxford friends came to bid him farewell, among others 
Thomas Mozley, Father Newman (as he then was), and, I be- 
lieve, Father Ambrose St. John, once his curate at East Far- 
leigh. It was through Henry Wilberforce that Newman had 
years before become acquainted with St. John, who was destined 
to be his dearest and closest friend, the one "whom God gave 
me when He took every one else away," as he tells us in the 
Apologia. 

Throughout the whole of Mr. Wilberforce's illness the 
Dominican Fathers from the neighboring priory tended him with 
the utmost kindness and solicitude, and several times a week 
one or other of the community said Mass in the sick room by 
special permission of the Bishop of Clifton. The temporary 
altar then used was the same as that on which Father Dominic, 
the Passionist, had celebrated Mass at Littlemore on the morn- 
ing of Newman's reception into the Catholic Church. 

To quote once more from the Cardinal's Memoir: "He had 
ever lived in the presence of God, and I suppose it was this 
that especially struck one of his Jamaica friends who has written, 
on the news of his death : ' I looked upon him as one of the 
most holy of men/ Indeed, in these last months his very life 
was prayer and meditation. No one did I ever know who more 
intimately realized the awfulness of the dark future than he. 



3 o8 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Dec. 

p 

His sole trust, hope, and consolation lay in his clear, untroubled 
faith. All was dark except the great truths of the Catholic 
religion ; but though they did not lighten the darkness, they 
bridged over for him the abyss. He calmly spoke to me of 
the solemn, unimaginable wonders which he was soon to see. 
Now he sees them. Each of us in his own turn will see them 
soon. May we be as prepared to see them as he was ! " 

On the 23d of April, 1873, after receiving the Sacraments, 
having several times during the preceding week received Viati- 
cum from the hands of his Dominican son, he peacefully breathed 
his last, surrounded by his wife and family. At his funeral, on 
April 29, a short and deeply moving sermon was preached by 
the great Oratorian whose words I have just quoted. It was 
touching to see the venerable preacher as he stood in the 
pulpit looking down upon the coffin of his old pupil and friend. 
For many seconds together he remained silent, unable to arti- 
culate a word, his face covered with his hands, the tears stream- 
ing from his eyes. Then he looked up and in a pathetic tone 
said: "Bear with me; I loved him so well"; and 'in broken 
accents he went on to sketch his friend's life, showing how he 
had willingly "become a fool for Christ's sake," and he ended 
with a wail of " farewell, dearest brother," which sent a thrill 
through the congregation. 

Now Henry Wilberforce lies buried in the pretty church- 
yard of the Dominicans, just under the East Window of the 
Church, within hearing of " the holy mutter of the Mass," and 
with him lies the body of his wife. On his tomb is written: 
" And He said unto him : ' Follow Me/ and leaving all things 
he followed Him. Within a bow- shot of this church (a perfect 
specimen of early English art) stands the Franciscan Convent, 
where their eldest daughter is one of the Community; and 
within a few yards of the spot were lies all that is mortal of 
his parents is the grave of their eldest son, Father Bertrand 
Wilberforce, O.P., whose whole life was devoted to spreading 
the faith for the sake of which his parents sacrificed money, 
friends, and home, leaving their children an inheritance un- 
speakably more precious than silver and gold. May their noble 
self-sacrifice win them eternal crowns ! 




IN THE SIERRA MADRE. 

BY CHRISTIAN REID. 
III. 

'N odd thing occurred to me the other day," re- 
marked Stanfield, as the staff of the Santa Cata- 
lina Mine sat in the corridor of the Company 
house around the charming daughter of their 
chief. 

"And that was ?" some one inquired. 

" As I was returning from the trip I made to Copalquin, I 
met Trescott out in the Sierra/ 1 

"Trescott ! " Several voices simultaneously expressed sur- 
prise. "When did he come back?" 

"That's the odd thing," Stanfield explained. "He hasn't 
come back, because it seems he has never been away." 

" Never been away ! Why it's months since he left San 
Andres" 

"To go out into the Sierra on a prospecting expedition. 
Exactly. Well, he went into the Sierra and stayed there. 
That's all." 

"Stayed where?" 

" Lord knows. He was very vague in his answers to my 
questions. All I gathered was that he had found a paying 
prospect somewhere in the wilds, that he had stayed out there 
to develop it, that he liked the Sierra and didn't think he 
should ever leave it again." 

" Great Scott ! " The listeners groaned in concert. " He 
must have gone off his head completely." 

Stanfield nodded. " Struck me there wasn't a doubt of it," 
he agreed. 

Then Eleanor Bering spoke the girl who had turned her 
back on all that was most gay and brilliant in social life, to 
come and visit her father in this remote Mexican mining camp, 
and incidentally to work havoc with the hearts of all the 
young Americans who gave the Santa Catalina the benefit of 
their valuable services. 



3IO IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec., 

"Why should a man be supposed to have gone off his 
head because he likes the Sierra ?" she asked. "/ like it." 

" Oh, liking it, and going out and living in it, are two dif- 
ferent things, you see," Stanfield told her. " You admire it 
from a distance; but Trescott has plunged into it, turned his 
back on civilization, and gone to " 

"Nature?" 

" Well he might call it that, but I should call it something 
else savagery, we'll say. After all, however, I suppose it's 
not remarkable that a man as hard hit by fate as he has beea 
should feel inclined to bury himself from the world." 

The chorus assented. " Not remarkable at all. Always 
thought he'd do something of the kind. Perhaps blow out his 
brains." 

" He may do that yet," Stanfield said gravely. 

Then, as if by mutual consent, the subject dropped, every 
one seeming glad to get away from it, to judge by the haste 
with which they plunged into other topics; and it was not un- 
til later that, finding herself alone with Stanfield, Miss Bering 
asked quietly : 

" What happened to the man you were speaking of the 
man you met in the Sierra to make him want to bury him- 
self from the world ? " 

Stanfield hesitated an instant before he answered. 

" Tragedy happened to him, and professional shipwreck, his 
friends forgot him, the world turned a cold shoulder, and well 
if you knew his story, you would wonder that he had not 
blown out his brains before the Sierra became a refuge." 

Eleanor looked out from the corridor where they sat to the 
majestic outlines of the great Sierra encompassing them. There 
was something very fine as well as beautiful in her face, and 
an exquisite quality of sympathy in her voice when she said: 

"Tell me his story." Then, as Stanfield again hesitated, 
" I am not a jeune fille, you know. I have been out eight 
years, and modern society talks of everything. What did he 
do?" 

" It wasn't so much a case of what he did as of what was 
done to him," Stanfield said. "There's a woman in the story, 
of course." 

" Of course. Who ever heard of a story without a woman ? " 
"And it's a queer fact that there doesn't seem to be any 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 311 

medium for women. They are either very good or uncommon- 
ly bad." 

Miss Bering smiled. " That's a man's idea. As a matter 
of fact, there are as many gray sheep among us as among men. 
But never mind generalizing. What did this particular woman 
do?" 

"Shielded herself and a man by making her husband 
believe that a compromising letter, which fell into his hands, 
was written by Trescott, his best and oldest friend. In con- 
sequence, he went for Trescott with such murderous energy 
that the latter was forced to kill him." 

"Ah!" 

"There was a civil trial for murder, in which Trescott was 
acquitted, as the killing had been clearly in self-defence; and 
then there was a court-martial they were both in the army 
as a result of which he was dismissed from the service for con- 
duct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." 

After a short silence the girl said meditatively : " He must 
be a strong man not to have killed himself if you are sure he 
was wronged throughout." 

" I don't think there's much doubt of that. It was pretty 
well understood that he was merely used by the woman as a 
blind, though he made no effort to prove this at his trial, prob- 
ably owing to misplaced chivalry." 

" And what became of her ? " 

" Oh, she married the other man in due course of time, and 
is very prosperous, I believe. If any ghosts haunt her, she 
gives no sign of the fact." 

" I would rather be haunted by the ghost of a dead than 
of a living man," Eleanor said. " Dead men have at least laid 
down the burden of existence, which sometimes " she looked 
again out toward the Sierra " presses very hard on the living. 
But was there no one to hold out a hand to him, this man 
dismissed from his service and disgraced ? " 

" None that counted, I believe. It's human nature to fight 
shy of disgraced men, you know ; and easier to accept the 
verdicts of courts than to look behind them. After awhile he 
turned up out here, a broken man. He was with us at the 
Santa Catalina for a time; but it was clear that he couldn't 
stand even our association. He was suffering too much, was 
too sore and full of pain. So, with the excuse of prospecting, 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec., 

' 

he one day mounted his mule and rode out into the Sierra. 
That was the last heard of him until I met him a few days ago." 

There was silence again for several minutes, and then Elea- 
nor said: "You know we are going to Durango, over the Si- 
erra, in a few days. I am looking forward to the journey with the 
greatest delight, for it seems it will take at least a week, and 
we shall camp out every night. Now, if we happened to meet 
this Mr. Trescott, I should be glad." 

Stanfield shook his head. " I hardly think there's the faint- 
est chance of it," he said. " It has been months since any of 
us saw him last; and from his manner when I met him the 
other day, I don't think he will be likely to be met again soon." 

"Not with any intention of his own, perhaps; but it might 
come to pass, nevertheless. I should like to meet him." 

Stanfield smiled at her. " I know that you are given to 
helping lame dogs over stiles. But even if you met Trescott, 
I really don't see what you could do toward helping him." 

"It is difficult," she admitted, "for any one to help another 
in this world in which we walk, each so strangely alone. But 
you say that nobody has held out a hand to him. I could at 
least hold out my hand." 

Stanfield looked at the hand of which she spoke the slen- 
der hand at once so delicate and so strong. It occurred to 
him that it might lead a man very far. 

"Yes"; he agreed, "you could hold out your hand; and 
if you did, it would no doubt mean much to the poor devil. 
But what would be the end?" 

" The end ? " She hesitated an instant. " Only God knows 
the end of anything," she said. " But if I meet him, I shall 
surely hold out my hand." 

She remembered these words a few days later, when the 
opportunity to hold out her hand to Philip Trescott came by 
one of those chances of life which we call accident, but for 
which perhaps a wider and higher vision has another name. 

All day she had been riding in the Sierra, amid scenes so 
beautiful that she moved through them in a species of ecstasy. 
The wild loveliness of this high region seemed, in Wordsworth's 
phrase, to haunt her like a passion, and as she climbed im- 
mense mountain sides, or passed through glades of sylvan beauty, 
where troops of graceful deer were feeding on the rich, lush 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 313 

grass, or rode across the great highland levels covered with 
noble forests, she had ever about her the aromatic scents of 
mighty woods, the murmur of unnumbered leaves softly whis- 
pering together, and a sense as if all the romance which the 
world has forgotten might have retreated here, and found its 
last refuge in the solitude of these great hills. 

So it came to pass that she left her father and his party 
far behind, and that she was followed only by a single attend- 
ant when, in the late afternoon, she emerged from a deep que- 
brada, up the steep, rock- strewn side of which her agile little 
mule had for an hour been climbing like a cat. Pausing on the 
summit for the animal to breathe, she looked out over a wild, 
majestic picture of mountains, canons, and cliffs. 

" Oh ! " she murmured to herself, " if one could but stay 
long enough to take it all in, or spread wings and fly out over 
it like a bird! What is it, Alejandro?" she added in Spanish, 
turning to the mozo, who had dismounted to examine how the 
girths of her saddle had borne the strain of the ascent, and 
now stood beside her. 

The man a middle-aged Mexican of intelligent, trustworthy 
type had an expression of perplexity and something like shame 
on his face. 

" Senorita," he said, " I I am afraid that I have made a 
mistake in the trail." 

"What!" she cried. And then, as his meaning flashed 
upon her, " you don't you can't mean that you have lost your 
way ? " 

" It is of that I am afraid," he acknowledged. " I thought 
I knew the way well, but" he looked around helplessly "I 
do not remember this place. I must have taken a road which 
was not the right one some time ago." 

"Good heavens!" The comprehension of what it meant to 
be lost in these wilds suddenly rushed upon Miss Bering. 
"Why did you go on, when you are not sure of the trail?" 
she demanded exasperatedly. 

Alejandro threw out his hands with a comprehensive ges- 
ture. 

" How could I be sure of anything ? " he asked. " There 
is so much Sierra, and it is all so much alike." 

"But you said you knew the way !" She paused, con- 
scious of the futility of reproaches. "We must go back at 



3 i 4 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec., 

once to the last place where you were sure," she declared witk 
decision. "But what a pity that you didn't find out that you 
were lost before we crossed this terrible quebrada" 

With an expression of extreme distaste, Alejandro glanced 
down into the dark depths out of which they had just climbed 
the tremendous earth rift which is known as the deepest and 
most difficult quebrada in all this part of the Sierra. 

"Since I mistook the road, Don Gilberto has no doubt by 
this time crossed the quebrada also, senorita," he said, "and 
if we are both on the same side, it seems very useless to go 
back." 

" But what else can we do to regain the right road ? Have 
you any idea where our party is likely to be, if they have 
crossed ? " 

Alejandro again looked round with a vagueness which suf- 
ficiently answered this question. Plainly he had so completely 
lost his bearings, that he had not the least idea in what di- 
rection the party from which they had separated was likely to 
be found. Interpreting his silence aright, Eleanor set her lips 
firmly and gathered up her reins. 

" It is a dreadful prospect to cross this awful canon twice 
again," she said, "but evidently there is nothing else to do, 
and it must be done at once." She glanced at the sun, so 
ominously low in the western sky. "There's not a minute to 
lose," she added, and turned her mule's head toward the steep, 
perilous trail by which they had climbed upward and must 
now go downward. 

But before she had succeeded in inducing Bonita to set 
her reluctant feet upon it, Alejandro uttered an exclamation 
of relief and delight. 

" Stop, senorita, stop ! " he cried eagerly. " Some one is 
coming !" 

It seemed incredible in the Sierra but Eleanor wheeled 
her willing mule around just as a horseman rode out of the 
green forest which clothed the great level summit on which 
they were. This rider had all the outward appearance of a 
Mexican, but as he advanced nearer, Alejandro uttered an- 
other joyful exclamation. 

" Don Felipe ! " he cried. " Gracias a Dios ! Como esta Vd., 
stnor?" 

The man addressed pulled up and glanced at him keenly. 






1908.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 315 

Then he smiled. " Oh, is it you, Alejandro ? " he returned. 
"How are you? and how are all at the Santa Catalina ? 
What are you doing here ? " 

" I am on my way to Durango with the Gerente, sefior," 
Alejandro answered. " He is behind with the conducta, while 
I am attending the senorita, his daughter." 

"The senorita!" The new-comer started and glanced in 
amazement at the figure silhouetted against the sky on the 
brink of the quebrada. And his amazement was so far justi- 
fied that surely such a figure had never before been seen in the 
Sierra. A slender, fair- faced girl, who rode a man's saddle in 
the manner of a man, and who in her costume of knicker- 
bockers, blouse, and jacket, with hat of soft felt, high buttoned 
gaiters, gauntlets, and spurs, looked like some young page 
wandered out of an old romaunt, or a Rosalind of to-day 
masquerading in a new and far wilder Forest of Ardennes. His 
hat came off immediately, showing a clear-cut, sunburned face. 

" I beg pardon," he said, " for not recognizing a lady." 

" You are pardonable, sefior," Eleanor told him. " I know 
that in Mexico it is very unusual to see a woman dressed and 
riding as I am; but in the States it has become rather com- 
mon, and in the Sierra I find it convenient." 

" Alejandro tells me that I have the pleasure of seeing the 
daughter of the Gerente of the Santa Catalina," he said. " I 
know your father very well, Miss Bering. My name is Tres- 
cott." 

The next instant he thought he had never seen anything 
so charming as the smile with which Eleanor leaned forward 
and held out her hand. 

"I have heard of you, Mr. Trescott," she said, "and I am 
very glad to meet you." 

IV. 

But if Miss Bering had doubted the gravity of their situa- 
tion, she would have been assured of it by Trescott's manner 
of receiving the intelligence. 

"Good heavens!" he said. "You have lost your way, and 
you were going down into the Quebrada Honda again ! Bon't 
you know that night would have been on you before you 
could possibly have climbed out of it, and then !" 



3 i6 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec., 

m 

"Then it would have been pretty bad, no doubt," she 
agreed, as he paused expressively. " But there didn't seem to 
be anything else to do. Alejandro hadn't the faintest idea 
where to go, and we couldn't stay here, you know." 

" You had better have stayed here than gone down into 
that chasm, to lose your way certainly, and possibly your 
life" 

She lifted her eyebrows. " But aren't you going down into 
it?" she asked. 

"Oh, yes"; he answered indifferently, "but you see I am 
very familiar with the trail, and I had hope of getting out be- 
fore night. That you could never have managed, with your 
mule pretty well used up, and such a guide." 

" Probably not," she agreed again, " so I am glad a kind 
fate sent you in time to prevent our going. That is certainly 
better than picking up my bones and poor Bonita's, when you 
reached the bottom. As for Alejandro" she waved her hand 
toward that crestfallen mozo " you needn't have troubled to 
pick up his" 

"Alejandro is the worst kind of a fraud!" Trescott said, 
severely regarding the person under discussion. "What did 
you mean by undertaking to act as guide to ; the senorita, when 
you are as ignorant as a fireside cat of the Sierra?" he in- 
quired sternly in Spanish. 

" I have been in the Sierra many times, senor," Alejandro 
protested with dignity, "and I thought it was plain the trail 
to follow " 

"Well, now you find that it isn't plain now that you have 
narrowly escaped subjecting the senorita to great hardship and 
possibly danger. As it is, you have brought her so much out 
of her way, that she will have to ride hard to reach her father's 
camp in time to save Don Gilberto great anxiety and trouble. 
Where did he intend to halt to-night?" 

" At Las Joyas, senor." 

* Then, Miss Dering " he turned to her again " we will 
waste no more time, but ride straight for Las Joyas." 

" We ! " she repeated. " Surely it isn't necessary for you 
to go. Can't you just put us on the trail ? " 

" In order that Alejandro might promptly lead you off of 
it? You see there are no sign-posts in the Sierra. Besides, 
there's really no direct trail from here to Las Joyas. You must 



i 9 o8.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 317 

trust me to get you there by sense of direction more than any- 
thing else." 

"I'm only too glad to trust you/' she said with a little sigh 
of relief. " I know I ought to be dreadfully concerned that 
you are turning out of your way and giving up your time in 
this manner; but I can only think with gratitude that you ap- 
peared so wonderfully just when you were needed. It was" 
she looked at him with curious gravity "as if you were sent, 
as if we had been riding all day, you and I, to meet at a crit- 
ical moment on the brink of the Quebrada Honda." 

" I suppose we were," he said as gravely as herself. " At 
all events I am glad that I reached here at the critical mo- 
ment. And now we had better ride on." 

They rode on Trescott turning directly back upon his way 
and as the trail just here wound like a well-beaten road along 
the level of the great ridge on which they found themselves, it 
was possible for two to ride abreast, and so riding to talk. 

Of what they talked, for a time at least, Trescott afterwards 
did not remember; but he remembered that he had from the 
first a distinct sense of pleasure in this unsought chance to step 
back for a brief space into his old life, to converse once more 
with one to whom he could speak on an intellectual equality, 
and in whom he recognized the peculiar touch in mind and 
manner which only intercourse with the world can give. For 
it happened that Eleanor Bering was the first woman of her 
order with whom he had spent an hour of voluntary associa- 
tion since the dark waters closed over him. The tragedy which 
ruined his life had not had the common effect of such tragedies 
in making him cynical in his attitude toward women. He never 
doubted that the woman who was the cause of this tragedy 
belonged to a comparatively small class of her sex ; but while 
she had not killed his faith in womanhood, she killed for him 
all possibility of pleasure in the society of those who in any 
degree recalled herself that is, in all who bore the stamp of 
things conventional and artificial. 

But in Eleanor Bering there was nothing of this stamp. 
With her, high breeding had reached its finest result simplic- 
ity ; and in her face there was a charm deeper than graceful 
features or lovely coloring, a charm which lay in the rare sym- 
pathetic quality to which " nothing that is human is strange," 
and in that subtle, indefinable gift of the gods which we call 



3 i8 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec., 

fascination. It had been long since Trescott had seen a coun- 
tenance at once so fair and so expressive of those things which 
are the finest flowers of civilization; and even while he shrank 
from the associations thus awakened, he was conscious of an 
attraction which had its source of power deep in that part of 
his nature which he owed to civilization, and could not, if he 
would, renounce. 

As for Eleanor, she on her part had a strange, awed sense 
of opportunity given in fulfilment of her desire, together with 
a doubt how best to use this opportunity. " If I meet him, I 
will surely hold out my hand," she had said ; but in saying it 
she had known, as she knew now, that the act of holding out 
her hand was but the symbol of deeper spiritual aid to be given, 
if circumstances made such giving possible. But how it might 
become possible was a hard question to answer. For as they 
rode together through the marvelous, leafy way, on this crest 
of the world, she recognized that it was not altogether an or- 
dinary man with whom fate had dealt so hardly. As she glanced 
at him now and again, she saw in the fine, somewhat stern 
contours of his face indications of a nature of extreme sensi- 
tiveness one of those natures which feel all things joy, sor- 
row, pain, love, or hate with an intensity beyond comprehen- 
sion to ordinary natures and although in the gray eyes there 
was the look which long-sustained suffering always leaves, there 
was no weakness about the thin-lipped, resolute mouth, or the 
firm chin. Clearly it would be difficult to get under the shield 
of reserve with which such a man would guard his inner life. 
"And yet I must I must! " she said to herself. " This strange 
chance wasn't couldn't have been given me for nothing." 

It seemed as if it had not been, for presently another chance 
aided her. Suddenly the plateau on which they were riding 
dropped away sheerly and steeply into a deep, green abyss, 
where a leaping torrent thundered, and through the stems of 
giant trees, which lifted their great crowns of verdure a hun- 
dred feet in the air, a wide, glorious prospect was revealed, 
stretching away into illimitable distance, and glowing with magi- 
cal tints of blue and purple, while from it breathed airs laden 
with the freshness of a thousand leagues of virgin forest. 

" Is it not divine ?" Eleanor cried, with a note of positive 
rapture in her voice, as she drew up her mule. " I never knew 
before what it meant to be alive just simply alive ! One must 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 319 

come to the Sierra to learn what it means. In this high, glad 
world, existence in itself is a delight. And death seems im- 
possible." 

Trescott pointed to an object near which they had paused 
a wooden cross without name or inscription of any kind, 
erected by the side of the road, with a pile of stones around it. 
Such objects are common on all roads in Mexico, and very fre- 
quent along these wild trails of the Sierra. 

" Death is not impossible," he said, " for some one has died 
here." 

The girl shivered in all her abounding joy of existence as 
ker glance fell on the rude memento mori. Standing there with 
the wonderful beauty, the glad life of nature around it, the 
deed which it marked seemed a thousandfold more tragic and 
pitiable than if it had occurred among the haunts of men. 

"But that is the sign of a violent death," she protested, 
"and of course one may die violently anywhere. 11 As she 
spoke she gazed, with eyes out of which the rapture had van- 
ished, at the cross. "Yet how sad to die here, where every- 
thing is so beautiful." She looked up at the leafy boughs and 
jewel-like heaven above, and then around at the green vistas 
of the forest, and out over the azure world afar. " To leave 
it all in a moment the beauty the sunlight how terrible ! " 
she said. " How sorry I am for the poor man, whoever he 
may have been, who died in this spot, so suddenly, so aw- 
fully ! " 

" Don't be sorry for him," said Trescott quietly. " You 
can't tell what burden he laid down, nor how glad he may 
have been to close his eyes even to the beauty of the sunlight, 
when the bullet or the knife found him here." 

Something in his voice made her glance at him quickly. 

" Even if he carried a burden as who does not ? and even 
if he were glad to lay it down," she said, " I should be sorry 
for him." 

" Because the Sierra is so beautiful ? " 

"No; but because, even for the unhappy, life holds many 
chances and death has none." 

Trescott shook his head. 

" There are men for whom life holds no chances," he said. 
"And for such a quick call a death in the sunlight and a 
cross by the wayside is no ill fate." 



320 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec., 

It was plain that he spoke without any thought of effect, 
and the words had a poignant note of pathos to the ear of the 
girl, even while her heart leaped as she recognized her moment 
of opportunity. 

" I do not believe that there are men for whom life holds 
no chances," she said, as they rode on. 

" Do you not ? " He looked at her with a slight smile. 
''That is quite natural. It would be strange if you were able 
to believe it." 

" You mean it would be strange if I knew what hopeless- 
ness and pain are ? " 

"Yes"; he answered, "I think it would be strange, for 
neither hopelessness or pain can have touched your life." 

"Do I look so shallow?" she asked. "For it surely would 
be a very shallow nature which could live in the world to my 
age without learning what hopelessness and pain are." 

" What we learn by observation, and what we learn by 
personal experience are very different things," he told her. 

"I suppose so," she admitted, "and yet through sympathy 
one can realize many things." She paused a moment, and her 
voice took a tone of very disarming gentleness as she went on. 
"For instance," she said, "during these days when I have been 
journeying in the Sierra I have not only felt how beautiful it 
is, how full of a divine charm of freshness, remoteness, and 
repose, but I have also imagined how it might enthrall one 
who felt this charm very deeply, until plunging into its wild, 
green recesses, he might forget everything." 

The man riding beside her gave her a sudden glance. 

" You have imagined truly," he said. " I am one whom 
the Sierra has enthralled, and who in its depths have forgotten 
everything." 

"Yet," she said quickly for surely the guard was down 
now, for a moment at least " I have felt much besides this 
enthralling charm. It seems to me that they express many 
things, these mountains which lift their solemn heads so nobly 
to the sky. There is inspiration in them, as well as repose. 
They fill one with great thoughts thoughts which are like 
arms to a soldier." 

"If one has withdrawn from the fight, one has no need of 
arms." 

"Has one ever a right to withdraw from the fight?" 



1908.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 321 

" I think that right is granted to a man who has been de- 
feated and wounded unto death." 

" No man is wounded unto death while life remains. I 
should bid him take up his arms and enter the battle again." 

"You are a stern oracle," the man said. "I might convince 
you that there are circumstances when desertion is allowable 
if if it were worth while." Then glancing around, as at a 
face familiar and beloved, "The Sierra has given me peace," 
he said. " The Sierra contents me." 

"Peace!" she echoed. "But are we here to seek only 
peace ? And can he find it who seeks it before he has won it 
where alone it can be truly won in the heat and dust of 
the conflict ? You say that I am a stern oracle ; but your own 
conscience must tell you that the Sierra is no place for such a 
man as you." 

" Such a man as I ! " he echoed in a tone of bitter self- 
scorn. " If you knew " 

" It is not necessary that I should know what has made you 
seek the Sierra," she interrupted quickly. "Whatever the cause, 
it remains true that there is no field here for your intellect, 
your education, or your talents. And there is a parable I'm 
sure you haven't forgotten it which tells us that he was ac- 
counted an unworthy servant who buried his Lord's gift. Now " 
she looked at him with a smile so sweet and winning that 
he felt it like sunshine in the depths of his being " you must 
forgive me for venturing to preach to you in this manner. My 
excuse is that probably you don't often see any one who can 
preach to you at all." 

" For the interest which has prompted you to preach I am 
very grateful," he answered in a low tone. 

After this there was silence for several minutes, until Tres- 
cott suddenly reined up his horse as he turned toward her. 

"We've some very rough ground to get over now," he said, 
" so I must ask you to follow me as closely as possible, while 
Alejandro will follow you, and keep a sharp eye on your mule. 
If she should slip" 

"Bonita never slips," Bonita's mistress proudly assured him, 
"and you can take us over no rougher ground than we have 
already been over to-day. Lead on. I can ride wherever you 
can." 

She was as good as her word, and although he looked 

YOU LXXXYIII. 21 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Dec. 

back anxiously now and then, he always found the agile, plucky 
little mule following closely in his steps, and her mistress softly 
encouraging her with voice and hand. It was indeed a rough 
trail, if trail at all, over which they now rode in single file, 
crashing down steep declivities, climbing others as steep, pass- 
ing over, under, and around precipitous rocks, and skirting fall- 
ing torrents which sent clouds of spray like incense toward 
heaven. It was a little wilder than any face which the Sierra 
had showed Miss Bering before; and although she felt its fas- 
cination thrilling her like a mighty diapason of magnificent 
music, she was also conscious, as twilight began to fall, of a 
sense of apprehension. For surely night in this great wilder- 
ness might hold a note of terror, and of danger also, which 
would render it impossible to continue on their way. When 
Trescott glanced around the next time, she spoke. 

" Have you any hope," she asked, " of reaching Las Joyas 
before it is too dark to travel ? " 

"That is why I am urging the pace so mercilessly, and spar- 
ing you no roughness of the way," he answered. " We must 
reach it, and unless I am mistaken in my bearings, we are 
nearly there. One more hard climb, and we shall gain the 
ridge on which you should have emerged from the Quebrada 
Honda." 

It was a terribly hard climb the harder because there was 
so little light remaining by which to choose the way but when 
they gained the summit, breathless and almost exhausted, they 
had not ridden very far along its level way when Trescott ut- 
tered on exclamation of intense relief. 

"We're ail right, now, Miss Bering," he said. "Yonder is 
your camp-fire." 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




" WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?" 

BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D. 
III. 

[HE situation represented in the parable of the 
Good Samaritan shows a single person in need 
of mercy and one only, of a number, showing it. 
The service required was direct and personal; 
that given was immediate and prompt. While 
this condition recurs frequently enough in everyday life, the 
distinctive modern character of relief work is that we deal not 
with individuals exclusively, but also with social forces; not 
with one, but with a multitude. Although poverty and distress 
are concrete in the individual, still one is compelled to look for 
larger social forces and conditions which affect the weak poor, 
and is constrained to take a social point of view, to look at 
social action tor remedy and to emphasize, for the time be- 
ing, the social rather than the individual element in the causes 
of poverty. Much of the misunderstanding in charity work is 
due to failure to take a common view of this fundamental fact. 
In preceding articles the attention of the reader was di- 
rected to some of the general social features of poverty and to 
processes which act on the poor with unmistakable effect. It 
remains now to look into what may be called the atmosphere 
of poverty. If it is the atmosphere which makes a school, as 
we Catholics rightly claim, and if the atmosphere in any social 
group is the strongest factor in the life of its members, it would 
seem that the atmosphere of poverty is an important factor in 
the life of the poor. To understand the poor, and to work 
with success among them, we must know something about the 
atmosphere in which they live. 

I. 

It is not easy to convey to the imagination an exact pic- 
ture of what is meant by poverty and the poor. Emerson says 
that the poor are they who would be rich. It might be said 
with more truth that the poor are they who are indifferent to 
their poverty. At any rate, relief work among the poor would 



3 2 4 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR?" [Dec., 



be infinitely lightened if they could be brought to desire earn- 
estly to be rich. For with such a desire might come ambition, 
industry, and foresight, traits which the real poor often lack. 
It is not difficult to understand Goldsmith when he says in 
writing to his brother : " Frugality and even avarice in the 
lower orders of mankind are true ambition. These offer the 
only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment." Even this 
quasi virtue is rarely found among the very poor, not so much 
because of willfulness on their part as because of the social 
forces which hinder the development on which thrift and fore- 
sight depend. 

For present purposes we may distinguish between the ef- 
ficient and the inefficient poor. In the first class are to be 
placed all who show some ambition and energy, who respond 
to assistance when given, and resist bravely the circumstances 
which oppress them. Such may occasionally require aid in 
times of idleness or illness, but one finds among them always 
not a few progressive traits of sterling character. Problems of 
relief are very simple among the poor of this kind. They co- 
operate intelligently with those who aid them ; the relief asked 
is what is really needed and they are reliable in their repre- 
sentations. 

By the term inefficient poor, we may understand those who 
are inert and helpless ; those who add moral guilt to economic 
misfortune and carelessly reckon on the generous impulses of 
charitable persons for necessaries and even comforts of life. 
Here we find those of dull moral sense, and of inferior mental 
equipment, who are without ambition, energy, or outlook. This 
is the arctic zone in the social world where no friendly warmth 
of a genial sun stirs latent manhood into vigorous growth. The 
atmosphere which envelops this class of the poor is a problem 
of distressing complexity for the neighbor who desires to show 
mercy intelligently. 

Ovid says that a girl is the least part of the girl herself. One 
may say that these poor are the least part of the poor them- 
selves. It will, of course, do the poor no good to diminish their 
sense of responsibility for their condition. The main hope for 
them lies in their belief that they can rise and that it depends on 
themselves to do so. To teach them that they are victims of so- 
cial forces and in no way themselves accountable, as, for instance, 
is done so much in the propaganda of Socialism, could result 



1908.] " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f " 325 

only in moral and material disaster. The sense of responsibil- 
ity, eagerness to do something and to be something, definite 
ambition must be awakened- or no reconstruction of character 
and life may be expected. Relief is not redemption, and pov- 
erty is a tragedy when the poor feel no recoil against the con- 
ditions which it imposes. 

While it would be harmful to the poor to deprive them of 
their sense of responsibility for their condition, it is of great- 
est importance to teach the strong classes in society that the 
poor are, to a marked degree, victims of social institutions; 
that they are helpless in much of their poverty, and that social 
action by strong classes, social action by and through institu- 
tions, is absolutely necessary. The assumption is widely be- 
lieved that the poor are to blame for their poverty. No im- 
pulse toward generous relief work will come to a heart when 
this conviction concerning the poor is felt. The strong will be 
enlisted in service of the poor only when they realize the extent 
to which these are victims of forces and processes that are 
mightier than the individual. 

II. 

Turning now to observe the atmosphere of poverty, we find, 
first of all, the basic fact that these members of society whom 
we have in mind are classified as '* The Poor." They are apart as 
truly as the " Four Hundred " are apart. They tend to develop a 
class consciousness, to take on a tone, to construct a moral and so- 
cial code, and to adjust themselves systematically to them. The 
poor are written about, inspected, studied, photographed, posed 
as a kind of pathetically interesting class not quite like other 
people. A mental self-appreciation appears which leads them 
to endeavor to maintain the style which is called for by their 
condition or class. On one occasion a number of gentlemen 
went to furnish entertainment to an institution, where the chil- 
dren of the poor were assembled. A girl of ten was asked if 
she did not think it very kind in them to have done this. She 
answered : " Naw ; they didn't want to sing f'r us. They just 
come to see how we look and act. We're the poor." No doubt 
there is a psychology of the poor as there is of the rich. If 
the latter at times cultivate a way of speech and an attitude, 
it is not surprising that children of the poor sometimes refuse 
to speak correctly because it would be "tony," preferring the 
forms of speech current in the traditions of their class. It seems 



32 6 " WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR ? " [Dec., 

evident, on the whole, that the class consciousness of the poor is 
not without its influence in their lives. 

One of the most conspicuous features in the atmosphere of 
poverty, possibly the most far reaching in its reaction on the 
poor, is the lack of a sense for the future. Scarcely a hope of 
achievement or a distant prospect of happiness lights a human 
face in those dark walks of life. Existence is in the dull dead 
present. There are no problems for them except the ever acute 
problems of to-day's food, to-day's clothing, the next month's 
rent, to-day's illness. Johnson might have written to-day what 
he wrote in the days of The Rambler: "Among the lower 
classes of mankind there will be found very little desire for 
any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to 
the relief of some pressing uneasiness or the attainment of some 
near advantage." Having no sense for the future, the poor lack 
all of the traits of character that are derived from the domi- 
nation of this sense in life. 

The Danes say: " We live forwards and think backwards." 
It is largely true. Foresight, self-discipline, enterprise, ambi- 
tion, industry, some desire for accumulation all traits which 
are prominent in strong characters result usually frcm vivid 
realization of future needs, future prospects and opportunities. 
Only he in whom future dominates over present is progressive 
and foresighted. It is the hope of " being something and doing 
something " which develops men. Take away from Americans all 
that the sense for future means and their institutions would perish. 

Now the atmosphere of poverty lacks this feeling for future, 
lacks all that that means in development of character and di- 
rection of energy. Little sense for the future, lack of motive 
to consider the future, lack of outlook against the forbidding 
circumstances in which they live, an educated conviction of 
helplessness, and a belief in the uselessness of effort, combine 
in the appalling enervation which we so often find among the 
very poor. If children in the best of homes, trained in the 
best of schools, living in an atmosphere charged up to the last 
degree with the stimulating elements of ambition, hope, great 
prospects, and all but compelling motives to greatest efforts, if 
they too often fail to respond and to bring forth fruits worthy 
of their opportunity, shall we wonder that among the very poor, 
where home life is disorganized, social standards are so low, 
and the social atmosphere is so enervating, many succumb com- 
pletely and perpetuate the disheartening history of poverty and 



? 



1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR f y 327 

distress. No individual, no class, no people, can rise to full stat- 
ure and develop power unless inspiration be drawn largely from 
ambition, hope, purpose. To the very poor these are unknown 
or, as far as known, misunderstood. 

Logically resulting from the condition described, there is 
found in the atmosphere of poverty, more or less disregard for 
social "standing." In the lives of the very poor, who are in the 
main held in mind, standing is not a marked element. Morality in 
many of us is largely a response in conduct to the expectations 
and estimates of our friends. The instinct is deep in us to en- 
deavor to be what we are supposed to be. Reputation is prac- 
tically the endorsement of our friends, and we aim to bring 
character up to it. The desire to protect standing already 
acquired, effort to rise to higher standing, respect for the social 
sanctions, for achievement, morality, and merit, found among the 
stronger classes, are of the greatest importance in the develop- 
ment of character and in the progress of social classes. 

Men and women fight with rugged tenacity to maintain 
standing, and although often poor judgment of values is shown 
in the struggle, it remains a source of strength and uplift to 
those who wage it. Lives that are devoid of the sense of 
standing and indifferent to the public opinion which usually acts 
through it, are necessarily weakened. And this is, to a great 
extent, the case among the very poor. Their outlook on life 
shows them so little to hope for, that they find no motive 
which rouses them. Their place in the social hierarchy is so 
low, that they feel outclassed. Sometimes too much is expected 
from them; sometimes too little is looked for. Either mistake 
is followed by a reaction among the poor, which holds them in 
their quiet indifference to public opinion and social standing. 
Their character, therefore, frequently lacks the traits which 
we owe to the power that social standing has over us. Not 
many among them feel as did one who rose from abject pov- 
erty to respectable standing in the law. He once remarked: 
"I was born so low that I could only look up." Many of 
the poor are born so low, so to speak, that they cannot be 
brought to look up. Careless housekeeping, untidy habits in 
clothes, indifference to the proprieties, disregard for many of 
the forms which make life gentle and converse pleasant, are 
found among the poor, because they lack the motive which 
develops these things in the stronger classes. The poor possess 
so little that they have no fear of losing anything; they are 



32 8 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f " [Dec,, 






so low in the social scale that there is but little from which 
to recoil. They do fear a nameless grave ; they will plan and 
save to have decent burial, even if the effort means reduction 
in the scant food supply that they have. But the ordinary 
fears, hopes, and efforts which characterize stronger classes are 
largely missing among them. 

Another feature in the atmosphere of poverty is the absence 
of the competitive spirit, with lack of the qualities of charac- 
ter usually to be expected from it. The inefficient poor are 
wreckage in the social process, shaped into identical form by 
the merciless forces which act upon them. Common misery, com- 
mon hopelessness, common understanding of life and experience 
in it, develop a sort of communistic spirit among them, leaving 
them indifferent to the prizes of life. Our strong classes, in 
the defence that they make against Socialism, claim that the 
competitive struggle is the savior of the race and the main in- 
spiration in individual character. The chronic indifference of 
the poor to advancement hinders the marked development of 
the spirit of rivalry and of the vigorous traits which usually 
result from it. The low physical condition of large numbers 
among them, due to imperfect nutrition and sanitation and to 
the generally depressing circumstances in which they live, is, 
of course, an important factor in their general apathy. 



We must deal with the general fact that the poor live in 
the atmosphere of poverty, and that it can enervate them and 
does so, much as the atmosphere in which the strong live stim- 
ulates and strengthens them. In the average conditions of life, 
strong and weak are distributed unevenly and connected by re- 
lationship or by social ties of varying degrees of strength. It 
was pointed out in a preceding article that many of these social 
bonds are losing their strength, with the result that the strong 
and the weak tend more and more toward separation. Not many 
nowadays feel as the Vicar of Wakefield felt, who welcomed 
cousins to the fortieth degree at his table, including among them 
"the blind, the maimed, and the halt." "As they were of the 
same flesh and blood, they should sit at the same table." If so- 
ciety compels the weak poor to associate almost exclusively with 
their own kind ; if traditions, point of view, inter-marriage, com- 
panionship, are found among them ; it is not to be wondered 
at if some commence to believe that " the poor " do constitute 



1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 329 

a separate natural order of creatures. Poverty and its impli- 
cations tend to produce types ; and when any one social class 
gives us more or less fixed types, belief that they are natural 
and not merely artificial social products, easily results. 

It is the belief of many experienced social workers that 
the poor ought to be treated like any other class, assuming 
that they are normal, everyday men and women and children. 
If, however, there is a psychology of poverty, if there is an 
atmosphere in the circles of the poor which acts on individuals 
and tends to shape them, all of this, it would seem, should be 
taken into account. Dickens, himself no dull observer of life, 
says in Barnaby Rudge : " It is the unhappy lot of thoroughly 
weak men that their very sympathies, affections, confidences 
all the qualities which in better constituted minds are virtues 
dwindle into foibles or turn into downright vices." In view 
of this it was not surprising recently to hear an investigator 
say that in the South child labor is a very good thing, although 
on the whole it is to be deplored. There it offers the only es- 
cape possible from the apathy and the deadening social influ- 
ences in which certain children are reared. Whatever the qual- 
ifications under which one might accept the statement, there is 
a germ of truth in its general thought. As men and women 
are above or below the line of social efficiency they respond 
differently to the same influences, much as numerator and de- 
nominator in a fraction respond inversely to the same treatment. 
It is undoubtedly erroneous to think of the poor as a natural 
order in society. But they will not be understood unless seen 
in their atmosphere and class. The work of relief is, therefore, 
social as well as individual and the strong in giving relief must 
look at not only the individual, but as well at the process that 
operated, the circumstances and the limitations, both individual 
and social, under which the poor must live and the strong 
must come to their relief. 

From the standpoint of the strong who give relief, a so- 
cial point of view is necessary. Efficiency, wisdom, economy, 
are of primary importance. They are secured only by organ- 
ized effort. Eliminating the exceptional cases for which pro- 
vision must always be made, the conclusion seems warranted 
that charity work should be conducted by institutions, organi- 
zation, system, and co-operation. These features of the work 
will be described in a concluding study. 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

VIII. 

THE PENANCE OF RICHARD LUFF. 

|HE Roman camp on Mendip lifts you high above 
the world. The hedges round the fields below 
look like lines on a map a church dotted here 
and there, is no bigger than a toy. Wide spread- 
ing on every side, as far as the eye can reach, 
the endless green fields stretch out, till the mountains in the 
distance stop them rambling any further. A village now and 
then, or a town, is such a speck in the landscape that it is 
lost upon the great green lawn, and even whole woods of 
stately trees are but dark patches on the velvet. 

Some five miles away, and straight before me as I lie upon 
the grassy slope that was once a well-trimmed rampart, stands an 
extinguisher shaped hill that rises suddenly from the green bed 
of meadow land and ends in a shaft or tower that points heaven- 
wards. It is a remarkable hill and the eye is sure to light on 
it, directly the vantage ground on the top of the camp is gained 
and you turn to see the view. The steepness and suddenness 
with which this curious excrescence raises itself above the plain 
is totally unlike anything in the miles and miles of country 
that stretch out before you. 

Wherever a hill is necessary, it starts gently as a rule. 
The West-Country coombs or valleys are sudden enough. 
They will begin at your very feet without a moment's notice 
for apparently no reason at all. The earth seems to start with 
a dimple, which in a moment widens to a smile, and directly 
afterwards is a wide stretching laugh from lip to lip. But the 
West is slower with her hills. Often there are two or three 
starts. A valley and a hill beyond then another valley and 
again a hill rising higher on the other side. Then beyond this 
is the real hill that was being aimed at all the time, towering 



1908.] WEST^ COUNTRY IDYLLS 331 

verdant to its top in curves that breathe of peace, and tell that 
it was no volcanic pang that gave it birth. 

Glastonbury Tor, which lies out there before me, is an ex- 
ception. Long ages ago the Severn Sea swept round its base, 
and then it seemed an island like the other islands formed by 
the Mendip hills, as must have been this very ground on which 
I lie. Of all the hills in the West- Country it has been the one 
to witness the strangest, most stirring, the dreadest scenes, as 
the ages have rolled by. 

Close to its foot the day-dawn of Christianity broke over 
our land when Joseph of Arimathea made his weary pilgrimage 
to Glastonbury. It hung as a great beacon or sign in the 
heavens above that wondrous abbey, through countless centu- 
ries, guiding the faithful of all lands to the " Second Rome " 
to the treasures clustered beneath its shelter. And, oh ! the 
sadness of it ! when that abbey fell, it bared its breast and 
made itself an altar on which the last abbot of that splendid 
house was slain. There it stands to-day lonely, desolate, 
crowned with a ruined sanctuary a solitary mourner weeping 
its mist clouds over the desecrated abbey at its feet. 

But I have not come here on this bright morning to tell 
the tale of that far away hill, but to see the new awakened 
life of spring in one glorious vision all at once. The bursting 
tree buds, the gilding of the grass, the love song of the birds, 
the joy of the new-born insects when they first feel the sun 
all this you get from this Mendip hilltop; not in detail, not 
in a snatch of the blackbird's song, not in this flower, nor in 
that insect but all of it all at once, with a fullness and a rush 
and a sense of the overwhelming prodigality of nature that 
sweeps you off your feet, caught as you seem to be in a wave 
of the Infinitude of God. That is why I have come to this 
mountain top to-day, why I lie full stretch in the sunlight on 
the outer rampart of the old Roman camp. 

The farmer has done much to spoil things. Over there he 
has made a great gap through the ancient earth-wall that his 
cattle may pass from place to place and that his hay cart may 
carry the spoils in and out with safety. Through this cutting 
I get a somewhat wider view, particularly of the country nearer 
under me. Quite in the distance I see a white winding road 
with a tender green hedge on either side, and it is framed in 
the cutting through which I see it. It is only a simple coun- 



332 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Dec., 

try lane/without a feature of any kind to attract attention, but 
the unexpected sight of it awakes a train of memory. 

It was there, in that lane whether in the exact part which 
I can see, I know not that the tragedy of Richard Luff's dis- 
appearance was enacted. I told the story in the account of 
"The Village School.*' He was the schoolmistress* husband and 
he had started out with his pony and trap to take his farm 
produce to Coleford, as he told his wife in the morning when 
he left. The cart had come back empty on the dark winter 
afternoon, and it wasn't until the old pony had stood half an 
hour in the yard, at the back of the house, that Mrs. Luff dis- 
covered that it had come without a driver. From that day for- 
ward she never heard anything more of her husband, and for 
months his disappearance was the topic of conversation in all 
the villages around. Fifty years ago, when the affair happened, 
there were many disused coal-pit shafts, open and unprotected 
about these parts, and persons confidently affirmed that Richard 
Luff had been set upon on his homeward journey, robbed, and 
thrown down one of these terrible wells, which would tell no 
tale. 

Luff had come to our village as a tiny child, with the woman 
he always called his mother. As he grew up, he became a 
well-mannered, well-spoken boy, and by the time he was thir- 
teen, he was big enough to be put into a suit of " buttons " 
and to be employed by the great family at the Park. In a few 
years more he was second footman, and then, hearing of a good 
place near Durham, he soon rose higher, and would have been 
butler, if his youthfulness had not stood in his way. Then 
Richard Luff made a mistake. 

An attachment had sprung up between him and one of the 
other servants, and although she was only twenty and he but 
a couple of years older, he married her. The fact was, the girl's 
father had just died her mother had been dead some years 
and he had left the little country inn that he possessed to his 
daughter. He knew of her engagement to Richard, and thor- 
oughly approved of the young man, whom he regarded as a 
good, steady fellow, and during his last illness expressed a wish 
that they should marry as soon as possible, and carry on the 
inn. Every one who knew Richard congratulated him on his 
good fortune, and his new life began happily enough. Within 
a year or two, however, the husband noticed a change that 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 333 

filled him with uneasiness. His wife was taking more to drink 
than was good for her, and the habit as usual was growing. 
Richard talked to her, persuaded her, argued with her, grew 
angry with her, quarreled with her. The life that had been so 
happy, slowly became intolerable, and as the drink habit grew, 
his wife neglected the home more and more, and comfortless 
days and turbulent nights drove Richard Luff nearly out of his 
mind. 

About this time the railway line began to be made through 
the village. It changed the face of things. Besides increasing 
Luff's business tenfold, it filled the place with a hoard of 
navvies and engineers, and every room in the village was let. 
One of the engineers came to lodge at the inn. Before a month 
had passed, Richard Luff had seen enough to make him take 
desperate steps. He gathered a little ready cash together, wrote 
a short note to his wife, telling her he was going away for 
good, and would never see her again, slipt out of the house in 
the early morning, and once more made his way southwards. 

All that the villagers here had ever known about Richard 
Luff after he left his first place at the Park was that he had 
gone into a great family in the north of England arid had im- 
proved his position. Of his marriage they knew nothing. His 
mother, as he called her, had died before he had gone north- 
wards, and letters were not written when Richard was a youth 
with the ease with which they are to-day. So when he came 
back to his old village he came as a stranger. 

One of the methods by which Luff had added to his in- 
come while he kept the inn, was by starting a small bread bus- 
iness. The business had been a success, and the young man 
acquired some skill in his trade. The first thing therefore that 
he did, on returning to his native village, was to look out for 
a place where he might begin baking again. It was not long 
before his enterprise discovered the oven and big room that 
lay across the yard at the back of the old schoolhouse. Miss 
Moon, who had recently begun to keep the school, was only 
too ready to let the premises, as it helped to reduce her heavy 
rent, and so within a fortnight of Richard's return, he had be- 
gun his baker's business once more. The nearness of the bake- 
house to the schoolhouse, led to developments. Miss Moon found 
the services of the obliging young baker more and more neces- 
sary on every emergency. Indeed, the emergencies seemed to 



334 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Dec., 

' 

multiply at a most curious rate. The kitchen blind- roller had 
tumbled down, or the old clock had stopped, or a broody hen 
wanted "sitting." No one could be found to get out the pota- 
toes, and the weather was going to change, and would Mr. Luff 
get them up at once ? Then, when they were out of ground, 
they had to be carried into the house right into the kitchen 
where Miss Moon sat when school was over, and into the room 
beyond. The schoolmistress helped she felt it was quite safe, 
for she was just ten years older than Richard, and her profes- 
sion gave her an official position which carried with it privi- 
leges. When the potatoes were safely housed, Mr. Luff looked 
so hot and tired that Miss Moon felt certain he would have 
some cider. Then came the delicate question of remuneration. 
Richard blushed and declared he didn't want anything at all 
the exercise was good for him after he had been in the hot 
bakehouse so many hours. With a playful smile Miss Moon 
said that this could not be allowed, and if he wouldn't take 
any recompence, now that it was so late, would he stay to 
supper ? Richard stayed. The supper was a more comfortable 
one than he would have had in his lodgings, and he thought 
Miss Moon a kind and sensible sort of woman. Still the emer- 
gencies multiplied. Richard was so handy ; Richard was so 
clever; Richard was so near; and Miss Moon was fast getting 
past a marriageable age. It ended as might have been ex- 
pected, for, in spite of her official position, the schoolmistress 
made violent love to the young baker on every possible occa- 
sion. 

Within six months of his coming back to his West-Country 
home, Richard Luff had married Suzannah Moon, and a very 
happy marriage it proved to be. He kept the secret of the 
first Mrs. Luft locked in his breast, and from the day he left 
her to that December afternoon, two and forty years after- 
wards, he never heard of or saw his wife again. 

The piece of road that first caught my eye through the 
cleft in the old earthworks is steep, and it was at a steep part 
of his journey that Pvichard Luff, to ease the old pony, was 
walking by her side, as she dragged the cart up the lane. A 
gig with a fast-trotting horse overtook him. It was driven by 
a stout, coarse faced woman rather showily dressed. It passed 
him. Then the driver pulled up short, and puttirg her hand 
on the cushion beside her, she turned three-quarters of the 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 335 

way round, and said in a loud, harsh voice: " An' your name's 
Richard Luff, isn't it ? " 

" It be, mum," he answered respectfully, " but I don't know 
yourn." He was alongside of the gig now and had stopped 
his pony. 

" Don't know mine," she answered in a quiet, low tone, as 
if she were imitating something in the past, and she watched 
to see the effect it would have on the man in the road. 

" God in heaven have mercy on me," he cried in a tone of 
anguish that came from the depth of his heart. " Be that you, 
Liza?" 

"Yes it be, and I'm come to look for thee, Richard Luff, 
for thou must come back again thou hast had holiday enough." 

Richard clutched at the shaft of his cart, for he felt his 
legs giving way under him. The shock was terrible. " But I 
can't come back, 'Liza, I be " 

" No you bain't " ; she said, interrupting him, " and you 
knows that as well as I do ; and if I tells, you knows what 
you'll get. Now, just do what I bid thee." 

She bade him transfer the parcels to the gig, and take all 
else out of the little cart. Then he hung the reins safely on 
the lamp, and started the pony for home. Next he took his 
seat beside his wife, and asking which was the shortest way to 
Bath, she turned the horse round and trotted at a great pace 
till they came to the Fosse- way. In a couple of hours they 
had reached Bath. There they rested for the night and next 
morning pushed on again a stage northwards. 

What had happened was this. The man who had lodged 
with Mrs. Luff from the time Richard had left, had died a 
short time before. He had so managed the house and Mrs. 
Luff that he had made the place pay, and at his decease the 
woman found herself possessed of a few pounds, and a house 
that, when sold, would bring in a nice little sum. 

A few months previously Mrs. Luff had had unexpected 
tidings of her husband. She said there was fate in it, be- 
cause of the strangeness of the coincidence. When the rail- 
way line was first made the coming of the navvies was the 
beginning of the trouble. Now that the increased traffic re- 
quired the line to be doubled, once more an army of nav- 
vies descended on the village. Large companies gathered at 
the inn night by night where they spent a good proportion of 



33 6 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Dec., 

their hardly- earned wages. The usual low- class chaff and con- 
versation went round, sometimes good-humoredly, sometimes 

not. 

"Here, Mrs.," shouted one of the company, "here's a bloke 
as says you taught him readin' and writin* ; he'd like to shake 
hands with you." 

"I didn't say no such thing, mum," exclaimed a great burly 
fellow with a broad Somerset accent. " I said as how the 'oman 
as tart [taught] I, was named same as you be. That's arl I 
said." 

"And where's the person living that's got my name ? " asked 
the landlady with some degree of interest. 

" Down the country wur I come from," answered Albert 
Maggs, the youth appealed to, " she kep' the village school, 
and she tart I. 

" Did she teach all alone ? " asked Mrs. Luff. 

"Yes, all by hersel'; but when we chaps wur up to our 
games, or actin' arf, she'd go and holler for her husband, 
Richard Luff, to come and hit we, for she wur afraid to do it 
hersel'." 

" And could he keep you in order ? " 

" Sart a' arder. He wur a nice man, wur Richard Luff, an 1 
he sol' bread an' kep' pigs, an' had a cow or two, so he art 
to ha' made some money be this, for he must be getting on 
now." 

When turning-out time came, Mrs. Luff told Albert Maggs 
quietly that she wanted to have a talk with him some day, 
and the youth was flattered. 

Mrs. Luff learnt all about her husband's doings, his position, 
and his probable wealth. She was a woman with a keen bus- 
iness instinct, which had not been altogether blurred by her 
failing. Indeed, of late years, Eliza Luff had not given way 
nearly so much as formerly. The strong hand of her partner, 
and the fear in which she stood of him, kept her temperate 
for weeks together, but the inevitable wild outbreaks would 
come at last. In the lulls between the storms Mrs. Luff's 
undoubted powers of management and resource would show 
themselves, only to be misused, when the breakdown came, in 
circumventing her guardian's efforts to keep her from the 
drink. 

Things were in this position when the man died. Mrs. 



i9o8.J WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS 337 

Luff, in one of her saner moments, exercised her better judg- 
ment by selling the inn, thus removing herself farther from 
temptation. Her next step was to find Richard Luff. Her 
object in so doing was, first to add his fortune to her own, if 
possible, and secondly to secure some one who would exercise 
a restraining power at those times when the drinking fits were 
on. Eliza Luff, therefore, traveled from the north to Frome, 
partly by train and partly by coach. At Frome she bought a 
horse and gig, for it was part of her plan to kidnap her hus- 
band. She rightly saw that if there was any fuss in getting 
him to come back to her again, the story might get abroad 
and Richard would be tried for bigamy and she would lose him 
altogether. Before she left the north she shrewdly gave out 
that, having sold the inn and bought a house, she was going 
to see an old friend who had made her an offer of marriage. 
Mrs. Luff stayed a fortnight in London on her way down, and 
when she eventually got home again, she had been absent 
more than a month, which was quite long enough to account 
for her returning with a husband. One person, and one only, 
knew the true story, and that was Albert Maggs. As soon as 
Richard Luff arrived, the youth sought him out, told the old 
man who he was, and promised faithfully no word of his should 
ever betray him a promise he faithfully kept. 

Then Richard Luff's penance began. In the bitterness of 
his heart he compared Suzannah Moon with his wife. If the 
former was rather masterful at times, and for the sake of a 
quiet life he gave way to her, yet she was a good, upright 
woman, and he had loved her dearly. The real Mrs. Luff was a 
very different person. Coarse in mind and body, she held her 
husband in no respect, for she felt that she possessed a secret 
which, if revealed, would prove his ruin. She was disappointed 
too about Richard's supposed wealth. She found that there 
were very few pounds laid by, and that most of what he had 
consisted of his farm stock which, of course, she couldn't get 
at. Then, too, the habit of despising him and making little 
of him on all occasions before other men whenever she could 
recoiled upon herself. The dim idea that she originally had, 
that by getting Richard back she would have some one at 
hand who would check her when the drinking fits were on, re- 
mained. So little, however, did she respect her husband when 
she was in her senses, that when she began to indulge in her 

VOL. LXXXVIII. -23 



33 8 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Dec., 

$ 

old failing, she merely made game of him if he tried to exer- 
cise any control. 

Freed from the strong hand that held her before Richard's 
return, Mrs. Luff's outbreaks of intemperance became "more and 
more frequent. What her poor husband suffered in his gentle, 
silent way, no one ever knew, but the neighbors pitied the old 
man when his spouse, held up between some of her friends 
and accompanied by a string of jeering children, was pushed 
in at the cottage door, helpless and blaspheming. 

So Richard Luff's new life dragged on month after month, 
while the money that had been saved, melted quickly. Before 
their financial needs became desperate, Richard suggested to 
his wife, at a moment when she was rational, that the remain- 
ing cash should be put in the bank in his name, and that he 
should let her have a little from time to time. To this she 
agreed, and as the money supply was cut off, she managed for 
a week or two to keep sober. Then the old enemy returned 
with new strength gotten from the rest. As there was now 
no money with which to purchase the drink, she began to pawn 
the furniture. Bit by bit their belongings went, and the home 
became more and more miserable. Richard had taken on him- 
self most of the household management; and he often scrubbed 
and cooked and washed, while his wife sat helpless in a chair. 

It is no use following the story. I have pieced it together 
from the recollections of the old navvy who, for two years, 
lodged near the Luff's, after Richard had rejoined his wife. 

" You see, Father," Albert Maggs said to me one day, " I 
suppose I didn't understand rightly all the old man had to put 
up with. I wur but a young chap mysel', and it's a long 
whiles ago now fifty years or more and I forgets most o' what 
that there 'oman did. I told you about the rabbit last time 
you asked me, didn't I ? No ? Ah, well, that's about as good 
as anything she ever done, for you mind she wur a sharp 
'oman, even in drink, onless she'd had too much." 

"Bat what about the rabbit?" 

" It was this way, Father. One Saturday Richard Luff 
brings she in a rabbit for Sunday's dinner. She had been sober 
arl the week, so he thought he could leave her to do 'un all 
right. But she was jest beginning one of her bouts, I suppose, 
an' she wanted money for the drink. Mrs Luff waits till Rich- 
ard be garn arf somewheres, and then she pops arf too, and 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 339 

takes thic rabbit to a neighbor and sells 'un for sixpence, 'cause 
she says as how they've got two and she don't want thic 'un. 
She comes in home, and begins to consider what she be gwoin 1 
to say to Richard. While she wur wonderin' nex' door cat 
looks in at the winder, and she collers 'un, and does 'un in 
[kills it], and makes 'un up like stewed rabbit, ingions an' arl. 
She gi'ed 'un Richard for his Sunday's dinner, an' Richard he 
never know'd nothing about it at arl no, nor never wouldn't 
neither if Mrs. Luff hadn't bin foolish. She kep' herself straight 
till she seed the job through, and then she had one of her 
drinkin' fits, an' a main bad 'un it was, too. After a few days, 
when there was no more cash, for the old man tried to starve 
her out of the beer, and kep' her shart, she tries to sell the 
rabbit's skin. That there skin 'uld fetch a penny, and a penny 
'uld get her summat more to pour down her neck [throat]. 

" When Pat Donovan corned round wi' his trucks * my lady 
goes to the door as brazen'en as you please, and offered 'un 
the cat's skin. 

" ' An' what sart of a rabbit are you callin' that, Mrs. 
Luff?' asks Pat, for the fool had left the head on 'un, an' he 
seed they wur never rabbit's ears. 

"'It be arl right,' says she, 'an' he ain't broke, an' he's 
a good skin, too.' 

" Pat Donovan wur arlways on for his games, and p'r'aps, 
too, he seed the lady wur a bit sprung, so he carries on about 
the new sart o' rabbit skins, and the volk begins to gather 
round, and this just suits Mr. Pat, because it means trade. 
Presently, they as lives nex' door looks out to see what all the 
barny's [row] about. 

" Says Pat, holdin* up the cat's skin : ' Have yer evir seen 
a rabbit as could ketch mice, afore?' And wi' that he puts 
his fingers into the head, and lays the skin along the back of 
his han', and begins to stroke and stroke. 

" ' Put the blessed thing in thee trucks, an' don't stan' 
foolin' there,' screeched Mrs. Luff, for she were in a proper 
rage, I can tell you, for she seed what wur comin'. Just 
then, one o' the maidens from nex' door, and then the ol' 
'oman herself goes up to Pat and looks at the skin as he 
strokes it down and down. 

* A truck on two wheels is always described locally, as " a pair of trucks," or merely 
" trucks " This article is never spoken of in the singular. A " pair of rosary beads," and a 
" pair of stairs," are also old English expressions. 



340 



WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Dec. 



" ' Where did 'e get he from ? ' asks the old 'un, quiet and 
civil like. 

11 ' Get he/ says Pat, ' why, from Mrs. Luff sure, and she 
calls 'un a rabbit/ 

"That's our cat as we lost last Saturday, as sure as I'm 
alive,' says the maiden, an' the ol* 'un joins in, and then they 
two turns on Richard Luff's wife an' begins to call she all the 
worstest of everything. But Mrs. Luff went in an' banged the 
door, an' they'd lived too long next she, not to let she alone. 

" That's the way, Father, she treated the poor ol' chap 
oh, he had a hard time of it, he had; and many's the time I 
wur sorry for him from my heart. He must have been dead 
years and years by this, for I left there when the work wur 
finished, and come back here. 

" I never told any 'on 'urn that I know'd what had become 
o' Richard Luff, and when I heard them talking and saying as 
how he wur murdered for sure and certain, I know'd better. 
You be the fust I've told it to now, Father, for I promised 
Richard Luff I never wouldn't, an' I kep* me word." 

I had drawn this story from the old navvy only a day or 
two ago, and now on this June morning, by a mere chance, I 
was looking at the very spot where the tragedy had begun. 
And it all seemed so incongruous. What was there in common 
between this sweet Mendip lane and that drunken north coun- 
try wench ? And why was the simple, quiet Richard Luff to 
be the sport of this vulgar, violent woman? No; it is all out 
of place, and I don't want to think of it any more. I would 
rather watch the tiny rabbits as they play on the edge of the 
copse below ; or the friendly swallows as they fly close round 
me; or the white butterflies as they waltz above the golden 
gorse, while I lie and muse in the spring sunshine, upon the 
grass-grown rampart of the old camp on Mendip. 




ANATOLE FRANCE'S " LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC." 

BY J. BRICOUT. 

II. 

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE DOCUMENTS. 

FRANCE'S opinion of the chief documents that 
relate to Joan of Arc is practically the same as 
that of Jules Quicherat, who published the rec- 
ords of the two trials, and the testimony of the 
witnesses between 1841 and 1849. Henri Mar- 
tin, Michelet, and in our own days M. E. Lavisse, and even 
Petit de Julleville,* a Catholic, have formed a similar estimate 
of their value. We must add, however, without delay, that in 
setting forth those documents M. France differs in many im- 
portant points, not only from Petit de Julleville, but also from 
Quicherat and the free-thinking historians who follow him. In- 
fluenced by certain learned alienists, and his own anti- clerical 
hatred, M. France, more than all the rest combined, makes 
Joan an unfortunate victim of perpetual hallucinations, a poor, 
weak automaton, whose intellectual powers, as well as the part 
she played, have been greatly exaggerated. 

In our third and final article we will show that M. France's 
Joan of Arc is not the Joan of history, the real Joan. Our 
duty now is to examine the documents and weigh their value, 
so as to base our conclusions on knowledge. 

During the last ten years those documents have been studied 
thoroughly by many able Catholic critics. We may well believe, 
therefore, as Mgr. Touchet, Bishop of Orleans, has lately said, 
that we now have a better grasp of Joan's history. f 

* The first edition of de Julleville's work, La Venerable Jeanne d'Arc, appeared in 1900. 
There has been no change in the editions that have appeared since January 6, 1904, when her 
virtue was proclaimed heroic. 

t In his Lenten pastoral of 1904, Mgr. Touchet wrote as follows about his diocesan 
board of inquiry : " Our sittings were many and weighty, full of sharp discussions, and at times 
apparently stirred to irritation by objections which came from Rome. In this point we erred." 

" I had the honor of saying to the Pope in one of my audiences, that the subtle argn- 
lents advanced by the Very Reverend Promoter of the faith, had helped to deepen our 
knowledge of Joan. In future, I added, it will hardly be possible for any one to write a life 



342 , AN ATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF Axe." [Dec., 

M. France has a very poor opinion of the different chroni- 
cles written during the lifetime or shortly after the death of 
Joan. " If we knew," he says, "only what the French chron- 
iclers tell us concerning Joan of Arc, we would know her about 
as well as we know Sakya-Muni." * The Burgundian writers 
are hardly more instructive. 

"The chroniclers of that period, French as well as Bur- 
gundian, were hired writers."! They wrote to please their mas- 
ters. Moreover, fable and legend quickly laid hold of Joan. 
From 1429 on Joan was seen only through a " set of stories 
that are even more disordered than the clouds of a stormy 
sky."J At the end of his first volume M. France exclaims: 

Maid and peace-loving soldier, devotee, prophetess, sorcer- 
ess, angel of the L,ord, ogress everybody looks at her in his 
own way and dreams of her according to his own character. 
Pious people attribute to her an invincible sweetness and the 
divine treasures of charity ; simple folk make her simple like 
themselves; men who are violent and gross represent her as 
an ugly and terrible giantess. Will it ever be possible to ficd 
out what she was in reality ? There she is hidden from the 
first hour, and perhaps forever, in the flowery thicket of 
legend. 

The sketch is overdrawn, but M. France continually reverts 
to it. To take the poetry or, to speak more accurately, the 
supernatural, out of Joan's life, he must make his readers be- 
lieve that her contemporaries unconsciously fashioned an unreal 
Joan of their own. He would have it that German and Italian 
strangers, though clever and well-informed men, saw her, like 
the French, only through a chaotic mass of dreams and fictions. 
Confronted by such unanimous testimony, a historian who is 
not swayed by fear of the supernatural, but is inspired with an 
unalloyed love of truth, would ask if there were not after all 
something extraordinary and divine in Joan and her acts. M. 
France shows no hesitation; he straightway denies that such 
is the case. He affirms: 

of this Tenerable servant of God without consulting the records of our investigation, in the 
archives of the Congregation of Rites. In particular we may note that we subjected certain 
acumcntstoa thorough criticism; we proved -their value, or, as the case might be, their 
worthlessness ; and some we reconstructed in so truth-like a way that they carry conviction 
with them ." - Revue du Clergt Frangais, April 15, 1904. 

* Vie de Jeanne d' Arc, Vol. I., p. 15. Y Vol. I., p. 4. 

\ Vol. I., p. 545. $ Vol. I., p. 553. 



1908.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 343 

At no moment of her life was she known save through 
fables. If she influenced crowds, it was because of the 
countless legends that sprang up at her heels and flew before 
her. There is room for reflection on that dazzling obscurity 
which surrounded the Maid from the beginning. Those radi- 
ant clouds of myth, which revealed even while they hid her, 
should be examined.* 

He concludes: 

To sum up, the Maid was hardly known, even in her life- 
time, except through fables. Her earliest chroniclers, men 
utterly incapable oi scientific woik, from the very beginning 
wrote down legends as facts. t 

This verdict is too severe. That legends had a great in- 
fluence on men in those stirring and credulous days, I have no 
thought of denying, and I readily understand why a critical 
historian looks twice before he accepts any one of them. This 
legitimate distrust, however, should not lead a man to reject 
a priori everything that is extraordinary or presupposes a divine 
intervention. Sound philosophy shows that God exists; that 
He can act in a special way in the created world ; and that no 
one has any right to exclude miracles from history systematic- 
ally. We are bound, therefore, to study with care the chron- 
iclers who were contemporaries of the Maid. Their testimony 
is not to be rejected solely because they occasionally mention 
something marvelous. 

Some of them were paid chroniclers who do not always 
agree with the official records of the trials, nor with accounts, 
letters, and public as well as private documents which have 
come down to us from that time. 

We grant all that. But this is no decisive reason for making 
little of what they have written. An impartial historian will 
weigh the arguments for and against in each individual case 
and will decide as the balance leans to one side or the other. 
M. Anatole France follows a different method. He always 
rules out documents which contain even the slightest trace of 
the supernatural. In this he is inexorable. 

M. France, who sets so little store by the chroniclers who 
lived at the same time as Joan, has a higher opinion of the 
official records of the trials. He writes: 

*Vol. I., p. 19. t Vol. I., p. 32. 



344 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Dec., 



We will best find out the truth from the records of the trial 
at Rouen, from certain accounts, letters, and private as well 
as public documents. The process of rehabilitation will also 
help the historian greatly, so long as he remembers how and 
why that trial was held. By means of these documents we 
can reconstruct the main features of Joan's character and life 
with sufficient accuracy.* 

This last sentence shows M. .France's historical scepticism. 
The expressions he uses give evidence of too much mistrust, 
for it can be safely said that we know very clearly what we 
need to know about Joan of Arc. Laying aside this point, 
however, let us see if M. France is right in putting the value 
he does on the records of the two trials of condemnation and 
rehabilitation. 

It is evident that our opinion of Joan, of her mission, her 
career, and her sanctity, ought to depend very largely on the 
results of this critical study. These documents are of prime 
importance. In comparison with them the rest are of but little 
value. We might have said as much for the reports of the 
Poitiers inquiry, if they had not been lost. In her trial Joan 
frequently but vainly appealed to them. They were not quoted 
in the process of rehabilitation. How and why were they lost 
so soon ? M. France, whom we must now quote at length, 
writes : 

The condemnation trial is a treasure for the historian. The 
prosecutors' questions cannot be studied too careiully. They 
were based on information obtained at Domremy and in differ- 
ent parts of France through which Joan had passed. The 
reports they used have not been preserved. The judges of 
1431 need it be said? aimed only at finding Joan guilty of 
idolatry, heresy, sorcery, and other crimes against the Church. 
They scrutinized everything that they could find out about 
her life, for they were bent on discovering evil in her every 
act and word. They wanted to destroy her so as to heap 
dishonor on her king. Everybody knows what the Maid's 
answers are worth. They have the ring of heroic honesty, 
aud as a rule they are limpidly clear. Still we must not take 
everything literally. Joan never looked on the bishop or his 
assistant as her judges. She was not so simple as to tell 
them the whole truth. When she warned them that they 
did not know everything, she was as candid as could be ex- 

* Vol. I., p. 32. 



i9o8.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 345 

pected. We must also note that she suffered a strange lack 
of memory. I am well aware that a clerk wondered at the 
exactness with which she recalled the answers she had given 
to her questioner a fortnight before, That may be, in spite of 
the fact that she did not always give exactly the same an- 
swers. It is no less certain that after a year's lapse she had 
only a confused remembrance of certain important events of 
her life. Lastly, her perpetual hallucinations very often ren- 
dered her incapable of distinguishing the true from the false. 
The report of the trial is followed by an account of several 
things said by Joan in articulo mortis. This account is not 
signed by the clerks. For this reason it is irregular in law. 
Still it is none the less a historical document of unquestion- 
able authenticity. I believe that things happened in very 
much the way that this extra-judicial document asserts. In 
it we find Joan's second retractation, a retractation that is 
not open to doubt, since Joan died with the last Sacraments. 
Even those who called attention to the irregularity of this 
document during the rehabilitation trial, did not tax its con- 
tents with falsehood.* 

What are we to think of these documents, the records of 
the condemnation trial and the Posthumous Postscript? The 
latest Catholic historians, f whom the Sacred Congregation of 
Rites consulted before the publication of the 1904 decree, do 
not look on them so favorably as Jules Quicherat and M. 
France. They even speak in this connection of a " sort of 
revolution in the interpretation of the documents." \ 

The term is hardly an exaggeration. For proof, compare 
what Petit de Julleville wrote in 1900, about the condemna- 
tion trial, with what Canon Dunand wrote four years later. 

The former says plainly that he believes the records are 
honest. "Whatever Cauchon's intentions may have been, Man- 
chon, who was notary or clerk at the trial of 1431, and Pierre 
Miget, who sat in it as a judge, both testified in the rehabili- 
tation trial ; one to the effect that the official report which he 
had signed was a faithful record and the other that the official 
notaries were reliable men." Moreover, the official records show 
no traces of fraudulent interpolations, "they fit well together 
and seem exact." " Besides," adds de Julleville, "since I found 

* Vol. I., pp. 2-4. 

t Dunand, " L' He'roicitd des Vertus de Jeanne d 'Arc," dans la Revue du Clerge Frattfau, 
April, 1904. \ Dunand, art. cit. 



346 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Dec., 



nothing but what was wholly to the honor of Joan of Arc and 
proclaimed aloud her innocence and her virtue,* I could not 
discover any clear trace of the falsifications that are somewhat 
vaguely imputed to her judges. "f 

M. Dunand starts with the principle that accusations which 
come from declared enemies are "absolutely untrustworthy," 
so long as those enemies " offer only their own testimony as 
the proof or guarantee of their charges." Thence he concludes 
that by themselves alone Pierre Cauchon's base charges against 
the Maid, for whom he had a mortal hatred, deserve no cre- 
dence. He reaches also the conclusion that the records of the 
trial at Rouen, written up as they were at the order and under 
the inspiration of the English, sworn enemies of Joan, by judges 
and doctors who were in their pay, are unreliable from begin- 
ning to end, and by themselves cannot be trusted in anything 
that concerns the charges against the prisoner. | The contrast 
is very marked. The following observation, however, may mod- 
erate it a little. The minutes of the trial were first written in 
French by the clerks Manchon and Boisguillaume. Quite a 
while later they were translated into Latin by the same Man- 
chon and Thomas de Courcelles. The latter, a doctor of the 
Sorbonne, was a deadly enemy of Joan's May we not believe 
that the original was trustworthy as a rule, and that Thomas 
de Courcelles changed it more or less in his Latin translation? 
As a matter of fact, some really serious alterations have been 
discovered. Besides, do we know Manchon and Miget well 
enough to take their word without entertaining any doubts of 
their sincerity or even their infallibility ? They may have been 
deceived or they may have been dishonest. The best way to an- 
swer the question, it seems to me, is to examine some partic- 
ular points. 

After Joan had been captured by the Burgundians, she was 
shut up in the fortress of Beaurevoir. Having heard that Com- 
piegne was about to be taken and handed over to fire and the 
sword, and fearing also to be delivered to the English, she tried 
to escape, despite the " voices " which urged her to take every- 
thing in good part. Did she jump from the top of the tower, 

We will see later that these words of Petit de Julleville do not correspond exactly witk 
his thought. 

t Petit de Julleville, op. cit., pp. 109-111. \ Dunand, op. cit. t p. 390. 

$ We have the whole of the Latin translation, but only a part of the French original. 



I9o8.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 347 

as the term which the records put into her mouth implies, or did 
she fall, as the Chronicle of the Cordeliers * has it, when the 
linen strips which she had tied together and fastened to her 
window, broke just as she started to climb down them ? 

" We must believe the Maid," says M. France. " She tells 
us that she jumped. If she had fallen while sliding down an 
improvised rope, she would not have felt guilty, nor would she 
have accused herself of a sin."f 

These reasons do not carry conviction. In whatever way 
the prisoner tried to escape, she had disobeyed her "voices," 
and had therefore committed a fault, however excusable and 
slight f On the other hand, Joan, in answering the question 
put by her judges, may have used the term that they employed 
perhaps on purpose without ever suspecting its treacherous 
character. It may very well be, then, that the author of the 
Chronicle of the Cordeliers, who was acquainted, as M. France 
himself admits, "with certain diplomatic matters and had seen 
some diplomatic documents," told the truth in the present 
case. One is all the more inclined to distrust the term used 
in the text of the trial, in proportion as one feels that the 
judges were interested in making people believe that Joan had 
committed a grave sin of despair, and had wished to take her 
own life. As this is a lie, it is quite likely that the phrase in 
question is one also. 

Let us go on to another fact, about which the text of the 
trial is no less questionable the sign given by Joan to Charles 
VII. Here first of all is what the trial records say. Ques- 
tioned by Cauchon on March 10, 1431, she at first refused to 
answer. She had promised the king to keep his secret, and she 
had thus far kept her promise. Harassed and pressed still fur- 
ther by her judges, she ended by telling them that an angel, 
acting for God, gave the king the sign. The sign, so the an- 
gel assured the king as he gave him the crown, was that he 
would have the whole kingdom of France with the help of God 
and through the labors of Joan. The crown that he brought 
was of fine gold; it was entrusted to the Archbishop of Rheims; 

* This anonymous chronicle receives its name from the fact that the only manuscript whick 
contains it comes from a Paris convent of that religious body. It was written by a well-informed 
clerk from Picardy, a contemporary of Joan's, nd a partisan of the Burgundians. 

t Vol. II., p. 207. 

\ " The only fault she ever committed," writes Petit de Julleville, op. /., p. 126. 

$Vol. I., p. 15. 



34 8 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Dec., 

* 

and was still in the king's treasury. The angel who brought 
it entered by the gate, along with her and always accompanied 
her.* Some days later she told the same story with new de- 
tails. Now on the morning of the day she was burned, accor- 
ding to the Posthumous Postscript, she acknowledged that she 
was herself the angel, and that the crown was simply the prom- 
ise that the king would be crowned. 

Some who think the texts reliable, Quicherat and M. France, 
for example, say that Joan did not tell the truth that she 
lied. Others try to excuse her on the score that she was com- 
mitted to an " unpleasant course of conduct." Petit de Julleville, 
from whom I quote these last few words, continues: 

Being stubbornly determined I say it to her glory never 
to give up the king's secret, she wished, however, to be freed 
at any cost from the importunities of her judges. She thought 
she had a right to set a real fact before them in an allegorical 
form. In the end she told them of her interview with Charles 
VII., and in doing so adorned what was really very simple, 
with wonderful colors. . . . She invented this scene to 
have done with a very annoying question, and to throw her 
judges off the right track, by feeding their curiosity with her 
fancies. This disguising of the truth even when most in- 
nocent and excusable was not to the taste of her brave and 
truthful tongue. She played this part poorly ; she contra- 
dicted herself repeatedly. . . ,f 

For my part, I am more inclined to agree with Joan's latest 
Catholic historians in the judgment that not only the Posthu- 
mous Postscript, but also the official records of the trial, fail to 
tell the truth. M. Vallet de Viriville, a historian of Quicherat's 
school, whom M. France greatly esteems | is of this opinion. 
Here are his words: " This whole story of the sign and of the 
angel seems to be a malicious parody on the answers made by 
the prisoner. . . . We cannot repeat it too often, that in 
our judgment this is a biassed, unreliable text, written by un- 
just, hostile judges." Writers belonging to the latter half of 

" Petit de Julleville, op. elf., p. 130. 

\Opcit., pp. 129-130. M. France (vol I., p. 90) remarks that Joan sometimes expressed 
her thoughts in allegory. 

| " In my judgment, the most thoughtful of all the histories written between 1817 and 1870, 
is the one which forms the fourth book of Vallet de Viriville's History of Charles VI I. In it 
care is taken to connect Joan with the group of visionaries to which she really belongs " (vol. 
I., p. 66.) ^ Quoted by Dunand, artcil., p. 402. 



igo8. J ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 349 

the fifteenth century say the sign consisted in Joan's revealing 
to Charles VII. a secret prayer of his about his own legitimacy. 
It is very probable that these writers are to be believed in 
preference to the official records of the trial or the Posthumous 
Postscript. 

There are still other reasons why the historian should mis- 
trust these texts. Not to be too long, we will confine ourselves 
to an examinination of what they tell us about Joan's last days* 

On May 24,. 1431, the unfortunate Maid was driven in a 
cart, under escort, to the cemetery of Saint Ouen, to listen to 
a sermon and to hear the final sentence pronounced. If she 
will consent to hold as true what " the clerks and those who 
are judges of such matters say and have decided about her 
words and actions"; if she will consent to wear women's 
clothes ; to abjure and to revoke all that she has said, her ex- 
communication will be lifted and sentence of death will not be 
pronounced. Joan remains firm. All the while she wants to 
obey the Church, and if the Church, i.e., the Universal Church, 
commands it, she will sign the memorandum set before her. 
Finally, as they threaten to burn her that very day, unless she 
signs it immediately, she consents to their demand. In spite 
of the promises by which several clerks have led her on, she 
is brought back to the English prison. She dresses again as 
a woman. Three days later, however, she resumes male attire. 
Next day, Monday, May 28, Cauchon and the vice- inquisitor, 
accompanied by many masters and doctors, repair to the castle 
in which Joan is imprisoned. 

Her face was tear-stained and disfigured with dreadful 
grief. 

She was asked when and why she had resumed that sort of 
clothing. 

She answered: I have just now put on men's clothes and 
laid aside my woman's dress. 

Why have you changed and who made you do it ? 

I have done it of my own will, without any constraint. I 
prefer male to female attire. 

You have promised and sworn not to dress as a man. 

I never understood that I had taken an oath not to do so. 

Why have you taken to wearing such clothes again ? 

Because it is more lawful for me to wear them again and 
dress as a man, while I am among men, than to dress as a 



350 AN ATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Dec., 

woman. ... I am wearing them again because the pro- 
mises made to me, that I might go to Mass and receive ray 
Savior and that I would be freed from my fetters, have not 
been kept. 

Have you sworn in the same way not to resume that kind of 
garb ? 

I would rather die than be in chains. But if they are will- 
ing to let me go to Mass, and to take off my irons and to put 
me in a decent prison and to let me have a woman with me, 
I will be good and will do whatever the Church wishes. 

Haven't you heard your voices since Thursday ? 

Yes. 

What did they say to you ? 

They told me that God had sent word to me by Saints 
Catherine and Margaret what a great pity it was that I had 
consented to treason in making an abjuration and revocation 
to save my life, and that I was damning myself to save my 
life. It was through fear of the fire that I said what I did. 

Thus spoke Joan, with grief. . . . She had dressed 
again as a man, so as to obey once more her celestial counsel- 
lor, because she did not want to purchase her life by denying 
the angel and the saints, and finally because she wanted to 
retract her abjuration publicly as well as in her heart.* 

Now that she had relapsed, Joan had to be handed over to 
the secular arm. Wednesday morning, May 30, word came that 
she was to die that day. She realized at last that her " voices" 
had deceived her, and she confessed it several times. Then she 
was allowed to go to Communion. She was soon led out to 
the scaffold which had been erected in the Vieux-Marche 
Square. Cauchon pronounced sentence in his own name and 
in the name of the vice inquisitor. An hour later she was dead, 
burned alive at the stake. 

Such is the story as we read it in M. France. Its -details 
have been drawn from the records of the condemnation trial 
and the Posthumous Postscript. 

The first point to be noted is that the memorandum which 
we find in the official report of the proceedings is not the one 
that was read to Joan, the one she repeated and consented to 
sign. The abjuration which was included in the records, and 
which makes Joan retract and disavow in most humiliating lan- 
guage everything she had said about her mission, is quite lengthy, 

* A. France, op. cit., vol. II., pp. 276-8. 



i9o8.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S "JOAN OF ARC:' 351 

containing about fifty lines. Now in the process of rehabilita- 
tion, the bailiff Jean Massieu, who had read the formula of ab- 
juration to Joan, the notary, Guillaume Manchon, and other 
witnesses, testified that the abjuraticn read to Joan was no 
longer than a Pater, and contained only six or seven lines of 
writing. A base substitution had been effected. Since we can- 
not suspect these witnesses of lying, or of being deceived in 
this matter, we must conclude that the formula which we read 
in the records is a forgery. In the judgment of particularly 
competent critics, such as Canon Ulysses Chevalier, M. Marius 
Sepet, and Mgr. Duchesne, we may henceforth consider the 
problem solved and hold this as a historical fact. M. Anatole 
France himself recognizes it as such. With many others, how- 
ever, he seems to believe that the long formula is only the de- 
velopment of the shorter one. But " in that case, why were 
not the two texts placed side by side, so that the honesty of 
the judges might be above suspicion? 1 '* 

Does not this fact justify us in having our doubts about the 
remainder of the records and the Posthumous Postscript? We 
are dealing with Joan's deadly enemies, utterly unscrupulous 
men. Are they not capable of planning and carrying out a 
veritable judicial ambush to destroy Joan and also to blacken 
her in the eyes of posterity ? What faith can we put in men 
who spared no pains to make it appear that Joan had relapsed, 
and so led her to the stake? 

This one fact alone gives us a right to distrust the Pos- 
thumous Postscript, according to which, on the very day of her 
death, Joan had once more disowned her heavenly revelations, 
had presented her " voices " in a ridiculous and almost demoni- 
acal light, and had acknowledged her untruthfulness in regard 
to the sign given to Charles VII. Many other reasons lead us 
to treat this document as unreliable. It is in the form of an 
inquiry made by the judges eight days after Joan's death, and 
is placed at the end of the trial records, Unlike them, it bears 
no signature. Nobody ever came forward to guarantee its au- 
thenticity. For all that M. France whose words have been 
quoted already affirms that it is "an historical document ot 
unquestionable authenticity." On what grounds ? First, be- 
cause " it contains Joan's second retractation, a retractation that 

* Dun and. La " Vie de Jeanne d' Arc" de M. Anatole France et les documents. P. 86 
(Poussielgue, Paris, 15 me Cassette). 



353 ANATOLE FRANCE'S "JOAN OF ARC." [Dec., 



is not open to doubt, since Joan died with the last sacraments."* 
To this we may reply that if she had not made the retractation 
her judges were clever enough to let her go to Communion so 
as to make it appear that she had once more acknowledged 
her delusions and her crime. M. France goes on to say: 
"Those who called attention to the irregularity of this docu- 
ment during the trial of rehabilitation did not tax its contents 
with falsehood." Grant all that! What follows from it ? They 
may have been deceived by others, or they may have been self- 
deceived. Possibly they were not wholly in good faith. No ; 
the authenticity and the veracity of the Posthumous Postscript 
have not been proved. Quite the contrary! 

This is why recent Catholic historians have not had recourse, 
like Petit de Julleville, for example, to charitable interpreta- 
tions or to extenuating circumstances in order to vindicate 
Joan. They tell the story of the young girl's last days with- 
out taking the Postscript into account. From the records of 
the condemnation trial they take only what can be easily 
reconciled with what we know for certain about Joan and her 
character, and what we are told elsewhere about her doings 
and sayings during the last week of her life. To tell the 
truth, can a well-informed and fair-minded critic blame them 
for that ? 

M. Anatole France, who, in a general way, sets a high value 
on the records of the condemnation trial and on the anony- 
mous document which has been added to them, is proportion- 
ately severe in his arraignment of the rehabilitation trial. 

True, he grants that " the rehabilitation trial, with its me- 
moirs, its consultations, its one hundred and forty testimonies fur- 
nished by one hundred and twenty-three witnesses, affords us 
a rich supply of documents," and that it clears up a great 
many obscure points. He strongly urges historians, however, 
" never to forget how and why this trial was held." 

If it were not carried too far, this caution would be legiti- 
mate and wise. M. France carries it too far. He writes : 

The witnesses, for the most part, show themselves exceed- 
ingly simple and uudiscerning. It saddens a man to find so 
few judicious and clear-headed people in this crowd of all 
ages and conditions. Souls seem to have been wrapped up at 

This statement is not exact. She was not anoiated. 



i9o8.J AN ATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." 353 

that time in a twilight in which nothing stood out distinctly. 
Thought as well as language was strangely childish. One 
cannot go far into that obscure age without believing oneself 
among children. Along with interminable wars, misery and 
ignorance had reduced mankind to mental poverty and ex- 
treme moral indigence. The scanty, slashed, ridiculous attire 
of the nobles and of the rich betrays their absurdly garish 
tastes and their intellectual weakness. Their levity is one of 
the most striking characteristics of these little minds. They 
cannot pay attention to anything ; they cannot retain anything. 
No one who has read the writings of those days can help be- 
ing struck by this almost general weakness. 

Besides we cannot trust everything in those one hundred 
and forty affidavits.* 

M. France then cites certain depositions which he thinks 
very improbable, or are contradicted by documents which he 
considers more reliable. He goes on : 

In this work, while dealing with the rehabilitation trial, I 
have given my opinion as to what we should think about the 
depositions of the clerks, of the bailiff Massieu, of Brother 
Isambard de la Pierre, of Brother Martin Ladvenu, and of all 
those witch-burners and avengers of God who worked with as 
stout a heart to rehabilitate Joan as to condemn her.t 

" Cloister and sacristy tales," J he scornfully exclaims, in re- 
ferring to what was said in the rehabilitation trial about at- 
tempts at violence which had made Joan resolve to dress again 
as a man. He is not at a loss for words to abuse " all those 
Church ink-wells," the clerks, " who had drawn up arguments 
for the prosecution and then did marvels to destroy them; who 4 
the more zealous they had been in building up the case, aimed 
the more at tearing it down; who discovered as many flaws in 
it as one could wish ; $ and who, over and above all this, in- 
vented a thousand silly stories to blacken Cauchon and to ex- 
culpate Joan." 

His final reason for mistrust is thus courteously stated by 
M. France : 

If the testimony given in the second trial frequently seems 
to be artificial and studied, if it is sometimes altogether false, 
the fault rests not only with those who gave that testimony, 

* Vol. I., p. 20. t Vol. I., p. 24. \ Vol. II., p. 377. $ Vol. II., p. 488. 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 23 



54 ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC." [Dec., 

' 

but also with those who received it. They sought it too de- 
viously. This testimony has no more value than that given 
in an inquisition. In some places it represents the mind of 
the judges as much as that of the witnesses.* 

Joan must be made out an unintelligent, feeble-minded girl ; 
thus it will be much easier to defend many of her words and 
acts; and besides the Holy Spirit will be more manifest in her. 
She must have an infused knowledge of war; she must be 
miraculously pure, and to the degree of sanctity ; for thus her 
mission will be more evident and more unquestionable. Every- 
thing was arranged in such a way that the witnesses would 
make her out ignorant, artless, skillful in waging war, and of 
such saintly purity as to astonish the soldiers among whom 
she lived. "All this," concludes M. France, " as any one may 
see, corresponds with the thought of the judges; and these, if 
I may use the term, are theological, rather than natural truths. "f 

This skillful arraignment is complete; infantile simplicity or 
base villainy on the part of the witnesses; cunning on the 
part of the judges. Everything that can help to disparage the 
rehabilitation trial is abundantly and adroitly set forth in M. 
France's book. 

There is some truth in what he says, but it is exaggerated. 
To be sure we must not accept blindly what we are told twenty- 
five years after the events in question, by witnesses who are 
sometimes credulous or interested, who have no critical spirit, 
who are desirous of setting themselves right with the world or 
of vindicating one whom they knew or loved ; and who finally 
were questioned for the very evident purpose of annulling a 
previous sentence. For all that let us be slow to charge them 
with either error or deception. Let us not do that out of par- 
tisanship nor without a grave reason. 

A witness testifies to something extraordinary and marvel- 
ous. M. France, who does not believe in the supernatural, nor 
in miracles, quickly classes him among the feeble-minded. 

Another witness, in testifying to some word or act of Joan's, 
clashes with certain documents. M. France, who has his rea- 
sons they are not always critical and scientific for preferring 
{hose documents to the rehabilitation trial, sees in the asser- 
t;ion only an interested lie or a childish illusion. 

* Vol. I., pp. 24-25. f Vol. I., p. 28. 



1908.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S "JOAN OF ARC." 355 

This is a very convenient way of acting. It does indeed 
indicate a methodical mind, but it is of such a nature that it 
frequently leads a man too far. Why, alas ! indeed, did not 
God intervene to accredit His ambassadress, or to help her ful- 
fil her task of liberation ? But why, we ask in our turn, must 
we doubt a man's word because he becomes a friend instead of 
an enemy, or because he is trying to repair the evil he has 
done ? Why, in fine, must we refuse to accept what is to Joan's 
honor or to the credit of those who sought her vindication, 
while we make haste to admit everything that tells against 
them? 

Our enemies freely charge us with writing history, not for 
the sake of the truth, but to help the Church. Have we not 
as much, nay even more reason to reproach them on the same 
score ? 

At any rate the critical study which we have just made 
perhaps at somewhat too great a length enables us to conclude 
that M. Anatole France has frequently had a false notion of 
the documents in the case. May we not, then, with some show 
of reason, entertain a suspicion that he has not built a solid 
edifice on his ruinous foundations ? 

What we have to say further will show our readers that the 
suspicion is unhappily only too well fourded, and that the 
Joan of Arc imagined by M. France bears little likeness to the 
Maid who was the marvel of her age. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED ) 




TO MEN OF GOOD-WILL 

BY JEANIE DRAKE. 

f E was a tall and strapping young fellow, lean and 
muscular of body, well balanced of mind, and pre- 
eminently a man of peace. If you had met him 
a year or more ago in his native Alsatian village, 
and had questioned him of his scheme of life, 
being simple and direct of thought and speech, he would have 
answered you: 

" Monsieur, my grandfather was blacksmith of Falons, my 
father was blacksmith of Falons, and I, too, will keep the forge. 
But, since Rose Marie has the fancy, I will also buy a little 
farm, with a cow and chickens, and my good mother shall sit 
in our chimney-corner and enjoy warm milk and new-laid eggs. 
Who is Rose Marie, do you ask ? Ah, Monsieur, she is the 
best and sweetest yes, and the prettiest girl in France. We 
are to be married as soon after Christmas as the Church per- 
mits; but what she can see in a plain, stupid fellow like me is 
the wonder. The good nuns have taught her music and many 
accomplishments; and she can, besides, cook and spin and 
nurse the sick. It is only on Sundays and feast-days that I 
feel anywhere near her, as I have a sort of voice (and she has 
taught me) and I sing in the choir. You must hear our an- 
thems, for the cure, Father Ambrose, says to every one that 
his choir is not so bad. But it is all owing to Rose Marie's 
drilling. I wish you may be here for the wedding." 

Now, it was Christmas-tide and, instead, Rene Dufour, far 
from beloved Alsace, watched out the wintry night in blood- 
stained trenches, encompassing the privations and suffering, the 
fratricidal strife, the expiring hopes and ultimate despair of 
starving, besieged Paris. It was bewildering when you come 
to think of it. He who had shaken and cuffed in easy-going 
finality many a village adversary, rather than enter into more 
vindictive combat; who had forgiven with the large tolerance 
of a mild nature and a strong frame all things forgivable; and 
even, in just resentment of the seeming unforgivable, had let 



1908.] To MEN OF GOOD- WILL 357 

Rose Marie's soft eyes and pursuasive voice turn him from con- 
templated retaliation. 

" There is nothing unpardonable," he could hear her coax- 
ing even now, " or how could any of us dare to die when the 
time comes? Peace is always and forever best." 

Yet here he stood, with armed hosts opposed, to spoil or 
be despoiled, to wound or be wounded, to kill or be killed. 
Sullen cannonading roared and echoed among the hills and 
hollows. Balls came cleaving and whistliug, to scatter inani- 
mate dust or bury themselves in animate flesh. Smoke lifted 
and fell, acrid and choking, and from its obscurities came sharp 
command how best to slay, or sudden cry or moan as this com- 
rade or that fell in the rifle-pits, writhing, distorted. "Peace! 
Peace!" counselled Rose Marie; and this was what came. 

At least he had not volunteered for inhuman contention 
until his very home and people were threatened. 

" They will call me coward," he said at last. 

"You!" cried Rose Marie, with inspiriting disdain of the 
very thought. " Well, go then, since you must or be conscripted. 
I give thanks that you are not accountable ; and may the dear 
Lord forgive them who call the Prince of Peace a God of Bat- 
tles. But if you, my Rene, must go soldiering to others' harm, 
I can but try to heal, at least." Then, parting from him with 
helpful show of courage, she had enrolled herself among the 
nurses and been sent he knew not whither. 

So sadly thinned was his own company from previous en- 
counters that it was now combined with one of the Parisian 
gardes mobiles, wild fellows and reckless, whose officers could 
hardly handle or keep within precarious shelter. Yet even 
they had a bit envied Rene's mention twice in general orders 
" for conspicuous bravery." 

" It comes in the day's work," he told them quietly. His 
panic of the raw recruit once overcome, his continuous, sicken- 
ing horror at inevitable cruelty held in abeyance, he was now 
but a calm, clear-headed servant of military discipline, obedient 
to the call of a seeming duty, however repugnant. " A duty, 
God of Love ! A duty, my Rose Marie ! " Yet, under the 
hottest rain of bullets, he loaded and fired, re-loaded and fired 
again, with the steady, mechanical precision with which he 
turned out horseshoes at the forge. 

As he crouched, a twinge from the cold bit into the leg 



35 8 TO MEN OF GOOD-WILL [Dec,, 

which had been slightly wounded at Sedan, and he rested, gun 
in arm-hollow, striking his benumbed fingers together; then, 
cautiously straightening his cramped limbs, he slipped across 
to a higher mound, the icy earth crackling beneath his feet. 
Here he could stand nearly at length, his ears alert, his eyes 
intent for danger, yet ranging over all the wide scene, which 
lifting smoke permitted to view. 

" Where is she ? Where is she ? " iterated an inner con- 
sciousness, " on this eve of the dear Lord's birthday ? My 
Rose Marie, lover of peace and of me ! " A few of the nurses, 
so he had heard, greatly daring for humanity's sake, had been 
killed, and others wounded. So overwhelming had been un- 
expected defeat, so demoralizing the hasty retreat upon the 
capital, so urgent the need for womanly service, that all had 
been transported here, there, everywhere, as occasion called. 
"If alive, to-night of all nights, she surely thinks of me." 

It was near to twelve o'clock now, and freezing ever harder. 
Over head the clear, frosty skies, magnificently star- jewelled, 
glittered and sparkled and shimmered. There was a half moon, 
palely illumining the wide, snow covered, sinking and swelling, 
ghostly expanses of the earth beneath. 

From the advance- posts of the Germans could be plainly 
distinguished their challenge : " Werda?" And so close were 
they the ring of their rifle butts on the icy ground, even, was 
quite clear. On their side must have been heard, with equal 
distinctness, the French sentries' " Qui vive f " The furious can- 
nonading, and even more murderous firing from the rifle-pits, 
seemed suddenly suspended for an interval. A curious, brood- 
ing silence reigned for a while over the deathful, snow- clad, 
blood-stained fields. As an officer stamped his feet to restore 
sensation, a tall private, alert and active, of well- cut features 
and a calm, intelligent expression, stepped out frcm the line 
of gardes and Alsatians, and saluted. 

" What is it?' 1 

" Captain, may I have leave of absence from the watch for 
a little while ? " 

"Nonsense; you are beside yourself. Step into your place 
instantly. Do you suppose that I am less cold than yourself? 
Or are the others ? Do not be afraid this is only a breath- 
ing spell. Wait a little. When the firing begins again we will 
all be warm enough." 



1908.] To MEN OF GOOD-WILL 359 

The soldier did not move. Still saluting, he continued most 
respectfully but pertinaciously: "Captain, I beg you, give me 
your permission. The matter will take only a few moments. 
I assure you, you will have no reason to regret it." 

" The deuce I will not ! Who are you, anyhow, and what 
do you want to do ?" 

11 Who am I ? Why, I am Rene Dufour, chief singer in 
Father Ambrose's choir. What I want to do, Captain, must, 
please, reuiin my secret, for a few minutes only." 

"Then let it remain undone. No further foolishness. Get 
back. If I were to let one private return to Paris to-night, I 
I might as well send back the whole corrpany." 

" Why, Captain " smiling frankly " I have no desire to go 
to Paris to-night. I want to go in this direction," and he 
pointed over toward the German lines. "I 'ask lor only two 
minutes' leave of absence." 

The officer's curiosity was keenly awakened. Quiet still 
brooded over the wintry night and scene. 

" Well, then " he hesitated " you may go for that length 
of time. But, remember, it is your own desire. You are al- 
most certainly seeking death." 

Rene immediately leaped out of the trench and advanced 
swiftly toward the enemy. In the silence of the night the 
snow could be heard crunching under his feet, and the black 
silhouette of his figure, cast in shadow by the moonlight, ap- 
peared mysteriously to lengthen. At ten paces distance he 
stood fast, drawing himself to his full height and saluting. 
Then, with powerful, deep-chested voice, and great and moving 
fervor of expression, he began to sing the beautiful Christmas 
hymn of the composer Adam: 

" Minuit, Chretiens, c'est 1'heure solennelle, 
Ou I'homme-Dieu descendit sur nous." 

" 'Tis midnight, Christians, the solemn hour 
At which the God- man descended unto us." 

Sounding forth so unexpectedly over the silvery, solemn, 
silent stretches, under the sparkling winter skies, such beauty 
and impressiveness were added to the song through the sacred 
memories of the Holy Eve in such strange, outward contrast- 



360 To MEN OF GOOD- WILL [Dec., 

p 

ing circumstance, that even the Parisians, many of them doubt- 
ers and scoffers, listened with deep and genuine emotion. 

Similar feelings must have swayed the German portion of 
his audience. Doubtless many of these were reminded of a 
far-away home, of family and children, neighbors and friends 
clustered joyously around the Christmas tree. Not a weapon 
was raised against the daring singer ; no command was given f 
no call or step was heard. In unbroken silence the men of 
both armies listened to this touching reminder of their home 
life and their religion. His song ended, the brave soldier sa- 
luted once more, turned on his heel, and marched deliberately 
back to his own trenches : 

" Captain, I report my return. I hope you do not regret 
your permission." 

Before his officer could answer, attention was called once 
more to the German side, where, in his turn advancing towards 
the lines, the heavy, helmeted figure of an artillery-man now 
became visible. Ten steps or more he strode forward, just as 
Rene had done, halted, coolly made the military salute, and in 
the midst of the wintry night, surrounded by all these armed 
men who for months past had had no other thought than to 
destroy one another, he uplifted, with full voice and heart, a 
lovely German Christmas hymn, a hymn of praise and thank- 
fulness for the meek and lowly Christ Child, who came into the 
world eighteen centuries beiore to bring the divine behest of 
peace and love to mankind, and whom men have so poorly 
heeded or obeyed : 

' Von Himmel hoch, da komm ich her, 
Ich bring euch gute, neue Mahr." 

" From Heaven above to earth I come, 
To bring glad news to every home. 11 

So sang the German soldier, his full, mellow tones ringing 
out upon the night. He ended his hymn with the joyous cry: 
' Weihnachtszeit! " " Weihnachtszeit / " " Christmas time I " 
And from the German intrenchments came in full chorus the 
glad refrain: " Weihnachtszeit / " Then, with one voice, the 
French soldiers responded: "Noel! Noel!" " Christmas ! 
Christmas ! " 



1908.] To MEN OF GOOD-WILL 361 

The artillery-man slowly retraced his steps and disappeared 
in the trenches. An hour afterward the cannon from the forts 
boomed and crashed and roared their murderous business; and 
rifle-bullets sang and split the air once more before embedding 
themselves in quivering flesh. The Christmas singers crouched 
once more in the pits directing with accustomed precision mis- 
siles for each other's destruction. Thick smoke and welling 
blood, groans and cries, once more defiled and tortured the 
birth-night of the gentle Master. 

One singer, however, after his reverential and appealing 
chant, was ordained no more to take his brother's life. Hardly 
had storm of battle been renewed when Rene Dufour crumpled 
up suddenly as he knelt, rolled over, gasping : " Seigneur 
Dieu ! " and lay still. He had a moment of semi-conscious- 
ness when they were lifting him into an ambulance, and he 
heard the surgeon leagues away, it sounded saying: "Not 
much use putting that one in it will be over shortly " ; and 
thought: "So much the better. Slaughtering is nauseous bus- 
iness. Rather be dead than kill." Then he waked again, 
weeks afterward, in a Parisian hospital, and fancied at first 
that he might be in heaven, taking the cornettes of the Sisters 
of Charity flitting here and there through ward and corridor 
for wings of angels. A sharp pain in his side dissipated this 
thought, and when a cool hand was laid on his head he looked 
up to see one neither angel nor Sister of Charity, but whose 
sleeve bore the insignia of the field- nurses. "Oh, Sister," 
said a well-remembered voice, " thanks be to God ! he is 
conscious." 

" Rose Marie ! " 

"You must not talk. Take this now, and sleep." 

When allowed, he asked: "But how came you here away 
from the lines ? I asked so many and could hear nothing of 
you." 

" And I, my Rene, how hard I tried to have news of you. 
But must go and go always where I was sent. I should 
never have known your whereabouts but for that wonderful, 
beautiful thing you did. It was an inspiration singing there, 
in the moonlight and the snow, of the dear Jesus to the 
fighters. I was at work in the hospital tent in your rear when 
I heard your dear voice calling in the stillness to the armies. 



362 To MEN OF GOOD-WILL [Dec. 



Then I made my way in spite of all in time to come back 
with you. Your recovery you must think it a reward for the 
hymn " 

A doctor had paused to take rapid note of the patient's 
progress. He smiled a little : " Whatever reward may be due 
you, my man, it is given you here" touching her sleeve. 
"You owe her everything. The Sisters and I we had our 
hands more than full with all the poor fellows brought in, 
and many died. But you had Nurse Rose Marie's undivided 
attention. Thank her for your life." 

" Under God," said the girl with reverence, as he passed 
on. "You know," she told Rene gently, "war is over. The 
Germans have won it is permitted by the Lord and they 
occupy the city. Exchange of the wounded prisoners is now 
going on and you will be sent home when your strength is 
greater." 

"And you with me? Ah, Rose Marie, to see again our 
village the forge, the little farm, and the dear old mother in 
the chimney corner, Father Ambrose and the choir, who will 
sing anthems at our wedding will they not?" 

" Perhaps. At any rate, please God ! we will celebrate our 
next Christmas not to the sound of bugle and cannon, but to 
that of hymns of praise to Him, peace and good- will to all His 
creatures. What happiness, my Rene!" 




THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM. 

BY THOMAS J. GERRARD. 

[T seems needful once more to recall the sayirg of 
Newman that in his work on the Illative Sense 
he had no intention ol formulating a theory, but 
only of presenting an analysis of phenomena. 
Nevertheless, almost in spite of himself, he left a 
clue to a ready-made, age-old theory which at least has a close 
affinity to, even if it does not exactly fit, the analysis. This 
is the Aristotelian theory of intellectual habits. The clue is 
the concept of phronesis or judgment. Newman begins to de- 
scribe the Illative Sense by comparing it with phronesis as used 
in the Nicomachean Ethics. There it is the habit or virtue of 
the intellect which enables it to perform its most perfect judg- 
ments concerning conduct. Aristotle did not limit its function 
to conduct, though Newman takes that aspect of it for the 
purpose of his illustration.* 

As phronesis is then to moral duty, so is the Illative Sense 
to intellectual truth. Now it so happens that St. Thomas has 
chosen this identical concept of phronesis as a basis for his doc- 
trine concerning the habit and gift of wisdcm. In his strong 
hands the Aristotelian theory undergoes a complete transforma- 
tion, for it must needs be adapted to the revealed truths of 
man's supernatural end and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I pro- 
pose then in the following essay to sketch the origin, the na- 
ture, and the function of the habit and gift of wisdom as the 
same appears to me from the pages of the Suwwa, and to in- 
dicate the bearing of the same on the question of religious 
assent. 

The first step towards a right understanding of this doctrine 
will be to take a glance at the general anthropology of St. 
Thomas. We cannot remind ourselves too often that he was a 
prince amongst scholastics. He towered above them, the no- 
blest of them all. A long line of brilliant intellects led up to 
him, and then came a rapid falling off. It is only too tru 

* Grammar of Assent, p. 353. 



364 THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM [Dec., 



that he did not escape the influence of that ultra-dialecticism 
for which his age was notorious. Still, together with the su- 
preme dialectical and intellectual aspect of things, he did not 
lose sight of the human, the real, and the concrete. Certainly 
science was to concern itself with universals, but universals 
were to have their foundation in particulars; and in proportion 
as the mind was equipped with universals, so much the more 
fit was it to deal with the concrete particulars of life. He says: 

Choice in action follows a judgment of the reason. In 
things to be done much uncertainty is iound, because actions 
concern contingent singulars, which, on account of their 
changeableness, are uncertain. In doubtful or uncertain 
things, however, the reason does not make a judgment with- 
out a previous inquiry, and therefore an irquiry of the reason 
is necessary before a judgment in the choice of things. 
. . . When the acts of two powers are ordained for the 
sake of each other, there is something in each which belongs 
to the other, and so both acts may be named after each other. 
It is indeed manifest that the act of the reason directing 
things to an end, and the act of the will tending towards those 
things according to the rule of reason, are ordained to help 
each other mutually. Hence in the act of the will, which is 
choice, there appears something of the reason, namely, order ; 
whilst in advice, which is an act of the reason, there appears 
something of the will, namely, the matter which the man 
wants to do. This in fact is his motive, for it is on account 
of the man wishing the end that he takes counsel concerning 
the means to the end. Hence, Aristotle can say that choice 
is an appetitive intellect, whilst St. John Damascene can say 
that counsel is an inquisitive appetite. 

Hence, when St. Thomas says that science deals with uni- 
versals he manifestly intends that those universals shall be the 
fruit of a ripe experience with particulars, and that in the ap- 
plication of theories to the working out of man's aims due 
regard shall be paid to facts. Some of his followers seem to 
have forgotten this, but the work of Newman has recalled them 
to a sense of proportion. The Cardinal is only repeating St. 
Thomas' doctrine when he says: "Let units come first, and 
(so-called) universals second; let universals minister to units, 
not units be sacrificed to universals."* He attaches, perhaps, 

* ibid., p. 279. 



1908.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 365 

more importance to the unit than did the mediaeval doctor; 
nor is the epithet " so-called " without its touch of irony. But 
then he was looking at men's minds as they are, whilst St. 
Thomas was looking at them as they ought to be. There is no 
small difference between the quality of universals stored up in 
the average concrete mind and that of those which would exist 
in the ideal and perfect mind. 

Again, St. Thomas was keenly alive to those various de- 
grees of certitude which ultra-dialecticism seems so unable to 
comprehend. He says that the same kind of certitude cannot 
be found nor must it be sought for equally in all things. A 
properly educated man seeks only so much of certitude as the 
nature of each individual case allows. And with an exquisite 
quiet irony the Angelic Doctor remarks on the dialecticians of 
his day: "There are some who do not accept that which is 
said to them unless it be said in a mathematical way. And 
this happens on account of the custom of those who have been 
brought up on mathematics, for custom is a second nature. 
This also can happen to some people on account of their in- 
disposition, to those, namely, who have a strong imagination 
and a not very elevated understanding." * 

All this has its root in the principle of dichotomy. Accor- 
ding to this principle it is the same soul in man which thinks, 
wills, feels, vegetates, and actuates the primary matter. The 
body is the primary matter, which has no other function but 
to limit the action of the soul, for primary matter is a pure 
potency, and every act is limited by the potency into which it 
is received. Nevertheless in human actions it is the whole man 
who acts, not his soul, nor his body, nor his will, nor his in- 
tellect, nor his feelings, nor his substantial iorm, nor his pri- 
mary matter; but his person, his distinct, subsisting, rational 
nature. Pars est propter totum, et anima propter animatum. 
On the other hand, however, the actions and vital functions do 
not come from the man immediately. They do not come di- 
rectly from his person, but indirectly through the means of 
certain powers. Each of these is a principium quo, whilst the 
man is the principium quod. There is an essential difference 
between the intellectual and the sensitive faculties, yet at the 
same time an intimate though accidental connection between 
them, a connection so intimate that the intellect and the will 

* Metafhys. Lib. I., lect. V. 



566 THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM [Dec., 

cannot act without the aid of a sensitive phantasm of some 
kind. 

Since the various functions, then, spring frcm one and the 
same principle of life, namely the soul, they act in harmony 
with each other, the lower serving the higher, the higher con- 
trolling the lower. They are normally reciprocative. Some- 
times the sensitive functions seem to be at war with the ra- 
tional functions. That is because the rational functions are not 
then in their natural and normal condition. The fundamental 
activity of the soul being unduly absorbed by the sensitive 
faculty is withdrawn from the intellectual. But when all the 
faculties are in normal condition, and especially when the dis- 
orders of sin have been healed by the acticn of grace, then on 
account of the principle of dichotomy, there is a reciprocal ac- 
tion and reaction between the functions, and also between body 
and soul. 

Father Rickaby * says that St. Thomas will not allow that 
the body can act on the soul. This statement needs modifica- 
tion. If by " body " be meant the primary matter of which 
the soul is the substantial form, then it is a pure potency and 
cannot act. But in man primary matter should not be consid- 
ered except in so far as it is actuated and sensitized by the 
soul. And thus it can act and react on the higher powers of 
the soul. When St. Paul said that he chastised his bcdy and 
brought it into subjection he did not mean that he chastised 
his materia prima. He meant that he so exercised his rational 
and volitional functions as to make their combined force stronger 
than the combined force of the sensitive ard vegetative furc- 
tions. St. Thomas also speaks of body and soul under this as- 
pect. He says : 

According to the order of nature, on account of the combi- 
nation of the forces of the soul in one essence, and of the soul 
and body in one composite being, the superior forces and also 
the body influence each other ; and hence it is from the soul's 
apprehension that the body is transmuted, . . . and like- 
wise conversely the transmutation of the body re-acts upon 
the soul. Similarly the higher powers act upon the lower 
powers, as when passion in the sensual appetite follows upon 
an intense movement of the will, or when close study re- 
strains and hinders the animal powers from their acts ; and 

* God and His Creatures, p. 115. 



i9o8.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 367 

conversely when the lower powers act upon the higher pow- 
ers, and from the vehemence ot the passions in the sensual 
appetite the reason is darkened.* 

Nay, he will even admit that the perfection of the lever 
functions is proportionate with the perfection of the higher 
functions. 

Man has a more delicate sense of touch than any other an- 
imal ; and even amongst men themselves, those who have the 
finer sense of touch have the keener power of intellect. We 
see a sign of this in the fact that those who have soft flesh 
have able minds. t 

This, whether in itself true or not, appositely exemplifies 
the doctrine ot the saint. The same principle foims the basis 
of the theory of cognition. The exercise of the external senses 
is followed by that of the internal senses. The active intellect 
abstracts its universals from the particulars in the phantasm. 
The receptive intellect receives them and there they are for 
the purposes of scientific thought. The intellect may then act 
by intuition or by discursive reason. It must of necessity cling 
to first principles. The will too must of necessity tend toward 
well-being; for this is its final aim, and in this it has no choice. 
As regards its intermediate ends, however, it is free. Yet when 
it does act freely it must do so by the aid of intellectual light, 
so that when the actual choice is made, the act, although spe- 
cifically of the will, represents the result of deliberation. A 
rational choice includes a whole series of acts of reason, will, 
and feeling, each acting according to its own nature, each in- 
tertwined with the others, all going to make up what we un- 
derstand by a free judgment. Deliberate choice is not an act 
of the will alone nor of the reason alone. It is rather the re- 
sult of one power with a double virtue. Hence St. Thomas 
defines it as the facultas voluntatis et rationis, the faculty of 
will and reason combined. 

It is quite one thing, however, to possess faculties and quite 
another to employ them to the best advantage. The world has 
just been surprised by the invention of a working aeroplane. 
Man has at last learnt how to fly. Mr. Farman, using a machine 

* Quest, disp. de Veritate qu. xxvi., a. 10. 
t Summa, par. I., qu. Ixxvi., a. 5 corp. 



368 THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM [Dec,, 

built on the Chanute principle, has started from a given point, 
raised himself to a height of about twenty- five feet, flown for- 
ward half a mile, described a semicircle, and flown back to the 
starting point. The important part of the discovery, however, 
is this, that success depends not so much on the flying-machine 
as the experience in flight of the man who mounts it. Even 
a bird requires much practice. A young vulture has been 
known to require three months to be able to fly from the time 
it made its first attempt First it glides down hill, secondly it 
tries to jump up in the air, all [the while flapping its wings. 
This is exactly what Mr. Farman did. For weeks he was con- 
tent to glide down declivities. He needed a suitable machine, 
but he needed also to get into the habit of flying. So also is 
it with the flight of thought. If man is to soar to the highest 
peaks, where he can see the ultimate reasons of things, he can 
only do so by cultivating a special intellectual habit, and to 
that habit there has been given the name of wisdom. 

Now just as there are three kinds of habits required for the 
proper working of a flying-machine, namely the easy gliding 
down hill, the rising forward movement into the air, and the 
turning round and round at leisure, so there are three kinds of 
habits required for the flight of speculation. First, the intel- 
lect must be disposed to see those truths which to the average 
mind are evident in themselves. It must be able to see, for 
instance, that parallel lines will not meet and that a whole is 
greater than its part. This habit is called understanding (in- 
tellectus] or common sense. Secondly, the intellect must be dis- 
posed to work out those truths which are not evident in them- 
selves, but which may become evident by arguing from the 
known to the unknown. The habit, when duly formed, enables 
the intellect to see easily conclusions which, without the habit, 
would require laborious working out. It is called scientia or 
the scientific habit. It does for the scientist what common 
sense does for every individual. It turns his study and ac- 
quired knowledge into common sense. By its virtue he sees 
at once and without effort the truth of such propositions as: 
"an angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right-angle," or " water 
is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen." Thirdly, the in- 
tellect must not only be disposed to see principles easily and 
to see conclusions easily, but it must also be disposed to handle 
and arrange its principles and conclusions easily. It must be 



i9o8.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 369 

able to turn itself here and there, deftly comparing principles 
and conclusions with other principles and conclusions, following 
them back to their ultimate causes, and ordaining them to 
man's highest interests. The disposition to do all this is the 
habit of wisdom. 

Some habits exist in man by nature. The habit of under- 
standing or common sense is one of these. As soon as a man 
knows what a "whole" and what a "part" is, he sees imme- 
diately that a whole is greater than its part. But there are 
other habits which must be acquired. Since the intellect is 
passive as well as active, it retains the impression made upon it. 
Many impressions will eventually produce a new quality. The 
latent capabilities of the intellect must be painfully conquered 
by a repetition of acts before it is ready for its work of deep 
and serious thought. Thus is the habit of wisdom generated. 
Thus also is it improved. And as all acquired habits may be 
lost or spoiled by neglect or misuse, so too is it with the habit 
of wisdom. If we are satisfied with the knowledge which we 
learnt at school, if we are not ever seeking to assimilate more 
knowledge and to adjust our lives accordingly, then assuredly 
is our habit of wisdom losing its virtue. 

Again, a habit may be trained in different directions. In 
this does its value consist. The habit of science, for instance, 
may be trained along the various lines of mathematics, chemis- 
try, moral philosophy, and political economy. But although it 
enables its faculties to act along different lines and concerning 
different objects, yet it ordains the knowledge acquired to one 
end and thus demonstrates its unity. I am inclined, therefore, 
to disagree with Newman where he speaks of there being as 
many kinds of phronesis as there are virtues. He speaks with 
hesitation, however, and I think if he had had St. Thomas' 
distinction before him, of a habit being multiple in its opera- 
tion but simple in its essence, he would have agreed. Once 
again, however, we must remember that his aim was to analyze 
phenomena, not to make up a theory. 

The transformation of the Aristotelian theory in the hands 
of St. Thomas is twofold. The habit of wisdom is enriched 
by a special gift enabling it to deal with supernatural truths 
as well as with natural, and its range is extended enabling it 
to deal with practical truths as well as with speculative. Aristo- 
tle has said that " it pertains to a wise man to consider the 
VOL. LXXXVIIL 24 



370 THE HABIT AND GUT OF WISDOM [Dec., 

ultimate cause through which he can most surely judge con- 
cerning other causes, and according to which he ought to 
order all things. 1 ' St. Thomas then adopts this idea. He says: 

The power of intellect, first of all, simply apprehends some- 
thing, and this act is called "understanding"; secondly, 
however, it takes that which it apprehends and orders it to- 
wards knowing or doing something else, and this is called 
"intention"; whilst, however, it is engaged in the inquiry 
of that which it intends, it is called "excogitation"; but 
when it examines that which it has thought out with other 
certain truths, it is said to know or to be wise. And this is 
the function of bhronesis or sapicntia ; for it is the function of 
wisdom to judge.* 

Further, an ultimate cause may be conceived in two ways, 
First it may be conceived in any given particular line of thought. 
He who knows the ultimate cause of things in one special sub- 
ject, say that of medicine or that of architecture, is able to 
judge and arrange things in that subject and so is said to be 
wise in it. But he who knows the First Cause of all things, 
which is God, is said to be wise par excellence ; for he is able 
to judge and arrange things according to divine rules. A wis- 
dom of this kind, however, can only be given by the Holy 
Spirit. "For the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep 
things of God." The merely psychic man, that is, he who, how- 
ever clever and cultured, is without faith, cannot understand 
the things of God, but the spiritual man judgeth all things. 

Wisdom, therefore, in its highest perfection is something 
over and above the acquired intellectual habit. The latter is 
obtained by human effort ; the former comes down from above. 
The one may concern itself with merely worldly affairs, the other 
concerns itself with the things above, or with things below in 
so far as they are related to their First Cause and their final 
end which is above. Aristotle indeed seems to have had some 
dim glimmer of this gift. He says that it is not good for those 
who are moved by divine instinct to take counsel from human 
reason, but that they should follow the internal instinct, for 
they are moved by a better principle than human reason. St. 
Thomas makes this vague suggestion explicit by reference to the 
revealed word of God. In order to distinguish gifts from vir- 

* Summ*, p. I. qu. Ixxix. a. 10. ad. ym. 



i 9 o8.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 371 

tues we ought to follow the fashion of speaking in Holy Scrip, 
ture. There the question is treated, not however under the 
name of " gifts," but under the name of " spirits." Isaias xi. 
2, says: "And there shall rest upon him the spirit of wisdom 
and understanding." From these words it is manifest that the 
seven things there enumerated are in us by divine inspiration. 
These perfections are called gifts, not only because they arc 
infused by God, but also because by means of them man is 
disposed to become promptly mobile by divine inspiration. 
Thus Isaias again can say, 1. 4-5 : "The Lord hath given me a 
learned tongue, that I should know how to uphold by word 
him that is weary : He wakeneth in the morning, in the morn- 
ing He wakeneth my ear, that I may hear Him as a Master. 
The Lord God hath opened my ear, and I do not resist." 

Wisdom, considered as an inspiration, implies, from its very 
nature, action as well as contemplation. Hence we find St. 
Thomas drawing the broad distinction between the Christian 
and the pagan concepts. He says: 

Since, however, wisdom is a knowledge of divine things, 
it is considered in one way by us and in another way by the 
philosophers. For, because our life is ordained to enjoy 
God, and is directed according to a certain participation in 
the divine nature, namely through grace, wisdom according 
to us is not only considered as a means of knowing God, as 
with the philosophers, but also as a means of directing human 
life, which is ruled not merely by human reasons but by 
divine reasons also.* 

Wisdom then, in the Christian sense, is different from the 
Aristotelian wisdom in its origin, in its character, and in its 
effect. The intellectual virtue arises from a repetition of acts 
of the intellect. The gift operates from a divine instinct.f 
This does not mean, however, that because this higher wisdom 
inclines a man to act spontaneously and, as it were, to take in 
a difficult situation rapidly, that therefore it is a sort of blind 
force working without the concurrence of man's reason. Wis- 
dom of every kind sits enthroned in the reason. Folly is an 
aberration of the intellect, and if wisdom is the opposite of 
folly it must dwell in the intellect. Still, in so far as it is the 
gift of the Holy Spirit, the will is the instrumental cause in its 

Summa. aa aae qu. xix. a. 7. corp, f Sm*i, xa aae, qu. bmii. a. I. ad. <- 



3 ;a THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM [Dec., 

use. He who is possessed of it has a certain sympathy (ccn- 
naturalitas) with those things about which he judges. One man, 
for instance, may make a sound judgment in a question of chas- 
tity through his knowledge of moral theology, whilst another 
may make an equally sound, if not a better judgment on ac- 
count of his chaste habits and of his intense interest in and 
sympathy with chastity. This latter judgment is an implicit 
act of the intellect, but it is the fruit of the action of the will, 
for it is the effect of charity which has its seat in the will 
Charity is the virtue by which the soul is most closely united 
to God. Hence the most perfect wisdom, although it is an in- 
tellectual quality, is said to be a certain taste for divine things, 
for it is a habitual inclination to divine truth due to the influ- 
ence of a grace-informed will. 

And if, on the one hand, wisdom is to a large extent the 
effect of holy living, on the other hand it is also a cause of 
holy living. As a gift and as distinguished from the acquired 
habit, it is concerned with practical life as well as with specu- 
lative truth. " Walk with wisdom towards them that are with- 
out," says St. Paul. In this respect, then, it is a disposition 
of the practical as well as of the speculative intellect. In this 
respect, too, then, it will take under its control the habits of 
the practical intellect, namely prudence, art, and synderesis. 
Synderesis is the habit of seeing evident moral principles just 
as understanding sees mental principles. It sees without argu- 
ment, for instance, that good must be done, that evil must be 
avoided, that it is wrong to blaspheme and sinful to tell lies. 
Art is the habit by which the conclusions of science are ap- 
plied to life; and the most difficult branch of art is that in 
which revealed truth is applied to the making of a saint. 

Prudence is, in a sense, a species of wisdom. It is that 
wisdom which, left to itself, prescinds from divine considera- 
tions and deals only with human affairs, Manifestly, there- 
fore, if the highest wisdom is that which directs the soul in 
doing as well as thinking divine things, it must have under its 
control the habits of the practical reason. And, since it is the 
effect of charity, it is incompatible with mortal sin. Indeed a 
state of grace necessarily connotes the presence in some de- 
gree of the gift of wisdom. Nay more, the gift of wisdom 
would seem to be proportioned to the degree of ore's charity. 
Charity is the effect of God's love acting on the human will, 



i9o8.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 373 

and " God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom." 
Hence those who live merely by the rule of the command- 
ments see just enough of divine things, and of divine rules for 
human things, as is necessary for salvation. Those who take 
the standard of the counsels of perfection have a still deeper 
insight into the spiritual world. The saints are those who ex- 
cel. Thus is it that the Blessed Margaret Mary can see deeply 
into the truths of revelation; and thus is it that the Blessed 
Cure d'Ars can see the bearing of divine truths on human 
conduct. But all these things one and the same Spirit work- 
eth, dividing to every one according as He will. 

Wisdom then, in its Christian sense, looks two ways : it 
looks backwards to the First Cause of things and it looks for- 
ward to the Final Cause of things. It is both speculative and 
practical. The combined habit and gift may now be regarded 
as one disposition of the intellect. And the function of this 
one disposition is to enable the mind to pass easily from im- 
mediate causes to more remote causes, and again, from the 
more remote causes to the one Ultimate Cause. How does it do 
this? Well, first of all, it enables the mind to manipulate its 
elementary habits of understanding and synderesis. In this 
way the various first principles of the intellectual and moral 
order are marshaled in array and put in a way so as to be at 
the ready service of the higher habits of science and art. 
The science of chemistry could not be built up unless we could 
be sure of the principles of twice two being four, and of the 
whole being greater than its part; nor could rules be laid 
down for the guidance of the spiritual life unless we could be 
sure of the first principles that good must be done and evil 
avoided. Secondly, it enables the mind to manipulate the 
speculative habit of science and the practical habit of. art. 
Tnis ready manipulation consists in being able to reduce syl- 
logisms to enthymemes and summarize reasoning processes. 

In speaking of the enthymeme, I use it in the modern 
sense of a syllogism with one of the premises suppressed and 
Implied. Thus, in virtue of the scientific habit, I say: "This 
angle is inscribed in a semicircle and therefore it is a right 
angle." The habit saves me from the necessity of makirg the 
major of the syllogism explicit. Or again, my rector ccmes 
into my room and tells me that a certain priest in the diocese 
is dead. I say I am sorry, take out my ordo and register an 



374 THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM [Dec,, 

intention for the next day's Mass. I do not begin to argue 
and reflect that I have known my rector all these years, that 
he has given many evidences of his trustworthiness, and there- 
fore I will exercise my will and incline my intellect to con- 
sent to the proposition that he is speaking the truth. The 
habit of wisdom dispenses me from all that. Thus it is seen 
to have another function, namely, that of conserving all those 
previous acts of the will which have been exercised in the 
search for and consent to truth ; of conserving all those past ex- 
periences in virtue of which the will consented to such truths; 
and of thus leaving the mind free and yet well- equipped to 
choose out deeper truths and to utilize them in gaining richer 
experience. 

In the light of this doctrine of wisdom one can see the 
shortsightedness of the methods of Professor James and Dr. 
Schiller. The one by his PragmatisnVand the other by his Hu- 
manism have been making ineffective attempts to return by a 
short cut to the sapientia which hadlbeen lost by Protestant 
Rationalism. In the all-absorbing occupation of tasting the 
fruits of the tree of knowledge]they~have forgotten to cultivate 
the roots. Consequently the fruits which they have gathered 
are represented by a shrunken and deformed philosophy. Prag- 
matism and Humanism give us only the morphology of experi- 
ence, a purely static or anatomical analysis. Nay, since they 
have had for their subject-matter such an infinitesimal portion 
of experience, and that, at least in the case of Professor James, 
drawn from the observance^ diseased specimens, the morphol- 
ogy set up is, and must of necessity be, woefully untrue to 
real healthy life. 

The sapientia of St. Thomas, however, deals with the result 
of man's whole experience. By the doctrine of the soul's sim- 
plicity and unity all the functions of man are seen to partici- 
pate in the work of the formation of wisdom. By the doctrine 
of taking into account the supernatural as well as the natural, 
that is by utilizing the gift as well as the habit of wisdom, huge 
tracts of experience are dealt with which the rationalist and the 
pragmatist could never dream of. By the doctrine of Catho- 
licity, the experience of the whole Church, nay of the whole 
race, can be brought into requisition. By the doctrine of a 
Final Cause as well as a First Cause, a motive is provided which 
urges the mind on through all the vastnesses of both its intel- 



i9o8.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 375 

lectual and practical spheres of operation. By the doctrine of 
a First Cause as well as a Final Cause, the key is forged which 
unlocks the knowledge to be used for future experience. Thus 
is this sapientia at once a morphology, a physiology, a pathol- 
ogy, and a therapeutic of experience. It is not static, but dy- 
namic. True it is illumined and informed by a revealed truth 
which never changes. But the degree in which the mind enters 
into the apprehension of that truth is ever changing. 

It is not static, but dynamic. This remark leads me to speak 
of the relationship between the sophntia of St. Thomas and 
the Illative Sense of Cardinal Newman. The sapientia^ consid- 
ered under the combined aspect of habit and gift, has a more 
extensive object-matter than the Illative Sense. The former 
concerns both speculative and practical truth, whilst the latter 
concerns speculative truth only. Again, if we limit the sapientia 
to its bearing on speculative truth, and then compare it with 
the Illative Sense, we find a further difference. It is not an 
essential difference but only one ol aspect. It is precisely in 
this difference, however, that the originality of Newman con- 
sists. St. Thomas analyzes the origin and nature of the mind 
in abstraction; Newman does the same in the concrete. It is 
the question of universals. Now universals exist formally in 
the mind and fundamentally in the thing. Consequently there 
are two ways of looking at them. Considered as they exist in 
the mind they are called logical universals ; considered as they 
exist in the thing they are called fundamental universals. Each, 
however, connotes the other. St. Thomas, in his scientific ac- 
count of wisdom, uses logical universals; Newman, in his ac- 
count of the Illative Sense, uses fundamental universals. " Sci- 
tntia est de universalibus" says the one. "In this essay," says 
the other, "I treat of propositions only in their bearing on 
concrete matter." Nevertheless, the whole of St. Thomas' doc- 
trine of moderate realism implies that his logical universals have 
their counterparts in things, whilst Newman's doctrine of the 
Illative Sense dealing with concretes implies corresponding uni- 
versals in the mind. St. Thomas shows us the nature and ori- 
gin of the habit and gift of wisdom; Newman shows us the 
concrete working of it in the living human mind. And because 
it is ordained for the enlarging and deepening of human ex- 
perience ; because it enables the mind to find out the ultimate 
reasons of things; because it carries down to the present active 



376 THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM [Dec., 

moment a'll the mind's past experience, even though only a 
part of that experience may present itself to explicit conscious- 
ness ; and because it issues in an illation as to what truth must 
be here and now embraced ; for all these reasons it is, there- 
fore, dynamic and not static. 

I have said that one of the functions of wisdom is to reduce 
syllogisms to enthymemes and to summarize reasoning pro- 
cesses. In this function the Illative Sense is identical with 
wisdom. In enables the thinker to pass from the concrete to 
the concrete by the aid of an implicit middle term too sub- 
tle and too complex to admit of being rendered explicitly. 
Hence an enthymeme is also called a rhetorical syllogism. 
Hence the difference between Newman and St. Thomas and 
between Newman's illative sense and St. Thomas 1 sapientia. 
Newman was a rhetorician in the true meaning of the word, 
whilst St. Thomas was a logician in the true meaning of the 
word, A true rhetorician is a psychologist who knows how to 
appraise at their proper value the respective claims of intellect, 
will, and feeling. A true logician is one who, in applying his 
logic, pays due deference to psychology. Logic shows us how 
to express our thoughts rightly; rhetoric how to impress them 
rightly. And according as our chief aim is logic or rhetoric, 
so shall we be drawn to the concept of the sapientia of St. 
Thomas or to the Illative Sense of Newman. 

Unusquisque in suo sensu abundet. Let him who cannot avail 
himself of the doctrine of the Illative Sense turn to the doctrine of 
the habit and gift of wisdom. Let him begin with the first ques- 
tion of the first part of the Summa. There in the sixth article he 
may read that although a man may judge in one way by cogni- 
tion, as for instance when one instructed in moral science can 
judge concerning acts of virtue, yet in another way he may judge 
by inclination, as for instance when one who has the habit of a 
virtue can judge rightly of those things to be done according to 
that virtue; that the virtuous man is the measure and rule of hu- 
man acts; that one can follow the Pseudo Denys in holding that 
" Hierotheus is taught not only by learning but also by suffering 
divine things." Then let him look up the word sapientia in 
the index and carefully study the various articles there indi- 
cated. He will eventually be led to recognize that the gift of 
Wisdom is nothing less than the seventh beatitude. Peace is 
the tranquility of order, and tranquility of order in the spirit- 



i9o8.] THE HABIT AND GIFT OF WISDOM 377 

aal life is the object of religious inquiry. To harmonize the 
supposed conflict between faith and science, to justify God's 
ways to men, to adjust the psychic order to the spiritual, this 
is the office of the peacemaker, this is the function of wisdom. 
He then who by contemplation cultivates this habit, and by 
action strives to obtain an abundant measure of the gift, ren- 
ders himself fit to deal with the religious problem. Not until 
he has made some progress in this twofold growth can he hope 
to enter upon the consideration of the fundamental issues of 
life and religion with the faintest hope of fruitful effort. Con- 
versely, he who does adopt this method is in a sure way of 
obtaining his due measure of satisfaction. " Blessed are the 
peacemakers." Thus are they made sharers in the likeness of 
the begotten Wisdom of the Father, for "They shall be called 
the sons of God." The acquired habit will enable them to see 
ever more and more clearly the truths which God has revealed ; 
the infused gift will tone up that habit to enable them not 
only to see those truths still more clearly, but also to see their 
bearing on the manifold intricacies of the spiritual life. But 
since the gift is an effect as well as a cause of spiritual life 
for it is the fruit of charity and is kept in existence by the 
action of a divinely moved will then contemplation and action 
are mutually dependent. He who will know of the doctrine 
must do the Will. He who will come to the light must do the 
truth. 

The way of Holy Wisdom then is a hard way. It were in- 
deed a hopeless quest did we not remember that our share in 
it, in addition to being an acquired habit, is also a divine gift. 
Thus then will Holy Wisdom deal with the elect soul. " She 
will bring upon him fear, and dread, and trial; and She will 
torture him with the tribulation of Her discipline, till She try 
him by Her laws, and trust his soul. Then She will strengthen 
him, and make Her way straight to him, and give him joy." 



THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN. 

BY ALFRED YOUNG. C.S.P. 

THE following article is reprinted from THE CATHOLIC WORLD 
of April, 1866, at the formal request of the Bishops and Priests of 
the Alumni Association of St. Sulpice Seminary, Paris. St. Sul- 
pice, which has been the nursery of so many distinguished church- 
men, is a sample of the institutions which the present atheistical 
French Government is endeavoring to destroy, or at least cripple, 
by confiscating their property. Unlike the Paris property, it has 
not as yet been "appropriated" by the government. Since the 
writing of the article some changes have taken place in the build- 
ings, but the life described ever retains its happy charm of an 
earthly heaven. [EDITOR C. W.] 

(HERE are some places in this world nearer to heaven 
than others. I know of a place which I think is the 
nearest. Whether you may think so I do not know, 
but I would like you to see it and judge for yourself. 
Please to go to France, then to Paris ; then take a 
walk a little distance outside of the Barriere de Vaugirard, and you 
will come to a small village called Issy. When you have walked 
about five minutes along its narrow and straggling street, which id 
the continuation of the Rue de Vaugirard, you will see on your left 
a high, ugly stone wall, and if I did not ask you to pull the jangling 
bell at the porter's lodge and enter, you might pass by and think 
there was nothing worthy of your notice about the place. 

