(navigation image)
Home American Libraries | Canadian Libraries | Universal Library | Community Texts | Project Gutenberg | Children's Library | Biodiversity Heritage Library | Additional Collections
Search: Advanced Search
Anonymous User (login or join us) Upload
See other formats

Full text of "Catholic world"

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project 
to make the world's books discoverable online. 

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject 
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books 
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. 

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the 
publisher to a library and finally to you. 

Usage guidelines 

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the 
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to 
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. 

We also ask that you: 

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for 
personal, non-commercial purposes. 

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine 
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the 
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. 

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find 
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. 

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just 
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other 
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of 
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner 
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. 

About Google Book Search 

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers 
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web 

at http : //books . google . com/| 



Digitized by 



Google 



Digitized by 



Google 



Digitized by 



Google 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



General I^iterature and Science 



PUBLISHED BY THE PAUUST FATHERS. 



VOI,. XCI. 

APRIL» X910, TO SEPTEMBER, I9xa 



NEW YORK : 

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLICj WORLD, 

lao West 60th Strsst. 



1910. 



Digitized by 



Google 



CONTENTS. 




American History in Roman Archives. — 

Cart Russell Fish, . . . .657 

'Belloc, Hilaire (A Champion and His 

Labors). — Virginia Ji, Crawford, 1 

Black Forest, A Comer of the.— -£". C 

V^nsittart, . " . . . . 369 

Book-Lovers of Old (Catholics and 

Books). — Louis O* Donovan, D»D., , 17a 

Books, A Few General Ideas on (Catho- 
lics and Books). — Louis O'Donovan, 
D.D., 72 

Campagna, A Walk Across the.— /%, H. 

^., 640 

Carra and Tirawley (In), County Mayo. 

— Wilfrid St. Oswald, . . .755 
Catholic Literature (Life and Literature). 

—/oAn /. BurAe, CS.P,, . . . 289 
Catholic Musician (A) of the Sixteenth 

Century (Sebastian Westcott).— IF. 

//. Grattan Flood, Mus.D., . . 668 
Catholics and Books.— /^Mt> O* Donovan, 

D,D,, 7a, 17a 

Champion and His Labors, A. — Virginia 

M. Crawford^ I 

Charity, Problems in. — William /. 

Kerby, Pk,D,, 790 

China, The Catholic Church 'm,—£llis 

Schreiber, 433 

Christology and Criticism.— IF. T, C. 

Sheppard, 0,S.B,, B,A,^ . . .721 
College Plays— Are They Worth While ? 

— Thomas Gaffney Taafe, . 225, 374 
Conn and CuUen (In Carra and Tiraw- 

Icy, County Uayo),— Wilfrid St. 

Oswald, 755 

Costa Rica, An Episode in. — /ohn Arm- 
strong //erman, .... 649 
Criticism, Some Thoughts on. — S,M,F,, 507 
De La Pasture (Mrs.), The Novels of.— 

Agnes Brady, . . . . • . 304 
Divorce in the Russian Church. — An- 

drew f, Shtpman, » . . , 577 
Drum Major's Daughter, The — feante 

Drake, 28, 160 

Dying Man's Diary, K.-~Edited by W. 

.i. Ltlly, . . . . . 351, 445 
Education, Development, and Soul. — 

Edward A, Pace, Ph.D., . . 817 

Foreign Periodicals, 

119, 261, 403, 556, 695, 844 
Green Wood and Dry. — Helen Haines, 326 
Haydn. — Edward F. Cur ran, . .513 
*' History " of Religion, A New. — F, 

Bricout, . . . ... . 362 

International Eucharistic Congress, The. 

— P. W. Browne, .... 527 
Italy, Methodism in (Methodist Pioneers . . 

in Italy).— /<?Aii F. Fenlon, . . 230 



Labor Problems in Switzerland (So- 
cial Work in Switzerland). — Vir- 
ginia M. Crawford, . . , 764 

Life and Literature.- /i?An /. Burke, 

C.S.P., 289 

Literature, Life and. — /ohn /. Burke, 

C.S.P,, 289 

Madrid and Toledo (Recent Impressions 

of Spain).— ^ff^rm; /. Sktpman, . 56 

Mamichee. — Mary Austin, . . . 183 

Methodist Pioneers in Italy. — [ohn F. 

Fenlon, . .... 230 

Mexico of To-Day, The.—/. B, Frisbie, 39 

Missionaries in China (The Catholic 

Church in China).— -£"//»> Schreiber, 433 

Montreal Congress (The International 
Eucharistic Congress). — /*. W, 
Browne, 527 

New Books, 95, 247, 382, 533, 678, 826 

Old Wastrel, hn.^ Katharine Tynan, . 45 

Orpheus, by Reinach (A New ** History " 

of Religion).—^. Bricout, . . 362 

Patmore, Coventry. — KcUkerine Brigy, 14 

Patricia, the Problem.— i^jM^r W, 

Neill, .... 484, 589* 736 

Publicity and Social Reform. — [ohn /. 

Burke, C.S.P,, . . . .198 

Recent (Current) Events, 

126, 267, 41a, 565, 704, 852 

Russian Church Laws Concerning Maiw 
riage and Divorce (Divorce in the 
Russian Church). — Andrew /. Ship- 
fnan, 577 

Scholastic Logic and Modem Theology. 

^W, H.Kent, O.S.C, ... 83 

Shearing Time.— J/. F, Quintan, . . 92 

Social Reform and Publicity. — /ohn /. 

Burke, CS.P., . . . .198 

Social Reform (H. G. Wells).— W. E, 

Campbell, . . . 145, 312, 471, 613 

Social Work (Problems in Charity). — 

Willtam /. Kerby, Ph.D., . . 790 

Spain of To-Day. — Andrew /. Shipman, 801 

Spain, Recent Impressions of. — Andrew 

/. Shipman, 56 

Stolen Fortunes. — Marie Manning, . 774 

Switzerland, Social Work in. — Virginia 

M. Crawford, .... 764 

'TtTtsaL,S\..— Walter Elliott, C.S.P., . 627 

Theodora and the Pilgrim. — Marie Man- 
ning, 212 

Theology and Mathematics.— IF. H, 

Kent, O.^.C, 342 

^ Venice, A Daughter oi.-^An Irish Ur- 

suline, 456 

Wells, H. G.— IF. E, Campbell, 

M5» 31a. 471, 613 

Westcott, Sebastian.— IF. H, Grattan 

Flood Mus.D., 668 

With Our Readers, 139, 279, 423, 571, 714, 862 



Digitized by 



Google 



Contents. 



iii 



POETRY. 



Helen.— ^. G.Smith, . . . .311 
H0I7 Communion. — Katharine Tynan^ 626 
Is It I, Rabbi }— Richard L. Mangan, SJ,^ 71 



* Mane Nobiscum Domine ! " — Vera M. 
St. Clair, 



234 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Altar, Towards the, .... 843 
American Indnstrial Sodetj, The Docu- 
mentary History of, . . . • 253 
American Prose Masters, . . • 683 
Amirique de Demain, La, . . . 400 
Angelas (The;, and the Re£:ina Coeli, . 398 
Athiisme, Les Argnmenti de la, . • 402 
Ball and the Cross, The, ... 836 
Barat (Mdre), La Bienhearense, . • 403 

Barrier, The, 838 

Bible Stories Told to ** Toddles,** . 397 

Bibliotheca Ascetica Mvstica, . . 2^9 
Bioeraphj of a Boy, The, . . .681 
Blened Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, 

The Life of, 688 

Blessed Virgin, Treatise on the True De- 
votion to the. 399 

Bolivar (Simon), <* £1 Libertador," . 387 

Brahmanisme, Le, 402 

Brother's Sacrifice, A, • . . . 548 

Brownie and I, ..... 547 

Buds and Blossoms, .... 691 

Captain Ted, 547 

Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, History of the, . . . .382 
Catholic Church in Western Canada 
from Lake Superior to the Pacific, 

History of the, 384 

Catholic Encyclopedia, The, . . 533 

Catholic Paper, The, .... 842 

Cave-Woman, The, .... 692 

Childhood, The Story of a Beautiful, . 398 

China and the Far East, .. 539 
China, The Catholic Church in, from 

i860 to 1907, 97 

Christ (A Lite oO for Children, . .112 

Christianisme, L'Avenir du, . . . zi6 

Christianity, The Development of, . 826 
Christ in Palestine, With, . . .116 

Christ, The Courage of, ... 255 
ChristJThe Life of) Told in Words of 

the Gospel, Z12 

City Boss, The Dethronement of the, • 840 • 

Classical Moralists, The, ... 104 

Clericus Devotus, . . • . « 1x5 

Comedias Modemas, Tres, . • xi3 

Coming Religion, The, .... 843 

Comparative Religion, .... XC9 
Confederate War, The History of the ; 

lu Causes and Conduct, . -385 

Confessions (The) of St. Augustine, . 99 

Corrigan (Condy), The Escapades of, . 548 

Critidsm (Old) and New Pragmatism, . 538 

Damien of Molokai, .... 829 

De France, Madame Elisabeth, . . 833 
De Maistiv Blanc de Saint-Bonnet 

(Joseph), Lacordaire, Gratry, Caro, . 402 
De Masenod (Bishop), His Inner Life 

and Virtues, 103 

Dias (Porfirio), President of Mexico, . 388 

Divine Liturgy, Hand Book of, . . 547 
Divine Lover, The Holy Practices of a ; 

or, the Saintly Ideot*s Devotions, . 256 

Divine Story, The, • . • • 547 



Doctrines Religaeuses des Philosophes 

Grecs, 693 

Donnelly, Charles Francis, . . . 399 

Dundalk, A Short History of, . . 544 

Earl or (Jhieftain, 549 

Raster, Book of, 115 

Eglise Gatholique au XIX. Sidcle, Pe- 
tite Histoi^e de la, . . . . 402 
Eglise (La) et la Critique, . . . 109 
Enchiridion Historian Ecclesiastical Uni- 

versae, , 542 

English Literature in Account with Re- 
ligion, 555 

Essays (Little) for Friendly Readers, . 102 

Eternal Wisdom, Little Book of, . 832 

Eucharistic Triduum, The, . . • 105 
Eucharist ie (La), et la Penitence durant 

les six Premiers Sidcles de TEglise, • 693 

Exiled Nun, The Diary of an, . • 691 

Faith, Heroes of the, .... 394 

Faith (Our) is a Reasonale Faith, . 548 

Field and Woodland Plants, . . 546 
First Communion of Children and Its 

Conditions, 549 

Forei^ Missions, 682 

Francia's Masterpiece, .... 396 
Franciscan Legend, A Sienese Painter 

of the, 398 

Francis de Sales, 553 

Gait (Kenneth), The Redemption of, • X13 

Girls, A Bunch of . . . . • • 549 

God, How to Walk Before, . . • 547 

Gossamer Thread, The, . . • 841 
Government by Influence; and other 

Addresses, 540 

Gray (Very Rev. Dr.), The Blindness of 

the, 251 

Greek Lands and Letters, . . • X02 

Halton (Mrs.), The Fascinating, . . 39a 

Haunted House, The, .... 390 

Heavenly Heretics, . . . . xxi 

Hiawatha's Black Robe, . . . 549 

Historic PageanU, Three, . . . 84a 
Holy Eucharist, In Honor of the (Pour 

TEuchanstie), xz8 

Holy Eucharist, The Sublimity of the ; 
also a Visit to the Seven Churches 
in Rome on the Occasion of the Jubi- 
lee, 3Q4 

Housing Reform 69a 

Human Body and Health, The, • • 549 
Human Life (The Problem oQ as Viewed 
by the Great Thinkers from Plato to 

the Present Time, . . • 537 
Id6aliste du Sentiment Religieux, La 

Forme, 550 

Internelle Consoladon (La), Sainte 
T^rdsa, Pascal, Bossuet, Sainte Be- 

nott Labra, Le Cur£ d'Ars, . . 402 

Ireland Yesterday and To-day, . . 248 
Israel, Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church 
(Cours Superieur d*Instruction Reli- 
gieuse. Israel, J^sus Christ, L*Egli»e 

Catholique), ¥^ 



A 



Digitized by 



Google 



IV 



Contents. 



Jesus Chirst (The Childhood of) Accord- 
ing: to the Canonical Gospels, with aa 
Historical Essay on the Brethren of 
the Lord, 

J6sus Christ, Traite du Devoir de Con< 
duire les Enfants 1, . 

J6sus et le Rationalisme Contemporain, 
L* Existence Historique de, 

Jesus, Some Features of the Moral Phys- 
iog^nomy of, 

Joan and Her Friends, . 

Joan of Arc (Blessed), Life Lessons 
from, 

Kindergarten in the Home, The, . 

King, I'he Coming of the, 

King^ The Laws of the, . 

Latin, The Teaching of, 

Library and the School, The, 

Lincoln Died, When ; and Other Poems, 

Little Brother O'Dreams, 

Liturgie et la vie Chr^tienne, La, . 

Lorraine (Clare); or. Little Leaves From 
a Little Life 

Lourdes, The Glories of, 

Lucia's Stories of American Discoverers 
for Little Americans, . 

Madone a Travers les Ages, La Repr£< 
sentation de la, . 

Man Mirrowing His Maker, . 

Margaret's Influence, 

Meditations for Each Day of the Month 
of June, Dedicated to the Sacred Heart 
of Jesus, 

Mercier's (Cardinal) Conferences, 

Merton (Lady), Colonist, 

M6todo Prictico para Aprenderd EscribTr 
por el Taco, 

Miracle, Le Discernement du, 

Missale Romanum, 

Modem Chronicle, A, . . . 

Modemisme, Le, .... 

Modemisme Sociologique, Le : Decad- 
ence ou R6g6n6ration ? 

Monastery, The, • . . . 

Morale Scientifique et Morale Evange- 
lique Devant la Sociologie, . 

Morals in Modem Business, . 

Mother Erin,. Her People and Her 
Places, . '. , 

Naples, Elchoes of , . 

Negro Americans for Social Betterment, 
The Effects of the, 

New York, A Political History of the 
State of, 

Nightingale (Florence): a Story for 
Young People, .... 

Night Thoughts for the Sick, 

North America, Pioneer Priests of, 

Officium et Missa pro Defunctis, . 

Old Ivory, A Bit of ; and Other Stories, 

On Everything, .... 

Orpheus With His Lute, 

Pain, des . Petits (Le), Explication Dia- 
logue du Catechism, .... 

Papacy (The) and the First Councils of 
the Church, . 

Papacy, The Purpose of the, 

Passers- By, 

Peggy the Millionaire, . 

Penitent Instructed, The, 

Pens^es, 

P6tau, 

Peter of New Amsterdam, 

Peuples non Civilises, La Survivance de 
TAme chee les, .... 

Philomena, The Fortunes of. 

Piano Compositions, 



686 

40a 

40a 

1x8 
549 

834 
397 
549 
693 

548 
548 
390 
842 
553 

547 
108 

549 

403 
395 
549 



683 
247 
390 

843 
550 
397 
391 
55a 

550 
843 

40a 

545 

544 
399 

69a 
108 

i»3 
114 

534 
397 
547 
540 
107 

118 

98 

393 
114 

549 
549 
40a 
403 
548 

40a 

549 
XI4 



Politics and History, Psychology, 
Pragmatisme, Modemisme, Protestant 

isme, 

Predestined, 

Pridre Divine, La ; Le " Pater," . 
Problem, The Great, 
Psychology and the Teacher, 
Questione Femminile (La) in Italia e il 

Dovere Delia Donna Cattolica, . 
Question of the Hour. The, . 
Religion in Good Government, The 

Place of, 

Religions Orien tales : La Religion V^ 

dique 

Richard of Jamestown, . 

Rogers (Commodore John), Captain, 

Commodore, and Senior Officer of the 

American Navy 

Roman Campagna, Wanderings in the, 
Round the World, ..... 
Sacraments, The Esoteric Meaning of 

the Seven, - . . , . 
Sacraments, Theology of the. 
Sacred Heart, Practical Devotion to the, 
Sacred Heart, Prayers to the, 
St. Batt's, The Boys of, 
St. Clare, The Life of , . 
St. Francis Borgia, History of (Histoire 

de Saint Francois de Borgia), . 
St. Gerard Maiella, Life of, . 
Saint Paul (Epitres de), Lemons d'Ex- 

£g€se, 

Santa Melania.Giuniore, 
School Room Echoes, . . 
Scriptura Sacra, De, . ... 
Sens Commun (Le), la Philosophie de 

TEtre et les Formules Dogmatiques, 
Sermons for the Christian Year, . 
Simon the Jester, .... 
Sin, The Chief Sources of, . 
So As By Fire, 
Socialism, The Substance of. 
Social Science and Political Economy, 

The Elements of, ... 

Son^s From the Operas for Alto, . 
Spints, The Discernment of, . 
Spiritual Canticle (A) of the Soul by St, 

John of the Cross, .... 
Stanley, G.C.B. (Sir Henry Mortimer), 

The Autobiography of, . . . 
Stories (The Best) by the Foremost 

Catholic Authors, 
Strain of White, A, . . . 
Strictly Business, .... 
, Tower of Ivory, .... 
Traits des Scmpules, 

Trammelings, 

Trant (Luther), The Achievements of, 
Tme Church, My Road to the. 
Unbelief, The Causes and Cure of. 
Undesirable Governess, The, 
United States in the Year 1883, Diary of 

a Visit to the, ...» 
Up-Grade, The, .... 
Van Schurman (Anna), Artist, Scholar, 

Saint, 

Verses .... 

Ward (Mary), The Life of, \ 

Wayfarer's Vision, The, 

What Times I What Morals I Where on 

Earth are We? .... 
When Love Calls Men to Arms, . 

Whirlpools, 

Winnowing, A 

AVorld's Classics, The Best of the, 
Young Man's Guide, The, 



350 

556 
391 
55a 
loa 
679 

107 
385 

399 

117 
548 



389 
X06 
546 

259 
254 
114 

693 

554 

zx8 
107 

400 
X06 

398 
40Z 



W. 



51 
693 

260 
257 

545 

694 

100 

684 

685 
260 
393 

694 
a6o 



a6o 
391 

aS9 

no 
390 
397 
536 

840 
689 
68S 
»'5 
541 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

Vol. XCI. APRIL, 1910. No. 541. 

A CHAMPION AND HIS LABORS. 

BY VIRGINIA M. CRAWFORD. 

[HE standpoint of modern English literature when 
judged in the mass is so universally non- Cath- 
olic, often so materialistic, that the discovery 
of a Catholic outlook in a book that is neither 
controversial nor devotional itirs one with a 
glad sense of surprise. Such an outlook confers a note of dit* 
tinction, even of originality, on many a page that without it 
might be commonplace or conventional, and it arrests the 
reader with a realization of identity of interest between him- 
self and the author as pleasant as it is rare. The discovery 
may be made in books on almost any conceivable topic grave 
or gay. For the distinction I refer to is not in surface matters 
at all, nor in mere opinions, rather it affects the whole of a 
man's attitude towards life; it underlies the course of human 
thought so that whatever subject may be under treatment, be 
it history or travel, act or politics, the Catholic philosophy 
pierces through irresistibly, tingeing all the output. The note 
is unmistakable, all the more where it is allied with imagina- 
tive and intellectual gifts of a high order. We should know, 
even if we had no previous information on the subject, that 
no one but a Catholic could have written the poetry of Coven- 
try Patmore or Francis Thompson; so, none save a Catholic 
could have given us the prose of Mr. Hilaire Belloc. 

Having asserted his distinctive Catholicism, one must go 

Copyright. 1910. The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle 

IN THE State of New York. 
VOL XCU^I 



Digitized by 



Google 



2 A Champion and His Labors [April, 

a step farther and confess that Mr. Belloc is as little dis- 
tinctively British as may be. One is almost tempted to wonder 
how he came to write in English at all, so remote is his cast 
of thought from anything that Oxford is wont to produce. 
Yet, in point of fact, his clear-cut, penetrating French intel- 
lect finds its expression in peculiarly robust and picturesque 
English, and much of the charm and originality of his writing 
lies in the contrasts thus brought into juxtaposition. English 
vagueness and love of compromise and our pleasant, if illog- 
ical, capacity for sympathizing with both sides are wholly 
alien to Mr. Belloc's mentality. His mind is impregnated with 
the Roman ideals that have been perpetuated on Gallic soil. 
Thus he stands always for centralized authority as against a 
powerful aristocracy, a conviction that finds vivid expression 
in his word- pictures of Runny mede and of the flight of James 
11. in that fascinating volume The Eye^Witness. So, too, he 
believes passionately in peasant- proprietorship as the funda- 
mental basis of a Catholic state. He is anti-Semitic, as are 
nearly all French Catholics, and he is apt to discern malignant 
Jewish influences on every side in our modern life, much as a 
certain school of Protestants discover Jesuits. He has an in- 
stinctive hatred of Prussia and of all that Prussia stands for 
in modern Europe. He is anti- feminist, although his mother 
was one of the earliest workers in the cause of women's en- 
franchisement He is anti-Puritan and believes in the honest 
enjoyment of all the good things of this life, including the 
pleasures of eating and drinking. Indeed, he can barely speak 
of the temperance movement with patience, so allied is it in 
his mind with nonconformity and with a false conception of 
human liberty. He cares nothing for games or sport, but he 
is an enthusiastic walker of remarkable endurance, and en- 
dowed with a talent for topography, perfected by much use. 
Finally he is a militarist devoid of jingoism or vainglory ; it is 
the same militarism of the professional soldier, who loves for 
its own sake the art of war, and all that appertains to it. 

It is only natural to seek the key to characteristics so di- 
verse in Mr. Belloc's parentage and upbringing. English on 
his mother's side and French on his father's, he also claims, 
through a grandmother, a strain of Irish blood in his veins. 
He has, by the way, made his children's descent even more 
cosmopolitan than his own by marrying a Californian. Mr. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] A Champion and His Labors 3 

Belloc's father, a French barrister, died after a few years 
of marriage leaving two yoang children to the care of his 
widow, who, as Miss Bessie Rayner Parkes, was well known, 
previous to her marriage, to a large circle of intellectual men 
and women in England. Old Madame Belloc, who happily 
still lives to follow with keen pleasure her son's many triumphs, 
could count among her personal friends such names as those 
of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, William and Mary Howitt, 
the Brownings, George Eliot, Adelaide Procter, and Mrs. 
Jameson, and was herself one of the earliest promoters, in 
mid- Victorian days, of the higher education of women. It is 
more than half a century since, on a visit to Dublin, she had 
her attention drawn to the splendid service rendered to the 
poor by the Irish religious orders of women, and the under- 
standing of the Catholic faith that came to her through inter- 
course with them proved the first step towards her own con- 
version to Catholicism in 1864. Several charming and thought- 
ful volumes of reminiscences and impressions, instinct with 
Catholic feeling, are due to her pen. 

Thus Mr. Belloc and his sister, now Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes. 
grew up, partly in France, partly in England, amid Catholic 
and literary influences, and both took to their pens with as- 
tonishing ease when they were barely out of school. Each 
possessed the advantage of being perfectly at home in two 
languages and of being equally conversant with the literature, 
the politics, and the daily life of nations as diverse as the 
French and the English. Both elected, however, to make 
English and not French their written language, and England 
their permanent home. Mrs. Lowndes, previous to her mar- 
riage, did much successful journalistic work on the London 
press ere she settled down to the writing of novels of con- 
temporary society life, of which Thi Heart of Pitulope and 
Barbara Rebill have been perhaps the most successful. Mr. 
Belloc, after being educated at Edgbaston in days when Car- 
dinal Newman's frail and bent figure still gave a unique dis- 
tinction to the Birmingham Oratory, had already started on a 
journalistic career in London before he was called away, 
through his French paternity and French citizenship, to do a 
year's service in the French army. Thus it came about that 
he went to Oxford and to Balliol considerably later than is 
usual, and certainly with a wider understanding of life and of 



Digitized by 



Google 



4 A Champion and his Labors [April, 

affairs than most English undergraduates can boast. Already 
history claimed his allegiance, and he left the university a 
winner of the Brackenbury History scholarship, and with a 
first class gained in the History Schools. For some years Mn 
Belloc divided his time between journalism and the duties of 
a University Extension lecturer. Happily, literature absorbed 
him more and more, and the volumes that now follow each 
other in rapid succession from his pen certainly leave small 
leisure for other occupations. Even his parliamentary duties, 
as member since 1906 for one of the divisions of Manchester, 
seem in no way to have lessened his remarkable literary activ- 
ity. History and biography, essays, travels, and novels, polit- 
ical tracts, and nursery rhymes, he has tried his hand at them 
all and failed in none. Unquestionably Mr. Belloc holds to- 
day a very foremost place in the world of English men of 
letters. 

The individual event which has exercised the strongest in- 
fluence on Mr. Belloc's career, was probably the year he spent 
in the garrison at Toul as driver in a French artillery regi- 
ment. To have passed from an English public school to 
French barracks, and thence, after naturalization, to the House 
of Commons, must constitute a unique experience in contem- 
porary life. More than once in debate, when military matters 
have been under discussion, the member for South Salford has 
intervened with telling effect because he has been in a posi- 
tion to bear personal testimony regarding service in a foreign 
army. This, however, has been but an accidental result. His 
books testify in a hundred ways to the permanent mark the 
experience so gained has left on his life. The influence on 
character in instilling powers of endurance and the spirit of 
comradeship and social ^equality must have been in the high- 
est degree formative. It was his military training that first 
developed his keen vision for the natural features of a land- 
scape, invaluable alike to the descriptive writer and the ardent 
pedestrian. It is, however, as a military historian — and fight- 
ing plays a prominent part in many of his books — that the 
advantages of first-hand knowledge makes itself felt beyond 
dispute. Clearly, a campaign to a soldier represents something 
very different from what it is to an armchair historian. For 
obvious reasons I cannot pretend to express any opinion as to 
Mr. Belloc's qualifications as a military writer in the eyes of 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] A Champion and His Labors 5 

military experts. But as representing a somewhat numerous 
type of feminine reader, to whom war is a somewhat repulsive 
subject and descriptions of campaigns unutterably tedious and 
incomprehensible, it appears to me no slight praise to testify 
that Mr. Belloc is arresting and convincing even when he is 
describing a battle. Manoeuvres take on a new meaning under 
his pen; battles are seen in their most dramatic aspect — read 
" Roncesvalles " or " The Battle of Lewes " in The Eye^ Witness^ 
or the pages describing Carnot's relief of Maubeuge in the last 
tragic chapter of his Marie Antoinette — and the importance of 
apparently small military episodes in leading up to events of 
European importance is lucidly indicated. Much of all this, I 
say, may be traced to those arduous months as a conscript at 
Toul, glimpses of which may be enjoyed in the engaging pages 
of A Path to Rome. 

Before the brilliant diversity of Mr. Belloc's literary pro- 
ductions, his novels, his biographies, his travels, his essays on 
nothing and on everything, and his wholly fascinating picture 
books, illustrated by himself, for ''bad** children, it would 
seem at first sight difficult to determine any one permanent 
bent of his mind. In point of fact, that bent is clear and con- 
tinuous; his constant pre-occupation is history. Even when 
he is not professedly writing it, be is studying life from the 
historical point of view. Esto Perpetua^ a little sketch, vivid 
and suggestive, of a few weeks* ramble through Algeria, is in 
its essence an historical essay on the destruction of Reman 
civilization by the might of the Arab and Mahometan domina- 
tion, and on the gradual reconquest of the Maghreb by the 
Latin nations in our own day — a type of the age* enduring 
conflict between the Crescent and the Cross. Other books of 
wandering, notably The Old Road, are full of historical recon* 
struction and allusion. Even Mr. Belloc's novels deal — in bis 
most caustic vein — with contemporary politics, and touch with 
inimitable skill on many matters of contemporary interest. 
To him the attraction of politics is that it is history in the 
making, actual manifestations of forces and principles with 
which he has made himself familiar through study. 

It is perhaps rash to assume that it is chiefly as an his- 
torian that Mr. Belloc's name will survive, but undoubtedly, in 
mere point of bulk, his historical writings claim priority of 
notice. They consist of three biographical volumes dealing 



Digitized by 



Google 



6 A Champion and His Labors [April, 

with the French Revolution, his Danten (1899), his Rcbespierre 
(1901), and finally his Marie Antoinette (1909). Though bio- 
graphical in form, these three books treat of varying aspects 
of one of the most bewildering periods in modern history, and 
between them they exemplify very clearly the author's theories 
of the extremely difHcult science of historical reconstruction. 
His historical scenes are often so picturesque and so dramatic; 
he conveys, aided by the magic of bis style, so intense an im- 
pression of the personalities he depicts, that the sober reader 
is, perhaps, inclined to mistrust the effect and to ask how 
much is true to actual fact, and how much the outcome of a 
keen and cultivated imagination. In the preface to his Robes^ 
pierre Mr. Belloc himself supplies the answer. Admitting that 
bis imagination, amid favorable surroundings for reverie, evokes 
shadows from the past, these shadows 'fugitive if grandiose 
imaginaries,'* can only be transformed into ''certain and well- 
guarded possessions *' by the laborious building up of innum- 
erable details into an historic narrative. Much, he says, has to 
be sacrificed in the course of the task. 

'' Nevertheless, the sacrifice repays. It is like the growing 
of slow timber upon a sheltered hill; you seem to have es- 
tablished an enduring thing. There stand out at last a vigor 
and a plenitude that are to the unsubstantial origins of such 
a search what touch, sight, and hearing are to memory.** 

For two of the features attached to writing history by this 
method, Mr. Belloc considers that an apology is needed. In 
the first place you have to make the physical environment of 
your figure reappear; in other words, you must write, more or 
less, as an eye-witness, a somewhat perilous proceeding; and, 
second, you must admit "laborious and dusty discussion, not 
only of disputed events, but of the inner working of a mind." 
This two-fold endeavor may result in inartistic incongruity, but 
it brings you as near as may be to the truth. 

For my part, it seems to me that the historian one should 
distrust is precisely he who supplies a perfectly smooth, straight- 
forward narrative with simple issues, plausible motives, and 
logical sequence of events. Life, whether national or inter- 
national, can never be simple; it is rarely logical, at least on 
the surface, and it is always built up of a bewildering medley of 
good and evil. One of the impressive qualities of Mr. Belloc 
as an historian is his capacity for indicating the chaos of pas- 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lo.] A Champion and his Labors 7 

sions and emotions from which great events spring, while pre- 
senting to the reader a consecutive thread of narrative. 

Sach a feat is well exemplified in his volume on Danton. 
In style the book is inferior to its successors; here and there 
it is careless in construction, and it lacks the ease and briU 
liancy that practice alone can give. But in firm grasp of a 
highly complex situation and in vivid presentment of the cen- 
tral figure it is a remarkable achievement. The description of 
the revolution* on the very first page as ''a reversion to the 
normal " makes] it plain at the outset that no conventional 
view of that great cataclysm need be feared. The author's 
strong prepossessions in favor of the army and of peasant pro- 
prietorship, are shown in the remark that the 'Uime had turned 
the commonplace sons of bourgeois into something as great as 
peasants or as soldiers.*' Yet from the nature of the case the 
book could hardly be a popular one. It necessarily assumes a 
considerable knowledge of the period, more than the ordinary 
English reader possesses, and it gives him a hero with whom 
he can hardly be expected to sympathize. Even Mr. Belloc 
fails to make Danton attractive, or to make us really under- 
stand how it was he could have brought ''all who ever knew 
him closely to respect or to love him.'' Mr. Belloc's concep- 
tion of him is of a man who cared passionately for France and 
for the Revolution, who, left to himself, was naturally on the 
side of the Moderates and the Diplomatists, but who, by some 
cruel fate, was always being flung back into the arms of the 
Extremists. His vote for the King's death was given when his 
own young wife was on her death-bed and when bitterness 
and anger had overcome every normal consideration. Even 
so, all one feels inclined to say in his favor is that he appears 
to have been less personally responsible for the worst excesses 
of the period than the popular verdict has assumed. Only on 
the scaffold was he truly great, "still courageous, still power- 
ful in his words," and judged from the manner of his death 
his life takes on a nobler aspect. 

Mr. Belloc's Matte Antoinette suffers from none of the draw- 
backs of his Danton. The subject is one that exercises an un- 
failing fascination over many minds, and, thanks to his pro- 
longed study of the period, the author has been able to pose 
his central figure against a background from which none of 
the salient features of the European situation have been 



Digitized by 



Google 



8 A Champion and His labors [April, 

omitted. The book is far from being merely a personal biog- 
raphy, detailed and even intimate as portions of the narrative 
are. Rather it is a scholarly attempt to give Marie Antoi- 
nette her rightful place in the development of international 
alliances and rivalries that culminated in the Napoleonic wars. 
Did the old society of Europe attack the Revolution to destroy 
it, or did the Revolution break out into a flame which threat- 
ened to consume the old order throughout Europe? Mr. 
Belloc shows convincingly that the Queen was but a pawn in 
the great game for supremacy that was being played between 
the Powers, the victim of that Franco-Austrian alliance that 
was the most notable achievement of Maria Theresa's patient 
diplomacy, to which, ignorant ot the tragic future, she cheer- 
fully sacrificed her little daughter. Incidently there is an ad- 
mirable appreciation of the Austrian Empress, '^perhaps,'' 
writes Mr. Belloc, "the only worthy sovereign of her sex 
whom modern Europe has known." He feels, himself, and 
makes his readers feel, that from her very cradle the fates 
were against Marie Antoinette; that, do what she might, a 
doom hung over her which could only be consummated on the 
scaffold. Concerning her personal defects, he is brutally frank. 
He strips her of all sentimental adornment and shows her as 
she really was, a vivacious, very ignorant girl, a mere child in 
years on her first arrival at the French court, who grew up 
into a fascinating woman, extravagant and irresponsible, for- 
ever interfering in affairs of state that she was eager to con- 
trol, though incompetent to understand. One sympathizes 
with her in her proud young contempt of the du Barry, how- 
ever unwise, and even in her wilful disregard of the oppressive 
court etiquette. But in her absolute inability to adapt herself 
to the French point of view, in that something within her 
that caused her to remain the hated Auttichienne to the bitter 
end, one must admit a lack which made her temperamentally 
incapable of filling the great role of Queen of France. That 
she was placed in an extraordinarily difficult position Mr. Bel- 
loc shows; he shows, too, how lamentably she failed in it. Yet 
for her, as for many, adversity proved a compelling teacher, 
and that last power of hers, which to many proved irresistible, 
was, as he truly says, *^ a power made of abrupt vivacity tamed 
at last by misfortune into dignity and strength.'' He clears 
her absolutely of all complicity in the squalid intrigue of the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] A Champion and His Labors 9 

diamond necklace, 80| too, of anything save a romantic friend- 
ship for the faithful Ferseni yet on both these counts she was 
the victim in her lifetime of the grossest accusations that 
wounded her to the 'quick. Misunderstandings and blunders 
were on both sides, but fate ordained that Marie Antoinette 
should expiate hers by months of slow agony in the Temple 
and by that last awful drive, bound, on an open cart, amid a 
howling mob to the scaffold on the Place de la Concorde. 

** This is known, that she went up the steps of the scaffold 
at liberty and stood for a bare moment seen by the great 
gathering in the square, a figure against the trees of what had 
been her gardens and the place where her child had played. 
It was but a moment, she was bound and thrown, and the 
steel fell.'' 

One is tempted to linger too long over this enthralling 
book. Readers must go to its pages for Mr. Belloc's dramatic 
delineation of the closing tragedy, the personal aspect of Marie 
Antoinette's sufferings skillfully interwoven with the national 
aspect involved in the invasion of French territory by the 
allies which she had done her utmost to precipitate. They 
will find, too, interspersed through the book those vivid per- 
sonal convictions concerning a variety of themes with which 
Mr. Belloc is so delightfully prodigal. A casual reference to 
the partition of Poland at the instance of Prussia tempts him 
into an emphatic denunciation of the crime as '^ the first pub- 
lic renunciation of the international morality which bad hith- 
erto ruled in Christendom/' and as ** the germ of all that in- 
ternational distrust which has ended in the intolerable armed 
strain of our time." In connection with the flight to London 
of Madame la Motte, the infamous schemer against the 
Queen's honor, we find the sarcastic remark that she was ''not 
welcomed in London with those transports of affection or 
homage which she would receive to-day." All that Mr. Belloc 
has to say on the subject of the Catholic faith is full of in- 
terest in connection with contemporary events in France. 
There can be no shadow of a doubt that the prospects of re- 
ligion were incomparably worse then than now. ''It is diffi- 
cult," writes our author, "for a modern man to conceive how 
tiny was the little flickering flame of Catholicism in the gen- 
eration before the Revolution." Then the whole clergy were 
national in their sympathies. To-day their loyalty to the 



Digitized by 



Google 



lo A Champion and His Labors [April, 

Holy See is unimpeachable. Unhappily now, as then, the rul- 
ing powers are committing the blunder of slighting religion. 

I have left myself but scant space in which to do justice 
to Mr. Belloc*s lighter literary efforts. Undoubtedly a first 
place must be given to his books of travel. These are records 
of true pilgrim wanderings. Mr. Belloc tramps on foot with 
no luggage and very little money, often sleeping in the open 
air or in some barn, and philosophizing wisely and wittily on 
the way. The personal, rather intimate, note that such a 
journal warrants lends itself admirably to the author's most 
engaging characteristics: to his vivid perceptiveness, his 
humor, his diversified knowledge, the literary flavor of his 
style, even when most colloquial. In The Path to Rome he 
describes how he tramped, in fulfillment of a vow, from Toul, 
in the Vosges, to the gates of Rome. He meets with few 
definite adventures on the way, but instead charms us with a 
good deal about eating and drinking as behooves a sturdy 
pedestrian, with much philosophizing concerning the differ- 
ences between the German and the Latin tongues and tem- 
peraments, and with a succession of vivid pen pictures of the 
valleys through which he passes% St. Ursanne tempts him to an 
outburst on ** the high worship of windows.'' At Meiringen he 
falls in with a crowd of tourists and characteristically vows 
''a franc to the Black Virgin of la D^livrande (next time I 
should be passing there) because I was delivered from being a 
tourist," and for being instead ''a poor and dirty pilgrim.'' 
In the latter part of his journey the Italian peasantry win his 
heart as they win the hearts of all who sojourn among them 
in the right spirit, and lead him to a theological digression 
upon how *^ the Catholic Church makes men," and how ** of 
her effects the most gracious is the character of the Irish and 
of these Italians." Solitude and the long days under the open 
sky, and intercourse with simple village folk bring the reali- 
ties of religion very near to him, and there are pages on 
** that attitude of difficulty and combat which, for us others, is 
always associated with the Faith," that will awaken a respon- 
sive echo in many. But I venture to think the Catholic reader 
will thank Mr. Belloc most for his really beautiful passage on 
the hearing of daily Mass. He arrives at a village to find 
that Mass is over, and ''this justly annoyed me; for what is 
a pilgrimage in which a man cannot hear Mass every morn- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] A Champion and His Labors ii 

ing?'' He recalls St. Louis and his custom on the march of 
daily hearing Mass, by attendance at which '^you do all that 
the race needs to do, and has done for all these ages where 
religion was concerned/' and at which you gain ''all that your 
nature cries out for in the matter of worship''; and he com- 
pares the time spent at Mass out of a busy life to '' a short 
repose in a deep and well-built library, into which no sounds 
come and where you feel yourself secure against the outer 
world." 

The Old Road possesses less charm — perhaps because the 
pilgrim is no longer in a Catholic country — but it will appeal 
to all lovers of historic reconstruction. The theme is the fol- 
lowing of the road that in Roman and even pre- Roman days 
served as the main link between England and the Continent, 
a road whose devious course Mr. Belloc traces from Winchester 
to Canterbury. He brings to his task a shrewdness and a zest 
that mark at once the expert and the enthusiast and mingles 
fact and theory into a fascinating record of winter wandering. 
To him an old road is ''one of the primal things that move 
us,'' and "the humblest and most subtle, but, as I have said, 
the greatest and most original of the spells which we inherit 
from the earliest pioneer of our race. It was the most impera- 
tive and first of our necessities." More than rivers and moun- 
tain-chains, he says, roads have molded the political groups of 
men. His keen eye for topography is an indispensable adjunct 
for the by no means easy task he has set himself, and it is 
characteristic of him that having led his reader on so novel 
a pilgrimage he should end it abruptly at the desecrated shrine 
of St Thomas at Canterbury. As he approaches the Cathedral 
at dusk he confesses never to have known " such a magic of 
great height and darkness," but within, instead of a realiza- 
tion of the sacredness of the spot, there was only a blank, so 
chilling that, "to an emptiness so utter not even ghosts can 
return." Yet he cannot refrain from setting down a vivid word- 
picture, too long for quoting here, of how Becket met his death. 

The volume on the Pyrenees, published only last year, is 
more of a guide book than either of its predecessors. The 
whole mountain range is made wonderfully vivid by the de- 
lightful illustrations drawn by the author, while the maps and 
accompanying descriptions are models of lucidity. The book 
contains detailed information concerning inns and mountain 



Digitized by 



Google 



12 A Champion and His labors [April, 

paths, and would be invaluable to any one prepared to wander 
as Mr. Belloc wanders, on foot with provisions slung in a sack, 
and as often as not, sleeping out by a camp-fire. The rich 
tourist, however, who merely wishes to stay at fashionable re- 
sorts, such as Cauterets or Eaux- Bonnes, will find little to his 
taste in the book, for as the author asserts with vehement 
frankness : 

''The rule holds here, as everywhere, that where rich peo- 
ple, especially cosmopolitans, colonials, nomads, and the rest, 
come into a little place, they destroy most things, except the 
things that they themselves desire. And the things that they 
themselves desire are execrable to the rest ot mankind.'' 

In political matters Mr. Belloc always strikes one, in spite 
of the fact that he is a member of the British House of Com- 
mons, as an outside critic of English affairs rather than a par- 
ticipator in her political life. He never looks at things with 
English eyes, and he is keenly alive to all the national weak- 
nesses and conventions and inconsistencies. Judging not only 
from his writings but from his platform utterances he enter- 
tains a somewhat poor opinion of the political morality even 
of the House of Commons, and he has the worst opinion of 
Jewish finance and newspaper combines, which fill so dominant 
a part in the public life of the modern State. Caliban's Guide 
to Letters is a brilliantly written dissertation on modern jour- 
nalism and its methods, with caustic comments on the interview, 
the personal par. the topographical article, etc. It affords most 
entertaining reading. His latest novel, A Change in the Cabi* 
net, published only last year, is an amusing skit on parliamen- 
tary life written with the intimate inside knowledge of a mem- 
ber. 

Other and far graver revelations Mr. Belloc is in process 
of making in the pages of the Dublin Review. In an admirable 
presentment of the notorious Ferrer incident (in the January, 
1 910, number) the first authoritative version of the event to 
appear in the English press, Mr. Belloc establishes beyond 
question the Freemason influence. 

''What power is it," he asks, "which made this man so 
suddenly important, which raised an international and criminal 
mob in Paris and in various towns of Italy ? What is it which, 
when the truth about Ferrer began to be known, suddenly put 
an extinguisher upon the discusson of his life ? • • • Above 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A Champion and His Labors 13 

all, why and how was this strange, highly organized, and abrupt 
international movement — abrupt and evidently acting at a word 
of command in its rise as in its sharp cessation — connected 
with an equally abrupt and equally organized attack upon the 
Catholic Church ? " 

In a series of articles to be entitled ''The International" 
Mr. Belloc intends to give the solution to the riddle. 

Quite recently he has come forward as an opponent of So- 
cialism. He has published more than one pamphlet expounding 
his views. If Mr. Belloc opposes Socialism it is not in the 
least because he is content to let our existing industrial and 
economic conditions continue. On the contrary : the results of 
capitalism are, in his opinion, abominable, and English so- 
ciety to-day he holds to be in as sad a condition as it is pos- 
sible for a Christian society to be. The remedy, for him, lies 
not in collectivism but in peasant proprietorship and co-opera- 
tion. He believes the whole spirit of the Catholic Church to 
be opposed to Collectivism, and he denies that a Catholic so- 
ciety can remain CoUectivist or a Collectivist society Catholic. 
The Church prizes human dignity and human freedom, and 
both would be imperilled by Socialism. In his opinion the 
struggle of the future lies between Socialism and Catholicism, 
for the Catholic Church is the only institution strong enough 
to oppose the advance of a movement that appears to promise 
so much for human happiness. The weakness of Mr. Belloc's 
argument where England is concerned is that though in coun- 
tries such as France, Ireland, and Denmark, love of the soil 
may and doubtless will oppose a bulwark against the inroads 
of Socialistic theories, the English have shown for centuries no 
sort of capacity or desire for peasant proprietorship. Nor are 
there any symptoms, in Europe at least, of a Catholic revival 
on a sufficiently wide scale to warrant any blind confidence in 
the ultimate issue of the struggle to come. 

Yet I would not end this article on a note of depression. 
Mr. Belloc is an exhilarating writer with a keen imagination, 
strong sympathies, and a mind instinct with Catholic faith. 
He deserves to be as widely read in the New World as in. the 
Old. 



Digitized by 



Google 



COVENTRY PATMORE. 

BY KATHBRINB BR£GY. 
II. 

\ first person to be apprised of Coventry Pat- 
iore*8 submission to the Church was an English 
Eidy then resident in Rome, Miss Marianne 
Caroline Byles, a convert and close friend of 
!)ardinal Manning's. ** I had never before be- 
held so beautiful a personality/' Coventry declared with his 
usual ardor, ''and this beauty seemed to be the pure efful- 
gence of Catholic sanctity," The world was soon to know 
her as Mary Fatmore, our poet's second wife I '' Tired Mem- 
ory/' an ode of great beauty, interprets that delicate and 
difficult experience by which the new love was reconciled to 
that other, infinitely mourned, infinitely cherished, scarcely yet 
resigned to the ''stony rock of death's insensibility." In the 
pathos and intimacy of its self-revelation, the poem is not un- 
worthy of comparison with the Vita Nuova. Emily Patmore, 
when death seemed quite near, had begged her husband to 
wed again: so now, in a passionate revery, he brings her his 
confession of the strange new joy which will not be denied, 

O my most dear, 

Was't treason, as I fear? 

the poet muses. And with brief strokes of surpassing deli- 
cacy he traces love's "chilly dawn," the coming of this fair 
stranger with her starlike, half- remembered graces, the tired 
heart's reluctant stirring. 

And Nature's long suspended breath of flame 
Persuading soft and whispering Duty's name. 
Awhile to smile and speak 
With this thy Sister sweet* and therefore mine; 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 9 lO.] Co VENTRY PA TMORE 1 5 

Thy Sister sweet, 

Who bade the wheels to stir 

Of sensitive delight in the poor brain/ 

Dead of devotion and tired memory, 

So that I lived again, 

And, strange to aver, 

With no relapse into the void inane 

For thee; 

But (treason was*t?) for thee and also her. 

There were more than subjective difficulties in the way of 
a marriage, however. Miss Byles would seem to have taken 
a more or less formal vow of chastity, from which later on she 
was duly dispensed; while the poet, on his side, impetuously 
and quite unreasonably left Rome upon the discovery that 
his fiancee was possessed of a large personal fortune. By the 
good agency of friends all was eventually reconciled. Patmore 
returned to England to prepare his little family for the new 
mother, and on the i8th of July, 1864, the couple were mar- 
ried by Cardinal Manning at the church of St. Mary of the 
Angels, Bayswater. 

Of course, neither the second marriage nor the religious 
change was welcome news to our poet's English friends. Yet| 
in the home circle at least, Mary Patmore's victory was com- 
plete. The few letters of hers which have been preserved 
evince the most gentle, even scrupulous tenderness toward 
Patmore's children, a fastidious interest in his literary work, 
and a certain sweet austerity which must have been distinctly 
piquante to her outspoken and imperious husband. There is 
something deliciously daring in her shy comments upon the 
''Angel'': ''It is a shame for you to have been initiated into 
a thing or two quite solely feminine," she writes to Coventry; 
and yet again she refers to the "Wedding Sermon" as "not 
so high in some parts as St. Thomas ^ Kempis, than whom 
nobody ought to be lower, to my thinking." It sounds just a 
little bit formidable! Yet that uncompromising elevation of 
soul, and the vestal reserve of manner which few friends were 
able to pierce, were in reality tbel best possible foil for Pat- 
more's passionately sensuous yet mystical nature. All of his 
most searching work — "The Odes," perhaps the lost Sponsa 



Digitized by 



Google 



i6 Coventry Patmorb [April, 

Dei^ and the complete finding of his own soul — were accom- 
plished during his life with her. 

Shortly after this marriage, our poet's lungs were found to 
be so seriously affected that it became necessary to leave 
London and the Museum permanently. And so during the 
main part of Mary Patmore's life they resided first at '' Heron's 
Ghyl '' (an extensive Sussex estate which Coventry spent several 
healthful years in supervising and improving) and later at old 
Hastings by the sea. The circumstances of the family were, 
of course, vastly more felicitous than during the early days; 
and now, for the first time in his life, Patmore found leisure 
for continuous, concentrated study, as well as for that quiet 
meditation which is the seed-time of creative thought. His 
preoccupation with theology proved more absorbing than ever ; 
so that he often spent four hours a day upon the works of 
the more mystical saints — Bernard and John of the Cross, St. 
Theresa's Road to Perfection^ and always the monumental 
Summa. In the symbolic teaching of Emanuel Swedenborg, 
also, he found many points of agreementy being wont to de- 
clare that the latter's ''Catholic doctrine without Catholic 
authority'' would deceive, if possiblci the very elect 

A slender volume of nine odes, printed for private distri- 
bution in 1868, inaugurated Coventry Patmore's second and 
greatest poetic period. Superficially, there may seem but 
slight continuity between these searching and paradoxical poems 
and the domestic "Angel" — yet in essence they are close 
akin. For the master*passion of Patmore's life and the abiding 
inspiration of his poetry were identical: his work was one 
long Praise of Love. And so it was to an artistic and mys- 
tical development rather than to any temperamental breach 
that these odes bore witness. Our poet spoke, indeed, a 
language little intelligible to his countrymen; and the white 
heat of his passion, his seemingly esoteric psychology and his 
uneven but arresting metres, inspired dismay rather than any 
other emotion. Few of those men (poets, for the most part !) 
to whom the precious volumes had been sent, showed the 
slightest comprehension of this ** gray secret of the east/' and 
only the most perfunctory acknowledgments reached the author. 
So, with characteristic disdain, Patmore consigned all of the 
edition remaining to his own log fire ! '' Tired Memory " was 
one of the collection; so also was the brief and beautiful 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] Coventry Patmore 17 

^'Beata'*; '^ Faint Yet Pursuing/* an exquisite piece with what 
we now know as the true Patmorean flavor; and the resur- 
gent loveliness of ** Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore/' With these 
were two or three ironic Jeremiads of political and philosophic 
nature, and ''Pain" — which no other modern English poet, 
except perhaps Francis Thompson, could have written. Our 
poet's brooding and scornful reflections, as he watched the 
flames consume these first fruits of his richest thought, scarcely 
tended to commute the pessimistic opinion he had already 
formed upon latter-day taste and institutions. 

The genuine significance of these odes, both metrically and 
philosophically, can scarcely be overstated. To discerning 
readers, even the extracts already quoted must reveal a divine 
intensity, a subtlety of poetic feeling, beside which all of Pat- 
more*8 early work seems tentative and imperfect. Their verse 
form (which the poet somewhat vaguely described as based 
upon catalexis) has successfully defied all but the broadest 
critical analysis, and its effect would seem to depend almost 
wholly upon some intuition, alike musical and emotional, of 
pause and rhythm.* Yet it provides an almost perfect vehicle 
for the intermittent stress and reticence, the amazing passional 
surge, the mystic and often scholastic reasoning of the poems 
themselves. Always fascinating and usually dangerous has it 
proved as a model to younger poets; but at its best and in 
the master's hand, there is an impetuous freshness about this 
ode form which is the next thing to a new-blown wind flower. 
And this spontaneity was no mere illusion. Patmore spent 
months, even years, in maturing the matter of his greatest 
odes, but their actual form was often the work of two or three 
hours. 

'* I have hit upon the finest metre that ever was invented, 
and on the finest mine of wholly unworked material that ever 
fell to the lot of an English poet,*' Coventry Patmore wrote 
exultantly when the ''Unknown Eros'' was in preparation. 
This mine was mystic Catholic theology, in particular the 
nuptial relations of the soul to its God, and in general that 
essential and passionate humanity^ which is at the core of 

* *' It is in the management of the pauses — ^in the recognition of the value of time-beats — 
that Coventry Patmore's supremacy in the ode form lies. In his ' domestic verses/ he uses 
rhyme in places where Tennyson would not have dreamed of it — recklessly, audaciously, but 
in his highest moods ... he treats rhyme as an echo." Maurice Francis Egan ; '* Ode 
Structure of Coventry Patmore." Studits in Literature, 
VOL. XCI.— 2 



Digitized by 



Google 



I8 COVENTRY PATMORE [April, 

nearly every doctrine of the Church. But here was a task to 
stagger Orpheus himself, had Orpheus turned Christian t For 
how translate the secrets of the saints to a gaping multitude? 
How teach men what love meant, and what the Word made 
Flesh implied? How draw back the veil of mystery and sym- 
bol and allegory without breaking in upon the '* Divine Si- 
lence''? In an agony of concentration! in prayer and fasting^ 
the poet toiled on, still falling short of that infinite ''beauty 
and freedom " which the work demanded, were it to be done 
at all. Patmore reached at length his own explanation of this 
failure : not until these things should become controlling reali- 
ties in his own spiritual life could he sing of them worthily. 
No shade of religious doubt had crossed his understanding or 
his conscience from the moment of his reception into the 
Catholic Church. Yet with his rare and resolute candor, he 
has confessed that the quiet and absolute regnancy of faith 
before which his soul longed to bow was denied for many a 
weary year. More particularly was he conscious of something 
perfunctory in his service of the Most Blessed Virgin — of an 
imperfect harmony with the mind of the Church in this im- 
memorial devotion. So he resolved upon a curious and con- 
spicuous act, half-votive, half-penitential, very humble and 
popular and un-Patmorean — namely, a pilgrimage to LourdesI 
The poet set out toward the grotto of Bernadette's vision with 
a beautiful crushing of personal repugnance, asking much of 
the good God, giving what in him lay. The result is best 
told in his own words: 

On the fourteenth of October, ^^11 1 1 knelt at the Shrine 
by the River Gave, and rose without any emotion or enthu- 
siasm or unusual sense of devotion, but with a tranquil sense 
that the prayers of thirty-five years had been granted. I paid 
two visits of thanksgiving to I<ourdes in the two succeeding 
Octobers, for the gifl which was then received, and which has 
never since for a single hour been withdrawn." * 

One more dogma was thus revealed to Coventry Patmore, 
not merely as a convenient ^'form of sound words," but as a 
fact with vital bearing upon the rest of life. Mary of Nazareth 
became to him thenceforth the essential womanhood — the sym- 

• Autobiography : 4/. * • Memoirs and CorrespontUncit** ut supra. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0t} Co VENTR Y PA TMORE I9 

bol and prototype of homanity, natorei the body. In her little- 
ness and sweetness was found the perfect complement to God's 
infinitude: i^e was Regina Mutuli as well as Regina Caslif 
foreshadowing the triumph of every faithful souL A great 
epic upon the Marriage ol the Virgin was to have celebrated 
this theme, but it never saw completion. However, in that 
extraordinary surge of creative energy which peace brought to 
our poet, the nucleus of it all stole into one exquisite ode, 
''The Child's Purchase.'' This poem, written late in 1877, 
stands in a true sense as the crown and flower of the ''Un- 
known Eros," the consumnoation of Patmore's poetic career. 

Opening with the parable of a little child who receives 
from his mother a golden coin-— which at first he plans to 
spend " or on a horse, a bride-cake, or a crown," but brings 
back wearily at the last as guerden for her own sweet kiss-— 
the poet dedicates his gift of precious speech to this most 
gracious Lady. Then follows the glorious invocation: 

Ah, Lady elect. 

Whom the Time's scorn has saved from its respect. 

Would I had art 

For uttering that which sings within my heart! 

But, lo. 

Thee to admire is all the art I know. 

My Mother and God's; Fountain of miracle! 

Grive me thereby some praise of thee to tell 

In such a song 

As may my Guide severe and glad not wrong. 

Who never spoke till thou 'dst on him conferr'd 

The right, convincing wordt 

Grant me the steady heat 

Of thought wise, splendid, sweet. 

Urged by the great, rejoicing wind that rings 

With draught of unseen wings. 

Making each phrase, for love and for delight. 

Twinkle like Sirius on a frosty night 1 

Aid thou thine own dear fame, thou only Fair, 

At whose petition meek 

The Heavens themselves decree that, as it were. 

They will be weak t 

Thou Speaker of all wisdom in a Word, 



Digitized by 



Google 



20 Co VENTRY PA TMORE [April, 

Thy Lord! 

Speaker who thus could'st well afford 
Thence to be silent: — ah, what silence that 
Which had for prologue thy ** Magnificat *' ? — 

• • • • • • 

Ora pro me I 

Sweet Girlhood without guile, 
The extreme of God's creative energy; 
Sunshiny Peak of human personality; 
The world's sad aspirations' one Success; 
Bright Blush, that sav'st our shame from shamelessness ; 
Chief Stone of stumbling; Sign built in the way 
To set the foolish everywhere a-bray; 
Hem of God's robe which all who touch are heal'd; 

• • • • . • • 

Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed. 

Though nought thereof as yet they weet. 

Unto thy Babe's small feet. 

The mighty, wand'ring disemparadised. 

Like Lucifer, because to thee 

They will not bend the knee; 

Ora pro me I 

Desire of Him whom all things else desire 

Bush aye with Him as He with thee on fire! 

Neither in His great Deed nor on His throne— 

O, folly of Love, the intense 

Last culmination of Intelligence — 

Him seem'd it good that God should be alone t 

Basking in unborn laughter of thy lips. 

Ere the world was, with absolute delight 

His Infinite reposed in thy Finite; 

Well-match'd : He, universal being's Spring, 

And thou, in whom art gather'd up the ends of every- 
thing I 

Ora pro me I 



Throughout that supreme series to the *^ Unknown Eros," 
Patmore leads his reader into realms of palpitating beauty, 
truth, and love. The sensuous nature, by no means annihi- 
lated in this new life of the spirit, is glorified and inconceiv- 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 ic] Coventry Patmore %\ 

ably satisfied. The capacity of the soul for good (which our 
poet always contended was 'Mn proportion to the strength of 
its passions ") is infinite, because these passions are marshalled 
into the orderly service ol God. Here, at last, the Body re- 
ceives its meet salutation — not as ** Our Brother the Ass/' but 
as the 

Little sequestered pleasure-house 

For God and for His Spouse; 

and human love becomes a ladder leading up to mystic visions 
of Christ as the Love, the Bridegroom of the soul. Pre-emi- 
nently in the old exquisite myth of Eros and Psychci but 
scarcely less in the experiences of every loving and suffering 
life, Patmore found this all but unspeakable truth prefigured, 
and he played upon the motif in ode after ode of marvelous 
beauty and tenderness. 

The exceeding intimacy with which our poet clothed (or 
shall one say — unclothed?) his transcendent theme has proved 
distasteful to many a devout but colder mind : to Aubrey de 
Vere, who begged the suppression of the Psyche odes ; to Cardi- 
nal Newman, who never became quite reconciled to thus '^ mixing 
up amorousness with religion.'* The same exception, obviously^ 
might be taken to the Canticle of Canticles, and to much sub- 
sequent mystical writing. For love, as Coventry Patmore un- 
derstood it, was '* the highest of virtues as well as the sweetest 
of emotions, . . . being in the brain confession of good ; 
in the heart, love for, and desire to sacrifice everything for the 
good of its object; in the senses, peace, purity, and ardor.'' In 
this most elemental of human passions be found the one per- 
fect and consistent symbol of the Divine Desire and the Divine 
Espousals. 

And without this rare ability to translate spiritual truth 
into the terms of a vibrating humanity — this impassioned and 
mystic sensuousness (which some, doubtless, will label a 'Mivine 
sensuality"), Patmore could scarcely have escaped the snares 
which yawn before every poet conscious of a message. But, in 
point of fact, he was never more supremely the poet than 
when he was most radically the seer. Never, save possibly in 
one or two political arraignments, does the personal note de- 
rogate from the permanence of his poetry; never once, for all 
his vehemence of belief, does he descend into didacticism. 



Digitized by 



Google 



2z Coventry Patmore [April, 

Nor does his symbolic analysis of human emotion even for a 
moment lessen the intense reality of pain and of love through- 
out his song. Here is one little '^ Farewell/' scarcely sur- 
passed in its quiet heartbreak: 

With all my willy but much against my heart. 

We two now part. 

My Very Dear« 

Our solace is« the sad road lies so clean 

It needs no art, 

With faint, averted feet 

And many a tear. 

In our opposed paths to persevere. 

Go thou to East, I West 

We will not say 

There's any hope, it is so far away. 

Buty O, my Best, 

When the one darling of our widowhead. 

The nursling Grief, 

Is dead. 

And no dews blur our eyes 

To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies, 

Perchance we may. 

Where now this night is day. 

And even through faith of still averted leet. 

Making full circle of our banishment, 

Amazed meet; 

The bitter journey to the bourne so sweet 

Seasoning the termless feast of our content 

With tears of recognition never dry. 

In *' Amelia'' (Patmore's favorite poem, but scarcely his 
readers' 1) we find this ode form combined with the simpler 
narrative theme of [his earlier days. And once again we are 
forced to feel how dangerous and difficult a thing truth to the 
Utter of life may become I Yet there are perfect touches in 
the poem ; suggestions of Patmore's really great sea music, and 
Nature flashes like that 

young apple-tree, in flush'd array 
Of white and ruddy flow*r auroral, gay, 
With chilly blue the maiden branch between. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Coventry PATMORE t% 

** St. Vatentine's Day " and many another lyric bear witness 
to our poet's searching observation of natural beauty, yet this 
was less an object in itself to him [than a sensitive mise en 
seine for the human drama. To the core he was a symbolist; 
and of natural phenomena he seems to have felt what he 
somewhere declared of natural science — ^that its only real use 
was "to supply similes and parables'' to the spiritually elect. 

The year 1880 brought sorrow back into Patmore's life in 
the sudden death of his wife Mary. Her loss proved the first 
of a bitter trilogy. Scarcely two years later, his well loved 
daughter Emily (Sister Mary Christina as she had become, of 
the Society of the Holy Child Jesus) died in her nearby con- 
vent. The passing of this rare spirit, from childhood so deep- 
ly in sympathy with his own (a poet herself, and one of the 
best critics of her father's work), can scarcely have been less 
than a sundering of our poet's very life. And then there was 
Henry, Patmore's third son, whose brief novitiate of pain and 
promise came to a close in 1883. His little bark had never been 
very sea- worthy, yet in spite of serious illness he left poetic 
fragments of decided beauty and originality. ''At twenty 
years of age his spiritual and imaginative insight were far be- 
yond those of any man I ever met," Coventry declared, and 
it was his belief that had the boy lived to maturity, his poetic 
achievement might have surpassed his own. 

The decade commencing in 18S4 Patmore devoted to a 
aeries of varied and stimulating prose essays, contributed main* 
ly to the St. Jatnes Gazette. Politics, economics, philosophy, 
art, literature, architecture, were in turn touched upon with 
powerful and trenchant originality. The most significant of 
tiiese critiques were subsequently collected, partially in Principles 
in Art, 1S89, partially in that precious volume, Religio Poeta, 
1S93. A little book of pregnant aphorisms and brief, unequal 
essays. The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, closed this prose 
sequence in 1895. 

Meanwhile the Twilight of the Gods was drawing apace 
upon this inspired and imperious spirit. Flashes of comfort 
there were, indeed; the devoted companionship of Harriet 
Robson, who became our poet's third wife, and that little late- 
bom son, Epiphanius. In the friendship of Mrs. Meynell, too, 
Patmore found throughout these latter years one of God's best 
gifts, an exquisite community of ideals. One of his latest essays 



Digitized by 



Google 



24 Coventry PATMORE [April, 

was an appreciation of her own work both in prose and verse ; 
and through her he came into close touch with the young 
Francis Thompson, helping on the critical world to a recogni- 
tion of his genius. 

Daring all this time the poet's heart was growing in- 
termittently weaker, and his lungs, long underminded, caused 
increasing anxiety. At Lymington, whither he had removed, 
there were repeated attacks and convalescences ; and at last, in 
the November of 1906, a congestion set in. ''What about 
going to heaven this time?'' Patmore asked his physician, 
with weary but irrepressible irony. The next day, after receiv- 
ing the last Sacraments, his agony commenced. His words 
were broken prayers and thoughts for those about him. ''I 
love you, dear," he whispered to his wife when the end was 
very near, ''but the Lord is my Life and my Light." Into 
this larger life he passed painlessly on the 26th of November. 
And in the humble habit of St. Francis' tertiary his body was 
borne to its long rest in the little seacoast cemetery. 

Coventry Patmore's career as poet had closed full twenty 
years earlier, with the " collected " edition of 1886; consequently 
his place in our literature has passed the first tentative stage. 
The waxings and wanings of contemporary taste — the flood 
tide of the "Angel," the ebb-tide of the earlier odes, the 
ominous calm of the final years — no longer any whit affect his 
reputation. He has attained a certain degree of permanence. 
He has, quite indisputably, survived : as a name^ indeed, to the 
" general reader," but as a fact in the great confraternity of 
song. Francis Thompson was eager in acknowledging his debt 
to " this strong, sad soul of sovereign song," and others not so 
eager have gathered the riches of his vineyard. It is even 
possible to say that the chances of any just appreciation of his 
work are greater to-day than they were yesterday, and that 
probably they will be greater to-morrow than they are to- day. 
For in the literary world, as in the philosophic, mysticism-^ 
the symbolic interpretation of life — is once again becoming a 
potent factor. At the same time, a certain analytical brutality 
has accustomed latter-day readers to face reality, even to crave 
reality. Each of these tendencies is favorable to Patmore, cre- 
ating an audience (larger, though never large I) which his poetry 
may in time both delight and dominate. 

" I have written little, but it is all my best," our poet wrote 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Coventry Patmore 25 

in one of his prefaces ; '^ I have never spoken when I bad 
nothing to say, nor spared time or labor to make my words 
true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a pos- 
terity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect 
me/' He did, in fact, write little, and not one of the great 
works he planned was ever completed. Neither can all of this 
little be rightly termed his best. His style was nervous and 
unequal: capable of the most breathless perfection both of 
passion and of music, but capable also of perversity and a curi- 
ous commonplaceness. Yet the most fastidious posterity shall 
respect him. He was in his great moments one of our supreme 
lyric artists. He sounded the heart-beats with poignant and 
unforgettable truthfulness. He may be said to have created a 
i^erse form of powerful originality. And then, his was that 
fusing imagination (the crowning gift of genius!) which trans- 
mutes reason and emotion with equal facility into one ''agile 
bead of boiling gold." 

But it is not merely with Patmore's poetry — nor, for that 
matter, with his prose — that the critical world must one day 
reckon. It is pre-eminently with his poetic philosophy. Teach- 
ing in his verse only by suggestions of rare beauty, but through- 
out the essays with increasing definition and completeness, he 
formulated a very consistent rationale of life, love, and God. 
It was a mystical superstructure reared upon the foundation of 
Christian dogma, an interpretation of the " corollaries of belief.'' 
In another sense it may be called the psychology of sex, since 
in the mysteries of manhood and womanhood Patmore found 
the heavens above and the earth beneath explained. God he 
apprehended as the great, positive, masculine magnet of the 
universe; the soul as the feminine or receptive force; and in 
this conjunction of highest and lowest lay the source of all life 
and joy. '' This voice of the Bride and the Bridegroom " he 
detected in literature and art, as intellectual strength or sensi- 
ble beauty was found to predominate; while in the workings 
of conscience there was a similar duality, the rational and the 
sensitive soul. But as the poems have shown, it was the '' great 
sacrament" of nuptial love which most clearly manifested the 
mystery. 

The whole of life is womanhood to thee, 
Momently wedded with enormous bliss, 



Digitized by 



Google 



26 Coventry Patmore [April, 

bis Psyche cries oat to her immortal lover: and even so did 
Patmore conceive of the life-giving God. Originally, he de- 
clared there were three sexes (which in the Holy Trinity, Troth, 
Love, and Life, found their divine prototype) and it was mainly 
in order to achieve this complete but forgotten hotno that *' nup- 
tial knowledge*' became the one thing needful. Woman, be 
writes in that daring and suggestive essay, Dieu ei ma Dame^^ 
'Ms ' homo ' as well as the man, though one element, the male, 
is suppressed and quiescent in her, as the other, the female, is 
in him; and thus he becomes the Priest and representative to 
her of the original Fatherhood, while she is made to him the 
Priestess and representative of that original Beauty which is 
' the express image and glory of the Father,' each being equallyi 
though not alike, a manifestation of the Divine to the other.^ 
Upon this symbol^ conjugal love, Patmore indeed based the 
body of his work: yet he cannot justly be accused (as it would 
seem that Swedenborg in his much-discussed work must needs 
be I) of sacrificing to it the eternal reality — love divine. Chas- 
tity our poet recognized as the final and perfect flowering of 
this fair bud, and it was the '' Bride of Christ " alone who folly 
attained here below to that double sex which shall distinguish 
the regenerate in heaven. One of his most perfect odes, '' De- 
lias Saptentis de Amore," stands forever as defence and vin- 
dication. Boldly it calls to the glad Palace of Virginity those 
''to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear"— who, all 
gropingly and unwittingly, have sought and yet seek 

Nothing but God 
Or mediate or direct 

Father Gerard Hopkins, upon his single visit to Hastings 
in 1885, was shown the manitficript of a prose work, Sponsm^ 
Dei^ designed by Patmore for posthumous publication, and con- 
taining the fullest expansion of these transcendent views. He 
returned it with one grave remark: "That's telling secrets.'* 
It was upon the " authority of his goodness " our poet always 
declared, that this beautiful treatise became fuel for another 
liistoric burnt offering; but one can scarcely doubt that he him- 
self had come to recognize the delicate rightness of the priest's 
judgment, and the fact that his subject demanded the parabo- 

*^^de RiUgio Poita. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Coventry patmore 27 

He vesture of poetry. We have the less cause to moarn over 
this lost manuscript, since most of its matter appears to have 
reached us through the pages of Religio Poetcs. The Precursor 
of this latter volume is probably the most illuminating criti- 
cism upon natural and divine love which Patmore (or any other 
modern) has given us — ^the essence of his poetic philosophy, 
.thrown out with live sparks of mystical insight. 

There is about Coventry Patmore's work a supreme, almost 
an infallible, rightness of spirit; but not infrequently an ex- 
travagance and perversity of literal expression. Two explana- 
tions are at hand — the fact that much of his writing was 
''special pleading,'* and the exalted, autocratic nature of his 
genius. '' My call is that I have seen the truth, and can speak 
the living words which come of having seen it," he asserted; 
and his shafts were driven home with the instinct of a born 
fighter. Yet there can be no question of the constructive value 
of his teaching, of the overwhelming reality with which it re- 
veals the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real 
Presence, and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. All his life 
be was, in his own words, trying ''To dig again the wells 
which the Philistines had filled '' — building up the supernatural 
upon the basis of natural good, bowing down before the divine 
weakness and nearness of God in Christ, rather than before His 
primal isfiaity. It is all symbolised in that cryptic tomb at 
Lymington: the obelisk of Egypt (Nature) and the Lion tA 
^ah, rising upon the three steps of the Trinity; the Cross, 
the Host, the Virgin's lilies; and for a text that stupendous 
promise. My cmfinant shall be in your flesh. 

(THE END.) 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER. 

BY JEANIE DRAKE. 

E military parade bad been passing for hours. 
Now came still anotber regimental band playing 
the Russian National Hymn, and then the Seventh 
in all the bravery of new uniforms and perfect 
drilling. 

''What regiment is this, I wonder/' said Arnold Van 
Twiller, an on-looker, to his companion, Olmsted, ** a good 
many of them look like foreigners. Best music yet*-and what 
a fine-looking old drum major 1 Get up, Olmsted, and look at 
him— it's worth while." 

''I don't believe I can see him/' answered Olmsted, pul- 
ling himself up and peering with half-shut eyes. *' Oh, yes, F 
know; a good many Frenchmen in that regiment. Drum 
major's name is Deluce, I think. I have seen him at a 
downtown restaurant where I sometimes go to study men and 
manners. A handsome, soldierly old fellow/' 

** Come, then," said Arnold, '' this is the last company. 
Let's be going/' 

As they waited for a car, debating whether they would go 
to the restaurant or to Arnold's home for dinner, a tall man 
in uniform separated himself from a passing group and hailed 
a car going south. His action seemed to lead Olmsted to a 
decision. He scrambled in after the uniformed man and was 
followed by Arnold. 

''What did you take this car for?" asked Arnold. 

''I don't know exactly," answered his friend. ''It was 
just one of those impulses which sometimes come to us scrib- 
blers. We have abundant time to go to that restaurant I told 
you of, and then go uptown to dinner. Meantime, you may 
observe the object of your admiration, the drum major, for it 
was he who got in with us." 

True enough, seated nearly opposite them, his bearskin 
shako laid across his knees, sat the fine- looking old man they 
had remarked in the parade. His great height and soldierly 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE DRUM MAJORS S DAUGHTER 29 

bearing could only be suggested now; but his features were 
seen to be clearly handsome ; his hair and moustache of sil- 
very whiteness, while his dark eyes retained much of the quick- 
ness and fire of youth. 

'' My cherished dream as a small boy/' whispered Olmsted, 
''was to be a drum major — just to wear that gorgeous shako 
and twirl that baton once — and die!" 

'Tve a mind to speak to him/' said Arnold, ''but perhaps 
it wouldn't do— he might presume — " 

Olmsted was about to interrupt, but his words were cut 
short by the stopping of the car and the exit of the drum 
major. " Come/' he said to Arnold, " this is our street." 
They followed the erect figure that walked before them down 
one of the streets going eastward, and then, after a sharp turn 
to the left, stopped in front of a low building with a dingy 
sign in front, Cafi Jurot^ and went down a few steps and dis- 
appeared. The friends found themselves in a low-ceilinged, 
smoky room, resounding with a babel of tongues. Olmsted 
showed himself perfectly at home. The proprietor, a stout, 
rosy-faced Frenchman, spoke to him as to a favored, habitual 
guest. 

"Ah, Monsieur Olmsted," said he, "you will have seen, 
without doubt, that fine parade to-day ? Our friend, Deluce " 
— glancing towards the drum major, who sat a little distance 
from them — "he must have been superb." 

" He certainly was. Monsieur Jurot," assented Olmsted. 

"What a frightful noise," murmured Arnold. 

"One gets accustomed to it," answered his friend, "and 
learns that the speakers are not quarreling, but merely arguing 
with an animation that is unknown to our calmer race." 

A heated discussion going forward at a near-by table 
seemed to contradict this statement. Two Italians were talk- 
ing with great bitterness of feu Napoleon Trois^ calling him 
false and unreliable, and saying that if Orsini bombs had not 
failed of their mission, Sedan had not followed. Olmsted saw 
the drum major's face twitch convulsively. He watched the 
old soldier, who finally could no longer contain himself, and 
with a blow of his fist on the table, called out: 

" Tonnerre de Dieul only cowards insult the dead! And 
it takes ungrateful Italian cowards to forget Magenta and 
Solferinol" 



Digitized by 



Google 



30 THE DRUM MAjaitS DAUGHTER [April, 

Instantly one of the others was on his feet, apsettiog his 
chair^ but the host immediately interposed with a firm: ''No, 
no, messieurs; I will have no disputing here nor politico 
You know the rule of our house: Peace and quiet— or out 
you go." 

The hot words were presently apparently forgotten and the 
clamor of voices went on as before. The old soldier arose 
in a little while, paid his bill, and went out A moment later, 
with a glance at each other, the Italians went too. 

''That may mean nothing," observed Arnold, "still we 
might see"; and, Olmsted agreeing, they followed. In the early 
dusk a few street-lamps twinkled, but the lights were poor in 
this out-of-the-way quarter, and it was not easy to distinguish 
the drum major's figure, already some distance ahead. Walk* 
ing rapidly, they managed to get nearer, and also to distin- 
guish two prowling forms which kept in shadow on the other 
side. The old man turned into a side street, dark, narrow, and 
deserted; and in a moment his pursuers crossed over, ap- 
proached, and jostled him. A few sharp words were inter- 
changed, a blow struck, and while he warded another his foot 
slipped on the mud of the pavement and he went down. 
With a shout Olmsted and Arnold ran forward; and the as- 
sailants, seeing them coming, disappeared. 

"I hope you are not hurt, monsieur," Arnold inquired, 
helping him up. 

"Not at all, monsieur, thanks to you. Though, my word 
of honor I I would have been a match for both of the ac- 
cursed cowards if I had not slipped. All the same, I owe you 
many thanks; and to whom am I indebted?" he asked, with 
a courteous inclination of the head. 

"My name is Van Twiller," said Arnold, "and this is my 
friend, Mr. Olmsted." 

"My name, messieurs, is Deluce, formerly Sergeant in the 
Imperial Army of France; now, drum major in a regimental 
band of this city. Perhaps" — with sudden thought— "you have 
not supped. My dwelling, a very modest apartment, is near 
here, and my supper waits, if you will give me the pleasure — " 

"Certainly," said Arnold, seeing dissent on Olmsted's lips. 
Monsieur Deluce led the way, and they threaded a labyrinth 
of narrow, dirty, and noisy streets. Arnold had almost begun 
to share his companion's reluctance, when their guide turned 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] The Drum Majoi^s Daughter 31 

into a much quieter side-street. It was a mere lane in lengthi 
and poor enough in general appearance, but the door-steps of 
most of the houses were fairly clean and faded blinds hung 
before the windows. One of these was the Major's dwelling. 
He had conducted his rescuers upstairs and then left them for 
a few moments. On his return he said: 

''I will beg you to say nothing to my daughter of that 
affair. .It would frighten her. I have explained a bruise she 
observed on my forehead by telling of the fall and your kind 
assistance after." 

Through a dimly- lighted hallway they passed into a tiny 
room, which opened into still another, and from the inner one 
a young girl came out to meet them. ''These are the Mes- 
sieurs Olmsted and Van Twiller, Madeleine, my child," he said ; 
and the girl stretched a slim hand to one and then to the other. 

'' I greet you in the American style," she said in English, 
but with the prettiest accent, ''so to thank you for the great 
kindness my father tells me of." 

"You may talk French, my Madeleine, if you will," ob- 
served the drum major, " these gentlemen speak like Parisians." 

They had conversed but a very few moments when, with 
feminine quickness, she discovered that while Olmsted, the care- 
less, indifferent-looking elder, was entirely at his ease talking 
in a foreign tongue, it was something of a restraint on the 
younger. 

" I will beg of you a favor," said she, bending a little 
towards Arnold, "I may speak my own language at all times 
with Papa; but I should be so glad to practise my English. 
May I not with you ? " 

Presently, rising and laughing, she said : " Papa, you must 
be thinking about your supper, for I know well that hungry 
look. But I must first finish the salad; and will we have tea 
or coffee?" 

" Anything, ma mignonne^^ said her father, " for I am truly 
exhausted." 

The jdyous look left the girl's face, and she sighed uncon- 
sciously as she moved about in the inner room. The one the 
others were in, though small and bare, was scrupulously neat, and 
had a very homelike look. The waxed floor was covered with 
one or two home-made rugs; on a polished table stood a shaded 
lamp; the curtains and chair covers were delicately tinted; 



Digitized by 



Google 



32 The Drum Major's Daughter [April, 

some books and music were scattered about; and a few flowers 
stood in a slender glass upon the mantel-piece. But what most 
surprised Olmsted was an open piano of the best make, which 
was comparatively new. 

''Madeleine will give us some music by and by/' said her 
father, noticing his glance ; '' and will you smoke now ? '' Olm- 
sted accepted; but Arnold declared that he seldom smoked; 
which amazing misrepresentation only meant that at -present 
he had other views. He was watching through the open door- 
way the unconsciously graceful movements of a gray-clad, girl- 
ish figure, performing deftly various household services. Made- 
leine suddenly entered again and took the lamp from the table. 

''You have another light here; can you spare me this?'* 
she inquired. 

As she was lifting it, he took it from her hands: "Where 
shall I place it?'' he asked. 

"Just there," she said, indicating a small supper- table, neatly 
laid for four. Then, with gracious permission from her, he 
brought the flowers to decorate, and hastened to say, pleadingly : 

"Mademoiselle, if there is one talent I possess — ^my only 
one, in fact — it is to make mayonnaise. Let me assist you, I 
beg." 

"I do not know," she answered, pretending to regard him 
searchingly, "they say two persons should be very — how do 
you say it? — in sympathy, to make mayonnaise together. And '' 
— with a smile in her eyes-^"it is not so many minutes since 
Monsieur and I ai^e acquainted. The salad might be spoiled." 

"We will prove our sympathy, then," insisted Arnold; and 
he had his way. In a few moments there was great activity in 
the inner room. Coffee simmered and hissed on the little brass 
stand; eggs were broken into a dish and madly beaten by 
Arnold, while Madeleine, standing over him, poured a thin, 
steady stream of oil from a wicker flask. 

" More, more. Miss Deluce," he cried reproachfully ; " you 
wish to spoil it, so that you may declare that we are not sympa- 
thetic." 

" No, no, indeed " ; she protested laughingly. She was made 
girlishly light-hearted by this unwonted charm of youthful 
companionship ; and Arnold's boyishness of manner had set 
her quite at ease with him. 

In the dimmer light of the outer room the father and 01m« 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER 33 

sted sat and smoked, but the picture framed by the doorway 
distracted the latter's attention from the drum major's remarks. 
He regarded steadily the brightness of the lamp, the shining 
brass, and the youth's handsome head bending over a dainty 
figure whose grace idealized the commonplace household duties. 
He felt very old all of a sudden, sitting in outer dimness. He 
lent only an inattentive ear to the former sergeant's reminis- 
cences, and he absently lifted his hand to feel for som^ gray 
hairs which he had perceived in the mirror that morning. 

A fresh, soft ripple of laughter crossed their talk again, and 
the father said contentedly: ''My Madeleine seems to enjoy 
your friend's chat; and I am glad, she has so little pleasure. 
Figure to yourself, Monsieur, that I am father, mother, brother, 
everything to my little girl. Her mother she lost when an in- 
fant; her brother" — his moustached lip quivered — 'Mater, at 
Sedan, a mere boy. There is no one else; and it is hard for 
a girl of nineteen to have only an old father who feels very 
tired and useless sometimes. But she is a brave child" — draw- 
ing himself up — " a true daughter of a soldier. She is mana- 
ger, housekeeper, everything in our small minage. Then she 
teaches French of mornings in young ladies' schools and music in 
the afternoons. She has bought herself the piano you see there." 

" You may well be proud of her," said Olmsted, touched by 
these simple confidences. The object of their eulogy stood now 
in the doorway. 

" Supper," she smiled, " with the kind assistance of Monsieur, 
is now served." 

It was easy, Olmsted admitted to himself, for Arnold to 
drift here into some "confounded folly." Easy even for him- 
self to forget that they were supping in a shabby apartment 
over a shop in a quarter where Arnold at least had never be- 
fore found himself, and that their host was a simple drum 
major. The little table was so pretty, with its flowers and 
lights, its fragrant coffee and perfect salad. And this fair 
young hostess pressing hospitable attentions on hungry men — 
this was Arcadian. Meanwhile young Arnold was affiliating 
with their host and giving adhesion to Utopian views of politics 
quite foreign to a practical nature. He renounced all interest 
in the French Republic in favor of the Empire, and finally 
professed a loathing for all things German, which was singular 
enough considering that his last few years had been spent by 

VOU XCI.— 3 



Digitized by 



Google 



34 THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER [April, 

choice in that country. But it was easy to see that he had won 
the heart of Monsieur Deluce. 

Afterwards, when Madeleine cleared the table, she quite na- 
turally permitted Arnold to help her; but to Olmsted she said: 
''I will not trouble Monsieur." 

** Will you sing for us ? " her father asked her afterwards* 

'' I will play/' she said, seating herself at the piano. Olm- 
sted, /lothing if not critical, prepared for endurance ; but he 
was altogether disappointed. Simply, unpretentiously, she 
glided into melodies clear, tender, lovely — some of them he 
knew, others he had never heard. 

The guests had risen to go and Olmsted was thanking her 
father with grave courtesy for his hospitality. Once more she 
offered her hand in saying good-night; and while her father 
cautioned as to the steps and the nearest way to their car, she 
answered Arnold graciously: 

'' It will be a pleasure to Papa to hear you sing, and I 
shall be very glad." 

The two men went their way silently for a while; then 
Arnold began: ''She is quite unusual — and unexpected." 

''A very pretty girl," said Olmsted. 

'' Pretty I " indignantly answered Arnold, '' she is much more 
than that, and her manner is perfect." 

'' I wonder then where she acquired it," continued Olmsted, 
'' for her father told me that his people had always been small 
farmers near Nancy, when they were not fighting. He is a bit 
prejudiced himself and irascible now and then; but, on the 
whole, a fine old fellow." 

'' I know all about them, for we talked while making the 
salad." 

"No doubt." 

''Her great-grandfather was devoted to the first Napoleon, 
and her grandfather fought at Magenta. When the Empire 
went out at Sedan and this one lost his only son before Paris, 
he would stay in France no longer, but came here to begin 
again. Some friend obtained for him his present position, and 
she procured music pupils and French classes, and hopes, she 
says, to make much money, and then the 'dear father, so old 
and kind, shall march no more ! ' He moved with her to 
Paris, it seems, when she was a little child and managed to 
have her well-educated at a convent — especially in music. 
But think how lonely for that young girl." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER 35 

** What was the Christian oame of her great-grandmother ? *' 
asked Olmsted in a very serious tone; ''and did you discover 
how many heads of poultry and cabbage they raised on the 
farm at Nancy, before they moved to Paris?" 

** How altogether hateful you are this evening I '' cried 
Arnold impatiently. ''One thing I can tell you, you might 
have been with her for hours and she would never have grown 
friendly; for she said that your eyes, or glasses, or manner, 
or perhaps all together, were ' un peu sivire V and when I said 
that you were a litterateur^ she supposed you must be a 
critic/' 

Up in Richard Olmsted's rooms, on a warm afternoon some 
weeks later, a pleasant breeze was swaying the lace curtains 
to and fro. It blew some papers off the table where he 
sat writing, but he did not raise his eyes from the page down 
which his pen was rapidly traveling. A knock at the door was 
repeated twice — thrice — before he heard it. "Come in," he 
shouted, without looking up. 

"The divine afQatus never inspires you to tear visitors to 
pieces, I hope," said Arnold Van Twiller. 

"Oh, it is youl" said Olmsted in some surprise, "where 
have you been for the last three weeks? At Newport, I 
suppose." 

"No"; answered Arnold slowly. "I escorted my mother 
and party there; but came back immediately, and have been 
in town most of the time." 

"In town — so long — at this season I And never came near 
me I " exclaimed Olmsted. 

"Well, I knew how hard you were working at those papers 
for the Athenian^ and that I would only interrupt you. The 
sooner you get through, you know, the sooner we can start 
Westward," was the calm answer. 

" I have heard," said Olmsted quietly, " of something school- 
boys call ' a face of frozen brass.' " 

" Well, then," answered Arnold boldly, " I have been quite 
busy myself and scarcely had a moment's leisure." 

" You have not, then," Olmsted asked, drawing careless lines 
on the nearest sheet of paper, " you have not seen, by chance, 
our friend the drum major since we were last together?" 

"Once or twice," answered his visitor, reddening. 

" Once or twice, perhaps three or six times, or even a 
dozen," added Olmsted. "Well, he is quite interesting." 



Digitized by 



Goo^^ 



36 THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER [April, 

<« I assure you/' cried Arnold eagerly, ** he is the most in- 
teresting old fellow possible. He has seen so much of life and 
men in stirring times; and you are the very one who could 
appreciate him, Olmsted; and*-and — why do you smile in 
that exasperating way ? " 

Olmsted did not answer. 

''I do wish/' continued Arnold, ''that you would keep 
your smile for some other subject. I am free to confess 
that I find Mademoiselle Deluce very attractive, and*' — defi- 
antly — ''I have been there a great many times. We sing 
duets together. I am a friend of the household.'' 

'' And the neighbors " — Olmsted resumed his pencil tracing 
as he spoke — ''what do they think of a young man of your 
general appearance coming so often?" 

" I don't care a rap what the neighbors — " Arnold began. 

"That's not the point," Olmsted interrupted. "See here, 
Arnold," he continued, laying aside his ironical manner with 
his pencil, " what little I saw of this girl induces me to be- 
lieve that, under a pretty, coquettish manner, she is a true 
woman and has earnest aims in life. Her old father is bound 
up in her; but she has her own way to make. Now, is it 
manly to cross her path just to amuse yourself and, possibly, 
unsettle her mind?" 

"It's not so easy to unsettle," he began; then, breaking 
off : " Suppose that you go this afternoon. If you wilU I 
promise always to remain under your wise and prudent 
guardianship during these visits. Come now. Mentor I" 

Olmsted seemed at first irresolute, but an hour afterward 
they stood together before Madeleine's house. The hall door was 
open and likewise an inner door this sultry afternoon, and they 
could distinguish the accents of a low, clear voice. Madeleine, 
in some light-tinted muslin, was seated in a low chair, little 
Hans, the child of the watchmaker below stairs, was in her lap. 
The child's rosy cheek was pressed to hers and his yellow 
locks touched the dark ones where a rose was fastened like 
some others glowing in a vase at hand, which Olmsted noted 
and guessed the sender. 

"All at once," she was saying, "the tin soldier fell, head 
over heels, from the window into the street. It was frightful I 
He stuck one leg into the air and stood on his military cap, 
his bayonet between the stones. The maid and the little boy 
ran down but could not find him, for he did not think it 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] THE DRUM MAJOR* S DAUGHTER 37 

proper to cry out, because be was in aniform. Ab, Monsieur 
Van Tweeleer, it is you. I am glad, but I will not rise, I am 
so tired/' Seeing tben an unexpected figure following bis, sbe 
did arise, coloring a little and letting tbe cbild slip to bis feet. 
''My fatber will be so pleased to see Monsieur again,'' sbe 
declared politely. 

''Wby are yon so tired, Mademoiselle Madeleine?'' in- 
quired Arnold. 

''Tbe weatber, perbaps," sbe answered, leaning back a 
little languidly, "and I bave to go far to my classes. But 
I do not mind, for imagine to yourself " — witb ready confidence 
in bis sympatby*-" tbat I bave five new pupils ; and in a few 
years I will make money enougb, wbo knows, (or Papa to stop 
work and we may live togetber — in Paris, perbaps, and tben be 
could visit bis old bome in tbe country. But I forget " — turn- 
ing to Olmsted — "tbis cannot interest Monsieur. I am sorry 
Papa is late. He bas so mucb to tell always tbat is pleasant ; 
tbougb I believe" — besitatingly— " tbat you do not always 
agree witb bim. Monsieur Arnaut, now" — witb a gleam of 
miscbief in tbe dark eyes — ^"be tbinks in everytbing like my 
fatber." 

"Tbat is very remarkable, indeed," observed Olmsted 
drily. 

" Yes " ; sbe continued, witb more reserve, " considering tbe 
ages. He must like you very mucb. Monsieur Arnaut, or be 
would not speak to you of my dead brotber. I was a very 
little cbild tben; but I remember we were all croucbing in a 
cellar in Paris— tbe women and tbe cbildren~-and trembled 
wben we beard a sbell bursting, or tbe far-off artillery. It 
was a terrible time. We bad often notbing to eat all day, and 
were bungry— ob, very bungry." 

"Pray do not tell us" — interrupted Olmsted, almost 
rottgbly " I can bear to bear or read of borrors ; but not of 
tbem bappening to delicate women and cbildren— tbose we — 
we know." 

She looked at bim in evident surprise, baving given bim 
credit for but little sympathy. 

"Would you care to sing a little, Monsieur Arnaut?" 
asked tbe young girl. 

"Yes"; consented Arnold, "but without the lamp. Tbis 
twilight is so pleasant." 



Digitized by 



Google 



38 THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER [AprU. 

Olmsted turned to look at the accompanist, and, looking, 
forgot the song. Her gracious young head was outlined against 
the window, a slight smile parting the lips, the red rose shining 
in its dusky setting. He gazed until the end, then rose abruptly, 
pushing Arnold aside. '' Come," he said, ** make room, my 
dear fellow, it is my turn ! I shall fright the ravens, but I am 
moved to raise my voice in song.'* She left the piano, and 
seating himself, he struck a chord or two; then in a voice, 
harsh, it is true, [in comparison with his friend's, but with 
something in its timbre which impressed and thrilled, began: 
''Du bist wie eine Blume." 

When this was over, he went off into another song of 
Heine's — a wild thing and reckless in tone, but passing into 
soft tenderness at the last. Rising with a laugh of apology, 
he found Arnold his only listener, and Madeleine just return- 
ing with the shaded lamp. Perhaps it was because he had 
taken off his glasses while at the piano that she gavQ him now 
a quick, intent look, as though she saw him strangely and for 
the first time. 

He also noted her pallor, saying: ''You are, indeed, tired, 
Mademoiselle." 

" Yes " ; she admitted, lightly adding that she was suffering 
for her usual season at some fashion resort. 

" You like the country ? " 

''Oh, yes"; she answered with unconscious wistfulness* 
" It is so close here sometimes. Near Paris there were many 
pretty places where one could go on Sundays and holidays for 
the fresh air." 

"There are such here, too," said Olmsted, "We could ar- 
range a day. But we can speak to your father about it; and 
now we must go away and let you rest." 

" Yes " ; Madeleine answered with simple dignity, " as my 
father is late, I will wish you good- night." 

"What in the world," began Arnold when they were once 
more in the street, "made you sing German songs? It was a 
monstrous want of tact. The father cannot endure anything 
German, and of course she feels the same. You saw that she 
could not bear to stay in the room." 

" I had forgotten," said Olmsted, " but, as you say, it must 
have annoyed her." 

(to bb concluded.) 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE MEXICO OF TO-DAY. 

BY J. B. FRISBIE. 

' is a lamentable fact that a major part of the 
articles published in the United States, and other 
countries, regarding Mexico* are inexact and mis- 
leading. The writers of these articles have, in 
the majority of cases, made but hurried trips 
to the country, and have gone back to their homes imbued 
with a superabundance of fantastic fiction with which to de- 
ceive, so far as a general impression is concerned, millions of 
readers, and create erroneous estimates hard to eradicate. The 
result is that Mexico suffers great injury and injustice. 

We do not claim that these articles are, in all cases, de- 
liberately untruthful, but the careless, haphazard way in which 
alleged data are gathered, the implicit credence given to profes- 
sional dispensers of sensational trash, is to blame, in most 
cases, for the circulation of so much that is false concerning 
Mexico. 

To select a few defects, real or alleged, and then to en- 
large upon them, to magnify them into gigantic inventions of 
the imagination, is, at best, a cruel and cowardly way to treat 
a neighboring and a neighborly people, especially when that 
people is doing all in its power for the advancement of the 
country — an advancement which has made such stupendous 
strides during the last thirty years, a progress which surpasses, 
relatively, even the wonderful development of the United 
States. 

To call a country ** barbarous** whose enormous Indian 
population, excepting a few wild tribes, is absolutely docile, 
law-abiding, and Christian ; whose upper classes compare fa- 
vorably with the aristocracy of any nation in the world, in 
birth, education, character, and gentility; whose government 
is striving its utmost for the uplift of its people; where the 
education of the masses is being enhanced day by day; where 
strikes and labor unions are unknown ; where cranks and anar- 
chists are not permitted to enter; where divorce is not tolerated; 



Digitized by 



Google 



40 THE MEXICO OF TO-DAY [April, 

where the people of all classes are devoted to their religion; 
and where one of the very greatest men of his time rules 
with wisdom and justice, is, certainly, employing the phrase 
to signify what its very antithesis would better express. 

If drastic measures have, at times, been adopted in dealing 
with the marauding Yaqui and Maya Indians, with bandits and 
criminals and disturbers of the country's peace, such meas- 
ures have been put into force only when circumstances justi- 
fied their being used; and as to the evils of the peonage 
system, and other exaggerated and imaginary calamitous prac- 
tices, in the sense intended by Turner in the American Maga^ 
sinSf these exist only to a very limited degree, if at all, and 
will surely be wiped out, just as every evil in the country 
is being properly regulated where its complete obliteration is 
impracticable. 

Articles such as we refer to only invite retaliation and 
engender bad feeling; and while common sense, and the know- 
ledge that they are the exaggerated statements of professional 
'' muck-rakers/' will prevent any serious or disagreeable con- 
sequences — so far, at least, as Mexico is concerned— their 
publication, in all fairness, and for the general good, should 
be suppressed. The friendly relations existing between the 
United States and Mexico, the great volume of constantly in- 
creasing commercial and industrial intercourse, the amicable 
and fraternal feelings of the people for each other, the well- 
defined understanding between their governments, the inherent 
spirit of American patriotism which animates both nations, and 
the recent hand-clasp across the border of Presidents Taft and 
Diaz, all tend to foster friendship and mutual regard. Such 
friendship will render futile the pusillanimous efforts of a few 
misguided writers to disrupt the prevailing harmony and create 
international discord. 

The Mexicans are modest in their claims, and freely admit 
their defects, which, after all, are no more, no less, than those 
of any other great civilized nation; they are liberal in recog- 
nizing the good in others, and are sure to work out their 
destiny to their own satisfaction, and to that of the world at 
large, for they are intelligent, educated, enterprising, compe- 
tent, and patriotic. 

The story of Mexico's progress during the last thirty years 
reads like a fairy tale, and in no other nation in the world 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE MEXICO OF TO-DAV 41 

can such relative progress be demonstrated. When General 
Porfirio Diaz assumed power in 1876, the country, just recov- 
ering from the effects of the French intervention and its con- 
sequent war and desolation, was infested with bandits and out- 
laws, was subject to constant turmoil by internal dissensions and 
bloody revolutions; its commerce was at a standstill, its finances 
bankrupted, its industries dormant; means of communication at 
home and with the outside world were lamentably lackiDg, and 
the relations between Church and State in a most deplorable 
condition of animosity. 

But how changed is all that now! General Diaz adopted 
a policy of enlightened progress, and from national ruin and 
veritable chaos, has evolved a mighty nation, universally re- 
spected, whose credit is unsurpassed, whose commerce and in-* 
dustries have been developed in a wonderful, almost miraculous 
degree, whose government is wise, stable, and just, whose peo- 
ple are hard-working and progressive, where Church and 
State have, in a great measure, adjusted their differences. Of 
course, there is a so-called political opposition which, at times, 
occasions some excitement, but it is seldom taken seriously by 
the thinking people. No one is opposed to General Diaz, 
or his policies— there might be a few remote and unimportant 
cases — and it is the universal prayer in Mexico, that her Grand 
Old Man will be spared for many years. The rare gifts of this 
great soldier-statesman have done more than aught else in the 
up-building of this great nation, and while there are many pa- 
triotic, able, and scholarly collaborators aiding, very materially, 
in the colossal development under way, everybody, irrespective 
of creed or nationality, recognizes and appreciates the splendid 
worth of " El Gran Presidente,'' whose name will live as one of 
the greatest in American continental history. 

The government of Mexico, federal and local, is doing all 
in its power for the uplift and advancement of the people, 
and the forward march of the nation in recent years is the 
best demonstration of this fact. A few years ago public schools 
were few indeed; to-day every city has its quota; so that, 
with private and Catholic parochial schools and colleges, there 
is no lack of educational facilities. In the city of Mexico the 
government preparatory school and its colleges of jurisprudence, 
medicine, civil and mining engineering, its academy of fine arts, 
and conservatory of music, compare most favorably with any 



Digitized by 



Google 



42 THE MEXICO OF TO^DAY [April, 

similar institutions in the worlds and in the larger cities and 
towns of Mexico the same advanced conditions prevail. Edu- 
cation is compulsory, just as it is in the United States, and so 
the rising generation will not be deficient in this regard. A 
few years ago hardly any of the working classes could read or 
write; the reverse is now the rule. 

Besides these splendid educational institutions mentioned, 
the Jesuits and Marists have several fine colleges, and the Ladies 
of the Sacred Heart and other Orders conduct well-appointed 
schools and convents, which are patronized and supported by 
the best people of the country. 

In the trades the masses are constantly improving them- 
selves, and the skilled Mexican artisan can 'well hold his own 
with his brothers of other countries. Whenever the govern- 
ment grants a concession to an individual alien, or to a foreign 
corporation, it exacts that a majority of the employees, as soon 
as conditions justify it, be Mexicans; thus it is that on the 
railroads preference is given to a Mexican over a foreigner when- 
ever the former is found competent. It will take some time, 
however, to nationalize thoroughly the railroad service, for the 
country is young in railroads, and there exists, unfortunately, a 
tendency among the better classes to decry subordinate positions; 
but the railroads and the many great industrial enterprises, 
most of which have had less than a quarter of a century of ex- 
istence, are also great educators of the people, and the ad- 
vancement in this respect has been nothing less than phenomenal. 

It is estimated that there is about one billion dollars of Amer- 
ican capital invested in Mexico. England, Germany, France, 
and Spain follow in the order named, and altogether they have in- 
vested hundreds of millions. It is a well-known fact that every 
dollar of this stupendous sum is adequately protected ; the safety 
of life and property, generally, is not excelled anywhere, and no 
reputable foreigner has aught but encomiums for this splendid 
phase of governmental efficiency. So marked has been this good 
will towards the alien, who is treated as well as the native, 
that he has become just as enthusiastic in his love and respect 
for the country and its great Chief Magistrate as is the Mexican 
himself. It speaks volumes for Mexico that when a foreigner 
takes up his residence within her borders, he almost al- 
ways makes it permanent, and that the foreign colonies 
are constantly being added to by the influx of business men 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE MEXICO OF TO^DAY 43 

and their families from all over the world. While speaking of 
the foreign colonies it might be well to add that the Amer- 
icans, French, and Grermans have their own colonial schools; 
the Americans and French have fine hospitals ; the Americans, 
English, French, and Spanish have their own cemeteries; and 
each colony has its club, its benevolent society, to care for in- 
digent countrymen, and its organization to promote good fellow- 
ship. They all properly recognize and celebrate their re- 
spective national holidays. 

The city of Mexico is governed by an '' Ayuntamiento,'* 
or Board of Aldermen, composed of twenty-four members, who 
choose their own presiding officer, the Mayor of the city. The 
members of this body are invariably selected from among 
the best class of citizens, and so the city is splendidly gov- 
erned; luxuries are heavily taxed, the city is rich, and public 
improvements are constantly in progress. It is doubtful if any 
other city in the world has as clean and as able a municipal 
government. 

The city is situated in the Federal District, which corresponds 
to our own American District of Columbia, and which has its own 
governor, appointed by the President. The present incumbe*nt 
of this office is Sefior Guillermo Landa y Escandon. He was 
educated at the Jesuit college at Stony hurst, England, and 
is a gentleman of the highest culture. Governor Landa is 
the man who '*put the lid on'' in Mexico. He has done, 
and is doing, much for the good of the district and city. 
He takes great interest in the working classes, and is con- 
stantly promoting some beneficial work in their behalf, giving 
liberally from his private means to help the poor and promote 
their welfare. As it is in the capital city, so it is, more or 
less, in the other cities of the republic, and the march of progress 
is plainly manifest throughout the country. [In Mexico City a 
new post-office building was recently finished, at a cost of 
$6,000,000; a new national theatre is being erected, to cost 
about $10,000,000; a number of governmental structures are 
under way, all of them along the same lines of cost and beauty. 
The city is exceedingly well paved and lighted, has a good 
water supply, is remarkably well policed, and is, undoubtedly, 
from an historical viewpoint, the most interesting city on the 
continent. Its great churches, its magnificent monuments, its 
beautiful parks, its attractive homes, the culture of its people. 



Digitized by 



Google 



44 THE MEXICO OF TO-DAY [April. 

and its ideal climate, tend to make it intensely alluring, and 
well worthy of its sobriquet, ''The Paris of America.'' 

Mexico is Catholic; absolutely, immutably Catholic. No 
amount of proselytizing will ever make the slightest inroad 
upon the established religion of the country. The faith is 
there, and there to stay. The men are good Catholics, gener- 
ally, many of them magnificent exponents of Catholic manhood^ 
and the women are strong in their faith. Volumes have been 
written about the irreligion of Mexico. As a rule they contain 
an ounce of truth and a ton of fiction, and are begotten of 
either ignorance or prejudice. Without doubt they are flagrant* 
ly unjust to Church, and country, and people. Visitors to the 
country go there harboring wrong impressions, obtained from 
such writings. Invariably they depart for their homes with 
such impressions entirely eradicated, edified by what they have 
seen, filled with admiration for the religious zeal and patriot- 
ism of the Mexican people, and stirred by the ideal democracy 
exhibited in the churches, where aristocrat and peon worship 
side by side. 

The foregoing, while but a brief synopsis, is, in the writer's 
opinion, a fair, truthful recital of the existing situation in 
Mexico. His residence there for thirty- two years should give 
him a thorough knowledge of the country, its people, resources, 
customs, and conditions, and enable him to write more intel- 
ligently, in so far, at least, as facts are involved, than the so- 
journer for a fortnight, who gathers his data at random, often 
from questionable sources, and spreads them, not knowing 
whether they are fact or fiction. 

M$xic0 Cify, Febmary, igio* 



Digitized by 



Google 



AN OLD WASTREL. 

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. 

> Dan Connors was sitting in the workhouse 

'ard. There was a starved thorn-tree over his 

lead, and it had just come out in new leaf. 

^erhaps that was what made him think of Old 

Sawn. There wasn't another green thing visible 

in the great stony yard of the workhouse, except it might be 

a hardy grass-blade that pushed its head up between the 

stones, imagining that it was growing into a field, only to be 

crushed flat by the shuffling feet of the workhouse inmates. 

They all shuffled more or less. They were a disgraceful 
lot, to old Dan's thinking,^ those able-bodied men and women, 
who shuffled about on their unwilling employment. They were 
mostly fat with the fatness of idleness and an ignoble content. 
As a woman came in his view, her hands resting on her enor- 
mous hips, her tow-colored hair pulled back from her red, 
flabby face, her whole person hideous in the workhouse garb 
of coarse blue woolen stuff, old Dan groaned aloud, making 
the woman pause to ask a ribald question. 

It was not such women old Dan was accustomed to; and 
in spite of all the ups and downs of his life he had kept a 
curiously fastidious and innocent mind about women. He had 
never married, but his experiences had been fortunate ones. 
He groaned again, this time taking care to look about him 
first to see that no one was in sight, as he recalled the old 
days in Ireland, his mother and Kitty and Nora and Brideen, 
and Eily Driscoll, who was dead long ago, who might have 
been his wife and kept him straight if only she'd stayed in it 
and not been so quick to get to heaven. He had a wander- 
ing drop somewhere in him, and Eily's death had unsettled 
him, cut him adrift from his moorings. The old place had 
become dull and strange with Eily's death. The restlessness 
had come upon him and he had gone off in the following 
spring to America, where there was a chance for a man, and a 
crowd to be forgetting in, not the death-in-Iife of Old Bawn. 



Digitized by 



Google 



46 AN OLD WASTREL [April, 

So he had said thirty years ago. Now, sitting in the work- 
house yard, he recalled, as he had done many a time before. 
Old Bawn, looking at it through the dim eyes of his spirit as 
though he looked into Paradise. There was the low white 
house under its thatch, with its background of orchard — one 
gable opening on a green old garden, the other on the stack- 
yard and cattle-sheds, full of golden corn, of red and white 
cattle. He could see as plainly as though he had left it only 
yesterday the placid, white- washed kitchen, with its red-ocfared 
tiles, the settle against the wall under the little lattice window 
that opened into the orchard, the dresser full of crockery, the 
chairs of twisted straw by the fireside in which the father and 
mother had sat, the flitch of bacon and the drying herbs above 
the fireplace, the chimney shelf with its row of brass candle- 
sticks all shining bright, the wag-by-the-wall clock. 

The kitchen opened on to a green space, bound on one 
side by the wall of the barns and outbuildings, on the other 
by the neat privet hedge that outlined the lawn which lay in 
front of the hall door. A row of sycamores and chestnuts 
went down by the hedge. 

Sitting there in the workhouse yard, his old knotted hands 
clasped on his stick, he fancied himself sitting on the stone 
bench outside the kitchen door. He could see the very lights 
and shadows cast by the trees on the grass. A flock of yel- 
low ducklings came waddling to the kitchen door to be fed. 
Pincher, the Irish terrier, came out in a leisurely indignation 
and drove them away. He could hear the swish-swish of the 
churn handle in the dairy close by. 

Something struck him lightly and he came back to the 
horrible workhouse yard that was like a prison. He had 
dropped asleep perhaps. One of the able-bodied ones, with 
humorous intention, had flung a potato at him as he passed 
and wakened him out of his happy dream. 

It was too bad that he should have gone and left them— 
he, the eldest one too. It was a bad example for the younger 
ones. There had been a long line of younger ones when he 
left— down to a baby in the cradle three months old. Herself 
had been a fine strong woman, but himself had never been 
very strong. He supposed both of them were gone long ago. 
Thirty years brought such changes. 

Thirty years I Of such a life as his had been! It had 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] AN OLD Wastrel 47 

been a record of dismal failure. He bad gone out with a fool- 
ish certainty of success. He had even put his going on a 
high, unselfish plane. There were too many of them dragging 
out of himself and Old Bawn. It was right that one of them 
should go out and seek his fortune and be able and willing to 
share it with the others. There were eleven children in the 
family when he had taken his departure. He wondered what 
had become of them all. He had a sudden fond memory of 
Dicky a little lad of four, who had been a special pet of his. 
Dick would be thirty«four now if he was alive. Why, he 
wasn't much more than fifty himself, now he came to think of 
it, only he had had such hardships and seen so much trouble 
that he was an old man before his time — liker seventy than 
fifty-four. 

He had gone under from the time he had left them at Old 
Bawn — gone under, not by any choice of his own, but because 
things were against him. Once or twice he had been on the 
up-grade. Once a partner had absconded, leaving him only 
debts and angry creditors. Another time his savings had been 
stolen — eight hundred pounds, which he had toiled hard to 
earn. He had worked incredibly hard. The hardship had 
aged him as much as anything. But he was an innocent 
prodigal after all — scarcely a worse sin to his account than a 
few drinking bouts in which he had quarreled and assaulted 
the police. There were no shameful memories to come be- 
tween him and his faith in good women. A poor old wastrel, 
that was how he thought of himself. But he need not be 
afraid of his mother's eyes, nor of Eily Driscoll's when they 
should meet in heaven. 

Ah, there were good women in the world, if there were 
shameful hussies. There was poor Honor Daly, with whom he 
had lodged these ten years back, whose death had sent him 
to the workhouse. Honor had been fond of him. When he 
could work he had brought her his wages. When he was too 
crippled with the rheumatism to work, she kept him all the 
same — an heroic soul, with her three children and her helpless 
lodger to support by standing over the wash-tub all day. She 
was gone now, and the children were scattered in various in- 
stitutions. How Dan missed the children, to be sure ! He had 
been worth his keep for amusing the children. Honor Daly had 
often declared in the days of his rheumatic attacks, or when 



Digitized by 



Google 



48 AN OLD WASTREL [April, 

the pain in his back was too bad to permit his working as a 
quay laborer. 

Some one passing by with a brisk step, very unlike the able- 
bodied inmates*, pulled up in front of Dan Connors and spoke. 
It was the workhouse doctor, a man with a ruddy, wholesome, 
out-door face and very blue eyes — a countryman of Dan's, too 
and a man with a quick compassion for the flotsam and jetsam 
of humanity! that came his way : '' Heartbroke,'' Dan would 
have said, ''with trying to mend the workhouse ways/* 

''Dreaming, Connors?'* he said. 

Dan looked up at him with eyes in which the dreams were 
plainly visible. 

"Aye, sir"; he said. "I believe I was back in Ireland. 
The color of your moustache, now — I thought for a minute it 
was old Pincher's coat; *twas the little bit of a dog we had 
at home when I was a boy.** 

The doctor smiled. 

" I can see you've come of decent stock, Connors,** he said. 
" Isn't there some one would take you out of this ? It isn't a 
place for the like of you." 

Dan looked down at his corduroyed knees. 

"I was just wonderin*," he said, "if there was any of them 
left in Old Bawn at all. There was little Dick. He was no 
more than four when I went out of it, and a terrible fond child 
of me. I don't know that I'd like them to know where I was. 
'Twould be a terrible disgrace for them. The Connors were 
always decent people." 

The doctor protruded his lips rapidly and drew them in 
again in a characteristic gesture which Dan did not see. 

"How old are you, Connors?" he asked. 

"Fifty-four come Michaelmas, sir.** 

" You're sure of that ? " 

The doctor looked startled, as well he might. He looked 
down at Dan Connors, huddled up on the wooden bench under 
the hawthorn, and believed him. The age of the man was 
merely superficial. And there was nothing wrong with him but 
the overwork and the rheumatism that had resulted from ex- 
posure to all kinds of weather. 

"I'm surprised,** he said kindly. "Why, there's only ten 
years of difference between us. Plenty of men have done a 
lot of work after fifty-four. You'd be some use yet, Connors, 
under happier conditions." 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] An Old Wastrel 49 

'^ I might," said Dan httmbly, his eyes looking with admi- 
ration at the doctor*s stalwart, gray-clad figure. '^Snre, you 
look like my grandson/' he added. ''Tis the feeding youVe 
had, sir, and the care. Forty's too old for a quay laborer/' 

'' Let me see — you come from the County Tipperary ? " 

'' Near the foot of the Keeper Mountains. Twas a lovely 
little place we had there. Coolmore was the name of the vil- 
lage. You've maybe heard of it. There's great fishing there 
in the Coolbeg." 

'' I was there once. A very different place from this, Con- 
nors." 

'' You're right, doctor. Well, sure, God help us — 'tis often 
easy enough to be steppin' out of a place an' not so easy to 
be steppin' back. What would I be but a disgraceful old ghost 
goin' back among them. 'Twas different ideas I had once, when 
I thought of bringin' them home a bag of gold. Ah, thank 
you kindly, doctor. 'Tis very good of you." 

The doctor had held an open tobacco pouch under Dan's 
nose. Dan took a fill with trembling fingers and looked up at 
the doctor, sudden tears in his eyes. It wasn't often you met 
with any humanity in such a desolate old place. 

The doctor passed on to bring a breath of the open air and 
a touch of human kindness to the old people in the bedridden 
ward, while Dan sat on under the tree, once again lost in his 
dreams. 

The next day the doctor, passing him by, dropped an open 
paper across his knees. Dan fumbled for his spectacles, and 
having found .them, spread out the sheet and began to read. 

It was a little sheet, not very well printed, but it might 
have fallen straight from heaven so far as Dan was concerned. 
Why, every bit of if was set, as though with a clear, shining 
gem, with a well- beloved name. Coolmore, Coolbeg, Drumer- 
iskey, Emly^ Shanagolden, Derrybawn. They leaped out of 
that wonderful lost past as though they had been so many 
shining flowers. It was kind of the doctor, so it was — God 
bless him I The time wouldn't pass slowly for Dan having the 
Tipperary People to read. Why, it was like as though some- 
body had opened a door into a wonderful lost Paradise and 
bidden Dan walk in. 

For a time he hovered uncertainly over the paper, sipping 
at the sweets, so to speak. At length he settled himself down 

VOL. XCI.~4 



Digitized by 



Google 



so AN OLD WASTREL [Apri, 

for a steady read through it. He wasn't going to get tired of 
it easily. When he had gone straight through it he could be- 
gin it all over again. Perhaps the wardmaster would let him 
keep it by his bed. It would be great company in the lone- 
some night, with the old people sighing and groaning wearily 
all about him, to have the Tipperary People tucked away under 
his mattress. And — who knew? — God was good — maybe Dr. 
Devine might bring him another paper some day. 

He read on, and names of people long remembered or long 
forgotten sprang up out of the printed line and confronted 
him. Dear, dear I To think old John Cunningham was yet 
alive and doing well! for there was a record of the sheep he 
had bought at an auction. Elsie Doyle had taken a high place 
at the Intermediate Examinations. He wondered would she be 
Peter Doyle's daughter at all ? Peter and he had been at school 
together. The girsha couldn't be Peter's granddaughter. Surely 
not! Why, Peter would be a personable man still. He'd be 
about fifty-three. What was fifty-three to them that had had 
a chance of minding themselves? 

He hovered over the paper like a bee over a flower bed, 
picking out a name here and there. Suddenly he swooped 
like the bee and rested. He sat staring at a name: 

''Among those present was Mr. Richard Connors, J.P., 
D.C., P.L.G." 

Dick!— could it be Dick? Was it possible it was little 
Dick, who had followed his big brother about with a dog- like 
devotion in those days long gone? A J.P. too! A Justice 
of the Peace! And a Poor Law Guardian! Dan wasn't sure 
what D.C. meant. That was a new happening since his days. 
Little Dick! Ah, well, sure it was a great thing there were 
some to keep up the old name and make it honored and re- 
spected when there were others that dragged it in the dust. 

He was so elated by Dick's success in the world that he 
sat in the stray gleam of sun that had found its way over the 
top of the high buildings, transported out of himself for the 
time being. It kept him happy for all that day. But the in- 
evitable reaction followed. A chill sense came to him that 
Dick's advancement had closed in his face the door which had 
let through the faintest chink of light. He imagined Dick's 
glories. In his day to be a Justice of the Peace was to be a 
person of social importance, to keep a carriage, to follow the 



Digitized by 



Google 



igio.] An Old Wastrel Si 

hounds, to be a gentleman in short. Great man Dickl Dan 
remembered what a cute little codger Dick bad been, even at 
four years old. What would he be doing, a poor old shabby 
workhouse ghost, if he could return into the midst of such 
splendors, but frightening the life out of them all by his re- 
turn? 

He supposed it would be the workhouse to the end — the 
workhouse and the association with people whose ways and 
whose words repelled his curious natural innocence. He was 
more aloof from them than ever after his wonderful discovery 
about Dick, and they hustled and trod on him worse than 
need be as they went in to meals and on the way up to bed. 
One of the pauper nurses reported him to an official for in- 
subordination — ^there never was a more groundless charge — and 
he was threatened with punishment unless he mended his 
manners. 

His manners! — in that mannerless, morallcss abode! Dan 
had never lost his excellent, old-fashioned manners. They 
made him a softy to the rough lot about him and furnished a 
reason for his toes being trodden on and his ribs punched, 
till he began to see red and came near earning the threatened 
punishment. 

The pauper attendant, coming into the ward where the old 
men were beginning to brandish their sticks, cooled the hot 
blood by throwing cold water over some of them. Whether 
by accident or design Dan got more than his share of the 
water. His anger died down as though it had been actual 
fire. Sure, what right had he to be angry, God help him ? 
Hadn't he deserved any ill-treatment he got, he who had 
flung himself like a fool away out of Old Bawn into a world 
which had no place for him? 

A dreary sense of the futility and hopelessness of it all 
descended upon Dan. Sure, what were they fighting about ? — 
a lot of poor old wastrels that the grave might swallow to- 
morro^jir and welcome ! Weren't they all only cumbering the 
earth? What was the use of their vexing and annoying each 
other when they were only a vexation and annoyance to them 
that were doing the world's work and living decently in honor 
and esteem? 

The next day he was racked with the rheumatism and 
could hardly crawl out of bed. But he was better out of bed 



Digitized by 



Google 



52 An old Wastrel [April, 

than in bed, for the day was the day for washing out the 
ward, which was done with a great swishing of water, to the 
grievous discomfort of the rheumatic patients who must stay 
in bed. He crept out through the ophthalmic ward, where 
the patients were groaning in misery because the walls had 
been newly white-washed, and into the yard, where he crawled 
like a sick old fly in the sun. 

He ^z& let alone, being plainly too twisted and crippled 
with the rheumatism to do anything. He sat for hours under 
the thorn-tree, where the master's dog, who happened to be 
an Irish terrier, came and rubbed himself by Dan's knees, 
giving htm a sense of companionship. After a time he no- 
ticed and was moved to a simple wonderment at the knowl- 
edgeableness of the dog, who was reputed proud in his ways, 
and well able to distinguish between an official and an inmate. 
He must have known that Dan was a countryman of his own 
and made an exception in his favor. Dan, with his hand on 
the dog's little hard head, got some comfort from the compan- 
ionship. It made him think of Pincher long ago at Old Bawn. 
Pincher would be dead this many a year. Dan began to won- 
der if any of Pincher's blood were left in it. They had been 
a notable breed of Irish terriers and a cause of great pride to 
the Connorses of Old Bawn. 

The days slid over Dan's head in a waking dream. Some- 
times he was very ill at ease with rheumatism. He had bad 
nights. It had been nobody's business to dry his bed where 
the water had been flung on it. The bad nights made him 
sleepy in the day. He dozed away a great part of the sunny 
days, sitting on the seat under the thorn-tree, which was now 
becoming quite green, his old knotted hands clasped over the 
stick and his chin leaning on them. 

Once or twice Dr. Devine caught sight of him as he passed 
briskly to and fro, and spared to wake him. It was unusually 
warm weather for May, and the warm sun on Dan's rheumatic 
old bones was the best possible treatment for him. The doc- 
tor understood why it was that Dan wasn't to be found with 
the other old men where they shuffled about in their recrea* 
tion yard. He said to himself that he must remember to ask 
the master, who was a good fellow, to let old Dan have the 
run of his garden, and after a time, when the rheumatism 
troubled him less, to let him do odd jobs about the garden. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] AN OLD WASTREL 53 

*^\i I had my will/' said Dr. Devine to himself energeti- 
cally, '' the like of him would never be in the workhouse, any 
more than the children. It's no place for the decent old and 
the children.'' 

That was after he had become aware that some one had 
burnt Dan's lips with a match as he slept — a brutal jest which 
might have had serious consequences in a man of Dan's age. 
The perpetrator remained undiscovered. If Dan knew he would 
not speak. Dr. Devine rather suspected that he did know. 

'' It keeps me from feeling the rheumatics so bad/' was 
Dan's remark to Dr. Devine, who was too well used to the 
ways of his countrymen to wonder at this good wrung out of 
evil. 

But, awake or asleep, Dan's soul was in Old Bawn. The 
Tipperary People had made it all real and living as of old. 
He seemed to have forgotten the great stretch of failure and 
hardship that lay between him and Old Bawn. The sunshine 
that dazzled his eyes through the closed lids resolved itself 
into the garden of Old Bawn, with the summer house in the 
middle of it, overhung by a tree which bore the most luscious 
yellow apples known this side of Paradise. There was the 
tree* peony and the box borders and the gravel path, and the 
stone seat in the privet hedge, and the white walls of the 
garden. Or he was in the fields, and the mountains were over 
him, and the little streams singing. Or he was coming home 
at evening, healthily tired with the work he had despised, to 
supper in the parlor and a delicious sleep in his room under 
the thatch. What a fool he had been ever to leave it I What 
a fool ! A fool i And his mother, so fair and comfortable and 
kind. She had always been there to stand between him and 
his father's severity. Well, he had repaid her ill. He had 
been her favorite. He wondered how she had taken his disap- 
pearance — how long she had waited and hoped for a letter 
from him or for his return. In the last letter he had ever 
had from her she had bid him remember that his place waited 
for him still. 

Footsteps on the gravel-path disturbed the quiet of the 
noonday heat. He opened tired old eyes. There was the 
doctor standing looking at him with a peculiar kindness. There 
was some one else besides the doctor, some one young and 
strong enough to have been Dan's son. Some fragrance from 



Digitized by 



Google 



54 AN Old Wastrel [Aprils 

the far-off fields seemed to have come with this new arrival. 
He was a big, burly, broad-shouldered young man in a suit of 
gray, with a simple, kindly, capable face. His eyes were very 
blue. Dan's own had once been as blue before they had faded 
and grown blurred with fatigue and regrets. Dan's mother had 
had just such eyes. 

'' A friend to see you, Mr. Connors,'' said the doctor, with 
a new respectfulness of address. 

Dan blinked and stared at the handsome young man. 
There was some memory of the past troubling his tired old 
heart. Was it? — no, it couldn't bei 

<< You're kindly welcome, sir," said Dan with old-fashioned 
politeness. '' Who might it be ? I disremember somehow. I'm 
not as young as I was." 

'*Why, Dan, don't you guess who I am? Little Dick." 
The speaker's voice shook. *'0f course I couldn't remember 
you. I was only four when you went away. Nor you me. 
But the mother has talked to me of you so often. 'Keep a 
place for Dan,' she said, 'whenever he comes home.' Glory 
be to God — she's with us still. She wanted to come, but I 
thought it better not. I've come to take you home, Dan." 

After all, the Dan who arrived at Old Bawn a week or two 
later, although he was glad of his younger brother's strong 
arm to lean upon, was a very different person from the broken 
old pauper who had sat nodding on the seat under the thorn- 
tree, quite unaware of the wonderful good fortune that was on 
its way to him. Dan, in a well-made new suit of clothes, fur- 
bished up, well-cared for, even to the flower in his coat, to 
say nothing of the effect of hope and happiness, had gone 
back almost to the proper looks for a man of his age. After 
all, one on the threshold of heaven, new 'scaped from the 
bitter slough of the world — why, to be sure he is new-made. 
The workhouse was a page closed forever in Dan's life. No 
one except Dick and the mother knew where Dan had been 
delivered from. That shadow was never likely to fall on Old 
Bawn and the honorable position Dick had won for himself— 
to say nothing of the comely wife and children, and Dan's 
brothers and sisters who were married and settled all about 
the country and were coming for a family reunion as soon as 
Dan's meeting with the mother was got over. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] An Old Wastrel 55 

Why, if he had made his fortune, as he had meant to do, 
they couldn't have given him a greater welcome. Was that 
Pincher, or was it Pincher's great-grandson, whose eyes met 
Dan's with a grave friendliness as he emerged from the little 
pink-cheeked mother's embrace? It might have been old 
Plncher and Dan young and hopeful again 

For the matter of that, Dan felt fresh energy stirring in his 
veins. He wasn't going to be the old man in the chimney- 
corner^not just yet. He'd throw off the rheumatism, please 
God, with the great comfort and the great happiness. He'd 
be some use to them yet. They were not ashamed of him. 
There was only love in their eyes for him. 

'"Tis a great day," said the mother, ''when I've my Dan 
come home to me. I'knew in the heart of me he wasn't 
dead." 

'' Wasn't it by great good luck entirely we found him ? " 
said Dick, smiling happily, as though the discovery of an old 
wastrel were a matter for the greatest congratulation. 

'' 'Tis dreamin' I am that I'm in heaven," said Dan to him- 
self. ** Maybe I'd be wakin' up and findin' I was back there** 

But the sights and scents and sweet sounds of Old Bawn 
were about him. There was the white house and the mountains 
and the cattle grazing peacefully in the May pastures. Never 
had a prodigal such a]^happy home-coming. 



Digitized by 



Google 



RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN. 

BY ANDREW J. SHIPMAN. 
MADRID AND TOLEDO. 

railways in Spain are proverbially slow, yet 
e found that they went at a fair speed, even 
dged by American ideas of swiftness. After 
1 there was a good reason in part for their 
owness. The railways of Spain, with the ex- 
ception of a comparatively short stretch on the Northern 
Railway out of Madrid, are single track, and they are rather 
to be compared with our railroads west of the Mississippi 
River than with those in the eastern part of our country. But 
we found the sleeping cars quite comfortable and fitted up with 
much more privacy than is usual in the American Pullman 
car. The fast expresses have a letter box or slot on the side 
of the mail car and it is no infrequent sight at the country 
stations to see the people come trooping down to meet the 
train in order to mail their letters at once. 

The land through Castile and New Castile looks desolate 
and deserted to American eyes, so accustomed to farmhouses 
nestling among the trees. There are no trees in Castile and 
but few in New Castile. The Spanish countryman has an idea 
that trees afiord merely lodging places for the birds, where 
they may lie in wait and steal the grain the farmer so care- 
fully plants. In Castile they have a proverb that a lark has 
to bring his own provisions with him when he visits their 
province. As one views the rolling country and distant hills 
from the railway they seem like large brown sea waves hard- 
ened and fashioned into earth. Still the Spanish peasant is a 
painstaking and hard-working farmer. His fields are tilled with 
all the care and minuteness of a garden. Every bit of land, 
as far as' we could see on either side of the railway track, 
was under cultivation, and we were told that it produced 
good crops. The community life, whereby the Spanish peas- 
antry dwell in villages and go abroad to till their fields, gave 
a curious aspect of desolation to the landscape, for no houses 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 57 

or farm dwellings are seen scattered over the landscape. There 
is a village, then a desolate stretch of farm land, then another 
village, and so on. 

Finally we came into Madrid, at the Atocha Station, at the 
southern end of the Prado. The long line of hotel omnibuses 
and cabs bidding for the travelers showed that Madrid was as 
active in that line as our own land could be. Indeed, in one 
respect, it was far more advanced than New York has yet 
dared to become. The Spanish mail wagons {correos) were not, 
as here, drawn by horses in a more or less miserable condi- 
tion, but were smart, light-running automobiles, which went 
around the city with marvelous celerity and delivered the mail 
with great rapidity. 

Madrid, in some respects, is a disappointing city. It is 
old enough not to be new as our cities are ; and yet it is not 
old enough to be ancient as many other Spanish cities are. 
For instance, its Cathedral, Nuestra Senora de la Almudena^ 
has not got above the basement story, and in that it re- 
sembles the beginnings of many American churches. Some- 
how that circumstance made us feel quite at home when we 
went down to admire it. The basement, which is used just 
like our churches, is very beautifully constructed and has a 
fine organ. Some time, when money is more plentiful in Spain, 
the splendid main structure will be built Another instance of 
newness is the Church of San Francisco— the Pantheon or 
Westminster Abbey of Spain — for it looks almost as if it left 
the builders' hands only the day before yesterday. It is a cir- 
cular church with a very lofty dome like the Capitol at Wash- 
ington or St. Paul's in London. The stained glass is very 
modern, but it contains examples of the very finest German 
and French artists in modern glass-design and coloring. The 
whole effect is one of beauty and harmonyJ But the church 
hardly fulfills its purpose ot being the resting-place of the 
great men of Spain, as the inscription on its front ''Spain to 
her distinguished sons'' (Espana d sus preclatos Hijos) so 
proudly proclaims. The commission entrusted with the matter 
.was unable to find the bodies of Guzman, Cervantes, Lope de 
Vega, Herrera, Velasquez, or Murillo, nor does any one know 
their present resting-places, so that they cannot be removed 
•to this church. Even many of those who were disinterred 
and buried here had afterwards to be removed and restored to 



Digitized by 



Google 



5 8 RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN [April, 

their original tombs, becaase of the vigoroas protests and 
threatened lawsuits by their descendants and their fellow- pro- 
vincials. New buildings are going up everywhere; a fine new 
post-office building intended to be very modern and up-to- 
date« and a still finer hotel — one of the Ritz-Carlton series — 
which is intended to eclipse anything of the like nature, while 
a host of apartment houses and minor structures are projected. 
Even the first hotel we went to was being modernized to such 
an extent that holes were bored in the walls and the floors 
to admit a wondrous steam-heating plant. The proprietor 
begged us, with many courtly bows, to stay, that the installa- 
tion of the calefaccion should not disturb us, for it would be 
carried on in another part of the house. But notwithstanding 
his entreaties, and the fine rooms with special balcony over- 
looking the Carrera de San Jeronimo, we took up our quar- 
ters elsewhere, giving a weak-kneed promise of coming back 
when the calefaccion was installed. 

Madrid cabmen are very independent They seem to be 
self-possessed, are chary of speech, and will seldom abate much 
of their price for a drive. Indeed, they may be said to be the 
opposite of the Italian cabman in these respects. Once I asked 
a cabman how much he would charge to drive me across Madrid 
to the Museo de Arte Moderno^ and he answered : '' Dos pesetas 
y medio** (Two and a half pesetas). I said that I would give 
him two pesetas, and all that he did was to look at me re- 
proachfully, take out a cigarette, slowly light it, and set to 
smoking. He had named his price and that was all there was 
to it. Nor did any of the other cabmen in the line make a 
move to secure me as a fare. 

The focus of life in Madrid is at the Puerta del Sol — the 
Gate of the Sun. Once upon a time, when Madrid had its 
beginning and there were walls, which had not then gone out 
of fashion, there was a Gate of the Sun. It has disappeared 
long ago, and now one looks directly upon the rising sun, if 
one strolls out early enough. The place is now a large oblong 
plaza, the starting-point for all the electric street cars in Mad- 
rid and the location of some of the most fashionable hotels. 
The population of Madrid surges through it at all times of the 
day, and in that respect it may be compared to Fifth Avenue 
in New York or to Trafalgar Square in London. From it radi* 
ate a number of important streets, and of them the Calle de 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 59 

Alcali is the largest and best known. It is far wider than the 
widest street we have in New York, and it leads directly to 
the Buen RetirOt or Central Park of Madrid, passing by the 
PradOf or great avenues of trees, which is known all over the 
world. The very word Prado brings up the memory of the mag- 
nificent Museo Nacional de Pintura y Escultura^ which contains 
such fine collections of the great masters. There are two rooms 
there, each devoted to Murillo and Velasquez, which are the 
mecca of the admirers of the Spanish painters, to say nothing 
of the treasures of the Italian, Flemish, German, and French 
schools. It is especially rich in examples of Rubens and Van- 
dyke, while the works of the Spanish painters of the various 
schools can here be studied to greatest advantage. Raphael 
and Titian are well represented, and the portrait of Cardinal de 
Paira, by the former, seems almost as though the subject him- 
self was before the behplder. Art critics have done ample jus- 
tice to this noble gallery, and it would be but repetition to 
add my words of appreciation. 

Behind the Museo del Prado is the quiet little white Church 
of San Jeronimo el Real (St. Jerome the Royal), the church in 
which the sovereigns of Spain are wedded. In fact all this 
part of Madrid, back in the times of Lope de Vega was the 
^* meadows of St. Jerome,'' where the fashion of the Court 
used to go for recreation. The Church of San Jeronimo and 
the great promenade of the Prado are all that now recall it. 
In this church also (up to the year 1833) the members of the 
Cortes used to come to hear the Mass of the Holy Ghost and 
to take their oaths at the opening session of Parliament; but 
all that is now done away with. Here, too, the Prince of As- 
turias (as the heir apparent of Spain is called, something like 
the Prince of Wales in England) used to come to take his oath 
to observe the laws of the kingdom. Now, however, the church 
plays no greater historic part than receiving the marriage vows 
of the sovereign. It was here that King Alfonso and Queen 
Victoria were married on May 31, 1906, in all the pomp and 
circumstance of the Spanish Court, only to narrowly escape 
death a half hour later on the Calle Mayor on their way back 
to the palace. The cruel bomb, concealed in the midst of a 
huge bouquet of roses, was hurled from the third story of a 
house by Morral, an anarchist teacher in the Ferrer schools in 
Madrid, and it struck directly in front of the royal carriage 



Digitized by 



Google 



6o Recent Impressions of Spain [April, 

killing the horses and killing and maiming a score of {Arsons. 
As we entered the quiet, prim-looking chnrch, escorted by a 
small boy of the neighboring school, we tried to imagine the 
splendor of that event which so nearly had a tragic ending 
for the royal bride and groom. Almost across from the church 
is the severe -looking building of the Spanish Academy, while 
to the south lies the great Botanical Garden. 

The legislative chambers in Madrid are situated widely apart. 
The lower house of the Cortes meets in the Palacio de Con-^ 
greso on the Carrera de San Jeronimo, an unimposing building, 
while the Senate meets two miles away to the north of the 
Royal Palace, in an old building which was originally an Au- 
gustinian college. Further north is the Central University, 
made up of the union of the University of Alcald and the 
University of Madrid in 1836, which is now attended by 6,600 
students. The main building of the University is known as 
the NoviciadOf because it originally was a novitiate when the 
Jesuits formerly owned that property before their suppression 
in the eighteenth century. A little further on is the great 
Hospital de la Princesa, which, together with the great Hos- 
pital General, make two fine extensive institutions^ probably the 
equals of any in the world. In fact, I think Madrid is almost 
too well supplied with hospitals for a city of 600,000 inhabit 
tants. It has altogether eleven, and a special one for small 
children, besides having fourteen ambulance stations (Casas 
de Socorro) scattered over different parts of the city, affording 
first aid to the injured. 

I noticed the number of news stands and the great sale of 
illustrated papers, newspapers, and light novels, and concluded 
that the Spanish illiteracy could not be as great as repre- 
sented, or they and the numerous book stores would rapidly 
go out of business. On coming home t looked the matter up. 
I found that the statistics on the subject were much at vari- 
ance with the popular ideas and loose percentage given. For 
instance, I had heard it repeated that there was 68 per cent 
of illiterates among the population in Spain. That would 
mean that more than half the people could not read or write. 
Yet I never met a person who could not read or write during 
my whole trip through Spain; but, on the other hand, I saw 
everybody reading newspapers, novels, letters, and the like. 
I found that the 68 per cent was true enough when it was 



Digitized by 



Google 



I910.] RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 6l 

written, bat unfortunately the figures were taken from the 
Encyclopedia Britannica and referred to the census of i88o» 
and could hardly be controlling to-day. When we reflect that 
Spain is essentially an agricultural country, with only a small 
urban population (even now only two cities have a population 
of over 500,000)1 it will be seen that the diffusion of educa- 
tion must necessarily be of slower growth. I have not the 
figures of any late census by me, but the census of 1900 puts 
quite a different phase upon the situation. The total popula- 
tion of Spain then was 9,087,821 males and 9i530,265 females, 
making a total of 18,618,086. The elementary schools were, 
25f340 public schools with 1,617,314 pupils, and 6,181 private 
schools with 344,380 pupils, giving a total of 31,521 schools 
with 1,961,694 pupils. Besides this, there were ten universities^ 
numerous high and normal schools, and trade, technical, and 
engineering and professional schools of all kinds. The illiter- 
ates in 1900 amounted to 5,290,368, or less than 30 per cent 
of the population* These illiterate persons were, for the most 
part, persons from maturity to old age— chiefly hard-headed 
peasants who had old-fashioned notions about the necessity of 
reading and writing— while the younger generation was grow- 
ing up bright and alert. The lack of schools is also accounted 
for. Spain has local government; and the thrifty Spanish 
countryman will not tax himself to maintain schools, while the 
stipend derived from the central government at Madrid (which 
spends about $9,500,000 a year on education) is in itself too 
small to maintain schools, where no local taxation has been pro* 
vided. Our analogous situation may be found in North Caro- 
lina and Tennessee. In North Carolina in 1900 the illiterates 
were 28 per cent of the population, and in Tennessee they 
were a little over 20 per cent. Yet when we compare the 
sums spent by Spain on the education of her children and the 
school attendance there with the sums spent in New York 
State, the comparison is not altogether unfavorable. The 
various provinces and communes in Spain supply the largest 
amount of money to support the schools. I have not at 
hand exact figures for 1900, but I am told that it is between 
three and four times as much as the central government fur- 
nishes. Now in the State of New York local taxation pro- 
duced $34,721,611 for public education, while the state gov- 
ernment supplied $4,616,769 for the same purpose. The total 



Digitized by 



Google 



62 RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN [April, 

population of the State in 1900 was 71268,0 12, so that the 
State supplied a little over fifty cents per capita. The attend- 
ance in the New York public schools throughout the State for 
the year 1900 was 873,157 pupils. Now Spain, with two and 
one-half times the population of the State of New York in 
1900, supplied twice as many pupils to her public schools, and 
the central government supplied for education about twice as 
much money as the central government of the State of New 
York. New York is nearly the foremost (and certainly the 
richest and most populous) State in the Union, and when we 
find that Spain is by no means lagging far behind the pace 
set by the Empire State in the matter of education, we can 
see that a prejudiced view — based upon antiquated figures and 
compared with recent development here — has been taken of 
Spain in educational matters. She is by no means as far 
ahead as she ought to be; but she is not so far behind as 
hostile critics would make out. 

The same thing holds true of the statement that Spain is 
''priest-ridden,'' that there are two many priests, friars, and 
monks there. Perhaps there may be ; and the enjoyment of 
the endowments of a State Church and ancient privileges may 
have dulled their energy and rendered them less active and 
strenuous in their sacred callings. A keen and exhaustive 
study of the situation could alone determine that. Certainly 
I saw and conversed with as bright, keen, and eager*faced 
clergy in Spain as I have here in New York. Yet, when stress 
is laid upon mere numbers as the root of the evil, a little 
comparison will do much to clear the mind. 

When I was in Madrid a Radical newspaper published a 
severe article in which it asserted that the vast number of 
celibates (priests, monks, and friars) in the clergy — and it par- 
ticularly gave the figures for the city and province of Madrid 
— was an evil» particularly because it meant the withdrawal from 
civil life of many individuals who might otherwise be the honored 
heads of flourishing families. But the illustrated journal ''A. 
B. C/' replied by, a telling article in which it quoted statistics 
to show that in the city and province of Madrid there were 
already far more bachelors above the age of thirty years» who 
were laymen, than the entire number of religious mentioned, 
and it sarcastically asked why ''they did not become the 
honored heads of flourishing families ** for the welfare of Spain. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 63 

In Spain there were in 1900 (I have no later figures) some 
11,000 male religious — priests, monks, friars, and lay religious 
^-and these, in a population of 18,617,000, give about an 
average of one religious or clergyman to every 1,692 persons. 
By the United States religious census for 1906 (there are no 
figures available for 1900) there were i64>830 ministers and 
clergy of all kinds among a population that year of 84,246,250. 
This gives our own country one clergyman to every 511 persons, 
or over three times as many as Spain possesses per capita. Yet 
we are not prone to think that the United States is ''clergy- 
ridden.'' A little comparison of the relative situation of things 
would make the usual criticism of Spain a little more charitable 
and certainly more judicious. 

Some eighteen miles away to the northwest lies the village 
of Escorial, where Philip II. built the pile which has t^en that 
name to itself in the minds of most sightseers. Escorial (from 
the Latin scoria) was the forlorn village surrounding certain 
iron mines, where the slag and cinders were the chief orna- 
ment of the landscape, at the foot of the Guadarrama moun- 
tains. This spot was selected by Philip II. to erect the great 
building which is at once a palace, a temple, a monastery, 
and a tomb, and which was the abiding-place of that monarch 
in the declining years of his life. When the traveler arrives 
by train, a dashing automobile takes him from the station up 
the hill to the centre of the village, where the famous build- 
ings are. The dull gray stone and severe architecture make 
it a part almost of the frowning Guadarramas which lie be- 
hind it High up oh the mountain side is a little plateau 
called '' Philip's Chair " (La Silla de Felipe) where it is said 
that the king caused a large throne- like chair to be placed in 
which he sat and watched the workmen build the Escorial. 

The gray building is situated in an enormous courtyard, 
with still an inner court. Toward the east is the templo or 
church, which is built in a severe style of architecture, simple 
yet resembling St. Peter's Church at Rome. The high altar 
has a retablo or reredos of carved wood, which reaches up to 
the celling. On the Gospel side in a niche over the sanctuary 
are « the figures of Charles V. and his family kneeling and fac- 
ing the altar. On the epistle side is a similar bronze group of 
Philip II. and some of his family (he had four wives) in a similar 
attitude. High up in the rear of the church is the famous 



Digitized by 



Google 



64 RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN [April, 

coro altOf the choir in which Philip sat in his stall as a monk 
and which had the little postern door by his side through 
which he entered and received commnnications. Here he was 
kneeling when the news was brought to him that Don John of 
Austria had won the battle of Lepanto, and rising he com- 
manded the choir to sing the Te Deum. This choir loft is sup- 
ported upon a single flat arch or vaulting which trembles under 
the footsteps. It is said that the architect was told that it 
would fall if it remained as he built it, and thereupon he placed 
an elaborate pillar in the centre of the vaulting underneath, and 
then requested his critics to examine it. TThey walked over it 
again and again and pronounced it entirely safe. He then took 
them down into the church below and showed them first that 
the central pillar did not reach the vaulting by nearly an inch 
and besides that it was made of painted paper. The choir 
loft also contains a huge reading-desk some fifteen feet high 
for the great antiphonals to rest upon, and yet the slightest 
touch of the hand will turn it in any direction as though it 
were as light as a feather. 

Under the high altar, down a long staircase, lie the sarco- 
phagi of the kings of Spain and their wives who have borne 
kings. Queens who were childless, or whose sons did not 
succeed to the throne, are not interred in these vaults. There 
they range from Charles V. (or rather Charles I., as he is 
known in Spain) down to Alfonso XII., the father of the 
present king, and there are yet thirteen granite co£Sns un- 
named and to be filled. Beyond here and to the south lie the 
tombs of the Princes of Spain, some of them quite beautiful 
and all quite modern. The most beautiful is the tomb to Don 
John of Austria, who was killed by order of Philip II., be- 
cause he won too much favor as the Regent of the Netherlands. 

The monastery (of St. Lawrence) covers the whole of the 
southern portion of the building and possesses a fine library 
with some magnificent early Greek and Latin manuscripts. A 
peculiarity about the placing of the books on the shelves is 
that the gilt edges are turned towards the on- looker while the 
backs are turned towards the wall — the reverse of the ordin- 
ary book shelf. In the great courtyard of the Hebrew kings 
(so-called because of the gigantic statues of David, Solomon, 
Josiah, Josaphat, Ezechias and Manasseh) the ill-fated sol- 
diers and sailors of the Invincible Armada were blessed before 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 6$ 

it set sail for England. High up on the side of the great 
central dome over the church is a speck of gold, but it is actually 
half the size of a man's hand, placed there by the bravado of 
Philip, as a proof that he had not, as his enemies said, spent 
all the gold of his kingdom in building the Escorial, but had 
still some to spare to adorn the roof. The palace he built is 
on the northern side of the vast pile, but it is too formal and 
gloomy and has never been occupied except for brief occa- 
sions by the Spanish court. Perhaps the royal occupants real- 
ize too keenly that they will come one day to the Escorial to 
stay, and do not care to anticipate that last coming. We 
parted from the gray buildings with keen regret, for our stay 
had been too short to explore them thoroughly, for every rocm 
is filled with history. The study, bedtoom, and antichamber of 
Philip II., where he spent his last days and where he died, 
made everything a reality for us. 'A walk through the park 
and a visit to the Princes' Palace, a modern French toy • house 
almost, set at the end of the park by Philip V., completed 
and rounded out our visit by bringing it down to the times of 
the Bourbon kings. Just near the station is a little Spanish 
Posada^ the mistress of which provided us with as nice a cup 
of tea (and Lipton's tea at that!) as can be furnished anywhere 
in England or America. 

The city of Toledo lies some fifty miles from Madrid and 
is the ancient capital of Spain. Here it was that the Gothic 
kings ruled and here King Reccared and King Wamba held 
court in the days when Spain was converted to Christianity a 
second time after its invasion by the Goths and Visigoths. 
Not until towards the end of the Middle Ages was the capital 
transferred to Madrid. Toledo sits high upon a hill where 
the River Tagus sweeps round it in a semi- circle. It was 
for many centuries a stronghold of the Moors when they held 
more than half of Spain. It defied capture from the river side, 
but was at last taken by the Castilians from the landward side. 
Even yet, outside the church of San Juan de los Reyes, there 
hang on the walls countless numbers of iron chains and shackles 
which were stricken from the limbs of Christian captives at 
the taking of the city. The city bears a distinctly Moorish 
character in its narrow, winding, and confused streets. It is 
said to be one of the hardest Spanish cities to find one's way 
around in, and we marveled much at the dexterity of the driver 
VOL. xci.— 5 



Digitized by 



Google 



66 RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN [April, 

who was so successful in piloting the carriage without scraping 
the doorways on either side or squeezing the passersby flat 
against the walls of the houses. 

There are two bridges which cross the Tagus by which 
one may enter Toledo. The one further up stream, the Bridge 
of Alcantara (Arabic, al-kantara^ the bridge), leads from the 
railway station directly into the main part of the city by a 
winding road which goes past the wall and the Alcazar or 
citadel, which is now a military training school — the West 
Point of Spain. This bridge, as might be surmised from its 
Arabic name, goes back to the time of the Moors. The lower 
Bridge of St. Martin is further down the river at the other 
end of the city and has a romantic story connected with it. 
The architect who first planned the bridge had nearly com- 
pleted it; the wooden scaffolding was still in position and the 
arches were about to be finished. On going over his calcula- 
tions he discovered that his bridge would not be strong enough 
to bear any weight, and that when the king, court, and clergy 
passed over it the arches would fall. He was wild with despair 
and confided his discovery and grief to his wife. In the dead 
of night, while the city was all asleep, the devoted wife crept 
pown to the water's edge and set fire to the scaffolding which 
supported the centring. When the whole bridge fell in the 
people and court attributed the calamity to the fire. The 
architect remodeled his plans and the bridge was built again, 
and ever since has stood firm and true. When it was finished 
the wife publicly confessed her doings to Archbishop Tenorio, 
but instead of making her husband pay the expenses of re- 
building the bridge, he complimented him on the treasure that 
he possessed in such a wife. 

The Cathedral of Toledo is, of course, the great centre of 
attraction and its history dates back as far as 587. St Ilde- 
fonso was one of the early Archbishops and a national hero of 
Spain. The Moors conquered the city in the year 700. In 
712 they turned the great church into their MasjicUal^djami^ 
or chief mosque, and held it for 300 years. Even when 
Alfonso VI. captured the city in 1085 he permitted the Moors 
to retain it for Moslem worship. But in a year or so dissen- 
sions broke out between the Moslems and the Christians, and 
in 1087 the Christians took forcible possession of the build- 
ing and turned it into a church again. St. Ferdinand (Fer- 



Digitized by 



Google 



igioj RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 67 

dinand III.) caused the old building to be torn down and 
in 1227 laid the foundation stone for the present cathedral. 
It was completed in 1493, the year after the discovery of 
America. After the taking of the city from the Moors, the 
Archbishop of Toledo was made the Primate of Spain, and 
ever since it has been the primatial See. The Court which 
was established here under Alfonso VI. remained until 1561, 
when Philip II. transferred the capital to Madrid. The great 
Archbishops of Toledo are known all over the world. The 
names of Cardinal Gonzaliz de Mendoza, the friend of Columbus, 
and of Cardinal Ximenes de Cisn^ros, the great patron of learn- 
ing, are among the brightest in history. The cathedral itself 
is one of the most imposing Gothic monuments of Europe; it 
is 4cx^ feet long and 195 feet wide, covering about the same 
area as the^Cathedral of Cologne, and its stained glass windows 
are the finest of their time. There 'is only one note which 
jars upon the exquisite harmony of perfectly executed Gothic 
architecture — the aperture pierced through to the roof over the 
ambulatory behind the high altar by Narciso Tom^ in 1732 — 
a *^ fricassee de marbre ** as a disgusted Frenchman called it. 
It is called the trasparente or skylight by the Spaniards, and 
amid the chaos of angels and clouds which adorn it in a 
most rococo fashion, is the Archangel Raphael kicking his 
feet in the air and holding a large golden fish in his hand. 

The Cmpilla May^r or high altar, as in all Spanish cathe- 
drals, is separated from the choir and is enclosed by a beau- 
tiful teja or iron screen, a monument of the art of the black- 
smith, with all the beauty and tracery of delicate sculpture. 
Behind the altar is the retablo or wooden reredos, made of larch* 
wood gilded and painted in the richest Gothic style, erected 
under Cardinal Ximenez. Its five stories or stages represent 
scenes from the New Testament, the figures being life size and 
larger. The choir, which is in the centre of the cathedral, and 
its choir stalls are magnificent specimens of carved walnut* 
The 54 medallions represent scenes in the conquest of Granada 
and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. The marble outside 
of the choir is studded with bas-reliefs of the Old Testament. 

The most peculiar thing about the cathedral — that which 
differentiates it from other cathedrals in and out of Spain — is 
the Mozarabic Chapel in the southwest angle, below the great 



Digitized by 



Google 



68 RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN [April, 

tower. The rite of Spain originally seems to have been the 
Gothic rite, not the Roman, or as it is also known, the rite of 
St. James. The Goths and Visigoths of Spain, when converted 
to Christianity, seem to have used this rite altogether. How- 
ever, on the rise of Arianism, the Gothic races of Spain seem 
to have readily embraced the error, and for a long time Arian- 
ism flourished upon Spanish soil, teaching its doctrine that the 
Son was not equal to the Father. When King Reccared in 
586 renounced the errors of Arius and became a true Catholic, 
the Gothic rite, which had been practiced and used alike by 
Catholic and Arian, became in some way seemingly identified 
with Arianism. The Advent of the Moors and their domination 
in Spain left the question of rites undetermined. The Catholic 
Christians of Toledo and other Spanish cities were allowed by 
the Arabs to practice their religion und^r certain restrictions, 
but they adopted the Arabic language and many Moorish cus- 
toms, and in consequence became known as Mozdrahes or '' half- 
Arabs/' The Mass which they celebrated and the rites which 
they followed were the old Gothic Mass and ritual. In the 
aorth of Spain, in Aragon and Castile, the Roman rite was fol- 
lowed, and the Gothic rite became practically unknown, or at 
least disused. After the conquest of the southern part of Spain 
by Christian arms and the expulsion of the Moors, the Chris- 
tians of Toledo came again into their own. 

But those were troublous times and the Gothic rite gradu- 
ally waned and there came grave question as to whether it 
should be used by the Church or not. There is a legend that 
a huge fire was built to try the question by fire, and two Mis- 
sals, one of each rite, were cast into the flames. The Roman 
Missal leaped out of the flames unscathed ; the Gothic Missal 
remained there unconsumed. It was decided that both rites 
were proper for the worship of the Church. Then Cardinal 
Ximenes came to the rescue for perpetuity. He bad beautiful 
editions of the Gothic Missal printed — some of these editions 
may be seen here in New York at the Hispanic Museum — and 
he established the Mozarabic Chapel in the Cathedral of Tole- 
do, where the Gothic rite was to be used as long as the cathe* 
dral should stand. 

I had long been acquainted with the rite and had been in 
correspondence with Don* Jorje Abad y Perez, the Capellan 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 69 

Capitular of the Mozarabic Chapel at Toledo. Through his 
courtesy several years ago I became possessed of a fine Gothic 
Missal, and the Hispanic Museum is indebted likewise to his 
courtesy and advocacy for the fine specimens of the Gothic 
Missals which it possesses. So when we ' had inspected the 
cathedral as much as we cared to for the first time, we made 
our call upon Don Jorje. He begged us to excuse him for re- 
citing the vesper office in choir, but when that was finished — 
and we saw the Mozarabic canons file into their stalls and re- 
cite the office — he put himself entirely at our service, and not 
only accompanied us over the cathedral again, but went with 
us around the city and for a long excursion outside the walls 
and across the Tagus. Altogether he was a charming man to 
.talk to, his chief regret, as he expressed it, being that he did 
not speak English. One could tell by looking at him that he 
was of Gothic origin, for I was asked to translate to him the 
remark that he was one of the few Spaniards we had seen with 
brown hair and the bluest of blue eyes. He accompanied us 
to the Hotel Castilla and took coffee with us, and on parting 
hoped that he might some day visit New York, which we had 
described to him, I am afraid, somewhat grandiloquently. 

Up to i860 there were six Mozarabic churches in Toledo, 
besides the chapel in the cathedral, but now there are only 
two. The Mozarabic Mass is said in the others at certain in- 
tervals during the year, notably on St. James' day. There are 
also some five other places in Spain where the Mozarabic rite 
is celebrated on certain days in the year, so that the rite his* 
torically may never die out there. The rite is a personal and 
family privilege and belongs to those whose families have 
always been Mozarab. Others who follow the Roman rite are 
not permitted to pass over to the Mozarabic rite, nor are 
Mozarab families or individuals permitted to take up the 
Roman rite except in case of marriage, where the division of 
the family may result from separate rites. The decay of the 
Mozarabic rite represents, therefore, the dwindling numbers of 
the representatives of the old Mozarab families. 

The Mozarabic Mass is peculiar in many points, and quite 
Oriental in many of its characteristics. In some respects its 
Latin is quite archaic, and the names for the various parts of 
the Mass are quite different from the familiar names to which 



Digitized by 



Google 



70 RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN [April, 

we are accastomed. The Psalms are from the old Italic and 
not from the Vulgate, and the expression '^Oremus'' is only 
used twice in the Mass; once before the ''Agios/' a prayer 
not found in the Roman Mass, and again before the "Pater 
Noster." The Gradual is called the Psalleudo, the Offertory 
the Sacrificium, the Preface the Inlatio; while the Sanctus be- 
gins in Latin and ends in Greek. The Creed, which is usually 
called the Bint (couplets), is said immediately after the conse- 
cration, in couplets, each one divided off from the other, and 
immediately after that the Our Father is sung by the priest, 
who pauses at each petition while the choir responds '' Amen." 
For those who are learned in liturgies, I may add that the 
Mozarabic rite is the only western rite which has an epiclesis, 
which is said as the post pHdie on the feast of Corpus Christie 
In the Mozarabic Mass they read the Prophecy, the Epistle, 
and the Gospel, and have besides a Preface or Inlatio for nearly 
every feast day and Sunday in the year. Father Abad y Perez 
has compiled an excellent little Mozarabic Mass-book, contain- 
ing the whole Mass in Latin and Spanish, called Devocionario 
Musdrabif which is sold for a very modest sum at all the 
Toledo book shops. 

In addition to the cathedral and its old-fashioned cloisters 
with quaint decaying frescoes, the church of Santo Tom^ is well 
worth a visit, if it be only to see the pictures of El Greco. 
Besides there are two old Jewish Synagogues, afterwads turned 
into churches: Santa Maria la Blanca and La Sinagoga del 
Transito, afterwards called San Benito. Both are now merely 
architectural monuments, no longer used for worship. The 
cloisters adjoining the church of San Juan de los Reyes have 
been skillfully restored and show all the delicate tracery of 
column and arch designed by the Gothic architect, and hard by 
is the Escuila de Indusirias Ariisiicas, where young Toledans 
are taught in both day and night schools to revive and con- 
tinue the ancient arts of Spain. 

Toledo is remarkable for its manufacture of swords and for 
its inlaid gold upon steel and iron. It has also a modern 
arms factory just outside the walls, but the traveler's attention 
is chiefly directed to the beautiful swords and daggers twisted 
into curves and knots in the armorer's show-windows. You are 
asked to buy the ^'armas blancas" or ^'armas negras" — either 



Digitized by 



Google 



f9IO.] Is IT /, RABBI f 71 

of glistening steel or dull iron containing the marvelous trac* 
eries of bright, flashing gold imbedded in Moorish patterns. 
You may see in Toledo also the posada or inn where Cervantes 
lodged and where he is said to have written, or at least con- 
ceived, a portion of Don QuixoU. We were told that if one 
brought his own food, he could lodge and dine there even now 
at a peseta (20 cents) a day. However we did not care to make 
the experiment. 



IS IT I, RABBI? 

BY RICHARD L. MANGAN. S.J. 

Out of the darkness, yearning for the light, 

I saw Thy sign and followed from afar. 
Until above Thy presence, shining bright, 

Hovered the mystic star : 
With the poor shepherds, poor to Thee I came. 

And the strange pity of Thy new life saw — 
£temity bound in our human frame, 
God in a little straw t 

I^ater Thy hand clasped mine and gently led 

My faltering steps to knowledge fairer still; 
I knew Thee in the breaking of the Bread, 

Knew Thee and loved Thy will. 
Yea, I have talked with Thee, seen Thine eyes melt 

In pity o'er the sorrows of mankind. 
Dipped my hand with Thee in the dish and felt 
I^ve kindle heart and mind. 

Can he that dippeth with Thee, then, betray, 

Deny Thee? Ah, what bitter pain were mine, 
Should those sad eyes at last be turned away 

In agony Divine ! 
I see Thee hanging on the awful Rood, 

I hear Thy mournful, broken-hearted cry: 
•* One is a traitor." Oh, ingratitude I 
Master, it is AOt I? 



Digitized by 



Google 



CATHOLICS AND BOOKS. 

BT LOUIS O'DONOVAN, D.D. 

I. 

" Some loTe horses, some birds, some wild beasts ; but from my childhood a remarkable 
desire has invested me to acquire and possess books." * 

I.— A FEW GENERAL IDEAS ON BOOKS. 

OR most of as few things are more useful than 
good books. As truth is the object and food 
of our intellects, and as books are great store- 
houses of truth, ft follows clearly that scarcely 
anything is more needed than our books, and noth- 
ing deserves more careful choosing. And, like friends, books 
should be few and well chosen. 

Not only do almost all the truths about the past, but a very 
great number of those concerning the present and the future, 
reach our minds through the medium of books. Especially 
is this true with regard to Catholics; for those holiest, most 
precious traditions concerning the past, practices for the pres- 
ent, and hopes for the future, are recorded and prophesied in 
books, particularly in Thi B^ok par excellence — the Bible — 
wherein ''What things soever were written, were writtea for 
our learning." t 

And while Ruskin observes that: "All books are divided 
into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all 
time"; the Bible must, if put in any class, be pre-eminent 
In its unique position, because it is the inspired record of the 
revealed word of God. 

These pages treat only of books that may be included in 
the latter half of Ruskin's division. A very few words of ad- 
vice are given with regard to those of the first division. 

For herein only such books as have made men and history 
are of interest. They may be books of long, long ago, yet 
'' down the dim, distant valley " their echoes still reverberate — 
yes, in some cases, thrill and impel hearts to action. For, 

* An inscription in Greek •Ter the entrance to the*public library at Constantinople, at- 
tributed to Julian the Apostate : LonuUr, Dt BibliotkecU : UltrajicH, 1680, p. 132. 

t Rom. ZT« 4. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] CATHOLICS AND BOOKS 73 

wrote Channingi ''God be thanked for' books. They are the 
voices of the distant and the dead, and make as heirs of the 
spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true revellers. They 
give to all| who will faithfully use them, the society, the spir- 
itual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter 
how poor I am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own 
time will not enter my obscure dwelling ; if the sacred writers 
will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton 
will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shake- 
speare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the work- 
ings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his 
practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual com- 
panionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though ex- 
cluded from what is called the ' best society in the place where 
I live.' " 

If the best books be known only to a few, so much greater 
is the loss to those who know them not. Possibly these poor 
pages may move many souls to become .brothers of the /ew. 

At least it cannot be rash to hope great things of Catholics, 
those guardians of the word of God, whose names were at least 
once, in Baptism, written in the book of life. It cannot be 
rash to expect that Catholics, of even a moderate education, 
refinement, and income, should know something of the treas- 
ures of their own books — books whose intrinsic beauty and 
worth have appealed even to those without the true fold. Of 
Catholics surely let it not be said — at least truthfully— that 
they are devourers of daily newsprints and gaudy magazines. 

In this paper, which does not pretend to be an erudite or 
exhaustive treatise, but only a sketch of some of the odds and 
ends gathered by the writer in his readings, it is hoped that 
by way of a by-product, some evidence may be produced to 
show that the slurs about the ignorance and grossness of the 
Ages of Faith, misnamed the '' Dark Ages,'' may receive some- 
thing of an answer, at least in regard to the cultivation of 
books. To stimulate good reading is, of course, the writer's chief 
purpose, for, as Mrs. Browning says in Aurora Liigh^ ''The 
world of books is still the world." 

Nor can apathy exculpate itself by alleging that the study was 
made in youth. For every one's memory grows blurred, even if 
his intellectual view was once so broad and piercing as not to 
require further use of book-lore. Did we act otherwise would 



Digitized by 



Google 



f4 CATHOLICS AND BOOKS [April, 

not oor daily bath, and thrice daily meals, and other atten- 
tions shown to our bodies, give the lie to oar catechism pro- 
fession, that ''We should take more care of our soul than 
of our body '' ? For if it be true that '' The camelion changes 
its color as it is a£fected by sadness, anger, or joy, or by the 
color upon which it sits, and we see an insect borrow its lus- 
tre and hue from the plant upon which it feeds,"* it is equally 
true that not only our bodies but also our souls cannot but be 
strong and true, or weak and false, according as they are fed 
upon good food or bad. This surely is truth and wisdom, as 
Boethius — that charming, though too- little- read philosopher of 
the sixth century (Christian or not it is difficult to decide)— 
describes the vision of his mistress* philosophy, saying: ''In 
her right hand she carried hooks^ and in her left a sceptre.'* f 
St John Chrysostom, says: "It is impossible that a man 
should be saved who neglects assiduous pious readings^ or con- 
sideration/*! 

II.— BOOKMAKERS OF OLD. 

Having made our introduction, what is to follow may be 
divided into two parts: the first might be called the material 
side of books, and the second, for want of a better expression, 
the spiritual aspect of books ; or, again, one the body, and - 
the other the soul-life of books. 

Under the former heading there will be a few words with 
regard to the material form, or evolution of books, and some 
facts and figures as to the writing of books by hand, the cost 
and labor of the same, and the sizes of some of the early 
libraries gathered or made and used by Catholics. 

Under the head or caption of the spiritual side of books 
are grouped some stories of how most of the Saints loved 
books; how others, though fewer, professed not to need [thim ; 
how we should use books; what are the greatest and most 
helpful books for Catholics; and then an appeal to Catholics to 
write books. 

And first, as to the history of material, form, or evolution 
of books, we are told that " The most ancient manner of writ- 
ing was a kind of engraving, whereby the letters were formed 
in tablets of lead, wax, or wood, or like material. This was 

* Butler's Lives of the Saints, Preface. (To this inestimable storehouse of learning and 
edification the writer hopes others may turn with as much profit as he has done.) 
t Consolation of Philosophy. Bk. I. | Cone. 3 do Lataro. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Catholics and books 75 

done by styles made of iron, brass, or bone. Instead of such 
tablets leaves of papyrus, which grew on the banks of the Nile 
(also of the Ganges), were used first in Egypt; afterwards 
parchment, made of fine skins of beasts, was invented at Per- 
gamum. Lastly paper was invented, which was made of linen 
cloth (and wood). Books, anciently writ only on one side, 
were done np in rolls, and when opened or unfolded filled a 
whole room, as Martial complains; but when writ on both 
sides on square leaves, were reduced to narrow bounds, as the 
same poet observes/'* '* Antiquaries, by carefully examining 
the old manuscripts, have come to the conclusion that cotton 
paper was used in Italy as early as the tenth century or even 
the ninth; while no specimen of linen paper is supposed to 
be older than the fourteenth/' f For details and examples the 
standard book of reference on this subject is the monumental 
work, in Latin, of the Benedictine priest, John Mabillon, De re 
Diplomatica^ wherein are described many curious materials used 
formerly to make books, not only papyrus, the skin of the 
plant or weed that grows on the River Nile, but also rind and 
bark of trees, and skins of beasts and even of fish. Also the 
various colored inks — vermillion, gold, and silver, as well as 
the many different styles of letters and alphabets. Curious, 
too, is the system of shorthand therein described and attrib- 
uted to Tiro, the freeman of Cicero, embracing five thousand 
word-signs. 

This is not the place to describe at length bindings, shapes, 
sizes, weights, etc., of books, interesting as the study might 
be. But one example may give an idea as to the extent of 
the subject. We are told that the largest book yet printed 
is a colossal atlas, which is in the British Museum, and re- 
quires three men to carry it, being seven feet high, and weighs* 
ing eight hundred pounds. It is bound in leather, magnifi- 
cently decorated, and fastened with clasps of silver richly gilt 

To Catholics it is more interesting and edifying to leave 
aside the study of the general material make-up of books, 
and to get some idea of how our forefathers in the faith, and 
especially the priests and monks in their monasteries, wrote 
books by hand. The more so, since such a study may help 
to show us whether or not priests and monks were as lazy 
and ignorant as it is sometimes charged. This charge might 
well be answered by a few illustrations of some of their library 

* Butler, opus ciUttum, St. Casslan M., August 13. t Spalding, Misetliama, p. 698. 



Digitized by 



Google 



y6 Catholics and Books [April, 

buildings, or " sccrctaria," "chartaria/* "archivia," **scrinia/' 
"Hbraria," "scriptoria," where they wrote and preserved 
books, and which were so beautifully artistic and intelligently 
built. Bat architecture is not bibliography, which is our pres- 
ent subject. 

Abbot John of Trittenham, in A. D. 1480, said : " There is 
in my opinion no labor more becoming a monk than the writ- 
ing of ecclesiastical books." If one were allowed to moralize 
here, one would like to accentuate or expatiate on the word 
ecclesiastical. Let it be remembered also that Saints Albina 
and Melania the Younger, who lived in North Africa about 
the year A. D. 410, are said to have made it their occupation 
not only to read but also to copy good books. And if women 
outside the enclosure of convent walls so occupied themselves, 
one is not surprised to read that in the convent of Marseilles 
in the early sixth century some of the nuns transcribed holy 
books with ability and charm.* "In the eighth century, St. 
Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, writing to an Abbess, prays 
her to copy in golden letters the epistles of St Peter." f 
Indeed, it may be safely declared that this was a common ex- 
ercise or art in convents during the Ages of Faith. 

Nor were their brothers less assiduous in this labor. For 
in the life of St. Hilarion, the anchorite of the fourth century, 
who sailed from Egypt to Sicily to escape notoriety and 
secure seclusion, we read that "upon landing he offered to 
pay for his passage and that of his companions with a copy 
of the Gospels which he had written in his youth with his 
own hand."|: In the seventh decade of the next century An- 
astasius Bibliothecarius tells us in the Liber Poniificalis that 
Pope Hilary founded in Rome two libraries (perhaps more ac» 
curately two book- cases): ^* Fecit autem et duas biblioihecas.*^ % 
Witness, from the East, St. Stephen the Younger who was 
bom in Constantinople of rich parents and became a monk at 
the age of fifteen, near Chalcedon. He was made abbot at 
thirty, and was martyred A. D. 764. In his life we read how 
he "joined labor with prayer, copying books and making 
nets." II In writing books we are told that the ''Greater 
monasteries generally employed at least twelve copyists." ^ 

* Julia Addison, in Christian Art magazine for July, 1907. 

t Spalding, MiscelUnea, p. xo8. , % Butler, Id opus., October 22. 

^Migne Patroloiia LaOma, Tom. CXXVIII. || Butler, Livest November 28. 

^ Spalding, iiisctUamta, p. X09. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Catholics and books 77 

Nor was this labor pecoliar to monks only for the same aa- 
thority may be quoted to show how even bishops used to make 
books, for ''St. Osmund . . . disdained not when he was 
bishop (of Salisbury, in England, in the eleventh century) to 
copy and bind books with his own hands/'* 

Still later one of the most beautiful characters of all Chris- 
tian authors, Thomas k Kempis, was an example of the same 
common work, for ''Thomas had ever been an indefatigable 
writer, and copied books innumerable, both for the use of the 
monastery and for sale. How truly he revered the work of the 
copyist we know from his twentieth 'concio/ in which with 
delicate tenderness he writes as follows: 'Verily it is a good 
work to transcribe the books which Jesus loves, by which the 
knowledge of Him is diffused, His precepts taught, and their 
practice inculcated.' '' f 

These are a few examples, taken far apart as to time and 
place, indicating how widely spread among the clergy of the 
Ages of Faith was the practice of making books. In some 
cases as the labor was hard the rich might pay others to 
transcribe for them. An instance of this was St. Ambrose, 
a convert and a very prominent citizen of Alexandria, well- 
known for his wealth and ability, and an intimate friend 
of that giant soul and devoted scholar Origen. Ambrose 
"maintained for his use amanuenses, or clerks, to copy his 
books, besides several other transcribers for his service." t But 
oiten the copyist was a monk, and, either actually or by choice 
and profession, poor. The monks with whom St. John Chrysos- 
tom lived in his twenties "rose at midnight and after the 
morning hymns and songs, i. ^., matins and lauds, all remained 
in their cells where they read the Holy Scriptures, and some 
copied books.'' % And so, too, we read of St. Dunstan in the 
ninth century at Glastonbury in England, in his cell five by two 
and a half feet in size, painting and copying good books. 

Where it could be done the work proceeded more rapidly 
in a large community, for there the work could be system* 
atized. One monk slowly read aloud, while many copied down. 
However, sounds were at times mistaken or misunderstood, and 
thus many errors of the copyist occurred. 

* Butler, Liuts^ December 4. 

t SU Thomas a Kimpis, by Sir F. R. Crui»e. M.D., D.L., " CathoKc Truth Society, of 
Ireland." 

% Butler, (Hus citatum, St. Leonldas, April 22. $ Idtm opus, January 27. 



Digitized by 



Google 



78 Catholics and books [April, 

''Many different arts were represented in the making of 
the medieval book. Of those employed first came the scribe, 
whose duty it was to form the black, glossy letters with his 
pen; then came the painter, who mast also understand how 
to prepare mordants, and to lay gold leaf, burnishing it with 
an agate ; • . . after him the binder gathered up the leaves 
of vellum, and put them together under covers with heavy 
clasps. ... In an old manuscript in the monastery of St. 
Aignon the writer has thus expressed his feelings: 'Look out 
for your fingers 1 Do not put them on my writing 1 You do 
not know what it is to write 1 It cramps your back, it ob- 
scures your eyes, it breaks your side and stomach 1 ' "* " In a 
Sarum Missal, at Alnwick, there is a colophon quoted by my 
lamented friend, Dr. Rock, in his Textile Fabrics. It is appro- 
priate both to the labors of the old scribes and also to those 
of their modern readers: 'Librum Scribendo — Jon Whas Mo- 
nachus laborabat — Et mane surgendo multum corpus macer- 
abat.' " t Translation : The monk Jon Whas labored in writing 
a book and by getting up early greatly reduced his flesh. 

It may be of interest to know that this art of writing and 
illuminating and painting on vellum is not quite dead, nor al- 
together a lost art. An exhibition of a dozen or more of 
pieces, altar cards, sonnets of Shakespeare, etc., executed by a 
Catholic woman of Baltimore, recently drew many admirers of 
a handicraft rarely seen nowadays. But of course this labor- 
ious method of book-making could not be used in mercantile 
competition with printing. Every one nowadays wants books. 
" It is more than probable that where the ancients reckoned 
their books by hundreds, we now reckon them by tens of 
thousands."! Even in the early stages of the printing-press 
books were multiplied with incredible rapidity. "From the 
year 1455 to 1536, a period of 81 years, . . . 33,933«ooo 
books were printed/'^ "More than 18,000 works, it has been 
calculated, left the press before the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury.'' II And hence illumination is seldom undertaken now->a- 
days; yet, "a thing of beauty is a joy forever.'' 

Apropos of earliest printing, it may be of interest to know 
that there is a striking passage in St. Jerome where he speaks 

* Addison in magazine of Christian Att, July, 1907. 

t Andrew Lang, Thi Library, Chapter III. 

I Spalding, MisctlUuua, p. 70Z. $ Id opus ^ p. 707. 

I Andrew Lang, Tkt Library. Chapter IIL 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Catholics and books 79 

of letters on box or ivory, which he directed to be given to a 
young girl to be used as playing blocks for her education. * 
Notwithstanding the fact that these were not used for print- 
ing, yet they might have been suggestive in that line. 

Again a curious case is that of St. Didymus, who lived 
through nearly the entire fourth century, even though he had 
lost his sight when just beginning to learn his letters. Never- 
theless he afterwards got the alphabet cut in wood and learned 
to distinguish the letters by touch. With the assistance of 
hired readers and copyists he became acquainted with almost 
all authors sacred and profane, and acquired a thorough knowl- 
edge of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, 
astronomy, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and chiefly 
a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.'' f 

Having seen something of the manner of making books, the 
next question that arises is: Were they very plentiful ? If so, the 
labor of the writers was, of course, correspondingly great and 
their personal, painstaking, praiseworthy efforts are deserving of 
the eternal gratitude of all- book-lovers. '^ We are not perhaps 
at this day in possession of one-tenth part of the standard works 
which were once classical in Greece and Rome. . . . Out 
of 140 books of history, which we know that Livy wrote, only 
35 are now extant. Varro, the most learned of the ancient 
Romans, is known to have written no less than 500 volumes, 
of which but two have come down to our day. Of the 40 
books of history composed by Polybius, but five now remain; 
while, of the same number composed by Diodorus Siculus, but 
15 are extant. • . . Goth, Vandal, Iconoclast, Saracen, all 
conspired for the destruction of ancient libraries. St. Athana* 
sius, in his letter to Pope Mark, complains of the destruction of 
records by the Arians, saying: ' They have burned every one of 
our books, not leaving one fragment on account of the faith of 
truth. They burned the Nicene Synod for the shame of us and 
all Christians/ (The Caliph Omar ordered the 700,000 MSS. 
tomes of the library of Alexandria to be burned in A. D. 632.) 
Later, in France, the Huguenots burned the famous library of St. 
Benedict-sur-Loire, with its 5,000 MSS. volumes. ... In 
Germany, the war of the peasants sent 100,000 men to the 
tomb, and consumed, no doubt, more than twice that number 

* Epistle to Laeta. Fiani H litUroi vtl buxeat, vel ebumnu. Pat. Lat. Migne, Tom. 
XXII. CoU 871. 

t Butler's LivtSt St. Jerome, September a6. 



Digitized by 



Google 



8o Catholics and books [April, 

of MSS. volames. The great library of the city of Munster, 
one of the most famous in all Germany, was destroyed by the 
Anabaptists.''* So that the works now extant are bat im- 
perfect witnesses to the gigantic labors spent in making and 
preserving knowledge, science, art, and culture from oblivion 
by the protecting hand of books. But now let us see some 
examples of patient toil entailed in the copying out by hand 
of these priceless treasures of ancient lore. 

Of St Marcellus, monk of Ephesus, and a Basilian of the 
fifth century, we read: ''The greater part of the night he 
spent in prayer and the day he used in copying good books, 
by the sale of which he gained not only his own subsistence, 
but also wherewith to relieve the poor/'f 

Coming down a century later and crossing from the Orient 
to Ireland a charmingly humorous, yet also very serious, story 
is told of St Columba, which shows how difficult it was to 
obtain books and how highly they were valued. In the year 
562 a synod was held in Ireland at Teilte, now Teltowe, a 
village near Kells, in County Meath. St Columba, of a royal 
house, Abbot of Derry and other Irish monasteries, when he 
was on a visit to his former teacher. Abbot Finnian, had 
privately made a copy of his (Finnian's) Psalter. Finnian 
claimed this as his [property (because a copy of his book), 
and the Irish Over King, Diarmaid, Columba's cousin, de* 
cided for Finnian. By this, and also through the Church's 
right of asylum by the king, Columba was so embittered that 
he stirred up an insurrection against him. ''It came to a 
bloody battle and Diarmaid was forced to flee. In consequence 
of this the Synod of Teilte, without inviting Columba, passed 
a sentence of excommunication upon him, because he had been 
guilty of causing bloodshed. Coli^mba himself appeared at the 
Synod and the excommunication was removed, but it was laid 
upon Columba that he must convert as many heathens as there 
were Christians who had perished through his fault He there- 
fore left his native country and became the Apostle of Scot*- 
land. The manuscript on which so much depended was sub- 
sequently venerated by the Irish as a sort of national, military, 
and religious palladium, and still exists in the possession of the 
O'Donnell family." t Two centuries later, A. D. 766, at York, 

* Spalding,* MUceUanetit p. 706. f Butler, Opus citatum, December 29. 

% Hefele, Councils, Vol. IV.. p; 381., sec. 285. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lo.] Catholics and books 8i 

England, we read of the gnat library belonging to the Church 
being committed to the care of Alcuin.* 

On the mainland of Europe no brotherhood of monks was 
less attached to this world than that of the Carthusians of St. 
Bruno's establishment, founded in the eleventh century. And 
** It was their chief employ to copy pious books, by which they 
endeavored to earn their subsistence, that they might not be 
burdensome to any.'' To quote from one of their most holy 
members, Peter the Venefable, ^' Their constant occupation is 
praying, reading, and manual labor, which consists chiefly in 
transcribing books.** And while it is recorded that when the 
Count of Nevers sent them a rich present of plate and they 
sent it back as useless to them, yet when the Count sent them 
a large quantity of leather and parchment for their books it is 
not said that they refused this.t 

•"The library of St. Benedict-sur-Loire had 5,000 volumes; 
and that of Novaliase, in Peidmont, upwards of 6,000 That of 
Spanheim, in Germany, had upwards of 3,000 volumes. These 
numbers will not appear so small when we bear in mind that 
those books were all written out by hand, and that many of 
them were quarto and folio volumes of the largest 8ize."|: In 
the fifteenth century, "Jacob of Breslau, . • • copied so 
many books that it was said six horses with difficulty could 
bear the 'burden of them.'"^ More interesting still, because 
more detailed, is a notice of one Othlonus of Ratisbon, while 
in the monastery of Tegernsee. He says of himself: ''I wrote 
many books. . • . After I became a monk of St. Emeran 
• . . the duties of schoolmaster ... so fully occupied 
my time that I was able to transcribe only by night and on 
holidays. ... I was, however, able to prepare, besides the 
books I had myself composed, nineteen Missals, three books of 
the Gospels and Epistles, besides four service books of Matins* 
After enumerating hundreds of other copies he concludes the 
list by saying : * Afterwards old age's infirmities of many kinds 
hindered me."'|| 

We should always bear in mind that in general " Each mon- 
astery had its scriptorium for those who were employed in 

* Butler, Opus ciiatum, St. Elbert, May 7. 

t Butler, Opus ciiatum, St Bruno, October 6. 

I Spalding, Misctllanea, pp. zzo and 704. 

% Addison, in Christian Art, July, 1907. 

I Addison, hco citato. 

VOL. XCI.— 6 



Digitized by 



Google 



83 Catholics and books [April 

transcribing books, which was the asaal occupation of the 
greater part of the monks for the hours allotted to manual 
labor; each monastery had its own library. There were seven- 
teen hundred manuscripts in the library at Petersborough. 
The library of the Grey Friars in London, built by Sir Rich- 
ard Whittington, was 129 feet long and 31 feet broad and well 
filled with books. Ingulf tells us that when the library at 
Croyland was burned in 109 1 they lost ^QO books. The great 
library at Wells had 25 windows in each side of it, as Leland 
inforqas us. At St. Augustine's, at Canterbury, prayers were 
always said for the benefactors to the library both alive and 
dead." • 

We to-day, who buy books for a few dollars, can scarcely 
realize, the cost of books in past times. Yet even to-day, in 
this world of dollars and cents, the catalogues of manuscript 
dealers show that old manuscript Missals are listed up to one 
and two thousand dollars. A recent writer on this subject 
speaks of '' 100 books worth ;C40,ooo/' i. e., $2,000 per volume; 
and of a sale where ;£'3,400 and £2,600 were bid for two 
famous psalters respectively : i. ^., $30,000 for the two books.t 

As a last example, and one nearer to us, the following is taken 
from Shea's History of the Catholic Church in the United States 
** A remarkable monument of patience and industry exists in two 
manuscript Missals which, in his (Father Schneider, an early 
missionary in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey) few and 
unconnected hours of leisure, he copied out, so as to have a 
Missal at different stations, and thus lighten the load he was 
required to carry. Poverty made it impossible to obtain a 
supply of Missals, but his patience supplied the want. One of 
these is in perfect preservation, a volume six inches wide, 
seven and a half inches long, and an inch thick, the handwriting 
plear and beautiful.'' | 

(to be concluded.) 

*Butler, Livest St. Augustine of Canterbury, May 26. 

t Lang, The Library, Chaps. H. and IH. 

tVol. II., pp.6s^. 



Digitized by 



Google 




SCHOLASTIC LOGIC AND MODERN THEOLOGY. 

BY W. H. KENT. O.S.C. 

|0 those who are familiar with the merits of our old 
theological literature, it is easy to understand the 
impatience of its professors when they are told 
that men of the present age find its arguments 
inadequate and unconvincing, and that if religion 
is to be defended at all it must needs be by some new apolo- 
getic, whether it be by Pragmatism, or by appeals to the rea- 
sons of the heart, or moral arguments from a cumulus of prob- 
abilities, or by the admission of some ** illative sense ^* unknown 
to Fathers and Schoolmen. In this matter it may be said that 
this impatience with the advocates of new apologetics and new- 
fangled philosophies of religion is based on something better 
than the natural instinct of conservatism. And the opponents 
of the new views may be pardoned for feeling that here, at any 
rate, they are standing on firmer ground than in certain other 
controversies. For while elsewhere it might seem that if the 
conservative side had all the weight of authority and the wit- 
ness of tradition, the newer critics could at least make some 
plausible claim to speak in the name of reason; how, on the 
contrary, the party of progress appears to be rejecting reason 
and leaving both traditional authority and rational logic on the 
side of the Conservatives. And even those who are enamored 
of novelties may admit that it must seem the height of unrea- 
son to forsake a system of apologetic which furnishes a for- 
midable array of solid arguments and logical syllogisms that 
issue in certain conclusions and betake ourselves to a nebulous 
region of moral senses and probabilities and plausible conjec- 
tures. At the same time it must be confessed that the dubious 
advantages of this change of old lamps for new are hardly 
made more apparent by the somewhat peremptory fashion in 
which it is forced upon us. The student who has followed the 
course of theological history in the past might be prepared to 
learn that there is still room for some fresh developments and 
modification of methods. And if some of the old arguments 



Digitized by 



Google 



84 SCHOLASTIC LOGIC AND MODERN THEOLOGY [April, 

are set forth in a new form or are supplemented by others 
possibly more adapted to the needs of some minds in the 
present age, this change would bear some analogy to the evo- 
lution of theology and Catholic apologetics in the time of St 
Thomas. But it is a very different thing to be told that the 
old method of reasoning in defence of religion is utterly worth- 
less and must now give way to a radically new system. And 
conservative apologists may be pardoned for suspecting that 
those who speak in this fashion must be very imperfectly ac- 
quainted with the literature thus utterly set aside as obsolete. 

On the other hand^ it can hardly be denied that some of 
the critics, at any rate, have been themselves trained in the 
old schools whose methods they are now disposed to disparage, 
and must be more or less familiar with their subject And it 
may be well to ask how they come to take such a different 
view of arguments which give so much satisfaction to others. 
It is certainly a pretty problem, whichever way we take it. 
For it would seem that either the critics must be blind if they 
fail to see the force of clear-cut definite arguments, or else the 
orthodox logicians must be the victims of some singular delu- 
sion. 

It must be confessed that some writers do not seem to find 
any difficulty in assuming some such blindness or folly on the 
part of their opponents. There are others, again, who appar- 
ently think that the whole matter may be explained by the 
spirit of the age or by the different mental characteristics of 
the various races or nations. Deductive logic, it seems, belongs 
to the Greeks and Romans and the medieval world which was 
molded in the old forms. But the Germanic races and the 
modern mind arrive at a knowledge of truth by experience and 
intuition. It may well be that certain methods of reasoning 
may be more in vogue in one place than in another, and each 
age may have its own characteristic fashions in thought as in 
other matters. But this theory will hardly furnish a satisfactory 
solution of the problem, for we find in fact that men of the 
same time and of the same race take widely divergent views. 
The minds of classic or medieval philosophers were not all cast 
in one mold; and in our own age there are still many who 
find more satisfaction in the formal methods of scholastic logic 
than in any newer means of knowledge. Is is easy to indulge 
in hasty generalizations and set the old arguments aside as 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] SCHOLASTIC LOGIC AND MODERN THEOLOGY 85 

obsolete. And, in like manner, it is easy for others to dismiss 
modem criticism in the same contemptuous fashion. But in 
both cases it would surely be better to exercise a little more 
critical discrimination — to recognize the good work done by 
the critics, while we reject the errors which arise, for the most 
part, from a misapplication of true principles, and to allow the 
validity and the high value of scholastic logic without over* 
looking its limitations or the danger of illusions. 

Opinions may differ as to the comparative importance of 
formal deductive logic, induction, or other methods of reason- 
ing on arriving to knowledge of the truth. But in any case 
the candid inquirer must admit the validity of a genuine de- 
ductive syllogism; in other words, the truth of the conclusion 
follows infallibly from the truth of the premises. This doc- 
trine is the keynote of scholastic logic. But it may be doubted 
whether any schoolman has asserted it more strongly than one 
of the best of modem philosophers, the late Edward von Hart- 
mann, albeit he, like his master Schopenhauer, has had much 
more to tell us of immanent logic and the method of intuition.* 
And what is true of one syllogism holds good also in the case 
of a series or sequence of syllogisms, wherein the premises of 
the last are conclusions of preceding syllogisms, the whole 
series resting, in the last analysis, on primary principles, i. e., 
propositions which are seen to be true when once their terms 
are rightly apprehended. The conclusion of the last syllogism 
in the sequence follows with absolute certainty from the truth 
of the first principles. This, in a few words, is the ideal de- 
ductive method preached and practised by the medieval mas- 
ters. And though it may have obvious limitations, for it can- 
not be applied in all fields of knowledge, ^.^.y in physical 
science and history, though even in its proper sphere it may 
leave room for other methods, it can hardly be denied that it 
has the merit of safety and certainty. The most obvious ob- 
jection urged against it is that it can bring no accession of 
new knowledge, since the truth of the conclusion is at least 
implicitly contained in the premises. But the best answer to 
this may be found in the rich results obtained in the profound 

* '* Aber bei gegebenen PrSmissen einen eiDfachen Schlofs falsch vollzieben, das liegt nach 
meiner Anffassung gerade so ausser den Bereicb der M5glichkeit, als dass ein von zwei 
Kr^ten gestossenes atom anders als in der Diagonale des Parallelogramens der KrMte geben 
sollte." Philosophii dis Unbewusstin, B. VII. Das UnbtwnssU im Dinien, pp. 234-5. First 
Edition* 



Digitized by 



Google 



86 SCHOLASTIC LOGIC AND MODERN THEOLOGY [April, 

and luminous literature of Catholic philosophy and theology. 
Dr. W. G. Ward was surely right in regarding this as one of 
the two greatest achievements of the human intellect. ^^The 
pure intellect really exhibits to the full its astonishing capa- 
bilitiesi I think, only on two subjects: pure mathematics, 
which are its creation, and in which it legitimately claims ab- 
solute supremacy; and dogmatic theology, in which it submits 
contentedly to the only position allowed it on the field of 
morals and religion, the humble and dutiful subserviency to 
the spiritual nature " {Ideal of a Christian Churchy Chapter V., 
8. 8, p. 281). 

These considerations may be enough to explain the rever- 
ence with which so many of us regard the deductive and logi- 
cal method of our scholastic masters, and the pained amaze- 
ment with which we learn that many modern minds fail to 
find satisfaction in these luminous and convincing syllogisms. 
For is not this ordered sequence of logical argument the only 
way of safety and certainty? On other paths we may be 
misled by fancy or feeling or the tricks of plausible rhetori- 
cians. But here, at any rate, there is no loophole for illusion. 
So it would surely seem so long as this method of pure de- 
ductive logic is considered in theory or in the abstract. So 
long as the sequence of syllogisms starts with premises which 
are strictly first principles whose truth is self-evident, it must 
he confessed that the method leaves no room for error or un- 
certainty. But, as might be expected, this is very seldom the 
case in practice. Life is short, and logic, if applied in this full 
and explicit fashion, would be exceedingly long. A writer, as 
a rule, has no need to go all the way back to first principles, 
in the strict sense of the term; for it will be enough for his 
purpose to argue from propositions which, though not self- 
evident, are likely to be accepted by his readers. And in 
this same way two scholastic disputants, so long as they can 
appeal to principles allowed on both sides, have no occasion to 
go any further or deeper. This is all very sensible and prac- 
tical, no doubt. But at the same time it is well to be re- 
minded that it leaves an opening for one of the illusions of 
logic. In many cases we may be sure the argument has really 
been carried back to its ultimate source, and, if time and space 
allowed, the writer could work it all out on paper with the 
fullness and fidelity of Euclid. But too often the logician who 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Scholastic Logic and modern theology %i 

careially proves his conclusions by syllogistic reasoning would 
have to admit, if closely pressed, that he has not made any 
rigorous examination of the grounds on which he holds the 
premises of his arguments, and too often the intelligent reader 
may have a shrewd suspicion that in the last analysis it will 
be found that the premises are resting securely— on the con- 
clusions. 

This curious form of inverted and illusory syllogism is, 
naturally enough, very common in political argumentation. It 
may be safely said that political measures are generally de- 
cided by motives that have little to do with logic, by class or 
party interests, by the pressure of circumstances, by popular 
clamor. But we can hardly expect to find these real grounds 
set forth in a king's speech, in the preamble of an Act of 
Parliament, or in the utterances of the minister who intro* 
duces the measure. Here, on the contrary, the case is sup- 
ported by reasons drawn from some broad principles of po- 
litical justice — adopted for the occasion. The conclusion is 
supplied by other causes, and the premises of the argument 
are taken up for the sake of the conclusion to be drawn from 
them. The principles, no doubt, furnish a sufficient proof of 
the conclusion. But it will often appear that they prove a 
little too much, and lead to other conclusions by no means ad- 
mitted by the political logician. His argument throughout has 
an air of unreality. For one feels that he has a firmer hold 
of the particular conclusion than of the general principles by 
which it is supported. 

It is obvious that the danger of this logical illusion is by 
no means confined to the field of politics. And it may be 
said that it is present in some degree whenever a logician is 
engaged in defending a proposition or a doctrine which be 
already holds on grounds independent of his arguments. For 
the fact that he firmly holds the conclusion may predispose 
him to the hasty acceptance of general principles that seem to 
support it 

'' Trifles light as air 
Are to the jealous confirmation strong 
As proofs of Holy Writ.'' 

And it is safe to say that a cherished conviction which 
rests on nobler grounds than jealousy may easily have a like 



Digitized by 



Google 



88 Scholastic Logic and modern Theology [April, 

effect and lend to light and worthless arguments a force that 
is not their own. In this way, it may well be that the Catho- 
lic theologian and the Christian apologist are specially liable 
to this danger of logical illusion. The very firmness and depth 
of their own faith in the doctrines they are defending may 
lead them to use arguments which really rest upon it, and can, 
therefore, have no weight for those who are not already be- 
lievers. 

It is hardly necessary to observe that in this method of 
argument the natural order of the deductive syllogism is in- 
verted. For by the very fact that one proposition is put forth 
as a premise in proof of another, it purports to be more cer- 
tain or at any rate better known to the reader than the con- 
clusion that is to follow from it. It is of this very point that 
Aristotle is speaking when he enunciates the dictum so tersely 
rendered in Scholastic Latin — '^ Propter quod unumquodque et 
illud magis.'' Analyt. PosL^ lib. I., c. 2. Cf. St. Thomas, lect. 
VI., in locum. Clearly, if the conclusions are proved with 
certitude from the premises, these must be more known or 
antecedently certain. Yet for the most part it must be con- 
fessed that the theologian or the apologist is assured of the 
truth [of his conclusion before be has ever heard of the 
arguments or the evidence adducible in its defence. And 
when he is establishing a point of Catholic doctrine by the 
customary proofs from Scripture, tradition, and theological 
reasoning, the conclusion, indeed, has the certitude of faith; 
but there may be room for some misgiving as to the authen- 
ticity of the passages cited in evidence or as to the cogency 
of the reasoning. The point is not that strong arguments are 
wanting, but that one who is already assured of his conclu- 
sion is in danger of being satisfied with inadequate evidence. 

This may be clearly seen in the case of Patristic evidence. 
The unanimous testimony of the Fathers is a sure criterion of 
Catholic doctrine. And even apart from the religious and 
ecclesiastical value of this testimony, which can only be appre- 
ciated by Catholics, the mere Rationalist must admit that the 
agreement of these early writers furnishes historical evidence 
of the antiquity and continuity of Catholic doctrine. The best 
and most unmistakable proof of the real tendency of this 
testimony of antiquity may be seen in the history of the 
Tractarians who set out to follow the Fathers and found them- 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] Scholastic logic and modern Theology 89 

selves landed in Rome. Clearly the writings of the Fathers do 
contain valid arguments in defence of the Catholic Faith. But 
to give these arguments their full force something more is 
needed than a few isolated passages cited in support of a 
theological thesis. Before the reader can be assured tliat he 
has got the genuine teaching of the ancient Fathers he must 
have the help of criticism to decide the authenticity of the 
work quoted, he must consult the context, and possibly other 
writings also, to ascertain the author's real mind, as well as 
other Fathers in order to distinguish a concordant testimony 
from local or personal opinions. Doubtless this has been done 
by such masters as Petavius and Thomasinus or by later writers 
on patrology. But it may be feared that few who read a 
theological text-book or manual of apologetics have made any 
serious study of the matter. And if they feel, rightly enough, 
that the passages cited in prcTof of the Catholic doctrine, and not 
those explained away in the answers to objections, give the 
real mind of the ancient Fathers, it may be safely said that 
this conviction arises from their faith in the teaching of the 
living Church, with which the belief of the Fathers must 
needs agree. On this point it may be well to recall some 
words written by Newman in one of his last and ablest efforts 
as an Anglican controversialist. 

"A Romanist then cannot really argue in defence of his 
doctrines ; he has too firm a confidence in their truth, if he is 
sincere in his profession, to enable him critically to adjust the 
due weight to be given to this or that evidence. He assumes 
his Church's conclusion as true; and the facts or witnesses he 
adduces are rather brought forward to receive an interpretation 
than to furnish a proof. His highest aim is to show the mere 
consistency of his theory, its possible adjustment with the 
records of antiquity. I am not here inquiring how much of 
high but misdirected feeling is implied in this state of mind ; 
certainly as we advance in perception of the truth, we all of 
us become less fitted to be controversialists'' (The Prophetical 
Office of the Churchy Lect. III.). 

This acute criticism of Catholic apologetics cannot be ac- 
cepted without some reservation. And it may be remarked 
that the writer himself in later life gave a practical proof that 
a *^ Romanist" can offer real argument in defence of his doc- 
trines. Yet, from what has been said above it may be seen 



Digitized by 



Google 



90 SCHOLASTIC LOGIC AND MODEttN THEOLOGY [April, 

that there is some real foundation for this account of the Catho- 
lic attitude to the testimony of antiquity. It is true that the 
Catholic receives his faith in the first instance from the teach- 
ing of the living Church, that he turns to the ancient records 
in the confident expectation of finding them in agreement with 
that teaching. This expectation is abundantly fulfilled. For 
the past furnishes proofs of the present doctrines and at the 
same time the present throws back some light on the obscur- 
ity of the past But, as has been suggested here, the apologist 
sometimes fancies that he is bringing forth proof from the 
past when he is really interpreting the past by the present. 

It may be well to remark that this illusion is comparative- 
ly harmless so far as the apologist himself is concerned. For 
his conclusion really rests on excellent grounds and his inter- 
pretation of the past in the light of the present teaching of 
the Church is a perfectly legitimate operation. But unfortu- 
nately when it is presented to others as a proof it has a very 
different effect and only serves to discredit, however unjustlyf 
the whole system of Scholastic logic 

. • . Et crimine ab uno 
Disce omnes. 

The large inference is scarcely fair. But there is, at any 
rate, a rude sort of poetic justice when these lapses from 
orthodox deductive logic are visited with this illogical severity. 

These facts and reflections may help, in some measure, to 
explain the dissatisfaction with which so many modern critics 
regard the classic arguments of Catholic apologetics. But, in 
addition to this, something must be allowed for a natural re- 
action against the rigidity and narrowness of some orthodox 
writers. There is no cause to complain of those who attach a 
high, not to say a paramount, importance to the old logic of 
the Schoolmen, and stoutly refuse to abandon it for some new- 
fangled form of defence. But, unfortunately, this commendable 
conservatism is sometimes associated with an unreasonable re- 
luctance to leave room for any other method of finding or 
establishing the truth. The champion of formal logic will have 
nothing to say to Newman's 'Mllative sense,'' his cumulative 
probabilities, his argument from conscience, or to the methods 
of intuition and experience that find favor with other philoso- 
phers. This attitude has something of the narrowness of prim- 
itive Protestantism which finds its rule of faith in Chilling- 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] SCHOLASTIC LOGIC AND MODERN THEOLOGY 9I 

worth's famous formula: ^'The Bible and the Bible only is the 
religion of Protestants/' For in much the same manner our 
strait-laced logicians appear to be saying: ''The syllogism and 
the syllogism alone is the logic of Scholastics/' And it may 
not be amiss to suggest that both these extremists may be met 
in the same manner. The Catholic does not answer Chilling- 
worth by seeking to lower or lessen the authority of the Bible. 
But he rightly urges that its testimony is supplemented and 
supported by that of tradition. And he points out that the 
Protestant is mistaken in supposing that he is really going by 
the Bible only. For^ though the good man may be wholly 
unconscious of the fact^ his belief in the Bible itself rests, in 
the last analysis, on the authority of the Fathers or the tes- 
timony of the Church .and at every turn his interpretation of 
its pages is profoundly affected by the influence of tradition. 

In much the same way it may be observed that the most 
strictly logical series of syllogisms must needs depend, in the 
last resort, on first principles whose truth is self-evident, f. ^.. 
is known by intuition, and on the knowledge of facts that comes 
by experience. Nor is it only at the outset that these forces 
play their part. For the experience of facts and the intuitive 
perception of principles lend a continuous support to the train 
of deductive reasoning, which is. moreover, assisted and sup- 
plemented by moral and practical judgments and the estimate of 
probabilities. Ail these things have their place, not only in the 
philosophic writings of the present day. but in the massive works 
of such medieval masters as St Thomas, who could no more 
afford to do without them than we can afford to dispense with 
the aid of Scholastic logic in modern theology. 

St, Afafy*St BayswaUr^ London, England, 



Digitized by 



Google 



SHEARING TIME. 

BY M. F. QUINLAN. 

*' The shearers sat in the firelight, hearty and hale and strong, 
After the hard day's shearing, passing the joke along ; 
The ' ringer ' that shore a hundred, as they never were shorn before, 
And the novice who, toiling bravely, had tommy-hawked half a score, 
The tar-boy, the cook, and the slushy, the sweeper that swept the board. 
The picker-up, and the penner, with the rest of the shearing horde. 
There were men from the inland stations where the skies like a furnace glow, 
And men from the Snowy River, the land of the frozen snow ; 
There were swarthy Queensland drovers who reckoned all land by miles 
And farmers' sons from the Murray, where many a vineyard smiles. . . .*' 

— i4. B, Pattrson, 

Et. eleven months in the year nothing happens on 
an Australian sheep run. The life is uniform to 
monotony. Save for an occasional muster, or the 
rare advent of the teamster, there is but little 
to mark the passing of the days. But through- 
out this time there is a feeling in the air of pleasurable an- 
ticipation — of a gradual and sure unfoldingi which, like an un- 
dersong of hope» proclaims the ultimate awakening. 

It is this which gives a meaning and a definite aim to the 
daily round, for as the sower goes out to sow his seed with 
his hope set in the harvest, even so does the station- hand 
tend the flocks with a view to the gathering in of the wool 
in due season. To the pastoralist himself everything depends 
on the yearly ^'clip''; for having put all his money into the 
sheep, his profits are necessarily bound up in the success of 
the wool harvest. 

Before the shearing begins either he or his manager must 
make the necessary arrangments. He must aUo engage the 
full complement of shearing hands. Applications are generally 
made some months in advance. And because of the impor- 
tance of having the work done well and quickly the local au- 
thorities exercise some care in the choice of their shearers. 

The wool-king will only have picked hands. Therefore, 
when the shearer applies for a pen in the shearing shed, he 
must submit his testimonials and a deposit of twenty shillings. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] . Shearing Time 93 

Every hand must have a satisfactory record. No man is taken 
on without good references. That is to say he must know his 
work; for the references deal solely with his professional skill 
and not with his personal character. 

So the pastoralist or his proxy picks his thirty or forty 
men, and states the approximate time of shearing. 

In the north of Queensland shearing begins early ; in the 
central districts in July, August, and September ; in the west* 
em districts up till December. By this arrangement it is pos- 
sible for the same men to travel the country, picking up one 
job after another. 

For a full week before the shearing begins, numberless roust- 
abouts besiege the station. These may be pickers-up (there 
must be one picker-up to every five shearers in the shed) 
'< broomies,'' tar-boys, branders, pressors, and classers. 

Among the hands engaged for the shearing season, perhaps 
none is more important than the temporary cook who will have 
to minister to the wants of the shearers, and it is not uncom- 
mon for the competing candidates to give a demonstration of 
their skill on the day before. There is then a show of hands 
in the shed, and the cook who has the most votes gets the 
job. The cook's wages are then arranged for, the price of 
rations being also set down in his agreement. 

On the eve of the shearing the hands are ^' rung up ** and 
when all are assembled the manager reads out the shearers' 
contract, which each man must sign. 

This contract sets forth the obligations which are binding 
alike on employer and employed. It stipulates the rates of 
payment and the standard of work required. It also legislates 
for the maintenance of law and order ; and it expressly forbids 
the sale or consumption of intoxicants — these and the various 
other clauses having been drawn up and agreed to by the 
conference of pastoralists, who conjointly with the labor leaders 
represent what is known as the Shearers' Union. 

The preliminaries being now complete the shearers are free 
to start in; and in the morning the first ^'cut" begins. The 
general superintendence of the work in the shed is in the hands of 
the manager, whose tact and diplomacy are often put to the test 
in managing his men. The sub- manager takes charge of the mus- 
tering party ; the business of the mustering party being to feed 
the ** receiving paddock." To do this, the sheep must be driven 



Digitized by 



Google 



94 Shearing Time [April, 

in from another paddock further out. The wash-pool is gener- 
ally situated some four or five miles distant from the shed, and 
as the fleece must be thoroughly dry before being shorn, the 
sheep are put through the wash- pool some hours beforehand. 
As they are washed, they are turned into an adjoining paddock 
which is drawn upon as required, for the supplying of the re- 
ceiving paddock. 

To do this well requires careful management, since no in- 
terval of time may elapse between the incoming and the out- 
going flock. There must be a constant reserve of sheep wait- 
ing their turn to replace those that are already shorn ; the lat- 
ter being simultaneously drafted out into their allotted pad- 
dock. The sub-manager must, therefore, employ some judgment 
in bringing up the sheep, so that the shearers make no protest. 
For, according to the shearers' contract, the men may not be 
kept waiting. The sheep must be there, a constant supply 
ready to their hand, to enable them to earn a maximum wage. 
Shearers are paid by the piece- work system; consequently the 
best man wins. 

The method of work is always the same. The rams are 
gathered in first. Five-pence is the standard wage for shearing a 
ram. In point of time the shearing of one ram is supposed to 
equal the shearing of two sheep. As a matter of fact, the ram 
takes longer, for in addition to the ram's wool being harder, the 
curly horns retard the clipping, with the result that the men 
make less at ram than at sheep-shearing. Flock rams are always 
of superior breed. Once shorn, all the rams are put in the shorn- 
ram paddock, from which they are subsequently transferred to 
their own appointed paddock further out on the run. 

Next come the wethers. It may be a flock of ten thousand 
or so, which are run into the receiving paddock, there to wait 
their turn for the feeding of the shed. The wethers, like the 
rams, are easily managed. They are good battlers too, and 
when out on the run, can generally pick up feed for themselves. 
They will also find their way into water, even though it means 
traversing six, seven, and even eight miles of open scrub. From 
a psychological point of view it is interesting to see how the 
wethers have their preferences in the matter of friendship. 
The wether won't take to every wether, but only to one. And 
when the flock has been shorn and drafted out, the isolated 
wether will fidget round until he finds his own mate again. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Shearing Time 95 

After the wethers are all shoroi it is the turn of the ewes, 
and the hoggarts, and the lambs — the two latter sections being 
first drawn off and drafted, so as to be shorn in separate 
groups. The ewes are always a nuisance. They won't come 
in without coaxing, and frequently a pet sheep must be used 
as a decoy. It is the same out on the run. The ewes give 
more work than the wethers and the rams put together. For 
while these will pick up whatever feed there is, the ewes are 
continually bothering about the welfare of the lambs. Or if 
not, they are fretful at having no Iamb to fend for. Shearers 
get for sheep two-pence half-penny a fleece; a good man 
shearing as many as a hundred a day. 

Owing to the spirit of light- hearted ness in the shearing 
shed, as also to the keen competition among the men, the sheep 
are always in danger of being knocked about. But here again, 
the shearers' contract comes in, one clause of which provides 
that if a shearer gashes one or more . sheep, be is subject to 
dismissal, the manager reserving to himself the right of turning 
him off, or of giving him another chance. This does not mean 
that a certain amount or minor slashing may not pass, but* that 
wilful carelessness is barred. As a matter of fact, the sheep 
are continually being cut about, in testimony of which there are 
constant cries of ** Tar i Tar i '* from various parts of the shed. 
And at each summons the tar-boy rushes along with fear in 
his heart, and the tar brush in bis hand, and having hastily 
stanched the gaping wound, darts off to perform the same office 
elsewhere. For the tar-boy learns to be nimble xp his move- 
ments if he would escape being the object of the shearers' at- 
tention. 

So the hours speed in the shearing shed. Throughout the 
working hours it is as busy as a bee-hive. Hands, tongues, 
and limbs appear to be kept going continuously. There is a 
low, incessant buzz of activity; for, in spite of the occasional 
cracking of jokes, every man puts forth his best effort— each 
hopes to come out on top before sundown, since: 

'^The man that rung the Tubbo shed, is not the ringer here, 
That stripling from the Cooma side can teach him how to 

shear. 
They trim away the ragged locks, and rip the cutter goes. 
And leaves a track of snowy fleece from brisket to the nose ; 



Digitized by 



Google 



96 Shearing Time [April. 

It's lovely how they peel it off with never stop nor stay^ 
They're racing for the ringer's place this year at Castlereagh. 
• •■••■ ■ 

The youngsters picking up the fleece enjoy the merry din. 
They throw the classer up the fleece, he throws it to the 

bin; 
The pressers standing by the rack are waiting for the wool. 
There's room for just a couple more, the press is nearly full; 
Now jump upon the lever lads, and heave and heave away, 
Another bale of golden fleece is branded ' Castlereagh/ " 

The shearers' day begins soon after sunrise and continues 
until the noon-day break — "Smoko" they call it. 

Noon is the dinner hour, and there is nothing like shear- 
ing for developing an appetite or encouraging a thirst Cold 
tea is the accepted beverage, and in the shearing shed it is 
absorbed by the gallon. 

But now the dinner hour draws to a close; the shearers 
have gone back to the shed, the roustabouts are in their ap- 
pointed places — all are ready to start in when the signal is 
given. From further out comes a confused blur of sounds— the 
bleating of sheep, the yapping of the sheep dogs, the sharp, 
short ** crack " of the sheep- whips ; and, rising above it all, the 
voices of the mustering party, urging, coaxing, compelling, and 
then — with a jerk and a rush and a soft patter of feet — the re- 
luctant ewes are finally driven into the receiving paddock. 
Whereupon : 

"The bell is set aringing and the engine gives a toot. 
There's five and thirty shearers here are shearing for the 

loot. 
So stir yourselves you penners-up and shove the sheep along, 
The musterers are fetching them a hundred thousand strong. 
And make your collie dogs speak up — what would the buy- 
ers say 
In London if the wool was late this year from Castlereagh ? " 



Digitized by 



Google 



view £ooIi8* 

One of the objections brought by 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN shrewd Protestants against con- 

CHINA. tributing to the foreign missions 

sustained by their churches is 
that the missionaries overdo the business of advertising their 
work. The prospectus is always voluminous and alluring, the 
report of results generally brief and unsatisfactory. With us 
Catholics the difficulty has been the other way about. It is 
almost as if our missionaries forget their native language when 
they learn the language of '' the natives.'' Of course it is not 
forgetfulness, but an excess of modesty. At any* rate most of 
us Catholics, until lately, knew little about the work that is 
being done in the foreign mission field, except that this or that 
order had a number of priests in China, or Ceylon, or Uganda, 
and that there was a large number, or a sprinkling, of native 
Catholics. It took the educational work of the Society for the 
Propagation of the Faith to make the missionaries talk, and 
us listen. 

Father Wolfustan has discovered a way to combine the 
demands of modesty and those of proper advertising. He has 
composed, or compiled, a work of nearly 500 pages,* most of 
which is made up of quotations from non-Catholic missionaries 
and travelers on the work of the Catholic missionaries in China. 
The extent of his researches may be judged from the biblio- 
graphical appendix, in which he gives a list of about 300 
books which he has consulted. Most of the titles may also be 
found in the footnotes throughout the book, showing that he 
has found some matter to his purpose in the majority of them. 
He does not hesitate to cite criticisms and complaints, some 
of which he answers, and others of which he admits as well- 
based. But the whole trend of the testimony of these un- 
prejudiced witnesses (unprejudiced, at least, in favor of Catho- 
licism) goes to establish a magnificent tribute to the devotion 
and efficiency of the Catholic missionaries in the Celestial 
Kingdom. 

Since the work is essentially a comparison of churches and 
methods, it is not only a history of the Catholic Church in 

* TJU Caiholu Chunk in China from i860 U 1907, By Bertram Wolfustan, S.J. St 
LouU, Mo.: B. Herder. London and Edinburgh : Sands & Co. 

VOL. XCI —7 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



98 NEW BOOKS [April, 

China in the last half century \ it is the story of the efforts of 
all Christian denominations there. From this point of view, 
the work becomes a strong argument for the need of Christian 
unity. The havoc wrought by heresies is not so keenly per- 
ceived at home, for we have grown dulled to it by use during 
the past three centuries; but the extent of the evil shows it- 
self when a dozen disunited churches present themselves before 
a non-Christian people as being each the true Church of 
Christ. Father Wolfustan touches frequently on this difficulty, 
following in this the non- Catholic writers whom he is quoting. 
Several chapters are devoted to the question; notably, **From 
Confucius to Confusion " and ** Unum in Christo.'' The latter, 
which is an account of an attempt of certain missionary bodies 
to come to a common agreement, reads in places like ''The 
Comedy of Convocation." 

Other questions of general interest are also treated, such 
as the difficulty of translating the Bible into foreign tongues, 
the relative efficiency of married and of celibate missionaries, 
and the relations of foreign powers with China. Throughout 
the author has an eye for the interesting as well as for the 
edifying, and has made his book the most readable work on 
missions we have ever seen. 

We venture to congratulate Father 
THE PAPACY. Dolan upon the production of this 

excellent book.* It may be de- 
scribed as a refutation of the contention of some Anglicans 
that '* Papal Claims,'' i. ^., Papal Primacy in matters of faith 
and discipline, receive no support from the first great Synods 
of the Church. In the first place, the Catholic position rela- 
tive to General Councils is stated: namely, that the Bishop 
of Rome alone possesses the right to summon, to preside 
at, and to confirm the decrees of such Councils, and that 
he may exercise these rights personally or through legates. 
Then, basing his information on the great collections and his- 
tories of Manzi, Hardouin, the Ballerini, Constant, Baluze, He- 
fele, and others, the author studies the origins, circumstances, 
and decrees not only of the First Six GEcumenical Councils 
(Nicaea, 325; Constantinople, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 
451; Constantinople, 553, 680), but also the Synod of Sardica 

* Th€ Papacy and tJu First CouncUt of tki Church, By Rev. Thomas S. Dolan. St. 
Louis: B. Herder. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9loJ NEW BOOKS 99 

(343 01^ 344); the famous Latrocinium or Robber Synod of 
Ephesus in 449 ; and some minor Synods held between 
645-649. 

In a most interesting and logical manner the author brings 
forth from these Councils abundant proofs of the Catholic 
position of Roman Supremacy in matters of faith and discip- 
line. Nor are the difficulties ignored. The famous objections 
against Roman Supremacy, derived from canon 3 of the Coun- 
cil of Constantinople (381) and from canon 28 of the Council 
of Chalcedon (451) are fully explained and successfully refuted. 
The last chapter is an able summary of the entire thesis which 
proves that ''the Papacy was not only a colossal fact, but a 
controlling force, in its relations to those old assemblies of 
the Church's shepherds.'' The author very cleverly touches 
upon some of the less dignified scenes enacted in the Councils 
(PP« 32-49 55-6, 87), and also points out the dangers that menaced 
the Church from *'an attempted Erastianism, which found ex- 
pression in the constant meddling of the Byzantine Emperors 
in ecclesiastical affairs." The book contains a good index, but 
its value would be increased by the addition of a bibliography. 

There is no doubt that the present volume will be of great 
service to students of theology: those studying De Romano Pon^ 
tifice will find the historical side of the dogma fully treated, while 
the students of Christology will discover an interesting historical 
background to the conciliar decrees. Such a study is becom- 
ing a more and more necessary addition to the regular scho- 
lastic course, as non- Catholics are always more interested in 
the historical than in the philosophical side of theology. We 
wish that the clergy of the United States were turning out 
more of such volumes. They would take away our reproach 
and would be fulfilling the wish expressed by Pope Pius X. 
in his Encyclical on Modernism, that more attention should be 
paid to the positive side of theology than has been done in 
the past. 

We take pleasure in calling the 

CONFESSIONS OF ST. attention of our readers to a new 

AUGUSTINE. edition of The Confessions of St. 

Augustine.^ The translation of 

the immortal classic presented here is that made by Dr. Pusey 

* Tk€ CamfissUms of St, An^tuHmi, Edited by Temple Scott from the translation of Dr. 
Posey. With a Preface by Alice MeynelL London : Chatto & Windus. 



Digitized by 



Google 



lOO NEW BOOKS [Aprils 

in 1835. The preface is from the pen of Alice Meynell and 
fittingly does she introduce the heart-appealing confessions of 
the immortal Augustine : '' The great men of the race are they 
who are cliiefljr capable of a great sincerity. Other men may 
be entirely sincere, but the entire sincerity of great natures is 
of larger importance; of them it may be said that they are 
not relatively but absolutely and positively more sincere than 
the rest. And in nothing else, obviously, is a great sincerity 
so momentous as in religion. ... St. Augustine stood 
alone with the end of his search, alone in the great sincerity, 
one of the greatest sincerities in the history of the human 
race/' 

The volume is edited by Temple Scott and includes twelve 
beautiful illustrations from the brush of Maxwell Armfield. 
The letter-press, binding, the entire mechanical make-up are 
of the highest order. The Scriptural quotations are all printed 
in italic. May this great book of human experience be more 
and more known and loved by the multitude as well as studied 
by the learned. 

Lovers of the holy wisdom of per- 
THE SPIRITUAL CAHTICLE fection will thank Father Zimmer- 

BY ST. JOHH OP THE mann, the English discalced Car- 
CROSS. melite for his new edition of The 

Spiritual Canticle of the SauU^ 

He has already given us a new edition of both The Ascent 
ef Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, in all cases 
reproducing Mr. David Lewis* translation. This translator will 
hardly be superceded. His fidelity to the original and his terse 
clearness of style, together with the disciple's unction plainly 
in evidence, make him the final English medium of St John 
of the Cross. Such we believe to be the concurrent view of 
English-speaking readers of the mystics. Yet Father Zimmer- 
mann*s revision is of much, and in some aspects of essential, 
value. For he is himself a Carmelite friar of the strict obser- 
vance, and lives that daily life whose beatitude is shown in this 
Spiritual Canticle. He has devoted his life to the diffusion of 
this precious literature, his studies in it being honest in the 
extreme. And although his style is not always smooth, it is 
ever clear and emphatic 

.« 4 spiritual^ CantUU ofiJu Sntl by St. John pf tJu Cross. Translated by Da?id Lewis. 
RAv4Cir4 bV ptap^Gt Zimmennann, O.C.D. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] N£IF BOOKS lOI 

St. John of the Cross wrote this, bis last literary effort, 
while very near suffering a total collapse of all his aims in 
aiding St. Teresa in her Reform. He was at the time in prison, 
being shut up in ''a narrow, stifling cell, with no window, 
bat only a small loophole through which a ray of light entered 
for a short time of the day, just long enough to enable him to 
say his office, and affording little facility for reading or writ- 
ing." 

He managed under such difficulties to put down a sketch of 
these strange and charming verses, and the notes necessary for 
the comments his mind was full of. After being set at liberty 
he adjusted and perfected these and published them under the 
title of A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul. 

It is an abridged paraphrase of the scriptural Canticle of 
Canticles, or the Song of Solomon. This divine song of the 
celestial espousals has been grossly abused by heritics and 
sensualists. False mysticism is often associated with impure 
relationships between the sexes, and it has accordingly mis- 
used the oriental imagery of the scriptural Canticle. Rightly 
understood, the meaning is a spiritual doctrine of the most re- 
fined chastity. St. John of the Cross interprets it with the 
ease of a saint versed in the interior communications between 
the soul and its divine Spouse. He brings to his task, be- 
sides, the gifts of a natural poetical temperament. Therefore 
this revision of Mr. Lewis* translation will aid in Scripture 
study, as well as in the explorations of the higher paths of 
prayer. 

We thank Father Zimmermann for his labor and his taste, 
and we trust that he will go through the entire range of the 
saint's works in a similar spirit. 

His editing of the Interior Castle of St. Teresa, as done into 
English by the Stanbrook Benedictine nuns, entitles him to 
our gratitude. And we await the same wise co-operation in 
the new translation by the same competent hands of St. Teresa's 
Way of Perfection. This is a manual of .ordinary states of 
prayer, the only book of that mistress of earnest souls, wholly 
adapted to the spiritual needs of the entire body of the faith- 
ful. Canon Dalton's translation, in spite of its innumerable de- 
fects, has done good work. But its shortcomings are ^always 
annoying and often misleading. 



Digitized by 



Google 



102 NEW BOOKS [April, 

This is a collection of the shorter 
LITTLE ESSAYS FOR papers of a nun • who is a veteran 
FRIENDLY READERS, teacher among the Sisters of St. 

Dominic at their well-known con- 
vent in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. Judging by the tone of her 
work, the years have not been able to rob her of cheeriness 
and sprightliness of disposition. The Essays are on different 
topics — religion, character-building, education, literature, remin- 
iscences. They are written primarily, it can be seen, to suit 
the needs and ideals of a convent school, and therefore will 
receive their warmest welcome from .the '' friendly readers '' to 
whom they are addressed. But they contain a message, or a 
number of messages, to teachers and to women in general, 
which are worth presenting to the larger public The remin- 
iscences constitute the most interesting part of the book, and 
are executed with the surest touch. We can assure Sister 
Charles Borromeo that all of her readers, even her critics if 
there be any, will be "friendly readers'' so far as she herself 
is concerned. 

The chief characteristic of these 
THE OREAT PROBLEM, sermons f is their Spartan simplic- 
ity. The author, a devoted and 
well-loved priest of the Peoria diocese, purposely avoids rhe- 
torical display. His aim— -one successsfully achieved — is to give 
the people simple, wholesome, practical suggestions in a plain, 
clear, direct fashion. The sermons, based as a rule, on the 
Sunday gospels, have the additional excellence of brevity. 
While some may think the style too severely simple, too re* 
lentlessly unyielding to the popular craving for picturesque 
phrases and well-rounded periods, there can be no doubt but 
that, on the whole, it will be well for priests to aim always, 
as this author does, at simplicity and clearness. 

This book I has been written not 

GREEK LANDS AND for scholars or for those who have 

LETTERS. been fortunate enough to spend 

much time in Greece, but for the 

many travelers, whose time is limited to seeing only the most 

♦ UUU Essays for Friendly Readers, Bj^Carola Milanis (Sister Charles Borromeo, O.S D.) 
Dubuque. Iowa : Press of M. S. Hardie. 

• t The Great PrpbUm. By Rev. J. J. Burke. St. Louis : B. Herder, 

I Greek Lands and Letters. By F. G. and A. C. E. AUinson. Boston and New York : 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] N£IV BOOKS 103 

attractive places in Hellas. For these the authors have, with 
taste, selected the sites that would naturally appeal to the 
imagination of tourists. That the task has been well accom- 
plished is evident from even a cursory glance at the book. 
One interesting feature is found in the pages devoted, in the 
Introduction, to proving that the Hellenes were lovers of na* 
ture. Extracts from many Greek authors are adduced to illus- 
trate the Greek attitude toward nature. One-quarter of the 
volume is devoted to Athens, whose beauties and historical 
associations are quite fully dealt with. And the other chap- 
ters are just as attractively written. This is a travel book and 
tourist guide, as the authors modestly style it. But it is all 
this and much more, for it would he hard to find a volume 
intended for popular use, and still so replete with art and his- 
tory and literature. The authors have introduced much knowl- 
edge that will help the traveler; and, best of all, they have 
wisely elected not to overburden their readers with ancient 
lore. 

Charles Joseph Eugene de Maze- 
BISHOP DE MAZENOD. nod, Bishop of Marseilles and 

Founder of the Oblates of Mary 
Immaculate, passed from this life in the fragrance of holiness 
about a half century ago. His spiritual children are numerous 
and active as missionaries in all English-speaking countries (and 
in many others) ; but, unlike most religious families, they have 
not 1>een active in proclaiming the virtues of their holy founder. 
Even in French, when Father Baffie wrote this work-in 1894, 
there was but a scanty supply of literature bearing on his 
work and personality. This is due, we are told, to the fact 
that the humility of the man deterred his companions from 
writing in his praise even after his death. It would have been a 
misfortune, however, if this silence had been sustained, and we 
may be thankful to Father Baffie and to his anonymous trans- 
lator for making us acquainted with this model of priestly vir- 
tue. Mgr. de Mazenod was one of the great bishops who have 
been also founders of congregations, and as such he is a link 
between episcopal government and the life and work of reli- 
gious. But it is not only bishops and regulars who can gain 
profit from this study of his life. The young layman, the semi- 
narian, the mission priest, in fact, every aspiring Christian soul, 

* Bishop d» MatiHod, His Inner Lift and Virtuis. By Rev. Eugene Baffie, O.M.I. With 
portraits. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benxiger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I04 NEW BOOKS [Aprils 

can gain help and inspiration from the study of this singularly 
attractive type of spiritual character. 

The author warns us that his work is not a biography. 
He has adopted a method which Newman describes as chop- 
ping up a holy man into virtues. The drawbacks of this method 
are evident. But in spite of these, Father Baffie has succeeded 
in presenting a very interesting and fairly clear portrait of his 
subject. There is, of course, a great deal of skipping backwards 
and forwards through his life to get materials to prove his 
possession of various virtues, but with the help of a well-writ- 
ten little chronological sketch of the Bishop's career, which the 
translator has thoughtfully supplied, it is not hard to follow. 
And in other respects the book is easy reading. We are spared 
the usual prosy disquisitions on the virtues. Instead, we find 
aaecdotes, quotations from letters and diaries, everything in 
fact which goes to show the presence of the virtues in concrete 
form. 

Most University professors issue a 
CLASSICAL MORALISTS, list of <' required readings*' which 

must be studied as a supplement 
to the lectures. The idea is an excellent one. Students are 
generally only too willing to take their views of systems at 
second-hand. There is a certain fear of looking into original 
sources, a fear which comes from inexperience, and which is 
often dissipated by a half-hour's careful reading. The great 
thinker is in many cases simpler and clearer than his commen- 
tators. ''The half-gods go, when the gods arrive." 

The main drawback to the system is the expense. When 
the whole class need certain books, the resources of even the 
best library are overtaxed. To supply the need. Dr. Benjamin 
Rand, of Harvard, has compiled several works which present 
the more distinctive views of eminent thinkers. The present 
volume* treats of ethics. A brief introduction gives a rapid 
survey of the teachings of the different schools on the funda- 
mental points. In general, the selections are well made. There 
is, however, a paucity of citations from Catholic authors. The 
Fathers are passed over, except St. Augustine (who, by the 
way, can hardly be said to belong to the ''medieval" period). 

* Th€ Classical Moralists. Selections illostrating Ethics from Socrates to Martineaiu 
Compiled by Benjamin Rand, Ph.D. Boston, New York, and Chicago: .Honghton Mifflin 
'^'nnpany. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 105 

Of the Schoolmen we find only Abelard and Aquinas. The 
only other Catholic quoted is Father Malebranche. The author 
says that ''in the medieval period it is difficult to present 
ethics apart from the great body of theological doctrines, ex- 
cept by means of a collection of isolated passages/' That this 
is true concerning the work of many of our Catholic moralists, 
both in the earlier and later periods, may not be denied. But 
we think that the main difficulty is that Dr. Rand is unfa- 
miliar with the vast field of Catholic ethical thought. If he 
had consulted a competent guide in this matter, such as Dr. 
Fox or Father Wing, he could get references to Catholic 
authors who treat fundamental ethics exactly after the manner 
of the philosophers whom he cites. We might venture to sug* 
gest: Suarez, de Lugo, Lessius, and the Salamancus amongst 
the post-Tridentine writers; modern systematizers such as 
Meyer, Bouquillon, and Cathrein; and others, as Taparelli, 
Rosmini, and Gutberlet. It is a pity that such a well- con- 
ceived work is lacking in its statement of the ethical princi* 
pies of a school which must be conceded to be, at least nu- 
merically, the strongest in Christendom. 

This book, the work of a Belgian 
THE EUCHARISTIC TRI- Jesuit, has been written as an aid 
DUUH. to priests in carrying out the Holy 

Father's decree concerning the 
Ettcharistic Triduum.* It covers, however, the whole ground 
of the legislation on frequent Communion which has been is- 
sued during this pontificate. Part I. contains translations of 
the Roman documents which embody this legislation, and also 
directions and practical hints for a successful triduum. Part II., 
which comprises most of the book, is called ''Subjects for In- 
struction/' These "subjects" are really sermons, or rather 
sermon- sketches, which suggests ample matter for treatment. 
The general trend of all of them is to insist on the advantage 
of daily frequentation of the Eucharistic Banquet. Part III. 
describes various means of keeping up the good work inau- 
gurated by the triduum, by means of the Eucharistic League, 
the Apostleship of Prayer, the month of the Sacred Heart, 

♦ Tk€ EucharisHe Triduum, am Aid to Priists in Pnaehing Frequint and Daily Commune 
icn. According to tk€ Dtcrttsof Hu Holimss, Pius X. Translated from the French of P. Jules 
Untelo, S. J., by F. M. de Zulueta, SJ. London ; R. V. T. Washboume ; New York : Ben. 
siger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



io6 NEW Books [Aprils 

daily Mass, preaching, prayers, etc. It also offers further con- 
siderations concerning frequent Communion <or children, work- 
ingmen, and inmates of educational establishments. The bibli- 
ography of works on devotion to the Blessed Sacrament will 
be found helpful by many priests. 

The publishers have showered up- 
THE ROMAN CAMPA6NA. on- Professor Lanciani's latest vol- 
ume * a wealth of clear and attrac- 
tive illustrations and exceptional elaborateness of make-up. 
Yet the volume is well worth all this rich setting, for it is a 
gift book for which a scholar might well be grateful. Whether 
in reconstructing the social life of antiquity or in explaining 
the rise and decay of cities like Ostia, in great and in small 
things. Professor Lanciani seems equally the master. Con- 
fessing that he has omitted matters of interest because of lack 
of space, he promises — should the present volume prove ac- 
ceptable to the reader — that the subject will be continued in 
another. We trust that he may be called upon to fulfill his 
promise, for into his work the singular fascination of the 
Campagna itself finds place, with its variety of scenery, its 
fragrant antiquity, its quiet contentment, its eloquent memor- 
ials of prehistoric scenes. 

One of the occupations of the 
ST. MELANIA. learned leisure to which his Emi- 

nence Cardinal Rampolla retired 
at the close^ of his diplomatic career was the critical study and 
publication of documentary evidence concerning the life of a 
noble Roman lady and saint of the fifth century, Santa Mela- 
nia. It was the Cardinal's hope that these documents might 
be used by some devout writer in the preparation of a biogra- 
phy of the saint, which should be at the same time edifying 
and strictly historical. In the present volume f the Cardinal's 
wish has been fulfilled, as he himself testified, and the Countess 
da Persico has produced a work which gives the modern 
Italian lady a notable lesson by its vivid picture of a Christian 
heroine who lived and triumphed in a time and amid tempta- 
tions not altogether different from their own. 

* Wandirings in th§ Roman Campagna, By Rudolfo Lanciani. Boston and New York : 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 

iSania Afelania Giuniorg, Di Elena da Persico. Torino : Libreria Sacro Cuore. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] New Books 107 

The same distingaished authoress has recently published a 
lecture * delivered by her at Brescia during a sort of Social Con- 
gress, in September, 1908. It outlines the duty of Catholic 
women in the present age, and was occasioned by the fact that 
at Rome the Women's Congress had voted the elimination of 
the Christian catechism from the schools of Italy. 

Most of us, who have devoted the 
MTTHOLOOT. most fruitful years of our youth 

to the study of Latin and Greek 
classics, will admit that the heathen mythology was always a 
vague and confused world to us. And even now, when read- 
ing Milton or Keats or Matthew Arnold, we have to turn to n 
work of reference to make sure just what some mythological 
allusion means. Mr. Hutchinson's workf will make the path 
easier for those who tread in our footsteps. He has thrown 
into the form of a story (one might say a novel) the account 
of the gods of antiquity. The central figure in his tale is 
Orpheus, but his story is made a centre around which cluster 
the tales of all the elder gods. We have the* stories of Cronos 
and Zeus, of Prometheus and of Deucalion, of Apollo, Perse- 
phore, Cadmus, Bacchus, and the whole adventure of Orpheus 
in the under- world to regain his lost Eurydice. The narrative 
is written with power and dignity. It is easy to read and easy 
to remember. And if one feels that he is too far away from 
all that sort of thing to want to go over it again, he might 
make a present of the book to some lad in college who feels 
despairingly that the land of the ancient gods must surely be 
bounded on all sides by Lethe's stream. 

Lives of saints who serve as models 
ST. GERARD MAIELLA. for particular classes have always 

been of very special value; and 
religious communities in particular have found that there is no 
better way of forming the spirit of true piety in novices than 
by holding up for their example the life of some saint who 
has achieved perfection in their own state of life. St. Gerard 

* La Quistiom FimminiU in Italia t U Dovtre Delia Dwna Caitolica, Di Elena da Per- 
lico, Siena: Topografia Pontifida S. Bernardino. 

* OrplUus With His LuU, By W. M. L. Hutchinson. New York : Longmans/ Green ft 
Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



lo8 NEW BOOKS [April, 

Maiella* has been selected by Rev. VassalU Philips as a model 
for lay brothers. The offices of tailor, gardener, cook, sacris- 
tan, infirmarian — in fact, all the positions which a lay brother 
may be called on to hold — have been filled in turn by St. 
Gerard Maiella; and, as the author says, in his concluding ex- 
hortation: ''As the lay brothers go about their daily duties, 
they may remember that what they do now he did once.*' 

The present little work is a concise presentation of the data 
found in the more exhaustive treatise by Father Tannoia, en- 
titled The First Companions of St. Alphonsus. The narrative is 
designed to illustrate the salient lesson in St. Gerard's career — 
that sanctity can be obtained by a proper performance of the 
simple duties of the common life. 

The historian of the future will not 
POLITICAL HISTORY. lack for data in narrating the 

events of the present, unless some 
incendiary Caliph Omar shall have the will and the power to 
doom the libraries of the nation to the flames. This is the 
third volume of Hon. Mr. Alexander's Political History of the 
State of New York,f and it contains 561 generous pages. The 
period of history traversed runs from the outbreak of the Civi 
War down to Grover Cleveland's election as Governor in 1882. 
It is the story of events that are in the memory of many, and 
that still sound like ancient history to the younger generation 
in this swiftly moving republic. It brings up the names of 
Seymour, Greeley, Boss Tweed, Roscoe Conkling, Tilden, John 
Kelly, Arthur, Cornell, Cleveland. It is an interesting story, 
well told and well documented, and generally fair. 

This latest work on Lourdes,t by 
LOURDES. Canon Rousseil, reviews the later 

history of the apparitions and the 
life of Bernadette, outlines the character of the apparition, de- 
scribes the festivities of the golden jubilee, and speaks at 
length of the men principally concerned with the history of 
the shrine: Abb6 Peyramale, Mgr. Laurence, Henri Lasserre, 

* Life of St. Gerard MaieUa, Lay Brotfurofthe Congreiation of the Most Holy Redeemer , 
By Rev. O. R. Vassall-PhiUips. C.SS.R. London: Washbourne; New York: Benziger 
Brothers. 

t A Political History of the State of New York. By Dc Alva Stanwood Alexander, A.M.. 
LL.D. Vol. III. (i86i-i88a). New York : Henry Holt & Co. 

X The Glories o/Lourdes. By Canon Rousseil. New York: Benziger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 109 

Mgr. Schoepfer and Dr. Boissarie. A letter from Abb6 Ber- 
trin and a preface by Dn Boissarie confirm the scientific ac- 
curacy of the facts presented. The volume has been universal- 
ly admitted by the Catholic press of France to be the last 
word, whether historical, poetical, or mystical, on the events 
of the famous grotto. The author shows an abiding love for 
our Lady of Lourdes and his testimony is a valuable addition 
to Catholic apologetical literature. 

Mgr. Mignot includes in this apol- 
THE CHURCH AND CRITI- ogetic work on The Church and 
CISH. Criticism • the fruit of ten years' 

interest in modern religious con- 
troversy. These investigations are a sequel and a supplement 
to the Letters an Ecclesiastical Studies. The first and longest 
deals with Sabatier's Sketch of a Philosophy of Religion. Mgr. 
Mignot is justly proud of having discerned Sabatier*s errors 
ten years before they were condemned by the Encyclical 
Pascendi, despite the fact that he was the bishop ''whom cer- 
tain publicists have since wished to represent as too indulgent 
towards these novelties." In this study he deals with the 
psychological basis of religion, revelation and miracles, proph- 
ecy, Christ, and dogmas, and therein he shows how the Mod- 
ernists, ''without denying Christ and His work, lower it to 
human proportions.*' "What M. Sabatier's book lacks is not 
keenness of analysis, or depth of thought, or variety of sur- 
veys . . . what it lacks is Christianity." Space forbids 
quotation from the articles on " Church and Science " and " The 
Bible and Religions. " It is sufficient to note their fairness of 
view, depth of conviction, and vigor of style. 

Evolution has furnished the ene- 
COMPARATIVE RELIGION, mies of Christianity with plentiful 

objections; and of this numerous 
brood probably none are more vital to-day than those begot- 
ten by the science of comparative religion. It has been urged 
by rationalists that doctrines common to Christianity and 
other religions must have a common origin, and cannot be 
more divine in one than in another. ' 

* VRilist it la CrUiqui. Par Mgr. Mignot, Acher^que d'Albi. Paris : Libraire Victor 
Leooffre. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I lo New Books [April, 

Dr. Tisdall,* after examining the foundation for alleged re- 
semblances, endeavors to show: ''(i) that if these doctrines 
are almost universally held, then they cannot be devoid of 
significance and of truth ; (2) that, this being so, they must be 
deemed part of the divine education of the human race; (3) 
that in the ethnic religions they have been so perverted and 
distorted as to be productive of terrible evils; (4) whereas in 
the form in which they are taught in Christianity they pro- 
duce good results'' (p. vi.). 

The author himself holds firmly to the divine origin of 
Christianity and accounts for common beliefs by a primitive 
supernatural revelation, of which these are fragments. He 
seems willing to make concessions destructive of all real spe- 
cific difference between Christianity and other religions. 

Apart from this fact, however, and that he is occasionally 
unjust to the Catholic Church (this is one of a series of An- 
glican Church Handbooks), Dr. Tisdall has successfully accom- 
plished his task, in as far as that is possible within the limits 
of so small a book. 

The biographer of this Dutch 
ANNA VAN SCHURMAN. woman of the seventeenth cen- 
tury f confesses that the name of 
Anna van Schurman was quite unknown to her until she ran 
across it in reading the life of Queen Christina of Sweden. Few 
persons in our day, it is safe to say, had ever seen the name until 
it was presented to them in the title of this book. This oblivion 
is all the more remarkable when we consider that Anna van 
Schurman's portrait hangs in many European galleries, and that 
during her life she achieved wide fame as artist, student of 
Oriental languages, and advocate of woman's rights; and was 
a friend of the most distinguished persons of the day, including 
Descartes, Gassendi, Richelieu, and Queen Christina. Her ca- 
reer should possess interest also for the student of religious 
history, as she finally relinquished art and studies and friends 
to devote herself to the cause of Jean de Lebadie, ez- Jesuit, 
ex-Jansenist, ex-Calvinist, and finally founder of a sort of 
Quaker community. Much of the book is devoted to the re- 
ligious controversies between the Calvinists and Arminians at 

* CowiparaHve Riiiiion. By W. St. Clair Tisdall, D.D. New York and London: 
Longmans, Green & Co. 

t Anna van ScMurman, Artist, Scholar, Samt. By Una Birch. With Portraits. New 
York, Bombay, and Calcutta : Longmans, Green & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 1 1 1 

that timei and to the vicissitudes of the freakish sect which 
Anna van Schurman joined. The character, motives, and teach* 
ings of de Labadie were impeached not only by the Jesuits, 
but by adherents of organized religions in all the countries in 
which his strange career was passed. But Anna was faithful to 
him, and her devoted biographer will suffer no wonl against 
his memory. 

The book is strangely uninteresting. And the difficulty 
seems to lie with the subject rather than with the biographer. 
The learned Anna impresses us as a pious, priggish old maid, 
whose long-suppressed capacities for emotion were finally 
brought out under the spell of a fanatical preacher. 

''Nothing,*' says Mr. Chesterton, 

HEAVENLY HERETICS. '* more strangely indicates an enor- 

By L. P. Powell. mous and silent evil of modern 

society than the extraordinary use 
which is made nowadays of the word 'orthodox/ In former 
days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. • . • All 
the tortures torn out of forgotten hells could not make him 
admit that he was heretical. But a few modern phrases have 
made him boast of it. He says, with a conscious laugh: 'I 
suppose I am very heretical,* and looks round for applause.'' 
No better indication of this dangerous tendency could be found 
than the collocation made by a Protestant clergyman* of the 
adjective " heavenly '' with a noun that has been considered as 
an opprobrium in the whole history of the Christian Church. 

Not that Rev. Mr. Powell himself is tremendously heretical 
Of Methodist upbringing, he is now, it would seem, a Broad 
Church Episcopalian. He considers the separation of the Metho- 
dist denomination from the Anglican fold as "the greatest 
catastrophe in the last three centuries of the Christian Church '' ; 
and his line of thought might easily be pursued to the conclu- 
sion that the separations wHich took place in the century pre- 
ceding the last three were a still greater catastrophe. 

The book* consists of five lectures on leaders of religious 
thought, mainly in America. These are: Jonathan Edwards, 
John Wesley, William EUery Channing, Horace Bushnell, and 
Phillips Brooks. The treatment is in the platform manner, easy, 

* Heavenly Hereiia, By Lyman P. Powell. New York and London: O. P. Putnam's 
Sons. 



Digitized by 



Google 



112 NEW BOOKS [Aprils 

current, descriptive. There is no very deep analysis of the 
theological questions involved. At times these questions are 
skimmed over with the offhand assuredness of a man who has not 
bothered his mind with deep study of the tomes of theological 
controversy. Popular lecturers should not know too much. 

The author, or rather compiler, of 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST, this volume • warns us that she 

has not attempted anything orig- 
inal in thought, and that she lays little claim even to origin- 
ality of arrangement It may be added that her work is not 
a harmony of the Gospels, such as that by Dr. Bruneau, S.S.^ 
but rather a sort of diatessaron, a reconstruction of the life 
of Christ from the words of all four Evangelists. Sometimes 
whole sections, such as the genealogies, are omitted. The re- 
sult of her labors is the production of a very simple and easy 
narrative of our Lord's life. Questions might be raised here 
and there about the chronological order, etc., but scholarship 
can easily become meticulous in criticising a work intended 
for edification. The book is well printed, and there are a 
number of fine illustrations, reproductions of famous paintings 
of scenes in the life of Christ. Bishop Morris, of Little Rock» 
in a preface which he contributes, rightly looks upon these 
illustrations as incentives to Catholic children to read the textt 
and thus overcome a rather general defect in their religious 
knowledge. 

A Life of Christ for Children (no author given) has been 
sent to us by Longmans, Green & Co. The children of to-day 
need not want for a life of Christ suited to their understand- 
ing, nor teachers for helps and directions that will mfike their 
path easier. If the number of these works, the ability and 
the zeal manifested in their production, be a sign of growing 
interest on the part of children and of teachers, we surely 
have a coming generation of vigorous Catholics. The present 
work tells in simple, chaste language the Gospel story of our 
Lord's life. The simplicity of its presentation and the smooth- 
ness of its telling will win the reader's attention and interest 
at once. 

• A Life of Christ Told in Words oftkt GosptL ArraDged by Marj Lape Fogg. Boston : 
The Angel Guardian Press. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] New Books i 13 

By giving us these plays in their 
THREE MODERN COHBDIBS. present form, Professor Morrison 

has conferred a favor on the stu- 
dent of Spanish. They will be especially useful to those seek- 
ing a colloquial knowledge of the language, with its wealth of 
idiom and proverb. These are bright and breezy comedies,* 
which after some expurgation by the editor, are unexception- 
able in tone, and well adapted for reading and acting l>y the 
advanced pupils in Spanish classes, and they offer to the gen- 
eral reader a pleasant change from the rhetorical and stiltfd 
style of so many contemporary Spanish authors. The humor 
of these farcical comedies is sometimes exaggerated, but it is 
never wearisome. The plays are accompanied by a good vo- 
cabulary, which saves reference to a dictionary, and profuse 

notes. 

This is a readable story f of the 
FLOREHCB NIGHTINGALE, life of this great heroine of the 
By Laura E. Richards. battlefield. It is an account writ- 
ten for the young; feminine in 
its style and point of view, but none the worse for that. 
One point in the career of Florence Nightingale makes pleas- 
ant reading for Catholics. She was mainly indebted for her 
chance to carry out her benevolent plans in the Crimea to 
Lord Hubert of Lea, and no less to his wife. Lady Hubert 
of Lea, afterwards a convert to the Faith and the writer of 
many volumes, and still actively interested in every good work 
for faith and humanity. 

This novel I deals with the strug- 

THE REDEMPTION OF gle between Kenneth Gait's ambi- 

EENNETH GALT. tion and his duty to repair the 

wrong he has done the woman he 
loves. Duty finally prevails. The characters are clear-cut and 
as human as one would wish to find them. Among the many 
good scenes may be mentioned Gait's first meeting with bis 
own child, whom he does not know, and the gradual growth 
of affection of each for the other« until finally the father crushes 
his ambition in favor of his love for his own offspring. 

•Tru CmmnUas iimUrmu. Edited by F. W. Morrison, M.A.. U. S. Naral Academy. 
New York : Henry Holt ft Co. 

iPhrtnci Ni^MHn^igU: a Story for Yommg Peoplt. By Laura E. Richards. New York 
and London : D. Appleton ft Co. 

X Tko RodompHon of Kommth Gait. A Novel. By Will N. Harben. New York and 
London: Harper and Brothers. 
VOU XCI.* 8 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 14 NEW BOOKS [April, 

Like all well-written mystery 
PASSERS-BT. stories Mr. Partridge's latest novel, 

Passers^By^^ has the power to hold 
the reader's attention to the end. It is a readable story, which 
is more than one can say of the majority of gaily dressed 
novels that issue day after day from the press. The plot is a 
succession of startling incidents^ and Mr. Partridge has provided 
lots of excitement for his readers. 

^ Madame Cecilia continues to merit the gratitude of Catho- 
lics for presenting to them many helpful translations. However, 
the title of her latest translation. Practical Devotion to the 
Sacnd Hearty is somewhat misleading. The book really deals 
with the way of meditation according to the Ignatian method. 
It is of real, practical value, and the author's name is the best 
recommendation for the thorough and scholarly treatment of 
the matter. The book is issued by Benziger Brothers, New 
York. 

Father Eaton, who has given us a book of beautiful medita- 
tions on the Psalms, publishes, through B. Herder, Night 
Thoughts for the Sick. Father Eaton is always sympathetic, 
always encouraging and consoling. His words will lighten the 
burden of many hearts and will do miich to ease the pain of 
those who suffer, either mentally or physically. It is a very 
small volume, but it is a precious one. 

Songs from the Operas for Alto, edited by H, E. Krehbiel, 
is published by Oliver Ditson Company, Boston, The selections, 
twenty-nine in number, cover practically the whole period of 
operatic composition from LuUy to Gounod and Verdi, The 
songs are translated into English. 

Piano Compositions, 2 vols., Beethoven, edited by d'Albert, 
come from the same publishers. The contents of the two 
volumes comprise the masterpieces of Beethoven's piano music 
annotated and fingered by one of the foremost Beethoven 
players. The sonatas include the famous ** Pathetique," ** Moon- 
light," '' Waldstein," and '* Appassionata." 

• Passers'By. By Anthony Partridge. Boston : little Brown & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] New Books 115 

A very handy and most useful book for priests is the 
Clericus Devotus^^ just published by B. Herder, of St. Louis. 
The volume contains prayers for private devotion; selections 
from the Roman ritual most commonly used, and short medi- 
tations from the medieval writers on the matter of the ritual. 
The book is so small that it will conveniently fit the vest 
pocket Clerics will find it a blessed companion. The exhor- 
tation of Pius X. to the clerics of the world is reprinted at 
the end of the volume. 

This Book of Easter is a companion to The Book of ChrisU 
mas, both published by The Macmillan Company. The pres- 
ent volume is divided into three parts: ''Before the Dawn''; 
" Easter Day " ; and ** Easter Hymns." The preface is written 
by the Episcopal Bishop of Albany. The book contains nu- 
merous illustrations, most of which are reprints from famous 
paintings ; and all of which, save one, are appropriate. It is a 
pleasure to see that the preface emphatically states, against the 
scoffing critics of the day, the real resurrection of our Lord. 

The selections are, as 9, rule, made with excellent literary 
taste; but if one were to seek from them the waters of truth 
he would, at times, be confounded as to what is refreshing and 
what is poisonous. He might ask '' What is truth ? " and per- 
haps die of thirst, as he debated the various statements made 
here as to what Christianity is. But, taking the book in a 
less serious way, we may say that it has many pleasing and 
edifying selections. Yet even from the purely literary point of 
view we think it will be somewhat of a disappointment to 
many to see selections omitted which surely should have 
been included; and to notice that spring and not Easter has 
at times determined the choice of the compiler. 

Funk & Wagnalls, of New York, have published, under 
the editorship of Henry Cabot Lodge, a series in ten small 
volumes of Ike Best of tke World's Classics. Selections from 
the works of two hundred and twenty authors are here pre- 
sented in very handy form. Senator Lodge has endeavored to 
cover the whole world of literature— ancient and modern, do- 
mestic and foreign. The work is arranged by countries, and 
As a rule good judgment is shown. 

* CUricus Devotus. Ad Usum Saardotum ac CUric^rum, St. Louis : B. Herder. 



Digitized by 



Google 



Ii6 NEW BOOKS [April, 

With Christ in PaUstine * is a small volume of four ad- 
dresses from the pen of A. T. Schofield, M.D. The book is 
tastefully presented and includes attractive illustrations of 
places in Palestine. But Dr. Schofield makes the Holy Land 
a stage on which he preaches. His preaching we cannot 
praise, but must with regret condemn ; for while laudable in its 
aims it is most pernicious in its methods and its results, since 
it makes religion a futile thing of the emotions and strips re- 
vealed, objective truth of all value. 

M. Albert Dufourcq, the author of 

THE DAWK OP CHRIS- the present work,t is a professor 

TIANITT. at the University of Bordeaux, and 

one of the most distinguished of 

French Catholic savants of our day in the field of early Church 

history, patrology^ and archaeology. His previous works on 

the Gista Martyrum, in six volumes, some of which were 

''crowned" by the French Academy; his two volumes on 

St. Irenaeus, one in the collection La Pensie Chritienne^ the 

other in the collection Les Saints ; his Passionaire OccidentaU 

au VIL SiicUt have already placed him in the front rank 

among Catholic Church historians. 

The volume before us is the fourth of the first part of a 
large work, to be completed in eight volumes, having for gen* 
eral title VAvinir du Christianisme. It is the third edition, 
entirely rewritten and much enlarged, of a work which was 
originally published some five years ago, and which immediately 
attracted the attention of scholars and apologists. In the pre- 
vious volumes in this series the author has given a compara- 
tive history of the pagan religions and Judaism down to the 
age of Alexander the Great, and also the history of the founda- 
tion of the Church and its progress down to the third century. 
The fourth and fifth volumes bring the history down to the 
eleventh century. 

The volume at hand, the fourth of the series, deals espe- 
cially with the relations between Christianity and the Empire. 
It is divided into three long chapters of about equal length. 

^ WUh Christ inPalisHm. By A. T. Schofield. M.D. New York: R. F. Fenno Com- 
pany. 

^VAvenir du Christianisme, Par Albert Dufourcq. Premiere partie: Li Passg 
Cht/tiiM. Vol. IV. ffistoiri de r^iUsi du III,e au XU SiicU. Paris : Ubtairie Bloud et 
Cie. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] NEW BOOKS 1 1 7 

In the first the author discusses the relations between the 
Church and the Empire in the Mediterranean countries, tbe 
cruel persecutions under Septimius Severus, Valerean, and 
Deciusy the Church in North Africa, the ''Peace of tbe 
Church *' in the fourth century under Constantine and bis 
successors, and the development of the constitution and inner 
life of the Church. The second chapter deals with tbe devel- 
opment of Christian dogma, the various theological and ex- 
egetical schools, and tbe great Christian writers of the period. 
In the third chapter the author discusses the relations between 
the Church and the Byzantine Empire, that dismal tale of 
jealousies, intrigues, quarrels, and treaties* which finally ended 
in open rupture and the sundering of Eastern and Western 
Christianity. 

What impresses every reader of Dr. Dufourcq*s work is the 
astounding erudition displayed not merely in the body of the 
work, but in the array of critical notes and bibliographical 
references. His grasp of the data is masterful, and his criti- 
cism unprejudiced and serene. There is a sanity and a sure- 
ness about his historical inferences that gives confidence in 
the justness of his conclusions. The conclusions themselves 
are in harmony with the positions of Catholic orthodoxy. 

M. Alfred Roussel is professor of 
ORIENTAL RELIGIONS. Sanskrit in the Catholic University 

of Fribourg, Switzerland. Dur- 
ing the past two years he has lectured on the Vedic religion 
at his own University, and also at the Catholic Institute in 
Paris. These lectures are now given to the public in book 
form. The work* is not one of research, but rather aims to 
present the general results of study in this field for tbe bene- 
fit of those who are unfamiliar with them. M. Roussel de- 
pends largely on the work of Oldenberg, as indeed do most 
writers on this and kindred topics. His main aim is to give a 
clear exposition of the religion, though at times be pauses to 
compare or contrast it with Christian beliefs. There is a de- 
mand at present for works such as this on account of the rise 
of the study of Comparative Religions, a science which gives 
promise of holding the central place in theological studies 
during the coming generation. 

* RiligUm Oriintalis: La Riliiion Vidique, Par Alfred Roussel. Paris : Pierre T^uL 



Digitized by 



Google 



Il8 NEW BOOKS [April. 

In Honor of the Holy Eucharist, by Abb6 Carr6 {Pour 
V EucharistU. Par TAbb^ A. Carr^. Paris : Gabriel Beaucbesne 
et Cie.) is a small, unpretentious volume, but eloquent of deep, 
simple piety. Here and there we recognize the touch of the 
poet inspired by his wondrous theme. It suggests many 
thoughts and reflections useful for meditations. 

This History of St. Francis Borgia {Histoire do Saint Fran* 
pois do Borgia. Par Pierre Suau, S J. Paris t Gabriel Beauchesne 
et Cie.) is the result of researches extending over many years 
through precious, unedited works. St. Francis Boi^ia, be- 
cause of his very name and family, his intimacy with Charles 
Fifth, his life as courtier and statesman, the tragic events in 
which he participated, his unquestionable sanctity and zeal^ 
captivates attention. The rich resources at the command of 
the author has enabled him to reconstruct this intensely in- 
teresting life and paint it in most striking colors. The book 
ranks among the best works of hagiology. 

The Book of the Little Ones {Le Pain des Petits^ Explication 
Dialoguie du Catichism. 2 volumes. Par TAbb^ E. Duplessy. 
Paris : P. T^qui) is an illustrated development of the Catechism, 
presented, as the title indicates, in the novel form of dialogue 
and dedicated to the lady catechists of France. Written to 
interest children in the serious truths of religion, it is worthy 
of special recommendation to teachers, to whom it cannot fail 
to suggest useful and attractive methods of instruction. Its 
first volume treats of the Apostles* Creed, and the second of 
the Commandments, and in both the comparisons, etymologies, 
and anecdotes seem well calculated to dilute agreeably for 
young minds the strong food of doctrine, thus fulfilling its 
happy mission of breaking bread to little ones. 

A small volume, entitled Some Features of the Moral Phy* 
siognomy of Jesus, by Maurice Meschler, S.J. (Paris : G. Beau- 
chesne et Cie.) treats of our Lord's ascetic teachings. His 
pedagogy. His relations with men in general, and His preach- 
ing from a didactic and oratorical point of view. 



Digitized by 



Google 



jf oteidn Ipetiobicals. 

The Tablet (12 Feb.): ''The Archbishop of Canterbury Ex- 
plains " the position of the Established Church in the face 
of the recent judicial decisions in regard to marriages 
with a deceased wife's sisten^— *' A Catholic Congress.'* 
Under the Presidency of the Archbishop of Westminster 
a permanent committee has been formed to arrange for 
a National Catholic Congress. According to present 
indications it will be held, this year, in Leeds.— —''A 
Programme for Spanish Catholics." Cardinal Aquirre's 
programme of Catholic federation and action for the 
Catholics of Spain.-^^From our Roman Correspondent: 
It is rumored that Cardinal Gasparri will be nominated 
to succeed the late Cardinal Satolli as Prefect of the 
Congregation of Studies. It is probable that the Con- 
sistory will be held in March and that a considerable 
number of Cardinals will be created in it. 
(19 Feb.): Editorial on "Mr. Asquith's Position" and 
the classic precedent for dealing with the Lords by the 
creation of new Peers.— "A Way Round to Monop- 
oly" shows that M. Briand is losing no time in making 
good his threats against private schools in France.—— 
''Was Old England Roman Catholic?" treats of the 
correspondence between Mr. Denton Cheney and the 
Anglican Bishop of Bristol.— '' Consecration of West- 
minster Cathedral." Elaborate ceremonies arranged for 
this function in June next.— -The Roman Corres- 
pondent notes a permanent report of the work done by 
the Holy Father in the Calabrian earthquake.— »-" Mys- 
tery, Miracle, and Morality Plays." A lecture by Mr. 
Bertram Puckle on those three types of dramatic repre- 
sentations.-'' Catholics and a Reformed House of 
Lords." A reprint from The Observer discussing the ad- 
visability of allowing Churchmen of every creed to hold 
seats in the House of Lords. 

(36 Feb.): "Is there a Crisis?" Editorial on the Po- 
litical questions of England. " Catholics and Admin- 
istrative Pressure." The necessity of a continual struggle 
for the protection of the Catholic schools.— —" In- 
cense." An article by Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J., in 



Digitized by 



Google 



I30 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April, 

reference to the dispute on the use of incense in the 

worship of the Church of England. ^'The Salcsians 

and their Superior." The Roman Correspondent gives 
a report of the demonstration in memory of Giordano 
Bruno and also an account of the lecture of Abbot Gas- 

quet, on the '• Revision of the Bible/' ^The *' Catholic 

Union of Great Britain " is an account of the first half- 
yearly meeting of the Union and a statement of its 
views in regard to the Catholic Congress to be held 
later in the year. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (Feb.): "The Rights and Priv- 
ileges of Inferior Prelates," by the Rev. Patrick Mor- 

riscoe. The Editor continues his discussion of ** May- 

nooth in the British Parliament." In recent times the 
leading statesmen have adopted a different attitude 
towards the college, as was shown by the opposition 
which Maynooth interests encountered in the debates 

on Mr. BirreU's "University Bill." Under "Parlia- 

mentary Ecclesiastical Legislation," Sir Henry Belling- 
ham, Bart., points out the extent to which present-day 
Anglican church-builders have departed from the ordin- 
ances of the Reformers concerning the architecture and 

decoration of churches. '* The Philosophy of Energy," 

a reply to Dr. McDonald, by Rev. P. Coffey. In 

" Nationality and Religion," R. Barry O'Brien shows 
what a potent factor the " sentiment of nationality " was 
in deciding the outcome of the English Reformation. 
—«" Catholic Ideals in Education," an address delivered 
before the Catholic students of the Queens University, 
Belfast, by Rev. James P. Glenaghan. 

Le Correspondant (lo Feb.): ''Neutrality in the School." i. 
''The Text-Books," by Mgn Mignot, who claims that 
"the books given to children of from 8 to I3 years of 
age are catechisms of naturalism and agnosticism." "We 
do not demand the suppression of the public schools, 
. . . but what we do demand is that God be not 
treated as a negligible quantity and th^t our dogmas be 
respected." 2. E. Lecanuet ascribes "The Origin of 
Neutrality in the School," to the acquisition of power 

by the Republican Party in 1877. "The Memoirs 

of General Bertrand," by Eugene de Bude.-^— "The 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 121 

Associations and Societies of Country People in Paris/' 
by Comte Darn, deals with the important charitable or- 
ganizations among the million and a half provincials 

in Paris. "Frederick Chopin and His Work," by 

M. D. Calvocoressi. 

(25 Feb.): Ren^ Vallery-Radot gives an account of the 

youth of the Duke of Numale. In an article entitled 

"A Plot Against F^nelon," Henri Bremond maintains 
that one of the Bishop's greatest foes was the convent 
of Port Royal.^— The various benefits granted by Lis 
Association et Sociitis de Provinciaux h Patis^ by way 
of insurance and sick and accident benefits, are described 

by the Count Daru. ^Firmin Roz endeavors to follow 

the progress of American literature, to determine its 
exact relation with the national life, to point out its 
sources, and the exact period to which the various 

authors belong. An anonymous correspondent writes 

on French Military Aeronautics. 

£tudis (5 Feb.): Apropos of the recent Congress of Arcbae- 
ology, Jules Faiore indicates the work that was done, 
sums up the conclusions that were reached, and enu- 
merates the benefits that resulted.-^^M. d'Aspremont 
describes the Christian social movement in Switzerland, 
and in particular the workings of the Volksvenin, which 
is the centre of all social activity from a Catholic stand- 
point " A Baptism at Lyons in 1654," by Theodore 

Malley. 

(20 Feb.): Raoul Plus describes how St. Francis de 
Sales directed the beautiful but austere soul of Ang^- 
: lique Arnauld.— Andrd Bremond contributes a number 
of antique epigrams,^— Recently a few writers have 
been attacking Loriquet, the Jesuit historian of France. 
In this issue Pierre Bliard joins issue with them.— —The 
Christian social organizatian of Switzerland is described 
by M. d'Aspremont. 

La Rivue du Monde (15 Feb.): In an appendix to bis ^'Con- 
ferences" on the French clergy, M. Sicard deals with 
the clergy of the second order. The French clergy, 
he declares, are second to none in zeal, yet, as educa* 
tors and instructors, there is a lack of knowledge re- 
sulting from the absence of stimulus in clerical studies. 



Digitized by 



Google 



121 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Afuil, 

''Catholic Liberalism/' says R. P. At, was begotten 

of the fusion of Catholicism and Liberalism. He defines 
it as the art of being heretical, while at the same time 
enjoying all the merit and glory of orthodoxy. 
(22 Feb.) : '' A small Corner of Holland/' by Yves d'Au- 
bi^res.-^— "Around the World," political and literary 
essays, by Arthur Savaite.— — '^ The Feminist Move- 
ment" in Court, by Juste Niemand.—— Acquitting 
MM. Joran and Sava^te of all the minor charges, the 
court warned them to " be careful, that in the book in- 
criminated, there appear naught to justify the charge 
of immorality.'' 

Revue du Clergi Frangais (i Feb.): H. Les^tre closes his dis- 
cussion of the " Biblical Commission."-^S. CI. Fillion 
continues his history of ''The Stages of Rationalism in 
Its Attacks Against tl\e Gospels and the Life of Jesus 
Christ," and treats of the "Eclectic" school, embracing 
nearly all modern rationalistic biblical scfaolarf.— »-E. 
Bourgine discusses the question: "Has the Catholic 
Religion any Influence Regarding Suicide ? "-^ A. 
Boudinhon writes of " The Recent Acts of the Holy 
See/'— *J. Aicard sketches briefly the life and works 
of Fran9ois Copp^e. 

(15 Fek): A. Villien, continuing his history of "The 
Discipline of the Sacraments," concludes his account of 

the cerempnies of baptism. J. Riviere brings to a 

close his essay on the theological principles of St. 
Augustine " Concerning the Harmony of the Evangel- 
ists." In the "Chronicle of the Theological Move- 
ment in France" F. Dubois reviews the following: "A 
Commentary on St. Thomas' Summa Theologica** hy R. 
P. Thomas Pegu^s, OP.; "Duns Scotus and the Catholic 
Law of Thought at the University of Paris/' by R. P. 
Deodat-Marie de Basly; "The Adoptive Maternity of 

the Most Holy Virgin," by Augustin Sargent. A. 

Giraud begins a "Chronicle of the Greco- Slavic 
Churches." He gives particular attention to the churches 
of Constantinople and Russia. 

Revue Pratique a^ Apohgitique (i Feb.): J. Guibert, in an arti- 
cle entitled " Purity^Is It Useful ? " shows that impur- 
ity is inimical alike to the physical, intellectual, and moral 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 10.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 1^3 

well-being of the individual himself and to society in 
general.— **^ The Right of Parents and Some Historical 
Objections/' by N. Prunel. 

(15 Feb.): ''The Educative Value of the Religious Sen- 
timent/' by Ph. Ponsard.— The war upon the religious 
idea in education is declared to be unjust, not alone from 
the moralist's standpoint, but also in view of the scien- 
tific conclusions of leading psychologists. 

Annates de Phihsophu Chritienne (Feb.) Continuation of ''The 

'Social Week' of Bordeaux/' by Testis. H. Bremond 

this month considers "The Duplicity of F^nelon." M. 
Tronson had called F^nelon's letters to Bossuet and his 
subsequent action by the suggestive phrase "sinc^rit^s 
successives/' and M. Bremond endeavors to answer this 

and other charges of duplicity. M. Cav6ne, author of 

The Cilebrated Miracle of Su Januarius at Naples, objects 
to the spirit of raillery in which M. J. B. reviewed the 
book in a previous issue. 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques et La Science Catholique 
(Feb.): "The Divine Inspiration of the Book of Job/' 
by Canon Chauvin. The writer endeavors to explain 
some of the difficulties connected with the divine inspi- 
ration of the said book, especially the passages of the 
three friends, and cites numerous quotations from au- 
thoritative authors, pro and ^^i».^— "The Laws of Na- 
ture," by Canon Gombault. "God, Evil, and Man," 

by Rev. le Guichasua, treats of the supreme goodness 
of God in promising a Redeemer; of the evil of dis- 
obedience and the punishment to follow.-^^"The Rela- 
tions Between the Church and State," by Rev. J. B. 
Verdier.——" Studies on Sacred Botany," by Rev. E. 

NoflFray. " The Struggle for Existence," by Rev. Paul 

Michel, describes the struggle for existence and how 
Divine Providence has endowed all animals with certain 
powers for defence. 

Rivm Thomiste (Jan.-Feb.): R. P. Pcrret, writing on the 
"Authority of the Church and Liberty of Exegesis," 
distinguishes between the historical and integral senses 
of Holy Scripture. By historical is meant that sense 
yielded by the natural and obvious meaning of the 
terms; and by integral, the sense intended by God and 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 34 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April, 

hidden under the form of the letter— —H. Egerton, an 
Anglican, discusses ''The Religious and Philosophic 
Movement of the High Church/' Its starting point was 
Romanticism, which created a new religious conscious- 
ness and placed religious thought on a new basis; its 
work and development are, as yet, incomplete.—'' The 
Mystery of Redemption,*' the second of a series of 
papers, by R. P. Hugon, undertakes to prove that the 
theory of vicarious satisfaction is supported by Scripture, 
and proper to historical Christianity ; the modern theories 
of French and German liberal theologians rest on un- 
warranted presumptions. R. P. Mandonnet continues 

his examination of the Authentic Writings of St Thomas. 
Six works, classified in the older catalogues with the 
writings of St. Thomas, but omitted from the official 
catalogue, are shown to have a strong claim to authen* 
ticity. 

La Civilta Cattolica (March) '' Halley's Comet and Pope Calix- 
tus III.,'' reviews a work by Father Stein, S.J., wherein 
it is claimed that the bull of June 29, 1546, ordering 
prayers for the success of the Crusade, is the only foun- 
dation for the assertion that prayers were commanded 
because an approaching comet signified disaster. There 
is no mention of a comet in this bull. ''The Propa- 
gation of Modernism in Italy," draws attention to the 
various forms of modernistic literature which are being 
widely disseminated throughout the cities of Italy, and 
sounds a note of warning.— —" Father Joseph Marchi, 
S.J." This article briefly sketches the life and works of 
one who has been called the "Father of Christian 
Archaeology."— —" The Expiatory Sacrifice According 

to Theosophy," is continued. Under the direction of 

the learned Father A. d'AIes, of the Catholic Institute 
of Paris, the first edition of the Dictionnaire ApologiHque 
da la Foi Catholique has been completed. This is very 
similar in its scope to our American Catholic Encyclopedia. 

La Scuola Cattolica (Feb.) : " The Holy House of Loretto." 
A. Mont^ endeavors to disprove Chevalier's statement 
"that the Blessed Virgin's house in Nazareth had been 
destroyed before the period (1291) assigned to its first 
translation."-^— G. Poletto asks and answers the ques- 



Digitized by 



Google 



X9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 12$ 

tion '^ Why Dante is Cosmopolitan ? *'— — An historical 
and critical study of *' The Moral System of St Alpfaon- 
8U8 de Liqaori'' is given by S. Mondino. He treats of 
the origin and derelopment of Probabilism before St 

Alphonsas* time by way of introduction. C. Gaffuri 

writes on the ''New Discoveries Concerning Primitive 
Man." These discoveries are further proofs ''that the 
most ancient inhabitants of western Europe were real 
men and not representatives of a form intermediate be- 
tween the animal and actual man." Father Gigot's 

book, Outlines of Niw Testament History^ has been trans- 
lated into Italian under the title Compendia di Stotia del 
Nuovo Testamento. It is reviewed in this number. 
EspaOa y Amirica (i Feb.): P« M. Est^banez concludes his 
" Political Crisis in England," with further reflections on 
the socialistic and revolutionary features of Lloyd- 
George's budget— "Last Year's Biological Progress" 
in the study of heredity and the protozoa, with a de- 
scription of the Darwin and Lamarck celebrations, by 
P. A. J. Barreiro. "A Chapter in Historical Criti- 
cism," by P. P. Rodriguez, deals mainly with the Council 
of Elvira A. D. 300 and its canons.^— M. de Sabuz 
contributes a "Description of the Province and City of 

Mompds," beginning! with its physical geography. 

"Theological Modernism and Traditional Theology," by 
P. S. Garcia, gives the Catholic doctrine and defence of 

the Holy Eucharist "Expedition of Jimenez de 

Quesada to El Dorado," in 1537, by P. M. Rodrfguez 
H., is concluded. 

(15 Feb.) : P. B. Martfnez, continuing his articles on 
"Race-Suicide," attributes the low birth-rate in most 
French provinces to godless education.^—" The Modern 
Biblical Critic," by Anacleto Oreg6n, discusses the work- 
ing principles of advanced scriptural students.— »-" The 
Botanical Expedition of Mutes," to Granada, is described 
by P. L. M. Unamuno. P. Aurelio Martinez con- 
siders Balmes' statement, in his "Letters to a Skeptic," 
that one is not bound to believe anything definite re- 
garding hell, except its eternity. 



Digitized by 



Google 



(Current Events. 

The ordeal to which France has been 
France. subjected by the long-continoed 

floods, due to the oft* repeated 
rises of the Seine and its tributaries, as well to the overflow 
of the rivers in other parts, has had the good effect of elicit- 
ing sympathy and substantial help from all parts of the world, 
and of showing that suffering is one of the touches of nature 
which makes all the world kin. The measures of relief taken 
by the government, with the co-operation of the banks, mani- 
fest also the existence of a generous willingness to come to 
the relief of the numerous sufferers, not too often shown by 
those engaged in business. The Chamber of Deputies on the 
demand of the government voted some millions of francs for 
the relief of the most urgent necessities. The Minister of 
Finance has prepared a credit scheme for the reconstruction 
of damaged buildings and the reclamation of cultivated land. 
This scheme proposes the grant of loans free of interest, re- 
payable within five years, to storekeepers and tradesmen. 
Small farmers and proprietors are to share in the benefits. The 
Bank of France and other banks are being called upon to co- 
operate in raising no less a sum than eighty millions of francs 
free of interest, and the readiness with which they have re- 
sponded in a profitless undertaking furnishes good evidence of 
their desire to benefit the public. The sanitary measures taken 
to avoid epidemics of disease have been so successful that 
Paris is said to be more healthy than it was before the floods 
took place. The services rendered by the troops in the relief 
of suffering called forth a special order of thanks. A National 
Commission has been appointed to inquire into the causes of 
the floods, and to consider ways and means for the prevention 
of similar disasters, and for the mitigation of their effects. At 
the head of this Commission has been placed the eminent en- 
gineert 1^« Alfred Picard, the former Minister of Marine. 

Yet another project has been presented to the Chamber for 
the reorganization of the Navy. Twenty-eight battleships are 
to be built, with cruisers, destroyers, and other vessels to cor- 
respond. Adequate supplies are to be provided and no cor- 
ruption allowed. The work is to be completed by 1919. The 
^lan is considered moderate in its scope and is, in fact, more 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



igia] Current Events 127 

moderate than its immediate predecessor. The necessity of 
carrying it out is recognized if France is to continue to be 
numbered among naval powers. 

One of the two Bills announced by the government for 
the readjustment of education has been introduced into the 
Chamber. It deals with primary instruction in private schools. 
It gives the power to State school inspectors to demand copies 
of all text-books, reading-books, and prize-books used in pri* 
vate schools; and to the Minister of Education the power to 
prohibit their use. A headmaster of a private school must in 
future have a State certificate of fitness, an 
authorized to open such a school he must 
statement of his career since the age of twe 
he is not a member of a religious order, furni 
of the subjects proposed to teach, his class oi 
of his staff, and an account of their careers. 
State control is made more stringent. Such 
is understood in France. 

Two recent events should make the French 
tate before passing measures tending to weal 
of religious influences. The decline of the b 
come so serious that the customary quotas for 
of the strength of the army are not being 
present rate of decline continues for twenty y( 
military forces of the country will be dimini 
35, GOO. In consequence of this it is propos 
black troops for the Frenchmen now serving in 
of the Germans have given expression to th 
tion to being confronted by black battalion 
pressed their determination not to tolerate 
The Reporter of the Budget Committee hast 
any intention of bringing negroes for service 

The frauds of M. Duez form the second il 
result of suppressing the influence of religioo 
to be wondered at that the State which has i 
of wholesale robbery should in its turn be th< 
lar misconduct. M. Duez was one of the prii 
of the property of the suppressed religious < 
long time has been suspected of dishonesty, 
quiry by various devices, but in the end has 
to confess to a long series of defalcations, 
volved is at least two millions of dollars an( 

Digitized by LjOOQ l6 



128 Current Events [April, 

A Committee of Investigation has been formed, at the head of 
which is M. Combes. 

After several years of incubation the Old-Age Pensions Bill 
has at last been passed by the Senate, and it may now with 
some degree of confidence be expected to become law before 
the General Election. It will affect some seventeen millions 
of Frenchmen and women. All wage- earners, with the excep- 
tion of railway servants, minors, and some of the seafaring 
population, come under the Bill, as well as the more needy 
small landowners, tenant-farmers, and farm laborers. Obliga- 
tory contributions are required on the part of each beneficiary. 
The State also contributes a portion, as well as the employer. 
As a rule contributions must have been made for thirty years, 
and the lowest age at which the pension begins is 65. The 
amount of the annual pension will, under the most favorable 
circumstances, be about eighty dollars a year. With the frugal 
habits of the French this will not be a despicable sum. Quite 
a novel principle has been adopted in the Chamber in raising 
the money for paying these pensions. The funds raised by 
the taxation of the rich as an inheritance tax is to be specially 
devoted for the payment of the pensions of the poor. 

The foreign relations of France remain unchanged. Ger- 
many has given good proof of her fidelity in the observance 
of the Morocco agreement; for Mulai Hafid has at last ac- 
cepted the terms of settlement demanded by France, a thing 
he would not have done could he have found support else- 
where. A loan is to be issued for the payment of creditors, 
and for compensation for injuries done to foreigners. 

''Take ten men and shut the 
Oermany* Reichstag,'' a Conservative mem- 

ber of that body, Herr von Olden- 
burg, declared to be the right if not the duty of the King of 
Prussia and German Emperor. This utterance naturally ex- 
cited a great commotion, the more so as it was received with 
applause from the Conservative benches and as the speaker is 
a highly respected member of the Conservative party, more 
honest perhaps than the rest, as he is said to be in the habit 
of blurting out things which others keep to themselves. How 
many others are keeping to themselves the sentiment thus 
openly expressed we are, from the nature of the case, unable 
to say. That Herr von Oldenburg was not called to order for 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9IO.] Current Events 129 

this public slight in the Reichstag, or requested to withdraw 
from the house by the presiding ofGcer, showed that the latter 
was not altogether out of sympathy with the speaker. It is not 
generally believed, however, that it is the intention of the 
Enperor to carry out the speaker's wish. The spokesman of 
the Catholic party expressed his party's strong condemnation. 

The attitude of the Emperor towards the possession of 
real power by the country as a whole is better seen in the 
proposals for the reform of the Prussian Franchise laid befoie 
the Diet by the Chancellor. As at present constituted the 
house represents almost exclusivefy the propertied classes. 
The suffrage is almost fantastic — a studied effort not to do 
what it professes to do. Efforts have been made for many 
years to effect a change, and some time ago a promise was 
made by the government that it would bring in a bill for the 
purpose. The bill has at last been brought in, and has proved 
a great disappointment to the advocates of a real representa* 
tion of the people. The plutocratic character of the existing 
franchise is indeed somewhat modified, education, professional 
experience, meritorious activity in public life have been recog- 
nized to possess a claim to exert political influence, but the 
worst features of the old way have been retained — the three- 
class system and open voting. To go into further details the 
space at our disposal does not permit, although it would be 
interesting to see how loathe are those who vouchsafe to rule 
the Germans to place their confidence in the Getman people. 

The bill was introduced into the Diet by the Chancellor in 
a speech which has been criticized almost as severely as the 
Bill itself. Germany was declared to be a century behind 
England in political education and culture. Prussia was the 
leading state of Germany, and must remain strong. It would 
become weak and a source of weakness if power were taken 
out of the hands of the Conservatives and given to the people 
at large. Austria is not generally considered to be the home 
of democratic ideas, but the speech of Herr von Bethmann 
HoUweg met with severe condemnation in the press of that 
city. The views of the Chancellor were declared to be obso- 
lete in point of time, fallacious as arguments, and infelicitous 
if not dangerous as contributions to current political thought. 

The place claimed by the Chancellor for Prussia in the Ger- 
man Empire as the predominant and formative power is re- 
VOL. xci.— 9 



Digitized by 



Google 



I30 Current Events [April, 

seated by the other States and is considered as an evidence of 
a strong particularist tendency on the part of Prussian states* 
men, and as the indication of the existence of an atmosphere in 
influential Prussian quarters that bodes no good to the German 
Empire. The bill has been referred to a Committee, which has 
made several changes. In what form it will pass is uncertain. 
Dissatisfaction has been expressed by meetings in various 
parts of ^the kingdom, and at some of these meetings blood 
has been shed. A *' franchise walk '' was arranged in Berlin, 
meetings having been prohibited, in which a vast multitude 
took part, and which was as well ordered as any military dis^ 
play could have been. According to the Kreuz Zeiiung it has 
opened the eyes of all who love peace and order to the capa- 
bilities of a strong army trained in revolution by its masters. 
''The Socialist commanders have only to give a signal and 
the masses form up under their company leaders, asking neither 
whither they are to go nor why, but obeying silently.'' All 
the elections which have taken place of late show an increase 
of the Socialist vote. 

The loans which are now raised annually have already been 
issued and on somewhat more rigorous conditions. For the 
Empire and for Prussia they amount to about one hundred and 
twenty millions of dollars. The foreign relations, so far as can 
be seen, remain unchanged. The visit of Count Aehrenthal 
is looked upon as a solemn reaffirmation of the close friendship 
of Germany and Austria- Hungry. Benevolent interest is felt, 
so it is said, in the attempt now being made to bring about 
good relations between the Dual Monarchy and Russia. A 
good sign of the better spirit which now animates the German 
foreign office is the disapproval felt by the Pan* Germans. The 
managing Committee of [this League declares that serious 
anxiety is felt by the greater part of the press, and by the 
majority of the citizens of the Empire about its foreign policy. 
German interests it is declared are being neglected. 

The long- promised Constitution for 
Austria-Hungary . the annexed provinces, Bosnia and 

Herzegovina, has at length been 
promulgated, but, as it is necessary that it should be ratified 
by the Hungarian Parliament, and affairs in Hungary are still 
in their wonted state of suspended animation, when it will come 
into force is not clear. The Constitution seems somewhat com* 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Current Events 131 

plicated on account of the variegated nationalities of the in- 
habitants. The statutes, however, on the whole are conceived 
in a liberal spirit. The main provisions of the Austrian Con* 
stitution are to be extended to the annexed province with re- 
gard to equality before the law, freedom of personal movement, 
the protection of individual liberty, the independence of judges, 
freedom of conscience, autonomy of recognized religious com- 
munities, the right of free expression of opinion, the abolition 
of preventive censorship, the freedom of scientific investigation, 
secrecy of postal and telegraphic communications, and the rights 
of association and public meeting. The Diet is to consist of 
72 elected and 20 ex-cfficio members, 15 of the latter being 
dignitaries of the Mussulman, Serb, Orthodox, and Catholic 
Croat religious communities. The 72 elective seats are allotted 
according to religious denomination, the Serbs receiving 31, the 
Mussulmans 24, and the Catholic Croats 16. One seat is re- 
served for a representative of the Jews. The seats are divided 
into categories; and here complications set in. The fran- 
chise is universal on certain conditions being fulfilled, and, 
in the first category, women possess the franchise, but must 
exercise it by male deputy. From the legislative competence 
of the Diet all joint Austro- Hungarian affairs, and questions 
appertaining to the armed forces and the Customs arrangements 
are excluded. In all other matters the Diet has a free hand. 
But, and this is a far-reaching restriction, government matters 
submitted to the Diet 'require the previous sanction of the 
Austrian and Hungarian Cabinets. The assent of the two Cab- 
inets is also necessary before Bills passed by the Diet can re- 
ceive the sanction of the Crown. 

By the death of Dr. Lueger Austria has lost one of its 
great men and a powerful instrument in the formation of 
opinion and the management of politics. Next to the Emperor 
he was the most popular man in Austria. Since 1897 he has 
been Burgomaster, and was the founder, in 1882, of a party of 
which the programme was in his words: ''War against inter- 
national capitalism as organized by the Jews, to whom it gives 
incomparable power over the people; and, in communal af- 
fairs, the abolition of the cumulative offices which permit in- 
dividuals to manage public business for their private advan- 
tage.'' Under the name of the Christian Socialist party this 
association wielded a great and a purifying influence in Vienna 
and throughout the country. 



Digitized by 



Google 



132 Current Events [Aprils 

Attempts are being made in Hungary to inaugurate a new, 
and it is to be hoped, a better era in political affairs. An in^ 
fluential appeal has been issued calling upon all who have the 
Country's good at heart to unite together in order to restore 
the harmony between the King and the nation which has 
been lost under the Coalition rigime^ a policy of productive 
work and practical aims are declared to be the immediate ne- 
cessities of the country, which is therefore called ''The National 
Party of Work/' Count Stephen Tisza, who retired some little 
time ago from active political life, has come forward in sup- 
port of the new movement and of the government of Count 
Khuen Hedervary. It will be supported, too, by many mem- 
bers of the party once lead by Count Julius Andrassy. Hence 
there is a prospect of good results. Baron Ranch, the would- 
be absolute Ban, who has caused so much trouble in Croatia, 
has been^ superseded. Count Aehrentbal still retains office as 
Foreign Minister, but his errors of calculation are being wide- 
ly criticized. The negotiations with Russia seem to be near 
completion. 

On the surface Russia seems to 
Russia. be getting into a state of stable 

equilibrium. The extreme forces 
on either side are, doubtless, working behind the scenes for 
their own ends; but for the time being they make no sign of 
disturbing the tranquillity of the public. For the first time for 
twenty-two years the Budget shows no deficit, and for the very 
first time all the estimates have been laid before the Duma for 
general debate. The principle of parliamentary control of the 
Empire's finance has received this degree of recognition: although 
its power to pass measures into law is too frequently thwarted 
by the Upper House or by the Council of State. 

The visit of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who in Russia is 
styled the Tsar of the Bulgars, might give rise to the suspi- 
cion that the government was contemplating action in the Bal- 
kans, on behalf of the Slavs, were it not for the negotiations 
which for some time have been going on with Austria- Hun- 
gary, with a view to the removing of the misunderstandings 
which have arisen; and for the formulation of a common pol- 
icy on the part of the two Empires. These negotiations seem 
to be on the point of coming to a conclusion, and it is ex- 
pected that, as we have said before, the maintenance of the 
resent arrangements will be secured. Peace, nothing but 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Current Events 133 

peace, is on the lips of all the potentates, statesmen, and politi- 
cians of Europe ; what is in their hearts is not so well known. 
The measures which they promote, the ever* increasing arma* 
ments, make it hard to believe that the utterance of the lips 
manifest the purposes of the heart. 

A deputation of the French Parliament has also been pay- 
ing a visit to Russia, in order especially to show its sympathy 
with the Russian Parliament By the Tsar it was received 
with the utmost cordiality. The address he made to the mem- 
bers of the deputation produced a profound impression, and 
is looked upon as a spontaneous recognition of the relation- 
ship between the representative institutions of the two coun- 
tries, and of his determination to support the parliamentary 
figinu in his own country, in which it still has many enemies 
and would-be destroyers. This conduct of his Majesty either 
Springs from or accounts for the measure of popularity which 
he now enjoys. For years past his every step had to be 
guarded; now he is able to drive about for hours in St. Peters- 
burg without an escort. Strange to say, the French visitors 
were not welcomed by all the parties of the J?uma, the Ex- 
treme Right and the Extreme Left were united in resolving 
to take no part in the reception. But by the general sense 
of the Russian public, the visit is looked upon as a new ra- 
tification of the Franco-Russian alliance. 

The Duma, like all the Parliaments of the continent of Eu- 
rope, is made up of a multiplicity of parties, or rather groups. 
To counteract this tendency, which conduces to weakness and 
inefficiency, three of these groups, the Extreme Right, Moderate 
Right, and Nationalist, have formed a coalition to be called 
the Pan- Russian Union. It comprises more than a third of 
the Duma, and will in all likelihood be able to control legisla- 
tion. The object of this coalition is not quite plain, and what 
will be its result is still less clear. It may supersede the 
Octobrists as a ministerial party, the latter not having proved 
themselves of late so reliable as the government wished. Fears 
are expressed that it may be used to promote a return to the 
old order. 

The necessity of having recourse 

Greece. to the military in order to effect 

reforms in both Turkey and Greece 

shows to how low a depth these two states bad fallen, the 

former under the rule of an absolute despot, the latter under 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 54 Current Events [April, 

the almost uncontrolled power of the people. For Greece is 
in the enjoyment of a Constitution, with a King who has 
scrupulously acted according to its provisions ; and as there is 
no Second Chamber to revise the decisions of the house elected 
directly by the people, no restrictions have been placed upon 
its will except those of the Constitution, itself the creation 
of the people. And yet the result has been that in face of 
the great opportunity offered by the recent crisis in Turkey, 
Greece has found itself reduced to such impotence as to be 
utterly unable to take advantage of it, and has had moreover, 
to take with meekness the affronts offered to it by the Turk- 
ish government 

The annexation of Crete has been a matter of more or less 
acute agitation ever since the independence of Greece was 
effected. Its inhabitants are all Greeks, even the Mussulmans, 
for these represent the Christians who abandoned the faith on 
the conquest of the island. Under the present arrangements 
Greece is practically independent of Turkey, the only sign of 
the Sultan's sovereignty being one solitary flag hoisted at 
Canea. It is under the protection of Great Britain, Russia, 
France, and Italy; its highest ruler is a commissioner nom- 
inated by the King of Greece; it has its own Assembly, 
with the power of making laws. If independence would 
satisfy, the Cretans ought to be satisfied; independence, 
however, is not their supreme desire, but union with Greece. 
This union they declared on the 8th of October, 1908, on the 
occasion of the annexation of the provinces of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina and of Bulgaria's declaration of independence, 
and ever since the laws have been made and the country ad- 
ministered in the name of the King of Greece. The Powers 
protecting Crete refused, however, to recognize the annexation. 
This they did out of sympathy with the Young Turks; but it 
is generally believed that a promise was given both to the 
King of Greece and to the Cretans that, in a short time, the 
annexation would be recognized. In making this promise, 
however, the Powers reckoned without the Young Turks. By 
no means would they listen to any such recognition. It was 
contrary to the whole spirit of their movement. Their aims 
were the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman domin- 
ions. In fact, some of the more enthusiastic declare that it is 
the aim of the new order to regain parts of the Empire which 
*"^^e been lost — Egypt, Tunis, even Algeria. In view of the 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



i9ia] Current Events 135 

. resolute attitude taken by Turkey, its government, and its 
people, and with the object of averting the war against Greece 
which Turkey was anxious to declare, the Powers have not 
only not fulfilled their promise of recognizing the annexation, 
but have intimated to the Cretans that should they do as they 
have threatened, and elect members to the Greek Assembly, 
strong measures will be taken: that is to say, the reoccupa- 
tion of the island. 

Ft is not surprising, in view of these events, in view of the 
successful declaration of independence made by their hated 
rivals the Bulgarians, and especially in view of their own in* 
ability to accept the proffered union with Crete, that the 
Greeks should have asked themselves whether there was a 
remedy for their impotence, how it had arisen, and how it 
was to be cured. Politicians and party leaders could not find 
any means of salvation. In fact, it was they that were the 
cause of the disease. It is not said that they were grossly 
corrupt in the way in which we are acquainted with corrup- 
tion. But they are in the unfortunate position of being some- 
what small men who look upon themselves as the heirs of a 
great name. Alexander was a Greek, the Byzantine Empire 
was Greek; modern Greeks must, therefore, emulate their 
predecessors and recover the position and place in the world 
held by them. This fantastic ideal has prevented them from 
attaining decent efficiency in the sphere allotted to them and 
rendered it necessary for them to submit to the insults of the 
weakest power in Europe. The call to reform was serious and 
has made the politicians for the past six months submit to the 
dictation of the Military League. After passing no end of 
laws, the climax was reached when the League demanded the 
convocation of a National Assembly to revise the Constitution 
and demanded that this should be done in a manner not 
sanctioned by the existing Constitution. The King at first re- 
sisted this, but afterwards, as the less of two evils, he has 
acquiesced. As soon as the King's proclamation is issued call- 
ing together the National Assembly the League has promised 
to dissolve itself. The people have for some time been getting 
restive. Military rule, although it was tolerable for a time 
when things were very bad, has become unbearable. Dissen- 
sions, too, were breaking out within its own ranks. 

Although a National Assembly is to be called, hopes are 
entertained, promises, indeed, have been made, that it will not 



Digitized by 



Google 



136 Current events [April, 

proceed to an entire reconstitation of established institutions. 
A programme has been drawn up of the changes to be made. 
The fundamental features of the Constitution, including the 
privileges of the Crown, are to remain untouched, but a very 
large number of changes are proposed in the composition and 
rules of the Chamber, the mode of election of Deputies, and 
other matters. Among those is the proposal to restore the 
Council of State. This was voted by the last National As* 
sembly, but, in its zeal for the uncontrolled rule of the people, 
abolished by the Chamber. The need of it has now been 
demonstrated. Military and naval officers are to be disquali- 
fied. Soldiers on service are not to be allowed even to vote. 
The security of their tenure of office by public officials is to 
be made greater. 

These are some of the proposals that are thought to be 
necessary in order to restore to respectable efficiency one of 
the most democratic of States. It is another instance of the 
old lesson that no form of government of itself secures the 
well-being of the state, and that even self-government may 
not succeed. It is to be borne in mind, however, that ill- 
success in such cases is not so pernicious as that of the loathe- 
some absolutism to which Turkey has for so long been sub- 
jected. 

It is still uncertain whether the 
Turkey. Ottoman Empire will emerge from 

the degradation in which it has 
been so long involved. Those who at first were very hopeful 
are beginning to have their doubts. The measure of freedom 
to which it has attained is due to the army, and although it 
has completed its work it is unwilling to relinquish control. 
The equality which was proclaimed of all the various races 
over whom the Turk has dominated for so long has been vio- 
lated by the Young Turks. Instead of being willing to live 
on equal terms with these races, they have been endeavoring 
to turn them all into Ottomans and to abolish some of the 
privileges which they have enjoyed ever since they were con- 
quered. One of those was the use by each race of its own 
language. One of the first things the Young Turks tried to 
do was to establish schools in which the learning of the Turk- 
ish language should be obligatory. Moreover, what may be 
called a crusade against the Bulgarians who dwell in Mace- 
donia has been undertaken, and that illegally. Under the pre«- 



Digitized by 



Google 



.I9IO.] Current events 137 

text of acting against brigands, political meetings have been 
suppressed, and not a few Bulgarians executed. Ttiese provo- 
cations liave gone so far tliat the army of King Ferdinand has 
been mobilized, and it is possible that war may break out at 
any time. For the Bulgarians are eager to try conclusions with 
Turkey, feeling as confident of success in a war with their 
former oppressors as the latter do in a war with Greece. The 
Bulgarians wish, too, that the war may come at once, for, as 
the Germans have undertaken to reorganize the Turkish Army, 
its efficiency will every day become greater. The Powers^ 
however, seem to be doing all they can for the preservation 
•of peace. The visit which King Ferdinand has paid to the Tsar 
made it clear to him that this was the wish of Russia. The 
long-talked^of rapprochemint of the latter power with Austria 
is said to be bised upon the maintenance of the status quo in 
the Balkans, and on the renunciation, on the part of the two 
Powers, of any ambitious desire for aggrandizement in that 
region. It is said that the two Powers are ready to foster a 
confederation of the Balkan States, at the head of which Tur- 
key would be placed. But it is well to be cautious and not 
to believe too much that comes from official sources. It is, 
however, still permissible to hope for the best The title of 
the present Saltan to his throne is constitutional. It is to 
constitutional authority that he owes all that he has. If the 
Young Turks can be brought in their turn to respect the same 
authority and to fulfill their first promise of securing equality 
and freedom for all Ottoman subjects — Mussulman, Catholic, 
Jew, Greeks and Armenian, nay, even for the Kurds — the vast 
expanse covered by the Ottoman Empire may even yet be 
restored to civilization. Signs are not wanting that this course 
will be resumed. 

Like almost every other country, financial difficulties place 
obstacles in the way of reform. Sometimes, it must be said^ 
these difficulties stand in the way of their doing all the evil 
which otherwise they would attempt Turkey's difficulties of 
this kind have not, indeed, been removed, but somewhat di- 
minished. The success of the loan which it issued some time 
ago was not great, but the deposed Sultan, Abdul Hamid, has 
turned over to the state the greater part of what he had ex- 
torted from his subjects during his reign. No less a sum than 
fifteen millions of Turkish pounds has been handed over. Of this 
sum five millions are to be devoted to the construction of a navy. 



Digitized by 



Google 



138 Current events [April 

The first year of constittitionid 
Persia. government in Persia is far ad- 

vanced and no very remarkable 
improvement has taken place in the state of the country. Dis- 
tnrbances more or less serious have been taking place in var- 
ious parts, by which all commerce is prevented. The govern- 
ment is powerless, because it has no money and is not able to 
raise any by taxation. The deposed Shah had had no time to 
form a hoard. In fact, his grandfather, by his extortions, had 
not left his successors the opportunity. 

The Persians, while poor, are also proud, and for a time 
were strongly opposed to seeking foreign aid. But the neces- 
sity grew so urgent, that negotiations for a loan had to be 
opened with Russia and Great Britain. The two powers, how- 
ever, would not consent except upon conditions which in- 
volved a certain control over the internal affairs of Persia- 
conditions which have proved unacceptable to leading members 
of the Cabinet, who have in consequence resigned. In this 
they are supported by a considerable party in the Mejliss. 
But, as there is no other means of securing the wherewithal, 
except by the sale of the Crown Jewels, it is thought that the 
opposition to the loan will not be successful. Meanwhile Russian 
troops still hold possession of several places, and although the 
number of these troops has been diminished the complete 
withdrawal does not seem to be contemplated in the immedi- 
ate future. There is, in fact, a widespread distrust felt through- 
out Persia of Russia's intentions, nor are there wanting friends 
of Persia in Great Britain who share this distrust. This cour 
tinned occupation is looked upon as the first step to ultimate 
absorption. Better things, however, are thought, or at least 
hoped, by the friends of the Russo* English entente. All that 
Russia has in view, these hold, is the maintenance of tranquil- 
lity on the northern border. 

The Persian Parliament, which goes by the name of the 
Mejliss, is displaying great activity in various ways. It set to 
work at first ^o regulate its own procedure, and then devoted 
itself in a me^ odical way to the discussion of the bills sub- 
mitted to it byi<^e Cabinet, referring them to appropriate com- 
mittees for mire particular examination. No subject escapes 
its attention" and the Ministers are called upon to render an 
account of everything that happens. Whether or no it will be 
able to regenerate the country remains to be seen. 



Digitized by 



Google 



M' 



With Our Readers 



[R. HAROI^D BOI^CB, we confess, is not a writer who inspires 
us with unhesitating confidence. We do not recognize in him 
that distaste for exaggeration and sensationalism, that desire for 
unbiased and accurate statement of facts, that cultivation of mind 
and fullness of academic knowledge which are requisite to qualify 
him acceptably for his chosen rSle — the guide into the spirit and 
teaching of our American universities. Notwithstanding his one- 
sided and, at times, distorted presentation of his subjecty his articles 
in the Cosmopolitan have given a considerable amount of very im- 
portant truth to the American public. They leave no excuse to any 
intelligent man who does not perceive in many of our universities 
the intellectual foes of Christianity— of all that has been accepted, 
since apostolic times, as the doctrines of Christianity. Parents who 
send their children to these institutions now know, if they are at all 
desirous of knowing, the grave dangers to be encountered there, and 
must accept the responsibility of their action. 



w 



fHII^B the presence and the spread of unbelief, of scepticism, 
and of unchristian principles of morality in our universities is 
a very old story, and has come to be regarded by us as an evil to be 
expected ; few of us have as yet accustomed ourselves to the thought 
that young women should be subjected to the same pernicious in- 
fluences. Mr. Bolce's recent articles * will bring that fact home as 
a surprise and a shock to many readers. Yet the evil is patent and 
conditions make it inevitable. No cloistered intellectual training 
for American women is possible. Sweep back the ocean tide with a 
broom, and then it will be possible to keep the scepticism and in- 
fidelity oi the universities from reaching if not invading the minds of 
women in our secular institutions of learning. Many of the western 
universities are co-educational ; in them, accordingly, women receive 
the same instruction as men, and learn much of the same spirit. 
In nearly all women's colleges they read the same books, maga- 
zines, and papers; in many cases the women are taught by the 



^ C^smofolUoHt February and March, 29x0. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I40 WITH OUR READERS [April, 

same professors as the men students of a neighboring university. 
The one leaven is working in all secular colleges, whether for 
men or women ; the one culture pervades them all ; and it is not a 
culture that makes for Christian faith. 



THESE influences are as omnipresent in our state and city seats 
of higher education as in our private colleges and univer- 
sities. A grave problem lies here, which is certain in time to 
become the [subject of very serious consideration and discussion. 
Neutrality in religious matters may be possible in a curriculum oi 
elementary branches ; when it is carried into higher studies, it al- 
most means the establishment of agnosticism as the state system of 
philosophy. But in many of these schools neutrality is not ob- 
served ; the teaching of psychology, for instance, is but a veiled 
materialism. The instructors themselves are in many instances 
tainted with the false ideas oi the day, and cannot help communicat- 
ing something of them to their pupils. We have known, to give an 
extreme instance, of one instructor in a state normal school who 
taught ithat the resistance of temptation tended to make a weak 
character ! It is in the ideas expressed and in the assumptions so 
freely made that the real danger lurks ; yet Catholics are often un- 
suspicious of these real sources of danger, and supersensitive to 
points of history which will do no real harm. We Catholics assured- 
ly have the right to see to it that our children be not subjected, in 
our state colleges and normal schools, to influences tending to the 
destruction of their faith. Yet they are so subjected, and this is 
specially true of Catholic girls in the normal schools. 



THESE revelations of Mr. Bolce can be read by a Catholic only 
with a consciousness of outraged feelings, if not with a sense of 
surprise and shock. As priests are appointed by God for the preser- 
vation and spread of religious truth and worship, so women have 
come to be regarded, at least in Christendom, as ordained by nature to 
instill into each new generation faith and reverence towards God, be- 
lief in religion which they had learned oi old, and a love of Christian 
morality. Woman is the priestess of the Christian home, man hav- 
ing too generally abdicated that royal priesthood of the domestic altar 
which the first pope proclaimed as his rightful dignity. An irreli- 
gious woman seems to us not only bad but a perversion of nature. 
With what feelings, then, shall we regard a system of education that 
tends to give us, and is in great measure already giving us, a race of 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] With our readers 141 

women whose Irreligion ra]is:es from doubt and mild scepticism to 
atheism and the scorn of Christianity ? 



THE Father of the American Episcopate, the Right Reverend 
Charles Walmesley, 0. 8. B., is to be honored by a memorial in 
the Abbey Church at Downside, near Bath, England. Bishop Wal* 
mesley was the consecrator of the Most Rev. John Carroll, the first 
Archbishop of Baltimore, from whom is descended the vigorous hier- 
archy of America. The body of Bishop Walmesley has lately been 
transferred from the old Catholic Chapel in Bristol to the Abbey 
Church of Downside, and the occasion has been considered a most 
suitable one for the erection of a monument to his life and work. 
The energy and the ability of Bishop Walmesley, ** the Old Won • ' as 
he was called in a day when men of stalwart hearts were needed, 
attracted an amount of public attention unusual in the eighteenth 
century. He was educated at the Benedictine college in Douay 
(since transferred to Downside Abbey). His scientific attainments 
brought him at an early age into prominent notice. A gifted as- 
tronomer and mathematician, he was consulted by the British Gov- 
ernment on the reform of the calendar and the introduction of the 
•* New Style." He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of 
I/Ondon ; and the kindred societies of Paris, Berlin, and Bologna. 
During the Gordon riots he was threatened by the mob ; his house 
and library were destroyed by fire. When the action of the '' Catho- 
lic Committee," in 1789, threatened tocompromise the English Cath- 
olics Bishop Walmesley vigorously condemned the new oath intended 
for Catholics. In 1790 he consecrated the Rev. Dr. John Carroll 
Bishop of Baltimore. The Pontificals used on that occasion t)y 
Bishop Walmesley are still preserved at Downside. 

During his late visit to England Cardinal Gibbons went to 
Downside Abbey, that he might visit the resting place of Bishop 
Walmesley, and it is in great measure owing to the Cardinal's en- 
thusiastic approval that the work of the memorial has been under- 
taken. It is a monument which merits the interest and the support 
of all American Catholics. 



w 



TE have received a number of letters asking us for the facts con- 
cerning a story sent broadcast by the Episcopal Bishop of 
Kansas City, Missouri, to the effect that he had received into the 
Episcopalian Church a Catholic priest and an "entire" congre- 
gation. 

The facts in the case are these : some few months ago a man^ 



Digitized by 



Google 



142 WITH OUR READERS [April, 

giving the name of the Reverend John Marcello, presented himself 
to Bishop Hogan, of Kansas City, and requested permission to es- 
tablish a mission for Italian Catholics. The man had no credentials 
to show that he was a Catholic priest in good standing. When 
questioned about such credentials he pleaded that he did not have 
money enough to journey to Washington and secure them from the 
Apostolic Delegate. A short while afterwards some of the Catholic 
priests of Kansas City contributed the money necessary for his jour- 
ney. Whether the man ever went to Washington or not is uncer- 
tain ; but within a short time he was collecting funds in Kansas City 
for the purpose of establishing a mission for Italian Catholics. 
Bishop Hogan then took active measures against him ; announced 
in the daily press that the man acted without his authorization and 
was not a recognized priest*of the diocese. A few days afterwards 
the Episcopal bishop announced that the Rev. John Marcello, a 
Catholic priest who desired to be ** free from Rome," had been re- 
ceived with his entire congregation into the Episcopalian Church. 
The entire ''congregation" consisted of about six Italians who 
never were, in any true sense of the word, practical Catholics. 

The Reverend John Marcello is continuing his work under the 
patronage of the Episcopalian Church and has taken for the name 
of " his mission" that of St. John the Baptist. A Catholic Church 
of that name has long been established in Kansas City. The pur- 
pose, of course, is to deceive the simple Italian. Such methods 
speak for theoiiselves. 



ANEW society under the name of ''The Children's Universal 
Crusade of Prayer " has been founded in I^ndon. The object 
of the Society is to encourage children to pray for the advance and 
preservation of Christian education, and to interest them in Catholic 
schools, orphanages, and homes for the destitute. The work has 
received the blessing of the Holy Father. The foundress of the 
Society is Countess Clotilde de Hamel de Manin. 



THE Christian Advocate presents statistics of the churches in the 
United States for the present date, that is, three years later than 
those given in the Census of 1906. " In the order of denominations 
the Catholic Church stands first with 12,354,596 members (all Cath- 
olics except young children not admitted to their First Communion, 
or 85 per cent of the population)." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] WITH OUR READERS 143 

THE Department of State requests Ths Cathoi^ic Wori«d to give 
warning concerning certain bands of swindlers who operate in 
various towns and cities of Spain and who write plausible and de- 
ceitful letters to persons in the United States asking them to aid a 
relative — generally a daughter. 



READERS of Thb Cathowc Wori,d will learn with regret of the 
death of one who was a frequent contributor to our pages — Mr. 
Wilfrid Wilberforce. Mr. Wilberforce died at Ungfield Road, Wim- 
bledon, England, on January 14. He was the son of Mr. Henry 
William Wilberforce, who became a Catholic in 1850, by his wife. 
Miss Mary Sargent, of I^avington, England . These names will recall 
to our readers the attractive papers, **Four Celebrities — Brothers 
by Marriage," which Mr. Wilberforce contributed to Thb Cathowc 
WoRi«D, November, December, 1908, January, March, 1909, and 
which were enthusiastically welcomed in America and England. 
The Catholic world of letters has lost in Mr. Wilberforce an able 
writer. He was a most devout Catholic ; and it is said of him that 
to know him was to become his Mend. 



Digitized by 



Google 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York: 

Porfirio DioM—PrtsitUni of Mexic9. By Jos^ F. Godoj. Price $3 net. Tkt Rist of tk4 
Medieval Church from tht Apostolic Agt to the Papacy at Its Height in the Thirteenth 
Century, By Alexander C. Flick, Ph:D. 
Tbb Macmillan Company, New York : 

The Booh of Easter, With an Introduction by the Rt. Rev. W. C. Doane. Drawings t>y 
G. W. Edwards. Price $1.35. 
Longmans, Gkebn ft Co.. New York: 

Social Relationshifs in the Li^ht of Christianity, By W. E. Cbadwick. D.D. Psychology 
of Politics and Nistory, By the Rev. J. A. Dewe, M.A. Price $1.75. 
D. Appleton & Co., New York : 

The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. VII. Greg-Infal. 
American Book Company, New York: 

Stories of American Discoverers Jor Little Americans. By Rose Lucia. Price 40 cents. 
Bbnzigek Brothers, New York : 

B, Mary of the Angels, A biography. By Rer. George O'Neill, S.J. Price 75 cents net 
Man Mirroring His Maher, The Priest of God's Church. Edited by F. C. P. Price 
75 cents net. Captain Ted. By Mary T. Waggaman. Price 60 cents. A Red-Handed 
Saint, By Olive Katharine Parr. 
W. J. WfliTE & Co., New York : 

Tess of the Storm Country, By G. M. White. 111. 
The John McBride Company, New York : 

The Question of the Hour, By Joseph P. Conway. 
American Tract Society, New York : 

The Mash of Christian Science. By F. E. Marsten. Price $z. 
R. F. Fenno a Co.. New York : 

In the Shadow of God. By G. A. Jamieson. Price $x. 
The Dolphin Press, Philadelphia : 

The Life of St. Clare. Translated and edited from the earliest MSS. by Father Paschal 
Robinson, O.F.M. 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston : 

Enjlish Literature in Account With Religion. By Edward Morthner Chapman. Price 
$3 net. 
Angel Guardian Press, Boston : 

A Life of Christ, Told in Words oj the Gospel, By Mary Lape Fogg. 
Small, Maynard & Co., Boston: 

The Scar, A Novel of the New South. By Warrington Dawson. Price $1.50. 
Oliver Ditson Company, Boston: 

Gregorian Requiem Mass. According to the Vatican Edition. Mass in B Plat. Mass in A* 
Catholic Truth Society, London, England: 

The Catholic Social Year Booh for igio. Price 6d net. 
The Mission Book Company, Ltd., Toronto, Canada: 

History of the Catholu Church in Western Canada Prom Lahe Superior to the Pacific (i6s^ 
1S95). By Rev. A. G. Morice, O.M.I. In a vols. Price $3. 
B. HeEdbr, St. Louis, Mo. : 

Theology of the Sacraments. By V. Rev. P. Pourrat, V.G. The Purfose oJ the Papacy. 
Bv Bishop Vaughan. D.D. Price 45 cents net. Joan and Her Friends. By Evelyn 
Mary Buckenham. Price 56 cents net. The Fortunes of PhUomenm. By Evelyn Mary 
Buckenham. Price 50 cents net. First Communion of Children and Its Conditions. 
Pamphlet. 
Gabriel Beaucbesne bt Cib., Paris: 

La Resurrection de Jesus, Par TAbb^ E. Mangenot. Price 3/r. 50. 
F. Lethielleux, Paris : 

Jeanne. Par Marie Lacroix. Price ifr. 
Lbtouzey et An£, Paris: 

Ce Qu* on Enseigne aux Enfants dans nos Ecoles Publiques. Par J. Bricout. Price 3 fr, 50. 
PiCARD et Fils, Paris: 

Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus en Prance (is^S-iTda). Vol I. 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

Vol. XCI. MAY, 1910. No. 542. 

H. G, WELLS. 

BY W. E. CAMPBELU 

^E do not want to go back to the golden age, nor 
even to those silver ages of medieval splendor, 
of moral and material beauty in many respects 
so much more excellent than our own. We do 
not want to go back to them, because we can- 
not. We want to go forward ; but we cannot go forward with- 
out a vision and all the persistency of courage and endurance 
which true vision alone can give. Our vision of the future 
must be related to all the facts of the present and to all the 
values of the past. And coming to the vision of a future 
society we must remember a truth too often forgotten, the fact 
that in the very act of looking forward we help to create the 
future of our vision. We cannot separate the dream from the 
deed. Whatsoever we desire with persevering sincerity, that 
indeed we actually tend to become. Doing and dreaming were 
intentionally joined together in the nature of man, and should 
never be forced asunder. Fruitless dreams are useless, but so 
are deeds without inspiration. When two or three are tr^th- 
ered together in the unity of strenuous desire, they ai 
on the way to have their desire realized, their dream fu 
Now the desire for social reform is the. soul of social r 
but it is not its body. All this huge and multitudinous } 
of material product and attainment is the body of soc 
form. We do not want to do away with it; we only w 



Copyright. 1910. The Missionary Society op St. Paul the Apostli 

IN the State of New York. 
VOL. XCI.— 10 



Digitized by 



Google 



146 H. G. Wells [May, 

get a reasonable soul into it. It is not a bad thing in itself, 
it is the product of immense human thought and effort, but 
at present it is a very disorderly product We want it prop- 
erly informed, controlled, distributed. Its disorder is most 
evident in the havoc which it undoubtedly plays with our in- 
dividual and social life in all its grades, more especially at the 
apex of human society and at its base. At present it would 
seem as if man was very much at the mercy of his material 
environment, much more so in fact than in any previous time 
of which we have historical record. Of course, from the very 
beginning there has always been a necessary relation between 
man and his environment — a never-ceasing friction and inter- 
play, struggle and opposition, alliance and enmity, give and 
take, to and fro. Each man for himself must be master or 
servant, lord or slave, husband or handmaid, lock or key, and 
must, indeed, be somewhat of each as simultaneously or con- 
secutively he determines or is determined by his material en- 
vironment. 

In pre-Christian times man was tremendously aware of the 
power of his environment. He was still much more aware of 
his powerlessness to cope with it at all intelligently. It as- 
sumed to his imagination a much more complex, personal, and 
menacing form than it does now, and he assumed to it a much 
more superstitious attitude than he does at present. There 
were all the powers of nature figured out to his imagination 
as gods celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, each one of them to 
be distinctly and variously obeyed, worshiped, and propitiated. 
For the individual man of that age environment must have 
been rather too much of a good thing for intimate acquain- 
tance. We should, therefore, expect him to behave as a child 
not yet old enough to be trusted with intelligent responsi- 
bilities. 

Then came the Christian idea of God and the Christian 
idea of man; and finally the greatest of all Christian ideas, 
that the Very God was Very Man. Now, indeed, it gradu- 
ally became clear as noonday that man was meant to use and 
conquer his environment. If God were with him, who or what 
could be against him with any chance of ultimate success ? 
The man who could co-operate with the grace and might of 
his Creator God could no longer fear his environment, could 
no longer stoop to a fear* stricken and servile obedience to 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 147 

any lesser power. He might, of course, fear God with a ser- 
vile fear instead of loving Him with a filial love; but once 
endowed with, and persevering in, a resolute Christian faith he 
could no longer fear any other thing or force however menac- 
ing, he could only loathe or hate it And so we get the joy- 
ous courage of martyrdom so characteristic and peculiar to 
Christian asceticism. In these times man did not think much 
of his material environment. ''The work of the Middle Ages 
was the formation of character," says Professor Gwatkin. ** At 
the end of the Middle Ages we see not only new nations and 
new institutions, but new types of character and new moral 
ideals.*' This age had, of course, its marked limitations, but 
they were limitations rather on the material than on the per- 
sonal side. 

And now we come to our own times. It seems hardly nec- 
essary to point out how tremendously we have swung away 
from what I may call a Christian interest in the individual to 
that other pole of interest in our material environment. Now- 
adays we do tremendously over- emphasize the importance of 
our material environment — the predominance of that environ- 
ment over the mere individual — and we do tremendously mini- 
mize the importance of the individual himself. Bacon floated 
the idea, and it has since become a religion, that man is the 
creature of material forces, and that if he would survive and 
prosper he must first and before all other things learn an in- 
telligent faith in and obedience to them. In the name and 
power of this wholly material religion man went forth to con- 
quer nature by studious obedience, and he has reaped a great 
material reward; but at what a tremendous price? He has 
forgotten his Creator, he has lost remembrance of the image 
in which he was created, the manner of man he was meant to 
be, his end, his place, his true dignity and function, both in 
the natural and in the supernatural order. In the passionate 
search and study of his immediate material environment, of 
the things that after all form the least personal and least abid- 
ing part of his life, man has forgotten himself in a very true 
and tragic sense. 

If this be in any sense true, it will not surprise us to find 
that Mr. H. G. Wells has named his very first sociological 
study Anticipations — *' Anticipations of the reaction of mechan- 
ical and scientific progress upon human life and thought.' 



Digitized by 



Google 



148 H. G. WELLS [May, 

Bat in the end I think we shall find that he considerably 
changes his point of view and begins to ''anticipate*' the 
inverse process — the reaction of human life and thought upon 
mechanical and scientific progress. In this, then, I find bis real 
worth and promise, that he is giving his generation a gentle 
lead towards a more spiritual conception of life. I propose, 
therefore, to try and get at Mr. Wells' points of view, to see 
as far as possible what they are and how they change, to ap- 
preciate them and criticise them, and to add to them such 
complementary considerations as I am able.* 

'' Is there, it may be asked, any central thread in following 
which the unity of history most plainly appears? Is there any 
process in tracing which we can feel that we are floating down 
the main stream of the world's onward movement? If there 
be such a process, its study ought to help us to realize the 
unity of history by connecting the development of the numer** 
ous branches of the human family." 

'* One such process is the gradual and constant increase in 
man's power over nature, whereby he is emancipated more and 
more from the conditions she imposes upon his life, yet is 
brought into an always closer touch with her by the discovery 
of new methods of using her gifts. Two other such processes 
may be briefly examined. One goes on in the sphere of time, 
and consists in the accumulation from age to age of the 
strength, the knowledge, the culture of mankind as a whole. 
The other goes on in space as well as time, and may be de- 
scribed as the Contraction of the Worlds relatively to Man** 
(James Bryce. Introduction to History of the World, English 
translation, p. xliii.) 

" Contraction of the World, relatively to Man "—it is with 
this aspect of progress that Mr. Wells, first of all, concerns 
himself. Improvements in methods of communication have 
worked great changes in the old order of things. Upon the 
problems of locomotion and transport depend the most momen- 
tous issues of peace and war. What, then, are the relations 
between the social order and the available means of transit? 
First, there is the redistribution of population — the growth of 
great cities has been one of the essential phenomena of the 

* Apart from his novels, romances, and short stories, Mr. Wells has devoted six impor« 

tant books to sociological questions. When referring to any one of them I propose, for 

greater convenience, to use the following abbreviations : (A) AnHcipations (1901) ; (M) Afam-' 

Mind in the Makings (1903) ; (U) A Modem Utopia (1905) ; (Am.) Tht Future in America (1906). 

Worlds for Old {li^Z) ; (F) First and Last 7 kings (1908). 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] H. G. WELLS 149 

nineteenth century. We may take it as a general law that the 
distribution of population in a country must always depend 
directly upon the facilities for transport. In a farming country, 
for instance, where there are no railways, towns would never 
be more than from eight to fifteen miles apart; the distance 
between them would never exceed, in fact, the convenience of 
the farmer — such as would ''allow him to get himself and his 
produce there and back and to do his business in comfortable 
daylight And so it happens entirely as a multiple of horse and 
foot strides^ that all the villages and towns of the world's coun- 
tryside have been plotted out^* 

Another factor in town distribution in a world without rail- 
ways would be the seaport and navigable river, and it was always 
in connection with some port or navigable river that the greater 
towns of pre-railway days arose. Bruges, Venice, Corinth, and 
London are examples of this. These towns never rise to a 
population of more than a quarter of a million, except in Cbina^ 
where with its gigantic rivers and numerous canals we have 
several cities over a million. Are there then any limits to the 
growth of these huge cities? ''So far as we can judge, with- 
out a close and uncongenial scrutiny of statistics, that daily 
journey that has governed, and still to a very considerable 
extent governs, the growth of cities, has bad, and will probably 
always have, a maximum of two hours, one hour each way from 
sleeping place to council chamber, counter, workroom, or office 
stool. And taking this assumption as sound, we can state pre- 
cisely the maximum area of various types of town. A pedes- 
trian agglomeration such as we find in China, and such as most 
European towns probably were before the nineteenth century, 
would be swept entirely by a radius of four miles about the 
business quarter and industrial centre. . . .** 

" If, now, horseflesh is brought into the problem, an outer 
radius of six or eight miles from the centre will define a 
area in which the carriage folk may live and still be n 
of the city.'' Then suddenly came the railway and the 
ship. For a time neither of these affected intra- urban 
at all. They simply tended to increase the general vol 
trade, and thereupon ensued a gigantic rush of populati 
the magic radius of the city. This is proved by the fi 
in 1801 the density of population in the city of Lond 
half as dense again as that of any district, even of the 
slum districts, to-day. And thus we get what George 

Digitized by LjOOQIC 



ISO H. G. WELLS [May, 

has fitly named the '' Whirlpool/' '' the very figure of the nine- 
teenth century great city, attractive, tumultuous, and spinnitg 
down to death.'* 

But all these centripetal tendencies are beginning to change 
their direction and become centrifugal; and now in all great 
cities we see a thrust outward in every direction. ** Great towns 
before this century presented rounded contours and grew as a 
puff-ball swells; the modern great city looks like something 
that has burst an intolerable envelope and splashed/' We see, 
therefore, that the old carriage radius of eight miles has now 
been increased to a railway radius of thirty miles, which gives 
** an area of over 2,800 square miles, which is almost a quarter 
that of Belgium." Given then the increased rates of transit 
which must necessarily increase with every improvement in the 
methods of locomotion, we can easily foresee how the intolera- 
ble problems of over-crowded cities may soon meet with a final 
and happy solution. 

Of course, there are many other malignant factors conspir- 
ing together against the consummation so much desired, but 
my purpose just now is not to deal with these, but rather to 
illustrate Mr. Wells' way of approach to these social problems 
— it is, of course, the sociologist's approach. Nationalize the 
railways, facilitate and cheapen all means of communication, 
and what do we reach at last? ''Practically, by a process of 
confluence, the whole of Great Britain south of the Highlands 
seems destined to become one great urban region, laced alto- 
gether not only by railway and telegraph, but by novel roads 
and by a dense network of telephones, parcels delivery tubes, 
and the like nervous and arterial connections" {A., p. 61). 

This '''Contraction of the World, relatively to Man " affects 
us, too, not merely with regard to trade and business, but also 
with regard to our administration. In an article published as 
an appendix to Mankind in the Making Mr. Wells has very 
clearly demonstrated this fact. The great and rapidly increas- 
ing development of facilities for locomotion has had and is still 
having a tremendously disorganizing effect upon our ancient 
and static communities — they no longer serve the administrative 
purposes of the State. A radius of four or five miles marked 
the maximum size of the old community. A radius of a hun- 
dred miles will scarcely mark the maximum of the new com- 
munity. It is clear, therefore, that until we have faced the 
problem of reconstituting, enlarging, and decentralizing our 

Digitized by VjOOQIC 



i9ia] H. G. Wells 151 

present administrative areas, all our attempts at dealing with 
social areas will end in failure. 

The fact that stands most evident about most of our pres- 
ent administrative machines, whether we look at the more cen- 
tralized and national or at the more localized and provincial, 
is that they do not work satisfactorily, and this chiefly because 
we cannot induce the right kind of people to man them. The 
best administrative talent both in America and in England is 
de localtMed. ''It is not that these people do not belong to a 
community, but that they belong to a larger community of a 
new type which (at present) administrators have failed to dis- 
cover, and which our working theory of local government ig- 
nores. • • • The many people who once slept and worked 
and reared their children and worshiped and bought all in 
one area, have overflowed their containing locality, and they 
live in one area, they work in another, and they go to shop 
in a third. And the only way in which you can localize them 
again is to expand your areas to their scale.'' These excellent 
people become, as it were, '' Outlanders'*; they have no time, 
interest, freedom, or inducement to follow local politics, and 
yet they are the only people really fit for local administration. 
The places which they should fill now fall to the share of the 
'' small *' people of the district ; tradesmen, builders, a solicitor, 
and a doctor, each one of them with very short and very self- 
interested views on local necessities. Not only do these most 
capable people escape all local administrative offices, but, hav- 
ing no interest and feeling no responsibilities for the local wel- 
fare, strongly oppose all developments which might lead to 
increased taxation. 

On what lines, then, are these new and enlarged administra- 
tive areas to be constructed ? Take, for instance, '' the Thames 
valley and its tributaries and draw a line along its boundary 
watershed, and then include with that Sussex and Surrey, acd 
the east counties up to the Wash, you would overtake and an- 
ticipate the delocalizing process completely. You would have 
what has become, or is becoming rapidly, very rapidly, a new 
urban region, a complete community of the new type, rich and 
poor and all sorts and aspects of economic life together. I 
would suggest that watersheds make excellent boundaries. Let 
me remind you that railways, tramways, drain-pipes, water-pipes, 
and highroads have this in common^-they will not climb over 
a watershed if they can possibly avoid doing so, and that pop- 

Digitized by V^jOO^lC 



152 H. G. WELLS [May, 

ulation and schools aad poor tend always to distribute them- 
selves in accordance with these other things. You get the 
minimum of possible overlap — such overlap as the spreading 
out of the great midland city to meet London must some day 
cause — in this way. I would suggest that for the regulation 
of sanitation, educatioui communicationsi industrial control, and 
poor-relief, and for the taxation for these purposes, this area 
should be one, governed by one body, elected by local con- 
stituencies that would make its activities independent of imperial 
politics. For any purpose of a more local sort this body might 
delegate its powers to subordinate committees, consisting of 
the members of local constituencies, together with another mem- 
ber or so to safeguard the general interests.*' 

'* I submit that such a mammoth municipality as this will 
be, on the one hand, an enormously more efficient substitute 
for your present little local government bodies, and, on the 
other hand, will be able to take over the detailed machinery 
of your overworked and too extensive central machinery, your 
local government board, education department, and board of 
trade. It will be great enough and fine enough ' to revive the 
dying sentiment of local patriotism, and it will be a body that 
will appeal to the ambition of the most energetic and capable 
men in the community'* (if., p. 417). 

Such, then, is our author's conception of a new administra- 
tive machinery most suitable to modem conditions of life. 
But though this machinery may be as perfect as possible, yet 
that in itself is not a sufficient guarantee that we should, after 
,all, get the right men to work it. There is little to choose 
between England and America in this respect. In England 
capacity is discouraged because honors and power go by pre- 
scription ; in America it is misdirected because honors do not 
exist and power goes by popular election and advertisement. 
Is there no Urtium quidt ''What else can you have but in- 
heritance and election, or some blend of the two, blending 
their faults? Each system has its disadvantages, and the dis- 
advantages of each may be minimized by education; in parti- 
cular by keeping the culture and code of honor high in the 
former case and by keeping your common schools efficient in 
the latter. . . . The theory of monarchy is, no doubt, in- 
ferior to the democratic theory in stimulus, but the latter fails 
in qualitative effect much more than the former — is there no 
alternative to hereditary government tempered by election, or 

Digitized by LjOOQIC 



i9ia] H. G. Wells 153 

government by the ward politician and the polling booth?" 
The matter has two aspects and presents itself as two ques* 
tions: (i) Administration; (2) Honor and Privilege. In the 
matter of administration it requires that every one growing up in 
the State should be free at once to realize his social responsi- 
bilities and his social opportunities. He should be taught to dis- 
cern the kind of man alone eligible for state offices, not the noisi- 
esty not the richest, or the most skillfully advertised, but the best. 

In the other matter of honor and privilege, honor should 
be entirely separated from notoriety. Every citizen should be 
brought to understand that there are things more honorable 
than getting either votes or money ; it requires that throughout 
the whole range of life there should be the freest opportunity 
for every single individual to accomplish the best that is in 
him — the qualitative best. 

The days have come when the most democratic- minded of 
men. will acknowledge that the current methods of popular 
election have very marked limitations, no matter what standard 
of education the electors may have reached. The fact that 
elections can only be worked as a choice between two selected 
candidates, or groups of candidates, is the mechanical defect 
of all electoral methods. In spite of all this, Mr. Wells be- 
lieves that the democratic election system is still, on the whole, 
better than a system of hereditary privilege. But is polling 
necessary to the democratic idea f He thinks not *' There is a 
way of choosing your public servants of all sorts and eflfectual- 
ly controlling public affairs on perfectly sound democratic 
principles, without ever having such a thing as an election, as 
it is now understood, at all, a way which will permit of a de- 
liberate choice between numerous candidates — a thing utterly 
impossible under the current system — which will certainly raise 
the average quality of our legislators, and be infinitely saner, 
juster, and more deliberate than our present method. And, 
moreover, it is a way that is typically the invention of the 
English people, and which they use to-day in another precise* 
ly parallel application, an application which they have elabor- 
ately tested and developed through a period of at least seven 
or eight hundred years, and which I must confess myself 
amazed to think has not already been applied to our public 
needs. This way is the Jury system. The jury system was de- 
vised to meet almost exactly the same problem that faces us 
to-day, the problem of how on the one hand to avoid put- 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



IS4 H. G. WELLS [May, 

ting a man's life or property into the hands of a ruler, a 
privileged person, whose interest might be unsympathetic or 
hostile, while on the other hand protecting him from the tu- 
multuous judgments of a crowd — to save the accused from the 
arbitrary will of king and noble without flinging him to the 
mob. To-day it is exactly the problem over again that our 
peoples have to solve, except that instead of one individual af- 
fair we have now our general a£fairs to place under a parallel 
system. As the community that had originally been small 
enough and intimate enough to decide on the guilt or inno- 
cence of its members grew to difficult proportions, there de- 
veloped this system of selecting by lot a number of its com- 
mon citizens who were sworn, who were then specially in- 
structed and prepared, and who, in an atmosphere of solemnity 
and responsibility, in absolute contrast with the uproar of a 
public polling, considered the case and condemned or discharged 
the accused. Let me point out that this method is so univer- 
sally recognized as superior to the common election method^ 
that any one man who should propose to-day to take the fate 
of a man accused of murder out of the hands of a jury and 
place it in the hands of any British or American constituency 
as one of the British universities, would be thought to be 
carrying crankiness beyond the border line of sanity.'' 

''The necessity of either raising the quality of representa- 
tive bodies or of replacing them, not only in administration 
but in legislation, by bureaucracies of officials appointed by 
elected or hereditary rulers, is one that presses on all thought- 
ful men. • • . The necessity becomes more urgent every 
day, as scientific and economic developments raise first one 
affair and then another to the level of public or quasi-public 
functions. In the last century, locomotion, lighting, heating, 
education, forced themselves upon public control or public 
management, and now with the development of Trusts a whole 
host of businesses, that were once the affair of competing pri- 
vate concerns, claim the same attention. Government by hust- 
ings' bawling, newspaper clamor, and ward organization is more 
perilous every day and more impotent, and unless we are pre- 
pared to see a government de Jacto of rich business organizers 
override the government d4 jure^ or relapse upon a practical 
oligarchy of officials, an oligarchy that will artainfy decline in 
efficiency in a generation or so, we must set ourselves most ear- 
nestly to this problem of improving representative methods." 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9ia] H. G. WELLS IS5 

There is, no doubt, something to be said for Mr. Wells' 
jury system ; bat it is very much to be feared that its tendency 
would be right away from democratic conceptions of govern- 
ment. So far, the only system which appears to combine a 
sound qualitative efficiency with a sound democratic basis is 
that of proportional representation. That it would destroy 
party government, as. we know it at present, is true, and so 
we find old-fashioned politicians heartily opposed to it; but it 
would seem to be a more feasible system than Mr. Wells'; and 
in England, at any rate, the time is ripening for its trial. 

Having dealt with the question of administration, Mr. 
Wells goes on to that of honors and privileges. We learn from 
historical experience that these things once had real meaning 
and purpose, but awarded as they are to-day they lose their 
use and significance. In the United States titles are forbid- 
den, but secretly admired ; in England they are awarded, but go 
by prescription. ^' There are certain points in this question 
that are too often overlooked. In the first place, honors and 
titles need not be hereditary; in the second, they need not be 
conferred by the political administration ; in the third, they are 
not only*— as the French Legion of Honor shows — entirely com- 
patible with, but they are necessary to the Republican idea.^* 

According to Mr. Wells, the lowest grade of honor would 
include — as the English knighthood included — all really capable 
citizens, ** every man or woman who was qualified to do some- 
thing or who had done something, as distinguished from the 
man who had done nothing in the world, the mere common, 
unenterprising, esurient man/' From this class, of course, would 
be taken all candidates for higher honors. But what we should 
have especially to encourage would be the decentralization of 
all fountains of honor. This would be encouraged, of course, by 
the decentralization of administration. Every man of genius or 
capability would find it altogether worth while to be honored in 
his own county or urban district as a stepping- stone to national 
or even international dignities. All hereditary honors would, of 
course, be abolished. ''Local legislative bodies might confer 
rank on a limited number of men and women yearly; juries 
drawn from each great profession might assemble periodically 
to honor their really representative members." There would 
still, of course, be scales of social value; but, whereas now 
these social values are almost wholly determined by prescrip- 
tive dignities^ then^they would be determined almost entirely 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



IS6 H. G. WELLS [May, 

by community service. The Second Chamber would then really 
represent that efficient, stable, and experienced element in 
political life which it now so obviously fails to do. It would 
be far less party bound and far less mercenary than the 
American Senate, and far more intelligent and capable than 
the British House of Lords. 

Great, indeed, have been the changes wrought in the outer 
groupings of human society by the advent of machinery and 
mechanical production, but far more interesting have been the 
changes wrought upon the very substance of society itself. 
Before the eighteenth century property consisted chiefly of 
land and buildings — '' real estate.'* In addition, were the things 
which went with it — live-stock, serfs, the instruments of labor, 
ships, weapons, and such money for the purposes of exchange 
as could be got from the Jews. All such ''property** had 
actually to be held and administered by the owner; he was 
immediately in connection with it and immediately responsible 
for it, he was obliged to be '' on the spot,** and though of course 
he had stewards and managers, he was always present to over- 
see and overlook ; — responsible in the proper sense of the wo^d. 
There was no ovvaership without responsibility, no possession 
without use — property was a personal thing. 

But mechanical production, vast, complex, and technical, 
brought with it the Joint Stock Company, opening up quite 
new and easy channels for the use of money ; it created a new 
kind of property and a new kind of property- holder. ''The 
peculiar novelty of this kind of property is easily defined. 
Given a sufficient sentiment of public honesty, share prop$fty 
is property that can be owned at any distance and that yields 
its revenue without thought or care on the part of its proprietor ; 
it is^ indeed^ an absolutely irresponsible property ^ a thing that no 
old world property ever was. But, in spite of its widely di£fer- 
ent nature, the laws of inheritance, that the social necessities 
of the old order of things established, have been applied to 
this new species of possession without remark. It is inde- 
structible, imperishable wealth, subject only to the mutations 
of value that economic changes bring about** (^., p. 72). 

It might help us to realize the social significance of all 
this profit sharing if I gave in parallel columns the working 
expenses and profits in the cases of ten well-known joint 
stock companies, representing, of course, hundreds of others. 
The yearly working expenses of each company I shall place 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS IS7 

under the column headed workers. This includes the brain- 
work of managersi foremen, etc., as well as that of the ordin- 
ary employees. The column headed sleepers will give us the 
yearly dividends appropriated by the shareholders. 





Workers. 


Sleepers.* 


A., 


£\oo,ooo 


;^ 1 92,000 


B., 


. £lO,OQO 


;^76,000 


c, 


;fi39,cxx) 


;fi39,ooo 


D., 


;fl,000,000 


;f636,ooo 


E., 


;C20,000 


;f52,000 


F., 


. ;^S0O.00O 


;^5S6.0OO 


G.. 


. ;^I ,000,000 


;^2,684,ooo 


H.. 


. A6,ooo 


;^i47,ooo 


I., 


;f70.000 


;f70,000 


J.. 


;fl,ISS.OOO 


;f864,ooo 



Akin to this kind of property holder is the ground land- 
lord, in whose case also the having and holding of property 
has no correlative side of responsible being and doing. 

The men of this class, then, constitute the most difficult 
factor in modern life, whether we consider it from the economic 
or from the moral side. ''Previously in the world's history, 
saving a few quite exceptional aspects, the possession and re- 
tention of property was conditional upon activities of some 
sort, honest or dishonest, work, force, or fraud. But the 
shareholding ingredient of our new society, so far as its share- 
holding goes, has no need of strength or wisdom. The share- 
holder owns the world de jure^ by the common recognition of 
the rights of property; and the incumbency of knowledge, 
management, and toil fall entirely to others. He toils not, 
neither does he spin; he is mechanically released from the 
penalty of the fall, he reaps in a still sinful world all the 
practical benefits of a millenium — without any of its moral 
limitations'' {A., 74). 

But though this class of shareholder is without much col- 
lective intelligence or organization, it yet quite automatically 
determines the quality and quantity of our national supply and 
demand. In order the more clearly to show this I must make 
a distinction between need and demand. Take, first of all, a 

• See Riches andPovtrty, L, G. Chiozza Money, pp. 85-90. 



Digitized by 



Google 



158 H. G. WELLS [May, 

very simple case by way of lUastration. In a poor family 
there is a great difference between need and demand. The 
family needs bread and batter, but the father demands beer 
and betting. The need is rational, the demand is brutal; but 
for all that the demand is satisfied and the family is starved 
Apply this to our national affairs. The shareholder, as dis- 
tinguished from the working capitalist, demands all sorts of 
things irrationally, selfishly, unintelligently, and in order to 
satisfy his demand, the real life-needs of the nation must go 
unsatisfied. It is mainly because of the shareholder that the 
quality and quantity of our national production are so un- 
suited to our national needs. I will give three instances to 
enforce my contention. 

(i) Cotton Goods. More than half a million are employed 
in England in this great staple industry; and they produce 
ninety million pounds' worth of cotton goods per annum. 
Seventy • two million pounds' worth of cotton goods are sent 
abroad; leaving for home consumption only eighteen million 
pounds' worth. The lowest estimate at which we can put the 
national need for cotton goods, supposing that such goods 
were divided equally, is forty million pounds' worth. This 
leaves the nation minus her necessary cotton goods to the 
value of twenty^two million pounds. We can understand from 
these facts that a linen pocket handkerchief is considered by 
many English people an almost unnecessary mark of refine- 
ment. 

(2) Woolen Goods. The national need for woolen goods, 
calculated at the minimum, is estimated at a hundred million 
pounds per annum. Now the nation only produces sixty -five 
million pounds' worth of woolen goods in a year. Of this 
quantity twenty^three million pounds' worth are sent abroad, 
leaving for home consumption forty ^ two million pounds' worth. 
The need for woolen goods must, therefore, go unsatisfied to 
the extent of fifty-eight million pounds' worth. 

(3) Boots. Or, lastly, let us turn to boots. The Mayor of 
Leicester complains that there is a great slump in boots, that 
his city is becoming a sort of national sepulchre for surplus 
boots. There is no demand for them, he says; and unless 
something be done to stimulate this demand Leicester will 
lose her staple trade and the factories be shut down. Yet I 
am assured that the nation is needing boots to the extent of 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 159 

fifty million pairs. Evidently the Leicester boots must be 
shockingly misfitted to John Bull's dainty feet, or else there 
must have been some great error in distribution.* 

Demand, then, is not the same as need, and demand will 
always be non- representative until it includes need. The fact 
that it does not include need is mainly due to the share- 
holding class — to the poor and superfluous quality of their 
demands. The weakest point in our shareholding system is 
" its failure to secure the application of our national capital^ as fast 
as it is accumulated^ to the provision of our national needs in the 
order oj their urgency.^* We need more schoolmasters ; and the 
shareholder demands more jockeys. We need more recreation 
grounds for children; and he demands more race courses and 
motordromes. • • • We need more tailors, bakers, masons, car- 
penters ; he demands more coachmen, footmen, chauffeurs, and 
gamekeepers. In fine, what we most of all need is producers 
and what he most of all demands is parasites.f Surely, as Mr. 
Wells has somewhere said, '' Economic conditions are made 
and compact of the human will." 

This shareholding element seems, at present, to be a neces- 
sary back* eddy in our civilization; and it will endure so long 
as our present experimental state of society obtains. It is a 
class, too, which, above all others, appropriates and exploits 
all sorts and conditions of faculty, from the meanest to the 
most effective, by the low and fruitless quality of its demands, 
these demands being almost wholly unchecked by any ne- 
cessity of labor, responsibility, custom, local usage, or attach- 
ment. " Within the limits of the law (a member of this class) 
may do as the imagination of his heart directs. Now such an 
imperfect creature as man, a creature urged by such imperi- 
ous passions, so weak in imagination, and controlled by so 
weak a reason, receives such absolute freedom as this only at 
infinite peril. To a great number of these people in the second 
and third generation this freedom will mean vice, the subver- 
sion of passion to inconsequent pleasures.'' Here, indeed, we 
have an economic, an intellectual, a moral problem that must 
be faced most steadily and completely — far more completely 
than Mr. Wells has as yet attempted to do. I shall, there- 
fore, deal with it in my next paper. 

• See Pf ogress and Povtrty, L. G. Chiozza Money, pp. X3X-X33. 
t After Bernard Shaw, Tlu A#w Agt, January 25, 1908. 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER 

BY JEANIE DRAKE. 
II. 

E Sunday morning in July, as bis daughter came 
down to him, dressed in some pretty, inex- 
pensive summer stuff, rosy asters in the simple 
hatt ** confectionned** by herself, so she said, and 
her eyes and cheeks glowing in anticipation of a 
f6te, the drum major exclaimed: ''You look beautiful, my 
child." 

"You and I are one, and to praise oneself is vanity," 
answered Madeleine with a joyous laugh. Then she retied his 
cravat, put a flower in his button-hole, and brushed some im- 
perceptible dust from his coat, winding up the entire perform- 
ance with a kiss. 

The day's contemplated pleasure was of Olmsted's arrange- 
ment. He had called a few times lately with Arnold, and he 
had sometimes read a book at her request ''for the sake of 
her English," and sometimes Arnold had sung. It was during 
the last visit that Olmsted had found occasion to mention 
casually to Monsieur Deluce that a friend of his, owning a 
country place on the river, was now abroad, and that he had 
been invited to go there at any time ; and " perhaps Monsieur 
and Mademoiselle would enjoy a day among the rose-gardens." 
Arnold wished that he had originated this excursion, seeing 
how Madeleine's eyes danced at the idea. 

A week ago this talk had been held, and the night before 
Arnold had said to Olmsted abruptly, and in this very room, 
thinking they were out of Madeleine's hearing : " I may as 
well tell you that I intend to ask Mademoiselle Deluce to be 
my wife. You need not look like that, I have fully made up 
my mind. You are displaying " — suspiciously — "a more than 
common share of worldly wisdom. Perhaps" — slowly — "you, 
yourself — " 

" Stop I " cried the other with sudden fire ; then more gently : 
I beg your pardon, but you should not think things unfriendly 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE Drum Major* s Daughter i6i 

of me. To my mind a mesalliance is almost always a mistake ; 
bat if yott, in spite of a hundred objections, have fully decided 
then— I wish you good luck 1 '' 

Arnold felt as though he were already a fortunate lover, 
springing up the steps this Sunday morning and meeting 
Madeleine's bright smile. Olmsted came in more leisurely, and 
in time to hear his friend's compliment met with laughing re- 
proof. 

Fifteen minutes then and they were being driven through 
the city and suburbs and whirled along the smooth boulevard, 
and Olmsted was already repaid for his slight trouble, by 
seeing his guests' enjoyment of the unwonted pleasure of easy, 
swift motion through the fresh morning air. In a short while 
they were entering the broad avenue leading to his friend's 
house. 

''You will like to go in and rest now," he suggested, get- 
ting out and helping the others. 

'' No, no " ; said Madeleine eagerly. '' May we not go first 
into the gardens?" 

''Just where you like, but do not expect to find rare or 
choice blossoms. My friend has a fancy for old-fashioned 
things. Notice these tall, closely- dipt box and yew hedges; 
see the flowers in the garden-patches — sun-flowers, hollyhocks, 
cocks' combs, mignonettes, wall- flowers, and those enormous, 
old-time roses." 

"But they are beautiful and so fragrant," she said, smell- 
ing daintily at a huge one Arnold gave her. "The hedges 
look like that picture, 'The Labyrinth,' where the two lovers 
are in despair, for they are on opposite sides of the tall hedge 
and cannot reach each other. It is all like a picture," she 
rejoiced, " like something out of the Spectator that you read 
to me. / will play Sacharissa or Dorinda " — letting her light 
gown trail and pacing with pretended stateliness between the 
green rows-— "and Papa is Ser Rojaire — art thou not Ser Ro- 
jaire ? " taking his arm and keeping step. 

"I am whatever you like," said the old man indulgently, 
looking down^t the charming head which just touched his 
shoulder. It seemed that this day under the blue sky was 
making him forget for a while the very existence of Germany. 

" How many grand old trees," she went on, " and look at 
that queer, crooked, gnarled one, and is not that a swing?" 

VOL. XCI.— II 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



1 62 THE DRUM Major's daughter [May, 

And she harried joyously on, utterly forgetting Dorinda's 
dignity. Tlie swing was in a grove of tall trees, some of 
which seemed to whisper to each other as the breeze from the 
river swayed their tops to and fro ; while others bent low over 
their shadows in a near-by pond. A sort of chair was sus- 
pended securely between two of the largest. 

Madeleine girlishly seated herself and Arnold, leaning against 
a trunk, sent her backward and forward through the air. 

'' He looks bonny enough,'' thought Olmsted, '' among the 
boughs there, to carry o£f the Princess — though she is dis- 
guised as a beggar-maid. Well, if it must be, let his mother 
rave— there is reason enough why I should not interfere — and 
she might be glad to have her son do so well." 

After a while the swing grew wearisome. *' Shall we not 
go in now for some refreshment?'' asked Olmsted. 

" What a pity to go in ! " 

''Then we will manage better," he said. And presently, 
under his directions, two servants brought out a low table and 
some rustic chairs, and the luncheon was ready. With easy, 
bright talk, and a thousand allusions to music, art, and litera- 
ture, it went merrily; and Arnold wondered when he could 
hear such talk among his mother's set, so few of them other 
than narrowly self-contented and artificial. After a while be 
proposed that he should take Madeleine across the pond to 
gather some water-lilies. 

She consented gaily, and they rowed away in the small 
skiff tied at the foot of the steps. 

Monsieur Deluce and Olmsted, having lighted their cigars, 
strolled up and down the walks. The old drum major was in 
a softened mood this sunny afternoon, and instead of fighting 
his battles o'er he talked rather of his early childhood near 
Nancy; of the dear old grandmother, with her spare, erect 
figure and flying knitting-needles, and of the little brothers 
and cousins that played with him and all their simple farm 
life, and kindly, honest ways. "And all are dead and gone," 
he mused ; " the ends of the good God are His own. Only 
Madeleine and I left — and she so young and I so oldl " After 
some time Olmsted went back to the grove for the cigar-case 
which he had left there on the grass. Madeleine was seated 
in the swing again, and she was alone. " What have you done 
with Van Twiller, Mademoiselle?" he asked. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER 1 63 

She did not answer this, but said with a little effort: ''It 
seems that the air has grown suddenly very heavy and op- 
pressive." 

''It has become snltry. I see some very dark clouds, and 
there is thunder muttering. We are somewhat far from the 
house in case of a quick downpour, but there is a shelter. 
Let me show you a grotto, where it is deliciously cool/' She 
rose slowly, dropping some water-lilies to the ground and 
leaving them there. 

" Your father," said he, making talk against her lack of re- 
sponsiveness, "looks wonderfully well and bright to-day. He 
is remarkably strong for his years." 

"Yes;" she assented. Then, forgetting her usual reserve 
with him: "Ah, Monsieur, he is not always strong. He 
breaks down often, and then he grieves ; but I — I grieve even 
more. His work is heavy; to march miles sometimes and 
move the great baton for hours, that is not play. He is to 
march on Tuesday, the Fourth, and I wish it was over. He 
is not deaf, happily, but sometimes he becomes confused with 
the crowds and the shouting ; and, then, something might hap- 
pen. I fear for him every day — the carriages and the autos— - 
if he should grow dizzy. Hy heart is lighter when I stand in 
our doorway and see him coming." 

" I can imagine," said Olmsted gently, looking down at the 
young, wistful face. "But you have faith in the good God, 
Mademoiselle?" 

"Oh, yes" ; she answered, raising large eyes, full of reverence. 

They reached the grotto, which was merely a large hole 
blasted out of an immense rock, bounding one end of the 
garden, with space for three or four persons perhaps; and 
with a rough sort of bench, likewise hewn out of the rock. 
A sudden, loud clap of thunder startled them. 

" I hope," said Olmsted, " that you are not afraid of a 
thunder-storm; it was imprudent to bring you so far from the 
house, but I did not imagine that the storm-cloud was so 
near. We must stay here now, for you would be drenched 
in attempting to return." 

Thunder peals sounded louder and nearer, a great rush of 
wind came roaring and tearing through the garden, bending 
the tops of the stout old trees, and filling the air with dust 
and leaves. "There comes the rain now," he said, drawing 



Digitized by 



Google 



l64 THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER [May, 

in his head. The first pattering of big drops falling grew into 
a downpour faster and faster, until it became a perfect deluge. 
Olmsted, looking anxiously at his companion, saw her shiver. 

" I am not afraid/' she answered to his look, '' I never fear 
a storm; it is only— I am anxious for the others. Do you 
think they are surely safe?'' 

"They were near the house and will have made for shel* 
ten" As he spoke a fearful flash of lightning blinded diem 
and a volley crashed overhead. "That has struck some- 
where/' said the girl with a sob. But die last terrific peal 
seemed to be the storm's farewell, for it now retreated sul- 
lenly, with low muttering, up the hills on the farther side of 
the river. They hurried towards the house. Monsieur Deluce 
awaited them on the veranda and said that Arnold had already 
started homeward, "leaving for you, my child, many polite ex- 
cuses for abrupt departure; but he was so very wet and 
chilled and he thought it wiser to hasten." 

In a little while the carriage came and they too departed 
cityward. A very subdued party, notwithstanding that the 
dark clouds were now away in the distance and myriads of 
sparkling raindrops everywhere reflected the splendor of the 
setting sun. Olmsted was very silent, so also was Madeleine, 
but the drum major, still cheerful, bore the burden of the 
conversation. 

When they arrived home Olmsted was just extending his 
hand to assist Madeleine when her foot stumbled and she 
would have fallen had he not caught her and placed her gently 
and safely on the ground. She shrank back from him in an 
instant and grew very pale. 

" Good-bye I " he cried abruptly— cutting short Monsieur 
Deluce's thanks and re*entering the carriage — "I, too, must 
change this damp coat." 

As he was borne homeward he thought: "What have I 
done to excite such a feeling of repulsion ? How have I con- 
trived that a girl should look as if she would rather fall than 
accept my aid?" 

When he entered the writing- room from a late breakfast 
next morning Arnold was already there. 

"If you have finished your tasks, Olmsted," he began, 
without further preface, "why cannot we start Westward at 
once — to-morrow? The heat here grows intolerable." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.J THE DRUM MAJOItS DAUGHTER 165 

" It is scarcely warmer to-day than yesterday/' said Olm- 
sted; then his glance at Arnold softened as he noticed a sort 
of restless, jaded expression on the handsome, boyish face. 
''What's the matter, lad?" he asked. 

Arnold turned and looked out of the window for a few 
seconds. "Not much/' he said presently, forcing a laugh, 
''only — it's all of no use. Our wise hesitation and weighing 
of the matter were quite wasted, you see. I spoke to her 
when we were out in the boat yesterday, and she would only 
listen under protest. Her father and her music, she said — that 
was all her world ; though, being so gentle, she added, of 
course, some kindly things about gratitude — gratitude 1 But" 
—and Arnold's voice grew unsteady — " she could never, never 
feel as I would have her." 

Olmsted laid his hand gently on his friend's shoulder, 
which meant a great deal from him. " A woman's ' no ' is not 
always final," he suggested. 

" Hers is, I fancy," said Arnold — then, turning and straight- 
ening himself up, he continued \ " I will write to her from 
the West; the answer to that I will accept once for alL 
Meantime, camping and hunting and roughing it will be best." 

" I wish I could go with you, but my plan is upset by a 
business letter requiring my presence in Canada some time 
this month. After that is settled, I'm afraid it will be too late 
to join you, and Lmay as well cleave to my scribbling here." 

Next day was the "Glorious Fourth," and Arnold left on 
the early train. Olmsted kept to bis work, but afterwards^ 
growing restless, put away books and papers and strolled 
down to his literary club. Past the windows marched the 
staffs and bands and troops of the parade, but it attracted little 
of Olmsted's attention. Later an alarm of fire was sounded 
and he heard some one say that it was quite near. The troops 
kept on and he noticed that the Seventh was the next regi- 
ment coming, its band ahead, and the tall, well-known figure 
of its drum major in front. A sudden commotion down a side- 
street and a violent rush and trampling of horses' feet. " Clear 
the way ! " and mounted policemen were pushing the crowd 
right and left. The band of the Seventh stopped short, but its 
drum major seemed to become all at once confused and un- 
certain, though a policeman spoke directly to him. He turned 
first to one side, then to the other, and finally took a step in 



Digitized by 



Google 



166 THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER [May 

the wrong direction. A thundering, smoking, roaring monster 
of a fire-engine came on, with its dashing horses wildly ex- 
cited. It whirled across the path of the procession with light- 
ning speed and was gone. ^' Good heavens I '' shouted Olmsted, 
seeing the prostrate form around which the crowd clustered. 
In a moment he was out on the street with a sickening dread 
upon him. He made a path for himself and stood beside 
Monsieur Deluce lying in the dust, his white hair dabbled with 
blood, his shako and his baton broken and crushed at his side. 
An ambulance had already arrived. The surgeon made a rapid 
examination of the injuries ; then he turned to Olmsted : " Are 
you a relation ? '' he asked. 

''An intimate friend,'' was the answer. 

''Has he a family?'' 

" One daughter only." 

" Bring her, without delay, to the Fortieth Street Hospital.'* 

Olmsted hailed a passing cab. "This is yours" — showing 
the driver a coin — "if you get me to Wilder Street in fifteen 
minutes." He alighted at his destination, telling the man to 
wait. " May God teach me how to tell her I " he kept saying 
to himself, as he entered. 

She came down, dressed all in white, with a passion-flower 
which he had gathered for her yesterday in her belt. "I am 
in full dress," she told him, "as you see, for Papa likes me to 
be very fine when he comes in, and it is to-day a holiday, as 
you know. He will be so tired marching in the sun, I fear. 
You do not mind the dark room ? It is for coolness." She 
had talked on to hide a little surprise at this early call; but 
marking his silence, for he could not immediately speak, she 
stopped short. Her eyes, more accustomed now to the shaded 
room, perceived something strange in his look. " What is it ? 
What is it ? " she cried. Then : " Oh, my dear, beloved father " 
—as one to whom a terrible presentment has come home at 
last — " is it — ^is it ? " she cried, drawing close to Olmsted. 

"No, no"; he answered, " but he is hurt — badly hurt; and 
you must come to him at once." 

"I will be with you in a moment," and she glided from the 
room with no sign of either the wail or swoon he had dreaded* 
In another moment the girl stood beside him in hat and long 
dark wrap covering her gown. 

"Like lightning," Olmsted privately instructed the driven 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER l6r 

While they went he told her in a few words of the manner of 
the accident, and tried as he could to prepare her for what he 
had seen in the surgeon's face. She listened as though not 
hearing, and her eyes kept their wide, strained look. At the 
hospital she was out of the carriage before he could assist her. 
He followed quickly, and an attendant to whom he spoke, said 
they might go in at once — '*the doctors had finished.'' It 
chanced that no other accident had as yet been brought in that 
day and the old drum major lay there in the ward alone, save 
for an attendant* His daughter threw off her wrap advancing, 
and sank on her knees beside him, kissing the pale hand, hard- 
ly whiter than her lips. His other arm was bandaged as well 
as his head, but Olmsted was glad, for her sake, to see his 
face quite undisfigured and even serene. "Love," she said 
with heart-breaking appeal, " surely you will not leave me I " 

" A soldier must obey commands, my little one," he an- 
swered, smiling faintly, and essaying to stroke the dark head 
close to his cheek* ''The Great Captain calls, and Sergeant 
Deluce, of the Army of France, answers. I am old and rought 
but He will forgive that I care not to leave you« my little 
flower— but a brave girl, too—" 

" If I am brave it is you who have taught me ; oh, my dear — " 

''How long?" Olmsted asked the surgeon aside. 

"An hour, perhaps," he answered briefly. 

"Then there is something she would wish." He hurried 
down the corridor. Soon he was back with a grave, elderly 
man in priestly dress. "WiU you. Father, give me a few 
moments with him afterwards ? " he asked. The priest nodded, 
and after his ministration, called Olmsted, waiting outside. 
Alone with the dying man, Olmsted said, speaking very 
distinctly: "Monsieur Deluce, you still, perhaps, in spite of 
our Lord's consolations, are oppressed with some fears for the 
daughter left alone so young?" A motion of the eyelids an- 
swered him. " Listen to me, then," he continued very slowly* 
" Whatever may be, or wherever she may go, or whatever career 
she may choose, I promise you that she may rely upon my help 
when needed, and that I will always stand between her and 
harm — as though I were yourself — so help me God 1 " 

Monsieur Deluce looked at him fixedly with those dark 
eyes, so like his daughter's. Then he said: "I believe and 
trust you entirely." He then called for his daughter. When 



Digitized by 



Google 



I68 THE DRUM MAJOItS DAUGHTER [Hay, 

she came in he said simply: *'I wished to say good-night, my 
darling." He seemed to doze for awhile; and then, suddenly, 
he raised himself slightly on the unbandaged arm : ** A mai^ 
eamandes I " he called, and then was qnite still. 

For a few days after the faneral Madeleine remained in 
seclusion, seeing no one, though many tokens of sympathy 
came to the fair young teacher from pupils and others. Then 
she took up the burden of life and work again. 

It was, perhaps, a week after this that Olmsted, having ar* 
ranged everything for his departure for Canada the next day, 
came in the afternoon to see her. 

He found Madeleine, who had just come in, gazing absently 
from the window. Her heavy black street gown made her ap- 
pear slighter and younger than ever. She turned and, seeing 
who it was, gave him her hand, which he held for a moment* 

*' I could not thank you before,'' she said, ^* but you must 
believe that I have deeply felt your kindness. I can never fdr« 
get that you— not of the faith— remembered Pire Boucher; 
when I, so stricken—'' 

''Do not even speak of it," he interrupted her gently* 
There was silence for a few seconds, broken by the rustling 
of a paper which Olmsted drew from his pocket. *'I re- 
ceived a telegram to-day from Van Twiller, in answer to one 
of mine. He begs me to give you his most heartfelt sym- 
pathy." Then Olmsted seemed to nerve himself and began 
again: ''Mademoiselle, I do not know what he may write, 
but I can guess, for he spoke to me before he left; and the 
fact of your being now so young— alone in this great city-— 
may embolden him, as it does me, to say what would other- 
wise appear cruelly ill-timed." 

She gave him full attention now, and this young girl's gaze 
seemed almost to disconcert a man noted for his self-possession. 
Still he continued : " He told me of a — failure. But when he 
speaks again— do not think me presumptuous — will you not 
consider a little ? You do not know how difficult and wearing 
a task it is for a woman— a girl— to struggle, single- handed, for 
existence in a place like this. Van Twiller is a fine, manly 
fellow. I think, perhaps, your father might be glad — " 

Her lip quivered, but she spoke quite calmly : " Monsieur, 
I overheard something you said to your friend once in this 
very room. I could not help hearing it. You were wiser then." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER 169 

'' I hope it was not that which led yoa to answer him as you 
did. Yott could not hold him responsible for another's views." 

''Not at all. The money he may have — the position he 
may hold — would never influence me. My answer was what 
it was — simply because I did not think of him in that way — 
and never will." 

'' Then " — his manner freeing itself from its trace of constraint 
— '' I may tell you that my pleading for him was through loyalty 
alone. As regards my earlier warning to him to avoid such 
attachment— which you heard — ^it was not so much of class dis- 
tinction I thought, but rather of the individual. Van Twiller 
is at heart greatly influenced by his mother and really at home 
only in her circle. I thought rather of your happiness than of 
his; though I was bound to do him full justice." He fingered 
a sheet of music which was : " Du bist wie eine Blume " — a 
drooping white rose-bud now I Laying it aside after a mo- 
ment, he resumed, in an even, quiet tone : '' It was hard enough 
to plead for him, God knows, for yon see, I love you myself, 
and have loved you with all my strength from the first moment 
I saw you." 

Surprise made her white cheek a shade paler. She rose, it 
teemed involuntarily, shrank back with a pang, and stood lean- 
ing heavily against the chair-back. 

'' There must be some mistake," she said in a sort of whis- 
per, *' you should not speak to me so— and now*^ 

"I know," he answered hastily, ''that if the rest were ill- 
timed, this must appear sheer brutality, when you are so sad 
and suffering so keenly. But I entreat you again to remember 
the circumstances; and — and I must leave you to-morrow. 
Yon do not care for me now, I know, but you might some 
day; and, oh, Madeleine 1 " — with indescribable tenderness—" as 
your husband I could be very patient and wait for your love." 

" You forget," she said, still very low, " that I have heard 
you say, that 'a mesalliance was almost always a mistake.'" 

"In this case," he replied quietly, "the honor would be 
conferred on me. I am but a hard-worked writer. And my 
few relatives could hardly be prouder of an ancient pedigree 
than I should " — and he lowered his voice — " of the virtues of 
your dear and noble father." 

The allusion was more than she could bear just now. Lean- 
ing back in her chair, tears forced their way through her slen- 



Digitized by 



Google 



170 THE DRUM Major's daughter [May, 

der fingers. ''Leave me/' she said, ''you must go — I cannot 
have you near me — I must not speak more with you now— '^ 
Full of remorse, he touched with his lips the hand hanging 
at her side. Then he went out slowly from the house. 

October came, clear and cool and bright. Richard Olmsted 
had returned from Canada. Tired with the work of the morn- 
ing he had sauntered out and entered the Park. 

But once outside, he smiled to himself. He walked along 
a wooded path at a leisurely pace. He was so restless and dis- 
quieted that the throng annoyed him« and he presently turned 
into a narrow side-path, that he might be free to indulge his 
own thoughts — and his thoughts were of Madeleine. 

He had written to her several times during his three months' 
absence, claiming the right of a friend at least to place himself 
at her service always, and assuring her that it was her father's 
wish that in any emergency she should depend upon his advice 
or help. He told himself that he expected no answer to these, 
and none came. In later letters he enclosed merely his address 
at the time of writing. He had called at Madeleine's home 
immediately on his return, but she was out at work with her 
classes. Admitted by the storekeeper downstairs, who knew 
him well, he waited a while in Madeleine's sitting room* It 
wore to him a forlorn and deserted look. Olmsted mechani- 
cally took up the song : " Du bist wie eine Blume," which 
was lying on top of the other music. He opened it idly and 
a card fell out. It was the envelope of one of his letters and 
across it in her handwriting was the verse : 

"Si le roi m'avait donn^ 
Paris sa grande ville, 
Et s'il me fallut quitter 
L'amour de ma vie, 
Je dirats au roi, Henri, 
Reprenez votre Paris I 
J'aime mieux ma mie, oh gu^ 
J'aime mieux ma mie." 

And on the other side was pencilled, very faintly, the title 
of Blondel's song: "Oh, Richard, oh, Mon Roil" He put 
this in his pocket; it might mean everything— or nothing. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] THE DRUM MAJOR'S DAUGHTER 171 

Now he sauntered along this quiet pathway, scattering with 
his stick the heaps of many-colored leaves fallen and falling 
from the trees, so absorbed that presently he smiled in scorn 
of his own preoccupation. ''What kind of work can a fellow 
do after he becomes a monomaniac ? " he said half aloud. Then 
his heart gave a great bound, for he saw under a beech, in a 
secluded corner, the figure of a young girl reminding him of 
Madeleine. ''What nonsense!'' he said to himself, " as if there 
were not hundreds of women slender and graceful and dressed 
in mourning''; but again that peculiar poise of head and neck, 
it was strangely like hers. 

He crossed the grass with rapid, noiseless footfalls. Sitting 
idly, her veil thrown back, watching a child at play, Madeleine 
had not seen him come, and when now he stood so unexpect- 
edly before her, she was on her feet in an instant : " Oh, Rich- 
ard!" Then, recovering herself, "I am so glad to see you 
back, Mr. Olmsted," she murmured. 

"And I am glad," he answered boldly, "{that you know 
my first name — have even so perhaps thought of me — so writ- 
ten of me for yourself ? " He drew from his pocket the scrib- 
bled envelope. 

She glanced at it, attempted a denial, and stood before him 
mute, her dark lashes shading the crimson rose which burned 
{n her cheek. 

"Why, then, did you repel me so the last time we met?" 

" It was so soon — so very soon after he left me," she fal- 
tered, " I was afraid that my father— even in heaven — might 
feel hurt." 

"Tell me, Madeleine," he pleaded with tender imperative- 
ness, holding both her hands, "why did you go out from the 
room one night that I sang?" 

" It was because," she answered slowly, but very steadfastly, 
raising her eyes to his, "it was befcause God had given me 
love for you even then; and I thought you so far, far away, 
that your tones thrilled me with pain." 

Then he put his arm about her protectingly, and said 
"Your father will surely know now, and be content." 

(the end.) 



Digitized by 



Google 



CATHOLICS AND BOOKS. 

BY LOUIS O'DONOVAN. S.T.L. 

II. 
III.— BOOR-LOVERS OP OLD. 

names are more illustrious in the realm of 

>ok8« learning, and wisdom than that of Origen 

le Adamantine. And if, as. Andrew Lang wrote 

TAe Library f ** selling books is nearly as bad as 

sing friends, than which life has no worse 

sorrow/' how touching must have been the sight of this truly 

great scholar of old Egypt selling all his books, relating to 

profane learning, to one who daily supplied him with but a 

few pence, sufficient, yet requisite, to provide him subsistence 

for several years. One of Origen's fellow- students in the Chris* 

tian school at Alexandria, under St. Pantenus, and his successor, 

St. Clement, was more favored by fortune. For having become 

bishop of Jerusalem, St. Alexander was able to collect ''a 

great library, consisting of the writings and letters of eminent 

men, which subsisted when Eusebus wrote.''* 

One of the most successful book-gatherers of the East was 
St. Pamphilus, a priest who was martyred A. D. 309. He was 
rich, of honorable parentage, and was born at Berytus, a city 
famous for its schools. Having grown proficient in profane 
sciences, he later settled at Cssarea in Palestine. There, ** at 
his private expense, he collected a great library, which he be- 
stowed on the church of that city. St. Isidore of Seville reck- 
oaed that it contained nearly thirty thousand volumes. Al« 
most all the works of the ancients were found in it. The 
saint established there also a public school of sacred literature, 
and to his labors the Church was indebted for a more correct 
edition of the holy Bible, which, with infinite care, he tran- 
scribed himself, many copies whereof he distributed gratis." f 
Into this same Holy Land some years later came another 

* Butler, LiviSt March x8. t Butler, Opus citatum, June x. 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] Catholics and Books 173 

passionate and constant lover of Tki Book, St Jerome. It had 
been St. Jerome's greatest pleasure at Rome to collect a good 
library and to read all the best authors; in this such was his 
passion that it made him sometimes forget to eat or drink. 
Cicero and Plautus were his chief delights. *'He purchased 
a great many books, copied several, and procured many to be 
transcribed by his friends."* When he went to the East he 
'' carried nothing with him but his library and a sum of money 
to bear the charges of his journey." f 

That the Church authorities at Rome early originated li- 
braries follows from the record of the second synod of Rome, 
under Pope Sylvester, when ''The Roman Church kept nota- 
ries who wrote out carefully the deeds of the different mar- 
tyrs." t This work was continued by Pope Julius and Pope 
Damasus. Then, too, Dyptichs were common in churches. 
Probably one of the largest and richest libraries of the entire 
history of the Church was that of the Church of St Sophia, 
at Constantinople, thought to have been begun by Constan- 
tino, '' augmented by Theodosius Junior ... in whose 
times there were no less than 100,000 books in it, and 120,000 
in the reign of Basiliscus and Zeno, when both the building 
and its furniture were all unhappily consumed."^ 

Two centuries later Pope Gregory gave St. Augustine ''a 
small library, which was kept in his monastery at Canterbury. 
Of it there still remains a book of the Gospels in the Bodlein 
Library, and another in that of Corpus Christi in Cambridge. 
The other books were PsalUrs^ the PastotaU^ the Passionarium 
Sanctorum^ and the like." || 

In A. D. 147 1 died that friend of all Catholic households, 
Thomas k Kempis. His portrait represents him sitting in the 
open air, while on the pages of a volume at his feet are in- 
scribed the words: ''I have sought rest everywhere and have 
never found it unless in a little nook with a little book."^ 

Despite the love of books being general if not universal 
among the saints, yet there are indeed exceptions among the 
specially favored friends of God: the chosen few. And we 
must believe them sincere when they declare that they did 

* Butler, Opui citatum, September 30. t Loco Citato, 

X Lomeier, De Bibliotkicis, Ultrajecti, 1680. page I2Z. 

$ Bingham, Anti^uitatts, Book VIII., chap. vii. 

H Butler, Opus citatum, March la. 

IT Life, by Cruise, in Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, p. so. 



Digitized by 



Google 



174 Catholics and Books [May, 

not feel the need of books. Had not the inspired penman 
sung: ''Oi making many books there is no end; and much 
study is an affliction of the flesh?''* Is it not true that the 
Blessed Master — Eternal Wisdom — the Word of God incarnate 
— Himself neither wrote anything that we know of, save in 
the sand, with his finger? 

It is also true that a certain number of our Lord's great- 
est followers seemed to be above the use of books. St An- 
thony of Egypt, for example, when a certain philosopher asked 
him how he could spend his time in solitude, without the 
pleasure of reading books, replied that nature was his great 
book, and amply supplied the want of others.f 

Not only was this true of that anchorite under the clear, 
brilliant sky of Egypt, but St Bernard also tells us: *' Believe 
me, upon my own experience, you would find more in the 
woods than in the books: the forests and rocks will teach you 
what you cannot learn of the greatest masters."! The cruci- 
fix served for his book, said St Philip Beniti, the thirteenth 
century Italian Servite. 

So, too, St. Francis of Assisi was illuminated with a light 
and wisdom not taught in books. And no wonder that he 
should be able to declare that the Passion of Christ was his 
perpetual book, and that he never desired to open any other 
but the history of it in the Gospels, though he were to live 
to the end of the world. 

One day, in the same thirteenth century, St Thomas 
Aquinas, the famous theologian, went to visit St. Bonaven- 
ture, and asked him from what books he had learned his 
sacred science. St Bonaventure, pointing to his crucifix before 
him, replied: ''This is the source of all my knowledge, I study 
only Jesus Christ, and Htm crucified."^ St Ignatius Loyola 
also professed that '' Everything served him for a book, where- 
in he read the divine perfections, and by that means raised 
his mind to his creator." || And we read of the very beauti- 
ful soul, St. Teresa, that, ''When she once grieved that her 
Spanish pious books were taken from her, our Lord said to 
her: 'Let not this trouble thee; I will give thee a living 
book.'"ir 

♦ Eccles., xii. 13. f Butler, Opus ciiatttm, January 17. 

i Idem of us, August 20. $ Idem opus, July 14. 

Idem opus, July 31. ^ Idem opus, October 15. 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



1 910.] Catholics and Books 175 

And yet but tew can reach these dizzy heights. The majority 
are climbing up the lower steps of the holy mount, and can- 
not see what the greatest saints see, but are glad to have any 
one tell them the road, to use any chart, any book, that will 
help them on their way through the briars and forests that 
obscure their path and retard their celestial mission. And 
why should one not love and use good books ? The examples 
of almost all great and virtuous men, pagan and Christian, 
lead us to do so. ''The second century Roman Emperor and 
philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, called it the greatest favor that 
he had received in his whole life from the gods, that he had 
read the Enchiridion of Epictetus. In this book admirable 
rules for the conduct of life are laid down, extensively applied, 
and enforced by striking examples; yet in his work too great 
a freedom is given to the most unbridled of human passions 
and many essential defects occur."* 

Many beautiful and touching, as well as profitable, scenes 
occurred when, of old, monks visited brother monks for 
counsel and advice in Christian perfection. Who would not 
give much gold to speak with the gentle St. Francis and 
hear his conversations with his brothers ? The more learned 
and recondite would sacrifice much to attend the lectures 
of the angelic Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas. The reli- 
gious and pious would crave to be taken out of this low, 
earthly atmosphere by that heavenly nun, St. Teresa. And 
still these cravings can all be satisfied by selecting such reading, 
by using such books, as St. Francis' Little Flowers; St. Thomas' 
Sum of Theology; or Golden Chain; or St. Teresa's Auto^ 
biography ; or other writings. 

That books can be made to appeal not only to those ma^ 
ture in age, but also to the young, if emulation be stirred in 
such scholars, is shown by a pretty story told of the wise 
Alfred the Great of England when he was still a child. ''His 
mother one day showed him and his brother a fine book in 
Saxon verse, promising to give it him who should first read 
and understand it. Alfred was only beginning to learn to 
read, but, running straight to his master, he did not rest till 
he not only read it, but got it by heart." f 

When St. Thomas Aquinas was imprisoned by bis mother, 
lest he be a religious, "his sisters took him some books. 

* IcUm opust September 4. Idem oputt October 28. 



Digitized by 



Google 



176 Catholics and Books [May, 

What were they ? A Bible, Aristotle's Logic, and the works of 
the Master of the Sentences/'* And the Pope to whom we 
are indebted for the most accurate edition of St Thomas' 
works, Pius V., called '^ Constant devotion and study the double 
breast from which religious persons draw spiritual nourishment 
which maintains in them the love of God and the contempt of 
the worid/'t 

During the sixteenth century, in Spain, lived St. Paschal 
Baylon. And though he was too poor to go to school, yet 
** the pious child carried a book with him into the fields where 
he watched the sheep, and desired those that he met to teach 
him the letters; and thus in a short time, being yet very 
young, he learned to read. This advantage he made use of 
only to improve his soul in devotion and piety; books of 
amusement he never would look into."| 

It is recorded of the learned compiler of the Livi$ of th$ 
Saints^ the Reverend Alban Butler, that: *' Every instant that 
he did not dedicate to the government of his college, he em-^ 
ployed in study; and, when obliged to go abroad, he would 
read as he walked along the streets. I have seen him with a 
book under each arm/' writes Mr. Charles Butler, ^ ** and a third 
in his hands ; and have been told that, traveling on horseback, 
he fell a- reading, giving the horse his full liberty." 

Crossing now to our own land, it cannot but be of interest 
to note a few events in connection with books in America. 
And, first of all, books were written, or translations into the 
various Indian tongues made, in more than one case by the 
zealous missionaries to these benighted people. 

While neither prepared nor desirous to speak in detail of 
the various books published in their own languages for our 
native Americans, we may gather some ideas from a few facts. 
For the Mexican Indians Father Pareja published two cate- 
chisms as early as 1612; one ^' confesonario " during 1612 and 
1613; one grammar in 1614; one other catechism in 1627; 
besides treatises on purgatory, heaven, hell, and the rosary. || 

A century later, in 17 18, Father John le Boulenger drew 
up a '^ grammar and dictionary with a very full catechism and 
prayers," in the Kaskaskia Indian tongue. 

* Butler, opus citatum, March 7. f Idem opus. May 5. 

X Idtm opus. May 15. $ Introductory to the Lives of ike Saints, 

II Shea, History 0/ the CatholU Church in the United States. Vol. I., p. 157. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Catholics and Books 177 

At Conn River Head, Newfoundland, to-day, a small tribe 
of one hundred and twenty Micmac Indians have books with 
the Mass written in their tongue^ printed in Germany, which 
they chant after their humdrum, monotonous manner. 

As to early Catholic American books in the English lan- 
guage in Maryland, the public library at Annapolis '^ was com- 
menced about 1697, with books presented by King Wil- 
Uam III."* 

That the need of books was felt by the early colonists, we 
learn from the words of a priest of the times, Father Molyneux, 
Superior of the priests of Maryland, who declared: ''I be- 
lieve a library of great consequence." f To supply the need 
''The Jesuit Fathers really had circulating libraries at their 
missions and encouraged the reading of good books." | Father 
Atwood, in a letter to England, ordered a list of standard 
books for one of his flock. The order included the Rheims 
Tistanuni^ Parson's Three Convetsions, Catholic Scriptufist, Touch" 
stone of the Reformed Gospel^ and the whole ** Manual with Mass 
in Latin and English."^ And yet the future Archbishop, Rev. 
John Carroll, wrote that ** among the poorer sort (of Maryland 
Catholics) many could not read, or, if they could, were desti- 
tute of books, which, if to be had at all, must come from 
England ; and in England the laws were excessively rigid against 
printing or vending Catholic books." || 

Had things changed, or was it by extraordinary efl'orts 
that only a few decades later, when Father Flaget departed 
from Vincennes to return to Baltimore, he left ** a well selected 
library for the use of his successors " ? ^ 

However, a beginning was made, and Catholic books were 
for the first time printed, not anonymously, as in England, but 
openly. Apparently the first book thus issued was a prayer- 
book entitled A Manual of Catholic Prayers^ Philadelphia. 
Printed for subscribers. By Robert Bell, Bookseller, in Third 
Street, MDCCLXXIV!** 

Those curious to know about early publications can find them 
given by Rev. Joseph Finotti, in his Bibliographia Catholica 
Americana. 

• Campbell's Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll. f Id. opus. 

% Shea, opus ciiahim. Vol. I., p. 405. $ Shea, loco citato, 

I Shea, History of Church in United States. Vol. II., p. 49, and in Brent's Archbishop 
OirroU, p. 64. 

^^\it9^opMscUatum\ Vol. II., p. 486. ^ /d. Op. Vol. II.. p. 139. 

VOL. XCI — 12 



Digitized by 



Google 



178 Catholics and Books [May, 

la this connection one item of interest to every Catholic is 
the fact that our American Catechism was adopted by Bishop 
Carroll from that used in England.* A successor of Bishop 
CarroirSf the fertile and prolific apologist. Bishop England of 
Charleston, published a Missal in English. He also established 
a book publishing society and a Catholic paper, the United 
States Catholic Miscellany, f 

In 1844 Bishop O'Connor, of Pittsburg, ''began a circulat- 
lag library.'' I This was doubtless done in accordance with 
the decree of the First Provincial Council of Baltimore, urging 
the establishment of a society for the diffusion of Catholic books. 

The Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore commended the 
recently established tract societies intended to popularize the 
position of the Church on religious topics. To-day almost every 
one may read. If Ruskin's words in the ''Kings' Treasures'' 
are true of books in general, that " no book is worth anything 
which is not worth much ; nor is it serviceable, until it has 
been read and re-read and loved, and loved again, ahd marked, 
80 that you can refer to the pages you want in it " ; surely 
they are truer still of holy books of faith and virtue. 

In "Queens' Gardens " again Ruskin writes: "The best ro- 
mance becomes dangerous if, by excitement, it renders the 
ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid 
thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which they shall 
never be called upon to act." A century and a quarter ago, 
when Rev. Dr. Carroll, the future Archbishop of Baltimore, was 
sending to Rome a report of the condition of religion in Mary- 
land, one evil that he noted was the too *common reading of 
romances and novels. If Ruskin's counsel is true of good books, 
what care should be taken to avoid positively bad onesl 

In or about the year 18 10, Archbishop Carroll and the 
other bishops held a conference in Baltimore, and agreed that 
pastors of souls "should warn the faithful not to read any 
books in which the integrity of their faith or the purity of 
their morals could easily be corrupted ; and especially that they 
should not indiscriminately read those love stories which they 
call novels." % 

* Shea. Catholic Chnrch in the UnUed StaUs. VoL III., p. 96. 
t Shea, Idem opus. Vol. III., p. 3i5-Z7. 
% Opus citatum. Vol. IV., p. 70. 
$ See Vols. I. and II. Plenary Councils of Baltimore, No. 9. 

Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Catholics and Books 179 

Again the Second Plenary Cotincil warned against bad books, 
and as earnestly encouraged worthy ones. If, then, many 
books are positively to be avoided, what books, on the other 
hand, should be in every Catholic's library ? That is a difficult 
question to answer universally, as aims and methods and needs 
and means differ for different individuals. Yet well-meant 
counsel is generally helpful. Where one intends to make a 
considerable collection of rare or expensive books he '^ should 
acquire such books as Lowndes' Bibliography ^ Brunet's Manual^ 
and as many priced catalogues as he can secure."* Recently 
one of our great daily papers declared that the Bible is printed 
in 49s different languages, and each year 14,000,000 copies of 
the Bible in English are sold. This shows that The Book is 
•till loved and popular: the more so when we are told that 
each year there are 2,500 new novels published in the United 
States, while their average sale is about 500 copies each. 

Rightly, then, the Bible is well in its position, not only in 
the hearts, but also on the tables and book-shelves of the people. 

No theme can ever become so important as that which forms 
the subject-matter of Th$ Book ; nor can any author hope to 
equal those writers who had eternal truth revealed to them, and 
who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 

Next after this collection of the Law and Prophets in the 
Old Testament, and the Apostles and their associates in the 
New Testament, altogether forming our Bible ; after this book, 
par excellence^ naturally come the various commentaries on the 
Bible, and other writings by the great Fathers and Doctors of 
the Church. These have been gathered into two vast collec- 
tions, the one of the Greek writers, in one hundred and sixty 
ponderous tomes, called the Greek Patrology; the other of the 
Latin writers, in two hundred and twenty tomes, called the 
Latin Patrology; both edited under the general supervision 
of a priest, Abb^ Migne, about the middle of the nineteenth 
century. Various translations of certain of these Fathers have 
been published in English. 

Nor should we fancy that these two great collections con- 
tain only commentaries on Scripture. They treat of almost 
every topic that could interest the serious Christian in one 
way or another. 

And who has not heard, even if he has not read, some- 

* Andrew Lang, Tht Idbraty, Chap. ii. 



Digitized by 



Google 



l8o CATHOLICS AND BOOKS [May, 

thing of that deep, sweet, altogether lovely soal, St. Augus- 
tine ? In his wonderfully frank, even humiliating Book of Con* 
fessions one sees how truly great its author must have been, to 
lay bare to all mankind both his secret sins and his most 
cherished hopes. This same great Doctor wrote that monu- 
ment of philosophy and religion, the City of God. 

A work more easily produced, that should be well-read in 
every Catholic's study, is the Lives of the Saints^ in one form 
or another, with its forceful and appealing object-lessons of 
Christian benignity and refinement of character. 

What each should do is to have a few favorites, at least, 
among truly good books, and read them often and meditative- 
ly. Imitate St. Francis de Sales, who carried Father Lawrence 
Scupoli's Spiritual Combat in his pocket fifteen years, and read 
something in it each day. It is said that this work ran through 
nearly fifty editions before the death of the author. 

Great and popular as is the Spiritual Combat^ yet one other 
surpasses it, of which it is said: ^'The Imitation of Christ, by 
Thomas k Kempis, is the most excellent book that ever came 
from the hand of man — the Holy Scriptures being of divine 
origin, and the Spiritual Combat may be called its key or in- 
troduction." • 

Of course this is not the place to mention books on the 
natural sciences, etc., but only those more or less bearing on 
or connected with religion. 

In philosophy, dressed in a popular garb, may be recom- 
mended Cardinal Gibbons* Christian Heritage ; Father Hecker's 
Qtiestions of th^ Soul/ Father Aveling's writings, Schanz's 
Christian Apology; Thein's Anthropology: Shanahan's John 
Fiske on the Idea of God ; and the whole Stony hurst series by 
the Jesuit Fathers. 

In sociology there are the writings of Sir Thomas More, 
Father Cathrein, Rev. Dr. Kerby, and Rev. John Ryan's A 
Living Wage. On doctrinal subjects one would do well to 
have Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, learned, concise, 
and inexpensive. Then there is Berington and Kirk's Faith 
of Catholics, though once out of print now edited anew; 
Bossuet's Variations; Archbishop Spalding's numerous lec- 
tures and essays ; Brownson's various writings ; Chateaubriand's 
Genius of Christianity ; the three great English Cardinals, Wise- 

* Introduction to SpiriHuU Combat. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] Catholics and books i8i 

man, ManniDg, and Newmaiii who have written so well on such 
a vast field of subjects ; and Cardinal Gibbon's Faith of Our 
Fathers. Perhaps no better treatises on the Sacred Scriptures 
can be more easily procured than those of Father Gigot. 
Certainly the writer knows of no more happy combination of 
erudition and style on the life of Christ than that of Abb^ 
Fouard. Also his lives of St Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. 

For an account of the catacombs, Northcote and Brown- 
lowe's work combines happily the popular and scholarly. Fa- 
ther O'Brien's small volume on the Mass is a jewel. Bishop 
Hefele on the Councils of the Church is dry, yet authoritative 
and solid. Only the first six Councils are translated from the 
German into English. Pastor's History of the Popes is a strong, 
plain statement of facts on the subject of the great rulers of 
the Church in the late Middle Ages, and beginning of modern 
times. Digby's Mores Catholici is a storehouse of facts for 
churchmen. Montalembert's monumental Monks of the West, 
as well as his Life of St. Elizdbeth ; with Bishop Hefele's 
Life of Cardinal Ximinez and of Queen Isabella the Catholic^ 
should be charming reading for cultured Catholics. So, too, 
Martin Rule's Life and Times of St. Anselm, is a fascinating 
work for pious scholars. The History of the German People^ by 
Mgr. Joannes Janssen, is detailed and hard reading, but full of 
data. Bellesheim's History of the Church in Scotland is still 
the authority on that subject. Joyce on Ireland is readable 
and learned. For England, there is first, of course, Bede's 
Ecclesiastical History ; and Rev. Dr. Lingard's Anglo-Saxon 
Church, a delightful little work ; and the History of England, by 
the same author. Then, too, a very readable and reliable history 
of the Church in England is that of Father Flanagan. For a 
history of painting perhaps Vasari is still most popular. For 
the literary history of the Middle Ages Father Berington is 
erudite, though now out of print. As to American history, 
in part or in general, there are Brownson, McSherry, Scharf, 
and Father Russell, the last three from Maryland, and John 
Gilmary Shea's monumental History of the Church in the United 
States. For general histories Bossuet and Fathers Vuibert 
and Fredet are all good in their particular way, and Cardinal 
Hergenroether and Dr. Alzog for general Church histories. On 
education F^nelon's Christian Counsels, Cardinal Newman's Idea 
of a University, and the works of Bishop J. L. Spalding are 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 8a Catholics and books [May. 

well-known and strong books. For introduction to literatnre 
Brother Azarias, Father Jenkins, and Father Coppens should 
be recommended. 

Among Catholic fiction writers whose works are popular 
perhaps the following are the best: Consciencei Crawford^ 
Dorsey, Reid, Finn, Keon's Dion and the Sibyls^ Manzoni's 
The Betrothed, Newman's Caltista, and Loss and Gain, Wise- 
man's Fabiola, and the works of Sienkiewicz, Father Sheehan, 
Mrs. Ward, Katharine Tynan, Miss Sadlier, Henry Harland, 
Rene Bazin, and Charles Warren Stoddard. 

Many more names might be added to the list, if our readers 
had sufficient means and time at their disposal. There will, 
of course, be disagreement as to the merits of those mentioned. 
But to most these hundred or so volumes should be servicable 
and pleasant. 

Catholics who are capable should realize what a vast, fer- 
tile field for good seed is the broad prairie land of the press. 
Catholics who are able to, should write, for, what is written 
remains. But pecuniary remuneration should not be the mo- 
tive, else the vast majority will never reach their aim. Although ' 
Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore, was indeed erudite, and 
'' although he had for more than thirty years been a writer 
of Catholic books, he had in all that time made only two hun- 
dred dollars by all his labors." * 

Nor is the field much more lucrative to-day, if we may 
believe a recent writer in one of our prominent and conserva^ 
tive prints, for he stated that : '* The field of letters is by no 
means one in which there is fairness and impartiality. It is 
one that is to-day, with the exception of the ministry, the 
poorest in material reward, and the most difficult in which to 
gain a footing.'' f 

* Caikidral Records, Riordan, Baltimore, X906. p. 75. 
t Guy Carleton Lee in BaUimon Smm, 

(THE END.) 



Digitized by 



Google 




MAMICHEE. 

BY MARY AUSTIN. 

I. 

*' He prayeth best, who loveth best.*' 

^HE was jttst the most sympathetic, tender '* Little 
Mother'' in the worlds with a heart large enough 
to take in every one of her numerous family, no 
matter how bad, wicked, or ugly the new child 
might be. One and all soon fell under the 
charm of the little coolie girl, whose quaint Dutch name^ 
'' Mamichee," or ** Little Mother," so truly expressed her life 
and character. Heaven alone knows from whom she got her 
loving heart, most certainly not from her own experience of 
mother-love, or mother- care, for she had worse than none. 

*' Thrown away," the term so commonly used in Cape 
Town, and so expressive of those unfortunate children aban- 
doned by their unnatural parents, was true enough of poor 
^^Mamichee." She was left in the Cape Town Female Prison, 
usually called the '* Tronk," by her worthless mother, and when 
her time expired — at seven years old — the poor mite had no 
home but the prison. 

For, some twenty years ago, there was no other shelter 
for unhappy little children, unless some friends came forward 
and offered them a home while the mothers were ^Moing 
time." 

Mamichee had no such friend. There were not many 
coolies in the Cape; and with no one is the feeling of caste 
or race more strong than with the colored population. 

Picture to yourselves a quaint old parlor in semi»darkness, 
and intolerably hot in spite of large open ventilators, a party 
of six or seven English and Irish ladies trying to keep awake 
by the aid of iced lemonade instead of orthodox tea. Very 
little conversation was going on, when the door was suddenly 
opened and a grinning, black- faced orphan announced: 

*' Missis, the white Baas to see the missis." 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 84 MAMICHEE [May, 

''The missis/' for once, was not very well pleased to see 
the ''white Baas/' even though in this instance it was onr 

good friend the magistrate, Mr. R . She felt she had been 

caught in rather an infra dig. attitude. However, he was 
\^xy well pleased to find us resting, and apologized very much 
for breaking in upon our slumbers. 

"The truth is, ladies, that I want you to do something 
charitable at once. Though I know you will say you have 
not even room for a fly more in the 'ark/ you must take in 
at once a poor little coolie girl who is left in the Tronk. It 
is a shame for such a nice little thing to be brought up in a 
prison.'' 

There could be but one answer to this appeal, though 
most true it was that the Industrial Home, or, as it was called, 
" The Ark for Waifs and Strays," was as full as full could be, 
almost impossible to shut down the lid and let all shake into 
their places. 

I must not go into details about Cape Town of long ago, 
when English, Dutch, Afrikanders, and innumerable other 
races, somehow managed to live alongside of each other in 
harmony; and I will only explain that the "Ladies" were a 
party of Englishwomen living in a queer old Dutch house, in 
a still queerer old street, rejoicing in the appropriate name of 
"Keroom" or Turn-round-the-Corner Street. 

We were brought together by our good Father and Bishop, 
Dr. C , to help in the arduous task of endeavoring to civ- 
ilize the cosmopolitan society. We were young, we were am- 
bitious, and we were very much in earnest to lead noble lives 
and to do some good in our generation. 

The Home was so conveniently near to our own house as 
to make it advisable to secure it for our purpose. There were 
many large rooms which could be utilized for dormitories, a 
good garden, and so near the beautiful oak avenue oi Govern- 
ment House that the children could be turned out to play 
there with little trouble. But, and this was a very consider- 
able but^ for many years it had been the abode of twelve or 
more distinct families of Malays, and those followers of the 
Prophet had left their traces behind them. 

The children were of every nationality and every shade of 
color, from pure European type to the very blackest of 
Africa's black diamonds. These we separated into two classes ; 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] MAMICHEE 185 

the very roughest and blackest belonged to the '^ kitchen pot " 
black ; there were others much fairer and smoother, more gen- 
teel altogether, and these were the '^ tea-kettle" family. It 
was impossible sometimes to distinguish the '^ kitchen pot" 
black except for the glitter of the eye and the gleam of the 
very white ivories in the wide mouth. 

But I have strayed from Mamichee, and must now hasten 
on to say that we quickly agreed that one of us should go 
that evening and rescue the Little Mother. 

Since I was Captain of the Ark, it was decreed that I 
should go. The prison matron was quite pleased when I ex- 
plained the object of my rather late visit. I followed her into 
the large room set apart for female prisoners. About twenty 
or thirty were squatting about: it was their free or idle hour. 
Some were asleep on the earth floor, some smoking; tongues 
were going; and, you may be sure, some were quarreling. In 
the centre of the bare, cheerless place sat a huge, forbidding- 
looking black woman, a heavy scowl on her face; either a 
*' tantrum " was coming on or just going ofif. And sitting on 
her lap was the sweetest, prettiest little coolie girl. Her slender, 
olive- colored fingers were stroking and caressing the bad, ugly 
face, and her soft voice whispering: ''Poor, poor!" These 
were the first words I ever heard our sweet Little Mother 
say, and they were also the text, the key-note of her life — 
compassion. 

''There, ma'am,'' said the matron, "that is how it always 
is. No one but Mamichee can manage Johanna." 

However hard may be the heart, there is a soft spot some* 
where, and this woman, who was the terror of all around her, 
and who was in for life — she was a murderess — had utterly 
fallen under the spell of the tender, innocent little coolie. I 
really felt it almost sinful to take Mamichee away from these 
poor, unhappy women ; it was like destroying their one chance ; 
but, then, we had to consider the child, and though tears fell 
fast as she said " good*bye," they all generously agreed. " Yes, 
take her, missis; we are not good for her." 

Mamichee was not long in packing up her possessions, for 
she literally had nothing but the clothes she stood up in — an old 
cotton petticoat and a worn tie-behind pinafore ; yes, there was 
on$ thing more, her much-loved though headless treasure, an old 
rag doll. She hugged it to her breast with one hand, while she 



Digitized by 



Google 



i86 Mamichee [May» 

clang to my skirts with the other, and trudged on with noe 
as if she bad known me all |her life. No hat or son-bonnet 
protected her shapely little black head, so well set on her long 
neck. A quaint yet graceful little figurci the active little bare 
legs and feet trotted along very contentedly; no misgiving 
crossed her mind. 

And when the doors of St. Michael's Home were opened 
to receive the new little '* wreckling/' a smile of delight spread 
itself over the sweet little face ; she felt she was indeed entering 
her first happy home. She was our only little coolie girl, and 
her graceful Indian physique stood out in clearly defined lines ; 
her complexion was a pale, clear olive; the sensitive little 
mouth, with its thin lips, very different from the blubber, wide- 
projecting, true African type. It was not so much that she 
was a pretty child, but that grace and refinement marked every 
movement and feature. 

I think the first days in the Home most have been a kind 
of fairy life to the poor child, whose little feet had already 
trodden very hard paths. The daily swim in the fresh, cold 
bath, the clean new clothes, especially the Sunday uniform^ 
with its smart pink frock and white pinafore, were as delightful 
in her eyes as a young woman's first ball-dress is in hers. 

But the crowning joy of all, the treasure beyond price, was 
the red cotton pocket-handkerchief, adorned with a donkey oi 
a church and some lines of poetry. Bliss could not go beyond 
that which was in Mamichee's eyes, when this precious gift 
completed her toilet. She never lost sight of this wonderful 
thing. Every evening it was washed and carefully folded and 
put under the bolster, to be mangled and dried by her own 
little body. 

Mamichee was a born nurse, as the saying is. T do not 
know if she could have passed an examination and gained a 
certificate, but I do know there could have been no better or 
happier being than Mamichee as nurse to some sick child. 
Then, indeed, the handkerchief was in full play; tears were 
dried, aching heads were bathed and bound op in its wet folds, 
wounds tied up, and even '' winter feet," the special torture 
of the barefooted tribes, were comforted and consoled by Mami- 
chee*s handkerchief ; some special virtue went out of the don- 
key variety; yoo never knew where you would meet with it 
next. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] MAMICHEE 187 

The next great event in Mamichee's life was her baptism. 
We thought the name of the tender St. Monica a very appro- 
priate one) for the little motherly being, who indeed did not 
confine her consolafions merely to physical woes, but was very 
earnest in striving to console and comfort the deeper wounds 
of the soul. Indeed, the day of tribulation and punishment was 
a sort of field-day for Mamichee. The next great episode was 
the keeping of her birthday, quite an imaginary epoch in her 
life. So we decided St Monica's day should also be her birth- 
day. 

Four or five years passed in busy but uneventful routine. 
There were the usual variations of bright and cloudy days which 
mark all lives, so we will only say that as time went on ''the 
Little Mother" increased in stature and goodness, in favor with 
God and her neighbors. 

She was a happy, simple little girl, not without minor faults; 
perhaps she was a little indolent ; certainly she was not clever, 
according to school ideas ; it was never her proud lot on prize- 
day to go up to be crowned by the good Bishop with the 
wreath of roses, as a mark of talent or proficiency, whatever 
this last word may mean. But there was a universal chorus of 
assent when Mamichee was elected '' Mother '' of the big family* 

One evening, when I was alone in my room, Mamichee 
knocked and asked if she might come in; permission being 
given, she joined me at the open window. I was star-gaxing 
with a very sore heart, for our fgood and noble founder had 
gone to his eternal rest. In him we had lost our father and 
friend. 

The grand starry vault of heaven, studded with those mys- 
terious brilliant witnesses of so many of earth's sorrows and 
desolations, was a consolation to me. Mamichee's poetical 
temperament answered to my unspoken thought. 

'' Mother,'' she said — for once using the softer name — '' Moth- 
er, is it not true that when a very holy saint dies God puts a 
new star into the sky ? See, there is the Bishop's star ; it was 
never there before. See how beautiful it is 1 " 

And the little hand pointed to a great glowing light, some 
far-off world shedding long rays of golden fire in an empty 
space of the vast vault of heaven. Whether this was a new 
star or no, the rays of glory lightened my weary soul, and the 
words rose to my lips- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I88 MAMICHEE [May, 

** Who are these like stars appearing ? 
These before God's Throne who stand ? " 

And my heart was comforted. 

I have spoken of her attachment to her earthly treasure, 
the red pictured handkerchief. The spiritual treasure, the Pearl 
of great Pricei that spoke to her soul, was the crucifix given 
to her on her baptism. 

It was beautiful to watch unseen her devotion and reverence, 
when, the last thing before sleep and the first act of the morn, 
the kneeling child tenderly lifted the image of the Crucified 
and kissed the pierced Feet. Then out would come her earthly 
treasure to wipe those Feet, while her loving voice murmured : 
*' Poor, poor Jesus ! " 



II. 

<* Ban, Ban, Cal, Caliban, 
Get a new master, be a new man/'^T^U TimftsU 

There is always a ^'buf in the lot of all mortals. And 
poor Mamichee found it One day there was an arrival which 
filled even the most stolid heart with amazement. 

** Is it human, or is it a demon ? '' burst from my lips when 
I was called upon to say whether the '^ark" could find space 
for a most extraordinary inmate. In the entrance hall various 
groups of '' Ladies " were standing in attitudes of astonishment, 
and our kind Saperior was hesitating as to her answer to the 
new applicant. 

We were all looking at a most truly pitiable and repulsive 
object. Her name was '' Eva," surely a cruel irony that gave 
the name of the ''fair mother of all living'' to the hideous 
black being now before ujs. We hesitated whether to call her 
a child or an old wrinkled woman of eighty. 

She was crouching in a sitting posture, her keen, bright 
eyes gleaming at us like some hunted animal taken in a trap; 
and when our Superior tried to lift her, she sank again into a 
heap. The respectable woman who had brought her to us 
said that the poor thing could not stand, her bones were all 
soft. The pitiable story was this — Eva had been found one 
evening crawling about Bishop's Court, and the violent barking 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] MAMICHEE 189 

of the dogs attracted attention to her. Good Dr. G ^ had 

taken her in, and inquiries were made; some native women 
who lived on the property came forward and said they knew 
who she was, and that a wandering, very degraded bush tribe 
had been about, and had gone some twelve years ago, leaving 
a child ^'thrown away." This miserable being had crawled 
about since then, living like and with the animals; she some- 
times appeared in the huts, and she had been baptized '' Eva.'' 
How she had managed to exist all this time was a mystery; 
my own belief is that she was so hideous that even wild beasts 
and birds were afraid of her. 

Her chest was emaciated to a fearful degree, and so were 
her legs and arms; the latter were so long and wrinkled, that 
when she was made to stand, the long withered fingers, armed 
with formidable talons, touched the ground. But her poor 
body was swollen and misshapen. Her head and face were 
shaped, like a cocoa-nut. Her head was covered with thick 
black wool, growing down to the eyes, which were small and 
keen, with a most malicious expression; unlike the usual flat, 
squat nose, a huge parrot-Jike beak took its place, and the 
thin-lipped, cruel-looking mouth stretched from ear to ear. On 
the top of each ear, as if to add the final touch to the univer- 
sal horror, rose a sharp small horn, a real horny growth. No 
hideous gargoyle, no demon of Dora's most fantastic creatiout 
rould surpass the living reality that confronted us. Baboon 
like, yet human. Demoniacal, yet a living soul. Marvelous 
mystery i 

It was quite impossible for the first few weeks to put Eva 
with the other children, so unearthly and repulsive were her 
habits, and so savage her outcries on the least provocation; 
besides, the poor creature was almost a cripple from neglect. 
It was one of those wonderful instincts given even to the 
lower creation that made Eva crave for lime or earth; she 
sought a natural remedy; just as the hen eagerly swallows 
lime or mortar in order to harden the shell of her eggs so did 
nature prompt Eva to devour the same thing. The doctor 
told us to supply her with all bone- making material, and after 
about six weeks of proper treatment she was able to stand and 
walk. It was xurious, but there was certainly an attraction 
between our refined and delicate head nurse and this poor 
outcast of humanity. Such a contrast the pair made I 



Digitized by 



Google 



I90 MAMICHEE [May, 

One Sunday afternoon our Superior came in looking quite 
elated. 

'' Now/' said she, ** own that I am right. You all declared 
that I was only wasting my time with Eva, and that she would 
never be any better. Here is the proof that she is becoming 
civilized. She actually refused to eat a lettuce I gave her, un- 
less it was washed; only a few days ago she would just as 
soon have eaten a mouthful of dirt as a ripe orange 1 She 
can go to the other children to-morrow. I am rewarded for 
my trouble.'' We were all overcome by this extraordinary 
progress. And no more objections were made to Eva taking 
her place under the shadow of the wings of the great Arch- 
angel and being enrolled as a St Michael's child. 

But the subdued hush that fell on the noisy groups in the 
playground, and the look of fear on some of the children's 
faces when I introduced Eva on the morrow, was a sure and 
certain proof that there was still much to be desired. For 
once, even Mamichee forgot her usual duty of coming forward, 
in her capacity as '' Little Mother," to welcome and console 
the stranger. 

I called her, but she was not to be found for some time; 
and when she did appear, and I had put Eva into her care, 
the poor child actually shivered and turned perfectly white, 
her fawn-like eyes dilated with fear; and she looked like a 
child struck with a mortal terror. There was a marked antag«» 
onism from the very first between the two children. Mamichee 
could not conceal her fear. Eva did not try to conceal her 
hatred and ill-will. With the advent of Eva our Little Mother 
ceased to be a happy child. 

What a mystery is human nature! Here between two 
children, not so very far apart in outward circumstances, al- 
ready a great gulf was fixed. The divine breath that had 
breathed on Mamichee so that she became a 'Miving soul,'' 
seemed in Eva's case utterly wanting. 

Troubles, quarrels, wickedness, all seemed to spring into 
activity with Eva's arrival. We stood almost appalled by such 
an outbreak; and yet it was difficult to convict the imp of 
any very decided evil-doing. 

She was clever in a sort of way, ''as slim as a slow," as 
the black people say, meaning hereby '' as sly as a snake." 
Nothing seemed to soften her heart ; she was full of spite, espe- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] MAMICHEE 191 

daily against poor Mamichee, who seemed as fearfully fasct«- 
nated by the glitter of those evil eyes as is some poor bird by 
the crael serpent. 

Often when an interesting book was being read aloud, during 
the work lesson, the silence would be broken by a sharp scream 
from some unfortunate child sitting somewhere near Eva, and 
when the schoolmistress would investigate, with a stern rebuke 
for the disturbance, the sobbing urchin would tell how Eva had 
pinched her black and blue. Eva, meanwhile, with a leer, 
would deny the accusation, and would point out that it was 
impossible, for she sat ever so far from the victim. True, but 
Eva could quickly pass her long arms behind four or five 
children and fasten her formidable nails on some far-off victim. 
Her special delight was to seize on ^amichee and hold her in 
tome dark comer. Even if she did no bodily harm, she 
managed to completely terrify her, so that the poor Little 
Mother would weep and wail even in her sleep. 

It was our custom, when the heat of the long summer day 
was a little over, to take most of the children for a walk from 
about 7 to 9 p. M. We often went to a beautiful pine- wood 
not far from Cape Town. I do not know if it is still there, 
but in those days it was an ideal spot To be deprived of 
this walk was one of the most severe punishments in the 
Home. 

Eva had been unbearable all one hot day; every kind of 
naughtiness and spite at last brought upon her the verdict she 
richly deserved — to be left behind when the others started for 
the much- prized walk. She did not howl or cry when the 
happy children started, but she favored me with a most dia* 
bolical glance as I followed my children. 

It was almost dark by the time we were back. The fore- 
most children ran eagerly into the large play-room, but recoiled 
with a sort of shock. ^* What is the matter, children ? " I said, 
** why don't you go in quietly ? *' A sobbing sort of cry arose, 
and voices called out: ''O ma'am t don't go in, ma'am t it's 
Eva ; she is wishing you dead, ma'am t " 

Mamichee clung to me, crying as if her heart would break. 
The children, meantime, were wildly excited, some pushing in 
to see the show, while those who had seen it, came running 
back to implore me not to go in. The busy ant-hill was in 
commotion. I must just explain that '' wishing one dead" is 



Digitized by 



Google 



192 Mamichee [May, 

a peculiar and potent rite belonging to some tribes, and espe- 
cially practised among Malays. It is done in this way: 

The offended party wishes to revenge himself for some in- 
jury, real or imaginary. The revenge consists of a little erec- 
tion of any kind of rubbish, and is supposed to represent the 
victim's grave. Then the person who is wishing you dead 
goes round and round the grave in solemn procession, and 
with waving arms and mystic charms curses the object of his 
revenge. The spell is supposed to end in the sudden death 
or slow, lingering torments of the unhappy victim. This spell 
is very ancient, supposed to be very powerful, and therefore 
much to be dreaded. It was in this way Eva was venting her 
vengeance on me. 

The children almost held their breath with awe when, after 
scolding them for being so silly, they saw me walk quietly 
into the room. I am quite sure they expected either to see 
me drop down dead or fall into convulsions. Poor Mamichee 
was nothing but a fountain of tears. 

There in the gloom of evening was Miss Eva, as nature 
made her, her uniform thrown to the winds, marching solemnly 
round and round a little heap of stones and sticks — my grave 
— her long, misshapen arms waving in time to some weird, 
crooning notes, while she wove the mystic spell that was to 
compass my death. 

I felt very much inclined to laugh, but I preserved my 
gravity; with a gesture of contempt I kicked away the erec- 
tion, and in a stern verse ordered Eva off to bed. The dis- 
turbance was quelled and order once more reigned. But, as 
the discomfited Eva sneaked off to her bed, I noticed that she 
passed close to the still trembling Mamichee, and in a low 
voice said something that deepened the poor child's misery. 
What it was I never found out. 

About three weeks afterwards the blow fell on Mamichee. 
It was about school-time when a knock was heard at the front 
door and Mamichee was told to open the door. She went, 
but she never came back. Wondering why she did not return, 
we called her. No answer. Search was made everywhere 
she was still missing when bed^time came. Everything was 
done that could be done ; but all in vain. No trace or sign of 
Mamichee was to be found. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Mamichee 193 

Time went on ; with a sort of dull acquiescence we bore the 
loss of the dear '' Little Mother." 

One very hot day, about a month after our loss, a very 
hideous old black woman called and told us she had come for 
Eva. She declared herselt to be Eva's grandmother and that 
the tribe had sent her to buy her back 1 They wanted her, the 
woman said, and Eva they would have. Eva, with a hideous 
leer, declared she would go. We could not detain her, for we 
had no legal power over her. Besides, we all had a sickening 
impression that the rumor amongst the children was true, and 
that Eva had had a hand in poor Mamichee's mysterious fate. 

It was as if an evil spirit departed when Eva left, and if 
joy and merriment did not return to St. Michael's Home for a 
very long time, at least peace once more took up her abode 
with us. 



III. 

'* Out of the Depthi.'* 

For a time I had to leave South Africa. Some years after 
my return there fell upon the poor country the curse of a 
fearful drought; and that time is still known as the famine 
year. The rivers ran dry; every green thing perished; and 
the whole land was pirched and fruitless. The people died of 
thirst; the beasts fell exhausted in the streets. 

One morning as we went to early service at the Cathedral, 
we came across one of these poor dying beasts, the only con- 
solation being the thought that soon the poor animal would 
cease to suffer. We were somewhat late, and, instead of tak- 
ing the usual route, made for a short cut. On the edge of a 
deep crevice or hole we saw the evil bird (vulture or aas- 
vogel, as it is usually called in these parts) gloating over the 
last moments of, as we supposed, some poor beast. As we 
passed my heart gave a great thump, for I was almost sure 
I saw something unusual lying amongst the stones at the bot- 
tom of the hole. 

"Stop, stop," I cried, clutching my friend's arm. "I am 
sure that something strange is there. I saw the flutter of 
rags.'' 

VOL XCI.^13 



Digitized by 



Google 



194 Mamichee [May, 

<< No such thing/' said she, ^' it is only either an ox or a 
horse« poor thing; do come on, for we are late.*' 

However, I persuaded her to look closer ; the aasvogel did 
not even take the trouble to move, but turned its hideous head 
and long bare neck to gaze at us. We did look; and, sure 
enough, lying prone amid the stones, was a human being t 

A faint flatter of the poor rags told us there was still life. 
We called loudly to some black boys who were on their way 
to their work, and we made them scare away the aasvogel 
and clamber down the steep sides of the fissure. 

With many gutteral exclamations they re*appeared, carry- 
ing carefully the poor wasted form of a young girl. Some 
foreboding made me cry out: "It's Mamichee, Mamichee 1" 
as the poor object was held out to me. And so it was. Wasted 
to a fearful degree, with only an old rag on, we found it difficult 
to bslieve that this was our long*lost, sweet "Little Mother"; 
but, as if to confirm my words, out of one skeleton hand dropped 
two undeniable proofs of her identity, a crucifix and a morsel 
of ragged handkerchief. Yes, out of the very valley of the 
shadow of death our child came home to us. 

It did not take long to carry our fragile burden to the 
Home, and with tearful eyes our amazing story was heard. 
Needless to say with what loving care our poor Mamichee 
was tended. She remained quite unconscious, and our kind 
doctor said this might continue for many hours, nay, even 
days. All we could hope for was that when the stimulants 
had done their work, she would revive and regain conscious- 
ness ; but the doctor held out little hope of ultimate recovery. 
She was too far gone, he said. Her poor little body was 
covered with the marks of many a cruel beating, and even 
scars of burns were plainly visible upon it. 

Mamichee was not left for a minute ; some one was always 
watching for the eagerly desired moment of returning con-^ 
sciousness. For three days the little sufferer slept the sleep 
of utter exhaustion ; save for a faint moan, when we moistened 
her lips with brandy and milk, she never stirred; at last one 
afternoon the soft, dark eyes unclosed, there was a deep sigh, 
and a smile broke over the wasted face. 

For a minute she seemed restless, and her thin hand 
searched for something; one of us thought of her beloved 
crucifix and gave it to her. She raised it to her mouth with 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] MAMICHEE 195 

difficalty, the smile grew deeper^ and with a loving kiss to the 
Sacred Feet, the words so familiar of old fell from her lips: 
**Poor, poor." 

Mamichee all the world over, too, in the way she tried to 
wipe my fast* falling tears away, her sweet look of compassion 
as she said : '' Poor, poor Mother/' Most precious to as all 
were the short intervals of reviving strength, and bit by bit 
her sorrowful tale was told. She suffered chiefly from extreme 
weakness and thirst; and nothing did she enjoy more than the 
spoonful of big glittering hailstones which were carefully 
caught and brought to refresh the parched throat. 

<< Mamichee eating diamonds," she would say, with a feeble 
laugh. 

At length our patience was rewarded, though even now we 
had to be very careful; the slightest over-strain brought back 
the long, deadly fainting fits. She was so happy to be with 
her ''dear White Ladies'' again; this was her old pet name 
for us. 

She was too feeble in the daytime to say much, but we 
gathered more of her cruel sufferings and terrors from the 
words dropped in her painful night-wandering talk. Then the 
fever of delirium revealed much. It seems that as she opened 
the door of the Keroom Street Home a thick shawl was 
thrown over her head; she was muffled in its folds, gagged, 
and carried off. It was all done in an instant; she could not 
cry out When she awoke from a drugged sleep it w.as to 
find herself hundreds of miles away, in the heart of the most 
uncivilized regions of darkest Africa, and in the hands of one 
of the most degraded heathen bush tribes. It was the same 
tribe from which Eva came; and Mamichee was their pris- 
oner. From the first she was cruelly treated and suffered 
much; but far worse days were to come. For soon afterwards 
Eva arrived; she was greeted with horrid yells of welcome, 
and a terrible orgie was held in her honor. 

Mamichee had to witness the disgusting scene — raw flesh 
was eaten; and, more revolting still, blood formed the drink. 
Mamichee, trembling with fear, was dragged forward, given 
over to Eva to be her slave, and she was free to work her 
evil will of spite upon the poor child. 

She endeavored to force the loathsome draught of fresh 
blood upon the shrinking Mamichee, who, however, managed 



Digitized by 



Google 



196 MAMICHEE [May, 

to resist it Her clothes were torn from her, but she found 
an old petticoat, and refused to be, as Eva was, covered with 
hideous stripes of red and white paint. '' I am a Christian," was 
the answer to all the attempts to make her practise the revolt- 
ing savage customs and habits. 

'' Mother, they wanted to make me be like them; but I 
said : ' No ; I am a Christian. I will not drink blood ; I will not 
kiss the snake-devil.' Eva did« ma'am." But she could not 
bear the horror of speaking even of what she had witnessed. 

It was in the silence of the night that the terrified child 
would cry out: ''Take the snake-devil away. Oh, Eva, do 
not put the snake-devil on my face. I pray to God, to the 
poor Jesus, not to the snake-devil." Then she would wake, 
trembling from head to foot, and the only way to calm her 
was to give her her beloved crucifix. 

We asked her one day how she managed to keep it. Her 
answer was: ''Mother, when they were eating or fighting or 
drunk, I slipped away and made holes in a safe place, and 
wrapped my poor Jesus in a big leaf or the bit of handker- 
chief and buried Him ; and when night came I could creep 
out, and I took Him up and said my prayers and was happy. 
Mother." 

"And these marks on your body, my darling?" I asked 
hsr one day. 

" That's Eva, Mother. When I would not do like she did, 
and pray to the devil or be wicked, she used to tie me tight 
with strings of aloe, and burn and beat me with prickly thorns/' 

And yet with many a tear and sigh did the " Little Mother" 
speak of " poor Eva." Poor, indeed 1 

The same year that saw us in such trouble in the Free 
State also brought its terrible lesson of the wrath of God to 
many a heathen tribe. Small-pox, that awful scourge to all 
black races, fell heavily on the part of Africa where the bushmen 
lived. Eva's tribe was nearly 'decimated by it. They fell in 
hundreds, and the few who were left wandered far and wide in 
search of water and food. Eva was one of the first to perish. 

From various sources Mamichee heard that the "White 
Ladies" had come not so very far away, and had medicines 
good for sickness. 

Then came a ray of hope. She took advantage of the dis- 
persion of the tribe; she hid herself in the bush; and she 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] MAMICHEE 197 

managed every evening to get farther and farther away frcm 
her persecutors. 

How she survived and was not devoured by wild beasts is 
known to God alone and His holy aogels. She would say to 
me : ** Mother, I looked every night for the Bishop's star, and 
for the one you told me was the Southern Cross; and they 
showed me where the White Ladies lived/' 

Then came the end. Her strength was utterly spent, and 
just as she came in sight of Bloemfontein, and could hear the 
White Ladies' church bell, she fell into a deep ^'sluit/' and 
clasping her crucifix felt she was dying. A great longing to 
be able to see us all again, even for a moment, come over 
her. 

Out of the deep she cried unto her Lord, and He brought 
her out of her distress *' unto the haven where she would be.** 

The heavens were all alight with glory, the most beautiful 
lambent flames, coming and going every instant; it seemed as 
if the Golden Gates were opening very wide to receive the sweet 
Little Mother whose gentle life was ebbing fast away. 

We held our breath, it was almost more than human nature 
could bear, the exceeding glory and beauty, for the whole In- 
firmary was lighted with a dazzling flood of golden light. Our 
sweet Mamichee opened wide once more those eyes, which we 
never thought to see unclose in this world again. Her trem- 
bling fingers found her crucifix. With one supreme effort she 
raised it to her dying lips; and the old familiar words, fell 
for the last time upon our listening ears: '^ Poor, poor Jesus t " 
as her last kiss was given to the Pierced Feet. 

Farewell, Sweet Mamichee, the Southern Cross shines bright, 
high over your quiet grave. 



Digitized by 



Google 



PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM. 

BY JOHN J. BURKE, C.S.P. 

I HE question of social reform, so widely agitated 
to-day, is essentially connected with the question 
of publicity. Every department of life, every de- 
tail of contemporary history, every minute par- 
ticular, even with regard to private, personal 
matters, and private and personal motives, are to-day the sub- 
jects of publicity. Publicity means the publication, the making 
known in some sort of public way — in a way that is accessible 
to all men or the great majority of men — of particular data 
concerning an individual, an institution, or a nation. This data 
may be true or false. For the present we will suppose that it 
is always true, and we will define publicity as a making known, 
in a way accessible to all, of certain truths, certain actual con- 
ditions, habits, aets, with regard to an individual or an insti- 
tution, a state or a nation. 

The greatest agency in publicity to-day is the press; and 
by the press we mean the printed word which includes the 
book, the quarterly, the monthly, the weekly, and the daily 
newspaper. Whatever other agencies of publicity there may 
be — and such agencies are almost innumerable — the curious 
gossiper, the ordinary talk and conversation of the individual, 
private social committees of this kind and of that, legislative 
inquiries, city, state, and national investigations and reports — 
whatever other agencies there may be, the press, and in par- 
ticular the daily newspaper, is the most efficacious organ of 
publicity that we possess. 

The daily press gives to the individual the food for nourish- 
ment, the flesh and bone, the soul and the heart, we might 
say, that make him the kind of social being that he is. Morn- 
ing and evening, and some days quite oftener, the newspaper 
goes to him with word of what the world is doing and think- 
ing and aicntng at. True, it reflects various schools of opinion, 
and in this respect the reader will be influenced by the edi- 
torial page or the manner in which news items are presented 



Digitized by 



Google 



igio.] Publicity and Social Reform 199 

by his own particular newspaper. But, apart from all else, the 
press is the great world-wide, trumpet- voiced organ of publicity^ 
There is no human activity of any kind which it does not re- 
port Everything, without exception, is grist to its mill. It 
has its representatives in every part of the globe. It has de-^ 
stroyed privacy. Nothing is sacred to it, at least as far as the 
sacredness of silence is concerned. It is the creator of publicity. 
Of necessity, almost, it must run into license; and oftentimes 
abuse its power. But it has been an immense power for good. 
Every movement, every society, every school, must to* day have 
its printed organ. 

And yet this very power of the press, at times the creator 
and always the index of publicity, must itself be governed by 
the laws of effective publicity — if it is to achieve good. For 
publicity in itself is merely publicity. It simply means the 
making known of certain conditions concerning individuals or 
institutions. And as we are to treat of publicity as an agent 
of social reform, we must lay down the conditions essential 
for publicity if it is to be an effective agent in social reform, 
in the bettering of social conditions, in the cute of social 
evils, in the offering to larger and larger groups of the better 
opportunities of life. 

The publication broadcast of evil, unjust, illegal conditions 
is in itself sterile. Having done this, we have not by this 
alone advanced one step towards the removal of evil condi- 
tions or towards social reform of any kind. Members of a 
political organization may know for years of the corruption^ 
the vice, the moral degradation, which said political organiza- 
tion encourages and promotes, and never utter a word in pro- 
test. Extend this membership to thousands — yea, to hundreds 
of thousands— the knowledge of evil conditions, the publicity 
may be there, and yet social reform is never thought of; 
rather the abuses and the evils are allowed to increase. How 
many thousands of our citizens know well to-day the needs of 
our crowded city districts; the needs of mothers and fathers 
and children ; the needs of the hungry ; the unemployed ; the 
crippled; the homeless and the physically and the morally 
helpless; know all these things, and yet do nothing? Pub- 
licity has made them known, and publicity can go no further. 

Not only is this true, but publicity may, in some ways, 
and in very effective ways, be the enemy instead of the agent. 



Digitized by 



Google 



200 PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM [May, 

of social reform. How often, when you plead with one who 
has been dishonest in business, do you receive the answer: 
'' Oh, well« every one does it. We've all got to do it, else we 
would never get along." Uncover the sins of well-known 
men, of such as were esteemed leading patriots and statesmen, 
of legislators ; and, in many cases, they who read the exposures 
will learn to look less fearfully upon evil, and in their own 
dishonest course console themselves with the thought that 
they have such famous companions. Uncover the depredations, 
the conscienceless piracy of a number of great corporations; 
tell the crowd that the traffic manager of a great railway, in 
reply to the question : ** Why did you violate the law of the 
United States?'' answered: ''For business reasons," and there 
will be many who will conclude that business is a more im- 
portant thing than the law of the country. Uncover ruthlessly 
the story of debauchery, of license, and of murder; picture the 
criminal as a hero; and such publicity will make of many 
moral and physical wrecks, the worst enemies of social reform. 

The great corruptionists of the business and political world 
whom publicity has exposed have, through this very publicity, 
won many imitators. Murderers have been made murderers, 
because they were taught by the organs of publicity how 
murder was committed. ''Rtffles" has had his real children, 
who, after his manner, became thieves. The publicity given to 
the easy way in which marriage may be dissolved has broken 
up many families; and alluring pictures of ease, of pleasure, 
of indulgence, have won many captives. * 

The first essential requirement of publicity as an effective 
agent in social reform is that the data given to the public 
must be true. The individual and the corporate body resent 
nothing more rigorously and more justly than a lie. It is the 
first claim of all of us that we be presented to others as we 
really are; that our claims, our purposes, our doctrines, should 
be truthfully stated. And this is a natural right belonging to 
every one. The American spirit of fair play champions no 
spirit so loyally as it does this right of every man and every . 
institution. 

And as it is a right, so is there a corresponding responsi- 
bility upon the part of every individual and of every corpor- 
ate body — even of the newspapers — to see to it that in their 
statements they tell the truth; that they make themselves 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PUBLICITY AKD SOCIAL REFOEM 201 

certain, with evidence morally certain, at least, tfaat ir bat they 
publish is the truth. The crusade against vivisection has 
oftentimes been responsible for many exaggerations, fahehoods, 
and misrepresentations, and has at times really injured the 
fight against unnecessary cruelty to animals. How idle it is 
for a particular newspaper to champion the cause of anti-vivi- 
section simply because this same paper has been restrained 
from publishing certain medical advertisements by a medical 
society ? If we resort to lies, then social reform is out of the 
question, for whatever we may achieve for the moment will 
ultimately be of no avail. The unsparing justice of time will 
exact payment either from us or from our children. 

Secondly, publicity to be effective must be organized ; and 
it will be effective according to the measure of organized effort 
4>ehind it. An individual may have knowledge of serious social 
evils, of evils that cry to heaven for vengeance. He may 
shout the evils from the housetops and his voice may fall as 
ineffectively as snowflakes upon a warm pavement. A small 
social body may be championing a most worthy cause, but 
unless it can, through organized methods and means, make the 
evils known, it can never achieve success. On the other hand, 
a newspaper or a magazine, because it is organized, not only 
in the sense that it has a large circulation, but also in the 
sense that it has organized brains back of it, can appeal in a 
way that will attract the attention and excite the interest of 
the public. 

It is known that The Jungle^ by Upton Sinclair, led event- 
ually to the national Meat Inspection Bill. It is not generally 
known that the contents of that book appeared first in the 
columns of a Socialist paper in Chicago, and that the pub- 
licity there had no effect. The disclosures were still-born. 
The book was brought to publishers in New York, who put 
two investigators on the task of verifying the statements. The 
book was published, but still its disclosures had but little 
effect. Later it was brought to the attention of ex-President 
Roosevelt. He sent two investigators to Chicago, and in a 
short while the revelations aroused the country. 

The terrible condition under iiihich the men and women 
and children lived in Painter's Row, Pittsburg, were exposed 
by The Survey ^ the organ of the Charities Organization So- 
ciety. But the expoi^ had no effect. Conditions remained 



Digitized by 



Google 



aoa PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM [May, 

the same until a weekly journal of large circulation published 
an account of these conditions — and in a short while Painter's 
Row was altered for the better. 

The long hours of the steel workers^that every one of 
five had to work twelve hours a day for seven days of the 
week — were known for a long while. Not until a writer of 
note exposed the outrageous wrong in a monthly magazine 
was justice done to these laborers. 

Brains are more essential to effective organization than 
money. And the reason that so many campaigns of publicity 
in a good cause fail is because they are not intelligently con- 
ducted or because they are opposed by campaigns of publicity 
in aa evil and tyrannical cause with shrewd organizers behind 
them — organizers and champions that know how to present 
specious arguments, and how to color as they wish the pres* 
entation of facts or of so-called facts. Worthy publicity must, 
then, be shrewd and tactful, must employ, as far as is legiti- 
mate, the wise ways of this world, must be organized in lead- 
ers, in money, in followers, in centres of distribution; and in 
so far as it is thus organized will it achieve success. The 
National Civic Federation, for example, has just begun to 
found branches in every State of the Union for the adoption 
of uniform laws with regard to matters of social reform. 

Publicity must not alone concern itself with the truth, it 
must not alone be well organized in its measures, its agencies, 
in the manner in which data is presented to the public; but 
it must be unbiased, or, at least, it must come from sources 
that are not prejudiced, that are not working for an ulterior 
purpose. We do not say that it is not the duty of a society 
or a social body to expose the very evils which such a society 
was organized to correct. It is not ineffective for a labor or- 
ganization to expose the injustices of anti»labor legislation. 
But publicity is most effective when the evidence is presented 
strictly and frankly as evidence, when it is put out dispassion- 
ately, coldly, to tell its own attractive or repulsive story. 
Too much of the ''stuff'' presented to us to-day is exagger- 
ated, and exaggerated for a sinister purpose. The newspaper 
controlled and owned by the capitalist will exaggerate the dis- 
astrous consequences and the terrible rioting with bloodshed 
and murder of a railway strike. Newspapers that claim to 
represent the laboring man will exaggerate and misrepresent 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Publicity and Social reform 203 

the men and the ways of capitaL Socialist papers will con- 
ceal the good work of many present^^day institutions and paint 
in extravagant colors what the future is to be. All who are 
guilty of these things, in so far as they may be guilty, are the 
enemies, not the agents, of social reform. And it is true, 
indeed, that we have, by our extravagance, overstepped our- 
selves. We have overstepped ourselves in our impatience, in 
our zeal for a party cause. It is known to every one versed 
at all in the newspaper business that there are a number of 
news agencies throughout the country that can be subsidized 
to manufacture whatever news is desired, to '' write op " ac- 
cording to order. 

During the coal strike some years ago the reporter of a 
great Eastern daily was warned by the head of his paper to 
write up the news in such a way as not to injure Mr. Smith, 
who was a director in one of the roads that carried coal and 
also a stockholder in that particular newspaper* A similar 
message was sent to the editor of another daily by its owner 
after a railway accident that was caused by the company's 
carelessness and that resulted in the loss of many lives. 
"Don't write anything that will injure Mr. Jones'' — ^Jones was 
a director of the railway and a stockholder in the paper. If 
we are true members of the democracy, we will be emphatic; 
we will be angry, but we will sin not; we will keep at the 
good cause day by day and lay bare the multiform evils that 
to-day cry for reform ; but in our work we will be honest, fair, 
impartial, willing to take what we give; and if the desired suc- 
cess does not come to us in a day, we will be willing to com- 
mit our cause to truth and to justice, for in their hands are 
we ever safe. He that lies for the sake of a cause is the worst 
enemy any cause can have. 

Take a publicity that embraces these characteristics — pub- 
licity that is truthful, organized, unbiased ; subject to it almost 
any evil condition of society, and that cdndition will be reme- 
died. It may not be cured radically and absolutely, but it 
will be cured in the sense that no one will publicly stand 
sponsor for it. It will, in most cases, give way to a corre- 
spondingly good social reform. 

Publicity in itself is ineffective. But publicity works on 
the souls and hearts and minds of people. These are the 
springs that it excites to action. And the jouls and hearts 



Digitized by 



Google 



204 PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM [May, 

and minds of the people— and by the people we understand 
the intelligent, thoughtful, responsible portion of the com- 
munity — ^are radically and naturally good and not evil. 

The root of effective publicity is planted deep. It shows 
itself only in action. It is tremendously delicate and sensitive. 
But its strength is essentially the strength and the only strength 
of the individual both in himself and as a member of society. 
Its growth is something like the upbringing of a child, for into 
a child's growth and make-up a thousand agencies enter that 
we scarce know of. The slightest wind from this quarter or 
that quarter affects him. The root lies down deep in the 
spiritual nature of man. It is his soul. The soul makes the 
man and the souls of men make society. Upon the soul of 
man publicity plays. The men who to-day are advocating 
principles that will sap the individual of all moral and all 
spiritual worth, are the worst enemies of mankind. Degrade 
the community; tell the growing youth and the growing girl 
that they can feed upon nothing but the husks of fruitless 
materialism; tell them that this world is all the world that 
they will have; tell them that there is no difference between 
virtue and vice; and immediately you drive them back to sav- 
agery, where the only law is self and the survival of the fittest. 

On the question of publicity we must deal with human nature. 
Men can never be angels when we deny the existence of the 
angelic world. Neither can we falsify history and cut this pres- 
ent generation off from its fathers. We cannot deny social con- 
tinuity any more than we can deny the mothers who bore us. 
The present power of publicity, the reason why it has achieved 
the reforms it has, is because it worked upon souls and hearts 
that had a sense of moral righteousness, that knew good from 
evil — the sons and daughters of a race that has been civilized 
by Christianity. And the agency that will ever rob human 
hearts and human souls of that religious sense, of that moral 
sense, that will deny it to the children of our race, are the 
enemies of human kind. They are greater tyrants than the slave- 
drivers of old, because with their merciless whips of materialism 
and anarchy they are seeking to drive the human race back to 
that primeval gloom of ignorance and of savagery. 

To quote from Bryce's American Commonwealth : " In the 
formation of public opinion the ethical principle must not be 
overlooked. Moral responsibility is not outside the sphere of 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM 205 

politics. Let free peoples hold fast, theoi to the great truth: 
that communities are responsible ; that without unspotted purity 
and public faith; without sacred public principle, fidelityi and 
honor, no political government can give dignity to political 
society/* 

Publicity is effective because the public body of men and 
women to whom the real facts have been presented, the public 
body educated, intelligent, moral — as the public body as a 
whole is to-day — will rouse itself and demand the reform of a 
publicly known social evil. 

. To-day, organized, employed with great intellectual skill, 
publicity is very powerful. All political and social endeavor 
rests upon it. It dictates the platforms of political parties; it 
frames legislation; it creates legislators. Under its seething 
condemnation no man can live with comfort in the community 
whose public opinion is against him. It makes and unmakes 
governments. Its power is becoming more and more apparent 
and government itself is calling upon it to furnish the evidence 
that is government's own salvation against the dishonesty, 
the corruption, the secret lawlessness of great powers. Yet 
the truth remains that, like all other powers, publicity also 
may overstep itself. For, indeed, when we come to consider 
what it has effected in the last five years, we are tempted to 
believe that in itself it is a panacea for all social evils. 

One of the greatest benefits and examples of publicity was 
the appointment, in 1903, of a Commissioner of Corporations. 
To this Commissioner, who was under the supervision of the 
Bureau of Commerce and Labor, was granted the same power 
with regard to corporations as was given to the Interstate 
Commerce Commission over its particular field. We say the 
most beneficial example of publicity, because first : the appoint- 
ment of such a commissioner was the result of public agitation 
for years previous ; and, secondly : because the work of that 
Bureau has made public a mass of information concerning the 
conduct and management of corporations that has led to wide- 
spread knowledge of their methods; led in time to the suc- 
cessful demand for public control of them — a demand that is 
meeting with more effective success every day and that won 
its greatest success in the recent Corporation Publicity Act. 

And the worth of publicity, apart from what remedial 
legislation it may effect, may be judged from the words of the 



Digitized by 



Google 



2o6 Publicity and Social reform [May, 

Gommissioner of Corporations who, in his report of 1906, 
said : " The work of the Bureau during the past year presents 
very strikingly the power of efficient publicity for the correc- 
tion of corporate abuses wholly apart from the penal or reme- 
dial processes of the court." 

Publicity has exposed the piratical and conscienceless meth- 
ods of some great corporations. In 1905 it affected an inves- 
tigation of the methods of Life Insurance Companies, and led 
to radical changes for the better in the state laws governing 
their conduct and their obligations. To-day publicity is reveal- 
ing the sins of Fire Insurance Companies, and will eventually 
achieve a like reform in this field also. 

Publicity has made known to the people the social evils of 
great monopolies and caused them to give way more and more 
before public control. In this city of New York the fight for 
eighty-cent gas was distinctively a fight of publicity. 

Five years ago public exposure was made of the evils of 
patent medicine and of what are called ** canned goods." The 
result of such publicity was the national '' Pure Food Law," 
because of which the people now know what they eat and drink. 
The public campaign against tuberculosis has, by mere publicity, 
done more than all the medical fraternity ever did to turn 
back the tide of this dread disease. 

Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, of the United States Marine 
Hospital Service, discovered the hook-worm seven or eight 
years ago, perhaps more. He knew the symptoms of its vic- 
tims, and how to cure them. He tried to get his superiors to 
take some action or to allow him to. Nothing happened. A 
discovery that held hope for two million sick slumbered for 
lack of publicity. The Country Life Commission was appointed 
by President Roosevelt. Mr. Walter Page, a North Carolinian 
by birth, and editor of the Worla^s Work, was a member of 
the Commission. He was, and is also, a member of Mr. Rocke- 
feller's General Education Board. The Country Life Commis- 
sion took Dr. Stiles on its trip South. The World's Work pub- 
lished the first comprehensive article on the subject. It was 
a dramatization, as it were, of Dr. Stiles statistical and terri- 
bly convincing account. This article was the opening wedge. 
Dr. Stiles secured an audience with Mr. Rockefeller, and the 
latter, seeing the facts, established a $10,000,000 foundation 
devoted to the hook-worm's destruction and to an active health 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM 20J 

campaign in every Southern state. All this might just as well 
have been done eight years ago. The situation existed. Dr. 
Stiles had made his discovery. He knew the people were 
sick and he knew how to cure them. Nothing was done until 
effective publicity turned the wheel. 

The work of the Committee of Fifty did much good work 
in making public the evils of intemperance, and of the saloon 
evil. A weekly journal is now carrying on a campaign for a 
worthy liquor law, and such a law has, we believe, been already 
adopted in Iowa. 

The loan shark, the usurious villain who lives on the wreck- 
age of homes, has long been a great social evil in every large 
community. Publicity campaigns have been waged against this 
evil in Baltimore, Boston, Omaha, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, De- 
troit, and New York, and have met with much success. The 
public exposure of this evil gave rise to the National Asso« 
elation of Remedial Loan Companies, whose whole campaign 
is, in turn, built upon publicity. 

To take one city as an example, and to show what may 
be accomplished there in the way of social reform by the power 
of publicity, I would select Pittsburg and the work of the 
Charities Organizition publication — Ihe Survey. The Survey 
was backed by only $35,cxx), and a small band of energetic 
men. But The Survey took hold. Its trained investigators re- 
vealed many phases of the life and the living conditions of the 
wage -earners, racial, social, industrial. The publicity of The Sur^ 
vey has secured the founding of many classes for the education 
of immigrants, and at such hours as the immigrants may attend. 
The Survey secured the appointment of the Pittsburg Civic 
Commission. One of the most noteworthy acts of the Commis- 
sion is its championship of a recent bond issue of $7,cxx),ooo 
to be devoted to the improvement of the waterway system, 
parks, playgrounds, bridges, sewer, tuberculosis hospitals, etc., 
etc. Its work stopped the ravages of typhoid fever in Pitts- 
burg and the high rate of typhoid fever dropped to almost 
normal in 1908. It secured for Pittsburg an independent Health 
Department; it has reformed tenement house inspection and 
wiped out some of the worst shacks of Pittsburg. It has re- 
vealed the neglect of law on the part of the traction compa- 
nies. It has reorganized the juvenile court work and reformed 
the juvenile reformatory. 



Digitized by 



Google 



2o8 Publicity and Social reform [May, 

This saccessfal publicity work of The Survey has led to the 
establishment of '' Surveys ** in other cities. 

Example upon example might be enumerated^ did space 
permit, to show the tremendous power of publicity-^irom the 
attempt of a few earnest citizens, lovers of social welfare, to 
do away with a disreputable saloon in this corner of a large 
city, to the reform of great national abuses. 

Publicity has by no means succeeded in securing all — yea, 
it has not succeeded in securing half the legislation that it has 
demanded. But it has perhaps done better than this. It has, 
through its agitation, aroused the people to a sense of their 
power; to a sense of their personal duty as citizens of the 
democracy; it has deepened the sense of human brotherhood 
and has shown and is showing more emphatically every day 
that our brother's welfare is our own welfare. And the vie* 
tories that it has attained are but happy prophecies of the 
greater ones it has yet to achieve. 

Its greatest agency is the press and the need, therefore, of 
a conscientious, upright press — a press that cannot be won, or 
swayed, or influenced by money is more apparent than ever. 
And more apparent than ever is the blessing that we enjoy of 
the liberty of the press — a liberty that surely often runs into 
license, but a liberty that the moral sense of the community 
will guard and preserve and keep from anarchy. 

That liberty must be kept within ;the bounds of law, for 
law is, in turn, the safeguard of liberty, and without law liberty 
would ^bo impossible. Any agency that would destroy the 
liberty of the press is, therefore, a deadly enemy of the de- 
mocracy. It is an enemy of the best interests of a people. 
There is such a power at work to-day, and it is working strenu- 
ously to inculcate its doctrines and to increase its adherents. 
That power is extreme, radical Socialism. By Socialism we 
mean that body of doctrine which champions a complete social- 
istic and communistic state. At the \:r^^iry. of the well- 
being of a republic lies liberty of thoug/.t a;.i of discussion 
concerning all matters relating to the politic i. life of the 
republic. We must have individual initiar'/r 4i .1 the^ right 
to push individual initiative. The great vic^- .Vo: publicity 
have been won by the voice of the few that ' >p:aji:d to the 
many, and the power of the many to make th' si.A^ and the 
nation hear and answer their demands. That po %er n.-jst ever 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM 209 

flourish. As we have the right to make legislators, so must 
we have the right to unmake them. The voice of the few 
raised in a righteous cause must never be hushed. 

Under a Socialistic State liberty of the press would be 
dead. In order to be brief in supporting this charge, we will 
but say that while the champions of radical Socialism are 
amazingly free in giving their opinion on all other questions 
under and above the sun, they are, as a rule, unanimously 
silent on the important and urgent question of what would be- 
come of a free press under a Socialistic state. The reasons 
why a free press would be an impossibility under the rule of 
such a State are, we think, obvious enough. Socialistic writers 
who have ventured to write on the matter, admit the impossi- 
bility. 

H. G. Wells says: "It is still open to the anti- Socialist to 
allege that Socialism may incidentally destroy itself by choking 
the channels oi its own thinking and the Socialist has still to 
reply in vague, general terms.''* 

Mermeix writes: "The press under a Socialist government 
could publish nothing beyond the official dispatches which were 
forwarded to it by the Society. The government would rule 
the public mind.^'t 

And Karl Kautsky admits that "Papers as well as books 
would be under the censorship. The people would read noth- 
ing except by permission of the government."! 

From these quotations it will be evident that we are in no 
way unjust to extreme Socialism when we charge it with being 
the deadly enemy of popular government. 

The foundation stone of popular government is the indi- 
vidual. The virtue of publicity is that it gives to the indi- 
vidual the facts of every case: the arguments pro and con. 
It is for the individual to sit as a judge. Upon him rests the 
welfare of his country. The popular ballot is the government. 
More and more is this truth becoming apparent not alone to 
the social student but to the man in the street. 

Publicity with its power has taught us this — that we as 
citizens of our country should take an intelligent interest in 
public affairs; we should realize that such a seemingly far* off 

*N«w Worlds fir Old, p. 293, 
t Quoted from TJU New Socialism, by Jane T. Stoddart, p. X5X. 
% Idim., p. 153. 
VOL. XCI.— 14 



Digitized by 



Google 



210 PUBLICITY AND SOCIAL REFORM [May, 

thing as the tariff effects our pocket-book; that under the 
present woolen duties, for example, the clothes of the work- 
ingman are costing from 35 to 50 per cent more than they ought 
to cost Whether it is profitable for him that they should cost 
so much he must decide for himself in his use of the ballot. 
The illegal monopoly, the forced labor of women and children, 
the campaign for better homes, for a more equal distribution 
of the opportunities of life, for the suppression of tuberculosis 
—all these things should be known by him. He should real- 
ize that his yote is the effective power to remedy them. He 
sits as a judge, and not only as a judge but as an ezecutiye 
also. In all the measures of life there is a moral purpose. 
And if he sits not as a moral, upright, honest, pure judge^ 
then popular government is a failure. 

It is eternally true that publicity would bear but evil fruit 
unless it worked upon a power that directed it to good. Its 
ultimate appeal is to human nature and to human nature in 
the great majority, the great crowd. At the very basis, then, 
of all popular effort for good and for progress is the doctrine 
that in human nature there is a power that makes for good 
rather than for evil. 

Tell the growing boy that he is good-for-nothing and, as 
a rule, he will be good-for-nothing. Tell the community— the 
nation — that all its people are evil, that their tendencies are 
to evil rather than to good, and they will lose faith in their 
power of betterment and of reform. Preach the doctrine that 
human nature is radically and intrinsically evil, and publicity 
will produce no good, for publicity works on human nature. 
Present the doctrine that there is no such thing as sin — that 
evil is simply a mistake ; that the good man and the bad man 
will eventually share the same fate before the eternal God— 
and any such thing as reform and progress or social better- 
ment will be an absolute impossibility. 

The seeds of publicity would then fall upon a rock and a 
rock never grows the living grain, nor bears the good fruit. 
Through the ages and to-day the Catholic Church states the 
fundamental doctrine against those who have denied it — that 
human nature is not essentially bad ; that man's tendency is to 
good rather than to evil — and when we look at it deeply 
enough and honestly enough we will find that if we believe in 
the fruits of publicity we must believe also in the potential 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] PUBUCiTY AND Social REFORM 211 

power of human nature to achieve goodness through the di- 
vine help and guidance of Almighty God. That man> whatever 
sins he may be guilty of, will, if an evil condition — of dis- 
honesty, of injustice, of tyranny, of slavery — be presented to 
him ; if he finds a shameless traffic in girls, or a denial to men 
of the right to a living wage; or to his children of the right 
to education — that man, in the face of the evil, will rise, with 
a heart made strong by the teachings and the love of the In* 
camate God, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and fight for goodness 
and justice and purity. 

We have an abundance of power in our hands. If we are 
too indifferent to use it; if we sit back at our ease, selfishly 
satisfied because things go well with ourselves; if we leave it 
to others to monopolize the cry of humanity's welfare; then 
they who so monopolize it, who night and day cry it from 
the housetops, even though their principles be wrong, even 
though in the name of humanity they will eventually draw 
down humanity to ruin and to chaos, they will, for ^e present^ 
lead the community, and in the eyes of the coipmunity be 
heroes and leaders. 

As we have the power and the right principles so must we 
be ever alive; alive to every social evil and every social wrong; 
alive to the evil that exists next door to our home; that 
flourishes on the very street where we live; alive to the evils 
that are affecting our social circles; our city, our state, and 
our nation. And if we be so alive we, who have the power 
and the principles to guide us, will not only rob the enemy 
of glory, yea, we will be the greatest of victors, because we 
will win that enemy to our own standard and make them what 
we wish them to be : loyal disciples of Christ and of His Church ; 
and energetic, faithful citizens of the democracy of America. 



Digitized by 



Google 



THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM. 

BY MARIE MANNING. 

T seemed when people wanted anything very much, 
and there was a strong probability that they 
were not going to get it, the thing to do was 
to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint — 
barefoot if need be — and "vow'' things to him, 
like building a cathedral in his honor, or presenting him with 
a new tomb. 

Of course, when one was only "seven goin' on eight,'' 
these things might be a little difficult to manage by reason of 
one's pocket money being only five cents a week. But the 
saint about whom Theodora had been reading— one Thomas 
k Becket by name — seemed to be a person of very catholic 
taste and open to conviction along lines of argument within 
reach of the humblest means. Thus he seemed to grant a 
great many favors to people who walked barefoot to Canter- 
bury. Theodora was quite willing to walk barefoot anywhere 
— the weather was still comfortably warm — it would make a 
beautiful "vow"; in fact, she would have liked to start im- 
mediately. 

The favor Theodora was seeking was all but a lost cause- 
she was going to be sent to boarding-school. Thus would end 
her reign as: "Lady of the House"; which sovereignty, with 
attendant privileges and perquisites, had lasted since the death 
of her grandmother some six months before. Things called 
"prospectuses" were in her father's desk upstairs, and Aunt 
Winship was having made shiny black alpaca dresses that she 
was to wear at this hateful reformatory with the primmest of 
little white aprons. It will readily be seen how pressing was 
the business of the pilgrimage — if this calamity was to be 
averted. 

Like most great discoveries, Theodora happened on the ac- 
count of these wonder-working pilgrimages quite by chance. 
She had wandered into the shabby old library — a very haven 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM 213 

for the unappreciated — and decided to indulge in a little well- 
earned melancholy. Musty smelling brown books climbed tier 
on tier to the ceilingi except where there were gaps in the 
shelves like teeth missing from a comb. There was an old 
desk in the corner — an ever-welling fountain of mystery and 
delight — alleged to have a secret drawer. 

This morning, for the hundredth time, she stood in front 
of the desk repeating a really imposing, if ineffectual, rhyme, 
beginning : 

"Hickory, Hickory stick- 
Point out the treasure quick — '' 

when her attention was arrested by a bar of light that streamed 
through a broken slat of the shutter and pointed a golden 
finger at a certain book on the 3helf standing out a little from 
its fellows. Theodora, who lived in a world peopled with 
fairies who transacted a vast amount of business entirely by 
signs and omens, saw in this a summons not to be disregarded. 

The book was full of the most delightful colored pictures- 
people really taking advantage of their position as grown* ups 
and doing nice things. "A company of squires and dames 
hawking," was the line beneath one. Here they were, in the 
most gorgeous costumes — really as handsome as the ladies and 
gentlemen had worn in the circus parade— a bird was wheeling 
through the sky in pursuit of a smaller bird, a man with puffy 
cheeks was blowing a horn ; she fancied she could almost hear 
it, clear and thin, coming from far away. 

A little further on was another picture : '' Group of Can- 
terbury Pilgrims." This was the nicest of all, they rode such 
square, chubby little horses, and there was something about 
them, as they jogged along, that made Theodora feel she 
should like mightily to join their company. The reading was 
not hard. True, an occasional monster of a word appeared to 
contest her further knowledge of these goodly folk, but she 
had at command a sufficient verbal retinue to turn the odds 
against a chance four-syllable behemoth. 

Why had she not been told about these things before? 
Why had she been forced to glean such arid information as: 
"Seven times seven are forty-nine"; when real people came 
and went on pilgrimages and had their wishes granted like 



Digitized by 



Google 



214 Theodora and the pilgrim [May, 

people in fairy stories. Canterbary might be in the next 
county for aught she knew — "Jogafry*' came next to tables 
in her educational inquisition. Such information as she boasted 
belonged chiefly to the " rag-bag ^* order of things — odds and 
ends grasped from much hungry reading. 

It seemed, if you couldn't afford to build cathedrals, you 
could do things like cutting off your hair when you were a 
lady and extremely proud of it; or, let it grow if you were a 
gentleman and it promised to be in the way. Oh, there were 
lots and lots of things one could promise— Thomas k Becket 
seemed to be a very open-minded saint indeed I 

Theodora closed the book, her mind was made up— she, 
too, would go on a pilgrimage. In the meantime it was just 
as well to arrange the details out of doors ; the weather was a 
standing invitation to one's soul. The whole world was full 
of sunshine, crispness, and joy. She could close her eyes and 
still hear, in imagination, the clear, thin blowing of the horn 
that she had seen in the picture. The fallen leaves rustled 
silkily under foot and bright scarlet and yellow ones fluttered 
down to join them like heralds in motley — gay messengers 
'twixt earth and air. 

Theodora ran down the back porch- steps, made her way 
through the kitchen garden, and flung a handful of corn-bread 
to the doomed fowls imprisoned at the cook's pleasure. A 
little foot-road that connected their place with Aunt Winship's 
was her objective point. This road was private property, and 
no one was supposed to use it but the two families; this 
morning, however, it was not without its wayfarer — a dirty» 
trampish looking fellow with close to a week's growth of beard 
on his face. A yachting-cap shoved on the back of his head 
revealed a countenance not unlike a weather map, the growth 
of beard on the lower half indicating the storm centre, the 
cloudless upper half that fair weather might be expected. He 
was clad in an assortment of garments that, in their lack of 
congruity, had something of the effect of a sentence that will 
not parse — the frock coat, as subject, could never be made to 
agrree with the bicycle trousers, which stood in the relation- 
ship of a predicate; a pair of patent leather pumps — jaunty 
even in old age — was the ill-adjusted contributory clause. 

A few days before Theodora might have been frightened, 
but "reading maketh a full man," and in the meantime she 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM 215 

had added to her store of human knowledge tales of pilgriaa 
and pilgrimages. 