You say you have not time to stop now, that you have an ap- 
pointment to dine at the Hotel des Princes, in Paris, but that some 
other time you will be most happy, etc. Wait a moment, perhaps I 
may be able to show you something quite as good as a dinner, even 
at the Hotel des Princes. Ring the bell. The sturdy oaken door 
seems to open itself with a click. That is the way with French 
doors ; but it is the porter's doing. When he hears the bell, he 
pulls at a rope hanging in his lodge, which communicates with the 
lock of the door. You are free to enter. Go in. But you cannot 
pass beyond the porter's lodge without giving an account of your- 
self. You cannot get into this heavenly place without passing 
through the porter's review, any more than you can get into the real 




i9o8.] THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 379 

heaven without passing the scrutiny of St. Peter. I hope you are 
able to satisfy the " Eh ! b'en M'sieu' ? " of good old Pere Hanicq, 
who is porter here. He is a ptrc t you understand, by the title of 
affection and respect, and not by virtue ot ordination. You may 
not think it worth your while to be over humble and deferential in 
your deportment towards porters as a general rule ; but I think you 
may be so now ; for, if I do not mistake, you are speaking to a ven- 
erable old man who will die in the odor of sanctity. Pere Hanicq 
is not paid for his services, troublesome and arduous as you would 
yery soon find his to be if you were porter even here. He is porter 
for the love of God. You see he does not stop making the rosary, 
which is yet unfinished in his hand, while he talks to you. He does 
not iccompense himself by that business either, as shoemaker por- 
ters, tailor porters, and the like eke out their scanty salaries ; but 
it enables him to find some well-earned sous to give away to others 
poorer than himself. You say this lodge is not a very comfortable 
place, with its cold brick floor. It is not. Neither is that narrow 
roost up the step-ladder a very luxurious bed. Right again, it is 
not. But the Pre Hanicq is not over particular about these things. 
Besides, he is not worse off in this respect than the hundred other 
people who live in this place nearest to heaven. Indeed, most of 
them have a much narrower and drearier apartment than his. 

Now that you have said a pleasant word to the good old soul 
(for he dearly loves a kindly salutation, and it is the only imperfec- 
tion I think he has), you may pass the inner door, and you observe 
that you are in a square courtyard, a three-story, irregularly shaped 
building occupying two sides of it; stables and outhouses a third ; 
and the street wall the fourth. Before you go further, I would ad- 
vise you to look into one of those tumble-down looking outhouses. 
It looks something like a rag and bottle shop. It is a shop, and 
the Almoner of the poor keeps it. Here the residents of these build- 
ings may find bargains in old odds and ends of second-hand, and it 
may be seventy times seventh-hand furniture, either left or cast off 
by former occupants. Here the Almoner that voluble and sweet- 
tempered young man in a long black cassock disposes of these arti- 
cles of trade, enhancing their value by all the superlatives he can 
remember, for the benefit of certain old crones and hobbling crip- 
ples, whom perhaps you saw on the right of the courtyard receiving 
soup and other food from another young man in a long black cas- 
sock, who is the Almoner's assistant. You don't know it, perhaps, 
but I can tell you that the Almoner's assistant, as he ladles out the 
soup and divides the bread and meat, is mentally going down on 
his knees and kissing the ragged and worn-out clothes of these old 
bodies whom he helps, for the sake oi Him whom they represent, and 



3 8o THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN [Dec., 

who will one day say to him : " Because you did it unto the least of 
these My brethren, you did it unto Me." 

Now you may go into the house, after you have been struck 
with the fact how completely that high stone wall shuts out the 
noise of the street. You say, however, that you hear a band play- 
Ing. Yes; that comes from an " Angel Guardian " house over the 
way, like Father Haskin's house in Roxbury, Massachusetts (there 
ought to be angels, you know, not far off from the nearest place to 
heaven), where the "gamins," as the Parisians call them the 
" mudlarks," or " dock rats," as we call them are taken care of, 
fed, clothed, instructed, and taught an honest trade, also for the love 
of Htm who will one day say to the Pere Bervanger and to Father 
Haskins what I have before said about the Almoner's assistant. 

Well, here is the house. This is the first story, half under- 
ground on one side, and consequently a little damp and dingy. 
Here to the right is the Prayer Hall. This has a wooden floor (a 
rare exception), wooden seats fixed to the wainscoting, and here 
tnd there a few benches made of plain oak slabs which look as if 
they had lately come out of one of our backwoods saw-mills. A 
large crucifix hangs on the wall, and a table is near the door, at 
which the one who reads prayers kneels. The ninety-nine others 
kneel down anywhere on the bare floor, without choosing the soitest 
spot, if there be any such. 

Those portraits hanging around the walls represent the superiors 
of a community of men who are entrusted with the guardianship of 
this place nearest to heaven. The most of those faces, as you see, 
are not very handsome, as the world reckons handsome, but I as- 
sure you they make up for that by the beauty of their souls. The 
morning prayers are said here at half-past five the year round, fol- 
lowed by a half-hour's meditation, and the evening prayers at half- 
past eight. The hundred residents come here too just before dinner, 
to read a chapter of the New Testament on their knees, devoutly 
kissing the Word oi God before and after reading it; and then 
each one silently reviews the last twenty-four hours, and enters into 
account with himself to see how much he has advanced in that par- 
ticular Christian virtue of which his soul stands the most in need. 
It is a good preparation lor dinner, and I would advise you to try it, 
even if you cannot do it on your knees. It is a perfect toilette for 
the soul. Here also you will find the afore-mentioned hundred peo- 
ple at halt past six o'clock, just before supper, listening to a short 
reading on some spiritual subject, followed by a sort of conference 
given by the Superior, or head of the house, so full of unction and 
sweet counsel that it fairly lifts the heart above all earthly things, 
and seems to hallow the very place where it is spoken. 



1908.] THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 381 

Turn now to the left. That door in the corner opens into a 
chapel dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi. Here the Pere Hanicq 
and the few servants of the house hear Mass every morning, and be- 
gin the day with the best thought I know of, the thought of God. 
Keeping still to the left you pass into the Recreation Hall ; and if 
this be recreation day, you will see congregated here the liveliest 
and happiest set of faces that it has ever been your good fortune to 
meet in this world. Billiards, backgammon, chess, checkers, and 
other games more simple and amusing in their character, are here; 
and I can tell you that they are like a group of merry children play- 
ing and amusing themselves before their heavenly Father. You 
might pass the recreation days here for many a year before you 
would hear an angry word, or a cutting retort, or witness a jealous 
irown or a sad countenance. Notice that smiling old gentleman 
with a bald head capped by the black calotte. That is the Pere 

T . He is very fond of a game of billiards, and I know he loves 

to be on the winning side ; the principal reason of which, however, 
you may not divine, but I know ; it gives him a chance to pass his 
cue to some one who has been beaten, and obliged to retire. And 
many learn by that good old father's example to do the same kind 
and charitable act; and, take it all in all, I am inclined to think 
this room is not much further off from heaven than many other 
places about this dear old house. 

Of course everybody is talking here, except the chess-players, 
and at such a rate, that it is quite a din ; but, hark ! a bell rings: 
all is instantly silent, the games are stopped, the very half- finished 
sentence is clipped in two, and each one departs to some assigned 
duty. They are taught that the bell which regulates their daily 
exercises is the voice of God, and that when He calls there is noth- 
ing else worthy of attention. I have no doubt they are right ; have 
you? 

There is one other place to visit on this ground floor, the Re- 
fectory. A long stone- floored hall with two rows of tables on either 
side, and one at the upper end where sits the head of the house, a 
high old-fashioned pulpit on one side, the large crucifix on the wall, 
and that is the Refectory. It looks dark and cold, and so it is; 
dark, because the windows are small and high ; and cold, because 
there is no stove or other heating apparatus a want which may 
also be felt in the other rooms you have visited ; and as the win- 
dows are left open for air some time before these rooms are occu- 
pied, it must be confessed there is a rarity and keenness about the 
atmosphere, and a degree of temperature about the cold stores in 
mid-winter, which are not pleasant to delicately nourished consti- 
tutions. No conversation ever takes place in the Refectory except 



82 THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN [Dec., 

* 

on recreation days, or on the occasion of a visit from the Arch- 
bishop of Paris. At all other times there is reading going on from 
the pulpit, either from the Holy Scripture or some religious book, 
which enables the listeners to free their minds from too engrossing 
an attention to the more sensual business of eating and drinking ; 
not that their plain and frugal table ever presents very strong temp- 
tations to gourmandize ! 

As you are American, and accustomed to your hot coffee or 
strong English black tea, with toast, eggs, and beefsteak for bieak- 
fast, I fear the meal which these hundred young men are making ofi 
a little cold vin ordinaire^ well tempered with colder water, and dry 
bread, during the short space of twelve minutes (except during Lent 
and on other fast days, when they do not go to the Refectoiy at all 
before twelve o'clock), will appear exceedingly frugal, not to say 
hasty. You observe, doubtless, that, short as is the time allotted 
to breakfast, nearly every one is reading in a book while he is eat- 
ing. Do you wish to know the reason ? I will tell you. It is not 
to pass away time, but to make use of every moment of time that 
passes. None in the world are more alive to the shortness and the 
value of time than the hundred young men before you. Every mo- 
ment of the day has its own allotted duty ; and when there is an 
extra moment, like this one at breakfast, when two things can be 
done at once, they do not fail to make use of it. They take turns 
with each other in the duty of waiting on the tables, except on 
Good Friday, when the venerable Superior, and no less venerable 
fathers, who are the teachers of these young men, don the apron, 
and serve out the food proper in quantity and quality for that day. 

Now that you have seen the first story, you may " mount," as 
the French say, to the second. If you have not been here before, I 
warn you to obtain a guide, or amidst the odd stairways and ram- 
bling corridors you may lose your way. This is the chapel for the 
daily Mass. It is both plain and clean, and you will possibly notice 
nothing particular in it save the painted beams of the ceiling, the 
only specimen of such ornament, I think, in the whole house. It is 
there a long time, for this is a very ancient building, having once 
been the country-seat of Queen Margaret of Anjou ; and this little 
chapel may have been one of her royal reception-rooms for all you 
or I know. 

Hither, as I have said, come the young levites to assist at the 
daily sacrifice. I believe I have not told you before that this is a 
house of retreat irom the worldof prayer and of study for youthful 
aspirants to the priesthood of the Holy Church. I do not know 
what impression it makes upon you, but the sight of that kneeling 
crowd of young men in their cassocks and winged surplices, al> 



1908.] THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 383 

sorbed in prayer before the altar at the early dawn of day, when the 
ray of the rising sun is just tinging the tops of the trees with a 
golden light, and the open windows of the little chapel admit the 
sound ot warbled music of birds, and the sweet perfumes from the 
garden just below, enameled with flowers, is to me a scene higher 
than earth often reveals to us of heaven's peace and rapt devotion in 
God. Mass is over now, and you may go, leaving only those to 
pray another half- hour who have this morning received the Holy 
Communion. 

All these rooms which you see here and there, to the right and 
to the left, are the cells of the seminarians, about eight by fifteen 
feet in size, and large enough for their purposes, though certainly 
not equal to your cozy study at home in America, or to the grand 
talon you have engaged at the H6tel des Princes. As you are a 
visitor, perhaps you may go in and look at one. There is no visit- 
ing each other's rooms among the young men themselves at any 
time, save ior charity's sake when one is ill. An iron bedstead, with 
a straw bed, a table, a chair, a crucifix, a vexing old clothes-press, 
whose drawers won't open except by herculean efforts, and when 
open have an equally stubborn fashion of refusing to be closed ; a 
broom, a few books, paper, pen, and ink, a pious picture or statue, 
and you have the full inventory of any of these rooms. As they need 
no more, they have no more ; a rule of life that might make many a 
one of us far happier than we are, tortured by the care of a thousand 
and one things which consume our time, worry the mind, and are 
not of the slightest possible utility to ourselves, and the cause, it 
may be, of others' envy and discomfort. 

I am aware that, as you pass along the corridors, you think it 
is vacation time, or that every one is absent just now from their 
rooms, all is so silent. But wait 'a moment. Ah ! the bell again. 
Presto ! Every door flies open, and the corridor is alive with num- 
bers of the young men going off to a class or to prayers. Now that 
they are gone, suppose you peep into one of the rooms again ; that 
is, if some newcomer, not yet having learned the rule to the con- 
trary, has left the key in his door. Ah ! he was just writing as the 
bell rang ; the pen is yet wet with ink. Pardon ! I do not intend 
that you shall read what he has written, but you may see that he 
has actually left his paper not only with an unfinished sentence, but 
even at a halt- formed letter. That is obedience, my friend, to the 
voice of God, which I have already told you is recognized in the 
first stroke of that bell. I suppose you may read the inscription he 
has placed at the foot of his crucifix, since it is in plain sight. '* I 
sat down under the shadow of my Well-Beloved, whom I desired, 
and His fruit was sweet to my palate" (Cant. ii. 3). Yes, you are 



384 THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN [Dee., 

right. It is a good motto, for one who has sacrificed every worldly 
enjoyment for the sake of that higher and purer joy, the love ot 
Jesus crucified. You are noticing, I perceive, that everything looks 
very neat and clean, that the bed is nicely made, and what there is, 
Is in order. They have tidy housekeepers, you say, here. So they 
have, and a large number of them, too one to each room the 
seminarian himself. 

I think you may "mount" another stairway now when yon 
find it to the third story. I just wish you to step into that door on 
the right. It is the Chapel of St. Joseph ; and if you happen to 
enter here after night prayers you will see a few of the young men 
kneeling before the altar, over which is a charming little painting 
representing the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph holding the Child 
Jesus by the hand. They come to pay a short visit in spirit to the 
Holy Family before retiring to rest. " Beautiful thought ! " I be- 
lieve you. I see your eyes are a little dimmed by tears. What is 
the matter? "Oh! nothing; only I was thinking that by coming 
up a few more steps in this house, one has mounted a good many 
steps nearer heaven." Not ready to go? Oh! I understand, you 
wish to pay a little visit yourself to the Holy Family. Good. 
Now, along this corridor, around this corner, down that stairway 
which seems to lead nowhere take care of your head ! through 
those doors, and you are in a much larger chapel. All finished in 
polished oak, as you see, with a bright waxed floor. The semi- 
narians sit in those stalls which run along the whole length of either 
side of the chapel. Here, on Sundays and festivals, they come to 
celebrate the divine offices of the Church. I wish you could hear 
them responding to each other in the solemn Gregorian chant. 
Listen ; they are singing, and only to and ior the praise of God, for 
no strangers are admitted, so there is no chance for the applause of 
men. Possibly you may be sharp-eyed enough to note those mant- 
ling cheeks and detect the thrill of emotion in their voices as the 
swelling chorus fills the whole building with melody. 

Truly, I wonder not that you are moved, for the song of praise 
rises amid the clouds of grateful incense from chaste lips, and from 
pure hearts given in the flower and springtime of life to God alone. 
I can tell you, that whether their voices are singing the mournful 
cadence of the Kyrie, the exultant sentences of the Gloria, the im- 
posing chant of the Credo, the awe-struck exclamations of the Sanc- 
tus, or the plaintive refrain of the Agnus Dei ; or whether they re- 
spond in cheerful notes to the salutations of the sacrificing priest at 
the altar, one other song their hearts are always singing here: 
" Latatus sum in his qua dicta sunt mihi, in domum Domini ibimus " 
-I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into the house of 



J9o8.] THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 385 

the Lord. A heavenly joy is filling their ardent souls, moved by 
the grace of the Holy Ghost, and is reflected from their counte- 
nances as the sunlight sparkles on the ripples of a quiet, shaded 
lake, when its waters are gently stirred by a passing zephyr wafted 
from the wings of God's unseen angel of the winds. 

Now you may go out into the garden. A charming esplanade 
directly behind the house you have visited. Well-kept graveled 
walks stretch here and there through a glittering parterre of flowers 
of every hue and perfume. A pretty fountain sends its sparkling 
drops into the air in the center of a basin stocked with goldfish, 
which are very fond of being fed with breadcrumbs from the hand 

of saintly old Father C . You do not know the Pere C , you 

say ? Then you may envy me. I know him. Shall I tell you what 
he said to me one day ? 

11 Tenez, mon cher, on doit prier le Bon Dieu toujours selon le 
premier mot de I' office de None, ' MirabiliaJ et non pas selo?i le premier 
mot de Tierce, * Lege m pone. ' " God bless his dear old white head ! 
it makes my heart leap in my bosom to think oi him. Where were 
you ? Oh ! yes, beside the fountain. On each side of the garden is 
an avenue of trees, and in one corner a little maze, hiding a pretty 
statue of the Blessed Virgin, at whose feet that Almoner of the poor 
has placed a little charity-box, thinking doubtless, and not without 
reason, that here, hidden by the trees and close shrubbery, some 
one, you for instance, might like to do something with a holy secre- 
cy which shall one day find its reward from the Heavenly Father of 
the poor, openly. So I will just turn my head while you put in a 
donation fitting for an American who has a suite of rooms at the 
H6tel des Princes. I know you are loth to leave this pretty spot. 
I have had equal difficulty in dragging you away from the other 
places to which I directed your steps ; but you have not seen all. 
Come along. Cross the garden. Here, behind the large chapel, is 
a curious grotto all inlaid with shells floor, walls, and roof. This 
is the place where Bossuet, Fenelon, and Mr. Tronson held some 
conferences about a theological subject which need not take up your 
time now. Turn up that winding walk to the left, and you see a 
little shrine dedicated to our L,ady, to which the young men go to 
celebrate the month of May ; and it is a quiet little nook where one 
may drop in a moment and forget the world. The world is not 
worth remembering all the time, you know. As you pass to the 
middle of the garden again you notice a long archway, built under 
a high wall. Before you enter it please first notice that fine terra- 
cotta statue of the Virgin and Child near it, and take off your hat in 
passing, as all do here. This archway passes under a road, which 
is screened from view by high walls on either side, which also pre- 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 25 



3 86 THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN [Dec., 

vent the grounds you are in from being seen from the road. I have 
often thought about that high-walled road running through the 
middle of this place nearest to heaven. How many of us pass along 
our way ot life, stony, toilsome, dry, and dusty, like this road, and 
are often nearer heaven and heavenly company than we think ; and 
how many others there are we know and love, whose road runs 
close beside, if not at times directly through the Paradise of the 
Church of God on earth, and know it not. Oh! if they did but 
once suspect it, how quickly would they leap over the wall ! 

Now you are through the archway. Directly before you is a 
magnificent avenue of trees, all trimmed and clipped as it pleases 
this methodical people, and here is a fine place for a walk in recrea- 
tion. The seminarians recreate themselves, as they do all other 
acts, as a duty and by rule. One hour and a quarter after dinner, 
ten minutes at half-past four, and an hour and a half after supper 
appears to suffice, although I am afraid it is rather a short allow- 
ance. Silence is the rule during the other twenty-one hours out oi 
the twenty-four, and broken only by duty or necessity. How do 
you like it ? Be assured it is profitable to those who are desirous of 
living near to God. Recollect what Thomas a Kempis says in his 
Imitation of Christ : " In silentio et quiete prcfidt anima devota " In 
silence and quiet the devout soul makes great progress. You 
observe also that the reverend teachers of these young men are 
taking recreation with them. Yes ; and in this as in every other 
duty of this life of prayer and of study they subject themselves to 
the same rule that they impose on others. Example, example, my 
friend, is the master teacher, and succeeds where words cannot. 
They have learned beforehand in their own school the lessons of 
chastity, obedience, poverty, patience, meekness, humility, and 
charity, of silence, and every other Christian mortification of our 
wayward senses which they are called upon to teach here. They 
have a novitiate adjoining this house, called the *' Solitude," and 
their motto is inscribed over the little portal in the stone wall 
which separates the two enclosures. This is it : " O beata Sol- 
itudo ! O sola Beatitudo / " There is a short sentence, my friend, 
which will serve as a subject of meditation for you for a longer time 
than you imagine. 

Look at the Pere M , the reverend superior. What gen- 
tleness of soul beams from that kindly countenance ! It makes one 

think of St. Philip Neri. Ah ! and there is the Pere P , with a 

face like St. Vincent of Paul, and a body like nobody's but his own, 
all deformed as it is by rheumatism. I don't ask you to kiss the 
hem of his cassock for reverence sake, for that might wound hid 
humility, and he might moreover knock you down with his crooked 



I908.J 



THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 



387 



elbow ; but if you could see what place the angels are getting ready 
for him up in heaven, I think you would wifch to do so. And all the 
others, old or young bowed with age or strong of arm and firm in 
step you will find but little difference in them. They are all cast 
in about the same mold, of a shape which only a life, and a pur- 
pose of life such as theirs could form. You would like to know 
what that young man is about, would you, running from one knot of 
talkers and walkers to another, saluting them, and saying some- 
thing to e*ach ? Listen : he is repeating the password of the house. 
The password ? Even so. And is it secret ? Yes, and a secret, too. 
It is the secret of a holy life, the holy life to be led here, and not to 
be forgotten, where it is the most likely to be, in the dissipation of 
recreation. Lay it up to heart, for it will do you good: "Mes- 
sieurs, Sursum corda ! ' ' 

This building on your right as you come out of the archway is a 
ball-court. If you will step into the "cuisine," as a sort of wire 
cage is called, in which you can see without being in the way, and 
the irregular roof of which serves admirably to cause the ball to come 
down crooked, and " hard to take," you may see some good ball- 
playing ; and if you know anything about the game, I am sure all 
will offer at once to vacate their places and give up the pleasure of 
playing to please you. Somehow, these seminarians are always 
seeking to please some one else. Fraternal charity, which prefers 
the happiness of others to its own, is cultivated here to such a de- 
gree, that I tell you again you will not find a place nearer heaven, 
where charity is made perfect and consummated in God. 

Turn down now to the left for a few steps, and look to the right. 
Another beautiful avenue. The trees branching from the ground 
rise up and mingle together on all sides so as to form a complete 
arch. A building at the end. Yes; that is the place of all places in 
this lovely enclosure the most venerated by all who come to pass a 
part of their lives in dear old Issy. It is the Chapel of Loreto. 
Walk up the avenue and examine it. It has a facade, as you see, 
of strict architectural taste. I know that you, being an American, 
would very soon scrape the weather-beaten stones, paint up the 
wood-work, and put a new and more elegant window in front, if you 
were in charge. Perhaps it might improve it, perhaps not, Stand- 
ing as it does alone, out there in the midst of extensive^ grounds, 
it makes you think of the Holy House of Loreto in Italy, of which 
you know something, I suppose, and of which, indeed, the little 
chapel inside is an exact copy, and hence has obtained its name. 
Let me say a word about it before you go in, for no one is expected 
to break the religious silence which the young levites here are 
taught should reign about the tabernacle where reposes the sacred 



3 88 THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN [Dec., 

and hidden presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. It is 
this chapel, especially dedicated to His own dear and blessed 
Mother, that they have chosen for His dwelling-place among them, 
as her home at Nazareth was also His. It is what you might ex- 
pect. The Mother and the Son go together. A childlike and 
tender devotion to her whom He chose for the human source of His 
incarnate life, through which we are elevated and born anew unto 
God, cannot be separated from the profound act of adoration which 
humanity, nay, all creation, must pay to Him who is her Son, the 
first-born of all creatures. His mysterious incarnate presence is 
with us always in the Holy Eucharist, and will be, as He promised, 
unto the consummation of the world ; and the priest, by the power 
of His own divine word, is its human source. You remember the 
saying of St. Augustine: " O venerable dignity of the priest, in 
whose hands, as in the womb of the Virgin, the Son of God is in- 
carnate every day ! " 

Enter. On the wall to your left, just inside the outer door, you 
see this inscription : 

" Hie Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis." * 

On the wall, directly opposite, this : 

" Sta venerabundus, 
Qui aliunde ut stares veneris, 
Lauretanam Deiparae domum admiraturus. 

Angusta tota est. 
Toto tamen Christiano orbe angusto, 

FACTUS EST HOMO. 

Abbreviatum igilur aeterni patris verbum 

Hocce in angulo, cum angelis adora ; 

Silet hie et loquaci silentio: 
Beatae quippe virginis matris sinus, 

Cathedra docentis est. 

Audi verbum absconditum, et quid sibi velit attende. 
Venerare domum filii he-minis, 
Scholam Christi, 
Cunabula Verbi." t 

The door on the right leads into the sacristry, where the priest 
puts on his vestments. On the panel of this door you read : 

" Sanctificamini omnes ministri altaris. 
Munda sint omnia." \ 

* "Here the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us," 

t " Stand in awe, ye who have come hither from afar to admire the Loreto house of th 
Mother of God. The whole is but narrow and strait : however, the whole Christian world it 
but narrow in which the God made man suffered straitness. Wherefore, adore with the angela 
the straitened word of the Eternal Father. "He is silent here, but with an eloquent silence. 
For the bosom of the Blessed Virgin Mother is the seat of Wisdom. Hear the Hidden Word, 
and listen attentively to what He wills of thee. Venerate the house of the Son of Man, tb 
school of Christ, the cradle of the Word." 

I " Be ye holy, all ye ministers of the altar. Let all things be pure and clean." 



i9o8.j THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 389 

On the wall over the door is this inscription around a heart : 

" Quid volo nisi ut ardeat ? " S. Luke xii. 49.* 

Opposite the sacristy door is the door of the chapel, but I wish 
you to read the other inscriptions on these walls before you enter 
there. There are two more in this entry-way : 

11 Hie Maria, Patris Sponsa, de Spiritu Sancto concepit." t 

"Sile; 
Hue, enim, dum omnia 

silerent, 
Omnipotens sermo 

de regalibus 

sedibus advenit ; 

Vel aeternum aeterni 

Patris Verbum 

Siluit ; 
Vel otioso Deum adorat silentio."t 

In an adjoining room are several others, among which I think 
the following are worthy of your notice : 

" Signum magnum apparuitin terra. 
Amabile commercium, admirabile mysterium, , 

JESUS VIVENS IiN MARIA. 
VENITE, VIDETE, ADORATE. 

VENITE 
Ad templum Domini, ad incarnationis verbi- 

cubiculum, 

Ad sanctuarium in quo habitat Dominus. 
Et de quo, ut sponsus, procedit de thalamo suo. 

VIDETE 

Ancillam, Patris sponsam, Virginem Dei matrem, 

Adae filiam, Spiritus Sancti sacellum, 

Mariam totius Trinitatis domicilium, 

Angelo nuntiante effectam. 

ADORATE 

Jesum habitantem in Matre, 
Ut imperatorem in regno, ut pontificem in templo, 

Ut sponsum in thalamo. 

Hie requies, hie gloria, hie summa laus conditoris : 
Hie habitabo quoniam elegi earn." $ 

* " What will I, but that it burn ? " 

t " Here Mary, the spouse of the Father, conceived of the Holy Ghost." 

\ " Keep silence ; for hither, while all things were in silence, the Almighty Word leapt 
down from heaven from His royal throne. Here the Eternal Word of the Eternal Father be- 
came silent, and adores God in tranquil silence." 

$ " A great sign appeared on the earth, a lovely union, a wondrous mystery, Jesus living 
in Mary. Come, see, adore. Come to the temple of the Lord, to the cradle of the Incarnate 
Word, to the sanctuary in which the Lord dwelleth. From which He goeth forth as a spouse 
from his bridal chamber. See, by the annunciation of the angel, a handmaiden made spouse 
of the Father, a virgin the Mother of God, a daughter of Adam the shrine of the Holy Ghost, 
Mary, the resting-place of the whole Trinity. Adore Jesus dwelling in His Mother, as an 
tmperor on his throne, as a priest in the temple, as a spouse in his chamber. Here is th 
rest, here the glory, here the supreme praise of the Creator. Here will I dwell, because I 
hare chosen her." 



39 THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN [Dec., 

"Omnes " Hic 

Famelici. accedite Fons Fontium, 

adescas; Et acervus tritici, 

Domus hoec abundat CHRIST US, 

Panibus." * Unde sumunt angeli, 

Replentur sancti, 

Satiantur universi. 
Snpientia p^j c 

Miscuit Vinum, Ager fertnis 

Posuit mensam, Et congregatio aq uarum, 
Paravit om/iia. MARIA 

- ui bibunt ' Unde, velut de quodam 
Non sitient amplius ; Divinitatis oceano, 

- ui edunt ' Omnium emanant 

Nunquam esurient ; Flumina gratiamm/ . $ 

Qui epulantur, 

Vivent in aeternum. Si 

Bibite ergo et inebriamini, Tu es Christi bonus odor, 

Comedite et saturabimini ; Accede ; 

Effundite cum gaudio animas vestras Caminus M arise 

In voce confessionis et epulationis Altare thymiamatum est, 

Sonus est epulantis." t Caminus charitatis, 

Qmnes Cujus ostium 

Sitentes, venite Hostes non exci P it - 

ad aquas ; Sed hostias amoris. 

Locus iste scaturit Huc vota huc corda - viatores 
Fontibus."* Hucpectora."ti 

Before you look at the real chapel for which this building was 
erected, just step out of that door opposite to the one by which you 
entered. A little cemetery. Here repose, in simple, humble graves, 
the bodies of the deceased superiors and directors of the congrega- 
tion of St. Sulpice, in whom and whose seminary you have shown 
so much interest during this visit under the guidance of your 
humble servant. Here, in this little cemetery, beneath the shadow 
of the sacred chapel they have loved so well, in the very home, as it 
were, where so many holy souls have lived, and learned the lessons 
of perfection, and where, God grant, many more such may yet live 
and learn the same, they have laid themselves down to rest from 
their labors, peacefully resigning themselves to the common fate ; 

* " O all ye of the family of God, draw near to the banquet. This house is full of bread." 
t " Here the divine wisdom mingleth her wine, spreadeth her table, and maketh all things 
ready. 1 hey who drink shall not thirst any more. 1 hey who eat shall never hunger. They 
who feast shall live forever. Drink, therefore, and be inebriated. Eat and be filled. Pour 
forth your souls with joy in the songs of thanksgiving and rejoicing. There is a sound as of 
one feasting." 

\ " All ye who thirst, come ye to the waters. This place gushes with fountains." 
$" Here is the fount of fountains, and heap of wheat, Christ; of which the angels partake, 
the saints are replenished, and the whole universe is satiated. Here is the fruitful field and 
meeting of the waters, Mary ; whence, as from a kind of ocean of divinity, flow out the streams 
of all graces." 

|| " If thou art the good odor of Christ, ^raw near. This chamber of Mary is the altar of 
incense, the home of charity, whose door receiveth not enemies, but the victims of love. 
Hither, ye wayfarers, bring your vows, your hearts, and your affections." 



1908.] THE NEAREST PLACE TO HEAVEN 391 

yet privileged in this, that their dust mingles with earth hallowed 
by the footsteps of saints. I should like to write an inscription for 
the door of that cemetery. It is this : " Bt mors, et vita vestra ab- 
sconditae sunt cum Christo in Deo," for never in the history of 
Christianity, do I think, have men realized like them, in their 
lives and in their death, so fully those words of St. Paul. 

Return now to the entry and pass within those gilded doors. 
This is the chapel. The walls are frescoed, as you see, and in imi- 
tation of the walls, now defaced, of the original chapel at Loreto. 
There is a pretty marble altar and tabernacle where reposes the 
Holy ot Holies ; and above the altar is a grating filling up the en- 
tire width of the chapel, on which are attached a large number of 
silver and gilt hearts, little remembrances left by the departing 
seminarians at their beloved shrine of Jesus and Mary. Bthind the 
grate you can discern the statue made many hundred years ago, and 
sent to this chapel as a gift from the Holy House at Loreto in 1855. 
I know that your American taste will not be gratified by the appear- 
ance of either the statue or its decorations ; but America is not all 
the world. Keep that in mind, and it may save you a good deal of 
interior discomfort, whether you journey in other lands, or never 
stir from home. 

Now I leave you, for I know you are tired of sight-seeing and 
want a moment of repose and, may I not also add, a little time to 
pray here? The seminarians are coming in to make their daily 
visit, for it is a quarter to five o'clock. Oh ! sweetest moments of 
the Issian's day ! Here he comes and kneels at the feet of Jesus 
and Mary, and drinks in those silent lessons which reveal truths to 
the heart that no man can teach. Here the soul is ravished away for 
a while from earth and all its carking cares, anxieties, temptations, 
and afflictions, and reposes peacefully in the loving embrace of its 
God. "Here," indeed, "is the home of charity, whose door re- 
ceiveth not enemies, but the victims of love. Hither you may bring 
your vows, your hearts, and your affections." Remain you, then, 
and pray awhile with them ; for of a truth you are with the congre- 
gation of the just, and not far off from heaven. 



flew Boohs, 



Four new numbers of the St. Nich- 
THE ST. NICHOLAS SERIES, olas Series introduce to the young 

reader, in very attractive form, the 

stories of personages who, though the parts which they played 
and the stages on which they played them, were widely diverse, 
yet were united by one common trait active devotion to the 
Church of Christ. 

The first volume is a biography of Vittorino da Feltre,* 
a name which, though it belongs to the Middle Ages, is men- 
tioned with respect by our modern students of pedagogy. 
Rather an unpromising subject for a book to entertain young 
people, you will, perhaps, say. True, but the biographer has 
something of the deftness of her hero, the Italian priest who 
could succeed in coaxing his little pupils of six and seven to 
begin the study of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics almost un- 
awares. 

Nevertheless, we doubt if this volume will become as great 
a favorite as some of the others, where the theme is more full 
of action and brilliant color ; as, for instance, the life of St. 
Thomas of Canterbury. f Father Benson has spared no pains 
to put the scenes of the great Churchman's life vividly before 
us. He draws a lively picture of some phases of Norman Lon- 
don, and of the pomp and parade which surrounded the mag- 
nates of Church and State; and enlivens the narrative with 
picturesque details that will impress the reader with the feeling 
that he is witnessing real events and observing real men, in 
contrast with the dry abstractions of his historical text- book. 

The Man's Hands $ is a story of the Tower of London and 
Father Southwell. It, as well as the two others which make 
up the volume, are largely fanciful, with just a thread or two 
of historical fact running through them ; and the author an- 
nounces that they are offered as mere stories, and, in no sense, 
hagiography. 

* Vittorino da Feltre: A Prince of Teachers. By a Sister of Notre Dame. New York : 
Benziger Brothers. 

t 7 he Holy Blissful Martyr, St. Thomas of Canterbury. By Robert Hugh Benson. New 
York : Benziger Brothers. 

\ The MOM'S Hands; and Other Stories. By R. P. Garrold, S.J. New York: Benziger 
Brothers. 



1908.] &EW BOOKS 393 

The fourth volume * is both fact and hagiography ; for the 
South American statesman, Garcia Moreno, lived the life of a 
saint and died a martyr to the cause of religion. It is incred- 
ible how little is known by Catholics of education, here in 
America as elsewhere, of this noble man who lived in our own 
times and whose life is perhaps the solitary instance in the 
nineteenth century of a popular leader and statesman who 
faithfully loved and served the Catholic Church, and made the 
interests of religion his paramount concern. His career is told 
somewhat briefly, as the scope of the series dictated ; but Mrs. 
Maxwell-Scott has given a clear account of the complicated 
course of events in Ecuador during Garcia's public career, and 
of the great results he achieved in spite of the infidel opposi- 
tion which finally compassed his death. 

A sumptuous edition of Father Brid- 

THE HOLY EUCHARIST IN gett's well known history of the 
GREAT BRITAIN. Holy Eucharist in Great Britain 

has been issued as a monument of 

the recent Eucharistic Congress in London. This edition f is 
a large folio, in the same opulent type as was used in the 
printing of Father Ricaby's translation of St. Thomas' Con- 
tra Gentiles. Father Brid gett's work is deserving of association 
with the great historical reaffirmation on English soil of the 
doctrine of the Eucharist. It demonstrates with inevitable force 
that "for a thousand years the races that successively pecpkd 
the island regarded the celebration of this Sacrament as the 
central rite of their religion, the principal means of divine wor- 
ship, the principal channel of divine grace." It is needless to 
recall the scope of Father Bridgett's task. It was to show, on 
the principle of " By their fruits ye shall know them," that the 
part played in English religious life, by the Holy Sacrifice, 
Holy Communion, and the Real Presence in the Tabernacle, 
proved the truth of the Catholic doctrine and the divine effi- 
cacy of the Blessed Sacrament. The editors have taken advan- 
tage of an avowal made by the author that "to become pop- 
ular the book must be recast." There is a considerable rear- 
rangement of the matter; and information which has come to 

* Gabriel Garcia Moreno, Regenerator of Ecuador. By the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott. 
New York : Benziger Brothers. 

\A History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain. By T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. With 
Notes by H. Tkurston, S. J. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



394 NEW BOOKS [Dec., 

light since the book was first written has been utilized. This 
part of the editorial work has been done by Father Thurston, 
and is to be seen in copious notes throughout the volume. 
Apart from its apologetic worth the book is a fount of piety 
towards the Blessed Eucharist; and also, from the merely his- 
torical point of view, is highly interesting as a record of English 
religious life, in which prevailed many quaint customs that have 
disappeared forever. 

A more correct title for this vol- 

ALABAMA. ume* would be a history of Cath- 

olicism in, etc. The work does 

not profess to be written along the lines of critical history. It 
is a compilation of materials taken from all sorts of sources, 
without discrimination or any attempt to weigh the quality of 
the evidence or the value and import of events; footnotes are 
rare and charmingly unsystematic; and one is surprised fre- 
quently on being told impressively about something or another 
quite irrelevant to the subject, or something that everybody 
knows. For instance, the fact that M. Joly's Life of St. Teresa 
bears the imprimatur of Cardinal Vaughan ; that the present 
rector of the Irish College in Salamanca has been decorated 
with the highest marks of distinction that it is in the power of 
the Spanish sovereign to bestow ; that the charter of Trinity 
College, Dublin, proves it to have been founded as an engine 
of proselytism ; and many other equally irrelevant matters are 
not only introduced in the text, but also figure in the table of 
contents, which, by the way, occupies eighteen pages. Perhaps 
an idea of the desultory character of this book will be gained 
by indicating the nature of three of the chapters at the close. 
The last but two consists of a story related of the explorer 
De Luna, illustrating his lively faith ; the second last relates 
the establishment of the Visitation Order in Mobile, ard gives 
a list of their most conspicuous benefactors; while the last, 
after noting the grant of the indulgence of Portiuncula to the 
chapel of the Ursuline convent of New Orleans, furnishes a 
lengthy description of the crowns on two of the statues in the 
chapel, and winds up with a list of the author's works, includ- 
ing a second volume (in preparation) of the present history. 
It would be very easy, and a pleasanter task than that of point- 

* A Catholic History oj Alabama and the Floridas. By a Member of the Order of Merey. 
Vol. I. New York : P. J. Kenedy. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 395 

ing out defects, to make this present notice a string of empty 
compliments to the amiable writer. It is a more kindly service 
to tell the truth, in the hope that she may profit by it to make 
the second volume more worthy of the name of history. 

One of the most active promoters 
WOMEN IN SOCIAL WORK, of the movement to enlist Catholic 

women in the work of social ser- 
vice, Mrs. Virginia M. Crawford, publishes a little volume * of a 
thoroughly practical character, discussing some of the methods 
by which efficient work for the amelioration of the poor may 
be done. In England and France, at least, Catholic women are 
beginning to stir themselves to take away our reproach that in 
the cause of charitable work non- Catholics have left us far be- 
hind. It is no longer a sufficient answer to this charge to point 
out the great army of Catholic women, who in the various re- 
ligious orders have devoted their lives to the service of the 
poor and the suffering. Their unmeasured generosity does not 
cover the shortcomings of their sisters in the world who, for 
want of initiative or for want of authoritative prompting, take 
no personal interest in the relief of those who are suffering 
from the injustices of our social system. This charge Mrs. Craw- 
ford acknowledges to be true. 

It is in the wider sphere of educational and social activity, 
in all that is conveniently summed up in the phrase social 
service, that the Catholic women have, as yet, failed to fill the 
place that should be ours by right. We have an undeveloped 
civic sense and a very partial realization of the responsibili- 
ties laid upon us by worldly advantages. Generous and 
warm-hearted women, who are ready to give themselves and 
their money for the relief of distress, still fail to realize the 
need for studying the problems of the day in the light of 
sound Catholic principles. 

"These principles," she observes, "may be found in the 
Encyclicals of Leo XIII." Why do Catholic women fail to 
claim their birthright? The reasons for their apathy, as they 
appear to Mrs. Crawford, are that, 

filled with vague apprehension at the social changes in prog- 
~ess around us, they withdraw ostentatiously from all partici- 

* Ideals of Charity. By Virginia M. Crawford. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



NEW BOOKS [Dec., 

' 

pation in what appears to them as the dangerous tendencies 
of the times. Others, again, live so wholly in a little domes- 
tic world of their own contriving, and are so out of touch with 
the broader issues of life, that the struggle and temptations of 
women less happily circumstanced than themselves leaves 
them lamentably callous. In a word, we all have a great deal 
still to learn. 

The latter reason would, probably, be offered by any one 
competent to appreciate the situation to account for the fact 
that in our own country, generally speaking, in social service 
Catholic women are nowhere. A perusal of Mrs. Crawford's 
little book could hardly fail to stir up in the heart of any 
Catholic woman, in a position to help her less fortunate sis- 
ters, a desire to be up and doing. Among the subjects dis- 
cussed are: How and Where to Train; The Need for Co-op- 
eration; Co-operation with non-Catholics; Mothers' Meetings; 
Children's Holidays; Should Married Women Work? Girl 
Mothers ; Retreats ; Home Work ; and one or two others re- 
lating to specially English conditions. 

In France the Catholic feminist movement goes on apace. 
In all the great centers of the country the Catholic wouvement 
feminist is growing in extent and in the systematic character 
of its organization. Many brilliant writers have devoted their 
pens to its promotion. Among these is Paul Acker, who has 
a high reputation as a novelist. Some years ago the late M. 
Brunetiere, editor of the Revue des deux Mondes, requested M. 
Acker to contribute to that periodical some articles on woman's 
work in social service. M. Acker complied, and wrote some 
brilliant papers that are now published in book form.* He re- 
views what has been done abroad, chiefly in England, to afford 
suggestion to his compatriots; and gives an account of the fa- 
mous work done by Mile. Gahery and Mile. Chaptal ; and by 
the French and the Lyonese Syndicats. With the instinct of 
the novelist M. Acker runs into the psychological aspect of 
women's trials and burdens; and gives us some lively pages 
of description. He closes by relating how, some time ago, a 
stranger of note assisted at a brilliant reception in Paris. After 
watching the gorgeous display of dress and listening to the 
witty, frivolous conversation of the ladies, he smilingly insinu- 

CEuvres SociaUs des Femmes. Par Paul Acker. Paris : Plon Nourret et Cie. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 397 

ated to his hostess that he saw here an example of the pro- 
verbial frivolity of the Parisienne. She replied by recounting 
to him how several of her guests had been employed in the 
forenoon. One had been superintending a dispensary for con- 
sumptives; another had been taking care of laborers' children; 
a third had been at a social settlement, answering to the vari- 
ous demands made for moral and material help. M. Acker says: 

This stranger had entertained about Frenchwomen, and 
particularly Parisians, the opinion which most strangers hold. 
It is, indeed, irritating that we are so imperfectly known be- 
yond our own frontiers. The fault, doubtless, is with our- 
selves. We desire that others should praise the somewhat 
exterior qualities of our race, its wit, its grace, its elegance, 
its sprightliness, its easy scepticism, its politeness, qualities 
which have scarcely any result beyond making society agree- 
able ; and we hide, as if we were a little ashamed of them, 
our more solid qualities, to which we owe our existence and 
endurance. To show oneself as one is is not vanity ; it is only 
to have a just sense of one's worth, and to wish that others 
should have it also. Let the Frenchwoman be always the 
queen of the world ; I would have her retain this lovable roy- 
alty ; but she is something else besides, especially during the 
many years past when she has devoted herself to fruitful work 
in social amelioration ; and this truth we must not permit to 
be ignored. 

M. Acker does not neglect a very potent means of winning 
his countrywomen's sympathies in favor of the interest which 
he advocates. 

The contrast between the ignor- 

CONCORDANCE OF THE ance of the Bible displayed among 
HOLY SCRIPTURE. the present generation of Protest- 

ants and the familiar acquaintance 

with it which their fathers possessed has been frequently a sub- 
ject of piquant public comment. Is this change to be witnessed 
exclusively in Protestant circles? Do we find now-a-days the 
same knowledge of the Bible exhibited in our own pulpits as 
formerly ? How many of our preachers display a preoccupa- 
tion to strengthen their discourses by habitually clothing their 
thoughts in the language of Scripture, which, as Leo XIII. 



39 8 NEW BOOKS [Dec., 

says, " gives authority to the sacred orator, fills him with apos- 
tolic liberty of speech, and communicates force and power to 
his eloquence"? Without venturing to answer this ticklish 
question we may, instead, make the trite but indisputable re- 
mark that only the preacher who has a first-hand knowledge 
of the Bible itself can draw from it, in full measure, the match- 
less aids which it supplies for effective preaching. The best 
supplement for a deficiency of this first-hand knowledge is a 
good concordance ; not of the type of Cruden's or Dutripon's, 
which are chiefly serviceable to locate some remembered or 
half -remembered text; but one to provide a wealth of texts 
under appropriate headings. 

The Divine Armory , of Father Vaughan, has been the only 
English work of this kind that we possessed. And it, though 
in many respects admirable, is, in almost as many others, un- 
satisfactory and disappointing. The volume just produced by 
Father Williams* is destined, we believe, to prove a greater 
favorite. The titles are more numerous and better chosen ; and 
the arrangement is more favorable to easy and rapid consulta- 
tion. The texts under each heading, generally speaking, con- 
tain the leading word of the caption; so that the book serves, 
to a considerable extent, the purpose of the complete, systematic 
concordance. It is divided into two parts which are entitled, 
rather infelicitously, Moral and Doctrinal. This division im- 
plies that there exists an antithesis between the moral and the 
doctrinal. But is not the moral teaching of the Church also 
doctrine, just as well as is her teaching concerning the truths 
of faith ? The first part is much the larger and more com- 
plete of the two, taking up over six hundred of the eight hun- 
dred odd pages in the book. The dogmatic section is some- 
what meager, both in the number of topics, and, with a few 
exceptions, in the array of texts. There is also an appendix 
containing examples of just men, and of the punishment of 
the unjust; a synoptic arrangement of the several accounts of 
Christ's miracles, His parables, and His prophecies. Preachers 
have to thank the author for having provided them with an in- 
valuable aid to the fruitful discharge of their office. The bind- 
ing of the book is too flimsy for one of its size; and it will 
not long resist the wear and tear of constant use. 

* A Textual Concordance of Holy Scripture, Arranged especially for the use of Preachiag. 
By Rev. Thomas D. Williams. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 399 

While many histories of the En- 

THE ENGLISH MARTYRS, glish martyrs under Queen Eliza- 
beth have been issued in various 

other languages as well as English, now only is it possible to 
obtain a copy of the work which has been fitly called the 
germ of them all. This history is the one composed by Cardi- 
nal Allen, a contemporary of the martyrs. It was published 
shortly after its composition, but every copy has long since 
disappeared, with the exception of one which for generations 
has lain unnoticed and forgotten in the British Museum. From 
that copy a new edition is now issued under the editorship of 
Father Pollen, S. J.* It was widely known through a Latin 
translation which was published in 1583, and enlarged by ad- 
ditions from other pens. Until the publication of Cardinal 
Allen's letters, says the editor, no one knew that he had writ- 
ten it. " It was not ascribed to him by Simpson or Gillow, or 
the British Museum Catalogue, where it was practically buried 
under the heading, 'Catholic Faith.'" This story of the En- 
glish champions of the faith will sustain comparison with any 
other version that is extant. The style is simple, but singu- 
larly forceful and warm. Allen allows his eyewitnesses to tell 
their own tale in conversational phrase of Tudor English. An 
eminent critic of two centuries ago, a period when it was not 
prudent to praise publicly in England anything Catholic, called 
the history " a princely, grave, and flourishing piece of exquis- 
ite natural English." As a specimen of it we may quote the 
brief account of Father Campion's execution: 

The morning that he was brought forth to dye, he met with 
M. Sherwin and M. Brian, expecting his coming in Coul- 
harbar, where there passed much sweet speech and embrasing 
one of another ; all which when M. Lieutenant sought for F. 
Campion's buffe ierkine, meaning if he could have found it, 
for the more disgrace of the man of God, to have executed him 
in it ; so base is the despiteful malice of such, who with all 
the persecutors of God's sainctes shall be doonge and dirt, 
when these men shall be gloriouse in heaven and earth. 
When he was brought furthe among the people he said 
alowde, " God save you, God bless you all and make you 
Catholikes." And so was carried away to the ordinarie 

* A Brief History of the Glorious Martyrdom of Twelve Reverend Priests, Father Ed- 
mund Campion and His Companions. By William Cardinal Allen. Edited by Rev. J. H 
Pollen, S.J. St. Louis: B. Herder. 



400 NEW BOOKS [Dee., 

place ot execution, and was hanged upon the new gallowes, 
which is now called among Catholikes 1 'he Gibbet of Martyrs^ 
because it was first set up and dedicated to the blood of an in- 
nocent Catholike Confessor (D. Storye), and afterwards, by 
this man's and divers Priests and others' Martyrdoms, made 
sacred. 

The book contains six illustrations reproduced from engrav- 
ings published in the first Italian edition of the work. They 
show the usual course of the persecution: Apprehension; The 
Road to Prison; Examination with Torment; The Rack; The 
Road to Tyburne; The Execution. 

The first edition of this biography 

THE PATRON OF EUCHAR- was issued about three years ago 
ISTIC ASSOCIATIONS. i n the United States. The pres- 
ent one* was brought out with a 

view to the recent Eucharistic Congress in London ; as St. 
Paschal has been named by Rome the patron of Eucharistic 
associations. The English translator has wisely taken some 
latitude in his adaptation of the original to render it more to 
the taste of English readers. Three chapters arc devoted to 
recounting the long list of miracles, especially, to use the ex- 
pression of the author, " that collection of unheard-of prodigies 
known among Christian peoples as the ' Knocks of St. Paschal/ " 
Oi this p^int he observes that the original biographer of St. 
Paschal, Christopher of Arta, pauses when he comes to this 
matter, "as though appalled by the subject and doubtful of 
the effect which his narrative may produce. In order to en- 
courage himself in the difficult task, and at the same time to 
reassure his readers, he recounts a series of similar facts, taken 
from the lives of the saints, and accepted by the best critics, 
and then, before plunging into his subject, he undertakes to 
show that the prodigies he is about to speak of are attested 
by thousands of trustworthy witnesses and invested with all 
the marks of unimpeachable authority." Some of the mir- 
acles are, indeed, of an extraordinary character; but, as the 
translator is careful to note in his Preface, "the accounts of 
the miraculous events which enter so largely into the story of 
Paschal's life are not a mere collection of legendary tales, but 

Life of St. Paschal of Bay Ion, the Saint of the Eucharist. Adapted from the French of Fa- 
ther De Porrentruy. By Father Oswald Staniforth, O.S.F.C. New York : Benziger Brotlxera. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 401 

are based entirely on the testimony of witnesses cited by ec- 
clesiastical authority to give evidence in the Processes of Beati- 
fication and Canonization." 

In the second volume* of Father 

MORAL THEOLOGY. Slater's compendium of moral the- 

ology, he treats of the sacraments, 

censures, irregularities, and indulgences. An appendix is added 
which comprises the Constitution of Leo XIII. on prohibited 
books; the Decree Ne Temere ; and the document of Pius X. 
instituting a reform of the Roman Curia. The treatment of 
topics is clear and concise ; every important detail is at least 
touched upon; while main issues are exposed as fully as in the 
ordinary text-book. The common doctrine is adhered to; and 
controverted points of little practical importance are not raised 
at all. The notes appended by Father Martin on American 
legislation refer chiefly to questions of matrimony. The woik 
will be of interest and service to any of the laity who have a 
turn for theological inquiry. 

This very valuable contribution of 

MORAL INSTRUCTION AND information,! throwing light upon 
TRAINING IN SCHOOLS, the urgent problem of moral edu- 
cation in the school, has been the 

fruit of a private conference held in London about two years 
ago. The individuals present discussed the question of the 
value of systematic moral training for the young, and the best 
methods of carrying it out. Of course the fundamental point 
at issue was whether or not a religious sanction was an indis- 
pensable part of any serious moral training; and, on this point, 
the members were divided. They all found, that they stood in 
need of further information than they possessed in order to 
discuss the matter satisfactorily. So they formed a Provisional 
Committee for the purpose of prosecuting investigation; many 
persons of eminence in public life joined the body in England, 
either as members of the executive or advisory board. An 
affiliated committee was soon established in the United States, 
the roll of which includes, among many other conspicuous 
names, those of Nicholas Murray Butler, C. W. Barnes, Arthur 

* 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. New York : Ben- 
aiger Brothers. 

t Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. Report of an International Inquiry. In tw 

Edited by M. E. Sadlier. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 
VOL. LXXXYIII. 26 



402 



NEW BOOKS [Dec., 



T. Hadley, Charles J. Bonaparte, Morgan J. O'Brien, William 
H. Maxwell, William H. Taft, D. O. Mills, and Richard Wat- 
son Gilder. In the aggregate, the persons who associated 
themselves to the enterprise reached several hundred. 

The plan pursued was (i) To invite communications from 
members of the advisory council ; (2) To receive oral evidence 
from selected witnesses; (3) To commisssion investigators to 
prepare reports upon the methods of moral instructions and 
training in the schools of Great Britain and Ireland, France, 
Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Canada, 
Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Besides the reports from 
those countries, there are several essays and papers on various 
aspects of the general problem. A few of the contributions 
are rather superficial ; but most of them show a thorough ac- 
quaintance with their particular subjects. The accounts given 
of the continental and the Japanese schools are the result f 
close inspection by competent observers. The appreciations 
made upon what they have observed is frequently, of course, 
colored by the personal prepossessions of the writer. There 
are a few Catholic contributors. 

The question of the necessity of a religious sanction, as 
well as the various attempts to provide a substitute for it 
where it has been discarded, receives due attention. The re- 
ports from France occupy over a hundred pages. The writer 
of one, Mr. Harrold Johnson, though disposed to approve, if 
possible, the laicization of moral training, and though he speaks 
favorably of methods and manuals which are purely and ag- 
gressively secular, yet admits that the elimination of religion 
from the schools has reduced the moral ideals to narrow, mean 
dimensions. 

We touch here what is the main defect of the French moral 
instruction ; it has no vista, no escape into the ideal and the 
infinite. It is too clear, too intelligible, too obvious, too fa- 
miliar ; often too commonplace, too trivial. It is lacking in 
the subtler delicacies, the more solemn sanctities, and in ap- 
peals to the deeper needs of self-devotion. It does not open 
up the large horizons which alone make possible profound 
transformations of character. The more solemn chords of the 
human soul are not struck. It does not at all adequately ap- 
peal to the poetry ot the child-soul, around which the Catho- 
lic Church has known how to weave such spells of romance. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 403 

He continues, a little further on: 

The heart, especially the child-heart, still hankers alter 
something something of beauty, something wistful which 
the old Church may still supply. . . . One would have 
expected that the school would have learned some great les*- 
sons from the Church in the way of art, for example in the 
direction of festivals. But between Church and school there 
is a great gulf fixed ; and to many art too appears a siren 
luring back again to the old delusions. L'au-dela has gone 
the way of the fairies and the soul of the nation seems to have 
sped with it. 

The evils of the present system in France, which are touched 
upon so euphemistically by Mr. Johnson, are set forth in clearer 
and darker colors by the Rev. Edward Myers, who reports 
from the Catholic point of view. He temperately but uncom- 
promisingly describes the failure of the governmental system 
as it is writ large in the temper and character of the genera- 
tion which has grown up under it since 1882, when the Cate- 
chism was ousted from the schoolroom and its place taken by 
moral and civic instruction of M. Payot, whose books seem to 
Mr. Johnson admirable teaching manuals; he says: 

M. Payot's works are standard works in French training 
colleges, most of them are more than mere text-books they 
are the books to which Normalists are referred for such com- 
plementary information as their overcrowded time-table leaves 
them leisure to seek. His position is definite and clear; he 
is a Spencerian agnostic, and doubtless the schoolmasters of 
the future who have come under his influence will preach the 
religion of the Unknowable. 

The American contributors have nothing to report with 
which we are not all already familiar. One of the most inter- 
esting papers is that on Japanese education by Baron Kieuchi, 
for two years Minister of Education in his own country. The 
Japanese system is set forth in detail ; and in it there is not a 
trace of a religious idea or sentiment: "We have had direct 
moral teaching, entirely free from any form of religion, for a 
long time; indeed that was always taken to be the principal 
aim of education. It must, however, be repeated that the 
reverence of the Japanese people for the Imperial House is 
something almost religious." This the editor, perhaps cor- 
rectly, calls something akin to a religious sanction. 




404 NEW BOOKS [Dec., 

Irish education is represented by a very desultory but in- 
teresting paper from Mr. Stephen Gwynn. The analysis of 
Irish character occupies as much of his attention as do the 
Irish methods of teaching. He remarks that: "It may be 
said broadly that no ordinary person in Ireland contemplates 
the possibility of teaching morality apart from religion; and 
by religion is meant emphatically this or that particular ereed "; 
and he adds, as a corrollary, that: "It is hardly necessary to 
point out that in many respects the standard of Irish morality 
is so high that the example of Ireland may be quoted with 
confidence in support of the view which makes moral teaching 
necessarily a part of religion." 

The editor contributes a paper attempting a summary of the 
facts and views embodied in the reports. He finds that, regard- 
ing the necessary connection between moral and religious teach- 
ing, there are four contrasted views. These are, briefly : Re- 
ligious and moral teaching are inseparable ; they are wholly 
separable, and ought to be separated in schools maintained by 
public funds; the religious sanction is necessary to the efficient 
teaching of morals, but the religious side of moral teaching 
ought to be left to the family and the religious organizations; 
moral and religious training are in some points separable (man- 
ners and many matters of civic obligation), in others they are 
interdependent, yet as both are necessary for true education, 
so an educational system should find place for denominational 
schools. It is, the editor affirms, to the latter view that the 
great majority of the English witnesses lean. 

He brings out the fact that there is a sharp divergence of 
opinions as to what is the ideal of education. One which may, 
roughly speaking, be called the European, is that the teacher's 
business is to stimulate the intelligence of the pupils who sit 
before him under a system of rigid discipline. The other, 
whose advocates are American, is that the school "is a more 
or less self-governing community, occupied with vital move- 
ments of all kinds; full of freedom and initiative in a great 
variety of tasks; getting experience of the labors and relation- 
ships which lie at the foundation of all society; dynamic, self- 
expressive, educatively practical, busy with the effort to accom- 
plish (under due but unobtrusive guidance) certain things which 
its individual members wish to accomplish, and in which, there- 
fore, they find a strong motive for effort." 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 405 

To American Catholics the papers on Belgium and Switzer- 
land will prove especially suggestive, as the problem arising 
from mixed populations is acute in both countries; and in the 
former there exists a fierce but not victorious opposition to the 
presence of religion in the schoolroom. Pedagogists, theoreti- 
cal and practical, will find these two volumes well deserving of 
serious study. 

Dr. Schouler closed his long stand- 

IDEALS OF THE REPUBLIC, ing connection with the historical 

department of Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity with a series of lectures delivered in the past two years 
on the fundamental ideas, social and political, to which Amer- 
ica owes her progress and prosperity. The lectures are now 
published together in a book consisting of nine chapters.* 
The idea which Dr. Schouler treats as the fundamental one of 
American political life is "government by consent," and the 
next peculiarly American one is that of written constitutions. 
He next discusses the conception of the Union ; the necessity 
for limiting liberty by law; the play of party spirit; the prin- 
ciple that public officials and servants are answerable to their 
masters, the people. These ideas are examined not merely his- 
torically, but also in their application to present conditions ; 
hence Dr. Schouler treats of many actual questions the char- 
acteristics of party management as it exists to-day; competi- 
tion for civil service ; government ownership or regulation of 
railways; the function of the primaries; recent municipal ex- 
periments in simplified rule. In his closing chapter the author 
traces, with keen analysis, the influence, in American life past 
and present, of the two great and not easily reconciled forces, 
the desire for social equality and the desire to surpass, both of 
which, he shows, have resolved themselves into a relentless 
race for wealth, and this race has been the fruitful mother of 
many evils that are particularly out of place in a republican 
nation. To remedy these ills he recommends strong legislative 
control over the trusts and other great aggregations of wealth ; 
though he confesses that "it is difficult to surmise what will 
be the final outcome of the present development of monopolies; 
and amazingly difficult to devise any practical means of stifling 
or extinguishing what many regard as a natural and inevitable 
outcome of our highly organized industrial life." In the grow- 

* Ideals of the Republic. By James Schouler, LL.D. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



406 NEW BOOKS [Dec., 



Ing antagonism between capital and organized labor he sees 
portentous danger; and he protests, as an American, against 
any affiliation of American labor with " those destroyers of all 
property, all government, all stability of social life and order, 
whose schemes and dogmas are propagated in foreign countries 
as friends of the laborer.' 1 On the other hand, he roundly de- 
nounces the extravagant display of riches indulged in by the 
wealthy; and singles out the automobile as a specially per- 
nicious factor of strife-breeding between classes. 

Of all recent inventions for the pleasure of the rich, noth- 
ing, it seems to me, widens so impressively class jealousies 
among us as the automobile. This costly toy, which only a 
few can afford to keep and own, is the symbol and epitome of 
obtrusive arrogance towards the multitude, offset only by the 
danger it brings to those themselves who use it. The gor- 
geous coach and six which scattered the dust as it bowled 
along, harmed little, after all, and took only its own side of 
the road. Of turnouts with a horse there are still all sorts 
and kinds for the people. Our monstrous electric cars are for 
the multitude, and if we keep clear of iron tracks we are safe. 
But an automobile appropriates the whole road and right oi 
way ; with tooting horn and malodorous breath it speeds like 
a dragon, death-dealing, ravaging roads which others are 
taxed to maintain, exposing to sure danger those who ride by 
old-fashioned modes, and sending pedestrians at street-cross- 
ings in flight for their lives. 

Though he does not disguise the evils, the Doctor, trusting 
to the vitality of the nation, is optimistic about the future, 
trusting that Americans will again come to understand that 
there are better things in life than the satisfaction of an un- 
bounded thirst for accumulation. 

The reverend author of the novel 
NIZRA. Gan-Sar, founded on the story of 

Mary Magdalen, gives us another 

of the same type based on the Gospel history of the visit of 
the Wise Men to the Savior's crib.* Nizra, the daughter of 
Caspar, accompanies her father. The journey from their coun- 
try to Judea, their adventures in the city and around it, the 
visit to Bethlehem, and their subsequent return, are described 

* Nizra, the Flower of the Parsa. The Visit of the Wise Men. By Andrew Klarman. St. 
Louis: B. Herder. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 407 

with considerable play of fancy, which creates several non- his- 
torical characters to vary and enliven the narrative. On her 
return Nizra is sought in marriage by the prince of the coun- 
try, but she has promised to be a Sister to the newborn King 
of the Jews, and refuses to participate in the pagan rite of 
marriage, which refusal costs her her life. The style is pleas- 
ing, though somewhat stilted; and the characters are drawn 
with some animation. The author has interspersed his pages 
with some archaeological information on names of persons and 
places. The book should be a favorite with young girls. 

At first sight of this elegantly 

THE BOOK OF PRINCES bound and illustrated volume,* uni- 
AND PRINCESSES. form with the Fairy Book Series, 

one rashly exclaims: "Another set 

of fairies and folk-lore from Mr. Lang ; will the founts of his 
inspiration or invention never run dry ? " But the assumption 
would be almost the antithesis of the fact. The book is not 
concerned with fairies or any other imaginary beings, but with 
people, little people indeed, yet people of real flesh and blood; 
and the author is not Mr. Lang but Mrs. Lang. The subjects 
of the stories, taken from English and French history, deal with 
the early lives of young persons, some of whom died young, 
while others grew up to be famous personages. Though the 
stories are strictly historical in the main, Mrs. Lang has em- 
bellished the cold data with lively conversations, and paren- 
thetical comment to suit the story to juvenile taste. The book 
has the advantage over fairy tales that it cannot fail to im- 
plant the germ of a taste for historical reading in the minds of 
at least some of its readers. 

This whimsical title f introduces a 

FATE'S A FIDDLER. very readable novel with a dis- 
tinct flavor of Dickens in it. The 

hero, who tells his own story, makes his bow to us from a 
dingy basement in a dingy Boston street, where his father 
keeps a second-hand bookstore. The father and mother are 
variations of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. A rich relative's will 
furnishes the staple of the plot. The hero, Master Bibbus, gets 

* The Book of Princes and Princesses. By Mrs. Lang. Edited by Andrew Lang. New 
York: Longmans, Green & Co. 

t Fate so. Fiddler. By Edwin George Pinkham. Illustrated by Lester Ralph. Boston: 
Small, Maynard & Co. 



4 o8 NEW BOOKS [Dec., 

nothing from it, for all goes to a young cousin, whose guar- 
dian, however, takes Bibbus to live with him and the cou- 
sin. The youngsters become fast friends and emulate the day- 
dreams of Barrie's Tommy down along the Swampscott coast. 
Soon, however, just as the guardian is ruined by speculation, 
to which he is tempted by the wicked person of the story, a 
new light is cast on the will Bibbus, not Thomas, is the true 
heir. Then in a fit of noble rivalry each runs away in order 
that the other may enjoy the property. But they meet again 
as, in Oliver Twist fashion, they tramp out West, where the 
elder Bibbus has already established himself, as something at 
last turned up. Of course there is a girl, and many other com- 
plications, for which we must refer the curious to the novel 
itself, which will satisfy those whose taste does not need to be 
provoked by high seasoning. 

Like most other leading characters 

THE LONG ARM OF of Mr. Oppenheim, Mannister* is 
MANNISTER. a person of surpassing coolness, 

infinite resource, and great mag- 
netic force. His home has been ruined and his fortune rav- 
aged by a gang of London adventurers ; the story tells how 
he revenged himself on each one of them. The revenge took 
the form of financial or social ruin. Mr. Mannister's methods 
are too simple to greatly absorb a generation of readers that 
has known Sherlock Holmes. 

A story bearing the provocative 
IN THE TROPICS. sub-title of A Novel of Church and 

State in South America, gives a 

vivid picture of the relations between the half-breeds and their 
white masters in some parts of South America; and of the 
methods by which peon labor is exploited, in the rubber 
gathering industry, by the ruling classes, f The writer has 
thrown into a narrative form a number of stories which he 
listened to around the forest camp-fires. Those which im- 
pressed him most were told by a half-breed guide, who re- 
lated his own varied history, beginning in the hut of an Indian 
village, passing from that to a clerical school, and then cul- 

* The Long Arm of Mannister. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Boston : Little, Brown & 
Co. 

t The Power Supreme. By Francis C. Nicholas. Boston : R. E. Lee Company. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 409 

minating in an unsuccessful attempt at revolution. The story 
is strong and realistic, unmistakably the work of one who has 
been personally familiar with the country in which the scene 
is cast, and the manners and character of the people who fill 
his stage. A prominent note of the narrative is the abuses 
which have frequently arisen through the greed of individuals 
from the very close association of Church and State in some 
parts of Spanish America. 

Another writer conducts us among the rubber hunters in 
the other hemisphere. Long Odds* is the story of a lone Eng- 
lishman who for some unnamed reason has, without deserving 
it, been sent to Coventry by his fellow-countrymen. He comes 
to West Africa, and through a feeling of Quixotic loyalty to 
a worthless Portuguese trader, deceased, undertakes to rescue 
a native woman from slavery. The book is full of situations 
of danger for the hero, from natives, traders, and Portuguese 
officials. The vagueness of the descriptions and the want of 
Individuality in the characters betray the writer, who depends 
upon his reading and his imagination to furnish forth his ma- 
terial. These two books might be usefully compared with each 
other by a student of the novel who would seek to discover 
the secret of power in works of fiction. 

While the travelers who have 

GREECE AND THE ^GEAN " done " Greece have written for 
ISLANDS. the benefit of their stay-at-home 

brethern countless volumes full of 

archaeological and philological lore, very few have condescended 
to the humbler service of giving us any information of the 
country as it is to-day; or any counsel that would help a 
prospective tourist to compute his possible expenses and con- 
jecture what kind of comfort and convenience of transporta- 
tion he might expect to-day in Argos. This task Mr. Marden 
has taken upf and fulfilled in a fascinating volume which con- 
tains an account of his trip through the Grecian mainland and 
the adjoining islands. He describes the country as it exists at 
present, with the customs and manners of the people as they 

* Long Odds. By Harold Blindloss. Boston : Small, Maynard & Co. 
t Greece and the sEgcan Islands. By Philip Sandford Marden. Boston : Houghton 
Ififflin Company. 



4IO NEW BOOKS [Dec., 

' 

fell under his notice; and the ruins of the past are noticed 
with just as much archaeological comment as would amply 
satisfy the ordinary American tourist or reader; whose peace 
of mind and self-satisfaction Mr. Harden has so far tenderly 
consulted that he has nobly resisted the temptation to em- 
bellish his pages with any Greek quotations. The book is 
handsomely bound and illustrated. 

The latest number of the " Cathe- 
THE CATHEDRAL SERIES, dral Series 1 '* contains a detailed 

professional, critical description of, 

not alone the cathedrals strictly so-called, but also of all the 
other great historic churches of Northern Italy. An intro- 
ductory chapter consists of an able sketch of Italian ecclesi- 
astical architecture, in which Mr. Bumpus describes the devel- 
opment of church building in Italy from the earliest Christian 
times; and traces the formation and distinguishing character- 
istics of the different schools. A brief historical account of 
each of the churches visited is prefixed to the description of 
the building as it stands to-day. Sticking strictly to his proper 
subject, Mr. Bumpus neglects the statues and paintings in the 
churches; but some stroke of remorse for this seeming indig- 
nity to the great masters must have touched him and induced 
him to add, as an appendix, a full list of the most remark- 
able pictures and wall paintings alluded to in the work. The 
book is copiously illustrated with finely executed photogravures. 

A little work on the training of 

RELIGIOUS AND MONAS- novices for the religious state, 
TIC LIFE. published in France more than 

twenty years ago by the Benedic- 
tine Order, was compiled from the notes of the great Abbot 
Dom Gueranger by Dom Couturier, Abbot of Solesmes. It is 
now presented in English for the first time.f The book is 
small, but compact, with a thorough analysis of the religious 
idea. Extreme simplicity of exposition, in which the rhetorical 
has no place, is the conspicuous quality of the treatise. There 

The Cathedrals of Northern Italy, By T. Francis Bumpus. Illustrated. Boston : L. C. 
Page & Co. 

t Religious and Monastic Life Explained. Authorized version from the French of Dom 
Gudranger, O.S.B. By Rev. Jerome Veth, O.S.B. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



1908.] 



NEW BOOKS 



411 



is no doubt but that it will be highly appreciated as a manual 
for novices of religious congregations of both sexes in English- 
speaking countries. 

The second volume of the transla- 
BOOKS OF MEDITATIONS, tion of Branchereau's meditations,* 

like the first, has been adapted to 

the temperament of English-American readers by the translator. 
He has curtailed many of the meditations; and has used his 
blue pencil very freely on many pages that, in the original, 
abound in what to colder temperaments seems an excess of 
emotionalism. 

A book of short meditations on the Lord's Prayer and the 
Hail Mary, prepared by a Jesuit Father, will be found a very 
serviceable one for either the clergy or the laity. f Each medi- 
tation consists of three points, which are intended to occupy 
about a quarter of an hour each. The author's purpose is 
rather to supply pregnant suggestion than a fully developed 
meditation. The matter is quite practical, and may easily be 
developed into plain, substantial sermons ; all the more because 
under each point there is to be found a judicious selection of 
the most striking Scriptural texts which bear on the subject in 
hand. 

A Cistercian monk, some time ago, translated from the 
Latin a work written two hundred years ago by one of his 
fellow-religious, Morozzo, Cistercian abbot and bishop of Bob- 
bio, on the spiritual life.f It follows the traditional plan, be- 
ing divided into three parts. The Purgative Way; The Il- 
luminative Way; The Unitive Way. The instructions are 
pointed, and without those amplifications of illustrative anecdote 
and counsels drawn from the saints of the desert which figure so 
largely in Rodriguez and Scaramelli. That the book has in a 
short time reached a second edition is a proof that its excel- 
lence is appreciated. 

* Meditations for the Use of Seminarians and Priests. By Very Rev. L. Brancherean, 
S.S. Translated and Adapted. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

t The Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. By Stephen Beissel, S. J. St. Louis : B. Herder. 

\ A Treatise of Spiritual Life. Translated from the Latin. By Rev. D. A. Donovan, 
O.Cist. New York: Fr. Pustet & Co. 



jforeion periodicals. 

The Tablet (17 Oct.): "Archbishop Morton and St. Albans," 
by Abbot Gasquet, is a vindication of the Abbey from 

the charges brought against it by the Archbishop. 

" Unionist Policy." A constructive manifesto of the 
Unionist party has been published. It includes, among 
other things, Tariff Reform ; Increase of the Navy ; 
Wages Boards; Opposition to Sectarian Intolerance in 

the Matter of Education. " An Object Lesson from 

France " shows the fallacy of the neutral system of edu- 
cation and how in the long run it is distinctly hostile 

to religion. " Comparative Religion " draws attention 

to the fact that this department, from a Catholic stand- 
point, has been sadly overlooked, and that there is a 
real need of popular manuals on the subject. " Con- 
gress Papers" of this week reports in full "The Or- 
thodox Church and the Holy Eucharist," by the Rev. 
A. Fortescue, D.D. 

(24 Oct.): "Is the Bishop of Bristol an Anglican?" 
This startling question is the outcome of an address re- 
cently delivered by the Right Rev. gentleman, in which 
he stated that the English people before the Reformation 

were not Catholics. " The Persistence of Religious 

Prejudice " is shown in Fr. Thurston's review of a book 
recently published, called Wyclifte and the Lollards, in 
which many of the time-worn and oft-disproved fables are 
retold for the benefit of Protestant admirers. " Re- 
treats for Workingmen " is the subject-matter of an ar- 
ticle in The Spectator ', describing the recent retreat for 
Catholic workingmen at Marple. Why, the editor asks, 
cannot such opportunities be afforded to Protestant work- 
ingmen ? "Chalices for the Pope." Three hundred and 

sixty-one chalices are to be presented to his Holiness, 
subscribed for by the women of Great Britain and Ire- 
land. " Unemployment and Unused Town Lots " pro- 
poses to extend the American system of permitting the 
unemployed to cultivate vacant lots in proximity to cities. 

The Month (Oct.): Fr. Sydney Smith, in "The Eucharistic 
Congress," gathers up the impressions received and the 
convictions formed. It was a magnificent demonstration 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 413 

of the vitality and growth of Catholicism as well as an 

object lesson and a stimulus to devotion. "The Blessed 

Sacrament and the Consecration of Altars." Fr. Thurs- 
ton draws attention to the provision made in some of 
the old English Pontificals for the laying away in the 
altar of a part of the Sacred Host, together with three 
grains of incense, while the confession or sepulchre was 
to be anointed with chrism, the idea evidently being that 

of assisting at a solemn Burial Service. " Mendel and 

Mendelism" gives an account of the work performed by 
Mendel, an unknown Augustinian monk, in the depart- 
ment of biology. His theory of hybridism has yet to 
be proved, but his method has changed biology from a 

descriptive to an experimental science. "The Religion 

of Mithra," by C. C. Martindale, treats of that cult when, 
for the first time, it came face to face with Christianity. 
Mithra held the position of Logos ; he struggles against 
the evil principle and overcomes him. This struggle has 
a counterpart in the heart of man. 

The Expository Times (Nov.) : Gives the raison d'etre for " The 
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics," the first volume 
of which has recently issued from the press. The rela- 
tion between Ethics and Religion is so vital and so es- 
sential that it is difficult to separate them even in thought. 
" The Relation of the Fourth Gospel to the Synop- 
tics," answers the question, was the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel acquainted with the other three narratives? in 
the affirmative. "Recent Biblical and Oriental Archae- 
ology," by Professor Sayce, pays a tribute to the part 
the United States is playing in Oriental research. Among 
authorities mentioned is a book by Dr. Olmstead, pub- 
lished in New York, on Assyrian history. Under 

"Contributions and Comments" several difficulties are 
discussed, one being Joseph's " Coat of Many Colors," 

another "The Name 'Jahweh.'" Continued articles 

are: "Modern Positive Theology." And "The Jesus- 
Paul Controversy." 

The National Review (Nov.): "Episodes of the Month" de- 
votes considerable space to the recent disturbance in the 

Near East. " On the Eve," by H. W. Wilson, sounds 

a note of warning. The writer declares that the passing 



4I4 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec., 

of a British Naval Defence Act is England's only sal- 
vation, if she would retain her command of the sea. 

In " Votes for Women " the Hon. Mrs. Ivor Maxse takes 
up the arguments framed by the supporters of woman 
suffrage, and shows how inadequate and unsatisfactory 

they are. The Editor, L. J. Maxse, in his article, 

"A Crisis and a Moral," predicts that unless the states- 
men of London, St. Petersburg, and Paris organize a 
counter entente, for purely defensive purposes, Europe 
will become involved in a war by the vanity of Vienna 

and the restlessness of Berlin. "Some Aspects of the 

Reform Movement in Turkey," by George Lloyd. 

" The Government and Education/ 1 by C. A. Cripps, K. C., 
condemns the Educational Bill of Mr. Birrell as an attack 
against the National Church, and urges the claim of re- 
ligious education in secular schools. " Hungarian 

Nationalities " is a chapter from 7 he Political Evolution 
of the Hungarian Nation, by Knatchbull Hugessen. 

The Church Quarterly Review (Oct.): "The Lambeth Confer- 
ence" attracted, the writer says, a larger amount of at- 
tention than any of the previous ones, though at the 
same time disappointment was evinced at the lack of 
any definite or decisive opinion. " Eucharistic Doc- 
trine and the Canon of the Roman Mass," by Darwin 
Stone, points out that the early history of the Canon 
is unknown. The sacrificial idea is present through- 
out, and it neither implies nor asserts any doctrines 

which English Church people need repudiate. "The 

Higher Education of Women" shows how the sphere 
of woman's activities has become enlarged, and how 
necessary it is to fit her for entering upon the wider 

field of duties opening before her. "The Doctrine of 

Divine Immanence in the New Testament Theology." 
The tendency of present-day theology is to lay stress 
upon the immanence of God. This is to say that Chris- 
tianity is a philosophical religion. The Synoptics con- 
tribute less than any other New Testament writers to 
this doctrine ; it is in the Pauline epistles that the 
thought of God's immanence finds its fullest and most 
varied expression. 

The International (Oct.) : Alfred Holt Stone, of Washington, 



FOREIGN PERIODICALS 415 

D. C., in "The Future of the Race Problem in Amer- 
ica," offers three solutions of the difficulty : Deportation, 

Absorbtion, Race War. "German Social Insurance" 

is dealt with as a necessary corollary of the Factory 
Laws; nearly one-fourth of the entire population is under 
a scheme of insurance against sickness, accident, disable- 
ment, and old age. "The South African Native Ques- 
tion" is, the writer claims, the most pressing problem 
with which the African statesman stands face to face. 
Here, as elsewhere, the cause of discontent underlying 

all others, is the difficulty of obtaining land. " The 

Economic System of Canada " shows that the Dominion, 
in adopting the Australian system rather than that of the 

United States, has taken a step towards Socialism. 

"Future Prospect of Japanese Christianity" asks the 
question: What form will it take? Certainly, the writer 
says, neither English nor American, but purely national, 
suited to the needs and temperament of the people. 

The Monist (Oct.) : " A History of Early Chinese Philosophy," 
by Mr. Suzuki, discusses it from a religious point of 
view, dealing with the conception of God, and showing 
the line of demarcation between the classical and philo- 
sophical treatises. " That Than Which a Greater Can- 
not Be " is a scholastic essay by Gerald Cator, in which 
he proves that Theistic reality is not merely an empiri- 
cal but a necessary truth. " The Jonah Legend in 

India." The fact that such a story has been incorpo- 
rated into the history of Buddhism, shows that it was 
probably carried into India by the Arabs, for the inci- 
dent is narrated in several passages of the Koran. 

" The Classification of Religions," by Daren Ward, makes 
them fall under four headings based on : I. Theological 
Dogma; II. Objective Characteristics; III. Subjective 
Characteristics ; IV. Racial Distinctions. 

The Dublin Review (Oct.) : " The Ushaw Centenary and Eng- 
lish Catholicism," by Wilfrid Ward, is a retrospect of 
the Catholic Church in England from the fateful days of 
Elizabeth. The writer points out the prominent place 
occupied by such colleges as Ushaw and the part they 
played in the work of restoration. F. Y. Eccles re- 
views the works of " Maurice Barres " who, he says, is 



4l6 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec., 

H 

a recognized influence for good in his own country. 

" Revising the Vulgate," by Abbot Gasquet, gives a rapid 
sketch of the aim and object of the Biblical Commission, 
its personnel, and what it has already accomplished in a 

work which may well take generations to complete. 

"The Epistles of Erasmus" show him as one of those 
men who develop but do not change radically. He had 
a fatal love ol epigram, and even upon the gravest mat- 
ters, he could not exclude his wit. "The Neronian 

Persecution." Quoting from St. Clement and others, the 
writer, F. J. Bacchus, points out that the charge of in- 
cendiarism was not the cause of the persecution, but that 
it was brought about by envy and jealousy on the 
part of the Jews. 

7 he Irish Ecclesiastical Record (Oct.): "The Doctrine of the 
Mass in the Infant Church," by Rev. G. Pierse, of May- 
nooth College, treats of the doctrinal development regard- 
ing the Eucharist in the period embracing the last half 
of the second century and the first half of the third. 
That the Mass was regarded as a sacrificial function is 
shown from the writings of both Eastern and Western 

Fathers. "Evolution and Morality," by Rev. R. Ful. 

lerton, is the continuation of a question already dealt 
with at some length. One thing history makes clear, 
that whenever ethics have not been prompted by reli- 
gious motives, self-interest has reigned supreme. 

"The Origin of the Cultus of the Saints" is a refuta- 
tion of Harnack's theory that the worship of the saints 
may be traced to Hellenistic influences upon the early 
Church. The writer shows that the cultus originated 
with the worship paid to Christian martyrs. 
The Irish Theological Quarterly (Oct.): Dr. McDonald, in his 
article " Pan-Anglicanism," points out that, while recog- 
nizing the sincerity of those who took part in the dis- 
cussions, Catholics cannot but disagree profoundly with 
nearly all of what they wrote and said. "The Tem- 
ple of Onias at Leontopolis," by Rev. Hugh Pope, O.P., 
tells of the flight to Egypt, from Jesusalem, of Onias IV. 
While there he made a request of Ptolemy that he be 
permitted to build a temple, as Isaias the prophet had 
foretold some six hundred years before that time that a 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 417 

temple would be built to the Lord in Egypt. " St. 

Anselm's Definition of Original Sin," by Rev. P. J. 
Toner, traces the history of this discussion. It began 
with St. Anselm, who refuted the Augustinian theory, 
but it took many years for the recognition of the truth 
that the privation of original justice, which constitutes 
original sin, is nothing else than the privation of grace. 

" The Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel " is 

defended by the Rev. J. MacRory ; while recognizing 
many difficulties, he claims that they admit of explana- 
tion. Other articles are : " Clandestinity and Mixed 

Marriages in Ireland," by Rev. Dr. Harty. And 

" The History of the Vatican Council," by Rev. J. Mac- 
Caffrey, Ph.D. 

Le Correspondant (10 Oct.): "Napoleon III. and the Empress 
Eugenie," their representative roles in the war of 1870, 
by M. H. Welschinger. It cannot be denied that the 
Empress exerted great influence in causing war to be 
declared. She foresaw that victory would consolidate 
the throne, and guarantee the succession to her son. 
The Emperor was doubtful from the first and feared the 

results of internal dissension. "Letters to Mauper- 

tuis," ten letters of Madame du Deffand to M. de Mau- 
pertuis, show the charm and talent of the great woman 
rather than her philosophy. M. George Goyau con- 
tributes " Twenty Years of Bavarian History." It covers 
the period from 1848-1870; the tactics of Hohenlohe 
against the Jesuits and Ultramontanists receive due at- 
tention. M. A. Bechaux : " Economic Life and the 

Social Movement " ; a general study of existing condi- 
tions. Among the topics discussed are: The Congress 
of Nuremberg; Power and Weakness of Syndicates; the 
Psychology of Syndicates; Emigration, etc. 
(25 Oct.): "The America of the Future," the third in- 
stallment of an article by Abbe Klein, relating his im- 
pressions of America. Peoria and Bishop Spalding; St. 
Paul and Archbishop Ireland, are the headings of sections 
delineating the personal charms of the two great pre- 
lates and the work done in their respective dioceses. 
Creighton University receives its share of appreciation ; 
under the able direction of its then President, Rev. M. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 27 



4I 8 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec., 

Bowling, S.J., it set a standard which the Catholic Uni- 
versities of France might well emulate. " The French 

Institute, 1 ' is a short historical sketch apropos of the 
celebration of the one hundred and thirteenth anniver- 
sary of the Institute. Its organization marks an epoch 

in the history of civilization. In " Neo Classicism and 

the Autumn Exhibition," M. Gabriel Mourey, intimates 
that the French artists of to-day would do well not to 
sin against the eternal standards of beauty ; without 
ceasing to be men of their day, they could cast a glance 
at the ideals of the past, for "a thing of beauty is an 
eternal source of joy." 

Etudes (5 Oct.) : The recent pastoral of " The French Hier- 
archy on the School Question" is given in full. J. de 

la Serviere continues his criticism of " The Pan- Anglican 
and Lambeth Conferences." The resolutions of the lat- 
ter, as well as the encyclical it issued, are given. " The 

Tercentenary Celebrations at Quebec " are highly praised 

by M. Tamisier. Joseph Brucker's views on theology 

and biblical criticism, on historical truth in the Bible, 
and upon the authenticity of the Pentateuch, as exposed 
in his work, 1 'he Church and Biblical Criticism, are high- 
ly commended. " The Criticism of M. Turmel." F. 

Dubois complains that M. Portalie was unjust towards 
him in criticizing his defence of M. Turmel. M. Portalie 
replies trenchantly, justifying the tone of his article. 
"How to Teach Theology in Seminaries" is the cap- 
tion of an article by Jean Bainvel. 

(20 Oct.): J. de la Serviere records some of the im- 
pressions made upon him during "The Eucharistic Con- 
gress in London." He speaks in terms of praise of the 
music rendered in the Westminster Cathedral, and also 
of the great faith of the English Catholics. A psy- 
chological study of " Martin Luther," based upon un- 
edited documents recently discovered, is contributed by 
Paul Bernard. In "Voyages of Missionaries" is de- 
scribed the sufferings, discomforts, and inconveniences 
that a sixteenth- century missionary underwent in going 

from Lisbon to Goa. " British Science " gives us an 

interesting account of a visit to the Franco-British Ex- 
hibition in London. "The Mystical Life." Jean dc 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 419 

Seguier joins issue with M. Sandreau upon three points; 
namely, that contemplation does not require a special 
vocation ; that perfection requires the graces of a mystic; 
and that contemplation, in its lower stages, is a knowl- 
edge of an intelligible nature, more perfect than, but of 
the same order as, human intelligence. 

Annales de Philosophic Chretienne (Oct.) : " Dogma and Theol- 
ogy/* by M. Laberthonniere, is a comparison of the 
theories put forward by M. Le Roy and M. Lebreton. 
The pragmatism of the one is an agnosticism which he 
avows, while the intellectualism of the other is an ag- 
nosticism which he does not avow. To the one dogma 
is unknowable; to the other it is knowable, but cannot 
be attained to by the natural intelligence. This, after 

all, is but a play upon words. "Two Methods of 

Treating the History of Religion," by M. Louis, is sug- 
gested by a recent work. The one method is very eru- 
dite, involving itself in controversy ; the other less 
learned, but more philosophical. This latter is the plan 

advocated by the writer, as adopted by specialists. 

F. Lehardy, in "The Moral of Lafontaine's Fables," 
says that his work is truly a reflection and expression 
of his life. He wrote his fables as a bird sang, without 
more reflection. He played with life, and yet life is 
something more than a game. 

La Democratic Chretienne (8 Oct.) : " Social and Economic 
Science " is a summary of the social doctrines of Baron 
Charles de Vogelsang. According to this eminent Aus- 
trian sociology is ethical ; it is also philosophical, in 
that it considers the origin, the end, and nature of so- 
ciety. "The Popular Institute of Hellenes" is a re- 
port read September 20, 1908. It treats of three diffi- 
culties attending the reunion of the institute. The or- 
ganization committee, the difficulty of obtaining pro- 
fessors, and the need of greater financial support. 

"The Catholic Congress at Diisseldorf" is made the 

subject of some reflections by the Abb G , who 

deplores the fact that no French delegate was present. 
" Social Papers " deal with the International Con- 
ferences at Zurich and Geneva, also the Departmental 
Congress of the diocese of Versailles. 



420 POREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec., 

Revue du Monde Catholique (15 Oct.) : P. Camillus concludes his 

account of the Eucharistic Congress. Ch. Beaurredon 

continues his criticism of Modernism. He concludes with 
" A Last Word," in which he points to M. Loisy as an ex- 
ample of the practical action of Modernism. M. Sicard 

begins a history of " The French Clergy in the Past and 
Since the Concordat of 1801." This number sketches the 
period from St. Irenaeus to Gregory the Great. In his 
preface the author promises "to compose no panegyrics, 
to speak plainly, to call things by their name, to give to 

events and to persons what is coming to them. Xavier 

Levrier writes of "The True Chronology of our Lord Jesus 
Christ," and criticises the position taken by M. Rene des 
Chesnais that our Lord was born on the 25th of Decem- 
ber, in the Roman year 748, and that his death took 
place in the year 783, being the fourth Pasch of his pub- 
lic life, which is altogether contrary to received tradition. 

Revue Pratique d' Apologetique (15 Oct.) : " The Prophetical Ar- 
gument." This installment of J. Touzard's series dwells 
upon the importance of the Prophets in Old Testament 
times. The texts in Isaias, Jeremias, and Ezechiel regard- 
ing the future of Israel are treated at great length. The 
conclusion reached is that the fulfilment of these prophe- 
cies can be found only in the person and work of Jesus. 

" Buddhism and Apologetics." After stating the 

problem that isfsignified by this title, M. de la Vallee 
Poussin gives his solution for the apologist's use. He 
says that the many resemblances between Buddhism and 
Christianity serve but to reveal the historical value to be 
adduced for the teachings of Christianity in contrast with 
the legendary foundation upon which Buddhism is built, 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques et la Science Catholique 
(Sept.): "The Fourth Gospel," by 1'Abbe Roupain. The 
subject is divided under two headings: ist. "Are We 
Justified in Attributing this Gospel to St. John?" 2d. 
" Can We Hold With Certainty to the Historicity of the 
Book?" These questions are answered affirmatively. The 
argument for the former is based on Tradition. And, 
again, that this Gospel dates from the end of the first 

century and was written entirely by St. John. "The 

Subliminal Consciousness," by Chanoine Gombault. 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 421 

Lourdes and its Cures regarded from a scientific point 
of view. That cures have taken place there is unques- 
tionably admitted. Explanations offered for them are 
in no way satisfactory. Subliminal consciousness, as 
urged by Dr. Mangin, is insufficient. "The Theol- 
ogy of William of Champeaux," by E. Hurault, proves 
that he was orthodox on the doctrine of Original Sin, 

although somewhat careless in his terminology. 

" Historical Bulletin," by 1'Abbe Lourdeau. Subjects 
treated : " The Great Abbeys of the West " ; " The Be- 
ginning of the Anglican Schism"; "The Pilgrimages 
of Louis XL" 

La Scuola Cattolica (Sept.) : " Assyrian Demonology," by E. 
De Giovanni. The Assyrians, ignorant of the causes of 
evil, attributed disease and suffering to spirits ; this is 
one of the reasons why we find in the magical literature 
of Assyria a veritable army of wicked spirits. The gen- 
esis, growth, knowledge, nature, and power of these de- 
mons is considered by the aid of the magical incan- 
tations of the Assyrians. D. Bergamaschi concludes 

" The Life of Fra Buono, Hermit, Institutor of the Forty 

Hours' Devotion." Other articles: " Discernibility of 

Miracles," by G. Mattuissi, SJ. "The Incidental 

Proposition in Traditional Logic," by G. Cevolani. 

La Civilta Cattolica (3 Oct.) : " The Jubilee of Pius X. and the 
Voice of the Pope." The touching spectacle which took 
place on the i8th day of September last, has passed; 
in less than one hour it was over, but in the mind and 
on the heart of one who assisted, it has been so indeli- 
bly written as never to be forgotten. " The Human 

Element in Sacred Eloquence." This excellent article 
is again continued at length, embodying much practical 

knowledge. "The Divinity of Christ and the Primacy 

of St. Peter." A defence of these two truths, so con- 
nected one with the other. One the foundation of all 
Christianity; the other the foundation of the true and 
genuine Christianity a refutation of Loisy and his fol- 
lowers. 

(17 Oct.): "The Eucharistic Congress in London " con- 
tained in this number. As is also the article on the 

" First Centenary of Saverio Betinelli. " New Studies 



422 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec. 



on the Question of Pope Liberius " continues to give 

much valuable information on a vexed question. 

Other articles are : " The Encyclical on Modernism," 

in view of some recent writings. "The Symbolism of 

the Three Beasts as Used by Dante." "Justice," a 

eulogy on its value to the commonwealth, rightly spoken 
of in philosophy as the morning and evening star. 

Espana y America (i Oct.): "The Exhortation of Pius X." to 
the clergy on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of 

his priesthood is concluded. P. E. Negrete continues 

his examination of "The ^Esthetic Ideas of St. Augus- 
tine." "Biblical Exegesis and Modern Criticism" is 

again discussed by P. Miguel Coco. He opposes to the 
destructive theories of Loisy the Pauline arguments for 
the Resurrection of Christ, and shows that denial of the 
resurrection of the dead leads to a frightful naturalism. 
(15 Oct.): Alberto Blanco discusses "The Theological 

Meaning and the Poetical Structure of Psalm CX." 

P. L. Alvarez investigates how " Modernism " destroys 
faith. This to the modernist is an assent operating 
independently of the will and of the understanding; 
to the Catholic it is a free intellectual act. The author 
denies that such assent to the teachings of the Church 

is against one's reasonable liberty. P. M. Lorenzo 

concludes his historical sketch, "The Sisters of Fabiola." 

Razon y Fe (Oct.): R. Ruiz Amado contributes an article on 

"Education Not a Political but a Social Function." 

L. Murillo treats of " The Cosmogonies of Primitive Pagan 

Peoples" as compared with that of the Hebrews. 

"Joseph Bonaparte and the Spanish ex-Jesuits" is treated 
by D. de Valbuena. The king's demands upon them seem 
to have been unjust; his manner precipitate and violent; 
his punishment of them by exile and imprisonment sanc- 
tioned by no law; and their constancy entire and gen- 
erous. "The New Organization of the Curia," with 

advices relative to religious and to the decree Ne lemere 
is treated by J. B. Ferreres, and will be continued in the 
next issue. 



Current Events, 



No settlement of any one of the 

The Near East. many questions raised by the ac- 

tion of Austria- Hungary and of 
Bulgaria has so far been made. It is, however, generally recog- 
nized that the manner in which both governments acted was 
iniquitous and unjustifiable. Nevertheless, it is looked upon 
as impossible to undo what has been done. To this extent 
wrong- doing has triumphed. The triumph is, however, of a 
somewhat sorry character, for it has involved the destruction 
of the credit of one of the Great Powers, hitherto looked upon 
as a support of the established order. Confidence is no longer 
placed in the fulfilment by her of obligations solemnly ac- 
cepted. Mr. Gladstone's declaration that nowhere has Austria 
ever done any good, and that it is impossible for her ever to 
learn a declaration thought at the time it was made to be ex- 
aggerated is now being recalled to remembrance and is meet- 
ing with the approbation which was then refused. It is a fine 
thing to have a long history to which to look back; but when 
that long history is, to a large extent, a record of deeds of 
violence, injustice, and oppression, which form precedents for a 
further series of such deeds, then it is a matter for congratu- 
lation that we in this country do not inherit so pernicious a 
burden from the past. 

It may seem strange to reckon the annexation of the two 
Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the 
long list of the misdoings of Austria. For the Austrian rule 
over the provinces has proved much better than the Turkish. 
It is generally recognized that there has been a great increase 
of material prosperity in the two provinces, and that law and 
order now reign where formerly there was widespread anarchy. 
Moreover, to all intents and purposes the provinces had be- 
come the possession of Austria, and it was not expected by 
any one that they would ever be restored. 

For all that, the time and manner of the annexation made 
what might have been accomplished in an orderly way in the 
highest degree lawless and unjust and worthy of the severest 



424 



CURRENT EVENTS [Dec., 



condemnation. It was a distinct breach of the Berlin treaty, 
which forms the basis of the last European settlement. This 
treaty formed the sole justification of Austria's right to be in 
the provinces at all. The hopes which are being entertained 
by many, for the preservation of peace by means of arbitra- 
tion-treaties, will prove to be baseless if no regard is to be 
paid to the binding character of a treaty after it has been 
made, and if what is supposed to be one of the Great Powers 
can set aside so solemn a treaty as that of Berlin at will, 
small reliance can be felt in any other treaty which may be 
made. Happily the condemnation passed upon Austria's con- 
duct, almost universal as it is, has shown that other nations 
have higher standards of morality and of fidelity to their en- 
gagements. 

Perhaps an even worse feature of the proceeding was the 
time chosen for the annexation. Very few Christians would be 
sorry if Turkish dominion over every part of the world were 
to come to an end. That, however, being unlikely, all right- 
minded men cannot help rejoicing that the evil features of Turk- 
ish rule, or some of them at least, should be abolished or miti- 
gated, and that the yoke of the autocrat, and especially of so 
fiendish an autocrat as the Sultan, should be broken. Just when, 
to the surprise of all, there was a prospect of this, on account 
of the restoration of the Constitution, the action of Austria 
was best calculated to throw the subjects of Turkey, Christians 
and Ottomans alike, back under the complete domination of the 
Sultan ; for nothing welds a nation so closely together as for- 
eign opposition. 

For the past half-dozen years Austria, along with Russia, 
has stood in the way of the other Powers of Europe, and has 
prevented them from interposing in Macedonian affairs, and 
thereby saving men, women, and children from being massacred 
by thousands. The action taken by Austria is seen now to 
have been a mere pretence in order to shield her own sel- 
fish plans ; for the moment that all this had come to an 
end, and peace had been restored in Macedonia, was chosen by 
Austria for taking a step the most likely of all to bring about 
a reversion to the former state. Happily there exists at the 
present time a power to which the so-called great Powers and 
all kings and potentates must bow ; that power is public opinion. 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 425 



The approval of public opinion in this country, it has been 
stated in the papers, Baron von Aehrenthal has been very anx- 
ious to secure. He has, however, signally failed. 

As a result of the annexation, the future holds out a worse 
prospect for the continuance of Hapsburg rule. Although the 
Hapsburgs are Germans, they have been cast out of the Ger- 
man Empire. Of the Germans left under their rule, a not in- 
considerable number are anxious to throw off allegiance to the 
Emperor-King, Francis Joseph, and to become subjects of the 
Kaiser William II. The Magyars, the second main division of 
Francis Joseph's subjects, hate no people so much as their Ger- 
man fellow-subjects. The Slavs form the third of the principal 
races in the Empire, and they have for an ideal the formation 
of a great Slav Kingdom, independent and distinct, which is to 
have in Russia a protector. The annexed provinces, Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, contain a large number of Slavs, and by the 
annexation of these provinces the number of those willing to 
disintegrate the Empire has been increased, and ground has 
been furnished for a conflict with Russia. And, so far from 
strengthening the Empire, the annexation has only added to 
the difficulties with which it has to meet. 

These difficulties spring from the spirit of nationality which 
has for so long been the most potent force in the formation 
and disintegration of Empires. The Serbs are animated by this 
spirit in no slight degree, and have long been cherishing the 
desire to bring together under one rule and in one kingdom 
all of the same race. The principality of Montenegro is of the 
same blood. Both Servia, consequently, and Montenegro have 
been exasperated almost to the point comparatively weak 
though they are of declaring war against Austria; for the 
annexation has separated the large number of Serbs in the two 
provinces from their fellow-Serbs, and has placed an obstacle 
as permanent as the existence of the Austrian Empire itself in 
the way of the formation of a Greater Servia. The Russian 
people, too, have been moved to indignation by the wrong 
done to their fellow-Slavs, and it has required great determi- 
nation on the part of the government of Russia to restrain the 
movement in favor of war. It is even yet uncertain whether 
it will succeed. The Russian people were able against the will 
of the government to bring about the last war with Turkey, 



42 6 CURRENT EVENTS [Dec., 

' 

and they may possibly be able to force the government this 
time and bring about a war with Austria. 

One of the strangest of the results of the action of Austria 
has been the bringing about of what may almost be called an 
entente between Russia and England, in which France is in- 
cluded, so that there is now a triple entente between England, 
France, and Russia. This is due to the efforts of M. Isvolsky, 
the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, who has made a series 
of visits to all the principal countries, and has entered into per- 
sonal intercourse with the foreign ministers of Austria, Ger- 
many, Italy, France, and Great Britain. It is said that he is 
a man who inspires and deserves confidence, a somewhat rare 
thing among diplomatists. His efforts have been devoted to 
the summoning of a Conference for the readjustment of the 
European situation and the amendment of the Berlin Treaty. 
Success seems to be doubtful, for Austria will not submit to 
the discussion of the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; 
consequently, no advantage from a Conference can be hoped 
for. She will, we hope, incur the penalty of non-recognition. 
This may not be of much importance to Austria, but for Bul- 
garia, the other violator of treaties, the consequences will be 
more serious, as the money which the new kingdom requires 
cannot be legally raised or secured until that recognition. It 
is said, however, that Bulgaria has entered upon direct nego- 
tiations with Turkey and that there are hopes that an amicable 
solution may be found. The points at issue are the payment 
of the tribute for Eastern Rumelia and the compensation for 
the seizure of that portion of the Orient Railway which passes 
through that district. The relations, however, between Turkey 
and Bulgaria were at one time so strained that war was on 
the point of breaking out ; that it did not break out was due, 
it is said, to the intimation made by Russia to the Prince's 
government that Russian troops would enter Bulgaria the mo- 
ment when an attack should be made on Turkey. 

No Power has been so perplexed as to its course of action 
as Germany. On the one hand she is the ally of Austria, and 
indebted to her for the only support received at the Algeciras 
Conference. On the other, since Great Britain threw Turkey 
overboard, Germany has been the chief supporter of the Sul- 
tan. The Baghdad Railway is a German project, and in other 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 427 

ways Germany looks for benefits from Turkey. So it became 
an exceedingly anxious question which side Germany should 
take that of Austria or that of Turkey; and it is not yet 
clear what decision has been reached. So far, however, Aus- 
tria seems to have carried the day. The conduct of Italy has 
been very ambiguous. At first Signer Tittoni intimated that 
Italy had full knowledge and gave full consent to Austria's 
action, but afterwards he retreated, or seemed to retreat, from 
that position. 

Greece, too, has been placed in an embarrassing position. 
No sooner did Bulgaria declare independence, than Crete de- 
clared its own annexation to Greece. The latter kingdom, 
however, much as it hates the Turk, hates the Bulgar more; 
and appears to have been unwilling to give trouble to Turkey. 
At all events she has not yet accepted the offer of the Cretans. 
Perhaps the four Powers who have been protecting Crete may 
have had some influence in the matter. 

The one Power whose conduct has met with general ap- 
probation is Turkey. This has been due not to love of Turkey, 
but to the strong hope which exists that a more reasonable 
form of government may be upon the point of being perma- 
nently ' established for the benefit of the many long-suffering 
peoples under the rule of the Sultan. This hope the wise and 
moderate conduct of the Young Turks, and of the government 
whom they advise and control, has done everything to strengthen. 
The advice given by friendly Powers has been listened to, 
and the natural desire to rush into a war has been resisted. 
All the Powers, therefore, have recognized that Turkey is en- 
titled to compensation for the loss of prestige she has suffered ; 
and all, even Russia, have renounced any purpose of securing 
for themselves advantages at the expense of Turkey. 

The constitutional regime seems to be established, but it 
would be altogether premature to say that it really is established. 
No one imagines for a moment that the Sultan will assent to 
its continuance a moment longer than he is forced; but there 
is every reason for thinking that the only force that exists in 
Turkey, the army, is determined to defend the Constitution. 
Of this there seems to be good proof. 



42 3 CURRENT EVENTS [Dec., 

Germany has been passing through 
Germany. an internal revolution, peaceful in- 

deed, but effectual in bringing about 

a more reasonable form of government. It has been a matter 
of common knowledge that the Kaiser chafes under the con- 
trol over his actions which is involved in the existence of a 
Constitution. More than once he has caused grave inconvenience 
by independent action ; but his subjects were not aware, until 
he himself revealed the fact, how often this interference had 
been, and how near to the infliction of the gravest injury upon 
his own country and upon the world his indiscretion might 
have led. In the interview which recently appeared in an Eng- 
lish paper he has, by the indiscreet revelation therein made of 
his own personal diplomacy and of that of France and Russia, 
succeeded in rendering it almost impossible for confidence to 
be placed in German action by other Powers. As to his own 
people, while they were led to think by the Kruger telegram 
that he was friendly to the Boers, as were the vast majority 
of his subjects, at the very time he had prepared for British 
use a plan of campaign for their defeat. In the words of a 
leading German paper, this self-revelation of the Kaiser's ac- 
tion has " more closely welded together the ties which unite 
our enemies and has diminished the number of our friends ; 
it has depressed our prestige like a market quotation, and has 
lessened belief in the earnestness of our purpose and in the 
seriousness and trustworthiness of our policy. ... It has 
increased the difficulties of conducting our foreign policy to 
such an extent that we by no means envy the task of the re- 
sponsible statesman whose function it is to defend these utter- 
ances." 

Prince Biilow felt the task to be so heavy that while he 
chivalrously took upon himself the responsibility for the publi- 
cation of the interview, yet he felt himself compelled to offer 
his resignation. This was not accepted ; but after the meeting 
of the Reichstag and the severe criticisms of the Kaiser's con- 
duct, which were made at its first sessions, the Prince felt com- 
pelled to insist upon a clear understanding as to his position. 
Either the Kaiser was to be at liberty to act as an absolute 
ruler, in which case the Prince would resign, or the require- 
ments of the Constitution should be observed in the letter and 



i 9 o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 429 

in the spirit. According to the latest news the Kaiser has 
renounced all desire to carry out personal policies of his own, 
and has submitted to the will of the nation. He declared it 
to be the bitterest hour of his life. We hope he will live to 
look upon it as the happiest. Experience has shown the ex- 
tremes of misery through which the world has passed through 
the dependence of millions upon the will of a single individual. 



Very little has to be said about 
France. France, the Near Eastern question 

having engrossed her energies to 

the exclusion of almost every other interest. The one event 
necessary to mention is the fall of the Minister for the Navy, 
M. Thomson. The long series of accidents which have taken 
place led the Chamber of Deputies to pass a resolution con- 
demning in strong terms his administration of that department. 
He accordingly resigned and has been succeeded by M. Alfred 
Picard, a man of high distinction as an author and an engineer, 
but totally unconnected with politics. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

ALLAN ROBINSON, president of the Allied Real Estate Interests, has 
issued the following statement relative to the increase of over six mil- 
lion dollars asked for by the Board of Education. 

Criticism of education appropriations is not popular. There are few 
taxpayers who would be found willing to stint the Board of Estimate and Ap- 
portionment when it comes to giving the youth of this city a good education 
or to paying our teachers properly. The increase, however, of $6,258,521 
asked for this fall by the Board of Education is an enormous increase. The 
total appropriation asked for by the Board of Education is $33,031,484, or 
the equivalent of $7.23 tor every man, woman, and child in Greater New 
York. United States census reports for 1905 show the following per capita 
appropriations for educational purposes in the seven largest cities in the 
country: Chicago, $3.78; Philadelphia, $3.57; St. Louis, $3.40; Boston, 
$6.69; Baltimore, $2.94; Cleveland, $4.67 ; Buffalo, $3.97. 

It will be noted that, with the exception of Boston, where the rate is 
quite high, the educational appropriations of these cities are about one-half 
as much per capita as the proposed budget in New York would amount to. 

In the year 1899 the first year of the consolidation of the various bor- 
oughs the appropriation for educational purposes was $13,641,616.95, or 
$3.84 per capita. If the increase asked for by the Board of Education is 
granted, the appropriation for educational purposes will have increased 142 
per cent in ten years, while the increase in population during the same 
period has been only 32.7 per cent. 

The taxpayers want to know if this enormous increase is justified, and 
the forthcoming Budget Exhibit will be utilized to present to the people of 
New York the facts as to how this money is being spent. 

* * 

A writer in The Living Church says : 

Of course American conditions make it impossible for churchly educa- 
tion to be given in the public schools; neither do churchmen find it prac- 
ticable on financial grounds, to introduce a parochial school system gener- 
ally, though Roman Catholics and Lutherans, who are not commonly believed 
to average greater wealth than do churchmen, find a way to do it. We are 
considering now only the problem of the boarding school. There the 
Church is strong in the opportunity to educate, if churchmen will use the 
opportunity. Efficient church schools are here; churchmen may make use 
of them if they will, but for the most part they do not. The problem of ex- 
pense must often enter into the consideration. It is truly said that most of 
our church schools are expensive. That arises from the fact that efficient 
education is always expensive, and church schools have not been sufficiently 
endowed to enable them to supplement tuition fees from income thus ob- 
tained. If some of the wealth of churchmen might be devoted to the pur- 
pose of such endowment, with a view of cheapening tuition, itvould te 



1908.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 431 

most helpful to parents of moderate means. In the meantime, however, 
plenty of churchmen are sending their sons and their daughters to equally 
expensive schools in which the environment is not churchly, often unchurch- 
ly, sometimes irreligious, so that the problem of expense is not the whole 
difficulty. The real fact appears to be, the more expensive schools are bet- 
ter supported than the less. 



While contending that all attempts have failed to attach Shakespeare to 
any particular denomination, a recent writer in The Contemporary Review 
admits much in favor of the Catholic claim. He declares that it was not 
Shakespeare's business, we may even say it was not his policy for policy in 
religion was a matter of some importance in the reign of Elizabeth to de- 
clare his religious beliefs. In so far as he was a private individual his faith 
was his own business, while in so far as he was a dramatist his declarations of 
faith were part of his art. However, it is true enough to say that the form 
and fashion of the old taith fascinated his nature in a way that was impossible 
with the reformed religion. When we read the plays it is impossible to be- 
lieve that the age of the Reformation has come and gone. The faith of the 
Middle Ages inspires and pervades the plays to an extent and in a fashion 
that is due to deliberate [preference. The formulas of Holy Church, oaths 
and phrases drawn from the creeds and gospels, are ever on the lips ot his 
people. He shows a minute and intimate knowledge of the highly technical 
precepts of the old faith. No detail is wanting of Church life, from the car- 
rying of the chrisom child to the bringing home of bell and burial. Holy 
Church environed the creations of Shakespeare from the cradle to the grave. 
The Catholic position was, in fact, his position, though there is evidence that 
he did not recognize the Papal authority. 

The introductory paragraph of Shakespeare's will seems to give us a di- 
rect statement of his belief: I commend my soul unto the hands of God my 
Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus 
Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting. How does this 
noble commendation tally with the faith that peers through the plays as we 
watch Shakespeare's great creatures live and move and have their wondrous 
being? The plays taken as a whole give the reader certain definite impres 
sions. We notice, for instance, a profound reticence on great religious 
issues that are perfectly consistent with, indeed follow directly from, his 
Catholic position, and are not betrayed by the lavish use of religious material. 
The use of religious forms, he realized, is a fundamental fact in the lives of 
men and women. Therefore the formalism of religion permeates play after 
play. It is a part of the life of his age, and is, therefore, part of the world 
that he creates. But the fundamental issues, of which religion in fact treats, 
are not brought into the foreground. One instance of Shakespeare's reti- 
cence and his reverence for the old Church is the fact that he never attacks 
the clergy or religious of that Church, while he is always ready to smile at 
the Puritans. The stage, moreover, is not the place either for religious 
polemics or for the treatment of sacred themes. Neither the Mystery Plays 
nor the Moral Plays come within Shakespeare's vast range of creation, and 
this must hare been the result of deliberate choice. M. C. M. 



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THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVIII. JANUARY, 1909. No. 526. 

GERARD HOPKINS. 

AN EPITAPH AND AN APPRECIATION. 
BY KATHERINE BREGY. 

N the Jesuit church of St. Aloysius, Oxford, is a 
holy water font of vari-colored marbles bearing 
this simple inscription : In memory of Father 
Gerard Hopkins, S.J,, who died June 8th t 1889. 
R. I. P. Sometime Priest on this Mission. For- 
merly of Balliol College. It was erected by two devoted friends 
(the Baron and Baroness de Paravicini) and stands to-day as 
one of the very few objective memorials of a fine and glowing 
spirit a poet who, when he shall come into his just inheri- 
tance of human praise, may well be known as the Crashaw of 
the Oxford Movement. Very early the imperious obediences 
of the religious life took him from a purely literary career; 
and early, too, came the great Silencer. Yet to examine his 
few and scattered poems is to be convinced that the divine 
fire burned upon his brow, once and until the end, albeit in 
curious and unwonted arabesques. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born at Stratford, near Lon- 
don, the 28th of July, 1844. It was a year of pregnant sig- 
nificance for English-speaking men and women. The Tracts 

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

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 28 




434 GERARD HOPKINS [Jan., 

had done their work; the face of religion was changed; and 
art and literature were destined to take on the rainbow color- 
ing. That tremendous rediscovery of the Christian past that 
vision which included the mystic communion of all saints, the 
Real and sacrificial Presence of the Living God, the brooding 
empire of the Holy Ghost over an undivided Church must 
needs have stretched the horizon upon every side. Such 
ideas are fountain-heads of art as well as of faith, in the sec- 
ond harvesting. But meanwhile it was an interval of great 
spiritual struggle. A few months more and John Henry New- 
man was to break at last from that hopeless Via Media, blaz- 
ing the pathway for so many souls " ex umbris et imaginibus in 
veritatem." All through Gerard's childhood, and during his 
preliminary education at the Cholmondeley School, Highgate, 
this august exodus continued: Faber and the Oratorians were 
followed by Manning, Aubrey and Stephen de Vere, the poet 
Patmore, Mother Frances Raphael (Drane), Orby Shipley 
only the angels of God can number them all, but we do our 
best ! And if to-day we bow down in spirit before that mighty 
crusade of half a century ago, what must have been the moral 
effect upon a highly sensitized contemporary spirit ? It was 
an effect which found expression less in words than in the 
complete fusing and fashioning of the spiritual energies; to 
those who could receive, it provided both motive-power and 
motive for existence. 

We own no surprise, then, in discovering that the wood of 
Gerard Hopkins' cross lay just beyond his doorsill. But in 
the wise and sweet economy of life the cross for most of us is 
piigrim-staff as well. Our poet's pathway was not destined to 
lead beside the pleasant ways of gardener hearthstone; it was 
to know conflict from without and from within; but his con- 
solations, more especially in youth, were notable. By nature 
that is to say God he had been rarely dowered. His in- 
tellect was keen and scholarly, his imagination peculiarly quick, 
subtle, and original; he was gifted musically and artistically, 
and possessed, in the words of his poet-friend, Robert Bridges, 
" humor, great personal charm, and the most attractive virtues 
of a tender and sympathetic .nature." Above and beyond all 
this, his was the awakened soul; and something of his absorb- 
tion in spiritual things may be guessed from the opening stan- 
zas of a little undated Hymn: 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 435 

Thee, God, I come from, to Thee go ; 
All day long I like fountain flow 
From Thy hand out, swayed about 
Mote-like in Thy mighty glow. 

It was in October, 1866, his twenty-third year, that our poet 
was received into the fold of the Catholic Church, finding there 
the one unchanging haven of a life in which to a degree mer- 
cifully unknown by mediocre souls God willed to cast not 
peace but a sword. 

One reckons among Gerard's lesser privileges his youthful 
intercourse with that rare and cultured spirit, Walter Pater. 
It was through the latter's preparation that he entered in 1867 
upon his classical first course at Balliol College, Oxford. But 
to those fair, scholastic precincts the young undergraduate had 
brought a yet fairer vision a burden of unrest, indeed, until 
that vision should be wrought into reality. Just how early the 
ascetic and sacerdotal ideal had taken possession of the con- 
vert's heart one perceives from a poem of great beauty, "The 
Habit of Perfection," written the year of his reception. All 
through its stanzas rings the cry of that great renunciation 
which was soon to be: 

Elected Silence, sing to me 

And beat upon my whorle'd ear, 

Pipe me to pastures still and be 
The music that I care to hear. 

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb; 

It is the shut, the curfew sent 
From there where all surrenders come 

Which only makes you eloquent. 

Be shelled, eyes, with double dark 

And find the uncreated light: 
This ruck and reel which you remark 

Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight. 

...... 

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet 

That want the yield of plushy sward, 

But you shall walk the golden street, 
And you unhouse and house the Lord. 



43 6 GERARD HOPKINS [Jan., 

After those lines, we are prepared to find the fiery dawn 
of a religious vocation hastening the expectant soul upon her 
way. Gerard left Oxford : he made a brief perhaps too brief, 
but one feels safe in adding inspirational sojourn with Car- 
dinal Newman at Birmingham; and then, in 1868, he offered 
his life to the Society of Jesus. 

Father Hopkins proved true in all things to his elected 
obligations; but on the bare objective side his priestly career is 
quickly told. For awhile, and until the delicate, harassed spirit 
almost broke beneath the strain, he labored in the wretched 
slums of Liverpool. Later he was "select preacher" in Lon- 
don ; and then we find him back at Oxford, in St. Aloysius* 
Church. The one available portrait of Father Gerard pictures 
him during this latter mission ; it shows a face of most deli- 
cate and chastened beauty, with noble forehead and chin of 
extraordinary determination the face of a youthful, high-born 
Englishman, whose eyes might have known Gethsemane. In 
1844, having been elected Fellow of the Royal University of 
Ireland, he was appointed to the post of classical examiner at 
Dublin; where, five years later, he succumbed to a contagious 
fever and died. Ic was a bloodless martyrdom we know that 
now : a story of tragic consecration to duty and of a heart 
predestined to suffering. And the poetic life was but the silent, 
passionate undercurrent to this all-absorbing ministry a life 
too ruthlessly mortified at first, then cultivated sedulously, in- 
tricately, but more and more as a refuge from actual things. 

Gerard Hopkins had written poetry as a boy ; in fact (like 
Milton and Crashaw and some others never destined to a like 
eminence!) his verses won him distinction at school. But in 
the first fervor of his novitiate, and doubtless as a costly exer- 
cise of detachment, he burned nearly all of these youthful 
poems. One fragment survived, a " Vision of Mermaids," writ- 
ten back in 1862. Its lyric sweetness has a momentary sug- 
gestion of Tennyson but in its sensuous love of beauty there 
is an abiding affinity to the poet of " Endymion." Here is a 
picture of early summer, charming in its blithe and sunny 
abandonment : 

Soon as when Summer of her sister Spring 
Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling, 
And boasting " I have fairer things than these," 
Plashes amid the billowy apple-trees 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 437 

His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind 
SarirKng out bloom till all the air is blind 
With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists 
Of driving vermeil rain ; and, as he lists, 
The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers, 
A glorious wanton; all the wrecks in showers 
Crowd down upon a stream, and jostling thick 
With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick 
On tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowd 
Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud. 

The prodigal melodiousness, the simplicity of meter, and 
the colorful word-painting of this early poem are all notable; 
but still, it is manifestly an early poem ! One feels that it 
lacks distinction, individuality that the poet whose touch was 
most indubitably here had yet to " find himself/' 

" The Habit of Perfection," quoted above rather as a page 
of character- revelation than as a piece of art, was written four 
years later. It is in all ways more significant. For, while, 
retaining that delicate and exquisite sweetness, it bears dis- 
tinct prophecy of those characteristics which were to mark our 
poet's maturer work; the subjectivity and intensity of feeling, 
the eccentricity of expression and preoccupation with spiritual 
ideas, are all here foreshadowed. It is, indeed, one of the 
most interesting and revealing of his poems the Abrenuntio 
of a pure and cloistral spirit. But it came perilously near be- 
ing a valedictory as well. For almost ten years after entering 
the Jesuit novitiate, Gerard Hopkins' poetic labors ceased, and 
his lips seem literally to have " shaped nothing " but the mighty 
offices of his calling. When the young levite turned once 
more to the world, her immemorial face held manifold and 
mysterious meanings for him. With the poet's sensuous ap- 
preciation of the outer life was to mingle henceforth a vein of 
ethical and divine interpretation. Omnia creata had he not 
weighed and sounded this world of shadow and symbol and 
enigma? But two realities abode steadfast: God and the strug- 
gling soul of man ! 

We will admit that all this is emphatically Ignatian but it 
is also emphatically catholic : it is the story of every illumined 
soul. Nature is first a pageant to us, and then a process; and 
at last we perceive it to be, in Carlyle's words, the "garment 



45 8 GERARD HOPKINS [Jan., 

of God 11 and, withal, the enveloping mantle of man. This 
deepening of vision is noticeable throughout Father Hopkins' 
work, as it has been in the work of many another authentic 
poet. And always the world was fresh to him, as it is fresh 
to children and to the very mature. At every turn, and by 
sheer force of his own vivid individuality, he was finding that 
" something of the unexplored," that " grain of the unknown," 
which Flaubert so sagely counselled de Maupassant to seek in 
all things; but which none of us may ever hope to find until 
we cease looking upon life through the traditional lenses of 
other eyes. Therefore was Father Hopkins Ignatian in his own 
very personal way. Few men have loved nature more raptur- 
ously than he; fewer still with such a youthful and perennial 
curiosity. There is a tender excitement in his attitude toward 
natural beauty (whether treated incidentally or as a parable) 
that is very contagious, and the exultation of that early and 
earthly Vision clung to the young monk almost with life itself. 
Nature, indeed, was his one secular inspiration ; and that even 
she was not wholly secular is evinced by the characteristic 
music of his spring song : 

Nothing is so beautiful as spring 

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush: 

Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush 

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and ring 

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; 

The glassy pear-tree leaves and blooms, they brush 

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush 

With richness; the racing lambs, too, have fair their fling. 

What is all this juice and all this joy ? 

A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning 

In Eden garden. Have, get before it cloy, 

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, 

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, 

Most, O Maid's Child, thy choice and worthy the winning. 

Here at last, in one of the most hackneyed of poetic sub- 
jects, we are come upon an original vein of poetry; a spiritual 
motivation, a vigor of word-painting, and a metrical proficiency 
of very real distinction. It was written in 1877, and its ex- 
istence argues for Father Hopkins more than a mere dilettante 
use of the poetic faculty. 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 439 

Another sonnet of the same year, "The Starlight Night," 
is almost equally striking in music and in metaphor. But it 
must be acknowledged that both of these poems bear traces of 
that eccentricity and occasional ambiguity which point forward 
to Father Hopkins 1 eventual excesses. Lucidity was the chief 
grace he sacrificed as years wore on ; and his fondness for un- 
common words at one moment academic and literate, at an- 
other provincial did not help matters. " Inversnaid " (written 
in 1881) is an extreme instance of his later manner: there is a 
certain bounding and prancing charm about it, but, in truth, 
the stream's highroad is sadly obstructed by Anglo-Saxon and 
other archaic undergrowth. Wiry heathpacks flitches of fern 
and the groins of the braes [that the brook treads through, send 
the reader's mind back with some ruefulness to that lovely 
random line from the " Vision of Mermaids " : 

To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea ! 

We are not born original in these latter days of literature, 
it would seem ; we must achieve originality and often at the 
cost of so much complexity ! Not a few of us, indeed, would 
appear to have been born complex, with a congenital impulse 
toward entangling an existence already difficult enough. But 
there is one ineradicable simplicity about religious men they 
are always coming back upon God. To Him they reach out, 
and peradventure attain, through the mysteries of nature, 
through the mazes of science and abstract speculation, even 
through the fundamental intricacies of their own temperament. 
His Spirit they perceive brooding above the patient earth, 
glorifying and illumining her travail. And so we find Father 
Hopkins' ultimate message, clarion-clear, in this very direct and 
characteristic sonnet upon "God's Grandeur": 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil ; 

It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil 

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck His rod ? 

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod ; 

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; 

And bears man's smudge, and shares man's smell ; the soil 

Is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod. 

And for all this, nature is never spent; 



44 o GERARD HOPKINS [Jan., 

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 
And though the last lights from the black west went, 
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 
World broods with warm breast, and with, ah, bright wings ! 

The vital and arresting quality of that little poem distin- 
guishes all of Gerard Hopkins' religious poetry; and it is in 
his religious quality, after all, that he attained most unequivo- 
cally. There is an invariable quickness and reality in his work 
although at moments it may also be a bit fantastic at the 
very point where the tendency of so many other poets is to 
become a little cold or a little sweet. We may search for 
many a long day among the treasures of English Catholic verse 
before we shall find such a powerful and poetic meditation 
upon the Holy Eucharist as he has left us. We quote but 
two stanzas of "Barnfloor and Winepress," although the entire 
poem ought to have the recognition due to a devotional classic: 

Thou who on Sin's wages starvest, 

Behold, we have the Joy of Harvest: 

For us was gathered the First-fruits, 

For us was lifted from the roots, 

Sheaved in cruel bands, bruised sore, 

Scourged upon the threshing-floor, 

Where the upper millstone roofed His Head, 

At morn we found the Heavenly Bread ; 

And on a thousand altars laid, 

Christ our Sacrifice is made. 

Thou, whose dry plot for moisture gapes, 

We shout with them that tread the grapes; 

For us the Vine was fenced with thorn, 

Five ways the precious branches torn. 

Terrible fruit was on the tree 

In the acre of Gethsemane: 

For us by Calvary's distress 

The Wine was racked from the press; 

Now, in our altar-vessels stored, 

Lo, the sweet vintage of the Lord! 

In quite other vein, and of real lyric charm, is " Rosa Mys- 
tica." Father Hopkins has contrived to throw a glamor of sim- 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 441 

plicity and ingenuousness over thoughts by no means simple; 
while the use of assonance and alliteration (frequent and nearly 
always felicitous throughout his work) and of the refrain, pro- 
vide a very rhythmic vehicle. There was a rose-tree blooming 
once upon Nazareth Hill, he tells us with the playful serious- 
ness of some old ballad but it passed from men's eyes into 
the secret place of God : and cannot the heart guess the name 
of this sweet mystery ? 

Is Mary that Rose, then ? Mary, the tree ? 

But the Blossom, the Blossom there, who can it be ? 

Who can her Rose be? It could be but One; 

Christ Jesus, our Lord her God and her Son. 

In the Gardens of God, in the daylight divine, 

Show me thy Son, Mother, Mother of mine. 

What was the colour of that blossom bright? 

White to begin with, immaculate white. 

But what a wild flush on the flakes of it stood, 

When the Rose ran in crimsonings down the Cross- wood. 

In the Gardens of God, in the daylight divine 

I shall worship the Wounds with thee, Mother of mine, 

Our well-loved Francis Thompson was, in life and in death, 
often hailed as the successor of Crashaw. But the mantle of 
that mystic dreamer and songster fell far more truly upon the 
shoulders of Gerard Hopkins. His was not merely the exu- 
berant fancy ever bursting into curious and striking analogies, 
but the intimate and childlike tenderness, the metrical cunning, 
and the almost impeccable ear for lyric music which character- 
ized the older poet. His was the same wistful pathos and reso- 
lute detachment from life's more passional aspects. In both 
men was a similar tragic sensitiveness an inevitable recoil from 
the inconsistency and ugliness and corruption which are a part 
of human existence. So it seems natural enough, despite the 
intervening centuries, that even the objective facts of their lives 
should bear a curious resemblance ; and that both poets should 
pass, painfully but unreluctantly, into the larger life wearied 
and forespent ere half their years ! 

But to return to the poetry : we have yet to consider an 
ode of extraordinary beauty, and of a sustained lyric ecstasy 
not unworthy of Shelley or Swinburne. The poem which, 



442 GERARD HOPKINS [Jan. 

lacking a better title, I have ventured to call " Our Lady of 
the Air" is the longest and perhaps the most ambitious po- 
etic effort Father Hopkins has bequeathed us. It is built around 
a unique and powerful metaphor: 

Wild Air, world- mothering Air, 
Nestling me everywhere, 
That each eyelash or hair 
Girdles; goes home betwixt 
The fleeciest, frailest fixed 
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed 
With riddles, and is rife 
In every least thing's life; 
This needful, never spent, 
And nursing element; 
My more than meat and drink, 
My meal at every wink ; 
This Air which, by life's law, 
My lung must draw and draw, 
Now, but to breathe its praise 
Minds me in many ways 
Of her, who not only 
Gave God's Infinity 
Dwindled to Infancy 
Welcome in womb and breast, 
Birth, milk and all the rest, 
But mothers each new grace 
That does now reach our race 
Mary Immaculate, 
Merely a Woman, yet 
Whose presence power is 
Great as no goddess's 
Was deemed, dreamed ; who 
This one work has to do 
Let all God's glory through, 
God's glory which would go 
Through her and from her flow 
Off, and no .way but so. 

If I have understood, 

She holds high Motherhood 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 443 

Towards all our ghostly good, 
And plays in grace her part 
About man's beating heart, 
Laying, like air's fine flood, 
The death-dance in his blood; 
Yet no part but what will 
Be Christ our Saviour still. 
Of her flesh He took Flesh: 
He does take, fresh and fresh, 
Though much the mystery how, 
Not flesh but spirit now; 
And makes, oh, marvellous, 
New Nazareths in us, 
Where she shall yet conceive 
Him, morning, noon, and eve; 
New Bethlems, and He born 
There evening, noon, and morn 
Bethlem or Nazareth, 
Men here may draw like breath 
More Christ and baffle death ; 
Who born so comes to be 
New self and nobler me 
In each one, and each one 
More makes, when all is done, 
Both God and Mary's Son. 

In a vivid passage commencing : 

Again, look overhead 

How air is azured; 

Oh, how ; nay, do but stand 

Where you can lift your hand 

Skywards- 

the poet analyzes the essential mission of the atmosf^ere, and 
the blinding, staggering possibilities of a universe unslaked by 
this "bath of blue." And the simile is brought to a tender 
and beautiful conclusion: 

So God was God of old : 
A Mother came to mould 

V 

These limbs like ours which are 
What must make our Day-star 



444 GERARD HOPKINS [Jan., 

Much dearer to mankind; 
Whose glory bare would blind, 
Or less would win man's mind. 
Through her we may see Him 
Made sweeter, not made dim ; 
And her hand leaves His light 
Sifted, to suit our sight. 

There exist but a few other poems bearing Father Hopkins' 
name. A short but characteristic piece, " Morning, Midday, 
and Evening Sacrifice," would be included among the devo- 
tional lyrics ; also that direct and manly Hymn referred to 
early in, this paper. And there is one white rose of a frag- 
ment, so brief and so exquisite that we give it entire : 

"HEAVEN HAVEN." 

(A Nun Takes the Veil.) 
I have desired to go 
Where springs not fail, 

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail, 
And a few lilies blow. 

And I have asked to be 
Where no storms come, 

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, 
And out of the swing of the sea. 

Thinking about heaven makes all of us wistful; but it is 
pondering on the tear-stains and blood-stains of earth that 
crushes out the joy of life. Father Gerard had, seemingly 
from boyhood, a dangerous realization of this omnipresent 
sorrow of living; his own experience did not tend to lighten 
the burden, and throughout his later years the weight was 
well-nigh intolerable. Sanely enough he gauged the cause of 
so much bitterness; it was the "blight man was born for" if 
he happened to be an idealist it was the consciousness of his 
own too twisted nature ! " It is Margaret you mourn for," he 
told one little Margaret when she was grieving over the fall- 
ing glory of autumn: but, none the less, outer conditions will 
all along furnish the occasion of Margaret's grief. There can- 
not be any doubt that Father Hopkins' life in Dublin was a 
final crucifixion of spirit as well as body. It was not only the 
monotonous and consuming toil of his position as examiner in 
the University; it was not merely the political corruption by 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 445 

which he was perforce surrounded; although we are told that 
these combined to plunge his final years into a state of utter 
dejection. One of the sonnets of this period (all of which are 
colored by an ominous and leaden gray !) reveals his sense of 
exile "To seem the stranger lies my lot my life among 
strangers' 1 and expresses his human and priestly sorrow that 

Father and mother dear, 
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near. 

But another indicates that the cause of Father Hopkins' 
darkness lay deeper down than loneliness (too familiar to the 
sons of St. Ignatius ! ) or than any normal weariness of the 
day's work. Few lines of such haunting sadness have come to 
us from the hand of any Christian poet : 

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 

With Thee ; but, sir, so what I plead is just, 

Why do sinners' ways prosper ? and why must 

Disappointment all I endeavour end ? 

Wert Thou my enemy, O Thou my Friend, 

How couldst thou worse, I wonder, than Thou dost 

Defeat, thwart me ? . . . 

We must surmise a great part of this last struggle; but it 
would seem to illustrate that spiritual phenomenon of desola- 
tion which has immersed so many a chosen soul. For full 
thirty years was St. Theresa in this desert land, where frus- 
tration reigns in all visible things, and to lose the life without 
finding it again seems the guerdon of superhuman effort. Of 
course it is impossible to write healthy poetry in the depths 
of this tragic experience : and Father Hopkins was too true a 
poet not to realize the fact. He submitted^ the very year of 
his death, his noble and highly masterful apologia: 

To , 1889. 

The fine delight that fathers thought ; the strong 
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame, 
Breathes once, and quenched faster it came, 
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song. 
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long 
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same : 
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim 
Now known, and hand at work now never wrong. 



44 6 GERARD HOPKINS [Jan., 






Sweet fire, the sire of muse, my soul needs this; 

I want the one rapture of an inspiration. 

O then if in my lagging lines you miss 

The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation, 

My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss 

Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation. 

His winter world ! It was destined sooner than he dreamed 
to give place to the unwaning spring. Dr. Bridges (to whose 
words we turn once again, because the knowledge of a physician 
as well as the wisdom of a friend went into them) declares 
that our poet made no struggle for life when the fever of 1889 
attacked him. He had fought his good fight and carried arms 
no longer: but the God of Battles knew. And on the 8th of 
June the month he had loved so well! Gerard Hopkins' soul 
marched quietly over the borderland to victory. 

But little remains to be said. The poems have been per- 
mitted to speak for themselves, and if their faults are con- 
spicuous enough, so too is their unique and magnetic attrac- 
tion. No doubt this is in the nature of an acquired taste. 
They were not written for the public (during their maker's 
lifetime not one of them was put into print !) they were written 
for the consolation of the poet and a few chosen friends. And 
to such readers no concessions need be made. Father Hop- 
kins' very delicate craftsmanship and not less the singularity 
of his mental processes might produce on some minds an im- 
pression of artificiality. Yet nothing could be further from the 
fact, for in all the poems of his manhood there is a poignant, 
even a passionate sincerity. It is quite true that his elliptical 
and involved expression mars more than one poem of rare and 
vital imagining. It is true also, and of the nature of the case, 
that our poet was to a certain degree self-centered in his 
dream of life. He was not an egoist ; but it must be obvious 
that from first to last he was an individualist. And in our 
human reckonings the individualist pays, and then he pays 
again; and after that, in Wilde's phrase, he keeps on paying! 
Yet in the final count his chances of survival are excellent. 
Outside of the poets, Father Hopkins' work has had no recog- 
nition and no understanding; but his somewhat exotic in- 
fluence might easily be pointed out in one or two of the fore- 
most Catholic songsters of to-day. And for all its aloofness, 



1909.] GERARD HOPKINS 447 

the young priest's work struck root in the poetic past. Its 
subtle and complex fancifulness and its white heat of spiritual- 
ity go back in direct line to that earlier Jesuit, Father South- 
well; while one would wager that Hopkins knew and loved 
other seventeenth-century lyrists beside the very manifest Cra- 
shaw. It is by no means without significance, moreover, to 
note that Coventry Patmore's Odes "To the Unknown Eros," 
and Browning's masterpiece " The Ring and the Book," both 
appeared in that memorable 1868 when Gerard entered upon 
his novitiate. Those were the days when a young poet might, 
almost without public comment, fling out to the world his 
daring and beautiful gift. 

After all there is nothing sadder in the world of letters 
than a fragment unless it be a fragmentary genius ! And al- 
ways in proportion to the magic of the fragment, and to its 
promise, is the depth of this sadness. We can nowise escape 
such a shadow of incompleteness in treating Father Hopkins' 
work. We cannot, as yet, gather the fundamental materials 
for more than a tentative criticism. His poems are scattered 
in a few precious anthologies, still awaiting the zeal of col- 
lector and editor. It seems probable, unless he himself de- 
stroyed them during the last years, that a number of them are 
still somewhere in manuscript form ; for of those already 
published, about one-third have been given in this article. 
Merely great poetry is, of course, seldom popular; although 
the greatest of all poetry that of Homer and Dante and 
Shakespeare strikes a universal echo in the hearts of men. 
It is inclusive, and it is written not as an escape from life but 
as the inevitable and impassioned expression of life itself. 
Gerard Hopkins' artistry was not of this supreme sort. He 
was essentially a minor poet: he wrote incredibly little and 
he interpreted few phases of human experience. But, with the 
minor poet's distinctive merit, he worked his narrow field with 
completeness and intensity. And who can deny that the very 
quality which seemed, at worst, an eccentric and literate man- 
nerism, proved itself in the finer passages a strikingly original 
and authentic inspiration ? 

NOTE. Father Hopkins' published verses can be found in the following volumes : Orby 
Shipley's Carmina Mariana, Canon Beeching's Lyra Sacra, and Miles' Poets and Poetry of the 
Century, Vol. VIII. ; which last contains also Robert Bridges' critique. 

The author desires to acknowledge her indebtedness to Miss Louise Imogen Guiney for 
many otherwise inaccessible details of our poet's history. 




IN THE SIERRA MADRE. 

BY CHRISTIAN REID. 

V. 

|HE is a noble-hearted creature," a man of much 
penetration had once said of Eleanor Bering, 
"but, like all the rest of us, she has the defects 
of her qualities. What are they ? Well, chiefly 
perhaps an ardent idealism which leads her to 
feel a strong desire to play Providence to her fellow-creatures, 
to lift them up to certain heights, and to set their feet in paths 
where she thinks they should go." He paused a moment. 
" It's rather a dangerous business," he added meditatively, "and 
some day she may come to grief over it." 

Granting the accuracy of this forecast, it was at least cer- 
tain that the day prophesied had not yet dawned when Miss 
Bering felt herself moved so strongly to play Providence to 
the social derelict whom she met in the wilds of the Sierra. 
The idea of holding out a hand of possible rescue to him 
had, as we know, occurred to her as soon as she heard his 
story ; but when he entered her path in such strangely oppor- 
tune fashion, it seized her with the force of fascination. That 
a charm in the man himself had anything to do with this she 
would not have acknowledged, yet there could be no doubt 
that Trescott possessed a singular attraction for women, the 
more powerful because unconsciously exercised ; and this charm 
was not lessened, but rather for a woman of Eleanor Bering's 
temperament increased by the -shadow which now lay over 
him, which had worn the lines on his face and put the haunted 
look in his eyes. The ardent heart within her went out to 
help to help; and to this end she exerted all her own charm 
to influence the man whom she felt instinctively would be pe- 
culiarly susceptible to such influence from his long exile. 