Here, undoubtedly, was one of them— even to the staff he 
carried. True, his clothes were not as becoming as those of 
the ladies and gentlemen in the print, but that only proved 
he was pilgriming harder — had done something worse, or wanted 
something more. Theodora was delighted to have found an 
authority on the subject then engrossing her thoughts. 

"Good- morning/ 'she said with her most ingratiating smile. 
"I'm very glad to meet you/' 

The pilgrim seemed surprised at the cordiality of his recep- 
tion. He gave a little prefatory growl and brought out his 
" good-morning " a little awkwardly, as if, perhaps, it was quite 
a while since he had used it. 

" It is a beautiful morning for a pilgrimage," she continued 
genially. But her companion did not seem inclined for small 
talk — perhaps silence was part of bis vow — or at least he might 
have sworn not to talk any more than necessary. 

" You ain't got anything about you in the way of a ' hand- 
out,' have you?" 

"A hand-out— what's that?" 

"The hand* out is a local issue — in New England it's apt 
to be cold fish-balls and me]>be pie ; if it's ben a failure, round- 
about here it's corn-pone. Sometimes it's a shot-gun and some- 
times it's dish-water. Oh, it's got plenty of aliases." 

"Dear me, I'm so sorry I gave the corn-bread to the 
chickens; but they have to be killed, you know, and I try 
to make things as pleasant for them as possible while they 
last." 

"You run and ask your mother if she's got anything for 
a poor man to eat — I'm hollow as a drum, I am." 

" My mother isn't living, neither is my grandmother — I am 
the lady of the house now." 

"Then you run and see how well you can do for a poor 
man." 

" If it was only me I'd love to ; but our cook's so cross, 
if you can wait till lunch I'll give part of mine — they let me 
eat it out of doors." 

" Oh, I'd be dead before then, starved to death at your 
door, an' you the lady of the house, too. There was a little 
girl up near Winchester, an' she gimme a regular parlor-car 



Digitized by 



Google 



2i6 Theodora and the pilgrim [May, 

meal, she did, she was a lady of the house as knowed her 
place," 

'' And she walked right in and got the things and wasn't 
afraid of anything?'' 

'' She was as brave as a lion/' affirmed the wanderer. 

'' You wait here and 1*11 be out jjtesently." She hadn't 
gone more than a dozen steps before she turned: ''Are you 
sure that other little girl had a cook ? " 

'' On my honor as a gentleman, they kep' a cook." 

'' Had she liyed with the little giri's family a long time- 
years an' years?" 

"She had been with 'em so long/' said the pilgrim sol- 
emnly, ''that the fambly theirselves seem to have butted in/* 

With an absence of noise, almost professionally burglarious, 
Theodora gained the kitchen. Aunt Sally was in the store- 
room beyond, singing: 

"Mount Nebo's given away O, Lord, 
Mount Nebo's given away—" 

Aunt Sally pronounced it, and Theodora understood it to be: 
"My knee-bone's given away." And both regarded it as a 
petition singularly appropriate to scrubbing, or duties that 
called into requisition that particuUr joint of the system. 

The chatelaine helped herself nervously and quickly to sev- 
eral rashers of bacon, a couple of kidneys, corn muffins, and 
coffee sweetened redundantly, and was leaving at a lively tempo, 
when Aunt Sally called: "What you-all doin' wif Unc' Josh's 
breaff ust ? " 

" Please, Aunt Sally, I'm only taking a little something to 
a holy man who is goin' on a pilgrimage." 

" What you-all mean by a holy-man ? — dat he am ragged 
or dat he am righteous?" demanded the cook sharply. 

" Now Aunt Sally he's kinder both—" 

" He aine' got no business to be bofe, de bible hit say dat 
cleanness am nex' to gawdliness,' an' dat doan' mean to stop 
wid washing yo' face — hit mean dat you is to keep yo'se'f as 
aristocratish as succumstances pummit." 

" But 'deed. Aunt Sally, the best pilgrims ain't stylish— they 
put on their old clothes to mortify the flesh." 

"Dey soun's powerful like po' white to me." 

"But you don't understand. Aunt Sally, 'deed you don't; 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM 21 7 

a pilgrim is awful good — better than the minister — an' when 
he gets through his pilgriming the Lord 'most always gives 
him what he wants/' 

If Aunt Sally could be " conjured " the word minister could 
be relied on to do it. Her reverence for the cloth amounted 
to idolatry. '' I des' take a look at dish-yere holy man my- 
se% I will"; and instinctively she straightened the handker- 
chief on her head to make as good an impression as possible. 

The wanderer, who sorely felt the need of the coffee that 
had been cooling during these polemics, was at his most un- 
clerical ebb when Aunt Sally appeared — he was sitting on the 
ground with his back against the fence. Peradventure, he 
dreamed — for his mouth gaped wide and his chin looked un- 
godly in its field of stubble. 

''Does you hav' de owdaciousness to say you is a minister 
an' sen' into white folks kitchens io' breaffust on false preten- 
shuns? You aine' nuttin' in dis Lord's worl' but a tramp— a 
nasty, low-lifeted tramp I " And Aunt Sally turned and went 
back to her kitchen. The pilgrim looked [after her and mut* 
tered a word that Theodora knew to be worse than " doggone." 

She looked at him deeply apologetic. ''Oh, please don't 
mind her, Mr. Pilgrim, she don't understand — she can't read, 
so she don't know anything about saints and shrines; but she 
makes the nicest layer cake in the world." 

He reached a shaking hand for the coffee and gulped it. 
Theodora noticed that he turned away from the food as if he 
had been to a party the night before. 

" Aren't you hungry ? " she asked. 

" This here fresh air cure kills the appetite when it's pushed 
too far; but I kin eat after I've coaled up on coffee. You 
just try me — " 

She hesitated, then took the cup. "That other little girl 
got me two cups," he called after her. This time fortune was 
favorable — Aunt Sally was nowhere in sight. The pilgrim drank 
his second cup of coffee, ate his breakfast, and thanked his 
hostess. " You're an all right lady of the house ; I wish there 
was more like you." 

He groped in his pocket and produced an abandoned look- 
ing pipe — his grimy hand bestowing an unconscious caress on 
the blackened bowl before he filled it with shavings from a 
plug of tobacco. 



Digitized by 



Google 



ai8 THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM [May, 

In the meantime Theodora had studied the details of his 
dress and recorded them with the fidelty of a camera. He 
didn't look much like the Canterbury pilgrims in the picture 
— they all rode chubby horses much too small for them, and 
their heads were wrapped around with cloths something like 
the way Cindy wrapped hers before sweeping a room. Per- 
haps he was too poor to have one of those little Canterbury 
horses — a most fascinating order of beast to Theodora^or, 
she thrilled with the magnificence of the idea, perhaps he was 
a king who had done an awful crime and was walking to the 
shrine of the saint, too humble to ride or even tie his head 
in a duster 1 

What had to be done? She felt her imagination kindle at 
the magnificent choice of iniquity presented. A splendid 
panorama of historical atrocity began to unfold itself before 
her enthralled vision — had he slain nephews in a tower? Had 
he beheaded a cousinly pretender to the throne? Had he shut 
his wife up in a fortress, where she had pined away and died ? 
Theodora found difficulty in fastening on him any specific 
crime, perhaps because it precluded the luxury of believing the 
others. 

Whatever had been the nature of the heinousness, the un- 
happy monarch was not without his moments of content; sit- 
ting humbly on the common dirt of the road, with the fence 
palings for a back-rest, he seemed to enjoy a momentary sur- 
cease of pain. Theodora hung over the gate and looked at 
his shabby habiliments and looked again, in the hope that 
they might furnish a clue to his identity, perhaps a crown 
jewel or two might peep from a ragged pocket^one that he 
contemplated leaving at the shrine of the saint for an oflfering; 
but time was passing, there were things she must learn about 
pilgrimages from an authority. 

** Now,'' she deprecated, ** I know it ain't polite to ask 
questions; but if I said "scuse me ' first, would you mind very 
much?" 

He took his pipe from his mouth and waved it with a 
gesture of conferring leave. 

''I'm thinking of going on a pilgrimage myself." 

** A pilgrimage ? " he repeated vaguely. 

''Yes, walking somewhere like you, and leaving all my things 
at home; but mebbe Pickey — she's my dog — I know dogs 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM 319 

can't get holy like people from goiog on a pilgrimage; but 
don't yott think God would 'sense her if she kept on being 
the same as she is now, even after we came home?" 

'' Sure t " He took his pipe from his month and watched a 
smoke cloud whirl and eddy. ''I think He excuses a lot of 
things when we try, and slip. But, what put trampin' in your 
head — ain't the folks good to you at home?" 

"Oh, yes, indeedy; an' I've got very few folks besides." 

" Then what do ' you want to tramp for ? Besides, the 
business ain't what it used to be — the nap's wore oflfn it. But 
you was sayin' as how you wasn't much of a family man." 
Unconsciously the tramp straightened up a little as he awaited 
her reply. 

'* My father's a circuit judge and that keeps him away from 
home a good deal — " 

" Who's home with you ? " the pilgrim interrupted. 

"There ain't any one home with me but the servants* 
My Aunt Winship lives next door, and she comes in every 
day to see that I'm washed and behaving like a little lady. 
She's nice, but she's not like my father — did you ever have an 
aunt?" 

" Had 'em to burn," said the pilgrim, bitterly reminiscent. 

" Oh," and Theodora's breath came a little more quickly at 
the discovery of the object of his pilgrimage — he had burned 
his aunts t Perhaps — she tried to think as exteouatiogly of the 
circumstances as possible — they had sought to usurp the throne. 

"You was sayin' as how most of the time you hadn't no 
home ties, barrin' a long-distance aunt" 

"Aunt Sally and Cindy, the housemaid, stay in the house, 
Uncle Josh and Tommy sleep over the stable ; but we ain't 
ever afraid, 'cause all the people round here are honest*-half 
the time Cindy forgets to bring the silver upstairs." 

"And I suppose she's careless about fastening up some- 
times ? " 

"Aunt Winship is always getting after her." 

" And p'raps some of the ketches ain't as good as others ? " 

"If any one wanted to get in 'twould be dead easy — the 
springs on the back porch windows are loose. I often come 
in an' out that way myself." 

The pilgrim smoked on silently. Theodora noticed that his 
expression had changed, he looked almost happy. 



Digitized by 



Google 



220 THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM [May, 

Loud calling came from the house — the uncouth music of 
a negress' voice: '' Tee-doah^you, Tee-doah — come into de 
house dis instance — ^yo' aunt am waiting fo' you-all/' 

'' That's Cindy, and I must go. Aunt Winship's come over ; 
but — I'll be out again soon, don't go away ; I haven't finished 
asking you about the pilgrimage yet." 

*^A11 right/' the pilgrim answered, and he went on smok- 
ing. 

Bat when the auntly inspection was- over and Theodora 
hastened back for a final word with him on the all-absorbing 
subject, he was nowhere to be found. This left the decision 
of several weighty questions entirely to her own discretion- 
search from cover to cover of the pilgrim book as she would, 
there was no data on such an important issue as this: should one 
take a toothbrush on a pilgrimage? or did it savor of pomp 
and ceremony, and would it please St. Thomas better to leave 
it at home? In the matter of Pickey — should she wear her 
collar— or abandon the gaud, temporarily, for the same 
reason ? 

And then, quite unexpectedly about a week later, Theodora 
had another encounter with her pilgrim. Pickey, the faithful 
black-and-tan, whose wants on the proposed journey were no 
small source of anxiety to her little mistress, was in the habit 
of sleeping in her room when she could evade the watchful 
eyes of Cindy and Aunt Sally. Failing of this, she courted 
slumber, more or less indifferently, on an old sofa downstairs. 
Theodora had gone to bed, on the night in question, at the 
usual hour, but all^ the strategic gifts of Pickey had not en- 
abled her to escape the vigilance of the guard; a depressing 
night on the sofa confronted her. There was a slim chance 
that she might reach the back stairs through the cellar — Pickey 
took it — and found herself locked out into a cold world. She 
prowled about for a while, chased a cat or two, but found it 
rather slow ; then settled herself beneath her mistress' window 
to whine piteously. 

Presently, from the little foot-road at the back of the house, 
came a man ; Pickey knew him to be an intruder, or he would 
not have stooped and crouched to keep within the shadow of 
the fence; and being of the fair sex, and of an emotional 
temperament to boot, Ihe little terrier threw back her head 
and had hysterics. The lady of the house heard the yapping 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Theodora and the Pilgrim 221 

wails and concluded that ker confederate was baying the 
moon. It was not the first time that Pickey's miscalculations 
had cost Theodora a trip downstairs, and, grimly dutiful, she 
lighted a candle — the undertaking had no terrors for her. 

She raised the sash in the library^Pickey had undoubtedly 
sought shelter on the porch — pushed back the shutter cau- 
tiously, it flapped against something that had a human feel. 
Limp with fear she shook in every limb. The shutter swung 
back against her hand and the pilgrim confronted her. 

''Oh, you frightened me so^I thought mebbe it was a 
robber ? '* 

'' You did, did you ? What are you doin' up at this hour 
of the night ? " 

'' I came down to let my dog in — here Pickey, Pickey— - 
she won't come, she's afraid of you. Oh, Pic-a-lums, don't be 
a silly doggy; please grab her and give her to me." 

The pilgrim grabbed her — he would have enjoyed doing 
more. Theodora patted her into a state of reassurance and 
stood holding her clasped in her arms. They were a strange 
trio— the lady of the house and Pickey inside the library 
window, and the pilgrim without, like the traditional peri. 

''Are the darkies asleep?*' he inquired. 

"Oh, yes, indeedy; nothing ever wiEtkes them. Sometimes 
Pickey howls worse'n this when she's shut out; but I'm so 
glad you came back, there are so many things I want to ask 
you. You've been on your pilgrimage, haven't you ? " 

He nodded. "But, say now, I ain't got no time to talk 
about that, you g'long upstairs"— he glared at her— "mind 
now, if you tell them darkies I'm here, some'pun terrible's 
goin' to happen to you." 

" Oh, I know why you came back, it was because you said 
a bad word the day you were here; an' now you've got to 
do your pilgrimage over again, from this place." 

" Yes, that's it ; but you g'long upstairs now, an' remember 
what I told you." 

"Please don't ask me to go upstairs, Mr. Pilgrim, I want 
to ask your advice about lots of things — will it make God 
angry if I run away, even to go on a pilgrimage?" 

" Of course it will, what do you want to run away for ? " 

The quaint little face, with its big brow that seemed to 
dwarf the rest of it into insignificance, grew absolutely grave. 



Digitized by 



Google 



222 THEODORA AND THE PILGRIM [May, 

'* I'm going on a pilgrimage because I want God to grant me 
a boon/' 

"A what?" 

" Oh^ well, yott can say favor if you like, bnt I say boon, 
because Robin Hood and lots of nice people in books say boon. 
They're going to send me to boarding-school; then I sha'n't 
be the lady of the house any more, and there's no telling 
whafU happen." 

"An' you're going to run away from them?" 

'Tm not going to run away for fun; but how can I go 
on a pilgrimage without running away ? An' you being a holy 
man, I want you to tell me." 

'' You want me to tell you how to be good and bad at the 
same time." The wayfarer made a sound that was something 
between a laugh and a grunt *'It can't be done, little girl; 
besides, there ain't nothin' in this runnin' away ; it seems brim 
full o' glory when you're a kid, but there ain't nothin' in it'* 

"But I want to leave my offering at the shrine of the 
saint — it's a little coral hand with a gold bracelet on it. I got 
it in the grab-bag of a church fair, and I think St. Thomas'll 
be real pleased with it, and do what I want him to." 

"You think you could fix it up with him for the coral 
hand?" 

" Oh, yes, indeedy ; to begin with, he was devoted to pomp 
and splendor— I read ail about him in my English history." 

"But you said he got converted." 

"So he did." 

"Then you couldn't do nothin' with him for graft" 

"Graft—?" 

"Yes; that coral hand's graft; an' you'd make him mad 
as — as anything, offering it to him; besides, how d'you think 
he'd like gettin' mixed up in your runnin' away ? That's wicked 
to run away an' scare folks, and mebbe get killed — " 

" But ain't you pilgriming yourself ? " 

" Lord t it don't matter what I do— nobody cares — " 

" But I'm sure St. Thomas is glad you're pilgriming, and 
he'll ask God to forgive you. He does wonders with sinners,'' 
said Theodora warming to her task. 

The wayfarer groaned. " I'm afraid he'd give out on me.'* 

"No"; she said with passionate conviction, thinking of 
the aunts he had burned. "It's the wickedest ones he takes 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Theodora and the Pilgrim 333 

the most pains with. If I had the pilgrim book with me I 
could read you about it. Why he forgave the kiog that had 
him killed.'' 

She was so eager, standing there in her little white night- 
gown, with the shivering Pickey in her arms, that the way- 
farer smiled ; not his usual sardonic grin, but a smile that had 
something of youth in it: "Say, you're the oddest kid I ever 
struck; now, don't you go runnin' away, somethin' might 
happen to you — " 

" If you tell me not to, I won't ; do you want me cross my 
heart and promise?" 

He, too, could remember when he had been young enough 
to cross his heart and promise. ** Yes ; I'd kinder like to have 
some one gimme a promise." 

She put down Pickey to perform the cryptic rites and re- 
peated: '*I promise to stay home and not run away, even to 
go on a pilgrimage. But you'll tell St Thomas when you get 
to Canterbury, won't you, that I wanted to go, only you said 
1 mustn't?" 

''Yes, I'll tell him; an', say, I hope your game won't be 
queered by your messenger." He threw his shoulders back 
and looked her straight in the eye. ''Say, it's good to have 
some one believe in you — even if they don't know what you 
are." 

Theodora, who took this to be a reference to his royal 
rank, replied : '* I think it was so kind of you to come back 
here to-night. I might have been very wicked if you hadn't." 

He groaned. ** O Lord 1 you're worse'n a trust for crowdin' 
a poor man out of business. I'm goin' now. Good- night 
I'll push the shutters to real easy; an' you fasten 'em quiet 
on the inside — " 

''Good-night," she held out her hand, the wayfarer took 
it. "You don't need to go to no heathen country a-mission- 
aryin'^you don't." 

" Good-bye," she called through the closed shutters, not 
understanding his last remark in the least She took up the 
candle and began to climb the stairs, Pickey following. 

The pilgrim quietly left the back porch, made his way to 
the little foot- road at the back of the house where he had 
first met her. "It's a wonder," he soliloquized ironically, 
" that you don't take to bein' a solid citizen. What do you 



Digitized by 



Google 



224 *' MANJS NOBISCUM DOMINE t " [May. 

want if that job wasn't slick enough to suit you? Do yon 
want people to press the family jools in your hand and tell 
you they're tired of them." 

He could get a view of the house now above the tree-tops. 
For a long time he stood looking at it — that uncouth, inde- 
terminate figure that Theodora had sped forward toward her 
ideal Canterbury. With such sweet, innocent vigor had she 
dispatched him that new impulses seemed to guide the feet of 
the wayfarer along dark lanes; and as he shot a last whim- 
sicali puzzled glance toward the roof under which Theodora 
now slept he spoke, softly, a phrase by no means unworthy of 
a godly pilgrim. 



"MANE NOBISCUM DOMINE I" 

BY VERA M. ST. CLAIR. 

" Sl^AY with us, O I^ord 1 " 
The lengthening shadows purple on the hills — 

The night-dew cools the lips of thirsty flowers — 
Nay, go not hence until the day-break fills 
Our hearts with gladness, and the golden hours 
Smile upon our way. 
'Twas thus the twain at Emmaus spoke that day, 
While burned their souls with rapture at the board : 
" Stay with us, O Lord!" 

Stay with me^ O I^ord I 
When stealthy months have crept into the years, 

And full upon mine ear Life's vesper chime 
Doth break in sudden melody. The fears 
That yawn upon the border-path of Time 
Wait my tired feet- 
Nay, let us go not hence ; 'tis. Master, meet. 
That at Life's farth'est Inn we sit at board- 
Stay with me, O Lord I 



Digitized by 



Google 



ARE COLLEGE PLAYS WORTH WHILE? 

BY THOMAS GAFFNEY TAAFFE. 

say that the average college theatrical perform- 
ance of to-day is of educational value, is to in- 
vite a smilci Musical comedy, at its best, is but 
a poor and flimsy thing, and the skill and clev- 
erness of even masters of the craft have never 
succeeded in raising it above the level of mediocrity. What^ 
then, of the college performance, the product of youths still 
in the rawness of their nonage, and the happy illustration of 
the proverb about fools and angels ? And what of its educa- 
tional value? Yet who can say, in these revolutionary days, 
what far-seeing design is behind it? The drunken Helot 
played his part in the training of the Spartan youth of old; 
and why not the college burlesque in this year of grace? In 
justice be it said, however, that if we view college life as it is 
pictured in the current magazines and newspapers, we may be 
forgiven if we accept the college performance as an adequate 
reflection of undergraduate habits of thought. The constant 
exploitation of the accidentals of college life has resulted in 
obscuring and relegating to the background what to the 
serious-minded are the essentials. It is the order of the day 
to emphasize the trifling and the inconsequential. What won- 
der, then, that college theatricals, which in their most serious 
aspect are in the nature of recreation, should take on a frivo- 
lous character. A high standard of taste supposes an element 
of seriousness, and youth, left to itself, especially in matters 
of entertainment, is not prone to seriousness. Hence the 
gravitation of college theatricals toward the lower 
the epidemic of musical farces, more or less — and 
than less — inane, and verging perilously near the ^ 
the crudities, the buffooneries, the pitiful attei 
femininity in its least engaging aspects. 

It may be argued that these performances are 

to be educational; that they are frankly mere ft 

versions of undirected youth, having no other en( 

guile the lazy time that popular fancy attribute 

VOL. xci.— 15 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



226 ARE College Plays Worth While? [May, 

life. One might say with Sir Toby: ''Dost thou think, 
because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and 
ale?'' But, then, even the most ardent sympathizer with Sir 
Toby would hardly maintain that this rejoinder is a conclusive 
argument, apt and appealing as it is. Life, even college life, 
is not all cakes and ale. Nor is Sir Toby competent authority. 
He is a very engaging blackguard, to be sure, but he is a 
blackguard nevertheless, and though we may enjoy him, we 
need not commit ourselves to his philosophy of life. 

But is it necessary that college dramatics should be alto- 
gether a matter of cakes and ale ? Or, if not — if we be virtu* 
oas, need the cakes and ale be banished ? Must college dra- 
matics be confined to the lower level? Or, can they serve a 
higher purpose than mere foolery, without loss of interest to 
the players ? And if so, is this purpose worth while ? Here 
we have a wide divergence of opinion. On the one hand is 
your learned pedagogue to whom education is a thing of tasks 
and text-books; who can see no virtue in anything outside of 
the deadly routine of the class room; who frowns at every 
turn from the straight and narrow path. On the other is your 
student for whom college days are days of dalliance; who re- 
fuses to take his pleasures seriously; to whom a play is a 
play and nothing more. And, as usual, truth and reason walk 
in the middle course. There is a measure of justice in each 
extreme. But both are blind to the real purpose of a college 
training. Education is not a mere matter of text* books and 
lectures; it is not a treadmill to which a student is bound and 
driven to labor through four grinding years; nor is it a pro- 
longed holiday, a thing of gaieties and diversions, a round of 
varied pleasures. It has its tasks, it is true, its obligations, 
and its solemn duties. It is no royal road. But a score of 
lesser activities go hand in hand with its serious duties. And 
these, each in its own way, share in the work of formation. 
Body and mind are benefited, an added zest is given to the 
set tasks, and lecture hall and class room are brightened by 
the side-lights thrown in on them. The student who goes 
through his course with mind and eye and ear on the alert 
for everything that makes for culture is getting the best his 
college can give him. There is no Procrusteaa bed for him. 

Not the least of the benefits to be derived in this indirect 
manner is to be found in the dramatic training, when properly 
conducted and kept free from vulgarity and inanity. One might 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



1910.] ARE COLLEGE PLAYS WORTH WHILE? 227 

go farther and say that there is not one of the many activities 
at the student's hand from which so many and such varied 
benefits can be reaped. The mere appearance before an audi- 
ence, to cite the least of them, gives him an ease of manner 
and grace of bearing that fit him to face any gathering. It 
breeds in him^ too, a confidence in himself that is of inestima- 
ble value. In the mere externals, the use of voice and hands, 
the bearing of his body, unimportant as these are, he acquires 
an ease and grace which he could acquire by no other means. 
And where the enterprise is carried on in a manner and with 
a judgment fitting the dignity of a college production the study 
of even one masterpiece of dramatic art with the care and 
research necessary for an adequate interpretation, brings a 
knowledge more thorough and intimate than any amount of 
class room analysis. Add to this the effect on the character 
of conceiving a notable enterprise and carrying it through to 
achievement, no matter how small his share in the undertaking. 
And above all there is the inestimable benefit he derives from 
being lifted out of the rut of everyday events; from the in- 
evitable rousing of his emotions and the stimulation of noble 
impulses. The impersonation of the character, the delivery of 
the poet's impassioned lines, lifts the player above the common 
level into a world of lofty imagination, and stirs and quickens 
in him emotions that the world of reality knows not of. One 
hour of this is worth days and weeks of class room drudgery 
Sttdi work as this brings to the student a two* fold reward. 
It not merely instructs, but pleases while instructing. Perhaps 
it would be more correct to say that it instructs by pleasing. 
In this respect the dramatic art does not differ, in kind at least, 
from other arts, but the difference in degree is what makes 
this particular mode of training most valuable. From its very 
inception the modern drama has served this two- fold end of 
pleasing and instructing. When St. Gregory Nazianzen, or 
whoever it was who wrote '^ The Suffering Christ," the earliest 
mystery play of which we have any record, set himself to his 
task he had this two- fold end in view. So, too, had the host 
of learned clerks who followed in his footsteps through the 
succeeding centuries. Their primal purpose was to teach, to 
spread the gospel, to quicken the knowledge of the doctrines 
of religion in a dull-witted and unlettered generation. It was 
a generation that knew not books, that hearkened not willingly 
to sermon or homily, and other means were needed to stimu- 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



228 ARE College plays Worth While? [May, 

late its interest in the essential truths of religion. Hence the de- 
vice of visualizing these truths, tricking the senses by pageantry 
and show and making vivid and real to them what would other- 
wise have been poured into unheeding ears. At Christmas it was 
the Incarnation that furnished the theme ; at Easter it was the 
Passion; and at other seasons subjects equally appropriate. And 
when out of this type of elementary drama grew another— the 
miracle play, which dealt with incidents in the lives of the saints 
or prophets or patriarchs — the same two-fold end was in view. 

The underlying purpose in all these plays was instruction, 
but the element of entertainment was not forgotten. In fact^ 
the practical purpose was attained through the instrumentality 
of the diversion furnished. Our wise elders realized the effect 
of the combination and used it to every possible advantage. 
Nor was this two-fold end lost sight of in the later development 
of the drama. 

Even when it had become secularized in the fifteenth cen- 
tury the didactic purpose and the means by which it was at- 
tained were not lost to view. With the introduction of the 
morality play came an extension of the field of instruction. 
The drama came down from the heights of theology to the 
lower plain of practical ethics. The aim was still to instruct, 
and though a greater license resulted in the introduction of a 
deal of clowning and buffoonery to please the groundlings, the 
serious character of the plays was not affected. Even the in- 
terludes, which followed in the line of development, were 
made to serve a purpose, which was, in a measure, educational. 
They flourished at a time when religious feeling ran high, and 
in the hands of Bale and Hey wood and others of their day 
proved effective weapons of 'controversy. 

It was with the beginning of the drama as we know it to- 
day that the first radical change is to be noted. The develop- 
ment of the drama had been slow before the middle of the 
sixteenth century. As an art form it had been subsidiary and 
was looked upon merely as a means to an end. But with the 
appearance of the first English comedy, ** Ralph Roister Dois- 
ter,'' came a new departure for the drama. It was no longer 
consciously didactic, and in the plays that followed we find 
the same disregard of the purpose of the drama of an earlier 
and less sophisticated age. But, though it had abandoned the 
didactic pose, it had not severed its connection with the cause 
of education. On the contrary, the new drama was actually 

Digitized by V^jOO^lC 



I9I0.] Are College Plays Worth While? 229 

bora in the school. Nicholas Udall, the author of *' Ralph 
Roister Doister/' was head master of Eton, and the play was 
written for presentation by the pupils of the college. So it 
was with all the plays of that day. They were written for 
presentation in the schools or universities or inns of court* 
Moreover, their inspiration and, to a certain extent, the models 
on which they were constructed were classical. |From this 
time until the beginning of the era of professional writing and 
the birth of the native English drama, in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, the drama was practically a diversion of the schools. 
Even the court pageants were often performed by the boys of 
Westminster and other schools, and sometimes, though rarely, 
by the gentlemen of the inns of court. 

Here, then, we see the drama serving another educational 
purpose. It is not, as in the days of its beginning, a con- 
scious teacher. Its end is cultural rather than directly didactic. 
And this is the tradition that has come down to the present 
day. Throughout Europe the cultivation of the drama in schools 
and colleges has become almost universal and the custom has 
long obtained in this country, too. In our Catholic colleges, 
particularly in the Jesuit colleges, the tradition has been as- 
siduously preserved. Indeed, the Jesuits have gone farther 
than any other educational body to keep alive this wholesome 
and valuable custom. Where others have depended on the mere 
devotion to tradition to perpetuate the custom they have pro- 
vided for it by legislation. The rule is laid down in their 
institute and provision is made for faculty supervision of every 
play. With them the production of a play is not a mere 
student diversion, but an integral part of the college work, 
carried on under the direction of a member of the faculty 
designated as Moderator. 

But, whether fortified by legislation or dependent on estab- 
lished custom, which in some quarters is almost as secure a 
safeguard, the college drama is a firmly rooted growth. Its 
roots have sunk centuries deep, and its growth is almost co- 
eval with that of the school itself. Seeded in the desire for 
the spread of knowledge it has found congenial soil in the 
schools, and while the one endures the other will flourish. It 
has grown with the ages and, though with its growth it has 
altered its aspect, it is essentially the same. The destiny fore* 
shadowed for it in its first uses it is fulfilling to-day. 



Digitized by 



Google 



METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY. 

BY JOHN F. FENLOH, D.D. 

Y are tbe Methodists, of all sects at work in 
Rome, singled out by the Vatican for repro- 
bation ? 

The Vatican account is quite naturally regarded 
as partisan by a section of the public; let us, 
then, go to a source of information that will not be suspected 
of unfairness to .the Methodist propaganda in Italy. 

I. 

An old-fashioned Methodist minister, brought up in Maine, 
firm in the faith, not weakened either by modern difficulties 
or lurking tenderness for Rome, scorning delights, in good old 
Htyle, and willing to live laborious days, militant and mission- 
ary in spirit, is unexpectedly called by his bishop to the Italian 
Mission. He accepts the call as the voice of God and sees in 
his new work the career for which ''years of enthusiastic 
study'' had furnished him ''a graciously providential prepara- 
tion.'* He starts for his post, going by way of London, where 
'* new inspiration was gained by listening to some of the living 
prophets and visiting the tombs of the dead," as well as the 
hallowed spots on which ** Christian heroes bad suffered mar- 
tyrdom*' under Queen Mary. At last he reaches Rome and 
surveys the Eternal City from the Pincian Hill. ''Towering 
in the distance across the Tiber is the massive pile of St. 
Peter's and the Vatican. Here at last is the citadel of the 
hostile forces. Here is the centre of that huge system of error 
and superstition that we have come so far to spend our life in 
opposing. The might of ancient Rome vanished before the 
presence of our northern barbaric ancestors. Why may not 
this new and mightier Rome be conquered by weapons of 
Gospel truth? Not in our day, to be sure, but it is a great 
privilege to have even a small part in the beginning of the 
mighty contest. Such thought," our missionary adds, "in the 
midst of such scenes and associations, inflames enthusiasm." 

We like the spirit of the man and forgive his prejudices. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 23 1 

We remember that John Henry Newman of Oxford once shared 
in them and had more bitter thoughts than this preacher from 
Maine. A sincere character we feel him to be, and zealous 
for the truth as he sees it. 

For four and a half years he lives and labors in Italy at 
his appointed task, the creation of a theological school and 
the raising up of a native Italian Methodist clergy. That sturdy, 
uncompromising champion, Bishop Vincent, commends him for 
laboring ** most faithfully to promote the spiritual life, to train 
the heart and conscience'' of the young men who are the 
hope of Methodism in Italy. He attends conferences; he be- 
comes acquainted with the work and the workers; he travels 
throughout the country and sees the actual condition of the 
missions. The result? He becomes disillusioned, not to say 
disgusted; disapproves of the entire policy of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in Italy; his school breaks up; he returns 
to Maine and tells his brethren they can do nothing better 
than to work on where they are. 

What was wrong ? What quenched this ardent enthusiasm ? 
Our missionary wrote a book to inform us. He tells the truth, 
according to his knowledge, but not the whole truth. He 
dare not. '* It is of course quite improper,'* he says, ** to state 
in public print all the facts that the authorities need to know. 
They would be disgraceful to all concerned." The story is 
unfolded in the volume : Four and a Half Years in the Italy 
Mission : A Criticism of Missionary Methods. By Rev. Everett 
S. Stackpole, D.D.'' 

Of another work of Dr. Stackpole, Bishop Vincent says: 
** There is no creak of the crank in it.*' There is none in this 
volume. It is calm and measured; it creates the conviction 
that the author desires to be just and merciful in his criticisms. 
He is evidently and avowedly reticent, not revealing more thaii 
is necessary for his purpose, the reform of the missionary 
methods of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which he con- 
sidered sadly in need of reform. His disclosures might tempt 
one to conjecture about the hidden. We shall be content 
with the facts revealed. They suffice. 

II. 

The first great need of the Methodist propaganda in Italy 
was a corps of native preachers. Without them this foreign 
religion, strange to Italian eyes and preached by Americans 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



232 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

who spoke the Italian language imperfectly, could hope at best 
for a very slow and uncertain success. To dispense entirely 
with native preachers and endeavor to form a little congrega- 
tion here and there; to pick out a few promising candidates 
for the ministry, to instruct and to train them; to wait for 
the gathering of a richer harvest by these new preachers and 
the recruiting through them of a native clergy ; all this seemed 
to the Methodist pioneers an interminable process. A short 
cut to success must, if possible, be found. 

As there were no Italian Methodists (except perhaps a few 
Wesleyans), the difficulty of getting Italians to preach Methodism 
might have seemed formidable. How could it be overcome? 

The men in charge of the Methodist organization hit upon 
a solution which, however, was not original with them; they 
would draw preachers to spread the Gospel in Italy by the 
attraction of large salaries. This, they believed, would appeal 
powerfully to the Italian nature. Accordingly, it became the 
settled policy to pay their preachers better than those of any 
other denomination in Italy. They receive in most cases. Dr. 
Stackpole shows (pp. '130, 131), from two to three hundred 
dollars per year more than other preachers, which is counted 
there a very considerable sum. House rent, moreover, is free. 
This recompense compares more than favorably with the in- 
come of other professional men. ^* Reckoning bouse rent,'* 
says our author, ''our preachers in the larger cities have re* 
ceived more than twice what a College Professor receives in 
the same city" (p. 131). 

III. 

By this winning financial policy, preachers of various kinds 
were procured and Methodism established in Italy. Dr. Stack- 
pole tells us from what ranks they were recruited. ''The 
policy and practice from the first have been to choose our own 
preachers mainly from two elements, f^>., ex- priests and ex- 
Waldensians. There is a heterogeneous remainder that comes 
from other denominations and is picked up at random. . • • 
Not more than three of our preachers have been converted 
under the auspices of our church" (pp. 58, 59). This was in 
1S94; probably some of their converts since then have become 
preachers. 

The tiny sect of the Waldensians, as most of our readers 
know, traces its rise far back into the Middle Ages, and amid 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9I0.J METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 233 

many vicissitudes and despite cruel persecutions — or because of 
them^-still survives with a certain vigor. A pertinacious, 
simple peasantry, they have been unyielding in their opposi- 
tion to Catholicism, but fluctuating in their theological ideas. 
Migrating from Piedmont, they established churches in several 
cities of Italy. They maintain a propaganda among Catholics; 
but with the poverty and coldness of their creed and worship, 
their lack of intellectual culture, and their immemorial insigni- 
ficance, they have made little headway. They are, however, 
more respected in Italy than the denominations which foreign- 
ers are endeavoring to establish. ''Thus far,'' Dr. Stackpole 
confesses, '' we [Methodists] have simply a poor and feeble 
imitation of Waldensianism, and any careful and candid ob- 
server can but prefer the original article '' (p. 63). If the 
Waldensians had the vast wealth of the Methodist organiza- 
tion at their command, they might — unless wealth corrupted 
their simplicity — become more formidable. 

The Waldensians have always shown a certain readiness to 
ally themselves with other Protestant sects, and in Italy many 
of their preachers have joined themselves to the Methodists. 
Though the two churches differ considerably in creed and 
worship, the Methodists have welcomed these ex- Waldensians 
and sent them forth to preach Methodism and to convert 
Catholics. ''They are simply Waldensians with the name 
Methodist,'' we learn {p. 63), "and while they may be very 
excellent Waldensians, they are, for the most part, very poor 
Methodists. They retain the spirit and form of the mother 
church and, we think, still respect and love that church more 
than our own, for which we cannot blame them." Neither 
can we; but we feel, and probably Dr. Stackpole feels also, 
that in such a case they cannot escape blame for quitting their 
own church. Our author continues: "They have not been 
converted and trained up by our church. Thev have simolv 
been employed to serve us as best they can. 
remuneration offered for their services is relati 
most of the Waldensian pastors (be it said to th 
remained in their poorly paid charges. Th 
Methodists obtain, it is stated, are '* preachers v 
reasons, could not obtain a pastorate in the Wa 
or have not wished to accept such pastorate 
Some have not been sufficiently educated in the 
church " (p. 62). 



Digitized by 



Google 



234 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

A mild and mitigated praise is all that Dr. Stackpole feels 
able to bestow apon this element of his Italian Mission. He 
far prefers it to the ex-priest contingent. At this none of us 
will wonder — corruptio optimi pessitna. " They have never dis- 
graced our ministry by immoralities/' he says in his compari- 
son. '' They have, as a rule, more sympathy with the common 
people. They are more spiritual and less addicted to plots and 
scheming" (p. 62). 

Besides the Waldensians, there is, as we have seen, another 
Protestant element in the Methodist ministry in Italy; or, as 
Dr. Stackpole puts it, '* a heterogeneous remainder that comes 
to us from other denominations and is picked up at random." 
There seems, in fact, to be a wide freedom among preachers in 
Italy in passing from one denomination to another; and the 
head of a church, longing to be rid of an undesirable minister, 
does not always feel bound, in recommending him to a sister 
church, to tell the whole truth about his departing brothen 
^' More than one superintendent in Italy," according to the 
testimony of Dr. Stackpole, ''has a way of recommending to 
another denomination men whom he does 'not want. . • • 
The preacher who, on being turned out of one denomination, 
cannot find acceptance in another, must be a poor thing in- 
deed. We never knew such a case; and the preachers that 
have belonged to two or three denominations may be counted 
by the score" (p. 116). 

Here and there, in the book, the edge of the veil is lifted 
a little to permit a half glance at the character of these changes 
of allegiance. We get a glimpse of Signor Bracchetto, for in- 
stance, who was in charge of a Free Italian Church, at Turin, 
during many years. When accused of '' constantly compromis- 
ing his church and committee and the honor of Christ," he 
withdrew and was able to carry his congregation with him; 
they were received into the Methodist Episcopal Church. '' The 
action of the pastor," Dr. Stackpole comments, '' cannot be 
considered as anything better than a treacherous secession" 
(p. 98). And he hints at the reason for his welcome by the 
Methodists. '' He reported 97 members and 125 hearers, and 
our annual statistical report was increased by so much." An- 
other instance is that of a Modernist born before his time. 
<'He had been educated by the Wesleyans, but was unaccept- 
able to them." He was welcomed by the Methodists, appar- 
ently on the recommendation of the Wesleyan superintendent. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 235 

^' After he had preached five years in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, we became aware of a book published anonymously 
by him in the first year ol his ministry, in which he avowed 
the rankest pantheism. He denied the personality of God, the 
divinity of Christ, the efficacy of prayer, the need or possibil- 
ity of regeneration, and conscious existence after death. Yet 
the committee on examinations had reported him sound in the 
faith. When charged with being the author of the book, he at 
first denied it ; but when the proof was presented, he confessed 
his authorship, but declared that those were his opinions five 
years before, when he thought that ' Methodism might be thus 
philosophically interpreted.' Now he had changed his mind. 
He was, however, asked to withdraw from the Conference and 
did so. We were told that he wrote to a friend soon after, 
reaffirming the opinions of that book. He was, however, soon 
received into another evangelical church in Italy on the * warm 
recommendation' of the Presiding Elder'' (pp. 115, 116). The 
Presiding Elder at this time — the one, we presume, who gave 
such a warm recommendation of this pantheistic preacher— was 
William Burt, D.D., later made bishop, and at present charged 
with the responsibility of the Italian Mission.* 

There is the story, too, of the preacher '' who brought over 
a Wesleyan flock to us in Florence and this was duly tabulated 
as an indication of the progress of our Mission in Italy.'' He 
was, our author judged, ''the ablest minister" at the Milan 
Conference. Remaining with the Methodists for fourteen years, 
he ''located and • . • asked for a bonus of six months' 
salary, i. e., $480. He had already made arrangements to re- 
turn to the Waldensian Church as pastor, and, in fact, directly 
after the session of Conference, withdrew from our church, 
taking with him to the Waldensian fold, nearly our entire con- 
gregation at Rome. . . . Some blamed the preacher for 
his act, which had the appearance of treachery, but long re- 
flection has convinced us that he did what any other preacher 
would naturally have done under similar circumstances. He 
had become thoroughly convinced of the inability of our Mis- 
sion to accomplish the work needed, and so could not be ex- 
pected to urgently advise his congregation to remain in the 
Methodist fold " (p. 82). 

* C/, Enropt and MetJUdism, by William Bnrt, D.D., whose narratire of the Italian 
Mission is summarised and briefly commented upon [in the March issue of Thb Catholic 
WOKLD, pp. 858-862. 



Digitized by 



Google 



236 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

Instances such as these illustrate how the Methodist organ- 
ization in Italy recruits its preachers — and how, sometimes, it 
loses them. As the wealthiest corporation engaged in this fieldt 
it seems willing to take over any struggling Protestant church, 
finance it, and add its membership to the statistics it presents 
to its American contributors. It was thus, we see, that the 
Wesleyan churches at Pavia and Florence, as well as the Pres- 
byterian Free Church at Turin, were gained ; while, on the other 
hand, Dr. Stackpole records various instances of Methodist 
ministers and even congregations passing over to another de- 
nomination. Catholics, with strict ideas of dogmatic truth and 
of the binding character of church allegiance, are not apt to 
view these changes very charitably; but we must remember 
that one form of Protestantism must appear to the Italian mind 
very much like any other form. Dr. Stackpole will inform us 
presently as to the real nature of Italian Methodism. 

IV. 

And now we must touch on the disagreeable topic of '* the 
ex-priest element '' in the Methodist ministry of Italy. It has 
been, we are told, not only the practice but the policy of the 
Methodists to employ ex-priests to preach Methodism. It is 
not at all surprising, however we may lament it, that they have 
always been able to secure the services of a certain number. 
Ex-priests there always have been since the days of Judas, and 
there will be till the coming of Antichrist. That in a large 
Catholic country like Italy, where there is much poverty, a 
certain number would creep into the ministry through worldly 
motives; that some of these and certain others who began with 
higher spirituality would fall by the wayside; that some, for 
one reason or another, would lose the faith; all this is ex- 
pected by any student of history or of human nature. Viewing 
the matter abstractly, and from their standpoint, we cannot 
blame Methodists for receiving an ex-priest, as such, and em- 
ploying him among Catholics any more than they can blame 
us for ordaining an ex-minister and sending him forth to preach 
to non* Catholics. But the question, a concrete one and not at 
all abstract, is this; what kind of men, as a matter of fact, 
are employed ? Now some Catholics would condemn all ex- 
priests as about equally bad ; but they have no right to expect 
this view to be taken by non- Catholics. The name perhaps 
should only be bestowed on those who trade upon the sacred 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



I9IO.] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 237 

character they have renounced, who are ex-priests by profes- 
sion. And, truly, men who have forsaken the priesthood vary 
all the way from Ddllinger, a man of clean morals and of per- 
sonal dignity, down to that unprincipled rascal and marvel of 
depravity, Achilli. Two things may in justice be demanded of 
a Protestant organization before it engages an ex-priest for its 
ministry: first, that it be reasonably certain he truly believes 
the doctrines he is expected to preach ; and, second, that he 
is a man of correct life. If these essential qualifications of a 
Christian minister were to be in all cases exacted, how many 
ex-priests would be preaching Protestantism? Nowadays far 
intore caution and decency' are observed than formerly; but 
one indelible shame imprinted on the face of Protestant history 
—which has by no means blushed for its shame as it should 
^s undoubtedly this, that it has frequently shown itself willing 
to welcome any one coming from Rome with vile stories, caring 
little or nothing about demanding guarantees of their truths 
and that it has been ready to engage such a one without 
reasonable certitude of the sincerity of his belief or the fitness 
of his character. Baptists and Methodists, far more than other 
organications — some of which have acted with decency — incur 
this shame. Too often the only question has been : can he dam- 
age the cause of the Papists ? If he could, then he was en- 
gaged, even as the unspeakable Achilli and many another be- 
fore and since. Moreover, Protestantism has very rarely been 
able to enlist the services of those former priests, whom, in 
a measure, we can respect, while we mourn their loss of faith. 
On the other hand, who ever heard of the Catholic Church 
welcoming into its priesthood an ex-minister of unsavory repu- 
tation or questionable sincerity of belief? And when has she 
commissioned any one to attack and vilify the ministry or the 
church which he has abandoned? No, not by such means are 
truth and charity communicated from soul to soul; and it is 
because such a policy deserves only the loathing and contempt 
of all decent men, and yet has been pursued by the Methodists 
in Italy, that the Holy See has condemned them while keep- 
ing silent about other Protestant denominations in Rome. 

''From the first,'' says Dr. Stackpole, 'Mt has been the 
policy of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Italy to employ ex- 
priests as preachers'' (p. 58), Does the abandonment of the 
Catholic priesthood by an Italian qualify him for the Metho- 
dist ministry? What becomes of the cardinal Methodist doc- 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



238 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

trine of conversion ? No one is a true Methodist until he has 
''experienced conversion''; yet of all the preachers employed 
during more than twenty years, only three, according to Dr. 
Stackpole (p. 59), were converted under the auspices of the 
Methodist Church. Probably it is not rash to conjecture that 
not one of the three was an ex-priest. Men of this stamp sim- 
ply cease to be Catholics; they do not become Mothodists. 
And so Dr. Stackpole avers: ''We have no Methodist preach- 
ers among the Italians'' (p. I2i). It is not hard to know the 
type of Methodism among those who, our author states, are 
*^ex necessarily. They have quarreled with their superiors, or 
been guilty of some immorality, or they want more salary or 
to get married" (p. 6o). The entire story of this book shows 
that these men are seeking, not the Methodist assurance of 
salvation, but the assurance of a good salary and little work. 
Concerning those of whose character Dr. Stackpole thinks 
more highly, he says: "They do not make good Methodist 
preachers, for the simple reason that they know nothing about 
Methodism; and when it is explained to them, they either do 
not understand it or they do not like it" (p. 6o). No won- 
der he concludes that " a full-blooded Methodist • • • can* 
not be found at present among the Italians. It will be a long 
time before he will be produced" (p. 120). 

By what process do these men become Methodist preach- 
ers? They are not converted; they do not undergo years of 
theological instruction and moral training, as a former minister 
must among us ; they simply offer themselves and are accepted 
on trial and begin to draw a good salary. They have no 
more faith in Methodism than they have in any other form of 
Protestantism; and the sole reason why most of them are 
attached to Methodism rather than to any other form of Prot- 
estantism, according to Dr. Stackpole, is the larger salary it 
pays (p. 132). 

Dr. Stackpole, happily, refrains from any detailed account 
of the lives of these preachers of Methodism ; stray hints there 
are and broad statements regarding the scandalous conduct of 
several, but we have no heart to weave them into a picture of 
this group. The shame of it, that a Christian denomination 
should pick up these poor weeds from the Pope's garden, call 
them Methodists, and expect them to diffuse around an odor 
of virtue and a perfume of sanctity. But, alasl a weed by 
any other name will smell as rank. They have no spiritual 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9IO.] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 239 

life and they communicate none. Dr. Stackpole says in gen- 
eral of the ex-priests whom they employ : '' The spiritual con- 
dition of their flock and the salvation of sinners give them 
little concern'' (p. 62). Our good Doctor, who evidently got 
many of his impressions and ideas of Catholicism from these 
derelicts, attributes this to their Catholic training. We may 
remark that he lost none of his anti-Catholic prejudices in 
Italy, and is frequently very sweeping in his condemnation; 
but this may to a certain extent be excused because of his 
disheartening experience of the characters who swarmed around 
the Methodist Mission — the only persons, no doubt, whom he 
came to know intimately. His conclusions are eloquent of the 
judgment he formed upon their character and work. ''The 
ex-priests, on the whole, have done us very little good and 
very much harm'' (p. 61). Elsewhere there is the same story 
ta tell. '' The experiment of utilizing ex-priests had been tried 
and had failed in Mexico and in South America" (p. 59). 
And he ends with this earnest admonition to his brethern: 
'' We wish this matter might be laid seriously to heart by our 
own and other churches, that genuine Protestantism cannot be 
built up in Italy or elsewhere by means of ex-priests " (p. 62). 
A wish to which we say a fervent amen, not because these 
men harm us, but because the policy is so disgraceful. Six- 
teen years have passed since this wish was uttered. Ex- 
priests are still employed by the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in Italy. We have not the knowledge, however, which would 
warrant us in affirming that they are of the same stamp as the 
pioneers of Italian Methodism. 

V. 

Ex-Waldensians and ex-priests failed to create a satisfactory 
Methodism. ''AH our authorities/' we are informed, " became 
at last convinced that a Methodist Church could not be estab- 
lished by means of such preachers " (p. 59). A training school 
to raise up genuine Methodist ministers became a necessity. 
Dr. Stackpole himself was the man named to establish and 
direct the work. His story of the enterprise is not lacking in 
interest and deserves space. The preachers had spread the 
good news abroad. " Applications for admission fairly poured 
in. Sixty- five applicants wrote to us in the course of three 
years. . • . All who wrote told the same story. They 
were absolutely penniless. Only one of all the sixty-five felt 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



240 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

able to do so much as clothe himself. The rest wanted board, 
clothes, books, lights, fuel, washing, tuition, and even railroad 
expenses. • • . Some with family asked to be supplied 
with a furnished house outside the school and a salary of 300 
francs per month. ... At first, money to pay traveling 
expenses to Florence was sent to accepted candidates. Enough 
was sent to purchase a second-class ticket. . . • The re* 
suit was that the hopeful candidates bought third-class tickets 
and put the balance in their pockets, and soon one to whom 
we had sent money for railroad fare, failed either to appear 
or to refund the money '' (pp. 65-68). Henceforth railroad fare 
was not paid. 

Of the numerous applicants, nine, the most promising, no 
doubt, were selected. '' It might be interesting," Dr. Stack- 
pole continues, ''to know more particularly the personnel of 
that first class in the school in order to get a little insight 
into Italian character '' (p. 69) ; or, rather, as we would prefer 
to say, into the character of the Italians who aspired to the 
Methodist ministry. Number one was '' expelled from a Roman 
Catholic Seminary for vagabondage. He professed conversion 
and united with our church at Turin, He was warmly recom- 
mended by the pastor and had been employed by the Presid- 
ing Elder about a year as assistant pastor at Milan and else- 
where. At Milan he was also President of the Young Men's 
Christian Association and is said to have left the city with 
some of the funds of that society in his pocket. ... He 
was about the plainest specimen of a rascal that we ever had 
anything to do with. He could pray and exhort with what 
passes for ' unction ' with some. ... By cheating and bor- 
rowing from other students he succeeded in taking away with 
him about one hundred francs. Lying and swearing were his 
daily pastime. We gave him money enough to pay his fare 
to Turin'' (pp. 69-70). Number two came highly recommended 
by his pastor and wife, '' He had wasted his substance and 
well-nigh his body in riotous living. He could wear a meek 
and devout look and could almost cry at will. But he would 
lie and break the rules of the school. He had to be dismissed 
for general worthlessness " (p. 70). Number three was dis- 
missed for stealing books from the library and selling them to 
second-hand book stores. Number four captivated Bishop 
Barf by his readiness of utterance and apparent earnestness." 
He was suspended as an untrustworthy character, but. to the 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



19 IC] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 24 X 

Faculty's surprise was appointed, we presume by Bishop Burt, 
as assistant pastor. Number five 'Macked gifts, grace, and use- 
fulness/' Number six, ''general worthlessness • . . with 
a marked tendency to deceitfulness/' Number seven was in 
love and neglecting his studies. Told to choose between the 
ministry and the girl, he chose the girl. He married, and 
struggled with hard luck till he was appointed pastor of a 
Methodist Episcopal Church in a large city. Number eight 
''was called prematurely into the ministry. His heart was im- 
pulsively good, but he lacked stability of character. He was a 
poor scholar and could say all he knew in a very few. noisy 
sermons.'' Number nine finished his course of study and was, 
up to 1894, the sole graduate of the school. Dr. Stackpole 
says nothing of his character (pp. 71-74). This completes his 
report of the first aspirants to the Methodist ministry in Italy ; 
it speaks more convincingly perhaps than he was aware con* 
ceming the sort of characters whom Methodism attracted in 
Italy and the degree of influence which it exerted upon them. 
The result was discouraging, but more students must be 
secured. "We searched the land through and got all that 
were at all hopeful cases." Bishop Vincent visits the school 
and is charmed; he writes a most glowing and edifying letter 
to the New York Christian Advocate all about the dozen young 
meut selected out of fifty-six applicants, who "are Methodists 
in theory and experience and choice" (p. 156). They "filled 
me with large hope," the bishop says, " for our work in Italy." 
And Dr. Stackpole, who has a low opinion of the Italian 
character, for which he cannot be greatly blamed, since he 
came into close contact chiefly with worthless or rascally 
preachers and would* be preachers, records his " conviction that 
it will be impossible to gather so good and promising a com- 
pany of young men as candidates for the [Methodist] ministry 
in Italy for many years to come" (p. 158). Soon a con- 
spiracy was formed by all the other students against one who 
proved to have a good character. As a consequence, all but 
four left. "We discovered that every one of these [twelve] 
students, except the one accused, had been secretly breaking 
the rules of the school ... by getting in or out of the 
window late at night, by improper associations, etc." (p. 161). 
"Some declared their readiness to abandon Methodism and at 
once sought admission to other denominations. . . . We 
VOL. xci.— x6 



Digitized by 



Google 



242 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

found they had no love for Methodism, for which we could not 
much blame them, since the so-called Methodism of Italy has 
manifested few amiable qualities'' (p. 162). This school, which 
was at Florence, was discontinued. ** Dr. Stackpole having re- 
tired from the field,'' as Bishop Burt writes* in a laconic 
style that makes Caesar appear verbose, a theological school 
was later established at Rome under Rev. N. W. Clark, its 
present head. So far as we know, the inner story of the new 
school has not yet been published by Dr. Stackpole's successor. 
Bishop Burt is silent about its success or failure. From our 
author we merely learn that it started with three students; 
these three foundation stones were an ex- monk, an ex-priest, 
and an ex-seminarian (p. 164). 



VI. 

Jam satis. Let us turn now from this study of the clergy- 
men and clerical aspirants of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in Italy and, under Dr. Stackpole's guidance, take a brief 
glance at the organization's work among the people. 

Who constitute the Methodist laity of Italy ? Let our guide 
answer: ''The better and nobler class of Italians' we have not 
reached. Our system attracts the mendicant class, just as mo- 
lasses draws flies" (p. 177), which, by the way, throws light 
upon the character of the young men from whom we have just 
parted. A vivid sketch is drawn of the working of the system ; 
how the community has no interest in the new movement, 
which they regard as a foreign importation thrust upon them ; 
how some come at first out of curiosity, when a semi-political 
subject is announced, and applaud when the preacher chimes in 
with their political views, but leave him empty pews if he 
preaches religion; how persons of noble character and social, 
influence stay away, out of self-respect, while a lot of mendi- 
cants, hearing that a very wealthy society has domiciled among 
them, flock to the church; how tramps and beggars expect the 
pastor to furnish them money for all their wants and, if re- 
fused, desert his church for another similarly organized but 

* Europe and Methodism, p. 73. The bishop's concise narrative omits the entire story of 
this theological school at Florence, which fact speaks volumes about his method of writing 
history. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 243 

more liberal in the distribution of money, clothing, and soup; 
how the congregation looks to the wealthy oi^anization to 
provide Yankee gold to pay the pastor and nearly all current 
expenses; how some are shamed, for the sake of appearance, 
into throwing something, the smallest coins, however, into the 
collection basket; how the very small sums which the Metho* 
dist Episcopal churches of Italy contribute come chiefly from 
American and English visitors; how, in some places, a few 
persons become sincerely attached to the church, while the rest 
are ready to sever their connections for the slightest cause; 
how one sort of pastor dare not rebuke sin, for fear of dimin- 
ishing his congregation, and another doesn't care a green fig 
whether his people come to church or stay away.* No fancy 
picture this. Dr. Stackpole assures us. In a few instances 
''some favorable modification'' would have to be made; but 
for a true picture of the oi^anization as a whole, he avers, 
''such is the Methodist Episcopal Church in Italy" (p. 142). 
No wonder the whole basis is pronounced unsound. "Not 
the least of the evils of our financial system in Italy," he de- 
clares, "is that it tends to diminish piety and to develop a 
selfish dependence upon others" (p. 148). If any of these 
converts ever had any zeal, this system kills it. "In Italy," 
he says, "the laymen do almost nothing unless paid for ser- 
vice, and then they do but little" (p. 108). It is to them a 
plain matter of business and they regard themselves as work- 
ing for the society (p. 150). In fact, according to Dr. Stack* 
pole, most of the workers in Italy, as^in Bulgaria, are under 
the impression that the Methodist Mission exists "for the 
financial benefit of the workers employed" (p. 113). This 
view is shared by the women workers as well as by the men. 
Not infrequently the service of the employees has to be dis- 
continued. It is the "rule without exception, so far as we 
know," says Dr. Stackpole, that "whoever has once been in 
the pay of our mission as preacher, Bible woman, janitor, or- 
ganist, etc., and has, for any cause, been discharged, has be- 
come at once a bitter opposer of our church, proving thereby 
that his motive for uniting with us was a mercenary one" 

(p. 54). 

How these unprincipled rascals must have laughed among 
themselves and chuckled in their sleeves at our poor Methodist 

♦ Chapter on " Self-Support." 



Digitized by 



Google 



344 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May, 

brothers and their Yankee shrewdness I Imagine, for instance, 
the twinkle in the eye of the editor of the Nuova Scienza^ 
sometimes called the Italian Methodist Quarterly Review. For 
six years he extracted from the Methodists both his salary and 
the funds for printing his magazine, ''which had not the re- 
motest connection/' it appears, ''with any work of Methodism 
in Italy/' It was a philosophical review, and the philosophy 
it taught, as judged by several members of the Conference, 
was . . . pantheism. The editor " accepted the compliment 
pf being the best recent exponent of Giordano Bruno '' (p. 84), 
which possibly explains why he was paid by the Methodists. 
Shrewd schemers, high and low, from philosophers and preach- 
ers down to janitors and Bible women, they have all gleefully 
gathered in the golden eggs laid by the Methodist hen. 

The financial policy of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
ruled also over their educational institutions, at least to a great 
extent Free elementary schools were established. "It wad 
thought that by getting the children into our schools, the par- 
ents could be drawn into our church services; but the results 
in this direction have not been encouraging. As soon as the 
children are able to earn a few cents per day, they are put to 
work and we see them no more'' (p. 167). In Rome there 
was established a Boys' Institute, which was advertised as 
" semi*gratuitous." "The word semi-gratuitous, with the 
emphasis on the last part of the compound, expresses the pres- 
ent policy of the administration. Everything must be furnished 
either for nothing or less than cost. This is the shortest way 
to apparent success" (p. 171). It opened with eight pupils: 
three were expelled for stealing (p. 170). Since Dr. Stackpole 
quit the field the educational work of the Methodists has grown 
greatly; and we believe the claim is now made that some of 
the institutions are self-supporting. 

The final judgments of Dr. Stackpole upon the system are 
well worth noting and weighing. " We fear that much of the 
money poured into Italy by Protestants of every name and 
land has become unintentionally a corruption fund" (p. 133)^* 
this he declares in relation to the effect upon preachers. "A 
corrupting financial policy " (p. 1 13) is his characterization of the 
method of dealing with the workers in general. And when we 
remember its influence upon the people and the children, we 
are prepared to hear him sum up the system in this final word : 



Digitized by 



Qtoo^z 



I9IO.] METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY 24S 

** It is an attempt to build up the Kingdom of God by a judi- 
cious use of money alone'' (p. 142).* 



VII. 

Sad chronicle of shame t What object could tempt men of 
a certain religious zeal to stoop to so low a policy and to en- 
list the aid of rogues and mercenaries? Only a rare and 
alluring prize — the conquest of Italy, the Pope's own country^ 
of Rome, his very city t What but this could prove so fatally 
bewitching to the Methodist heart, so dazzling to the Metho* 
dist conscience? Here lies the secret of the warped hearts 
and twisted consciences with which American Methodists have 
attempted to carry out this brilliant enterprise. Elsewhere 
indeed, in the pursuit of their propaganda among Catholics, 
we do not observe in them any nice scrupulosity in the 
choice of means; witness their missions among the Italians 
of our large cities. But when Catholicism is not their game, 
their native sentiments of honor and decency seem to have full 
play. Then, with something higher than hatred to inspire 
zeal, their efforts are more worthy of respect and crowned 
with greater success. In contrast to their Italian missions, Dr. 
Stackpole outlines their policy in Germany. Here we see none 
of those characteristics which are so salient and sinister in bis 
sketch of Italian Methodism. There are no ex- priests, no ex- 
Lutheran ministers, hired in Germany to attack or vilify the 
church they have ceased to serve. Soup is not regarded as 

* Here would be the appropriate place to speak of the results of these missions ; but per- 
haps that has been done sufficiently in the March Catholic World, pp. 858 sg. The only 
trustworthy account is kept by the recording angel, and the secret is safe with him. Dr. 
Stac]q>ole repeatedly asserts that the reports of the Mission, at any rate, are not at all trust- 
worthy, because falsified by the pastors. The great apparent aim is to produce a good in^ 
presskm on the society in New York, from whence cometh their aid. The Americans in charge 
of the Italian Missions are not accused of fraud, however ; but, apparently, Yankee shrewd- 
ness has been beguiled by Italian diplomacy into believing in very highly exaggerated 
numbers. The Mission at present makes far bigger boasts ; we cannot say how great a dis- 
count should be deducted before the truth be reached. Is there one Methodist among them 
all 7 Perhaps one ; possibly fifty ; but many, no doubt, become good Pope-haters. Bishop 
Burt, if quoted correctly (New York Times , Sunday, April 10), has abandoned the hope of 
converting Italy to Methodism, but expects great things from it in the fight for religious 
liberty. It will be remembered that the providential Dr. Tipple, who in one crowded hour 
of glorious life revealed to the world all the sweetness and light of Italian Methodism, also 
strongly advocates religious liberty and the destruction of Popery. So does LAsin^* [See 
remariu hi the department of *' With Our Readers."— Editor.] 



Digitized by 



Google 



246 METHODIST PIONEERS IN ITALY [May. 

the universal, divinely appointed means of salvation. The 
American Methodism of Germany appears — ^if, as we believe 
and trusty Dr. Stackpole's picture is faithful^what we should 
like to see it everywhere — decent and respectable, with a soul 
of piety and fervor and love. But what a marvelous magician 
is religious hate I It waves its wand and, lo t men of ordinary 
honesty and cleanness of life see rascals transformed into help- 
meets for the spread of God's kingdom, they see the light of 
sanctity rest upon ways and means of propaganda from which, 
an their sober senses, they would shrink as too vile to touch. 
All is fair and good when the Pope is the foe. In his pres- 
ence latent antagonism is aroused, and hate, and the determina- 
tion to conquer at any cost. The priests and the scribes of 
Methodism have vowed to undo him. They seek out Judas 
and buy him with silver. They join hands with Herod and 
Pilate, with men who scorn them and hate all religion, in order 
to compass their ends. They encourage the rabble to shout 
for Barabbas, and join with the cohorts of evil that revile and 
spit upon the Vicar of Christ. 



Digitized by 



Google 



Hew £ooIi8* 



It is a constant source of wonder 

CARDINAL MERCIER'S to us why, with the large number of 
CONFERENCES. very excellent books issuing from 

the Catholic press, Catholics are 
not more alive to the benefits and the joys of spiritual reading. 
Nothing would so efficaciously create the ''new man'* within 
them ; nothing would so wondrously transform their lives from 
a dull, monotonous succession of days, than a faithful de- 
votion to healthy spiritual reading. It is idle to say that the 
devotional books written for Catholics are poorly written. 

In truth, with all the active, energetic forces about us that 
constantly seek to deceive us by false values; that constantly 
endeavor to lead us to compromise with the world-spirit; that 
insidiously blind our soul to the vision that God would grant 
it and shut us from the knowledge of our power and our in- 
heritance; it is absolutely necessary for every Catholic, if he 
is to keep the flame of divine love aglow within him, if he is 
to keep, by freedom from mortal sin, at least, the reign of 
the Holy Spirit within the temple of his soul and body, that 
he should, by spiritual reading, preserve fresh and living the 
basic principles of the Christian life. If the soul does not by 
prayer, by reading, by instruction, recall these to its active 
consideration, it will abandon them altogether. 

Call after call is being sent forth by unselfish souls who 
have given themselves to the highest service of humanity ; who 
have, by study and by personal consecration, learnt the prec- 
ious secrets of the real Christian life ; and who, with further 
labor, have written for others in a delightful, appealing way 
of that life and the principles that must guide one in it 
Books of this sort are issued frequently by the Catholic press. 
What they treat of is the very warp and woof of the Christian 
character; and every Catholic — for we are all sufficiently edu- 
cated — should welcome them, read them, and, because of the 
food which under God's grace they will give, lead the life 
which is not of this world and which they must lead if they 
really hope ever to reach the kingdom of God. 

These words will be appropriate for many of the volumes 



Digitized by 



Google 



248 NEW BOOKS [May, 

reviewed in The Catholic World month after month. For 
there is not space always to exhort. Most frequently we most 
confine ourselves to a few lines of exposition. We wish to call 
special attention here to a book* which, though written es- 
pecially for those who were studying for the priesthood, con- 
tains chapters that will be joyfully welcomed by every intel- 
ligent and pious soul — cleric or lay. Cardinal Mercier treats of 
great lofty themes, themes that appeal to every soul, and yet 
which many souls abandon because they hopelessly believe that 
such things are not for them. The Cardinal exposes in a 
masterly way and with simplicty of expression intelligible to 
any one the steps and the methods, and, better still, the prin- 
ciples of the spiritual life. He is thorough, solid, thoughtful, 
competent. He has written a book which has this mark of 
distinction — that it may be employed with profit by the simple 
and the learned; by beginners and by experts. It is com- 
posed of seven conferences. And among the subjects are Re- 
tirement and Recollection; the Voice of God; Intercourse With 
God ; Peace of Soul ; and Emanuel : God With Us. The layman 
who reads it will be able to see what is for him and what is 
not, and he will find here a fullness of instruction, of guidance, 
and of inspiration that will enlighten his mind and gladden his 
heart. We need not speak of its excellences for clerics. The 
translation is unusually well done. 

Mr. John Redmond, in his preface 
IRELAND. to this book,t gives a brief ac- 

By Sutherland. count of the way in which it came 

to be written. ** Some seven years 
ago, when the Irish movement was passing through one of its 
most exciting and critical stages, the proprietors of the Nprtk 
American (of Philadelphia) sent one of the ablest members of 
their staff, Mr. Hugh Sutherland, over to Ireland to describe, 
for the information of the American people, the Irish situation 
as he found it. The result was a series of brilliant and illu- 
minating articles. . . . Mr. Sutherland was again deputed 
this summer (1909) to visit Ireland and record his impressions 

♦ Cardinal MireUf's Omfirmces, Translated from the French by J. M. O'Kavanagfa. 
With Introduction bj Canon Sheehan. New York : Bendger Brothers. 

MrelandYtsitrday and To-day, By Hugh Sutherland. With an Introduction by John 
E. Redmond, M.P. Philadelphia: The N«rth American. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 249 

of its changed conditionsi and this he did in a second series 
of letters no less remarkable than the first." To these two 
series of descriptive letters Mr. Sutherland has appended an 
historical sketch which shows the reasons for Ireland's miseries 
and the justice of the claim for self-government. 

The work is well done. Mr. Sutherland is a wide-awake 
American reporter, with an eye to see and a tongue to tell, 
and a camera, too, to prove his descriptions true. His investi- 
gations were made in the congested districts, mainly in West- 
ern Connaught. The first series of letters paints a dismal 
picture of poverty and distress, but the second series depicts 
conditions which have already been vastly improved, and which 
will, no doubt, continue to grow better as the new peasant 
proprietors acquire complete ownership of their farms. 

Incidentally, Mr. Sutherland describes for us three fine 
types of Irish patriot, and describes them well. One is that 
of a political leader, in the person of Mr. John Fitzgibbon; 
another the practical reformer, quiet and e£fective, Mr. Henry 
Doran, chief land inspector of the Congested Districts Board. 
He is most enthusiastic in his appreciation of Rev. Denis 
0*Hara, parish priest. '' It seems to me that the ' P. P.' which 
he writes after his name is as noble a distinction as any string 
of letters to be found in the peerage. It is the Distinguished 
Service Order of Humanity." 

There is an interesting chapter, by way of postscript, in 
answer to critics. Most of them were moved to write to him 
by anti-Catholic bias. ^'One indignant person « • . dis- 
missed my labors with the charge that I was a narrow-minded 
bigot, hopelessly enslaved by the Church to which he assigned 
me. Perhaps this will be sufficient apology for the very per- 
sonal disclosure that back of my Americanism is an ancestry 
of double-dyed Ulster Scotch-Irish, and that the nearest ap- 
proach to a saint in my church is John Wesley." Concluding 
this topic, he says: ''If religion was 'dragged into* the Irish 
question, the dragging was done by Elizabeth, James I., Wil- 
liam III., James II., and their Parliaments; but there's no use 
writing peevish letters to them, because they're dead. And if 
it is kept in, the keeping is done by those who denounce the 
idea of self-government upon the ground that it would confer 
equal rights upon citizens of a different faith." 



Digitized by 



Google 



S50 NEW BOOKS [May, 

It is cheering to see Catholic 
POLITICS AND HISTORT. writers who have the courage 
By Dewe. and initiative to blaze their own 

way through the virgin forests of 
a new science, instead of following after, as we so often do, 
picking brushwood. The science of sociology, though it occu- 
pied, in some of its phases, the minds of Plato and Aristotle, 
of St Thomas and Dante, of Locke and Rousseau, is still, in 
many important respects, a new science. 

The present volume,* by a Catholic priest, the Rev. J. A. 
Dewe, M.A., of the University of Ottawa, is an inquiry into 
the principles of social development and decay along the lines 
of the nature of man himself. The author is convinced that 
the attempts to explain the rise and fall of nations on the 
basis of climate or of geographical conditions, or of economic 
opportunities, leave out the most important factor in the 
problem — the psychology of individuals and communities. 
Outside of this one contention, he can hardly be said to have 
any pet thesis to defend. He approaches his task with the 
manner of one who has an investigation to make, not a point 
to prove. This is a proper scientific attitude to take, and his 
taking it gives one confidence in his treatment of the problems. 

His plan is stated in the Introduction (p. 4) as follows: 
** It is the human element that counts, and the object of our 
research must be to consider scientifically the constituents of 
this element in the individual, and then to see how its work- 
ings affect the condition of society.** This plan is beset by 
the difficulty that is always present when one endeavors to 
follow a single thread through, a tangle, and the author does 
not always stick to his proposed method. He often takes the 
easier way of discussing social changes from the standpoint of 
the historian rather than of the psychologist. For the rest, 
his conclusions are drawn from a wide knowledge of human 
nature and human history; they are well-balanced and sane, 
and in accordance with Catholic views of life. 

Two of the most valuable chapters are the third, on ''The 
Harmony between the State and £xtra*State Elements/* and 
the seventh, on ''The Influence of Christianity on the State." 
In the former he shows the relation between " extra-state** ele* 
ments, i. e., individual rights and family interests on the one 

♦ PsychoUiy of Politics mnd History^ By Rev. J, A, Dewe, M.A. New York, Bombay, 
and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 2St 

hand and the claims of the general social organism on the other. 
His conclusion is that men are best o£f in a middle condition 
between mere iamily clannishness and the sort of State domi^ 
nation which Socialism proposes. The chapter on Christianity 
is an excellent analysis of the social value of the Gospel 
teaching, with a brief but lurid sketch of the relations between 
the Christian Church and civil society down to our own day« 
The author looks with equanimity upon the present tendency 
towards separation of Church and State. 

We shall venture to quote one passage which is interesting 
to American readers, and which will serve as an example of 
the author's clearness and fairness of view. In his chapter on 
''The Connection Between the Speculative Thought of Indi- 
viduals and the Thought of the Masses/' he says that in coun- 
tries where democracy is all-powerful, as in the United States, 
''it is only with great difficulty that individual genius can 
assert political influence/' He quotes De Tocqueville to this 
effect, and then goes on to say : " What commanding influence 
has there been in the States but owes its power and origin to 
the people themselves? And what instance can be quoted of 
any commanding individuality that ever came into collision 
with the strength of the masses and was then able by sheer 
intellectual force to lead them along ? " This has a good and 
a bad side, as is evident, but to offset the evil in it, as he 
remarks: "The American people have reached generally a 
high level. Even the ordinary workman is fairly well educated 
and is able to take an intelligent interest in the affairs of his 
country.*' The author's summing up of the conditions is really 
a testimony to the vitality of our democracy. The power ex- 
ercised over English opinion by individual thinkers and lead- 
ers " stands out in remarkable contrast with the state of things 
in America, where reforms and changes have almost invariably 
arisen from the people themselves, or from persons who owe 
their influence entirely to the people." 

Canon Sheehan's work in fiction 

THE BLINDNESS OP could be published under a general 

DR. GRAT. title borrowed from George Eliot, 

By Canon Sheehan. Seems from Clerical Life. He has 

been criticized for this by some 
well-intentioned people, who would like to have inscribed over 



Digitized by 



Google 



fS2 NEW BOOKS [May, 

the door of every rectory the legend ''Foris estote, profani/' 
Of such it may be said that they are more reverent than 
judicious. When men are . as prominent in the minds of the 
people as the Catholic priests are, their lives and characters 
are constantly under review. And, necessarily, the estimate is 
made, to a large extent, on the basis of externals. The best 
portion of a priest's life, being hidden with Christ in God, is 
unknown. 

The leading character of the present novel* is an Irish 
parish priest, who was educated under the old semi-Jansenistic 
Irish school, ''a rigorist in theology, a rigid disciplinarian, 
who never knew what it was to dispense in a law either for 
himself or others, ... a grave, stern man, . • • inflex- 
Uble in the observance of statutes, • . • with the fury of a 
revengeful deity on any infraction of law, or any public scandal," 
A type to be respected, but not loved. In the end he dis- 
covers the truth that '' Love is the fulfilling of. the law." 

The book is not, however, a mere study in sacerdotal psy- 
chology. It contains a well-handled bit of romance; together 
with scenes of gypsy life and smuggling, which bring us back 
to Guy ManneHng ; the unending, miserable, Irish land squab- 
bles; and scenes of Irish domestic life, painted with tender- 
ness and humor. And the still deeper note, so prevalent in 
all his work, is not wanting here. His deepest interest seems 
to be, not in life as led by this or that individual, but in the 
great problem of life itself. He has sympathy for various 
views, but over and over again there comes out his own Cel- 
tic Christian mystical view of life. His work is the work of 
a priest. It is priestly in its broad and generous view of man^ 
his passions and aspirations, and priestly also in its steady in- 
sistance on the claims of God. 

Because of the limits of our space 
INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, it is impossible to give reviews 

such as we would wish to many 
important publications. In fact, with regard to many new 
books an article of ten pages would scarce do justice. The 
Arthur H. Clark Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, whose unsel- 
fish labor as publishers is worthy of all praise, are just now 
issuing a work entitled The Documentary History of American 

• Th€ Blindness ofthi Vtry Rev, Dt, Gray^ By Canon Shechan. New York : Longmans, 
Green & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ta] NEW BOOKS 253 

Industrial Society ^^ to which the much-abused adjective ** monu- 
mental*' may be justly ascribed. The work will cover in a 
documentary way the labor, industrial and generally sociologi- 
cal history of our country from pioneer to present day. The 
American Bureau of Industrial Research and the Carnegie In- 
stitution of Washington have gathered information through years 
of labor, at an expense of over seventy-five thousand dollars, 
and have carefully prepared and edited the work. 

It must be apparent at once that any one who wishes 
to make a study of America; of the beginnings of its politi- 
cal institutions; of the courses that shaped its history and 
guided the actions of its people — for nothing is in a practical 
way more close to the people than their daily occupation — any 
one who wishes to speak or write upon social or industrial 
America must be acquainted with these volumes. They give 
detailed, documentary evidence which is otherwise inaccessible; 
and evidence such as this is, one must know and digest if he 
is to speak with authority. From these volumes one may 
really know at first hand the beginnings and the growth of 
industrial America and of the great forces within it that are 
surely making the America of the future. No student of 
social reform, no student who seriously looks out upon the 
horizon and asks himself anxiously what mean the clouds that 
are gathering there, will remain unacquainted with this thorough, 
painstaking work. The volumes so far published deal with the 
Plantation and Frontier, and the Labor Conspiracy Cases from 
1806-1842. The work will be completed in ten volumes, and 
will recite by documents the history of the labor movement 
up to 1880. 

No doubt the documentary history of later years will sub- 
sequently be added, and we will have what we absolutely lack 
—and what no other country lacks — a detailed record of our 
industrial and economic life. The Catholic World earnestly 
hopes for the publishers the success and support which their 
labors deserve. Every library in the country worthy of the 
name will have on its shelves this work; and the individual 
able to afford his own personal collection will do well to 
secure it 

* Tki Docnmintafy History of American Industrial Sociity, With numerous illustrations 
and facsimiles. Complete in ten volumes. Cleveland, Ohio : The Arthur H. Clark Com- 
pany. 



Digitized by 



Google 



354 ASJT BOOKS [May, 

The translation of this volume * 
THEOLOGT OF THE was a work worth doing and is a 
SACRAMENTS. work well done. Of late years 

liberal Protestant and Rationalistic 
Iheologians have declared that the Catholic dogmas concerning 
the Sacraments are purely human inventions and that these 
Christian rites have been borrowed from Paganism. With an 
array of historical facts that would startle the uninitiated, and 
aided by an unscientific criticism, these scholars have triumph- 
antly given their biased and exaggerated doctrines to the world 
as the latest results of scientific and critical investigation. 

In the present volume Father Pourrat submits these same 
historical facts to a rigorously impartial and scientific criticism. 
The result has been to show ^'that an exclusively Christian 
inspiration presided over the origin of our dogmas regarding 
the Sacraments and over the origin of those Sacraments them- 
selves; and that between the scriptural and patristic data in 
this matter and the sacramentary definitions of the Council of 
Trent there exists a conformity sufficient to satisfy any reason- 
able mind.'' 

The various chapters of the book deal with the questions 
usually handled in the treatise on The Sacraments in General; 
The Definition ; Matter and Form ; Efficacy of the Sacraments ; 
The Sacramental Character; The Number and Divine Institution 
of the Sacraments ; The Intention in the Minister and Subject. 

But besides being treated from the ordinary doctrinal point 
of view, they are all subjected to an exhaustive historical study. 
For this purpose the author divides the matter into four peri- 
ods: from the beginning to St. Augustine; from St. Augus- 
tine to the Twelfth Century ; from the Twelfth Century to the 
Council of Trent; from the Council of Trent to our own day. 
And he shows how the doctrines have been deduced from the 
sacramental practice of the Church, how the sacramental the- 
ology has grown out of the Church living by her Sacraments. 
The process can be summed up in the consecrated phrase ''Lex 
Orandi, Lex Credendi.'' In the earlier centuries, the Fathers 
were absorbed by such doctrines as the Trinity, Incarnation, 
Redemption, Original Sin, and Grace; there was no doctrinal 
development of the Sacraments ; writers were content with a 

* Tkiohiy of the Sacraments, A Study in Positive Theology. By the Very Rev. P. 
Pourrat, V.G., Rector of the Theological Seminary of Lyons, France. Authorized Transla- 
tion from the third French Edition. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 255 

mere description of the existing customs; hence the theology, 
as distinct from the practice of the Sacraments, was incomplete 
and vague. It was only later that Christian thought turned 
to the formal consideration of the Sacraments: the theologians 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the representatives of 
Catholic Tradition in their time as the Fathers were in the 
first centuries, gathered together and synthesized all the tradi- 
tional data relative to the Sacraments and constructed there- 
from a complete theological system. 

The Council of Trent (1545-63) defined the traditional doc- 
trine of the Sacraments which Protestants were casting aside; 
we say the traditional doctrine in order to distinguish it from 
the theological opinions which the Church has never sanctioned 
and which have been subjected to change according to the re- 
sults obtained in late centuries from a more profound and more 
critical study of history. It is to this work of positive theol- 
og7f u distinct from scholastic theology, that modern theolo- 
gians are now devoting their efforts in accordance with the 
desire expressed by Pope Pius X. in his Encyclical on Mod- 
ernism. 

Such in brief is a summary of a volume which should be 
in the library of every English-speaking priest and seminarian. 
The field of positive theology has been exploited by German 
and French Rationalists for their own purposes and their works 
have found abundant translators into English. But it is a field 
that has as yet been but little explored by Catholic scholars 
•f any nationality. Of late years something is being done, but 
as yet our English literature on positive theology is limited to 
such volumes as the one under discussion and the translation 
of Riviere's History of the Atonement. 

We trust, then, that this volume of Father Pourrat will have 
the circulation and success it assuredly deserves. 

We welcome this little book on The 
THE COURAGE OF CHRIST. Courage of Christ • In it Father 

Schuyler sets an example and pre- 
sents a model. In the first place, the work is based on a sound 
theological foundation. There is a complete avoidance of the 
danger into which pious Protestants often fall, of getting to view 
our Lord as if he were a mere man, ** the Master,*' indeed, but not 

^Tk4 Courage of Christ. By Henry C. Schuyler, S.T.L. Philadelphia: Peter Reilly; 
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



256 NEW BOOKS [May, 

(at least not with doe emphasis) '' the Lord God/' Secondly, the 
study is based strictly on the Gospel record, and there is no 
attempt to push description beyond the legitimate ground of 
imagination working on the data of the Gospels and knowledge 
of the customs of the times. The style is manly, direct, simple, 
sincere. The object of the author is to present the actions of 
our Lord so as to produce a moral e£fect on the readers. This 
he does by revealing the attractiveness of Christ as a model 
of courage and patience, and by well-timed and brief moral 
disquisitions and exhortations. We are glad to be told that 
^' this little volume is the first of a series, in each of which, 
circumstances permitting, one of the virtues of our Lord will 
be treated.'* 

The daughter of a great-grandson 

TffB HOLT PRACTICES OF of Blessed Thomas More, Helen 

A DIVmE LOVER. More, was the head of that grou^ 

of nine young women who, in 
about 1623, left inhospitable England and founded a Benedic- 
tine community at Cambrai. Miss More's name in religion 
was Gertrude. She possessed many of the gifts of her illus- 
trious and saintly grandparent. She was well educated, talented, 
and of quick and ready wit. Yet she suffered from the defects 
of a too-high spirited and enthusiastic temperament. The first 
years of her religious life were, in a great measure, unhappy, 
and at length the clouds of doubt settled upon her soul and 
she seriously questioned her religious vocation. But her soul 
was not to be lost to the high service of God. She was to 
be taught that hers was a nature that must possess all or 
nothing; must climb to the highest perfection or not seek to 
climb at all. 

Under Divine Providence, a master of the spiritual life of 
prayer was sent to her. Father Augustine Baker was at that 
time already renowned for his learning and his spiritual in- 
sight. Under his skillful, holy guidance Dame Gertrude ad- 
vanced rapidly. Her soul grew strong in prayer, and interior 
peace settled upon her. She was in religion only nine years; 
yet when about to die, and asked if she wished Father Baker 
to come to her assistance, she answered: ''No; only thank 
him a thousand times for having secured the peace I now en- 
joy.'' Dame Gertrude died in the odor of sanctity on the 
17th of August, 1633, in the twenty* seventh year of her age. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] NEW BOOKS 257 

Her life, which was written by Father Atigastine Baker, is, we 
are pleased to say, to be republished in the very near future. 

Dame Gertrude was the compiler of this small book of 
Devotions. They were prepared by order of her confesson 
They are not always original, for Dame Gertrude drew upon 
any source near at hand — the writings, for example, of St 
Augustine, particularly his Confessions^ and of the Abbot 
Blosius. The title. The Ideofs Devotions^ was not an uncommon 
one in that age and means simply ''Devotions of a Plain 
Man/' 

The book * breathes throughout the spirit and the teaching 
of the great Benedictine master — Father Baker. It will be a 
source of much profit and great joy to tvtxy lover of prayer; 
and a special help, as Dom Fox says in his introduction, to 
those "who by nature are unfit to practice meditation in the 
sense in which that word is usually understood by spiritual 
writers in these days. For many souls this is a most salutary 
and necessary practice; but for others such discursive prayer, 
as it is called, is a distraction and a hindrance.'' 

The work gives first a summary of perfection ; then careful 
directions as to the use of these devotions; then follow the 
devotions themselves — practices of contrition; exercises on the 
life and passion of our Savior, Jesus Christ; acts of resigna- 
tion ; holy practices of divine love ; holy exercises of pure love 
of God; certain amorous aspirations; and at the end is added 
the Top of the Heavenly Ladder — which is really a develop- 
ment and completion of the Devotions. Dame Gertrude tells us 
that they were written for persons of ''every state and con- 
dition — religious, single, or married people." She prays that 
all may make use of them to the honor of God and their souls* 
good — and we heartily re-echo her prayer. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas, in ^at 
SOCIALISM. article II., U.^^ q. 66, a. 2, of bis 

By Spargo. Summa, which is devoted to the 

discussion of private property, 
presents as his chief argument in its favor the fact that it is 
in accord with the best interests of the community. A simi- 
lar principle is affirmed by Catholic teachers when, in consid- 

* TAi Holy Practices of a Divime Lover; or, the Saintfy Ideofs DevotUtu, By Dame 
Qeitmde More. London : Sands &^Co. 
VOL. XCL— 17 



Digitized by 



Google 



258 NEW BOOKS [Majr, 

ering the limitations of the right of private property, they 
reprobate that use which is inconsistent with the best inter* 
ests of the community largely considered. In a word, private 
property is justified on the one hand, and is limited on the 
other, by the common welfare. 

Now if, accepting this principle, one were to reflect upon 
the abuses prevalent in the industrial and commercial world 
to-day; and if, reflecting thereupon, one were to outline a 
method for the permanent bettering of conditions, it is possi- 
ble that he would produce a volume resembling in many re- 
spects the little book which Mr. Spargo has been pleased to 
name The Substance of Socialism.^ 

In Mr. Spargo's vocabulary. Socialism is a principle— a princi- 
ple which calls for the elimination of the power of an idle class in 
society to exploit the wealth- producers (p. 84). It is not opposed 
to private property. Subject to the superior right of society as 
a whole, the individual possession of private property might 
be ** far more widespread under Socialism than to-day *' (p. 89)* 
The form of ownership ** is relatively unimportant according to 
the Socialist philosophy" (p. 92). ''Socialism is not hostile 
to private property, except where such property is used to 
exploit the labor of others than its owners. The socialization 
of property in the Socialist State would be confined to (i) 
such things as in their nature could not be held by private 
owners without subjecting the community to exploitation or 
humiliation; (2) such things as the citizens might agree to own 
in common to attain superior efficiency in their management'' 
(p. 94). What Socialism wants, in a word, is ** equal economic 
opportunities for all ** (p. 33). Moreover, if a change be effected 
in the existing order, **\t is the duty of the State to give an 
indemnity to those whose interests will be injured by the nec- 
essary abolition of laws contrary to the common good in so far 
as this indemnity is consistent with the interests of the nation 
as a whole '* (quoted from Liebknecht in the Foreword). 

Critics of the author have charged that he is not an ''or- 
thodox Socialist '* ; he vindicates his claim in the Preface. But 
to what avail will men continue to quarrel about this most 
unfortunate wordl The important question is this: Can we 
trust the Socialist ? There are thousands of us who think much 
as Mr. Spargo does about many things, and who suffer quite 

• Th€ Substance of Socialism, By John Spargo. New York : B. W. Huebsch. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] NEW BOOKS 359 

as keenly in oar souls because of the cruelty and injustice 
rampant in the present order; and yet we are deterred from 
making common political cause with ''Socialism/' because we 
do not feel that we can trust its influence in the moral and 
religious field. This timidity is unfortunate for the cause of 
economic reform, no doubt; but will Mr. Spargo say that it is 
without foundation? Tell us, Mr. Spargo, if we were to put 
you and yours in power, would you confine your activity strictly 
to the economic territory, speaking no word and lifting no 
hand against the moral principles, doctrinal truths, or religious 
institutions that we hold sacred ? 

We have already called the attention of our readers to the 
volumes of De Ponte's Meditations ; and we wish now to speak 
of the excellencies of three additional volumes of these same 
meditations published by B. Herder, of St Louis. The volumes 
are in Latin; exceptionally well-printed and bound; and the 
merits of De Ponte's writings need no comment— any words 
on the merit of these meditations would be superfluous. Learned, 
solid, inspiring, they should be heartily welcomed and read 
and re-read by every priest. The third volume of the medi- 
tations treats of the active and the contemplative life ; the birth, 
childhood, preaching, and miracles of our Lord; the fourth of 
our Lord's Sacred Passion and Death; the fifth of the Resurrec- 
tion, the work of- the Holy Spirit, the conversion of St PauU 
the ascension of our Blessed Lady, and the joy of the elect 
To the editor and the publishers of this most worthy Bibliotheca 
Ascetica Mystica our sincere gratitude is again extended. 

This small brochure* was accompanied by a request for a 
favorable review. If we could possibly do so, it would have 
been a personal pleasure for us to oblige the author. Truth 
and justice to our readers compel us to say that a more in- 
exact, thoughtless, and altogether foolish pamphlet than this 
has never in our memory, which extends over many years* 
come to us for criticism. 

This novel t gives us much of novelty and of humor, and 
its serious side deals capably with the struggles of a man, weak 

* 7*A# Esoteric Meaning of thi Stvtn Saerawanis, By Princess Karadja. London : 
Messrs. Wooderson. 

t Thi Up^Gradi, Bj Wilder Goodwin. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



260 NEW BOOKS [May. 

in will power, but in a measure ambitious to overcome that 
weakness and achieve better things. The love of a good woman 
helps him to success. 

The confusion and uncertainty regarding the title and 
authorship of this book* are explained in the Preface. The 
work is divided into two parts : one historical ; the other crit- 
ical. The first part begins with the preaching of Christ and 
summarizes the principal phases of the history of Christian be- 
lief and unbelief. The second part explains the meaning of 
faith and of unbelief^ and seeks to analyze the causes and 
principle forms of contemporary infidelity. The book con- 
cludes with a chapter by Archbishop Ryan, of Philadelphia, on 
'^ Paganism Under a New Name.'* 

Among the recent works of fiction we wish to mention 
particularly: Trammelings^ by Georgina Pell Curtis, a volume 
of short stories attractive in style, wholesome in tone, and 
agreeably presented. Two of the short stories particularly 
recommend themselves: ''A Romance of Guadalupe'* and 
*' Castle Walls.'* The volume is published by B. Herder, of 
St. Louis. 

W. Woodruff Anderson gives us a delightful book in A 
Strain of White. He tells charmingly of the unselfish labor of 
.an old cur^ in the spiritual training and development of a 
half-breed Indian girl, and how through various vicissitudes 
and temptations that training proved successful. The book is 
published by Little, Brown & Co., Boston. 

The heroine of So As By Fire^ by Jean Connor, is a mag- 
netic little soul, blooming like a wild flower amid adverse 
circumstances. She gives to the book vivacious action and is 
at once its heroine and its villain. With the trials and struggles 
of a perfectly candid nature interestingly presented as a back- 
ground the story is attractive and capable and has throughout 
a distinctly Catholic atmosphere. The volume is published by 
Benziger Brothers, New York. 

* Th€ Causes and Curt of Unbelief. By N. J. Laforet. Revised, enlarged, and edited bj 
Cardinal Gibbons, with a chapter by the Most Rev, P. J. Ryan, D.D. New York: P. J. 
Kenedy & Son. 



Digitized by 



Google 



jfoteidtt petiobicals. 

7h$ Tablet (19 March): ''The French Liquidation Scandal/' 
An editorial on the ''affaire Duez/' M. Duez, one 
of the three liquidators of the property of the dissolved 
religious communities, has been incarcerated on the 
charge of enormous defalcations.— Fr. Thurston, SJ., 
contributes the first of a series of papers on "The 
Dark Ages of English Catholicism/' This deals with 

the "No- Popery Alarm of 1734-5." The Roman 

Correspondent gives the views of the Italian Press on 
the new Code of Canon and Marriage Laws.— —An- 
other step in the process for the canonization of Yen. 
Oliver Plunket. 
(26 March): "The Joy of Achievement/' Bernard 

Whelan describes the new Westminster Cathedral. 

The House of Lords has completely vindicated the 
claims of the monks regarding the Chartreuse Liqueur. 
(2 April): Fribourg and its University," by Wilfred C. 
Robinson, " The University of Fribourg, while national 
and Catholic, is also international in its character. 
Both its professors and its students are drawn from 
many lands besides Switzerland.** 

(9 April): "The Easter Festival,'* by the Rev. Herbert 
Thurston, S.J., deals with the ancient tradition which 
teaches that the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension 
of our Lord are this year commemorated on the dates 

upon which they actually occurred. In "Economic 

History for Catholic Women,** Mrs. Philip Gibbs thinks 
a knowledge of this branch of history indispensable to. 

* those who wish to fulfill their duties to their Church 

and their country. She suggests certain Catholic and 
non-Catholic works with which to commence, and makes 
a plea for an insistence in our convents upon the eco- 
nomic aspect of history •-»—" In the Footsteps of Some 
Martyrs,** by the Comtesse de Courson. An account of 
thirty-two sisters put to death in BoU&ne during the 
Reign of Terror. 

The International Journal of Ethics (April) : Charles R. Hen* 
derson, in "The Ethical Problems of Prison Science,*' 



Digitized by 



Google 



263 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May, 

comments upon the questions to be considered by the 
Interaational Prison Congress at Washington, D.C., in 

October next. ''Nature in Morals and Politics." W. J. 

Roberts. F. C. Sharp and M. C. Otto, in '* A Study of 

the Popular Attitude Towards Retributive Punishment/' 
by the State or individual, describe an elaborate ques- 
tioning by them of one hundred agricultural freshmen 
students. It appeared that only two out of the one 
hundred utterly opposed the principle of retribution — 
that is, punishment not lis a deterrent, but simply for 
the sake of getting even. 

Tki Irish Ecclesiastical Record (March) : '' The Irish Pastoral 
College at Antwerp,*' by the Very Rev. P. Boyle, CM. 
— '' Peter, Prince of the Apostles," is an account, by 
Rev. James P. Conry, of St. Peter*s connection with 
and martyrdom at Rome, based on the testimony of the 
Fathers and tradition.— —W, H. Grattan Flood sketches 
the life of ''John Walker — a Forgotten Maynooth Pro- 
fessor."— —The Editor contributes an article on "Mod- 
ern Socialism." He deals at length with the life and 
work of Karl Marx, the author of modern scientific so- 
cialism. The writer denies Marx's fundamental economic 
principle " that manual labor, estimated in terms of time, 
is the sole source and measure of economic value or of 
wealth," because it takes no account of the mental en- 
dowments, the energy, and thrift of the laborer, nor of 
the difference in value of the objects worked upon. Dr. 
Hogan also exposes " the principle of atheistic material- 
ism which underlies the whole system of the famous so- 
cialistic philosopher." 

Le Comspondani (lo March): Gustave gives an account of the 

" Risings of the Seine." ^"The Sentiments of Alsace,'* 

by Pierre de Quirielle, reviews the recent discussion of 
the Chancellor of the German Empire, M. de Bethmann- 
HoUweg, and the answer of the Parliament of Alsace- 
Lorraine upon the political conditions prevailing in these 
provinces. In view of the sentiments shown, at the re- 
cent unveiling of a monument " to the French soldiers 
who fell for their country " at Wissemburg, and at the 
releasing ofJ'Abb^ Wetterle, who had been imprisoned 
for affirming his French sentiments, the author thinks 



Digitized by 



Google 



I910.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 26% 

that this section is still French at heart.— ^C. Looten 
writes of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, *' whose novels are a 
school of virility and energy." 

(25 March): Under the title "Shall we have a Navy?'' 
L. de Saint- Victor de Saint-BIancard decries the decline 
of France as a naval power, which he attributes to 
"France being entirely abandoned to the power of an 
ignorant and blundering oligarchy, who are indifferent 

to the general interests." Prince Louis d'Orleans et 

Bragance gives an interesting account of the ruins and 
natural beauties of "Peru and Bolivia."— ^Fcrnand 
Caussy narrates the happenings of March and April of 
1810 that resulted in "The Marriage of Napoleon and 
Marie-Louise."-^—" Souvenirs of Assisi," by Johannes 
Joergensen. 

£tudis (5 -March) : In a number of unedited letters of de Lam- 
ennais to Father Ventura, we find the former to be a 
determined opponent of :Gallicanism, and a strong de- 
fender of the Pope.— H. J. Leroy maintains, amongst 
other things, in defence of labor unions, that they are 
misunderstood by the clergy. This explains the manifest 
hostility of priests towards, and the lack of sufficient in- 
terest in, the movement ^Jean Aicard, the poet of 

Provence, is compared to Copp^e. 

(20 March) : " The Psychology of St. Francis of Assist," 
by Lucien Roure. The writer maintains that history 
gives the lie to Paul Sabatier and the whole Protestant 
school who try to see in Francis a reformer of the Refor- 
mation type.— —" Aviation," by Pierre de Vregille. 
"The Social Status of Catholics in Holland," by P. 
Mullen 

jStudis Ftanciscaines : P. Egidio M. Gulsta discusses the question 
as to who was the "True Architect of the Basilica of 
Assisi."— — " Mental Prayer and Contemplation," by P. 

L. de Besse. " The Franciscan Spirit," by P. Eugene, 

the second of a series of conferences for the Third Order. 
"There is no essential difference between the Franciscan 
spirit and the Christian spirit." 

Revue du Clergi Franpais (i March): "The Primacy of Peter 
and the Coming of Peter to Rome," by Ch. Guignebert, 
is reviewed. The author tends towards denying the 



Digitized by 



Google 



264 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May* 

strength of the Petrine texts, and attributes the tradi- 
tion of St. Peter's visit to Rome to a desire of the 

Judaizers to exalt St. Peter above St. Paul. E. Evrard 

reviews the works of Robert Hugh Benson, treating in 
particular the qualities and defects of the novel entitled 
By What Authority. Mgr. Amette, writing of '' Edu- 
cation/' considers the necessity of religion in education 
and the roles which the family, the State, and the Church 
respectively fill therein. 

(15 March): ''Orpheus and the Gospel'' is the reprint 
of a lecture by P. Batiffol, in which he adduces numer- 
ous evidences to show that, contrary to the theory of 
M. Reinach in his work Orpheus^ St. Paul's teaching 
closely depends on the teaching of Christ— ^P. Con- 
veilhier treats of the '' Principal Results of the Excava- 
tions of Susa and Their Relations with the Bible."—— 
'' New Letters of de Lamennais " are reviewed. 

La Rivus du Monde (i March): In the first of his articles on 
''France and the Holy See," Abb^ P^ret treats of the 
preliminary negotiations, confidential and public, respect- 
ing the coronation of the Emperor Napoleon the First. 
-»— Discussing the "Question of the Orient," Marcel 
Joran gives a risumi of the " Treaty of Berlin," signed 
July 13, 1878.— "Alphonse Daudet and Provence," by 

J. Hugues. "A Robber at the Grand Chartreuse,'* 

a brief history of Dom Leonis, by Eugene Grlselle.— — 
" A Literary Memory and the Art of Cultivating It," by 
Albert Robichon. 
(15 March): "Man and God," the first of a series of 

conferences by M. Sicard. "The History of Canon 

Law in France" deals with the "collation of bene- 
fices. " " Father Jean Amoux, \S.J., Confessor to 

Louis XIIL," by Eugene Griselle. 

Rivue Pratique d* Apologitique (15 March): H. Les^tre writes on 
"The Annunciation." The Church, in recalling in its 
office the Gospel narrative of the Mystery, concentrates 
attention upon the great things done to Mary and the 
manner in which she responded to her sublime vocation, 
He incidentally comments on the "Ave Maria Stella." 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach {II.) : " Russian Mysticism," by J. 
Overmans, S.J. Professor Zdziechowski, an authorita- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] FOREIGN PERIODICALS %6s 

tive writer, thinks that Russian genius, with its senti- 
mental mysticism, could teach us a truer valuation of 
sentiment and thus enrich the powers of our soul. All 
Russians have the same mystical faith and glowing 
patriotism for ''Holy Russia/' It is unshaken by the 
darkest clouds. But such enthusiasm does not stimulate 
towards definite political goals. Successful action is 
based on calm deliberation and Russian mysticism is 
opposed to this. 

Civilta Cattolica (19 March): ''A False Concept of Religion 
in Dante '' thinks that Karl Vassler, in his study of the 
Divina Commidia^ in its genesis and interpretation, has 
falsely conceived the idea of religion therein. Vassler lays 
down, as requisite for the right understanding and just 
appreciation of Dante, the history of Christian dogma 
as Harnack and the German Rationalistic school por- 
tray it. '' Accusations Against the Catechism *' shows 

how the state of affairs in Italy is growing more like 
that of France in the desire to destroy everything that 
savors of Christianity in the schools. 

La Scuola Caitolica (March): A reply to ''An Objection 
Against the Miracles of Lourdes," by Fra Agostino Ge- 
melli. The instantaneousness of the -cures, it was said, 
is only apparent,'' for the influence of the nervous sys* 
tem upon the sick person during the time he is think- 
ing of the future cure, during the time of preparation 
for the pilgrimage, is more than sufficient to determine 
a very rapid process of restoring the diseased tissues. 
This, it is claimed, is opposed to biological principles. 
A second objection is that the cures of Lourdes are but 
the result of natural causes; the proof is the fact that 
scars remain after the cures have been effected. The 
answer is given that the cicatrices correspond in no way 
to the gravity of the maladies, and that they are en- 
tirely unlike those observed in similar cases; several 
cases of cures are cited to substantiate this statement. 

RasSn y Fe (March): A hitherto unpublished article by Bal- 
mes, entitled : " Persecution and Opposition Suffered by 
the Clergy." He attributes this to three causes: the 
Church insists upon faith; she will not submit to any 
external authority; she fearlessly reproves the wicked. 



Digitized by 



Google 



266 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May, 

-^— H. Gil contributes some notes on ''Catholic Mis- 
sions Among the Heathen."-^—'' Modernism and Social 
Action/' by N. Nogner, discusses the letter of our Holy 
Father to the '' Social and Economic League '' of Italy, 
pointing out bow this League is really opposed to the 
Church. ''The Historical Method and the Interpre- 
tation of the Synoptic Evangelists/' by L. Murillo. 

C. Gdmez Rodeles continues his *' Footprints of the 
Ancient Jesuits in Europe, America, and the Philip- 
pines/' An illustrated article, by E. Ascunce, on 

"The Conquest of the Air." 
EspaHa y Amirica (March): "Godless Education." P. M. Rod- 
riquez H., after outlining the results of such a system 
elsewhere, concludes that "Spain will never consent to 
destroy herself with that poison," "notwithstanding the 
attempts of certain anarchists and political demagogues/' 
P. S. Sanz discusses " Halley's Comet" After nar- 
rating the history of our knowledge concerning it, he 
assures us that the passage of the earth through its tail 
will not perceptibly affect us.-^—" Theological Modern- 
ism and Traditional Theology," continued, by P. S. 
Garcia. This number takes up Penance and Extreme 
Unction.' — ^Continuation of the "Description of the 
Province and City of Mompds, Columbia." Marques de 
Sabuz is of the opinion that [but for the laziness and 
"brahminic quietism" of the inhabitants this province 
would rival any section in the world in opulence.— ^A 
second article upon "Spain and the Argentine Exposi- 
tion," by P. A. Monjas.-^—" Patriotism and Primary 
Education in the Argentine Republic," by P. C. Fanjul* 
The author thinks that the Argentine owes her strength 
and prosperity to a system of free education compulsory 
upon all children between six and fourteen. By care- 
fully arranged books, festivals commemorating historic 
events, statues, etc., a fervid patriotism is instilled. 
This patriotism, while primarily directed to the Re- 
public, also embraces Spain and all Spanish-speaking 
countries. 



Digitized by 



Google 



IRecent Events^ 

The latter half of April saw the 
France. end of the Chamber of Deputies 

bjr effluxion of time, and the first 
elections for the new Chamber took place on the 24th of the 
month; bat as the second ballots are not held until the 8th 
of this month, the definite composition of the new Chamber 
is not yet settled. The prospects are that there will be a 
quiet election with no great change in the relative strength of 
parties, nor is it considered probable that M. Brian d will be 
displaced. The Duez scandal threatened to shake his position, 
but he was able to show that it was to action taken by him- 
self more than a year ago that the discovery of the delin- 
quencies was due. The appointment of Duez and his fellow- 
liquidators was, of course, made many years ago, shortly after 
the passing of the Waldeck- Rousseau Law; and not by a 
government at all, but by the judiciary. Consequently, they 
could not be removed at pleasure, but only by legal proceed- 
ings with legal proof. A bill has been introduced to place 
the liquidators under the immediate control of the government, 
with the hope that similar defalcations in the future may be 
avoided; but from the many evidences of the existence of 
widespread corruption that are coming to light, this hope seems 
to be somewhat sanguine* The navy in particular seems to 
be steeped in dishonesty, and some years ago the army was 
stained in the same way. Secular upbringing works out rather 
in the wrong direction. 

Another example of the inability of the secular system to 
cope with the situation is the existence in Paris of a little 
army of Apaches. In a certain quarter they form the domin- 
ating element of the population. A burglar leaves his kit or 
revolver with the innkeeper and has no fear that he will be 
betrayed. Hundreds of lodging houses are given up to the 
worst characters, male and female. Wholesale arrests have 
been made from time to time, but without result, for the 
humanitarian movement prevents severe treatment and secures 
their release or an amnesty. M. Lupine, the Prefect of Police, 
pronounces, as a result of experience, that excessive philan- 
thropy is dangerous. '' If Paris is not protected it will become 
a haunt of cut- throats.'' 



Digitized by 



Google 



268 RECENT EVENTS [May, 

A more pleasing aspect of Paris life was presented during 
the recent Holy Week and Easter. Church-going, independent 
authorities assert, is on the increase. The Madeleine was 
thronged on Good Friday throughout a great part of the day, 
and in all the churches the celebrations were very impressive, 
and the congregations large. On £aster Day the services in 
all the churches were attended by congregations remarkable 
alike for numbers and for their devout and reverent bearing. 
The music performed does not seem to have suffered from re- 
cent legislation, for it included works of Palestrina, Bach, Mo- 
zart, Beethoven, Schubert, Cherubini, and Haydn, of the older 
school, the more modern being represented by Schumann, 
C^sar Franck, Gounod, Wagner, and Saint-Saens. 

The disclosures above referred to have caused in many 
minds somewhat pessimistic views as to the future of the 
Republic, and have called forth from the Due d'Orl^ans some 
criticisms of the present state of things. He also pointed out 
the way in which a monarchy would put an end to existent 
evils. Small response, however, has been elicited by his ap- 
peal, although it is recognized that it should not be disdained, 
and that his censures should be treated as those of a ''wise 
enemy,'' and made use of to take the necessary measures to 
remove the evils. If the Republic is ever imperilled, it will 
be by the errors of the Republicans rather than by the attacks 
of Royalists. This is the view held by moderate Republicans, 
for modern France, it is declared, has the Republic in its 
blood. 

The Old-Age Pensions Bill has at last become law, after 
various modifications made in the Senate, which is allowed in 
France to alter even financial measures ; in this case it lowered 
the amount of the pensions of some classes of working-men. 
This law is considered to be the most important measure of 
social reform that has been made during the Third Republic, 
although within the last four years no fewer than twenty- 
three social laws have been passed. The Old-Age Pensions Law 
will alleviate the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of the 
poorest of the French people. It differs from the English 
Law in that it requires contributions to be made by those who 
enjoy its benefits. 

The Tariff Revision Bill has also been passed, and as it 
raises duties against Great Britain, notwithstanding the entmts 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 269 

cordiale^ proving that business is always business, it has given 
to the Tariff Reformers in England one more argument for 
the change which they advocate. 

The advent of the new Chancellor 
Germany. has had upon the foreign policy 

of the Empire a tranquilizlng 
effect His words and his actions inspire confidence, and it is 
felt that he aims at doing justice and not merely defending 
German interests, because they are German interests. This 
was seen clearly in his treatment of the Mannesmann claims. 
These brothers had obtained exclusive mining concessions cov- 
ering more than an eighth of the whole territory of Morocco. 
Naturally this was gratifying to Germans as a race, and when 
the Chancellor refused to lend the support of the Empire he 
was violently accused and denounced as not being patriotic. 
He, however, refused to recede from the position which he 
had taken up, because to support the claims would be to vio* 
late the agreement with the other Powers, and would destroy 
the confidence reposed by them in the good faith of Germany. 
^'To a policy of treaty- breaking I will not give myself,'' he 
declared in the Reichstag. '^ Nothing will persuade me to 
break the pledge contracted at Tangier at our instance. This 
point of view is above every other consideration whatever." 
This sounds a new note of fidelity and sincerity, and tends to 
the purification of the somewhat pestiferous atmosphere which 
has pervaded European Chancelleries ever since Austria's an- 
nexation of thet Provinces. Equally clear were his declarations 
as to the relations between Germany and Great Britain. '' We 
build our navy not for aggressive purposes, but solely because 
we are convinced that we require an effective sea-power for 
the protection of our coasts and our trade. Our desire is 
equally apparent, without prejudice and in sincerity, to culti- 
vate friendly relations with England." 

Prince Henry of Prussia, who has recently been on a visit 
to London, made similar declarations. '* I gained the impres- 
sion," he said, ''that sincere and honorable feeling prevails 
towards us in England, and that there is absolutely no idea of 
aggression in English Government circles. In my opinion the 
feeling is mutual. Every attempt should be made to strengthen 
mutual confidence between the two Powers. The old expres- 



Digitized by 



Google 



a7o RECENT EVENTS [May, 

sion — confidence for confidence — applies^ here/' The Nortk-^ 
German Gazette^ an authoritative organ, says that the two 
German Socialists in the Reichstag uttered treasonable senti- 
ments when they stated that the people who maintained that 
the German naval construction was directed against England 
were right in this contention. It declares such a view sense- 
less, and that the German navy, while meant to be effective, 
will always occupy a modest place by the side of the British 
navy. 

Alsace-Lorraine is at present in the subordinate position of 
a Province in the Empire governed by a Statthalter appointed 
by the Emperor. At one time it was widely believed that its 
inhabitants would never consent to any form of incorporation 
with their conquerors. But times have changed, a new gener- 
ation has sprung up, and the representatives of the province 
in the Reichstag are now clamoring for their recognition as a 
Federal State and protesting their loyalty to the Empire. In 
response the Chancellor has promised the speedy introduction 
of a Bill for the development of the Constitution of Alsace- 
Lorraine. The extension of political independence was, the 
Chancellor said, absolutely the only way to promote the best 
interests of the Reichsland. It would seem that in France 
there are only a few who refuse to acquiesce in this incorpo* 
ration, or who cherish any hope of a restoration of the Prov- 
inces. Such, at all events, is the declaration of close students 
of the European situation. 

In interior politics the government has to rely upon the 
support or to yield to the opposition of a new bloc^ called the 
Blue-Black. This means that the dominant power in the Reich« 
stag consists of the united forces of the Conservatives and of 
the Centre. This is true not only of the Reichstag but of the 
Prussian Diet. In the latter this bloc has forced upon the gov- 
ernment modifications of the Franchise Bill of some importance. 
The Bill, as introduced, abolished indirect voting, the bloc has 
restored it. Secret voting was not conceded by the government 
Bill, the bloc has introduced it, for the primary elections, the 
election of the '* electors." The electors, thus chosen by secret 
ballot, must themselves vote publicly for the members of the 
Diet. The government has felt itself obliged to accept this 
compromise, otherwise the Bill would have been lost. It is far, 
however, from giving satisfaction to the bulk of the population. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] RECENT EVENTS 211 

for many of the restrictions formerly in force have been re- 
tained. But the rulers of Prussia have not yet brought them* 
selves to place trust in the people, and still think that safety 
depends upon distrust. 

The long negotiations with Russia 
Austria-Hungary. for the restoration of the normal 

relations between the two countries, 
which had been Interrupted since the annexation of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, resulted in a mutual declaration that the two 
Cabinets of St. Petersburg and Vienna were, in Balkan affairs, 
in complete agreement in political principles. They both recog- 
nize that the era for expansion in that region has closed, and 
that the status quo is to be maintained. This declaration does 
not amount to an agreement, nor has it caused any large degree 
of satisfaction in any quarter. It does not seem likely that the 
visits which the Kings of Bulgaria and of Servia have been 
paying to the Tsar and to the Sultan have tended to give 
greater force to existing arrangements, although nothing but 
peace and its maintenance have been upon the lips of the 
potentates— in their public utterances, with which it is to be 
hoped their private utterances accord. But that Aus1;ria and 
Russia should again be on speaking terms is a step in the right 
direction. 

The life of Dr. Lueger shows that in Austria a career is 
open for the talented son of a poor church beadle. By earnest- 
ness and sincere devotion to a great cause he overcame all op- 
position and won the esteem and even the attachment of his 
opponents. During his last illness the Jews of Vienna offered 
prayers for his recovery. His funeral testified to the place he 
held in the minds of his fellow-citizens. Fully a million rever- 
ent spectators lined the streets through which it passed. A 
long procession, consisting of representatives of various bodies 
too numerous to mention, preceded the hearse. In the Cathe- 
dral were the Emperor, the Duke of Cumberland, the Arch- 
dukes and Archduchesses, the specially delegated representatives 
of the Pope, the German Emperor, the President of the French 
Republic, the King of Spain, the King of Rumania, the Prince 
Regent of Bavaria, with the other members of the Diplomatic 
Corps, the aristocracy, and the chief dignitaries of State. Many 
years, it is said, will pass before the memory of the day will 



Digitized by 



Google 



!272 RECENT £ VENTS [May, 

fade away. As Dr. Lueger's successor as leader of the Chris- 
tian Socialist party, Prince Alois Liechtenstein has been elected. 
It is impossible to form an opinion as to the probable course 
of events in Hungary. Not having been able to obtain even a 
hearing in the Parliament, the new Premier, Count Khuen 
Hedervary, decided upon dissolving it. This was . declared to 
be unconstitutional; and, upon his persisting, ink pots, paper 
weights, volumes of statutes, and other missiles, were hurled 
as more cogent arguments than words. The Minister of Agri- 
culture was wounded in the eye, while the Premier himself fell 
back bleeding with two wounds on the forehead and cheek. 
The sitting was suspended that medical treatment might be 
given to the victims of the enraged Magyars. Success, how- 
ever, did not attend these efforts to avert the dissolution, and 
Hungary is entering upon an electoral campaign. The New 
world does not seem to have much to learn from this part at 
least of the Old. 

Within less than six months two 
Italy. Cabinets have fallen and both of 

them have failed to pass the meas- 
ures of reform for which governments exist. The heavy taxa- 
tion under which the country groans calls for readjustment, 
and admits of it; in many parts of Italy there are marshy 
plains which are capable of reclamation and drainage, while 
mountainous districts need to be reafforested. Social legisla- 
tion is required to mitigate the conflict between the interests 
of capital and labor, many disputes having arisen on account 
of the uncertainty of the legal rights of property on the one 
hand and of labor on the other. Of this the strike in Parma 
in 1908 was an instance — a strike which inflicted very heavy 
loss on the province and on its laboring population. The State 
system of railways stands in need of development and of a 
complete reorganization of its management. A demand also 
exists for a complete change in the method of election to 
Parliament. To none of these things have the two govern- 
ments which have recently fallen found a remedy. The whole 
blame cannot justly be thrown on them. They, of course, 
depend upon their supporters, and those supporters are more 
deeply interested in their own local interests, and sometimes 
in their own selfish personal interests, than in the well-being 
of the country as a whole. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 273 

The fall of Signor Gioletti's ministiy in December last was 
due to the unwillingness of the Chamber to accept a more 
democratic scheme of taxation which had been proposed by 
the ministry — a scheme which placed upon the richer members 
of the community^ a somewhat heavier proportion of the burden 
than they had hitherto borne. The taxes and the duties on 
sugar were to be reduced, and the loss thereby caused was to 
be made good by considerable increases of the death duties 
and the taxes on income from bouses and land. In view of 
the rumors that are abroad at the present time as to the 
policy of the ministry that is just entering upon office it may 
be mentioned that one of the charges made against Signor 
Gioletti*s Cabinet was that it was too clerical. This charge 
rested upon the fact that it displayed some degree of moder- 
ation in its dealing with the Church, and that, consequently, it 
had the support of Catholic newspapers. 

The Cabinet which succeeded Signor Gioletti's had for its 
head Baron Sonnino, one of the most highly respected of 
Italy's politicians, and he was supported by three members of 
his own party, by three of the Right, and by three of the 
Giolettian Left. It excluded the Democratic Liberals and the 
Extreme Left, and was, therefore, of a Conservative type. 
The fact that Baron Sonnino would not admit Into the Cabinet 
two politicians who insisted upon certain anti*^ Catholic legisla- 
tion as the price of their co-operation shows that he was as 
favorable to the Church as it is possible for an Italian office- 
holder to be. Members of all parties accepted him as the best 
qualified among their number to deal practically and efficiently 
with the financial necessities which stand most in need of regu- 
lation, and yet within less than four months be has fallen and . 
has not accomplished a single point of his programme. The 
fall was due not to any merits of the question at issue, which 
was the so* long debated Marine Conventions Bill, but simply 
to the party manoeuvres of a coalition of seli-seeking politicians. 
The Chamber has lost the opportunity of doing that service 
to the country of which it stands in such great need. Its 
members have proved themselves once more to have their own 
interests alone at heart and not those of the country. 

The new Cabinet, which with some little difficulty has been 
formed, is a coalition but of a different kind. Its members te- 
long to the Liberal Right, the Giolettian Left, and the Extreme 
VOL. xci.— 18 



Digitized by 



Google 



274 RECENT EVENTS [May, 

Left. It has at its head a distinguished financial authority, 
Signor Lazzatti. One of its members is named Signor Catto- 
lica, but, from what seems to be the probable action of the 
Cabinet, this is another instance of lucus a non lucendo. Signor 
Ltizzatti will have to exercise all the skijl of which he is 
possessed, for, although Italy is already the most highly taxed 
country in the world, there are urgent calls for results, the ac» 
complishment of which will involve large additional expenditure. 
A new navy programme has been adopted ; large sums are re- 
quired for education; and the state railways, so far from pay- 
ing, involve subvention from the taxes. 

It is to be hoped that the members of the Chamber are not 
fair representatives of Italy's place in the rank of civilized na» 
tions. The treatment given to Baron Sonnino's ministry shows 
that they are destitute of public spirit, while a series of duels 
which have taken place shows that they have not yet emerged 
from a semi-barbarous period. These duels were preceded by 
a scandalous scene in the Chamber and by violent encounters 
in the lobbies of the House. One honorable member boxed 
another honorable member's ears. It would not be for the 
edification of our readers to explain the reason for this sad 
outbreak of uncontrolled passion. There were no less than four 
challenges but only two duels seem to have come off, with no 
fatal result. 

Other schemes for the amelioration of affairs, which do not 
fall directly within the sphere of parliamentary control, do not 
meet with any better success. The Commission for the Zona 
Monumentale appointed for the purpose of guaranteeing and 
preserving in perpetuity a certain district in Rome, and the 
ancient sites and monuments which it contains, has, so far 
from carrying out its purpose, confined its energies to the 
making of a road« the effect of which is to obliterate the re- 
mains of the past and to destroy the whole aspect and 
character of the district. This has led to the resignation of 
one of its most distinguished members, Commendatore Boni, 
who gives the following description of the misery of the poor 
of Rome under the secular government, which has now been 
established for forty years, a description which shows how 
little they have benefited under the new rigime^ 

** The pigsties dug out of the rocks in the Via Flaminia, 
the inside niches and the outer buttresses of the Aurelian Wall, 



Digitized by 



Google 



IJIO.] RSCEUTT BVEI^TS tfi 

the femains of the Temple of Claudius^ and of the Circus 
Maximiifl^ the foundations of the Temples of Venus and Rome, 
and the vaults behind the Basilica of Maxentius have been in- 
vaded by a gypsy race of troglodyte instincts. Mo need to go 
to New Zealand or Polynesia; the great centre from which 
Litta civilisation radiated can now offer examples of primitive 
savagery authentic enough to bring burning shame to the faces 
of those who are preparing for 191 1 an ethnographical hedge* 
podge of dead things and old clothes. In the tufa cellars, 
beneath the stone vaults, between the pilasters of such walls 
as the pickax has spared, shut in with pieces of old tins and 
fri^^ments of boards, live whole families of ahamdess and half- 
naked creatures with their dirty offspring, trained to steal fire* 
wood, break street lamps, or turn cart-^wheels for a half<*penny. 
While all round Rome, on the banks of the Tiber and Anio, 
on the heights of tha Via Cassia, or Via Prenestina, there are, 
still unoccupied, uncultivated lands and deserted pastures; 
while the banks and institutions of credit capitalize their in* 
terests; while, in spite of the rise in rents, the revenue of the 
commune decreases, wasted in millions upon works which are 
only harmfnl-^all this time these houseless wretches, in the 
horrible promiscuity of their asphyxiating cabins, in the dank 
darkness of their cellars, are multiplying ever more precocious 
recruits for the country's prisons.** 

After this description of the state of Romans poor under 
the present rule, the Commendatore goes on to indicate what 
the government should and could do to remedy the horrible 
conditions. "A sjrstematic arrangement of existing tramway 
lines could easily be made to open out new suburbs, where 
each family would have the means to breathe and earn its 
living. Instead of spoiling the Villa Borghese with dens for 
wild beasts, let us provide wholesome dwellings for these hu- 
man creatures who, deprived of light, air, water, of every* 
thing which they need, grow every day nearer beasts within 
refuges which are morally and physically worse than any 
prison.'* 

The present Municipality was elected a few years ago on 
a promise for cheaper food and lower rents. It has done noth- 
ing for the poor wretches whose state Commendatore Boni 
describes. In fact both rents and food are higher. And the 
less valuable but perhaps more valued possessions of Rome, 



Digitized by 



Google 



276 RECENT EVENTS [May, 

the ancient monuments of the city, are also suffering from the 
treatment of a municipality which has a Jew for its head, and 
for its object nothing intelligible unless it be to attract to 
Rome the nouviaux richis of the world. More might be said 
of the failure of the new rulers of Italy who, although they 
have cast aside every religious influence, have not succeeded 
in bettering the material aspects of life. Even the funds placed 
at their disposal by other nations for the relief of the suffer- 
ers from the earthquake at Messina have been so badly ad- 
ministered that those for whom they were given have not 
benefited to the extent to which they were entitled. The one 
set-off on the other side is that the Campanile at Venice is 
approaching completion, and that the International Agricul- 
tural Institute at Rome gives some promise of becoming a 
useful institution. The visit to Rome of the German Chancel- 
lor has been the occasion of the renewal of assurances that 
Italy is still loyal to the Triple Alliance. This is no doubt 
true of the government; but there is strong reason to believe 
that a large number of the people would be glad if, so far as 
Italy is concerned, the Alliance should come to an end. In 
fact, the relations between the governments of France and of 
Italy are becoming ever more and more intimate, as is shown, 
among other things, by the somewhat unwonted exchange of 
congratulations by French ministers on the appointment of the 
new Italian Cabinet. 

In Spain also there have been re« 
Spain. peated changes of government. 

When Sefior Maura fell in Octo- 
ber last, as a consequence of his having allowed the law to 
take its course in the execution of Senor Ferrer, the praise- 
worthy attempt made by him to lift Spanish politics to a 
higher plane came, it is to be feared, to an end. What is 
called in Portugal the Rotavist system had for long, in a 
somewhat modified form, been in existence. In Portugal the 
two principal parties, by a tacit contract, held office for a 
more or less well-defined period, not for the public but for 
their own private advantage; and this in a gross, materialistic 
way. In Spain the same rotation of parties had been prac- 
tised, but from motives of a higher character— the giving to 
opponents their fair share in the honors of office. Scnor 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 2J1 

Maura, when he resigned, felt that he had been treated so 
badly that he declared that he would no longer act in accord • 
ance with the hitherto established practice, but would wage 
war without quarter on his successor* Indeed, on entering 
upon office, he had repudiated the hitherto accepted doctrine 
that he was to spend a quiet year without doing anything of 
great public utility, and then give way to the Liberals. He 
took a more serious view of his duty, and entered upon a 
comprehensive work of regeneration. He brought in a bill to 
reform local administration in order to take power out of the 
hands of the local '^ bosses*' — for they have these creatures 
even in aristocratic Spain. By making voting compulsory, and 
dispensing with official interference at the polls, he hoped to 
restore to the people that power of managing their own affairs 
which had practically been taken from them. The list of re- 
forms attempted or achieved by himself and his chief coad- 
jutor, SeSor la Cierva, included the institution of industrial 
tribunals, the regulation of the work of women and children, 
the enforcement of Sunday rest and early closing, the building 
of hospitals, the starting of anti- cholera and anti-tuberculosis 
campaigns, the introduction of open competition for admission 
to the police and other departments. 

In all these efforts at amelioration he was supported by the 
Church, but was opposed by the professional politicians who, 
in Spain as in many other countries, live upon the spoils. 
Moreover, he entered into a contract with British firms to build 
in Spain a war-fleet The mistakes which he made in the con- 
duct of the Melilla campaign prepared the way for his fall^ 
an event which took place shortly after the execution of Senor 
Ferrer, after he had been in office nearly three years. 

Not being able to rely upon the support of Sefior Maura 
and his followers, as would have been the case in former days^ 
the government of his successor, Sefior Moret, fell back upon 
the party which is opposed to monarchical institutions altogether 
—the Republicans. This gave a great impetus to the strength 
of this party and led to their success at the municipal elections 
last January — an event naturally not pleasing to the King, nor, 
indeed, to the bulk of the Liberal party. Somewhat suddenly 
and unceremoniously the King, in the early part of February, 
dismissed Sefior Moret and his Cabinet. A new Cabinet was 
formed without delay, which will rely for its support upon the 



Digitized by 



Google 



^JZ RECENT EVENTS [»«/« 

Liberal party aloiie> and will have nodiiiig to do witk Repab* 
licaot and Socialists. The new Prime Minister is tke Sefior 
Canalejas, who is looked upon as the inspirer of the violent 
anti-Catholic policy adopted by the Liberal party in 1906^ 
One of his Cabinet is, however, a strong CsdioUc, and so it 
may be hoped that the new government is not committed to a 
campaign i^ainst the Church, although the Premier insists that 
he has not changed his ideas. He proposes to extend educa- 
tioaal facilities, giving more importance to technical education 
than to merely learning to read and write. He also proposes 
to undertake a more equitable distribution of taxation by ^>* 
plying the theory of unearned increment, to institute old<>age 
pensions, but on a contributory basis; to suppress octroi duties; 
and to institute universal service in the army. Time will show 
what success he will have in carrying out this programme. A 
general election has to take place, and this may result in a 
new adjustment. The Republicans have found a leader in the 
person of a Sefior Lerroux, who is said to be well fitted for 
the work of agitation, being a fluent speaker, a man of big pres* 
ence, and of genial manners. He has been in exile for the past 
few years, and it has not improved his temper, for his style is 
violent, full of personalities, and of appeals to class hatred and 
envy. The credit due to his assertions may be judged from 
the declaration which he made at a recent Republican demon- 
stration at Barcelona, that Spain was not governed at Madrid 
by a Spanish government, but by Foreign Powers who bad 
their headquarters in Rome. It seems probable that there will 
be a more determined effort to propagate Republican opinions, 
to the success of which the reopening of the lay schools^ 
which has just taken place, will no doubt contribute. During 
the past few months several riots have taken place, and it seems 
not improbable that Spain may be entering upon a period of 
mere or less acute agitation. 



Digitized by 



Google 



With Our Readers 

THB irony of fate would seem to have decreed that the illustrious 
American whom the Holy Father would desire to welcome, 
the one whom his Catholic fellow-citizens would prefer to see hon- 
ored by the Holy Father, should fail to obtain what has been freely 
accorded to so many undistinguished Americans, The irony is 
deepened when Mr. Roosevelt's published cablegrams, in which the 
audience was requested, show us how desirous he was of meeting 
Pius X. Our late President has certainly deserved well of the 
Catholic Church; not because he has granted to Catholics any 
special favor, for that he has not done and could not do without 
contravening his firmest principle; but because, though he differs 
from us radically in religious views, he has stood with us squarely on 
the broad ground of our common American citizenship. He has not 
been afraid to act on the principle that we are as fully entitled to 
our rights and to recognition as any other American citizens. De- 
cided in his own opinions, no doubt, he is yet singularly free from 
any taint of bigotry — he is honored and esteemed Iby Catholics oi 
every shade of political belief. Whether or not he was justified in 
his interpretation of Bishop Kennedy's message, all sensible men 
perceive that he merely followed his own sense of honor ; and Catho- 
lics are as convinced that he acted without the slightest feeling of 
hostility or disrespect towards the Holy Father as they are certain 
that Pius X. desired to do whatever he could in conscience to grant 
an audience to this distinguished man whom he honored for his own 
character and for the high office he had filled so illustriously. That 
desire was defeated by a conspiracy of circumstances, to the great 
regret of the Holy Father and of the Cardinal Secretary of State. 
The issue was unfortunate, and is deeply regretted by us all ; but 
no great harm can come of it. Honest men will despise the effort of 
those who try to make political capital out of it ; they may smile at 
them, too, for Mr. Roosevelt has lost nothing by the incident. 
Though most Catholics, perhaps, believe he acted hastily, all rec- 
ognize his honorable motive. 



w 



f E reprint here the view of the incident which the Editor of Th« 
Cathowc Wori^d expressed at the time in the daily papers : 
"In viewing the much-discussed matter of Mr. Roosevelt's 
failure to visit the Pope, every honest American will give heed to 
Mr. Roosevelt's own words in his cable message to the Outlook: 
* The incident will be treated in a matter-of-course way as merely 
personal and, above all, as not warranting the slightest exhibition of 
rancor or bitterness.* 

** There can be no question of the love that the Holy Father 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



28o With Our readers [May, 

bears our country and onr non-Catholic brethren. That love has 
been proven over and over again in public act and document and in 
his cordial welcome of thousands of non-Catholic Americans who 
have visited him in Rome. To I<eo XIII. Mr. Roosevelt, when 
President, sent a number of volumes containing the messages of 
the Presidents, and I<eo XIII. sent in return a costly mosaic picture 
of the Vatican. The present PontiflF has frequently expressed his 
admiration of American institutions. 

^* The Holy Father looked forward with pleasure to the ex- 
pected visit of Mr. Roosevelt. The court of the Vatican is a 
court, and as such is worthy of respect. Like every court, it has 
its conditions, which all visitors must respect. These conditions 
are well known, and no prospective visitor — even among the most 
notable sovereigns of the world — thinks of violating them. If he 
does so he knows that he will not be received, and he knows also 
that he will have no one but himself to blame. Only a few days 
since the Imperial chancellor of the German Empire took great care 
to observe the proper etiquette, and the Kaiser himself, in his latest 
visit to Rome, observed it also as a matter of courtesy. 

*< The Vatican expressed the great pleasure that it would take in 
welcoming Mr. Roosevelt, and, at the same time, kindly intimated 
that he should give assurance that he would in no way violate the 
etiquette of the court. Mr. Roosevelt was free to accept or reject the 
conditions. They were in no way dishonorable to him ; in no way 
unworthy. He chose to assert that he would accept no conditions — 
that he must be [left free to do absolutely as he liked. There was 
nothing left for the Vatican to do but to refase the audience. The 
same conditions apply to Mr. Roosevelt as to any other man. Every 
American may rest assured that to refuse the audience caused much 
pain and regret to the Holy Father, who had expressed his delight 
at meeting Mr. Roosevelt. 

** And it must be a cause of equal regret to every American that 
Mr. Roosevelt did not see his way to accept conditions which the 
Vatican out of self-respect had to lay down, and hear from the lips 
of the great ruler of Christendom his words of love for America and 
its people." 

SOME of our readers may be entirely unacquainted with VAsino. 
L'Astno is the title ot a journal published in Rome, probably 
the vilest sheet printed in the world to-day, and synonymous with 
the most unspeakable filth and indecency. It would not be tolerated 
for an hour on any news-stand in America ; yet it is publicly sold and 
exhibited in the shop windows and on the news-stands of Rome. It 
makes a mockery of everything that is sacred and holy in the eyes 
of Christians, particularly of CatholicSi and is especially virulent in 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] WITH OUR READERS 281 

its attacks on the Pope and the Holy See, and unspeakably disgust- 
ing in its obscene caricatures. It poses as the organ of enlightened 
progress. The assertion has been made that the Methodists are 
directly connected with this publication. We do not believe it, and 
will not believe it until undeniable proof is furnished us. But it is 
beyond question that certain expressions of sympathy have passed 
between some Methodists and the directors oiUAsino. Dr. Tipple 
writes to the Christian Advocate of this city, in a sympathetic strain, 
about the recent Giordano Bruno celebration in Rome. The gross 
excesses oi that celebration were graphically described by an eye- 
witness in the London Saturday Review : 

'' These people were one and all anarchists and revolutionaries, 
anti-clerical and anti-everything. The procession passed to the 
statue erected to the notorious pantheist, Giordano Bruno. Here 
revolutionary speeches of a most violent description were delivered, 
notably by Podrecca, the editor of the unspeakable Asino^ and by 
Barzilai, a wealthy Jew socialist member of Parliament. These 
violent attacks on the Pope, the Church, and the monarchy were 
endorsed by Mayor Nathan. In the meantime • • . revolu- 
tionary chants were howled in chorus ; and then came the usual 
cries of : ' Down with the Pope I ' * Death to religion 1 ' * Down 
with Austria ! ' • Death to Christ ! ' ' Neither God nor Master ! * 
' Death to the King I ' ' Death to the Queen I ' 

" After a sort of ritual ceremony performed before the statue of 
their idol, Giordano Bruno, the mob wished to pay a visit to the 
Austrian Embassy in the Piazza di Spagna, but here the troops . 
barred their passage. They were, however, contrary to precedent, 
allowed to cross the bridge with impunity and proceed almost to the 
very doors of the Vatican, to within earshot of the Pope's windows; 
The headquarters of the demonstrators, which have been recently 
removed from the centre of Rome to a house near the Porta Angelica 
within a stone's throw of his Holiness' apartments, were decorated 
for the occasion from top to bottom with black and scarlet flags and 
blasphemous and disloyal inscriptions. In order that his Holiness 
should hear their approbrious cries several scoundrels used horns and 
megaphones, and in the course of the evening a searchlight was 
thrown into the windows of the Pope's private apartment the better 
to attract his attention to the outrageous illuminated inscriptions 
that appeared above their meeting house. The Italian police never 
interfered and the beastly crew were allowed to insult and annoy the 
Pontiff for over an hour in a manner which would not have been 
tolerated had he been a private individual, however criminal and 
obnoxious." 

No man and no body of men with any pretense to charity, 
unless blinded by fearful prejudices, could for a moment prefer to 



Digitized by 



Google 



282 With Our readers [May» 

ghre their sympathies to a mob of anarchists, hoodlums, and anti- 
clericals rather than to any Christian chnrch npon earth. The ^>ixit 
of the mob is most appropriately expressed by UAsin^. 



Q' 



^UITE the most surprising fact of the recent spring elections is the 
Socialist victory in Milwaukee. That party will govern the 
city for the next two years, through the mayor, two-thirds of the 
aldermen, and a majority of the supervisors. Two of the seven 
newly chosen civil judges are likewise Socialists. And the majority 
received by the c€Lndidate for the mayoralty was the largest ever re- 
corded for that office. Everywhere people are asking how it hap- 
pened, and what will be the result ? The answer to the first ques- 
tion is not difficult. It is to be found in the corrupt government that 
Milwaukee has had for several years under the old parties, and in 
the practical character and efficient organization of the Milwaukee 
Socialists. In Milwaukee, as in so many other American cities, 
there has loa^ existed the evil alliance, of ^diich I4ncoln Steffens 
tells, between political bosses, the smaller agencies of crime and cor- 
mption, such as the disreputable saloon and the disorderly house, 
and the ^' big business ** that sedcs to be above the law. When a 
continuation of this rigime was threatened by the candidacy on the 
Demooiitic ticket of a representative of the old, bad alliance, large 
numbers of voters belonging to the old parties revolted, and elected 
Mr. Seidel. For the Socialists, though much stronger, in Milwau- 
kee than in any other American city, are considerably less than one- 
third of the voting population. But th^r are practical and *' oppor* 
tunist, ' ' rather than theor^ical ' ' cataclystic. ' ' They believe in ad- 
vancing step by step, and reaching their ultimate goal through 
partial reforms, rather than in waiting until conditions become so 
bad that the Socialist order will be realized almost automatically. 
And they have, in the city council and in other offices, fought always 
iCM: reasonable measures in the interest of civic efficiency, honesty, 
and decency. Hence their candidates were regarded by thousands 
of the voters as presenting the smaller of two evils. 

Both the fears of their enemies and the hopes of their friends 
are likely to remain unrealized. '' A new broom swe^s <dean," and 
the Socialist government will probably be a dean and efficient <Mie — 
for the first term at least. But its members are too practicalj and 
the obstacles confironting it are too great, to permit of anything like 

revolutionary achievements. 

« « « 

THE Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee, it is said, will, when taking 
office, add to the oath '* So help me God I " the words " and 
I hereby pledge my word of honor so to do.** This, as a daily paper 
remarks, sounds suspiciously like : '' I won't bet on itj but I'll take 
my oath." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] With Our Readers sSj 

TH£ current issue of the EcdesiasHcal Review contains a short let- 
ter from Rev. Dr. Selinger^ of Jefferson City, on the relation of 
the parish clergy to social reform. The plea of the writer for more 
active participation by the clergy in social work, merits prompt sup- 
port. The suggestion that preparation for this duty be begun in the 
seminary comes, with double authority, from one who has had years 
of rich experience as both seminary professor and parish priest. 
Thb Cathouc Wori«d welcomes this appeal most heartily. Possir 
bly one further suggestion might be added to anticipate apparent 
difficulty. One long step ahead will be made when a specialist in 
Social Sciences, or at least one who has had thorough graduate 
training in them, is added to the seminary faculty ; and a second 
step will be taken when students with special aptitude will be per- 
mitted to arrange seminary work in such a way as to incorporate re- 
liable social and economic training into their theological courses. 

What is needed in the main, to realize Dr. Selinger's happy 
suggestion, is sympathy for social studies in the cletgy at large ; tiie 
formation of a good number of specialists and the production by 
them of a satisfactory literature offering direction in the work pro- 
posed. Many of these students might be able to make university 
studies. Tlie Seminary Conference two years ago devoted much 
sympathetic attention to this problem. 

It must be admitted that many of the debated reform questions 
have ditect moral and spiritual bearings, and that the actual leader- 
ship of the social forces making for better social conditions is not 
now in the hcuids of the clergy. It is true that these questions take 
on in tUs country a political color. But, politics or no politics, if 
work of women and children, unsanitary housing, constant Sunday 
work, oppressive conditions of labor, faulty administration of laws, 
insufficient wages, and a hundred similar features of modem society, 
affect, adversely and directly, the morals of thousands ; narrow, or 
practically destroy, their spiritual outlook, and rob them of their 
spiritual birthright — and such is the case— then the cleigy may 
speak with authority. What is needed is not more authority, but 

equipment that will enable them to speak with power. 

« « • 

IT seems altogether fitting that Mr. James Bryce should represent 
something of English political life to Americans, since none so 
well as he has represented American democracy to Englishmen. In 
the Yale lectures of 1909, on The Hindrances to Good CiHzenship^ he 
has given us a beautifully worded summary of democratic principles, 
togetheridth a Uioughtfal though slightly academic commentary 
on tiieir practical limitations. There is an introductory lecture fol- 
lowed by three others in which the hindrances to good dticenship 
are dealt with i^ecifically— Indolence, Private Self-interest, and 
Party ^irit, with a final lecture on the method of overcoming these. 



Digitized by V^jOO^lC 



-!l 



284 WITH Our Readers [May, 

DR. JOHNSON, when asked to account for a certain error in his 
great Dictionary, thought it sufficient to reply: '^ Indolence! 
my dear sir I sheer indolence ! " Indolence, too, in Mr. Bryce's 
opinion, is the greatest hindrance to good citizenship. Indolence is 
the first mark of a man out of training, of a man not ''fit" enough 
to play the game for all it is worth. It is as much an emotional as 
an intellectual failure ; it is a lack of sympathy as well as a lack of 
intelligence, for to have good citizenship, or good anything else, 
Intelligence and sympathy must be yoked together in active partner- 
ship. But of these two sympathy is the more important. The rich 
man will often, from his greater educational opportunities, be en- 
dowed with more intelligence than the poor man ; but for all that 
his lack of sympathy, the absence in him of the sense of personal re- 
lationship with his fellows, will make him a much poorer citizen. 
A poor man, though perhaps much less educated, by this very gift 
of sympathy is much more richly endowed with the essential and 
positive virtue of citizenship. Just as sympathy is the bond of family 

life, so also should it be of civic life. 

• • « 

BUT, unfortunately, ever since the rise of the laisser faite philoso- 
phy, the first principle of business life has been intelligence 
without sympathy. This is the secret of profit-making, but it is also 
the fons et origo of all our civic maladies. The business man, however 
good a father, however exemplary in the relationships of family life, 
leaves sympathy behind when he goes to business and becomes at 
once indifferent and ignorant of the real human needs of those about 
him ; he becomes, in fact, a bad, indolent, private-minded, party- 
spirited citizen, and all this, as we say, not from lack of intelligence 

but from lack of emotion. 

• « • 

THE modem Socialist, contemplating this sad state of things, pro- 
fesses to explain it by saying that the family is to blame. The 
family has made selfish, profit-grinding machines of us all by absorb- 
ing into itself all our really human sympathies, leaving nothing for 
our neighbors and fellow-citizens but a keen and inhospitable edge 
of selfishness. A similar argument is applied to religion and all 
religious bodies, they are other-worldly and anti-civic, and must, 

therefore, be discouraged if not abolished. 

• « • 

BUT the Catholic diagnoses the case differently. He says that 
the bad citizenship of to-day is due rather to the lack of re? 
ligion and true family life than to the presence of it. He is per- 
fectly willing to acknowledge that the present age has made great 
advance in material knowledge and invention, but in the theory 
and practice of citizenship we seem to fall woefully short of the 
pasty and the bigger our cities the more marked our shortcoming. 



Digitized by 



\ 
\ 



I910.] WITH OUR READERS 285 

This cannot be because our intellectual equipment is less, it must be 
because our emotional life is less effectively lived, more starved and 

impersonal than once it was. 

• « • 

AS Mr. Chesterton has told us, the only way to improve Pimlico 
is to love Pimlico. " If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, 
then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles. If 
men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is 
theirs^ Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence." 
Sympathy is the secret of good citizenship, but intelligence without 
S3rmpathy is nothing. Mr. Bryce has forgotten that the only sound 
basis for democracy is the religious one ; namely, that right feeling 
towards our fellow-creatures can only proceed from a right feeling 
towards the Creator Himself. And if we would renew that right civic 
feeling within us we must go back to the family which is its cradle 
and nursery, aqd to the Catholic Church which is the Mother of us 
all. Until Social Reformers begin to grasp the importance of a right 
emotional quality in citizenship theories may multiply, but practical 
solutions will always be wanting. 

THE Twenty- first International Kucharlstic Congress, which is to 
be held in Montreal from September 7 to September 11, 19 10, is 
a matter of great interest to the whole of Canada and the United 
States, and, in fact, to the entire world. A large number of Cardi- 
nals, the great majority of the Archbishops and Bishops of Canada 
and the United States will attend ; and thousands of priests and 
thousands more of the laity will gather to make this Congress a 
great success. The railways of Canada — the Grand Trunk, Cana- 
dian Pacific, and the Intercolonial — have already offered to grant 
reduced fare (one-half) to those who will attend the Congress ; and 
the railways of our own country, it is hoped, will extend a like favor. 

Every large diocese in the world will be represented by its 
prelate. Pius X. has appointed Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli to 
represent the Vatican. The Archbishop ot Westminster, Most Rev. 
Francis Bourne, D.D., will represent the English hierarchy, and the 
Duke of Norfolk is coming as the official representative of the laity 
of Great Britain. Cardinal Gibbons has just written a letter to 
Archbishop Bruchesi, of Montreal, accepting the invitation to par- 
ticipate in the services. The cardinal will be one of the preachers. 
Archbishops Farley, Glennon, Ryan, Moeller, Blenck, Ireland, 
Keane, and Riordan will also attend. 

The programme makes known that not only will there be a 
public procession of the Blessed Sacrament at the closing of the 
Congress, as was the case in Iiondon in 1908, but that there will be 
a Pontifical Mass in the open air in Fletcher's Field, at the foot of 
Mount Royal. 



Digitized by 



Google 



286 With Our readers [Kay, 

Cardinal Vannutelli will arrive in Montreal a lew days prior to 
the opening of the Congress. On Tuesday evening, September 6, 
he will be officially received by the members of the American and 
Canadian hierarchies in St. James Cathedral. The following even- 
ing there will be a public reception in his honor at the City Hall. 
The ceremonies proper will begin with a Midnight Mass In the 
Church of Notre Dame, one of the oldest edifices in North America, 
and probably one of the largest. Its dimensions are such that 
15,000 people can comfortably stand In it. This Mass will be for 
men only, and the entire congregation will receive Holy Com- 
munion. At nine o*clock there will be a Pontifical Mass at the 
Cathedral. The rest of the day will be given to sectional meetings 
of the congress, which will be conducted in both French and 
English. In the evening there will be a public meeting at Notre 
Dame Church, which will be addressed by bishops^ priests, and lay- 
men. On Friday, September 9, will occur the solemn service in 
Fletcher's Field, which will consist of Pontifical Mass and sermons 
In French and Bnglish. At night the Cardinal Legate win hold a 
reception. On Saturday, September 10, there will be a Pontifical 
Mass in St. Patrick's Church, to be followed by sectional meetings. 
On the last day of the Congress, Sunday, September 11, there wUl 
be a Pontifical Mass at the Cathedral, and the congress will be 
brought to a close at two o'clock with the solemn procession of the 

Blessed Sacrament. 

« • • 

WHILB we are not unreasonably regardful of the purity of the 
English language, we confess to having experienced a shock 
the other day from a brand new expression. Our friend, the pro- 
fessor, remarked oi some one : •• He tipples In his speech." " Where 
did you get that ? " we Inquired. ** Why," said he, •* firom Doctor 
Tipple oi Rome, to be sure ; the Methodist minister who made that 
extraordinary pronouncement. ' To tipple in discourse ' is to be in- 
temperate In your use of language, to be emotional, violent, Inflam- 
matory ; to be lacking in Intellectual poise or moral balance ; to 
shout against persons you hardly know, but whose face you dislike ; 
to shake your fist at them ; then, after storming and stamping, to 
close with the remark that you always believe in being considerate 
of others' rights ; and in talking as a gentleman. Such a man, I 
say, tipples In his talk ; he makes a tippling speech : he's an orator- 
ical tippler." We objected: **You certainly put a great deal of 
meaning into a single word." •* Not at all, man," he rejoined, ** I 
am merely extracting from the word but a small fraction oi its 
meaning. The name was predestined. I admit, if you wish, that 
few vocal tipplers can hope to equal Doctor Tipple ; there are de- 
grees of tippling, and he stands on the tip of the pinnacle of excel- 
lence." As the professor is a very learned man and a philologist, 

Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9ia] BOOKS RECEIVED 287 

we feared to argue with him any farther. Our readers will have to 

decide the question for themselves. 

« « • 

TELE Postal Record^ the organ of the United States mail carriers of 
Greater New York, states that more than fourteen hundred em- 
ployees of the boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx alone are engaged 
in various post-office duties on Sundays and receive no free day to 
compensate for this Sunday labor. In its fight to have Sunday labor 
reduced to a minimum and to secure a compensating free day for 
those who must labor on Sunday, the Postal Record has our earnest 

support. 

• • « 

THB Cathouc Wori,d announces with regret the death of 
Charles J. O'Malley, late editor of the New World, the Catho- 
lic weekly of Chicago. Mr. O'Malley was an editor of different 
journals since 1882, and went to the New World in 1904. Mr. 
O'Malley was a writer, and particularly a poet» of marked ability ; 
a staunch champion of the Catholic faitii and of Catholic citizenship. 
Because of his death the Catholic press has suffered a great loss. — 
X. I. P. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

LOMOMANt, Orxbn ft CO., New York: 

BiiU St9ri4S TM to '* ToddUar By Mrs. Hennann Bosch. PHce 80 cenU net. Gcv- 
irmment bjf Im/menci: and Otkir Addresses, By E. E. Brown. Price $1.35 net. Bast 
Lomdam Visi^ms. By O'Dennid W. Lawlcr. Farcin Missiams. By R.I1. Maiden. 
M .A. Price $z.a5 net Amcieni and Modem Imferiaiitm, By the Earl of Cromer. 
Price 90 cents net. TaUs ofBemgai. By S. B. Baneijca. Edited by P. H. Skrine. 
JOBN Lamb Compant. New York : 

The War in Wexford, By H. F. B. Wheeler and A. M. Broadley. III. Price $4 net. 
Simum BoUvar, By F. Loraine Petre. Price $4 net. 
E. P. DuTTOH k Co., New York : 

St, Teresa of S/aim. By Helen Hester CoItIU. Price $2.50 net. 
Habpbs ft BsoTHBSS, Ncw York : 

TJke Biogr^hy of a Boy. By Josephine Daskam Bacon. UL Price $1.50. 
Thomas Y. Csowbll ft Co., New York : 

Ckima and the Far-Rast, Edited by G. H. Blakeslee. Price $a net. 
f UNK ft Wagnaixs, New Yorii: 

The Crowds and the Veiled Wotman, By Marian Cox. Price $1.50. 
Thb Macmillan Company, New York : 

Lost Fau. By Jack London. IlL Price $1.50 Tower of Ivory. A Novel. ByGerw 
trade Atherton. Price $1.50. A Modem Chronicle. By Winston Churchill. Price $1.50. 
Chaklbs Scsibnbs's Sons, New York : 

Predestined, A Novel of New York Life. By Stephen F. Whitman. 
Bbnzigbs Bsothbrs, New York : 

The Ught of His Countenance. A Tale of Rome in the Second Century After Christ. 
By Jerome Hart. Price $1.35. Practical Hints on MducoHon. To Teachers and 
Parents. By Elsie Flury. Price 75 cents net. The Best Stories by the Foremost Catholic 
Writers. In 10 vols. Heroes of the Faith. By Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B. Price 80 
cents net What Times/ What Morals/ Where on Earth Are Wef By Rev. Heniy 
C. Semple, S. T. Price 35 cents net. A Handbooh 0/ Church Music, By F. Clement 
C.Egeiton. Frice $1.15 net TheYouni Man* s Guide. By Rev. F. X. Lasance. Price 
75 cents net. 
Fr. Pustbt ft Co., New York: 

OJtcium et Missa Fro Dejunctis. Editio Mathias. Price 30 cents. Missale Romanum. 
Price $4 net History of Church Music. By Rev. Dr. Karl Weinmann. Translated 
from the German, race 75 cents net 



Digitized by 



Google 



288 BOOKS RECEIVED [May, 19IO.] 

DUFFIBLD ft Co.. New York: 

Tkg History of Mr. PoUy. By H. G. Wells. 
American Book Company, New York: 

Tht Human Body and Health, By A. DaTison, M.S. Price 40 cents. Richard oj Jawu$» 
town. By James Otis. Price 35 cents. 
Charities Publication Committee, New York: 

Housing Reform, A Handbook for Practical Use in American Cities. By La¥rrence 
Veiller. Price postpaid $1.35. 
Christian Press Association. New York : 

BUssed Joan of Arc, By E. A. Ford. 

A. C. McClurg ft Co., New York: 

Thg First Gttat Canadian. By Charles B. Reed. Price $8 net 
The America Press, New York : 

Pioneer Priests of North America^ 1641-1710, By the Rev. T. J. Campbell, S.J. Vol. II. 
Among the Hurons, 
DoUBL«DAY. Page ft Co., New York : 

Lady Merton, Colonist, By Mrs. Humphry Ward. Price $1.50. The Fascinating Mrt, 
Halton, By E. F. Benson. Price $1.50. Strictly Business, More Stories of the 
Four Million. By O. Henry. Price $z.20. 
Yale University Press, New York: 

The Beginnings of the Gospel Story, By B. W. Bacon, D.D. Price $a.as net. 
Theo. E. Schultb, New York: 

American Meat, By Albert Leffingwell, M.D. Price $1.25 net. 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston : 

LiHle Brother O^ Dreams. By Elaine Goodale Eastman. Price $z net. The American 
People, By A. Maurice Loyr. Price $2.25 net. 
Small, Maynard ft Co., Boston: 

The Achievements of Luther Ttant, By E. B. W. MacHarg. 111. Price $1.50. A Cycle 
of Sunsets. By Mabel Loomis Todd. Prica $i.ao net. Self Help and Self-Cure. 
Welder ft Taylor Price 75 cents net. A Simple Explanation of Modem Banhmg Cut* 
toms. Price 25 cents net. Woodland Paths. Winthrop ft Packard* Price $z.9o net. 
Little, Brown ft Co., Boston: 

Just Between Themselves. By Anne Warner. Price $1.50. 
John Murphy Company, Baltimore: 

The Chief Sources of Sin, By Rev. M. V. McDonough. Price 75 cents net. 
Government Printing Ovfice, Washington: 

Report of the Commissioner of Education for Year Ended June jo, 1909, Vol II. 

B. Herder, St. Louis, Mo. : 

Where Mists Have Gathered. By Mrs. Macdonald. Price $z net. Bibliotheca Ascetica 
Mystica. De Ponte Meditationes V. The Sublimity of the Holy Eucharist, By Rev. 
M. Meschler, S.J. Price 75 cents net. The Marrying of Brian. By Alice Dease. Price 
50 cents net. A Bunch of Girls and Wayside Flowers. By "Shan." Price 50 cents 
net Hcmdbooh of Divine Liturgy, By Rev. Charles Cowley Clarke. Price 90 cents 
net. 
H. L. KiLNER ft Co., Philadelphia, Pa.: 

The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Out Lady ofSotrows. Price 25 and 50 cents. 
The University Press, Notre Dam*, Ind. : 

The Place of Religion in Good Government, By Max Pam. 
Burrow Brothers, Cleveland, Ohio : 

History of the Society of Jesus in North America, By T. Hughes, S.J. (1605-1838). 
The Anti-Saloon League of America, Westerville, Ohio : 

The Anti-Saloon League Year Booh, jgio. Compiled and edited by Ernest Hurst Cher* 
rington. Price 35 cents net. 
Fitzgerald Book Company, Chicago : 

Ireland and Her People. A Library of Irish Biography. Vol.11. Prepared and Edited 
by Thomas W. H. Fitzgerald. 
Society of the Divine Word, Techny, 111. : 

Our Faith is a Reasonable Faith. By E. Huch. Price 50 cents. 
Burns ft Oates, London : 

The Catholic Who's Who and Year Booh, Edited by Sir F. C. Bumand. 
PiCARD ET Fils, Paris : 

Les Perh Apostoliques. ///. Ignace d'Antioche et Polycatpe de Smyme, Bpitres; Martyre 
de Polycarpe. Texte Grec, Traduction Fran^aise. Paper. Price ^fr, 
Plon-Nourrit et Cie, Paris : 

Dom Guiranger—Abbi de Solesmes. Par Un Moine Benedictin. Tome Premier. Vols. I. 
and II. La yie Privle de Tallyrand, Par Bernard De Lacombe. 
Pierre T6qui, Paris : 

Louis XVL Par Marius Sepet. Price ^fr. 50. La VitiUe Morale d I *£cole. Par Joseph 
Tissier. Price sfr, 50, La Sainte Vterge, Par I'Abbtf P. Feige. Price i/r. 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

Vol. XCI. JUNE, igio. No. 543. 

LIFE AND LITERATURE. 

BY JOHN J. BURKE, C.S.P. 

G with a man well versed in the history of 
it-dajr crimes and criminals, the writer of 
aper was astonished to learn that there was 
^ a striking increase of crime among young 
that seventy-five per cent of the criminals 
convicted in the courts where this man gained his experience 
were between twenty-one and twenty-five years of age. When 
asked what reason, if any, he would assign for such a notable 
increase of youthful criminals, the speaker replied that, to his 
mind, there was no doubt that such a state of things was ow- 
ing to the utter lack of religious training. He had taken the 
pedigree and the history of every criminal that came under 
his observation, and he always included the question of re- 
ligious training, so he was warranted in speaking as an 
authority. 

It is not our intention here to speak of the necessity of 
religious training for the young. In the May number of this 
magazine we spoke on the benefits of publicity. We endeav- 
ored to show how useful it is to make great evils known in 
order that they may be remedied. Every Catholic reading 
that paper must have thought at once of what a powerful 
agency a Catholic press would be — a press possessing financial 
means, supported by an intelligent organization, capable of pre- 



Copyright. 1910. The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle 

IN TEH State of New York. 
VOU XCI.— 19 



Digitized by 



Google 



290 Life and Literature [Jtmc, 

senting every need of the Catholic body, of reporting from 
original sources every question that affects the welfare of the 
Catholic Church at home and abroad; a Catholic press that 
would constantly give to our people the best of her literature, 
the best of her past and present spiritual life, and that would 
in the Catholic body find loyal support, attentive hearing, 
personal interest, and a ready response. 

An effective way to save the children is to save the par- 
ents. To him who observes ever so slightly, ominous portents 
are not wanting. The powerful forces at work incessantly in 
the world to-day — forces that poison the reading matter of our 
people, poison it both as to facts and principles, that are de- 
nying the need of God for the right growth of the human 
soul; forces that practically command the ear of the world, 
possess their power and effectiveness because they are ap- 
pealing to the masses that are in turn uninstructed, unenlight- 
ened, and, weighed down by social injustice and social tyranny, 
will listen to and follow the voice that promises them redemp- 
tion and happiness. It is not alone necessary that youth be 
trained in religious knowledge; it is also necessary, for the 
well-being of the Catholic body, that its corporate sense of 
the necessity of religious education for children as for adults^- 
of the necessity of having hearts and souls freshened contin- 
ually by the waters of God's truth, and of keeping in intelli- 
gent touch with the needs, the trials, the battles, the defeats, 
and the victories of God's Church upon earth — be kept vigorous- 
ly alive. In proportion as that sense grows dull, the Catholic 
body will grow weak. 

They that keep the city must watch by day and by night 
else the city may fall. And it is to the honor of every dweller 
therein that he has his own true part to play in its defence 
and in its glory, a part which, great or small, no one can take 
from him ; no one else can fill. But to be faithful to it, head 
and heart, one's whole being must be alive to the needs of the 
hour; and head and heart must constantly be enlightened, in- 
spired, and guided by the spiritual food of Catholic teaching. 
Else will they grow ignorant and lukewarm, without thought 
of a city to defend or of an inheritance to cherish. 

A stock broker well knows that unless he keep himself in 
close, accurate touch with the market, unless he feed bis mind 
every day with the details of its transactions, be will soon. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] LIFE AND LITERATURE 291 

very soon, be incapable of carrying on bis business. The same 
is true of every department of business; of every profession, 
of every field of human endeavor. Does the service of Christ 
ask less? And will the earthly welfare of His Church be pro- 
moted while we are deaf to the evils that threaten it ; indiffer- 
ent to the problems that we must face; ignorant of the vast 
riches that guided and that have been increased by our fathers; 
heedless of the words that intelligenti thoughtful, saintly lead- 
ers are striving to have us hear to-day ? 

The literature of the Catholic Church has played a supremely 
important part in the past in the sanctification of souls, the 
extension of Christ's Church upon earth, the growth and de- 
velopment of the Catholic mind. In a true sense it may be 
said that without Catholic literature none of these things 
could be. 

A comprehensive definition of Catholic literature is im- 
possible. It may include in the broadest sense every line of 
human writing that is good and true — even though it deal 
with the comparatively unimportant things of life, for all 
goodness and all truth are from God. To use ,tbe words of 
St. Paul, Catholic literature includes ''whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, 
whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame.'* 

But in its usually accepted meaning, Catholic literature 
may be defined as that body of writing informed^ enlightened^ 
implicitly or explicitly, by the truths revealed to us by Jesus 
Christ and preserved by His Church. It extends to the high- 
est and to the lowest. There is no thought or act, impulse or 
emotion, power or aim, no relation, individual or social, which 
it does not embrace. Catholic literature is as large as Catholic 
life, and Catholic life embraces the entire man in his common- 
place thoughts as well as in his highest aspirations, in his per- 
sonal duties as well as in his social responsibilities. Catholic 
literature is the detailed expression of the Christian life. 

Even in its widest sense it may, in a measure, be called 
the word of God. The far-off, faintly- shadowed word at 
times; meant, perhaps, only as an interpretation of the gentle 
wind; or the quiet sea; or the birds of the wood; neverthe- 
less, in its measure, it is His voice. It is again the merely 
human word speaking of commonplace things and of the issues 
that engage us in every-day life; but this also is, indirectly, of 



Digitized by 



Google 



293 Life and Literature [Janet 

God. In its fullest sense it is God*s direct word, revealed to 
His servants immediately by Him, bearing with it power and 
light from heaven, and lifting man from the things of earth to 
the things of God. It will be seen, then, that Catholic litera- 
ture reaches from end to end and *' orders all things sweetly.'' 
Its various expressions are so many separate rays, differing in 
Intensity, differing in power, differing in fruitfulness, yet from 
out one Sun they all spring; to the one Sun they owe their 
being; and that Sun— is Christ, the Eternal Word. 

Rightly, by His eternal begetting, is He called the Word 
of God ; and the human expression of that Word, the man 
Jesus Christ, is also the absolute perfection of human wisdom, 
from Whom all truth must spring and to Whom all truth must 
go. We do not say that all literature must be devotional; 
that it must always point a moral; that it must always be re- 
ligious. Our Lord Himself spoke of the beauty of the fields; 
the glory of the lilies, of the harvest, the flocks, and the birds 
of the air. As He came to save man and to save him by teach- 
ing him and lifting him up to perfection, so He made His 
teaching encompass the whole man, every want and every pos- 
sible demand of heart and soul and mind. 

Christ did not hesitate to dispute with the doctors ; He led 
a quiet home life for thirty years ; He had His own particular 
human friends; He hesitated not in preaching, in defending, in 
condemning; He loved to console, to take the little human 
good and lead it to the heavenly better, the heavenly best 
He was the Word simple yet infinite ; divine yet human ; God 
omnipotent yet the Way and the Life for us. Not the Way 
and the Life that we were to follow at certain times and use 
only on particular occasions, but the only Way and the only 
Life for all men at all times and all places. He will have us 
entire or He will not have us at all. No man can serve two 
masters. We must be in Christ; Christ must be within us; 
and His truth and His commandments must govern all our 
thoughts and our purposes — not only our holy thoughts at time 
of prayer, but our thoughts of business, of success in the world, 
of our relations with our neighbors, of our whole outlook upon 
life — this is Christianity, this is the teaching, clear, distinct, of 
the Catholic Church. 

As Christ was the perfect Word, so every word before or 
since, of human lips that has been true and worthy, is an an- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] LIFE AND LITERATURE 293 

nouncement or an echo of Him. And the Catholic Church, 
from the very moment of her birth, has been restless under the 
holy desire to make known that truth to men; to saturate 
men's lives with it ; to bring the world and all the things of 
the world into captivity at the feet of Christ. 

From the day of its birth, under tongues of fire, the Apos- 
tles went forth as the preachers of the word. As soon as pos- 
sible they put down in writing, under the guidance of God, 
the truths entrusted to them. As Christ perfected the law, so 
did they perfect the literature of God ; and added the Christian 
revelation to that greatest of literary works— the Bible. 

From the very first the Apostles realized, and realized under 
the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, the necessity of a Chris- 
tian literature. That Word of God, inspired as it is, was brought 
forth by human emergencies and, so to speak, by the temporal 
necessities of the Church. St. Matthew defended the human 
birth of our Lord; St. Mark gave evidence for the Virgin 
Mary; St. John wrote against the Gnostic heresies of his own 
day; St. Luke wrote the acts to chronicle the early labors of 
the Apostles, particularly the journeys of St. Paul; St Paul 
wrote to prove to the Hebrews that the Christians had an altar 
and a sacrifice; wrote to confirm and strengthen newly-made 
converts; and to bring home to particular churches particular 
truths. 

It is impossible to describe, even in the briefest way, how 
the Gentile world was led to Christ. The methods that won 
the victory are well shown to us in the life and work of St. 
Paul — St. Paul journeying over sea and land — the length and 
breadth of Asia Minor, and thence to Rome — preaching, writing, 
enforcing at every opportunity the word of God; speaking to 
the philosopher, the governor, the simple people; versed in 
Hellenic philosophy and leading Hellenism to God; a patriot 
appealing to Caesar; a citizen faithful in his allegiance; a writer 
of unsurpassed literary power; the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
and, as the conquerors of old, leading the Gentile world cap- 
tive at his chariot wheels to Christ. 

There was ever present with the Church this necessity of 
expressing, of defending her own life in the written word. 
Even when the world was laboring in the pains of rebirth, 
and the Church was suffering the i^ony of persecution, her 
literature was not permitted to die but Very little of it is left 



Digitized by 



Google 



294 LIFE AND LITERATURE [June, 

to us. But we have enough to show how important it was 
considered and how widely it was circulated. Clement of Rome^ 
Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Papias, the 
author of the letter to Diognetus — the works of these have 
come down to us. We have in them the outline of future 
Christian apologetics. In their day they defended the Church, 
they taught the people, they secured converts, sanctified souls, 
and begot heroic lives and heroic martyrs. 

In the great battle that was waged but two centuries after 
the beginnings of Christianity, the great leaders whom God 
raised up, leaders capable, brilliant, and the writings which they 
produced and which were read by the whole world, strengthened 
and extended the cause of Christ. Justin, who, like Augus- 
tine after him, had tried every philosophy — Stoic, Peripatetic, 
Pythagorean, Platonic — finally found, through the words of an 
old man, the true philosophy in the Catholic Church. Justin 
showed that pagan philosophy was wrong, that Christian phil- 
osophy was right. Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Tertul- 
lian, Pantasnus, Clemens, the schools of Alexandria, Cassarea, 
Rome, Edessa, Antioch — all these were great agencies that 
sent forth through the world and through every channel of 
Christian life the word of Christ. 

Through its literature the Church valiantly and triumphantly 
reviewed the past, though it was but three hundred years old, 
and through such apologists as Lactantius and Eusebius stirred 
its children to hope, and pointed to a glorious future. Atba- 
nasius, the savior of the Church against Arianism, Jerome, 
Augustine, Chrysostom, Basil, and Gregory, were veritable 
warriors in the holy cause of God's word. Then, as now, were 
charges made against Catholics as disloyal citizens. Then was 
it charged, as the Roman Empire began to disintegrate and 
fall to ruins, that it was the Catholics who, by their unfaith- 
fulness, had betrayed it. And St. Augustine, in his great 
work, The City of God^ showed how false the charge was and 
silenced the pagan and the Arian. 

And if we were to trace the work of the Church through 
further centuries we would find that in spreading broadcast the 
word of God she never slept. In every age and in every cen- 
tury her aim has been not only to preach the direct, revealed 
word of God, but to support that word ; to interpret it for 
her children; and, under her own guidance, to give them the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] LIFE AND LITERATURE J95 

secular wisdom of the world that might otherwise work their 
destruction. 

But from what has been said it will be evident that the 
Church since her very birth has been conscious of her duty 
to spread forth her literature — yea, to make literature her own ; 
to spread through the world the positive teachings of Chris- 
tianity; to make known the principles of true morality; to 
convert the world not merely in its religious aspect, but the 
entire world in its religion, its morality, its politics, its prac- 
tical life, its thoughts, its customs, its whole self to the teach- 
ings of Christ. She does not destroy; she builds up. She made 
captive the Greek world ; she made captive the Roman world ; 
she made captive the barbarian; she will yet make captive the 
children who have rebelled against her. As Christ is the 
Alpha and the Omega so is she, of all human life, the be- 
ginning and the end. She has not only opened heaven, but 
she has shown that the things of earth lead to heaven. She 
has not only her own literature; she is the mistress of litera- 
ture and, as the guardian of truth, has blazoned forth that 
truth — which without her the world has forgotten — that litera- 
ture, if it is to be an art at all, must be true. 

Her children in the past were faithful to her because they 
nourished themselves upon her word ; loved it, drank it in, 
made it their own. They of centuries ago, when printing was 
unknown, shame us who have the printed word at hand. St. 
Jerome, as early as the fourth century, might say: ''The 
ploughman as he held the handle of his plough would, instead 
of love songs, be singing his Alleluias ; the reaper, heated with 
his toil, would be solacing himself with the Psalms; and the 
vine-dresser, with his curved pruning hook in his hand, would 
be chanting one of the compositions of David." 

And coming to our own day, the duties and the necessities 
that rest upon us as Catholics are as great, if not greater, than 
those which rested upon our forefathers. It the printing press 
gave to Catholic truth, to Catholic literature, an efficacious 
&Uy» it gave to non-Catholic forces a powerful weapon. And 
so far have we neglected our duties that the printing press 
has practically been made captive, and -the press is, in great 
measure, in the hands of the enemy. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the immense outpouring 
today from presses and publishing houses all over the coun* 



Digitized by 



Google 



296 LIFE AND LITERATURE [June, 

try. That outpouring fairly deluges the earth. No one can 
know its entire force; yet none can remain entirely unaffected 
by it. The press is universal in its scope. Adults read till 
they lose their power of vision; children become the servants 
of the press almost as soon as they can read. The daily paper 
is omnipresent. Libraries are scattered in profusion all over 
the country. They are crowded indiscriminately with books. 
Everybody is eligible for membership and may be supplied 
with almost any book he desires. Books are sold at a very 
low price. Through booksellers and great department stores 
they are brought within the reach of iall^ and the glaring ad- 
vertisements in the newspapers are filled with announcements 
of book bargains. 

This power of the press is to-day a power that has wide- 
spread influence in the formation of character, in the welfare of 
the individual, of the family, of the nation ; it is the most effica- 
cious — the controlling factor. And that press, beginning with 
the daily through to the monthly and to the book itself, is 
predominantly non-Catholic. 

If we are to make ourselves truly Christian and Catholic 
in our character, our aims, our principles, then we must be 
readers of Catholic literature. If we are to have the true- at- 
mosphere of Catholic teaching in and about our homes, then our 
homes must welcome Catholic periodicals and Catholic books. 
If we are to influence our neighbors as we ought to influence 
them, to make them look more kindly upon Catholic teaching, 
to lead them to the acceptance of that truth which is their 
soul's salvation, then we must have Catholic literature to offer 
them and to enlighten them. If we are ever to make our 
country Catholic, and the more we love it the more energet- 
ically will we try to do this, then we must have an unlimited 
supply of appropriate Catholic literature. If we, as Catholics, 
are to retain our political rights — to keep from the hands of 
the Church those who would despoil her — then we must have 
a capable, well-organized, and well-supported Catholic press. 

The Catholic Church conquered the Grecian world of phil- 
osophy and art because, through her own literature, she showed 
that both were vain without Christian teaching, and both in 
Christian teaching had their fulfillment and their perfection. 
The Catholic Church conquered the Roman world because her 
children in family, social, and civic life exemplified Christian 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] LIFE AND LITERATURE 297 

teaching. Her apologists answered in detail every charge 
against her; and when Rome fell the only literature of the 
civilized world was that which the Church preserved. 

At the present time the Catholic press of Germany is the 
support and the strength of the Catholic Church in that empire; 
the disasters that have befallen the Church in France were 
made possible because French Catholics utterly neglected to 
support an intelligent, fearless. Catholic press. The life of the 
Church in England for the last fifty years has been her Catho- 
lic press. In a wonderful way the Catholics of England have 
been alive to the situation, and by persistent effort, by study, 
by intelligence, by sacrifice, they have answered every charge, 
met every difficulty, and have made the Catholic Church the 
most respected institution in that land. 

Throughout the entire world to-day the Catholic Church 
has an attack to meet more insidious in its quiet, disdainful 
way than any she has ever had to meet before. In the matter 
of faith she is met by the answer that dogma is a thing of 
the past; that the intelligent man now knows dogma to be 
but a development of merely human knowledge ; and that we 
ought now to put off our swaddling clothes. In the domain 
of ethics we have the commonly accepted theory that the 
principles of morality are not fixed; that they change as peo- 
ple change. .Numerous books have been published of late that 
deny any real difference between right and wrong. In the mat- 
ter of devotion many laugh at prayer ; deny the communion ot 
saints ; and think reverence for the dead to be a foolish thing. 
In the field of sociology almost every book published, almost 
every article in our secular magazines on the subject is untruth- 
ful and false in its principles. All manner of theories are ad- 
yanced on the subject of education. Socialism and the advo- 
cates of Socialism are more active every day. They are telling 
the people that the Catholic Church is opposed to the welfare 
of the working classes. They are ceaseless in their watching 
and unbounded in their zeal. 

In every field of human endeavor there are those who are 
opposed and who are opposing the Catholic Church. Whence 
is the antidote to come ? It is useless to say that these things 
do not affect Catholics — ^that we can live our life and let these 
things go by. The philosophy of history contradicts us ; the 
example of the Church throughout the ages puts us to shame. 



Digitized by 



Google 



298 LIFE AND LITERATURE [June, 

We, as Catholics, ought to have a press — and we can have 
it if we will-^that would, at least, instruct our own people 
and enable them to take their place in the world, as their 
fathers did, as intelligent champions of Catholic truth. We 
ought to have a press that would answer every charge, meet 
every difficulty, and be able, through the support of the Cath- 
olic people, to meet the non-Catholic world on every field; to 
show with regard to all things of this life, all questions of the 
human mind, in physical science, in biblical research, in his- 
tory, in economics, in politics, as well as all things of the life 
to come, that, at the root of all, and the perfection of all, as 
the mainstay and foundation of all, are the teachings of 
Christ 

To give an example. Here is a magazine article, an edi- 
torial in the newspaper, a book about the horrible injustice of 
the Church in the Spanish Inquisition. Where will you find 
an answer to it? Or, again, it is generally said that all 
Protestant countries are progressive; that Catholicism is the 
ruin of all nations upon whom it fixes its grasp. Or, again, 
that the Church is the enemy of physical science and always 
has been; or that Catholics can never make good citizens of 
a free republic. You know that the whole question of Church 
and State in France has been falsely reported in our secular 
press. Was there any great eagerness shown by American 
Catholics to defend here, before our own countrymen, the 
action of the Church there? 

Would it not broaden our minds, make us more zealous 
Catholics, keener lovers of the cause of God, if we knew that 
the Church in Italy was fighting for Christian education; if 
we knew that to-day it is introducing Christian education into 
Japan ; if we knew that the Church in France is fighting vali- 
antly for Catholic education ; if we knew that in South Africa 
the Boers are still fed upon Maria Monk literature, and that 
many of them have a hatred of the Catholic Church that is 
almost inconceivable? 

We have in this country question upon question that is 
yet to be settled. We should endeavor, as far as in us lies, 
to leaven the world of thought with Catholic principles; of try- 
ing to make the Church a master not alone in Israel, but in all 
the world. If we have not this duty before our eyes; if we 
do not arouse ourselves to it ; if the cause of good, intelligent 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 to.] LIFE AND LITERATURE 299 

Catholic literature continues to be neglected, as it is neglected 
now, then God's hand will not be stretched forth upon us and 
our children will have to face problem after problem that has 
been intensified by our neglect. 

We do not deny that our people have been deceived time 
and again by undeserving Catholic books and Catholic journals. 
But that is no reason why they should take no interest at all 
in Catholic literature; no reason why they should not devote 
themselves to what is worthy and noble and good. 

Are we not, as a people, shutting our eyes and refusing 
to stretch forth our hands to a treasure which ought to be 
ours? We are fed by the bread of earth. We never enter 
to enjoy the fruits of the promised land. Neglecting to read 
works that are directly Catholic, we are dead to the inspira- 
tion of Catholic faith and love in our every-day life* Many 
are driftwood as far as the great stream of human love that 
ought to send . itself forth from the hearts of men to the heart 
of God is concerned. 

We are rational creatures, and we promote our own good and 
the good of any cause we would serve by prayer, by devotion, 
by thoughtfulness, by a zeal for knowledge. And the cause 
of Christ, the cause of our own salvation, is promoted, not by 
external service alone, not simply by branding ourselves as 
Catholics, but by an internal realization, a bringing home to 
ourselves, by absorption into our own life of the truths and 
the principles of the Catholic faith. In this way, by this un- 
derstanding and welcoming of Christ, does Christ come to live 
in us and we in Him; in this way do we fulfill the command 
to bring our intellects into the captivity of Christ; in this 
way do we begin to understand and to know what is meant 
when we are termed the sons of God ; what js r ' 
Christ tells us that He will no longer call us y 
guests, but co-heirs with Himself of the Kingdom 

The revelation of God was made with an eterc 
The wondrous writing of the fathers and of the 
lives of holy men and women, should be a heavei 
well-loved by us. The instructive works by cap 
of to> day^^devotional, scriptural, doctrinal, ethical, 
sociological, of story and of poem — of all those, t 
alembic of whose Catholic minds have passed gr 
all these are sent to help us and inspire us, that \ 



Digitized by 



Google 



300 Life and Literature [June, 

more easily, through them, know the height and the depth of 
that wisdom that reaches from end to end. 

Books, such as I speak of here, are common and within the 
reach of all. Even from a merely human standpoint nothing 
could be more efficacious to the building up of character. The 
good effect upon the individual who would read them is incal- 
culable. The Scriptures, the writings of the past ages, the 
writings of to-day, treat every Catholic subject that could be 
mentioned; and these treasures are accessible to all. Around 
and about us — a veritably omnipresent atmosphere, which will 
supply our souls with the highest and best life — is this treasure 
of God's word ; the revealed word of Jesus Christ, the Eternal 
Truth ; the sacred, inspiring words of His disciples ; the helpful 
word of thousands of Catholic men and Catholic women who 
have interpreted and preserved for us the experiences and the 
lessons of the ages — this unlimited wealth is at our command. 

Around about us is a work that the poorest and the sim- 
plest of us can accomplish — the duty to know something of that 
sacred word ; the duty to know something of the best in litera- 
ture; the duty to sanctify our own souls, and sanctification 
comes not without knowledge ; the duty to help our neighbors 
and to spread, as far as our hands can reach and our word 
can go, not only the direct word of God, but the good taste, 
the pure, wholesome standard that bespeaks the Christian, and 
that will keep the world, and the works of the world that be- 
long to God, holy in His sight. 

The daily press is filled with accounts of serious offences 
against the commandments of God. Upon this press many 
of our people feed, sending their children morning and night to 
the corner stand to procure a copy of the sheet that tells them 
alluringly of the world's sin, and yet never calls it sin. The 
great majority of our novels are insipid and sensational; our 
magazines are made up of startling, hair-raising articles, or 
else of the cheap, attractive pictures of men and women, and 
of stories that give an altogether false picture of life. If we 
stop to think, we will realize that the printed word of to-day 
is predominantly untrustworthy. It preaches the enervating doc- 
trine that one religion is as good as another. At times it goes 
further. Not long ago one of our great city dailies, which not 
many days before had thousands of votes for a popular Catholic 
in one of its contests-— that same paper had a picture of the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] LIFB AND LITERATURE 301 

Crucifixion and an advertisement that told of a book written 
about other saviors that were equal to Christ, and that had also 
been crucified. That paper was read and supported by thou- 
sands of Catholics. In morality it teaches that there is no 
such thing as the positive commandments of an infinite God. 
It practically denies free will and personal responsibility. It 
never speaks of heaven; it will not hear of hell. 

Through the length and breadth of life the popular press 
of the day gives pronouncements without fear on every ques- 
tion that can concern us from the cradle to the grave: on edu- 
cation, on marriage, on the family, on property, on every 
phase of human conduct 

The pity of it is that, if it does not succeed in sowing the 
seeds of these errors in the souls of others, it does succeed in 
making them less watchful with regard to Christian truth; it 
leads them inwardly to compromise ; it debases their tastes and 
destroys their ideals, and robs them of the true Christian spirit. 

For the Christian and Catholic spirit is the spirit that 
looks to God in all things. The natural man has only what 
nature can give him, and nature falls short — infinitely short — 
of God. The Christian has the positive word of Christ. The 
word that came direct from heaven and that xi not alone re- 
ligious in the historical sense, but religious in the sense that 
it is the sole source of spiritual life, and is in itself sufficient. 
As it embraces the entire man, so does it go forth into all the 
actions of man. In his Christian rebirth he has been born 
into a new world, illumined by a new sun. He sees things 
entirely different from the merely natural man. He sees all 
things in the light of God; and for him that light will never 
be extinguished. In religion, in morality, in his own individual 
conduct, in his business, in his thoughts, in his ambitions, in 
his reading, he will be governed implicitly and explicitly by the 
light of Jesus Christ 

He has been bom a son of God and for none of the un- 
worthy things of the world, not even for the slightest, will he 
forget that sonship; and as the printed word is the greatest 
power for thoughtfulness, for action, for inspiration, and imi- 
tation of the example of the ages, so will the Christian not 
weaken or debauch his mind by what is unworthy ; but he 
will realize with a deep, personal, abiding consciousness and 
determination the duty of knowing, and having his children 



Digitized by 



Google 



302 Life and Literature [June, 

know, the great truths of Christianity ; the great truths of the 
saints, the great questions of the Church and of the world 
she is trying to save. 

Our fathers fleeing from the fury of Jew and pagan halted 
here and halted there to deliver the word of God — to drop the 
seed that would bear abundant fruit. The world pursued them 
in hate ; and because they in love gave their life for the world, 
the world in turn hastened to love them. Our fathers by land 
and by sea, amid deserts and forests, in the din of war or the 
quiet of peace, sought to learn the word of God and give it 
to others. With the labor of years they transcribed and handed 
down thousands of volumes that are the wealth of the ages. 
Because the world was made to listen to the word of the 
Catholic Church, because the world did listen and drink it in, 
the world is civilized and Christian to-day. 

The pupil that sat reading at the feet of Alcuin helped 
later to save Europe to civilization. The boy that listened to 
Peter Lombard afterwards became the Christian Aristotle. Our 
fathers in the days of later persecution — in that land from 
whence many of them journeyed— in this land when books 
were not so common as they are now— taught their children 
the love of good reading. 

This is our danger, that in the day of seeming prosperity 
and growth, we should neglect to strengthen the foundations 
that will sustain and advance to further fullness what has al- 
ready been accomplished. 

The great wealth of our Catholic spiritual literature, the 
goodly number of worthy volumes that are being published to- 
day, and are adding to this wealth, are in great measure un- 
known to Catholics. It is the exception to find a home where 
spiritual reading is done to any great extent or in any in- 
telligent way. Such reading would open up for every in- 
dividual a wonderful vision; inspire him with that delicate, 
sensitive conscience which is the mark of every true Catholic; 
inspire him with zeal and love, show him the true way to 
personal happiness and divine peace, and make him a watch- 
ful, faithful member of the visible kingdom of God upon earth. 
Under its benign influence the Holy Spirit would, indeed, re- 
new the face of the earth. Our own homes are desolate and 
our own souls are barren without it. Because we refuse to 
bathe in these waters, stirred for us by angel hands, we have 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 to.] Life and Literature 303 

a poor concept of Catholic ideals; we are weak in the pres- 
ence of temptation and never have the power to reach out in 
confident determination to that positive love and union with 
God for which our souls were created. 

And with regard to our duty towards others there arise^ 
as we talk daily with our companions and friends, Catholics 
and non* Catholics, a thousand and one questions which we 
ought to be able to answer intelligently and capably, and thus 
represent worthily before men the Church of the living Christ. 
It is unnecessary to mention questions regarding the Church's 
teaching and discipline, questions in which the whole world is 
interested. There are, besides these, questions of the secular, 
political, and social world which materially affect her welfare. 
A Catholic should realize that he is not only a member of a 
parish, but of a world-wide organization; yes, a living organ- 
ism of which Christ is the head, and the Holy Father is His 
Vicar upon earth. In every matter that affects her welfare he 
should be eager and anxious and sympathetic. He is false to 
his duty if, owing to his ignorance, owing to his failure to 
seize opportunity, he must stand silent when he hears her teach- 
ings and her discipline assailed. They are being assailed to-day, 
and assailed bitterly, by journals and books — and what are the 
vast majority of Catholics doing to defend her and place her 
name in honor before our countrymen? 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE NOVELS OF MRS. DE LA PASTURE. 

BY AGNES BRADY. 

EIT is never didactic, does not take kindly to facts, 
is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed 
outright by a sermon.*' Such, at least, is the 
opinion pronounced by Agnes Repplier in one 
of her delightful essays. And if, on reading 
it, some grave and judicious heads shake a little dubiously, 
most readers, we fancy, will agree that the dictum is not al- 
together devoid of truth. Unfortunately the majority of our 
present-day novelists, the very men for whose benefit this 
pleasing doctrine is proclaimed, refuse to avail themselves of 
it in practice. They resemble that group of Mrs. Jellyby's 
friends, each of whom had a separate and distinct mission in 
life, except Mr. Qaayle, whose mission it was to be interested 
in everybody else's mission. We ask them for pleasure, and 
they give us a problem ; or perhaps they condescend to solve 
the problem; or in the overflowing goodness and simplicity of 
their hearts, taking compassion on our multitudinous ignorances, 
they slip in here and there a little treatise on psychology, or 
on ethics, or on economics, or — blest Eldorado of the hourl-^ 
on sociology. Tired of their grim and determined earnestness, 
we sigh for something with the breath of life in it, for a 
novelist's world of real human beings with beating hearts that 
send the blood tingling through the veins. It is with relief, 
then, that we turn from the lay preachers and university ex- 
tension lecturers, who have been masquerading as novelists, to 
one who has old-fashioned notions of the story-teller's art. 

Mrs. de la Pasture devotes herself frankly to the business 
of giving pleasure to her readers; their number, therefore, has 
become legion in England, and is fast growing among our- 
selves. With a dozen or more novels to her credit, she is 
now enjoying the plenitude of her powers, master of a sure, 
ripened, and agreeable style of fiction. Her most popular 
stories perhaps, are: Peter's Mother and Deborah of Tod^s; 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE Novels of Mrs. de la pasture 305 

but others also are wide favorites, such as Catherine of Calais ; 
Catherine's Child; Adam Grigson; The Man from America; 
and The Lonely Lady of Grosvenor Square. Her success as a 
dramatist has been assured since the unusually favorable re- 
ception accorded in London to the presentations of The Lonely 
Millionaire^ Peter^s Mother^ and Her Grace the Reformer. Deb^ 
orah of Tod's was produced very successfully in America. 
But it is with the novels that we are at present concerned. 
Mrs. de la Pasture offers us bright, wholesome stories oi the 
higher classes in England, told with cleverness, a quiet humor, 
and a knowledge of the life whereof she speaks. 

Another young Englishwoman once took from her busy, 
cheerful life some leisure hours to write down a few stories, 
which she then quietly locked away in her desk, never dream- 
ing of their real value, never guessing how freely future 
generations would bestow smiles and tears upon the affairs of 
Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins, of Fanny Price and Marianne 
Dashwood. With the same happy unconsciousness and growing 
love for her task we can imagine Mrs. de la Pasture writing 
pleasantly of the second romance of Peter's Mother^ or describ- 
ing the pathetic evolution of Deborah of Tod's. Perhaps no 
writer since Jane Austen has succeeded better in the portrayal 
of family life. Even the Bennets, assembled in solemn council 
over the question of getting the girls partners enough for the 
next ball, or the frequent entertainments of Barton Park, 
which '' supported the good spirits of Sir John, and gave exer- 
cise to the good breeding of his wife,*' are not more real than 
the delightful glimpses of domestic affairs in Mrs. de la Pasture's 
stories. In The Tyrant we become intimately acquainted with 
one household — the sweet little mother, the pretty, romance- 
loving daughters, the ambitious sons, all ruled by the miserly, 
autocratic father, who is, indeed, lord and master of the house. 
One day at luncheon time the two daughters paused on the 
staircase while their father was speeding the parting guests to 
whom he was too economical to play the host 

'''One comfort is, they will get a much better luncheon 
at home,' said Sophy viciously. 'They are laughing. Listen. 
Papa can't be so very cross. He is telling them a funny 
story I ' 

"'Which?' said Annie with unconscious satire." 

Surely this bit deserves to be placed beside those pleasant 
VOL. xci.— 20 



Digitized by 



Google 



306 THE NOVELS OF MRS. DE LA PASTURE [Jane, 

annals of the family whose after-dinner conversation was on 
the topic of the height of the different grandchildren 1 

It is not in plot construction that Mrs. de la Pasture excels. 
Her plots are sometimes loosely woven and guilty of occasional 
inconsistencies. Her stories, though not carefully planned, do, 
of course, proceed in an interesting fashion, but it is in the 
character drawing that she is especially admirable. It is usually 
asserted that no woman can succeed in making real men of 
her heroes ; that hopeless prig, Daniel Deronda, is always cited 
as an unhappy example. Such failure, in the case of Mrs. de 
la Pasture, must be admitted with a very few of her heroes, 
notably that inconceivably august. King Arthurian personage, 
Sir Philip Adelstone, who stalks through the pages of Cathe^ 
tine of Calais^ and that rigid gentleman with uncomfortably high 
standards, who gives the title to The Grey Knight^ and who, 
after years of cruel neglect of his daughter, cannot forgive a 
momentary flash of temper in the same direction on the part 
of his idealized fiancee. Yet in general her masculine characters 
are convincing; they are individuals, not types. Perhaps the 
most carefully delineated and the most amusingly realistic is 
the stolid young Englishman in the story of Peter^s Mother* 
Peter Crewys, at the age of twenty, returns wounded from the 
Boer War to regain his health and take charge of the estate 
in Devonshire, which has come into his possession by his father's 
death two years before. Peter has a long nose, small, gray 
eyes, and a comfortable sense of his own importance. He for- 
gets that his mother. Lady Mary, who was but a girl of seven- 
teen when she married her elderly guardian and came to live 
the tiresomely sedate life of Barracombe House, is still com- 
paratively young, and may desire a future of her own. When 
he arrives home he expects to find her in deep mourning, and 
ready to devote her remaining years to his comfort and ser- 
vice. He has nicely planned her rSle as his dear old mother, 
and may even have selected the special kind of lace cap that 
he would like her to wear. '^ I mean to keep everything going 
here exactly as it was in my father's time,'' he tells her. ''You 
shall devote yourself to me, and I'll devote myself to Barra- 
combe ; and we'll just settle down into all the old ways Only 
it will be me instead of my father — that's all." 

In a lti9 days, however, Peter makes some surprising dis- 
coveries. It appears that his mother, aided by his cousin and 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] The Novels of Mrs. de la Pasture 307 

gaardian, John Crewys, has been occupied in the task of re- 
storing and redecorating the house and improving the estate. 
Peter does not like changes. He is also beginning to suspect, 
very reluctantly, that his mother and his guardian have be- 
come seriously interested in each other. But poor Lady Mary, 
naturally sweet and gay, longing for love and happiness, still 
refuses to marry John Crewys, and, rather than disappoint 
Peter's ideals, is ready to sacrifice herself for her beloved son. 
The outlook is bad for Lady Mary's chance of happiness, when 
the dea ex machina appears, in the form of Miss Sarah Hewel, 
a brilliant young beauty with great self-confidence, red hair, 
and an admiring love for Lady Mary, whom she determines to 
rescue from Peter's selfishness. She therefore brings that young 
gentleman completely under her sway. In adoration of her 
charms Peter submits to her superior wisdom, learns his own 
insignificance in the scheme of things, and becomes reconciled 
to his mother's marriage with John Crewys. Finally Sarah 
surprises herself by falling in love with Peter, and the story 
ends as happily as a fairy tale. In the character of Peter the 
author has certainly achieved a triumph of indirect delineation. 
No artist uses a label. Thackeray does not tell us that George 
Osborne is selfish, nor does Dickens hint that Mrs. Nickleby 
is silly — the good woman opens her mouth and speaks for her- 
self. Peter does likewise. His quite unconscious selfishness, 
his hopeless, stolid narrow-mindedness, are in his own honest 
words. His every utterance is weighed down, not by light con- 
ceit, but by a ponderous sense of his own importance ; he ex- 
asperates, even while he amuses. When he condemns his moth« 
er's new way of arranging her hair by saying, '* Why, Mother, 
you never used to follow the fashions before I went away; 
you won't begin now, at your age, will you ?" we long to shake 
him. But when he decides that '^ the sudden joy of my return 
has been too much for you, poor old mum," or remarks casu- 
ally, '' Women can never take care of themselves," he is so 
funny as to be almost likable; and we are tempted to agree 
with the opinion of his guardian that ** the lad is a good lad 
at bottom, and a manly one into the bargain." 

A character utterly dissimilar, but portrayed with the same 
subtle touch, is presented for our enthusiastic appreciation in 
the novel called The Man From Ametica. The old Vicomte de 
Nanroy, '' who had been christened Patrick, and whose family 



Digitized by 



Google 



308 THE NOVELS OF MRS. DE LA PASTURE [June, 

name was O'Reilly, was the son of the brave Chevalier 
O'Reilly, a naturalized Frenchman and a soldier of fortune/' 
With his corpulency, his lameness, his fierce white moustache, 
his baggy trousers, and his yellow linen waistcoat, the Vicomte 
combines the elegant politeness of a foreigner of distinction. 
In Honeycott Manor, the little homestead nestling among the 
hills of Devon, he lives with his two little granddaughters in a 
frugal contentment undreamed of by Horace on the Sabine 
farm. He feeds his cats and his doves, buds his roses, cooks 
his own meals, reads French with his grandchildren, Rosaleen 
and Kitty, and teaches them picquet and dummy whist. The 
little girls love him dearly, but rather pityingly. 

'^The extraordinary thing about bon papa was, as Kitty 
remarked despairingly to Rosaleen, that he was always being 
surprised at something. 

^' The first primrose surprised him regularly every February 
or March or April, according to the date when the first prim- 
rose took it into its head to appear. The first crocus that 
opened its golden cup to catch the golden sunshine surprised 
him no less; and he was annually astonished, on measuring 
Rosaleen and Kitty, to discover that they had grown. 

'^ ' Does he expect us to be little girls forever ? ' said Kitty, 
in disgust, to her sister. 

''When they presented him with a pair of socks that did 
not match~-one being tightly knitted by Kitty, and the other 
very loosely by Rosaleen — bon papa was so amazed at their 
achievement that he almost fell into a fit ; though he must 
have seen them at work upon the gift for months previously." 

Perplexed indeed is the Vicomte when Rosaleen and Kitty, 
grown older, demand to be taken to London; but more per- 
plexed are the Londoners in the big hotel by his plaid shawl, 
baggy trousers, and air of distinction. After a visit to the 
shops, the Vicomte is much bewildered by the sudden trans- 
formation of his Rosaleen and Kitty into young ladies of 
fashion, and when a few weeks of society suffice to bring 
about the engagements of them both, we suspect him of real 
relief at the prospect, not only of their happiness, but of his 
own freedom to return to the cats, doves, and roses. In his 
charming combination of oddity and distinction, simplicity and 
aristocracy, the Vicomte finds an English counterpart in 
Colonel Newcome; he is quite as distinct a personality, and 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] THE NOVELS OF MRS. DE LA PASTURE 309 

altogether one of the finest and most lovable old gentlemen 
in all fiction. 

With a few exceptions the women drawn by Mrs. de la 
Pasture are not individuals. They belong to either of two 
types: the ordinary, pretty young English girl, who has color 
in her cheeks, but little in her character; the lay figure type, 
like Kate Nickleby; and the woman of thirty-five, whose 
romance comes late in life. The heroines of the latter class 
are fairly well presented, especially Lady Mary in Peter's 
Mother. But there are two of Mrs. de la Pasture's women 
who^are so unusual and so strikingly depicted as to be quite 
unforgettable. The first is Rosamond Evelyn, who gives the 
chief interest to the story of Adam Grigson^ she is ** tiny as a 
sprite, coaxing and beaming, with a little, delicate face, eye* 
lashes too light for pathetic gray eyes, and fluffy, fair hair.'' 
The shallow silliness which she takes no pains to hide, the 
little mind so frankly material, suggest her namesake, Rosa- 
mond Vincy, of Middlemarch fame. But she reminds us more 
vividly^of another heroine: incapable of passion or affection, 
using her inginue charm and sly shrewdness unscrupulously 
''to get ahead in the world," Rosamond is very like Thack- 
eray's Becky Sharp. After she succeeds in her ambition of 
" marrying money," Rosamond's short and checkered career in 
the longed-for London society ends as abruptly as did Becky 
Sharp's, but not so disastrously, since she is saved from folly 
by the good sense and strength of her husband. George Eliot 
holds Rosamond Vincy up pitilessly for our scorn, like a but- 
terfly on a pin ; and Thackeray, as Mr. Howells points out, is 
"boisterously sarcastic" at Becky's expense; but Mrs. de la 
Pasture has drawn the character of her Rosamond with a fine, 
subtle skill, and has made her shallowness pathetic rather than 
despicable. If we have a secret sympathy for Rosamond Vincy, 
and an inclination to pity her for being married to Lydgate, 
rather than vice versa, we are guiltily conscious that George 
Eliot would not approve. We can almost hear her say sternly: 
" My poor Lydgate has deteriorated since he married this silly 
woman. She is dragging him down I " And in our enthusi- 
asm for Becky Sharp we are sure that we appreciate her bet* 
ter than her creator ever did. Thackeray painted her faith- 
fully, to be sure, but we see through the painting to the 



Digitized by 



Google 



3IO THE NOVELS OF MRS. DE LA PASTURE I June, 

originaL George Eliot was, in mind, almost as much a man 
as Thackeray ; Mrs. de la Pasture has a feminine touch. She 
analyses the complexities of Rosamond neither pitilessly nor 
sarcastically, but with keen insight and quiet truth. 

The second, and probably the better known, is Debdrah of 
Tod*s. Deborah is a Devonshire maid; from her father, an 
officer in the Hussars, she has inherited what she calls with 
simple directness her " gentle blood " ; from her mother the 
farm of Tod's, which she herself manages. She is described 
as majestic in mien, with black hair and eyes, and rich color- 
ing; her whole bearing is marked by an air of repos^ and 
quiet strength. This rustic goddess General Sir Arthur d'Alton 
courts and marries, forgiving her dialect for the sake of her 
wealth. Deborah reverences the general for some past act of 
kindness toward her (dead) father, but a few months of mar- 
riage show him as he really is, a man old in dissipation, the 
wreck of a gallant soldier. Yet Deborah never falters in her 
direct, uncompromising notions of duty; she manages Sir 
Arthur's household, makes friends with his daughters, and 
pays his son's debts. Hardest of all, she goes about in a 
London society which she is not gay enough to enjoy, and in 
which her dignity wins her the name of '* the Sphinx." When 
the general is struck with partial paralysis, Deborah says 
calmly: '' I was tu be his wife equally in sickness and in health. 
What wude yu have me be doing of wi' him lying there suf- 
fering ? " — and nurses him day and night with affectionate care 
for more than a year. When at the end of that time he dieSj 
she puts on the old blue gown in which she used to work in 
the cider-press, and goes back to Tod's in search of her lost 
youth and happiness. But the farm life is too narrow for her 
more mature ambitions. Her own suffering has broadened 
her sympathies. Together with the man to whom she has al- 
ready, unconsciously, given her love, and who comes to claim 
the gift, Deborah resolves to devote herself to the wider in- 
terests which will be hers as mistress of a large estate. 

Deborah is a character of unusual strength. The story of 
her mental evolution, of the slow and reluctant steps with which 
«he advances in worldly wisdom, is pathetically told. Her re- 
ligious scruples, her absolute lack of humor, her feminine de- 
sire to be loved, all are very real and vivid. Her untutored 



Digitized by 



Google 



IpIO.] HELEN 311 

nobility is presented in striking contrast to the shallowness and 
artificiality of the vapid ''society folk'' with whom she is 
thrown in contact 

Mrs. de la Pasture is a Catholict and The Catholic 
World is most happy in paying this tribute to her work. We 
are grateful — as all lovers of good books must be — for what 
she has given us. It is much to have known hon papa and to 
have smiled at Peter Crewys; to have become intimate with 
many charming characters; and to have carried with us from 
her pages the memory of many delightful hours. And we 
know that a deep and tender feeling of Catholic piety has not 
been without its influence upon our author. 



HELEN. 

BY H. G. SMITH. 

Not she who watched from her gold battlement 
The tide of war, the carnage that she wrought 
With her wide eyes, and lithesome fairness bought 
By I/eda's charm ; not she who could content 
Her empty soul with all the vauntings sent 
To harass Troy ; she with the sunlight caught 
In her pearl-braided hair, for whom had fought 
The gracious heroes, brave of heart, war-spent ; 

Not she the type of thy sweet spirit's bliss. 
But rather that fair Helen, who at mom 
By her low casement sees an amber sky 
And messengers of God, whose fleet wings kiss 
Her lifted brow, within their sure arms borne 
The sign of pain and love's immensity. 



Digitized by 



Google 



H. G. WELLS. 

BY W. E. CAMPBELL. 
II. 

r were considering the shareholder as a none too 
healthy factor in modern social life. We must 
try and probe a little deeper into this question 
than Mr. Wells has done, and with other help 
than his. 
The mistake which is too often made, both by the opponents 
and the apologists of the present system, is to regard pro* 
daction and distribution as widely separated processes ; where- 
as, in point of fact, they not only take place simultaneously, 
but are in a sense one identical process. We cannot study 
the production of wealth and its distribution apart The very 
payment of money, which we call distribution, is in fact an 
order upon goods already produced or about to be produced* 
Just as we regard the human frame so must we regard the 
industrial organism as a living whole. Just as the human frame 
requires so many units of food to keep it going, so too, does 
the industrial organism require a regular supply of industrial 
energy to keep it efficient — energy which it may be said to 
derive from land, labor, and capital. But what leads to so 
much confusion at present is the fact that we are obliged to 
measure the various kinds of energy supplied to the industrial 
organism in altogether distinct and un-correlated units. Land 
is measured in acres; workers are measured by hours' or 
weeks' work; and capital in hundreds of dollars. We, there- 
fore, need a direct measure of units of productive power, for 
it is these units that are really bought and sold under the 
guise of acre productivity per annum ; laborer productivity 
per week; and machine or concrete capital productivity per 
annum [cf. U. pp. 78-9). Having once got a clear notion of 
the industrial system as an organic whole, using up various 
kinds of industrial energy in turning out commodities, we need 
now to get a fuller understanding of the methods by which 
the inevitable waste of structure is repaired, by which new 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] H. G. WELLS 313 

and increased structure is created, and by which fresh energy 
is poured into the system. The industrial system as a whole, 
like the individual factors of which it is composed, works for 
its keePt and it will continue to operate productively only so 
long as it is kept in constant repair, and the energy which it 
gives out in production is constantly replaced. It must have 
a maintenance fund. But a growing industrial system requires 
more than its keep ; it needs a further supply of energy where- 
with to create new tissue in order that more work may be 
. done. 

First, then, as to the maintenance fund. This does not 
consist of wages alone. ''Every sort of laborer giving out 
muscular and nervous energy and consuming tissue in his 
labor must receive in income the food, clothes, shelter, etc., 
required to maintain him in his working power. Since, too, 
he is mortal, this work of individual restoration cannot be 
kept up forever. If the suppy of labor- power is to be main- 
tained, the material means of bringing up children to replace 
aged workers must be provided*' (The Industrial System^ J. 
A. Hobson, p. 63, cf. also Leo XIII., On the Condition of Labor). 
This gives us the basis of the ''minimum wage/' which will, 
of course, vary with different kinds of labor, that which re- 
quires a greater exercise of physical energy or mental skill 
having a higher "minimum." 

But not only must wages have a physical basis, they must 
also have a moral one. Man is not a machine but a creature 
of will, and in order to get the best quantity and quality of 
production from him his will must be properly stimulated. 
An engine driver or a compositor will require a higher sub- 
sistence wage than a general laborer, and so right up through 
the scale of industries. It is clear, then, that " the subsistence 
wages, required to maintain the existing supply of labor power, 
may be held to constitute a first charge upon the industrial 
product on behalf of labor. If there is a failure anywhere to 
provide this subsistence, the industrial system is weakened and 
diminished in productivity." All "sweating," however much it 
may "pay" the employers of unskilled labor, is undoubtedly 
a damage to the industrial organism as a whole. 

But while this " wage of subsistence " suffices to keep the 
industrial system at its present state of efficiency, it makes no 
provision for its growth. If production is to be increased in 



Digitized by 



Google 



314 H. G. WELLS [June, 

quantity and quality a greater provision must be made. The 
quantity of production can be increased in two ways : first, by 
increasing the number of laborers; second, by inducing the 
existing workers to give out more productive energy. In either 
case a rise in wages will bring about the required result. 

It is the same with an increase in the quality of production. 
To evoke the finer sorts and uses of human energy we must 
have a higher standard of life and a higher rate of payment. 
** For each unit of the finer sort of productive power a higher 
price is necessary than sufficed for a unit of the ruder power. 
It is partly a question of physical, partly of moral motive. 
Fine and reliable work cannot be got out of workers living 
upon a bare subsistence wage; coarse material surroundings 
and the presence of poverty do not support a nervous system 
capable of the nicer adjustments of muscle and brain involved 
in fine work of any sort ; there is neither the physical stimulus 
to acquire and apply such power.'' 

'' If, then, a trade is to grow in quality and size, this growth 
involves a rise in price per unit of human energy. This is the 
real significance of the rise in rate of pay which has taken 
place in the skilled cotton trade of Lancashire during the last 
half-century, as also in many other manufactures where growth 
in volume of work has been accompanied by improved skillt 
care, regularity, and responsibility. This is the so-called 'econ- 
omy of high wages,' assisted, doubtless, in its mode of oper- 
ation by the organization of the workers, but primarily based 
upon the economic necessity, which is ultimately traceable to 
*tbe play of physical and moral stimuli or motives operating 
upon individual workers and molding class standards of life." 

So much then for labor, the quantity and quality of it, and 
the part it plays in the industrial system. We must now turn 
to capital and see what it should rightfully and healthfully 
claim for itself. 

Just as labor claims for itself a fund sufficient for main- 
tenance and progress, so does capital — and by capital we just 
now mean ''the concrete forms of buildings, tools, machines, 
stock, etc., which assist industry, not their financial equivalent 
or measure." But capital and labor differ in this respect, that, 
whereas labor requires a wage of subsistence dnd a wage of 
progress, capital requires, in addition, the cost of initiation* 
We have to take into account the costs of bringing into exist- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] H. G. Wells 315 

ence this industrial system. " The maintenance fund of capital 
must contain a payment for the effort of saving required to 
bring into existence the forms of material capital/' 

Now, in order to induce people to save, something must 
be given them for the effort and inconvenience thereby caused ; 
to use the ordinary economic phrase, we must reward ^'the 
effort of abstinence or waiting/' But this effort of abstinence 
or waiting does not fall on all alike. It is, therefore, valued 
at the maximum and not at the minimum inconvenience it 
would give to any man in the country~-the inconvenience 
caused to a poor man being obviously much greater than that 
caused to a rich one. Hence it is that all saving receives the 
price which must be paid to the most expensive savers, those, 
in fact, who would not save at all unless they received, say, 
three per cent. 

Thus, for the use of capital required in the industrial sys- 
tem, two absolutely necessary payments must be made ; a fund 
with minimum interest for the production and upkeep of the 
business fabric; and a further payment of interest to elicit 
capital for the quantitative and qualitative growth of that busi- 
ness. 

Lastly, we come to land. Just as in the case of labor and 
capita], there must be payments for maintenance and improve- 
ment. A third payment, however, comes in in this case, and 
that is called rent. This must be left for later consideration. 

This, then, is the simple statement of how the industrial 
system begins, continues, and grows. Each one of the pay- 
ments made to land, capital, and labor is a strictly necessary 
cost of production. And, as we have seen, this method of 
maintenance and growth is at once quantitative and qualita- 
tive, physical and moral. 

This brings us to a further and, from the social point of 
view, a much more important and interesting consideration. 
The industrial sysUm produces mare than its keep ; what becomes 
of the surplus f It is conceivable that the whole of the sur- 
plus product of the industrial system is capable of being dis- 
tributed and consumed in such a manner as to promote its 
increased efficiency, and that quite without any regard to the 
more human interests of society. But we know, only too well, 
that great portions of this surplus product go neither to stimu- 
late the growth and efficiency of industry itself nor« on the 



Digitized by 



Google 



3i6 H. G. WELLS [June, 

other hand, to the promotion of the common good. We know, 
on the contrary, that large amounts of it are taken as onnec- 
essary and excessive payments which help rather to depress 
than to stimulate both the industrial and the social systems. 
To use the words of a capable English economist, ** the abuse 
or uneconomical use of the surplus product is the source of every 
sort of trouble or malady of the industrial system^ and the whole 
problem of industrial reform may be conceived in terms of a truly 
economical disposal of this surplus** {The Industrial System^ 
J. A. Hobson, p. 78). 

Before the rise of our modern capitalistic industry surpluses 
were relatively small, and so there remained a very small 
margin wherewith to increase industrial progress, on the one 
hand, or to pass as '^unearned increment" into the hands of 
the landlord or financier. But now the industrial organism 
tends more and more to increase and with it the surplus mar- 
gin grows greater and greater. It must be clearly understood 
that we have no cause for complaint that great surpluses in- 
crease or that they are made productive by being applied to 
genuinely reproductive purposes, but only that so large a pro- 
portion of them are applied to unproductive and socially de- 
structive purposes. At present no law exists for the apportion* 
ment of such surpluses except the law of superior force. Land- 
owners, capitalists, laborers, or combinations of these, can, ex- 
actly in proportion to their strength, appropriate as unearned 
and excessive gains lumps of this surplus. It, therefore, rests 
upon us all seriously to consider any proposals which may be 
made with a view to securing that as much as possible of this 
industrial surplus should be applied to the purposes of indus- 
trial and social progress 'Mnstead of passing in the shape of 
unearned income to the owners of the factors of production, 
whose activities are depressed, not stimulated, by such pay- 
ments." 

There can be little doubt that larger and larger shares of 
^'surplus" tend to pass into the hands of certain large inter- 
ests — the banker and financier, transport companies, city land 
owners,' manufacturers of protected or patented goods, brewers 
and distillers, and contractors for public works ; and while this 
is so these large appropriators can in no way be said to re- 
turn to the industrial system anything like proportionate ser- 
vices for what they receive — they do little to stimulate either 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 317 

indastrial or social progress. ^* Among entrepreneurs the finan- 
cier or manipulator of fluid capital and of credit is at present 
in a position of such vantage that his share of the surplus is 
out of all proportion to his services. Much of the surplus goes 
in overpayments, which check, instead of stimulating, efficiency 
and progress, while other portions of the system, especially 
the lower grades of labor, are deprived of the share needed 
to evoke, educate, and support the growing efficiency requisite 
for participation in the more rapid march of modern industry *' 
{16. pp. 136.138). 

It now remains for us to indicate in the briefest manner 
certain ways of diverting this ''surplus'' into more suitable 
and productive channels. First, we have what is called the 
labor movement. This movement owed its early vigor very 
largely to the one-sided teaching of Karl Marx that '' surplus,'* 
while entirely due to the laborer, had been appropriated by 
the capitalist ; and that, in order to satisfy justice and redress 
the wrongs of the proletariat, this surplus must return to the 
class from which it came. But, without committing ourselves 
in any way to the Marxian fallacies, it is clear enough that 
the tremendous amount of unproductive surplus appropriated 
by the capitalists is entirely due to their strong strategical 
position, and this of itself is a quite sufficient justification of 
trades unionism and the labor movement. ''Wherever such 
surpluses exist they form an object of attack for the labor 
movement, for since they are, ex kypotkesi, unnecessary or ex- 
cessive payments, taken by capital because they can be £0t, they 
can be secured by labor in higher wages and other improve- 
ments of conditions, if labor is strong enough. . . . The 
economics of the labor movement hinge mainly upon the ex- 
istence of the (industrially and socially unproductive) 'surplus' 
held by the employing class and distributed as rent, extra 
profits, or interest, fees or salaries. The whole or any part of 
it can theoretically and in practice be diverted into real wages, 
if labor is strong enough to take it" {lb. p. 206). 

This, too, can be done, as Mr. Hobson shows us, without 
any detriment to the quantity or quality of production. Nay, 
rather with great and lasting benefit to both. This is a point 
that is so fiercely and frequently debated by apologists for the 
present capitalistic system that it will be well to keep it 
clearly in view as we proceed. 



Digitized by 



Google 



3i8 H. G. WELLS [Jane, 

Everything depends on the ''surplus'' which remains over 
when capital has taken its rightful share. If there is no 
'' surplus/' then, indeed, the labor movement has no economic 
basis whatever. (Nor, for the matter of that, has capitalism.) 
As things stand at present, labQr is the weakest claimant for 
surplus, and the labor movement is an attempt to strengthen 
its position and so better its chances of obtaining a more 
equal share of it. So far capital has had all the best of it; 
its better organization, its abler direction, and its wealth have 
enabled it to offer a so far successful resistance to the de- 
mands of labor* Hence we find labor moving forward into 
politics, hoping here, with the help of legislative weapons, to 
strengthen its position. There is nothing necessarily socialistic 
about all this. // is simply an attempt to improve the bargain^ 
ing power of the workers. ** The growing disposition of trade 
unions to favor drastic land legislation, unemployed relief 
works, old-age pensions, wage-boards in sweating trades, as 
well as to promote large schemes of public education and 
public credit, is not attributable to any distinct theory of 
state functions or any preference of public to private enter- 
prise. These projects are primarily viewed in their bearing 
upon the bargaining power of the workers. Land reform will 
help to relieve congestion of the labor market; unemployed 
relief and old-age . pensions will economize the financial re- 
sources of the workers and their unions; education, poor law 
reforms, the repression of sweating conditions, will help to 
build up a more solid basis of working class organization. 
The ultimate weapon of capitalism has always been and still is 
starvation** {lb. p. 210). 

The labor movement has, of course, other ends in view as 
well, but it is engaged at present, first and before all, in at- 
tempting to secure for itself an increased share in the surplus 
product of industry, which remains after all necessary expenses 
have been met, and is at present distributed between capital, 
land, and labor, just exactly in proportion to their respective 
abilities to demand it* 

What people seeoi so slow to recognize is this, that given 
a ''surplus," it is far better that a larger share of it should 
go directly to increase the quality and quantity of production, 
by being more widely and beneficially distributed throughout 
tht '9f\io\t personnel ol the industrial system, than that it should 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] H. G. WELLS 319 

be narrowly accumulated and unprofitably misused by a very 
few in order to oppress the many, Ruskin's words have fresh 
meaning in this connection. ''As diseased local determination 
of the blood involves depression of the general health of the 
system, all morbid local action of riches will be found ultimately 
to involve a weakening of the resources of the body politic." 
A wise distribution of ''surplus" is, therefore, the true secret 
of industrial prosperity. 

But although the labor movement has done something, and 
may yet do more, to equalize the distribution of " surplus," yet, 
after all, it has been and will always be but a clumsy instru- 
ment of redress. It is merely an attempt to fight, capital on 
its own ground and by its own methods — the method of force. 
Is it possible that some method of assigning the surplus product^ 
more equitable^ regular^ and conducive to industrial progress than 
the method of force, can be devised? 

There can be no question that modern states are tending 
more and more to interfere with the working of industrial op- 
erations, with the result, and sometimes with the intention, of 
bringing about a more socially advantageous distribution of 
wealth. There are three main ways in which the State sees 
good to intervene. 

1. State regulation of industry. 

2. State operation of. industry. 

3. Taxation in order to raise revenue for public consump- 
tion. 

How, then, do these interventions affect distribution? 

I. State regulation of industry. "This includes all legal powers 
wielded by public bodies in the control of the conditions of 
private industry, which have the effect of diverting what would 
otherwise figure as interest, profit, or other emoluments of the 
stronger factors of production, into wages or other expenses 
connected with improved conditions of workers." Take, for in- 
stance, wages and arbitration boards, which have powers to de- 
termine wages, hours, or other conditions of labor. What they 
really do is to convert "unproductive surplus" into wages, 
leisure, or other benefit of the employees. And even if this 
should lead the employers to tax the consumer by raising his 
prices, yet it is found that the increased burden falls mostly 
upon those incomes which are best able to bear it. And so with 
all other industrial legislation the final effect, whether inten- 



Digitized by 



Google 



320 H. G. WELLS [June, 

tional or not, is to take something from the unproductive sur- 
pluses of the capitalist and convert them into some direct bene- 
fit for those who need them most, namely, the workers, the 
consumers, or even the public at large. 

2. State operation of industry. The main effect of this is to 
convert private monopoly into public use and profit Hence 
we notice an increasing tendency on the f part of states and 
municipalities to undertake the ownership and control of ser- 
vices of transport and communications-city lands and housest 
mining resources and sources of industrial power, banking and 
insurance, water, gas, and other routine local services. And in 
these cases the considerations of public order are as important 
as those of public profit. What the State or municipality does 
by such operation is to socialize profits which would otherwise 
have gone to the monopolist. These profits may be socialized 
in three ways, (i) The State may continue to charge monop* 
oly prices and may use part of the surplus to pay wages of 
greater efficiency ; or (2), it may lower prices and so allow the 
'^ surplus'' to pass to the consumer; or (3), it may retain the 
surplus income for public use. In all these cases it is clear 
that ** surplus ** is better distributed. The question at issue is 
whether the quality and quantity of production is at the same 
time sustained or increased. As I have shown before, produc- 
tion and distribution can never be separated. At present pro- 
duction is maintained at cost of distribution. Under a Social- 
ist form of government it is contended that we should have 
distribution maintained at the expense of production. It fol- 
lows, then, that both the present capitalistic and the socialistic 
theories of industrial management are extreme. Just as the 
human organism is kept 'Mn training'' by a proper equation 
of nutrition with exercise, so should it be possible to keep the 
industrial organism "fit" by a proper equation of production 
with distribution. I contend, therefore, against Mr. Wells and 
the Socialists that the function of the State is in the main 
neither to produce nor to distribute, but to ensure that a proper 
and socially health-maintaining balance is preserved between 
production and distribution. The State should never allow the 
individual capitalist to become glutted with surplus profit ; nor, 
on the other hand, should it allow him to practice industrial 
asceticism to such an extent as to become too weak to sustain 
a normal standard of productive energy. The State should in- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] H. G. WELLS 321 

terfere by all meaDs, but that it should, except in extreme and 
obviously necessary cases, carry its interference to the extreme 
of appropriation is wholly Jnadvisable. In so far as the taking 
over of certain specific industrial operations^such, for instance, 
as the services of transport and communication — is necessary to 
national order and convenience, it should be carried out; but 
beyond that, no I Where the ** unproductive surplus " of any 
individual capitalist increases to such an extent as to become 
a public menace it should be subjected to an automatically in- 
creasing burden of taxation. And this brings me to the third 
and last and most effective method of State interference. 

" All property is due to the efforts of individuals^ and belongs 
by right to them. But the State^ organized by individuals for 
their joint protection^ must have such income as is required to 
perform this service. For this purpose^ aud this alone^ it must 
be empowered to invade the properly and incomes of individuals^ 
and take by taxation what is necessary.^* The first bald state- 
ment of the right of the State to tax ** surplus '' in proportion 
to its ability to bear such taxation sounds like Socialism pure 
and simple, but a closer analysis of the statement will disclose 
in it a warp and woof of complementary and not antagonistic 
principles. All production must rightly have as its first inten- 
tion the increased efficiency of individual life. Whatever rights 
the State has or acquires are entirely subsidiary to this. The 
State is for the individual, not the individual for the State. 
The State is merely intended to help the individual to self- 
determination, per se movens, as the Scholastics put it, and not 
motum ab alio. Men, at any rate for the most part, are not 
meant to live alone; for attempting to do so they are more 
likely to turn into beasts than angels. Man, then, lives in so- 
ciety, because society should help rather than hinder him in 
his progress towards self-realization. Society, then, not for it- 
self, but only for the benefit of the individual, should be able 
to maintain itself in a progressively efficient condition, and in 
order to do this it must unceasingly receive, as we saw before, 
in the case of land, capital, and labor, a wage sufficient for its 
upkeep and growth. Socialists, finding that a few individuals 
have accumulated and misused the surplus fruits of production, 
have roundly denounced what they call Individualism as a 
wholly vicious principle, and have gone to the opposite extreme 
of crying out for a complete State appropriation of all the in- 
voL. xci.^ai 



Digitized by 



Google 



322 H. G. WELLS [June, 

struments of production and exchange. The problem of dis- 
tribution is entirely unsolved by their theories and the whole 
Christian principle of voluntary self-determination abandoned 
at a stroke. Man becomes a mechanical cog-wheel in an en- 
tirely deterministic society. Against such theories no protest 
can be too strong. But while protesting we must not forget 
that the private accumulation of immense wealth by the very 
few, instead of its widespread distribution, is a thing almost as 
bad as Socialism itself. 

How, then, are we to find a better way ? Our first inten- 
tion is to give to every man in the State a free opportunity to 
realize his individuality to its utmost capacity. He must be 
placed, in fact, at the outset of his manhood, in a position of 
unhampered opportunity, economic, physical, intellectual, moral. 
He must have, according to his capacity, the best start that 
home, health, education, and religion can give him. As things 
are at present a very, very few young men can get this 
chance. Our business here is not with the Church and the 
interior life of the soul. Man lives in society, and the State is 
the concrete expression of what society can or cannot do for 
him. If the great unnecessary wrongs of our civilization are 
to be redressed, even in part, the State must be equipped to 
this end. Individualism, self- regarding, materialistic, and ac* 
cumulative, has acquired such enormous economic power to 
perpetuate itself and all the evils that spring from it that the 
only earthly power capable of coping with it is the State. But 
the State must have as its end not the intention of abolishing 
individualism itself, but that of restraining this enormous abuse 
of it. What then is the State to do? In a word, it is to tax 
unproductive surplus according to its ability to bear taxation. 