It was indeed like stepping back into another half-forgotten 
world to Trescott that evening at Las Joyas " The Jewels," 
as the little ranch in the far heights was poetically called. 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 449 

In order to obtain food for the large number of animals in the 
train, it was necessary to gain, if possible, one of these widely 
separated ranches for the night's halt. But the camp was 
made quite away from the rude house or patch of cultivated 
land. It was in an open space under a group of noble, soar- 
ing pines that the great blazing fire of resinous boughs threw 
its rich radiance over the white canvas of the tent erected 
near-by ; over the moving forms of men and animals ; over 
the piles of pack-saddles and other equipment for the road; 
over the table improvised on the top of the camp chest, from 
which the materials to set it forth in such strangely civilized 
fashion were drawn ; on the handsome, typically worldly face 
of Mr. Bering, who spent half his time promoting great min- 
ing ventures in the chief capitals of Europe, and the other 
half looking after them in the remote wilds where nature 
buries her treasures; and on Eleanor Bering as she sat with 
her hat thrown aside, the brilliant firelight playing over her 
fair hair and showing the frank delight of her lovely face. 

And this delight was not only in the picturesqueness of 
her surroundings, in the cool, aromatic breath of the night at 
this high elevation, and in the sense of the great, trackless 
Sierra, with its mystery and its awe, its mighty heights, its 
chasms, torrents, and forests which encompassed them ; but in 
the fact that, for the present at least, Trescott was, so to speak, 
safely under her hand, the guest of her father, and apparently 
not ill pleased to come once more in touch with the world he 
had forsaken. 

Perhaps Mr. Bering himself felt this, as he talked to the 
man who had been his subordinate long enough for him to 
know something of his fine skill as engineer and draughtsman ; 
for presently, as they sat by the fire smoking, he remarked 
carelessly : 

" Isn't it about time for you to go back to civilization, 
Trescott ? It strikes me that you've been in the Sierra as 
long as it's well to remain." 

In the pause which followed this speech, Trescott was aware 
that Eleanor, who had been accompanying their conversation 
by lightly touching the strings of a mandolin which one of 
the music loving Mexicans had brought along, suddenly held 
her hand motionless on the last chord, and he knew that she 
was listening for his answer. It came a little constrainedly. 
VOL. LXXXVIII 29 



45 o IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 

" Civilization does not offer anything very tempting to me," 
he said; "while, as it chances, the Sierra offers a good deal 
of solid value." 

" As for example ? " 

" An extremely good gold prospect out in the Sierra be- 
yond Urbeleja, for one thing." 

" Indeed ! " The seasoned promoter pricked up his ears. 
" If it's anything very good, you might let your friends in- 
to it. You know you can't handle a really paying prospect 
alone. If you had only let me know before I left the Santa 
Catalina, I'd have gone out there and looked at it, and per- 
haps have carried it to London with me, where I'm going to 
float some other properties. Even now but, no" regretfully 
" it would mean several days, and I must make Durango 
by the fifteenth, so as to keep an appointment in New York 
on the twentieth." 

Eleanor saw relief clearly stamped on the countenance over 
which the firelight played revealingly. "Either he hasn't any 
prospect," she thought, " or it is only an excuse to stay here." 

" It isn't really in shape yet for such promoting as yours," 
Trescott was meanwhile saying. "You know you only care to 
handle big things. One couldn't ask a million or two for a 
prospect like this." 

" There's no telling what it might become, however. Has 
it ever been worked before? How wide a vein have you? 
And how much ore in sight?" 

The information was given without hesitation and with ex- 
plicit directness; but also with a lack of interest which struck 
Eleanor, if not her father. " He cares nothing about it," she 
said to herself. " It is only an excuse." 

"Hum!" Mr Dering pondered. "That may be something 
very large. If I could only have seen it ! Tell you what, 
Trescott, you can surely join us for a few days in our ride 
through the Sierra. Not to speak of the pleasure of your so- 
ciety, your knowledge of the country will be invaluable I don't 
believe any of these rascals of mine know much about the trails 
and you can give me all the points about your mine, as well 
as about the other mineral resources of this region." 

Trescott was so much surprised by the wild desire which 
leaped within him to agree to this proposal, that for a moment 
he did not reply. Then he said, almost sternly: 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 451 

" Impossible. I am now on my way to attend to some 
business. " 

" It can't be pressing nobody's business is in the Sierra," 
Mr. Dering urged, with incontrovertible knowledge of the coun- 
try. "You'd better come with us. It'll do you good, and per- 
haps save Eleanor from breaking her neck over some precipice 
I'm certain it isn't every day that such a social opportunity 
is offered you." 

" It may be that the social opportunity is a drawback rather 
than an inducement," said a soft voice. 

Trescott looked quickly across at the girl leaning forward 
in the firelight, and what he read in the beautiful, eager eyes 
fell like a weight in the scale of his hesitation. 

"On the contrary," he said, "the inducement is so great 
that I find myself unable to resist it. For a few days, then " 
to Mr. Dering " I shall be glad to accompany you. I am 
a better guide than Alejandro, at least; and, perhaps" he 
looked again at Eleanor " I may be able to show you some 
things in the Sierra which you might miss without me." 

Once in every man's life, although generally for a very brief 
space of time, the gates of Paradise open, and entering he 
dwells within, breathing enchanted airs, wandering down flowery 
ways, over meadows starred with asphodel and under the shade 
of perfume laden boughs. Like Adam he does not linger there 
alone, and, like Adam also, when he goes forth he never re- 
turns, however long the years of life may be. Nor is it in ex- 
treme youth that he is most likely to find his way within these 
gates. He must have wandered in the desert, and drank the 
bitter waters of life, before he can feel the divine loveliness of 
the green shades, or taste the sweetness of the sparkling foun- 
tains. 

These gates opened for Trescott when he rode by Eleanor 
Bering's side out of the camp of Las Joyas the next morning. 
He had said to himself, with a certain recklessness, that for a 
few days a few days only he would enjoy the pleasure of an 
association such as he had never known before and was never 
likely to know again. But he had a sense of something more 
than this as the forest opened its arms to them and the trail 
led upward into yet higher regions. It was as if in following 
it, through the crystal beauty of the early day, he were leav- 



452 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 

ing the past and all that it contained behind and mounting into 
a new existence. 

And never had existence, old or new, a more idyllic set- 
ting than the Sierra gave. When they had gained the summit 
up which they had climbed, and, freshened in every energy by 
the airs which awaited them, rode onward at a quickened pace, 
it was into a veritable region of enchantment that they entered, 
for again the trail led them over a vast plateau, where tall 
pines and evergreen oaks rose in columned stateliness to im- 
mense height, while the interlacing boughs formed overhead an 
expanse of foliage through which the faintest wandering breeze 
woke a murmur like the voice of the sea. And then it car- 
ried them through winding defiles between the hills, full of 
such enchanting loveliness of trees and interlacing vines and 
swiftly fleeting water, that nature, like a siren, seemed breath- 
ing on every side alluring invitations to linger. " Why do you 
hasten?" leafy depths and gleaming water murmured. "Life 
is long and sad, and its dusty plains are many. You may never 
again see anything to gladden your eyes so beautiful and fresh 
as this. Stay with us stay 1 " " It required," Eleanor wistfully 
remarked, "more than the courage of Ulysses to resist these se- 
ductive invitations, and ride on." 

For the noon rest they halted in a region of mighty rocks 
resembling castles, fortresses, and towers. Like tokens of some 
forgotten warfare of the gods, the stupendous masses lay in the 
verdurous forest, while the pigmy forms of men and animals 
wound among them like passing shadows, of as little account as 
the squirrels that played over their hoary battlements. What 
was it to them that some of these insignificant beings leveled 
impertinent cameras at their majesty of ages, or dashed their 
outlines down upon paper? It was Trescott who, by Miss Der- 
ing's request, sketched some of the splendid masses, with much 
fanciful talk and weaving of tales about them. 

" Are those Aztec myths, or are they your own ? " Elea- 
nor presently asked. 

' They are my own conception of what the primitive mind 
would have thought," he replied, smiling. " I am presump- 
tuous enough to believe that I know something of the primi- 
tive mind, because the people of these mountains who are not 
Aztec at all, by the way, but a pure Indian race of great an- 
tiquity are wonderfully primitive in their ideas, traditions, 
and customs." 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 453 

"You seem to know them very well." 

" I have eaten their bread and salt for many days. I 
should know them well." 

There was a pause. The sketch grew under his hand, 
while Miss Bering looked away to where Alejandro had lighted 
a small fire to boil water for tea. The pale blue smoke rose 
beautifully into the still, sunlit air, amid the gray, lichened 
rocks and the abounding foliage of the trees. Mr. Bering 
lay stretched out in the shade upon a gay- colored blanket, the 
mozos were loosening the pack-saddles, that the mules might 
feed in comfort on the rich grass the whole scene was full of 
the charm of this outdoor life, with all its suggestions of 
gypsy-like freedom, its association with things wild and de- 
lightful. 

" Just now," she said, " I can imagine the conditions of 
such lives as those better than any other. The world of what 
we call civilization seems so infinitely remote. What have we 
to do with cities, railroads, theaters, libraries, nay, even with 
houses and the lives of those who live in them ? We have 
gone back to the primitive world, to the heart of nature. We, 
too, can sing : 

" ' Under the greenwood tree, 

Who loves to lie with me, 

And tune his merry note 

Unto the sweet bird's throat, 
Come hither, come hither, come hither, 

Here shall he see 

No enemy, 
But winter and rough weather.' " 

Through the clear atmosphere her sweet, gay voice was 
borne to the ear of Mr. Bering. He turned his head and re- 
garded her with a smile, in which was much satirical amuse- 
ment, as well as pitying indulgence. 

"You would soon find that 'winter and rough weather' 
were enemies enough, if you were exposed to them," he said. 
"Lying under the greenwood tree is all very well as we are 
at present, but a storm or two puts a different face on the 
Sierra. And you mustn't forget that there are occasionally 
some enemies here besides winter and rough weather else we 
shouldn't see quite so many crosses along the road." 



454 



IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 



A quick cloud fell over the brightness of the girl's face. 
" Mr. Trescott says that those were all put there a long time 
ago," she hastily answered. " He says that although there were 
once a great many bandits among these wild heights, every- 
thing of that kind is over, and the Sierra is now perfectly safe." 

" He's quite right," Mr. Bering answered carelessly. " Un- 
der ordinary circumstances the Sierra is safe enough, the ban- 
dits have all been shot and travelers are not interferred with. 
But if I had an enemy, I shouldn't particularly care to meet 
him out on these trails. I've heard of a few crosses being put 
up, even in my time." 

"Why should we talk of such things?" asked Eleanor im- 
patiently. " They are very inappropriate to these beautiful 
scenes! I am sure that nobody is killed in the Sierra now; 
but if such things did happen we have no enemies to fear." 

" Probably not," assented her father lazily " Oye t hombre" 
he cried suddenly and angrily in Spanish, as he lifted himself on 
his elbow, "what is the meaning of this? Why don't you look 
after your mules better ? " 

" Pardon, senor " ; answered a tall, dark-browed arriero, 
who had come dashing into the camp after several of his pack- 
mules, who, at sight of the feeding animals of the Santa Catalina 
party, had left the trail to join them. "The mules got away 
so suddenly that we had not time to stop them." Then his 
glance fell on Trescott, whom the commotion startled into look- 
ing up from his drawing, and a sudden expression of unmis- 
takable surprise appeared on his face. "Buenos dias, Don 
Felipe," he said, with the air and manner of an old acquaint- 
ance. 

Trescott nodded in reply, and then as the mules were driven 
off and quiet restored, Miss Bering said : 

" It must be very pleasant to feel that all these people are 
your friends." 

" I don't particularly care to include that man in my list 
of friends," Trescott answered. " He's rather a bad proposi- 
tion." 

" He seems to know you." 

"Oh, yes, he knows me; his business is that of conducting 
pack-trains to and fro through the Sierra, and we have met 
on the road and elsewhere." 

"What is his name?" 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 455 

It was a careless question ; but Trescott paused for an in- 
stant before answering it. 

" His name," he said, " is Cruz and his appearance, con- 
sidering that we were just talking of crosses, seems rather an 
odd coincidence.' 1 

" It is odd," she agreed. " And he looks I don't want to 
do injustice to one who is probably an estimable citizen but 
he looks as if he might, under other circumstances, have aided 
in putting up a cross or two himself." 

Trescott laughed. " I don't think you do him injustice," 
he said. " I'm afraid there's no doubt that he has missed his 
vocation, owing to these dull times of law and order. A few 
decades ago he would have done a much better business put- 
ting up crosses along these trails than he now does in taking 
trains of merchandise over them." 

" But it is a time of law and order he wouldn't venture to 
do anything of the kind now?" 

"Not without great provocation, and unless he fancied the 
chances for escaping detection good. Given those chances, 
however, I don't think he would hesitate a moment." Then he 
looked up with an air of relief. "Alejandro is announcing la 
comida" he said. 

There followed a pleasant half-hour round the camp-chest, 
with its plentiful supply of solid food, together with claret and 
tea. Then another half-hour of smoking on the part of the 
men and of much gay talk on the part of all, while the mozos % 
with many shouts and adjurations, replaced their burdens on the 
backs of the mules. Then, all things being again in order, they 
put themselves once more in the saddle, and resumed their 
march through the fair green solitudes. As they rode away 
Eleanor turned and waved her hand in farewell to the sylvan 
loveliness of the spot where they had rested. 

" It makes me sad to think that I may never see it again," 
she said, meeting Trescott's eyes. " There is something about 
this journey which seems singularly typical ot life, although, of 
course, all journeys are that, in more or less degree. We linger 
for awhile in these enchanting places, and then, whether we 
wish it or not, we must pass on and leave them behind." 

" As sooner or later we leave everything behind." 

"Yes; but one doesn't often feel that, as I feel it here. 
For, you see, I am not coming back." 



456 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 

"You are not returning with your father?" 
"No; papa thinks that the Santa Catalina is no place for 
me, and that I should go to my aunt in Paris. It will be 
But what is he saying ? Oh, he wants us to ride faster and 
pass this pack- train. Andale, Bonita ! Show what you can do, 
my pretty mula ! See, Mr. Trescott, it is the same pack- train 
that disturbed our camp. I remember the face of the tall ar 
Sind how he stares at us ! " 



VI. 

At Los Charcos which was the name of the Lopez ranch 
there had been no change in the outward aspect of things since 
Trescott first rode up to the log house. The work on the 
mine, now safely " denounced," had as yet brought no money 
to any one concerned ; and the simple life of the household 
went on in all its details just as it had before the advent of 
the stranger, whom its members now regarded as almost one 
of themselves. 

Only to one of them had his coming made a difference so 
great that when he was gone, even for a short absence, it was 
as if the sun vanished out of heaven. With the intense passion 
of her race, Ramona had merged her very existence into that 
of the man who seemed to her to belong to a higher order of 
being, and yet had stooped from this order to her lowliness. 
That she was happy in the strange fact that he had found 
something in her to attract his regard and tenderness there 
could be no doubt; but this happiness was always shadowed 
by the fear she had once expressed. " You cannot stay in the 
Sierra always,'* she said, " and when you go away what will 
you do with poor Ramona, who knows nothing?" He had in- 
deed assured her that she knew all he desired, and that, having 
no more part in the world "out yonder," the Sierra would 
always content him ; but even then a deep instinct had kept 
her from really believing this; and as time went on the dread 
of inevitable change, of the time when he would feel a call 
summoning him back to his own people and his old life, lay 
always like a weight upon her heart. 

This was especially the case when, as now frequently hap- 
pened, Trescott left Los Charcos on one excuse or another 
really impelled by a growing spirit of restlessness and was 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 457 

absent for several days together. She did not know that this 
restlessness was bringing about the psychological moment when 
an influence out of the past might find him prepared to yield 
to it ; but she feared and distrusted all that foreboded change. 
It was with a sadly yearning heart, therefore, that she had seen 
him ride away on the fateful day when he met Eleanor Bering 
on the brink of the Quebrada Honda, and two days later she 
wandered out at twilight to the end of the arroyo opening into 
the valley, in the faint, hardly defined hope of meeting him on 
his possible return. 

As she went, breathing the sweet, fresh odors of resinous 
trees and plants and listening to the voice of the stream, which 
rushed in wild tumult down the gorge, to fall, on issuing, into 
the pools (los charcos) which gave its name to the ranch, she 
had a sense of pleasure in these things which it would have 
been absolutely impossible for her to express. She was a true 
daughter of the Sierra, inasmuch as they thrilled to her inmost 
being, and when away she pined for them as a dumb animal 
pines for that to which it has been accustomed. But to analyze 
or describe her sensations with regard to them was far beyond 
her power. Dimly, but only dimly, conscious of her pleasure, 
she was standing by one of the pools, listening to the deep 
music of the stream, when she suddenly saw an unwelcome 
sight a pack-train, emerging from the arroyo, the loaded ani- 
mals coming in single file along the shelf-like trail, with the 
whistles and cries, the admonishing "Macho!" " Mula / " of 
the arrteros sounding behind them. 

Her heart sank. There were many pack-trains crossing the 
Sierra beside that of Cruz Sanchez, but few of them ever came 
to Los Chatcos, and she had an immediate instinct that this 
was his. He had not been at the ranch since he was dis- 
missed as her suitor, and she had cherished the hope that he 
would not come again, but now she knew that the hope was 
vain ; that he had come. That his coming tallied so exactly 
with the absence of Trescott seemed an ill omen. It could 
not have happened by calculation, she knew, unless unless 
Had the men met on the way, and was Cruz coming to tell 
her that the gringo to whom she had given her heart was lying 
dead in some dark pass with a knife thrust in his back? The 
extreme improbability that if this were so Cruz would come to 
tell her of it, thereby convicting himself of a crime for which 



458 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 

there is short, sharp shrift in Mexico, did not occur to her. 
A wild panic of fear and foreboding seized and rooted her to 
the spot where she stood. She hardly looked at the long train 
of laden animals as they went by, nor at the men accompany- 
ing them. She was waiting for the man who came last, and 
who proved to be, as instinct had forewarned her, no other 
than Cruz, 

He halted in his surprise at meeting her, and as they stood 
for an instant regarding each other, he read the deadly fear 
and anxiety in her eyes. It gave him a distinct gratification, 
as any proof of power affords gratification to certain natures. 
He took off his hat with an air of exaggerated deference, for 
the Mexican peon has, when it pleases him, the manners of an 
hidalgo. 

" Buenas tardes, Ramona," he said. "Many thanks for com- 
ing to meet me." 

"You know well, Cruz Sanchez, that I did not come to meet 
you," Ramona answered, drawing up her stately figure. " I 
did not think we should see you again at Los Charcos." 

" And you are not pleased to see me," he returned with 
bitterness. "You are afraid that I have come to make trouble 
with your gringo lover for I knew he was that when he in- 
terfered between us! You were always glad enough to see 
me before he came." 

"You lie!" said the girl tersely. "You know that I was 
never glad to see you, that I told you over and over again 
that I cared nothing for you. And as for whether Don Fe- 
lipe is my lover or not, that is no affair of yours." 

" I will make it my affair, for, say what you please, you 
would have listened to me at last but for him." 

" I would never have listened to you never ! " she reiter- 
ated passionately. "And" with a brave show of contempt 
" I have no need to fear your making trouble with him. He 
would soon teach you your place. He is un caballero, and 
you are only an arriero." 

" Caballero or no, he shall answer to me sooner or later for 
his interference between us," said the arnero with flashing eyes. 
" And you are a fool to believe that he will think of you a 
day longer than his business keeps him in the Sierra." 

"That is no affair of yours," she repeated, "but I have 
faith in him perfect faith." 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 459 

"You have?" he sneered. "Then it is a pity that you 
could not have seen him as I saw him yesterday. The Gerente 
of the Santa Catalina is crossing the Sierra with his daughter, 
the Senorita Americana, and a great train of men and mules. 
I passed the conducta at the noon rest, and with them sitting 
apart with the senorita who is beautiful as la Maria Santis- 
sima herself was Don Felipe. From an old friend of mine in 
the train I learned that he had joined them the day before, 
and that he is traveling out of the country with them. So, 
doubting whether you knew this for it would be like a gringo 
if he went away without even bidding you farewell I have come 
out of my way to tell you." 

"It is false!" Ramona said. "I do not believe it." 

" False ! Dios de mi alma / Shall I call Tobalito and Pepe 
to swear to it ? " 

She put out her hand with a detaining gesture, for he 
turned as if to summon the other arrieros. She was conscious 
of a sudden stricture about her heart, a feeling as though it 
were crushed in a strong and cruel grasp, but she struggled 
gallantly to show her scorn of the malice which was torturing her. 

" There is no need to call Tobalito and Pepe," she said. 
" It may be true that you passed such a train on the road. Why 
should not the Gerente of the Santa Catalina go over the 
Sierra and the senorita, his daughter, accompany him ? I have 
nothing to do with them. What is false is that Don Felipe 
has gone with them. He has gone to get supplies for the mine." 

" No doubt he told you so," Cruz answered mockingly. 
" He is not the first man who has lied to a woman. But why 
should he have gone for supplies just when the senorita is in 
the Sierra, if not for the purpose of meeting her ? Bah ! thou 
art a fool, Ramona ! I will wager my best mule that he will 
never return to you unless, indeed, the gold in the mine 
brings him back ! " 

The confidence of his assertion, the triumph of his tone, 
were more than Ramona could bear. All the strength of her 
passionate love and faith rose up to meet him. 

"And I," she said, "am so sure that he has not gone to 
meet her, and that he will return, that I am ready to wager 
more than a mule I am ready to wager myself upon it. I 
am so sure of him, that 1 do not hesitate to declare that if he 
goes away with this woman I will marry you for what differ- 
ence would it make then what became of me? This will show 



4 6o IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 

you how little I believe you, how certain I am that he will 
come back to me ! And now I have not another word to say 

to you." 

She turned, gathering her rebozo more closely around her, 
after the fashion of Mexican women, and passed so swiftly away 
that he had no opportunity to detain her, had he desired to 
do so. But in fact he felt no such desire. Her last words 
had overwhelmed him. She had meant them as the supreme 
expression of her faith in Trescott, but they contained another 
meaning, another possibility, and another hope for the man 
who heard them. 

VII. 

It was in a stream fed glen between the hills that the 
Bering party made its halt the next night. These camps were 
a continual source of delight to Eleanor. All camping scenes 
are more or less picturesque, but, as she often remarked, there 
was no element of the picturesque lacking here. The fire of 
great pine logs, the tent which shielded her father and her- 
self from the heavy frost or drenching dew of these high re- 
gions, the delicately formed mules, the Mexicans in their 
bright-colored zarapes and peaked hats, with the woodland 
surroundings, the solemn hills and flowing water all made up 
a scene which she contemplated every evening with an ever- 
renewed sense of passionate pleasure. 

This evening, as usual, she was seated at some little dis- 
tance from the camp, taking in all the charm of the picture. 
The work of pitching the tent and making the fire was over. 
The mules had been watered and were now feeding. The men 
were bringing fuel to keep up the fire during the night. Ale- 
jandro was setting the table for the evening meal, while Mr. 
Bering, seated like Abraham at the door of his tent, gave now 
and then peremptory orders to the mozos. It had been broad 
daylight when they halted; but twilight is short in these lati- 
tudes, and dusk was now gathering, bringing out the rich radi- 
ance of the firelight, as the flames leaped upward from the resin- 
ous mass of burning wood, throwing their light on the es- 
carpment of the rocky hillside overhanging the camp, on the 
surrounding masses of foliage, and on the moving figures of 
men and animals. Overhead a silver moon, cut sharply in 
half, was riding buoyantly through the violet sky, effacing the 
stars, that gleamed, however, in full golden luster, lower down 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 461 

above the hill-crests. The stream was chanting the sweetest 
conceivable song as it hurried over its stones, and all the 
fragrant, pungent odors which night draws forth in the forest, 
and especially in the neighborhood of water, filled the air. 

" Isn't it delightful ? " said Eleanor, with a soft sigh of 
enjoyment. " How sorry I am that we are one day nearer 
to the end ! I wish we could lose our way and wander in 
the Sierra for a month." 

Trescott, who was stretched out on the ground beside her, 
looked up with a smile. 

"That might be easily accomplished, 1 ' he said. "But it is 
best not to wander here too long, or you might never find your 
way out. The Sierra has a fascination which is hard to break 
when one has dwelt in it long." 

" As I have told you, I can imagine that," she said. " The 
world we know seems so far away, and so undesirable " 

"Very far away, and very undesirable," he echoed. 

"And in these enchanted solitudes," she went on, "one un- 
derstands the passion for nature and things wild and free, which 
now and again makes men break away from all restraints of 
civilization and, in some remote region like this, go back to 
the primitive life. It is the feeling which at this moment makes 
me sorry to see another camp-fire yonder." 

Trescott started, and following the direction of her glance, 
saw at a distance of several hundred yards up the narrow val- 
ley what was indeed the unmistakable gleam of another fire. 
For the first time since they had been journeying in the Sierra, 
their place of rest was shared with other human beings. An 
annoyance which had a deeper root than Miss Bering's fanciful 
objection, made 4 him frown a little. But he spoke carelessly 
enough : 

" It is the camp of some pack-train. A day's march in the 
Sierra is so much the same for every one that the camping- 
places are often shared." 

"I don't like it," Eleanor said. " I wish we could move on." 

"I'm afraid it's too late for that now." 

" Of course it's too late. Papa would never hear of any- 
thing so absurd. ' What possible harm can the camp do us ? ' 
he would say. I couldn't make him understand that it spoils 
the charm of our solitude." 

" In order to feel that the charm of solitude is spoiled, one 
must first appreciate it. Mr. Bering, I think, hardly does that." 



4 6a IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Jan., 

" I'm sure he doesn't. On the contrary, he is longing to 
get out of the Sierra, and find himself in a Pullman car. His 
only consolation for being here, is the enormity he is contem- 
plating, of trying to bring a railroad into this heavenly region." 

Trescott laughed. " You must have overheard some of our 
conversations." 

" I have lain in the tent at night and heard you telling him 
as you smoked together before the fire, all about elevations 
and possible routes, and ' immense deposits of timber.' Fancy 
talking of these grand forests as ' deposits of timber ! ' The 
very expression is a sacrilege, for it implies such possibilities 
of destruction. I should like to have sovereign power here, so 
that these great heights should always remain 'the inviolate 
hills. 1 " 

"And I," said he in a tone which was only half- jesting, 
" should like to have power to crown you queen of the Sierra. 
I would, however, make a condition that you should make your 
home here, like a true greenwood sovereign." 

"At this moment I feel as if nothing could be more de- 
sirable. And yet" her tone suddenly changed, as her eyes 
turned full on him "even while we talk in this way, we know 
that we are deceiving ourselves, that it is all a play, that we are 
the children of civilization, and that we can never throw away 
our heritage, however much we may desire to do so." 

Trescott met the gaze which challenged him. 

"You have learned or divined a great deal," he said, "and 
nothing more truly than that. For you are right. We cannot 
throw away our heritage, however much we may desire to do 
so and some of us desire it exceedingly. We may come close 
to nature and primitive lives; but between us and them there 
is a deep gulf set a gulf of difference which nothing can bridge. 
And when we fancy we have accomplished what we desire, that 
we have forgotten our heritage, and that we are content, there 
comes a mysterious rebound toward all that we have forsaken, 
and we find ourselves drawn, by cords which we cannot resist, 
toward the thing we have cast off and renounced." 

"Ah, you acknowledge it!" she cried and now her eyes 
shone with something like triumph " I knew that it must be 
so. It is strenuous, it is exhausting, it is even terrible in some 
of its aspects and revolting in others, that world out yonder: 
but it is there that our destiny is cast, and we dare not for- 
sake it. We must go down to the dusty plain, though our 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 463 

hearts may protest and yearn for the repose of the heights we 
leave." 

It was with a glow of admiration in his own eyes that he 
looked at the face so brilliantly alive with thought and feeling. 

"Yes " ; he said, "you will go and rightly. For it is where 
you belong. To such as you life shows only its nobler side, 
and you are made to put fresh courage into the hearts of those 
who are ready to despair." 

" Let me, then, put it into your heart," she returned quick- 
ly. With an altogether charming and self-forgetful gesture, she 
laid her hand on his arm. " Come with us," she said. " Come 
down to the plain, to the dust, and to the conflict. It is where 
you also belong. Come." 

Surely a man might have been pardoned had he walked 
through fire at the bidding of that voice, that glance ! And 
yet it was no siren invitation, but the stronger for its loftiness, 
for its calling upon all the higher forces of his nature. 

"You tempt me," he said hoarsely "no, you do not tempt 
you inspire me beyond my strength to resist. See now ! 
we have only two more days of this idyllic life. Let us let 
me enjoy it, without thinking of what is to lie beyond. On 
the night we make our last camp I will tell you everything: 
what brought me to the Sierra, and what holds me here; and 
then you shall decide whether I stay, or whether I go with you." 

Two or three hours later the camp was quiet. The flap of 
the tent was closed, the Mexicans, wrapped in their blankets, 
were stretched around the fire asleep, and even the mules were 
still. The music of the stream now had the silence all to it- 
self, and was the only sound which broke it, except that now 
and then from the thick woods on the farther bank there rose, 
clear and iterative, the note of the whippoorwill. 

To Trescott, as smoking he strolled slowly along the valley 
in the bright moonlight, the last sound brought many painful 
memories. It was so far unusual in Mexico, that in all his so- 
journ in the country he had never heard it before; and when 
Miss Bering exclaiming: "Why, there are whipporwills ! " 
had asked the mozos the Mexican name for the bird, they 
had been unable to give it. For himself the plaintive, pierc- 
ing call had far-reaching associations. It carried him back in 
memory to his childhood's home in the South, to the hedges 
and copses in the old garden where he had played, whence 
this same sound would issue in the fragrant summer twilight 



464 iff ? HE SIERRA MADRE Jan., 

and far into the summer night. He remembered how the ne- 
groes would whisper to him that: " Sump'en sho gwine to 
happen! Bad luck boun* to come when de whippo'wills cry 
roun' de house." That bad luck seldom followed the presage 
in those childish days did not lessen the superstitious thrill 
with which he had been trained to hear the sound. And it 
was this early impression, no doubt, which gave such depth to 
his last association with it. How the whippoorwills had cried 
around his open window the night before he met Paul Raynor 
in the encounter which ended his friend's life and ruined his 
own! All the long unnerving agony of pain and remorse came 
back to him as he listened to the ill-omened notes; he saw 
again the black heads shaken, he heard again the solemn tones 
of his nurses and attendants : " Bad luck gwine te come when 
yo' hear de whippo'wills ! " 

And yet he laughed to himself, not only at the old super- 
stition, but also, somewhat grimly, at the thought that ill luck 
had surely spent itself upon him. What possible misfortune 
remained to come to him ? But, even as he asked the ques- 
tion, he remembered the dark, faithful woman in the depths 
of the Sierra, who had given him her heart; and then, as was 
altogether natural, he remembered the man whose enmity to- 
wards himself he knew well, and who was now so near at hand. 

For he had never doubted that the camp at the other end 
of the glade was that of Cruz ; and for this reason he was not 
in the least surprised to see the arriero coming, as if by ap- 
pointment, to meet him. In the moonlight the figures of the 
two men were clearly revealed to each other as they ap- 
proached from opposite directions, while the stream by their 
side sang over its stones and the whippoorwills called with 
plaintive insistence from the thickets on the hillside. 

" I wish to speak for a moment with you, senior," said 
Cruz, stopping short when they met. 

4 What do you want?" Trescott asked, pausing also. 

"I wish to know if you are leaving the Sierra, senor." 

;< You are insolent to ask the question. What affair is it 
of yours ? " 

" You know well what affair it is of mine," the man an- 
swered, dropping the surface deference of his tone. " When 
you are gone, Ramona will be willing to marry me." 

" That is a lie, and you know it." 

"It is not a lie. I have been at Los Charcos since you 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 465 

left there, and she has told me that if you go away she will 
marry me. Seeing you, therefore, as it appears, on your way 
out of the country, I ask you to tell me plainly if you are 
leaving the Sierra, because the knowledge will spare her much 
long waiting and suspense." 

There was an instant's pause a pause due to the fact that 
Trescott was so angry that he could not immediately trust 
himself to speak. Surely he had entangled his life in a fright- 
ful manner, when this peon had, in a certain sense, a right to 
approach him with questioning which touched the deepest 
points at issue within himself 1 If he had followed his inclina- 
tion, he would have answered in a manner more forcible than 
speech. But to knock the man down would only have been 
to insure the certainty of his rising, armed with his knife ; 
and a personal encounter with an arriero was an impossible 
thing, even if he had not been within sight of the Bering 
camp. When he spoke, however, his tone was the equivalent 
of the blow he felt bound to restrain. 

"You are a liar," he said sternly. "I am certain that Ra- 
mona has not made any such promise; and if she had, it 
would give you no right to question me concerning my plans 
and intentions. It is no business of yours whether I go or 
whether I stay in the country, and if you venture to address 
me again, I shall punish your insolence as it deserves." 

"There may be two words to that, senor," replied the Mex- 
ican, resuming the outward deference which only gave addition- 
al point to the real insolence of his speech and bearing. " But 
I have nothing more to say to you now, and with thanks al- 
ways (gracias sismpre) for your kind consideration, I promise 
that when I address you again you will be ready to answer me." 

His tone made the last words an unmistakable menace; 
and with them he turned away. Trescott stood still, watching 
the tall figure as it strode along the valley toward the distant 
camp-fire. There was no possibility of doubting the man's 
sinister meaning ; and to feel that one has an absolute and un- 
scrupulous enemy is not an agreeable sensation even to the 
most courageous. He turned to retrace his own steps, and 
as he went back toward his camp the call of the whippoor- 
wills seemed to fill all the listening stillness of the night. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 30 




THE "PIONEER" TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT IN IRELAND. 

|HE report of the proceedings at the recent Con- 
vention of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union 
of America, held at New Haven, is calculated to 
fill Catholic Temperance advocates in Englard 
with a holy envy. For, not many months ago, 
a correspondent wrote to The Catholic limes asking if there 
was such a thing as a Catholic Temperance Association in Eng- 
land. He had consulted the "Daily Mail" Ytar-Book of the 
Churches, and found there what professed to be a practically 
complete list of National and International Temperance Socie 
ties; none of these, however, seemed to have any connection 
with the Church. Himself a priest, he then sought for infor- 
mation amongst his ecclesiastical brethren, but none cculd en- 
lighten him on the point. So he came to the very natural con- 
clusion that, if such a thing existed among Catholics in Eng- 
land, it was not much in the eye of the world. No doubt the 
occasion, shortly after, of the celebration of Cardinal Manning's 
centenary, both at the Westminster Cathedral and in Hyde 
Park, gave him the information he wanted, while it also justi- 
fied his inference. 

There is, it is clear, at least one Catholic Temperance As- 
sociation in England " The League of the Cross " but, since 
the death of its founder, it has been, not dead, indeed, nor even 
sleeping, but still, let us say, in a somewhat drowsy state. 
However, advantage was very properly taken of the centenary 
of Cardinal Manning's birth to revive the enthusiasm which 
characterized the movement during his lifetime. On Sunday, 
July 12, there was a great gathering of original " Leaguers" in 
Westminster Cathedral, some three thousand in number, who 
were addressed by Canon Murnane, the late Cardinal's right- 
hand man, and his worthy successor at the head of the or- 
ganization. On the following Sunday there was a demonstra- 
tion in Hyde Park, where the numbers of the Leaguers were 
swelled by representatives of various organizations of working- 
men, who have so much to gain by the spread of temperance. 
We earnestly hope that " The League of the Cross " will be 



1909.] THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND 467 

roused to new life by these honors paid to its founder. It is 
now thirty-five years old, and has a glorious record of good 
work done. May that be but the seed of a still more vigorous 
harvest in the near future, till in God's mercy what Cardinal 
Manning did not hesitate to call " Our National Vice " has 
ceased to characterize the English nation. 

Cardinal Manning was prominent in all branches of social 
reform, but, in spite of his example, it is to be feared that 
English Catholics, as a body, have not yet taken the foremost 
position in the movement for the improvement of the condition 
of the workers which their faith and their ideals demand of 
them. Believing that society can be saved only by a return 
to the principles of Catholicity, we nevertheless at times allow 
others to surpass us in zeal in the external expression of the 
spirit of Christianity, as they understand it. Few in numbers, 
we lose still more in effectiveness through political disunion, 
for, under our party-system of government, though the evils to 
be remedied are national, the remedies themselves necessarily 
take a party color. Amongst the opponents of the present 
Licensing Bill, for instance, how many are animated by zeal for 
Toryism rather than zeal for Temperance ? Happily, the tran- 
scendent importance of the Education question has been able 
to unite the warring factions, and has shown incidentally how 
powerful we are when united. Would that it were so in regard 
to all matters affecting the welfare of society, as, for instance, 
the great question of Temperance. Hitherto, alas ! there has 
been no combination of effort to oppose " Our National Vice." 
Though the principles at stake are clear enough, the methods 
recommended are perhaps not so indisputable. In default, there- 
fore, of concerted action, it is all the more important that the 
individual Catholic should have clear and correct notions on 
this vital problem, and should realize how greatly his personal 
attitude may affect its solution. It may be encouraging to call 
attention to a recent remarkable and very successful attempt 
at its solution in Ireland, in order both to show America that 
we are not totally devoid of initiative in these islands and to 
strengthen "The League of the Cross" in England by the 
spectacle of so energetic a movement on its borders. 

If the compiler of the "Daily Mail" Year- Book of the 
Churches had extended his survey to Ireland, we venture to 
think that he would have found many additions to make to his 



468 {THE " PIONEER " Mo YEMEN T IN IRELAND [Jan., 

list of Temperance Societies under Catholic management. We 
do not mean to imply that the evil to be combatted is there 
more prevalent, though it may be more disastrous than else- 
where. We fear that no one of the three kingdoms can exalt 
itself above its neighbors in this regard ; the abuse of strong 
drink is scandalously common in all, and none can safely afford 
to relax its efforts to control it. We must own, however, that 
the poverty of the country makes intemperance especially harm- 
ful in Ireland, just as the higher ideals of the people's religion 
make it more disgraceful. Hence, strenuous efforts are being 
put forth to restore the nation as a whole to self-control in 
this matter, by those who have her welfare most at heart. 

We do not intend to enumerate the various Catholic organi- 
zations which are opposing the drink evil on Irish soil. Many 
may be seen detailed in the Irish Catholic Directory, their num- 
ber and influence being largely due to a Joint Pastoral issued 
by the Irish Hierarchy in 1890. Foremost among the workers 
in this cause are the Capuchin Fathers, the brethren of the 
famous Father Mathew, whose marvelous success in his day re- 
mains as a standing stimulus and support to all temperance 
reformers. It is true that his movement collapsed after a time, 
but the failure is directly traceable to accidental and preventa 
ble causes, whilst the lessons of his experience are left for the 
guidance of those who are laboring so successfully to revive and 
rival his work. In addition to the " Father Mathew " Society, 
there is another organization, partial in its aim, but thorough 
in its methods, called " The Anti-Treating League," the object 
of which, as is implied in its name, is to put down the per- 
nicious social custom of celebrating every event, from a busi- 
ness deal to a chance meeting, by drinking. This undertaking 
strengthens many against a very powerful form of temptation. 

Both these associations are well-known; but there is a third, 
the knowledge of which, on account of its recent growth, is 
still confined mainly to Ireland. It is about this that we pro- 
pose to say a few words, because it is in several respects unique 
in its methods, and because it has met with remarkable and 
growing success. Its official title is "The Total Abstinence 
League of the Sacred Heart of Jesus/' but it is generally known 
by the name of the " Pioneer Association " ; not because it claims 
any priority in time, which would be absurd, or superiority 
over others, with which, indeed, it is in no sense in rivalry, 



1909.] THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND 469 

but because its members aim at being in the very first ranks 
of Temperance Reform, their engagement being of the most 
absolute character and based upon the highest motives. It is 
most important that this should be understood clearly, other- 
wise one of the chief features of the " Pioneer " movement will 
be ignored, and it will be exposed to the reproach of causing 
a division of forces and consequent loss of efficiency. This as- 
sociation, then, has as its object the training of strenuous tem- 
perance workers in every field and, incidentally, the supplying 
of recruits of the first quality to other bodies. There is noth- 
ing whatever to prevent "Pioneers" being members, for instance, 
of " The League of the Cross " ; as a matter of fact, in Ireland, 
the great Capuchin organization includes many members of the 
younger body. As the number of " Pioneers/' both priests and 
layfolk, in Great Britain, America, and the Colonies, is now 
not inconsiderable, doubtless branches of the organization will 
presently appear in those countries also. 

The fact that the " Pioneers " are mainly recruited from the 
ranks of those who do not need, and in all probability never 
would need, a "pledge" to keep them from excess in drink- 
ing, may be reckoned a second characteristic of their associa- 
tion. It does not aim so much at the cure oi the drunkard, 
as at the prevention of drunkenness. Its appeal is not pri- 
marily to personal motives, to the loss to character, family, 
health, or purse, resulting from the cultivation or continuance of 
a bad habit, but to motives of unselfishness, to the love of 
God and neighbor impelling to self-sacrifice. It is a practical 
recognition of the Christian duty of habitual mortification, of 
taking up the cross daily as a means of showing love of God 
and obedience to His law. Thus the motive is the same as 
that which prompts the practice of the Evangelical Counsels 
and every other sort of voluntary sacrifice of liberty in God's 
service. But the personal benefit to soul and body is, in a 
sense, an accidental result ; the chief object of the " Pioneer " is 
to help to educate public opinion, by the persuasive influence 
of personal abstention, in regard to the folly, useiessness, and 
danger of habitual recourse to intoxicants. " Here is a prac- 
tice," he says in effect, " which has done me little or no harm, 
but which has ruined and is ruining thousands of my race and 
nation. With God's grace, I will have nothing to do with it. 
It is the first thing, if not the least, that I can do." 



470 fHE " PIONEER " Mo VEMENT IN IRELAND [Jan., 

In the third place, the pledge in this Association is abso- 
lutely for life. We are not likely to see for many generations 
to come such a diminution of excessive drinking as would make 
the advocacy of Total Abstinence unnecessary, so the motive 
will always endure. It is apparent that, under this aspect, the 
promise implies a certain degree of courage, which gives it a 
claim to be called an " Heroic Offering.*' There is something 
so final, so exceedingly definite, about a life-pledge, that a 
person has need of some strength of character, or some assured 
help from outside of himself, to take it deliberately. On the 
other hand, the prospect rouses a man's instincts of generosity, 
and, provided the motives are well grasped and kept alive, there 
is no fool- hardiness in such an undertaking. 

We are thus brought to the fourth characteristic of the 
" Pioneer Association/' which is designed precisely to prevent 
any rash or inconsiderate action in making the " Heroic Offer- 
ing"; viz., the preliminary probationship. Before candidates 
are allowed to take the pledge for life, they have to prove 
their strength and fitness by abstaining for two whole years 
from all spirituous liquor. During that interval they will have 
abundant opportunity of ascertaining whether their original 
design was born of a passing enthusiasm or a deep-seated pur- 
pose. As no one can become a "Pioneer" before the age of 
sixteen, it follows that Probationers must be at least fourteen 
years of age. This wise provision of a sort of temperance 
noviceship has probably done more to consolidate the " Pioneer " 
movement than any other feature of the organization. It is 
something to have withstood temptation from various quarters 
for twenty-four calendar months, and the Probationer can now 
face the "Heroic Offering" with a more assured confidence in 
the power of grace, as well as with the self-reliance that comes 
from experience. It remains to be said that any deliberate 
violation of the pledge, however slight, reduces, ipso facto, the 
" Pioneer " to the ranks; he must serve two years more before 
he again receives the privileges and assumes the insignia of 
full membership. And this second trial is granted only at the 
discretion of the Council of the branch to which he belonged. 

A fifth distinctive note of this Association is the great stress 
laid upon the display of the tokens of membership, Other 
temperance societies, of course, have the like the " Blue Rib- 
bon " has become proverbial, and Father Mathew made great 



1909.] THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND 47 1 

use of the medals and crosses which he distributed. But in 
the Pioneer Association all members are obliged not merely to 
wear, but to display, their badge of membership, which is an 
emblem of the Sacred Heart arranged as a brooch, pin, or 
pendant. The badge of the Probationers has a red cross in 
place of the representation of the Sacred Heart. The advan- 
tages of this prescription are manifold. Once its meaning is 
known, the token is a silent sermon on temperance to the passer- 
by. Then, while reminding members of their obligations, it 
gives them a sense of solidarity, which is very helpful in an 
uphill fight. It is quite remarkable how much this badge is in 
evidence in Ireland, especially in the streets of Dublin. One 
cannot walk far without noticing the pretty little design on 
watch-chain, or scarf-pin, or brooch, adorning both sexes and 
all classes. If the sight of drink and its effects, and the too- 
abundant means of drink, in the streets of that fair city, de- 
presses one who has the good of his Faith and his country at 
heart, the sight of these eloquent emblems comes to restore 
and invigorate. 

In other respects as well, the rules of this remarkable or- 
ganization are the outcome of many years experience and ob- 
servation on the part of men who have made temperance sub- 
jects the study of their lives. The members are divided into 
groups of thirty-three, corresponding to the number of years 
of our Lord's life, each group with President, Secretary, and 
Treasurer, who, with one or two others, form a Council. These 
groups, again, are linked together in local " centers " and have 
fixed periodical meetings to determine the admission of candi- 
dates, and to discuss methods of promoting temperance, total 
abstinence, and rational recreation. For, not the least com- 
mendable characteristic of the " Pioneers " is their activity in 
furthering means of amusement which shall not depend on the 
bottle. The alcoholic public-house, they realize, will be most 
effectively discouraged by the provision of public- houses where 
people may meet for social converse and recreation, without 
being compelled or persuaded to endanger health or morals by 
imbibing intoxicants. 

Another wise rule enjoins the laying aside of the badge, 
whenever, and as long as, a member is under medical orders 
to take alcohol. This is necessary to avoid scandalizing other 
members and to prevent the individual from unduly prolonging 




472 TfffE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND [Jan., 



the treatment. The present tendency of medical practice hap- 
pily points to a time when alcohol will be very rarely used. 
Clearly, no one is allowed to prescribe for himself in these 
matters, nor to yield to the suggestions of unqualified friends. 
Affiliated to the " Pioneers " is another temperance society, the 
members of which take the pledge for a less period than life 
and have a separate badge and card of membership. We may 
mention, finally, that within the last year or so, at the instance 
of many experienced temperance workers, measures have been 
taken to admit a certain number of those who have been re- 
claimed from excessive drinking. These are, of course, sub- 
jected to a prolonged and severe test before they are accepted, 
even as probationers. 

Such, in brief outline, is the Total Abstinince Association 
of the Sacred Heart, which took its rise at a meeting of four 
persons in St. Francis Xavier's Presbytery, Dublin, on Decem- 
ber 28, 1898. These four fervent "Pioneers" have surely no 
reason to fear " to speak of '98," for, while still some months 
short of its first decade, the organization they then started 
numbers ninety thousand tried members, to say nothing of the 
large fringe of candidates, and upwards of seventy active cen- 
ters. At each successive annual meeting in Dublin, the move- 
ment has received a new impetus, especially since about three 
years ago, when the Association was enriched with various 
Indulgences by the Holy Father. Everything that an en- 
lightened prudence, well-read in the lessons of the past, can 
do to maintain the body in its first fervor and to render its 
progress independent of the zeal of one or more individuals, 
has been or is being done. 

One exceedingly hopeful feature about the movement is the 
number of clergy and ecclesiastical students who belong to its 
ranks. The great College of Maynooth is one of the chief 
" centers/ 1 containing several hundred members. Similarly, in 
Dublin, the Colleges of Clonliffe and All Hallows, and, through- 
out the kingdom, many other schools and colleges have en- 
tered into the movement with enthusiasm and have become 
flourishing " centers." It may be said, on a moderate es- 
timate, that one- third of the Irish clergy are already total ab- 
stainers. Nothing, it is plain, could contribute more effectu- 
ally to the reformation of a people, exposed by custom and 
character and circumstance to the danger of excessive drink- 



1909. J THE "PIONEER" MOVEMENT IN IRELAND 473 

ing, than that their spiritual pastors should be teetotallers. 
For total abstinence, for many of their flock, is often the only 
prudent course, whilst in all cases, whether regarded frem a 
religious, physical, social, or economic standpoint, it is emi- 
nently desirable. But who can preach total abstinence effec- 
tively save the total abstainer, one who can say to his people : 
" Come ! " instead of " Go ! " 

This spread of total absinence amongst the young is of the 
brightest augury for Ireland's future. Upon the rising gener- 
ation, both clergy and laity, the destiny of the country rests. 
Here is the seed-plot for the harvest to come. It is much 
easier to renounce, by anticipation as it were, habits not yet 
acquired and tastes not yet developed, than to oppose the 
practices of many years. If one realizes from youth that 
alcohol is one of the most potent instruments for the moral 
and physical destruction of man, he will be less inclined ever 
to indulge in it. 

We have described, more or less fully, what the " Pioneers " 
are: let us cast now a glance at their raison d'etre, that we 
may better appreciate the good work they are doing. The 
task before them, as before all other temperance workers, is 
indeed an uphill one. Excess in drinking on the present gi- 
gantic scale is a comparatively modern portent, not because 
human nature has notably deteriorated, but because the facili- 
ties for obtaining intoxicating liquors have enormously in- 
creased. Still, temperance advocates have to aim at changing 
the views and practice of many generations. They have to 
remove from the minds of many, who have little desire, per- 
haps, to be undeceived, a widespread delusion as to the ad- 
vantages of alcohol. They have to find other and less harm- 
ful expression for ingrained social habits. They have to incul- 
cate restraint in a matter wherein excess is exceptionally easy. 
They have to change public opinion. Let those who are in- 
clined to think the task hopeless reflect that public opinion is 
already changing. A century ago public opinion did not at- 
tach a social stigma to the sin of drunkenness; now, it is on 
the side of righteousness. A century ago the duellist was re- 
garded in Ireland as a hero; now he would be known as a 
murderer. There are people alive still who remember, nay, 
who have shared, the common opinion in the southern States 
of North America about the lawfulness and desirability of the 



474 THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND [Jan., 



slave trade. How many advocates are there now of that pe- 
culiar institution? And so the time may come when the fre- 
quent and unnecessary consumption of alcoholic poison, even 
in small doses, will be recognized as unworthy of a reasonable 
man, and when the moral and physical advantages of total ab- 
stinence from alcohol will be generally seen to outweigh the 
good derived from its use. 

In medical circles the change of view regarding the benefit 
of alcohol has become very marked. If one is to believe Sir 
Victor Horsley,* the use of the drug even as a medicine is of 
the most doubtful advantage ; its evil effects more than coun- 
terbalance its good, which latter, moreover, may be secured by 
means that are not harmful. His opinion, set forth in detail 
and with all scientific sobriety, is amply borne out by the 
testimony of other physicians of eminence and by the gradual 
disuse of alcohol in medical practice, as evinced by the ex- 
penditure-sheets of the great London hospitals. It is obvious 
how the knowledge of these facts must help temperance work- 
ers, for much of the misuse of alcohol results from ignorance 
of its real character. On the medical profession and on all 
educated people generally rests the responsibility of destroying 
so widespread an error. The need is so urgent, the disease so 
desperate, that every motive must be used to remedy it. The 
drink bill of the United Kingdom is 165, 000,000 annually! 
If we add to this almost total waste the gigantic losses, caused 
in various more indirect ways by excessive drinking, e g. t the 
cost of maintaining additional accommodation in prisons, re- 
formatories, poorhouses, lunatic asylums, for those who are 
driven to crime, poverty, and madness by drink a very large 
proportion of the whole total we should reach, perhaps, as 
much again. 

We speak of material loss, because that is the more tang- 
ible, but who shall estimate the vast amount of sin and moral 
misery which that huge expenditure represents, or the injury 
caused to the physical well-being of the nation, present afld fu- 
ture ? The annual statistics of the British Registrar General, pub- 
lished a few months ago, show once again what was already well 
known, that the most dangerous, occupation, next to file- making, 
in the kingdom is that of inn-keepers and inn-servants. The 

See Alcohol and the Human Body, by Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. Mary Sturge. Mac- 
millan, 1907. 



1909.] THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND 475 

publican's chance of premature death is three times greater 
than that of the gardener. The fact is recognized by all in- 
surance companies, some of which absolutely refuse to insure 
those in the drink-trade, whilst those who do, generally add 
fifty per cent to the premium. The number of deaths due 
directly to excess in drink has risen threefold in the last fifty 
years. It is not easy to calculate the total sum, but the late 
Dr. Norman Kerr put it at 60,000 annually ; the mortality to 
which alcoholism is a contributory cause being of course much 
greater. 

But it is with Ireland that the "Pioneers" are particularly 
concerned. It is the thought of the terrible ravages of drink 
in that unhappy land that gives these men much of their in- 
spiration and their force. Here we have a country which, for 
one reason or another, has rarely, if ever, enjoyed material 
prosperity, whose trade has been crushed, whose resources 
have remained undeveloped, whose population, in spite of a 
prolific birth-rate, has been halved by famine and emigration 
during the last sixty years. If the nation is not to disappear 
altogether, clearly its strength should be husbanded in every 
way. Yet this country spends more than its whole annual 
rent-roll in drink! This poverty-stricken land raises some 
fourteen million pounds a year to spend on what is at best a 
mere luxury; and what is, in effect, a cancer eating away the 
substance of national life. Half of this immense sum goes in 
excise duty and half in actual expenditure. If the whole were 
thrown into Dublin Bay instead, the resulting national loss 
would be less; for, as we have seen already, the mere waste 
of money is not the worse side of the picture. We must add 
the ruin of health and character, the degradation of family 
life, the interruption of work, the injury to trade, the in- 
creased civil burdens, which in all cases follow excessive drinking. 

But by itself the gigantic and wholly spontaneous tribute 
paid to the tyrant, Drink, both by the slaves to excess and 
the slaves to moderation, would, if turned into productive 
channels, remove nearly all the economic ills that oppress the 
land. A tithe of it would build and endow a National Uni- 
versity second to none in the world. Elementary education 
could be much improved, industries developed, emigration 
checked in its causes, by a twentieth of this huge sum. As 
long as the waste goes on, the standard both of material and 



476 THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND [Jan., 

intellectual development remains permanently injured. That 
religious ideals have not also suffered is due to the robust 
faith, which centuries of persecution have nurtured and strength- 
ened. In the recognition of these facts by thousands of pa- 
triotic Irish folk to-day, we see one explanation of the suc- 
cess of the " Pioneer " movement. Here we have the true " Sein 
Feiners." Ireland is poor and crippled in every direction by 
its poverty, but, in view of the waste caused by unnecessary 
drinking, how can we deny that this poverty is, in part, self- 
created and self-imposed? Thirty- three years ago the Hierar- 
chy of Ireland told the nation, in words which have lost none 
of their truth to day 

" Drunkenness has wrecked more homes, once happy, than 
ever fell beneath the crowbar in the worst days of eviction ; 
it has filled more graves and made more widows and orphans 
than did the famine ; it has broken more hearts, blighted more 
hopes, and rent asunder family ties more ruthlessly than the 
enforced exile to which their misery has condemned emigrants ! " 

Under these circumstances, one is tempted to gauge the 
sincerity of an Irishman's patriotism by his attitude towards 
temperance. He may be an enthusiastic Gaelic Leaguer, may 
wear his life out in Parliament, may face and conquer the dif- 
ficulties of the Irish language, may foster in every way Irish 
industries, may even go clothed " in the garb of old Gael,' 1 
but if he is indifferent to the spread of temperance, if he does 
not encourage total abstinence, if he fails to give the example 
of strict sobriety in his own person, then he is laboring in vain, 
for he has not touched the essence of the problem of how to 
regenerate his race. Until the ulcer of intemperance is cured, 
all other attempts to cure the body corporate will result in 
worse disaster. If advance in elementary self-control does not 
precede advance in material prosperity, we shall only increase 
the nation's drink bill. As we write, the publication of the 
balance sheet of Messrs. Guinness and Co., the famous Dublin 
brewers, announcing that they have made a profit of thirty- 
four millions sterling in twenty-two years, and that their high- 
est annual profit, 2,306,700, was made this very year, comes 
as a striking commentary on the situation. The one thriving 
trade in Ireland is that which contributes, more largely than 
any other cause, to her ruin and degradation ! We all know 
the saying " Ireland sober is Ireland free,' 1 but it has even a 



1 909. ] THE ' PIONEER " Mo VEMENT IN IRELA ND 47 7 

deeper and truer meaning than the politician reads into it. It 
is for this and all its attendant blessings that the " Pioneer As- 
sociation" is working. 

Of all natural motives, this motive of patriotism is perhaps 
the strongest. A man often does for his country what he will 
not do for his family, or even for himself. But the "Pioneers," 
whilst neglecting no motives for self-control, rest as we have 
seen on the most inspiring and most permanent of all, viz., 
the motive of religion. For no mere knowledge of evil conse- 
quences, more or less remote, has ever been effective in keep, 
ing mankind as a mass from harmful self-indulgence, else 
would the revelation of hell-fire have prevented the believer 
from sinning. And so, though the spread of knowledge about 
the harmful nature of alcohol, especially amongst the young, 
who have still open minds on the subject is to be welcomed, 
that alone will never make man sober. Medical science is now 
only formulating what people might have learnt ages ago from 
the teaching of experience, viz., that alcohol, so far from being 
a stimulant and a source of strength, is a mere narcotic, harm- 
ful to the bodily functions even in small quantities. Fear of 
social consequences, a prudent self-regard, again, will often 
prevent open drunkenness, but not the hardly less pernicious 
custom of constant "nipping." Once more, considerations of 
health, family, and pocket appeal to the educated, the thrifty, 
and the refined. But the religious motive is at once the most 
universal and the most powerful. It is embodied in its purest 
form in the words of the " Heroic Offering," made by the 
" Pioneers " : 

" For Thy greater glory and consolation, O Sacred Heart 
of Jesu ! to give good example, to practise self-denial, to make 
reparation for sins of intemperance, and for the conversion of 
excessive drinkers, I will abstain for life from all spirituous 
drinks. Amen." 

He would be a poor Catholic, not to say a short-sighted 
social reformer, who should find anything to cavil at in the 
fact or the spirit of such an offering. Yet we have known a 
man so blind to the temporal and spiritual benefits of total 
abstinence as to declare publicly : " Let those who wish to 
put this millstone around their necks, come forward ! " And 
we have known another to try, happily in vain, to persuade 
a club to introduce the sale of beer into its gatherings ! 



478 THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND [Jan., 



We will conclude this imperfect sketch of an organization, 
whose progress all lovers of Ireland should view with sympa- 
thetic interest, with some practical counsel tendered to the 
"Pioneers" by one of their original founders, but equally applic- 
able to all temperance workers: 

" Let Total Abstainers not be aggressive in asserting their 
principles or their practice. Aggressiveness does no good and 
much harm. Let them not exaggerate Total Abstinence as a 
passport into heaven, without anything else to recommend or 
entitle them to eternal reward. Let them not pride themselves 
on their slender self-denial, as being better than their neigh- 
bors who do not offend against temperance. Let them preach 
more by practice and example than by words. Let them be 
bright and cheerful in their relations with others at home and 
abroad. From the savings resulting from their total abstinence 
let them make competent provision for the future, and let them 
never forget to help the poor."* 

We venture to think that the advice contained here is of 
incalculable value. Much injury has resulted to the cause of 
temperance through teetotalers affecting superior virtue and 
"giving themselves airs." Also from their practically denying 
to their neighbor his right to use his liberty. Total abstinence 
is a counsel, not a precept; under existing circumstances, it is 
emphatically the " better way," but men may reasonably use 
their freedom not to walk therein. Thus the teetotaller who 
should pride himself on not being as other men "even as this 
Publican " would only be exchanging one vice for a worse, and 
lamentably falling short of the spirit of his profession. On the 
other hand, some of the disrepute which seems to attach to 
the profession of total abstinence arises from the false idea 
that it is an extreme^ and therefore to that extent irrational 
and unnatural. " Moderate drinking " is regarded as the vir- 
tue standing between the two extremes of drunkenness and 
teetotalism, and as therefore commendable, whereas the vice 
that stands opposed to drunkenness or abuse by excess is abuse 
by defect, i. e. t such abstention from alcohol as would produce 
evil effects, either to body or soul. Needless to say no such 
vice exists. 

In England this year, during the present session of Parlia- 

* See the useful little penny Temperance Catechism, written by Father James Cullen, S.J., 
which also contains full information about the " Pioneer Association." 



1909.] THE " PIONEER " MOVEMENT IN IRELAND 479 

ment, the Liberal Government are endeavoring to remedy the 
evil of drunkenness by the passage of a bill to reduce the num- 
ber of public houses; accordingly much is heard on the tem- 
perance question at present. Apart from the merits or de- 
merits of this attempt, with which we have here no concern, 
we may be permitted two remarks in conclusion. The first is 
that every scheme of temperance reform must tend, until prices 
are readjusted, to injure the interests of the drink trade, for 
the simple reason that it aims at diminishing the total con- 
sumption of drink. Temperance would be very little promoted 
if the amount consumed was not reduced, if, i. e. t both tee- 
totallers and drunkards joined the ranks of " moderate drink- 
ers " What is a "moderate drinker"? It is a very elastic 
term, made to cover all classes between those who drink only 
at mealtime, and then not much, and those who, short of ac- 
tual intoxication, keep their blood in a constant ferment by con- 
stant indulgence. The latter class may easily injure health, 
purse, and soul more completely than the actual, if occasional, 
drunkard. But once grant that alcohol is not a food but a 
drug, once realize the immense injury, both to the individual 
and to the State, caused by its unnecessary consumption, and 
it becomes clear that drinkers must be abstemious indeed to 
have a just claim to the epithet. 

Our second remark is that it is worse than foolish to dis- 
courage Temperance Reform by repeating, as some do, the 
parrot-cry, started originally, without doubt, by some public- 
house parrot : " Man cannot be made sober by Act of Parlia- 
ment." Such a saying flies in the face of all preventive legis- 
lation, and would justify the removal of the law against dis- 
orderly houses, or the already- existing restrictions on the sale 
of spirituous liquor. The poet's exclamation : " How oft the 
sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!" shows 
a truer psychology. 




FOUR CELEBRITIES-BROTHERS BY MARRIAGE. 

BY WILFRID WILBERFORCE. 
III. GEORGE DUDLEY RYDER. 

JHE subject of this sketch belonged to a family so 
full of interest, and so intimately associated with 
the history of England at an eventful period, that 
a good deal of self-denial on the part of the 
writer is needed to restrain his narrative within 
reasonable limits. The family history of the Ryders would by 
itself supply ample material for a long and interesting article. 
George Dudley Ryder, the son of the well-known Protest- 
ant Bishop of Gloucester and afterwards of Lichfield, was born 
on April n, 1810, 

Bishop Ryder was an Evangelical ot the best type. There 
had been at that time a special revival of piety in the Protest- 
ant Church in England, headed by Simeon and others at Cam- 
bridge. Their distinguishing characteristic was a deep personal 
love and devotion to our Lord, coupled with strong efforts to 
imitate the examples of holiness which the Gospels reveal to us, 
and to give themselves to works of charity for the sake of 
Christ. There was no attempt to form any theological system. 
It was simply making the best of the meager, desolate, nega- 
tive Protestantism into which they had been born. Still that 
it was in very truth making the best of it, no one can deny, 
and the result was that those families which thus acted up to 
the light that they had, produced the most beautiful examples 
of domestic virtue, and in many instances of heroic self- sacri- 
fice as well, and it is worthy of note that a great many of the 
converts in the middle of the last century had gained their 
earliest notions of religion from the sincere, if undogmatic, creed 
of Evangelicalism. 

It was from a father imbued with these religious sentiments, 
and from a mother equally devout,* that George Ryder received 
his early training. His health was not strong enough to per- 
mit of his being sent like his brothers to a public school, but 

* His mother was a sister of Charies March Phillipps, father of Ambrose Lisle Phillipps, 
afterwards De Lisle. 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 481 

at the usual age he went to Oxford and entered at Oriel Col- 
lege, where Newman and Hurrell Froude were tutors. 

George Ryder had been brought up in the midst of sur- 
roundings which were holy and pure, and was thus in every 
way fit to be influenced by the teaching of Newman and Froude. 
He naturally became absorbed into the High Church party, and 
this without any opposition on his father's part. While at Ox- 
ford he became intimate with a number of men who afterwards 
became famous, among them Gladstone, Manning, Sydney Her- 
bert, and the three Wilberforces. What was thought of Glad- 
stone by his fellow- undergraduates is shown by a little incident 
which is worth recording. Gladstone entered Parliament when 
he was three and twenty. One day George Ryder, whose father 
and uncle were in the House of Lords, was walking in one of 
the corridors with Gladstone. They happened to meet Lord 
Harrowby, and Ryder stopped to talk to him while Gladstone 
passed on. "That is Gladstone, 11 said Ryder, pointing to the 
disappearing figure. " We all say that he will one day be Prime 
Minister." This seems to have been Manning's opinion also, 
and Gladstone, on hearing it from his lips, replied : "If I am 
Prime Minister, I will appoint you to Canterbury/* 

Bishop Ryder numbered among his intimate friends the 
leaders of the Evangelical School, and this naturally brought 
him into frequent contact with William Wilberforce, the emi- 
nent philanthropist. Hence it came about that George Ryder, 
who had made the acquaintance of Henry Wilberforce at Oriel, 
paid more than one visit to old Mr. and Mrs. Wilberforce. It 
was in their house that he met Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce, the 
eldest of the four Sargent sisters, and later on he met the 
youngest sister, Sophia, his future wife. It was not long before 
a strong attachment sprang up between them, and old Mr. and 
Mrs. Wilberforce soon saw how matters stood and sincerely re- 
joiced at it. However, the consent of Sophia's parents had still 
to be asked, and this was delayed by the illness and death of 
her father, the Rev. John Sargent. When the sad news reached 
George Ryder, his loving sympathy with the bereaved family 
drew him irresistibly to the spot. He walked over the Sussex 
Downs and entered the beautiful wood or " hanger/' overlook- 
ing- the house and grounds. The little parish church, with the 
small graveyard, where all the members of the family have been 
buried, is actually in the garden attached to the Squire's house. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 31 



4 8 2 FOUR CELEBRITIES I [Jan., 

- 

George Ryder was thus an unknown spectator of the funeral. 
His delicacy of feeling forbade his intruding upon so great a 
sorrow, while he felt that he was showing the highest act of 
respect in his power to one whom he had hoped so soon to 
look upon as his father-in-law. It was in the following year, 
1834, that this hope was fulfilled, and Sophia Sargent became 
his wife. 

Ryder, while still a youth at Oxford, had felt himself called 
by God to the life of a clergyman. In his eyes it was em- 
phatically, not a career but a vocation, and it greatly shocked 
him to hear young men speak of adopting the clerical life sim- 
ply as the choice of a profession, just as they might speak of 
entering the army or navy. His father, being a bishop, natu- 
rally had several livings in his gift, and he gave his son the 
choice among three. George and his young wife visited each 
in turn, and, as money at that time was not an object with 
him, he chose, not the one with the largest income, but the 
most beautiful namely Hanbury, in Staffordshire. This he ex- 
changed some three years later for Easton, near Winchester. 
The ciurch here is very ancient, and the baptismal font is that 
which was used in Catholic times. The church still retains its 
old dedication and is known as " St. Mary's." At Easton he 
remained until he became a Catholic, and here were born four 
out of his seven children. 

None who had known Ryder in his younger days were sur- 
prised at the whole-hearted devotion and energy with which he 
carried on his duties as a parish clergyman. His great object 
was to instill real piety into his parishioners. He began to 
have daily service in the church; he repaired, and otherwise 
decorated, the building, and as his own mind advanced, uncon- 
sciously to himself, towards the Catholic Church, he gradually 
introduced Catholic practices, and he came at last to have daily 
prayers for the union of the Roman and Anglican Churches. 
From the Protestant Prayer Book he gathered not merely the 
lawfulness of confession, but its necessity, and one day he 
made an expedition to the parish adjoining Easton, where Ktble 
was vicar, and begged him to hear his confession. Keble had 
not advanced so far in those early days, and it was with great 
reluctance that he yielded to Ryder's request. The Vigils and 
Fasts of the Church too were most rigidly kept by the fervent 
Anglicans. Many of them ate nothing till sunset. 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 483 

A very remarkable instance of Ryder's intense earnestness 
in the service of God may be mentioned here. 

He had had a serious illness, and though his health grad- 
ually returned, he found that the languor and weakness of his 
malady had made early rising extremely difficult to him. For 
some days he yielded, and this made him fear that the habit 
of laziness was growing upon him. He thought over it very 
seriously. It occurred to him that such a habit, had he been 
a workingman, would have meant loss of money and perhaps 
the means of livelihood. He resolved to trample upon it once 
and for all. He determined that every time he remained in 
bed after seven o'clock he would throw half-a-guinea into a 
deep stream. It had at first occurred to him to give that sum 
to the poor, but such a resolve would have been inefficient, be- 
cause he would be sure to comfort himself while lying in bed 
with the thought that some one would profit by his sloth. 
One morning he again remained in bed beyond seven o'clock. 
That day half a- guinea was thrown into the stream, and so 
heartily was he ashamed of himself for having indulged in this 
expensive luxury that he never had reason to repeat it. In a 
very short time early rising became a second nature with him. 
One of his daughters, now a nun, writes: "He told me this 
to encourage me when I was at one time inclined not to get up 
for early Mass, though I was not ill, only lazy, with the ever 
ready excuse of not strong. It helped me then, and ever since." 

It may be well here to mention an incident which, though 
of a delicate nature, is so extremely characteristic of George 
Ryder that I am loath to omit it. When he was well-advanced 
in years he was speaking to one of his sons, a priest, about a 
young man in whom he was much interested. He feared that 
this young man was being led astray by bad companions and 
he asked his son to try to save him. "You may tell him if 
you like," added George Ryder with much earnestness, " that 
when I was a young man, I was once severely tempted during 
the night against the Holy Virtue, but by God's grace I rose 
and flung myself on my knees on the floor, and begged God 
rather to cast me headlong into hell than allow me to give way 
to the temptation, and so I overcame it." One is reminded of 
what is related in the lives of St. Benedict and other saints 
when similarly tempted, and the violent remedies they used to 
gain the victory. 




484 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 

4 

A curious incident occurred during George Ryder's incum- 
bency of Easton. It happened that a poor woman came to the 
village. She was nominally a Catholic, but her character was 
bad and few would have anything to do with her. Mrs. Ryder, 
hearing that she was in great poverty, used to send her food. 
The poor thing, in hopes of getting more substantial assistance, 
affected to be converted to Protestantism, and sent word to that 
effect to the rectory. Mr. Ryder realized at once that she was 
merely trying to get further help, and he called at her cottage 
and told her his opinion. She however persisted, and to test her 
resolution, the rector said: "If you are sincere you must pre- 
pare for confession, for I shall not receive you without it." 
Her disgust and astonishment were great. " Sure, your honor," 
she said, " I have nothing to confess unless it be that I took 
a few broken victuals when I was a lass in service." But the 
rector stuck to his point and told her she had better examine 
her conscience. A few days later she was seized with illness 
and implored to see a real priest. The rector gladly sent for 
one and the poor woman made a good death. 

George Ryder had been rector of Easton for about nine 
years when his wife's health made it advisable that she should 
go abroad for a couple of years. He invited his youngest sis- 
ter, Sophy, to accompany them, and he left England in the 
autumn of 1845. Of the children, the three eldest went with 
their parents, while the two youngest, boys of three years and 
one year respectively, were left under the care of their aunt, 
Mrs. Henry Wilberforce, at East Farleigh. At this time, no 
doubt had ever crossed George Ryder's mind as to the Angli- 
can Church being a part of the Church of God, and to turn 
the period of his absence to good account, he purposed to write 
a book to prove what to him was an undoubted truth. He 
had already been for some time in the habit of jotting down 
notes of everything that he came across in books or in prac- 
tice that could strengthen or prove this contention. His leisure 
time abroad would, he thought, enable him to expand these 
notes into a book. 

The travelers stayed for a few days in Paris. Here they 
were introduced to a French .priest, who took a good deal of 
notice of the children and then fell into conversation with the 
parents. He was very kind and genial, and the Ryders hoped 
that they would see more of him. This, however, was their first 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 485 

and last meeting. At parting from him George Ryder, ac- 
cording to his custom when saying good-bye to a priest or re- 
ligious, said: " Pray for me and mine." The priest held Ryder's 
hand tightly in his, and said with great earnestness: "Yes, I 
will pray for you; and to-morrow morning, at seven o'clock, I 
will offer Mass for you." 

It had been a busy day, and the whole party were very 
tired. Orders were given that they were to be called at eight 
o'clock instead of at seven, which was the usual time. George 
Ryder, however, woke of himself, and to his unspeakable sur- 
prise, found that his mind was full of arguments on the Catho- 
lic side. So strong and so clear were they that for the first 
time in his life a doubt as to the truth of the Protestant church 
came to him. He felt that, as an honest man, he was bound 
to make a note of these, just as he had long been accustomed 
to write down the arguments on the Protestant side. He, there- 
fore, reached out for his notebook and pencil which, with his 
watch, he had placed on a little table near his bed. It was 
7:15, and the thought came to him: "It is the exact time that 
that holy priest promised to offer Mass for me. This may be 
the effect of his prayers." He met this his first doubt by 
earnest prayers that God would guide him and enable him to 
do His Holy Will in all things. 

In the hotel where the Ryders were then staying was Arch- 
deacon Manning and his great friend Mr. Dodsworth.* Both 
were at this time very High Churchmen, eager to assist at 
every grand service they could, and to pick up everything they 
met with in the way of Catholic devotion. f 

When George Ryder and his party were starting in the old- 
fashioned carriage which was to take them by short stages to 
Nice, Archdeacon Manning came to wish them good-bye. As 
he did so he slipped a small book into Sophy Ryder's hand. 
She put it into her pocket until she could examine it at leis- 
ure. She found later that it was a little book on devotion to 
our Blessed Lady, with prayers and hymns in her honor. She 
had been longing to pray to our Lady, but had not dared to 

* His son Cyril became a Redemptorist, and one of his daughters entered the Good Shep- 
herd Order, and died as Prioress of Colombo, Ceylon. 

t In 1865, just after Manning's consecration as Archbishop of Westminster, be and 
George Ryder once more met in Paris. It was just twenty years since they had bid each other 
farewell when the family were on their way to Rome. They reminded each other of this. By 
God's goodness Manning was a Catholic priest and archbishop, Ryder a Catholic, his 
eldest son ordained, two other sons preparing to be priests, a daughter on the eve of becom- 
ing a nun, and his sister a religious of the Good Shepherd. 



4 86 $ FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 

do so for fear it might be wrong. Now that Archdeacon Man- 
ning had given her this book, she felt that she need hesitate 
no longer. He must surely have meant her to use it, and use 
it she did from that day, invoking our Blessed Lady more and 
more fervently. 

At Lyons Mrs. Ryder and her sister-in-law each bought a 
rosary, the first they ever possessed, and the little book told 
them how to use it. It was October when the travelers reached 
Naples. They found many friends already there. While they 
were still enjoying the sights of that lovely city they were 
shocked and grieved to learn that John Henry Newman had 
been received into the Catholic Church, or, as they then ex- 
pressed it, had " gone over to Rome." 

Christmas found them still at Naples and George Ryder and 
his sister attended Midnight Mass in the Cathedral. The sanc- 
tity and beauty of it made a very deep impression on them. 
Oa leaving the church Ryder said to his sister: " Now this is 
something really worthy to be called an act of adoration." 
This Mass was talked of for a long time afterwards and the 
brother and sister seemed to realize how it was that in old 
days Catholics in England had valued Mass, and how they had 
allowed no difficulties, however great, to prevent their hearing it. 

In February, 1846, the party reached Rome. Here they 
met their old friends, Charles Monsell and his wife. Charles 
was the younger brother of William Monsell, a distinguished 
convert who adopted a political career and eventually became 
Lord Emly. It would seem that many hopes were entertained 
in Rome that Charles Monsell and his wife would become 
Catholics, and some thought them more likely to do so than 
the Ryders, especially as their reception would not have en- 
tailed the pecuniary sacrifices which Geoige Ryder had to 
make. Unhappily the Monsells remained Protestants to the 
end. Charles died a few years later crying out for a priest, 
but in vain. His widow became the foundress of the Protest- 
ant Convent at Clewer, near Windsor, under the direction of 
Mr. Carter. She kept up an affectionate correspondence with 
Sophy Ryder when the latter had become a Good Shepherd 
nun. She was most anxious to* obtain from her all possible in- 
formation about the religious life, how to manage penitents, 
and the like. " We are all one/ 1 she would say, "you are 
Roman Catholics, we are English Catholics, but it is just the 
same." Sophy Ryder told her, kindly but with firmness, that 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 487 

the whole secret of managing the penitents lay in the power 
of the Sacraments, and that these could be found only in the 
one true Church, the Church of Rome. 

One great help to George Ryder in the process of his con- 
version was the testimony of the Catacombs. Here he saw 
clearly, unearthed before his eyes, the proofs of what Chris- 
tians in the primitive times believed and practised ; and the 
more he saw the more clearly he realized that these beliefs and 
these practices agreed with the Church of Rome, not with the 
Church of England. From the day of their arrival in the 
Eternal City the brother and sister found their doubts as to 
the truth of Anglicanism growing stronger and stronger. In 
a lesser degree this was the case with Mrs. Ryder also, but her 
health often prevented her joining in the expeditions and visits 
made by her husband and his sister. They frequently spoke 
of the wonderful sights they had seen ; of the Early Church, 
of the martyrs; of the old frescoes in the Catacombs, and the 
light these frescoes shed upon devotion to our Lady and the 
saints, showing that it had been practised from the very begin- 
ning instead of being an innovation of the last few centuries. 

Often as they spoke of these things, neither of them ever 
ventured at this time to refer to the possibility of their becom- 
ing Catholics. Only in prayer to God could a word be breathed 
about a step involving such terrible consequences. 

Sophy Ryder was in the habit of hearing an early Mass at 
San Andrea, the church of the Jesuit novitiate. It was close 
to where the family were lodging, and it had the further at- 
tractions of cleanliness and quiet. One morning a lady came 
up to her and very kindly asked if she would like to hear Mass 
in the room in which St. Stanislaus died. With mingled fear 
and pleasure she agreed and followed the lady to the Oratory. 
The beautiful altar was prepared and Mass was just going to 
begin. Everything in the chapel was devotional and impres- 
sive ; there was an atmosphere of sanctity about it which awed 
her, and as she gazed with reverence at the life-sized figure of 
the young saint on his marble bed, she felt that a heretic and 
a sinner such as she had no right to be in so holy a place. 
But she was destined very soon to feel even greater confusion. 
The lady who had led her to the chapel came up and reminded 
her by pointing to the altar that it was time to go up to re- 
ceive Holy Communion. Of course Miss Ryder could not do 
this, and the mistake made her feel more of an intruder than 



4 88 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 






ever. She slipped out of the chapel as quickly as she could 
and went home. 

It was some time in Lent that the Ryders made the ac- 
quaintance of one of the nuns in the Sacred Heart Convent of 
La Trinita de Monte. The acquaintance soon ripened into in- 
timacy. A retreat for ladies was to be given in the convent 

about this time by a Jesuit Father, a brother of Madame E , 

their nun friend, and it occurred to Miss Ryder to ask per- 
mission to join it. Leave was given, and Miss Ryder and an- 
other High Church lady, a friend of hers, went into retreat, 
resolving to attend all the exercises. An experience such as 
this could have but one effect upon a soul already so strongly 
attracted towards the Church. Sophy Ryder had indeed, be- 
fore beginning the retreat, promised her brother that she would 
neither make her confession or take any other definite step 
without first telling him. But it must have been quite clear 
to the Jesuit who gave the retreat and to the nuns, that the 
conversion of this lady was only a matter of time. As she sat 
in the pleasant room assigned to her, musing over the words 
of the last meditation and revolving in her mind the arguments 
of the controversy between England and Rome, the physical 
beauty of Rome was before her eyes. From her window she 
could see the illustrious city spread cut in all its majesty be- 
fore her, while in the distance, against the deep blue of the 
Italian sky, the dome of St. Peter's was outlined. Madame 

B 's frequent visits to her room helped to fix in her mind 

the truth and beauty of the one true Church which this ma- 
terial view symbolized. At the close of the retreat the truths 
of religion had taken a new hold upon her mind. True to her 
promise she had taken no step, but to remain for any length 
of time in her present state of mind was impossible. She hap- 
pened to know an English-speaking Jesuit, and to him she 
went for advice. He received her with great kindness, assured 
her that she was on the right path, and begged her to perse- 
vere in prayer, assuring her, if she did so, that God would guide 
her. He ended by promising her a daily memento in his Mass. 

On the Feast of the Annunciation the thirty ladies who 
had taken part in the retreat. were invited to the altar rails 
after Mass to kiss the relic of the True Cross. Miss Ryder 
joined them only after an assurance by one of the nuns that 
she might lawfully do so. 

The Ryders, during this critical time of their history, were 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 489 

greatly helped by the prayers of a saintly nun who was then 
living in the Sacred Heart Convent Mere Macrina. She be- 
longed to the order of St. Basil and had been Superior of a 
convent in Poland which had been cruelly persecuted by the 
Russians. She herself had undergone imprisonment and bar- 
barous treatment, and her escape from her persecutors was 
nothing short of miraculous.* This holy nun took a lively in- 
terest in the conversion of the Ryders, who felt afterwards that 
they had owed a great deal to her prayers. The evident lean- 
ing of the family towards the Church had caused much alarm 
among their Protestant friends in Rome, who tried hard to 
restrain them from taking what they called "the fatal step"; 
and even after their return to England, immediately after 
Easter, they sent books and papers to the Ryders to " coun- 
terbalance the influence of Rome." 

This seems a fitting place to mention a curious experience 
which befell the husband, wife, and sister during their sojourn 
in Naples. They were being shown over an asylum near that 
city, when one of the unfortunate inmates, a woman, addressed 
Mrs. Ryder. She pointed upwards, and said: " II coelo"; then 
looking at Sophy Ryder, she pronounced the words: "La 
Madalena"; and to George Ryder she said: f< Molto denaro." 
Within a very short time Mrs. Ryder died the death of a 
saint and Miss Ryder became a nun of the Good Shepherd. 
Mr. Ryder interpreted the soothsayer's words to himself to 
mean that he was to sacrifice much money ; but in later years 
he came into such large sums, owing to various legacies from 
relations, that the prophecy, if such it was, may be said to 
have been fulfilled in this way. However this may be, the 
words addressed to the two ladies were perfectly appropriate 
to what afterwards occurred. 

George Ryder's devotion to our Lady made it not sur- 
prising that on the very first day of the month dedicated to 
her honor he should receive a very signal and striking grace. 
It was the first Friday in May. The family were still in Rome. 
In the night George Ryder became very ill and it was feared 
that he had caught the Roman fever. As he lay sleepless 
through the watches of the night, he thought seriously of his 
position. "What should I do," he asked himself, "if I knew 
that I was about to die?" His conscience made answer clear 
and distinct: "I should send for a priest and ask him to re- 

* Fr an account of her sufferings the reader is referred to The Nuns f Minsk. 



490 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 

. 

ceive me into the Church of Rome." He felt quite convinced 
now that nothing was keeping him from taking this momentous 
step except the fear of the temporal consequences to his dear 
ones which such an act would involve, and then he fell to 
prayer earnest and repeated that he might have the neces- 
sary strength and courage. When morning came his mind was 
made up. He met his sister as she returned from Mass at 
San Andrea. "Well," he said abruptly, "are you ready to 
enter the Church of Rome, the Holy Catholic Church ? " She 
was overjoyed at her brothers words, for she had been won- 
dering how she could break to him the news that she longed 
to be a Catholic. "Yes, to-day if you like," she replied eagerly. 
He then told her what had happened during the night, adding 
that, with God's help, he meant to take the great step in spite 
of all consequences, as he felt it would be wrong to put it off 
any longer. George Ryder then explained his position to his 
wife. He told her that he was convinced that the Church of 
Rome was the one true Church founded by Christ and that 
his individual salvation depended upon his submitting to her. 
He asked his wife whether she was prepared to follow his 
example. Mrs. Ryder replied that her reason was not fully 
convinced, and that if she were then received she would be 
acting more from love of her husband and out of deference to 
his judgment than from her own conviction. On her own re- 
sponsibility, she said, she could not become a Catholic, and if 
she did so it would be because she trusted to his guidance. 
Then again the thought of her children was a grievous trouble 
to her. How, if she were to become a Catholic, could she un- 
say what she had always taught them ? 

As if to relieve her of this great difficulty a curious and 
consoling incident took place on the evening of the very 
next day May 2. Mrs. Ryder had gone as usual to visit the 
two boys after they had gone to bed. She found the elder 
crying bitterly. She urged him to tell her his trouble. Lay- 
ing his head upon her shoulder, he sobbed : " Oh, mamma, I am 
so miserable, so very miserable. I wish we had confession in 
our church as the Catholics have. I could be happy then." 
Surely this was our Lord's kind way of removing one of her 
difficulties. She told her son that his father had decided to 
become a Catholic and that he therefore would soon be able 
to go to confession. She kissed him and bade him go to 
sleep in peace, which he did. The next morning he and his 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 491 

younger brother talked the matter over and expressed the 
greatest delight at being able now to pray to our Lady and 
the saints. It was a peculiar consolation to their mother to 
find that they took so readily to those very doctrines which 
had been a difficulty to her. At this time, however, she did 
not feel that it was God's will that she should become a 
Catholic. On that memorable morning, as soon as breakfast 
was over, George Ryder and his sister went to the Scotch 
College to consult Dr. Grant. He listened to what his visitors 
had to say about themselves, and particularly about the state 
of doubt in which Mrs. Ryder still was. He promised to visit 
her. On his doing so he decided that, though her knowledge 
was wide enough, God had not yet given her the light of 
faith, and that she did well therefore in not being received. 
He urged her to persevere in prayer. The brother and sister 
then went to the Abbate Hamilton, a great friend who had 
been most anxious for their conversion. They found Mr. Charles 
Weld with him, and they two at once offered to do all in their 
power to assist the would-be converts. They advised them to 
choose some priest to whom they could make their confessions, 
and they eventually chose Father Grassi, S.J., of the Gesu. 
They therefore called upon him and he arranged to meet them in 
the chapel of the Scotch College, as that was near their home. 
At this great crisis in their lives, when they were on the 
brink of an unknown precipice of trial and temporal loss, the 
thought of the many prayers offered for them by numerous 
priests and religious was a great comfort to them. They were 
supported too by the knowledge that they were in Rome, the 
city of martyrs and saints, who had given up all for God, the 
center of the Christian world where rest the bodies of the 
glorious Apostles. George Ryder indeed feared not for him- 
self, but it was nothing short of anguish for him to think what 
might be in store for his delicate wife and their young chil- 
dren. It was not only poverty which faced him. This, indeed, 
was a necessary consequence of resigning his preferment in the 
Anglican Church. His marriage settlement was comparatively 
slender and he had naturally depended upon the benefice which 
had been given to him, and upon others which his family in- 
fluence would bring in the future. Hard indeed to bear was 
the prospect of poverty when he thought of his wife and chil- 
dren. But it was not the hardest part of his trial. What gave 
him still greater anguish was to remember the intense grief 



492 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 



and cruel misunderstandings which his own and his sister's re- 
ception would cause to his own mother, to his brothers and 
sisters, and also to his wife's mother, old Mrs. Sargent (to 
whom he himself was intensely devoted), and to the rest of his 
wife's family. He had come to be looked up to, since the 
death of his father, as though he had been the eldest born. 
Had he renounced Christianity and dragged all his family and 
his younger sister into rank infidelity or paganism, the dis- 
grace, the shame, and the grief of all his friends could scarcely 
have been greater. 

But there was a further difficulty which his conversion 
brought to him. A short time before he went abroad, at a 
time when he looked upon himself as certain to remain a clergy- 
man all his life, he had rebuilt his parish schools, and for this 
purpose he had applied to his old uncle, the Earl of Harrowby, 
who had always been kind to him. At his request, the old 
earl had lent him ;i,ooo. He thought at the time that this 
loan would cause him no difficulty. But in his altered cir- 
cumstances it became a heavy burden to him. It was a debt 
of honor, and it seemed something like a dishonorable act to 
take a step which made it impossible for him to pay it.* 

But the call of God was clear, and no considerations of 
a temporal nature could justify him in hesitating. No doubt 
the many prayers that were being offered for them gained them 
great and special blessings. The eldest boy, Harry, destined 
later to become a distinguished Oratorian and one of the most 
eminent champions of Catholic truth in England, was even then 
gifted with a clearness of intellect unusual in a child of his 
tender age. Though only nine years old, he used to listen 
carefully to the conversations carried on between his father and 
his Catholic friends, and he told his mother that to him "the 
Catholics almost seemed to be in the right, only, of course, 
papa knows best." His mother's teaching to him and his 
younger brother Lisle, about our Blessed Lady, the saints and 
angels, sorrow for sin and prayer for forgiveness, made him 
long to be a Catholic, though she was unconscious of the ef- 
fect she was producing; nor, as we have seen, was she herself 
convinced at that time of the truth of the Catholic Church. 

In God's good time, however, and much sooner than her 
husband had dared to hope, the light of faith came to her soul. 

On Sunday, May 3, the feast of the Finding of the Cross, 

* In later times Lord Harrowby generously changed the loan into a gift. 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 493 

she accompanied her husband and sister-in-law to the great 
church of Santa Croce to receive the blessing which is given 
on that day with the relic of the True Cross. Mrs. Ryder, 
when she entered the church, was in the state in which she had 
all along been. She knew that her husband was casting aside 
his career, and all his earthly prospects, for what he believed 
to be God's one true Church. In her soul there was no such 
faith. But at the moment when the priest held aloft the sacred 
relic, to bestow the blessing, Mrs. Ryder looked up, and it 
seemed to her at that instant as if a bright light came from it 
which penetrated to the very depths of her soul. She bowed 
down her head and all she could say was: "I believe, I be- 
lieve." All doubt and hesitation had left her. In an instant 
her soul was filled with strong, calm faith, and with courage 
to meet any trial which God should will to send her. 

When she left Santa Croce, she told her husband and her 
sister-in law that she was ready to join them and be received 
with them into the Catholic Church. On the following day 
they all three made their confession to Father Grassi, S.J., in 
the chapel of the Scotch College, and on the day after they 
drove to the house of Cardinal Acton, who had promised to 
receive them. After a short instruction they made their pro- 
fession of faith, and the cardinal administered conditional Bap- 
tism. Thus was accomplished the great step which was to have 
such momentous results for this world and the world to come. 

Leaving the cardinal's palace they walked home along 
what has been called " The Martyr's Way/' because of the 
countless martyrs who have been led along it to torments and 
death. 

They could now feel that they were truly members of the 
Church to which those glorious martyrs belonged and for which 
they died ; they felt too that they could count on having the 
same graces that had enabled those champions of Christ to per- 
severe in spite of weary years of trial, and sharp, cruel suf- 
ferings. 

Before the end of that week the new converts had made 
their First Communion and received Confirmation,* and as the 
weather was then beginning to be very hot, they left Rome 

* They were confirmed by Cardinal Franconi, Prefect of Propaganda, in his private 
Oratory. When they arrived, they found Lord and Lady Shrewsbury and Lady Acton wait- 
ing to act as god-parents to them. The Cardinal was exceedingly kind, and after the cere- 
mony he presented to each of the ladies a beautiful rosary mounted in gold. 



494 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 

M 

and settled for the summer at Frascati. Here they were to 
taste the first of the trials consequent upon their conversion. 
Two of George Ryder's brothers, Thomas and Alfred, arrived 
from England early in June, bringing an order from their mother 
for the return of the party without delay, or at least of their 
sister, Sophy Ryder. They described the distress and indigna- 
tion of their mother and the whole family as intense. Every 
possible argument was used to shake their constancy, but they 
had found Truth and could not return to error. No one can 
tell the pain it was to all three to be obliged to cause such 
suffering to those whom they loved so dearly. Mrs. Ryder's 
mother, Mrs. Sargent, was broken-hearted at the news, and all 
relations on both sides looked upon it as a terrible sin, and a 
great disgrace, to leave the "Church of their Baptism," as it 
was called; George Ryder was reminded of all he might look 
forward to from a worldly point of view, which ought to influ- 
ence him for his children's sake if not for his own. He was 
reminded, too, that the Church of England was an indulgent 
mother, who allows her children to hold any opinion they choose 
provided that they do not " go over to Rome." 

To all this George Ryder had but one answer: "The Church 
of Rome is the one true Church and I can save my soul in no 
other." He was made to understand how enthely they would 
be cut off from the rest of the family, and he was bid to con- 
sider the delicacy of his wife, as well as the interests of the 
children. But all this was beside the question. He had counted 
the cost and, as he said afterwards, had made the sacrifice of 
everything into God's hands, believing that he was doirg God's 
will. In return he received the grace of an unshaken confidence 
that God would always give him what was necessary for the 
good of his family even though he might have much to suffer. 
This holy confidence remained with him as his great support 
through his life, and never was he disappointed. 

There were occasions when he undertook things for his chil- 
dren, believing before God that they were for their greater 
good, even when he did not actually possess the money neces- 
sary for completing the plan. He was often blamed for this, 
but his confidence never wavered, and never did the required 
money fail to come to him, and often in ways the most unex- 
pected, though sometimes it was delayed long enough to occa- 
sion him a great deal of suffering. The actual humiliations and 



1909.] 



FOUR CELEBRITIES 



495 



privations of poverty he looked upon as beneficial, not hurtful. 
If, however, there was a question of the education of his chil- 
dren, care of their health, matter of vocation, and the like, he 
trusted to his Heavenly Father to provide what was necessary, 
and he was never disappointed. 

Before leaving Rome the family were granted several audi- 
ences with Pius IX., who was then beginning his illustrious 
pontificate. On one of these occasions the Holy Father singled 
out George Ryder's eldest son by laying his hand upon the 
child's head and telling him that he would one day be a priest. 
This came to pass. He became a member of the Birmingham 
Oratory and succeeded Cardinal Newman as Superior of that 
community. On his return to England, George Ryder was 
offered by his cousin, Ambrose de Lisle Phillipps, a small house, 
beautifully situated with several acres of ground, about a mile 
from his own house, Grace Dieu. This new home, "the War- 
ren," as it was called, must have been most acceptable to the 
Ryders after the harassing though happy time through which 
they had passed, and it was a house to which the children 
looked back in after years as a peaceful and blessed home. 
But, like so many glad and happy things in this world, it became 
overshadowed by a great sorrow. In becoming a Catholic, 
George Ryder had offered himself to God with a willingness to 
endure any cross which He might lay upon him. In March, 
1850, a grief, sudden and overwhelming, fell upon him. His 
wife had never been strong, but no one suspected that her life 
was in any danger. On March 20 she went, according to her 
frequent custom, to visit a sick person in the neighboring village, 
taking with her her youngest son, then only five years old, now 
a priest of the Redemptorist Congregation. She returned some- 
what fatigued and went to her room to rest. On the following 
morning she suddenly breathed her last. It is said that her 
husband, finding that his beloved wife, the mother of his chil- 
dren, had really left him, fell prostrate on his face on the floor. 
Like one who bows before the scourger, he lay under the af- 
flicting hand of God ; but not then or ever aftarwards did he 
once murmur at the heaviness of the blow. 

A very remarkable event connected with Mrs. Ryder, and 
one which throws a bright light upon her saintly character, 
ought to be mentioned here. In December, 1849, she wrote to 
her sister, Mrs. Henry Wilberforce, in these terms : " I do not 



496 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 



know how long you and Henry mean to remain in the Egyp- 
tian darkness of Protestantism, but I do know that I should be 
willing to die, leaving my husband and children, and undergo 
all the purgatory that may be due to me, if by so doing I 
could bring you all into God's true Church." 

These words were written in December. In March the 
writer died. In the following June her sister was a Catholic. 
In the following September Henry Wilberforce and the rest of 
his family were received. 

It is scarcely open to doubt that Sophia Ryder had offered 
her life for the salvation of these souls, and that God had ac- 
cepted that great sacrifice. 

Many years later George Ryder suffered another acute sor- 
row in the death of his youngest daughter, Beatrice, who had 
married Richard Hurrell Froude, and had gone with him to 
India. This was in 1877, and it is probable that the unex- 
pected blow shortened his life, though he received it, as he 
received all his sorrows, with the most exemplary resignation. 

He made a point all through his Catholic life of doing 
everything in his power to advance the interests of the Church. 
When every member of his large family was settled in his or 
her vocation, he felt that he could serve God better by becom- 
ing a priest. He spoke of this to his confessor, who very 
prudently suspended his judgment and begged his penitent to 
take other advice. He consulted Father George Pcrter, S J., 
(afterwards Archbishop of Bombay) and Cardinal Manning, who 
both approved of the idea. His own children, on the other 
hand, though they would have rejoiced much at seeing their 
father a priest, never believed that it was the will of God that 
he should be ordained ; and in the end his confessor, Canon 
Ryrner, decided that God had not called him to change his 
state of life. 

Throughout his Catholic life he devoted himself much to 
the service of the poor, making generous donations to charities 
at a time when his own income was comparatively slender. 
Wherever he lived he enrolled himself as a member of the 
Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and delighted in visiting poor 
families in their homes. Many a poor, squalid cottage and 
many an overburdened heart have been brightened and solaced 
by the sight of that sweet countenance and by the kind, tender 
sympathy that George Ryder knew so well how to express. 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 497 

It would be very difficult to convey in words to those who 
never saw him the nobility and beauty of his face, his natural- 
ly refined and well-chiselled features, and his expression, which 
was made still more attractive and lovable by his extreme 
goodness and the action of divine grace. 

He was, besides, a raconteur of quite unusual excellence, 
and his well-stored mind, his power of graphic description, and 
his keen sense of humor made him everywhere a very popular 
guest. 

During his residence at Brighton he served as a member of 
the first School Board, being the only Catholic elected. Owing 
to changes which took place on the Board, the Church of 
England party and the Dissenters became very evenly balanced, 
so that for some time George Ryder possessed practically the 
casting vote on any question upon which the other parties 
were divided, and he was able to exert considerable influence 
and to safeguard Catholic interests in a very efficient way. 

In this, as in all his undertakings, he devoted himself heart 
and soul to the service of the Church and the salvation of souls. 

About this time he published a pamphlet, the first part of 
which contained a very clear and effective statement of the 
claims of the Catholic Church to be the one true Church of 
Jesus Christ. It also exposed the nullity, or at the very best 
the extreme doubtfulness, of Anglican Orders.* The occasion 
of his writing this pamphlet was a peculiarly painful one. 
While visiting a poor family at Brighton, he discovered that a 
parson, believing in the validity of his Orders, had prevented 
a poor Catholic from having the attendance of a priest. The 
pamphlet was so clear and telling that it brought one person 
at least into the Catholic Church. 

In 1879, a few months after his daughter's death, George 
Ryder became sensible of a serious failing of health, and in 
May, 1880, he took to his bed, from which he never rose. 
Every sick bed has a character and a feature which can be 
crystalized into a motto. In George Ryder's case this was: 
" Do not pray that I may recover, but that I may die a good 
death." That was the great longing of his heart. He often 
paid that he felt his work was finished, and that he had noth- 

*This was of course many years before Leo XIII. 's decision pronouncing Anglican 
Orders to be " absolutely null aad utterly vojdj^BSRSHFfBBlQi^lg^is eren now of considerable 
terest and value. 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 32 




498 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Jan., 

ing left to live for. This work had been the training of his 
children. At the time of their mother's death they were quite 
young and the responsibilities of their education had devolved 
entirely upon him. It was a joy to him as he lay on his bed 
of death to feel that as good Catholics all in their sphere were 
working for God. Of his four sons, three were priests. Of 
his three daughters, the eldest was happily married, the second 
was a Good Shepherd nun, while, as we have already said, the 
youngest had died in India. All his living children were with 
him in his illness, except the nun. He loved her dearly, but 
he resigned himself to her absence, knowing that it was more 
pleasing to God than if she had been present. One great con- 
solation was the tenderness with which he was nursed and 
cared for by his son an official in the Treasury, who after- 
wards held the important post of Chairman of the Board of 
Customs, and later received knighthood. He had made his 
home with his father for the last few years and was a bright 
example of a devoted and loving son. 

During this last illness the sick man was consoled by a visit 
of several hours from the venerable Cardinal Newman, who 
was then in his eightieth year. George Ryder had throughout 
made resignation to the will of God the ruling principle of 
his life, and on the death of his wife he had composed an Act 
of Submission which was afterwards printed on his mortuary 
card and on that of his youngest daughter. It was indulgenced 
by Cardinal Manning. The last and crowning trial of his life 
came to him in the form of a long and protracted agony which 
lasted no less than seven days. A priest of many years' ex- 
perience on the mission declared that he had never witnessed 
a longer or more painful agony. While it lasted ore of the 
Carmelite Fathers was constantly by the sick bed, giving all 
possible consolation to the dying man, and when unconscious- 
ness came, the three priest sons took turns to be by his side. 
One of these, now a Redemptorist, writes: "I could not help 
thinking of the words: * They that are Christ's have crucified 
their flesh with its vices and concupiscences.' He was going 
through his crucifixion like his Divine Master, and he was go- 
ing to his reward. He had risked and ^sacrificed all for God, 
and now he was dying in peace and perfect resignation. . . . 
It was the afternoon of Saturday, June 19, 1880. I sud- 
denly noticed a change in the breathing." The rest of the 




1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 499 

family were immediately summoned. Father Cyril Ryder, hav- 
ing faculties for the diocese, gave the customary absolutions, 
while the others knelt at the bed praying. 

On the Wednesday following his holy death, a High Mass 
of Requiem was sung in the neighboring Carmelite church, his 
eldest and youngest sons acting respectively as celebrant and 
deacon. On the following morning the coffin was conveyed by 
train to Loughborough and thence to the Cistercian monastery of 
Mount St. Bernard. This house had been founded by Mr. de 
Lisle, and as it lay close to " the Warren," where Ryder had spent 
the first eleven years of his Catholic life, he greatly desired to 
be buried there. Mrs. Ryder had at her death been laid in 
the crypt of Grace Dieu chapel. At the very natural wish of 
her children her body was moved to the churchyard of the 
monastery and buried in the same grave as her husband. 

It was a favorite practice of St. Alphonsus, and indeed of 
other saints, to go in reality or in spirit into a cemetery where 
some who had held high positions and dignities were buried. 
He would *try to realize what they now thought of all their 
riches or honors or success. He would think how death equal- 
izes all, and that if one could take the poor skeletons and lay 
them side by side, one could not tell who had been rich and 
who poor; who master and who servant. It made him realize 
the utter hollowness and vanity of the world and the things it 
ralues, and it made him long to perform good works which 
alone will be the treasures of our souls when this life is over. 

This short sketch is in some sort like a visit to such a 
cemetery. The chief actors are dead, and the few that survive 
will soon follow them. No one who really believes in the Eter- 
nal World can doubt that the sacrifices and sufferings which 
George Ryder endured are infinitely more precious to him now 
than all the honors and dignities which might have been his 
had he not been faithful to Divine Grace. For him the sorrows 
of life are over, and "the former things have passed away." 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

IX. 

THE OLD FORGE. 

|HAT be the old farge, Father, an* over there's 
whur the wheel wur." 

The place looked as unlike a blacksmith's 
forge as anything well could. I had sought, 
without success, for this curious spot on many 
occasions, and I should not have found it now, but for the help 
of an old lady of my flock who acted as my guide. 

The farge, as she called it, looked like a disused stone 
quarry. It was circular in shape and some fifty feet across 
its depth perhaps about twenty. 

" Over there's whur the wheel wur, and the water come down 
here and went in that there slocker-hole * in the bottom. When 
there was floods old Jerry wur very near drownded." 

Some broken stone steps, steep and slippery, led me to the 
bottom. The walls were formed of the natural rock, and where 
this failed, the gap was made good with masonry. On one side 
a solidly built stone trough formed the bed in which a water 
wheel once worked. The water from the stream was brought 
in a wooden pipe, which shot its contents on the top of the 
wheel and caused it to revolve. Here was the motive power 
of the establishment. The great wooden axle on which it re- 
volved stood out beyond the wheel some two or three feet. 
It contained five great iron spikes which projected from it like 
the spokes of a cart wheel. As the great water wheel revolved 
these spikes revolved with it, and they caught and pressed down 
an oaken beam, whose shank was shaved to a slant for the 
purpose. As soon as a pin had pressed the shank down as low 
as it would go, it slipt off, and the other end of the beam fell 
with a terrific thud. At this end was the great, ironbound 
hammer head. No sooner was the hammer down, than its han- 

* Slocker-hole, a fault in the rocks. 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 501 

die was caught by the next of the revolving pins, which pressed 
it down as before. Then the pin slipt off again, and a second 
thundering blow on the anvil was the result. With the help 
of a number of mysterious rods and cranks, the bellows them- 
selves were blown by power obtained from the wheel. When 
the whole of the machinery was at work, the noise caused by 
the great blows, and the clanking and rattling of the loosely- 
working bellows rods, was deafening. The wheel creaked and 
groaned under its load, and not being hung any too scientifi- 
cally, added to the din. The pace of the hammer blows was 
regulated by the water supply up above. This was turned on 
and off by pulling or pushing a stick, which moved the last 
foot of the wooden pipe and caused the water to fall either 
over the wheel, or to shoot clear of it. The system was primi- 
tive and splashy. Rough elm planks partly shut in the wheel 
and made it keep some of the superfluous water to itself, but 
the whole forge ran with moisture and the place was damp and 
humid. Three parts of the circular pit was roofed over, and 
above the fire was a hole through which the smoke was sup- 
posed to escape into the air. 

It is silent enough now in the old forge. The roof has gone 
altogether, and there is nothing but a glorious blue sky, as I 
stand at the bottom looking up. It is damp and chilly down 
in this well, and I get back again to the upper level with a 
feeling of relief. 

" And did old Jerry live down there long ? " I ask. 

" From the time he wur a boy till he went blind. It wur 
that dark down there times that you couldn't see nothing, and 
damp so that it 'uld 'a killed anybody but old Jerry, and he 
wur one of the tough sart, he wur." 

Jane Snook pushed her dirty old linen bonnet further on to 
the back of her head, and with a hand on each hip, she con- 
tinued : " You hear'd what he did afore he died, I s'pose, Fa- 
ther ? Folks said at first as Alice Milburn art to be 'shamed 
of herself; but they soon got to talk different when they seen 
what she done it for. She wur a good girl, she wur, and I 
don't care what nobody says. Be 'e a comin' in, Father ? " 

We walk to Mrs. Snook's home across the grass of two 
meadows. 

"Who knows the story of old Jerry and Alice best?" I ask, 
as I sit on the settle before the fireplace. 



502 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Jan., 



"Blest if I do know, Father. They be arl that stuck up 
and full o' pride now a-days, that there's no talking to 'em 
about nothing. I sent Perkins* maid to shop day afore yester- 
day, and she 'idn't a come back yet she's los' the money or 
forgot what I sent her for one or t'other o' it. They be arl 
the same and I ain't a got no patience wi' 'em." 

I didn't want to disagree with Mrs. Snook, so I let her talk. 

"You d' know what Alice Milburn did wi' old Jerry, don't 
ye, Father? No? Well, I'm blest. I thought everybody 
knowd that git out, 'ull 'e ? " The last remark was addressed 
to about half-a-dozen hens who had walked into the kitchen, 
and were so tame that Mrs. Snook found it difficult to dislodge 
them. All the while we were talking the old lady was busy 
pushing sticks into the fire to make the kettle boil. With one 
of these sticks she drove the chickens from the room, and then 
sat down on an old box and wiped her face with a rather dirty 
apron. 

Mrs. Snook farmed. That is she kept a number of fowls, a 
pig or two, and cultivated an untidy, weedy garden. She set 
and dug her own potatoes, wore rather short skirts, and boots 
like a man's. I don't think I ever saw her without the linen 
bonnet, and through all the years I knew her, I believe it was 
always the same one. Mrs. Snook was honest, dirty, and hearty. 

The one thing I dreaded when I went to see her was the 
cup of tea. A brown earthenware teapot, with the top of a 
tin can doing duty for a lid, lived in the oven beside the 
grate, like hermit in a cave. The tea that came ut of it must 
have stewed for generations. If the color gave out ever so 
faintly, Mrs. Snook would add more tea, and put the pot back 
again into its cell, till things righted themselves. On this ter- 
rible liquid she lived. Sugar was added but no milk milk 
implied softness. I had to protest that I could not take tea, 
that it made me ill, that in fact, anything that would stave 
off a dose of the poison ; but I'm afraid the refusal always 
hurt Mrs. Snook's feelings, and sometimes she showed it. 

" If I tells you about that there affair, you won't write it 
down, 'ull ye ?" 

I promised accordingly. Mjrs. Snook poured herself out a 
cup of the correct color, and taking a saucepan into her lap, 
began to eat cold potatoes out of it with a steel fork. As I 
promised I wouldn't write down what she said I'm afraid I 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 503 

have an evil reputation in the parish for doing this I must 
keep to the bargain, and relate the story in my own words. 

Jerry, I learn, works early and works late at his forge. He 
is a little man, bent nearly at a right angle, and he wears a 
pair of glasses that are set in round horn frames, perhaps a 
quarter of an inch wide. The wires at the side are iron, and 
have been made or repaired on his own anvil. He is slow in 
his movements, and seems to keep time with his great ham- 
mer, which strikes its ponderous blows at a pace that is above 
hurry. As you watch him he fishes a queer shaped piece of 
iron, glowing white hot, out of the fire, and carrying it in the 
tongs, holds it on the anvil beneath the great hammer, wait- 
ing for a blow. Jerry pulls the stick which regulates the water 
supply, and a full charge falls upon the wheel. Its increased 
pace makes the hammer lift its head and fall again with double 
speed. This way and that he turns the glowing metal, and 
as blow after blow falls upon it, the iron begins to grow into 
a shape. Then it becomes cold and is put back into the fire 
again. Once more Jerry places the metal under the hammer, 
and when he has turned it a time or two, he throws it on the 
floor behind him, a nearly finished miner's shovel. Out of the 
fire comes another piece of iron and the process is repeated ; 
and so Jerry spends his day, spends his week nay, spends 
his life. Sometimes his work is varied with repairing half-worn 
shovels and picks, or a hanger for a farm gate is wanted, or a 
latch for a door, but Jerry never encourages fancy blacksmith- 
ing, for his work is to make shovels, and shovels only. If 
any one speaks to him he answers shortly and uncivilly. 

His forge is so far off the road, and the road is so little 
frequented, that visitors do not trouble him much. Sometimes 
a farm boy, working in the fields at hand, will come to the 
edge of the forge, and shout at the old man to make him look 
up. But Jerry never hears. The din of the machinery, or his 
native obstinacy, makes him deaf to every sound. Kicking up 
a turf with his heel, the boy waits till the blacksmith has his 
back to him, then takes a deliberate shot with the lump of 
turf, and drops flat on the ground to watch results. The re- 
sult is always the same. Jerry dances round and round, wav- 
ing his tongs above his head and saying things which the 
clatter of the workshop effectually prevents reaching the upper 
world. If the antics are not considered up to the mark, the boy 




504 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Jan., 

takes a second shot with something lying close at hand, and 
watches till the dance is over. Then he crawls backwards a 
yard or two from the edge, and getting up, returns whistling 
to his work. 

For years beyond any one's memory, Jerry had lived in a 
little two- room cottage, with thick mud walls, which was but a 
stone's throw from the forge. The roof of his house was 
thatch, and the rafters on which it lay showed inside, for the 
rooms had no ceiling. The door was so low, that even Jerry 
himself, little and bent as he was, had to bend yet more when 
he entered, to avoid knocking his head. The woman who was 
Mrs. Snook's predecessor, lived in the only other cottage any- 
where near, and this was, as I said, two fields away from the 
forge. She brought Jerry's food, and the little else he wanted, 
and placed it in the porch, for she was never allowed inside 
the door. 

Every now and then Jerry disappeared. He would ask the 
woman at the cottage not to put any more food for him, and 
then, locking up the part of the forge where the tools were 
kept, the old man would be lost sight of for about three days 
at a time. Mrs. Snook said he was like the corn-crake [land- 
rail] "he did come you didn't know how, and you only knowed 
he wur come, when you did hear 'un." No one saw Jerry 
depart, and no one saw him return. Like all else about him, 
his coming and his going were wrapped in mystery. 

As the years passed, Jerry's increasing age began to find 
him out. The terrible damp in which he always worked pro- 
duced rheumatism, and from all accounts, this must have at- 
tacked his eyes. Few persons interested themselves in the 
morose old blacksmith, and when folk in the village which 
was quite two miles away from Jerry's forge heard that the 
great hammer was stopped, they only remarked that that was 
always what they said would happen. But after a week or two, 
the hammer began again and Jerry was better for his rest. 

It was a day in the early summer soon after his illness, 
and Jerry was at work as usual. Suddenly he hardly knew 
where it came from he was confronted with an apparition. 
A slight, fair girl, with a quantity of light hair that the stiff 
linen bonnet seemed unable to control a girl, fresh as a 
spring morning, with pretty eyes and a gentle face, had come 
down the steep steps, and was standing before the crumpled 









1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 505 

up, dirty old Jerry, who glared at her through his black- 
rimmed spectacles. 

" I heard thou wast main bad, Jerry, and I be come to see 
how thou be'st." 

"Eh?" 

" I hope thou be'st better," shouted the girl, trying to make 
herself heard above the din of the machinery. 

" What's odds to thee ? " 

Not noticing the old man's rudeness, she laid her hand en 
his arm with such a singular gentleness, that Jerry started. 
" Stop the wheel a minute, I do want to talk to thee," said 
his visitor. " I won't hinder thee long." 

Jerry turned round to the forge, and began raking the fire 
together, as if he hadn't heard. The girl took a step towards 
him and pointed to the wheel. Slowly, reluctantly, the old 
man went over to it and pushed up the controlling stick. In 
a moment or two the noise ceased, and Alice Milburn began 
again. 

" T'other day, when I heard thee eyes wur bad, and thou 
coulds'n't work, I thought I'd come and see if I could do any- 
thing for thee. Let's look at 'em." Without giving Jerry a 
chance to resist, placing one hand on his shoulder, with the 
other she pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and looked 
at his eyes. Jerry could hardly believe such a thing possible 
that he could let any one, much less such a bit of a girl as 
this, take such a liberty with him. 

"They be very bad, Jerry, and they do want bathing. If 
doesn't have 'em seed to, thou 'ult go blind, and then the 
wheel 'ull stop altogether. Let I come and do 'em for thee, 
'ult [wilt thou] ? I'll be ever so gentle, and they 'ull be a 
site better for it." 

Jerry made no reply at all. He pulled his glasses down 
again and stood still. 

"You'll let I make 'em better, won't 'e ? " Alice asked 
again. 

" How did 'ee get down here ? " 

"By them steps, be sure," she said, laughing. 

" Get up 'em again, and get out of my way." Saying this, 
Jerry pushed rudely past her, pulled the stick, and a moment 
afterwards the hubbub of the forge was deafening. 

Alice took him at his word and leaving the forge went up 



5o6 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Jan., 






into the field and sat on the stile a short distance away. She 
was a curious character for, in spite of her fair, gentle face and 
slight frame, she had the heart and courage of a man. 

"I'll try him again presently/ 1 she said to herself; and if 
he ain't no better, I'll come again to-morrow." 

Presently she heard a step behind her, and looking over 
her shoulder saw Jerry, to her great surprise. 

" Come to-morrow, if you've got a mind," he said with a 
sort of growl. Alice took no notice. 

"Do 'ee hear?" 

"Yes." 

The old blacksmith slowly hobbled back to his steps, and 
Alice saw his head sink below the edge of the opening. She 
thought it best to treat him with as little ceremony as he 
treated her, and she was right. 

Next morning Alice was back at the forge. She had brought 
a basin with her, and a kettle which she rilled at the stream 
before she went down the steps. 

" Put he on the fire and bile 'un up quick," said Alice, as 
she handed the astonished old man the little kettle. But he 
stood with it in his hand, firm and obstinate. 

" You be duddered [made stupid] with the noise, I suppose," 
she said, taking the kettle from Jerry and setting it on the 
fire iierself. It was not long before the water was hot. Turn- 
ing an old bucket upside down for a seat, she set the basin 
filled with warm water beside it. " Now sit thee down there, 
Jerry, and let I bathe thee eyes." 

"I 'oon't." 

Alice took no notice, as if she hadn't heard. " Don't bide 
standin' there whilst the water do get cold ; sit down at 'onct." 
Very gently she took the old man by the arm and made him 
sit down. 

"I 'oon't let 'ee; I 'oon't let 'ee ! " he protested, as Alice 
took off first his greasy cap and then his glasses. The next 
moment she had put the basin in Jerry's lap, and then, on her 
knees beside him, she bathed his swollen and inflamed eyes. 
All the time she was at work her soft, soothing voice kept the 
old man from protesting; and when she had finished, and the 
wet cloth had traveled out of its due course over his begrimed 
features as far as she deemed it prudent, she gently dried his 
face and replaced the spectacles and cap. 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY I&YLLS 507 

"Be you coming to-morrow?" 

" Yes, I be." 

And this was all that was said on either side. Alice came 
the next day and the next; and at each visit Jerry was brought 
more and more into order. 

" Now say ' thank 'e,' " she said to him one morning when 
she had finished his toilet. Jerry made the reply as he was 
bidden, and added : " An* that be more nor I ever said to any 
one afore in me life." 

The old blacksmith was not the only patient Alice had to 
attend to. Most of the poor creatures the girl visited were 
thankful enough for her ministrations; and "good little Alice," 
as they called her, was welcome everywhere. Her self-imposed 
tasks made sad inroads on her time, for she earned her liveli- 
hood by knitting, as did so many in the village in those days. 

Alice Milburn could ill afford the time she gave to nursing 
the sick, and tending the old and feeble, but she had done 
it since she was quite a child, and now, although she had to 
support herself entirely, she still kept up the practice. At two 
and twenty she seemed just the little, merry, light-hearted 
child she had always been just as independent, and caring as 
little what any one thought of her. To her neighbors she was 
a profound puzzle. They had known her mother " stuck up," 
they called her and fond of giving herself airs. They con- 
cluded that Mrs. Milburn had put all kinds of grand and flighty 
ideas into little Alice's head ; and when the poor child's mother 
died, they charitably hoped that, now the influence was re- 
moved, she would grow up like other children. But her mother's 
death made little difference in her ways, and the lessons she 
had early learnt only developed more strongly as she grew 
older. Alice lived with a neighbor from the time she was left 
an orphan, and by knitting earned enough to be scarcely any 
burden ; and before many years were passed she was able to 
keep herself entirely. 

About a year before Alice Milburn began her ministrations 
to the old blacksmith she had shown herself to be like other 
girls in one respect at least, in as much as she had allowed 
and encouraged the attentions of a suitor. The entire village 
was taken by surprise. That Alice could ever marry did not 
seem to have occurred to any one. She kept herself so aloof, 
and yet made friends with every one, and with no one in par- 



508 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Jan., 

ji 

ticular, that it appeared impossible she could have a sweetheart. 
The young man who had had the temerity to walk out with 
her was the very last the village could have imagined she 
would have cared for. Josh, as every one called him, was a farm 
laborer a huge, fresh-colored fellow, awkward and blushing, 
with very little to say for himself, and possessing a fund of good 
temper. He had found Alice going out one wet evening on an 
errand of mercy, and she was so loaded with a great parcel 
that she was giving up the umbrella in despair. Joshua Vagg 
was passing at the time, and very shyly asked if he might carry 
the parcel. " Of course you can, if you're strong enough," 
said Alice; "and then I can keep up the umbrella. 1 * But this 
spoilt everything. Alice was very ^short, and she kept the 
umbrella close down over her. Josh was very tall and he could 
only look on the top of a black dome beneath him, as he strode 
along, taking one step to Alice's three. Of Alice he could see 
nothing, and only now and then could he hear her voice com- 
ing up through the umbrella below. When they arrived at 
the end of the journey, the young man asked if he was to 
wait and carry anything back. " I sha'n't be more than two or 
three minutes, for I only wants to give old Nancy the parcel, 
and tell her what to do with the different things." This was 
good enough for Josh, and so, with a beating heart and a drip- 
ping hat, he stood under a tree opposite until Alice came out 
again. " Let I hold the umbrella for thee," he said, as they 
started on the return journey, for he was determined to avoid 
the isolation it had caused before. "You do hold 'un up in 
the sky, Josh; but I s'pose you be obliged to if it's to keep 
the rain off thee and I too don't walk so fast, there's a good 
lad." Josh winced. He thought he was getting on splendidly, 
but Alice was only treating him as a child. " 'Ull 'ee be 
car'in' [carrying] any more o* them parcels to-morrow?" he 
asked in his slow, drawling way ; " 'cause if you be, and you 
be minded to, Til I'll come and help." The last three words 
came out with a run, for he was frightened at his own temer- 
ity. " I don't know yet, Josh. Come round about seven o'clock, 
and mabbe I can send thee somewhere with sommat, and then 
I can bide in an' do me knitting, for I be behind wi' the work, 
and that's true." This was not exactly what Josh meant, but 
he said he would come. 

From this day onwards Josh and Alice often " walked out," 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 509 

which means that they were mildly making love. Alice did all 
the talking Josh listened and approved. He carried her bas- 
ket, and still called her " Miss," for to Josh, Alice was a very 
superior being. When Jerry became seriously ill, if Alice went 
to visit him in the evening, when it was getting too dark to 
knit at home, Josh had quite a good spell of her company. 
The long, winding lane leading to the forge, where the nut 
bushes met overhead, tke stream that had to be crossed on 
stepping-stones, the stile at the end which was steep and awk- 
ward all gave Josh scope for imagination. When they came 
to the stepping-stones, he would cross first, and then hold out 
a great hand that would engulf and wrap round Alice's, and so 
help her over, when she could have crossed quite as easily 
without any help at all. Where the lane became " up at hill," 
as they called it, Alice would put her hand on Josh's arm and 
complain he went too fast, and Josh's arm would get lower, 
and Alice's hand would get further into it, until when they 
reached the stile it would have been difficult to say that they 
were not arm in arm. 

The reader will remember that Mrs. Snook is retailing this 
story for me, while she takes her tea. Thus far I have sat pa- 
tiently through it, .on the old settle before the fire. When, 
with every fresh name that was mentioned, the relations to the 
third and fourth generation threatened to be brought in, I have 
prudently drawn the lady back to the point where she digressed. 
Except for these excursions, the story is as she gave it to me. 
At this point Mrs. Snook exclaims : " Be now the pair on 'em 
wur main lovin', they were"; but as I told her I wouldn't 
write down any of her words, I must keep to my promise. 

Old Jerry's eyes were better for Alice's visits, but before 
very many weeks he had to stop work again. Alice had by 
this time got on such good terms with him, that he even al- 
lowed her in the cottage. Under her care the place was cleaned, 
set in order, and she even persuaded him to let Josh give the 
rooms a coat of whitewash. Before the autumn came Jerry 
was quite blind and almost incapable of doing anything for 
himself. He had consented to the doctor seeing him at Alice's 
urgent request, and the doctor having reported his case to the 
workhouse officials, they decided to remove him thither at 
once. This Jerry would not hear of. Alice arrived one morn- 
ing as the overseer of the poor and the parish doctor were 



510 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Jan., 

holding a consultation in the garden, out of the old man's 
hearing. " He sha'n't go to the House," she said in very de- 
cided tones, " I'll look after 'un and Til be responsible for 'un; 
and if I'm not let, I'll get some one else as can. 'Ull 'e let 
he bide a fortnight more till I do get it settled ? " This was 
agreed to, and Alice made her plans. Yes ; Jerry agreed, he 
even smiled, and it was the first time Alice had ever seen any- 
thing like a smile upon his face. But Josh was the great dif- 
ficulty she must break the arrangement to him. 

That evening as they were walking out she tried. "Josh, 
I've a got some arrangement I do want to make, and you must 
help I." Josh smiled and said nothing. "You do see as us 
can't marry just yet, can us ? not for two years or more, 
'cause of your mother." Josh had to support his mother, and 
his wages were ten shillings a week. " I'll be getting twelve 
shillings before two years, though," said Josh, in a rather in- 
jured tone of voice, " and us said as how we'd a get married 
when I'd a got eleven." "Yes, so us did; but, Josh, when 'e 
marries 'uld 'e mind marr'in' a widow?" Alice asked, and there 
was the least sign of a tremble in her voice. " Marry a widder, 
what should I want to marry a widder for ?" he asked. "Well, 
'cause I wants 'e to," she replied. "And if I do want 'e to, 
'e 'all do it just to please I, won't 'e ? " 

She turned up the stiff linen bonnet to look at Josh, who 
was so far above her, and the face inside it pleaded very 
sweetly. " I bain't gwoin' to marry no other maid than thou, 
Alice, and that's truth; and I couldn't, e'en to please thee." 
"And I don't want 'e to, neither, Josh; only what I means is, 
I'll be a widow when we do marry." "Then dost thou want 
to marry somebody else fust, Alice ? " he asked in a tone of 
bewilderment. "That's just what I do, Josh, and that's what 
I do want thee to let I do, and it won't matter; and then I 
can look after old Jerry properly till he do die." 

Josh stood still in the lane. His mind always worked slowly, 
and new ideas effected a lodgment with difficulty, but this 
arrangement of Alice's was quite beyond anything that had 
ever entered his head before. Alice continued : " You do see, 
Josh, it be like this. They do want to take the poor old man 
to the workhouse, and it 'ull break his heart, and no one 'ull 
do for him 'cept it's I, and it ain't proper for a girl to do for 
an old man like that, who 'ull be bed-ridden in a month or 



1909.] WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS 511 

two. I won't live in the house with 'un, and do for 'un, un- 
less I be married to 'un, and that's plain." "Then you do 
mean that by the time we wants to marry, you'll be a wid- 
der ? " said Josh, the light beginning to break in on him., 
"Somewhere about that, but mabbe we'll have to be patient." 

The parson at Elmwick found it difficult to give out the 
banns of marriage between Jerry Stripp and Alice Milburn, and 
the announcement on the three successive Sundays seemed to 
effect the congregation too. The wedding day came, and all of 
two villages ours and Elmwick turned out to see " Decem- 
ber marry May." Eleven o'clock was the hour fixed, and the 
crowd was in good time. Still no bride and bridegroom came, 
and rumor had it that the parson had gone away for the day. 
But the sight was too good to be lost ; and as things don't 
harry much in the country, the crowd waited until another 
hour had passed, and then slowly melted. Jerry and Alice had 
been quietly married at eight o'clock the morning before. 
Alice had not entrusted the secret to any one except Josh, 
and so he and the parson's wife were the only witnesses. Poor, 
simple Josh had to "give away" his sweetheart and had to 
guide old Jerry's trembling hands when it came to putting on 
the ring the ring, by the way, which he had bought at Bristol 
for the aged bridegroom a week or so before. As Mrs. Snook 
here remarked : " He'd had all the trouble of it, 'cept marr'in' 
her." 

Twelve months passed away, and old Jerry was completely 
bed ridden. Alice waited on him, put up with his temper, was 
heedless of his rudeness, and to a certain degree made him 
better behaved. Josh had a difficult time. A day or two after 
the wedding he asked Alice to walk out with him as usual. 
Alice had to explain that now since she was a married woman 
this couldn't be. 

Only slowly the new situation began to reveal itself to Josh. 
" Bain't I never gwoin' out wi' thee no more ? " he asked rue- 
fully. " Not so long as me husband do live," Alice answered 
with dignity, "it 'ouldn't be right." "I know'd I'd have to 
wait for thee," he said, " but I didn't think it 'uld a come to 
this. What I wants to know is, are we gwoin' to get married 
at arl ? " " Don't you see, Josh, I be married, and therefore 
us can't marry ain't that quite plain ? " Yes, it was plain ;' 
but it was all too complicated for Josh to think out. 



512 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Jan. 

The winter had passed, the days were lengthening out, and 
the first tinge of green was on the hedges. A rustic funeral 
was making its way to the churchyard at Elmwick. The cof- 
fin, short and small, might almost have been that of a child. 
Four men carried it between them, and the way they stepped 
out, showed that the coffin was not heavy. Behind it followed 
Alice, her linen bonnet being exchanged for a black straw hat 
and behind Alice followed Josh. He had not felt certain of 
his position on the occasion, and the idea that there is always 
a procession after a coffin, suggested his walking where he did. 

A few of Alice's friends gathered at the graveyard, and 
then all that was mortal of Jerry was given to the earth. It 
is the custom for the bearers and friends to return to the house 
after the funeral, and eat a ham, and finish with beer or cider. 
Alice dispensed with the time-hnored custom, and did not 
even return to the house herself. She had the key in her poc- 
ket when Josh bade her good-bye at the door of the cottage 
where she had spent her childhood. She had arranged to re- 
turn there, as her late home was too lonely. 

By the time the nut trees had once more made green arches 
across the lane that led to the old forge, Josh and Alice might be 
seen beneath them as of old. Once again he handed her across 
the stream, and when they came to the stile, he helped her 
over. Hand-in-hand they stood on the brink of the silent 
forge, which Josh had stript of all but the great wheel, and 
then they went across to the cottage, and Alice's husband 
pointed out with pride the little garden where of late he had 
worked so hard reducing it to order. 

"And now you do see what it arl corned to, Father," said 
Mrs. Snook, as she held aloft the last potato on the point of 
her fork, " it's the way them things al'ays ends. Alice had a 
found twenty pound in the house, when she fust went to take 
care of the old man, so there wus enough to ke'p 'un till he 
died, and to bury him decent wi' a ham an* arl that, had she 
bin minded to. After he wur agone she found dree hundred 
pound in the bank down to Wells, and that proved whur old 
Jerry wur arf to, when he went on them navigations and wur 
lost two or dree days at a time. They be arl dead now, Josh 
and Jerry and Alice, an' arl the lot of 'em. Git out, 'ull 
'ee ? " The fowls were back in the kitchen again. 



THE FATE OF BOSNIA. 

SOME IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMMEDIATE OBSERVER. 
BY BEN HURST. 

THE declaration by Bulgaria of her independence and the an- 
nexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria have, of course, 
surpassed in interest and importance every other recent event. 
How long behind the scenes these transactions have been in prepa- 
ration we do not yet know ; but it may be well to give a rhume of 
the facts that are known. Upon the granting of the Constitution 
Turks and Bulgarians fraternized as cordially as did the other races. 
A series of visits, in fact, took place of Bulgarians to Constanti- 
nople and of Turks to Bulgaria. The first step in the wrong direc- 
tion was taken by Turkey. To a dinner given by the Foreign Min- 
ister to the representatives of the Powers the Agent of Bulgaria was 
not invited. This was contrary to the custom which had existed 
hitherto, and was said to be intended as a clear indication that Bul- 
garia was to be treated, as in fact she was, as a vassal state. 

Bulgaria keenly resented this treatment, and when the strike 
broke out upon the Oriental Railway, a part of which passes 
through Eastern Rumelia on its way from Vienna to Constanti- 
nople, that part was seized by Bulgaria to be worked by the railway 
staff of the army ; and when the strike came to an end, she persist- 
ently refused to restore the railway to the Company. This was 
nothing less than robbery on a large scale, for the railway's rights 
in Bulgaria were legally secured ; and as its owners were largely 
German, and its managers largely Austrian, it brought from their 
governments public remonstrances. With reference to Austria, at all 
events, it may be doubted in the light of subsequent events whether 
these remonstrances were sincere. Before Prince Ferdinand de- 
clared himself Tsar of the Bulgarians he had been received at Buda- 
pest with regal honors by the Emperor Francis Joseph, and it can 
readily be believed that, as is now said, a secret treaty had been 
concluded between the Prince and the Emperor. A few days after- 
wards Bulgaria's independence was declared, and almost simultane- 
ously Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed. 

Both of these transactions are flagrant breaches, not merely 
of the somewhat vague provisions which are called international 
law, but of the express stipulations of the Berlin Treaty, which 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 33 




5 i 4 THE FATE OF BOSNIA [Jan., 

forms the basis of any rights that Austria or Bulgaria can claim 
to possess. Of late sympathy and respect have been accorded to 
the Emperor-King on the occasion of his Diamond Jubilee. It is 
almost a pity that he has lived to see this event, for he has 
brought a stain upon his old age which only revives the memory 
of many like stains upon the house of Habsburg. The worst of it is 
that of late these attempts at unjust aggrandizement have been 
failures, so much so that Austrian shortsightedness has become 
proverbial. The present annexation does but add to the number of 
the Serbs which are already comprised in the Empire, and has 
driven to exasperation the neighboring kingdom of Servia. [FROM 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD OF NOVEMBER, 1908.] 



ITHOUT preamble or explanation Austria has 
lately incorporated into her empire two Slav 
provinces Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had 
been merely confided to her charge by the Con- 
gress of Berlin. Austria has taken this step 
without a word of warning or of explanation and has trusted 
to the universal desire for peace to escape punishment or in- 
terference. 

Lovers of the moral law and believers in human progress 
may find some consolation, at least, in the outburst of con- 
demnation which this act has aroused throughout the Euro- 
pean world. Europe the Europe that has seen twenty cen- 
turies of spoliation is outraged by this unblushing violation 
of a solemn contract. 

Much has been said, and can be said in reason, to palliate 
Austria's usurpation. She has accomplished material reforms 
and developed the countries' resources during her thirty years 
of guardianship. Good roads, comfortable inns, roomy school- 
houses and hospitals have initiated the people into the conven- 
iences and advantages of modern life. Such delights, how- 
ever, are confined to the great centers frequented by tourists, 
and the remote parts of the provinces have not known a 
change since the day of Turkish rule. Her interested ex- 
ploitation increased Austria's revenues and gave her a hold in 
the land, the absolute possession of which was her ultimate aim. 
That she should claim to reap the full fruits of her work of ad- 
ministration might have been foreseen; that she should continue 
to exercise a certain jurisdiction after the grant of the promised 



1909.] THE FATE OF BOSNIA 515 

share of autonomy, could not reasonably excite cavil ; but the 
arbitrary seizure of the lands delivered to her care has alienated 
appreciation of her best and fairest endeavor. 

The pretext for abandoning an avowed intention to con- 
fer a system of self-government on Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
was the " radical and dangerous change in the neighboring 
empire." In other words, the Young Turk movement, inau- 
gurating freedom of nationality and conscience, is unacceptable 
to the Power which poses as the civilizer of the Balkans. As the 
Sultan is the nominal suzerain of Bosnia, the existence of a Turk- 
ish parliament would necessitate the attendance of Bosnian repre- 
sentatives at Constantinople and the recognition of an author- 
ity Bosnia's right to send representatives which no longer 
exists. Either this or the introduction of constitutional gov- 
ernment in the occupied provinces seemed the only alterna- 
tive. But Austria chose a third and dishonest course. With- 
out any preliminary steps, she simply proclaimed an act of 
union such as was resorted to by Castlereagh in a similar 
dilemma one century ago. No measure of liberty is granted 
to a people writhing under absolutism ; there is no canceling 
of the iniquitous press censorship ; martial law for political 
offences has not been abolished; there is but the harsh, cynical 
appropriation of a foreign race, recalcitrant but powerless to 
resist. 

The inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina are historically 
and ethnographically Serb. In customs, language, and creed 
they are identical with the Serbs of the free kingdom of Servia; 
the Serbs of Montenegro ; and the Serbs of Old Servia and 
Macedonia still under Ottoman rule. Serb tribes had settled 
in Bosnia in the seventh century and in the ninth a state was 
already formed. Among the various Serb kingdoms and prin- 
cipalities Bosnia kept a prominent place, although it remained 
isolated until the fifteenth century, when after a brave stand 
with its sister states it fell beneath Moslem invasion. Long 
afterwards we find the Austrian Emperors alluding to Bosnia 
as a Serb land, and all through the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries Serb nationality was manifest and undisputed. The 
present efforts to call the people " Bosnians " and their tongue 
" Bosnian " are pitiable in the light of facts. Bosnia was the 
cradle of the renovated Serb language, and gave out the first 
modern Serb publication Ike Grammar of Kulina Ban, a stand- 



516 THE FATE OF BOSNIA [Jan., 

ard work for Slav philologists. The everyday speech of the 
people of Herzegovina is the literary criterion for all Serb 
peoples, be they Montenegrins or Macedonians. The famous 
Serb ballads, finest of mediaeval epics, are written in Bosnian 
dialect. 

Identity of speech does not, however, determine national- 
ity. A stronger factor is the ever-growing tendency to union 
between the divided branches of a race, and this is evident 
among the Serbs of the Balkans to a remarkable degree. The 
question of creed, which plays but a minor part in political life 
to-day, would, if considered, prove another link of fraternity 
to draw Servia, Bosnia, and Montenegro together. The major- 
ity of Bosnia's population are " orthodox " ; next in numerical 
importance are Mohammedans ; and Catholics are in a minority. 
(The latest census gives 673,246 "orthodox" Serbs; 548,632 
Mussulmans; and 334,142 Catholics.) There is no doubt that 
Austria sought to further at the same time political aims and 
religious propaganda, and that she has succeeded in shifting a 
measure of her own unpopularity to certain representatives of 
the Church. The superficial judge, forgetting that Austria's 
most rebellious subjects are just now the fervent Catholics of 
Siavonia, confounds Austria's ambitious schemes with the cause 
of Catholicity and passes upon both a common condemnation. 

Fair-minded Catholics the world over have not hesitated to 
characterize in scathing terms the flagrant breach of contract 
committed by Austria in annexing the lands confided to her 
care. The would-be champion of the Church in Southeastern 
Europe has tarnished her shield and alienated sympathy from 
what is most worthy of respect. The admirable work of the 
religious orders in Bosnia cannot be overestimated. Their edu- 
cational and humanitarian foundations redound to the credit of 
Christianity. These obscure toilers in the Lord's vineyards 
should surely have no blame attached to their noble endeavor 
because they stand beneath the banner of one who presumes 
to point to their success as justification for treacherous aggran- 
dizement of empire. No amount of philanthropic institutions 
will wash away the stain of broken faith ; nr must the de- 
voted servants of the Church, ministering to the material and 
spiritual needs of a long-oppressed race, be identified with 
spoliation. 

Unhappily, nevertheless, Austria's recent action has inten- 



1909.] THE FATE OF BOSNIA 517 

sified an old prejudice against Catholicity among the Serbs of 
the Balkans, and estranged the Catholics of Montenegro from 
their brethren who owe her allegiance. The fate of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina has a dolorous echo in a little Slav land where 
Catholics enjoy every privilege possessed by their compatriots 
of the state religion. At the moment that Bosnia was passing 
under Habsburg rule, Prince Nikola of Montenegro addressed 
the following telegram to his lifelong friend, the Catholic Pri- 
mate of the Principality, Monseigneur Milinovitch, Archbishop 
of Bar: 

On this, the occasion of your jubilee, I hasten to assure you 
that it is a day of joy for Montenegrins of all creeds. Our 
earnest wish and fervent prayer are for your Grace's con- 
tinued welfare. Living amongst us for nigh fifty years you 
have worked, Faithful Servant of the Altar and True Friend 
of your people, to elevate and advance our race. Looking 
back on the half-century of your priesthood you may rejoice 
at duty fulfilled towards God and the nation. An enlightened 
patriot and good Catholic, may you long be spared to brighten 
our land by your wisdom and virtue. NIKOLA. 

This telegram would in itself show that Austria has not the 
exclusive monopoly of protecting Catholicity in the Balkans. 
The erection of churches and monasteries in Bosnia and Dal- 
matia is no doubt praiseworthy, but liberty of action for the 
devoted Italian missionaries in Albania would be a better proof 
of sincerity in espousing the interests of the Church. 

What Austria fails to recognize or, recognizing, fails to 
admit is that the Kingdom of Christ is not indissolubly con- 
nected with her own material prosperity, nor dependent on the 
political triumphs of her Empire and Dynasty. Her protection 
of the Church is decidedly not disinterested. She put a veto 
on the concordat between Servia and the Vatican. That ardent 
Slav apostle, Bishop Strossmeyer, was a thorn in her side. She 
wishes all Slav Catholics to rally to her flag, and determines 
they will have little rest elsewhere. Her dishonest machinations 
are harmful to what she affects to uphold, but she pursues her 
way, greedy and faithless. 

It remains to be seen how far Austria can influence a peo- 
ple whose ancestors clung to the Bogumil heresy through cen- 
turies of persecution, and finally embraced Islamism in numbers 



5 i8 THE FATE OF BOSNIA [Jan., 

rather than submit to ecclesiastical control. The true interests 
of sincere Catholicism will scarcely be furthered by the annex- 
ation of Bosnia. Austria's boasted culture, ever suspected as 
tending to denationalization, will be doubly unpalatable to a 
race, alien and wounded by the loss of the last vestige of 
liberty. Bosnia had entered on a heroic struggle for something 
more than that fourteen per cent of her children should be 
enabled to attend school ! For this is exactly what has been 
accomplished in the cause of education during thirty years of 
Austrian administration. 

In 1875 the first shots of the rebels against Turkish des- 
potism echoed in Nevesinje, and soon resounded in Popova 
Polya, Zubtsina, Bania, and throughout all Bosnia and Herze- 
govina. The " Rayahs " had made a dash for freedom. Hard 
battles were fought at Nevesinje, Stoep, and Trebbin. To the 
astonishment of the world a handful of Serbs persistently de- 
feated the Sultan's forces. Their brethren of the free States 
of Servia and Montenegro hastened to join them, and the two 
Governments prepared to follow the volunteers. But the Triple 
Alliance of that day stepped in; and in the interests of "peace 
and Turkish integrity " exacted neutrality from these neigh- 
boring and kindred states. Resistance in Bosnia continued none 
the less, and after the flame of insurrection had smoldered close 
on three years, Russia took action and peace was proclaimed. 
The Treaty of San Stefano, concluded in favor of the Chris- 
tian belligerants, was annulled at the instance of Lord Beacons- 
field, and replaced by the Treaty of Berlin, to which all the 
Great Powers were signatories. Austro-Hungary got a man- 
date to pacify the disturbed provinces and, immediately trans- 
gressing a first stipulation that she should make an arrange- 
ment of time and method with Turkey, entered Bosnian terri- 
tory as a conqueror. The unfortunate insurgents, who had 
taken up arms for independence and not for a mere exchange 
of masters, received the imperial troops with sword and shot. 
At Modrana, Doboj, and Maglaja fierce encounters showed that 
the spirit of the nation was still vital. A well-disciplined and 
well-equipped army, however, could not fail to subdue irreg- 
ular combatants, weakened by three years of constant warfare 
with the Turks. Bosnia has since been quiescent, but not re- 
signed. 

How far Austria has won the confidence of the people she 



1909.] THE FATE OF BOSNIA 519 

undertook to govern, may be judged by the vast army of con- 
tingents drafted into the land some weeks preceding the an- 
nexation. Chronic disaffection had necessitated the mainte- 
nance of well- rilled garrisons during the occupation. The sup- 
pression of national feeling will be no easier to accomplish now 
that the chains of absolutism are drawn tighter. Fresh difficul- 
ties are in sight, and it is admitted by the authorities them- 
selves that such difficulties exist. According to the Hungarian 
delegate, Nemets, the state of the annexed provinces is worse 
than it was under Turkey ! In vain does Austria seek to im- 
press on the world that she has the adhesion of her new subjects. 
The deputations appointed by the government, who went to 
Vienna to thank the Emperor for " graciously extending his 
sovereignty " over Bosnia and Herzegovina, were hooted on their 
return and forced to quit their native villages. When the Im- 
perial proclamation was read in public, sobs and groans were 
heard in the remote villages, and in the larger towns the citizens 
obstinately refused to decorate their houses in honor of the oc- 
casion. The prisons are now full of respectable merchants, doc- 
tors, advocates, and ecclesiastics suspected of high treason. 
The press laws are so rigorous that, one by one, the national 
organs have been stifled. 

After the suppression of the journal Otatsbina (Fatherland), 
the more widely-read Narod (Nation) succumbed, when the 
very advertisements were struck out by the censor. It had 
continued publication for a long time, even when it was forced 
to appear with three blank pages out of four. There remains 
the Serbska Retch (The Voice of the Serbs), whose fate will 
be undoubtedly the same, although it confines itself to print- 
ing extracts from Servian histories and time-honored patriotic 
songs, without direct reference to the actual situation. Before 
long, it is to be feared, the cause of the Bosnian Serbs will be 
confined to secret societies, which inevitably crop up when 
public discussion is prohibited. Austrian occupation, instead of 
diminishing the national sense, has had rather the opposite ef- 
fect. Already, in 1882, repressive measures were adopted to 
quell the tendency towards fraternity with ether Serb lands; 
and both Bosnia and Herzegovina have been treated since then 
as if they were held in punishment, and not in trust for Europe. 

The very fact of the annexation, at a moment when other 
Serb lands were getting a form of self-government from Tur- 



520 THE FATE OF BOSNIA [Jan., 

key, shows that Austria recognizes the inclination to Serb soli- 
darity. Martial law was proclaimed to subdue the people, who 
were represented by Austria as eager to incorporate themselves 
with the Empire of Austro-Hungary ! A campaign of system- 
atic calumny and intrigue had preceded the decisive step. A 
"Great Servia " propaganda was invented, and traced to that 
very unenviable and obscure monarch, King Peter of Servia, 
who is much too insecure on his own blood-stained throne to 
dream of subverting the equilibrium of others. He was a con- 
venient scapegoat for Austria's "faked" conspiracies; and when 
a fictitious bomb plot had successfully alienated the sister states 
of Servia and Montenegro Bulgaria had been previously es- 
tranged from both by skillful fostering of rivalry the moment 
seemed favorable for open usurpation. The danger of united 
Slav opposition once conjured, the pioneer of Germany's Drang 
nach Osten seized the two provinces that are a powerful link in 
the chain of Slav lands stretching from the Adriatic to the 
Black Sea. 

The foul means by which Austria attained her end will surely 
bring retribution in the near future. In particular the employ- 
ment of the informer, Nastitch first known to fame as the 
author of a scurrilous pamphlet, The Jesuits in Bosnia dis- 
credits Baron Rauch and his subordinates. Nastitch, after hav- 
ing posed as the friend of the unfortunate Serbs exposed to 
the wiles and corruptions of a designing Order, suddenly went 
over to the Austrian interest and proceeded to betray the se- 
crets of Serb patriots with whom he had been intimate. The 
man who had sworn to free Bosnia from " the cursed thraldom 
of the Vatican spies " went into the dock, and incriminated 
everybody with whom he had been in contact. At Cettinge he 
testified that he had participated in a plot formed in Servia 
for the destruction of the Royal Family of Montenegro; and 
that bombs for the purpose were manufactured in the govern- 
ment arsenal at Kragujevats. At Agram he gave "authentic" 
accounts of the Serbo-Croat Coalition members who had impli- 
cated themselves in the " Great Servia propaganda." Their 
open opposition in parliament concealed, according to Nastitch, 
nefarious plans against Austrian hegemony. This whilom de- 
nouncer of the " Roman Proselytizers" supported every govern- 
ment indictment with the same zeal and alacrity with which, 
sometime before, he had defamed everything Austrian. It was 



1909.] THE FATE OF BOSNIA 521 

when, through this unworthy tool, the patriots of Bosnia had 
been incriminated, and the independent Serb states set at vari- 
ance, that Austria resolved to transform her temporary rule to 
permanent possession. The method as well as the act may be 
qualified as immoral, arbitrary, and altogether unworthy of a 
Great Power. 

The consequences of a disastrous breach of faith are already 
making themselves felt in Europe. A wave of discouragement 
and mistrust has swept over the Continent. Of what avail are 
conferences and arbitration when the strong hand will not 
abide by a pledged word longer than it finds such a course 
profitable and expedient for itself ? Rumors of Austria's im- 
pending invasion of Belgrade immediately after the annexation, 
obtained credence in the most unexpected quarters. There 
was a hurried mustering of diplomats in Rome, London, and 
St. Petersburg to discuss the most feasible manner of pre- 
serving Servians threatened independence without recurring to 
arms. The recognition of the little kingdom as a neutral 
ground a species of Balkan Switzerland was at first sug- 
gested ; but who can now accept Austria's guarantee that 
she will respect the integrity of any state weaker than her- 
self? The clearly declared stipulations of the Powers have been 
set at naught; and, backed by Germany, the infringer of the 
Berlin Treaty sends out a silent, sinister challenge to Europe. 
Cynical disregard of past engagements and past arguments is 
the most revolting feature of Baron Aehrenthal's present policy. 
It was Andrassy's loud protests that hindered Russia's attempt 
to conclude, by right of conquest, an independent peace with 
Turkey in 1878. "The wishes of Europe and the right of the 
Powers to control must be considered." Russia submitted; and 
a precedent for the solution of grave international problems was 
formed on the basis of mutual concessions and friendly repre- 
sentations. To-day Austria repudiates any outside interference 
in the affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She insists, with il- 
logical brazenness, that it is a matter between herself and Tur- 
key. Nevertheless, her formal notification of the "extension of 
her sovereignty " is an admission that the Powers do possess a 
right of control over the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

The wily guardian of these two Serb provinces, who had so 
bravely wrested their liberty from the Turks, would fare badly 
if called to give an account of her stewardship. Apart from 



522 THE FATE OF BOSNIA [Jan. 

the veneer of prosperous civilization near the railway centers 
frequented by travelers, little has been done to alleviate the 
hard lot of the peasants who toil for a scanty subsistence under 
the most iniquitous system of agrarian laws extant since the 
abolition of Irish landlordism. The Austrian occupation, it must 
be remembered, was allowed and advocated, in the first place, 
for the impartial regulation of the land question. Nothing has 
been done, however, during thirty years of administration, to 
modify a feudalism of the most harassing nature. Serfdom had 
been abolished in 1851, but the relations of the Mohammedan 
overlords with the Christian population were not thereby im- 
proved; and since the insurrection of 1875-78 the Spahis view 
their tenants with increased disfavor. Austria, who had under- 
taken the government of the provinces ostensibly for the amel- 
ioration of the tillers* sad condition, has not attempted to 
grapple with the haughty and greedy landowners. They still 
claim a third of the land product; and a tenth of the remainder 
is exacted by the state. The mode of payment is antiquated 
and complicated. While the people labor under this cumbrous 
and tyrannical system of land tenure, material suffering, com- 
bined with political disability not to speak of the wounded 
pride attendant on repressed national aspirations provide a 
dismal outlook for the illegally confirmed regime in Bosnia. 

Meantime the harmony of Europe is at stake. Servia re- 
fuses to be pacified. Relying on the moral force that ever ac- 
companies Right struggling against Might; encouraged by in- 
terested factors eager for the first sign of disintegration in a 
heterogeneous empire; the Serb race, spread over the Balkan 
peninsula, awaits a pronouncement of the signatory Powers on 
the outrageous violation of the Treaty of Berlin. Should it be 
unfavorable to the cause of Justice should there be neither 
redress nor compensation forthcoming, in the shape of autonomy 
for Bosnia, or free communication for Servia with the Adriatic 
a spark can assuredly be lit that will not fail to ignite the 
long- dreaded conflagration of Europe. 




ANATOLE FRANCE'S " LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC." 

BY J. BRICOUT. 

III. 

A CARICATURE OF THE MAID. 

UR previous study of the subject has put us in a 
position to pass an intelligent judgment on M. 
Anatole France's portrayal of Joan of Arc. He 
writes : 

To feel the spirit of a bygone age, to become a contemporary 
of those who lived in other days, requires a long course of study, 
and patient, exacting care. The difficulties to be met con- 
cern not so much what is to be known, as what one must no 
longer seem to know. How much we must forget if we would 
really live over the fifteenth century ! Our sciences and our 
methods everything, in fact, that makes us a modern people 
must be put away. . . . Neither the historian nor the 
antiquarian can make us understand the Maid's contempora- 
ries. It is not because they lack knowledge ; it is because 
they have it. It is because they know modern warfare, mo- 
dern politics, modern religion. 

But when we shall have forgotten, so far as we can, every- 
thing that has happened since the youthful days of Charles 
VII., we will soon find that we must make use of all our in- 
tellectual resources to understand the situation, and to dis- 
cover what are causes and what effects. . . . The histor- 
ian must look far afield one moment and near at hand the next. 
If he undertakes to tell the story of past times, he will need in 
quick succession, and occasionally at one and the same mo- 
ment, the ingenuousness of the crowd whom he tries to pic- 
ture to the life, and critical ability of the first order. Para- 
doxical as it may seem, he must be an ancient and a modern, 
and live on two different planes at the same time.* 

It is, indeed, quite true, as we knew ourselves, that the 
historian must be an ancient and a modern at the same time, 

* Vie de Jeanne d 'Arc, vol. I. pp. 75-76. 



524 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " [Jan., 

since history is at once a " resurrection " and a " science of 
the past." The difficulty is in seeing to it that the ancient in 
him does not suffer from contact with the modern. This is 
what has happened in M. Anatole France's own case. M. 
France, who has been successful in the field of romance, has a 
strong imagination ; and he has given it free rein in his Life 
of Joan of Arc. Besides he is a free-thinker, a militant anti- 
clericalist. His prejudices and his irreligious dogmatism have 
stained his work, He is, in a word, a believer in the new 
science of psycho- pathology, and like a fervent neophyte, be- 
lieves that this new science explains the Maid of Orleans. 
Consequently he is not to be taken literally in his proud de- 
claration : 

I have written this history with an ardent and yet calm 
zeal. I have sought for truth without weakness and have 
met it without fear. Even when its features were strange, I 
did not turn aside. I will be charged with boldness until 
somebody charges me with timidity.* 

We make neither of these charges against M. Anatole 
France, but we do charge him and with reason, as will be 
seen with an insufficient detachment from himself, i. e. t from 
his own ideas and personal feelings. 

All through his book M. France endeavors to show that 
Joan has been overrated. He cruelly ridicules the " poor Duke 
d'Alenfon for saying that Joan showed great skill in assembling 
and leading an army, and was, above all, expert in placing the 
artillery. In the opinion of Anatole France Joan was brave, 
reliable, diligent, and full of ardor. She could ride a horse, 
spend long hours in the saddle, and make use of a lance, but 
that was all. She was utterly ignorant of military science. 
Besides " certain leaders, notably the princes of the blood- 
royal, knew very little more than she. To wage war in those 
days required nothing beyond ability to ride. . . . The 
military art was reduced to a few tricks such as any farmer 
might devise, and a few rules of horsemanship."! As a mat- 
ter of fact, Joan's only contribution to the success of Charles 
VII. 's armies lay in the confidence with which she inspired 
them. 

"Vol. I. p. 81. f Vol. I., p. 47. 



1909.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " 525 

When she announced that she had had a revelation from 
the Archangel Michael with reference to the war, she filled 
the Armagnac soldiers and the people of Orleans with as much 
confidence as an engineer of the Republic would have inspired 
in the Loire militia in the winter of 1871 by inventing smoke- 
less powder or an improved style of cannon. What people 
looked for from science in 1871, was expected from religion in 
1428.* 

To tell the truth, Joan's military talent is of slight concern 
to us, for she will not be placed on our altars because of skill 
in war. Still we cannot help noticing that M. France settles 
the question somewhat too summarily. We will grant readily 
enough that certain witnesses in the rehabilitation trial, spoke 
about Joan's military qualifications without knowing anything 
about them, and apparently according to instructions. But M. 
France exaggerates when he tells us that the military science 
of the fifteenth century was worthless and null. Man of the 
twentieth century though he be, and member of the Academy, 
he stands in a rather ridiculous light when he makes bold in 
this matter, not only to contradict the soldiers of the past, who 
were in a better position than he to judge of Joan's achieve- 
ments, but also to set himself against officers of our own times, 
who have proclaimed her genius as a tactician, after a con- 
scientious study of her campaigns. Again, according to M. 
France, it was not hard for Joan to vanquish the English: 

Their ridiculously small garrisons were prisoners in the 
conquered country. They lacked means both to take new 
provinces and to pacify those they held. . . . What is 
astonishing is not that the English were driven out of France, 
but that they were driven out so slowly. 

Assuredly "Joan rendered a two- fold service to the royal 
cause, which was the national cause as well. She inspired 
confidence in Charles VII. 's soldiers, who thought her lucky; 
and fear in the English, who imagined that she was the devil." 
But "the misfortunes of the English, from 1428 on, may be 
explained very naturally"; and "it was not Joan who drove 
the English out of France. If she helped to save Orleans, 
she rather retarded its deliverance, by neglecting the oppor- 

*Vol. I., p. 41. 



526 , ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " [Jan., 

tunity to recover Normandy, for the sake of the Consecration 
march. 1 ' 

These, it must be admitted, are not common-place asser- 
tions, but on what do they rest? In complicated questions 
one can always conjure up something to justify one's opinions. 
But I say again that Joan's contemporaries and even present- 
day experts, who are more competent to decide in these matters 
than M. France, were and are of a decidedly different opinion. 
Is it not most reasonable to trust them in preference to him? 
If one reflects, for example, on the great importance people 
then attached to the consecration of the king, one will easily 
do justice to M. France's enigmatical assertion about that 
march. It is not enough to hit hard; one must, above all, hit 
fairly. 

Another opinion held by M. France is that Joan's courage 
has also been overrated. She showed herself a very weak 
woman during the last few days of her life, and on several 
occasions retracted previous assertions, in the hope of satisfy- 
ing her judges and escaping death. In this connection it will 
be well to recall what was said in our second article about the 
historical value of the condemnation trial records and the Post- 
humous Postscript,! 

But even if these texts be reliable, it does not follow that 
Joan was so seriously weak. Catholic historians who take her 
expression about Beaurevoir literally, and who admit what 
these documents say about the sign given to the king, justify 
or excuse her easily enough, as we saw before. They also en- 
deavor, if not to exculpate her altogether, to show at least that 
she was not gravely culpable, even if she made the two-fold 
retractation as it is described in the record of the first trial 
and in the Postscript. Petit de Julleville writes as follows : 

There before the grim pile ready to leap into flame, before 
the half-hostile, half-friendly crowd which cried to her, in 
wrath and in pity, to make the abjuration, exhausted at last 
and almost annihilated by her long imprisonment, by chains, 
by injuries, by threats, by violence, by sickness, by the 
agony of thirty cross-examinations, by the consuming weari- 
ness of a trial that lasted 114 days, this nineteen-year-old 

* Vol. I., pp. 49-51 passim. 
fTHE CATHOLIC WORLD, December, 1908, p. 351. 



1909.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC ' 527 

girl gave way to fear. I^et the shame of it fall on her judges 
and executioners.* 

Further on he writes: 

In opposition to many historians, t I believe that this offi- 
cial report is trustworthy. I think I see in it Joan's lan- 
guage and sentiments. After an hour of weakness, she re- 
gained her self-control, and then voluntarily took back a re- 
tractation which had been snatched from her by surprise and 
violence. | 

He writes again : 

All the witnesses of the last hour that she spent in the 
prison were her enemies. At any rate they were the judges 
who had condemned her, and one may, therefore, justly in- 
cline to the belief that they had an interest in making it ap- 
pear that she had been somewhat weak. Now what are we 
to think about the statement they all say she made to them 
on that last morning : " My voices have deceived me " ? 

Such an avowal seems at variance with her steadfastness 
at the stake. That she was firm then is admitted by all who 
were present at her execution. They all admired the heroism 
of which she then gave proof. Because of these facts, those 
who testified to her weakness in prison, have often been 
charged with perjury. The probability is that they simply 
erred by exaggerating the meaning of a concession she made 
to them. The account given by Jean Toutmouille, the Do- 
minican, may set us on the right track. According to him, 
Cauchon had said to Joan : " Come now, Joan, you have 
always told us that your 4 voices ' said you would be set free. 
You see how they have deceived you. Own up, then, to the 
truth." Then Joan answered : ** Yes ; / see clearly that they 
have deceived me." Supposing these words to be authentic, 
we ask what is their true meaning. She did not mean to say : 
" Those * voices ' are not from God." A few moments more, 
and she will die affirming that they are from God. What she 

* LA Venerable Jeanne d'Arc, p. 151. 

t The point in question here is what the Posthumous Postscript says about the prisoner's 
resumption of male attire. Petit de Julleville does not deny the statement that a snare was 
laid to ruin her, but he believes that " she fell into it deliberately, preferring to die rather than 
continue in her abjuration." Op. cit., p. 155. 

\ Op. cit., p. 148. M. France (Vol. II. pp. 377, 379) does not admit the truth of what 
Massieu and others said in the rehabilitation trial about the insults offered to Joan in prison. 
However, he blames the English for leaving Joan her male clothing to tempt her, and the 
judges for sentencing her to prison when they were well aware that they could not put her in 
any ecclesiastical prison. 



528 , ANATOLE FRANCE'S "JOAN OP ARC " f Jan., 

meant to say is this: " I did not understand them. I thought 
that they promised me safety, and now I see I am going to 
die." Cauchon insisted : " Then were those ' voices ' good or 
bad?" "I leave that to Mother Church," she said. (Ac- 
cording to another version her answer was : " I leave that to 
you churchmen.") No ; she did not disavow her mission. 
She was simply weary of arguing, and since her last hour 
was so near, she wanted to think of God alone, and let men 
believe what they would about her. 

She ardently desired to receive Holy Communion before 
going to her death. To get this favor from her judges a 
lavor which was denied on principle to unrepentant relapsed 
she had to bend them by a phrase which they could inter- 
pret, strictly speaking, as a last concession.* 

An hour of weakness. . . . A last concession. Yes ; that 
can be considered a merely venial fault. The solution offered 
by Joan's latest Catholic biographers, however, is much more 
pointed and radical, The records of the condemnation trial 
and the Posthumous Postscript are justly open to suspicion in 
connection with her attempt to escape from Beaurevoir, her an- 
swers to inquiries concerning the "sign" given to the king, 
and her last days. 

The formula of abjuration which Joan pronounced and rati- 
fied at the cemetery of Saint Ouen "was the exact opposite 
of an abjuration in matters of faith. It did not imply an oath. 
It did not contain anything unlawful. All that Joan renounced 
in it was the wearing of men's clothes, the carrying of arms, 
and the wearing of her hair clipped. The other articles were an 
unqualified act of submission to the Universal Church, and a 
conditional act of submission to the Rouen tribunal: * pro- 
vided it be pleasing to God.' These were acts for which the 
servant of God deserved praise, not blame." If she dressed 
again as a man a few days later, in spite of her promise, it 
was out of necessity and for the preservation of her virtue. 
Let the responsibility for that fall on the Bishop of Beauvais, 
" who, after publicly agreeing to put her in an ecclesiastical 
prison and to give her a woman companion, shamelessly broke 
his promise." 

Finally, the Posthumous Postscript is unworthy of credence. 
1 The charges formulated in this document are as unfounded 

* o/. v., pp. 160-162. 



1909.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC" 529 

as the hateful epithets applied to the servant of God in the 
abjuration formula forged by the Bishop of Beauvais."* 

Both of these solutions advanced by Catholic authors give, 
as will be seen, a very different impression of Joan from that 
which M. France's work leaves in his reader's minds. Despite 
his assertions, Joan has not been overrated. His feverish at- 
tempts to disparage, to misrepresent, and to disfigure her, are 
all in vain. She still stands worthy of gratitude and admiration. 

What does M. Anatole France really think of Joan ? In 
his judgment she is simply the victim of hallucinations on a 
higher plane than others of her class, if one may so speak 
but for all that she is the plaything of a diseased imagination, 
not at intervals only, but habitually. This last phrase falls 
from his pen every minute,! and one may be sure that there 
is a very definite purpose underlying its frequent use. 

Even after the pontifical decree of 1904 had proclaimed that 
Joan's virtues were of heroic cast, a Catholic could still admit $ 
that she sometimes deceived herself about the nature or the 
interpretation of her "voices" and their revelations. That 
would not be so very abnormal, nor would it be incompatible 
with sanctity. M. France notes, with marked satisfaction, that 
Joan was deceived by her "voices" and that she frequently 
admitted the fact herself. He writes : 

While the trial lasted, trusting her " voices," she counted 
on being set free. She did not know how nor when her de- 
liverance would be effected, but she was just as sure of it as 
of our ford's presence in the Holy Kucharist. . . . 

Full of confidence, she waited for the angels and saints to 
accomplish their promises by coming to set her free. She did 
not know how nor when her rescue would be brought about, 
but she had no doubt it would be accomplished. To doubt 
that would be to doubt Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and 
our lyord ; that would mean her " voices " were evil. Her 
"voices " had told her not to fear, and she did not. . . I 

" Now, see here, Joan," said the Lord Bishop of Beauvais 
to her, ' ' you have always told us that your * voices ' prom- 
ised you your freedom. You see now how they have de- 

* Dunand, L'Hlroicite des Vertus de Jeanne d 'Are et la Revision de son Histoire t cf % Revue 
du Clergt Frangais, April 15, 1904. 

tTo give only one example : " Her perpetual hallucinations very often rendered her in- 
capable of distinguishing between truth aud falsehood, Vol. I., p. 3. 

JSee THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1908, p. 247. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 34 



530 . ANATOLE FRANCE'S tl JOAN OF ARC" [Jan., 

ceived you. Come, now, tell us the truth." She answered : 
"Yes; I see clearly that they have deceived me. . . ." 
" Do you still believe in } T our ' voices' ? " "I believe only in 
God, and I no longer put willing faith in those ' voices ' which 
have deceived me in this way." * 

It is very probable and almost certain that these words do 
not give us a faithful account of Joan's thoughts. But even 
if Joan did believe that she had made a mistake in thinking 
that her " voices" spoke to her about her "deliverance"; even 
if she had misinterpreted the "deliverance" of which they 
spoke ; even if she had been led consequently, by the turn of 
events, to realize that she had deceived herself, we would have 
no right to charge her with having doubted her mission. 
Neither might we say that she was conscious during certain 
lucid intervals, of being ordinarily a victim of hallucinations, f 
We may remark that a person may make a mistake about one 
point of an accidental character, without being always deceived 
about what is essential. 

Whatever may be thought about this particular case, it is 
quite certain that Joan was not the complete and hopeless 
slave of hallucinations that M. France made her out. He 
asserts: 

The chief conclusion drawn from the documents is that she 
was a saint. She was a saint endowed with all the attributes 
of sanctity as it was conceived by the fifteenth century. \ 
She had visions. They were neither shams nor counterfeits. 
She believed that she really heard voices speaking to her 
and that they did not come from human lips. . . . 

Is not that the same as saying that she had hallucinations 
of sight, of hearing, of touch, and of smell? 

M. France faces the question as to the objective character 
of Joan's visions and voices. Joan believed they were real. 
Therefore, she was the victim of a delusion, No other expla- 
nation is possible; none other is to besought. If one were to 

*Vol. II., pp. 231, 254, 385, 387. 

t This does not fit in very well with M. France's theory about the Maid's " perpetual hallu- 
cinations." 

*M. France is very fond of the idea that he expresses in this phrase. He dwell* on it 
frequently. On page 38 of his first volume he writes as follows : " Unfortunately the idea of 
sanctity has greatly degenerated in the Church since the Council of Trent, and orthodox his- 
torians are very little inclined to acquaint themselves with the vagaries of the Catholic Church 
in past ages." $V ol. I., pp. 32-33. 



1909.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " 531 

say to him: May there not be, after all, a world of spirits su- 
perior to man who occasionally enter into communication with 
us?" he would answer: "Nonsense." Yet what proof is there 
to back up such stout denial? What is it that proves so con- 
clusively that Joan was deluded ? 

The first "proof" offered by M. France is an observation, 
suggested to him, he tells us, " by a study of the documentary 
evidence," and one which seems to him " of infinite impor- 
tance " : 

The visionaries who believe themselves invested with a 
divine mission are marked off from the rest by singular char- 
acteristics. When a man studies these mystics, and com- 
pares them one with another, he will see that they all present 
certain features of resemblance which can be followed down 
to very minute details, all of which find expression in various 
words and acts. When he recognizes the strict determinism 
which governs the movements of these visionaries, he is like- 
ly to feel surprise at the fatal uniformity with which the 
human machine responds to the action of one and the same 
mysterious agent. Joan belonged to this religious group, 
and it is an interesting study to compare her in this connec- 
tion with Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Colette of Corbie, 
Yves Nicolazie, the peasant of Kernanna, Suzette Labrousse, 
the prophetess of the Constitutional Church, and so many 
other seers and seeresses of this class, who all wear a family 
resemblance. Three visionaries in particular are closely re- 
lated to Joan, The first was a serf of Champagne, whose 
mission was to speak to King John . . . ; the second was 
a blacksmith of Salon . . . ; the third, a peasant from 
Gallardon, by the name of Martin. Despite the difference of 
sex, there are very intimate and profound resemblances be- 
tween these three men and Joan of Arc. The similarity is 
one of nature even, and the differences which seem at first 
sight to put a wide gap between her and them, are of the 
esthetic, Asocial, and historical order, and are, consequently, 
external and contingent. To be sure there is a contrast be- 
tween them in appearance and fortune. They were as ill- 
favored as she was charming ; they have been left in oblivion 
while she has gained in strength and has flourished in legend 
The scientific mind, however, detects the qualities held in 
common by the fairest specimens and the veriest abortions of 
the same species and thus attests the identity of their origin.* 

Vol. I., pp. 35-37. 



532 ' ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " [Jan., 

Joan then was a victim of hallucinations because she bears 
"a family resemblance" to certain persons who, according to 
M. France, are commonly recognized as visionaries. This rea- 
soning is not conclusive. A fool, who labors under delusions 
and thinks he has been sent by God to save his country, may 
resemble in many points a sound-minded man who has real 
visions and has really received a commission from God to de- 
liver his people. The " nature even " of their preoccupations 
might create between them "intimate and profound resem- 
blances.' 1 It does not follow from this that they were equally 
inspired by God, or were equally foolish. Christianity and the 
fetichism of savages resemble each other, and in certain im- 
portant details, as, for example, in calling on their God for 
help, but no one can rightly infer from this fact that both are 
divinely revealed, or that both are human inventions. For the 
same reason, the resemblances pointed out by M. France fail 
to justify the conclusion he draws from them. 

A second argument advanced by M. France is that there 
were swarms of visionaries in Joan's days, and it is no more 
than just to rank her among them. 

Together with interminable wars, misery and ignorance 
had reduced mankind to mental poverty and extreme moral 
indigence. . . . 

At this crisis many holy women appeared in the little army 
of the L,oire. They led a singular life, like Joan, and were in 
touch with the Church Triumphant. They were, so to speak, 
a flying column of Beguines who followed the army. . . . 
They all had wonderful visions. Joan saw Saint Michael in 
arms and Saints Catherine and Margaret carrying crowns. 
L,a Pierronne saw God clothed to His feet in a white robe 
with a beautiful red toque. Catherine of L,a Rochelle saw a 
white lady dressed in gold cloth.* 

Yes, troubled times and seasons of misery often beget folly. 
History tells us that. But, again, this fact, and this by itself 
alone, does not prove that Joan also was a visionary and a vic- 
tim of delusions, the complete and perpetual slave of halluci- 
nations, as she has been described. 

The two reasons brought forward by M. France are very 
weak. They have no weight except with the superficial and 

*Vol. I., p. 21 ; Vol. II., p. 96. 



1909.] ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC" 533 

inreflecting, or with those who, like M. France himself, reject 
ie supernatural and deny the possibility or the reality of a 
livine intervention in human affairs. When a man denies 
priori the supernatural, he must extricate himself from diffi- 
culties as best he can and adopt the only solution left. At 
bottom M. France's argument comes to this : Joan is a victim 
of hallucinations because she cannot be anything else, since 
there is nothing supernatural. We who believe in the super- 
natural make bold to declare his reasoning defective and radi- 
cally false. 

We do not admit the fact of a concrete miracle without 
duly established proofs, nor do we think ourselves authorized 
to reject duly established proofs, because they force the con- 
clusion that a miracle has been wrought. 

On what side must the truly scientific spirit range itself ? 
M. France has offered only bad reasons in support of his denial. 
What good reasons have we to offer in support of our affirma- 
tion ? 

Joan was ignorant, but no trace of superstition can be found 
in her. " Quite near Domremy," she said, in answer to her 
judges, "there is a tree called the Ladies 1 tree, or the tree of 
the fairies. I have heard it said that people suffering from 
fever drink the water there to be cured. I have myself seen 
them drinking there, but I do not know whether they were 
cured or not. I have frequently heard old people, who were 
not of my family, say that the fairies haunt that spot. A wo- 
man named Joan, my godmother, and wife of Mayor Aubery, 
even said that she had seen the fairies. I do not know if that 
were so, but I have never seen them myself." Joan it would 
seem was not over-credulous, nor excessively impressionable. 

Nor was there any trace of religious or patriotic ecstasy in 
her when she received the revelation of her " voices " for the 
first time, at thirteen years of age. Her piety was normal and 
reasonable ; her love of country well-balanced. On this last 
point Petit de Julleville writes with great good sense : 

The trouble that the war brought on her in childhood has 
sometimes been exaggerated.* How many provinces there 
were that had to suffer more grievous afflictions than the 
Marche of Lorraine. Relatively speaking, it fared well. 

* M. France has made this mistake. 



5 34 ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " [Jan,, 

The sum of its troubles amounted to unbloody alarms, the 
menaces of marauding bands, and hurried flights with the 
threatened live stock. Before she went to war, Joan very 
probably never saw French blood flow except what was spilled 
when the small boys of Domremy had stone-throwing battles 
with the "Burgundians " of Maxey. The first "voices" 
that spoke to her during the summer of 1425, took her by sur- 
prise and waked her, as it were, out of the perfect calm of her 
maiden heart. These "voices " slowly created the passionate 
patriotism she manifested three years later. Her patriotism 
did not antedate, nor did it beget them. We notice also that 
her " voices " did not tell her all at once about her mission. 
For quite a while they simply gave her pious advice. Then, 
as she advanced in years and reasoning power, that mission 
was revealed, little by little. At first she rejected it with 
mental agony ; then she accepted it ; and at last she wel- 
comed it with passionate ardor. This onward march and 
progress of events should be carefully borne in mind. No 
matter how you explain it, you see that this mysterious inter- 
vention slowly shaped Joan's soul and will. Many seem to 
have believed without proof and against the evidence that 
Joan sought, instigated, and almost necessitated this mysteri- 
ous intervention, by her solitary and personal ecstasies. The 
truth is quite the contrary. The first time she heard the 
1 ' voice ' ' she ' * was frightened . ' ' That phrase tells us how far 
she was from expecting or summoning it how far she was, 
so to speak, from giving either ear or heart to the miracle.* 

Everything in her childhood and girlhood indicates physical 
and mental health. She was not a virago ; but she was a 
strong country girl, a peasant, well-built, robust, and able to 
bear hardship. Her life furnishes abundant evidences of good- 
humor, of roguish simplicity, and of unaffected candor, touched 
with shrewdness and irony. Her presence of mind, during the 
trial, was truly marvelous. There she sat face to face with 
fifty solemn, subtle, crafty, treacherous, unfriendly doctors, with 
no one to advise her, and worn out by a long and hard im- 
prisonment. Even her enemies admired her self-possession, her 
good sense, her candor, and her directness in dealing with the 
points at issue. 

Her moral temperament was also well-balanced. All vir- 

* Op. cit. t pp. 12-13. In our first article, THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1908, pp. 
239-242, we have shown that M. France's attempt to attribute Joan's vocation to cleverly con- 
coaled ecclesiastical influences is a pure hypothesis, unsupported by a single solid proof. 



1909.] AN ATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC" 535 

tues met in her heart. She was pious, good, pure, brave and 
humble, in an heroic degree. 

Let M. France name a single visionary or victim of delu- 
sions, whose vocation was begotten like hers, or who was as 
well equipped as she intellectually and morally. Certain fana- 
tics, it is true, have asserted that Jesus himself was a fool.* 
At that reckoning our dictionaries must be changed completely, 
and it must be decreed that henceforth we will call folly what 
we have hitherto known as wisdom, inspiration, or genius. That 
is the height of unreason. Let M. France mention a single 
visionary who has done what Joan of Arc did. L'Abbe Coube 
mentions in this connection an infidel doctor who once said to 
a friend: "Come to La Salpetriere,f and I will show you fifty 
Joans of Arc." " That is too many," answered his friend, 
"show me just one who can give us back Alsace and Lorraine, 
and I will no longer see anything supernatural in the Libera- 
trix of Orleans." t I do not say that the comparison is wholly 
just. I am quite convinced that it would be more difficult to 
give us back Alsace and Lorraine, than it was to drive the 
English out of France. Still it remains true that no visionary 
ever played a part to be compared with that of Joan. 

M. France's answer to this is that her work has been ex- 
aggerated, but we have seen that M. France does not prove his 
statement. He also says that Joan was a visionary of a higher 
order; but we have a right to tell him that a superior vision- 
ary of this kind is no visionary at all. If he were to reply 
that no visionary was ever placed in such circumstances, we 
could show him that many of them lived amid surroundings 
that were equally, if not even more, favorable, and yet they 
did not achieve like results. It is decidedly true that a man 
may be a good novelist, and only an indifferent historian or 
scholar. 

Doctor George Dumas, professor of the Sorbonne, a man 
particularly well-informed in psycho- pathology, and little sus- 
pected of clericalism, is much more reserved than M. France in 
a letter written to the latter and published by him in the ap- 
pendix to his second volume. We will analyze this letter care- 
fully. M. Dumas begins by declaring that a physician of our 

* As, for example, Dr. Binet-Sangle', author of La Folie de Jesus (Paris, 1908). 

t An almshouse and asylum for insane women in Paris. 

f S. Coub^, Le Coeut de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 32 (Lethielleux, Paris, 10, rue Cassette). 



536 ANATOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC" [Jan., 

9 

days can hardly pass a judgment on Joan's case, since the re- 
ports of the trial do not furnish sufficient information about 
her nervous condition. 

Jean d'Aulon, he continues, testified, on the word of several 
women, that Joan would never have been fully developed. 
That indicates an insufficient physical growth such as we meet 
in many neuropathic patients. It is also likely enough that 
Joan's sight delusions were one-sided. Still these facts, even if 
they were well-established, " would not justify definite conclu- 
sions." The same must be said about the " distinctness " and 
"certainty" of her hallucinations. None of these facts afford 
sure proof that Joan was hysterical. On the other hand, she 
is marked off' from the classical examples of hysteria by several 
important characteristics: she resists her "voices" and she 
makes them come at her will when they do not come of them- 
selves. Dr. Dumas concludes: 

This characteristic enables us, if Joan were hysterical^ to 
point out the part that her nerve ailment might play in the 
development of her character, and in her life. 

If hysteria had any part in her, it was only to let the most 
secret sentiments of her heart become objective in the shape 
of visions and heavenly voices ; it was the open door through 
which the divine or what Joan took to be divine entered 
into her life ; it strengthened her faith ; it consecrated her 
mission ; but Joarf s intelligence and will remained sound and 
right. Nervous pathology hardly throws even a feeble light 
on that soul. 

Why did not M. France pay more attention to the judgment 
of the master he had consulted ? If Joan were hysterical . . . 
If hysteria had any part in her . . . Joan's intelligence and 
will remained sound and right ; these are phrases to be remem- 
bered. M. Dumas doubtless does not believe in the objective 
character of Joan's " voices " ; he even speaks of her hallucina- 
tions as of an undisputed fact. Still it counts for something 
that he does not make the Maid a hysterical creature, an au- 
tomaton, a plaything and victim of continuous delusions. M. 
France should have held to this minimum, at the very least. 

Why has he not done so ? Because M. France does not 
trust the masters in psycho-pathology any more than the mas- 
ters in the art of war, when their opinions upset his system. 



1909.] ANA TOLE FRANCE'S " JOAN OF ARC " 537 

All that remains for us to do, is to sum up our conclu- 
sions. M. France has aimed at doing for Joan of Arc what 
Renan did for our Lord almost half a century ago. They both 
have sought to explain, without the supernatural, lives and per- 
sonalities which were wholly or almost wholly supernatural. 
Like his master, M. France has failed in his sacrilegious at- 
tempt. His Life ef Joan of Arc has literary merit and some 
parts of it are useful. As a whole, however, it is a defective 
work, with no great historical or scientific value. It will not 
be an indispensable or authoritative book, as incompetent critics 
or flatterers have thoughtlessly declared. Its success will not 
endure. 

Joan of Arc is still for us the heroic girl we have always 
admired ; the saint that the Church is making ready to place 
on her altars. When I speak of our admiration, I do not mean 
French Catholics alone. Joan of Arc has been praised, hon- 
ored, and defended by Catholics the whole world over, of every 
race and nationality.* Better yet, have we not heard, even 
lately, Protestants and free-thinkers of every shade of belief, 
from the New World as well as from the Old, expressing their 
deep sympathy for her whom M. France tries to belittle ? 

M. France labors in vain. In the life and character of Joan 
of Arc there is something singularly touching, dramatic, and 
truly marvelous. She stands before us, a young peasant girl, 
simple, good, sensible, who, out of obedience to the call of 
God, leaves her village and her family, convinces the most pru- 
dent, fills the conquered with courage, defeats her enemies, has 
her king anointed, is then made a prisoner, and after an unjust 
trial dies at the stake in her nineteenth year, meriting the title, 
"Saint of Patriotism." What more beautiful or more touching 
can be imagined ? 

In truth we should weep for those who, out of hatred for 
God and the Church, vainly try to lessen her glory and to 
tarnish her sanctity. 

* Archbishop Ireland's magnificent discourse on Joan, delivered at Orleans in May, 
1899, is still well remembered in France. Cf. La Revue du Clerge" Fran fats, June i, 1899. 

(THE END.) 



flew Books. 



A person unacquainted with Mr. 

ORTHODOXY. Chesterton's characteristics if 

since the publication of Heretics 

there is to be found any such person among those who read 
English would probably meet with the literary surprise of 
his life, when, after reading the plain, simple introduction, he 
would proceed to peruse the pages of Orthodoxy * and find 
himself at once dazzled, perplexed, delighted by this blaze of 
wit, paradox, epigram, sarcasm, Johnsonian common sense, 
original ways of looking at things which everybody knows, 
deep philosophic argument served out in terms of the most 
commonplace thought, and some of the great truths of reli- 
gion tested effectively and favorably by inspecting them up- 
side down. The book, Mr. Chesterton informs us, is meant to 
be a companion to Heretics, in which he attacked some of the 
current philosophies. Some champions of these challenged Mr. 
Chesterton to give his own philosophy of religion ; and, in re- 
sponse, the iconoclast turns constructor and presents his reasons 
for believing in Christianity as it is embodied in the Apostles' 
Creed. As a specimen of apologetics Orthodoxy stands alone, 
with nothing approaching to it, from Justin and Tertullian to 
Newman and Hettinger. The gist of Mr. Chesterton's argu- 
ment is that life and religion are too large to be put into the 
narrow logical categories of philosophical systems that view 
them through one narrow lens ; the paradoxes of life are made 
intelligible by the paradoxes of Christianity; while materialism 
and agnosticism are the suicide of thought. 

The whole secret of mysticism is this : that man can un- 
derstand everything by the help of what he does not under- 
stand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, 
and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic 
allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else be- 
comes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation 
quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say <l it you please " 
to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain 
a sacred mystery ; but because of this his relations with the 
housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He 
puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness ; but it branches 
forth in all directions with abounding natural health. 

* Orthodoxy. By Gilbert K. Chesterton. New York : John Lane Company. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 539 

The same idea is presented in another way : 

That transcendentalism by which all men live has pri- 
marily the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious 
of it as of a kind of splendid confusion ; it is something both 
shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the 
circle of the moon is clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and 
inevitable as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the 
moon is utterly reasonable ; and the moon is the mother of 
lunatics, and has given to them all her name. 

The following passage is the one that approaches nearest 
to summing up the trend of Mr. Chesterton's march : 

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have 
fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of Orthodoxy as some- 
thing heavy, humdrum, safe. There never was anything so 
perilous or so exciting as Orthodoxy. It was sanity ; and to 
be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equi- 
librium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to 
stop this way, and to sway that, yet in every attitude having 
the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The 
Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any war- 
horse.; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went 
mad along one idea. She swerved to left and right, so ex- 
actly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one side 
the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all worldly powers 
to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was 
swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it 
too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame 
course or accepted the conventions ; the orthodox Church 
was never respectable. It would have been easier to have 
accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have 
been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into 
the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a mad- 
man ; it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the 
age have its head ; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. 
It is always easy to be a modernist ; as it is easy to be a snob. 
To have fallen into any of these open traps of error and ex- 
aggeration, which fashion after fashion and sect after sect 
have set along the historic path of Christendom that would, 
indeed, have been simple. But to have avoided them all has 
been one whirling adventure ; and in my vision the heavenly 
chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies 
sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. 



540 NEW BOOKS [Jan., 

H 
Brilliantly clever and true to the facts is Mr. Chesterton's 

account of how the great agnostics, the guides of his youth, 
succeeded in arousing in his mind doubts about agnosticism. 
He was informed that Christianity was not only vicious but 
had an astonishing talent for combining in itself the most con- 
trary vices. It was attacked for quite contradictory reasons: 

No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too 
far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clear- 
ness that it was much too far to the west. No sooner had my 
indignation died down at its aggressive squareness than I was 
called upon again to notice and condemn its enervating and 
sensual roundness. 

He was told that with its doctrine of the other cheek 
Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. 
But: 

I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain 
turned upside down. Now I found that I was to hate Chris- 
tianity, not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. 
Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity 
had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly 
angry with the Christian because he was never angry. And 
now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had 
been the most huge and horrible thing in human history ; be- 
cause his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. 
The very people who reproached Christianity with the meek- 
ness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very peo- 
ple who reproached it also with the violence and valor of the 
Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow 
or other) that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that 
Richard Cceur de Lion did. 

Elsewhere, again, the agnostic is neatly castigated. 

The ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a 
non-believer for a multitude of reasons ; but they are untrue 
reasons. He doubts, because the Middle Ages were barbaric, 
but they weren't ; because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it 
isn't ; because miracles do not happen, but they do ; because 
monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because 
nuns were unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful ; be- 
cause Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out 
in peculiarly bright colors and gay with gold; because 



i 909-] NEW BOOKS 541 

modern science is moving away from the supernatural, but it 
isn't, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity 
of a railway train. 

Scarcely a page but invites quotation. Enough, however, 
has been given to convey a definite idea of Mr. Chester- 
ton's line of apologetics, in which many a weighty philosophic 
or historical argument is couched in witty metaphor or whim- 
sical illustration ; and whose richness of thought, if diluted 
with a sufficient infusion of syllogism, would furnish forth 
more than one respectable volume. Here Mr. Chesterton pro- 
fesses only to champion Christianity, as it is common to all 
believers ; but he promises that, if challenged to do so, he will 
write another to prove where the principle of authority, indis- 
pensable to Christianity, is lodged. We trust some opponent 
will, therefore, strike Mr. Chesterton's shield fair in the center. 

Most joyously must all lovers of 

FRANCIS THOMPSON'S high poetry and all lovers of 
POEMS. vital Catholicity welcome this new 

edition of the poems of Francis 

Thompson.* For him, as for many another, has death wrought 
what life seemed powerless to consummate : and the bereaved 
world has at least this grace to recognize and in measure to 
gauge its deep bereavement ! Yet through all the later years 
of that singularly tragic life, it was Thompson's solace to have 
the appreciation of the few who really mattered. " He had," 
says the introductory note to this present volume, " what poets 
of old, to their great sorrow, lacked ; he had trial by his peers ; 
a kind fate gave him fellow- poets among his reviewers." 

And not less, a kind fate gave him rare friends. Very meet 
and right it seems that from the hand of Wilfred Meynell who 
long ago gave the young genius his first opportunity to live 
and to shine should come now this selection from his finished 
work. There is nothing in the little collection with which we 
could willingly dispense ; there are even additions (notably from 
Thompson's final volume) which \ we should right gladly welcome 
to the number. For beside " Love in Dian's Lap," " The Hound 
of Heaven," selections from the " Odes " and from " Sister 
Songs," might no place have been found for that exquisite 

* Selected Poems of Francis Thompson. London : Methuen & Co., Burns & Oates. 



542 NEW BOOKS [Jan., 

" dramatic sequence," " A Narrow Vessel," or for the poignant 
and heart-subduing poems of the "Ultima"? And can even 
the beauty of "Any Saint" reconcile us to the omission of that 
most Thompsonian production, "The Dread of Height"? Mr. 
Meynell will know that even so must the poet's lovers clamor 
for what is not still cherishing supremely all that he has given 
them. The original volumes of Thompson are, for practical 
purposes, out of print, so that old readers and numberless new 
ones, let us confidently hope ! must flock gratefully to the 
present selection. They will find it worthy of its sponsor. 
And the portrait of Francis Thompson in youth, together with 
a little intimate yet reticent biographical note, will not fail to 
add their own interest to the precious volume. 

In his course of lectures, delivered 

THE AMERICAN AS HE IS. before the University of Copen- 
hagen last September, which have 

just been published,* the President of Columbia University 
presented a highly favorable sketch of America and Americans. 
His patriotism did not quite hinder him trom an occasional 
admission that the typical American betrays some slight im- 
perfections of character, and that the prevailing conditions of 
life, political, commercial, and social, are not absolutely Uto- 
pian, Probably before an American audience President Butler 
would have found more subjects for unfavorable comment. 
But his good taste and loyalty rightly restrained him from air- 
ing family grievances before strangers. And the foreign gen- 
tlemen who, after a hasty sojourn here, during which they 
catch a glimpse of some of the superficial characteristics of the 
people, undertake to enlighten the world upon everything 
American, may be trusted to publish our shortcomings. The 
first lecture sketches the American political idea a govern- 
ment of principles, not men. The substantial unity of view 
regarding this principle, President Butler affirms, brought the 
United States into existence, and, persisting in undiminished 
strength to the present day, is the controlling and unifying 
fact in American life. Other forces have contributed to the 
unification of the heterogenous masses which immigration has 
poured into the national crucible the gradual march west- 

The American as He Is. By Nicholas Murray Butler. New York : The Macmillan 
Company. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 543 

wards from the older States, the influence of many voluntary 
organizations which are national in scope, and of the great 
political parties : 

Members of a given party organization are drawn closely 
together, no matter how far apart their homes may be. A 
prominent Democrat of Texas is a welcome guest of his fel- 
low-partisans in New York or Massachusetts, and a distin- 
guished Republican from Maine is greeted as an old and 
valued friend by the Republicans of Illinois or California. 

Another unifying force is the newspaper press which, says 
Dr. Butler, is a powerful factor in the development of a national 
consciousness. He deplores the existence of yellow journalism, 
but warns his audience not to judge the American press by 
its worst examples. Finally, the Doctor brings out one feature 
of our political system which is unheard of in Europe the pre- 
cedence of the judiciary over the legislature: 

Most completely of all the organs of government the courts 
represent the settled habits of thinking of the American 
people. A President may be, and at times is, powerfully in- 
fluenced by the passions and clamor of the moment. The 
federal courts are much less likely to be so influenced. The 
Congress may be stampeded by a popular outcry into passing 
some crude or unjust act. The Federal courts are there in all 
their majesty, to decide whether the popular outcry has asked 
for and obtained something which runs counter to the consti- 
tutional guarantees of civil liberty, and to the division of 
powers between nation and States. If so the popular clamor 
cannot have what it thinks it wants. To override the Con- 
stitution would be revolution. 

The second lecture treats the American apart from his 
government, and, analyzing the national character, presents the 
main characteristics of the type. If you would view this char- 
acter aright, the lecturer warns his hearers, do not confine 
yourselves to New York and Boston : 

The American type is seen at its purest and best in any 
one ot the hundred or more small cities and towns of the 
Middle West. If one were to select a restricted area in which 
to study American life and American characteristics, he 
would do best to choose Northern Illinois and the adjacent 



544 NE BOOKS [Jan., 

parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Here the soil is 
rich, the settlements are old enough to have an aspect of com- 
fort and order, the population is well-to-do they read the 
best books, and take the best magazines, reviews, and weekly 
journals . . . there is little vice and less crime. 

On the other hand, however, Dr. Butler, after reminding 
us that the literary pre-eminence of Boston is a mere tradi- 
tion, crowns New York as the intellectual and social capital 
of the country. He has a word of regret for the absence of 
any supremely good American contributions to first-class liter- 
ature : 

The richest and most elegant modern prose is that of the 
French academicians and of English scholars, trained under 
the classical traditions of Oxford and of Cambridge. Few 
Americans write so well as either of these, and if the classical 
tradition further weakens in the American colleges and uni- 
versities, or perishes altogether, there will be fewer still in 
years to come. Only occasionally is an American book of 
even exceptional scholarship really well written. 

The typical American, as President Butler sympathetically 
draws him, has, in spite of many faults, a fine nature. Here, 
as a farewell warning, the President would correct some foreign 
misconceptions which, not without reason, are entertained on 
this point : 

He is not the man who, suddenly grown rich, disports him- 
self vulgarly in the public gaze ; he is not the boastful Phil- 
istine, who is ignorant of the world's civilization and despises 
what he does not know ; he is not the decadent of the large 
cities who wastes his patrimony and his life in excess and 
frivolity. All these exist in America, but their notoriety is, 
unfortunately, out of all proportion to their number. 

And then the writer presents a fair ideal of American man- 
hood : 

The typical American is he who, whether rich or poor, 
whether dwelling in the North, South, East, or West, 
whether scholar, professional man, merchant, manufacturer, 
farmer, or skilled worker for wages, lives the life of a good 
citizen and a good neighbor ; who believes loyally and with 
all his heart in his country's institutions, and in the under- 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 545 

lying principles on which these institutions are built; who 
directs both his private and his public life by sound princi- 
ples ; who cherishes high ideals ; and who aims to train his 
children for a useful life and for their country's service. 

From the tenor of some of his observations one would ex- 
pect that Mr. Butler would have inserted some religious faith 
as an indispensable trait in this portrait. Perhaps he means to 
convey this characteristic in the phrases referring to the under- 
lying principles of the country's institutions ; for, backing up 
his assertion with the well-known pronouncement of Justice 
Brewer, he affirms that the United States is, both in law and 
in fact, a Christian nation ; and that the whole point of view 
of the people, as well as their institutions and traditions, are 
those which have been developed under the dominance of the 
Christian faith. 

The title and the handsome bind- 

THE TRIAL OF JESUS. ing of these two large volumes* 

stimulate curiosity. Have we 

dropped on a masterpiece of criticism and biblical lore, com- 
bined with forensic science ? or is the title itself its strongest 
claim to attention ? A glance at the preface discovers that the 
work is on the plane of the popular lecture platform, where 
the speaker appeals to his audience with picturesque descrip- 
tion, commonplace allusion, and a matter-of-fact handling of 
topics that are usually treated only in the solemn language of 
the pulpit. The first volume discusses the trial of our Lord 
before the High Priest, from the point of view of Jewish legal 
procedure. "What was the nature of the charge brought against 
the Christ ? Was He guilty as charged ? Were forms of law 
duly observed in the trial of the accusation against Him? 1 ' 
The author has read a number of authorities on the laws and 
customs of Israel ; but he does really grapple with what might 
have been the most interesting and serviceable feature of his 
task, that is, to demonstrate against rationalistic criticism, that 
the Gospel narratives are unimpeachable documentary evidence 
for the facts of the case. The subject is spun out by numer- 
ous digressions. 

The second volume reviews the Roman trials before Herod 

* The Trial of Jesus. Enm a Lawyer's Standpoint. By Walter M. Chandler, of the 
New York Bar. 2 Vols. New York : The Empire Publishing Company. 
VOL. LXXXVTH. 35 



546 NEW BOOKS [Jan., 

m 

and Pilate. These, Mr. Chandler shows, were, like the Hebrew 
one, grossly illegal in form. This volume is swollen by the ad- 
dition of a treatise on Graeco Roman Paganism, of which the 
aim is to describe the moral degradation that prevailed at the 
time of Christ. This subject is a rather incongruous and unbe- 
coming one to place in juxtaposition with the other, especially 
as the author has spread plentifully over his pages salacious 
details furnished by Suetonius, Arnobius, and other classic 
writers. He borrows plentifully, too, from Dollinger's Jew and 
Gentile. The author's treatment of his subject, united to a fas- 
cinating delivery, would, doubtless, secure from a popular au- 
dience a higher measure of approbation than it can hope to 
command from any cold-blooded critic who makes his acquaint- 
ance with it through print. 

The rapidity with which the great 

THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLO- work of the Catholic Encyclo- 
PEDIA. pedia* is progressing exceeds the 

expectation even of its most op- 
timistic friends. Only six months have elapsed since the ap- 
pearance of the third volume, and now the fourth appears, 
accompanied with an assurance from the managers that the 
fifth is advancing rapidly towards completion. The list of con- 
tributors, numbering about two hundred and thirty, is of the 
same cosmopolitan character as those of the previous volumes. 
English, French and other continental scholars have contributed 
extensively ; and almost all the weightier articles have been 
written by persons whose names are already favorably asso- 
ciated with the literature of the respective subjects. While 
welcoming a few of the new contributors, one must also regret 
the absence from the present list of some names that are 
signed to articles of conspicuous merit in some of the pre- 
ceding volumes; and we still look in vain for the names of 
some American scholars and professors who, from their posi- 
tion in American Catholic education, one would expect to find 
among forces making for the signal success of this American 
Catholic undertaking. 

The fourth volume fairly merits the praise of maintaining 
the high standard embodied in the preceding numbers. There 

* The Cathtlic Encyclopedia. Vol. IV. Clan-Dio. New York : Robert Appleton Com- 
pany. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 547 

are not, perhaps, so many subjects of paramount interest as 
there were in the first and second. But this drawback to the 
value of the volume is offset by the high quality of a large 
number of articles on topics which, if not of the highest, are 
of very high interest. Among the chief biblical questions 
treated are the Book of Daniel, by Dr. Gigot, who handles this 
thorny question very circumspectly; and the Deluge, by Father 
Maas, who, while remaining well within the pale of orthodoxy, 
makes some concessions to modern science. In deference to it, 
Father Maas affirms, the geographical universality of the Flood, 
held everywhere till the seventeenth century, may be safely 
abandoned. But he takes his stand uncompromisingly on the 
anthropological universality. That the whole human race was 
destroyed by the Deluge is a conclusion which we must ac- 
cept, because up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this 
belief was general ; and, moreover, the Fathers held, not as a 
private opinion, but as a development of the doctrine con- 
tained in the well-known texts from the Petrine Epistles, that 
the Ark and the Flood are types of Baptism and of the Church. 
There are two interesting articles on biblical criticism. If the 
writer of the one on Textual Criticism had been entrusted 
with that on Higher Criticism, we should have, on this point, 
a more striking manifestation of "that careful adjustment of 
writer and subject " which, the editors justly claim, has " guar- 
anteed the scholarly quality of the Encyclopedia.'* One of 
the gems of the volume is the paper on Historical Criticism 
by no less an authority than Father De Smetd. Its ten pages 
contain a clear, comprehensive synopsis of the principles of 
historic criticism as expounded in the book which won for the 
writer a high reputation in the world of scholarship. 

Among the more prominent topics is " Constantinople," 
which embraces a vast quantity of historical, liturgical, and 
political information ably presented by various pens. The 
quality of the articles on the Councils of Constantinople and 
of Constance increases the prevailing regret that the writer has 
not yet applied himself to the production of some work worthy 
of his talents, which, though not quite buried in a napkin, have 
not yet yielded the results of which they are capable. " Col- 
umbus/' " Dante/ 1 " Cyril of Alexandria/ 1 " Cyril of Jerusa- 
lem," "Copernicus," "Descartes," are among the best speci- 
mens of biographical writing in the volume ; while " Contrition," 



548 NEW BOOKS [Jan., 

- 

" Confirmation/ 1 " Communion," " Cross and Crucifix," and 
" Cloister," may be mentioned as valuable items in this rich 
treasure-house of expositions of doctrine and discipline. 

Philosophy is well represented by " Deism," " Deity," " Cyn- 
ic School of Philosophy," " Cyrenaic School of Philosophy," 
" Creation," and " Creatiomism." If we were to mention the 
oe article most remarkable for the interest attaching to its 
subject just now, we should pick out that on " Conscious- 
ness," which has been ably treated by Father Maher. To an 
adjoining article on " Conscience," by Father Rickaby, we 
should turn, if called on to illustrate to a non- Catholic the 
broad and temperate spirit which, generally speaking, pre- 
vails throughout the pages of the Encyclopaedia. The partic- 
ular passage which we should cite as an evidence of the fair- 
mindedness that is not, as some people assert, a quality far to 
seek in all Catholic writers, consists of a warning against the 
fault of imputing to men, as actual fact, all the false conse- 
quences that may logically be deduced from their systems. 
Men, Father Rickaby points out, as he names Kant, Spinoza, 
Paulsen, may be better than their systems; and, as a crown- 
ing instance, he mentions Luther and his pernicious doctrines 
concerning free will and good works, who nevertheless " as- 
serted that the good tree of the faith-justified-man must bring 
forth good works ; he condemned vice most bitterly, and ex- 
horted men to virtue." " Hence Protestants can depict Luther 
simply as the preacher of good, while Catholics may regard 
simply the preacher of evil. Luther has both sides." By 
tke way, one is astonished to find in this fine article a 
strange definition of ethics " Ethics is conduct or regulated 
life." Ethics is no more conduct than geography is the sur- 
face of the earth. Ethics is a science; the science of conduct 
or regulated life, if you will at least such is American usage^ 
which is supported by the first authorities across the water. 

To indicate that the Encyclopaedia, while giving due atten- 
tion to the past, aims at recording contemporary movements 
and treating contemporary questions, we may turn to the ar- 
ticles on the following subjects : " Congo," " Cremation," " Com- 
munism," "Co-education," "Collectivism." As the Encyclo- 
paedia grows, so must grow the conviction that when it is com- 
pleted with its historical accounts of men and times and places 
that figure in the Church's story for two thousand years ; with 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 549 

its record of the various forms of philosophic thought and re- 
ligious beliefs which she has encountered ; with its description 
of her interests bound up in every great human movement; 
and its presentation of her doctrines and discipline that per- 
meate every nook and cranny of life the Catholic Encyclo- 
paedia will be a majestic monument of the Church's catholicity. 

That veteran traveler, Maud Howe, 
RAMBLES IN SPAIN. who has a method all her own of 

describing the countries which she 

has visited, now tells us of her rambles in Spain during the 
year 1906,* which, it will be remembered, was the year of the 
king's marriage. This event, which the author witnessed, is 
vividly described, as are also the enthusiastic preparations of the 
previous days, and the terrible catastrophe of the day itself. 
There is nothing of the guidebook here. The writer simply 
relates the experiences of herself and her party ; the people 
they met, the places they visited, the sights, public and do- 
mestic, which they saw, in a trip which embraced Gibraltar, 
Seville, Cordova, Granada, Madrid, Toledo, with a flying ex- 
cursion to Tangiers. 

Many travelers, who write of their wanderings, have not en- 
joyed the privilege of meeting, on intimate ground, any of 
the people whose country they have passed through ; and, in 
consequence, their books contain little but what is superficial' 
about the manners and characteristics of the lands which they 
have visited. On the contrary, Maud |Howe met, on terms of 
friendship and intimacy, many very interesting Spaniards and en- 
joyed the hospitality of their homes; so she is able to present 
us with some intimate glimpses of Spanish character and man- 
ners. She met all sorts of people, from the King and Queen 
to bullfighters, gypsies, and professional dancers; assisted at all 
sorts of spectacles, from the gorgeous services of Holy Week 
in the Cathedral of Seville to the horse- fair and the carnival. 
Her experiences are related, not in the stiff form of impersonal 
description, but, mainly, by reporting the conversations always 
lively, and frequently witty of the party which accompanied 
her. Among the members of the party were frequently a dis- 
tinguished painter and a charming, broken-down gentleman of 
fortune, who was educated at Stonyhurst, and as a legacy of 

* Sun and Shadow in Spain. By Maud Howe. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



NEW BOOKS [J an -i 



the distant days of his youth possessed a very amusing variety of 
broken English. The warm sympathy entertained for her hosts, 
public and private, glowing in every page of Maud Howe's 
book, is one of its charms ; and though she is not a Catholic, 
difference of religion does not act as a restraint on the warmth 
of her feelings and admiration. Though, as she remarks her- 
self, she did not see Spain, and the account of her journey, if 
not quite what she herself calls it, "a halting story," covers 
only a few cities, yet she manages to impress the reader with 
her own experience of the " spell of Spain, so dark, so noble, 
so tremendous, not to be shaken off." 

Probably she believed she had exhausted the language of 
eulogy when she compares the Spaniards to a race that only 
recently would have considered the comparison a compliment 
to themselves: " They are more like us Anglo-Saxons than any 
people I have lived among. Villegas (the painter) says: 'In 
every one of us Spaniards there is a Sancho Panza, and a Don 
Quixote.' That is as true of us as it is of them." The book 
has a goodly number of illustrations. 

Myrtle Reed's Flowers of the 

FICTION. Dusk * is a pleasant, graceful story, 

told in an easy, unaffected, natural 

style, brightened with gleams of humor and wit which relieve 
the genuine pathos that is the prevalent note of the story. 
One is puzzled to say whether its chief character is hero or 
heroine, for the interest is fairly divided between the blind 
father and his crippled daughter. Ambrose North is an elderly 
man of high ideals and poetic temperament, who lost his eye- 
sight many years previous to the opening of the tale ; and, 
shortly after, lost his fortune, though he knew it not. As 
the story opens, we find his daughter, Barbara, and her aunt 
living together with him, and acting a fiction in order to prevent 
him from discovering that, instead of being in the enjoyment of 
wealth, they depend for support on Barbara's needle. The old 
man's happiness is Barbara; Barbara and the cherished recol- 
lection of his dead wife. Did she not love him passionately 
till that last fatal moment when after Barbara's birth she, for 
some unaccountable reason, took her own life? Through the 
discovery of an old letter, forgotten in a book, Barbara and 

* Flowers of the Dusk. By Myrtle Reed. New York; G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 551 

her lover discover the truth that the dead wife had ceased to 
love her husband, and committed suicide to avoid temptation. 
Through the generosity of a wealthy young lady the fairy 
godmother who with her fiance furnish the fun of the story, 
Ambrose North's sight is restored, and it seems impossible to 
keep from his knowledge the contents of the terrible letter. 
But Barbara manages deftly to stand between him and the 
fatal knowledge; so he dies at the crisis of the story and still 
happy in his life-long delusion. The book is daintily printed 
and bound. 

The girl described in Old Mr. Davenant's Money * is a good 
piece of character drawing. She is naive and ingenuous, and, 
by her undiscerning friends, in consequence, set down as 
hopelessly stupid. But they are very much mistaken; for, 
when she gets away from her domineering old grandmother, to 
visit her fashionable relatives and their circle, she displays, 
though she herself is unconscious of it, shrewd good sense, 
as well as a very decided will of her own. The plot of the 
play turns upon the ruse adopted by one of the women to keep 
old Mr. Davenant's money for herself and her child. She had 
twins, one a girl, the other a boy; if the boy died the money 
was to go to another relative ; if he lived it should be his and 
his mother's. The reticence which leaves the reader to guess 
for himself from sufficient, though veiled, hints the facts of the 
case, exhibits a delicacy of touch that resembles French art 
rather than the clumsier methods that prevail with our own 
writers, except those of the first rank. 

Another pleasant story is Sydney Carringtorfs Contumacy^ 
in which a very wilful but high-minded young girl sets her 
guardians at defiance by keeping up a correspondence with a 
young man whom they have forbidden her to see. But her 
persistence in the correspondence is merely a benevolent scheme 
to help him out of a scrape ; for she does not love him at all. 
Another young lady presents the problem of an imaginary re- 
ligious vocation, striving long, but vainly, against the rival in- 
fluence. Though religious conversion also is an element of the 
plot, these matters are not allowed, as frequently happens in 

* Old Mr. Davenant's Money. By Frances Powell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 
t Sydney Carringtons Contumacy. By X. Lawson. New York : Fr. Pustet & Co. 



552 NEW BOOKS [Jan., 

- 

novels from a distinctly Catholic standpoint, to stifle the in- 
terest of the story. 

A wonderful piece of imagination, in the Jules Verne vein, 
is The Man Who Ended War* The American Secretary of 
War received a letter informing him that the writer, determined 
to stop the devastations of war, would, after the lapse of a 
year, destroy every battleship in the world. Accordingly, in 
due time, an American battleship disappeared, " melted into 
the yeast of waves," in the most mysterious manner; and a 
similar fate overtook, in succession, a French, a German, and 
an English battleship. Meanwhile a newspaper man and two 
scientists brother and sister friends of his, start to dis- 
cover the perpetrator and his means of operation. How they 
at last run him down is a long story, full of adventures on 
the water, experiments with radio-activity, tracing of clues 
through dingy houses in London, and under the English chan- 
nel in submarines. Of course they do run down the great in- 
ventor and discover the secret of his power, which could re- 
duce metal to vapor at a thousand miles' distance. But he is 
not cornered till he has destroyed the best part of the Eng- 
lish and German navies, and the nations of the world have re- 
solved to pledge themselves to abandon war. There is a good 
deal of ingenuity in the concoction of the tale; but its scien- 
tific data fit but loosely together in many places, and, even 
after the first enormous " Let it be granted " is conceded, too 
many demands are made, by the details, upon probability. 

One must not inspect too criti- 

UNTRODDEN ENGLISH cally the title which Mr. Shelley 
WAYS> affixes to his description of places 

that he has visited in England,! 

for some of them have been trodden steadily for generations 
by the tourist as well as by the native. The "Poets' Corner " 
in Westminster Abbey, for instance, has long been a place of 
literary pilgrimage; and, though the tide of fashion has long 
since ceased to roll through " Bath and its baths," Thackeray's 
influence alone has been strong enough to prevent the moss 
from growing on the streets of that city. The proportion, 
however, of the places and monuments described that are out 

The Man Wh. Ended War. By Hollis Godfrey. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 
t Untrodden English Ways. By Henry C. Shelley. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 553 

of the beaten track of the sightseer is large enough to justify 
the title. Some out-of-the-way spots on the Coast of Corn- 
wall; some nooks of Devon; the Lincolnshire fens; Beacons- 
field; the Nonconformist cemetery of Bunhill Fields, where are 
buried John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, and some lesser celebrities; 
and several other places of equal interest, are described by the 
pen and camera of Mr. Shelley. He visits also several other 
notable burying grounds; and two "memorable pulpits*' 
that of Thomas Arnold in the Chapel of Rugby, and that 
of the parish church of Lavington from which Cardinal Man- 
ning preached in his Anglican days. One chapter, which in- 
troduces a little known curiosity corner, describes the contents 
of the storeroom in Westminster Abbey, which contains the 
wax figures representing the deceased, which, according t an 
old custom, were borne in the funeral procession at royal in- 
terments. Mr. Shelley brings a pair of observant eyes, some 
historical and literary gossip, but not much imagination or 
play of feeling to his task of description. The illustrations, 
most of which are photogravures, are well executed, and the 
book is prettily bound. 

The anonymous author who gives 

THE ECCLESIASTICAL us this excellent little volume,* ex- 
YEAR. plaining the meaning of the feasts, 

fasts, and devotions of the ecclesi- 
astical year, has treated a well-worn subject in a fresh and at- 
tractive manner. The space given to each feast and fast or 
devotion is small ; but the writer knows the knack of conden- 
sation; and Uses no time with insipidities or irrelevancies. His 
purpose is to stimulate devotion as well as to instruct. The re- 
flections are pithy and suggestive ; and to each topic an edi- 
fying " example " is added. The book is very suitable for spir- 
itual reading for busy persons who are unable or unwilling to 
devote more than eight or ten minutes a day to this exercise. 

For the benefit of laymen, Dr. 
PATROLOGY. Adrian Fortescue, whose interest 

in the Eastern Church, past and 

present, has enriched our library with some valuable works, 
publishes a set of short biographies of the Greek Fathers.f 

* Catholic Life ; or, The Feasts, Fasts, and Devotions of the Ecclesiastical Year. New 
York : Benziger Brothers. 

t The Greek Fathers. By Dr. Adrian Fortescue. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



554 NEW BOOKS [Jan. 

The aim of the writer is rather historical than theological; so 
he does not touch upon the theological value of the Fathers' 
writings. He gives, however, a list of them and of the various 
editions in which they are to be found. The biographical 
sketches are fairly comprehensive without going into detail. 
One is frequently surprised, and not always pleasantly surprised, 
at finding the long-established English form of a Greek name 
set aside for one more nearly approaching to or identical with 
the original. The Doctor apologizes for his inconsistency in 
the spelling of Greek names, on the ground that one cannot 
spell them all in Greek nor all in English. He wishes that they 
could all be spelled in Greek, but, not daring to adopt this 
plan, he approached as near as possible to it. But some of 
the names which he has changed have obtained a right of citi- 
zenship just as much as others which he has respected. We are 
spared Athanasios; but instead of our old friends, Eusebius 
and Nazianzan, we are introduced to Eusebeios and Nazianzos. 
This, however, is a trifle that is to be condoned in view of the 
solid utility and scholarly form of Dr. Fortescue's study. 

This volume * consists of a series of papers published in the 
Revue du Clerge Franfais during the past year. M. Boudinhon, 
who suggested the name of M. Villien to the editor of the 
Revue, contributes a preface, in which he congratulates the au- 
thor upon his success and advises the reader upon what he 
may expect: namely, monograph, written quite in accord with 
the best historical method, describing the origins, the develop- 
ment, and, when necessary, the gradual mitigation of the 
"commandments of the Church." 

We can readily agree with M. Boudinhon, that his protege 
has done his work well. In fact, it is little less than wonder- 
ful how these French scholars of the new school succeed in in- 
fusing living interest into the treatment of matters that in all 
probability would have been insufferably tedious if written ac- 
cording to the methods in vogue twenty or thirty years ago. 

Any student whose researches take him into the field of 
church institutions, and any preacher who is anxious to give 
his congregation a series of discourses upon the specific obli- 
gations of the Catholic, will thank M. Villien for this conven- 
ient, interesting, erudite treatise. 

* Histoire des Ctmmandtmtnts de I 'glise. Par A. Villien. Preface par M. 1'Abbd Bou- 
dinhon. Paris : Lecoffre. 



jforeicjn periobicals. 

The Tablet (7 Nov.): Anent the "Sunday Closing Movement," 
Mr. Balfour put himself on record as saying that if only 
his countrymen could be brought back to what used to be 
their beverage, viz., beer, more would be done for tem- 
perance than all the Sunday closing would be able to 

do. The article on the "Continuity Theory" of the 

Anglican Bishop of Bristol is brought to a close, giving 
a quotation from a leading Anglican church paper to 
the effect "that the idea of a Pre- Reformation Church 
independent of Rome was merely a dream of contro- 
versialists." The Rev. Gerald Stack treats the " Sixth 

Chapter of St. John " with reference to the light it 
throws on the most difficult text in the Gospels: "Give 
us this day our daily bread." Writing on the "Edu- 
cation Bill," the Daily Chronicle suggests that if the 
government is balked in its purpose, one weapon re- 
mains administrative pressure. 

(14 Nov.): "The National Union of Conservative Asso- 
ciations " has put out a declaration of policy, which 
states that the free importation of manufactured goods 
is decreasing the area of employment, and all classes 
are turning their eyes towards the banner of fiscal 

reform. Penny Postage between Great Britain and 

this country being an accomplished fact, Mr. Henniker 
Heaton has now started a new campaign in favor of 

" Penny-a-Word Cablegrams" all over the world. 

" The Recent Eucharistic Congress " receives a eulo- 
gistic notice from St. Cuthbert's Anglican church maga- 
zine, which attributes the growth of the Catholic Church 
in England to her strong government; she has been well 
led, while weakness and indecision have marked the his- 
tory of the Church of England. " Our First Legates" 

is the conclusion of a series of articles by Canon Moyes 
showing the extent of Papal Jurisdiction in England 
eleven hundred years ago. 

(21 Nov.): The latest movement in regard to the vexed 
"Education Question" is the Prime Minister's announce- 
ment of a New Bill. Under the heading "The Dead 

Bill and the New Peril," it is pointed out that the 



55 6 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jan., 



Anglican surrender can in no way effect the Catholic 
position on the question. Catholic children will not 
go to Protestant schools they will go to Catholic schools 

or nowhere. The account of "The Papal Jubilee" 

gives an opportunity to make a review of all the 

leading activities of the Pontificate of Pius X. In a 

circular just issued by the Emigrants' Information Office, 
" Where Not to Go,'* emigrants are cautioned against 
going to the United States until there has been a sus- 
tained recovery from the depression. A recent work 

by Signor Righetta makes the somewhat startling an- 
nouncement of the alleged discovery of a spurious or 
interpolated canto in the received text of the "Inferno. 1 * 
The canto referred to is the eleventh. 

The Month (Nov.): "The Moral Education Congress," by the 
Rev. F. S. Smith, is a report of the proceedings of the 
Congress held last September in London, having as its 
object the improving of the Moral Education offered in 

schools. "The Mystery of Life," by the Editor, asks 

the old question : What is Life ? What constitutes the 
impassable gulf between a donkey and a donkey-engine? 
Our extended knowledge of to-day takes us back to the 
simple belief of the day before that the principle of life 
is not heat, not electricity, not any force known to phy- 
sicist or chemist, but something essentially different from 

any of these. "The Religion of Mithra," says C. 

C. Martindale, was originally a dualistic nature- worship, 
which was gradually overlaid with Babylonian astrolog- 
ical symbolism, although the worst Asiatic features are 

never found in it. " Faith Found in Fleet Street," is a 

review of Mr. Chesterton's Apologia for Christianity, 
which he says alone allows man the free and natural 

use of his faculties. "Another Protestant Advocate 

of Tyrannicide" points out that the theory of "killing 
no murder" had no place in Scotland until John Knox 
preached tyrannicide against Mary Tudor and Mary Queen 
of Scots. 

The Expository Times (Dec.) : " Was the Last Supper the Pass- 
over Supper?" Mr. Brooke and Professor Burkitt hold 
that it was not, and thus reopen an old-time controversy. 
Their claim is that St. Luke's account agreed with that 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 557 

of St. John, but that the text of the former was altered 
to make it fit into the Synoptic tradition, In a lec- 
ture, "The Religionist and the Scientist," by Rev. G. A. 
Ross, it is pointed out that if religion is indebted to 
science, the latter also owes something to the former. 

"The Value of the History of Religions for Preach* 

ers " is that it will enable the reader better to appreciate 
his own, for the attack upon Christianity to-day is made 

from the side of Comparative Religion. " The Bearing 

of Criticism upon the Gospel History," by the Rev. W. 
Sanday, of Oxford, deals with the difference between 
the non-critical and critical methods of studying the Gos- 
pels. 

The International (Nov.): Under Economics the editor treats 
of " Constitutionalism in the Factory. 1 ' Nationalization, 
combined with industrial constitutionalism, is to supply 
the harmony which drowns all the discords of the pres- 
ent time. "The Jews in China," by S. M. Pertman, 

tells of the settlement of a colony of Jews in China, at 
a date so far unknown, where they have, to a large ex- 
tent, become assimilated with the people and accepted 

their religion. " America's Yellow Peril." We learn 

that in Hawaii, under cover of working emigrants, 60,000 
Japanese have established themselves, and that their pres- 
ence is no assurance of peace. " French Canada" treats 

of the three great divisions of that country, separated from 
one another by manners and customs, tradition and psy- 
chological characteristics, French, English, American. 
" The Miracles of Suggestion." Suggestion can cure only 
the ills it has caused. It can do nothing against natural 
laws, consequently the domain of faith-healing is limited. 

The Journal of Theological Studies (Oct.) : " The Apocalypse," 
by Dr. Hort. The writer has no hesitancy in attributing 
the authorship to St. John, placing its writing at a period 
between Nero's persecution and the fall of Jerusalem. 

" Historical Introduction to the Textual Criticism of 

the New Testament," by C. H. Turner, who suggests that 
the subject of textual criticism might be less repellant 
were we to approach it from the point of view of living 
history something belonging to the Church. This 
method the writer proceeds to develop. Cuthbert 



558 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jan., 






Latty, in writing on ' ' The Apostolic Groups," shows 
how the grouping represents four corresponding stages 
in the evolution of the apostolic college; incidentally 
he mentions the position assigned to the Lord's breth- 
ren and refers to Dom Chapman's article dealing with 

the subject. Some fifty pages of the magazine are 

devoted to an exhaustive analytical study of " The Leo- 
nine Sacramentary." 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (Nov.): "The Church and the 
Bible," by Rev. S. J. Walsh, is a protest against the 
charge so commonly made that the Catholic Church is 

the enemy of the Bible. " Appearance and Reality," 

by Rev. P. Coffey, sums up the unsoundness of the 
Kantian position. Under " Notes and Queries " are 
answered many questions of great interest dealing with 

theological and liturgical difficulties. Among the 

" Documents " published is the full text of the exhorta- 
tion of Pius X. to the clergy of the world. 

Etudes (5 Nov.): "The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Sovereign 
Pontiff's Priesthood," is the inspiration of a laudatory 

review of Pius X.'s reign by L. de Grandmaison. 

Lucien Choupin gives a succinct account of the various 
divisions of the " Roman Curia, and its Recent Reorgani- 
zation by the Present Pope." Apropos of a recent 

work, Yves de la Briere discusses the attitude of "St. 
Cyprian Towards the Papacy." Joseph Brucker, writ- 
ing of a recently discovered " Papyrus of the City of As- 
souan," in Egypt, contributes an article on the customs 
of a Jewish colony residing there in the fifth century 
before Christ. 

(20 Nov.) : " A Comparison Between Morals Based on 
Science and Those Based on the Gospel." The former 
do not contribute the idea of obligation that the latter 
do. They lack the notion of responsibility. Their high- 
est aims are individual and selfish. Fred Bouvier, re- 
viewing the recent " Congress for the Study of Com- 
parative Religion Convened at Oxford," speaks of it in 
terms of praise and thinks it is but the beginning of a 
work that is to endure, In " The Dogma of Transub- 
stantiation and the Christology of the Antiochian School 
of the Fifth Century," Jules Lebreton candidly admits 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 559 

the difficulties presented by the writings of the Antiochian 
Fathers. He maintains, however, that the distinction of 
the two natures in Christ and the permanence of the 
substance of bread and wine in the Eucharist are not 
supported by a universal and prolonged tradition. 
La Civilta Cattolica (7 Nov.): "The Reformed Modernism. 11 
The Modernists, in their desire to abolish the abuses, 
true or false, in the Church to-day, are moved by an 
absurd principle by a sophism which the logicians call 
the " Fallacy of the Accident'' i. e. t they attribute to the 
nature of a thing that which agrees with it only in an 
accidental and a variable way. We know that the Church 
is a Divine Society, and that Christ is with her to the 
consummation of the world. "The Esoterics of Reli- 
gion as Viewed by Theosophy." For the Theosophists 
the religion founded by Christ is equal to Buddhism, in- 
vented by Buddha ; to Mohammedanism, established by 
the prophet of Mecca ; and for them there is as much 
truth in the revelations of Buddha and of Mohammed as 
in the miracles and revelations of Christ. " The Na- 
tional Character and the Catechism " is again continued. 
This month the nature of modern science is discussed, 
and it is shown that Italy still possesses worthy succes- 
sors of Dante, Columbus, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, 
in the school of culture for the formation of the na- 
tional character. 

(21 Nov.): "The Triumph of Christ in the Jubilee of the 
Pope." A history of Pope Pius X.'s short but success- 
ful pontificate, showing how there is an evidence of the 
triumph of Christ's interests in the person of His Vicar 
on earth, who has gained the love and admiration of 
the entire Christian world. "The Liberty of Instruc- 
tion." The only true and practical solution of the prob- 
lem of education in Italy to-day is liberty of instruction. 
Italy will demand the liberty in education as enjoyed in 
the United States of America, which is the object of 
her admiration and worthy of imitation. "The Vati- 
can Edition of the Gregorian Melody. The announce- 
ment in the Motu Proprio of April 25, 1904, that a new 
edition of the Graduale Romanum would be published 
by the Holy See, is now fulfilled ; the work is completed 



560 POREIGN PERIODICALS [Jan., 

and will, no doubt, be welcomed by the teachers of 
Plain Chant. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i Nov.): "The Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ/ 1 by E. Mangenot. It demonstrates that 
the Resurrection, as an historic fact, is clearly attested 
by the New Testament writers. This article is restricted 
to the testimony of St. Paul, and shows that he not only 
asserted the fact of the Resurrection, but also that this 
fact was transmitted by a tradition which was truly his- 
torical. R. P. Le Bachelet writes his impressions of 

the Eucharistic Congress. His article is glowing and 
enthusiastic. 

(15 Nov.): "The True Religion of the Spirit," by A. 
Baudrillart. This is a University Sermon directed against 
the well-known work of A. Sabatier. The argument is 
to prove the unity of spiritual enthusiasm with authorita- 
tive religion ; the proofs cited are the lives of famous 

saints: Augustine, Bernard, Ignatius, and others. 

This number's installment of E. Mangenot's study on 
the Resurrection deals with the chronology of the event. 
He argues that St. Paul's testimony for the Resurrection 

on the third day is verified in the Gospel accounts. 

The text of a letter from Cardinal Satolli to the Bishop 
is 'given. The purpose of it is to urge a deeper study 
and wider use of Latin in the Seminaries of France. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (i Nov.): Arthur Savaete gives the 
second part of his article, dealing with the French- 
Canadian situation, under the title " Towards the Abyss.'* 
It is chiefly a presentation of some documents pointing 
out the dangers attendant upon the growth of liberalism 

among the Catholic French- Canadians Two more 

chapters are contributed to " The French Clergy in the 

Past and Since the Concordat of 1801." Marina Alix 

treats of "The Socialist Religion," and expounds its 

tenets as the antitheses of Christianity.- "The French 

Apologists of the Nineteenth Century " gives the bio- 
graphy of Father Felix, who occupied the illustrious 
position of Chairman of the Conferences of Netre Dame. 
His system of philosophy and the nature of his work as 
an Apologist are dealt with at length. 
(15 Nov.): In "Feminism," by Theo. Joran, the writer 






1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 561 

remarks that women do not need, in the present day, to 
be defended against some imaginary tyranny, but rather 
against themselves and their false friends, for the op- 
pression of woman coincides with the humiliation of 
man. In this connection Poulain's " Discourse on the 
Equality of the Sexes " and " The Education of Women" 
are analyzed. He is described as a sophist feeble in 

his thesis and vigorous in his antithesis. " Ambition " 

is discussed in the second conference on "Woman and 
Her Mission/' by M. Sicard. The field of ambition for 
the Christian woman is threefold: the education of her 
children, influencing her husband for good, and combat- 
ting so-called feminism. 

La Democratic Chretienne (Nov.) : Notice is given of a work 
which has appeared under the title Pages of Christian 
Sociology, consisting of two parts. The Doctrine and The 
Action. An article is to be devoted to it in the ensu- 
ing issue. "The Situation of the Social Question at 

the Present Moment," by Dr. Vogelsang, who treats it 
under the headings: "Liberalism"; "Atheism"; and 
"Nihilism." He claims that each of these "isms" can 
count its votaries in the various countries of Europe, 
and that in France Nihilism has gradually insinuated 
itself among the lower strata of society. He shows that 
the spirit of the time is well expressed in the words of 
Guizot, " enrich yourselves," by pointing to the enor- 
mous increase of the nouveaux riches. " The Chris- 
tian Workingman's Movement in Belgium," is reviewed 
during the ten years or so of its existence. There has 
been a steady increase in its activities and to-day it 
counts i, 600 societies or unions, with a membership of 
200,000; and by its action it has disarmed much of the 
prejudice against it, which once existed, and has gained 
the approval of the Belgian Episcopate. 

Annales de Philosophic Chretienne (Nov.): "The Theodicy of 
Fenelon and his Quietest Theory," by Jacques Riviere, 
underwent, the writer claims, a great change between the 
time of his refutation of Malebranche and his later works, 

published in his retreat at Cambray. "The Religious 

Experience of Contemporary Protestantism," by D. Sab- 
atier, is concluded. The two great tenets of Protest- 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 36 



562 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jan., 

antism are discussed "The Scripture the Sole Source 
of Revelation" and "Justification by Faith Without 
Works." The Catholic falls back upon the infallibility 
of his Church on determining the truths to be be- 
lieved; the Protestant gives his adhesion to the evidence 
of his reason, his moral and religious sense. It is this 
incompatibility between Catholic realism and Protestant 
idealism which must render illusory all hopes of corpor- 
ate reunion. 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques et La Science Catholique 
(Nov.): "God in History/' by M. L'Abbe Roupain. 
In this fifth conference the author treats of the Divin- 
ity of Christ. It is not his object to make a complete 
demonstration of this truth, but to present scientifically 
the faith of those who believe in Him as opposed to 

the modernistic interpretation of the Incarnation. 

" Psycho- Psychology," Chapter III., "Phenomenon of 
Stigmatism," by M. Le Chanoine Gombault. The views 
of the theologian and psychologist are presented, and 
two chief topics considered. Can the phenomenon of 
stigmatism be attributed to the imaginative power ? Can 
hypnotic stigmas be compared with those usually at- 
tributed to supernatural power, as, for instance, those of 

St. Francis of Assisi ? "The Felicity of Lamennais," 

treats of that portion of his life which is dealt with by 
the Abbe Boulard in his second volume, entitled Liberal 
Catholicism. The writer, Abbe Biguet, in his review of 
this volume, considers some of the prominent movements 
of the period in which the literary work of Lamennais 

played an important part. "A Chronology of our 

Lord Jesus Christ," deals with the census ordered by 
Augustus, which began in the year 745, when our Lord 
was born, and so coincides with the narrative given by 
St. Luke. 

Espana y America (i Nov.): P. M. Rodriquez, reviewing the 
"Present Situation in Colombia," believes that the Re- 
public is not dying, but that, as evidenced by its alliance 

with Japan, it presses forward to a glorious future 

P. E. Negrete, continuing his "^Esthetic Ideas of St. 
Augustine," takes issue with Guyau and briefly dis- 
cusses Lalo's essay on the aesthetic sense. "The 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 563 

General Law of Religious Music," treats the question 
whether there is an essential difference between theat- 
rical and sacred music. The article is written by Frederico 
Olmeda. The life and labors of R. P. Lorenzo Al- 
varez, O.S.A., who died recently after an exemplary 
missionary career in China, are related sympathetically 
by P. C. de la Puente. 

(15 Nov.): P. S. Garcia, in " Theological Modernism and 
Traditional Theology," shows how the errors of Loisy re- 
garding the Church may be refuted from the Bible and 

from history. " A Monologue," by G. Jiinemann, is 

called forth by the publication of "The Greater Re- 
ligious Dramas of Calderon." An article on " Peru," 

especially its government, education, and religious con- 
dition, is furnished by P. M. Valez. "The Centenary 

of Balmez," the purest glory of Spain in the nineteenth 
century, gives a brief but exact picture of that philos- 
opher's views and position. The writer is P. Aurelio 
Martinez. 

Razon y Fe (Nov.): "The Divine and Human in History," by 
E. Portillo, begins in this issue. The author treats of 
"The Divine Element in History," and shows the ten- 
dency of modern historians to deny the existence of 
God and revelation. After giving the historical data 
concerning these truths, he compares the methods and 
truths of faith and history; traces the evidences of God 
and Christ in the world; and treats the question of 

miracles. "The Organization of Trade Unions" is 

treated at length by N. Noguer. R. Ruiz Amado 

gives us an interesting article on "The University of 
Oxford." This issue also contains the " Exhorta- 
tion of his Holiness, Pius X., to the Catholic Clergy on 

the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of his Priesthood." 

And "Twelve Years of Radio- Activity," by Jaime 

M. del Bassio. 



Current Bvents. 

During the discussions which took 
France. place on the Near Eastern Ques- 

tion, and on the German Emper- 
or's interview, Morocco fell into the background. On a sud- 
den, however, it came to the front again, and for a moment 
seemed to threaten to develop into an even more acute crisis 
than either of the other two. Of this the Casablanca incident 
was the cause. As in mediaeval times so also in our own there 
are a number of worthies whose delight is in warfare. A num- 
ber of these form the Foreign Legion of the French Army, 
which is now in active service in Morocco. Of these some half- 
dozen of German, Austrian, and Swiss nationality deserted from 
the ranks. The German Consul at Casablanca took them under 
his protection, and as they were under the conduct of a Moor 
being marched off to a vessel for embarkation, they were ar- 
rested, with a certain amount of violence, by French soldiers, 
and lodged in prison. 

Technically this was an affront to the German Empire, but 
morally the case was so bad, that that Empire felt a little 
ashamed to take earnest action in the matter; and so in a 
more or less informal manner it proposed that the whole 
question should be submitted to arbitration; a proposal which 
the French government at once accepted. The difficulty was 
therefore looked upon as settled. The unpleasant position, 
however, in which the Chancellor, Prince Biilow, had been 
placed, by the celebrated interview of the Kaiser and by the 
necessity of raising large additional sums of money by taxa- 
tion, made, so it said, the Chancellor take advantage of the 
dispute for the sake of diverting the attention of his fellow- 
subjects from the misdoings of their own government to those 
of their enemy, in the belief, justified by experience, that the 
country would condone the former in view of the government's 
zeal against the latter. And so the Prince required, as a con- 
dition of submitting the matter to arbitration, that the French 
government should apologize for the conduct of its soldiers in 
arresting the deserters while they were under the protection 
of the German consul. This, however, the French government 
refused to do; and in this refusal they met with the unani- 
mous support of every party and of the whole country. 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 565 

For some days the Bourses were agitated, a conflict being 
looked upon as probable. A compromise, however, was made, 
by the terms of which the two governments agreed that they 
would simultaneously and on a footing of equality express their 
regrets for the acts of violence which had been committed, and 
would submit to arbitration the whole of the questions raised 
by the incident. According to the verdict of the arbitrators 
upon the facts and upon the question of law, each of the two 
governments undertook to express its regrets for the acts of 
its subordinate agents. 

It is understood that the arbitration will be submitted to 
the Court established by the Hague Conference. This refer- 
ence will form another step towards the advent of that era 
which not a few, encouraged by the successes of the past, are 
looking forward to with no little confidence, when critical in- 
ternational conflicts will be settled by a far more rational 
method than that which has hitherto been the last resort. The 
conduct of France during this crisis, for such it may be called, 
excited the admiration of the world. The conciliatory yet firm 
attitude of the government united every party in the State, 
from the opponents of the republican form of government 
on the one hand, to the extremest of the Socialists on the 
other, in unanimous support. The allies of France were of 
the same mind, and if the conflict had resulted in war, as for 
a few days seemed possible, their united support would have 
been given. Three years ago France yielded to pressure from 
Germany, and sacrificed M. Delcasse. To a renewed attempt 
firm resistance has been offered ; as a consequence, France has 
taken a higher place among the nations of Europe. 

One thing, however, threatens her permanent hold upon 
this position, and this is beginning to be recognized by those 
who give serious thought to the needs of the nation. The 
French army is at present between ninety and one hundred 
thousand smaller in the number of men than the German. 
But, owing to the diminishing birth-rate, a serious decrease in 
the annual contingent is to be expected in the future. The 
male birth-rate has fallen, in thirty years, from 430,000 to 
395 ooo last year. This year's contingent was only 210,000 
men; in ten years' time it will have fallen to 201,000; in 1928 
it will be only 182,000. The effect of this decrease upon the 
army will be to reduce its effective strength from 433,000 men 



5 66 CURRENT EVENTS [Jan., 

at present to 402,000 in ten years' time, and to 371,000 in 
1928. On the other hand, the German population is growing, 
and with it the effective strength of its army. 

The failure to keep the laws of nature is meeting with the 
retribution which it deserves. Even the navy is suffering from 
mal-administration due to dishonesty, dissension, and insubor- 
dination. This has led, as has been already mentioned, to the 
resignation of the minister in charge of naval affairs. Further 
revelations, which have been made on high authority, disclose 
even a worse state of things than had been imagined. Ships 
without ammunition, a fleet without means of replenishing its 
magazines, arsenals without reserves such has been the con- 
dition of things for the past fourteen or fifteen years. And 
while the thoughts of the rest of Europe have been occupied 
withj political questions of supreme importance, the attention 
of Paris has been engrossed with the proceedings of a woman 
more depraved than those who constitute the lowest class. 

The plan for raising the very large 

Germany. amount of additional taxation, 

which has been rendered necessary 

by the developments of German policy, has at length been laid 
before the Reichstag. These proposals, if carried into effect, 
will bring home to each and every one the cost of the new 
world policy, and may therefore have a sobering effect. The 
amount to be raised each year, in addition to the present taxa- 
tion, is no less than one hundred and twenty-five millions of dol- 
lars. For this purpose recourse is had to seven different sources. 
The Empire is to become the sole maker and wholesale distribu- 
tor of raw spirits, the further manufacture and the retail distribu- 
tion being left to private individuals. This will involve an in- 
crease of cost, an increase, however, upon which the govern- 
ment congratulates itself, inasmuch as it will tend to restrict 
over-indulgence in the use of ardent spirits. The drinkers of 
beer, however, are not to escape, nor yet those of wine. The 
duty on brewing is to be increased ; still wines are to be taxed 
for the first time, while sparkling wines are to have a higher 
duty imposed upon them. Smokers will have to pay their share, 
for upon cigars, pipe and chewing tobacco, and cigarettes, ad- 
ditional taxation is imposed. Not even snuff is excepted. Users 
of light will have to pay for the first time to spread German 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 567 

civilization throughout the world, for both gas and electricity 
are to be taxed for the first time. Electric power is also made 
subject to the new impost, although at a lower rate than elec- 
tric light. Mental illumination will also have to suffer, for all 
commercial and other business announcements in papers and 
periodicals, as well as circulars, placards too, and flash light ad- 
vertisements, will be levied upon. 

Death duties are imposed for the first time, and in future 
husbands or wives and children are to be liable to the payment 
of duties on inherited estate. The astounding proposal is made 
that the State shall become the heir of all estates except of 
those which are bequeathed by husbands or wives, or by grand- 
parents and parents, or by descendants in the first or second 
degrees. Descendants in the third and more distant degrees 
are to be excluded from the right of inheritance, although any 
moral claims which they can establish in a Court, to be insti- 
tuted for the purpose, will be allowed. This seems to be an 
unparalleled interference with the rights of property, and a long 
step in the direction of Socialism. To complete the list, what 
is called the Matricular Contribution of the various States of 
the Empire is to be doubled for the period of five years. 

These proposals will have to pass through the ordeal of dis- 
cussion in the Reichstag, and they have met with a great 
deal of opposition, especially as they form only a part of the 
increase which is asked for. Each particular State has its own 
burdens; and in Prussia a large addition to taxation has been 
demanded. 

The assurances given by the Kaiser that he would make no 
public utterances except those which had received the appro- 
bation of the Chancellor were exemplified at a recent celebra- 
tion in Berlin. The speech which he was to make was osten- 
tatiously handed to him by Prince Biilow ; this speech the 
Kaiser dutifully read from the manuscript, and made no remarks 
of his own. All Germans, however, are not even yet satisfied ; 
they have suffered too much from the fancies and whims of 
personal rule. There are many who wish to have an alteration 
made in the Constitution which will effectively secure that sta- 
bility and security which public discussion and the collective 
wisdom of the people alone can give. After a two days' de- 
bate the question of a revision has been referred to a Commit- 
tee of the Reichstag appointed for the purpose. The repre- 



5 68 CURRENT EVENTS [Jan., 

sentative of the Government having declared that, in the event 
of definite proposals being made, they would give to them the 
most careful consideration. 

On the second of December the 

Austria- Hungary. Emperor- King celebrated his Dia- 

mond Jubilee, bringing to an end 

a series of celebrations which had been going on throughout 
the preceding twelve months. If the celebration had taken 
place a feiv months ago, the event would have given unalloyed 
gratification, not only to his own subjects but to the world at 
large, for all had recognized his single-minded sense of duty, 
his courage in confronting the many dangers to which his do- 
minions have been exposed, his wisdom in bowing to the in- 
evitable when his sagacity made him see that it really was in- 
evitable, his unremitting labor for the good of the various peo- 
ples committed to his charge, and, above all, his unblemished 
truth and fidelity. It is this last which has been tarnished by 
the recent annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. How far he 
is responsible is not known. It is rumored that he has been 
led by the overbearing insistence of the heir to the throne and 
of his nominee to the Foreign Ministry, Baron von Aehren- 
thal. If this is the case, it is not the first time that an Aus- 
trian ruler has been led to act in the supposed interests of the 
State against his own better judgment. Maria Theresa, as she 
herself has left on record, was led by her Minister to act like 
the Prussians, at the cost of her honor, of the reputation of 
the Monarchy, of her good faith, and of her religion. " Truth 
and faith," she writes, "have gone forever, and with them the 
chief jewel of a Sovereign and his true strength against his 
fellows." It is not too late for his Majesty, Francis Joseph, to 
return to the paths in which he so long walked; and the lat- 
est news gives some hope that Austria is willing to submit her 
proceedings to the judgment of a European Conference. Great 
relief was felt at the announcement that the maladroit instru- 
ment, if not instigator, of the proceedings, Baron von Aehren- 
thal, had resigned, but this proved to be unfounded. This res- 
ignation, however, cannot come too soon ; for the results, so far, 
of his administration have been the conflict with Turkey, Ser- 
via, and Montenegro, disagreements with Russia and England, 
coolness with Italy, and even with Germany, on account of the 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 569 

conflict at Prague between the Germans and the Czechs. The 
latter made the streets of the city resound with the cries: 
" Long live Servia!" "Down with Austria I' 1 The govern- 
ment thought it necessary to proclaim a state of siege. This 
meant that the Court acts as a Court of summary jurisdiction. 
The executioner, with his assistants, who were sent down for 
the purpose from Vienna, must be within the precincts of the 
Court. All persons whose guilt appears evident are brought 
before this Court, and if the four judges composing the Court 
unanimously recognize the guilt of the accused, sentence of 
death must be passed and executed within at most three hours. 
Appeal is inadmissible. Only after one or more have been ex- 
ecuted can the Court admit extenuating circumstances in 
minor cases, and inflict penal servitude for from five to twenty 
years. It was in this way that Austria restored order in 
Prague. 

The same arbitrary and domineering spirit which has of 
late become characteristic of the Dual Government is seen in 
the treatment by the Hungarian ministry of the Croats who 
have protested againstjan infringement of their rights. Scores 
of them are in prison, and have been there for months with- 
out trial, for protesting against the wrong which they have 
suffered. 

The ruling race in Hungary has nothing so much at heart 
as the retention of the power to continue this and similar forms 
of wrong- doing. The present Ministry came into power some 
two years ago for the express purpose of establishing universal 
suffrage. Delay after delay has taken place; but at last the 
Bill has been laid before Parliament. It turns out, however, 
to be little more than an elaborate attempt so to manipulate 
the suffrage that the Magyars may retain the complete ascend- 
ency so long possessed, but to which their numbers do not en- 
title them. 

Very little progress has been made 
The Near East. in making definite arrangements 

for the assembling of the Confer- 
ence which it is desired to hold in order to take cognizance of 
the rearrangement necessitated by the action of Bulgaria and 
Austria. The chief offender does not wish its lawless action to 
be animadverted upon, or in any way brought under discussion ; 



570 CURRENT EVENTS [Jan., 

and if this refusal is persisted in, the holding of a Conference 
would be a futility. If it should not be held no great regret 
need be felt. The conduct of Austria has been condemned by 
a more powerful tribunal than would be the assembly of a dozen 
or so of the men who pass as statesmen. Public opinion has 
given its verdict, the force of which, in his own case, Francis 
Joseph's German cousin, William II., has lately been able to 
appreciate. The last-named Emperoi has had to bow before 
it; if the Austrian Emperor escapes for the moment it will be 
at the cost of not receiving for the annexation of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina the recognition of Europe, and [of having been the 
main cause of the unsettlement which now exists and which 
may lead, in the not distant future, to the dismemberment of 
the variegated Empire over which he rules. This event a few 
months ago would have been looked upon with regret; now 
to most men of good-will it would prove a cause of rejoicing. 

It is far from certain that war may not yet break out. Ser- 
via and Montenegro have been wrought up to the highest pitch 
of resentment by the injustice which has been done to their 
race and by the obstacle which has been placed, by the annexa- 
tion, to the union of all Serbs in one kingdom or Republic, 
The Russian people also warmly sympathize with their fellow- 
Slavs ; and even the Poles are ready to give their support. 
The Russian government, however, turns a deaf ear to the call 
to take up arms, and has joined with the other Powers in mak- 
ing representations to Servia and in calling upon her to keep 
the peace. The fact, however, that the Crown Prince of Servia 
was personally received by the Tsar, although he too gave 
peaceful counsels, renders it probable that the government also 
sympathizes with the Serbs, although it wishes to avoid war. 
Austria's only support is Germany ; although, strange to say, 
Italy seems to lean in the same direction. Doubtless she is 
fettered by being one of the members of the Triple Alliance. 

The conduct of Russia throughout the whole of this crisis 
deserves the highest praise. To her initiative is due the pro- 
posal to call a Conference, and to her self-renunciation the 
policy of seeking compensation at the expense of Turkey was 
rejected. Austria doubtless expected that the example which 
she had set would be followed, and in particular that Russia 
would seek to secure the right to pass the Dardanelles. But 
Russia refused to raise this question, and joined with France 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 571 

and England in giving to Turkey an opportunity to establish 
free institutions without suffering the loss to its prestige which 
further dismemberment would have entailed. Of this oppor- 
tunity Turkey has so far made good use: the Liberal govern- 
ment remains in "power, and has used this power with both 
moderation and firmness. Some small attempts at reaction 
have been repressed, and a mutiny of palace troops quelled; 
the elections have, on the whole, been quietly made. 

Bulgaria has entered into direct negotiations with Turkey 
with reference to the tribute for Eastern Rumelia and for the 
purchase of the Oriental Railway. Although so far no result 
has been secured, a fairly friendly feeling exists between the 
two States. Indeed, one of the possibilities of the future is that 
an alliance will be made between the newly organized and 
vivified Turkey and the Balkan States to place a bar to fur- 
ther aggression. Ferdinand is still, in the eyes of the world, 
Prince, and not, as some of our papers style him, Tsar or even 
Emperor. Emperors are not so easily made. 

The ways of the Constitution in 
The Middle East. Persia are very rugged, and it is 

still far from certain whether it 

will ever reach the goal. The Shah, with that disregard for 
his plighted word which is characteristic of absolute monarchs, 
notwithstanding his solemn declaration that a new Parliament 
would be summoned, let the appointed day pass without caus- 
ing elections to be held. It was evident that he had made up 
his mind to resume the old autocratic methods. But some re- 
gard had to be paid for appearances; and so a deputation, al- 
leged to represent the people, was formed, which marched be- 
tween two lines of executioners into his presence and besought 
his Majesty to remove the ignominy from Islam and abolish 
the constitution, as it was, it alleged, the work of Babism. 
Affectionately responding to these loving subjects, the Shah 
promised to remove the black spot from the religion of the 
faithful, and to issue a rescript giving effect to their wish. 

This, however, was more than even Russia could stand, and 
accordingly, acting jointly with Great Britain, she made urgent 
representations to the monarch, telling him very plainly that 
it was necessary for the well-being of the State that the prom- 
ised Parliament should be summoned and the oath to keep the 



572 CURRENT EVENTS [Jan. 

Constitutional Oath adhered to. The Shah yielded to these 
representations for the moment; but only for the moment. 
His hatred of all control made him revert to his oft- attempted 
plan, and decrees were published a second time abolishing the 
constitution. But this was not the end. Neither Russia nor 
England would consent to be thus mocked ; and these decrees 
have also been recalled, and for the time being Persia is still 
looking forward to a constitution. No Parliament, however, has 
been even summoned so far, and no one can tell what the future 
has in store. 

We cannot omit to chronicle the 
The Far East. deaths both of the powerless Em- 

peror of China and of the all- 

powerful Dowager- Empress, especially as, in common with so 
many other parts of the world, China is seeking to obtain the 
blessings bestowed by constitutional rule. Its establishment after 
a fixed term of years was decreed by the late Emperor, and 
the most anxious question after his death was what would be 
the fate of the project. The new Emperor has removed all 
grounds for doubt, for he has not merely taken a name which im- 
plies the advent of the new system, but has also issued a de- 
cree in which he reaffirms the convocation of a Parliament and 
the proclamation of a Constitution in the ninth year from the 
2;th of August last. He ordains that "every one, from the 
Emperor downwards, must obey the decree. The date of the 
eighth year of Hsuan Tung, fixed for the convocation of Parlia- 
ment, is unalterable. Let no indifference or vacillation be shown, 
but let every one quicken his energies, so that the Constitution 
may become a fact and tranquility prevail universally. There- 
by the spirits of their late Majesties shall be comforted, and 
good government be secured for countless ages." 

The way in which not only the nations which have in some 
degree already secured a share in their own government are 
striving to make it larger and more real, but also those nations 
which have hitherto been without such a share are meeting 
with success in their efforts to secure it, is one of the most 
remarkable features of our time, and one of the most hopeful. 
Egypt and India are alike in a state of unrest, because they 
think themselves deprived of its advantages. For the latter 
country steps in that direction are oa the point of being taken. 



MA t.-iANCH 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

"The Catholic World" in July, 1908, purchased " nonahoe's 
Magazine," of Boston, and became the owners of its subscrip- 
tion list. All communications on the matter should, be addressed 
to "The Catholic World," Mew York City. 

THE notice of the Selected Poems of Francis Thompson, which appears on 
page 541 of this number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, may be to some of 
our readers a first introductien to that poet's work. For a fuller knowledge 
of his life and poems we refer such readers to three articles already published 
in THE CATHOLIC WORLD: " The Poetry of Francis Thompson," by Kath- 
erine Bregy, August, 1905; "Francis Thompson," by Father Cuthbert, 
O.S.F.C., January, 1908; "Francis Thompson, Poet," by Thomas J. Ger- 
rard, February, 1908. 

* 

Tuberculosis is one of the worst scourges that affect humankind. Its 
ravages must now be known to almost every man, woman, and child of the 
civilized world. For years past, and it might be said for centuries, Catholic 
charity, as expressed in individual labor and sacrifice, in free hospitals and 
homes, in the untiring devotion of religious communities of men and women, 
has cared for incipient consumptives, has housed incurables, and advocated 
such prophylactic measures, as the research of medical science little by lit- 
tle discovered. The warfare against this disease is one of the most chari- 
table works of the present day ; that such is the case is becoming evident to 
the whole world, and tuberculosis is to be fought and opposed, and we believe 
finally conquered, by the great charities, the methods of public instruction, 
the aroused sentiment against it, which are being carried on by many agen- 
cies to-day. The movement cannot but help reaching beyond the cure for 
the prevention ot tuberculosis alone; it must go to the cure of those great 
moral evils that are oftentimes the cause of tuberculosis, and particularly the 
cure of the drink evil. Our day is witnessing the blossoming of this work 
against the spread of tuberculosis, the seeds of which were planted by sacred 
hands centuries ago. Every effort t fight and to kill the dread disease has 
our hearty support. Therefore, we wish to give this word of encouragement 
to the national work now being promoted by the Red Cross Society, and 
which, during the month of December, has taken the form of putting Red 
Cress stamps on all packages and letters mailed during the Christmas season. 
The use of that Red Cross stamp will mean help and consolation to many 
suffering human beings, and health and strength to many yet unborn. It is 
well to teach the young the joy of giving, even if it be but a little, and the 
generous spirit of Catholic youth in this matter has been happily evidenced 
in the number of letters addressed to our Uncle Ned of THE LEADER, bear- 
ing, besides the necessary government stamp, the one-cent stamp that means 



574 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION [Jan., 



a fight against tuberculosis. The work of this crusade, the labor during the 
past years and to-day of Catholic charities and Catholic institutions in this re- 
gard, certainly deserve to be recorded, and we hope to present a paper on 
the subject in the not-distant future through the pages of THE CATHOLIC 

WORLD. 

* * * 

Since its organization, about five years ago, the Catholic Educational 
Association of the United States has stimulated much useful discussion and 
published valuable reports by which colleges and schools may study the best 
standards of progress. The aim of the directors is to enlist the interest and 
co-operation of all connected with the work of Catholic education in the 
United States. 

It is a sacred duty of Catholic educators to maintain with persistent 
vigor the principle of liberty of education, and to safeguard the right of 
Catholic educational work to an equal standing before the law. This is not 
only a matter of our own self-preservation, but a service we owe to the 
Republic. In pursuance of this duty we need the united support and influ- 
ence of every Catholic educational institution, and of every pastor, teacher, 
and layman who has the welfare of Catholic education at heart. We need 
to stand as a united body, to keep the correct statement of our aims and our 
principles before the public, and to maintain our rights with courage and de- 
termination. 

The report of the meeting held July, 1908, at Cincinnati, published by 
the Secretary General the Rev. F. W. Howard, 1651 East Main Street, 
Columbus, Ohio contains over two hundred pages devoted to problems of 
the Parish School, and is entitled to rank as one of the best contributions for 
the reading public. It has many pages of abiding interest for every Catholic 
family, as well as for the teachers and managers of schools. The discussion 
on the method of teaching religion, between the Rev. Thomas E. Shields, 
Ph.D., and the Rev. P. C. Yorke, D.D., should attract much attention 

among expert catechists. 

* 

The d'Youville Reading Circle, of Ottawa, continues to flourish, and has 
presented many brilliant programmes within the past year. On a recent oc- 
casion Edward Kylie, of Toronto, presented a study of Francis Thompson. 

* * * 

Apropos of the articles now being published in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 
which point out what an unhistorical caricature M. Anatole France's Life of 
Joan of Arc is of the Maid of Orleans, the following recent despatch from 
Rome will be ot interest to our readers: "There was an impressive cere- 
mony at the Vatican upon the occasion of the reading of the Beatification 
Decrees conferred upon Joan of Arc and thirty-six French missionaries who 
met the death of martyrs in China. The reading of the decrees took place 
in the presence of the Holy Father and many high prelates. The decree in 
the case of Joan of Arc recited the details of three miraculous cures in the 
years 1891, 1893, and 1900. Following the invocation to Joan of Arc, Pope 
Pius delivered an address extolling the faith of Joan. She was called by 
God to defend her country,' said his Holiness, <and accomplished a feat that 
the whole world believed to be impossible. That which is impossible t man 



1 909-] BOOKS RECEIVED 575 

alone and unaided, can be accomplished with the help of God. The power 
of the evil one is in the feebleness of Christians.' 

''Turning to the French prelates, the Pope continued: 'When you re- 
turn to France, tell your fellow-citizens if they love France they should love 
God, the faith, and the mother Church. 1 " 

* * * 

We have before called the attention of our readers to the excellent work 
of the Christ Child Society. The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Society, 
just issued, gives us an edifying account of the work accomplished during 
the past year by its seven hundred and fifty members. The helpful influence 
of that work reaches into every channel of child life, for the object of the so- 
ciety is to aid and instruct needy children. Its efforts are devoted to the 
practical work of providing complete and comfortable outfits for poor chil- 
dren, making them happy by suitable gifts at Christmas time, and giving 
them an opportunity of a holiday in the country during the warm summer 
months. The Society has also branched out into settlement work. In 
Washington, for instance, eight different sections of work have been organ- 
ized and classes formed to meet the needs of children in each special locality. 
The present Report deals with relief and settlement work, and shows a 
marked development in both these fields of charitable endeavor. Over 
twelve hundred of the poor children of the District of Columbia were aided 
and instructed by the Christ Child Society during the past year. We trust 
that the Society's good, effective work will bear still more abundant fruits in 
the years to come. 



BOOKS RECEIVED 

JOHN LANE COMPANY, New York : 

Orthodoxy. By Gilbert K. Chesterton. Pp. ix.-299. Price $1.50. 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York : 

Out of Doors in the Holy Land. By Henry Van Dyke. 111. Pp. xii.-325. Price $1.50 net. 
CHRISTIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION, New York : 

The Young Converts ; or, Memories of the Three Sisters, Debbie, Helen, and Anna Barlow. 

By Rt. Rev. L. de Goesbriand. Pp. 304. Price 75 cents net. 
E. P. DUTTON & Co., New York : 

The Inner Life of the United States. By Count Vay de Vaya and Luskod. Pp. 443. 

Price $4 net. 
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York : 

An Immortal Soul. A Novel. By W. H. Mallock. Pp.474. Price $1.50. 
THE GRAFTON PRESS, New York : 

Early Christian Hymns. By Daniel Joseph Donahoe. Pp. 265. Price $2 net. 
ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, New York : 

The Life of Sir Isaac Pitman (Inventor of Phonography). By Alfred Baker. Pp. xi.-3Q2. 

Price $2 net. 
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York: 

Li/e and Letters of Henry van Rensselaer, S.J. By Rev. E. P. Spillane, S.J. Pp. vii.- 

2 93. 
PAFRAETS BOOK COMPANY, New York : 

Christ Among the Cattle. A Sermon. By Frederick Rowland Marvin. Pp. 58. 



57 6 BOOKS RECEIVED [Jan., 1909.] 



GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. : 

JP#<w* o/M* Commissioner oj Education for the Year Ended June 30, 1907. Vol. I. Pp. vu.- 

522. 
CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Columbus, Ohio: 

Report of the Proceedings and Addresses of the Educational Association. Pp. 480. 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, Boston, Mass. : 

The sEneid of Virgil. Translated into English Verse by Theodore C. Williams. Pp. 
xxix.-456. Price $1.50. By the Christmas Fire. Essays. By Samuel McChord 
Crothers. Pp.226. Price $1.25 net. 
L C. PAGE & Co., Boston, Mass. : 

O-Heart-San. The Story of a Japanese Girl. By Helen E. Haskell. 111. Pp. 129. 

Price $i. Old Edinburgh. By Frederick W. Watkeys. 111. 2Vols. Price $3. 
NICHOLAS M. WILLIAMS COMPANY, Boston, Mass.: 

A Brief History of the Archdiocese of Boston. By Rev. M. J. Scanlan. Pp. 60. Paper. 

Price 10 cents. 
JOHN JOSEPH McVEY, Philadelphia, Pa. : 

Sermons. By Rev. Reuben Parsons, D.D. Pp.462. Price $1.50 net. 

B. HERDER, St. Louis, Mo.: 

Bibliotheca Ascetica Mystica. Meditations. Vol. III. By Ven. P. L. de Ponte, S.J. 

Price $1.45 net. 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN COMPANY, Milwaukee, Wis. : 

Pro-Romanism and the Tractarian Movement. By Rt. Rev. C. C. Grafton. Pp. 72. 

Paper. 
THE MOORE LANGEN COMPANY, Terre Haute, Ind. : 

Benoni. A Christmas Play. By M. B. le Brun. Pp. 16. Price 15 cents. Music, 5 

cents extra. 
THE AVE MARIA PRESS, Notre Dame, Ind.: 

The Lepers of Molokai. By Charles Warren Stoddard. New Edition. Enlarged. Pp. 

138. Price 75 cents. 
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, London, England: 

The Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints. John Chrysostom. By Adrian For- 
tesque. Pp. 131. Price 25 cents net. Our Faith. By Cecil Lylburn. Pp.88. Price 
25 cents net. The Catholic Church and Science. Price 40 cents net. Workingmen as 
Evangelists. Our Lady of Lour des. A Dialogue on Socialism. Howard Wilton, Wan- 
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The Religion of Early Rome. The Religion of Modern Judaism. Pamphlets. Price 5 
cents net. 
GARY & Co., London, England: 

Mass of St. Benedict for Voices in' Unison. By Richard B. Mason. Priceu.net. Missa 
Fidelium. The Common of the Holy Mass set to Music for Two Unison Choirs and Organ. 
or Harmonium. By Samuel Gregory Ould. Price is. 6d. net. 
THE ANGELUS COMPANY, Norwood, London, England : 

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THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1909. No. 527. 

THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. 

BY BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, LL.D., F.R.S. 

P O person can have given any attention to early 
Irish history without having discovered that in 
the days when Christianity first exercised its 
sway over the island, there grew up a very re- 
markable and complete University system which 
attracted to the scholars of the Western land disciples from 
almost every part of Europe. In the eighth century her schools 
were famous throughout the civilized world, and Alcuin, who 
was the instructor of Charlemagne, in his life of the celebrated 
Willibrord, mentions the many years which he had spent in 
Ireland, inter eximios simul pics rcligionis et sacrce lectionis 
magistros. Troublous times came upon the land ; first the Danes 
and afterwards the Normans sacked the university cities, de- 
stroyed the libraries, and produced so disturbed a state of af- 
fairs in the country as to destroy all that fair fabric of educa- 
tion which former generations of scholars had built up. It is 
not until 1311 that we hear of the first university established, 
like most of the mediaeval universities, by Papal Bull. It was 
the first of several thus established, but none of them seems to 
have had any success, perhaps could hardly have looked for 
success in the existing condition of affairs. 

We have to come to the end of the sixteenth century be- 

Copyright. 1908, THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL TH APOSTLB 

IN THB STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 37 




578 THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM [Feb., 

fore we arrive at the foundation of an institution of university 
rank which has had any permanence. This institution is, of 
course, Trinity College, Dublin, or the University of Dublin, 
for it is known by both names, a foundation of Queen Eliza- 
beth's, erected at that time juxta Dublin, though it is now al- 
most in the center of the city, on the ground once occupied by 
the monastery of All Hallows, which had been suppressed, like 
all the other religious houses of the country, by Henry VIII. 
or some of the purloiners of church property who followed him 
upon the throne of England. There is some conflict of opinion 
as to whether this University in its first inception was intended 
to be of a proselytizing character or not. Professor Dixon, one 
of the most recent historians of the University, who naturally 
looks at the matter from the Protestant point of view, says 
that it was not, and urges the facts that Catholics contributed 
liberally to the funds of the original endowment, that no re- 
ligious tests were enforced, and that it was not necessary for 
Fellows to become Protestant ministers, as arguments in sup- 
port of his view. Others claim that any gift coming from 
Elizabeth and her advisers to Ireland must, of necessity, have 
been of the nature of the house of Troy, and contend that the 
institution of this seat of learning was only an item in the cam- 
paign against the religion of the people. 

After all, this discussion is only of academic interest, for 
no one denies that at a somewhat later date, in the times of 
James the First, that meanest and worst of men and of sov- 
ereigns, and still more in the days of his unfortunate son, 
Charles the First, a definite attack on the Catholic religion was 
opened ; and in the latter reign, when Laud became Chancel- 
lor of the University, new Statutes were promulgated which 
definitely bound up the University to the established Protest- 
ant Church, although as Bedell, himself a Protestant and Pro- 
vost of Trinity College (1627), declared "the island was almost 
entirely Popish, and its Protestant establishment had as little 
effect on the religion of the people as a chariot, lashed upon 
the deck of a ship, has in directing her course." 

Ireland, at least Catholic Ireland, had, however, for many 
years little time to think of university matters. She was en- 
gaged in a life and death struggle for existence, and was obliged 
to let such matters as higher education rest until the tyranny 
was overpast. 



1909.] THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 579 

After Catholic Emancipation had been granted the natural 
love of the people for learning led to a demand for university 
education suitable to the ideas of the majority of the inhabi- 
tants of the island, and it became clear that something would 
have to be done to meet that demand. The first attempt was 
the foundation of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's Uni- 
versity in which they centered. As regards the former, now 
that they are disappearing, or becoming transformed by Mr. 
Birrell's legislation, it may be said that, though more than un- 
fortunate as to the time of their birth, they were not conceived 
in anything like the narrow spirit as has often been supposed. 
Every similar institution in the three kingdoms at that time 
was tied up to some religious organization. Owing to the 
very nature of things, Ireland being bound to a Protestant 
country, like England, by the Act of Union, it would not 
have been possible to have passed a bill through Parliament 
uniting the new university to the Catholic Church as the 
English universities were to the Anglican, and to have united 
it to the Protestant establishment would have meant its en- 
trance into the world still-born. Hence the statesmen of that 
day launched it as a non-sectarian institution and earned for 
their bantlings the name of the " Godless Colleges," given to 
it, by the way, not by O'Connell, as many incorrectly imagine, 
but by a true-blue English Protestant Tory. Even as it was, 
it was much less non-sectarian or non- religious, to speak more 
accurately, than university institutions have since become; in- 
deed, in some respects, it permitted more recognition of reli- 
gion than is contemplated by the measure which has just passed 
through Parliament. But at what a moment did these unfor- 
tunate colleges emerge ! It was at the very time of the Dur- 
ham Letter, of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, of the absurd and 
undignified fuss and disturbance which one reads of now with 
so much astonishment and which led to such a contemptible 
conclusion. 

It is little to be wondered at that Irish bishops should, 
at such a moment, have hesitated to trust their flocks to in- 
stitutions not only set up, but also largely to be controlled 
by such a government. Yet even under these circumstances 
there were many who thought that the new institutions should 
have been taken hold of and made use of from the beginning, 
and a vote, at the celebrated Synod of Thurles, in favor of 



580 THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM [Feb., 

' 

condemning the colleges was only carried by a majority of 
one. It was, however, sufficient, for of course the Roman con- 
demnation followed, and though Catholic students have, as a 
matter of necessity, always more or less frequented these col- 
leges, they have done so without the snaile of the Church upon 
them and with, until very recent years, no regular assistance 
in the nature of ecclesiastical supervision. Here again it is 
useless to linger over ancient history and to ask what might 
have happened had the bishops really taken up and worked 
the colleges of Cork and Galway as they were undoubtedly 
intended to do by the government which introduced the m-easure. 
Suffice it to say that such a line of action was not pursued and 
that the demand for higher education for Catholics remained 
still ungratified. 

Mr. Gladstone's attempt at legislation, which upset one of 
the most powerful Liberal Ministries which had ever existed, 
must be remembered by many and cannot now be detailed. 
Nor need time be spent over that specious and hurried piece 
of legislation which destroyed the Queen's and produced the 
Royal University. So much has been said about the latter 
institution, and so much of what has been said has been un- 
favorable, that one hesitates to urge any arguments in its 
favor. It is undoubtedly true that it has debauched the pub- 
lic ideal of a university by leading persons to imagine that 
the obtaining of degrees is the be-all and end-all of such an 
institution, and that the way in which they have been studied 
for is of secondary, if indeed of any, importance. This is a 
false attitude towards university matters which it will take 
some time to change, though it will ultimately be changed in 
a much more radical manner than the similar attitude in Eng- 
land, engendered by the London University. But, in its favor 
it may be urged that it did permit the Catholic University 
College founded by the great Cardinal Newman, but then al- 
most, one would have said, on its death-bed to recover and, 
under the fostering care of the Jesuit Fathers, to carry on a work 
of great importance for the Catholic youth of the country. 
This was effected by a roundabout method of endowment 
which was certainly never understood by the English Parlia- 
ment when the Bill was passed, but which did, as a fact, in 
some measure finance the Catholic College, though to a wholly 
inadequate extent 



1909.] THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 581 

Still it remained perfectly obvious to all interested in the 
matter that the condition of affairs then set up could not be 
permanent. I remember a distinguished Protestant member of 
the Senate of the Royal University saying to me, not more 
than two years after its incorporation, that he expected that 
the whole concern would be handed over to the Catholic 
College before five years were over, and heartily approving of 
such a course. It has taken a good deal more than five years 
to accomplish what my friend foresaw, but in the long run his 
prophecy has come true, or seems likely to come true, for the 
site of the new Dublin College has not as yet been made pub- 
licly known. 

One of the worst features of the condition of affairs just 
described has been that every educational interest in Ireland 
has been kept in a state of unrest. " We know what we are 
but we know not what we may be," might have been, and in- 
deed was, the cry of every place of higher education. Each 
new Chief Secretary and on the average we have a new one 
every eighteen months had his own nostrum for the settle- 
ment of the question. At one time Trinity was to be brought 
into what was pompously and foolishly alluded to as a "Na- 
tional University," and immediately the Protestant drums be- 
gan to beat and the Protestant forces to march up and down 
in and out of Parliament in defence of what they call " non- 
sectarian" education, which, being interpreted, means education 
more or less in consonance with the doctrines of the Protest- 
ant Church. At other times other policies were adumbrated ; 
but always there was some good reason, or so it was alleged, 
for doing nothing and the university question, in spite of the 
soft words of Chief Secretaries, Scotch or English of course 
we never have such a thing as an Irish Chief Secretary re- 
mained unsettled and unsettling. 

Mr. Bryce, on the very verge of leaving our island for 
America, "nailed," as Mr. Balfour wittily put it, "his flag to 
another man's mast and ran away." In other words, he pro- 
pounded a policy, which almost anybody could have told him 
was most unlikely to succeed, and declared that it was the 
only policy which the government was prepared to favor. It 
was the policy of including Trinity College, and it led at once 
to the uproar which any person acquainted with the country 
might and would have predicted. And as a result, after a year 



582 THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM [Feb., 

of consideration, Mr. Bryce's successor, Mr. Birrell, introduced 
and, after weary and protracted opposition and obstruction, 
carried to a triumphant conclusion, a measure the very reverse 
of that which had been proffered on the eve of his arrival in 
Ireland and proffered as the only measure which the govern- 
ment were prepared to put their seal to. 

It is this measure which I propose to describe in the re- 
mainder of this article, and I will try to explain the bearing 
which its principal provisions have upon the future of university 
education in this country and upon the Catholic demand that 
it should be in accordance with the faith which is professed 
by the vast majority of Irish people. 

In the first place, then, comes the question of the method 
of government of the university and its colleges, for it was on 
this rock that all previous schemes of university education 
have come to grief. As to Trinity College, that institution 
suffers under the most antiquated and impossible system which 
the mind of man is capable of conceiving. 

"We're governed by seven worthy men 
Who wise men once have been," 

says an old college song and, as a matter of fact, the college 
and university are governed entirely by the seven oldest Fel- 
lows. At the time when the college had good livings, in the 
shape of parishes under the then Established Church, to give 
away, many Fellows were contented to be thus provided for, 
and promotion was more rapid than at present. But all this 
was changed by the Disestablishment Act, and Fellows now 
remain in possession of their Fellowships until they die. The 
result is that no man ever becomes a Senior Fellow until he 
is over seventy years of age, and the government of Trinity 
College has become a perquisite of senility, the purest example 
of a gerontocracy in the world. One used to hear from certain 
quarters complaints because the Catholic Hierarchy had not taken 
possession of Trinity College when its endowments and posi- 
tions were thrown open to all denominations by the Act of 
1873. There is at least this reply possible that, even if such 
a policy had been entered upon, and if every Junior Fellow- 
ship had been gained from that time till now by Catholic 
candidates, still there would not at this present year of grace 



1909.] THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 583 

have been a single Catholic on the governing body, the body 
which has the sole and entire control of everything in the Uni- 
versity and College, nor would any have been likely to occupy 
such a position for fifteen or twenty years to come. 

As to the Queen's Colleges, the government of those insti- 
tutions was in the hands of the professoriate of each college, 
bound, however, hand and foot by Castle red tape. But the 
professors of the colleges were all appointed by the Crown, 
and so was the president of each college ; and it was, there- 
fore, obviously possible that the professoriate of a college 
situated in a Catholic part of the country might be or become 
wholly Protestant and even violently anti- Catholic. As a mat- 
ter of fact Cork has always had a Catholic president and a 
majority of its staff at this moment are Catholics, but Galway, 
situated in Catholic Connaught, has had only twice and, in the 
aggregate, for a period of not more than three of its sixty 
years of existence a Catholic for president, and by far the 
larger number of its professors and lecturers are non- Catholics. 

Belfast, of course, has always had a Presbyterian president 
no other is conceivable in that city and though it has oc- 
casionally had a sporadic Catholic on its staff, there is at pres- 
ent no representative of that Faith connected with the college. 

It is obvious, from what has been said, that Belfast and 
Galway must always have had overwhelmingly Protestant gov- 
erning bodies. Cork has a governing body on which Catholics 
are in a majority, but such has only recently been the case, 
and might not continue. It is obvious that this state of affairs 
is not one which could be looked upon with any very great 
favor by the authorities of the Catholic Church. 

When a new system had to be constructed it was clear that 
the method of government must be one which would be Catho- 
lic in its composition, whilst at the same time it was also clear 
that by no legislative enactment could this be declared totidem 
verbis. However, there were plenty of precedents for the line 
of action which was followed, a line which it may confidently 
be expected will meet both the difficulties indicated above. All 
the newer English universities have governing bodies formed 
in part of members of the teaching staff; and in part, in- 
deed largely, of representatives of various public bodies, such 
as city and county councils. The general tendency of things in 
England being to slur over religious questions and exclude 



584 THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM [Feb. 






them from educational institutions, the governing bodies, which 
represent the general feeling through these representatives of 
public bodies, have as a rule kept the universities which they 
control non-religious. Ireland, however, is a Catholic country, 
and any just representation of public bodies, at least in the 
southern and western parts of the island, must necessarily be 
largely, if not entirely Catholic. Or, to put it in other words, 
a governing body, constructed on similar lines, would be in 
Birmingham largely Nonconformist and in Cork largely Catho- 
lic, and this not because of any special legislative enactment 
towards that end, but because in each case the governing body 
more or less accurately represented the general sense of the 
district. It would be difficult, therefore, for the most ardent 
Nonconformist or the greatest opponent of Rome to object to 
a system in Ireland which was already in full vogue in Eng- 
land, and operating in the direction which he desired, because 
the introduction of that system in Ireland would lead to the 
constitution of a directorate on which Catholics would have a 
majority. It was on these lines that Mr. Birrell settled the 
question of the governing body. The University of the South 
and West, and the three colleges attached to it, will each of 
them have nominated governing bodies which will hold office 
for the first few years, and on each of these Catholics have a 
substantial majority. After the expiration of that first period 
these bodies will be replaced by others composed partly of 
teachers, partly of representatives of the graduates, and partly 
of other persons appointed by the great elective corporations, 
whether city or county. It may be concluded that the great 
majority of these representatives will be Catholic as long as 
Ireland is Catholic, and by this means the problem of providing 
the bodies in question with a management at least not hostile 
to Catholic ideas seems to have been solved. But it was neces- 
sary to exclude Belfast from this arrangement, for in that city 
any such thing as a governing body which was even moderately 
Catholic, and still more any connection with a university con- 
trolled by a Catholic majority, would have been matter which 
would have caused every Orange drum in the North to com- 
mence to beat. 

Hence, Belfast has been separated off from the other col- 
leges and erected into an independent university, with its own 
completely distinct governing body. Rather a curious and sig- 






1909.] THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 585 

nificant point arises here and throws a bright light on the dif- 
ferent amount of tolerance for the views of others which is shown 
in the Catholic South and in the Protestant North. In Cork 
there is a governing body, of which one- third is Protestant 
and two-thirds Catholic. Now the population of the county 
shows a proportion of nine Catholics to every one Protestant. 
So that the Protestant minority cannot certainly complain of 
unfair treatment, yet no Catholic, so far as I am aware, has 
urged that undue generosity has been shown to those who are 
not of his faith. In Belfast, however, where the proportion of 
Catholics to Protestants in the population is far greater than 
that of Protestants to Catholics in Cork, only one member out 
of a governing body of thirty-five belongs to the Catholic 
Church. I note this curious discrepancy and pass on. 

Two universities then are to take the place f the former 
Royal University, which is to disappear entirely ; and of those 
two universities one is to have its seat in Belfast and to con- 
sist of the former Queen's College in that city alone, the other 
is to have its seat in Dublin and to possess three colleges, one 
in Cork, one in Galway, and one a new college in Dublin. 
This introduces us to a kind of university unknown, I believe, 
in America the Federal University. It is not a type which, 
so far, has met with any conspicuous success, yet it is a type 
of which the English mind ever prone to the middle path is 
very fond. Napoleon, that arch-centralizer out of the ruins of 
the old universities left after the Revolution constructed the 
University of France and attacked to it a number of colleges 
erected in the cities which had formerly been the possessors of 
niversities. It is admitted by all that the result was a com- 
plete sterilization of education, and worse: a serious degrada- 
tion of national learning and intelligence so great as to have 
led some of the acutest French observers to attribute the dis- 
asters of 1870 very largely to the effects of this fatal legisla- 
tion. Of recent years it has been entirely reversed and a num- 
ber of independent universities take the place of the affiliated 
colleges which formerly existed. In England it seems to have 
been thought a happy solution to say to a number of cities of 
different ambitions and perhaps separated by considerable dis- 
tances from one another: "Universities cannot be given to all of 
you, but we will lump the lot of you together and make you a 
university, and you must shake down together as well as you 



586 THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM [Feb., 

i 

can." The first attempt of the kind was the Queen's Univer- 
sity in Ireland ; and it really did seem as if that university 
would achieve some sort of a success, when it was ruthlessly 
slain, instead of being modified as it ought to have been and 
might easily have been. Then followed the Victoria Univer- 
sity, in which were united Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds. 
That institution managed to hold together for about twenty 
years and then it resolved itself into its constituent atoms, each 
of which became a separate and independent university. There 
still exists the University of Wales, which contains the Colleges 
of Cardiff, Bangor, and Aberystwith, and to the list is now to 
be added the new university in Ireland. It is not likely to re- 
main long as it is now constituted, for there has always been 
a distinct and unmistakable demand in Cork for a separate 
university, and it cannot be doubted that the people oi the 
Province of Munster, if they show that they really mean bus- 
iness, will shortly be rewarded by receiving those distinct 
powers and privileges which alone can bring them complete sat- 
isfaction and the full advantages of higher education. 