Unfortunately the two schools of thought, the capitalistic 
and socialistic, which have so far discussed this question of 
taxing surplus, have given us more heat than light upon the 
subject. The Socialists are so extreme in their doctrines, and 
the Capitalists so frankly mammonlstic. Mr. W. H. Mallock, 
for instance, contends that ** directive ability '' is the main- 
spring of production, and that the only real incentive to "di- 
rective ability ** is the possibility of colossal profit. Take away 
this incentive, directive ability will droop and disappear, pro- 
duction will diminish, and consequently employment, and the 
ensuing state of affairs, will be far wotse than anything known at 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.J H. G. WELLS 323 

the present time. The simple answer to this is that the colos- 
sal profit gainer is, in the majority of cases, not the man of 
''directive ability,'' as I so plainly showed in my last paper, 
he is a " sleeper " and not a '' worker/' And even if he is a 
worker the quality of his productive work is useless if not 
positively harmful. In the financial sense of the terms, it is 
so often the fools that invent and the rogues that profit by 
their inventions. There is no necessary connection between 
profit and directive ability, at any rate between it and the kind 
of directive ability which controls and stimulates the best 
.quality of production. As Mr. Wells puts it: "Let us con- 
sider some of the commoner methods of getting rich. There 
is first the selling of rubbish for money, exemplified by the 
great patent medicine fortunes and the fortunes achieved by 
the debasement of journalism, the sale of f prize-competition 
magazines, and the like; next there is the forestalling, the 
making of "corners" in such commodities as corn, nitrates, 
borax, and the like; then there is the capture of what the 
Americans call "franchises," securing at low terms, by ex- 
pedients that usually will not bear examination, the right to 
run some profitable public service for private profit, which would 
be better done by public hands; then there are the various 
more or less complex financial operations, watering stock, " re- 
constructing," "sharing out" the ordinary shareholder, which 
transfer the savings of the common, struggling person to the 
financial magnate. All the activities in this list ate more or less 
antisocial (and for this reason truly unproductive), yet it is by 
practising them that the greatest successes of recent years have 
been achieved. Fortunes of a second rank have no doubt 
been made by building up manufactures and industries of 
various types by persons who have known how to buy labor 
cheap, organize it well, and sell its produce dear ; but even in 
these cases the social advantage of the new product is often 
largely discounted by the labor conditions. It is impossible 
indeed, directly one faces current facts, to keep up the argu- 
ment of the public good achieved by men under the incentive 
of gain and the necessity of that incentive to progress and 
economic development. 

"One can only appeal," Mr. Wells proceeds, "to the in- 
telligent reader to use his own personal observation upon the 
people about him. Everywhere he will see the property owner 



Digitized by 



Google 



324 H. G. WELLS [June, 

doing nothing, the profit-seeker busy with unproductive efforts, 
with the writing of advertisements, the misrepresentation of 
goods, the concoction of plausible prospectus, and the extrac- 
tion of profits from the toils of others, while the real necessary 
work of the world — I don't mean the labor and toil only, but 
the intelligent direction, the real planning, designing, and in- 
quiry, the management and evolution of ideas and methods — 
is, in the enormous majority of cases, done by salaried in- 
dividuals, working either for fixed wage and the hope of in- 
crements having no proportional relation to the work done, or 
for a wage varying within definite limits'' {N.^ pp. 95-6, 98). 

Having demonstrated, then, that the enormous unproduc- 
tive surpluses so common at the present time are neither nec- 
essary for the individual good of the gainer, nor for the social 
good of the State, nor for the preservation of a high quality 
and quantity of production — nay, on the contrary, that these 
excessive surpluses work infinite harm to every individual in 
the State — we may go on to examine with care the possibili- 
ties for an equitable scheme by which these surpluses should 
be taxed in proportion to their ability to bear such taxation. 

It must be continually borne in mind that whatever taxation 
be imposed by the State upon large unproductive surpluses, 
this taxation has no other end in view than the increase both 
of the quality and quantity of production. As I said before, 
just as right nutrition is the sine qua non of good training, so 
is right production the sine qua non of a healthy industrial or 
national organism. As things are at present, the capitalistic 
factor of the industrial organism is so strong that, by its very 
position, it can forcibly take more than its share of surplus, 
and this of course at the expense of the weaker factor, labor. 
Then, again, the State, which exists in order to uphold and 
protect all those general interests which its individual mem-> 
bers have in common, may, without injustice, take from capi- 
talistic surplus, so long as it does no detriment to the indus- 
trial organism as a whole nor to any of its factors, sufficient to 
keep itself fit and strong enough to perform all its proper 
functions. Lastly, it must take no more than capital can bear ; 
that is to say, capital must only be deprived of such surplus 
as would prevent it by excess from maintaining its fullest out- 
put of productive energy and growth, just as a man in train- 



Digitized by 



Google 



igio.] H. G. WELLS 325 

ing may be beneficially deprived of things that militate against 
his ''fitness." 

The whole argument of this paper, from its comparative 
newness, may seem a little strange, theoretic, and unreal, but 
I think that the reader, after exercising himself in it a little, 
will gradually become convinced of its extreme and practical 
simplicity. If the equity of this surplus taxation is once per- 
ceived, its practical application will soon follow. At present 
people are so afraid of that word Socialism, that any, even 
the mildest, suggestion of State interference is labelled with 
it at once. But the whole controversy is raging between ex- 
tremes. There must be some workable and just mean be^ 
tween the present unhampered license which is permitted to 
any one with ''money'' to do what he will with his own, no 
matter what the social or industrial consequences, and the op- 
posite Socialist vision of a State owning all the means of pro* 
duction and exchange. Such a scheme as here laid down in 
the rough seems to be suCh a mean. Its economic doctrines 
are already accepted as unexceptionable by reputable econo- 
mists and social reformers, and having thus barely introduced 
them I must recommend those who wish to study them further 
to read for themselves Mr. J. A. Hobson's Industrial System. 



Digitized by 



Google 



GREEN WOOD AND DRY. 

BY HELEN HAINES. 
I. 

' is something to have relieved one's mind of a 
three years* contract for engine oil, and the 
General Superintendent of the Atlantic and 
Western, thinking over his decision, had found 
it good. 

Now that General Manager Catesby was at Hot Springs, 
and it was round house gossip he might never return, a feeling 
almost of omnipotency took possession of Roger Eldredge. 

The contract had gone to the Universal Oil Company. He 
was surprised, therefore, to see beside his breakfast plate, a 
day or two after the papers had been signed, an envelope with 
the superscription of the oil company in the upper left corner. 
Omnipotency is not open to correspondence alter the fiat^ and 
Eldredge's frown, as he tore the letter open, plainly indicated 
annoyance. 

" That looks as though it should have gone to your office," 
his wife explained, half-apologetically. 

Roger, with a grumbling *' I had hoped this matter was 
settled,'' began to read; but Mrs. Eldredge, watching him, as 
she kept the maid busy supplying his needs, was relieved to 
see his brow clear. 

When theyj^were alone he asked suddenly : '' The boy isnH 
about, is he ? " 

'' He is out long ago, over in the meadow picking bluets ; 
do you want him?'' 

'' I don't wish him to hear just now. Seymour, of the Uni- 
versal Oil Company, is sending him a pony." 

'' Seymour! Why, Roger, be scarcely knows the child I " 

''It is a*compliment to me, my dear," said Roger with a 
gratified smile. " We have given Seymour's company a big oil 
contract — one^of the things Catesby left to me when he went 
away." 



Digitized by 



Google 



igia] Green Wood and Dry 327 

Mrs. Eldredge grew thoughtfu], and there was a moment's 
paase before she said : '^ Of course, Roger, we couldn't accept 
such a present, if you were just giving this contract." 

''Edith, I said we had given it/' Roger looked a little 
impatient. " Seymour might have sent me cigars, or a case of 
champagne, they often do. You wouldn't want him to send 
that sort of gift to the boy?" he asked playfully, his good 
humor restored with a second cup of coffee. 

''No— o"; said his wife absently. Roger laughed, and she 
added more positively: "Don't be absurd, dear, I am in 
earnest. Somehow the other things are not so tangible ; while 
a pony is an ever present reminder of something.^* 

Eldredge pushed his plate aside and looked across the 
table at his wife. His voice, too, was positive, as he an- 
swered: "Well, Edith, the pony is being shipped to-morrow. 
I could wire Seymour not to send it ; but what possible differ- 
ence can it make ? Even if a man in my position always refuses 
to receive gifts, every one thinks he takes them. Why, look 
at Catesby I He owns stock in the Universal, and is going off 
for a six months' cruise with its president." 

"But Mr. Catesby is a rich man. Everybody associates 
him with yachts and Hot Springs and other luxuries." 

"Most people associate him with the Atlantic and West- 
ern; but, while I admit he's made a good thing out of it, 
there isn't any reason why he shouldn't. I certainly would, if 
I were in his place"; and Roger closed the discussion by 
rising from the table, linking his wife's arm in bis, as together 
they stepped through one of the long dining-room windows 
on to the porch. 

There, in the early June sunshine, a sweet picture was 
framed by the honeysuckle vines^a trim lawn sloped gently 
to a brook, spanned by a rustic bridge, and on the other side, 
in the midst of a wide meadow covered with bluets, stood a 
little lad, his wide- brimmed straw bat hanging by its elastic, 
his hands and the basket on his arm filled with the flowers 
he was still picking; and, with the tenderness prompted by 
the loving pride of possession, Eldredge took his wife in his 
arms and kissed her gently. 

They were interrupted by a cheery voice calling inside the 
house, a voice whose owner was evidently dear and expected, 
for Roger turned to the window with a welcome for his friend. 



Digitized by 



Google 



328 GREEN WOOD AND DRY [June, 

John Hatton, and Edith picked a fragrant sprig of honey- 
suckle to decorate him. 

Hatton submitted, but laughed. ''Oh, you can't escape a 
chiding by any such blandishments. I'm late enough as it is. 
Mother fairly pushed me out of the house. But you, Edith, 
are responsible for the Acting General Manager, and he is not 
setting his subordinates a very good example this morning." 

''Acting General Manager?'' Roger questioned nervously. 
" What do you mean, Jack ? " 

" Oh, come, you know very well Catesby's much worse off 
than is admitted, and this leave is preparatory to his resigning 
altogether. It's confidently expected. Madam Edith, your hus- 
band is to be -made Acting General Manager." 

"Splendid! "cried Edith; but added: "Poor Mr. Catesby.'* 

Roger made no comment, but glanced over his shoulder at 
the dining-room clock. "Time's up, John, we must hustle 
down." 

Mrs. Eldredge followed the men out through the hall to 
the open front door. "I must go too and tell the boy about 
the pony; get Roger to tell you. Jack, about the pony," she 
called after them. 

Edith stood and watched the men as they walked away; 
the tall, nervous figure of her husband, his blue eyes alert and 
eager, his blond head slightly held forward, as if searching 
for that material advancement on which his heart was set; 
and the straight, well*knit man at his side, in whose calm 
gray eyes dwelt ideals, saved from an indefinite fulfillment by 
a kindly twinkle of humor. They had been boyhood and col- 
lege friends, and their first work together had been on the 
Lumberton, a road of eighty miles or so, mulcted by a long 
and dishonest receivership. Inside of two years, by hard work 
and stringent economies, they had made it pay a small divi- 
dend to its stockholders. This road had become a division of 
the Atlantic and Western, and the men on it had been pro- 
moted gradually to the main line. Hatton had not married, 
but lived with his widowed mother. He was the godfather 
of the Eldredges' only child, and the tie which united the 
friends was very close. 

" I didn't tell Edith my other bit of news," said Hatton, 
as he and Roger walked on briskly to their offices, "for I 
know how it will distress her to leave the home; but have 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] GJtEEAT WOOD AND DRY 329 

you heard the talk of our general offices being moved to New 
York?" 

<< Yes''; Roger replied. '' It would be a great thing for us." 

'' I don't agree with you/' answered his friend firmly. '' It's 
poor business; the expense is great, and we only reach tide- 
water through pure connection, so there's no reason for it." 

'' But every road, including our rival the Midland, now has 
general offices in New York." 

"Perhaps that accounts for the lax discipline on most of 
them. It's not the desirability of being in New York that 
makes the move necessary, but it's the desirability of being 
near the ticker that has affected all of us." 

''I can't see why a man shouldn't use his knowledge of rail- 
way affairs to make a quiet turn or two," retorted Eldredge. 

''Ah, if it were only his knowledge of actual business; but 
since he is buying or selling stock for purely fictitious teasons, 
it's all wrong; and I'm surprised to hear you've been taken 
in by the apparent speciousness of the newer dispensation." 

" This comes naturally from you," laughed Eldredge good- 
humoredly, ** your father wouldn't take a railroad pass when 
he was President of the Transylvania Central — said he couldn't 
complain of anything if he accepted favors." 

Hatton smiled; ''I don't mean to be quixotic, Roger; I 
mean to be honest; and I hope to stay so. But men no older 
than you and I know the real railroad man is now an almost 
extinct species, found usually on the sidings, for Wall Street 
owns us." 

'' Oh, you're old-fashioned, Jack," Roger said easily ; ** it's 
a day of big things, and you mustn't forget that." 

** Maybe so, maybe so— but what about the pony ? Was it 
a pony Edith said ? " 

Eldredge explained. 

*'Of course, Roger, you won't touch it." 

'' Good Lord, man I " cried Eldredge, somewhat nettled, 
** the contract was made and signed before I ever heard of a 
pony." 

''Still you must have known Catesby is a stockholder in 
the Universal?" 

" Certainly, but that fact didn't influence me — not a little 
bit; and the results of the U. O. Co.'s tests — we've been 
making tests on the line for two months, and I've been keep- 



Digitized by 



Google 



330 GREEN WOOD AND DRY [Jnne, 

ing close tab on the reports— showed up so much better than 
those of any competing company, and for the class of oil their 
prices are really lower. Look here, Jack, yon can |[ive me 
pointers on traffic any day, b«t when it comes to my part of 
the business—" 

''You'd like me to mind mine," laughed Hatton; and, their 
differences forgotten, the two friends parted at their offices. 

Seymour's gift soon arrived, and the little creature became 
one of the family. Hatton never again referred to the pro- 
priety of Roger's accepting the pony, and if Edith sometimes 
had a return of her old misgivings, she said nothing to her 
husband. She could not but be happy in the delight of her 
little son over his new acquisition, and, as the summer days 
flew by, in her husband's pride in the boy's fearless horseman- 
ship, for the child had learned at once to ride, as children do 
when furnished early with a mount. 

So far as Roger was concerned, there had not been any- 
thing to discuss, but he was relieved that the actual arrival of 
the pony had checked any further expression of such absurd 
quibbling. Then, too, as Hatton's prophecy had come true, 
and Roger had been made Acting General Manager, the summer 
months had proved to be the busiest of his life. He had 
worked hard and unceasingly, desirous of making a record, so 
when Mr. Catesby's leave had expired, and his resignation 
should be made public, Roger would be the only practical 
choice for his successor. 

Summer had given way to autumn, when Eldredge took 
advantage of an inspection trip, he had begun some two hun- 
dred miles up the line, to examine on his own account unde- 
veloped coal and oil properties between the A. and W. and 
its paralleling rival, the Midland. It had necessitated a day's 
detour on horseback; in the late afternoon he returned to 
inspect his car shops, and a telegram from Hatton, that had 
come during his absence, was handed to him. 

The Master Mechanic, to whom he was talking, saw him 
go white, and for an instant lose his accustomed self-control. 
But he soon spoke urgently : '' My son has been injured, and 
I must leave at once. If 105 is in, get her ready, while I try 
the telephone." 

There was but little comfort to be derived from the long 
distance, which only confirmed the news in the telegram. *It 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Green Wood and Dry 331 

was sapposed that the child, ridiog the pony, had gone out to 
a grade crossing, to watch bis father's special go by the after- 
noon before; that the animal had become frightened as the 
train approached, had partly thrown its rider, then rolled with 
him into a ditch by the roadside. Searching parties had been 
out all night, and in the morning had found the child uncon- 
scious, possibly dying. The maimed pony had been shot. 

Up and down the line orders went — "Right of way for 
105/' Eldredge, knowing the engine, and sure of the sympathy 
of his men, saw there was yet a chance to cheat time. He 
sank into the fireman's seat, with a silent signal to his engineer, 
and the engine leaped forward, flashing along the track, as a 
meteor shoots through the sky. Crouched in his corner, Roger 
sat with face set and stern, living over again every precious 
moment of the little life of his child. His eyes pierced the 
growing darkness, as if to read its secrets, but whirling by, 
silent and black, it gave no sign. Night fell, and the great 
searchlight flooded the track ahead, revealing flying mileposts, 
halting trains. From time to time the yawning fire box at 
his feet opened to take into its hungry maw the coal poured in 
by the sweating fireman; the indicator of the steam-gauge 
climbed up and up. Occasionally there was a short panting 
stop for water and fuel; and once a telegram was handed in, 
on which were the words — "No change.'' 

Roger winced, and crushed the paper in his hand. He 
thought of Edith alone with sorrow — alone, perhaps, with 
death. " Ah, no ; not that 1 " he groaned aloud, " not death 1 " 

The engineer, anticipating an order, looked across^ but, 
seeing the motionless figure, understood. 

Gray and chill the dawn came softly. Eldredge shivered. 
Like some great bird, brooding on her nest, it hovered, then 
settled on a waking world. 

As they reached the city, at the grade crossing nearest 
his home, a red flag hung across the track. On the roadside 
a buggy waited, a grim and silent man holding the horse's 
head. It was John Hatton, and Roger knew, by the pity in 
his eyes, that death had won. 



Digitized by 



Google 



332 GREEN WOOD AND DRY [Junc, 

II. 

Near the market-place lie the modern gardens of Hesperides. 
Its golden fruit falls readily enough to those who, daring 
opportunity, snatch it from its guardians; but those who bear 
the weight of the world — its poverty, its misery — can watch 
only from afar the ingathering. 

With the removal of the A. and W/s general offices to New 
York, and in his capacity as Catesby's successor, Eldredge 
had reached his opportunity. The passing years had more than 
justified his appointment, for the business of the road had 
more than doubled under his far-seeing management; and 
Roger, too, had profited, as Catesby had before him, until he 
had reached a position far in advance of his dreams in simpler 
days. Indeed, many of the chances to make money had 
seemed so obvious, that he felt he had not yet tried his 
mettle. 

There had been that little diversion of a new branch line 
through timber land, acquired by Roger, and where new towns 
now were building; and that block of stock, presented by a 
railway supply company to Edith, which had enabled him to 
purchase more cheaply for the needs of the road than if 
forced to buy in the open market. Then there was a sale of 
twenty miles of light rail to the Pickering Lumber Company, 
with its great mills on the A. and W., when Eldredge, as well 
as the scrap dealers through whom the purchase was made, 
had received a handsome commission. Always there was the 
stock ^market with its fascinating fluctuations. But each round 
of the ladder surmounted, only served to show a prospect more 
alluring, and Eldredge soon hoped to command sufficient re- 
sources to develop the coal and oil lands lying in that rough 
country between the A. and W. and their great rival, the Mid- 
land — lands that he had examined on that dreadful day which 
he had trained himself to forget. The way to accomplish this 
dear project was not yet clear, but Roger had grown to have 
faith in his star— in his ability to '' make it all up to Edith," 
as he epitomized it. 

In memory alone Edith seemed to move, to live, life hav- 
ing become a dim unreality. While she flitted through it 
gracefully enough, playing her part, cultivating at Roger's re- 
quest its social side, where it would best benefit his career, 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Green Wood and Dry 333 

she constantly viewed the rewards with suspicion, fearing to 
taste the fruit tossed into her lap by her husband's generous 
hand, lest she should find it had already suffered blight. 

One of the privileges of wealth is its ability to command 
the price of genius. From photographs, a golden curl, a 
mother's story told with its heartbreak, the great artist Edith 
had commissioned to paint her boy's portrait, had taken his 
cue. The result had been an inspiration. Mrs. Eldredge had 
hung it in a room she sadly called the '^ play-roora," where it 
became the only object. Here she still kept a few of her child's 
faded books and belongings; here she had furnished with 
comfortable chairs and some reminders of the happy past. It 
sometimes seemed all that was left to her, for Roger was pre- 
occupied, and the house often filled with guests — newJfriendF, 
for there seemed no time for the old intimacies. Even John 
Hatton, who had also moved to New York as Eldredge's Traffic 
Manager, no longer ran in for an informal chat. The com- 
plexities of a fashionable city house barred the door, and the 
increasing formality bored him. He remembered the anniver- 
saries dear to the mother heart, but Edith rarely saw him, and 
heard of him chiefly through his business meetings with her 
husband. 

To Hatton's honest conservatism the changes wrought by 
the years had meant not only the loss of this intimacy, but 
the subversion of the old order of railroading; and he often 
found himself wondering when, according to the standards of 
the new, he should be weighed and found wanting. 

That time came when Eldredge, comparing month by month 
the published reports of the Midland, saw that his company's 
showing was unsatisfactory. He felt that the rival road was 
getting their business, and although somewhat uncertain as to 
the cause of the falling off in traffic, knew the situation de- 
manded some change. 

The explanation he sought came to him in an interview 
he had in his car when he was up the line on a business trip 
with Pickering, the manager and chief owner of the Pickering 
Lumber Company. 

In response to Roger's perfunctory: ''Well, Mr. Pickering, 
how's business ? " the mill man responded with an acid attack 
on the policy of the A. and W.'s Traffic Manager in holding 
up rates. 



Digitized by 



Google 



334 Green Wood and Dry [June, 

«<Whjr, Mr. Eldredge/' he said, 'Mf Hatton had cut that 
rate only forty cents a thousand, we'd had that big contract 
with the Manganese Dock Co. — three hundred million feet it 
amounted to — and the A. and W/d gotten every foot of itl 
Three hundred million feet 1 '' he added impressiTely. 

''Who did get it?'' asked Eldredge. 

" Peyton and Brooks." 

** Well they have two mills on our road and ship over the 
A. and W." 

''You'll get less'n a hundred cars of it and only a fifty-mile 
haul on that; the Midland's seen to all that, through their new 
short line to Peyton's Siding," growled Pickering. "Why, look 
here, Mr. Eldredge, we've got six mills on your road, and we're 
good customers of yours, but you folks don't appreciate it. 
You don't do a thing to help us. This ain't the first time 
we've lost a big contract, because your traffic people have got 
their eyes glued to the published tariff. I'm thinking we'd best 
extend that twenty miles of track we've got out to Pickering 
Mills, and connect up with the Midland ; it's only fifteen miles 
across there, and the Midland would sell us rails a sight cheap- 
er'n you did." 

Roger soon disabused Pickering's mind that he feared any 
such threat, but the mention of the Pickering Mills Branch, in 
this connection, caught his attention, and there opened out 
before him the possibility of realizing his cherished project in 
this little lumber road. If it were not extended south to the 
Midland, but southwest to the great city of Richburg, which 
the Midland had made, it would tap that coal and oil country. 
But Roger put his vision aside for future reference, and having 
shown his interest in the industrial development of the Picker- 
ing lumber business, by a suggestion that Mrs. Eldredge had 
some money lying idle which he would like to invest, Picker- 
ing's wrath cooled ; and as he needed the money for expansion 
and improvements he gladly accepted Roger's offer. 

"Come in to see me, Mr. Pickering," Roger said, as they 
parted at Pickering Mills Junction," the next time you find the 
tariff more than business will stand, and I will see if I can get 
our people to let up on you a bit." 

The results of this meeting were momentous and far-reach- 
ing in their effect upon the fortunes of all concerned. First 
there was a "concession" in rates to the Pickering Lumber 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] GREEN WOOD AND DRY 335 

Company^ of which that concern's rivals knew nothing. Then 
there came the incorporation of the Pickering Mills Railway, 
as a siparati company; this became the lever by which El- 
dredge achieved his plan. The third effect followed a short 
conference Roger had with his old friend and Traffic Manager, 
John Hatton. 

''Look here, John," said the General Manager, when they 
met in his office, and after they had indulged in personalities 
for a few moments. '' Look here, John, aren't you a trifle old- 
fashioned in your business methods ? Our balance sheets, com- 
pared with the Midland's, are making a poor showing the past 
six months. For instance, I happen to know that the Picker- 
ing Lumber Co. would have shipped three hundred million feet 
of lumber our way recently, if you'd shaved the price a bit" 

Hatton looked at Eldredge questioningly; and for a second 
gray eyes met blue. "You know the rates, Roger, as well as 
I do," said Hatton. 

''We're not playing choo-choos, John; we are running a 
big railroad for what there is in it; and you are Traffic Man- 
ager to get the business." 

" But the Pickering Lumber Co. can afford to pay the reg- 
ular rates," argued Hatton; "if we shave on them, there's just 
as good reason to shave on the Amalgamated Iron Co. and 
the Central Oil Co. and the Western Wheat Growers and the — " 

" Never mind their names," interrupted Roger angrily, pound- 
ing his fist on his desk. "You understand me, once for all, 
Hatton; get the business — that's what you're here fori" 

A momentary silence followed this explosion. "And, El- 
dredge, you understand me, once for all, I'll never cut a cent 
on the regular rates." 

As Hatton, with a quiet "Good- morning," left the office, 
Roger shrugged his shoulders. He knew his friend, and well 
understood he had spoken his final word, and that his resigna- 
tion would follow shortly; but the old associations tugged at 
his heartstrings, and he felt he could not sacrifice the old 
friendship, however much they might differ in their business 
point of view. 

To meet this difficulty, it was necessary to consult the At- 
lantic & Western's President, and after laying the matter before 
him« it was decided to offer Hatton the Company's new land 
agency, with a title of Engineer of Land^ and a somewhat 



Digitized by 



Google 



336 Green Wood and Dry [June, 

higher salary. Hatton's obstructive policy would be eliminated 
and the position of Traffic Manager offered to the Midland's 
shrewd General Freight Agent, whom Eldredge vaguely char- 
acterized as a ''hustler/' 

But the person to whom Roger most dreaded to speak of 
this change was his wife, and he broached the subject with 
considerable finesse one opera night as they waited in the play- 
room for their motor. 

Edith took the news silently for a moment, then she re* 
marked gravely: ''I can't fancy your side* tracking him in that 
way." 

''How queerly you look at things, Edith," her husband re- 
plied indignantly. " We're promoting him. He will get a larger 
salary, and nothing like as hard work." 

"But why does he resign his present position?" persisted 
Edith. "You said when you became General Manager and 
made Jack Traffic Manager the Midland would have to work 
to get any business at all." 

"What I said then would be true now if John wasn't so 
stiff on his rates. As it is, the Midland is getting <mr business." 

Edith looked perplexed. "But I thought all the roads 
agreed on rates. 

"Certainly they agree! I can't go into details, my dear; 
but you've often seen the sign, 'Liberal Discounts to Large 
Consumers'; in other words, the people who buy the most, 
should get more privileges than those who buy little." Roger 
picked up an evening paper and scanned the reports of the 
stock market. 

"But the railroads do not advertise their discounts," rea- 
soned Edith, " and what becomes of the small shipper, Roger ? " 

Eldredge^ deep in his newspaper, did not answer, and his 
wife sat looking dreamily into the slumbering wood fire, think- 
ing how far away seemed that meadow by the rippling water, 
and the little child standing in the midst of the bluets. 

" I wonder what John thinks of it," Mrs. Eldredge said, re- 
turning to the subject, as she and her husband were being 
carried swiftly down town. 

Eldredge gave an indulgent sigh. He was sorry he had 
opened the subject, for he had looked forward to an evening's 
diversion, and found Edith somewhat exigeanti. " Oh, John is 
old-fashioned in his ideas. He seems to have no conception 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] Green Wood and Dry 337 

of the magnitude of a great corporation's bnsiness. He thinks 
we're working still on the old Lnmberton." 

''Oht Roger, I wish you were/' cried his wife wistfully. 
''Those were dear happy days. I am afraid we have left for- 
ever our Garden of Eden ; and if we tried to enter again, we 
would find at the gate the Angel of the Flaming Sword. No ; 
we couldn't go back," she added sadly. *'I wonder whether 
John Hatton could." 

'< You've such fanciful ideas sometimes, Edith. Looking 
back over the past years, I think my life compares very favor- 
ably in usefulness with Hatton's. What has he done for his 
neighbor? Why doesn't he turn his money over? He's had 
a big salary for years I Look at the A. and W. under my man- 
agement! And what does John do for the poor? I have yet 
to see his name on a subscription list. You know my list of 
charities — and when I'm richer I'll increase them. Wait until 
I am president of one of the biggest systems of roads in the 
country — and I will be some day—" 

'' I hope so, dear, since it is what you are working for," 
replied Edith gently, but the door of the limousine opened 
and she was silenced. 

III. 

Roger's first move towards perfecting his project, was his 
quiet withdrawal from the Pickering Lumber Company. In the 
division of interests he retained, as his share, the line of twenty 
miles, known as the Pickering Mills Railway which extended 
southwest from the Atlantic and Western towards the Midland. 
This arrangement satisfied the lumber company, whose business 
had increased enormously since the freight reductions had been 
made, and Eldredge agreed to handle their logs for what it was 
costing them. For president of this short line he selected 
one of the former mill superintendents, whose chief qualification 
for the position was gratitude. 

Then, piece by piece, Eldredge secured options on those 
large tracts of rich, undeveloped lands between the A. and W, 
and the Midland. 

The preliminary surveys toward Richburg aroused conster- 
nation in the Midland camp, and the feeling of bitterness be- 
tween the paralleling lines increased when the A. and W., sup- 
voL. xci.— aa 



Digitized by 



Google 



338 GREEN WOOD AND DRY [J^oe, 

posed to be backing the scheme, was warned to keep out of 
Midland territory. 

Eldredge could not refrain from an astute smile, as he 
watched the course of Midland Common, which, at all times a 
highly speculative stock, was responding, as he anticipated, to 
these new influences brought to bear upon it; and he knew 
the time was now ripe to present his plans to the well-known 
banking firm he had selected. 

** Building one road, while stepping on the toes' of another, 
is not altogether a satisfactory proposition,'' was the Wary 
answer to Roger's opening remarks. 

But Roger was not discouraged. He was certain of the 
commercial value of his proposition, and certain of the men 
whose co-operation he sought For years he had awaited this 
moment of brilliant efflorescence under appreciative eyes. He 
patiently unfolded his plan, which was to form a syndicate to 
finance the extension of the Pickering Mills Road. He told 
just what he would provide in the way of franchise, survey, 
right of way. Just what percentage of the stock of the new 
company he would expect, what participation in the under- 
writing of the bonds. He had not brought with him either 
plans or estimates, but he produced a small map, which, while 
not drawn to scale, gave an adequate idea of the porition of 
the rival lines. 

"This Pickering Mills Railway," he said. 'Ms already built 
a distance of twenty miles southwest from our line. But if we 
announce a plan to extend it into Richburg-^the Midland's 
city — Midland Common will jump quickly; and after that an- 
aouncement, should the A. and W. determine upon a radical 
reduction in freight rates, it would assist the slump tremen- 
dously." 

There was no doubt now that Roger's proposals had aroused 
interest. ** So, beside the financing, the building of this new 
line, your idea is that this syndicate might make a quick turn 
in Midland securities?" he was asked. 

''No"; Eldredge replied positively, " this speculation should 
place the means at our disposal to buy in control of Midland 
before the Midland people discover what has happened." 
. "What then?" 

** After my directors have had time to realize their posi- 
tion, to consolidate the rival systems." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] Green Wood and Dry 339 

*' Ah-^h I So not the Atlantic and Western^ but y^u^ Mr. 
Eldredge, own this Pickering Mills Road I '' 

Roger smiled assent. He knew that he had won. ''The 
coal and oil are well worth development/' he explained; ''but 
if we succeed, the building into Richburg — '' he shrugged 
doubtfully. 

''Hardly necessary. We must congratulate you upon the 
ability with which you have handled this proposition. Our 
success'' — the head of the banking house smiled contentedly 
— "will be due to your foresight." 

"Say, rather/' rejoined Roger with affable humility, "to 
your wide experience in the market, and my presentation of 
salable wares." 

The heavy selling of Midland Common, which began almost 
immediately after the syndicate plans were perfected, was ap- 
parently justified, when the newspapers announced a serious 
rate war between the rival lines. The knowledge, too, that a new 
line into Richburg had been surveyed through their most prof- 
itable territory, made the Midland clique heavy sellers of their 
own stock. Heretofore they had found no difficulty in buying 
back their short sales at a satisfactory profit; but now, when 
they felt the decline had gone far enough, they were amazed to 
find the stock reacting buoyantly. Their brokers, receiving 
orders to change front, found Midland Common advancing more 
rapidly than it had declined ; and the Midland crowd were dis- 
mayed when they learned the stock sold by them had passed out 
of their hands, and with it the control of the road— the syodi- 
cate, of which Eldredge was a partner, held a majority of the 
shares. 

When the Atlantic and Western directors were in a suffi* 
ciently receptive frame of mind, Eldredge placed before them 
the plan to merge the long-contending rival lines. He was 
careful to point out to them the advantages that would result 
if his scheme were effected; but the men who controlled the 
A. and W. were not long in realizing that the governing spirit 
6f this new consolidation must be their former General Manager, 
backed as he was by one of the strongest exponents of the 
modem school of finance. 

Absorbed in these responsibilities Roger had been working 
early and late. He felt a pang of compunction, now that 6uc«> 
cess was assured, over his neglect of his wife, who had lingered 



Digitized by 



Google 



540 GREEN WOOD AND DRY [June, 

on in the city, worried over his haggard face and unstrung nerves, 
hoping the summer months would bring a respite and a little 
of their former companionship. 

Flushed and triumphant, he hurried home to tell Edith of 
the results of the meeting before she should see the news in 
any of the evening papers. He found her before their boy's 
portrait, finishing the arrangement of some wild flowers, the 
lonely mother heart tenderly relighting the fires of its love be- 
fore its sacred shrine. 

Edith looked up as her husband entered the play- room. 

" I've won the day, Edith," he cried. " I've been made 
President of the Consolidated Lines." 

She came back from the silent places, where her soul had 
been wandering, and as she finished her simple task, the haras- 
sing encroachments of their lives never before had seemed so 
cruel. She turned with a stifled sigh, for she knew it was a 
time for congratulation. '' I know I should be very proud of 
you, dear," she said with an effort. She sat on the arm of 
the chair into which Roger had sunk; he was sitting with 
closed eyes, weary now the excitement was over. 

''What have you been doing to-day, Edith?" he asked. 
''Ah," he added sadly, noting the flowers for the first time, 
•' I know, I know." 

His wife wound her arms about him. "John sent them. 
The boy would have been twenty-one to-day," she whispered 
softly* "I have been thinking over the years, dearest; and I 
think it all began with the pony. Oh, husband, could we have 
brought him with us on all these triumphal marches, you and 
I ? " And kissing Roger gently, Edith left the room, closing 
the door behind her. 

Roger Eidredge was alone. His thoughts were of the son 
who would have been twenty-one that day. What chums they 
would have beenl How proud the boy would have been of 
his father, the youngest railroad president of one of the great- 
est systems in the country! He rose with squared shoulders 
and head held high. He glanced about the room, and the 
familiar objects became invested with rare import on this day 
of days. His eye rested on the little riding crop, which hung 
by the fireplace, waiting for the child who had never come 
to use it. Roger's chin fell to his chest, and he began to 
walk restlessly to and fro« Was Edith right, and had it all 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] GREEN WOOD AND DRY 34 1 

begun with the pony? Had what begun? What did Edith 
mean ? 

John Hatton had remembered the day and he had forgot- 
ten I To him. it had been but the crowning of his own ambi- 
tion. Roger, recalling the events of his rapid rise in life, saw 
his victory rise to face his questioning soul, and slowly it 
emerged a pitiful thing. 

Twenty- one to-day 1 Would he have been with his father, 
learning from him the tortuous methods of the modern business 
man? No; a thousand times Not 

Suddenly Roger understood why his little child had so long 
ago crossed the river, and had stayed in"" those fair fields on that 
far other side. Who was he to have led that little white soul 
-^that greatest gift of God — on the longer up-hill world jour- 
ney ? How dark and sinuous seemed the path of his own fol- 
lowing, which all along had beckoned fair and straight I 

He paused in his restless walk before the portrait, whose 
childish eyes searched his with wistful tenderness* Kneeling, 
he passed his hand over the flowers humbly, as though he 
feared their innocent petals would close at his touch. Their 
gentle aroma called back to him the joy of life, its spring- 
song, its purity. 

''Oh, little son,*' he cried. ''At last I know I I'm only 
another sort of failure.*' 



Digitized by 



Google 



THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS. 

BY W. H. KENT, O.S.C. 

pure intellect usually exhibits to the full its 
itonishing capabilities, I think, only on two 
ibjects^pure mathematics, which are its crea- 
on, and in which it legitimately claims absolute 
upremacy; and dogmatic theology, in which it 
submits contentedly to the only position allowed it on the 
field of morals and religion, the humble and dutiful subserv- 
iency to the spiritual nature/' 

These weighty words of Dr. William George Ward, in his 
once famous work The Ideal of a Christian Church (Chapter V., 
page 28), may be said to serve a two-fold purpose. For, 
while they bring before us very forcibly the high intellectual 
delights that may be found in the study of dogmatic theology, 
they remind us at the same time that the Catholic theologian 
must bring something else besides mere intellectual power to 
this sacred study. But, apart from its immediate purpose, the 
comparison has a curious interest for its own sake. And it 
may well set some readers wondering why these two sciences, 
which on this showing would seem to have much in common, 
are so seldom associated with one another in actual experi- 
ence. The sciences themselves appear to move in different 
spheres, so that they never come into contact. There is thus 
none of the hostility which too often arises between theolo- 
gians and professors of other sciences. But, on the other 
hand, there is no mutual help or friendly co-operation; and 
those who are masters in one of these high temples of knowl- 
edge very often know little and care less about the other. 

To some extent, we suppose, this fact can be explained 
partly by the diversity of natural gifts and tastes and apti- 
tudes, and partly by the exigencies of professional education. 
Without adopting to the full Dogberry's doctrine, that reading 
and writing win by nature, we may safely say that most chil- 
dren are born into the world with special fitness, or maybe un- 
fitness, for certain lines of learning; and even at an early age 
the bent for science or literature may be plainly discernible. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS 34} 

This may be illustrated by the words of a French song on the 
boyhood of Napoleon: 

A genonx, \ genoux, an milieu de la classe, I'enfant mutin t 
Avec un cerveau en feu pour TAlg^bra, et la glace pour le 
Latin. 

The first stages of a schoolboy's education are rightly 
made on broad and general lines, for the mere rudiments both 
of letters and science may well be within the capacity of most 
children. But there will always be many who cannot go be- 
yond a certain point, and in some direction they will soon 
reach their natural limit. Thus, even with those who have 
leisure and opportunity for a full development of their powers^ 
and love learning for its own sake, many must lain content 
themselves with elementary mathematics, and cannot hope to 
reach the higher regions of this science. But, in any case^ 
comparatively few are allowed their choice or opportunity of 
full development on their own lines. The great mass of men 
meant for active life have but small scope for intellectual cul- 
ture of any kind. And those destined for some learned pro- 
fession will soon have to specialize their studies at the ex- 
pense of other fields of knowledge outside the province of 
their own profession. 

It is true that in many cases time might be found or made 
for other studies. But most men need some other stimulus to 
study besides the love of knowledge (or its own sake. For 
this reason theological and biblical learning is generally left to 
the clergy. And the study of higher mathematics will be 
confined, for the most part, to those who require it for their 
work in life, or for the purpose of an examination at the out- 
set of a professional career. In the latter case it will gener- 
ally be relinquished when once the object in view is achieved. 
In the same way students of theology, when they come to 
the parting of the ways in their educational course, not un- 
naturally take the more literary and classical line, which seems 
more closely connected with their own sacred science. And 
unless they happen to be schoolmasters or have some special 
gift and taste for mathematical studies, they will generally 
drop them and, sooner or later, lose the little they have learnt 
in their schooldays. In this way it may well be that accom* 
plished theologians will be at a loss if called upon to discuss 



Digitized by 



Google 



344 THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS [June, 

the metaphysics of the infinitesimal calculus, and many of 
them even may never have heard of any quaternions save 
those appointed to guard the Apostle in his captivity. 

It would be unreasonable to complain of this dissociation 
of theological and mathematical studies. For, in the case of 
the generality of students, it is natural, not to say unavoid- 
able. Many would only waste their time in attempting to 
combine the two studies. And in other cases there may be 
other branches of science more practically useful to the theo- 
logian. Yet here as elsewhere it may be that the division 
of labor in the field of science has been carried a step too 
far. And, as theology stands to gain from the wider culture 
of its professors, it might surely be an advantage if those who 
have a natural taste and capacity for mathematics were to 
cultivate this branch of study and note its analogy with their 
own sacred science. The old Schoolmen, it may be remem- 
bered, conceived of all the sciences as an ordered system or 
hierarchy, wherein theology was the queen and the others the 
ministering handmaidens. Looking at the matter in this light 
we may well expect to see some signs of connection or of 
sympathy between mathematics and the sacred science of 
theology. And though at first sight it may seem that the 
two sciences lie far apart, and belong to wholly different re- 
gions of thought, a broader and deeper study of their litera- 
ture and history will reveal many points of contact. 

In the first place, it is a significant fact that, though ordi- 
nary students of the one science may neglect the other, it 
has been otherwise with many of the great masters. For 
reasons already suggested this fact may have attracted little 
attention. But those few who happen to be familiar both with 
theological and mathematical literature, know that many theo- 
ogians have done good service to the science of mathematics, 
and not a few of the first masters of mathematical science 
have achieved some distinction in the field of theology. Even 
outside Christian literature we meet with minds naturally dis- 
posed to speculate both on divine mysteries and on numbers, 
even if they do not combine them in a curious numerical 
mysticism. It will be enough to mention Pythagoras, Plato, 
and Plotinus, and Proclus, who, through the writings of Psuedo- 
Dionysius and the Book on Causes, had considerable influence 
on medieval theology. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS 345 

In the scholastic period we find a conspicuous instance of 
the association of mathematics and theology in the person of 
the Doctor Profundus^ in other words, Thomas Bradwardin, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, whose name will be familiar to 
readers of Chaucer. This remarkable man, one of the most 
original minds among the later Schoolmen, has left some 
treatises on mathematics, among them being one, De Quadra^ 
iura Circuit. And some traces of his predilection for this 
science may be seen in the pages of his great theological 
work, De Causa Dei Contra Pelagianos. For, instead of follow- 
ing the fashion of contemporary scholastics, he anticipates 
Spinoza in the application of mathematical method in the field 
of religious philosophy. The book is probably little known to 
students of the present day. But, as Thomassinus surmises, 
it had considerable influence on the course of later theological 
controversy. 

It is in some ways more remarkable to meet with instances 
of this kind in the later period, after the great movement of 
the Renaissance and the Reformation. For science and learn- 
ing extended themselves more and more among the laity; and 
there was, moreover, a general tendency to greater specializa- 
tion and division of labor. Yet even here we may find some 
of the most important mathematical work accomplished by 
members of religious orders, by theologians or amateurs in 
theology. Thus, it may be said that the first important step 
in the making of modern higher mathematics was the discov- 
ery of the method of indivisibles by Father Bonaventura Cava- 
lieri, a member of the Jesuate or Hieronymite order. On this 
point it may be enough to cite the emphatic words of Carnot : 
'' Cavalerius fut le pr^curseur des savants aux quels nous devons 
1 'analyse infinitesimale ; il leur ouvrit la carridre par sa Gio-^ 
metrie des Indivisibles ** (Rifiexions sur la Metaphysique du Calcul 
Infinitesimal^ n. J13). 

The merits of this religious mathematician are not, perhaps, 
so widely known as they deserve to be. But no student of 
mathematics is likely to forget how much the science owes to 
the painstaking analysis and ingenious suggestions of Ren^ 
Descartes. And if the father of analytical geometry and the 
inventor of the method of indeterminates was not exactly a 
theologian, his new presentment of the ontological argument 
betokens an intelligent interest in natural theology. Another 



Digitized by 



Google 



346 THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS [June, 

great name in the history of mathematics fills a larger place 
in theological literature. And the Catholic theologian will 
naturally agree with the mathematician in wishing that Pascal 
had given to the science, which was his own peculiar province^ 
the time and labor he bestowed on theology and Jansenist 
controversy. But those who are perplexed by the problems 
of apologetics would be loath to part with his Pensdes^ and the 
lover of literature could scarcely spare that delicate irony in 
the Provincial Letters. Curiously enough, one of the victims 
of that irony, ** notre docte Caramuel/* was a master of mathe- 
matical science as well as a moral theologian, and he gave 
some practical proof of his scientific gifts by his work as an 
engineer at the siege of Prague. 

Before coming to the great names of Newton and Leibnitz, 
it may be observed that Newton's teacher, the Anglican Bishop, 
Isaac Barrow, was illustrious as a master of mathematical 
science before achieving distinction in the field of Protestant 
theology, and anti-Papal polemics. At the present day, no 
doubt, he is best known by the memory of bis voluminous theo- 
logical writings. But there can be little doubt that he rendered 
a more real and enduring service to scientific literature by his 
Latin edition and adaptation of the works of Archimedes and 
Apollonius. Newton himself, the master mind of modern 
mathematics, can scarce be accounted a theologian. But it 
will be remembered that he took a keen interest in some theo- 
logical subjects, notably the interpretation of prophecy; though 
it may be safely said that his writings on these matters are 
only remembered for the fame of their author in other fields. 
A far higher importance attaches to the theological efforts of 
his great rival, Leibnitz. That truly universal genius has left 
much that is of permanent value in most of the varied sciences 
which engaged his attention. Yet it may be averred that the 
volume containing his theological writings is next in importance 
to the mathematical works that form the chief foundation of 
his fame. 

And beyond their intrinsic merits, both alike have historical 
significance. For, on the one hand, much of all that is best 
in modem mathematics owes its origin to the suggestions of 
his genius, and in his first tentative essays we may see the 
forms of this science elaborated and elucidated by later writers* 
And, on the other hand, his efforts in irenical theology, his 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Theology AND Mathematics 347 

Protestant approximation to Catholic orthodoxy, seem to fore- 
shadow the great movement of Catholic revival. This position 
of those two great mathematicians may remind us that in the 
eighteenth century the leadership in science was no longer left 
in the hands of Catholic ecclesiastics, and in the age of the 
encyclopedists and the revolution it seemed to belong to men 
yet further removed from Catholic orthodoxy. Yet even in 
those days some excellent work was accomplished by religious 
writers. Thus, it is pleasant to note that one of the best edi- 
tions of Newton's Principia was edited in Rome with illumi- 
nating commentaries and appendices by Fathers Jacquier and 
Le Seur of the order of Minims. The value of this edition 
may be gathered from the fact that it was reprinted in Glasgow 
in the nineteenth century. By a curious confusion the editors 
of this reprint speak of Jacquier and Le Seur as Jesuits, in 
spite of the fact that the title page tells that they were Minims— 
an order which somehow seems more appropriate in connection 
with the method of fluxions and infinitesimals. 

In these later days, when in every branch of learning there 
is an increasing tendency to greater specialization, we can hardly 
look for so many instances of a literary association of theology 
and mathematics. Yet the nineteenth century can boast some 
conspicuous examples of men who were masters in both realms 
of science. Thus, readers of this review will naturally recall 
the name of the late Father Bayma, the mathematician and 
religious philosopher, some of whose best work made its ap- 
pearance in the early numbers of The Catholic World. 
A somewhat different association of the two sciences may be 
seen in the pages of that singular volume of mathematical the- 
ology or mythical mathematics, Der Gott des Christenthutns als 
Gegenstand streng wissenschaftlicher Forschung^ published at 
Prague some thirty years since, by Doctor Justus Rei — a book 
which irresistibly reminds us of Pope's line, 

''See mystery to mathematics fly.** 

It may be hoped, however, that it does not fulfill the other 
half of the couplet. 

A more searching and systematic survey of the history and 
literature of theology and mathematics might add many another 
name to the list of those who have achieved distinction in both 
these realms of science. And it must be remembered tlMtt, be- 



Digitized by 



Google 



348 THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS [June, 

sides those who have written on both subjects, there are many 
more whose published work is confined to one alone, while the 
other has still remained a favorite theme of study. We have 
an instance of this in Dr. W. G. Ward, whose words were cited 
at the opening of this article. His writings bear witness to 
his proficiency in theology, and to most men he is mainly 
known by the part he took in a great theological movement* 
Bat it is only when we turn to his biography that we find that 
his attainments as a mathematician were scarcely less than his 
merits as a theologian. And, though his active work in this 
science was confined to the days of his tutorship at Oxford, 
to the last he found delight in that fascinating study. 

This personal and historical association of theology and 
mathematics may well suggest the thought that there must be 
some objective connection between the two sciences, or that 
the same mental powers are called into play by both. And if 
this be so, the cultivation of mathematical study should be of 
some service to the theologian, both as a mental exercise and 
as a source of argument, or illustrations on suggestive analo- 
gies. Thus, to take an obvious instance, the aforesaid associa- 
tion and the comparison made by Dr. Ward may serve with 
some as an argument in defence of theology. In an age of 
materialism some men are apt to regard nothing but hard facts 
and objects that fall within the range of their sciences. And 
the purely intellectual speculations of theologians and philoso- 
phers are often dismissed as idle dreams without any solid 
foundation. The evidence of the senses is naively accepted, but 
it is doubted whether the reason can arrive at truth and certi- 
tude. But this shallow scepticism is confuted by the fact that 
the purely intellectual speculations of mathematicians arrive at 
results which can be safely tested by the evidence of the senses. 

In this way the analogy of higher mathematics may rebuke 
the sceptic and the materialist and show how intellectual spec- 
ulation and discursive reasoning may be a sure means of reach* 
ing a certain knowledge of necessary truth. But may not some 
theologians and apologists in their turn find wholesome lessons 
in mathematical analogy ? There are some of us, it may be 
feared, too apt to conclude that a line of argument with which 
we happen to be familiar, or which appeals to us most power- 
fully is the one only and necessary way. 

Thus on the great question as to the arguments for the ex- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] THEOLOGY AND MATHEMATICS 349 

istence of God, we have, on the one hand, the familiar scholas* 
tic arguments set forth by St Thomas and his followers, the- 
ontological argument of St Anselm, and Newman's argument 
from the testimony of conscience — to name but these few. 
And, unfortunately, we find that many, who very naturally 
prefer one or other of these lines of argument, are almost as 
anxious to demolish the other arguments as to defend their 
own. Some who take their stand by St. Thomas roundly re- 
ject the arguments of St Anselm and Cardinal Newman as 
fallacies. Others, who agree with Newman in preferring the 
argument from conscience, go on to say, what Newman never 
said, that the scholastic proofs are invalid and unconvincing. 
Here the student of mathematics may find some help in the 
analogy of his own science. For are there not many mathe- 
matical truths that can be firmly proved by many and various 
independent lines of argument, by geometry, by ordinary 
algebra, by the method of indeterminate coefficients, by the 
differential calculus? The modern mathematician may remem* 
ber, moreover, that though he may see the force and cogency 
of all these lines of argument, the old masters knew nothing 
of the last two methods, and there must still be multitudes to 
whom they are unknown, and some who would in any case be 
unable to appreciate them. For this reason he will be dis- 
posed to welcome a like abundance of independent arguments 
in natural theology, and though he may find one more help- 
ful and satisfying to '.himself, he will have no desire to de- 
molish the others. Nay, even though he may fail to see their 
force and cogency, he may modestly surmise that the fault 
lies in himself and not in the argument. 

Cardinal Newman, it may be remembered, incidentally 
touches on the analogy of the differential calculus in illustra- 
tion of his own attempt at a new method in his Grammar of 
Assent. But the remark is merely made in passing, and he 
does not, apparently, think it worth while to pursue the sub- 
ject It would seem likely, however, that a careful comparison 
would show not a few curious points of analogy between the 
new methods in mathematics and theology. In this connection 
it is important to observe that though the infinitesimal calculus 
at first sight seems to be content with probability and ap- 
proximation, as Carnot has shown in his admirable reflections 
on its metaphysics, it really issues in rigorous accuracy. And 



Digitized by 



Google 



350 Theology AND Mathematics [June. 

the same may be safely said of Newman's methods in religious 
apologetics. 

Another point in which some help may be ionnd in the 
analogy of mathematics is the present tendency to deny dis* 
cnssion and synthetic reasoning, and to exalt the method of 
intuition and analysis. The classic instance of this in mathe* 
matics is the proof of the celebrated Pythagorean proposition. 
Euclid (I. 47) established it by an elaborated argument, based 
on several preliminary propositions, resting, in the last re^ 
sort, on the primary axioms and definitions. In the modem 
method, discussed by Schopenhauer {DU Welt als Wille und 
VorsUUung^ B. I., sect 15) we take instead the particular case 
of the isosceles triangle and the truth of the whole proposition 
is seen at a glance. As the philosopher remarks, it is super* 
^nous to prove it by other propositions or axioms. For its 
truth is so evident, that one who denied it might just as well 
deny the axioms themselves. At first sight this seems to 
support the current rejection of synthetic reasoning. But a 
further examination of the mathematical example will serve to 
correct this impression. For it must be observed that Euclid's 
arguments are not rejected as invalid, since they do in fact 
arrive at the same truth which is seen more speedily by the 
other method. The point is that the longer way is needless 
and superfluous. And the most strenuous advocate of dis^ 
cursive reasoning would not wish to waste words in proving a 
self-evident proposition. But, on the other hand, it must be 
remembered that many important truths are not attainable by 
the direct and intuitive method, and most of us mutt be con* 
tent to take the humbler path instead of the '' high priati 
road.'' Some 'minds, it may be added, can see more at a 
glance than others ; just as some have the power of seeing a 
large number, as thirty or forty, without having to count it» 
We have an instance of this in Archbishop Temple, who once 
remarked after a confirmation that there were forty-three boys 
present, and being asked if he had counted them, he said* 
''No; I saw them." The high powers of intuition possessed 
by some great mathematicians, may remind us of the scholas* 
tic distinction between understanding and reasoning, and of 
the teaching of St. Thomas, that angels in one idea see what 
men can only see in many. And that is another instance of 
the sympathetic harmony of mathematics and theology. 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 




A DYING MAN'S DIARY* 

EDITED BY W. S. LILLY, 

December 20, i88o« 

T is now just one week since I heard my sentence 
of death pronounced. ** My dear M , I must 
tell you frankly that you are very ill; I fear we 
can do nothing; it may be a matter of several 
months— -or of several weeks; but it can only 
end in one way/' Every word is graven in my memory as in 
letters of fire. I had expected to be told of a slight indispo- 
sition and to receive a prescription and an assurance that in 
a Tew days I should be myself once more. Instead of that I 
have been told that I am dying. 

I hardly realize it even now. And yet I have been look- 
ing it straight in the face these seven days; I whose new- 
born happiness seemed so perfect I But I hardly dare think 
of that; and yet I must write and tell her. A day or two 
longer, when the figure of the grim shadow who is waiting 
for me has grown more familiar, and' I feel absolutely sure of 
myself. Until then I must continue my daily letters to her, 
poor child, in the old strain ; talk of the hopes which to me 
are the saddest mockeries, of our future life together in years 
when I know I shall have been long in the grave. It was only 
a fortnight ago (that our marriage day was fixed: her last 
letter is full of our plans for our wedding tour. And to-day 
I must answer it I Ah, God I I think my heart will break. 

No; I must play out this horrible comedy to the end. 
Already I know something of the tranquillity of the eternal 
silence, at which I have been gazing so intently, has passed 
into my soul. I can think calmly enough of quitting my place 
here ; another will fill it better ; of looking for the last time at 

* This yMdtf Interesting document has been in my possession for more than a quarter of 
a century. I am now permitted to publish it— suppressing those parts that ought to be sup- 
pressed, that is to say, omitting names and all details which would give any clue to names. 
^[W. S. Lilly.] 



Digitized by 



Google 



352 A DYING MAN*S DIARY [June, 

the few kindred faces that are left to me; they have other 
and nearer ties; of the coldness and decay which will seize 
these limbs, now so full of life; of the impenetrable darkness 
into which I will follow the generations of my fathers. If 
it were not for her, if this decree had gone forth only a year 
ago— when in my sadness and solitude — it would have been 
almost welcome. But now« that a light I had never hoped for 
has sprung up for the future in her dear face, a world of 
hopes which I had thought dead has been revived by one lit- 
tle word, the sweetest those dear lips ever uttered^it seems 
too hard to bear. 

And yet, for her sake I must bear this burden, and bear it 
lightly; for it will fall on her, too, and I must support her« 
With that iron which has entered into my soul I must wound 
her gentle breast; and then, as best I may, try to heal that 
wound. This is my appointed task. Let me strive manfully 
to perform it. 

December 27. 

Another week of the few remaining to me has passed and 
my task is still before me. Each day has brought her letter 
and carried away mine. It seems I have not been quite able 
to conceal from her the sadness of which my heart is full 
''Dearest Arthur,** she writes-^it seems a solace to me to 
transcribe her dear words — ''I am going to give you a little 
wee scolding to-day; I think you are too grave, sir; you do 
not think enough of; me. Hav*n*t you told me that my smile 
had chased away all those dark clouds of melancholy from 
your heart and made a bright day spring there? You see I 
remember your very own words. I do so want to think you 
are quite happy. I know you are when we are together; but 
when you are away from me, I am afraid you brood too much 
over your sad past. You know, dearest Arthur, I could never 
wish to deprive that love and that sorrow of their proper 
place in your heart. Do I not share in them, as I want to 
do in everything of yours? But God has given you a future; 
and I want you to look to that, for I shall be by your side 
then; and three happy months have taught me that I can 
make you happy. So, sir, when you write to me, you are to 
put my picture before you and think of the days when, instead 
of that deaf and dumb shadow, your own little wife will be 
iaiways by your side, ready to chase away all those black 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAITS DIARY 353 

phantoms which try to sadden a heart she intends to make 
always glad." Poor child, and I must write and tell her that 
the fttture she so trusts in is an idle dream, that the sadness she 
tries to charm away, by her gracious ways and pretty sayings, 
is inseparably bound up with herself. If she only knew the 
bitter irony of her words — '* God has given you a future 1 ** 
And she must know in a few hours. Time is fast flying; and 
the days have sufficed for me to gather together all my 
strength, and do the hard duty which remains to me. I have 
resolved to tell her to* morrow; to-day will be my last letter 
of sweet hypocrisy ; my last baseless vision of hopes in which 
I half believe as I write of them. To-morrow I must tell her 
the stern truth ; and then a few days of ever* increasing gloom, 
until the valley of the dark shadow altogether enshrouds me. 

December 28. 

I sat a long time this morning thinking how I could tell 
her. Her picture lay before me, her last letter beside it. Ah I 
what an unconscious irony there seemed to be in that soft, 
sunny face, shadowed with that rippling, velvety hair, over which 
my hands had so often glided, and which I shall never touch 
again but once. For I have resolved to see her only once be- 
fore I die. Not now; but after weeks, when she has learnt 
to bow herself to the will of the iron fates, and all future de-* 
lusive hopes have passed away. For she will hope ; her young, 
fresh heart will rebel against the decree of science ; she will 
pray ; and will believe that her prayer may avail I And far be 
it from me to attempt to shake her simple faith. She will learn 
soon enough that no miracle will intervene to arrest the prog- 
ress of the malady, which is swiftly sapping the foundations 
of my life. 

I sat a long time thinking how I could tell her, and at last 
I wrote very slowly the letter which I copy here. I have oot 
sent it, but it must go in two hours; she must not have a 
blank post to-morrow. Would to God I could make it only 
a blank post! 

** My own dearest Beatrice : What I have to say to you 
to-day is so inexpressibly sad, that I would rather die than 
write it. Diet Ah, that is not so hard; I have looked at 
death steadily since he came so near me and took away a por- 

VOL XCI.^33 



Digitized by 



Google 



354 ^ DYING MAN'S DiARY [June, 

tion of my own heart. 'The common road into the great dark- 
ness' lies before us all, and it demands no great heroism to 
resign oneself to tread it. But to tell yon, as I mast to-day, 
that all oar hopes for the future are vain, that I can never 
claim you as my wife, that instead of bridal robes, garments 
of mourning await you, dearest Beatrice — it is a task which 
I can hardly perform, although for the last fourteen days I 
have scarcely thought of anything else. 

'' You will hardly understand this, darling. You will remem- 
ber the letters I have written to you daily, and you will think 
me mad. No ; those letters were lies. I have known the truth 
since the day after I left you ; but I have not been strong 
enough to tell you until now. You know it is a fortnight ago, 
last Monday, that I left B— ^ for London. The next day I 
saw my old and kind friend. Dr. L He received me very 

gravely, looked at my letters, talked to me for a long time, 
minutely examined me, and at last rose from his chair and 
walked about the room, very slowly, regarding me earnestly. 
I thought there was something wrong, and [said to him: *Do 
tell me what is passing through your mind. It is only fair to 
me, and I assure you the simple truth will be the kindest thing 
to say.' And then be told me that I was laboring under an 
altogether hopeless affection of the heart; that my life was 
only a thing of a few months, or it might be only a few weeks; 
that all science was impotent to help me. I thanked him and 
went away ; and since then my chief trouble has been how I 
could tell you. And now I have told you. But you will only 
half understand it. You will think there must be some mistake. 
Alas 1 there is no mistake. L does not make mistakes; but 
since then I have, at his desire, seen Sir W. J—— and Dr. 
P , and they both agree that I am a doomed man. 

'' My darling, the part which is saddest is that I must leave 
you. Everything else is comparatively easy to quit. But you, 
my latest found treasure, not yet fully mine, my sweet hope 
for the future, my bright and true comforter — to leave you I 

'' I do not think it will be wise, dearest, that we should see 
each other at present. It would unman me and would be too 
sad for you. And do not write to me for a day or two, until 
you have thought over this letter, and carried it to Him to 
Whom you carry everything. But ask your brother Charles 
to come to me. Ah, my own tender and sweet Beatrice, the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAN'S DIARY 355 

pain it has cost me to write this is worse far than death ; but 
I wottld bear it ten times over rather than cause you the pang 
which I know it will give you to receive it." 

I think I must have hardened very much, for I wrote this 
without a tear, and a few days ago my eyes would fill at the 
bare thought of her. The words, too, seem very cold; that 
is only as it should be, for the chill of death is upon them. 
But it is time the letter went; and with it goes my last gleam 
of sunshine. 

December 29. 

I was seized with an intolerable restlessness yesterday even- 
ing, as soon as I had sent my letter. This place was unen- 
durable to me. I seemed to j stifle in it. The damp, foggy 
night without looked more congenial than the bright, warm 
room in which I was sitting; I went out into the raw, dark 
atmosphere and walked rapidly through street and square, not 
heeding the direction I was taking. At last I found myself in 
a quarter I had never been in before. The streets were very 
parrow and full of squalid shops and crowds of wretched look- 
ing men and women. I looked up at a turning and found it 
was one of the most miserable parts of Soho; lean, ragged, 
hungry- looking women, men whose countenances seemed to be 
less human than a well-kept dog's, unkempt children with keeut 
old*looking faces, surrounded me. I stopped to look about 
me and to think which of ^several converging streets I should 
follow, when my attention was attracted by a whining voice, 
soliciting alms. The beggar wi^ a bent old woman, in tattered 
clothes, and shivering in the sleety wind. I took a certain 
pleasure in listening to her piteous supplications: *'Dear kind 
gentleman, for God's sake, help a poor creature who has had 
nothing to eat to-day,'' was the burden of her petition. At 
last I said : *' Why do you want to eat ? If you don't eat for 
a few days you will die, and be out of your misery ; that will 
be better for you, I think; and the pain isn't great after the 
first forty- eight hours, they say." She answered: ''No doubt 
you are right, sir; it would be better for me to die; and I 
don't care about living ; only give me six pence to get a little 
gin to stop the pain." I put a shilling into her hand and hur- 
ried on. I thought of a fresco I had seen at Pisa years ago: 
Orcagna's terrible Triumph of Death. It is a horrible mystery 
—the young, the happy, the loved, cut down by the inexorable 



Digitized by 



Google 



3S6 A DYING MAITS DIARY TJone, 

scythe; the old and miserable and solitary left, against their 
will, in a world they would gladly quit. 

I had not walked far when I heard the sound of chanting. 
I listened, and distinguished one of those beautiful Gregorian 
tones, which I always thought the perfection of Church music. 
Following the direction from which the sound came I found 
myself before a small chapel, in which the Psalms were being 
sung. I remembered, then, that Beatrice had spoken to me 
of a mission in this district in which she was interested; in- 
deed, I think I had given some small sum towards it at her 
request. A sort of curiosity to see a place which had this 
slight association with her, led me to push open the door and 
to enter the building. The Psalms were finished as I entered, 
and the ist Lesson was being read. It was from one of the 
Apocryphal books. I did not listen for a time until the words 
fell upon my ear: *'For God made not death; neither hath 
He pleasure in the destruction of the living.*' Any word that 
spoke of death seemed to have a message for me. And I 
started when I heard the saying: ''God made not death*'; 
I think I heard nothing more until the sermon began. I stood 
up, sat down, and knelt mechanically with the rest of the 
congregation, but the words "God made not death" went on 
ringing in my ears. The agony I had suffered had incapaci- 
tated me from thinking; only the sound of the words echoed 
in my mind. At last one of the clergy ascended the pulpit 
and began to preach. He was a spare, sickly looking man and 
it seemed to be an effort to him to speak. His text was: *'So 
He giveth His beloved sleep." His sermon seemed to me to 
be a panageric of death. It seems it was Innocents Day. 
The blessedness of their death was the chief theme of his 
discourse. I thought of a picture of Guido's I had seen at 
Bologna : The Massacre of the Innocents. I recalledtthe shriek- 
ing children in the hands of the butchers who took their lives ; 
the agonized faces of the mothers, vainly endeavoring to screen 
their offspring; the horror and desolation and infinite sadness 
of the scene; and my mind revolted against the preacher's 
talk of the blessedness of martyrdom.^ He went on to speak 
of death as one of God's best gifts — a delivery out of the 
miseries of this sinful world — granted to those whom He would 
take into His immediate presence. I thought of the deathbeds 
I had stood by: when the truest and tenderest and best of 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] A VYING MAN'S DIARY 357 

the human race I have known had been severed from all they 
most loved ; I remembered the agony of grief with which they 
relinquished the world, where their nearest and dearest re- 
mained behind them; their faces, full of the most mournful 
tendernessi rose to my view, and seemed to give the lie to the 
words of exultation and triumph which fell from the wan 
preacher's lips. No; I thought, there is some mystery deeper 
than that enthusiast knows of. The old writer spoke the truth 
when he said : '' God made not death.'' There is a curse on 
the race. Divine goodness and love — if they exist — have been 
baffled ; we are the sport of a malignant, resistless Fate, which 
snatches us from the sight and sound of all we love, all we 
hope in. And upon me the iron doom has fidlen. I go- 
hurried away from my dawning happiness. But I will go as a 
man, erect, unconquered; no conventional lie shall stain my 
lips as I yield to the inevitable doom. The wreck of my hopes 
is not from the all-merciful God. *'God made not death." 

I hurried from the church when the service was over, and 
retraced my way towards the western quarter of the city. The 
stream of life I met in every street seemed to mock me. I 
cursed the firm step and ruddy cheek of the strong man who 
walked past me. The blasphemous oath of the half-drunken 
rough, the loud, coarse language of the vulgar, no longer 
disgusted me, but seemed rather to be in harmony with the 
frame of things. I traversed street after street, until I came 
to a square which had for some months been a sacred spot 
to me. It was there that I had first spoken of love to Bea- 
trice, and had learnt, from her downcast eyes and blushing 
cheeks and trembling lips, that a happiness I had hardly dared 
hope for — the love of her pure young heart — had become mine. 
I stopped and looked up at the window where we had stood 
together, so short a time ago, looking out on the trees rich in 
their autumnal tints and the flowers whose brightness had not 
altogether faded. It seemed to be the supreme pang — to stand 
there and think that never more should the hopes which then 
burnt so brightly revive for me; never should the light of 
those dear eyes again cast their sweet lustre upon my solitary 
path; the goal of that path is set; the light which shone 
upon it has turned into a lurid gloom, showing more vividly 
the blackness in which it is lost. I stood, not thinking so 
much as suffering the weight of ^y misery to press upon my 



Digitized by 



Google 



3S8 A DYING MAN'S DlARY [June, 

brain, when a hand was laid upon my shoulder and a familiar 
voice inquired what was the matter with me. I turned and 
recognized an old college acquaintance, whose intimacy with 
me had survived the many changes which had happened to us 
both since our Oxford days. I hardly distinguished what he 
said at first. He looked at me curiously, fancying, I think, 
that I was not quite sober; and a sort of pride prompted me 
to show him that he was wrong. He wanted me to come with 
him to his rooms he said, where he expected a large party to 
supper to meet an old mutual friend who was coming up to 
town by a late train. The notion of assisting at such a gather- 
ing at first seemed horrible to me, and I at once refused. But 
his question: *'Why won't you come, if you have nothing 
better to do? You look in rather bad form; it will do you 
good to meet some old friends,'' seemed hard to answer. Why 
not go ? What difference could it make ? What else had I to 
do ? So I went. 

It was a large room, brilliantly lighted and luxuriously 

furnished, into which B led me; some halt- dozen men, of 

most of whom I knew something, were assembled when we 
arrived, others came in one by one; and at last the hero of 
the evening having arrived from his journey supper was served. 
I had tasted nothing all day, and ate and drank heartily. 
Gradually I was drawn into the conversation which went on 
around. I forgot for a time my misery. There was no phys- 
ical pain to bring to my mind my frightful situation. The 
disease under which I labor does its work silently, giving no 
signs except to a doctor's experienced eye. Several of the 
guests were brilliant talkers. In particular one man, whom I 
had never met before, seemed possessed of an inexhaustible 
fund of anecdote, which he poured forth apropos of every- 
thing. I found myself laughing with the rest at his stories, 
and making from time to time my contribution to the amuse- 
ment of the table. 

At last the conversation assumed a more sombre tone. 
G— -, the guest of the evening, was on his way to India, to 
take a judgeship. He had hesitated to accept it for some 
time, he said. His only brother had died in Bombay a few 
years before, and he had a vague feeling that evil awaited him, 
too, in the land with which this was his only association. The 
talk turned on presentiments, and weird stories were told, as 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAN'S DIARY 359 

tisttally happens when subjects of this kind are discussed 
among men whose imaginations are heated with wine. One of 
the guests, a hard-headed Scotchman, ridiculed the tales in a 
style of superiority which displeased me. I remembered to 
have read in a book of Alfred de Musset's of a man who 
boasted that he was proof against all superstitious terror, and 
feared nothing, and whose friends put his fortitude to a fright- 
ful test They placed a human skeleton in his bed, locked his 
room, and stationed themselves in an adjoining room to watch 
the effect. They heard nothing; but next morning when they 
entered the room they found him sitting up in his bed playing 
with the bones with the vacant smile of madness on his lips. 
I told the story. And the Scotchman acknowledged that the 
trial was a terrible one, which he would not willingly en- 
counter. A gloom had fallen on the party; and our host by 
way of a diversion suggested cards. A few men sat down to 
whist. Others, of whom I was one, to poker. I played reck- 
lessly, but fortune favored me ; the stakes were high ; and I soon 
found a heap of gold before me. At the end of an hour I was 
the winner of nearly a hundred and fifty pounds. The rest 
declared that they had lost as much as they cared to lose; 
and play was given over. One of them, whom I had known 
intimately in earlier days, began to congratulate me on my 
good fortune. He was not ignorant of my success in life, and 
had just heard of my engagement, it seems. "Everything 
goes well with you,'' he said. '*You have won a position at 
thirty which few men attain until twenty years later in life; 
you have won a prize in love which more than one man I 
know would have given 'all other bliss' and 'all their worldly 
wealth ' for ; and you have a rich man's luck : as soon as you 
touch a card, money pours in upon you. You make one en- 
vious." His words recalled me to myself; their bitter, un- 
conscious irony stung me to the quick. ''Envious of me," I 
said. " There is not a man who would change places with me 
All you have said is true enough: I am rich, successful, and 
loved; but I am a dying man. No; I am neither drunk nor 
mad; listen" — and I told them my sad secret. There is a 
Spanish story, which I once read, where a marble statue sud- 
denly becomes animated in a gay company, and taking the 
hands of the guests sends through them a mortal chill. Such 
was the effect of my words. There was a moment of deep 



Digitized by 



Google 



36o A DYING MAN'S DIARY [Jane, 

silence ; then I took my hat and went otit into the damp, cold 
night in silence. 

I walked rapidly through the deserted streets to my rooms. 
It was nearly 3 a. M. when I entered them. I was overcome 
with fatigue, and« throwing aside my clothes, hastily lay my- 
self down in my bed. I closed my eyes, but the phantoms of 
the day came up to mock me; and an uneasy succession of 
vague, distorted dreams flitted through my brain. At last I 
thought I was in the little mission church again; the clergy 
and choristers were kneeling before the altar weeping; the 
stalls were filled by the friends with whom I had supped; 
the congregation had been augmented by the motley crowd I 
had passed in the neighboring streets. I stood in the pulpit 
and preached a Gospel, which was not a gospel. *^ Fools I'' I 
cried, '^who hope to pierce, with your prayers, that heaven 
which has become as brass. Fools who turn from your bitter 
miseries to seek comfort from an all* merciful God, not know- 
ing that^he irrevocable law of an iron fate presses hopelessly 
on all. For eighteen Christian centuries the prayers and tears 
and groans of men have gone as they go up now ; for eighteen 
Christian centuries the world has trusted in a vain hope; for 
the story on which the world's faith has been fixed is an idle 
tale; the life which was its hope is death. Silence has coldly 
dissected the records you call sacred and has found them un* 
true. Only one thing is true — death, which God did not make." 
Then I thought a little hand, so unspeakably dear to me, was 
laid upon my lips, and a soft low voice, which thrilled through 
me, bade me not sin nor charge God foolishly. With a great 
start I awoke and saw the light from my fire fall faintly upon 
the picture of Beatrice. The clock struck five. I turned wearily 
in my bed, endeavoring to avert my thoughts from the visions 
which her voice had interposed to break. I remembered that 
I had broken my word to her. In the earliest days of our 
engagement we were walking among the falling leaves, talking 
of some papers I had written, in which I had glanced at more 
than one religious question in the tone a man of the world of 
liberal opinions usually employs. Beatrice hardly touched on 
this part of my essay. But I had shocked her simple faith; 
and I was vexed that the articles had come into her hands. 
We paused by a bridge; she was never tired, she told me, of 
looking at the clear, rippling water as it glided smoothly by. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAN'S DlARY 361 

We stood in silence for a few minutes. At last she said in a 
very low voice : ** I want to ask yon a favor ; it will make me 
very happy if you will grant it to me. There are some sub- 
jects which seem almost too sacred to [talk about. Will you 
promise to say this every night? It is a little prayer of 
Madame Swetchine which I have copied out for you.'' I took 
the paper she gave me« raising her little hand to my lips, and 
said : ** I promise, dear Beatrice.'' Last night I broke that 
promise for the first time. And as I remembered my omis- 
sion, the familiar words came to my lips : '' O Good Jesus ! true 
God and true man. Thy two natures, united yet distinct, make 
us a twofold object of Thy mercy. Because of Thy Godhead 
forgive our offenses; because of Thy Humanity remember our 
miseries. As God draw us always, raise us to Thee; as man 
accompany us on the hard road of exile ; be our companion in 
good and evil days. O Good Jesus I as a King pardon us ; 
as a friend sympathize with us." I do not know that I at- 
tached much meaning to the words as I murmured them; but 
they seemed to diffuse a. sense of calm and peace over my 
whole soul; the prelude of some hours of welcome uncon- 
sciousness. It was not till noon that I awoke from an un- 
broken, dreamless sleep. 

(to be concluded.) 



Digitized by 



Google 



A NEW "HISTORY" OF RELIGION. 

HOW Af. REINACH WOULD DESTROY CHRISTIANITY. 
BY F. BRICOUT. 

(T offering bis book, Orpheus^* to tbe public M. S. 
Reinach modestly declares that for the first time 
there is here presented ''a complete summary of 
religions considered simply as natural phenom- 
ena*'' M. Reinach further states that his book 
is suitable for '* ladies '' as well as gentlemen, and that even 
careful mothers ''may give his book to their daughters." And 
to this end he has imposed a certain restraint upon himself, 
particularly in the descriptions of some of the rites of the 
oriental religions. 

Orpheus, after whom the volume is named, was, we know, 
the ''interpreter of the gods," a poet, and a musician. M. 
Reinach, by the very choice of a title, would charm refined 
minds and lovers of fine literature, for he is not merely a 
scholar and a savant, he is also an artist, an appreciative lover 
of ancient Greece. He has imbibed copiously the teachings of 
Voltaire. His unbounded admiration of the notorious French 
atheist may be known from the fact that he states that "to 
Voltaire's incomparable talent as a narrator we owe the most 
spiritual and the least pedantic of general histories." From 
the Greeks and from Voltaire the author has learnt a lightness 
of touch, a charm of style and of wit, a happy command of 
brilliant phrase and cutting word. With these, and frequent 
citations of the classic in literature, he, after the manner of 
Orpheus, is apt to mislead and even hypnotize his reader. 

Orpheus has already met with much success in France. 
The book has gone through many editions in that language, 
and there are in preparation further editions in German, Italian, 
Spanish. Russian, and perhaps Japanese. The government of 
France is completing its attempt to ruin the old religion by 

^Orpheus, A General History of Religions. By Solomon Reinach. Sixth Edition. 
Paris : Alcide Picard, 1909. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A NEW ** HISTORY'' OF RELIGION 363 

making Orpheus a text-book and enforcing regular school 
teaching on its lines. M. Reinach is a director of music at 
Saint- Germain and a professor zt^TEcoU du Louvre. He has 
already won a certain popularity because of his previous works 
^^Apollo and Cults ^ Myths ^ and Religions. His latest work will 
be seized upon as a rare opportunity by superficial minds who 
love to be ^'learned'' in the fashion of the day, and to know 
the latest word in the '' science '* of comparative religions. 

But, unfortunately, believers in any religion at all may well 
deplore the success of such a book, for it means disaster to 
many souls. 

The Catholic Church, according to this author, is an odious 
machine of oppression, which an unscrupulous clergy govern 
skillfully for their own enrichment and the increase of their 
own power. He quotes the words of Channing: ''An Estab- 
lished Church is the tomb of the intelligence." This, M. 
Reinach writes, is particularly true of the Roman Catholic 
Church. He is considerate enough to think that the Catholic 
Church was not invented by the priests; but he maintains 
that the priests always take advantage of human folly and 
human incredulity. That traditionally sane judgment of the 
Church, which has ever been the cause of admiration to the 
historian and perplexity to the adverse critic, the just medium 
preserved by her teachings between mysticism and rationalism, 
this, to M. Reinach's eyes, is but the right understanding of 
the Church's own temporal interests. 

He lays great stress on the intolerance of the Church. He 
says that Voltaire, because of his hatred of fanaticism, became 
himself intolerant. We fear that the same fate has overtaken 
M. Reinach, for he makes an urgent appeal for the suppres- 
sion of liberty of instruction. He is the bitter enemy of every 
form of religion and turns a flow of ridicule, raillery, and 
gross insult against all Christian belief and worship. Non- 
Christian religions are not spared. But his bitterness, his un- 
restrained abuse, reach their climax only when he speaks of 
the Catholic Church. His appeal to a certain class of minds 
will be the more effective because he pretends to have made 
certain his knowledge and to have weighed well his judg- 
ments. He is most dogmatic on essential points. He is mod- 
est, hesitating, frankly admitting his ignorance on matters of 
detail that are of no importance. Now and again, in the gen* 



Digitized by 



Google 



364 A NEW ''HISTORY'' OF REUGION [June, 

erosity of his heart and the liberality of bis mind, he conde- 
scendinj^Iy pays a tribute to Christianity or to the Catholic 
Church. ''I embrace my rival, but only in order to strangle 
him'' — such is M. Reinach^t method. 

It will be evident that M. Reinach is the apostle of the 
most radical free- thought. An atheistic evolutionist, he 
preaches his chaotic gospel at every opportunity. He wishes 
to make Orpheus the universal creed of future generations. It 
may be said at once that the author is the slave of an arti- 
ficial system. He is absolutely blind to any fact, any evi- 
dence, that does not square with his thesis. His absolute 
confidence in the basis of his system, the hypotheses of taboos 
and totems, is truly stupefying. Of these very hypotheses he 
himself wrote some time ago: '^I frankly confess that mine is 
an edifice built not with materials substantial, solid, tested, 
veritable, but out of possible or probable hypotheses, which 
reciprocally support and buttress one another. And this style 
of architecture is well known, for in it card*castles are built" 
{Cultes, MytheSf et Religions). 

M. Tontain, director of VEcole des Hautes^Etudes^ repeatedly 
stated that ''in the actual state of our knowledge, to make 
totemism the foundation of a mythological and religious exe- 
gesis is to disregard the most elementary rules of historical 
method.* Nevertheless M. Reinach persists in riding his hobby 
— a word of his own coining.f 

Historians, all equally conscientious,' often differ in the 
interpretation of facts. They will propose various, and at 
times almost contradictory, explanations. Now historians are 
by no means in agreement with regard to the meaning of the 
terms animism^ totemism^ etc., and beyond the bare meaning 
there are vast fields in the history of religions still obscure, 
yea, all but unknown. There are wanting, and doubtless 
always will be wanting, the necessary documents that would 
enlighten us with regard to all this unexplored territory. 

But, lo ! M. Reinach appears with his little book, and with 
imperturbable assurance tells us that he can answer all ques- 
tions of importance in the entire field of the history of reli- 
gion. The extravagance of his claim is sufficient to lead one 

♦ Siudiis 0ftk* Mytholoiy and History ofAncUnt Religions, p. 80. Paris, 1908. 

t Transactions of the Third IntemaUonal Congress for the Histoiy of Religions, t. 
IK, p. zz8. Oxford, 1908. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A New ** History'' OF RELIGION 365 

to suspect his worth. We have further reason to distrust him ; 
and we shall see that the scientific value of Orpluus is but 
small. 

The first six chapters of Orpheus treat of the non* Christian 
religions. The author claims that it is easy to see the rise of 
all of them from savagery. To his mind every religious belief 
of uncivilized peoples to-day is reducible to animistic con- 
ceptions and practices, to taboos, totems, fetiches, and magic. 
Among the Mongols and the Finns, in China, in Japan, as well 
as in India and Thibet, these same beliefs and practices are to 
be found ; and they are found even among those peoples who 
have embraced, in part at least, the teachings of a native re- 
former (Budha, Confucius, etc.), or of a foreign religion (Chris- 
tianity or Islamism). Moreover the ancient religions, the dead 
religions, all resembled the beliefs of the savage people whom 
we can now observe. This, M, Reinach maintains, is true of 
the religion of Arabia before the coming of Mahomet, of the 
primitive cults of the Gauls, Germans, Slavs, and also of the 
religions of Greece, of Rome, of ancient India, of the Syrians, 
Phoeaicians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. 

It will be seen that M. Reinach is not modest, nor does he 
set limit to his knowledge. The world, since the days of crea- 
tion, is under his searching eye. Suffice it to say that he does 
not prove his statements nor come anywhere near proof. 
We feel that every scientific historian of the rise and growth 
of religions will agree with us that such statements, on ac- 
count of the absence of data, record, document, and tradition, 
are impossible of proof and will always remain so. But M. 
Reinach must ride his hobby, or rather his hobby rides him. 
What matter if his conclusions mean despair and chaos to the 
human race. Let the wild orgy of unsupported hypotheses 
go on I 

We may state here that even though the case were as M. 
Reinach claims it to have been, though the uncivilized peoples 
of the present day were authentic specimens of what all or 
almost all men have been in times far remote, our faith need 
have no cause for alarm. Catholics are not obliged to believe 
that primitive revelation has always been preserved intact, since, 
as P&re Lagrange* remarks. Sacred Scripture, which teaches 
us revelation, adds that revelation was itself obscured anH that 

•StudUsofPrimUiviRili^Ums,^,U Paris 1903. 



Digitized by 



Google 



366 A NEW ''HISTORY'' OF RELIGION [June, 

the immediate ancestors of the Hebrews themselves were poly- 
theists.* 

Let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that present, 
day savages are in almost every respect similar to the prehis- 
toric man of whom traces have come down. It by no meens 
follows that such prehistoric man is necessarily the original 
father of the human race, or that he is a true picture of man as 
God created and formed him. Nor may it be said that these 
savages, or these prehistoric men of [whom we have record, 
have no good human characteristics; no reasoning powers ; no 
moral sense ; no praiseworthy idea of religion. Even in anim- 
ism and tabooism there is some vestige of a belief in God, of 
a living God and an overruling Providence ; something of moral 
obligation and ot duty. Savages are not beasts; and God, the 
common Father of all humanity, has at His command and em- 
ploys a thousand means, outside His ordinary course of action, 
to secure their salvation. And among uncivilized people of the 
present day knowledge of the true God is not entirely wanting. 
Mgr. Le Roy, who lived for twenty years among the Negritos 
and Bantu, and who is a most competent scholar, does not 
hesitate to affirm that these poor blacks know and adore a 
Supreme Being, the Ruler of the universe.f 

M. Reinach is equally inaccurate and untrustworthy in the 
statements he makes in Orpheus regarding Judaism and the 
beginnings of Christianity. He does not, of course, believe 
in the inspiration of Holy Scripture; he restricts to very nar- 
row limits its human authority. He does not understand even 
the meaning of inspiration and has evidently taken no pains 
to understand it. He scoffs at miracles. ''The Gospels," he 
says, ''are worthless documents in so far as the real life of 
Jesus is concerned"; and he adds: "we do not know how 
Jesus died." 

Since he has made taboos and totems the basis of his sys- 
tem, M. Reinach must find these in Judaism and Christianity. 
" The idea of taboo," he says, '* common to all primitive races, 
has left many traces in the Bible." Even he must admit, how- 
ever, that the moral teachings of the Bible are independent of 
all taboos. An idea of what extremes he must go to in order 
to prove his point may be gained from this statement in £7r- 
pheus : " The Hebrews abstain from killing and eating animals, 

* Josue, xxiv. a. t TMs Reli^^iom o/PrimUive PeppUs. Paris, Z9o8« 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] A New *' History'' OF Religion 367 

like the hog^ because wild boars, from which the hog is de- 
scendedy were totems among their ancestors/' Extremely clever 
and deep reasoning, is it not? Again, instances of totemism 
are found in the role played by the ass in Zacharias (ix. 9); 
also in the account of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem; 
in the descent of the dove upon Jesus, etc., etc. And with 
all this childish reasoning is combined an ignorance of the 
Catholic Church's teachings, particularly with regard to the 
sacraments, that is really pitiable. Indeed, this work gives us 
reason to believe that M. Reinach has taken the trouble to 
trace out various unimportant resemblances, not so much for 
the purpose of making a scientific study as of casting ridicule 
and mockery upon Christian teaching. 

The last four chapters of Orphtus^ covering two hundred and 
fifty pages, are devoted to the history of the Catholic Church. 
The enemies of the Catholic Church charge that Catholicism 
is a corruption of the Christian religion.* They make this 
charge, even though they also assert that they do not know 
what the religion founded by Christ was or is. M. Reinach, 
who also says that we know nothing of the life of Jesus from 
the Gospels, still boldly charges that Catholicism is a corruption 
of the religion of Jesus Christ — which religion, according to 
the same M. Reinach, is founded upon totems and taboos. 

The saints are, with him, but *' successors to the gods," 
and the Blessed Virgin is a goddess. He gives but little space 
to the external history of the Church. He appeals to the pas- 
sion of hate by indignantly denouncing the suppression of 
heresy and the means used in such repression. He exagger- 
ates, he is bitterly partisan always. The Catholic Church, he 
says, has fought only ^* for authority, privilege, and riches." 
In the long combat which, during the Middle Ages, the Church 
waged against the tyranny of kings, and because of which 
Europe was saved to civilization, M. Reinach sees only the 
unbridled ambition of the Roman pontiffs. In conclusion he 
states that the Catholic Church is absolutely decadent and is 
surely advancing to a more or less speedy ruin. The Director 
of the Historical Review^ M. Monod, put it mildly when he 

* With regard to the origin and growth of the Catholic Church we would refer our 
readers to the series of articles in the Revue du Clergi FtanfmiSt published in answer to a 
challenge made by M. Loisy, *' The Truth of Catholicism/' October z» November i. Decem- 
ber z, 1908, January i, February z, March z, March Z5, Z909. A rismm/oi these articles is to 
be found in La VirUidm CaHUliciswu, Chapter IV., par M. Bricout, Paris, Bloud et Cie., Z9Z0. 



Digitized by 



Google 



368 A NEW *^ HISTORY'* OF RELIGION [Jane. 

said: ''Ofteii« in that part of his book which treats of Chris- 
tianity, prejudice has led M. Reinach to distort facts" {Revue 
Historique^ November and December, 1909). 

Before we close we might consider jnst for a moment what 
the idea of religion represents to M. Reinach's mind. His very 
definition of religion is nothing short of ridicnlons: 

I propose [he gravely writes] to define religion as a collec-> 
tion of scmples forming an obstacle to the free exercise of the 
faculties. This definition eliminates, from .the fundamental 
concept of religion, every idea of God, of spiritual beings, of 
the Infinite — in a word, all that has been considered as the es- 
sential object or objects of religious feeling. The term scruple 
is faulty in this — that it is somewhat vague and, if I dare say 
it, too " laicised." The scruples . . . are of a particular 
nature. ... I shall call them taboos (Orpheus^ p. 4). 

Religion, therefore, in the mind of M. Reinach, is simply a 
matter of taboos or religious prohibitions. It will easily be 
seen how false and inadequate this definition is. In the first 
place, the taboo itself is only explicable on the ground of an 
antecedent belief in gods, spiritual beings, etc, and the men- 
tion of this belief is a necessary part of the definition. How 
can we adequately define a thing by giving but a few of its 
notes,Z and excluding others equally important and equally 
essential ? 

Bat such failure to treat the question fairly and thoroughly is 
characteristic of M. Reinach. His book is pseudo-scientific and 
will be harmful only to the weak-minded. As P&re Lagrange 
wrote: ''Taking into consideration the talent of the author, 
his learning, his scientific authority, his position, it must be 
acknowledged that Orpheus will not add honor to his name. 
It is unscientific and contentious ; it breathes contempt for the 
only institution that has labored to make mankind better.''* 

^ BibliccU Review, 19x0, p. Z4Z. 



Digitized by 



Google 




A CORNER OF THE BLACK FOREST. 

BY E. C. VANSITTART. 

fN ideal place for a holiday — a place where we 
may, to use a French word, retremptr (re-dip) 
our being, soul and body, with God in nature- 
is to be found in the Black Forest, at the village 
of Schonwald, which lies between Freiburg and 
Furtwangen, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Up, forever up, 
winds the road all the way, for Schonwald stands at a height 
of over 3,000 feet The village itself consists of only 30 or 
40 houses, though there are scattered homesteads for miles 
around, and comfort and plenty are to be found at the excel- 
lent old Gasthof zum Hirschen. Up to the present Schonwald 
has not been spoilt by tourists; its summer guests are, for the 
most part, German families who spend their holidays here, and 
for two months enliven the solitude of the village, which is de« 
serted during the remaining ten months of the year. There 
are no entertainments at Schonwald, nor shops, beyond those 
of a cobbler and a grocer, and the workshops where the local 
industries of clock-making, wood-carving, and straw-plaiting 
are carried on. Those who come here must suffice unto them- 
selves. 

For lovers of peace and beauty nature here spreads an 
ample feast. The village stands high in a wide open country 
but there are pine woods on every side. The air is wonderful- 
ly invigorating as it sweeps across expanses of moor, scented 
with the fragrance of pines and a thousand aromatic herbs. 
It is the bracing atmosphere of wild, free spaces untainted 
by factory smoke or the dwellings of men. 

Before the hay is cut the fields are covered with oxeye 
daisies, dandelions, golden -yellow arnica, buttercups, bluebells, 
forget* me- nots, scabious, and feathery grasses; in the boggy 
districts the white bog-cotton waves like tufts of silk; down 
by the river yellow irises lift their flags, and bulrushes and 
sedges raise their heads. The delicious sound of running 
water tinkles on every side. The trout leap up out of the 

VOL. XCI.— 24 



Digitized by 



Google 



370 A Corner of the Black forest [June, 

streams as the patient fisherman follows the meandering course 
of water which swirls and eddies here and there. Storks 
parade majestically by the banks of the streams, and the water- 
wagtails fearlessly poise on any overhanging log or np*stand- 
ing bowlder. 

One may wander for miles through the pine woods, where 
the ground is carpeted with fallen pine needles or springy 
heather. Cranberries, bilberries, and wild strawberries grow in 
profusion in the clearings, bracken and fern form a miniature 
underforest, and the sunlight, filtering through the hoary, 
lichen -covered trees, throws flickering shadows on the green 
moss and junipers. During hours of wanderings in this place 
one will not meet a human being; but when one suddenly 
steps out into the open, and looks down over the valley and 
upland, he will see many a cozy homestead nestling under 
its broad eaves and overhanging roof, and, far away, the 
rang^ of blue- black hills from which the Black Forest takes 
its name. 

Or one may lie on a hillside, laxily watching the wondrous 
effects of rapidly passing clouds casting swift and ever-changing 
shadows over the fields, the great moss-covered bowlders, and 
the pine woods, producing marvelous gradations of green. A 
blue mist is thrown over all like a veil ; but gradually the light 
breaks through and the gray changes to blue, and a flood of 
golden sunshine glorifies everything far and near. Round about 
the bees hum in the clover, and the tinkle of cow bells, some- 
where below, echoes far up on the slopes. Far out of sight 
the mowers are at work in the hayfields; the rhythmic swish 
of the scythes rustle through the grass; while from nearby 
a lark suddenly soars up into the blue and pours forth a 
wondrous flood of song. As the evening shadows &11, the 
smoke rises from the peaceful homesteads, the cattle turn towards 
their byres, the spaces in the valleys are filled with translucent 
golden mists, and the pine trees, clearly defined, stand out like 
black silhouettes against the sky ; the hills rise one beyond an- 
other in softly*curving ridges, and the great peace and qpiet of 
it all remind one of the visionary pictures of the Celestial Land 
in Pilgrim's Progr§ss. 

There are strange grey days, too, when the clouds hang 
low, and the whole atmosphere is colorless; the pines and firs 
are sharply outlined, the very birds are silent ; the houses look 



Digitized by 



Google 



ipia] A Corner of the Black Forest 371 

{[hosUlike aod hot a breath of wind stirs ; yet it is all beauti- 
ful in its way. The people are worthy of their land: frank, 
kindly, hardworking, clean, and self-respecting, with a free gait 
and an independent air. The blue-eyed, flaxen-haired children, 
universally barefoot, walk miles to the nearest school, their 
knapsacks on their backs. They salute the passing stranger 
fearlessly with the words ; ** Gruss^* or '* Gutontag^* generally 
abbreviated to " Tag.'' 

The women wear a peculiar headdress, consisting of a small, 
gold-embroidered crown, with broad black silk ribbons hanging 
down in long streamers to their heels, a black velvet bodice^ 
and full white linen sleeves. In winter the staple food consists 
of bacon, sausages, flour, potatoes, milk, and home-baked rye 
bread. 

They are a deeply religious people, too, with a simple, child* 
like faith ; Sunday is strictly observed ; one side of the church is 
reserved for the women; the other for the men. On the feast 
of the patron saint of Schonwald, June 18, a procession started 
from the church, and made the round of the village. The 
Sacred Host was borne under a golden canopy surmounted 
by white plumes. The whole population followed reverently, 
walking two and two. The choristers were robed in scarlet 
and white and the girls wore white wreaths and devoutly re* 
peated the. litany, while bells chimed and guns were fired. 
Every dwelling was decorated with pine branches and flowers. 

The little cemetery on the hilltop is a feature of Schdnwald. 
It is absolutely treeless, and lies free to wind and sun. Each 
grave has its stoup for holy water, in which a sprig of whor- 
tleberry or rosemary is placed for use as aspersoir^ and the 
dove^ who wheel overhead with a great flash of silvery wings, 
come down to drink out of the little vessels. A strange 
characteristic are the streamers of white net or lace which 
drape the crosses on the graves. These wave gently in the 
breeze, and the effect is most singular. At a distance the 
stranger would think these floating white visions were seraphs* 
wings, and especially is this true in that portion of the ceme^ 
tery set aside for children, where each tiny grave is watched 
over by the statuette of an angel. 

The farmhouses in the Black Forest are very picturesque* 
They are built of wood which, in nearly all cases, is black with 
age. A large painted crucifix usually hangs over the door. 



Digitized by 



Google 



372 A Corner of the Black Forest [June, 

with a motto beneathi such as: ** Dieses Haus ist in Gottis 
Hand; Gott bewakre es vor Feur und Brand.*^ The roof is 
heavy and slopes low down ; there are rows of small windows^ 
bright with flowers growing in wooden tubs or broken crocks^ 
and a carved gallery runs round the front of the building, 
with numerous doors opening on it. 

The type of house that we see in Schonwald to-day was 
practically fixed in the sixteenth century; as the houses were 
built then, so are they built now. The stube^ or common 
dwelling room, is invariably situated on the ground floor, it is 
a large room with a big tile stove. A genuine old-fashioned 
Black Forest stube is a curiously picturesque object. At the 
door there is the stoup for holy water; from it family and 
servants alike (for living in the Black Forest is still patriarchal) 
sprinkle themselves. Close to this stoup is the handgiessle^ a 
water-vessel made of tin, in which all who enter wash their 
hands. Religion does not end at the door; the room has its 
Herrgotteswinkelf God's corner, in which stands the KUnsterU, 
or house*altar, at which family prayers are offered. It is draped 
with gay, cheap finery. In this corner also the big oak table, 
which is handed down as an heirloom from father to son, finds 
a place. The wall of the room is lined all round with wooden 
seats, under which are fixed handy chests. 

Outside is the veranda, or tfippel^ a most useful as well as 
ornamental feature of the house. It is used for pleasure, and 
also serves as a general drying-place. The bright-colored bed- 
ding is hung out on this balcony to air, while poppyheads, 
fennel, and other kitchen plants, are put out to dry. Where 
straw- plaiting is in* vogue, bunches of green straw may be seen 
hanging from the balustrade, and below this the ladders, pitch- 
forks, and other long implements used on the farm find place. 

Pigeons abound; they are kept as pets, and are looked 
upon with affection by the peasants, and even drink out of the 
same trough as the cattle. Swallows return year after year 
to their nests under the eaves, and it is a popular superstition 
that where they build no thunderbolt will strike, and that their 
presence means peace and quiet in the home. 

Watch-making and straw-plaiting are the two chief indus- 
tries of Schpnwald; all through the long winter every man, 
woman, and child work steadily. Children begin to learn 
straw- plaiting at four or five years of age, and even in summer. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A Corner of the Black forest 373 

when most of the time is taken up with field labor, one will 
constantly meet a girl or woman with a wisp of straw tied to 
her waist, her fingers busily plaiting in odd moments. The 
pay is pitifully small, but it is not disdained by these thrifty 
people. The plaits are sent to the factories in the towns to 
be sewn up into hats. Cuckoo clocks, in fact all kinds of 
clocks, are produced in Schonwald, and at Furtwangen, which 
may be called a ''town of clock- makers." It was a Furt- 
wangen glass-blower who originally set his townsmen on the 
way of making clocks; the first striking clock was produced 
in the Black Forest in 1740. These home- industries keep 
families together in a sacred way. So attached are the Black 
Forest peasants to their district, that they have been known 
to die of homesickness while serving their term as soldiers. 

Everywhere tall wayside crucifixes are to be found : in the 
silence of the woods, by dusty roadsides, in the midst of green 
fields, by running streams, beside happy homesteads, on green 
hilltops, in sunshine and shadow, wind and rain, the Figure of 
the Crucified is reared aloft, and, though often of the rudest^ 
roughest workmanship, its pathos never fails to appeal, and 
bring its message to the passerby. 

Perhaps the lesson taught by these symbols so constantly 
before the people's eyes, has something to do with the simple, 
old-world, pious customs the peasants about Schonwald still 
observe. For instance: a prayer is offered before the sickle 
is put' to the corn; the farmer's wife makes the sign of the 
cross over the great loaf of bread which she is about to cut* 
The salutation on meeting with a priest is : ** Praised be Jesus 
Christ 1 " On Christmas morning neighbors greet each other 
with the words: ** Ick wiinsche dir Chr%stkindle*s Herz** a 
beautiful wish, with a deep meaning underlying the words; 
the ringing of the church bells on that day is called Kindle^ 
ariegen; they are, on this occasion, swung in a peculiarly 
gentle, soft way. 

As we leave Schonwald, bearing with us the memory of a 
** haunt of peace,'' we echo the words of a great writer, him- 
self a son of the Black Forest : " He who has never been alone, 
day alter day, in the summer-time, in a German forest, who 
has not learned its language and listened to its many voices, 
knows not the power of quiet nature on the restless human 
heart." 



Digitized by 



Google 



ARE COLLEGE PLAYS WORTH WHILE? 

BY THOMAS GAFFNEY TAAFFE. 
II. 

AlT the college play is worth while is a thesis 
that must be accepted with a distinction. 
Viewed as an abstract proposition there seems 
to be no question. In the schools the drama 
is at home; it is maintaining there one of its 
oldest traditions; there it is fulfilling one of its most impor- 
tant purposes. But it is possible for even a wholesome tradi- 
tion to degenerate, and for a good institution to fail of its 
purpose when that purpose is lost to sight. So much depends 
on the spirit in which the tradition is carried out that in the 
concrete it becomes a debatable proposition. 

The practical working out of the theory underlying the 
college drama demands a watchful eye and correct standards 
of taste. The very fact that its results are indirect, that the 
good to be derived from it is bound up in the pleasure it 
affords, complicates the problem. It is so easy to lose sight 
of the ultimate good in the contemplation of the immediate 
enjoyment that constant vigilance is essential to the achieve- 
ment of any benefit. The gravitation toward the lower levels 
is so easy that nothing but the most rigid care can guard 
against it Appetite grows with what it feeds on, and the re- 
straint once removed the decline is imminent. Nick Bottom, 
with the fairy music ringing in his fair large ears, longed for 
''the tongs and the bones,'' and Nick's taste, like his ass' 
noil, much as we dislike to admit it, is in a great measure 
typical. Though the fairy music ring in our ears, the ears 
are none the less long and flexible and the taste for the tongs 
and bones equally pronounced. 

If, then, this particular form of student activity is to 
achieve its end it must be something more than a mere stu- 
dent activity. If it is to play a part, even a small part, in 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] -4i?* College plays Wouth while t 375 

the formation of the student, some measure of guidance \z 
necessary. Mature judgment and scholarly taste are needed to 
offset the weaknesses to which youth is prone. For youth if left 
to itself will follow strange gods. Hence the absolute necessity 
for some supervision on the part of the faculty, if the play is to 
serve any other end than mere foolery. This need is recognized 
in many quarters, although in far too many instances the authori- 
ties, blind or indifferent to the opportunities at their hands^ 
hold aloof, giving to dramatics even less attention than they 
give to athletics. In our Catholic colleges, it must be said* 
this is rarely, if ever, the case. There, especially in the Jesuit 
colleges, dramatics are kept under the direct control of the 
faculty. It is true that, even with this supervision, there are 
sometimes sad lapses from the standard that should be main- 
tained, but it is equally true that they are few and far between. 

At no stage of the preparation of a college play is the 
need of mature judgment more urgent than in the initial stage, 
the selection of a play. If the play is to serve its legitimate 
end there is but one field open — the classic drama. Of that 
which is frankly ephemeral, which sings the song or tells the 
tale, not of a period or a generation, but merely of a day, 
there is nothing to be said. That has no place in scholastic 
surroundings. For the more serious efforts of modern writers 
hardly any more can be said. It takes time to try the worth 
of a play and none of us can hope to live long enough to 
follow it through its period of trial. The classic drama alone, 
then, which has stood the test of years and has survived the 
accidental peculiarities of its own generation, is worthy of aca- 
demic auspices. Nothing ejse is in keeping with the dignity 
of the school; nothing else has any place in college halls. 
What time has consecrated, and the judgment of successive 
generation has approved, is the only matter worthy of presen- 
tation under scholastic auspices. 

But this limitation is by no means narrow. The field is 
well*nigh inexhaustible. The Elizabethan period alone is a 
mine rich in material, and, with the comedy of the eighteenth 
eentury, eliminating, for obvious reasons, the comedy of the 
Restoration, can furnish plays enough to carry a college dra- 
matic organization through more than a generation. There 
is no literature, ancient or modern, so rich in drama as the 
literature of the English-speaking people. In every branch. 



Digitized by 



Google 



376 AHE COLLEGE PLAYS WORTH WHILE? [June, 

^' tragedy, comedy, historyi pastoral, pastoral* comical, historical- 
pastoral,'' and so on down through Polonius' tedious catalogue, 
its riches are practically inexhaustible. There is the dignity 
and sublimity of tragedy, the gayety of comedy, the stately 
march of historical pageantry — matter that will move storms 
or compel laughter. There is that which will serve every end 
of the college player — it will please; it will instruct; it will 
uplift; it will inspire. 

Outside the fteld of the classic drama there is no justifica- 
tion for the college drama, as the college drama. A group 
of college students may, of course, like any other group of 
amateur performers on recreation bent, assemble to present a 
modern farce, a musical comedy, or even a minstrel show, but 
in doing so they are doing nothing that any haphazard as- 
semblage of persons in search of recreation might not do as 
well or, perhaps, better; and their efforts are entitled to no 
more serious consideration. But if they rescue from oblivion 
some forgotten or half- forgotten masterpiece which a thought- 
less generation has relegated to the dust covered bookshelf; if 
they direct their energies to the adequate and intelligent pre- 
sentation of some quaint conceit of a more poetic age, which is 
impossible from the viewpoint of the speculative manager, 
they are doing a scholarly work that is deserving of commenda^ 
tion. Their effort is more praiseworthy even than that of him 
who tenders a similar work within the covers of a book, with 
learned note and comment; for they are presenting the play 
as it was intended it should be presented, and enhancing its 
beauties with the interest that the living voice and the scenic 
presentation always bring to it. And even if they have no claim 
to discovery; if they are content with the familiar plays of 
Shakespeare ; their efforts are none the less commendable. In 
producing these they are delivering a message that is ever 
new; they are uttering thoughts that are immortal; they are 
speaking with the voice of the master dramatist of all time, 
and they need no excuse of antiquarian interest. 

The Elizabethan age is obviously the most fruitful field for 
the labors of the college player and the best suited to his 
purpose. That was the golden age of the English drama. It 
was the age of greatest dramatic achievement, and therefore most 
worthy the attention of players prompted rather by scholarly 
interest than by a gainful purpose. Its remoteness, too, lends a 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IQ.] ARE College plays worth while? 377 

charm, and there is about its archaic flavor an attractiveness 
that even indifferent playing cannot destroy. It was an age 
of poetry as well as an age of drama, and the poetry in its 
drama is sufficient to make good many of the shortcomings 
of the unskilled interpreters. It will carry itself by the sheer 
force of its poetic beauty and the intensity of its dramatic in« 
terest. 

The comparatively recent movement toward restoring, with 
the plays, the manner of presenting them in the Elizabethan 
age has brought with it a practical advantage of great value 
to the college player. The impossibility of adequately mounting 
a play of Shakespeare in the modern manner has always been 
a barrier to the colleges. Even the most costly of the recent 
elaborate professional performances, with all that money and 
skill could do, have failed to realize the scenes that the dra- 
matist has pictured. What, then, can the colleges do with 
their meagre equipment, and with the necessity facing them 
of being obliged to make that meagre equipment serve again 
and again, irrespective of time or place? But even the most 
elaborate equipment, were it within reach, would be a detri- 
ment to their purpose, for every added detail of setting means 
a corresponding inroad on the text. The play is cut to make 
room for scenery, and poetry is sacrificed to upholstery. 

But the return to the Elizabethan simplicity, to the ** naked 
room with a blanket for a curtain," has in a measure solved 
the problem. It may be, and it has been, criticized as a pose, 
an affectation; and at first glance there may seem to be some 
justice in the criticism. It is argued that were Shakespeare 
alive now he would use all the devices of the modern stage to 
gain his effects, as he used everything that his own paltry 
stage afforded; and that, therefore, we should, in presenting 
his plays to-day, make the same use of every available device. 

But the argument is hardly relevant. We must bear in mind 
the fact that his plays were written for the Elizabethan stage, 
where imagination was not hampered and circumscribed by 
painted cloth and electrical effects; where, with nothing to limit 
it and the poet's lines to stimulate it, it could roam through 
time and space and see visions which no scenic art could vis- 
ualize. And these very limitations furnished a stimulus to the 
poet; because of the exigencies of his stage he was obliged 



Digitized by 



Google 



378 ARE COLLEGE PLAYS WORTH WHILE t Unne, 

to rely on his text to realize the scese for his audience. His 
the task to fill eye and ear and *' lead men's minds the rounda^ 
bout.'' Why, then, should these plays not be presented as they 
were in their own day and allowed to make their own appeal ? 
It is no pose, this return to Elizabethan simplicity, but a sdiolar«* 
ly effort to restore, as far as possible, a condition that has 
passed away. If we consider as an added reason the fact that 
under these conditions it is possible to present the play unim- 
paired, in its original completeness, there remains no further 
room for adverse criticism. 

The practical value of this method, too, is not without its 
strong arguments. What simpler equipment can we find? It 
is true we have little definite knowledge of what the Eliza* 
bethan stage was like. De Witt's picture of the Swan, the 
specifications of the Fortune, and a few passing references in 
contemporary writings, are practically all we have to guide us. 
But if our knowledge of the accidental features is limited, we 
do know what the essentials were, and these essentials are well 
within the reach of any college company. A simple platform, 
without footlights or border lights, extending into the audi- 
ence, a screen to hide the actots from view while they await 
their cues, an outer and an inner stage, separated by traverses, 
a few set pieces to suggest the scene — and our stage is equipped. 
It is the ''naked room with a blanket for a curtain"; and it 
needs only Shakespeare's winged words to make it ''a field for 
monarchs." 

There is another tradition of the Elizabethan stage that 
lends itself admirably to the college drama, a tradition derived 
from a condition parallel to that which prevails in the colleges 
to-day. Women were unknown to the English stage until after 
the Restoration, and in the golden age of the drama the female 
parts were played by boys. And our college players are lim- 
ited in a similar manner. Exactly the same conditions drive 
them to the expedient that the Elizabethan actors were obliged 
to fall back on; and the result, when the other Elizabethan 
conditions are complied with, is a reproduction that is remark- 
ably accurate. This detail, it is true, is not adhered to uni- 
versally. In many of our Catholic colleges, especially in the 
Jesuit colleges of this country, a strange prejudice prevails 
against the assumption of female parts by boys. What is the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IQ.] AXS CQLIMGM FLAYS WORTH WHILE t 379 

origin of this prejudice it it impossible to say, but that it exists 
there is no doubt It may have had its origin in France, for 
the French stage has no such tradition as that which has come 
down to QS from Elizabethan times. In France and in Italy, 
as Car as we know, the female parts were always played by 
women, a custom which shocked Coryate and many another 
English traveler of Elizabethan days. Many of the Jesuit com- 
munities in this country trace their lineage back to the French 
province, and the prejudice may have its root in France, for 
the English custom was as offensive to French taste as the em- 
ployment of women was to Elizabethan taste. This explanation 
is largely a matter of conjecture, but it takes on some color 
of truth from the fact that, as far as the English-speaking col- 
leges are concerned, it is purely local. There is no Jesuit leg- 
islation on this point, except with respect to the houses of 
study for members of the order. The ratio is silent as to the 
practice, and there is no ruling of any Father- General forbid- 
ding it. Moreover, in the Jesuit colleges in England and Ire- 
land, in accordance with long-established custom, the female 
parts in the plays are all assumed by boys, without any ques- 
tion of good taste being raised. 

Whatever the origin of the prejudice, it has been and still 
is a serious detriment. It has marred many an otherwise ex- 
cellent performance, and it has set narrow limits to the number 
of plays available for production. For in order to present a 
play it is necessary either to eliminate the female characters 
or to alter them to male characters. It is ol>vious that this 
tampering with the classics works inevitable mischief. Then, 
when we consider how few plays there are that are susceptible 
to this adaptation, we can realize how pitifully narrow is the 
field of selection. And this in a dramatic literature which is 
perhaps the richest the world has ever known. 

It is true that many devices are resorted to to offset this 
difficulty, but it is so great that ingenuity is sorely taxed in 
the effort The most ingenious way out of it was exemplified 
in the very excellent performance of ''The Merchant of Ven- 
ice,'' which the students of St. Francis Xavier's College, New 
York, gave during this year. There the play was so judicious- 
ly cut as to eliminate those elements of the play which ne- 
cessitated the presence of Portia, Nerissa, and Jessica in fro-^ 



Digitized by 



Google 



380 ARE College Plays worth While? [June, 

pria persona^ and to retain those scenes in which they appeared 
disguised as men. The result was a coherent story, artfully 
fitted and joined at the points where the excisions were made, 
and satisfying even to one who was unfamiliar with it But 
the number of plays which are susceptible of this treatment 
are lamentably few, and the adapter is frequently put to the 
choice of a play broken into disjointed fragments, or altered 
with a crudity that would make the judicious grieve. It is a 
pity that this should be so, for it is a noteworthy fact that in 
the Jesuit colleges, where this prejudice is strongest, the dra- 
matic performances are otherwise notable for the high standard 
of excellence which they maintain. 

Something more, however, is demanded of a dramatic per- 
formance than the mere good taste and intelligence that pre- 
vail among men of education. Something of technical skill 
and a knowledge of the niceties of dramatic presentation ia 
necessary if an adequate presentation of a play is desired. It 
is not sufficient that your student actors individually should 
deliver their lines with precision and intelligence. A group of 
individual impersonations, no matter how good, does not con- 
stitute a dramatic performance; some attention must be given 
to the ensemble. There must be some unifying force in the 
direction which will harmonize the individual parts and sub- 
ordinate them to the whole. And this involves a host of de« 
tails of management. The importance of dramatic situations 
must be emphasized. The pictures must be well composed; 
the action must be easy and natural; in a word, action must 
come to the aid of dialogue and help to tell the story. It 
must be remembered that a dramatic production is a work of 
art and the twofold purpose of every work of art must be 
kept in mind — to please and instruct, or rather to instruct by 
pleasing. 

It would be unreasonable, it is true, to look for the same 
degree of technical excellence in a college production as that 
to be found in the work of skilled actors, but a certain meas- 
ure of technical skill is within the reach of your college play- 
ers, and enthusiasm may be relied upon to supply some of the 
deficiencies. Moreover, the average of intelligence and scholar- 
ly knowledge of the play is 'higher in a. group of college 
players than in a corresponding group of professionals, and 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] ARE COLLEGE PLAYS WORTH WHILE t 381 

this will go far to offset the lack of facility in interpretation. 
At any rate, it is always possible, with a well- chosen play, to 
develop a sufficient degree of this technical skill to quicken 
the interest of the spectators and create a measure of illusion. 
All of this, of course, supposes competent direction. But 
competent direction is always possible where judgment and 
good taste go hand in hand, and the dramatic instinct that is 
bom in every one of us is fostered and developed. The feel* 
ing for the dramatic, like the feeling for any other form of 
artistic expression, is not a matter of equal possession. Some 
have a more generous allotment than others. But where a 
tradition like the college drama has flourished for so many 
centuries a certain degree of skill is bound to be the heritage 
of those whose charge it is to perpetuate that tradition. The 
mantle descends from prophet to prophet. At the worst, 
technical skill can always be enlisted, should the necessity 
arise, in the service of scholarship, and with this relation rigid- 
ly preserved, instruction, supplemented by entertainment, can 
be provided without recourse to ''the tongs and the bones.'' 



Digitized by 



Google 



flew Sooks. 

To write the history of one's own 
HISTORY OF THEiCATHOLIC times is an attractive, hot a danger- 
CHURCH. ous task. The facts Ue at one's 

hand, under one's eyes. Their 
interest is present, personal, absorbing. But it is hard to judge 
great ideas and movements, to which the only ultimate test 
must be brought by time; hard, also, to avoid the personal 
point of view; and easy to offend susceptibilities and make 
trouble. It is a delicate task, requiring balance, prudence, and 
tact It has twice been accomplished successfully in our own 
day, and in both instances by Irishmen. Justin McCarthy has 
done it for the history of Great Britain and Ireland, and Dr. 
MacCaffrey for the history of the Catholic Church during the 
nineteenth century.* The Maynooth professor has not the 
striking literary gifts of his distinguished countryman, espe-> 
daily his power of lively graphic narration and characteriza- 
tion. But knowledge, balance, and prudence he certainly pos- 
sesses, as his two large volumes show in every page. 

His breadth and discernment may be judged from the 
questions which he notes in his preface as being the most im- 
portant ones which have arisen during the century. These are: 
the rise of Constitutionalism and of national feeling (with both 
of which movements he is in sympathy), the relations between 
Church and State, the struggle for religious education, the 
conflicts between faith and science, between capital and labor, 
and the spread of the Church abroad, whether by missionary 
activity or by emigration. 

Volume I. is devoted to the history of the Church in Con- 
tinental Europe. It begins with the French Revolution of 1789. 
The overturning of accepted ideas and the changes of bound- 
ary-lines, which the Revolution effected, make it the proper 
starting point for a history of the nineteenth century. French 
history is brought down to 1848; and then the ecclesiastical 
history of Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and 
Italy are successively treated as far as the same year. The 
year 1848 makes a good dividing point, not merely because it 
comes so near the middle of the century, but by reason of the 

•History of HU Catkclic Ckurek in HU NvuUaUk CnUwy (nS^-r^oS). By James Mac 
Caffrey, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Maynooth. In two volumes. Dublin : M. H» 
'""' •- Son; St. Louis: B, Herder. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] New BOOKS 383 

new social and political movements which date from it. From 
1848 to 1898 the Continental peoples are considered in the 
same order. The final chapter is devoted to ''The Papacy.'' 
There is a good account of the political misfortunes of the 
Papal States, and an excellent history of the Vatican Council. 

The second volume opens with the repeal of the Penal Laws 
in England. The Oxford Movement, the establishment of the 
hierarchy, and the recent history of the Church in England 
and Scotland are surveyed succinctly and accurately. The 
history of the Church in Ireland, at least as a whole, is given 
only down to the Act of Disestablishment, forty years ago. 
In this instance, one may judge, the author found the task 
of writing the history of his own times too difficult even for 
his prudent pen. He had less need of reticence in giving the 
account of '' Education in Ireland,'' which has a chapter to 
itself and which is completed down to the Irish Universities 
Act of 1908. 

Chapter IV. treats of the Church in America, a generous 
share of it being accorded to the United States, and much 
might be quoted to show the author's friendly attitude towards 
the Church in America. 

A strange error has crept into this chapter which we can- 
not help but notice. On pp. 294, 295 the Rev. A. P. Doyle 
is named as the Superior of the Paulist Fathers. It is well 
known that the Very Rev. George M. Searle was Superior 
from 1904-1909 and that he was succeeded by the Very Rev. 
John J. Hughes in July of last year. Moreover, the organ of 
the Paulist Fathers is not The Missionary but The Catholic 
World. 

After considering the general history of the Church in 
Canada, South America, Australasia, and in the foreign mission 
fields, the author devotes six interesting chapters to special 
topics : Religious Orders, Theological Errors and Developments, 
Ecclesiastical Studies During the Nineteenth Century, Ecclesi- 
astical Education, Socialism, and The Catholic Labor Movement. 

The knore one studies these two volumes of Dr. MacCaffrey, 
the deeper becomes one's appreciation of his special fitness for 
the difficult task to which he addressed himself. Out of the 
tnass of data at his disposal he selects the essentials with sin- 
gular and unerring felicity. He rather avoids the characteriza- 
tion o! individuals; it is in the summary of events that he is 



Digitized by 



Google 



384 New books [June, 

at his best; here he moves with rapid but with steady step. 
He is always calm and well-poised. He points out evils where 
they exist, but he never scolds. His history of Catholic ac- 
tivities never degenerates into a mere indictment of the age 
and of humanity. He is in sympathy with all sane pro* 
gressive movements towards political equality, economic bet- 
terment, educational advance, and improvement in practical 
religious methods. He has the faith in divine Providence and 
the hopefulness about the future which distinguish the Catho- 
lic and the Celt; and, in addition, a broad and clear outlook 
as an historian over the field of human history, which makes 
his judgments broad-minded, equable, and sane. We warmly 
recommend The History of the Catholic Church in the Nine* 
teenth Century. 

Western Canada is to-day the land of promise. In fact, it 
bids fair to be to-morrow the land of fulfillment. The great 
continental ''trek** is moving northward, and the broad lands 
on both sides of the Canadian Rockies are attracting thous- 
ands of settlers. The pioneer days of savages and mitis^ voya^ 
geurs and counurs du bois^ Hudson Bay officials, and mission- 
aries, are fast passing away, to be succeeded by a civilization 
of railroads, churches, schools, and courts, settled farms, and 
well-equipped mines. The earlier conditions are well within 
the memory of the devoted Catholic missionaries who labored 
so valiantly to plant the cross in that vast region, stretching 
from Lake Superior to the Pacific and from the American 
border to the frozen North. It is well that some of them 
have been moved to write for posterity the history of the 
earlier times before the last vestige of those times has become 
obliterated by the foot of progress. It is fitting also that an 
Oblate of Mary Immaculate should essay the task,* for where- 
ever the traveler may go throughout that whole region he 
will come across the evidences of the heroic toil of that de- 
voted band of missionary priests. Father Morice is no novice 
in historical work. He comes to his task with the added 
equipment of years of experience in the country whose history 
he is writing. And it is a moving tale he tells — of missionary 
adventures, successes, and tragedies, of Indian lore, of settle- 

* History of tlU CaiJkolu Church in Western Canada from Lake Superior to the Pacific 
(1659-1895), By Rev. A. G. Morice» O.M.I. In two volumes. With Maps and lUustra* 
tions. Toronto : The Mosson Book Company, 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] New books 385 

ments, rebellions, massacres, of the beginnings of towns and 
churches, the whole drama of civilization in the making. His 
main interest is in the progress of religion; but he often 
touches on points of more general history, and always with 
the sure touch of the man who has a first-hand acquaintance 
with the facts, persons, places, and circumstances. His account 
of the two insurrections with which Louis Riel was concerned 
should be read by every fair-minded historian before a final 
verdict is pronounced on that unfortunate leader. The auto- 
graphs and portraits of eminent pioneers form a valuable fea- 
ture of the work. 

We have any number of books treating of the work of the 
Catholic Church in general, and its influence on civilization, 
on the individual, the family, and society. But there has been 
felt the need of some book treating of the Church in our own 
particular country. We have the histories of the church in 
different dioceses and in different sections of the country ; we 
have volumes on the work done by various individuals and 
various religious societies; but as yet no one has given us a 
general survey of the position and influence of the Church in 
the United States. The present volume* is a step in the 
right direction. It does not, of course, pretend to be exhaus- 
tive; it is only a general, a very general, survey of the work 
of the Church in this country, just barely touching on the 
most prominent topics. A good idea of its contents may be 
gleaned from the headings of the chapters: ''The Past''; 
''Missionary Heroes''; "In Colonial Days"; "The Church in 
the Nation"; "A Little History on Religious Lines"; "The 
Science of Irreligion"; "The Philosophy of Unbelief"; "Im- 
migration"; "Education and the Bible"; "The National 
Church." The value of the book is enhanced by some statis- 
tics and tables given in conclusion. 

Some years ago a large class of col- 

THS SOUTH IN OUR GREAT lege graduates, all natives of this 

^AR. country, were seeking admission to 

an institution of professional train- 
ing. One of the questions submitted in the written examination 

^ TJu Quuiwn of tki Hour. A Survey of the Posidon and Influence of the Catholio 
Church in the United States. By Joseph P. Conway. New York: The John McBride 
Company. 

VOL. XCI.— 35 



Digitized by 



Google 



386 NEW BOOKS [June, 

was this : '' What general was in command of the Union forces 
at the battle of Gettysburg?** The answers were in several 
cases quite wide of the fact, and one of the young gentlemen 
wrote down: ''General Grant, of course/' This was by no 
means the grossest error about American history, and is but 
a specimen of the condition of minds under tuition, higher and 
lower, in matters of the sort. Hence the good of such works 
as Mr. Eggleston's on the War of the Rebellion.* 

The reader here has the advantage of an old soldier's ex- 
perience as to narrative, as well as of a practised writer's 
power of condensation and smoothness of description. The 
author served in the Southern army all through the war. 
Therefore his treatment of army operations is graphic and 
piquant. That it is critical in the stricter sense, as claimed on 
the title page, some will question. For example, the strategy 
of Stonewall Jackson's brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah 
Valley in the spring of 1862, is credited mainly to General 
Lee. That great leader profited greatly by the Valley cam- 
paign, and personally approved of it ; but its whole scope and 
purpose, no less than its detailed execution, was Jackson's own, 
as is fully shown by Colonel Henderson in his classic work on 
that eccentric hero. General Joseph E. Johnston, however, 
aided Jackson, not only largely but essentially, being his im- 
mediate superior and granting him every soldier he could spare 
from the lines in front of Richmond. Lee held no actual 
command at the time, and was placed on the waiting list with 
the complimentary title of ''Military Adviser" of President 
Davis, a sort of cbief-of-staff. 

Another lapse is the failure to mention the two little war- 
ships, the Tyler and Lexington^ in the account of the battle of 
Shiloh, which, barring that omission, is one of the fairest and 
most interesting we have ever read. 

Taken as a whole, the work is accurate enough to be re- 
liable. Audit has such high literary merit as to redeem many 
such defects as we have noticed. It reads like a novel, clear 
as crystal, sparkling everywhere with the epithets of earnest 
feeling and the adornments of pure literary taste. 

Since the war Mr. Eggleston has resided in the North en- 
gaged in literary and notably historical labors with well-earned 
applause. Therefore his introductory chapters on the origin of 

* Tk€ History o/iJU CanftderaU War: Its Causes and Conduct, A Narrative and Critical 
History. By George Gary Eggleston. Two Vols. New York : Sturgis & Walton Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] New Books 387 

the conflict, demand an attentive consideration from Northern 
readers, apart from their intrinisic merit. We cannot quite 
allow ourselves to be led into his view of Southern rights ; yet 
they are shown to be historically plausible, if not probable, are 
well arranged for reference, and offered in a literary dress 
superior, we think, to any other portion of the work. 

American history still lacks a distinctive and powerfully writ- 
ten account of the strictly political affairs of the Confederacy. 
Some of the ablest of American statesmen led the South out of 
the Union and organized the new and short-lived nation. It 
is now generally conceded, and is repeatedly affirmed or implied 
by Mr. Eggleston, that the diplomacy, the finances, the legisla- 
tion of the Confederate States, were each and all a lamentable 
failure, nearly all the more important measures being unwisely 
conceived and blunderingly carried out Especial interest at- 
taches to this condition, when it is just as universally admitted 
that the military achievemeqts of the Southern people were of 
the highest order of excellence. Our author has notably contri- 
buted an intelligent and very enjoyable study of the whole 
epoch. 

To the popular imagination one 
SIMON BOLIVAR. of the most picturesque characters 

in the history of the Western 
Hemisphere is Simon Bolivar, "The Liberator.'' Most of us 
know very little of the facts of his life, but bis name bears 
with it mingled associations of the dash and daring of the 
early Spanish conquistadores uxA the democratic self-abnegation 
of a Cincinnatus or a Washington. But the grave writers of 
history have passed him by. This has been due to the dis- 
turbed and backward state of the republics which he freed from 
the dominion of Spain, and which, under better conditions, 
would have been the proper agents for the keeping of his 
deeds before the tyt% of the world. The digging of the 
Panama Canal has of late turned our eyes in the direction cf 
South America, and Mr. Loraine Petre deems it the psycholo- 
gical moment to present once more the story of the Liberator 
to the English-speaking world. 

His work * presents every evidence of being a carefully studied 

* Si$iton Bolivar,** SI Libtrtador" A Life of the Chief Leader in the Revolt against Spain 
in Venesuela, New Granada, and Peru. By Fr. Loraine Petre, London and New York : 
John Lane. 



Digitized by 



Google 



388 NEW BOOKS [June, 

and impartial document. It is rather difficult reading on ac« 
count of the agility with which its subject keeps skipping over 
a large and to us unfamiliar map. The ever- changing kaleid- 
oscope of Spanish American politics does not help to clearness 
of view. But we do get a fair idea of Simon Bolivar. When 
all is said and done, it must be acknowledged that he is not 
the ideal that our fancy had painted him, but he is pretty much 
of a man notwithstanding. To state the worst first, he was 
vain, ambitious, and lacking in power to govern the territory 
which his arms had won. But he was brave, resourceful, un- 
daunted, and indefatigable. The vice of avarice has not 
smirched his name as it has so many of his successors. He 
possessed the perseverance and courage of a Hannibal, but not 
the administrative genius of an Alexander or a Napoleon, and 
only in outward show the deep patriotism of a Washington. 
But he was the liberator of his people, and is deserving of 
their gratitude. His native land, Venezuela, has given birth to 
no nobler son, and has borne the yoke of much less worthy 
rulers. 

Of late the ''devil's advocates'' 
PORFIRIO DIAZ. have been doing rather effective 

By Godoy. work in undermining the popular 

reputation of the President of our 
neighboring republic. That he is jealous of the good opinion of 
Americans has been shown in various ways, one of them being 
a legal action, which resulted in the imprisonment of a clever 
cartoonist. The present work* bears evidence of being part 
of a campaign of rehabilitation. It may possibly be the en- 
thusiastic tribute of a whole-hearted admirer; but it reads at 
times like a campaign document. Half of the book consists 
of an account of the life of Porfirio Diaz. The main events 
of this really remarkable career are narrated with lucidity and 
directness. The only objection is that Diaz is pictured as 
being so unhumanly and monotonously right. A few dark 
lines would make the picture more artistic — and more credible. 
The latter half of the book consists of an impressive array 
of '' Opinions of prominent men regarding President Diaz as 
a soldier and statesman," and various appendices containing 
documents, statistics, etc. The ''opinions" were written at 

• Porfirio DioM, Pruidont of MtaHco: \TJu Master Builder of a Greai CommomweaUk. 
By Jos^ F. Godoy. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] New books 389 

the request of the author, who does not over-state the facts 
when he says that the list of the writers contains the names 
of '* some of the most noted men in the United States and 
Canada, including most eminent statesmen, diplomats, govern- 
ors, federal officials, army and navy leaders, newspaper writers, 
successful bankers, men from all leading walks of life/* The 
unanimous verdict which these men render will, no doubt, be 
the verdict of history. It is that Porfirio Diaz is one of the 
greatest men of our times. This, however, does not modify 
the fact that history will insist on a more detailed and scru- 
pulous estimate of the man and his achievements than can be 
found in the present work. 

Dr. PauUin, the author of this 
COMMODORE JOHN ROGERS, book,* is a resident of Washing- 
ton, and a graduate of the Catholic 
University of America. He is an authority on American naval 
history, having already published the Navy of the American 
Revolution and the Administration of the Continental Navy of 
the American Revolution. He has selected Commodore Rogers 
as a subject, partly on account of the interesting career of the 
man himself, and partly because his activities were so closely 
connected with the history of the old navy, his years of service 
extending from 1798 to 1838. The whole narrative is graphic, 
and, to our modern eyes, picturesque. It brings back the days 
when a sea-fight was a romance, the days of wooden ships 
and sailing manoeuvres, of pirates and privateers. Commodore 
Rogers took part in the war with the Barbary pirates and in 
the War of 18 12. He was associated with such men as Decatur 
and Lawrence, the Perrys, Porter, Bainbridge, and MacDonough. 
He played a part, too, in the more pacific home and foreign 
affairs of his country, and, during his long period of land 
service, had an important share in developing and systematizing 
the naval department. Among other things he advocated for 
many years, planned, and later secured, the Naval Academy 
at Annapolis. 

Dr. Paullin has had full access to all the official documents 
bearing on the period, and in addition he has made use of 
family and private papers which have not hitherto been access- 

* Commcdan John RogtrSt Captain^ CowtiH§dore, and Sinicr Offiarof thi Atmruan Navy 
irnj-'S^S). A Biography. By Charles Oscar Paullin. Clereland: The Arthur H. Clark 
Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



390 New BOOKS [Jane, 

ible to the historian. He also furnishes an extensive bibli- 
ography of sources and a careful analytical index, as well as 
numerous portraits, facsimiles, and views. The large volume 
is gotten up with the exquisite care which always marks the 
publications of the Arthur H. Clark Company. 

A collected volume from the pen of 
VERSE. Edward William Thomson* comes 

to us, containing verses both pa- 
triotic and sentimental, translations, and some interesting Cana- 
dian ballads. The Lincoln poems have powerful sincerity and 
many a heart- reaching touch of war-time color; although the 
persistent coupling of our martyr-president with the crucified 
Son of God is open to the charge of bad art as well as bad 
taste. Mr. Thomson has inclusive sympathies and a felicitous 
trick of phrase : his philosophy will scarcely make serious ap- 
peal to the Catholic mind. 

In a volume t upon many themes, and of unequal merit, 
Mr. Wilson Jefferson gives us two or three really beautiful 
lyrics. ''After Death'' is a fragment of poignant and perfect 
simplicity. 

The Haunted House t contains verses, narrative and other- 
wise, distinctly fervid for the most part, and given to experi- 
ments in rhythm. It is scarcely reassuring to confront upon 
the first page a phonetic effusion concerning 

'' the nasty, sickly wheezing of lost souls.'' 

There is no tremendous intellectual 

LADY MERTOH, COLONIST, problem in the latest novel of 

By Mrs. Ward. Mrs. Humphrey Ward,§ and the 

story is the better for the lack. 

The scene is in Western Canada, the country of big things, 

and Mrs. Ward is enthusiastic about everything in that new. 

and vigorous land. The main characters are a Canadian of 

the dynamic type that our own Frank Spearman loves to de- 

* WJUm Lincoln Died; and Other Poems. By Edward William Thomson. Boston and 
New York : Houghton Mifflin Company. 

t Venes, By Wilson Jefferson. Boston : Richard G. Badger. 

X The HannUd Houst. By Henry Percival Spencer. Boston : Richard Q. Badger. 

$ Lady Merton, Colonist, By Mrs. Humphrey Ward. New York : Doubleday, Page ft 
Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 391 

pict, and Lady Merton, an Englishwoman of refinement, who 
finally elects to give up old-world comforts and culture and 
take her place in the life of the western country. There is one 
Catholic in the story, a French- Canadian who represents spir- 
itual ideals. More might profitably have been made of him. 

Winston Churchiirs American por- 

A MODERN CHRONICLE, trait gallery contains specimens 

By Churchill, f^om each generation, beginning 

with Colonial times. In the pres- 
ent volume* he depicts modern people and conditions. The 
scenes are laid in St. Louis, New York, and across the Atlantic, 
There is a winsome but difficult heroine, and a sturdy, patient 
hero of the ''Peter Stirling" type. The story does not hold 
one's interest to the same degree as, for instance. The Crossing 
or Coniston^ but it is, like all the author's work, well worth 
reading. 

Not long ago Professor Mtinster- 

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF berg attracted considerable atten- 

LUTHER TRANT. tion, and not a little ridicule, by 

suggesting that the methods of 
psychological research should be used for the detection of crime. 
The idea has been taken up by the authors of The Achieve^- 
ments of Luther Trant.f The book contains half a dozen good 
detective stories, in which there is a fine blending of the scien- 
tific and the human interest. The methods used for testing 
the credibility of witnesses, registering the emotions of the 
guilty, etc., would hardly be admitted in court according to 
the rules of evidence; but it is evident that they can serve, 
in competent hands, for aids to the detection of crime. 

Mr. Crawford's posthumous work } 

THE UNDESIRABLE will hardly add to his fame. It is 

GOVERNESS. a simple story of English country 

By Crawford. life, with a decidedly old-fashioned 

plot — kidnapped heiresses have 

gone out of fashion in fiction. If it were not that a balloon- 

*A Madim CMromuli. By Winston Churchill. New. York: The MacmiUan Company. 

t TJU AekUvimints of JLuthet Trant. hy £. Balmer and W. MacHarg. Boston : Small, 
Maynard & Co. 

I Tk€ UtuUsirabU Govinuss, By F. Marion Crawford. New York : The Macmillan 
Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



39' NEW BOOKS [June, 

ing adventure plays a prominent part in the denouement, one 
would surmise that the story was an old and suppressed ven- 
ture of the author, written before Mr. Isaacs had shown him 
what he might expect of himself. However, it is a clean, sim- 
ple little tale, told with grace and humor. 

Mrs. Atherton's Tower of Ivory • 

TOWER OF IVORY. is not a great work. A young 

By Mrs. Atherton. Englishman meets a pritna donna 

in Munich. She arouses him to 
the level of the best in him— a poor best^and under her stimu- 
lus he passes his examinations for the diplomatic service. She 
saves him from the clutches of a designing woman, and, in 
self-denying vein, refuses to marry him herself. But the char- 
acter of the man is unattractive ; indolence and self-indulgence 
are the main qualities depicted in the book. Of course the 
story is well told, for Mrs. Atherton is a master of craft, but 
at times it is heavy. 

Daisy plaited Jeannie's long white 

THE FASCINATING fingers in with her own. •• I think 

MRS. HALTON. it*g one of the nicest things that 

By Benson. ^^^r happened,*' she said. ''Ifs 

like some old legend of a man 

who has — well, racketed about all his life, and then suddenly 

finds his ideal, which, though she is quite out of reach, entirely 

satisfies him. . . • It's just what the man in the legend 

would do. 

And the reader of The Fascinating Mrs. Halion;\ supposedly 
a novel that pictures English social life of the '' upper '' classes, 
particularly in their country house parties, will also say that 
it is a legend pure and simple, a mythical thing that lacks the 
ring of true life. Some of the people are wicked; others are 
on the way to be wicked; and the virtuous heroine does not 
hesitate to employ wicked methods that good may come. In 
the old yellow-backs the good hero was always triumphant; 
the villain, persisting in his villainy to the last, was utterly 
vanquished. 

In Mrs. Halton we feared that vice, so threateningly ram- 
pant, might, in the end, conquer. Our fears were vain. Vice 

» Tower of Ivory. By Gertrude Atherton. New York: The Macmillan Company. 

t Tkt FascinaHu^ Mrs. HaUon. By E. F. Benson. New York : Doubleday, Page & Ca 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 393 

does not conquer. Not even the villain dies. He lives — a de- 
voted servant of all things good and proper. No wonder 
Daisy said it was '' one of the nicest things that ever happened." 
In its ending at least this tale would adorn the library of a 
Sunday-School. Without fair warning and with a complete- 
ness that is inexplicable Tom, the wretched villain, turns to 
Jeannie and says, in the virtuous accents of a most conscien- 
tious man : '' I love and I honor you " ; and though Jeannie 
will not, cannot accept him, the tender yet powerful influence 
of that love to which he aspired, yet never attained, changes 
utterly his life and character, and is equivalent for him to per- 
severance, pitched virtuously high. And Daisy, for whom we 
worried without cause, is also won and transformed by the 
wondrous virtue of Jeannie. 

All this Mr. E. F. Benson relates in his attractive, conver* 
sational way, and his plot has at least the merit of novelty. 

In this volume * we have twenty- 
STRICTLT BUSINESS. three stories from the pen of one 
By 0. Henry. of the most industrious of present- 

day fiction writers. We expect 
to find humor and keen^characterization in, everything from the 
pen of O. Henry, and^we are not disappointed in the present 
book. The themes of these varied tales have, one and all, to 
do with the energetic, restless, materialistic life of^ proletarian 
America. They bring us in close contact with the strange, 
surging city of ''Bagdad-on- the- Subway.'' The realism of the 
presentation flashes upon the reader things which, through 
dreaming inattention, we have missed, and we are led into 
questioning why we have not looked out upon this common 
life with our own eyes open in observation and sympathy. 
Three or four of the stories are of exceptionally good quality, 
though it is also true that many chapters reveal the strain of 
hurried work. But Strictly Business will give to a reader a few 
hours of very pleasant entertainment. 

English-speaking Catholics owe a 

THE PAPACT. deep debt of gratitude to Bishop 

By John S. Vaughan. Vaughan for his literary activity. 

He has already given us many 
books treating of spiritual and doctrinal subjects, almost all 

• StrUay Busmas. By O. Henry. ;Ncw York : Doublcday, Page ft Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



394 NEW BOOKS [June, 

of which have passed through many editions. The discharge of 
his manifold duties as Auxiliary Bishop of Salford does not 
seem to lessen his literary activity. The present volume * was 
not originally intended for publication, but many who had 
heard these lectures wished to see them in a more permanent 
form. They treat of the Infallibility of the Pope. In clear, 
concise language the Right Reverend author gives the doctrine 
of the Catholic Church and shows how reason demands an in« 
fallible authority in the Church of God. The second part 
deals more particularly with Papal Infallibility in connection 
with the Church of England, and especially with the Continuity 
Theory so much in favor among modern Anglicans. 

The book will be of great service to all who wish to study 
this important question, since Bishop Vaughan has a happy 
iaculty of popularizing theology. We wish it the success it 
deserves and such success as has justly come to Monsignor 
Vaughan*s previous volumes. 

We cannot have too many books 
THE HOLT EUCHARIST, of popular devotion on the Holy 

Eucharist and the Holy Sacrifice 
of the Mass. The Blessed Sacrament is the fundamental devo- 
tion of the Church; all our spiritual life revolves around it; 
and the better it is known, the more will it be loved and the 
deeper will be our union with Christ. Hence we extend a 
hearty welcome to this production of the learned Jesuit.f It 
is a book full of deep spirituality based upon dogmatic truths. 
The subjects treated are '' The Idea of Sacrifice''; ''The Beauty 
of the Eucharistic Sacrifice''; ''The Miraculous Multiplication 
of Bread and Communion " ; " The Perpetual Presence of Our 
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament " ; " Visits to the Seven Churches 
in Rome." The author has handled his subject-matter in a 
masterly manner, and priests will find in his work much ma- 
terial for sermons on the Holy Eucharist. 

Dom Bede Camm needs no intro- 
HEROES OF THE FAITH, duction; he has already won a 
By Dom Bede Camm. lasting place in the hearts of Eng- 
lish readers. He now emphasizes 

* TJu Pufpost of tht Papacy. By the Right Rev/John S. Vaughan, D.D. London : 
Sands & Co.; St. Louis : B. Herder, 

t TJu Sublimity of tht Holy Bmckarisi; also, A ViHi to tht Sivon Chunhes in Rowu om tk$ 
Occasion of tht [Jubilee, Five Essays by Father Moritz [Meschler, S.J. Authorized transla- 
tion by A. O. Ciaf ke. London : Sands & Co. ; St. Louis : B. Herder. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] NEW BOOKS 395 

that claim by a new volume * dealing with the English martyrs. 
He has already told as something of this subject: in 1904 he 
published a volume dealing with the causes for which the Eng- 
lish martyrs died; in 1906 a second volume was devoted to 
the martyrs of the Seminaries of Douay, Rome, and Valladolid, 
The present book gives some account of the sufferings and wit- 
ness of members of the Religious Orders and of the laity. 
The various chapters of this series were originally delivered as 
addresses at Tyburn Convent and at Westminster Cathedral. 
They tell the story, in Dom Bede Camm*s interesting literary 
style, of the sufferings undergone for the faith in England in 
bygone days. The narratives are graphic, touching, and in- 
spiring. 

This is a new book on the priest- 
THE PRIESTHOOD. hoodf and a welcome addition to 

our library of English books deal- 
ing with the subject. The editor tells us that he has been ac- 
quainted with the manuscript for some years, and thought *' that 
its burning, eloquent words and thoughts on the sacred office 
of the priesthood might prove a source of strength and inspira* 
tion to many priests in these days of stress and storm, with 
the absorbing claims of external things pressing upon them, 
threatening to occupy a larger place in the priest's life than is 
their due/* So he prepared the manuscript for publication. 
The volume contains chapters on '' The Church Student '' ; '' The 
Public Life''; "The Mass"; " Calvary Priests " ; "The Blessed 
Sacrament " ; " The Beloved Disciple " ; " Renunciation " ; " The 
Way of the Cross"; "Perfection"; "Making Saints." It is 
full of deep spirituality, frequently recalls the need of medita- 
tion, insists over and over again on mortification and self-denial 
and renunciation ; in fact, these last points are, as they should 
be, the predominant thought which actuates the entire book. 

Another point we are glad to see insisted upon is the lead- 
ing of souls in the higher paths of perfection and sanctity ; in 
other words, the office of direction. Here and there the prac- 
tical side of the sacerdotal life is touched upon, but only in a 
passing way. These reflections contain much that is edifying 

* Hiroisqftkt Pmith. New Conferences on the English Martyrs deliTered at Tyburn 
Convent by Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., Editor of the St; Nicholas Series. New York : Ben- 
dger Brothers. 

t Man MUrrofing Mis Maktr, Thi Friai of God's Church, Edited from an unpublished 
manuscript by F. C. P. Westminster : Art and Book Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



356 ifEW BOOKS [June, 

and inspiring. Yet, in spite of all this, the style of writing 
will appeal but slightly to the average English-speaking priest 
It is written in the high, ecstetic spirit of the Latin ferverino ; 
the subjects are not logically worked ont ; it is difficult to fol. 
low the general theme of the chapters; and the entire volume 
is interspersed with prayers and appeals to the Blessed Virgin 
that have no apparent connection with the immediate text. 
On account of its defects of style and plan, it will never have 
the success that our classical volumes on the priesthood have 
attained. However, it is a book worth having, since its lessons, 
if learned, will give us a deeper appreciation of the sublime 
dignity of the sacerdotal state. 

Mr. Carmichael has undertaken 

FRANCIA'S MASTBRPIECB. the unusual task of writing a smaU 

By Carmichael. volume on a single picture, and 

yet he addresses not the learned 
but the well-intentioned multitude, who admire religious re- 
presentations, though ignorant of their history or specific pur- 
pose. In his treatise on the altar-piece in San Frediano, at 
Lucca, the author is really presenting us with an essay on the 
beginnings of the Immaculate Conception in art. The lower 
portion of Francia's charming picture represents four mystical 
foreseers of this dogma, David, Solomon, Anselm, and Angus*, 
tine, and the volume is appropriately dedicated to the memory 
of the Venerable John Duns Scotus, its ardent champion in 
later times. Mr. Carmichaers bookf is a complete answer to 
Mrs. Jameson's statement that the Immaculate Conception does 
not appear in art until the seventeenth century. It also proves 
that many " Conceptions,'' " Assumptions," and " Coronations," 
have been misnamed because the critics did not investigate 
the purpose of the altar for which the paintings were in- 
tended. 

Predestined^^ by Stephen French Whitman, is a story of New 
York life with nothing to recommend it. The man lives an un- 
principled and undisciplined life, and dies alone, a physical and 
moral wreck. He has no claim to birthright in a book — nor any 
promise of a long existence. 

» Praneia*i MasUrpUct^ By Montgomery Carmichae]. New York : E. P. Dutton & Co, 
t PrtdtsHmd, By Stephen French Whitman. New York : Charles Scribner*8 Sons. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] NEW BOOKS 397 

From Beoztger Brothers, New York, we have received the 
Life of Mary Ward. Ai we are told in the able introduction, 
by Abbot Gasquet, the publication of this short biography is 
singularly opportune. Quite recently, by the decree of the 
Sacred Congregation of Religious, the nuns of the Institute of 
the Blessed Virgin Mary were once again allowed to acclaim 
Mary Ward as their foundress. This they have not been per- 
mitted to do for the past one hundred and sixty years. Many 
editions of the life of Mary Ward have been published, it is 
true, but such a life will ever bear repetition. The earnest 
purpose, the life-long labors, the constant journeying and per- 
petual perils, the successes and the failures of this heroic wo- 
man, make her life read like a romance, and furnish encour- 
agement and inspiration for every one of us. 

The liturgical works issued by Pustet & Co., of New York, 
are always excellent. We wish to call special attention to their 
Solesmes edition of the Officium et Missa pro Defunctis^ trans- ^ 
lated by Dr. F. X. Mathias. It is carefully edited and pub« 
Ushed at a reasonable price. 

Worthy of exceptional praise is the Missale Romanum, which 
the same publishing house has sent to us. In size it is ad- 
mirably suited for missionary priests and also for private de- 
votion. It is complete in every particular and may be used 
for low or solemn Mass. In type, binding, durability, and 
general usefulness we heartily recommend it as a most worthy 
piece of book-making. 

The children of years ago read with pleasure and profit the 
stories contributed to The Young Catholic by Mrs. Herman 
Bosch. It is with particular pleasure, therefore, that we chron- 
icle the fact that Mrs. Bosch has not ceased her labors, but 
bas given us in permanent form, through Longmans, Green 
& Co., her Bible Stories Told to '' Toddles:' As stories that 
will interest and gain the love of little children for that treas- 
ury of divine wisdom, the Holy Bible, we recommend them to 
priests and teachers and mothers and to the children them- 
selves. May they meet with the success they deserve and ac- 
complish the work for which their author has labored. 

The Kindergarten in the Home. By Carrie S. Newman. 111. 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



398 NEW BOOKS [June, 

(Boston: L. C. Page & Co.) The mission of this attractive 
volume is a high and worthy one. It is a book to help those 
who have the sacred responsibility of training children. The 
author's work is sympathetic and personal and she presents 
many valuable suggestions. A happy intimacy with the life 
and ways of children of tender years is evident in the work. 

Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. have issued in attractive 
pamphlet form the two valuable sermons preached at the open- 
ing of the Newman Memorial Church, Birmingham, by the Rev. 
Joseph Rickaby, S.J., and the Very Rev. Canon Mclntyre; 
also a pamphlet entitled : The Angelus and the Regina Cceli. 
This last is another evidence of the increase of devotion to the 
Blessed Virgin among Anglicans. May it lead them to a knowl- 
edge and a speedy acceptance of all the truths of Christ's 
Church. 

A Sienese Painter of the Franciscan Legend. By Bernard 
Berenson (New York : John Lane Company). Those who have 
found in the Giotto paintings of Assisi the best communica- 
tion of the early Franciscan spirit meet in Mr. Berenson a 
steadfast opponent. He says : '' In so far as Giotto is respon- 
sible for these works, it may be said that he was still young, 
and that his sense for spiritual significance was still undevel- 
oped.'' Mr. Berenson's thesis is that Stefano Sassetta, of Siena, 
in nine panels, once forming the front and back of a single 
altar-piece, has, of all painters, left us the most adequate ren- 
dering of the Franciscan soul. He compares the works of the 
two artists picture by picture. The volume is embellished with 
twenty-six illustrations in collotype. 

School Room Echoes^ by Mary C. Burke, is a good sized 
volume of verse suited to class and assembly room recitatioiu 
A large variety of subjects are to be found in the table of 
contents and the volume will be helpful to both teachers and 
pupils (Boston: The Gorham Press). 

The Story of a Beautiful Childhood is a tribute, by Kiithe- 
rine E. Conway, to the memory of a young boy whose short 
life of fifteen years contains a lesson for men and women of 
every age (Boston: C. M. Clarke Company). 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 399 

The Place of Religion in Good Government, by Max Pam, 
is the title of a discourse delivered at the University of Notre 
Dame and published by the University Press. The House of 
Mourning is the latest addition to the Marooma Library series 
— reprints of stories and article from the pages of the Ave 
Matta. 

Echoes of Naples is a collection of thirty songs gathered to- 
gether by Mario Favilli. The majority of these songs have 
appeared in different previous collections. They are, as a rule, 
well selected. For those organists and choirs not fully ac- 
quainted with Gregorian notation, an arrangement of the Re- 
quiem Mass, Vatican edition^ made by Eduardo Marzo, will be 
helpful. Mr. Edward Quincy Norton has prepared a very help- 
ful manual on The Construction^ Tunings and Care of the Pianos- 
Forte for tuners, dealers, musicians, and owners in general of 
pianos and organs. He has put into it the results of years of 
study and practical experience. He writes in a simple manner, 
without attempting any technical explanation of the theories 
of sound. His directions are clear and concise. All these 
publications are issued by Oliver Ditson Company, Boston. 

At the close of fast year there passed away from this earth 
the soul of a fine Catholic layman of Boston, Charles Francis 
Donnelly. His wife, with the aid of Katherine Conway and 
Mabel Ward Cameron, has issued for private distribution a 
memoir of his life.* The portion of this book devoted to Mr. 
Donnelly himself is all too short It is a revelation of a sin- 
gularly noble and religious soul. The main part of the book 
is taken up with an account of the most striking of his ser- 
vices to the Church, his conduct of the Catholic side against 
a Bill for the Inspection of Private Schools which was intro- 
duced by the Massachusets A. P. A« in 1888. The account 
of the hearings on this Bill contains a lot of valuable matter 
for any one who is interested in the questions of constitutional 
religious rights and religious education. 

P. J. Kenedy & Sons have issued a very well presented 
edition of Faber's Translation of Blessed Grignon de Mont- 

* Char Us Francis Doniulfy. A Memoir. By K. E. Conway and M. W. Cameron. New 
York: James T. White. 



Digitized by 



Google 



400 NEW BOOKS [Jtme, 

fort's Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The 
work contains the preface written by Cardinal Vaughan, late 
Archbishop of Westminster, and also the introdoctions of 
Father Faber and of the saintly author himself. 

Oar republic has never had a 
AMERICA OF TO-MORROW, critic at once as kindly and as 
By Abbe Klein. shrewd as Abb^ Klein. He is so 

generous in his praise of our suc- 
cesses and merits that we might be tempted to think that 
he has an eye only for our good points. Yet he has a 
way of indicating, by a little shrug and a smile, his per- 
ception of our exaggerations and defects. He has now produced 
four books treating of our American Republic: Au Pays de la 
'' Vie Intense ** ; La Dicouverte du vieux monde par un itudiant 
de Chicago ; La Siparation aux jStats^Unis; and the volume 
under review.* 

M. Klein was not satisfied with the knowledge of America 
which he had attained in former visits, he wished to see more 
of the country, and accordingly it was not difficult for his 
American friends to induce him to visit the ** America of To« 
morrow,'* the land of the West The book which registers his 
pilgrimage is a traveler's diary, jotted notes and impressions. 
But it is not a mere reflection of the guide-book. M. Kllein 
has a mind of his own — and an eye — and a tongue. And what 
he sees and says is somehow fresh and interesting, even though 
the facts seemed commonplace enough to us before. His itin- 
erary brought him into touch with such a variety of places, 
persons, and interests as the Catholic Summer- School, Chautau- 
qua, Chicago and its University, Peoria and St. Paul with their 
famous bishops, the Canadian West, Seattle, and San Francisco. 
It must have been a rare pleasure to make that journey in his 
company, unless indeed he was saving all his shrewd observa- 
tions and piquant remarks and judicious praise to delight the 
readers of his book. 

The present volume f is an exam- 
EPISTLBS OF ST. PAUL, pie of true Catholic critical exege- 
sis. Since the modern study of 
the sacred books lays such constant insistence on philological 

•VAwUriquitUDimaim. Par M. TAbM F^liz Kldn. Paris : Plon-Nonrrit et Cie. 
iB^itru d€ Saint Paul, Lefons iTExi^hi, Par C. Toussaint. Vol. I. Litires amx 
Tkissaioniciams, aux Galatgs, aux Corinikiatu, Paris : Beauchesne et Cie. 



Digitized by 



Google 



101 a] New Books 401 

and critical points. Dr. Toussaint aims at giving the Catholic 
student a thoroughly critical edition of the Epistles of St» 
Paul. Such a work is necessary, he contends, not only for the 
purposes of a sound apologetic, but also for a proper grasp 
by the constructive theologian of the true sense of the inspired 
authors. It is only by establishing the original text of the 
sacred scriptures that a solid foundation can be had for inter- 
preting them. In this first volume, on St. Paul's Epistles to 
the Thessalonians, to the Galatians, and to the Corinthians, Dr. 
Toussaint makes a scholarly and satisfactory application of the 
principles of textual and literary criticism. The results show 
that '^ nothing is to be feared for the sacred books frcm the 
true advance of the art of criticism ; nay more, that a bene- 
ficial light may be derived from it, provided that its use be 
coupled with prudence and discernment." 

The object of this little volume • 
SCRIPTURE. is to give a short but complete 

theological treatment of those ques- 
tions concerning the Bible which are usually examined under 
the title of General Introduction to Sacred Scripture. It dif- 
fers, however, from most such ** Introductions " in its preference 
for the theological, and its comparative indifference to the his- 
torical, point of view. It aims at giving the teachings of the 
Church on general matters pertaining to the Bible. 

The work is divided into two parts. The First Part (pp. 
1 1*107) is devoted entirely to documentary evidence, from the 
Encyclicals Providentissimus Dius and Pascendi Dominici Gregis^ 
the decree Lamentabili^ the decisions of the Councils of Trent 
and the Vatican, and of the Biblical Commission on fundamental 
scriptural problems. The testimony, not only of Fathers and 
theologians, but of Jews and Protestants, is also cited. 

The second part of the work (pp. 108-208) is a theological 
treatise, based on the doctrinal decisions already quoted, on 
such questions as the Canon of Scripture, its inspiration and 
inerrancy, the authority of the Vulgate, the rules of hetmeneu- 
tics. The work is concluded with a chapter on the use of 
Scripture. 

These questions are treated after a strictly theological fash- 

*Z># Stripiuta Saira'. Par J. V. Bainveli Lector Theologiae in Facilitate Catholica Paii- 
sieasi. Paris: Beauchesne et Cie. 
VOL. XCI.— 26 



Digitized by 



Google 



402 New Books [June. 

ion, bat ample bibliographical references to historical treatises 
are furnished. The work will be found useful by those who 
wish to have in convenient form a collection of decrees and 
other Church documents bearing on Scripture, together with a 
concise exposi of Catholic teaching in these matters. 

In the hope of leading his readers to study their religion 
more thoroughly, and to know its treasures better, Abb^ La- 
bourt has written a new manual, Israel^ Jesus Christy the CathO" 
lie Church. The work is comprehensive, and shows an abun* 
dance of knowledge. Its complete title is Cours Superieur d*In^ 
struction Religieuse. Israel^ Jisus Christy VEglise Catholique^ 
and it is published by Victor^ Lecoff re, of Paris. 

The same publishers have issued La Bienheureuse Mire 
Baratf by M. de Grandmaison, which tells the inspiring life- 
story of Madame Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred 
Heart of Jesus. The members of the Society, engaged for the 
most part in teaching, now number over six thousand. Madame 
Barat's historian's keen psychological insight and clearness of 
expression are worthy of praise. The volume is a notable trib- 
ute to the noble life which it records. 

Also, for those of our readers interested in the latest French 
publications we make mention of the following, published by 
Bloud et Cie: Les Argutnents de VAth^istne. By J. L. de la 
Paquerie. VExistence Historique de Jesus et le Rationalisme 
Contemporain. By L. CI. Fillion. Petite Histoire de VEglise 
Catholique au XIX. Steele. By Pierre Lorette. Morale Scien^ 
tifique et Morale £vangilique Devant la Sociologie. By Dr. 
Grasset. Pdtau (1^83-1632). By Abb< Jules Martin. La 
Survivance de PAme chez les Peuples non Civilises. By A. 
Bros. La Representation de la Madone a Travers les Ages. By 
J. H. M. Clement. Le Brahmanisme. By Louis de la Valine 
Poussin. Vlntetnelle Consolacion Sainte Tirese^ Pascal^ Bossuet^ 
Saint Benott Labra, Le Curd d'Ars. By J. B. d'Aurevilly. 
Pensies. By Joubet. Joseph de Maistre Blanc de Saint 'Bonnet^ 
LacordairCf Gratry^ Caro. By J. Barbey d'Aurevilly. Traite du 
Devoir de Conduite les Enfants h Jisus^Christ. By Gerson. 



Digitized by 



Google 



Jbteion petiobicals^ 

TAe Tablet (i6 April): '* The Liverpool Inquiry/' A report of 
the investigation of the recent anti-Catholic riots of 
Liverpool, in which it is clearly shown ''that neither 
directly nor indirectly does the slightest blame attach 

itself to the Catholics of the city." According to the 

report of Abbot Gasquet, President of the Biblical Com- 
mission, the revision of the Vulgate is carefully, though 

slowly, progressing. What the Osservatore Romano 

says of the Roosevelt Incident — ''a bare and genuine 
exposition of the facts.'' 

(23 April): ''Mechanical- Like Morality." In refuta- 
tion of this theory of conduct. Father Rickaby, SJ., 
declares that a normally trained man, in making a choice 
of the various lines of conduct open to him, is cor- 
rectly conscious that it is a choice and not the resultant 

of inevitable conditions. " The Earth and the Comet." 

" A collision might result," says Father Cortie, SJ., 
" in a shower of shooting stars, but that is all " 
According to M. Briand, a "real* Republican" is a man 
who, while desiring further progress, renounces nothing 
in the work of secularism achieved during the past ten 
years. 

(30 April) : " The French Bishops and Le Sillon:* Should 
Le Sillon be suppressed? This society, founded by M. 
Marc Sanguier "to form enlightened citizens and dis- 
ciples of Christ," is regarded by several of the French 
hierarchy as worthy of condemnation, since its director 
has explained that " the young workmen are to be their 
own religious educators, and that the movement is more 

advanced than Socialism itself." " Further Light on 

the Roosevelt Incident," from our Roman Correspondent. 
A private message of the intermediary, Mr. Leishman^ 
is said to have been the cause of all the trouble. 

The Month (May): Under the caption "La Terreur Blanche," 
the editor replies to those who, in defending the French 
anti-clericals, point to the excesses of 18 15. He shows 
the lack of parity in the example and denies that the 
Pope and Bishops instigated such abuses as then took 
place.*— Bernard J. Whiteside points out the great 
wofk Lord Kelvin did for social and scientific progress. 



Digitized by 



Google 



404 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June, 

"The Coming Election in Belgium/' by J. Wilfrid 

Parsons, outlines • the aims and history of the various 
factions and analyzes the present political situation. 

Th€ Church Quarterly Review (April) : Rev. Arthur C. Headlam, 
D.D., reviews several works dealing with " The Euchar- 
ist in History/' He concludes ** that there is nothing, in 
the language of either the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom or 
the Roman Mass, so far as regards their Eucharistic 
teaching, which a sincere member of the Church of 
England could not use with spiritual edification.''— 
In '' Christianity, Science, and ' Christian Science,' " Dr. 
Harrington Saintsbury sees that the new theory of 
** Mind Cure " " opens wide the door to the most power- 
ful of all spiritual forces. Religion," in treating disease. 

"How We May 'Think of the Trinity/" by Rev. 

Robert Vaughan. ^Rev. W. C^mmet, in ''The Biblical 

Teaching on Divorce," restates the traditional Anglican 
view. He thinks, however, that " Divorce is always a 
bad thing," and that the New .Testament "permits it^ 
nothing more," to avoid a greater evil. 

Th$ Crucible (March): "Surveillance in Schools." L "The 
Opening |of Letters." In this article M. Segar points 
out that the opening of the parents' letters to their 
children at school results in a restriction of free inter- 
course, and is a primary cause of estrangement between 
parent and child. B. Stofford deals with the "Re- 
strictions on Woman's Labor," which involves the ques- 
tion whether woman is to be regarded as a co-laborer 
with man, or simply as an alien in the labor market.—— 
M. Fletcher presents to us " Ruskin as a Social Reformer " 
and " The Encyclicals of Leo XHL," venturing to sug- 
gest " the study of the affinities to Catholic teaching in 
the economic writings of Ruskin." 

The Hibbert Journal (April): Professor Henry Jones discusses 
" The Ethical Demand of the Present Political Situation " 

in England. G. W. Balfour inquires into the relation 

between recent " Psychical Research and Current Doc- 
trines of Mind and Body." If the results towards which 
Psychical Research seems to be tending are proved valid, 
he concludes, theories such as Parallelism and Epiphe- 
. nomenalism would have to be abandoned.—— Miss Vida 
D. Scudder writes of " Christianity in the Socialist State." 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9IO.] ' FOREIGN PERIODICALS 40$ 

The writer is of opinion that Christianity '' alone will have 
power to furnish the secret strength, without which the 
very civilization that discards it could never survive." 
Also that ''Catholicism is much more likely than Pro- 
testantism to adapt itself to the socialist state/' 

Dublin RevUw (April): Viscount Halifax and James Fitzalan, 
M.P., advocate reform of the House of Lords by selection 
from within the present assembly and addition from with- 
out A Reformer urges the substitution of a suspensive 

veto for the present absolute one. In '' Modernism in 

Islam *' Francis McCullagh points out conditions favor- 
able to the new movement. He seems to think that 
Christians are to blame for Mohammedan intolerance. 
-—J. B. Williams, despite contrary opinions, says that 
Cromwell was responsible for the massacre at Drogheda. 

James Britten shows William Bennett's influence on 

the present ritual of the Anglican Church.— The second 
of a series of articles on The InUmaHonal^ by Hilaire 
Belloc, M.P., indicates a present-day method of attack 
on the faith, and cites as an example the recent Ferrer 

case. In "The People and the Populace,** Wilfrid 

Ward defends an aristocratic form of government and 
points out the evils of universal electoral franchise. He 
thinks the people can only be educated up to a wise 
use of liberty by a paternalistic authority. 

Irish Theological Quarterly (Aptll): Dr. MacRory offers a criti- 
cism of the Cambridge Biblical Essays^ recently edited 
by H. B. Swete, D.D.— — Rev. T. Slater, SJ., discusses 
the scrupulous conscience resulting from a pathological 
condition of mind ; and shows, by several cases in point,^ 
that it would be of great benefit to the confessor to know 
how the doctors of medicine are proceeding in this field 
common to them and the moral theologian.— " The 
Mosaic Authorship of Deuteronomy '' is the title of an 
article contributed by Rev. H. Pope.— Dr. Slattery, 
writing on the Sacrificial Idea, shows that totemism is 
the basis of the doctrine put forth in a discussion of the 
matter by the late Bishop Bellord. The truth is that 
the Sacrificial rite is not the offering in itself, nor the 
destruction in itself, but rather the offering to Gred of a 
thing in the state of destruction. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (April) : ** Prehistoric Man : His 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



406 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June^ 

Civilization and Religion/' by Rev. Charles Gelderd. 
The writer concludes that prehistoric man had ''an in* 
telligence of a very high order." Prehistoric races were 
also not devoid of all religion, for their burial places 
bear witness to a belief in a future life. " Moral In- 
struction in French Lay Schools/' by Rev. W. B. O'Dowd. 
The object of the present educational system of the 
French Government is, under the veil of neutrality, to 
abolish all religious influence in the schools. A review 
of the atheistic text-books used to accomplish this pur- 
pose. An "Editorial Note on the Restoration of the 

Crypt of Columbanus at Bobbio." 

Li Corresp&ndant (lo April): "The Public Spirit is Italy/' by 
Henri Joly. There are two political factions in Italy: 
Socialists and Catholics; the latter consisting especially 
of the elite and the old noble families. While a great 
many recognize the temporal power of the Pope, recon- 
ciling it with their love for the king, the decadence of 
the religious spirit gives opportunity to the Socialists.—— 
£. Sainte- Marie Perrin, in a character study of" Nathaniel 
Hawthorne," says his works are not only those of a 
master novelist but of a man who has tried to throw 
some light on the old problems of humanity. He dis- 
cusses The Scarlet Letter at length, considering it as an 
index to Hawthorne's character. 

(25 April): "The Enemies of Jean Jacques Rousseau/' 
by Emile Faguet The writer discusses Miss Macdonald's 
recent study of Rousseau, in which she says he was a 
most honest and virtuous man. He denies this emphat- 
ically ; says there is no need to go for testimony to the 
Memoirs of Mme. d*Epinay, which Miss Macdonald claims 
to be a calumny; and that there is sufficient matter to 
show the falsity of Miss Macdonald's conclusion in 
Rousseau's Confessions^ and Correspondence.^-^-^* IjtXitXB 
of Chateaubriand to Rosalie de Constant," by Henri 
Cordier.— " Lace/' by Auguste Lefebure. Sixty years 
ago France had 240,ocx> lace-makers, while to-day the 
industry is practically dead.- The author believes that 
the industry may be revived by the elite reviving the 
use of real hand lace, as Queen Marguerite did in 1872. 

Annates de Philosophie Chritienne (April) : " The Historical Vi- 
cissitudes of the Political Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas^ 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



19 lO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 407 

by Jacques Zeiller. St. Thomas had an important effect 
upon his contemporarieSi especially St. Louis. Many 
political developments of to-day can be logically deduced 
from his teaching, though brought about by men en- 
tirely ignorant of the great doctor. Leo XIII., how- 
ever, probably owed his social teaching directly to St. 
Thomas. And 'Mt is incontestable that St. Thomas has 
affirmed the mutual independence of two powers, eccle- 
siastical and civil.'' 

£tudes (5 April): "The 'Message' of Robert Browning/' by 
Xavier Moisant. Those who think materialism character- 
istic of Browning's poetry err seriously. This is simply 
a " robust, joyous, and pure realism." While his reli- 
gious creed was full of errors and prejudices, he per- 
formed a service to his age by insisting stoutly upon 
the necessity and importance of religion. 
(20 April): Rostand is said to have conceived the idea 
of ** Chanticler " from the sight of some chickens in a 
little Basque village. In ** Cambo et Chanticler," Pierie 
Lhande discusses the traces of Basque scenery, folk-lore, 
and character to be found in the play.— —'' Kepler and 
Protestant Intolerance," by J. Berchois, compares the 
sufferings Kepler endured at the hands of Protestants 
on account of scientific opinions with those of Galileo. 

Revui du Monde (i April): ''The History of Canon Law in 
France," by R. P. At. Speaking of the collation of 
benefices, he states that the Pope, in virtue of his juris- 
diction over the entire Church, is the universal collator 
of all benefices. 

Revw Binidictine (April): D. G. Morin contributes an article 
on "The Conflict of Vices and Virtues." This little 
ascetical treatise, so widely circulated during the Middle 
Ages, has often been put forward as the work of St. 
Ambrose. The mistake is due to a confusion of the 
Christian name of the real author — Ambrose Autpert, 
with that of the illustrious bishop of Milan.— —D. U. 
Berliere gives a biographical sketch of Henri de Vienne, 
abbot, canonist, and intimate friend of Clement VII. 
His chief claim to fame, however, rests on his little 
book Marriagi in Infidel Countries^ remarkable for hav- 
ing insisted, in that early period^ on principles which 
formed the basis of much subsequent legislation. 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



408 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jane, 

Revue du Clergi Franpais (i April): E. Vacandard begins an 
historical sketch of the ''Origins of the Feast and of 
the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception/ * E. Tav- 
ernier sketches the life of ''Dom Gu^ranger, Abbot of 
Solesmes/' Ch. Calippe reviews "The Social Move- 
ment/' "The Agricultural Life, Its Forfeitures, Its 

Reinstatement," is a pastoral letter by Mgr. Fuzet, 
Archbishop of Rouen. 

(i May): Second installment of the articles, by E. Va- 
candard, on "The Immaculate Conception/' It deals 
with the development of this dogma from the early cen- 
turies to its promulgation ; gives a detailed account of 
its theological opponents and adherents ; and shows that 
this feast was celebrated as early as the thirteenth cen- 
tury. "The Religious Movement Among English- 
Speaking People'' treats of the formal and general 
observance of Sunday in London and the puritanical 
restrictions which the writer, Gabriel Planque, claims are 
typical of the religious spirit of England. Quoting from 
contemporaneous historians and the Official Year Book 
of i^op he says, that " out of a population of thirty 
millions only two or three millions are members of the 
Established Church." The growth^of the Catholic Church 
is noted. The author estimates the number of converts 
at ten thousand a year. The Baptists are increasing most 
rapidly; but in this increase the author includes the 
negroes of the United States. An article by a mis- 
sionary from India, C. Auzuech, deals with the present 
dissatisfaction with English rule in India. How the 
English government handles the ntuation and the effect 
upon Catholic missions. Under "Scientific Chroni- 
cle" the subject of Evolution, its present widespread 
acceptance among naturalists, and its development from 
the teachings of Lamarck and Darwin to the opinions of 
Hertwig on comparative anatomy, and the later articles 

by Vialleton and Lampeyre, are treated. A series of 

letters with regard to the Catholic lay organization called 
the ** Sillon.** Correspondence between Mgr. Andrieu 
and Mgr. Mignot. 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach (May): O. Zimmermann, S.J.,in a 
paper on "Inwardness," refutes the charge of external- 
ism raised against the Church, and shows that she fos- 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 409 

ters and ctiltivates the interior life, usiog for this end 
external ceremonies, and by these means preventing the 
excesses into which Protestant inwardness, without any 

guide, may fall. ^Victor Cathrein, SJ., writing on 

'' Ethical Subjectivism upon a Darwinistic Foundation/' 
discusses £• Westermarck's book on Origin and Develops 
meni of the Concepts of Morality ^ which traces morality 
back to the different affections found among animals. 
Fr. Cathrein charges Westerinarck with not clearly de- 
fining his concepts of morality, and of using too little 
critical discretion. 

Rivue Thomiste (March-April): Under the ingenious title, 
''Can there be Psychology Without a Soul?'' Mgr. 
Farces points out the false principles underlying the 
proposition |of James, that in psychology the substan- 
tial principle of unity (the soul) constitutes a superflu- 
ous hypothesis"; and argues that from its nature psy- 
chology can never be reduced to a mere empirical or 
positive science.— -*M. F. Cazes discusses in some 
twenty-five pages the characteristics common to Mod- 
ernism and Kantianism, and shows in detail how 
the Kantian principles have been applied to Catholic 
dogma, and the destructive nature of the results that 
followed.— That St. Thomas in no way minimised the 
importance of positive theology is the main idea in a 
paper of Abbot Renaudin, O.S.B., ''The Influence of 
St. Cyril of Alexandria on St, Thomas." 

R$vu€ Pratique d'Apologdtique (i April): "The Recitation of 
The Rosary," by Georges Goyau, is a plea for a less 
mechanical use of this " Spiritual Wreath of Roses."—— 
"Pierre Cauchon, the 'Schismatic and Excommunicated' 
Bishop of Beauvais," by Canon H. Dunand. Was Pierre 
Cauchon really a schismatic ? Was his condemnation of 
Jeanne d'Arc the cause of the bishop's excommunica- 
tion? 

Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (30 April): "Unedited 
Writings of Dante on Count Guido da Montefeltro.'^ 
The history of his conversion to the religious life given 
here reminds one of St. Ignatius. He was born in 
Tuscany of German ancestors; Guido distinguished 
himself in wars of the Ghibellines against the Guelfs, 



Digitized by 



Google 



4IO FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Jane, 

and was several times excommunicated; but finally laid 
aside all worldly honors and asked for the Franciscan 
habit 

Die Kultur (April): Contains three papers on the late Pope: 
"Leo XIII. in History/* by Dr.Tomek; "The Attitude 
of the Encyclical JSUmi Patris Towards the Philosophi- 
cal Tendencies of the Present Time/' by Dr. Willmann; 
and "Leo XIII. the Social Pope/' by Dr. Schindler. 
They think that in politics, philosophy, and in social 
reform his reign was providential, and that the influ- 
ence of his work will continue to be felt in these par- 
ticular fields. P. Roesler, C.SS.R., in an article en- 

titied "The New Preaching of the Gospel, by St. 
Klemens Maria Hofbauer,'* makes a comparison between 
the saint, on one hand, and Napoleon and Goethe on 
the other. 

Bibliscke Zeitschrift (April): Dr. Fritz Tillmann, of Bonn, be- 
gins an article "Essentials in Proving Christ's Divinity 
From the Synoptists in Opposition to Modem Criticism.*' 
Critical investigation is revealing more authoritatively 
that the origin of the Synoptists and St. John may safely 
be assumed as that given by Catholic tradition. Modern 
critics ask: What was the self-consciousness of Jesus 
according to the historical sources; and what is the 
historical trustworthiness of the synoptic tradition ? On 
this field, therefore, liberal criticism must be answered 
in order to show that its concept of Christ is merely 
a fiction. An example of how it may be done is fur- 
nished by the conclusions of the radical Schweitzer, who 
confesses that a Christ such as pictured by rationalism 
could never have existed. 

Rivista Internazionale (March): G. Toniolo explains at length 
the work of the ''Italica Gens'' or Federation for the 
assistance of Italian emigrants in transoceanic countries. 
Its aims being in perfect agreement with those of the 
authorities of the Italian government, it proposes to unite 

^ its activity with that of the State, and supply with its 

vast organization the needs to which in many places the 
government authorities cannot attend. 

CivilU Cattolica (April): ''Faith and Reason'' is a refutation 
of the rationalist position that the human intellect is 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lo.] Foreign PERIODICALS • 411 

absolutely supreme and all-sufficient. It deals with mira- 
cles, and shows that miraculous fact, in many cases, is 
well established by science.^— -'' The Sixtieth Year of 
the Cilnlth Cattolica.^* A sketch of its history since 1850, 
when it was inaugurated at the express wish of Pius IX. 
''The Victory of Constantine the Great over Max- 
en tius.'' This article is an anticipation of the celebration 
of all Christendom in 19 12 over Constantine's victory, 
which turned the history of the world in a new course 
and made Christianity triumphant. 

LaScuola Cattolica (April): C. Ceresani thinks thaf The Dan- 
gers to Youth at the Present Day '' are threefold : the 
idolizing of the body at the expense of the soul; the 
insolence of the press in destroying the noble ideals of 
the past with the purpose of substituting its own worldly 
ideals; and the war against everything supernatural, 
manifested especially in the vigorous campaign against 
the Catechism. These are '' the difficulties which a Chris- 
tian educator must conquer.** 

Espana y Amirica (April) : Under the title, '' The Prodigies 
of Grace,'* P. M. B. Garcia briefly describes the conver- 
sion of the Graymoor Community at Garrison, New York. 

P. B. Ibeas, in " Some Foreign Social Works,** de- 

scribes the ''socialization of the function of maternity** 
in some European countries. Benefit societies have been 
founded to pay workingwomen during confinement and 
to care for the child during the first few months. In 
Germany the state has assumed the obligation of pen- 
sioning widows and orphans of workingmen for a certain 
time. 

Rosin y Fe (April): "The Royal Order Relative to Lay 
Schools,** by V. Minteguaga. The author claims that 
the issue has been confused by calling these schools 
neutral. In reality they are atheistic, and as such op- 
posed to the Concordat of 185 1, which is still the law 

of the land. R. Ruiz Amado, in "The Church and 

the School,** endeavors to show that each is necessary 
to the other and that neither can rightly perform its 
functions alone. 



Digitized by 



Google 



IRecent IBvcnU. 

Tlie chief preoccupation of France 
France. of late has, of course, been the 

election of the new Chamber. 
This takes place, as a rule, every four years. No election has 
ever been conducted with so much quiet or has excited so 
little interest. M. Briand, the Premier, seems to have secured 
a firm hold upon the electorate. The people that manifest the 
most open hostility towards him are the Extreme Socialists. 
Yet he has been, during the whole of his political life, ranked 
as a Socialist. He is now declared by M. Jauris to be an 
insolent tyrant. M. Briand has certainly modified his views. 

In a sense he may, perhaps, be looked upon as feeling re- 
morse for his treatment of the Churcli. In a speech made be- 
fore the election, in which he declared that France was craving 
for an era of peaceful development, he characterised certain 
measures which had recently been passed, meaning the Separ- 
ation Act and the Waldeck-Rousseau Expulsion Act, as drastic 
measures which were not in harmony with any conceivable 
lofty conception of sober justice. This is a striking acknowl- 
edgement of guilt to be made by a public man. He went on 
to declare, however, that those measures were necessary for the 
enfranchisement and the security of the Republic, and so, we 
fear, there is no hope of his being willing to advocate resHtu- 
tion. But it is worth while to take note of this acknowledge- 
ment, and of his declaration that such a state of warfare can- 
not last. That it should be continued was against the interests 
of France. 

The chief feature of the government's programme for the 
election, as indicated by M. Briand, was the reform of the 
electoral system, the re-introduction of scrutin de lisU instead 
of the existing scrutin d^arrondissement^ in order to enlarge the 
constituencies, thereby giving them a broader and more national 
outlook. M. Briand expressed also a wish to lengthen the period 
for which the member sits, in this going against the democratic 
movement of the day, which aims at a more frequent appeal 
to the electors. The strength of Parties in the new Chamber, 
as the result of the election, is as follows, so far as can be 
definitely ascertained: The Liberals or the Republican Left 
number 74, as against 90 in the last Chamber; the Radicals 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT EVENTS 413 

are 124 in number, as against 116 in the last Chamber; the 
Socialist Radicals 1329 as against 135; the Independent Social- 
ists are 24 in nnmber, and were 9 in the last chamber. 

Before the election the opposition numbered 176, consisting 
of ConservatiTcs, 87; Nationalists, 30; the Centre or Progress- 
ires, 59. The recent election has reduced their number to 
167, although there is a probability that some of the members 
who have been classed as belonging to the Republican Left 
may be found to belong to the Centre. The result gives to 
the government a majority of about 350, which is virtually the 
same as it had in the last Chamber. In order to remain in 
o£5ce the government must draw up such a working programme 
as will satisfy the demands of the Radical and Socialist Radical 
parties. Collectivist and Independent Socialists may be ignored. 

It is not yet definitely known what will be the programme 
of the gorermnent for the new session, but it is thought that 
the Chamber will inaugurate an era of social, as well as of 
electoral reform. Paris is to be embellished at a large expense 
to complete the work of Baron Haussmann; but this falls 
under the control of the Municipality, although a part of the 
funds is provided by the State. The necessary reforms in the 
Naval Administration have been effected by a thorough re* 
organization, and a part of the programme for the increase of 
the Navy has been accepted by both houses. Two new armored 
battleships are to be laid down at once, so as to be ready for 
service in 1913. The rest of the programme still remains in 
suspense. 

In dealing with the situation at Marseilles, caused by the 
strike of the imerits maritinus^ the government acted with as 
much determination as could have been shown by the most 
autocratic of monarchies. These inscrits occupy a privileged 
position, dating from the time of Colbert, and have repeatedly 
made use of it to throw into disorder the trade of the country. 
Ships were not able to sail and commerce was suspended* 
The sailors in the Navy were ordered to take the places vacated 
by the strikers. The Confederation of Labor, which has for its 
object to overturn by violence the existing system, tried to co- 
operate with the sailors, and to bring about in their support a 
general strike. Although the situation for some time was very 
serious, the project did not succeed, on account of the ener* 
getic action of the government in taking proceedings against 



Digitized by 



Google 



414 RECENT EVENTS [June, 

the prime mover, and in arresting some of those who had fol- 
lowed his advice. There is a possibility that the charter of 
the seamen who have abused their privileges may be revoked. 

In dealing with the proposed May Day demonstration the 
government acted with like firmness and determination. The 
Socialists called a meeting to be held in the Bois de Boulogne, 
and this the government permitted, but the procession to be 
made through the streets of Paris it refused to allow, and 
brought into the city a large number of troops to enforce their 
decision. The government did not claim the right to prevent 
peaceful citizens from going out to the Bois, but it was their 
duty to prevent any breach of the peace. The demonstrators 
were content, although they savagely criticized the govern- 
ment's action, to stroll to and from the place of meeting; and 
thus, to use their own words, to avoid a massacre. 

Much the same action was taken throughout Germany, pro- 
cessions being forbidden, while meetings were allowed. Strange 
to say Spain seems to have been the only country in which 
no restrictions upon May Day demonstrations were placed. 
The annual labor procession took place in Madrid without any 
interference at all. A large number of workmen marched 
through the city, nor was there the least disturbance. 

What effect upon the grouping of the Powers, and espe- 
cially upon the entente cordiale between France and Great 
Britain and between Russia and Great Britain, the lamented 
death of King Edward will have it is too soon to say. A few 
years ago Great Britain and France were on the point of war^ 
and their relations had for some time not been of the best ; while 
between Russia and Great Britain there had existed for a long 
period relations bordering upon open hostility. ''Splendid 
isolation " was declared to be the ideal of Great Britain by 
her leading statesmen. The King, acting in a perfectly con- 
stitutional manner, and in a way which carried the whole 
country with him, was the means of making the change which 
recent years have seen. His death gives cause for some little 
anxiety whether a change for the worse may not result. 

Like most of the other nations of 
Austria-Hungary. Europe, both Austria and Hungary 

are under the necessity of raising 
money, and have to do so by loans, the current income being 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 9ia] RECENT EVENTS 4 ! 5 

insufficient to meet expenditure. The cause of the deficit in 
this instance is the expense that was incurred by the annex- 
ation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The proposed Austrian 
Loan amounts to nearly forty millions of dollars. The Hun- 
garian State Loan has been already issued and amounts to 
something over twenty millions. Both of the countries are 
threatened with a further increase of their indebtedness on 
account of the Dreadnoughts which for so long a time it has 
been proposed to build. When the suggestion was first made, 
it met with such great opposition, on account of the expense, 
that it seemed as if the project had been shelved. It is now 
found that the government has adopted the somewhat disin* 
genuous plan of circumventing Parliament by allowing certain 
private firms to make preparations to construct the war ships, 
and after the expense has been incurred it will then call upon 
the patriotic feelings of the country to reimburse these firms. 
And so it is expected that there will be four Dreadnoughts 
complete by 191 3. To what use they are [destined it is not 
easy to say. There are writers in the newspapers who say 
that they are meant to serve as a protection against the Italian 
Navy — an indication of the small confidence which is placed in 
the loyalty of Italy to the Triple Alliance. There are, how* 
ever, Englishmen who think that it is possible ^that they are 
destined to act with the German Navy in any call which it 
may make for their assistance. 

The warm reception given to Mr. Roosevelt by the people 
both of* Austria and Hungary was due not merely to himself, 
and the regard they had for him, but to the influence which 
this country has had in the constitutional changes that have 
taken place in those countries, especially through the influence 
exerted by Austrians and Hungarians who, having once lived 
in this country, have returned to their old homes. Par- 
ticularly in Hungary has this influence been felt. Persons in* 
timately acquainted with the history of Hungary declare that 
the restitution of the Constitution made in 1867 was chiefly 
due to those who drew their inspiration from American 
sources. An incident which took place a few weeks ago illus« 
trates the extent to which this influence has spread. At the 
village of Zakopese, in the Trenesen county of Hungary, the 
candidate for Parliament attempted to address a public meet- 
ing of Slovaks in the Magyar language. A peasant came for- 



Digitized by 



Google 



4l6 RECENT EVENTS [Jon^ 

ward and asked him to speak English as his audience knew 
no Magjrar. He was able to comply with their request, and 
the reason for its being made was that 80 per cent of the 3<ooo 
inhabitants of the village had once lived in America, where 
they had learned the English language. It is to be hoped 
that this influence will grow greater. True, indeed, it is that 
tilings are far from being perfect here; but it may be said 
with truth that no such iniquitous attempt is likely to be made 
in this country as that which the Austro-Hungarian government 
made last year to convict innocent Croatians at Agram. Jus- 
tice has eventually triumphed and the last of the prisoners has 
been released, and thereby an end has been put to the most 
Iniquitous judicial drama of modem Austro-Hungarian history. 

The new Ministry, of which l^gnot 
Italy. Luzzatti is the head, and the mem- 

bers of which form a heterogene- 
ous combination, representing various groups of the Chamber 
~the Liberal Right, the Giolittian Left, the Radicals or Ex- 
treme Left, and the Democratic Left — has met the Chamber, 
and presented to it the programme which it hopes to carry out, 
or to postpone. For this is its proposal with respect to the 
long discussed Maritime Conventions, which the last two Minis- 
tries have failed to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. 

Fiscal reforms were promised, as well as the reform of 
electoral abuses. More money is to be spent on education, 
for which the smokers of tobacco are to pay. There would 
be no persecution of the Church ; that is to say, there is to be 
nothing that the Ministry would call persecution. On the other 
hand, there would be no compromise with what it is pleased 
to style Clericalism. Absolute opposition would be offered te 
all aggressive action against the Church as well as to aggres- 
sive Churchmen. In politics the Church would be allowed no 
place. As the question of divorce was, according to the Min- 
istry's view, a political question, it is easy to see how illusive 
are the Ministry's assurances that religion would have the full 
freedom which was declared to be its due. The question of 
divorce is, accordingly, to be discussed, but upon its own merits, 
irrespective of the dictates of any one religion. As to foreign 
affairs the peaceful rSU of Italy was to be maintained. The 
Chamber, which at first had received the Ministry's proposals 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 417 

with a certain degree of coldness, after the speech of Signor 
Luzzatti in their defense, by a vote of 393 to 17, expressed 
its confidence. 

An effort is being made to find houses for the working 
classes, and thereby to remedy some of the evils to which we 
referred in the May nnmber of The Catholic World. On 
the latest birthday of Rome the King laid the foundation- store 
of a new block of buildings to be constructed for the occupa* 
tion of government employis^ of whom there is a great army. 
Twelve acres of land are to be occupied by these buildings. 
The task of supplying the wants of these people falls upon the 
government, because, for some reason or other, there is a lack 
of private enterprise. 

Good relations with Austria* Hun- 
Russia, g&ryt based upon the recognition 

of the status quo in the Balkans, 
having been restored, the Elings of Bulgaria and Servia paid 
visits first to St Petersburg and then to Constantinople. A 
later visit of Hilmi Pasha, ex-Grand Vizier, to St. Peters- 
burg, led to declarations that never again would Russia and 
Turkey enter into conflict, but that each would render to the 
other mutual support All of which seems to be a somewhat 
dubious way of maintaining the existing state of things, and 
in fact points toward the formation of the much- talked- of Feder- 
ation of the Balkan States under the leadership of Turkey. It 
is certainly a great departure from the Murzsteg programme, 
which had as its background the anticipation of the break* up 
of the Ottoman Empire, and the division of its territories be* 
tween Austria- Hungary and Russia. Austria-Hungary, on her 
part, is said, but on authority far from convincing, to have 
had a part in fomenting the rising of the Albanians which has 
been giving, for some weeks, so much trouble to the govern- 
ment of Turkey. After a general survey of the situation it is 
not easy to place much confidence in the long- continued main- 
tenance of the status quo. Although the whole of thinking 
Russia is said to be opposed to a policy of adventure in the 
Balkans, Count Aehrenthal has not proved himself a very re- 
liable partner to an agreement. Since his arrival upon the 
scene Austro- Hungarian foreign policy has become more or 
less enigmatic. 
VOL. xci.— 37 



Digitized by 



Google 



4l8 RECENT EVENTS [June, 

It is unfortunately possible to entertain doubts as to the 
maintenance of the modified form of constitutional government 
so recently established. On the one hand the Duma has proved 
itself useful, by enabling the receipts to exceed the expenditures 
through its careful examination of the budget. On the other 
handy its work is ignored as a rule by the Council of the 
Empire and the vast horde of reactionaries— who are suffering 
under the new tigim$ — are losing no opportunity that may pre- 
sent itself to bring about a return to the absolute rule which 
is so profitable to themselves, although so detrimental to the 
people. 

Even M. Stolypin, who has remained at the head of affairs 
so longi and who has so often declared his attachment to the 
constitution, seems to have suffered the usual effect of the 
possession of power. He is said never to put in an appear- 
ance at the Sessions. There are also two members of his 
Cabinet who openly deride the popular assembly and all its 
ways. No effort has been made by the government to carry 
out the civil and political reforms which it has promised. 
Administrative exile is still in forcci and arbitrary measures 
against the Press are frequently taken. In fact, the policy of 
repression adopted against the revolutionists is still continued 
with but few modifications. 

The attitude assumed of late by M. Stolypin and the two 
members of his Cabinet before referred to, together with per- 
sistent rowdyism and obstruction on the part of the Extreme 
Right, which ^endeavors by any and every means to abolish 
the Duma^ led to the resignation of its President, M. Homia- 
koff. He declared that the situation had become intolerable. 
Internecine squabbles, the attitude of certain ministers, the leg- 
islative boycott of the Upper House, were, he said, jeopardiz- 
ing the very existence of the House. The ferment of hatred 
was spreading throughout the country. Matters were reaching 
a stage when a c^up d'itat would become necessary. To pre- 
vent so great an evil he felt the best course for him to take 
was to resign. It seems to have produced the desired result. 
The leader of the Octobrists was elected as M. Homiakoff^s 
successor, and since his election the course of the Duma has 
been smooth, on the surface at all events, but we do not know 
what may lie beneath. The Tsar has given to M. Gucfikoff 
his personal support, a fact which renders it possible to hope 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 419 

that the enemies of law and order may not succeed. The at- 
titude of M. Stolypin and of the members of his ministry 
towards the lower house of the legislative body has undergone 
a change for the better. The number of those who believe 
that the prosperity of Russia can only be secured by the Con- 
stitution seems to be growing, and in this number there is good 
reason to think that the Tsar is included. This does not mean 
that parliamentary government in the English sense, in which 
ministers are responsible to parliament, is to be adopted or 
even worked for at present. That will not come for many years, 
if at all. The Executive is responsible only to the Monarch, 
not to political parties. 

While the prospect for the peaceful establishment of con- 
stitutional government is better than it was, a serious conflict 
is imminent between Russia and Finland. By the command of 
the Tsar a Bill has been laid before the Duma to regulate the 
relations between the Empire and the Grand Duchy. The object 
of the Bill is to define what Finnish matters are to be regarded 
as affecting the Empire generally, and what are purely local. 
It gives an exhaustive list of Finnish questions which the gov- 
ernment proposes to bring within the competence of the Im- 
perial legislature. It even goes beyond the principle of unify- 
ing legislation by transferring to the Dufna all matters in which 
the Grand Duchy is not alone concerned. It goes so far as to 
propose that the fundamental principles of the Finnish internal 
government may be defined or amended by the Sovereign with 
the assent of ithe Duma and of the Council of the Empire. 
These proposals will, if adopted, in the judgment of impartial 
students of the question, reduce Finnish autonomy to an empty 
phrase, for the list of subjects excepted by the Bill from the 
decision of the Diet of Finland covers practically the whole 
domain of internal government. The opposition, even in the 
Russian Duma, declares that the Bill is a violation of the or- 
ganic laws of the Grand Duchy, and will reduce the Diet to a 
merely consultative assembly; while all parties in Finland de- 
clare that both the proposals themselves and the proposed way 
of bringing them into force are entirely illegal and that the Finns 
will prevent by passive resistance every attempt to enforce the 
Bill if it should become a law. 

Some time before the Bill was laid before the Duma, eight 
of the most eminent jurisconsults of Europe published a dccla- 



Digitized by 



Google 



420 RECENT EVENTS [Jonc, 

ration, supported by a detailed historical review, of the rela- 
tions between Russia and Finland, upon the juridical status of 
Finland. The status of autonomy of Finland hitherto existing, 
in the judgment of these authorities, was not a temporary 
privilege granted to a conquered province, but a legal right, 
and the competence of the Finnish Diet could not legally be 
modified or restricted except with its own consent This decla- 
ration, although in the highest degree worthy of consideration, 
does not, of course, settle the question. There is a Russian 
side, the exposition of which Dr. Dillon, in the ConUmporary 
R$vuw^ has undertaken. But it seems a pity that when there 
are so many more urgent matters to be dealt with this question 
should have been raised — a question which in recent times 
has caused so much trouble. 

The rising of the Albanians has 
Turkey. made evident the difficulty of the 

task which the Young Turks have 
undertaken. The unification of the various races is the object 
which they have in view. No longer are there to be Turks 
and Kurds, Jews and Arabians, Armenians and Albanians, 
Bulgars and Greeks; all are to become true Ottomans with 
equal rights and bearing equal burdens. And as upon the 
Albanians had been conferred the privilege of sharing in the 
legislative power, so the government thought it only fair that 
they should take upon themselves a part of the burdens, and 
in all other respects be placed upon an equality with the 
other races. They accordingly laid upon these privileged tribes 
a larger amount of taxation, proposed a general disarmament, 
and even required of them an alteration in the alphabet, i;vish- 
ing to substitute for the one hitherto generally used the holy 
Arabian script What other influences the Albanians were 
subjected to, whether Austrian intrigues had any part or cot, 
an almost general uprising took place, the Catholic Albanians 
sharing with their Orthodox and Moslem compatriots. For 
some time it has appeared as if they might prove successful, 
or at least enforce concessions humiliating to the govern- 
ment. It was, however, a matter of such supreme importance 
for the figime of the Young Turks that the government felt 
it necessary to spare no exertion. In fact it is said to be the 
opinion of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Pro- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT EVENTS 421 

gress, who practically control the government, that a war is 
necessary in order to give them prestige. Military prepara- 
tions have been going on for some months by day and night. 
Their wish is to fight the Greeks, perhaps even to recover 
Greece, a thing which would compensate the Ottoman Empiie 
for its loss of so much territory. The inability to control 
their own subjects would be fatal to all aspirations of that 
kind, and might even lead to the restoration of the detestable 
Abdul Hamid. In the event, therefore, of the Albanians being 
successful, a very important change will be the result 

There is another policy and one that seems wiser. Its 
supporters do not seek to attain the unattainable, but limit 
themselves to the endeavor to federate on equal terms, with 
equal rights and privileges, all the various races. But whether 
even this is attainable there is reason to doubt. The Turk 
has no idea of putting himself upon a level with any othet 
race on the face of the earth. He was born to command and 
to rule by the sword. One or two instances which indicate 
his views may be given. Upon the Armenians, one of the sub- 
ject races, he has so impressed his superiority, that in the pres- 
ence of a Turk no Armenian dares lift his head. Sir William 
Ramsay, in his account of the recent Revolution, relates that 
during the massacres at Adana some twenty Armenians took 
refuge in a loft. A single Turk put up a ladder to reach the 
place of refuge, went up alone, and killed them all. In an- 
other place large numbers of Armenians were ordered by a few 
Turks to lie down in rows in order to have their heads cut 
off. They meekly obeyed; and in cases in which they had 
not suitably disposed themselves for an easy decapitation, at 
the word of their murderers they readjusted themselves. It is 
said, too, that the Turk deliberately rejects all efforts to de- 
velop mines, lest such development may compel him to en- 
gage in manual toil. 

The Turkish Chamber seems to be doing its work quietly 
and efficiently. The Budget has recently been laid before it, 
and although there is a deficit of some seven million Turkish 
pounds, the financial prospects are considered favorable. The 
Customs have been placed under the management of an English- 
man and are yielding a considerable increase. Some new taxes 
are to be imposed and loans raised, for it is not expected that 
revenue will equal expenditure for some years to come. In 



Digitized by 



Google 



422 RECENT EVENTS [June. 

Abdul Hamid's days Turkey's credit was so poor that no loan 
could be raised. To be able to raise a loan is one of the 
privileges of a constitutional government 

After the excitement of seven 
Greece. months, for which period Greece 

was under the domination of the 
Military League, an interval of comparative tranquillity has 
supervened. It is true that a general election for the National 
Assembly is at hand, but for the Greeks such an event is 
rather restful, so fond are they of politics. For some of the 
army officers, indeed, there is not much prospect of peace. 
They have to be /' purified " : a Commission has been ap- 
pointed for this purpose, and some seventy, it is said, of the 
older officers have been held responsible for the state of dis- 
organization into which the army has fallen, and are to be 
dismissed from the service. 

The Military League has, according to its promise, dis- 
solved itself, and has left to the Civil authorities and to the 
politicians the control of the State and of the election which 
is to take place. On this occasion it issued a manifesto to the 
nation, in which, while declaring that its work had been ac- 
complished, it admitted that the greater part of the reform 
programme remained unfulfilled. ''The bloodless and high- 
souled revolution,'' which it had striven to accomplish, had 
been paralyzed by the political factors. The outpouring of 
fifty years of national distress over terrible and manifold humilia- 
tions had not produced its full effect. The League had, how- 
ever, done its best, and the officers would return to their 
duties; but they would individually continue to give close at- 
tention to every act which might affect the future of the Greek 
nation. The army would still remain a watchful guardian of 
its own honor and of the national aspirations. This seems a 
clear indication that, should the officers not approve of the 
resolutions of the National Assembly, they will reunite in 
another League in order to save the country. In the mean- 
time the people are looking forward to its meeting — a meeting 
which cannot fail, for good or for evil, to have most important 
results. 



Digitized by 



Google 



With Our Readers 



THE Catholics of the British Empire are compelled to cut a rather 
sorry figure at the present moment. They must crave the mean 
favor that their religion be not insulted and their dearest convic- 
tions outraged by their sovereign at the most solemn moment of his 
reign. Every American feels this to be no favor, but a mere ele- 
mentary right, that should be guaranteed to every citizen and, in 
fact, to every human being. What right has a free man, or any 
man, if he has not a right to be protected from insult and outrage ? 
In this case, every element is present to aggravate the insult and 
the outrage. They come from the sovereign who qualifies himself, 
by this same insult and outrage, to claim the respect and obedience 
of those he is offending. He speaks in the name of the nation and 
the government to which they owe loyalty. Above all, the injury 
is inflicted on the deepest and most sacred feelings, which are con- 
cerned with beliefs and a Person dearer than life, dearer than all 
which earth can hold. And all that Catholics demand is this : '* Do 
not insult us ; do not, on this most solemn and public occasion, out- 
rage what we love and cherish most. Make the Protestant succes- 
sion as secure as oaths and statutes can bind, if you will — only let 
there be no insult tc Catholic beliefs and feelings! " No demand 
could be more evidently just and no man with a drop of honor or 
manhood in his veins could demand less. 

.• • • 

BUT, after all, it is not the Catholics who are cutting the sorry 
figure ; it is the Epglish Protestants, and particularly the Non- 
Conformists, who are opposing the expunging of the insulting terms 
and little realize what a spectacle they are making of themselves 
before high heaven. No men willingly and knowingly exhibit 
themselves to the world as bigots or bullies or t3rrants. Bigotry and 
wanton insult are writ so large across the face of the Coronation 
Oath that one might imagine them legible even to the very great 
majority of English Non-Conformists. Vain expectation I Many 
of them have a conscience and a psychology as peculiar as the ways 
of the Heathen Chinee. Whatever they think is light ; whatever 
they feel is nobleness and charity ; whatever they do isl justice. 
Their mind never opens to a glimmer ot the suspicion that they may 
be bigots and tyrants. They regard themselves as the champions 
of religion and civilization ; they have ever reserved to themselves 
the privilege of shouting loudest for liberty and enlightenment, all 
the while unconscious that they are the most perfect type in Chris- 
tendom of religious bigotry and ignorance. 



Digitized by 



Google 



434 WITH OUR READERS IJtmc, 

IF we may use a homely but expressive and historic figure, It would 
make a donkey laugh to hear some oi the Non-Conformists pro- 
claim the glories of liberty and light. Gratefully conscious of be- 
longing to a higher order of creation, nevertheless we expect to ex- 
perience a similar pleasure in reading British news of the next month 
or more. Leading divines and prominent politicians will preach the 
glories of British civilization and clamor for the maintenance of the 
benighted Oath. We can realize their point of view by recalling the 
utterance of their brother in blood and religion, Rev. Doctor Tipple, 
of Rome, whose pronouncement, be it remarked, was a plea for light 
and liberty. England for a season will buzz with the noise of the 
wagging tongues of a thousand Tipples — all for liberty and light and 
the damnation of Popery. 



w 



JllXi bigotry prevail? Will the Coronation Oath remain un- 
changed ? We cannot be sure. Bigotry still flourishes in Eng- 
land and bigotry, we know, is a vigorous plant. As the verses say. 
One cannot cleave its deep-hid roots ; 
Knife cannot prune its fast growing shoots. 

It may be counted on to exhibit in England to-day its customary 
vitality and fecundity. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the 
great mass of Englishmen are ashamed of the Oath and would gladly 
be rid of it ; and though old-established law, when upheld by a 
large, noisy, and fanatical minority, has marvelous tenacity, still we 
do not believe that this outrageous Oath will long continue to dis- 
grace the statute books of England. If it be not modified, as it 
probably will be, before the Coronation, it will scarcely be able to 
sustain the assaults that will speedily follow. Pall it must, we 
believe, for the mass of Englishmen are opposed to it or indifferent ; 
the leaders of political lite, with, few exceptions, denounce it ; the 
king himself is reported to have an invincible repugnance against 
it ; and, finally, the Irish brigade is ready to give the fiercest on- 
slaught in all their history. And when the hurly-burly's done, 
wlien the battle's lost and won, we trust that English Catholics shall 
not render grudging thanks to their Irish brethren, without whom 
the victory had been impossible. 



w 



^ENEItABLE monument of English Protestantism 1 How much 
it typifies, how truly it has represented and still represents, the 
spirit of a goodly number of Englishmen ! Before it disappears, the 
Coronation Oath will at least have rendered this service to Truth — it 
will have shone in the eyes of the world as the sjrmbol of English 
Protestant bigotry, past and present. If the reality would be in- 
terred with the symbol, our joy would be unalloyed. But with the 
symbol will disappear one monument to the truth of things as they 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] WITH OUR READERS 425 

are ; we rejoice, though, because its disappearance will tend to cause 
the ugly reality also to disappear. At the same time, we confess that 
many Bnglish and American Protestants have need of numerous re- 
minders of their not all glorious past and present. Who so virtuous 
as they, whose hands so spotless as theirs ? They never weary of 
soundhig their own praises on trumpets and C3rmbals ; and if we 
venture, with the hope of inspiring a little modesty and of moderat- 
ing the abuse of our own not immaculate record, to recall something 
of their past, our voice is drowned in a deafening clamor. Protest- 
antism, both Bnglish and American, has much to be ashamed of; 
and we shall be more hopeful of the elimination of bigotry and re- 
ligious ignorance when we see a more general acknowledgment of 
its crimes during the past centuries. Catholics have always be- 
lieved that the confession of sins is an essential, and the first, ele- 
ment in a true conversion. And though we Catholics have often ex- 
hibited our own reluctance to confess the shameful truth, still our 
self-knowledge and self-accusation are almost marvelous in compari- 
son with the reluctance of the ordinary religious American or Bn- 
glish Protestant to see. and confess the shameful truth in their past. 
They put the record'^of our delinquencies in large type ; their own 
are crowded into fine print — ^which, in their reading of history, they 

religiously skip. 

« • « 

ADVBRTISING IN RELIGION. 

IN our superficial, hurrying age, nearly all of us read as we run. 
Whether we like it or not, we must acknowledge the day of 
literary browsing is over. For ten who have the zeal, the time, or 
the inclination to acquire that wisdom which is ** shining and never 
fadeth,'' hundreds are content with the glittering veneer of knowall- 
ness, spread by the news-stand, the clearing house of the latest idea. 

Next to the newspaper, the secular magazine has recognized 
this fact and has contrived, not'only to display its wares in startling 
or persuasive form, but has made them so insistent, and so pervasive, 
that purchase is inevitable* All the large trades and certain cor- 
porations own journals or magazines to exploit their interests. The 
devotee of every occupation and sport, the reader of every taste is 
consulted ; and the success of these periodicals is proven by the in- 
crease of the many, the failure of the few* 

For its progress and development^the magazine depends neither 
upon airy flight of fancy nor solid literary merit, but upon the tre- 
mendous force of its advertising pages — ^much as the luxurious lim- 
ited train is made practicable by the substantial returns of the long 
haul freight. Not upon its subscription list, but upon its adver- 
tising columns does the magazine rely for the wherewithal to tempt 
great literary and artistic names to lend kudos to its issues. 



Digitized by 



Google 



426 WITH Our Readers [J^ne, 

Is our Catholic Press, with Its august message to all mankind, 
advantaging Itself of this energy ? II we are to cope successfully 
with the indifference and materiallsmtwhlch Is seeping into all other 
religious bodies ; if we are to give honest answer to that inquiring, 
restless, surging mass of readers, churchless and rudderless, we must 
discover to them this message. 

It may be urged that if we do not appear in many public places, 
laden with advertisements, neither do the non-Catholic, regions 
weekly and monthly. But their mission is too circumscribed to ap- 
peal to any but a limited class of readers, while the Catholic Press, 
as the exponent of the Church of Christ, has for its great business 
the spr^d of Truth to all. To achieve this destiny it must not be 
supported solely by the faithful, but by those who, in their aimless 
flight through life, have paused to buy because it Is unavoidable, 
and because they have been met more than half way. 

If the sagacity of our non-Catholic friends finds in religion a 
pragmatic value for their business enterprises, it is surely per- 
missible for us to turn the tables, and utilize these entexprises as a 
means to spread the Faith. 

Do not Catholics want soap and automobiles and infants' foods, 
as well as schools, lives of the Saints, and stained glass windows ? 
Is there anything derogatory to the dignity of a religious publica- 
tion to cry it for sale as the train leaves ? To find it displayed 
conspicuously on every news-stand and proclaimed within secular 
pages? 

The public no longer seeks to buy ; it is coaxed to buy ; and it 
will not patronize understandingly unless it be informed. 

Perhaps the reader has stumbled in and out of publishing houses 
in New York to find a copy of a foreign Catholic review, noted in 
one of its American contemporaries. Has he found it 7 

Perhaps he has tried to respond to the criticism of a prejudiced 
fHend, by placing before him one of our small leaflets ot religious 
truth ; but by the time he has received it, the acceptable time is 
gone. Thank God, a few of our churches are responding to this 
grave need. Why so few ? 

Perhaps the reader has called the attention of an open-minded 
non-Catholic reader to a current number of a Catholic periodical, to 
receive the response from the smaller city: '' I have sent through 
our book-store, but it has not come " ; or, as reported recently from 
the leading book-store of Richmond, Virginia, and Brentano's in 
Washington, D. C, *• Nor do they know where ii is published.^* 
Why? 

These conditions arise from our own lack of funds, or initiative, 
or both. If the Catholic weekly, monthly, or quarterly is to be 
forceful in our every-day civilizadon, it must be made more get-at* 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] WITH Our Readers 427 

able. It must jostle the newspaper, and rub shoulders with the 
secular magazine, if it is to have any significance to those crowds, 
who "chatter, laugh, and hurry by, and never once possess their 
souls before they die." 

Be certain that in these utilitarian days, if there is business in 
it, advertisers will clamor ior space in our pages, and every book 
stall in the country be informed. 

The suggestive thought of an endowed Catholic Press carries 
the imagination far I One poises delightedly on this pinnacled ideal 
— ^where luminous sincerities disperse vague doubts, authoritative 
utterance spans the world, and the price is within reach of the 
poorest I 

But until that Utopian vision is realized, may not our Catholic 
Religious Press, mighty servant as it is of Mother Church — herself 
the first great teacher by means of symbols— appropriate more effec- 
tually for its own high uses, this modem symbolic manifestation 

of the business world ? 

• • • 

THB following extract from a letter written in Bruges, Belgium, 
by Agnes Repplier, will be enjoyed by our readers : 
'* By a rare stroke of luck we arrived in time for the grand 
procession of the Saint-Sang (The Precious Blood) on the 9th of 
May. We rented a second-story window in the Place du Bourg, 
where we could see it all, and the Benediction with which it closed. 
It was too beautiful for words. Hundreds of men, women, and 
children, dressed in the quaintest of costumes, presented scenes from 
the Old and New Testaments, not on stupid floats, but walking 
through the streets, they} came — angels, saints, dignitaries of the 
Church, priests, monks, soldiers,(and the great relic in its crystal 
cylinder, borne aloft amid the blare of trumpets and the waving of 
banners. Every one was serious, grave, devout. Group after group 
fdl into its proper place around the altar which had been erected in 
the lovely old Place du Bourg, lined with cavalry, and hung with 
pennons. When the relic was raised for Benediction every one 
knelt, and my heart leaped into my throat with pure joy, it was all 

so wonderful." 

« « • 

DURING eleven weeks, June 27 to September 9, the Catholic 
Summer- School will present a varied programme of University 
Extension studies at Cliff Haven, N. Y., on Lake Champlain. The 
report of the Committee on Lectures, prepared by the Rev. Thomas 
McMillan, C.S.P., contains the following announcements: 

A series of thirty lectures on tbe Principles, History, and Psycfcolrgy of 
Education, by professors of the Department of Education in the Catholic 
Unirersity of America, Washington, D. C, 



Digitized by 



Google 



428 WITH Our readers [June, 

PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION. 
By the Rev. Edward A. Pace, Ph.D.i D.D.| Professor of Philosophy. 
July II — The Meaning of Education ; 
July 12 — The Function of Educational Ideals; 
July 13 — Cultural and Vocational Aims; 
July 14— The Mind of the Child; 
July 15 — Body and Mind; 
July 18 — Necessity and Value of Method ; 
July i9^The Content of the Curriculum; 
July 20 — Moral and Religious Training; 

July 31 — Institutions that Educate : the Home ; the School ; the Church ; 
July 22 — Qualifications of the Teacher. 

HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 
By the Rev. William Turner, D.D., Professor of Philosophy. 
July 25 — Education Dominated by Imitation and Tribal Custom ; 
July 26^Education Dominated by Caste, National Tradition, and Religious 

Ideals — Hindustan, China, Egypt ; 
July 27 — Education for Citizenship— Persia and Sparta ; 
July 28 — Education for Excellence According to Human Standards — Athens 

and Rome ; 
July 29 — Christian Education as Preserving and Transcending the Earlier 

Ideals ; 
August I — Assertion of the Supremacy of Spiritual Interests in the Struggle 

of Christianity with Pagan Culture — Preservation of the Classics; 
August 2 — Assertion of the Same Principle in Monasticism: Influence of the 

Monks on Civilization; 
August 3 — Assertion of the Same Principle in Professional and Craft Educa- 
tion — The Guilds ; 
August 4 — Assertion of the Same Principle in the Institutes of Chivalry — 

Status of Woman in Medieval Times ; 
August 5 — Assertion of Supremacy of the Spiritual in Philosophical and 

Theological Education — Rise and Spread of the Universities. 

PSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATION. 
By the Rev. Thomas Edward Shields, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Education. 
August 8 — Sources of Mental Food; 

August 9 — The Function of Education in Mental Development ; 
August 10 — ^The Teacher's Pgjrt in the Educative Process ; 
August II — From the Static to the Dynamic; 
Angust 12 — The Plastic Individual ; 

August 15 — The Source of Energy in Mental Development ; 
August i6^Strength and Docility ; 
August 17-7-Environment and Mental Growth ; 
August 18 — Mental Growth and Mental Development; 
August 19 — Balances in Development. 

GENERAL COURSES. 

First Weeki June 27-July 2. — Illustrated lectures by Professor Robert 
Turner, Boston, i. Scenes from Ben Hut. 2. Passion Play of Oberam- 
mergau. 3. A Trip to Canada, including the Shrine of St. Anne de Beau- 
pre. 4. Views of America. 

Second Week^ July ^-«?.— Morning lectures by Gertrude M. O'Reilly, 
Chicago. Subject : Irish Art and Literature. 

Evening recitals by Mary C. V. Neville, New York City. 

Dramatic recitals from Ramona^ with musical accompaniment by Vir- 
ginia Calhoun, New York City, 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lo.] WITH Our Readers 439 

Third Wuk^ July //-/j.— Morning Round Table Talks by A. Helcne 
H. Magrath, New York City. Subject : A Trip through America with 
Abb6 Klein. 

Four Evening Song Recitals by Marie A. Zeckwer, Philadelphia. 

Fourth IVeeh, July i8-2Z. — Morning lectures by the Rev. Robert 
Swickerathy S.J.| Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. Subject: The 
Struggle for Religious Liberty in Germany and its Lessons for American 
Catholics. 

Evening lectures on Art and Environment by Jennie M. Naughton, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. Recitals from the dialect poems of Dr. Drummond by 
Albert £. Heney, Ottawa. 

Fifth IVeeh, July 2j-2p. — Morning lectures by flie Rev. John T. Driscoll, 
S.T.L., Albany, N. Y. Subject: The Basis of Sociology: i. Sociology of 
Comte. 3. Physical Basis of Sociology. 3. Evidence from Biology. 4. 
Sociological Psychology. 5. Summary and Criticism. 

Evening violin recitals by Alma Grafe, Philadelphia. 

Travels in India, illustrated, by the Rev. Vincent Naish, S. J., Montreal. 

Sixth Weekf August i-j. — Morning lectures by the Rev. John H. 
O'Rourke, S.J., editor of the Messenger of the Sacred Hearty New York 
City. Subject : The Catholic Church as a Bulwark of the Republic. 

Evening lectures by the Hon. Thomas F. Wilkinson, Albany. Sub- 
jects : Paths to Justice ; Irish Wit and Oratory. 

Song recitals by Berthe M. Clary, New York City. 

Seventh IVeeh, August S-12. — Morning lectures by the Very Rev. 
George M. Searle, C.S.P., New York City. Subject: Research Work in 
Modern Astronomy. 

Evening lectures on The Citizen and the State, by the Hon. Edward R. 
O'Malley, Attorney-General, State of New York. Studies in Contemporary 
Literature, by Rose F. Egan, A.B., Syracuse, including the lyrics of Father 
Tabb and the novels of George Meredith. 

Eighth IVeeh, August 75 -/<?— -Morning lectures by the Rev. James Mac- 
Caffrcy, Ph.D., Maynooth College, Ireland. Subject: History of the 
Church in the Nineteenth Century. 

Evening lectures on Historical Studies of the Countess Matilda and St. 
Catharine, the publicist, by the Rev. John J. Donlon, Diocese of Brooklyn, 
N. Y. Two lectures by the Rev. Lewis J. 0*Hern, C.S.P., Winchester, 
Tenn., on The Catholic Church, the Guardian of Society. 

Ninth Weekf August 22-26, — Morning lectures by Professor Arthur F. 
J. Remy, Ph.D., Columbia University. Subject: Studies in Comparative 
Literature, i. The Legend of Tannhauser. 2. The Legend of the Wan- 
dering Jew. 3. The Troubadours and Minnesingers. 4. The Keltic Ele- 
ment in the Literature of Europe. 5. Oriental Influence on European 
Literature. 

Evening lectures on Travels in the United States by Professor James J. 
Monaghan. 

Tenth Week, August 2g-September 2, — Morning lectures by James J. 
Walsh, M.D., LL.D., Fordham University. Subject: The Medical Pro- 
fession in Relation to Human Progress. 

Evening Song Recitals by Marie Narelle from Australia. 

Eleventh Week, September 5-7. — Convention of the Catholic Young 
Men's National Union. The International Eucharistit Congress will open in 
the city of Montreal Tuesday, September 6, with a Solemn Reception of the 
Cardinal Legate, and will be continued until Sunday, September ix, inclu- 
sive. Many of the distinguished visitors are expected at Cliff Haven during 
the preceding week. 



Digitized by 



Google 



430 WITH OUR READERS [June, 

THE May number of The Cathoi^ic World contained the follow- 
ing comment on the Roosevelt- Vatican incident : 

The irony of fate would seem to have decreed that the illustrious Amer- 
ican whom the Holy Father would desire to welcome, the one whom his 
Catholic fellow-citizens would prefer to see honored by the Holy Father, 
should fail to obtain what has been freely accorded to so many undis- 
tinguished Americans. The irony is deepened when Mr. Rooserelt's pub- 
lished cablegrams, in which the audience was requested, show U9» how 
desirous he was of meeting Pius X. Our late President has certainly de- 
served well of the CathoKc Church ; not because he has granted to Catholics 
any special favor, for that he has not done and could not do without contra- 
vening his firmest principle ; but because, though he differs from us radically 
in religious views, he has stood with us squarely on the broad ground of our 
common American citizenship. He has not been afraid to act on the 
principle that we are as fully entitled to our rights and to recognition as any 
other American citizens. Decided in his own opinions, no doubt, he is yet 
singularly free from any taint of bigotry — he is honored and esteemed by 
Catholics of every shade of political belief. Whether or not he was justified 
in his interpretation ot Bishop Kennedy's message, all sensible men perceive 
that he merely followed his own sense of honor ; and Catholics are as con- 
vinced that he acted without the slightest feeling of hostility or disrespect 
towards the Holy Father as they are certain that Pius X. desired to do what- 
ever he could in conscience to grant an audience to this distinguished man 
whom he honored for his own character and for the high office he had filled 
so illustriously. That desire was defeated by a conspiracy of circumstances, 
to the great regret of the Holy Father and of the Cardinal Secretary of State. 
The issue was unfortunate, and is deeply regretted by us all ; but no great 
harm can come of it. Honest men will despise the effort of those who try to 
make political capital out of it ; they may smile at them, too, for Mr. Roose- 
velt has lost nothing by the incident. Though most Catholics, perhaps, be- 
lieve he acted hastily, all recognize his honorable motive. 

We reprint here the view of the incident which the Editor of The 
Catholic World expressed at the time in the daily papers : 

''In viewing the much-discussed matter of Mr. Roosevelt's failure to 
visit the Pope, every honest American will give heed to Mr. Roosevelt's own 
words in his cable message to the Outlook: 'The incident will|be treated in 
a matter-of-course way as merely personal and, above all, as not warranting 
the slightest exhibition of rancor or bitterness.' 

"There can be no question of the love that the Holy Father bears our 
country and our non*Catholic brethren. That love has been proven over 
and over again in public act and document and in his cordial welcome of 
thousands of non-Catholic Americans who have visited him in Rome. To 
Leo XIII. Mr. Roosevelt, when President, sent a number of volumes contain- 
ing the messages of the Presidents, and Leo XIII. sent in return a costly 
mosaic picture of the Vatican. The present Pontiff has frequently ex- 
pressed his admiration of American institutions. 

" The Holy Father looked forward with pleasure to the expected visit of 
Mr. Roosevelt. The court of the Vatican is a court, and as such is worthy 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] n^iTJf Our readers 431 

of respect. Like every courts it has its conditions^ which all visitors must 
respect. These conditions are well known, and no prospective visitor — 
even among the most notable sovereigns of the world — thinks of violating 
them. If he does so he knows that he will not ^be received, and he knows 
also that he will have no one but himself to blame. Only a few days since 
the Imperial Chancellor of the Gerntan Empire took great care to observe the 
proper etiquette, and the Kaiser himself, in his latest visit to Rome, observed 
it also as a matter of courtesy. 

** The Vatican expressed the great pleasure that it would take in wel- 
coming Mr. Roosevelt, and, at the same time, kindly intimated that he 
should give assurance that he would in no way violate the etiquette of the 
court. Mr. Roosevelt was free to accept or reject the conditions. They 
were in no way dishonorable to him ; in no way unworthy. He chose to 
assert that he would accept no conditions — that he must be left free to do 
absolutely as he liked. There was nothing left for the Vatican to do but to 
refuse the audience. The same conditions apply to Mr. Roosevelt as to any 
other man. Every American may rest assured that to refuse the audience 
caused much pain and regret to the Holy Father, who had expressed his 
delight at meeting Mr. Roosevelt. 

''And it must be a cause of equal regret to every American that Mr. 
Roosevelt did not see his way to accept conditions which the Vatican out 
of self-respect had to lay down, and hear from the lips of the great ruler of 
Christendom his words of love for America and its, people." 
• • • 

On May 7 the Boston Pilot published the following as part of an 
editorial headed '' The Transcript's Mistake " : 

Let us say right here that the sentiments expressed by The Catholic 
World on this question remind us more of the timid shilly-shallying of half- 
heartedness than the protest of a loyal-hearted Catholic. It states that '<no 
great harm can come of the incident." Of course no harm can come to the 
Vatican, but that is not on account oi any such defence as that of Thb 
Catholic World, but because the Church has strong and loyal defenders 
of her dignity and the dignity of the Holy See. 

But great harm can come to Catholics by the weakening of the sense of 
reverence for things that touch them deeply. The Catholic World 
makes it apparent that it is appealing rather to non-Catholics than to strong, 
loyal Catholics. That is not the way to convert non-Catholics, but rather to 
lead them to despise us. • . • It would be well if The Catholic World 
would not be so solicitous of the commendations of its non-Catholic readers 
and think more of the straight stand that a real and true Catholic periodical 
is bound In duty to take. 

• • • 

We leave the issue, if there be any issue, to the judgment of the 
Catholic public. 



Digitized by 



Google 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York : 

Tk4 AUhtmisfs Secret. By Isabel Cecilia Williams. Price 85 cents postpaid. 
Fr. Pustet ft Co., New York: 

The Month of Mofy. By Rev. B. Hammer, O.F.M. 
Tbb Macmillan Company, New York : 

The Undesirable Governess, By F. Marion Crawford. Price $1.50* 
Yalb University Press, New York : 

Everyday MthUs, Price $1.25. The Hinderemces to Good CittMensh^, Price $z.z5. 
MoraU in Aiodem Business. Price $1.25. 
American Book Company, New York : 

Peter of New Awuterdam. A Story of Old New York. By James Otis. Price 35 cents 
net. 
Longmans, Qreen ft Co., New York: 

Newman Memorial Sermons, By Rev. Father Joseph Rickaby and V. Rer. Canon Mo- 
Intyre. Principles of Political Economy, By John Stuart Mill. 
Bbnziger Brothers, New York : 

Clare Lorraine. By** Lee." Damien of Molohai, By May Qninlan. Buds and Blossoms. 
By Bishop Colton. A Bit of Old Ivory ; and Other Stories, Price $z .25. The Raccolta. 
By Ambrose St. John. Price $z net. The Boys of St, Batts\ By R. P. Gannold, S.J. 
B. W. HUEBSCH, New York : 

The Development of Christianity, By Otto Pfleiderer, D.D. 
Thomas Whittaker, New York : 

Bishop Potter, The People's Friend. By H. A. Keyser. 
D. Appleton ft Co., New York : 

l/p the Orinoco and Down the MagdaUna. By H. J. Mozaus. 
International Catholic Truth Society, Brooklyn : 

My Road to the True Church, By Frank Johnston. Price zo cents. 
Washington Press, Boston : 

Astronomical Essays, By Rev. George V. Leahy, S.T.L. Price $z. 
Joseph M. Tally, Providence, R. I. : 

The Divine Story, By C. J. Holland, S.T.L. Price $t net 
B. Herder, St. Louis, Mo. : 

Hiawatha's Black Robe, By E. Leahy. Price 35 cents net. P^gy the Millionaire, By 
Mary Costello. Price 35 cents net. The Coming of the King, By Arthur Synan. 
Price 35 cents net. Earl or Chiejtain, By Patricia Dillon. Price 35 cents net. Mar- 
garet's Influence, By Rev. Peter Geiermann, C.SS.R. Price $1. Manual of Church 
History, Vol. I. Bv Dr. F. X. Funk. Price $2.75 net. The Formation of Character % 
By Ernest R. Hull, S.J. Price zs cents net. Handbook of Ptaetical Economics, By 
J. Schrivers, C.SS.R. Price $z.35 net. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle 
Ages. By Rev. H. K. Mann. Price $3 net. 
Catholic Register and Canadian Extension, Toronto, Can. : 

The CatholU Paper. By Rev. J. T. Roche. LL.D.. Pamphlet. 
Elliott Stock, London : 

Essays in Pentateuckal Criticism, By Harold M. Wiener. Price 3^. 6d, net. 
Williams ft Norgatb, London : 

The Ring of Pope Xyitus, By F. C. Conybeare, M.A. Price 41. 6d, net. 
Bloud bt Cib., Paris. France: 

La Viritidu Catholicisme, Par J. Bricout. Price 3/V. 50. 
Pierre T6qui, Paris : 

Scrupules, Par M. I'Abb^ Grimes. Price i/r. ^ 

LiBRMRiB Armand Colin, Paris: 

La Question de Finlande, Par Rene Henry. Price i fr, 
F. Lethiblleux, Paris : 

L'Ame cU Jeanne d'Arc, Par TAbb^ Stephen Coube. Price 4/r. 