Meantime, in this particular university, the federal yoke is 
to be of a much lighter nature than has heretofore been known 
in any university of the class. In previous federal universities 
the curriculum in each college has been the same and has been 
determined by the general governing body, and the examina- 
tions have also been the same for all the colleges, though all 
the teachers in the different colleges have taken part in them 
Quite different is to be the state of affairs in the new venture. 
Each college is to be at liberty to present to the Senate of the 
university its own schemes of courses for degrees, and the uni- 
versity is to recognize and approve them if they appear to be 
of sufficient breadth and standard. It is thus quite possible 
that there may be avenues to a degree, or even degrees, in one 
of the colleges which may not exist in the others. It natu- 
rally follows from this that independent examinations for the 
different degrees will be held in each college, and here the 
watchdog nature of the university comes in under the pro- 
vision that it is to appoint extern examiners, independent of 
any of the colleges, who will co-operate with the professors in 
each college, conduct the examinations with them, and decide 
who are to pass and who are to be rejected. And in addition 
to this though it is not set down in the charters there can 



1909.] THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 587 

be no doubt that the degrees obtained in each college will be 
conferred in that college upon those who have gained them. 
In a word, each college will really be an almost independent 
university and the only function of the university body will be 
that of co-ordination and supervision, a supervision mainly di- 
rected towards the maintenance of an approximately identical 
standard for the degrees of the various colleges. In the mat- 
ter of the election of a president, a professor, or an independ- 
ent lecturer, the university will also have a voice. When any 
of these personages is to be elected the final decision will lie 
in the hands of the governing body of the university, but that 
body has not a free choice amongst the various candidates 
who may present themselves. The university is bound to take 
the opinion of the college, in which the vacancy exists, on the 
situation, and the college may if it chooses and one may feel 
quite sure that it will choose send up three names from 
amongst those of the candidates. One of these three the uni- 
versity must choose. Thus, if there are ten candidates for a 
post, the college has the absolute power of vetoing seven of 
them, and it may be presumed that it will set the other three 
in order of preference. It may also, one hopes and expects, 
be assumed that the university will have sufficient confidence 
in the judgment of the college to accept its choice and elect 
the dignissimus of the terna, unless there is very clear and un- 
mistakable evidence that something in the nature of a "job" is 
being attempted. It is obvious that a great deal of the success 
of the new venture must depend upon the consideration shown 
by one college for the views of another, and one hopes that 
peace and harmony and a general desire to assist rather than 
to hamper one another will be the prevailing instincts of the 
new governing bodies. Any person who peruses the Act of 
Parliament setting up the new universities or their charters, or 
those of the colleges, will recognize that the papers in question 
only set up a skeleton which has to be clothed with flesh in 
the shape of minor provisions or statutes. These last are to 
be the work of two statutory commissions set up by the Act, 
one for Belfast and one for Dublin. Their labors have but just 
commenced and must necessarily be spread over some consid- 
erable period of time, since there are many vexed and difficult 
questions which they will be called upon to settle. Until their 
work is done and approved by Parliament, the new institutions 



588 THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM [Feb., 

- 

cannot get to work or even enjoy the modest increases of in- 
come which are promised under the new arrangement. 

Three points remain for notice which are not wholly satis- 
factory in their character In the first place no one is to be 
allowed to build a chapel for the worship of God in the grounds 
of any college. With every college in Oxford and Cambridge 
provided with a chapel in which Anglican services are con- 
ducted, such a provision seems to be peculiarly unfair and 
even insulting, but it is one of several things which had to be 
accepted if a measure even as favorable as this was to be 
extracted from a Parliament largely dominated by Noncon- 
formists. 

Another point a more serious one, too is the exclusion 
of professors or teachers of theology from the academic coun- 
cils and from boards of studies. From this it will be at 
once understood that no Chair of Theology may be set up in 
the university or any of its colleges from public funds. But 
the Act expressly provides that such Chairs may be set up 
by private munificence, if universities or colleges wish to ac- 
cept them, and that under these circumstances the appoint- 
ments to the Chairs and the conditions of tenure, etc., may 
be such as are laid down by the founders. But and this 
is the important point no such professor is to be allowed to 
sit with professors of other subjects in the academic councils 
of the colleges or of the university. Why it should have been 
thought that the presence of a few theological professors 
would so far overawe their secular brethren as to render them 
incapable of taking a fair view of educational problems is 
hard to say, but the provision is there and is another of the 
things which Ireland has had to endure in order to obtain 
what she has obtained from a Nonconformist Parliament. 

Finally, there is the very inadequate provision of money 
which has been made for the various institutions, Belfast receiv- 
ing by far the best treatment in this matter. The amount which 
is to be granted for new buildings in Cork, for example, is hope, 
lessly inadequate, and, unless it is supplemented by outside 
gifts, must greatly hamper the progress of that college towards 
full university powers. The same may be said, with perhaps 
even greater truth, about the college in Dublin. For this, 
however, it is no business of mine to plead, but I venture to 
take the opportunity afforded to me when writing this article 



1909.] THE IRISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 589 

to appeal to exiled Munstermen, blessed with worldly goods, 
not to forget the college of the province to which they be- 
longed. Already Mr. and Mrs. William O'Brien have promised 
their entire fortune to it, and it is hoped and believed that 
arrangements will shortly be made by which fifty thousand 
pounds will shortly be available from this source, a truly 
princely gift, the most generous which has ever been made 
for educational purposes in the history of Ireland, for most of 
the gifts of importance made to the University of Dublin were 
made from other people's money*, a cheap and easy method of 
endowment, now fortunately impossible of execution. 

But much larger sums than this will be required if the 
colleges are really to effect all that they might and, let us 
hope, will, and these sums must come from private generosity. 
The spring of this generosity for university purposes has long 
been dry, and no wonder, considering the uncertainty in which 
everything connected with Irish universities has been so long 
wrapped. Now that uncertainty has been dispelled ; the coun- 
try has been provided with a university and colleges which 
Catholics may freely enter and freely use, and it may be hoped 
that the spring of generosity may once more burst forth 
and provide the colleges of the new Dublin University with 
the means necessary to carry out their work and to supply 
the youth of the country, Catholic and Protestant, with those 
chances of instruction which private benevolence has so lav- 
ishly provided for the youth of America and is now providing 
for the youth of England. 




IN THE SIERRA MADRE. 

BY CHRISTIAN REID. 

VIII. 

|WO days later, as the day was closing into evening, 
the party made their last camp. They had come 
down, by way of many a long and tedious de- 
scent, from the Sierra. Its mighty heights, sis- 
ters of the sky and the clouds, its green woods 
and singing waters lay behind them. They had descended to 
the comparatively tame elevation of seven or eight thousand 
feet above the sea, and into one of those great valleys which 
in their extent and productiveness are among the marvels of 
Mexico. There are many such valleys, very Arcadias of beauty 
and cultivation, in this fair land, but none more beautiful, more 
fertile, or more perfectly cultivated than that which extends 
from the foot of the Sierra eastward to where the little city of 
Santiago Papasquiaro lies like a pearl on the banks of the river 
of the same name. It is this crystal river which, flowing in 
bright, swift current through the valley's length, gives its wa- 
ters to irrigate the lands that bear such bounteous harvests, and 
it was on a knoll rising abruptly from its banks that the last 
camp was made. 

It was altogether different in its surroundings from any of 
their other camps. Even the night before they had been many 
thousand feet nearer heaven, on a pine- clad highland, where 
in the morning frost had lain white, and where the tall trees 
and solemn hills were their only neighbors. But here cultivated 
levels stretched around them, the village of a great hacienda 
on the other side of the river made a perfect picture, with its 
Oriental-like mass of flat-roofed houses, on each side of the 
wide pastoral expanse soft azure hills rolled up, and across the 
western horizon the great Sierra lay, a distant massive wall, 
robed in imperial purple. Above this wall the sun was sinking, 
with much resplendency of color, and the beautiful stream, very 
broad and shallow here as it flowed directly across the valley, 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 591 

was glowing with the reflection of the red and golden splendors, 
while in the east, pale and soft, hung the silver moon. Proces- 
sions of women were passing across the stretch of white sand and 
stones which lay between the village and the river, to fill their 
water-jars at the stream. A little lower a group, kneeling on 
the bank, were washing clothes. Some burros came down to 
the water to drink. A soft wind breathed out of the golden 
west, fresh from the majestic heights, and over the whole scene 
was spread an ineffable charm of pastoral repose and wide 
space. 

" It is not the Sierra," said Miss Bering dispassionately, as 
seated on the hillside, which was starred over with yellow flow- 
ers, she looked at the picture. " But it is a typical Mexican 
scene, which means that it is very beautiful. I should find it 
charming if my heart were not yonder, on the wild green heights 
we have left. I am glad that we are facing the Sierra in our last 
camp ; but I feel as if this river flowing below us were a di- 
viding line between two worlds." 

Trescott, who was seated beside her, did not answer im- 
mediately. To him that river, shining with the tints of the sky, 
seemed a dividing line, not only between two worlds, but be- 
tween two lives. Which should he choose that which lay yon- 
der in the purple Sierra, or that which awaited him if he re- 
turned to the world where he had been born ? Until now he 
had not known how difficult the choice would be. 

" We may think of it as a dividing line between many 
things," he said presently, trying to speak lightly. " Or, we 
may dream that it is the river of life of the old allegories it's 
lovely enough just now to be and that we have reached the 
farther shore, where it is very appropriate that we should find 
the ground covered with immortelles." 

"Do you call these immortelles ?" asked Eleanor. She had 
gathered some of the flowers, which she was arranging together 
as she spoke. " I should call them golden daisies." 

" It is a pretty name at all events ; and I am not botanist 
enough to dispute it. But to my fancy they remain immor- 
telles the flower that does not die. I have an idea that they 
can be preserved very perfectly. Will you give me one to try ? " 

She might have reminded him that they were growing all 
around him, and that he had but to extend his hand to take 
as many as he liked, but instead she gave him two. 



592 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

" One/ 1 she said, " is for your experiment in preservation, 
the other is for another experiment. You know the old fash- 
ion of telling fortunes by the petals of the daisy? Pluck off 
the petals, saying alternately on each : ' To go to stay ' ; and 
let us see what fate will bid you do." 

Smiling a little, he obeyed. "To go to stay"; he re- 
peated monotonously, as the petals dropped one by one from 
his fingers. "To go to stay to go" The last fluttered to 
the earth, and he looked up at Miss Bering. 

" The oracle echoes yourself," he said. 

"Of course"; she replied. "Bid^you think I would give 
you a flower which would answer differently from myself ? 
And so fate has settled the matter. You will go with us." 

He did not contradict her. At this instant it seemed to 
him that he had no power of resistance left. The river flow- 
ing by in the sunset glow became more than a dividing line 
between two possible lives it became a flood, bearing away 
on its swift current all thought of everything save the woman 
beside him. As he looked at her he said to himself that of 
the many pictures of her which this journey had given him, he 
would longest remember the one she made now seated on the 
ground amid the golden daisies, with the soft wind from the 
Sierra blowing her sunny hair about her face. If they had 
been indeed on the farther, the immortal side of that mystical 
river of which he had spoken, it seemed to him that this face 
could hardly have worn a fairer or sweeter aspect than it wore 
for him now. And everything aided its influence, the awak- 
ening of old powers, the yearning of desires which he had 
fancied dead within him, the softer charm of nature, even the 
oracle of a flower! Was there nothing to speak on the other 
side? He looked toward the Sierra, the stern heights which 
lift their great heads forever to the sky, the solemn hills "from 
whence cometh help." Had they help for him? inspiration? 
counsel? 

" Well," said Mr. Bering, speaking suddenly in a satisfied 
tone behind them, " I must say that I am very glad that we 
are safely out of the Sierra, and have only one day more of 
riding before us. To-morrow night we shall be in Santiago." 

His daughter sighed. "I wish I could share or even sym- 
pathize with your satisfaction, papa," she said; "but I am 
only sorry for the end of our journey. I have never enjoyed 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 593 

anything quite so much, and I am glad there is at least one 
more day of riding before us ! " 

" I only hope that your gladness will continue when you feel 
the scorching heat of the sun on a dusty, unshaded road," her 
father returned. " Riding in the Sierra is all very well though 
I am by no means so enraptured with that as yourself but 
riding elsewhere in Mexico is the very devil ! We must get 
up at four o'clock, and do the greater part of our traveling in 
the early morning hours. I hope, by the by, that you are not 
intending to leave us to-morrow, Trescott?" 

" We won't ask Mr. Trescott his intentions now," interposed 
Eleanor. " He has fulfilled his promise of seeing us out of the 
Sierra, and we mustn't press him to do anything more. Per- 
haps to-morrow he will decide to go on, and if so he knows 
that we shall be very glad; but we'll wait until to-morrow for 
his decision." 

An hour or two later supper was over. In view of the early 
start of the morrow, Mr. Dering had already retired to his tent 
and the camp was quiet. The last stain of sunset had long 
since faded out of the west, where the sky was now a great 
violet arch, thick sewn with stars. In the east the moon rode 
in serene majesty, undisputed sovereign of the night, flinging 
her silver radiance far and wide upon plain and hills, distant 
heights and gleaming river, making the last as silver as herself. 
In this fairy light the whole picture was touched with an al- 
most mystical enchantment at least to the eyes of the two 
who had wandered quite away from the camp, and following 
the hill found higher up the stream a strangely beautiful spot. 
It was a natural rampart, like the battlement of some fortress 
or mediaeval castle, where the action of the forces of nature 
had stripped the rock bare, leaving a ledge rising sheer from 
the stream, which washed its base some thirty feet below, while 
the rounded mass of the hillside rose behind it. Strewn over 
this long but narrow level space were a few scattered stones, 
and on one of these Eleanor sat down. 

"It is a throne which has been waiting for you since the 
beginning of time," said Trescott, looking at her with a smile. 
"We will make it a judgment- seat as well as a throne. For 
now the time has come for the fulfillment of my promise; and 
when I have told you my story, you shall decide whether I go 
with you back to our world, or whether I return to the Sierra." 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 38 



594 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

* 

As Eleanor glanced at him, it might have been seen, even 
in the moonlight, that she paled a little. Now that the mo- 
ment of fate was come, she had a sense of shrinking from the 
responsibility she had invoked. 

" Need you tell your story ? " she asked hurriedly. " I have 
heard something of it enough for me to understand." 

"I haven't doubted that you had [heard something of it," 
he replied. *' But there's everything in the point of view from 
which a story is told, you know. Not that I have any inten- 
tion of going into details; but I should like to tell you myself, 
in a few words, how my life was broken short, like a forest 
tree which a storm has snapped in two. The trunk stands, but 
it can never be a tree in any real sense again. So it is with 
me. And I don't pretend that I am altogether the victim of 
a woman's falsehood. What the woman who ruined my life said 
was false; but she could not have said it, and above all, it 
would not have been believed, if I had not been playing the 
part of a fool dangling after her, feeding her vanity, and in- 
dulging one of those superficial fancies, which, begun in idle- 
ness and folly, often end in passion and crime. So when she 
said to her husband: ' Philip Trescott wrote that letter/ he be- 
lieved her; and I have no right to blame him for believing 
her. And is was because we were friends, Jcomrades from boy- 
hood as well as of later life, that he was beside himself with 
rage and that what you know followed. I have often wished 
that I had not yielded to the instinct of self-preservation, and 
had allowed him to kill me. As it was, I did not mean to kill 
him, only to wound so as to incapacitate. But the bullet meant 
for the shoulder found the heart Even yet, I wonder why I 
didn't shoot myself then." 

His voice ceased, and in the silence which followed a silence 
that the river filled with its low murmur as it swept along the 
base of the cliff where they sat Eleanor had time to think that 
it is a terrible thing to see a human soul laid bare, and that 
for such suffering all attempts at consolation would be at once 
impertinent and vain. Presently she said very gently: 

1 You did not shoot yourself because you were brave. Sui- 
cide is the coward's refuge. You have borne your pain coura- 
geously, and, by bearing it, expiated all that was your fault. 
Why not try to feel now that it has been expiated and to take 
up your life again where it was broken off?" 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 595 

As he looked at her, she saw all the somber shadow of the 
past in his eyes. 

" A tragedy such as I have known breaks a man's life hope- 
lessly in two," he answered. "For then came the trials; no 
doubt you've heard the end of that. At the court-martial the 
woman could have saved me ; but as she had sacrificed me once 
to her husband's jealousy, so she sacrificed me the second time 
to what shadow of reputation remained to her. I waited for 
her to speak, but she did not speak; and I was dismissed from 
the service a disgraced man. Then I understood that she had 
revenged , herself because I had never laid myself altogether at 
her feet ; and I understood again that our own deeds make the 
whips which scourge us. Well, I left the country, drifted down 
into Mexico, and finally to this region attracted by its wildness 
and remoteness, by all that makes other men dislike it. For 
a while I was at the Santa Catalina ; but the social associations 
were more than my sick soul could endure. I went away out 
into the Sierra and there, for the first time, I found something 
like peace. Nature seemed to lay her mighty hand upon me and 
soothe my pain, as no other influence on earth had power to do." 

Again he paused, and again the murmur of the river, which 
seemed the very voice of nature, filled the silence. He sat for 
a minute or two motionless, with his eyes fastened OH the great 
mass of the mighty Mother Range, as if from afar off he felt 
its influence ; and then, still gazing toward it, went on : 

"You told me once when I said that the Sierra had given 
me peace, that it was ignoble to seek peace before one had 
won it in the heat and dust of conflict. But if you have ever 
known what it is to suffer horribly, savagely, incessantly yet, 
what folly 1 How could you know ? " 

"Perhaps I can imagine in some degree." 

" In some degree, perhaps, you can ; for you are one of those 
whom sympathy teaches many things. Let me tell you, then, 
that when one has so suffered and has found relief, any relief, 
one is too well content, too grateful, to ask anything more. 
That was how it was with me when you blamed me for being 
satisfied with such content. A man should hardly be blamed 
who, taken out of hell, asks simply to lie on the green earth 
and look at the sun." 

His words, his tone, roused such a sudden, wild inclination 
to tears, that she could not answer for a moment. 



59 6 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

- 
" I was presumptuous," she said. " My only excuse and it 

is a poor one is that I did not know the depth of the wound 
I touched. I knew that you must have suffered, but I never 
guessed " 

As her voice faltered, he turned quickly and laid his hand 
on hers, with a close, passionate pressure. 

" Don't ! " he said. " Don't reproach yourself ! Your words 
were like the call of a trumpet, only they had an effect which 
you never intended they wakened me to a new pain." 

"No no." 

"Yes"; he removed his hand. "And now I must tell you 
about that; and I must not spare myself, for you are to judge 
as well as to sympathize, you know. It comes to this, then 
I am mad enough to love you, and I haven't the faintest pos- 
sible right to do so ! " 

Would he ever forget the look on her face, as she turned 
it toward him ! 

"Why not?" she asked, or rather breathed softly. 

" Ah ! " He caught his breath sharply. " For two reasons," 
he said almost sternly. " First, because I am a broken man, 
without prospects and without energy, the murderer of my best 
friend" 

"Stop!" she cried. "You shall not call yourself such a 



name." 



"He who kills is a murderer; and I killed him, not only 
by the bullet which ended his life, but by the criminal folly 
which made the bullet a possibility. There is no changing that 
fact, God Himself as I have often felt with a sense of despair 
cannot change it now; and, this being so, I could never think 
of offering a blood-stained hand to you." 

" It is not blood-stained," she said passionately. " A man's 
hand is only stained when he has shed blood wilfully, when he 
had an intention to kill. It is the intention which makes the 
deed a crime or an accident. With you it was an accident." 

He shook his head. " Not altogether. I have never been 
able to lay that comfort to my soul. But, whether I could or 
not, the fact remains that in the eyes of the world my hand 
is blood-stained, and therefore not fit to touch, much less take 
yours." 

With a gesture of exquisite sweetness, she extended her hand 
and laid it on his. " Let this show you what I think," she said. 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 597 

Deeply moved, he bent his head and kissed the hand. Then 
he placed it gently back in her lap. 

" You are goodness itself," he said, " and I understand ex- 
actly what you mean and why you mean it. You are very 
sorry for me, and you wish to reinstate me in my own self- 
esteem. Well, be sure, if anything on earth could do it, your 
belief in me would. But I dwell too long on what I am or am 
not, which is, after all, beside the question ; for the second rea- 
son why I have no right to love you is a woman." 

Again a silence; but this time a very brief one, and in it 
Eleanor Bering heard no longer the murmur of the river, but, 
like the heroine of the old ballad, only the beating of her own 
heart beating so painfully, and to her senses so loudly, that 
she almost feared it was audible to the ears beside her. But 
she made no sound or sign, and after an instant Trescott went 
on: 

" If I were speaking to another person, I should have to 
explain much, but not, I think, to you. The case then is this: 
In my wanderings in the Sierra I had, as you know, the excuse 
of prospecting, and it was with this excuse that I went to the 
house of a woodcutter of the Sierra, who had brought me rich 
samples of ore. I didn't expect and didn't desire to find any- 
thing of real value ; but, because I didn't desire it, I found a 
mine for which a real prospector would almost have given his 
head. Having found, I felt bound to stay and work it; and, 
besides, it was an excuse to remain in the mountains and let 
nature do the healing work, of which I have spoken. Then 
presently I began to feel the first pleasure which I had felt 
since my life was broken off short, in watching a girl, a daughter 
of the woodcutter. And this pleasure was due to the fact that 
she was a purely natural creature, absolutely without artifice, 
absolutely primitive in all her instincts in short, if you can 
understand what I mean, she was a perfect embodiment in human 
form of the scenes and the influences which were surrounding 
me." 

Miss Bering's voice had a tone of involuntary constraint in 
it when she said : 

"I think I understand perfectly. But was not this fancy 
due to your own condition?" 

"Partly, no doubt; but, putting my fancy aside, I believe 
that if you saw her yoi^re^Tptie^gn^that, unconsciously to 




MORRISANIA BRANCH 
fiin P-jct ifiQth St. 



59 8 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

j 

herself, the great scenes amid which she has lived have molded 
and influenced her character and her thoughts. I watched her 
long and closely, just as I liked to watch the wild fawns out in 
the forest, and I never saw her do a thing, or heard her utter 
a word which was not serene and noble." 

" It is saying a great deal." 

" It is saying simply the truth. Indeed, I should be an 
ingrate if I failed to say it, for she was as kind to me as only 
a woman knows how to be to a man whom she feels to be 
sorely wounded. She helped may God deal with me as I 
should deserve if I ever forget how much she helped ! in 
healing my wounds. And then one day I found that she was 
about to be handed over by her father to a man whom she 
detested. I interfered, and brought such pressure to bear on 
the father that he was forced to send the man away. But I 
saw that there was only one real way to save her, and that 
was to marry her myself. You see " for Eleanor had started 
" I felt that I was, for all practical purposes, a dead man. 
I had given up my home and my country, I desired nothing 
more than to bury myself in the Sierra; and it seemed as if the 
best I could do with my ruined life was to make it a protec- 
tion to one to whom I was sincerely attached, and who cared 
for me far more than I deserved. So, while I did not tell her 
that I loved her I have never told her that I told her that, 
if she trusted me, I would be faithful to her." 

His voice sank, and silence followed, which Eleanor pres- 
ently heard herself break by asking: "And you have, then, 
married her ? " 

"Not yet"; he answered. "It is not easy to be married 
in the Sierra ; and there seemed no need for haste. She has 
been satisfied to wait. She would be satisfied with anything, 
so long as I did not break faith with her. And so I have lived, 
forgetting, or trying to forget, more and more that there was 
any other life until I met you." 

Silence again. How the river sang over its stones, with 
what liquid sweetness of melody its pouring water filled the 
silver night ! And, hark ! coming clear and plaintive from a 
group of trees which crowned the hill behind them, the cry 
of the whippoorwill, sounding far and wide over the sleeping 
valley ! 

"I met you," Trescott repeated, as if those words told 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 599 

everything, " and, having met you, what could I do but fol- 
low you ? I said to myself that it would only be for a few 
a very few days, and that their pleasure was worth whatever 
I should have to pay. For you not only embody all that is 
highest and best in my old life, every social charm, every in- 
tellectual grace of civilization, but you are more than that 
you are yourself, individual, exquisite, so rare and fine and 
noble, that if we part now, if I never see you again, and if I 
suffer all the pain which must be my portion in not seeing 
you, I shall be thankful even for this pain, because it has its 
root in having known you and loved you and felt the sweet- 
ness of your companionship, your sympathy and your com- 
passion." 

"Oh, hush! hush!" Eleanor cried with a stifled sob. 
"You break my heart!" 

In an instant he was kneeling beside her, holding both her 
hands. 

" Have I hurt you ? " he said. " I am a brute as well as a 
fool ! Don't you understand ? don't you see ? There's noth- 
ing for you to regret nothing ! If the Sierra soothed my 
pain, you have " 

" Made you suffer more ! " 

"Wakened my soul, taught it that there are things so di- 
vine that one would willingly buy them at the price of any 
pain ! And you have also given me strength to go back to 
the world where my place and my duties are, or would be, if 
if the other obligation which I have made for myself here 
did not prevent. Tell me you know everything now what 
shall I do ? Shall I go, or shall I stay ? " 

" It is too much," she said passionately, " too much to ask 
me to decide ! " 

" But you only can decide. Don't you see that I can't 
trust myself ? Every instinct of my nature, every feeling of 
my heart, urges me to go with you, to return to the world 
where I belong, and where I may meet you, see you, perhaps 
some day even win the right to love you And all that in- 
terferes with this is my word, just my word, given t one with 
whom most men and women of our race and class would feel 
that it was sheer folly, sheer madness, to keep faith ! If I go, 
I must break my promise, and perhaps break her heart God 
only knows about that and besides abandon her to a savage 



600 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

brute; w&ile, if I stay, I must give up everything which could 
make life have once more a meaning for me, and commit 
mental and moral suicide. There is the strait in which I am 
placed. So what can I do but put the matter in your hands 
these kind and tender hands and bid you decide for me?" 

She drew her hands out of his clasp. 

" Will you go away," she said, speaking very low, " and 
come back in about a quarter of an hour? I will think over 
what you have told me, and give you my decision then." 

A quarter of an hour later all the night seemed to Tres- 
cott's fancy filled with the mournful cry of the whippoorwills, 
as he went back to where Eleanor sat, quite motionless, her 
hands clasped around her knees, looking as steadfastly as he 
had looked toward the great heights, where they had journeyed 
together during a few golden days, and where the other the 
dark woman awaited his return. Not until he stood immedi- 
ately before her did she remove her eyes from the Sierra and 
look at him. Then, in their expression, he read his doom. 

" I have thought it all over," she said very quietly. " I 
have weighed everything. And I don't see how it is pos- 
sible for you to do anything but go back." 

" I knew you would say that," he answered as quietly as 
herself. "There isn't anything else to do. To-morrow I will 
turn my face again toward the Sierra, and let you go back to 
the world without me. After all, it is expiation and it is 
justice. What right have I to look for happiness? It is 
better so." 

"It is not better so," she answered, and now her voice 
was firm and clear. " You have expiated long and bitterly 
what was a folly and an accident, rather than a crime, and 
you have a right to your life, to success and happiness and 
and love, like other men. But you can't build a new life 
on broken faith and ingratitude. Other men might do so, and 
never feel a pang of self-reproach; but not you. If you come 
with us now, nothing would ever enable you to forget that 
you had repaid kindness and love with desertion and betrayal. 
Therefore, you must go back." 

" Yes, I must go back." 

" But you must not stay," she went on. " You must find 
a means there are open and honorable means of avoiding 
what would be in the end misery not only to yourself but to 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 60 1 

this woman. Think of the mental as well as of the social in- 
equality between you ! think, above all, of the fact that you 
do not love her ! " 

" And that I do love you ! " 

" Then to marry her, no matter how much you might give 
her in other respects, would be to do her a grievous wrong. 
Don't fancy that because she is ignorant and humble she would 
not feel it. Nothing can take the place of love to a woman. 
If, then, you will let me advise you for your own sake and 
hers you will tell her the truth. It is the only brave and 
honest thing to do." 

He knelt down again beside her ; and taking her hands 
again in his own, carried them to his lips. 

" You are right/' he said. " As long as I was dead it did 
not matter what became of me, and I might have made her 
content. But now I am alive and she would feel it " 

" Yes, she would feel it." 

" And so I will try to do your bidding in this also if I 
can. It will be hard, for it will hurt her, but I will try. And 
if if I succeed" 

" Let us say nothing of that ! " she interrupted quickly. 
"It is not good to make plans for possible happiness on an- 
other's loss. Do it because it is right, because the truth is 
due to her and to yourself. Whatever may follow is in God's 
hands. Let us leave it there. And since it is possible that, 
after we part to-morrow, we may not meet again, I want you 
to remember just one thing: that the pain of which you have 
spoken is not all yours, but I am glad to bear my share of it, 
if since we met I have helped you in the least. For I have 
known from the first that your burden is very heavy. But it 
will be lifted I am sure it will be lifted and you will yet do 
your duty to God and man with courage and honor. Now we 
must go back to the camp. You know we are to start very 
early in the morning." 

It was so early when they started the next morning that the 
moon was still shining though now in the western sky and 
the light which filled the sleeping world was a beautiful ming- 
ling of moonlight and a glow from the east, which was rapidly 
growing incarnadine before the coming of the sun. It was in 
this strange, mystical radiance, with the sinking moon on one 
side, and the rosy dawn coming up the sky on the other, that 



602 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

- 
Trescott put Eleanor on her mule and held her hand for the 

last time. 

"Good-bye"; he said and in his face, as he looked up at 
her, was all that was left unsaid. 

" Good-bye"; she echoed. And then, leaning a little from 
her saddle, she pointed to the flushing dawn. " ' Until the 
day breaks and the shadows flee away ! ' ' she said very softly 
and sweetly. "Have no fear. The day will break the sha- 
dows will flee away. So, good-bye and God bless you ! " 

It was with this gentle benediction still sounding in his 
ears that, at the foot of the hill, he saw them ride away 
toward the east, momently growing more radiantly glorious, 
while he turned his horse's head and, crossing the river, set 
his face toward the west, the shadows, and the Sierra. 

IX. 

It was not yet fully daylight when Trescott rode by one ot 
the many pack-train camps which are constantly seen in this val- 
ley, since through it pass all the trains which convey goods 
and supplies from Santiago to many places in the Sierra. He 
hardly noticed the ordinary scene the long row of pack saddles 
and bales of various kinds, the patient animals, the men stretched 
out in their blankets around the smoldering fire. Even less 
did he observe that, at the sound of his horse's tramp on the 
hard white road, one of the men raised his head and looked 
toward him, then sat up, and then rose to his feet still re- 
garding the now diminishing figure of the horseman with a 
glance in which recognition was mingled with disappointment 
and anger. He watched the figure until it disappeared and, as 
he watched it, an expression of dark malignity settled over a 
face which nature had apparently formed for such expressions. 
He muttered a curse, then turned and kicked one of his sleep- 
ing companions. 

"Wake up, Pe'pe ! " he growled. "I have something to tell 
thee. Nombre dc Dios, what a sleeper ! Wake up, man, I say ! " 

Pepe rolled over, uttered a curse or two on his own account, 
and finally sat up. 

" What dost thou want, Cruz ? " he asked, looking up at the 
tall figure standing over him. "It is no more than the mad- 
rugada. What need is there to start so early ? " 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MADRE 603 

"Start at noon, if thou likest, lazy one! I have not waked 
thee to talk of starting, but to tell thee that I am going back 
a day's journey or so. Take the mules on to Santiago, de- 
liver this letter to Don Jose* Medina, tell him I was taken ill 
on the road, but that I will be there in a day;'or two, and wait 
for me. Say nothing to any one else, and make Tobalito hold 
his tongue." 

" Pepe was by this time wide awake, staring at his comrade. 

"For what art thou going back, Cruz?" he asked. 

Cruz swore at him roundly. " Is it business of thine what 
I am going back for ? " he demanded. " But I may tell thee 
that I am going to Santa Rosa to visit a woman. I thought 
of her when I saw the town in the distance yesterday, as we 
crossed over the mountain by the short cut, and I said to my- 
self that I would go there to-day, for we shall be too hurried 
when we return, with our loads of merchandise, to stop." 

"Well, good luck go with thee!" said the other, giving his 
blanket a roll around him and lying down again. " Adios" 

Cruz, who was the only mounted member of the party, 
saddled his mule, and after a brief breakfast of cold tortillas 
and beans, set forth not in the direction of Santa Rosa, which 
lies to the north, but straight west toward the Sierra. 

He rode all day, taking care not to come within sight of 
the horseman whom he knew to be in advance of [him, and 
whom several times he was in danger of overtaking, for Tres- 
cott, having no reason to press his horse, rode slowly, especial- 
ly since by afternoom they were well among the hills and 
mounting higher with every step. Only once the man behind 
left the trail which the other was following. On this occasion 
he turned aside and sought a small ranch deep among massive 
heights. Here he found a friend who gave him hearty welcome 
a friend who belonged to the large class of retired bandits, 
once very numerous in this country, but whose ranks death is 
now thinning. After they had exchanged greetings, patted 
each other on the ^back, even as if they had been high born 
caballcros, and, with many 'compliments, drank ^to each other 
out of the same bottle of tequila, Cruz, resisting the hospitable 
entreaties of his friend that he would remain for the night, 
broached his business it was to borrow a rifle. He had left 
his pack-train to go back and search for a strayed mule, the 
search would take him into a wild part of the Sierra, and he 



604 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb., 

I 

must spend the night there alone. Mountain tigers, as Pablo 
knew, were very bold when it was only a question of a single 
man; therefore he would like, as a measure of precaution, to 
have a rifle, which he would return without fail in a day or 
two. 

Pablo was not so indiscreet in questioning as Pepe had been. 
Mountain tigers made a good enough excuse for him. He 
produced with alacrity his rifle a treasured weapon, which he 
had carried in the Sierra for many a day, as one of the band 
of Francisco Mora, who was called the king of the Sierra, and 
who reigned there like a king until the government was con- 
temptible enough to put a price on his head, which so quickened 
the zeal and energy of his pursuers that he was taken and shot, 
and his faithful followers had to put away their rifles, under 
pain of being shot likewise. All of this Cruz knew he not 
only knew about the adventurous past of Pablo, but especially 
why the rifle bore such marks of service and why its owner 
handled it so lovingly. As he fastened it to his saddle, the 
latter looked at it with a sigh. 

"So I carried it," he remarked. "And it never failed me. 
Many a cross it helped to put up in the days of Francisco 
take care of it, Cruz, and bring it back safely. I would rather 
lose one of the chiquitos than this rifle." 

" I will take care of it and bring it back," Cruz promised ; 
and then, with fresh salutations and good wishes, he rode 
away. 

The ex-bandit looked after him with a sympathetic but also 
a presaging gaze. He, who had known long what it was to 
stalk a human prey, with what fierce excitement such hunting 
fills the veins, was at no loss to read aright the fire in the 
dark, somber eyes which had looked into his own. 

" He wants to put up another cross," he said to himself; 
" but he will do well to take care that he does not put up 
two. If they come to me I shall certainly say that he had the 
rifle. I have no mind to be shot at this late day for his mis- 
deeds." 

As nightfall came down upon the great heights, Trescott 
was still climbing wearily upward along a scarcely discernible 
trail. He knew that he should have reached before this the 
place where he intended to spend the night ; but he had rested 
too long at mid-day and traveled too slowly after starting; so 



1909.] IN THE SIERRA MAD RE 605 

sunset and swift-falling twilight found him on a long, steep as- 
cent, in one of the wildest parts of the outlying Sierra. 

It mattered little to him, however. The deadly lassitude 
and depression which follow any great mental or moral, just 
as it follows any great physical, effort were upon him. He felt 
shattered, utterly overcome, utterly indifferent to any further 
blow which fate might have in store for him. What did the 
trifle of being belated or lost among the mountains matter to 
one whose life was belated and lost ? A shadow, such as had 
scarcely rested upon his face since he had first sought the house 
of Miguel Lopez in the depths of the Sierra, rested on it now. 
The reaction from the brightness and happiness of the last few 
days was intense; the sense of loss acute. All the exaltation 
of mood, all the hopefulness which he had drawn from Eleanor 
Bering were gone with her. Dark upon his soul fell the old 
misery, and with it a new despair the consciousness, the cer- 
tainty, that he had only dreamed of freedom, of new life, of 
sunshine, and possible happiness. These things were not for 
him. The woman whose spirit had for a time wakened and 
borne up his own was gone, and he knew knew with a posi- 
tive intuition that he should never find strength and confidence 
enough in himself and his destiny to seek her again. All that 
remained to him was such obscurity and such peace as the 
Sierra might give. 

And yet he felt as if even that had been taken away from 
him. The Sierra had now no message of peace, no soothing 
for his wounded soul. He had once told Eleanor that its great- 
est power of soothing lay in its freedom from human associa- 
tions, in the fact that among the great hills there was nothing 
to remind him of his past life, or of anything which was a 
source of pain. But now Ah, now all this was changed ! 
Where could he now turn that he would not see, with that in- 
ward vision which in absence beholds so clearly, and beholding 
burns the heart like a fire, the presence that had passed with 
him through the wild forests and the deep sylvan glades, and 
robbed them of repose forever ? What had the Sierra now be- 
come to him but an empty and desolate region, such as the 
fairest region that earth knows must become when love has en- 
tered and gone out of it? Enchanted solitudes she had called 
the scenes where they had wandered together for a few brief, 
happy days; and solitudes indeed they now remained to him, 



6o6 IN THE SIERRA MADRE [Feb. 

while she' had taken the enchantment with her when she rode 
away into the rosy, golden dawn. 

All these thoughts accompanied him as he climbed upward 
where only the day before they had descended together; and 
when he caught the sound of a horse's tread on the stony trail 
below, it was a proof of how keenly he felt the loneliness which 
encompassed him that the sound was almost welcome to his ear. 
At length he gained the height up which he had been climb- 
ing, and found a comparatively level summit on which some- 
thing of sunset light was yet lingering. And here his eye was 
caught by one of the wayside crosses so common along the 
way. The sight of it recalled the day he had pointed out such 
a cross to Eleanor Bering, and she had said that she was sorry 
for the man who had died there, because, " even for the un- 
happy, life holds many chances and death none." How he could 
hear her voice uttering the words ! and what was it he had 
answered ? 

"There are men for whom life holds no chances. And for 
such, a quick call a death in the sunlight and a cross by the 
wayside is no ill fate." 

Well, he was ready to say the same thing again, with added 
emphasis ; ready to envy the man to whom the quick call had 
come here. For what friend was like death to give peace to 
the tortured and weary spirit, to lift the burden from galled 
shoulders, to cut knots and solve riddles which were past all 
human cutting or solving ? He drew up his horse and, with 
his figure outlined against the sky, stood looking at the rude, 
pathetic memorial of tragic death. Into his mind came the 
words which had been Eleanor's farewell to him in the morn- 
ing: "Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away." 
Would the day indeed break, the shadows flee ? 

The sharp crack of a rifle rang through the forest. There 
was the wild rush of a startled horse, the sound of a falling 
body 

The day had broken, the shadows fled forever. 

(THE END.) 




"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?" 

BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D. 

IV. 

|HE implications of poverty are more distressing 
than poverty itself. Did the poor invite from us 
merely food and clothing, they would be provided 
for without much difficulty. But the implications 
of poverty give the problem a most complex 
character. Neglect of health, undernutrition, ignorance of sani- 
tary precautions, lack of that acute regard for physical well- 
being which comes with civilization, are to be noted on all 
sides among the poor. Furthermore, one finds among them a 
low sense of personal responsibility, a narrow outlook on life* 
and a peculiar kind of fatalism which render them provoking- 
ly resigned to everything that happens, and kills initiative that 
might lift them from their usual surroundings. Poverty 
implies, too, enforced association of poor with poor, promiscu- 
ous association of wicked and virtuous, of refined and de- 
graded, often under the same roof. The poor cannot pick their 
dwellings, nor their companionships, nor their friends. They ac- 
cept those whom fate throws near them. They cannot pick their 
bankers, hence they go to the loan shark. They cannot choose 
their grocer, hence they must trade where they will be trusted 
but cheated. They cannot select their neighbors, hence they are 
preyed upon by borrowers who rob them of half of their in- 
sufficient store of necessaries. 

The atmosphere and environment in which the poor must 
live greatly effect their lives. Hence, in assisting them, 
we assist not some vague average individual, but a number 
of concrete persons, living in these conditions, subjected to 
definite temptations and weaknesses. Varied obstacles are in 
their way, for some of which they are to blame, for many of 
which society, and not they, is responsible. The relief of 
hunger, pain, danger, is always of first importance. There are 
no implications to be considered when the poor are hungry. 



608 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f " [Feb., 

But the true understanding of their condition depends on our 
insight into all of its implications and our wisdom in helping 
them will depend on the manner in which we meet and re- 
move these. Undoubtedly much of the indifference of other- 
wise good persons, persons of real spiritual sense, toward the 
poor, is due to systematic failure to see in poverty anything 
but hunger and rags. Hunger and rags are not the chains of 
the poor. Their chains cannot be seen unless one looks into 
the world of the poor. The active friends of the poor know 
this. Others ignore it; and to the heavy burden that the poor 
must carry is added the inexcusable indifference of thousands 
who might befriend them, did the thousands understand. 

The implications of giving in charity are quite as impor- 
tant as the relief given. Cardinal Newman says somewhere 
that charity has no reserves. It must have them. The giver 
must accept reserves from his relations to others who give in 
charity, from his understanding of all of the elements in the 
condition of those who receive aid. No doubt the Christian 
impulse acts most beautifully when a personal bond unites 
giver and recipient. When the latter seeks intelligently and 
the former gives in person and kind, there is no "problem" 
of charity, no "method" to follow, no "trained worker" to 
engage, no check to be drawn, no " appeal " to be made. But 
this is not usually the case. There are so many poor to be 
cared for and so few who wish to give the care ; there are so 
many among the poor who are dull or timid or deceitful or 
personally to be blamed, or deliberately lazy, that organization 
and system are absolutely necessary. There are so many 
among the well-to-do who have no knowledge of the poor, or 
having information, have no heart, or having heart, lack good 
judgment, that it is necessary to rouse one class, instruct 
another, and direct a third. Without organization and system 
this cannot be done. 

Let us regret the need of organization and system as we 
may ; let us admit frankly every shortcoming that can be al- 
leged against them; let us admit to the fullest the possibility 
of unorganized personal service of the poor by the well-to-do; let 
us emphasize as we may the particular personal character of social 
service as Christ taught and exemplified it. After all is said, 
the need of organization and system in charity is imperative. 
Restraint, discrimination, direction, which constitute the very 



1909.] " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f " 609 

purpose of all social institutions, must be introduced into the 
service of the poor. Men will differ concerning types of organi- 
zation and relative efficiency of methods. They may judge re- 
sults by different standards. But the aims that all friends of 
the poor must have in mind are impossible without system of 
some kind, without organization of some type or other. It is 
practically impossible nowadays to know who is one's neigh- 
bor; or, knowing, to understand how to be neighbor to him 
as Christ would ask and his condition would invite. Organi- 
zation and system aim to provide neighbors and neighborly 
service to all who need them. Beyond that it has no mission 
whatever. 



Charity is primarily personal and individual. This primitive 
character of charity, so perfectly symbolized in the story of 
the Good Samaritan, is never to be lost from sight. It is real- 
ized most happily in this age, in small towns and cities where 
the poor are relatively few in number and are easily known. 
They retain individuality, since poverty is robbed of many of 
its worst implications. Within family circles, and in uncounted 
isolated cases, the direct personal character of charity may be 
found. It is the nearest approach to the Christian ideal. It 
is to be welcomed and sustained whenever possible. But one 
sees at a glance that the whole problem of charity can never 
be met in this way. This method may supplement organiza- 
tion and system. It can never replace them. 

n. 

Modern charity must be organized. They who feel a sense 
of duty toward the poor, and obey the impulse to serve them, 
should know one another, understand one another, and co- 
operate in their work. Wise division of labor, selection of in- 
dividuals with aptitude for particular tasks, utilization of ex- 
perience, avoidance of waste effort, and gradual creation of 
policy in dealing with recurring conditions, are of vital impor- 
tance. These ends are obtained by organization, which is, after 
all, the short road to efficiency in all kinds oi social action. 
Once a body of representative men and women is well organized, 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 39 



6io " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR*" [Feb., 

- 
they develop a breadth of view and habit of observation which 

are of highest value in relief work. 

A second advantage is found in the fact that organized 
charity gives us an organ for the social conscience. From 
among the ranks of the strong and well-to-do come many who 
feel their duty toward the poor. Isolated, they are merely in- 
dividuals doing their duty. Organized, they acquire power and 
prestige. They express whatever social conscience society pos- 
sesses, and, by their example and effort, develop that con- 
science. Organized charity forces information concerning the 
poor into circles where the poor are unknown. It goes to 
those who have knowledge but lack sympathy, and endeavors 
to awaken slumbering Christian feeling. It goes to many who 
aid the poor generously but unwisely, and suggests intelligent 
restraint and wisely ordered purpose. 

A third service given by organized charity is that of acting 
as attorney for the poor before society at large. Poverty is 
seen as a whole in its organic relations to society and its in- 
stitutions. The social processes which come to view in the 
facts of poverty, and subsequent processes going out from them 
are certainly sought and to some extent understood by organ- 
ized charity. It goes before city councils and executives, be- 
fore legislatures and governors. It sends representatives before 
courts and into committees. It accepts service when called 
upon by social authorities to give information or advice. Or- 
ganized charity inaugurates social movements in the interests 
of the poor, watches the enforcement of laws and asks for their 
enactment. Back of this activity is the keen understanding of 
social causes in poverty, of the constructive role of law, and 
of the power of public opinion in bending social forces to the 
relief of the poor. 

There is no practical way of reaching any of these results 
except through organization of men and women who are de- 
voted to the poor. There is no other way of meeting the im- 
plications of poverty; of presenting, in the fight against them, 
forces as strong as those which poverty reveals. Organized 
charity means simply association and co-operation among those 
who serve the poor. It means that as astronomers and chem- 
ists and economists, as business men and priests and laboring 
men, obey a natural instinct for association and a laudable de- 
sire for increased efficiency, so also they who engage in charity 



1909.] " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f" 61 1 

work seek efficiency, wisdom, re-enforcement through associa- 
tion. If it be objected that the distinctive personal and spiritual 
character of charity lends itself poorly to organization, it may 
be said in reply, that charity is not more spiritual than wor- 
ship which is organized, nor more confidential than the con- 
fessional, for the wise conducting of which preparation is made 
by organized discussions and conferences. 

It is true that philanthropists when organizing charity will 
produce one spirit ; that Catholics will develop a distinctly dif- 
ferent one ; and that Protestants will be unlike both in their 
work. But it remains equally true that there are points of 
contact as well : problems that must be met in common, re- 
sources of which all may avail themselves, and duties toward 
society at large, toward rich as well as poor, in urging which 
all may join. 

One might, with some appearance of justification, say that 
in urging these points to the credit of organized charity, one 
invades the domain of Church and home and school. These 
are the normal agents which share in forming Christian char- 
acter. It may be claimed that these shape the social conscience 
and express it; that they act as attorney for the poor before 
society. 

That all three should do this kind of work is beyond ques- 
tion. That they actually do so, and leave nothing for organ- 
ized charity to undertake, would scarcely be maintained by the 
narrowest opponent of organization. Much of the awakened 
social conscience found in religion is to be credited to organi- 
zation of charity within its lines. It is no surprise nowadays 
to see the layman who is active in organized charity enter the 
seminary to lecture to future priests on the work. 

No institution is universal in its effects. Organized charity 
is not without drawbacks. Obvious as are its advantages, its 
disadvantages are equally so. But that does not affect the case 
in its summing up. Organization is favored as an endeavor to 
reduce the average mistakes in dealing with the poor, and to 
render those which are inevitable, less harmful. It should be 
judged as all institutions and Christianity itself are judged 
by what they do rather than by what they fail to do. If there 
are particularly complex problems in charity that can be met 
only by organization, then organization is necessary, as ex- 
plosives are necessary in spite of accidents, and railroads are 



612 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR? " [Feb., 

- 

necessary in spite of collisions and killings. If then, not organ- 
ization in itself, but some organizations that one has known, 
be condemned or opposed, the issue is merely an accidental 
one. Rightly understood, organization is not a substitute for 
individuals in charity work; it is a scheme to increase their 
number and efficiency. It does not indicate that an impersonal, 
inhuman view of the poor is taken ; it means that deepest con- 
cern for all the poor is felt, and effort is made to reach them 
by the increased efficiency of those who give themselves to the 
work. The idea of organization is closely allied to that of 
system, in the discussion of which the thought now in mind 
is completed. 

in. 

Modern charity must be systematic. The law of giving may 
not be derived from the verbal demands of those in need. They 
may know best of all that they are hungry and cold, but they 
may not be trusted implicitly beyond questions of acute dis- 
tress. The danger is direct, of enervating the poor if too ready 
compliance with their requests is found. " I have observed," 
Franklin is quoted as saying, "the more public provisions are made 
for the poor, the less they provide for themselves." There are 
many among the poor who know what they need and who want 
nothing beyond it. Their representations may be taken as in 
the fullest, wise and true. For such, there is no charity prob- 
lem except that of giving just what is asked. But in general, 
the risk of encouraging laziness, of making fraud easy and suc- 
cessful, of overlooking very poor judgment, is present in reliev- 
ing the poor. Some practice of discrimination is necessary. 
We must look not to the poor, but beyond them, to find its 
principle. Hence the law of giving may not be derived from 
the requests of those in need. 

Neither may the law of giving be derived from the mere 
impulse of the giver. There is no guarantee that a good im- 
pulse is a wise one, or that a favoring providence is so pleased 
by good intention as to shield those who have it from penal- 
ties of their mistakes of judgment. The poor have a right to 
protection against their injudicious friends. That one enjoys 
giving is no valid reason for giving. That one feels that one 
ought to give justifies giving, but does not direct it. That one 
seeks supernatural merit by giving in God's name does not 



1909.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 613 

wipe out the duty that one has of refraining from such con- 
duct as may aid deception, encourage idleness, and degrade a 
fellow-man. Unwise giving has the unfortunate power of ac- 
complishing all three. 

The law of giving must be derived from an intelligent judg- 
ment of the whole condition of the poor viewed as possessing 
average human traits, responsibilities, and rights. Their first 
right is to relief. Their second right is to self-sufficiency, to 
reconstructed character and normal social relations. No whim 
of a poor man and none of a giver can assure the wise review 
and correct apprehension of a case. The view that will be ob- 
jectively true and morally right will be widened and deepened. 
To day's need, once the poor are fed and clothed, must be seen in 
relation to yesterday's and to to-morrow's. Social causes, social 
environment, social situations, must be looked into, for it is not 
so much the tact ot poverty as its relations that will give us 
understanding. That a man now works twelve hours a day says 
little. That last year he worked fifteen and now twelve gives 
us one history. That last year he worked ten and now twelve 
gives us another. It is similar in the case of poverty. The 
facts to-day can be understood only when seen in relation to 
facts of yesterday. And wisdom in dealing with facts to-day 
must come mainly from looking at the facts we desire for to- 
morrow. It is always well to know how much the individual 
had to do in his downward way and how much he may do in 
his own restoration. If many fell among robbers regularly, and 
each Good Samaritan knew of only his own case, much would 
be missed until some Good Samaritan with wider knowledge, 
saw all of the instances in their relations, after which probably 
his impulse would be to order a regiment to exterminate the 
whole robber tribe. But while only isolated cases of brigandage 
were thought of, this larger service would never be rendered, 
In a word, judgment in giving relief should rest on past and 
future, as well as present views of the case. 

That this will be often unnecessary, often impossible, some- 
times ill-advised may be granted. But we must, as a rule, 
look forward in the case to find our aim in giving, backwards 
to find an explanation, and then into the case to find our work 
and obey our wisdom. Mercy is not forgotten, but wisdom is 
added to our effort ; efficiency is not impaired, it is augmented. 
The self-respect of the poor is protected and hope is let into 



614 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR? " [Feb., 

their lives, The doing of all of this is system. It means wiser 
methods, larger views, truer perspective. It brings to the scat- 
tered generous impulses of men the multiplied energy of asso- 
ciation, the re- enforcement that comes when many work to- 
gether. Just as education reaches power through system, as 
business becomes possible byjsystem, as religion becomes stable 
and strong through it, so charity seeks its wisdom, its efficiency, 
its wider mission to men, through system. And as system in 
business has its cost, and system in education, its penalties, and 
system in religion, its drawbacks, so system in charity has its 
cost and its penalties and its drawbacks. But, beyond these, 
it has a power, a justification, that the observing eye cannot 
miss. 

System is the inevitable companion of bigness in any domain 
of life. Small undertakings present no problems; mass and 
complexity offer many. Everything in modern charity makes 
system necessary. 

However direct one's defence of system may be, one may 
not close one's eyes to the obvious objections and difficulties 
presented to a fair mind. Objection is made against trained 
workers, need of whom is one of the implications of system. 
It is claimed that they become impersonal, professional, me- 
chanical in work that is peculiarly individual and personal. 
Objection is made against the payment of salaries, because this 
converts a profoundly spiritual activity into a mercenary pro- 
fession. Fault is found with the keeping of records, showing 
history of cases of distress relieved, because it invades the pri- 
vacy of the poor, and offers to the curious, an opportunity to 
know the details of misfortune that humanity and culture would 
hide. Objection is made to a certain regularity of procedure 
in cases of charity, because it introduces delay, divided respon- 
sibility and indefiniteness. This is known as red tape. Claim 
is made that there are too many "principles," too much liter- 
ature, statistics, schools of philanthropy, methods. Even wit 
and humor, which often reveal a deep stratum of feeling and 
keen philosophy in society, are directed against the alleged 
shortcomings of systematic charity with telling effect. Thought- 
ful men, however, will not adapt their views to suit current 
humor, nor will they mistake a caricature for a photograph. 

Sometimes an individual is confused with an institution, and 
when the former merits criticism, the latter is apt to receive it. 



1909.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 615 

Again an objection, true of every form of organized life, is 
hurled with particular emphasis against organized charity. Many 
of those who base their judgment on such restricted views might 
find reason for modification if a well-rounded, healthy estimate 
of the whole situation were made. There are real difficulties to 
be met. Vigilance is necessary to prevent system from becom- 
ing an end instead of being a means. There is danger of los- 
ing sight of the personality of the individual poor, of dealing 
in averages instead of in men and women and children. It is un- 
doubtedly true that system in charity work does at times chill 
the free and buoyant impulse to service which is the crowning 
glory of Christian character, and does rationalize where feeling 
loves to have its sway. System does spend much money in 
salaries and administration expenses which may appear out of 
proportion to amounts spent in relief. But this is because no one 
of equal efficiency will work unpaid. It may think of the poor 
as types, and at times forget that they are individuals after all, 
each with feelings, rights, stomach, heart, and soul. System 
may produce impractical persons who roam among the poor, 
and finding a "case," turn to their Book of Principles and 
Methods in order to find out what to do, much as though a 
sociological guide book were directing their feelings and aims 
It may be that the scientific worker goes among the poor with 
her hard face never brightened by the bounding light of a big 
emotion and never softened by the relaxing look of pity. Yet, 
after all is said and admitted, what have we but system to re- 
place system. 

As these objections are sometimes advanced, they contain 
much exaggeration and denote the usual ratio of misunderstand- 
ing. Qualitatively they are the inevitable results of system, 
paralleled in every line of social institutions which man has de- 
vised. Quantitatively many of the objections have real force, 
but they constitute no indictment that will hold in the court of 
enlightened sense. 

IV. 

Organizations of charity should co-operate. System is one 
thing; a particular system is another. There are institutions 
in modern charity work whose wisdom may not yet be finally 
proven, as there are methods which may be reasonably ques- 



616 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR ? " [Feb , 

' 

tioned. Particularly we Catholics have occasion for much so- 
licitude on account of the peculiar organic relation conceived 
to exist between our charity and our faith. Catholics are much 
inclined to institutional life for orphans for reasons that are 
evident, if not always wise. We insist on the spiritual mo- 
tive in giving and oppose publicity with varying degrees of fer- 
vor. We are firmly set against salaries in any kind of char- 
ity work, and are keenly alert to protect the privacy of the 
poor. We carry the fullest understanding of the moral and 
religious laws of life into every detail of charity work, and 
never abate solicitude for the fullest respect of all of the per- 
sonal human rights and the conscience of the poor, whatever 
the consequences or burdens that result. 

With the whole soul of faith entering into each feature of 
charity work, the Catholic is sensitive and, very often, uncom- 
promising. He believes that he detects signs of currents and 
counter-currents in general charity work. He sees 'efforts made 
to secularize all charity, to base it on the universal point of 
view which is the starting point of philanthropy replacing re- 
ligion. Even in New York, where frank recognition of the role 
of religion in life is written into charter and constitution, rest- 
less forces appear to work against the policies and ideals for 
which we stand. It is not surprising, then, that doubt concern 
ing co-operation with other forms of organized charity should 
be met in Catholic circles and that the difficulties in the way 
of it should have great prominence in our literature. Nor is 
it strange that the tendency is to minimize relations with 
others and co-operate reluctantly at all times. Unfortunately 
it is sometimes justified. But at times it is at least construct- 
ively unfair to secular and non-Catholic charity workers. The 
Catholics who go among workers of other types, who learn 
their methods at first hand and co-operate, often become 
much broader. Great eagerness to do justice and respect feel- 
ing is actually found, whatever evidences of the contrary may 
be shown. Were Catholics to understand their own position 
fully, and to express it frankly when identified with other 
charity workers, the very best results would undoubtedly ob- 
tain. The International Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul 
Society in St. Louis in 1903 formally adopted a resolution fa- 
voring such action: "As American citizens it is our duty to 
co-operate with citizens of all creeds in all that pertains to the 



1909.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 617 

elevation of our fellow-beings; but in this co-operation we 
should be guided by our rules, which wisely forbid the expo- 
sure of the misfortune of the poor.' 1 In May, 1908, the Na- 
tional Conference of Charities and Corrections, the Hebrew 
Charities, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society met in the same 
week in Richmond. All took part in one joint meeting. The 
President of the National Conference, which includes representa- 
tives of the secular and Protestant charities and philanthropic.*, 
was none other than a Catholic, one of the most active Vincent 
de Paul workers in the United States. 

No social group, no great organized interest in society, is 
possible except when members look for points of agreement 
among themselves, unite on them, and overlook the forces that 
might separate them. Charity organizations need obey only 
this general social law. They need only look for the work, 
methods, and aims in which they do agree, in order to be in 
position to increase efficiency. While Catholic, Protestant, and 
Jew, men of every religion and of no religion, are jumbled into 
the mass of the poor, charity workers of all kinds will meet, 
will find themselves facing the same problems, each needing 
the other in many ways. But, above all, this need of their 
union is found in the indirect work that charity organizations 
must do in society at large, in order to effect the redemption 
ol the poor. 

v. 

Organizations of charity should undertake social reform work 
for the sake of the poor as well as for the relief of individuals 
and families. 

It was hinted a moment ago that the charity organization 
is an organ of the social conscience and is in addition attorney 
for the poor before society at large. In these capacities, it 
must undertake such reforms as are directed toward the pro- 
tection of the poor in any way. All legislation that makes in- 
dustry safer for laboring men reduces the number of orphans 
that society must care for. All precautions that employers can 
be induced to take to make trades less harmful to health, re- 
duce the number of needy families that will be deprived of 
their natural support when the broken-down father or mother 
is thrown out of work. All movements which secure facilities 



618 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR?" [Feb., 

I 

for healthy play and schooling and health inspection for chil- 
dren, increase chances for right development of them and may 
reduce the number of criminals or idlers that the next genera- 
tion must punish and feed. Movements which suppress and 
banish loan sharks, and provide loans for worthy poor, with no 
interest or only nominal interest, which aim to brighten and 
cheer the home, are all of highest importance. 

Every day we see more clearly that environment is vital; 
that law and lawmakers have neglected measures to protect the 
poor ; that there are sequences of social cause and effect in the 
lives of the poor; and that many measures of social reform are 
vitally necessary in the work of redeeming the poor. Hereto- 
fore the individual and the family have absorbed attention. 
While neither has lost its importance, social reform has claimed 
its recognition. The concept of charity must be widened, until 
it is seen that the spirit and the letter of Christ's law of social 
service are complied with to the fullest in this work of social 
reform for the sake of the poor, quite as well as when we feed 
the hungry and clothe the naked. 

VI. 

The evolution of the charity worker is a varied process. 
Things have antecedents. There is a technique in producing 
a social conscience as there is in producing a statue. Neglect 
in either case mars the work and discourages effort, The atti- 
tude of many Christians toward the poor baffles analysis. There 
are, as suggested, whole classes in society who scarcely know 
and surely do not realize that there are poor. There are 
whole classes which feel the luxury of pity for the poor with- 
out longing for the delight of helping them, resembling those 
who believe, as Goldsmith remarked, that " they pay every 
debt to virtue when they praise it." There are classes which 
aid the poor by throwing money to them and feeling that 
they have honored God and satisfied humanity in doing that. 
There are classes which complain that all the poor are to 
blame for poverty and nothing can be done. And there are 
wise and consecrated classes of men and women who honor 
the race, who know and love the poor, know and love the 
God of the poor, and who are very saviors to them that sit in 
the darkness of poverty and in the shadow of death. 



1909.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 619 

There are methods employed to procure funds for char- 
ity, made apparently necessary perhaps, but none the less 
undesirable, which are unworthy of the Christian, and consti- 
tute a sad enough commentary on the social spirit of the fol- 
lowers of Christ. Rightly developed, social conscience would 
put an end to them forever. 

The problem of training the charity worker even the Catho- 
lic worker is not easy to solve. But some system is neces- 
sary. The emotions of children ought to be developed. They 
should early be accustomed to go to the poor, to accompany 
elders in their personal service. Conversation in the home 
should be so directed at times and always so guarded that 
children are brought to see and feel the bond that unites 
strong and weak in God. Our schools should undertake, in 
similar spirit, to incorporate understanding of poverty and its 
relations into the mental formation of the young. College and 
university should understand their duty toward the poor and 
toward the young whose Christian formation is entrusted to 
them. All of this, properly supplemented by the priest and 
his teaching, ought to be able to revive the spirit of neigh- 
borly service which is extolled by Christ. Future employers 
of labor, future physicians and lawyers, future legislators and 
social and political leaders, who pass through Catholic homes 
and Catholic schools, who sit every Sunday throughout the 
year before the pulpit ready to receive God's word from the 
preacher; all such who, arriving at the height of power and 
efficiency, do not know who is neighbor to them, feel no im- 
pulse to generous service, and fail to measure up to the Gos- 
pel standard of the Christian man, offer a distressing com- 
mentary on either our understanding of our mission or the 
efficiency of our methods in carrying it out. 

It is not desired, nor is it necessary, that every one engage 
in personal service of the poor. Nor can it well be tolerated 
that so few do. A bishop in a city of a hundred thousand 
inhabitants complained recently in a public speech that he was 
unable to find representative men enough to organize a Con- 
ference of St. Vincent de Paul in the city, though he could 
have all of the money needed for the relief of the poor. 
Something very definite can be aimed at in the vague sug- 
gestions now made. We can aim to have active workers 
enough to do all of the direct relief work that is needed. 



620 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f " [Feb., 

We can aim to have a big brother for every lonely little fellow 
in our cities, between the two of whom a personal bond of 
companionship can be developed, thus going back through 
system to the sweet individual personal touch between strong 
and weak symbolized by the Good Samaritan. In this way, 
through system, we undo system. We can rouse the hidden 
Christian homes that would admit orphans and take them from 
street and from institution, introducing them to the warmth 
and love and individuality that home confers. We can pos- 
sibly rouse Christian men and women, in positions of trust or 
power and out of them, to lend spirit and force to reform 
movements that will bring hope, cleanliness, protection, and 
cheer into the dull, dead homes of the poor, removing the 
larger social obstructions to self-help. 

This is monumental work ; great enough to sap the ener- 
gies of half a civilization, worthy enough to vie with every other 
aim of advancing humanity, imperative enough to justify for 
the moment the cessation of art and learning if only such ces- 
sation would insure what is sought. But inspiring as is the 
ideal which is thus outlined, appealing as is even the hope 
that some day this might be realized, one of the chief results 
of such an accomplishment would be in the character, lives, 
and aims of, not the weak, but the well-to-do, A rich man 
is as dear to God and as important to humanity as a poor 
man, much in the same way that a man with cuffs is as im- 
portant as a man without them. Being rich or poor is an ac- 
cident, as having or not having cuffs is an accident. The man 
is the important thing. 

The Christian community is a social body, and the unity 
of that body is dear to the heart of Christ. That there 
are rich and poor is a matter of indifference in itself. That 
there are some enjoying every advantage, and others deprived 
of them, shows disorder. That some are gay and joyous and 
others degraded and in distress, while the lormer ignore the 
latter and these hate the former, shows that somehow Chris- 
tianity fails and Christ is disappointed. The story of the vine 
and the branches is true everlastingly as the sum of Christian 
philosophy and theology, symbolizing the will of God in human 
society. To vary the figure, congestion occurs when too much 
blood is centered in capillaries or other vessels at any one spot. 
Headache results when much blood presses on the brain. Treat- 



1909.] " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR?" 621 

ment aims to restore normal circulation. Society is suffering 
likewise from congestion. Wealth and learning, leisure and op- 
portunity, sympathy and hope, are congested in a small portion 
of the social body, while millions starve and suffer and cease to 
hope. It is the indirect function of charity in the scheme of God 
to restore normal circulation ; to relieve congestion where the 
body is burning and vitalize where the body is starving. Grant- 
ing that Christian virtues have definite functions in the Christian 
body, charity has this great office to perfrm ; and they who 
are most blessed by charity are they who give, not they who 
receive. The strong and well-to-do need neighbors in Christ's 
sense quite as badly as the weak and suffering need them. 
The rich need neighbors in order to adjust themselves to eternity, 
the poor need them in order to adjust themselves to time and 
the world. Contact with the poor, thought of them, sympathy 
for them, is a better corrective of selfishness in aims, narrowness 
in views, materialism in motives, than are preaching and missions 
and lectures. Some apostle is needed to impress this lesson 
on modern society. The strong need the weak as much as the 
weak need the strong. It is unnecessary to insist that the poor 
do not exist for the sake of inviting virtues in the rich. Many 
are selfish, because experience of life has developed selfishness. 
The way back to normal Christian views and conduct is by 
paths of unselfishness. These lead us among the poor and 
lowly, among whom Christ loved to linger. Let men once un- 
derstand this, and a day might come when there would not be 
neighbors enough to go around. 




BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM. 

BY LEWIS JEROME O'HERN, C.S.P. 

?OME time ago Doctor Charles Chapman Grafton, 
Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac, 
published a work entitled Christian and Catholic, 
in which the bishop "attempted to be Roman 
Catholic without the Pope." It seems that the 
effect of this effort was to hasten the Romeward movement of 
a large number of Episcopalians, who otherwise might have 
lived and died in good faith and communion with the Church 
of England. Some of the bishop's closest personal friends are 
among the seceders. 

Now Bishop Grafton' strives to erect a fresh barrier to stem 
the Romeward tide, whose flood-gates he himself , was, at least 
partly, instrumental in loosing. This he 'has attempted to do 
by the publication of a small brochure called Pro-Romanism and 
The Tractarian Movement.* 

"The Tractarian Movement " is a separate article reprinted 
from the July (1898) number of The Living Church. "Pro- 
Romanism" occupies the greater portion of the work. 

Its author no doubt entirely satisfies himself, but will hard- 
ly receive the unqualified approval of all his fellow-churchmen. 
We are acquainted with at least one conversion to Catholicity 
which was hastened by the reading of the pamphlet. 

"Pro-Romanism" begins by saying: "The Church is now 
undergoing some trials. It would not be fair or wise to ignore 
them. The Church's cause may seem to some to have received 
a check in the desertion of a few to Rome. Towards them we 
must continue our love, while we condemn their action and re- 
pudiate their argument. . . . Reviewing the field and the 
course of battle, the points gained and lost and the causes 
thereof, we think one mistake has been an overzeal and desire 
for the reunion of Christendom. We have centered our hopes 
upon it, looked upon it as the one thing needful, and we have 

* Pro-Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, by Charles Chapman Grafton, S.T.D., 
Bishop of Fond du Lac. Milwaukee : The Young Churchman Company. 1908. 



1909.] BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO- ROMANISM 623 

made it an idol. Persons have so dwelt upon it as to give it 
a reflexive, suggestive, hypnotic power. The idea so takes 
possession of them that when exercised in respect of Rome, 
they are hypnotized by it, and no reason or argument can 
break the spell. They can for the time see Rome, and noth- 
ing but Rome." 

In these introductory remarks the bishop realizes that re- 
union with Rome presents to those who have dwelt upon it a 
vision of such surpassing beauty and loveliness that " no reason 
or argument can break the spell." To " break the spell," how- 
ever, is his purpose; and in attempting to do this he has not 
hesitated to make statements which are not accepted by modern 
scriptural authorities, are incompatible with known historical 
facts, and are unpardonable in one of Bishop Grafton's sup- 
posed knowledge and scholarship. 

"The foundation of the principle of the Anglican Church 
was expressed," says he, " in its declaration in Convocation in 
1534, that the 'Pope of Rome has no greater jurisdiction con- 
ferred on him by God in Holy Scripture in this Kingdom of 
England than any other foreign bishop.' " * 

Papal Supremacy and Infallibility are thus at once seen to 
be the storm-center around which the battle is to rage; this 
the chief citadel against which the heaviest artillery is to be 
trained. 

Let us examine into the soundness of this "Foundation 
principle of the Anglican Church," viewed in the light of recent 
biblical criticism and unimpeachable historical research. "The 
Anglican Church," says Bishop Grafton, " holds with the Eastern 
that the Rock on which the Church is founded is Christ. 
Rome, while admitting this, says: 'It is also Peter and the 
Roman SEE. 1 But our Lord did not say: 'Thou art Peter, 
the Rock, on whom I will build My Church'; but 'upon this 
Rock,' which evidently refers to Christ, whom Peter had just 
confessed to be the Son of God."f 

The Rev. Professor Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D., is an 
eminent divine of Bishop Grafton's own church ; his fame as a 
profound theologian and a conscientious thinker is world-wide. 
He studied at the University of Virginia, the Union Theolog- 
ical Seminary of New York, and also at Berlin. From 1874 to 
1891 he was Professor of Hebrew, and since 1891 has been 

Ibid, page 9. t Ibid, page 38. 



624 BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM [Feb., 

Professor' of Biblical Theology in the Union Theological Semi- 
nary. In 1898 he was ordained a priest in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. Among his published works are: Biblical 
Study, Messianic Prophecy, The Authority of Holy Scripture, The 
Bible, The Church and Reason, and The Incarnation of the Lord. 
His great attainments and services to scholarship have been 
recognized through honorary degrees by a number of institu- 
tions on both sides of the Atlantic, including Princeton and 
Williams at home; and Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Oxford 
abroad. In a notable article on " The Real and the Ideal in 
the Papacy' 1 this distinguished scholar says: 

" The Papacy has a much firmer basis in a number of texts 
of the New Testament, and in Christian history, than most 
Protestants have been willing to recognize. . . . Jesus in 
His vision of His Kingdom, when St. Peter recognized Him as 
the Messiah, said (Matt. xvi. 17-19): 

Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah, 

For flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, 

But My Father which is in heaven ; 

And I say unto thee : Thou art Peter, 

And upon this rock will I build My Church, 

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 

I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of God, 

And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in 

heaven, 
And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 

heaven 

" All attempts to explain the 'rock* in any other way than 
as referring to Peter have ignominiously failed. (Italics our own.) 

" St. Peter was thus made by the appointment of Jesus the 
rock on which the Church was built as a spiritual house, or 
temple ; and at the same time the porter of the Kingdom, whose 
privilege it is to open and shut its gates. The Church is here 
conceived as a building, a house, constituted of living stones, 
all built upon Peter, the first of these stones, or the primary 
rock foundation. It is also conceived as a city of God, into 
which men enter by the gates. These conceptions are familiar 
in the Old Testament. The significant thing here is the pri- 
macy of St. Peter. He is chief of the Twelve, who elsewhere 



1909.] BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM 625 

in the New Testament are conceived as the twelve foundations 
of the temple and city of God." * 

As if realizing the adamantine strength of this text and the 
weakness of his interpretation, Bishop Grafton adds that "the 
Roman argument that God gave a special supremacy to Peter 
is unsound, for if given to Peter, it was a personal privilege, 
and personal privileges are not transferable. The allowed trans- 
ference of such a power must be expressly stated in the original 
grant, and explicit evidence given of its transference."! (Italics 
our own.) 

Herein he proves too much, for he believes that the power 
to preach the gospel, to baptize, and to forgive sins is in the 
world to-day, and yet in the "original grant" the "allowed 
transference" is not "expressly stated" nor "explicit evidence" 
given of its transference. Whence, then, arises the necessity of 
explicit evidence concerning the transference of Peter's suprem- 
acy? Once more we quote the opinion of the greatest living 
biblical scholar of the Protestant Episcopal Church : 

" It is evident that Jesus, in speaking to St. Peter, had the 
whole history of His Kingdom in view. He sees conflict with 
the evil powers and victory over them. It is, therefore, vain 
to suppose that we must limit the commission to St. Peter. 
We could no more do that than we could limit the Apostolic 
commission to the Apostles. The commission of the primate, 
no less than the commission of the Twelve, includes their suc- 
cessors in all time to the end of the world. The natural in- 
terpretation of the passage, therefore, apart from all prejudice, 
gives the Papacy a basal authority, as it has always maintained. 
Therefore we must admit that there must be a sense in which 
the successors of St. Peter are the rock of the Church, and 
have the authority of the keys in ecclesiastical government, 
discipline, and determination of faith and morals. "\ (Italics 
are ours.) 

The Petrine text, " feed My sheep," also receives a unique 
interpretation at the hands of Bishop Grafton. He says : 

" In the restoration of St. Peter, on his threefold profession, 
our Lord said : ' feed My lambs ; shepherd and feed My sheep.' 
He was to feed the little 'lambs of the New Dispensation and 

* North American Review, February 15, 1907, pages 348-349. 
t Pro- Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, pages 36 and 37. 

tThe Real and the Ideal in the Papacy," by Professor Briggs, Ntrth American Review > 
February 15, 1907, pages 349-350, 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 40 



626 BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO- ROMANISM [Feb., 

i 

guide and feed the sheep of the Old into the New Kingdom, 
which he did. Rome argues that here authority was given 
over the shepherds; but this is not stated, but on the other 
hand clearly denied; for when Peter asked concerning John, 
' what shall this man do ? ' our Lord said, ' what is that to 
thee ? ' He was to have no control of jurisdiction over the 
other Apostles." * 

Only Bishop Grafton can see in the words, "what is that 
to thee?" a denial of Peter's authority over the shepherds. The 
three preceding verses (St. John xxi., 18, 19, 20) are concerned 
with the death by which Peter should glorify God ; and Peter's 
question in reference to John " what shall this man do " 
plainly refers to the death of John. St. John himself tells us 
that Christ refers to this, and not, therefore, to the shepherd's 
charge : 

" Then went this saying abroad, among the brethren that 
this disciple should not die; yet Jesus said not unto him he 
shall not die, but If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
that to thee?" St. John xxi. 23. (King James version.) 

Professor Briggs says: "There are two other passages upon 
which the Papacy builds its authority. The chief of these is 
John xxi., where Peter is singled out from the seven who were 
with Jesus on the shore or the Sea of Galilee after His resur- 
rection, and the command was given to Peter to ' feed the 
sheep.' Here Jesus appoints St. Peter to be the shepherd of 
the flock of Christ, which, in accordance with the usage of the 
time with reference to the kings of David's line, and with ref- 
erence to Christ Himself as the Good Shepherd, implies gov- 
ernment of the Church. It is all the more significant that this 
passage singles out and distinguishes Peter in the presence of 
the sons of Zebedee and others, the most prominent of the 
Twelve, and that the narrative is contained in the Gospel of 
John. Here again it cannot be supposed that this is a com- 
mission to St. Peter as an individual. He is given an office as 
the chief shepherd of the flock of Christ. If the flock con- 
tinues, the chief shepherd must be the successor of St. Peter, 
to carry on his work as shepherd." f 

Bishop Grafton next appeals to what he terms "the action 
of the Apostles" themselves, in support of the Anglican posi- 
tion. "The Anglican believes," says he, "what the action of 

* Pro-Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, pages 37-38. 
t North American Review, February 15, 1907, page 350. 



1909.] BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM 627 

the Apostles shows them to have believed. They recognized 
no supremacy of Peter over themselves. They, as superior to 
Peter and John, sent them to Samaria." * 

Is this view well taken ? There are four lists of the Apos- 
tles in the New Testament, and Peter's name appears at the 
head of each list. St. Matthew, who was himself an Apostle, 
is the author of one list, and he expressly calls Peter "The 
First," *. e. t the Primate or Chief one. (St. Matthew x. 2.) 
Naturally we look to the Acts of the Apostles for an authentic 
record of apostolic faith and 'practice. Do we find it stated 
there that the Apostles " recognized no supremacy of Peter over 
themselves " ? It has been well said by a distinguished Angli- 
can that the former half of the Book of the Acts "might be 
described as the acts of Peter ; for he is mentioned oftener than 
all the rest put together (his name occurs more than fifty times, 
the next after him being mentioned only eight times) ; he takes 
the leading part everywhere; he is mentioned directly, others 
obliquely ; he answers for all the Apostles ; and his actions and 
speeches are recorded in full."f 

Doctor Dollinger, one of the old Catholics praised by Bishop 
Grafton for their learning, J gives in The First Age of the Church 
the following summary of St. Peter in the Acts : 

" It is Peter who appoints that one shall be elected to the 
place of Judas, and presides at the election. It is Peter who 
stands up with the eleven on Pentecost day to preach the Gos- 
pel. And it is to Peter and the eleven that the multitude re- 
ply. It is Peter, though accompanied by John, who performs 
the miracle on the lame man at the gate of the temple. It is 
Peter who, on that occasion, explained in Solomon's Porch the 
power of Christ. It is Peter, though both he and John are ar- 
rested, who makes the defence. The punishment of Ananias 
and Sapphira, the anathema on Simon Magus, the first heretic, 
the visiting and confirming the Churches under persecution, were 
all Peter's acts. If he was sent with John by the Apostolic 
College to the new converts at Samaria, he was himself mem- 
ber and President of that College." 

This does not look as though the Apostles "recognized no 
supremacy of Peter over themselves." 

A final word from Professor Briggs on this point : " Peter 

* Pro-Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, page 39. 

t The Prince of the Apostles, by Rev. Spencer Jones. The Lamp Publishing Company, 
Garrison, N. Y., page 41. \Pro-Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, page 25. 



628 BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM [Feb., 



was certainly the chief of the Apostles, according to all the 
Gospels, during the earthly life of our Lord. The early chap- 
ters of Acts represent him as the acknowledged chief of the 
Apostlic community down to the Council at Jerusalem . . . 
in fact the Council of Jerusalem decided for St. Peter, and St. 
Paul himself abandoned his earlier unflinching adherence to 
theory in favor of the Christian expediency of St. Peter, in all 
of his subsequent life, as is evident from his own later Epis- 
tles and from the story of the companion of his travels."* 

As was to be expected, Anglican Orders comes in for a 
unique defence at the hands of Bishop Graf ton. He says: 
" So far as Rome is concerned, it is obvious that during the 
past half century she has placed more and greater barriers in 
the way of reunion. She has done this by additions to the 
faith, and has finally closed the door by a final rejection of 
our Orders. Good came out of this, as it was a demonstra- 
tion to us Anglicans that the Pepe was not possessed of any 
special gift of infallibility. For if there is one thing as clear 
and certain as that there is a God, it is that we are possessed 
of valid orders and a true priesthood. . . . It is clear that 
the Edwardine form of ordination, the form in dispute, retained 
the proper Episcopal minister, with laying on of hands, with 
gift of the Holy Ghost, with determination of the office and 
the recognition of the Sacerdotium" 'f 

To those who have studied the question impartially it is 
convincingly plain that in the Edwardine form of ordination 
every word and idea suggestive of the true Sacerdotium of 
Christ were utterly eliminated. This is not to be wondered at 
when we know for certain that Cranmer, who compiled the 
Ordinal, did not recognize any distinction between a priest 
and layman. Being asked one day by Henry VIII. whether 
in the New Testament any consecration of bishop or priest 
was necessary, or whether mere institution to office was suffi- 
cient, Cranmer replied : " In the New Testament he that is 
appointed to be a bishop or a priest needeth no consecration by 
the Scriptures, for election or appointment thereto is sufficient "\ 

Hooper, who was associated with Cranmer in the compila- 
tion of the Anglican Ordinal, also denied the Eucharistic Sacri- 
fice, speaking of the Mass as "a horrible idol." The same 

*North American Re-view, February 15, 1907, page 349. 
t Pro-Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, page 5. 
\ Cf. Estcourt. The Question of Anglican Orders Discussed. 



. 



1909.] BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM 629 

ideas were held by Cox, Ridley, Pilkington, Matthew Parker, 
Sandys, and others, who are justly styled " Fathers of Angli- 
canism." Leo XIII., in the Bull Apostoliccz Curce, sums up 
the whole matter as follows : 

" In the whole Ordinal not only is there no clear mention 
of the Sacrifice, of consecration, of the Sacerdotium, and of 
the power of consecrating and offering sacrifice, but, as we 
have just stated, every trace of these things, which had ex- 
isted in such prayers of the Catholic rite as they had not en- 
tirely rejected, was deliberately removed and struck out." 

In this connection Bishop Grafton forgets that Leo XIII. 
was not the first to reject Anglicaa Orders as invalid, for they 
had already been so pronounced by two of his illustrious pred- 
ecessors Julius III. and Paul IV. and the same judgment 
was passed upon them by the Greeks, Russians, Jansenists, 
and Old Catholics. 

The bishop speaks tenderly of these last named as "a small 
but learned and increasing body." (Italics are ours.) Is it not 
strange that with so much learning they have not been able to 
see a fact which, to Bishop Grafton, is "as clear and certain 
as that there is a God " ? 

Having swept away, as he supposed, the scriptural basis 
for the papacy, the bishop now makes his appeal to history 
as follows: 

"The Church in Britain had been founded independently of 
Rome, and for centuries existed apart from her jurisdiction. 
When the Monk Augustine came, about 597, the seven British 
Bishops refused to transfer their allegiance from their own 
Metropolitan to him. . . . The development of the papal 
power in England, after the Norman conquest, by the rise of 
the feudal system and the influence of the forged decretals, 
was constantly resisted. . . . When at length the op- 
pressions had become intolerable, God delivered the Church, 
and her bishops recovered their ancient rights."* 

Whatever excuse there may have been in the past for 
maintaining such views, the original historical documents, which 
have been placed at the service of the public by the opening 
of the Vatican library, render such statements at the present 
hour inexcusable. As Doctor James Gairdner, an Anglican 
Churchman, says, in his preface to The English Church in the 
Sixteenth Century: "The copious stores of documents now 

* Pro-Romanism and The Ttactarian Movement, pages 6-7. 



630 BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM [Feb., 

available' have rendered many long cherished views untenable. 
(Italics our own.) . . . It is to be feared that the truth on 
very important subjects will have much prejudice to encounter 
before it can win general acceptance." 

Rev. Spencer Jones, Episcopal Rector of Moreton, in Marsh, 
England, who has written much concerning Papal Supremacy 
in the British Isles, says: 

"An Ecclesia Anglicana not in conscious dependence upon 
the Holy See in spirituals is a phenomenon unknown to his- 
tory before the reign of Henry VIII. We take the period ac- 
cording to its precise limits, i. e. t from A. D. 597 to 1534; 
and we assert that in no single year, from the former date to 
the latter, did churchmen in England regard themselves as 
otherwise than in conscious dependence in spirituals upon the 
Holy See."* 

The Rev. Paul James Francis, Episcopal Rector of Gray- 
moor, New York, the editor of The Lamp, says: 

" Our study of Anglican Church history prior to the Reform- 
ation leaves, we think, no room for doubt or question as to 
the dependence of the Church of England in spirituals upon 
the See of Rome from the coming of St. Augustine to the 
reign of Henry VIII. Nor can it be successfully disputed that 
the bishops and clergy of the Church of England during this 
time in many ways expressed their belief in the Roman Pri- 
macy as having authority over them de jure divino and not 
simply de jure ecclesiastico. How then did such a radical change 
of attitude take place under Henry VIII. towards the Papacy ? 
The account of the English Reformation so long current among 
Anglicans, to the effect that the Church of England was weary 
of the Papal yoke and eagerly embraced the opportunity af- 
forded by Henry to shake herself free from ' the usurpations 
of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities/ has 
been so thoroughly discredited of late years by our best his- 
torians, both secular and ecclesiastical, that no man who has 
due regard for his reputation as a scholar will any more ven- 
ture to uphold the old-time tradition about the ' Blessed Eng- 
lish Reformation.' 

" It has been slain by the cold logic of facts. 

"The substitution of the King for the Pope as 'Supreme 
Head* of the Church of England, so far from being in any 
sense the free and willing act of the English clergy and peo- 

* The Prince of the Apostles. 



1909.] BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM 631 

pie, was accompanied in the teeth of national opposition by 
sheer brutality of force coupled with political trickery and fraud. 
It has been truly said: 'Henry VIII. fixed his supremacy on 
a reluctant Church by the axe, the gibbet, the stake, and the 
laws of praemunire and forfeiture. ... By such sweet meth- 
ods did bluff King Hal dethrone the Pope in the hearts of the 
English people. . . . The King substituted himself for the 
Pope, the Spiritual Head, wholly and solely because the Holy 
See would not violate the moral law and gave him a dispensa- 
tion for either bigamy or divorce.' " * 

Bishop Grafton has read the early history of the English 
Church to little advantage if he does not know that, in 1382, 
a Doctrinal commission, perhaps the largest and most represent- 
ative ever held in the Pre-Reformation Church, including among 
its members the Primate and the Bishops of the province of 
Canterbury, condemned not merely as erroneous or untheologi- 
cal, but specifically as heretical the proposition that "after Ur- 
ban VI. (the reigning Pope) no one ought to be recognized as 
Pope, and we should live after the manner of the Greeks, un- 
der our own laws."f He has studied church history to little 
advantage if he does not know that the English Church, speak- 
ing through its Primate, Arundel, in 1414, with the assent of 
the bishops and clergy, declared the belief in the Papacy to be 
a part of the Catholic faith. He has read English church his- 
tory to little advantage if he has not heard of the Convocation 
f !559> presided over by Bonner, Bishop of London. This 
was twenty -five years after the Convocation of 1534, at which 
date Bishop Grafton tells us " the foundation principle of the 
Anglican Church was expressed, that the Pope of Rome has 
no greater jurisdiction conferred on him by God in Holy Scrip- 
ture in this kingdom of England than any other foreign Bishop." 

Was this the sentiment of the bishops in 1559? Let the 
Anglican editor of The Lamp tell us : 

" If the English Church, as represented by the whole bench 
of bishops, was really longing for deliverance from the yoke 
of a foreign Pontiff, now is their opportunity to speak out, with 
the certain knowledge that any anti- papal . utterances on their 
part would win for them the Queen's (Elizabeth's) favour. But 
by a unanimous and entirely spontaneous agreement, braving 
the royal displeasure, they take just the opposite stand. On 
January 24 the clergy in Convocation drew up a set of five 

* The Princeof the Apostles, pages 167, 168, 169. fWilkins' Concilia. III., 157. 



632 BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO- ROMANISM [Feb., 

articles, Seclaring the belief of the Church of England in (i) 
the Real Presence of our Lord's Body and Blood in the Holy 
Eucharist; (2) Transubstantiation ; (3) the Sacrifice of the Mass; 
(4) the divinely appointed Supremacy of St. Peter and his Suc- 
cessors over the universal church; (5) that the authority to 
deal with matters of faith and discipline belonged to the pas- 
tors of the Church and not to laymen. If the Anglican Church 
voiced her real faith and convictions at any time during the 
sixteenth century, it surely was in the Convocation of 1559. 
And as that was the last time that a free synod of the English 
Church has declared what its belief is concerning the Papacy, 
and as moreover such declaration is in entire accord with all 
previous synodical utterances of Ecclesia Anglicana, save dur- 
ing that brief period when in violation of Magna Charta Henry 
VIII. under gag-law forced the English clergy to confess a 
supremacy in which they did not believe, the question natur- 
ally suggests itself, why should not this come to be regarded 
as the true faith of the Church of England, inasmuch as the 
witness of the Holy Ghost must always be consistent."* 

The "gag-law" of Henry VIII. , then, is the explanation 
for the rejection of Papal Supremacy in 1534! 

In the face of these accepted historical facts, Bishop Graf- 
ton tells us that " the Reformers appealed in all they did to 
the Fathers and the Ancient Church. Thus they kept the 
Church one with the Church of antiquity. Rome, on the other 
hand, holds, as Cardinal Manning said, that 'the appeal to an- 
tiquity is both a treason and a heresy.' "f 

Here is what Manning really said : "And from this (Truth 
is the same forever) a fourth truth immediately follows; that 
the doctrines of the Church in all ages are primitive. It was 
the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were 
not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. 
But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. 
It is a treason because it rejects the divine voice of the Church 
at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that the Voice is 
Divine. How can we know what antiquity was, except through 
the Church ? No individual, no number of individuals, can go 
back through eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of 
antiquity. We may say with the woman of Samaria : ' Sir, the 
well is deep, and Thou hast nothing to draw with/ No indi- 

* The Prince of the Apostles, pages 187-188. 

t Pro-Romanism and The Tractarian Movement, page 34. 



1909.] BISHOP GRAFTON AND PRO-ROMANISM 633 

vidual mind now has contact with the revelation of Pentecost, 
except through the Church. Historical evidence and Biblical 
Criticism are human, after all, and amount at most to no more 
than opinion, probability, human judgment, human tradition. 
It is not enough that the fountain of our faith be divine. It 
is necessary that the Church be divinely constituted and pre- 
served." 

From the midst of its context, Cardinal Manning's sentence 
exalts the witness of the Fathers and the Ancient Church to 
the security of historical memory, speaking with the certainty 
God has bestowed on His deathless teacher of Truth. 

As a distinguished fellow-churchman of Bishop Grafton has 
said : " There is in fact no institution in the world that appeals 
more constantly to history than the Papacy. * The magisterium 
of the Church/ says Schanz, ' as the living organ, not f rev- 
elation, but of tradition, could not define a doctrine without 
historic evidence.' " f 

Many other statements there are in Bishop Grafton's book 
which deserve the attention for which truth, when brutally 
butchered, always cries aloud. But it would be going beyond 
the limits of this paper to analyze them here. The chapters 
on " The Roman Doctrine of Purgatory," " Devotions to 
Mary," "Indulgences," "The Spirit of the Papacy," "Its 
Venality," " Its Attitude to Freedom," " Its Lust for Power," 
and " Its Superstitions," would all require a separate treat- 
ment. His discussion of these subjects is such that, a current 
periodical has said, it " might easily be mistaken for the utter- 
ances of an A. P. A. lecturer." 

But in reference to these chapters, and the value he places 
upon them as ancilliary to his main argument concerning what 
he calls " the foundation principle of the Anglican Church," 
we urge upon Bishop Grafton consideration of the following, 
taken from St. Cyprian, whom the late Archbishop Benson, of 
Canterbury, so glorified, and whom Bishop Grafton himself so 
freely admires : 

" He who forsakes the chair of St. Peter, upon whom the 
Church is built, let him not feel confidence that he is in the 
Church of Christ." | 

* Tempgral Mission of the Holy Ghost. Chapter V., " The Relation of the Holy Ghost to 
the Divine Tradition of the Faith." 

t The Prince of the Apostles, page 217. \ De Unitate Ecclesics, page 195, edit. Baluzii. 




BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA. 

BY A. DEASE. 

JT is nowhere easier to lose one's way than amongst 
sandhills ; even in the comparatively small stretch 
that lies between Dangonnel and Tillaroan land- 
marks are difficult to recognize, and wandering 
there in search of the old Abbey and the grave- 
yard, that we knew to be near the sea, we found ourselves 
circling round, instead of keeping onwards; so, catching sight 
of two figures on the shore, we decided to go and ask them 
for directions. 

Drawing nearer, we saw that there was only one man, the 
other figure being a donkey, rendered shapeless by the masses 
of dripping seaweed that filled the creels upon its back and fell 
in shining brown masses over its whole body. We were high 
above them on the hill, but a path winding from the smooth 
stretch of beach to the loose sands at our feet showed that, 
by waiting where we stood, we would soon have them within 
hail. 

"The Abbey is it? Faith, then, 'tis a contrary way to be 
goin' from this." The old man, shriveled and bent, pulled him- 
self upright to answer our questions, resting both his hands on 
the thick crooked stick that helped him along. " Maybe 
'twould be best for ye to come along of me to the highroad 
above, an' I'd set you on the way. Without that ye'll be 
wantin' to go climb them banks till you come to Con Teirney's 
fishing cot; an' after, when ye'll come to the last toepad on 
the right, ye won't take it, but wheel to the left a bit further 
on, an' ye'll come to where ye'll see the ruin, only there's an 
u g!y gripe, an' a couple of walleens " We thought that this 
was certainly a case where the longest way round was the most 
desirable, and we therefore followed Peter Keane, as we learnt 
the old man's name to be, in the direction whence we had late- 
ly come. 

He was the owner, or rather the holder, of five acres of 
land, for which he paid two pounds twelve and sixpence a 



1909.] BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA 635 

year to the agent. Landlords are merely names in those parts, 
all are absentees, and most have never even set eyes on the 
place or the people who supply the incomes that are spent 
elsewhere* 

On reaching the highway, we waited to receive instructions 
before parting with our guide, but having come so far he an- 
nounced his intention of accompanying us all the way. 

" G'wanomerat ! " He emphasized his parting word to the 
donkey with a whack of the stick, mercifully in a place where 
there was a comfortable padding of seaweed. Evidently the ani- 
mal understood this adjuration, for it proceeded immediately to 
" go along home out of that," whilst its master led us once more 
in the direction of the sea. A dull haze hung over the islands 
that block the full stretch of the Atlantic, but between them 
the waves showed gray and leaden, with angry ridges of white 
foam, and even in the bay where the gulls and terns had come 
for refuge there was a big heaving swell on the incoming tide, 
and we could hear the dash of waters against the rocks, even 
before we entered the graveyard. 

The founders of the Abbey had done well in choosing their 
site if they wished to live remote from the world. With the 
sandhills behind, and the broad seas before, the rest of Ireland 
felt no nearer than the country over the ocean, and the islands 
are merely stretches of rock, bleak and rugged, without vege- 
tation or sign of human life. One really felt that churchyard 
to be on the verge of eternity. 

The builders of old did not lay their foundations in the 
sand; they chose the only head of rock for many miles, and 
piled their masonry upon it at the point where it juts the 
furthest into the sea. Then the westerly gales blew in, and the 
flying sand gathered in layers round the walls and over every- 
thing, and when graves came to be needed, it was in the sand, 
hardened by time, and bound to firmness with bent grass roots, 
that the bodies were laid to rest. 

Nothing remains of the monastery that once was there ; lit- 
tle even of the Abbey itself. There are two gable ends pierced 
with early Norman windows, where ivy has grown up and sea 
and land birds meet, and quarrel, and finally nest ; and be- 
tween these ends, with a broken wall around it, is a great 
gray altar slab, weatherstained and worn, but with the five 
crosses of consecration still imprinted on it. There are graves, 



636 BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA [Feb., 

seemingly,' on graves, and weeds and nettles everywhere. Some 
of the mounds have bare crosses over them, some slabs, and 
heavy ugly monuments, but many, nay most of the graves, 
are nameless. 

One reason for our visit was to seek the originals of some 
epitaphs we had seen in a magazine, and which were said to 
have been copied from tombstones at Dangonnel. On paper 
they were delightful, but truth compels us to acknowledge that 
they did not exist on stone. 

" It's a many I've seen comin' here," said ^ Peter Keane cheer- 
fully. "The Lord have mercy on their souls! There's not 
much place left in it now. That's where me an* herself'll lie. 
over beyont where the Widow Duggan's husband do be buried." 
Then Peter pointed to another grave still further away. There 
was nothing to distinguish this grave from the others, but the 
old man told a real romance of the sea about it. 

North of Tillaroan, between the gravelly shore of Killawur- 
ity and the sands of Dangonnel, a high mass of cliff stands 
boldly facing the Atlantic. Even at low tide the waters swirl 
aad eddy round its feet ; but when the waves come dashing 
in, breaking against the granite walls and thundering through 
the caves that pierce their rugged surface, they form a sight 
not easily forgotten. There are great pieces of rock, too, de- 
tached from the cliffs themselves, cruel, jagged points, that in 
a storm are hidden by the angry waves. 

Since we have known the cliffs of Tillaroan a lighthouse has 
stood upon their heights, warning passing ships to keep away. 
Sailors traveling that coast know that they cannot seek the 
shelter of the bay without a local pilot to guide them through 
the narrow channel, seemingly so fair and wide, yet holding 
death at every point but one, in the merciless rocks that lie 
beneath the water. 

The village stands in the shelter of the headland, and when 
the fishing boats are out it is only an abode of women and of 
children. Thus it was the night that Owen Colohan lost his 
life. He happened, for some reason, to be at home just then, 
but there was not another seafaring man in the place, except- 
ing Dan McGHnchy. Daniel, in his day, had been a first-rate 
seaman, but he was one of those who do not care for work, 
and when the others went away to fish he preferred to remain 
behind, ostensibly to mind his lobster pots, but incidentally to 



1909.] BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA 637 

be within convenient reach of a public house. A storm had 
sprung up early in the afternoon, and when the evening fell 
it was raging so wildly that not an eye was closed in all the 
village, women and children had to keep awake to pray for those 
who were at sea. 

Fierce as was the gale, there was always a hope that their 
own dear ones were away beyond it, but that some one was in 
danger from it became known in the village early in the night. 

Sounds of distress came moaning through the darkness, and 
by the light of fireworks sent up at intervals, those on shore 
could judge that the sailors, whoever they might be, had tried 
to run for the Bay of Dangonnel, but, missing the channel, were 
lying now close to the hidden reef, and God only knew how 
long they could keep from drifting on it. Still a man who 
knew the coast could even yet have saved the ship, and, frag- 
ile as a curragh is, it has been known to live where other boats 
were useless. 

There were curraghs in plenty on the strand : the question 
was who would dare his life on such a quest. A narrow 
question, embracing only two men, Owen Colohan, strong with 
a lad's strength, and Dan McGlinchy, than whom no one better 
knew the coast. Which would it be? 

"Toss," said Daniel hoarsely "Heads!" 

A coin was thrown, turned in the air, and fell. Some one 
struck a light, and man and boy bent forward. The flick of 
the match lit up two anxious faces. Owen's, young, keen, 
cleanly, little touched by the passing of eighteen blameless 
years. And the other There was one black sheep in the 
parish, and his face it was that now showed gray and livid 
before the match died down. For an instant their eyes met 
above the coin that lay, with head upturned: then young 
Owen's hand went lightly to it. 

" Tails,' 1 he said quietly. " 'Tis me ! " 

Then in the dark they moved towards the curraghs, loos- 
ened one and carried her across the shingle. A lantern was 
set in her bows, and close beside it was the bottle of holy 
water, without which no man fr*m thereabouts will ever put 
to sea. 

Quick as the toss had been, some besides the two con- 
cerned had seen what happened. If the lad chose to go why 
should they prevent it ? Dan had his wife and children, all 



638 BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA [Feb., 

still young, and Owen's mother was an aging woman, God help 
her Owen knew that she was amongst the crowd that was 
gathered round, and having tested both his oars, he turned to 
say one word to her. There was no fear in his face, for the 
call of the sea was upon him. She would have let him leave 
her with a muttered blessing from her strained white lips, 
although she felt that death was almost certain. Then, with a 
sudden instinct or did some murmur warn her what he had 
done she seized his arm. 

" Is it you to go ? " she questioned with sudden fierceness. 
"Clean and honest, is it you?" 

"Let me go, Mother!" But he left her cry unanswered. 

" Is it you ?" she repeated, clenching her strong hands about 
his arm. " Don't dare to go before the throne of God with a 
lie upon your lips." 

And all this while the precious moments were slipping by. 

" Let me go, Mother agrah ! He has his wife an' the childer 
at home." 

" An' no good he is to them ! Owen avick, come back 
out o* that." She was pleading now, but yet she held him 
strongly. " I wouldn't say you nay, had it been the will o' 
God." 

Then he bent his head and whispered in her ear, and even 
those about them could not hear the words he said. After- 
wards the people learnt them, and Peter told us what they 
were. He was ready to go less than a week before he'd 
been to the priest, when the station was in Shane Devine's 
but Dan Dan wanted time. She loosed her hands and turned 
upon McGlinchy. 

" Have you done your Easter ? Are you ready to meet 
your God ? " 

As far as animal courage went, Dan was no greater coward 
than his neighbor, but now, in the dim light, the Widow 
Colohan saw there was awful terror in his eyes. Then she 
went again to Owen. 

" Go, avick," she said. " God love you now and forever ! " 

For a minute or more they watched the tiny light cresting 

the huge waves, then as it disappeared in the darkness the 

agonizing keen of a heart-broken mother was taken up by the 

winds and carried sobbingly to heaven. 

Meanwhile the ship was drifting nearer, nearer to destruc- 



1909.] BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA 639 

tion. Hope had almost died away, when Owen's light, the 
merest speck, gave it sudden life again. Twenty pairs of eyes 
were strained into the darkness, twenty pairs of ears sought 
for sound of human voice. " Lower a rope ! " The captain's 
order was obeyed almost before it had been spoken. 

The dot of light was close to now, tossing up and down in 
the black chasm of waters. Owen dared not go too close, and 
over and over again they flung the rope towards him, but 
never near enough for him to grasp it. When at last it hit 
the curragh the force of the blow made the frail craft fly ; but 
Owen had it safely held. Keeping only a single oar, he made 
the line fast about his body. " Heave to ! " very faintly they 
heard his call. The cord tightened ; the spray flew from it on 
his face; a second pull and he felt the curragh glide from 
under him. He was hanging in space against the side of the 
ship, clasping his oar with both his hands to protect himself 
from crashing against the timbers. Once he flew out, but, as 
he came back, the oar received the shock. 

A second time the lurching vessel flung him from her and 
those on deck heard a splintering crack, a crash, and the 
burden at the rope end hung limp and inert, and hurriedly 
they drew it in. His chest was bare and wet, but not with 
the cold sea waves. A warm crimson flood told its own tale, 
and the broken oar that had failed in its task lay shattered on 
the rocks below. Once again the thought of safety passed 
away from the crew; then the lad opened his eyes. 

" Hold up my head," he said. 

They did his bidding pityingly, not yet daring to hope that 
he could guide them. 

" Turn sharp to the right," he went on faintly. " Keep 
straight on. Now to larboard, but quickly. Put up a bit of 
sail if you can." 

It almost seemed that he was wandering, but desperate men 
try desperate remedies, and with the sail up the ship bounded 
through the darkness. 

" Can you see the lights of the village yet ? " he asked. 
And when they answered "No"; he bade them keep ahead. 

"We see them now." 

" Then turn, turn right about to face them." 

A moment later the sailors did not need to be told that 
they were saved. The great jagged rocks that had threatened 



640 BETWEEN THE SANDHILLS AND THE SEA [Feb. 

their destruction stood up now a solid breakwater between them 
and the storm. 

He was still breathing when they laid him in his mother's 
arms, and all the long hours, whilst a barefooted lad of Dan 
McGlinchy's was away over the mountains for the priest, she 
half knelt, half sat, holding him to her and wiping the lips from 
time to time through which the life-blood was slowly draining. 
With the dim light of early dawn the priest came in and spoke 
the words of absolution over him. It was peace already, and 
very soon came rest. And they had buried him there only a 
few feet from where we sat listening to his story. One ques- 
tion we had to ask, and that was whether the time he gave to 
Dan McGlinchy had been made use of to good purpose. 

"Didn't herself see to that," said Peter. "I was only a 
gossoon meself that time ; but the old folk did use to be sayin* 
he went to the priest that very morning. Anyways, 'twas, a 
good day for his wife and childer, for wasn't he the changed 
man with the fret he got ; an' many's the blessin's did the 
widow woman get for the hand that she had in it. 'Didn't my 
Owen give his life for that one to get time?' says she, 'an' 
'tisn't me that'll see him lose his immortal soul after.' Me 
mother, God be good to her! used to be sayin' that she seen 
her huntin' Dan along the road home, when she seen him next 
or nigh the public house; and never would a station be from 
this to Killwurity but the Widow Colohan was in it, an' who 
would it be takin* her along on th' ass' back but Dan himself, 
an' he beside her with the priest as well." 

We crossed the stile leading back to the sandhills, and turned 
for a last look at the graveyard by the sea. It stood out against 
the sky, with the waters only showing on either side of it. 
The sun, sinking towards the horizon, was vainly struggling to 
pierce the heavy clouds, but it only succeeded in showing a 
faint light, just enough to recall the great radiance beyond. 

Behind us Peter Keane had gone on his knees, and a glim- 
mer of brightness seemed to fall upon his upturned face. His 
shapeless hat and the blackthorn stick lay on the grass before 
him, his head was bare, his hands joined, and his lips moved 
in supplication to heaven for the souls who still were waiting. 




TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH. 

[VER since John Tauler's Sermon's were first pub- 
lished, in the latter half of the fourteenth century, 
his fame as a spiritual writer has been established 
and has- gone on increasing. There is a vehe- 
mence in him that has the urgent power of a 
leader. And there is a rare maturity of knowledge of spiritual 
conditions displayed in his writings. But the best reason 
for the constant reference to him by all kinds and schools 
of writers on devout subjects, is that his teaching is integral, 
combining the ascetical and the mystical in proper proportion 
and perspective. Scarcely any author who treats extensively 
of the ways of God in men's lives but quotes Tauler. And 
some of them, like the famous Abbot Blosius, are content to 
summarize him for the best expression of their own plans of 
attaining to the most perfect states of prayer. 

Tauler is named and is a mystic. But it would be a sad 
error to suppose that these Sermons constantly carry one's 
soul far up into the dim regions of contemplative love. No, 
by no means; for there is not a simple Christian duty but is 
explained and enforced in these living words of wisdom, nor 
any ordinary Christian privilege whose plainest value is not ex- 
posed and fully commended, and that in many places with much 
variety of illustration. The parish priest who would have his 
instructions savor of Christ's love, and be fragrant of the unc- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, can do no better thing than read Tau- 
ler in preparation for his Sunday discourses. Take as an ex- 
ample the following on Holy Communion: 

This holy sacrament banishes sin. It puts sin to death, 
and causes a man to grow strong in a virtuous life, ever im- 
parting new graces. It safeguards him from future dangers, 
and from the snares of the enemy, snares incessantly being 
laid for us. Without its strong help one may easily fall, 
either by inner or outer sinfulness. Besides this the holy sac- 
rament has a great grace when offered for the souls in purga- 
tory ; many souls would suffer there till the last day were it 
not for holy Mass, especially when offered by very devout 

VOI. LXXXVIII. 41 



642 TAULER' s SERMONS IN ENGLISH [Feb., 

i 

priests. This blessed observance works wonders in purga- 
tory, especially during this part ot the year. Bach one 
should assist at Mass with deep longings of spirit, uniting his 
lervent intention with every Mass offered in the whole world, 
especially remembering those who are dear to him, whether 
living or dead. We thus feel ourselves present, not only at 
the Mass being celebrated before us, but at all the Masses be- 
ing offered in the whole world. I strongly counsel any interior 
man to hear Mass every day, and to do so in a very recol- 
lected spirit. That will suffice ; for the deeper his turning 
inwards towards God, the more fruitful is holy Mass to his 
soul. 

What is the reason why so many who receive this holy sac- 
rament full of graces as it is show little or no improvement, 
even though they remain in the state of grace ? The blame 
is their own. They take no diligent account of their venial 
sins ; they do not look on themselves with disfavor. These 
defects hinder the influence of grace. A man must scrutinize 
his life closely and watch his conduct strictly and take mea- 
sures to stop any habitual venial sins. Especially should he 
guard against idle words and all words are idle that are not 
spoken thoughtfully. This he should do to the best of his 
ability. 

Thus the ordinary practices of religion are treated in a spirit 
just as practical as it is refined with the sentiment of a con- 
templative. The new translation is to be furnished with an in- 
dex of topics, which will enable a priest to sort out readily 
the matter necessary for preparing sermons, ordinary Sunday 
addresses to the people. Such an author as Tauler is an en- 
emy to the commonplace spirit, too often the defect of those 
whose calling requires constantly repeated instructions on the 
same list of subjects to the same congregation. 

If the approval of saints may canonize an author, then is 
John Tauler enrolled among the souls of the just made perfect. 
Listen to St. Paul of the Cross, certainly a competent judge 
of the worth of all kinds of spiritual writings; for besides be- 
ing (as every saint is sure to be) a contemplative, he was al- 
so a most practical leader in the devout ways common to all 
fervent souls. In advising one of his Passionists about bearing 
the stress of care and disappointment incident to the office of 
rector, St. Paul says of our author: 

My dear Father Rector, now is the time to dwell in the 



1909.] TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH 643 

depth oi Tauler, I mean in interior solitude, and to take the 
repose of love in sinu Dei. There you will learn to perform 
well the duties of your office of rector, and to become a saint. 

Let a saint praise a saint the one lifted high on our altars, 
the other deeply enshrined in our inner affections; for all who 
read Tauler devoutly have a worshipful mind towards him. St. 
Paul of the Cross took especial delight in reading Tauler, whose 
full meaning on the obscured teaching of contemplation he could 
so fully understand, having been granted himself the rarest ex- 
perimental knowledge. He esteemed Tauler so highly that he 
made the latter's teaching a matter of frequent conversation 
among his more intimate associates all men of highly devel- 
oped spirituality. Sometimes at the mere mention of this fa- 
vorite author the saint's countenance became inflamed, tears 
would rise to his eyes, and his holy joy would break forth in 
burning words of praise. Those parts of Tauler's writings in 
which he treats of the union of the soul with God, St. Paul 
had made entirely his own, for he experienced in himself what 
he read in Tauler's vivid descriptions. (See The Oratorian Life 
of St. Paul of the Cross. Vol. II., ch. xi.) 

It was such allegiance as this, and given by such souls as 
St. Paul's, that won for the powerful Dominican of the four- 
teenth century the surname of the Illuminated Doctor. Ap- 
proved by such witnessing, and further tested by widely ex- 
tended use, Tauler is to be reckoned as a most enlightened and 
trustworthy guide to Christian perfection in all its grades. And 
he is especially helpful in showing the simplest and shortest 
way, namely, steadfast self-abnegation, joined to restful acqui- 
escence in God's outwardly shown good pleasure, above all, 
ready responsiveness to the inward touches of divine grace. 
Whosoever grows fond of John Tauler has a plain mark of 
God's particular favor in the career of perfection. 

It is not a little surprising, therefore, that the Catholic Eng- 
lish-speaking public has no version of Tauler in their own lan- 
guage. The Protestant English have indeed some of his ser- 
mons, more or less mutilated, translated by Miss Winkworth.* 
To this fragmentary gift of our author's doctrine no less viru- 
lent an anti- Catholic than Charles Kingsley contributed an elab- 

* The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler, of Strassburg ; with Twenty- 
five of his Sermons. Translated from the German, with additional notices of Tauler's Life 
and Times, by Susanna Winkworth. London. 1857. 



644 TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH [Feb., 

orate preface. Mr. Kingsley was as stupidly ignorant of Tau- 
ler's spirit as Miss Winkworth was incapable of finding it out. 
But the latter was honest, and gave a little taste of Tauler 
with a good heart to a small and wondering public of Protest- 
ants. As Tauler's sermons are between 140 and 150 in num- 
ber, her work was indeed but a taste of the full spiritual meal 
of the intensely Catholic friar preacher. She wrote for those 
whose stomach would revolt at pure Catholic teaching, and she 
candidly owns that she rejected those discourses which were 
" too much imbued with references to the Romish ritual and 
discipline to be suitable for the common Protestant people." 

Recently an English Protestant minister, Mr. Arthur Wol- 
laston Hutton, has procured and published a translation of an- 
other fragment of Tauler, about thirty more of the Sermons.* 
His work is conceived and executed in a spirit of entire fair- 
ness. Different from Miss Winkworth, his purpose is rather 
critical and biographical than devotional, as he says : 

My idea has been rather to present these sermons of Tau- 
ler's in such a form as may aid towards a more accurate 
historical appreciation of the man and his teaching. I have 
had no thought of either pruning or adapting. He was a 
Dominican friar of the fourteenth century, and he held all the 
beliefs of his age and of his Church, without any trace of 
reserve. 

The translation of Mr. Hutton is an accurate rendering, ex- 
cept that in various instances lack of familiarity with Catholic 
terms has rendered it somewhat obscure; and a too rigid ad- 
herence to the exact letter of Tauler's primitive German may 
account for further obscurity; because the original German is 
anything but clear in some places. Taken as a whole, Mr. 
Hutton's book is useful to Catholics, trying as it often is to 
one's patience in seeking for a clear understanding of long and 
perplexed sentences. The Introduction also gives a brief sketch 
of Tauler's career, which is of value. Its further estimate of his 
teaching, and especially of his mystical doctrine, can hardly be 
called satisfactory. But that is a topic not to be easily man- 
aged by a non Catholic, even one as sincere and well-read as 
Mr. Hutton. 

For information about all that may be said of Tauler, pro 

* The Inner Way. Being Thirty-Six Sermons by John Tauler, Friar-Preacher of Strass- 
burg. A new translation from the German. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Wol- 
laston Hutton, M.A. London : Methuen & Co. 



1909.] TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH 645 

and con, we refer the reader to the late Father Dalgairns* 
article on the German mystics in the Dublin Review of March, 
1858. This defence of our great and truly holy preacher is 
perfect; the examination into his teaching in spirit and letter 
is sympathetic and worthy of the Oratorian's learning and 
spiritual gifts. 

John Tauler was born somewhere near the end of the thir~ 
teenth century in the city of Strassburg on the Rhine. His 
family seems to have been a good one, in the worldly mean- 
ing of the term, for it is said that his father was a town 
counsellor. " It is said " and " it seems " such words as these 
are scattered through all the accounts of his life, which, apart 
from his activity as a preacher, is in great part shrouded in 
obscurity. At eighteen years of age, perhaps a year or two 
earlier, he entered the Dominican novitiate in his native city. 
He had, doubtless, fallen under the gentle spell of those friars, 
who at that time, and in Strassburg and its neighborhood, had 
rendered distinguished services to religion in the domain of 
the interior life, men like Blessed Henry Suso. These were 
destined to be Tauler's masters in the higher kinds of prayer. 

After he had taken his vows he received the best train- 
ing his Order could command, and was second to none in 
Christendom; for he was found to be a young man not only 
of intense religious fervor, but also endowed with high intel- 
lectual gifts. His studies were long and were conducted under 
the foremost teachers of his age. He made most of them at 
his Order's house in Strassburg, spending eight years there, in 
addition to the two years of novitiate. For a higher course 
four years more were given to him at the Dominican " Studium 
Generale," at Cologne, a privilege accorded only to the more 
intellectual members of the scholasticate. It is thought that by 
this time he had been ordained priest, or was at least in holy 
orders. In his own city he must have heard Eckhart preach, 
possibly Tauler became his disciple there, as, to some extent, 
he certainly did afterwards. Eckhart is by many reckoned as 
the most refined of the German mystics, some critics rating him 
highest of them all ; certainly he was a man of philosophical 
endowments of a very high order. Tauler would have met him 
again in Cologne, where Eckhart had the misery of being for- 
mally accused of pantheism. He was cited before the Inquisi- 
tion there, tried, and acquitted. Considerable mystery still 
hangs over the question of his being tainted with some such 



646 TAULER' s SERMONS IN ENGLISH [Feb., 

errors, which are too easily alleged against writers who deal 
with the more intimate state of union between the soul and God. 

At Cologne Tauler studied thoroughly those Fathers and 
Doctors with whom he afterwards showed so lull an acquaint- 
ance, and whose words he so frequently quotes, such as St. 
Augustine, St. Gregory, and St. Bernard, especially the first 
named. As to mystical writers, he was fully possessed of the 
works of St. Dionysius, and Hugo and Richard of St. Victor; 
these he is fond of quoting in his discourses ; and it may be 
said in passing that his quotations and references uniformly 
exhibit a thoughtful choice of passages always adaptable to 
the uses of ordinary intelligences. 

Of course so bright a student was made an adept in St. 
Thomas Aquinas, then and now and ever to be the foremost 
of all the scholastics. His frequent use of Albertus Magnus 
shows Tauler to have liked him well and to have assimilated 
his peculiarly scientific temper. The Scriptures he knew per- 
fectly, quoting them, as it were, instinctively, and always with 
aptness, as well as with signs of deepest reverence. Frequent 
references to those pagan classical authors who were of a philo- 
sophical turn are found in the sermons, as well as other evi- 
dences of a mastery of the authors of antiquity. 

Thus was Tauler prepared for his career, Could he have a 
better preparation even had his lot been cast in our own 
day? Could he have been associated with nobler or holier 
company ? He was worthy of these early privileges of a for- 
mative sort. And his Order can boast of only a few names 
more distinguished in leadership of souls to the perfection of 
Christian virtue. Many have thought that he studied also at 
the university of Paris, at that time in a flourishing state of 
intellectual prosperity. This is antecedently probable, but lacks 
some elements of certain proof ; the same may be said of the 
question whether or not Tauler received his Order's scholastic 
degree of Master of Sacred Theology. There is less room for 
doubt here, however, since this diploma was seldom withheld 
from one so long retained in the pursuit of learning, so natur- 
ally eminent for mental excellence, and so fruitful in his pub- 
lic apostolate. 

It was about the thirtieth year of his age that Tauler quit 
regular attendance in the schools and began his active career 
as a preacher somewhere about 1329. Besides the equipment 
of learning, systematic, elaborately assimilated, tested by the 



1909.] TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH 647 

severest trials of thesis and examination, he was a young man 
totally devoted to the perfect practice of the Christian and 
religious virtues. His spirituality was of the quieter kind, 
variously called the interior life, the mystical states, the life of 
recollection, in contradistinction to the use of elaborate methods 
of prayer and the stated practice of devotional exercises. These 
latter, of course, such men as Tauler faithfully observe, but 
with incessantly repeated inward glances and inward search- 
ings of soul, rather than the usual sincerity of more external- 
ized characters. 

We give our readers a brief contrasted statement of both 
kinds of spirituality, that is to say, contrasted and yet not separ- 
ated. It is taken from one of Tauler's Sermons for the second 
Sunday after Trinity : 

God's searching of the soul is both active in making it act, 
and passive in making it directly receive His action. In the 
active way God causes the soul itself to work, and in the 
passive He Himself does the searching and acting. The first 
is in the external order, the second in the interior life, and 
the interior is as high above the external as heaven is above 
the earth. The active and outward life is in external devout 
practices and good works, according to God's guidance and 
the suggestion of God's friends. This is especially seen in the 
practice of virtue, such as humility, meekness, silence, self- 
denial. The other is far above this, namely our entering into 
our soul's inmost depths in search of God, according to His 
own words : " I<o, the kingdom ot God is within you " (I^uke 
xvii. 21). Whosoever would find God and all His Kingdom, 
all His essence and nature, let him seek where He is. It is 
in the soul's deepest depths that God is nighest to it, much 
nigher to it there than is the soul to its own self. I,et a man 
enter that house, leaving outside all that is self, all that be- 
longs to the life of the senses in forms and images and imag- 
ination ; yea, he must in a manner transcend even his reason 
and all its ways and all its activity : when a man thus enters 
his interior house in search oi God, he finds it all turned up- 
side down, for God it is that has been seeking him ; and God 
acts like a man who throws one thing this side and another 
that side looking for what He has lost. This is what happens 
in the interior life when a man seeks God there, for there he 
finds God seeking him. 

This is all roughly put, but it vividly portrays the two ex- 
tremes of a good, prayerful life, its active prayerful benevolence 



64S TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH [Feb., 

viewed in contrast with its deeply retired contemplation. And 
this quotation, which has been selected almost at random, also 
shows something of that urgent spirit, that masterful impact 
of teaching peculiar to Tauler. 

His mystical tendencies were strengthened, as we have al- 
ready seen, by close personal association with men whose spir- 
ituality was like his own; these were mostly members of his 
own Order, but also some of the secular clergy, even laymen. 
Such company had a definite influence on Tauler's character. 
Who could live with Blessed Henry Suso and fail to be a saint ? 
He was one of the most beautiful characters of the era. We 
are fortunate in having his autobiograghy, and that even in 
English. It has, we fear, gone out of print a touching, gen- 
tle, plaintive narrative of a noble spirit's marvelous journey 
through darkness into light. Father Hecker was so much 
charmed with it that for many years he carried a copy of it 
in his coat pocket for use while traveling back and forth on 
the missions. The influence of such men on Tauler, young, 
ardent, wholly devoted to divine thoughts, a mind naturally 
bright and perfectly possessed of all that study could give, must 
have been exceedingly powerful and permanent. 

As to his external ministry, Tauler's lot was cast in trou- 
bled times, the epoch of the papal residence at Avignon, to be 
followed not long after his death by the Great Western Schism. 
Men's minds were disturbed fundamentally, too, about curious 
questions affecting ordinary Christian doctrine and morality, for 
heresies were numerous and widespread, War was universal 
and seemed destined to become chronic. Among the clergy 
abuses were rife, simony and sloth too often prevailing in both 
high and low places, and secular motives, not to say guiltier 
ones, influencing many members of the Church's ministry. In 
the midst of it all, however, God placed many saintly men and 
women. The Avignon popes, though almost unavoidably sub- 
servient to the French monarch, were generally zealous pastors 
of the Church, and always good men. That they were unequal 
to many of the greater tasks is true ; that they were wholly 
incompetent is untrue. They were aided by many saintly bishops 
and parish priests; and the religious orders, taken generally, 
were faithful to their vocations, It is to be noted that just in 
this sad age of Avignon, whose misery was but a portent of 
the more frightful sorrows of the Great Western Schism, many 
heroic servants of God were granted the Church. To them she 



1909.] TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH 649 

owed her preservation. Churchmen, monarchs, and statesmen, 
of every degree of sincerity or of treachery, kept the Christian 
world in a state of turmoil, the most tremendous, perhaps, the 
religion of Christ has ever experienced. Look at history ; it 
is their deeds and misdeeds that monopolize nearly every page. 
But the humble saints of the cloister are, with very few excep- 
tions, unchronicled. Yet, as a matter of fact, the whole of 
Europe was caught and fascinated, and over and over again 
brought to penance by multitudes of holy missionaries of all 
orders. Contemporary with Tauler was St. Catherine of Siena, 
the most marvelous woman saint, as some good judges say, 
since the days of Mary of Nazareth, exerting a feminine, nay 
a motherly, mastery over all ranks in Church and State, and 
ever in the interests of peace and mutual affection for the sake 
of Christ. She was a member of Tauler's great Order. The 
same Order was destined, in the next generation, to train and 
set forth St. Vincent Ferrer, the most amazingly successful 
missionary to the Catholic people, nay the most miraculous 
ever known since the days of the Apostles. 

Any one of such spirits as these did more good work for 
God and holy Church, a thousand times over, than all the state- 
craft and management and temporizing and expedients, whether 
peaceful or warlike, of all the others put together. It was the 
preaching to the people of the love of Jesus crucified that saved 
religion then, as it can alone save it now or in any age what- 
soever the preaching and the practice of the maxims of the 
crucified Redeemer. Among these fierce lovers of heavenly 
peace, these ardent champions of patient love, Tauler's place 
was very important. He was one of many great preachers 
whom Providence gave to the Rhine country, members of the 
various religious orders as well as of the secular clergy, who 
strived incessantly to divert men's minds, not only from the 
allurements of sin, but also from the perplexed condition of re- 
ligious affairs, and to fix their thoughts on the serene glories 
of the interior life of God in their own souls. 

Though preaching in Latin to an occasional audience of the 
educated, Tauler usually preached in German to all classes of 
the people. The mighty German tongue was a crude dialect 
in his time, but its strength was as remarkable then as now, 
though it lacked elasticity and all elegance. Tauler made it a 
fit medium for an eloquence truly majestic. His field of ac- 
tivity was all the Rhineland, from Basel or even Constance down 



650 TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH [Feb., 

to Cologne. His opportunity was given him by his great and 
learned Order, everywhere venerated if sometimes feared, and 
which had houses and churches in most of the larger towns. 
He was an ideal preacher, as is plainly evident from the least 
acquaintance with his sermons. With soundness of Catholic 
faith and its simplest spirit he combined thorough learning, 
gentleness of heart, dignity and fearlessness of address. It is 
true that his denunciations of the vices prevalent at the time 
verged on the extravagant, and excited hostile criticism. On 
one occasion some of his violent sermons alarmed his Domini- 
can brethren in the convent in which he was dwelling no cow- 
ards themselves we may be quite sure so that they reproved 
him and forbade him further use of their pulpit. But the peo- 
ple of the town, though raw and bleeding from his stripes, were 
yet deeply and religiously moved; Tauler was no mere destruc- 
tive. Their leaders, therefore, petitioned the friars to restore 
their hard but not merciless master to them, and he was readily 
allowed to resume his discourses, a fine witness to our mystic's 
mingled boldness and gentleness. And, in fact, neither he nor 
any other preacher could do much good in those desperate 
days without offending not only shameless sinners but the usual 
multitude of timid and time-serving Christians. 

But these sermons, on the ordinary themes of a good and 
a bad life, have not come down to us, with the exception of 
a few of very doubtful authenticity. What are known as Tau- 
ler's Sermons are quite different. They are discourses on the 
spirit of a perfect Christian life, and the means of attaining to 
it. They may be called conferences on ascetical and mystical 
subjects. They have ever been cherished as a priceless treasure 
of holy reading for souls who are seeking by the more interior 
methods to make themselves perfectly and instinctively respon- 
sive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They were addressed 
to religious communities, mostly in convents of Dominican 
nuns. But it is plain that they were not strictly private con- 
ferences. From often repeated expressions, and many plain 
references, it .is certain that they were really sermons for the 
most part at any rate delivered in the public oratories of these 
communities, in the main room of which were assembled con- 
gregations of the people, including both clergy and laity, the 
sisters meanwhile being within their cloister, the grating of 
which formed one side of the sanctuary. 

It is to the zeal of these nuns that we are indebted princi- 



1909.] TAULER'S SERMONS IN ENGLISH 651 

pally if not entirely for what is known ever since as Tauler's 
Sermons. They made notes of his preaching and afterwards 
compared and arranged them and gave them to the public. 
This was done with intelligence enough as to ordinary ascetical 
and mystical matters, though with some defects as to theologi- 
cal terms and quotations from Scripture. These discourses, we 
are glad to learn, are now, for the first time, translated into 
English one and all, and are about to be published. The trans- 
lator is the Rev. Walter Elliott, of the Paulist Fathers. 

As to further details of Tauler's life, the reader is referred 
to the brief History -, so-called, which will be prefixed to the 
volume of the Sermons above mentioned. Therein is given an 
account of the most important event in his spiritual career. 
Perhaps we may call it his second conversion to a life of per- 
fection, as he doubtless would himself; there also will be a 
touching account of his death. His activity in later life seems 
to have centered at the Dominican house at Cologne, in which 
city he preached continuously for many years, the " eight 
years " mentioned in the History referring only to the last eight 
years of his life. He was also confessor and spiritual director 
of a convent of nuns of his Order in Cologne. But at the end 
he returned to Strassburg, and died there June 16, 1361, and 
was buried in the Dominican convent. 

Tauler's fame rests wholly on the solid and magnificent 
foundation of the Sermons, to be given entire for the first time 
in English by Father Elliott's translation. The little book known 
as Tauler's Imitation of Christ is undoubtedly spurious. A few 
brief spiritual letters to nuns and some little ascetical instruc- 
tions, together with some equally short and devout poetical 
pieces, may rightly be ascribed to him. The Divines Institu- 
tioneSj so often quoted as his, are but a collection of maxims 
taken partly from Tauler's Sermons but also from Ruysbroek 
and other mystics. A beautiful book of Meditations on our 
Savior's Passion, attributed to him, has in recent years been 
given a good English dress under the learned and sympathetic 
editorship of the late Father Bertrand Wilberforce, O.P. The 
book is worthy of our great author and has some of the char- 
acteristics of his powerful style. But there is no extrinsic evi- 
dence of its authenticity. 




IN SICILY. 

BY JOSEPH McSORLEY, C.S.P. 
I. MESSINA. 

OU ask me to tell what I saw in Catania at the 
celebration of the feast of St. Agatha, in Febru- 
ary, of the year nineteen hundred and eight. 
Per Bacco ! the thing is easy enough to write 
about; but where shall I begin ? Might I put in 
a word or two about that entrancing ride along the coast from 
Messina? I can never forget it when I think of Sicily the 
green glint of the waters washing up from the blue depth 
of the Ionian Sea to curl and break in little storms of spray, 
first on big, misshapen rocks and then on black and white 
stretches of wind-swept sand ; the fie hi d* India so foreign look- 
ing and so huge that made the railway seem like the road of an 
Oriental garden; the blue, green, orange, and red- schemed dress 
of the peasant women at the village stations; and the great bank 
of moist morning cloud that clung to Etna with taunting indiffer- 
ence to the hunger of my eyes and kept me waiting almost a 
day for my first sight of // Monte, cruel old Sicilian despot, 
destroyer of cities and of men, irresponsible tyrant who kills 
and gives life as best pleases him, and yet, despite every 
crime, reigns forever supreme in the wondering affection of his 
simple subjects. And the vines and the crags and the castles 
and What ? Hurry ? Vabbene ! But first may I say a 
word about the morning that dawned so cold and gray over 
the sullen hills of Calabria the day before, when I was passing 
in between Scylla and Charybdis and looking with quickened 
blood on the coast of Sicily where it runs out in a long low 
cape of shiny sand bearing a line of clean, pretty colored fish- 
ing huts and a lighthouse, // Fato, on the point ? 

And to go a little further back No ? Diamine ! Then 
I shall have to leave out some of the best part, for I cannot 
tell you of the previous night when the swift steamer carried 
me out of the Bay of Naples. Ah, Che bellezza ! that ten- mile 



1909.] IN SICILY 653 

sweep of lights along the shore from Posilipo to Torre del Greco ! 
Down by the sea a line of lamps stretched from Mergellina and 
the Via Carraciolo to the Port and along the road to San Gio- 
vanni ; higher up was the shining of the Corso ; and above all the 
brilliant, gleaming beacons of San Martino and the Vomero. 
The music of serenading mandolins and the frantic hubbub of 
the porters die away. We are getting well out into the bay. 
Over yonder must be Nisida and Procida; here I turn un- 
seeing eyes towards old Vesuvius hiding in the dark. Castellam- 
mare is in that farther corner. Soon we shall run in between 
Capri and the Punta di Carnpanella, and then head for Sicily 
in the open sea. The wind is fresh and cool, the moon in its 
last quarter; low hung stars peep from behind the Sorrento 
hills and flash in between the little and the great St. Angelo. 
Every shadow here is full of history. It is a place that all the 
world has always talked about and loved each nook and corner. 
And then to think that earlier that very day I had been at 
Cuma, the oldest Greek settlement in Italy and the mother of 
Naples. Coming from Cuma I had seen where St. Paul having 
set sail from Reggio " after one day, the south wind blowing, 
came the second day to Pozzuoli." And had I not remem- 
bered Horace's luxurious Roman as I looked out over the 
waters of Baia, and Virgil's trumpeter as I gazed at Cape 
Miseno, and "Stop ? " Ha ragionc, Signer direttore ; I must 
begin to talk about Sicily ? 

But it is a gloomy recollection that day of my landing 
from the Naples steamer in the sickle shaped harbor of Mes- 
sina gloomy because now that busy and proud and beautiful 
city is a sepulchre. And it was beautiful. Looking from the 
ship one saw back of Quay and Corso a low line of palaces 
and tall massive churches and the high spiral tower of San 
Gregorio, where once stood a temple of Jupiter, and still be- 
yond, the ruined fortress of Castellacio which the great Emperor 
garrisoned four hundred years ago. Before him, Frenchman 
and Saracen and Roman and Carthaginian and Greek had held 
this city ; and first of all had come the pirate pioneers who 
gave it birth. Povera Messina / City so typical of the whole 
rich and beautiful island, because pursued by misfortune so re- 
lentlessly. Half ruined by wars in the seventeenth century, 
stricken with a fearful plague in the eighteenth, nearly de- 
stroyed by earthquake in 1783, forced to count its dead by 



654 IN SICILY [Feb., 

thousands during the cholera of fifty years ago ! Poor Mes- 
sina, struggling so desperately to maintain its life too fatally 
near that terrible death-line, which nature has traced from 
Etna to Vesuvius, and now at length struck down in a visita- 
tion that seems almost final. 

Other Sicilians have usually said hard things about the 
Messinesi, and an American friend of mine, after living among 
them for years, was no more kindly in his comments. A sea- 
port town, with so checkered a history, it may well have de- 
served the name it bore, though my own acquaintance with its 
citizens was too slight to let me form an opinion. I recall now 
that my first experience in the place was that of being asked 
to pay a franc for being landed from the steamer, but I gave 
the boatman half a franc and went unmolested on my way. 
A boy who carried my bag guided me through an archway to 
the nearest church and the priest there directed me to the 
Cathedral. Here, after some discussion and my display of 
suitable credentials, I was allowed to offer Mass ; not, how- 
ever, until a padre had questioned me about the financial 
panic in America, obviously and indeed I heard him say so 
for the purpose of ascertaining from my voice if I was 
really and truly an American. From what I had been read- 
ing in the Italian papers, my sole source of information, I 
gave him an explanation of the crisis quite sufficient for the 
purpose in hand, and he allowed me to vest and to proceed 
to the altar. Whenever I think of that morning I shall al- 
ways recall the distressing, noisy, reckless way in which the 
boys served me by fits and starts, and the red wine which I 
had never before seen upon the altar. Occasions of distraction 
come often to a traveler, but a certain unpleasant pre-emi- 
nence attaches to that morning in the Cathedral of Messina. 

Messina has probably not attracted a fair amount of atten- 
tion from the tourist who, coming from Rome by the night 
express or from Naples by steamer, very often hurries on to 
Palermo with its wealth of interests, or to Taormina, the great 
show-place of Sicily. Yet there is or was much beauty in 
the old city by the straits. Set in the shadow of bald and 
rugged hills that go sweeping southward toward Etna, it made 
a pleasant picture to the traveler approaching it from the sea. 
There was something unique in the impression produced by the 
long row of two-storied palaces with handsome columns that 



1909.] IN SICILY 655 

ran along the untidy Corso. This Palazzata and Montorsoli's 
Fountain Neptune between symbolical figures of Scylla and 
Charybdis we find frequently reproduced in pictures of the 
Marina. Running out easterly from the south end of the 
town, and curving round to the north and west, a hook of land, 
the Sickle, locked in almost completely one of the best har- 
bors in the world and gave great commercial importance to 
this city of less than a hundred thousand inhabitants. Oranges, 
almonds, olives, and wine figured chiefly in the export trade, 
together with lemons, which went out yearly in many thousands 
of tons. A Sicilian confided to me his wonder at the immense 
cargoes of lemons consigned to America, and asked me how 
Americans used them all. He said a torrid summer in Amer- 
ica involved so great an increase in the lemon trade of Sicily 
that Sicilians were ever imploring the summer sun to beat 
down relentlessly upon America. 

The Cathedral was perhaps the most interesting sight of 
Messina, fire, earthquake, and restoration having made it a sort 
of symbolical monument of the city's history. Its granite col- 
umns had been taken from an old pagan temple on the light- 
house point. The building itself, originally constructed by the 
Normans, retained Gothic tombs and Gothic windows. The high 
altar, ornate with elaborate carving and beautifully inlaid with 
precious stones, was the repository of a mediaeval copy of the 
famous letter which the Blessed Virgin is said to have sent to 
the Messinesi by the hands of St. Paul; and the feast of Ma- 
donna della Lettera has always been celebrated with great en- 
thusiasm on the third of June. 

Relics of antiquity in Messina are naturally rather scarce 
in consequence of the frequent calamities experienced by the 
city. Two very beautiful fountains by Montorsoli are note- 
worthy, that of Neptune near the Municipio and that of Orion 
near the Duomo. 

The inhabitants used to say truly I presume that the im- 
portunate beggars haunting the city were not natives, but Ca- 
labrian intruders who came over daily from Reggio in the two- 
cent ferry to share Messina's prosperity. I have also heard a 
Calabrian speak with scorn of the inhabitants of Reggio as low 
people "quite as despicable as the Sicilians." The frequent 
instances of this sort of detraction strongly impress upon the 
observer a sense of the intense and incurable provincialism 



656 IN SICILY [Feb., 

which has been so great an obstacle to the constructing of a 
United Italy. 

The fish market, usually crowded with fishermen and bar- 
gainers and gay colored fish, was one of the notable spots of the 
city; but the thing that looms brightest in my memory of Mes- 
sina is the ride to the Faro or Lighthouse point. A keepsake 
of it is the crumpled trolley- ticket which lies on the table be- 
fore me at this very moment and records that I paid forty-five 
centesimi for a second-class ticket from the Stazione Marit- 
tima to Granatari. That was a memorable ride alongside the 
Giardino a Mare, then out past pleasing villas and an old 
monastery King Roger had founded. Across the boat-studded 
waters of the strait, behind San Giovanni, rise the rugged cloud- 
swept Calabrian Mountains. I pass small fishing hamlets and 
the lakes of Pantani, known for their oyster beds and inviting 
little restaurant. A walk from the terminus of the tramway 
through the village of Faro brings me to the lighthouse, and 
on the way I converse amicably with two carabineri about the 
fishermen's strike, which has been giving trouble to the police 
and keeping Messina almost empty of fish for the last few 
days. The soldiers invite me to lunch with them, but I stop 
instead at a little stone cottage where tiny waves run up a 
gravelly beach and splash and sing merrily beneath my window. 
The good housewife fries delicious fresh fish, and serves it with 
a plenty of bread and wine and apples, and is content with a 
lira as her pay. 

I was a solitary visitor at the lighthouse, and the keeper, 
when he had at last been found, insisted, despite my protests, 
upon accompanying me to the top, being unwilling to risk the 
chance of my jumping off the roof. In the mind of an Italian 
an American, while highly respected, is liable to do pretty 
nearly anything extraordinary. The keeper was of use, how- 
ever, for he helped me identify Stromboli and the Lipari Islands, 
just visible to the north over the long miles of intervening sea. 
Down at my feet the racing tide ran into one of the Charybdis 
whirlpools, perhaps the very one where Cola lost his life when 
diving to please the emperor. Looking eastward over the 
straits, I saw, on the Calabrian side, a picture- village built upon 
old Homer's Scylla ; and Cannitello was straight across, scarcely 
two miles away. Along the edge of the hills beyond were 
Bagnara and Palmi. The white trail of the creeping smoke 



1909.] IN SICILY 657 

showed where the Rome express runs when it dashes through 
the coast towns of Gioia, Rosarno, Nicotera, on its way to San 
Giovanni and Palermo. Over behind those hills lay Sant' Eu- 
femia and San Roberto and many another town about which 
the poor Calabrian exile is asking to-day, as he seeks to learn 
if his old parents still survive and if his native village still 
exists. 

In a guide book you may easily discover the name and 
standing of Messina's good hotels; in fact, at the present time 
you may see pictures of them in the papers any day. But I do 
not believe that Baedeker even lists the place where I spent 
my night at Messina. That morning I had approached the city 
from the east when I landed from the steamer ; at night I en- 
tered it by train, returning from an excursion to the west, af- 
ter a long, tiring, and vexatious day of hasty plans, confused 
telegrams, and missed appointments. I had been tasting the 
bitterness of a friend's unpunctuality and had been made a tar- 
get by the fiendishly tormenting boys of Cefalu. I cannot say 
what Messina looked like as I entered it by night, for luck 
gave me a solitary compartment, and I think I had been sleep- 
ing a couple of hours when the porter called " Messina." It 
was half- past eleven. A quickly summoned cab, a hasty drive 
to a near-by inn, a room engaged for thirty cents, and a race 
to a restaurant, where I sat at a little luncheon with my watch 
on the table before me, are the most vivid of my recollections. 
When the hands of the watch should point to midnight, I must 
begin my morning fast. I felt uncomfortable enough in that 
Via Garibaldi Trattoria at so unseemly an hour, and doubly 
out of place when canzonettista and her friends invaded the room 
to order a midnight supper. I wonder where they are now, 
those people, and what has happened to my Messina restau- 
rant, and whether or not any one died when the walls fell in 
on that little Albergo d'Europa, where I lay awake most of the 
night listening to a cat wailing an accompaniment to clattering 
dishes, and loud-shouted orders in the kitchen below my win- 
dow. 

The next morning after Mass, in the Church of the "An- 

nunziata," I took the diretto for Catania, and what I saw 

deserves never to be forgotten. The traveler beholds a long 

succession of romantically beautiful scenes gardens of olives, 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 42 



658 IN SICILY [Feb., 

lemon frees, almond blossoms, and high-tinted wild flowers, 
framed in the magic colors of the Ionian Sea that dances white 
and blue and green, beyond the rough rocks and the shining 
sand. Etna peers over the nearer hills awhile, then reveals 
itself full length, snow-streaked, cloud*crowned; and all about 
are the evidences of past conflict between the mountain and 
the sea. Every hill we cross or tunnel through is a frozen lava 
stream. The stone fences, the roads, the very houses are 
built of lava blocks. The tall cactus-looking bushes, with 
immense racket-shaped branches, are the famous Indian fig. 
Oranges gleam golden in the green setting of their own foli- 
age. Date trees, pines, palms, and olives catch the eye by 
turn. Huge oxen that plough, men that dig, women that wash 
clothes knee- deep in a wayside stream, shepherds and goatherds 
that loiter comfortably along the beach, seem so many figures 
from stageland. Dancing waves lap the eerie rocks of lava 
islands, romantic castles set upon lonely promontories watch 
the sea, wild, fantastic crags that once were fiery fluid stream- 
ing towards the ocean have made themselves into a patient 
framing of the picture. The bright colored boats, the painted 
carts, the glad tinted clothing of the peasants publish the 
Sicilian's passion for color; the farms and gardens that stretch 
up the hillside in fertile terraces bear witness to the patience 
of his labor. Castles and picture towns, here and there em- 
bosomed amid the hills or perched upon mountain tops, record 
the story of his adventures and his wars; and the broad, grav- 
elled beds of dry torrents tell of the one respect in which nature 
has been a bit niggardly to him. 

My Sicilian companions in the train were very courteous 
and much pleased at the enthusiasm which I did not attempt 
to conceal. One interesting bit of information they gave me 
was that the grapevines growing plentifully along our way 
were American vines, and it seemed good to hear that from 
this young country of ours old Sicily had learned something 
about how to grow the grape. 

I had an interesting group in my compartment a young 
university student, an automobile agent, a school director, and a 
woman. The educational man, a veteran Garibaldian, was evi- 
dently a man of some importance in Messina. The conversa- 
tion as is usual in Sicily was, in large measure, a wholesale 



1909.] IN SICILY 659 

condemnation of the central government. Sicilians keep ever la- 
menting the lack of improvements and protesting that the mil- 
lions obtained by the confiscation of religious houses in Sicily 
were taken out of the island and used to make roads in Upper 
Italy. The schoolman delivered this epigram: "The Bourbon 
government was despotic and enlightened ; our present gov- 
ernment is despotic and bestial An amusing and character- 
istic feature of the conversation was the cool non-chalance 
with which this company of chance acquaintances discussed 
topics which would be tabooed by our more prudish English- 
speaking peoples. 

Lovely scenery without, and interesting talk within, have 
made the time speed quickly. We are at the end of the two 
hours and forty minutes allotted to the express to cover the 
sixty miles between Messina and Catania. Houses and shipping 
appear to the left. The train stops and I am in Catania. It 
is the thirtieth of January, and the celebration of the Feast 
of St. Agatha, the patroness of the city, has already begun. 
da vederc! 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 




A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT. 

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. 

fRAVELINESis a little gray French town steeped 
in history. At Gravelines was fought a battle 
in which the Spanish Count Egmont, reinforced 
by the timely arrival of an English squadron, 
vanquished the French governor of Calais, who 
had sallied out and captured Dunkerque and the villages about 
it. The site of the battle is out there among the immense 
golden cornfields, where they are reaping with the sickle to- 
day as they reaped in the days of Queen Mary. Occasionally 
the plough will turn up trophies of arms and armor, relics of 
the battle of Gravelines. 

No one troubles himself about the battle to-day, except an oc- 
casional English schoolboy. The people of this corner of French 
Flanders are peacefully occupied in making money these by 
the tedious harvest of the sea; those by the shining cornfields. 
Gravelines, encircled by its triple fortifications, walls and bas- 
tions, moats and drawbridges, is quite wealthy, we are told, al- 
though it is not easy to imagine big fortunes being made in 
such a dead-alive place. It is only quite awake of a market 
morning. The shops are few and small. The colored house- 
fronts, with their outside shutters, are oddly reticent. The old 
town, with its rough cobbles underfoot and its smells on every 
hand, is dreary despite its associations. Only now and again 
a door of the blank house-fronts will open and you will catch 
a glimpse of shining garden beyond the entresol. These Flem- 
ish merchants keep their houses entrenched from the world. 
A glimpse as a house-door opens and shuts makes it easier to 
believe that there are fortunes in Gravelines which run well 
into six figures. 

Yet Gravelines has a moldering and decaying air. A po- 
tent factor in its prevalent sadness is no doubt the great con- 
vent of the Ursulines, which takes up quite a quarter of the 
town's space, lying shut up and deserted in the midst of it. 



1909.] A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT 66 1 

So disproportionate is the size of the convent to the size of 
the town that one suspects the town to have grown round the 
convent rather than the convent to have been an appanage of 
the town. In any case, the convent was here while yet the 
English owned Calais, before Mary's heart was seared with the 
lost town's name. For four hundred years it has dominated 
Gravelines. Now it lies derelict soon to be scattered stone 
from stone at the will of the eldest daughter of the Church. 

It was originally a convent of the Poor Clares, an English 
foundation and an aristocratic one, for each noble dame was 
supposed to have twelve quarterings in her escutcheon. After 
the capture of Calais by the French, the Clarices, suspected of 
treasonable communications with their mother-country, were 
expelled, as the Ursulines were expelled last September, and 
it has since then, down to the time of the second expulsion, 
been a convent of Ursulines. 

The strangest thing in the present situation in France is the 
real or apparent acquiescence of the people who hold the votes 
and therefore the controlling power in their hands in the things 
that are being done. Gravelines is clerical, although it has at 
present a radical mayor, elected not by the votes of Gravelines 
but by the outlying hamlets which considered their interests 
neglected for the interests of the town. We were able to get 
at the root of the matter because of the fact that we were lodg- 
ing in the house of a French-Englishman, an anti-clerical and 
much given to meddling in local affairs, thereby apparently not 
increasing his popularity. Indeed, with fuller knowledge, we 
came to the conclusion that a certain unfriendliness towards 
ourselves on the part of some of the people of the fishing -village 
was directed not so much at us as at our host. The fishing 
village is still, judging by the attendance at the Sunday Mass, 
overwhelmingly Catholic. True, the cure's collection was pain- 
ful in its meagerness ; and even the sou for the chair, which 
was obligatory in the days of the Concordat, was paid not over 
willingly ; but, then, the French grow thriftier and thriftier in 
the affairs of this world and the next. Yet no vessel will go 
out to sea without the prescribed number of Masses for its 
safety being offered. It is a condition which the sailors exact 
from the masters. And the altar in the church, specially given 
to the cause of the seamen, drowned and living, is hung with 
all manner of reconnaissances. Yet the will of these people must 



662 A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT [Feb., 



remain very inoperative, since the work of expulsion of the re- 
ligious orders goes steadily on. 

Our anti-clerical host, who was a pseudo- Catholic and ac- 
knowledged that if the present cure of the Petit Fort had been 
in office at the last elections there would probably not have 
been a radical mayor in Gravelines, was ready to assist us when 
we expressed a desire to see the convent. Through him we 
made a somewhat unwilling acquaintance with the aforesaid 
radical mayor, one Valentin, who was the prime mover in the 
expulsion of the Ursulines. One wenders that M. Valentin 
should thrive and occupy an honorable position among the 
clericals of Gravelines. He is a printer by trade and sells pho- 
tographs and stationery, besides publishing an unclean little rag 
of a paper once a week. He was a soldier from the south be- 
fore he became a printer in Gravelines, and is a short, rather 
dirty-looking man, with a moustache and imperial, his com- 
plexion giving one the idea that printer's ink had somehow got 
mixed with it accidentally. In fact, he has the look of a rev- 
olutionary cobbler much in need of a bath. I don't know that 
any one holds him in esteem : yet this is the man who by re- 
peated knockings at the door of headquarters in Paris, with the 
assistance of the Jewish sous-prefet of Dunkerque, finally brought 
about the expulsion of the Ursulines. 

However at the moment he was not able to forward our 
designs very much, owing to the fact that the convent was 
temporarily the property of one of the rich Catholic mer- 
chants of Gravelines, who had bought it at the first sale as a 
friend of the nuns. In France all considerable property sold 
by auction must be put up a second time. We were on the 
eve of the second sale at Dunkerque ; but for the moment the 
convent was in the hands of good Catholics. Finally we suc- 
ceeded in getting the keys, although evidently we were the 
object of some distrust on the part of the good people who 
had charge of them ; and no wonder, considering the company 
we kept. Our host indeed told a cock-and-bull story of us as 
possible purchasers of the convent. I felt it might have been 
more efficacious if he had told the truth that here were two 
sympathizers with the nuns, one of whom desired to write of 
the convent for other sympathizers. But perhaps we should 
not have been believed. 

Anyhow, after several failures, we found ourselves unex- 



1909.] A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT 663 

pectedly in possession of the keys, with the warning given to 
us as we departed that we should probably never find our 
way out, a warning which fell on deaf ears. 

We knew the convent from the outside as a great dreary 
place of blind walls, with only the fa9ade of the chapel behind 
locked iron gates and the front of the chaplain's house look- 
ing upon the world. 

It was a golden August day; and there was a fair in the 
Place, which was crowded with country people. The Hotel du 
Commerce and the many estaminets had their rows of people 
sitting out in the sun sipping their variously colored drinks. 
The steam round-abouts blared, and the children shrieked 
with joy as they flew down aeriel railways holding on to pul- 
leys. There were even a couple of nuns in charge of some 
children at the corner of the Place near the convent, of whom 
we asked a question about the house of M. Vaumonier. A 
good many curious eyes watched us as we turned the key 
with some effort in the double lock of the door. If there had 
been time we should probably have had a crowd. But the key 
turned, the door gave, and we were inside in a shuttered 
darkness which hardly allowed us to see, when we had recov- 
ered from the strong sunlight, the debris that littered the floor, 
the dirt and desolation of everything. Plainly no one had 
cleared up after M. Vaumonier. In the convent there was 
no such litter, though the nuns had had only a few hours of 
warning. From the floor we picked up a picture of the Sacred 
Heart with an English inscription and the visiting-card of an 
English priest. This latter reminding us, with a sense of won- 
derment, that barely twelve months ago, and not somewhere 
in the Middle Ages, was the convent desecrated. 

It was a relief to leave the shuttered and disordered rooms 
for the aumonier's garden, thought hat too was sad enough, 
with everything overgrown, nature fast taking back her own, 
and the ordered garden becoming a wilderness. A bough of 
beautiful pale roses flapped in our faces as we emerged into 
the garden, where we could imagine the priest with his bre- 
viary, pacing to and fro in the summer weather. 

By a door across the garden we entered the convent proper, 
finding at the end of the first corridor the broken door by 
which the enemy took possession. This was in the early 
morning of September 28, 1907. Only the preceding evening 



664 A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT [Feb., 

did the 'nuns know for certain that they were to go. They 
say that no one in Gravelines believed till the last moment 
that the expulsion would really take place. Why should it? 
For four hundred years the nuns had carried on the work of 
education among the children of the townsfolk. They had 
helped the poor in their need. At the time of their expul- 
sion a peasant of the neighborhood came forward to testify 
that in three generations his family had been helped by the 
nuns to the extent of four hundred pounds. M. Valentin got his 
warrant not from Paris but from Dunkerque. The sous-prefet 
there had had in his hands for some time the act of expulsion, 
pending the decision of the Council of State in Paris, for the 
nuns had appealed against their expulsion. So suddenly did 
the blow fall, that it came on the very eve of the day when 
the school-children, scattered over land and sea for the sum- 
mer vacation, were to return, and the nuns had been busy all 
day making preparations, with not the slightest idea of what 
was about to happen. A hundred ladies of Gravelines stayed 
up with the nuns that night, setting things in order against 
the hurried flight. The men were fortifying the convent, so 
that there should be at least some trouble before it was taken. 
At half-past three in the morning M. I'aumonier said his last 
Mass, giving Holy Communion for the last time to the nuns 
and their friends. 

They had just finished breakfast when the cry came that 
the troops were in the street. Within a few moments the 
convent was blockaded by a company of the noth Regiment, 
with seventy gendarmes. What an employment for those 
strapping fellows we saw running so lightly about the bar- 
rack-square at Gravelines, fetching water from the great spouts 
with gargoyle heads, over against the old church, which for 
centuries have supplied Gravelines with water ! They seemed 
light- hearted boys as they indulged in good humored horse- 
play with one another; strapping fellows too, though an Eng- 
lish Tommy Atkins would have been amazed at the disorder 
of their undress. One wonders what thoughts were in their 
hearts when they, inheritors of a great military tradition, were 
given the task of expelling the harmless nuns, whose only sin 
was that they had served God in quietness and their fellow- 
creatures for Him. 

To be sure the resistance was merely formal. Catholic 



1909.] A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT 665 

France, except in Brittany or La Vendee, seems to take these 
despoilers easily. The convent bell began to toll in the dark- 
ness before dawn to tell the townspeople the hour had come. 
Two or three workmen arrived in a cart escorted by gendarmes. 
Then came M. Brisac, the sous-prefet of Dunkerque, displaying 
his Jewish sallowness in his uniform of a "civil-general." 

As the clock struck six the sous-prefct ordered the Police 
Commissary to summon the nuns to render up their convent. 
That functionary knocked three times at the convent door, sum- 
moning the nuns to open in the name of the law. There was 
no answer, except that frm the windows of the chaplain's 
house a woman's voice could be heard calling : " Down with 
the robbers ! " The cry was taken up by the crowd which had 
gathered in the street. Then the workmen's tools were brought 
into requisition. There was the grating sound of the tools 
against the locks and hinges. It took twenty minutes of hard 
work before the doors were opened. At last they fell back with 
a crash and the messengers of the law entered, breaking down 
door after door, till they came upon the sacred enclosure which 
had been inviolate for four hundred years. 

They sought the nuns first in the chapel, which was empty, 
and they found them eventually praying in their cells. After 
that the work of expulsion was simple and easy enough. With- 
in a few hours the nuns had left their convent ; within a few 
days they had said good-bye to Gravelines forever. 

It took some time, that work of expulsion ; and no wonder, 
for never was there such a maze, such a rabbit-warren as the 
convent. If the nuns had chosen to lead their evictors a dance, 
they might have held them at bay for an indefinitely long time. 
We had hardly listened to the keeper of the keys when she 
told us that we should not see the convent in an afternoon 
and that we should never find our way out. We went near 
to proving the truth of her words. 

For myself, I may say that my visit to the convent was one 
of the most eerie experiences of my life. A wall twenty- five 
or thirty feet high shuts in the many convent buildings. The 
Place and its crowd seemed nearly as far away from us as they 
might from one of the quiet dead in the graves out beyond 
the gates. There Were literally miles of corridors; twisting 
staircases up, twisting staircases down ; mysterious passages, low, 
unlit places, fast-shut doors, a relic doubtless of the seizure; 



666 A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT [Feb., 

all eerie and strange. No wonder those evictors lost their way 
last year. 

Perhaps it was the mephitic vapors of an old, old place, 
into which the air had never entered freely, for the convent 
buildings going round their gardens were several stories in air 
and beyond was the thirty-foot wall. Anyhow, one felt curi- 
ously nervous and did not dare stray away from one's com- 
panions. It would be so very easy to get lost. Doors slammed 
somewhere in the labyrinth and one's heart was in one's mouth. 
We climbed up one of the corkscrew staircases and came out 
in a long corridor, ankle deep in chaff and straw. There was an 
unpleasant feeling of its association with illness, as one sees it 
laid down in the London streets ; but it was only the bedding of 
the nuns which they had found time to scatter before their flight. 

All down the long corridor were the black apertures of the 
open cell doors. The day was dazzlingly bright outside, but 
it might have been shadowy dusk for its suggestion of terrors 
within. At first I would not be afraid. I reminded myself that 
in this place had been nothing that did not belong to God. I 
approached one of the cell- doors and found on it the little 
picture of the Sacred Heart with the inscription : " Cease, the 
Sacred Heart of Jesus is with us ! " which is so familiar to 
Catholic lips and hearts. How could one be afraid ! I looked 
within, Half the cell was taken up by a coffin- shaped bed, a 
mere hollow box, half-filled in yet with the chaff and straw, 
which, without mattress or paillasse, had made a good enough 
bed for the brides of Christ. By the bedside was a little wooden 
set of shelves. There was hardly room for any other plenish- 
ing. Fifty such black open doors followed one another down 
the long corridor, ankle- deep in chaff and straw. My compan- 
ions had climbed yet another corkscrew staircase to an upper 
corridor, calling to me not to climb up till they found out what 
was above. It was of course the mephitic vapors ; but a panic 
seized me. I stood at the foot of the staircase. On one side 
stretched the long corridor with its many doors. On the other 
side was a fast-shut door. Supposing supposing that door 
were to open and a very old nun to come forth, asking by what 
right those echoing male footsteps sounded in the sacred en- 
closure of the convent! And how they did echo the voices 
and the footsteps ! And one of the party was a traducer of 
the nuns. I looked from the closed door to the dwindling per- 



1909.] A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT 667 

spective of open doors, and I fled upstairs to the solace of com- 
panionship to another corridor of cells, knee- deep in chaff and 
straw like the one below it. 

Never was such a place for losing your way. We thought 
to have our correct bearings and came out at a place we had 
left behind us long ago. We doubled back on our own foot- 
steps like one of the unfortunates lost in the Australian bush. 
Never were such loops and twists and turnings. And always 
the low doors and the cobwebbed passages, cheerful enough 
when the nuns were here, with fire and light and human speech 
and human faces, but now somewhat terrible. 

The cloister ran round a rose garden fast going back to 
desert, the roses and snapdragons and poppies still reaching 
long arms out of the undergrowth to clasp the feet of the deso- 
late Calvary in the midst of the garden. Last year the garden 
would have been ordered and beautiful. Last year the cloister 
windows, clear and bright, would have looked on roses. The 
cloister walls, where we saw the marks of crucifixes and shrines, 
would have been white and bright. Now the cobwebs draped 
everything, and far down here in the well of the buildings was 
a chilly darkness. 

Under our feet in the cloisters were the graves and the 
memorial brasses some wonderfully preserved of those noble 
dames, the Clarices. We walked above the bones of those 
good ladies of long ago. Since the visit was an unexpected 
one we had not provided ourselves with writing materials, and 
it was a few days later that we came back, this time accom- 
panied by a small Irish and Catholic boy, his thoughts more 
intent on the fruit in the nuns' garden than any associations 
of the place, instead of the incongruous and uncongenial anti- 
clerical. We came back to transcribe what we could decipher 
of the inscriptions on the brasses of the Clarices. One, by the 
way, had a wonderful representation of a nun, perfect from 
coifed head to sandaled feet. 

I and the small boy wandered to the garden while the in- 
dustrious one, on his knees, by the aid of a candle-end, tran- 
scribed the lettering. The inscriptions were semetimes Latin, 
sometimes English and French. Now and again they were in-" 
decipherable. The footsteps of the centuries had worn some 
away completely. But here is one of them which we tran- 
scribed. 



668 A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT [Feb., 

4 

Hie Requiescat Corpus JE. D. M. 

Purissimae et Venerabilis Matris ac Dominae 
D. Mariae Socii nobilis Anglise Heroinae 
Primae hujus Coenobii Abbatissae 
Fundatricis et auctricis 

Praecipuae 

Obiit virtute singulari et sancto 

Patrimonio Praedita XXI Novemb. 

Anno Dom. M.D.C. XIII. 

Another inscription of later date would go to prove that 
the Ursulines of Gravelines, who had succeeded those noble 
Dames Anglaises, the Poor Clares, gave hospitality to an Ab- 
bess of the Order. Her inscription runs : 

Here Lieth the Body 

of Rev. Mother 

Mary Josephine Frances Summers 

Abbess of the English Poor Clares oi Aire 

Who Departed this life Nov. XXI 

Anno Domini 1831 
Aged 53. Professed 26 years. 
Requiescat in Pace. 

The one who rose at last from his knees, having deciphered 
these inscriptions, was startled to find himself alone, with a 
sense of being lost in the labyrinth. Again it must have been 
the mephitic vapors that made his head swim and his heart 
beat. We were quite out of sight and hearing in the kitchen 
garden of the nuns, where a small boy, innocent of nerves, was 
rifling the fruit trees, although it was only round one twisted 
passage, through the community- room, by the side of a stair- 
case, and there was the open garden door. But it was a place 
where one needed clues. 

The garden, its fruit and vegetables rotting to decay, must 
have been a pleasant place last year. The thirty-foot wall 
made a glorious wall for fruit. Fig trees, nectarine, plum, pear, 
and apple trees had been trained upon it; and between the 
fruit trees were empty niches where the guileless shrines of a 
convent garden had been last year. The flower and vegetable 
beds were a wild tangle. The statue of St. Roch, with his dog 
and his wounded knee, was almost breast high in prairie grass. 






1909.] A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT 669 

The door of the grape house was broken from its hinges 
and the purple clusters dropped with their own richness. There 
had been pitiless devastation in the garden. M. Valentin, with 
that philanthropy characteristic of his class, had thrown open 
the convent gardens to the children of the town. And what 
havoc they had wrought ! The fruit must have been under-ripe 
when they were there, for now what was left of it hung golden 
on the boughs or purple on the ground where the beautiful 
fig tree had been torn from the wall and left to lie. Great 
branches of the other trees were broken and lay upon the 
ground. The fruit garden was of a piece with the ruin and 
desolation everywhere. 

In the chapel the altar had been torn from its foundations 
and only a heap of masonry left behind. The chain of the 
altar lamp had been wrenched and a length of it dangled in 
the dimness overhead. One forlorn statue yet occupied its 
niche, as though it had been overlooked and forgotten. What 
will become of it and of the stained glass windows when the 
convent is razed to the earth? For we have since heard that 
the sale of the convent to the nuns* friend has been upset; and 
the town, represented by M. Valentin, has acquired it for six 
thousand pounds, a grotesquely inadequate sum, even for the 
site. 

In the wall of the chapel is a tablet telling of a founda- 
tion for Masses by two Seigneurs father and son and the 
bequest directs that, at the end of every office in choir and 
after the conventual Mass, two Religious will sing: " O Good 
Jesus, grant the grace of conversion to England, our father- 
land." And the choir will repeat three times in answer: "So 
be it." 

One wonders over this bequest of the tw Seigneurs living 
under le Grand Monarque, and over what tie there was between 
them and England. Also, if the trust holds good to this day. 
Fancifully one wonders if these prayers of the undowered Eng- 
lish nuns may not have found an answer when heretical England 
opened her doors to those robbed and driven out by the eldest 
daughter of the Church. They seem to have been excellent 
business men those Seigneurs father and son and to have 
tied up their trust pretty tightly. By the way, heretical England 
made as generous a provision for the priests and nuns turned 
out of France in the revolution as though they had been her 



670 A SEQUESTRATED FRENCH CONVENT [Feb. 

own children. Eight thousand priests and thirty bishops found 
refuge in England in 1793. England not only harbored them 
as she is harboring the French congregations to-day, but gave 
them support as well. By orders of the government appeals 
were made for their sustenance from the Protestant pulpits of 
the country; a great house at Reading was given by govern- 
ment for their lodging ; and the University of Oxford printed, 
at its own expense, four thousand copies of the New Testament 
and of the Roman Breviary for their use. Who shall say that 
these things have not brcught, will not bring, a blessing to a 
people of so much honesty of purpose and liberality of mind 
and action ? 

The great parlors with their grilles, the community-room, 
the refectory, were all echoing silences. The convent itself, 
except for the dust and the spiders, except for the chaff and 
the straw ankle-deep in the corridors, had a swept and gar- 
nished air. Only in the community-room, with the pious texts 
set in the walls, were some odd moldering fruits lying in the 
deep window ledges, as though they had been laid out with 
the intention of drying them. 

Our anti-clerical friend, who had been on the lookout for 
oubliettes and other things out of which might have been 
manufactured some musty scandal, found nothing at all. Once 
his hopes rose high, as we discovered a subterranean passage; 
but it only led under the street to the externat, where the nuns 
taught the poor children of Gravelines for so many generations. 
Again he lit up the wine cellar; and, entering without stoop- 
ing, received a blow from a beam that dazed him for a time. 
I think he was half-inclined to ascribe it to the malice of the 
Poor Clares. At the last we were at fault for a few minutes. 
Our friend turned pale as we considered the possibility of be- 
ing shut in all night; and he flatly refused to accompany us 
on our second visit. 

" A las les Voleurs / " stared at us from the dank outside 
wall of the convent as we closed the door of the chaplain's 
house behind us, with a feeling of relief. Certainly the air 
was poisonous and there was a suggestion of death about every- 
thing. The poor nuns hoped to come back. Well, Messieurs 
les Voleurs have made that impossible. 




NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY. 

BY A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE. 

|HE oft-quoted saying that " history is a con- 
spiracy against the truth" is too sweeping to 
be true in itself. It would be more correct to 
say that a great deal of what passes as history 
is a travesty of the truth, and this is more es- 
pecially the case with history written in a partisan spirit, 
and above all the history of a conquered people set forth by 
their conquerors as an apology and justification for the con- 
quest. There is even a danger of the story of a nation's ex- 
tinction being misrepresented when the writer is one of the 
vanquished race, inspired with a traditional hatred of the 
victor. 

Irish history has suffered much at the hands of prejudiced 
historians. It must be confessed that many histories of Ireland 
are little better than political pamphlets on a large scale. But 
any impartial critic must admit that the greatest errors lie on 
the side of the apologists of the English conquest. For hun- 
dreds of years they have had the ear of the world, and they 
have succeeded in persuading many Irishmen themselves that 
the invaders from Great Britain had to deal with a race that, 
whatever had been its glories in earlier times, was lagging be- 
hind the civilization of the rest of the western world. Ireland, 
we are told, had not recovered from the miseries of the Dan- 
ish wars. Much of the land was a roadless wilderness. It 
had no trade, no manufactures. Its tribesmen gained a poor 
living from a primitive agriculture and the keeping of cattle. 
The culture of the once famed " golden age " of Ireland had 
disappeared in the destruction of the monasteries by the 
northern pirates, and there had not been time to restore it 
when the long wars with the Normans began. 

But history is being rewritten. It is becoming, as the 
Germans say, "objective/* that is, inspired by objective facts 
viewed in a judicial spirit, not by the subjective views of the 
writer. It is no longer the fashion to repeat the traditional 
view without testing it by careful consideration of every frag- 



672 NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY [Feb., 

ment of contemporary record. This process is at last being 
applied to Irish history, and the result is a startling revelation 
for those who have so long accepted the old view of the cen- 
turies between the first raids of the Norman barons in the 
reign of Henry II. and the devastating conquest under the 
Tudor sovereigns, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. 

This period has been dealt with in a very remarkable book 
by an Irish Protestant writer, Mrs. Alice Stopford Green.* 
Mrs. Green is the widow of John Richard Green, whose Short 
History of the English People made him famous some thirty 
years ago. She not only helped her husband in his work, but 
she has herself been all her life a painstaking student of his- 
tory, and is the author of many books on the subject that 
have won her a well-deserved reputation. She is the daughter 
of a Dean of the Protestant Church of Ireland, and was edu- 
cated at home. 

Her latest work throws a flood of new light upon the story of 
four centuries. It deals only incidentally with wars and battles, 
for the writer's researches were directed to discovering what 
was the condition of the Irish people in the four centuries 
that ended with the wars of Elizabeth's viceroys. It is divided 
into two parts. The first deals with trade and industries in 
mediaeval Ireland, the second with the state of education and 
learning. In her preface Mrs. Green says: 

Many reasons have prevented the writing of Irish history. 
The invading people effaced the monuments of a society they 
had determined to extirpate ; and so effectively extinguished 
the memory of that civilization that it will need a generation 
of students to recover and interpret its records. The people 
of the soil have been, in their subjugation, debarred from the 
very sources of learning, and from the opportunities of study 
and association which are necessary for the historical scholar. 
. . . It was the fashion among the Tudor statesmen, very 
confident of their methods, to talk of " the godly conquest," 
" the perfecting of Ireland." The writers of triumphant na- 
tions are enabled to give the story of their successes from 
their own point of view ; but from this partial tale not even 
the victorious peoples can learn what the warfare has im- 
plied, nor know how to count the cost, nor credit the gain. 

Most readers of Mrs. Green's book will find on its first page 

* The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing, 1200-1600. By Alice Stopford Green, London : 
Macmillan & Co. 1908. 



1909.] NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY 673 

information that will come to them as a surprise. Even after 
the waste and ruin of the Danish wars Ireland was famous 
through western Europe as a rich and prosperous land. The 
monk Adhemar of Angouleme wrote of it in the year 1000 as 
" that very wealthy country," and centuries later'a writer, whose 
report is preserved in the State Papers of Henry VIII., de- 
scribed it as "none other but a very Paradise, delicious of all 
pleasaunce, to respect and regard (/. e. t in comparison with) 
any other land in this world." It was this reputation of Ire- 
land that lured the first Norman adventurers across the narrow 
seas from Pembrokeshire. Henry II. came after them, received 
their assurances of fealty, and made treaties with the Irish 
chiefs. But before long it was clear the result would be not 
the English domination of Ireland, but the building up^of a new 
state of things, in which Norman baron and Irish chief would 
be semi-independent rulers of what both regarded^as their com- 
mon country. As Mrs. Green puts it : 

Norman, French, and Welsh knights seized: lands, built 
castles, declared themselves conquerors, and, themselves van- 
quished by Irish civilization, turned into patriots in their new 
country. "For," said a mediaeval Irish writer (A. D. 1315), 
"the old chieltains of Erin prospered under these princely 
English lords, who were our chief rulers, and who ^had given 
up their foreignness for a pure mind, their surliness for good 
manners, and their stubbornness for sweet mildness, and who 
had given up their perverseness for hospitality." Succes- 
sive generations of newcomers cast in their lot with their 
adopted land, till there was not more than twenty -miles>bout 
Dublin that obeyed English law. 

Just as after the Danish invasions the Danes of Ireland had 
been largely welded into the native race, so after the first years 
of strife there was a blending of Norman and Celt. Burkes, 
Fitzgeralds, and other families of the invaders became " more 
Irish than the Irish themselves." There was good prospect 
that a prosperous Irish nationality would be created by the co- 
operation of men of Celtic, Danish, and Norman-English blood. 
How much was actually achieved in this direction is brought 
to light by collecting from a hundred scattered sources facts as 
to the condition of Ireland in later mediaeval days. 

Ireland was not a wilderness peopled by quarrelsome clans. 
It was a busy and prosperous land, with a growing internal 
VOL LXXXVIIL 43 



674 NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY [Feb., 

and external trade, that could only exist under settled condi- 
tions. Roads and beaten tracks traversed the country. One 
hears of the building of many bridges. The internal waterways 
were largely used. There were fleets of small craft on the 
Shannon, and the ports were full of native and foreign shipping 
for the trade with the Continent. The fairs held at stated times 
all over the country provided for the needs of internal trade, 
but the trade by sea with other countries was considerable. 
The "ships of Ireland" were well known in the Hansa ports 
of Hamburg and Lubeck, at Antwerp and Bruges, Bordeaux 
and Vigo, and as far away as Naples. Delegates of the mer- 
chant guild of Lucca settled in Ireland. Philippe le Hardi 
gave a general safe conduct for Irish traders to travel in the 
cities of Flanders. Irish chiefs used to make the pilgrimage 
to Compostella, sometimes more than once in their lives. So 
regular, in fact, was the over-sea traffic between the Irish ports 
and Corunna and Vigo that it was a common thing for letters 
from England to Spain to be sent by way of Ireland. Bays 
and inlets where there are now only a few fishing boats were 
then busy with shipping. As late as 1570 it was reckoned that 
there were in Ireland no less than eighty-eight " chief haven 
ports." Most of these places have now lost even the tradition 
that a forest of masts once clustered along their sea fronts. 
Take one instance out of many. Ardglass, on the coast of Down, 
is now a quiet seaside village with a few boats. It was once 
the chief port of the O'Neill. Mrs. Green describes its wharves 
and forts; its storehouses, one of them a building 250 feet long. 
A few fragments of ruins and traces of the old trade road are 
now all that is left to tell of long-vanished greatness. 

" Tall ships " from Venice were often seen at Cork, then 
one of many busy ports along the south and west coasts. But 
the chief trade was with Spain. What a picture we have of 
the change between past and present in this account of one 
of the old ports of Kerry : 

A [traveller in the eighteenth century describes the relics of 
the ancient wealth of Dingle (a forlorn village now) the 
houses * ' built in the Spanish fashion with ranges of stone 
balcony windows, this place being formerly much frequented 
by ships of that nation who traded with the inhabitants and 
came to fish on this coast ; most^of them are of stone, with 
marble door and window frames," One Rice carved on the 



1909.] NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY 675 

house lie built (A. D. 1563) two roses and beneath them a 
notice that "At the Rose is the best Wine." While travel- 
lers " well refreshed" themselves, "the Irish harp sounded 
sweetly" in their ears. The country round was full of peo- 
ple industrious and prosperous, every parish having its own 
church, many of them very large, as appears by their ruins ; 
while several of the mountains, though but of poor and stony 
soil, are marked by old enclosures and other signs of former 
culture on their sides even to the very tops. 

Their business relations with other countries led Irish trad- 
ers and artificers to settle abroad. There were Irish vintners, 
goldsmiths, and merchants in London; Irish weavers, mem- 
bers of the Corpus Christi Guild of Coventry ; an Irish mayor 
of Oxford in 1551. There was a prosperous Irish colony in 
Bristol. When King John of Portugal built the princely mon- 
astery of Batalha he employed two Irish master builders. In 
Genoa, as early as the twelfth century, Irish merchants founded 
a hospital for their sailors. There were many prosperous Irish 
traders settled in Flanders and Spain. 

The language of this Continental trade was Latin. This 
fact alone shows that Ireland had its schools, and Latin was 
then the lingua franca of Catholic Europe. The imports were 
not only such useful commodities as iron and salt, but things 
that told of a high level of prosperity in the country silks and 
satins, cloth of gold and embroidery, arms and armor, carpets, 
wines, and spices. The exports that paid for this trade were 
hides and tallow, cattle, wool, corn, and agricultural produce, 
polished marbles in blocks and slabs, and enormous quantities 
of timber from the forests, planks, laths, staves for barrels, and 
abundance of oak. 

The fisheries were a great source of wealth, and thousands 
of barrels of fish left many of the ports each year. The linen 
industry was famous throughout Europe. The serge d* Irlanda 
as it was called, of the wool weavers was long celebrated in 
Italy. Irish friezes were sold in half the fairs of the Continent. 
Irish leather was so good that one reads of a French knight 
wearing "an Irish belt" as if it was something to be proud of. 
Many were the craftsmen, skilled in working in gold, silver, 
and other metals. The quantity of gold and silver used in the 
arts in Ireland would in itself be enough to prove the prosper- 
ity of the country in mediaeval days. When the exterminating 



676 NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY [Feb., 

Tudor wars began Ireland was well worth plundering. Mrs. 

Green says: 

Elizabeth's lieutenants and those of Henry VIII. did cot 
journey there to make a trade in raw hides, or take their pil- 
lage of naked savages living in caves, nor even of a people who 
had attained the level of Hottentots or Zulus. The hardships 
they endured were paid with richer spoil. 

Our author gives further proof of this by gathering together 
from a hundred sources interesting details to make up a pic- 
ture of the home life of the people in town and country the 
well- furnished houses, the rich farms, the decorative work ex- 
pended on dress and household belongings, and indicating a 
leisured, comfortable life. The women held an honored place 
of influence. The better classes spoke Latin as well as Irish, 
and some learned English. 

Hospitality was lavish, " without sorrow, without gloom in 
the house " ; and even in the towns it was held a shame to 
have an inn or send a traveler to seek entertainment there. 
In every homestead the mistress kept an oaten cake whole for 
the stranger. The saying ran: "Three preparations of a 
good man's house : ale, a bath, a large fire." . . . "Though 
they never did see you before, they will make you the best 
cheer their country yieldeth for two or three days, and take 
not anything therefor " ; this account, like all others we have 
from Englishmen, was written in a time of war and poverty 
(A. D. 1590). 

The knowledge and love of music seem to have been very 
common. The peasant and small farmer had well-defined rights 
and could easily win a sustenance from the land. The towns 
man had his town charter and the protection of his guild. 

This state of things was destroyed by a deliberate plan, 
perfected by the famous statesmen of Elizabeth's days, who de- 
termined not only to extend English rule beyond the Pale, in- 
to the country of the Irish and the Anglo Irish, but to destroy 
the trade of Ireland to make way for that of England, and this 
was to be effected by rooting out the manufactures, wasting 
the lands, and reducing their holders to the position of serfs 
under new landlords. And when the people resisted these pro- 
ceedings the war became one of extermination, embittered fur- 
ther by the fact that the Irish clung to the old faith, and the 
Elizabethan adventurers were professors of the new-made re- 






1909.] NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY 677 

ligion. To use the words of a contemporary writer, " all the 
might of English arms, all the devices of English policy, were 
called into play to plunge the Irish into the abj ss of the worst 
barbarism." 

The life of Ireland in the days of prosperity before this 
disaster was not one of mere material well-being. The Irish of 
the Middle Ages, whether of the pure Celtic or the mixed 
Norman race, were a cultured people, eager for learning. It is 
not possible to summarize the evidence that Mrs. Green has 
collected concerning the state of education in mediaeval Ireland. 
Its force depends on the marshaling of hundreds of details. 
Some points may be briefly noted. The organized study of 
Brehon law, and the transmission and perpetuation of Irish 
poetry by the bards, was kept up to Elizabeth's time. Not only 
Irish chiefs, but Anglo- Irish barons had the ollamh and the 
bard as officers and attendants of their household, and were 
themselves as proud of a reputation for learning as of glory 
in arms. The widespread knowledge of Latin has already been 
mentioned. An Irish chief, when an envoy brought to him an 
English document, bade the messenger read it aloud in Latin 
so that his council could understand it. A shipwrecked captain 
of the Armada, thrown on the shores of Connaught, then 
wasted by English war, tells how he met some savage- locking 
half naked people, and was surprised when they addressed him 
in Latin. 

In the wholesale destruction of the Tudor wars much of 
the manuscript literature of mediaeval Ireland perished, but 
enough remains to show how scribes were kept busy translat- 
ing the books of other countries into Irish and multiplying 
them. Not the abbey only but the castle had its library. 
Irish students went to Oxford and the universities of the Con- 
tinent, and many of them became professors in other lands. 
Beside the full stream of Gaelic lore, there was the sister cur- 
rent of Latin learning, of double service, because Latin was at 
once the language of the Catholic Church and of intercourse 
with other nations. It is notable that the links with the life 
of the Continent were closer during these mediaeval centuries 
than the intercourse with England. 

Half of Mrs. Green's book is devoted to this study of the 
culture of Ireland in the pre- Reformation centuries. She tells 
how, when the Irish schools were broken up, and Elizabeth 



678 NEW LIGHT ON IRISH HISTORY [Feb. 

had founded in Dublin a college for bringing up the sons of 
the Irish chiefs and Barons as English Protestants, the tradi- 
tion of Irish learning was kept up, not only among the re- 
fugees in the schools of the Continent, but at home by monks 
who lived in cabins near their ruined cloisters, teachers of il- 
legal schools that met in secret, and scholars who, in pov- 
erty and obscurity, wrote books that were multiplied by end- 
less copying. The printing press was in the hands of the 
government and employed only in turning out proclamations 
against Irish rebels and catechisms for the conversion of the 
people to the State religion. In England the press was giving 
the world accounts of the barbarism of Ireland before the Tudor 
conquest. Since silence was imposed on the defence, and much 
of the evidence destroyed, it is no wonder that the popular ver- 
dict was in favor of the accuser, who, by blackening the record 
of the Irish nation, hoped to justify his own treatment of it. 

Mrs, Green has done a splendid work in her scholarly re- 
futation of this legend and in giving to the English-speaking 
peoples this noble picture of pre-Reformation Ireland. It will 
inspire Irishmen to persevering effort for the betterment of 
their country. And, in the following words, it also surely has its 
message for Englishmen : 

The story of the English in Ireland shows with what stub- 
born will and long tenacity this people too is endowed. But 
it also demonstrates how dangerous and unprofitable a foun- 
dation for a lasting settlement is a false and perverted history. 
For centuries, a number of circumstances aiding to perpetuate 
the first error, the English have been constantly misled as to 
the main facts of Irish life, both political and economical. 
And the natural results have followed. There are men, how- 
ever, in England who believe in Ireland ; many desire her 
prosperity ; many follow justice for its own sake, and recog- 
nize that right order will never be established on legends of 
ignorance. This book will have served some purpose if it 
should call attention to the importance for Ireland of a critical 
study of national history corresponding to its revived study 
in other lands. For the true record of Ireland will be power- 
ful to efface the prejudices, the contempt, and the despair that 
falsehood alone can foster ; and to build up on solid founda- 
tions of fact the esteem and consideration that must form the 
only honorable relation between two neighboring peoples. 



Bew Boofcs. 

If we are to be guided strictly by 

TEN PERSONAL STUDIES, the title of his latest volume,* the 
By Wilfrid Ward. brilliant author of Problems and 

Persons has, in the present instance, 

withdrawn from problems to concentrate on persons. Indica- 
tions there are in plenty, however, throughout the new volume 
that he has not abandoned his favorite field without casting 
"one last lingering look behind." The essays which make up 
the book have already appeared in various Reviews. The 
subjects are: J. A. Balfour; T. H. Delane ; R. H. Hutton; 
Sir J. Knowles ; Henry Sidgwick ; Lord Lytton ; Father Ry- 
der ; Sir M. E. Grant Duff ; Leo XIII. ; Cardinal Wiseman ; 
John Henry Newman; Cardinals Newman and Manning. 

The study on Mr. Balfour is confined to the crisis in the 
Unionist party during the years 1903-1905 ; when the leader, 
according to the belief of a great part of the political world, 
was completely overshadowed by Chamberlain. The latter had 
come out for a policy of protection, and, it was asserted, Bal- 
four agreed with him, but had not the courage to adopt 
the protectionist principle. On the contrary, he delayed, and 
evaded anything that would commit the party either one way or 
the other. This policy of delay, Mr. Ward pleads, so far from 
being an evidence of weakness and vacillation, was a master- 
piece of Fabian statesmanship. The question, the party, the 
country, were not prepared for any immediate resolution. The 
question had not been sufficiently studied, there was no possi- 
bility of evolving at the time any fiscal system that had even 
a chance of success. Balfour saw this ; he had the courage to 
say so, and to resist the Chamberlain movement; with there- 
suit that, by 1905, he was master of the situation, and the 
Chamberlain star had suffered eclipse. 

Mr. Ward draws three interesting sketches of the famous 
editors, Knowles of the Nineteenth Century ; Delane of the 
Times ; and Hutton of the Spectator. Of the three, he says 
Hutton, who occupied the smallest figure in public and social 
life, exercised the most lasting influence: 

Hutton alone of the three has left behind him, in the 

* Ten Personal Studies. By Wilfrid Ward. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



\ 



680 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

thoughts which he published to help an earlier genera- 
tion, a legacy which is still prized by our own (as the sale of 
his republished essays from the Spectator attests), and which 
will descend to our children along with the tradition of the 
noble and austere character, which made his great thoughts 
so intimately a part of himself. 

The most prominent features of the Sidgwick poitrait are 
his intellectual pessimism, combined with practical optimism; 
an exacting critical judgment which no system could satisfy ; 
and a wide interest in everything pertaining to life, not ex- 
cluding Catholicism. The paper on Lord Lytton, whose lofty 
and candid character is vividly set forth by a few strokes of 
Mr. Ward's brush, turns chiefly on the peculiar gifts of Lytton 
which were capable of making him either a great statesman or 
a great poet. But, like all mortals, he had to choose between 
incompatible possibilities. The papers on Leo XIII., and the 
three English Cardinals, are highly appreciative, though the 
writer permits himself the liberty cf mild adverse criticism from 
time to time. 

In the last one, in which he shows that his interest in the 
"Problems 11 is by no means extinguished, he holds up in con- 
trast the characters of Newman and Manning; and though be 
does ample justice to the greatness of Manning, it is easy to 
perceive that W. G. Ward's preferences have not been inherited 
by his son. Newman and Manning, so runs his summing up, 
represented, respectively, two types of Catholicism: Manning 
is the man of the Counter- Reformation ; Newman is the type 
of the patristic era. Newman's temper had little in common 
with that of the "liberal" Roman Catholics; it was "far more 
akin to that of More and Erasmus, who rejected scholastic 
subtlety and undue dogmatism, but were, nevertheless, filled 
with enthusiasm for ancient ways and venerable tradition." 
" He was keenly alive to the liability of the human reason to 
error in its conclusions of the things of God. He inveighed 
against those who, like Louis Veuillot, ' exalted opinions into 
dogmas." He would have found his kinship in the present 
day with the learned Benedictine rather than with the " liberal" 
Catholic. The contrast is brought to a finish by turning it as 
a flashlight on one of the problems: 

The modern opposition between liberalism and intransi- 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 681 

geance is, indeed, an opposition between temporary excesses on 
either side at a time of transition. So far as the underlying 
permanent antithesis is between elements reconcilable with 
Catholicism it must resolve itself into that between the types 
which we have styled Jesuit and patristic respectively. The 
former is the type which rejoices especially in authority 
and discipline. It is proper to the Church in a state of de- 
fensive warfare which keeps the intellect under military dis- 
cipline. The latter form of Catholicism is perhaps more gen- 
eral in the Church when she is promoting peaceful civiliza- 
tion, giving to individual initiative free scope and encourag- 
ing original learning and thought as important factors in her 
well-being. These two types are largely those symbolized by 
the two English cardinals. Manning, in spite of his opposi- 
tion to the Jesuits, belongs unmistakably to that type of Cath- 
olicism of which they are the most distinguished representa- 
tives, and Newman rather to the type preserved in the Bene- 
dictine Order, owning as fellow-creatures such writers as 
Mabillon and the Congregation of St. Maur ; though he 
added an element of active and free speculation more akin to 
his beloved Augustine, or to the mediaeval schoolmen, than 
to the calmer labors of the monkish historian. 

The paper on Grant Duff is founded on the Diaries, which 
Mr. Ward considers to be the record of a very exceptional 
mode of life. In order to put them in a light for sympathetic 
appreciation he furnishes as a background the character of that 
life, marked by an " unworldly, almost religious, devotion to all 
that is interesting in life, with little thought of personal 
advantage." 

Though, presumably, Captain Ma- 

NAVAL ADMINISTRATION han writes for the profession as 
AND WARFARE. we ll as for the public, his method, 

which, as somebody has said, is 

to deal with a few large, plain, simple ideas, contributes to ren- 
der his work intelligible and interesting to the lay mind in a 
measure very much beyond the degree in which this quality 
is usually found in books of experts. His latest volume,* which, 
thanks to the universal interest taken in the spectacular cruise 
of out fleet to the Orient, is likely to be eagerly read, sets 
forth, in a clear and highly interesting exposition, some of the 

* Naval Administration and Warfare. By Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N. Boston: 
Little, Brown & Co. 



682 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

principles of naval warfare which everybody can grasp and 
apply to one of our own greatest national problems. Of the 
ten essays which constitute the book, the two that obviously 
are meant to convey a lesson to the American public, and 
thereby help to educate public opinion, have for their subject 
the Russo-Japanese war. One which was written during the 
course of the war, before the fall of Port Arther, abounds with 
forecasts and opinions which the events, and the subsequent 
publication of information that was unknown to the author, 
strikingly confirm. The second article, written in March, 1906, 
is a retrospect directed to estimate the relations of the siege 
and capture of Port Arthur upon the naval operations of both 
sides; and the lesson to be learned by our own country from 
the mistakes made by Russia in dividing her naval strength so 
that it was cut up piecemeal by the enemy. 

Before the outbreak of war, so runs Captain Mahan's criti- 
cism, Russia kept sending her vessels, one by one, to the 
Pacific; but she retained at home the Baltic squadron, till it 
was unable to reach the others before they were undone by 
Togo. Furthermore, a similar error was committed by di- 
viding the Pacific force between Port Arthur and Vladivostock 
with a similar result. The dangers of this policy, says Cap- 
tain Mahan, were as clear as daylight before the war opened; 
and Russia, which was not a government browbeaten by po- 
litical turmoil, had no excuse for ignoring them. The writer 
describes an imaginary discussion at the Russian council board ; 
but while he writes of Russia and speaks retrospectively, his eye 
is on America and the future, as is shown by the tenor of the 
last objection offered to despatching the entire fleet eastward : 
" In a representative government would doubtless be heard the 
further remark: 'The feeling in our coast towns, at seeing no 
ship left for their protection, would be so strong that I doubt 
if the party could carry the next election.' Against this there 
is no provision except popular understanding; operative per- 
haps in the interior where there is no occasion for fight." 

The Captain's lesson to the American people is that the 
principle which the Russians, to their discomfiture, violated 
holds also with regard to the naval situation of this country. 
In virtue of our geographical position, the momentary location 
of the fleet is not of so much importance as its simple exist- 
ence in adequate concentration anywhere. If war were to 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 683 

begin with the fleet divided between the Atlantic and the Pa- 
cific, "one- half may be overmatched and destroyed as was 
that of Port Arthur; and the second, on coming, prove inade- 
quate to restore the situation, as befel Rozhestvensky." Then, 
with the emphasis of capitals, the Captain lays down his coun- 
sel : " Concentration protects both coasts, Division exposes 
both. IT IS OF VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION OF THE 
UNITED STATES THAT ITS PEOPLE, CONTEMPLATING THE RUSSO- 
JAPANESE NAVAL WAR, SUBSTITUTE THEREIN IN THEIR AP- 
PREHENSION ATLANTIC FOR BALTIC, AND PACIFIC FOR PORT 

ARTHUR. So they will comprehend as well as apprehend." 

Another instructive essay in the volume treats of the value 
of the present cruise of the fleet in the Pacific. The Captain 
attaches great importance to this measure as a means of ac- 
quiring lessons of immense value which the navy could learn 
in no other way, except in the perilous school of actual war. 
Incidentally, he emphatically warns against the dangers that 
would arise to this country if Asiatic immigration were per- 
mitted. 

Who was he, and what did he 

HOW I CAME TO DO IT. do ?* He was an Anglican clergy- 
man, who fervently dedicated him- 
self to celibacy. When any of his clerical brethern entered into 
matrimony he became exceedingly annoyed. " We have no 
business," he would urge, "to divide our hearts, but should 
give up our whole mind and affection to the great work com- 
mitted to us, and refrain from everything that can hinder and 
hamper our mission." And he had all the appropriate texts of 
Scripture at his fingers' ends to fire at the heads of his recal- 
citrant brethern in proof of his position. But into this para- 
dise of his parsonage one day entered the woman, and with 
her the tempter. Miss Dorothy Brown thought it would be 
a feather in her cap if she could trouble just a little bit 
the fierce aggressiveness of this champion of celibacy and 
very soon Mr. Blackswhite is desperately in love. Then the 
texts become susceptible of quite another interpretation ; and 
he sees that if he is to do the best possible work for God 
among his flock nothing can be of greater service than a worthy, 

* How I Came to Do It; or, The Celibacy of the Clergy. By Rev. J. Blackswhite. Edited 
by Mgr. John S. Vaughan. London: Burns & Gates. 



684 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

Christian helpmate than, in short, Miss Dorothy Brown and 
so what he does is to get married. The author for the fiction 
that the work is autobiographical is not sustained devotes 
some care and a moderate allowance of mild humor to clothing 
his statement of the Anglican position towards celibacy in the 
guise of a story. Thus far the first four chapters of the book. 
Then chapter the fifth opens with the warning that eighteen 
years have flown by, enriching Mr. Blackswhite in their pas- 
sage with thirteen children. From that to the end the thread 
of the story becomes thinner and thinner, while it serves to 
hold together a series of arguments and answers to Protestant 
objections, relative to the Roman character of the early English 
Church, the defection of the Reformation, the unity of the 
Catholic Church, and the authenticity of her claims. The lec- 
tures of a Catholic priest, Father White, serve to set Mr. 
Blackswhite thinking seriously ; some subsequent interviews and 
letters achieve his conquest ; and what he comes to do finally 
is to enter the Catholic Church. The book will prove pleasant 
reading for converts who look back on the way that they have 
trod, and who may be a little impatient with their former com- 
panions who fail to discern the road. It attempts to combine 
two distinct kinds of intellectual work which only a master 
hand can successfully fuse together polemics and the novel. 

Among the rules that must be 

THE CONVENTIONALISTS, observed to secure good results in 
By Benson. the novel with a religious or po- 

lemical purpose, the first one is 

that the author must not attempt to cover too much apolo- 
getic ground. A single point of doctrine or discipline, or a 
single historical phase is quite enough for one story. This rule 
is observed by Father Benson in his latest as in all his 
other novels. The Conventionalists * endeavors to depict the 
worldly, unspiritual, mechanical, routine temper of English 
Protestantism as it exists among the higher classes. Another 
rule is that the reader must be entertained and pleased as well 
as instructed and Father Benson complies with this condition 
also. 

The central figure of the story is a young man, the second 
son of an English county magnate. While still a Protestant 

* The Conventionalists. By Robert Hugh Benson. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 685 

he displays a genuine ascetic insight, and, consequently, is 
thoroughly disgusted with life as it is interpreted by the tem- 
per, occupations, convictions, and ambitions of his family and 
his class. To the family he is a sort of ugly duckling, and 
rather a guy for his younger brother. He is, at the beginning, 
in love with a young lady, who, however, is attached to the 
eldest brother, the heir of the house. Falling under the in- 
fluence of Father Benson, Mgr. Yoland, and Mr. Dell, an 
ascetic in a kind of Bohemian surroundings, he soon becomes 
a Catholic ; and, furthermore, gives indications which set his 
three mentors the task of deciding whether or not they are to 
encourage him to join the contemplative life, or to marry the 
lady. His conversion is the signal for his expulsion from his 
father's house. The family easily reconcile themselves to his 
disappearance. But then the heir dies; and they are con- 
fronted with the dreadful prospect that the family acres are to 
pass into the hands of a Papist. Worse and worse, he soon 
announces his intention of becoming a monk, which to his 
father implies the intolerable consequence that the family pro- 
perty will go to the Abbey. The three messengers who bring 
the news of the son's resolution to the father have a terrible 
quarter of an hour. But the paternal indignation, and angry 
resolution to prevent his son's vocation, promptly vanish on 
finding that the latter relinquishes all claim to the estate, which, 
therefore, will go to the youngest son. Father Benson's charac- 
ters are types rather than individuals, though Algy, the hero, 
and his friend, Christopher Dell, do not represent a numerous 
class in English society. More widely distributed is that of 
Lady Brasted, a convert, who loves to be " ecclesiastical " in 
her drawing-room, elegant in her devotions; who in her desire 
to be Helpful, busies herself overmuch about promoting con- 
versions, vocations, and marriages; and to have a finger in 
whatever pertains to the cure of souls. An entertaining story 
which hits squarely its serious mark. 

Though the title * clearly tells to 

AN IMMORTAL SOUL. anybody acquainted with Mr. Mai- 
By W. H. Mallock. lock's intellectual tastes that the 

purpose of his clever novel is 
philosophical, we must read far into the book an agreeable 

*An Immortal Soul. By W. H. Mallock. New York : Harper & Brothers. 



686 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

task be'fore we perceive, to use a colloquial phrase, what he 
is up to. The first chapter introduces a highly refined, spright- 
ly, somewhat unconventional young girl, living amid aristocrat- 
ic English surroundings, with an aunt, while her parents and 
her sister are resident abroad. There is some cloud over the 
family lineage; and she and her sister never meet. The ap- 
pearance of the one anywhere is always preceded by the de- 
parture of the other. A mutual interest soon develops be- 
tween the girl, Miss Vivian, and a man much older than herself. 
She is under instructions for confirmation by a worthy clergy- 
man, who becomes alarmed at the worldly society into which 
her new admirer leads her. He eventually falls in love with 
her himself. Certain neurasthenic or hysterical symptoms in- 
dicate that her constitution is not quite normal. An attack of 
illness supervenes, during which she falls under the care of a 
distinguished scientific medical man, who is acquainted with 
her and her family. He has her removed elsewhere, and, with 
the approval of her father, refuses to reveal her whereabouts. 

Before she goes, Mr. Barton, the clergyman, asks her to 
marry him, and receives, he believes, a favorable answer. 
When Miss Vivian has departed, her sister, or half-sister, Miss 
Wynn appears on the scene. Though very much alike in ex- 
ternal appearances, the newcomer, morally and religiously, is 
the antithesis of her religious, correct, ladylike sister. She is 
from the first a complete tomboy, and soon behaves in a very 
indecorous fashion. As Dr. Thistlewood, the friend of the 
family, ultimately discloses, her past is unmentionable. She de- 
parts and Miss Vivian returns. Then Mr. Barton presses his 
suit on the latter. Thistlewood intervenes by revealing to 
Barton the tragic secret that the two sisters are not two but 
one a case of double or dissociated personality. Mr. Mallock 
discusses, through the medium of his characters, this psycholo- 
gical question, from the " scientific " and the religious point of 
view. He has taken his cue from such works as that of Dr. 
Morton Prince, of Boston, on the case of t Miss Beauchamp. 
Incidentally he introduces into the controversy the views ex- 
pressed on subconsciousness and double personality by Father 
Maher, S.J., in his "Psychology," relative to the case of 
Felida; and makes the scientist's claim that another famous case 
exhibited the precise characteristics on the absence of which, in 
Felida's, Father Maher relies to brush away the theory that, in 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 687 

such cases, personal identity ceases to exist. From the novelist's 
standpoint Mr. Mallock's book is a clever piece of work, full of 
action, sparkling dialogue, and vivid pictures of character and 
manners. He manages the mystification element dramatically 
enough to make the story not a bad second to Jekyll and Hyde ; 
and describes powerfully the struggle that Barton passes through 
when he finds out the secret. From the philosophical point of 
view his close is rather impotent ; and he does not squarely 
raise the issue which is involved in the problem of these ab- 
normal phenomena, that is, not immortality but responsibility. 

If the widespread interest centered 

IMMORTALITY. for some time past on the investi- 

By E. E. Fournier D'Albe. gation of subconsciousness, telepa- 
thy, hypnotism, and spiritism has 

done nothing else, it has certainly assisted in completing the 
rout of the materialism of the nineteenth century. We can 
scarcely imagine a graduate in science of the London Univer- 
sity coming forth in the days when Huxley was in his zenith, 
to offer, in the name of physical science, any theory in support 
of the immortality of the soul; or to claim that the phenomena 
of spiritism real or alleged contributed to confirm that doc- 
trine. To-day we find all this is changed ; and men of science, 
like Lodge, Crookes, and Russell Wallace, not to mention many 
minor names, in physical research, see, in abnormal psycholog- 
ical phenomena, strong evidence of immortality. The latest con- 
tributor to this line of speculation, Mr. Fournier D'Albe, at- 
tempts to weld into a synthetic whole some arguments based 
on physics and physiology, with others drawn from spiritism, 
to prove the existence of the life beyond.* 

Any discussion of his speculations and theories on the na- 
ture of the soul, which he holds to be a substance of some 
sublimated quasi-material stuff, cannot be entered upon here 
for want of space. Suffice it to say, that the scholastic will find 
himself muttering repeatedly an uncompromising Nego Majorem, 
or Nego Conclusion*,, though he cannot fail to be interested at 
the ingenuity of some of the speculations. In the latter part 
of the book, dealing with spiritistic phenomena, the writer 
cites a number of the best known and most discussed cases; 

New Light on Immortality. By E. E. Foamier D'Albe, B.Sc., London, M.R.I.A. 
New York: Longmans, Green & Co.j 



688 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

and follbws the beaten track of theory as to their nature. He 
outruns his more cautious scientific brethren, by admitting that 
some of the alleged messages from the dead have been of a 
character to establish the identity of the correspondent. 

Our interest in reading a book writ- 

AS OTHERS SEE US. ten by a foreigner about Amer- 
ica lies, as a rule to which the 

exceptions are a De Tocqueville, a Bryce, and very few others 
in what it tells us about himself. Perhaps, too, we are curi- 
ous to know just what kind of photographs of ourselves are 
circulated abroad. To estimate fairly this handsome book be- 
fore us,* we must not take its ambitious title literally ; but, in- 
stead, interpret it according to the definition given of its scope 
by the author in his introductory remarks. He declares he 
does not pretend to have written a book about America, His 
purpose was merely to mark some characteristics, not material, 
but mental and psychological, of American Hie. 

The volume reveals the author as a modest, cultured, kindly 
gentleman, with fair powers of observation, who considers the 
things of the mind rather than material assets, as the genuine 
index of a people's rank. He has seen, during his several visits 
to the United States, something of New York, Washington, 
Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburg. He has been in the slums 
and in the drawing rooms. And he has supplemented his per- 
sonal observation by extensive reading. He is not a fault-finder; 
and, in general, regarded the country with friendly eyes. What 
has struck him most in the national character is the great will- 
power, enterprise, and exhaustless energy of the people. The 
tribute of statistics to American greatness, which he cites on 
various points, has value for him, not because they show the 
riches of the country, but because they testify to the quality 
of the people who have produced the wealth. He treats of 
alien immigration ; the conditions of labor ; educational system; 
the negro question; the intellectual status; American art and 
literature ; and, of course, that conspicuous figure of American 
life, Theodore Roosevelt, at whose inauguration the Count 
assisted. 

The author is still old-fashioned enough to consider Boston 

* The Inner Life of the United States. By Monsignor Count Vay de Vaya and Luskod. 
New York : E. P. Dutton. 






1909.] NEW BOOKS 689 

the intellectual capital of the country ; and the New England 
woman the most attractive feminine type in America. He 
protests against the widely disseminated idea that the Ameri- 
can woman is flighty and frivolous, no real helpmate for her 
husband, but rather an expensive doll. His chapters on art and 
literature show an extensive acquaintance with our native authors 
of the past, and with the achievements of American painters; 
but he has a very poor opinion of the American connoisseur. 
"To gauge American taste in art we must not only go to the 
public galleries, but also to the private collections of the wealthy, 
and to the numerous sales. At these latter one is surprised 
and puzzled at the extraordinary medley of trashy daubs and 
real masterpieces. Who can say which of these causes more 
pleasure to the purchaser ? Or is he, perhaps, indifferent at 
heart to both, and finds his sole pleasure in the consciousness of 
possession ? " 

The Monsignor's observations on religious conditions are 
disappointingly superficial. He dwells on the respect shown 
by all classes for the Catholic hierarchy, and on the recognition 
which the Church receives as a powerful engine for social well- 
being. On this subject, as on other topics, unlike some for- 
eigners who have told the world all about America after a six 
weeks' stay in the country, he shows himself independent of 
prejudice and prepossessions. If his appreciations are not quite 
correct and this is the case in many instances the errors arise 
from hasty generalizations, in which special conditions in some 
places, or among some classes, are taken as typical. In many 
instances, too, he has not thoroughly digested his information. 
For instance to take one illustration from the realm of ideas, 
and another from the world of fact -he confounds the Monroe 
Doctrine with Anti-imperialism, and he fancies that Tuxedo and 
Lenox are watering places. Again he pays the Irish the unde- 
served tribute of believing that they form sixty per cent of the 
population in the most flourishing sections of the agricultural 
districts. But whatever favor he may win by this statement in 
the eyes of Irish sympathizers, will be lost when they read that 
the low grog shops among the cities around New York, are the 
haunts of " Anarchy, Fenianism, and all kinds of doctrines which 
inculcate the destruction of the existing order." Frequently, too, 
we meet with some misinterpretations of facts and mistaken 
estimates of proportions. When, however, the Count confines 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 44 



690 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

} 

himself to registering his own personal observations he is ac- 
curate. A charming trait which the book modestly reveals is 
his deep interest in his poor fellow-countrymen, the Hungarians, 
here, among whom, aristocrat and prelate though he is, he spent 
a good deal of laborious time. 

The appalling rapidity with which 

THE ANTI-RELIGIOUS irreligion has, of late years, spread 
PRESS IN FRANCE. in France has, according to the ad- 
mission of both parties concerned, 

been due to a section of the French press which openly pro- 
fesses the destruction of religious belief to be its sole purpose. 
This is clear. A debatable question, however, is whether the 
secular press in general, is or is not, in France at least, ani- 
mated by anti- religious principles, so that it, too, pursues a 
policy of hostility to the Catholic Church. That this is the case 
is the view supported in an able volume,* written by a Catho- 
lic priest, who unfolds, in the course of his thesis a vast quan- 
tity of information regarding French journalists and publicists, 
which, apart from the issue of the question at stake, makes very 
interesting reading. The French press, M. Delfour maintains, 
is not free ; it is enslaved to the capitalists who dictate its 
policy ; and the dictated policy, M. Delfour, for reasons which 
are more or less convincing, declares to be hostility to the 
Church, Catholics, he proceeds to show, allow themselves to 
be intimidated by the anti-Catholic press, which insidiously 
promotes the tendency to dethrone in the intellectual world 
French Catholic ideas and to substitute for them German-Prot- 
estant culture witness the abdication of M. Loisy in favor of 
M. Sibatier. He studies, successively, various types of enemies 
declared adversaries, like M. Ranc, the collaborateurs of Le 
Matin and of Le Progres de Lyon, and Anatole France; mod- 
erates, like P. Sabatier, M. M. P., of the Journal des Debats, and 
M. Faguet. 

Analyzing the secret of the force of the hostile press, he 
finds it to lie chiefly in its uncompromising policy, its riches, 
its superiority in the methods of attack; while, for the most 
part, the Catholic press fears to be intransigeante. The French 
press, M. Delfour argues, is a tributary of the foreign press; 
and the press of the world on French religious affairs such, 

* La Presse Centre L'glise. Par L. C. Delfour. Paris : Lethielleux. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 691 

for instance, as the rupture of the Concordat and the Dreyfus 
case utters an identical note, which is always anti- Catholic. 
Americans will hardly be convinced that this opinion is true. 
Perhaps M. Delfour has nt perceived the bearing on this view of 
the fact that he mentions, namely, that, in its reproductions from 
the foreign press, French journals carefully exclude everything 
that manifests sympathy with French Catholicism. And one 
fears that M. Delfour's conviction is much stronger than the 
arguments he offers for it, when he declares that the press of 
London, Vienna, Paris, and New York form a single orchestra 
which follows faithfully the baton of the official director of the 
German press, wielded in the Wilhelmstrasse. However, after 
making all allowance for the exaggerations, this book draws a 
convincing picture of the evil. The depression produced is not 
mitigated when one finds that the author offers very little sug- 
gestion as to how the enemy is to be met. 

What is an Incroyant a term which 

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE we may translate by unbeliever ? 
UNBELIEVER. Can we formulate a definition in 

scholastic form, constituted by the 

proximate genus, and the specific difference ? M. Moisant says, 
"No." The psychology of the unbeliever offers no uniform 
characteristic feature, chiefly because in the first place the ex- 
ternal circumstances amid which he develops vary ; and, sec- 
ondly, he is not a fatal result of heredity, of education, or of ex- 
ample. Instead of formulating a definition of the class, M. Moi- 
sant presents it and studies it in three different types the nock- 
er, the pasitivist, and the intellectual, represented respectively by 
Voltaire, Comte, and Renouvier, the anti-clerical philosopher. 
Although M. Moisant's purpose is to draw the psychology of the 
man rather than to criticize his doctrines, yet, as the man is 
t be studied in his writings, M. Moisant's book* is a critique 
of ideas, doctrines, and methods. It is a brief, keen analysis, 
exhibiting the main characteristics of the three philosophers, 
which does not hesitate to contradict conventional and traditional 
estimates. For instance, of Voltaire M. Moissant says : " It 
is agreed that Voltaire is the personification of wit and mock- 
ery. But we know now that he represents discouragement and 
spite. In appearance an esprit fort, he is, in reality, a feeble 

9 Psychologic del' Incroyant. Par X. Moisant. Paris: Beauchesne et Cie. 



692 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

soul." Comte he represents as the type of the constructive un- 
believer who plays two parts: he would destroy Catholicism, 
and then he would provide a substitute ; while Renouvier is a 
blend of the Huguenot and the Platonician. To these exemplars 
M. Moisant believes, in variable proportions, all unbelievers 
may be reduced. 

The latest volume of the series 

SAXON CATHOLICISM. published by the Bibliotheque de 

I ' Enseignment d 'Histoire J&cclesias- 

tique, an enterprise inspired by the suggestions of Leo XIII., 
realizes the ideal inculcated by him to its initiators, Cardinals 
Luca, Pitra, and Hergenroether. Dom Cabrol's study * on the 
Saxon Church is " history in harmony with the criticism of to- 
day/ 1 The writer seeks causes and forces beneath the surface 
of events, and sums up the results of his analytical processes 
in comprehensive generalizations. One of the most interesting 
chapters is that devoted to a comparison and a contrast of the 
Celtic and the Roman Monks, which were two very different 
types that did not fuse together harmoniously. The Anglo- 
Saxon Church, as Dom Cabrol pictures it, can show no great 
literary glories like those of Africa, Caesarea, Jerusalem, or 
Rome ; nor has it any system of philosophy or any great thinker 
who impressed a movement upon Christian thought, as have the 
Churches of Gaul or Spain. On the other hand, however, it 
possessed a large number of men gifted with a talent for ini- 
tiation and organization in practical life, who built up firm and 
strong the edifice of religion. This Church, too, Dom Cabrol 
shows, stands pre-eminent for its development of the monastic 
system. 

Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cloisters produced marvels of 
sanctity, and won for England, for ages, the title of Island of 
Saints. We do not mean to speak of the Celtic Church in 
Great Britain, the fecundity and originality of which we have 
spoken of, but to confine ourselves to the Saxon Church what 
works accomplished does it show ; what zeal for study ; what 
progress in the arts of calligraphy, illumination, and archi- 
tecture ; what influence exerted by its missionaries and mas- 
ters ; what a spirit of initiative and proselytism ; what great 

* L'Angleterre Chrttienne Avant les Normands. Par Dom Fernand Cabrol. Paris : Le- 
coffre, Gabalda et Cie. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 693 

and strong institutions ; what conquests over barbarism and 
paganism ! 

The volume is enriched with a number of valuable notes 
and a well composed bibliography. 

Will the author of Helladian Vis- 

GLIMPSES OF GREECE, tas* pardon us for referring to his 

entertaining volume by a less res- 

onent designation ? Doctor Don Daniel Quinn, who, after seme 
years spent as professor of ancient Greek in America, resided 
for a long period in Athens, where he was rector of the Lceon- 
teion, contributed, during and after his residence there, many 
papers on Grecian topics, ancient and modern, to several of 
our magazines. A number of these papers are now printed in 
a volume which, notwithstanding the baldness of its style, is 
very entertaining reading. Familiar with classic Greece and 
intimately acquainted with the modern country and its inhabi- 
tants, Dr. Quinn brings forth from his storehouse, in popular 
form, a bounteous supply of things new and old. The book 
may be obtained from the author. 

The Ingersoll Lecturer for 1908 

BUDDHISM AND IMMOR- took for his subject the exposition 

TALITY. O f the Buddhist idea of Nirvana, f 

This lectureship was founded at 

Harvard university by a Miss Ingersoll, who devised a sum of 
money for the establishment of an annual lecture on the immor- 
tality of man. Mr. Bigelow opens his subject with an analysis 
of consciousness; and, following a prevalent school of psychol- 
ogy, makes the ego consist in states of consciousness. The 
result of asking us to conceive states without a subject to 
which these states are attributable is to render his ideas very 
confused and confusing; and we are not much helped to an 
understanding of the Buddhist idea of Nirvana when he makes 
it identical with "limitless conscience unified by limitless will" 
another instance of how we allow ourselves to be cheated by 
abstract terms and abstractions. If, for the idea " conscious- 

* Helladian Vistas. By Don Daniel Quinn, Ph.D. The Author, 1 Yellow Springs, Ohio, 
t Buddhism and Immortality. By William Sturgis Bigelow. New York and Boston : 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 



694 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

ness," which does not exist in general, but as an individual, 
Mr. Bigelow were to substitute the concrete term " conscious 
beings" he would find it necessary to recast his views. 

This little volume * should be of 
PATROLOGY great service to all students of 

patrology. It is a work which is 

intended to serve as an antidote to the uncritical notes Bishop 
Coxe added to the American edition of the Ante-Nicene 
Fathers. Some of the more flagrant errors into which partisan 
feeling led the bishop are here corrected by Father Dolan. 
He shows, for example, that there was truly a recognition of the 
authority of the Roman See by the Corinthians in 96 A. D. 
Father Dolan gives the traditional interpretation to the texts 
in Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others concerning 
the Roman Supremacy. In regard to the Cyprianic testimony 
it might be noted that a few texts here and there do not ex- 
plain the attitude of the Carthaginian Bishop in regard to 
Rome. As Duchesne says: " Cyprian expresses himself in terms 
of great respect for Rome, but at the same time furnishes the 
example of a decidedly clear manifestation of autonomy." 
(Catholic University Bulletin, October, 1904.) Nevertheless, this 
presentation of the controversy will do great good. It is to be 
regretted that not unfrequently the writer permits himself to 
refer to Bishop Coxe in a strain of acerbity which were better 
absent in one who writes as a defender of her who "presides 
over the congregation of charity." 

A third edition of Roads to 
ROADS TO ROME. Rome^ has just appeared. The 

only change it exhibits from the 

original is that the few anonymous papers which the first edi- 
tion contained have been omitted here, and the editor has added 
a second introduction commenting upon the criticisms which 
the first volume provoked ; and offered an explanation of the 
purpose which he had in view in planning the work. He has 
gathered a number of criticisms from English Protestant publi- 
cations which are significant from the contrary views they ex- 

* The See of Peter and the Voice of Antiquity. By Rev. Thomas S. Dolan. St. Louis 
B. Herder. 

t Roads to Rome. By J. Godfrey Raupert. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 695 

press and the contradictory character of the faults and merits 
which they ascribe to it. For instance, one critic declares the 
book to be " sad reading and controversy of the baser sort." 
Another says that " some of the arguments are so paltry that 
one hardly knows whether to congratulate the one Church on 
losing such weaklings, or to condole with the other on gaining 
them," On the other hand, a third critic says that " not the 
least of the merits of the book is its good taste, that all sects 
can read it without being hurt by coarseness or repelled by 
ungenerosity " ; and a fourth writes that "there is much that 
is very attractive and beautiful in these pages, that the honest 
profession of a number of eager souls who have sought the 
light, and, as they believe, found the light, is intensely touch- 
ing, and that, if read with charity and allowance, these papers 
may enable Englishmen to understand the modern English Ro- 
manist, especially the Romanist by conversion, better; neither 
to fear nor dislike, much less to despise him, but to understand 
and appreciate more kindly what he is, and how he has come 
to be what he is." This particular criticism, which may be 
taken as representative of a widespread sentiment towards the 
book, must have been extremely gratifying to the editor who 
conceived the project of publishing such a work. For one of 
his main motives was to combat the tendency of non- Catholics 
of a certain temper who grossly misrepresent and misinterpret 
the motives of any one who joins the Catholic Church. 

In this interesting book* Father 

THE CHURCH AND THE Guitart gives the history of the 

WORKMAN. relations between Labor and the 

Catholic Church. Beginning with 

the teaching of Christ, and coming down to the Encyclical 
Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII., he shows how important a 
factor in the regeneration and present civilization of the 
world has been the Christian conception of the dignity of 
labor, not so much for the material results, as for the part it 
plays in the development of the Christian l f e. The contempt 
of manual work and the utter disregard of the rights of the 
workman which characterized Paganism, yielded to the influence 

* La Iglesiay el Obrero : The Church and the Workman. By Ernesto Guitart, S.J. Bar- 
celona, Spain : Gustavo Gili. 



696 NEW BOOKS [Feb., 

of a religion that taught that slave and master were equal be- 
fore God and that to labor was to pray. 

The Rule of St. Benedict, in which the necessity and ad- 
vantages of manual work are given a prominent place, and the 
example of that saint and of his spiritual descendants in ages 
of social degradation, effected an amount of good that can 
scarcely be over-estimated. 

The Church stands out through the ages as the steady 
friend and protector of the workman, when he most needed 
help her support was given to the Guilds, and aided largely 
in their formation and in extending their influence. These 
powerful corporations, during the long period of their pros- 
perity, not only guarded the material interests of their mem- 
bers, but were centers of faith and religious practices. 

In the chapter on slavery some facts are omitted which 
it would be more correct to state. For instance, Las Casas 
is extolled as a man in advance of his age in his strong 
opposition to slavery. That he devoted his life and energies 
to the hopeless task of shielding the Indian from the avarice 
and cruelty of the conquerors is true; but, by a singular in- 
consistency, while doing everything possible .to secure their 
freedom, he advocated negro slavery and was instrumental in 
the promotion of that nefarious trade. His opinions on this 
subject were shared by most of his contemporaries, and we have 
no desire to besmirch an unselfish and heroic character, but he 
cannot justly be held up as a champion of freedom. 

This work* is a clear exposition 

LAS RELIGIOSAS. of the Canon Law that deals with 

the life and government of female 

religious communities. The whole matter is comprised under 
five different heads: Confessors; The Account of Conscience; 
The Cloister; Vows; Election of Superiors. This treatise is 
written in the same direct, plain, methodical way as the au- 
thor's book on Betrothal and Marriage. It is a book of great 
practical value, not only to nuns themselves but also to their 
spiritual guides. 

* Las Rdigiosas, Comcntarios Candnico-Morales. Per el R. P. Juan B. Ferreres, SJ. 
Tercera edici jn. Madrid : Administration de Razon y Fe. 



1909.] 



NEW BOOKS 



697 



This commentary on the present- 

THE NEW MARRIAGE day marriage laws of the Church * 

LAWS. we ji deserves the warm welcome 

it has received. It is clear, simple, 

direct, cogent. The meaning and force of the new laws are 
brought into relief by contrasting them with the laws that are 
now mere history. Every intricate question is carefully ana- 
lyzed, and each one of its component elements taken up in 
turn, so that there is no room left for doubt as to the author's 
opinion. The value of his judgment in debatable points is 
evidenced by the fact that the Sacred Congregation of the 
Council has repeatedly confirmed his conclusions by its de- 
cisions. This edition is considerably larger than its prede- 
cessor, containing not only the most recent pronouncements of 
the Congregation that deals with these matters, but also prac- 
tical applications of these laws to difficulties advanced by vari- 
ous readers, The work is well- filled with references to stand- 
ard authorities and is well-indexed. An alphabetical table of 
contents, however, would be a welcome addition. 

* Los Espousales y el Matrimonio. For el R. P. Juan B. Ferreres, S. J. Madrid : Ad- 
ministration de Razon y Fe. 



MORRISAN1A BRAHCH 
610 East 169th St. 




jforeion Ipeciobicals. 



The Tablet (19 Dec.): Reports that "The Eight Hours Coal 
Miners Bill " was read a third time, also a Bill pro- 
hibiting children from entering public houses. "A 

Penalty for Mass Going " in France gives a case where 
five officers of the garrison of Laon attended Mass and 
heard a sermon. No charge was brought against the 
preacher, but the colonel was deprived of his command 
and the other officers transferred to other regiments.- 
Under the heading "The Declaration of the Sovereign" 
a correspondence has appeared in The Times on the 
oath taken by Roman Catholic Bishops in England 
against heretics pro posse persequar et impugnabo where 
the word persequar is translated I will persecute. Need- 
less to say, these words have been omitted, by the 
sanction of the Holy See, for the last ninety years, as 

pointed out by the Archbishop. In connection with 

the beatification of the " Venerable Joan of Arc," the 
Sacred Congregation of Rites has promulgated the de- 
cree Tuto. The ceremony of beatification is fixed for 
next May. 

(26 Dec.) : " Conditions in India," which are evidently 
serious, received attention when Lord Morley sketched 
the plan of his proposed reforms, which did not include 

the blowing of disturbers from the mouths of guns. 

Mr. Lloyd George, in his Liverpool speech, pointed oat 
the advantages of " Free-Trade." Providence, he said, 
" intended " it. He drew a picture of the fate of the 
Christmas plum-pudding if Tariff Reform carried the 

day. The death is reported of the " Mother- General 

of the Sisters of Nazareth," Margaret Mary Owen, a 
Mother in Israel. Attention is drawn by a corre- 
spondent to " A New Departure." It consists in the 
introduction of the Paulist system of a Question Box at 
the entrance to the Church on Sunday evenings. An- 
other champion of "The Maid of Orleans" has ap- 
peared in the person of Mr. Andrew Lang, who has en- 
tered the lists against M. Anatole France and disposed 
of his naturalistic explanations. 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 699 

The Month (Dec.) : " What Sort of Neutrality ? " by the Rev. 
S. F. Smith, is an analysis of the scheme presented by 
the French deputies at the recent International Moral 
Education Congress. It is nothing less, the writer says, 
than a deliberate plan to use the State schools for the 
purpose of rooting out all religious belief from the peo- 
ple. "Dr. Gairdner on Lollardy," by Father Thurs- 

ton, is an appreciative article on the work of the octo- 
genarian historian, who, in dealing with the suppression 
of the English monasteries, substantially endorses Abbot 
Gasquet's conclusions, which had been so violently as- 
sailed. Another noteworthy article is the concluding 

portion of the Rev. C. C. Martindale's account of "The 
Religion of Mithra," which tends to show that some of 
these old religions may be a source of new dangers in 

our own day. " Social Work After Leaving School" 

asks the question, in view of the growth of Socialistic 
ideas, What are our Catholic laity doing? If England 
is to be won to the faith, the people must see Christ 
moving among the multitude, in the person not only of 
His priests, but of Catholic men and women whose 
watchword is service. 

The Expository Times (Jan.): "The Bearing of Criticism Upon 
the Gospel History," by Professor Sanday, is an ac- 
count of the controversy raging around the Fourth 
Gospel. Allowance must be made, the writer thinks, 
for the " personal equation/' as many of the critics on 
the negative side take hold of the Gospel by the wrong 
end, especially when they charge that the author of it 
was utterly indifferent to historical reality, and, more- 
over, was not an eye-witness to the facts of which he 
wrote. "The Hour of the Crucifixion" tries to recon- 
cile the difference in the time as stated by St. Mark 
and St. John. The former is accepted as being correct. 

The Hibbert Journal (Jan.): "Some Recent Investigations by 
the Society for Psychical Research," by the Right Hon. 
Gerald W. Balfour, deals more particularly with the 
subject of automatic writing and the phenomena now 

known as "cross-correspondence." Following on the 

same line is an article by John W. Graham, entitled: 
" Messages From the Dead and Their Significance." It 



7 oo FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Feb., 

refers to the work of Frederic Myers, who, although 
dead, claims that he is much more alive than when here 
on earth, and demonstrates this by a stream of messages 
from the other world. " Psychotherapeutics and Re- 
ligion," by Dr. Marshall, of New York, analyzes the 
mental and psychic forces back of Christian Science 
and the Emmanuel Movement in Boston. A conclusion 
arrived at is that in a certain class of diseases collabor- 
ation between the physician and the religious leader may 

be of great value. The Rev. J. W. Barton, on " Church 

Missions as Affected by Liberal Theology," claims that 
what is needed in the Foreign Field is a more rational 
and intelligent method of imparting Christian doctrine 

to the heathen. Professor James, in "The Doctrine 

of the Earth- Soul and of Beings Intermediate between 
God and Man," exposes the philosophy of Fechner, 
and at the same time the thinness of American Tran- 
scendentalism. Other articles are by Miss Vida Scud- 

der, on " The Social Conscience of the Future." By the 

Right Rev. E. Mercer, "Is the Old Testament a Suit- 
able Basis for Moral Instruction ? " By Lewis Farnell, 

on "The Cult of Ancestors and Heioes." 

The International (Dec.) : In " Evolution of the Principles of 
Punishment," Dr. Broda advocates prevention as being 
better than cure. Impulsive crime he claims is largely 
due to drink and to the lack of the refinements of edu- 
cation. "The Prohibition of Absinthe in Switzerland" 

tells how the long warfare against the manufacture of 
the "green peril" has been brought to a successful con- 
clusion. The new law will come into force July, 1910. 

Lajpat Raj, in "The Indian Problem," gives an account 
of the political impasse in India, brought about largely 
by the policy of Imperial aggressiveness. Self-govern- 
ment is the cry. There is hardly a strata of Indian so- 
ciety that is not effected by it. " Unemployment " 

shows that neither Free-Trade in England nor protection 
in the United States means "work for all." There i s 
but one economic remedy for it, and that is to organize 
industry on a co-operative basis. 

The International Journal of Ethics (Jan.) : Professor F. Thilly 
reviews " Fiiedrich Paulsen's Ethical Work and Influ- 




i99-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 701 

ence." Paulsen's system of ethics was in direct opposi- 
tion to that of Kant, for while the latter defined acts as 
good or bad in themselves, Paulsen held that acts are 

right or wrong according to the effect produced. J. 

S. Mackenzie writes of the late Dr. Edward Caird. 

" Self- Esteem and the Love of Recognition as Sources 

of Conduct" is dealt with by H. H. Schroeder. The 

article on "The Morals of an Immoralist Friedrich 

Nietzsche" is continued. Other articles are: "The 

Will to Make-Believe," by Wilbur M. Urban. " Crime 

and Social Responsibility," by Carl Heath. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (Dec.) : " Socialism ; its Develop- 
ment and Program," by J. F. Hogan, D.D., is a strong 
attack upon the principles of scientific Socialism as being 
utterly opposed to the tenets of Christianity. The right 
to property is a right that comes from nature and not 
from law, as Socialists would have us believe. He warns 
Catholics against adopting the name in their efforts to 

redress social grievances. "The Betting Evil," by 

Rev. J. Kelleher, points out how deeply seated in human 
nature the evil is. He shows how the purchaser of a 
lottery ticket is indeed far from getting the value of his 
money. A picture is given of a race meeting, with the 
prosperous book-makers on the one hand, certain of suc- 
cess; and on the other, the dupes, backing their fancy, 

certain in the long run to lose. " Historical Notes on 

the 'Adeste Fideles'" goes to prove that there is no 
trace of the hymn prior to the year 1745. The oldest 

existing manuscript can be traced to Ireland. "The 

Secularization Policy in the German Empire," by Rev. 
J. MacCaffrey, traces the overthrow of the Catholic 
strength in Germany to the action of Napoleon after the 
treaty of Luneville, in 1801, when the ecclesiastical 
estates were cut up and divided among the lay princes 
in order to further his own political ambitions. 

Le Correspondant (ioDec.): "Young Turkey and the Balkans," 
sketches the events leading to the Young Turk Move- 
ment. Commenting on one of the questions brought 

up, at the First International Educational Congress held 
in London, G. Fonsegrive, in "The Modern State and 
Neutral Schools," asks what are the capabilities of France 



702 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Feb., 

to give moral instruction in the public schools? He 
answers that she has none, for according to her policy 

all opinions should be recognized and tolerated. H. 

Bremond introduces us, in his article " Poets of To-day ," 
to a galaxy of French poets. " The Greatness of Pub- 
licity/ 1 by Jules Arran, draws attention to the enormous 
strides made in the business of advertising. 
(25 Dec.) : Apropos of Bulgaria's reawakening, M. Lamy 
gives a resume of the reign of " Prince Alexander of 
Battenberg." His reign may be divided into three per- 
iods, and its nature learned from the characteristic note 
of each period. In the first he was unsuccessful ; in the 
second he was timorous ; while in the third he made 
himself honored and respected. Abbe Klein con- 
tinues his articles on " The America of To-morrow." 
The present one deals with the progress of the North- 
west, its railroads and cities, and includes an account of 

a trip to Alaska. "The Education of Blind Deaf 

Mutes." Helen Keller aud Marie Heurtin are the sub- 
jects of a paper by M. Gaston Paris. Marvels have been 
accomplished by the first, but more marvelous still is 
the story of the second, who, from being a wild, savage 
child, grew to be a modest, intellectual woman under 
the direction of the Sisters of Mercy. Both cases offer 
arguments for the spirituality of the soul. 

Etudes (5 Dec.): "The University of Paris" on the i;th of 
March will be a century old. Paul Dudon draws our 
attention to what the orators at the centenary celebra- 
tions should say regarding the university's origin; the 
motives Napoleon had in founding it ; the injustice done 
to the Church by placing the faculty of theology in other 

hands than her own, etc. It was the purpose of the 

recent congress for " The Study of Religion at Oxford," 
F. Bouvier thinks, to show that Christianity is but a 
natural evolution. He summarizes many of the more in- 
teresting discussions, and notices at some length the pa- 
per of Dr. Eisler, of Vienna, on the Eucharist, and the 
extemporaneous but none the less convincing refutation 

of it by Professor Dobschutz, of Strassburg. "M. J. 

Turmel and M. E. Portalie again join issue. The former 
maintains that his point of view was misunderstood. 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 703 

He was writing history, not theology, in his History of 
the Papacy. On the other hand, M. Portalie urges M. 
Tunnel to come to the point and explain away the 
identity of his views with those of Herzog-Dupin ; to 
reconcile his views on the angels, original sin, etc., with 
the teaching of the Church. Both of the participants 
enter into a discussion of some of the less important 
points of the controversy.^ Pierre Lhaude gives a 
sketch of "Father Louis Colomba," the Spanish novel- 
ist, who has lately been honored by the Spanish Academy. 
(20 Dec.): "The Knowledge of Faith" Jules Lebreton 
criticizes those who hold that we have no personal and 

direct intuition concerning a mystery of religion. 

"Revolutionary Justice" is practically a summary of two 
recent works, Le Tribunal Revolutionnaite, by M. G. 
Lenotre, and that of Hector Fleischmann, La Guillotine 

en 1793. Xavier Moisant writes on " St. Thomas 

Aquinas as a Psychologist." Joseph Brucker reviews 

the recent historical works on the Jesuits. 

Annales de Philosophie Chretienne (Dec.) : " Christian Human- 
ism," by Imbart de la Tour, shows that the intellectual 
revolution of the sixteenth century modified not only 
literary and moral theories, but had also a great effect 
upon religion. But between the fundamental principle 
of the Reformation and that of Catholic humanism, there 

is an essential difference. The Quietist Elements in 

" The Theodicy of Fenelon " are dealt with by M. J. 
Riviere. Notwithstanding Fenelon's many contradictions^ 
he held to one essential principle, the absolute freedom 
of God in regard to His work. He attacks unceasingly 
the statement that God was obliged to create the most 
perfect world; to admit that is to confound the world 
with God and to recognize two infinitely perfects. 

La Democratic Chretienne (Dec.) : " The Fundamental Ideas of 
Social Reform." The writer, M. de Vogelsang, draws 
attention to the Social Christianity of the Middle Ages, 
from which we have sadly departed. To-day society is 
largely individualistic, but Christian social ideas are in- 
nate in man and are but sleeping, and wait for some one 
to rouse them into action. "Physical and Moral Con- 
ditions for the Welfare of the Family " is the report of 



704 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Feb., 

a conference by Dr. L. Bierent. Alcoholism, Tubercu- 
losis, and Care of Children are treated under the physi- 
cal conditions, while Education and the Christian Ideal 
form the subjects dealt with as necessary moral condi- 
tions. "The Encyclical Pascendi" is a review of the 

effects produced by the Encyclical and the errors it 

sought to expose. "The Spanish Letter" deals with 

the Social Economic exhibit at the Spanish- French ex- 
position in Saragossa. It included among other things 
documents showing the growth of Catholic workingmen's 

societies. It is with regret we read that with this issue 

La Democratic Chretienne passes out of existence. The 
editor, TAbbe P. Six, draws attention to La Chreniqtie 
Sociale, which is already doing a valuable work in the 
same field. 

Revue\Pratique d* Apologetique (i Dec.): J. Geslin contributes an 
essay on the two genealogies of our Lord given by Luke 
and Matthew. It is claimed that the interpretations for- 
merly advanced do not solve the difficulty, therefore a 
new interpretation is attempted. The problems are solved 
and the authority of the evangelists safeguarded, accord- 
ing to M. Geslin, by the fact that Luke's genealogy in- 
tends to give the genealogy of Him who is Son of Da- 
vid, whereas Matthew intends merely to give a dynastic 
genealogy of the Messias, the King of Juda. "Provi- 
dence and Physical Evil " an article that is very appro- 
priate at this time on account of recent calamities. The 
writer, H. Lesetre, maintains that it is blasphemous to 
impute these physical evils to the Deity. That is the 
Old Testament idea of God's influence on the world. 
The Christian conception is that evil is part of this man- 
ifestly finite world and is to be endured in preparation 
for the kingdom of God. 

(15 Dec.}: "The Beginnings of Christian Apologetics," 
by J. Lebreton, describes the different meanings borne 
by the word "Apology" since Plato wrote the apology 

of Socrates. "The Catholicism of Erasmus." His 

entrance into religion was, the writer, G. Planke, claims, 
an irreparable misfortune. Was he a Protestant ? Some 
reply in the affirmative. The Lutherans claimed him as 
one of themselves, and called him " our great Erasmus"; 




1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 705 

but men who had the interests of the Church at heart 
recognized him as a son faithful and loyal, though per- 
haps somewhat eccentric and caustic. Review of 
L'Abbe Bertrim's classic work on Lourdes. 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques et La Science Catholique 
(Dec.): In his "Knowledge of Christ," M. Abbe E. Rou- 
pain discusses the errors of those who attribute to Christ 
ignorance of His office as Messias and Redeemer, and 
shows that, by the Beatific Vision and unity of personal- 
ity, the testimony to an indivisible omniscient Person 

still claims our assent. Canon Hurault exposes the 

teaching of William of Champeaux about the Incarnation 

and the Redemption. In his " Chronology of our 

Lord," Xavier Levrier proves that Quirinus was really 
in Judaea and in Syria at our Lord's birth, December 25, 
of the year 745, and that this does not conflict with 
Tertullian's statement that Sentius Saturninus was he who 

took the census. The works of Father Billot, on Grace 

and Free Will ; of Father de la Serviere, on The Theol- 
ogy of Bellarmine ; and of Mgr. Batiffol on The Primi- 
tive Church and Catholicism; are reviewed at length by 
M. L'Abbe' A. Michel. 

Stimmen aus Maria- Laack (i Jan.): M. Meschler, S.J., contrib- 
utes an article on "Jeanne d'Arc," O. Zimmermann, 

S.J,, explains, in a paper on "Personality," the variety 
of meanings in which this term is used in modern liter- 
ature and warns against its indiscriminate use, since our 
most fundamental doctrines of faith require a definite 

conception of "personality." H. Muckermann, S.J., 

writes on " Palaeontological Documents and the Problem 
of the Formation of Species," and shows that all the his- 
torical material furnishes hardly anything certain about 

the great problem of evolution. C. Blume, S.J., gives 

a sketch of the history of Hymnody, and points out the 

reasons for its growth and decay. J. Bessmer, S.J., 

in " Religion and Sub- Consciousness," criticizes Professor 
W. James* teaching that sub-consciousness is the source 
of religion. James considers in his theory only religious 
feelings; and purposely neglects religious concepts and 
ideas. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (15 Dec.): "The Ancient Church 

VOL. 1XXXVIII. 45 



L 



706 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Feb., 

of Africa and the Modern Innovators," by Jean Hura- 
bielle, Canon of Algiers, is a comparison between the 
ancient African Church and the Catholic Church of to- 
day, showing that in all essential points of doctrine the 

former agreed perfectly with the latter. R. P. At, in 

''The French Apologists in the Nineteenth Century," 
gives the biography of Maurice d'Hulst. This apologist 
had a specially difficult task before him, namely, to give 
a new presentation of the Church's teaching on ethical 
principles so severely attacked by those wishing to sep- 
arate morality from religion. "Save the Parish,' 1 by 

P. Camillas, is an account of the gradual encroachments 
of the French Government upon the rights and property 
of the French Church, beginning with the laws expelling 
the Religious Orders engaged in teaching. 

La Civilta Cattolica (5 Dec.): In " The Work of Pius X,," our 
attention is called to the first announcement made by his 
Holiness to the Universal Church that he intended to 
have no other programme than this, viz., "To restore all 
things in Christ." How he has gone about this is dis- 
played in the course of an appreciative article which deals 
with the Motu Proprio t the decree Ne Tewere, and other 

documents. "The History of Art in the Schools." 

A new factor in education has been introduced into the 
schools of Italy the cultivation and study of art. It is 
a singular thing, the writer remarks, that the cultivation 
of the fine arts should be so neglected in a country 

which abounds in works of art. " New Studies on the 

Question of Pope Liberius"is a continued article. The 
present chapters deal with the criticisms of G. Rasneur 
in the Revue d* Histoire Ecclesiastique and P. Hurter in 
the Zeitschrift fur Katkolische Theologie. 

Espaila y America (i Dec.): Felipe Robles, extending a former 
article on grammatical " Case," treats of " The Philosophy 

of the Verb." P. M. Velez attacks the thesis that 

"the cult of humility and of repentance, which the Chris- 
tian faith still preserves, is immoral because harmful to 
the moral progress of humamty," and expounds the true 
Catholic doctrine as to these virtues. The fifth in- 
stallment of "Godoy and his Century" is given by P. 
Martinez. P. E. Negrete, in "The Esthetic Ideas of 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 707 

St. Augustine," states the saint's classic doctrine of the 

relation between the senses and the beautiful. Mr. 

Taft's election, the production of a Spanish play at 
Daly's Theater, and the publication of a fifty- five volume 
history of the Philippine Islands, give P. M. Blanco Gar- 
cia occasion for remarks on the reign of mammon and 

the spread of civilization. Fray Meliton praises highly 

the " Black and White " art exhibition. " Social An- 

tagonisms," a romance, is continued. P. Miguel Coco 

treats " Nine Doubtful Points " regarding the application 
of the decree Ne Temere. 

Razon y Fe (Dec.): In an article entitled "Free- Masonry in 
Spain During the War of Independence," A. P. Goyena 
traces much of the immorality and blasphemy of the 
time to the lodges established under the influence of 
Napoleon and his officers. L. Murillo reviews the va- 
rious theories purporting to harmonize "The Mosaic and 
the Laplacean Cosmoganies," and points out flaws in 
each. "Is the Liberty of Thought Favorable to Prog- 
ress ? " V. M. Mintegulaga asks and shows how it has 

been in the sense approved by the Church. V. Agusti, 

apropos of Dr. Meyenberg's work on The Practice of the 
Pulpit, finds a remedy for the ineffectiveness of preach- 
ing in a return to biblical study and biblical inspiration, 
" The Annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the 
Kingdom of Austro-Hungary," treated by E. Ugarte de 
Ercilla, is a retrospect and a review of the Treaty of 

Berlin. "Twelve Years of Radio-Activity," by Jaime 

M. del Barrio. " Scientific and Philosophic Chron- 
icle," by E. U. de Ercilla. 






The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and par- 
ticularly those who have known the magazine for some 
years, will learn with regret of the death of the Rev- 
erend William D. Hughes, priest of the Congregation 
of St. Paul the Apostle. THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and 
Catholic literature in general throughout the United 
States, will always be greatly indebted to the zealous, 
capable, and devoted services of Father William Hughes. 

Father Hughes was born in New York City in 
1856. He was educated at St. Gabriel's School in the 
same city, and later at St. Charles' College, Ellicott 
City, Md. He received his philosophical and theologi- 
cal training at Seton Hall Seminary, South Orange, 
N. J. He entered the Paulist Community, and was 
ordained priest in 1882. Shortly afterwards, in 1885, 
he became manager of THE CATHOLIC WORLD ; had 
entire charge of the equipment of the Paulist printing 
house in New York; and in all matters that pertained 
to his position showed exceptional administrative abil- 
ity and untiring diligence. His work and success are 
the more noteworthy because, through all his years, 
he suffered extreme physical pain, such as would have 
rendered the ordinary man useless as a worker in any 
active field. 

But Father Hughes was more than an ordinary 
man in his intellectual powers and his moral qualities. 
All but encyclopaedic in his knowledge ; wide in his 
sympathies; incredibly patient in his labors; hopeful 
and always constructive in his outlook upon the pres- 
ent and the future, sustained through peace and stress 
by an intensely spiritual zeal, he served THE CATHO- 
LIC WORLD even until the end. Forced by illness to 
retire from its staff in 1892, he again gave his ser- 
vices to the magazine in 1904, and continued them till 
some few weeks before his death, January 10, 1909. 

May his soul be at rest in the peace of God. 



Current Events. 



With reference to the question which 

France. has overshadowed all others that 

of the action taken by Austria in 

the Balkans France has given her support to the demand 
made by all the other Great Powers, with the exception of 
Germany, that the annexation, involving as it does a breach of 
the Treaty of Berlin, should be submitted to the discussion of 
a Conference. She has also acquiesced in the proposal made by 
Austria to Russia that a discussion in writing should precede 
the actual holding of the Conference. 

A man who wished the restoration of royal power thought 
well to manifest his contempt of the present regime by attempt- 
ing to pull the President's beard; another individual, who de- 
clared himself a strong Republican, but who could not endure 
the tyranny of the present government, fired shots through 
the window of M. Clemenceau's room. There does not, how- 
ever, appear to be any widespread opposition to the present 
authorities. Elections have just taken place for the renewal of 
that one-third of the Senate which retires every three years. 
These elections have resulted in the strengthening of the parties 
which support the present government. Extremists on both 
sides failed in their appeal to the electors, the supporters of 
the restoration of the monarchical form of government having 
returned only five members. The anarchists and extreme So- 
cialists were equally unsuccessful. 

M. Clemenceau has now been in power for more than two 
years, a period somewhat long for France. It seems probable 
that he will survive the present Parliament, which comes to an 
end in the spring of next year. But quite recently differences 
have arisen in the Cabinet. The question of amnesty for riot- 
ers in certain strikes which took place last year, and that of 
the infliction of capital punishment, have caused divisions. 
Whether they will lead to an actual split remains to be seen. 

The question of Morocco has not attracted much attention 
of late. Mulai Hafid has taken the place of his brother Abdul 
Aziz. The latter is to receive a pension and to settle down 
to the life of a private gentleman. He professes himself quite 
satisfied with the change. Mulai Hafid has not been formally 



7 io $ CURRENT EVENTS [Feb., 

recognized; but the prospect is good. The French troops are 
being gradually withdrawn. There is a large bill, however, to 

be paid. 

Germany has had a very difficult 
Germany. question to settle as to which side 

was to be taken with reference to 

the annexation of the Turkish Provinces. On the one hand, 
her commercial interests in Turkey, especially of the Baghdad 
Railway, rendered it desirable that she should retain the existing 
Turkish authorities; on the other, the close alliance with Aus- 
tria, her only absolutely reliable friend, and gratitude for the 
services rendered at the Algeciras Conference, made it a duty 
to support the latter power. After some hesitation, the deci- 
sion to support Austria seems to have been taken, and the two 
stand alone against the rest of the world. 

Prince Billow has two internal questions en his hands of 
supreme importance for the existence of his government. These 
are under the consideration of two Committees appointed dur- 
ing the last session of the Reichstag. The first of these is the 
question of the limitation of the power of the Kaiser by making 
ministers more directly responsible to Parliament ; the second 
is the scheme for raising, by taxation, an additional annual sum 
of one hundred and twenty-five millions. The former will test 
to the utmost the cohesion of the present supporters of the 
government, as these are made up, on the one hand, of believers 
in the divine right of the crown; on the other hand, of sup- 
porters of the inalienable right of the people to govern them- 
selves. The second question touches the pockets of every class, 
and, so far as it touches them, the proposed plans have met 
with the keenest opposition on all sides. The natural opposi- 
tion always felt to an increase of taxation is accentuated in the 
present case by the fact that for a long time there has been a 
great depression in trade and business, and that the whole sys- 
tem of Imperial finance has broken down. The fact that the 
" conquest of the air " has been so well begun by Count Zep- 
pelin, while it has mitigated, has not removed the gloom. 

The many questions raised by 

The Near East. Austria's action are still far from 

being settled, and it is still by no 

means certain that war may not yet break out. Whether 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 711 

a Conference will be held is still in doubt. The refusal of 
Austria to discuss the one question which was worth discussing 
her own lawless action in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina 
has been modified by the proposal made by her and accepted 
by the Great Powers that a written discussion in advance of 
the meeting of the Conference should deal with this point. 
Some are of opinion that this will render a Conference un- 
necessary; for, on all other questions, argreement has been 
reached. All are agreed that compensation of some kind or 
other is due to Turkey, and that this compensation should be 
made by Bulgaria to Turkey and to the Oriental Railway Com- 
pany, and by Austria to Turkey. Russia refrains from seeking 
compensation, or, as perhaps it would be more accurate to say, 
postpones that question to a more convenient season. 

It is the just resentment felt by Servia and Montenegro at 
the thwarting of their most dearly cherished plans for a greater 
Servia that most of all imperils the prospects of peace. There 
is very little doubt that, had these states been stronger, they 
would have entered upon an armed conflict with Austria. 
Their weakness has, however, counselled prudence; the other 
Powers also have made urgent representations, and have in- 
formed the representative of Servia that no support would be 
granted her in the event of war. In every other way, how- 
ever, they will act to the best of their ability in defence of 
Servia's interests. We hope that she will not, as has so often 
been the case, be betrayed. 

While little if any regret has been manifested by Austria 
for the blot which the recent proceedings have made upon her 
honor, the Turkish boycott of her merchandize has touched her 
in a more tender spot. This boycott has been very effectual, 
and has caused Austria to make representations at Constantino- 
ple in which she demanded that the government should suppress 
the boycott, as if such a thing could have been done even in 
the days when Abdul Hamid ruled despotically. The Austrian 
Ambassador, it was said, would leave, and it was (we suppose 
seriously) threatened that Austrian warships should accompany 
her merchant vessels to enforce the transaction of business. 
These threats were not carried out, for a compromise was 
made, Turkey promising to do her best to get the carriers in 
the employ of the Customs to handle Austrian goods. The 
Ambassador, consequently, did not depart, and direct nego- 



CURRENT EVENTS [Feb., 

tiations between Turkey and Austria were opened. The princi- 
ple that compensation was due to Turkey for the loss of the 
Provinces having been admitted, what that compensation was 
to be has been under discussion, and this question has, we 
believe, been settled. 

As to Bulgaria, the same principle has been admitted, but 
the negotiations as to the amount have not yet been brought 
to a conclusion. The most insistent demands for compensa- 
tion are made by Servia and Montenegro; but, so far, their 
claims have not been recognized even in principle. It is still 
rather more probable than not that war will break out, for 
Austria has thought it necessary to collect 150,000 troops in 
the annexed provinces, and many Servians believe that they 
can force the hand of the Russian government. This they be- 
lieve because the mass of the Russian people are strongly in 
favor of war in defence of their fellow Slavs. The New Year 
has, therefore, opened with dismal prospects. 

With the insignificant exception of Monaco, where absolutism 
and gambling still exist uncontrolled, giving to each other re- 
ciprocal protection, the soil of Europe has at last been freed 
from autocratic rule. Constantinople has been the scene of 
the assembling of the Turkish Parliament in which deputies 
from Mecca and Medina sat side by side with the representa- 
tives of Jerusalem and Salonika. The house is an assemblage 
of even a more motley array of races than is the Parliament 
of Austria Syrians and Arabians, Armenians and Druses, 
Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Kurds. The dignitaries of 
the Moslem religion united with Christian bishops and Jewish 
rabbis, The Moslems, however, far outnumber the Christians, 
and we do not know that there is a single Catholic in the 
whole assembly. 

The Sultan himself opened the Parliament by a speech read 
by his first Secretary, in which he declared that his resolution 
to govern the country in conformity to the Law of the Consti- 
tution was irrevocable, and called for the divine aid in the task. 
He deeply regretted that the want of education on the part of 
the people had rendered it impossible for him to have a Par- 
liament as soon as he had wished ; but now, on account of the 
progress which had been made, the desire of his heart could 
be gratified. It is to be feared that very few really believed 
that these were his real sentiments; but all can congratulate 



1 909. ] CURRENT E VENTS 7 1 3 

themselves upon the fact that they have become the deep con- 
victions of the majority of the people in the Turkish Empire, 
and that they have found an efficient means of expression in 
the Committee of Union and Progress, to whose action the re- 
cent change is due. This Committee represents, it is well to 
remember, not so much the Army as the civil elements of the 
Empire. It has been organizing the movement for nearly a 
score of years, and when it became strong enough to take action 
it was also strong enough to use the army as an instrument 
to accomplish its purpose. 

Its own time of trial is now approaching, and it will soon 
be seen whether it is true to its own principles, Since the 
decree was issued by the Sultan for the establishment of the 
Constitution, the Committee rather than the Ministry has been 
the real seat of power. But by all constitutional principles the 
Parliament, where it exists, must be the supreme power. Will 
the Committee be faithful to these principles and consent to 
abdicate and to relinquish the powers which it has so wisely 
used; or will it, with the so common infatuation which the 
possession of power often brings with it, strive to retain 
what no longer belongs to it ? Upon the choice it makes de- 
pends, in the immediate future, the success of the experiment 
just begun. Every one recognizes the immense difficulties which 
stand in the way of success. These are so great that many 
who hope for their being overcome are almost in despair. The 
corruption springing from despotism has sunk so deep into 
the very being of the State that hope may well give place to 
despair. Yet there are not a few who think that the genuine 
Turk has fine qualities and that all the evils of his rule have 
been due to bad rulers. Moreover, the effectual way in which 
Abdul Hamid was deprived of his power, and yet quite without 
bloodshed, seems to show that there is among them a reserve 
of political capacity which may justify hopes for the future. 
At all events, the new Turkish Parliament enters upon its career 
with the sympathy of all that is best in the world, a sympathy 
which was expressed by the Parliaments of Austria, Hungary, 
Italy, Servia, Rumania, and Great Britain, and by the Russian 
Duma. 

Negotiations have been carried on with Bulgaria and Aus- 
tria-Hungary, with a view to coming to a peaceful settlement 
of the questions at issue directly between the respective states, 



* CURRENT EVENTS [Feb., 

and there is reason to expect that these negotiations will be 
successful. War, if it breaks out, will not be laid at the door 
of Turkey. 

The Sultan was not satisfied with opening in person the 
first session of the revived Parliament. He accorded to it an 
honor which, so far as we know, has but one precedent that 
is to say, he invited all its members to a banquet at Yildiz 
Kiosk. He himself presided, although his speech was read for 
him by his secretary. In this speech frequent references are 
made to God and even to His grace. The work of the mem- 
bers is declared to be sacred; while for himself he has devoted 
his person, with the help of the Almighty, to safeguarding the 
provisions of the Constitution and to guaranteeing its sacred 
rights. He declared that he would be the greatest enemy of 
any one who should act in a contrary sense. Time will show 
how deep-rooted in the Sultan's mind are these reassuring sen- 
timents. The deputies, however, manifested their high appre- 
ciation and were only too lavish in their demonstrations in 
honor of the ex-autocrat. However, the more peaceful the 
transition from despotism to law and order can be made the 
better is it in itself and the more likely is the change to be 
permanent. 

The fearful calamity which has be- 
Italy. fallen Italy may prove a blessing : 

for it has moved the whole world 

and every people to heartfelt sympathy with her. Even the 
Sultan has contributed to the relief of the distressed. It may 
even be the means of averting a war; for the action of Aus- 
tria, in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, had so alienated the 
minds of the people that demonstrations had taken place, show- 
ing the hostility which had begun to be felt and indicating the 
revival in strength of the Irredentist movement. The govern- 
ment was placed in a very difficult position; for Italy is still 
a member of the Triple Alliance, which includes Austria and 
Germany; and so, although the minds of the people had largely 
turned against Austria so much so that it was being commonly 
said that Italy's friends were not her allies and her allies were 
not her friends the government was not free to act in the way 
in which it doubtless would have wished. The sympathy man- 
ifested by the Emperor, Francis Joseph, and many of his peo- 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 715 

pie for Italy in her misfortune has given another turn to what 
seemed the probable course of events, and may prevent the dis- 
solution of the Triple Alliance. 

Those who have entertained ap- 
The Far East. prehensions as to the course of 

events in the Far East will have 

their fears removed by the formal conclusion of an understand- 
ing between this country and Japan. The treaties of Japan 
with Great Britain, with Russia, and with France had left no 
door open for complications, except with Germany and with 
the United States, and of the two, it was with this country 
that there was the greater reason to expect trouble; for Ger- 
many is very unlikely to take action by herself. The under- 
standing is calculated to remove all anxiety, for it declares that 
it is the policy of the two governments to encourage the free 
and peaceful continuance of their commerce in the Pacific 
Ocean, to maintain the existing status quo to defend the prin- 
ciple of equal opportunity of all nations in China, mutually to 
respect the actual possessions of each other, and to support the 
integrity and independence of China and the open door fcr the 
commerce of all nations alike. In the event of the status quo 
being threatened, the two governments propose to consult each 
other as to what steps should be taken to preserve it from dis- 
turbance. 

One of the most striking features 

Movements for Self -Government, of current events is the demand, 

more or less powerful, of so many 

Oriental peoples for a share in the government. Russia, Tur- 
key, Persia, Egypt, India, and to a certain extent China, are 
more or less agitated by this demand. Although holding large 
tracts of Europe, the Russian must be considered rather an 
Oriental than an Occidental form of government, and every 
one, of course, is familiar with the efforts made of late to se- 
cure the reign of law and order and deliverance from arbitrary 
rule. These efforts have not, indeed, been crowned with that 
full measure of success that could be wished for. They have 
not, however, by any means resulted in complete failure. The 
Third Duma is still not only in existence, but it discusses the 
most important measures, and Ministers of State lay before it 
for public discussion their plans and projects. 



CURRENT EVENTS [Feb. 

The Budget and Foreign Policy have to undergo its criticism. 
Turkey, as we have seen, has just entered upon a constitutional 
career. For Persia the prospects are darker, and it is not easy 
to learn how far the people are in earnest in their demand for 
a Parliament. One of the strangest of recent events is the fact 
that Russia, of all countries in the world, acting even a more 
strange conjunction with England, is enforcing upon the Shah, 
who perjures himself every alternate week, the duty of keep- 
ing his plighted word and of calling the Parliament which he 
has so often promised. But the outcome is still doubtful. 
A party in Egypt is loud in its demand that Egyptians should 
have an effective voice in the government of themselves, and is 
not satisfied with government, however good it may be, by 
foreigners. At present there is a legislative Council, but it has 
very little power. Those who have this desire will undoubted- 
ly obtain what they wish, if they show themselves in earnest, 
and that they have some degree of capacity for self-govern- 
ment. For this is what has taken place in India. Recent 
events there have been followed by the grant to its people of 
a much enlarged degree of power in the government of the 
country; not with a view, as Lord Morley insisted, of estab- 
lishing parliamentary government for India as a whole, but for 
giving to the various localities control of their own affairs. 
This has been effected by giving to the unofficial element in 
the Provincial Legislative Councils, of which there are already 
many, and the number of which is to be largely increased, the 
controlling majority. India is, consequently, placed in the pos- 
session of local self government. Many in India profess them- 
selves satisfied with the reforms which have been made, others 
look upon them merely as steps to the attainment of even more. 

The list would not be complete if China were left out. 
The steps which have been taken for the establishment of a 
Constitution have been referred to in a former number. What 
they will lead to the readers of current events ten years hence 
for that is the time fixed for the introduction of constitu- 
tional government will be able to say. The abrupt dismissal 
of one of the most prominent reformers because of an affec- 
tion of his feet, is hardly a step in the right direction. 




THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

WE wish to call special attention to the article published in this number of 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD on the sermons of Father John Tauler. The 
announcement contained in the article of the publication of these sermons in 
English is of exceptional interest and importance to all English-speaking 
Catholic peoples. We might add to non-Catholicsalso, for the work will be of 
great value even as an addition to English literature. Considering the difficul- 
ties of Tauler's original German, the work of translation has been laborious 
and minute ; but it presents to us in our own familiar tongue one of the greatest 
writers on spiritual subjects of our Church. It must not be supposed that 
these are " cut and dried" discourses. As will be seen from a reading of the 
article, they are forceful, direct, inspiring, imaginative exhortations, and 
stirring appeals that will rouse and help the soul to-day as they helped the 
thousands who heard the same words directly from the preacher's lips. 
They deal with our common, everyday tasks; help us in our ordinary duties; 
and yet teach us how to make these very things steps on the ladder of our 
spiritual growth and perfection. Tauler's sermons will be of immense ser- 
vice to the beginner, to him whom we might call the ordinary Christian, and 
of immense service also to him who would aspire to the highest and the most 
perfect. Such is Tauler's power and f such his sympathy that he can stretch his 
hand down to the simple and the weak, to lead them upward and onwards; 
such his learning and his spirituality, that through him the "perfect" 
may be made even " more perfect" still. 

The principal aim of this department is to rouse Catholics to the study 
and the love of good Catholic literature. With emphasis we recommend to 
every Catholic this work of Tauler's sermons in English which is about to be 
published. The ability and the fitness of the translator, Father Walter 
Elliott, need no recommendation from us. We would like to see every Catho- 
lic home possess it as one of their "family" books. To priests it will be a 
treasury of instruction and inspiration, and to all religious a help and a joy. 
* 

A notable article, says the London Tablet, to this month's Contemporary , 
is that by Mr. Horace Round upon "A New Anglican Argument." That 
might seem at first sight as if Mr. Round had brought forward a new argu- 
ment in defence of Anglicanism. But that is not at all the case. The argu- 
ment is somebody else's, and Mr. Round comes forth not to propound, but 
to destroy it. The argument was introduced to the public by the Rev. Dr. 
Gee, at the recent Church Congress, as a buttress to the theory of Anglican 
"Continuity." It is known to every one how, at the accession of Queen 
Elizabeth, the Catholic Bishops of England stood out as one man against the 
change of religion, and how the last Catholic Convocation solemnly affirmed 
with its final breath the great Catholic dogmas of Papal Supremacy and 
Transubstantiation and the binding nature of the vows of the monks and 
clergy. As a result, out of fifteen diocesan bishops, fourteen were deprived 
and the only recalcitrant amongst them was Kitchen, the contemptible 
Vicar-of-Bray Bishop of Llandaff. The Anglican Church had to be built on 
a new State-intruded hierarchy, and such a foundation is naturally felt to be 



;i & . THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION [Feb., 

fatal to the plea of Anglican Continuity. It was in defence of this flaw that 
Dr. Gee discovered and propounded the "new Anglican Argument." It 
took more or less the shape of an historic parallel and a Tu quoque. Dr. 
Gee maintained that all that Elizabeth had done and more had already been 
done by William I. at the Norman Conquest. He asserted, not only that 
William deprived all the English diocesan bishops save one, but that Lin- 
gard admits that he did so. He holds that William's action was uncanonical 
and tyrannous, and anything worse could not be said against that of Eliza- 
beth. In a word, if William's action did not sever continuity at the Con- 
quest, neither did Elizabeth's at the Reformation. 

An unhappier attempt at an historical parallel could not easily be im- 
agined. Those who are familiar with the facts of the Conquest will remem- 
ber that the enterprise was approved in Papal Consistory, that William's 
banners were blessed by the Pope, that he himself was crowned by Papal 
Legates, and that the whole settlement of the Church in the new conditions 
was carried out under Papal sanction, and under the "authority of our Moth- 
er the Roman Church." To compare this with the revolt and separation 
under Elizabeth is, of course, to take up a wildly indefensible position, and 
to court being blown out of the field by any well-informed writer who might 
choose to attack it. Mr. Round has a special aptitude for punishing rash- 
ness of that kind, and he sets about his task with deadly earnestness, and 
carries out the process of pulverizing with terrible completeness. 

Beginning with the statement that, according to Lingard, William the 
Conqueror deprived all the English diocesan bishops save one, he shows, in 
the first place, that Lingard says nothing of the kind. Secondly, he shows 
that the alleged deprivation is utterly untrue, and quotes the case of quite a 
number of bishops who retained their sees after the Conquest. Thirdly, he 
shows that such deprivations as were made, were made not by William, but 
by the Papal Legates and the church authorities, and that they were neither 
tyrannous nor uncanonical. Finally, he shows that at the Conquest, doctri- 
nal differences were never for a moment in question, and, consequently, that 
it is ludicrous to establish a parallel between the Norman Settlement and the 
Elizabethan Reformation. It will thus be seen that Mr. Round, as usual, 
does his work with great thoroughness, and that not very much is left of the 
"New Anglican Argument." 

* * * 

We were surprised, to say the least, to meet with the following sentence 
in a review of Mr. G. K. Chesterton's ^latest work, Orthodoxy, contributed 
by H. W. Garrod, of Oxford, to the January Hibbert Journal'. "At the same 
time, I cannot help asking whether it is worth the while of a man of gifts so 
brilliant and telling as Mr. Chesterton's to write a whole book just in order 
to pull Mr. G. S. Street's leg? " 

* 

An article contributed by Wilfrid Ward to the Dublin Review is a most 
important appreciation of the arrival of a new prophet Gilbert K. Chester- 
ton. With regard to Mr. Chesterton's latest work entitled, Orthodoxy, Wil- 
frid Ward writes : " If any one opens it with a predisposition to take what 
I may call the frivolous view of Mr. Chesterton he will find in skimming its 
pages plenty to confirm such a view. ." 



1909.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 719 

To the adverse critics of Orthodoxy Mr. Ward says: "Starting with 
their assumption all the brilliant epigrams, with which Orthodoxy is packed 
from start to finish, seem to be extraordinary feats of intellectual agility 
the renewal, under nineteenth-century conditions, of the dialectical tourn- 
aments of the thirteenth : and in those tournaments it rejoiced a skilled dis- 
putant to have to defend what was neither probable nor true, as it gave all 
the more scope for his ingenuity. To me this aspect of ingenious paradox 
appears simply accessory. I regard it partly as a concession, which has 
become habitual on the part of the writer, to the taste of an age which loves 
to be amused and hates being bored. It is the administration of intellectual 
stimulants, or the application to a lethargic and tired and rather morbid 
world of a tremendous shower bath, in order to brace it and renew its nor- 
mal activities. The net result, however, of Mr. Chesterton's awakening 
treatment is not mere stimulating paradox, but, rather, a douche of start- 
ling common sense." 

The effect that Mr. Chesterton's work had n Mr. Ward's mind "was not 
to diminish his sense of the difficulties of which, perhaps, Mr. Chesterton in 
his sense of victory makes too light,but to bring into relief the shallowness of 
thinkers who have allowed new difficulties in detail to lead to doubts ot Chris- 
tianity itself." 

" But it does seem to me to be an attempt in English literature of the hour 
at doing what a sympathetic spectator from another planet would regard to 
be one great work of the Church at present namely, bringing to bear all 
available guns against a perverse philosophy of life, which is being preached 
in the name ef progress. Such a spectator would, perhaps, say that the 
Church does not just now show in its action a close or understanding sympathy 
with modern thought, but rather regards it as, on the whole, taking a wrong 
direction ; that the Church, at this moment, is urging action on the ancient 
fixed ideal and creed rather than speculatitn on nevel points of view. . . . 
Many of her representative thinkers, are indeed, keenly alive to the special 
problems which such advance presents. But, in her official action, the Church 
emphasizes rather the defects and dangers of modern thought. . . . Our 
faculties are in danger of losing what they have already grasped and pos- 
sessed truth which is substantial and divine while they pursue shadows 
or substances ever retreating among the shadows. To concentrate our main 
attention on this fact is a one-sided insistence for the age on old aspects of 
truth which are being forgotten, not a denial of new aspects to be recog- 
nized in due time and in due proportion. Such an attitude is undoubtedly 
reinforced by some of Mr. Chesterton's pages. And it is likely to be as un- 
popular in many quarters as the Church is ever unpopular with the world." 
* * 

Some Roads to Rome, in America, is the title of a new publication by 
Miss Georgina Pell Curtis. The volume is now on the press and will be ready 
for the market early in the spring. B. Herder, of St. Louis, is the publisher. 

Miss Curtis is also about to begin the compilatien of an American Cath- 
olic " Who's Who ", and would be grateful to those persons sending biograph- 
ical sketches if they would address such communications to 2919 North Ash- 
land Avenue, Chicago, 111. These articles must be short and comprehensive. 



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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York : 

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A Man Without a Principle 1 ? By Retsel Terreve. Pp. 345. 
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THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD, 

VOL. LXXXVIII. MARCH, 1909. No. 528. 

FOUR CELEBRITIES-BROTHERS BY MARRIAGE. 

BY WILFRID WILBERFORCE. 



IV. SAMUEL WILBERFORCE. 

N writing this fourth article I am confronted with 
a difficulty which was happily absent in the case 
of the other three. Hitherto I have dealt with 
the lives of those who had the happiness to 
be called into the true Church, but it is diffi- 
cult, for obvious reasons, to write, so as to interest Catholic 
readers, of one who spent his life outside the Fold. As, how- 
ever, this sketch will deal only with the early part of Samuel 
Wilberforce's career, I am saved from the necessity of re- 
ferring to those controversies which stirred him to anger and 
to hatred of that strange figment which, though it had no ex- 
istence outside his own imagination, he honestly believed to 
be the Roman Catholic Church. 

Samuel Wilberforce, the third son of William Wilberforce, 
M.P., and of Barbara Spooner, was born at Clapham Common, on 
September 7, 1805. His father's house was a well-known cen- 
ter of the Evangelical party in those days, and was within 
easy reach of Mr. Thornton's and Zachary Macaulay's homes. 
" Holy Clapham " was the nick-name given to the neighbor- 
hood by those who derided the piety of the Evangelical school; 

Copyright. 1909. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL TH APOSTLE 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 46 




722 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar., 

but there was a real truth in it, and the great number f 
Catholic churches and convents which now exert their in- 
fluence upon Clapham, may well be God's blessing bestowed 
upon the place in return for the sincerity and zeal which 
characterized the men of that day. 

William Wilberforce was a busy and active member of Parlia- 
ment, but the pressure of his public duties did not prevent 
him from giving the closest attention to his children's welfare, 
and many hundreds of letters are still extant written by him 
to his children, amid the distractions of a Parliamentary career. 
These letters are full of love and tenderness, and full also of 
the highest spiritual advice and Christian morality. Mr. Wil- 
berforce had a profound mistrust of the influence of public 
schools, and all his sons were sent to private tutors. Thomas 
Mozley had some interesting theories, to which I will refer 
presently, as to the results of this plan upon the brothers, 
but this was of course in later years when they were at Ox- 
ford. 

But, quite apart from any schools or tutors, the atmosphere 
of William Wilberforce's house was such as to instill religious 
belief and practice into the minds and conduct of his children. 
Every morning and evening he would hold a kind of service 
something more than ordinary family prayers and he would 
introduce an eloquent extempore sermon, which, coming from 
lips so revered, could not fail to exert a powerful influence 
upon his sons. A story is told in connection with these exer- 
cises. It was almost impossible that the servants should be as 
pious as their master, and an old butler at one time took to 
absenting himself from prayers, frequently at first, then alto- 
gether. William Wilberforce gently inquired why he could 
not join in family worship. The butler threw himself into an 
attitude and said that in the Bible he had found written the 
words : " To your tents, O Israel ! " It is related that for 
once in his life his master was taken aback. Mozley tells us 
that Henry Wilberforce thought that the reply had something 
to do with tent beds. 

So many outsiders wished to be present at these meetings 
that Mr. Wilberforce was obliged to limit the number to twenty. 
Even so there were these who attacked Wilberforce, I suppose 
on the ground that he was usurping the functions of the 
clergy. At last a chapel was built, but about that time Wil- 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 723 

berforce left Highwood, near Mill Hill, and henceforward can 
scarcely be said to have had a settled home. 

We are indebted to Canon Ashwell for the memory of a 
humorous incident which occurred at the house of one of the 
private tutors to which Samuel Wilberforce was sent. He was 
at that time about twelve years of age, and his tutor, the 
Rev. E. G. Marsh, with his family and a few other pupils, 
occupied a furnished cottage at Horspath, near Oxford. Samuel 
had decided likes and dislikes, and he conceived a strong re- 
pugnance for his tutor. One day, after a violent quarrel, he 
demanded to be sent home. The tutor hesitated, whereupon 
Samuel rushed into the road the highroad over which some 
twenty coaches a day were accustomed to run between London 
and Oxford and threw himself flat on the ground. He an- 
nounced his intention of remaining where he was unless he 
were sent home. Mr. Marsh let him be for a few hours, but 
at last gave in, and his pupil was sent back to his parents. 
One room in Mr. Marsh's cottage will probably be known for 
all times, as it is the scene of the family group of the New- 
mans the mother, the two sons, and the daughters drawn by 
the celebrated Miss Maria Giberne, afterwards a convert and a 
nun of the Visitation Order. She was a great friend of New- 
man, and indeed of all the Tractarians ; her tall figure and 
classical features lent her something of a royal aspect, which 
earned for her the genial sobriquet of the " Queen of Trac- 
taria." She became of the greatest assistance to Newman at 
the time of the Achilli trial, but " that is another story." 

In 1819, when he was about sixteen years old, Samuel was 
under the care of a tutor named George Hodson, afterwards 
Canon of Lichfield and Archdeacon oi Stafford. A letter writ- 
ten to him at this period by his father is interesting, inasmuch 
as it expresses the principal objection which the writer had to 
public schools. One oi Samuel's companions had been guilty 
of a wrong act. It was of such a kind that, in William Wil- 
berforce's judgment, Samuel ought to have reported it at once 
to Mr. Hodson ; but this he had failed to do, and his father, 
with the . utmost tenderness, but with equal sadness, expresses 
his pain that he had not "told Mr. Hodson, at the first, the 
wrong proceedings which you knew to be going forward. This 
is," he continues, "one of the numerous (they are almost in- 
numerable) class of cases in which worldly honor teaches one 



724 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar., 

lesson and Christian morality another; and the very same 
principle which, I suppose, led you not to mention to Mr. 

H the misconduct of your schoolfellow, would prompt you, 

when a man, to obey the laws of honor in fighting duels, or 
in all the other instances in which the World goes one way 
and the servants of Christ another. ... I know that this 
is often one of the consequences of a youth's being at a great 
School, especially if his parents are pious, that he has one set 
of principles and ways of going on in all respects at school 
and another at home. But it is chiefly for the very purpose 
of providing against this double system, that pious parents do 
not like to send their children to Public Schools." 

A somewhat similar note is struck by Thomas Mozley in 
his Reminiscences : " One result of a private education on the 
Wilberforces," he writes, " was their truthfulness " ; and he adds 
that a school large enough to create a social distance between 
masters and boys " is liable to suffer the growth of conventional 
forms of truth and conventional dispensations from absolute 
truth." Very few, he thinks, came out of a public school in 
those days, without learning the art of lying; and boys who 
would have shrunk from the idea of lying to a schoolfellow 
thought nothing of practising it on their natural enemy the 
schoolmaster. Newman noticed with sorrow that among his 
public school pupils, in those days, many would not invariably 
tell the truth, and he used to warn them not to acquire too 
great an ingenuity in inventing excuses. One of Mr. Hodson's 
pupils was Albert Way, a son of the famous Mr. Lewis Way. 
Another was Henry Hoare, afterwards celebrated for the part 
he took in the revival of Convocation in the Church of 
England. Samuel used to say that he owed everything to 
having been in the same class with Hoare, who, at the end of 
one of the terms, carried off the prize, and once also gave him 
a severe thrashing. This made Samuel determined that he 
would never again be beaten by Hoare in an examination, and 
he there and then set to work and formed such a habit of 
study and application, that he was never afterwards beaten. 
As for the thrashing, that too took place but once,, for the 
boys never quarreled again and remained friends in after life. 
At Stanstead Park, in Sussex, lived Lewis Way and his 
family. They were great friends of William Wilberforce, and 
Samuel, while a pupil of Mr. Hodson, used constantly to spend 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 725 

his Saturday afternoon and Sunday there. The Sargent family 
were also frequent visitors at Stanstead. On one occasion Lewis 
Way took his pupil to visit the Sargents at Graffham Rectory, 
and here Samuel met his future wife. 

The period that elapsed between his school and university 
life was one which left a very deep, nay probably an indelible 
impression upon his character and future life. His health was 
delicate and the air of Barmouth was recommended. Here he 
spent a summer with his father as his constant companion. A 
notebook still exists in which the young man recorded his 
father's conversations, his judgments of men, his views and 
criticisms upon books, sermons, and events. So close a study 
of such a man as William Wilberforce could not fail to effect 
the mind of an affectionate son, more especially at the impres- 
sionable age which Samuel had then reached. It is probably 
true to say that his father's influence during those weeks at 
Barmouth had its effect later on in preventing Samuel from 
following his brothers into the school of thought which ulti- 
mately led them into the Catholic Church. 

Henry Wilberforce never wearied of declaring that Samuel 
was in no sense a High Churchman. It was the custom to say 
that he was, and some of his acts may have given color to it. 
But, paradoxical as it sounds, these acts tended really to dis- 
prove the assertion. Samuel viewed the Church of England as 
comprehensive and capable of accepting nearly every view and 
nearly every practice short of Popery. This inclusiveness im- 
plied some things that were High Church, but it by no means 
meant that the man who believed in it belonged to the High 
Church party.* On the contrary, it was incompatible with 
High Churchmanship as understood by Newman or Keble, and 
that the future Bishop did by no means see, eye to eye, with 
them is evident to any reader of his biography. Thus at the 
close of 1837 he notes in his diary: "Henry's accounts of 
Froude's Remains truly grieve me. They will, I fear, do ir- 
reparable injury. He says : ' He seems to hate the Reformers.' " 
And another entry describes the book as showing an " amaz- 
ing want of Christianity, so far. They [the Remains} are Henry 
Martyn ^christianized." 

* He was orthodox on questions like Baptismal Regeneration (as is shown by the fact that 
he was opposed to the Gorham Movement), and he voted against the Divorce Bill when that 
iniquitous measure was before the House of Lords. 



72 6 > FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar., 

In 1838, again, we find Newman declining his further con- 
tributions to the British Critic. "To say frankly what I feel 
I am not confident enough in your general approval of the 
body of opinions which Pusey and myself hold, to consider it 
advisable that we should co-operate very closely. The land is 
before us, and each in our own way may, through God's bless- 
ing, be useful; but a difference of view, which, whether you 
meant it or not, has shown itself to others in your sermons 
before the University, may show itself in your writings also; 
and, though I feel we ought to bear differences of opinion in 
matters of detail, and work together in spite of them, it does 
not seem to me possible at once to oppose and to co-operate; 
and the less intentional your opposition to Pusey on a late oc- 
casion, the more impracticable does co-operation appear." 

Here at last was the rift in the lute which grew into the 
vast cleavage between Newman and Samuel Wilberforce. Most 
true does it seem, as Henry Wilberforce used to maintain, 
that his brother was not a High Churchman, and that he never 
lost the early Evangelical training which he had received from 
his father. 

These remarks, of course, are by way of anticipation, but 
they seem to be called for, and now we may return to the fu- 
ture Bishop's earlier career. 

Samuel Wiberforce began his Oxford life in Michaelmas 
Term, 1823, as a commoner of Oriel College. The Provost at 
that time was Dr. Copleston. The tutors were Hawkins, after- 
wards Provost, Endell, Tyler, and Jelf. Among the Fellows 
were John Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pu- 
sey, and H. Jenkyns. The Froudes and Merivale were among 
the undergraduates at the time. The Union Debating Society 
was then in its infancy, and Samuel very soon became a mem- 
ber. Almost immediately he made his mark, and it happened 
by a mere chance, as it appears, that his second speech ob- 
tained a notoriety most unusual in the case of undergraduate 
utterances. Hook,* the nephew of the famous Theodore Hook, 
editor of John Bull, happened to be on a visit to Oxford and 
he visited the Union during a debate. The question was the 
well-worn and now academic dispute between Charles I. and 
his opponents. Samuel seems in his speech to have taken nei- 

*It should be mentioned that in later years there was cordial friendship between S. 
Wilberforce and Hook. 






1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 727 

ther side very decidedly. But Hook, who hated the very name 
of Wilberforce, sent off an account of the speech to his uncle. 
It was published in John Bull, with comments to the effect that 
the young Wilberforces might be expected to take part in any 
revolution or treason. 

The article of course was directed, not against Samuel but 
against William Wilberforce. But the sons were so warmly at- 
tached to their father that they probably regarded it as an hon- 
or to share in any odium which his enemies might entertain 
towards him. The confidence between father and sons was un- 
limited. As Mozley tells us : " he was the joy of their life and 
the light of their eyes. Visitors have described, as the most 
beautiful sight they ever witnessed, the four young Wilber- 
forces stretching out their necks, one in advance of the other, 
to catch every word of the father's conversation, and note ev- 
ery change in his most expressive countenance. On such terms 
was he with them that a stranger might have thought their 
love and respect admitted of some improvement by a slight ad- 
mixture of fear." But surely, if the respect was there, we may 
suppose that it was their perfect love which banished fear. 

Samuel read steadily during his Oxford career, and closed 
it by taking a First in Mathematics and a Second in Classics. 
He became a candidate for a Balliol Fellowship in November, 
1826, and in the opinion of the University his success was 
highly probable; but the two vacancies were filled by the 
election of Francis Newman and Moberly. The Master of Bal- 
liol invited him to stand again, but before another vacancy oc- 
curred his plans had undergone a momentous change. As far 
back as 1821, when Samuel was still a boy, he had become at- 
tached to Miss Emily Sargent, and the years which had since 
elapsed had greatly strengthened the -attachment. His father 
was now strongly in favor of the marriage, and the idea was 
well received by the Sargent family, though they insisted on a 
little delay. At last it was determined that it should take 
place in the summer of 1828, and that Samuel should be or- 
dained deacon at Christmas of the same year. On June 1 1, 
1828, accordingly, Samuel Wilberforce and Emily Sargent were 
married in ^Lavington Church, the ""officiating clergyman being 
the celebrated Charles Simeon. The first few months of his 
clerical career were passed as curate of Checkendon, near 
Henley-on-Thames. Its comparative nearness to Oxford was a 



728 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar., 

I 

great advantage, especially as his brother Robert was still there, 
as one of the tutors of Oriel. When he had been less than 
two years at Checkendon, Samuel was offered the rectorship 
of Brighstone, in the Isle of Wight. Hither he went in June, 
1830. His principal parishioners were yeomen farmers who had 
inherited their properties from father to son from time imme- 
morial. One or two amusing experiences belong to this period. 
At first some of the Brighstone people were disposed to resent 
his youthful appearance. "Why, they've sent us a boy," was 
a remark which a very short experience made the speaker 
change for: "I thought he was a boy, but I see he's a man" 

Samuel Wilberforce was fond of relating a conversation be- 
tween a farmer and himself that occurred when he was visiting 
the parish immediately after his appointment. " Be you going 
to keep the meadow (a small one on the glebe) in your own 
hands?" "Why?" asked the new rector. "Well, parson," 
replied the farmer, " you see, when the late 'rector had it he 
used to cut his grass when I cut mine, and his being only a 
little piece, in course he gets his up while most of mine be lying 
about; and then sure enough the very next Sunday he claps 
on the prayer for rain so, if you don't mind, I'd like to rent 
that meadow from you." 