Digitized by 



Google 




THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

Vol. XCI. JULY, 1910. No. 544. 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHINA. 

BY ELLIS SCHREIBER. 

|HE eyangelization of the vast empire of China 
has loBg held a prominent place in the history 
of missionary labors in the East. Tradition al- 
leges that the Apostle Thomas journeyed thither 
to preach the Gospel, and it appears certain 
that the Nestorians carried on missions in China in the sixth 
and seventh centuries with some success, the protection of the 
Emperor being extended to them. On the withdrawal of the 
imperial favor, however, this heretical form of Christianity died 
out. Somewhat later China seems to h^ve again been the 
scene of missionary effort, as the tablet of Sian-fu, a stone 
discovered in 1625, dated 781, bears an inscription to the 
effect that in the eighth century missionaries from the West 
were propagating the Christian religion in the country. 

It was the determination of that greatest of. missionaries, St 
Francis Xavier, after the completion of his work in Japan, to 
introduce Christianity into China, an attempt long resisted by 
the Portugese authorities in Goa and elsewhere, and finally 
frustrated by the impediments thrown by them in the way. 
Hardly had Xavier made known his purpose when he was met 
by the opposition and even persecution of Alvarez, the resi- 
dent at Malacca and former friend of the saint, who became 
the inveterate opponent of his missionary expedition. Har- 
assed and worn out, the saint died when he was at the point 
of realizing the object of his ambition. He bequeathed, how- 
ever, his double spirit to Father Matteo Ricci, SJ., who ar- 



Copyright. 1910. The Missionary Society op St. Paul the Apostle 

IN THE State of New York. 
VOL XCI.— 28 



Digitized by 



Google 



434 ^no^ Cathouc Church in China [July, 

rived about thirty years later at Macao, where several priests 
from Portugal were already established with a view of minis- 
tering to the needs of the residents, and converting, if possi- 
ble, such natives as came in contact with them. The Fran- 
ciscans, Dominicans, and other orders had, in the meantime, 
not neglected this field of tabor, despite the determined oppo- 
sition of the traders, especially the Portugese, who regarded 
with the liveliest apprehension the introduction of missionary 
work which might, from the intimacy with which religious 
and political life were interwoven in China, cause complica- 
tions of a serious character, fatal to the interests of commerce, 
and perhaps end in their exclusion from the empire. 

Father Ricci is described as ''a man of great scientific at- 
tainments, of invincible perseverance, of varied resource, and 
of winning manners, maintaining, with all these gifts, a single 
eye to the conversion of the Chinese, the bringing of the 
people of all ranks to the Christian faith." He and his com- 
panion, Father Ruggiero, found it difficult to obtain a footing, 
and they worked their way up to the capital, where Ricci was 
favorably received by the Emperor, and was elevated by him 
to a high social rank. 

Daring the period which elapsed before, and that which 
immediately succeeded, his death in 1610, the course of the 
mission progressed steadily, until in 1645 controversy arose 
respecting the degree of toleration which was to be extended 
to the ceremonial and political usages of the converts, and 
also as to the term to be employed to signify the true God. 
An appeal was made to the Propaganda in regard to these 
questions; the decision given was that the presence of Chris- 
tians in the idols' temples and the sacrifices to Confucius 
therein were condemned; also the ancestral worship practised 
by the Chinese. At a later period another appeal to Rome 
was made by the Jesuits ; their contention being that the wor- 
ship of Confucius was of a civil character, and that of ances- 
tors was merely homage, not real worship, and could, there- 
fore, be practised without injury to the Christian faith. After 
a lengthy investigation of the questions in dispute, the Pope 
decreed that all participation of Christian converts in such rites 
was to be prohibited; and the word Tien Chu^Xo signify God, 
was approved of, in contradistinction to the term Tien (the 
Supreme Emperor). Meanwhile recurrence had been had to 
the Chinese Emperor, who gave a contrary verdict. The mis- 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9IO.] THE Catholic Church in China 435 

sionariesy of coursei obeyed the Pope, and this setting aside 
of the authority of their Emperor incensed the Chinese to snch 
a degree that an edict was issued forbidding the propagation 
of Catholicism in the country, and only allowing a few mission- 
aries to remain who were required for scientific purposes in 
Peking. Some obeyed the edict requiring them to depart, but 
others remained, carrying on their work in secret. 

In writing about 1724 Captain Brinkley remarks (C*^ma, //^ 
History ^ Arts^ and Literaturg^Brinklty, Vol. XI., p. 140, 1904): 
''At no time were there fewer than forty priests in the coun- 
try. The presence of these men must have been known to 
thousands upon thousands of people outside the circle of their 
converts. In traveling to and from their stations, in their re- 
ligious ministrations, in their daily lives, however secluded, it 
is impossible that their identity can have been concealed. 
Yet, with exceptions so rare as to prove the rule, the people 
never betrayed them. On the part of their converts fidelity 
might have been expected. But that men and women whom 
they called 'pagans' should have refrained from betraying 
them, indicates a spirit very different to the bitter anti-foreign 
sentiment now shown by the Chinese nation. The fact already 
deduced from independent records is thus strongly confirmed, 
that outside the narrow areas where the abuses of medieval 
trade and the violence of medieval traders created an atmos- 
phere of passion, no animosity was harbored against foreign- 
ers." And speaking of a later period, the same writer says 
that ''while the people in and about Canton and Macao were 
calling foreigners 'devils,' and stoning or bambooing them 
whenever opportunity offered, the people of districts in the 
interior treated them with courtesy, respect, and even friend- 
ship." The Chinese are a proud people, who have always en- 
tertained a supreme contempt for every other country and 
nation. Their inborn hatred of foreigners has been roused 
and intensified by the high-handed, offensive, and cruel con- 
duct of the European traders who came to their ports. 

Disguised as natives, the priests penetrated into the inter- 
ior in order to disassociate themselves from the mercantile 
classes of foreigners, and there worked unobtrusively and in- 
conspicuously at their varicrus stations, living a life of truly 
apostolic poverty. In hardly any instance has a traveler 
reached a point where he has not found that a member of the 
Catholic clergy had gone before him. 



Digitized by 



Google 



436 THE CATHOUC CHURCH IN CHINA [July, 

''The missionary in China/' it has been said, ''must de- 
nationalize himself/' and this the Catholic priest does. People 
at home have little idea oi the sacrifices men of cnltnre and 
refinement, often of noble birth, make for the furtherance of 
Christianity, and the hardships and privations they heroically 
endure. Travelers tell of one who, though comparatively young, 
falls a victim to starvation and fever; of another who has seen 
no European, except perhaps a fellow-priest at long intervals, 
for the space of thirty years; of a third driven from his sta- 
tion and forced to fly for his life. The anguish of such absolute 
loneliness and isolation alone would be intolerable without the 
sustaining power of divine grace. European customs, habits, 
luxuries, are all abandoned from the moment they set foot on 
the shores of China; parents, friends, and home are in many 
cases heard of no more, and they know that their graves will 
be far away from the land of their birth. When they left la 
belU France they left it without any hope of return." No work 
is too hard for them, no living too poor; they are not deterred 
by epidemic of sickness or threatened massacre; they have 
simply devoted themselves to the propagation of the faith and 
nothing can turn them from their purpose. They wear the 
dress of the Chinese, eat their food, conform to their customs 
and habits, shave their heads, and adapt the pig-tail, identify 
themselves with the natives as far as possible. ''The great 
mortality amongst the missionaries," says a writer on China, 
" cannot be attributed to the climate, for diplomats and consuls 
bear their residence in China well enough ; it is to be explained 
by the hard lives they lead, especially the Chinese food, the 
want of medical help, and the privations of every kind to which 
they are exposed; the indescribably filthy state of the towns 
and houses, the lack of real privacy and quiet. In most in- 
stances the missionary occupies a Chinese house, with mud 
floor, a straw bed, paper windows, devoid of every kind of 
comfort." 

" I recollect one priest in a most remote village," writes 
Mrs. Archibald Little in The Land of the Blue Gown (1902), 
"showing me — half excusing himself, half proudly — his one 
great luxury, a little window with glass panes he had put in 
near his writing-table so as to write and read till later in the 
evening. He showed me a set of photographs of his native 
village in France, but I noticed that he dared not glance at 
them himself while we were there. What this expatriation means 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I910.] THE CATHOUC CHURCH IN CHINA 437 

to a Frenchman is enongh to indicate the immensity of the 
sacrifice he yolantarily makes without any expectation of ever 
again re- visiting his beloved country. Yet not a single French- 
man has ever left this post. ' Pas un / Ni pour cause de maU 
adiiSf ni pour affaires parttculieres^ ni pout alter a Peking. Pas 
un seul^ says the Procureur somewhat prondly/' 

In i824i under pressure from foreign Powers, an Imperial 
edict was promulgated granting entire toleration of Christianity 
throughout the Empire. By this act Christianity was placed 
on a different plane from the other foreign religionsi Buddhism 
and Mohammedanism, to which China of its own accord ex- 
tended complete toleration. Christianity is, therefore, associ- 
ated in the minds of the Chinese with the humiliation of the 
Empire — coercion on the part of the hated foreigner— a calam- 
ity yet fresh in the memory of the present generation. 

Subsequently to the war carried on in China by the English 
in i860, in which France joined on account of the torture and 
beheading of one of her missionaries in Kwangsi, a treaty was 
concluded in which it was agreed that the religious and char* 
itable institutions, the churches, colleges, cemeteries, houses, 
and all other possessions confiscated from the Christians during 
the persecution of 1724, should be restored; and the protection 
of foreign Christians in China was formally assumed by the 
French, to whom thus belongs the honor of inaugurating the 
new era of religion in that country. Unhappily the Catholic 
Church has, in consequence, been associated with what appears 
the aggressive policy of France, a. power which is suspected 
by the natives of employing the missionaries as political and 
even military spies. ''After the cross, the sword; first the 
missionaries, then the gun-boat, then the land- grabbing; such 
is the process of events in the Chinese mind,'* says one who 
wrote in 1901. 

It is, indeed, deeply to be deplored that the outcome of the 
intercourse of the Christian nations with China should have 
been that, as lately as the opening years of the present century, 
she stored up a fund of the deepest resentment towards them ; 
and that during that intercourse missionaries— those more es* 
pecially of the Catholic Church, because under French protec- 
ti<m — should be regarded with distrust and hatred ; not because 
they taught the '' worship of the Lord of Heaven '' (the Catho- 
lic Faith), to show the Chinese how to attain to the "better 
land'' in the next world; but because they were the brethren 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



438 THE CATHOUC CHURCH IN CHINA [Jolyi 

of the '* foreign devils/' only anxious to deprive tliem of the 
land and the wealth they possess in the present one. 

A memorial drawn up in 1905 shows clearly that the deep- 
est cause of aversion to Christianity is not the religion as such 
but its close connection with the so-called Protective Powers. 
That China distrusts them, and returns hatred and aversion for 
their violent encroachment upon her most intimate domestic 
affairs is not to be wondered at in so proud and exclusive a 
nation. When she sees that the mission has recourse to the 
armed force of Protective Powers, the distrust and aversion are 
extended to the Church and Mission also, and since the edict 
of toleratioui fear of foreign aggression has led to violent out- 
breaks of hostility and terrible persecution of missionaries and 
Christian converts with every fresh scare of interierence and 
encroachment on the part of foreigners. Perhaps, also, the 
consciousness of having the political Protective Power behind 
them makes some missionaries — Protestants chiefly— overlook 
certain delicate considerations in their dealings with the native 
authorities, the neglect of which wounds beyond measure the 
Chinese, who in this respect are very sensitive. ''Hence, in 
the edict of toleration, proclaimed in 1886, the Imperial Gov- 
ernment deems it necessary to state that Chinamen who may 
embrace Christianity are entitled to protection from their own 
Government, to which alone they owe obedience. The pro- 
mulgation of this edict followed immediately upon the decision 
of the Pope to send a Papal Legate to the Court of Peking, to 
represent him as the sole foreign power interested in the Chi- 
nese Roman Catholics, thereby disclaiming all political protec- 
tion from France." 

Prior to this, the same principle had already been enunci- 
ated by a French missionary, P&re Louvet, who says: "The 
efforts of the missionaries must be directed to keeping their 
work clear of politics. From this point of view I, for one, can 
only deplore the intervention of the "European Powers." 

As an eminent expert in Chinese affairs, P&re Joseph Gonnet, 
S.J., insisted decades ago, "the models, even in this respect, 
must be the missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies, who coniormed in every possible way— in language, 
dress, manners, customs, forms of social intercourse, etiquette— 
to the peculiarities of the Chinese, and spared their national 
susceptibilities with punctilious care." 

"The French hostilities of 1883 had, moreover, some effect,'* 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



19 lo.] THE Catholic Church in China 439 

we learn from Professor Parker, "in concentrating upon the 
Roman Catholics most of the odium which was formerly shared 
in equal measure by Protestants/' 

The first Protestant missionary to China was the Reverend 
Robert Morrison, who arrived in 1807. There was so strong a 
feeling against all Europeans that he was unable to carry on 
evangelistic work and occupied himself with translating the 
Bible into Chinese. The first version of the Gospels was made 
by an unknown Catholic missionary as early as the seven- 
teenth century, and this Mr. Morrison used as the basis of his 
translation of the New Testament. Later on, when English 
missionaries, together with some American ones, gained a 
footing in Macao, and alter the Nanking Treaty of 1842, 
when Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain, were able to 
penetrate into the interior, their great and primary object was 
to effect indiscriminate circulation of the Scriptures, sending 
out agents to scatter them broadcast among a people to whom, 
without explanation or elucidation, they were simply unintel- 
ligible. Nay more, since Christian ideas cannot well find terms 
in the Chinese language to convey them aright, and the allu- 
sions to rites and customs diametrically opposed to those of 
the Chinese gave rise to scandal and persecution, the sacred 
books were either flung aside in contempt, or were put to the 
use of wrapping up parcels or making the soles of boots and 
shoes. Thus it became apparent, even to those who distributed 
them, that the Scriptures were useless as a means of convey- 
ing revealed truth to the Chinese, and served rather to retard 
the progress of Christianity amongst them. Moreover, the 
different terms adopted to designate the one true God in liter- 
ature and preaching — ^the Jesuits employing Tien Chu (Lord of 
Heaven), the American Protestants Chen Shen (True Spirit), 
the English Shang-ti (Supreme Lord) — confused and bewildered 
the natives; yet more so the multiplicity of sects and their 
internecine warfare. la 1906 there were no less than eighty- 
two distinct societies of divers creeds and practice working in 
China, and all mutually antagonistic. In one matter they were 
united; in hostility to the Catholic Church. The Hie of the 
Protestant missionary also brings religion into contempt. So- 
cial and family cares occupy his attention to the exclusion of 
weightier matters, as a writer ironically remarks: ''The birth 
of a babe excites more interest than the conversion of a 
heathen.*' The married clergyman cannot be expected to in- 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



440 7HE Catholic Church in China [July, 

habit a native house, to sit on the floor, sleep on a mat, eat 
from a plate of plantain leaves, and dispense with the books, 
furniture, musical instruments of his country: there is little 
about him of the grace of self-denial and self-sacrifice, which 
the Chinaman appreciates. Every great religious teacher in 
the East who has made his mark has been a rigid ascetic, and 
celibacy constitutes an important element of self-sacrifice in the 
eyes of the Chinese. '' A priest,*' they have been heard to say, 
'* and yet married I " The Protestant missionary is, moreover, 
often a man of low birth and narrow horizon, who displays 
intolerant scorn of native customs and superstitions, as if he 
imagined the evangelization of an ancient, highly cultivated 
race was to be effected by imperious commands instead of 
tactful prudence and sympathy. " I will have no convert who 
permits his wife to cramp her feet,'* said one; and this speech 
illustrates the mental attitude of the majority. 

All this tends to enhance the contempt and hatred felt for 
the foreigner; but the greatest, most formidable impediment 
to the success of the Catholic missionary Is the unchristian 
lives of the European traders and military officers. The Chi- 
nese, irritated by the offensive airs of patronage and superi- 
ority assumed by these unwelcome invaders of their country, 
exasperated by inexcusable acts of high-handed violence, In^ 
justice, and wrong, see in our efforts to gain a commercial 
footing in China nothing but a lust of gain, a determination 
to exploit the resources of the country for their own enrich- 
ment. As late as 1867 excesses of the most ruthless kind 
were perpetrated in abundance: the Portuguese initiated these 
villainous proceedings and other nations followed. The inter- 
course with these people can scarcely convince the Chinese of 
the doctrines they profess, l^ it has been such,*' says a writer 
on the subject, '' as to store up a fund of the deepest resent- 
ment towards them.'* Can they be expected to feel respect 
for the Christianity which their arrogant oppressors profess, 
by the principles of which they claim to be guided, and which 
so many of their compatriots have come to teach? ''Nay 
more," as the Rev. A. Williamson, a Protestant missionary, 
observes, ''the Chinese are learning evil faster than they are 
learning good. They are adding foreign vices to their own, 
aping foreign free-living and evil habits; in and around our 
centres of commerce they are less honest, less moral, less re- 
ceptive to divine truth than formerly by a long way. From 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9IO.] The Catholic Church in China 441 

contact with draoken sailors, swearing sea-captains, and nn- 
scrupalous traders they constantly learn new lessons in the 
school of duplicity and immorality. Western civilization is 
proving no blessing to the Chinese." And speaking of official 
and military residents Major Knollys (English Life in China, 
i88s) remarks: ''The majority of our countrymen seem to have 
left their religion behind them in England." 

The fact that the Chinese visit on the head of the Catholic 
missionaries the offences of the English and Americans, ac- 
counts for the frequent risings of the natives against them. In 
1891 a serious riot took place in I-chang, when the Jesuit 
mission was burned and the graves violated; two Chinese 
Sisters connected with the mission were accused of drugging 
the children, in order to stupify them and take away speech 
and hearing, that they might steal them and send them to 
Shanghai. The rioters destroyed everything of a foreign nature 
on which they could lay their hands. 

In 1895 there were riots in Sz*Ch'wan. The Catholic 
bishop, after rough handling from the mob, managed to escape. 
Over forty stations were destroyed in that province, the mis- 
sionaries having to fly over mountain passes and untrodden 
paths to find a refuge. " The history of the Tz-Coo Mission," 
says Mr. Cooper (Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce, 1871) 
"may, from the date of its establishment, be traced in the 
blood of numbers of brave and noble-minded priests, who have 
fallen by poison or the knife in the cause of their religion." 
During the Tibetan revolt in 1905 four French priests were 
murdered. 

'' The establishment of an orphanage," says Sir H. R.Douglas 
(Europe and the Fat East, 1904, pp. 134-5), "under the care 
of the Sisters of Mercy at Tientsin, a port opened in 1858 to 
foreign trade, had aroused considerable ill-will on the part of 
the people, who credited the Sisters with the horrors at times 
charged against the missionaries. In 1871 a peculiarly fatal 
epidemic broke out in the orphanage, and the rumor spread 
abroad that the Sisters were murdering their charges whole- 
sale. An angry mob surrounded the house and demanded 
admission. The Sisters invited five individuals to enter and 
inspect the premises. At an ill moment the French Consul 
drove the inspectors out of the building, with the result that 
he and his clerk were beaten to death. The infuriated mob 



Digitized by 



Google 



442 THE CATHOUC CHURCH IN CHINA [July,: 

set fire to the cathedral before wreaking their vengeance oa 
the Sisters, eight of whom were mnrdered; their Superior 
was boand to a post, and the assailants inflicted on her all 
the tortures in which they are so terribly skilled, finally cutting 
her body into small pieces. The remaining Sisters were first 
outraged, then murdered, their home and church set on fire, 
and their mangled bodies thrown into the flames/' 

The story of the Boxer rising in 1900 is too well known 
to need repetition here. It represented the wrath and hatred 
of sixty years' growth. 

The habit of concealment is natural to the Chinese, and 
grievances may exist and grow unsuspected beneath their blank, 
expressionless faces, until some trifle lets loose the storm of 
fury, fed by a thousand mutual misunderstandings and genuine 
causes of complaint. Thus it was in 1900. ^' I think," said 
Mgr. Favier (whose Vicariate was Pe Tche*li, in which Peking 
is situated) to Mrs. Archibald Little,t " 12,000 Christians lost 
their lives in that rising ; three of our European, four Chinese, 
priests, and many of our Sisters. One priest hung on a cruci- 
fix, nailed, for three days before he died.'' Mgr. Hamer, Vicar- 
Apostolic of Mongolia, was delivered over to the mercy of the 
soldiers, who took him for three days in the streets, every- 
body being at liberty to torture him. All his hair was pulled 
out, his nose, fingers, and ears cut off. After this they 
wrapped him in stuff soaked in oil, and hanging him head 
downwards, set fire to his feet. His heart was eaten by two 
beggars." Thirty-four hundred native Christians were beseiged 
in the cathedral and reduced to the starvation point; yet not one 
evinced the slightest disposition to yield to reiterated invita- 
tions to surrender. 

The orphanages, or more strictly asylums, of which there 
are sometimes six or seven in a single mission, managed by 
the members of different religious orders, are for the reception 
of infants who would otherwise be destroyed. Although infanti- 
cide is forbidden by the law, thousands of newly-born babes^ 
almost exclusively girls^are either smothered by their parents 
or exposed in the streets and waysides to perish. Women un- 
blushingly own to having killed four or five of their offspring, 
or even to having buried them alive. 

' A Roman Catholic priest, who had lived twenty-one yeara 

t Round About Uy Pokiui Gardiu, 1905, p. zt. 



If 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] THE Catholic Church in China 445. 

in Peking, told me/' writes Miss Fielde {Pagoda Shadows^ 1890; 
Adele Fielde) '' that daring the year 1882 seven hundred little 
castaway girls had beep gathered np alive from the rats and 
pits of the street, and brought in by the messengers sent oat 
on sach service from the Roman Catholic Foundling Asylum 
of that city ; and that during the previous ten years over eight 
thousand infants had been thus found and sheltered by the 
same institution/* 

Baron Von Htibner, writing in 1871 {A Ramble Round the 
World. Translated by Lady Herbert, Vol. II., p. 197), speaks 
thus of his visit to one of these houses. ''We were taken to 
the orphanage, the Salle d*asile of the babies brought to the 
Sisters by their families or picked up in the street These 
poor little creatures, all girls, who when they arrive are just 
bundles of skin and bone, devoured by vermin, and generally 
full of disease and wounds, are baptized, clothed, their wounds 
dressed, and if they survive, brought up in this house, and 
married to their co-religionists, or else placed as servants in 
Christian families. We went into one of the large rooms. It 
was spacious, beautifully clean, and well ventilated. All along 
the walls are ranged cradles, each containing two children. 
A number of Sisters, leaning over them, were tending them 
with the utmost care. Only yesterday these poor little crea- 
tures were thrown out on a dungheap, left to be devoured by 
pigs, or to expire in a slow and horrible agony; to-day they 
have found mothers, who, to save them, have come from the 
uttermost parts of the earth on the wings of God-like charity." 

The girls remain in the orphanages until their eighteenth 
or twentieth year. The majority marry, and become model 
wives and mothers, edifying all who come in contact with them, 
and handing down to their children the virtues acquired during 
their training by the Sisters. Bridegrooms are not wanting for 
them, because the families of converts have more boys than 
girls. A small number prefer to remain unmarried, to devote 
themselves to the care of the children in the orphanage, and 
when more advanced in age to assist poor and sick women and 
baptize dying children. 

Yet the Sisters — ''foreign barbarians'' — who carry on this 
good work are accused of kidnapping young children to take out 
their hearts and eyes for sale to foreign merchants to make 
chemicals and medicines (Human Publications. Translated 1892). 



Digitized by 



Google 



444 T^^ CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHINA [July. 

Nor are these sttspicions confined to the lower orders. We 
are told that ** the famous General 'Tseng Kwo^Fan was talking 
one day with an English doctor on the subject of this babies* 
eyes fraud, when he suddenly said : ' It is of no use to deny 
it, for I have some of the dried specimens/ and he pulled out 
a packet of gelatine capsules used for covering castor-oil and 
other nauseous drugs/' 

All this hatred, distrust, and persecution is the Nemesis of 
a long course of oppression and unscrupulous injustice on the 
part of Western nations, actuated only by the desire of tem- 
poral advantage. 

Many pages might be filled with the testimony of non- 
Catholics to the work of our missionaries in China. We give 
the two following. Sir Robert Hart, speaking at Leeds, says: 
''The ability, energy, self-denial of the Roman Catholic mis- 
sionaries demands our hearty admiration and attracts our sym- 
pathy. They have done a great work both in spreading the 
knowledge of one God and Savior and in teaching every kind 
of useful knowledge.*' ''The Jesuits," says Professor Parker, 
"who compel veneration and respect in China by the sheer 
force of their erudition and self-denial, have the good sense to 
discern that the Chinese intellect demands their very best men* 
In the province of Kiangnan alone they have nearly four hun- 
dred priests, seminaries, schools, orphanages, two observator- 
ies, a natural history museum, a printing press, workrooms, 
and workshops.'' "The Franciscans," writes Mr. Consul Ala- 
baster, in his report on the trade of Hankow for 1883, "con- 
fine their chief operations to the neighborhood of the port, 
where they now have a strong position ; the prudence of their 
directors, their noble charities avoiding, on the one hand, sources 
of irritation and winning for them the respect and kindly feel- 
ing both of authorities and people." 

The number of Catholic priests in China, as given by Fa- 
ther de Moidrey, SJ., in his report for 1909, is as follows: 
Bishops, 45 ; Priests, European (including about five Americans), 
If 379 ; Priests, Chinese, 63 1. The following statistics on Catholic 
Missions are given by Hilari6n Gil : Missions, 44 ; Seminarists, 
1,215; European Lay Brothers, 229 ; Native Lay Brothers, 130; 
European Nuns, 558; Chinese Nuns, 1,328.* 

* The Catholic Mind, April 8, zqzo. 



Digitized by 



Google 




A DYING MAN'S DIARY. 

EDITED BY W. S. LILLY. 
11. 

first thought, when I fally recovered conscioiiff* 
neaa, was: Would to God that I had never woke 1 
There has been, ever since I knew my fate, 
something hideous about the meeting with each 
succeeding day. Since my engagement to Bea- 
trice her daily letter had been my first care, and my man had 
been in the habit of bringing it to me immediately on the 
arrival of the post This morning I found it by my bedside. 
Haydyn afterwards told me he had brought it as usual at 
eight o'clock but was deterred from waking me, I was so sound 
asleep and looked so worn and ill. Poor little letter, I thought 
as I broke the seal ; the last gleam of sunshine for my heart ; 
the last word of happiness I shall ever listen to. It was as 
all her letters have been : a simple reflection of her pure, true 
soul. My eyes began to fill as I read over the tender, deli- 
cate words. I could picture her so well as she wrote it, her 
slight, graceful figure bending over the writing desk I had given 
her, the smile and blush which succeeded each other on her 
face, her fits of sweet musing between the sentences, for she 
had told me, half-penitently, how she loved to linger out this 
occupation and to fill the morning sometimes with the task of 
half an hour. Then I thought of her as she would be at that 
moment, pale and terror struck, all the sunlight faded from 
her bright face, holding my last letter in her trembling hands. 
My man came in, and I hid my face in the pillows, for I did 
not wish him to see it then. He has lived with me ever since 
I left Oxford, has traveled with me many thousand miles, 
and nursed me in more than one illness. And his faithful 
sagacity divined that something was amiss. He fidgeted about 
the room for some minutes; and then broke out: ''I hope you 
are not ill this morning, sir." I said: ''No, thank you; but 
I am rather tired; I was rather late last night*' He asked 



Digitized by 



Google 



446 A DYING MAN'S DIARY IJulyt 

if he might bring me a cup of tea, to which I assented, glad 
to get him oot of the room. As soon as the door dosed, I 
got up and bathed my face. Why not let him know? I 
thought. He must know soon ; and of what use to put it off ? 
Bat then I reflected, that I had better mature my plans first. 
Determine how and where to spend the short time which re- 
mained to me; then break to him my secret A few months 
— it may be weeks — and more than a fortnight has gone I I 
have no time to lose. I remembered, too, that I had told a 
dozen men last night; an additional reason for speedily resolv- 
ing when and how my short course was to be run. 

Haydyn entered with the tea, and drawing attention to a 
pile of gold which lay on the mantel-piece, said: ''I found 
this in your pocket this morning, sir/' I had forgotten my 
winnings; and now the question was what to do with them. 
Among the follies and vices of my youth, not free from stains, 
gambling was not one. For years I had not touched a card; 
and in the days when I used to play occasionally my gains 
had been so small and unfrequent as never to embarrass me. 
Now there was this considerable sum before me which I had 
not wanted to win; and did not think of keeping. To return 
it to the men from whom I had won it was out of the ques- 
tion. I was at a loss for some minutes what to do with it 
At last I thought of the Mission Church, with its hard worked 
clergy and poor congregation. Yes ; there was the solution of 
the difficulty. I would give it to that work which was sacred 
to me from its slight association with her. I told Haydyn to 
put the money in a bag and take it to one of the clergy of 
the church. I sent with it this note. 

''The donor wishes this money to be employed for pious 
and charitable uses, at the discretion of the clergy of St. — — 
Mission Chapel. He is particularly anxious that his name may 
not be known, and desires that no inquiries may be made re- 
garding him." I gave this to Haydyn to read, reiterating to 
him my desire to remain anonymous. In the course of a few 
hours he returned, bringing me this letter of acknowledgment 
from the Incumbent of the Church: 

** Sir : Allow me, on behalf of myself and my colleagues, 
to thank you for the donation of £l^^ lo o, which we have 
this morning received. We think we shall best fulfill the 
directions you have given regarding its employment, if we de- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] A DYING MAN'S DIARY 447 

vote one-half to the poor ; and one-half to the services of the 
Church. I trust you will allow me to add that we thank God 
for patting it into yoor heart to come to our assistance. The 
distress in this district from sickness, want, and vice is always 
great ; and although the services of one of the mission priests, 
of all the choir, and of the organist, are gratuitously given, 
we have incurred a debt for those small expenses necessarily 
attending our ministry, which, without this providential supply, 
we should not have known how to liquidate. Your wish to 
remain anonymous will, of course, be respected by us; but in 
our solemn acts of intercession with Him from Whom no 
secrets are hid you will not be forgotten. Finally, I trust you 
will permit me to say that if, at any time, our office and 
ministry should be needed by you, we trust you will not for- 
get that you have a claim on us of which we shall be gladly 
reminded/' There was something about this letter which 
struck me as familiar and I asked Haydyn what the clergy- 
man who had given it to him was like. From his description 
I thought the writer must have been the man whom I heard 
preach last night. And there is something in the tone of the 
letter which recalls his sermon to me. 

And now let me think of my brief future. I have never 
kept a diary or been accustomed to record my own thoughts 
and feelings, except in the few notices of them which might 
find their way into my letters to my few correspondents. But 
it has been a relief to me since I began to write these sheets, 
I feel less alone with my terrible secret since I have en- 
trusted it to these mute confidants. I think I shall persevere 
with it This record of what I have suffered will have an in- 
terest for one or two when I am gone. What to do? One 
thing only seems clear to me. I must not see her except once, 
perhaps at the very last, if I am to play my short part man- 
fully. I shall better reconcile myself to the thought of losing 
her, if I thus anticipate the separation. And it will be better 
for her ; I know her heart is mine, and the sight of me, sink- 
ing day by day, would wring it as nothing else can. But the 
temptation to go to her will be very strong at times; and 
perhaps my will may weaken as my physical strength declines. 
I think it will be safest for me to leave England. Yes; that 
will be best I will go to Italy. My brother Henry, I know, 
will come out with me and I ought to be with him. I should 



Digitized by 



Google 



443 A DYING MAN'S DIARY [July, 

like before I die to see the grave of the poet whose namet 
like mine, was writ in water ; and to stand by the spot where 
the heart of Shelley lies. Perhaps, too, among the desolate 
ruins of the Imperial City, the dust and embers of a dead 
world, I may learn the pettiness of my own griefs; standing 
on the land of the stern old Roman philosopher I may, per- 
haps, catch something of his spirit and learn to estimate justly 
the insignificance of my worthless life. And yet it is not 
worthless, for it is consecrated to her. If it were not for that I 

December 30. 
This morning I saw her brother. I was sitting over my 
fire, my face buried in my hands, a position in which I pass 
many hours daily, thinking. There was a knock at my door 
and Charles B-^— came in. I ought to have expected him, 
for I had asked her to send him to me; but I had forgotten 
it, and I started in surprise when I saw him. He wrung my 
hand and stood silent for a long time, turning his face to the 
fire. I was very calm; sorrow for his distress, I think, was 
the uppermost feeling in my mind. At last he broke out with 
a sob : ^* God help you, old fellow I I don*t know what to 
say to you." I said: ''Sit down, Charles, and tell me about 
her. There is not much to be said about me. I have had 
time to think it over, and I hope I shall bear it like a man. 
But tell me about her." He sat down and it was some min- 
utes before he could trust himself to speak. I poured him 
out a liqueur glass of brandy and made him drink it. Then 
I said again: ''Don't think about me, Charles, but about her. 
We must do all we can to help her bear it. She showed you 
my letter?'' "Yes''; he replied, "I read it yesterday. She 
got it as usual, at about ten o'clock, and went up to her own 
room to read it. At luncheon time she had not come down, 
and we sent up for her; when her maid came into the room 
looking very frightened, and told us she feared her mistress 
was ill. She was deadly pale, the girl said, and was sitting 
before her toilet table looking at a letter. I rushed up to her 
room, and found her as the maid had told me. I took her 
hand and asked her what was the matter. She did not answer 
me for a minute; and when I repeated my question she put 
your letter before me. She watched me narrowly as I read it. 
I suppose my face must have shown how shocked I was; for 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAN^S DIARY 449 

before I had finished it she cried, in a tone I shall never for* . 
get: 'It is true, then/ and fainted away. It was a very long 
time before she recovered consciousness; and then she was in 
a high fever. We got her to bed, where she has been ever 
since, my mother watching over her. She does nothing but 
moan and murmur your name, poor child/' 

I heard him in silence. Then I said : '^ Have you told me 
all?'' *'Yes"; he replied, ''all; the doctor has been to see 
her three times. He says there is no occasion for alarm; be 
tells us to keep her perfectly quiet and make her take a little 
nourishment from time to time, and leave the rest to nature." 
We did not talk much more. My mind was full of the sad* 
dest thoughts. I tried to think the worst was over for her; 
but I knew that the long days of bitter, hopeless anguish 
which awaited her would be far harder to bear than that first 
outburst of passionate grief. Charles B spoke a few dis- 

connected words of sympathy. I wrung his hand, but found 
nothing to say in reply to them. At last his presence grew 
intolerable to me; and I asked him to leave me and go to 
her. "You may be of use there," I added, "and you will 
telegraph to me this evening about her/' He promised to do 
so, and to conceal nothing. When he had quitted the room, 
I locked the door and threw myself on my knees in a passion 
of weeping : " O God I help her to bear it," I said over and 
over again. At last the evening closed in. Haydyn came for 
orders. I unlocked the door, glad that the darkness concealed 
my face, dismissed him, lighted my candles, and sat down to 
write this. He has just come again with this telegram from 

Charles B : "B— « had a great fit of sobbing at four 

o'clock which quite exhausted her ; she is now sleeping quietly. 
The doctor says she will be better to-morrow. Will telegraph 
again in the morning." Poor child, I would sacrifice half my 
remaining days to procure her a quiet rest to-night. I could 
not stay in my rooms, so I dressed and went to The Travel- 
ers to dine. 

December 31. 

I dined at The Travelers last night, in a corner alone, and 
was thoroughly exhausted when I came back here. I slept as 
I have not done for three weeks. It was eight o'clock when 
I woke this morning from dreams that were too happy. For 
in sleep I am never conscious of my misery. I see her face 
vou xci.— 29 



Digitized by 



Google 



450 A DYING MAN'S DIARY [July, 

much more plainly than I can in my waking moments, and see 
it witbont a pang. I have found in my own experiences . the 
truth of Sir Thomas Brown's saying that we with difficulty 
recall to our minds the features of those we best love. Even 
with her picture before me, I can but dimly image forth that 
slight, small figure and that delicately shaped head, with its 
massive coronet of golden hair. But in my sleep I touch her 
hand and hear her soft low voice, and rejoice in the subtle 
grace of her presence, as really as when I am with her in 
the external world. And herein I try to take comfort. If, 
as the poet teaches, death is sleep's brother, may not this 
happiness be continued to me when I am gone hence? I 
think I should be almost content to die, if I could be sure 
that I should dream of her in my grave. 

And she I what will become of her ? I have tried to think 
that out. Poor child, her young, fresh heart is smitten down, 
and pierced through and through. But will not time heal it? 
God knows I trust it will without the least reserve of selfish 
feeling. And yet it is hard to think of another being to her 
all I have been — and more! Still I would have it so. Ah, 
how cruel she would think it, if she could read these lines; 
and yet, if you ever see these lines, dearest, believe me, my 
heart was never more brimful of love for you than at the mo- 
ment when I wrote them. 

While I was dressing this morning I got this telegram from 
Charles B-^— : ** Beatrice passed a good night. This morning 
she is free from fever, though weak. She is very pale and 
worn, but is quite composed. Dr. S— says she is much bet- 
ter and wishes her to get up and go on the lawn for an hour 
in the afternoon. Will telegraph again in the evening and will 
come up to-morrow.'' I read the telegram with a feeling of 
sad relief, and sat down to follow out the thoughts it aroused 
in me. What a multitude of memories those words, ''the 
lawn," presented to me: the rosebeds amongst which she loved 
to linger; the rivulet which has so often reflected our forms, 
blending them in a sweet indistinctness that I loved to watch, 
and to point out to her as an emblem of our future lives; the 
long, broad expanse of velvety turf which seemed to bound 
in gladness under the pressure of her little feet; and, dearer 
than all, the spreading beech, with its rustic seat, where we 
have passed bo many hours reading or talking, or in sweet, 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAN'S DIARY 451 

silent thought, broken oftener by looks than words. One day 
of transcendent happiness came back to me with startling viv- 
idness. She had been reading to me from her copy of Petrarch. 
I well remember the sonnet and how every fibre of my heart 
thrilled as her clear, silvery voice brought out all the delicate 
music of the verses, whose full meaning she hardly grasps per- 
haps. Then, she confessed to me, with many a blush and pretty 
hesitation, that she had herself written some sonnets: I must 
not criticise them too harshly as, although she had lived so 
long in Italy, she was not apt at acquiring languages. She 
would not read them to me ; but she was curious to hear how 
they sounded when read ; she had shown them to no one else; 
I must read them aloud. How well I remember every line; 
but I will not write them here — no eye but mine has seen them ; 
the sweet melody of their rhythm, the simple grace and quiet 
refinement of their thoughts, are pictures of that sweet soul 
revealed only to me, and to be treasured up among my most 
sacred possessions until death tears them from me« They pleased 
her no longer, she said ; girlish fancies about birds and flowers 
and pictures, when she had hardly known that there was any- 
thing dearer in life. Did any man ever hear a sweeter confes- 
sion from the woman he loved? I thought, too, of another 
day, when in that same hallowed spot she put into my hand 
a little locked volume, and its key. It was the book in which 
she had recorded from time to time her thoughts since she was 
sixteen, she told me. It had been to her as a confessor, she 
said; all her grave faults had been faithfully written down; 
all her troubles and all her happiness — no, not all her happi- 
ness, she added softly; that would be impossible; no, I was 
not to look at it then. I might keep it until — until she asked 
me for it. She should not Write in it any more, for I had said 
hard things about journals and diaries. How I have treasured 
that book; how I have pondered over the sweet secrets of 
that pure soul so unreservedly confided to me. As I thought 
of these things I rose to draw it from its hiding place and my 
eye fell upon the telegram which recalled me to the bitter 
present. I had for a while forgotten the hours had crept on 
with their relentless pace as I had been lost in my reveries, 
the afternoon had come; and I pictured her, pale and worn, 
the happy light extinct in her eyes, walking wearily on the 
spot where my fancy had been dwelling. And that was what 



Digitized by 



Google 



452 A DYING MAN'S DIARY [July, 

our love had come to I Was it too great for earth ? So near 
an approach to heavenly happiness as to provoke God's jeal- 
ousy ? I took her book in my hands. The figure of the cross 
on its cover seemed to answer my thought. But I could not 
endure the answer. I laid it down with a bitter curse in my 
heart, which only my reverence for her banished from my 
tongue. 

January i. 
I went to bed last night thinking of the letter from Bea- 
trice, which I felt sure the morning would bring me. I lay 
awake for many hours in the dull pain of hopeless expecta- 
tion. I thought of those words of Keats: 

''To know the pain and feel it, 
When there is none to heal it. 
Nor numb&d sense to steal it I" 

and the sad refrain kept echoing in my ears, banishing the 
sleep which I badly needed. For already I beg^n to feel physi- 
cally weaker; partly, no doubt, from the exhausting effects of 
the violent emotions I have undergone during the last weeks ; 
and partly, I think, from the progress of the disease. It was 
almost morning when I sunk into a heavy, unrefreshlng slum- 
ber ; and as the clock struck seven I awoke again ; I think no 
hour ever felt so long to any man as the next Eight o'clock 
struck and Haydyn came into my* room : I saw nothing but 
the letter which he held in his hand. I turned it over and 
over before I opened it. The address in her fine, delicately 
shaped handwriting seemed strangely familiar, and yet when I 
looked at it a little closer I thought I saw that her hand must 
have trembled as she wrote it. At last I broke the seal and 
read it. It was six hours ago : and it has hardly left my hand 
since. Every word of it is graven on my memory as in letters 
of fire. It gives me a strange pleasure to write it down here : 
Noble heart I Did ever man win such a treasure before ? 

''My own dearest Arthur: I have been very ill, else I 
think I should have found it hard to obey you and to keep silence 
for two days. Now I am strong enough to write, and, oh I 
how much I have to say to youi But I am glad that I have 
not been able to write before, for it has given me the more 
time to think and to pray, with your last sad letter before me. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAN'S DIARY 453 

It is very hard for me to lay aside the reserve of my sex and 
say what I am going to say to you; and if I had not sought 
for help, where I know it is always to be found, I could not 
summon up courage to ask you what I am going to ask you. 
But I have tried so hard to forget myself; not to think about 
my loss, but about you only; and would He to Whom I have 
looked for guidance, and Who has never failed those who put 
their trust in Him, let me do wrong ? Arthur, dear Arthur, I 
want our engagement not to be broken off. I want our wed- 
ding on the day it was fixed for. I do not want to give you 
up, darling, until death claims you for God. Why should not 
you be mine till then? If, indeed, the doctors are right, and 
He, in His infinite goodness, will call you so soon, may He 
help us to bow our heads and worship I But why should I 
not be your wife? Can any one be to you what I will be? 
Is it not the special mission of us women to nurse the sick 
and tend the djring ? Can there be any mitigation of my loss 
like the thought that I have been with you all through your 
weakness and sufferings? Ah, dearest Arthur, do think of 
me ; if you are to be taken away from me, and as you say the 
future we had planned is an empty dream, what comfort can 
there be to me like the recollection that I have been all I can 
to you; and have gone hand in hand with you to the very 
margin of the great river which I hope it is not wrong to 
wish to cross very soon after you? Ah, you won't deny me 
this poor consolation : your name and the thought that I have 
ministered to you, as no one but a wife can, for a few short 
months. Think, too, dearest Arthur, is it not my duty ? I 
would not ask you, if it were only my love for you which 
prompted me. But would it not be base indeed of me to leave 
you when you most want me? Ah, do not make me do 
wrong; and it would be wrong and cowardly to desert you. 
Dear, dear Arthur, do not reject me; I have tried to make 
you know me fully since we were engaged ; and have you not 
told me how astonished you were at the deep determination 
which you found under my quiet manner? Will you not be- 
lieve me then when I tell you that my future, so far as the 
world goes, is inseparably bound up with you ? This is no 
rhapsody of a girl of nineteen, but the quiet resolve of a wo* 
man whose heart has been given to you once for all, and who 
has oldened by many years in the last two days. If God takes 



Digitized by 



Google 



4S4 A DYING MAN'S DIARY [July, 

you away from mt^ I shall go into a sisterhood, and devote 
my days until He calls me, too, to Him and His poor. Yes; 
my future in the world is limited by yours. Why should we 
not spend it together? If you think of me, will not the re- 
membrance of our short wedded life be my most precious 
treasure ? And if I think of you, who can be to you what I will 
be? 

''I have shown this to my mother. How good she has 
been to me ! She said : ' I cannot say you are wrong, Bea- 
trice.' No; I am not wrong; for I am not only following the 
dictates of my heart, but I have had counsel of Him Who is 
greater than our hearts and knoweth all things. Surely He 
would not forsake me in this greatest need. Dearest Arthur, 
do not let a false dignity stand in your way. Do you not love 
me well enough to sacrifice that for me ? May God bless and 
comfort you is my prayer day and night. Before I wrote 
this letter I took up my prayer-book and I came upon these 
words : ' My heart and my flesh faileth ; but God is the strength 
of my heart and my portion forever.' Will you think of them 
sometimes, for my sake? You are much wiser than I am^ 
and it is not for me to try to teach you, but when I read 
those words I thought I must tell them to you. Dearest 
Arthur, I must not sit at my desk any more to-day, for I am 
not strong yet and my mother is very anxious about me. But 
I must write one last word. I love you more than ever, for I 
feel that yen have more need of my love now.'* 

I was sitting thinking over this letter, in a passion of ten- 
derness and regret, when Charles B-^— came in. Beatrice 
was better, he told me ; she had been quite composed since she 
wrote to me yesterday, and had returned to the usual habits 
of her life. I asked him if he had heard anything of the con- 
tents of the letter ? '^ No '' ; he replied. He could only guess 
from a little talk he had had with Beatrice. " She had said 
nothing but death should take you from her; that she should 
be more to you instead of less now.'' I put the letter into his 
hands and bade him read it. He read it twice in silence, and 
then gave it back to me, saying only : '' Poor child 1 " 
''Child!" I replied, ''she is a heroine of love and pity. 
There is none like her, none." I do not think we spoke again 
for half-an-hour. Then I said : " Charles, I must inflict another 
wound upon that noble heart. I must write to-day — what a way 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DYING MAlTS DIARY 455 

of beginning the New Year — and tell her that I cannot accept 
the sacrifice she would make. You must try to comfort her. 
You must tell her that I should be base indeed and unworthy 
of her, if I for one moment hesitated about that.'' He wrung 
my hand and said: ''I know, I know; but it will be a terri- 
ble blow to her.'' By a great effort I changed the conversa- 
tion and began to tell him about my plans. Fortunately he 
had recently returned from traveling in Italy, and could help 
me to settle my route. When did I think of coming back ? 
he asked. I told him not until I felt the end approaching 
'' Then I should return to see her once more before I am laid 
in the quiet country church where my ancestors are sleeping." 
The conversation then flowed back to the old channel; and 
gradually ceased. He went away at last promising, what I 
know it was superfluous to ask, that he would be everything he 
could be to Beatripe; and would write to me constantly of 
her. And now I must write to her my last letter perhaps. I 
shall tell her all that is in my heart about her if I can. Poor 
heart — the cause of all my misery. How odd it feels now; 
and I am so drowsy. I must put this aside and lie down. 

(He never rose again. His faithful servant, coming into 
the room, found him on the sofa, dead.) 

NOTB.— This profoundly interesting document— " A Dying Man's Diary "—teaches, it 
seems to us, a great Catholic lesson. A brave and honorable man, but one who was void of 
religious faith, was utterly overwhelmed by the evil tidings of his approaching death in cir^ 
cumstances which, indeed, were most tragic One cannot but help think how differently those 
same tidings would have affected him bad he been a Catholic. Even a lax and worldly one 
would have foimd in such a great tribulation an anchor of the soul sure and steadfast. And 
the lesson is brought out the more clearly because of the magnificent way in which she whom 
he loved, and who loved him, met, by reason of her Christian faith, the terrible trial. The 
woman eventually became a Catholie and later a nun. Her death has made possible the 
publication of this unique diary.— [Editor C. W.] 



Digitized by 



Google 




A DAUGHTER OF VENICE. 

BY AN IRISH URSULINE. 

I.— INTRODUCTORY. 

" There is a glorious city in the sea : 

The sea is in the broad the narrow straits. 
Ebbing and flowing ; and the salt leaweedj 
Clings to the marble of her palaces.'* 

^VER fourteen hundred years have passed away 
since fierce hordes of Visigoths and Huns, 
sweeping over Venetia, as the Northern part of 
Italy was then named, made the terrified in- 
habitants fly before them and take refnge in the 
islands of the Lagoons of the Adriatic. Numbers of the fugi- 
tives settled in the Rialto, where they founded a small repub- 
lic governed by ten tribunes. Here a populous dty rose up, 
as if by magic, and, extending gradually over seventy- two 
islands, became, in course of time, the historic, poetic, and 
artistic Venice, the ''Bride of the Sea,*' the aspect of which 
is stately and magnificent 

Its great school of painting, which holds the first place 
among the schools of the world for the brilliancy and har- 
mony of its coloring, had its origin in the sixth century 
through the Greek mosaics of Grado and Torcello. The most 
ancient pictorial relics within the ancient territory of the 
Doges, are preserved at Verona, in the subterranean chambers 
of the nunnery of Santi Nazario e Celso. The symbols, the 
attitudes, the drapery, the touch and manipulation indicate 
that they are the works of foreign masters produced before 
the initiation of native art. Five centuries later, in 1070, the 
Doge Selvo brought mosaic workers from Greece to adorn the 
Church of St. Mark. This magnificent cathedral, which is a 
singular but brilliant combination of the Gothic and Oriental 
styles of architecture, occupies one side of the historic square. 
The famous bronze horses^ obtained as plunder at the siege of 
Constantinople during the fourth Crusade, stand on pillars in 
front of the great entrance where, over elaborately ornamented 
pedestals, three gonfalons of silk and gold once waved to the 
breeze, symbolizing the triple dominions of the Republic 
Venice, Cyprus, and the Morea. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 45 

The special emblem of the Evangelist^ the winged lion, is 
actilptared on the fa9ade of this famous building, and also 
stands on a pillar of classic beauty near the entrance of the 
piazza which bears the saint's name. This world-renowned 
republic having, in the thirteenth. century, reached the highest 
point of glory, power, and warlike prowess, the Byzantine 
Empire became subject to it when in 1204 the Doge, Enrico 
Dandolo, conquered Constantinople. Then Venice was flooded 
with Byzantine artists, under whose influence and teaching its 
school of painting progressed so rapidly that, when Jacopo 
Bellini and his sons. Gentile and Giovanni, came from Padua 
and settled down near the Rialto, the day of ''the city of the 
lion,'' as one of the great centres of Italian art, bad dawned. 
About the middle of the fifteenth century Bellini's little work- 
shop began to produce altar pieces and other sacred pictures, 
and his sons were employed in the decoration of the hall of 
the Consiglio Maggiore. 

Antonello da Massina, who had got possession of the secret 
method of the Brothers Van Eyck, the inventors of painting 
in oils, came to Venice in 1473, and the first canvas of the 
Sicilian was a revelation and a subject of wonder for the 
painter brotherhoods. On the scaffoldings and in the hall of 
the Palazzo, which they were beautifying with their artisti- 
cally conceived and dashingly executed frescoes, a wave of 
excitement and a tempest of debate would run round, as they 
discussed the new medium, even for them an unsolved mys- 
tery. The story goes that Giovanni Bellini, disguising himself 
as a man of noble birth, commissioned the 'unsuspecting An- 
tonello to paint his portrait and, observing every movement 
of his hand, saw him dip his brush from time to time in 
''oil" and soon the new method was taught in the school of 
the Bellini. Here a large number of students were trained, 
one of the most distinguished being Vittore Carpaccio, the poet 
historian of art, whose pictures, illustrating the life and mar- 
tyrdom of St. Ursula, the royal Irish virgin martyr, rank as 
one of the noblest series of medieval painting. The ideal 
beauty of the pictorial scene which repf esents the young Celtic 
princess lying in ecstatic repose with her protecting angel 
hovering near is, according to many competent judges, the 
loveliest conception that ever came from the mind of man. 

The years sped on, the great work progressed and, about 
the year 1500, the golden period of the Venetian school corn- 



Digitized by 



Google 



458 A DAUGHTER OF VENICE [July, 

menced. It was initiated and carried on by Tiziano Vecellio 
da Cadore, of whom we learn from the traditions of his race, 
that, while yet an infant, he foretold his fame as a colorist by 
attempting to paint a picture of the Madonna with the juice 
of brilliantly colored flowers.. When a boy of nine, his father 
Gregorio Vecellio, took him from Cadore to Venice and placed 
him in the school of Sebastiano Zuccato. He changed later to 
that of Bellini, where he and Giorgione, then aged respec* 
tively i8 and 19, worked side by side. In 15 16 he finished 
his Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a picture of dazzling 
splendor. At the time he executed this glorious masterpiece, 
his future pupil, Tintoretto, was four years old. 

11.— MARIETTA'S MISSION. 

Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when our 
little story opens, the power, wealth, medieval grandeur, and 
artistic fame of the world-renowned republic had attained its 
zenith. There, in these far*away days, close to the Church of 
Santa Maria dell' Orto, stood a house, on the front of which 
long stripes of red, green, blue, and yellow announced in mute 
but expressive language: *' Dyeing done here." The absence 
of the piece of colored cloth usually hung out as a sign, the 
silence which reigned within and around, the long unused boil- 
ers, turned upside down on the flagged yard at the back, told 
plainly that the colored ensigns had lost their meaning and 
that '* Dyeing was no longer done there.'' 

In one of the deserted workshops, on the wall of which 
was inscribed: ** II disegno di Michel Agnolo; il colorito di 
Tiziano!* a tall, powerfully built man stood, with palette and 
brush, before an easel on which was a work of art, glowing 
with the unsurpassed coloring of the Venetian school, softened 
by blue or ash-colored tints, which added to the effect of the 
Chiaroscuro. The artist, whose brush, wielded by a skillful 
hand, passed rapidly over the canvas, blending, harmonizing, 
softening, and retouching the lights and shadows of his master- 
piece, was Jacopo Robusti, the dyer's son, known to the world 
as Tintoretto. His father, seeing him when a little boy daub- 
ing the workshop colors on the walls at every vacant spot, 
judged that it would be unwise to oppose so strong a natural 
impulse and procured him a place among the pupils of Titian. 

An ideal Venetian of the sixteenth century in his imper« 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 459 

iou8 independence and resolution to recognize no master, be 
threw himself into his work with a fierce energy which earned 
for him, from the society of artists of Saint Roch, the title of 
21 Furioso. Ridolfi's estimate of his genius is : '' No one of all 
our painters stands out of the canvas like the dyer's son ; 
robust as his name; a true type of his indomitable race,'* In 
truth, the wonderful sweep and grandeur which his contem- 
poraries called Stravagantit the lavish power with which he 
treated every subject, cannot fail to excite admiration and 
wonder. At the time this little sketch treats of he had lost 
his wife, who left him two children, a son named Domenico 
and a daughter named Marietta, both of whom had been 
tenderly cared for by his aged mother. 

A glorious Italian day was drawing to its close; the sun 
was setting behind the Lagoon, its fading rays flooding the 
canals, the ancient historic buildings, the stately churches in 
rich crimson light. 

The silence was suddenly broken by the soft, harmonious 
chiming of the bells ringing out the evening Angelus. As the 
melodious sounds floated over the city, the master devoutly 
bent his knee, made the sign of salvation, and recited aloud: 
** Ang$lus Domini nunciavit Maria^ $t conapit de Spiritu Sancto** 
etc. Then, rising, he stepped back a little from his canvas, 
passed a critical glance over the result of his day's work, put 
palette and brushes aside, and, remembering that the next day, 
being the eve of the great feast of the Ascension, should be 
devoted to preparation for the espousals of the city with the 
Adriatic, placed his unfinished picture behind a screen, until 
he should be able to resume his work. Then, passing quickly 
out into the garden attached to the house, he advanced to- 
wards the entrance gate with his quick, firm step, as a vener- 
able and picturesquely clad old Venetian dame came in by it. 

Taking her wrinkled hand in his he said lovingly and gen- 
tly: ''Lean on me, Mother, you seem weary." 

''Not weary, my son," she answered, "but anxious — yes, 
anxious and troubled about our beloved children, Domenico and 
MarietU." 

"Troubled about our children^ Mother, may I ask why?" 

" Ah, my son, you are so occupied with your dyeing that 
you do not notice what goes on even in your own house." 

" Occupied with my dyeing I " exclaimed the Tintoretto, 
drawing himself up proudly, " though you are the widow of a 



Digitized by 



Google 



46o A DAUGHTER OF VENICE [July, 

dyer, remember you are the mother of the painter, Signor 
Jacopo Robust! — the Tintoretto/' 

** The Tintoretto, the Tintoretto/' she repeated, leaning lov- 
ingly on the strong arm, ''and what does that name recall? 
Were yoo not, in the bygone happy days, the sturdy little boy 
who toddled about the workshops and beautified the walls here, 
there, and everywhere with the dyer's colors ? Tintoretto, the 
little dyer—" 

** Yes, yes, Mctdre mia " / he answered tenderly, as the mem- 
ory of her devoted love and care came back to him, '* for you 
I am always the little dyer, the son of Jacopo Robusti, // Tin* 
ton. And now, tell me, what makes you anxious about our 
children?" 

'' Figlio miOf I am haunted by the look of care on the beau- 
tiful face of our Marietta, and by the change in the appearance 
of Domenico, The boy is much altered and not for the better ; 
he no longer gives me his love and confidence. Then I can 
never find him in his workshop, which is always locked, and 
when I knock at the door he does not answer me/' 

''Ah, you do not know what it means to be an artist; he 
does not answer you, because a true artist becomes absorbed 
and lost in his work, and hears nothing of what goes on around 
him. Domenico is my pride and my joy and, like myself, sets 
up as his standard and watchword: 'The design of Michel 
Angelo, the coloring of Titian.' Have you seen his last pic« 
ture, which the canons of San' Ambrogio have ordered for 
their Church of Santa Maria dell' Orto ? " 

" How could I see it, Jacopo, I who never see himself ? 
The boy is never at home I" 

"That is to say. Mother, he never stirs from his work. I 
rather approve of that habit of his of locking himself in his 
studio ; it prevents his being interrupted. My Domenico, before 
many years pass away, will stand forth as one of the greatest 
masters of our famous school, and hold one of the first places 
among the colorists of the world I " 

The devoted mother, now remaining silent, bowed her aged 
head and leant more lovingly and trustfully on the strong arm 
of her son. As they moved on slowly towards the entrance 
of the dyer's house, Tintoretto said : " Where is Marietta ? 
Why is she not here?" 
She is out, Jacopo." 

'Out at supper time? This is constantly happening, and 



ff 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9IO.] A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 461 

is one of my caoses of dissatisfaction. I have no time to watch 
over her and I confide her to yonr care. Where is she?'* 

''Your daughter does not require to be watched over by 
us ; she is an angel and the heavenly spirits protect and guard 
her I " 

As she gave utterance to this consoling thought, the garden 
gate opened again and admitted a vision of medieval beauty, 
gracefulness, and dignity. It was a young girl of madonna- 
like loveliness whom they both now advanced to meet. Her 
rich brown hair, fastened up by pins of gold, left the snow 
white forehead bare on which were written, in unmistakable 
characters, the innocence and modesty of a privileged soul. 
Long lashes veiled the lustrous beauty of her dark Italian eyes, 
which had a far-away look, telling of high and holy aspirations 
that lift the mind above the passing things of earth and make 
it wander into the mystic regions of exalted conception and 
artistic idealism 1 Her features, perfect in outline, were devoid 
of the downy freshness of youth ; could it be some secret sor- 
row that banished the rosy tint of girlhood from the soft, snow- 
white cheek? 

** Marietta,'* said the Tintoretto, *' where have you been all 
the afternoon?*' 

** At the Grimani Palace, Father," she answered. 

" Marietta, Marietta," said Jacopo, as the three walked into 
the supper*room, ** you are no longer the little child whom the 
kind, motherly countess petted, caressed, and supplied with 
sweets and tojrs— you will soon arrive at the marriageable age, 
and her eldest son, Masino Grimani, is a youth of twenty." 

''And what objection have you to all that, my son?" in- 
terrupted the old lady as she seated herself at the table. '' If 
the young count admires our child and appreciates her worth, 
why should she not become the Countess Masino Grimani ? " 

''Certainly, if God so wills it," replied the master; "but I 
give the preference to one of her own rank, who would not 
be ashamed to call the dyer's son. Father, and who would not 
look down on her grandmother. We must not aspire above 
our station in life. Mother." 

" We are not forbidden to rise, Jacopo." 

"No, undoubtedly, provided we rise by talent and good 
conduct." 

"Does talent give us the entrance into higher society, my 
son? Have you been ennobled?" 



Digitized by 



Google 



463 A DAUGHTER OF VENICE [July, 

The young girly fixing her eyes lovingly on the solemn, 
bearded face of her sire, now exclaimed : '' Oh, Grandmother, 
how can you, the mother of the Tintoretto, speak so ? Venice 
is proud of my father and rejoices that she can number him 
among her most illustrious sons. Has he not that true no- 
bility which is derived from artistic genius and daily increasing 
fame ? What title of Count, Marquis, or Prince, can rank with 
that of the Tintoretto ? ** 

'* Ah, my little one,'' said the aged dame," you have spoken 
the truth; who, indeed, holds a higher place in the esteem of 
our fellow- townsmen than my little dyer? And yet he will 
never get beyond dyeing, even though he should paint angels, 
saints, apostles, kings, queens, doges, gondoliers, and all the 
rest of them I He will always be grinding colors like my poor 
dear husband — my poor — dear — Robusti." 

'*Oh, I beg of you, dear Granny, let us talk no more of 
painting and dyeing I " 

''You are right. Marietta,'' again responded the old lady, 
'' What I want now to speak of is a very different subject in- 
deed. I am anxious to know where your brother is; as I 
passed his workshop about midday, I happened to look in; he 
was not there, neither could I see any signs of recent work; 
do you know anything of his movements ? " 

As this question was addressed to her the lovely girl's pal- 
lor increased, and she answered in a broken, hesitating voice: 
''You must not be displeased with Domenico; this morning 
several of his young comrades called and asked him to help 
them with some decorations they are putting up on the Riva; 
remember the feast of the great ceremony of the Espousals 
draws near." 

"True, true, my child," exclaimed the Tintoretto, "and I 
too must now go to the artists' reunion to arrange all about 
the part we are to take in the glorious pageant." 

So saying, he rose from the table, fixed his eyes lovingly 
on the queen-like face of his daughter, and, hastening to the 
canal, was soon being swiftly carried in a gondola towards the 
meeting place of the artists of St. Roch. When alone with 
Marietta, Signora Robusti again tried to make out the truth 
about her grandson, but the faithful sister skillfully shielded 
him, and finally succeeded in turning the conversation to other 
topics. 

The splemn striking of the great clock of St. Mark's now 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 463 

resounded over the city that lay bathed in soft nioonlighti and 
Marietta! putting her arm lovingly round Dame Robusti, said : 
^'This is your hour for retiring. Grandmother, come to your 
room, you must be tired; I will wait up for Father/' 

Next morning, before the sun had risen and while all was 
still silent in the dyer's house, the door of one of the rooms 
gently opened and Marietta, stepping noiselessly down the 
stairs, stood in the hall listening anxiously. 

'' Not a sound," she murmured, *^ alas 1 he has not returned ; 
for the whole night I have watched and waited in vain. Brother, 
Brother, how sadly you are to blame I '' 

Advancing to the entrance door, she opened it cautiously 
and darted into the street. Hastening onwards she came to 
the Church of St. Mark, knelt at the closed door in fervent 
supplication for help and guidance, then hurried in the direc- 
tioQ of the canal, on the bank of which she stood, and, lifting 
her eyes heavenwards, sent up the cry of her stricken heart 
to Him who alone could help her. A gondola approached the 
landing place — a well-known voice fell upon her ear^ — a tall, 
handsome youth walked towards her. 

** Domenico I '' she cried. What tender reproach in that one 
word. 

''I kown all you have to say. Sister,'' he replied, hanging 
his head in shame. "I am a ne'er-do-well — a good-for-noth- 
ing-a-" 

''You are worse than all that, you are a bad, ungrateful 
son, an unkind, heartless brother. You, so gifted, so clever — 
you, of whom poor deluded Father is so proud — go on day 
after day deceiving him; you, who might rise to be one of 
the great masters of Venice, whose name might go down to 
posterity surrounded by a halo of glory equal to that of Titian 
or Tintoretto, abuse your gifts, bury your talents, and devote 
the precious days of youth to frivolous and degrading pleas- 
ure." 

The young man shuddered, passed his hand over his 
fevered brow, and tried to speak, but the devoted sister, put- 
ting her hand on his shoulder, said: *'Come« come, Domenico, 
we must hasten home now and you must get up to your studio 
before Father leaves his room." 

Then, linking her arm in his, she hurried him past the 
grand fa9ade of the church, from which the winged lion seemed 
to look down on the erring one in mute disapproval. 



|fed by Google 



Digitize! by 



464 A Daughter of Venice [Joly, 

III.— THE ESPOUSALS. 

At dawn of day on the feast of the Ascension, 1554, the 
chiming of the joy bells from the spires and towers of the 
dttcal city filled the air with melody which, passing [over the 
still waters, lingered round the distant shores, and woke magic 
echoes in the pine and olive groves of the islands of the La* 
goon« The sacred edifices were thronged from an early hour 
with devout worshippers who assisted at the High Masses 
which were celebrated with the utmost pomp and ceremony. 
As the day went on^ the sun poured down its golden rays on 
a scene of ideal beauty and joy. A fleet of gondolas, steered 
so skillfully that they seemed to glide and turn at will, their 
steel prows flashing in the sun and their keels silently tracing 
a line of pearl over the bright green waters, swept along the 
walls of marble fa9aded palaces, the names and artistically 
carved heraldic achievements of which recalled golden memories 
of the past. 

At the traditional hour the reigning Doge, Francesco Donate, 
in all the pomp and state of his exalted office, invested, like 
the ancient Spartan monarchs, with the majesty of a king and 
the power and liberty of a citizeni rode down in the splendid- 
ly decorated ''Bucine d'Oro'' to the Lido. There he stood 
on the deck in all the glory of the historic robes of office, the 
state umbrella over his head, surroundered by his court and by 
the Knights of the Venetian military order, distinguished by 
the brilliant star of twelve points, their symbolic device. 

Down the Riva were ranged in order: the ecclesiastical 
dignitaries and clergy, in a barge covered with cloth of gold 
and in all the glory of their sacred vestments. Then came the 
noble inheritors of great names, among whom could be num- 
bered the Michieli, descendants of the conqueror of Tyre, who, 
in the day of triumph, displayed on the ramparts of the fallen 
city the Banner of St. Mark beside the Standard of Jerusalem, 
the city of '' the vision of peace '* ; the Dandolo, who bore a 
white and red shield, symbolizing innocence and beauty, mar- 
tial power and courage; the Gradenigo, of the Bend; the 
Foscari, bearing the winged lion and open book, with many 
other representatives of the great merchant princes of the 
'' Bride of the Sea.*' 

Next in rank were the members of the Society of St Roch, 
conspicuous among whom were Titian, Palma Vecchio, Tintoret- 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



I9IO.] A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 465 

to, Pordenone, Bonifazio, Sebastiano del Piombo, and many 
others whose names have come down to us, through the centuries, 
surrounded by a halo of glory and artistic fame. While all 
waited in hushed and expectant silence, the golden barge rode 
out into the sea and the Doge dropped a priceless ring into 
the surging waters. The silver trumpets rang out a harmon- 
ious fanfare, which was taken up by the city bells and, while 
joy and triumph reigned supreme, the thoughts of many a 
stately dame and chivalrous knight wandered back three cen- 
turies to that memorable day, the prelude to the first espousals, 
when the aged Doge, Sebastiano Ziani, who had nobly and 
generously taken the part of Pope Alexander III. against the 
fierce tyrant, Frederick Barbarossa, returned in triumph, after 
conquering the Imperial Fleet and was received at the Lido by 
the exiled Sovereign Pontiff who, hailing him as lord and 
master of the sea, placed in his hand a priceless ring with 
which he was later to wed the Adriatic. Must not their hearts 
and those of all true Venetians have swelled with pride as they 
recalled, on each recurring anniversary, that other scene of un- 
paralleled solemnity and historic interest when his Holiness, en- 
throned in all the pomp and splendor of his sacred office, before 
the entrance of St Mark's, received the homage and submission 
of the '^Red Beard*' who, approaching him, knelt and kissed 
his foot, which the Pontiff then placed on the Imperial neck, 
entoning the Psalm ^^ Super aspidem et bastliscum ambulavit** 
It was during the stay of Alexander in Venice that, the 
feast of the Ascension being celebrated with special solemnity, 
the pageant of the Espousals was fully recorded for the first 
time, when Ziani wedded the sea with the Papal ring and 
changed the primitive rite by which, in the tenth century, the 
triumph of Pietro Orseolo over the Narentani was celebrated, 
into the more imposing histrionic ceremony of the twelfth. 

While the joyous chimes still rang out, the golden barge 
again passed through the Lido and the return journey began. 
As the gondolas glided noiselessly back to the city, the eyes 
of many a dignified signora and graceful maiden were directed 
towards one over which waved a richly embroidered flag em- 
blazoned with the arms of the Grimani. On its raised platform 
the countess was seated. Marietta Robusti, though only the 
daughter of an artist, held the place of honor on her right, 
and on her left stood the young Count Masino Grimani, des- 
voL. xci.— 30 



Digitized by 



Google 



466 A DAUGHTER OF VENICE [July, 

tined one day to hold the high office of Doge and to perform 
the same symbolic ceremony which had jost touched and glad- 
dened all hearts. 

As they drew nearer to the city, having passed the island 
of Sant' Andrea, the mother's eyes rested meaningly on the 
thonghtful countenance of her son who, as if in answer to a 
wish thus silently communicated, went to join a gay group of 
guests some distance down the deck. 

She then took Marietta's hand and, drawing her gently 
toward her, said : '* My child, I mean to ask your father to 
allow you to spend some time with me. You look pale and 
tired and a rest will be good for you. You should look on 
me as a second mother; have I not known and loved you 
since you were a little child?'* 

''Oh, beloved Madam," exclaimed the beautiful girl, ''you 
have indeed been a second mother to me, and the remembrance 
of your loving smypathy has helped me on through many a 
weary day of trial, anxiety, and disappointment ; but, much as 
I long to be with you, I cannot now desert my post — if I do 
so, I shall be false to my mission.*' 

"Your mission I what do you mean?" 

" My one aim and end in life is to save my beloved father 
from the sorrow and disgrace which his son's conduct is likely 
to bring on him, and to rescue Domenico from degradation by 
leading him back to the path of truth, honor, and earnest 
work, from which he has wandered." 

" Alas, my poor Marietta," answered the countess, " that is 
a painful and difficult mission, for the success of which I have 
prayed much." 

"Ah, then, you already know the sad story of my trouble?" 

" I do, my child, and I shall continue to pray, to hope, 
and wait in silence for better news." 

" Oh, Signora, what a heart of gold is yours I Such is your 
condescending goodness to me, that I now long to open my 
mind unreservedly to you." 

"And why not do so, Marietta?" exclaimed the noble, 
generous damci " perhaps I can help you ? " 

The lovely girl now fixed her eyes trustfully on the gentle 
face bent lovingly towards her and said: "The truth is that since 
Father gains barely enough to cover his own expenses and to 
Veep up appearances and provide necessary comforts for dear 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 467 

old grandmothery I devote every available moment to paint- 
ing. In order to keep my secret, I sell my works under my 
brother's name; op to this I have escaped detection/' 

** Yoo have painted these beautiful pictures that have made 
a name for your brother — a name to which he has no claim ? 
How nobly you have acted and how yoo deserve to be re- 
warded I If you accept my invitation, and accompany me later 
on a tour of pleasure, which Masino is anxious I should enjoy 
with him and his friends, some good angel may open up to 
you a new and successful way to attain your end/' 

''Delightful as that tour would be for me, I cannot see 
how it could bring about such a result'' 

'' Has it never occurred to you. Marietta, that my son admires 
you and would be happy to make you his wife ? As the young 
Countess Masino Grimani you would have wealth, influence, 
position, and what would all that mean for those you love ? " 

As these words came from the motherly heart, a modest 
blush passed over the lovely face of the maiden, who replied 
in a broken, trembling voice : " Oh, my true and generous 
friend, what answer can I, a poor, unknown girl, give to such 
a proposal ? But in truth, I am not called to such a position. 
God has made known His will to me, which is that, when I 
have done all I can to save Domenico, and have been the stay 
and comfort of my father. He calls me to a higher and holier 
life than that of the married state." 

Raising her eyes heavenwards in thanksgiving the countess 
exclaimed: ''Ah, I have always thought that you were called 
to something high and holy. Now I at once renounce the 
sweet dream of one day calling you my daughter. Far frcm 
trying to draw you away from your divinely inspired vocation, 
I shall daily pray and long for its realization." 

Marietta was about to speak again, but the gay group of 
excursionists, as they swept past "San NicoI6 del Lido," 
gathered round their hostess to thank her for the treat she 
had given them, and soon the gay company stood in groups 
on the landing place where the Tintoretto was waiting for 
Marietta. The Countess accosted him with gracious dignity, 
saying how much she had enjoyed his daughter's company. 
The great master, bowing low before her, took the proffered 
hand, which he kissed respectfully, thanking her for the kind- 
ness shown his child. 



Digitized by 



Google 



468 A DAUGHTER OF VENICE [July, 

''My child also, Signor Robust!; do you not know how 
dear she is to me?'' 

Then embracing Marietta she said : *' Remember I expect 
to see you soon again.** 

''To visit you, Signora, is always a joy for me. I shall 
very soon have that honor and happiness, I trust.*' 

IV.— MARIETTA'S TRIUMPH. 

At an early hour, the morning after the Espousals, Jacopo 
Robttsti again stood before his easel, and, under his bold, firm 
touch his masterpiece, "The Last Supper,** rapidly advanced. 
It is, say the critics, " a miracle of art ** — so perfect is the 
perspective, that the apartment appears double its real size. 
The master's own verdict is, however, the highest encomium, 
for he ranks it with his " Crucifixion ** and his " Miracle of 
the Slave,** to which three works alone he affixed his name. 

The hours flew by, and towards midday the door oi the 
studio opened and Dame Robusti came in, holding in her 
hand a large square envelope from which hung a large seal. 
This she gave to Jacopo saying : " My son, a courier in royal 
livery, and mounted on a splendid horse, has just brought this 
for you.'* Jacopo, looking at the seal, exclaimed : "The royal 
arms of Spain I ** Then, hurriedly opening the letter and 
looking at the signature, he said: "It is from King Philip I 
He speaks of a portrait painted by my daughter — forsooth, as 
if a woman could produce a work worthy of royal admiration. 
Of course this is a mistake, he means my son, and he invites 
him to his court I Oh, what an honor I What joy and glory 
for me 1 Mother, Mother, go for my boy. I knew my Dome- 
nico had a future — a great future before him I ** 

Rushing to the door, she cried out: " Domenico, Domenico, 
come quickly I ** 

After a short interval the old dame hurried her grandson 
down the stairs and into his father's presence, who said : " My 
boy, I have glorious news for you — read that.** 

Domenico took the letter in his trembling hands and, glanc- 
ing at its contents, exclaimed: "It is not meant for me. 
Father; it is for Marietta.** 

"You must be mistaken, boy; doubtless his Majesty has 
seen some Spanish noble*s portrait from your hand. Your 
sister daubs, but does not paint.** 



Digitized by 



Google 



igioj A DAUGHTER OF VENICE 469 

*' My sister daubs ? O Father 1 is that your estimate of her 
talent?" 

"Yes; your sister is a good-for-nothing, stupid girll After 
all I have spent on her musical training, she cannot now play a 
note. I asked her this morning to sing for me while I worked^ 
and the young lady made no end of idle excuses. When I 
insisted on her going for her mandolin, she burst into tears. I 
have banished her from my presence. I wish to see her no more/^ 
''My poor Marietta/' said Domenico, as his eyes filled with 
tears. ''You are displeased with my sister — you have pun* 
ished her — and she, the true and faithful one, did not tell you 
that it is to toil for me, to make up for the time I misspend, 
that she works from early morning at the pictures you think 
are mine? Not content with that, she supports us all by her 
portrait painting. You know, Father, how little we contribute 
to keep up our home. Our Marietta is a genius, a true artist, 
an angel of goodness. The King's letter is certainly for her; 
come now and see for yourself.'* 

Jacopo and Dame Robusti hastened after Domenico, who 
approached the door of his studio, and peeping through the 
keyhole, whispered : " She is there ; she is there I " 

The impetuous Jacopo burst open the door and rushed in, 
followed by the others. At sight of her father Marietta sprang 
back from the canvas on which she was working, and casting 
herself on her knees said: "Father, Father, forgive me, I have 
disobeyed you. I am — " 

" Oh, my child, it is I who am at fault — it is I who must 
beg for forgiveness for having wronged an angel of goodness." 

Then, catching sight of the picture, he exclaimed: "What 
coloring, what harmony, what artistic e£fect 1 Who has painted 
it?" 

"It was my brother." "It^was my sister," both cried out 
together. 

"It was you, Domenico, who designed that head." 

"It was you, Marietta, who painted it — and those angels 
and that background. Father, everywhere you see my sister's 
touch — so soft, so harmonious, so perfectly blended, and yet 
so bold and firm I " 

"Ah, no, no, Brother; much of what you sing the praises 
of is your work and not mine." 

" Noble girl," exclaimed Domenico, " exalt me and shield me 



Digitized by 



Google 



470 A DAUGHTER OF VENICE [Jaly. 

no longer. I am overwhelmed with shame; yoor generous 
unselfishness has at last conquered; and^from this day, I shall 
be a changed man/' 

'* You are both my beloved children/* said the proud father, 
as he embraced them, adding : '' And you. Marietta, are a great 
painter. My God, I thank Thee I I shall now die happy.*' 

''She is more than a great painter," said the old grand- 
mother, as she pressed the girl to her heart, ''she is a good, 
dutiful daughter, a devoted sister, and a true Christian.*' 

All was now changed in the home of the Robusti, where 
happiness, peace, and contentment, combined with earnest work, 
henceforth reigned supreme. The beautiful girl artist sat daily 
at her easel, a fond, proud father bending over her, under whose 
teaching she attained perfection in design and coloring. She 
shrank from the studies necessary for historical subjects, and 
devoted herself to portrait painting, in which she acquired such 
fame that her contemporaries ranked her productions with those 
of Titian. The nobility of Venice became her generous patrons, 
while the Emperor Maximilian, the King of Spain, and the 
Archduke Ferdinand, by promises of wealth, position, and im- 
perial and royal distinctions, in vain endeavored to attract her 
to their courts. Compared with her sacred mission and her 
exalted vocation, all earthly honors were to her but as the pass- 
ing vapors of the morning that disappear before the first rays 
of the sun. 

The peaceful days, like all things of earth, passed rapidly 
away, and the now prosperous artists moved to the Palazzo 
Camello, where the venerable Dame Robusti was soon called to 
her reward. Being no longer under the watchful eye and the 
motherly care of her devoted grandmother. Marietta's natural 
weakness of constitution, increased by early anxiety and toil, 
began to tell its sad tale, and, before she was able to carry out 
her cherished project of serving God in the life of prayer, self- 
sacrifice, and peace of the cloister, she heard the voice of her 
Beloved calling her to be crowned. The father and brother, 
for whom she had heroically deferred the realization of her 
fondest hopes and highest aspirations, shed many bitter tears 
beside her bier, and her solemn obsequies, in the Church of 
Santa Maria dell' Orto, were attended by all the celebrities of 
Venice, conspicuous amongst whom were the Countess Grimani 
and her son, Masino. 



Digitized by 



Google 




H. G. WELLS. 

BY W. E. CAMPBELL. 
III. 

l^ the latter part of my first article, and in the 
whole of my second, I discnssed the economic 
factor in social reform. A clear distinction has 
been drawn between productive and onprodoc- 
tive surplus; our quarrel was not with surplus 
as such, but with unproductive surplus. 

Nor did we quarrel with the private ownership of surplus, 
but only with its unproductive use, and in this, of course, we 
dififer from our author. We saw, in fine, that the difficulty 
was not one of State against individual, of capitalist against 
Socialist, but simply of the unproductive use of surplus whether 
by the State or the individual. 

In New Worlds for Old (1908) Mr. Wells has given us cer- 
tainly the most popular and probably the calmest and clearest 
statement yet put forward of the methods and intentions of 
Socialism. Here, indeed, we have a brilliant discussion of our 
social evils, and, as a quick and simple remedy. Socialism, 
largely and variously explained. At the very outset he has 
seen, what so many Socialists have not, the fact that such re- 
forms as he is pleased to advocate need something more than 
the disinterested application of knowledge to bring about their 
practical initiation and growth. Good- will, he tells us, is 
needed to make Socialism '*go.'* The problems before him 
are essentially and intensely human, all too human for the 
success of any merely scientific solution. There is a fine ring 
about his announcement that ''there is food enough for all, 
shelter enough for all, wealth for all — men need only to know 
it and will W 

But immediately after this clear acknowledgment of the 
importance of good-will we are introduced to what is called 
the fundamental idea of Socialism. '' The fundamental idea of 
Socialism is the same fundamental idea as that upon which 
all really scientific work is carried on. It is the denial that 
chance impulse and the individual will and happening consti* 



Digitized by 



Google 



472 H. G. WELLS [July, 

tute the oaly possible methods by which things may be done 
in the world'' (p. 22). 

Here we have an instance of a device somewhat too fre- 
quently used by Mr. Wells. He embarks upon controversy, 
his ship is out of harbor, but there is not wind enough to fill 
his mainsail, so he claps on all extra sail to. catch whatever 
breeze of favor there be. But presently, when his mainsail 
fills out, he discards this mere auxiliary canvas as useless or 
even dangerous, and he is apt to forget that he has ever used 
it at all, much more that without its help^he could never have 
got under weigh. 

What we want to know is whether he considers the indi- 
vidual human will to be a main or merely a minor factor in 
all possible human reform. And this leads us at once to the 
central question of property and private ownership, upon which 
he bases his second main generalization. 

** The idea of private ownership of things is enormously and 
mischievously exaggerated in the contemporary world. The 
conception of private property has been extended to land, to 
material, to the values and resources accumulated by past 
generations, to the vast variety of things that are properly the 
inheritance of the whole race. As a result of this (we have 
our present evils). . . . The Socialist holds that thi commu^ 
nity as a whole should be inalienably the owner and administra* 
tor of the land^ of raw materials^ of values and resources ac^ 
cumulated from the past^ and that private property should be of 
a terminable nature^ and subject to the general welfare *' {N.^ 
pp. 88-9). 

I must call the reader's careful attention to this second 
generalization, especially to the part in italics, for it has both 
a body and a tail, and which wags which I cannot at present 
decide. The body most unmistakably asserts that '' the com- 
munity as a whole should be inalienably the owner and ad- 
ministrator of the land, of raw materials, of values and re- 
sources accumulated from the past " ; but in the tail we find 
that ''private property (of what kind he does not say) should 
be of a terminable nature.*' I do nol for a moment wish to 
diminish or exaggerate Mr. Wells' intentional meaning, but 
in order to make a definition serve any useful purpose it 
should be framed rather to exclude than admit confusion. 
We must seek further light. There is no doubt that else- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 473 

where he has much to say on behalf of private ownership. It 
is better, therefore, to give ipsissima verba. 

" The factor that leads the World State on from one phase 
of development to the next is the interplay of individualities; 
to speak teleologically, the world exists for the «ake of and 
through initiative, and individuality is the method of initiative. 
Each man and woman, to the extent that his or her individu- 
ality is marked, breaks the law of precedent, transgresses the 
general formula, and makes a new experiment for the direc- 
tion of the life force. It is impossible, therefore, for the State, 
which represents all and is preoccupied with the average, to 
make effectual experiments and intelligent innovations, and so 
supply the essential substance of life. . . . Within this 
scheme, which makes the State the source of all energy, and 
the final legatee, what will be the nature of the property a 
man may own ? Under modern conditions — indeed, under any 
conditions — a man without some negotiable property is a man 
without freedom, and the extent of his property is very largely 
the measure of his freedom. . . . With a certain small 
property a man is free to do many things. « . . (But) very 
speedily, under terrestrial conditions, the property of a man 
may reach such proportions that his freedom oppresses the 
freedom of others.'' 

'' The object sought in the code of property laws that one 
would find in operation in Utopia would be the same object 
that pervades the whole Utopian organization, namely a uni- 
versal maximum of individual freedom. ... A modem 
Utopian most assuredly must have a practically unqualified 
property in all those things that become, as it were, by pos- 
session, extensions and expressions of his personality . • . 
so intimate is this property that I have no doubt Utopia will 
give a man posthumous rights over it.'' 

Even the limited |liability company, '' which has so facili- 
tated freedom and progress," will be permitted, not of course 
as a profit- grubbing machine, but in order to encourage all in- 
ventive ventures, ''all new machinery, all new methods, all 
uncertain and variable and non- universal undertakings (which) 
are no business of the State." Even land may be leased out 
to communities and individuals, but must never pass out of 
the possession of the State. It would appear, then, that what 
a man must never be allowed to hold and to have inalienably 



Digitized by 



Google 



474 -*^* G. WELLS [July, 

as his own is a piece of land however small and, as we shall 
see later, a wife (Ui. pp. 88-97, 175-^1 3)* 

The problem of private ownership has two sides, opon each 
of which we must concentrate our attention: 

(i.) There is man desiring to own property. 

(2.) There is a certain limited amount of property to be owned. 

The most difficult factor in the problem is the first — that 
of man desiring to own property. But it is upon the second 
and more simple factor that the Socialist has specialized, and 
his solution would be effective if it met the whole dynamic 
problem. He has clearly got hold of the quantitative side of 
the question, namely, that there is only a limited amount of 
property^; but he has failed to grasp the qualitative side of it> 
namely, that there is an unlimited intensity of human desire 
directed towards its private possession. Not only is this inten- 
sity of human desire unlimited, but, unfortunately, it is at 
present extravagantly inordinate. The limited nature of prop- 
erty is, then, a big difficulty; but it is not nearly so big a 
difficulty as the unlimited and inordinate desires of men, for 
they alone are the cause of the abuses which at present attend 
private ownership. Human desire is only inordinate when it 
is directed to wrong ends or is directed to right ends too ex- 
cessively; when it is, for instance, wholly concentrated upon 
material ends it always runs to excess, always becomes inor- 
dinate. Man has not only a body, but a mind and spirit as 
well, and when he lives an intense and fully developed life he is 
brimming over with creative and integrating desires of every sort» 
and if only these desires be rightly directed towards their law- 
ful ends, he will become in every sense of the word a socially 
fit and ^finely productive member of the community. But if^ 
on the other hand, he say, not only in his mind but also in 
his heart, that there is no God, or refuse to discipline himself 
to the bonds of marriage and concentrate his whole desire upon 
the accumulation of quantitative things, to the neglect of his 
neighbors' rights of love, life, and property, he is socially use- 
less and disintegrating, and no amount of expropriation will 
ever of itself make him any better. Socialism has no machin- 
ery powerful enough to organize, economize, intellectualize, or 
spiritualize the desires of men — all she can do is to materialize 
them to a still greater extent. 

Cottte, it will be remembered, divided historic time into 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 475 

three successive stages of civilization, which he called respec- 
tively the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. His 
only mistake was to suppose these stages successive rather than 
simultaneous, universal and not individual. Every human being, 
as psychologists and physiologists are now insisting, recapitu- 
lates within himself a microcosmic history of humanity^-he is at 
once and in himself theological, metaphysical, and positive; in 
simpler words, he is at once and in himself a spiritual, an intel- 
lectual, and a physical being. Now corresponding to these three 
determinations of his nature, man has three determinations of 
desire — the desire of the soul, the desire of the mind, and the 
desire of the body. 

The desire of the soul must be purged, illuminated, and 
finally sanctified by union with God Himself ; the desire of the 
mind must be encouraged to the discipline of knowledge and 
humbled by a frequent contemplation of eternal truths; the 
desire of the body satisfied as need be, but kept within law- 
ful and sacred bonds. These desires, too, it will clearly fol- 
low, must always be either integrating in an ascending order 
to what is spiritual, or disintegrating in a descending order to 
what is material, that is to say, the more a man desires spir- 
itual things the less he will desire material things for their own 
sake ; and, on the contrary, the more he desires material things 
the less he will desire spiritual. This, at any rate, is the Catho- 
lic theory of human desire. 

Desire being the very stuff of life, the Church has ever 
been pre-eminently concerned to cherish, discipline, and organ- 
ize it; and it is generally allowed that in this field no other 
institution in the world has attempted or achieved so much. 
Socialism has almost neglected this aspect of dynamic economy. 
Like Martha, she has been too busy with the merely quantitative 
side of economics to attend to the one great necessary economy 
of human desires. Socialism does not know how to deal with the 
selfish passions of man, and, even if she did, has no intrinsic 
ability to turn them into integrating powers of social benefit 

Socialism has neglected human desire, and wherever she has 
come across it she has singularly misunderstood it — as in the 
case of the family, which I shall speak of later, and in that 
of private ownership, which we are now discussing. The desire 
to own a small piece of land is either right or wrong — that 
being right according to the Socialists which benefits the ccm- 



Digitized by 



Google 



476 H. G. Wells [July, 

munity, and that being wrong which does not Since Socialism 
forbids all private ownership in land whatsoever she evidently 
considers the desire to own wrong; but on careful search for 
the reason of this wrongness, I find it to consist, in her opin- 
ion, in the excessive desire for ownership on the part of a few 
men (JVl, pp. 88, 93, 97). ''Abolish private ownership in land,'' 
says the Socialist, ''even when it is right, in order to prevent 
It from becoming wrong by excess/' My conclusion, however, 
is a different one: "Encourage the desire for small pieces of 
land, because distribution is right and socially beneficial; but 
discourage the desire to own land on a large scale, because 
being excessive it is socially harmful/' This last is, of course, 
the policy advocated by Leo XIII., and rests upon the simple 
principle that it is good to encourage desires so long as they 
remain good, but necessary to discourage them whenever they 
become bad. We see, here, in its very simplest form, the car- 
dinal error upon which Socialism rests, namely, the compulsory 
prohibition of human desires even when right and lawful. 

We now come to Mr. Wells and the family, including, of 
course, his views on the position of woman, marriage, the bring- 
ing up of children, and the relation of all these to his social- 
istic State. 

One cannot but come to the conclusion that be has no liv- 
ing and central faith in the family as such or in marriage itself 
— they are things on the very margin![of his integrated experi- 
ence; he does not place marriage high among bis important 
institutions ; he subjects it in all things to the State, which he 
seems to regard as its paramount superior; he uses many fine 
adjectives about it, but he has no strong conviction of its sub- 
stantive importance; he only writes of it out of necessity and 
as it affects other things to him much more important than it- 
self; he is not "for" it in any positive sense, and, as far as 
I am able to judge, is almost blind to its place and significance 
in the economy of human life. 

In fact, whether we turn to his novels or to his more defi- 
nitely sociological work, we shall not long be left in doubt. 
Marriage is not one of the things which through faith has 
gained his good report ; he does not believe in it, or rather he 
believes it to be a failure. His characters may be intellectually 
heroic, but they are ;never emotionally so; they are simply 
creatures without a shred of emotional self-discipline or stabil- 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9io0 H. G. Wells 477 

ity ; and this is especially true of his men. Is it surprising to 
find, then, that their marriages turn out to be failures? Mar- 
riage is a much more searching and practical test of a man's 
emotional integrity than perhaps Mr. Wells may imagine; and 
those who submit themselves to it with such excruciating fail- 
ure as do these characters of his, are apt, for the very sake of 
their self-respect, to attribute their failure rather to the exam- 
ination than to themselves. Mr. Wells' characters are unfit 
for human society, because they are such dangerously disinte- 
grating forces — their very intellectual efficiencies only serving 
to enhance and intensify their emotionally disintegrating power 
over the unfortunate men and still more unfortunate women 
with whom they are brought into contact. George Ponderevoi 
in Tono-Bungay^ brilliantly intellectual but disastrously ineffec- 
tive because of the hopeless disorder of his emotional lifci is 
the incarnation of a very modern type of man, a type which 
reverses the old order both of nature and of grace. The old 
order contended, and still contends, that unity of desire is prior 
in time and importance to the unity of explicit thought: ''Seek 
first," it says, ''the kingdom of ordered personal desire, and 
all things — all minor unities — shall be added in due time and 
proper measure." Among these minor unities is that of explicit, 
discursive, speculative thought ; all, in a word, that we under- 
stand by modern science. Science is busied, and rightly so, 
about many things, "the many that change and pass"; but, 
on that very account, she is the more apt to forget the "One 
that remains," from Whom alone is to be gained that disciplined 
unity of personal desire which passeth understanding but never 
passeth away. 

Mr. Wells has, so far, neglected the study of the highest 
laws of human relationshlp^-those laws which are most prac- 
tically exhibited in the working of the Christian family, and 
which radiate from it out towards society with most beneficent 
effect. And what is most of all to be noticed about these 
laws is that they express themselves primarily in the order of 
disciplined emotion, and only secondarily in the order of ex- 
plicit thought. 

In order to emphasize the importance of this statement as 
to the relative order and importance of disciplined emotion and 
explicit thought I may be allowed to quote Professor Stanley 
Hall, who speaks of "the growing recognition by psychology 



Digitized by 



Google 



478 H. G. WELLS [Jwlyt 

that, as the will is larger than the intellect, so the instincts 
and feelings are at the root both of reason and wilP' {AdoUs^^ 
cence^ Stanley Hall. Vol. 11., p. 138); and again: ''Our scrip- 
ture will itself be regenerated and re-revealed as the record 
of man's highest insights into meaning, and his most practical 
utilization of his own life, which far transcends anything known 
to modern psychology and ethics, and all chiefly because it 
recognized love as the central power in the soul, and pre- 
sented both patterns and precepts how, instead of a way of 
death, it could open up a way of life'' (/&., p. 129). 

Mr. Wells, then, attaches so little importance to the family 
because he attaches so little importance to the discipline of 
human emotion and desire. As he himself has said, every man 
''has within his own composition, the whole diapason of (an) 
emotional fool." But would it not be wiser, by healthy train- 
ing, to tune these notes to a less discordant pitch than to at- 
tempt their utter suppression and desperately to fail in that 
attempt? Take, for instance, his description given in Anticim 
potions oi the coming engineer and the life he is going to lead. 
He will be a man in whom ''the emotional and mystical ele- 
ments in his religion will be subordinate or absent " — this side 
of his nature being so neglected lest it should interfere with 
his purely scientific career. "If sensuality is to appear at all 
largely, it will appear without any trappings of sentiment or 
mysticism.'' Marriage is to be a concession to the flesh neces- 
sary to secure efficiency ; it is throughout a secondary thing, a 
something that distracts a man from the highest purposes of 
individual achievement; in fact, so great is the danger in this 
respect that it will probably be necessary to modify the tradi- 
tional and Christian conception of it. "It is impossible to 
ignore the forces making for a considerable relaxation of the 
institution of permanent monogamous marriage in the coming 
years. • • • I guess, without attempting to refer to statistics, 
that our present society must show quite an unprecedented num- 
ber and (an) increasing number of male and female celibates — 
not religious celibates, but people, for the most part, whose 
standard of personal comfort has such a relation to their earn- 
ing power that they shirk or cannot enter the matrimonial 
grouping. The institution of permanent monogamous marriage 
— 3xcept in the ideal Roman Catholic community — is sustained 
at present entirely by the inertia of custom, and by a number 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] H. G. WELLS 479 

of sentimental and practical considerations! considerations that 
may very possibly undergo modification in the face of the 
altered relationship of husband and wife that the present de- 
velopment of childless nUnages is bringing about. . • • It 
must be remembered that both for husband and wife in most 
cases monogamic life-marriage involves an element of sacrificci 
it is an institution of late appearance in the history of man- 
kind, and it does not completely fit the psychology or physi- 
ology of any but very exceptional characters of either sex. 
For the man it involves considerable restraint ... for the 
woman it commonly implies many uncongenial submissions. 
• • • Will a generation to whom marriage will be no longer 
necessarily associated with the birth and rearing of childreui 
or with the immediate co-operation and sympathy of husband 
and wife in common proceedings, retain its present feeling for 
the extreme sanctity of the permanent marriage bond?'' 
(A.^ pp. 125-128). This is indeed casting away the rudder in 
order to lighten the ship 1 

Such reading as this, though very distasteful to a Catholic, 
must be openly dealt with — mere distaste is no positive anti- 
septic to such virulent poison. Marriage — perpetual monoga- 
mous marriage — according to this view is no longer to become 
a necessary rule of highly civilized life, because, forsooth, 
emotional restraint is so painfully irksome to men and women 
of ungoverned passions. Does Mr. Wells deliberately coun- 
tenance the relaxation or abandonment of marriage because 
there are so many bad people in the world who make mar- 
riage hideous to themselves and their neighbors by an utter 
refusal to abide by its inmost law? If so, he deliberately 
encourages the abandonment in despair of all moral hope, 
training, and discipline whatever. This is the worst kind of 
pragmatism^that kind for which there being no absolute moral 
law, morals become mere expressions of human convention; 
if any man finds it difficult to practice this convention, he may 
abandon the attempt on the plea that for him, at any rate, it 
has no pragmatic value. The end of such philosophy is not 
difficult to foresee. 

But lest I should seem to be judging our author by a 
solitary pronouncement, I must ask the reader to exercise bis 
patience even further. '' The question of marriage," says Mr. 
Wells, '' is the most complicated and difficult in the whole range 



Digitized by 



Google 



48o H. G. Wells [July, 

of Utopian problems/' What then are the lines upon which 
he will grapple with it ? Roughly speaking» State interference I 

First, the State would interfere with the marriage contract 
itself. Mr. Wells is against compulsory pairing, but is in favor 
of ''general limitiDg conditions.'' ''The State is justified in 
saying, before you may add children to the community for the 
community to educate and in part to support, you must be 
above a certain minimum of personal efficiency, and this you 
must show by holding a position of solvency and independ- 
ence in the world; you must be above a certain age, and a 
certain minimum of physical development, and free from any 
transmissible disease. You must not be a criminal unless you 
have expiated your offence. Failing these simple qualifica- 
tions! if you and some person conspire and add population 
to the State, we will, for the sake of humanity, take over the 
innocent victim of your passions, but we shall insist that you 
are under a debt to the State of a peculiar sort, and one 
you will certainly pay, even if it is necessary to use restraint 
to get payment out of you ; it is a debt that has in the last 
resort your liberty as security, and, moreoveri if this happens 
a second time, or if it is a disease or imbecility you have 
multiplied, we shall take an absolutely effectual guarantee that 
neither you nor your partner offend again in this matter" 
(K, p. 184). 

Secondly, the State will interfere to make women as eco- 
nomically free as men. " It is a fact that almost every point 
in which a woman differs from man is an economic disadvan- 
tage to her, her incapacity for great stresses of exertion, her 
frequent liability to slight illness, her weaker initiative, her in- 
ferior invention and resourcefulnessi her relative incapacity for 
organization and combination, and the possibilities of emotion- 
al complications whenever she is in economic dependence on 
men" {U.^ p. 187). The remedy for this economic inferiority 
of women is as simple as it is finally destructive of all that 
marriage has ever meant to the best of women and men. 
" Since the State is to exercise the right of forbidding mother- 
hood, a woman who is, or is becoming a mother, is as much 
entitled to wages above the minimum wage • • • as a 
bishop in the State Church. • • • In Utopia a career of 
wholesome motherhood would be, under such circumstances as 
I have suggested, a remunerative calling." In this case, as in 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 48.1 

others, the Socialist is so much wiser than nature, but far less 
economical. Mr* Wells himself has pointed out elsewhere that 
it is better wherever possible to displace the spirit of gain by 
the spirit of service, the great creative things of life being 
done for nothing — that is to say for love (N.^ Chap. V.). 

Thirdly, the State will interfere after marriage between the 
husband and wife ** on account of clashing freedoms.'' Also 
the one unavoidable condition of marriage will be the faithful- 
ness of the wife; ''her infidelity being demonstrated, must at 
once terminate marriage and release both her husband and the 
State from any liability for the support of her illegitimate off- 
spring. That, at any rate, is beyond controversy. A woman 
who is divorced on this account will be divorced as a public 
offender. Mr. Wells being at last brought face to face with a 
practical problem of conduct takes a much more strictly ethical 
line than he seemed inclined to do in his more disinterestedly 
speculative Anticipations. He has become almost a Calvinist 
in his new zeal for State morality, but, as always happens 
with State moralists, he is so much rougher than the Church 
in his treatment of human frailty — his only way is that of the 
broad arrow and the mailed fist, to her that bath not shall be 
taken away even that which she hath, no place being given for 
hope or recovery. 

Lastly, the State will interfere with marriage in respect to 
the children. He treats of this at length in chapter IH. of 
New Worlds for Old. ** One general maladjustment,'' he says, 
''covers every case of neglected or ill-brought-up children in 
the world, and that is this, that with or without decent excuse, 
the parent has not been equal to the task of rearing a civilized 
citizen. We have demanded too much of the parent, materially 
and morally. . . • There are two courses open to us. The 
first is to relieve the parents by lowering the standard of our 
demand ; the second is to relieve them by supplementing their 
efforts." According to Mr. Wells the child stands between two 
authorities, that of its parents and that of the State. In his 
opinion the State is in every way the more efficient of these 
two authorities, and certainly the higher authority. He there- 
fore argues that to the State should be given all powers of in- 
terference, to be used by it at its own discretion. This view 
I believe to be wrong. The Christian family — father, mother, 
and child or children — is an organic thing and lives an organic 
VOL. xci.— 31 



Digitized by 



Google 



481 H. G. WELLS [July, 

life. The best and only way to treat it is in and for itself. 
Like an individuali or eren like a State, it may be starved and 
so become ineffective and socially dangerous. In the first place 
it most be properly fed, but it is to be fed in order tiiat it 
may do things for itself and not in order that things should 
be done for it by proxy. So far, then, the State is of assist* 
ance. The State must use its proper powers in order to en- 
sure the economic basis of family life. As Cardinal Manning 
said: ''The minimum wage must be sufficient to maintain a 
man and his home.'' But, as I have shown in my last paper, 
this minimum wage of maintenance may be obtained without 
resorting to Socialism. The State must ensure a living wage 
as just payment for work done, but it can never, and should 
never, attempt to relieve the family of its own responsible life 
or any part of its own ^characteristic work. The father must 
do for the family — for the mother, the children, and himself— 
what he alone can most effectually and characteristically do; 
the mother must do for her husband, for her children, and for 
herself what she is most fitted by her nature to undertake; and 
the children mast do for their parents and for themselves what 
they can. 

The business of the State is not, then, to detach the mem- 
bers of the family from their organic body in order to make 
them separately and selfishly efficient — we only cut off a mem- 
ber from the body as a last and dreadful resource to prevent 
organic poisoning. The business of the State is radier that of 
helping the family to a healthy, co-operative, and productive 
unity. What it must avoid, except in the most extreme case^ 
is treatment of a kind which would tend to tiie entire separa- 
tion of members of the family from the family as a whole, 
whether in the matter of feeding, education, instruction, or 
employment. And what is more, when help is given through 
the State, it should, as far as possible, be given through thi 
father, who, as the responsible head and bread- winner, is in 
the highest place of directive authority.* Why tear asunder 

* Mr. Wells resigned his portion on the Executive Boftrd of the Fabian Society in X908 because 
he found himself in disagreement with that body on this very point. In a letter to tfaeaecretary 
he writes : *' My chief objection to the (Fabian) basis is its disregard of that claim of every child 
upon the State, which is primary and fundamental to my conception of Socialism. A schewu 
which proposa to Uovt wtathirand child ceoticmicaUy dtptndkni tipom the father istowtcm^t So* 
ciaHtm at aJi, Itforbids the practical freedom of women and leaves the essential evils ol the 
Individualist system untouched. • • • I do not care to remain permanently identified with 
formulae that misstate my views by this tremendous omission.*' 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 483 

this material and spiritual whole which God has made and made 
to co-operate into dissevered units, who must each, in the 
most self»regarding and selfish manner, look to the State for 
food, clothing, shelter, and the rest? The State was never 
meant to appropriate to itself the main parental duties and 
responsibilities. It was rather meant to prevent other people, 
exploiting employers and the like, from appropriating them. 
What parents, especially poor parents, need most of all just 
now is a wider, freer, healthier family sphere in which to be 
properly parental. 

'< The family,'' wrote Leo XIII., '' may be regarded as the 
cradle of dvil society, and it is in great measure within the 
circle of family life that the destiny of the State is fostered. 
. . . Parents hold from nature their right of training the 
children to whom they have given birth.'' Education at schools 
is, of course, necessary, yet he reminds us ** that the minds of 
children are most of all influenced by the training they receive 
at home." 

The Christian family is a self-integrating thing. All pos- 
sible social reform must be based on this fact Socialism is 
not based on this fact^ because Socialism has never envisaged 
the family as such. Socialism regards the father of a family 
not as a father at all, but as a unit producing or failing to 
produce for the good of the community; the mother is not 
thought of as the wife of a given husband, but as the producer 
for State benefi.t of one, two, or more babies ; the very children 
are but producers in potenUa. This is the Socialist's mistake. 

The family is, after the Church, the most effectively qual- 
itative institution in life; it is the private battle-ground of in- 
dividuality; it means freedom for good or evil; it means that 
economy of human affections which gives them their maximum 
creative power and makes them formative of all that is most 
characteristically human in the mother, in the father, and in 
the child. It is the holy and terrible place which God has 
consecrated for the free struggle between the human will and 
the powers of evil There the child may find all effective 
helps and spurs to morality, and there he will best learn to 
fight for the strong and healthful possession of his own soul, 
his own body, and his own hearth. The family is a private 
place, and that is why Socialists dislike it; it is a place of self- 
possession, and it is sacredly exclusive, because God made it z<^. 



Digitized by 



Google 



PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM. 

BY ESTHER W. NEILL, 

Chapter I. 

i why shouldn't be drink himself to death?*' 

The other members of the conference turned 
owards Miss Cuthbert with varied expressions 
i wondering dismay. 
The agent smiled faintly. ** There are the usual 
reasons/' she began, then hesitated. After all, the question 
seemed open to discussion. It was the first time that Miss 
Cuthbert had spoken. She had come in an hour before with 
Miss Delarue, a sweet-faced little saint, who gave all her wak- 
ing moments to charity problems. The new recruit, in her 
handsome furs, looked oddly out of place among these earnest 
workers, and yet there was a possibility of power about her 
that made the other occupants of the room vaguely feel their 
own deficiencies — an energizing quality not quite submerged 
by her present apparent indifference* 

" Of course I don't know the man," she went on, ** but if, 
as you say, he has no work, no health, no friends, no pros- 
pects, no definite religion — how are you going to appeal to 
him? Drink seems the logical outcome." 

"Oh, we can't work on those principles," protested Miss 
Delarue. '' The man must have some good in him somewhere. 
I think I can get him a place in the country where he will 
have work out of doors and a good home. Will you send him 
to me to-morrow?" 

The tired eyes of the agent brightened as she made a note 
of this offer on the minutes. Any hint of a solution to these 
pitiful human problems was received so gratefully that Miss 
Cuthbert found herself questioning whether the agent could 
care so much; for this case, only partially disposed of, seemed 
to count so little among the many other soul tragedies which 
the agent brought from her file, neatly docketted and coldly 
classified in their large envelopes of brown manila. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 485 

These papers, spread out upon the table, read of shattered 
pride, sin, and shame, the cry of the unborn, petitions from 
the dying, untiring lore, cruel vindictiveness. Some of the 
letters were almost illegible, written by the untutored, the 
crafty, or by hands stiffened by age or weakened by want. 
There were long accounts of help given, help withheld — the 
world-old stories to which the ages have but added slight dif- 
ferences in outline. 

Miss Cuthbert*s strong face revealed growing impatience^ 
The office, with its air-tight stove, was stuffy and unattractive, 
though the agent had done her best to touch it into some 
Semblance of a home. On the window sill two yellowing 
geraniums struggled for existence in the chance sunlight; the 
rest of the room was furnished in derelicts. A three-legged 
sofa was prudently propped on its maimed side by a soap bo^ 
over which had been draped, with accurate carelessness, a 
bright-hued serape. A chromo, flanked by a calendar, hung 
on the whitewashed wall, and a high-backed rocker with a 
carpet seat stood waiting for the chairman who did not come. 

Miss Cuthbert's quick eyes took, in all these trifling details, 
while she listened to the arguments going on about her. Her 
mind was distracted by her own affairs. She had told Miss 
Delarue that she was in no mood to listen to the miseries of 
other people. She regretted that she had been persuaded to 
come. 

At last some one suggested that the meeting adjourn, and 
Miss Cuthbert promptly seconded the motion. Once out of 
the office she breathed in the fresh air delightedly and hurried 
to her little electric run-about that stood, a black-coated aris* 
tocrat, amid the muddied drays and wagons that creaked their 
way over the cobble-stones of this barely respectable street. 

'' Now Marie," she said, turning to her friend, ** jump in 
beside me and tell me that you are satisfied.'* 

**Vm not at all satisfied,'' smiled Miss Delarue, tucking the 
heavy fur rugs about her feet. '' You are in a contrary mood, 
Patricia. Some day you will find the work interesting, I 
know." 

** Never 1 " said the other decidedly, as she started the ma- 
chine. ''You won't believe me, because you are an unhalocd 
saint, while I am such a sinner. We live at the poles of tbe 
spiritual world." 



Digitized by 



Google 



486 Patricia^ the Problem [joiy, 

'' If yoti would only go into the work, Patricia^'' pleaded 
Marie, '' I know yon would be a power. I am going to make 
Hugh talk to you/' 

Patricia smiled tolerently. ''And who is Hugh?'' she 
asked. 

''My cousin — I am sure you have heard me speak of 
Doctor Farrell/' 

"Oh| you mean the paragon who used to write to you 
while we were in Paris. Please forgive me, Marie dear, but 
I hate your cousin from hearsay.'* 

"But you don't know. him. You are so unreasonable to- 
day." 

Patricia laughed good-naturedly. "I have 'always heard 
that unreasonableness was a woman's privilege. If your cousin 
is so much interested in slums and settlements, why wasn't 
he at the conference to»day?" 

" I don't know. I wish he had been. He is so helpful ; 
he has had so much experience in dealing with the poor." 

Patricia looked dreamily off into the distance. "What leads 
him to take an interest in such things? I cannot understand 
this seeking after paupers. I couldn't stand going to their 
houses. I don't want to see them— dirty, ragged, smdly crea- 
tures — I don't want to hear their multitudinous woes. I want 
to be happy, Marie dear, I want to grasp at all the happiness 
I can." 

"You can't be happy in yourself," returned Marie seri- 
ously. 

" Well, I don't expect to go into solitary confinement," she 
Uughed again. "Look at the people. I couldn't live alone 
in a world full of people." 

They had turned into one of the wide avenues where the 
mist of the damp winter afternoon was broken by crowds of 
smartly dressed men and women. Two or three teas were in 
progress and the striped awningSi stretched from curb to door- 
way, contributed a bit of flaming color to offset the grayness 
of the sky. 

" I don't understand your cousin Hugh," said Miss Cuthbert 
again, after a long silence given to steering her machine through 
an intricate passage between vehicles. "What does he do for 
a living? Why doesn't he enter your priesthood? Why this 
passion for paupers?" 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 4S7 

*' Which question shall I answer first ? '' smiled Marie, tight- 
ening her fur scarf about her throat. ''Please, dear Patricia, 
slow down a bit. You are exceeding the speed limit I know/' 

'' I usually do/' said Patricia recklessly. '' Half the time 
the policemen never see, but you are a nervous little thing, 
so 1*11 slow down if it makes you any more comfortable. Is 
this slow enough? Now tell me about your cousin.'' 

'' Well, to begin, he is very rich. My grandfather had only 
two children, you know, and he divided his estate between 
them. My uncle, Hugh's father, invested his share wisely and 
doubled the original amount, I believe. My mother knew noth- 
ing about business, and lost everything she had before I was 
born. As for the other question, about the priesthood, that 
seems rather ridiculous. I wouldn't call Hugh pious. You 
know it's no longer unique to go in for settlement work. Hugh 
has always felt an enormous pity for the suffering. When he was 
a boy the house was kept full of sick kittens, lame dogs, broken- 
winged birds. I remember as a child I was afraid to go to my 
uncle's, for fear some of the invalids would fly at me. I haven't 
seen much of Hugh in years. He was away at college and 
then he spent so much time studying in Berlin; and while 
Father lived we were always on the move, seeking our fortune 
and never finding it^-" 

Miss Cuthbert rested her large hand sympathetically upon 
her friend's for a moment. '' It was a lucky day for me when 
Father found you," she said. 

'' Lucky for us," said Maria. '' You have made my mother 
so comfortable and happy." 

''I don't know," said Patricia reflectively, ''sometimes I 
think she has found the position very trying. We are not your 
sort, Marie dear, and you know it. I have been half-way tamed, 
but dear old Dad never will be— he is too old to change." 

"He has been very good to us." 

" I think there is a special reason," said Patricia enigmati- 
cally. 

" I don't know what you mean^-" 

" Perhaps I don't either. Here we are at home. What a 
monstrosity this house is 1 I don*t think I ever comprehended 
its whole hideottsness before." 

As the machine stopped a man in livery came hurrying out 
to assist the ladies to alight and to take charge of the machine 



Digitized by 



Google 



488 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [July, 

and the sable robes. Miss Cuthbert sat quite still for a mo- 
menty looking up at her home, lost in re very. 

The Hon. Tom Cathbert's mansion was most conspicaous 
for its ornate exterior. He had planned it himself from some 
fancied castle that he had seen pictured in his boyhood, and 
the bewildered architect, after a short sermon on repose in sim* 
plicity, realizing that his suggestions were useless and ill-timed^ 
and that a hundred-thousand^dollar contract was slipping from 
him, cast his ready imagination into that of his client and per- 
petrated a palace of disproportioned turrets, gables, and gar- 
goyles. The Hon. Tom would like to have added a drawbridge 
with sewer connections, if the authorities had not insisted upon 
his keeping within well-defined building lines. 

At first Patricia had wandered through the frescoed rooms 
with a child's delight in their gorgeousness of color, but, after 
four years of foreign travel, she had returned home with a 
different point of view. 

''Dad, dear,'' she said on the night of her arrival, coming 
up behind him and putting her arms around his neck, ''your 
house is too gay and I don't like it." 

" Don't like it t " exclaimed the Hon. Tom, catching at the 
large white hands and keeping them clasped in front of his 
grizzled whiskers. "I'm sure I've been as exemplary as a 
Sunday- School while you've been gone. Gay 1 Why, Pat dear, 
the house has been as lonely as a sepulchre without you." 

" Sepulchre," laughed Patricia. " Who ever saw a red-green- 
blue-satin sepulchre. It looks like a Fiji Islander's." 

He turned and stared up at his daughter with a wondering 
admiration. Her frankness pleased him. It brought back the 
girl he remembered. He had had a strange feeling all evening 
that he)had lost her. This beautiful woman, in her Paris gown, 
that he had met at the dock that afternoon, seemed so different 
from the disheveled, careless girl who had gone from him. 

" Well, then, fix it to suit yourself i" he said good-naturedly. 
"Now that you are here you are boss of the ranch. We've 
got the stuff to do anything we please. Leave the walls stand- 
ing and tear the blooming insides out." 

" I will," said Patricia, running her fingers caressingly 
through his thin hair. "I 'm so glad to be back again to boss 
you. You always spoilt me, Dad. You've always given me 
my own way about everything." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 489 

' ''Well, if I hadn't, ten to one yots would have taken it. 
You're a chip of the old block, Pat, though the Lord be thanked 
your face was cut after a different pattern. Td take no prize 
in a beauty show, while you — " 

'' Do you really think I'm pretty. Dad ? " she interrupted 
him. '* Do you really think I've improved ? " 

*' Improved 1 " he gave a long, low whistle. ''When I think 
of you riding around the prairie with your dusty skirts and 
your hair flying, and a sombrero that some cow man left at 
our place because things in that territory had grown too hot 
for him and he had to leave in a hurry, I can't believe my 
eyes. You're stunning, Pat; something like the Goddess of 
Liberty come to shore — " 

Patricia stooped and kissed him on his growing bald spot. 

''But I'm the same on the inside. Dad," she said, "just the 
same." 

He wheeled around suddenly and faced her. " I don't know," 
he said, with a troubled expression in his keen gray eyes. 
" I — don't — know — I don't feel so sure of that." 

Chapter II. 

Bob Bingham had been drunk twice before he was six years 
old from draining the glasses that his convivial father left stand- 
ing at all hours around his bed-room. The first time that he 
had actually keeled over on the floor his blear-eyed parent 
had been roused to some degree of solicitude and had rushed 
frantically for) a doctor, who 'answered the urgent summons 
clad unconventionally in trousers, trailing suspenders, and pa- 
jama coat. After^ examining the child he had quickly pro- 
nounced it a case of alcoholism, and then he proceeded to de- 
liver an irate lecture to both father and child. But it had no 
effect. ' Bob drank again as often as he got the chance. 

Mr. Bingham, a prosperous saloon keeper, with some vague 
ideas of parental duty a&d still mistier views on education, had 
insisted that his son Bob should finish at the high school and 
then go on to college, from which he was promptly expelled 
for drunkenness and disorder. A short time after this his old 
father died. Bob spent a few days of sober respectability, 
in which he planned out a radical change of life, but, after 
hearing the will read, and realizing that he was sole heir to 



Digitized by 



Google 



490 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Jol7f 

his father's Urge btisiiiessp and that there was a fortane^ lar ex- 
ceeding his maadlin expectations, to his credit in the bank, he 
went on a spree to celebrate and signed papers so reddesdy 
that his next genuine sober moment found him withoat a cent. 

Since that time he had drifted aimlessly from place to place, 
in his happy- go-Incky fashion, making friends and losing them 
with equal cheerfulness, working spasmodically in all sorts of 
situations and trying nearly every trade, for his fingers were 
skillful and his quick mind retained some of its deremess even 
when half befogged by liquor. The world had been his tramp- 
ing ground. He had seen all sorts of civilisations, and could 
tell wondrous stories of his experiences. His own code of 
ethics was so elastic that he had a vast toleration for the fol- 
lies and sins of his fellows, and his unfailing sense of humor 
made him a philosopher in the midst of his deprivations. But 
now that he was getting older. his body craved food and de- 
finite shelter for the winter. 

This afternoon, as he readied Tom Cuthbert's door, he 
looked up at the house in some dismay. From the pauper's 
point of view it looked unsympathetically discouraging; but 
mounting the steps he rang the bell, while he glanced uncer- 
tainly at the card he held in his hand. 

It bore the name of a charitable organization and on the 
back the agent had written: ''Ask for Miss Delarue.** 

Bob was uncertain of the name, the writing was indistinct, 
and his eyes had lost some of their power. When the door 
opened he thrust the bit of pasteboard on the butler, saying: 
''That's the name of the lady I came to see." 

" She don't buy of peddlers," snapped the man, who bore 
some resemblance to a turtle in his tight-fitting livery. 

"I'm not a tin peddler," said Bob, grinning in his old 
genial way, "the Lord forbid. Chase yoursdf and get the 
lady. I'm here by appointment — special invitation-^under- 
stand ? I'll come in out of this west wind, rince yon insist on 
it. Now shut the door— don't cool off the gentleman's house. 
Used to be a butler myself in my early days. Staid a week 
—couldn't stand the job answering bells and acting like a 
fool." 

Fearful of this tall, heavily built stranger, the butler moved 
cautiously away to report his presence, leaving Bob to find a 
seat in the hall or drawing-room as he saw fit. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19IO.] Patricia^ the Problem 491 

Bob meditated aloud : '' If I go in the parlor she may give 
me a job in the legislature/' he grinned ; *' if I stay in the 
hall she may take me for a cook '' ; and^ attracted by the glow 
of an open grate that he saw in the distance^ he walked bold« 
ly between the satin portieres into the paneled drawing*room. 
''I look like a burglar/' he said, viewing himself with critical 
indifference in the long mirror above the mantel. '''Ought 
to have had a shave and borrowed some clothes— up against 
the big bugs this time/' He pulled at his frayed collar and 
tried to straighten his stringy red cravat, and then sat restful- 
ly down in one of the brocade-covered chairs, feeling equal 
to any emergency. He had played the part of a gentleman 
before not unsuccessfully. 

He began deliberately to plan out a! dramatic life-story for 
the present occasion, when he was forced by surprise back into 
his own personality. 

Miss Delarue was out, so Miss Cuthbert had graciously con- 
sented to meet the man whose case she had declared hopeless 
when she had heard it reported to the conference the day be- 
fore. For a moment she stood speechless in the doorway, 
startled by the familiar face of her visitor, which was reflected 
in the gold framed mirror, then she came forward, holding out 
both hands with frank cordiality: ''Bob Bingham f she ex- 
claimed. " Well I might have guessed it, though they did not 
mention your name. No money— no health— -and drinking 
again. How do you do?" 

''It— it ain't Pat Cuthbert?" he gasped. "If it wasn't for 
your red hair, Pat. Surely it ain't little Pat Cuthbert that I 
used to take on my knee?" 

"And tell stories to before the wood fire." She paused for a 
moment, seeming to enjoy his astonishment. " I've grown up. 
Bob; you know I had to grow up." 

As she spoke the barriers of the years were razed. Fol- 
lowing a common impulsct she had fallen naturally back into 
her old attitude towards this favorite comrade of her child- 
hood. He had noticed her when others neglected her, he bad 
given her her first visions of a world outside her own; hit 
stories of his many-sided adventures had made him a hero in 
her eyes; she had always found him a delightful companion 
when he was sober, and a harmless one when he was drunk. 

"Lord! I should say you had grown up," he said, as his 



Digitized by 



Google 



49« PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [July, 

bloodshot eyes gazed intently in her face, seeking a glimpse of 
the girl he had known. ** And — and yon live here ? " 

''Since two weeks ago." 

"Is this place Tom's?" 

"It is." 

" Are — are yon keeping a hotel ? " 

"Not now," she laughed. "We have money — loads of 
money. Dad struck it rich — a gold mine. It's like your story 
of the fairy princess all come true." 

"Well I'll be ," said Bob, sinking limply back in the 

brocade chair, "and from what particular hole in the ground 
did he get it?" 

"The Larimee Mine." She sat down and propped her 
spangled slippers up on the brass fender. "You remember 
the old Larimee that you all used to laugh about" 

"Lord save usl And he got this out of that?" And his 
glance roamed around the room as if he were taking an inven- 
tory of its valuable possessions. "Wonder how he got the 
claim — wonder if he bought it clean outright. Used to belong 
to a party here in the East, I believe. Your pa wasn't born 
yesterday, you know." 

"Oh, I don't know how he got it," she said carelessly. 
"We have it — that's the main point. Now tell me what you 
want. Bob." 

"Lordl I don't know just this minute. I came here to 
work some sort of a bluff; and I've butted into you folks, 
who know me too well. I'm not as young as I once was. 
It's getting chilly outside. I reckon I've got to go to 
work." 

" Work, Bob ? Do you really think you could keep at it ? 
What kind of work? What have you been doing since I saw 
you last?" 

"Seven years ago," said Bob reflectively. "Let's see- 
same old thingi I reckon. I was a year at your pa's tavern, 
trying to keep his books, while you rode round the country on 
those wild Indian ponies, trying to break your neck ; then you 
went away to school, and that spoiled you-«" 

"Spoiled me?" 

" Well, next time I saw you, you were tamed considerable." 

"I had to grow up. Bob." 

"Of course, that's the trouble with most of us. Sprry I 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 493 

didn't pike oat for glory when I was fit to go. IVe been 
such a blooming fool." 

She looked up at him, her eyes full of their old childish 
sympathy. ''Most of us are. Bob, sooner or later/' she said 
comfortingly. ''But what are you going to do now?" 

"I don't just know." 

**Are you hungry?" 

''Well, now that you mention it—" 

"Come in then and have some lunch." 

He followed her awkwardly, fearful of treading on the train 
of her clinging gown. The handsome dress and the elaborate 
Jtyle of coiffure all seemed unfamiliar, and he found himself 
wondering, with a half-defined sense of resentment, whether 
charity or her old hospitality had impelled the invitation. 

She seated herself at the head of the long mahogany table, 
and motioning her guest to a seat by her side she rang the 
bell for the butler to bring back the lunch dishes which had 
just been removed. " I have finished," she said, and the smile 
brought back the atmosphere of friendliness which had seemed 
lost for the moment. "I'll drink another cup of tea, just to 
be sociable." 

"Lord, I'm not used to such magnificence," said Bob, 
picking up some of the silver and examining it. "How does 
Tom take to all these fixings? I've been prospecting with 
him when we ain't had so much as a fork between us." 

"We can get used to anything," she said; and for the first 
time since his arrival she became conscious of the chasm of 
the years. She noticed the shabbiness of his clothes and the 
grime of the hand that rested on the gleaming table-cloth. 

"Except starvation," he said. His eyes turned hungrily 
towards the massive sideboard, where stood some half-full 
decanters. "Please, Pat, don't you want to give me a 
drink?" 

"Indeed I do not," she answered promptly. "Don't ask 
it Didn't I try to keep you sober seven years ago?" 

"Without success." 

"You didn't drink so much that winter. You told me so 
yourself." 

"I drank more than was good for me." 

"Well you always did that." 

He laughed good-naturedly. " Right again, Pat," he said 



Digitized by 



Google 



494 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [July, 

''Then will you tell me why I wms brought here this after* 
noon ? Your name wasn't on that card I sent in." 

''I know. Miss Delarue wanted to see you/' 

''And who is she?'' 

"She is a friend of mine. She waited in all morning to 
see you; and when you did not come she left the message 
with me." 

"Then fire ahead." 

" She has a place for you as caretaker. A cousin of hers 
owns a place in the country about twenty miles from here. He 
wants a man to go there and live and take care of his horses." 

"And you are going to recommend me as a sober, indus- 
trious citizen?" 

"I don't know," she said, "they won't come to me for 
recommendations ; and if they do— well. Bob, if you'll take the 
place, I'll try to help you every way I can. I suppose I'll lie 
for you if I have to. Miss Delarue would think it a sin—" 

"And who is Miss Delarue?" 

" Dear me. Bob, Miss Delarue Is a saint, while I-^well, you 
know I might have been one too if I had had a mother." 

"Well, religion ain't in my line, either," he returned with 
cheerful resignation. " Saints I how was any one going to get 
religion in that God-forsaken country you came from ? Ranch 
men and sheep grazing, and afterwards prospecting with your 
dad. I used to say you ought to have been a boy ; but, now 
—Lord 1 what a woman." 

She seemed pleased at his frank admiration. "It's my 
clothes, Bob," she said, as she smoothed out a fold in her toft 
dress with a caressing touch. "They make me seem so fine. 
You know. Bob, I always wanted good clothes." 

" Clothes can't do the whole business," be said with con- 
viction. " I ain't disputing that money's a good thing to get, 
but it's hard to hold. I'm glad it don't make you forget old 
times." 

"No"; she said, and the brightness died out of her face 
for a moment, "but I'm trying to forget; I don't want to re- 
member. I couldn't be poor again and go back. I couldn't. 
Bob." 

"Well, I wouldn't mind," he said, gulping down his tea, 
"but I've never stepped up." 

"But you will. Bob?" she entreated. "You'll take this 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Patricia^ the problem 495 

nice place la the country and get strong and keep sober? 
Promise me yon will keep sober.'* 

''I never have/' he said helplessly. ''You know, Pat, I 
never have.'* 

''Snppose, Bobt I gave yon some money, what would you 
do with it?'' 

'* You want the honest truth ? " 

"Yes." 

''Then I'd make for the nearest saloon on the block." 

"But there are no saloons on the block, and I am going 
to trust you. Bob. Somebody has got to trust you. You will 
need carfare to go to this place in the country ; and you ought 
to have an overcoat. I'm going to give you fifty dollars; you 
may need it." 

" No doubt about that," he grinned, " but I've experienced 
the sensation before. I'm not taking your pocket money, Pat." 

She fumbled in the gold bag she carried and slipped a roll 
of bills into his hand. 

"You know we have plenty, Bob. Dad gives me all the 
money I care to spend." 

"Well, if It's Tom's I ain't so particular. Might have had 
a piece of the Larimee myself if I had staid long enough to 
get on to the curves of the deal." 

" Perhaps," she said composedly. 

"And now tell me who is this tenderfoot?" 

" I don't know him. Here is his address. He's not our 
sort. Bob. He's been respectable for generations. He owns 
an estate that his grandfather and his great-grandfather had 
before him, and It was given by the king to his great-great* 
grandfather. 

"Depends on how you look at it Kings ain't overly re- 
spectaUe." 

" Perhaps not," she said, " but the present owner is a model 
of goodness; works in the slums and starts settlements and 
fresh air farms for poor children." 

"Sounds like an easy job," observed her visitor. 

" But he doesn't do it for money. Bob. He has a fortune." 

"Then what does he do it for?" 

" Piety, I guess," said Patricia with a little grimace. 

"Oh Lordl And his name?" 

"Hugh FarreU," she said. 



Digitized by 



Google 



496 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [July, 

Chapter III. 

Mrs. Delarae sat in the tapestried library, holding a band- 
painted screen between her face and the firelight The screen 
was symbolic. All her life she had straggled to shot out the 
real, elemental things by pretty ruses or baubles of some sort. 
But, in spite of her efforts, she had experienced enough of the 
meagreness of poverty to make her sensitively aware of her 
present luxurious surroundings. Soft cushions were to her like 
caresses, her palate craved highly-seasoned food, she liked to 
think of cooking as a fine art, a maid had become almost 
a necessity. After all, she told herself, these things were her 
birthright, so that outwardly she accepted them as a matter 
of course, while mentally she exaggerated the service she gave 
in exchange for this sumptuous livelihood. 

The butler, moving noiselessly over the heavy rugs, appeared 
suddenly before her with a card tray* 

*' If you would only clear your throat, James,'' she protested^ 
glancing at the card. ''You are like a ghost I never could 
stand being startled. Please clear your throat hereafter when 
I do not hear you coming. Ask the gentleman to come in 
here.*' 

As the man went to do her bidding she rose from her chair 
and stood waiting to greet her guest. She had long studied 
the value of effect, and she knew that she made a stately pic- 
ture, posed thus with her back to the fire. The light could 
not accentuate her wrinkles, her trailing gown fell in graceful 
folds from her well-rounded figure, which had none of the pnffi- 
ness or angularity of old age. Her gray hair was arranged in 
softening waves, after an approved fashion, and her lorgnette, 
granted as a concession to her dimming eyes, and worn reluc- 
tantly while reading, now dangled idly from a chain of unique 
workmanship. 

''Why, my dear Hugh/' she said with well modulated af* 
fection, as she held out her arms to the tall man who came 
eagerly forward. ''I thought you would never come." 

He stooped to kiss her affectionately. '' I've been away for 
the last two weeks. Didn't Marie tell you that I was out of 
town ? " 

*' Business in these days seems to be an excuse for every- 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Patricia^ thm Problem 497 

thing/' she said a trifle fretf ally^ *' though there is no denying 
that it has a most necessary place in the. world. If my poor, 
dear husband had had the business instinct of a baby, I wouldn't 
be in my present position, I know." 

Hugh looked around the room in some curiosity, as if he 
were trying to comprehend the situation at a glance, and then 
he took the deep-seated chair opposite to his aunt. As the 
firelight flared in his face, Mrs. Delarue scrutinized him care- 
fully. 

''Too tall— too thin — too pale,'' she said to herself; and 
then aloud : '' Why don't you grow a beard, Hugh ? You are 
so— so ascetic looking, I feel that you ought to have on a 
cassock and a bcretta and all the other habiliments of Rome." 

" Just because I prefer to shave ? " His smile drove the 
sadness out of his eyes for a moment. '' I believe I feel 
cleaner without whiskers; but if it would contribute to the 
happiness of my relatives — " 

'' Now don't be absurd," she interrupted him. ''I see no 
reason why a man should be any uglier than necessary." 

'' I don't know that I do either," he admitted humorously. 
'' I don't know that I ever considered the matter analytically 
before." 

''Few men do," she said with feminine finality. "Beauty 
is to a woman what business is to a man. In other words, 
she ought to make a business of being beautiful." 

"Some women are created exempt from such labor," he 
said with old-fashioned gallantry, looking into her handsome 
face with genuine admiration. 

"Not at all," she contradicted him, "that's a myth that 
men cling to. I've been studying the subject scientifically of 
late, for in Paris I've been transforming Tom Cuthbert's daugh* 
ter into a beauty." 

She stopped, feeling aware of his inattention. Somewhere 
through the long glittering stretches of the house sounded the 
faint music of a harp. Hugh was listening to catch the elusive 
melody. 

"And did you succeed?" he asked, feeling that his aunl 
had paused for some sort of a response. 

"You shall see," she smiled her satisfaction. "But of 
course you won't realize the difference that five years have 
made. When I saw her first out West I knew she had pos- 
VOL. xci.— 3a 



Digitized by 



Google 



498 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [July, 

sibilities. She developed very quickly. She mast haveinher* 
ited some sense of refinement from her mother, who died many 
years ago/' 

*' Certainly not from her father/' he said without math in* 
terest. 

''Oh, no; he's quite impossible/' the old lady agreed; 
''but he's so enormously rich that people forgive his manners 
and his finger nails/' 

"Finger nails I" 

'' Well you knowi dear, they are of the grubby, stubby 
sort, and never quite clean; but, then, we don't see much of 
him. He spends all his time looking after his interests; never 
reads a book — studies the stock exchange— adds to his fortune 
daily— very generous and kind-hearted; but, as I said before, 
impossible socially — quite impossible/' 

'' And you have undertaken to launch his daughter ? " 

'' I suppose so, though that was not in the original con- 
tract. You see it was this way. Your poor dear Uncle Henri 
had lung trouble, though he never would admit it, and we had 
gone West for his health, and while we were there some one 
persuaded him to invest what little money he had in mining 
stock. We soon found out that we had buried our money, 
and I believe the disappointment killed Henri, for he lay down 
and seemed to be dying from sheer hopelessness and despair, 
and then one day he began to cry out for a priest— you know 
he always was very religious and I was always worldly. 
Marie inherits her piety from him. Well, this day I was des* 
perate, for I felt that he was dying, and I went downstairs 
to find out if, by chance, there was a mission anywhere in the 
vicinity, and I saw Patricia standing on the porch. She had 
on boots, a short skirt, a man's sombrero, and when I ques- 
tioned her she told me that she would get the priest, and, 
mounting a horse that was standing in the yard, she rode off 
astride without a word to any one. The priest arrived late 
that night— I found out afterwards that Patricia had ridden 
thirty miles to bring him through an almost impassible road; 
and she is not a Catholic, so she had no belief to spur her 
on. 

She paused for a moment. Hugh's eyes showed a gleam 
of interest. '' Have you converted her ? " he asked. 

'' No, indeed ; why, my dear Hugh, she is a perfect heathen 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 499 

as far as any religious convictiotia go. I thiak she believes 
vaguely in a God^ but that is all. She never had any trainingi 
she had no one to teach her anjrthing. She grew up in her 
father's tavern^ watched over by a slattern of a woman. Her 
father sent her to boarding school for a time, and she was ex- 
pelled because she broke every rule — not from any spirit of 
maliciousness, you understand, but because she didn't see 
sufficient reason for keeping them.*' 

''Well, perhaps they were unreasonable." 

''Not at all. You cannot manage an institution without 
rules; but Patricia was unused to discipline of any kind. She 
talked in her class and in the dormitories. She studied the 
lessons that interested her and left alone the ones she did not 
like. She went out shopping several times without permission; 
and the effect was bad on the other girls, for she was a general 
favorite." 

"Then how did you succeed in taming her?" 

The music of the harp grew louder. The invisible musician 
was playing some old Irish lullabies that his nurse had crooned 
to him in his cradle; they seemed to soothe away the troubles 
of a world. 

"My part was easy," his aunt went on. "You see, Henri 
left us absolutely penniless, and Tom Cuthbert— I don't know 
whether he understood the real situation or not — asked me 
to take Marie and Patricia abroad. 'I want to make her a 
lady,' he said, 'a lady like her mother was. I don't khow 
how.' He gave us a most generous allowance. Patricia is so 
intelligent that her development was astonishing. We had a 
charming little circle in Paris — some of dear Henri's relatives 
among the nobility ; most exclusive, you know — Patricia was a 
great success. She really could have made a brilliant mar- 
riage; but in some ways she is peculiar, and her ideas of 
marriage are absurd." 

" What are her ideas ? " he asked, knowing that she had 
again paused for a vivifjring question. 

"Well, she believes in love." 

"Don't you?" 

"Of course; but I know it has its limitations. It can't 
live on nothing a year. Patricia talks comradeship and intel- 
lectual equality, and demands more than our grandmothers 
ever dreamed of." 



Digitized by 



Google 



500 PATRICIA. THE PROBLEM U^7f 

''Yoa would hardly expect the Tiewpoint of her grand* 
mother ? '' 

''No, not exactly; bat in my day women were not so 
analjTtical. If a man cared for her and could proTide com- 
fortably, she was married and contented/' 

** It sounds rather barbarous," he said. 

She tapped his arm lightly with her lorgnette. ''I never 
expect you to agree with me, Hugh dear. Your father was a 
most obstinate boy; but I do want your help with Patricia." 

'' How?" he asked in some dismay, 
r ''I want you to introduce her to your friends." 

** Oh, my dear aunt," he said, laughing as he stretched out 
his feet to the fire. '' If you could see my friends — ragpick* 
ers, charwomen, newsboys, drunks. I dropped out of your 
sort of lodety years ago. I'm a social outlaw. I never pay 
a dinner calL I rarely answer an invitation — I haven't time — " 

''You are still very presentable," she said, surveying his 
faultless evening clothes; "and if, as a rich man, you choose 
to dabble in all sorts of queer philanthropies, it makes you all 
the more interesting in these days when every one is supposed 
to have a fad of some sort. Now it will be a real charity to 
help me this winter. I want Patricia to join the Southern 
Assembly, and we will need you. As I told you before, Tom 
Cuthbert is quite impossible socially, and a man is useful in 
so many ways." 

"Well, until you find some one more amiable and more 
ornamental, I'm willing to be used," he said resignedly, "but 
I hate assemblies. I don't know how to dance and I never 
hope to learn — I can't comprehend afternoon teas, and I only 
find dinners tolerable when the cook is a chef. So please 
marry off Miss Patricia as quickly as you can." 

She leaned over and rested her wrinkled face against his 
shoulder, more conscious of the fine quality of his coat than, 
any real definite feeling of affection. " I knew you would be 
good," she said. " Now, go find the girls. I want you to see 
Patricia. They are in the music room. I will join you there 
as soon as I finish this chapter of my novel. People in books 
are so satisfactory. They always do what one expects they 
will do." 

" Must I go ? '% he asked pathetically. He was very tired. 
The deep leather chair was so comfortable, and his aunt's 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9Xp.] PATHICIA, THS JPHOBlSM 50I 

prattle required so little response, that he could listen to the 
dreamy, far-away music with bis old childish unquestioning 
sense of peace. 

'' Of course you must go/* she said, ** I want your opinion 
of my prot^g^e." 

He arose reluctantly, and following the music he passed 
through the ornate magnificence of the hall; the conservatory 
and the music room were at the extreme end. The fragrance 
of exotics seemed a fit accompaniment to the rare melody of 
the harp. He stopped for a moment to listen, and then he 
knocked softly upon the framework of the door. 

** Come in,** some one said, and pushing the silken portiere 
aside he found himself alone with Patricia. 

For a moment she did not look up. She was sitting on a 
low stool, dressed all in white, her reddish hair resting in 
sharp contrast against the gold of the harp, her large white 
hands caught dreamily at the strings, as if she were trying to 
express some melody of her own improvising. At last she 
turned — 

''I suppose you are Dr. Farrell,'' she said indi£ferently. 
** Marie has a headache and has gone upstairs.'' She held out 
her hand. It lay inert in his for a moment. ** I am Patricia, 
the problem,'* she said* 

Chapter IV. 

There was something totagonistic in Patricia's greeting that 
roused his curiosity at once. 

''Will you keep on with your music?" he began, finding a 
cushioned divan by the door. 

''I think it might be safer," she said. 

"Safer?" 

'' Safer for a beginning " ; she forced a mirthless little laugh. 
^'Your aunt has been telling you all about me— all about us 
*— I hate to be dissected. I know she wants your opinion— I 
feel that it is going to be most unfavorable. I think I shall 
try to make it so." 

He listened in some amazement, and then, with an intui- 
tion rare in men, he comprehended her position. If she had 
not actually heard his aunt's conversation, she could rightly 
conjecture it. The five years had been an education in books 



Digitized by 



Google 



$92 PATJtICIA, THE PROBLEM [Jolr» 

Md travel. They had brought tocher a love of calttire and re- 
fiaemeot, a knowledge of the conventions which neither over- 
awed nor encompassed her. Her long, impressionable child- 
hood, spent on the wide-stretching plains^ where all bonndary 
lines are lost in misty horizons, had left her free. Mrs. Del- 
arne's standards would be accepted so far as they seemed de- 
sirable. To Patricia they would never prove formative. They 
were no part of her; she used themi or she discarded them, 
as she saw fit 

She had again taken her place on the low stool, but sud- 
denly she pushed the harp from her. 'Tm in no humor for 
music,'* she said. 

He surveyed her for a few moments in silence. Her figure 
was silhouetted against the tall French windows. The heavy 
velvet curtains had been pulled apart to coax in the last glow 
of the sunset; and now the moon was rising from behind some 
black pines, that stood out, lance-like, guarding the city. The 
small, red-shaded light in the room mingled strangely with the 
white brilliance from outside. 

^'A moment ago,'' Hugh said, ''I fancied you a saint set 
in a stained-glass window, or perhaps one of the seraphim with 
a harp; but a saint out of humor — " 

''Perhaps you are not so far wrong," she interrupted. 
'' Stained-glass saints are not sanctified, you know. I always 
think of them in sections leaded together, sometimes most awk- 
wardly. Your aunt has given you the pieces to form an image 
as you like. Perhaps I won't recognize myself when you get 
through; but it really doesn't matter." 

^'I think it does," he said, a trifle disconcerted and not 
knowing what else to say. 

''What is the use of pretending?" she began, smoothing 
her wavy hair back from her forehead as if she were already 
tired of the interview. "We won't like each other." 

'' I'm sorry," he said gently ; and he wondered if he felt, or 
forced, the tone of regret in his voice. "But we need not 
know each other if you don't wish it." He rose, preparatory 
to taking his deparature. 

"Yes, we must"; she said with a certain imperiousness. 
" Please sit down. You see I have persuaded Mrs. Pelarue to 
remain with me this winter, and she will expect to see a great 
deal of you ; and then Marie likes you and feels so much 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 503 

sympathy with your work. Mrs. Delarue woald not under- 
stand your not coming here freqaently. So we mast know 
each other. I fear I have made a rude beginning." 

''I don't know/' he said, and there was a gleam of hnmor 
in his eyes, '' I have met many people ; bat I believe I never 
made such progress in an acquaintanceship before. Of course 
I can understand perfectly any one disliking me, but still, feel- 
ling of any sort usually has some foundation. You see we 
don't know each other. Don't you think your judgment is a 
bit rash?" 

She caught the expression in his eyes and smiled back at 
him. ''Perhaps/' she admitted, ''but I have heard things." 

"What things?" he asked. 

"Oh, good things/' she replied hastily. "Marie tells me 
you are so religious — few men are — I don't think I should 
like the type. She tells me that you live in a settlement, 
although you have a beautiful home of your own. I can't 
understand any one choosing to be surrounded by the ugly, 
vicious things of life when he could escape them. Marie tells 
me that you studied medicine so that you could practice only 
among the poor. I never could endure the sight of suffering. 
When I was a child and we were living on a ranch, I ran 
away whenever Father branded the cattle. I've run away now, 
and I mean to stay away." 

" I can understand that point of view, too," he said slowly. 

She looked quickly up at him, incredulity in her eyes. 

"I don't believe you can," she said. "You have never 
been really poor yourself. You have only made believe." 

"There are many things worse than poverty," he said, 
falling back upon this platitude to urge her to go on. 

" Then I don't know them," she said quickly. " Poverty 
seems to embrace all other forms of misery. I seem to have 
felt them all. I was born in a shanty out on the plains. My 
mother cooked and washed and ironed for eight ranchmen. 
We had nothing but the sheep — nothing in the house but the 
barest necessities, and few of those— and my mother, now that 
I am old enough to understand, was not used to privation. 
She bad come from a beautiful New England village to teach 
a little Western school She loved music and the artistic 
things of life. The work was too hard for her. Her health 
began to fail, and that summer we moved further on. The 



Digitized by 



Google 



504 PATRICIA, THE PjtOBLEM [JulXf 

sheep bad proved a failure. Father had heard that rich gold 
mines had been discovered about a hundred miles away, and 
again we moved on. We took possession of a little cabin that 
had been abandoned several yeai;s before, ,and while Father 
went prospecting. Mother, in her struggle for food and fuel, 
began to furnish meals to some of the miners. Then Father 
adde(^ several rooms to the cabin, and opened a bar, and called 
the place tjbe Golden Eagle. Mother protested, but Father 
could not understand her objections. His father and his fath- 
er's father had kept a saloon, and he called my mother a little 
Puritan. I remember the word — I puzzled over it as a child 
—I was four when she died. Poverty killed her. It was the 
grind, the burden, the ugliness, the cramping of her soul into 
surroundings from which there seemed no escape. You have 
never felt it. At any time you could give up. You have not 
known the horror of it all—the sordid, desperate struggle to 
keep a badly vitalized body when all energy of mind and soul 
seem gone." 

'' You could not have felt that either.*' 

''Yes**; she said, ''I saw it and felt it. The woman who 
came to take care of me when my mother died had not a 
thought above her dish pans and her glass of grog at night 
In the saloon men gambled and fought for infinitesimal nuggets. 
One night there was a murder. I heard the angry voices and 
then groans out of a sudden silence. I was only twelve, and I 
put my fingers in my ears and buried my head under the bed- 
clothes. Old Emily, who slept in the room with me, told me 
to go to sleep. 'If it*s a killin*,' she said; "tain't goin* to 
mend matters to have you settin' up all night* Oh, I want 
to keep away from it — I could not go back. I hate the sight 
of the struggle — the struggle of the body to live— just to 
live.** 

While she talked her face had flushed into beauty. He 
bad listened in silent amazement. He had expected to find 
Miss Cutbbert a snob, ambitious only for social supremacy. 
He tried to fancy her in the old world society, of which his 
aunt had spoken. Had they welcomed her candor as refresh«k 
ingly American, after their satiety with ancestral codes ? Was 
she always so frank as she had been with him; or had she 
felt forced to explain herself mora fully, since Mrs. Delarue 
had taken him into her confidence? 



Digitized by 



Google 



19XO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 505 

''I know the lower world is an unlovely one,'* he said, ''but 
we can't keep our hands o£f. After all, they are our neighbors.*' 

"We can keep our hands o£f if we choose, and I choose. 
I want to be happy for a little while, I want to live for my 
own happiness alone.*' 

"Some women could/' he said reflectively, "but I don't 
believe you are one of them. You will never find your hap- 
piness that way." 

She went to the window, and turning her back upon him 
she looked out into the garden. The bare trees were ice 
laden and in the moonlight seemed to be hung with sparkling 
fruit. 

"How do you know?" she said stiffly. "Please don't 
preach to me. It wouldn't do any good. I have the vaguest 
ideas of religion. Life is so mysterious I don't want to think 
about it. I want to accept what has been given to me as un- 
questioningly as I can." 

"For how long?" Again his eyes showed a humorous 
light. 

"Oh, I don't know. As long as I can. The world is full 
of beautiful things, I'll see that side only; and keep away 
from the dark corners." She spoke with the wilfulness of a 
child. 

"You can't," he said. And his lean white face had some 
oi the severity of the anchorite about it. "The dark comers 
are everywhere; and we depend upon our neighbors at every 
turn. They build our houses, our bridges, our railroads. They 
clothe us, they furnish us with food and fuel; our luxuries, 
our necessities, depend upon that under world. Are we to 
render it no service in return?" 

" I cannot think as you do ; and that is another reason for 
my being happy." She looked out again into the garden, and 
then, as if animated by some sudden impulse, she took her 
place at the harp and lightly touched the strings. " Now lis- 
ten to my creed," she said. 

The music began stealthily, as if it feared resistance, then 
it spoke and revealed to him a wonder world. It led him 
through primeval forests,^ where nature rioted unassailed, and 
unfolded colors of changing green and gold, the tinkle of pale 
lily ponds— birds drinking from unpressed grapes then singing 
to their nesting heights— the whir of wings — ^the splash of tiny 



Digitized by 



Google 



506 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [July. 

waterfalls— then away with the wind — past^fidds of crackliog 
corn, past lowing cattle dozing in the snn, across the m«rmar- 
ing grasses of the plains— np— up to peaks of eternal snow- 
flaming clouds— seas of molten fire-^widths of stars— die peace 
of dark-riven gorges, broken only by the tumultoousness of 
monntain streams. 

The music stopped. Patricia sat silent, only half-consdotts 
of her guest. He stirred uneasily. ''What a power. What 
pagan power I '' he exclaimed. 

"You understand ?•' 

'' It's a mood/' he said. ** Only a mood/' 

She shook her head. ''The mood is me.'' Then she 
laughed. "I may be ungrammatical ; but I always try to tell 
the truth." 

Her tone and the forced laugh brought him back to the 
ordinary world of couTentions. 

"Your music is wonderful/' he said; and then, seeking to 
relieve the tensity of the situation, he added: "That alone 
would preserve you from pauperism"; and he arose to bid her 
good-night, feeling, in some intangible way, that she wished 
to dismiss him from her thoughts and her presence. 

(to bb continued.) 



Digitized by 



Google 




SOME THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM. 

BY S. M. P. 

|E suffered from critics who were forever shearing 
the wild tresses of poetry between rusty rules, 
who could never see a literary bough project 
beyond the trim level of its day but they must 
lop it with a crooked criticism, who kept in- 
domitably planting in the defiles of fame the established 
canons, that had been spiked by poet after poet. • • •** 

So wrote Francis Thompson of a great forerunner of the 
early nineteenth century, and so might it be written of many 
another in the further past And if it is not to be true of the 
poets of the future, it is needful for critics to reconsider their 
office and its responsibilities. In all spheres of mental activity 
we are gaining from new heights, new outlooks, and why not 
in this one ? 

It is true, indeed, that never has finer or more interpreta- 
tive criticism been written than within the last hundred years, 
but this work has been done, for the most part, on the ac- 
knowledged masterpieces of the werld's literature, on dead 
and gone authors, and with the assured approbation of an 
almost entirely concurring generation. But the critic has an- 
other and more difficult office, that of being adequate to a 
new genius, or literary force, of his own day. It is here that 
he should hesitate, that he should look to his qualifications, no 
matter what good work he has already done. It is here that 
disasters have multiplied, and too often he who has charmed us 
with his interpretation of old authors is quite unfit to lead us 
beyond the outer courts of the new. 

In all departments of life or art there tends to grow 
in die minds of proficients an ideal out of what has pleased 
and attracted them in the past Before the bar of this ideal 
original forces, coming on the scene, are too often doomed. 
Those who have settled the graver problems of life or art for 
themselves, and have lived along these lines, consciously or un* 
consciously, cease to be much interested in what coming seers 
would unfold. But ** a poet is not merely a purveyor to es- 



Digitized by 



Google 



S08 SOME THOUGHTS dtf CRITICISM [July, 

tablisbed tastes '* ; he is also ** a compelling and shaping force, 
a light thrown on the dark places of changeful human ex- 
perience/' His recognition therefore is more likely to come 
from among those to whom, from the impact of temperament, 
life can still bring surprising knowledge, who are searching 
for those responses which ' their own time or the near future 
alone can give. Out of such should come the apptedaUve 
critic for whom every artist seeks. Great preachers have con* 
fessed to composing and delivering their best sermons for an 
audience of one, the ideal listener and exemplar of their theme 
— hundreds were charmed, only one soul was deep enough for 
the seed to bring fullest fruit. So too the poet or artist has in his 
heart the ideal critic whose nature responds to his utterance 
as thirsty 'earth to the summer shower, as sunflower to the sun. 

He therefore who responds, who appreciates, who praises 
where praise is due, fulfills one, and the most important, office 
of the critic. Alas 1 the name carries with it the idea of a 
different function : but — and a modern writer has put it well 
-^^'the absolute naming of qualities, not the degree in which 
they are present or absent, is the function of criticism '' . • , 
''criticism ideally is the perfect praise of perfect art, but, 
failing the perfect art, it must needs be a measurer of imper- 
fection.'* Too often it has been little more I It is so much 
easier to find fault than to doff one's prejudices and enter into 
the soul of another. 

Hence the multitude of unqualified critics of indefinite 
varieties, all keeping with the elements more or less kindly 
mixed, the tendency to solve life and its activities by fixed 
formulas, by old laws, rather than by conscientious study, or 
sympathetic appreciation. And such is the apparent strength 
of their attitude, that the result to their victim is a sense of 
closing mental trap-doors; and a prison to which stone walls 
and iron bars were comparative freedom. 

''Failing the perfect art, it must needs be a measurer of 
imperfection," this, the last resort, is still in many cases looked 
on as the whole duty of criticism, notwithstanding the great 
warnings of the past Francis Jeffrey and William Words- 
worth stand out as clear-cut examples of unqualified critic and 
victim. The lesson should have taught us all wary walking I 
Yet still the dauntless critics rush in where angels fear to 
tread, carrying with them the framework of " fixed criteria 1 " 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] SOME THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM 509 

Recently I beard a lecture on Francis Thompson that was 
an example of this, a revelation of what might be called mislnttu 
pretative criticism. The lecturer set up his '* canons *' and pro« 
ceeded to test the poet by them. Fortunately Thompson passed 
the trial with honor, though he failed to *' fit in '' completelyy 
being condemned where he is most individual, and therefore 
most precious to lovers of literature. The lecturer described 
individualism as the bane of literature. Of course largeness of 
utterance and height of vision are essentials, but all great poetry 
is not objective. ''The Hound ol Heaven,'' for instance, not 
only reveals to us the ways of the soul, but also illustrates the 
continuous patience of God. The poet sings what he has learnt 
of the winding ways of man to God. And in all great art there 
is a certain individual coloring, a way even of touching or at- 
taining to large issues, that constitutes no small part of its 
fascination ; in the greatest passages of great poems what stirs 
us beside their eternal truth is that a man has been here and 
this is his soul. 

As an instance of baneful individualism, our critic quotes 
the following passage from '' Sister Songs '' as expressing a re- 
lation of personal and psychological dependence such as no 
healthy-minded man would acknowledge! 

''In all I work, my hand include th thine ; 
Thou rushest down in every stream 
Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening gorge; 
Unhood'st mine eyas- heart, and fliest my dream; 
Thou swing'st the hammers of my forge; 
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, 
Moves all the labouring surges of the world. 
Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me. 
And there thy pictured countenance lies unfurled, 
As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree." 

Multitudinous are the ways of man to God and diverse 
surely and infinite in their variety His ways to men. Thank 
God I some of us know, and carry with us stilU the strength 
of a human influence that lifted us for a moment, held us poised 
for a glance perhaps, yet sent us in the impetus of that mo- 
ment far on the full tide of a higher life to a glad and holy 
goal. These are but human helps, yet a human being may 



Digitized by 



Google 



SIO SOME THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM [July, 

bring a divine inflaence to poor starved soali beaten down with 
the surges of misunderstanding and stress of work or loneliness. 
And cannot a poet well sing for us, what many of us have 
felt, tliat this loving influence entered into all we did and 
stimulated us in our difficult feats ? Literary criticism can speak 
from many altitudes. Its soundings can, so to speak, be taken 
from various degrees of the literary compass. But it should 
never forget that, given a poet, a great part of the interest and 
pleasure he affords us lies in the fact that he sets forth a man's 
discovery of the truth anew. "There is,'' says Paul Bourget, 
''a deal of individual suffering, of defeated aspiration, an im-^ 
mense and tragic failure of countless life- histories in that em- 
bodiment of a shade of feeling, sublime, or delicately touching, 
which we call a work of art" How many and how great 
obstacles has the spirit overcome ? The answer to this question, 
as well as the vision of the spirit which overcame, counts in 
art 

Of course some critics deal out withering scorn to those 
who do not apply universally their '' labor-saving apparatus," 
or venture to move without the ** established canons I " Hu« 
mility and a sense of poetic beauty would seem to be excel* 
lent substitutes for the '* canons." Jeffrey applied ''fixed cri« 
teria" to Wordsworth's poems, and we know now who is 
laughed at, though Jeffrey was a thoroughly logical man, 
capable of appreciating recognized poetry, but in no sense 
capable of recognizing or doing justice to a new poet 

Again some critics lay it down as a test, that a great poet 
must always set before himself a great and noble aim, and 
this in the face of literary biography. The stuff of which great 
poetry is made is, indeed, always noble and everlastingly true. 
But the man who is a poet does not consciously set this end 
before himself — it is set for him. He often exemplifies Mil- 
ton's dictum, that he who would write an heroic poem, his 
whole life should be an heroic poem. And how frequently is 
die poetry greater than the life, greater than the poet realizes. 
He does but sing because he must, out of an idealism that is 
''the revenge of the mutilated desires of his heart." The 
central love is there. It is that which sings, though the poor 
wastrel may starve it sadly, while feeding on the garlic and 
onions of Egypt I am sure Shakespeare felt that he was a 
sorry sinner, but "Macbeth " teaches eternal truth in an eter- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] SOUS THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM 5U 

nally convincing way. I do not think it irreverent to say, 
one might me this play as a text-book for a retreat, and not 
have ezhaosted the sublime snggestiveness of Act V . as a 
commentary on the wages of sin. He and many more bnilded 
better than they knew, but not better than God meant. Who 
makes provision for the long road and the eleventh hour, 
guiding home many far-wandering jsheep by the light of art-^ 
surprising souls, as we have seen in our own day, where they 
least expected it, and sending them back to the bosom of the 
Truth. He will always have His blind workers who give their 
authentic witness to Him, as in the days of St. Paul. 

Of such critics as move by arbitrary rules, Professor 
Raleigh says: 

The monkey and the parrot die hard in man. It is they 
who foster the widespread belief that criticism is a kind of 
shorthand system, whereby right judgments, based on ad- 
mitted principles, can be attained at the cost of infinitely less 
labor than was involved in the production of the work to be 
judged. Given that the principles are sound and sufficient, 
then, they argue, if there be no error of detail in the applica- 
tlon, the result will be valid. They overlook, however, one 
important element in the case. Poetry is original or it is noth- 
ing. The admitted principles can never be sufficient to cover 
all the cases that may arise ; if they were, there would be no 
reason why men of fair intellectual abilities should employ 
themselves in turning out goods to prescribed patterns. All 
poetry begins at the beginning, it creates its own world, and 
presents the eternally novel matter of experience in words 
that charm the ear of the simplest listener. 

Criticism must do the same ; it must follow the poet, if he 
gives any token of being worth the following, step by step, re- 
creatiiq; his experiences, hanging on his words, disciplining 
itself to the measure oi his paces, believing in him, and living 
with him, tmtil looking back on the way it has been led, it 
shall be able to say whether the adventure is good and the 
goal worthy. 

There is no short cut to the end desired. Standards, eter* 
nal principles, formulas, summaries, and shibboleths, if they 
be substituted for the living experience, are obstacles and 
pitfalls. 

Let as, then, not make fixed and eternal what God has not 
made so. He has made man of infinite variety. 



Digitized by 



Google 



Sia Some Thoughts on Criticism. LJaly^ 

Interpretative criticism, as well as judicial criticism, has its 
limits and dangers. Space- will allow me to point out only 
one. The best interpreter and appreciator of the contem-^ 
porary genius, though he be polished to perfect clarity of 
vision and acuteness in the sense of proportion, has, after all, 
but one man's point of view, admirably as it may be focussed^ 
He can but suggest or set forth what has swung into his range 
of vision from his angle of observation, and therefore he should 
not claim, as Jeffrey did, to speak finally on the poets of hid 
time. 

Comparative and judicial criticism will grow out of a con* 
sensus of views and must come later. They belong to another 
branch of the art The contemporary critic is not in a posi* 
tion to judge finally — for many poets have, over and above 
their essential utterance, a message to their time that is beside 
the question of their enduring fame. Byron and Wordsworth 
may be cited as instances— tiie former was in harmony with 
his age, the latter contravened it. But the harmony and the 
discord have ceased to obscure the essential utterance of both. 

If the poet is born, not made, so perhaps must be his 
ideal interpretative critic — yet the literary sense can be taught 
or developed, to a great extent, though it requires from master 
and pupil what is too rarely given. Deep study, much sweat 
of the mind, and long practice in differentiating, must accom- 
pany the bitter gifts of nature. Literature is deep and wide 
as life — indeed a knowledge of it is a splendid equipment for 
any career— and perhaps nowhere else, but in religion, are the 
disadvantages of a little learning or a hasty, irreverent spirit 
so apparent 

And criticism of the contemporary genius can only be 
safely practised by those who have explored the depth and 
breadth of literature, not finding therein rules, and crystalliza- 
tion of soul, but the wisdom of humility. It is the science of 
the humble, of those who know something of the possibilities 
and limitations of their own souls, and who are still in sym- 
pathy with the ever-questing hearts of men ; who have, more- 
over, a keen instinct for the subtle differences of style that 
are to be encountered in a region that has yielded such di- 
verse spirits as Shakespeare and Milton, Pope and Walt Whit- 
man, and such opposite productions as **Tam 0*Shanter'' and 
''The Anthem of Earth.'* 



Digitized by 



Google 




HAYDN, 

BY EDWARD F. CURRAN. 

[ROM the territory of Croatia, bordering on the 
frontiers of Bosnia and Slavonia, came the an- 
cestors of Franz Joseph Haydn. Caspar Haiden, 
the composer's great-grandfather, is the first 
relative in the direct line that we can trace, and 
he was born close to Hainburg. His son Thomas afterwards 
became a burgher of this town, and his grandson Mathias 
tramped some ten miles distant and settled at Rohrau or Trstenik. 
Here Mathias set up as wheelwright, and it would appear also 
became sacristan of the little church, and in due time a kind 
of magistrate. 

Mathias married, November 24, 1728, in his twenty* ninth 
year, Maria Koller, a young cook in the household of Count 
Harrach. Of their twelve children Franz Joseph was* the 
second, and was born on either the 31st of March or the 
1st of April, 1732. The latter date was the one accepted by 
Joseph in after years, and he used to say jokingly that his 
brother Michael had selected the 31st of March so that he 
would not have a brother an April fool. 

Being in no way different from children of his class Joseph's 
childish tricks and prattle were let go unrecorded, for nobody 
saw in the wheelwright's toddling child anything out of the 
ordinary. The father and mother were naturally of a musical 
turn, though nreither possessed any knowledge of the art; 
both parents sang a little, and the father spent his evenings 
after the day's toil singing and accompanying himself on the harp. 
The household was a typical CathoHc one. Mathias, being an 
honest tradesman, loving his home, and the wife, a thrifty and 
kind woman, doing all she could to make the family circle pleasant 
and agreeable. It is no wonder, then, that their children grew up 
filled with filial love and deeply imbued with Catholicity. 

Little Joseph was not long attending the village school be« 
fore his love for music showed itself. He could not play any 
instrumeat, but his observing eyes noted the schoolmaster 
playing the violin, and in the evenings as he sat by his father's 

VOL. XC1.»33 



Digitized by 



Google 



514 HAYDN [July, 

side he imitated the teacher, asing two pieces of stick for 
▼iolin and bow, and keeping perfect time to the singing of his 
father. This childish amusement was the cause of bringing a 
great change into his life in 1738. 

It was the fond desire of the mother that one day Joseph 
should be ordained a priest; the father, however, had more 
worldly notions^ and hoped that his son would at some future 
time bring renown to the family. But the choice of a voca- 
tion for the child was settled abruptly by a visit of a relative, 
Jobann Mathias Frankh, school-teacher and choir director of 
Hainburg, the ancestral home of the Haydns. Frankh, with 
the eye of a musician, observed Joseph keeping time with his 
pieces of stick, and discovered that he had also a voice, so he 
offered to bring the child to Hainburg and teach him music. 
After some objection on the part of the mother, who with 
maternal intuition felt that the dearest wish of her life would 
not be fulfilled if the boy left her, Joseph, at the tender age 
of six, was borne away from home. 

Under Frankh and his wife the child had not a very happy 
time. Frankh was a rough teacher of the hedge-school species^ 
obsessed with the idea that the end of a stick was the most 
favorable means of driving knowledge into his pupils. Accord- 
ingly Haydn was not spared but received his share, and a 
goodly share, of cuffings from his master. Still, the little fel- 
low was acquiring a solid ground-work in violin and harpsi- 
chord playing, and his voice became so remarkably sweet that 
his name was known throughout the surrounding country- 
side. Frankh's tuition, therefore, although rude was most 
beneficial, and Haydn in after years, when he had acquired 
world-wide fame, attributed much ef his success to, and spoke 
with kindness of, Frankh. Griesinger recorded that Haydn 
said to him on one occasion: ''I shall be grateful to Frankh 
as long as I live for keeping me so hard at work, though I 
used to get more flogging than food.'* For Frau Frankh^ 
however, Haydn did not cherish the same kind feelings. She 
was a slovenly, lazy woman, and allowed the boy to become 
neglected, and failed to keep him clean ; indeed, the child sad- 
ly missed the loving care of his mother. 

But soon the scene was again to change for him. Georg 
Renter^ the Kapellmeister of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, 
came, in 1740, on a visit to the parish priest of Hainburg. 
While there he heard of Haydn, and had the child brought be- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] HAYDN 515 

fore him. Renter put Joseph through an examination in 
music, and was greatly pleased with the ability of the little 
fellow. On one point only, so runs the story, did Haydn fail ; 
he could not perform that musical embellishment which nowa- 
days every tenth- rate soprano must attempt and murder. 
*'How is it that you cannot shake?'' asked Renter. ''How 
can I when Herr Frankh cannot do it himself ? '' was the answer. 
The Viennese then gave Haydn one lesson, and so rapidly did 
the boy imitate Renter that the latter then and there deter- 
mined on securing him for his choir. 

In his eighth year Haydn arrived in Vienna, and was ad- 
mitted to the Cathedral choir. If his two years' pupilage at 
Hainburg was unpleasant, they compared favorably with the 
succeeding years he spent under Renter. It has been asserted 
that this Kapellmeister was jealous and afraid to teach Haydn, 
lest^ the pupil should oust the masten This theory on the 
face of it is too flimsy to bear examination. To me Renter 
seems to have been merely a careless, bad-tempered musician ; 
one of those men who, having once learned sufficient to ob- 
tain a lucrative post, were (and are) accustomed to do as little 
work as possible. Haydn avowed that he had received only 
two lessons in composition while he was under Frankh. 

But, like all who have a thirst for knowledge, the boy took 
care to learn privately as much as he could of harmony and 
counterpoint He managed to buy two celebrated theoretical 
works, Fux's Gradus ad Patnassum and Mattheson's Perfect 
ConducUr^ over which he pored incessantly. In the meantime 
he was working also at original compositions, some of which 
he had the temerity to show to Renter, and was promptly 
snubbed for his trouble. He had now reached his eighteenth 
year, and when his voice broke 'his term of usefulness in the 
choir was at an end. The Empress Maria Theresa complained 
that he sang like a crow, and Renter had no alternative but 
to show subserviency to her Majesty. Still he did not imme- 
diately dismiss Haydn. I feel more and more inclined to think 
that underneath his rugged exterior Renter had a secret regard 
for the boy, and loathed to send him adrift It had to be done, 
however, and when Haydn broke the school discipline he seized 
the opportunity to fly into a rage, and while in it to steel 
his heart to the unpleasant task. In the rain and cold of a 
November evening, 1749, Haydn was driven out, penniless and 
unknown, into the streets of Vienna. 



Digitized by 



Google 



Si6 HAYDN [July, 

Utterly dejected he wandered abottt, not knowing where to 
turn or what to do. But fortune befriended him in a chance 
meeting with an acquaintance^ a tenor singer named Spangler, 
attached to St. Michael's Church ; a man for whom every lover 
of Haydn should have a special regard. Though as poor as 
the proverbial church mouse, Spangler pitied the boy and asked 
him to share his attic with him. What he offered was misery 
itself, but Haydn would have a roof at any rate to shelter him 
from the inclemency of a Viennese winter, and he gladly ac- 
cepted the offer. During that winter (i 749-1750) he lived up 
under the rafters, doing all that he could to earn sufficient to 
keep body and soul together. There was nothing in the line 
of music that he did not try. He sought pupils^ he made *' ar- 
rangements '' for any one that would pay him, he serenaded 
in the streets with his violin, he took part in the festivities 
connected with baptisms; in a word, wherever a coin was to 
be earned Haydn was easily found. 

At last the first step up the ladder was made when a friendly 
tradesman gave him a loan of 150 florins. He now hired an 
attic room in what was known as the Michaelhaus, in the Kohl- 
markt. Though this garret was cold and miserable, and in his 
loneliness he thought the sky filled with black clouds, his coming 
there was the real turning point in his career, for there dwelt in 
the same house Metastasio, a poet then at the height of his fame. 
He, like Haydn, had been through the mill of poverty, and knew 
well what suffering meant. He was at this time educating a little 
girl, Marianne von Martinez, daughter of an official attached to 
the Nuncio, and when he heard of the struggling musician he 
placed the musical tuition of the girl under Haydn's care. 

Metastasio next introduced him to Porpora — the Wandering 
Jew of the musical tribe — who was giving lessons to a woman 
living under the patronage of the Venetian Ambassador. Haydn 
was engaged to act as accompanist at the monthly wages of 
six ducats (roughly about $13.00), and have the privilege of 
blacking Porpora's shoes, brushing his clothes, and taking meals 
with his servants I But Haydn did not mind these indignities 
so long as he could learn. He was eagerly seeking musical 
knowledge, and to be in the companionship of Porpora— a name 
then to be conjured with throughout Europe-^meant much to 
the young man. And nobody familiar with Haydn's life can 
come to any other conclusion than that his period in the service 
of the Italian was most useful. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] HAYDN 517 

Haydn's reputation was steadily growing, and an opera, *' Der 
Neue' Krummen Teufilf* which was staged in 1752, helped him 
on considerably. In 1755 he was invited by Baron von Furn- 
berg, an enthusiastic amateur who kept a private orchestra, to 
direct a series of concerts, and at the same person's suggestion 
Count Morzin appointed him, in 1759, Kapellmeister. This post 
brought him about $100 a year, with free board and lodging. 
Haydn had not long enjoyed his new office when two misfor- 
tunes came; one to the Count, the other to himself. The for- 
mer fell into financial straits and had to dismiss his orchestra. 
Haydn's misfortune — both enduring and ever increasing — befell 
him on November 26, 1760, when he had the ill luck to marry 
a shrew whom no kindness could tame. Anna Maria Keller 
made his life as unendurable as she could, but with characteristic 
honor he was always reticent ot her misdoings. 

After his premature dismissal by Count Morzin he was almost 
immediately engaged by Prince Esterb dzy, to whom some of 
his compesitions were known. The orchestra over which he was 
to have control numbered from sixteen to twenty- two performers, 
to which were added a small choir of eight very select voices. 
Haydn appreciated the position exceedingly, for it gave him 
the opportunity of having his own compositions tried over as 
often as he wished. Here is what he said himself*: '* . . . As 
conductor of an orchestra I could make experiments, observe 
what produced an e£fect and what weakened it, and was thus 
in a position to improve, alter, make additions and> omissions, 
and be as bold as I pleased." 

Year after year was spent in his daily duties with the Es- 
terhizy band, and there is nothing out of the ordinary to chron- 
icle in this brief risumi of his life. We must, therefore, jump 
over a number of years until we come to that event which 
raised him at once among the great masters of music— his visit 
to England. Cramer, the violinist, in 1787, was the first to 
invite Haydn to come to London; money was no obstacle, 
any terms that Haydn demanded should be acceded to willingly. 
Haydn felt he was not free to accept. Again, Gallini begged 
htm to write an opera for Drury Lane, having in mind, most 
likely, the possibility of tempting the composer across the 
Channel to conduct the work. This was also declined. Then 
Salomon, after making an unsuccessful attempt through an agent, 
happened to be on the continent seeking singers when he heard 
of Prince Nikolaus Esterhaey's death, and immediately went post 



Digitized by 



Google 



5l8 HAYDN [July, 

haste to Vienna, called upon Haydn, and, it is said, made him- 
self known to the master in the following unconventioQal maa- 
ner: "My name is Salomon and I have come to take yon to 
London with me. We can settle terms to-morrow/' This time 
Haydn gave way, for he was now practically free of duties with 
Esterhazy. Prince Nikolans had left him a pension oi i,ooo 
florins on the condition that he would retain the title of ICapell- 
meister to the family. Prince Anton, the successor of Nikolaus, 
had not the same musical tastes, and he at once dismissed all 
the musicians, with the exception of a few necessary for reli- 
gious service. To Haydn he gave a pension of 400 florins, and 
only nominally retained his services. Therefore, having nothing 
to do at Esterhdz, and having already settled down in Vienna, 
it did not require much argument to persuade him to undertake 
the visit to London. 

In company with Salomon he started fr«m Vienna on De- 
cember 15, 1790, went to Bonn, where he met Beethoven, then 
on to Brussels and Calais. The two arrived in London on 
January 2, 1791, after a rough passage across the Channel 
As this was the first time Haydn had beheld the sea, he gazed 
on it with curiosity. ''I remained on deck,'' he wrote, 'Mur- 
ing the whole passage in order to gaze my full at that huge 
monster — the : ocean. So long as there was calm I had no 
fears, but when at length a violent wind began to blow, rising 
each minute, and I saw the boisterous high waves running on, 
I was seized with a little alarm and a little indisposition like- 
wise." 

When he had settled down at Salomon's house he was be- 
sieged by callers, and every conceivable way of honoring him 
was adopted by musicians and musical societies. He was not 
in London long when he foresaw that if visiting and feasting 
were to be kept up continually he would not be able to fulfill 
his contract with Salomon, so he first of all moved away from 
the hurly-burly of the city and took up residence at Lisson 
Grove, and next decided that he would dine at home every 
day at four o'clock, and furthermore declined absolutely to 
receive visitors in the forenoons, which he reserved for com- 
position. This shows what strength of character he had; work 
and duty first, then pleasure, appeared to be his maxim. 

Needless to say his concerts were a prodigious success^ 
though some of the more venomous of his opponents had tried 
to belittle him in the newspapers. On March 1 1 the first 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] HAYDN 519 

concert took place before one of the most brilliant audiences 
ever gathered together in the Hanover Square Rooms, and the 
enthusiasm was great when Haydn appeared in the orchestra. 
His benefit concert was given on May 16, and then began a 
round of social successes both in London and in the country^ 
The first great event was the conferring on him of the degree 
of Doctor of Music by the University of Oxford, where he 
received an ovation when he appeared in his Doctor's robes. 
Amid a number of visits to various people that to the Duke 
of York is the most noteworthy, and it can only be charac* 
terized by saying that he had a very pleasant time with all 
the royalty gathered together at the Duke's residence. The 
Duchess— a girl of seventeen— played the piano and sang fof 
Haydn, and while he performed she sat by his side. The 
party began their music at ten each night, (and continued 
playing until two in the morning, when they had supper and 
succeeded in getting to bed at three o'clock. All seemed 
to have been captivated by the simplicity of Haydn ; the Prince 
of Wales in particular was attiacted to him in an especial 
way, and honored him by sending him back to London in 
the royal carriage and horses. 

When the year 1792 opened Haydn returned to the routine 
of concert giving, and after a successful series had ended, 
and he had visited some friends — which occupied a few weeks 
of his time — he left London for Vienna. On his way thither 
he touched at Bonn, where great honor was shown him, and 
where he i^ain 'met Beethoven, who seized the opportunity 
to open the question of becoming a pupil of Haydn's. They 
evidently came to some arrangement, for in the following 
December Beethoven arrived in Vienna and began taking 
lessons. It is better to speak no further on the relations be* 
tween the two, since it is a matter that could not be treated 
with justice in a few words, and it is a point over which there 
has been considerable useless wrangling by partisans of both 
masters. 

A period of comparative inactivity followed Haydn's return 
home, and he scarcely did anything until i794» when he set 
out for a second visit to London on the nineteenth of January. 
This time he was accompanied by his servant and copyist, 
Johann Essler, and both, after jeurneying down the Rhine, 
arrived in London early in February. The welcome now ac* 



Digitized by 



Google 



S20 HAYDN [Jttly# 

corded the master eclipsed that of his previous visit; in fact, 
England appeared to have gone wild with delight at seeing 
his rugged, kind features once again. Just as before, the suc- 
cess of the concerts he directed far exceeded the most sanguine 
expectations, and Haydn found that from a monetary point of 
view he was a made man. As usual, after the concert season 
ended, he had to put in his time visiting friends throughout 
the country, which occupied him till near the close of the 
year. In the following February, 1795, he conducted another 
series of concerts, but did not compose an)rthing new for 
them; he also directed twenty-six concerts for the Prince of 
Wales at Carlton House, for which he had to apply to Par- 
liament to be remunerated. There was much more work for 
him to do, but owing to an invitation to resume bis old duties 
from the new Prince Esterhazy, who desired to reorganize his 
household orchestra, he cut short his stay in London, depart- 
ing from it on August 15, 1795. 

When he arrived in Austria he found that the nation was 
ready to lionize him, and one of the first to set the example 
of honoring him was Count Harrach, In whose household, as 
we have seen, the composer's mother had been cook. The 
Count invited Haydn and a number of nobles to visit Rohrau, 
and there they found a splendid monument erected in Haydn's 
honor close to the house in which he had been born. This 
monument is still standing, and is in the form of a large 
square pedestal with paneled sides, surmounted by a fine 
bust of Haydn. The old man was overcome with gratitude at 
this unexpected honor, and he showed his characteristic hu- 
mility by conducting his noble companions to the little thatched 
house, where he pointed out to them the corner in which he 
used to sit and keep time to his father's music; then falling 
down he kissed the threshold of the door. 

Among those who work in the arts, where imagination has 
such play, it does not generally happen that a man of sixty- 
five produces his most mature works, yet such was the case 
with Haydn; he had done much, but he was to do even 
greater things. In 1798 "The Creation'' was performed; and 
in 1801 he finished ''The Season6." Of these it will be 
necessary to say a passing word, but first we must glance at 
the composition which he himself liked best. 

To those who know '' The Hymn for the Emperor *' 6r, as 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] HAYDN SSI 

it is commonly called, ^'The Austrian Hymn/' all words of 
praise in cold black and white will seem lacking in proper 
enthusiasm. Only one word can do it justice — it is sublime. 
Austria was without a suitable national anthem, and Baron 
van Swieten, the composer's great friend, suggested to Count 
Saurah, the Prime Minister, that Haydn should be commis- 
sioned to write a melody which would be for Austria what 
'' God Save the King '* was to England. The suggestion was 
acted on immediately for, as Count Saurau afterwards explained, 
there was great need of some national hymn to offset the 
vigorous propaganda of French Jacobinism which had obtained 
a fairly strong hold in Vienna. Accordingly the poet priest, 
Lorenz Leopold Haschka, was commissioned to write suitable 
words, which when finished were passed on to Haydn to set 
to music Those who have a desire to peep into the work^ 
shop of the composer and learn what great pains he took to 
produce the simple hymn, cannot do better than read a delight- 
ful little volume entitled A Croatian Composer (by Mr. W. H. 
Hadow), published a few years ago. From the various sketches 
of the tune there given we can see the foundations built on a 
Croatian folk-tune, Haydn's treatment of it, and the care he 
exercised to produce well-balanced phrases. On January 28, 
1797, a decree was issued that this composition was to be re- 
tgarded as the national anthem, and on February u, the 
Emperor's birthday, it was sung in all the theatres of the 
capital. Since then it has become known all over the world, 
being found even in Protestant hymn books. Osce beard it 
is never forgotten. 

Critics are agreed that, had Haydn never visited England, 
it is more than probable that the literature of music should 
not have been enriched by '' The Creation." While in London 
he had seen the powerful influence of Handel's or&torios, and 
there seems to be no doubt that his ambition was fired to 
write something on the same lines as ''The Messiah." But 
how he ever succeeded in writing such beautiful music to the 
rubbishy libretto of '' The Creation " is a mystery. It can only 
be accounted for by saying that genius triumphed. The work 
.was first sung in private, and then publicly on the 19th of March, 
1799. It at once took the public by storm, not only in Vienna 
but in London, and, strangest of all, in gay Paris, where ora* 
torio scarcely ever got a hearing ; everywhere the same enthu- 



Digitized by 



Google 



Saa HAYDN [Jdly, 

siasm was aroused by the delightful strains. Indeed it is no 
wonder, for nobody with the slightest love for good music can 
fail to appreciate the beauties of such numbers as "With 
Verdure Clad''; "Now Heaven in Fullest Glory Shone '' ; "In 
Native Worth''; or those two great choruses, "Achieved is 
the Glorious Work " and " The Heavens are Tellbg." Haydn 
was very much affected himself on the first performance of the 
work. " One moment/' he tells us, " I was as cold as ice, the 
next I seemed on fire. More than once I was afraid I should 
have a fit." 

"The Seasons," the text of which was based on the work 
of Thompson the poet, was finished in 1891, and performed, 
on April 24, at the Schwartzenburg Palace. There was no 
appreciable difference between its success and that of "The 
Creation." The same delightful atmosphere pervades the music, 
and it is impossible to detect any signs of senile decay on the 
part of the composer. Of late, however, this work has been 
shelved to some extent, and most likely it will be forgotten 
when " The Creation " still holds its own. A great misfortune 
followed the production of "The Seasons "—Haydn's health was 
shattered. He always attributed his loss of strength to the 
composition of this work. "I should never," he told Ries, 
" have undertaken that work. It gave me the finishing stroke." 
And looking back to what he wrote in 1799 to Breitkopf & 
Hartel we may understand how he suffered: "The world 
daily pays me many compliments, even on the fire of my last 
works; but no one could believe the strain and effort it costs 
me to produce these, inasmuch as many a day my feeble 
memory^ and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely 
crush me to the earth, that I fall into the most melancholy 
condition, so much so that for days afterwards I am incapable 
of finding one single idea. . . ." 

The end was now near. In the latter part of 1803 Haydn 
made his last professional appearance, when he conducted his 
"Seven Words." He felt himself daily growing weaker, and 
therefore he withdrew from the public gaze to prepare him- 
self for the lifting of the veil. He was constantly visited, 
however, by a few friends, principally musicians or members 
of the Esterh&zy household ; these were welcomed, but to others 
a card was presented in excuse of his denying to see them, 
on which were the words, " Fled forever is my strength ; old and 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] HAYDN 523 

weak am I/' set to four bars of music. Still he worked in 
private at his beloved art, the principal works accomplished 
being short symphonies and accompaniments to Scotch airs 
for Thompson the publisher. There is just one humorous 
touch connected with this work which is worth repeating. 
Haydn had expressed a desire to obtain some Indian handker- 
chiefs, and Thompson in sending them to him had the ill-luck 
to include one for Frau Haydn who had (happily for the hus- 
band) been gathered to her forefathers three years before. 

*'The Creation '' was performed at the University on March 
27, 1808, in honor of Haydn's seventy-sixth birthday. The 
old man was carried up in an armchair through the hall 
while the audience rose from their places as a token of respect. 
It was a cold night and the ladies around him covered him 
with their own wraps to protect him. At that striking chorus, 
^' And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters: 
and God said : Let there be light, and there was light,'' Haydn 
became much moved and exclaimed : ^^ Not I but a Power from 
above created that"; and as the performance progressed it was 
seen that he was becoming so dangerously excited that after 
the first part it was deemed advisable to remove him. As his 
chair was lifted the most aristocratic in the land crowded 
around him to bid farewell, and Beethoven came forward and 
tenderly kissed him on the forehead and hand. When the 
door was reached the bearers stopped and turned the chair 
while the old man raised his hand in farewell to the audience. 
It was a touching incident, and the last in the public career 
of the master. He struggled on during the year, and on May 
31, 1809, breathed forth his last. With a cordon of French 
soldiers and oflSters— Vienna being then occupied by the French 
—to give military honors, his body was placed in a grave, 
where for five years it lay without any stone or mark above 
to show who slept beneath. 

And now a word on his character. He had all the marks 
of a truly great man. Though successful far beyond the 
dreams of vanity he was as modest and as ingenuous as a 
child. His geniality of temperament as well as his kindness 
to fellow-artists have become proverbial, and the unique name 
of '^Papa," given him by musicians from Mozart downwards, 
is in itself a testimony to his towering greatness and his lov- 
ing, fatherly disposition. Yet if we look at a true likeness of 



Digitized by 



Google 



SM HAYDN [July, 

bim we are somewhat disappointed at the heavy, ragged, and, 
in a degree, repulsive features. But in all portraits we miss 
the great telltale feature, his eyes, which contemporaries tell 
us ^'beamed with benevolence.". His own saying touches off 
his character perfectly: '^ Anybody can see by the look of me 
that I am a good-natured sort of fellow.'' 

His social successes may be attributed to his character, for 
while he was genial he never forgot the serious side of life^ 
and was an honest, sterling friend. Religion was something 
real to him, and his Catholic faith peeps out at almost every 
turn and twist in his life. The most of his actions from early 
life seem to have been dominated by the spirit of prayer; he 
begun and ended all his work in that spirit, for on nearly all 
his scores are to be found these pasons of religion. Salt Deo 
Gloria f Laus Deo ei B. V. M(b. et 0ms. Sis., Laus OmnipotenH 
JDio it Beatissifn(B Virgini Maries^ while before he penned a 
note he wrote down the invocation In Nomine Domini. In 
his old age he gave this advice to a number of boy choristers 
who visited him: ''Be good and industrious and serve God 
continually.'' And he tells us that never had he been so pious 
as while composing "The Creation." "I felt myself so pen- 
etrated with religious feeling that before I sat down to the 
pianoforte I prayed to God with earnestness that He would 
enable me to praise Him worthily." 

Haydn had the peculiarity of being occasionally possessed 
with an extraordinary love of fun and mischief ; " sometimes 
a mischievous fit comes over me that is perfectly beyond con- 
trol," he once told Ries. His dismissal from the Cathedral 
choir of Vienna arose from his prank of trying a new pair of 
scissors on the pig- tail of a fellow* chorister's wig; while in 
London he had his laugh in the '^ Surprise" Symphony, when 
he made his somnolent audience jump at a crash of all the in- 
struments. ''There the women will scream/' he said. Another 
practical joke was his " Farewell/' Symphony,* when one after 
another the performers in the orchestra arose, blew out their 

* It is now known that the introduction of the " Surprise *' chord was an afterthought on 
the part of Hajdn, for there is no appearance of it in the original maauscript score of the 
Symphony. This discovery, due to Sir Alexander Mackenzie, is related in Tht Musical 
TimtSt May, 1909, p. 300, with which number was given a facsimile of the passage in question. 
One important point which the Editor of that journal passes over in silence is that the entire 
eleven bars have been crossed out by Haydn. There is, therefore, no good reason to declare 
that the story of Haydn's exclamation is not based on fact. In all likelihood there is another 
manuscript copy of the Symphony still undiscovered, and when it comes to light the "Sur- 
prise " chord will be in evidence. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.J HAYDN 52s 

desk-lights, and departed until only two violins remained. 
(There was practical point in his wit here, for he wished 
gently to remind Prince Esterbazy that the musicians desired his 
Highness to depart and give them freedom to visit their fami- 
lieSy and the best; of it is that the Prince took the hint). 
^'Jacob's Dream/' another outlet to his humor, was a compo* 
sition intended to ''bog'' a pretentious violinist; and every 
one knows that delightful production, the ''Toy Symphony/' 
so pleasing to children. 

Throughout life he was a hard-working man, keeping at com- 
position steadily and regularly. There were none of these erratic 
ways which a certain class of self-advertisers attribute to genius : 
Haydn had no need to pose, no need to make himself remark- 
able by eccentricities of conduct. From his childhood he felt 
within himself that he had sufficient ability to produce good 
work, and he depended on his own talents to arrive at success. 
Hence his originality, and hence his position in the history of 
music to-day. He is regarded as the father of instrumentation, 
the first to raise secular music into a position equal to that 
previously held by Church music, the man who made the first 
steps toward placing orchestration on a firm basis, and as being 
the first to make concrete the forms of the Symphony and the 
pianoforte Sonata — forms which are now accepted as " classical." 

It would be absurd to attempt here an examination of his 
works, considering that they number, according to some, 1,178, 
or, as others reckon, 1,407. The greater works, such as his 
oratorios, symphonies, and string quartettes, are not to be heard 
on the everyday concert platform, and those of my readers who 
are acquainted with them will likewise know the position they 
hold in the art. But many will be anxious to hear what is to 
be said of his sacred music — fifteen masses, and an equal num- 
ber of other works intended for church use. The least said, 
I fear, the better. From these works excerpts could be made 
which would be suitable for the Church, but on the whole Haydn 
worked on wrong lines in this form of composition. The fault 
was not altogether his; he lived at the wrong period to write 
good sacred music. The plain truth is that he was dealing 
with a clergy and a laity whose ideas of what was correct in 
sacred music were warped. It will be noticed by those acquainted 
with the period that Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (all prac« 
tically contemporaries) failed lamentably in supplying any work 



Digitized by 



Google 



526 HAYDN [July. 

which could be added to the musical archives of the Universal 
Church; the sacred worlcs they did write are more fitted for 
the concert room than the church. What a chance the Catho- 
lic Church lost when she had these three men at her call, 
for when shall the world ever see again three men of like 
genius ? There are 8ome« I am aware, who defend Haydn, but 
even his blindest disciple on this point will admit that his 
masses are light and airy. It will, then, be a test to one's 
credulity to read that Prince Esterbdzy found fault with Haydn 
for writing masses to« serious and severe. Yet such was the 
case. What greater index of the ideas then prevalent is needed ? 
His own defence given to Caspari was, ''that at the thought 
of God, his heart leaped with joy, and he could not help his 
music doing the same." There is a saying of his brother 
Michael — a musician whose masses are still popular in Austria 
—which if not authentic is certainly hin trovdto and touches 
off the point nicely : " Joseph, Joseph I take care of thyself; 
I am afraid that thy sacred music has not come from above, 
and it will prepare for thee a cool reception there!'' 

As the pianoforte is the universal household instrument, 
those who play it may like to know something by Haydn suit- 
able to their executive abilities. It is well first to keep in 
mind the secret of Haydn. It is to be found in his pure mel- 
odies and simple harmonies. On melody he placed paramount 
importance. ''The invention of a fine melody,*' he declared, 
"is a work of genius. It is the air which is the charm of 
music and it is the most diflScult to produce.'' To acquire the 
true spirit of Haydn it is best to begin with his minor compo- 
sitions, and gradually go through the entire pianoforte works 
which are to be found in eight small volumes. How melodic 
and delightful are his minuets I I do not think there can be 
anything more beneficial for the musical training of the young 
than a thorough knowledge of these simple compositions, or 
of his charming Deutsche Tanze. After once becoming familiar 
with Haydn's works, sound ideas of what is real music and a 
sense of rhythm will in a great measure be developed. Mozart's 
judgment on Haydn is worth remembering. Comparing various 
composers he said: "None of them can be jocose or serious, 
raise laughter or create profound emotions, and with equal 
success, like Joseph Haydn." Such a man's works are surely 
worthy of our attention. 



Digitized by 



Google 




THE INTERNATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS. 

BY P. W. BROWNE. 

|F/' says Cardinal Gibbons, In a circular letter ad* 
dressed to the hierarchy and laity of the United 
States, ** the last three decades hare been marked 
by trial and straggle for the Church of God, 
they have been also singularly fruitful in conso- 
lation and encouragement; and it is highly significant that 
our age, so noteworthy for scientific* advance and material 
progress, should hare witnessed so general an increase in de- 
votion to one of the profoundest mysteries of our holy 
religion/' 

During these eventful decades the threatening clouds of 
Jansenism have gradually been dispelled by the Eucharistic 
Sun, whose beneficent rays have revived the warmth of devo- 
tion in centres where indifference had ^' chilled the genial cur- 
rents of the soul,'' and lighted anew the dim recesses of the 
world. Countless thousands have enrolled themselves ''among 
the forces of the King" (I. Mach. x. 36), and the great army 
of adorers, not unlike the crusaders of old, are marching on- 
wards to wrest the sanctuary from the forces of unbelief. 
This marvelous renewal of faith and devotion is unquestion- 
ably the effect of the stimulating influence of the Eucharistic 
Congresses which, since 1881 have given organization and 
energy to Catholic action. 

Just thirty years ago, to the month, a tiny spiritual seed 
was planted in European soil; to-day its offshoots are firmly 
rooted in the soil of every country in Christendom. The 
Eucharistic International Congress originated in France, and 
Lille shares with Paray-le*Monial the honor of giving birth to 
the movement 

In 1879 a saintly woman confided to Mgr. de Segur (who 
is justly termed the apostle of devotion to the Eucharist) the 
idea of extending devotion to the Eucharistic Christ by means 
of gatherings, to be convened successively in different coun- 
tries, in which, for several days, in prayer and study, matters 
pertaining to the Blessed Sacrament should be discussed. The 



Digitized by 



Google 



S28 THE INTERNATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS [July, 

zealous Bishop at once decided to take up the work ; but bow, 
and where ? France, at the moment, was a much disturbed coun- 
try; and it was unwise, be deemed, to hazard the inaugura- 
tion of such a momentous movement within its borders. He 
turned to Belgium as a jpossible cradle-land, and communi- 
cated with Mgr. Deschamps, the Archbishop of Malines, who 
heartily endorsed the project. Then, with the assistance of 
an enthusiastic confrere — M. de Benque — Mgr. de Segur drew 
up a circular which he addressed to the Belgian Bishops and 
the various associations and tommunities in which the devo- 
tion of Perpetual Adoration had been established. The response 
to the circular was hearty and encouraging; and all that re- 
mained to give the movement concrete form was the selection 
of a fitting place for the meeting of the Congress. 

But, suddenly, unforeseen difficulties arose. The Belgian 
Bishops decided that, owing to the intense feeling then reigo- 
ing throughout Belgium on the school question and the coming 
general elections, the projected gathering would incur the risk 
of being swamped in the tide of political issues. Mgr. de Segur 
(whose health had become seriously impaired) wrote, under date 
of March lo, 1881, to M. de Benque: ''No further light is being 
shed upon our undertaking ; on the contrary, our difficulties are 
increasing, and its execution now seems to me impracticable.'' 
To her who had suggested to him the idea of the Eucharistic 
Congress he wrote: ''Formerly, when I was in a position to 
lead, I never faltered ; now that (like an old swallow no longer 
able to cleave the air) I am forced to the rear, I can do but 
little. ... I am^ entrusting the whole matter to M. de 
Benque, who will, doubtless, find some means of solving the 
difficulty." The latter, also, had his misgivings concerning the 
successful issue of the undertaking; for under date of April 20, 
he wrote to a friend: "I consider the project impossible, at 
least for this year.'' 

But Providence willed otherwise. An enthusiastic layman 
tendered his services to the cause ; and within a week M. de 
Benque could write, in the most optimistic terms, to Mgr. de 
Segur, assuring him that ^'the work was making marvelous 
progress." This zealous layman was none other than Philibert 
Vrau, the saintly father of the well-known publicist, M. Fer6n- 
Vrau, whose services to the Church at the present hour are 
invaluable. One thing further was necessary for the consum- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] The International eucharistic Congress 52^ 

mation of the undertakiog-^tbe approbation of the Holy See. 
M. Vraa set oat immediately for Rome, and there, in conjunc- 
tion with Father Picard (the recently- elected Superior General 
of the Assumptionists) and Viscount de Damas, he drew up a 
petition to the Holy Father, which opened with these words: 
''It is at such a moment as this, when Catholic nations are 
seriously menaced, that it behooves us to have ^ recourse most 
urgently to Him Who deigns to dwell among us ; in Whom 
alone there is salvation. . . .** In response to the request 
of the petitioners, Leo XIII., on May 16, 1881, issued a Pontifi- 
cal Briefi addressed to the President of the Committee of Or- 
ganization, in which he not only sanctioned the holding of the 
Eucharistic Congress, but commended it in the most felicitous 
terms, as the following extract proves: '*It is fitting that the 
faithful should solemnly celebrate the remembrance of the in- 
stitution of the Holy Eucharist. Thus we shall honor th^ in- 
effable manner in which God is present in this Adorable Sac- 
rament Thus we may praise the divine power which operates 
such wonders, and render to God acts of thanksgiving due Hini 
for such an inestimable favor. Hence, beloved son, we grant 
you and all who may participate in this pious work our Apostolic 
Benediction.'' 

In further proof of his sympathy with the cause, the Holy 
Father, through Cardinal Alimonda, Official Protector of Eu- 
charistic works, delegated Canon Ruggieri to present his heart- 
iest congratulations to the Congress at Lille, which opened oii 
June 21, 1 88 1. The attendance exceeded the most sanguine 
expectations of the promoters, more than three hundred being 
present, and was representative of the religious life of France 
and Belgium. In addition to episcopal delegates, there were 
members of the religious orders, parish priests, and curate^, 
and a large contingent of professors — lay and clerical — from 
the faculties of Catholic institutions. Under the presidency of 
Mgr. de la Bouillerie, titular bishop of Perga and co-adjutoir 
of Bordeaux, various resolutions were formulated, and a per^^ 
manent committee was organized which, at the end of th^ 
Congress, prepared and published a report of the proceedings. 
This committee consisted of the President, Canon Didiot, MM. 
de Benque, Philibert Vrau, and Gustave Champeaux, who was 
named its secretary. 

The second Congress assembled, under the presidency of 

VOL. XCI.— 34 



Digitized by 



Google 



530 THE INTERNATIONAL EucHARiSTic Congress [July, 

Mgr. Halsey, at Avignon, in 1882, with an attendance larger 
and, perhaps, more enthusiastic than that of the preceding 
year. The third Congress was held at Li^ge in the following 
year; and the number in attendance exceeded, by hundreds, 
the Congress of Avignon. Bishops, religious, the secular 
clergy, and the laity had now entered enthusiastically into the 
work; and when, on September 9, 1885, the fourth Congress 
met, under the presidency of Mgr. Mermillod, at Fribourg, in 
Switzerland, members of the Cantonal government, oflScials of 
the municipality, oflScers of the army, judges, and lawyers oc* 
cupied places on the , platform, while thousands of Catholics 
from various sections of the Continent joined in the formal 
procession of the Blessed Sacrament. The fourth Congress, 
held at Toulouse, June, 1886, was attended by fifteen hundred 
ecclesiastics, and fully thirty thousand laymen were present at 
the closing exercises. The sixth Congress met in Paris, July, 
1888, in the great memorial Church of Montmartre, with an 
attendance of three thousand clerics and fifty thousand lay- 
men. Antwerp, in Belgium, was the scene of the seventh Con- 
gress in August, 1890. The attendance numbered one hundred 
and twenty thousand. The eighth Congress held its sessions in 
Jerusalem, from May 14 to 21, 1893, under the presidency of 
Cardinal Langenieux, Archbishop of Rheims, legate of the 
Holy Father. At this Congress the union of the Orient was 
the subject of serious discussion, and special sermons on the 
Eucharistic propaganda were delivered on the very spot where, 
tradition says, the Agony of our Lord took place. The ninth 
Congress was held at Rheims, July, 1894 ; and at this Con- 
gress, for the first time, a special place was given to the study 
of social questions. Faray-le-Monial, the " City of the Sacred 
Heart '' was the scene of the tenth Congress ; and the eleventh 
was held at Brussels. The twelfth — one of the most remark- 
able which had yet been held— convened at Lourdes, under 
the presidency of Cardinal Langenieux (the Pope's legate), in 
August, 1889. The thirteenth was held at Angers, in 1901 ; 
the fourteenth at Namnr, in Belgium, 1902. At the fifteenth 
Congress, held at AngoulSme, in 1904, the Government of the 
Republic prohibited a public procession of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. By special request of the Holy Father the next Con- 
gress was held in Rome, in 190S, amid splendor hitherto un- 
known: the Pope celebrated Mass at the opening of the ses- 



Digitized by 



Google 



191 o.] THE INTERNATIONAL EucHARisTic Congress 531 

81008, and gave a special audience to the delegates at the 
close of the proceedings, at which he presided. 

Tonmait in Belgium, was the scene of the seventeenth Con- 
gress, 1906; and the eighteenth went to Metz, in Lorraine, in 
1907. Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli was the Pope's represen- 
tative; and, by a singular act of respect for the Church, the 
German Government suspended the law of 1870 forbidding re- 
ligious processions, in order that the customary public func- 
tion might be held. At the close of the Metz Congress, at 
the invitation of Archbishop Bourne, it was decided to hold 
the nineteenth Congress in London — the first under the auspices 
of English-speaking members of the Church. This was un- 
questionably the most significant event in the history of the 
Church in England since the Reformation. The Congress was 
solemnly opened on September 9, 1908, at the Cathedral of 
Westminster, by the Papal legate, Cardinal Vincenzo Vannu- 
telli, assisted by Cardinals Gibbons, of Baltimore, Logue, of 
Ireland, Sancha y Herv^s, of Toledo, Ferrari, of Milan, and 
Mercier, of Belgium; with them were representatives from 
every nation on earth. The sessions of the Congress were 
closed on Sunday, September 13, with Mass by the Apostolic 
legate and a sermon by the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore. 
Solemn Vespers followed, and then the procession took place. 
Untoward circumstances precluded the carrying of the Blessed 
Sacrament in the procession; otherwise everything was sol- 
emnly observed. After the Congress the Holy Father sent a 
special letter of congratulation to Archbishop Bourne, stating 
that, though the Congress was the first of its kind held in 
England, it must be regarded as the " greatest of all, for its 
concourse of illustrious men, for the weight of its delibera- 
tions, for its display of faith, and for the magnificence of its 
religious functions.'' 

Last year the Congress was held at Cologne — the city 
which ranks as the veritable centre of the artistic, commercial, 
and intellectual life of western Grermany. An 
pository had been erected in the great squar< 
around which were assembled sixty bishops and 
priests. The entire city, with its population of 
faithful souls, seemed transformed into a vast t 
rose a Tantum Ergo which cleaved the skies, 
paniment of booming cannon and silver truna 



Digitized by 



Google 



532 THE INTERNATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS [July. 

great assembly had dispersed fervant prayers ascended to the 
Eucharistic Christ to bless its sticcessor, which is, seemiDgly, 
destined to eclipse in grandeur and solemnity any Catholic 
gathering which the western world has ever witnessed; for, 
says Cardinal Gibbons, ** The impulse of faith, which has hitb<- 
erto found its expression in Europe, directs the Congress this 
year to Canada* -It will be held upon ground that is rich in 
memories of the early days when Christianity and ciTilization 
came together to these shores — borne by men to whom the 
entire continent of America stands indebted. It is not merely 
as discoverers and explorers that their names are written in 
our history, but as heralds of the kingdom of God and as 
bearers of the Cross of Christ'* 

From September sixth to eleventh the city of Maison- 
neuve— the humble burg where Mile. Mance and Marguerite 
Bourgeois taught and nursed the redskin and the poor three 
centuries ago— will be the scene of the grandest manifestation 
of faith that America has ever witnessed. A papal legate, 
hundreds of bishops, thousands of priests, tens of thousands 
of pious worshippers will assemble under the shadow of Mont 
Royal, in the city of Mary (''Ville Marie 'Ot to render public 
homage to the God of the Eucharist Wonderful are the 
vicissitudes of human things. This never-to-be-forgotten dem* 
onstration will be held under the protection of the flag of 
Protestant England, whose armies vanquished the forces of the 
'^ Eldest daughter of the Church'' two-and-a-half centuries 
ago on the Plains of Abraham. France no longer permits 
public homage to the Eucharistic Christ England lends pro- 
tection to the worshipper. Montreal is not unlike Cologne as 
regards its population and its faith; its position is somewhat 
similar. The mighty St Lawrence lacks the charm of antiquity 
and the poetic enchantment of the picturesque river whose 
banks were the pathway to victorious fields; though it echoes 
not adown the centuries the memory of a Clovis or a Charlc*- 
magne, it speaks, as does the Rhine, of noble deeds wrought 
for humanity and Christ. Here will be gathered in early Sep«- 
tember representatives from every section of the Canadian 
commomwealth, from Cape Sable to Vancouver; aye and pil* 
grims from every corner of the American continent. 



Digitized by 



Google 



fiew £ooh8* 

As the successive volumes of The 
CATHOLIC ENCTCLOPEDIA« Catholic Encyclopedia come out» it 

becomes increasingly difficult to find 
fresh words of praise for the undertaking. Its sdbcess has been 
so thorough and so consistent that laudation has exhausted itself, 
and the best thing that the critic can say of a new volume is 
that it is up to the standard of its predecessors. The volume 
to hand, the 'seventh/ brings the work practically half-way 
towards completion ; and, at the present rapid rate of publica- 
tion, the whole splendid set of fifteen volumes will soon be at 
the disposal of those who wish to obtain exact information 
concerning the history, doctrines, and practises of the Catholic 
Church. 

Three important geographical articles are incorporated in 
this seventh ;volume: ''Holland,'* by P. Albers, S.J.; ^'Hun- 
gary," by Dr. Aldasy; and "India," by E. Hull, & J. ''Hun- 
garian Catholics in the United States " is a topic handled with 
customary ability by Mr. Andrew Shipman. Further knowledge 
of India is contained in articles by Dr. Aiken on " Hinduism " 
and by Professor Benigni on the patriarchate of the "East 
Indies." 

Noteworthy contributions to general history are those of A. 
Degert, on "Huguenots"; Edmund Gardner, on "Guelphs 
and Ghibellines"; Georges Goyau, on the "House of Guise"; 
Dr. Edwin Burton and M. Marique on " Guilds "; p>r. Wilhelm 
on " Hus and Hussites " ; and Herbert Thurston, S.J., on " Henry 
VIII." The articles on "Huron Indians," by A. E. Jones, S.J.. 
and on "American Indians," by Mr. James Mooney, are espe* 
ctally complete, being possibly, at least in the former instance, 
too ample for a cyclopedia. A number of biographical articles 
are contributed by Dom Chapman, who writes on " Honorius," 
Dr. Kirsch, Dr. Mershman, O.S.B., Michael Ott, O.S.B., Father 
Pollen, S.J., Dr. Remy, etc. 

Father Delehaye treats of "Hagiography," Dr. Adrian For- 
tescne of " Hesychasm," i. e., a system of Quietism among the 
Greeks. Father Schulte, of Overbrook, and two learned Bene- 
dictines, Cabrol and Leclercq, treat of things liturgical. The 

• rA/ Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. VII. Grcg.-Infal. New York: Robert Applcton 
Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



534 -'VXir BOOXS [July, 

article on ''Ecclesiastical Heraldry/' by Fox^Davies, is very 
complete and well illustrated. Scriptural topics are well handled 
by Dr. Gigot, Dr. Fenlon, Father Maas, Dr. Driscoll, Father 
Fonck. Canon Law is represented by contributions of Dr. 
Boudinhon and Father Hilgers, S.J. In connection with the 
work of Fathcfr Hilgers on the ''Index of Prohibited Books/' 
a suggestion might be made. When an article is written by a 
foreigner, it would be well to see whether the bibliography he 
submits does not need supplementing with books written in 
English. On this topic, for instance, the works most STailable 
for consultation are Index Legislation^ by Dr. Hurley, and CV^- 
sorskip of the Church of Rome^ by G. H. Putnam. Neither of 
these is listed. 

In theology proper, M. Bainvel writes on the "Heart of 
Jesus," Jacques Forget on the "Holy Ghost." Father Holweck 
on the " Immaculate Conception," W. H. Kent on *' Indul- 
gences," while Dr. Toner has contributed the banner article of 
the volume in a thorough discussion of the important question, 
" Infallibility." In philosophy the most noteworthy articles are 
those of Father Maher on " Immortality," Dr. SurUed on " Hyp- 
notism," Dr. Windle on " Heredity/' Dr. Fox on " Hedonism," 
and Dr. Turner on " Hegelianism." Of special interest to 
Americans are the contributions of Dr. Hayes on " Archlnshop 
Hughes," Father Kenny on " Joel Chandler Harris," Miss Guiney 
on her father, " General Guiney," Father M. P. Smith on " Isaac 
Thomas Hecker," and Father Henry Wyman on "Augustine 
Francis Hewitt." 

In this second volume of Father 
PIONEER PRIESTS OF Cwai\ltA\onPioneer Priests of North 
NORTH AMERICA. America • the scene is changed 

By Campbell. from the land of the Five Nations 

to that of the Hurons. This work 
narrates the brief and tragical, but glorious, annals of the 
Huron mission. Just as Isaac Jogues was the central char- 
acter in the sacred tragedy enacted among the Iroquois, so 
on the Canadian side we find one dominant figure, that nobilis 
athleta Christie John de Br^beui. In all the annals of martyr- 
dom one can scarce find a more heroic soul. Other names, hardly 

^PiofUtf Friists of hifik AwuwUa, i64»-t'jto. By Rev. T. J. Campbell, S.J. VoL II. 
' -^-mg tht Hurons, New York : The America Press. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 535 

less glorious, lend interest to this volume, among the first his 
fellow-martyr, the lovable Gabriel Lalemant. Father Campbell 
informs as of the present state of the proceedings for their 
canonization, in which every Catholic on this continent should 
be interested. Having referred to the proceedings instituted 
immediately after their death, he continues: 

After two hundred and sixty years the cause has again 
been taken into consideration. The tribunal established for 
the hearing of testimony was in session for more than two 
years in Quebec in 1906 and 1907. An investigation into the 
turn culi, that is, an inquiry whether any public worship has 
been approved or tolerated by any one in anticipation of the 
action of the Holy See, was also made. A great number of 
witnesses were summoned, and the documents recounting 
what has been done are now awaiting examination in Rome. 
If they are canonized the New World will have two glorious 
patrons. 

When this much desired result is attained, the way will be 
made for the introduction of the cause of other missionaries 
whose witness to the faith is here narrated, Daniel and Gar-, 
nier, Chabanel and Garreao. The author also tells the pathetic 
story of young Father de Noue, frozen to death and found 
kneeling in the snow. Two other Lalemants, Charles and 
Jerome, are very interesting persons, though they lack the halo 
which a heroic death placed upon the brow of Gabriel Lale- 
mant. 

The work is not altogether confined to the Huron missions. 
As a proper introduction to these missions, the author has 
deemed it best to give a short account of an attempt made 
by the Fathers to evangelize Acadia. An interesting feature 
of this part of the book is the letter of Father Peter Biard in 
defense of the missionaries. Graphic, shrewd, humorous at 
times, it 4s quite delightful. It must surely have aroused an 
answering chord in Father Campbell's heart, for, whenever the 
nature of his tragical subject will permit, his style also takes 
on similar qualities. The work is, therefore, most interesting 
and most readable. It is well that to such a competent pen has 
fallen the task of recalling to the minds of men the deeds of 
these pioneer priests, whose work is thus summed op in the 
epilogue : 



Digitized by 



Google 



536 NEW BOOKS [J«lyf 

To have attempted to convert such a people during the' 
briet period of ten years, every |noment ot which was marked 
by wars, massacres, starvation, disease, and pestilence, and 
nevertheless to have established flourishing missions In every 
Huron town, to have made many thousands of Christians, to 
have developed very many splendid examples of exalted 
sanctity, and, 'finally, to have closed their books of account 
with the Lord not only by years of suffering almost unpar- 
alleled in Christian annals, but to have sealed them with the 
blood of seven ot their noblest men, is the glorious record of 
the Huron missionaries. 

In the hands of Father Thomas 

THE WAYFARER'S VISION. J. Gerrard, theology is a liTing 

By Father Gerriard. science. This phrase does not 

imply the substitution of new 
creeds for old. That means death. To be living implies iden* 
tity and continuity, developing while remaining the same. 
Father Gerrard combines freshness of view with staunch ortho- 
doxy, and a subtle discernment in spiritual things with a just 
estimate of life as a whole. He partakes of Aquinas and of 
Newman. Too many have been interpreting the great Oxford 
thinker in terms of philosophies which he would have rejected. 
Father Gerrard views him as a devoted admirer, but from the 
viewpoint of a convinced Thomist. 

His present volume* is a collection of essays, many of 
which have already seen the light in the columns of The 
Catholic World, the New York Review, and the Dublin 
Review. The title is a reminiscence of St. Paul's saying, ** We 
see now through a glass in a dark manner." In an introduc- 
tory letter to Dr. Adrian Fortescue he indicates the spirit and 
method of his work. *'Our present vision of God has been 
made dark and eiigmatical for a moral purpose. That purpose 
is to try and to strengthen our wills, to generate that love of 
God by which alone the beatific vision may be gained. That 
purpose, moreover, could not be accomplished if the dark vis- 
ion were so dark as to result in agnosticism, or so enigmatical 
as to result in [unauthorized dogmatism.'' It must be ''a 
revelation and a mystery,'' a revelation to guide us, a mystery 
to stimulate our wills. The process of development of Chris- 

» The Wayfartr^s Vision. By Rev; Thomas J. Gerrard. London: Bums & Oates; St. 
Louis: B. Herder. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 537 

tian doctrine uses all the powers of man's soul. ''Such a 
process is best accounted for by a combination of the work of 
St Thomas and Cardinal Newman. By combining St. Thomas 
and Newman we are saved on the one hand from pragmatism 
and humanism^ for we expressly exclude any substitution of 
will or feelings for intellect ; on the other hand, from dialecti- 
cism and rationalism, for we set the will, feelings, and intellect 
in right relation to each other." 

On these principles he discusses a number of topics more 
or less closely related to one another, such as tb« psychology 
of religious assent, the Divine Personality, the problem of evil. 
The first chapter, on ''The Enigmatic Vision,'' and the last 
two, on "An Old Dilemma" and "The Happy Fault," are 
especially suggestive and stimulating. 

It is not an unusual experience 
THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN for the Catholic student to find 
LIFE. authors with whom he fiilds him- 

By Eucken. self like-minded in general views 

on philosophy and religion, but from whom he finds himself 
divided by a whole sea of differences when it comes to more 
definite points of doctrinal belief. Dr. James Martineau is a 
good example of such thinkers. On matters concerning God, 
the soul, and the moral life, we consider him as a potent ally; 
but in dogmatic theology we have to treat him as an adver- 
sary. So, too, we rejoice in the successful work of Dr. Ru- 
dolf Eucken at the University of Jena to offset the ruinous 
influence of Ernst Haeckel. But when we come to estimate 
his definitely constructive theological work, we have to part 
company with him. Nevertheless, viewing the present condi- 
tions of religious life and belief in University circles, we can 
welcome his contribution to the religious probl^*" »• ^^^^ ^^ 
one who, in the main, gathers rather than scatte 
ent work* is a translation of his Die Lebensans 
grossen Denkir^ based on the seventh German 
It gives, as the sub-title indicates, a history ol 
ment of the problems of human life from Plato 
time. The problem of human life, in the au* 
evidently at bottom a religious one. The methc 

* TIU ProiUm of Human Life ms Viewed by the Great Thinkers frm 
Time. By Rudolf Eucken. Translated by Williston S. Hough and, > 



New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 



Digitized by 



Google 



538 NEW BOOKS [July, 

combination of the history of philosophy and the philosophy of 
history. The viewpoint of the author is that of a religions- 
mindedf or, at least, idealistic philosopher, who feels that man 
is not to be satisfied by bread alone. The conclusion is 
vaguely optimistic, but points to no certain way of redemp- 
tion. The style is elevated and clear, the translation excellent. 

Since the [days of Duns Scotus 

CRITICISM AND PRAO- Irishmen have not done much to 

MATISM. udd lo the reputation for meta- 

By O'SttUivan. physical acumen which that most 

subtle of schoolmen conferred up- 
on the race. That this neglect of philosophy was caused by 
political disturbances is proven by the growing frequency with 
which Irish names are nowadays seen on the title-pages of 
learned treatises. The latest among such is the present work* 
of Dr. J. M. 0*Sullivan, which is a criticism of the systems of 
Kant and Hegel, with additional remarks on the new Prag- 
matism. The first and longest section, on Kant and Hegel, 
originally appeared in German, and was published in Berlin as 
a monograph of. the Kant^Studien. The author first gives a 
remarkably lucid exposition of the standpoints and methods of 
Kant and Hegel. He then devotes two long chapters to a 
criticism of their treatment of the category of Quantity. There 
follows a shorter chapter on Kant's treatment of the all-im- 
portant category ef Substance. All of this portion of the 
work is for the initiated, of course, but even a tyro in philos- 
ophy might read with profit the introductory chapter and the 
one on Substance. The treatment of Pragmatism occupies a 
much shorter section of the work. The author shows its de- 
pendence on the critical philosophy and its points of depar- 
ture from it ** One of the main distinctions between Kant and 
the present-day Pragmatists is to be found in the fact that, 
whereas both took as their starting* point the individual of 
psychology, the Pragmatists adhere more steadfastly to this 
position and its implications. A consequence is that truth is 
regarded by them as a dynamic relation, whilst with Kant it 
tended to be static.'* Kant's inquiry is epistemological ; that 

* Old Criiieifm and Niw Pragmatiim, By J. M. 0*Sullivan, Ph.D., Fellow of the Royal 
University of Ireland. Dublin : M. H. Oill & Son ; London and New York: Longmans, 
Green & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 539 

of the Pragmatists is in the main psychological. The author 
does not believe that the recent philosophers have been more 
successful in their attempts than the philosopher of Konigs- 
berg. ''We want a Lo^c of Values; but this is precisely 
what Pragmatism seems unable to give us. But even had we 
this Logic, even could we reduce all the different values to 
one common measure and so estimate their claims, yet the 
difficulty of applying the canon thus got would be practically 
insuperable; it would 'not worlc/*' 

Asiatic immigration, the conquest 
CHINA AND THB FAR BAST, of the Philippines, the rise of 

Japanese power, and our trade in- 
terests in China, are four factors which have brought the 
United States face to face with a new set of questions which 
are usually summed up as "The Problem of the Pacific/* At 
a recent celebration at Clark University the department of 
history wisely decided to present a series of papers by eminent 
authorities on various aspects of the situation in the Orient. 
The more important of these are published in the present 
volume.* They treat of the relations, actual or possible, be- 
tween the United States and China, and of many questions 
concerning the internal affairs of the Celestial Kingdom, its 
economics, monetary system, the opium problem, the army, 
studies, religion, etc. There are also three papers on Japan, 
and three on Korea. All of these form a series of interesting 
documents by men of experience and authority. They should 
be read by all who are anxious to become informed on Oriental 
ideas and institutions. 

To us, as Catholics, the most interesting chapter is one 
that does not touch on a new problem. It is that entitled 
" The History of Christian Missions in China.'* It is written 
by Professor Harian P. Beach, of Yale University. If Father 
Wolferstan ever gets out a second edition of his work on 
Th$ Catholic Church in China, reviewed in these columns a (ew 
months ago, he will find in this chapter a further testimony to 
the work of our missionaries to add to the hundreds already 
presented in his book. 

* Ckima and tki Fmt Bast, Clark University Lectures. Edited by George H. Blakeslee, 
Clark University. New York : Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



540 NEW BOOKS [July, 

Mr. Elmer Ellsworth Brown, United 
GOVERNMENT BT INFLU- States Commissioner of Education, 
ENCE« has published in a volume* Tar- 

By E. E. Brown. j^us addresses which he delivered 

in different parts of the country. 
The addresses view education in its relation to different elements 
of individual character and national life — religion, morals, in- 
ventiveness, motherhood, industry, agriculture, international ar- 
bitration. They are thoughtful and serious, but rather heavy 
productions. The author expresses his respect for religion, 
or rather for what may be called '' religiosity,*' but he is out of 
sympathy with religion as a definite principle of belief and 
conduct. 

Religion in its modern relations, sectarian religion, is a 
breeder of disturbance in those national systems of education 
in which it now holds a place in accordance with a tradition 
all unconsciously outgrown. Where the tradition has al- 
ready passed away, or where it has never become established, 
the teaching of any system of religious doctrine is to be stead- 
ily excluded from public and common schools. 

Protestants in England and America should see in this the 
writing on the wall, and, if they sincerely desire the propaga- 
tion of Christian beliefs, should unite with the Catholics to 
secure the equal rights of schools in which the children of 
Christian parents are taught the truths of religion. 

Brief, but extremely well done, 
ON EVERTTHINQ. laden with fruits of wide reading 

By HUaire Belloc. and extended travel, made pre- 

cious with judgment that is exact 
and thoroughly sane, a new volume of essays entitled: On 
Everything f comes to us from the pen of Hilaire Belloc. 
Readers of The Catholic World know the worth and char- 
acter of his writings from the paper contributed to its pages 
by Virginia M. Crawford in the May issue. Within these cov- 
ers Mr. Belloc really treats of everything, or of almost every- 
thing, and there is no subject which he handles which be does 
not present attractively, and none to which be does not bring 

* Gwtmmeni by Injluetiee : and Other Addresses, By Elmer Ellsworth Browii. New 
York and London : Longmans. Green & Co. 

t On Everything, By Hilaire Belloc, New York : E, P. Dutton & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW Books 541 

a wealth of knowledge and a grace of expression. For example, 
take this from ''On Song/' 

Song also is the mistress of memory, and though a scent is 
more powerful, a song is more general, as an instrument for 
the resurrection of lost things. Thus exiles who of all men 
on earth suffer most deeply, most permanently, and most fruit- 
fully, are great masters of song. . . . All the songs that 
men make (and they are powerful ones) regretting youth are 
songs of exile, and in a sense (it is a high and true sense) the 
mighty hymns are songs of exile also. 

Qui vitam sine termino 
Nobis donet in patria, 

that is the pure note of exile, and so is the 
Coheredes et sodales 
In terra viventium 

and in this last glorious thing comes in the note of marching 
and of soldiers as well as the note of separation and of longing. 

It is a handy volume, and a most enjoyable one — a de- 
ligbtfal book to read aload. He who reads it or hears it read 
will go away richer and happier. 

Father F. X. Lasance some time 
A GUIDE FOR YOUNG MBN. since published a little book of 

spiritual doctrine and advice for 
young girls. It found a ready sale and did much good, where- 
by he has been encouraged to undertake the more difficult 
task of similarly helping young men.* 

Take care of the boys and the girls will take care of them- 
selves, has passed into an adage. Here is a practical attempt 
to aid our young men to tide over the difficult era of dawn- 
ing consciousness of passionate inclination. Persuade a boy 
that the true ideal of life is found in the life and passion of 
our Redeemer, as presented to him by Holy Church, and you 
do a work entirely necessary for the right formation of hit 
character. That girls are apt to be silly and boys sure to be 
bad during their teens — alas! how true it is. A good book, 
serious enough to be a solid nourishment to the soul, and at- 
tractive enough to entertain religiously, is surely one of the 
best means of saving boyhood and early manhood from ship- 

♦ Tki Y0ung Mam's Guidt, Counsels, Reflections, and Prayers for Catholic Young Men, 
By Rev, F. X. Lasance. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



542 NEW BOOKS [J«ly, 

wreck. Father Lasance has, we believe, gone far towards 
achieving success in his worthy endeavor. 

The Arst part of the little work is devoted to a doctrinal 
suminary of the Catholic faith, pleasantly stated and driven 
home by good illastrations. After that, the whole scope of 
life is divided into an excellent arrangement of topics, embrac- 
ing the praise of virtue and the condemnation of vice, includ- 
ing a plain and yet guarded treatment of the preliminaries of 
marriage. 

At the end there is found all the material of a good prayer- 
book. The print is good and the binding first-rate; a book 
for hard usage and permanent benefit. 

This volume * is a Latin version 
ECCLESIASTICAL BISTORT, of Father Albers* well-known 

Church Histoty^ originally written 
in Dutch, and already translated into French and Italian. The 
Latin translation is made by the author himself. It leaves 
nothing to be desired in point of accuracy and clearness. The 
style is limpid and easy, and thus adapted to the needs of 
seminary students. 

When Father Albers* work first appeared in Holland it did 
not attract the attention it deserved, as it was written in a 
tongue not widely known ; but when translated into French by 
the Dominican Father Hedde (Paris, Lecoffre, 2 vols.) it was 
accorded a very generous reception by Catholic scholars 
throughout Europe. This reception was well merited, as the 
work combines the qualities which are sought for in a manual 
of this kind : comprehensiveness, clearness, accuracy, and scien- 
tific method. The bibliographical references are also more 
abundant and more up-to-date than in any other Church his- 
tory manual we know of. This is especially true of the sec- 
tion relating to early Church history, in which are treated 
briefly, but satisfactorily, the most recent questicns of Chris- 
tian archaeology, liturgy, controversies, etc. 

The work in its Latin form will consist of four volumes, 
of about 350 pages each. The first, which has just appeared, 
covers the Christian era down to the year 692. Type, paper, 
and press-work in general are good. The book is to be highly 
commended for the use of priests and seminary students. 

* Bnckwidion Historic EccltsiastUa C/mtverAte, Tom. I. Atias Prima tin CkrisHsna 
Amiiquiiat^A, Z>. 1-691, St. Louis: B. Her(|er. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] NEW Books 543 

We have received for review a book entitled LitUrs to His 
Hclimss^ Pope Pius X» by a Modernist^ from the Open Conrt 
Pablishing Company, of Chicago. The antbor's name is not 
given. The preface implies that he is a Catholic priest still ac- 
tively engaged in the ministry. Considering the book, this 
seems to us to be impossible. In the first part of the volume 
the aathor pretends that he is zealons for the welfare of the 
Church, and would have it purified of all abuses. His love for 
its welfare urges him to speak out plainly. ''But/' as Mr. 
Chesterton has put it, ''no man ever did, and no man ever 
can, create or desire to make a bad thing good or an ugly thing 
beautiful.** And it is soon evident to the reader that the 
author has lost every shred of belief in and love for the Church. 
He would reform the Church by destroying her. A personal 
hatred of her supreme head, "the steps of whose throne are 
built of the bones of murdered men,** stains its pages. Pius X. 
is " ignorant ** and he is " filthy/* There is not one of all the 
religious beliefs sacred to mankind for thousands of years 
which the author does not tear to pieces and throw to the 
wild winds of modern "criticism** and the "religion of the 
spirit.** The Old Testament is unreliable and little more than 
fabulous. The Synoptic Gospels are not to be depended upon. 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are, in great part, " theological apolo- 
getic and not history.** The Fourth Gospel was written by 
some one who looked not at the facts but who was bent 
on squaring Christ with the Logos of the Greeks. "The mod- 
ern critic is far more dispassionate in writing the history of 
Jesus than were the Evangelists.** All external religion must 
go. Holy water, consecrated oil, all the sacramentals are super- 
stition. A celibate clergy is a superstition. There is no priest- 
hood; no altar; no sacrifice. There are no sacraments. The 
account of creation is mythical. There was no fall; no origi- 
nal sin. Belief in a personal devil springs from Manicbaeism 
and the heathen notion of tat>oo. Biblical inspiration, in any 
true sense of the word, is an impossibility. All dogma must 
go. Organized Christianity must go. There is no Church and 
"the idea of a Church was perhaps utterly unintelligible to 
Christ.** The atonement for our sins by Christ is untenable; 
the doctrine of the redemption cannot be held. That Christ 
is God is utterly impossible. He did not establish a Church 
with Peter as its head. Miracles are but "legend and apolo* 



Digitized by 



Google 



544 NEW BOOKS f JulXf 

getic.^' Christ was not born at Bethlehem. The Virgin birth 
is not to be believed. The Immaculate Conception is, of coarse, 
ridiculous. Infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff is utterly un- 
tenable Of course there is no Holy Spirit, no Trinity, Yes, 
there is a God — ''the Ideal which men call God.'* But neither 
Bible nor ten commandments nor Church is necessary for moral- 
ity. Were all of these unknown ''not one ray would be les- 
sened in the resplendent divinity of duty.'* 

Our readers will pardon us for burdening them with this 
recitaL One word we would say in conclusion. It is of the 
very essence of our Lord's work that He came not to destroy 
but to build up. After His example must every man who has 
a spark of goodness or a vestige of love for human kind labor 
to-day. The writer of this book will meet many who are har- 
rassed by difficulties against faith, against Christ and God, and 
yet are working upwards through their very difficulties to the 
light of truth and the joy of peace which the Church alone 
can give them. A word of help and of encouraging guidance 
will mean everything to their souls for time and eternity. Will 
this man fling them back into the pit of darkness and despair, 
into the hell of doubt and denial ? 

The author of this book may meet some who, faithful still, 
are yet weakened by the difficulties and the temptations born 
of modern research. Will it be his aim to help them retain 
all that they now possess, or will he urge them ; to give up 
everything that has made life noble and eternity real, and ex- 
change faith and hope and love for subtle and fruitless scep- 
ticism ? 

MothiT Erin^ Her People and Her Places ^ by Alice Dease 
(B. Herder), describes life in Ireland anew for children. Sketches 
of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Waterford, and Killarney, with brief 
accounts of Ireland's customs, traditions, games, amusements, 
etc., make up a readable narrative to which good illustrations 
add interest. 

Dun Dealgan, latterly known as Dundalk, is the name of 
an ancient Irish stronghold overlooking the town and bay of 
Dundalk. This fort has, after much agitation, been secured 
for the use of the public. A short sketch of its history has 
been issued by the Dundalgan Press, Dundalk, in aid of the 
purchase fund which has yet to be raised. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 545 

A priest of Mount Mellaray has translated from the Italian 
a Catholic work on sociology and economics. While we are 
preparing {if we are) men who will write original works on 
the same topics. Father McLoughlin's work* will render good 
service. The Italian author is an archpriest in Northern Italy. 
He is a parish priest in active touch with the life of the peo- 
ple. Knowledge thus gained of the needs of his times has moved 
him to prepare these lectures, primarily for the benefit of cler* 
ical students. His bishop is warm in his praise, and he speaks 
modestly of himself — ^both excellent recommendations. The work 
is a study of principles and elements, which fact gives it its 
value for beginners. Readers who have gone beyond the early 
stages in these sciences will find the book worth while as an 
excellent commentary on the views laid down in the encycli- 
cals of Leo XIII. After that great Pontiff, the author follows 
the eminent Catholic authority. Professor Toniolo, of Pisa. The 
tone of the work is thoroughly Catholic, but not reactionary. 
As a follower of Leo XIII., and as a priest of Northern Italy, 
the author is sympathetic with the better elements in the spirit 
of the age. The work of the translator is well done, though 
an exception might be taken against the use of the word ** pol- 
icy*' (p. 21) to express the art of government Father Mc- 
Loughlin has also added footnotes applying some of the prin- 
ciples of the work to conditions in Ireland. 

Father Semple borrows from Cicero a title for his pamphlet, f 
which indicates the shock given to his mind and to the minds 
of many other thoughtful men by the articles of Mr. Bolce on 
'' Blasting the Rock of Ages.'' Father Semple does not merely 
give a summary of the Cosmopolitan articles. He adduces testi- 
mony from various sources to show how far the present age is 
drifting from sound and tried views in education, government, 
and morals. He then discusses in a special way the views of 
Professor Lichtenberger, of Pennsylvania, on divorce, and Presi- 
dent Butler's attempt to reply to the remarks of Bishop McFauh 

When that eminent Catholic educator, the Abb^ Hogan, 
was professor of Moral Theology at Saint Sulpice, Paris, be 

* Thi BUwunU •/ ^Social ScUnc* and Political Reomomy, Rsptcially ftr Ust im CoUiga, 
Scho9ls, CMt, GmUds, itc. By the Yen. Archpriest Lorenxo Dardano. Translated by Rev. 
Williaxn McLoughlin. DubUn : M. H. GiU & Son. 

t What Timts I V^hai Morals I Whin en Earth art Wif By Rev. Henry Churchfll 
Semple, S.J. New York : Bensiger Brothers. 
VOL. XCU— 35 



Digitized by 



Google 



546 NEW BOOKS [July, 

ttsed to make it his business to go around among reputable, 
coQScientioas men in professional and business life and find out 
from them what was the opinion prevalent amongst them on 
the ethics of their avocations. He considered that such a course 
was necessary in determining the application of moral princi- 
ciples to the complex details of modern life. A theologian who 
desires to be equally thorough in his work will find much help 
in the series of Yale University lectures now under review.* 
The first series is a symposium on modern business conditions 
and the questions of right and wrong which they create. The 
second deals with a variety of problems in Journalism, Ac- 
countancy, the Law, Transportation, and Speculation. The third 
is a course of lectures on Citizenship, which requires no further 
recommendation than to say that it is the work of Hon. James 
Bryce. 

This is a popular workf on British flowering plants, but 
it will appeal to lovers of plants in all lands. The two first 
chapters are devoted to the general characters of plants and 
to pollination and fertilization. Chapter III. deals with climb- 
ing plants. The remainder of the book treats of the flowers 
of spring, summer, and autumn, arranged according to habitat 
For example, there is a chapter on ''Woods and Thickets in 
Spring ** ; another on " Wayside and Wastes in Spring '' ; also 
one on *' Meadows, Fields, and Pastures in Spring,** There 
are also chapters on flowers having special habitats, like the 
chalk, down, and moor. And the last is devoted to carnivorous 
plants. 

The work is abundantly illustrated. It is to be regretted, 
however, that the size of the volume prevents its being used 
as a pocket field-book. A useful list of flowers (common 
name) classified according to habitat, is given at the end of 
the volume, also a list of orders and genera, followed by a 
short glossary of botanical terms. 

The first word to say about the volumes that compose the 
Round the World series (Benziger Brothers) is that they are 
good samples of worthy book-making. The quality of the 

*Uorals in MpeUrm BuHmss. Page Lectures at Yale Uniyersity. Evtryday Etkus, 
Page Lecture Series. Thi Hindrancts to Gopd Cititaukip, By James Biyce. Dodge Lec- 
tures at Yale Uaiversity. New York,: The Yale University Press. 

t FUld and Wo^dkmd Plants. By W . S. Fumeaux. London and New York : Long- 
mans. Green & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] NEW BOOKS 547 

paper and illostrations if in itself an attraction; but, beyond 
the dresft there is much to commend in the interesting articles 
which treat of a great variety of subjects: trees, furs, gold- 
mining in Mexico, mountain* climbing in America, out-door 
bird taming, landmarks of old Virginia, for example, are sub- 
jects selected at random from Vol. VII., which we have re- 
cently received. For grown readers, as well as for boys and 
girls, these books will be instructive and interesting. 

A Bit of Old Ivory; and Othir Stories^ contains fifteen 
complete short stories written by well-known Catholic writers. 
The name of the author speaks for the merit of each individ- 
ual story. We notice several typographical errors in the vol- 
ume and the story of an author whose name appears in the table 
of contents is not to be found in the book. Richard Aumerle*s 
Brownie and /, a story for young folks, has to do with a dog 
—a very kind dog«-and a young boy. The story wins attention 
from the very beginning and it will entertain girls as well as boys. 
Mary T. Wi^gaman*s latest juvenile. Captain Ted^ is, as we 
expected to find it, a very delightful story. Its hero will find 
many admirers. Clare Lorraine ; or^ Little Leaves Hiom a Little 
Life, by '' Lee,*' is another story that takes ita place with the 
worthy ones for boys and girls. They are all published by 
Benziger Brothers. 

A re-written and enlarged edition of a treatise on the 
Holy Sacr^ce of the Mass, by the Rev. Charles C. Clarke, is, 
in its new dress, a Handbook of Divine Liturgy (London: 
Kegan Paul ; St, Louis : B. Herder). The author is to be com* 
mended for his care in simplifying the subject for the general 
reader and for his timely solicitude that all Catholics should 
have a keener realization of the meaning of the Holy Sacrifice. 

How to Walk Before God^ translated from the French of 
T. F. Vaubert, S. J., is a little treatise on the manner of keep-' 
ing ourselves in the presence of God (B. Herder). 

It is a pleasure to note that the demand for The Divine 
Story^ by Rev. Cornelius Joseph Holland, S.T.L., has been 
large enough to warrant a fourth edition of the work. This 
short life of our Blessed Lord is written specially for children 
(Providence, R. I.: J. M. Tally). 



Digitized by 



Google 



548 NEW BOOKS [July, 

The Teaching of Latin, by Eugene A. Hecker (Boston: 
Schoenhof Book Company), sets forth the benefits derived from 
the study of Latin, and compares in a detailed way the place 
of Latin in the school programmes of various countries. 
Teachers and those interested in the subject will find its many 
suggestions useful. 

Our Faith is a Reasonable Faith is a book translated 
from the German of E. Huch by M. Bachur and published by 
the Society of the Divine Word, Techny, 111. It has been 
said that if St. Paul lived to-day he would be the Apostle of 
the Printing Press. The signs of the times seem to point to 
the fact that Catholics are at last awakening to the value of 
the press as a means to combat error and to expound and de- 
fend Catholic truth. The present volume aims at giving a 
clear statement of Catholic doctrine and thus fortifying the 
layman and preparing him to refute current objections against 
religion. The volume consists of twenty- three chapters, and 
covers quite thoroughly the field of popular apologetics. 

The Escapades of Condy Corrigan^ by Cahir Healy, and A 
Brother's Sacrifice, by Aloysius J. Eifel, are the names of two 
story books recently published by this same Society. The 
first volume is a series of amusing fireside stories, and the 
second is more serious, but none the less readable. 

The Library and the School (New York : Harper & Brothers). 
The problem for American educators is to see that all, and 
especially the young, read that which is morally pure and 
strengthening, which will instruct as well as entertain. What 
books are our children reading, and why? What efforts are 
being made to guide them away from the trashy and the sen- 
sational ? How far can country people, with few educational 
facilities, remedy their own deficiencies ? These, and like ques- 
tions, form the subject of the present volume of eight short 
essays by educators and librarians, especially from the Western 
Central states. 

Peter of New Amsterdam and Richard of Jamestown, by 
James Otis (American Book Company). These historical stories 
show children the home- life of the colonists. They are told 
from the viewpoint of a child, and purport • to have been re* 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9IO.] Neiv Books 549 

lated by a child. This renders them both real and attractive 
to the average boy and girl. Numerous pen and ink drawings 
illustrate the narratives. Lucia's Stories of American Discoverers 
for Little Americans is an entertaining juvenile from the same 
publishers; from whom we have also received, The Human 
Body and Health, by Alvin Davison, a practical and useful ele- 
mentary manual based on the idea that the study of physiology 
should lead to the conservation of health. 

B. Herder, of St Louis, has arranged with the Catholic 
Truth Society of Ireland to publish for American readers The 
lona Series of tales. The four volumes which we have received 
are entitled : The Coming of the King, by Arthur Synan ; Earl 
or Chieftain, by Patricia Dillon ; Peggy the Millionaire, by Mary 
Costello ; Hiawatha's Black Robe, by E. Leahy. They are pub- 
lished at a remarkably low price. 

Margaret's Influence, by the Rev. Peter Geiermann, C.SS.R., 
is a story embodying the special instruction which the Re- 
demptorist Fathers address to the young people on Catholic 
missions. The narrative is, the author tells us, founded on fact. 
A Bunch of Girls, by ** Shan " ; The Fortunes of Philomena and 
Joan and Her Friends, by E. M. Buckenham ; are the titles of 
three juvenile publications. The last two stories would have 
been more attractive if the illustrations had been omitted alto- 
gether. They offend good taste. A counsel of eight practical 
instructions on how to make a good confession is entitled : The 
Penitent Instructed. This is a new and revised edition of the 
work of the Rev. £. A. Selley, O.E.S.A., a small booklet at a 
reasonable price. First Communion of Children and Its Cendi^ 
tions, a pamphlet translated from the French of F. M. de Zu» 
lueta, S.J. All are published by B. Herder. 

In France they are still interested 
MODERNISM. in the matter of Modernism. At 

least they keep on writing books 
about it, which may or may not be a proof that the question 
is a live one. The clergy in this country do not write books 
until a demand is felt-rnor even then, as a rule. But it would 
seem that no cultured Frenchman is happy until he sees his 
name and academic titles on the yellow paper cover of a book. 
And just now Modernism serves as a convenient excuse for 
writing. 



Digitized by 



Google 



55d -^VSFT BOOKS [July, 

Of the works lit hand^ the two which sustain modernistic 
positions are, as might be expected, from the Noorry publish- 
ing house^ P. Saint-Yves delivers a broadside against the value 
of miracles as a proof for doctrine.* He goes over the familiar 
ground of the objections against the possibility of determining 
whether any given fact is or is not miraculous in the theologi* 
cal sense. He writes as if nobody had ever before thought of 
these difficulties. A pilgrimage to Lourdes is what his case re* 
quires. 

Marcel H Aert makes a study f of two mystical works, the 
Confessions of St. Augustine and the Treatise on the Love oj 
God of St Francis de Sales, to show, against the ultra* Prag- 
matists, that there is a form of religious experience which is 
characteri2ed by the sense of the absolute, the perfect, as its 
essential element. The author cannot help admiring the great 
saints whose works he is studying, but his notes and comments 
are generally critical and destructive. 

On the other side of the question that stormy petrel of the 
sea of controversy, the Abb^ Fontaine, flaps excited wings over 
the billows and the wreckage. He has had the happiness of 
discovering a new kind of Modernism — sociological, this time.| 
When the Holy Father, two years ago, placed the name Mod* 
ernism on the definite system of heterodox thought, of which 
he purged the Church, it was an easy prophecy that extremists 
on both sides would extend the term to cover views which the 
precise pontifical document did not contemplate. Some critics 
of the Church seemed to have an idea that it was an attack on 
everything modern^— public schools and manhood, suffrage and 
wireless telegraphy, and the like. And some of ourselves, like 
the Abb^ Fontaine, play the part of the adversary, by a reck- 
less use of the term. Not that the situation at which be aims 
is not bad enough^ in all conscience. For he Is attacking the 
execrable poUcy of the leaders of thought in France, which is 
dMtroyIng the bases of religion and society^ Their actions and 
principles are deserving of the strongest denunciation, and, m 
Ux forth, this book is a pleasure to read. But there Is nothing 

•LtDtcitnumimti^iiiimdi. Pat P. Sflint^Ytts. trails: Hottfry. 

f ^ Fami iMtUitU i*r Simti m m^i Riiigieme. D«be Bi«qplasi 6l« AMfpu^n «t St. 

Fraa9oU de Sales. Par Marcel Robert. Paris : Nouny. 

U Uddifnitm Sftl^Uiigui: DHadmc€ $m ^iiM&aH&B f Par 14« 1 'AbM J. pMUHid. 
Paris . P. LethieUeux. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I910.] NEW BOOKS 551 

to be gained by assailiog the loyalty of those on one's own 
side who do not see eye to eye with one on all questions of 
method. One can be strong and unswerving without being 
cantankerous. 

M. Ledire's attitude towards Modernism— or, rather, the 
philosophy of Modernismi to whith he strives to limit his in- 
quiry—is that of the historical critic* He treats of its origins, 
its relations with other philosophical systems, its various forms. 
He traces its origin to the philosophy of Kant and the Liberal 
Protestantism oi the last half-century; it is related collaterally 
with British-American Pragmatism. In the Catholic Church 
its protagonists are 011^-Laprune, Cardinal Deschamps, and 
Cardinal Newman; its representatives in its more definite foim 
are Blondel, Laberthonni^re, Le Roy, Tyrrell, and Loisy. The 
name of Cardinal Newman dans cette galhre will give a shock 
to those who know that his work and memory have been ab- 
solved by the most eminent authority from the stigma of Mod- 
ernism. A summary of M. Lecl&re's more startling conclusions 
concerning the tendency of Newman's teaching will serve as a 
basis to estimate his competency as witness or as critic. He 
believes that Newman's views, as expressed in the Grammar 
of Assentf render grace unnecessary for the act of faith ; put 
the individual conscience above the Church; lead to the belief 
that external and organized religion is unnecessary; open the 
way to pantheism. '* Everything," he says, in his sweeping 
way, ** everything that has been made a reproach to Modernism 
by the theologians who represent Catholic orthodoxy is more 
than in germ in this pragmatism (of Newman), of which the 
most manifest characteristic is its resemblance to Protestantism.'^ 
Speaking on The Development of Doctrine^ he says : '* Relativ* 
ism, individualism, are at the bottom of Newman's teaching, as 
well as humanism and naturalism." In one place M. Lecl^re 
seems to get a momentary glimpse at the unfairness of his 
presentation: ''We are forcing the meaning of the celebrated 
Cardinal's teaching, no doubt " ; but he instantly hardens his 
heart, saying: ''but does he not invite it?" 

It is a relief to turn from this sort of stuff to the calm and 
rational discussion of the eminent Dominican philosopher. Father 

• PragwuHstmi, Modirmismt, '^rotatatUiswu. Par A. Led&re, Professeor i l^niyersittf 
de3enie. Puis: BhmdetCte. 



Digitized by 



Google 



552 New Books [Julyr 

Garrigou-Lagrange.* Here we have St. ThomaSi his spirit as 
well as his doctrine. The author takes up the views propounded 
by M. le Roy four years ago in favor of the purely moral 
value of doctrinal formulas. He discusses the questions at issue 
on the deep philosophical bases on which they really rest. 
The work is a good defence of the intellectualistic position^ or 
the philosophy of Being, against both Phenomenalism, the phi- 
losophy of Seemingt and Hegelianism, the philosophy of Be- 
coming. 

Cardinal Mercier's pamphlet f is a compilation from three 
sources: an address at the University of Louvain, a pastoral 
to his diocese of Mechlin, and a letter to the University Acad- 
emy of Madrid. They reflect the calmness and authority both 
of the true phiUsopher and the Christian bishop. 

The history of the Merovingian dynasty {St. Bathtlde, Queen 
of the Franks. Par Dom Couturier. Paris: P. T^qui) is as re- 
markable for its queens as for its kings. The last of its queens 
was St. Bathilde. Although a slave and a foreigner^ Clovis II. 
made her his wife. The volume gives the reader a good in- 
sight into the Gallic- French society of the period, its institu- 
tions, domestic life, habits, luxury, and morals, and presents to 
him the career of Bathilde from the workshop of Erchinoald 
to the palace of the king. He who loves the curious in his- 
tory will find much profit in the study of this book, and it 
will have its measure of edification and instruction for every 
Christian because of the life which it presents of one of the 
greatest saints of France in the seventh century. 

The copy of Pire Monsabr^*s posthumous work on the Pater^X 
which lies before us, is of the fifth edition, though the work was 
published only last year. iThis is a sufficient proof that it ranks 
with the other homiletic efforts of the great preacher of Notre 
Dame. It consists of a series of conferences, twenty-four in 
all, on the first five petitions of the Lord's Prayer, tlie approach 
of death having prevented the writer from finishing his dis- 
courses on the last two. The conferences possess the certain 
theological knowledge, the breadth •f view, the religious fervor, 

* Li Sens Commun, la Philes^phU dt V^trt it Us FirmnUs Do^wtoH^is. Par Fr. R.. 
Garrigou-Lagrange. Paris : Librairie Gabriel Beaachesne et Cie« 
t Li ModiTuismi, Par Cardinal Merder. Paris : Bloud et Cie. 
% La PrUri Divtm : U •• Patirr Par J. M. L. Monsabr^. O.P. Paris : P. Lethielleux. 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] NEW BOOKS 553 

which are familiar to all who have used his numerous works 
on religious subjects. For each conference there is supplied a 
careful synopsis, which will facilitate the work of a preacher 
who wishes to make use of the ideas of the eloquent Dominican. 

M. TAbb^ Vigourely professor at Saint-SulpicCi and author 
of a Cours Synthitiqui de Liturgie^ has arranged a number of 
points concerning the liturgy of the Church in a manner to 
make them available as matter for meditation or for sermons 
on Sundays and feasts.* He treats of liturgy in general, the 
divisions of the ecclesiastical year, the various parts and acces- 
sories of the Mass, the liturgy of the sacraments, the principal 
feasts, the office, the litanies, and other recognized liturgical de- 
votions. The matter is arranged to fit well into the spirit of 
the diverse seasons and festivals. The points selected are pre- 
sented in a suggestive rather than an exhaustive fashion, and 
are thereby all the better fitted for the preacher's use. The 
work will be of assistance to the clergy in making the faithful 
appreciate more than they generally do the treasures of spir- 
itual benefits which lie enshrined in the magnificent liturgy of 
the Church. 

No saint should be more read about 
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES, in our day of high aspirations than 

St Francis de Sales.t He devoted 
his life entirely to the progress of souls striving for perfection, 
and the saving of souls infected with heresy. In our time and 
country the holy ambition to be entirely under God's guidance 
is beginning to stir multitudes of hearts. No sign of the times 
is more consolfng than the instant response to the Holy Fa- 
ther's urgent invitation to more frequent and even to daily 
Communion. Confessors are everywhere increasing the number 

of penitents, men and women both, who, in the — -^— 

tions of life, are yearning for entire devotedness 
ards so well advanced by St. Francis. 

And with equal prominence stand forth missi 
tions of Catholic Americans, who can learn from 1 
methods of love in convert making. There is not i 

* La LUmr^U etlavU ChritUmtu. Par A. Vigourel, du S^minaire Sai 
P. Lethielleux. 

i Francis d* Salts. A study of the gentle saint. By Louise M. 
New York : Bensiger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



5S4 NEW BOOKS IJuly, 

out some converts. Many dioceses have missionary bands of 
secular priests, aiding the zeal of the ordinary parish clergy, and 
greatly extending the reign of Catholic truth. Everywhere the 
religious communities are winning souls to Christ and the 
Church. 

The writer of this book has imparted fresh interest to a 
narrative of loving activity and holy persuasiveness, adorning 
a personality of eminently heroic sanctity. She writes with 
sympathetic spirit, though not unduly thrusting forward her 
own statements of absorbed discipleship, and lets the saint tell 
his own story as far as possible. 

One easily rides on the tide of love for God and man that 
this narrative exhibits as flowing out of the heart of St Francis. 
There is a beautiful romance in the story of the young noble- 
man laying down his high lordship, and setting aside the 
attractive marriage schemes of his parents, in order to take 
the place of a humble priest in a ruined and despoiled die* 
cese of the Alpine foothills. Then the dauntless daring of 
his apostolate in the Chablais, where in a few. years he con* 
verted a whole province from rankest Calvinism to sweetest 
Catholicity. The contrast between Calvin, the gloomiest of 
Protestants, and Francis de Sales, the happiest of Catholics, 
between the apostle of wrath and the apostle of love, is well 
shown in this book. 

The author was rightly guided in using very abundantly the 
letters and other personal memorials, for St. Francis wrote his 
own life, his own very soul, in his letters, and, indeed, in all 
his devout treatises. Next to ^ Kempis there is perhaps no 
uninspired teacher so often quoted by devout Christians as 
St Francis de Sales, and quoted, too, because known by 
heart. Read this book to become acquainted with one who is 
all that is meant by a gentleman and all that is meant by a 
saint. 

The Life of SU Clare • edited by 
LIFE OF ST. CLARE. Father Paschal Robinson, and pub- 

lished by the Dolphin Press, is 
an altogether worthy volume. Father Robinson fias made a 
fine translation of the biography of St Clare attributed to 

* TksLifffSt. Clan. Ascribed to Father Thomas of Celano. Translated ttd edhed 
by Father Pasdial Robhison, O.F.M, With an Appendix contahiing the Rule of 8t Clare. 
Philadelphia: The Dolphin Press. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I30 NEW BOOKS 555 

Thomas pf CelanOy and also of the Rule of St. Clare. His in- 
troduction and notes leave nothing to be desired in the way 
of scholarship and literary merit. The Dolphin Press has also 
done well its share in the work. Paper, type» and illustrations 
are of the best. In every way this is a noteworthy contribu- 
tion to English Franciscana. 

In a famous passage Cardinal New- 

ENGLISH LITERATURE man says that, no matter what 

AHD RELIGION. use writers may make of it, ^* Eng- 

By Chapman. Ush literature will ever have been 

Protestant'* Mr. Chapman, in the 
present volume,* essays to estimate how far it has been, in 
the last century. Christian. Or, rather, that is part of his 
theme. He recogni2es the reciprocity between religion and lit- 
erature, the one supplying ideas, and the other supplying modes 
of expression to its mate — which is the idea underlying the 
Cardinal's dictum. Mr. Chapman gives us a history of English 
literature in the nineteenth century from an interesting point 
of view. He neglects no feature in the problem, whether for 
or against the progress of religious ideas. The work will repay 
reading. 

* Bn^Hsk LUirutmrt in Accommt with Rtligitm (iSoo-igoo). By Edward Mortimer Chap- 
man. Boston and New York : Houghton MifBin Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



jFoteian petiobicals^ 

The Tablet (7 May): ''Juvenile Labor and Unemployment/' 
Child labor is, undoubtedly, one of the chief causes of 
unemployment ; for such labor is merely temporary, and 
instead of leading to something better, leads to nothing, 
save to the ranks of the unemployed . **The Casting 
of St Edward's Bell/' This delicate operation was per- 
formed last Saturday, in the presence of his Grace, tbe 
Archbishop of Westminster, and of the Duchess of Nor- 
folk, the donor of the bell. 

(14 May): ''The Royal Declaration." A plea for the re- 
vision of a declaration that is most offensive to all Roman 
Catholics, blaspheming, as it does, against the most 
sacred mystery of our holy religion.^——" Catholics and 
the French Elections." The results following the cast- 
ing of the second ballot, though, as a whole, not of 
a very decisive character, yet show at least a loss on 
the part of the Radical Socialists.— ~" King Edward 
VII. and His Catholic Subjects." Incidents indicative of 
the friendly attitude of the late king towards his Catho- 
lic subjects. " The Terror of the Comet." Provided 

the world lasts sufficiently long, an encounter with the 
comet is bound to take place. 

(21 May): "Pentecost" is a day of a triple commemo- 
ration: one a thanksgiving for the gifts of the nation at 
the end of the harvest ; another the remembrance of the 
law-giving on Mount Sinai ; a third, the memory of the 
visible descent of the Holy Ghost.— ~" Two More Years 
of the Bloc." The municipal elections, to renew one- 
half the City Council of Rome, are to be held in June, 
yet it appears to be a foregone conclusion that the year 
191 1 will see the Anti- Clericals masters of the situation. 
(28 May): "Decisions oi the Biblical Commission." 
Eight answers regarding the authors and the date of the 
composition of the Psalms. Answers approved by the 
Pope and published at his order. Among other decisions 
is that it would be imprudent to affirm that only a few 
of the psalms are to be attributed to David, or to deny 



Digitized by 



Google 



igiO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 557 

his authorship of certain specific psalms. Certaia psalms 
are to be recognized as prophesying the coming, passion^ 
resurrection, etc., of our Redeemer. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (l/Lzy)i ''St Paul to Masters 
and Servants/' by Rev. E. T. CuUen. The chief cause 
of trouble between masters and servants is the want of 
a clear understanding of the rights of both parties con- 
cerned. The writer proffers a solution of the difficulties 
based upon the principles laid down by St. Paul in his 
Epistle to Philemon. Masters should be solicitous for 
the spiritual and temporal welfare of their servants, while 
the latter should render their services freely and from 

high motives. ''The Story of the Tithes/' a sketch 

of the troubles arising from the attempt to tax Irish 
Catholics in support of the clergymen of the English 

State Church, by R. Barry O'Brien. "Eschatology 

of the Old Testament/' by Rev. Martin O'Ryan. 

" The Irish Catholic Abroad and at Home." The writer. 
Rev. P. Sheridan, thinks dogmatic theology is "a mat- 
ter of too little concern with our ordinary students and 
priests." But this must be overcome If priests are to 
be successful in their labors abroad. 

Le Correspondant (lo May): "The Chinese Press/' by Fernand 
Farjenel. The awakening of the East has led to a vir- 
tual creation of a Chinese Press. There are at present 
over fifty papers published in China, consisting of dailies, 
periodicals, and illustrated journals. Their context "is 
analogous to that of the European and American papers 
which have served as models." The press is infusing 
new and modern ideas into the popular mind; advoca- 
ting and supporting the national assembly, and, on the 
whole, is bringing China into a closer re'-*'^'^- •^•^^ ***-' 
modern world.-—" The Economic Life 
Movement — Socialism." A. Bechaux wr 
progress of French Socialism and the Iw 
calls for a complete economic, politic 
emancipation of the workingman. The p< 
pation is to be achieved by the central 
government and the development of the 
and law. Moral emancipation is to be re 
materialistic conception of history and 



Digitized by 



Google 



558 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July, 

writer doubts that the Socialistic Ideal will ever be es- 
tablished, because of the '' instioctive need of individiial 
property and personal independence; also because of 
the moral and religious forces of the French soul.*' 

Revile du CUrgi Francois (15 May): *' Modernism in Italy/' by 
J. M. Vidal, reviews the present activities of the Mod- 
ernist foUowingi and sketches the work and character 
of the principal Italian leaders. The movement has 
practically no following among the masses, but attracts 
here and there certain groups of young people, fascinated 
by its promises of novelty and liberty.-— Ch. Calippe 
writes of the'' Social Ideas of Chateaubriand.*' 

£tudes Franciscaines (April): ''The Return to the Church,** by 
P. Gonzalve. The Conversion of Dr. A. de Ruville, a 
noted professor in the University of Halle. His con- 
version was due mainly to the influence of "Catholic 
Theological Literature.** 

(May): "Christian Men of Art,** by Alphonse Germain. 
A summary of the works of art by Christian artists of 
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The writer 
wishes to give, in a brief survey, the life, the where- 
abouts, the schools, and the teachers which influenced 
the individual painter. He enumerates the more impor- 
tant works of art produced by the various men and 
states the time and place of exhibition.-— "The Nature 
of State Education,** by P. Joseph d*Auresan. The 
writer takes up the question of official teaching in the 
various countries of Europe. In Germany we find two 
noted adversaries of the Catholic teaching attempting to 
do away with "Confession Schools.'* The writer goes 
on to show how the "Anti-Christian spirit reigns very 
forcibly in Spain, Italy, Russia, Belgium, and England.** 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiasti^ues et La Science Catkolique 
(May) : " Separation of School and State,** by M. C. de 
Kirwan, is an appreciation of the campaign— begun by 
M. Pierre Bi^try— in favor of the separation of the school 
from the State. The State authorities took from the 
Church the right to educate because the Church fashioned 
the young in its own way. These same men, however, 
are now training and teaching according to their own 
ideas. They condemn churchmen for the very thing 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 10.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 559 

with which they now concern themselves. M. Bi^try in 
his book gives the history of education from La Con* 
vention of 1793 to the present day. 

R$vue Pratique d^ Apologitique (i May): '* Observations on a 
New Theory of Sacerdotal Vocation/' by G. Letourneaui 
is a brief account of the noted work written by Canon 
Lahitton. Quoting Lahitton, he defines the priestly 
sacerdotal vocation as : *' The appointment or call of a 
subject to the sacerdotal state/' The prime factor in 
Lahitton's theory is the importance which is attributed 
to the approval by the Church authorities: it is not 
enough, says he, that the subject perceive that inner 
voice calling him to the sacerdotal state. 
(15 May): "The Devotion to the Sacred Heart/' by J. 
V. BainveL The writer endeavors to give a definite 
idea of the '* Devotion to the Sacred Heart" from an 
etymological point of view, inquiring whether the word 
" Heart " be taken in the material, metaphorical, or sym- 
bolical sense. Later he shows the historical, the theo- 
logical, and scientific basis of this devotion, and proves 
that it is not based on the vision of Blessed Margaret 
Mary. Pope Pius VI., in the Bull Auctorem Fidei^ 1794, 
approves of this devotion. 

JStudes (5 May): Benoit Emonet thinks the dramatic work of 
M. Eug&ne Brieux, recently elected to the Academy, 
immoral and commonplace.-— Louis des Brandes re- 
views a curious mystery play, " La Charit^ de Jeanne 

d 'Arc," by Charles Peguy. '* Le Sillon and the French 

Bishops/' The chief charge is that Le Sillon mixes re- 
ligion with a democratic political programme and claims 
to be independent of the Bishops. 
(29 May): ''La Question Syndicaliste," by Gustave de 
Lamarzell, senator from Morbihan, was suggested by Paul 
Bourget's play dealing with strikes and lockouts, ''La 
Barricade." The author writes sympathetically of labor's 
struggle. He thinks that the privilege of organizing is 
a right natural to the laborer and his only effective 
defence against capitalistic exploitation. 

La Revue du Monde (i May): "Letters of Marie de Medici to 

Louis XIIL," by Eugene Griselle. " A Pilgrimage to 

Subiaco/' by Yves d'Aubi&res.-— "Improved Arma* 



Digitized by 



Google 



560 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July, 

ment/' by A. de Sach| is a plea for the necessity of a 
nation adopting the most improved means of offensive 
and defensive warfare. 

(15 May): ''The School Question in the Canadian 
North West/' A short history of the origin of this 

question by Arthur Sava&te. ''In Old Castile/' a 

lecture by Yves d'Aubi^res on some still unexplored 
regions of Old Castile. 

Annales di Philosophie Chritientu^ (I^&y): Albert Dufourcq, in 
''The Evolution of the Greek Religion/' makes the ad- 
mission that it originated in a sort of zoolatry.-— " The 
Religious Attitude of St. Francis of Assisi," by Louis 
Canet, examines the latest attempts of Sabatier, Thode, 
etc., to separate fact froni legend in the records of this 
saint. It is clear, M. Canet thinks, that his outlook on 
life was purely religious, and that any political or social 
consequences, arising, for example, from his doctrine of 
poverty, were entirely accidental. 

Chtanique Sociale de France (May) : Max Turmann, under the 
caption " Protection of Labor," reviews the operation of 
laws in the United States and Australia, with particu- 
lar reference to high tariff and limitation of immigra- 
tion. He seems to favor a state-established minimum 
wage. 

Revista Intetnazionale (April) : " The Problem of the Family in 
its Social Aspect at the Present Day/' by G. Tomolo. 
The baneful sociological theories which deny the divine 
institution of marriage, combined with economical con- 
ditions which necessarily break up the family relations, 
are bringing about the destruction of the family. The 
Catholic faith, and the awakening of the entire con- 
science of the nation to the evils within it, must pro- 
tect, restore, and elevate the family, especially the 
Christian family. 

La Civilth Cattolica (21 May): "Religious Instruction in the 
Elementary School." From a comparison between the 
States anent this question, he concludes that France 
alone excludes religious instruction from all the elemen- 
tary schools. Italy, led on by the activities of the anti- 
clerical party and by the feebleness of the Catholic op- 
position, is moving rapidly to the same abyss.— "The 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 561 

History of Frequent Communion,'^ reviews the more re- 
cent studies bearing on the history of frequent Com- 
munion.*-^— '' The Truth of the Case of R. Murri'* is 
made manifest in the pastoral letter of the Archbishop 
of Fermo; it shows to the whole world, both to the 
faithful and to the opponents of the Church, the more 
than paternal kindness with which ecclesiastical authority 
dealt with this refractory priest. 

Espatia y Amirica (May) : " The Social Action of the Clergy/' 
by Sr« D. Victoriano Guisasola y Men^ndez, is reviewed. 
The author's thesis is that the times demand '^an in- 
tense, constant, and universal social action from the 
Catholic priesthood. 

Raz6n y Fe (May): P. Villada points out the duty of Catho- 
lics in ''The Legislative Elections of. 1910." The de- 
clared anti*clerical policy of certain candidates makes 
indifference criminal.— —*' Unconscious Cerebration'' by 
Francisco Segarra. This first of two articles examines 
the teaching of modern philosophers on this question. 
—Pablo Hernandez sketches the history of Aranco, 
formerly an independent state, now a province of Chile. 



VOL. xci*— 36 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



IRecent Events* 



The elections left M. Briaad and 
France. his Cabinet in power, with the 

prospect of an indefinitely pro- 
longed tenure of office. M. Briand at once took systematic 
steps to ascertain the wishes of his supporters in the Chamber 
of Deputies. To all the Prefects of Departments he sent in- 
structions to make an analysis of the speeches made to the 
electors by those who, in virtue of those speeches and in reli- 
ance upon the promises made therein, had secured the confi- 
dence of the people. He proposes to regulate his policy in 
accordance with the promises made by the majority of the 
successful candidates. A perfectly definite .programme will be 
laid before the Parliament prepared in order to hold the ma- 
jority to its pledged word. 

The most widely accepted of these proposals was that of 
electoral reform. The adoption of scrutin de liste received 
the support of the electors by an overwhelming majority, and 
there was a large majority in favor of some method of pro* 
portional representation in order that to minorities the oppor- 
tunity of a hearing might be given. Electoral reform, therefore, 
will be the first of the measures brought forward by M. Briand 
in the early part of the first sessions of the new Parliament. 
It is expected, too, that it will be proposed to prolong to six 
years the term of service of the Deputies, combined with a 
system for the renewal of the mandates of one-third of the 
whole number of the Deputies every three years. 

Fiscal reform, in the shape of the adoption of an Income 
Tax, has received a favorable reception ; but the form in which 
it was adopted by the last Chamber of Deputies, and in 
which it was sent up to the Senate, has not received the ap- 
probation of the larger number of the electors. To State 
monopolies in the sale of alcohol and in insurance a consider* 
able majority manifested its hostility. In favor of administra- 
tive and of judicial reforms, and for the better regulation of 
the relations between the State and its servants, the clear de- 
sire of the people was indicated. It is satisfactory to note 
that out of the 597 deputies who have been elected only 
66 ventured to advocate the State monopoly of education 
which would, if adopted, close the Catholic schools. Two 
hundred and thirteen, however, advocated State control of the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT EVENTS 563 

ecoUs UbreSf that is to say, the shotting out from Catholic 
schools of any control by the clergy. The Minister of Educa- 
tion is determined, it is said — although the number of the sup- 
porters of his proposal is, as has been said, very moderate — to 
proceed with the Bills which were introduced during the last 
session in consequence of the protests of the Bishops against 
the non-neutrality of the State schools. The object is, it is 
announced, to consolidate and defend the State neutral school 
and to organize the working and the control of the Scales 
libres, or private schools, both as regards the efficiency of the 
teacher, and with respect to the selection of school books. 
This is equivalent to making the State supreme in the schools 
supported by Catholics at their own expense. It is the same 
thing as would be a proposal of the Board of Education of 
New York to judge of the qualifications of the teachers in the 
parochial schools and of the suitability of the text-books. 
This is the way in which liberty is understood in France at 
the present time. 

The strikes of the inscrits matitimes at Marseilles and other 
parts have come to an end, but other disturbances have taken 
place. The most significant of all is the mutiny, for it cannot 
be called by any other name, of a number of Reservists at 
Ntmes. Finding the ground on which they were encamped too 
damp to suit them, they, contrary to the orders of their officers, 
marched into the town singing the ''Internationale,'' and were 
guilty of sundry other irregularities. They did not persist, 
however, in this unmilitary insubordination. The military au- 
thorities showed no lack of resolution, and put in prison a large 
number of the mutineers, leaving the rest of the regiment in 
its damp encampment outside the city. 

The State management of the Universities does not meet 
with the approbation of those over whom it seeks to exercise 
control. So little were certain examinations of the Medical 
School of the Sorbonne to the taste of the students that they 
assailed the examiners with volleys of eggs, tomatoes, and simi- 
lar missiles. This was kept up for several days, in spite of the 
fact that the police were brought upon the field of action to 
bring about peace. Information has not been published as to 
what it was in the examination that was so obnoxious, but it 
would seem as if the State's authority is no more relished by 
the physicians of the body, than it is by the clergy. 

The fact that at the funeral of King Edward, at Windsor 



Digitized by 



Google 



564 RECENT EVENTS [Jqly, 

the Get'man Emperor went out of his way to show special at* 
tention to M. Pichon, the French Foreign Minister and Special 
Ambassador, gave rise to rumors of a tappfochement between 
Germany and France. It was even said that a secret treaty 
had been made between the two countries. This is recognized 
as an exaggeration ; but it is equally well recognized that there 
exists at the present time between the two countries a desire 
to keep peace and to deal with all questions at issue in that 
spirit which makes for peace. There is in France a small num* 
ber of eminent men who have long cherished the hope of a 
permanent reconciliation, and worked with that object in view. 
Every good cause has in its beginning been advocated by a 
minority only, and sometimes a very small minority. It is too 
soon to be sure that this minority will become a majority, but 
there is no reason to despair. It is worth mentioning in this 
connection th'at the late King Edward gave active support to 
the efforts of Baron d'Estournelles de Constant to bring about 
a better understanding between France and Germany, and was 
resolutely opposed to the policy of '' hemming in,'' advocated 
by some Englishmen and bitterly resented by all Germans. 

Morocco has persistently protested agsinst being kept in or- 
der by main force against its will, and having to pay for it as 
well. After protracted delays, however, the Sultan, Mulai 
Hafid, was constrained to consent to the raising of a loan for 
the indemnification of French and other foreign interests. This 
consent he subsequently withdrew. Whereupon France seized 
upon the Customs in part satisfaction of those claims. There 
seems to be no other way of securing payment; for, even if 
the Sultan were loyal to his word, his power is in reality so* 
limited that, although nominally absolute, he is unable to carry 
out his promises. The latest news is that his army has been 
defeated and that in all probability he will be dethroned by 
rebellious tribes. 

By the election of Mgr. Duchesne to the Academy honor 
has been shown to a genuine scholar, who has proved that the 
most perfect integrity of mind in dealing honestly with histor- 
ical evidence gives support to the teachings of the Church. 

The first attempt to pass a legis- 

Oermany. lative measure of importance made 

by the new Chancellor, Herr von 

Bethmann*Hollweg, has failed. The Prussian Franchise Bill as 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 10.] RECENT EVENTS 565 

introdoced into the Lower House, did not do mtich to remove 
the anomalies which have made the Prussian system of election a 
by* word. It was transformed in passing through the House by 
the combined efforts of the Conservatives and the Catholic Cen- 
tre. It received further modifications, at the instance of the gov- 
ernment in the Upper House — modifications meant to win the 
support of the Liberals and Radicals. On its return to the 
Lower House, the Liberals and Radicals could not ag^ree, and 
thereupon the government withdrew the Bill. It is not yet 
known whether any further effort will be made to remedy a 
situation which has caused so much dissatisfaction. A large 
number of persons in Prussia possess property and have a long 
line of ancestors behind them who imagine that the safety of 
the country — as well as that of the Empire which depend s, 
they think, upon Prussia — requires that all power should be 
left in their own hands. The people are not to be trusted, as 
they do not know what is good for themselves. It is to these 
that the maintenance of the present situation is due. It is not 
yet known how long the people will acquiesce. The recent 
demonstrations in support of franchise reform have shown that 
they are as well organized as is the army itself, and there- 
fore great danger is involved in disappointing expectations 
recognized as just. 

The Navy League, the great organization that supports the 
government in that expansion of the Navy which causes so 
much anxiety in other parts of the world, has been holding 
its tenth annual meeting. No very startling proposals were 
made, perhaps because the programme of the League has been 
accepted by the government to almost its complete extent. 
Disarmament, the President said in his speech, was a purely 
ideal question, and all talk of it was dying out; even the 
limitation of armaments was being more and more recognized 
as practically impossible. All possible agreements, arbitration 
treaties, and international conferences, could not confer abso» 
lute security. Although the growth in numbers of the League 
during the past year was not so great as to give satisfaction 
to the President, the 11031,339 members form a body power- 
ful enough to exert considerable influence upon any govern- 
ment. The German Emperor sent a message to the meeting 
to express his appreciation of the valuable support the League 
had given to his efforts to strengthen German sea power and 



Digitized by 



Google 



566 RECENT EVENTS [Jutyf 

of his intention to continue to regard with special interest and 
favor the well-directed efforts of the League. 

Reference has already been made to the rumors of a rap^ 
prochetnent between France and Germany. The new Foreign 
Minister of Italy has been paying a visit to Berlin, in order 
to confer with Herr von Bethmann-HoUweg ; and as a result 
it is announced that the relations between Italy and Germany 
have become more than ever friendly and settled upon a 
secure and peaceful basis. To Berlin the first official visit of 
the new King of the Belgians has been paid, that which his 
Majesty made to England to the funeral of King Edward 
having been of a ceremonial and personal character. The ex- 
tension of the influence of Germany throughout the world, 
while not the object, was one result of Prince EitePs trip to 
Jerusalem. He was received with great ceremony, not only 
by Protestants, whose hospital he went to open, but also by 
the Catholic clergy. And it is said that there is not a 
Bedouin tent throughout Arabia in which the power of Ger- 
many is not extolled. 

The Emperor himself has been so unwell that he has had 
to devolve upon the Crown Prince the function of signing the 
documents which have received the Imperial approval. The 
illness was painful rather than serious. But subsequently an- 
other ailment has supervened, declared, indeed, not to be 
serious. Official declarations are, however, not always trust- 
worthy. 

The Emperor of Austria and King 
Austria-Hungary. of Hungary has been paying a 

visit to the provinces of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina. This he did in order to conciliate the good* 
will of the various populations, who had for the most part 
rather sullenly acquiesced in the exercise of the authority of 
their over-lord, especially as it was done in the good old 
medieval way, without consulting the will of the subjects at all. 
It was, however, so it professed, for the purpose of bestowing 
upon them constitutional government that the annexation was 
made, and this promise, so far as the government is concerned, 
has, after some delay, been kept, although the Constitution still 
awaits the ratification of the Hungarian parliament. 

The Emperor proved himself a most practical politician in 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] RECENT Events 567 

the course of his visit, and succeeded in winning for himself 
in the end an enthusiastic reception. In Bosnia the religious 
order takes precedence of the civil, and it was by the repre- 
sentatives of religious communities that he was received in the 
first place, and only afterwards did the civil authorities pay 
their respects. The Emperor responded in the most impartial 
manner. In the first place he went with his Staff to the Catho- 
lic Cathedral, where he was received by the Archbishop and a 
brief service was held. Then he went to the Serb Orthodox 
Cathedral, where he was received by the Metropolitan and 
conducted through rows of maidens dressed in the national 
costume to the Throne. Thence he passed to the Mosque and 
listened to, if he did not take part in, the prayers which are 
said for the monarch every Friday. He then went to two 
synagogues, one of the Spanish Jews and the other of the 
German Jews, and in the end visited the Protestant church. 
The Burgomaster was the last to be called upon. In all his 
utterances the Emperor exhorted his new subjects to concord, 
moderation, and earnest work for the development of the 
country. He manifested his hope that the inhabitants of the 
provinces would find in material prosperity compensation ior 
the political disappointment which so many have experienced 
through the annexation. 

The ancestral subjects of the Emperor stand in need of some 
consolation, as they are finding it hard to bear the expenses 
involved in the recent acquisitions of territory. They are al- 
ready over-taxed and are now confronted with heavy deficits 
both in Austria and in Hungary. The ^proposed increase of 
the Navy will entail a still further large expenditure. The gov- 
ernment seems afraid to disclose the full truth. It is said that 
private firms are to be allowed to ,build some at least of the 
new Dreadnoughts, and that when progress has been made 
the nation is to be confronted with a fait accompli and held 
bound in honor not to let the ships go elsewhere. 

The elections in Hungary have at last taken place and have 
resulted in a great surprise. For a long time nobody knew 
what was going to happen. The government was in a minority 
in the last parliament and upon its dissolution was treated with 
contempt and insult In the new house it will have a majority 
of at least 157 votes, which may be raised to 165. This un» 
looked • for success is due to the formation of the National Party 



Digitized by 



Google 



568 RECENT EVENTS [July, 

of Work through the efforts of the former Liberal Premier, 
Count Stephen Tisza— a party which seems to have given ex- 
pression to the disgust felt by large numbers at the insincerity 
and impotence of the former coalition ministry and its disre- 
gard of the work for which it was called into existence. 

The election has completely transformed the whole political 
aspect Independence of Austria, the only bond being the per- 
sonal one of a common sovereign, seemed to be the goal shortly 
to be attained. Dualism, as established in 1867, was thought 
to have received its death blow. But the Coalition Government 
so mismanaged things that, in the words of a leading political 
writer, it disturbed internal peace, brought to a standstill the 
economic and political development of the country, diminished 
the influence of Hungary within the Monarchy, cast a shadow 
upon the prestige of the Hungarian State in Europe, and shook 
faith in the political maturity and potentiality of the nation. 
The electors seem to have agreed with this writer's indictment^ 
and have given to Count Khuen Hedervary and to his very 
powerful coadjutor an opportunity to conduct the affairs of the 
nation on quite other lines. 

A General Election has been held 
Spain. in Spain as well as in Hungary, 

and has resulted in a victory for 
the present liberal government. The political intelligence of 
the Spanish people is so little developed that there is no such 
thing as a defined political programme. If seven Spaniards, 
it is said, were to agree upon the desirability of obtaining an 
object, in six months' time they would have split into three 
parties, and one independent. The recent elections are in 
seme degree an illustration of this, for in a house consisting 
of 404 members these members were divided into no fewer 
than ten parties. It would be tedious to give the names of 
these parties, although it is curious to note that two members 
were returned as forming the Catholic Party. The Liberal 
Ministerialists number 227, although, as is well known, they 
are divided among themselves into several factions; the Con- 
servatives are 105 in number and the Republicans 42, being 
three more than in the last Parliament. Nine are supporters 
of Don Carlos' heir. Spain's first Socialist deputy has been 
returned for Madrid, and Sefior Lerroux, with four foUowerF, 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT Events 5691 

has been elected for Barcelona. In fact, both in Madrid and 
in Barcelona, Republicans and Socialists have trinmphed. The 
majority of Sefior Canalejas, although large, may not be effec- 
tive, on account of the divisions referred to. An interesting 
point is that for the first time in recent history no attempt 
was made by the government to ** make the elections''; at least, 
if the orders of the Premier were obeyed. 

In the Senate the Ministerialists number 103, while the 
Conservatives have 42. The rest of the seats are held by 
various groups, four being held by Republicans. 

The first use made by the government of its majority is 
to embark upon the anti-religious measures which have been 
80 long threatened. A Royal decree was published on the 
31st of May requiring all religious associations and organiza- 
tions to submit to certain rules and regulations made in 1887, 
and taking steps to enforce coercive measures in default of 
compliance. Religious associations carrying on industries and 
those formed of foreigners, or numbering foreigners among 
their members, are also dealt with. On the nth of June a 
second decree appeared authorizing religious bodies not be- 
longing to the Church to display the insignia of public wor- 
ship on their edifices, and giving them untrammeled liberty in 
the conduct of their services. 

The Cretan Question is, perhaps. 
The Cretan Question. the one most likely to bring about 

a collision in the immediate fu- 
ture, although there are good grounds for the hope that such 
a collision may be averted. It will require, however, no small 
skill in diplomacy to find a peaceful solution. The Cretans 
possess complete autonomy with the recognition of Turkey's 
suzerainty. Four Powers, Russia, France, Italy, and Great 
Britain, stand as guarantee for the rights both of Turkey and 
of Crete. 

The Cretans, however, are not satisfied, and nothing less will 
satisfy them than union with Greece and the sepding to the 
Parliament that meets at Athens deputies elected in Greece. 
When Bulgaria declared her independence it seems certain that 
the Powers promised that this desire should ultimately be re- 
alized, on the condition that they remained quiet, and put for 
a time their demands in abeyance. The wish of the Powers 



Digitized by 



Google 



570 RECENT EVENTS [July. 

was, on acconnt of their sympathy with the new order of 
things in Turkey, to do everything in their power to give 
strength to that new r/gime, hoping that Turkey would fall 
in with their wbh to gratify Crete when a suitable time should 
come. 

In this they have been disappointed, for if there is one 
thing more than another upon which Turkey's heart is set, it 
is that no further loss of territory in any shape or form shall 
be allowed. Upon this both government and people are de- 
termined. In fact, large numbers of Turks feel that a war 
would lend greater prestige to their cause than anything else 
could do. So the Powers— finding Turkey determined, and 
not being willing to permit a war between Greece and Turkey, 
a war which might result in the conquest of Greece if Turkey 
were permitted to carry it on unopposed by any of the great 
Powers — have had to bring pressure to bear upon Crete. To 
this pressure the Cretans have been unwilling to submit. In 
fact, the members of the Assembly which has been held in 
Crete took the oath of allegiance to the King of the Hellenes, 
thus setting at nought the suzerainty or sovereignty of the 
Sultan; and, what was worse, would not permit the Mussul- 
man members to take their seats in the Assembly unless they 
took the same oath of allegiance to the King. This is the 
problem to be solved by the Protecting Powers, to avoid war, 
and to satisfy the conflicting claims of Turkey, the Greeks, 
and the Cretans. They have exercised or claim to exercise 
the dispensing power, declaring the oath of allegiance to King 
George null and void, and have declared the determination t» 
take serious measures and to put Crete in a less advantageous 
position than that which at present she enjoys; to restore, that 
is, the Commissionship regime^ thus forcing the Cretans to 
take a step backwards rather than forwards. The Powers have 
the cause of peace more at heart than the patriotic and nation* 
alistic aspirations of the smaller races, and what is called the 
love of liberty. The Cretans may protest that their cause is 
sacred, that they find it impossible to live apart from Greece 
and its institutions, that the attraction to union with the 
mother country is so great that no other government is possible; 
but these protests fall upon deaf ears in view of the necessity 
of preserving peace. 



Digitized by 



Google 



With Our Readers 



THE need to-day of Catholic men and women who will coura- 
geously and intelligently, in public and in private, stand for 
the principles of the Catholic faith must be evident at once to any 
one who walks with his eyes open. 

In private life there was never greater opportunity than now 
for the Catholic layman who can, without giving the slightest of- 
fence, show the worth of spirituality to a world that is rapidly grow- 
ing more materialistic ; the worth of principle to a people that rushes 
after pleasure ; the value of Christian dogma to souls that know no 
certain starting point, no place of rest ; the strength of the man who 
knows whence he came, whither he aspires to go, whose universe 
has its sure terms of beginning and of end, who reads that universe 
in the reasonable harmony of the revelation of God through Christ — 
to show all this to his acquaintances who may not understand, but 
who will certainly admire and Inevitably be attracted. To live 
happily with others does not mean that we must never speak of those 
things which ought to be most important and most sacred to all. 
We need not argue ; we need not intrude where evidently we are 
not wanted ; we need not seek to oppose. But there is a kind- 
er and more effective way apparent when the opportunity comes 
to the Catholic lajrman whose faith is his very life. And the 
opportunity will inevitably present itself to every one. We are liv- 
ing under sorely artificial conventionalities. We speak of every- 
thing except that one thing which is everything. I^t us not be 
deceived by the generally accepted agreement to relegate religion to 
the distant background and never to allow it to be exposed in any 
public way. 

Such a policy, if carried out logically, means the death of re- 
ligion and is absolutely at variance with the genius of Christianity. 
Nor can the compromise which it begets change human nature. The 
soul of man was made for God and for Christ. And one may be cer- 
tain that, however blatantly, the self-satisfied commentator on modem 
institutions may protest to the contrary, there are many within his 
immediate circle of acquaintances who will be interested and perhaps 
honored, and, best of all, perhaps comforted and guided aright, if 
at the acceptable time he speaks to them courageously, intelligently, 
zealously, of those things which make life so worthy and eternity 



Digitized by 



Google 



572 WITH Our readers [July, 

so real. He will find to his joy that he is doing the work of the 
Master, and that the hearts of his hearers also may bum within them. 

• « • 

EVEN if we be but stammerers and are tongue-tied, all of us 
have at least within our reach that powerful attraction of duty 
performed, of principle {faithfully adhered to, which must make its 
impress even upon the most callous. The very secrets of our hearts 
are a measure of our love for our fellows and our zeal for Christ. 
We do not and we cannot live alone. Matters which we believe are 
known only to God and ourselves, that we persuade ourselves affect 
only ourselves, actions that apparently begin and end with ourselves, 
really reach out and, in their measure, affect all humanity. Every 
thought, every aspiration, every design, every act of ours, is like a 
pebble dropped in the great ocean, which inevitably but surely 
affects the farthest shores. If we but bring the consciousness of our 
Catholic faith, our Christian responsibility, into the whole of our 
life, and really make ourselves new men in the sight of God, if we 
but do even this, we are surely and eloquently preaching the Gospel 
of Christ and extending Christ's kingdom among men. If we live 
for another world, if we are constantly looking out for the things 
that are to come, the very fixity of our vision will teach other men 
that there are things beyond worth living for. 

• « • 

ONE of the dangers of democracy is that every man will think he 
ought to do as the crowd does. The crowd, believing that 
every man is equal, that no one should act differently from any one 
else, will freely criticise, and criticise adversely, any pronounced in- 
dividual action. Democracy may be more tyrannical than absolut- 
ism, and it often places upon the individual the burden of defying 
the crowd, whereas the crowd .ought to encourage and help the in- 
dividual to attain the highest fulfillment of his personal ability. 
And yet what the crowd opposes, it often respects most. To-day, 
when we are thrown so closely together — when institutions, once so 
sacred that criticism never dared touch them, are being ruthlessly 
handled by the tyro in history and comparative religion ; when the 
temples of belief are being razed to the ground ; when by many it i^ 
thought a mark of real intelligence to smile away dogma and to as- 
sert that the basis of duty must be re-examined and the ten com- 
mandments be re-written — the individual action of the Catholic, 
faithful, earnest, intelligent, stands forth in tragic contrast against 
this background of ruin, of desolation, and of waste. To the souls 
of his fellows, souls made for God and for truth, such a picture of 
constancy, of peace, of conviction, must come home with telling 
effect ; its appeal must and will be heard. 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] With Our Readers 573 

ARE we living and working In this spirit 7 How far does the con- 
trary spirit of the world eat into our souls, and, through compro- 
mise, through cowardly self* consciousness, weaken the vitality and 
the watchfulness of our Catholic dignity and our Catholic responsi- 
bility ? The ringing call is sounding to us from the heart of the liv- 
ing Christ. Personal indifference, personal laziness, which have led 
us to neglect the powers of our intellect and our will, have deafened 
the ears of our soul. Christ does not send His angel to us. We 
Jbave the teachers and the prophets. To hear the call, to know our 
opportunity, we must by prayer, by reading, improve our powers ; 
exercise our ability ; know what the world is doing, even in secu- 
lar, political fields; know the burden and the suffering oi our 
Church; know her problems, the way to combat her enemies; and 
stand in our own personal dignity most steadfastly and most potently 
for her honor. 

• • • 

IN conferring the degree of Doctor oi Literature on T. A. Daly, 
the genial author of Canzoni^ Fordham University has appro- 
priately honored a Catholic writer who has thousands of admirers 
throughout the English-speaking world. The Cathouc World 
has the right to offer very special congratulations to this now recog- 
nized poet, for his first published work was printed in our pages. 
The easy grace and the perfect melody that have come to be consid- 
ered characteristic of his lyrics are qualities not to be counterfeited 
by any art ; the breath of spontaneity is present in every stanza he 
has given us. What in some sense is still more laudable, as it is 
more rare, is the ever-abiding kindliness of his tone. In all his sing- 
ing we find never a trace of sourness, never a sting of cynicism. To 
be so true a wit and to have retained his innocence untarnished in 
this respect is, on the whole, our best reason for being proud and 
fond of T. A. Daly. Prosit/ 

m • • 

THE death of Sir William Butler on June 7 marked the passing 
of an able and distinguished Catholic layman, a military com- 
mander of exceptional ability, and a writer of unquestionable talent. 
William Francis Butler was bom at Suirville, County Tipperary, 
Ireland, in 1838. He began his career as a soldier in the Crimean 
war ; showed himself from the first an earnest student, a courageous 
fighter, a man of sincere honesty and of strong personal convic- 
tions. During his long career he saw service in Canada, in West 
and South Africa, in Egypt, and in the Sudan. 

This is not the place to treat of his military or his political 
career. Right or wrong, he was sincere in all his convictions ; he 
was also' able to defend them intelligently ; and he never lacked the 



Digitized by 



Google 



574 WITH OUR READERS [July, 

courage to stand for them against all odds. Nature might stand up 
and say of him to all the world : ''This was a man." And being a 
Catholic he was a fearless Catholic. As a youth in private life, as a 
man of public prominence in later life, Catholic principle was, with 
him, the inspiration of his conduct, his service, his patriotism. It 
was the pleasure of the present writer to know Sir William Butler 
personally, and his cordial, genial manner ; his thoughtful sympathy 
with men because he really '* cared " ; his frankness, his idealism; 
would make any heart captive and any man proud to call him friend. 

We wish particularly to pay tribute to his ability as a writer 
and to say that his books are too little known among our people. 
All of them — even the story for boys — are inspired by that Catholic 
faith which animated everything he -dlfTand lent the glory of 
another world to his whole life. The London Tablet recalls the 
tribute paid by Ruskin, '* that he [Sir William Butler] could have 
written all my books." The Great Lone Land and Ihe Wild North 
Zran^f are captivating works that " need no gloss of fiction." His 
enthusiastic appreciation of Charles George Gordon is soul-inspir- 
ing. His latest work, 7he Light of the West, which gives much of 
his philosophy of life, appeared in 1908. His personal {memoirs are 
about to be published, and it is also reported that he left in manu- 
script a life of Napoleon. 

Under the title that he used for his latest book, he once con- 
tributed a paper to an English magazine in which he speaks of St. 
Patrick. The passage that we quote shows something of the ideals 
that animated the author himself, and illustrate also the poetry and 
the power of his style. Sir William Butler has been describing the 
beginnings of St. Patrick's mission, when outwardly everything 
spoke of disappointment and of failure, but : 

Beyond the bleak ridge and circle of firelight, perchance those deep sunk 
eyes are beholding glimpses of future glory to the Light he has come to 
spread ; and it may be that his ear, catching in the echoes of the night-wind 
the accent of ages yet to be, is hearing wondrous melodies of sound rolling 
through the starlight. Look well upon that fire, great messenger of God to 
the Gael I The fiame thou feedest with the furze and the oak-faggot is a 
light never more to die from this island. Kings of twenty lines shall rule the 
ridge of Tara. Wars and devastations, inroads and invasions, shall sweep 
the land, and its hillsides shall see fire and famine, and its valleys shall hear 
wail and lamentation ringing through myriad ages yet unborn, but never 
through the vast catalogue of thy children's sorrow shall this light of thine 
be quenched. * Nay, the travail of coming generations shall be but fresh fuel 
to spread over God's earth this holy fiame — ^beyond the shores, beyond the 
oceans, into continents yet unborn, the sacred light will touch the hilltops 
of Time until it merges at last into the endless radiance of eternity. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] WITH Our Readers 575 

THE March issue of \The Bibelot, published by Thomas B. Mosher» 
contains the last of three memorials written by Katharine Tynan 
to certain of her dear friends who have passed from this earth. The 
tender, abiding love of a daughter for her father, Andrew CuUen 
Tynan, here finds expression in exquisite prose and verse. It bears 
the only possible appropriate title : i^ The Dearest of All." 



THE InternationairCatholic Truth Society earnestly requests that 
all who have Catholic magazines and papers which they wish 
to dispose of would communicate with the office of the Society, 407 
Bergen Street, Brooklyn, New York. The Society will, in turn, 
send the names of an individual or family who are in sore need of 
Catholic literature and who will be much benefited by the missionary 
work of all those interested in the ^read of Catholic truth. 
• • • 

IN answer to inquiries, we wish to state that the novels of Mrs. de 
la Pasture, of whose work Agnes C. Brady (wrote in the June 
Cathowc Wori,d, are published by E. P. Button & Co., New 
York. 

• • • 

THE American Catholic Who's Who, edited by Georgina Pell Cur- 
tis, will be issued some time in the autumn from the publishing 
house of B. Herder, of St. I<ouis. 



Digitized by 



Google 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 



Longmans, Gkkkn ft Co., New York: 

Theorits of KnowUd^t. By Leslie J. Walker, S.J, Pric_ ^ . ^ 

Ctcil John Rhodes, By Sir Thomas E. Fuller. Price $z.6o net. French Secondary 
Schools, By Frederic S. Farrineton, Ph.D. Price $2.fo. EdmcaHom tmd CUtMenshU 
in India, By Leonard Alston. Price $z.85 net. Service Abroad, By Rt« Rev. H. H. 
Montgomery, D.D. Twentieth Centmy SodaJism* By Edmond KeOly. Price $z«75 
net. Life of Reginald Pole, By Martin Haile. 
Bbnziobk Brothers, New York: 

History oftheAwterican College, Rowu, By Rt. Rer. H. A. Brann, D.D. Price $a. The 
Laws of the King; or, Talhs on the Cotnm a n dment s, Price 60 cents. 
Funk ft Wagnalls. New York: 

The Dethronement of the City Boss. By John J. Hamilton. Price $z.fl0 net. Types from 
City Streets. By Hutchins Hapgood. Price $1.50 net. 
Thb Ardbn Prbss. New York: 

Problems of Yonr Generation. By D. Dewey. Price $z. 
Cbarlbs Scribnbr's Sons. New York : 

History of the Christian Church, By Philip Schaff. Price $3.S5 net, 
B. W. HUBBSCH, New York: 

Karl Mats, His Life and IVorh. By John Spargo. Price $0.50 net. 
The Cbnturt Compant, New York : 

A History of the United States, By S. E. Forman. Price $z net. 
John Lanb Company, New York: 

Simon the Jester, By William J. Locke. Price $1.50. 
United Charities. New Yerk: 

Seventeenth Annual Report of the State Charities Aid Association to the Commission in 
Lunacy for 1909, Thtrty-Seventh Annual Report of the State Charities Aid Association 
for 1909, 
United States Catholic Historical Society, New York : 

Diary of a Visit to the United States of America, By Charles Lord Rnssell. 
Thomas J. Flynn ft Co., Boston : 

Catalogue of Catholic Literature, Price 15 cents. 
Little, Brown ft Co., Boston: 

Whirlpools, By Henryk Sienkiewicz. Price $z.So. 
B. Herder, St. Louis, Mo. : 

Sermons for the Christian Year, By Dom Wilfrid Wallace. O.S.B. Vols. I., 11., and 
in. Frice, 3 vols, $4 net. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle A^es, By 
Rev. H. K. Mann. Vol. V. Price $3 net. A Wtnnowini, By Robert Hugh Benson. 
Retail price $1.50. The Diary of an Exiled Nun, Price $z net. 
Arthur H. Clarke Company, Cleveland : 

A Documentary History ofAwurican Industrial Society, Byljohn R. Commons and E. A. 
Gilmore. Vols. IV.. V., and VI. 
Bibliotheca Sacra Company, Oberlin, Ohio : 

• Essays in Pentateuchal Criticism, By Harold M. Wiener. 
Atlanta University Press, Atlanta : 

Effitrts for Social Betterment Among Negro Americans, Price 75 cents. 
Burns ft Oates, London : 

Pire Jean; and Other Stories, By Aileen Hingston. Price 70 cents net. 
Edward Arnold, London : 

Madame EliMobeth de France, By Mrs. Maxwell-Scott. Price 12s, 6d, net. 
Brown ft Nolan, Dublin : 

The Priests of Mary, By Rev. T. McGeoy, P.P. 
Bloud et Cie., Paris, France : 

Joseph de Maistre, Par J. Barbev d'Aurevilly. La Foi, Par P. Charles. VEvangile 
la Sociologie, Par** Grasset Price o/r. 60. Vie de Sainie Radegonde, Par Sain. 
Fortonat. Price o fir, 60. Comment il Paut Prior, Par Alice Martm. Price z y>. ao. 
Le Schisme de Photius, Par J. Ruinaut. Price o fr,6o. La Vie de Saint Benoii 
d'Aniane, Par Saint Ardon. Price ofr, 60. Ausone, Par de LabrioUe. La Nation 
de Catholicite, Par A. de Ponlpiquet. Price ofr, 60. Les Idies Morales de Madame 
deStail, Par Maurice Soorian. L Rial Modenu et la NeutraliU Scolaire, Par George 
Fonsegrive. Price 0/^.60. Que Devient VAme apris la Mortt ParWilhehn Sch- 
neider. Price oft, 60, 
F. Lethielleux, Paris : 

Les Merveilles de Lourdes. Par J. Bricont. Price o.6o. 
P. T6QUI, Paris : 

Le Discemement des Esprits. Par P. J. B. Scaramelli. 
M. Bretselneider, Rome : 
.^Ztf Diftsa del Cristianesimo, Par Nicola Franco. 



Digitized by 



Google 




THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

Vol. XCI. august, 191a No. 545. 

DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 

BY ANDREW J. SHIPMAN. 

|N theory the question of marriage in the Russian 
Orthodox Church seems to rest upon a reasona- 
bly solid foundation, but in practice it is quite 
different In the Orthodox Greek Church matri- 
mony, as in the Catholic Church, is a sacrament, 
and is indissoluble— at least that is the underlying sacramental 
theory. The Russian catechism gives the following definition: 
*' Marriage is a sacrament in which, upon the bride and groom 
giving before the priest and the Church their vows of marital 
fidelity, their espousals are hallowed, being the figure of the 
union of Christ with the Church, and they receive the grace 
of a pure union for the begetting and Christian rearing of 
children/* And it is an admitted axiom of Christianity, that 
the union of Christ and the Church is indissoluble. 

The theologians of the Eastern Church have always had 
the weakness of leaning too strongly upon the civil arm. The 
early emperors of Constantinople had the Roman law before 
them as a civil rule of conduct for themselves and their sub* 
jects. In the earlier ages, when Christianity was recognized 
by the State, the lax notions of paganism were not to be 
lightly uprooted. Besides, a very large proportion of the citi- 
xens were pagans of one kind or another. Hence, it was not 
likely that the civil law would easily recognize, and still less 
likely enforce, the higher morality of Christian teaching as to 
marriage and divorce. For the Roman civil law, even under 
Justinian, allowed divorce for six different causes. The Greek 

Copjrifi:bt. 1910. Thb Uissiojiart Society op St. Paul thb Apostlb 

m the State op New York. 
VOL. XCI.— 37 



Digitized by 



Google 



578 DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH [Aug., 

theologians, who were most suppliant at the court of Constanti- 
nople, used their reasoning powers to bring the Christian teach- 
ing into some sort of relation with civil law, in order, perhaps, to 
please the powers that were. They relied much upon the ex- 
ception of adultery mentioned by St Matthew (xix. 9), and 
took a curious reasoning to show why it applied. While that 
might justify a man in separating from his wife — literally di- 
vorcing her — they admitted that there was no explicit permis- 
sion for him to marry again. But they curiously reasoned as 
follows: *' Death dissolves the marriage bond, putting an end 
to it, and a man has then a right to remarry. If, therefore, 
something causes the death of the marriage relation, and adul- 
tery is its moral death, not only has the husband the right to 
put his wife away, as our Lord has said, but it follows that, 
as there is this moral death, he may then marry again.'' Then 
they stretched the point even a little further. Not content to 
reckon adultery as moral death, they reckoned other things as 
death, or as having the e£fect of death. If the other party 
was condemned to life servitude, or had gone away and was 
unheard of for a long time, so that one might conclude he was 
dead, these things were like unto death, and so destroyed the 
marriage relation. And thus the Greek theologians of the later 
and the lighter sort, managed after a fashion to reconcile the 
ecclesiastical and the civil law. Not all of them did so, and 
some of the great saints of the Eastern Church stand out firmly 
and clearly for the doctrine of marriage as defined in the Catho- 
lic Church. Other saintly writers merely admit that the words 
of our Lord in the Scripture — for they are writing commen- 
taries, not deciding cases — are capable of different constructions 
according to the point of view, and it is their obiter dicta^ as 
it were, which form the groundwork for the class of Greek 
theologians already mentioned. Photius, Patriarch of Constan- 
tinople, was one who gave the widest interpretation in the 
Greek Church to the causes allowing a dissolution of marriage, 
together with permission to marry again. 

All these laws of the Greek Church, and the commentaries 
on them, were taken over by the Russians after they were 
converted to the Christianity of the Greek rite, and became 
identified with the Greek schism ; and sometimes, in the trans- 
lation from the Greek to the Slavonic, just a slight touch of 
even greater liberality was given. Yet even these exceptions 
to the rule of indissolubility of marriage, no matter how 



Digitized by 



Google 



ipio.] Divorce in the Russian Church 579 

laboriously argued and set forth, did not quite meet the views 
of the Russian rulers. Professor N. S. Suvoroff and Dr. A. 
Zavialoff (author of the article ''Marriage/' in the Russian 
Church Encyclopedia) say: 

Among us in Russia, matrimonial legislation and practice 
was more or less severely observed until the time of Peter the 
Great ; and from his time until the codification of the laws in 
1832, and the Regulations of the Ecclesiastical Consistories 
in 1841, there was a long-drawn-out attempt at a reconcilia- 
tion of the severity of the teaching of the Church, with the 
laws of Byzantium and the customs oi the people, but now it 
appears to be completely ended. 

It was ended by civil legislation directed by the Czar, and 
then enforced upon the Ecclesiastical Consistories of each dio- 
cese, at the various dates above mentioned. 

Before coming to the actual practice in divorce matters, 
specified in the Russian Code in 1832, *it is well to look at 
what was done in the matter of marriage and divorce during 
the 'Mong-drawn-out attempt at reconciliation,'' etc. During 
the reign of Alexander I. (1801-1825) his brother, the Grand 
Duke Constantine, the Viceroy of Poland, desired to marry 
another during the lifetime of his first wife. The Czar was 
willing that he should do so. But what was to be done? 
The Russian Greek Church at that time would not permit di- 
vorce except in a case of proved adultery, or something laid 
down within the lines of the commentators, but no one dared 
to bring any such accusation against the Grand Duchess Anna 
Feodorovna. If such a violation of the canons were to be 
attempted by the authority of the Czar, would it not have 
been the duty of the Holy Synod to protest? They dared 
not protest or forbid, as St. Theodore the Studite had done 
in 809. when the Emperor Constantine VI. (Porphyrogenitus) 
cast off his wife, Maria, to marry Theodota, or as Pope Clement 
VIII. had done at the divorce of Henry VIII. To protest 
courageously was their duty, for it touched their Honor as 
bishops, and the honor of the Church in Russia. But in 
matters ecclesiastical, as in civil matters, the will of the Auto- 
crat was all powerful, and the Holy Synod could no more 
resist than any other department of State, 

On the 20th of March, 1820, after reciting the express ap- 
proval of the Holy Synod, the Czar solemnly informed his 



Digitized by 



Google 



S8o DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH [Aug,, 

sabjtcts, the people of Russia, that the marriage of his brother 
had been dissolved, and that he was authorized to take an* 
other wife. Here is a literal translation of the Prikag: 

Our well-beloved brother, Czarevitch and Grand Duke 
Constahtine Paulo vltch, has addressed a petition^ to our 
mother, the well-beloved Empress Maria Peodorovna, and to 
us, to call our attention to the domestic situation which has 
been created for him by the prolonged absence of his wife, 
the Grand Duchess Anna Peodorovna, who lelt this country in 
1810, because her health was entirely shattered, and who 
since that time not only has not returned to him, but who will 
never return, according to her personal declaration. Conse- 
quently, the Grand Duke has demanded that his marriage 
with her should be dissolved. We have submitted this 
matter to the Holy Synod, 'which, after having compared the 
circumstances with the ecclesiastical prescriptions based upon 
the precise text of the thirty-fifth canon of Saint Basil the 
Great, has declared as follows : '' The marriage of the Grand* 
Duke and Czarevitch Constantine Paulovltch with the Grand 
Duchess Anna Peodorovna is dissolved, and he may contract 
a new marriage if he wishes." Considering all these circum- 
stances, and relying upon the exact text of the ecclesiastical 
prescriptions, we consent publicly that the declaration of the 
Holy Synod shall be carried into effect. 

And the effect itself soon followed. The Grand Duke shortly 
afterwards married the Countess Joanna Grudzinska, who for 
that marriage was created Princess Lowicz. He, however, re- 
signed his rights to the throne, and his younger brother, 
Nicholas, became Czarevitch and afterwards Emperor. 

The grounds for this divorce were strange, to say the least. 
If one turns to the ''precise text'' of the canon of Saint Basil, 
upon which the Holy Synod relied for its decision, it will be 
found that the canon in no way refers to the case under dis- 
cussion, as the Holy Synod said it did. The canon reads as 
follows : 

If it is the husband who has been left by his wife, the cause 
of the abandonment must be examined, and if it appears that 
the wife has left him without reasonable cause, the husband 
is to be favored and the wife punished ; but favor towards the 
husband shall consist in his not being separated from the 
communion of the Church. 



Digitized by 



Google 



^ 1910,] DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 58 1 

Besides, this caaoa did not treat of the question of adulterjr, 
nor of abandonment of the husband by the wife, but treated 
of the penances, more or less severe, which should be inflicted 
tspon married couples who separated and thereby gave scandal 
to the faithful. Yet, upon this slight basis, the Holy Synod 
permitted the Grand Duke to marry again. 

But even this lax interpretation of the law of marriage and 
divorce was not sufficient for the Russian government. In 
1832 there was a complete revision and codification of the 
Russian Laws, including those of marriage (Svod Zakoncv. 
Vol. X. Part I.), and following this, in 1841, there was issued 
by the Government and the Holy Synod a complete form of 
procedure, called Regulations for Ecclesiastical Consistories. {Us-^ 
tav Dukhovnikk Konsistoru), which, together with the amend- 
ments and supplementary legislation (always in favor of laxity 
of divorce, although sometimes requiring stricter proof), are 
now the law of the Russian Church upon the subject of divorce. 
Each diocese in Russia has its consistory or diocesan council 
and court, of which the Bishop is president, and above them 
all is the Holy Governing Synod at St. Petersburg, which 
ultimately decides all marriage and divorce questions (Regla-- 
ment. Part II. Sec. 5). 

According to this existing law imposed upon the Church 
by the State, and thereby being the only canon law now valid 
in Russia, the dissolution of marriage and subsequent remar- 
riage, is regulated. Marriage is ended by the death of one of 
the parties, and afterwards the survivor may enter into a new 
marriage, if there be no impediments (Re£. Ecc. Con., page 222). 
But marriage may be also dissolved in two other ways: (i) 
by petition of one of the parties ; or (2) by a suit brought by 
one party against the other (p. 223). 

One of the parties may file a petition with the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Consistory of the diocese, requesting an absolute dis 
of the marriage where (a) the other party has been se| 
to a punishment (usually exile to Siberia) which is acco; 
by the loss of his civil rights, which, of course, embr 
family rights; or (b) when he has been absent without 
been heard from, or, what is practically in our langu 
sertion. 

Loss of family rights is, from their view of the cai 
of marriage, apparently equivalent to death, and disso' 
marriage. There is this difference, however, between si 

|- 

Digitized bv»; 




58a DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH [Aug., 

and death : the marriage is not considered to be dissolved be* 
fore the other party expresses a desire for its dissolution. 
Until such time, the marriage to the person under sentence, 
including the loss of civil rights, holds *good. The complete 
procedure as to this, is found on .pages 225 to 229 of the 
Regulations. 

Absence of one of the parties without news of him by the 
other, is reckoned in the same category of death, by canoni- 
cal fiction. According to the Regulations^ a period of five 
years of such absence must appear and be proved by the es- 
tablished procedure. The usual method of supplying such 
evidence is by an advertisement in a church paper, of which 
more will be said later. The same rule as to the continuance 
of the marriage prevails in this case. Until the abandoned 
party expresses the desire for a divorce and the ecclesiastical 
court decrees the dissolution of the marriage, it is regarded as 
in full force and effect. 

In regard to the matter of divorce by petition for deser- 
tion, the procedure was fully revised by the Imperial Orders 
of January 14, 1895. Proceedings as to divorces of persons 
belonging to mixed classes, or exclusively to the peasant class, 
are finally decided by the diocesan authorities. Other cases 
may be appealed to the Holy Synod, and in the case of nobil- 
ily or royalty, the divorce proceedings are brought in the Holy 
Synod in the first instance. 

Suits brought for divorces are divided into two classes: 
divortia sine damno and divortia cum damno ; that is divorce 
without criminality, and divorce arising from transgression. To 
the first belong matters of incapacity, and to the latter the 
violations of the marriage vows {Reg. Ecc. Con.^ p. 238). The 
suit is begun by the filing of a bill of complaint with the 
diocesan authorities (or Holy Synod, as the case may be) by 
the party seeking divorce, paying the stamp-tax thereon, and 
depositing the necessary costs, advertising expenses, etc. (p. 
240). The diocesan authorities, upon the receipt of such com- 
plaint, refer the matter to a reliable ecclesiastic, directing him 
to admonish the parties to end; their differences by setting a 
Christian example and to continue united in marriage. This 
is usually perfunctory. When these admonitions have no result, 
the diocesan authorities then proceed to the formal examina- 
tion of the matter (p. 240). For these divorce cases the per- 
sonal attendance of the parties in court is prescribed, since 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9I0.] DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 583 

the court (or consistory) stands as the preserver and defender 
of the marriage tie, and, on the personal appearance of the 
parties before it, takes every means towards the discontinuance 
of the suit At least that is the theoretical view. Attorneys 
are allowed to represent the parties in cases where it is shown 
to be impossible for the parties to appear in person (p. 34i)» 
Any and all sorts of excuses prevail in this respect, so that, 
by a series of legal fictions, the parties to-day are almost uni- 
versally represented by attorneys. 

In a suit for dissolution because of incapacity, a decree 
will not be granted where the suit is brought more than three 
years after consummation of the marriage, and upon proof ad« 
duced according to the specified procedure (pages 242-243X 
In a suit, however, for adultery, proofs are taken through 
the evidence of witnesses and by circumstantial evidence, to 
the satisfaction of the consistory, establishing the offense (p. 
349). The party found guilty in the divorce proceeding is not 
allowed to remarry (p. 253), but the other party may at once 
contract a new marriage. Later developments have made it per- 
missible for even the guilty party, after several years, to make 
application, perform the prescribed penance, and then receive 
permission to marry. Special regulations have been formulated 
for the dissolution of marriages between persons belonging to 
the Orthodox Church and those belonging to other denomina- 
tions (p. 257). 

It must be remembered that in Russia the civil courts have 
no jurisdiction over matters of marriage and divorce, and, in 
the case of the Orthodox, all matters relating thereto, or con- 
nected therewith, are wholly reserved to the ecclesiastical 
authorities, who in that respect exercise both temporal and 
ecclesiastical power. There may be some exceptions in rela- 
tion to Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and Mohammedans, but 
the cases of the Orthodox lie wholly within the province of 
the Church authorities, so that any abuses or corrupt practices 
must be attributed to the State Church and to its ecclesiasti- 
cal law and procedure. 

Of course this granting of divorce in the Russian Orthodox 
Church, together with its wide departure from the early canons 
and teachings of the Church, has produced many laxities and 
abuses, so that a state of things has been produced which is 
not even tolerated here in some of our very liberal divorce 
States, and at least it fairly equals any of them. The govern- 

Digitized by LjOOQIC 



584 DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHVRCH [Aug., 

ment wants the stamp-dutiesi which are required upon the 
various papers, the necessary advertisements are not objected 
to by the church papers, the various consistories reckon upon 
the costs and fees which come to them, as a part of their 
revenue, their officials frequently engage in divorce litigation 
as experts familiar with the entire routine of the court, and, 
lastly, the lawyers look upon it as a safe and profitable source 
of professional income, something like conveyance and search- 
ing of titles with us. 

As might be expected, the majority of divorces in Russia 
are obtained for desertion, or, as it is euphemistically put, 
''continued absence without news'' ol the other party. These 
.divorces involve much less proof and need not be of a dis- 
graceful nature, and are usually obtained through petition to 
the Ecclesiastical Consistory. Often a divorce is obtained by 
the wife in one part of Russia, and a divorce by the husband 
in another part of the empire, for this same cause. Usually 
the only notice given is by advertisements, which are published 
as a rule in the Church papers (of limited circulation) and not 
in the newspapers. Even in the United States the Russian 
Orthodox Church grants divorces for this same cause* It is 
quite a usual thing to see a list of divorce advertisements in 
the leading church papers in Russia, particularly the diocesan 
organs having charge of such matters. 

On the adjoining page a fac-simile of the advertisements 
appearing in the Tsetkovny ViedomosH (Church Gazette), organ 
of the Holy Synod, is given. We translate in full one of these 
advertisements : 

The Kieff Bcdesiastical Consistory, by these presents, 
announces that on March 19, 1905, a petition of the peasant 
Peodor Bvthimov Oleinik, residing in the village of Bzema, 
Vasilkovski County, Government of Kieff, was filed for disso- 
lution of his marriage with his wife, Theodosia Grigorieva 
Oleinik, a native of Kereshunova, which was celebrated by 
the pastor of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, 
Kzema, Vasilkovski County, May 29, 1889. According to 
the statement of the petitioner, Peodor Bvthimov Oleinik, the 
absence of his wife without news of her began In the City of 
Odessa in the year 1899. Upon the strength of this statement 
all places and persons capable of submitting testimony ^i^ff- 
ceming the amtiwued absence without news of Theodosia Gri" 
gorieva Oleinik are bound to furnish the same Immediately to 
the Kie£f Bcclesiastlcal Consistory, 



Digitized by 



Google 



ipio.] Divorce in the Russian Church 585 



3fe 51 nPtlBABJIEHIg KX gKFgOBHUM'B B^aOMOCrffl'B 2m 

.nT> AOBOKOll ATZOBBOtt SOB 
V iaBK% o6«aMnTca. •no vb »a7«L 19 
roA* scTjmuo i^vsieaf* mmu NvniKBMit*: 
JUaotoi o&Mcra. S«B«raBiti«» e<«opoBA A« 
■■VM»CT^7»«ar« vk iJTPP* 1-"'^ !!■■■« 
4MIO. ItovasMCBol craaaou. • Rtcro^i 
«• cv MMl iie^tpMo ii&9a«a ItopAmnol 
MepmjoMci, jpoKAMiaol ♦uBnooaol, i 
■« TeoMCKol .iiep«M Tjrapa Ha< 

, J oiiMsla. U •Mpu« IS77 roA«. Do 

JHwit^a BoMnvTMm OMOpoM A«p«*74 



liyw w v * TcaMCKol .iiep«M Tjrapa 
/UacMft oiiMsla. U ••■pau 1S77 re 
J H wi t ^ a BoMnvTMm OMOpoM j . . 
rtcno«-««tf3cnto aro ejopjra napacseu 
JHH^aww ii apojiMSMTca 6M«ft ft j«t%. < 
vtfhKtmiAM ae> Ji*e» « Jnw. MvjmiM mm 






r«ita ■crynu* spopMri* spaeivaam Otjum 
OAfiana, anTattc*a7»nar« k» «A Em 
CBAaoacaara f»ua. Klcacaol rrtfa^ala. a f 
<iiK> aro <% anaoi O aaAoc k l rpac ppa i a ai 

ypaat^itaBoft Repaaijaaaal, aw 



Mora TUA»„» aaa 1W9 ra^a. Ba .aaaaM 
VMa 4i^iapk eaaaaoaa aMliima« ^ mmn 
«ffMa aa erapTrt da^apa Baaaaaaa Oialaw 
■a% aa^ O^iMOdi, m% isM ra^. Coja» cfi 
■la Btm wncn m M«a. varyBia mrtm ( 
«|iMiwa«tM tfcMi»cauiaaaMyaMa««yia«MA.M 
W M a a i t O^Nwra, at ama a w wa aanaAMap 
aaJM y» ^Haacayw ^yxaaayw aaacawapiw." 

DiTb CapaxoBCxoli ffyaEomioi xoa 
cikfc attMaMtna, ^va ■» a^yia f an 
raWBCTyvaaa npaatala ATaapcaara vtm 
■caMP* tpoMiiaa GacMaM. amaiaaraj 
, lor- AnapciA, o paetopaaala Opaaa tra 9h 
0aaUa ♦aanaft CMS«A«Ma. ittrMsaara 
AraapcBOt llasaua-ilptaaTaJMaal pe6apa4 
m Aaa 1tt7 t^m. Bo aaaaaaaln ■pacaraik 
npaaaoaaaa CocMaaa. tfeasUraaa ar^TTcn 
iVjni 4|06oaa ^aaaaoi Cad^caaai aa^ 
tap. Ara^pcxa. arv 1900 toAj. Caiav cara 
wm MUn a jaoa. aoTToiia ma»n ortAftal 
aoaia. 6tM4emiio MneyaicffMyiM^tftt JWitfaai 
Coe^laaaA, oftpMaawrc^ aaaaAaaaaa Aana 
n CapareacayiP ^yiaaaya* aoa^crapte. 

nr^ Tmm&cmoaaM My^ o maoli km 
V oqiv a6%aB.*«aTca. ^ta va aaya) S8 
roAft aciToaja opcawla apaciwaaaa Gra 
■•Aoaraaa Doaaaa, sarMKrajiaiiuira w% 
coaaft. KoMoacsara jaaM. o panapaMflttf 
c» snei .eevjoi Haaapaaal llaaoaoi. 



9 aaatec 1979 roM- Bo saaajaaba appcara 
4opBMMoaTaaa Danaai. tfasaMtaoa arcTTCi 
Dpjni 0«a#w |l*MpoBol Daooaol aa^ujoa 
OpaaOypra, 9 Mm Toaj aaMurfc. Cajon < 
-jaaui met men m aaoa.' aorjaUa vm%-t% 
m^t e m t tutiu tfutAcauw Bai cyw caiayigafea e« 
paaa* Oprapaoa, i)6BauBaa>Te« aeHCAJeano 
a«ua «ft Tia goacayat 4jio»aya> aaacacropt 

f|T% Taepcxoli' nrxoavoil Moi 
, " caiTK atfMBAaaita, ^ta va aay» 19 
raM acTyaa4o • npoB|«Bla awaw aa^aara 
^^aauaaaaa Aariu IlaTpbaei Dojaaoiioft, aa 
frngA a% r#p. Kaiiiaa«» no neoo^aoi, yjaa 
CT— aa o y » A6Ba. a paaropawaia Opaaa «■ 
|Ca«CTaB«ia6ii-fc Eaaaalmfturb llojoMaiiai 
■aro Dpaaiaii« a^paaa caja Ooapaacaaro. 
Kaniaara. Bamwaraara yavAB. 19 ccBTntfpa 
Ho aaaajMMa)' opoanajaaaitii Aaaia Oarpoi 
•tdt, '0««n«Taoa uityina ta aa cyopyra I 
Eaanieaa Oojovow. umuoc% ■» . rop, 



Digitized by 



Google 



586 DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH [Aug., 

A summary of the other advertisements will be sufficient 
to show that all of them follow the same formula: 

Ecclesiastical Consistory of the Don, concerning the Cos- 
sack, Constantine Peodor Derezutzki, who filed a petition on 
July 19, 1905, and who says he was married in 1887, and his 
wife, Parasceve, has left him more than five years ; — Kieff 
Ecclesiastical Consistory, concerning Peodor Bvthimov Ole- 
inik (which is above translated in full) ; — Saratoff Ecclesiasti- 
cal Consistory, concerning Alexander Prokopovich Sosiedov, 
of mixed class, who filed a petition on September 6, 1905, and 
who says he was married in 1887, and his wife left him in 
1900; — Tamboff Ecclesiastical Consistory, concerning the 
peasant Stephen Dorimendontor Popoff, who filed his petition 
June 28, 1905, and says he was married in 1872, and his wife 
left him nine years ago ; — Tver Ecclesiastical Consistory, con- 
cerning the city freeholder, Anna Petrova Polozovei, who filed 
her petition May 22, 1905, and says she was married in 1894, 
and her husband left her in 1898 ; — Tomsk Ecclesiastical Con- 
sistory, concerning the peasant Anicia Nikiforovna Shikovei 
(no date to filing of her petition), who says she was married 
in 1894, and her husband left her in 1898 ;*Kharkofr Eccle- 
siastical Consistory (three advertisements), the first concern- 
ing the peasant Peodor Gordieff Bashkatoff, who filed his 
petition September 16, 1905, and says he was married in 1885 
and his wife left him in 1893 ; the second, concerning the 
peasant Maura Kovnilevei Peodorchenkovei, who filed her 
petition, August 23, 1905, and says she was married in 1892, 
and her husband lefl her in 1893 ; and the third, concerning 
Parasceve Aristarchovei Borodavkino, of mixed class, who 
filed her petition, August 16, 1905, and says her husband was 
married to her in Pebruary, 1891, and left her in September, 
1891. 

This fac-simile is merely one page from an old number of 
the Viedomosti^ and will give an idea of how these divorce 
advertisements appear in the church papers of Russia. 

But this is not all. Most of these peasants and persons of 
the mixed classes, even if they know how to read and write 
in a most elementary manner, have no idea of how to draw a 
petition in divorce, or of the varied machinery of Ecclesiastical 
Divorce Court procedure. Consequently, the Russian lawyer, 
who makes a specialty of divorce court business, is much in 
evidence, and does not hesitate to advertise himself in a way 
that would put to shame the most daring of the advertising 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



ipio.] 



Divorce in the Russian Church 



587 



OGECCKOE CROBO. ApRit, 1910. 



EPAKOPASBOAHbi^i/lfbilA 



BcA«Hl»io icixb ASJX. KOHCMCT. n Ca. 
CiiNOAt. COB'BTbl: no Afc/tairb M > c iitfl. , 
^fimwim^ |mJ<oM«tivfioseTM. rpajkoAHcrta. 
GOCTAB/1 Ert I E A%AO«. tfuiiarb, Aorosoposi 
MnpomMM Ha BblCOMAHUJEE MMR.npM'- 
HMMmrb|iJi6t6iiliAHAMAArb nPAQ-b 
H. e. OkyiMnSEHMt). Mockm, raMTHMR, 
An t TNToaa, ka. 6, *tw^. S0S-4e. Rptairb 
♦manK aa Md ^8 aim ji 4-0 aan. ___ 



BPAH0PA3B0AHBm -^"S'.*^*;* 

cocTMJUjnpoineB^ Afen. QyK. fifeAH. fi«anf»Tiio. 
A. 01CRPH0BT>, 4-11 Tae^^flMCC.. a> BopoAniut*' 
«B. n. Tea. 78^. npKttTht »-8 H «-8 *!. B0361.S 



P13B0A 



JI%IIJI« onMai. B. Of M 



noMoiiOTopIn « 

aioaoiraji^il oC«Mu MOOTS o*- 



i74HI8. ^ bottb Tu^anpaaaif MT or^ooTiiVjuui*! 



IMI»lfflJ|M|linPA3B0aTb 




CTb IM p. BO aeto aoaMraTop.^BomrpMaAe^ 
■le DO OMOBHaala aM^ Hoxqa. ow. BMaTiia 
aumaMTBo, aae«Un rpapAaa. ■ 7roaoa& «^ 
A. cepMM.. a oaoauL jfoca.. Oi» f-t «. ■ 4-41 
«. aa^^ OPMBP. on. l»-4 n. Mocaaa* & flaa, 
Ig M^ A» nSiiiDaioiia. aa. ^ «•. 5m8 

rBPAHOPAdBOIHUfl-l 

JI Mma^^Atea aoatr ao Mi aoaoaer. a aJS 
eoa*TM do bnm Ouaai. OTOJIOUAHAJIbHSK 

Cklt. nplmi If-t a ^-e. IVMfiCTMBi^ Baooo. 
ao»boao K ia IL, A. Jt Jw M. liT^Ua. UML JSS 



TRANSLATION. 



DIVORCE^ PROCEEDINGS 

brought in all Diocesan Consistories and be- 
fore Holy Synod. Advice in matters of inher- 
itance, adoption, lawsuits, dvil cases. Prep- 
aration of legal papers, contracts, and peti- 
tions to the Imperial authorities. Apply to 
N. £. Philipchbnko, LL.B., Moscow, No. 
3 Gazetny St., Room 8. Telephone, 206-48. 
Office hours, daily, 9-9 A. M., 4-6 p. M. 



SPECIALTY 

DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS. 

I practice in all Diocesan Consistories ; also 
criminal and civil cases ; lawsuits, adoption of 
children, family matters, inheritance, powers 
of attorney, separation, change of residences, 
business, and drawing contracts in all matters. 
Papers and petitions to Imperial authorities. 
Advice in every matter. Information, com- 
missions. Many years' experience. Office 
hours, daily, zo-a and 4-8. Holidays. 12-4. 
Moscow, No za Roshdestvensky St., Room 
18. A. Andrbbv. Telephone. 187-66. 



DIVORCE 



and Court Proceedings. Ad- 
vice in all matters. Prepara* 
tion of petitions. Business papers. Poor 
persons free. A. Smirnoff, No. 4 Tver- 
Yamsky. Borodin Building, Room 21. Tele- 
phone, 78-40. Office hours, 9-2 and 5-8 p. M. 

DTVORrF ^ATTBRS, advice. Ex-Seo- 
retary of Consistory, and now 
temporarily Secretary of the Divorce Division 
of the Holy Synod. Nikitin has his office 
hours on Sundays, in Moscow, from a-8 p. 11. 
No. 26 Tverskaya St.. Room 24. Telephone, 
174-08. On other days he recommends his 
colleague. Assistant Solicitor Chbkhovski. 

DIVORCE 

from 100 rubles up. in all Consistories. Pay- 
ment at the end of proceedings. Information 
in separation cases ; inheritance ; civil and 
criminal cases ; serious and complicated liti- 
gation. From 9-2 and 4-8 ; holidays, from Z9-6. 
Moscow. V. JAKIMANKA. Panushova, Room 
No. 86. 

DIVORCE MATTERS 
and Church matters brought in all Consisto- 
ries, gives advice upon them. Ex-Chief Clerk 
of Chancery in Divorce Division of Tabris 
Consistory. Samarskt. Office hours, zo-a 
and 5-8. No. 6 Roshdestvensky. Room z6. 
Telephone. a44-3Z. 



Digitized by 



Google 



588 DIVORCE IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH [Aug. 

lawyers in the United States. Imagine our Dakota or Nevada 
practitioners using the methods of their Russian contempor- 
aries! A fac* simile of some advertisements, recently clipped 
from the Russian daily newspapers, is given on the preceding 
page, with a translation of their contents. 

Imagine Counsellor Nikitin, who, employed during the 
week in the Divorce Division of the Holy Synod, comes down 
to Moscow on Sundays and drives a thriving business that day 
in divorces; or Counsellor Jakimanka, who charges from fifty 
dollars up and no pay until he ''delivers the goods." 

The matter of divorce in Russia is growing more lax each 
day. Were it merely a civil matter, as in the United States 
and in various European countries, the Russian Church miglit 
lift up her voice against the growing evil. But, bound as she 
is by the State, she is becoming the chief promoter of the 
divorce evil, because all the proceedings have to be consum- 
mated through her agency. Thus we have the spectacle of a 
Church and Hierarchy practically aligned on the side of easy 
and frequent divorce, instead of being unalterably opposed to 
it. In a word, its practice every day contradicts the teacbiog 
of its catechism and the noble traditions of the Church of 
God. 



Digitized by 



Google 



PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM. 

BY ESTHER W. NEILL. 

Chapter V. 

NL CUTHBERT went West that winter as one of 
the wealthy members of a powerful syndicate to 
invest in copper mines. Mrs. Delarae was pray- 
erfully grateful. 
^ ''It makes my way so much clearer/' she 

confided to Hugh. " Of course every one will understand that 
Patricia cannot live alone, and, since my position as her friend 
and chaperon is one of dignity, I can entertain all my old 
friends. I foresee a very pleasant winter if it were not for 
Marie—" 

Hugh smiled. He always found something amusing in his 
worldly aunt's candor. "Why, what has she done?'' 

''Done — why nothing. She is just too— too perfect. Pa- 
tricia wants her to stay here this winter as her guest ; but Marie, 
impelled by some absurd idea of independence, has gone to 
live. in a boarding house and has become a paid charity worker; 
and the pitiful sum she gets out of it seems to worty her." 

"Is it so small?" 

"Oh, she doesn't worry because it's so small; she worries 
because it's — anything at all ; and she talks of going to a con- 
vent so she can work without having to consider her bodily 
necessities." 

He showed no surprise. " I thought it would end that way." 

"Well, she hasn't gone yet," said his aunt, shutting her 
thin lips decidedly," and I think I'll oppose it. I have other 
plans for Marie." 

" What ? " 

" Well I would like her to marry money. Of course I love 
her and I hate the idea of her denying herself through a life- 
time." 

" So you would advise martyrdom ? " he said slowly. 

" Not at all," she contradicted him with some show of vex- 
ation. "You know, dear Hugh, that money is desirable; and 



Digitized by 



Google 






590 Patricia, the Problem [Aug., 

I feel that this winter I have an unusual opportunity. Patricia 
wants gayety — ^Tom Cuthbert does not care bow much money 
she spends in entertaining. We have this immense bouse, which 
is wonderfully improved since Patrjcia refurnished it ; and you 
know, Hugh, I have not been away so long that all my old 
friends have forgotten me. Our social position here has always 
been assured. I intend to have a ball in December and I want 
you to give us a house party some time in the early winter." 
' Me I " he exclaimed in some dismay. 
Of course, your house in the country is ideal for a week 
end. You ought to get out of your atmosphere of pauperism 
occasionally. Hunt up some interesting men and Til invite 
the women." 

" Must I ? " 

'^Of course. I'll not accept a refusal." 

She forced him into an amiable promise before he left her. 
He was beginning to take a coldly sociological interest in the 
plans of his aunt. 

The ball, engineered by Mrs. Delarue, was a great success. 
It was heralded diplomatically for days in the papers and ex- 
cited the envy of the uninvited. Her exclusive relatives ac- 
cepted her invitations with the vague conviction that **poor 
dear Eleanor," on the death of her aristocratic, incapable hus- 
band, had married a multi-millionaire. Tom Cuthbert's name 
did not appear in the social register, but then there were some 
favored persons whose position did not require such publicity. 
Later on, when they saw Patricia, and the situation was con- 
scientiously explained to them, they decided to help launch the 
young lady, since they understood that this ball, with its costly 
favors and elaborate supper, was but the beginning of a series. 

Marie begged to remain away from these functions. She 
was too tired and too busy, she said. But her mother entreated, 
and she came dutifully, finding some solace in the fact that 
Hugh was always ready to take her home early in the evening. 

Meanwhile Patricia plunged into this social whirlpool with 
an enthusiasm that taxed even Mrs. Delarue's power of endur- 
ance. Dinners, luncheons, teas, and after-theatre suppers began 
to wear upon the good lady's digestive organs; but she made 
no protest, for it was the life she adored and loved. She felt 
a maternal proprietorship in Patricia's popularity. The girl's 
beauty and unusual musical ability, emerging from a background 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Patricia^ the Problem 591 

of glittering gold mines, had created a sensation even in the 
critical orbit in which Mrs. Delarue moved. 

Since that first evening in the conservatory Hugh bad never 
seen Patricia alone. At times he thought she purposely avoided 
him ; but, be told himself, this was an unreasonable conclusion, 
since be had never made any effort to seek her society. 

During the winter he went North to spend some weeks 
studying the methods in hospitals for defective children — a sub- 
ject in which he was much interested. For a long time he 
had wished to establish an institution of this sort in connection 
with the settlement in which he worked. He was an ardent 
believer in the theory that much of youthful crime can be 
traced directly to unhealthy physical conditions. In restoring 
these poor little hampered bodies to a normal state he hoped 
to make their souls better, too. 

One morning, during his absence, Mrs. Delarue came into 
Patricia's room in a state of horrified excitement. She was 
panting from her hurried flight through the hall. Her hair, 
which was always arranged so carefully, streamed down in 
scant locks around her ears, and the purple dressing gown which 
she wore emphasized the pallor of her face. 

Patricia was still in bed, but Mrs. Delarue's unusual appear- 
ance roused her to energetic action. 

<<What is the matter?*' she said, jumping up. ''My dear 
Mrs. Delarue, what has happened ? *' 

'* Oa, it*8 dreadful,'' said Mrs. Delarue, sinking limply on 
the bed. 

Patricia's eyes showed real alarm. '' What — what is dread- 
ful?" 

'* Oh, it's all in the morning paper," sobbed Mrs. Delarue. 
^* Hugh has failed— failed utterly. He's a bankrupt, just like 
his poor uncle." 

** How — why?" said Patricia bewildered. '' I thought he was 
a doctor." 

"Oh, you don't understand, and I can't explain, because I 
never could comprehend business matters. But you see by the 
paper that the firm of Farrell has failed — the firm was estab- 
lished by my grandfather— the name has always been the same. 
Hugh has never been an active partner in the business, but he 
was one of the largest stockholders. Now he will have noth- 
ing — nothing — and what will become of me ? " 



Digitized by 



Google 



59« PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aug., 

"You?" 

''Yes; ohy you know I am no longer young. Hugh hu 
begged me many times to go and live in his country place— 
his mother's old home, you know. I*ve never explained to 
him my real objections. Of course il I were fifteen years older 
I would be willing to go and bury myself there ; but the lone« 
liness of it now would be more than I could stand. He also 
wanted to give me an allowance, and I gratefully accepted that, 
but now — now — I thought things were going too smoothly— I 
thought it couldn't last. My child, I've had so much trouble 
in my life that I have reached a stage when I actually dread 
happiness. Something is sure to occur when one feels peaceful 
and contented.'' 

'TU gladly increase your allowance here/' said Patricia, 
seeking some practical solace for such woe. '' I meant to men- 
tion it before, going out as you do requires so many clothes." 

'* I know,'* said Mrs. Delarue, wiping away her tears, *' but 
I couldn't accept anything more from you, you are so gener* 
ous. And, of course, I did not want to be dependent on Hugh 
if it could be avoided, but I did intend— -when I was older— 
I thought I might allow him to provide for me thep— " 

*' Perhaps it is not as bad as you think. Papers so often 
exaggerate," said Patricia, putting her white arm protectingly 
around her friend. ** Where is Dr. Farrell ? " 

"Oh I don't know — somewhere in a hospital." 

"Why, is he ill?" 

*' Oh, no, my dear; he's studying hospitals. He's so im- 
practical. He*8 founding some sort of an institution for crazy 
children, or deaf mutes, or something. It seems to be my 
fate to know nothing but impractical men— my poor dear 
husband had no business instinct, and Hugh seems to have 
inherited his incompetency." 

«' Bat how could he ? " 

'' Oh, I don't know how. Of course they were not rela- 
tions. Hugh's father was a business man. I suppose Hugh 
must inherit his weakness from his mother. Oh, I wish Hugh 
were here — I suppose he will come at once — and I wouldn't 
be surprised if he would treat the whole a£fair as if it were 
of no importance- — he's so indifferent to money — " 

" Because he has always had it," said Patricia with con- 
viction. '* He doesn't know what it means to be poor." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 593 

"But we do/' said Mrs. Delarue. •* We've had to face it 
out West Ah 1 Patricia, what a dreadful life that was out on 
the prairie; I don't know how we stood it. My one prayer 
was to get East. I suppose Hugh won't give us the house 
party now — I wouldn't care to burden him with it if a slight 
expenditure meant that he would have to live around at hash 
houses for a week. Oh, I hate poverty, Patricia — it's the 
great sin in society. The poor have no place^ — no place." 

Patricia regarded the good lady in some dismay. She had 
had no experience with hysterics. 

'' Please let me help you to your room, dear Mrs. Delarue, 
and do spend the morning in bed. I'll send for the doctor and 
get him to give you something to soothe you. You are over- 
wrought. I'm sure when Dr. Farrell comes you will find out 
that the whole affair has been exaggerated." 

"Please see if you can find Hugh, he may have returned 
to his office. Telephone the settlement — I want to know the 
worst — I cannot stand the su^ense. Telephone at once, dear 
Patricia ; I promise to go to bed and I'll try to compose my- 
self. I can go to my room alone. Please telephone to both 
places and ask him to come here at once." 

Patricia watched her go with a sense of relief; all her 
young life she had been so schooled in the repression of all 
her feminine feelings that she had a masculine contempt for 
scenes. She threw a soft wrapper over her nightgown and 
sitting down at her little rosewood desk she picked up the 
telephone book and began to search for Dr. Farrell's number. 

She tried the office first. He was not there, his man told 
her; he had returned to town the night before, but he had 
g»ne to his place in the country on the early morning train. 

Patricia looked dreamily out of the window, wondering what 
she should do next; then, acting on impulse, she decided to 
go and bring him to his aunt. She ordered her electric ma- 
chine, which she alwa]r& drove herself — twenty miles into the 
country in this beautiful sunshine was a short trip, she told 
herself — and secretly she was glad that the journey would 
give her a charitable reason for remaining away from Mrs. 
Delarue's sobs and lamentations. She had never been to Dr. 
Farrell's before, but she knew the general direction. She 
dressed hurriedly and her maid brought her her long fur wrap 
and tied a light blue veil over the brim of her broad hat. 

VOL. XCI.'38 



Digitized by 



Google 



594 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aug., 

Patricia did not once question the propriety of her going 
alone. She always welcomed the emergency that gave her an 
outlet for her surplus energy. The air was bracing* but not 
too cold; white flecks of cloud, huddled near the horizon, 
promised flurries of snow, but Patricia never heeded threaten- 
ing weather; she was in an introspective mood and she felt 
provoked for having to confess to herself « mild curiosity in 
wanting to see how Dr. Farrell would regard the loss of his 
fortune. He had seemed so superior to her in his attitude 
towards money that she found herself entertaining a half- de- 
fined hope that some of his philosophy would desert him in 
this crisis. Was it philosophy or religion ? she asked herself. 
She knew that his faith was very definite, while she had none. 
She had always grown rebellious at the thought of authority; 
the Church of Rome was so positive, so far-reaching, so power- 
ful; she had often watched Marie Delarue at her prayers, 
wondering at the look, approaching ecstasy, in her young 
friend's eyes; she could not understand why she gave up 
afternoons of pleasure in Paris to spend them in moldy smell- 
ing cathedrals, she could not comprehend a faith that domin- 
ated the trivial as well as the great things in life, that held 
the balance so unswervingly in a world of juggled ethics, that 
gave its followers such surety of truth, such security of im- 
mortality. 

The little machine sped along noiselessly over the well- 
kept roads. Once in the gray woods she missed the way, but 
a friendly signpost set her right again. After traveling the 
twenty miles she had to stop at a farmhouse to inquire how 
to reach the gateway of Oakview. A boy, blowing on his 
bare hands to keep them warm, emerged from the stable. 

''I jest dunno how to tell you/' he said, ''but I kin run 
along and show you the place to turn in." 

** Then get in here," said Patricia, making room for him 
on the cushioned seat. 

'' Lordy I " said the boy, his face breaking into a broad 
grin as he scrambled to the place beside her. ** Lordy 1 I 
never did think I*d ride in one of these here things." 

*' Cover up," said Patricia, offering him half of the fur 
robes; then, animated by a new sense of comradeship, she 
said: '<I*ve come to get Dr. Farrell for a friend of mine, but 
1*11 run a mile past his place if you care to go." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 595 

" Gee I wouldn't I ? '' said the boy. '' Then take me into 
Doc Farreirs afterwards and 1*11 walk home.'* 

When at last they turned into the beech-bordered avenue 
that led to the old colonial house the boy's freckled face 
radiated joy. 

''It beats a steam engine all hollow/' he said, getting out 
reluctantly. ''Run by lightning, so to speak, electricity^the 
same thing, ain't it?" 

The door opened and Dr. Hugh came out on the porch. 

"Why, Miss Cuthbert," he said in some bewilderment, 
" and Dicky Green." 

" I came to show her the way to yer house," said Dicky, 
who saw no reason for the doctor's astonishment, "and she 
give me a ride, for which I am thankful. I'm goin' now. 
Good-bye." 

" Good-bye, Dicky," smiled Patricia. " I'll call again some 
other day." The child notes in her voice answered Dicky's own. 
" Don't you forget me." And then she turned defensively to 
Dr. Hugh, as if he were challenging her present mood. 

Chapter VI. 

"Mrs. Delarue is anxious to see you, and I came to take 
you to her when I found that you had no telephone here and 
that the train does not leave until three." 

He noticed, with a sort of humorous interest, that her tone 
was far from friendly. 

" It was kind of you. I trust my aunt is not ill." 

"Hysterical." The one word showed her distaste for such 
feminine frailties. 

"I wish she wouldn't be," he said, as if he had suddenly 
become conscious of the cause of his aunt's nerves. "I don't 
want sympathy." 

She turned her tyts searchingly upon him as if she doubted 
the truth of this statement. "No, I suppose not; and I'm 
quite sure that no man prefers hysterics. Will you go?" 

" Of course ; but I'll have to ask you to wait a minute. I 
have a friend with me to-day; I'll excuse myself. Will you 
come in ?" 

She looked a little curiously through the stately doorway, 
with its fanlights and big brass knocker, and then, without 
hesitation, she jumped unassisted to the ground. 



Digitized by 



Google 



596 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aug., 

'' I would like to see your stable man, Bob Bingham. If 
he*s in the stable, and you have company, 1*11 walk around 
there." 

'< I'll tell him to come here.'' 

'' Don't trouble," she said imperiously, '^ I would like to 
look at your horses. |I hear you have some fine stock. One 
of the famous Spitfire's colts. I'd like a chance to ride him. 
It has been so long since I've been on horseback." 

His bewilderment was noticeable now. Ever since that 
first night, when she had told him so frankly of her past life, 
he had watched her with growing curiosity; her enthusiasms 
were so real, her pleasure in people 'so apparent, and yet 
there were times when she seemed a mere spectator, viewing 
tolerantly a phase of life in which she had no concern. The 
years spent with Mrs. Delarue in Paris had given her poise, 
and her natural cleverness and charm of manner proclaimed 
her a finished social product; but to-day, he told himself, she 
had reverted to her primitive type. 

''The horse is very dangerous," he said, feeling that he 
must make some sort of a response. 

She smiled faintly. '* I like risks — I've always taken them. 
Please go look after your company. I'd like to see Bob alone." 
He was too polite to protest when he felt that he had been 
formally dismissed. He watched her go up the box- bordered 
path that led to the stable yard. He saw Bob hurrying to 
meet her, and their greeting was that of two old friends; then 
he turned wonderingly away and went into the house. 

As he entered his own comfortable library, rich in rare 
books and staring family portraits, his guest, with old*fasb- 
ioned punctiliousness, rose from the low chair before the fire. 
He was an old man, dressed in black clerical clothes. A 
vest of purple beneath his Roman collar showed him to be a 
Church dignitary of some sort ; his finely chiseled features had 
all the calm and gentleness that asceticism brings. 

''A sick call, Hugh?" he said. 

Hugh took up his position between his friend and the fire- 
light. The puzzled frown had deepened between his eyes. 

'' Only my aunt," he said. '' She wants to hear the par- 
ticulars of the fall of the house of Farrell. Sit down, Father 
Joe, I can't go yet; the young lady who has offered to take 
me to my aunt wants to see my stable man." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 597 

The old priest sank back in his cushioned chair and picked 
ap a magazine that had fallen to the floor. 

"Don't let me keep you." 

** Oh, she didn't want to see me," said Hugh. '' I was re- 
quested to come in here. She wanted to see my man Bob, 
who is, I suspect, a cutthroat" 

The priest shut the magazine, and leaning over to the little 
smoking table beside him he lit a fresh cigar. 

''And why shouldn't Bob have his friends?" he said. 
^'You were saying, Hugh, when you left me — " 

Hugh turned and kicked a blazing log further back on the 
tarnished brass andirons. ''To tell you the truth. Father Joe, 
I don't know what I was saying. My present guest, out in 
the stable, is the queerest girl I ever saw." 

Father Joe took the cigar from between his thin lips and 
laughed softly. 

"You're a conservative, Hugh, though I don't expect you 
to acknowledge it. You talk equality and fraternity, and you 
are willing to hobnob with slugs and cutthroats yourself. 
Why be annoyed if the lady has like propensities ? " 

"She hasn't," he said. "She objects strenuously. She is 
the most inconsistent person I ever met." 

The old priest's eyes twinkled. "Then no doubt you will 
marry her," he said. 

" Marry her I • She hates me. She announced that fact the 
first evening I met her." 

" God bless me I what precipitancy. Did you propose the 
first evening?" 

"Propose? My dear Father Joe — here, give me one of 
those cigars — don't know when I can afford to buy another 
box of them. Certain flavor about being poor — " 

" Especially about poor cigars," said the priest drily. "But 
you are wandering away from the point, Hugh. You ought 
to marry— marriage is the normal state for most men." 

" I suppose so," agreed Hugh doubtfully, taking the chair 
opposite his guest and stretching out his long legs to the fire. 
"I always congratulate my friends when they get into it. If 
you will find me a lady I will consider the matter. I need 
help — I'm no sentimentalist, you know." 

Father Joe beamed amid his circles of smoke. "Well, I 
am," he said. "I think I'll select— the lady in the stable." 



Digitized by 



Google 



598 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aag., 

''The lady in the sUble/' exclaimed Hugh, ''is aboat as 
far removed from me, except chronologically, as the Queen of 
Sheba. I don't understand her, that's all/' 

"I like her." 

"And you've never seen her," 

"That makes my judgment all the clearer." 

"How?" 

" I can judge of her attributes apart from her personality* 
She may be ugly and that would prejudice me in her favor." 

Hugh leaned back in his chair and laughed. " Go on," he 
said, "your point of view is always interesting. How many 
men would share your prejudice?" 

"It's more than a prejudice, it's a conviction," the priest 
went on smiling. "Ugly women have no vanity, therefore 
they are unspoiled; they are more useful, because they are 
not ornamental; they have more resource within themselves, 
because they are often left alone; they are frequently brilliant 
conversationalists, because they have to be — now, our friend in 
the stable—" 

" Is beautiful." 

"Ah, that's a misfortune; but perhaps she may answer our 
purpose better; no doubt you would prefer it" 

"My dear Father Joe," protested Hugh, "for a sensible 
man, a doctor of divinity, you certainly talk nonsense." 

"And I insist that I am talking most sensibly. You are 
old enough to marry— you say you need help— I select the 
lady — and you call it foolish gabbling." 

" But the lady — you do not know her." 

"I know many things about her." 

"But, how? You do not even know her name." 

"Name," repeated the old man, "my dear boy, who is 
talking nonsense now? What is a name? Wouldn't you feel 
just as well acquainted with me if my name was John instead 
of Joseph? When I began to consider marriage for you, I 
was thinking solely of you ; but now I think I'll begin to have 
some consideration for — the lady in the stable." 

"I wish you would talk in Greek or some other dead 
language, and then I wouldn't try to follow you. It would be 
so much more restful to let you know once for all that you 
are incomprehensible." 

Father Joe chuckled, his pointed chin almost disappeared 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 599 

into the white wall of his high collar. '' Now, listen/' he said, 
''and 1*11 prove conclu^yely that my talk is not as foolish as 
it may seem. To begin, I sit dozing before the fire. I hear 
an automobile coming over the graveled road. I do not mean 
to play eavesdropper, bat yon leave the door wide open. I 
hear a child thanking a lady for a ride, that proves the lady's 
love for children and thonghtfulness for others. She desires an 
interview with year stable man, which shows a lack of snob- 
bishness and interest in the poor. She comes a long distance 
to get you. Why does she not send ? Because she is decisive 
and energetic. She says she likes horses, therefore she is fear- 
less; if she is fearless, no donbt she is healthy in both mind 
and body. Are not all these recommendations? What kind 
of a paragon are you looking for ? " 

''Oh, I'm not looking," laughed Hugh, "but I would like 
to prove to you that you are all wrong. In my opinion, the 
lady In question has no soul." 

"Tut, tut," said Father Joe. "How are you going to prove 
that? Souls Hre elusive things, my boy. You can't button- 
hole them in the light of day and ask them to explain all 
their motives; and half the time we don't know our own." 

"Well, I wish you knew her," said Hugh." I wish you 
would talk to her; she seems lacking in any sort of idealisms- 
she lives only for pleasure. If you could hear her play on 
the harp you would say she was a pagan." 

" Well, I'm no advocate of mixed marriages, but I like 
pagans," said the old priest musingly. " So many possibilities 
to a pagan. We have so much to show .them, to give to 
them. You're a born reformer, Hugh, and some of your no- 
tions delight me; but there's only a subtle difference between 
a reformer and a crank. You don't want to take narrow views^ 
my boy; you want to get up on the hilltop; but you don't 
want to get so high that your vision gets blurred. That's 
almost as bad as staying down in the valley and getting no 
view at all. Now that you are poor, there's more hope for 
you. Rich reformers rarely carry force." 

" Don't lecture," said Hugh beseechingly. " I've got to go 
and face my aunt She will tell me my woes unabridged, and 
she will cry over my defective judgment, until I see myself a 
decrepit old man dependent upon a dog and a beggar's tin 
cup for sustenance." 



Digitized by 



Google 



600 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Attg.^ 

'' What do you expect ? You can't go through bankruptcy 
without suffering the sympathy of your friends. It's a great 
thing to be old, Hugh, and to possess a sense of humor. 
There are so many melodramas in the world. Providence is 
blamed for all our mistakes, all our tantrums. Just look back 
on your own boyhood, Hugh. Remember the day you fell in 
the creek and cried because you thought you were drowned? 
Remember the many nights you were sent to bed without your 
supper because you stole green apples from the orchard? 
Remember the day you lost your bag of marbles, how you 
threatened to thrash every boy in the school ? Facts look foolish 
now, eh, Hugh ? Get a little older and you take the same 
view of your youthful manhood. Reach eternity, and I think 
we will smile at ourselves in earnest." 

''That may be all very true,'' said Hugh, ''but it doesn't 
alter the unpleasant present. Do you suppose," he added help- 
lessly, glancing at the clock on the mantel, "that I'm to wait 
until I'm called for?" 

There was the sound of a door banging and voices were 
heard in the doorway arguing good-naturedly. 

" Don't talk to me, Bob," Miss Cuthbert was saying. " I've 
made up my mind and I will — you know I will." 

"You won't," said Bob, "that horse fs a devil. If the 
Doc's gone broke that ain't any reason why you should tame 
his colt." 

She had reached the library door, and she stood there for 
a moment framed in the black woodwork, her blue veil shadow- 
ing the brightness of her hair, her cheeks red from the cold 
outside, and her gray eyes full of wilfulness. 

"I think we shall have to start," she said; and then she 
glanced inquiringly at the old priest. " Father Chatard,'* she 
cried with a^glad look of recognition, and she swept towards 
him and took his white, wrinkled hand in hers. " You do not 
know me? Don't you remember Pat Cuthbert, the wild girl 
that you called 'the witch of the woods' ?" 

The old priest looked at Hugh, his deep-set eyes sparkling 
with boyish mischief. "I told Hugh I knew you," he said. 
"A woman has her intuitions, a man makes his deductions; 
but a name sometines does make a difference— God bless me 1 
how you've grown." 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO,] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 6oi 

Chapter VII. 

''And you have not changed at all/' she said. ''While I 
— ^^well, nothing is as it used to be/' 

'* Not even you ? " said the old priest kindly. '* I wouldn't 
like to think that you had lost yourself altogether." 

She smiled half-sadly up at him. ** I've been trying to/' 
she said. ''Every one has been teaching me to be something 
different/' 

" That's hardly fair/' said the old priest humorously. " I 
think our individuality is immortal. We don't want to wrap 
it up so we won't be able to recognize it on judgment day. 
You must come and see me, or let me come and see you, and 
we'll talk about it. You see, Hugh, Patricia and I knew each 
other in the West. She guided me over one of the worst 
roads I ever traveled to bring me to a dying man's bedside— 
a poor consumptive who was on his way to Silver City." 

"Henri Dclarue?" questioned Hugh quickly. "My aunt's 
husband." 

'*Yes"; said Patricia. "We had a wild scramble to get 
back at all. There had been so much rain and the streams 
were swollen and two little bridges washed away." 

" And I'm not much of a horseman. I don't suppose I had 
been on a horse's back in twenty years. You see I just hap- 
pened to be stopping at the mission, the other priests were 
away, when Patricia came with her message. What a small 
place the world is, after all. I never knew that your aunt had 
married a Delarue ; but, then, I never knew your aunt until I 
met her that day at the Golden Eagle. You see, Patricia, I was 
Hugh's old tutor when I was pastor in this little country about 
a quarter of a century ago; and now, when the world seems 
to move too fast for an old fellow like me, I run down here 
to get my bearings. I won't detain you now, we must see 
each other in town. Take Hugh to his aunt, the poor lady 
may need some reassurances. We are not going to blow our 
brains out just because a few stocks and bonds have tumbled 
into nothingness." He followed them out into the sunlight to 
examine the weight of their robes, so solicitous for their com- 
fort that he seemed oblivious to the cold wind that took play- 
ful liberties with his snowy hair and wrapped his seam- worn 
cassock about his lean form. 



Digitized by 



Google 



6oa PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aag^ 

'' Good-bye, children, God bless yea I '' he said. '' Bob and 
I will find something in the larder for lunch ; and 1*11 leave 
on the three o'clock train and see yon both in town some 
day." 

Patricia started the small machine, and for several miles they 
traveled in silence, then she said: 

'' I have half a mind to drop yon in town and take to the 
woods forever." 

•'Why drop me?" he smiled. 

** Yon are so civilized, while I am only a half •tamed savage. 
When I am out in the woods like this, I forget— I feel the 
call of the wild — I forget all of Mrs. Delame's teachings. 
Breathe the bite of frost in the air. Look at those tall trees 
etched against the sky. See that fretfnl little brook trying to 
break through its thin shield of ice. I hate an automobile on 
a day like this. I*d like to be on the back of your untamed 
colt. You say you have lost money— why not enter him for 
the sweepstakes this spring?" 

'^ And break my neck by way of adding to my general bro« 
kenness ? " 

''Bob could break him," she .'said with conviction, "Bob 
and I." 

"You?" 

"Of course. Why not?" 

There was an unconscious look of disapprobation in his ^yt:^ 
which she detected at once. She believed that it was caused 
by her suggestion to help him, and she added with quick vex- 
ation : " It would only be for the joy of the sport, the joy of 
conquest; but I forgot, I suppose you do not approve of 
horse- racing." 

The question was so direct, that he could think of no light 
way to parry it, though he had no desire to moralize. 

" I don't believe I would care to make money that way* 
The game is usually so crooked." 

His words struck her as a reproof, and her eyes blazed an- 
grily. " Of course you wouldn't," she said. " Naturally you 
wouldn't care for the normal thing, you are so different from 
most men." 

" Not at all," he interrupted her. " Men are hop^essly alike. 
I have my own particular notions and a jockey has his. I 
like blooded stock because it is beautiful and convenient to 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 603 

own, a }ockey cares for it for its monetary yaine. I have never 
cared for money—*' 

'' I don't believe yon/' she interrupted. '' Money is an ab- 
solute necessity with me/' 

'' I think that is only a fancy/' he said. '' I have found 
that all the best things in life can flourish without it." 

''You have always had it, while I— think where I came 
from — it has seemed to open the way for everything." 

"What for instance?" 

''For life— the whole of life." 

"You had life on your western mountains/' he said slowly. 
"You show it every way." 

"What, after all Mrs. Delarue's warnings?" She smiled. 
"Poor lady, have all her efforts been in vain?" 

"You know what I mean/' he went on slowly. "Life in 
the open gave yon your beauty, your freshness, and half your 
standards. You will come back to them after a while. So 
many things do not matter. The mountains are eternal. They 
show us our own petty proportions." 

" Don't preach," she interrupted him. " Yon Catholics have 
a spiritual viewpoint that you think other people share. You 
forget that I'm a pagan with a pagan's distrust of creeds." 

He made no reply, and she regretted her words. She would 
have liked him to go on. She enjoyed being analyzed. She 
had grown a little tired of men who made love to her. 

Another long silence fell between them. Then the small 
automobile came to a sudden stop in the most deserted part 
of the wooded roadway. 

" We will have to be towed back to town," she said com- 
posedly. " How far are we from the nearest farmhouse ? " 

"Dicky Green's," said Dr. Hugh, getting out to exam- 
ine the little car. " But the horses there are nothing but bags 
of bones. I think it would be wiser to go back to my housct 
if a five*mile walk is not too much for you." 

" Five miles," she laughed. " You don't know what a tramp 
I am." She threw back the fur robes and, purposely ignoring 
his profferred assistance, she started to jump out, but her foot 
twisted in some unaccountable way and she fell, a limp heap, 
on the hard, frozen ground. As he bent over her she gave a 
low moan, and he saw that her face was white and drawn with 
pain. 



Digitized by 



Google 



604 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Ausr., 

** I've sprained my ankle/' she said calmly. ''You will have 
to go alone/' 

'' And leave you here ? Let me lift you into the car. I'll 
bandage your ankle. And he began tearing his linen handker- 
chief into strips with practised fingers. 

*' I don't want you to do anything for me/' she said, '' ex- 
cept to find a team of horses. I can't walk, that's plain. You 
might help me to that little clump of trees and give me the 
robes. There's a little lunch in the basket beneath the seat* 
I can lie down among the pine-needles until you return." 

" It's so cold." 

"Then build a fire." 

In spite of her apparent dislike of him, her placidity in the 
emergency would have won the admiration of any man. The 
rough life she had led in the West made all inconveniences 
seem trivial. She did not expect any special consideration on 
the plea of her femininity. If their positions had been reversed, 
she would have been quite as capable of dealing with the sit- 
uation as her companion. 

When the fire was made and a pile of dry wood had been 
placed close to the rugs, so that she could feed the flame until 
his return. Dr. Hugh still hesitated. 

''I don't know what is best to do," he said, ''there is so 
little passing on this road that we may be here for several 
hours before we can get assistance, and yet I don't like to 
leave you here alone and in pain." 

'' My ankle is easier now ; you can bandage it when we get 
home. We can't stay here like shipwrecked mariners. Please 
go— 

<' But I don't know how safe these woods are," he said re- 
luctantly, fearing to frighten her, and he glanced at the dia- 
mond brooch she wore. "There may be tramps—" 

"Don't worry," she interrupted him, and from the pocket 
of her coat she brought a small revolver. " I have this through 
a lucky accident. The last time I had on this coat we went 
down the river to see some target practice, and I put this in 
my pocket, because — well, you see, I'm a dead shot, and I 
wanted to show those army officers we went with that a woman 
could shoot as well as a man; so if a tramp should happen 
to come by," she laughed, "he may need all your professional 
skill to revive him." 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 605 

Half-satisfied he left her, telling himself that he was not 
living in the days of highwaymen; but in spite of his assur- 
ances a presentiment of evil followed him. Before the road 
turned he stopped and looked back to wave his hat, but Pa- 
tricia did not see him, she was busily engaged feeding some 
snowbirds with the crumbs from her lunch basket; they hov- 
ered fearlessly around her, recognizing* a sympathetic spirit 
spreading a feast for them in this frozen world of famine. 

Dr. Hugh had not been gone more than an hour when 
Patricia heard footsteps coming along the hard-packed road. 
She sat up, alert for any danger, her large hand resting confi- 
dently on the shining pistol by her side. 

A strange looking man rounded the angle of the pines. 
He was dressed in shabby clothes of a gaudy pattern, and he 
wore no overcoat; his soft felt hat was pushed back on his 
head, showing a line of straight black hair; his high cheek 
bones and deep-set eyes gave him the appearance of an Indian. 

Patricia saw nothing alarming in his advent. His resem- 
blance to a Choctaw chief appealed to her sense of humor. 

'' If he only had on feathers,'* she sighed. Then, animated 
by a spirit of mischief, she decided to ask for immediate as- 
sistance; she thought that if the stranger had a horse in the 
background she might end her long vigil in the woods and 
vanish before Dr. Hugh returned for her. 

''Got a team?'* she asked, falling back into her Western 
brief directness. 

The man looked startled. Her voice carried clear in the 
still cold air, and he looked from side to side in his effort to 
place her, for her little camp was concealed from the point 
from which he stood; then, seeing the car, he came hurrying 
forward. 

" Had an accident ? " he said, " or has the juice ju** ^^v* 
out ? '* 

"Both," said Patricia. "Have you a team?" 

''Lord, no; Tm down and out« piking to find a fr 
mine who will help me on to the next station. A 
hurt?" 

Patricia's hand tightened on her glistening revolve 
little," she confessed, " I'm waiting lor a friend of i 
bring a horse or two to tow me back to town ; and meai 
she added, seeing his eyes rest on her diamonds for a n 



Digitized by 



Google 



6o6 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aug., 

''I was practicing with this/' she brought the revolver into 
fall view. 

''You want to tell me you can shoot/' he said with quick 
astuteness. '' I didn't mean to frighten you, but I might add 
—being on the subject^that you don't frighten me either. 
Women never shoot straight." 

''Don't they? "she said, her lips tightening as she realized 
there might be some reason for alarm. "You see that small 
dead leaf hanging on that tree — now where is it ? " 

"That's some shooting/' said the man admiringly, as the 
remnants of the leaf fluttered to the ground. " You shoot like 
Prairie Nell in the Wild West show. Don't happen to be 
Prairie Nell, are you ? Reckon she's riding around in an auto- 
mobile by now." 

"No"; said Patricia shortly. 

"I didn't mean no harm," he said. "I'm out here looking 
for a friend of mine. Don't happen te know Bob Bingham, 
do you?" 

"Why, yes"; she said eagerly, her sense of safety fulljr 
restored. " He is one of my oldest friends." 

The man looked surprised. The whole situation was as- 
tonishing from his point of view. This handsome young woman, 
with the costly clothes, sitting so contentedly by the roadside, 
seemed anxious to claim Bob's friendship, when there were 
few who would wish to acknowledge his acquaintanceship. 

" How far am I from his place ? " . 

" About five miles." 

"Are you waiting for him?" 

"No; I wish I were," she said earnestly. 

The man spat some tobacco juice against a distant tree- 
trunk, and then asked: "Is Bob up or down?" 

"Sober now," said the girl, quick to catch the drift of his 
words, "but he's not burdened with a bank account; he's 
taking care of a man's place and horses." 

The man chuckled unpleasantly. His teeth were broken 
and his gums showed wide and yellow. "Biggest horse thief 
that ever went unhung/' he said. 

"Well, he isn't stealing now," said Patricia, "and if you 
have any such notion I wish you would leave him alone." 

"Oh, I haven't a notion," said the man innocently. "No- 
tion ain't the word, I'm only seeking information. You see. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 607 

Miss, I*ve been in Australia for the last seven years, and I've 
been knocking aronnd the world so generally that I ain*t had 
a chance to keep up with my friends. I want to locate some 
of them. Ain't that natural? Only landed yesterday. Got 
into a little game last night and they skinned me — d— 
them. Begging your pardon, Miss, ain't heard no polite lan- 
guage for two months. Some one was telling me that Tom 
Cuthbert has made his pile and that he has come East. 
Don't happen to know Tom Cuthbert, do you?" 

Patricia experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. Her 
old life seemed to be closing in upon her. 

''Yes"; she said after a moment's hesitation. 

"They say he's out of town." 

" He is." 

'' You don't happen to know when be'U be back ? " 

"Not exactly." 

" I reckon it will pay me to wait and see Tom Cuthbert," 
he said. Then reflectively: "He used to keep a bar out my 
way— called it the Golden Eagle — and I reckon it swallowed 
up more yellow birds and turned out more bad whisky than 
any place east of the Rockys." 

"Don't," she said. "Don't I" 

"Well, of course, if he's a special friend of yours — " 

"He happens to be my father," she said. 

" Great Scott I " exclaimed the man, looking down at the 
beautiful woman at his feet. " Now, I wouldn't have thought 
Tom Cuthbert was good enough to black your boots." 

Chapter VIII. 

Hugh drove up in the comfortable old carriage that had 
belonged to his mother. He quickened the horses' pace when 
he saw that Patricia was not alone. 

"Thought I might be of some assistance," said the man 
easily, by way of explaining his presence. 

"No"; said Dr. Hugh with scant courtesy. "My stable 
man is behind me bringing a horse to haul the car to the 
nearest garage. Miss Cuthbert, let me lift you in. You have 
had a long wait in the cold. I believe you are shivering." 

"Not at all"; she forced a mirthless little laugh. "But I 
have come to the conclusion that a steam radiator is prefer- 



Digitized by 



Google 



0O8 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Aug.» 

able to woodland scenery. Let us get home as quickly as 
we can." 

She made no protest as he lifted her in his arms and placed 
her among the cushions of the carriage. The tramp's state- 
ments had strangely shaken her. He seemed to embody some 
impending disaster. For the first time in her life she felt help- 
less and afraid; but fear was so foreign to her that even now 
she attributed her mental state to the pain in her ankle» 
which was almost unbearable when she moved. 

When Dr. Hugh questioned her about her companion of 
the roadside, solicitous to know whether he had been rude to 
her, she said: "He proved to be a friend of your man Bob, 
and Bob is one of my oldest friends; he used to be kind to 
me when I was a child, and nobody else cared." 

There was a certain appeal in her frankness which was an- 
other phase of her inconsistency. For the rest of their slow 
homeward journey she answered him in monosyllables. She 
was trying to force her memory back into her father's past. 
Her chance acquaintance had made her old life loom so large 
that she had to acknowledge reluctantly that she might never 
be able to escape from its consequences. 

When they reached home Mrs. Delarue met them in the 
hallway, genuinely alarmed when she saw Patricia carried into 
the house. Her hysterics, lacking a sympathetic audience, had 
abated, and a disconcerting telegram from Tom Cuthbert had 
roused her from her bed and bromide to preparations for his 
arrival. 

As soon as Patricia had been made comfortable, and her 
swollen ankle dressed, the telegram was brought to her. It read : 

*' Knocked out — Coming home — Meet five-forty-five. 

"T. Cuthbert." 

" What does it mean ? " asked Mrs. Delarue vaguely. " Do 
you suppose he has met with — violence?" 

''He is ill," said Patricia, her eyes filling with tears. ''Dr. 
Farrell, I must go to him. Can you get me a pair of crutches ? " 

"You cannot stand," he said, wondering a little at this 
first exhibition of tenderness he had ever seen in her. 

"I must," she said with her old wilfulness. "My father 
is evidently very ill, I must go to him at once." She started 
up impetuously, but fell back on her pillow, faint with the pain. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 609 

'^ You cannot go/' he said. " You see that you cannot go« 
I will meet him and do all that I can.'* 

''Thank you/' she said simply, dimly realizing the com- 
mand in hi^ tone, and again she felt unaccountably helpless 
and afraid. 

Tom Cuthbert's train arrived that afternoon half-an*hour 
late. He was not alone. A pompous old physician, justly 
celebrated for his skill, had traveled East with him. Taking 
up his position in the carriage he announced his intention of 
going home with the Hon. Tom to remain some days. 

'' To see the last of me," said the Hon. Tom with a glimpse 
of his old cheerfulness. 

Dr. Hugh forced a responsive smile at this grim joke, 
though his professional experience told him that he was facing 
a dying man. In explaining Patricia's absence he belittled 
her accident, and dwelt upon her desire to meet the train and 
her demand for crutches. 

"She's like her dad/' said the Hon. Tom. ''Ain't accus- 
tomed to acknowledging obstructions." 

His face looked like yellow wax in the light of the fading 
day. Once or twice during the drive the doctor leaned over 
and anxiously felt his patient's pulse. 

"He ought never to have attempted the journey," he told 
Dr. Hugh afterwards, when the Hon. Tom had been put to 
bed and a trained nurse installed. "He's led a hard life, and 
been more or less dissipated. I think you will agree with me 
that there is only the slimmest chance for him. He had his first 
attack the early part of the winter. He was willing to go to 
a hospital then, but this time he determined to come home. 
I did not know he had a family physician. I must have labored 
under a misapprehension — " 

" I am not Mr. Cuthbert's physician," Dr. Hugh hastily 
assured him. " I am here merely as a friend — I have never 
been consulted in any way." 

"Then I shall remain," said the great doctor. "I think it 
is only a question of days/' 

When Mrs. Delarue and Marie were told of their bene- 
factor's dangerous condition, their Catholic instincts were 
alarmed at the thought of his dying without any religious 
ministrations, and when they hesitatingly consulted Patricia 
her eyes opened wide with horror. 
VOL. xci.^39 



Digitized by 



Google 



6lO PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Aug., 

'' Do yott mean that my father is dying ? " she asked. 

'' He is very ill." 

''And what can a priest do?" 

Mrs. Delarue was unequal to the emergency. She stroked 
Patricia's hand in the same absent-minded way with which she 
would have caressed a kitten. She had always found the di- 
rect questions of her charge most difficult. 

"Oi» Patricia dear/' said Marie, her soft voice full of sym- 
pathy. ''A priest could help your father's soul. He could 
pray for him— prepare him — " 

''For what?" said Patricia. "Do you think my father 
would want to be worried with bis sins ? His point of view is 
so different from yours, Marie. Nobody was good where I 
came from. Everybody went in for high grading. Every one 
cursed and gambled and drank. Oh, I wouldn't want to be- 
lieve as you do — eternal punishment for a soul — " 

"But, Patricia darling," said Marie, "there is always re- 
pentance. God is good and merciful. He isn't going to judge 
us all by the same standards, without regard for our environ- 
ment, our spiritual enlightenment. Let the priest talk to your 
father; it will do no harm. There is old Father Chatard." 

Patricia sat up among her pillows. " I don't mind him," 
she said. " He knows us — he will make allowances. Oh, it is 
terrible to think of going into the unknown alone. Oh, why 
wasn't I given some faith — some belief in the personality of a 
God." 

Father Chatard came next morning. He stayed a short time 
with the sick man, and on his way out of the house he stopped 
to see Patricia, who was in the library on a couch before the 
fire, a pair of white crutches on the floor beside her. 

" It was good of you to come," she said, holding out her 
hand to him. "Will you sit down for a moqient? I want to 
ask you — I know you will tell me the truth — I want to ask 
you if my father is going to die ? " 

His dim eyes were full of tenderness. " I am afraid so," 
he said. 

"And his soul?" said Patricia. "I want you to tell me 
something about his soul — the part that will go on living — 
living forever — " 

"And Mrs. Delarue has been telling me that you had no 
faith," said the old priest. " Who taught you that ? " 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 6ll 

''No one; but I have always felt it. At first it was the 
savages' idea of a great Spirit — the spirit of the winds, the 
stars, the mountains — then came the feeling that I was a part 
of an understandable force. It has all been vague, indefinite, 
but now that I seem shut away from the cli£fs and the gorges* 
it seems to seek some expression in my music; but the idea 
is so elusive I cannot grasp it" 

''Few of us can," said the old priest "We make weak 
attempts in prayer." 

Patricia looked dully at the fire. " I don't know how to 
pray," she said. 

"Would you like to learn?" The suggestion was made 
with hesitating gentleness. 

•'No; I don't believe in it," she said. "I don't believe I 
ever could." 

" But you wouldn't mind my praying for you ? " 

" No." 

" And you wouldn't mind what my prayers specify 7 " 

She smiled faintly. " Well, now, I'm not so sure of that" 

"But I thought you had no faith." 

"But your confidence half frightens me." 

" And convinces ? " 

"No; I think I have a superstition about you." 

"I hope it isn't an unpleasant one," he said with old-fash- 
ioned courtliness. 

" You seem all spirit," she went on. " The material things 
of life seem to make no di£ference to you. I feel that I can 
talk to you with the same freedom with which I should con- 
verse with a ghost Every time I shake hands with you, I am 
surprised that I touch a living hand instead of thin air — " 

The priest's eyes showed a gleam of humor. "What a 
nebulous nobody I must seem. What an unsympathetic 
vacuity I " 

"Now, you know it isn't that," she interrupted hastily* 
" You are smiling at me, and so I won't attempt to explain. 
I confess I was a little interested in the — specifications. I have 
a general idea that we shouldn't agree on a plan." 

"But I hope we should in the end," he said. "I want to 
ask you if you could tell me where I can find Hugh? Your 
father wants to see him." 



Digitized by 



Google 



6 12 Patricia^ the Problem [Aug. 

^'My father wants him? Why, is he dissatisfied with the 
doctor that he brought from the West ? " 

"I believe he does not want to see him professionally. I 
think it is a business matter/' 

"That is very strange/' she said, contracting her brows. 
"Why should my father ask for him, when he has his law- 
yer?*' 

"I do not know/' said the priest. "He told me nothing." 

" And they do not like each other/' she continued. 

" He did not tell me that." 

" And I do not like to ask him to come." 

"Why?" 

" Because/' she said slowly, " I do not think I like him 
cither." 

"And I have a great admiration for him," said the old 
priest. " I love him as a son. He has a noble soul — a bit 
impulsive, a little over-confident — " 

"And proud, overbearing, and snobbish," she added. 
" Please forgive me for abusing your friend, but we do not get 
on together." 

"Tut, tut, I wouldn't be so violent. First impressions are 
often mistaken ones. I won't ask you to send for him. The 
duty is mine, since your father asked me. 1*11 go to the 
settlement first. Good-bye. God bless you t I am coming 
again to-morrow to see your father." 

" Oh, yes ; come again " ; she said eagerly. " You must 
help my poor father. The spirit world will seem so dark to 
him. You must talk to him — teach him — show him the way." 

(to be continued.) 



Digitized by 



Google 



H, G, WELLS. 

BY W. E. CAMPBELL. 

IV. 

^E have considered Mr. Wells' Socialism in relation 
to the family and to private ownership. We 
must now approach it more positively. What 
is to be its institutional form — that through 
which it will impress itself upon our daily life 
in its most executive and powerful way ? What, in a word, of 
the Socialist State ? 

It is important that we should have a concrete notion of 
the Socialist State as Mr. Wells pictures it, for in it, and through 
it, and by means of it, and by means of it alone, he seeks to 
achieve the regeneration of human life. With him the State 
is the first and final institution — it is the seat and source of 
all authority, that to which all other institutions are subordi- 
nate, that from which there is no appeal. True he speaks both 
of the Church and the family, but he speaks of them as insti- 
tutions altogether subordinate to the State; and such opinions 
as he is pleased to express about either of them, when not di- 
rectly antagonistic, are so thin and speculative as to proclaim 
most unmistakably that he has no active faith in them what- 
ever.* With him, as far as institutions go, it is the State or 
nothing; and, therefore, to his State we must direct our care- 
ful attention, in order to learn what it is and how it will work. 
In A Modern Utopia we have a most brilliant presentation 
of the Socialist State ; and in First and Last Things we have 
Mr. Wells' latest conviction with regard to it; taking the two 
books together, we should get to the heart, and I hope to the 
truth, of his great faith in Socialism. In attempting a sort of 
thumb-nail sketch of this I shall follow him in setting down 
not only what is more obviously and immediately practical, 
but also what may seem to some quite remotely idealistic and 

* With regard to riews on family, see article in the July Catholic World ; with re- 
Ifard to those on religion and the Church, see (A,) 284, 293, 303 ; {F,) 83-9Z, Z5Z-Z65. 

Digitized by LjOQQK:^ 



6/4 H. G. WELLS [Aog., 

visionary. His own fearless loyalty to the truth as he sees it 
is so fine that I should make a poor return for his generosity 
if I held back any sincere conviction or failed to trace an idea 
of his to what I deemed its final or even fatal consequence. 

We Catholics are familiar enough with the idea of a world- 
wide institution; the Church is such an institution, but it is 
mainly concerned with the spiritual needs of man, and with 
his physical needs only in so far as they are subservient to 
his spiritual ones. Mr. Wells, too, has a fine conception of a 
world-wide institution, of a World State which is to be the 
owner of all the earth and the provider and disposer of those 
material goods which are at once so necessary and at the same 
time so insufficient of themselves to satisfy what is really high- 
est in human desire. The World State in his ideal '' presents 
itself as the sole land* owner of the earth, with the great local 
governments . . . (and) municipalities, holding, as it were 
feudally, under it as landlords. The State, or these subordinates, 
holds all the sources of energy, and either directly or through 
its tenants, farmers, and agents, develops these sources, and 
renders the energy available for the work of life. It, or its 
tenants, will produce food, and so human energy, and the ex- 
ploitation of coal and electric power, and the powers of wind 
and wave and water, will be within its right It will pour out 
this energy by assignment and lease and acquiescence and what 
not upon its individual citizens. It will maintain order, main- 
tain roads, maintain a cheap and efficient administration of jus- 
tice, maintain cheap and rapid locomotion, and be the common 
carrier of the planet, convey and distribute labor, control, let, 
or administer all natural productions, pay for and secure healthy 
births and a healthy and vigorous new generation, maintain 
the public health, coin money, and sustain standards of meas- 
urement, subsidize research, and reward such commercially un- 
profitable undertakings as benefit the community as a whole; 
subsidize, when needful, chairs of criticism and authors and 
publications, and collect and distribute information. The energy 
developed and the employment a£forded by the State will de- 
scend like water that the sun has sucked out of the sea to fall 
upon a mountain range, and back to the sea again it will come 
at last. . . . Between the clouds and the sea it will run, 
as a river system runs, down through a great region of indi- 
vMual enterprise and interplay, whose freedom it will sustain. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 615 

• • . From our haman point of view the mountains and the 
sea are for the habitable lands that lie between. So, likewise, 
the State is for Individualities. The State is for individuals, 
the law is for freedoms, the world is for experiment, experi- 
ence, and change ; these are the fundamental beliefs upon which 
a modern Utopia must go" (27., pp. 89-91). 

In this paragraph, which I have just quoted, we have the 
State presented as the summum banum of all earthly institu- 
tions. In the latter part of it we have a metaphor intended 
to enlighten us. We are told of the sun, of the mountains, and 
the sea, and of the habitable lands that lie between. We are 
also told that just as the mountains and the sea are for the 
habitable lands that lie between, so is the State for individu- 
alities. From this we may conclude that the State is repre- 
sented by the mountains and the sea. It is only fair, then, for 
us to ask what the sun represents. The sun is the light and 
life of the metaphor, but it shines without explanation. What 
in Modem Utopia corresponds to this glorious symbol ? What- 
ever it is, it must be something intrinsically finer and more 
predominant than even the State itself; but, unfortunately, we 
are given no clue to its identity. To me, however, it has taken 
on a great significance, for may it not be meant to represent 
that great problem which Mr. Wells so often approaches, but 
never at all adequately grapples with, I mean, the problem of 
the Spiritual Power in the Socialist State? 

He comes, however, to close quarters with it when treating 
of the Utopian Samaurai — a voluntary nobility, who are to be 
the salt of the Socialist State, the pattern and stimulus of all 
that is at once most stable and progressive. 

In Utopia, ''a world identical in every respect with the 
real planet earth, except for the profoundest differences in the 
mental content of life/' there are four main classes of mind 
quite clearly distinguishable and called respective ly» the Poietic^ 
the Kinetic^ the Dull^ and the Base. The two former classes 
are the living tissue of the State, the two latter, its fulcra and 
resistances. With the Dull and the Base we need not deal 
here, but the distinction between the Poietic and Kinetic is a 
very useful and suggestive one. 

The poietic class, at its best, includes all those who are 
most creative, initiative, progressive, and even revolutionary in 
the best sense of that word. The kinetic class, on the other 



Digitized by 



Google 



5I6 H. G. WELLS [Aug., 

hand, ts less creative and more generally efficient, it makes 
more for stability in the State than for novelty, is more self- 
disciplined and more inclined to take its stand upon historic 
values than the poietic. ''A fairly energetic kinetic is probably 
the nearest thing to that ideal which our earthly anthropolo- 
gists have in mind when they speak of the 'Normal* human 
being. The very definition of the poietic class involves a cer- 
tain abnormality/' 

A State run entirely by kinetics would cease to grow, first 
in this department of activity and then in that ; it would lose 
its power of initiation, of adaptation, of integrating change. 
But, on the other hand, a State run entirely by poietics would 
quickly fall from its sheer instability — from that lack of order 
and discipline which only an unyielding and peremptory law 
can give it. 

The problem, therefore, arises as to whether there is to be 
an inevitable alternation of now poietic and now kinetic as- 
cendency, or whether it be possible to maintain a sort of 
complementary equilibrium between these two equally neces- 
sary but wholly differentiated classes in the State. ''Is it 
possible to maintain a secure, happy, and progressive State 
beside an unbroken flow of poietic activity?'' 

Mr. Wells' Utopians thought so and, according to him, at- 
tained to a practical solution of this difficult problem. 

What characterizes a member of the poietic class is obvi- 
ously a specialized and momentous individuality. But such a 
person is so often by his very nature impatient and incapable 
of submission to the authority of an external institution, unless 
indeed an organization can be found which will give him an 
atmosphere and an environment both free and stimulating, an 
organization, in fact, which will educate this momentous indi- 
viduality of his to its highest point of social utility. I am 
speaking, of course, entirely from Mr. Wells' standpoint as to 
the all importance of what he would call community values. 

The Utopians believed it possible for the State to frame 
limiting conditions within which every person of poietic tem- 
perament should be encouraged to the full and practical ex- 
pression of his peculiar excellence. Education, at first general 
and afterwards specialized, with appropriate incentives, honors, 
and rewards, was open to all without class or distinction. But 
the flower of Utopian manhood was to be found in the Sam-^ 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. Wells 617 

aurai. ^'Any iatelligent adult, in a reasonably healthy and 
efficient State, may» at any age after five-and-twenty» become 
one of the Samaurai/' an Order into whose hands falls practi- 
cally the whole administrative work of Utopia. 

This Order of the Samaurai was entirely voluntary ; it was 
open to any one who could submit to the discipline of its 
Rule. It included, at the time of Mr. Wells' visit, all the 
head teachers and disciplinary heads of colleges, judges, bar- 
risters, employers of labor beyond a certain limit, practising 
medical men, and legislators; in fact, everybody who was any- 
body in Utopia. 

The Rule was designed ''to exclude the Dull, to be unat- 
tractive to the Base, and to direct and co-ordinate all sound 
citizens of good intent." It was also designed ''to discipline 
the impulses and emotions, to develop a moral habit, and sus- 
tain a man in periods of stress, fatigue, and temptation; and, 
in fact, to keep all the Samaurai in a state of moral and 
b9dily health and efficiency.'' It consisted of three parts, the 
things that qualified, the things that must not be done, and 
the things that must be done. 

A youth or man is qualified for admission by a sort of 
leaving- certificate from his college, obtained by an examination 
which excludes about ten per cent of the healthy Utopian 
youth. Among those who are necessarily excluded are people 
of nervous instability, however great though irregular their 
poietic gifts may be; such people are not wanted among the 
Samaurai.* 

Now as to the things that are forbidden. Meat having for 
some time been abandoned throughout Utopia, the Samaurai 
hardly notice this privation, but neither are they allowed in- 
dulgence in any alcoholic drink or narcotic drug. Usury, too, 
at first forbidden to the Samaurai alone, has by this time al- 
most died out of Utopia. The Samaurai may not buy or sell 
for profit, except on behalf of the State; from this it followii 

* It may be mentioned, that the Samaurai have a Canonical Book, but 
of a very elastic nature, the last addition being a poem by the late Mr. W. 
includes that memorable Terse : 

*• Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be. 
For my unconquerable soul." 



Digitized by 



Google 



6i8 H. G. WELLS [Aug., 

that the great employers, who are necessarily Samaarai, never 
trade for selfish gain — a great innovation on our earthly cus- 
tom — and so there are no private fortunes in Utopia that can 
compare at all with the huge wealth of the State. The Sam- 
aurai are forbidden to act, sing, or recite, though they are 
permitted to lecture authoritatively or join in debates; they 
must not play games in public, nor be seen watching them, 
much less indulge in betting of any kind ; they may not per- 
form menial tasks for hire, but they are enjoined to shave, 
dress, and wait upon themselves ; they may not keep servants, 
but must make their own beds and look after their own pri- 
vate rooms. 

With regard to more intimate matters of moral discipline 
there are very strict injunctions. There is a Rule of chastity, 
but not of celibacy. The young, indeed, it would appear, are 
allowed to sow their wild oats before they reach the age of 
twenty* five, and are then fully eligible for the sterner life of 
the Samaurai, no special training in emotional or moral disci- 
pline is made compulsory before that time. '' Let them have 
a chance of wine, love, and song; let them feel the bite of 
full-bodied desire, and know what devils they have to reckon 
with '' (p. 285). But after twenty-five, failings of this kind, 
which before were merely venial, now take rank as mortal 
offences, for which there is no room for repentance, at least 
within the Order itself. ^'A man who breaks the Rule after 
his adult adhesion at five-and-twenty is no more in the Sam- 
aurai forever.'' 

In this place, at any rate, the Utopians seem quite frankly 
to recognize the weakness of human nature. Civilization, we 
are told, has developed far more rapidly than man has modi- 
fied for the better; his natural powers of self-restraint are too 
weak to curb his physical and emotional passions; great ma- 
terial prosperity has always been followed by moral collapse. 
In times of security, liberty, and abundance, '^ the normal un- 
traiiied human being is disposed to excess in almost every 
direction; he tends to eat too much and too elaborately, to 
drink too much, to become lazy faster than his work can be 
reduced, to waste his interest upon displays, and to make love 
too much and too elaborately. He gets out of training, and 
concentrates upon egoistic or erotic broodings. The past his- 
tory of our race is very largely a history of social collapse due 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 619 

to demoralization by indulgences following secarity and abun- 
dance" (293).« 

How» then, do the Utopians in general^ and the Samaurai 
in particular, propose to deal with these original and actual 
failings of human nature? ''Our founders organized motives 
from all sorts of sources, but I think the chief source to give 
men self-control is pride. Pride may not be the noblest thing 
in the soul, but is the best king there, for all that. They (the 
Utopians) looked to it to keep a man clean and sound and 
sane" {lb). 

Then as to the things that must be done. There are very 
precise regulations as to the times and places when the Sam- 
aurai may meet each other for purposes of companionship and 
recreation. As the order is open to members of either sex, 
and to people both married and single, the permissions are 
very detailed, personal, and specific, especially with regard to 
married people themselves; but these need not be enlarged 
upon here, except in so far as to say that within the marriage 
sphere there seems less freedom and power of mutual decision 
than without it 

We now come ''to the heart of all Utopian explanations, 
to the will and the motives at the centre that made men and 
women ready to undergo discipline, to renounce the richness 
and elaboration of the sensuous life, to master emotions and 
control impulses, to keep in the key of e£fort while they had 
abundance about them to rouse and satisfy all desires" — in 
fact, to the Utopian religion. Religion they contend is as 
natural to man as lust and anger, ^1^/ less intense; they accept 
it as they accept thirst, "as something inseparably in the 
mysterious rhythms of life " ; they seem to regard any external 
manifestation of it as a pleasant weakness to be indulged in 
rarely, and by the best of the Samaurai not at all ; " the 
Samaurai will have emerged above these things," above "the 
religion of dramatically lit altars, organ music, and incense," 
above " the delusive simplification of God that vitiates all ter- 

* We are told, however, in another place (p. 299), that " the leading principle of Utopian 
religion is the repudiation of Original Sin." Original Sin is a dogma which proclaims the 
weakness of himian nature, and vrithout the great complementary dogma of the Incarnation 
would, indeed, give little courage to struggling humanity ; the Church never repudiates the 
weakness of human nature in order to overcome it, she teaches us to face it squarely and with 
patient humility, and then directs us with hope and encouragement to the eternal hills from 
whence cometh our help. 



Digitized by 



Google 



620 H. G. WELLS [Aug., 

restrial theology. . • • The intimate thing of religion must 
exist in human solitude, between man and Grod alone • • . 
a man may no more reach God through a priest than love his 
wife through a priest" The Rule of the Samaurai will, there- 
fore, have no official concern with the religion of its members. 
''So far as the Samaurai have a purpose in common in main- 
taining the State, and the order and progress of the world, so 
far, by their discipline and denial, by their public work and 
effort, they worship God together,'' but in what we may cer- 
tainly presume to be a rather implicit manner. 

In this religion of the Samaurai there appears to be noth- 
ing that appeals to the whole man — his heart and senses as 
well as his critical intellect — nothing that is universally known 
and passionately and personally believed in ; nothing that the 
best men live by and would willingly die for; nothing that is 
objectively, absolutely, and transcendently true. The Samaurai, 
in fact, do not believe in an Objective or Explicit Super- 
natural Revelation, and consequently they do not believe in 
an institutional and divinely authoritative Church — an institu- 
tion superior to and independent of the State — whose function 
it is to guard, interpret, expound, and unfold this supernatural 
revelation, and furthermore to administer its sacraments and 
perform its beautiful and symbolic ritual. 

The Samaurai are bound by their Rule to a yearly retreat 
of seven consecutive days. Each one of them has to go apart 
into some wild and solitary place, without companions, books, 
pens, paper, or money, in order to exercise himself in his 
privately conceived, privately sustained, and privately inter- 
preted religion; and we may, without unfairness, presume the 
substance of his meditations from certain passages written by 
Mr. Wells himself: 

''Many people would be glad, for rather trivial and unim- 
portant reasons, that I should confess a faith in God, and few 
would take offence. But the run of people even nowadays 
mean something more and something different when they say 
' God.' They intend a personality exterior to them and lim* 
ited, and they will instantly conclude I mean the same thing. 
To permit that misconception is, I feel, the first step on the 
slippery slope of meretricious complaisance. . . . Occa- 
sionally we may best serve the God of Truth by denying him." 

'' Yet at times I admit that the sense of personality in the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 621 

universe is very strong. If I am confessing, I do not see why 
I should not confess up to the hilt. At times in the silence 
of the night and in rare lonely moments, I come upon a sort 
of communion of myself and something great that is not my- 
self. It is perhaps poverty of mind and language obliges me 
to say that then this universal scheme takes on the e£fect of a 
sympathetic person — and my communion a quality of fearless 
worship. These moments happen, and they are the supreme 
fact of my religious life, they are the crown of my religious 
experiences** (F., p. 50.). 

On Free-Will. ''Is the whole of this scheme of things 
settled and done 7 The whole trend of science is to that be- 
lief. On the scientific plane one is a fatalist, the universe a 
a system of inevitable consequences. But ... it is quite 
possible to accept in their several planes both predestination 
and free-will. If you ask me, I think I should say I incline 
to believe in predestination and do quite completely believe in 
free-will. The important belief is /ree-will. ... I am free 
and freely and responsibly making the future— so far as I am 
concerned. On that theory I find my life will work, and on 
a theory of mechanical predestination nothing works'* {lb., p. 51). 

On the Idea of a Church. ** The practical fact is that it (a 
Church) draws together great multitudes of diverse individual- 
ized people in a common solemnity and self-subordination, 
however vague, and, in so far, is like the State, and in a man-^ 
ner far more intimate and emotional and fundamental than the 
State, a synthetic power. And, in particular, the idea of the 
Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is in 
many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea 
of any existing State . . .'* (pp. 15 1-7). 

On Humility f the Basis of Democracy. "The real justifica- 
tion of democracy lies in the fact that none of us are alto- 
gether weak; for every one there is an aspect in which he is 
seen to be weak; for every one there is a strength, though it 
may be only a peculiar strength or an undeveloped potentiality. 
The unconverted man uses his strength egotistically, empha- 
sizes himself harshly against the man who is weak where be is 
strong, and hates and conceals his own weakness. The be- 
liever, in the measure of his belief, respects and seeks to 
understand the different strength of others, and to use his own 
distinctive power with and not against his fellow-men, in the 



Digitized by 



Goo 



^ 



622 H. G. WELLS [Aug., 

cotntnoQ service of that synthesis to which each one of them 
is ultimately as necessary as he" (lb., p. 198).* 

There is one last confession which gives the specific note 
of all these pathetically hopefnl, but actually faithless, medi- 
tations. ''AH my life has been at bottom, seeking, disbeliev- 
ing always, dissatisfied always with the thing seen and the 
thing believed, seeking something in toil, in force, in danger, 
something whose name and nature I do not clearly under- 
stand, something beautiful, worshipful, enduring, mine pro- 
foundly and fundamentally, and yet the utter redemption of 
myself; I don^t know — all I can tell is that it is something I 
have ever failed to find."f 

Hoir negative, inadequate, and paralyzed with doubt is the 
** religion " I have here attempted to summarize, though I 
hope not unfairly or with disproportion I There is not to be 
found in the paragraphs quoted above, nor anywhere through- 
out our author's writings, one single positive expression of 
faith in the existence of God. The nearest approach to it is 
a reverent obeisance before some great Perhaps, whose only 
symbol, we may add, should be a sublime note oi interro- 
gation. Of what poor and tepid avail is an agnosticism such 
as this when called upon to energize ordinary human nature 
in its unceasing and momentous conflict with undisciplined 
passion t 

Undisciplined passion is always a trespasser, whether re- 
garded from the individual or from the social standpoint; 
moreover, undisciplined intellectual passion is a much more harm" 
ful trespasser than undisciplined physical passion. This last fact 
I must dogmatically assert in the teeth of all modernist and 
'' New Theological '' opposition, and I beg to call Mr. Wells' 
serious attention to it, for the neglect of it is the main reason 
of his failure to apprehend what religion is in itself and what 
it is meant to do. 

There are times when it is a right and proper thing for a 
man ** to smite down,'' as Newman says, the pride of his criti- 
cal intellect; and most of all is it right to do this when the 
critical intellect turns trespasser and thief within the very 
sanctuary of God-given Truth — presuming, of course, that there 
be a God and that He has revealed Himself; if there be no 
Gad there can be no religion except in an equivocal sense. 

^Cf, Aquinas, Summm^ 8 8. Q. z6z, art. 3. t TptM-Bu^gay, p. 852. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 623 

To make the critical intellect, on the other hand, the supreme 
and final criterion of divine revelation is to put it to an en- 
tirely undisciplined and improper use. But not only is the 
intellect of man, in its critical capacity, thus put to undis- 
ciplined and improper uses; in its constructive capacity it is 
put to a task still more out of all proportion to its natural 
powers, namely, that of creating a new revelation of its own 
in the place of that divine one it has so wantonly presumed 
to criticise and condemn. 

According to the now fashionable doctrine of many reli- 
gious bodies and of Mr. Wells himself — who deny that there 
is any decisive and final religious authority external to the 
private individual judgment — according to this doctrine, private 
individuals are endowed with the capability (and, therefore, with 
the right that not even the State may dispute) of creating 
brand new religions, each according to his own image, super- 
scription, and idiosyncrasy. 

Now this is a pretty big order even for the massive intel- 
lect of the ordinary man, with his not over-thorough education 
and training in the theory and practice of the spiritual life, 
and we are not surprised to find that, although Mr. Wells al- 
lows the human intellect such large and powerful jurisdiction 
in spiritual matters, he will not allow it the same absolute 
privileges in more mundane affairs. Despite his formal repudia- 
tion of original sin in one place, he categorically lays it down 
in another, that the intellect of man is not to be trusted, be- 
cause of its inherent weakness and imperfection. ''The for- 
ceps of our minds are clumsy forceps and crush the truth a 
little in taking hold of it " ; we need, he tells us, certain safe- 
guards and correctives '' in order to save us from the original 
sin of our own intellectual instrument.^* • 

If this is true of our intellectual dealings with the more 
quantitative things of life« it is truer still of our dealings with 
the more qualitative ones, and most of all true with regard to 
the things pre-eminently qualitative — the things of God Him- 
self. A man may, indeed, reach out to the things of God, but 
only by the exercise of a lover's faith and a lover's humility. 
The critical faculty of a man of faith is turned in upon his 
own failings and has there a sufficient and proper occupation 
(I am speaking, of course, only of its religious use). Distrust 

* ScipHcism ofthi InsitMwtint, now printed as an appendix to A Modetn Utopia^ p. 39a. 



Digitized by 



Google 



624 H. G. WELLS [Aug., 

of selff that is where the critical faculty comes in and quite 
rightly so ; trust in God, that is where it does not come in, 
and if it did, would come in wrongly and without reason. If, 
at any time, however, say in some period of waning devotion, 
it should be tempted to turn itself to the criticism of the 
divinely perfect or such revelation of truth as He has vouch- 
safed for our temporal and eternal benefit, then it is the busi- 
ness of humility to step in and silence its questionings by 
pointing out their unreasonable folly, lest, forsooth, the critical 
intellect, once more pretending to a supremacy above God 
Himself, should become in very truth the abomination of deso- 
lation trespassing where it ought not.j 

Intellectual passion, then, is a good thing when devoted to 
its proper objects in proportion to its proper powers and under 
the auspices of its proper authorities, but it is a bad thing 
when exercised in an inordinate and undisciplined manner, at 
wrong times and in wrong places and upon wrong objects, 
without subjection to authorities more universal and more ex- 
cellent than itself. Mr. Wells supports this contention and 
uses it most powerfully When speaking of his State; but when 
he comes to his ** religion " he denies it in theory and in fact 
and chases it out of the field as a dangerous enemy to free- 
dom of the individual. 

After all, Mr. Wells' religion is a poor thing and won't 
work — as he himself is candid enough to confess in First and 
Last Things (p. 143) — it is merely a side dish put on at his 
social board for those of his guests who, after partaking rather 
generously of his earlier Socialistic courses, need something 
tasty to make them feel nice and sentimentally good. Mr. 
Wells, unfortunately, does not believe that religion is to pro- 
vide the main food of man here on earth, but seems rather to 
believe that it is thrown in to tickle a jaded palate when sur- 
feited with the abundance of this world. Mr. Wells has made 
a mistake. Religion is not given to tickle a jaded palate of 
man; it is given that man may have life and have it more 
abundantly. 

The problem of the spiritual power in the Socialist State 
has not been solved after all, the *'sun'' of Mr. Wells' earlier 
netaphor is still a mere metaphor, signifiying nothing; and 
his whole scheme is left in the darkness of great spiritual fail- 
ure. Mr. Wells, I know, repeatedly asserts that there is no 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] H. G. WELLS 625 

real distinction between things (][uantitive and things qualita- 
tive, but I presume that, at any rate, he will allow us to make 
a real distinction between people who are f otitic and people 
who are base. It is true that he emphasizes that difference on 
the intellectual rather than on the emotional side, and that is 
why his whole political cosmos is such a rigid and static af- 
fair. It is love that makes the world go round and it is lust 
that makes it go round the wrong way. His cosmos, too, is 
rigid and static because it is densely and materially fashioned, 
and this is true of every Socialist cosmos. Socialism of itself 
and by itself can do nothing to diminish or discipline the im- 
mediate and materialistic lusts of men^ because Socialism is itself 
the most exaggerated and universalized expression of those lusts 
yet known to history ^ Last of all, it is insufficiently energized 
and accelerated in the right direction by spiritual as distin- 
guished from material forces, and by an authoritative spiritual 
as distinguished from an authoritative material power. To 
sum up, the problem of Social Reform has two aspects, the 
quantitative aspect and the qualitative aspect, the latter being 
the more important. Mr. Wells has dealt with the quantita- 
tive aspect very fully, but not I think satisfactorily, on a 
Socialistic basis. As to the qualitative aspect of the problem, 
he has not yet got within sight of it, much less within sight 
of its solution. Such, at any rate, is the contention advanced 
in these articles. 

* See two most powerful articles on Socialism in the English QuatUrly Rtviiw for April 
and July of the present year. Socialism is searchingly examined as to its origin, philosophy, 
and practice ; and is declared on all these heads to be essentially materialistic and anti« 
spirituaL 



VOL. XCI.— 40 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



HOLY COMMUNION. 

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. 

My soul that's house-mate with my body. 
And finds the tenement too small. 

Frets at her vesture, white and ruddy, 
Would break the windows, scale the wall. 

Would spread her useless wings and flying 
I/eave all her dull estate behind. 

To-day, with angels touching, vieing, 
She finds her prison to her mind. 

See now the prisoner's manumission ! — 
And yet she hugs her prison still — 

Where shining heads and wings elysian 
Are crowding by her window-sill 

She sweeps her room and makes it festal, 
Flings a white cloth upon the board. 

And with a bridal heart and vestal 
Awaits the coming of her I^ord. 

This is her hour. Bnrapt, with Mary, 
She breaks her box of ointment rare, 

Kneels in her heaven, I/Ove's sanctuary, 
And feels His hand upon her hair. 

Meanwhile her house-mate, who shall perish. 

One hour is glorified likewise ; 
Envied of angels, she doth cherish 

The Darling of the earth and skies. 

One hour, poor wench, her honor's over, 
She, destined only for the earth. 

Fashioned for no immortal lover. 
Gives praise for crowns beyond her worth. 

No longer now the soul's in prison. 
Nor tethered by her useless wings. 

Slips bonds : follows her I^ord arisen 
And, ere she falls, by heaven's gate sings. 



Digitized by 



Google 



ST. TERESA. 

BY WALTER ELLIOTT. C.S.P. 

March I2« i622| five saints were canonized in 
Rome amid the most splendid ceremonies and 
most heartfelt rejoicings. One was St. Isadora 
Agricola, whom Gregory XV. then placed on the 
altars of Christendom to call men's souls to wor- 
ship God and thank Him for the marvels of grace adorning 
the lowliest state of life, for St. Isadore, as his surname indi* 
cates, was a peasant. 

The other four were among the greatest saints of their era, 
which was that of the Protestant revolt in the heart of the six- 
teenth century; and each was typical of some special, divine 
gift to the Church during her time of sorest trial. They were 
St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Philip Neri, and 
our St. Teresa of Jesus. The first named was chosen by God 
as the chief organizer of the forces of truth and holiness which 
He set in array to stop the ravages of Protestantism, and to 
re-establish Catholic peoples on the solid foundation of obedi- 
ence to lawful authority, guiding them, meanwhile, to the in- 
terior life of God by his marvelous system of mental prayer. 
St. Francis Xavier was the foremost disciple of Ignatius, and 
had in the Far East renewed the missionary glories of the 
apostolic era. Then comes the name of Philip Neri, the saint 
whom God appointed to a sixty years' apostolate in the eter- 
nal city, so fruitful as to merit for him the official title of the 
Apostle of Rome. And finally St. Teresa of Jesus was canon- 
ized, the reformer of the Carmelite Rule, and the foremost ex- 
emplar and teacher of contemplative prayer granted the Church 
for many centuries. Men saw in the canonization of these four 
saints, just a hundred years after Luther's rebellion, an account- 
taking of what heaven had bestowed on the Church of Christ 
as a compensation for the losses of the Protestant revolt. And 
they noticed, also, that the year 1622 was the one which ended 
the glorious life of St. Francis de Sales, the most successful 
of the Church's missionaries to Protestants. He was also a 
very powerful exponent of God*s ways in every form of devout 



Digitized by 



Google 



628 St. Teresa [Aug., 

life, including contemplative prayer, which was the special theme 
of St. Teresa. 

We are now writing of her on occasion of a new English 
version of one of her most notable works, The Interior Castle 
of the Soul. The translation is made by an English Benedictine 
nun, one who is evidently kindred to her spirit; and it is edited 
by a Carmelite friar who is just as plainly competent to aid 
her in an editorial capacity.* 

The saint wrote this luminous exposition of infused prayer 
in all its gradations and qualities, while she was suffering from 
a furious persecution. And yet it breathes that heavenly calm- 
ness peculiar to spirits dwelling in the loftier regions of hea- 
venly peace. Like all of her writings she composed this one 
under a very stringent obedience from her confessor, at that 
time Canon Velasquez, afterwards Archbishop of Compostella. 
It is curiously allegorical in its framework; and yet the high 
topics are very plainly treated of, and they are made as intel- 
ligible to ordinary readers as is possible ; all the more so, in 
fact, on account of the comparison she adopts between the 
stages of the soul's advancement in prayer, and the progress 
of a guest in a magnificent castle passing from its outer to its 
interior splendors. The style is familiar, yet the tone is state- 
ly, often even majestic. The author sheds a clear light, clear 
though dazzling, on the vague and distant and ravishingly beau- 
tiful states of contemplative prayer. 

Some time previous to writing The Interior Castle^ St. Teresa, 
under similar and even more painful stress of obedience, had 
written her most famous work, her autobiography. It narrates 
the principal events of her life up to and including the found- 
ing of the first monastery of her reform at Avila. But its chief 
purpose was to specify dates, places, persons, and all other ac- 
companiments of her earlier supernatural experiences, such as 
locutions, visions, and ecstacies. It is the chronicle oi the saint's 
novitiate under the Holy Spirit as novice master. It tells in 
narrative form of the same kind of divine extraordinary visita- 
tions more systematically treated of in The Interior Castle. 
The personal element is very powerful in the Life^ for during 
several years of these divine visitations she was suspected of 
being bewitched by Satan ; in fact, this was deliberately decided 

* Tkt Interior CastU; #r, the Mansions. Exclamatioos of the Soul to God. Translated 
from the Autograph of St. Teresa by the [English] Benedictines [Nuns] of Stanbrook. Re- 
vised, with an Introduction, Notes, and Index, by Benedict Zimmerman, O.C.D. London : 
Thomas Baker; New York: Benziger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



ipio.] St. Teresa 629 

on by sereral learned and devout priests, and St. Teresa was 
treated accordingly. After a dreadful interval of suffering she 
came across better informed confessors, and her vindication was 
really dramatic in its suddenness and completeness. The Life 
is a book of most vivid interest and withal of most valuable 
instructiveness. 

It was followed almost immediately by the little treatise on 
prayer called The Way of Perfection. This is a manual of what 
may be called meditative contemplation, or meditation of the 
less active, more intuitive kind. But yet The Way of Perfect 
tion also deals extensively with the virtues of a good Christian 
life, which are at once the means and the results of absorbed 
mental states of devotion of whatsoever degree or kind. Though 
written expressly for Carmelite nuns, it is a book richly replete 
with elementary instruction for devout Christians of all condi- 
tions, though it inclines the soul to those quieter tendencies 
of the spiritual life which are peculiar to the cloister. 

This in turn was followed by her Book of Foundations^ 
which may be called a continuation of her autobiography. It, 
again, was written under obedience. It holds a unique place 
in literature, being a minute disclosure of the interior guid- 
ance of God as related to His external ordering of affairs. It 
is a faithful, elaborate history of the providential happenings 
connected with the beginnings of nearly all of her convents of 
men or of women. It is thus the sequel of the Life^ a narra- 
tive of the events of her career from the start of the reform 
at Avila till not long before her death. This makes it a book 
as precious as it is charming. But its peculiar value is in the 
golden thread which runs through it of the daily supernatural 
history of the author. Hardly anything important was ever done 
except from the inner prompting of the Holy Spirit. These 
are all described in the same artless but entrancing simplicity, 
as are the curious and often startling adventures accompanying 
the outward work of the establishment of the different houses. 
One passes continually from the promptings of her divine in- 
terior guide, to her counsellings with her external guides, and 
her conflicts with her many opposers. We read now of her 
shrewd dealings with lawyers and property owners, and then 
of her ecstacies and visions. From long conferences with 
magistrates and prelates we pass to her interviews with the 
holy angels. And we see how marvelously both orders of life, 



Digitized by 



Google 



630 ST. TERESA [Aug., 

the earthly and heavenly, were ordered and mingled together 
by God for the founding of communities of austere, prayerful 
friars and nuns, intermediaries for the uniting and carrying 
out of God*s temporal and external purposes among men. 

The Book of Foundations was composed by the saint from 
her own imperishable memories of her supernatural experiences 
in the establishment of those houses of solitude and penance, 
each of which was to her as dear as her heart's blood — almost 
every one a victory earned by a hard-fought battle against 
the allied forces of petty jealousy, human greed, and official 
timidity. Besides her own vivid recollections, the saint had at 
her command those of her associates early and late and their 
diaries and other memoranda, as well as the community records 
of each house. 

Taken together with the Life and the Leitets^ the whole 
forms a singularly powerful and impressive history of one of 
God's greatest saints, and certainly of the greatest woman of 
the sixteenth century. These books impart perhaps the most 
intimate, certainly the most extensive, acquaintance ever 
granted of the hidden ways of God with His more favored 
children. The Life^ as we have said, is her most famous book, 
and in several ways deservedly so. Yet the Book of Founda^ 
tions is needed for an integral, a finished study of her career 
and character, since it is a minute history of those long and 
painful, some of them racking, years between 1562 and 1582 
covered by her work as a founder. 

We are indebted to Mr. David Lewis, a distinguished 
Tractarian convert, for an admirable English translation of the 
Book of Foundations. His work is preceded by a succinct his- 
tory of the reform, which embodies a summary life of the 
saint. The translator also elaborately edits the book, offering 
many valuable observations, historical and critical, together 
with a surprisingly full contribution of references to parallel 
records of events and teachings found in her other writings. 
He possessed the perfection of Teresian learning as well as 
the most ardent enthusiasm of Teresian discipleship. He also 
translated and placed at the end of the volume the saint's 
manual of the Visitation of the nunneries, the Carmelite Rule, 
the Constitutions of the Reform, and the Maxims of St. Teresa. 
Mr. Lewis also wrote the Life of St. John of the Cross and 
translated his works. 



Digitized by 



Google 



ipia] St. Teresa 631 

The Library of the Paulist Fathers, in New York, possesses 
a unique work in French hj an anonymous artist, entitled 
LEspagne ThiresUnne, au Pelerinage d^un Flatnand a touUs les 
Ftmdations de Ste. Thirhe. It was published in folio, second 
edition, 1893, at Ghent, at the Carmelite monastery there. It 
is an illustrated itinerary of the saint's life as a founder, con- 
taining twenty-nine large pictures aud innumerable smaller 
ones, all excellent engravings from line drawings made on the 
spot, of buildings and localities, together with likenesses made 
from authentic portraits of all persons in anywise closely con-^ 
nected with the rarious foundations. The work is artistic and 
thoroughly well done. It is accompanied with narrative and 
descriptive comments of the most reliable kind, made by the 
Carmelites of Ghent. It is a work of deepest interest to all 
disciples of our saint, though only best appreciated by artists. 
It is a worthy companion volume to the Book of Foundations. 
We fear that it is too good to obtain wide circulation and 
that it will pass out ot print. For the copy now in possession 
of the Paulist Library we are indebted to the kindness of the 
Rev. Mother Prioress Beatrix of the Holy Spirit, of the Bos- 
ton Carmel. 

Newman has said that the only real biography is that 
which a man himself writes in his letters. The truth of this 
is shown by the Letters of St. Teresa. However, in her case, 
the candor of letter-writing characterizes all of her books, 
especially her autobiography and her Book of Foundations^ re- 
sulting in a self-revelation of ever- increasing credit to herself 
and instruction to her disciples. 

There is an indescribable charm about St. Teresa's letters. 
In reading them one exclaims instinctively: ^'Oh, how out- 
spoken a soul is this, and how affectionate; how fearless and 
positive and resolute a character; and yet how gentle; how 
great a gift of speech and how vast a wealth of holy thought 
to draw upon for spreading the love of God and zeal for souls.'' 

The immovable calm of this master mind is as well dis- 
played in her Letters as in the Book of Foundations^ a feminine 
spirit enthralled by the knowledge of God closely viewed, and 
yet devoid of feminine fussiness. The entire gentleness of the 
sex is also there, every sweet virtue of sympathy, kindness, 
and patience. But withal a queenly purpose to stand her 
ground for right and for God against all comers. One notes 



Digitized by 



Google 



632 St. Teresa [Aug., 

that she rules the male sex as simply as she does the female, 
not seldom becoming spiritual adviser to the many saints and 
sages who from first to last were her directors. " My son/' 
was a term of address she oiten used to men well advanced 
along the road of perfection, and of high name and office in 
the Church and the schools. In this trait she was kindred to 
St. Catherine of Siena, who had grouped about her during the 
iater years of her life, and living almost continually in her 
company, a little college of men of distinguished ability, great 
sanctity, and widespread influence in Church and State, proud 
to be called her disciples. 

The foremost disciple of our saint was St. John of the 
Cross. His works on mystical topics are quoted everywhere. 
She formed, under God, his mind and life to the highest stand- 
ard of perfection. What St. Francis Xavier was to St. Igna- 
tius, we might almost say St. John of the Cross was to St 
Teresa. We are fortunate in having Mr. David Lewis as his 
English biographer and translator, giving us his exact, almost 
scholastic, and yet highly poetical development of St. Teresa's 
more artless teaching of the higher kinds of prayer. In 
founding her reform — as is shown by her letters as well as by 
her other writings — she dealt no less masterfully with able and 
holy men than she did with the great-souled women who were 
her close associates. Her coadjutors, or rather her auxiliaries 
were, indeed, oftener men than women, noblemen and men of 
wealth or of learning, or of sanctity, and of states of life 
varying from petty shopkeepers to Archbishops and high 
grandees. She exercised over them all the same kindly au- 
thority as over the young girls whom God sent her for the 
equipping of her new monasteries. But if she mastered these 
men with great power, it was not at the expense of her wo- 
manly kindliness, nor with the least semblance of mannishness. 

Given a reader with any degree of devout receptivity, and 
St. Teresa's writings are quickly established among his master- 
books, to be used occasionally all through life, in many cases 
to be used unceasingly. The Way of Perfection and The Interior 
Castle are systematic treatises; they exhibit the saint's spir- 
itual doctrine in ever fresh attractiveness, but with close regard 
to form and division of parts. The Book of Foundations and 
the Letters joined to the Life as a vine to a trellis, impart the 
same precious teaching but more discursively. They are par- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] St. Teresa 633 

ticularly valuable as elaborate and really fascinating accounts 
of her whole career, and afford every possible means of know- 
ing exactly what by nature and grace God did when He made 
and perfected St. Teresa, 

From generation to generation this literature continues to 
win for our saint a tribute of reverence as affectionate as it 
is powerful. Her books establish and continually re-establish 
and perpetually inspire the Teresian discipleship of silence^ 
self-denial, recollectedness, and hidden union with God. Not 
in all holy reading, outside of Scripture, are any books pos- 
sessed of exactly their peculiar sweetness and force, making 
for love of the hard life and glorious recompense of the soul's 
retirement into God. 

TAe Way of Perfection^ the Life^ the Book of Foundations^ 
The Interior Castle^ and the Letters are the chief literature of 
our saint, though her rules for governing and visiting the re- 
formed houses are of great and, indeed, essential value to her 
own religious. But we must not forget to say that there are 
a few little poems of hers which are of fascinating beauty, the 
outpourings of the saint's soul in the language of a most re- 
fined imagination. In reading, for example, her ^' Canticle on 
Death,'' we cannot help regretting that God did not guide her 
to write a whole book of poems. 

Her literary abilities were of the highest order, and place 
her words, written as they were in the golden age of her 
native tongue, among the best Castilian classics. The style is 
at once flowing and terse. There is not the faintest suspicion 
of verbiage, and yet she possesses that diffusiveness of descrip- 
tion so necessary in discoursing of topics where the least 
shade of meaning ministers to the essential needs of integral 
information. 

How miny mysterious details of transcendent mental states 
are found in all her writings. They lift the reader out of his 
element into the serene, if baffling, glories of the higher kinds 
of prayer, yet not without frequent glimpses sharp and clear 
of perfectly intelligible truth and beauty. Nor is this privi- 
lege the monopoly only of the more perfect Christians. A 
soul but newly converted from the most degrading vice, if he 
be only intensely converted, can get some profit, indeed some 
very practical profit, from every page of these messages of a 
fellow-mortal raised to the highest sanctity. 



Digitized by 



Google 



634 •Sr. TERESA [Aug., 

Her style has enabled our saint to be a crystal medium of 
communication between herself and any human soul, a medium 
as sympathetic as it is unconventional. She is, therefore, con- 
stantly read by persons of all states and conditions of life in 
Holy Church, who are in the least degree desirous of Christian 
perfection. The test of three and a half centuries of trial has 
been applied to these books, and has proved them to be worthy 
of the life-long reading of all spiritually- minded Christians. 

Until the Stanbrook nuns gave us this perfect translation 
of TAe Interior Castle^ English readers must have used per- 
force Canon Dalton's version; and the same is to be said of 
The Way of Perfection. All praise to him. Truest of disciples, 
his services were very great. Among all the saint's clients 
none was more devoted than he. He was eager and jubilant 
in his work of translating her books, and he reveled in it. It 
is a pity that he lacked literary quality, even such needful gifts 
as clearness of expression and verbal orderliness. The present 
translators will, no doubt, wholly supersede him; and they 
promise an English version of The Way of Perfection. Of all 
the letters of St. Teresa of any value we have Father H. J. 
Coleridge's translation, attached to his valuable biography of 
the saint. 

As to our saint's natural character/ one might think that 
so typical a contemplative would necessarily be a fetiring and 
timorous soul. Teresa was retiring indeed, and craved pas- 
sionately to be alone with God. But in reading her Life and 
Letters^ and especially her Book of Foundations^ we become ac- 
quainted with an independent, even an aggressive tempera- 
ment, full of initiative, venturesome, resourceful, often bold to 
the verge of audacity — all this exhibited not simply as the 
result of the supernatural gift of fortitude, but, in a certain 
degree, of her native and instinctive qualities. 

Her age was the last glorious era of Spanish knighthood, 
whose exploits in the old and new world filled men's souls with 

* The folloMriog is the chronology of the principal events in the life of St. Teresa. Bora 
March 28, 1515, at Avila, in Old Castile, her father being Alphonsus Sanches de Cepeda, her 
mother Beatrice Ahumada. In 1522, being then seven years old, she induced her little 
brother to steal away with her to Africa to be martjrred for Christ by the Moors, and was in- 
tercepted and returned to her home by her uncle. In 1533 she entered the Carmelite convent 
of the mitigated observance in Avila. In 1537 she is granted her first vision. In 1560, imder 
supernatural divine guidance, she resolves to found a monastery of nuns of the strict observ- 
ance of the primitive Carmelite Rule. In 1563 foundation of the first monastery of the reform. 
From that time till her death, October 4, 1582, the saint is almost wholly occupied with plan* 
ning and founding new monasteries of men and women. St. Teresa's life thus extended 
over the greater part of the eventful sixteenth century. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] ST. Teresa 635 

wonder, and established the mightiest empire of modern times. 
But no cabellero or conquistador among her dauntless countty- 
men could excel her in daring. She battled valorously in the 
peaceful field of the Gospel, where victories are won by love 
of enemies and by holy patience. She thirsted for those con- 
flicts; and she exhibited a spirit of adventure in the cause of 
God during the twenty years of her career as a founder, which 
makes her achievements read like a romance. 

Furthermore, this nun, rated by non> Catholic writers as a 
dreamy mystic, was a good business manager. Though so often 
rapt into the celestial regions of holiest thought and love, St. 
Teresa was the reverse of a dreamer, knew how to drive a good 
bargain, borrowed money advantageously, quickly fathomed 
weakness of character in the men and women with whom she 
dealt. Cardinal Wiseman, in his preface to the English version 
of St. John of the Cross, calls attention to the matter-of-fact 
expression of St. Teresa's face in her authentic portrait, the 
solid sense, the keen observation, the well- recognized traits of 
countenance of a capable woman of affairs. Read her letters 
to her brother about family concerns, and the many other let- 
ters about business matters, if you would see how good a head 
she had for plain, everyday work — that head so filled with di- 
vine thoughts, and yet so shrewd for the earthly duties inci- 
dent to her vocation as a foundress. 

She was the advance agent and the first and final manager 
in all such things as title deeds and purchases, debts and lega- 
cies, as well as the current support of each of her many mon- 
asteries; a sane woman of immense positiveness and great busi- 
ness foresight, yet often lifted up into the heavens in raptures 
and again restored to earth — a wondrous duplex life of inspi- 
ration wholly miraculous and of good sense entirely reliable. 
Her practical decisions were very rarely at fault. She had a 
marvelous mingling together oi the truest earthly with the sub- 
limest heavenly guidance. 

Take a specimen from her letters ; we may call this message 
to her brother a sort of interlude of family business thrust into 
the midst of high contemplation. Writing to him about some 
connection of the family who had been tormenting them with 
lawsuits, and with whom they were now arranging a settle- 
ment, she says : ** He has a good heart, but in this case he is 
not to be trusted ; and therefore, when you send him the thou- 



Digitized by 



Google 



636 St. TERESA [Aug., 

sand realSy you must make him sign a deed» by which he will 
obligate himself to give five hundred ducats to my sister Mary 
if he should again trouble us with recommencing the lawsuit/' 
Notice in the Book of Foundations with what unconscious ease 
she passes from the relation of visions and the revealing of 
heavenly secrets to the discussion of such a mundane thing as 
the shortcomings of a stone mason in her employ. 

As a child of seven years she ran away from home that 
she might go to the country of the Moors to suffer martyrdom, 
dragging with her her little brother Rodrigo. 

*^ Scarce has she learned to lisp the name 
Of martyr; yet she thinks it shame 
Life should so long play with that breath 
Which, spent, can buy so brave a death. 

''Scarce has she blood enough to make 
A guilty sword blush for her sake; 
Yet has she a heart dares hope to prove 
How much less strong is death than love.*' 

^Crashaw^ " Hymn to St. Teresa!* 

Some little girls forecast their future vocation by playing 
nun; she did so by actually striving to become a martyr for 
Christ. Hers was naturally the reverse of a yielding, pliant 
nature. During her early years, both at home add at boarding 
school, though a sweet-tempered and guileless child, she yet 
was self-willed. When her father refused his consent to her 
entering the convent, she left her home and joined the sisters 
against his will. From the beginning to the end of her life 
she exhibited much self-poise of character. Even after God 
had terribly chastened her by interior anguish and bodily ill- 
ness extending over many years, and began to illuminate her 
soul with miraculous guidance, He yet did not hinder her think- 
ing for herself, though, as we shall see. He granted her an 
heroic grace of obedience to superiors. After He had elevated 
her motives and had bestowed on her the rarest gifts of infused 
prayer, she still retained her original native force; and she re- 
sponded to His inspirations for introducing the Carmelite reform 
by a strikingly fearless plan of action. After she had fortified 
herself with the counsel of the wisest confessors she could find, 
she undertook the task of reforming on old and decadent re- 



Digitized by 



Google 



IpIO.] ST. TERESA 637 

ligious order; a harder task by far than that of founding a new 
one in original fervor; ''a purpose/' to quote the language 
of Holy Church in the saint's office, '^ in which blossomed forth 
the omnipotent blessing of the merciful Lord. For this poor 
virgin, though destitute of all human help, nay very often op- 
posed by the great ones of this world, was yet able to estab- 
lish thirty*two monasteries/' 

In making these foundations, she was in almost every case 
forced to defend herself against powerful and numerous ene- 
mies. Her holy purposes were maligned, her friends were per- 
secuted, she herself was sometimes in danger of even bodily 
harm. We constantly behold her struggling in what was,human. 
ly speaking, a hopeless effort to introduce into a town a body 
of holy women who, for God's love, would voluntarily live on 
alms, keep holy silence, fast, and pray. But she struggled on un- 
dauntedly ; now with the wild passions of the townspeople, now 
with the jealousy of other communities or the dark suspicions 
of prelates, again hindered by the coldness of associates or 
half-heartedness of friends, sometimes held back even by the 
timidity of her confessors — brave men enough, but appalled at 
the obstacles which she so fearlessly faced. Again, every effort 
is for a time paralized by excommunications and interdicts or 
other such restrictions of bishops, the generals of the order, 
and even papal nuncios, resulting practically in her occasional 
imprisonment in monasteries.) 

Yet this woman, though so valiant, was never disobedient. 
In reading her own calm narrative of all the important occur- 
rences of her life, one says instinctively, never was any saint 
called on by God to obey so many unlawful superiors ; so many 
lawful superiors quite misinformed, often enough totally stam- 
peded by the basest calumnies; or again far transgressing their 
canonical limits of authority. Yet she responded with entire 
compliance in every case, submitting sadly but fully to usurpa- 
tion, just as she did joyfully to legitimate guidance. Fools in 
high places received her allegiance as well as the wise 
in Spain; she obeyed scoundrels as promptly as saints, 
ing many years she was led by an interior guidance so 
divine that she solemnly and repeatedly affirms that she 
have cheerfully died to witness its validity. Yet when a 
holding authority over her in the external order, cross 
divine will thus made known to her, she never faltered 
dience to the representatives of God's outward rule, 



Digitized by 



CmOo^z 



638 St. Teresa [Aug., 

sometimes she felt a pain in doing so that threatened to be 
her death. 

As in her practice so in her precepts, she advances the es- 
sential need of this virtue of obedience, so renowned in the 
little commonwealths of absorbed prayer and sacrificial suffer- 
ing she was engaged .in founding. The following words, taken 
from the fifth chapter of the Book of Foundations^ and addressed 
to all of her nuns, may be a description of her own struggles, 
while emphasizing in practise the supreme dogma of obedience : 
*' Our Lord makes much of this submission, and with perfect 
justice; for it is by means of it that we make Him master of 
the free-will He has given us. We practise it sometimes quick- 
ly and completely, thereby winning an immediate self-conquest; 
at other times it is only after a thousand struggles that we 
succeed, constantly thinking that the decisions made by supe- 
riors in our case are nothing but folly. But finally, being drilled 
and practised by this painful exercise, we conform to what is 
commanded — painfully or not, we do it Upon this our Lord, 
having helped us all the time, now seeing that we submit our 
will and our reason for His sake, gives us the grace to become 
masters of both.'' The uses and the philosophy of obedience 
could hardly be better stated. * 

The most cursory acquaintance with our saint reveals, as 
we have shown, a nature impulsive indeed but not headlong, 
a steadfast soul, full of initiative, yet by obedience made pru- 
dent to the verge of caution. But once set agoing by the 
instincts of zeal, it bore down opposition by the force of 
holiness of motive and an extraordinary power of persuasion. 
All through her Book of Foundations^ as well as in her Lift 
and Letters^ she shows that her resistless will to do right was 
wholly adjusted to the strictest obedience. Men and women 
conscious of a great mission (or of a little one they think to 
be great) will find in her a perfect illustration of how obe- 
dience does not hinder individuality, but, on the contrary, only 
tames the soul's wildness, chastens its pride, purges it of lower 
motives, enriches it with the counsel of good, wise, and peace- 
able advisers, and hinders both precipitancy and tardiness. 
While constantly checking self-conceit, obedience blesses and 
adorns a strong nature's activity with the supreme merit of 
humility. '' Experience has shown me " — mark these words, 
the very first in her prologue to the Book of Foundations — 
''not to mention what I have read in many places, what a 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



I9IO.] St. Teresa 639 

great blessing it is for a soul never to withdraw from under 
obedience. Herein lie, in my opinion, growth in goodness and . 
the gaining of humility. Herein lies our security amidst the 
doubts that arise whether or not we are straying from the 
heavenly road. . . . The divine majesty in His goodness 
has given me light to see the great treasure hidden in this 
priceless virtue.'' After the death of her countryman, St. 
Ignatius, our saint was the most aggressive spirit of her age — 
and also the most obedient. Notice that the end of her life 
was almost coincident with the beginning of that of St. Vin- 
cent de Paul, whose personal initiative was so great that 
princes and peasants, courts and armies and senates yielded to 
him as to an imperial master; and yet who seemed to be — and 
indeed in a sense really was — the gentlest and most yielding 
of human beings. To read but one side of the lives of these 
three great workers for God, Ignatius, Teresa, Vincent, one 
would behold what seemed the very petrifaction of submissive- 
ness; and yet the other side shows the successful planning and 
successful executing of vast undertakings under incredible diffi- 
culties, without the faintest lesion to the integrity of obedience. 
Nor can the closest investigation detect where obedience ends 
and personal decision begins in many of their greatest works. 

So St Teresa always thinks for herself and yet is never 
free from the sense of another's approval. One- half of her 
outward history tells of the great works of God she both 
originated and achieved; the other half is the narrative of her 
dealings, most submissive, with every grade of superior. The 
lesson is plain; it is that in religious affairs the perfection of 
individual force is found in an activity springing from interior 
guidance subject to external regulation, both equally divine. 
No zeal is God's gift, except it shows itself faithful to the inner 
light of His grace, and equally faithful to the outer rule of 
His discipline in Holy Church. 

One is at a loss to decide whether such virtues as courage 
and constancy are more plainly St. Teresa's characteristics than 
conformity to lawful authority. If her obedience is magnifi- 
cent, yet her fearlessness is often yet more magnificent. If a 
model of obedience, yet is she a living lesson that a life of 
perfection is not for the chicken-hearted. A saint is one who 
has been taught by God how to mingle energy with patience, 
initiative with obedience. 



Digitized by 



Google 



A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA. 

BY F. H. P. 

T visitors to Rome know something of the Cam- 

>agna, for they have presumably been out to 

Ubano or to Frascati, and have thus caught a 

[limpse of the great rolling waste which sur- 

ounds Rome on three sides. But few really 

know the Campagna, for although some chosen ones may have 

gone out a good distance on the Appian way, not many venture 

to take a real Campagna walk. And yet we dare to say that 

until they have done so they miss one of the greatest charms 

of Rome '' without the walls." 

We had felt fascinated by the Campagna from the few 
glimpses we caught from the train as we came down from 
Civitk Vecchia; the wild wastes spreading away towards the 
sea, the long lines of low hills, the arid expanses of sand, all 
seemed to tell of a land unlike any we had seen before, and 
we made up our minds that we would not leave Rome without 
taking at least one good walk away from metalled roads — we 
did not realize when we made this resolution that we should, 
in a sense, keep it without any difficulty, for there are no 
metalled roads in the true sense of the term in Rome or its 
neighborhood. 

We ventured to broach the subject of this walk one day, 
but were met with a whole string of objections. No one ever 
dreamed of doing such a mad thing I What on earth was the 
good of it? We should certainly be eaten up by the fearful 
Campagna dogs, of whom terrible tales were told us. One in- 
formant had even beard — though he was not inclined to believe 
it — that there were wild buffaloes to be met with in some por- 
tions of the Campagna I And, lastly, we were told that if we 
escaped all these terrors we should certainly fall into the hands 
of the Campagna shepherds, who were notorious bandits. To 
tell the truth these ** travelers' tales '' only had the effect of 
whetting our curiosity, and we were now determined to go on 
a voyage of discovery. The first proceeding was to buy a re- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA 64I 

liable map. And here, as so often in Rome, we drew a blank 
at the outset. We were shown by one of the biggest book- 
sellers in the city a poor map which took in hardly anything 
of the parts we most wanted to see, and when we demurred, 
and asked if there was nothing better, we were solemnly told 
that nothing else existed, that no one ever wanted to go into 
the Campagna, etc., etc. We were beginning to know some- 
thing of Roman ways, however, and proceeded to another 
shop. Herfe we found exactly what we wanted, a full and de- 
tailed map with brooks and watercourses, etc., marked, and to 
our huge joy we discovered written across a compartment of 
the Southern Campagna the words : ^* Procojo dei BufalV* So 
there actually were buffaloes there after all. 

A few days afterwards saw us on our way to the Trastevere 
Station. An attempt at Charing Cross in a wilderness is the 
only description we can give of this would-be magnificent en- 
terprise. It is a relic of the desire to make of Rome a mighty 
commercial city, and it lies there now as a solemn warning to 
posterity. We found that a train left in a short time for Fiumi- 
cino, a spot on the coast a little to the north of the mouth 
of the Tiber. We got into a third-class carriage and found 
ourselves in the company of sundry strangely-attired figures 
armed with long fowling pieces which looked for all the world 
as though they dated from the flood ; dogs and hair-knapsacks 
completed their kit, and we learnt that they were going down 
to the marshes to shoot wild- fowl. We ventured to make in- 
quiries about one of the fowling-pieces, and were not aston- 
ished to find that it had formerly belonged to one of Fio Nono's 
soldiers, and that it had seen service in Abyssinia ; and, added 
its possessor with an air of pride, it does shoot straight I 

The train, wonderful to relate, started punctually, and in 
an hour we were at our destination. Most of the sportsmen 
had got out at earlier stations on the way, but a few passengers 
still remained, they had come down from Rome to get a whiff 
of the sea. We walked along the quay, peeping into the 
church on our way. It looked for all the world as though it 
had been transplanted from Belgium, a thorough village church, 
with its gaudy shrines, its St. Antony, and its Madonna, be- 
decked with flowers, and its tinsel ornaments on the altars. 
Still it was ''the house of God," and perhaps the inhabitants 
thought it a work of art, though more probably they never 

VOL. XCI.-*4X 



Digitized by 



Google 



642 A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA [Aug., 

gave that point a thought, but looked upon their church as a 
place of prayer where they had been baptized, where they heard 
Mass, where they received the Sacraments, and whither they 
would one day be brought on their way to the cemetery. 

We wanted to make our way up the coast a little, so we 
went to the very edge where the tiny waves were breaking. 
This was the only place where the sand was solid enough to 
make walking possible; but when we were out of sight of the 
people on the shore near the village we took off our shoes and 
stockings and walked in the sea itself. It was a most delight- 
ful mode of progression, as the sea-beaten sand was firm and 
the water both cooled and hardened our feet. As we had a 
long walk before us this latter point was of importance. It 
was glorious, that view of the Mediterranean. The sea of the 
deepest blue, the sky to match; while a barque standing out 
to sea with all sail set, and a few small fishing smacks closer 
in, completed the picture. Meanwhile the sun grew hotter and 
we bethought ourselves of a swim. Truth to tell, the idea of 
a swim in March had never struck us, but when we noticed 
how warm the water was we felt it would be wrong to miss so 
golden an opportunity, and in we went. 

We emerged like giants refreshed and, after a short time 
spent in consuming part of our provisions, we turned inland. 
Here swamp succeeded swamp and our progress was propro* 
tionately slow. Huge locusts sprang from the bushes as we 
fought our way through the undergrowth ; butterflies were 
everywhere — they were presumably all hibernated specimens 
which were enjoying the sun. In the pools were countless 
frogs which plopped into the water with extraordinary agility, 
80 that for a long time we almost persuaded ourselves that 
they were lizards, though how these latter could survive the 
water we could not understand. At last, however, we caught 
a distinct view of a frog as it leapt from the bank into the 
water; it sank like a stone and there was no sign of its pres- 
ence save a few bubbles. These frogs seemed to be of a differ- 
ent species from any we had hitherto observed, they were striped 
all down the back and were extraordinarily agile, so that one 
had little or no chance of getting a clear view of them before 
they were in the water and hidden in the weeds at the bottom. 

It was hard work struggling across this sandy waste, as at 
every turn we were forced to retrace our steps in order to 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA 643 

avoid a swamp. Cattle tracks — the buffaloes' we hoped — were 
everywhere, but these beasts could go through swamps which 
were impassable to us. More than ooce we had to remove our 
shoes and stockings, and one member of the party, who wore 
boots, found this a serious inconvenience. At length we came 
to a road bordering one of the irrigation canals and we went 
along this for some way, as the swamps had thrown us out of 
our course considerably. On starting from the shore we had 
singled out a scar in the distant hills as a mark to be aimed at, 
and this was very necessary in a place where there was little 
hope of meeting a friendly native to tell us the way. We had 
no compass, but used our watches instead. There is a very 
useful trick which, as it may not be known to some, we men- 
tion here : if in default of a compass you take your watch and 
point the hour-hand to the sun, then half-way between the 
hour-hand and twelve marks the south — if it be before midday 
you must work forwards, if it be afternoon you must work back- 
wards. Thus, if it be 10 o'clock in the morning 1 1 on the dial 
will indicate the south; if, however, it be 4 o'clock 2 on the 
dial will point to the south. This simple device stood us in 
good stead during the long walk of that day. 

We had been much struck by the absence of bird life so 
far, but shortly after 12 o'clock we came to some ploughed 
land and here the birds were much in evidence. Kites sailed ma- 
jestically through the air, and the sunlight played marvelously on 
their wings, bringing out into clear relief the peculiar burnished 
brown which is so striking a feature of these birds. As they 
turned in the air the white wing-coverts shone and gleamed, 
while their forked tails served them as steering gear. It is 
always a treat to the bird-lover to watch a hawk on the wing, 
but the sight of a kite has in it something far more satisfying. 
He is so large, so graceful, his wings have such a spread, his 
tail is so large and so graceful, his huge circles in the air are 
so fascinating, and his varying colors as he wheels round are so 
wonderfully displayed, that one would far sooner watch one of 
these glorious birds than any hawk. On the ploughed land a 
bird of the wheat- ear species was very conspicuous. The 
patches of white made him easily visible and his habit of 
mounting on the rails of the neighboring fences, or on any 
hillock which suited him, made it easy to observe him even 
without the aid of the binocular. 



Digitized by 



Google 



644 A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA [Aug., 

We walked across the ploughed land to gain a good look 
at the huge Campagna oxen which were yoked to the plough 
and which moved in dignified ease as the share broke up the 
soil. What majestic creatures these oxen arel Nothing seems 
to disturb them; their mild eyes gaze at the stranger, their 
huge ears twitch with curiosity, but they move on unperturbed. 
The Campagna soil is heavy, and the roots of a bulbous plant 
spread everywhere and cause much difficulty to the plough. 
There were three ploughs at work in this part ; the furrow was 
fairly deep and the oxen had to pull hard, but they never 
looked as though they were really working, for their strength 
is enormous. They pull of course from the neck like all cat- 
tle, and not from the chest as do horses. 

There is hardly a more picturesque sight than that of these 
Campagna oxen pulling steadily at the plough. They are 
yoked in pairs, and here there were four pairs to each plough. 
When you stand behind the plough the four pairs of huge 
horns waving to-and*fro form a very curious picture. The 
marvel is that the cattle do not prod one another as they 
struggle with the plough ; but they never seem to do so. The 
cultivation of the Campagna is progressing rapidly, and it was 
good to see large portions of it being turned up by the plough. 
Its irrigation, too, is admirably carried out, and if only the 
inhabitants chose they could undoubtedly raise many fine 
crops here. 

We now struck further inland and the soil got firmer as 
we went. A glance at the map showed us that we had no 
hope of seeing the buffalo, for the spots marked ** Procojo dei 
BufalV* were much too far to the north and we had our work 
cut out for us to get back to Rome by 8 o'clock in the even- 
ing. Presently we came to a broad irrigation canal. Two gulls 
were busy feeding in it and we stalked them for some time in 
the hope of being able to determine to what species they be- 
longed, but they were too wily for us and fiew away before we 
could get near them. Meanwhile we had not lost sight of our 
landmark — the scar on the hillside; indeed, if we had not 
singled it out when starting we should certainly have got into 
difficulties long before. It stood out plain now, and we turned 
eastwards towards it We had noticed a long line of fences 
at a distance, and as our road lay in that direction we made 
for them in the hope that they marked a bridge which would 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA 645 

carry us over one of the innucnerable irrigation canals which 
intersect the country; we had had enough of taking off our 
shoes and stockings. 

As we approached the railing we saw dull, chocolate- 
brown figures moving about ; they were certainly cattle and at 
first we paid no attention to them. But suddenly one of them 
lifted its head and we ejaculated '' Buffaloes f Though far 
away from the district marked on the map, they were indeed 
a herd of buffaloes. As far as we could see the huge beasts 
were scattered over the plain ; they were feeding quietly enough 
and we went up to the double fence which at this point separ- 
ated them from the wild part of the Campagna whence we 
had come. As we leant against the fence the nearest beast 
got wind of us and lifted his ugly head and sniffed ! We felt 
safe where we were, but we realized that unless we wanted to 
go a very long way round we must make our way through 
the midst of the herd 1 

Right across the ground on which the buffalo were feed* 
ing there ran a narrow ditch full of water with a weak fence 
on either side sloping almost over the water. We noted that 
inside this fence there ran a narrow path near the water's 
edge. If we could gain that path we should not be so con- 
spicuous to the beasts feeding above us, and if one of them 
did take it into his head to charge we could at a pinch get 
into the water, though that was no inviting prospect, as it was 
very filthy and we had a long walk before us. We started 
down the fence-line and passed the first buffalo on our left 
without difficulty. The frogs kept plashing into the water as 
we went, and in the interest of trying to determine their 
species we almost forgot the beasts above us. After a while 
we came into close proximity with a buffalo to our windward. 
As we got within his range he lifted his hideous head and 
sniffed ominously. If he had charged we were done for, as 
there was nothing in the shape of shelter save the ditch in 
which we were, and this would probably have proved no ob- 
stacle to an angry buffalo. We held our breath, but steadily 
pursued our way, pretending not to notice his uneasiness. But 
our hearts leapt to our mouths when he seemed to make up 
his mind that we really were ''undesirables,'' and then made 
one rapid step forward. He stopped, however, as suddenly as 
he had moved forward, and, to our inexpressible relief, re- 



Digitized by 



Google 



646 A WALK Across the Campagna [Aug., 

sumed his grazing. We stole alongi edging away to our left 
so as not to annoy him by the smell of '' humans '' more than 
we could help. 

After a time we came in sight of a man with a dog. This 
reassured us, and we made towards them. The man seemed as- 
tonished to see us, and when we asked him in our poor Ital- 
ian whether the buffalo were dangerous he said: ''Yes; if I 
I were not with you.'' We thought at the time that this was 
an exaggeration, especially as we had now got beyond all the 
herd. But we felt rather uncomfortable when our new friend 
informed us that we could not go to the righti as we had in- 
tended, but must turn to the left and pass through another 
herd, for the land on the right was all swamp. We followed 
in his wake and he kept up a runnings fire of remarks, most 
oi which were unintelligible to us. We made out, however, 
that all the buffaloes within sight were cows — we had counted 
ninety of them — that the bulls were higher up, and that the 
calves were in a separate enclosure. Just at that moment we 
had to pass very close to four or five cows; they tossed up 
their heads and came menacingly towards us. It was an un- 
comfortable moment, as the ground on which we stood — though 
well enough for a mud-larking buffalo-^was too much of a 
quagmire for us to do more than pick our way with delibera- 
tion. However the guide poured out a rapid volley of exple- 
tives at them, and they did not come any nearer. 

For the next quarter of an hour we were occupied in sav- 
ing ourselves from a marshy death, but at the end of that 
time we found ourselves on solid ground. We thanked our 
guide and then asked him whether there was an osteria any- 
where within easy reach, as we were thirsty. To our delight 
he pointed to a little cottage near-by, and told us he would 
take us there and we would be well provided for. We went 
in and were shown upstairs into a little room where three 
young girls were seated with an old man— presumably their 
father. They brought out the wine at once, but were not at 
all satisfied when we refused a second glass. We tried to ex- 
plain that we had a long walk before us and dared not take 
too much. Neither would they accept any payment— indeed, 
they made us feel that we ought not to have offered it. 
While we were drinking our wine the men amused themselves 
by guessing our ages and we returned the compliment; we 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA 647 

found to our astonishment that our recent guide, who was 
agility itself, was over sixty- two years of age. We left them 
bowing and making expressions of gratitude for our visit. 
How spontaneous and natural is the hospitality of these rough 
and untutored natives of the Campagna! And yet some of 
them do not bear too good a character for honesty, and per- 
haps if one met them at a late hour of the night one might 
find oneself relieved of one's purse ! 

We now scrambled up on to the low- lying hills which 
separate the flat from the higher portion of the Campagna. 
It is remarkable how these two parts differ; the one is fiat, 
sandy, divided up by marshes, monotonous, and untenanted 
save by our friends, the buffaloes. The other is hilly, undu- 
lating, broken up into fertile valleys, and tenanted by herds 
of Campagna cattle, such as those we had seen engaged in 
ploughing, and by immense fiocks of sheep. Our way took us 
across a series of valleys which necessitated a constant mount- 
ing and descending of the alternate fianks. It was hard work, 
but interesting from its novelty. Later on in the day, at the 
top of one rise, we saw the dome of St. Peter's. It stood out 
in all its majesty even at that distance — it was twelve miles 
away. Indeed, so near did it seem that we almost began to 
doubt the map which indicated its true distance. We felt sure 
it could not be more than four miles awayl We were des- 
tined, however, to learn in the most practical way that it was 
fully twelve miles distant, for our weary feet, in spite of the 
sea*bath of the morning, were going to be very sore ere we 
got home that night. 

After some considerable walking we had come to a stream 
called the Galera. It was a fine mountain-stream which went 
brawling along, cutting a deep channel as it went and showing 
by its deeply indented banks that in flood-time it carried a 
large volume of water. We had to remove our shoes and 
stockings once more, but it was worth while, if only for the 
delightful coolness of the water which went gurgling round 
our legs and refreshed us much. It was shortly after this that 
we had our first view of the dome of St. Peter's and until 
nightfall it was always within sight. 

On the map a road is marked leading from a bridge across 
the Galera, but we had struck this river too high up to make 
it worth while to go down to the bridge and we had in con- 



Digitized by 



Google 



648 A WALK ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA [Aug. 

sequence missed the road. We were glad of this, however, as 
we immeasurably preferred the free walking over the rolling 
Campagna. All about were huge flocks of sheep and at one 
spot we had rather an unpleasant time. We had come across 
a ewe with a new born lamb. She courageously came towards 
«is, bleating as she did so, when suddenly there came a hoarse 
bark, and one of the dreaded Campagna dogs came bounding 
down the hillside at us. We had one stick — a formidable one 
it is true — and one of us had shortly before picked up a use- 
ful stone. The dog rushed up and we felt sure he would at- 
tack us. But, though he kept growling and showing a most 
unpleasant set of teeth, he made no more hostile demonstra- 
tion. Presently he trotted off and we began to breathe more 
freely and congratulate ourselves on the nerve we had shown. 
All of a sudden, however, he was back again and seemed 
in a more determinedly hostile mood than before. We walked 
stolidly on, pretending we were hardly conscious of his pres- 
ence, but all the same heartily desirous of his absence; at last 
his attentions became too wearisome and I stooped down to 
pick up an imaginary stone. It seemed rather a rash thing to 
do as he might have flown at us, but what was our astonish- 
ment when he at once took to his heels with his tail between 
his legs. We had been told that this would be the case, but 
had hardly credited it, as these dogs seem so fierce and are 
so very large that a mere stone would seem the most ineffec- 
tual weapon against them. However it was a relief to see his 
rapidly retreating form and we pursued our interrupted way 
in peace. 

After a time we came to a really beautiful stream which 
formed quite deep pools one above the other. The map in- 
formed us that it was the Maglianella. It offered the most 
tempting chance for another bath, but we could ill afford the 
time as it was getting dusk and we wanted to be well off the 
Camoagna by nightfall. We struck up towards the north, 

fore, and soon found ourselves on the Via Aurelia. From 

point we had a weary trudge of five miles into Rome, 
glad we were to sit down and remove our shoes our 

rs may well guess when we say that we had covered 

' miles. 



Digitized by 



Google 




AN EPISODE IN COSTA RICA. 

BY JOHN ARMSTRONG HERMAN. 

|HEY told me he was the oldest man on Irasu and 
that from his eyrie he looked down upon Car- 
tagOy the ancient capital of Costa Rica — a town 
founded in 1543 — and on the great valley which 
Nature has made an earthly paradise. 

My legal work was done. Certain dusty Spanish records 
had been read and translated. Certain colonial and post- 
colonial statutes had been considered as bearing upon an an- 
cient title. Now it was time to play. The fates decreed that 
the beginning of my sweet-do- nothing- time in the little repub- 
lic, northwest of Panama, would be a visit to the Old Man of 
the Mountain. 

Irasu I It is one of the beautiful mountains of the world. 
It has been terrible in its time, but it is slumbering now, 
slumbering ever since it destroyed a former Cartago in 1841. 

It was the morning of a September day when I turned my 
horse's head from the Hotel Cartago, where I had spent the 
night, towards Angulo's eyrie. If you are on pleasure or 
recreation bent in Costa Rica you go on horseback — Paseos a 
Caballo they call it. The carteras — cart roads — are not used 
for light vehicles, and men, women, and children walk or ride. 

It would be unnecessary in Cartago to say that the morn- 
ing was perfect. All mornings in Cartago are perfect in Sep- 
tember. It is the rainy season, which means the rain begins 
to fall at three o'clock in the afternoon — sometimes the rain- 
fall is torrential — and it stops about seven o'clock in the 
evening. At five thousand feet above the sea level the equa- 
torial sun is not oppressive, the trade winds play on Irasu's 
shoulders, the flora, in which Costa Rica is singularly rich, has 
been refreshed and reinvigorated by the downpour of the pre- 
vious afternoon, and the intense glare of the sun discovers to 
the eyes of the early equestrian thousands of raindrops on the 
tropical foliage, raindrops that glitter prismatically as they die. 

It is difficult to be moderate in a description of the scenery 



Digitized by 



Google 



6SO AN EPISODE IN COSTA RiCA [Aug., 

and tropical beauty of Costa Rica if the witcheries of Nature 
find echo in the blood. Long ago I had read Anthony 
TroUope's song of praise of this tropic Switzerland and its 
courteous denizens. Thomas F. Meagher, in 1859, closed a 
series of brilliant articles on Costa Rica with this invocation : 
''Oh, may that Providence, typified by the vast mountain 
Irasu which overshadows it, and which has long since quenched 
its fires and become a glory instead of a terror to the scene, 
protect Costa Rica to the end of time/' Elisee Reclus grows 
eloquent over the fertility of the soil and the salubrity of the 
climate, and Wilhelm Marr, in Riise Nach^ Central America^ 
published in Hamburg, generalizes somewhat extravagantly 
about Costa Rica in this vein: ''No one can imagine a coun- 
try more beautiful than this. This perfect climate does not 
permit the development of impassioned thoughts or turbulent 
passions. This air, this nature, are as balsam to the life over- 
whelmed with activity and pleasure.'* So that in his deep 
appreciation of this land of the sun the German author may 
not have been judicial. 