Another story illustrates the necessity of defining one's 
words, especially when speaking to those whose education has 
led them to attach but one meaning to them. Brighstone had 
at that time a bad reputation for wrecking and smuggling, and 
the rector felt it necessary to preach against the latter habit. 
His sermon was founded upon the text: "Render unto all 
their dues: custom to whom custom, etc." He was anxious to 
know what effect the sermon had had, and he got a friend 
to go about the parish to make inquiries among the parishioners. 
This friend found that the rector's exhortation had been well 
received, the only objection being that he did not practise what 
he preached ! " How so ? " asked Wilberforce's friend. " What 
has the rector done wrong ? " " Why, Sir," was the amazing 
reply, "you see he told us we ought to give custom to whom 
custom was due, and yet he doesn't deal in the village, but 
buys his things at Newport." 

Wilberforce's sojourn in the Isle of Wight did not interrupt 
the friendships he had formed at Oxford, and he had visits from 
Sir George Prevost, Frederick Oakeley, Richard Hurrell Froude, 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 729 

George Dudley Ryder, Henry Edward Manning, and others. 
On November 7, 1833, the last named became, through his 
marriage with Caroline Sargent, a relation as well as a friend. 
In this year Samuel lost his venerable father, and Mr. Sargent 
also died at the early age of 52. Thus husband and wife were 
in sorrow together. The young rector wrote a charming sketch 
of his father-in-law which is published as an introduction to 
Mr. Sargent's own biography of Henry Martyn, the celebrated 
Protestant missionary, and Robert and Samuel compiled a Life 
of their father. It is a monument of filial piety as well as a 
work of great historical value, but as one of its critics observed, 
the book does not err on the side of brevity, and Samuel him- 
self probably felt this when, many years later, he brought out 
a one-volume edition. While he was at Brighstone he also 
wrote his exquisite allegory entitled Agathos. 

In 1839 the Rector ot Brighstone was appointed Archdeacon 
of Surrey, a promotion of great importance and one which 
necessarily brought him more before the public. In May, 1840^ 
he was offered by the University of Oxford the Bampton Lec- 
tureship. In informing his brother Robert of this, he writes: 
" I have trembled and assented. I shall want your help." But 
the lectures were never delivered, for though during the first 
two months of 1841, he was busily engaged in their prepara- 
tion, an event occurred in the March of that year which 
crushed him to the ground. 

On Sunday, December 20, 1840, he preached his last ser- 
mon at Brighstone, for he had been offered and had accepted 
the Rectorship of Alverstoke and the Canonship of Winchester. 

On March 10, 1841, his beloved wife, Emily Wilberforce, 
died. Every year afterwards he remembered and kept the day. 
All his resignation to God's Will, all his devotion were roused 
by the poignancy of this grief. His private diary reveals the 
utter desolation of his soul at the moment of his agony. On 
the day itself he writes : " A day of unknown agony to me. 
Every feeling stunned. Paroxysms of convulsive anguish and 
no power of looking up through the darkness which had set- 
tled on my soul. March n. In some degree, yet but little, 
able to look to God, as the smiter of my soul, for my healing. 
Oh, may HE enable me to lead a life more devoted to His 
glory and my Master's work. May the utter darkening of my 
life, which never can be dispelled, kill in me all my ambitious 



73 o FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar., 

desires and earthly purposes, my love of money and power and 
place, and make me bow meekly to Christ's yoke." 

And the diary for Wednesday, the i7th, the day of the 
funeral at Lavington, contains the following graphic words: 
"The gaslight, one only, in the damp, dark morning; the Ca- 
thedral* in still majesty; muffled tread, hollow voices ; strange 
men bearing that beloved form from my door, and her mother 
and her husband seeing the hearse drive off with all that made 
life an earthly Paradise to me." 

Each year, as the loth of March came, his diary shows how 
fresh the grief remained. In 1853 he writes: "Woke early, 
with all the events of this day twelve years as fresh as yester- 
day before me. My vain hope that she slept. The heavier and 
more labored sleep. The dews of death." And in 1861, he 
writes: "My sweet one at rest. My own keeping through all 
these years. Oh, if my sins had not forced the enduring chas- 
tisement of this day, my life had been too bright for earth." 
On March 10, 1864, his diary records the events of a full and 
busy day, and yet the entry ends thus : " All my thoughts 
all day in the Close House at Winchester, 1841, seemed yes- 
terday." 

For over thirty-two years he mourned her who had made 
him so happy a home. Eight years after her death his sorrow 
found expression in lines which deserve to be better known than 
they are. These lines, dated "Lavington, February 10, 1849," 
may be found in Canon Ashwell's biography of Samuel Wilber- 
force. The Canon describes them as " too tender and too 
perfect to admit of one word of comment." 

This, the heaviest sorrow of his life, did not prevent his 
carrying on the work which he believed that God had given 
him. He accepted the grief that made his life " sunless as 
far as earth goes," from God's hand. " I wish to do my work 
meekly and cheerfully till I also am called," he writes in the 
first days of his agony, and that he retained this admirable 
resignation through the years that followed is abundantly evi- 
dent, though it was equally clear that his energy and cheer- 
fulness were due to no forgetfulness. When he had been four- 
teen years a widower we find him writing in his diary of a 
family gathering at Cuddesdon: "All save Herbert and my 
sainted wife together. Oh, how I long for her at such times, 

* Winchester, where Samuel Wilberforce was living at the time of his wife's death. 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 731 

and call on her as I lie awake at night to show herself to me, 
if she may, but once to gladden these weary eyes." "I had 
loved her from my boyhood. I had thought of her, I am 
certain, daily, at school and at college," he writes to his in- 
timate friend Charles Anderson. 

" Herbert," mentioned above, was Samuel Wilberforce's eld- 
est son, a young naval officer, who distinguished himself in 
the Baltic campaign. In the course of it the seeds ot con- 
sumption were sowed in him, and he died on February 29, 
1856, to the great grief of his family and of all who knew 
his lovable nature. 

The Bishop of Oxford, as Samuel Wilberforce became in 
1845, was celebrated as an orator and as one of the hardest 
working men that ever sat on the Episcopal bench. He had 
almost as great a reputation for geniality and humor, and 
many witty retorts have consequently been fathered upon him 
which he never uttered. It would be impossible in an article 
of this length to repeat half of those that were genuinely his ; 
and of course many of them need, for full appreciation, the 
glance of the eye, the tone of the rich and flexible voice, and 
the impromptu utterance that are lost in print. He possessed 
in an extraordinary degree the power of passing from one 
topic to another, giving his whole mind to each, and he could 
do this equally when one subject was light and playful and 
the other grave. Moreover, he was able, while conversing with 
a person in a room where others also were speaking, to listen 
to what was addressed to himself, and at the same time to 
gather enough of some other conversation to strike in and 
contribute to it. 

He touched life at so many points that it is very difficult 
to convey to a reader a full picture of his personality. He 
had a wonderful love and knowledge of natural history, a 
subject on which in the midst of a busy life he wrote articles 
for the Quarterly Review. Thomas Mozley tells us that he 
once heard Wilberforce and a friend "alternately name Pines 
and Taxodia till they had got over fifty." 

Perhaps no one ever traveled as much as he did, for his 
sermons and speeches were sought for in every part of Eng- 
land. To save time he carried on a portion of his immense 
correspondence in trains and carriages. He sometimes dated 
letters thus " Rail," adding the name of the nearest town. On 



732 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar., 

one occasion a correspondent, who knew neither him nor his 
ways, addressed a reply to one of the Bishop's letters: "S. 
Oxon Esqre., Rail, near Reading." The letter was neverthe- 
less delivered, with only the delay of a post or two, at the 
Bishop's London address. 

There are two little studies of character in Mozley's book 
which are worth quoting. I think the narrator meant them 
to illustrate the worldly-wisdom of one brother and the guile- 
lessness of the other. I must warn the reader, however, that 
Mozley's memory shows itself in some parts of his book very 
inaccurate. I well remember Cardinal Newman saying to me 
in reference to the Reminiscence 's t then just published: "I 
have been quite offended with some of the things he has said 
about your dear father." Rather than say nothing I replied 
that it was a pity that Mozley had not made further inquiries 
before writing. " It was not a case of inquiry," returned the 
Cardinal instantly, " the book professes to be Reminiscences" 
Still I am quite certain that Thomas Mozley retained a warm 
affection for my father, an affection dating from early days at 
Oriel and continuing, in spite of my father's conversion, to 
the end of his life. 

The first incident is one which may be true, but it is at least 
curious that I should never have heard of it until I met with 
it in Mozley's book. " Many years after, . . . when Henry 
had gone over to Rome, the two brothers, Samuel and Henry, 
gave a singular illustration of their respective shares in the 
wisdom of the world. They made a trip to Paris. Immediately 
after they had left their hotel to return home, there came an 
invitation to the Tuileries. It was telegraphed down the line, 
and brought them back to Paris, where they spent an evening 
at the Tuileries, and had a long talk with the Emperor. The 
Archbishop of Amiens was there, and engaged them to a re- 
ception at his palace, offering them beds. It was a very grand 
affair ; a splendid suite of rooms, brilliantly lighted, and all the 
good people of Amiens. The bedchambers and the beds were 
magnificent. Putting things together, and possibly remember- 
ing Timeo Danaos, the Anglican bishop came to the conclusion 
that his bed had probably not been slept in for some time or 
aired either. So he stretched himself down upon the coverlid 
in full canonicals, had a good night, and was all the better for 
it. Henry could not think it possible a Roman Archbishop 



1909.] FOUR CELEBRITIES 733 

would do him a mischief, and fearlessly, or at least hopefully, 
entered between the sheets. He caught a very bad cold, and 
was ill for some time after." The next quotation describes the 
future Bishop's cleverness in gaining his end in a small matter, 
characteristic no doubt of his ability in larger spheres. 

" Henry Wilberforce occasionally went to public meetings, 
for which he had received the usual circular invitation, and was 
frequently late. He was sure that, had he been in time, he would 
have been asked to take part in the proceedings, and as he was 
never without something to say, he was sorry to find himself 
in a crowd of [listeners, perhaps disappointed listeners. He 
noticed, however, that his brother Samuel, though quite as liable 
to be behind time as himself, nevertheless was always on the 
platform, and always a speaker. How could this be? Samuel 
explained it straight. He was perfectly sure that he had some- 
thing to say, that the people would be glad to hear it, and that 
it would be good for them. He was also quite certain of hav- 
ing some acquaintance on the platform. So immediately on 
entering the room he scanned the platform, caught somebody's 
eye, kept his own eye steadily fixed upon his acquaintance, and 
began a slow movement in advance, never remitted an instant 
till he found himself on the platform. The people, finding 
their toes in danger, looked round, and seeing somebody look- 
ing hard and pressing onwards, always made way for him. By 
and by there would be a voice from the platform : ' Please allow 
Mr. Wilberforce to come this way'; or, 'Please make way for 
Mr. Wilberforce.' Such a movement demanded, of course, great 
confidence, not to say self- appreciation, but anybody who is 
honestly and seriously resolved to do good must sometimes put 
a little force on circumstances. I should doubt whether Henry 
ever tried to follow his brother's example." 

It has been a common saying that Bishop Wilberforce was 
merely an ambitious courtier, a diner-out, and a society- loving 
man. Those who think thus understand nothing of his char- 
acter. They know nothing of the deep, unostentatious, self- 
denying piety which lay at the root of his character and formed 
the mainspring of his conduct. If he was the self-indulgent, 
worldly man that his enemies depict him, how is it that he was 
so careful to rise early in all weathers to spend an hour or 
more in private prayer ? How is it that we find him struggling 
with his faults in the presence of God, and above all accepting 



734 FOUR CELEBRITIES [Mar 

the unspeakable sorrow of his wife's death, because it was his 
Master's Will ? " I fear being scourged into devotedness" he writes 
in his diary, three years before the blow fell. " Lord, give me 
a will for Thee. I wish earnestly that I more wished to be as 
a flame of fire in Thy service, passionless for earth, and im- 
passioned for Thee. ... I could torture myself almost into 
madness if HE had not said ' As thy day/ etc." 

And on Good Friday, 1835, he writes in his diary: "Read 
three of Newman's sermons, etc. Read Pusey's tractate on 
Fasting am convinced by it, if not of the duty, yet certainly 
of the expediency of conforming to the rules of the Church on 
this point. I think it likely to be especially useful to me in 
three ways : first, in enabling me to realize unseen things, one 
of my special difficulties ; second, as likely to help me in prayer, 
in which I am greatly interrupted by an unbridled indolence; 
third, in helping me to subdue the body to the spirit, which I 
think very needful for me. I have also been brought to this 
conclusion both by seeing in my dearest father's journals his 
difficulties on this very point, when he set himself to serve 
GOD in earnest, and comparing it with the mortified and un- 
self- indulgent life he led afterwards. ... I have, therefore, 
determined, with God's help, to make a conscience of observ- 
ing the fasts of the Church. I set myself no exact limits of 
abstinence, intending only to practise on those days, with a 
view to self-conquest and humiliation, such self-denial, espe- 
cially in meats and drinks and the like, as I can do secretly 
and without injury to my health or present exertion. Help me, 
Lord, to act wisely and humbly in this matter, and as in Thy 
sight." 

Certainly no Catholic can read his life, lamentably Protest- 
ant as it is, without feeling what a splendid champion of the 
Church he would have been if only he had been led into the 
truth. And one puts down the volume with the sense that, as 
far as his lights allowed him, he was a sincere, earnest, and 
loving follower of Jesus Christ. 




BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON. 

BY JEANIE DRAKE. 

|HE fitful breeze whipped a strand of hair across 
the eyes of a woman hoeing in the field. She 
put it back patiently with a roughened brown 
hand, took another moment to wipe her forehead 
on her limp calico sleeve, and went on with her 
work. She was about twenty-five, though she looked twice 
those years, and at fifteen, when she married, was the prettiest 
maid in a wide region of drowsy valley and brooding mountain- 
side. 

Another woman, more than a little older, overlooking the 
worker indifferently from a hammock on the inn's upper veranda, 
had retained both tint and contour of girlish freshness. She 
swayed the hammock, twisting undulating folds of her silken 
tea-gown about her, and diffusing a delicate suggestion of the 
lilac and its fragrance. 

" Heavens ! " she murmured, " how much of this could one 
survive? Why must Tommy have had scarlet fever and need 
mountain air and quiet ? Children are always doing something 
tiresome! And the magazine is nothing but tommyrot this 
month." 

It was her favorite periodical, Swell Swaggerers, to which 
she was temporarily disloyal, as she took undoubted pleasure 
in its weakly vulgar attempts at cleverness. Her listless gaze 
roamed again afield. 

" Won't that woman ever go away ? If she didn't keep up 
that maddening digging, one could fancy her a scarecrow with 
flapping rags and sticks of arms and general grotesqueness. 
There goes her hair again why does it tumble down con- 
tinually ? " She must have ejaculated the last aloud, for the 
landlord who had come to the doorway, answered after a de- 
liberate minute or so. 

"Mebbe she ain't got no ha'r-pins. Mis' Flack's a mighty 
tidy woman, but she's powerful poor." 



BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON [Mar., 

"So I should judge," said the lady carelessly. "And 
you you hire her for field- work?" 

" She ain't a-doin' hit for fun/ 1 replied Pick Brattle im- 
perturbably. 

His slow, wide-eyed gaze surveyed the heavens above and 
the peaks beneath, the babbling creek and the rustling corn- 
rows, the uncouth, weather-beaten drudge in the field, and the 
graceful woman of the world beside him, and whether in ap- 
proval or condemnation of these works of the Creator no man 
might say. 

" Flack, now "he went on after a pause " he been dead 
near about two year. She jes woke up an' foun' him thet-away 
beside her one winter mornin*. Got five little uns oldest nine. 
I been a-givin' her a place to sleep" he indicated a one- 
room cabin across the pasture " but it takes hustlin' to feed 
an' cover six ef she don't hardly eat nothin* herself. Mighty 
willin' worker, Mis' Flack washin', cookin', scrubbing milkin', 
hoein' but I'm afeard she's a gittin' weakly." 

" That is no excuse," declared pretty Mrs. Warenham cold- 
ly, "for letting her hair fall down six times in one afternoon." 

The finality of this prevented Pick Brattle opening his 
mouth again if he had so intended ; and, after another inspec- 
tion of the universe, he took himself away unhurriedly. 

Upon his departure Mrs. Warenham gave the magazine at 
her hammock's foot a slight kick. " This is intolerable," she 
declared, "that I should see another wearisome sunset and eat 
another dreadful supper with this stupid crew ! But for the 
one advantage in the situation " secret complacence at this 
remembrance relaxed the pettish lines of her mouth, which 
softened further into dimples at the appearance on the veranda 
of the One Advantage. Tall he was and straight, though plain 
of feature, and wearing with his tramping suit something of 
the large kindliness of all outdoors. 

"Oh, Egbert," said the caressing voice plaintively, "how 
could you leave me so long alone ? " 

" Poor little cousin, it was rather selfish to go off fishing 
without you. It was too far for your small feet, though " 

" In to-day's sun ! I should think so ! But I forgive you on 
condition that I hear nothing of mossy nooks or crystal brooks 
or any other eccentricities of these oppressive mountains." 

He laughed tolerantly, his eyes appreciating her sweet looks. 






1909.] BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 737 

" ' As for me, 1 " he quoted, " I abhor the beauties of nature.' 
But your exile should end shortly now, in view of Tommy's 
weight and color." 

."You won't desert us, though, Egbert" quickly. "Since 
Tom died I have been lost without a man to guide and counsel 
me. It was such a godsend your coming back from Egypt 
just now." 

" I am glad to be of use to somebody. But I can't indeed, 
Grace, dawdle around springs or such places. If I am not to 
shoot or tramp, I must at least get near some books." 

" I am going straight from here to town and its libraries," 
she protested in sudden heroism, born of a shimmering vision 
of the Lawson fortune, with incidental feeling of a sort for its 
owner himself. " And and Tommy who worships you ! " If 
she did not quite blush, the downcast lashes gave that effect. 

" Tommy is a great little chap," remarked his father's cousin 
absently ; " but, hullo ! surely that's not the same woman I left 
hoeing before daybreak and at it still ? " 

" Isn't it pitiful ? " in such tones of womanly sympathy as 
Pick Brattle would not have recognized. " Poor thing, all day 
long toiling, and it showered two or three times, and she must 
have been drenched and then dried in the broiling sun." 

" Dear God ! " muttered the man. Once more Mrs. Flack's 
long coil of black hair unwound itself and she raised her aims 
to twist it; but this was her final effort for the day and for 
all time, as swaying she fell among the snapping corn-stalks. 
Over the balustrade and down a pillar her companion had 
swarmed before Mrs. Warenham's temperate curiosity was awak- 
ened. Then she shrugged her shoulders and went in to dress 
for the evening. But her blue eyes were sweetly grave when 
later she asked Egbert Lawson for news of the mountain wo- 
man. " She is lying in her cabin six of them huddling in 
one room, and the neighbors crowding. Typhoid, the doctor 
thinks, or overwork, or exposure to the sun, it does not mat- 
ter something that kills. The contrast to our lives it makes 
one feel guilty somehow " 

"I know" laying a soft hand of sympathy on his arm. 
"You told the doctor that you that I both of us" 

" Oh, of course ; but the futility" 

Fortuitous recollection came to her of a joyous face seen 
once under an apple-tree, a pretty child's, with black hair and 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 47 



738 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON [Mar., 

big gray eyes and rosy cheeks. " I should like to take charge 
of one of the children/' she said gently, "if if she dies." 

"Would you, Grace? How kind; but I knew your heart 
was as sweet as your face." He was near to such yielding to 
her beauty and charm for him, as in previous strength he had 
resisted, when Pick Brattle's comprehensive, disconcerting stare 
arrived to arrest this moment of Fate. It was, perhaps, well 
for Mr. Brattle that his charming guest was not Madame de 
Brinvilliers, for she regarded him in passing out as one might 
a saliently obnoxious feature in the near landscape. 

Shortly after that time Mrs. Flack lay under a beech tree 
upon the hillside, incessant labor at an end; and her children 
were dispersed among those who would take them, in valley 
or village, farm or factory. One, the prettiest, "Minervy" 
they called her, found herself dazed by the change in a lux- 
urious city apartment house. The only one near her who spec- 
ulated with sympathetic interest on what this amazing revolu- 
tion could mean to the childish mind was Egbert Lawson. 

" Oh," said her Lady Bountiful lightly, when he dropped a 
word of this wonder," she must realize that she is in clover. 
Imagine the relief from the corn-bread and bacon from the 
society of pigs and chickens and boorish clowns to my ser- 
vants' quarters and table." 

"Stupendous!" he assented. Indeed, meeting the child go- 
ing in and out after little Tom, he had not failed to admire 
her appearance in the new Alsatian costume and headdress. 
If her gray eyes looked a bit wild and confused, the exchange 
of music of mountain torrents for roar of elevated trains and 
surging street crowds, of the mountain night's darkness and in- 
effable hush, broken only by cockcrow now and then, for in- 
cessant nocturnal clangor and hum of life might well account. 

" Not crying, Minerva ? " he asked kindly, surprising once 
a big tear that welled and fell silently. 

" She wants to go barefooted," explained her mistress with 
some sharpness. "The child should understand the absurdity 
of such a thing here. She must get used to shoes." 

' Yessum " ; said Minerva, meekly submissive as the cattle 
of her native pastures, and went out in the pinching shoes after 
the nurse and little boy. 

" She is really a sort of dummy," declared Mrs. Warenham, 
"with a dummy's own stare. Her 'we-uns' and 'you* uns' 



1909.] BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 739 

and 'critters' are something impossible; and yesterday I 
caught her dipping snuff out of a brown paper." 

" How about school ? " Mr. Lawson asked. 

" Oh, if she is to be of the slightest use to me it is in fol- 
lowing Tom about and picking up his toys and things. She 
knows the park well enough now to trust him there with her 
when I need Dawson's services as maid." Her nerves were a 
little uncertain these days, owing to his own tardiness, which 
kept her living and entertaining on a scale somewhat wearing 
on a limited income. "But for my weakness for him I might 
be spending the Hardacre millions," she reflected, " and the 
ancient beau who encumbers them cannot be kept in suspense 
forever." Then she smiled with enchantment, to which Egbert 
once more yielded his misgivings. 

The torrid August sun, which had helped kill her mother, 
changed to mellow September and crisp October with a meas- 
ure of relief for the orphaned waif, whose lungs, used to free 
air, had gasped for breath sometimes in the much-furnished 
city rooms. "You look like a freckled fish," Mrs. Warenham 
had then assured her. It seemed a decided liberty that a de- 
pendent should manifest discomfort at temperature which the 
lady herself found reason for enduring. 

Another time she told the trembling Minerva: "I never 
get angry. It makes ugly lines. But your clumsiness would 
vex a saint. That is the third piece of bric-a-brac you have 
broken in a week. If you knock over one thing more with 
those scrawny elbows, Dawson shall whip you." Promptly there 
came a crash as the girl, endeavoring to avoid a statuette, ran 
into a vase. " Take her to your room, Dawson," commanded 
their mistress. Which order became more frequent, as hope 
deferred put an edge on the lady's temper, and as the child, in 
certainty of offending a mistress she dumbly adored, blun- 
dered ever more awkwardly. 

It was after such an interview with Dawson, stoically endured, 
that, wandering in the park behind the active Tommy, they 
came upon Mr. Lawson. While the boy ran to clasp his rel- 
ative's knees with a comrade's freedom, Egbert noted the grow- 
ing thinness of Minerva's young cheek, on which freckles now 
showed through lesser ruddiness. 

" Is this as beautiful as your mountains, Minerva ? " he asked. 

The child's gaze rested on the scarlets and yellows of au- 



740 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON [Mar., 

tumn foliage so like, and the stream of brilliant equipages so 
unlike, her home, and vainly swallowed at the lump in her 
throat. "You and Tommy are great friends/ 1 said the young 
man in hasty diversion, "are you not?" 

" I I thinks a powerful sight of Tommy. He's e'enamost 
our Balsam's bigness, an* they laughs jes as like's two peas. 
But Mis' Warnum she tole me she didn't want no talk 'bout 
we-uns at the Ridge." 

" Oh, it's all right to me. I like it. Where is Balsam 
now?" 

The little mountaineer's face kept its tenseness. " I don't 
hear a mite o* news. Thar's nobody here knows nobody thar. 
I I kep a-thinkin' of 'em those hot nights I didn't sleep ; 
but that's all, for I ain't a-knowin* nothin*. Balsam's jes as 
cute " The cool air from the lake blew on the child with 
a mocking suggestion of the resinous breath of the Ridge 
Country ; her hungry gaze went hopelessly to the far extent 
of the strange city's roofs and steeples, seeking and finding 
not; and accumulated homesickness, mounting beyond restraint, 
betrayed her into sudden sobs. The women of fashion who ad- 
mired Mr. Lawson, the distinguished explorer, might have 
stared to see him on a secluded park bench comforting a 
weeping little figure in Alsatian dress, while a small boy held, 
wondering, to his coat-tail. 

"You will feel better for a good cry," he told her pres- 
ently. " Now dry your eyes and let us be cheerful." He 
patted her shoulder, straightened the Alsatian bow, and gave 
joy to Tommy and her wonted self-control, at least, to Minerva, 
by a visit to the Zoo. 

"We met Cousin Egbert in the park," the little boy said to 
his mother, "and 'Nervy cwied, and we saw the monkeys." 

" Minerva cried ? " Mrs. Warenham repeated coldly. She 
shrugged her graceful shoulders. "Go away," she told the 
girl, "you begin to be a nuisance. Stay out of my sight all 
you can." And Minerva went henceforth with an ever op- 
pressive sense of guilt upon her. 

" Cold agrees with the youngster," decided Mr. Lawson, 
later in the season, pinching Tommy's firm cheek. " He looks 
like an apple set in fur. But Minerva's dress a credit to your 
taste, I'm sure but isn't it a bit light?" 

" My dear Egbert, I think you may trust me to take care 



1909.] BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 741 

of a dependent especially a child/ 1 said his cousin's widow 
plaintively. And she drew him into the easiest chair and flavored 
his tea just as he liked it, and talked the while in low, caress- 
ing tones, so that, when she presently left the flower-scented 
room to change her white silk for outdoor dress, he had dis- 
missed his uneasiness about little Minerva with the reflection : 
" Decidedly I am a meddlesome ass." 

On the return of his hostess, in becoming gray velvet and 
fur, she found him standing by the crackling wood fire ab- 
sently fingering a mass of blooms. " Mr. Hardacre's violets ! 
Oh, take care ! Thank you ! " pinning them carefully on her 
fur. " My venerable escort would not forgive their absence." 
His hand had touched hers he took it into his firm grasp: 
" Grace ! " he began impetuously and the door swung open 
and a servant announced: "Mr. Hardacre." 

As her elderly admirer handed her into his sleigh, "Dine 
with me to-night," she called to Mr. Lawson. Her eyes 
sparkled, the sleigh-bells jingled a joyous accompaniment to 
her hopes of the near future. " Lovelier than your flowers," 
said Mr. Hardacre fatuously, not knowing that her thoughts 
were with the tall figure they passed at the park gate. 

Meanwhile the two children had been roaming along the 
remoter footpaths, Tommy the rosier for the frosty air, Min- 
erva blue and pinched from less cold than the little moun- 
taineer had hardily enjoyed in her native wilds. 

" Sure ye look sick. Ye'd better get in," advised a genial 
policeman, who often talked with the pair. 

"Mis' Warnum, she said we-uns was to stay out the en- 
durin' mornin'," Minerva repeated dully and parrot- like. 

"Well, then, keep a-stirrin' or ye'll get froze." 

The children knew from Dawson that they should not go 
near the water unless she were with them ; but, " Me want 
f'owers," Tommy announced, spying a dash of scarlet holly- 
berries on the white slope above the lake. 

"You kain't go Alongside the pond," said Minerva. Tom- 
my twisted his chubby features preparatory to a howl, and 
the little girl knew well she dared not take him home tear- 
stained. "Wait here, then "hastily " an 1 keep plumb still, 
an* I'll git 'em." She went around the water's edge and up 
the untrodden snow-hill to the holly- tree. 



742 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON [Mar., 

Tugging at the thorny branches she did not at first per- 
ceive the little fellow's attempt to follow her. " Git down, 
thar ! " she cried, " Git down ! " and his foot slipped and he 
rolled on the snow over and over and into the lake. Imme- 
diately she fled down the slope, and as he came to the sur- 
face plunged in after. Fortunately her first cry had reached 
the friendly policeman who came sprinting to the rescue. 
Mr. Lawson, walking home in some buoyancy of spirits, re- 
ceived one dripping, unconscious little form from Officer Han- 
Ion, who supported another. 

" Thanks be ! " he told the gentleman piously, " that the girl 
could swim." Occupants of a sleigh speeding along a neigh- 
boring driveway were attracted by the little group on the lake 
border. 

" Some child in trouble," suggested Mrs. Warenham sweetly. 
"Shall we inquire? I am so interested in children." 

" It is like you," responded Mr. Hardacre tenderly, " you 
who are guardian angel to that orphan child ! " 

" Oh, oh ! " she cried, when they stopped, " it's Tommy, my 
Tom ! " The policeman relinquished his burden to the very 
pretty woman in gray. 

" I ain't dead, mamma," said the little chap, opening his 
eyes. 

Mr. Hardacre heaped fur rugs about the two. The slim, 
awkward, shivering girl's figure, in pitifully drenched Alsatian 
dress, supported by Mr. Lawson, looked at her mistress, whose 
icy glance ignored her. " You'll follow, Egbert," called the lady, 
and was driven rapidly away. The expression on Mr. Lawson's 
irregular features was a curious one, as Minerva again became 
unconscious, a lock of her wet black hair falling across her 
face. 

"Under my care," he explained at the Children's Hospital. 
" Yes, please, a private room." 

When Tommy had long been at play again, the life of his 
little deputy nurse hung still in the balance. " Pneumonia," 
the doctor said, 4< with complications. Mustn't see her mistress 
on any account. Would revive patient's delirious fancy that 
she had killed the boy." The crisis past, Egbert Lawson sat 
every day beside the child, and, her thin hand in his, heard 
her artless revelations. She gave him, unawares and quite un- 



1909.] BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 743 

complainingly, some idea of the frequency of Dawson's disci- 
pline and of the extent of her own loneliness. 

"You-uns all in this yere town/' she said, "jes natchally 
thinks a heap of sech as Tommy ; but Mis' Warnurn, now, she 
couldn't help despisin' common kind like me. More she tole 
me to look out thar, more I seemed to run into them that 
purty crockeries. My maw, Mist' Lawson you mightn't believe 
it but my maw, she used to pat my head sometimes and tell 
me I was a good little gal. But Dawson, she says I'm a him- 
pudent beggar an' nasty poorhouse trash." 

The unconscious imitation of Dawson's London accent did 
not bring a smile to the young man's compressed lips. " Why 
doesn't she get better ? " he asked the doctor. That gentle- 
man raised his brows, " Some sort of depression rather unnat- 
ural in a child. But if she doesn't respond pretty soon" he 
touched his lungs and heart expressively. 

" See here," said Mr. Lawson next day, " what a nice doll 
just would come with me." 

The little patient thanked him, but the gift presently fell 
from listless hands. 

" I dremp* las' night," she told him, " thet the men was on 
a coon-hunt, an* we little uns, we crep out to listen to the 
hound dogs a-barkin' up on Big Ben. An' thar was a gret, 
white moon over the mounting, an* a owl a-hootin' down by 
the crik, an* you could smell the trees. Did you ever smell 
the woods by night ? " She closed her eyes in a wan smile. 

"Listen, Minerva. Hurry and get strong, and just as soon 
as you are up and dressed, we will go you and I and see 
Big Ben." 

She trusted him with a child's sureness of instinct; and 
from that time amazed the doctor by her rapid recovery. 

One day Mrs. Warenham, a thought paler than usual, sat 
with this note in her fingers: 

DEAR GRACE: As you know my erratic habit of wander- 
ing, it will not surprise you to learn that I have taken a fancy 
to see the Blue Ridge in winter; and, incidentally, to restore 
Minerva Flack to her own people. You will pardon the liberty, 
I am sure. From that region I shall probably seek passage by 
the first outgoing steamer for the Mediterranean, as Egypt 



744 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON [Mar. 

draws me again irresistibly. Leaving best wishes for yourself 

and Tommy, 

Sincerely, 

EGBERT LAWSON. 



After a while she threw this into the fire and sat down to 
write her acceptance of Mr. Hardacre. 

At the same time Pick Brattle stood in front of his inn with 
Mr. Lawson, both of them watching a little, black- haired girl, 
who prattled as she led her small, rosy brother across the foot- 
log, following Mrs. Brattle with the milk pails. 

" We'll take care of Balsam and of her/ 1 said Pick Brattle, 
"jes the same as we would of our own ef we had any. Your 
money'll be used, Sir, jes as you say for schoolin 1 an* ever'- 
thing right. The gal's eyes is brighter already, and you kin 
mos' see the flesh a-growin'." 

Again his gaze roved comprehensively over snow- topped 
mountains and spicy evergreens, the torrent tumbling along its 
rocks and the breath of a wagoner's team smoking upward at 
the ford. " It's a mighty bad thing thet thar lonesomeness, 
with 'everything plumb flat an* strange around ye, an 1 nothin* 
friendly like. Yes, sir; I've knowed folks die of it." 




LITERATURE AND MORALITY. 

BY R. L. MANGAN, S.J. 

|HE New York Review for September, 1907, con- 
tained an article, " A Starting Point in Ethics," 
in which the writer pleaded for a return to the 
Aristotelian point of view for the purposes of 
apologetic. It was urged that, whilst amongst 
ourselves we could still hold as the proximate norm of con- 
duct the dictates of our rational nature, in the face of our 
friends the enemy we might do well to emphasize more the 
effect of moral action on the perfection of the rational spirit, 
and look rather to function than to duty. Aristotle does not 
ask of a certain course of conduct whether it is forbidden by 
the law of God, still less whether it will increase pleasure, but 
only whether it will improve function. If it tends to perfect 
the highest part of man, if it is the activity of the soul in 
accordance with what is best in human nature, that action is 
good conducive to the "well-being" of man. This, it has 
been pointed out, gives us a less immediate norm of conduct. 
That is true; but we are not concerned with a new basis of 
ethics, but with a method of approaching those to whom the 
Catholic system of morality is practically without meaning. 

It is only a question of accustoming ourselves to present 
our ethics, for the purpose of apologetic, in a different order 
from that in which we usually study them. Let us learn 
how to start with the moral facts as we find them, and to keep 
out, at least from our initial treatment, all reference to God, 
to a future life, to obligation, duty, conscience, sin. When 
we have finished with ethics proper, with " happiness," with 
eudaemonism, we can go on to deontology (or the science of 
what ought to be done) and to that Natural Theology which 
furnishes the only explanation of the actual phenomena of 
conscience. We need not begin by working out the connec- 
tion between God's law and human conscience, or between 
conscience and conduct.* 

* " A Starting Point in Ethics." By Rev. C. Plater, New York Review, September, 1907. 



746 , LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar., 

Oliver Wendell Holmes said long ago that the world would 
go back to Aristotle, and this suggestive essay reminds us 
that in the theory of the well-being of the soul, its activ- 
ity in the highest manner, we may perhaps be able to con- 
struct for the "tired rationalist" a path through the jungle 
of contradictions and misunderstanding in the matter of liter- 
ature and morality. 

Catholics, with revelation to aid them, may view the truth 
from many points of view. The important thing to determine 
is how to present it to those who are not so happily placed. 
If David cannot walk in the armor of Saul, it is better that 
he should face the giant of unbelief with confidence in God 
and a few smooth pebbles from the brook. We are confronted 
with men who cannot at once take in the idea of an Omnipo- 
tent Judge, dispensing reward and punishment. To put such a 
thought before them is to preclude all hope of conviction. 
They fall back into the attitude expressed, or tacitly implied, 
in so much modern verse : 

I shrug my shoulders and acquiesce 
In things that are. I believe the bond 

For us is a common weariness, 

A light despair of the things beyond. 

We greet with laughter the ancient curse 
Knowing it might be worse. 

The Commandments are, for the most part, stated nega- 
tively, and they were written on tables of stone small enough 
to be carried by Moses down the mountain side ; but, in real- 
ity, they are found to be very positive finger-posts to the city 
of Mansoul. The Catholic may well be grateful for the posi- 
tion from which he is able to see that man's proximate end, 
his attempt to reach the highest form of the good to which his 
reason points, is referable to and summed up in God Himself. 
But, for the purposes of apologetic, it is not necessary to put 
forward that view to those who are not ready for it. 

The question of the relation of art and morality has exer- 
cised the mind of man, probably from the time when he first 
began to practice morality or to study art. But, if one may 
judge by the work of living artists, that question is as far 
from solution as ever. The cry of " Art for Art's Sake " has 
been constantly repeated and denied, and as constantly mis- 



1909.] LITERATURE AND MORALITY 747 

understood, both by its advocates and its opponents; one side 
asserts that morality has no relation whatsoever to art, the 
other that art must be the conscious servant of its mistress if 
it is to live long and bring forth fruit worthy of its powers. 
We seem to have lost sight of the truth that though, as St. 
Ignatius says in the Exercises, (t the other things on the face 
of the earth were created for man's sake and in order to aid 
him in the prosecution of the end for which he was created," 
art as a living and personal, not a dead and symbolic, instru- 
ment, may best assist man to reach his goal by achieving its 
own proximate end. We propose to try and throw some 
light on a vexed question by an examination of that particu- 
lar pleasure called aesthetic, which is admitted to be the aim 
and proximate end of all art. 

In the time of Aristotle the traditional theory was that 
poetry had a distinct moral purpose ; it was essentially di- 
dactic. Homer, for example, was a great teacher of the rules 
of moral life. So strongly was this view held that even Aris- 
tophanes feels obliged to claim for comedy that it is "ac- 
quainted with justice/ 1 and for himself that he is a moral and 
political adviser, the best poet the Athenians ever had, be- 
cause he had the courage to tell them what was right. His 
objection to Euripides is substantially the same as our objec- 
tion to-day to the extreme realistic school, expressed by Mr. 
George Meredith in the epigram, "The world imagines those 
to be at nature's depths who are impudent enough to expose 
its muddy shallows." Plato, again, is so preoccupied with the 
erection of his ideal state, and the ethical effect of poetry as 
a training for the young, that he has not given us a clear ex- 
position of the value of poetry or of fine art generally, con- 
sidered on aesthetic grounds alone. Aristotle is the first to 
distinguish between the political or educational value of art 
and the aesthetic pleasure which is its proximate end. 

Aristotle, as our enquiry has shown, was the first who at- 
tempted to separate the theory of aesthetics from that of 
morals. He maintains consistently that the end of poetry is 
refined pleasure. In doing so he severs himself decisively 
from the older didactic tendency of Greece. But in de- 
scribing the means to the end he does not altogether cast off 
the earlier influence. The aesthetic representation of char- 



748 . LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar., 

acter he views under ethical lights, and the different types of 
character he reduces to moral categories. Still he never 
allows the moral purpose of the poet or the moral effects of 
his art to take the place of the artistic end. If the poet fails 
to produce the proper pleasure, he fails in the specific func- 
tion of his art. He may be good as a teacher, but as a poet 
or artist he is bad.* 

Mr. Butcher goes on to show how the prevailing didactic 
theory became firmly established in the Roman world, was 
translated thence to France, was adopted in England from 
the French, until the independent spirit of Dryden once more 
formulated the opposite view in his Defence of an Essay of 
Dramatic Poetry : "I am satisfied if it (verse) cause delight; 
for delight is the chief if not the only end of poesy; instruc- 
tion can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only 
instructs as it delights." 

To-day, the opposite poles are perhaps best represented by 
Tolstoy with his uncompromising opposition to hedonism in 
any form, and by Walter Pater and his school, whose funda- 
mental error is that they confuse the end of art with the end 
of life. The conclusion to his volume on the Renaissance is 
well known but it will bear repeating : 

Well ! we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says ; we are 
all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite re- 
prieve les hommes sont tons condamnes a mort avec des sursis 
indefinis ; we have an interval, and then our place knows us 
no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in 
high passion, the wisest, among the children of this world, in 
art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that 
interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the 
given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense 
of life, ecstacy, and sorrow ot love, the various forms of en- 
thusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come 
naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion that it 
does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied con- 
sciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of 
beauty, the love of art for art's sake, has most ; for art 
conies to you professing frankly to give nothing but the 
highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply 
for those moments' sake. 

* Butcher : Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 234. 



1909.] LITERATURE AND MORALITY 749 

The pernicious effect of such frank hedonism on the lives 
and writing of some of his contemporaries is too well known 
to call for further comment, and it has frightened many of our 
Catholic writers into the opposite error, that art must have for 
its proximate end the service of morality and religion and noth- 
ing but that. We are afraid of the independence of art, be- 
cause its abuse has been so flagrant. But as long as we re- 
member that art is not the whole but only a part of life, there 
seems to be no reason why we should not agree with Professor 
Bradley in his inaugural lecture on the Art of Poetry, given at 
Oxford a few years ago, when he claimed that art is its own 
end. We shall find that just as in ethics the perfecting of the 
rational nature by individual acts pushes a man gradually God- 
ward, so art, if it fulfills its aim, will issue in something of 
which it perhaps never dreamed, and will possess that " par- 
ticipation of divineness" which Milton claimed for poetry. 

"All art and therefore literature," it has been said, "may 
be defined objectively as the creation of the beautiful, and sub- 
jectively as the creation of aesthetic pleasure"; and as the lat- 
ter is the effect of the former, we may, by a consideration of 
the nature of aesthetic pleasure, arrive at some idea of the man- 
ner in which the artist's soul must act in order to produce the 
beautiful. " The impression of the beautiful," says Father La- 
couture,* "is the joy arising from the perception of order in 
its splendor." This joy does not spring from the action of an 
isolated faculty, but the whole soul takes part in it, as Ruskin 
saw, because the impression of the beautiful brings all the fac- 
ulties into harmony. It is the immediate and disinterested in- 
tellectual grasp, following upon perception, which distinguishes 
the aesthetic pleasure from every other. Disinterested, we say, 
because there is in it no trace of desire, jealousy, or egotism. 
St. Thomas Aquinas says: 

De ratione boni est quod in eo quietetur appetitus, sed ad 
rationem pulchri pertinet quod in eius aspectu quietetur ap- 
petitus. 

* We prefer to say, with Father Verest, that beauty is the fineness of truth. Cf. Pater : 
" Truth ! There can be no merit, no craft at all without that. And further, all beauty is in 
the long run only fineness of truth, what we call expression, the finer accommodation of 
speech to that vision within." Essay on Style. This more for clearness" sake than for any- 
thing else, as Father Lacouture rightly objects that truth is after all only order in ideas. Pa- 
ter's conception of truth seems to us not wide enough, and we quote him merely for the hap- 
py equivalent of la splendeur du Vrai. 



750 LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar., 

And again: 

Bonum est id quod simpliciter complacet appetitui, pul- 
chrum autem id cuius apprehensio placet. 

This harmonizing of the faculties is akin, in its effect, to 
that purgation by pity and terror, that cleansing of the soul, 
which Aristotle posited as the end of tragedy. ^Esthetic pleas- 
ure frees the soul from brute inclinations and replaces them by 
order and harmony ; it lets " the ape and tiger die." 

So whensoever the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul, 
David took his harp and played with his hand, and Saul was 
refreshed and was better, for the evil spirit 'departed from 
him. 

That is an aesthetic as well as an historical fact; whether 
St. Teresa was as proficient on the flute and tambourine which 
she used to play on feast days, is a matter for conjecture, but 
we may be sure that a woman at once so sensible and so sen- 
sitive to beauty, recognized the psychological effects of beau- 
tiful music, as also would St. Francis, who, we are told, used 
to ask Brother Pacific to play the guitar. There is no need to 
labor the point. The average man who has, by sight or hear- 
ing, been brought into contact with the beautiful knows by ex- 
perience the peculiar quality of the pleasure, and all who have 
" put away the things of a child " without forgetting them, know 
that the quantity of aesthetic pleasure is regulated by the men- 
tal and moral balance of the soul. Its cause is more difficult 
to gauge, though it would seem almost certainly to lie in the 
harmonious action of all the faculties at once. All pleasure 
may be said to arise from the free activity of one or other of 
the functions of our complex life, finding in action the good 
conformable to its nature. The intellect may find pleasure in 
the pursuit or possession of truth, the will in victory over temp- 
tation, but the activity of isolated faculties is not purged of all 
egoistic elements, and does not result in that peculiar pleasure 
which we call aesthetic. If the intellect reposes in the posses- 
sion of that which is true, the resulting joy does not seem to 
pass beyond the bounds of the intellectual faculty, and produce 
that distinctly sensible emotion, that real trembling of the soul, 
which is felt in the presence of the beautiful. This is a fact 
of experience, verifiable by any man of average intellect and 
sensibility who cares to compare, for example, the difference 



1909.] LITERATURE AND MORALITY 751 

between a theological definition of prayer and Millet's "An- 
gelus." 

If, then, this peculiar pleasure is due to the concomitant 
action of the soul's faculties acting in harmony upon an object, 
we may presume that, as art is a message from soul to soul, 
the production of the beautiful will be due to the harmonious 
and complete action of the spiritual powers of the artist's soul. 
At once we get an objective criterion of judgment, and may 
hold with Brunetiere against Lemaitre and Anatole France and 
their " adventures of a soul in a land of masterpieces," that the 
beauty of a literary work is something independent of the 
reader, something objective and absolute. To say this is not 
to deny the value of the subjective impression of the two French 
critics. Each of them may be, for aught we know, that man 
of sound aesthetic instinct whom Aristotle makes the final court 
of appeal, as he makes the man of moral perception the stan- 
dard of right. What we assert is that the subjective impres- 
sion is based upon objective facts, of which some analysis can 
be made. 

What is it in literature which goes to constitute the fine ex- 
pression of truth? On this question we could have no better 
guide than Father George Longhaye, whose work Theorie des 
Belles- Lettres is not, we fear, as well known by Catholics as it 
deserves to be. Speech is in itself the image of human nature, 
corporal by the sound, Vair battu, as Bossuet says, spiritual by 
the thought. It conveys to the reader an object and also the 
revelation of a soul. Whether he will or no, the writer reveals 
his soul in every utterance of any worth, he draws the thing 
as he sees it. His vision is his own, whether he sees all things 
that they are very good, or some particular thing that it is 
very bad. No matter what his theory of art or morals, he 
wishes to produce a certain effect, an effect of power and com- 
pleteness. He wishes to influence another soul. Virgil, it is 
said, when near to death, asked his friend to burn the -<Eneid, 
but he was not, we may be sure, moved by any foolish notion 
of art divorced from all appeal to his fellow- men. That idea 
is modern and does not arise from that "passionate desire of 
unattainable perfection " which Mr. Mackail notes as charac- 
teristic of Virgil. How then does speech produce this wonder- 
ful and complete action ? By affecting all the faculties of the 
reader at once. Let us take an example. 



752 i LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar., 

A chronicler of the time might tell us that there was once 
a certain officer of the English army named George Osborne. 
He had married a young girl whose ardent love he did not 
return and to whom he was, in heart, at least, unfaithful. On 
the night before the battle of Waterloo, stirred by the emo- 
tions produced by the chances of war, he went to his wife's 
room to say good-bye, and thinking she was asleep he ap- 
proached the bed and bent down over the pillow. His wife 
was awake and embraced him affectionately. Compare this with 
Thackeray : 

She had been awake when he first entered the room, but 
had kept her eyes closed so that even her wakefulness should 
not seem to reproach him. But when he had returned, so 
soon after herself, too, this timid little heart had felt more at 
ease, and turning towards him as he stepped softly out of the 
room, she had fallen into a light sleep. George came in and 
looked at her again, entering still more softly. By the pale 
night-lamp he could see her sweet pale face the purple eye- 
lids were fringed and closed, and one round arm, smooth and 
white, lay outside the coverlet. Good God ! how pure she 
was ; how gentle, how tender, and how friendless ! and he 
how selfish, brutal, and black with crime ! Heart-stained 
and shame-stricken he stood at the bed's foot, and looked 
at the sleeping girl. How dared he who was he, to pray for 
one so spotless ! God bless her ! God bless her ! He came 
to the bedside and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, 
lying asleep ; and he bent over the pillow noiselessly towards 
the gentle pale face. Two fair arms closed tenderly round his 
neck as he stooped down. " I am awake, George," the poor 
child said, with a sob fit to break the little heart that nestled 
so closely by his own. She was awake, poor soul, and to 
what? At that moment a bugle from the Place of Arms be- 
gan sounding clearly, and was taken up through the town ; 
and amidst the drums of the infantry, and the shrill pipes of 
the Scotch, the whole city awoke. 

Wherein does the difference lie? In the first the writer 
appeals only to the intelligence, he is reporting facts and noth- 
ing more; whereas Thackeray is bringing into play all the 
faculties of his soul in due subordination, and the reader's 
soul, in consequence, is moved in the same way. Our imagi- 
nation is stirred to picture to itself the dimly-lighted room, 
with its two tragic figures in striking contrast the pure, un- 



1909.] LITERATURE AND MORALITY 753 

selfish girl and the selfish, indulgent husband. A few lines 
put us into relation with the adventures of their souls, the 
sensibility has been touched, the whole man has been thrilled 
by awe, pity, and admiration. The ear has taken its part in 
the symphony. Thackeray, often so careless in style, is " lifted 
to the height of his high argument/* and the varied music of 
his rhythms assists the expression of his thought. Most im- 
portant of all, the intelligence holds the mastery in its search 
for essential truth. There is nothing at which the will revolts 
and the imagination and the sensibility are held in check, be- 
ing granted only that range of liberty which will enable them 
to help to produce the final effect. Intellect, will, imagination, 
sensibility, ear, have combined to produce a pleasure that is 
unique, because they have in the writer's creation acted in 
harmony, conforming to the true character of the object, and 
to the balanced and healthy nature of the human soul. 

This theory of the Hierarchy of the Faculties is, we think, 
the most philosophical yet propounded, and, to give honor to 
whom honor is due, it cannot be doubted that the French 
Jesuit taught it long before one whose name is better known, 
the late M. Ferdinand Brunetiere. The present writer remem- 
bers well a certain day some ten years ago, when Father Long- 
haye entered his lecture room with a letter which, judging from 
his manner, evidently contained news of importance. It was 
from the French academician. After some graceful compli- 
ments on Father Longhaye's work, it went on to say that the 
writer intended to propose to the Academy that his History of 
French Literature in the Seventeenth Century was worthy of 
the prize for the best work on literature. The reader's voice 
trembled a little as he spoke of M. Brunetiere's generosity and 
asked his hearers to pray that God would grant him light to 
see the truth. That the grace was given and received is known 
to everybody. So much for anecdote. We cannot help think- 
ing that Brunetiere must have been influenced by the more im- 
portant of the author's two books on literature when we find 
him writing as follows: 

What properly constitutes a classic is the equilibrium in him 
of all the faculties that go to make the perfection of the work 
of art, a healthiness of mind, just as the healthiness of the body 
is the equilibrium of the forces that resist [death. A k classic 
TOL. LXXXVIII. 48 



754 LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar., 

is a classic, because in him all the faculties find their legiti- 
mate function without imagination overstepping reason, 
without logic impeding the flight of imagination, without 
sentiment encroaching on the rights of good sense, without 
the matter allowing itself to be despoiled of the persuasive 
authority it should borrow from the charm ot the form, and 
without the form ever usurping an interest that should belong 
to the matter. Essays in French Literature. 

It may be said that Matthew Arnold had some inkling of 
this when he stated as the characteristics of high quality in 
poetry, the superior character of truth and seriousness of mat- 
ter allied to superiority of diction and movement marking its 
style and manner. But without undervaluing the debt which 
English criticism owes to Arnold, we doubt whether he saw 
the philosophical bearing, the depth and reach of the theory 
as propounded by his French contemporary. He certainly did 
not learn it from Sainte-Beuve, and it is probably due to his 
sound aesthetic instinct and his gift of narrating with beauty of 
style " the adventures of a soul in the land of masterpieces.*' 
Two other French critics of equal if not greater power have 
fallen into error on this point. Taine would put imagination 
on the same level with the other faculties, and refuses to allow 
its subordination to any other authority. Paul Bourget, in his 
younger days, committed the same mistake. In his Essais de 
Psychologic Contemporaine t quoted by Father Longhaye, he says : 

II y a plaisir, certes, et comme une ivresse a voir une faculte 
grandir dans une cerveau jusqu' a devenir demesure'e. 

And again : 

ly'histoire de la litterature, dit-on, est une longue et inutile 
demonstration de ces deux verites contradictoires (sic.) que 
les intelligences n'ont de valeur que par la predominance 
d'une faculte et que toute faculte predominate finit par 
steriliser 1 'intelligence qu'elle absorbe. 

This last paradox has a considerable element of truth. 
Literature, as Cardinal Newman has shown, is no earthly para- 
dise. In his plea for the inclusion of literature in a university 
education he states the case against himself as only Newman 
could : 

I wish this were all that had to be said to the disadvantage 
of Literature ; but while nature physical remains fixed in its 



1909.] LITERATURE AND MORALITY 755 

laws, nature moral and social has a will of its own, is self- 
governed, and never remains any long while in that state 
from which it started into action. Man will never continue 
in a mere state of innocence ; he is sure to sin, and his litera- 
ture will be the expression of his sin, and this whether he be 
heathen or Christian. Christianity has thrown gleams of 
light on him and his literature, but it has not converted him but 
only certain choice specimens of him, so that it has not changed 
the characters of his mind or of his history ; his literature is 
either what it was, or worse than what it was, in proportion 
as there has been an abuse of knowledge granted and a re- 
jection of truth. On the whole, then, I think it will be found, 
and ever found, as a matter of course, that literature, as such, 
no matter of what nation, is the science or history, partly and 
at best of the natural man, partly of man in rebellion. 

The theory of the ordered powers of the soul does not lose 
sight of original sin written large over the history of literature. 
Far from it. It is precisely because it keeps those lamentable 
results in view, that it asserts that such results authorize and 
justify nothing. The fact is undeniable, but it can never prove 
a right. Human nature is still, at bottom, sane and healthy, 
still, like St. Paul, wills the good which, perhaps, it does not, 
aiming higher than it ever reaches, sensitive always to truth 
and beauty. But Bourget strikes a much more important truth 
in the last sentence, where he says that the predominant faculty 
ends by sterilizing the intellect. It will, we take it, be con- 
ceded even by the thoroughgoing hedonist, that the faculties 
of the soul differ in rank and importance. Man is of soul and 
body, and the spiritual faculties of intellect and will are higher 
in rank and importance than the five senses by whose service 
his soul is brought into action. But man is not pure spirit 
working in the cramping limits of the body, a soul in gaol, as 
Plato thought. 

From the true substantial union between the two arise the 
Imagination and the Sensibility, whose concurrence is required 
for full activity. Le style est rhomme meme, as Buffon said, the 
homo universalis compound of spirit and matter, not in antag- 
onism but co-operating, when rightly used, to his highest aim. 

What is he but a brute 
Whose flesh has soul to suit, 
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play ? 



756 $ LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar., 

To man propose this test 
Thy body at its best, 
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? 

At the head of the hierarchy stands the intellect, laboring 
and slow of movement in comparison with the sweeping intui- 
tions of pure spirit, but in itself the faculty which makes us a 
little lower than the angels. The goal of truth is reached by 
a long and circuitous route. Man must toil, " like a miner in 
a landslip," comparing, contrasting, deducing ideas, eager for 
truth, impatient of error and insincerity. Along this perilous 
road he must travel from thought to thought, avoiding pleasant 
but misleading byways, banishing with courage the easy ex- 
cuse to halt and pitch his tent halfway to the object of his 
search. A mere matter of logic, no doubt, but logic, lucidity, 
is the first note of style. But the morality of style, as John 
Morley says, goes " deeper than chill fools suppose." It lies 
not only in the order and movement of our thoughts, but in 
the manner in which we conceive each single one of them. 
Before we have begun to arrange and group them, a hidden 
wizard has been at work simplifying or ornamenting the mate- 
rial of experience. The confessional is a stone of scandal to 
many non-Catholics, but all who write the adventures of a soul 
go to confession, not to one with whom the secret is inviolable, 
but to all who have eyes to read between the lines. And what 
a confession it often is of ignorance, incompetence, insincerity, 
and laziness ! Imagination, on the borderland between intellect 
and sense, evokes under sensible images the immaterial and ab- 
sent objects of sense, giving to 

airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 

But beyond color and imagery it cannot go. Thus it serves 
as handmaiden to the intellect, which penetrates the outward 
surface of things, and attains to the abstract and universal idea, 
compares, judges, and pronounces judgment. Thus allied with, 
and subordinate to, the intelligence, imagination is raised and 
spiritualized. In the same way the sensibility is the servant 
of will, not pure spirit, not free ~as is its master, but a faculty 
peculiar to man from which arises one of his keenest pleasures. 
Suppose, for a moment, you have suddenly received a piece of 
bad news. The intelligence conceives the object, the imagina- 



1909.] LITERATURE AND MORALITY 757 

tion fixes it, gives it color and form, and if not checked tends 
to exaggerate it ; the will moves towards or away from the ob- 
ject, and with this movement comes that shock to the whole 
organism of keen pleasure or pain. 

But reverse this order, destroy the delicate balance of the 
soul, and we have the lamentable result seen in much literature 
both present and past. Even those who will not grant a hier- 
archy of faculties, who consider that the imagination and the 
sensibility are on the same level as intellect, will testify to the 
disastrous effects both to the soul and to literature of such 
doctrine in practise. 

Aristotle makes it clear that the highest activity, which is 
practically identical with the highest pleasure, is an activity of 
the spiritual faculties, because, as faculties, they work continu- 
ously, without fatigue or injury. Thought can never be too 
clear or lofty, action never too high or generous, for the intel- 
lect and will. But it is not the same with the lower powers of 
imagination and sensibility. The continuous exertion of these 
not only stupifies the intellect and dulls the will, but each 
strain made upon them affects their capabilities and makes them 
insensible to anything but strain. 

Give free rein to the imagination and the intellect will cease 
to do its proper work of penetration and judgment. It will 
play with the images evoked, lose all concern for truth and 
sincerity, abandon the hard work of thought. Ask a young 
literary student what he considers to be the real thought un- 
derlying the "Ancient Mariner"? Unless he is like the math- 
ematician who brought back the borrowed copy of Paradise 
Lost with the remark that he did not see what it proved, you 
will find, if we mistake not, that his intellect has been put quietly 
to sleep by the enchanting imagery of that wonderful poem. 
The case is, we think, worse with Swinburne, a master of im- 
agery and verbal music. It is ungrateful, perhaps, but the lines 
of W. S. Gilbert recur to the memory after reading Swinburne: 

And my harrassed spirit rolls 
In the universe of souls, 
Which is pretty, but I don't know what it means. 

The effects of the rupture of the hierarchy are far more 
serious when the sensibility is allowed unchartered license. 
This is a matter of serious consideration to parents and edu- 



75 8 LITERATURE AND MORALITY [Mar. 

cators at the present day, when literature is so cheap and so 
widely distributed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to 
check the reading of the young. More than fifteen hundred 
novels are published in the English language every year. Apart 
from the type, which is frankly immoral, could any man seri- 
ously hold that the effect of the average modern novel is in 
the direction of good ? The most striking note in modern fic- 
tion seems to us to be effect at any cost. With the exception 
of an honorable few, there is not only an utter blindness to 
literary beauty, but no aim at all but that of administering 
shocks to the sensibility. It is as if ;a whole nation were to 
take to dram-drinking. The habit is not only ruinous in itself, 
but the doses must be increased in strength to meet the crav- 
ing of the drinker. The result of this abuse is blindness to 
true beauty, scepticism of the heart, egotism and cruelty. We 
have suffered from the realism of the slum and the glorification 
of the educated thief; and the evil effect on silly, weak souls 
is only equalled by the exaggerated sentimentality, false pathos, 
and insincerity of the novel purporting to deal with the noblest 
of the passions. The final goal of such a movement is clear. 

But the immediate evil results to aesthetic pleasure are no 
less important to notice. Listen to the confession of Flaubert 
" Autant je me sens cxpansif.fluide, abondant et debordant dans 
Us douleurs ficlives, autant les vraies restent, dans mon cceur, 
acres et dures" Morality apart, one cannot take liberties with 
the faculties of the soul. The kingdom of heaven, of that pe- 
culiar joy, is not to be won but by a spiritual violence, a con- 
trolled act of power, the harmonious and regulated action of 
the soul. That is the first commandment of the law of litera- 
ture, and a man who can be made to see its reasonableness will 
be led irresistibly to the conviction that this end is contained 
in one still higher which expresses it more fully, gives it a 
wider range and a more immediate standard of judgment. He 
will see that though art is not morality, is not even contained 
in it, nor vice- versa, yet the two are in inevitable contact on 
account of the nature of the human soul. 

Nay more. The study of the classics of any age or coun- 
try will reveal that background of eternity which is the life of 
literature. Whether in obedience or revolt, the permanent not 
the passing, the eternal not the temporal is the highest subject 
for the contemplation of the soul, both in literature and in life. 




IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE. 

BY MAISIE WARD. 

|0 a casual visitor in Constantinople who has never 
studied the Mohammedan religion as a system 
and knows but little of its tenets, it is curious 
and fascinating to try to realize and understand 
it to some extent from its influence on the con- 
duct and character of its disciples. But more than with any 
other race or religion does one fail with the Turks to glimpse 
below the surface. Certain rules they obey, certain actions they 
perform, but their inner feelings and thoughts remain forever 
a mystery to the outsider. 

This does not, however, diminish perhaps it increases the 
interest with which one watches their actions and sees by what 
rules of conduct they are governed. 

That prayer forms a great part in the lives of good Moham- 
medans is certain. From the minaret of every mosque the 
muezzin calls to prayer five times daily, and in the bazaars 
and streets many will leave their goods and lay aside their oc- 
cupations and obey the call. During Ramazan the great fast 
they eat nothing till sunset, and on " the night of power " 
the mosques are crowded with fervent worshippers. 

Their religion forbids wine at any time. It prescribes one 
complete and three partial ablutions daily the courtyard of 
every mosque is supplied with rows of taps where worshippers 
may make their ablutions before entering. Great reverence is 
inculcated ; the shoes must be laid aside in the mosques and 
certain forms of bowing and prostrating towards Mecca must 
be observed during prayer. 

There are several sects among Mohammedans, holding some- 
what different tenets chief among these are the various orders 
of dervishes, some of whom are quite heretical. 

The dancing and howling dervishes who may be seen at 
Constantinople and Scutari are interesting examples of a strange 
species of religious excitement. The latter not being very well 
known, it seems worth while to describe the service that took 



760 IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE [Mar., 

place one day when I was present it varies, of course, slightly 
from time to time. 

The service was held in a small mosque in a side street at 
Scutari. The middle space was railed off and spectators stood 
behind the railing on two sides. At one side was a shrine 
looking towards Mecca, and in the corner a raised, railed plat- 
form where some children were standing. 

Several dervishes came in as we entered and each exchanged 
the " kiss of peace " with the chief dervish or " high priest." 
Then the congregation came in only about twenty men who 
took their stand round the sides of the square inside the rail- 
ing ; each removed his coat and fez, which were laid near the 
shrine, and they were supplied with white linen caps instead. 

Seated on the floor, one of the dervishes read passages from 
the Koran, while the congregation bowed incessantly from side 
to side, singing or shouting " Allah illah, illah 'llah " over 
and over again. After this had gone on for about half an hour 
they all looked absolutely exhausted and ready to faint; the 
shout became hoarse, the words unintelligible, and they seemed to 
be swinging their bodies merely from habit and without volition. 

I wondered whether they would ever be able to stop, but 
they did so suddenly and with no apparent difficulty and all 
sat down on the floor while some prayers were read. 

The chief dervish then went up to the shrine and seated 
himself before it. He was a fine looking man with a calm and 
beautiful face. 

A garment was brought to him to be blessed; he blew upon 
it and tied a knot in the sleeve ; then they brought a child on 
whom he also blew. Last came an old man stiff with rheu- 
matism apparently. With great difficulty he lay down on the 
floor. The priest then removed his shoes and stood with all 
his weight on the prostrate figure, seeming by his expression 
to be in rapt prayer the while. 

It looked rather terrible, but the man rose and departed ap- 
parently unhurt. 

The bowing and chanting was then resumed for a while, 
after which congregation and dervishes linked arms and went 
round in a circle, one standing in the middle. Their voices are 
fine and the chanting alone was very impressive, if one could 
avoid seeing their pale, exhausted faces and swaying forms. 
Some of them stamped too, as though in a frenzy of excitement. 



1909.] IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE 76 1 

After this dance the service proper was over and most of 
the congregation departed; a few, however, remained to receive 
the " gift of God " by far the most impressive part of the 
whole ceremony. They prostrated themselves before the shrine, 
then rising held their hands out, palms upward, with a solemnly 
expectant expression. Then when the gift had come they 
lifted their hands to their foreheads and departed quietly. 

This takes place every week. It gave me occasion to note 
for the first time that there is no color prejudice among the 
Turks, for one of the dervishes was a big negro. 

Nothing that one sees in the mosques has the same strange 
effect as this ceremony. There one may come upon a few men 
praying at any hour of the day quite quietly, standing, bow- 
ing, and prostrating themselves. Such worshippers and the 
number of the mosques give a deeper impression of the reli- 
gious spirit of the people of Constantinople than the frenzies 
of howling dervishes. 

And, indeed, the number of mosques in Stamboul is very 
great, both of those which were once Christian churches and 
of those which are of later date. Among the former St. Sophia, 
of course, stands pre-eminent both for size, beauty, and his- 
torical interest. 

It is not probable that exalted motives of piety inspired 
Constantine in his foundation of the original St. Sophia. In- 
deed it has been surmised that he chose the name of Holy 
Wisdom that the edifice might be equally appropriate for a 
Christian church or a heathen temple ; for it seemed uncertain 
at that date whether Christianity or paganism would finally pre- 
vail as the religion of the empire. This surmise is strength- 
ened by the fact that Constantine dedicated another great church 
to St. Irene or Holy Peace. 

"The principal church," says Gibbon, "which was dedicated 
by the founder of Constantinople to St. Sophia, or the Eternal 
Wisdom, had been twice destroyed by fire ; after the exile of 
John Chrysostom and during the Nika of the blue and green 
factions. No sooner did the tumult subside than the Christian 
populace deplored their sacrilegious rashness; but they might 
have rejoiced in the calamity had they foreseen the glory of 
the new temple, which at the end of forty days was strenuous- 
ly undertaken by the piety of Justinian. . . ." 

The new Cathedral of St. Sophia was consecrated by the 
Patriarch five years, eleven months, and ten days from the first 



762 IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE [Mar., 

foundation ; and in the midst of the solemn festival Justinian 
exclaimed with devout vanity : " Glory be to God, who hath 
thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work ; I have 
vanquished thee, O Solomon ! " 

It is strange how the Turks have managed to make this 
church of eminently Christian architecture, created by Justin- 
ian's architect Anthemius, so completely their own. They have 
whitewashed the mosaics, almost concealing all the Christian 
imagery ; they have carpeted the paved floors and set up a 
shrine towards Mecca; and they have hung huge shields with 
the Sultan's monogram on every pillar. They, too, have tra- 
ditions connected with the very stone not always pleasant 
ones. Pausing between two pillars the imaun who conducted 
us spoke energetically to our kavass, pointing out certain marks 
high up on both. 

" He says," the kavass translated, " that this is the mark 
of Mahomet's hand (Mahomet, or the Conqueror), this of his 
sword, and this of his horse's hoof as he rode a conqueror 
into the city. The church was piled with the bodies of the 
slain who had taken refuge there and over them he rode." 

We looked up. There was a mark very like a human hand 
far above our heads the hoof and the sword print too were 
there. 

This great church is most fitly described in the words of 
those who first told of it to the world as a Christian Church, 
before it was shorn of so much of its glory. 

"It is distinguished," says Procopius, "by indescribable 
beauty, excelling both in its size and in the harmony of its 
measures, having no part excessive and none deficient ; being 
much more magnificent than ordinary buildings and much more 
elegant than those which are not of so just a proportion. The 
church is singularly full of light and sunshine ; you would de- 
clare that the place is not lighted by the sun from without, 
but that the rays are produced within itself, such an abundance 
of light is poured into this church. . . . Who could tell of 
the beauty of the columns and marbles with which the church 
is adorned ? One would think that one had come upon a mead- 
ow full of flowers in bloom ! Who would not admire the pur- 
ple tints of some and the green of others, the glowing red and 
the glittering white, and those too which nature, painter-like, 
has marked with the strongest contrasts of color ? Whoever 
enters there to worship perceives at once that it is not by any 



1 909.] IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE 763 

human strength or skill, but by favor of God that this work 
has been perfected." 

Still more enthusiastically speaks Paul the Silentiary. " Who- 
ever," he says, " raises his eyes to the beauteous firmament of 
the roof, scarce dares to gaze on its rounded expanse sprinkled 
with the stars of heaven, but turns to the fresh green marble 
below, seeming as it were to see flower-bordered streams of 
Thessaly, and budding corn, and woods thick with trees, leap- 
ing flocks, too, and twining olive trees, and the vine with green 
tendrils, or the deep blue peace of summer sea, broken by the 
plashing oars of spray-girt ship. . . . And the lofty crest of 
every column, beneath the marble abacus, is covered with many 
a supple curve of waving acanthus a wandering chain of barbed 
points all golden full of grace. . . . And above all rises 
into immeasurable air the great helmet (of the dome) which, 
bending over, like the radiant heavens, embraces the Church." 

He describes the wonder and joy felt by all when, " by 
divine counsel, while angels watched, was the temple built 
again. . . . And when the first gleams of light, rosy armed, 
driving away the dark shadows, leaped from arch to arch, then 
all the princes and people with one voice hymned their songs 
of prayer and praise; and as they came to the sacred courts, 
it seemed to them as if the mighty arches were set in heaven." 

So for many years it remained an image and symbol of the 
"Light of the World." "Through the spaces of the great 
church come rays of light, expelling clouds of care and filling 
the mind with joy. The sacred light cheers all ; even the sail- 
or, guiding his bark on the waves, leaving behind him the un- 
friendly billows of the raging Pontus and winding a sinuous 
course amidst creeks and rocks, with heart fearful at the dan- 
gers of his nightly wanderings, . . . does not guide his 
laden vessel by the light of Cynosure, or the Circling Bear, 
but by the divine light of the Church itself. Yet not only 
does it guide the merchant at night, like rays from the Pharos on 
the coast of Africa, but it also shows the way to the living God." 

It is indeed melancholy to see any Christian Church turned 
aside from its true purpose, but the grandeur of St. Sophia in- 
tensifies this feeling. By what remains we can measure in some 
degree what is lost. " How doth the city sit solitary that was 
full of people. Her adversaries are become her lords, her 
enemies are enriched. . . . And from the daughter of Sion 
all her beauty is departed." 



764 IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE [Mar. , 

Next in interest and beauty among the older churches is 
SS. Sergius and Bacchus, or " Little St. Sophia." As its nick- 
name implies, it is very like St. Sophia in everything save size. 
It is an octagon in shape and the pillars, both of the body of 
the church and of the gallery, are exquisitely carved. A Greek 
text has been left uneffaced on the walls. 

St. Irene is notable as the only church of any importance 
that was not turned into a mosque. It became instead the 
armory. 

The mosaic mosque of St. Mary in the Chora is especially 
beautiful and interesting. For some unknown reason the Turks 
did not, as with other churches, paint out the early mosaics 
and frescoes which are of very great beauty. They represent 
scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin. There is also in 
the roof of the narthex a head of Christ of especial beauty. 

Taking the Byzantine architecture of St. Sophia for their 
model, the Turks themselves have erected many remarkably fine 
mosques notably that of Achmed II., of which the court and 
outside surpass any other. It stands at the side of the Hip- 
podrome, in a beautiful situation, where its six minarets show 
to great advantage. When Achmed built it people looked 
askance on him. " How dare he, 11 they asked, " build a mosque 
with as many minarets as the sacred mosque of Mecca ? " 

Achmed, however, was determined to retain his six minarets, 
so he added a seventh to Mecca. 

Inside it is beautifully ornamented with green tiles, but their 
effect is somewhat spoiled by bright blue stencilling on the 
pillars, added later. 

The interior of the tiled mosque of Mustem Pasha is more 
completely beautiful (though much smaller), being entirely 
lined with tiles of a delicate blue ; and that of Suleiman, the 
Magnificent, is more imposing, giving a wonderful sense of space 
and strength. 

Outside the mosque of Suleiman stands his own turbeh (or 
tomb). A turbeh is like a small house built over the graves, 
with sufficient space in it for a man to stand and pray. There 
are many such in all parts of Stamboul and an entire street of 
them at Eyoub, 

The Turks live among their dead they bury them on hill- 
sides in regular cemeteries, it is true, but also in the city it- 
self and even in their own gardens. One often comes across 
a number of graves in a private garden between two houses. 



1909.] IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE 765 

These are not turbehs but ordinary graves like ours surmounted 
by a headstone bearing a fez and an inscription (for a man) or 
carved with flowers (for a woman). 

Most holy of all the mosques, situated at the end of the 
" Street of Tombs " into the courtyard of which we tried in 
vain to enter is that of Eyoub. It is guarded by a soldier 
at every entrance and has never been polluted by infidel feet. 
Here every new Sultan comes to receive "the sabre of the 
great Osman " and to be proclaimed ruler over his people. 

The Sultan, is, indeed, not only ruler over his people, but 
also the head of their religion. Every Friday (the Turkish 
Sunday) he is obliged to worship, however ill he may be. If 
he were dying he must be carried from his palace to the 
mosque. 

Every Friday, accordingly, the road between the palace and 
the Sultan's mosque is lined with soldiers of every race 
Armenians, Albanians, Turks, officered often by Germans or 
Englishmen ; the ambassadors and their friends assemble in 
their kiosk (lodge) and other visitors on the adjoining balcony 
to watch the procession. 

First to come forth from the palace are the ladies of the 
harem in closed carriages, through the windows of which a 
glimpse may be caught of exquisite robes of all colors. They 
are accompanied by attendants moving beside the carriages. 

Next follows the royal body-guard; then the highest of- 
ficers of state; and last the Sultan in his carriage. The sol- 
diers greet him with a shout, while from the minaret a muez- 
zin announces that the hour of prayer is come. 

During prayer the horses are removed from the ladies' car- 
riages s and led away, while they are left seated in them out- 
side the mosque. The fact that they are not allowed at the 
ordinary services has probably led to the common idea that 
the Turks think women have no souls. This is not so. They 
may often be seen praying ia the mosques when no service is 
going on and, during Ramazan, special services are held for 
them, though they are regarded as greatly inferior to men. 

The Sultan came forth and drove away, the procession re- 
turned to the palace the Selamlik was over ; the soldiers 
shouted again as he passed, saluting him one might almost 
say reverently, for is he not the head of their religion ? Their 
shout was very awe-inspiring. They say there are notes in the 



66 IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE [Mar., 

voice of an Eastern that a European hardly ever possesses. 
Is not this akin to that something mysterious in their minds 
that sets them apart from us, and makes it so difficult for even 
those who know them best to enter into their feelings and un- 
derstand their faith ? 

A striking proof of the fact that women's souls are re- 
garded by the Mohammedan as greatly inferior to men's is 
that though religious observance and worship are strictly re- 
quired of every man, they are to a woman a matter of free 
choice. It is well that a woman should attend the mosques 
in Ramazan and that during the rest of the year she should 
pray in private, but no blame attaches to her if she does not 
do so. 

Another thing that strikes a western mind as very strange 
in a religious nation is that there is no form of worship or 
consecration attaching to marriage. A Turkish wedding con- 
sists only of a grand reception, beginning at the bride's house, 
in the midst of which the bridegroom joins her and they walk 
together through the rooms amid the assembled guests. This 
may be the first time they have met, and the bride is theoret- 
ically able to break off the wedding here if she dislike his 
appearance theoretically only, for such a proceeding is un- 
heard of. They then exchange the " kiss of peace " and pro- 
ceed together to the bridegroom's house, where the reception 
is continued. It sometimes lasts for three days first for men 
and then for women where the contracting parties are rich 
and of high station. 

At the reception for women the bridegroom is the only 
man present, and he only appears occasionally and proceeds 
through the rooms scattering small silver coins (piastres), with 
the bride at his side. She, however, is present the entire time, 
and the guests throng round her wishing her joy. Besides 
those invited, any Turkish woman may attend without invita- 
tion; so at a grand wedding the throng is immense. 

At the marriage of the daughter of the Governor of Mecca 
in Stamboul, it was almost impossible to get in at all; we 
should not have achieved it but for the black slaves on guard 
at the doors, who, seeing our card of invitation, pulled us in 
by force through the unasked crowd. Among the Turkish 
ladies themselves the unbidden guests by far the greater num- 
ber may always be distinguished by their yashmaks and fered- 



1909.] IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE 767 

jis or carshafs, which they keep on in the house. Their hos- 
tess provides them if very poor with a wedding garment, and 
entertains a hundred or more at a banquet ; for those who 
come from afar she provides beds which are spread at night 
in every room. 

We made our way to the bride to wish her joy ; she was 
seated on a divan looking very pale and tired as the crowd 
of women pressed round her. She was dressed in flowing white 
robes, embroidered with pearls, with pearls on her forehead 
and long strings of silver tinsel hanging on either side of her 
face. This is called her " silver hair " and any girl may ask 
her for a piece to keep for luck. Her smile was a very sweet 
one as she broke off a long string in compliance with my re- 
quest. 

A little " white slave " took us downstairs and gave us 
coffee in cups of silver set with pearls and turquoises sug- 
gesting a pleasant sense of oriental magnificence while she 
answered all our questions. The house was thronged with 
black slaves, brought over from Mecca by the bride's father, 
but these were of a different standing altogether, and greatly 
scorned by our little friend, who had shared the education of 
the bride and her sisters (speaking both French and English 
admirably) and was related to the family. 

It is very rarely that Islam makes any proselytes among 
the Christian races that mingle so strangely in this city, and 
one would have thought that among women it was unheard of, 
since their status both civil and religious is so much lower 
with the Turk than with the Christian. Yet one woman I saw 
at this wedding an Armenian who had become a Moham- 
medan, and whose appearance I shall not easily forget. She 
was tall and strong looking, with red hair and deep-sunk eyes 
a terrible face and a hoarse voice that made the usually 
musical language hard and repulsive. Yet there was an odd 
fascination, too, which made one long to know her past his- 
tory and present state of mind. Either mad or very miser- 
able, I thought, as she passed upstairs, " swearing horribly " 
our guide told us in a tone of shocked delight, and with a 
wild look in her eyes. 

This wedding was altogether a strange glimpse at the lives 
of Turkish women. The bride and her sisters had had French 
and English governesses and had been as highly educated as 



;68 IMPRESSIONS OF ISLAM IN CONSTANTINOPLE [Mar. 

any European girl. To such as these there must be much in 
their life that is almost unendurable. But they are, of course, 
in a small minority; the vast majority seem happy enough. 

It is very little realized by Europeans how much social 
life they have among themselves. Though they may never 
see a man, they visit one another to any extent. At all hours 
of the day a Turkish lady must be ready to receive her friends; 
she cannot say " not at home." If they come from any dis- 
tance she must put them up for one or two nights and enter- 
tain them with conversation the whole time they are with her. 

On Fridays in the season they don their gayest clothes and 
go in parties to the " Sweet waters of Europe " situated on 
the Golden Horn above Eyoub, or to those of Asia. 

With these and like occupations time passes pleasantly for 
those who know of nothing better. But for the few who are 
intimate with Europeans, and know how different is woman's 
life and aims in other lands, surely such methods of " killing 
time" must be unavailing: 

" No easier and no quicker pass 
The impracticable hours.' 1 

The very occupations in which they might find at least a 
passing interest reading and the like are prevented by the 
uncertainty of ever being alone, the obligation to admit their 
acquaintances at all hours, and to return these unseasonable 
visits. 

Yet a great step has been gained in the admission of for- 
eign culture into their lives and the widening horizon that it 
brings. Surely, in time, as this process of education extends, 
it must produce a radical change in the lives of Turkish 
women. 

Yet " iar as is the East from the West so are their thoughts 
from our thoughts," and it may be that if they compare at 
all, it is for the most part with no sense of degradation but 
rather of superiority. 

Many words have been written, many speculations made, 
on this subject. It would be rash indeed foi one to add to 
their number who attempted no more than to look at the sur- 
face as an interested observer, and whose fancied glimpses be- 
neath can be only the merest guesswork. 




G. K. CHESTERTON. 

BY W. E. CAMPBELL. 
I. INQUISITOR AND DEMOCRAT. 

HE fact that modern journalism stands for so much 
that we Catholics regard as worthless, and even 
dangerous to faith and morals, is not to be won- 
dered at when we consider that it is so largely 
inspired and controlled by the powers of material- 
ism and negation, standing where they ought not. But that a 
man should come out of Fleet Street to challenge these mod- 
ern fashions, of thought in the name of all that is traditional 
and Catholic is, indeed, something new and strange. Such a 
man is Gilbert Keith Chesterton. He is in no strict sense 
scholar, specialist, novelist, or poet. He speaks in no technical 
dialect of the kind so often wearisome to flesh and spirit. And 
yet, in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, he has become a 
sign in the way, a herald of change in the thoughts and con- 
victions of men. He may be described as a very genial Grand 
Inquisitor one who conducts his inquisitions with so much 
charity, simplicity, and humor that he is incapable of harming 
the soul of a little child. If we turn to that fantastic book of 
his, The Man Who Was Thursday, we shall see the author as 
he sees himself and the work that he has to do : 

"I will tell you," said the policeman slowly. "This is 
the situation : The head of one of our departments, one of the 
most celebrated detectives in Europe, has long been of opin- 
ion that a purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten 
the existence of civilization. He is certain that the scientific 
and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against 
the Family and the State. He has, therefore, formed a spe- 
cial corps of policemen who are also philosophers.- It is their 
business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not 
merely in the criminal but in the controversial sense. I am 
a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value of the 
ordinary man in matters of ordinary valor or virtue. But it 
would obviously be undesirable to employ the common police- 
man in an investigation which is also a heresy hunt. . . . 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 49 



770 . G. K. CHESTERTON [Mar., 

"I tell you I am sick of my trade when I see how per- 
petually it means merely war upon the ignorant. But this 
new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny 
the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the 
dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. 
We remember the great*poisoning princes of the Renaissance. 
We say the dangerous criminal is the lawless modern philos- 
opher. Compared to him burglars and bigamists are essen- 
tially moral men ; my heart goes out to them. They accept 
the essential ideal of man ; they may seek it wrongly. 
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to 
become their property that they may more perfectly 'respect 
it. But philosophers dislike property as property ; they wish 
to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists 
respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly 
ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But the 
philosophers despise marriage as marriage. . . . 

11 The common criminal is a bad man, but he is, as it were, 
a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obsta- 
cle be removed say a wealthy uncle he is prepared to ac- 
cept the universe, and to praise God. He is a reformer, but 
not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not 
to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter 
things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has 
retained all those parts of police work which are really op- 
pressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spy- 
ing upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified 
work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and 
powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we 
must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have 
the right to punish anybody else. 

Having defined the scope of our author's work, we may now 
go on to examine briefly the negative and controversial side of 
it. After that we shall be in a position to learn something 
of his affirmative and constructive philosophy. 

Just now we are all by way of being impartial men; but 
this is a great mistake. An impartial man is a man without 
faith, and a faithless man is a failure. Of such Lord Rosebery 
is the standing symbol. He has so many theories that he 
doesn't know what to do; and he doesn't know what to do 
because he doesn't believe in one of them. It is not sufficient 
to have theories. We must discuss, select, believe, and prac- 
tise. Fides, quia fit quod dicitur, as St. Augustine puts it. We 



1909.] G. K. CHESTERTON 771 

have no cherished principles of behavior towards ideas. We en- 
tertain them without moral discrimination and never stop to ask 
their practical outcome until it is too late. We condemn the 
cruelty of fifteenth-century inquisitors who cross-examined and 
tortured a man because he preached immoral ideas. But are 
we not as cruel as they ? At any rate we are much less log- 
ical and much more ridiculous. To take one case. Oscar Wilde 
was feted and flattered because he preached an immoral atti- 
tude, and then was cruelly broken because he carried his teach- 
ing into practice a little too openly for the convenience of his 
flatterers. It is far more practical to begin at the beginning 
and to discuss theories before we accept them. " I see that 
the men who killed each other about the orthodoxy of the 
Homoousion were far more sensible than the people who are 
quarreling about the Education Act. For the Christian dog- 
matists were trying to establish a reign of holiness, and trying 
to get defined, first of all, what was really holy. But our mod- 
ern educationists are attempting to bring about a religious lib- 
erty without attempting to settle what is religion and what is 
liberty. If the old priests forced a statement upon mankind, 
at least they previously took the trouble to make it lucid. It 
has been left for the modern mobs of Anglicans and Noncon- 
formists to persecute for a doctrine without even stating it." 
This point is driven home by a delightfully apposite parable : 

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about, 
let us say, a lamp-post, which many influential people desire 
to pull down. A monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, 
is approached upon the matter and begins to say in the arid 
manner of the Schoolmen : " Let us first of all, my brethren, 
consider the value of Light. If Light be in itself good. 
. . ." At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked 
down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the 
lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congrat. 
ulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as 
things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people 
have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the 
electric light ; some because they wanted old iron ; some 
because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. 
Some thought it was not enough of a lamp-post ; some too 
much ; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal 
machinery ; some because they wanted to smash something. 
And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he 



772 G. K. CHESTERTON [Mar., 

strikes. So gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or 
the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk 
was right after all, and that all depends on what is the phi- 
losophy of light. Only what we might have discussed under 
the gas-lamp, we must now discuss in the dark.* 

There is no lack of theories in modern life, but they all 
suffer from one capital defect they are negative. They do not 
nourish the life of the spirit. They are but a rediscovery of 
the smaller matters of human imperfection and lead to nothing 
better than themselves. They are full of warning, but they 
have no intrinsic power of communicating hope. They give 
us a withering knowledge of evil ; but there is no saving health 
in them and no saving humor. They are characterized by the 
absence of healthy idealism of those vivid pictures of purity 
and spiritual triumph which alone seem able to hearten the 
human will to the high conquests of the spiritual life. In a 
word, they are not mystical, they are merely scientific. They are 
without that element which only Christianity could have given 
them. " A young man may keep himself from vice by con- 
tinually thinking of disease. He may keep himself from it by 
continually thinking of the Virgin Mary. There may be a ques- 
tion about which method is more reasonable, or even which is 
more efficient. But surely there can be no question about which 
is more wholesome." 

It is of importance to the right understanding of our au- 
thor to keep this distinction in mind, for it is a very funda- 
mental one with him. We shall find, as we follow him through 
his criticisms of contemporary thinkers, that he is always com- 
ing back to it in some form or other. He has much to say in 
praise of Mr. H. G. Wells, the one purely modern man who 
does carry into our world the clear personal simplicity of the 
old world of science. But as yet, alas ! he does not believe in 
Original Sin. The permanent possibility of selfishness arises 
from the mere fact of having a self, and not from the accidents 
of education or ill-treatment. The weakness of all Utopias 
is that they take the greatest difficulty of man (to wit, Original 
Sin) and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate 
account of overcoming the smaller ones. "We do not plank 
down a Utopia, because a Utopia assumes that all evils come 
from outside the citizen and none from inside him. But we 

* \Heretics, p. 23. 




1909.] G. K. CHESTERTON 773 

do plank down these much more practical statements: (i) that 
a man will not be humanly happy unless he owns something 
in the sense that he can play the fool with it; (2) that this 
can only be achieved by setting steadily to work to distribute 
property, not to concentrate it ; (3) that history shows that prop- 
erty can be so distributed, while history has no record of 
successful Collectivism outside monasteries.'** 

Or take again the much talked of "New Theology." It 
has no regard for the transcendent aspect of Deity, but by neg- 
lecting that what do we get but introspection, self- isolation, 
quietism, social indifference, and no more ? By insisting upon 
it we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, 
righteous indignation Christendom. He also criticizes those 
undenominational religions which profess to include what is 
beautiful in all religions and appear to have collected all that 
is dull. All real religion is popular, military, public, and sen- 
sational. Ritual is much older than Reasoning. There is an 
eternal and boisterous gaiety about the truly religious. Wine 
in its holiest uses is not a medicine but a sacrament. "Drink, 
for the trumpets are blowing, and this is the stirrup cup. . . ." 

Finally, he examines the contention of Mr. Lowes Dickinson 
that pagan virtue was the joyous thing, while the virtues that 
are distinctively Christian have saddened the heart of man and 
impoverished the natural richness of his life. 

The real difference between the pagan or natural virtues, 
and those three which the Church of Rome calls the virtues 
of grace, is the real difference between Paganism and Chris- 
tianity. Christianity has adopted the natural virtues of Pa- 
ganism and has added to them the three mystical virtues of 
faith, hope, and charity. The first evident fact, I say, is 
this, that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, 
are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, 
hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And 
the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is that 
the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the 
Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their es- 
sence as unreasonable as can be. As the word "unreason- 
able" is open to misunderstanding, the matter may be more 
accurately put by saying that each of these Christian or mys- 
tical virtues involves a paradox in its own nature, and that 
this is not true in any of the typically pagan or rationalist 

* New Age, February 29, 1908. 



G. K- CHESTERTON [Mar., 

virtues. Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due 
to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists 
in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and 
adhering to that. But charity means pardoning what is un- 
pardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping 
when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith 
means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. . . . 
Everybody mockingly repeats the famous childish definition 
that faith is " the power of believing that which we know to 
be untrue." Yet faith is not one more atom more paradoxi- 
cal than hope or charity. Charity to the deserving poor is 
not charity but justice. It is the undeserving who re- 
quire it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists 
wholly for them. It is true that there is a state of hope 
which belongs to bright prospects and the morning ; but that 
is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in 
earthquake and eclipse. For practical purposes it is at the 
hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the 
virtue does not exist at all or begins to exist at that moment.* 

The main accusation, then, which Mr. Chesterton brings 
against modern thinkers is that they rely almost entirely upon 
mere analytic reasoning. He does not say that this analytic 
reasoning is an unlawful process of thought, but that its use 
and value are overestimated at this present time. For the high- 
est purposes of human activity it is an inadequate instrument. 
It not only misses the secret of life, but it also destroys it. 
It can only be exercised to establish an entirely mechanical and 
depersonalized conception of life. It is unwholesome because 
it is inhuman. 

At a time when to confess to a conviction about any high 
matter is considered almost ill-bred, the rhetorical art which is 
mainly concerned with producing conviction is held in disrepute. 
Rhetoric, it is said, is all very well for the popular fore- court 
of the Temple of Science, but thus far and no further should 
it go. Reason, it is contended, in order to be right, should be 
divorced from emotion. You might just as well say that Amer- 
ica, in order to be right, should be divorced from Niagara. 
When America understands the ultimate uses of Niagara the 
material world will be at her feet. And so, in a higher order, 
is it with emotion. But, at present, we do not understand 
emotion ; we do not respect it enough to try to understand it ; 
we merely despise it, leaving it, as we say, to the crowd. 

* See Heretics, p. 157. 



1909.] G. K. CHESTERTON 775 

If, however, we can tear ourselves from the local and tem- 
poral fallacies that so easily beset us we shall find that emo- 
tion has ever played a more dignified part in the highest life 
of the world. The great things of art and conduct owe their 
conception, continuance, and completion to the right and order- 
ly union of reason with emotion. Reason acting alone, reason 
in the void, is merely analytic, sceptical, disintegrating, imper- 
sonal. But reason wedded to emotion begets all that is syn- 
thetic, religious, life-enhancing, executive, personal. 

It is beside the question to point out that emotion is a dan- 
gerous thing. Of course it is, and so is reason. Emotion is a 
living force of terrific energy, a very torrent of Niagara, given 
in human nature. It is there and we can never get rid of it. 
It is there to be put to splendid uses. It is there to be con- 
verted into heat and light and motive power. But if we de- 
spise it, refuse it access to the higher reaches of our life, it 
will burst all meaner boundaries and become a dreadful havoc- 
worker and destroyer of all that separates us from the beast. 
This was thoroughly understood by the old worshippers of 
Pan, and that the danger has not passed, our modern word 
panic testifies. There is nothing more dreadful than emotion 
yoked to lust and fear. Corruptio optimi pessiwa. 

No philosophy save that of the Church has granted suffi- 
cient recognition to the necessary and living relation between 
reason and emotion; reason (which is so masculine) and emo- 
tion (which is so womanly) are too often held to have their 
proper perfection in a separated life. What God hath joined 
together let no man [break asunder. Pure reason (which, by 
the way, is pure act) has indeed a unique perfection it is di- 
vine; but it cannot be attained to by man, nor even so much 
as gazed upon during life. No man can see God and live. 
The face of man is strangely beautiful in death, as if love had 
at last had its perfect way in the soul so lately fled ; and it 
wears too, for the first time, the graven traces of pure thought ; 
for only at death, which is the threshold of life, is the face of 
man turned to the face of God. 

This, then, is the main charge brought by Mr. Chesterton 
against those in the high places of science, trade, and finance 
that they have separated reason from emotion, things whose 
fruitful union is necessary alike for the beginning, continuance, 
and completeness of human life. 



77 6 G. K. CHESTERTON [Mar., 

And now we come to the more positive side of Mr. Chester- 
ton. What does he believe in ? He believes in democracy and 
in the Catholic tradition. I will leave Catholic tradition for 
the present and deal first with the term democracy. What 
meaning and significance has it for him ? 

There are, very roughly speaking, two kinds of people. The 
people who feel at home in the ordinary surroundings of their 
daily life and work, and the people who do not. At first 
thought it would seem likely that those would feel most at 
home who had a superfluity of material comfort, and that those 
who lacked this would be full of an uneasy discontent, not at 
all satisfied with that place in life in which it had pleased God 
to put them. But looking about us, we find that this sup- 
position is contradicted by obvious fact. We notice that those 
who gain a moderate superfluity at once get away from the 
sight and sound of their workshops and become in the first 
case siiburban, and then, as their superfluity accumulates, cos- 
mopolitan, or shall we say imperialistic ? They will tell you that 
they flee from the realities of their very successful livelihood 
because they find them so insufferably dull, and that the further 
away from these realities they get the more interesting and 
romantic life becomes. The fact is, of course, that they can- 
not comfortably remain in personal contact with the people 
they employ, and that not merely for what we may call snob- 
bish reasons. They are obliged to wander over the face of the 
earth, branded like Cain, because they will not be their brothers' 
keeper. And here we touch perhaps the bad secret of Imper- 
ialism (no doubt it has a good one) the passion for material 
expansion, at whatsoever human cost, the desire to retreat from 
the personal injustice that must needs be done for the sake of 
inordinate material accumulation. The nemesis of this passion 
consists in a growing distaste of and retreat from human respon- 
sibilities. For the ordinary man his family and business rela- 
tionships are the main and unavoidable occasions of virtuous 
habit; but when he becomes rich these personal relationships 
are so easily avoided, the virtuous habit so easily lost, the 
temptation to delegate the often painful but always astringent 
human duties being so very strong and so very subtle. Mr. 
Chesterton treats this very serious topic with delightful humor 
and truth : 

The common defence of the family is that amid the stress 



1909.] G. K. CHESTERTON 777 

and fickleness of life, it is peaceful, pleasant, and at one. But 
there is another defence of the family and to me evident ; this 
defence is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and 
not at one. The family is a good institution because it is un- 
congenial. It is wholesome precisely because it is uncongen- 
ial. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested 
in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the 
bracing qualities of a commonwealth. It is exactly because 
our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions 
of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The 
man who lives in a small community lives in a large world. 
He knows more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising 
divergencies of men. There is nothing really narrow about 
the clan, the thing which is really narrow is the clique. So- 
ciability, like all good things, is full of discomforts, dangers, 
and renunciations. When London was smaller, and the parts 
of London more self-contained and parochial, the club was 
what it is in villages, a place where a man could be sociable. 
Now the club is valued as a place where a man can be un- 
sociable. The more the enlargement and elaboration of our 
civilization goes on the more the club ceases to be a place 
where a man can have a noisy argument, and becomes more 
and more a place where a man can have what is somewhat 
fantastically called a quiet chop. Its aim is to make a man 
comfortable, and to make a man comfortable is to make him 
the opposite of sociable. The club tends to produce the most 
degraded of all combinations the luxurious anchorite, the 
man who combines the self-indulgence of Lucullus with the 
insane loneliness of St. Simeon Stylites. 

If we were to-morrow morning snowed up in the street in 
which we live, we should step suddenly into a much larger 
and much wilder world than we have ever known. And it is 
the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from 
the street in which he lives. First he invents modern hygiene 
and goes to Margate. Then he invents modern culture and 
goes to Florence. Then he invents modern imperialism and 
goes to Timbuctoo. And in all this he is still essentially 
fleeing from the street in which he was born ; and of this 
flight he is always ready with his own explanation. He says 
he is fleeing from his street because it is dull ; he is lying. 
He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal 
too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is ex- 
acting because it is alive. Of course, this shrinking from the 
brutal vivacity and brutal variety of men is a perfectly rea- 



778 G. K. CHESTERTON [Mar., 

sonable and excusable thing so long as it does not pretend to 
any point of superiority. It is when it calls itself aristocracy 
or sestheticism or a superiority to the bourgeoisie that its in- 
herent weakness has in justice to be pointed out. . . . 
Every man has hated mankind when he is less than a man. 
Every man has had humanity in his eyes like a blinding fog, 
humanity in his nostrils like a suffocating smell. But when 
Nietzsche has the incredible lack of humor and imagination 
to ask us to believe that his aristocracy is an aristocracy of 
strong muscles or an aristocracy of strong wills, it is neces- 
sary to point out the truth. It is an aristocracy of weak 
nerves.* 

We find, then, at the opposite poles of our civilization two 
groups of men the men who renounce human responsibilities 
and the men from whom these responsibilities are taken away. 
And between these two groups of spiritually misemployed lies 
that great and wholesome democracy in which Mr. Chester- 
ton so heartily believes; and which recapitulates human nature 
in its widest and healthiest and most essential activities, f 

The root of democracy is, of course, a religious one. "All 
men are equal as all pennies are equal because they bear the 
image of the King. All men are therefore intensely and pain- 
fully valuable and from this fact spring two others of equal im- 
portance, The first is that all men are tragic ; the second is 
that all men are comic. This is evident in literature, where 
Tragedy becomes a profound sense of human dignity and 
Comedy a delighted sense of human variety. The first supports 
equality by saying that all men are equally sublime. The second 
supports equality by saying that all men are equally interesting. 
These are the two things in which all men are manifestly and un- 
mistakably equal. They are not equally clever or equally mus- 
cular or equally fat, as the sages of modern reaction (with 
piercing insight) perceive." Scott and Dickens are taken as 
respectively representing and emphasizing these two aspects of 
human equality. 

In the idea of the dignity of all men, there is no democrat 
so great as Scott. This fact, which is the moral and endur- 
ing magnificence of Scott, has been astonishingly overlooked. 
His rich and dramatic effects are gained in almost every case 
by some grotesque or beggarly figure rising into human pride 
and rhetoric. The common man in the sense of the paltry 

* Heretics, p. 179. f See The Napoleon of Netting Hill, pp. 298-300. 



1909.] G. K. CHESTERTON 779 

man, becomes the common man in the sense of the universal 
man. He declares his humanity. For the meanest of all the 
modernities has been the notion that the heroic is the oddity 
or variation, and that the things that unite us are merely flat 
or foul. The common things are terrible and startling, death, 
for instance, and first love : the things that are common are 
the things that are not "commonplace. Into such high and 
central passions the comic Scott character will suddenly rise. 
Remember the firm and almost stately answer of the prepos- 
terous Nichol Jarvie when Helen Macgregor seeks to brow- 
beat him into condoning lawlessness and breaking his bour- 
geois decency. Think of .the proud appeal of the old beggar 
in the Antiquary when he rebukes the duellists. . . . 
" Can you find no way? " asked Sir Arthur Wardour of the 
beggar when they are cut off by the tide. "I'll give you a 
farm. . . . I'll make you rich." . . . "Our riches 
will soon be equal," says the beggar, and looks out across the 
advancing sea. All this popular sympathy of his rests on the 
graver basis, on the dark dignity of man. . . . Scott was 
fond of describing kings in disguise. But all his characters 
are kings in disguise. He was, with all his errors, profound- 
ly possessed with "the old religious conception, the only pos- 
sible democratic basis, the idea that man himself is a king in 
disguise. 

Dickens had little or none ol this sense of the concealed sub- 
limity of every separate man. Dickens' sense of democracy 
was entirely of the other kind. It rested on the sense that 
all men were wildy interesting and wildly varied. When a 
Dickens character becomes excited he becomes more and 
more himself. He does not, like the Scott beggar, turn more 
and more into a man. As he rises he grows more and more 
into a gargoyle or grotesque. He does not, like the fine 
speaker in Scott, grow more passionate, more universal as he 
grows more intense. The thing can only be illustrated by a 
special case. Dickens did more than once, of course, make 
one of his quaint or humble characters assert himself in a 
serious crisis or defy the powerful. There is, for instance, 
the quite admirable scene in which Susan Nipper faces and 
rebukes Mr. Dombey. But it is still true that Susan Nipper 
remains a purely comic character throughout her speech, and 
even grows more comic as she goes on. She is more serious 
than usual in her meaning, but not more serious in her style. 
Whenever Dickens made comic characters talk sentiment 
comically, as in the instance of Susan, it was a success, but 



78o G. K. CHESTERTON [Mar., 

an avowedly extravagant success. Whenever lie made comic 
characters talk sentiment seriously it was an extravagant 
failure. Humor was his medium ; his only way of approach- 
ing emotion.* 

No one can deny that ordinary folk despise the partiality 
and dullness of mere intellectualism, and have as hard things 
to say about it as the Church herself. They care little for 
instruction, but they love what they call "character." They 
do not amuse each other with epigrams, but they do amuse 
each other with themselves ; they are always and everywhere 
persona). When a man in a public house speaks of another 
as a " character " you may be sure he will rejoice you with 
his company and refresh you with his wisdom. Such men 
have no desire to rule the world or to buy it they are much 
too simple. There is a kingdom of romantic entertainrrient at 
their very doors, and since they are without a trace of snob- 
bishness their eyes are open to its glorious possibilities. Where 
do nearly all the great ones of literature come from ? The 
Mulvaneys, the Pycrofts, the gorgeous rustics of Mr. Hardy, 
the thousand characters of Dickens ? They are not creations 
from the void. They are attempted recollections of actual 
people encountered in the humblest walks of life; and they 
are in reality understated rather than overdrawn. 

It is with a gloomy sense of futility that we often watch 
the well-intentioned but one-sided efforts of intellectual and 
emotional specialists on behalf of the poor. Such men may 
call themselves democratic, but the most obvious thing about 
them is that they do not believe in the poor, they do not under- 
stand them, they do not love them.f They are totally blind to 
the light and shadow of humble life; to them the virtues of 
the poor seem as gross as their vices, and their joys as dull 
as their sorrows. To such the very true and real ceremonial 
of the poor is dull, formal, superstitious, and degrading they 
cannot appreciate their rich and varied emotional life. Who 
but the poor can intensely enjoy the mysteries of giving and 
taking; with them festivity is almost a sacrament, Only they 
seem able continually to create and enjoy, in spite of the 
dullness of their surroundings, occasions of mirth and good- 

* Charles Dickens, p. 245. 

t cf. Twelve Types, pp. 17, 26, Charles Dickens, p. 274 seq. The Defendant, Introd. xii. and 
passim. 






1909.] G. K. CHESTERTON 781 

will, where forgotten memories are revived, and the solemn 
events and seasons of many-sided human nature are celebrated 
with all the fervor and publicity of an age of faith. They 
understand far better than their would-be helpers that the 
things that reform life are mainly the things of the heart. They 
have no doubt that a man " with his heart in the right place " 
will always get good out of life, and will freely spend it among 
his fellows. 

There is no dearth of quality in life and it is to be sought, 
for the most part, in humble and private places. "It is in 
common life that we find the great characters. They are too 
great to get into the material world. It is in our own daily 
life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies. 
This is the truth, not merely of the fixed figures of our life: 
the wife, the husband, the fool that fills the sky. It is true 
of the whole stream and substance of our daily experience. 
. . . Compared with this life, all public life, all fame, all 
wisdom, is by its nature cramped and cold and small. . . . 
It is when we pass our own private gate, and open our own 
secret door, that we step (for good or evil) into the land of 
giants." 

One has no wish to deprecate the work of the many who 
have given their lives to political and social reform, but why 
is their success so moderate? 

I have already pointed out that democracy is sandwiched, 
as it were, between two groups of men: (i) the men who have 
renounced human responsibilities ; (2) the men from whom 
these responsibilities are taken away. It is also obvious that 
the second is mainly created, sustained, and increased by the 
first. These two groups, then, which for convenience we may 
call the over-world and the underworld, are a perpetual menace 
to the well-being of any state. The difficulty is, of course, 
an economic one, but not mainly so. 

Why do the men of the overworld renounce their human 
responsibilities? (i) Because the human responsibilities of the 
great capitalist are too great to be realized by one man; and 
so far forth it would appear that some limit to the accumula- 
tion of private riches might be prescribed by the state with- 
out touching the principle of property and individual pos- 
session. (2) Because the temptation to retreat from what may 
be called the center of realization the place where their em- 



G. K. CHESTERTON [Mar. 

ployees work and live is so strong. (3) Because the men of 
the overworld have, for the most part, renounced their private 
allegiance to the one power that would help them to realize 
their human responsibilities and would also help them to re- 
sist their strong temptation to flee from the center of reali- 
zation. 

" Only the Christian Church can offer any real objection 
to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained 
from the beginning that the danger was not (mainly) in man's 
environment, but in man. Further she has maintained that if 
we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most danger- 
ous environment of all is a commodious environment. Rich 
men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. The whole 
case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the 
luxuries of life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically 
corrupt, financially corrupt." 

We can never hope that the overworld will reform itself, 
by itself. Nor can we expect the underworld to be reformed 
by the overworld that is to say by a state government bought 
and controlled, as at present, by the overworld. Where, then, 
shall we look ? To democracy ? Yes ; to democracy at least 
as the materia prima. 

Democracy stands for the great principle that the essential 
things in men are the things that they hold in common. "Fall- 
ing in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The 
democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the 
tribe) is a thing like falling in love and not a thing like dropping 
into poetry it is one of the things that we want a man to do 
for himself even if he does it badly. Democracy classes govern- 
ment as one of the universal human functions." To democ- 
racy, then, we must hopefully look, and what is more to a 
democracy the wholesome- hearted of every state stimulated, 
idealized, individualized by the Church. 

What, then, is to be said for the Church ? This Church 
which professes to actuate the human heart to such an extent 
as to make it capable of really human responsibilities ? In our 
next and concluding paper we hope to give Mr. Chesterton's an- 
swer to this important question. 




IS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? 

BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD. 

WHETHER time's revenges are, on the whole, a part 
ot that special providence by which God fulfills 
Himself in history, is a question that religious 
men will be slow to answer. Revenges there are 
in plenty, however; and whoso runs with the 
world's honest chroniclers may read them, if he will. If some 
of them are very fragmentary and laughable, other some are 
correspondingly relentless, not to say ironic, in the fullness of 
their readjustments ; and the wise are not slow to note their 
chastening lesson. Who would have predicted, scarcely more 
than half a century ago, that English-speaking Catholicism would 
one day be suffered, in the pale world of ideas, at least, to 
come back quietly into some little of its own? Yet this long- 
wished-for consummation is beginning to be realized at last in 
our own time. It is not so many decades, as the student reck- 
ons time, since Cardinal Wiseman, whose judgment and learn- 
ing alike certainly gave him the right to speak, was cheaply 
criticized jfor having ventured to call Dr. Lingard "the only 
impartial historian " that England had thus far produced. More 
than fifty years have elapsed since Newman succeeded in win- 
ning a hearing, but not a following, for his own bold analysis 
of the smug and only too well established tradition prevalent 
among non-tractarian Protestants on all the more fundamental 
facts of the Reformation period. 

The Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England 
assuredly augured well; but not even they could be described 
as prophetic of the dawn which has since happily broken, see- 
ing that Charles Kingsley could find so large and apparently 
so cultivated a public for the poor paste-board stuff and tin- 
dagger elements of Westward- Ho in 1855, and Charles Reade 
an almost wider circle of equally intelligent admirers for the 
not less wretched material of The Cloister and the Hearth, which 
saw the light some six years later in 1861. It was in the deso- 
late interval, in 1856, we believe, that the first two volumes of 



784 ft IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? [Mar., 

Froude's History appeared; and it is scarcely a paradox to 
maintain that it is in the reception accorded to this curious 
work that the first faint beginnings of a change in English sen- 
timent on these matters may be discerned. Considered as mere 
writing, and judged from the serene point of view of the stylist, 
the success of the volumes was immediate and unchallengeable. 
Seldom, if ever before so thought a generation which had lis- 
tened to Newman at St. Mary's, which was beginning to under- 
stand Carlyle, and go demented over Macaulay had English 
ears drunk in such obvious, yet virile, music, wedded to such 
pure, such picturesque, such idiomatic prose. The great Brit- 
ish public behaved as it invariably does in such junctures. It 
folded the hapless author without further question to its heart. 
Fortunately for the cause of historic truth, the critics, such as 
they were in a purblind time, took up a more cautious posi- 
tion. With the exception of a friendly reviewer in the Times, 
nearly all of them were unfavorable to this magnificently anti- 
Catholic account of the English Reformation. Henry Reeves 
had just taken over the editorship of The Edinburgh, and the 
treatment which the History received at the hands of that staid, 
but scholarly, quarterly, under its new management, was savage 
in the extreme. From this time forth it became the accepted 
thing in high academic circles to discredit Froude as an inter- 
preter of the past. 

Meanwhile more scientific, more exacting, perhaps profound- 
er views of the historian's vocation had been gradually forming 
in the English universities, and in no more significant per- 
sonality did these ideas find sane embodiment than in that son 
of Oxford to whose industry and scholarship we owe the re- 
markable volumes known as The History of the Papacy During 
the Period of the Reformation. Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History at Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop, in turn, of Peter- 
borough and of London, Mandell Creighton was scarcely the 
man, it might have been thought, to whom the average Ameri- 
can Catholic student, or the average English Catholic student, 
for that matter, of the generation just passed, could be expected 
to turn to for an essentially fair-minded presentation of so con- 
tentious a theme. Yet he produced a work in which it could 
be said that he had made out a better case for the Papacy than 
a Catholic writer like Dr. Ludwig Pastor has done. Breadth, 
carefulness, balance, insight, a scrupulously scientific regard for 



1 909-] 



IS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE ? 



785 



solid facts of which he nearly always shows himself the master, 
an impartiality amounting, it might almost seem, to ethical color- 
lessness, these are but some of the more obvious qualities that 
will strike the reader of a work which is doubly noteworthy as 
being the product at once of the finer Anglican spirit and of 
the newer economics of research. The story of the Greek eccle- 
siastic whose imperfect knowledge of English enabled him to 
recall but two words out of Creighton's many sermons and ad- 
dresses, to wit, character and sympathy, is symbolic of much 
that went to make up both the historian and the man. The 
amount of gossip let loose in the half year following upon his 
death in 1901 revealed him as in many ways an extraordinary 
personality, quite as much of an enigma to the men of his own 
communion as he was to many among ourselves ; but he was 
not an anomaly; nor was he insincere. Full of that rare form 
of semi-ironic courage which dares to make out a case for mis- 
represented church authority, even when writing for an English- 
speaking public somewhat ridiculously debauched by heady 
metaphysics, and a still headier sentimentality on the subject of 
religious revolt, Protestant Bishop though he was, he succeeded 
in producing a rounded story which scholars of every shade of 
ecclesiastical view will long regard as unassailable in temper, 
whatever they may be constrained ultimately, by the discovery 
of fresh material, to think about its disturbing array of facts. 
He was also one of those a growing class in our day whose 
reading of Reformation evidence inclines them to the view that 
there need never have been a change of doctrine; seeing that 
what was most needed by ecclesiastical Europe at the dawn of 
the sixteenth century was a change of heart. Were the ideas 
of Pole, of Caraffa, of Sadoleto, of St. Ignatius of Loyola to be 
justified at last? 

It is sometimes said that what the universities are thinking 
about to-day, the public will be prating about to-morrow. The 
apothegm may be accepted as roughly true, if by to-morrow is 
meant the popular movement of five and twenty years hence. 
Many things have happened in learned as well as in workaday 
England since Froude pleased the vulgar and ruffled the tem- 
pers of Irish and academic folk by his outrageous treatment of 
More and Fisher and Mary Stuart, and other champions of the 
elder Faith. Much, too, has changed since Creighton began to 

VOL. LXXXVfll. 50 



786 J Is IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE ? [Mar., 

write about the Popes. An entirely new school of history has 
grown up, which, wisely or unwisely, invokes one compelling 
name, and loves to associate its triumphs with one compelling 
university center. We refer, of course, to that Cambridge School 
of History which looks upon the late Lord Acton as its chief, 
if not its only begetter, and the English Historical Review as 
its most accredited mouthpiece. Lord Acton, as all the world 
knows now, lived and died a child of the Roman Church. If 
some of the more derivative obediences of his creed seemed to 
sit so lightly upon his conscience as to scandalize the simpler- 
minded and more logical among his brethren, much was after- 
wards forgiven him for his services to the cause of scholarship 
and for the unaffected piety of his riper years. It could not 
be said of him at the time of his death, at any rate, as had been 
said, too rancorously, indeed, a score of years before, by a re- 
ligious weekly journal with some repute for orthodoxy as well 
as tone, that he had forfeited his right t be considered a repre- 
sentative Roman Catholic in the England of bis time. His fault 
lay rather on the temperamental than on the intellectual side 
of his nature; for this last was essentially sound and true. His 
scanty writings would seem to show that he was deficient in 
imagination and lacked the gift of sympathy so necessary to an 
historian in whom the sense of moral values was abnormally 
acute. He was, perhaps, not altogether the miracle of omnis- 
cience that his disciples averred ; but, like his friend Mr. Glad- 
stone, he had an extraordinary memory, and was probably the 
most widely read Englishman of his period. What The Times 
said of him on the occasion of his inaugural address as Regius 
Professor of Modern History at Cambridge possibly affords a 
clue both to the appeal he so successfully made to the scholars 
of this generation and to his failure to commend himself en- 
tirely to the more uncompromising apologists of his own creed. 
1 There are many Protestant historians," a leader in that great 
journal declared on the morning after the lecture was delivered, 
" who would take sides far more ardently with the Church of 
Rome.*' He was so scrupulous, it would seem, in divesting 
himself of all theological bias, that he became, in the event, 
somewhat unfair to those who fought and intrigued too insist- 
ently for the faith which he himself prized above life. The 
ideal he holds up, however, is one that no sane Catholic is 
likely to quarrel with in the years to come, even if that larger 



1909.] /S IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? 787 

insight into human nature which religious sanity invariably im- 
parts, makes most of us pessimistic about ever seeing it real- 
ized before the Millenium. " If men were truly sincere," he 
says, " and delivered judgment by no canons but those of evi- 
dent morality, then Julian would be described in the same terms 
by Christian and Pagan , Luther by Catholic and Protestant ', 
Washington by Whig and Tory, Napoleon by patriotic Frenchman 
and patriotic German." This is excellent, indeed, but it is not 
all; for this austere conception of impartiality, which is an at- 
titude of mind at best, needs to be supplemented by those 
more technical rules of critical research, of comparative evi- 
dence, and of method which are " only the reduplication of 
common sense." Tried by these tests writers like Froude and 
Prescott and Motley are, we suppose, ruled out of court, while 
such favorites of yesterday as John Richard Green are rendered 
as hopelessly out of date as though they had written in the too 
confident middle of the nineteenth century. 

Has any practical result come of this changed orientation in 
the schools of historic research ? One might point to the remark- 
able series known as The Cambridge Modern History, of which 
some ten bulky volumes have already appeared. As originally 
planned, the conception is said to have been Lord Acton's ; 
and it must be admitted that there is a certain comprehensive- 
ness, not to say grandioseness, in the mere outline of the en- 
cyclopaedic work quite in keeping with all that is known of 
that noble scholar's genius for generalization. To be enabled 
to read an elaborate series of monographs on the chief topics 
of interest among the multitudinous events of the past four 
hundred years is a privilege for which even the most omniscient 
may well be grateful. When the idea was first announced by 
the projectors of the work a good deal of interest was inevit- 
ably manifested by Catholic students both in this country and 
in England. Some of the most contentious problems in modern 
history would come up for discussion in the course of publi- 
cation, and expectation as to the kind of treatment these mat- 
ters would receive naturally grew keen. To hear the ripest 
scholars of our time delivering their judgments on such points 
as the suppression of the English monasteries, Luther, Henry 
VIII., Cranmer, Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart, Matthew Parker's 
consecration, the Elizabethan settlement, Calvin, the Council of 
Trent, the rise of the Jesuits, the St. Bartholomew's massacre 



788 * 75 IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE ? [Mar., 

to name but a few of the graver issues clamoring for solution 
was an opportunity not lightly to be spoken of. Can it be 
said that the result has been at all commensurate with the ex- 
pectations which were raised when the prospectus of so haz- 
ardous an undertaking was first published a little over seven 
years since ? It would be easy to find fault with a work con- 
ceived on the lines of the Cambridge editors, even if it were 
less open to intelligent criticism than it unfortunately happens 
to be. One might ask, for instance, on what principle of im- 
partiality an irritating and one-sided writer like Principal Lind- 
say should be selected to discuss such matters as popular re- 
ligion in Germany in the fifteenth century; or why a person of 
Mr. H. C. Lea's performances should be asked from among 
ourselves to tell an only too expectant public what might per- 
tinently be affirmed on the decline of morality among the 
clergy before the days of the Reformation ? These are grave 
blunders. Omniscience, we know, is the prerogative of few edi- 
tors, even among the orthodox ; but, surely, we have a right 
to expect a modest sense of proportion as an indispensable 
part of their mental stock in trade. Scire ubi aliquid invenire 
possis, maxima pars eruditionis est, says a nai've adage once 
current among Latin schoolmasters. Familiarity with the knowl- 
edge-market is not precisely the same thing as the possession 
of knowledge itself ; but it is an excellent substitute for the 
same; and in an encyclopaedia-ridden age like our own the 
editor who embarks upon an enterprise without it is lost. 
Yet there are so many good things and rare things about the 
Cambridge Modern History that it may possibly seem ungra- 
cious, even in a Catholic, to carp at deficiencies like these. 
It does sincerely aim at impartiality ; and in a multitude of 
critical cases it actually achieves it. One needs constantly to 
be reminded, however, that some things are of such paramount 
value in Catholicism as in life, that to wear an air of judicial 
neutrality when they are in the balance is to betray God's 
cause to an unbelieving world. It is a fact like that which 
makes a venture like the Cambridge Modern History so human, 
for all its scientific affectations; and which renders the attitude 
of the cultivated English Catholic in its regard so reasonably 
unreasonable. But here we trench upon tenuous matters. 

From the Cambridge History, with its bulky and multitudi- 
nous volumes, to a work like Mr. Edward Armstrong's Charles 



1909.] 



IS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE f 



789 



the Fifth* is an obvious transition; for not only may the au- 
thor be described as one of those serenely unimpassioned in- 
terpreters of the past in whom Lord Acton would have de- 
lighted, had he lived to pronounce judgment on the work, but 
he is also one of the best and most fair-minded of the con- 
tributors to the series which we have been considering. Few 
characters in modern history are at once so enigmatic and so 
representative as that of the august ruler whose name is as- 
sociated so intimately, or with such a variety of sentiment, with 
the three great forms of Protestantism that have seemed for a 
space to prevail against the Catholic ideal. Charles has this 
further distinction, also, that there is something of the touch- 
stone in his story; for, as men judge of him, so are their se- 
cret predilections revealed with respect to the controversies 
that cluster about his career. In temperament and habit he 
was more of a Fleming than a Spaniard. Yet he was the fa- 
ther of Philip the Second and a typical Iberian in the dramatic 
circumstances of his farewell to worldly glory and his demean- 
or in the face of death. The genuineness of his Catholicism 
was the most obvious and coherent thing noticeable in his 
many-sided and contradictory nature; yet he could make war 
upon the Pope and, with ample resources at his call, could en- 
dure to see the great fabric of Catholic unity shattered in Eng- 
land and in northern Germany without striking a whole- hearted 
blow in its defence. He was drag-weighted by a demon of 
hesitancy. To write adequately of such a character would seem 
to demand something more than learning, something deeper 
even than insight; yet the author has not only brought these 
qualities to bear upon his task, but has injected into it, like- 
wise, an atmosphere of fairness that must commend him to 
readers of the most opposite schools. Popes and cardinals and 
heresiarchs, princes and statesmen, move through his pages ; 
policies and measures are discussed ; and criticism is dealt to 
high and low with frank, unsparing words; yet, as was gener- 
ally pointed out when the work appeared some seven years 
ago, it would be hard to say what Mr. Armstrong's religious 
tenets really are. To read him, after having renewed oneself 
in Robertson by way of comparison, is like coming from Edin- 
burgh to Rome. It is like going from the carping isolation 
and distorted perspective of a provincial capital to the breadth, 

* The Emperor Charles the Fifth. London : Macmillan & Co. 2 vols. 8vo. 1902. 



790 Is IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE ? [Mar., 

the loftier outlook, and the sanity of the great centers of the 
world. 

Whether the instances we have thus far adduced will con- 
vince the Catholic, who has grown weary of protest, that the 
tide of foolish and anti- Roman opinion on most points of his- 
tory is at last on the turn, there can hardly be room for fur- 
ther hesitation, if we take into account Dr. James Gairdner's 
two recently published volumes on Lollardy and the Reformation 
in England, The author can scarcely be described as a pop- 
ular, much less a fairly exploited, writer on any of the sub- 
jects connected with the scope of this article. Nevertheless, 
we shall not exceed the bounds of moderation, if we say that 
there is not in the world of English-speaking scholars at this 
moment an authority who can claim to speak with greater 
weight on the particular theme which he has happily chosen 
to discuss. Dr. Gairdner is now an old man. He has had a 
familiar and first-hand acquaintance with rare and hitherto un- 
considered sources of knowledge on the English Reformation 
crisis practically from early manhood. He became clerk in the 
Public Record Office as far back as 1846, and Assistant Keep- 
er in 1859. He had edited for the Master of the Rolls the 
Memorials of Henry VII. and the Letters and Papers of the 
reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII. When Professor Brew- 
er died, in 1879, Mr, Gairdner was selected to continue the 
difficult Calendar of Henry VIII., of which the fifth volume and 
all the subsequent issues as far as Part I. of volume the nine- 
teenth have appeared under his editorship. It is to his indus- 
try also that scholars owe the present accessibility of the Pas- 
ton Letters (1872-75); and in addition to other work done for 
the Camden Society, for the English Historical Review, and for 
Sir Leslie Stephen's great Dictionary of National Biography, he 
has written A History of the English Church in the Sixteenth 
Century from the Accession of Henry VI I L to the Death of Mary* 
However colorless this list of achievements may appear to that 
fastidious, yet sometimes undiscriminating, public that prefers 
its history costumed and staged in due histrionic form, it re- 
presents an apprenticeship that .gives the author a right to be 
heard at the close of his laborious days. Why has he chosen 

* See Volume IV. in the series known as A History of the English Church, edited by the 
(late) Very Rev. W. R. Stephens, D.D., and the Rev. William Hunt, M.A. London : Mac- 
millan & Co. 1903. 



1909.] /S IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE ? 791 

to write over a thousand pages of carefully collated narrative 
on such a subject as Lollardy and the Reformation in England ; 
and what is his deliberate and final judgment of that long- 
debated matter? He himself tells us, practically, in answer to 
the first question, that it was because his earlier volume on 
The History of the English Church was produced under edito- 
rial restrictions which forbade his giving a rounded and per- 
fectly satisfactory story.* Not that Dr. Gairdner suffers in any 
appreciable degree from the after-tortures of the stylist; sty- 
listic graces, indeed, he seems scarcely to affect; but he feels, 
what students on the Catholic side have felt all along, that .a 
tremendous and far-reaching event like the English Reforma- 
tion cannot be explained in terms satisfactory to the scientific 
mind by restricting one's investigations to the narrow and often 
arbitrary limits of three or four reigns. Indeed his desire to 
tell a complete story to-day furnishes a pertinent commentary 
on the modern reader's appetite for that unsubstantial and 
often unwholesome form of mental food known as the " histori- 
cal series." Periods and events are mapped off with misleading 
precision; so many years and facts to each, and so many 
printed words to the telling of them, as the economy of edi- 
tors or publishers may happen to enjoin. Not so can history 
be kept loyal to its new ideals, or even made vital and human 
and true. . 

Dr. Gairdner's " present work, therefore, although partly 
going over the same ground as its predecessor, has a wider 
scope and a materially different aim." It looks both before 
and after ; because, as the author tells us, " the Reformation, 
as a study by itself, forbids us to confine our view even to 
one single century. "f And so it happens, that in the course 
of four books, running through two large volumes of over five 
hundred pages each, we have the more important outlines of a 
" general survey " which carries the reader over such debatable 
ground as The Lollards (Book I.), Royal Supremacy (Book II.), 
The Fall of the Monasteries (Book III.), and The Reign oj the 
English Bible (Book IV.) Dr. Gairdner is now an old man in his 
eighty- first year; but contact with the moldy records of the 
past does not seem to have dulled the edge of his mind or 
abated any of that ardor for actuality which enters so largely 
into the spiritual make-up of the scholar of these times. The 

* Lollardy. Volume I. Preface, p. vi. f Preface, pp. vi., yii. 



792 fs IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? [Mar., 

desire to which he gives expression in the preface to his first 
volume of retaining his strength long enough to "carry the 
work on to the reign of Queen Elizabeth " reads like a rebuke 
and a summons to younger men. Educated Catholics all over 
the English-speaking world who read these remarkable volumes 
will have every reason to pray that so honorable a hope may 
not be frustrate; for, whatever they may think of his account 
of certain debatable details in the long and diversified movement, 
however they may marvel here and there at the theories of 
church unity and jurisdiction involved in not a little of his 
inevitable comment upon the enthralling story, they will recog- 
nize him, almost from the outset, as one more link a most 
invaluable link, as being both a scholar and a would-be apol- 
ogist for Anglicanism in that chain of witnesses to the Cath- 
olic sense of things that runs in unbroken strength from Abbot 
Gasquet and Dom Norbert Birt, from Father John Morris, and 
the Jesuit lay brother, Henry Foley, through Lingard and the 
Roman controversialists of the two preceding centuries, back to 
Nicholas Sanders and the misunderstood Parsons, until it ends 
in those who dared to seal their testimony to the same Cath- 
olic reading of things in their hearts' blood. This may sound 
very much like sentiment and not science, we fear. To those 
who may be tempted to think so we say : Read these thous- 
and pages and see. There can be few cultivated Catholics 
in our day who have views on the subject worth considering 
at all, who would not be willing to have their traditional claim 
judged in substance by the concessions of this book. For 
what, in fine, has been the strength we are speaking of the 
living and actual, not the abstract logical strength of the 
great Protestant tradition in English-speaking lands during the 
past three centuries but this, that Henry VIII. and the English 
reformers, no matter what their errors in other respects may 
have been, overthrew a despotic and hated superstition and 
set up the Christian " law of liberty " in its stead ? Reduced 
to its barest terms that is what pride in Protestantism, with its 
habitual mistrust of the counter Catholic ideal, has amounted 
to. Where it has ventured to become articulate, as it has in- 
creasingly done under the guise of literary sentiment and the 
accepted views of uncritical historians, this tradition has taken 
definite and specific form, and it has practically framed its 
contentions to this effect: that "Papistry" never sat easily 



1909.] IS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? 793 

upon a healthy Englishman's conscience, as the story of the 
Lollard movement shows; that the Royal Supremacy was but 
the logical expression in time of this distaste for Italianism in 
religion ; that the monasteries before their suppression under 
Henry VIII. were, for the most part, hotbeds of hypocrisy 
and corruption; and finally that it was the English Bible that 
revealed to the men of the Reformation the real strength 
of the religion of the Spirit as contrasted with Roman ex- 
ternalism. 

The average English-speaking Protestant has surrendered 
many a dear prejudice during the past fifty years; for the 
business of research is going steadily on and the acid of criti- 
cism is filtering down, through the medium of popular litera- 
ture, even to the hardest minds; but these are the four cardinal 
preambles of his creed. The point about the monasteries he 
has shown at times a decent willingness to reconsider; but not 
the other three. Are not the first two as old and as incon- 
testable as Shakespeare himself ? * And is not the last attested 
by the extraordinary development of our English tongue? Is 
not reverence for and familiarity with the Authorized Version 
one of the admitted secrets of our melodious speech? Surely, 
all educated men recognize to-day the true source of 

The golden thread that goes 
To link the periods of our prose ? 

Let us see what Dr. Gairdner has to say on these primary 
matters. Almost on the threshold of his extraordinary investi- 
gation he has this to remark : 

One whom we might well take as a guide considers the 
Reformation as " a great national revolution which found 
expression in the resolute assertion on the part oi England of 
its national independence." [Historical Lectures and Ad- 
dresses ', p. 150.] These are the words of the late Bishop 
Creighton, who further tells us in the same page that " there 
never was a time in England when the Papal authority was 
not resented, and really the final act of the repudiation of 
that authority followed quite naturally as the result of a long 
series of similar acts which had taken place from the earliest 

* cf. King Jahn III., i,, 11. 147 ss. 



794 IS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE ? [Mar., 

times." I am sorry to differ from so able, conscientious, and 
learned an historian, and my difficulty in contradicting him 
is increased by the consciousness that in these passages 
he expresses, not his own opinion merely, but one to which 
Protestant writers have been generally predisposed. But can 
any such statements be justified ? Was there anything like 
a general dislike of the Roman jurisdiction in church matters 
before Roman jurisdiction was abolished by Parliament to 
please Henry VIII. ? or did the nation before that day be- 
lieve that it would be more independent if the Pope's juris- 
diction were replaced by that of the king ? I fail, I must say, 
to see any evidence of such a feeling in the copious corres- 
pondence of the twenty years preceding, I fail to find it even 
in the prosecutions of heretics and the articles charged 
against them from which, though a certain number may 
contain denunciations of the Pope as Antichrist, it would be 
difficult to infer anything like a general desire for the aboli- 
tion of his authority in England. . . . 

That Rome exercised her spiritual power by the willing 
obedience of Englishmen in general, and that they regarded 
it as a really wholesome power, even for the control it exer- 
cised over secular tyranny, is a fact which it requires no very 
intimate knowledge of early English literature to bring home 
to us. . . , It was only after an able and despotic king 
had proved himself stronger than the spiritual power of 
Rome that the people of England were divorced from their 
Roman allegiance ; and there is abundant evidence that they 
were divorced from it at first against their will.* 

These are very frank words ; but to realize their full sig- 
nificance to those who have hitherto maintained substantially 
the same views on other, and perhaps hardly less critical, 
grounds, one needs to measure, not so much the authority and 
scholarship of the writer, which hardly need to be insisted up- 
on now, as the breadth and persistency of the tradition they 
so courageously assail. Dr. Gairdner finds further and cr- 
roborative evidence of the truth of these conclusions in three 
out of the four very interesting chapters in which he discusses 
what may be called the surviving Protestant myths on the 
origin and character of English Lollardy. WyclifiVs heresy, he 
holds, had all but disappeared in the country of its birth when 
the loss of prestige that resulted to Papal authority from the 

* Lollardy and the Reformation in England. Vol. I., pp. 3, 4, 5. 



1909.] fS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE f 795 

unhappy scandals of the Great Schism gave it a fresh lease of 
life. But it never really gained ground in the " Church " es- 
tablished under Royal Supremacy. If we would study its sub- 
sequent developments we must look for them in English Puri- 
tanism and in the fanatical positions of the extremer sectaries 
of Germany in the sixteenth century. 

Interesting as are the chapters that rehearse the melancholy 
story of the suppression of the religious houses, there is little 
in them that bears upon the immediate scope of this article. 
Dr. Gairdner, in common with every reputable scholar who has 
ever attempted to sift the evidence in the case, is convinced 
that it was a measure of wholesale injustice, due, in the first 
instance, to the lust, the selfishness, the caprice* of the "cas- 
uistical and self-willed tyrant " who ordered it ; and in the sec- 
ond place to the thoroughly unscrupulous character of the two 
worthies Doctors Legh and Leyton whom Cromwell, as "Vice- 
gerent of the king in spiritual matters," and " with a view to 
his own advancement in wealth and power," f commissioned to 
carry it out. How the sorry business was effected readers of 
Abbot Gasquet have known now these many years. " It is 
now generally agreed," says Dr. Gairdner, who quotes with 
approval on the same page the learned Benedictine's remarks 
on the nature of the commission entrusted to the visitors, 
"that it was not an honest investigation."! If that were all 
that could be claimed, decent folk might well restrain their 
anger. But, as Catholics have known since Nicholas Sanders' 
day, matters were much worse. Of this ugly element in the 
sinister procedure, Dr. Gairdner writes: 

If monks ought to have been protected by their rule and 
the respect in which it had always been held from the evil 
influences ot a secular tyranny, even more so should nuns 
have been ; but it was only too evident that they were not. 
Nuns under twenty-five years of age were turned out of their 
convents, and one of the commissaries sent on this business 
(no doubt Dr. Legh) addressed the ladies in an immodest way. 
They rebuked his insolence, and said he was violating their 
apostolic privileges ; but he replied that he himself had more 
power from the King than the whole Apostolic See. The 
nuns, having no other appeal, made their remonstrance to 

* Vol. II., pp. 45-46. f Vol. II. p. 53. . $ Vol. II. p. 59- 



796 fS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? [Mar., 

Cromwell ; but lie in reply said these things were but a pro- 
logue of that which was to come.* 

So the occurrence was reported at the time by Chapuy t in 
England to Dr. Ortiz, the Imperial agent at Rome ; and San- 
ders, who, though then only eight years old, was much better in- 
formed and more accurate about many things when he wrote than 
past historians have believed,\ says distinctly that I/egh, as a 
means of discharging the duties imposed upon him, solicited 
the nuns to breach of chastity, and that he spoke oi nothing 
more readily than of sexual impurity ; for the visitation was 
appointed expressly for the purpose that the King might catch 
at every pretext for overthrowing the monasteries. The 
tradition of this abominable procedure, as is shown even by 
the Protestant historian Fuller, was kept alive for some gen- 
erations by the just indignation of Roman Catholics; and 
Fuller himself reports, as a fact circumstantially warranted by 
the tradition of papists, the story of one of those base attempts 
in a nunnery some miles from Cambridge. It is moreover 
evident that Fuller himself, with every desire to discredit the 
story, was far from being convinced that it was altogether un- 
true. If false, indeed, the tradition must have been very ela- 
borately supported by further falsehood ; for it is stated that 
one of the agents afterwards confessed to Sir William Stan- 
ley, who served in the L,ow Countries in the time of Queen 
Elizabeth, " that nothing in all his life lay more heavy on his 
conscience than this false accusation of these innocents. "II 

In spite of the extremely unpleasant character of the extract 
we have given above, the entire passage will be found valuable, 
we think, because it illustrates so significantly both the candor 
and the essential manliness of spirit in which this disillusioned 
specialist writes. 

Nor will his chapter on the story of the English Bible ^ be 
found less instructive to the English-speaking student of his- 
tory in this country. Adherents of the old faith, no doubt, 
are already familiar enough with the main outlines of this con- 
troverted point as given by Lingard and by Abbot Gasquet 

* Letters and Papers, IX. , 873. f The French Ambassador. 

\ The italics are mine. C. C. 

Historia Schismatis Anglicani, p. 105. Ed. Cologne, 1628. 

|| Vol. II., pp. 70-72. Dr. Gairdner adds an interesting footnote, giving the reference 
in Fuller (Ch. Hist. Ed. 1845; III., 385) and identifying the nunnery as, possibly, Chatteris. 
The penitent visitor was, he adds, no doubt, Ap Rice. 

11 Book IV. Chapter I., p. 221. 



1909] JS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? 797 

and by Catholic writers of lesser note. If Dr. Gairdner does 
not seriously contravene what they have argued for, he never- 
theless manages to tell a story which is practically new both 
in setting and in detail. Few positions in Catholicism have 
been so regrettably misunderstood by the world of English- 
speaking men, as its various enactments on the reading and 
translation of the Scriptures. Here, if anywhere, is the Re- 
formation protest supposed to be strong, while the Catholic 
counter- ideal, in spite of all our explanations of it, is adjudged 
to be correspondingly weak. Indeed, the whole case between 
the two opposing schools may be decided offhand by a simple 
juxtaposition. While the Authorized Version has been up 
to the present at least one of the great formative influences 
of the race, spiritually, temperamentally, linguistically, the 
Douai and Rheims versions have been practically of no effect 
at all. The King James translation, which may be said to have 
become, more distinctively than all others, the English Bible, 
was, in spite of the ex-parte and surely polemical character of 
its production, an English and almost spontaneous growth ; 
whereas the Catholic version was, at its best, an exotic, be- 
cause continental, makeshift. It was a kind of bone flung 
grudgingly to the dogs of war, and was never seriously intended 
to edify the spiritual life of the laity at large, who were taught, 
even while they used it, to mistrust it. So might one formu- 
late in substance the thoughts of the victorious Protestant mind 
on this sad subject of the English Bible at any time during 
the past three hundred years. But what are the bare facts of 
the case as Dr. Gairdner rearranges them ? First, that ver- 
sions in the vernacular existed and were in use for the benefit 
of unlettered souls, in the religious houses and out of them, 
long before Wycliffe ever attempted to provide a Bible in the 
English tongue; secondly, that there was no evidence of any 
disposition on the part of authority to discourage the circula- 
tion of these versions until heretical men began to garble par- 
ticular texts and to emphasize their disquieting tendency by the 
addition of marginal glosses of a very questionable and inflam- 
matory kind ; thirdly, that Tyndale's version in particular was 
unworthily associated with a strangely commercial, not to say 
venal, transaction in which not merely a group of "Evangel- 
ical " London merchants were involved, but the sanctimon- 
ious translator himself; fourthly, that so far were the great 




; 9 8 IS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE? [Mar., 

body of Englishmen from taking kindly to this indiscriminate 
spread of the Scriptures, that they had to be compelled to 
listen, and through their parish priest to buy ; and fifthly, that 
Henry VIII. encouraged the movement in part solely from a 
selfish desire to lessen the prestige of the clergy, and by this 
means to strengthen the principle of Royal Supremacy.* It 
would seem that Bible worship as a religious institution among 
us is not one whit more respectable in its ancestry than the 
State worship that masqueraded so long in the guise of Royal 
Supremacy. 