The summit of Irasu is about twelve thousand feet above 
the level of the sea, and therefore about seven thousand feet 
above Cartago, where I had spent the night. The crater of 
the mountain is almost directly north of Cartago, but for a 
mile or two the ascent is most gradual. My way first led 
past the station of the railroad and by a pretty little plaza 
where stands the statue of Don J&sus Jemenez, father of the 
President elect of Costa Rica. The statue was erected by 
public subscription and the inscription on the stone base of 
the statue informs the passerby that this honor was due Don 
J&sus Jem&nez, because he had been a good and faithful Pres- 
ident of the Republic. Beyond the plaza the road leads 
through the straggling suburbs of the town. Flowing water 
courses through open aqueducts in the streets of Cartago, and 
my way for a mile or so followed up one of the streams that 
hurries from Irasu to the ancient capital. In the suburbs the 
small adobe houses were frequently embowered in luxuriant, 
semi-tropical verdure, and in gardens, the ginger plant, the 
wormwood, the camomile, and other medicinal plants grew, 
and the mango, the aguacate, the lime, the orange, and other 
fruit trees were as grateful to the eye as their fruit is grate- 
ful to the palate. Costa Rica has few indigenous roses, but 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] An Episode in Costa Rica 6s i 

from the ends of the earth they have been brought here to 
bloom and flourish. But it is a land of almost perennial 
blossoms, and there are sixty varieties of humming birds that 
live on the nectar of Costa Rica's flowers. As I journeyed 
further into the country great shrubberies lined the road, and 
humming birds often flashed before me like a ray of green or 
blue or ruddy light, for they are of many hues. 

Let no man who has not some knowledge of the Spanish 
language try to travel the serpentine mountain roads of Costa 
Rica without a guide. Time and again it was necessary for 
me to appeal at cross-roads for information, and time and 
again it was most courteously given. A peon went to the 
trouble to trace with his fingers on the sand on the road a 
route map for me, and every one had a ** Buenos Diaz^ Cabals 
lero!* for the traveler from the Northland. Women were wash- 
ing clothes in the streams. Men and women were hurrying 
towards Cartago with fruits and vegetables, some on foot and 
some on horseback. Many of the people I passed were mestizos. 
Some were of pure Spanish blood and some of native race, 
but all alike seemed to know Angulo, and one informant told 
me of his altar to the Virgin, and of his vista of the rich, 
rain-drenched, and sunkissed valley of Guaco, and of Orosi 
farther southward. Orosi where streams are born and where 
the banana of the lowlands and the coffee and orange of the 
uplands flourish together. 

As I traveled farther away from Cartago the road became 
steeper, the last vestige of the suburbs disappeared, and I 
was in the country, a land of large estates. As we climbed 
higher and higher the sun shone more brilliantly and my 
patient little horse would stop now and then, ostensibly to 
take a long breath, but in reality to clip the grass or herbage 
by the wayside. The semi-tropical flora began to disappear 
and I was entering the zone of the Indian maize that was 
now in tassel. Then came pasture lands, where the great red 
cattle of Costa Rica were grazing on the hills — hills rising one 
ab3ve the other towards Irasu's crater — and then on a com- 
manding point I stopped. 

Cartago was below me now, its light and straw-colored 
houses flooded with tropical sunlight vividly outlined in its 
deep green setting. Further south were the Cerros de las 
Cruces (the Mountains of the Crosses), and at the south of the 



Digitized by 



Google 



6s 2 AN EPISODE IN COSTA RICA [Aug., 

Crosses, Orosi, and in the midst of Orosi, a white band. The 
white band was the turbulent beginning of the Reventazon, a 
river that is ever in head-long haste to reach the sea of the 
Antilles. Above me was the village of Tierra Blanca, eight 
thousand feet above the sea, for I was taking a round-about 
way to Angulo's — the longer the better, for the way was beau- 
tiful. The primitive forest in the great valley and on Irasu's 
shoulders had long ago disappeared and my view was un- 
obstructed, while white, lace-like clouds above me, now touch- 
ing the pasture lands here and now the corn tassels, were 
noiselessly flying along the mountain side, driven by the trade 
winds. There was elixer in the air and sunlight. Indescribable 
color — hues opalescent, green, olive — bathed the distant Moun- 
tains of the Crosses. So Santiago, my pony, and I, crossed 
another hurrying stream and won ever steeper hills outlined 
by ever deeper glens, until we came to the straggling village 
of Tierra Blanca. 

It is a hamlet of a simple life, a very Arcadia where spring 
is almost perennial and, for all that Santiago and I might know, 
eternal. The houses were lost in foliage. The peach tree and 
the quince tree blossom and bear fruit at this altitude and I 
recognized in the gardens the tuber that has helped to solve 
the starch problem, and other vegetables of the temperate zone. 
The natives call the climate ftio (cold) and saledoso (healthful), 
so after all there was a good scientific reason why there should 
be an Old Man of the Mountain. The children scurried away 
from the man of the Northland. With the exception of the 
tourist who once in a while visits the crater of Irasu, people 
of the North are seldom seen in the village, and the unknown 
is sometimes viewed with suspicion. I had lingered long at 
outlooks from coigns of vantage on my way and it was ap- 
proaching noon. From men and women came the same 
'' Buenos Bias, Senor^** with a glance at the sun, for after mid- 
day the expression changes as it does in English- speaking 
lands. It was difficult to believe that the village had five hun- 
dred inhabitants, as is claimed. The houses were scattered and 
lost amidst the orchards and dense shrubberies and the site of 
the town is a jumble of great hills and deep glens. As I 
traversed the village I was ever discovering houses where I 
had least expected to see them — now hid in a glen, now lost 
in an orchard. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] An Episode in Costa Rica 653 

The home of the nonagenarian was a thousand feet below 
Tierra Blanca, and was on the direct road between Tierra 
Blanca and Cartago. It was a more traveled highway than the 
route I had taken to Tierra Blanca. People were returning 
from Cartago and people were going to Cartago. Patient^ 
poverfuly and obedient oxen were struggling up the hills with 
heavy loads. Other oxen with as great travail were holding 
back heavily laden carts on the down grade. The trade winds 
were fresh and brisk at this altitude, the humming birds less 
frequent, the racing brooks more garrulous, and the view ex- 
tensive and magnificent. Dark clouds were beginning to gather 
over the distant Mountains of the Crosses and over the crater 
of Irasu. People on foot and people on horseback, good- 
natured and smiling, added a human interest to the scene. 
My horse was going down hill now and homewards, and it 
seemed but a short time after I left Tierra Blanca when we 
arrived at the broad open doorway of Pastor Angulo's home. 

His was a modest home. A small abobe house sheltered 
the patriarch. The estate was a small one and near the house 
a brook — there are brooks and brooks during the rainy sea- 
son on Irasu — rushed headlong away. The front of the house 
faced the valley and the roof extended an unusual width be- 
yond the front of the house. The residence stood near the 
highway, and as I rode into the front yard my horse, knowing 
the customs of the country better than I did, trotted towards 
the broad open doorway and stopped only when his head was 
within the doorway. Almost before I was aware of it, my lit- 
tle horse was inspecting the interior. As I apologized Angulo 
answered that the sheltering roof was for the protection of 
horse and man from the mid-day tropical sun and I was in- 
vited to enter. 

So I alighted and walked into a good sized room, where I 
saw a large man sitting in a massive chair by an altar to the 
Virgin. He would hear of no apology from me for invading 
the sanctity of his home. 

" I am glad " {nu gusta mucho) " to see you," he said in 
Spanish, and motioned to me to draw a chair beside him and 
sit down. He told me it was his {fllmuerzo) breakfast time and 
invited me to join him. All in the polite Spanish language. 
Then it was that I saw that my host's lower limbs were help- 
less, for he made no attempt to rise from the chair in which 



Digitized by 



Google 



654 ^N EPISODE IN COSTA RiCA [Aug., 

he sat, nor did he rise or attempt to stand upright daring the 
hour I was by his side. His widowed daughter, and his grand- 
children, one of eight years, and the other of twelre years of 
age, brought us tortillas, warm milk, coffee, and eggs. While 
we ate I answered many questions about the great republic of 
the North and its cities and its intense activity, so different 
from the quiet life on the breast of slumbering Irasu. In the 
midst of breakfast Angulo's middle-aged sons came in from the 
field where they had been at work, and the [questions were 
multiplied, the] little Spanish girls mustering courage to ask 
about the boys and girls of the visitor's land so far away. 

As I tried to satisfy my questioners, I was lost in wonder 
because of the altar to the Virgin. It occupied the entire 
side of the room opposite to the entrance and was to my left 
as I sat at table. It was carefully if crudely constructed. In 
the centre stood the image of the Virgin, the head of the 
image almost touching the ceiling. Artificial flowers, Ave 
Marias in golden letters, the creed in artistic letters, and elabo- 
rately illustrated commandments of God, adorned and beauti- 
fied the altar. Some ef the objects were attached to the 
altar by nails and others were supported on elaborate brack- 
ets. There were illustrations in color of the sacraments of the 
Sacred Mother Church (Sacra Madre Iglesia). It was a richly 
embellished altar — not rich in the usual sense, but rich in its 
many adornments that told of the reverent work of Pastor 
Angulo or of the reverent work of loving hands for him. 
Nothing in that modest home was half so fine. In its wealth 
of ornamentation the altar stood alone. 

To my right I looked down through the broad doorway 
upon Cartago where I could distinctly see the Church of La 
Sefiora de las Angelos, Orosi the land of cascades, the Moun- 
tains of the Crosses; all wondrously beautiful — a seeming 
paradise. Angulo read my thoughts. He spoke in the Span- 
ish language a thought which might be translated with these 
words : 

'^The view of the valley gives me a picture of an earthly 
paradise, and when I turn to my. altar through it and beyond 
it I have a view of the celestial Paradise. Should I not be a 
happy man ? '* 

As I was about to frame an answer the two middle-aged 
bachelor sons arose to go out again to work on the mountain 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] An Episode in Costa Rica 655 

side, aod one of the little granddaughters rushed in with a 
handful of blossoms for the man from the Northland. It was 
very plain to me why her grandfather was so cheery and 
happy. He had dutiful sons, a filial daughter, gracious and 
sweet grandchildren, and profound faith in a happy future. 
So that the deepening twilight of a long, long life was roseate 
and joyous. 

But the time had come to go and the visitor tried to ex- 
press in proper phrase his gratitude and appreciation for the 
kindness he had received. How could I thank the little Se- 
fiorita for her blossoms? A happy thought came to me. I 
had in my card-case a tiny starred and striped flag. Momen- 
tarily I had forgotten that a hotly contested election had just 
been held in this distant land and did not understand the child 
when she stepped back without accepting my gift A slight 
cloud passed over Angulo's face. 

"Take it Rosililla. The gentleman means it in all kind- 
ness," he said. 

" And is it not true, Sefior, that your country will send an 
army to take our cities?'' she asked. 

I could have given many negative answers to a grown-up 
person, but to a child it was different. So I told the little 
girl that in my land there was room for untold millions of 
people. That we only wished her peaceful land prosperity, 
and that it had made me happy to see the little boys and 
girls of Costa Rica love and worship the beautiful striped 
Costa Rtcan flag as deeply as the boys and girls in the far- 
away land loved and*worshiped the stars and stripes. 

In that hospitable environment an hour had fled. Then 
they brought Santiago, who had breakfasted too. As I left I 
saw Angulo touch his forehead, lips, and breast with his fin- 
ger tips, while he made the sign of the Cross each time— and 
repeated words that were an appeal that he might think no 
evil thoughts, speak no evil words, and do no evil deeds. I 
distinctly heard the Spanish words: males pensamientos^ malas 
palabras^ and malas obras. 

I felt sure that he thought no evil thoughts, spoke no evil 
words, and did no evil deeds. 

As I rode away the little Sefiorita's words ** Hasta la vista^^ 
(come again) were ringing in my ears. 

During that hour's rest in the abode of the Old Man of 



Digitized by 



Google 



6S6 AN EPISODE IN COSTA BlCA [Aug. 

the Mountain Nature had wrought a stupendous transformation 
scene on the towering peak of Irasu. How Nature dwarfs the 
mimic transformation scenes of the theatre's stage I Instead of 
the white, lace-like shreds of clouds, that at great intervals 
had been racing across the crater and breast of Irasu, dense, 
black, impenetrable clouds thousands of feet in depth now 
mantled the mighty crest, almost extending to Tierra Blanca, 
a thousand feet above me. Southward, far across the valley» 
I had seen from Angulo's doorway the marshaling clouds 
growing in great throngs over the Mountains of the Crosses, 
until the clouds were an ebon mass, illuminated now and then 
by the far-away lightning's glow — but Irasu's summit to the 
north had been invisible. 

Already from the summit of the Cerros de las Cruces, and 
from the summit of Irasu, Thor, fabled ruler of the world of 
mists, was sending out clouds in companies, battalions, and 
regiments towards the valley, and I knew that in an hour or 
two the plain, now drenched in sunlight, would be drenched 
in rain. 

I had often wondered at the precision and clock-like cer- 
tainty of the downpour every afternoon, and often watched 
the gradual and sure effacement of the deep blue tropical sky 
that canopied the valley of Guato by the approaching mists — 
and now it would be repeated. But I knew there was ample 
time to reach the inn at Cartago. 

So Santiago had his way, as he nibbled grass here and a 
young twig there, as we came down the mountain side, while 
the shadows of a whole division of clouds began to blot out 
the sunlight. It was almost three o'clock when we passed 
again the plaza where stands the statue of Don Jisus Jem^nez 
in Cartago. 

The first great drops of rain dashed themselves into liquid 
fragments on the hard stone floor of the patio of the hotel, as 
I sought the shelter of my room. An hour before I reached 
the inn, Tierra Blanca and the eyrie of Angulo had been en- 
gulfed in a trade-wind driven flow of seething clouds. 



Digitized by 



Google 




AMERICAN HISTORY IN ROMAN ARCHIVES. 

BY CARL RUSSELL FISH.* 

^HEN I informed people in Rome that I had come 
there upon a mission to search for materials for 
American history, I was met nearly always with 
a smile of polite incredulity, from which they 
recovered with the illuminating suggestion that I 
might possibly find something on Columbus. As a matter of 
fact, there is probably nothing on Columbus that was not made 
public at the time of the four- hundredth anniversary celebra- 
tion ; while the American material grows increasingly abundant 
and important the more nearly we approach our own times. 

The most interesting material for the sixteenth century is 
found in the Nunciature, or collections of the diplomatic corre- 
spondence of the Holy See. These collections were once widely 
dispersed, as they were held to be the private property of the 
successive Secretaries of State, and were by them incorporated 
in their family archives. The more important, however, have 
now been brought together in the Vatican; and while there 
are still some collections unsecured, and gaps which no known 
collection can fill, their bulk is so enormous that it will resist 
publication and even calendaring for very many years to come. 
From this correspondence, particularly that with Spain, one 
gets an unequalled view of the great struggle of that century 
for the control of the Atlantic ocean. The Roman court was 
in the centre of the diplomatic situation, and tentacles of in* 
terest ran out to every seafight and every colonizing plan 
of English Protestants or French Huguenots. This interest was 
not confined to a desire to keep au courant with the news. 
The Spanish kings soon convinced the Holy See that extra- 
ordinary efforts were necessary to defend their vast and scat- 
tered empire, and received permission to levy special taxes on 
ecclesiastics for that purpose. Any student of American history 

* Research-Associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1908-1909, appointed to 
examine Italian archives. ^ 

VOU XCI.^42 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



6s8 American History in Roman Archives [Aug., 

might spend a few months profitably in reading these letters 
and news sheets, even if he had no direct object in view, and 
although the direct references to America form but a small pro- 
portion of the whole. 

This same material supplies, moreover, a great part of what 
little we find at Rome on the history of the Church in Amer^ 
ica during this period. The original bull of Alexander VI., 
granting the Western Hemisphere to Ferdinand and Isabella, 
gave them, also, most unusual ecclesiastical privileges. Not 
only the ordinary patronage, but the whole direction of mis- 
sionary enterprise, and the creation of an ecclesiastical system, 
was left in their hands and those of their successors. These 
privileges were strictly insisted upon by the Spanish govern- 
ment, and therefore, instead of close and intimate accounts of 
the Spanish explorations, the life of the Indians, and the strug* 
gles of the early fathers, we have chiefly the negotiations be- 
tween the Spanish government, and the nuncio at Madrid, who 
was always striving and always failing to secure for the Church 
a closer supervision over its new branches. Through these, in- 
directly, one occasionally gets a glimpse of things in America. 

After the first third of the seventeenth century the Nuncia^ 
iure decline in interest for the American student. The news 
sheets contain even more about America, but their items are 
not so unique. The general diplomatic correspondence becomes 
less vital, as the centre of European conflict shifts from Spain to 
France, which was much less closely bound to the Holy See. 
The correspondence of the nuncios relating to missions, more- 
over, ceased to be carried on with the department of state, but 
was now done with the Propaganda. 

The Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda was founded 
in 1622 to secure a more effective control of missionary enter- 
prise. Its powers extended to every part where there were 
unconverted to be brought into the Church, but were more ex* 
tensive in some regions than in others, and were particularly 
wide in America. From the first it was active and business- 
like; its archives were the best kept in Rome, and they con- 
tain the bulk of the material for American history there, from 
the date of its foundation to the present time. 

The first use to be made of these records should be to study 
the general organization and methods employed. The Propa- 
ganda was not, of course, primarily a missionary agency, but 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] AMERICAN HISTORY IN ROMAN ARCHIVES 659 

was intended to supervise the various organizations engaged in 
that work, to harmonize their efforts, and to keep them in touch 
with the Holy See. Its policy of making its license necessary 
to missionaries, and of granting to them and to bishops outside 
of Europe, facolth or special powers, for limited periods with 
the necessity of renewal, gave it control of all new missions and 
gradually tightened its hold on the older ones. Its direction of 
missionary education served the same end, and finally, by mak- 
ing itself the medium of appeals to Rome, it came into contact 
with the lay populations of America and many other parts of 
the world. 

Under these new conditions it was natural that still further 
American material flowed into the papal archives. Even from 
Spanish America came accounts of explorations, including one 
particularly valuable narrative of the occupation of New Mexico 
by Father Bonavides. The relations of the early English set- 
tlements came mostly at second hand from the Blessed Father 
Stock, and are more interesting than accurate. The news of 
their success, reaching him in somewhat exaggerated form, 
moved him to suggest, in 163 1, that the Church itself under- 
take the foundation of a colony of Italians. The reports of 
the French explorations came promptly, and were promptly 
acted on, missionary undertakings being authorized in Louisi- 
ana as early as 1684. These accounts are fairly full, and may 
prove, on careful examination, to contain much material not 
previously known to historians. 

The social and even economic problems of America began 
to find reflection in these archives even from the beginning. 
One of the reasons for the desire to extend the influence of 
the Holy See in America had been the hope of improving the 
condition of the Indians, physically as well as spiritually, and 
Propaganda was actively concerned in this matter. The ques- 
tion of negro slavery began to attract its attention about 1660, 
and problems arising out of it recur constantly, including 
those produced by the abolitionist zeal of certain mission- 
aries in Cuba. There are some interesting documents on the 
slave trade, particularly concerning concessions made by the 
Spanish government to the Dutch. The difficulties and methods 
of ocean travel, the routes of transportation, and the whole 
question of communication between Europe and America are 
splendidly illustrated. Certain financial documents show direct- 



Digitized by 



Google 



66o AMERICAN HISTORY IN ROMAN ARCHIVES [Aug., 

ly, aad the many requests from Canada for a diminution in the 
number of feast days, indirectly, the poverty and the stress of 
the frontier communities. Questions regarding matrimony were 
largely left in the hands of the bishops, but those that did 
come to Rome were the more complex and important From 
the French West India islands, where there was only a vicar- 
apostolic with facolta less extensive than those of a bishop, 
came petitions for judgments or graces on a wider range of 
subjects. 

Many documents of the seventeenth century deal with the 
attempts of Propaganda to reform the Spanish American 
Church. During the long period of its growth, in the absence 
of central control, there had developed many practices bad in 
themselves and many deviations from the customs of the 
Church. These included simony, the pursuit of trade by ec- 
clesiastics, disorders, and misunderstandings of all kinds be- 
tween bishops and regulars, and laxity in the enforcement of 
the rules of monastic orders. The discussion and settlement 
of these difficulties involved much diplomacy and the accumu- 
lation of voluminous reports, but this great bulk of material 
touches only the portions of the United States once held by 
Spain, and those only here and there, as they formed such a 
small proportion of the Spanish empire. By the eighteenth 
century a modus vivendi had been reached, and these subjects 
received much less attention. 

A subject of the most general interest is that of the rela- 
tions of the Church with the various civil governments in 
America. As has been already indicated, Propaganda was 
able to deal more effectually with Spain than had the State 
department before its foundation; in part because of the in- 
creasing needs of Spain for the defence of America. The total 
extent of its progress, however, fell far short of its desires. 
The Spanish American Church remained practically a branch 
of the Spanish government, and communication was chiefly 
through the nuncio at Madrid. Complaints of the violation 
of ecclesiastical immunity were frequent. When the time came 
for the formation of a bishopric in Canada, profit was taken 
of the experience of the past, and it was made directly sub- 
ject to the Holy See, and not a part of the French ecclesias- 
tical system; although the patronage was granted to the king. 
On the discussions over this question, covering many years, 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] American History in Roman Archives 66i 

and on the controversies with the archbishop of Rouen, who 
claimed jurisdiction, there is a great amount of inedited ma- 
terial; while its settlement, being favorable to the Holy See, 
meant that from the beginning the communication between the 
Church in Canada and Rome was constant and intimate. 

The greater portion of the documents illustrating the rela- 
tions between Rome and the missions in English North America 
have been printed by Father Thomas Hughes, in his History 
of the Society oj Jesus in North America. Intercourse was slight 
and indirect; a local superior reporting very infrequently 
through the vicar-apostolic of London, who himself corre- 
sponded through the mediation of the nuncio at Brussels. The 
more important records, through the first half of the eigh- 
teenth century, are those in the archives of the Society of 
Jesus itself. 

The numerous changes of territorial jurisdiction were 
promptly adjusted by the Holy See, which acted on the prin- 
ciple of recognizing governmental boundaries. Even the sug- 
gestion that certain nearby West India islands, belonging to 
separate powers, be united for missionary purposes, was dis- 
carded. The conquest of Canada, transferring so large an area 
to the rule of a government with which the Holy See was not 
in relations, called for the formation of a special congregation 
to consider it, but the case was really a simple one, as the 
territory constituted an independent bishopric, which continued 
its close connection by means of an agent at Paris. While 
much is known of this episode, the documents at the Propa- 
ganda must be examined before its history can be said to be 
complete. 

The war of the American Revolution brought more novel 
problems. There were few precedents for the adjustment of 
the Church organization in independent non- European coun- 
tries, and none at all in a country where government refused 
in any way to interest itself in ecclesiastical concerns. The 
matter was most carefully considered during 1784; the cor- 
respondence included letters of Propaganda, several written 
under the direction of Pius VI., the nuncio at Paris, Dn 
Franklin, Count Vergennes, Count Luzerne, and M. Marbois, 
the French representatives in America, several American ec- 
clesiastics, and many others. The plan of transferring the 
American Catholics from the direction of the vicar- general of 



Digitized by 



Google 



662 American History in Roman Archives [Aug., 

London, to that of some French prelate, was abandoned for 
that of leaving out all intervening links and bringing them, 
like the Catholics of Canada, directly into contact with the 
administration at Rome. There are but few documents on the 
foundation of the bishopric of Baltimore, because that was only 
the expected outcome of the decision of 1784. This material 
has been used by J. G. Shea in his Life and Times of the 
Most Rev. John Carroll^ and the greater part of it will prob- 
ably be printed in the American Historical Review during the 
year. 

The effect of this settlement was, as in the case of Canada, 
the immediate strengthening of the bonds between the new 
diocese and Rome, and the material from this date forward is 
sufficient to give a most intimate history of the development 
and expansion of the Church in America. One series of prob- 
lems was occasioned by the gradual acquisition of Spanish 
territory by the United States. None of these became serious, 
owing to the continued policy of the Holy See of recognizing 
all official changes of jurisdiction and the immediate inclusion 
of the newly added territories in the ecclesiastical system of 
the United States. More important were the difficulties that 
arose from the fact that Catholic organizations in the English 
colonies had been so little accustomed to interference, and, 
while no such bad conditions had developed as in Spanish 
America, there was some divergence of custom and an un- 
willingness to submit to control. The readjustment was de- 
ferred owing to the confusion of the Napoleonic rigime^ and 
took place chiefly in the period from 18 15 to 1830. The 
material on this subject is voluminous and interesting. One 
question was that of the proper vesting of church property. 
Difficulties arising out of this and allied questions brought 
about the occasional necessity of diplomatic activity, and, in 
the absence of a papal representative in the United States, 
the Sardinian officials acted for the Papacy. During the ad- 
ministration of John Quincy Adams, the interference of the 
United States government was sought, and some letters ex- 
changed and interviews held with American representatives 
abroad. While this intercourse is interesting, what is more 
significant is its slight character as compared with that be- 
tween the Church and Government in Canada. As the archives 
are closed to investigation for the period after about 1830, it 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] American History in Roman Archives 663 

is impossible as yet to make a thorough study of the later 
beginnings of actual diplomatic negotiations between the Papal 
and the United States, and the agitation for the establishment 
of a nunciatura in the latter country. 

One of the methods by which it was sought to bring about 
closer relations was by education. More than half the ma- 
terial relating to the negotiations of 1784 was concerned with 
that subject. The willingness of Louis XVI. to provide the 
funds for the support of American students at Bordeaux was 
doubtless due in part to the hope the French government held 
that France might take the place of England as the metropo- 
lis of the United States ; but their education there was more 
effective toward the unity of the Church than in furthering 
the plans of the French Government. At the same time pro- 
vision was made for two American youths at the Collegia 
Ufhano at Rome, and a small subsidy was granted Mgr. Car- 
roll for educational work in America. The gradual increase in 
the number of seminaries, schools, and colleges in the United 
States is recorded, and the view of educational expansion, 
while not always detailed, is comprehensive. The archives of 
the American College at Rome, founded in 1859 by Pius 
IX., are extensive; but they, and those of Propaganda re- 
lating to it, fall after the period to which general access is. 
allowed. 

A subject lying but just outside United States history, is 
that of the relations of the new Spanish American republics 
with the Church. The material for these negotiations is very 
full, and offers a most tempting field for any student of Spanish 
American history, or of the policy of the Holy See. 

Supplementary material is to be found in many other 
Roman collections. The offices of the various congregations 
other than Propaganda do not contain much, since the latter 
exercised most of their functions for America ; but occasionally 
difficult questions were referred to those of the Holy Office or 
of Bishops and Regulars. The archives of the Spanish em- 
bassy, which are quite complete from the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, contain much on routine matters, and on such 
subjects as the formation of new dioceses. Particularly inter- 
esting are the negotiations, about 1795, for the formation of a 
separate bishopric for Florida and New Orleans, which must 



Digitized by 



Google 



664 American History in Roman Archives [Aug., 

be taken in connection with the Spanish policy of strength- 
ening its hold on these territories neighboring to the United 
States. The Archivio Nagionali includes many Papal records, 
seized at the time ot the Italian occupation. These belonged 
mostly to the Canura^ and are consequently of a financial 
character, but such material often supplies, under skillful hand- 
ling, important facts, and the series Libri ohligationum pro 
serviUis and Libri resignationum contain, regularly, American 
items. Nearly all the national libraries, occupying as they do 
the rooms, and retaining the library collections, manuscript as 
well as printed, of the various monastic orders, have some few 
unique items of Americana, but these are scattered, and, ex- 
cept those of the Fundo Gesuitico of the Biblioteca Vittorio^ 
Emanuele^ are mostly unimportant. The various collections 
gathered from time to time into the Biblioteca Vaticana, con- 
tain similar material, and its bulk and importance probably 
somewhat exceed that in all the national libraries taken to- 
gether. 

The government seizures after 1870 did not include the 
archives of the monastic orders with their libraries; but these 
archives have suffered much more than the central archives of 
the Papacy from the alarms and excursions of the last hun- 
dred years. The central Roman monastic archives never con- 
tained as much relating to America as those of certain prov- 
inces of Spain and France; except, perhaps, in the case of 
the Society of Jesus. The most important class of material is 
that of reports of the procurators of provinces. Probably the 
collection containing the most of interest to the American 
student is that of the Franciscans, which is at the present 
time being carefully ordered. The Dominican archives also 
contain a great deal of American material, as do those of the 
Recollets. The material in the English College at Rome has 
been used by Father Hughes in his History of the Society of 
Jesus. 

One class of material remains to be mentioned, and that 
the most fundamental; the regular series recording the official 
action of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. These are 
in, or in connection with, the Archivio Vaticano. The consis- 
torial records are for the most part merely formal, noting the 
creation of dioceses, and the conferring of ecclesiastical digoi- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] AMERICAN HISTORY IN ROMAN ARCHIVES 665 

ties. They should Include also the brief summaries of condi- 
tionsy which were prepared and furnished the cardinals before 
the meeting of the consistory as a basis for their action, but 
many of these have been lost. These records are fundamental 
in determining the chronology of the various dioceses, and 
have been used for their American material by St. Ehses in 
his Grundung von Bisthumem in Amerika in the Romische 
Quartalschrift for 1892, and by the American Catholic His- 
torical Society, for its volumes IX and X. Neither of these 
researches extended as late as the foundation of the bishopric 
of Quebec, and consequently they relate only to Spanish 
America. 

The bulls relating to America for the fifteenth and the 
greater part of the sixteenth century are registered in the 
Regesta Vaticana. As these are not arranged geographically, 
nor even with perfect chronological accuracy, it will require 
great patience and the labor of many scholars for many years, 
to discover all those relating to America. Nor are all bulls 
registered, particularly for the second half of the sixteenth 
century. A complete [examination would, however, doubtless, 
taring to light many — the qriginals of which have been lost — and 
probably the first requisite for a complete history of the Church 
in America is a comprehensive bullarium. The Regesta Lattr^ 
anensis^ so called because it was formally kept at the Lateran, 
extends into the nineteenth century, and is continued by other 
series to the present day. This is a register of bulls, most- 
ly of a formal character, as, for example, those granting bish* 
oprics. It is a question whether this might not serve as a 
better basis for a chronology of the American hierarchy, than 
the consistorial archives, but its contents would scarcely repay 
publication complete;- calendaring would be sufficient, and 
should be comparatively simple, as the series is more easily 
handled than the Regesta Vaticana. Beginning towards the 
end of the sixteenth century, and up to the present time, bulls 
on subjects of a less routine character have been registered 
with the secretary of briefs, and are to be found in the 
imnense collection recently removed from his office to the 
Afchivio Vaticano. These thousands of volumes are practically 
without arrangement, except that their contents are ordered 
with fair chronological accuracy, and the labor of examination 



Digitized by 



Google 



666 AMERICAN HISTORY IN ROMAN ARCHIVES [Aag.» 

is enormous. Their contents, however, continuing the material 
in the Regesta Vdticana, is so important, and the amount per- 
tinent to America increasing with the growth of the Church 
here, so large as a whole, that they cannot be permanently 
neglected. 

Throughout the modern period a very great proportion of 
the most important decisions of the Holy See have found ex- 
pression not in bulls but in briefs. The registers of these 
were at first less carefully preserved than those of the bulls, 
bat they are, if any difference of value exists, the more neces- 
sary for the historian, at least from the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century. These volumes consist of minutes rather than 
registers. The earliest are preserved in the Arckivio Segreto^ 
the original collection around which the Atchivio Vaticano has 
grown up. They have suffered much from the hand of time, 
many have completely disappeared, and no one seems to know 
just what exist and what do not. They contain a sprinkling 
of American material, and their condition should perhaps be 
taken as an incentive to use them while one may. There is, 
in addition, a series of Lateran briefs, containing answers to 
petitions on many different subjects. Included in this series 
are the fee books, with the record of payments made for the 
briefs registered. The American items are few because the 
facoltk of the bishops included the power to grant most of the 
requests here included; they are, however, numerous in the 
case, already noted, of the French West India islands, where 
there was no bishop. The most important collection of briefs 
is that transferred, with the bulls, from the office of the secre- 
tary of briefs. This again is rather a file than a register, al- 
though the material is arranged in volumes. It contains nearly 
always the original petition, sometimes in the handwriting of 
the suppliant and sometimes as put in shape by a procurator. 
This is endorsed in such a way as to show its history, note 
being made of reference to some official or congregation, and 
finally with the sanction : " /// mus annuit^*^ often accompanied 
by some restriction, as **Juxta decretal* or "^0 solitis restric- 
tidn.^* Finally there is the minute of the brief which was 
drawn up to execute the decision. 

Americans have not yet done their share in making useful 
to the world these vast collections thrown open so wisely and 



Digitized by 



Qoo^'^ 



I9IO.] American History in Roman archives 667 

so graciottslx bjr Leo XIII. While nearly all the governments 
of Europe are represented officially or semi-officially, and all 
the great orders of the Church, the serious workers from the 
United States, from the opening in 1880, might be counted 
on the fingers of one hand. The occasional ecclesiastic, pointed 
out as American, is usually from Mexico or Peru. It was 
perhaps proper that the first and hardest work, that of break- 
ing into the material, should have been done by those who 
had more to find, but it certainly seems that there should be 
no further delay. It is to be hoped that we may profit from 
the experience of the pioneers, and particularly that our 
scholars may waste less time through lack of a plan of cam- 
paign and of co-operation than have those of Europe. Cer* 
tain large and comprehensive operations should be carried out 
first, in order that local or particular studies may afterward 
be made without overlapping, and without incompleteness due 
to failure to exhaust the material. The greatest contributions 
will, of course, be to the history of the Church, but if the 
treatment of this be only broad enough, it will shed needed 
light on all the other branches of our history. 



Digitized by 



Google 



SEBASTIAN WESTCOTT 
{1524.^1583). 

BY W. H. GRATTAN FLOOD, Mus.D. 

NOTWITHSTANDING the great and deserved fame 
of the music school of St. Paul's Cathedral^ Lon- 
don« in the sixteenth century, there is very lit* 
tie of detail handed down regarding it by any 
of the historians of English music. Even in the 
interesting monograph on the ''Cathedral Organists of Great 
Britain/' by Mr. John E. West, there is a lacuna in the list of 
organists of St Paul's from 1547 to 1583. Mr. West merely 
gives the date of John Redford's resignation as 1547 and he 
then gives the name of William Mulliner with a query, followed 
by that of Thomas Gyles in 1583. 

The really remarkable feature of what may well be termed 
a conspiracy of silence on the part of our English musical his- 
torians in regard to the organist of St. Paul's Cathedral from 
1553 to 1583 is that the position was held during these thirty 
eventful years by a Catholic — not a nominal adherent of the 
ancient faith, but a staunch recusant who suffered imprisonment 
on two occasions for his resistance to the Protestant innova- 
tions, and yet who was permitted by Queen Elizabeth to retain 
his appointment. This man was Sebastian Westcott, who has 
up to the present received but scant notice even from Catholic 
writers. His name is not to be found in Grove's monumental 
Dictionary of Music and Musicians^ edited by Fuller Maitland ; 
nor in Dr. Ernest Walker's recently published History of Music 
in England; nor yet in the Dictionary of National Biography ; 
and therefore no apology is needed for rescuing his name from 
undeserved oblivion. 

Of Westcott's birth and early training we have scant par- 
ticulars, save that he was born in 1524, but it is more than 
probable that he was a chorister of St. Paul's under John Red* 
ford, who was organist, almoner, and master of the boys from 
149 1 to 1547— a supposition which would sufficiently account 
for his great gifts as a choir^trainer and playwright. Indeed, 



Digitized by 



Google 



>s 1910.] Sebastian Westcott 669 

it is in the latter capacity that we meet with the first mention 
of ''Master Sebastian"— for by this name was Westcott gen- 
erally known, even in official records. This was on the eve of 
Queen Mary's coronation, in .1553, on which auspicious occa- 
sion, as Stowe, the chronicler, tells us, the choristers of St 
Paul's took part in a pageant, and also ''played on viols and 
sang/' 

Here it is apropos to mention that the choristers of St. 
Paul's Cathedral, as far back as the year 1378, presented a pe- 
tition to King Richard II. to protect their plays and pageants, 
which had cost much money and which were being interfered 
with "by ignorant and unexperienced persons " performing the 
same. Under Henry VII., as Warton writes, moralities, inter* 
ludes» and pageants had reached a very high level, and one of 
these with music is still preserved, namely, A New Interlude and 
a Mery^ of the Nature of the IIIj. Elements, by John Rastall, 
the friend and relative of Blessed Thomas More— remarkable as 
being the earliest known specimen of English dramatic music. 

It would not be assuming too much to identify Westcott 
with one of the boys who had been "impressed" at the same 
time as Thomas Tusser as a chorister of St. Paul's. From Tus- 
ser's Hundredth Pointes of Husbandry, the first edition of which 
was published in 1557, we learn of the then prevalent custom 
of impressing boys and men for the choir of St. Paul's. Tus- 
ser thus praises his master, John Redford : 

"Thence for my voice I must (no choice) 
Away of force, like posting horse, 
For sundrie men had placards then 
Such child to take. 
By friendship's lot to Paul's I got. 
So found I grace a certain space 
Still to remaine 

With Redford there, the like nowhere 
For cunning such and vertue much 
By whom some part of music's art 
So did I gaine." 

Certainly Tusser— who was born in 1525 — was impressed by 
John Redford about the year 1538, whence he proceeded to 
Eton College under Nicholas Udall. And it is well to observe 



Digitized by 



Google 



670 SEBASTIAN WESTCOTT [Attg.» 

that these impressed boys were very well treated, and to them, 
after the breaking of their voices, every opportunity was given 
for advancement Redford was, for the long period of fifty- six 
years, organist and choirmaster of St. Paurs, and to his lot fell 
the production of numerous pageants and masks, in addition 
to the performances by his boys at Christmas, Shrovetide, etc. 
Dean Colet, in his statutes for the government of St. Paul's 
School, made a provision that the scholars ''shall every Chil- 
dermas day come to Paul's Church and hear the child-bishop 
sermon, and after to be at the High Mass, and each of them 
offer a penny to the child> bishop, and with them the masters 
and surveyors of the school." This provision refers to the cus* 
tom of the Boy- Bishop, which celebration was forbidden by a 
statute of Henry VIII. in 1542, but restored by Queen Mary. 
A favorite pageant at this period was that of the *' Nine Wor- 
thies,'' of which mention is made in the Coventry pageant of 
the year 1455, on the occasion of the visit of the Queen of 
Henry VI. The last pageant in which Redlord was engaged 
was for the procession of King Edward VI., on February 19, 
I547f previous to his coronation. Redford's successor, William 
Mulliner, had a short term of office, as owing to the Puritan 
spirit in 1551, under William May, Dean of St. Paul's, the 
organ was silenced in the Cathedral of London. 

With the advent of Queen Mary came the natural reaction 
from Puritanism. John Hey wood devised a beautiful pageant 
for the coronation, and he himself made the Queen an oration 
in Latin. On this occasion, too, when Sebastian Westcott ap- 
peared for the first time with his choristers, Richard Beard, 
vicar of St. Mary •hill, wrote a ''godly psalm," the opening 
chaplet of which ran: 

** A godly psalm of Mary queen, which brought us comfort all 
Thro' God Whom we of duty praise, that gave her foes a 
fall." 

When Queen Mary made her triumphal entry into London, 
** the Lords, surrounded by the shouting multitude," as Froude 
writes, ** walked in state to St. Paul's, when the choir again 
sang a 7> Deum^ and the unused organ rolled out once more 
its mighty volume of sound."* On St. Catherine's Day (No- 

* A TV Deum was also sung in St. Paul's on February 9, 1554, the day after the suppres. 
slon of Wyatt*s rebellion. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] SEBASTIAN WESTCOTT 67 1 

▼ember 25, 1553)1 Bishop Bonner formally restored the old form 
of worship at St Paurs* and Rev. John Howman de Fecken- 
ham, O.S B.; was appointed Dean. A few weeks later the 
banned custom of the Boy- Bishop on the Feast of Holy Inno- 
cents was again observed, and one of Wcstcott's boys distin- 
guished himself as the " childe-bishop.'' 

On the first Sunday of Advent, 1554, Cardinal Pole was 
present at St. Paul's, Dr. Feckenham presiding as Dean, Bishop 
Gardiner being the preacher. Sebastian Westcott provided a 
grand Latin service for the occasion, and it is likely that the 
beautiful motet : Te spectant Reginalds Poli^ was sung in honor 
of the Papal Legate. Certain it is that Orlando di Lasso, 
who composed this motet for Cardinal Pole, was in England 
at this time and was doubtless presents to hear it sung. This 
visit to England of the great Netherland composer is various- 
ly given by his biographers as ''before 1554" and as ''about 
1554"; but inasmuch as Cardinal Pole did not land at Dover 
until November 20, accompanied by di Lasso, the date is nar- 
rowed very considerably. The verses to which di Lasso set 
music are as follows: 

"Te spectant Reginalde Poll, tibi sidera rident, 
Exultant montes, personat Oceanus, 
Anglia dum plaudit quod faustos excutis ignes 
Eliciis et lachrimas ex adamante suo.'' 

No doubt di Lasso, during the Advent season of 1554, 
must have met Tallis, Bowyer, Hey wood, Shepherd, Edwards, 
Farrant, Byrd, White, Forrest, Wayte, Westcott, and other 
well-known English Catholic musicians, but his stay in Eng* 
land lasted only a few weeks, as we find him back in Ant- 
werp in February, 1555. It is only pertinent to add that this 
motet was published at Antwerp in 1556, being included in 
his First Book of Motets, containing twelve numbers for five 
voices and five numbers for six voices. Perhaps it is also as 
well to mention that one of di Lasso's songs " Monsieur Mingo,'' 
concluding " God Bacchus do me right," etc., is quoted by 
Shakespeare in his Henry IV. (Pt. IL v. 3). 

For the Feasts of St. Nicholas and of Holy Innocents, 
I555f the Boy*Bishop ceremony was carried out with un- 
wonted splendor, and Strype tells us that "the child-bishop. 



Digitized by 



Google 



672 Sebastian Westcott [Aug., 

of Pauleys Church, with his company/' were admitted into the 
Queen*8 privy chamber, where he sang before her on St. Nicholas* 
Day and upon Holy Innocent^s Day. The lyric which was 
sung by one of Sebastian Westcott*s boys was written by Hugh 
Rhodes, a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and set to music 
by the organist of St. Paul's. 

On November 21, 1556, John Feckenham, D.D., O.S.B., 
Dean of St. Paul's,^ was formally installed as Abbot of West- 
minster, and was succeeded by Dr. Henry Cole. The usual 
Christmas festivities were carried on by the children of St. 
Paul's, and Strype tells us that the child-bishop ''on St. 
Nicholas even went abroad in most parts of London, singing 
after the old fashion, and had as much good cheer as ever 
was wont to be had before." Strype is also our authority for 
the great May Day revels of the year 1557, when the ''Nine 
Worthies " was revived, with Morris dancing and other amuse- 
ments. 

During the Christmas holidays of 1556-7, Queen Mary 
paid a visit to the Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield, when a play 
was performed by the children of St. Paul's, under the direc- 
tion of Sebastian Westcott. We read that the Princess — then 
in custody oi Sir Thomas Pope — was particularly pleased with 
the choristers, and "on the next day she sent for one Maxi- 
milian Poynes, who had taken a part, and made him sing to 
her while she played at the virginals." Incidentally we may 
observe that the Princess Elizabeth's detention was not unduly 
severe, and we may also observe that both Queen Mary and 
Elizabeth were most accomplished musicians, especially excell- 
ing on the virginals. It is also well to remove a popular de* 
lusion to the effect that the virginals was so called from the 
"Virgin" Qaeea, whereas, as a matter of fact, the instrument 
was in use in England in 1499, under Henry VII. 

Queen Mary in the last year of her life kept up her prac- 
tice on the virginal, and under date of April 10, 1558, we find 
a warrant in the Lord Chamberlain's accounts, directing John 
Green " coffer- maker " to be given "as much green velvet as 
will suffice for the covering of one pair of virginals, and as 
much green satin as shall serve to line the same, with pas- 
samayne lace of silver for the garnishing and edging of the 
same." 

•Feckenham was made D.D. at Oxford University in May, 1556. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] Sebastian Westcott 671 

At the accession of Queen Elizabeth, in Novemberi 155^1 
no changes in religion were made for the greater part of fi 
year, and, of course, Sebastian Westcott was continued at St 
Paurs, as also was Richard Bowyer as master of the song pf 
the Chapel Royal. 

However, no sooner was the Act of Uniformity passed than 
a general visitation was instituted. Accordingly, on August 
ii» I559» as Machyn writes in his diary, ''the visitors sat at 
Paurs,'' in regard to the Harpsfields and others. Strype tells 
us that though all the members of the Chapter of St. Paul's 
Cathedral were cited, ''very few appeared,*' and so the absent 
ones were regarded as contumacious. John and Nicholas 
Harpsfield and John Willefton refused to subscribe to the 
Articles of Enquiry and the Injunctions. So also did the 
organist, Sebastian Westcott. The new subscribers were then 
bound over till the 12th of October following. The adjourned 
visitation took place on November 3, and Westcott, remain* 
ing firm, was, with the majority of the Chapter, deprived.^ 
The Dean, Dr. Henry Cole, was sent to the Tower on May 
29, 1560. 

It is well known that the musical services of the Chapel 
Royal were of the very highest artistic order, and it is also a 
matter of common notoriety that the gentlemen of the Chapel 
were left undisturbed in their religious views during the reigns 
of Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. But it is 
not so well known that an avowed Roman Catholic was per- 
mitted by Elizabeth to continue as organist, almoner, and 
master of the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral, even though 
presented and deprived on two different occasions. The real 
truth is that Queen Elizabeth was undoubtedly food of music, 
and she even sacrificed her religious views in regard to any of 
her musicians for the sake of musical art, an instance of which 
may be cited in the case of John Bolt, who afterwards became 
a secular priest. 

Mr. R. R. Terry, organist of Westminster Cathedral, thus 
writes: "Elizabeth was not the woman to suffer any diminu- 
tion of splendor in any musicians appertaining to the Court. 
She was quite determined that the magnificence of the Chapel 
Royal services, so long the wonder and admiration of Europe, 

* Bishop Bonner, of London, was deprived in May, 1560. 
VOL. XCI.— 43 



Digitized by 



Google 



t>74 Sebastian westcott [Aug., 

sliould not be denuded of their ancient splendor at the bidding 
of reforming prelates. On the contrary, she maintained as 
ornate ceremonies as were consistent with the new form of 
worship, and not merely did she retain the services of all her 
musicians (knowing them to be Catholics), but also created 
new posts for others, such as Tallis and Byrd, although she 
could have been under no illusion as to their religious opin- 
ions. This protection extended to Catholic musicians by 
Elizabeth is a curious historical fact, but it is eminently 
characteristic of the woman.'* 

Yet, though sentence of deprivation was given, Westcott 
was permitted by Elizabeth to continue in office. Dom Birt, 
O.S.B., in his scholarly book. The Elizabethan Religious Set' 
tlement, gives by far the best account yet published of the 
actual state of religion in England in the years 1559-60, and, 
in his notice of the visitation of St. Paul's mentions Westcott's 
deprivation. He does not, however, allude to the fact that 
this worthy musician was allowed to retain his post, and 
therefore it is well to insist on what may otherwise seem in- 
explicable, especially as the Bishop of London (Bonner) and 
the Dean of St. Paul's (Cole) had been, as we have seen, sent 
to the Tower. The proof lies in the contemporary description 
of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Nonsuch, at the close of the 
year 1559, when Lord Arundel entertained her right royally. 
In this contemporary document we read that one of the fea- 
tures of the pageants was ''a play by the children of Paul's, 
and their master Sebastyan, after which a costly banquet, ac- 
companied with drums and flutes." 

But some reader may object that, though Westcott was in 
office in 1559, where is the proof that he continued so in the 
years 1 560-1 ? Fortunately we are enabled to answer this 
objection, and to place here on record the proofs from con- 
temporary sources, not alone as to Westcott's retention in 
office for these years, but as to his continuance in same to 
the year 1583 — and this in spite of the fact of his well-known 
obstinacy in his religious views. 

Under date of Christmas, 1560, there is an entry in the 
Accounts of the Revels^ which relates to the payment of the 
sum of £6 lis 4d to Sebastyan Westcott, ''master of the chil- 
dren of Paul's," for plays presented before the Queen's Maj- 
esty, or, to quote the exact wording, ''for playing before her 



Digitized by 



Google 



. I9IO.] SEBASTIAN WESTCOTT 675 

Grace.'' Be it added, too, that music largely entered into 
these performances by the choristers of St. Paul's and we know 
that in "Gorbuduc," or ''Ferriaand Porrex" (1561), there was 
music in each of the five acts* namely violins, cornets, flutes, 
hautboys, and drums. Again, in the tragic comedy of ''King 
Cambyses" music is introduced at the banquet: 

"• • • they be at hand, sir, with stick and fiddle, 
They can play a new dance called Hey- diddle- diddle, ^^ 

For the proof of the statement that the subject of this 
memoir was still organist and choirmaster of St. Paul's in 1561, 
and this without abating his religious convictions one jot, or 
compromising his orthodoxy, we may appositely quote an in- 
teresting paragraph contained in the Report* presented to 
Cardinal Morone by the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Sander, in May, 
1561 : "Sebastian, organist of St. Paul's, London, was willing 
to be deprived, but, being a favorite with Queen Elizabeth, he 
was allowed to retain his appointment in that church without 
doing anything schistnaticaV^ 

From the Acts of the Ptivy Council we learn that Westcott 
received annual sums of £6 13^ ^d for the years 1561, 1562, 
and 1563, for plays performed by his choristers for the delecta-^ 
tion of Queen Bess. Apparently his enemies became active in 
1563, for in August of that year, as appears from a letter to 
Lord Robert Dudley, quoted in Grindal, Master Sebastian was 
again deprived ''for refusing the Communion and upon sus- 
picion of adherring to Popish principles." Dom Birt, O.S.B., 
seems to imagine that the sentence of deprivation really took 
effect, and that Westcott lost his position at this time. He 
thus writes : " Every effort was made to induce him to conform, 
but in vain; and finally he suffered deprivation in 1562* He 
was master of the choir at St. Paul's; hence his influence 
amongst the choristers had to be counteracted or removed ^ This 
inference by Dom Birt is opposed to facts, for the Revels 
Accounts for the year 1564 shows a payment to Sebastian 
Westcott, "master of the children of Paul's," of the usual 
sum of £6 lis ^d "for a play presented by him before the 
Queen's Majesty" at Christmas, 1564, which sum was paid on 
January 18, 1564-5. Less than two months later, on March 9, 

♦ Vat. Archivi. Arm., Ixiv. a8, flf. 252-274. 



Digitized by 



Google 



6j6t SEBASTIAN WESTCOTT [Aug., 

9 similar sum was paid him for the performance of a play on 
Candlemas Day. 

It is, therefore, absolutely certj^in that Master Sebastian 
continued in favor with Queen Elizabeth even after the second 
sentence of deprivation, and notwithstanding his known re* 
fusal to conform. In the Revels Account^ foi* 1568-9 we 
meet with the customary payment of £t i^s ^d to Wcstcott 
for a play presented by hiip ** before her Highness '* on New 
Year's Da^, 1568-9. Three years later, on the Fea$t of Holy 
Innocents (December 28), 1571, he produced the play of 
'' Iphigen." Again^ on the feast of St. John the Evangelist 
(Pccember 27), 1574, the children of St. Paul's, under Westcott, 
produced a play entitled '' Alkmeon." Not long afterwards be 
presented a Mask for which a payipent is entered of twenty- 
^ix shillings, being amount given to the featbermakcr for ''a 
coat, hat, and buskins all cpvered with feathers of colors for 
Vanity in Sibastian*s play.** Another entry, on February i, 
1574-5, accounts fof two shillings for *' skins to fur the hoods 
iff Sebastian's play "; and a further sum of two shillings for 
** making of two sarcenet hoods for citizens in the san^e pUy/' 
Incidentally it may here be mentioned tb^t Archdeacon Nich- 
plas Harpsfield died on Decefnbe|r 18, 1575, outliving Bishop 
Bonner by six years. Abbot Feckenham was committed to 
(he care of Bishop Cox, of Ely, on July 28, 1577, and Arch- 
deacon John Harpsfield to that of Bishop Cowper, of Lincoln. 

On New Year's Day, at night, 1576-7, Westcott presented 
a play called the '' History of Error " at Hampton Court. On 
the following Shrove Tuesday night he presented the '' History 
of Titus and Gisippus" at Whitehall. 

In the early summer of 1577 religious persecution broke 
(^ut afresh, and Blessed Cuthbert Mayne (arrested on June 8) 
vras n^ar^yr^d on Noyeinber 29, 1577. Two months later Blessed 
John Nelson and Blessed Thomas Sherwood gained the mar- 
tyr's crown, and a rjgprous treatinent of Catholics was orflered 
all over the country. Of course. Bishop Aylmer, of London, 
was only too glad of the opportunity to exercise greater se- 
verity against Catholics, and so, in November, 1577, he re- 
turned Sebastian Westcott, ''master of the children of Paul's 
Church," as a recusant. Dom Birt tells us that at this period 
Master Sebastian" lived in London, doubtless under the pro* 
tection of Lord Dudley," and that he resided '' under the shadow 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Sebastian Westcott 677 

of his old home in St. Gregory s^ by PauVs^* and strangely enough 
assumes that he was then finally deprived. In this return, 
now in the Public Record Office/ Juliana, the wife of William 
Byrd» the famous English composer, is also included. 

It may be as well to state that Westcott Was not living, as 
Dom Birt puts it, ''under the shadow of his old home, in St. 
Gregory's," but he was actually livitig in his old bom<^, whete 
he had been in continual residence as almoner and master of 
the choristers since the year 1553. Nor yet did he suffer de- 
privation finally in November, 1577, for, according to another 
document in the Public Record Office, he was at liberty in 
March, 1578, and still retaining his post at St. Paulas. How- 
ever, there is a very important fact to be chronicled, namely, 
the imprisonment of Master Sebastian, as a confessor of the 
Faith. Aylmer, no doiibt with a view of currying favor, had 
Westcott arrested and sent a prisori6r to the Marsbalsea on 
December 21, 1577. In th6 ''List of Prisoners for Ecclesias- 
tical Causes '' we read as follows : " Sebsistiati Westcott sent ita 
by commandment from the honorable Lords of the Council 
for Papistry, 21 December, 1577, and was discharged by my 
said Lords of the Council the 19th day of March, 15^7 tiS?^].*' 

No doubt Qaeen Elizabeth herself interfered for the en- 
largement of such an old and valued musician and choir train^t, 
and it is beyond question that Master Sebastian retained bis 
post. In the Revels Accounts for 15 78-1 5 79 there is aii 
entry under date of January i, i 5 78-9, in which three and 
sixpence is charged *' for carriage of a frame ioi Master Se* 
bastian to the court." A further entry gives us the informa- 
tion that Westcott and the children of St. Paul's performed a 
Morality entitled "The Marriage of Mind and Measure," at 
Richmond, on the Sunday after New Year's Day. 

From the Records of Christ^s Hospital, London, we obtain 
a valuable reference to the sturdy Catholic organist of St. 
Paul's at this period. Under date of March 5, 1579-80, we 
read that "Mr. Sebastian of Paul's'* was giveh Halloway, the 
younger, from Christ's Hospital, "to be one of the choristers 
of St. Paul's Cathedral." This entry refers to thfe privilege 
accorded to the masters of the children of St. Paul's (slnd ex- 
ercised for over a century) of impressing choir boys and men 
front other establishments — a privilege also atllk:hed to the 

♦p. R. O. Dom. Elix., cxviii., November, 1577. 



Digitized by 



Google 



678 SEBASTIAN WESTCOTT [Aag. 

mastership of the song in the Chapel Royal. It is worthy of 
note that William Byrd was organist of the Chapel Royal at 
this time, although he was well* known to be a Catholic. I 
have previously alluded to the fact that Byrd's wife, Juliana 
Birley, had been presented as a Catholic recusant in November, 
1577, but she was again presented on June 28, 1581, on Jan- 
uary 19 and April 2, 15821 and in several succeeding years. 

The last reference I can find regarding this staunch Cath- 
olic musician is in 1582, a year memorable for fierce persecu- 
tion against Catholics, resulting in the martyrdom of Blessed 
John Payne (April 2), Blessed Thomas Ford, Blessed John 
Short, and Blessed Robert Johnson (May 28), Blessed William 
Filey, Blessed Luke Kirby, Blessed Lawrence Johnson, and 
Blessed Thomas Cottane (May 30), Blessed William Lacey and 
Blessed Richard Kirkman (August 22), and Blessed James 
Thompson (November 28). Fearful of danger, two eminent 
Catholic singers from the Chapel Royal, Nicholas Morgan and 
.Richard Morris, fled to the Continent. This is confirmed in a 
letter written by Cardinal Allen to Father Agazzari, in July, 
1582: ''Two notable musicians, married men, have escaped 
from the Queen*s Chapel, who are said to be going to Rome 
to exercise their art and gain a living by it, and by this the 
Queen is said to be incredibly displeased. One is named 
Morris, who easily excels all the musicians of this church and 
and place, and he says that another is at Rouen on his way 
to us, a colleague in the Queen's Chapel, who is far superior 
to him/' Yet Thomas Tallis, organist of the Chapel Royal, 
though a Catholic, held his post, and we know that some others 
of the gentlemen were certainly of the ancient faith. 

In regard to Westcott, his name disappears from the Revels 
Accounts for the year 1583, and we can fairly conclude that 
he either resigned, or died, about that time. Unfortunately, 
the Acts of the Privy Council for the years 1583 and 1584 
are missing, but inasmuch as Thomas Gyles was organist of 
St Paul's in 1583-4 our conjecture cannot be very far astray. 
Moreover, the extraordinary severity of the laws against Cath- 
olics in 1583 led to a reduction of the members in St. Paul's 
Cathedral, and will also account for the resignation of West- 
cott, for we find Queen Elizabeth issuing a warrant to Thomas 
Gyles, in 1585, to impress boys and men for the service in 
the choir. 



Digitized by 



Google 



flew Kooks* 

In what might be called ''essays 
PSTCH0L06T. in applied psychology/' Professor 

Munsterberg is continually en- 
deavoring to correlate the conclusions of his own proper sci- 
ence with the needs that different classes of people daily ex- 
perience. So, having spoken to the lawyer, and the doctor, be 
now addresses himself to the teacher, his aim being to sum 
up in the present volume* all the enlightenment that modern 
education may hope to receive from modern psychology. 

Premising correctly that the first fundamental question 
must be: What shall the teacher aim to achieve? the author 
devotes himself to the larger inquiry: What are the supreme 
purposes of human life? This question is then considered, 
rather ponderously, in the course of the first, or ethical, part 
of the volume, and answered by the affirmation that life must 
be devoted to the upbuilding of the absolute values, truth and 
beauty, love and peace, progress and justice, morality and re- 
ligion. 

Among the most interesting chapters of the second, or 
psychological, part, is that which outlines the recent develop- 
ment of psychological science, and describes, modestly enough, 
the beginnings of educational psychology. The chapter o9 
*' Mind and Brain " leaves one a little uncertain as to the pre 
cise character of the freedom postulated for the will, ''which 
cannot demand a break in the causal chain.'' The chapters on 
" Memory," " Association," and " Attention," and, in fact, all 
of the second part, will be especially instructive and sugges- 
tive to the general reader. 

The third part of the book considers in what way the school 
may be best used to fit the child for the purposes of life, and 
contains a number of well-grounded criticisms looking to the 
improvement of the existing educational system in Apierica. 
It is interesting to read that "there is no school and no 
teacher who can afford to teach without implanting in the 
young souls a religious and philosophical loaging." 

The book might be compressed with advantage, but, as it 
stands, will be useful to discriminating readers. 

« Psyckoloiy and tki Ttackir, By Hugo Miinsteiberg. New York and London : D. 
Appleton & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



68o NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

Father Benson's latest book, A 

A WINNOWING. Winnowing • is absolutely out of 

By Robert H. Benson. the ordinary. As usual with the 

author, it is ileith^r the characters 
nor the plot, but rather the idea that makes the story. This 
time the idea, as in The Conventionalists ^ is that of the re- 
ligious life, the need of its existence, the true nature of its 
purpose, and the insistence of its call. By a miracle of Divine 
Providence Jack Weston, the young squire of a good English 
estate, is brought back to life a few moments after his actual 
death. The puzzled doctors later pronounce it a case of sus- 
pended animation, but Jack knows that he actually died, and 
those few moments showed him the reality of it all— of judg- 
ment* heaven, and hell. On his recovery he decides to change 
his life. His desire is to become a monk, on condition that 
his young wife, Mary, will consent to enter a convent. This 
arrangement Mary very naturally rejects, but promises not to 
oppose any other plans her husband may form. 

The latter, therefore, contents himself with giving up his 
beloved sports, with practising pious exercises, and with build- 
ing on his upper lawn a convent for some Carmelite nuns exiled 
from France. By the example of these nuns, by the silent 
force of their characters, Mary Weston comes by slow and 
painful degrees to a realization of her own call to the religious 
life in fulfillment of a vow which she made at Jack's deathbed, 
and which she has since been trying to interpret more lenient- 
ly. But when at last she tells her husband of her readiness 
to become a nun, leaving him free to follow his plan of enter- 
ing a monastery, it is only to learn that while her ardor has 
increased. Jack's has gradually declined. He renounces his 
'' pious folly " in disgust, and goes off to South Africa to play in a 
cricket- match, and Mary's life seems to resume its former tenor. 
In less than a month, however, a telegram from South 
Africa announces her husband's death, and two years later 
Mary takes her final vows in the Carmelite convent. The 
almost uncanny mixture of the real with the exalted and super- 
natural, the everyday occurrences seen by flashes of the 
'Might invisible," make the story altogether unusual. It is 
thought-compelling and has many meanings ; and is a book to 
be remembered. 

♦ A Winncwmg. By Robert Hugh Benson. St. Louis : B. Herder. 

Digitized by LjOOQIC 



igio,] New BOOKS 681 

A good book of sermons is a book 

SERMONS FOR THE for the millions^ even though it 
CHRISTIAN YEAR. never is read by an unclerical 

reader. It sweetens the springs of 
holy teaching. It is a book of a universal kind, for from head 
to members of the parish organism it informs all minds, the 
one or two leaders being inspired by it and the rest instructed 
by that inspiration. 

The writer and preacher of these sermons,* Dom Wilfrid 
Wallace, O.S.B., was a type of the best kind of preachers 
He was a scholar, an author, a professor, and a pastor of souls] 
The latter half of his life was spent under the vows of the 
Benedictine Order, the first having been devoted to the pursuit 
of sacred learning and parish duties. 

The sermons are all comparatively short. There are two 
for each Sunday in the year, devoted to the explanation of 
the Gospel lessons. They are working seimons, pointedly ap- 
plicable to the needs of dally life, sympathetic with human 
sorrows, stimuUtive of hoi>^ and joy no lesd than of penance 
for sin. 

They are devout in spirit, useful, practical, abounding in 
scenes and descriptions, with a wise choice of Scripture quota- 
tions, and the solid substance of Catholic doctrinal instruction. 

If there is little pretension to the flowery adorhments of 
style, there are yet frequent appeals to the deeper religious 
emotions. Every ennobling sentiment of religion, both natural 
and supernatural, \t aroused. Though this be done in the 
quiet-minded way of Englishmen, with the self- poise of a grave 
character, the teaching force is all the better concentrated. 

These three volumes, we trust, will be procured by zealous 
pastors everywhere, serving, as they do, to enforce Pius X/s 
urgent injunctions for good preaching. 

Those who laughed over the esca* 

THE BI06RAPHT OP A BOY. pades of Binks in The Memoirs of 

By Josephine D. Bacon. a Baby, will be glad to welcome 

this new volume f which recounts 
his later adventures. Again Binks is at war with modern 

• Sermons for the Christian Year. By the laic Dom Wilfrid Wallace, O.S.B. With a 
preface by Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B. 3 vols. St. Louis : B. Herder, 
t The Biogrttphf of a Boy, By Josephine Daskam Bacon. New York : Harper & Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



682 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

scientific methods of education, and persists in growing up 
after a delightfully irregular fashion of his own. He scorns 
the paper birdcages of his kindergarten, and, bent on ''block- 
ing Froebers game," he surreptitiously learns to read under 
the tutelage of the hired man. 

Poor Sinks is next encouraged to devote himself to the 
domestic animals, which sounds well in theory, but has its 
drawbacks, as when he imitates his canine friends too realisti- 
cally in his mothor's drawing-room. Funniest of all is bis 
violent interest in Christian Science, which leads him to rub 
poison ivy in his cheeks as a ''test"; next day, under his 
laudanum bandages, he reluctantly decides to abandon the 
" Science " and to try common sense instead. 

The succeeding phases of Bink's development are described 
with an irresistible humor, and the story will probably be even 
more popular than its predecessor. 

This work of Rev. R. H. Maiden 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. on Foreign Missions^ is, in the 

By Maiden. main, a brief history of Christian 

missionary endeavors from the be- 
ginning. The concluding chapters estimate methods and re- 
sults and suggest ways of arousing interest at home in the 
foreign field, but the work is largely historical. The author 
makes no claim to be a grefit authority on the subject. He 
wishes to narrate main facts and stir up interest. What im- 
presses one first of all is the fact that the bulk of this work, 
although written by an Anglican clergyman, deals with Cath* 
olic missions. After readiag it, one is still more impressed 
by his evident sympathy with our missionary endeavors, and 
his desire to be fair. At times he reflects prevalent Protestant 
opinion, as in his estimate of the Jesuits — Macaulay's praise 
and censure watered down. At times, also, the Author in- 
terjects a little criticism of Roman methods and beliefs; but 
one feels that in his adverse criticism there is no malice. He 
pleads for the reunion of Christendom; and we may say that 
the spirit of fair play and of sympathy which he shows always 
goes a long way towards promoting an end so devoutly to be 
wished. 

* Foreign Missions: Biing a Study of Some Principles and Methods in the Expansion 
of the Christian Church, By R, H. Maiden. M.A. New York : Longmans. Green & Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] New BOOKS 683 

This recent work of Mr. Brownell/ 

AMERICAN PROSE is an important contribution to 

MASTERS. American literary criticism. The 

By W. C. Brownell. authors whom he discusses are 

Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Pee, 
Lowell, and Henry James. Each author is treated at length, 
and under various aspects, the very titles of which reveal Mr. 
Browneirs power of analysis. But he has more than the 
power of analysis, though that is one of the chief requisites 
for the critic. He has read widely in various literatures, and 
has his standards for comparison. He keeps, too, in touch 
with reality, and refuses to pay his worship to mere form, as 
a characteristic judgment will show : '' The truth is, it is idle 
to endeavor to make a great writer of Poe, because, whatever 
his merits as a literary artist, his writings lack the elements 
not only of great, but of real literature. They lack substance. 
Literature is more than an art. . . . Shakespeare, for ex- 
ample, is neither exclusively nor supremely an artist." 

The thirty days of June are de- 
MEDITATIOnS FOR JUNE, voted to the worship of divine 

love, as exhibited in the Heart of 
Jesus and its throbs o\ pity for sinners. To feed this devotion 
there are many books of prayers and meditations, some of 
singular merit, others a shade too sentimental, as may be af- 
firmed of a large number of the hymns published with the same 
purpose. But sifting out these faulty contributions, we yet have 
a prayerful literature of the Sacred Heart of solid worth. 

A recent publication f forms no inconsiderable addition to 
the permanent books of praise and prayer for this widespread 
devotion. The book is small enough, and therefore portable; 
the print very plain, the style clear and concise. The spirit 
which inspires the writer recalls that of Fenelon. One is every- 
where forcibly arrested and taught. The tone without being 
unpleasantly imperative is yet compelling. 

One feature that is worthy of special commendation is the 
choice of Scripture quotations and the arrangement of them 
in reference to the meditations, each day's allotment being 

*Amirican Prose Masters, By W. C. Brownell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 
t Meditations jor Each Day oj the Month of June, Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 
Translated and adapted from the Italian byCharles Santley. New York : Benxiger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



684 NEW BOOKS [Atig,, 

headed by several passages, admirably adapted to inspire ap- 
propriate thoughts. It occurs to us that this little Tolume 
might well serve for the manual of the yearly retreat of de* 
Tout clients of our Redeemer's loving Heart None of the 
principal topics of a Christian's reflections upon life and death, 
time and eternity, God and His Christ, are omitted. 

This life* of the African Btila- 
STANLET. Matari (Breaker of Rocks) i^ of 

absorbing interest. It is edited by 
Lady Stanley, inasmuch as Sir Henry died before completing 
his task. Bat the whole work is from Stanley's pen, exce^it 
some twenty pages written by his wife, or by others, in appre- 
ciiltion of Stanley's work. Stanley had brought his autobiog- 
raphy down to the year 1862. The account of that portion of 
his life forms Part I. of the Autobiography. The second and 
larger division, Part II., is the section edited by Lady Stanley, 
and is made up of shorter and longer extracts from Stanley's 
unpublished diaries, lectures, and letters. These are united by 
paragraphs or, sometimes, by a few pages from Lady Stanley's 
pen, so that the whole presents a connected lif^ of the Welsh- 
man, John Rowlands, or Henry M. Stanley, as he afterwards 
was called. 

In Part L Stanley gives a reflex picture of his early life at 
the Workhouse of St. Asaph; of his escape from it; of his 
shipping to America ; of his '' finding a father " in Mr. Stanlejr 
of New Orleans. He tells of his part in the Civil War, as 
Confederate and as Unionist, giving a most vivid description 
of the battle of Shiloh. 

In Part II. Stanley, speaking from his journals and other 
unpublished writings, tells how he became special correspond- 
ent for the New York Herald; of his quest for Livingstone, 
and of his great esteem for that noble character. Three chap- 
ters are devoted to: <^ Through the Dark Continent " ; "Found- 
ing of the Congo State"; and ''Rescue of Emin." In these 
chapters we have Stanley's estimate of his work, and of those 
who helped him to accomplish it. From Chapter XIX. on are 
given the events of Stanley's later life — his lecture tours, elec- 
tion to Parliament, appreciation of various public men, his last 

♦ Thi Autobiography of Sir fitnry Morion Stanley, CC.B, Edited by his wife, DoroChj 
Stanley. Bostoa : Houghton Mifflin Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 68$ 

days. The final chapter (XXVII.) contains thoughts on various 
sutgects, extracted from his note-book. 

The characteristic that strikes one most on reading the life 
is sterp earnestness. Stanley was deserted by his near relatives 
while still a child, and this harsh treatment seems to have pro- 
duced a certain amount of bitterness in his nature that never 
sweetened. Public distrust and neglect did not help to dissolve 
that bitterness, as we see from the following words: 

For what was my reward 7 Resolute devotion to a certain 
ideal of duty, framed Mter much self-exhortation to upright- 
ness of conduct, and righteous dealing with my fellow-crea- 
tures, had terminated in my being proclaimed to all the world 
first as a forger, and then as a buccaneer, an adventurer, a 
fraud, and an impostor I It seemed to reverse all order and 
sequence, to reverse all I had been taught to expect. Was 
this what awaited a man who had given up his life for his 
country and for Africa ? • • . Spears in Africa were hurt- 
ful things, and so was calumny of the press here ; but I went 
on and did my work, the work I was sent into the world to do. 

The life of Stanley shows that he was a deeply religious 
man. He says, speaking of his gratefulness for having received 
a ''Biblical education'' at the workhouse: 

My belief that there was a God, overseeing every action, 
observing and remembering, has often come between me and 
evil. Often, when sorely tempted, came the sudden strength 
to say : " No ; I will not, it will be wicked ; not criminal, but 
sinful ; God sees me." It is precisely for this strength that I 
am grateful. Reason would not have been sufficient to re- 
strain me from yielding to temptation. It required a con- 
science, and a religious conviction created it. • . • Re- 
ligion grew deep roots in me in the solitude of Africa, so 
that it became my mentor in civilization, my director, my 
spiritual guide. 

We wish to call special attention 
BEST STORIES BY CATH- to ten small and neatly bound 
OLIC AUTHORS. volumes issued by Benziger Broth- 

ers, and entitled, The Best Stories 
by the Foremost Catholic Authors.^ The volumes contain one 

• Th€ Bat Stpriis bf the Foremost CathciU Authors, With an Introduction by Maurice 
Francis Egan, LL.D. In Ten Volumes. New York: Benziger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



686 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

hundred and fiftj stories by sixty-four Catholic writers of 
note, and they successfully answer the criticism that there is 
no good, reasonably priced Catholic literature. Maurice Fran- 
cis Egan asks in his introduction who is responsible for the 
small payment received for their work by Catholic authors? 
He concludes as follows: 

One can see, by reading the names in this set of volumes, 
that the responsibility for this condition of things does not lie 
with the author. There are celebrated names here. May I, 
at random, point to Benson and Katharine Tynan, John Tal- 
bot Smith and Christian Reid? There are stories here as 
nearly perfect as any short story can be. The fault is not 
with the publisher. Here are books, well made, in good 
taste, and sold at a moderate price. What more can the 
Catholic public ask ? To ask more would be to be over-criti- 
cal. What, then, ought to be the duty of people who need 
decent literature, which does not insinuate cynical unbelief, 
palliate free love, plead for sexual lawlessness — or, in a word, 
debase the moral currency? To support the efforts oi the 
Catholic publisher — to enable the authors to be free of anxiety 
— and to better literary conditions that are beginning, thank 
God, to improve. 

The frequent additions that of 
CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST, late have been made to our meagre 

library of English works treating 
Catholic dogma from the positive and historical side are a 
source both of regret and rejoicing; of regret that English- 
speaking theologians are doing so little in this line ; of rejoic- 
ing that by translations we are enabled to profit by the work 
of foreign scholars. Thus within the last year our libraries 
have been enriched by Riviere's scholarly work on The Atone- 
mentf by Pourrat's volume on TAe Sacraments, and soon we 
hope to welcome an English translation of Gixerout's classic 
production on the Historj^ of Dogma and the German Raus- 
chen's book on The Eucharist and Penance in the first six cen- 
turies, which will be a companion to Dr. O'Donnell's volume 
on Penance. 

To these it is a real pleasure to add the present volume.* 

* Tki Childhood of Jmsus Christ Auordin^ fa tht Camcnical Gospels, with an Historical 
Essay on the Brethren of the Lord, By A. Durand, S.J. An authorked translation from the 
French. Edited by Rev. Joseph Bnineau, S.S.. D.D. Philadelphia : John J. McVcy. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 687 

It is a collectioa of the articles published by the eminent 
Jesusty Father Durand, in the Revue Pratique d^Apologitique^ 
and the Revue Biblique; these are not merely reproduced, but 
were done over and completed by the author and then put 
in the more permanent book form in French, and are now 
presented to us in their English dress. The work treats 
mainly of the special question of the Virgin Birth of Christ, 
round which are gathered the other questions relating to the 
divine Infancy; namely, the Dreams, the Magi, the Massacre 
of the Holy Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, and the Geneal- 
ogies of Christ; to which is added an historical essay on the 
Brethren of the Lord. 

There has been a great need of just such a volume in 
English. The general position of rationalistic and liberal 
scholars and also Modernists has been to admit the sincerity 
of the Evangelists, but to hold that the primitive tradition 
underwent a process of transfiguration under the influence of 
the faith of the early Church; such a principle led to the 
rejection of all that is supernatural; hence the narratives of 
the Childhood of Christ, and particularly the Virgin Birth, 
have been looked upon as merely legendary. This position has 
been current in Germany for years; it has spread of late to 
England and America and the traditional views have been 
gradually losing ground ; within the last ten years an enormous 
literature has appeared on the question of the Virgin Birth 
even in English, but not one English book has come from the 
pen of a Catholic. True we have had some masterly articles 
in reviews — the ones by Dr. Oussani deserve especial com- 
mendation; but the fact remains that this translation is the 
only scientific treatise in English on this all important ques- 
tion. 

We know these doctrines by revelation; we believe them 
on the word of God and the infallible word of the Church; 
but it is also well to give a reason for the faith that is in us, 
to be able to give the historical and critical justification for 
our position. This is precisely what Father Durand does. He 
appeals to criticism, and a scientific criticism demonstrates that 
there is not a single serious reason to reject the Gospel of the 
Infancy as legendary, but rather every reason to accept it as a 
first-rate historical authority. He appeals to history, and his- 



Digitized by 



Google 



688 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

tory proves satisfactorily that from the days of the Apostles 
to our 09ftk day the orthodox Church has looked upon the Virgin 
Birth of Christy as well as the miraculous events connected 
with it, as historical realities. 

The work is well translated and printed, is loaded with 
footnotes and references. These Ust should have been gathered 
into a bibliography. It is a volume which ought to be in the 
library of every priest and educated layman. 

The life of Gabriel Possenti*— a 
THE LIFE OF GABRIEL very modern saint — is, for many 
FOSSENTI. reasons, of more than ordinary in- 

terest. He is a child of our own 
times. Born in 1838, he lived only to the age of twenty-four, 
dying in 1862. He gave no evidence of his future holiness 
until he crossed the threshold of his cloister home. The five 
years of his religious life, during which he attained such per- 
fection, were devoted to the performance of common duties. 
Cardinal Gibbons was one of the three bishops who« in 1895, 
first petitioned the Holy See for Gabriel's beatification. He 
was beatified within fifty years of his death, and present at it 
were his brother, several relatives, many fellow-students, his 
spiritual director. Father Norbert, and even the lady, now the 
wife of an officer in the Italian army, who had once thought 
it such a great pity that Gabriel turned his back on the world 
and herself to become a Passionist. 

The [volume is founded principally upon the sworn depo- 
sitions contained in the Episcopal and Apostolical Processes. 
The author treats the life of Blessed Gabriel under these head- 
ings: *' Secular Life," "Religious Life," "Work and Means of 
Perfection," " Consummation in Death," and " Glorification." 

The reading of this book will bring home the lesson that 
essential perfection or holiness is not to be sought in wonder- 
ful deeds, but rather in the ordinary duties of life sanctified 
by the love of God. 

♦ Th€ Life ofBUsstd Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, Gabriel Possemti of the Con^re^ati^n 
of ike Passion. Begun by Rev. Hyacinth Hage, C.P. Rewritten and enlarged by Rev. 
Nicholas Ward, C. P. With an Introduction by Cardinal Gibbons. Philadelphia: Kilner 
&Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] New Books 689 

During the month of July the 

WHIRLPOOLS. Poles celebrated with much cere- 

By SienHewicz. mony the five- hundredth anniTer- 

sary of the battle of Tannenberg, 

when the victory of the Jagellons meant the beginning of 

Poland's greatness. Poland lies now dismembered and at the 

mercy of strangers. Whether the kingdom of Poland will exist 

again or not is a question difficult to answer in the present 

confused state of European politics. But the call of their 

ancient country is still strong in millions of hearts. 

Almost simultaneously with this national celebration, Henryk 
Sienkiewicz, the Polish patriot. and well-known writer, has pub- 
lished his latest work Whirlpools^^ which sounds like a bugle 
call to all lovers of Poland to hasten to the rescue and the 
rehabilitation of their country. The struggle of the twelve 
million Poles of Russian Poland against Russian tyranny con- 
tinues to this day with unabated vigor. The doctrines of 
Russian socialists and Russian atheists have secured a foothold 
in the land. They are bearing destruction and chaos in their 
wake, and their triumph will spell utter defeat for the restora- 
tion of Poland. The fate of any people struggling for inde- 
pendence and for nationality, particularly when that people are 
brothers with us in faith, must be of interest to us. And from 
out these pages rings the pitiful cry that tells us of the terrible 
trials of a conquered people ; of their wrongs inflicted both by 
those without and within; and most tragic of all — how the 
virtuous lift prayers in vain; how the responsible ones are 
faithless to their trust; how truth and morality are sacrificed 
for self- advancement and self- gratification; and how shame is 
written in red letters by the hands of her own sons across the 
face of Poland. 

The book, moreover, has a world-wide interest and a world- 
wide value. Poland may here be the only background to the 
storm that threatens, but the real background is the world — for 
the storm threatens the whole of civilized society. They that 
have ears will hear ; and they that have eyes have already seen« 

But Gronski spoke further: ''Socialism — good I That, of 
course, is a thing more ancient than Menenius Agrippa. 

* Whiflp—U. By Henryk Sienkiewicz; Translated from the Polish by Max A; Drennal 
Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 

vou XCU— 44 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



69Q NEW BOOKS [Atig., 

That river has flown for ages. At times, when covered by 
other ideas, it coursed underground, and later emerged into 
the broad daylight. At times it subsides, then swells and 
overflows. At present we have a flood, very menacing, which 
may submerge not only factories, cities, and countrieSi but 
even civilization. Above all, it threatens France, where com- 
fort and money have displaced all other ideas. Socialism is 
the inevitable result of that. Capital wedded to demagogism 
cannot breed any other child ; and if that child has the head 
of a monster and mole, so much the worse for the father. It 
demonstrates that superfluous wealth may be a national dan» 
ger. But this is not strange. Privilege is an injustice 
against which men have fought for centuries. Formerly the 
princes, clergy, and nobility were vested with it. To-day no* 
body has any; money possesses all. In truth, I^bor has 
stepped forth to combat with it." 

And through this same Gronski, who seems to be his offi^ 
cial spokesman, Sienkiewicz shows that in the solution of thcat 
pressing agrarian and economic problems Socialism is showing 
itself an idiot. And finallyi when all has been summed up aad 
the story told, an unbeliever speaks; 

'' Hear, sir, an athiest, or at least a man who has nothing 
to do with any religion. Knowledge without religion br«^d& 
only thieves and bandits." 

The pen of Sienkiewicz has lost none of its power. He 
can still present a picture with telling lines and vivid colors. 
His analysis of character is marvelous. He gives us Poland 
in its nobility, its peasants, and its rabble, detached and ac- 
curate. We know their beliefs, their aims, and their morals. 
To Poland itself the book must be a sort of patriotic classic; 
to us it is valuable as the apology against Socialism of a keen 
observer and a deep student. 

We regret to say that, like other books by this same ao«- 
thor. Catholic as he is, this story is tainted by what some 
would call, for the sake of using a euphemism, exaggerated 
realism. If the filth was there it was sufficient to indicate it; 
it was not necessary to expose it, and hold it long before the 
jreader*s eyes. We are sorry to see such stains upon an un- 
usually powerful book. The translator's work is poorly done* 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] NSW BOOKS 691 

When Lord Russell, in 1883, visited the United States, he 
had the happy foresight to jot down in the pages of a diary 
his observations of the places and persons whom be met on his 
trip across the continent. These pages,* intended originally 
for family perusal, have been edited under the auspices of the 
United States Catholic Historical Society by Charles George 
Herbermann, Ph.D. Intensely interesting, this dinry possesses 
great merit, because it reflects the mind of a man of excellent 
judgment, keenly observant of the things around him and fully 
sympathetic with American life and institutions. At no point 
dull, his impressions are enlivened by touches of Irish humor 
and the affectionate effusions of a tender, fatherly heart. 

The last few years have been for French Catholics a time 
of persecution. All have suffered, yet on none has the hand 
of the government fallen more rigorously and with more dire 
effect than upon the nuns. Unable to battle with the world, 
they have been east out of their homes, and oftentimes by mere 
brutal force. What they have endured, what their sufferings 
have been, none of us may rightly imagine. The present vol- 
ume,t however, supplies us with a vivid description of the 
trials of these poor women. It is the diary of a nun who has 
witnessed the expulsion of her sisters and companions, who 
has seen her community house pass into the hands of atheist 
rulers, and has herself realized in full the meaning of her 
Master's words: ''the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay His 
head I ** The style is not that of one writing for effect, but 
simple and unadorned, truly picturing a heart almost broken, 
yet never despairing. Deep and touching, it is indeed a story 
of sorrow. 

Bishop Colton, despite his many episcopal labors, has again 
found time to gather together his thoughts on subjects of prof- 
itable interest to Catholics. This latest volume. Buds and 
BlossomsX consists of numerous short essays and a few poems 
that treat of Catholic life from every practical point of view. 

^ Diary of a VisU to the Uniiid S$atts m thi Year i88^. By Cbarlesi^L^rd Russell» of 
KiUowen. Edited by Charles G«orge Herbennaim, Ph.D. New York: The United States 
CathoUc Historioal l^f lyf 

\ TM4 Diitry ^^n ^MikdNm. An AuthoHfed TraosUtion. fit LMis: B, Harder. 

%Buda amd Biossowu. By Right Rev. Charles H. Colten, D.D. New York; Bensiger 
Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



692 NEW Books [Aug., 

Wide in scope, brief yet pointed in its discuss! on, this book 
will afford pleasant and useful reading to the busy Catholic 

The scene of this story * is a fashionable hotel in the moun- 
tains. There is a little mystery, a bit of detective work, and 
two love-affairs; the book has no serious claim to considera- 
tion, but is pleasant reading for a summer afternoon. 

The Chief Sources of Sin, a small volume by Rev. M. V, 
McDonough, and published by John Murphy Company, of 
Baltimore, includes a sermon on every one of the seven capi- 
tal sins. 

From the Atlanta University Press, we have received a 
pamphlet on The Ej^orts of the Negro Americans for Social 
Betterment. The pamphlet gives much interesting information 
and copious statistics. It is an important addition to the lit- 
erature concerning the social betterment of the negro. 

The latest addition to the series of instruction books for 
children, published by Benziger Brothers, of New York, is en- 
titled The Laws of the King. With an easy, simple style, and 
in clear, intelligible language, with here and there an apt illus- 
tration, the author explains for young folks the meaning of 
the ten commandments. 

" Even to the reader unacquainted with Mr. Veiller's career, 
a mere glance at his book f will justify its title of ** practical." 
Little theory and no rhetoric may be a departure from the 
style of discussion which has been too prevalent in the field 
of tenement reform, but it makes this volume a series of valu- 
able instruction and unavoidable conclusions — presented in a 
very clear and interesting way. We can think of no point 
within the scope of the discussion that Mr. Veiller has not 
treated — and treated well. 

Although not equal in charm to the author's former suc- 
cess, Septimus^ this new story,! by W. J. Locke, has neverthe- 

* The Cavt-Woman, By Viola Burbans. New York: Henrj Holt & Co. 
t Housing Reform, A Hand-Book for Practical Use in American Cities. Bj Lawrence 
Veiller. New York : Charities Publication CommiUee. 

I Siwton the Jester. Bj W. J. Locke. New York : John Lane Company. 



Digitized by 



Goo gle 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 693 

less a decided attraction of its own. The characters are un- 
usualy the plot is of a fantastic originality^ and the style, now 
pathetic, now whimsical, remains always delightfully clever. 

The mysterious death of a pet rabbit leads to a feud be- 
tween a ''gang'' and a more aristocratic ''set" in a boys' 
day-school. The story of the skirmishes, the open warfare, and 
fiaaily the reconciliation, is very real, and is told with evident 
knowledge of the genus boy. The book* is not warranted 
to suggest novel ideas or to stimulate unduly the young im- 
agination, but is probably interesting enough to be popular. 

The publishing house of Lecoffre has again claimed our 
gratitude by adding another to its long list of publications 
bearing on positive theology. The volume f before us is very 
unpretentious, claiming to be a book of information rather than 
a doctrinal treatise ; but, however we may choose to designate 
it, the professor or student of Sacramental Theology will find 
it a valuable help in determining the mind of the Fathers of the 
first six centuries on disputed points. As the title suggests, the 
subject matter is divided into two parts: one dealing with the 
Eucharist, and the other with Penance. The arguments drawn 
from the writings of the Fathers gain in importance from the 
fact that Dr. Rauschen gives not only his own critical opinion 
but also the comments of recognized modern scholars ; and the 
translators have added notes elucidating more fully the thought 
of the French authorities quoted. The index of proper names 
will be very serviceable for reference work. At times the nu- 
merous names and citations of modern authors and the scho- 
lastic terminology used in interpreting the Fathers are some- 
what confusing ; but on the whole the work deserves its French 
dress, and we trust that an English translation will be forth- 
coming. 

The purpose of this volume | is to point out the evolution 
of dogma in the writings and teachings of the Greek philoso- 
phers. That there is organic unity in Hellenic philosophy all 

• The Boys of St, Batfs, By R. P. Garrold, S.J. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

t L* Euckaristit et la Pinittnet durant Us sixpremUts sihles de VSglise, Par G. Rauschen, 
Professenr de Thdologie k l' University Catholique de Bonn. Traduit de TAlleniand par 
Michel Decker, Vicaire k Saint- Vincent-de-Paul, et E. Ricard, Professeur au Grand S^ni- 
naire d'Aix. Paris : Librairie Victor LecofEre, J. Gabalda et Cie. 

XDocirina Reli^uusis dis Philotophes Grecs. Par M. Louis. Paris: P. Lethielleux. 



Digitized by 



Google 



694 NSW BOOieS [Aug* 

loTers of Qttmsm will itoutly maintain, and to M. Louis has de*- 
▼oted hitnsalf to a task that cannot fail to elicit the intsrest 
of scholars and the appreciation of all stodeats of religion. 
Eight chapters seem few and insufficient for such a subject, 
and jet the author has succeeded in packing all of these 
chapters full of knowledge. Some of his theories are originali 
either in themselves or in the manner in which they are set 
forth. Probably the most interesting chapter is the second 
one, which treats of the "Divine Mission and Reform of 
Socrates." 

Much of what is said here is old and familiar to the 
Greek student, but the lengthy and attractive discussion of the 
«< Daimonion ** of Socrates is perhaps the best treatment of the 
question that has yet been given. The opinions of aadent 
and modern writen are attractively set before the reader. 
The laws of psychology and pathology, and the Greek religions 
doctrines of inspiration and divination, are invoked in behalf 
of this phenomenon. Like his predecessors, M« Louis admits 
his inability to find a proper translation of this word *'Dai-- 
monion " ; but he insists that it must not be confosed with 
the voice of conscience. In the last chapter the author treats 
of the " End of Hellenism.'' Briefly put, he says that Hellen- 
ism had its day, and then disappeared '' as all great things do, 
because they are replaced by still greater ones" — the dogmas 
of Christianity. The whole volume is ably and well written, 
and the reader will find himself loath to lay it aside until he 
has read the last page. 

The masterly ascetical work of Father Scaramelli, S.J., on 
Tki Dis^etnmint of Spirits^ has been translated from the 
Italian to the French by M. A. Beassioni, and published by 
Tequi, of Paris. The translation is ably done. May it inspire 
some one of our writers to give us the same work in English. 

To those who re&d French we recommend another small 
volume, published by the same house and entitled Traiii des 
ScrupuUs, by TAbb^ Grimes. The little brochure might well 
be entitled Traiti Ccndutsant i la Paix de VAme, so well does 
the author handle his subject and lead the suffering soul out 
of the labyrinth of its self-imposed miseries. The last chapter 
is a translation of Father Faber's treatise on the same subject. 



Digitized by 



Google 



J^oteidn petiobicald. 

Thi nbttt (4 Joiie)! ''The Ditmotid Jubilee of the Restora- 
tion of the Hiefarchj " is an accottnt of the ** Papat 
agression agitation" which arose after the Brief restor- 
ing the Catholic Hierarchy in England had been pnb- 
lished.-«**--^The movement of public opinion regarding 
''The Royal Declaration'': A summary of expressions 
representing the views of Catholics and Protestants 
in England, Ireland, and Canada.**-*-^'' Mr. Roosevelt's 
Warning to England/' a notice of his ''Guild Hall 
Speech." "The Press comments on his speech have 
been marked by a note of friendliness." 
(n June): "Herbert Cardinal Vaughan/'a brief sketch 
of the life and work of the late Cardinal of Westminster, 

by William Canon Barry. The text of the Encyclical 

Letter on St. Charles Borromeo.-^-—* Under "Divorce in 
America " we learn that " divorce was more prevalent 
in the United States (in 1908) than in any other civil- 
ised country, Japan alone excepted." This is due to 
the "lightness and frivolity" with which marriages are 
contracted and dissolved in this country.— The degree 
D.C.L. conferred upon Mr. Roosevelt at Oxford. 
(18 June): "The Germans and the Encyclical." How 
some Grerman Protestants became agitated over passages 
in the recent Encyclical Letter — an agitation which is 
"entirely factitious." 

(25 June): "The Catholic Missionary Society" tells of 
an historic event — the opening of the Mission House at 
Broudesbury Park, with Dr. Herbert Vaughan in charge. 
The English institution is similar in purpose to the 
Apostolic Mission House at Washington, D. C— — " The 
Story of Westminster Cathedral" is a special supple- 
ment telling of Cardinal Vaughan and the Cathedral, its 
style of architecture, history, etc.— ~-The Holy Father 
has addressed to the Archbishop of Chicago, "a brief 
full of praise for the Catholic Church Extension Society 
of America." 

The Month (June): "King Edward VII.," by Rev. Sydney 



Digitized by 



Google 



696 Foreign periodicals [Aug., 

Smith, is a Catholic tribute to the late King as a kind 
ruler, a lover and a promotor of universal peace.— *' In- 
crease and Multiply ** deals with some interesting facts 
concerning the marvelous workings of geometrical pro- 
gressions in the animal and insect worlds.— -—The Rev- 
erend Charles Plater, in an article entitled ''The Teach- 
ing of Civics in Catholic Schools,'' emphasizes the need 
and the advantages of such a course. Affiliation with 
the Catholic Social Guild and practical social work are 

advocated as means to this end. ''Christianity and 

War'' by the Rev. Joseph Keating, reviews some of 
the recent peace movements, and in a somewhat de- 
tailed manner discusses the attitude of the Church 
towards war.— "The Alphabet and the Consecration 
of Churches," by the Rev. Herbert Thurston, offers an 
explanation of the origin of the ceremony of writing the 
alphabet on the pavement as a rite in the consecration 
of a church. 

Tki Crucible (25 June) : " Citizens of no Mean City " deals 
with the question of our faith, and advocates that we 
should work effectively " to Catholicize the Catholic 
youth of to- day ; " a special appeal is made to build up 
a strong middle class of forceful and intelligent Catho- 
lics, who will be strong and firm defenders of the faith. 

^V. M. Crawford describes "How Giri-Clerks are 

Trained at Fribourg" in a recently established institu- 
tion known as the &cole de Commerce pour Us Jeunes 
FilleSf organized and controlled by the Council of State, 
but placed under the supervision of the Ursuline Nuns. 

" The Training of Social Workers " is set before us 

by E. C. Fortez. Two points are suggested in attempt- 
ing to deal with the problems of poverty: (i) Remedial 

Work ; and (2) Constructive Work. Felix contributes 

"A Catholic Social Catechism," showing what Society 
is, what ails it, and how true Catholic principles applied 
by Catholics can help in curing it. 

The National Review (July) : Episodes of the Month reviews 

Mr. Roosevelt's visit to England. The Earl Percy 

writes on "The British Army in a European War" It 
is a plea for a national army: "The safety of our 
shores lies In the maintenance of the balance of power 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 697 

in Europe.'' ''Coca and Cant. A Study in Radical 

Ethics/' is an exposi of men who preach certain prin- 
ciples and in commercial life violate them. The article 
is aimed at the proprietors of several English papers, 
among them being The Daily News^ The Star and 

Morning Leader^ and The Nation. Alfred Austin writes 

on *' Byron in Italy." The question of a Reciprocity 

Treaty between Canada and the United States is dis- 
cussed and the writer hopes that no such treaty will be 
made. 

Hibbert Journal (July) : '* An Open Letter to English Gentle- 
men/' signed Pars Minima, is an appeal to the ** men 
of gentle birth, of an inherited courtesy and courage/' 
to turn their ''serious attention to politics and to a 
patriotism broader and less self- regarding " than hitherto. 

W. M« Childs discusses "Woman Suffrage." He 

criticises the main arguments on either side and con- 
cludes with a caution not " to allow novelty and risk to 
prejudice favorable consideration of a prudent, an equit- 
able, and a necessary proposal/' He says again: "Let 
us realize that nothing more injurious to the interests 
of women could happen than a premature decision upon 

a proposal of such deep moment to the State." E. 

Armitage treats of the question "Why Athanasius 
Won at Nicasa." He finds the answer in the fact that 
Athanasius " stood forth as the exponent of the deeper 
soul in every man's soul . . • whose deep spiritual 
needs had made him cry aloud for the living God, and 
who then declared that in Christ this need had been 
met/' 

The International Journal of Ethics (July): Felix Adler thinks 
that " The Moral Ideal," to which every one should 
strive to conform, should be conceived of as a supreme 
society, an organism having a multiplicity of parts rather 
than as a single Infinite Being — God. His reason for 
this position is that no one individual can be conceived 
of at the same time as mother, father, brother, sister, 

etc. In "The Moral Mission of the Public Schools," 

C. N. Johnston discusses the lessons of the Congress in 
London at which America was not among the eighteen 
nations represented. The possibility of idealizing "na- 



Digitized by 



Google 



698 FOkBtGN PSklODiCALS [Aug., 

tioAal duty" or *' social solidarity '' to take tbe i>lace of 
God and raligiofi is cofisidertd. Mr. Johnstoii reviews 
the experience of Japan and France on the afirtnative 
and that of England and Germany on the negative side. 
He concludes that the whole problem of morals and re- 
ligion in education is^ throoghont the wofld^ in the ex- 
perimental stage. 

Irish Ec€l$siasHcal tiecotd (June) : '' Agrarian Socialism/' by 
the Editor, an essay disclosing various methods of 
nationalizing the land. The chief object of Agrarian 
Socialism is to make the State a oniversal landlords 
Single tax on land should relieve all other taxation. 
Some of the principles advocated, and a criticism of the 
method proposed by each, are considered.-^^^The article 
entitled ''Newspaper Controversy'' is a call to priests 
to engage in defense work in the newspaper columns. 
This medium of knowledge reaches all classes and what- 
ever the newspaper states is taken without criticism by 
the majority of readers. Hence error is easily spread. 
''The masses should be attended to, heresy must be 
checked, the newspaper is tbe means." 

Le Coruipondant (to June): "The First Exile of the Duke of 
d'Aumale." The entire correspondence of the Duke 
d'Aumale with Cunllier-Fleury was published by M. 
Limbourg. The article at hand is a review of some of 
the letters of this publication, relating to the Duke's 
first exile, which was spent at Clermont Castle, Eng- 
land.-^-----Baron de Witte, in his article entitled " Twenty- 
Six Years of Catholic Government in Belgium," gives 
an account of affairs in Belgium since the reactionary 
election of 1884 gave power to Catholics. The topics 
considered by the author are: The School Question; The 
Revision of the Constitution and Electoral Reform ; So- 
cial Questions; The Question of Languages; The Colo- 
nial Question.*-"— " Prayers and Unedited Meditations 
of Ernest Heller." These prayers and meditations are 
published on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the author's 
death. 

(S5 June) : " The Papacy^the View of Germany/' Mgr. 
Batiffol refutes G. Krueger's German work— ^TIW Papacy^ 
lu Idea and In Upkoldifs^in which the latter 'says 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] FOJiSTON JPJUUOJMCAU 699 

that ** the Papacy is a worldly powtr, but that the Pope 
dots not consider the diffioolt problems of the times, 
bot leaves their solution to the divine grace which is 
given him/' Mgr. Batiffol appeals to Janssen and says 
that Kraeger does not wish to acknowledge the good 
that the Charoh has done for Germany^ especially in 
the early ages. He considers the book very rationalis-> 

tic. ''The Submarines and their X4/e in our Navy/' 

An anonymous writer under the name ''Seaman'^ re* 
fers to the part played by the submarines in the French 
manceavres of 1909 as a proof of their eficiency. He 
does not believe that such accidents as recently hap- 
pened to the P/uvUti will hinder the further adoption 
of this means of warfare.— ^*' The UntversitiM and the 
Preparation tor a Business Career/' by Mait Turmann. 
The Universities are responding to the demands of 
business that the youth study the commercial sciences 
in preference to the classics as found in the curriculum 
of the past generation. We find that ''auditors" are 
outnumbering the regular students in the large German 
universities. 

JSntdis Franciscaims (June): P. Edouard d'Alen^oU makes a 
short, critical study of "A Letter of Indulgences, 148 1/' 
This was written by Sixtus IV., and appears to forgive 
the sins of Ange de GasoUo, in view of a contribution 
to the Crusade. It is explained that in reality it was 
merely an ordinary indulgence and the granting of per- 
mission ;to confess to an ordinary priest sins reserved 
to the Pope. 

Rivue du CUrgd Franfais (i June): P. Pisani writes of "The 
Directory and the Pope" (1796. 1797).— P. Lanier has 
an article on " The Bible and the Origins of the World/' 
His thesis is that the account contained in Genesis was 
originally revealed to Adam in a series of visions. The 
biblical narrative gives a series of seven days for the 
moral purpose of teaching the people the necessity of 
sanctifying the Sabbath. 

(15 June): J. Bricout, treating of "The Auxiliary In- 
ternational Language/' gives an historical sketch of 
" Volapak/' "Esperanto/' and "Ido/' a modification of 
Esperanto. He discusses also the advantages and the 



Digitized by 



Google 



70O FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

feasibility of the project and treats of the various ob- 
jections brought against it H. LesStre^ discussing 

''The Day of the Last Supper/' cites the data of the 
Sacred Writers^ and .concludes that all the probabilities 
point to the day of the Pasch as that on which our 
Savior was crucified.— —A. Bros and O. Habert give a 
brief sketch of Pre- Islamic Religion (of the Arabs), 
Mahomet, and the Doctrine of Islam. 

£tudes (20 June) : Jean V. Bainvel reviews '' The Last Book 
of George Tyrrell.'' This work, although seeming to 
contain indications of a return of the author towards 
the Church, still leaves a great deal wanting to make 
his theories conformable to Catholic doctrine.-^-»Auguste 
Hamon writes of ''The Devotion to the Sacred Heart 
of Jesus after the Blessed Margaret Mary. 

Rivue Pratique d^ Apologitique (i June): "The Intelligence of 
the Savage," by Clodius Piat. The savage is, according 
to the writer, a specimen of the primeval man, he is in 
the lower stage of evolution, and in many, if not in all, 
respects bears similarity with the child. The writer not 
only gives his views, but cites the different theories set 
forth by Mr. Levy-Bruhl and H. Spencer "pro and con.'' 
Lubboch and his followers believe the question to be 
as yet insoluble. 

(15 June): "The Protestant Declaration of the British 
Sovereigns at the Time of Their Accession," by J. L. 
de la Verdonie. "The Duel in Ecclesiastical Legis- 
lation," by F. Cimetier. According to the author the 
Church at large always did forbid the duel proper for 
any reason whatever. To prove this the writer enumer- 
ates the various ecclesiastical documents which condemn 
this form of " honorable " homicide. 

La Revue Apologitique (June) : " Jean Ruysbroeck the Admira- 
ble," by P. Kremer, C.SS.R. The nature of mysticism 
and its development up to the time of Ruysbroeck are 
discussed. The fundamental difference between Christian 
and pagan mystics is that the former alSrm the neces* 
sity of supernatural faith and grace while the latter are 
guided by mere natural speculation and a superstitious 

theurgy. "Shintoistic Mythology," by Th. Gollier. 

H. Pinard, SJ., discusses two recent ^books on the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 70I 

history of religions (by Reinach and Toutain) criticizing 
their unscientific methods. Toutain, e. g.^ asserted that 
the totemism of the natives of America and Australia 
is perfectly known and that it is a stage of religion 
through which all the peoples of the globe have passed 
— both of which assertions are mere postulates. Rein- 
ach finds in all mythologies analogies to the Trinity, 
Communion, etc.« and many biblical personalities, and 
infers from them that these are unreal or only adapta- 
tions. 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach (June): ''Critical Difficulties in 
Apologetics/' by C. A. Kneller, SJ. Scripture-texts as 
they stand are admitted by rationalistic critics to prove 
the truth of the Catholic Church and dogma; but these 
texts themselves are now rejected as not genuine. 
Should Catholic apologists enter into textual criticism? 
No ; for apologists have chiefly to deal with Protestants 
who believe in the Bible as it stands.— ''The Psychol- 
ogy of Religion, a New Branch of Experimental Psy- 
chology,'' by J. B. Linwurzky, SJ. The methods and 
aims of this science, which is chiefly an American growth, 
are discussed with regard to its usefulness for Catholic 
sciences. A phenomenon of religious life should not be 
explained by referring to the " causa prima " as long as 
any possibility of a natural explanation is not excluded* 

Theologisch^Practische QuarialscAri/t {July): "The Education 
and Training of the Clergy in Accordance with the 
Times," by Dr. Reinhold, is a risumi of Dr. Schroer's 
book of that title. The author insists that higher edu- 
cation is a necessity, and points out the important part 
the meagre knowledge of " Church matters " played in 
the catastrophe of the Dark Ages. He compares the 
Italian with the French seminaries; lastly he notices 
the houses of study under Jesuit direction, which he con- 
siders ideal. " Theft in the Law of Moses and in the 

Code of Hammurabi." Dr. Andrew Eberharter com- 
pares various passages in each code. As a whole they 
agree, through the code of Hammurabi is often stricter 
than that of Moses. That the Law of Moses originated 
in Babel is absurd in the light of the foregoing compari- 
son. " The So-called Biblical Questions and the Edu- 



Digitized by 



Google 



fQ$ FOXXIQN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

cation of the People/* by Dr. Hugo. Any apparent 
errors in the Bible must be confined to profane qnes- 
tionf. They are to be explained by the human element 
in the Scriptures and the theory of implicit quotation. 

La Civilid Cattolica (4 June): The need of '^Congresses to 
Improve the Morals of the People/' such as was held 
in Rome recently, is shown to be beyond question ; but 
the ignoring of religion as a remedy for the evils of 
society by this congress must be censured.-^-^*' Prayer 
According to the Theosophists/' There are three kinds 
of prayer for the Tbeosophist; and the object to which 
these prayers arc directed is '* God '' ; but this '' God '' 
is only a threefold category of beings which pervade 
the universe. 

(18 June): Contains the Latin text and an Italian trans- 
lation of the Encyclical on the Centenary of the Canoni- 
zation of St. Charles Borromeo *-^-^The Encyclical is 
made the subject of an article. The writer believes that 
the storm which arose in Germany over the Encyclical 
is due to the intrigues of certain apostates |from Catho- 
licism, espeeially of one residing in Rome, who put a 
false interpretation on the words of the Pope, 
(a July); ''Christianity at the Crossroads/' tells of the 
"challenge flung at Christianity by poor TyrrelP'; it is 
an exposition of the principal thought put forth in Tyr- 
rell's last works \ Tkrm^ Scylh 4nd Ckatybdit, M$di€vml- 
ismf and Christianity at tha Cpossr^ds.^^^-^^**The Re- 
ligious Spirit in the Army *' is an account of the fight 
carried on by anti«olericals and others against every 
manifestation of religion among the members of the army. 
The writer shows even the national effects produced by 
religion.^-^^" The Encyclical jEdiio! Sofia and the Agi- 
tation Among the Protestants of Germany.'' Now that 
the storm has subsided the writer deems it advisable to 
put the whole affair of the Encyclical in its true light 

La ScuQta Cattolica (June): Fra Semeli, who is also a doctor 
of medicine, writes on "Scruples and Obsessions" for 
the use of confessors.— i— A. Cantone endeavors to show 
that " Biblical Monogenesis " has anticipated those in- 
vestigations which tend to prove the existenot of a sin- 
gle home of all mankind in a favorable section of Asia* 



Digitized by 



Google 



1 910.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 703 

RaxSn y Fe (June) : R. Ruiz Amado, under the caption '* Re- 
ligious Education/' asks why the devotion of so many 
religious men and women to this cause has not been 
more fruitful. He lays the blame largely upon the 
materialistic atmosphere of modern society and political 
opposition from anti-clericals; but he suggests, as a 
partial remedy, a study of modern pedagogic methods. 
First of a series of articles on proportional representa- 
tion by F. Lopez del Vallado. The rights of a minority 
are pointed out. 

Espana y Awt/ma (June) : P. M. Rodriguez H. sketches '' The 
Yankee Infiltration in Latin America." The author 
thinks that the United States is trying to absorb the 
nations of South America and that certain agitators in 
Peru and elsewhere are willing to further such action* 
He looks to Brazil and Chile to block the move.— — **R. 
P, Requeijo describes the deep devotion to religion in 
''The City pf Mexico/'— ^P. Maximiliano Estebanei; 
shows that recent Spanish-American congresses have 
brought Spain and her former colonies closer together 
by dispelling ignorance on both sides.— —*P. B. Martinet 
gives an account of the drowning of three Augustiniap 
missionaries in China. They were run down by an Engf- 
lish vessel in the Tang Su River. 



Digitized by 



Google 



IRecent Evente^ 

France, it is said, is entering upon 
Franco. a new era of parliamentary gov- 

ernment. Up to the present some 
one or other of the many groups of which the Chamber con- 
sists has secured, by alliances with others of these groups, the 
dominating power, and has used this power for their advantage 
alone, governing against the parties outside. M. Briand has 
announced his intention to change all this. ''The Government 
is to govern with Republicans in the interests of the country 
as a whole.'' He will not place any longer the Republican 
Administration at the mercy of a clique. This determination 
of M. Briand dissatisfied the largest group of those who had 
hitherto supported him, and at first they were unwilling to 
do more than give their adhesion to the measures which he 
announced and refused to approve of his methods. M. Briand 
would not accept half-hearted support and announced his in- 
tention of resigning if he did not receive a vote expressing the 
perfect confidence of the Assembly, not only in the measures 
proposed, but also in his methods of government. After con- 
siderable wavering, the Socialist Radicals gave the asked- for as- 
surance, and, by a vote of 403 to no, M. Briand was empowered 
to introduce the new era — the triumph of a national policy over 
the petty and factious interests of certain tyrannical political 
groups. The government is in future to govern for France 
as a whole. The judicial, the executive, and the legislative 
powers are to be kept in their respective spheres, the majority, 
and not a selfish minority, is to rule. What Gambetta tried 
to do thirty years ago, M. Briand has accomplished. His sup- 
porters in the decisive vote were the Progressists or Moderate 
Republicans, the Nationalists, the Ripublicains de Gauche^ and 
a large proportion of the Radicals and Socialist Radicals. The 
Socialists without exception voted against him. 

The President of the Republic, in the course of a series of 
visits made to various parts of France, gave his support to the 
same policy. Addressing the Mayors of the department of Puy- 
de-Ddme, he said : '' Defend ardently the Sag of the Republic. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 10.] RECENT EVENTS 705 

It is the flag of France^ the emblem of our glories. But when 
you act in your capacity of administratorsi act in the interests 
pf all. If you are elected Mayor by a party, let all your 
fellow-citizens profit by your administration. Thus *will you 
insure your influence and your authority.'' And in paying a 
visit to a hospital, he gave expression to his high appreciation 
of the Sisters of Charity and of the devotion shown by them 
in the service of the patients. Perhaps this may be taken as 
confirming the rumors which have been circulated, that efforts 
are being made towards a more conciliatory mode of action in 
respect to the Church. The recent rioting in Paris, and several 
other evidences of a widely spread spirit of lawlessness, may 
well make every one who has the well-being of the country 
at heart anxious as to the future, and willing to take the nec- 
essary steps to avert any coming dangers. The Confedera- 
tion of Labor declares that the present republican organization 
is made up of hypocrites, spies, and assassins. How far this 
is a true representation of the opinions held by the mass of 
French workingmen, we do not know. But that an authorized 
association should give public utterance to such views shows 
that in the background there are many elements of danger. 

The foreign relations of France have undergone but little 
change. The idea of entering into closer relations with Ger- 
many may have received something of a set-back, owing to 
Germany having applied to certain French exports the maxu 
mum Tariff, and to the reprisals threatened in consequence. 
It has been found necessary to enter upon military operations 
in Morocco on account of the machinations of a very influen- 
tial sorcerer, but as these were attended with complete success, 
there is no likelihood of long-drawn*out hostilities. There is, 
however, no reliance to be placed upon the Sultan, who, if 
the accounts — widely circulated, although denied by himself— 
may be believed, is one of the most cruel of the long line of 
cruel despots, inflicting upon those from whom he wishes to 
extort money tortures too atrocious to be described. 

A visit in state has been paid to Paris by the grandson of 
Louis Philippe, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, recently de- 
clared King of Bulgaria. He was received with every mani- 
festation of welcome and seems to have at once become quite 
popular. 

VOL. xci.— 45 



Digitized by 



Google 



706 RECENT EVENTS [Aug., 

There has been qaite an exodut 
Germany. from office of Grerman officials. 

The first to go was the Colonial 
Secretary, Herr Dernburgi appointed nearly four years ago. 
The aristocrats of Germany claim for themselves, as of right, 
all the high offices, and when a banker was appointed in order 
to effect absolutely necessary changes in the management of 
the Colonies, deep resentment was felt at the innovation, and 
at the indignity involved in the fact that persons of their 
quality should be placed under the control of a mere com- 
mercial man. These feelings made them act in such a way 
towards the Colonial Secretary, that he found his position too 
unpleasant to retain. It is said, with how much truth we 
know not, that the Catholic Centre was in part responsible. 
The resignation of Herr Dernburg was followed a short time 
afterwards by that of two Prussian Ministers, Herr von Moltke, 
Minister of the Interior, and Herr von Arnim, Minister of 
Agriculture. No particular importance is attached to these 
resignations. Neither of them was desirous of office; the for- 
mer declared that he would willingly walk all the way back 
to his home at Konigsberg, and the latter that he was glad to 
return to the cultivation of his own cabbages. 

A more important change was brought about by the trans- 
fer to Paris of the Foreign Secretary, Baron von Schoen, as 
German Ambassador to France, to take the place of Prince 
Radolin, and by the appointment in his place of the Grerman 
Minister to Bucharest, Herr von Ktderlan-Wachter. Even these 
changes are not so important as they appear, for the control 
of the foreign policy of the Empire is not in the hands of the 
Foreign Secretary. It is the Chancellor who nominally con- 
trols, but it is thought that the Emperor William is the real 
controller. The last of the changes is the resignation of the 
Prussian Minister of Finance, Baron von Rheinbaben. Rumors 
have been rife that the Chancellor himself, Herr von Bethmann- 
Hollweg, was upon the point of going the way of the rest, 
success not having attended his efforts to settle the Prussian 
Franchise question. These rumors, however, have so far proved 
to be unfounded. There is said to be a lack of men fit to fill 
so exalted and responsible a position. It is the Emperor, of 
course, who is responsible for these changes, and for the ap- 
p ointments consequent upon them, and what they mean is» 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT EVENTS 707 

therefore, more or less guess work. But it may well be be- 
lieved that nothing has been done lightly, for he has himself 
informed the world in a recent communication that in all his 
thoughts and actions he is accustomed to ask himself what the 
Bible says about the matter, and to find in it the fountain 
from which he draws strength and light. His subjects, how- 
ever, seem to be looking in other directions, for recent elec- 
tions have resulted in victories for the Social Democrats. 



The Duma has shown by its pro- 
Russia, ceedings with reference to Finland 
that a parliamentary assembly can 
be as arbitrary and as little amenable to reason as the sheer- 
est of autocrats. The crucial clauses which provide that the 
autonomy, of Finland, should be subordinated to the Imperial 
Legislature, that the schools, the Press, and the right of meeting 
and association, the Imperial taxation, the Customs, military 
service, and the merchant marine, should no longer be within 
the exclusive jVirisdiction of the Finnish Diet — these clauses 
which abolish the century- old Finnish constitution were passed 
through the Committee stage in the brief space of seven minutes. 
Two days afterwards the second and third readings were carried. 
In the Council of the Empire, which is largely a nominated 
body forming the upper House, more consideration seems to 
have been given to the matter. 

And so the Tsar has found his Parliament willing to co- 
operate with him in making naught of his plighted word and 
that of his predecessors, that they would preserve intact the 
rights and privileges which were a condition of its annexation 
of Finland to the Empire, and of the acceptance by the Fin- 
landers of the sovereignty of the Russian Emperor. According 
to these promises Finland was to be free in her internal affairs, 
she was to take her place in the rank of nations, she was not 
to be looked upon as a conquered province endowed with tem- 
porary privileges, but as an autonomous organism, united by 
free agreement to a sovereign state, which, on account of this 
agreement, was obliged to respect this autonomy. Finland was 
to be a part of the Russian Empire consisting of Russia and 
Finland, but not a part of the Empire of Russia. All this 
has been set aside, in spite of representations made by various 



Digitized by 



Google 



708 RECENT EVENTS [Aug., 

authorities througboiit Europe. One hundred and twenty Brit* 
ish Members of the House of Commons and forty-three Irish 
Nationalists signed Memorials to the Duma in favor of the 
Finns. Members of the Belgian Senate and House of Depu- 
ties, and a large number of Italian Deputies, including several 
members of the present government, took a like course. One 
hundred members of the French Chamber of Deputies and fifty 
of the Senate also sent a Memorial. We have already referred 
to the Manifesto of some of the most distinguished Juriscon- 
sults of Europe. 

We said, in spite of these representations the Duma passed 
the restrictive legislation. Perhaps it ought to have been said 
on account of these representations greater unanimity was se- 
cured. For Russia, like Most other countries and some indi- 
viduals, resents outside interference and is more likely to stick 
to a wrong course on account of it than to accept advice from 
outside. 

The only justification offered for this violation of their 
pledged rights was that the Finns had refused to fulfill their 
military obligations, and that it was inconvenient to the Em- 
peror to run the risk that measures taken for the good of the 
Empire by the Imperial Parliament should be thwarted by the 
action, or want of action, of so small a body as the Finnish 
Diet. It has to be admitted that the Finns have shown no 
love for the Russians in the past, and have in several ways 
made things inconvenient for them, and that they may in fact, 
in some cases, have acted unjustly. So there were grounds 
for thinking that the Diet might not act in unison with the 
Duma. 

It is in this way that the action of the government and of 
the Duma may be explained. It ought to be mentioned also 
that a modification was made in the Bill by which it is left to 
the Tsar alone to initiate all action to be taken under the new 
Law in the practical and actual exercise of any of the powers 
conferred by it. Moreover, there were considerable minorities, 
both in the Duma and in the Council of the Empire, against 
the passing of the Bill; and there is said to be a large num- 
ber of Russians who are strongly opposed to the new Law. 
What action the Finns will take remains to be seen. It is al- 
most certain that they will offer passive resistance all along 
the line to any practical exercise of powers in derogation of 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] RECENT EVENTS 70g 

their rights. The Finnish Diet has already unanimously de- 
clared that the prorisions of the new Law cannot be regarded 
as valid in Finland. Finnish judges and administrative officials 
will, it is saidi declare that they cannot comply with it, since 
it is in conflict with the Constitution which they have sworn 
to uphold. What will Russia do? Shall we see another era 
like that under Bobrikoffi when judges and officials were sum- 
marily deposed and private persons exiled, imprisoned, or de- 
ported to remote parts of Russia ? 

It is not the Finns alone who are to be deprived of hither- 
to existent rights. The Poles are to become victims of the 
same unifying policy which is the cause of so many of the evils 
to which various nationalities in Europe have to submit, and 
which is the excuse of so much tyrannical action. A Bill has 
been introduced into the Duma which is primarily intended to 
deprive the chief landowners of the right of election to the 
Upper House, and to exclude them from the chief elective 
offices and salaried posts. This Bill was considerably modified 
before it passed, and the* injustice inflicted was not so great, 
therefore, as its promoters intended ; but a further assault upon 
Polish privileges, such as they are, is projected for the coming 
autumn. 

The Jews, too« have been made to suffer from this revival 
of national sentiment. It is hard to estimate to what extent 
the recent expulsions have been carried out, as accounts vary ; 
and they are said to be legal, that is, in accordance with the laws 
of Russia. But in one or^ two instances even Russian justice 
stood in the way of the government, and prevented it from 
carrying out its orders. 

In view of the Duma^s participation in the Finnish legisla- 
tion, there is a temptation to pass upon it a severe condemna- 
tion and to despair of any hope of the advent of a better time 
for the Russian people, seeing that Tsar and Duma are bad 
alike — squally arbitrary and ready to oppress. This,: however, 
seems premature. The mere fact that there is at least the 
semblance of open debate and of discussion before the public 
is better than the issue of Ukases on the Tsar's sole authority, 
passed under nobody knows what secret influences.. The nation 
is becoming accustomed to the gradual diffusion of light upon 
matters which in former times were wholly wrapped in dark- 
ness; a school of political education, is being formed, and the 



Digitized by 



Google 



7IO RECENT EVENTS [Aug., 

power of public opinion will, in consequence, become greater. 
The Duma has already been the means of reforming a large 
number of administrative abuses. Incompetent, unscrupulous, 
and corrupt officials have felt its power, and the measure of 
their dread is the violence of the opposition which they offer 
to its continuance. The reactionaries in the third Duma form 
a group of fifty organized members, mostly, it is said, men of 
low education and led by two agitators, who speak on all oc* 
casions and carry on a constant campaign of provocation. Some 
of the speeches of one of these agitators, M. Purishkevich, are 
not fit to be printed, and are avowedly made to bring disgrace 
on the Assembly by exciting disorderly scenes. The resigna- 
tion of the latest President was due to the uproar caused by one 
of these speeches. A large number is doing all within its 
power to discredit the Duma^ but these advocates of extreme 
reaction are bankrupt both in policy and in personnel. 

That the Tsar remains a firm supporter of the constitution 
which he granted offers a firm barrier to the efforts of its 
enemies. M. Stolypin has been able to thwart the many at- 
tempts that have been made to remove him from office, and 
has, besides carrying the Land Law of November, 1906, ef- 
fected a large number of administrative reforms. One factt 
however, enables an estimate to be formed of the degree of 
progress so far attained in Russia. Upon the adjournment of 
the Duma the President, M. Guchkoff, resigned his position in 
order to go to prison for one month, this penalty having been 
inflicted upon him for having a short time before fought a duel. 
No other evil effect seems to have followed upon conviction of 
such a crime — a fact which goes to show how little public 
opinion in Russia is influenced by moral considerations. This, 
however, need not cause surprise, when it is remembered under 
what a vile police system the country is governed — a system 
in which the spy and agent provocateur of one day may be 
a high official of the force on the next. 



It is too soon to tell what will be 
Spain. the outcome of recent transactions 

in Spain. The government, with« 
out consulting the other party to the Contract, have given a 
new interpretation to the Concordat, which rules by mutual 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT EVENTS 711 

agreement the religious conditions of the country. They have 
also taken steps to control the religious orders, a thing which 
is outside the competency of the civil power, incompatible with 
religious liberty, and contrary to the feelings and wishes of 
large numbers of the Spanish people. Meetings have accord*- 
ingly been held throughout Spain to protest against the action 
of a government which represents in this matter only a minor- 
ity of the nation. 

After operations which lasted near- 
Turkey, ly two months the rising of the 

Albanians is declared to have been 
suppressed, although there are those who are somewhat scepti- 
cal as to the complete success of the expedition. One of the 
objects of the campaign was the disarmament of those dwellers 
in the mountains who for centuries have prided themselves upon 
their independence and freedom from control. Abdul Hamid, 
for his own purposes, as the Albanians formed his body- guard 
and protected him from the punishment he so richly deserved, 
confirmed them in these privileges. The new order, the object 
of which is to establish the reign of law for all parts of the 
Empire alike, necessarily came into conflict with these ideas. 
The government at Constantinople spared no effort and stuck 
at no measures necessary to overcome the resistance of the in- 
surgents, burning down their homes and quartering upon them 
large bodies of troops. The Minister of War himself appeared 
on the scene of warfare. Success was for a time doubtful. 
At length, however, arms were surrendered, but as they are 
for the most part very old and antiquated, it is thought that 
the really useful arms have been retained by the astute moun- 
taineers. 

Friends of the new constitutional order have, on the whole, 
reason to feel satisfied with the course of events. The Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress is still the real source of power, 
and therefore military force is the controller of the situa* 
tion. But with a few exceptions this committee seems to be 
using its power by taking steps which will lead to a higher 
kind of government An earnest effort has been made to re- 
place the despotic and extortionate governors by honest and 
impartial administrators. Night-schools are being established, 
normal schools are projected and even universities. New courts 



Digitized by 



Google 



7 1 3 Recent events [ Atig., 

of justice are being set up^ and efforts are being made to find 
just judges. Concessions for railways are being negotiated. 
Investigations are being made as to the feasibility of the irri- 
gation of Mesopotamia which, if carried through, would render 
this district a source of the enlarged cotton supply which is 
so much needed. Improved methods of agriculture are being 
introduced) and the postal service developed. Theologians are 
discovering that the Koran sanctions all these innovations. 
Even the animal world is feeling the power of the new riginu^ 
for an edict has gone forth that the dogs, which for so long 
have infested the streets of Constantinople, are to be destroyed. 
All of these reforms cost money, especially the increase and 
reorganization of the army, and there is, in consequence, a def- 
icit of five millions of Turkish pounds. The Turkish Assem- 
bly was willing, however, to make the necessary sacrifices, and 
.adjourned at the end of June to meet again on the first of 
November. In the course of its session ii8 Bills were presented 
for its consideration, of which 65 passed. The result is con- 
sidered as highly satisfactory. Except in the districts in the 
neighborhood of Baghdad peace has been established throughout 
the Empire. 

The Cretan Question, however. 
The Cretan Question. cannot be considered as definitely 

and finally settled. That it should 
ba is the wish of the Ottoman government. But the way to 
do it is not easy. The Cretans desire to be united to Greece, 
and nothing will satisfy them until this is brought about. It 
Is surmised that on the occasion of the declaration of the in- 
dependence of Bulgaria, in 1908, the Powers protecting Crete 
gave a promise that this union would be allowed — a promise 
which induced both Greece and Crete to remain quiet at that 
time. This promise the four Powers have broken, and have 
.sent a note to the authorities that they will re-occupy the 
island with their troops in case the Mohammedan members of 
the Assembly are not allowed to take their seats, although 
they have refused to take the oath of allegiance to the King 
of the Hellenes. In consequence the Cretans are dissatisfied. 
On the other hand, equal dissatisfaction exists at Constantino- 
ple, for the same Powers will take no further action to bring 
about the definite settlement desired by the Turks. In fact. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] RECENT Events 713 

they have replied that they are incompetent, and that all the 
Powers that signed the Berlin Treaty must join in such a set- 
tlement. This is a very adroit way of getting out of the diffi- 
culty, for Germany and Austria- Hungary, while willing enough 
to promote dissension, are for that very reason unwilling to 
gratify either the Turks or the other Powers. 

Nothing, therefore, can be more unsatisfactory than the 
present state of things in Crete. On the one hand, the Pow- 
ers protecting the inhabitants of the island^ while securing 
their complete autonomy and self-government, explicitly rec- 
ognize the fact of the sovereignty of the Sultan. On the other 
hand, the Christian members of the Assembly, the judges, 
military officers, and officials, have taken the oath of allegiance 
to King George, an oath which the Mussulman Deputies and 
officials refuse to take. For this refusal they have been pen- 
alized by the Christian majority, a majority which, in its turn, 
is to be coerced by the Powers in the event of its refusing to 
yield to their demands. And yet the Powers will go no 
further, and refuse to do anything definitely to settle the 
question whether Crete is to belong to Turkey or Greece. 



Digitized by 



Google 



With Our Readers 



THB following incident is a curious example of the increasing lax- 
ity of discipline in one of our most prominent ecclesiastical 
bodies. In a state educational institution the salaried chaplain 
holds service every Sunday (excepting in the summer, when there 
is none because he is in Europe). He is an ordained Episcopalian 
minister. Many of the young men obliged to attend his service 
(rendered in keeping with the American edition of the Book of 
Common Prayer) are not Episcopalians but Presbyterians, Baptists, 
Methodists, and others having no religious belief whatever. A few 
of the more piously inclined expressed a desire "to take the sacra- 
ment " once a month with their Episcopalian brother students. At 
first the chaplain hesitated to administer the sacrament, since some 
were not only not confirmed but not even baptized. After a time he 
suppressed his scruples and invited all who so desired to partake 
of communion. The violation of this rubric would not occur in 
England, since the law is well defined by the authority of the 
Crown, at least, for the beneficed clergy. Strictly considered, con- 
firmation may be regarded as a " rite " and not a sacrament, there 
being but two sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist. By what 
law, then, may an Episcopal minister give communion to young 
men who are Baptists, Presbyterians, or Methodists ? By what law 
may an Episcopal minister consecrate and give communion to young 
men who are not even baptized ? This is a matter more serious for 
the High Church party than even the question of " the open pulpit,' 
for it is a more striking manifestation of that growing doctrinal dis- 
ruption which is undermining the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
America. 



N' 



[OT unfrequently we see men accusing Catholic Churchmen, and 
especially the members of the Curia, of mental dishonesty, and 
betraying, even in the very attack, a surprising degree of moral 
obtuseness. Some found it difficult to accept the plain evidence 
for this in the case of an eminent priest who died out of the visible 
unity of the Church ; we can hardly shut our eyes to a flagrant 
and more recent instance in a non-Catholic who stands sponsor for a 
violent assault upon the Church. The author of this assault, we 
deeply regret to state, is a former Catholic priest, whom his spon- 
sor presents to the public as still engaged in the Catholic ministry 
and devoted to his pastoral work, '' a devout Christian and a good 
Catholic in the broad sense of the word.'' Will it be believed that 
this is the characterization — misleading, as it will appear— of a man 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lo.] With Our Readers 715 

who proclaims his disbelief in all Catholic doctrine, and even in all 
that the world has hitherto agreed to call Christianity ? What idea 
of honesty and sincerity possesses the soul of one who can praise a 
man who will at the same time disbelieve Catholicism and act before 
the world as a Catholic priest ? That an unbeliever should applaud 
the lapse of a Catholic priest into unbelief is intelligible ; but that 
he should praise one who lives the life of an unbelieving priest, 
proves only one thing — that he himself is incapable of discerning be- 
tween sincerity and the deepest dishonesty and hjrpocrisy. He is, 
in fact, so blind to the difference between the two that he naively 
exhibits his blindness to the world without any suspicion that it will 
be discovered, or rather that there is any blindness to be discovered. 
Surely a Catholic priest, by his very ministry, professes belief in 
Catholic doctrines and loyalty to the papal authority ; if his profes- 
sion be false, his life is a lie, a greater lie than the life of a soldier or 
statesman who should be a traitor to his country and work in the 
interest of the enemy. The thought of an unbelieving priest is in- 
tolerable to any Catholic, and, thank God ! the instances of it are 
as rare as they are hideous. It should be intolerable to any honest 
man. An Bmest Renan is commended, and very justly, for refus- 
ing to accept the priesthood of the Catholic Church after he had 
ceased to believe her doctrines. One only course is open to honest 
doubt — not to enter upon, nor to continue in, a priesthood which is 
essentially a profession of faith. A man in a transitional stage, not 
knowing his own mind, may be pitied or excused ; but there can 
surely be only condemnation for one who disbelieves and yet con- 
tinues the exercise of the holy ministry. We do not speak thus be- 
cause we feel there is any call for such a word to our priests — far 
from it, for we know perfectly well that they deserve the confidence 
which the laity repose in them ; but we speak out in order to con- 
demn and reprobate a position assumed, in the present instance, by 
one who takes a lofty tone of moral superiority. It is pitiful, in- 
deed, to see one come before the world as a teacher of morality who 
cannot distinguish between light and darkness. 

• « • 

THB philosophic sponsor for this book — we shall not gratify him 
by advertizing its title — assures his Protestant readers, in his 
brief introduction, that they have one thing to learn from the Catho- 
lic Church. Many conjectures will occur to the mind of the Catholic 
reader before he would dream of the true one : the one thing which 
Catholicism can teach Protestantism is — the love of art I At first we 
were tempted to smile at the simplicity of this grave philosopher ; 
but we soon fell to admiring it as an unexpected and charming hu- 
man trait. He forced us to note the great resemblance between him- 



Digitized by 



Google 



7i6 With Our Readers [Aug., 

self and a certain lady who had an interview with Tennyson. '* How 
did the poet impress you ? '* she was asked. ** Wonderfully," the 
lady replied rapturously. **I never in my life saw such a lovely 
head of hair! " And we recalled the more striking resemblance 
between our philosopher and another lady who admired a certain 
preacher. " Your sermon was beautiful," the good woman assured 
him, " and your surplus was such a lovely fit ! " And so our friend, 
who has long played the riles of public teacher, of philosopher, and 
critic, admires the Mother of the Faithful for her flowing locks and 
well-fitting robes, and urges the Protestant world to frequent her 
salon and learn there a love of art. It is worth while to gather up a 
pleasing absurdity of this sort, when we find it blossoming beside the 
dusty road of religious controversy, and to inhale its perfume ; but 
we should like our philosopher, before he stands sponsor for further 
attacks upon the Catholic Church, to learn something of its real 
nature and power. Perhaps, after some years of study, he may be- 
come persuaded that the Catholic Church is powerful because she 
convinces multitudes of all classes and all degrees of culture of her 
ability to satisfy those two imperious needs of the religious soul — the 
need of truth and the need of forgiveness or of union with the Deity. 
She convinces men that she has this two- fold ability, because they 
see, with their own eyes, that she has the ability, however sheac* 
quired it, and because she presents the best credentials for its divine 
origin. Philosophers are eternally calling upon the Church to 
become strong by surrendering her unique claim to be the immortal 
prophet of God upon earth ; but her strength lies in that claim and 
in the reality on which it is based, that she is, in truth, the oracle 
and vicegerent of God upon earth. 



w 



TB who have the happiness of believing in the Catholic Church 
cannot read without sorrow the pages of this book (whose in- 
troduction, by a non-Catholic who has been for many years an as- 
sailant of Christianity, we.have commented upon), when we remem- 
ber that its author is a former Catholic priest. F6nelon and New-^ 
man, we believe, have both asserted that impatience was the charac- 
teristic sin of heresiarchs ; we feel that it is characteristic of this 
author, who will, however, be no heresiarch, because, like De Lamen- 
nais, like Tyrrell, like I#oisy, he will draw no souls after him into the 
abyss of unbelief and hopelessness. A noble soul gone far astray, is 
the thought that haunts us as we turn over these sad pages ; we are 
impressed as when we gaze on the ruins of a once majestic monas- 
tery, or as the poet when he viewed the wintry branches, 

^' bare, ruined choir 
Where late the sweet birds sang.'' 



Digitized by 



Google 



igio.] With Our Readers 717 

Faith and love and hope, we feel and we know, once reigned 
in this heart now possessed by so different a spirit. All that was 
good and strong in this soul is transformed and pressed into the serv- 
ice of unbelief, into a furious attack upon Catholic faith and the 
power of the Papacy. It is not ours to judge the causes and the 
process of this transformation, yet no one can help seeing in this 
book the lack of measure, the one-sidedness, the unfairness which 
usually characterize the extremist who turns upon the institution he 
once loved. Fortunately for the influence of the work, its hatred of 
the Papacy and its bitter unfairness are too conspicuous for it to ef- 
fect harm among Catholics. The author essays the impossible rile 
of a reformer of a Church which he declares founded upon falsehood 
and compacted of errors and blunders. He might destroy such a 
Church, but he never could reform it. Once he has proclaimed his 
disbelief in the divinity of our Lord, and in the divine origin of the 
Church He founded, the author's influence upon Catholics is gone 
and gone forever. No new light is shed by him on old questions. 
There is no need of fighting old battles over again, and this would 
not be the place for it. The old foundations remain unshaken ; the 
old, battered building shows no sign of cracking or crumbling. One 
more figure passes out into the dark night of scepticism, trying vain- 
ly to persuade itself that the sun is shining ; we think of those that 
preceded it, of De Lamennais, of Doellinger, of Tyrrell, of I^oisy, of 
Houtin, and of their wretched lot ; we reflect on the hopelessness of 
their fight and of the good they might have rendered the Church if 
they had remained her faithful children ; we see this new recruit join 
them and we remember the past. The Catholic Church has many 
arguments ; and not the least powerful is the fearful shipwreck of 
the Christian religion which overtakes those who abandon the bark 
of Peter. 

« « • 

A GREAT Catholic educational convention was held in Detroit 
during the month of July. We are informed that its complete 
minutes, with all the papers presented by Catholic educators and 
Catholic leaders of to-day, will be published shortly. The report 
will be of keenest interest to all interested in education. The con- 
vention was attended by many archbishops and bishops, prominent 
priests and laymen, and by more than five hundred Sisters from 
communities that devote themselves to the education of the young. 
These conventions are an emphatic evidence of our vitality and our 
power. They receive but scant notice from the secular press, and 
yet it is upon the fidelity to right principle, as laid down by Catholic 
teaching, that the welfare of our country rests. 

The Detroit Free Press said, editorially, of the convention: 



Digitized by 



Google 



7i8 With Our Readers [Aug., 

<< The meeting of the Catholic Educational Association in Detroit 
has brought together a body of men and women of whom the public 
at large knows but little, but whose work must have a profound 
effect upon the nation's future. They are primarily reponsible for 
the education of 1,200,000 of the nation's children, who are already 
in Catholic schools, and they are aiming to gather into those institu- 
tions at least as many more who are compelled still to go to the pub- 
lic schools for lack of room in the parochial ones. That they will 
ultimately succeed in weaning all their own fold from the public 
schools there is much reason to expect, especially if their claims of 
the low cost and excellence of their system be correct. 



LAST month, about sixty years after the restoration of the hier- 
archy in England, the Cathedral of Westminster was solemnly 
consecrated. The importance of the celebration can hardly be over- 
estimated. In historical significance it overshadows all other events 
connected with the restoration of Catholicism in England. The 
Emancipation Act gave relief and freedom to a long and bitterly 
persecuted people ; the restoration of the hierarchy was the harbin- 
ger of a Second Spring, and now — sooner, it seems, than Newman ex- 
pected — comes an event that speaks of strong, religious life ; of a 
spring that was well planted, a summer fruitful, and a harvest that 
is constantly increasing. The event gives reason for every hope that 
the harvesters will be many and capable and that the harvest itself 
will be so great as to tax their every effort. Wiseman, Manning, 
Vaughan — the hopes, the prayers, the life-work of all these are in- 
corporated in the history of this magnificent London basilica. The 
Catholic faith is again set before England in its rightful place of 
dignity and of power. No longer is its only evidence the dingy 
chapel on the side street attended by Irish laborers. That faith is 
set upon a hill in order that its beauty and its universality may be 
known to all men. No longer is that faith a thing that once was 
great. It is great now, and the consecration of this cathedral is a 
proof of its divine, unending life. The Catholics of England may 
well rejoice and their fellow-Catholics throughout the world also 
rejoice with them. 

« « « 

THE consecration occurred at a time that offered signal opportunity 
for impressing favorably the public mind with the universality 
and the spiritual power of the Catholic Church. The second reading 
of the bill to change the notorious Royal Oath was carried by an over- 
whelming vote of 342 to 41. Protestant bigotry and non-Conformist 
prejudice will certainly receive a death blow. The Irish members, of 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] With Our Readers 719 

course, voted solidly for a change in the wording of the Oath. And 
the unquestioned fidelity of the Irish should never go unmentioned 
when the history of Catholicity in England is discussed. And the 
I^ndon Tablet is conspicuously in error when it says that "alone 
among the nations England gave martyrs for the rights and supre- 
macy of the Apostolic See." 



THE consecration of the Cathedral of Westminster brings more 
forcibly than ever to our minds the joy and glory which will be 
our own at the consecration, in September next, of St. Patrick's 
Cathedral in New York. That event will be replete for us with his- 
torical importance. It will mean not only the successful labors of a 
diocese that is one of the greatest in the world, but it will recall and 
commemorate the deeds of our fathers in the faith, bishops, priests, 
religious, laymen and women, who endured sacrifice, fought the 
good fight, and made possible the favors and the prosperity that we 
of the present day enjoy. The consecration of St. Patrick's Cathe- 
dral will be an enduring testimony to the imperishable glories of our 
past — short comparatively as it has been — and a most hopeful in- 
spiration for us to labor unceasingly in the future, for great as is 
the body of the faithful, rich as is the harvest, both will, under God's 
providence, be greater and richer still in this our land for the years 
that are to come. 

« « « 

AMERICAN Catholic literature suffered a notable loss in the 
death, on June 17, of the Rev. John J. Ming, S.J. Father 
Ming was born in Switzerland in 1838, and began his labors in this 
country in 1874. He was a contributor on philosophical and sociolog- 
ical subjects to the American Catholic Quarterly^ the Messenger^ the 
Catholic Encyclopedia^ and America. Data of Modem Ethics was his 
first published volume. The Characteristics and the Religion of Mod- 
em Socialism and The Ethics of Modetn Socialism are two noteworthy 
works from his pen that refute the claims of radical Socialism and 
show its utterly unchristian spirit. He labored steadfastly in the 
cause of Catholic apologetic almost to the very day of his death. 
« « « 

AS we go to press we learn that the extensive preparations for the 
International Eucharistic Congress, to be held at Montreal, Sep- 
tember 7-1 1 , are almost complete. Without doubt this Congress will 
witness the greatest religious ceremony ever held in America. 



Digitized by 



Google 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

Bbnzigbi Brotrbrs, New York : 

IfidUatioHs for Jun: By Charles Santley. Price 60 cents net 

P. J. Kbnbdt ft Sons, New York: 

Emglisk AcciMiuatum. Bj Rer. F. T. Barrtf, C.S.C. Price 60 cents. 

Hbnbt Holt ft Co., New York: 

TMf Cavi-lVomaM. By Viola Borhans. Price $1.50. 

Undbrwood Typbwritbb Company, New York: 

MetoiU Fractuo Para Aprtmdtr a EscrUirpar El Taeio, Par J. Martinex. 

Small, Maynard ft Co., Boston: 

Astir: AFubliskif's Life-Stofv, By John Adams Thayer. Price $x.flo net. IVke Cowi>* 
ing Rtligian, By Charles F. Dale. Tht Gossamir Thread, By Venita Seibert. Price 
$z net When Levi Calls Men to Arms. By Stephen Chalmers. Price $1.50. 

L. C. Paob ft Co., Boston: 

HouseboaHng on a Colonial Waterway. By Frank and Cortelle Hutchins. Price $2.50. 

J. B. Lyon Company, Albany: 

Report of the Attorney General in the iiatUrofthe Milk InvestigaHon^ 

John T. Combs, Pittsburg: 

Description of the Epiphany Church, Fittshtrg, Pa* By Rev. Thomas F. Coakley, D.D« 

PsBSS OP THB Parish Monthly, Huntington, Ind.: 
The Parochial School, Why f By Rey. John F. Noll. 

Bobbs-Mbrrill Company, Indianapolis, Ind.: 
By Inheritance* By Octave Thanet. 

B. Hbrdbs, St Louis, Mo. : 

Undir the Ban, By C. M. Home. Price 60 cents net. Towards the Eternal Priesthood, 
By Rev. J. M. Leleu. Price 15 cenU. Towards the Altar, By Rev. J. M. Leleo. 
Price 15 cents. Are Our Prayers Heard f By Joseph Eager, S.J. Price 15 cents net. 
Simple Catechism Lessons. By Doro Lambert Nolle. O.S.B. Pric '^ - - 



OH the History of Religions, Vol. III. Price 60 cents net *Mid Pines attd Heathtr^ 
' " " andth " ----- .- ...«.- 



rice $1 net. Lectures 
I Pines iutd h' 
and the True and the Counterfeit, By Joseph CarmichaeL Price 60 cents net 

T. FiSHBR Unwin, London : 

The Following of Christ, By John Tauler. Price y 6d net 

A. ft C. Black, London : 

The Quest of the Historical Jesus, By Albert Schweitzer. Price zor 6d net. 

Thb Angblus Company, London : 

Little Booh of Eternal Wisdom, By Blessed Henry Suso. Price 2s net 

Bloud bt Cib., Paris. France: 

Le Positivisme Chretien. Par Andrd Codard. Price 3 /r, 50. Le Ponti/Ual. Par Jules 
Baudot. Price o Jr, 60. LIdie /ndividualiste et VIdie Chritienne, Par Henri Lorin. 
Price o fr. 60. Qu*est ce que le Quietisme f Par J. Paquier. Price z fr, 90. LHistohre 
des Religions et la Foi Chr/tiemne. Par J. Bricout. Price z fr. oo, Apolog/tifuo 
Chritienne, Par Anatole Moulard et Francis Vincent Price 3 fr. 50. 

J. Gabalda bt Cib., Paris : 

Orpheus et VEvangile. Par Mgr. Pierre BatiffoL Price 3 fr. Saint Leger, Par R. P. 
Camerlinck, O.P. Price a /r/. 

P. Lbthibllbux, Paris : 

Combats d'Hier et d'AuJourd *Hui, Par Comte Albert de Mun. Vols. I and II. Price 
Zfrs. 



Digitized by 



Google 



THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

Vol. XCI. SEPTEMBER, 1910. No. 546. 

CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM. 

BY W. T. C. SHEPPARD. O.S.B.. B.A. 

[JTSIDE the Catholic Church the question, What 
think ye of Christ? is still being asked, and the 
answers that are given to it are legion. Although, 
as Catholics, we gaze upon the dispute with the 
attitude of spectators who have no personal in- 
terest at stake, since for us the question admits of no dubious 
reply, yet we cannot be wholly indifferent to the course of a 
controversy which is causing many to lose such faith as they 
once possessed, and which is of vital importance to all profess- 
ing Christians who are separated from the unity of the Church. 
The present time is characteristically an age of ''new the- 
ologies." There is little, indeed, that is altogether novel in the 
main conclusions of the modern theories about Christianity, but 
in the methods of presentation there is much that is peculiar 
to our own time. A large section of society, claiming to be 
representative of the ''modern mind/' with new sciences, new 
ways of thinking, and new philosophies, has grown recalcitrant 
of old beliefs, and, intoxicated by success in mai 
knowledge which modern research has opened ot 
recklessly onward, eager to encompass within its ci 
that Christians have ever held to be most sacrcsan 
erable. Continental Protestantism is rapidly cet 
Christian in any true sense of the term ; America, toe 



Copyright. 1910. The Missionary Society of St. Paul the . 

IN the State of New York. 
VOL. XCI.- 46 



Digitized by 



Google 



722 Christology and Criticism [Sept., 

have made strides along the same path ; and it is to be feared 
that even in England, where, generally speaking, a spirit of 
greater moderation has prevailed, very many members of the 
Established Church, as well as of the numberless other denomi- 
nations which have hitherto held fast to the truth of Christ's 
Divinity, are gradually but surely coming under the influence 
of what is euphemistically termed a *' Liberal Theology.*' 

We are told in many quarters that the ''old theology" is 
dead. The very name of dogma is become a byword. The 
Christian Revelation means, it is said, not a heavenly message 
sent down from God to man, the acceptance of which is a 
necessary condition of salvation, but only a particular effort 
in the general and natural striving of mankind after the tran* 
scendent and divine. Hence it does not differ in any essential 
particular from other religions. Like them, it may be left be- 
hind in the march of the world's progress, and if it is to con- 
tinue in the future to be of service to mankind, it must be 
subjected to restatement or alteration in order to answer the 
requirements of the advanced knowledge and ideas of the time. 
Such a process, we are told, is in fact needed in our own day, 
in which the criticism of the New Testament and of Christian 
origins, combined with the new study of comparative religiont 
has made imperative the abandonment of the old Christological 
formularies. 

The consistent attitude of the Catholic Church in opposing 
these attacks upon the traditional doctrines is naturally a seri- 
ous block of stumbling to the apostles of ''reform." We are 
accustomed by now to the oft-repeated taunt hurled at us from 
the rationalist camp, that the Church is an effete and antiquated 
institution cumbering the path of progress ; though it is a lit- 
tle difficult to listen with a straight countenance to the dreams 
of fervid advocates of new theologies, who look forward to a 
golden age when a Modernist Pope will arise to put the house- 
hold of the Church in order and to bring her teaching into line 
with present-day ideas. It is not unreasonable to ask what 
manner of restatement ought to be accepted in place of the 
ancient doctrines of the Church, and whether— even apart from 
any divine and infallible authority lying behind the Catholic 
dogmas — the answers given by the various critical schools have 
such compelling force as to establish the prudence (to say the 
least) of our embracing them. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Christology and Criticism 723 

The ** assured results of criticism " — to employ a phrase of 
the late Father Tyrrell — hold a prominent place in the writings 
of the liberal schools, especially in reference to recent study 
of the New Testament These ''results'' are referred to as 
something so notorious and so evident that by many critics 
adherence to traditional beliefs respecting the Person of Jesus 
Christ is regarded as the mark of an antiquated mind and as 
indicative of a lamentable want of appreciation for the progress 
of modern science and thought. It is true that all the forces 
of criticism, sane and insane, have been brought to bear upon 
the writings of the New Testament to such a degree, that it 
is no exaggeration to say that never, in any former age, have 
these documents been submitted to so close and so searching 
an examination. Far be it from any Catholic to disparage or 
ignore the good work that has been done in the field of New 
Testament study by scholars of whatever religious views. We 
readily acknowledge the vast amount of erudition and scholar- 
ship that has been displayed in many quarters outside the 
Church, and are grateful for all that criticism has done, whether 
in the matter of text or exegesis, or in throwing light upon 
the background of the Gospels and Epistles, or in contributing 
in any way whatsoever to our knowledge of the sacred writ- 
ings. Within this wide area solid results have been attained. 
But to one who is not predisposed by philosophical prejudices, 
it is not easy to see wherein the '' assured results of criticism " 
have made necessary a revision of our traditional doctrines with 
regard to the Divinity of Jesus Christ. What are these results ? 
The critics themselves do not seem to know, although they 
appeal to them so loudly. 

Father Tyrrell, speaking for the so called '' Catholic '' Mod- 
ernists, after declaring that all [are united in ''the belief in a 
possible reconciliation of their Catholicism with the results of 
historical criticism," is yet bound to confess tha* "*'**^ — Aia^^ 
widely as to what those results are, and as to 
reconciliation."* A glance at the literary outpt 
criticism in recent years will show how widely tl 
of the various liberal " theologians " respecting C 
differ one from another. The much-discussed H 
SuppUment for i^op, if not very valuable in oth< 
at any rate instructive in giving some idea of tt 

* CJkristiamiif at iJU Cross-Roads^ p. zz. 



Digitized by 



Google 



724 CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM [Sept., 

opiaion which prevails among those who are seekiDg to adapt 
Christianity to the '' modern mind/' M. Loisy himself is struck 
by this want of agreement, for he writes in the Hibbett Jaut' 
nal (April, 1910, p. 496) that ''one feels strongly tempted to 
think that contemporary theology-^except for Roman Catho- 
lics, with whom traditional orthodoxy has always the force of 
law — is a veritable Tower of Babel, in which the confusion of 
ideas is even greater than the diversity of tongues/' 

The fact is, that the only point upon which the various 
schools of liberal criticism are agreed is in the rejection of the 
supernatural and miraculous. '' Miraculous " and '' historical " 
are opposed terms. The idea of a supra mundane interference 
in the established and orderly course of things, as manifested 
by ordinary experience, is assumed to be an impossibility. 
Hence the traditional attitude towards the New Testament, in 
which the supernatural figures so largely, can no longer be 
maintained, and the central Personage of the Gospel narratives 
must be unfrocked of the garb of glory and divinity with which, 
as it is said, later generations have invested Him, and be re- 
duced at all costs to the category of ordinary humanity. This 
attitude towards the supernatural is the real motive of the 
critical attacks upon the Fourth Gospel, which is rejected, and 
denied all historical value, not because of any serious weakness 
in the evidence for the Johannine authorship, nor because there 
is much real difficulty in reconciling it with the earlier Gospels, 
but simply and solely because it emphasizes the divine char- 
acter of the Christ and refuses to submit to the arbitrary dis 
section of modern critical methods for the removal of the super- 
natural. The unhistorical character of St. John's Gospel is now 
assumed as unquestionable by all the rationalist critics, and 
everything in the Synoptics which in any way approximates 
to its teaching is treated in a similar fashion. The Divinity of 
Jesus being regarded from the outset as an impossibility, every 
critic is free to devise his own Christology, and the '' results " 
of criticism are just those views which happen to fit in with 
the individual critic's philosophy. 

The cry '' Back to the historic Jesus I " has been dinned 
into our ears ad nauseam. We have had enough, it is said, of 
the unreal idealized Christ presented to us by the formularies 
of orthodox theology: we want to get behind that figure, and 
to see the real living man Jesus, who actually moved and taught 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM 72$ 

upon the soil of Palestine. Hence the long succession of lib- 
eral theologians for the past two centuries has been unceasingly 
employed in the attempt to depict the ''Jesus of history'' as 
He actually was. The history oi this movement of historical 
''reconstruction/' from Reimarus (1694- 1768) down to our own 
day, is melancholy reading to any one who is not possessed 
by the prejudices of liberal theology ;* and, as we read, a long 
procession of strange figures passes before our eyes, ranging in 
character from the ideal man to a deluded lunatic or a disrepu- 
table charlatan, each bearing the label " the historic Jesus," each 
professedly portrayed from a study of the facts, and each pos- 
sessed of no real existence apart from the inventive imagina- 
tion of the critics. A writer.f who can scarcely be accused of 
excessive devotion to traditional views, has said with truth that 
" when we are bidden to choose between the Jesus of history 
and the Christ of dogma, few, except professed students, know 
what a protean and kaleidoscopic figure the ' Jesus of history ' 
is." 

It is no exaggeration to say that the state of liberal tkeoU 
ogy (as its exponents are pleased to term it) is nothing short 
of chaotic. To single out any one theory and to label it as 
the dominant view would, perhaps, be too definite; judging from 
the rationalistic literature which is pouring continually frcm the 
press, especially in Germany, there would appear to be no 
dominant view. It is possible, however, to give a rough classi- 
fication into which the various theories about Jesus Christ may 
be fitted, despite the considerable differences which often divide 
critic from critic; and we may distinguish three main classes: 
the humanitarian, the eschatological, and the mythological. 

A school which has been very prominent all through the his- 
tory of criticism is that which we may call the " humanitarian," 
which, by the elimination of everything that is supernatural 
or eschatological in the Gospels, attempts to reduce Jesus to 
ordinary manhood, though, to be sure. He is to 
as a veritable paragon of humanity. There hdve 
advocates of this view, but the exposition wbicl 
known best in this country is that of Professor H 
Das Wesen des Chtistenthums. Approaching the 

* C/. Tht Quest o/the Historical Jesus, By Albert Schweitzer. Trans 
gomery, 1910. London : A. and C. Black. 

t Professor F. C. Burkitt, introduction to Schweitzer's book already m 



Digitized by 



Google 



726 Christology and Criticism [Sept., 

the usual presuppositions about the miraculous^ he discovered 
in Jesus a merely human teacher, a preacher of ethics. Whose 
doctrine is concerned in no way with his own Person, but with 
lofty conceptions of God's Fatherhood and love for men, with 
the priceless value of the human soul, and with the advance- 
ment of right conduct in a purely internal, invisible^ and ethical 
'* Kingdom of God/' Such is the ''Essence of Christianity," 
which abides permanent and immutable for all time, though 
disfigured and obscured from its very infancy by elements bot- 
rowed from Greek religion and other extraneous sources, until 
German professors restored it, rejuvenated in all its pristine 
beauty, to the light of our own generation. 

The arbitrary method by which this conclusion is reached 
has not escaped criticism from other quarters in the liberal 
camp. It simply succeeds in reading modern German ideas 
into the Gospels and in rejecting everything that conflicts with 
them ; and hence M. Loisy's well-known criticism is very true, 
when he says that Professor Harnack, looking back through 
the ages at the figure of the historic Jesus, is like a man who 
peers down a deep well and sees reflected in the waters be- 
neath the countenance of a modern German Protestant. It 
has been objected that Harnack and other critics of that class 
fail to take into account the thought and condition of the 
Jewish world in the time of Jesus, and especially the eschatc- 
logical ideas which were then widely current. 

This leads us to the consideration of what we have classi- 
fied as the second school, the eschatological, which takes its 
stand upon the eschatological teaching of Jesus^ i. ^., the say- 
ings about the '' last things " — and claims to find in that alone 
the essence of Christianity. This theory has grown very 
prominent in recent years. Reimarus had, indeed, long ago 
suggested something similar. Strauss too, in the earlier por- 
tion of his life, seems to have inclined to some view of this 
description; but the theory did not meet with great favor 
until much lateV. The studies of Helgenfeld* and Dillmann,t 
in the field of the late Apocalyptie literature of Judaism, had 
drawn attention to Jewish eschatological ideas. Johannes 
Weiss (1892) gave considerable impetus to the attempt to 
place Jesus Christ on a level with the Apocalyptic visionaries 
of declining Judaism, and in more recent years an ardent apos- 

.• Hnueh, 1851. t Judiscke ApokalyptU, 1857. 



Digitized by 



Google 



igio.] Christology and Criticism 727 

tie of a more developed form of the theory has been Professor 
Schweitzer.* This species of '^ Christology '' has grown only 
too familiar to* us through the writings of the so-called 
''Catholic'' Modernists, and, in the form expounded by the 
late Father Tyrrell {Christianity at the Cross-Roads)^ it presents 
Jesus to us not as a German professor of ethics-^Who, if He 
were only a reality, would be a really estimable personage— 
but as a mysterious Apocalyptic yisionary, Who in some way 
-^we know not how— became possessed of the idea that He 
was to be the Messias, Whose destiny it was to return very 
soon upon the clouds of heaven, escorted by angelic hosts, and 
to inaugurate, by some strange and sudden cataclysm, an en* 
tirely new order of things in the ''Messianic kingdom"; His 
function meanwhile on earth being to warn men of the com- 
ing catastrophe and to stimulate their minds to thoughts of 
"other worldliness/' Or, as a reviewer f of Tyrrell's book 
correctly says, the Jesus Whom this class of criticism offers 
us is " a man who believed Himself to be a demi-god though 
there are no demi-gods; Who lived in the expectation of tak- 
ing the chief part in a dramatic transformation scene which- 
never occurred; . • . Who bade His disciples transfer all 
their hopes from the world in which they lived to a millenium 
which existed only in His own imagination." 

When the Modernist, in the person of M. Loisy, accuses 
Harnack, in the criticism already cited, of arbitrary dealing 
with the Gospels, it is natural to recall the remark which a 
certain proverb records as having been addressed by the pot 
to the kettle. Both the theories which we have been consid- 
ering stand condemned as a priori and arbitrary, as necessitat- 
ing the most unwarrantable manipulation and expurgation of 
the text, and as being based upon methods which are capable 
of leading to any conceivable result that the private judgment 
of the critic may desire to draw in support of his peculiar 
notion as to what the Jesus of history ought to have been. 
Hamack's school seeks to read modern German Protestantism 
— or, rather, a single phase of it — into the Gospels; Modern- 
ism, precluded by its philosophy from admitting the possibility 
of man's obtaining to any permanent and abiding truth, and 

* Dtu MeuianitStS' und Leidims-itheimnis, Z90Z ; and The Quest of the Historical Jesut 
(English translation), 19x0. 

t Dr. W. R. Inge, Hibbert Journal, January, 19x0. 



Digitized by 



Google 



728 CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM [Sept., 

compelled to regard all religion as in a state of unceasing flux, 
and all doctrines and beliefs as merely symbolic expressions 
oi transient " religious experience " which may be true for one 
age and false for another, succeeds only in extracting from 
the Gospels precisely that idea of Christ which it has itself 
placed there; and whatsoever is found to be at variance with 
the theory must be either ignored or attributed, after the 
methods of M. Loisy, to the idealization of early Christian 
"faith/' or to the exigencies of primitive apologetic. This 
view of the Gospel Christology is not critical but one-sided; 
it cannot do justice to the moral teaching of Jesus; it cannot 
give any adequate account of a great deal of what we may 
call " non->eschatological " material in the Gospels; and it fails 
to recognize the complex nature of the "Kingdom/' and does 
violence to an important group of sayings which represent 
that Kingdom as something actually present. 

There is^ moreover, another objection which strikes at all 
these attempts to find a so-called "historic Jesus/' in contra- 
distinction to the Christ Whom the Church has always wor- 
shipped as divine. If there was an "historic Jesus" at all, 
and if out of this real personage the disciples' " faith " (or 
whatever else we care to call the motive power in the process), 
as reflected in our earliest documents, created a glorified and 
idealized being as the object of their enthusiastic love and ad- 
oration, it is a serious difficulty to imagine how this most 
sudden and unparalleled development could have taken place 
between the Crucifixion and the dates to which modern scholar- 
ship assigns the earliest writings of the New Testament. The 
growth of myth and legend requires time, and it may be 
gravely questioned whether in the space of twenty years, or 
even less, which must be allowed for the process, we have a 
period sufficiently long to account for the beliefs regarding 
Christ's Person which are found to be universal in the earliest 
Christian communities of which we have record. A great deal 
of modern criticism is still dominated by the theory that St. 
Paul was uniquely responsible (or the line of development 
which Christology is supposed to have taken in the early 
Church. But, whatever be St. Paul's place in the process of 
a deeper and fuller realization ci the truths of Christianity, it 
is impossible, on the evidence of our documents, to show that 
in his Christology he was in any way opposed to, or different 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Christology and Criticism 729 

froaii the older apostles.* It is clear that whatever was the 
content of the private revelations which he mentions, these 
were not (as is often asserted) the means by which he acquired 
doctrines which were not hitherto existent in the Church ; and 
the paradosis in I. Cor. xv. 3 following, which he declares he 
has himself '' received " from others and taught at the first 
onset {en protois) to his Corinthian converts, shows that some 
at any rate of the main truths about our Lord's life and 
atoning mission lie behind St Paul, and that the apostle is in 
their regard a merely passive recipient of established tradition. 
Everything points to the homogeneity oi Apostolic doctrine. 
And is it not reasonable to suppose that this doctrine is au- 
thentic and goes back to the Founder of Christianity Himself T 
It seems difficult to account for the faith of the primitive 
Church on any other hypothesis. There were other so-called 
Messias, who made many followers, an4 some suffered for their 
presumption. Why was none of these made the object of this 
strange apotheosis? Even if we ignore the improbability that 
such a process would have taken place in a company of 
Palestinian Jews, whom we should naturally suppose to have 
inherited all the Jewish abhorrence of idolatry and pagan my- 
thology, it is surely an extraordinary phenomenon that an 
obscure Galilean peasant, Whose life ended in apparent failure 
with a cry as of despair upon His lips, should have been 
transformed, within a few years, and while membets of His 
own family were yet alive, into a Divine Being endowed with 
the lofty attributes to which even the earliest of our New 
Testament writings bear testimony. 

Our documents must be taken as a whole. No satisfactory 
or permanent result can be expected from the application of 
such arbitrary methods as those which have just been dis- 
cussed. The supernatural is too closely interwoven with the 
rest of the material to be so easily separated; and this applies 
not only to the Fourth Gospel, but even to our earliest Gospel, 
St. Jidark's, where the central Figure of the narrative is One 
Who cannot by any sort of legitimate criticism be reduced to 
the category of ordinary humanity. *^ Go as far back as you 
like in your investigation," says a recent writer,t who cer- 

•Cf, Gal. ii. 2,7-11. 
t •• The Collapse of Liberal Christianity." By Rev. K. C. Anderson, Hibhtrt Journal ^ 
January, 1910. 



Digitized by 



Google 



730 Christology and Criticism [Sept., 

tainly has scant sympathy with orthodox theology ; ** what you 
have at last is a supernatural Christ . . . nowhere can we 
get back to an historic Jesus." In so far as these words de- 
scribe the hopelessness of seeking in the Gospels a Jesus Who 
is mere man, they are true. 

That the objections against the above theories are some* 
thing more than a fiction of orthodox apologetic seems to be 
indicated by the attitude of certain other schools of liberal 
criticism. Clearly^ if the hypothesis of an ''historic Jesus'' is 
to work at all, we must allow a much longer period for the 
process of transformation. Such a period has been allowed by 
some critical schools in one of two ways: either by assigning 
the ** historic Jesus " to an earlier date, or by relegating the 
documents to a later age than is usually accepted. Certain 
Dutch critics^ of whom Van Manen may be taken as the chief, 
have adopted the latter alternative, and have not hesitated to 
place all the Gospels and Epistles at an advanced date in the 
second century, and to regard them as legendary matter which 
has grown up not only around an ** historic Jesus/' but also 
around an ''historic Paul." This dating of the documents, 
however, encounters such enormous difficulties that the school 
of Van Manen has not found many disciples. In the other^ 
direction a few writers — happily insignificant— who claim sup- 
port from certain very dubious statements in the Talmud, 
seek to remove the higher time*limit by placing Jesus about 
a century before the Christian era. 

It is not too much to say that the quest of an "historic 
Jesus" has terminated in a culde sac. It is perhaps the recog- 
nition of this fact that has given an impetus at the present 
day to what we may call the mythological explanation of the 
Christological problem. However that may be, there are cer- 
tainly strong tendencies in many quarters to relegate the 
whole life of Christ to the category of myth ; and just as the 
later Greek, who had outgrown the primitive religious con- 
ceptions of their forefathers, sought still to retain the »old 
myths about the gods, and to render them more or less re- 
spectable by covering them with a cloak of allegory, so does 
a certain class of extreme critics endeavor to adapt Chris- 
tianity to modern needs. 

The older German criticism was not wanting in advocates 
of the mythological theory, though they did not meet with 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Christology AND Criticism 731 

any considerable support, even from liberal critics themselves. 
Bruno Bauer had gained a notoriety by working out a theory 
which regarded all the Gospel narratives as the projection into 
the form of history of the '' reflexion '' of the early Church ; * 
and Albert Kalthoff developed a theory in the interests of 
what he called "social theology/' finding in Jesus nothing 
more than an eponymous hero, owing His origin to the social 
conditions and ideas of the second century.f We have recent- 
ly had, nearer home,| a fair sample of this view of Jesus 
Christt which discovers the origin of Christianity not in a 
single Person, but in a " synthesis of the factors that controlled 
the historical development of the time/' It sprang up in an 
age when religious feeling found its expression in the " Mys- 
teries'' and in numberless cults or religious associations which 
were constituted under the patronage of a protective deity, 
whose name the members bore and whose honor and service 
were their special care. Christianity was simply one of these 
societies, and just as there were cults of Zeus Soter, Serapis, 
Dionysos, or Hercules, so did men gather together under the 
patronage of a god Christos. As in the "Mysteries," so in 
Christianity, the central idea is the story of a dying and ris- 
ing god — a conception which goes back to primitive nature 
myth, derived from the yearly experience of the withering of 
vegetation in autumn and winter, and its revival in the spring. 
A German professor (Jensen) tells us that the story of Jesus 
Christ is merely a version of the old Babylonian legend of 
Gilgamesh, and hence His religion is one out of many forms 
of the worship of the solar deity. More recently, M. Salomon 
Reinach has suggested that the roots of Christianity lie in 
totemism. If we ask how it is that a religion founded upon 
mere myth has been able to survive so long, and to exercise 
so profound an influence as Christianity has done, we receive 
divers answers: some critics, after the manner of Strauss, still 
tell us that the power of Christianity lay in the " idea " of 
god* manhood, the realization of which in every personality is 
the ultimate goal of humanity; others, again, say that the 

• Chriihu und dU Casarem, 1877, 

t Das Christus-Problem, 1902 ; and DU Entsttkmng da Ckruitnthmms, 1904. 

% Dr. Anderson, Hibhtrt Journal, January, 1910, article cited. There is another recent 
work (which the present writer does not yet know from personal perusal) advocating the 
myth-theory ; Di* CkrUtusmytkt, of A, Drews (1909). An American professor (W. B, Smith) 
has been prominent in the same class of "critics." 



Digitized by 



Google 



732 CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM [Sept., 

element of permanent value in the Christos-myth was its lesson 
that we must ** die to live." 

"In proportion as the science of religion progresses/' 
observes M. Loisy» " it becomes more and more difficult to up- 
hold that Christianity was born, that it was developed, that it 
is maintained, under conditions quite different from those of 
other religions."* The whole universe of paganism, ancient 
and modern, has been ransacked for analogies to Christian 
doctrines and beliefs, and it has been said, with the most un- 
blushing confidence, that all the main features of Christ's life- 
story were in existence hundreds — it may be thousands — of 
years before Christianity. Long lists of alleged parallels have 
been collected to show that the miraculous elements in Christ's 
life, the sacramental system, and practically the whole scheme 
of Christian doctrine, so far from being new things in the 
world, are only particular expressions of religious ideas, which 
are a common heritage of humanity all the world over. We 
are referred to legends of miraculous births, such as those re- 
lated of the Buddha, or of Plato, or of Perseus; to stories of 
dying and rising gods like Serapis and Dionysos; and to the 
sacramental character of Greek-mystery cults; and by emphasiz- 
ing superficial resemblances, and ignoring the points of dif 
ference, critics take these myths as proofs of the natural origin 
of Christianity. This is not the place to enter into the long 
discussions and minute comparisons which the reputation of 
these theories involves; but in general it may be pointed out 
that if the critics would lay as much stress upon the differ- 
ences as they do upon the resemblances between the old myths 
and the Christian doctrines, the "results" attained from the 
comparative study of religions would recede to a much less 
prominent place in rationalistic argument than they at present 
hold ; for it would be seen that very many of the examples that 
are cited, especially in connection with the Virgin Birth and 
the Resurrection, stand in the relation not so much of similar- 
ity as of contrast to the Christian truths. Even were the re- 
semblances much closer than they actually are, it may be 
seriously questioned how far they prove the rationalistic thesis. 
The historical arguments still remain; and it is difficult to lee 
how any unprejudiced reader can peruse tbe writings of the 
Nejif Testament, to say nothing of the testimony afforded by 

* Hibhert Journal, April, 1910, 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.J Christology and Criticism 733 

pagan and Jewish writers, and of the abiding and conspicuous 
fact of the Church's existence for nearly two thousand years, 
without coming to the conclusion that there lies behind the 
Christian tradition a very real and concrete Personality. In 
the Synoptics (as liberal criticism from its own standpoint has 
so strongly emphasized), and even in the Gospel of St. John, 
Jesus is a man subject to the conditions of humanity, touch- 
ingly human in His emotions and His sorrows; and it is re- 
volting to the historical sense to suppose that He is merely 
the creation of mythologizing fancy or the projection of an 
idea into the world of actual existence. The Jesus of the 
Gospels has too close a relationship with actual history, and 
the background of His life — as in the case of the religious and 
political forces at vork in Palestine during His day — is de- 
scribed with too great a vividness and accuracy to enable any 
reasonable person to regard these facts as the mere vesture of 
an ideal. 

From this scanty survey of modern liberal tendencies in 
theology it will be seen that with numerous and important 
differences, which we have been unable here to indicate in 
detail, the critics give three main answers to the question with 
which this paper opened. The '' humanitarian '^ view shows us 
Jesus as a mere man, generally a very worthy and admirable 
personage, with a strong suggestion about Him of a modern 
German professor of theology; Modernism, with the eschato- 
logical school generally, introduces us to a kind of harmless 
maniac ; and the myth-theory offers us a nonentity, or (in some 
cases) a personage whose existence does not transcend the 
hypothetical. It may well seem to us Catholics that liberal 
criticism is not far removed from its reductio ad absurdum. 
Sufficient, at any rate, has been said to show how fluctuating 
and unstable are those views of Christ's Person which we axe 
accustomed to hear proclaimed with so much confidence and 
dogmatism as ''assured results of criticism'' in dea 
the early Christian documents. The one element in 
is the denial of the supernatural. Some of the the 
vanced seem to be too ridiculous for any person in { 
seriously to propose. Yet they really appear to repi 
true views of their upholders, and to be offered a 
" solutions " of the Christological problem ; and if th< 
no other value, such theories are, at all events, inte; 



Digitized by 



Google 



734 CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM [Sept., 

the psychologist who makes it his study to investigate the 
strange aberrations of the human mind. A stream of litera- 
ture is steadily issuing from the press in support of hypotheses of 
the crudest description, which would exact demands upon our 
credulity surpassing those required by the most stupendous 
miracle ever recorded in orthodox circles. The fact is, that by 
reiecting the possibility of the supernatural, the critics have 
blown out the lamp which alone could shed light upon the 
New Testament and the course of Christianity from the be- 
ginning until now, and consequently are groping blindly, hope- 
lessly, in the darkness. 

Even in an age of nebulous philosophies it may not be ex- 
travagant for most men to expect that a cause should be pro- 
portionate to its effect: and there may be grave reason for 
doubting whether it is probable that the various theories put 
forth by modern liberal theologians are sufficient to explain 
the part which has been played in the world by Christianity. 
To descant upon the power which this religion has exercised 
through so many centuries over peoples of most diverse nation- 
ality and temperament, would be to enlarge upon a truism* It 
is difficult to imagine how this result-^this religious, social, and 
moral transformation which stands out unique in the history 
of religions, and which is admitted by liberal critics themselves 
—could have been effected if Jesus Christ was nothing more 
than His critics represent Him to have been. It may be doubted 
whether it is ^sufficient to attribute the success of Christianity 
to the lofty ethical teaching which it contains. But whatever 
may be the speculative probability that ethics alone should have 
been able to achieve such great victories as history records to 
the credit of Christianity — and those who know human nature 
as it is will perhaps feel somewhat sceptical upon the point-^ 
there can be no doubt that the real secret of the success of 
Christianity lies in the fact that it preached a Person, Who, 
"being in the form of God, took the form of a servant''— 
became man and suffered and died for His fellow-men, in order 
to draw them to Himself. Morality was simply a consequence 
flowing from union with Christ. Whether or no it is possible 
to regard this faith in Jesus Christ's Divinity as a deception 
or a mistake must depend upon one's belief as to the existence 
of a rational principle directing this universe of visible phe- 
nomena. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM 735 

Liberal criticism, led by its philosophical presuppositions, 
is ioToWed in an impasse. Has not the time come, then, to 
question the competency of its gaide, and to doubt the valid- 
ity of a philosophy which is found to be so frankly opposed 
to the facts of history and the data of the documents ? Such 
would seem to be the reasonable inference. But so far there 
seems little, if any, indication that liberal ''Christianity" is 
beginning to reconsider the validity of its premises, and we 
peer in vain through the mists of controversy to ** catch a glory 
slowly gaining on the shade." We must rest content in the 
hope that, with the progress of investigation, as successive 
theories languish and expire, and the disorder and instability 
of the rationalistic forces become increasingly apparent, there 
may at least be found many in the liberal camp who will re- 
consider their fundamental presuppositions, and acknowledge 
that, when all is said and done, not all the things in heaven 
and earth are dreamed of in their philosophy. 



Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



PATRICIA THE PROBLEM. 

BY ESTHER W. NEILL. 

Chapter IX. 

UGH appeared at the house late that afternoon. 
Mrs. Delarue hovered in the hallway^ making no 
effort to conceal her curiosity at the strangeness 
of this summons. 

** He's a dying man, Hugh/' she said by way 
of warning. ^* I know you don't care for him; I know you 
don't believe in him; but if he makes any request of you — I 
hope you will not lose your temper — I hope you will try and 
oblige him." 

''My dear aunt/' said Hugh smiling, ''have I proved my- 
self an unfeeling brute? I can't help thinking the gentleman 
is crookedj living or dead, and if he wants me to take up some 
of his circuitous methods — " 

''Oh, Hugh I Hugh I" she said. ''You are such an ideal- 
ist. There is no idealism in business. Sometimes I doubt if 
the modern man will be judged by the ten commandments at 
all." 

" Most of them hope not to be. Now, please show me to 
Mr. Cuthbert's room. Father Joe told me he wanted to see 
me at once; and I confess I ^would like to get the ordeal 
over." 

Tom Cuthbert lay in his massive mahogany bed, a shrunken 
figure. In spite of the luxurious furnishings of the room, the 
white capped nurse, true to her long years of training, bad 
unconsciously created an indefinable atmosphere of hospital 
austereness. The lace curtains were twisted into unrecogniz- 
able spirals to admit more air, the oriental scarf on the table 
had been replaced by a linen towel on which stood an enamel 
basin, a number of medicines were arranged in a systematic 
row on the mantel, and a fever chart was spread out on the 
ornate desk in the corner. 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 737 

<' Howdy-do, Dr. Farrell ? " said the Hon. Tom, stretchiog 
out a hot hand to his visitor. '^ Sit down and tell the nurse 
to keep out until I ring for her. She's a tyrant ; but I reckon 
that's her business. If a man hasn't got but a week or two 
to live, I don't see why he can't do as he pleases." 

The nurse, who stood near the bed, forced a weak little 
smile, as if she were accustomed to abuse from her patients, 
and then moved quietly out of the room. 

•'Now shut the door. Dr. Farrell, shut the door — don't 
want any evesdropping — haven't any breath to waste— it's 
getting shorter all the time — you think I've got the flounders 
— I sent for you — ^because — I heard you had lost money — " 

'' Yes " ; said Hugh, reluctantly taking the chair nearest to 
the invalid. 

The Hon. Tom's keen eyes searched his visitor's face. 
" Much ? " he asked. 

" About all I had." 

"And you were rich?" 

''Well that depends on how you look at it." 

The old man smiled tolerantly. "Don't want to give me 
the figures, eh?" 

" I don't mind, if it would be of any interest to you — about 
half a million, I should say." 

" On your uppers now, are you ? " 

"No, not exactly"; he answered, trying to fight back a 
feeling of resentment at this inquisition. " I have my profession, 
which might pay if I had any system about collecting bills, and 
I have a small place in the country, so I'm not homeless." 

"But you have no income?" 

"No." 

" Don't suppose you would object to having one ? " 

"No." 

" Well, I sent for you to-day to make you a proposal — may 
be a little out of the ordinary, but then you don't expect an 
ordinary proposal from a dying man — I know I'm dying, and I 
want to have this matter settled some way — I ain't got any 
breath to waste." He half raised himself on his elbow and his 
voice, which had been sinking lower, sounded like a croak. 
"I want you to marry my daughter," he said. 

For the moment Hugh was speechless with amazement. He 
had been bewildered by the summons to this interview, and 

VOL. XCI.^47 



Digitized by 



Google 



738 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

(or the last five minutes he bad been watching the Hon. Tom 
with growing suspicion. He had expected some crooked busi- 
ness proposition— anything but a suggestion of marriage. 

'' Let me finish/' the Hon. Tom went on. '' I know you 
are surprised — I reckon I am too^ — I haven't cared for you and 
you haveQ't cared for me — but a dead father-in-law is often 
more convenient than a live one. I know men, and I know 
you are clean — I think you've got the correct ideas about liv- 
ing — I ain't had them myself. This idea of doctoring people 
for nothing, and housing them for nothing, and feeding them 
for nothing — I've called them dern fool notionSi but I've come 
to see some sense in them. If you take that much interest in 
outsiders, your wife won't have nothing to fear; and there's 
another reason, too, not much in my line — I want Pat to have 
some position in this town, and even if you're broke your name 
stands for something. Now, what are you going to say ? " 

''I was going to ask," began Hugh with some hesitation, 
for the Hon. Tom had sunk back among his pillows, gasping 
for breath, '' I was going to ask if Miss Patricia had been con- 
sulted?" 

'' Lord, no ; Pat would raise the roof. You'll have to do 
all the courting, but I think you can win out Will you 
promise ? " 

The old man looked so pitifully weak in the dim light that 
Hugh tried to escape from the direct answer to the prepos- 
terous question. 

''She does not like me," he said. 

"Has she told you so?" 

'' She has shown it in many ways." 

'' That's a good beginning." 

'' I don't think I quite understand." 

''Then you don't know women — ^that's another point in 
your favor. When I was your age I had been in love twenty 
times; start an active dislike in a woman and |she begins to 
think about you — she is no longer indifferent. Let her think 
enough about you and she's in love before she knows it. But 
I can see plainly that you don't like the idea. Is it some 
snobbish notion that Pat is not good enough for you ? " 

Hugh was rapidly losing patience. "It's a question of re- 
serve of privilege," he said. 

"For what?" 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 739 

''To choose my own wife when I get ready/' 

The Hon. Tom*8 small black eyes sparkled like coals« 
''And money makes no difference?" 

'*I have never cared for money/' 

"Because you have always had it/' said the old man in a 
tone that reminded Hugh of Patricia's own. "Wait nntil you 
begin to suffer for the lack of it — wait until the world kicks and 
cuffs you around^ and grinds you down until you're willing to 
seize any chance to get back to a position of power. I tell 
you every man wants money. It isn't so much the money, it's 
the power that money brings. I want you to think about what 
I have said, young man — I don't want you to decide off-hand ; 
and I tell you this: I'm trying to keep my temper, I'm try- 
ing to remember just how I would have felt if a rich old man 
had made such a proposition to me when I wasn't expecting 
it and I wasn't very well acquainted with his daughter; I'm 
trying, I say, to put myself in your place, and keep my head, 
young man, because if I thought you felt superior to my Pat, 
I believe I'^ blow your brains out" 

" Then I had better leave at once," said Hugh, choosing to 
interpret the Hon. Tom's threat humorously. "I hope you 
will soon be well again." 

" Even if you have to face a six shooter ? " said the old 
man, with a touch of his old genialty; "but I reckon you 
need not worry about that. I judge the Almighty thinks it 
about time for me to pull up stakes. I trust you won't men- 
tion this little talk to Pat ; she would never forgive me. If 
she asks what I wanted with you, say — business. Reckon 
that's no lie." 

"You may certainly trust me." And he could not help 
smiling at the thought of the tempestuousness that would 
follow such a revelation. Getting up he shook the invalid's 
hand in a perfunctory way and left the room. He heard Mrs. 
Delarue's voice in the library, but he did not stop. He was 
anxious to get out into the fresh air — to be alone. Inside the 
sick chamber pity for a strong, gnarled old body struggling 
for its life blinded him to his own feelings. Now that he re- 
hearsed the interview, he seemed to experience a white heat 
of rage. Why should Tom Cuthbert take advantage of Pa- 
tricia's absence, and offer her to a man she did not care for? 



Digitized by 



Google 



740 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Sept, 

Why should he be the man almost duped into makiog prom- 
ises to marry a woman for her money ? Tom Cuthbert had 
offered to buy him, nothing less; and because of the old 
man's physical condition he had felt it would be unkind to 
protest. It was an unfair advantage to take — unkind to Pa- 
tricia — more unkind to her than to him. It was like offering 
her in the marketplace. He felt in some way that they had 
both been victimized, and he fell to wondering unconsciously 
what she would say if he should propose marriage to her. 
He smiled at the thought of the vehemence of her refusal; 
then another phase of the situation came to him. His old 
suspicions of Tom Cuthbert returned with renewed force. He 
felt that back of the interview there was a hidden, deeper 
meaning — something he could not fathom. It came as a pre- 
sentiment or an intuition — too elusive to be reasonable. He 
forced it out of his mind by asking himself if Tom Cuthbert 
would insist upon a definite answer to his proposition; and he 
found himself questioning whether a man could preserve his 
self-respect and, to humor a dying father, go through the form 
of suggesting marriage to a girl whose dislike for him was so 
apparent. 

His long walk brought him to the Settlement. The short 
winter afternoon was merging into twilight, faint lights began 
to glimmer in the wretched tenements around him, but in the 
friendly neighborhood house the flaring gas showed bright 
through the swiss curtained windows. Years ago, when the 
city was young and fortunes were reckoned only by thousands, 
this home, with its white marble steps and flagged vestibule 
and three full stories covered by a brown stucco, had been 
considered a pretentious mansion, but that time had passed, 
the false front had peeled away, revealing the cheap brick 
beneath, the builder and the owner were long since dead, and 
the heirs had moved away to a more fashionable part of town, 
almost ashamed to confess that their respected ancestors had 
ever lived in a street that had grown so ''slummy." 

The children of the tenements were to have tableaux this 
evening and Dr. Hugh's services were in much demand; 
scenery had to be shifted, a curtain swung across the long 
dr.awing*room, chairs placed for the eager audience^ and when 
the small actors and actresses arrived they needed much 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Patricia, the Problem 741 

friendly assistance to get them into the bright cambric coats 
and dresses that the feminine workers of the settlement had 
evolved oat of the '^ remnants'' donated by charitable mer- 
chants. 

The evening was one of genuine pleasure for Dr. Hugh; 
the interview of the afternoon was almost forgotten. The chil- 
dren were so funny in their unaccustomed clothes, the specta* 
tors so breathless with admiratiouy so unrestrained in their 
applause; tired mothers clapped their work-worn hands with 
joy as they beheld the unexpected beauty of their little ones 
transfigured in the regal robes of kings and queens. What 
mattered it if the crowns were only made of gold paper and 
the ermine of raw cotton dotted with blotches of black paint? 
The happiness was more real than at royal courts and the 
night was an epoch in their histories. 

In the midst of the festivities Dr. Hugh was called to the 
telephone. It was an urgent summons from Father Chatard. 

'^ Get a taxicab and come to Mr. Cuthbert's at once. 
Don't delay a moment." The old priest's voice was strained 
with excitement^ and he cut off further communication at once, 
as if he too were in great haste. 

Dr. Hugh was no saints He was thoroughly out of patience 
with the Hon. Tom. He had carefully avoided him while 
livingi and he had no desire to be called in to witness his 
exit. The last interview had been embarrassing enough, but 
he had escaped without making any rash promises. Now he 
would be called upon to be brutally frank. The whole affair 
was most unpleasant; but it called for the truth, even if the 
truth caused the Hon. Tom to fall into a rage and hastened 
him into eternity. 

The taxicab arrived in a few moments. Dr. Hugh ex- 
pressed his regret at his rapid leave-taking to the actors and 
the audience and pulling on his overcoat he hurried to obey 
Father Chatard's orders. 

The butler admitted him into the Hon. Tom's mansion, a 
little curious that an afternoon call should be repeated so 
soon ; and, relieving the doctor of his hat and coat, he moved 
noiselessly away, leaving Hugh to face Patricia, who stood, 
dressed all in white, looking wraith-like in the dim light of the 
library. 



Digitized by 



Google 



74* PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

<< Come/' she said, holding out both hands to him, ''I have 
dropped my crutch. Will you help me to a chair? I am so 
frightened. Father is dying and yet he sent me away. He 
wanted Father Chatard and you — oh I why should he want 
you, when you do not care for him? — while I — he is all I 
have on earth-^oh, go to him and ask him if I may not come 
back — you will help me upstairs — go — go/' her eyes were 
wild with terror. 

She seemed so helpless, so beautiful, so softened, in her 
grief, that he experienced a sudden change of feeling towards 
the Hon. Tom's demands as he placed her in her chair. 

'^ I will do all that I can," he said, knowing that she little 
dreamed of all that his words might mean. '^Is Father Cha* 
tard upstairs?" 

'' He has been here for an hour." 

''And I am expected to go up at once?" 

''Yes; I was waiting to tell you." 

Reluctantly he ascended the richly carpeted stairs and 
knocked at the invalid's door. It was opened by Father 
Chatard. 

" I am glad you came so quickly," he said, putting his 
arm wearily about the young man's shoulders, telling him in 
this mute way of the efforts he had put forth in the sick 
man's spiritual behalf. 

The Hon. Tom half raised hiniself in bed. "Come close/' 
he said, the bravado had died out of his voice ; he had grown 
perceptibly weaker in the last few hours. "I'm not a Catho- 
lic," he went on, and his breath came quick and short, "and 
I reckon the Lord will forgive me for not believing all the 
things I ain't accustomed to ; but I'm obliged to confess some- 
thing. I tried to straighten it out this afternoon, but I reckon 
it wasn't fair — this gentleman has been talking to me so much 
about mercy and forgiveness — that I reckon some of it has 
soaked in, and I'm trying to be honest at last" He caught 
at Hugh's hand and pulled him down towards him. " I — don't 
own the Larimee — you hear ? " he said hoarsely, " I never 
owned it — it was your father's — twenty years ago^Pat — Pat — 
is a pauper. Oh, my God I " 

He fell back, white and gasping, and then lay inert among 
his pillows. 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 743 

Chapter X, 

Hugh brought Patricia to her dead father's bedside. She 
leaned heavily on his arm as he led her up the stairs. It would 
have been difficult for him to analyze his own feelings — ten- 
derness that he might have felt for any woman in deep grief; 
sympathy that she had no one nearer than him to cling to her 
in her hour of need ; wonder at the revelation that Tom Cuth- 
bert had just made; and a gradual questioning of himself when 
he considered the old man's last request Was it so preposter- 
ous after all? 

He watched Patricia as she fell on her knees beside her 
father and took one of his cold« rough hands in both her own, 
as if she would try to warm it into life again. She did not 
cry — her face was white and set and full of dread, as if^ she 
stood alone facing an eternity of mystery. 

Once she moaned aloud: *^ I must go with him — I must 
go/' It was the protective cry of the maternal instinct that 
reaches out to the helpless. She rested her head on the pillow, 
and the pent-up sobs came at last. Hugh and Father Chatard 
withdrew, leaving her with her dead. 

In the dimly lit hallway Hugh stopped and turned to face 
the old priest. 

**l want to tell you at once/' he said, ''that I mean to 
take no steps to examine into^what shall I call it ? — my claim. 
Mr. Cuthbert may have been delirious." 

'' Of course you may trust me to say nothing. It is your 
own affair. But Mr. Cuthbert was not delirious. The claim is 
just, and you have nothing." 

''But it means poverty and disgrace for Patricia." 

The old priest smiled faintly. '' There is one way out," he 
said enigmatically. 

Mrs. Delarue came hurrying from her own room, nervous 
and curious. Had the Hon. Tom been received into the 
Church ? Had he gone to confession ? Would they have Mass 
at the cathedral ? Her face fell with disappointment when she 
heard that the Hon. Tom had died, as he had lived, expressing 
no preference for any creed. 

The funeral was spectacular, monstrosities in the way of 
floral decorations came from clubs, lodges, business associates. 



Digitized by 



Google 



744 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

Resolutions of condolence were drawn up and elaborately illum- 
inated and sent to Patricia; the undertaker provided the most 
ornate of caskets and innumerable' carriages, which were filled 
with the conventional minded, who came reluctantly, because 
attending funerals was part of their social code. An obliging 
minister read some passages from the Scriptures and prayed 
largely for the State, the welfare of friends, the comfort of 
Yelatives. Mrs. Dslarue expressed her relief openly when it was 
all over. 

'^You must pardon my frankness, Patricia,'' she said, ''but 
it is all so different from our point of view. Even though I 
am a worldly woman, at such times our thought is all for our 
dear one's soul — prayers for his eternal rest — help for him in 
his direst need." 

''Then show me how," said Patricia. "Even if I don't 
believe as you do, I suppose I could pray. There must be a 
God somewhere — there must be a reason — a plan to account 
for all this suffering and death and misery in the world." 

" The plan will never be explained to you," said Mrs. Dela- 
rue. " It's one of the things that will make dying interesting. 
We shall solve so many problems. You look so pale and thin» 
Patricia, I wish you would think about your own body a little. 
Why don't you go back to Paris? The ocean voyage would 
do you so much good." 

"Would Marie go with us? " 

Mrs. Delarue felt grateful for the " us." She had wondered 
whether Patricia would care to live under her chaperonage now 
that she was absolute mistress of her own life and fortune* 
She settled down in her chair with a comfortable feeling of 
security and said : " I'm afraid not. I meant to tell you that 
Marie enters the novitiate this week." 

Patricia looked puzzled. "And what's that?" she asked. 

"The convent, you know," answered Mrs. Delarue. "The 
novitiate is — well, I suppose you would call it the preparatory 
class for nuns." 

" I expected it," said Patricia dreamily. " She seemed so 
apart from the world— did you know that my father loved her?" 

"Loved her?" gasped Mrs. Delarue in amazement. "Did 
he ever tell her so ? " 

" He told me," said Patricia. " He said he was too old- 
he said he was not fit — he said she was an angel and that he 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.J PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 745 

— oh I I will not tell you what he said about himself — men are 
not good in mining towns/' 

'* God is merciful/' replied Mrs. Delarue, while her thoughts, 
in spite of her sensible efforts to control them, began to picture 
Marie as an interesting young widow, sharing Patricia's inheri- 
tance. 

** Marie never knew," continued the girl. '' I suppose she 
never thought of marriage with any one/' 

** No, I suppose not " ; agreed the mother regretfully. 

Patricia closed her eyes wearily. *^ Perhaps it is just as 
well," she said. ''The average man is not very entertaining. 
I'm getting worn out and critical/' 

" You need rest," said Mrs. Delarue. " Try to go to sleep, 
now. Remember your father's lawyer is coming this afternoon, 
and you will have to see him. Please, dear, try to sleep for 
a little while/' She bustled about with motherly solicitude, 
darkening the windows, smoothing Patricia's pillowf, and then, 
seeing that her charge was inclined to follow her suggestion, 
she left the room and closed the door noiselessly behind her. 

It was after two o'clock when the maid announced a gen- 
tleman visitor, and Patricia, remembering her appointment with 
her father's legal advisers, went downstairs unquestioningly, 
to find Bob Bingham in the drawing-room. 

She was still a little lame, and he came gallantly forward 
to help her to a chair. '' Little Pat," he said, and his voice 
was full of tenderness, ** I'm here on the d-^^dest errand that 
a man ever traveled for; and I came mighty near murdering 
the man who sent me/' 

She put her white hand on his coat sleeve with a restrain- 
ing gesture. ** Don't, Bob," she said with a faint smile. '' I 
wouldn't enjoy a hanging. You are about the only friend I 
have left." 

''There's Doc Farrell," he said, watching her intently be- 
neath his shaggy brows. " He's a good man and square as a 
die." 

" He doesn't like me," said the girl hastily. " He's only 
civil on his aunt's account." 

"Well, I would have bet my bottom dollar that he was 
clean gone. Pat" — he began again, and he swallowed a lump 
in his throat, feeling an unusual emotion at her deep mourn- 
ing, which made her pallor more apparent — "Pat, child, I 



Digitized by 



Google 



746 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

reckon yoo know I*m your friend, and what I've got to say 
is mighty private. I'd like to shut all the doors/' 

''Then shut them," said Patricia, half* amused at his tone. 

He went energetically to work, pulling out the sliding doors, 
locking them on the inside, drawing the heavy portieres over 
them, then taking a chair close to Patricia's own, he went on : 
<< You've always treated me right, Pat, and you ain't got any 
reason to doubt me. If yer Pa was alive I'd leave Jim Biggins 
and him to fight it out betwixt them, but it ain't fair to let 
that cutthroat come here and bully you — it isn't fair." 

** And who is Jim Biggins ? " asked Patricia, her old instinct 
for excitement reasserting itself. 

'' Jim Biggins is the man you met by the roadside the day 
your automobile gave out. He didn't have any place to go 
and I let him sleep in the stable for a night or two." 

''And he stole the horses," interrupted Patricia, "he stole 
that wonderful colt?" 

" Lord, no ; I wish he had. That colt would have broken 
his neck before he had gone a mile. "No; it's worse than 
that, Pat, he found a trunk full of old papers, and, having noth- 
ing to do all night, he went clean through them." 

She leaned wearily back in her chair. The story was losing 
in interest. Why should Bob get so excited about a trunk 
full of old papers? 

" I never did have any use for papers," continued Bob. 
"They are always looming up to plague a man when he least 
expects it; and the law sets so much store by the written 
word. Well, Jim showed me those papers — you understand 
they belonged to Doc Farrell's father — it seems he went West 
about twenty years ago to go into mining in a gentlemanly 
sort of way — no grub-staking or claim-jumping for him — he 
bought things outright, and — and he bought the Larimee 
mine — " 

Patricia's large hands clasped the arms of the chair, and she 
leaned forward, eager yet afraid to hear more. " Then, how 
did— how did?" 

"I'm going to tell you," said Bob, spitting nervously at 
the fire. "Your dad leased that mine and got nothing. He 
dug so much and talked so much that every one thought it 
belonged to him. You see, he leased it for ten years, and he 
didn't get a sight of pay dirt during all that time. Folks 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 747 

laughed at him for keeping on, and when Doc Farreirs father 
came out there, on his way to San Francisco, he found his 
mine no good; then he went back East and seems to have 
forgotten all about it. Then, when Tom began to strike it 
rich, he didn't say anything to anybody at first — kind of scared, 
you see — nobody paid much attention to what he was doing 
in his special hole in the ground. Old man Farrell hadn't stayed 
out there long enough to get acquainted, and folks quit soon 
in mining towns. Don't know how Jim Biggins ever remem- 
bered that he'd been there, 'cause soon after he hiked out for 
Australia. Then old man Farrell died — nobody claimed the 
Larimee — and your dad wasn't hunting the heirs — " 

*^ Go on," she said huskily, ** and the papers ? " 

** Well," continued Bob, finding the confession even harder 
than he had anticipated, '' I came into the stable one night 
and found Jim leaning over a little horse-hair trunk, the kind 
people used to carry around with them years ago. ** I've seen 
the same sort strapped to a stage many a time. Well, Jim was 
excited, I could see that; he said he had found just what he 
was looking for, said the Lord was certainly good to him. I 
told him I didn't think the Lord had anything to do with him. 
I kind of felt it in my bones that he was up to some rascality. 
Well, he had those papers, and he was coming straight to Tom 
— he knew Tom would give a good deal for them. He calcu- 
lated that Tom would give more for them than Doc Farrell, 
seeing as Tom stood to lose everything he had. Then, when 
he heard Tom was dead, he was coming straight to you—" 

"To me?" 

" Well, he calculates on selling them to you for ten thousand 
dollars; and I reckon, Pat — I reckon you had better buy — " 

She passed her hand across her forehead as if she were 
trying to comprehend the full meaning of his words. " I don't 
think I quite understand." 

" Well, it's this way, Pat," he began, sending another stream 
of tobacco juice at the sputtering fire, " you see, I'm no lawyer, 
but these papers prove that your dad never did own the Lari- 
mee — he only leased it for ten years, and he never struck gold 
until the lease expired. Jim Biggins has got brains, and he 
suspected it all along. He was going to make trouble for your 
dad anyway, but when he found the papers — well, then, Jim 
knew he could turn them into solid cash." 



Digitized by 



Google 



748 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

''Bat, Bob, if the papers were so important, why were they 
left in the stable?'' 

''Old trunk full of trash — papers weren't considered any 
good. Reckon old man Farrell thought he'd been a fool to 
go into any wild-cat mining scheme, thought the least said 
about it the better. Jim was coming here to talk to you; I 
wouldn't let him. Bat Fat — I hate to say it, Pat — but I reckon 
you'll have to buy him off." 

Her expression was like a child's in its white helplessness. 
"And if I don't. Bob?" 

" Then — well then, Pat, you're not worth a cent Jim Big- 
gins knew he held the cards, he could have landed Tom Cuth- 
bert in jail. You — you'd be as poor as Job's turkey, and your 
father would be known as a — thief." 

She covered her face with her hands and moaned : " Oh, 
what shall I do. Bob, what shall I do?" 

He put his arm roughly around her, forgetful of the change 
that her womanhood had made. To him she was a child againt 
sobbing out her troubles on his shoulder, when there was no 
one else to comfort her. 

" I ought to have killed him, Pat," he said regretfully, "and 
taken those papers away from him. Don't know why the idea 
didn't occur to me until just now. You've got to buy him 
off, Pat, there's no other way. He says he will leave the coun- 
try — he's promised me that — ^you'll have to buy him off." 

"But nothing is mine« Bob— nothing is mine." 

" It is if you burn the papers. It won't take a minute. 
You can't go back to your old life, Pat, you once told me that 
you couldn't be poor again. Why, it means beggary, Pat, and 
disgrace — disgrace for your dad — " 

"Disgrace?" she repeated vaguely. 

"Jail if he had lived," said Bob convincingly. "He was a 
thief, Pat, and if you don't buy those papers all the world 
will know." 

"Then I will," she said desperately. "Where are they? 
Get them for me. Bob. I can't have my poor father branded 
as a thief." 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9IO.J PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM 749 



Chapter XI. 

When Jim Biggins received Patricia's check he brought the 
papers to the house himself, and then left town with a prompt- 
ness altogether due to Bob's importunate and vengeful in- 
sistance. 

Patricia received the small package with trembling hands 
and going to her own room she locked the door, and sinking 
weakly down in a low chair by the window she tore open the 
heavy envelope of brown manilla and began to examine its 
contents. 

The lengthy forms and legal language puzzled her, even 
while they convinced her of the authenticity and danger of 
the documents. She felt that she dared not consult a lawyer 
as to her rights, and, as she read the papers over and over 
again, she was convinced fully that Bob's conclusion was cor- 
rect. She had no rights and she had chosen the only way 
possible to preserve her fortune and her father's honor. 

But she could not burn the papers. All night she had re- 
mained awake reasoning with herself that this was the only 
safe thing to be done; and yet she could not bring herself to 
the finality of such an action. 

There was a small safe in the library which had been built 
into the wall for the keeping of jewels in frequent use and the 
guarding of ready money. Here was a place of concealment — 
the combination was known only to herself — she would put 
the papers there, and then she would go away to Paris — to 
Italy — anywhere — to forget their existence. 

Anxious to get them out of her immediate possession, she 
folded them carefully back in their envelope and descended 
to the library. She was half-way across the room to the pic- 
ture that hung over the door of the safe when she realized 
that there was some one sitting before the fire. 

Dr. Hugh rose lazily from the big tapestried chair, and 
dropped the book he had been reading. "I am afraid I 
startled you," he said with that rare solicitude that always 
seemed to extraordinarily individualize the person he ad- 
dressed. ''I was waiting for my aunt." 

Patricia asked herself, with a dull wonder at questionisg 



Digitized by 



Google 



750 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

herself at all, why he always made a point of exhibiting his 
indifference to hen 

''And 80 you are disappointed at seeing me?'' she said, 
seeking refuge in a conventional coquetry to hide her visible 
embarrassment. ''I was going to put away some papers, and 
— I am going to ask you to help me.'* The suggestion was 
characteristic of her daring. To make him share in his own 
disinheritance seemed to lessen her responsibility. ''Will you 
tip that Daubigny just a little to one side? There is a small 
safe beneath; I want to open the door.'' 

He approached the painting with the reverence of an art 
lover. The picture was one of Patricia's own choosing, a dark, 
rock hewn coast, with the bluest of waters and a paler sky 
above. 

" If the papers are important," he suggested, with mascu- 
line prudence, "I would advise a safe* deposit box; these little 
household affairs are not always fire-proof." 

" I would rather have them here," she said, nervously 
thrusting them into the small aperature " and " — she hesitated 
— "if I should drown on my way to Europe you will remember 
to take them out?" She turned the combination with a sigh 
of relief. 

"Then you are going to Europe?" he said, and there was 
unconscious regret in his tone. 

"Yes; Mrs. Delarue has promised to go with me. I am 
nervous and want a change." 

She walked back to the fire and stood with her hands 
clasped behind her; they were so cold and she did not want 
him to see their trembling. 

"And Marie?" 

"Why, did you not know?" she replied, looking up at 
him, "I thought you knew that Marie has entered the con- 
vent I can't understand it." 

There was a silence. "I can," he said at last. 

The old feeling of distance fell between them. This spir- 
itual difference of viewpoint seemed more of a barrier than 
the sin they had just shared. 

"I wish you would explain," she said, and then she 
laughed mirthlessly. " I seem to be struggling for light. 
After all, life is so short, the world seems so full of pain and 
misery. Can you help me to see the plan?" 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 751 

''There's always the doctrine of compensation/' 

'' And that means ? *' 

''That our lives are more even than they seem." 

"I don*t believe I quite understand that either/' 

"I mean that our lives are more or less alike in joy and 
sorrow. Some people have less pain, but have more capacity 
for suffering; some have less joy, but have more capacity for 
happiness." 

" Perhaps it's true/' she said, " I do not know. Marie be- 
lieves many strange things, and they seem to make her happy. 
I thought "—again she hesitated— "I thought—" 

"What?" 

"I thought you cared for her." 

" Of course I care. I care tremendously for her happiness ; 
but if you mean sentiment, of the Romeo variety, I can tell 
you honestly that I was never in love in my life. Marie tried 
to urge me into the priesthood; but I'd never make a priest, 
I find praying hard work." 

"Then perhaps you can understand some one who doesn't 
know how?" she said, turning away from him to face the 
fire; "and if a person — an ignorant person of that kind- 
should do — well, let us say, something very dreadful or sinful, 
I suppose she wouldn't be as culpable as people who were 
truly religious?" 

"Why what great crime are you contemplating?" he 
laughed. 

"Nothing more," she said, making an effort to smile. 
" I've done enough, God knows." 

The seriousness of her tone arrested his attention ; but she 
was full of quick surprises. He had always told himself that 
that was the only reason for his interest in her. Her moods 
were unaccountable. She had been his chief thought of late. 
Tom Cuthbert's last request had assumed the form of an obli- 
gation, if the old man's last confession was true. All day Dr. 
Hugh had been trying to piece together broken recollections 
of conversations he had had with his father, exciting stories 
of western travel, and hints of foolish mining schemes. It was 
all so long ago. He was only twelve years old when his 
father died; but he found himself forcing his memory back to 
that time in his effort to give personal proof of Tom Cuth- 
bert's startling statements. 



Digitized by 



Google 



752 PATRICIA, THE PROBLEM [Sept., 

And as he examined further into his motives he found that 
it pleased him to think that Patricia was living in ignorance 
on his bounty. It seemed to bring her closer to him. And 
he began to wonder if Tom Cuthbert's plan to save her from 
poverty was not more honorable than bis own. He felt that 
Patricia would rebel at the thought of preserving her fortune 
only through his careless generosity. 

"How long will you stay in Europe?'' be asked, wishing 
to break the tenseness of the situation that he only half 
understood. 

** Six months^ — a year — I do not know — as long as it pleases 
us.'* 

Her face looked white and drawn in the sudden blaze of 
some falling embers. 
. " Then perhaps I may join you there." 

She turned to him with a strange expression of frightened 
amazement. Then she said, with her old indi£ference : ''I did 
not know you thought of crossing this spring.'' 

** Neither did I until just a moment ago ; and now that I 
think I would like to go, I am forced back on the reflection 
that I can't afford it." 

''Oh/' she said with a little crying sound, ''not even 
that?" 

Again he could not understand. " I have an unfortunate 
way of forgetting my present poverty," he said lightly. 

"But — but don't you make any money out of your — pro- 
f ession ? " she asked hopelessly. 

He smiled at her evident belief in his inability. " Most of 
my patients are poor," he said. " Collecting bills is a heart- 
rending job. Being sick is bad enough, but paying for it 
afterwards often entails more suffering. Oh, I have enough — a 
home, and land to farm when I have to. All men at some 
stage in their careers believe that they are divinely ordered to 
become farmers, and when I failed to feel the call of the land 
I suppose the fact had to be forced upon me." 

" And you do not mind ? " 

"Well, I'll be honest. You see, I do mind. I had some 
pet projects and they had to fall through." 

The room was very still, even the fire seemed to hold its 
breath. "And — and those pet projects?" 

"I'm afraid you wouldn't be interested, they are semi- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM 753 

medical matters. I wanted to establish an institution of some 
size for defective children. I believe a great deal of crime is 
directly traceable' to a poor physical make- op. There's nothing 
original in the idea, but we lack facilities )n this town.'' 

'' Will you let me help ? " she interrupted, and her youth 
seemed to return with her eagerness. 

'' You ? " He made no effort to conceal his astonishment. 
'' I would rather you would not, until — well until you have 
considered it for a long time^ It would cost a great deal — I 
{eel somehow as if I had asked you." 

'' And why shouldn't you ? " she said. '' I have too much. 
My lawyer was here the other day, and the fortune — well, it 
is fabulous — I did not know how much. My father made wise 
investments and added greatly to the actual sums he got out 
of the Larimee mine." 

Her last words seemed to bring her some unspoken satis- 
faction. 

''And you are tired of your possessions?" His lips were 
smiling, though his eyes were sad. '' Has life been stripped of 
its illusions so soon ? " 

"1 do not know." 

''You once said that you could not live without money." 

"And I could not now," she said with a touch of fierce- 
ness. " I could not now. What could I do ? — where could I 
go? — ^back to the Golden Eagle that my father still owned 
when he died ? — back to the life of a barmaid? — oh, my God I " 
she buried her face in her hands. 

" Patricia I Patricia I " he cried, startled out of his cold calm 
and taking both her hands in his, so that he could look into 
her face. " Why should you talk this way when I love you ? " 

She broke away from him; her face had flushed crimson, 
her gray eyes blazed with sudden fury. 

"Did you think I was trying to persuade you into some 
sort of pitiful proposal ? You have always disliked me — I have 
felt it — seen it. You have told me I was a pagan, which means 
our point of view is as wide as the world. I cannot under- 
stand your religion — you cannot understand me. You have 
tried to be kind to me — I wish you had not. Are you offer- 
ing to martyr yourself through a lifetime? I would rather 
have you murder me than to marry me — " 

He looked at her for a moment helplessly, and a great light 

VOL. XCI.'4S 



Digitized by 



Google 



754 PATRICIA^ THE PROBLEM [Sept. 

was borne in upon him. Her refusal bad made bim realize wbat 
tbe loss of ber would mean to bim. 

''It's of no use, Patricia/' be said quietly. ''I am sure 
now tbat I bave bs^ttled against it — you will try — tbe end will 
be tbe same. We love eacb otber.'' 

He expected another outburst. He was wondering bow be 
would meet it, when Patricia laughed. It was a poor attempt 
at mirth, but it relieved the strain of the situation. 

'' Wbat melodrama I '' she exclaimed. ''.You bave always 
bad tbe power to make me more angry than any one else* 
Of course I wanted you to propose to me — you've been so 
indifferent. You did it very badly. It's plain that you haven't 
acquired proficency through practise." Her tone was mock- 
ing. 

It was bis turn to be angry now. "You do not under- 
stand " be said, towering white and stern above her. 

*' Better than you think," she interrupted bim. " I want to 
ask you one question and you must answer me. You bad no 
idea tbat you were in love with me when you came into this 
room this afternoon ? " 

He met ber attack with bold truthfulness. " No " ; be said. 

"It proves my point" 

"It proves nothing. 

"It proves your excessive truthfulness." And without 
apology or adieux she turned and left tbe room. 

(to bb concluded.) 



Digitized by 



Google 



IN CARRA AND TIRAWLEY, COUNTY MAYO. 

BY WILFRID ST. OSWALD. 
I.— CONN AND CULLIN. 

your honor, and it's St Patrick himself as 

in Carra, and blessed the lough and all 

thould be on it forever.'^ This, by way of 

ragement presumably, from one of the boat* 

irho pulled our Galway-built craft away from 

the wooded Corriasla shore of the Southern waters of Lough 

Conn, which at times is as tempestuous as any Scotch loch on 

which we have been in peril. Bat to- day and on many another 

day the beauty of a singularly beautiful May morning casts its 

spell upon us as we trail rod and line, thinking less of sport 

than of the loveliness of the scene around us and of its wealth 

of associations. 

Breaking through vaporous mist, golden sunlight is irradi- 
ating Nephin, the country's giant mountain, which, embodying 
strength and mystery and guardianship, is to the people of 
Carra and Tirawley much what La Rhune is to the French 
Basques, or the Oertler Spitz to the Tyroleans of Trafoi, or 
Roseberry Topping to ancient dwellers on the Cleveland moors 
of Yorkshire. Nearer to us than Nephin, and seemingly nearer 
too to the sunshine, rises the serrated ridge of Larragan, a 
glorious harmony of gold and russet and purple hues; while 
opposite these towering heights the lough is dark beneath the 
beetling brows of Cuinbeg and Tawnaghmore, over which hovers 
an eagle ready to swoop down on its ptey. Well within our 
ken lies a belt of islands, possibly long ago broken o£f by aque- 
ous or volcanic action from the rocky promontories which, 
united by the Pontoon Bridge, divide the lakes of Conn and 
Cullin, whose combined length measures about twelve miles. 

The largest and most interesting of these islands, lUanaglashy 
or Glass Island, is conspicuous by the ivy-clad ruins of its 
thirteenth century, square-towered Gothic church, and is singu- 
lar in having a population all its own — five peasant families of 



Digitized by 



Google 



7s6 IN Carra and Tirawley, County Mayo [Sept., 

Tirawley, who, when the winds and waves permit, row on Sun- 
days to the mainland where they have a many^mile walk to 
Mass. A bi-weekly post, duly organized from St Martin'f-le- 
Grand, is their link with the outer world, and letters are de- 
livered by a postman of * no mean parts who, none the less, 
cannot read. Rather proud is he of his probably unique posi* 
tion in the postal service. When we are told that '' the blind 
Abbot *^ had a foot amputated on lUanaglashy, we are expected 
to believe that there was on the island a monastic house, of 
which he was the grave and reverend senior; whereas there 
never was a monastery there, and '' the blind Abbot,'' though 
actually a living entity, was not an abbot at all, but a certain 
William Burke, the fighting father of a fighting family, blind 
only in a strictly metaphorical sense, possibly to his own in- 
terests or to those of the country, of which he was for a short 
time nominal ruler as '* MacWilliam '' in the stormy sixteenth 
century.* Tiniest of the island belt is Tory island, a collection 
of cliffs submerged only in roughest weather, lying at the edge 
of a cross-current, formed by the waters of Cullin forcing them- 
selves back into the larger lake Conn, from which they flow in 
too great volume to be all at once received by the river Hoy, 
which is Cullin's outlet. 

Hard by the richly wooded Corriasla side of Pontoon is 
Freaghillon, most beautiful of this island group, better known 
to us as Bilberry — a woodland hillock carpeted with moss and 
fern and shamrock and wild- flowers, earthstars all of them— 
primroses and bog violets, wood anemones and sweetgale, gorse 
and trailing bilberry, and scarcely opening heather, the glory 
of days to come, beneath a tender green canopy of budding 
oak and birch. ''Lunch on Bilberry'^ is most often the word 
after a morning on the southern part of the lake; or, if not 
on Bilberry, out east among the boulders on Sdhool House 

♦ Mayo formed part of the grant made by King Henry II. to Wifliam de Burgo, the first 
of the Anglo-Norman invaders: he made alliance with Cathat of the Red Hand, King of 
Connaught, whose daughter married Richard de Burgo (or Burke) the great Earl. His 
descendant in the elder line, Earl William, was assassinated in 1333, and left an only 
daughter, who was taken to England ; whereupoa two Burkes or de Burgos of the younger 
branch seized and divided between them the inheritance of the infant girl, and, taking the 
name of MacWilliam, became lords of Western Connaught ; Edmund de Burgo, who bad 
appropriated County Mayo, being distinguished as MacWilliam Eighter ; while the usniper 
of County Galway was differendated as Mae William Oughter. Their descendants retained 
the MacWilliamship, with varied fortunes, for about two hundred years. The child heiress, 
who had been dispossessed, married Lionel, son of Edward III., and handed on her claim to 
her daughter, who married Edmund Mortimer, Lord Lieutenant in 1380. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] IN Carra AND TiRAWLEY^ County MAYO 757 

Bay, whence there is no finer distant view of Nephin and Lar- 
ragan ; or, if we row westward and have succeeded in rounding 
the often stormy Terrybaun and Castle Head, we land at Mass- 
brook for the midday rest, remembering that some two miles 
away, ^twixt Lough Levally and Nepbin's foot, rose heretofore 
at Bofeenaun a house of Franciscan Conventuals, which unfor- 
tunately seems to have left nothing save its name to recorded 
history. 

To Castle Head attaches a legend held in firm faith all over 
the countryside, that in the far-off days, when kings were 
plentiful in the land, a certain king's daughter was carried off 
by force from her father's home in Scotia to be the bride of 
the lord of Castle Head. Her brothers started in pursuit, but 
not for a year did they discover their sister in her lonely home 
on Conn. Greeting her with fair words, they asked her to tell 
them where they could find her husband. In all trustfulness 
she bade them seek him at a spot where he had that morning 
gone hunting. They found him and slew him, and brought to 
their sister his severed, bleeding head. Distracted with grief, 
she took in her arms her infant son, and rushing from the cas- 
tle cast herself and her child from the hill-top into the lake 
below: wherefore, add those who relate the legend, are the 
waters ever rough round Terry. 

Once more on the lake, in the quiet waters of Massbrook 
Bay, we pass Massbrook House, a mansion modem as any on 
Windermere or on the Starnberg See, striking a note of incon- 
gruity with the delightful reckless fecklessness of nature's wild 
ways in Tirawley. Further north on the western shore lie Lord 
Arran's woods, a glorious labyrinthine tangle of undergrowth 
and gnarled, ivy-clasped pillars defying the storms and stress 
of centuries ; while nearly latitudinal with the highest heights 
of Nephin rise the lakeside hills of Cuilkillew, pointing to the 
ancient holy well and ruined church of Addergoole, almost 
certainly a copy of the famous parish church of Inishrobe at 
Cuslough, known as Tempul na Lecca, a typical Irish adapta- 
tion of early Gothic. To be laid in the churchyard of Adder- 
goole is what the local peasantry most earnestly desire for 
their bodies after death. 

Where this churchyard touches the lake, the land forms 
another tranquil bay before jutting out into a bold headland, 
from which on a long, lonely promontory the stately Abbey 



Digitized by 



Google 



758 IN Carra and Tirawley, County mayo [Sept, 

of Errew, erstwhile sharing with Killala the honor of being 
the religious centre of Tirawley, echoed with the soand of 
praise and prayer to God, as it kept watch OTcr the waters. 
Not of the more ancient monastery, founded early in the sixth 
centory by St. Tigeman, the Apostle of South Tirawley, ire 
the ruins at Errew, but the remains of a twelfth or early thir- 
teenth century building of the style made familiar by the 
Cistercians, though there seems to be no cTidence to show 
that Errew was ever the home of the Sons of St. Bernard be- 
tween its early Patrician or Columban period and its recon- 
stitution as a house of Augustinian Canons, by which title it 
was described at the dissolution of monasteries in the sixteenth 
century. Inland from the abbey, but still on the headland, is 
the Errew Hotel, built in great measure from the monastic 
ruins, and misliked accordingly by the people, who naturally 
look upon it as an actual, albeit unintentional, desecration of 
a holy fane. 

Beyond Errew and the woods and islands of Eoniscoe, 
whence chieftains waged war in days long ago, yet another 
relic of medieval religious life is there, a mile inland from the 
lakeset hills of Gortnardhy, at Croesmolina, where was one of 
the many Franciscan friaries, which may have given to Carra 
and Tirawley and to other parts, too, of County Mayo the 
honest if unconscious Franciscanism of its peasantry. With 
them it is certainly not a pose. Close to its northernmost 
point Lough Conn receives the waters of the river Deel whicb, 
before reaching Croesmolina, has passed by the hills of Bally- 
carron, traditionally described as the Grave of Kings, a title 
claimed also by Errew and by many another place in Mayo. 

Past Castle Kelly and the Annagh islets, once the seat of 
the O'Dowda Kings, and made memorable in the fourteenth 
century by the murder of Bishop Barrett, we next skirt Clog- 
bans on the lake's northeastern shore — a stony stretch of bn^ 
prettily indented but lacking the distinction of mountain or 
forest — and come to Kinmore Point, barely a mile distant from 
Errew on the opposite shore. A suggestion that in days looif 
ago, rocks uniting the two points may have been rent asnoder 
by the forces of fire or water, thus making one lake of what 
had been two, elicited from St. Patrick's client the ready ^ 
joinder that maybe the saint had broken up three loughs (Cooo 
Upper and Lower and CuUin) to form but one, when be wtf 

I Digitized by LjOOQIC 



i9ia] In Carra and Tira wle k, County Ma yo 759 

preaching Christianity, **Xo learn the people the Trinity/' 
This apt adaptation of the shamrock episode to a twelve* mile 
scale, however improbable, says not a little for the trend of 
our unlettered friend's thoughts. Well loved of the peasantry, 
two lonely ancient graveyards, looking south from a bend of 
the rocky eastern shore far out upon Illanaglashy, seem yet 
to receive from its ruined church the blessing of Him Whose 
sacramental presence once hallowed its sanctuary. Never, be 
it noted, do the quick-witted people of this wild country for- 
get what made and makes sacred their churches. 

We are writing as if one day sufficed to make acquaintance 
with Lough Conn ; whereas many hours of many days are all 
too few to reveal its varied. beauties, of which we have indi- 
cated only a very small number. Greatly enhanced are they, 
especially during the spring and autumn months, by the 
changeful skies that make the lights of one hour, nay of one 
moment, the shadows of the next, playing fitfully upon crag 
and creek and wave and mountain, and suggesting significance 
in the bursting of the storm-cloud, the echo of thunder, the 
roar of raging waters, and in the blessed return of sunlight, of 
songlight, and of peace. To some such day, when time was 
young, may we attribute the genesis of the pre-Christian 
legend that an infuriated giant flung across the lake from 
Nephin a seemingly ilUpoised but really immovable rock, a 
marvel of }ust balance, on a distant mountain. There is a 
similar legend in Tyrol, but there the mighty hand-baller is 
not a giant but an infuriated, checkmated devil. 

Gladly do our sportsmen welcome, not the storm, but the 
quietly fitful or all gray skies that lure trout and salmon and 
char to the trailing rods; and even those of us who are but 
novices in matters piscatorial, learn to feel the fisherman's 
thrill in playing and reeling up and netting the fish. To one 
of our boats, and to the practised hand of our host, fell the 
good fortune last year of capturing some of the largest trout 
ever caught on Conn, and before the end of the season one 
of the finest salmon ever taken in the lake was his prize. 

Too reedy in the later fishing months for boat or line or 
rod, CuUin calls the fisherman in early spring, but is beauti- 
ful always, and often storm- tossed, as befits the wild character 
of its setting. Better known than Conn is it to casual travel- 
ers, for along most of its northern and part of its western 



Digitized by 



Google 



760 IN Carra AND TiRAWLEY, County Mayo [Sept., 

shore raos the road from Ballina and Foxford to Castlebar — a 
feat of engineering which is appreciated when we notice that 
for nearly a mile on the Pontoon there is barely room for the 
road between the rocky bases of the mountains and the water. 
Never to be forgotten indeed is the now familiar drive from 
Foxford to Pontoon on entering the ancient barony of Tiraw- 
ley, now, with the barony of Carra, better known colloquially 
as the Conn and Cnllin country. With here and there a few 
cottages, primitive and picturesque and sometimes sheltering 
poverty, six miles of rugged rock and dreariest bog are broken 
by a single stretch of gracious roadside woodland, and bright- 
ened only here and there at the lough's stony brink by gor- 
geous groupings of mingled gorse and sweetgale, or, as it is 
commonly called, bog myrtle. ''The country likes its birth- 
day suit,'* remarks a racy son of the mountains. In these 
apparently irreclaimable wastes it is not easy to see how it 
could be made to don any other. Griffin's island on Cullin 
has the questionable distinction of having been the home of 
Gallaher, the last wholesale robber captaita in Ireland, and of 
his band of freebooters, which was broken up by the capture 
and death of their leader as late as 1818. Suggestively but 
inconsequently, as they are of later date, the now disused 
Constabulary Barracks are on the Pontoon close by, and near 
them is a pleasant fishing lodge, while the well-known Anglers' 
Hotel welcomes holiday fishermen congruously with the char- 
acter of the country. 

The heights of Knockaglana stand sentinel to Cullin where 
the road divides, turning south to Castlebar, and branching 
to the northwest, rises and falls to touch Conn at Corriasla 
and Massbrook. If the drive from Foxford lives in memory, 
still more vividly pictured there is the oft- repeated walk along 
the Corriasla road. We know and love its every feature — the 
pine- clad slopes of Knockaglana, the mountains sunlit and 
shaded, distant and near, the tiny farms on hillside or in hol- 
low, their little fields broken by big boulders, the lakelets and 
the little river, the wealth of wild flowers in their seasons; 
even the stray dogs and fat pigs, the mild-eyed cows and 
silly sheep; the happy larks praying or gossiping in heaven 
(who shall say which?) the stately blackbirds and the trilling 
thrushes, the warbling robins and the tame finches and yellow- 
hammers, fearless all of them and to all friendly. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] IN CARRA and TIRAWLEY^ COUNTY MAYO 761 

There at the foot of Larragan, or [by the rude roadways 
reaching out to Lough Conn, or on the hills rich in legend, at 
Pontoon and at Terry, by Dark Lake and Deer Mountain, at 
far-away Deerens and historic lUanaglashy, live a peasant people 
who have found their way into our hearts for all time. To 
paint them as we know them, these Gaels of ** cheerful yester- 
days and confident to-morrows,'' would be impossible, for our 
appreciation cannot be crystalized into cold comment, nor can 
we fairly generalize where individualities are marked. Strong 
and true-hearted their men, their women gracious and tender 
and dignified, not without reason are the people of Carra and 
Tirawley held to be among the finest peasantry in the world. 
If, like the rest of us, they have the defects of their good 
qualities, and if the enervating climate makes listless the weak- 
ly among them, surely this cannot be laid to their charge in 
blame; rather should we wonder at the grit and virility of so 
many dwellers in a district sheltered by high mountain ranges 
from the sea winds of the Atlantic. Simple as is the manner 
of life of these children of Western Ireland, it is marked by 
certain characteristics of high civilization, and it is less primi« 
tive than was the life of St. Francis of Assisi and his disciples, 
who loved even to familiar companionship the beasts and birds 
and fishes of God's worlds Good gifts indeed from the Anglo- 
Norman settlers to Carra and Tirawley were the Franciscan 
friaries, whose influence of long ago may have been an impor- 
tant factor in forming among the people a tradition of simplic- 
ity of outlook upon the things of earth and heaven, which has 
outlasted the vicissitudes of centuries. 

Greatly we wondered during the early days of our visit to 
hear the soft Connaught burr attuned to phrases and expres- 
sions unmistakably reminiscent of ** God's own County '^ in the 
sister isle; but the reason was not far to seek. When their 
own ''hurrying time" at home is over, many Mayo men 
swell the crowd going to England as harvesters, and year 
after year work in the same pastoral and agricultural districts 
of Lancashire, returning to Ireland before Christmas. Last 
summer one of the harvesters, a younj^ man of great promise, 
was struck dead by lightning during a severe thunderstorm at 
Ormskirk. Within two hours after the telegram announcing their 
Ji>ereavement had reached his parents at their little farm bard 
by Pontoon, the whole countryside for many miles around had 



Digitized by 



Google 



762 IN CARRA and TIRAWLEY, COUNTY If AYO [Sept» 

in some seemingly magical way become apprised of their loss, 
and quickly gathered at the saddened homestead for the caoin 
or wailing for the dead — a low, pleading sound, piteous and 
pathetic, and withal eerie, falling in soft cadences, and telling 
of loving sympathy with the bereaved family, and mourning 
for the departed whose body was laid to rest in the Catholic 
churchyard at Ormskirk. 

Miles away from church live the families, on mountain 
side, or bog, or islet in the Conn and Cullin country; but, if 
frequent Communion is practically impossible for them, Christ 
our Lord gives Himself sacramentally to these scattered children 
of the Faith at the biennial ** Stations," which are regularly held 
at appointed places in each district One sturdy man told us 
with pride that it was his privilege, as it had been the privi- 
lege of his father and grandfather before him, and of his 
^' fathers for evermore,'* to serve Mass when the '' Station'' was 
held at Pontoon; and a like privilege was the boast of a homy 
handed son of toil on lUanaglashy. Without a reference to 
the ''Stations'' the most cursory glance [at the remote Conn 
and Cullin country would be incomplete, and we cannot more 
fitly close our tribute to our friends there than with words 
spoken by Father Ryan, P.P., V.G., at the Eucharistic Con« 
gress in London in September, 1908: 

It is true that for the most part the ^' Stations " are now 
held not in the homes but in the churches. Still in remoter 
parts of extended country parishes it has been found unwise, 
for the sake of religion, to break with the ancient custom. 
• • . Twice a year, at Christmas-time and at Baster-time, 
the country home is prepared for the coming of the Divine 
Visitor. Within and without the DonusHca EccUsia is cleansed 
and reverently set in order for this greatest of honors and bless- 
ings. The £Eunilies in the immediate neighborhood have 
gathered with their households, and are waiting when the 
priest arrives. The best room has been prepared for the hear- 
ing of confessions, and there the old and young, master and 
mistress and servant, enter in turn and receive the^Sacrament 
of Penance. . . . Confessions ended, or, at least, the Mass 
hour come— for in older da3r8 before the drain of enigration 
the confessions had to be resumed and were often continued 
far into the day— the priest enters the roomy ** kitchen," as 
the larger room is generally called, and there all has been 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] IN Carra and Tirawley, County Mayo 763 

prepared for Holy Mass. The walls, and even the roof- 
beams, are snowy white ; gleaming metal, sparkling glass and 
china, tell what loving hands have done to show their simple 
reverence. The homely table is the '' mensa '' of this domes- 
tic chapel, and altar-stone and altar-cloths, crucifix and 
lighted wax candles, and all the other rubrical essentials for 
the Holy Sacrifice, are duly arrayed. The priest has rested 
and begins his Introibo ad altare Dei. Reverently grouped 
around, kneeling on the rude floor — as often as not a floor of 
day — ^the worshippers join with him in the great Act. The 
time for the Communion comes and the Bread of I^ife is dis- 
tributed, lyittle children, whose happy day has not yet come, 
look on with longing eyes. The priest passes them by now, 
but it will not always be so. In the same places their fathers 
and grandfathers had knelt as children, knelt and waited. It 
is Hope looking on at Faith and Love. The Mass over, priest 
and people make thanksgiving together, and in another hour 
the simple house resumes its usual appearance. But the place 
has been sanctified, and the blessing seems to cling to these 
houses ''unspotted from the world.'' When at night the 
household again gathers there for the Rosary, the memory of 
the morning's blessing hangs like incense around the place, 
and that nightly Rosary goes on until the Blessing comes 
again. 



Most true it is, indeed, that these ''Stations'' are the key 
to the gladness and content and holy purity of the lives of 
^ our peasant friends in the wild country by Conn and CuUin. 



Digitized by 



Google 



SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND. 

BY VIRGINIA M. CRAWFORD. 

V tourists find their way to St. Gall, near the 
Lake of Constance. Yet it is a picturesque old 
town lying, like Innsbruck, at the foot of encir- 
cling mountains and dominated by the great red- 
roofed Abbey Church which tells of long centuries 
of Benedictine rule. To-day the monastery buildings, among 
the vastest in Europe, are turned to civic and secular purposes, 
though happily the famous library has been preserved intact 
and still contains priceless MSS. from medieval times. The 
church itself, several times destroyed by fire, survives only in 
rpcoco eighteenth century form, but so spacious in its florid 
curving lines, so mellowed in its gold and white decoration, as 
to achieve a high measure of dignity and beauty. 

It was, however, it must be confessed, none of these things 
that drew me to St Gall last February, when the town lay 
radiant amid bright sunshine and melting snows, with a warm 
south wind bringing visions of spring from Italy. It was the 
assurance that at this remote mountain city I should find an 
efflorescence of Catholic social activity well worthy of study. 
St. Gall is as German as Fribourg, which I had just left, is 
French. The one is residential, somewhat exclusive, and mainly 
devoted to education; the other industrial and progressive. 
St. Gall, as every one knows, makes a specialty of muslin and 
of so-called " Swiss " embroidery, sent to all parts of the world ; 
mills and workshops abound, and the town has a more purely 
industrial population than almost any other in Switzerland. 
Hence labor problems, and the moral conditions under which 
the industrial worker lives, have asserted themselves more com- 
pellingly than elsewhere, and have demanded a concrete so- 
lution. 

The main characteristic of the democratic agitation in Swit- 
zerland for economic and industrial reform was, in its inception, 
that it was wholly undenominational, and that, for a time at 
least. Catholics, Protestants, and Socialists worked side by side. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND 76| 

Religious differences, of ceursei existed and later asserted them- 
selres, but for some years mutual toleration prevailed, and the 
welfare of the worker was the end for which men of opposing 
schools of thought were ready to combine. Thus many Catho- 
lic workingmen's societies affiliated themselves at its foundation 
in 1886 to the Arbeiterbund or Fidiration Ouvriire Suisse, xtprt' 
senting men of every creed and of no creed, being content to 
work together for economic reforms, while acting independently 
in religious and educational matters. The movement in Switzer- 
land was in close union with that in Germany, of which Bishop 
Ketteler was the accepted representative; its leader M. Decur- 
tins, a staunch Ultramontane and advanced democrat, was a 
personal friend of Cardinal Manning's, a follower of Baron von 
Vogelsang, the Austrian Catholic leader, and, it need hardly 
be added, a devoted son and disciple of Leo XIII. The pub- 
lication of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum^ which came as a 
definite and supreme sanction to all for which the Christian 
labor leaders on the Continent were striving, was hailed with 
special enthusiasm in Switzerland, emphasized as it was by 
constant personal directions given by Leo XIII. to M. De- 
curtins. 

Perhaps the high water mark of the movement, as far as 
Switzerland was concerned, was reached at the celebrated inter- 
national Congress of Labor that met at Zurich, with the express 
sanction of the Pope, in August, 1897, when, for a whole week, 
Catholics of all nations, priests and laymen, discussed funda- 
mental labor problems with Socialist leaders such as Bebel, 
Liebknecht, Vandervelde, and many more. It was an historic 
occasion which made a profound impression upon all who took 
part in it. The regulation of the labor of men, of women, and 
of children respectively, and the prohibition of night and of 
Sunday work formed the subjects of discussion, and though a 
deep cleavage of opinion made itself evident on certain points, 
more especially on all that concerned women's woik, a general 
agreement was reached on many fundamental points of inter- 
national , labor legislation. Indeed, at the time, hopes ran high 
of a far-reaching democratic movement under supreme Catholic 
auspices which was to bring economic independence and decent 
industrial conditions to every workingman's cottage, hopes 
which, unhappily, were not destined to be realized. 

Circumstances, far too intricate to be discussed here, have 



Digitized by 



Google 



766 SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND [Sept., 

given a different direction to the movement in Switzerland. 
The ideal, eloquently preached by M. Decnrtins, Dr. J. Becke, 
and others of a constructive policy, of social justice in which 
men of all creeds should unite, became more and more difficult 
to uphold, perhaps more and more out of touch with the prac- 
tical necessities of the moment. Extremists on either side ren* 
dered any sort of common platform increasingly precarious, 
and the narrow anti-clericalism of the Socialist party in other 
countries became a factor in the situation that could not be 
ignored. Meanwhile the individual needs and influences of each 
canton tended to foster a variety of experiments, useful and 
instructive in themselves, but somewhat destructive of that unity 
of Catholic social endeavor that had once seemed so all impor- 
tant. Thus in recent years it has come about that St. Gall has 
devoted its best energies to the development of Syndicats Con^ 
fessionnels^ notwithstanding that such action ran counter to 
earlier Catholic ideals. Indeed its policy, actively pursued, may 
be taken to indicate a definite parting of the ways. 

As a result a somewhat acute controversy has been in prog- 
ress for the last few years, over the rival merits of confessional 
and non-confessional Syndicats Prcfessionmls or trades* unions. 
It was felt to be so burning a question that it was debated at 
length in the pages of the Revue de Frihourg (December, 1904). 
Some years previously the Swiss Hdiration Ouvriire had passed 
a resolution that all professional syndicates should be strictly 
neutral in matters of faith. Hence when the St. Gall syndicates 
came into existence it was a question whether they could legally 
be affiliated to the Fidiration Ouvriire^ and at a Congress held 
at Lucerne in 1904 the proposals made for their admission 
were rejected ^by a large majority. On the one hand it is 
contended — I summarize the views expressed in the Revue de 
Fribourg — that the Syndicats Neutres were more efficacious pro- 
fessionally, that they brought together, in a beneficial way, men 
of every party, and that they in no way interfered with the 
religious beliefs and practices of members. On the other hand, 
promoters of the Syndicats Confessionnels assert that they are 
absolutely essential as a means of keeping Catholic workingmen 
together; that syndicates are not merely economic organiza- 
tions, but moral and educational forces, molding a man's whole 
ife and thought, and consequently full of dangers to faith unless 
built upon a definitely Christian basis. They assert that the 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND 767 

so-called SyndicaU Niutres are never really neutral, and that 
they often circalate objectionable literature. It is pointed out 
that the St. Gall trades-unions are not strictly Catholic, but 
Christian, that Protestants join them in considerable numbers, 
and that it is only Socialists, Anarchists, and Anti-Christians 
generally who are excluded. Finally, it is urged — and this is, 
perhaps, the most conclusive argument of all — that the success 
of the movement is its best justification, that it has clearly 
filled a want, and that Catholic workingmen themselves have 
been the first to agitate for an organization of their own. It 
only remains to add that in the earlier stages of the contro- 
versy the promoters of the neutral associations believed them* 
selves to be interpreting the wishes of Leo XIII., while in the 
later stages their opponents have claimed to be carrying out 
the directions of Pius X. 

Whatever may be thought of the merits of the problem, 
and clearly there is much to be said on both sides, there can 
be no question that the Syndicats Confessicnnels of St Gall are 
doing a remarkable work for the Church. They form the nu- 
cleus of a whole network of organizations, constituting what 
is known as the St. Gall Kartell of the ''Central Federation 
of Christian Social Workmen's Associations of Switzerland,'' 
of which the head offices are at Zurich. To this Central Feder* 
ation over one hundred Catholic Arbeiter-vereim or Working- 
men's unions, situated mostly in German Switzerland, are 
affiliated, having a total membership of over 7,000; and as of 
this number 1,150 members belong to the St. Gall Verein, It is 
obvious that it is among the most important. Indeed, except 
in St Gall and Zurich the Vereine cannot claim to have attained 
as yet to any numerical importance; their virtue lies in the 
fact that they constitute an organization that is capable of in- 
definite expansion and one that represents a genuine effort at 
a constructive social policy on Catholic lines. Judged from 
an English standpoint continental workmen's syndicates appear 
somewhat weak on their economic and industrial side, and the 
St. Gall unions seem to me no exception to this rule, although, 
undoubtedly, they have intervened successfully on various 
occasions to prevent strikes and to improve the conditions of 
daily toil for their members. The raising of the rate of wages, 
which is the main object of English trades-unions, seems to 
occupy them but little. On the other hand, they are very 



Digitized by 



Google 



768 SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND [Sept.» 

Strong on thrift and education. In connection with the St 
Gall Arheiter^verein there are a flourishing Savings Bank, pay- 
ing, interest at 4 per cent on all deposits, sick and burial clubs, 
^ an Unemployed and an Old Age Pension Fund. A Labor 
Bureau and free legal advice are at the disposal of members, 
also a Loan Fund to pay the railway fares of men in search 
of work. The Verein owns splendid premises, including a really 
spacious hall for meetings and entertainments. I had the good 
fortune to be present at the annual business meeting held one 
Sunday afternoon when the place was crowded to the doors, 
and the routine was enlivened by much indulgence in tobacco, 
beer, and coffee, and by the singing of chorales. 

Another closely allied branch of activity is the develop- 
ment in the villages of small loan and savings banks on the 
well-known Raiffeisen system of unlimited liability. Of these 
there are now some no, mostly in the Catholic districts of 
Switzerland, and all affiliated to the central Swiss Co-Opera- 
tive Bank of St Gall, which affords them the necessary security. 
Thanks also to the existence of this bank, it has become pos- 
sible to open a number of co-operative shops for the benefit 
of members of the various unions, and these have proved ex- 
tremely successful. There is also a flourishing co-operative 
printing press at Winterthur which carries out the printing for 
the whole organization. 

Excellent as all these features are on the material side, 
they are not of themselves sufficient to give a distinctive 
character to the .movement. Its real strength is derived from 
the ideals that inspire it, ideals of religious faith, of Christian 
justice, and of organized self-help. These are perpetually 
preached to the members by the two priests who have been 
mainly instrumental in the development, in the face of con- 
siderable opposition, of Syndicats Confessionnels, Professor Jung, 
President of the Arbeiter-verein^ and Dr. Scheiwiler, Rector of 
St Othmar on the outskirts of St Gall. By conferences and 
by frequent courses of lectures on social subjects, as well as 
through the various newspapers published by the organization, 
members are taught to feel that they are brothers of one 
family, sharing in the same joys and sorrows, and are urged 
to seek progress not in enmity and class wars but in righteous 
dealings one with another. All these societies are, moreover, 
affiliated to the recently established Swiss Volksverein^ which 



Digitized by 



Google 



i9ia] Social Work in Switzerland 769 

organizes the annual Catholic Congresses or Katholikentage^ at 
which enthusiasm is kindled and a fuller understanding gained 
of the duties of Christian citizens. In all these ways the 
moral and intellectual life of the Swiss Catholic workingman is 
molded and strengthened, and a sense of religious esprit de 
carps developed. Finally on the spiritual plane there are the 
workingmen*s retreats, carried on at the Jesuit bouse at Feld* 
kirch, the value of which has only recently begun to be fully 
appreciated. 

Far more remarkable, however, are the results achieved by 
the Arbeiterinmn^vereint or workwomen's union. In the facto- 
ries in and around the town some 3,500 women and girls are 
employed, many of whom necessarily live away from their 
homes, and of these factory- workers and embroiderers, no less 
than 2,400 are organized in the Catholic Afbeiierinmn-verein. 
It is a splendid result, representing an arduous ten years' 
work. In England, and, I believe, in most European countries, 
workgirls of all trades have usually shown themselves singu- 
larly indifferent to the advantages of trades-unions and sadly 
lacking in any intelligent social spirit. That the progress of 
the Swiss unions should have been so rapid is no doubt partly 
due to the excellence of Swiss education, but in part also to 
the inspiring ideals preached by the Swiss Vereine. Economic 
principles are never quickly grasped by women, but when they 
are skillfully linked with definite material advantages, and the 
whole movement is infused with a religious spirit, the sex is 
not slow to respond. So at least one may assume from the 
experience of St. Gall. The women's union is entirely auton- 
omous as far as its internal administration is concerned, but 
it is affiliated to, and directly represented in, the Central Feder- 
ation at Zurich, and on its economic side it is closely linked 
to the men's unions. Thus the Savings Bank, Sick and Burial 
Clubs, and old Age Pension Fund serve equally for men and 
women, while the latter are, of course, among the regular 
customers of the co-operative shop '' Concordia." 

I had the pleasure, during my short stay at St. Gall, of 
long talks with the President of the Arbeiterinnen^vereinf Fraii- 
lein Anna Frank, and learnt from her how much the organi- 
zation is effecting for the material and spiritual welfare of its 
members. Perhaps the most satisfactory feature is that there 
is no almsgiving in the concern. It is an entirely self-sup- 

VOL XCI«'49 



Digitized by 



Google 



770 SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND [Scpt, 

porting enterprise, managed by the members themselves under 
the general supervision of Professor Jung, the energetic pro** 
tagonist of trades-unions. Fraulein Frank is herself, I may 
say, employed in a shop in the town and gladly gives the 
whole of her spare time to the service of the Verein; so 
too do the members of the Executive Committee, who are all 
workers in factory or shop, and who, like the president, are 
elected annually by the members. Under Fraiilein Frank's 
guidance I visited the fine property of the union, the Pension 
Felsengarten, consisting of two large six-storied buildings 
standing pleasantly in a garden in the upper part of the town. 
That the Verein should have been in a position to raise suffix 
eient money for so spacious a building is in itself a fair proof 
of solvency. Felsengarten is not only the working centre of 
the organization, but it offers ah attractive home to some 120 
members, whose work compels them to live away from their 
families. Charming bed-sitting-rooms, furnished with every 
comfort, and containing either one or two beds, can be had at 
prices varying from 2.50 francs to 5 francs a week. Complete 
board, consisting of four meals, costs only i franc a day. 
Thus the charge is well within the means of the ordinary 
workgirl, earning from 12 francs to 15 francs per week. The 
large dining-hall seats over 200 people and members not liv- 
ing in the house can come there for their meals. 

The building is heated throughout with hot air and lit by 
electricity, and bathrooms are provided. There is a large hall 
where courses of lectures and practical classes are held every 
evening in such subjects as cooking, ironing, fine sewings 
dress-making, embroidery, book-keeping, shorthand, and social 
economics. Each course, for which members pay only 1.50 
francs, consists of 20 lessons, and last year some 400 girls 
took part in them. Here, too, is housed a lendiilg library of 
1,600 volumes, of which members have the free use. Each 
member is further entitled to the free use of the employment 
bureau, and to legal advice when needed, and she is supplied 
weekly with Die Arbeiterin, an excellent little propagandist 
organ. All these benefits are paid for, in addition to the 
general administrative expenses, by the small monthly sub- 
scriptions of members to the Verein. A choral society, with 
annual entertainments and theatrical performances, represents 
the healthy recreative side of the busy life lived in and around 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND yjl 

Felsengarten. Finally, I must not omit a feature which stamps 
the whole house with a religious impress: the presence within 
it of a few nuns, to whom the domestic and kitchen super- 
vision is entrusted. They are Menzingen Sisters, members 
of that admirable Franciscan congregation founded some sixty 
years ago by the celebrated Capuchin, Father Theodosius, 
which has grown with such amazing rapidity that to-day the 
Menzingen Sisters are to the German Cantons of Switzerland 
all that the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul hare long 
been to France. They are found everywhere in humble and 
arduous labors, and they have contributed no mean share to 
the prosperity of innumerable Catholic institutions. Yet they 
are not in any sense the directors of the house ; they are con- 
tent to restrict themselves to the domestic management which 
ensures the comfort of the boarders and to maintain by their 
presence an atmosphere of peace and orderliness of inestimable 
value. 

Of the immense advantage, material and moral, that such 
an institution must be to girl workers, stranded in a town 
away from home and friends, there can be no question. It 
was satisfactory to learn in addition that the Venin does not 
neglect the industrial interests of its members. On the whole, 
so Fratilein Frank assured me, factory legislation, owing to the 
combined efforts of all parties, is fairly adequate; the in» 
spection is well carried out and over-time is strictly regulated. 
Nevertheless hours are still unduly long in solme trades and 
wages very low. Encouraged by their Vitein the girls in the 
cotton mills have agitated with some success for shorter hours 
and better pay. In the hand-embroidery work-shops, where 
the cutting out process was extremely badly paid, improved 
conditions were granted as a result of the organized protests. 
At St. Gall, as elsewhere, *' sweated'' labor and all 
of female home-work prevail in certain trades, more ( 
in shirt-making and underclothing. It was to obvii 
drawbacks and to set a higher standard in the tow 
woman's work-room was opened in connection with 
operative shop ''Concordia," in which the workers 
nearly double the rate of pay prevailing locally, i 
the less a profit of lo per cent is realized. 

It must not be forgotten that the Arbeiterinnen^ 
St. Gall is no isolated development. Scattered over 



Digitized by 



Google 



77^ Social work in Switzerland [Sept., 

land there are no less than 74 of these women's anions^ with 
a total membership in 1909 of 10,575. Not a few of them 
possess, like St. Gall, their own premises and boarding-henses; 
all afford facilities for thrift and self-help, organize courses 
of lectures, and develop a Christian social spirit, and the 
greater number are in a flourishing condition. At many places^ 
such as Rorschach, Schaffhausen, Olten, etc., the membership 
of the women's unions far exceeds that of the men. St. Gall 
was quoted to me, however, as the town where I should find 
the fullest efflorescence of Catholic activity on modern lines, 
and even my short stay afforded me pleasant glimpses of a 
very busy little world. The Vereine I have described are in- 
deed far from exhausting local Catholic enterprise. Female 
servants, equally with workgirls, have organized a union of 
their own, with some 350 members, and they possess not only 
a large servants' home and registry office, but a beautifully 
planned and almost luxurious mansion where aged servants or 
Pfrundnerinnen can eke out their savings in comfort and refine- 
ment. This house, too, is under the care of the Menzingen 
Sisters and has its private chapel, and it also receives girl 
clerks, teachers, etc., as boarders. Then there is an active 
centre of that most necessary organization, the International 
Association for the Protection of Girls, the office of which 
has been made to serve as the base of a voluntary distributing 
agency of Catholic literature, girls with leisure carrying round 
fresh books every fortnight to working-class families. Even 
that popular subject, Temperance, excites enthusiasm at St. 
Gall. A lecture by Frau Hoffmann of Geneva on the Sunday 
afternoon of my stay drew a crowded audience, and was note- 
worthy for being based less on the needs of the individual 
than on the wider grounds of social welfare and national 
hygiene which it was the duty of every one to further. 

What, then, I asked myself, at the close of my two bewil- 
deringly busy days at St. Gall, is the main impression to carry 
away from so much well-planned and intelligent activity ? It 
seemed to be this : in other countries an undue proportion of the 
social work of the Church has to be devoted to the mere relief 
of distress, to almsgiving in a more or less organized fashion, 
in other words, to palliating, abnormal and unhealthy conditions 
of national life. Some measure of such work is no doubt every- 
where needful— disease and destitution can never be wholly 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] SOCIAL WORK IN SWITZERLAND 773 

wiped out — and in some lands at present it is necessary on so 
gigantic a scale that it tends to overshadow everything else, 
and to cripple other necessary activities. The Catholic Church 
becomes in the eyes of many a mere machinery for the relief 
of distress, a society with which individuals are apt to claim 
membership mainly for what they can get from it. What Chris- 
tian workers often fail to realize is that they are trying to do 
quite inadequately and amateurishly what it is the plain business 
of the State to do thoroughly and systematically, and that in- 
stead of struggling individually with an impossible task, it 
would be more to the purpose, even from a strictly religious 
standpoint, to combine in an active crusade of industrial re- 
form, in order to clear the ground for the spiritual action of 
the Church. Such a realization would be the first step towards 
the evolution of a Catholic policy of constructive reform, prac- 
tical in its application and based on broad Christian principles. 
We are, alas, still far from having elaborated such a policy, 
but in Switzerland, after thirty years of active, if intermittent, 
agitation, based largely on the teaching of the Leonine en- 
cyclicals, muck has been accomplished in labor legislation, in 
housing, in education, in the development of the civic sense. 
In Switzerland we find no extremes either of poverty or of 
wealth with their blighting evils^ — no destitution on the one 
hand, no enervating luxury on the other. Everywhere through- 
out the Republic there is to be found a widespread observance 
of Sunday rest, and almost complete religious toleration. 
Hence at St. Gall, although in point of fact the population is 
only three-fifths Catholic and two-fifths Protestant, the social 
student can watch the Church at work under normal and 
healthy conditions in an environment favorable to spiritual 
growth. And the conviction is forced upon him that in the 
world of to-day only democracy, wisely understood, furnishes 
such a basis. 



Digitized by 



Google 



STOLEN FORTUNES. 

BY MARIE MANNING. 

~ OXFORD could never quite forgive Mrs. Burrell 
Peters her ''queer" marriage. It knew that 
surprises will occur in the best regulated town- 
ships and — priding itself on its cosmopolitanism 
— it was willing to condone them. But to be 
invited to a wedding, and then have it turn into a — Roxford 
believed such things were called '' surprise parties *' — was taking 
too much for granted. It was not a frivolous town, and a 
generation ago it was less frivolous than it is to-day, when 
many of the old famflies have succeeded in disposing advan- 
tageously of their fine old places to Northern capitalists, acd 
these ''new people'' have different ideals. 

But twenty years ago things were very different — then no 
one thought it necessary to leave town from June to October. 
Such a proceeding would have been construed to indicate phy- 
sical weakness, and nothing could have been resented more 
anxiously than such an impression. An outing of a week or 
two to Saratoga, Niagara Falls, or Lake George— these very 
names, then, recalled perspectives of flowered parlor carpet, 
crystal chandeliers, and draped lambrequins — and the traveler 
returned and told the stay-at-homes about the extortions, his 
fellow-" boarders," and— the scenery. The ladies seldom trav* 
eled ; for the most part they made preserves and pickles during 
the long summer days, and after supper they sat on their porches 
in wholly charming muslin frocks of their own devising. 

These gentle arts of pickling, preserving, and needle* work 
filled the lives of the young gentlewomen to pleasant ovesflow** 
ing, for it was long before the days of girl- bachelors, or pro- 
fessional women, or careers. Then it was a woman's career to 
have as many "alternatives" as possible, one of which she 
finally chose, and her wedding was the great event of her life. 
If for any reason romance did not come about in this harmoni- 
ous sequence, at the age of twenty-five, she regarded herself 
as " an old maid," and from henceforth she plied her needle 
in the romantic interests of her younger sister, and in time took 
her place in this sister's family as that now wholly extinct 



Digitized by V^jOOQIC 



I9I0.] STOLEN FORTUNES 775 

connection — the . maiden aunt. On the whole, the number of 
marriages was greater then than now. Perhaps it was that 
girls did not sequester themselves at summer resorts, at which 
there were no pen, and dance the precious, fleeting years away 
with other young ladies. They stayed at home where business 
kept the men, who would ''drop around'^ and sit with the 
muslins on the porch, and later there would be sangaree and 
a little music — ^all the girls played then, it wasn't necessary 
to have studied with Letitichsky before they'd dare touch a 
piano-^and the air was full of romance. 

Therefore, when old Matthew Reverdy died very suddenly 
and his daughter, Sydney — named for her mother's family in 
good Southern fashion — became the ward of Judge Maitland, 
he was naturally aghast at her request that she ** go out into 
the world " — that was the phrase, they didn't believe in soften- 
ing the horrors of the undertaking — and earn her own living. 

Sydney Reverdy was twenty and there was a something 
about the warm duskiness of her coloring that suggested a 
nasturtium. She was far from conventionally pretty. Roxford 
considered her nose too short and her mouth too scornlul— or 
at least the ladies did, no man thought anything about her 
mouth but the marvel of its scarlet. The girl had been much 
with her father, who was among the last of the old regime. His 
days were spent in gentlemanly idleness and he was a connois- 
seur in the almost extinct art of julep- making. He was an 
old man when Sydney was born. The girl had had scant 
''raising" for a Southern girl, her mother dying before she 
was ten. Roxford invited her to its parties and the mothers 
thanked heaven that they had been spared to watch over the 
destinies of their own daughters. The verdict regarding Sydney 
stood that she was a good girl, but "read too much for a young 
lady." 

' This was what Judge Maitland thought when she advanced 
her preposterous plea of going North and earning her own 
living. Like Doctor Johnson, he thought a knowledge of Greek 
incompatible with female delicacy. Not that Sydney knew a 
word of the dread tongue, but dead languages and inclinations 
toward independence both came under the judge's ban of " un- 
ladylike." 

"What would you have me do?" inquired Sydney. "I 
have an income of $300 a year. I dare say Cousin Abby Tucker 
would let me live with her — girls seem to be like kittens, yco 



Digitized by 



Google 



776 STOLEN FORTUNES [Sept, 

have to find homes for them. You can drown the kittens 
you fail of this, but the girls — " 

** My dear Sydney/' interposed the judge, ** I beg you will 
not telk like that. Your Cousin Abby will be delighted to re- 
ceive you." 

^' Granting that : out of my princely income I shall have 
to dress suitably to the station in which it has pleased Provi- 
dence to call mCf fer, as Mrs. Allen Tucker's young relative, I 
shall require clothes. Can you conceive of the amount of jug- 
gling I shall have to do with that $300? Can't you see me 
always making over, always surreptitiously heating irons?" 

** My dear child, since the Civil War very many estimable 
ladies have spent the major part of their time that way." 

She threw back her head impatiently. The foreshortened 
view of her charmingly petulant face would have undoubtedly 
carried the day, had it not the more sharply emphasized the 
dangers of the day to be carried. 

''And aren't women capable of better things?" 

** It is inconceivable, my dear Sydney, that the destiny of 
a girl, young and lovely, should stop with these irksome 
details. They are, if I may say so without the touch of cyni- 
cism that my words imply, to the life of a young lady what 
the grind of a law-school is to the subsequent triumphs of the 
successful lawyer." 

The judge was wholly unconscious that his portrayal of the 
probable destiny of a young and attractive girl filled Sydney 
with amusement tempered with antipathy. 

** Cousin Abby will undoubtedly do her duty — you know 
how well it will be done. Why go into the harrowing de- 
tails? Can't you see her on my wedding-day saying to the 
family : * Heaven knows I have done my duty to Sydney, I 
have been a mother to her ' ? Is there no other profession 
open to a girl than that of marriage ? Let me at least try, 
I am not a fool, and if I marry it will be because I want to 
marry, and not because I'm handed over to a man by my 
family." 

Plainly this girl had been reading — a dangerous thing is a 
little specious argument in the hands of ladies. The judge 
was genuinely distressed. Were a girl beautiful as Venus she 
would be spoiled by this kind of nonsense. Who would want 
a wife with ''views"? It was but one step to "woman's 
rights." 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Stolen fortunes 777 

In doe coarse Roxford heard of Sydney's incendiary senti- 
mentSi and it asked itself, with the consciousness of daty done 
at homci what could be expected of a girl who had been al- 
lowed to grow up in her father's library, where Tom Paine, 
Shakespeare, and Byron were not even under lock and key ? 
Mrs. Allen Tucker related to Judge Maitland that when she 
was a young girl her father pasted together certain pages of 
Shakespeare rather than run the risk of having the young 
people read them. The judge bowed before the ripe and per- 
feet fruitage of such a system. And Mrs. Tucker continued 
that she was willing to offer Sydney '' the sanctuary of her 
home" — she could never deny herself a mouth* filling phrase 
— ''but that she'd stand no 'women's rights' foolishness." 
The young girls of Sydney's own age did not take her am- 
bitions toward a profession very seriously; she was quite 
clever enough, they believed, to have a trick up her sleeve 
that would be offered in due season. 

To the great inconvenience of Mrs. Allen Tucker^who was 
homesick for her own coffee, her beaten biscuit, and the orderly 
swing of housekeeping as it was maintained in her own home 
— Sydney continued to cling to the old house, though the 
sign announcing its sale was already affixed to the maple on 
the lawn; and Mrs. Tucker, scrupulous in fulfilling blood 
obligations, remained with her. The girl felt that if she went 
with her Cousin Abby, that step would be the last of her as 
an individual. She would then begin her novitiate in that re- 
pressed sisterhood — that silent order that was only too well 
known in the South a generation ago-^of peripatetic guests 
and dependents. She had known many of them to grow old 
in this polite slavery, ladies who could never afford the luxury 
of an idea, for fear it might not be cordially received by their 
temporary hostess and task- mistress. The] 
for all the manipulation of their own partic 
and their relatives accepted their services 
or in times of illness, or when there were vi 
and there was need of some one to tak< 
times the professional visitor would go froi 
courteous and repressed — grateful for old c 
advice, always grateful for everything, and n 
to call her own but what the caprice of 
offer for her services — culinary or funereal. 

Sydney was willing to pickle, or to pr 



Digitized by 



Google 



778 STOLEN Fortunes [Sept., 

the sick, but she wanted to do these things away from the 
comments of her relatives, and she wanted to be paid for them 
in coin of the realm. There was another reason, too, at the 
bottom of the girl's desire to '' go out into the world "—a 
postscript reason that told the motive that the long letter 
lacked— but Sydney showed her postscript to no one. Judge 
Maitland, who never suspected it, was at the end of his argu- 
ments — and his patience. He wrote a long letter to Burrell 
Peters — then in Naples — telling little in the way of detail re* 
garding the passing of their late friend and kinsman, but lavish 
in diatribe as to the lack of repose in the modern young 
woman. Peters, who knew his correspondent, read skippingly 
till he came to the last paragraph : '' Sydney Reverdy now in- 
sists on going to New York to earn her living; she is full of 
specious arguments. Matthew unfortunately allowed her to 
read too much for a young lady — '' 

Peters folded the letter, consulted a steamship company's 
leaflet that offered sailing dates for the next three months, and 
decided to go home immediately ; and this despite the fact 
that he had come to Naples to make the Amalfi- Sorrento cir- 
cuit, and he was reckoned a trifle set in his ways. He was a 
bachelor of graciously mellowing years, whose exact number 
would have come in the nature of a shock to a new acquaint- 
ance. He had *' drifted " with time so suavely — birthdays were 
honored in the breach by him, they never came in a series of 
rude jolts — that he gave to youth, when youth was of his own 
sex and disadvantageously pitted against him, something of 
the acrid rasp of an unmellowed vintage. He was one of 
those men with whom women, even to the remotest eddy of 
cousindom, and sometimes even farther, delight to emphasise a 
connection real or fancied. He was '' Cousin Burrell " to half 
the county. Beside the glamour of bachelorhood, which 
potentially confers a man on every woman, the glamour of 
travel, experience, cosmopolitanism was upon him. It was 
generally understood about Roxford that the only reason that 
kept '' Cousin Burrell '' from making his mark in literature was 
that he found life too brilliantly absorbing for him to tie him- 
self to the tedium of a desk. He had been the star to which, 
alas I many ladies had hitched the wagon of their fondest 
trust, but he continued to shine brilliant and solitary — the ex- 
quisitely forlorn hope of successive generations. Daughters 
dreamed and fluttered where their mothers dreamed and flut- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] STOLEN FORTUNES 779 

tered before thenii but ''Cousin Burreir' was always slipping 
away to Europe and the Orient, and the voyages which gave 
him such prestige in Roxford doubtless contributed^ in no 
small degree, to the charmed life he seemed to bear, matri- 
monially speaking. 

When Jam Eyre was a newer book in Roxford than it is 
to-day, and young ladies — often surreptitiously— followed the 
fortunes of the governess with full emotional accompaniment, 
the delicate aquilinity of '' Cousin Burrell's '^ profile seldom 
failed to illustrate the countenance of Rochester. Who could 
tell 7 — at that very moment perhaps he was eating his heart 
out for — the reader. Some cruel entanglement of early youth, 
doubtless, kept him from '' speaking.'^ Be that as it may, 
" Cousin Burrell ** had a heavy load of romance to carry on 
his broad shoulders. That he carried it and was on friendly 
terms with all the contributors argued eloquently for his talents 
in diplomacy. 

Sydney Reverdy had no such illusions; she knew him too 
well to convert him into a vehicle for romance. He and her 
cynical old father had been great cronies. She remembered 
their amusing comment on Roxford's social conditions*— the 
long patient shoeing, in secret, of that tyrannous ''best foot,'' 
before it could be put forward for the inspection of kith and 
kin. Perhaps "Cousin Burreir' was implicated in Sydney's 
secret postscript, and she preferred that the makeshifts of her 
poverty should play out their little comedies elsewhere than 
for his good-natured amusement Humor, that doubtful gift 
of the gods, more especially to the feminine recipient, invested 
her with a shuddering dread of the rSle her family seemed bent 
on her playing. After all, should she have to yield to them 
and " make her home with friends " ? This was the euphemis<» 
tic triumph, the funeral pomp as it were, that they employed 
to bury alive hapless gentlewomen— of no foi ' 

Roxford felt rather sulkily that Sydney E 
ring it out of all proportion to the importano 
volved. While she had not spoken of her a 
except those who constituted themselves her 
that her attitude of revolt impugned their 
then they dropped her of their own voliti< 
topic perennially new and absorbing. "Cou 
returned from Italy — Sydney was among the 
news. 



Digitized by 



Google 



78o Stolen Fortunes [Sept/ 

''Poor man/' was all she said, ''how many suppers he'll 
have to eat/' 

Sapper was Roxford's ceremonious meal— it still dined at 
midday. Sydney already felt assured of Peters' sympathy ; he 
was no narrow provincial who would rob a woman of her 
birthright of independence because she was of his kin. He 
would be her advocate, he would plead her cause with Judge 
Maitland and Mrs. Allen Tucker. And when she had made 
up her mind that he would smooth away her difficulties toward 
independence, she locked her door and spent the afternoon in 
tears. 

Next morning's mail brought Miss Reverdy a note from 
Mr. Peters, briefly expressing his sympathy for her loss and 
the hope that she would find it convenient to receive him that 
afternoon. Sydney glanced up from the hastily written page 
with a look of blankness in her face. The sight of the hand- 
writing had led her to expect a different sort of letter. He 
was her kinsman and oldest friend; the happiest recollections 
of her life were the evenings he had spent with them— their 
delightful triangular talks, he sometimes as ally, sometimes 
as opponent, and her keen old father leading the talk, now 
humorously, now whimsically, but always keeping it up to the 
standards of his day, when men boasted Clay and Webster as 
contemporaries«-"and could answer them, too, sir, if they 
didn't agree with them." 

Sydney had already begun to pack when Mr. Peters' card 
came up. Whatever she might do, go to New York or stay 
in Virginia with Mrs. Tucker, the ordeal of leaving her old 
home must be gone through with. She paid " Cousin Burrell " 
the tribute of a fresh coiffure, but whether from a species of 
perverse vanity or a deliberate avowal of indifference, only she 
could have told. The result was a quakerish demureness not at 
all unbecoming. She called it declining to make herself look 
pretty "like the rest of them." 

Meanwhile " Cousin Burrell " was sitting on the claw- footed 
sofa in the meagrely furnished drawing-room. For the first 
time its aspect of brave poverty appealed to his sense of pity. 
Heretofore, there had been almost a swagger about the few 
bits of really good mahogany; they were like a company of 
Spanish grandees keeping up a fine tradition of self-sufficiency 
among themselves. But now it was as if they had lost the 
humor of the situation, with the deluge at hand. The old 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Stolen Fortunes 781 

French clock on the mantel seemed to sigh away the moments, 
and the miniatures of Matthew Reverdy's grandmother and 
grandfather, looking down from either side of the clock, had 
already the pathos of dispossession. 

'' Cousin Burrell '' could see in the mirror opposite that the 
hair about his temples was grayer than when he had last sat 
in that room. His slightly faded aspect of perfect distinction 
had seemed to him in Paris, in Monte Carlo, in London— and 
heretofore in Roxford — an adequate and desirable exponent of 
his personality. But now, regarding himself critically in that 
frankest of mirrors, he found the presentation a trifle discon- 
certing. 

'' It is presumptuous." And ** Cousin Burrell " deliberate- 
ly turned his back on the reflection in the mirror. Had the 
watchful eye of Roxford a glimpse of its universal cousin as 
he awaited the appearance of Sydney it would have had dif- 
ficulty in recognizing in the submissively apprehensive man 
its nonchalant social connoisseur, its pride, its most ornamental 
citizen. 

Sydney was in the room before he realized it, her black 
frock making her seem older and her manner suggesting de- 
fenses in reserve. If he attacked her plan of going to New 
York — and his letter led her to believe he would — he'd find 
she was not unprepared in the matter of argument. 

The cousinly privilege that had always been taken for 
granted, after long absences, and that each regarded as ''en- 
tirely perfunctory'' on the part of the other, was more con- 
spicuous on this occasion in its omission than it would have 
been in the observance. Conversation balked — they were like 
travelers that didn't start — or at least Mr. Peters was, sulkily 
declining any of Sydney's various leads. 

'' Haven't we made rather a bad beginning?" suggested 
'' Cousin Burrell." ** Forgotten something ? I've alway 
a stickler for old forms and ceremonies." 

''So I've understood," Sydney answered demurely. 
I believe I've grown to be a — dissenter." She was all 
ling mischief, the teasing Sydney he had known from 
hood; but in a moment she was sitting erect in her st 
backed chair, relentless as an armored cruiser awaiting 
Her defenses wanted but the word; she was ready, shi 
shell, to open up fire against any possible assault on tb 
nomic independence of her sex. 



Digitized by 



Google 



78a Stolen fortunes [Sept., 

But astute ** Coasin Barrell " was too old a campaigner to 
waste his ammanition against such Fourth of July cannon; 
hadn't he taught her to load and fire them himself for the 
pure mischief of seeing her frighten the old ladies of Roxford ? 

<< You've had a hard time, my dear; shouldn't you like to 
travel for a little while and try to forget — " 

The toy cannon made ready for business. '* Then you 
haven't heard of my plans?" 

'Xousin Burrell's" wise, kind eyes intimated that he was 
perfectly familiar with her plans. Very soothingly he answered t 
''When a great sorrow uproots and strands us, Sydney dear, 
we are apt to make plans that leav^ out of consideration any 
possible return to happiness." 

''You speak as if I had the power to choose." 

"And so you have, dear, unless you are going to try to 
make yourself over into one of those sad, gray women who 
go about looking for wheels on which to break themselves in 
the name of duty." 

And these were the words of the one-time ally I /' But you 
always said, you and father, that when a woman is left as I 
am, it is so much better to take whatever little ability she has 
and turn it to practical account, instead of being harbored by 
relatives like a bit of out- grown bric-a*brac that is allowed to 
knock about the house for sentiment's sake." 

"But if the bric*a*brac is exquisite, a joy to look at, a 
privilege to have, we pri^e it for its intrinsic worth." 

Her ey^B were half saucy, half sad, as she answered him: 
" Doubtless a great deal of well-meaning bric*a*brac has started 
on its career to the attic with that false premise, failing to 
take into account that much basking on the mantel-piece will 
turn it yellow and that new styles will supersede." 

" But age will only increase its value if it's Sevres, or Chelsea, 
or Dresden, and — " 

"But what a destiny^that of a perpetually smiling shep- 
herdess, forever at the mercy of the house-maid's duster." 

There was a full measure of pity in his glance, but of that 
he was unconscious. The poor child, who spoke so contemptu* 
ously of smiling destinies, what sort of destiny would await 
her in the world ? But he answered lightly : " I fear this young 
shepherdess, whose destiny we are considering, will not evade 
the duster in whatever walk of life she elects to tread. If she 
refuses to smile beautifully as a shepherdess, she has her choice 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Stolen fortunes 783 

of growing old and unbeautifal as a mariooette ; and they, too, 
are subject to the peril of the duster— doing little futile things 
that any one can do as well — " 

''But you never talked like this before. You said — " 

''Yes, yes; but now let us look at the reverse of the medal/' 

"Let^s not; I'm bored to death with the reverse of the 
medal. See, I know all the little stencils by heart. A woman 
loses her privileges in proportion as she gains her rights. Let 
ber not expect a salary and a seat in the 8trce.t*car, for both 
of these things do indicate an exceeding covetousness. Man is 
no longer her natural protector, but her rival, ready not only 
to wrest from her her job, but likewise the sandwich she has 
thriftily brought from home for her lunch. She must be pre- 
pared to face all seasons — the rain which causes her hair to 
uncurl and herself to look exceedingly unlovely; the wintry 
blast which will redden her nose; the summer heat which will 
cause the same to shine. Furthermore, let her beware that she 
does not lose her heart to one of these rivals — '' 

"Don't, dear, don't; there is so much bitter truth in all 
that you say so lightly. How can you know, in the beautiful 
morning of your youth, that there is nothing sadder in the 
world than a girl beating herself to pieces on the inevitable — " 

"You've said it— the inevitable. Then why discuss it?" 

"Dear child, because ninety-nine sheep go over a cli£f, why 
must you be the hundredth ? Why won't you stay with Abby 
Tucker till your father's affairs can be more thoroughly sifted ? 
Surely some means can be devised to make the estate yield 
an income." 

"My dear Burrell, as my most distinguished relative, you 
would be giving me away within the year to any one-^' rich- 
man, poor- man, beggar- man, thief.' Cousin Abby has but one 
method with girls: they are made to walk the ] 
matrimonial sea, the band, meantime, playing 1 
relatives smiling inanely and throwing rice." 

" Is that her method 7 Then that settles it, \ 
but another case of trust betrayed— of the dishc 
Granting me the right to give you away, I m 
Sydney, you belong to me, I've stolen you. Y 
mine." 

The color broke on her cheek and brow, wa 
then receded. "I don't understand — " 

"That I have come to claim you instead of th< 



Digitized by 



Google 



784 Stolen Fortunes [Sept., 

Dear Sydney, that is one of those pieces of black injustice of 
which the world is full. The fairy prince ought to have come 
driving up in his golden chariot with the crystal slipper to fit 
your foot; but the world has grown old and gray, and the 
fairy princes that I used to read to you about when you were 
a little girl are all dead. Realism in art killed them, and a 
dreadful thing that they call Pure Reason. But if this dread- 
ful ogre had not killed your fairy prince, believe me, Sydney, 
I would never have spoken. As your nearest of kin I should 
have given you to him with the best grace in the world, and 
like Punchinello : ' Then sat him down and wept/ " 

She put her hand to her forehead. '' I don't understand-^ 
I think it's because you're sorry for me." 

''Sorry for you — because you have youth, loveliness, and 
brains, and all the world before you ? Accept my most sincere 
condolence for these things." 

She smiled at him with eyes that were wet with tears. 

''Dear Sydney, please say yes; not because I deserve it, 
but because I'm so tired of traveling about waiting for yoo 
to grow up. In the absence of the fairy prince, please say 
yes." 

"You have always been my fairy prince," she said, 

Roxford abandoned itself to astonishment, not of the polite, 
eyebrow*raising kind, but of the dour species that sudden death 
and calamity generate. Its idol had feet of clay. How could 
a man who had been twice around the world marry a girl who 
had never been away even to boarding school ? Mothers who 
had sedulously done their duty in this respect, and "spared 
no expense " in the matter of " extras," had the blank look of 
asking what the world was coming to? Then, because the 
habit of making a hero of him had been going on so long that 
it was difficult to drop immediately, they fitted up a working 
hypothesis that rescued him at the eleventh hour. He was 
marrying her from motives of chivalry. How could he let a 
relative "go out into the world and make her own way"? 
As for her — every one knew how clever she was. 

With mid- October came the wedding-day. The maples had 
clothed themselves in wedding garments of scarlet and gold for 
the occasion, and the sky was blue as the heart of a turquoise. 
It was like a " before the war " wedding, with kith and kin 
coming from every side, and Mrs. Allen Tucker's old "man- 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



i9ia] Stolen Fortunes 785 

sion'* disposing of them all with real Southern strategy. The 
darkies who lired on the borders of her land, and who still 
regarded themseWes as belonging to the family, were wild with 
festal joy and clustered round the outer gate to participate in 
the excitement of arriving packages. The florist's men had 
driven away, the crimson carpet was spread down the broad 
white steps— everything was in readiness. 

The ceremony was to be at eight. Already it was six, and 
Sjrdney, in a marvel of a petticoat, was stepping about in her 
white, high-heeled slippers. 

Two of the bridesmaids, dressed in picture gowns of rose 
and white, watched the performance critically. 

''Do I walk as if they were new?'' 

'''The bride limped to the altar on the arm of her uncle/ 
No, they can't say that about you ; but when I get married 
I'm going to wear old slippers that I've danced and had a 
good time in." 

" Thaf 8 an idea." Ada Beverly tried her picture hat at 
another angle. "It's always so hard to find the something 
'old.'" 

'"Something old. something new, something borrowed, 
something blue,'" Belle Peters quoted. "Chalk the soles, 
Sydney. It isn't that wedding* shoes are tight, it's because 
the soles are slippery that makes brides walk so awkwardly. 
I know, I've been bridesmaid six times." 

"Have you a 'going, going, gone,' feeling, Syd?" Molly 
Bainbridge addressed herself to the comnnnv in th^ manni^r of 
one thinking aloud. "Do you know, 
ately in love I was, I think at the lai 
change my mind." 

"Sydney, my dear," and Mrs. All 
door, " you've only left yourself an hot 
to put on your wedding-gown and vei 

"Heaven help me, I shall surely d 
Sydney, who was rubbing the soles 
lump of magnesia, stopped. 

" Girls, I really think Sydney will 
you go to your own rooms." Mrs. Ti 
room of all but Aunt Annibel, who as 
privilege of dressing her nursling for t 

"Shall you put on yo' weddin'*dr< 

VOL. XCI.'50 



Digitized by 



Google 



786 SlOLEN FORTUNES [Sept, 

** O Mammy, get me my wedding- bouquet-^ Uncle Joshua 
put it in the spring-house to keep it cool/' 

The wedding- gown lay on the bed, a mass of shimmering, 
pearly white, Sydney looked at it, a little in awe of its signi- 
ficance. How wonderful it all was — she who had been so 
friendless, so alone. And she had loved him ever since she 
could remember. That was why she had wanted to go away, 
that he might not see her first blundering steps in this hateful 
venture. Yes; she could call it a hateful venture, now that it 
was never going to happen. 

From the room on the other side of the hall where the 
bridesmaids were dressing, she heard a peal of laughter^then 
another — then a perfect chorus of it* Sydney wondered what 
it was about. She had a sudden sense of loneliness. Why 
had Cousin Abby turned them out? It had been so jolly, 
being there all together. She started toward the door, then 
heard — 

''No, I shouldn't think it was necessary for her to chalk 
the soles of her slippers to walk to ' Cousin Burrell I ' '' 

''She could have managed it on glass— or a tight-rope/' 

"My dears, I always admired brains, and Burrell Peters 
would have gone on philandering to the end of the chapter, if 
Sydney Reverdy hadn't been clever enough to land him with 
her little trick." 

"Don't you think she ever intended to go to New York?" 

"No, indeed; she knew what she was about. Burrell 
Peters would never let a woman relative of his go to New 
York to earn her living. She was clever— she always was 
clever." 

" He did it for pure chivalry." 

Sydney put her hands to her ears. Was it true, was he 
marrying her because it was repugnant to him to see a young 
gentlewoman earn her bread among strangers? 

The wheels of reason whirled wildly, then stopped with a 
sudden jerk. He had argued against her going North. Yes; 
he had begged that she content herself at Cousin Abby's. 
Yes; all this was true. He had never married before; and he 
was forty- three years of age. They had laughed at the dif- 
ference in their ages only the night before. She bid her face 
in the folds of her wedding-dress and cringed. But he shouldn't 
marry her — no; even at the eleventh hour. She'd hide like 



Digitized by 



Google 



1910.] Stolen Fortunes 787 

the bride whose skeleton they found years afterward in a 
chest — Genevra. Yes; she could remember sentimental little 
girls reciting '' Genevra " on Friday afternoons at school. 

She laughed wildly. Cousin Abby's home furnished no 
carved chests for recalcitrant brides. She must go away. She 
went to the clothes-press and slipped a black gown over the 
white silk petticoat. It was but the work of a moment to 
button it. She ran to the door and listened — already she 
could hear the labored breathing of Mammy Annibel as she 
climbed the back stairs bearing the bridal bouquet. Sydney 
rushed down the hall and hid in a darkened room. The old 
negress passed on. She could smell the delicate fragrance of 
mignonette as her old nurse carried the bouquet past the door. 
Mignonette was her favorite flower, she had asked her fianc^ 
to have some sprays of it put into the wedding- bouquet, 
Uncle Joshua made way for her at the foot of the back stairs, 
he had not recognized her with a black lace scarf thrown over 
her head. She gained the back porch — the one on which the 
kitchen pantries opened. In her frantic desire to escape she 
forgot, for the moment, the pain of her awakening— her only 
desire was to release this man who was marrying her because 
he was sorry for her. 

She ran nimbly down the steps into the darkness, giving 
one backward glance at the house 
window. At the outer gate of tl 
laughing, chattering group of darkies 
wedding-guests. They made way fo; 
returning hair-dresser or dressmak< 
and soon the darkness of the open ro 
just time to step into the hedge ai 
drove past. '' I wouldn't miss it f o; 
the carriage said. '' The most elusi^ 
captured by a little minx — '' She 
and ran — then glanced down at th< 
— ah, yes, she had forgotten to ch 

She hurried as fast as the uselei 
carry her, with no definite plans, or 
she loved might not marry her out 
riage passed and another — full of 
Unconsciously she put her hand i 
her purse. She had worn the gov 



Digitized by 



Google 



788 STOLEN FORTUNES [Sept., 

shopping. There was over twenty dollars in her pocket. 
Thank heaven! It would be enough to take her away. The 
down train to Richmond would come througli at five minutes 
tCL^nine. She would take it — then to Washington, then New 
York. 

The girl cut across the fields to avoid the road to Roxford. 
About a half mile from the town there was a little station 
with a watering tank near by, and here trains stopped some- 
times to water their engines. And presently, worn, panting, 
she arrived at the little open shed and sank exhausted on the 
bench. 

What were they doing at the house? They must have 
discovered her absence almost immediately, but they would 
never think of this little station. They would search the 
grounds to-night, and to-morrow, perhaps, the pond. And they 
would inquire at the Roxford station, and if they did find where 
she had been— she would have a day ahead of them. The 
moments crept on slowly. Surely the train must be due. 
Would it stop, would she be able to signal it? 

She heard something in the distance that sounded like the 
train. Down the tracks a great smoking light began to flash, 
streaming and formless, like a blazing lantern. It kept close to 
the tracks. If the 8:5s were on time there would be a col- 
lision. The streaming comet slowed down as it approached 
the shed and she made out that it was a hand-car with some 
one carrying a torch. A man sang out to its occupants from 
beyond the tank: ''Nothing but a freight," he said, ''no one 
hurt." 

"Will the 8:55 be late?" she inquired breathlessly. 

"Not more than five or ten minutes." 

A frantic apprehension seized her. Would the delayed train 
defeat her purpose ? Would they find her and bring her back 
for Burrell Peters to marry for charity ? She wouldn't. No ; 
she wouldn't make the responses. The splendor of the autumn 
night gradually began to lay soothing hands on her distracted 
consciousness. She looked up at the dark sky sown with stars, 
million on millions, as if perchance the little blind love god 
had scattered them to the undoing of mortals. The first hills 
of the blue ridge huddled softly as lambs laid down to sleep. 
The floor of the shed began to vibrate, then tremble with the 
rush of the oncoming train. Its great unwinking eye rounded 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] STOLEN FORTUNES 789 

the curve and with a succession of heaving shocks it began to 
slow down. It was at hand, the train that was to take her 
away from love — and all that made life worth while. 

The brakeman was holding his lantern to help some one 
alight She stepped aside to make room. The lantern revealed 
two pale^ eager faces — Sydney's and her lover's. She swayed 
unsteadily, he slippedL his arm about her and motioned to the 
brakeman. The train moved on, leaving them alone on the 
trembling platform. 

''Dearest, how like you it was to come! My telegram 
must have frightened you. You thought I was hurt, didn't 
you ? — ^and you came all alone to see. But they ought not to 
have let you come." 

" They didn't know, I ran away—" 

"You would always find me, dearest, even as you found 
the real me years and years ago. But when we crashed into 
the freight — I ran over to Peterboro' at the last moment to have 
another look at the old place; I wanted it to be at its very 
best for my little lady. I thought when we crashed into that 
train — that perhaps I wouldn't be able to speak to you when 
you came." 

Then she knew that her running away had been all but 
futile — a turn more of the wheel, perhaps, and she might have 
been running away from him— ^eadl 

''You shan't make a heroine of me. You mustn't think I 
came to find you." And then she told him all, finishing with 
true feminine logic : " I don't want to run away now — ^because 
—you might have been killed." 

" And have I made such a sorry lover that you didn't 
understand how much I've loved you? Dearest Sydney, all 
other women are platitudes compared to you. Even this run- 
ning away is but another page. Dearest child, you are an 
ever fascinating romance." 

"But I hate them all and shall never be married before 
them." 

"Nothing easier. We'll walk to Roxford and be married 
by the curate. Then we'll go back and tell them." 

Roxford never quite understood the mystery, nor did it 
quite forgive — ^but the Burrell Peters are the happiest people 
in the country. 



Digitized by 



Google 



PROBLEMS IN CHARITY. 

BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, Ph.D. 
I. 

I HE approaching National Conference of Catholic 
Charities serves to direct renewed attention to 
the complicated problem of relieving and up- 
building^ the socially helpless classes. All con- 
ventions of those actively engaged in charity 
are efforts to learn more about social conditions, to examine 
and improve methods of dealing with the poor, and to test the 
practical aims which inspire these efforts. 

An accurate knowledge of poverty is very valuable. Thor- 
ough study of its causes leads one to question the moral val- 
idity of institutions under which it exists. Some who make 
the study are led into radical theories of total social recon- 
struction. Others are led to reaffirm the fundamental institu- 
tions on which the social order rests, but to demand very 
important modifications of them and far-reaching changes in 
the ways of meeting the problems. Others again see in modern 
poverty rather a sign of social and spiritual failure than of 
bankruptcy of social organization. Some there are who look 
without thinking and see without feeling, and become con- 
scious of no problem, agreeing with Podsnap in Our Mutual 
Friend^ who first denied that any poor starved to death ; then 
claimed that, if they did, it was their own fault; then claimed 
that^proud England nobly provided for its poor; and then 
asserted that it is by decree of Providence that there are poor; 
and wound up by declaring that the subject is disagreeable 
and'should'not be mentioned in polite society. 

Numberless charity organizations have sprung up because 
the condition of the poor does challenge our institutions, our 
wisdom, and our methods in dealing with them. The whole- 
sale criticism of traditional methods in charity is further proof 
of the deep hold which the problem has taken on society, and 
the reckless eagerness with which '' new '' views are embraced 
is as much a sign of hope as it is a proof of thoughtless love 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



19 lO.] PROBLEMS IN CHARITY 791 

of untried innovation. All fundamentals in charity work are 
questioned nowadays. The relation of the Church to poverty 
and its causes ; the relation of state or city to relief and pre- 
vention; the relations of Church and State in charity; rela- 
tions of voluntary organizations to political authority in serving 
the poor; relations of these organizations among themselves; 
the natural rights of the poor when in seeming conflict with 
the rights of society; the validity of traditional views against 
new views ; the ultimate standards from which the higher laws 
of relief must be drawn; in a word, everything is in question* 
And thus arise philosophies, policies, antagonisms, with their 
undercurrents, all of which worry the peace lover and jeopard- 
ize progress in the real solution of the problem. 

The questions involved are vital. The mass of poverty 
which confronts modern society is simply appalling. The amount 
of money that would be required to capitalize charity in the 
United States challenges belief. The difficulties in the way of 
concerted and sympathetic action of all agencies, because 
largely inherent and natural, o£Fer no promise of being mastered, 
and yet we must be optimists. We must believe in the suc- 
cessful outcome of things. In this field really lies the most 
serious challenge to our civilization, to our Christianity. We 
have learning enough, literature enough, churches enough, 
political institutions and schools enough, to do us credit ; but 
the great failure of our time is our failure to treat, wisely and 
effectively, our failures. 

Every institution, every civilization, fails at some spot. Its 
real wisdom is shown in its provision for its failures. Com- 
petitive institutions are good for the strong, but fatal to the 
weak. Elective studies in universities help one < 
and harm another. Trust ennobles the honora 
ages the crafty. Modern liberties curse as 
bless. Since all institutions include persons oi 
terests, of antagonistic temperaments, of diff< 
moral insight and intellectual skill, there wi 
harvest of failures to be charged up, and in r< 
wisdom in any institution should be devoted 
of providing for its failures. 

The poor are our most conspicuous failures, 
paralysis of energy, in the failure of our ideah 
to reach and stimulate them, in their lack of 
spur of necessity, to the touch of hope, to I 



Digitized by 



Google 



792 PROBLEMS IN CHARITY [Sept., 

tponsibility, they are failures. Tbey are not our only failures, 
but they are the most conspicuous. It is only from the height 
that one can see the depths. It is the preinalence of exalted 
ideals that makes poverty seem so pitiful. It is the mighty 
energy in modern life that causes the poor to appear so help- 
less. It is oftentimes the very perfection of institutions, as 
such, that emphasizes their failure to uplift e£Fectively the poor. 
Christianity gave us the deep doctrine of brotherhood which 
social facts so baldly contradict. Christ taught us the infinite 
yalne of the individual soul and the inherent sacredness of per- 
sonal rights, but the facts in modern distress scorn us. The 
roots of charity are in these doctrines. They were destined to 
take the agony of nameless fear out of the heart of poverty 
and to replace it by the solace of trust. Christianity has fur- 
nished the social philosophy out of which charity sprung. Chris- 
tianity gave us the doctrine and example on which charity was 
formed, and the motive and inspiration by which its energy 
was supplied. Charity comes down the centuries, first-bom in 
the family of Christian virtues. Its spirit, sprung of the heart 
of Christ, whispered to strength the secret whereby stieogth 
might be sanctified. And, obediently, hopefully, health served 
disease, virtue served sin, learning served ignorance, freedom 
served captivity, wisdom served the fool, and wealth served 
poverty. Thus arose the- communities in the Church which 
loved and served the helpless because they believed that these 
were loved of God. 

Charity has not escaped the world movement that is chang- 
ing everything. Everything is nowadays to be separated from 
everything else. Science must separate from faith; education 
from religion; morals from dogma; State from Church; and^ 
say our modern thinkers, charity must separate from the super- 
natural. Thus we face the new philanthropy. Thinkers do 
more of this separating than life does. As we think these 
forces apart, life seems to drive them back into association. 
And thus the Church stands out more impressed by the facts 
of life than by the innovations of the thinkers. She is quite 
as much impressed by the failures of science as she is by its 
successes. She realizes that the history of error requires more 
volumes than th^ history of truth. She remembers many false 
prophets and false prophecies among scientists as well as among 
believers. The new philanthropy is not the first ** new '* force 
that she has faced. Nor will it be surprising if at some not 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9ia] PROBLEMS IN CHARITY 793 

distant day the new philanthropy will turn back to the old and 
ask it for some of its time-tried secrets. 

And thus, in the midst of disconcerting changes, we are going 
to be slow. We shall hold to our philosophy , to our doctrine, 
to our motive and inspiration in charity work. It will continue 
to be an organic part of our faith and we shall continue to look 
to the life beyond — toward which the Savior pointed^for stim- 
ulation and recompense. We shall continue to see the bene- 
diction of Jesus Christ awaiting us beyond the prostrate figure 
to which we minister. But this is only one- half of our attitude. 

We have made mistakes and we >hall continue to make 
them. We have our failures, as all institutions have their fail- 
ures. We do not love our mistakes; we are not wedded to 
them; but we know of no infallibility in human reason, and 
no finality in earthly wisdom. The philosophy, doctrine, and 
motive of our charity must be supplemented by our own efforts. 
Our understanding of social laws and causes, our common sense 
in dealing with human nature, and our personal consecration, 
affect the efficiency and adequacy of our charity at all times. 
Relations change, methods wear out, hence we must observe, 
reflect, experiment, and learn. We will learn eagerly and grate- 
fully from every source : from the new philanthropy as well as 
from our own ; from our critics just as hopefully as from our 
leaders. The poor are too sacred in the mind of Christ to per- 
mit us to be swayed by feeling if those who do not like us or 
admire our ways may still teach us well. 

If our critics ask us whether we have finally settled on the 
one wise way to deal with orphans, we answer: No; nor do 
we think that they have. If they ask us if we have discovered 
how to give relief without at all enervating the recipienti we 
answer: No; nor do we think that they have. If they ask us 
if we can prevent wife- desertion and drunkenness among the 
poor, we answer : No ; nor do we think they can. If they ask 
us if all of our workers among the poor are wise, farsighted, 
tender, and patient, we answer : No ; nor do we think that 
theirs are. And hence we are willing to learn. But we some- 
times formulate our thoughts badly. We have within our circles 
the secret of finding tens of thousands who consecrate themselves 
entirely to the service of the poor, and are satisfied to leave 
the account with God. But often this consciousness takes on 
a form of opposition to paid workers who are found in such 
large numbers in the new philanthropy. Those among us 



Digitized by 



Google 



794 PROBLEMS IN CHARITY [Sept, 

who reflect, avoid the mistake. If those who serve the Gospel 
should live by it, why not apply the law to those who serve 
charity. The mind accustomed to unpaid work in charity 
needs time and widening of horizon to understand that it may 
be necessary to change that order. 

The same is true with regard to much of the opposition 
to scientific charity. The new philanthropy sometimes ex* 
presses badly what it means by '' scientific/' and we some- 
times make mistakes in opposing it. When errors are cleared 
away, friend and enemy are not so far apart. St. Vincent de 
Paul was scientific in a true sense. We are not afraid to follow 
him. 

Should we Catholics ever drift into the shallow conviction 
that we cannot learn anything new, should we ever deceive our- 
selves into the belief that we have settled problems in charity, 
we would, indeed, need critics whose sharpness would sting us 
and startle us out of such a paralyzing illusion. Only by un- 
derstanding that everything fails at some point, will we be 
docile. Only by believing that we are failing here or there, 
and can do better, will we be progressive. Only by recalling 
the guesses and mistakes that flock around everything new 
in history, can we be conservative ; only by recalling that Christ 
gives the poor to us in charge, can we be patient in the face 
of criticism and firm in face of trial. 

It is well for us to be reminded constantly that in our 
charity work we but share the common lot. Respectable tes« 
timony is at hand which, it is claimed, shows that democracy 
is a failure; that our city government is a failure; that our 
public school system is a failure; that our prison administra- 
tion is a failure; that our criminal law practices and institu- 
tions are a disgrace to civilization. Every day we hear of 
'' new '' methods in teaching and of failure of the '' old,** in art^ 
in music, in raising children, in medicine, in everything. Shall 
we Catholics alone claim exemption, and say that we do not 
fail ? Shall we refuse to study, observe, experiment, simply be- 
cause sharp critics assail us and a too eager spirit of innova- 
tion about us leads us to fear all innovation too much? 

We must be open-minded toward every problem in charity. 
Let us hold to our philosophy, to our doctrine, to our super- 
natural motive and inspiration. Then let us seek progress in 
method and practical aim from friend and from critic, from 
conservative and radical, from new and from old. In doing 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.J PROBLEMS IN CHARITY 795 

this there is no need to surrender the cherished and venerable 
traditions of the spirit of charity; no need to part company 
with the saints, whose halo of sanctity would seem to be their 
visible reward of their service of the poor; no need to forget 
the unnumbered thousands of men and women who found a 
noble destiny for talent and thought in consecrated personal 
ministrations to the lowly; no need to surrender the symbols 
of the power of the supernatural motive and heavenly inspira- 
tion which was, in old days, a nursery of heroes and heroines 
and nowadays meets so often but scant courtesy. 

The situation is not simple. We need a more widely de- 
veloped sense of responsibility toward the poor and more ac- 
curate knowledge of social relations and processes. Means in 
greater abundance, secured by more refined methods, are neces- 
sary. We are sometimes in danger of surrendering too much 
of our traditions because the chorus of fault-finding is impres- 
sively loud. We may love an old method because it is easy and 
dislike a new one just because it is difficult. 

The widely shared feeling of unrest in our charity circles 
has given rise to the concerted movement expressed in the 
formation of the National Conference of Catholic Charities. 
We need the guidance of our collective thought. We need the 
inspiration of collective presence. We need collective wisdom 
in dealing with the new philanthropy and with the old. The 
formation of this conference is a step toward such results. Its 
aim will be largely to find out the condition of our charities 
and the validity of the methods in them. It will endeavor 
gradually to understand the current in modern charity and to 
estimate rightly its value. It, therefore, becomes a work of 
primary importance to the American Church and one of direct 
appeal to Catholics in general. In order to place its eflPorts in 
their relation to problems a review in outline of general charity 
conditions is herewith suggested. 

II. 

There are four classes of persons who must be looked to 
by the associations which perform works of charity, each pre- 
senting distinct problems, a distinct spirit, and each requiring 
entirely di£Ferent treatment. First, there are those who do not 
know the facts in modem poverty. This class needs informa- 
tion, instruction. Second, there is a class which knows the co** 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



796 PROBLEMS IN CHARITY [Sept, 

ditions well enottgh, but feels no responsibility for them. They 
are cold individnalists. This class needs not information, bnt 
inspiration, formation of a social conscience. Third, there is a 
class which feels the impulse to social service,^ bnt seems not to 
know what to do. Snch have need of leadership, of direction, 
or organization, and there are those who are actively at work, 
some working wisely and some foolishly, some producing noble 
results and others holding back progress. Many of these have 
need of improvement in methods and widening of social outlook 
or deepening of knowledge of social conditions. Organized 
charities are thus confronted by four distinct, complex problems : 
that of instruction ; that of spiritual information and inspira- 
tion ; that of organization itself ; and that of finding e£Fective 
methods among changing and complex conditions. 

The first class referred to is fairly large. There is no one 
who does not know that poverty is to be found. But the 
knowledge is remote, speculative. The mass of distress is so 
great that many are repelled. Lack of evident relation between 
any given poor and any given well-to-do helps to keep one's 
sympathies suppressed. Life as most of us live it is busy ; it 
is filled with complex relations, with struggle for existence or 
for maintenance of standard, or for social advance. Means and 
energy are so absorbed that one is conscious of no superfluous 
resources, available for any good purpose. The well-to-do are 
everywhere separated from the poor: at church, in the thea- 
tre, in society, in residence districts. We never see the poor 
at work or at home. It is true that modern books, magazines, 
lecturers, and official investigations are forcing much knowledge 
into higher circles. It is true that there is to-day less excuse 
than ever before for ignorance of the details of poverty. But 
with all allowances made, an ignorance is still to be found 
among the well-to-do that hinders many from any action and 
even any impulse toward personal interest in the conditions of 
the poor. 

Decent interest in one's city; patriotic regard for city in*- 
stitutions and administration as these affect the poor; intelli- 
gent understanding of modern industrial conditons in one's 
city; some grasp on the duty of society as a whole toward 
its failures; zeal for the vigorous assertion of social and spirit- 
ual ideals; conscientious desire to follow the literal, emphatic 
teaching of Jesus Christ— all of this should be found in the 
Christian American citizen. Any one of such motives should 



Digitized by 



Google 



X9ia] PROBLEMS IN CHARITY 797 

Uad him directly to take interest in the poor. But many, un- 
fortunately, are never aroused by all of them taken together— 
never aroused even to a rudimentary interest We may grant 
that it is out of the question for one to know all. Yet one 
may know something; one may work in some line; one may 
lend a hand toward alleviation somewhere. But the number 
who fail to do even this is too large to be overlooked. 

Progress in charity, in civic life, in religion, demands, then, 
that systematic e£Fort be made to instruct this class ; to spread 
information in such form as to stir sluggish sympathies into 
eager service. Organized charity, then, must give attention to 
this problem. Only some such body as a national conference 
can make the thorough survey required, and, on the whole, 
adopt methods fitted to bring about the desired awakening. 
Not that organized charity itself can accomplish all of this: 
but it can do much. And it can enlist in the work schools, 
press, and pulpit. A difficult task awaits him who would show 
that a knowledge of the classics, or of history, or of geology 
is of greater cultural, spiritual, and social value to our young 
than is a knowledge of the ebb of civilization among the poor. 
A revision of valuations on all sides might awaken us to a reali- 
zation that accurate knowledge of this literal ''underworld,'* 
with stirred sympathies leading to thoughtful service, might be 
worth as much in the development of the young as courses in 
ethics and possibly higher catechism. The work of e£Fective 
instruction in the facts of poverty remains to be done. It is 
one of the chief concerns of organized charity; one that a 
national conference can in the long run undertake to handle. 

There is a second problem awaiting organized charity, an 
offshoot possibly of that just referred to : namely, that of awak- 
ening the social conscience where it is inactive in presence of 
sufficient information. There are hard, cold individualists who 
will maintain that poverty is the concern of the poor; that 
the poor are to blame usually for their plight Such persons 
adopt a rigid standard of justice which is narrow and unsocial. 
They are encouraged in their attitude by the harsh struggle 
for material gain which they witness on every side, and by their 
lack of personal knowledge of the poor. They comfort them- 
selves with the vague assumption that there are many good- 
natured people who will give whatever relief is necessary to 
the deserving poor. 

This problem confronts organized charity, but cannot b" 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



798 PROBLEMS IN CHARITY [Sept., 

happily solved by it. The social and spiritual teachers of the 
race must undertake to help. In as far as the social con- 
science enters the religious life, the formation of it becomes in 
large part the duty of the religious teacher. Inasmuch as the 
social conscience is an integral part of the good citizen, the 
formation of it becomes the duty of the school which professes 
to form good citizens. Inasmuch as the social conscience of 
society, as such, must come to expression in and through laws, 
it becomes the particular duty of the law-maker to be pos- 
sessed of social conscience, to foster it, to enact it. Inasmuch 
as the social conscience is necessary to the man of wealth who 
believes that he is a steward, under God, of his wealth for 
society, he must develop it if he would be a faithful man. In- 
asmuch as the social conscience is a necessary element in the 
formation of the Christian-minded employer, he, too, must 
respect and obey it if he would be a good man, good citizen, 
good employer, good Christian. And thus the work of develop- 
ing the social conscience in modera life becomes the joint duty 
of Church, school, legislator, property owner, and employer. 

It is only through some such contrivance as conferences 
that these can be brought together to do this duty in the 
name of God, of humanity, of civilization, and of progress. 
And, therefore, by duty and by right, all of these must enter 
the charities conference. They must work together, must 
learn from one another, bear with one another, and seek in 
patient trust and tolerant discussion ways and means to organize, 
strengthen, and adapt social conscience to life. The charity 
worker, with possibly too much sympathy ; the employer, with 
too little; the legislator, with indi£Ference or even aversion; 
the teacher, not touching the problem at all ; the minister of 
the gospel, at times maybe with strong speculative convictions 
and limited practical knowledge— must be brought together in 
sympathy, trust, and zeal to work out the problem for civili- 
zation and Christian faith. 

The National Conference of Catholic Charities will find this 
a complicated problem. But it must be met fairly, honestly, 
patiently, slowly. At any rate, it must be met. And it would 
seem that the projected Conference can meet it best. 

The third class referred to is made up of those who have 
the social conscience and do not know what to do. Their sym- 
pathies are active and their will is good. They are confused by 
the endless claims on them, by a sense of helplessness, and a 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] PROBLEMS IN CHARITY 799 



sabtle thought that, since not all can be done, it is not worth 
while to try to do anything. Such need leadership and or- 
ganization. Division of labor is as necessary in charity as 
in shoemaking. The organization can place individuals where 
their aptitudes and circumstances will be taken into account. 
One allied with a hundred feels power, feels that what one 
does is worth while. One thinks of one's achievement in the 
totals that organization accomplishes. There are some who 
cannot do friendly visiting. They are awkward, self-conscious, 
and stupid in a poor home ; but they can organize, sew, manage, 
or pray. The negro minister who told the men in his con- 
gregation to rush out and save a neighbor's house from fire, 
and ordered the women to regiain in the church and pray, 
' had a sense of situation that is not to be despised. Through 

organization in charity one finds his proper place, sees that 
his efforts count, that his wisdom and sympathy influence a 
' much larger circle, and that he is protected against his own 

^ impulses and mistakes. 

Organized charity must, therefore, organize charity. It 

^ must find out all who will serve and it must guide them in 

^ serving. Organized charity must know the problems in charity ; 

it must see them as a whole, and measure resources with 

f which to meet them. 

^ The National Conference of Catholic Charities can, there- 

( fore, render good service to a great cause. It has already un- 

i dertaken a survey of the conditions of Catholic charities in 

i the United States. Its endeavor to learn problems, organi- 

i zation, limitations, successes, and failures; to find out what 

( is needed and to take steps toward meeting the needs, stamps 

\ it at the outset as a practical, definite agency seriously bent on 

earnest work. 
\ It is hardly necessary to undertake a defense of organiza- 

tion in charity, or to state again and again, with all possible 
f emphasis, that no one wishes to crush individuality or formal* 

ize service of the poor, or take the heart out of charity. When 
\ organization is spoken of, one who believes in it takes it with 

r its shortcomings, its dangers ; but one hopes to minimize these 

I and to accomplish much for the poor in the spirit of God. 

The fourth problem confronting organized Catholic chari- 

I ties is that of method in work. We must hold sternly to the 

philosophy, the doctrine, the motive, and inspiration of Catholic 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



80Q PROBLEMS M CHARITY [Sept. 

charity, while modifyiog methods and immediate aims to meet 
new conditions. The new conditions are, indeed, complex. 
We mnst work oat wisely and carefully onr understanding of 
our relations to state and city in relief work. We must con- 
tribute our share to the discussion of the f6l$ of the Church 
in modem conditions. We have, then, to determine fairly and 
broadly our relations to the new philanthropy, with other or- 
ganized charities which work in the same field, but often with 
different standards and principles. We have to seek out every- 
thing that is helpful, wise, approved, even among our critics, 
and incorporate it into our own works. We must hold ourselves 
in readiness to tell others some of the secrets of power and 
consecration which we have had for centuries. 

We have, too, to work out new views of conditions. We 
must learn quickly to distinguish between what law must do 
in relief and prevention ; what public opinion may do and what 
organization may do. And we must acquire the mental habit 
of referring facts to general situations. We are discovering 
that city administration means much to the poor. We must, 
therefore, take an interest in it for the sake of the poor. We 
see that laws alone can hinder a hundred processes in industry^ 
in living conditions that are causing death and disease among 
the poor. In order to magnify preventive work to the utmost, 
we must work to secure legislation that will awaken public opin- 
ion. 

Such changes in method of charity work will be made as 
modern conditions, together with ancient ideals, demand. Or- 
ganization may never be too rigid to change as problems change; 
Safe guidance in this situation will be found when we come 
together in conference. 

One may not close one's eyes to these great problems. 
Instruction, stimulation of social conscience, organization, suit- 
able methods, are collective needs demanding collective wisdom 
and action. The National Conference which begins this great 
work will invade no field now occupied; it will displace no 
organization ; and will in no way enter the field of actual relief. 
It can, however, explore conditions, renew the inspiration of 
old ideals, guide wisely in the larger relations of the work, 
and thus serve in no mean way to make our methods equal 
to our problems, our aims worthy of our ideals, and onr achieve* 
ments worthy of our Faith and its noble traditions of charity. 



Digitized by 



Google 



SPAIN OF TO-DAY. 

BY ANDREW J. SHIPMAN. 
I.— THE COUNTRY AT LARGE. 

; newspapers have been teeming with news from 
pain regarding the present crisis ; bat very few 
lets have been given their readers upon which 
3 base any adequate view of events that are 
iking place. Even as I write, there are rumors 
of civil war and vague statements, without names, dates, or 
places, that the clergy are fomenting it. The Catholic com- 
mittees have abstained from their projected protest against 
the present policy of the government, and that alone, irrespec- 
tive of whether troops were massed or Radical counter-demon- 
strations were planned, shows that they have no desire to in- 
volve their country in insurrection or war. We have been re- 
galed ad libitum through the press with extracts from the 
speeches of Liberal and Republican, nay, even Socialistic, lead- 
ers, but not a word has been said of the speeches, in reply, of La 
Cierva, Dalmacio Iglesias, Urguijo, and others, quite as notable 
in their way from the Conservative standpoint. This is not an 
entirely fair attitude for the American press; it ought to tell 
both sides of the story. 

Spain is an intensely Catholic country, with Catholic tradi- 
tions and Catholic prejudices running back to the earliest ages. 
Perhaps the Spaniards still have too much of the Goth in them, 
too much of the old inflexible spirit which drove out the Moor 
and protected all Europe from the Moslem. Spain has been 
the greatest country in the world, an empire vaster than that of 
ancient Rome. People are apt to forget this. And the old, 
proud spirit, that brooked no contradiction and knew no com- 
promise, still dominates the people, although they are fallen 
from their high estate as rulers of the world. Perhaps Kings 
like Charles V. and Philip II., with their strong centralizing 
tendencies, laid the foundation ; while lesser men, with all their 
faults and none of their capacity, completed the inflexibility 
which seems a part of the Spanish character as a whole. We 
who judge Spain as a whole must take into consideration this 
VOL. xci.— 5 X 



Digitized by 



Google 



8o2 Spain of To-Day [Sept., 

inheritance of history and tradition, as it is one of the things 
which make up nationality and keep alive the pulsing blood 
of the race. 

Then, too, Spain is a poor country. It has been devastated 
by the English and the French, and has had besides civil wars 
of its own. All these things tend to make the Spaniard, some- 
what like our proud Southern families after the Civil War, purely 
introspective and averse to dealing with things that come from 
the great powers which did so much harm to his native country. 
And these habits of mind frequently dominate those who wish 
to alter things — they desire to impose them autocratically, not 
by way of amendment or in the manner of compromise upon 
non-essentials. 

Spain is a constitutional monarchy with a written Constitu- 
tion, adopted in 1876, very similar, aside from the Monarchy 
and Established Church, to our own Constitution in its general 
provisions, and quite the equal of any of the constitutions of 
modern states. It embodies all the best principles of the previ- 
ous Spanish Constitutions, together with the matters considered 
fundamental in a modern state, such as a bill of rights. To us 
Americans, viewed side by side with our own Constitution, it 
seems to be defective chiefly in its protection of individual 
and property rights, as we understand them, by not having 
sufficient checks to prevent their invasion. Unfortunately the 
Constitution is interpreted by the habits, usages, and predilec- 
tions of old Spain, and its shortcomings must be attributed to 
those ingrained ideas rather than to the instrument itself. But 
it is a strong, liberal, and far-sighted document, equal to rank 
with the fundamental law of any modem state. 

The executive power under the Constitution rests in the 
King, while the law-making power is vested in the Cortes, or 
Parliament, and the King. The Cortes is composed of two 
houses, the Senate and the Congress, equal in authority and 
law-making initiative. The ministry or cabinet may be chosen 
from either house, and the ministers may speak in debate in 
either house, but may vote only in the house to which they 
belong. The Constitution provides that the King is inviolable, 
but his ministers are responsible, and all his decrees must be 
countersigned by one of them. The Senate is composed of 
360 Senators, divided into three classes: Senators in their 
own rights that is, sons of the King, other than the Prince of 
Asturias, sons of the successor to the throne, certain grandees 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



I9IO.] SPAIN OF TO-DAY Soj 

of Spain, Captains- General, Presidents of the Supreme Councils, 
and all the Archbishops; Senators for life (vitalicios), nomi- 
nated by the Crown, who, together with the preceding class, 
cannot exceed i8o in number; the remainder are Senators 
elected for ten years by the corporations of the State, that is, 
the Universities, Cdmmunal and Provincial Assemblies, various 
corporate churches, and certain commercial bodies. To be either 
a vitaliciOf or elected Senator, the candidate must have already 
been a President of Congress (Speaker), or a deputy who ha6 
sat for three consecutive parliaments or eight independent ones, 
former ministers of the Crown, bishops, grandees of Spain, 
lieutenant-generals of the army or vice-admirals of the navy 
who have served more than two years, ambassadors or minis* 
ters who have served five years, directors of the various Span*> 
ish National Academies, and certain others who have served in 
various capacities. The lower house or Congress of deputies 
is elected by universal suffrage, upon the basis of one deputy 
for every 50,000 of population throughout the kingdom. The 
qualification is that they must be Spanish and twenty- five years 
of age, and they are elected for a term of five years. The 
Cortes may be dissolved by the King at any time upon resig- 
nation of the ministry, as in the English Parliament. Accord- 
ing to the law of 1890 every male Spaniard, twenty- five years 
of age, who has been a citizen of a municipality for two years, 
has the right to vote. Neither deputies nor senators are paid 
for their services, and cannot hold other office, except the cabi- 
net ministry. There are at present 406 deputies in Congress. 
Besides this central government, Spain has also local self- 
government. Very often many of the Spanish troubles are 
caused by the clash between the central government and the 
local government Spain has forty-nine provinces, or, as we 
may call them, states; and each one of these provinces has 
its own individual parliament and local government. The 
provincial parliament or legislature is called the Diputacion 
Provincial^ the members of which are elected by constituencies. 
These Diputaciones Provinciates meet in annual session, and the 
local government is carried on by the Comision Provincial, a 
committee elected by the legislature. Thus we see that goV^ 
emment by commission is quite usual in Spain, although it is 
being heralded as a novelty in the government of cities in the 
United States. Neither the national executive nor the Cortes 
has the right to interfere in the established provincial or 



Digitized by 



Qoo^^ 



8o4 Spain of Today [Sept., 

municipal administration, except to annul such acts as lie out- 
side the sphere of such administration, very much like cor 
State and Federal jurisdiction. The municipal government is 
provided for by a duly elected Ayuntamiento^ corresponding to 
our aldermen or board of supervisors, which consists of from 
five to thirty-nine regidores (supervisors) or ^oncejales (aldermen), 
according to the size of the municipality, and by an Alcalde 
(mayor) who in large places has one or two TenienUs Alcaldes 
(vice-mayors). The entire municipal government, with power 
of taxation, is vested in the Ayuntamientos. Half of their 
members are elected every two years, and they in turn elect 
the Alcalde from their own body. Thus it may be seen that 
Spain has a pretty fair local self-government, one which would 
be completely effective, were it not that pressure is frequently 
brought to bear upon the local elections by the central gov- 
ernment. Such things are not wholly unknown in the United 
States. 

Spain is chiefly an agricultural country and has no largely 
populated cities and industrial centres. The total population 
in I9QO was 9,087,821 males and 9,530,265 females, making a 
total of 18,618,066. The estimated population on January i, 
1909, was 19,712,285. The largest cities in Spain are Madrid 
and Barcelona; the former with 539,835, and the latter with 
533*100 inhabitants. Valencia follows with 213,530, and Seville 
with 168,315. Two other cities, Malaga and Murcia, have over 
100,000 inhabitants; but all the other cities in Spain were, in 
1900, under that figure. It is in the cities of Spain that the 
modern radical, socialistic, and revolutionary elements are to 
be found, and not among the great mass of people in the 
country. 

The politics of Spain are hard to explain to the outsider. 
One may live long in Spain before they are fully grasped. 
They are somewhat on the group system; one or two ideas 
in common for a particular purpose, rather than broad plat- 
forms of action such as our great parties use. Still a few 
general ideas may be given about them. First of all there is 
the Conservative party, now out of power and filling the place 
of the opposition in the Spanish Parliament. It stands for the 
old order of things in general; the ''make haste slowly*' 
principle. Its adherents are of various shades of opinions. 
The majority of them are heart and soul for the present mon- 
archy and for a Constitutional Spain. Others are Carlists and 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 la] Spain of To-Day 805 

II. hark back to the older rigime ; others still want to see no 

:; change whatever^they are the ''stand- patters'' of the party. 

n Others are strong clericals, and see in any change an attack 

s: upon the vested rights of the Church. This party was in 

£ power for eight years and accomplished much^mnch more 

'I proportionately than its successor seems to be capable of do- 

ing. It passed the laws of Electoral Reform, giving Spain 
manhood suffrage; and it passed the laws for Local Govern- 
ment, providing a larger measure of autonomy for the cities 
and provinces of Spain than ever before. The next is the 
Liberal party, which believes in bringing Spain up to the top 
measure of constitutional monarchies in short order, no matter 
what interests may suffer. The majority of its adherents are 
!^ constitutional and devoted to the monarchy. They are too 

"^ fond, however, of adopting foreign ideas and foreign experi* 

ments in government, no matter whether they are suited to 
^' the genius and temperament of the Spanish people or not. 

They want the broadest measure of modern political invention, 
^' whether Spain is ready for it or not. Then comes the Re- 

^ publican party, which may be described as being in the same 

^ relation (in the inverse order) to the Liberals as the Carlists 

^ are to the Conservatives. They are anti-constitutional and 

' anti-monarchical. They want a republic in Spain as soon as 

^ possible, and unfortunately they have fixed on France as their 

^ model, instead of taking, say, the United States or Switzer- 

' land. Then follow the Radicals, who are the apostles of dis- 

^ content, and whose members are of all shades of opinion, 

^ theorists, socialists, and some even of the white glove, or phiU 

^ osophical school of anarchy. They are the preachers of polit- 

ical discontent; and are such energetic reformers that they 
are prepared to tear down everything and build entirely anew. 
( They are divided into various groups such as, RegionaU 

ists. Independents, and the like. 

The Church in Spain is the oldest institution which the 
country has. Its charter and inherited rights go back beyond 
the present Constitution, the present reigning house, or its 
predecessor^ clear back even before Spain became a united 
kingdom under the Catholic kings, when the Moslem was 
driven from Spanish soil. Its history is the history of Spain, 
and it is the one enduring monument which Spain has to tell 
of its struggles and progress. In the mind of the Spaniard it 
is almost impossible to disassociate the Church from Spain it- 



Digitized by 



Google 



8o6 Spain of TOmDAY [Sept, 

self; they are one and indissoluble. It is this viewpoint that 
makes much of the present situation in Spain ineomprehen- 
sible to the outsider. One might as well try to separate his 
family identity from his personal identity; to the average 
Spanish mind it is unthinkable. At present the Church is 
composed of nine archbishoprics or provinces, with forty* seven 
suffragan bishoprics or dioceses. The Archbishop of Toledo 
is the Primate of all Spain, and Patriarch of the Indies. There 
are in all Spain some 1 7,369 organized parishes, having 23,- 
558 churches and 7,568 chapels, which are served by 33,303 
priests. A detailed statement for each diocese has been givea 
by me in America (July 33, 1910). As a whole the figures do 
not show that Spain is abnormally overcrowded with priests^ 
although in some of the dioceses the dwindling of population 
within the last century has left them supplied with more 
churches and clergy than possibly they need at the present 
day. On the other hand, many places in Spain show that the 
Church is under-equipped with clergy. Nearly the entire 
population is Catholic. There were in 1900 some 213,000 
foreigners in Spain, whose religious affiliations were not counted, 
some 7,500 Protestants, 4,500 Jews, and from 18,000 to 20,- 
000 Rationalists, Indifferentists, and others. This is as near as 
the census can inform us. 

The Constitution requires the nation to support the clergy 
and maintain the buildings and equipment of the Church for 
public worship* This is especially regulated by the Concordat, 
which will be mentioned later. This, it must be understood, 
is no liberality on the part of the State, although the present 
generation is trying to give it that aspect, but is merely a return 
of part of the fruits from the estates and property of the 
Church which were siezed by the State under various pretexts 
during the past. It is an indemnity rather than a grace. The 
estimate of expenditure in this regard for the year 1910 it 
4ii337fOi3 pesetas, or about $8,267,000, which is about the 
same as for the year 1909. This sum looks magnificent when 
it is viewed as a whole, and no account is taken of its actual 
application. Some persons reading hastily the figures as given 
in the daily newspapers get an idea that the clergy receive the 
whole of it But that is far from being the case. In the first 
place the appropriation is used to run the Ministry of Wor- 
shio: to pay the salaries of the minister, his assistants, and 
*. clerks, employees, and statistical and administrative work. 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



I9IO.] Spain of To^Day 807 

In the second place the fabric of the cathedrals and churches 
must be kept up out of this sum. Most of the cathedrals in 
Spain are national monuments and are more or less in need 
of repair. Those who have seen the Cathedral of Barcelona, 
with the scaffolding around its towers, or the Cathedral of 
Seville, with the extensive works in the courtyard extending 
along the northern side, will understand this. When one con- 
siders the number of beautiful cathedrals, churches, abbeys, 
and church buildings in Spain, which are models of Gothic 
architecture, and which are to be kept in good condition or 
restored, one realizes the amount of expenditure required. 
Then come the actual salaries of the clergy. They are certain- 
ly not extravagant. The primate, the Archbishop of Toledo, 
receives $7,500 annually; the archbishops of Seville and Val- 
encia, $7,000 each; the other archbishops $6,500 each; two 
bishops, Barcelona and Madrid, $5,400 each; four bishops, 
Cadiz, Cartagena, Cordoba, and Malaga, $5,000 each ; twenty- 
two bishops, $4,300 each; and the remaining bishops not 
quite $4,000 each. Deans and archdeacons receive from $900 
to $1,000 each; regular canons, $800, and beneficed canons 
from $350 to $700; while parish priests in the cities receive 
from $300 to $500, and those in the country from $150 up. 
Assistant priests receive from $100 to $200 annually. Truly it 
cannot be said to be a wildly extravagant rate of pay; and it 
needs the usual stole fees, such as weddings, ceremonial bap- 
tisms, and the like, to eke out their income. The specific ap- 
propriations for the maintenance of worship and ordinary care 
and cleanliness of the churches are as follows: each metro- 
politan cathedral, $4,500; each suffragan cathedral, $3,500; 
and each collegiate church, from $1,000 to $1,500; while 
parish churches get an allowance proportioned to their im« 
portance from a minimum of $50 up. Besides this, diocesan 
seminaries receive an allowance of from $4,500 to $6,000 each 
for the instruction and maintenance of candidates for the 
priesthood. From these figures one can get a very fair idea 
of how the Church expenditure in Spain is apportioned. 

Besides the parochial, secular clergy just mentioned there 
are several religious orders in Spain. The ordinary news- 
papers, in reporting this fact, run them up into high figures, 
which is the veriest nonsense. What they mean, when they 
speak of religious orders, are religious houses or separate com- 
munities, and even these numbers they exaggerate. In 1909 



Digitized by 



Google 



8o8 Spain of To^Day [Sept, 

there were 597 religious houses or communities of men, con- 
taining I2J42 members, which were devoted as follows: 294 
to education; 92 to training of missionaries; 97 to education 
of priests; 62 to manual training for the young and the sale 
of their products; and 52 to monastic and contemplative life. 
There were 2,656 communities of women, having 42,596 mem- 
bers, divided as follows: 910 for education; 1,029 'or hospital 
work and charity; 717 for a contemplative life. Some of these 
religious communities have taken up some sections of the most 
desolate and wild lands in Catalonia and the north, lands which 
had never been profitable or even cultivated, and erected mon- 
asteries there after the manner of the Middle Ages or of our 
energetic missionaries in the far West. 

Education in Spain is not, of course, as far advanced as 
it is in the United States, or in Germany, or France. In a 
great measure this may be explained by the fact that the great 
majority of the Spanish population is rural. All sorts of mis- 
leading information about education and illiteracy in Spain 
has ^been given in our daily and weekly press, as well as in 
some leading magazines. Some of them have said that there 
was 75 per cent of illiteracy in Spain; but those figures were 
taken from the census of i860. Others have said that 68 per 
cent of the people were illiterate; but that was taken from 
the census of 1880. The trouble with these writers ^as that 
they utilized the handiest encyclopedia they could find, no 
matter what its date was, instead of obtaining the latest avail- 
able figures. The census of 19 10 is not yet computed, but the 
figures for 1900 gave 25,340 public schools with 1,617,314 
pupils, and 6,181 private schools with 344,380 pupils, making 
a total of 31,521 schools with 1,961,694 pupils. One-ninth of 
a population of 18,500,000 is certainly not a bad showing. In 
1900 the central government at Madrid spent $9,500,000 on 
education, and the local governments about three to four times 
as much more. In 19 10 the governmental budget for educa- 
tion is 53,522,408 pesetas, or about $10,710,000. In 1900 the 
illiterates of Spain amounted to less than 30 per cent, or to 
be exact 2,603,753 males and 2,686,615 females, making a total 
of Sf 290, 368 persons. I am informed that the Spanish age 
at which illiterates are counted is nine years, and these illiter- 
ates were for the most part persons from maturity to old age. 

The pay of a school teacher is never magnificent in any coun- 
try. The close* fisted, hard-headed Spanish peasant has old- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] SPAIN OF To-Day 809 

fashioned notions about the necessity of reading and writing, and 
will not tax himself to maintain schools, and still less to pay 
large salaries to teachers, especially in the primary grades. 
For this reason teaching in Spain is not an attractive profession, 
and arouses no enthusiasm outside the large cities. The sub- 
jects usually taught in the primary schools are: Christian 
Doctrine, Spanish language, reading, writing, and grammar, 
arithmetic, geography and history, drawing, singing, manual 
training, and bodily exercises. In city schools the elementary 
notions of geometry, physical science, chemistry, and physiology 
are taught. 

The teacher of the lowest primary grade in a country school 
begins with the magnificent salary of 500 pesetas, or $100 a 
year. He can be advanced by gradation of 200 pesetas, until 
he receives 1,500 pesetas; after that the places are all subject 
to competitive examination (oposicion). The highest places are 
in Madrid and Barcelona, where the best paid teachers get 
3,500 pesetas, or $500. Secondary education is provided by 
what are called Institutos, analogous to our high schools. Chil- 
dren must \ht at least eleven years of age and pass an en- 
trance examination. These institutes have a five to six years* 
course, and are expected to prepare for an elementary, profes- 
sional, or a university course. Then come the normal schools, 
the professional schools, and the nine universities. The number 
of university students in 1907 was 16,500. Besides, the edu- 
cation of women is also progressing. In 1907 twenty-two wo- 
men students passed through the universities ; in the same year 
1,076 women passed through the school of arts and industries ; 
and in 1908 this number rose to 1,315. In the normal schools 
in 1907 some 2,241 schoolmistresses graduated; in 1908 there 
were 3,584 women on the list. These refer wholly to the gov- 
ernmental public schools. Besides these, there are the private 
schools, managed in part by religious congregations, and in 
part by laymen (both Catholic and otherwise) concerning which 
I have no adequate figures as to salaries and service. 

Spain is also a nation of small holders of real property, and 
has but comparatively few holders of large estates. Perhaps 
to. this is due in a measure its poverty, for it is the small land- 
owner rather than the manufacturer or trader who predominates. 
Of the 3,426,083 recorded assessments to the real property tax, 
there were 624,920 properties which paid a tax of from i to 10 
reales (5 to 50 cents), 511,666 from 10 to 20 reales, 642,377 



Digitized by 



Google 



8lo SPAIN OF TO' Day [Sept., 

from 20 to 40 realeSf 788^184 from 40 to 100 reales, 4161546 
from 100 to 200 reales, 165,202 from 200 to 500 reales ($10 
to $25); while the rest, to the number of 279,188, are larger 
estates which pay from 500 to 10,000 reales, and a few upwards. 
About 80 per cent of the soil is classed as productive. In 
minerals Spain is very rich, being the largest producer of cop* 
per in the world after the United States, while mercury, iron, 
and zinc are largely produced, but the mines are said to be 
inadequately worked. The railway communication comprises 
9,025 miles of rail, nearly all single track, except near Madrid 
and Barcelona. 

II.— THE PRESENT SITUATION. 

The present moment is agitated by reports of a threatened 
break between Spain and the Holy See, and all sorts of rumors, 
and even the veriest nonsense, have been printed about it. It 
all arises from an attempt at a revision of the Concordat at 
present existing between Spain and the Holy See, which is 
complicated by the repeal of an existing law and the introduc- 
tion of two new ones into the Cortes whilst negotiations are 
pending. The present Congress, or lower house of the Cortes, 
is composed of 229 Liberals, 106 Conservatives, 40 Republicans, 
9 Carlists and 20 other members of the Integrist, Regionalist, 
Independent, and Socialist groups, so that it can be seen that 
the Liberals have a clear majority of 54 votes over all the other 
parties combined. The Senate, however, leans more towards 
the Conservative party. After all the seats had been filled in 
the late election and by appointment, it stood 178 Ministerial- 
ists, 117 Conservatives, 6 Carlists, 5 Republicans, 29 Indefinites, 
and 17 Prelates, with nine others, Regionalists and Palatines. 
The present Prime Minister of Spain, or Presidente del Consejo^ 
is Don Jos^ Canalejas y Mendez, probably the strongest Lib- 
eral in Spain. He certainly is the strongest and most effective 
public speaker and knows how to turn his sentences in a way 
that even his enemies must admire. In Spain they use the 
bull-rings on off-days in which to hold their political meetings, 
and they serve the purpose excellently. At one of his latest 
addresses to his followers Canalejas addressed them so forcibly 
and stirred them up so thoroughly that at the conclusion of his 
speech they tore up the seats and threw them into the ring. 

While undertaking to enter into negotiations with the Holy 
See for a revision of the Concordat, Sefior Canalejas during 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Spain of To-Day 8ii 

the pendency of negotiations at Rome promulgated a Royal 
Order, which completely changed the interpretation of the Con- 
stitution in regard to non- Catholic bodies, and introduced into 
the Cortes two measures, which are nick-named the 'Mock* out ^' 
(candado) in the Spanish papers, looking towards the diminu- 
tion or suppression of religious orders and houses in Spain. 
The Holy See replied that that was not the way in which ne- 
gotiations should be carried on, for one party to do whatever 
he wanted, and then to say we will talk revision as to the rest. 
A few words upon the Constitution and the Concordat may be 
necessary to explain the situation. 

There have been several Concordats between Spain and the 
Holy See, the later ones superseding the others. The present 
Concordat was entered into on March 16, 185 1, and a supple- 
ment thereto was added on August 25, 1859. There have also 
been a number of Constitutions adopted in Spain. The present 
Constitution was adopted June 30, 1876, and its general provi- 
sions have already been described. The portion of the Consti- 
tution principally bearing on the present situation reads as 
follows : 

Article XI. The Apostolic Roman Catholic religion is the 
religion of the State. The nation binds itself to maintain this 
religion and its ministers. 

No one shall be molested in Spanish territory on account 
of his religious opinions, or for the exercise of his partic ular 
form of worship, provided ,he show the respect due to Chri^ 
tian morality. 

Ceremonies and public manifestations other than those of 
the State religion, however, shall not be permitted. 

The first and the last clauses of this article are the ones 
which are creating such a stir just now. Spain is almost entirely 
Catholic, and, as I have said, there are only about 7,500 Prot- 
estants (including many foreigners) and some 4,500 
Spain. They were an insignificant minority, and, in s 
they were foreigners, Spaniards have never deemed tl 
should enjoy privileges to which the Spanish native-be 
entitled. And so they did not give them the privilege 
the outward and visible signs of a church upon thei] 
of worship, construing that to be a '' public manifestati< 
hibited by the Constitution. Unfortunately, the doubi 
tions of the Spanish Constitution are not construed, 
us, by a judgment of the Supreme Court. They are int 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



8 12 Spain of To-Day [Sept., 

by a decree framed by the Council of Ministers and signed 
by the King, which has all the force of a law. On October 
23y 18761 a Royal Order — for such a decree is so called — was 
promulgated, which undertook to construe Article XI. of the 
Constitution, as follows: 

1. Prom this date every public manifestation of worship or 
sects differing from the CaUiolic religion is prohibited outside 
oi the house of worship or cemetery belonging to them. 

2. The foregoing regulation comprises, under the meaning 
of public manifestation, every act performed in the public 
street, or on the exterior walls of the house of worship or 
cemetery, which advertises or announces the ceremonies, 
rites, usages, and customs of the dissenting sect, whether by 
means of processions, placards, banners, emblems, advertise- 
ments, or posters. 

This law has been pn the books for thirty- four years, and 
Spaniards have never, in any number, petitioned for its re- 
moval or change. On the contrary, they have always wanted 
it. There is no need here to go into the propriety or justice of 
such a law. In the Southern States we have a '' Jim Crow " 
law, which represents the local wishes of the inhabitants, even 
if it is indefensible. The United States has a Chinese ex- 
clusion law, which no one claims to be a miracle of justice. 
And thus it is that this law exactly fitted the wishes of the 
great majority of Spaniards, as against an infinitesimal mi- 
nority who represented alien religions. We could no more ex- 
pect the Spaniards to change their views on this, than we can 
get our Southern fellow^citizens to abolish their ''Jim Crow'' 
and voting statutes. It is human nature, that is all ; and it must 
be recognized. 

But as this interpretation was made originally by Royal 
Order, so, too, it could be revoked by Royal Order. This is 
exactly what Canalejas has done; he has simply repealed and 
annulled the former decree which has stood for so many years, 
without putting anything in its place. One does not know to- 
day whether a non- Catholic church may put up merely an an- 
nouncement of its name, or even a cross and statues of the 
saints, or may commence a campaign like the Methodist in- 
stitution in Rome. That is what exasperates the Catholic 
Spaniard; for the present Liberal Government has done this 
propria motu^ without request from any large body of citizens 
or any debate on the subject. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9I0.] Spain of To-Day 813 

The other measures are bills submitted to the two houses 
of the Cortes — the so-called '' lock-out" legislatioui using the 
simile of the factory. One is said to propose the suppression 
of the convents and monasteries which have entered Spain il- 
legally ; the other is said to be a measure to enable the bishops 
to suppress unnecessary religious houses within their dioceses. 
A great deal of pure nonsense has been written or telegraphed 
to the American press upon this phase of the matter. For in- 
stance, it is said that the Concordat limits the number of male 
religious orders to three, and there are now six hundred male 
religious orders in Spain. This statement has been repeated 
in numbers of papers here. I have already given the statistics 
of the religious orders in Spain, and need only say that the 
six hundred can only refer to religious houses or communities. 
If the correspondent's fertile imagination holds out, he will soon 
reckon each individual monk as a ''religious otder.'' 

There is no law in Spain, nor does the Concordat itself use 
any terms, restricting the male religious orders to three. I 
quote from the Concordat of 1851, which was ratified and put 
into execution in Spain by the law of October 17, 1851: 

Article XXIX. In order that the whole Peninsula may 
have a sufficient number of ministers and evangelical laborers 
for the prelates to avail themselves by giving missions in the 
localities of their dioceses, helping die parish clergy, assist- 
ing the sick, and for other works of charity and public utility, 
the Government of her Majesty, which proposes to assist Col- 
leges for Missions beyond the seas, will henceforth take 
suitable steps to establish wherever necessary, after previous 
consultation with the diocesans, religious houses and congre- 
gations of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Philip Neri, and another 
order among those approved by the Holy See, which also will 
serve at the proper times as places of retreat for ecclesiastics, 
in which to make their spiritual exercises, or for other pious 
uses. 

There is no restriction in this language, but on the con- 
trary these three orders are made a part of the State Church. 
This will be seen from a later article in the Concordat where 
the State is bound to maintain them: 

Article XXXV. The government of her Majesty will pro- 
Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



8 14 Spain of To-day [Sept, 

vide the necessary means for the maintenance of the religious 
houses and congregations mentioned in Article XXIX. 

This was really a short method of getting charitable and 
eleemosynary work done at the least expense to the Stale. 

There is no restriction upon religious orders in Spain, any 
more than there is in the United States, and in both places 
they have occupied somewhat the same stattts.\ Under the 
Spanish Constitution it is provided that: 

Article XIII. Bvery Spaniard has the right • • • to 
form associations for any of the ends of human life. 

This has been uniformly interpreted as the right to form 
religious organizations of any kind. This right is expressly 
recognized in the Associations (or, as we should say. Member- 
ship Corporations) Law of June 30, 1887: 

Article I. The right of association which is recognized 
by Article XIII. of the Constitution may be exercised freely, 
conformable to the provisions of this act. Under it associa- 
tions may be formed for religious, political, scientific, artistic, 
and benevolent purposes, or for recreation or other lawful 
ends, which do not have profit or gain as their sole or princi- 
pal object. 

Article U. Prom the pro^slons of this law are excepted : 
(i) Those associations of the Catholic religion authorized in 
Spain by the Concordat. The other religious associations 
shall be regulated by this law, but the non-Catholic ones must 
be subject to the limitations prescribed by Article II. of the 
Constitution. (2) Societies which are formed for mercantile 
purposes. (3) The Institutes or corporations which exist or 
act under special laws. 

What the Liberal ministers mean, when they say '' illegal** 
orders, is that many orders have not inscribed themselves, as 
to their respective houses or communities, in the books of reg- 
istry of the province where they are situated. But the statis- 
tics which I have show that out of a total of 3.253 ^com- 
munities, 2,831 have been duly registered. The Premier Can- 
alejas also desires to shut out all foreign members of religious 
orders or congregations from their rights of association, vpcn 
the ground that the Constitution only provides that Spaniards 
shall have such rights. It is very much analogous to our laws 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] Spain of To-Day 815 

proTiding that Asiatics shall not become naturalized citizens, 
or that aliens cannot hold land in certain states. 

The debates in both houses of the Cortes upon these last 
proposals have been very warm. The one of which so much 
is made in America — the so-called permission for non- Catholic 
organizations to display the insignia of public worship— has 
not caused so very much comment in Spain. In fact. Catholic 
newspapers refer to it only to a very slight degree. It is re- 
garded more as an affront to the Pope, as a desire to avoid a 
real revision of the Concordat, and is treated as a cheap bid 
for popularity. But in regard to the Spaniard's constitutional 
right to form associations as he pleases, feelings run deep and 
strong. The provision of the bill that orders may be sup- 
preMed, their very interior affairs regulated by officious state 
meddlers, has roused general indignation. Protests have been 
pouring in by mail, telegraph, and special messenger from 
every, part of Spain. Sometimes four to five columns of the 
bare outline of the protests and the thousands of signatures 
appear in the papers. Catholic sentiment throughout the en- 
tire country is aroused, for this is recognized as the opening 
gun of an assault upon the Church. Canalejas is a Catholic, 
but his successor may not be, and so the Catholic world is 
rousing itself. 

And Catholic Spain is fairly well organized. At present 
there are 255 Catholic associations or clubs, 47 Catholic labor 
unions, 556 agricultural associations, 297 Raffeisen Mutual 
Banks, 95 artisans* unions, 33 consumers' leagues, 92 indem- 
nity associations, 33 diocesan councils of the different societies, 
eight popular libraries, and three credit banks. The Catholic 
press publishes 60 papers of all kinds. The units of the 
organizations are the various parishes, which they try to make 
a focus of religious and social life. 

It has been asserted on the floor of the Cortes, and re- 
peated over and over again in our press, that Spain is over- 
run with religious orders, and that they pay no taxes. Of 
course those that are authorized by the Concordat pay no 
taxes, for they are part and parcel of the State Church. I 
have not the statistics at hand to show what taxes are paid or 
what exemptions are claimed, but if one will look at the 
matter a moment from an American standpoint it will be seen 
that ordinary civilized nations exact no taxes in similar cases. 



Digitized by 



Google 



8l6 SPAIN OF TO-DAY [Sept., 

For inttaacei here in our own country schools, hospitals, libra- 
ries, asylums, and the like, pay no taxes. Why, then, should 
the religious orders in Spain, who conduct such institutions of 
education, charity, or mercy, be required to submit to taxation ? 
I have already given the statistics of the religious orders in 
Spain, but the surprising part of the situation is that Spain 
has many less fnembers of religious communities per popula- 
tion, than many other Catholic countries or Catholic popula- 
tions. Here are some^ of the figures for the year 1909 : 

Country. Catholic Population. Individuals in Number per 

Religious Orders, ten thousand. 

Belgium, 7,276,461 37iQ05 52 

United States, 14,235,451 65,702 46 . 

England & Wales, 2,130,000 6,458 30 

Germany, 22,109,644 64,174 29 

Ireland, 3,308,661 9»i90 27 

Spain, 19,712,285 54.738 27 

In addition to this it was also pointed out that in 28 dio- 
ceses the number of individuals belonging to religious com- 
munities in each does not reach 100. In Minorca there are 
only three; in Guadix 6, in Astorga 15, and in Siguenza 19. 
Hence it cannot be said that Spain is overrun with religious 
orders, or that its condition in that regard, as compared with 
other countries, is remarkable. 

The outcome of the parliamentary discussion of the bills 
in relation to the orders and religious houses cannot be fore- 
seen clearly. It may be said that they will pass Congress, 
but in the Senate many of the ministerialists are not strong 
Liberals, while the Conservatives have a large following and 
can also make combinations with other groups. 

The unfortunate affront to the Holy See will, of course, 
not be allowed to stand in the way of the proper adjustment 
of things. That was shown when the massing of the protest- 
ing Catholic organizations was abandoned, rather than allow 
it to be used as the entering wedge of Carlism. But the ele- 
ments of the situation which I have given will enable the 
reader to judge in some intelligent fashion the fragmentary 
and often incoherent news that comes from Spain. 



Digitized by 



Google 




EDUCATION, DEVELOPMENT. AND SOUL 

BY EDWARD A. PACE, Ph.D. 

]NE of the encouraging features in modern educa- 
tion is the endeavor to get back from details 
and devices to underlying principles and laws. 
While the attempt is not made by every teacher, 
it is generally recognized that the best work can 
be done only by those who understand the value of method, 
not merely through its successful application, but also through 
its relation to the deeper truths of psychology and even of 
philosophy. Common sense, indeed, requires that any one 
who undertakes to deal with the mind, as the teacher does, 
should know something about the nature of mental life and 
its processes. But the sense of responsibility is even more 
imperative. Whoever realizes to what an extent the intel- 
lectual and moral welfare of the pupil depends upon the sort 
of education he receives, will surely not be satisfied with just 
those odds and ends of method which suffice to make the 
teacher a pedagogue in the literal, etymological sense of that 
term. We expect more from the physician than a knowledge 
of prescriptions, and more from our spiritual guides than what 
the catechism, in its present form, can supply. It is not then 
unreasonable to insist that the teacher shall acquire a knowl- 
edge of those principles at least which determine the ends of 
education and the means. 

The immediate benefit, and perhaps the greatest, resulting 
from such knowledge, is the preservation of the teacher's in^ 
dividuality against the ceaseless encroachments of machinery. 
School systems, like organic systems, are sometimes ** regu-^ 
lated'' to death. The tendency to render education mechan- 
ical eventually produces rust. And it is certainly anomalous 
to demand that the teacher shall cultivate the pupil's individ- 
uality when the teacher's own range of initiative is no wider 
than the path of a monorail car. This narrowing often results, 
not from neglect of method, but rather from a helpless attach- 
ment to what method is supposed to require. The best of 
methods may become a hard master ; and this is what usually 

VOL. XCI.-*53 



Digitized by 



Google 



8l8 EDUCATION^ DEVELOPMENT^ AND SOUL [Sept., 

happens to those who follow it in the letter with no insight 
into its spirit. On such it takes a hold like that which the 
hypnotizer gets upon his subject; and the more docile the 
subject so much deeper is the hypnosis. The awakening 
comes when the method, or rather the one who applies it, 
fails of the desired result. The '' first aid '' remedy consists in 
marking the pupil as slow or defective or in some other way 
unqualified. But it is worth considering whether the method 
itself might not be rendered more flexible if the teacher had 
it thoroughly under control. There is quite a difference be- 
tween the traveler whose acquaintance with a foreign language 
is limited to the phrases set down in the first pages of his 
guide-book, and the student who is familiar with the grammar 
as well as with the ordinary forms of speech. In the same 
way, a teacher who has found out, not only that a given 
method is good, but also why it is good, has an advantage 
over one who is content with knowing that it ''works beauti- 
fully*' — so long as it works. 

It must be admitted, of course that the search for prin- 
ciples has its difficulties. To begin with, educational work 
opens up problems that come within the province of psychology; 
and psychology has not an answer ready-made for each and 
every question that the teacher may ask. Or it may be that 
there are too many answers, each of the various psychologies 
offering a solution that bears its own particular stamp. But a 
more serious difficulty often arises. However cautiously it 
moves, psychology can hardly avoid contact with philosophy; 
in fact, its anxiety to keep clear of philosophical problems 
sometimes lets out its real, though clandestine, relations with 
this or that philosophical system. And even when it proceeds 
quite confidently, being well within its own lines, it frequently 
suggests questions which it does not care to follow up. It 
discourses readily enough about apperception, for instance, but 
it is apt to fall silent* when requested f explain what it is 
that apperceives ; and while it deals continually with states and 
processes and activities — self-activity included^it may not be 
prepared to say in what sort of being all these come to pass. 

If under such circumstances the student is somewhat per- 
plexed, the situation becomes clearer when he sees in the 
background a doctrine which be cannot harmonize with his 
beliefs or with certain philosophical truths which he regards as 
fundamental, though he may not have scrutinized them with 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] EDUCATION^ DEVELOPMENT^ AND SOUL 819 

the critical eye of an expert. When he sees, let as say, that 
materialism is the root from which a given kind of psychology 
springs, he is apt to look with suspicion on everything that 
ramifies, in the shape of theory or law, from such a philo- 
sophical stem. Now in some cases this suspicion is a safe- 
guard; and the sooner it leads to a downright rejection of what 
is erroneous, the better it is for the student himself and for 
his work as an educator. But in other cases suspicion of this 
sort mayi^^bef harmful — especially if it hinder the acceptance of 
theories which are true in themselves, though they are pre- 
sented as the outgrowth of principles that are false. Every 
philosophical system that is alive to its own interests, quickly 
claims as its rightful possession whatever is established by 
scientific research. Materialism is usually beforehand in assert- 
ing that its interpretation is the only rational one for each 
new fact that is discovered and for each new theory that is 
verified. And it is particularly keen in this respect when it 
foresees that what is theoretical at the start will have far* 
reaching practical applications. Thus it may happen that the 
student is frightened into rejecting what might be useful, or 
at any rate is confronted with an unpleasant alternative. 

As a case in point, one may take the important principle 
of mental development, which enters so lately into educa- 
tional theory, and promises so much on the practical side. 
No teacher, of course, can be indifferent to the fact that the 
mind develops, or to the obvious inference that education must 
be adapted to each of the stages through which the develop- 
ment passes. The question, indeed, is not whether develop- 
ment takes place, but how it shall be more thoroughly under- 
stood—what are the factors, the processes in detail, the rela- 
tions with organic growth. On the other hand, one is naturally 
interested to know what it is that develops. When reference 
is made to bodily growth, the thing that grows is plainly to 
be seen: it is a plant, or an animal, or a human organism. 
To say that vegetal growth proceeds by such and such laws 
is an abstract statement that does not debar us from saying 
it is a tree that grows. And so, after admitting that mental 
development takes place, one is inclined to think it is a mind 
that develops — the more so because every explanation of 
mental development is based on analogies suggested by bodily 
growth. The question, then, concerning the " what *' of mental 
development is not irrelevant. It is not even purely specu- 



Digitized by 



QiOo^z 



830 EDUCATION^ DEVELOPMENT, AND SOUL [Sept., 

lative, since the answer it calls forth must a£fect profoundly 
one's entire view of life, of its purpose and value, and c^nst* 
quently also the meaning of education. 

Here again the materialist is prompt with his answer. What 
develops is simply the brain. Under repeated stimulation, 
through the organs of sense, the afferent nerves become 
smoother pathways. The central structures increase in com- 
plexity as new cells and fibres are brought into function, new 
connections established, and a larger store of latent vestiges 
accumulated. Association of ideas means the linking of cere- 
bral elements or centres; memory, the aftermath of sensory 
stimulation; emotion, the discharge over efferent paths. De- 
liberate volition implies a momentary conflict between tenden- 
cies to action; and this ceases as soon as the "hitch'' is re- 
moved. Development, then, as a whole goes on by organizing 
the several nerve processes in such a way that they are re- 
duced, more or less rapidly, to the level of mechanical perform- 
ance, of which reflex functions are the type. Naturally, too, 
consciousness, as a by-product, becomes more complex, like 
the effect of an orchestra to which new instruments are added, 
giving a larger variety of tone combinations. 

This view has its merits ; it at least recognizes the common- 
sense notion that whenever development takes place there must 
be a real something that develops. Furthermore, it is consist- 
ent. As materialism holds that the brain secretes thought and 
all other forms of consciousness, it cannot logically point to 
anything else than the brain when it attempts to solve the prob- 
lem of development. On the other hand, its answer does not 
meet the question as to what lies back of mental development. 
Once it assumes that there is no such real being as mind dis- 
tinct from the organism, it may abound as it will in describing 
cerebral development, but it has no right to use the word "men- 
tal." At most it may say that different psychical processes 
occur as the brain activity passes into different phases. Sy 
gradually pouring water into a glass we can get various tones 
as we strike the glass; but this does not mean that there is 
a development in tonal quality; what changes is the level of 
the water; the highest tone does not "grow" out of those 
that are lower in pitch. Likewise, on the materialistic hypoth- 
esis, the intellectual power of the adult is not a development 
out of earlier mental activity, but the direct result of the pres- 
ent condition of the brain; so that if the brain could reach 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] EDUCATION^ DEVELOPMENT^ AND SOUL fill 



' its maturity without producing any conscious effects at all, it 

> would, in its very first production, as a fully developed organ, 

bring forth the ripened fruits of intelligence. This, of course, 
I would greatly simplify the work of education, and it would re- 

\ duce the teacher's labors to the task of seeing that the child 

was not wakened too soon. 

It is not, however, on this score that materialism is usually 
discredited. The argument against it strikes at its main con- 
tention, i. e.t its assertion that consciousness is a product of 
cerebral activity. Since this production is inconceivable, we 
are obliged to admit that there is a mind. And when we fur- 
ther inquire into the nature of this mind, we are informed by 
many who reject materialism that the mind is the aggregate 
of conscious states, not a permanent substantial being, but a 
series composed of sensations, thoughts, volitions, etc., which 
do not issue from the brain or from anything else, thought 
happily, they run on parallel to the cerebral functions. When 
a given change occurs in the brain, a particular conscious state 
appears ; and, conversely, when a given conscious state appears, 
a particular change occurs in the brain ; but there is no inter- 
action ; the two series simply move along side by side. Thus, 
it is claimed, we keep clear of materialism without being obliged 
to postulate a soul or mental substance. 

With the intrinsic merits of this parallelism we are not now 
concerned. What we desire to know is how it accounts for 
mental development. Evidently, it cannot, after abjuring ma- 
terialism, fall back on increasing complexity of cerebral struc- 
ture and function as the sole explanation; if the brain does 
not produce the mind, neither can growth of the brain be al- 
leged as the cause of mental growth. Closely as it may paral- 
lel the organic development, the mind must have a develop- 
ment of its own; and the point is — in what does that develop- 
ment consist? or, rather, is any such development possible 
within the limits which this theory prescribes for itself ? 

The plainest implication in the concept of development is 
that there must be a latent condition of some kind out of 
which something emerges. Having learned by experience that 
an oak grows up from an acorn, we are prepared to say of any 
particular acorn that it has in itself a capacity of germination 
which will pass into processes of growth as soon as the requi- 
sites of soil and the rest are supplied. And we are equally 



Digitized by 



Google 



822 EDUCATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOUL [Sept, 

certain that no external icfluence will avail to initiate growth 
if the acorn's vital capacity has been destroyed. On the same 
principle, mental development presupposes a latency or poten- 
tiality in the mind. However weak or imperfect, the germ 
must be there at the outset ; otherwisct there can be no germ- 
ination. But if the mind is only a series of states, it is rather 
difficult to understand in [what the germinal capacity resides 
before the series begins. The brain, let us suppose, has reached 
a certain point in its own development, and as yet there is 
no glimmer of consciousness. How, then, does the very first 
mental process arise? We are not allowed by the theory to 
say that it arises out of the brain, nor is it legitimate, accord- 
ing to the same theory, to suppose that there is a soul which 
might hold its capacities in latent form until the organism is 
fitted to co-operate with it. We are thus at a loss to see how 
the series, to which the name of mind is given, ever get started. 
And yet, start it must — unless we accept the one alternative 
left us and say that it is eternal, in which case the parallelism 
disappears, since it will not be claimed that the brain also is 
etemaL It would seem, therefore, that while the theory in 
question is plausible if applied to the mind at any period 
during development, it will not account for the initial stage; 
and this failure is the more disastrous for the reason that if 
the beginning of a series cannot be explained, the fact of its 
continuation does not throw much light on the problem of de- 
velopment. 

The initial difficulty, however, is not the only one. Devel- 
opment requires more than a succession of activities or pro- 
cesses. Each of these must modify something that already 
exists, and this modification must be so preserved that it may 
in turn undergo change through subsequent function. In other 
words, the effect of each process must be registered, and this 
implies a permanent something to carry the record. I can 
make in the air exactly the same movements that I make in 
writing these words; but no trace will be left out of which 
another person may read a connected sentence. And again, if 
such movements, or the larger ones involved in physical cul- 
ture, were executed without leaving a trace in the muscles, 
bodily strength would be rather slow to develop. There would 
be a series of muscular actions and these might become highly 
complex; but the muscles themselves would gain nothing. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9ia] EDUCATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOUL 823 

The application to mental development is obvious. Impressions 
without number may arouse sensations, and these may be fol- 
lowed by the most brilliant ideas or the most energetic voli- 
tions; but if these are not retained in any form, it is hard to 
see how the mind can develop. 

The materialist would make short work of this difficulto; 
the brain, of course, holds in its modified structure the after- 
effects of each process, and thus provides for the reception of 
new stimulation. Just because there is a permanent structure, 
each impression helps to determine in advance the reception 
that will be given to the next impression. Though the paral- 
lelists cannot endorse this explanation as final, they profit by 
what it suggests^ and maintain that conscious states, in addi« 
tion to the cerebral traces, leave after them psychical traces or 
dispositions. These remain latent, below the threshold of con- 
sciousness, until they get the signal, from some later idea or 
sensation, to reappear. So the necessary element of perma- 
nence is supplied by these dispo8itions,^which are all the more 
important as factors in mental development because they alone 
persist while the several processes vanish. 

It is hardly needful to say that the theory is correct in 
teaching that psychical dispositions remain and that they in- 
fluence all subsequent activity. But in what do they remain? 
Where do they come in contact with dispositions previously 
acquired ? If the mind is nothing more than a series of states, 
then, at any moment, it is nothing more than the state^ or 
group of states, which is actually in consciousness. The series 
as such is no abiding reality, any more than the hours whose 
sequence we call a day. Hence the dispositions, in order to 
survive, must cling to the state that presently occurs and be 
adroit enough, when it passes out, to take hold of its successor 
— a remarkable amount of activity in dispositions that inhere 
in no subject and at best are only potential. 

From the purely psychological viewpoint, a good many 
other weaknesses might be detected in this theory, such as its 
failure to account for memory, recognition, comparison, and 
the sense of personal identity. All these no doubt are in- 
volved in mental development; ;but there is something which 
is more essential and on which educational theory very prop- 
erly lays great stress. Education, we are told, must not 
treat the mind as though it were passive, and still less must 



Digitized by 



Google 



834 EDUCATION^ DEVELOPMENT, AND SOUL [Sept, 

it aim at securing passivity or establishiog a merely receptive 
condition. On the contrary, its whole endeavor should be to 
arouse, sustain, and by all means strengthen self-activity, so 
that power and efficiency may be the result. And this cerr 
tainly is correct — provided there is a ** self '* whose activity 
Can be developed. Since, moreover, it must be a mental self, 
we may rule out at once any pretensions that materialism puts 
forward on this score, and call up parallelism for examination. 
The problem it has to solve is this: given a series of mental 
states that belong to no substantial mind, plus a collection of 
psychical dispositions that do not '* dispose'' any permanent 
subject, find a self, endow it with activity, and provide for an 
increase of said activity. The first step is to explain how a 
transient process takes on the character of selfhood, to show, 
for instance, how in the child a sensation, resulting from an ex- 
ternal impression, comes to have an inner subjective side, andt 
in particular, how, amid the flux of sensations and other pro- 
cesses, a centre of unity is established. Until this is made clear, 
it is useless to ask how the consciousness of self arises; we 
must have the self before we can be aware of it. It is also 
forbidden, by the terms of the problem, to say that the idea 
of self is elaborated in the course of development : this is true, 
but to what does that idea refer? And finally, if it be said 
that self-activity is merely an abbreviation which sums up the 
innumerable transient processes, then, since these, in the nor- 
mal mind, are constantly changing in quality, the self would 
not be itself for two minutes at a time. The pupil would be 
several thousand ** selves " in the course of a day, and the 
teacher would have opportunity for a large and varied experi- 
ence. 

The plain truth of the matter is that there can be no 
mental activity without a mental agent, and therefore no 
mental development without a permanent substance of mind. 
Whoever condemns materialism and yet seeks an ultimate ex- 
planation of mental facts, must logically accept the soul as a 
substantial reality and not merely as a procession of states. 
On this basis it is intelligible that there should be an unfold- 
ing of latent capacities, because there is something in which 
the capacities inhere. It is further evident that with a per- 
manent soul as the source of mental activity, provision is made 
for the retention of the dispositions or effects which the traa- 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IOO EDUCATION^ DEVELOPMENT^ AND SOUL 815 

sient processes leave. And self-actirity becomes a term full of 
meaning when, and only when, a sonl is acknowledged as the 
unifying principle in which all processes centre and to which 
any of them may be consciously referred. 

There is, consequently, no reason why one who appreciates 
the value for education of genetic psychology, should be de- 
terred from a study of the facts with which it deals or of the 
laws which it formulates. To the materialist one may answer : 
you describe a development but you cast out the mind; and 
to the parallelist: you postulate so many minds that none has 
a chance to develop. Now the fact is — the mind develops. 
The interpretation of this fact cannot be given by any philos- 
ophy that rejects the substantial soul. 

One discouraging feature of modern education is the ten- 
dency to invest certain words with a quasi-authoritative char- 
acter, as though the simple utterance of them were sufficient 
to dispose of the most serious problems. Of those who em- 
ploy such terms, comparatively few take the trouble to ex- 
amine into their real meaning. ** Development '' is a good il- 
lustration. Pronounce this with due solemnity and you are 
forthwith absolved from the obligation of finding answers for 
a whole lot of bothersome questions. This or that character- 
istic of mind is the product of development ; the mind requires 
such and such education because it develops, and so on. But 
what is development, and what does it logically imply ? Only 
analysis can furnish the requisite information; and analysis is 
not always a pleasant pursuit It may, however, be profitable, 
especially where it leads to the habit of challenging theories 
that flourish by manipulating '' values " made up chiefly of 
words. 

In the actual work of education reflection on its remoter 
principles is not a daily necessity. The teacher is not called 
on to philosophize at every step, or to have a dictionary of 
philosophical terms constantly open on his desk. None the 
less, education is the working out in practice of some one's 
ideals, and therefore of some one's philosophy. It lies with the 
teacher to decide whether he shall serve as an instrument for 
the application of principles which, perhaps, he could not ac- 
cept — or, by sifting the true from the false, become the master 
of his method and the owner of himself. 

Tki Catkolk UnivertUy ofAmerua. , . • 



Digitized by 



Google 



flew ISoofcs. 

Dr. Pfleiderer's book, Die Entwick^ 

DEVELOPMENT OP elung des Christenthums, first pub- 

CHRISTIANITT. Ushed in Munich, March, 1907, has 

lately been translated into Eng- 
lish.* It was the third of a series of lecture courses given in 
Berlin in 1905, 1906, 1907, professing, as the author says, "to 
give a connected and condensed review of the whole of the 
religious life of humanity, from its primitive beginnings to its 
present stage of development " (p. 3). The lecturer admits that 
he was " painfully conscious '' of the great difficulty of com- 
pressing the immense mass of material into the narrow frame of 
a few lectures without making the latter too superficial or un- 
intelligible. The intelligent reader will grant that his fears 
were perfectly justified. If this book were presented as a sci- 
entific treatise on the development of Christianity to the faculty 
of any Catholic university in Europe or America, the candi- 
date for a degree would without question be rejected with the 
command to rewrite every lecture. 

In his introductory chapter Dr. Ffleiderer speaks like a dis- 
appointed old man who sees the moderns deserting his camp 
for the newer views of Ritschl and Harnack. He is still pathet- 
ically faithful to the antiquated views of Baur, to whom he 
continually refers his readers (pp. 4, 13, etc.), and from whom 
he adopts his vague definition of Christianity : " the religion of 
divine humanity — the elevation of man to a consciousness of 
his spiritual unity with God, and freedom in God*' (p. 13). 

Of course his is a Christianity without the divinity of Christ. 
He styles the view of Christ held by the early Christians, " con- 
ceived in the mythical form of a one-time and unique super- 
natural miraculous figure," as a defect, a " veiling of the actual 
truth '* (p. 25), and assures us that '' nothing was further from 
Jesus* purpose than the founding of a new religion " (p. 20). 
The Christianity of Jesus was a narrow, earthly, Jewish Kingdom 
of God, freed from the fetters of Mosaism by the Apostle Paul 
(p. 24). The personality and gospel of Jesus is an open ques- 
tion, because each gospel writer gives " his own spirit, his own 

•TkiDevilopmnUcj CMsHamiy. Bj Otto Pfleiderer, D.D. TranBlated by Danid A. 
Huebscb, Ph.D. New York : B. W. Huebsch. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 827 

gospel, and his own ideal of Jesos, which he reads into the 
gospels with pardonable self-deception'' (p. 17). 

He defines development as " that becoming which moves ac- 
cording to law and strives towards an end, in which everything 
is fruit and seed at the same time, in which every phenomenon 
is conditioned by what has preceded, and conditions what is 
to follow** (p. 16). This formala, which is vague enough to 
satisfy many a different viewpoint, precludes for Dr. Ffleiderer 
the possibility of "any perfect thing at the beginning of a de- 
velopment-series '* ; therefore, the original justice of Adam be- 
comes an absurdity^ and the idea of a divine revelation ending 
with Christ and the Apostles an unthinkable hypothesis. 

It is rather strange to learn that the idea of development 
was first introduced into the science of history by Herder, Hegel, 
and Baur (p. 13); it is rather peculiar to find no mention of 
Vincent of Lerins or of Cardinal Newman, when Dr. Ffleiderer 
declares categorically that Catholicism does not even discuss the 
problem (p. 10), 

The first five lectures deal with the period from St. Paul 
to St. Augustine. Without any attempt at proof, without the 
slightest reference to the work of Catholic scholars on these 
centuries, Professor Pfleiderer makes false and arbitrary state- 
ments without number : v. g.^ ** the sacraments do not go back 
as far as Jesus'' (p. 86); "the idea of baptism came from John 
the Baptist and was made a sacrament by St. Paul " (p. 87) ; 
"the last supper was originally a love-meal of the brother- 
hood, developed by St. Paul into a sacrificial memorial in imi- 
tation of the pagan customs of his day" (p. 89); "the office 
of the bishops originated in the second century, and they were 
in no sense successors of the Apostles" (p. 91); "the primi- 
tive church was purely democratic" (p. 91); "the papacy de- 
veloped out of the episcopacy, and was modeled on the political 
and military organization of the Roman Empire " (p. 95) ; " St* 
Peter was never Bishop of Rome" (p. 96); "Leo the Great 
is the author of auricular confession" (p. 97); etc 

In his lecture on the Germanic- Roman Church, he stigma- 
tizes the conversion of Clovis as insincere, and the Christianity 
of the Franks as "masked heathenism" (p. 120); he points 
out Pope Zachary's scriptural sanction of Pepin's illegal suc- 
cession to the throne (p. 121); he repeats the old calumny that 
the false decretals were the principal weapon of the papacy in 



Digitized by 



Google 



8l8 NEW BOOKS [S^t., 

its straggle for rulership in Church and State (p. 125); he calls 
St Gregory VII. ''a hard, proud, inconsiderate man, who in 
his fight for celibacy " ruthlessly trod upon the holiest feelings 
of men,'* and merits the hatred of every loyal German, be- 
cause ''he lit the torch of civil war in our fatherland" (p. 

130). 

His treatment of the religious orders reads more like the 
ravings of an A. P. A. lecturer in the early nineties than the 
supposedly careful utterances of a university professor. While 
praising St. Francis of Assisi as the most attractive saint in 
the Catholic Church, he denies the fact of the stigmata, and 
speaks of St. Francis being "worshipped after death as a wonder- 
working savior." He sneers at the Franciscan vow of poverty, 
''which did not hinder their building the most marvelous 
monasteries, and hoarding the greatest treasures^ which they 
called the Pope's by a formal fiction"; he declares their order 
"the main representative of all Church evils, of superstition, 
ol hierarchical greed, and of moral corruption" (pp. 166-167). 
The Dominicans were simply crafty inquisitors who sold in- 
dulgences and forgiveness for gold, and won the people over 
to the Pope's side (p. 168). Even those devout mystics, the 
Brothers of the Common Life, are condescendingly dismissed 
as "not inimical but indifferent to the Church" (p. 170). 

But the Jesuits merit his greatest scorn for their valiant 
work in combating the Reformation. He speaks of them after 
the manner of Eugene Sue. Like an English Protestant of the 
Evangelical Alliance he sees a Jesuit behind every tree, and 
divides them into Professed, Scholastics, and — "the third or 
widest circle, the affiliated of minor observance, who remain in 
the world, and merely obligate themselves to obey their supe- 
riors" (p. 126). 

Jesuit philosophy forbids one to talk about "principles," 
and Jesuit ethics is controlled by what is called nominally the 
glorification of God, but which is really the glorification of 
their own general (p. 218). Their chief fault is that they have 
been great defenders of the Roman Papal Church, "which has 
been rather a hindi^ance than an aid to the coming of the 
Kingdom of God] on earth." They have carried over into the 
Church " the consciencelessness i^sic.) of Machiavelian policy, by 
calling the most immoral and most criminal acts good, if they 
but seem useful for churchly domination." We are rather 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 819 

bored to meet the old-time calumny about "the end justifies 
the means/* and the oft-refuted charges of lax morality, sophis- 
tical dialectics, the immorality of probabilism, and the like (pp. 
219-220). We naturally expect to hear that the Thirty Years' 
War in Germany was due to Jesuit intrigue, but it was news 
to us that Henry IV/s assassination resulted from his refusal 
to exile the Jesuits (pp. 223-224). We would advise Professor 
Pfleiderer to read Father Duhr's Geschichte der JesuiUn in den 
Ldndem deutscher Zunge im XVI. Jahrhundert^ Father Astrain's 
Historia de la Compania de Jesus en EspaOa^ Father Venturi's 
Storia delta Compagnia di GesU in Italia^ and Father Fouqueray's 
Lis Origines. He might then understand something of the 
painstaking thoroughness of the men whom he stigmatizes as 
merely thorough *' mediocrities " (p. 217). 

The translation is very faulty throughout, both in the use 
of words and in the construction of sentences. It bears the 
earmarks of a foreign language on nearly every page. The 
translator speaks of " disharmonies (p. 107), of '' the conscience- 
lessness of Machiavelian policy'' (p. 219), of ''the apocalyptic 
expectation^of the catastrophic coming of the rulership of God " 
(p. 25). He confuses his tenses (p. 301), uses "one another'^ 
for "each other," and "one which" for "which," omits fre- 
qnently the definite article (pp. 113, 302, 176, 188), etc. 

Instead of being a serious contribution to the history of 
dogma, Dr. Ffleiderer's book is merely an inaccurate, supetficial 
history of the past nineteen centuries crowded within the narrow 
compass of a rather dull series of lectures. They are vitiated 
throughout by his rationalistic denial of the supernatural,, and 
his ill-concealed prejudice against all things Catholic. We 
do not wonder that even modern unbelieving thinkers have 
passed him by to follow the more scholarly opponents of the 
Christian positions. 

A notable edition to the St. Nich- 

FATHER DAMIEH. olas Series— which, by the way, 

By May Quinlan. {g one of the most capable series 

of Catholic books that has ever 
been published — is . Damien of Molokai^^ by May Quinlan. 

These volumes, although intended primarily for the younger 
folks, will [please and instruct older readers as well. Miss 
Quinlan has in Father Damien a fascinating subject. His 

*Dami€n of Molohai, By Maj Quinlan. New York : Bcniiger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



830 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

name is the modern synonym for heroism and self-sacrifice. 
Though the task was the more difficult because the subject 
has been treated so often. Miss Quinlan has given us a re- 
markably fresh, attractive, and full portrait of the martyr of 
Molokai. The book opens with a short dissertation on the 
scourge of leprosy, from earliest times to the present day. An 
account follows of the early days of Joseph Damien de Veuster. 
At the age of eighteen he put on the religious habit at Louvain, 
gave up his family name, as if he would show his entire con- 
secration to the welfare of all human kind, and took that of 
his patron, St. Damien. Thinking himself too ignorant to be 
a priest, he worked at menial tasks as a lay brother. But the 
lay brother took such interest in the Latin grammar read to 
him by his own brother, Famphile, that the question of his or- 
dination was reconsidered. During the novitiate, while Damien 
''sat outside the gate whence all wisdom flows, straining his 
ears to catch a whisper from within,'' it seemed as if he heard 
a voice in the listening silence. It was a voice of marvelous 
sweetness, so soft, so low, yet of such power that he thought 
it filled all space, making the heavens to thrill again. 

'' I came to cast fire on the earth,'' said the voice, '' and 
what will I, but that it be enkindled." 

His brother, Famphile, was about to be sent on missionary 
labors to the Sandwich Islands. But the brother suddenly 
became seriously ill. ''What if I went instead?" was the 
immediate and generous suggestion of Damien, His offer was 
accepted. He was ordained priest at the age of twenty-three, 
and immediately joined " the ranks of those whose life-work 
it is to seek and save that which was lost" Damien began 
his labors on the island of Hawaii. But the scourge of leprosy 
struck every island in the Archipelago. 

There was no escape, "the victims of disease were swept 
along like straws in the eddying stream. Homes were broken 
up and families scattered; husbands were torn from wives; 
children were wrested from their mothers' arms; young men 
and maidens were struck down and forced to part. Neither 
old nor young were spared; neither age, nor sex, nor condi- 
tion. The blow fell alike on the innocent and the guilty. 
Like a hurricane the scourge came down upon the island's, 
and in its wake rose a sound of wailing. It was a cry which 
struck terror into the heart, for it told of the loved ones who 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 831 

had been driven oat, to meet a fate that was worse than 
death/' 

Every leper was transported to Molokal, and one only 
needs to read Miss Qainlan's chapters to realize that life there 
was worse than death. The lazaretto became a by- word in 
the ways of iniquity. The crying need of these suffering bodies 
and souls moved Damien's heart. He begged to be sent to 
Molokai and the Bishop acceded to his request And that 
little wedge-shaped island of the Pacific, known before only 
as a barren rock by the travelers that ply between Sydney and 
San Francisco, was to become fertile and bring to full blossom 
a flower that has added glory and the sweet odor of unselfish 
devotion to the annals of human kind. Yet in Damien's time, 
according to Stevenson, '' it was a pitiful place to visit and a 
hell to dwell in.'' 

Damien arrived on a cattle boat. His religious zeal was 
unbounded ; and, like every thoroughly religious man, his zeal 
was directed by common sense. He spoke the word of super- 
natural life to the soul dead in sin; he comforted the way- 
worn spirit; he anointed the despairing heart with the oil of 
gladness. Yet he realized that much in the way of man's 
spiritual betterment depends upon his social, physical condi- 
tions, and for the improvement of these Damien labored un- 
ceasingly and successfully. ''In his intercourse with souls he 
put into practice those words which surely ought to be writ 
large over a desponding world: 'To have faith is to create; 
to have hope i/i to call down blessing; to have love is to 
work miracles.'" 

After eleven years of service Damien, too, was stricken 
with leprosy. In 1884 he wrote: ''I am glad there is now no 
doubt about my sickness. I am a leper." But his work was 
done. The welfare of Molokai was assured. There were now 
five churches and two resident priests on the island, and his 
last prayer : " If we only had the Sisters," had been answered 
by the arrival of the Franciscan nuns. On April 15, 1889, 
Father Damien died. And Father Tabb wrote that the angels 
sang: 

O God, the cleanest offering 

Of tainted earth below. 
Unblushing to Thy feet we bring — 
' A leper white as snow I " 



fi 



Digitized by 



Google 



8ja NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

Miss Quinlan reprints R. L. Stevenson's '' An Open Letter '' 
— that classic given to us by reason of the bigotry of Dr. 
Hyde. 

The volume is intensely interesting. The author never de- 
parts from her theme, yet her reflections, enriched by literary 
quotation, often touch and touch wisely t|ie deepest currents 
of human life. 

We have told the story at great length, because we fear 
that there are many of t|ie rising generation who know it not. 
We would like to see this volume one of the familiar, well- 
loved books of Catholics, young and old. 

This worthy companion volume* 
LESSONS OF ETERNAL to the autobiography of Blessed 
WISDOM. Henry Suso is published in 

small, portable form. The les- 
sons of divine wisdom, of which the holy author was the self- 
named but divinely chosen servitor, are herein interpreted in 
simple but exceedingly penetrating lanj[uage. We know not 
how to describe the charm of this saint's style, to use a word 
too low for so high a spiritual gift as his mode of expres- 
sion. The little volume is a poem in loftiness of idealism, and 
yet a catechism of the every-day spiritual life of all really 
generous-hearted Christians. Meantime its tone is plaintive, 
though anything but gloomy. It is the song of a poetical 
nature under the entrancement of Calvary. For the whole ef- 
fect of it is to make one love to suffer in union with Jesus 
Crucified. The strange witchery of the love of Christ is to 
make men fond of sorrow and of pain, for His sake and out 
of love for the race He died to save. Hardly any saint knew 
better than Henry Suso how to fix this fascination in human 
speech. 

The familiar form of colloquy is chosen so that Wisdom 
Incarnate and His devoted servitor are found trading thoughts. 
On the ope side are inquiries and doubts and protestationsi and 
on the other the choicest treasures of love and of truth. Nor 
should the reader fancy that he will be lifted into the unreal. 
No ; but rather the invisible things of God will be largely and 
grandly shaped into perceptible truth, nay into tremendously 

^LUat B0ok tf EUmal^ Wisdom, Bj Blessed Henry Suso. To which is added the 
c^ebTtLied Paradii t/ tAi JHi^rim, Bj Walter Hilton: London'; TheAngelus Publishing 
Company ; *New York : Benziger Brothers. 



Digitized by 



Google 



igic] NEW BOOKS 833 

influential realism. And tliis will be found mainly, indeed, in 
the inner region of his motives, but without failing to specify 
pointedly the practical details of a life of love of Grod and of 
man. 

It is a book from which to choose the unforgettable max- 
ims of a devout life. 



It is the habit of the historian, 

ELIZABETH DE FRANCE, and somewhat naturally, to focus 

By Mrs. Maxwell Scott. interest upon Austria's fated child, 

Marie Antoinette, in retelling the 
tragic story of the household of the French Court during the 
Revolution. Did the historian not possess a certain quality of 
hero worship, combined with individual taste, the fairest types 
that have figured on the great stage of human events would 
continue to the end of time to fill minor parts in the drama 
and the essentials of the drama — ^those elemental forces which 
subtly form the cosmic whole in history, would be lost. 

In her recent book, Madame Eligabeth de Franpe^^ the 
Honorable Mrs. Maxwell Scott, of Abbotsford, has reawakened 
interest in and love for the revered daughter of Maria Theresa, 
but she has also animated the enthusiasm of her readers for 
Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., who forswore all else in life 
that she might, with loyal Catholic fortitude and womanly 
steadfastness, remain close to the royal person of her brother 
and share in the vicissitudes of his complex reign. 

So wise, so sane, so nobly poised was Madame Elizabeth 
in the many crises through which she was forced to pass, that 
Mrs. Scott's deductions lead the reader to feel the Revolution 
might have been averted had she held the reins of govern- 
ment She was gentle yet strong^; a diplomatist, yet guileless ; 
a statesman in her reasoning and a Carmelite in her interior 
sanctity. From her utterances alone the reader might find a 
rule of life to fit the exigencies of the time. A more promi- 
nent place than it now occupies in history should be given 
Madame Elizabeth's conversation with Barnave, on the mem- 
orable return from Varennes. One sentence alone furnishes a 
text for the day: *'You forget that progress must go slowly 

* Madmmi BiiMobeih de France-'i*f64'tyg4. By Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott, of Abbotsford. 
With handsome colored illustrations. London: Edward Arnold. 

VOL. XCl.— S3 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



«34 NEW BOOKS [Sept, 

and that in striving to arrive quickly, one runs the risk of 
losing one's way/' 

Should the women of the present seek from the not-too-far 
distant past a type for emulation, Mrs. Scott's tenderly intimate 
history of Elizabeth de France furnishes all the lessons worthy 
of imitation in this very modern, intellectually and morally up- 
turned, but not hopeless, twentieth century. 

There is a sense of values not possessed by all writers of 
biographies or memoirs, and the absence of delicacy that ruth- 
lessly turns one's pen into an entering wedge to lay bare the 
more sacred places in the private life of the individual, often 
places the reader in the embarrassing attitude of seeming to 
peer through his neighbor's key-hole* Mrs. Scott has the rare 
gift of telling with reverential accuracy the most intimate hap- 
penings in the life of her saintly heroine, without in any sense 
shocking the reader's appreciation of eternal fitness; and while 
she does not minimize the greatness of others in seeking to em- 
phasize the purity, fortitude, faith, and rare intellect of the 
''St. Genevieve of the Tuileries," as Elizabeth was affection- 
ately called, the reader knows with revivified faith that saint- 
liness is attainable, since the Reign of Terror carried this 
daughter of the Church, this off-spring of the ill-fated Capets, 
te the guillotine itself, with never an apparent temptation to 
turn aside for the world or self. 

The book is timely, and France of to-day should take to 
heart those words of Elizabeth de France uttered on Christmas 
night, 1792, when Chaumette forbade midnight Mass and ''the 
Mass was sung as usual." " It is good for the people to know,'' 
said Madame Elizabeth, " that those who pretend to make them 
free, desire liberty neither for conscience nor for prayer." 

It must be very difficult to write 
JOAN OF ARC. the life of a saint : the words and 

actions of the saints are so simple, 
direct, and plain that modem biographers have been under no 
little temptation to embroider, to sentimentalize, and to exag- 
gerate their lives unduly. It must, indeed, be candidly acknowl- 
edged that many of the lives of the saints which have been 
re-written during the nineteenth century, especially with a 
view to edification, have been marked by defects on the side 
of littleness, thinness, far-offness, and unreality. There was 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] NEW BOOKS 835 

too moch painting of the lilies, too moch bedraping of the 
pillars of the church, too much suppression of that true and 
tremendous humanity of the saints through which alone their 
sanctity could shine forth in the dark places of the earth. 
The saints were real men and women from the very beginning^ 
and just in proportion as they became more saintly so in that 
same proportion did they become more really men and women, 
more actually, strongly, perfectly, and tenderly human. Who 
can think of St Peter, St. John, St. Jerome, St Augustine, 
St. Benedict, St Catherine of Siena, St Teresa, or the Blessed 
Thomas More, without thinking at the same time of all that is 
most strong and gracious, most gentle and heroic in the records 
of holiness ? 

The little book, in which Father Bernard Vaughan has 
sketched for us the life story of the Blessed Joan of. Arc,* 
aptly confirms this truth. Her story, as. here given, does most 
eloquently teach ''our Catholic maidens and women of every 
degree, how to do whatever Grod puts into their hands to do, 
and yet keep untouched and bright all the glory of their woman- 
hood." Her own simple words, uttered in times of difficulty, 
trial, misunderstanding, and more especially those spoken at 
her final trial, are the most convincing of all. When warned 
by her captors not to make any attempt to escape, she re- 
plied: ''I do not accept the warning, so that if I do escape, 
let no one accuse me of having broken my word." When asked 
with flippant irreverence whether it was right to have made 
an attack on Paris on a saint's day, she answered: ''Pass on 
to something else I " Or again, take her warning to her ac- 
cuser : " You call yourself my judge ; beware what you do, for 
truly I am sent by God, and you are putting yourself in great 
danger." And when questioned as to whether she was in a 
state of grace or not, she replied : " If I am not, may God put 
me in it If I am, may God keep me there." Or lastly, how 
magnificent was her retort on those who asked her whether 
St Catherine and St Margaret bated the English: "They love 
what God loves, and hate what He hates." 

The book is illustrated by reproductions from the Broms* 
grove Guild of Artists, which are excellent, and with colored 
plates by M. Bussiere, which are crudely sentimental. 

• Lift Lessens frwm BUssidJ^an of Arc, By Father Bernard Vaughan. S.J. London : 
George Allen ft Sons. 



Digitized by 



Google 



8s6 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

Is it reading something into the 

THE BALL AND THE CROSS, story, or does the '' pugnacious '' 

By G. K. Chesterton. ** G. K. C." combat Father Hugh 

Benson's theory in The Lord of the 
World, when he writes The Ball and the Cross t^ In both 
these books — the former having appeared possibly two years 
before the latter — the authors leave their readers much to ex- 
tract from a wealth of symbolism that typifies Truth and its 
antipodes. 

In The Lord of the World Father Benson was taken to task 
by some of his critics for suggesting the ultimate annihilation 
of the Church through the workings of humanitarianism, as 
typified by the great and all-pervading hero« '' Felsenburgh/' 
who hovered above the homes and sentiments of men in his 
far-sailing air-ship. But Father Benson never forgets the thing 
that the gates of hell cannot do to the Church, and his seer- 
like warning, if seemingly hopeless, was a legible hand- writing 
on the wall to those who would combat insinuating modern in- 
fluences against faith and morals. 

In The Ball and the Cross, however, Mr. Chesterton leaves 
no doubt, if the critic follows bis symbolism to the end. He 
too uses a flying machine as his material locomotion for the 
initial conveyance of an idea, and at its helm he places the 
scientific Professor Lucifer, with an antiquated monk from the 
Balkans as his guest. Throughout the fantastic maze of Mr. 
Chesterton's kaleidoscopic reasoning one ever distinguishes the 
unchanging color of orthodoxy, illumined by a sense of humor, 
and Mr. Chesterton never forgets that true humor is funda- 
mentally, essentially reverent. Who but a genius can make his 
reader reverently chuckle with risible delight while pouring 
over arguments concerning Eternal Truth; and who but Mr. 
Chesterton has done this with such success in his day ? The 
delicious irony with which he makes Professor Lucifer run into 
the ball and the cross on St. Paul's in London, when he proudly 
thinks he is discovering a new planet, significantly illustrates 
the invariable barrier to the intellectual wings of the angel of 
pride, and Mr. Chesterton artistically allows the antiquated 
monk to point the moral. 

The Ball and the Cross finally becomes the romance of two 
men — an honest Highland Catholic and an honest London athe- 

• T)u BaUtmdtki Crou. By Q. K. Chesterton. New York : John Lane Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



igic] NEW BOOKS 837 

ist — who, as the extremes of affirmation and negation, battle 
to the end of the story with triumphant conclusions. The in- 
itial provocation for battle between the two men is a paragraph 
against the Mother of God, found in the atheists' paper by the 
simple Catholic Highlander, '' who could not, if he would, con- 
ceive a doubt." 

When a book is very well worth the reading, it is salutary 
for the reviewer to tempt occasionally the reading public with 
a sample of the writer's wares, and though it is harder to dis* 
criminate with '' G. K. C." than any other of his kind (is there 
any other?) those who may, or may not, read Thi Ball and 
the Cross must not overlook the defense before an English Court 
of Justice, of an unlettered Catholic Highlander, who challenged 
an atheist to combat because of irreverent language against 
the Virgin Mother* 

If he had said of my mother what he said of the Mother of 
God, there is not a club of clean men in Europe that would 
deny my right to call him out. If he had said it of my wife, 
you English would yourselves have pardoned me for beating 
him like a dog in the market place. Your worship, I have 
no mother ; I have no wife. I have only that which the poor 
have equally with the rich ; which the lonely have equally 
with the man of many friends. To me this whole strange 
world is homely, because in the heart of it there is home ; to 
me this cruel world is kindly, because higher than the heal! 
vens there is something more human than humanity. If a 
man must not fight for this, may he fight for anything ? I 
would fight for my friend, but if I lost my |friend, I should 
still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my 
country, I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams 
were true, I should not be — I should burst like a bubble and 
be gone. I could not live in that imbecile universe. Shall I 
not fight for my own existence ? 

The climax of the book is splendidly reached toward its 
close, when the Catholic hero and the atheist are imprisoned 
in cells B and C of a lunatic asylum, by the opinionated ser- 
vants of modern thought. By remaining ''a mortal month 
alone with God " the hero finds a means of escape by discov- 
ering the inmate of cell A (oh, thou great Alpha I) an ancient 
man white with eld, '' whose face seemed like a scripture older 
than the gods, and whose eyes, bright, blue, were startled like 



Digitized by 



Google 



838 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

those of a baby. They looked as if they had only been fitted 
an instant before in his head." Oh, thoo eternal freshness of 
Truth I 

We can still remember the indig- 
THE BARRIER. nation of a Catholic woman who 

By Rene Bazin. administered a stern rebuke to a 

priest for daring to recommend 
such a novel as VIsoUe {The Nun)^ of Ren^ Bazin. And yet, 
while the dramatic finale of that story might be rather strong 
food for a convent girl of fourteen, no French bishop's pas- 
toral, no series of lectures, no American meeting of protest, 
brought before the world so clearly and so eloquently the 
tyranny of the French pseu do- democracy in its cruel, unre- 
lenting persecution of the helpless nuns of France. 

Bazin's latest novel La Barriire, is also a novel with a 
purpose. It is in reality an apology of the Catholic Church, 
not so much detailing the reasons of belief, as setting forth the 
e£fects of Catholicism on the mind and heart of an intelligent 
outsider, and the absolute moral disaster that follows the apos* 
tasy of the Catholic born. It might be styled a moral tragedy 
in three acts: 

Act I. — England. Scene: The home of a stem, old-school 
Anglican nobleman, with a bitter hatred of Romanism, and a 
strong political attachment to the National Church. 
* Act II. — France. Scene: The home of a modern nouviau 
riche indifferentist, with its cynical unbelief, its hopeless world- 
liness, and its inevitable immorality. 

Act III. — Italy. Scene: Rome, with its living voice of 
primitive antiquity, and its compelling dogma of the Real Pres- 
ence, effecting the conversion of the hero, and witnessing his 
perfect self-surrender for conscience sake. 

Reginald Breynolds, an Indian army officer, is first attracted 
toward the Church by a strange meeting in the Indian jungle 
with an ascetic Catholic missionary, living a life of absolute 
self-denial to atone for a life of wickedness in Europe. 

On his return to his father's house in England the claims 
of Catholicism seem ever to haunt him, especially the Euchar- 
istic Christ, abiding with His people. Most dramatic is the 
scene at table when the father asks all assembled to drink a 
toast to England's National Church. Reginald, although not a 
Catholic, has utterly rejected the State Church his father so 



Digitized by 



Google 



igic] NEW BOOKS 839 

reveres, and, true to conscience, refuses tbe toast, only to be 
disinherited and driven forth after a very stormy interview. 

The second part gives us a striking picture of the homes 
of two cousins, the Limerels: the one Catholic to the core, 
devout, self- recollected, believing; tbe other of the modern 
French anti-clerical type, worldly, external, and irreligious. 
Felicien Limerel proposes to his ccusin Marie, but is rejected 
on account of his unbelief, his sweetheart telling him in char- 
acteristic fashion: ''I wish to be the mother of a holy race/' 
Like Pierre Loti kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemani, and 
disappointed because such an environment left him unmoved, 
Felicien goes to the sanctuary of Montmartre to spend a night 
before the Blessed Sacrament, in the vain hope of winning 
back the faith of his fathers. He then goes straightway to 
Marie to inform her of the failure of his demand for a miracle. 
Afterwards be bitterly upbraids his parents, for their neglect of 
his religious training. This is one of the strongest passages 
in the whole novel, which brings out clearly the paramount 
importance of the home in tbe upbuilding of character, and in 
the safeguarding of that most precious of treasures, the Cajfcho- 
lie faith. 

Reginald, giving up home, kindred, worldly prospects, and 
finally his love for the '' pearl of great price,'' is a character 
that wins one by its quiet dignity, strength, and unswerving 
loyalty to conscience. Marie Limerel, giving up her lover from 
conviction despite all the promptings of affection, sets an ex- 
ample that may prove more effective to girls in like position 
than a strong sermon on the evils of mixed marriages. 

Interspersed throughout the book are many beautiful de- 
scriptions in Bazin's best style of an English summer resort, 
a French drawing-room, a parish church on the outskirts of 
Paris, the sanctuary of Montmartre, the cancer hospital of the 
women of Calvary, the hills and churches of Rome. 

Some one has criticized the writer's portraits of Reginald 
and Marie as devoid of human interest, because they are so 
hopelessly perfect, and so uniformly actuated by the most 
ideal motives. Perhaps the critic never in his experience 
came across such souls, but every Catholic pastor has many 
Maries in his flock, and converts like Reginald have come 
over to us by the hundreds from alien folds. We hope soon 
to welcome The Barrur in its English dress, but we feel cer- 



Digitized by 



Google 



840 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

tain that only a writer of Bazln's literary finish can give us 
the fall charm of the original. 

When Love Calls Men to Arms^^ 
WHEN LOVE CALLS HEN TO the new story by Stephen Chal- 
ARMS. mers, is supposedly ''an auto- 

By Chalmers. biography of love and adventure, 

truthfully set down by Rorie Mac- 
lean, Laird of Kilellan, in the seventeenth century, and here 
rewritten from the original MS. into clearer English. '' Love 
and adventure there surely are in good plenty, bloodshed and 
hairbreadth escapes, romantic flights and quick quarrels between 
hot-blooded Highland' clans. Rorie tells his story well; he 
describes his love-troubles and his '' braw-fights " with a 
confiding honesty and a quite unconscious humor worthy, 
at times, of Blackmore's John Ridd. The book is interesting 
reading, and deserves a better title. The character of Bor- 
deaux, the gentlemanly, poet-quoting vagabond, is well drawn. 

'' The notion that eight or ten alder- 
CITT GOVERNMENT. men, whose energies are sorely 

taxed by their own business, can 
administer the affairs and expenditures of a city, involving 
vast amounts of money, by holding stated meetings in the 
evenings once in two weeks, and the like special evening 
meetings spasmodically and without system, is absurd and 
puerile in itself. We have outgrown this method, and it ought 
to be cast aside like a wornout garment." 

Those who wish to know the experience of certain cities 
of moderate size which have cast this old system aside for the 
commission plan, should read Mr. Hamilton's Dethronement of 
the City Boss.f To many persons the word commission con- 
notes an appointive office and they have been suspicious of 
the idea as undermining republican principles. Such persons 
need only read Mr. Hamilton's book to have such fears dissi- 
pated. 

In reality we see, from this interesting and popular exposi- 
tion of the Des Moines plan, that the commissioners are much 
more directly subject to the voters than in any old-fashioned 

• Whin Lave CaUi Mtm to Arms, By Stephen Chalmers. Boston : Small, Maynard 
ft Co. 

t Tk4 DithroHimint of the City Boss. By John J. HamUton. New York: Funk ft 
Wagnalls Company, 



Digitized by 



Google 



igio.] NEW BOOKS 841 

monicipality. A mayor and four commissioners form a legis- 
lative and executive council transacting all the business of the 
community and making all appointments. But, upon a pro- 
test of twenty- five per cent of the electors, this administrative 
board must either repeal an objectionable ordinance or sub- 
mit it to the people. Likewise upon a similar petition an 
ordinance must be passed or referred to the voters. Also 
upon a twenty-five per cent petition any one of the council 
may be called upon to face a special election at any time 
during his term. These provisions are known respectively as 
the referendum, initiative, and recall. 

Mr. Hamilton does not confine himself to a bare outline of 
the Des Moines plan. He shows very carefully how and why 
this should eliminate corruption, and proves his point by the 
actual experience of several typical cities. 

For the first time the German. 

THB GOSSAMER THREAD. American child is introduced and 

By Seibert. makes her literary d^but in the 

story of The Gossmpter Thread^^ by 
Venita Seibert. The heroine is little Velleda, gray-eyed, wist- 
ful, and imaginative, who understands about the Different World- 
'* One is very proud to know the Real World, . . . but in 
secret one stretches forth longing arms toward that other 
World, which is, where?" The two worlds, truth and illusion, 
conflict pathetically for Velleda, beginning with the sad Wein- 
nacht's Abend, when she discovers that the St Nicholas who 
brings the Christmas toys is only Onkel dressed up in a long 
white beard and a cotton-sprinkled overcoat* Realities are 
very puzzling to Velleda, and not least puzzling is the thing 
called fashion. After a bitter experience in purchasing faeelless 
shoes, long her heart's desire, only to find that heels have 
*' come in again," Velleda arrives at a decision. '' Fashion," she 
says firmly, *'is something that you want very bad, but when 
you get it, it's something else." In the last chapter of the 
story Velleda has already left the Fairy Ring of Childhood, 
and sets forth bravely, but with wistful eyes, for the City of 
Grownup, clasping under her arm the volume of Th$ English 
PoetSf which is to be the key to unlock the Different World, 
The book is an exceptional piece of child-portraiture, suggest- 
ing both Emmy Lou and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. 

* Tki Gossamer Tknad. B7 Venita Seibert. Boston : Small, Maynaid ft Co. 



Digitized by 



Qoo^z 



841 NEW BOOKS [Sept, 

Little Brother O'Dreams^ is not 

LITTLE BROTHER really a story at all, but a little 

O'DRBAMS. prose-poem, a mountain idyl. It 

By Eastman. jells of a lonely, dreamy child, 

living on the mountain- side with 
a tired, sad mother, who took good care of him, but ** didn't 
understand.'* He had called himself ''Little Brother.'' '''I 
like that name,' he said, 'because it makes me feel as if 
there were more of us. It isn't a lonesome name; it's a nice 
all- together sort of name I'" But he soon found book friends 
and out-of-door friends. ''The trees loved him, and the 
flowers, and the sky; and the little people of the woods, the 
birds and squirrels, didn't mind his poor pale face and his 
queerly cobbled clothes." And, best of all, he could make 
his poems. Strange, quaint fancies formed into little poems in 
his head, and sang themselves to him. Little Brother's great 
longing was for a Little Sister; the story of how be found 
her, and of the wonder she brought into his life, is told with 
a pretty simplicity that cannot fall to charm. The style is 
graceful, almost poetic. 

In a booklet entitled Three Historic Pageants^ by Dudley 
Baxter, we find articles of much interest. The first is entitled : 
"The Last 'Sacre' at Rheims"— that which terminated with 
Charles the Tenth in 1825. In " A Canonization at St. Peter's" 
we have a description of the canonization, by Pope Leo XIII., 
of St. Pierre Fourier, and St Antonio Maria Zaccaria. "The 
Last Coronation at Westminster" describes the ceremony at- 
tending the coronation of King Edward VII. and Queen Alex- 
andra. 

We desire to call particular attention to a valuable book- 
let, written especially for Catholics, and having for its subject 
Th^ Catholic Paper. The articles are particularly timely, and we 
hope with the author, the Rev. J. T. Roche, LL.D., that they 
will be instrumental in arousing Catholics, as a whole, to a 
deeper interest in those things which concern the Catholic 
press. The booklet should be widely distributed throughout the 
land. It may be obtained from the Catholic Register, Toronto, 
Canada. 

•UtiU BnUUr CtDnams^ By Elaine Goodale Eastman. Boston and New York: 
Hooghton MiflBin Company. 



Digitized by 



Google 



leio.] ^Tejv Books 843 

An interesting record of the ways and means by which the 
Holy Spirit leads the author, a Protestant lawyer, to an ac- 
ceptance of the Faith, is given to us in a pamphlet of about 
80 pages entitled My Road to the True Churchy by Frank 
Johnston. It is published by the International' Catholic Truth 
Society, at 10 cents per copy. 

The papers that make up the booklet entitled Towards the 
Altar, by the Rev. J. M. Lehen (B. Herder: St Louis), were 
written and published with a view to fostering vocations for 
the priesthood. They are gathered from many sources, and we 
hope that they may be instrumental in e£fecting their very 
worthy purpose. The publication sells at 15 cents per copy; 
$1*35 per dozen. 

A book of practical commercial value, arranged especially 
for all Spanish-speaking countries, has recently been published 
by the Underwood Typewriter Company, New York. It is 
entitled Mitodo Prhctico para Aprender h Eseribir por el Taco, 
compiled by J. Martinez, E.M. Briefly explained, it is a 
practical method for learning typewriting in the easiest and 
shortest way, that is by the sense of touch. 

Another book has been added to the already numerous as- 
sortment claiming to describe the religion of the future. To 
Charles F. Dole, The Coming Religion* is not a religion at all, 
but a sort ef universal sense of duty to humanity. His ideas 
are somewhat vague, but one gathers that ** reasonableness '* is 
to be gained in the new cult by rejecting authority, miracles, 
etc. 

In a very small and handy volume (price 35 cents net) 
Benziger Brothers have published a translation of Prayers to 
the Sacred Heart, composed by Blessed Margaret Mary, and 
selected from the authorized Vie et Oeuvres, published by the 
Sisters of her own monastery of the Visitation at Paray-le- 
Monial. 

We have lately received the Franciscan Almanac for the 
year 191 !# the annual publication of the Franciscan Fathers, 
The Monastery, Paterson, N. J. 

* Tki C^mit^ RiUii^m. By Charles F. Dole. Boston : Small, MaTnard ft Co. 



Digitized by 



Google 



J^oteidtt ipetiobicals. 

Thi Tabht (9 July) : '' The Catholic Church and Divorce/' a 
verbatim report of Mgr. Moyes* exposition of Catholic 
doctrine on divorce given before the Royal Commission 

on Divorce. An explanation of the '' Branch Theory " 

and wherein it is defective. *' Church and State in 

Spain/' how the anti* clerical outbreak in Spain came 
about, and how the Concordat was interpreted. 
(16 July): ''The Depopulation of France/' The num- 
ber of births in France is rapidly gowing smaller. In' 
1909 the number of births did not exceed the number 
of deaths by more than 13,000.— —The Osservatcre Ro^ 
mano publishes an official note defining the attitude of 
the Holy See in relation to the questions now ai issue 
with the Spanish Grovernment 

(23 July): A Bill will be introduced to provide for the 
giving of instruction in public elementary schools on 
hygiene. ''At the present time 120,000 children die 
every year beforcr reaching the age of twelve months.'' 
—-The date of the next Consistory may be in Novem- 
ber next Father Cortie, S.J.f writes on "The Pass- 
ing of the Comet" 

(30 July): The Bill providing for an amendment of the 
Royal Accession Declaration passed the second reading 
by a majority of 326.— —Little has developed during 
the week relative to the "Spanish Question."— -A 
supplement gives an account of the Leeds Catholic 
Congress. 

T/u Month (July): "The Life of Cardinal Vaughan/' by the 
Rev. Sydney F. Smith is a review of Mr. Snead- Cox's 
biography of the late Cardinal. Father Smith's numer- 
ous quotations give a vivid picture of the great prelate* 
His opinion of the book, despite certain adverse criticisms 
which he makes, is very favorable.— C. M. Antony 
describes " The Last National Embassy to Rome." This 
article is based upon some ^try ancient manuscripts and 
includes numerous passages from the same describing 
incidents of the journey.—— Rev. Joseph Keating writes 



^.Google i 



I9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 845 

on ''Some Obstacles to Peace/' While favoring uni- 
versal peace, he thinks the reasons of many of its ad- 
vocates unsound. 

The Expository Times (Aug.): Synopsis of the latest informa- 
tion regarding the importance of the Hittites. The seat 
of their greatest power is thought to have been Cappa* 
docia.-^— Dr. Sanday's Life of Christy for the ''Inter- 
national Theological Library/' is reviewed. Review of 

Principal Skinner's Genesis and Prof. Curtis' Chronicles 
for "the International Critical Commentary."— ^Pro- 
fessor Barton writes on Hilprecht's "Deluge-Tablet" | 

The Church Quarterly Review (July) : " Education in Australia/' 
by A. G. B. West, tells what a new country has accom- 
plished in this field in a few years. Considerable in- 
formation is given concerning methods and courses in 
the grammar, secondary, and university systems. There 
is no religious instruction in the State schools of Aus- 
tralia. ^Very Rev. T. B. Strong, Rev. W. H. Frere, 

Rev. A. S. Tait, and Rev. Herbert Kelly write on "The 
Training and Examination of Candidates for Orders." 
Hitherto the Anglican Church has required practically 
no specific training for its ministers. Ways and means 
of thoroughly and uniformly preparing the clergy for 

their work are suggested. "Pope Gregory VII. and 

the Hildebrandine Ideal/' by Rev. J. P. Whitney, D.C.L. 
"Hildebrand reveals himself to us not as one who 
would force a given system upon us to-day, but as one 
who wrought into living fact a needed, although surely 
a passing, phase in the growth of Christian society." 
The struggle against lay investiture did not begin with 
Gregory, and he was not an ambitious ecclesiastic de- 
voted to a subjugation of the imperial power. 

Dublin Review (July) : Wilfrid Ward in reviewing the biography 
of Cardinal Vaughan by Mr. Snead-Cox draws a graphic 
picture of the great prelate, who was dogmatic, ener- 
getic, uncompromising, yet withal open-minded.——— 
"Pascal and Port Royal," by Mrs. Reginald Balfour, 
briefly sketches Pascal's life and the history of Port 
Royal, and the political and religious elements con- 
tributing to the controversy.— ^Francis Thompson's Life 
of St. Ignatius Loyola is reviewed by Canon Barry.— 



I 



Digitized by 



Google 



846 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept., 

Rev. Hugh Pope writes on the "Origin of the Douajr 

Bible." In ''John Stnart Mill and the Mandate of the 

People/' by Wilfrid Ward, are expressed the views of 
James and John Stuart Mill on democracy. Despite its 
development since 1865, the younger Mill's hope for 
independence and increased individualism has not yet 

been realized. "Unemployment and Education/' by 

Mrs. Crawford, shows that the evils of our inadequate 
educational equipment are accentuated by various fea- 
tures of our national life— a lack of organized appren- 
ticeship and parental control, and a spirit of independence 
that is often abused. The present prosperous condi- 
tions in Switzerland are due to a clear recognition that 
individualism must be limited. 

Irish Theological Quarterly (July): Rev. W. T. Sheppard, O.S.B., 
contributes an article on the '' Kenosis According to St. 
Mark"; it is a refutation of the theories of Dr. Weston 
and Rev. J. M. Thompson. The Gospel of St Mark 
being an incomplete document, it cannot be argued that 
because it records no manifestation of Messiahship be- 
fore the Baptism, therefore none occurred. It is im» 
possible from the Gospels to fix any point in the life 
of our Lord at which the Messianic consciousness began 

to dawn. " The Seed Growing Secretly," by Rev. H. 

Pope, is an interpretation, after St. Augustine, of Mark 

iv. 26-29. Rev. J. Henagan details the unjust and 

baneful effects of the Penal Laws during the reign of 
Queen Anne. Never before had the Irish been so 
doggedly persecuted.— ^-The Rev. H. Keane, S.J., gives 
an exhaustive review of T. R. Glover's book, 7h$ Con^ 
flict of Religions in the Roman Empire^ and draws atten- 
tion to its lack of originality and scientific method. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (July): Mr. Dawson's article, 
'' St. Gregory the Great, Pope and Confessor," is a short 
biography of St Gregory.—** A Great Reformer — Fra 
Girolamo Savonarola," by Rev. S. M. Hogan, O.P. The 
article presents Savonarola's work of religious, ethical, 
and social reform. 

Le Correspondant (10 July): H. de Boissieu writes of the 
*' Universal Exposition of Brussels," describing many of 
the foreign exhibits. '* One is impressed by its gaiety 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 847 

and by the manifest confidence for the future of the 
country/'— —'' French Art in the Middle Ages and Re- 
ligious Iconography/' by Louis Brehier, gives us a 
risumi of an appreciation written upon the awarding of 
the Gobert prize to Emile Male for his works on Re- 
ligious Art. The article treats the subject historically. 

'<The Military Elite/' by H. de Matharel, deals 

with the education of military officers, comparing the 
systems of the Continental countries. He believes the 
officers to be the elite of a nation and would have them 
free of all vice and pedantry. 

Rivue du CUrge Franpais (i July): Under the title ''The 
Teaching Church " H. Ligeard gives a sketch of '' the 
Doctrines of the Theologians from the Eighth Century 
to the Vatican Council." P. Godet begins a bio- 
graphical account of Rosmini. In this part he describes 
the philosopher as a model priest and at the same time a 
sincere patriot, inviolably devoted to the Holy See and 
likewise to the cause of Italian independence.— —Re- 
viewing the "Social Movement/' Ch. Calippe discusses 
''The Ecclesiastical Circles of Social Study and Cardi- 
nal Mercier"; "The Lessons in Social Study by P. 
Schwalm " ; " In Austria ; the work of Dr. Lueger." 
(15 July): Under the title "The Discipline of the Sac- 
raments/' A. Villien gives a brief sketch of some usages 
relative to Baptism.— —A. de Poulpiquet, O.P., discusses 
"Dogma, the Principle of Unity in the Church and of 
Individual Religious Life." His thesis is that dogma, 
so far from being the source of disunion and disagree- 
ment among men, fulfills all the conditions of unity.— 
J. Hurabielle gives an historical sketch of " The Church 
in Chili." According to the author the Church and 
morality have flourished there almost from the begin* 
ning.— — E. Lenoble reviews a life of Su Thanas 
AquinaSf by A. D. Sertillanges.*^Mgr. Bouquet con* 
tributes an article on "Servants and Laborers on the 
Farm." 

Revue Binidictine (July): D. De Druyne catalogues various 
African documents bearing on the Latin versions of the 
Bible. These should form a basis for the systematic 
study of the Vulgate, and will greatly aid the textual 



Digitized by 



Google 



848 Foreign periodicals [Sept, 

critic in classifying the various manuscripts of that ver- 
sion. '* A Roman Commentary of the Fifth Century '' 

is the title of an article by D. G. Morin. This com- 
mentary on St Mark has been attributed to St Jerome, 
but evidently is the work of a Roman monk.— —J. de 
Ghellincki SJ., tejls of the wide diffusion of the works 
of Gandulphe de Bologne during the Middle Ages, and 
points out their influence on scholars, especially Peter 
Lombard. 

Annates de PhilosophU ChriHenne (July): ''Descartes and His 
Method/' by Ch. Dunan, is a chapter from a book 
about to appear under the title, The Two Idealisms. 
Aristotelian philosophy, according to the author, was 
based upon the fundamental principle that one cannot 
think without phantasms {sans images)^ while it was the 
object of Descartes to think without phantasms by what 
he called '' clear and distinct " ideas. Descartes' liiathe- 
matical ideas, his explanation of sensation, and his 
famous ''Cogito, ergo sum'' are considered.-^— A. 
Boissard, in ''The Contract to Work and Social Ethics, 
considers how the necessity under which laborers are 
to work in order to live influences the wages they get. 
The author ^holds that employers should not take ad- 
vantage of this position of the workmen to contract 
with them in opposition to the legitimate demands of 
life. 

La Revue Apologitique (July): "A Recasting of Values," by 
L. De Ridder, C.SS.R. The author discusses whether 
or not our dogmatic formulas express only a religious 
experience, as formulas of physics express laboratory^ 

experience. '* Scientific Apologetics and Certitude 

in Geology," by R. de Sinety, S.J. " St. Clement 

Maria Hoffbauer," by Dr. Martin Spahn, is a sketch of 
the times and character of the saint and his influence 
upon the development of the Catholic Church in Ger- 
many. "Social Truths and Democratic Errors," by 

A. Favi&re, states that complete equality and sovereignty 
of the multitude cannot be sustained in the face of the 
dogma of original sin. Charity belongs properly to 
Catholicism and needs the rock of the Church to make 
it stable and efficient 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 849: 

Revue Pratique d' Apologitique (i July): ''The Origin of the 
Dogma of the Trinity/' by Adhemar d'Ale% is a 
risumi of a book of that title by J. Lebreton Beau- 

chesne. ''Mystical Acts in Apologetics/' by Aug. 

Poulain. Are ecstasies^ raptures, and the like sound basis 
for apologetical arguments? Yes; even though these 
phenomena are common to all religions, and especially 
prominent in the fakirs of India. 

(15 July): "The Apologetical Use of Miracles/' by 
Andr^ Dubois, gives a critical exposition concerning the 

validity of miracles. "The Formation of the Theo- 

logical Notion of Person/' by L. Labauche, is an his- 
torical sketch of the development of the present mean- 
ing of the word. The author gives briefly the views 
of the councils and individual Fathers.— -" The Biblical 
Commission on Implicit Quotations/' by H. Les^tre. 

Rivue des Sciences Philosophiques et Thiologiques (July): "The 
Will in Faith/' by A. de Poulpiquet, O.P. The necessity 
for the intervention of the will in faith is based upon 
the intrinsic lack of evidence in the object. Hence the 
will recognizing the authority of the person speaking, 
and the inherent goodness of faith, directs the intellect 
to that phase of the object which appears . true.— —J. 
Zeiller shows the connection between the political 
theories of Aristotle and St. Thomas. The greatest 
weakness in both is the excessive power given to the 
" tyrant," who is just as likely to turn out bad as good. 

Siimmen aus Maria^Laach (July): "The Diversity in Modern 
Philosophy," by K. Kempf, S.J. With Emmanuel Kant 
as 'a basis, our modern philosophical writers are doing 
their utmost to do away with Scholasticism as an ob- 
struction to modern advancement. The author gives 
briefly some of the more noted views held by anti Scho- 
lastic writers. He admits. that there are some diversities 
in Scholastic Philosophy, still none that undermine the 

principles of Christianity. "The Ciusade against the 

Duel," by M. Reichman, S. J., is a summary of statements 
made by various Protestant theologians and pastors 
against this " Honorable Murder." All, whether Chris- 
tian, Jew, or Turk, are of one mind in condemning the 
duel. " Authority and Freedom," by P. Lippert, S. J., 

VOL XCI.^54 



Digitized by 



Google 



8SO FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept., 

gives briefl/ the contents of a book of that title by Fn 
W. Foerster, who solves the great problem of harmonizing 
authority and freedom. Authority is the great '' Mys- 
tery *^ of Catholicity. The author treats his subject from 

a concrete psychological point of view. ''Religious 

Education in Colleges/' by St von Dunin-Borchowski, 
S.J.| is an exhortation on all trainers of our youth to 
consider the necessity of religion in the education of the 
youth. The author shows how impossible it is to follow 
the natural law without the knowledge of God. 

Biblische Zeitschrift (III.) : Professor J. Hehn comments upon 
Hilprecht's '' New Babylonian Deluge- Tablets/' The bib- 
lical conclusions of Hilprecht seem to be going too far, 
but the suggested age and the proposed restoration of 

the lacunae may be safely accepted. ^To ** II. Mace. i. 

19/' Dr. L. Shade remarks that between a concept and 
its expression exists not only an intrinsic but a conven- 
tional relationship, and only the conventional use of a 
word decides whether or not it is justifiable in any given 
case. When II. Mace. i. 19 speaks of a captivity in 
'' Persia/' it may be taken for granted that the Jews 
of that time used this term also for '' Babylonia/' which 
was then a part of Persia. There need be no historical 

error in the account. Dr. Joseph Slaby writes on 

''Sin, Its Punishment and Remission in Old Assyro- 
Babylonia." The vocabulary and the inscriptions of 
Babylon show the existence of an elaborate concept of 
sin against God, not only of sins of deed and word, but 
also of thought, which proves that those nations confessed 

a positive religion. Dr. A. Steinmann advances a new 

reason why Northern* Galatia was the home of those 
Christians to whom the epistle to the Galatians was ad- 
dressed. 

La Civilth Cattolica (16 July): Under the title "Controverted 
Points Concerning the Question of Pope Liberius," F. 
Savio, S.J., treats of .the metrical inscription engraved 
near his tomb in the catacombs of Priscilla, which some 

attribute to him. " The Roman Forum According to 

the Latest Excavations," by P. Sinthern, S.J. Two dia- 
grams accompany this article. Two recent works, The 
Historicity of the First Three Chaptjtrs of Genesis^ by P. 



Digitized by 



Google 



ipio.] FOREIGN Periodicals 851 

M^chineaui S J., and Bishop Bonomelli's The Lay School^ 
Suicide^ the Family^ and Divorce^ are reviewed at length 
in this number. 

RazSn y Fe (July) : L. Murillo, in the first of a series of arti- 
cles on ''The Synoptic Problem/' states the conclusion 
of some modern critics that the Gospel of St. Mark de- 
pends upon those of St. Luke and St Matthew, and 
that none of them*] represents the first history of Christ 
The positive and negative adverse testimony of the Fa- 
thers to this position is examined.— P. Villada, gives 
the provisions of ''The Royal Order Against Religious 
Associations.'' This is thought to be an attempt by Sr. 
Canalejas to distract public astention from questions of 
taxes, etc., with which he cannot successfully cope. 

Espanay Amirica (i July) : " Lombrosian Philosophy," by P. A, 
Gago, outlines the famous theory of Lombroso that crim- 
inals are born such and show by certain physical char- 
acteristics the fact that they are or will become criminal. 
P. B. Ibeas considers " Charity in Spain " according 
to a governmental report of December 30, 1909. Ninety- 
five per cent of the charitable institutions had a religious 
origin, and yet " clericalism " is the enemy of the State 1 
In " Bonds of Union between Spain and Latin Amer- 
ica," P. Fabo points to the common language, history, 
and ideals of Spain and her former colonies. But the 
strongest reason for some sort of union is " the insatia- 
ble piracy of the White House " : witness " the annexa- 
. tion of California and Texas; the infamous blow to 
Porto Rico; the humiliating tutorship over Cuba; the 
stealing of the Philippines; . • • the barefaced tramp- 
ling under foot of the rights of Colombia in the Panama 
Canal affair." 

(15 July): P. M. Coco maintains, in "Pro Patria," that 
since religion is the foundatian of the State it is the 
duty of a good government to preserve the deposit of 
faith intact by all means, "even coercion." Therefore 
Sr. Canalejas, in fostering heretical sects and opposing 
the Catholic Church, is an enemy of his country. 



Digitized by 



Google 



IRecent Bvente* 

Several events that have recently 
France. taken place throw light upon the 

state of things, and indicate that 
all is not well In the France of to* day. The Prefect cf Police 
a few months ago said that ** Paris is a place of refuge for too 
many bandits, and for those the laws are too tender/' For a 
long time the administration of the law has been even more 
tender, for the sentence of death even in the rare cases in 
which it was inflicted by the Courts has been, until quite re- 
cently, Invariably commuted by the President. In January last 
a man named Liabeuf, in circumstances which manifested open 
contempt for the law, murdered one policeman and wounded 
three others. The case was so clear that the death sentence 
was passed by the Court, and the President refused to inter- 
vene, notwithstanding an active campaign conducted by Social- 
ists and humanitarians In favor of a reprieve. So great, how- 
ever, is the power of the sympathizers with crime, that not 
merely the police, but a force of cavalry were required to keep 
order when the execution took place, and the crowd which had 
gathered together (for executions still take place in public in 
France) greeted the ministers cf law with cries of: ''Assassins, 
assassins I '' There is no doubt that a rescue would have been 
attempted, had not the force been overwhelmingly strorg. Tbe 
Greneral Confederation of Labor issued a manifesto calling upon 
the working classes to retort by blows to all the blows which 
they themselves receive. '' In the midst of the bandits of a re- 
public of hypocrites, spies, and murderers let us use every means 
at our disposal for our own defense.'' Whatever may be said 
about liberty and equality, it cannot be said that brotherly 
love is a marked characteristic of the working classes of France, 
so far as the General Confederation of Labor can be looked 
upon as their representative. 

This moral disfigurement of Paris finds a counterpart in 
its physical disfigurement. For many years the Place de 
rOp^ra, the Place de Havre, the Rue Roy ale, and other 
thoroughfares, have been so obstructed by tirorks carried on by 
the contractors for underground railways and by street repairers 
that it is said that in no other city in Europe, outside of 
Russia or Turkey, would such proceedings have been tolerated. 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 853 

The streets are not kept even clean, pedestrians are splashed 
with dirty water from the puddles that are left. So great is 
the change effected in the Paris which was a few years ago 
the most beautiful of cities. Strikes are partly responsible for 
this state of things, and these in their turn are attributed 
to the change that has come over the spirit both of the 
workingmen and of the municipal authorities. The former are 
more anxious to secure what they look upon as their rights 
than to do their duty. Two of the present scavengers do not 
do as much work as one of the old kind did. The Municipal 
Council, in order to humor the men, changed the old system 
some time ago, and, according to its President, made a mistake 
in so doing. ''There is nothing for it,'' he said, ''but to go 
back to the old methods.'' The Municipality has passed a 
resolution to expedite the works and for the revision of plans. 
How effectual this will be depends upon the good-will of those 
who have hitherto stood in the way of progress. 

In even higher circles there are signs that forces are at 
work which, unless controlled, will throw obstacles in the way 
of orderly progress. In the Rochette affair the Chamber of 
Deputies gave to M. Briand's governmient the vote of confi- 
dence which it demanded by a majority of 395 to 85, but 
proceeded immediately afterwards, notwithstanding the Pre-* 
mier's opposition, to appoint a Commission to investigate the 
whole affair. M. Jaur^s, the most bitter opponent in the 
Chamber of M. Briand, is the Chairman of this Commission, 
which proceeded, according to the worst tradition of the 
Revolution, to arrogate to itself the right of a judicial tri- 
bunal, and this for the sake of discrediting political opponents* 
Leading magistrates and officials have been summoned before 
it and vigorously cross-examined. An even worse feature of 
the case is that the whole of the procedure seems to indicate 
that the distinction between the executive and the judicial 
power is not yet fully recognized in France, and that conse- 
quently the country may be at any moment imperilled by the 
confusion of powers. Political passion may, on account of this 
confusion, destroy the confidence in the law and its adminis- 
tration, upon which all stability depends, by importing into the 
courts the passions of the politician. 

M. Rochette, whose wrong- doing has been the occasion of 
these proceedings, is an enterprising individual, who for some 



Digitized by 



Google 



854 RECENT EVENTS [Sept., 

years has been engaged in making a fortune for himself by 
promoting frandulent companies. Upon the government in 
France falls the duty of prosecuting malefactors of this 
kind. For some time it had had a well-grounded suspicion, 
and more than a suspicion, that M. Rochette was guilty. It 
had not been able, however, to bring him into court for want 
of a person willing to bring a definite plaint, in legal form, 
for having been himself defrauded. At length the government 
was moved to action by hearing that M. Rochette was on the 
point of leaving the country. Accordingly*through M. Lupine, 
the Chief of the Police, measures were taken to find some one 
willing to take the necessary first step. The fact that the in- 
dividual who was induced to bring the complaint was not him- 
self worthy of great respect, and that police officials seem to 
have speculated in stocks on account of their knowledge of 
the action that was being taken, led the Collective Socialists^ 
with M. Jaur&s at their head, to take action in the hope of 
scoring a point against the government. It does not seem 
likely that they will succeed, for M. Rochette has been con- 
demned in the Court of First Instance, and the Commission 
has adjourned, much to the delight of the best disposed of the 
citizens of the Republic. The whole goes to show how wil- 
ling politicians in France are to quarrel, and how little they 
have at heart the good of ..the country — that it is personal 
advancement and personal interests, and not principles, that 
are the dominating motives. 

This, in fact, has been the characteristic evil of the Third 
Republic, and of its Parliament, and it is in order to find a 
remedy that M. Briand is striving for Electoral Reform. To 
find a remedy — that is the object that inspires and directs the 
whole spirit of his policy. He has declared it to be his inten- 
tion to work, not for the good of any particular party, but 
for the best interests of the country as a whole. He will no 
longer let the government be a tool for the use of any group, 
or bloc of groups, for their own exclusive advantage. In this 
he is more or less openly opposed by the strongest group both 
in the Senate and in the House of Deputies, as well as by 
Extremists like M. Combes in the Senate, and M. Jaur&s in the 
Chamber. Strange to say the Senate is the more Radical of 
the two Houses, especially since the recent election of the Lower 
House ; nor are the departmental elections, that have just taken 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 855 

place, likely to alter the character of the Upper House. It i^ 
upon these that the composition of the Senate, to a large ex- 
tent, depends. These elections have resulted in a gain of 13 
seats for the Radicals and the Socialist- Radicals, and of 18 
seats for the Collect! vists. Those commonly called Reaction- 
aries, and the Conservative Republicans, lost heavily in the 
elections, thereby indicating, if it stood in any need of indica- 
tion, that the Republic is becoming ever more deeply rooted 
in France. The only question now is what kind of a Republic 
it is going to be— ^extremely Socialistic and anti* Catholic, such 
as M. Combes and M. Jaur&s would make it, or, such as is M. 
Briand's avowed aim, one which will give a full measure of 
justice and fairness to all French citizens, even though they 
are Catholics or Royalists. The success of the Collective So- 
cialists at the recent elections is said to be due to the fact that 
the peasants in many districts are being encouraged to hope 
that the soil of France is to be divided among them. Their 
action is in striking contrast with that of the electors of Paris 
who, at a recent by-election, rejected so well-known a man as 
M. de Pressens^ because he was a CoUectivist. 

Before the adjournment of Parliament the government took 
steps to redeem its promises by introducing the Electoral Re- 
form Bill and the Bill for regulating the duties and securing 
the rights of Civil Servants. By the former it is proposed to 
make the change from scrutin d^arrondissentint to scrutin de liste^ 
of which so much has already been said, and to make arrange- 
ments for the partial renewal of the Chamber every two years, 
the term of each member being extended to six years. By the 
latter, measures are proposed to protect Civil Servants from 
arbitrary action and favoritism, but this is to be secured to 
them on the condition that they renounce the right to strike, 
an express prohibition being included in the Bill. The right 
of association within their own respective branches of the service 
is accorded to all except to the Police, on the condition that 
certain formalities are complied with» 

No change has taken place, so far as is visible, in the rela- 
tions of France to her neighbors. The escape of a political 
prisoner from a British ship ^ in the territorial waters of 
France has given rise to a discussion between France and 
Great Britain, as to whether or not he ought to have been 
handed over to the French authorities, rather than to the 



Digitized by 



Google 



S56 RECENT EVENTS [Sept., 

British. M. Jaur^s and the Socialists are the promotors of the 
claims of France and of the agitation, such as it is, that has 
arisen. But, in whatever way it may be settled, it is not 
likely to diminish the warmth of the entente cotdiale between 
the two countries. Nothing seems to have been done with 
reference to Morocco, and nothing seems likely to be done. It 
is still one of the darkest places on the face of the earth~an 
abode of cruelty and misery. The Sultan has been charged, 
upon good authority, with having inflicted upon a woman 
brutal tortures of an indescribable nature, for the purpose of 
fordng her to reveal her husband's treasures; and, even if in 
this particular case there has been some exaggeration, it is 
only one of many instances in which most cruel treatment has 
been accorded to his subjects. That this method of govern- 
ment should be still possible, even under absolutist rule, is not, 
however, the fault of France. If she had been permitted to 
have her way a few years ago, such things would no longer 
be possible. This is the era of the domination of merely ma- 
terialistic ideas. 

The political world in Grermany 
Germany. has been taking a holiday. The 

Emperor has been cruising and 
preaching. The new Ministers have been learning to fulfill 
the tasks that have been imposed upon them. The new For* 
eign Minister has paid a visit to Count Aebrenthal; whether 
to learn or to teach has not been disclosed. The eighth Dread- 
nought battleship has been launched, the fourth of the second 
batch. A Vice-President of the Reichstag has resigned, in 
order to show his conviction that it is no longer possible 
for the Conservatives to co-operate with the Liberals, and 
that so great a gulf exists between the Right and the Left 
that no one can bridge it. The Ministerial changes seem to 
indicate that the new Chancellor, nothwithstanding his failure 
to settle the Prussian Franchise question, is going to be allowed 
to have a further trial with colleagues more of his own way 
of thinking. It is, we believe, a generally recognized fact, 
that there is a dearth of suitable candidates for the office of 
Chancellor, and that the Empire and its Emperor must be satis- 
fied with what they can get. 

The attempt to govern without close association with any 
party — that is, no longer to try, like Prince Biilow, to form or 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO,] RECENT EVENTS 857 

make use of a bloc'^s to be continued. Prince BQIow, when 
he left office, predicted that a Socialist flood was at hand. 
Their success at the by-elections which have recently been 
held seems to fulfill his prophecy. A General Election is to 
be held next year, and there are those who say that there is 
a good prospect that the Socialists will then win twice as 
many seats as they lost in 1907. Hopes are entertained that 
thereby parliamentary government may show itself to be a 
failure. At the present time it is the Catholic Centre that 
holds the balance of power. 

Certain utterances of Mr. Asquith in his speech on the 
British Naval Programme have led to the revival of the dis* 
cussion about the possibility of an understanding between 
Germany and Great Britain. It is even said that it, in a certain 
sense, already exists. It may be safely said that a better feel- 
ing is in the air. It is time for something to be done; for 
the long-continued tension, and the burdens which it involves, 
cannot be long borne. It costs every man, woman, and child 
in Great Britain five dollars a year to maintain the navy at its 
present strength. The only thing that renders this expense 
necessary is the fear of Germany. 

With reference to the conclusion of the agreement between 
Russia and Japan the German Press expresses indifference, 
although there are some writers who look upon it as involving 
danger both to Germany and the United States. The talk 
about the admission of Turkey into the Triple Alliance serves 
only to show the selfishness which dominates in politics; for 
if any influence was exerted to keep Turkey under the rule 
of Abdul Hamid, that influence was exerted by Germany and 
Austria. 

How little, even in those days of the wide diffusion of in- 
formation, one nation knows about the condition of life in 
other nations^ is shown by the assertions repeatedly made 
during the course of the elections which took place last Janu- 
ary in Great Britain. It was then publicly asserted over and 
over again that the German people were as a rule reduced to 
such a state of extreme wretchedness as to be forced to live 
upon black bread and offal or carrion. The scientific spirit of 
the day, combined with political animosity, led to expeditions 
of investigation being sent to explore Germany in order to 
learn the truth. These expeditions found that the German 



Digitized by 



Google 



858 RECENT EVENTS [Sept., 

people had, in many respects, a better way of liviog than the 
English themselves enjoyed; that, so far as they could see, there 
was practically no drunkenness. They were greatly impressed 
by the beneficial activity of the State and of the local author- 
ities in many directions; by the system of insurance against 
sickness, accident, and old age ; by the provisions for relieving 
and preventing distress; by the welfare schemes provided by 
employers; by the absence of squalid misery; by the domestic 
efficiency of the women and the cleanliness and good order 
of the children. They found, in fact, that they had more to 
learn than to teach, and are now living in the hope that 
their own government may introduce legislation similar to 
that of Germany. 

The sudden prorogation of the 
Austria-Hungary* Austrian Reichsrath was due to 

obstruction in the Budget Commis- 
sion carried on by the Slavs. The whole circumstances are an 
illustration of the distracted state produced by the conflicts 
between the various nationalities. In this case we have com- 
binations and permutations of Germans, Slavs, Poles, and Italians. 
The government is mainly German, and would have been in a 
minority if all the Slavs had been united in opposition, but the 
Poles have hitherto, for somewhat sordid reasons, supported the 
government. The Italians have been promised a university; the 
Poles, however, would not continue to ^ive the government 
the support necessary to enable it to keep its promise on ac- 
count of the discontent which they felt for not having obtained 
certain pecuniary advantages for which they had hoped. The 
Slovenes thereupon claimed an equal right to a University with 
the Italians, and, when this right was not recognized, were 
supported by the other Slavs and took obstructive measures. 
Abandoned by the Poles, and attacked by the Slavs, the gov- 
ernment could not proceed, and, without warning, adjourned 
Parliament. 

^ In Hungary, on the other hand, wonderful to relate, there 
is a prospect of peace, and of an acceptance on the part of 
Hungarians of an arrangement more agreeable to Austrian ideals 
than for many years past could have been hoped for. The 
greatest victory that has ever been won in support of the ex- 
isting Compromise is as surprising as it is complete. A Com<- 
mon Army and a Common Bank seem assured, thus indicating 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 lO.] RECENT EVENTS 859 

he will of the people for close union, and the discomfiture^ if 
not the disappearance, of the movement for independence that 
seemed, only a short time ago, assured of victory. The new 
Prime Minister, Count Khuen Hedervary, is declared, even 
by opponents, to be a statesman with wonderful gifts of modera- 
tion and foresight. M. Kossuth's organ cannot, indeed, bring 
itself to give such unstinted praise, but yet it is filled with 
astonishment at his clever strokes of policy. Difficult problems, 
however, await solution — the suffrage question and an increase 
of taxation in payment of the Bosnia- Herzegovina annexation. 
As to the former, the Premier says that he holds very liberal 
views, and hopes to find a compromise which will settle the 
matter, giving universal suffrage, and at the same time preserv- 
ing the rightful influence of the more intelligent elements of 
society, and of the predominance of the Magyars. This is, in- 
deed, a hard thing to do. Hungary, the Count affirms, is the 
strongest support of the Triple Alliance — an affirmation which 
has caused great displeasure in some Austrian quarters. 

For a long time rumors were cur- 
Rttssla. rent that it was only a matter of 

time when war would break out 
again between Russia and Japan, that the two countries were 
preparing for the renewal of the conflict, and that its imme- 
diate cause would be a collision of interests as to their respec- 
tive railways in Manchuria. All these apprehensions have 
been set at rest by the conclusion of an agreement by which 
the contracting parties extend to one another their friendly 
co-operation, with a view to the improvement of their respec- 
tive railway lines in Manchuria, and promise to abstain from 
all competition prejudicial to the realization of this object. 
Each of the contracting parties undertakes to respect and 
maintain the status quo now existent in Manchuria, and in the 
event of its being threatened in any way, they will enter into 
communication with one another, with a view to coming to an 
understanding for its maintenance. This agreement is to be 
welcomed, since it strengthens the prospect of peace in the 
Far' East, and, on the condition that the two Powers are loyal 
to their engagements with other nations for the preservation 
of the open door. 

It is, however, almost a direct rebuff to this country, for 



Digitized by 



Google 



86o RECENT EVENTS [Sept., 

it is the most distinct refusal to assent to Mr. Knox's proposal 
for the internationalization of these railways that could be 
given. China, also, must look upon it as a blow to the at- 
tempts which she has been making to regain complete sa* 
premacy in her own province. Whether Russia, now that 
anxiety has been removed as to a conflict with Japan, will be 
m^re active in the Near East, or more ready to repay Germany 
for the treatment she received in the recent complications with 
Austria, is a matter about which no conclusion can be formed. 
There are those who say that the army of Russia is in such 
a condition as to render it necessary at all costs to avoid 
everything leading to war, and that, consequently, no fear of 
mischievous activity in European politics need be felt And if 
there is to be an internal contest with Finland, as seems likely, 
there is still smaller likelihood of external conflict The Persian 
situation must be taken into account. Confidence in Russia's 
loyalty to her agreement with England is felt or expressed by 
official circles in that country. But there' are not wanting those 
who maintain that Northern Persia is being quietly absorbed by 
Russia. This might be done without it being necessary to im- 
pute anything directly to the discredit of the Russian govern- 
ment; for it is a well-known habit of her agents in the distance 
to act on their own authority and trust to the recognition of 
the fait accompli. The fact that no troops at all, or only a few, 
have been withdrawn from the place occupied in Persia, lends 
support to this view. 

In the Ottoman dominions not a 
Turkey. few events of some importance 

have to be mentioned. The Cretan 
question has, in one respect, been settled and in another left 
unsettled. The Powers presented an ultimatum to the Cretan 
Executive requiring it to allow the Mohammedan deputies and 
officials to enjoy their rights without taking the oath to the 
King of the Hellenes, and threatening in the; event of refusal 
to land forces and to seize the customs. The Cretan gov* 
ernment had to yield to force majeuti^ but the hearts of the 
Cretans have not been changed, and they are only looking 
forward to a suitable opportunity to bring about that union 
with Greece to which they aspire. On the other hand, Turkey 
seeks a definite solution for good and all, so that the ques* 
tion may never again be raised ; but this the protecting Powers 



Digitized by 



Google 



I9IO.] RECENT EVENTS 86l 

cannot, from the nature of the case, grant. What Turkey 
really wants is a war with Greece, but she dares not venture 
upon such an enterprise, for the whole of Europe would com- 
bine against her. 

As was surmised at the time, the rising in Albania was not 
completely suppressed, and there has been a renewal of the 
fighting. It is asserted, whether on good grounds or not we 
cannot say, that the complete submission of the Albanians 
has at length been secured. Complaints have been made by 
Bulgaria of the treatment of the Bulgarian subjects of Turkey 
dwelling in Macedonia. The determination of the government 
to disarm the Albanians, which caused their uprising, is one 
which extends equally to the Bulgarians, and in fact to all 
Turkish subjects, and seems to be a wise one. If no arms could 
have been borne by any of the races in the Balkans, the dis- 
trict would not have been the scene of the innumerable mur- 
derous outrages that have taken place for so long; and if the 
Turks can succeed in their disarmament proposal for all alikei 
it is a long step towards the improvement which is so much 
needed; provided always that it is only the first step, and 
that all the other promises which have been made are fulfilled. 

The second celebration of the Revolution, which deprived 
the Sultan of absolute power, has been celebrated with great 
rejoicing, and with good reason for joy. Yet much remains to 
be done. This is recognized by the Turks themselves. While 
the constitutional rigime has acquired a certain power and soli- 
darity, there is still a want of union of the various elements 
of the population. In fact a plot has been discovered to over* 
throw the existing government and a deputy has been arrested 
for complicity in it. A year ago a Committee of Fundamental 
Reforms was formed in Paris and branches were established in 
various places in the Turkish dominion. Its object was to stir 
up public opinion in favor of a return to the old state of things. 
There does not seem to be any great probability of its success, 
for discontent is, on good authority, said to be non-existent 
except among those who have suffered by the change and the 
few who have been disappointed in personal hopes. The 
strengthening of the army and even of the navy is perhaps at 
the moment the chief preoccupation of the government, as is 
shown by the large sums voted by Parliament for the former and 
the endeavors made to purchase two battleships from Germany. 



Digitized by 



Google^ 



With Our Readers 



A NOTEWORTHY article by Father Benson appears in the 
August Atlantic Monthly. Its title, '* Catholicism and the 
Future," attracts at once the notice of every thinking man, and 
arouses the enthusiasm of every Catholic. Father Benson is hopeful 
and optimistic, apd states in clear, thoughtful language the reasons 
for his hope. The tide is surely turning towards Catholicism ; and 
the arm-chair philosophers, who, for the most part, have dealt with 
a priori assumptions rather than with facts, have but hastened its 
turning. 

Father Benson points out the significant portents foretelling 
another victory for Catholicism. His paper is a trumpet-call to 
Catholics. No one can read it unmoved. Beholding the possibili- 
ties of the near future, one is straitened to put forth every energy 
when energy will bear such fruit ; to go forth, in as far as he can, 
into the halls of learning, the schools, the congresses, into the high* 
ways and byways of everyday life, and show forth the truth of the 
Catholic faith, by preaching, by example, by conversation, by the 
distribution of the printed word. Our harvest is world-wide and the 
fields are white for the gathering. As Father Benson shows, the 
world, almost in spite of itself, is preparing to welcome Catholicism. 
The Catholic Church holds the truth and the blessings that the 
human soul craves. It is eternally important that all of us should 
be up and doing — we upon whom this inheritance rests — in order 
that nothing of the glory of future Catholicism be lost because of 
our ignorance or our indifference. 



WB earnestly hope that the coming National Conference of Catho- 
lic charities will receive the active support of every charitable 
organization and every charity worker throughout the United 
States. The work contemplated by the Conference will not inter- 
fere with or cross in any way the work and aims of any existing 
charity organization — but will unite all, aid all, by the interchange 
of the knowledge which experience brings, and raise to a still 
higher point of eflSciency the Catholic charity work of the United 
States. The Conference will open at the Catholic University, 
Washington, D. C, on September 25, and close on the 28th. As 
officially published the aims of the Conference are : 



Digitized by 



Google 



19 10.] WITH OUR READERS 863 

(i) To bring about exchange of views aijiong experienced 
Catholic men and women who are active in the work of charity. 

(2) To collect and publish information concerning organization, 
problems, and results in Catholic charity. 

(3) To bring to expression a general policy toward distinctive 
modem questions in relief and prevention and towards methods and 
tendencies in them. 

(4) To encourage further development of a literature in which 
the religious and social ideals of charity shall find dignified expres- 
sion. 

• ♦ . • 

THE series of papers on **The Holy Land,'' which Robert 
Hichens is contributing to the Century^ and which will end 
in the September issue, are unusually brilliant pieces of descrip- 
tive work. The Century presents them with many photographs and 
with paintings in color by Jules Gu6rin. In the August Century 
Hichens writes of the holy places in Jerusalem. We select the fol- 
lowing extract : 

** I heard, when I was about to penetrate into the low and dark 
grotto in which our Lord is said to have been imprisoned and kept 
for a time by the order of Pilate, a soft and strangely, innocently 
sweet voice singing. I stood for some minutes listening, wondering 
whether the singer was a child. Then I went on softly. In a small 
and low cavern, containing a tiny wooden altar, I found an old 
Russian peasant woman. She had set a votive candle upon the 
altar. This was her only light. Dressed in a sort of tunic of some 
coarse and dark stuff, with a short skirt and thick woolen leggins, 
she was kneeling on the hard ground, holding a small book in her 
wrinkled hands and singing. Now and then the tears rolled down 
her cheeks. When I came in she did not look at me. I stayed for 
some time with her in the cavern. I do not think she knew I 
was there. Her soul was with Christ, imprisoned, maltreated, for 
the sake of all the poor peasants of Russia, of all the poor peasants 
of all lands. And the innocent tenderness of her heart, the gratis 
tude, the sorrow, the faith of her soul, sent such an indescribable 
sweetness, almost as of virginal youth, into her voice, that I shall 
not forget it. The votive candle on the tiny wooden altar burned 
low. I lelt her singing alone, yet surely with one hearer." 



Digitized by 



Google 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

Thomas Y. Crowbll & Co., New York : 

Oberumwur^u. By Tosephine H. Short. Price $z net. Tki Bofs Cnckuimm, Heroic 
Legends of Ireland. By Eleanor Hull. Price $1.50 net TJU DmrakU SaHifycHtms 
of Life, By Charles w. EUot. Price $z net. 
Thb Alice Harriman Company, New York: 

Trails Through Western Woods, By Helen Fitzgerald Sanders. Price $2 net 
Bbmziobr' Brothers, New York: 

Prayers to the Sacred Heart, By Blessed Margaret Mary. Price 35 cents net. 
Longmans, Green & Co., New York : 

Letters of John Mason Neale, D,D, Price los. 6d, net. 
State Charities Aid Association, New York: 

An Illustrated Hand-Booh for Tuberculosis Comsnittees, Price 50 cents. 

R« F. Fbnno & Co., New York : 

The Passover, By Clifford Howard. Price $z net. 
John P. Smith Printing Company. Rochester: 

Reunion in New Netherland, By Frederick J. Zwierlein, L.D. 
Apostolic Mission House, Washington, D.C.: 

Tho Sermons and aonfermues of John TamUr of tho Order of ProMchers, By Walter 
EUiott/C.S.P. 
L. C. Page ft Co., Boston: 

Comrada of tho Trails, By G. E. Theodore Robertf. Prioo $2.50. 
Franciscan Monastery, Paterson: 

T he Franciscan Almanac, Price 25 cents. 
Society op the Divihb Word, Teehny, 111.; 

St, Michael's Almanac for igii. Price 25 cents postpaid. 
C. Th. Odhner, Bryn Athyn, Pa.: 

Michael Servetms, His Lift and Teachings. By C. T. Odhner. Price 50 cents. 

B, Herder, St. Lonis, Mo. : 

The Life of Cardinal Vanghan, By J. G. Snead-Coz. Vols. I. and II. Price, 2 vols., 

{7 net. ModUaHont. By De Ponte. Vol. VI. BiUiothscn AuoHca Mytiim. Priee 
Z.30 net. 
Art ft Book Company, London : 

The LUnrgical Year Historical^ ExfUdned and a Kej^ toths Misioi for thi Uu of tki 
Laity, By Father Thaddeus, O.F.M. Price 6df. net.. 
Qborgb Allen ft Sons, London : 

Ltfe Lessons from Blessed Joan of Arc* By Father Bernard VangfaaB, SJ. Price 31* 
6</net. 
P. Lbthibllbux, Paris : 

La Relipon de la Grice Antique, Par O. Habert Cumu Scriplmm Sacrm, Par B. 
Comely, T. Knabenbaner, Father De Hnmmelaner. Coutmentarins in Proverbia, Per 
Josepho Knabenbaner, S.J., Cum appendice De Arte Rhythmka H ebnmrmm per 
Francisco Zorell, S.J. Commenlarius in Librum Safientice, Par Rudolpho Comely, 
S.J. Edidit Frandsco Zorell, S. J. Introdudiones in U, T, Libros Sacoos Comfendimm, 
Par Rudolpho Comely, S.J. Editionem Seztam Recognovit et Complerit Martinoi 
Hagen, S.J. 
Bloud bt Cib., Paris, France: 

La Philosophic Mintrale, Par Albert de Lapparent. Price ^frs, 50. 
J. Oabalda et Cie, Paris : 

Problomes Economiquu et Sociaux, Par Max Tormann. Price 9 firs, 50. FonoUn ei Sea 
Amis. Par Albert Delplanque. Price 3 frs, 50. St, Leon to Grand. Par Adolphe 
Regnier. Price 9 frs, 
P. TAqui, Paris : 

La Venerable Mario de F Incarnation, Par Une Religieuse do Meme Ordre. VAngt 
Guardien, Par I'Abb^ P. Felge. Price ifr, Pierre DeXeriolet. Par le Vie Heppo- 
lyte le Gouvello. Price 3 fii, 50. £n Pinitonce choM les JSsmies* Par Panl tCer. 
Price ^frs, 50. Planes d* Instructions pour le Docese De Nevers. Price 3/rr. 
Gabriel Bbauchesnb bt Cie, Paris : 

Dictionnaire Afologetique delaPoi Catholique. Fascicule L, II., IV. 
Fr. Pustet, Rome : 

Summa Juris Ecclesiastice Publici, Par Augustino Baehofen, O.S.B. Price, Bound, 
$z.5o,net. 
Australian Catholic Truih Socibty, Melbourne: 

Ferrer, the Anarchist, The Facts of His Life and Trial, By Rer. M. H.;MacInery, O.P. 
Marriage, By Rev. John Charnock, S.J.^ 



Digitized by 



Google 



SEPTEMBER 1910 



THE 



ONIV. OF MICH, 

Aira 991910 



itholie rid 

Ohristology and OriticiBm W. T. C. Skeppard, OS.B,, B.A. 

Patricia, the Problem Esther W. Neill 

In Garra and Tirawley, County Mayo Wilfrid St. Oswald 

Social Work in Switsserland Virginia M. Crawford 

stolen Fortunes Marie Manning 

Problems in Charity William /• Kerby, Ph.D. 

Spain of To-Day Andrew /. Shipman 

Education, Ddyelopmenf, and Soul Edward A. Pace, PKD. 

New Books— Foreign Periodicals 

Recent Erents : France : Unpunished Crime— Paris Disfigured— Ob- 
stacles to Progress — Imitating the Revolution — Politicians and 
Patriotism — M. Briand and Political Reform — Foreign Relations — 
Darkest Morocco. Germany: Ministerial Changes — Socialist 
Successes — More Cordial Relations With Great Britain — How the 
People Live. Austria- Hungary : Conflict of Nationalities — 
Peace in Hungary— Unsolved Problems. Russia: Friendly Agree- 
ment With Japan — ^A RcbufI to the United States— The Army — 
Activity in the Near East. Turkey: The Cretan Question— Re. 
newcd Fighting in Albania— Growing Satisf£.cticn ^ith the New 
Governments 

With Our Headers: Future of Catholicism— The National Conference 
of Catholic Charities. 

Plicae— 95 cents \ #3 per Year 

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD, NEW YORK 

Z30-Z9S mrest 6oUi street 

KEQAH PAUL, TRBHCH, TRUBNER ft GO., Ltd., Drydea House, 43 Qarrird St., Soho, LondoBi V 

Poor U Fraaeo ot las Goloalas Franoaisos: ARTHUR SAfABTB, Edltenr 
MMtenr de U " RoTue dn Monde Oatholiqae," 76 Rue des Baints-Pores, Paris 

S9TERED AT NEW YORK POST-OFFICE AS StCOND-CLASB M4f|fggd by V^jOOQ IC 





Broadway, Ulh and 37th Sb„ HcmU Square^ 

New York 

Most Centrally Located Hotel on Broadway 

Four Beautiful Dining Rooms 

European Plan 

400 Rooms r 200 Baths 

SCHEDULE OF RATES 

90 Rooms Privilege of Bath, - - $i.oo . 
80 Rooms with Bath, - - - - 1.50 
60 Rooms with Bath, - - - 2.00 

50 Rooms with Bath, - - - :- 2.50 
45 Suites — Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath, 500 

For Extra Person in Room, - - i.oo 

WRITE FOR BOOKLET 

SWEENEY-TIERNEY HOTEL COMPANY 



E. M. TIERNEY, Managing Director 



Digitized by 



Google 



PLAIN FACTS FOR FAIR MINDS. 

An Appeal to Candor and Common Sense. 

By FATHJRR SJSARLB, PAUI,IST. 
S^o pp«f paper* xo cents. 

S eentM « o^py in guanUtiea of xoo or more, tor emMh. 

nCBJR COI«I7MBI7S PRHS8» 
xso 'West 6otli Street* Keinr Yorlc. 



SHILLINO VOLUMES. 



TBB CATBOI<IC CBIHKCB AKD I<ABOBL. 



A Litter U tki Workimg-Mm <if Bmgland, 
Ckristimm Democracy in Pre-Reformatum 

Tiwus, Bj Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B. 
TMe Church and Labor, Bf Abbot Snow* 

O.S.B. z. The Church and the Slare. 

a. The Church and the Serf. %, The 

Church and the Crafts. 4. The Church 

and the Workman. 
Christian Aspects 0/ the Labor Question, 

Bjthe Same. 



Containins: : 



Fair Treatment /or Honest Worh, By the 

Same. 
The Cathoitc Church and the Sweatmi 

System, By Leslie A. Toke. 
Leo Xin, on the Condition of Labor. Bj 

Cardinal Manning:. 
Thoughts for Freethinhers : An Appeal to 

Young Men, Bj the Very Rer. Canon 

Barry, D.D. 
Thoughts for CreedUss Women. By Emily 

Hickey. 



CATBOI<lCISH AIVD SOCIAI<ISH. 



Containins:: 



Christian CHfUiaation and the Pertls that 
threaten it. By the Archbishop of Phil- 
adelphia. 

Sowu economic Considerations of Socialism. 
By Alexander P. Mooney, M.D. 

Some Ethical Considerations of Socialism. 
By the Same. 



Socialism. By the Rey. Joseph Rickaby, S.J. 
Socialism and Religion* By the Rer. John 

Ashton, S.J. 
Socialism. By Charles S. Devas, M.A. 
Plain Words on Socialism. By the Same. 
The Socialist Movement. By Arthur J. 

O'Connor. 



SOCIAI^ ^WOBLK POBL CATBOI<IC I<AY POI<K. 



The Laywum in the 
Church. By Abbot Gasquet, 6.S.Bc 

The Layman in the Church. By the Very 
Rer. Canon Barry, D.D. 

The Work of the Catholic Laity. By Car- 
dinal Vaughan. 

The Help of the Laity. By the Rer. John 
Norris. 

Rescue Worh. By Lady Edmund Talbot. 



Containing: : 
Pre-Reformation Settlement Worh. By the Same. 

Worh in the Hop-Gardens. By Bertrand 

W. Devas. 
Retreats for Worhers. By Charles Plater, 

S.J. 
Study-Clubs for Working-Men. By C. C. 

Martindale, S.J. 
Some Methods of Social Study. By Leslie 

A. Toke. 



OifBOUO fBUra BOOIBTT. 69 SMrikwark-BrUga Roil, Irfmiti, 8. B. BmI^ 



Ptease mention The CathoMe World when writing to adwerttsere. 



Digitized by 



Google 



Five Million, Eloquent. 



If there were only one telephone 
in the world it would be exhibited 
in a glass case as a curiosity. 

Even in its simplest form tele- 
phone talk requires a second instru- 
ment with connecting wires and 
other accessories. 

For real, useful telephone service, 
there must be a comprehensive 
system of lines, exchanges, switch- 
boards and auxiliary equipment, 
with an army of attendants always 
on duty. 

Connected with such a system a 
telephone instrument ceases to be a 
curiosity, but becomes part of the 



great mechanism of universal com- 
munication. 

To meet the manifold needs of 
telephone users the Bell System has 
been built, and today enables twenty- 
five million people to talk with one 
another, from five million telephones. 

Such service cannot be rendered 
by any system which does not cover 
with its exchanges and connecting 
lines the whole country. 

The Bell System meets the needs 
of the whole public for a telephone 
service that is united, direct cmd 
universaL 



American Telephone and Telegraph Company 

I And Associated Companies 

■ JVA^ wrtitngto aduertutrs pUast wuntion Tki CatMic World. 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



% OF 



General Literatore and Science. 



Vol. XCI. , SEPTEMBER, 1910. No. 546. 



Tht entire contents of erery issue of The Catholic Wobld are protected bj cop^s^t 
in the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. Quotations and extracts, of reasonable 
leng;th, from its pa^es are permitted when proper credit is giren. But reprintini^ the articles, 
either entire or in substance, eren where credit is ^ren, is a riolation of the law of copj* 
right, and renderf the party guilty of it liable.to prosecution^ 



PUBLISHED BY 
THE PAULIST FATHERS. 

New York: 

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD 

120-122 West 60th Street 

Copyright ia United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. 
Eniired at the Past-Offies as Second-Class Matter, 

DEALERS SUPPLIED BY THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 

N.B.^The posugc on *• The Catholic World "to Great Britain and Ireland, France, 
Belgium, Italj, and Germany is 6 cents. 

Digitized by LjOOQ IC 



JUST PUBLISHED. 



Spanish Question Box. 

A translation into Spanish 
of the well-known book by 



Father BERTRilND L CONWAY, CS.P. 



PAPER. 700 PAGES. 

Prlccy 50 cento per copy. 



Send for Price List, when ordered in quantities. 



THE COLUMBUS PRESS, 
xao West 6otb Street, New York, 



J 



Digitized by 



Google 



D0 net/orgwt /« mmm^m this MagMMm^ mk^m gifriitgyaur 9ri€r$. 

Digitized by VjOOQIC 



HOLY CROSS COLLEGE, ^•^^^//sT^"'* 

Oldest Calliolic College in INeir Bn8:laiid. I.ar8:e9t Catbolic Col- 
le8:e in America. Pre-eminently tlie Selection of tlie Critical. 



Under the administration of the Jesuit Fathers. Situated in America's healthiest section ; beautiful and ex- 
tensive {^rounds ; large and imposing buildings ; modem equipment and conveniences ; cultured environment. 

Offers exceptional educational and athletic advantages. Advanced courses in classics, mathematics, sciences, 
modern languages, and philosophy. Fully equal to any non-Catholic College. 

Athletics Mncourajied to^.lo^i^^^^:^^"^''' 

Athletic fields, gymnasium, baths — equal to the best. 
For terms, entrance requirements, etc., address Prefect of Stttdiea* 



ST. CECILIA ACADEMY, 

Nashville, Tenih 



U Oik Bad Aft Dep«rtm«Bti tMi* 



A Boarding School for Yoang Ladies. 

Collegiate course of study, sound, logical, fbotonch. 
iacted l^ teachers of great skill and experience. 

Object — to gire pupils a thorough education of mind and heart, to help them d e T tl f 
healthy bodies, womanly characters, and gradoat manners. Climate genial, invigoimtlBf « 
eminently helpful to delicate constitutions. Apply to DotfiNiCAa SUTIBI. 



In antwgHng advertUemints phase mentis Tk§ OUkPiic World, 

Digitized by LjOOQIC