We have dwelt more at length on Dr. Gairdner's two volumes 
than on any of the others in the not insignificant list we have 
chosen, because they illustrate so pointedly one might almost 
say, so surprisingly the drift of scholarly interest to-day which 
seems to be towards and not away from the Catholic goal. If 
we have been frank in our praise, we have not, we trust, been 
inconsiderate. There is much, of course, in these thousand pages 
that a Catholic writer might be prone to criticize more ad- 
versely than we could find it in our conscience to do, even on 
historic grounds,! There is much, likewise, in the way of im- 
plied ecclesiastical opinion which is both theologically unscientific 
and logically unsound ; for Dr. Gairdner is evidently a sincere 
believer in the " Continuity- Comprehensive" theory of modern 
Anglicanism, and writes as though the English Church could 
have passed through such a crisis as he has described and yet 
emerge substantially intact. But considerations such as these 
are beside the purpose of our present study, which has been 
undertaken for the sole purpose of calling attention to what 
thoughtful men cannot but regard as a hopeful sign of the 
times. To have an intellectual interest in Catholicism, is not 
the same thing as to understand Catholicism ; and the time may 
still be far distant when the Church, as of old, will leaven the 
new social order now shaping so indeterminably before our very 
eyes. But it is a great thing to behold a dividing wall of 
prejudice, built foolishly in ignorance and misapprehension, 
broken down. Has the process of disintegration seriously be- 
gun ? We may safely leave that question to a later generation 
to answer. It is something, however, to have seen what we 

* Book IV. : The Reign of the English Bible. Vol. II., pp. 221-303. 
t See, for example, Abbot Gasquet's most recent strictures in the Tablet for January 
16, and Father Thurston's admirable article in the Month for December last. 



1909.] JS IT THE TURN OF THE TIDE f 799 

are confronted by to-day, the unrest in the higher reaches of 
the intellectual world. It is that unrest which threatens to 
break down the wall whereof we speak; and it is a discontent 
that reaches further than many of us imagine ! Neither in his- 
tory nor in letters alone, but in science, in philosophy, and 
even in religious creeds, as well, men are everywhere engaged 
in reconsidering the long- accepted landmarks. It is the reign 
of criticism; a kind of a new and formless Religion of the 
Real. Wholly outside of the visible boundaries of Catholi- 
cism as a definite movement at present, it betrays itself now and 
then in a gathering tendency, as in the historic writers whose 
books we have been considering, that looks strangely like an 
advance towards those same subsidiary ends which Roman 
Christianity in the quest of its further goal has claimed magis- 
terially to foster. Is it a step towards a higher and more en- 
during reunion ? The very suggestion of such an idea may 
savor of madness to the outsider. But Roman views are pro- 
verbially long views, and who shall say that the perspective 
we have hinted at is at fault ? 

Settn Hall, South Orange, N. J. 



WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 




BY H. E. P. 

X. 

A LEGEND OF HOLCOMBE.* 

N the story of "The Old Manor House" I told 
how I wandered down a grassy lane that ended in 
a gate on which I rested, while I heard the story 
of the haunting of the poor old place. To-day 
I have climbed the gate it is past opening 
now and crossed the field to another gate, where the lane, 
narrowed to a mere path, begins once more. Evidently some 
enterprising farmer, in a past age, has blotted out the inter- 
mediate stretch of road, and added its site to his grazing land. 
The path leads through a copse a copse so thick that my 
way lies darkly beneath the boughs that meet overhead. The 
moss-covered path runs steeply to the bottom of the combe, 
where a bridge crosses the stream, and here I pause. Run- 
ning water is always an attraction, with its lights and shades, 
its curves and rings, its restlessness. I watch the persistence 
with which it pushes at that bit of stick, caught on a bramble 
spray, until it sets it free, and sends it twisting down the 
stream, only to be caught up half a dozen times more before 
it has gone as many yards. Here a group of frothy bubbles 
are having a quiet dance all to themselves in a back-water, 
whither they have drifted. A merry swarm of gnats whirl round 
and round in a streak of sunshine that has forced its way through 
the boughs above. There are weddings amongst them, and 
sudden deaths, and funerals and feasts, but they whirl on as if 
life was only a waltz. There is sharp practice amongst the 
spiders, hidden in aquatic plants, and general consternation 
amongst everything and everybody, when a glad and frisky 
trout jumps a foot into the air and upsets all this little world 
with his returning splash. All this I see, while I listen to the 
hum of the bees as they hunt among the scented bluebells, 
and I hang over the parapet of the bridge. 

*The " Great Pestilence" began in the south of England, in the autumn of 1348, and 
lasted for about a year. During that time the disease swept away fully one-third of the popu 
lation of England and Wales. 



I909.J WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 801 

The water dashes over a few boulders built up as an ob- 
struction, and then falls into a pool before it runs beneath the 
arch on which I stand. Along the sides of the pool is a fringe 
of lady ferns, and their reflections seem to make another fringe 
under water. A large clump of yellow marigolds have pushed 
down to the edge, as if they too wanted to see their faces 
like the vain lady ferns. And when I look above the babbling 
water, as far as I can see, the ground is enameled with broad 
patches of pink campion, broken up with bluebells here and 
there. Away beyond, a sea of white garlic flowers ends in the 
distance under the dark boughs of the fir plantation. 

The water follows through the copse of hazel and dogroses, 
and twists about mossy rocks, and splashes and bubbles and 
sings, until at last it is out in the light, and free of the wood. 
Then, for a dozen yards or so, it rushes on until it fills up a 
hollow in the combe and makes a small lake. Here the pool 
stretches from bank to bank, placid and still. In summer time 
it bears up great water-lilies, which float wide open on its 
breast and then it looks like a silver brooch set with pearls, 
clasping together the sides of this sunny combe. 

I leave the bridge and follow the path, which for a while 
is companion to the stream. The sun is scorching hot for 
early spring, and it "pens down," as the natives say, in this 
narrow combe and brings out the flowers and butterflies and 
the young birds, earlier than anywhere else. In fact the place 
earns its name of Lucombe, or the loo-combe, because it faces 
south and gets a full share of the sun. 

Lucombe wood with its stream and its flowers, with its 
sunshine and its lake, with its sad tale hidden in its heart is 
no ordinary place. It once teemed with life. The laurels are 
not wild, nor are its cherries nor its plums. Ages upon ages 
ago fingers that are very still now plucked the raspberries 
which even yet grow here in profusion. Five hundred years and 
more have passed since the waterfall was made, or the bridge or 
the lake, or this narrow and steep path on my right, which leads 
me so suddenly upwards. It is the old road, doubtless, so I fol- 
low it still. A tangle of raspberry and wild roses blocks the way. 
Beyond great stalwart lime trees stand, shoulder to shoulder, 
as if their office was to defend something precious. Through 
the nettles, as high as my head I fight my way, and then, sud- 
denly, I am close up to an old gray wall with windows in it. 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 51 



802 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Mar., 

The church of St. Andrew was the parish church of Hoi- 
combe, whose village in a bygone age nestled round it. On 
the side from which I have approached it is completely shut 
in by the trees of Lucombe wood, and they close in at its 
ends as well. Only its south side is open, and this is given 
up to the dead. No house is near you hear no sound but 
the singing of the birds. 

The sun beats down on the low square tower at the one 
end, and on the little sanctuary at the other. Half way be- 
tween the two is the porch with its zig-zag Norman arch, and 
within it the old door, closed above a well-worn step. How 
wonderfully peaceful it is ! The dead must lie in more than 
ordinary calm in such a spot as this so remote, so unworldly, 
so forgotten. And why have all things drifted away from the 
place, leaving it only with its dead ? What has happened to 
stop the flow of life, so that the old church is left so lonely 
and so desolate ? The terrible secret is yards down beneath 
those heaving mounds, away there in the field, beyond the 
churchyard wall. 

It is hot, and I am weary with the stiff climb and the 
fight with the brambles and nettles. The porch, with its shade 
and its bench, invites to rest. Here I can look out across the 
buried dead, whose stones record their names, to that buried 
village where so many lie, all unnamed, unknown. As I rest 
unless I grow too sleepy I must try to call up to my 
mind's eye how that village looked, with its rows of thatched 
cottages, its narrow street, its simple folk, its simple life. 

Part of my view is hidden by a rose bush growing near the 
porch. A robin at this moment perches on one of its long 
swaying shoots, and begins to sing. I have often tried to un- 
derstand the robin's song, and once more I wonder at its theme. 
The mournful cadence which brings the short effort to an end 
is so unlike the joy song of any of our native birds. On a wild 
day in early autumn, when the leaves come flying down in thou- 
sands, and the rain pelts on the window, his song is in place. 
On such a day, perched just outside the house, he seems to be 
singing the dirge of the dead summer. But on a bright spring 
morning, when the joy of new-born nature knows no bounds, I 
never understand the robin's song. Perhaps not far away, under 
some primrose leaves, his wife is sitting, brown- eyed and still, on 
five well-loved eggs. You would think he would feel proud and 
glad as other birds, but yet he sings his dirge his sad, sad dirge. 



1 909. ] WEST- Co UNTR Y ID YLLS 80 3 

I listen on listen dreamily to the ever repeated cadence. 
Presently it seems to me to have words I'm sure he is singing 
words they grow plainer and plainer Kyrie Eleison, Christe 
Eleison no ; the words come from inside the church, and I 
hear footsteps too 

The procession is not long. A quaint silver cross leads the 
way, and there are boys, and the candles gleam before they 
pass out into the bright sunshine, and then their sparks are 
lost. Two and two, and sometimes three and three, the people 
come out of the church and follow the cross. Lastly walks a 
priest, who half reads, half chants from a book, the Litany of 
the Saints. They pass me as I sit in the porch, but they pass 
me and seem to heed me not at all. 

Down the churchyard path, through an old gate with a roof 
above it, from which wild garlands of white starry clematis are 
hanging, and then out into the winding village street they go. 
I can still hear the singing, and the priest's voice, plain and 
solemn, calls three times on St. Andrew their patron, and three 
times over the people shout back their Ora pro nobis. The 
bishop has ordered a procession in every church in his diocese 
that God may be implored to stay the great pestilence which 
even now has reached England, and down the country on the 
Dorset coast has already " most pitifully destroyed people in- 
numerable. 11 * The procession is out of sight. I have seen old 
folk, too feeble to walk with the others, come to their doors 
and bow as low as age would let them, when the cross passed 
and the priest prayed. 

An old man claims my attention. He is not walking in the 
procession, nor is he standing at his door. He is deformed, 
and when I saw his face a few moments ago I did not like it. 
He has walked off and has gone past the side of the church 
where there is a footpath, and I see whither it is leading him. 
The lake is at the end of the path, and it shines through the 
trees. A bend leads the old hunchback to his hut, which is on 
the bank some yards above the water. I wonder why he has 
not joined in the procession every one in the place was in it, 
and seemed terribly in earnest too, for they must fear this 
dreadful visitation and are praying God to spare them. The 
man has gone into his hut, and is laughing to himself. An old 
dame leaning on a stick, passes the door, and as she does so, 
speaks to the hunchback. He is telling her she is late for the 

* August 17, 1348. 



804 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Mar., 

procession, that it is quite out of the village by now, and per- 
haps half way round the parish, and that she had better go 
back home again. No, she will go up to the church and say 
her prayers, and wait -till they return. She is in no hurry, and 
they chat. I gather that the hunchback is the grave-digger ; and 
he seems to me to talk profanely, for the old dame chides him 
often. He does not mind if the pestilence comes the more 
that die, the more graves there are to dig, and the more groats 
to earn ; and for what is life, if not for gathering groats ? I 
think the other suggests that the plague might take him too, 
but he only laughs and makes game of both her prayers and 
fears. Then she leaves him and goes by the path that leads 
upwards to the church. 

The procession is now some distance on its way, for I can 
hear the chanting response to the litany coming across the hill 
that rises above the lake on the right. To judge from its vol- 
ume, many more souls have joined since they left the church, 
for the sound is loud and strong, although it must be at least 
half a mile away. Perhaps the very earnestness with which they 
sing makes the chant travel so far and so distinctly. It must 
be a dreadful thing, this new disease, and it gives but little 
time when it strikes its victim. At Melcombe Regis [Wey 
mouth], where it began, they say that the pestilence had two 
forms. If it attacked the lungs it brought on a terrible blood 
spitting, and within an hour, even with the strongest man, all 
was over. With the weak and the young it was quicker even 
than this. When the plague took the other shape, great black 
swellings came under the arm or in the groin, or indeed, for 
the matter of that, all over the body of the luckless sufferer. 
Death was not so swift when the blood spitting was absent, and 
the victim might last a couple of days or so, according to his 
age and strength. A few of those stricken with the black swell- 
ings sometimes lived through the attack and dragged on a dying 
life for months, and then slowly came back to health. But for 
most men, once to be taken with this dire disease meant death 
death quick and terrible. And when the pestilence is on 
them, folk are quite at a loss how to meet him. The simple 
remedies they know of seem quite useless, and he laughs them 
to scorn. They have tried blood-letting, but the victim died 
just the same. No herbs of which they know have any effect; 
nothing placed against these awful swellings stops the biting 
pang. Once the pestilence seizes, the man is doomed, and his 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 805 

nearest, dearest friend will fly from him in terror. Then alone, 
forsaken by all, the raving delirium will fill his last moments 
with woe and anguish. If the priest is not stricken down too, 
the last rites are hurriedly, furtively given the fierce struggle 
begins, and choked with the ever rising blood from the lungs, in 
a short space the poor creature is a discolored, swollen corpse. 

They have already died by the hundred in this manner, all 
along the seacoast, where the ships and the fisher boats first 
brought the disease from abroad, and now, as it spreads inland, 
a great and terrible fear of approaching evil is in all men's 
minds. No wonder the chant rises with such a loud chorus as 
the folks join in and pray, perhaps as they have never prayed 
before, that the homes they love so well may be spared. Are 
they not out of the way off the ordinary roads, here in their 
little sequestered village and may they not reasonably hope 
that the pestilence will pass them by ? Alas, alas ! not one in 
all the throng that now sings so earnestly, and that begs this 
tender mercy at the hands of an all-merciful God, will be alive 
three months from to-day ! The voice the priestly voice that 
I heard read the litany so sternly and so strong will be hushed 
forever by that cruel hand, and another will come after him. 
He too will die, even while he ministers to the dying, and then 
of priests there will be an end, for the flock has gone. The 
whole flock has been stamped out of existence, and so no shep- 
herd is needed save to plead for their souls. But much must 
happen ere that awful silence falls upon the village, ere its 
beating life is still. 

Round the lake, following the path that will lead past the 
hunchback's hut, comes a peddler. He is a young man and 
bears a great pack upon his shoulders that the August sun 
makes to feel heavier than it is. At least, so I think, for I 
see him set the pack down often and rest. As he arrives in 
sight of the hut, the sexton comes to the door to look out, or 
perhaps to hear the distant singing. When the peddler reaches 
the cottage, he once more sets his pack on the ground, and 
throws himself down on the bank near the door in the shade. 
He asks the hunchback for something to drink, but the old 
man only laughs. Presently the peddler gets more persistent, 
but the sexton never moves from the doorway, he seems to 
me to be enjoying the discomfort of the youth. Then the ped- 
dler stoops over his pack and unbuckles its great strap and 
rolls out the contents on the grass beneath the trees. He holds 



$,06 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Mar., 

up something, I cannot see what, but the hunchback only laughs 
again. Then he shows him something else, and this time the 
old man takes the article and looks at it closely. He nods to 
the peddler and goes into his hut, taking the thing with him. 
He is out again directly, carrying a red earthen pitcher, about 
as much as he can lift. The stranger is down on his knees, 
and he tips the pitcher over towards him, and puts his lips 
to the brim and seems to take a long draught. Then he pauses, 
and after a moment or two takes another longer than before. 
I see the hunchback watching him closely as he throws him- 
self on the bank again, and heedless of his pack being open 
and all unprotected, rolls over on his face and kicks the ground 
with his toes as if in some sharp pain. 

How long the peddler stays there I cannot tell, but it seems 
an age. All the while the old man has hovered round him 
like some bird of prey, but he has never touched him, for he 
is certainly afraid. Presently the youth sits up, and I see great 
quantities of blood coming from his mouth. All the fail, mossy 
bank about him is horrid with the stains, and ever and anon 
he sinks backwards, and then sits up once more as the blood 
forces its way to his lips. The poor fellow knows what is the 
matter he has caught the pestilence on his journey and he 
will die. A conversation is carried on while the peddler has 
voice and strength. He seems to want something, or some one, 
and asks earnestly ; but the hunchback never moves from the 
doorway. He seems to be watching the youth grow weaker 
and weaker, as a spider might watch his victim, waiting until 
the strength to resist is gone. 

At the back of the hut is a shed a place formed with 
rough tree trunks and a roof of dried fern. The walls on two 
sides are made with a wattle of dried fern and sedge from the 
lake. The sexton has driven the peddler with a long stick he 
keeps as far from him as he can round to this place, that he 
may die upon the dry fern with which the floor is strewn. 
Then he goes to the lake and brings up pitcher after pitcher 
of water, which he throws upon the bank to wash out the scar- 
let stains. But before he goes, he rolls up the pack and drags 
it into his hut and fast closes the door. Yes, I seem to see 
the whole plan. The peddler will die, for the pestilence has 
marked him down. Then, if the old man can get rid of the 
corpse without any one knowing it, the pack will be his, for 
no one saw the traveler come that way. 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 807 

The chanting is borne on the air from the other side of the 
lake now, so the procession has made a good part of its jour- 
ney, and ere long it will be returning by this road, and so 
back to the church. Little the good people know that, while 
they cry for mercy, the foe has even now broken through and 
is at their very ^doors, awaiting their return. Little [too do 
they think, as they pass the sexton's hut, that the air is full 
of the pestilential disease, and that by to-morrow it will be- 
gin to mow them down ; while in their full life and strength 
they will fall helpless before it, as helpless as they have oft-times 
seen the summer grass fall across the scythe. 

Why is the old hunchback rolling two great stones to the 
edge of the lake, and why does he hasten back again to his 
hut? A long trailing dead bough is on the ground, and lying 
on it is the corpse of the peddler, livid and swollen. Down to 
the water's edge the sexton drags his sledge with its burden, 
and then he rests. He ties two cords about the corpse, and 
then I see what the great stones are for. But here the old 
man pauses again and steps back and ponders within himself. 
Yes; it is a pity to drown all those good clothes, and yet it 
is a risk, to be sure, but 'twere a real pity to send so much 
to the bottom of the lake. Later on he could sell the clothes, 
and they would turn to groats. 

He unbinds the feet again, draws off the shoes and hose 
and strips the dead man even to his shirt, and, fearful of the 
infection, casts the things about him on the bank almost like 
one possessed. Then he makes the great stones fast again and 
drags and pulls until one goes over the edge with a splash, 
and the other follows a moment later, between them taking the 
dead man to the bottom of the lake. 

The hunchback gathers up the clothes and dips them in the 
water and wrings them out, and dips them again, and once 
more wrings the water out. Back beyond his hut he hangs 
them in the wood to dry. 

The village seems full of life and the folk pass up and down 
the narrow street or stop and chat. The hunchback is busy. 
He spreads the tale that yesterday, while they were going 
round the parish singing the litany, he was in Bristol and 
brought back the goods they wanted. To this one and to 
that I see him sell the peddler's wares, pressing all to buy, as 
he has great store to-day. There is laughing and bargaining, 
a friendly calling of the old man ugly names, for his avarice 



808 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Mar., 

and greed are a byword in the village. He has pressed his 
goods and sold cheaper to day than he has ever been known 
to sell before, and scarce a household in the place but what is 
richer for something from the peddler's pack. Even the parish 
priest, who passes him in the street, stops and looks at his 
goods, and holds some of them up and appraises them in play- 
ful mood at a much lower sum than he knows the stony- 
hearted little man will ever sell them for. % 

Hot and close and sultry grows the evening, and but few 
stars shine in the dark sky. Faint lights show here and there 
in the houses, and the stillness of night is coming on. Pres- 
ently I see a neighbor come out of her cottage and go into 
the next one, scarcely waiting to knock. She is out again at 
once, taking the other woman back with her. There is a talk 
at a bed-side, where lies a boy a farm boy of fourteen years 
or so. His face is black and flushed, great beads stand on his 
forehead and his talk is wild and frightened. His mother lifts 
his arm and points to great swellings underneath. "The pes- 
tilence," the neighbor cries, " the pestilence," and rushes from 
the house. Lower down the street a knot of men are talking, 
and a door stands open near them. They point to it as moans 
and almost shrieks come forth, and say with frightened voice : 
" The pestilence has come the pestilence is here." The parish 
priest is going from house to house. I see some rush at him to 
pull him one way, while others would fain have him come with 
them, for the destroying angel has passed by, and from the 
wailing and the crying, and the terror on men's faces, there can- 
not be a house where there is not one dead. 

In the gray of the early morning the hunchback is at work 
digging a great pit. Two men assist him, for the time is short. 
Through the little sanctuary window a dim light comes, and 
through the open door the holy murmur of the Mass. Then 
the dead are brought, rolled in their winding sheets, and the 
grave receives its own. What a dreadful crowd of dead, what 
a frightened handful of living ! Then they fly, scared, from the 
grave's mouth back to the village, back to the dying, back to 
their own death. One, and one only, smiles on for he draws a 
groat for every corpse ; and when there is no one living to give it, 
he goes into the cottage and takes anything he likes. And now 
the voice is silent in the church, and close by the door, alone 
and separate from the rest, the priest is in his hasty grave. 
Another grave more dead less living and so on, day by day. 



1909.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 809 

One more pit has to be dug, and the sexton says, as he 
lays himself down, that he will rise with the light, as this will 
be the last, for there now live scrace half a- dozen souls, and 
some of these have battled with the foe and conquered and 
cheated him of his fee. The hunchback turns uneasily in his 
bed. He looks where the pestilence first marks its victim, and 
persuades himself that there is nothing there. An hour passes 
and the pain and heat increase. He is sure now. By the faint 
rush-light he sees the glands beneath his arm stand out swollen, 
rigid and black. He knows that it is all over with him, and 
the agony he has watched in others he must himself go through 
alone. But if he must leave what in that simple age seemed 
in his greedy eyes a wealth untold, he will at least be even 
with the cruel God who has cheated him out of it. 

He had planned what he would do weeks ago, when he 
placed another great stone by the side of the lake. Yet when 
he fain would rise to carry out his design, he finds that death 
holds him tighter than he thinks, and he strives to rise in vain. 
Falling backwards, he rolls over on his face, and in his agony 
kicks the bed, as he had once watched the peddler kick the 
turf. The heat that rages in him brings wild fancies to his 
brain. He sees the peddler by his side, risen from the lake, 
covered with its ooze and slime and dripping wet. The dread- 
ful form seems to demand its pack, and it holds a red pitcher, 
full to the brim, but will not give a drink to the thirst-tormented 
wretch. 

Shrieking, cursing, shrinking from the accuser, the sexton, 
mad with his fever and his fear, snatches at his bag of savings, 
and rushes from the hut. The lily leaves divide, there is 
scarcely a splash, and the old hunchback, still grasping his 
groats, is at the bottom of the lake, fathoms down. 

The grass is high in the village street, the roofs have fallen in, 
the place has moldered to decay, the stream of life has stopped. 

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, parce nobis Domine 
Why, the procession must be coming back again! I thought 
it had returned long ages ago, and much that was very, very 
terrible had passed since Miserere nobis yet the tune is not 
the litany it is a robin's song it is the robin that was sing- 
ing before yes; this porch was a comfortable place to rest in, 
and I must have slept. Over there are the green mounds and 
all around me is this sad past. 





IN SICILY. 

BY JOSEPH McSORLEY, C.S.P. 
II. CATANIA. 

jN a recent edition of a New York Italian newspaper, 
there is a column of correspondence from Cata- 
nia, dated January thirteenth. By a rather curious 
chance the entire correspondence is taken up with 
describing the discovery of mangled human re- 
mains in the body of a huge shark captured by Catanesi fisher- 
men just outside the port. By a curious chance, I say, because 
a year ago almost to the day, in that very port, "Zio," Pippo, 
and I hired a barchetta at dusk and rowed out around the arm 
of the breakwater into the quiet- rolling Ionian Sea; and despite 
the half -laughing, half-serious protests of my companions, I 
plunged in to swim for a few minutes in the cold, bracing water, 
mocking their warnings about the fierce man-eating pesci-cani. 
" Un* altra Americanata," said Pippo, and "Zio " shrugged his 
shoulders, and we all laughed. It had come to be a recognized 
by-law of this happy little company that Americans are privi- 
leged characters not to be fettered by prevalent conventions 
or common customs. It is inevitable that men will be influ- 
enced by the irresponsible behavior of their associates, and the 
next time I swam in the Ionian Sea diving from the base of 
one of the rocks that the blinded Cyclops hurled at the wily 
Ulysses Pippo jumped in too. And "Zio" almost came not 
quite, for I think he still remembered fearfully the day when I 
had lured him to crouch with me in a dirty iron box and be 
let down by a chain, along fifteen hundred feet of shaky track, 
into the heart of the sulphur mines at Centuripe. Ever after 
that adventure he was wont to regard me suspiciously when I 
would repeat my favorite compliment, namely, that he was quite 
fit to be an American. Ah, good old "Zio," caro Pippo, when 
shall we meet and jest again ? 

Now, dear American reader, these were Sicilian youths, these 
chums of mine, and we lived together for months in a happy 



1909.] 



IN SICILY 



811 



brotherhood, part of the time on their native island and then 
again on the continent. And I may take advantage of the 
present occasion to record of them what in a general way I can 
affirm of their countryman, the often despised Sicilian they 
were true, intelligent, sympathetic, generous-hearted friends. 
That there are characteristic faults, as there are characteristic 
virtues, in the Sicilian type, no one of course will for a moment 
doubt. But I think it is obvious to most travelers that the Si- 
eilian is a great deal better than his reputation, and that for- 
eigners are usually led to judge him harshly because they put 
an undeserved confidence in the critical comments of his worst 
enemy, the continental Italian. And as for the Sicilian's faults 
well, I have only this to say, that almost anything may be 
excused in the conduct of one who has been the victim of such 
neglect, such abuse, and such secular plunder as he has had to 
undergo. 

Catania is a pretty town and impresses the visitor first with 
its very neat and very modern aspect. This point of contrast 
with other southern cities is readily understood when one learns 
that the city he is looking at is the latest of a series, for as 
Catania lies on the slope between Mount Etna and the sea, 
volcanic eruptions send down upon it great torrents of molten 
lava, which periodically bury the old city and then become the 
foundations of the new. 

Leaving the railway station of course after having had the 
customary quarrel with the cabmen we see first of all a foun- 
tain with an ornate specimen of what may be called the free- 
and-easy style of sculpture; and then a statue of St. Agatha, pa- 
tron of the city, surmounting an ancient column of great height. 
We pass the Via Lincoln ; to the left is the grand promenade, 
beyond it the port, bounded by an immense sea-wall, and then 
the ocean stretching away towards Greece and Malta and 
Cyprus. A short ride down the Corso but, behold ! here is 
"Zio," here is Pippo, come to embrace me and to welcome me. 
Catanesi to the manner born, they take me in hand, carry me 
to my appointed lodging, pay the vetturino, and ask me only 
to tell them how I wish to spend my time. And every day 
of my stay in Catania they will place themselves at my service. 

You must get a better map of the city than a guide book 
provides if you would find my lodgings in the Via Dottore, or 
else you must take these directions : Starting from the facade 



8 12 IN SICILY [Mar., 

of the Duomo, follow the Via Garibaldi until near the Piazza 
Mazzini, then plunge bravely into the squalid little short and 
narrow street at your left. If you go on a few steps you will 
see on the left hand side of the street a dingy looking tene- 
ment. Pick your steps among the goats, if a herd happens to 
be passing on the sidewalk, and do not look too amazed if you 
see one of them being milked into a can let down by one of 
the housekeepers of the upper floor. Goat's milk is the only 
kind you are going to get for the next few days; and goat's 
flesh you will eat and be glad to get it, if you stay here. 
Ecco ! the battered old door. Ecco / the filthy courtyard. 
Ecco ! the dark stairway step very carefully if you have not 
your goloshes on. Ecco! Here is my very room. The ceil- 
ing is just as low as ever you don't expect time to bring 
changes here, do you ? The light is just as bad did you sup- 
pose the people on the floor above had stopped hanging out the 
wash in front of the window ? You can read a book here easily 
enough if you crouch up there in the corner and seize your 
chance when the wind flaps back the sheet that is drying out- 
side; or if that doesn't do, you may light the lamp. Here's a 
basin of water where you may kill the fleas most daintily 
when you've caught them if you have learned the art of blood- 
less execution. Don't worry about that anyway, because you'll 
quickly learn with constant practice. Sicilian fleas are so large 
and so placid comparatively and so numerous, that the veriest 
blockhead can become fairly expert in the use of scientific 
methods of destruction. 

But blessed is he who has any stopping place in these days, 
be it in a miserable little albergo of the Via Dottore or in one 
of the big hotels where the rich Inglesi stay, for the town is 
filled with strangers and quivering with excitement. Bands are 
parading through the streets perpetually and venders of every 
imaginable kind of wares stand at the corners and in the squares 
and in the big Piazza Duomo, where they group around the 
huge lava elephant carrying an ancient Egyptian granite obelisk, 
that you see reproduced in the municipal arms. The Via 
Stesicoro-Etnea which is the popular promenade and which 
affords a splendid vista of Etna's white summit twenty miles 
away is so crowded now as to make passage difficult. Yet 
prancing along its driveway, two abreast, comes the eight-horse 
team of a fashionable young nobleman, who sits on the box and 



1909.] IN SICILV 813 

enjoys the admiration of the crowd. Here and there posters on 
the walls announce the various features of the celebration. I 
shall not forget the details, for to this day I have preserved 
two copies. And here is the way the Catanesi honor their pa- 
tron saint : 

PROGRAMME FOR THE FEAST OF ST. AGATHA. 

January 29, 30, 31. 

Solemn Triduum at the Cathedral at 17:30 o'clock. Bands 
of music will parade the different quarters of the city. 

February i. 

Music as on the preceding day. At 16 o'clock horse-races 
in Twentieth of September Street,* with prizes for the winners 
and launching of baloons in the Piazza dell* Esposizione. 

February 2. 

At 12 o'clock drawing of lotteries at the City Hall three 
prizes, of L 125 each, for marriage portions of poor orphan 
girls of Catania, and seven prizes of L 25 each, for poor families 
of conscripts. 

Horse-races with prizes in Twentieth of September Street 
and launching of baloons in the Piazza dell' Esposizione at 
1 6 o'clock; music as on the preceding day. 

February 3. 

In the morning, parade of the various "candles," escorted 
by bands of music. At 13 o'clock procession for the offering 
of wax along the Via Stesicorea from the Church of St. Agatha 
of the Furnace to the Metropolitan (i. e., the Cathedral). From 
14:3010 16:30 musical concert at the Bellini Gardens. At 19 
o'clock march of singing youths, with grand pyrotechnic dis- 
play conducted by Signor Giamore Salvatore. 

February 4. 

Bands of music will parade in the city streets until four 
o'clock in the morning. At 6:30 o'clock, outside journey of 
the Sacred Body of the Saint, with stops at the Churches of 

* A common Italian street name it commemorates the date of the taking of Rome by the 
army of Victor Emmanuel. 



8 1 4 IN SICILY [Mar., 

the Carmine and Old St. Agatha. Musical concerts from 
12:30 to 14:30 o'clock in Piazza. Stesicoro ; from 14:30 to 
16:30 at the Bellini Gardens, and from 20:30 until the return 
of the Saint to Piazza. Duomo. 

February 5. 

Solemn Pontifical, with grand orchestra, in the Metropolitan, 
celebrated at 10 o'clock by his Eminence, the Cardinal Arch- 
bishop. From 14:30 to 16:30 o'clock, musical concert and 
dress parade in the Bellini Gardens, with prizes for the best 
equipages. At 16 o'clock, inside journey of the Sacred Body 
of the Saint. At the arrival of the Saint in Piazza Stesicoro 
there will be a splendid display of fireworks in the square of the 
Cappuccini; and along the hill on Lincoln Street there will be 
another grand illumination. In the evening musical concert in 
Piazza Duomo where, at the return of the Saint, fireworks will 
be set off. 

THE PRESIDENT OF THE COMMISSION. 



With unimportant exceptions, everything happened as an- 
nounced; but the printed programme gives a poor idea of the 
noise, the color, the feverish emotion of these days of high 
festival. The reader acquainted with Giovanni Verga's Coda 
del Diavolo may perhaps recall his words : " At Catania there 
is no carnival before Lent, but in compensation they have the 
feast of St. Agatha." And a Sicilian carnival it surely is. 

Monday morning came the procession of the Candelore, 
great immense candelabra, carved and painted, and adorned 
with statues, lamps, and banners. Each of these belongs to a 
trade, and the eight strong fellows who carry the colossal con- 
struction stop before the workshops and stores of members of 
their own profession and execute a queer little shuffling dance. 
Monday night the bands of students and of workmen who ser- 
enaded the houses of the more prominent citizens, visited first 
the palace of the Cardinal Archbishop and then the house of 
the Prefect of the city. The Via Stesicoro was crowded and 
the balconies above were packed tightly with watchers as one 
after another these groups of twenty or thirty young men 
marched along, escorted by a band, singing gay hymns in honor 
of the saint. Every few moments, too, explosions of bombs 



I909-] 



IN SICILY 



815 



and firecrackers rent the air and the brilliant flames of rockets 
lit up the darkness with variously colored pictures. All night 
long the musicans paraded my earliest experience next morn- 
ing was that of being awakened at half- past four o'clock by a 
band that passed near my albergo. 

At half- past six on Tuesday morning, the streets were al- 
ready fairly well filled with people on their way to the 
cathedral; and inside, the members of the various trades were 
getting ready their candelore, which looked in the dim morning 
like so many portable towers. At the side altars Masses were 
being offered, and some people were receiving Holy Communion, 
though many men were wearing their hats and there was con- 
siderable loud talking and scurrying about. When everything 
was in readiness " La Santa " commenced the exit from the 
chapel amid loud and long " Evvivas "/ and as soon as the 
procession had reached the Piazza, a halt was made and a ser- 
mon was preached. 

After Mass I went from the Cathedral to the seminary close 
by and from a high balcony looked down upon the broad Via 
Dusmet, where it spreads into a sort of square between the 
seminary and the railway here built along the water's edge. In 
the street below were crowded some ten thousand people of 
every sort, including young girls and numerous babies in arms. 
Beyond the bright pageant of brilliant colors set into the black 
masses of clothing and the white lines of faces, one saw 
the blue ocean lighted by the morning sun. It was eight 
o'clock, time for the procession to appear. And now, by way 
of precursors, straggle along groups of boys dressed in white 
albs that make a new harmony of color as they mingle with 
the gay clothing of the crowd. Ecco / There comes the long 
line of black- capped, white- gowned, white-gloved men hauling 
with two long ropes the enormous car which supports the re- 
liquary. Head and breast are in a hollow silver bust decorated 
with precious votive offerings, watches, rings, and jewels. A 
pectoral cross of Pius IX, is there and another of Leo XIII. ; and 
on the head is an emperor's crown, possibly given by Richard 
Coeur de Lion. In the great silver casket, surrounded with 
candles and flowers, repose the bones. As the car swings round 
the corner into full view, the crowd breaks out into an enthusias- 
tic chorus of " Vivas / "and thousands of white handkerchiefs are 
now waved frantically in the air. Down from the upper windows 



8i6 IN SICILY [Mar., 

of the seminary fall nine gaily colored paper banners, each as 
it unfolds displaying a huge painted letter, and there they 
hang spelling out the name " San? Agata" Bombs of fearful 
power are exploded, a "musketry" of fire- crackers is set off, 
and down in a perfect shower rain thousands of tiny fragments 
of colored paper. Then come the striscie long, sinuous, snake- 
like paper ribbons, yellow and white and pink and green, that 
dart out from the balcony and turn and float and dive and twist, 
serpent- wise, until they fall limp across faces and hats and 
shoulders in the crowd below, or catch on the branches of the 
two trees across the way to hang there and festoon them 
gaily. 

My first striscia comes down upon the head of the man 
who holds the free end of the nearer rope, and my second falls 
over the shoulders of one of his two hundred followers. Slowly 
and with frequent stops " La Santa " is drawn along, at the 
signal of a little bell rung by a man beside the stoled and sur- 
pliced priest upon the car. A railway train speeds by over 
across the street, the engine itself bearing a streaming green 
striscia that some one has contrived to cast over it, and the 
passengers crowd to the windows to wave salutes. 

Until nine o'clock that night " La Santa" continued her 
journey through the city. At noon I met the procession ap- 
proaching the Church of the Carmine and stood at the door 
to watch. The vast piazza was crowded as at a fair and every 
nearby street was holiday-jammed. Itinerant venders sold nuc- 
ciole, cannole, pictures of the saint, printed hymns, baloons, and 
the like. The peasant women were radiant in silks and satins 
and brocades of a richness that amazed me, until Pippo ex- 
plained that these were their wedding dresses saved through 
the years to be used on such glad occasions as the present. 

As one looked around all colors caught the eye, pink and 
green and blue, orange and gold and red. Now and again a 
boy or man in white camice and black velvet cap would struggle 
by through the crowd or stand to chat with friends. Bells 
tolled and colored paper rained down as the candelore of the 
five trades came along butchers, bakers, grocers, winesellers, 
fishermen and the flags on the top fluttered and gleamed in 
the sunlight as the bearers rushed up the steep ascent. Mus- 
cular, bronzed fellows they were panting with exertion now, 
though often relieved wearing turbans of sack cloth folded back 



1909.] IN SICILY 817 

on the shoulders into little pads to ease the strain of the car- 
rying poles. 

A youth beside me commented on the magnificence of the 
bara, or car, as it passed, saying rather contemptuously that the 
one used by Santa Rosalia patron saint of Palermo was molto 
piccola. He also said some strong things about the disgraceful 
scenes often enacted at the patronal festival of Tre Castagne, 
a village near Catania. Fierce fighting and riotous drinking 
were common things there, he affirmed. Many people go to 
that festa barefoot and a number of youths run all the way 
from Catania clad very scantily. 

As we talked his Eminence, the Cardinal, drove up to attend 
the function, in a handsome carriage, escorted by two men in 
livery blue coat, with red cuffs and silver buttons, red knee- 
breeches, crimson stockings, white gloves, tall black hats with 
yellow bands. The horses, too, were decorated with red. As 
he went slowly up the lane between the people, they crowded 
in upon him and many seized and kissed his hand; for he is 
an affable and most lovable man. 

And now, amid loud resounding bombs and striscie, that dart 
with startling suddenness from the balconies overhanging the 
street, "La Santa" approaches the church. The two hundred 
and fifty men at the ropes pass the entrance by about fifty 
yards, and then swinging round in a great quarter circle, face 
the door, and rush the heavy car up the hill behind the three 
monks in Mass vestments, who have issued from the door to 
meet the procession. And a great cry goes up, " Cit-ta-di-ni! 
Viva San? Aitaf" As you may well suppose, the woodenr un- 
ners on which the bara rests slide up that stone incline only 
by the mightiest of efforts. To get the bara started, the bearers 
must always sway it a little from side to side, or wiggle it as 
we might say. " Dondolare " is the Italian word for this, but the 
Catanesi have a special phrase, "s'anaga," and this they repeat 
delightedly when the bara begins to move in its peculiar fashion. 

Behind the bara we were swept into the church ; thousands 
had preceded us and other thousands tried to follow. It was 
a noisy place ; men and women conversed unconcernedly wher- 
ever they chanced to meet, a canon attempted to preach, a 
priest came out to say Mass at a side altar and was buried in 
the crowd with scarcely room to extend his hands. Perched on 
the confessionals might be noticed several women, bound to 

VOL. LXXXYIII. 52 



8i8 IN SICILY [Mar., 

secure a vantage corner. It would not have been an auspicious 
occasion for St. Paul to preach against externalism. Many re- 
garded me curiously ; but being stared at had long ago become 
an old story, and I went on jotting things down in my little 
notebook. 

" Cit-ta-di-ni ! " shouted the Canon; one could scarcely hear 
him. " Viva San? Aita / '" went up the answering cry of the 
fervent multitude. It was noon ; High Mass was about to com- 
mence, and we left the building, noting on the walls the curi- 
ous collection of ex-voto offerings, wax dolls, wax arms, and 
crude pictures of miracles. 

At five o'clock in the afternoon we again met the proces- 
sion at the church of the Cappucini. Again the venders, the 
noisy, jostling, holiday crowds, the filled balconies. A wan- 
dering organ-grinder broke into the line of the procession dur- 
ing a halt and played La Spagnuola, the most popular music- 
hall air in Italy last year. Inside the church a monk was re- 
ceiving a visit from half-a-dozen friends, and a woman sat be- 
fore the high altar complacently nursing her baby, as uncon- 
scious of observation as the Madonnas in the pictures that 
adorn these southern churches. 

At half-past nine o'clock that night " La Santa" returned 
to the Cathedral, amid a glory of red lights, rockets, bombs, 
" musketry," music, and illumiaated candelore, while thousands 
of people, including many babies, filled the Piazza from end to 
end. 

At eleven o'clock Wednesday morning was sung a Solemn 
Pontifical Mass. A band of thirty pieces played, and a choir 
of some forty men and boys supplemented the usual sanctuary 
choir, singing the Common in music, which, though operatic, 
was not undignified. Guards, wearing their red and blue holi- 
day-plumes abounded; here and there were stylish looking 
dragoons and bersaglieri with their curious feather plumes. 
" La Santa " was carried from her own chapel to the high altar 
and was then turned around so as to face the people. Every 
now and again would come the summons " Cit-ta-di-ni ! " fol- 
lowed by the response " Viva San? Aita!" His Eminence en- 
tered, prayed, and ascended the throne more bombs, bells, 
" musketry." 

But I must abbreviate the further account of the celebra-' 
tion. The afternoon found us at the Villa Bellini, where, in 



1909.] 



IN SICILY 



819 



the grand parade of Catania's aristocracy, I saw dukes, duch- 
esses, princes, marchesas, and all the rest. Seeing the ladies 
on these occasions one easily notes that it is not only in fire- 
works that Catania consumes an enormous amount of powder. 

At five in the evening " La Santa " began her second jour- 
ney through the city. It was dark when the procession left 
the Piazza and came along the Corso to visit the old cloister 
where three venerable nuns, sole surviving relics of the ancient 
regime, appeared at the barred window. The Government will 
confiscate that convent as soon as those three old ladies die. 
At different points along the route were given magnificent dis- 
plays of fireworks, and when, near midnight, " La Santa" 
reached the Cathedral again, a grand giuoco-fuoco was presented, 
" Viva Sanf Agata " being printed out in letters made up of 
dazzling fireworks. One of the candelore shone brilliantly with 
acetylene lamps, and each of the groups gave their short, shuf- 
fling dance as they made their exit. Even before " La Santa " 
was taken from the bara and carried into her chapel by the 
attendant clerics, the big firework letters had burned out and 
the last tremendous rattle of " musketry " had been set off. The 
band struck up the Marcia Reale, the crowd began to break 
up and drift away, and the boys and men commenced to tear 
down the smoking remnants of the burned sticks and paper. 
The venders of nucciole and torroni, having done their last piece 
of business for the night, folded their stands or carried off their 
empty trays. The streets grew quieter and darker by degrees. 
The great Festa of the year was over. 



IRew Boohs* ' ; 

Anything coming from the pen of 
SERMONS. Cardinal Gibbons is sure, in ad- 

vance, of a kindly reception, from 

an immense public, comprising all American Catholics and a 
large section of our non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. In the 
volume of sermons which he has just published* he has sketched 
a picture of the most illustrious of his predecessors which, with 
a few adaptations required by difference of time, public opinion 
would approve as a picture of himself. In a sermon on the 
growth of the Church in the United States he says of Bishop 
Carroll : 

I regard the selection of Dr. Carroll as a most providential 
event for the welfare of the American Church. If a prelate 
of narrow views, a man out of sympathy and harmony with 
the genius of the new Republic had been chosen, the progress 
of religion would have been seriously impeded. It is true 
the Constitution has declared that no one should be molested 
on account of his religion ; but a written instrument would 
have been a feeble barrier to stem the tide of popular and 
traditional prejudice unless it was vindicated by the patriotic 
example of the Patriarch of the American Church. . . . 
He was a man of sterling piety and enlightened zeal. These 
gifts endeared him to the faithful. He was a man of consum- 
mate tact, of courteous manners, and unfailing charity. He 
enjoyed intimate relations with his fellow-townsmen in every 
walk of life. The interest that he took in social and literary 
improvement rendered him very popular with his fellow-citi- 
zens. He was, withal, a sturdy patriot. ... He was 
thoroughly in touch with the spirit of our institutions, and by 
these loyal sentiments he won the esteem and confidence of 
his countrymen. 

The sermons are based on the Gospel of the day for the 
Sundays throughout the year. The first good quality to be 
perceived in them is brevity; for the author, in the role of 
preacher, practises the virtue which, when it is his turn to lis- 
ten, he appreciates highly in the pulpit orator. About two- 
thirds of the discourses are moral, and one- third dogmatic. 

* Discourses and Sermons for Every Sunday and the Principal Festivals of the Year. By 
James Cardinal Gibbons. Baltimore and New York : John Murphy Company. 



1909.] 



NEW BOOKS 



821 



They were, the Cardinal tells us, for the most part, preached 
in the Cathedral of Baltimore, and treat of topics that " have 
been to the writer an unfailing source of joy and comfort, of 
strength and fortitude during the last half century." 

They are simple, sincere, earnest expositions of the old 
truths applied to daily life. The tone throughout is paternal 
and persuasive. Generally one can observe evidence that the 
speaker had in his audiences some who did not belong to the 
Church; and he sought to place Catholic doctrine before them 
in its most winning form ; and we scarcely need add that not 
the faintest trace of polemical acerbity is observable from the 
first to the last page. All sermons, even the dogmatic ones, 
are largely composed of solid, apposite, practical counsel on 
the duties and dangers of life. And when he touches upon 
duties or faults the Cardinal does not content himself with 
generalities and abstractions, he speaks of living conditions and 
characteristics ; and in this book one perceives a truth which is 
entirely overlooked in many volumes that profess to set forth 
the obligations of the Christian life ; namely, that the Catholic 
has public duties as a citizen, which are no less obligatory than 
his private obligations. The volume bears a very gracious dedi- 
cation to the Sulpician Fathers of Baltimore Seminary. 

Another excellent set of instructions for all the Sundays 
of the year is that of Dr. McQuirk.* His plan has been to 
produce an exposition of the Catechism of the Council of 
Trent. Deriving from such a source, the instructions are sound 
and solid. It is, perhaps, trying them too severely to take 
them up immediately after the preceding volume. For the in- 
evitable comparison accentuates the cold and impersonal tem- 
per of these discourses. Here we have a book, a very good 
book, but only a book. In the other case, we have the man, 
in the book, where heart speaketh unto heart. It does not 
follow, however, that this one may not serve some purposes 
equally as well as the other. The published sermon may aim 
at two different classes of patrons those who read the sermons 
for their own edification, and those who buy them to preach 
them. This volume will find its sphere of service among the 
latter class. It furnishes sound material which, when quickened 

* Short Discourses for All the Sundays of the Year. By Rev. John McQuirk, D.D., LL.D. 
New York : St. Paul's Library, East n8th Street. 



822 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

with a little oratorical leaven, will make excellent spiritual bread 
which the busy priest can break t his flock. 

The recording angel's ledger, prob- 
MOLOKAI. ably, shows, but assuredly no hu- 

man mind here can even roughly 

estimate, the immense influence which the career of Father Da- 
mien has had in removing from the mind of the non- Catholic 
world, throughout English-speaking countries especially, its in- 
herited prejudices, and replacing them with respect or sympa- 
thy for the Catholic Church. That the attention of the world 
was forcibly directed to the lonely, unknown Belgian priest, 
toiling cheerfully amid the grim horrors of desolate Molokai, 
has been due, chiefly, to two publications which, if bulk were 
the index of efficiency, would cut a very small figure in the lit- 
erary output of the age. One of these was the Letter to the 
Reverend Mr. Hyde, written by R. L. Stevenson, over which, 
as a classic of merciless invective and blistering sarcasm, even 
the pages of Junius, or Jonathan Swift can assert no pre-emi- 
nence. The other little book, which we owe to Charles Warren 
Stoddard, is scarcely surpassed in our language, for tender sad- 
ness and sweet moan. The new edition of The Lepers of Molo- 
kai* which has just issued from the press, is, one feels sure, 
but the second of a series that will stretch out, not till the crack 
of doom, but for many a year to come, and, let us hope, past 
the future day when the dreadful scourge which it wails, will 
have disappeared from the scene of Damien's heroism. 

We have heard the criticism made that just a little less art, 
a little less feminine sentiment, would have been more in keep- 
ing with the dreadful theme ; the unreflecting spontaneity o^ 
Defoe, which is too much absorbed by the sight of horror to 
pause in order to make elegant phrases or produce a rhythmic 
sentence, is the only appropriate style to describe a horrible 
scene of human suffering. Perhaps; but this is a criticism of 
the professional armchair. In the long run, however, it is not 
the professional critic, but the world's estimate, which determines 
the fate of a book; and the world of this generation, touched 
to tears, has enthusiastically voted that The Lepers of Molokai 
is a story that is to live in English literature. 

The Lepers of Molokai. By Charles Warren Stoddard. New Edition. Enlarged. 
Notre Dame, Indiana: The Ave Maria Press. 



1909.] 



NEW BOOKS 



823 



It is high praise to say that the 
THE ST. NICHOLAS SERIES. Life of Cardinal Allen, in the " St. 

Nicholas Series " is worthy of the 

hero and of the hero's biographer.* The saintly character and 
the work of the man to whom, more than to any other indi- 
vidual, was due the preservation of the faith in England dur- 
ing the days of persecution, has been a congenial theme for 
the learned English Benedictine. He relates, briefly, but com- 
prehensively, the labors and trials undergone by " the Cardinal 
of England," in establishing and conducting the seminaries which 
supplied the courageous priests who wrought and died in order 
to keep the light burning in England through the days of dark- 
ness. With the frankness of the Benedictine and the scholar, 
however, Dom Camm does not hesitate to make some reserva- 
tions in his eulogy when necessary. While he fully recognizes 
the devotion and ability with which the Cardinal personally 
carried out, during his life, the arduous task of directing the 
conduct of English religious affairs from abroad, he adds : 

It is unfortunate that the incurable optimism which distin- 
guished his character, and which made him cling to the last 
to the idea that the reign of Protestantism in Kngland could 
be but a transitory one, caused him to refrain from obtaining 
for the afflicted Church in Kngland the greatest boon that 
could have been given her, 2. e., a permanent ecclesiastical 
organization. If he had provided that at least after his 
death some form of hierarchy should be established in the 
country, he would have probably saved us from the greatest 
of all the many evils that then afflicted us, i. e., the divisions 
and dissensions to which we have already alluded. 

On another incident in the Cardinal's conduct, which has 
had its defenders, Dom Camm pronounces an adverse sentence. 
In 1587, Sir William Stanley, a Catholic, who was holding the 
city of Deventer for the States who were in alliance with Eng- 
land, surrendered his charge to the Spaniards, deserted the 
English service, and carried his men with him over to the ser- 
vice of Spain. Allen justified this action on the ground that 
the States were rebels against their sovereign chiefly on account 
of religion ; and that an English soldier could not in conscience 

* William Cardinal Allen, the Founder of the Seminaries. By Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B. 
New York: Benziger Brothers. 



824 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

assist them against the Catholic King. This may be true, ob- 
serves Dom Camm, and it might be well argued that the war 
was an unjust one, but " it is one thing to resign a commission 
and decline to fight in an unlawful conflict, and another to de- 
liver up a charge confided to one's care." Dom Camm regrets 
that Allen, though his intentions were pure, should have allowed 
himself to be drawn into the political intrigues against his coun- 
try. The consequences were not merely to smirch Allen's other- 
wise stainless character, but also to inflict irreparable injury on 
the cause which he had at heart: 

Allen not merely defended Sir William's action, but took it 
as an example of what might be expected to happen in Kng- 
land, if the Pope would send an expedition to invade the 
country in order to restore the Catholic faith. He implored 
Sixtus V. to undertake this work with the help of Spain and 
other Catholic princes ; and he assured him that posterity 
would reckon this as the most glorious act of his Pontificate. 
The result was tlie disastrous Spanish Armada, an occasion 
which gave emphatic proof of the loyalty of the Catholics of 
England, and of the short-sighted folly of those who sought 
to restore the ancient faith by force of foreign arms. 

The theme of this volume,* com- 

HE CAN WHO THINKS HE posed of a number of editorials 
CAN. that appeared in the Success Maga- 

zine, is to impress on young men 

the conviction that victory in the struggle of life depends 
mainly on self-reliance, energy, industry, and the choice of a 
congenial career or occupation. Dr. Harden inculcates the 
value of these motor forces vigorously, and presents his case 
from many points of view, enforced with illustrations from the 
lives of well-known men who have, here in America, to use a 
popular phrase, reached the top of the ladder. For the en- 
couragement of those who must begin at the lowest rung he 
points out how poverty has so often proved the spur which 
started some of the most successful. He insists strongly, too, 
upon moral fiber and honesty, without which, he argues, all 
seeming success is a failure. There is inspiration in the book 
for those who are starting on the struggle; though, unfortu- 

He [Can Who Thinks He Can; and Other Papers on Success in Life. By Orison Swet 
Marden. New York : Thomas Y. Crowell. 



1909.] 



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825 



nately, another book might be written in reply, charged with 
an overwhelming role of instances in point, to prove that if one 
would be magnificently successful in commercial life, as sue- 
cess is measured by our popular standards, along with energy 
and industry, he must also cultivate, not integrity, but flexibil- 
ity of conscience. 

The biography * of the inventor 

SIR ISAAC PITMAN. of the most widely practised sys- 
tem of writing the English lan- 
guage, besides the interest it offers as an account of the in- 
troduction and development of one of the greatest labor-saving 
inventions of the last century, may be read with enjoyment by 
all who love the story of a man who, for an idea, makes a 
stout and victorious fight against difficulties. Though Pitman's 
invention brought him both fame and fortune, neither of these 
was his chief aim. He loved the art to which he consecrated 
his life ; and, believing that it would prove useful, he spared no 
pains, and when money came to him, he spared no expense, to 
diffuse his system. One reads, in his case, the common story 
of established custom calling novelty bad names without giving 
it a fair trial ; and of how those who were at first the bitterest 
opponents, while the new idea was weak and struggling, osten- 
tatiously patronized it when it had succeeded in spite of them. 
The book reveals a strong, upright, though not very rich per- 
sonality ; and the advocates of the simple life have in Pitman 
a fine model for imitation, or a more frequent purpose ex- 
hibition. He was a strict vegetarian, never drank alcoholic 
liquors, seldom tea, did not smoke, and had a pronounced anti- 
pathy to the use of tobacco by others. A potato and a glass 
of water was his share of the viands at that shrine of Epicurus, 
a Lord Mayor's banquet in London. 

He had the reward promised to the filial child in the Old 
Dispensation, for he lived to be eighty- five years of age. His 
strenuous efforts to popularize phonetic spelling have not been, 
as yet and we are among those who sincerely hope never 
will be crowned with success. The hunter after coincidences, 
and the investigator of heredity, will be attracted by a curious 
fact related in a letter reproduced in the book. The writer was 
Dr. Thomas Hill, of Harvard University. He relates that there 

* The Life of Sir Isaac Pitman (Inventor of Phonography). By Alfred Baker. New York : 
Isaac Pitman & Sons. 




826 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

lived in Somerville, Mass., a man named Isaac Pitman, who 
was an enthusiastic phonographer. The two namesakes were 
ot the same age, born on opposite sides of the Atlantic, of no 
known relationship, with the same zeal for shorthand, the same 
devotion to Swedenborg, and with the same adherence to two 
or three other "isms." 

The innumerable friends of the 

HENRY VAN RENSSELAER, late Father Van Rensselaer will be 
SJ. delighted to find that the noble 

priest's name and character have 

been presented in a cleverly written biography.* The biographer 
had to record no striking events, no conspicuous work, either in 
the intellectual or the missionary field, but the simple story of 
ordinary priestly duty done long and faithfully, with a love for 
God and a love for men that made the name of this son of the 
Dutch Patroons according to the flesh, and of St. Ignatius ac- 
cording to the spirit, a household word among those who knew 
him. The most interesting portion of the book is that which 
relates his conversion and the events that preceded it. Many 
letters of Father Van Rensselaer to friends and to his mother 
from Oxford, before his conversion, are of special value, as 
they afford a glimpse of conditions that prevailed there after 
the exodus of Newman and his friends. 

If the spirits of the blessed are 
JOAN OF ARC. still capable of earthly preferences 

and affections, one cannot but think 

that the soul of Joan of Arc, in her heavenly home, entertains 
a grateful tenderness for Scots and Scotland. Of all the nation- 
alities with which she came in contact during her stormy ca- 
reer French, Burgundians, English, Scotch the sons of " the 
leal Northern land" alone, whether men of war, with sword 
and halbert, or men of the Gospel, like Bishop John Kirk- 
michael, stood staunchly by her through good repute and in 
evil repute. When, after her death, the battle of pens arose 
concerning her character, Scotchmen again, among the chroni- 
clers of that age, proved her unfailing champions. And while, 
long after, our own good Dr. Lingard declared her to be a 
mere visionary, who " mistook for realities the workings of her 

*Lifoand Letters of Henry Van Rensselaer, S.J. By Rev. Edward Spillane, SJ. New 
York : Fordham University Press. 



1909.] 



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827 



own imagination," who but David Hume, the arch- sceptic from 
whom agnosticism draws its favorite weapons to assail the mirac- 
ulous, was the first among celebrated men of letters to acknowl- 
edge the nobility of Joan's character and the splendor of her 
career ! 

Have we a confirmation of the adage that " blood will tell " 
in the fact that now, when the controversy concerning Joan is 
once more active, another Scotchman enters the academic arena 
to do doughty and effective battle for her whom one of his 
countrymen among the chroniclers called the " puella a Spiritu 
Sancto excitata"? Making a present of this question to the 
psychologists interested in the problem of heredity, we arc 
content to remark that the life of Joan, just published by An- 
drew Lang,* takes its place, with all due respect to Mr. Low- 
ell's work, as the most complete and critical English work on 
the subject. 

The book is on a generous scale. It contains close upon 
four hundred large pages, fifty of which are filled with inter- 
esting appendices and closely printed notes of reference. The 
narrative, accurate and detailed, flows along smoothly, in the 
easy, colloquial style familiar to Mr. Lang's readers. It is oc- 
casionally interrupted, as Mr. Lang's readers would expect, by 
perhaps unduly protracted discussions upon some unimportant 
question of fact or documentary evidence; for the author of 
the Casket Letters dearly loves to wrestle with an historical 
puzzle. From the beginning Mr. Lang stoutly combats the 
theory that Joan's visions were mere subjective hallucinations, 
or, as the more recent form of the theory has it, the results of 
hypnotism. He shows that neither " trance " nor " ecstasy " 
can be offered as an explanation of the visions. " The pecu- 
liarity of her visions is that they never interfered with her 
alert consciousness of her surroundings, as far as the evidence 
goes. She heard them on the scaffold, where men preached at 
her, with the cart waiting to carry her to the fire; and she 
heard them as distinctly as she heard the preacher whose in- 
solence she interrupted." 

Against the attacks of Anatole France Mr. Lang defends 
the value of the records of the Trial of Rehabilitation. There 
was, he admits, a woeful failure in that process to refute many 



* The Maid of France. Being the Story of ihe Life and Death f Jeanne d "Arc. By An- 
drew Lang. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 



828 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

slanders and misrepresentations that remained untouched, but 
" that the judges cut and garbled the replies to the questions ac- 
tually put is a mere baseless assertion." The theory of "in- 
doctrination," first broached in 1730, by a certain Beaumar- 
chais, and rehabilitated in " scientific " form by Anatole France, 
Mr. Lang riddles through and through by a careful presenta- 
tion of facts. This theory is, in substance, that the Maid was 
an enthusiast who was completely under the control of a crafty 
ecclesiastic, Brother Richard, or somebody else. On his assur- 
ance she believed herself to be a saint to whom were vouch- 
safed supernatural visions. Her director or directors took good 
care to suggest of what nature the visions and the instructions 
and orders which accompanied them should be. The king and 
his counsellors saw the advantage that might be gained from a 
belief that God had sent a special messenger to retrieve the 
royal cause; and, consequently, they assiduously, skillfully, and 
successfully fostered the delusion. Mr. Lang furthermore dem- 
onstrates that, in the hands of its recent exponents, the hy- 
pothesis is self- contradictory. For they admit, inconsistently, 
the evidence which proves Joan to have been conspicuously 
independent of clerical influences. 

In his final appreciation of the nature of the voices and 
visions of Joan, Mr. Lang reviews briefly the opinions of the 
eminent neuropathologist, Dr. Dumas, who leans to the hypo- 
thesis that these were the outcome of sub-consciousness. What, 
by the way, do not the inexhaustible mysteries of self- con- 
sciousness explain, when boldly drawn upon as they are now- 
adays ? But Mr. Lang very pertinently asks : What do we 
mean by unconscious thinking ? And he proceeds to affirm that 
to answer the question lies beyond the powers of psycholog- 
ical science at present. Nor does Mr. Lang attempt himself to 
solve the problem of the nature of Joan's visions a problem 
which he considers to be outside the scope of an historical 
treatise, the object ol which is to relate, establish, and cor- 
relate the facts. The facts he has shown are established, ex- 
plain them as you will. His own belief is clearly enough ex- 
hibited through the course of the book, and briefly indicated 
towards the end: 

I am inclined to think that in a sense not easily defined, 
Jeanne was " inspired, " and I am convinced that she was a 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 829 

person of the highest genius, of the noblest character. With- 
out her genius and her character, her glimpses of hidden 
things (supposing them to have occurred) would have been 
of no avail in the great task of redeeming France. Another 
might have heard Voices offering the monitions; but no 
other could have displayed her dauntless courage and gift of 
encouragement ; her sweetness of soul ; and her marvelous 
and victorious tenacity of will. 

The special merit of the work is that it exposes the manner 
in which, here as in many other historical fields, writers who 
profess to be above all things impartial, objective, " scientific," 
ignore, distort, misread unimpeachable evidence, and manipu- 
late facts, to twist evidence and fact to fit their a priori prin- 
ciples. 

We are indebted to Dr. Barden- 

PATROLOGY. hewer and to Dr. Shahan for an 

excellent work in the study of 

Early Church History. The Patrologie* of Bardenhewer was 
brought out by Herder in 1894, and republished in a new 
edition in 1901. The success of the work was immediate, hav- 
ing been received by all critics, Catholic as well as non- Cath- 
olic, with great favor, and soon it was considered one of the very 
best studies on the Fathers and Patristic Literature. The 
translation of Dr. Shahan is made from the second edition of 
the Patrologie and is excellently done. The only additions 
made to Bardenhewer's original work are in the bibliographical 
sections, where Dr. Shahan has incorporated some references 
from the recent French and Italian translations of this same 
work. This exhaustive study of the Fathers will be of great 
benefit to all students of Church History; in fact, is bound to 
supplant the few brief works we have on the subject of Patrol- 
ogy and to become a sort of Vade Mecum for all instructors 
in that particular branch of study. It is for advanced students 
and instructors that the work will have greatest value. The 
average reader would desire that the biographical and biblio- 
graphical sections of the book were sacrificed somewhat for 
the sake of a more extended philosophic historical treat- 
ment of the age of the Fathers. A "general conspectus," it 
is true, is given at the beginning of different sections, but 

* Patrology. By Otto Bardenhewer, D.D., Ph.D. Translated by Thomas J. Shahan, 
D.D. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



830 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

given in space exceedingly brief, relative to the size of the 
work. Still, all readers will find great stores of information in 
this Patrology and will see that Dr. Shahan has done a great 
service for English students by placing within their reach this 
excellent work of Bardenhewer. 

Not since the appearance of Fa- 
LOGIC. ther Maher's Psychology has any 

new philosophical text-book and 

many have been published called forth a thrill of welcome 
such as that which a perusal of Father Joyce's Principles of 
Logic has inspired.* The author has deserved well of the re- 
public of professors and students. The work adheres to tradi- 
tional Aristotelian and scholastic principles, but it differs as 
much from the conventional text-book as a dried specimen in 
a botanical museum differs from a vigorous living plant. With 
its assistance a scholastic student is equipped to present him- 
self at any modern university examination and to hold his own 
in the concursus. Though uncompromisingly loyal to scholas- 
tic principles, Father Joyce recognizes that justice is not done 
to those principles unless they are adjusted to the needs of to- 
day. And Father Joyce has happily effected this adjustment. 
While adhering to the traditional scheme, he takes note of mod- 
ern details which the ordinary text-book never alludes to, or 
touches on in an entirely inadequate fashion. For instance, in- 
stead of being dismissed in a brief thesis, as a mere trivial con- 
sideration, the inductive method is assigned six full chapters 
in which are discussed the relation of formal logic to scientific 
research; the function of observation and experiment; meth- 
ods of inductive inquiry ; the scope of scientific explanation 
and hypothesis ; the methods of quantitative determination and 
the elimination of chance ; and the estimation of probabilities. 
These subjects make up the second part of the work, and con- 
stitute " Applied Logic " as it stands in Father Joyce's treat- 
ment. This scheme will not, probably, escape criticism; for it 
ignores the topics of the nature and criteria of certitude, truth, 
the sources of knowledge, and especially the validity of testi- 
mony. Certainly the work does not provide a treatment of 
these important subjects, and for this reason it will not cover 

* Principles of Logic. By George Hayward Joyce, S.J., M.A., Oriel, Oxford. New 
York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 831 

the ground that is mapped out in the traditional division of 
our text-books. But it is becoming more and more evident 
that, in view of the present methods of anti-Catholic philoso- 
phy, the epistemological question ought to be taken up in 
close connection with psychology, and no advantage is gained 
by introducing it, in an a priori fashion, and with an inadequate 
exposition, to the beginner in logic. Indeed one of the most 
meritorious features of Father Maher's book is that it presents 
the epistemological problem in as close relation to the psycho- 
logical as is the concave to the convex in the circle. If we 
take Maher and Joyce together they cover the whole ground 
with the reservation of the questions of certitude, testimony, 
and authority. The latter subject, however, is not treated with 
anything like the necessary fullness in the ordinary text-book, 
which contents itself with laying down one or two principles 
that go but a short way towards introducing the student to the 
meaning of historical criticism. 

As presented by Father Joyce, Aristotelian logic shows it- 
self in its essentials as fresh and vigorous as it was in the days 
of the Stagyrite, and capable of assimilating with whatever 
modern logicians have discovered of value in the way of ap- 
plication or expression. The author has appended a set of ques- 
tions on logic, borrowed from examination papers set at Ox- 
ford, Cambridge, the universities of Glasgow, London, the Royal 
University of Ireland, and by the Commissioners of the Indian 
Civil Service. This collection dispenses the professor from the 
not inconsiderable trouble of formulating such questions him- 
self, or having recourse to Keynes or Welton. These questions 
are invaluable from a pedagogical point of view ; for to wrestle 
with them the student must not only make his own the in- 
struction obtained from his Latin text-book, but he must also 
develop the power to express his knowledge in current terms 
and phrase a power which is all too rarely cultivated. 

"Who would not go to Palestine ? " 

OUT-OF-DOORS IN THE asks Henry Van Dyke in his lat- 
HOLY LAND. est volume,* and if one might ride 

on horseback through green pas- 
tures and by still waters with the wonder of a new land to 

Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land. By Henry Van Dyke. New York : Charles Scribner's 
SOBS. 



832 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

feed upon day by day, and the wide and starry sky to lie down 
beneath at night who would say no ? It is the story of a 
pilgrimage such as this that Dr. Van Dyke tells in the volume 
before us. Its purpose ? to meet that " personal and indefina- 
ble spirit of place which was known and loved by prophet and 
psalmist, and most of all by Him who spread His table on the 
green grass and taught His disciples while they walked the nar- 
row paths waist deep in the rustling wheat. . . ." The lit- 
tle party of four met together in Jaffa, on the Mediterranean, 
and with guides and camp gear set forth upon their journey 
out-of-doors in the Holy Land. 

From Jaffa to Jerusalem, as the crow flies, takes one through 
a tiny portion of Israel, the northern extremes of Judah, and 
at last to the city that is set upon a hill. From Jerusalem a 
journey was made south to Bethlehem and still a little farther 
to Hebron where the Oak of Abraham stands upon the hill of 
Mamre. 

Of Jerusalem, one finds prisoned in Dr. Van Dyke's words 
the spirit of the city itself that calm, sublime spirit of trag- 
edy, of aloofness from the fates of the other dwelling-places of 
men, even as the city looks down upon the plain ; an abiding 
sense of the eternal and immutable in the midst of change and 
modernity, and of that gray melancholy which broods upon the 
walls that are wet with the tears of an expectant people. The 
travelers' tent is cast in an olive- grove, outside the gates, whence 
little journeys are made into the streets of the city, with its 
squalor and its charm, over the course of the Via Dolorosa, to 
the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and to the Dome of the 
Rock, where temples have been building and destroying far into 
the memory of man. Mizpah, to the northwest of Jerusalem, 
where Samuel offered sacrifice to Jehovah and sent his people 
down against the Philistines, and the Mount of Olives are also 
journey-points. 

There is nothing finer in the book before us than the chap- 
ter on the Garden of Gethsemane. It is the scene of the su- 
preme tragedy in the Passion of Christ and Dr. Van Dyke has 
written of it with a simple beauty and tenderness which flow 
only from a real sympathy in the truest sense of the word. 

From Jerusalem Dr. Van Dyke and his party go down to 
Jericho, but do not fall among thieves as did the traveler of 
the Gospel. Thence they cross the Jordan into the land of 



I909-] 



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833 



Gilead and journey up the river valley to Gerasa, the ruins 
of a once proud city of the Decapolis. Recrossing to the west- 
ern shore of the Jordan, they strike into the heart of Samaria, 
passing through Shechem, nestling between Mounts Ebal and 
Gerizim, Samaria and Dothan, where Joseph was sold by his 
brethren ; across the plain of Esdraelon to Jezreel and Nazareth, 
where Jesus was a child, to Cana of the Wedding Feast, and 
thence to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. Dr. Van Dyke's 
treasure-house is full of memories of the Lake, which is so in- 
separably associated with Christ and His disciples, Simon and 
Andrew, James and John, and he turns his face northward 
again with reluctance to the Waters of Merom, to Dan of the 
golden calf, to Caesarea Philippi, and, skirting the snow- crowned 
Hermon and Lebanon, through the country of the Druses to 
Damascus. 

Those who know the author ever so slightly, will perceive 
that something is lacking in the foregoing lines. It is ours to 
confess we have omitted it. The Doctor cast his flies, a Royal 
Coachman and a Queen of the Water, in the Lake of Galilee, 
and, later, in the headwaters of the Jordan, he took something 
which was "doubtless Scriptural and Oriental" and, "so far 
as there is any record, the first fish ever taken with an artifi- 
cial fly in the sources of the Jordan." Who will find it hard 
to forgive this angler's note of triumph ? 

Between the chapters of his narrative Dr. Van Dyke has 
placed the psalms which strike some sweet and [dominant note 
and are suggestive of the lyrics which Tennyson cast between 
his Idylls. 

With the exception of the Poetry of lennyson and his pieces 
of fiction, both of which belong to another class, Out-of-Doors 
in the Holy Land will take precedence, we think, of anything 
which Dr. Van Dyke has done hitherto in prose. Its greatest 
charm is its power to draw one out ol himself far over the 
seas; its wondrous rich descriptions, often of a lovely beauty; 
and its language, made delightful by the breath of the Scrip- 
ture itself. 

The spirited little brochure* of M. 

THE CHURCH IN FRANCE. Barbier, breathing courage and op- 
timism, on the religious crisis in 
France, has rapidly reached its second edition. Though he 

* L *glise de France et les Catholiques Frangais. Par Paul Barbier. Paris : Lethielleux. 

VOL. LXXXVIII. 53 



834 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

permits himself no illusions on the seriousness of the situation, 
he sees, on many sides, reasons for trusting that the worst is 
past for Catholicism, and that the Church in France, though 
she will have been sadly crippled in her material resources, 
will emerge from the struggle stronger, more aggressive, and 
more efficient than she was before. 

He repudiates the charge sometimes made that one of the 
causes of the anti-religious success has been the intellectual 
decline of the clergy. They have not declined, he argues ; 
and they are up to the requisite intellectual demands of the 
day. They still enjoy, he contends, a high prestige in the eyes 
of the people; and this prestige is destined not to wane but 
to increase. The clergy of all ranks, he declares, have committed 
an enormous fault in their failure to oppose to the anti-reli- 
gious press a sane and able patriotic Catholic press, even though 
it might have cost them some of the millions which, during 
the last thirty years, they expended on their churches. It is 
somewhat late now, he continues, to remedy this error. Never- 
theless it is a good augury that bishops and priests are taking 
steps to supply the crying need. 

Although the French people do not like to see their priests 
meddling in public affairs, nevertheless, M. Barbier believes, 
the clergy have a splendid field for work that will increase 
their religious influence, by coming out boldly, wherever the 
occasion offers, publicly to combat those who disseminate free 
thought and infidelity. 

The laity, too, he says, have been misrepresented by those 
who have charged them with being paralyzed by a narrow 
formalism and supine indolence. He accepts the computation 
of M. de Rivaliere who, in 1898, estimated that there were in 
France ten millions of Catholics for whom religion is an affair 
of importance (chez qui les preoccupations religieuses tiennent une 
place importante). These ten millions proved their loyalty by 
their conduct in the affair of the inventories; and in many 
places are giving further proof by the prompt generosity with 
which they are coming to the support of the clergy. The re- 
sult of the present war will be to embolden both clergy and 
people to fight more valiantly for their rights. The persecu- 
tion has eliminated from the ranks a large number whose 
presence was a weakness: 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 835 

There are now fewer routine Catholics, fewer hypocrites, 
than in any former period. There are fewer egoists, fewer 
cowardly spirits, fewer half believers, fewer formalists for 
whom religion was only an attitude or a pose. All this is a 
sign, not of retrogression, but of progress. I/et the French 
clergy and laity march forward hand in hand to coming 
battles ; they will conquer. 

A double purpose has inspired 

CARDINAL MANNING. Miss Taylor in her excellent par- 
tial biography* of him whom Lon- 
don's toilers called " The Good Cardinal." She aimed, and aimed 
very successfully, at presenting the manner in which his demo- 
cratic principles were exemplified in the part that Cardinal 
Manning took in public affairs which fell within his sphere of 
action; and in the views which he held and advocated regard- 
ing some questions of moment with which he had not person- 
ally to deal. The ulterior purpose of the writer is to hold up 
Manning's life as a proof of the identity of Christian and 
democratic principles "a truth perfunctorily and theoretically 
acknowledged, but disallowed in any true sense, by the ma- 
jority of friends and foes of religion alike." " It is a truth," 
Miss Taylor says as she points her moral, " obscured and veiled 
by the action of those who have again and again made of the 
Christian Church an instrument of oppression, have striven to 
turn it to their own profit; who have employed it in the in- 
terests of a class or party, and have succeeded in partially 
masking its character." 

After an introductory chapter, Miss Taylor takes up the 
subject at the appointment of Manning to the archbishopric of 
Westminster ; and, passing without notice all those matters 
which appertained strictly to his spiritual office or his private 
life, she relates the part played by the Cardinal in the various 
public questions through which he came to be known as a 
friend of the working people, and of all who struggle against 
entrenched injustice. Miss Taylor interprets her facts with 
judicious comment, and exposes them with a frankness not less 
than that of Mr. Purcell himself. She makes it perfectly clear 
that the principles of the Cardinal meet with her fullest sym- 

* The Cardinal Democrat. Henry Edward Manning. By I. A. Taylor. St. Louis : B. 
Herder. 



836 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

pathy, and that she desires her book to be an instrument of 
propaganda. 

Her ardent admiration for Manning does not, however, re- 
strain her from giving judgment against him in one of the 
famous controversies in which he was involved. When Gladstone 
designated as "an astonishing error " Manning's assertion that, 
until the publication of Gladstone's pamphlet on the Vatican 
decrees, the friendship existing between the pair for forty- five 
years had never been overcast, the Statesman, Miss Taylor 
holds, was right and the Cardinal was wrong. In the course 
of the dispute concerning the unbroken friendship, Gladstone 
"cited, not without justice, its suspension during a period of 
twelve years, as well as more recent accusations and counter- 
accusations made and retorted in no moderate terms in regard 
to the Italian question." 

Miss Taylor's comments on the Cardinal's claim that, though 
communication between him and Gladstone had been inter- 
rupted for many years, he felt that his own feelings and he 
believed that Gladstone's had undergone no change: 

To imagine that a friendship, vulnerable, like all things 
human, to influences from without, could remain unaltered 
through twelve years of a silence broken only by outward 
discord was in truth the vision of a dreamer, singular in a 
man with so little of the dreamer about him as Archbishop 
Manning. 

Treating of Manning's poverty, the writer emphasizes the 
fact that Manning was content, even glad, not merely that he 
himself personally was poor, but also that the Church over 
which he presided was poor. 

For her, no more than for himself, did he covet wealth. 
Poverty was in his eyes, a security for her energy and purity, 
and he openly rejoiced that, in the richest of all nations, the 
Catholic Church was poor. Unestablished, unendowed, she 
was the more free to do her work. " My Church and I," he 
once told Mgr. Darboy, " date, thank God, from the ages of 
Christianity, when the Church was poor, but free." 

To some other French ecclesiastics he addressed advice 
which they probably treated as the chimerical views of a 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 837 

foreigner, which were ridiculously impractical. Yet subseqent 
events show them to have possessed a prophetic character, hid- 
den, doubtless, from both the speaker and those who listened to 
him. " ' Go/ he told them, ' go, ask for freedom to share the 
lot of the people; eat their bread, touch their heart, and con- 
quer their souls for God.' " 

Among the topics fully treated are Manning's change of 
opinion regarding the Temporal Power of the Holy See; and 
his ardent advocacy of the Irish agitation against landlord in- 
justice. The Cardinal's change from having been a violent ad- 
vocate of the Restoration of the Temporal Power to becoming 
an earnest opponent of that aspiration Miss Taylor defends, 
not on the ground of consistency, but in the spirit of St. 
Augustine's maxim : " ' If I utter no word that I should like 
to unsay I am nearer being a fool than a wise man.' " As 
time went on, after 1870, the Cardinal perceived "that the past 
could return no more " ; that the old dynastic world was mori- 
bund, a new world of the peoples was replacing it; and that 
if the Temporal Power was to be restored it would be under 
new conditions. The reasons on which Manning's views rested 
are stated very boldly, indeed, by Miss Taylor, as are also the 
circumstances which .surrounded the appearance of the papal 
Rescript against the Plan of Campaign in Ireland. In fact, 
throughout the volume, the writer, as becomes the daughter of 
the author of Philip Von Artevelde, displays an unmistakably 
independent temper. She has done a service to the memory 
of her hero by placing, in popular and attractive form, the 
great human traits of his life before that large class of readers 
who have not the time or inclination to peruse Purcell's two 
large volumes. 

Franciscan Italy has, of late years, 

FRANCISCAN ITALY. become so favorite a ground for 

the tourist, the artist, and the 

traveler with an eye to future publication, that there would 
seem to be little hope for one opening a new book on the 
subject to find anything that has not been said before. The 
writer of this dainty little volume* does not, certainly, furnish 
any historical or critical information that has not already been 
made public property. He relates his own journeys to, and 
his brief sojourns in, a few of the famous Franciscan monaster- 

* Pilgrim Walks in Franciscan Italy. By Johannes Jorgensen. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



338 NEW BOOKS [Mar., 

ies of Northern Italy. He has enough acquaintance with art 
to appreciate the various treasures that have passed under his 
notice, and enough good judgment not to attempt any lengthy 
descriptions of them. He has suffused his pages with the glow 
of feeling which he experienced as he shared the hospitality 
and the devotional exercises of the sons of St. Francis at Fonte 
Colombo, Greccio, La Foresta, Assisi, Cortona, and the Holy 
Mountains. For example: 

I think I may say that in the course of my life I have met 
with much that was out of the common and affecting, yet 
scarcely ever with anything that impressed me as profoundly 
as those minutes of perfect silence among the Franciscans of 
Greccio. As I knelt amid those barefooted, brown-habited 
friars who, in the darkness, raised their hearts to Heaven in 
voiceless prayer, I realized more vividly than ever I did be- 
fore what the Middle Ages were how far removed the twen- 
tieth century was; how far away beyond the crest of the 
mountains was the modern world; how remote seemed the 
great, busy towns, with their glare and their noise, their 
unrest, their endless round of amusements. Nothing then 
seemed real to me but that humble little chapel of the poor, 
primitive monastery, where the Sons ot St. Francis prayed, 
gave thanks, and offered praise to the God for whom the 
votaries of the world had scarce a passing thought. 

As we accompany Mr. Jorgensen, who points out to us the 
beauties of the scenery along the pilgrimage, through the vale 
of Rieti, through Assisi, through Cortona, and are permitted 
through his eyes to get an intimate view of the friars in their 
ancestral homes, we are convinced that the spirit of the poor 
man of Assisi still dwells among his brethren. 

This second edition of Father Chis- 

THE CATECHISM IN holm's Catechism in Examples * was 
EXAMPLES. demanded, it seems, by the "un- 

precedented success " of the first 

and by the almost universal demand for a reissue. Every 
continent and every country, so the author tells us in his " Pref- 
ace to the Second Edition," has sent requests for more copies, 
and many members of the hierarchy, beginning with " his late 

* The Catechism in Examples. By the Rev. D. Chisholm. zd Edition. In Five Vol- 
umes. Vol. I. Faith The Creed. Vol. II. Hope Prayer. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



1909.] NEW BOOKS 839 

Holiness," Leo XIII., have praised the book without stint. It 
is needless, then, for us to praise the work. We need only 
concur in the chorus of commendations; and, for the benefit 
of those who may not know what is the exact nature of the 
book, say that it contains two thousand anecdotes, illustrations, 
stories from the lives of the saints, facts from secular history, 
occasional incidents and passages of Sacred Scripture, reports 
of missionaries to foreign parts, and all such like matters that 
will conduce to make interesting and graphic the otherwise stiff 
and unimaginative lessons of the Catechism. 

This latest of Mr. Oppenheim's sto- 

THE MISSIONER. ries* opens in a fashion that might 

raise hopes in the inexperienced 

that they were about to enjoy the development of a religious 
zealot or fanatic, after the manner of George Eliot or Walter 
Scott. A young man invades an English village under the very 
nose of its grand lady proprietress, to carry on a religious re- 
vival. She forbids him, snubs him, and secretly falls in love 
with him ; but she cannot or will not marry him. Of course, 
she fulfills Mr. Oppenheim's ideal of beauty ; she is graceful in 
her slender perfection, or perfect in her graceful slenderness 
we do not remember which, though we were told the truth sev- 
eral times. The young missioner, whose vocation collapses sud- 
denly when he finds how the wind blows, is, also of course, a 
wonderfully athletic and powerful young gentleman, who, when 
the occasion calls for it we know from the very second page 
that the occasion will call, will actually bawl for it simply, to 
use a rather colloquial phrase, but the right one for the nence, 
wipes the floor with the heavy villain of the piece. After aban- 
doning his missionary career, at a very early stage of the game, 
the missioner, Mr. Macheson, rushes into the public haunts of 
the London and Parisian demi-monde, the manners of which are 
described with unnecessary detail. Mr. Macheson, who has 
touched the pitch without becoming defiled, soon wearies of 
this form of distraction, which he adopted only to drive out 
of his head the image of his cruel goddess. At length the 
mystery which had been keeping us in suspense from tke start 
is dispelled; then the lady is free to obey the dictates of her 
heart and they lived happy ever after. 

The Missioner. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Illustrated. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



8 4 o NEW BOOKS [Mar. 

Mr. Oppenheim's character drawing is not very careful; 
but he does not leave us time to reflect on this drawback. He 
issues very heavy drafts on the credulity of his readers, but, 
judging from the success of his works, and the rapidity with 
which they follow one another, none of his paper is ever re- 
turned to him bearing the sinister brand, N. G. And he de- 
serves the praise of always inculcating morality, though the 
ideals of some of his good people are not always sufficiently 
strict in detail. 

This is an earnest and forceful 

LITERATURE AND THE presentation of the duty incum- 
PRESS. bent on all Catholics to encourage 

and contribute to the spread of 

good literature,* especially of good magazines and newspapers. 
" If," says the bishop, " the press is such a power for good 
and answers to the most urgent needs of our time, charity and 
the obligation to do good to our neighbor impose upon us the 
duty of employing it to that end"; to use our influence "that 
the productions of a good press be widely disseminated and to 
lessen those of bad tendency which sow the seeds of evil and 
foster crime." He advocates the formation of associations for 
increasing the circulation of good periodicals and urges the 
clergy to take an active part in this apostleship of the press, 
quoting from the great German Catholic leader, Windthorst, 
that " the priest preaches once a week, the newspapers every 
day," and shows what has been accomplished in Germany by 
the efforts of Catholics for the uplifting and spread of the Cath 
olic press. " The Crusade of the press to ransom not the 
stones where lay the body of Christ, but the souls redeemed 
by His precious blood, is to be considered under a double as- 
pect, the crusade by means of the press and the crusade for 
the press." 

We may add that the book bears eloquent testimony to the 
zeal of [the author, his spirit of fervent piety and wide range 
of reading. 

La Cruzada de la Bucna Prensa. By D. Antolin Pelaez, Bishop of Jaca. Barcelona: 
Gusiaro Gili. 



jforeion periodicals* 

The Tablet (16 Jan.): The recent "Board of Trade" returns, 
while showing a slight increase in imports, indicate a 
heavy falling off in exports amounting to forty- eight 
millions of pounds for the year. Commenting on this 
the Morning Post says that " it exceeds even the worst 
expectations." Abbot Gasquet, writing on "Arch- 
bishop Morton and St. Albans," brings further evidence 
to bear on the vexed question of the moral condition of 
the Abbey at the time of the Archbishop's visitation. 

In a speech at Birmingham Mr. Churchill made a 

violent attack upon "The House of Lords." Referring 
to Protection, he said : " If they want a speedy dis- 
solution they know where to find one." A very in- 
teresting series of articles, "About Glastonbury," is 
being contributed by Mgr. Moyes. The present one 
deals with the restoration of Dunstan to his position as 
Abbot, by King Edmund. 

(23 Jan.) : " Unionists and Free-Fooders." As the next 
General Election approaches, the Unionist party finds 
itself facing the difficulty, What is to be the attitude of 

the party on Tariff- Reform ? " The Rev. Mr. Campbell 

and the Drapers." Mr. Campbell, of New Theology fame, 
having made the statement that women engaged in drap- 
ers' shops in London were obliged to lead immoral lives, 
on account of their small pay, has been asked to prove 
it. Having refused to do so he is threatened with an 
action. "Women's Suffrage." An editorial is devot- 
ed to this subject, and the conclusion arrived at is fav- 
orable to the granting of the franchise. Father Thurs- 

ton, SJ., tells the story of the letter alleged to have 
been written from Jerusalem by the Blessed Virgin to 
the people of Messina. He treats it under the heading 
" Messina's Buried Palladium." In a curious corres- 
pondence as to "The Order of Corporate Reunion," the 
text of the original manifesto is given and the question 
asked, Are there any " second generation Bishops " ? 

The Month (Jan.): Did "John Milton" die a Catholic? This 
question Father Thurston answers in the negative. He 
died, as he lived, the incarnation of Protestantism, hold- 



842 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar., 

ing to a system in which divorce and polygamy found 
a place. He was a monument of egoism and would have 
accepted no religion unless it were one in which he were 

a Pope. "The Main Problem of the Universe," by 

the Editor, presents the teleological doctrine of final 

causes. There is a prevailing notion that only in the 

nineteenth century men began to give serious thought 
to science. This J. J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., disproves by 
introducing " Guy de Chauliac," who lived in the four- 
teenth century, as the Father of Modern Surgery. 

Other articles are : " The Pope and the Forty-Five,' 1 an 
account of the Jacobite rising. "A School for Scan- 
dal," a reply to a slanderous work by a Protestant min- 
ister. 

The National Review (Feb.) : " A Diplomatic Reminiscence," 
by "Amateur," throws light on a period of international 
politics in 1896, when, it is stated, Russia was tempted 
by Germany, yielded, and was hindered from plunging 
Europe into war by the timely action of the Procurator 

of the Holy Synod. Viscount Llandaff contributes a 

criticism and a suggestion on the " Educational Im- 
broglio." In correction of the unjust Education Bills of 
the Government, which aim to make the so-called na- 
tional type of school universal, the writer suggests a sys- 
tem that leaves secular education under the full control 
of the State, but requires religious education to be com- 
bined with it. "War at the Present Day" is repro- 
duced from the Deutsche Revue. " The Ex- Landlords 

of Ireland Their Duties and Prospects" is an interest- 
ing article, remarkable in its straightforward admissions 

and conclusions. "A Plea for More Bishops" for the 

Church of England is made by Rev. J. J. Lias, D.D. 

"Canada and the British Navy," by C. P. Wolley. 

In the department of "American Affairs," A. Maurice 
Low discusses President Roosevelt's recent attack upon 

the integrity of Congress. A. G. Boscawen writes of 

the success attending the resumption of " Tobacco Grow- 
ing in Ireland " and the possibilities for the same indus- 
try in England. Writing of the so-called "Shake- 
spearean Problem," George Hookham says in conclusion : 
" While there is sufficient evidence to make us doubt, or 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 843 

possibly disbelieve, the Shakespearean authorship, yet it 
is not strong enough at present definitely to establish 

any other theory." " The New Reforms in India " are 

discussed by A. T. Arundel. 

The Church Quarterly Review (Jan.): In "The Mind of the 
East," Sir T. Raleigh, writing on the controversial ques- 
tion of the British policy in Egypt and India, com- 
ments freely on its merits and failings in the hope, as 

he says, that truth may prevail. " Presbyterianism 

and Reunion " is a further contribution going to show the 
advances which the Church of England has made towards 
corporate unity with the various Protestant " Churches." 

" The Ornament's Rubric " has, the writer claims, 

given rise to a voluminous literature. In the reports 
recently issued by the Two Houses of the York Convo- 
cation a permissive usage of vestments, subject to cer- 
tain safeguards, is suggested; this, the article says, will 
make for peace. The nature of the distinction be- 
tween Christianity and other religions is the subject of 

an article entitled " Revelation and Religious Ideas." 

" Causes and Remedies of Unemployment." " The 

Mohammedan Gospel of Barnabas," "The 'Dearth 
of Clergy ' in the Anglican Church," are among the 
other contributions. 

The International (Jan.): "The Future of the Race," by Dr. 
Broda. Heretofore advanced civilization has ended in 
the downfall of the people among whom it was devel- 
oped; already evil forces are at work among ourselves, 
can they be counteracted ? The writer answers in the 

affirmative and proceeds to develop his theory. What 

will become of "Austria-Hungary Without Francis Jo- 
seph " ? Will she hold together ? Mr. Stead asks. The 
answer is written on the map. Austria- Hungary will 
become a new and a greater Switzerland. Dr. Tou- 
louse, in " Insanity and Crime," contends that all habit- 
ual criminals are more or less abnormal, and in con- 
finement should be subjected to a course of training of 
such a kind that they may again become useful mem- 
bers of society. "The Social Transformation in Ja- 
pan," says Dr. Bryan, is already on the way, and its 
most significant feature is an eclecticism highly colored 



844 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar., 

by British and American Influences. "The German 

Tariff From the Woman Point of View," means increased 
cost of production, increased cost of living, and woman 
has to bear the heaviest share of the burden. What is 
the remedy ? That power be given her to advocate her 
own interests; that is, the right to vote. 

The Crucible (Jan.): " Father Augustin Rosier and the Woman 
Question/' deals with the elementary and secondary 
education of girls, which latter is, in the case of many 
girls, a preparation for their future occupation or vo- 
cation. " Old Age Pensions and the Care of the Aged 

Poor." In this Bill, the writer says, we have a most 
important and revolutionary measure, still the amount 
that can be received under it, namely a dollar and a 
quarter a week, is, after all, only a starvation allowance, 
and must, in many cases, be supplemented by private 

charity. "The Truth About Ourselves," is an essay 

from the pen of a nun. Everything, she claims, tends 
to blind us in this matter and prevent us from seeing 

ourselves as we really are. " Congress on Industrial 

Training of Women and Girls." "Life of a Girl Stu- 
dent at Oxford." "Intellect and Emotion in Music 

Teaching," are found among other contributed articles. 

Margaret Fletcher, in " Pilgrimage Pictures," gives 

a descriptive account of the recent visit made by Eng- 
lishwomen to his Holiness. 

The Irish Theological Quarterly (Jan.): "Loisy and His The- 
ories," by Rev. J. McRory, is an expose of the Modern- 
istic platform and an inference as to its logical end. 
The writer expresses his astonishment that Protestants 
who still believe in our Lord's divinity can express sym- 
pathy with such a Rationalistic religion. The scien- 
tific side of the theology of " Penance " is dealt with by 
Rev. P. McKenna, showing how order and harmony may 

be perceived where before seemed nought but chaos. 

" Dr. Gairdner and the Reformation in England," by Rev. 
J. MacCaffrey, is an appreciative notice of Lollardy and 
the Reformation in England, Dr. Gairdner's most recent 
work. It dwells upon the demoralizing results of the 
Reformation, as seen in Royal Supremacy and the right 
of Private Judgment. Other articles are : " The Latin 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 845 

Writers of Mediaeval Ireland," by Abbe Gougaud. 

" Botanical Evolution in Theory and in Fact," by Rev. 
T. J. Walshe, brings before us some of the views recently 
advanced upon the origin of species in plant-life. 

The Dublin Review (Jan.) : In " Mr. Chesterton Among the 
Prophets," Mr. Wilfrid Ward gives us a review of the 
former's latest work, Orthodoxy. The book stands for 
a conviction against scepticism, for authority versus pri- 
vate opinion, for orthodoxy as opposed to liberal the- 
ology. The author arrives at his conclusions by fol- 
lowing, in a popular way, the reasoning of Cardinal 
Newman, i. e. t by the " cumulative argument," by the 

" illative sense." "The Measure of National Wealth," 

by H. Belloc. In the writer's opinion none of the 
current methods of estimating the wealth of a com- 
munity are satisfactory. His conclusions are purely neg- 
ative. In another article positive conclusions will be 

drawn. " Catholic Social Work in Germany," is the 

third of a series of articles dealing with this subject. 
In it we are told of the founding of the Volksverein, 
the history of which forms the history of the Catholic 
social movement in Germany. Canon Barry's " Cen- 
sorship of Fiction " is an apologetic for authority over 
faith and morals. He deplores the tendency of the day 

towards cheap and prurient literature. Other articles 

are: "Eugene Fromentin," by Professor Phillimore.- - 

"Modern Turkey," by Major Mark Sykes. "Du- 

chesne's Ancient History of the Church," by Dom Chap- 
man. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (Jan.): Opens with a review of 
the position of "The Catholic Church in 1908." It is 
clear, the writer says, that the struggle is no longer be- 
tween Catholicity and the Dissident Christian Sects, but 
between Catholicity and Secularism. In treating of the 
condition of the Church a handsome tribute is paid to 
the astounding progress of Catholicism in the United 
States. The Editor continues his article on "Social- 
ism and Christianity," dealing with the much- discussed 
question as to whether a definite social doctrine is to 
be found in the Gospel. It is clear, he says, that just 
as our Lord does not consider poverty a thing to be 



846 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar., 

recommended on its own account, neither does He con- 
demn wealth as a thing bad in itself. "The Regen- 
eration of Lost Parts in Animals and the Theory of 
Matter and Form/' by the Rev. C. Gelderd, of Ushaw, 
gives some interesting examples of the power possessed 
by some animals of reproducing lost parts. The higher 
we ascend in animal life, the more limited is this re- 
generative faculty, until in mammals it is altogether lost, 

save as we see it at work on the healing of wounds. 

" The Notes and Queries " department is, as usual, re- 
plete with valuable information. 

The Irish Monthly (Feb.): Opens with an article on "The 
Venerable Oliver Plunkett, Bishop and Martyr," by the 
Editor. " Our Lady of Lourdes," is the English ver- 
sion of the French hymn. "The Cure's Matchmak- 
ing/' a story by M. C. Keogh. A. L. Pringle writes 

of "Nova Scotia and the Acadians." In this ever 

pleasing little monthly there is always to be found a 

happy selection of verse. Katharine Tynan is the 

author of "Erin Aroon." We note also "A Day in 

the House of God," by M. E. L'Estrange. " The Good 

Happy on Earth," signed by the familiar initials of M. 
R., is a second view of the subject. 

L Correspondent (10 Jan.): "The Unknown America" traces 
the primitive civilization and establishes the point that 
Christopher Columbus did not discover but only re- 
covered the continent, for there was what may be called 

"Primitive America." "The Economic Life and the 

Social Movement" sets forth the rights and duties of 
French Socialism, and over against it the Christian re- 
ligion, which is really the religion of Humanity uplifted. 

" The New Revolutionary Spirit " has as its prime 

mover M. Georges Sorel, who is spoken of as the founder 
of the revolutionary syndicate. 

(25 Jan.): Writing on " Political Switzerland," Henri Joly 
shows that, notwithstanding its democratic principles, it 
has developed an aristocracy of money and can to-day 
count its millionaires and its beer and chocolate barons. 

"America of To-morrow," by Abbe Klein, gives a 

description of San Francisco immediately after the earth- 
quake. He contrasts the splendid work done at Berkeley 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 847 

University with the scandalous condition of municipal 
affairs as he saw them under the late mayor and his 

chief of police. "Splendors and Miseries of Men of 

Letters" Chateaubriand, Balzac, Dumas pert, Lamartine, 
furnish instances of authors who, notwithstanding their 
splendid incomes, passed their lives in one long struggle 

with financial difficulties. Other articles are: "Love 

and Faith," by H. de Lacombe. "The Succour of 

Messina after the Earthquake of 1783," by D'Estourmel. 

Etudes (5 Jan.): "The Supernatural Mission of the Prophets 
of Israel/' is a critical examination of A. Condamin, S.J,, 
of A. Kuen's theory that the prophets were bands of 
fanatics, the result of certain religious influences at work 
among the Canaanites. He declares this to be pure 

conjecture. Geo. Longhaye discusses the position of 

" The Saints in History." Their influence is not to be 
ascribed to their work as scholars, reformers, etc., but to 
the fact that they were imbued with the spirit of Christ. 

Commenting on "The Intellectualism of St. Thomas," 

L. Roure points out the importance, in modern thought, 
of the question whether the infinite is possessed by the 

intellect or by the will. "The Orthodox Eastern 

Church" is an extended review of three recent books 
dealing with the churches separated from Rome.- 
" Revolutionary Justice," by Pierre Bliard, is a con- 
tinued article. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i Jan.) "The Training of the 
Young for Liberty," is one of the most vexed questions 
in the education of youth. To-day individual liberty 
reigns supreme; indeed, it has well-nigh degenerated 
into license. How this may be checked is expanded in 

the article. "Christianity and Catholicism," by E. 

Julien. Is Catholic Christianity the only true Christian- 
ity? This, of course, Protestants deny. To establish 
this fact Bossuet employed all the force of his logic, for 
the Catholic faith is the proof a posteriori of the Chris- 
tian faith. " The Narratives of the Sacred History," 

gives the work and mission of Elias and Eliseus. 
(15 Jan.): "The Origin of Christian Apologetic," by M. 
Jules Lebreton. One difficulty to be encountered is that 
Christ wrote nothing, all we know of His life and teach- 



g 4 8 * FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar., 

ing we gather from the words of His disciples. How far 
are their accounts worthy of our credence ? Modernists 
say they cannot be believed. Catholic apologists prove 

that they can. " Science, Religion, and Revelation," 

by Ph. Ponsard. In the eighteenth century the opposi- 
tion of science and religion meant the opposition of reason 
and faith, now the alliance between reason and science 
is ruptured, reason and faith have joined forces, and both 
have been relegated to the region of the transcendent. 
Against the one and the other we find science arrayed. 

" The Inquisition " is a letter by the Bishop of 

Beauvais showing that for punishment of heretics by death 
the Church was not responsible, and that the secular 
power was alone to blame. The famous Constitution of 
Frederic II. is referred to in order to prove that the 
Emperor acted on his own responsibility and did not seek 
the approval of the Church. 

Revue Benedictine (Jan.) : D. A. Wibmart writes on the Tractate 
"Noah's Ark," which, he claims, is the work of Gregory 
of Elvira, dating from the middle of the fourth century. 

That " Donatism " does not owe its name to Don- 

atus, the Great Bishop of Carthage, but to Donatus, 
Bishop of Casae Nigrae, is contradicted by D. J. Chap- 
man. "The New Papyrus Liturgy at Oxford," by D. P. 

de Paniet, gives the history of this papyrus belonging 
to the seventh century, discovered in Upper Egypt, in 

the ruins of a Coptic monastery. Other articles are: 

" Studies in Orthodox Theology," by D. P. de Meester. 

The first chapter is on original sin. " The Accusation 

and Disgrace of the Carafa," a continued article, deals 
especially with the charges brought against the cardinal. 

Revue Thomiste (Dec.): Starting with the principle that "The 
Bible is the Book of the Supematural in Humanity," 
Rev. P. Mercier gives a detailed study of the first three 
chapters in Genesis, showing that the extremely anthro- 
pomorphic character of the dialogue between God on the 
one side and Adam and Eve on the other is clear jjproof 

of the supernatural character of the book. Rev. P. 

Hugon revives the old question concerning "The Active 
and Passive Virtues." He deems it necessary to reiterate 
the Papal warnings that have been directed in recent 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 849 

times against those who unduly exalt the active virtues. 
" Common Sense the Philosophy of Being/ 1 by Fa- 
ther Reg. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., deals with Dogmatic 
Formulas and their value as opposed to the Theory of 

the Modernists. "The Development of Dogma Ac- 

cording to St. Vincent of Lerins," by Father Nicolas 
Dausse, O.P. St. Vincent spoke on the one hand of the 
unchangeableness of Catholic dogma and on the other 
of the theory of development. Are these two views an- 
tagonistic? The writer's answer is: By no means; and 
he proceeds to reconcile them. 

Annales de Philosophie Chretienne (Jan.): In writing on "The 
Synoptic Gospels/' by M. Loisy, P. Chevalier says it is 
a most remarkable effort of historical synthesis. It is real- 
ly in the capacity of an historian and a savant that M. 
Loisy has approached his task. He applies to the Syn- 
optics the same critical methods he employed in dealing 
with the Fourth Gospel, and now, as then, arrives at a 
hostile conclusion. " Platonism in France in the Eigh- 
teenth Century " is concluded. The views of Buffon, 
Rousseau, Condillac, Saint-Martin, are exposed. The last 
words are a quotation in the form of an eulogy by La 
Harpe, who says that of all the ancient philosophers, 

Plato was the most brilliant. "The Theodicy of Fene- 

lon," by J. Reviere, touches on the passive elements of 
his Quietism. 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques et La Science Catholique 
(Jan.) : The seventh conference in the series " God in 
History," by Abbe Roupain, is on the Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. The dogma is proved as against the evo- 
lution theory of M. Loisy and the pragmatism of M. le 

Roy. " The True Chronology of Our Savior Jesus 

Christ," by M. Levier. The conclusion 'arrived at is that 
Jesus was born on the 25th of December, in the year 

745 of Rome. " Eucharistic Traditions." The author 

takes his traditions from the works of St. Augustine. 
Among the subjects dealt with are : Frequency of Com- 
munion ; Mode of Communion Under Two Species: 

Communion of Children ; the Excommunicate. " The 

Search for a Plastic Intermediary," is an account given 
by M. le Chan. Gombault of the attempt made by cer- 
VOL. LXXXVIII. 54 



850 ' FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar., 

tain occultists to discover an astral fluid which will serve as 
an intermediary between spirit and matter, soul and body- 

Revue du Monde Catholique (i Jan.): "The Voice of Canada," 
by A. Savaete, deals especially with the instruction given 

at Laval University. "The French Apologists of the 

Nineteenth Century," by R. P. At, expands the three 
theological virtues and marriage as the foundation of the 

family. M. Sicard furnishes two articles : " Woman 

and Her Mission"; also "The French Clergy Since the 

Concordat of 1801." "The Critic of Critics/' by F. 

J. Constant, O.P., is concluded. 

(15 Jan.): Abbe Bajon, in "The Supply of Clergy," 
offers several suggestions as to the way of meeting an 
increasing demand with a decreasing supply. Provincial 
seminaries is one, another is the setting free of those 
clergy known as canons titular for work in more ex- 
tended fields. Other articles are: "Letters of Louis 

XIII. to his Mother." "Save the Parish," by P. 

Camillus. Frederic Masson writes in reply to " The 

Heart of Feminism," deploring the effects of the move- 
ment and its evil influences on society at large. 

Biblische Zeitschrift (I.): Dr. Steinmetzer, Prague, writes on 
" The Holy Oil of Unction " of the Old Testament and 
on God's prohibition not to anoint the flesh of man with 
it nor to reconsecrate it (Exodus 30). He holds that 
this prohibition did not include the anointing of kings 
and the remixing of a necessary supply. The Jews after 
the exile did not anoint their priests, but this was the 
result of a complete change of their political and reli- 
gious conditions, while the rabbis explained this with 

the above prohibition. Dr. Landersdorfer, O.S.B., 

Munich, tries to overcome "The Difficulties in St. Luke's 
Record of the Annunciation," by going back to the prob- 
able Hebrew wording of the conversation between Mary 
and the angel. The Hebrew phrase corresponding to 
' Thou shalt conceive " may refer either to the future or 
the past (e. g., Gen. xvi. 2). Mary now may have under- 
stood it as referring to the past, and therefore asked an 
explanation, since she had not [known man. This ex- 
planation makes the unwarranted hypothesis of a per- 
petual vow of chastity unnecessary. Dr. Ephr. Baum- 

gartner, O.M., explains the number "seven" of the 



1909.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 851 

deacons in the primitive Church in Jerusalem by refer- 
ring to Deut. xvi. 1 8, and to Josephus, who relates that 
the Jews had in every town a committee of seven men, 
directors or judges. 

Die Kulttir (Jan.) : Monsignor Baron de Mathies, "In the Re- 
vival of the Liturgical Sense," points out how the Lit- 
urgy in its broadest sense may be said to lie at the 

base of all religion. In connection with a question of 

great moment Dr. Franz Walter defends the affirmative 
reply to the query: "Is the Sexual Enlightenment of 

Youth a Necessity of the Present Day ? " F. M. L. 

Wornovich, in " The Struggle on the Frontiers of Lika 
in 1809," highly praises the courageous stand made by 
the inhabitants of Dalmatia to retain the dearest of all 

human treasures liberty. Other articles are : " A 

Noble Friend of Nature," by A. Wimmer. " Citizen- 
ship in Salzburg in 1808-9," by Dr. Lampel. 

La Civilta Cattolica (2 Jan.): St. Anselm of Aostia. The Church 
this year has been celebrating the centenary of the great 
Bishop and Doctor of the Oriental Church, St. John 
Chrysostom; but the Latin Church, and Rome especial- 
ly, now comes forth to honor the memory of another 
great doctor, St. Anselm of Aostia, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury and Primate of England. " The Birth of Christ 

and Poetry." Poetry substantially consists in the beauty 
and interior harmony of the concepts and images. The 
embodyment of all this is found in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures no religious language is more poetical than that 
of the Bible. 

(16 Jan.): "The Method of the Catechism." An article 
showing the necessity for all to be well instructed in the 
catechism, that they may be preserved from the con- 
tagion of error and modern apostasy, and the method in 

which the catechism ought to be presented. " Pagan 

Esoterics According to Theosophy," is continued in this 
number. As is also " The Birth of Christ and Poetry." 

Razon y Fe (Jan.) : R. Ruiz Amado treats the Educational Con- 
gress of London and various societies in America, Eng- 
land, and Germany for ethical culture based on belief in 

a personal God and disregarding differences of creed. 

" Are Spanish Jesuits Ignorant ? " The answer to this 
charge is given by A. Perez Goyena, in recounting their 



852 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar. 

work in 1908 in journalism, history, sociology, music, 
pedagogy, exegesis, science. N. Noguer treats " Muni- 
cipal Action and the Problem of Cheap and Sanitary 
Housing." The question as to the legitimacy and the 
limits of public intervention in such matters at once 

arises, and various solutions are discussed. Seiior 

Moret's speech at Saragossa is developed in its antagon- 
ism to religion, really the liberalism described by Leo 
XIII.'s Encyclical Libcrtas, and its dangers exposed by 
P. Villada. 

Espana y America^. Jan.) : P. Antonio Blanco begins his " Op- 
portunity of the Catechism," apropos of the Pope's Chris- 
tian-social teaching on that subject. " Godoy's Re- 
forms," especially in religious matters, which contributed 
largely to his unpopularity, are treated by P. B. Mar- 
tinez. An appeal for the making uniform of our "Phil- 
osophical Technology," is made by F. Martinez y Gar- 
cia. The offering of the Spanish-American banners to 

" The Virgin of the Pillar " is praised by P. D. V. Gon- 
zalez. "The Religion and Morals of the Chibchas," a 

people dwelling in the neighborhood of Bogota, are de- 
scribed by P. Rodriquez. The ancient customs prevail 

amongst them to an astonishing degree. P. E. Ne- 

grete continues his article on " The ^Estheticism of St. 
Augustine." 

(15 Jan.): P. G. Martinez, continuing his " Biography of 
an Heresiarch," shows that Luther's teachings were de- 
structive of the foundations of morality. " The Ob- 
jective Progress of Revelation According to the Modern- 
ists," is proved fallacious by M. Gonzalez. This system 

endeavors to reconcile immanence with agnosticism. 

' The Discourse of Moret in Zaragossa," pronouncing 
the Church's doctrine of charity to be the only remedy 

for social evils, is continued by P. A. de los Bueis. 

F. Olmeda answers some objections to his former ar- 
ticle on " Church Music," and further explains the pur- 
port of the Motu Proprio. Those interested in hyp- 
notism, spiritism, occultism, and semi-insanity from a 
scientific viewpoint, will find food for reflection in P. 
Angel Gago's " Problems of Psychiatry and Legal Medi- 



Current Events. 



In Russia and in Austria it has not 
France. been uncommon for the students of 

the Universities to give expression 

to their immature opinions on political and other questions by 
various forms of disturbances. The services of the police, and 
even of the military, have not infrequently been required, and 
for longer or shorter periods universities have had to be closed. 
The same disease is invading France. The medical students, as 
well as some of the students of the Sorbonne, have given vio- 
lent expression to their feelings of dissatisfaction. No long 
time, however, was taken in bringing these tumultuous assem- 
blages to quietude; although the military and the police had 
to be called out, and many arrests made. 

The increase in crime in France, and its loathsome and 
terrible character, seems to show that the non- religious educa- 
tion which has been adopted by the country has not had the 
good effect which was anticipated. It has, however, brought 
about one result. Public opinion, in opposition to the wishes 
of the President and the government, has called for the in- 
fliction of the death penalty, which has been for many years 
practically abolished. For the first time for many years, capi- 
tal sentences have been carried out, and as executions, when 
they do take place, are in public, they were witnessed by an 
enormous crowd, made up of every class of society, who, it is 
said, alternately howled and cheered. The headsman was 
greeted with loud applause. The conduct of the large assem- 
blage was disgusting and throws an instructive light upon the 
character of the populace which has abolished religious institu- 
tions. The Chamber of Deputies itself had to listen at the 
opening of its last Session to an address delivered by one of 
the minority, in which the moral state of France was declared 
to be characterized by the unbridled selfishness and overween- 
ing vanity of the new generation. The family, the speaker 
said, was being ruined. It would be well to paint on the walls 
of the schools: "Honor thy father and thy mother." "Thou 
shalt not kill." " Thou shalt not steal." The formation of the 
child's character was as important, at least, as any social reform. 



354 CURRENT EVENTS [Mar., 

The attitude of the government towards those who alone 
are able to provide the remedy to these evils, shows how bent 
and determined it and its supporters are upon pursuing to the 
bitter end the course upon which they have entered. The law 
provides that no teacher in the primary schools shall say any- 
thing which shall be obnoxious to the consciences of the children. 
The Bishops, taking advantage of this provision, have organized 
associations to prosecute in the courts any teacher who violates 
this law; and have secured penalties for such violation. This 
the government did not like, and a Bill has been introduced to 
prevent what they call the undue interference of the parents or 
guardians of the children. By this Bill the State is substituted 
for the teacher, and the legal action must be brought against 
it, thereby interposing a shield between the teacher and the 
parents. With the same object another Bill has been intro- 
duced, which inflicts penalties upon any parents or guardians 
who shall prevent their children attending school, or using the 
prescribed text-books, or participating in the instruction on 
prescribed subjects. Any one who preaches a sermon, or pub- 
lishes a placard, or writes a pastoral letter, inciting to a breach 
of these provisions is made punishable by imprisonment for 
from three months to two years. This is how liberty is under- 
stood in France. Not by all Frenchmen, it is true; for the 
Journal des Debats condemns these proposals as inconsistent 
with the rights of parents as guaranteed by the Fundamental 
Republican Law of 1793. 

While the army of France is said to be up to the mark in 
every respect, many accidents and several sinister events have 
led to widespread doubts as to the state of the navy. The 
new Minister of Marine has seriously taken the matter in hand, 
and his demand of a very large sum of money (no less than 
forty millions of dollars) for necessary supplementary expendi- 
ture, confirms these suspicions. It was thought at first that 
this demand might cause a conflict in the Cabinet, but the mat- 
ter seems to have been arranged, M. Picard's demands having 
been granted. 

The German Emperor is being very 

Germany. closely watched, in order to see 

how well or how badly he keeps 

the silence with reference to political questions which he prom- 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 855 

ised. Within a few weeks after the promise had been made, 
word went abroad that he had given public utterance to his 
views. At the annual New Year's reception of the officers 
commanding army corps, his Majesty had read an article on 
the political and military situation, written in one of the Re- 
views by the former Chief of the General Staff. Fears conse- 
quently were expressed of a renewal, in an aggravated form, of 
the agitation which had just been put an end to. It was, how- 
ever, soon authoritatively explained that the article in question 
was read and approved of by the Emperor only in so far as it 
referred to purely military matters. The new regime is, there- 
fore, being faithfully kept. 

Two events which have recently occurred will reassure the 
minds of those who are anxious for the maintenance of peace. 
It is too soon, indeed, to appreciate at their real value the im- 
portance of these events, but they give good ground for hope. 
The first is the visit of King Edward to the Kaiser. The fact 
that the King was accompanied by the Under. Secretary of State 
for Foreign Affairs, and that the latter had interviews with the 
German officials, showed that it was not merely a private visit. 
The outcome is said to have been, we do not know on what 
authority, the settlement of several points of difference and the 
removal of most of the obstacles to a complete understanding. 
Undoubtedly the saner part of the people of both countries is 
totally opposed to a war, but whether the saner part is also 
the greater part it is not easy to judge; but if the Emperor's 
great influence is now to be thrown on the side of peace, there 
is no reason to think that it will not be effectual. 

The second event is, perhaps, of even greater importance, 
as the danger was more imminent. The conflict between France 
and Germany, with reference to Morocco, brought the two coun- 
tries not long ago to the verge of war, and no one knew but 
that a like danger might recur almost any day. Now an agree- 
ment has been signed by which the two countries mutually rec- 
ognize and guarantee the respective interests of each other in 
Morocco. This places that country outside the sphere of con- 
flict, and so far dissipates the cloud in which their relations were 
enshrouded. The fact that such an agreement has been possible, 
indicates that a better spirit is animating the people of the two 
countries, and this is of even more importance than the agree- 



856 CURRENT EVENTS [Mar., 

ment itself. It may perhaps be taken to indicate that Ger- 
many may co-operate more cordially with the rest of the 
Powers in the peaceful settlement of the many Near Eastern 
questions. 

Not only in the Empire but in some of the States of 
which it is made up, deficits have become the order of the 
day. In Prussia the year 1907 closed with a deficit of nearly 
eighteen millions of dollars. For the financial year 1908 it is 
expected to amount to more than forty millions, while for the 
year 1909 it is expected to amount to thirty-eight millions. It 
is worthy of note that one of the causes of the excess of ex- 
penditure over revenue is the loss which has for two or three 
years been incurred in working the State railways. These 
have suffered the same depression as the other branches of 
trade, and the State, that is the tax- payers, have to bear an 
additional burden. 

Many people, if they had to name 
Russia. a representative Russian, would 

single out Count Tolstoy, whose 

eightieth anniversary was celebrated a few months ago. Yet 
he has been excommunicated by the Orthodox Church and the 
celebration of his birthday interdicted by the State. A man 
better entitled to be looked upon as a representative of Russia 
was Father John of Kronstadt. This is shown by the effect 
produced by his death. Sorrow was manifested throughout the 
whole of Russia. Rich and poor, high and low, officials in gor- 
geous uniforms, peasants with hardly any clothes at all, passed in 
endless procession before his body as it lay in state. The Tsar 
himself sent presents to adorn the bier. During the journeys 
which he sometimes took through Russia, almost Royal honors 
were given him, and people ran miles only to catch a glimpse of 
his face. Many believed that he was able to perform miraculous 
cures. His funeral was attended by twenty thousand people. 
How far he deserved all these honors this is not the place to 
discuss. All our concern is with the facts as an indication of 
the mind of the Russian people. 

The horrible state of Russia's internal affairs, and of its meth- 
ods of government, has been brought to light by the discovery 
of the doings of a man named Azeff. The various outrages 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 857 

which have taken place in Russia, and which have shocked the 
whole world, among others the murders of M. de Plehve, the 
Grand Duke Serge, and the Governor of Ufa, M. Bogdanovich, 
as well as two attempts at insurrection, were, if what is now 
being said is true, originated in the police offices of the gov- 
ernment itself. The officials engaged the services of Azeff and 
paid him large sums of money to provoke the revolutionaries 
to commit these crimes. Such is the accusation brought against 
the upholders of authority. They do not, indeed, acknowledge 
their guilt, but have arrested a former police official, who de- 
clares his innocence and alleges that he is being made a scape- 
goat. It is the part of a prudent man to treat these charges 
as mere charges until further and better proof of their truth 
is given. 

The awful earthquake which de- 
Italy, stroyed Messina, Reggio, and so 

many other towns and villages, has 

revealed in an unwonted way the thoughts of many minds. 
Most prominently of all it has shown how close are the bonds 
which unite all the nations of the world in practical sympathy 
and effective helpfulness. Succor poured in from every country, 
with the only exceptions, so far as we know, of Persia, Afghan- 
istan, and the other States of Central Asia. As to the recipi- 
ents of the help so lavishly given, nothing was wanting in the 
gracefulness with which it was accepted. The effect of many 
generations of Christian training was shown by the way in which 
so many of the women of the country of the noblest blood and 
most gentle training hastened to the scenes of disaster and min- 
istered with their own [hands to the wants of the sufferers. 
And while the funds entrusted to the administration of the 
officials of the State were often rendered unavailable by the strict 
regulations which were made, and, as a consequence, not a few 
deserving cases suffered hardship, the funds which the Holy 
Father devoted to relief, were wisely and promptly given to the 
sufferers through the instrumentality of the clergy. The won- 
derful organization and ready generosity of the Vatican have 
been recognized even by the secular press. 

But bad nature as well as good nature has also been re- 
vealed. The chief burden of the work of clearing away the 



858 CURRENT EVENTS [Mar., 

ruins and rescuing the dead has fallen upon the soldiers. Not 
merely did marauders appear upon the scene, who had to be 
shot, but the workingmen who survived, or who arrived from 
the neighborhood, refused to work except for exorbitant wages. 
The soldiers had consequently to do the work. Instances seem 
to be accumulating which go to prove that some workingmen 
can be as selfish as are some capitalists 

While the overstrict ^regulations made by the Italian gov- 
ernment deserve criticism, it cannot be said that it failed to 
make adequate provision for the relief of the sufferers. Parlia- 
ment was promptly summoned and six milllions of dollars were 
voted. It speaks well for the state of Italian finances that no 
new permanent tax has to be imposed or loan raised in order 
to provide this sum. The surplus of the financial year 1908-9 
is almost sufficient for the purpose. A temporary surtax of 
one-twentieth, to be levied upon certain revenues for two years, 
will make up the difference. 

Of the many questions which 

The Near East. Austria's action has raised in the 

Balkan States, two seem to be up- 
on the verge of settlement, while others, especially that of the 
Serbs and of a Greater Servia, still remain ; nor is it likely that 
of the latter a permanent arrangement will be made for many 
years. In fact, seeds of disturbance have been sown in the 
territories of the Dual Monarchy which may accelerate its dis- 
ruption. 

In a short time after the annexation of the Provinces, Aus- 
tria was brought to see the necessity of making pecuniary com- 
pensation to Turkey for the violation of the latter's rights of 
sovereignty. To save Austria's face, however, this compensa- 
tion was to take the form of payment for the lands which be- 
longed to the Sultan as head of the State. Although this 
agreement is not actually concluded when we write, the pros- 
pect of its being accepted by both parties seems fairly cer- 
tain. 

An arrangement of a similar character is on the point of 
being made between Turkey and Bulgaria. As compensation 
for the loss of what had been left of her sovereignty Turkey is 
to receive a sum of about twenty-five million dollars. This agree- 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 859 

ment will have been made with difficulty and after long nego- 
tiations. War at one time threatened to break out. All the 
Bulgarians, it is said, are enthusiastic for war and look upon it 
as inevitable. Negotiation had brought the two parties to an 
agreement upon the principle of compensation; and differ- 
ences existed only as to the amount, when Turkey made a 
proposal for a rectification of the frontiers. This led to some 
of the reserves being called out. Thereupon Russia intervened 
and offered to pay to Turkey the difference in amount between 
Turkey's demands and Bulgaria's offer. The former State was, 
at the same time, to withdraw its proposal for the rectification 
of the frontier. In this way a peaceful settlement seems to be 
on point of being concluded between Turkey and Bulgaria. 

What has all along been the most dangerous question still, 
however, remains unsettled. Servia even more than Turkey has 
felt herself aggrieved by Austria*s action, for by the annexa- 
tion of the Provinces she is completely hemmed [in and domi- 
nated by Austria, and the long- cherished aspirations for a 
Greater Servia have been placed in danger of defeat. The out- 
break of war has been imminent even since the annexation, 
and as spring is the time when the peoples of the Balkans have 
long been accustomed to enter upon hostile operations, the 
advent of that season is looked forward to with grave appre- 
hension. 

All the Powers, with the exception of Austria and its 
" loyal " supporter, Germany, recognize the justice of Servians 
claim for compensation ; but how that compensation is to be 
made passes the wit of all the existent statesmen to discover. 
Servia claims a strip of land in order that she may have ac- 
cess to the sea ; and that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be 
granted autonomy under European control. To neither of 
these demands will Austria listen. The only plan which holds 
out a prospect of being even discussed is that freedom from 
customs should be given to Servians commerce through the 
annexed provinces. 

There are two rival pan-Serb ideas, neither of which is likely 
to be realized for a long time, on account of the maladroit 
blundering of Baron von Aehrenthal. One idea is that cher- 
ished by Servia of a Greater Servia, which would embrace all 
the Serbs, whether within or without the Austrian dominions; 



86o CURRENT EVENTS [Mar., 

of this Greater Servia the present kingdom would not neces- 
sarily be the head, nor would it necessarily be a kingdom. It 
might be a Republic, but it would be a single independent 
nation made up of all the Serbs. The other idea is that all 
the Serbs, both those within and those without the Austrian 
dominions, should be united under the rule of the Austrian 
Emperor. The Emperor is already King of Hungary; a third 
crown would be placed upon his head, that of King of the 
Serbs. But after Baron von Aehrenthal's exhibition of Austrian 
governmental methods, no Serb outside will want to come in- 
side. Brute violence wins no hearts. 

In Turkey itself and its internal government things have 
taken a turn for the worse, and the evil which many well- 
wishers of the new regime apprehended seems to have come 
about. The authors of the beneficial revolution which has sup- 
planted Abdul Hamid, have themselves become intoxicated, as 
is wont to be the case with the possession of power, and have 
driven from office a Grand Vizier of large experience and well- 
proved liberal views. He had shown his sincere desire to effect 
reforms by setting aside that false patriotism which refuses all 
help from outside when it is really necessary, and by calling 
to his assistance from all parts men qualified to set the new 
order of things on the right path. Finance, of course, is the 
most important consideration. For many years Turkey has been 
sinking deeper and deeper into debt; and has been unable 
to pay even current expenses. It is interesting to note that 
among works immediately to be undertaken is the irriga- 
tion of the ancient plains of Mesopotamia. That he should 
have been overthrown so soon and a new Grand Vizier, the 
third under the new regime^ appointed, cannot but cause anxiety 
for the future carrying out of these plans. Perhaps satisfac- 
tory explanations may be forthcoming. 



No settlement has yet been made 

The Middle East. o f the Persian question. Russia 

and Great Britain are engaged in 

making representations to the Shah urging him to re-establish 
the Constitution ; but whether these representations will have 
any result is doubtful, for the army, such as it is, is loyal, 



1909.] CURRENT EVENTS 861 

and wherever it is present completely overawes the supporters 
of popular rights. Many parts of the country, especially 
Tabriz and Ispahan, are in open insurrection, and anarchy is 
spreading ever farther and farther. The Powers disclaim the 
intention of any active intervention; but it seems very doubt- 
ful whether they will be able to avoid it. 



Absolute government may be toU 
The Far East. erable when the ruler is intelligent 

and benevolent. The late Dowa- 
ger Empress of China may be ranked among such rulers, and 
consequently its people were not altogether unprosperous. The 
normal state in which this form of government reverts seems 
now to have come about. The best administrator that China has 
produced during this generation has been dismissed from office 
through the machinations of a cabal. The reason alleged was 
that " he is suffering from an affection of the foot, has a diffi- 
culty in walking, and it is difficult for him to perform rules 
adequately." He is, therefore, commanded to resign instantly 
all his offices, and to return to his native place to treat his 
complaint. Such care for his health is truly touching. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

IT is now somewhat over forty years since Father Hecker, assisted by intelli- 
gent workers among the laity, established a Free Circulating Library for 
the teachers and scholars of St. Paul's Sunday-School in New York City. 
No expense was spared to get the best books. The object kept in view was 
to provide for the intellectual needs, not only ef the children attending 
school, but also to encourage the love for good reading among the young 
folks. Library cards, finished on one side with white silicate, were arranged, 
containing fifteen books, of which ten were selected from writers ot fiction 
and five from biography, history, or entertaining books of adventure and 
travel. At least one book devoted to the life of a saint, r some explanation 
of religious truth, was assigned to each set. These cards, with the titles of 
fifteen books and the names of their authors, were distributed on Sunday 
during the recitation of the Catechism lesson. Under the guidance of the. 
teachers, scholars made a choice of the books. By the aid of a number for 
each book the librarians easily kept the account of the circulation. For the 
return of books every two weeks the class was held accountable as well as the 
individual. This rule directed attention in a public manner to the delin- 
quents, who were promptly admonished by their own classmates. 

Not to mention other obvious advantages, it may be claimed that this 
method of supplying books gave the teachers an excellent opportunity to 
elicit conversation about favorite authors, and to make the library a potent 
influence in the mental growth and character-building of their scholars. 
Each class became in reality a miniature Reading Circle, with the teachers in 
charge, assisted by the librarians, and under the personal supervision of the 
Rev. Director. From the graduates of St. Paul's Sunday-School, trained in 
this way during their early days, came the first members of a Catholic Read- 
ing Circle for women, in the year 1886. It was named in honr of Frederic 
Ozanam, the gifted friend of Lacordaire, the leader of young men in w*rk 
for the poor, who won conquests for the faith in the field of literature within 
the nineteenth century. The object proposed for the Ozanam Reading 
Circle was the improvement of its members in literary taste by meeting to- 
gether once a week, in an informal and friendly way, to talk about books 
giving prominence always to Catholic authors to take part in reading aloud 
some of the best specimens of magazine literature, and to aid one another by 
the discussion of current topics. At that time no society could be found in 
existence intended to provide for Catholic young women equal intellectual 
advantages, such as were secured for young men by parish lyceums and 
literary unious. When the Convention of the Apostolate of the Press, held 
January, 1892, in New York City, under the auspices of the Paulist Fathers, 
brought together the pioneer workers for the Reading-Circle movement, it 
was admitted that the Ozanam Reading Circle ranked first in date ot forma- 
tion. 

Rumors have been heard that objection was made to the Reading-Circle 
movement because of its recent origin. As in the case of the young man who 






1909.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 863 

promised to try to get older every day, this objection was long ago removed 
by time. The underlying principle of co-operation in all departments of hu- 
man activity may be traced a long way back in history. No one can doubt 
that a union of intellectual forces extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
or vice versa, could develop a bulwark of strength for Catholic literature in 
the United States. Any ne desiring the sanction of hoary antiquity for the 
modern Reading Circle can find it at the University of Paris in the days of 
St. Thomas Aquinas, when students made notes of his profound lectures and 
afterwards read them aloud to their friends at the family gathering. 
* 

In the department " With Readers and Correspondents " of the CATH- 
OLIC WORLD for December, 1888, appeared an unsigned communication 
stating briefly the outlines of a society for young women having a mature de- 
sire for an advamced course of Catholic reading after graduation. It was 
suggested that the social element might be eliminated, as the work proposed 
could be accomplished by interchange of ideas at meetings and by corre- 
spondence among kindred minds in differeat places. This communication 
was written in Milwaukee, Wis., by Miss Julie E. Perkins. Further particu- 
lars regarding her valuable personal service in awakening latent forces for 
the practical realization of her plan may be found in the " Tribute of Praise " 
published in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August, 1894, shortly after ker death. 
She had very strong convictions that the Catholic people of high position in 
social life were, in many cases, allowing the intellectual opportunities of the 
present age to be monopolized by shallow, self-constituted leaders. Her 
efforts to make known the enduriag claims of Catholic authors deserve per- 
petual remembrance. 

The request for a discussion of the plans submitted by Miss Perkins was 
answered by numerous letters from readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, show- 
ing that in the United States, in Canada, in Australia, and throughout the 
immense area f the English-speaking world there was need of a wider diffu- 
sion of the best Catholic literature. From reliable sources of information it 
was estimated that thousands of dollars were annually spent by Catholics, 
especially in the rural districts, for bulky subscription books. In order to 
establish a central bureau for the guidance of the Catholic reading public, to 
foster the growth of Reading Circles, and to secure a permanent combina- 
tion of forces for the diffusion of good literature, THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 
June, 1889, announced the formation of the Columbian Reading Union, 
which was located at the house of the Paulist Fathers, 415 West Fifty-ninth 
Street, New York City. An appeal was made for the voluntary co-operation 
of those having a knowledge of books, so that guide-lists might be prepared 
at small cost for those seeking the information thus rendered available. 
Catholic writers were especially invited to take part in the new movement; 
assistance was also expected from librarians and others qualified to make se- 
lections from the best books published. Many individuals, as well as those 
identified with Catholic Reading Circles, gladly donated small amounts of 
money, besides giving their time and energy to make known the ways and 
means of extending the influence of Catholic literature, and to secure a place 
of deserved recognition for Catholic authors in public libraries. Some of the 



864 J BOOKS RECEIVED [Mar., 1909.] 

far-reaching results of the movement were indicated by the late John A. 
Mooney, LL.D., Brother Azarias, .and other prominout Catholic writers. 
From the beginning the Columbian Reading Union has been under the per- 
sonal supervision of the Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S.P., as indicated by his 
signature of M. C. M. He wishes to take this opportunity to thank publicly 
all who have gratuitously contributed to this department, and to request 
prayers for the departed benefactors especially the late Mrs. Margaret F. 
Sullivan, of Chicago who have aided more than words can express in the 
altruistic work thus far accomplished through the agency of the Columbian 
Reading Union. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York : 

Sodality of Our Lady, Under the Banner of Mary. By Father Henry Opitz, S.J. Pp 

206. Price 50 cents. 
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York: 

The Princess of Gan-Sar. By Andrew Klarmann. Pp. 421. Price $1.50 net. Ordo. 
Baptisimi Parvulorum. Pp. 16. Price 25 cents. Two Series of Lenten Sermons. 
1. Sin and Its Remedies. II. The Seven Deadly Sins. By Francis X. McGowan, 
O.S.A. Pp. 224. Price 75 cents net. 
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York: 

The Italians of To-Day. By Rend Bazin. Pp. 240. 
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY, New York: 

The Banking and Currency Problem in the United States. By Victor Morawetz. Pp. 119. 

Price $i net. 
J. P. LYON & Co., Albany, N. Y. : 

Eighth Annual Repott of the New York State Hospital J or the Care of Crippled Children. 

Year Ending September, 1908. 
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. : 

Physiological and Medical Observations. By Ales Hrdlicka. Pp. 425. Twenty-Second 

Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1907. Pp. 1,562. 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, Boston, Mass. : 

The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Boys and Girls. By C. W. Moores. Pp. 132. Price 
60 cents net. The Fifteenth Annual Report of Craig Colony for Epileptics, Sonyea, 
N. Y. Illustrated. Pp. So. 
LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston, Mass.: 

Our Benny. By Mary E. Waller. Pp. 102. Price $i net. But Still a Man. By Mar- 
garet L. Knapp. Pp. 376. Price $1.50. The Bridge Builders. By Anna Chapin 
Ray. Pp. 407. Price $1.50. 
J. S. HYLAND & Co., Chicago, 111.: 

The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. By Rev. T. Cox. Pp. 253. Price $z. 
THE AVE MARIA PRESS, Notre Dame, Ind.: 

The Coin of Sacrifice. By Christian Reid. Pp. 57. Price 15 cents. 
FRANKLIN PRESS COMPANY, Pueblo, Colo.: 

Life of the Rt. Rev. Joseph P. Machebeuf, D.D. By the Rev. W. J. Hewlett. Pp. 419. 



P. LETHIELLEUX, Paris, France: 

Souvenirs (1825-1907). Par la Princesse de Sayn- Wittgenstein. Pp. 182. Price ^fr. 50. 
Derniets Melanges. Vbls. II. and III. Par Louis Veuillot. Pp. 620. Price 6 fr. La 
Cnse Intime de I ' Eglise de France. Par Paul Barbier. Pp. 118. Price o fr. 75. Du 
Connu a I'Inconnu. Pp. 87. L' Eglise de France et les Catholiqves Franc_ats. Par 
Paul Barbier. Pp. 113. 

GABBIEL BEAUCHESNE ET GIE, Paris, France : 

La Religion des Primitifs. Par Mgr. A. le Roy. Pp. 498. Price 4 fr. Une Anglaise 
Canvertie. Par le Pere H. d 'Arras. Pp. 212. Price 2 ft. Le Celebre Miracle de Saint 
Janvier. Pp. 349. 

BLOUD ET CIE., Paris, France: 

Le Catholicisme en Angleterre. Pp. 256. Price 3 Jr. 50. 



1909 



THE 




Four CelebritiesBrothers by Marriage 

By the Waters of Babylon 

Literature and Morality 

Impressions of Islam in Constantinople 

G. K, Chesterton 

Is it the Turn of the Tide? 

West-Country Idylls 

In Sicily 

New Books Foreign Periodicals 
Current Events 



Wilfrid Wilberforce 
feanie Drake 
R. L. Mangan, SJ. 
Maisie Ward 
W. . Campbell 
Cornelius Clifford 
H. E. P. 
foseph McSorley, C.S.P. 



Price 25 cents; 3 per Year 



THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD, NEW YORK 

120-122 "West 60 Hi Street 

PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd., Dryden House, 43 Oerrard St., Sobo^London, W 

Pour la Prince et leg Colonies Francaises: ARTHUR SAVAETE, Editenr 
Dlrecteur de la " Revue du Monde Cat holique," 76 Roe des Sainta-Peres, Paris 

ENTERED AT NEW YORK POST-OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MATTSJ8. 



MY SPECIALTIES. 

Pure Virgin Olive Oil. First pressing 
of the Olive. Imported under my Eclipse 
Brand in full half-pint, pint, and quart 
bottles', and in gallon and half- gallon 
cans. Analysis by Agricultural Depart- 
ment, Washington, showing absolute 
purity, published in Callanan's Magazine. 

L. J. Callanan's Eclipse Brand of 
Ceylon tea eclipses all other Ceylon teas 
offered in packages in this market, in 
quality and flavor. 

There is no better tea sold in this 
country than my "41 " blend, quality and 
flavor always the same. No tea table 
complete/ without it. 

My " 43 " Brand of Coffee 

is a blend of the choicest coffees imported. 
It is sure to please lovers of good coffee. 
No breakfast table complete without it. 

MY MOTTO, Everything in Groceries, 
Altar Wines, and Cigars, everything of 
the Best. A visit to my permanent food 
exposition will pay you. Copy Callanan's 
Magazine and price list mailed on request. 

!. J. CAIJLANAN, 

4 1 and 43 Vesey Street, New York. 



R A E S 
LUCCA 
O LIVE 

O I Li 

Is the perfection of 

Olive Oil, made from 
sound, ripe Olives, 
gro.wn in Tuscany 
"The Garden of It- 

aly." Its absolute 

Purity is vouched 
for by U. S. govern- 
ment analysis. 

SAMUEL RAE & CO. 

Establish* d 1836, 
LEGHORN, TUSCANY, ITALY. 

SPRAGUE, WARNER & CO., 
Distnbuters, 
CHICAGO. 



SUBIIME 



LEGHORN 



Xo Consumers of 

l-IOW 

Brand 
Condensed and Evaporated 

MII-K: 

Over $3,000 in Gash Frizes 

Will be awarded to consumers of Lion 
Milk on April i. 

Your grocer has just received a new 
shipment of milk which has a circular 1 
around each can giving full particulars. 

The quantity of milk which has these 
circulars is limited, so vdo not fail to 
buy some at once and secure a part of 
this money. 



Church Furniture 

Altars, Pulpits, Confessionals, Pews, 
Wood Carvings, In fact church furniture 

of Every Description 



Designs and estimates furnished 

upon request. 
Send for booklet "In Evidence." 



American 
Seating 
Company 

NOT IN ANY TRUST OR 
COMBINATION 



Chicago, 
215 Wabash 

Avenue 
New York, 

19 West Eigh- 
tenthSt 

Boston, 

70 Franklin 

Street 

Philadelphia, 
1230 Arch St. 

Branches in all 
parts of country 



AP The Catholic world 

2 

C3 

v.88 



PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE 
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET 

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY