THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
' AP '
i.
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.
VOL. XCV.
APRIL, 1912, TO SEPTEMBER, 1912.
NEW YORK.
THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
120 WEST 6oth STREET.
1912.
CONTENTS.
Apostolicity, The Note of. H. P.
Russell 86
" Ballad, The, of The White Horse,"
G K. Chesterton's. James B.
Dollard, . . 4i
Bazin, Rene. Joseph L. O'Brien, 815
Bible Study and Translation, Wo-
man's Work in. A. H. Johns,
AM 463
Blessed Sacrament, The Poet of
t he. Anna T. Sadlier, . . 363
Brittany, The Pardons of. Anita
MacMahon, . . .629
Calderon, Don Pedro: See The
Poet of the Blessed Sacra-
ment ^nno T. Sadlier, . 363
Catholic Principles and English
Literature. Emily Hickey, . 145
Catholic, The, Social Guild. Vir-
ginia M. Crawford, . . 47
Charles II.: See A Scamp's Pro-
bation. John Ayscough, . 737
Chesterton, G. K. : See " Ballad,
The, of the White Horse."
James B. Dollard, . .41
Church The Four Notes of: See
The Note of Apostolicity.
H. P. Russell, ... 86
Darwin and " Darwinism " and
Certain Other " Isms." Sir
Bertram C. A. Windle, LL.D.
i, 177, 320
Dolben, Digby. Louise Imogen
Guiney, .... 758
Eugenics and Catholic Teaching.
Thomas J. Gerrard, . . 289
Eugenics : See Sanctity and Racial
Betterment. Thos. J. Gerrard, 721
Foreign Periodicals,
119, 263, 409, 551, 694, 839
France, The Social Apostolate in.
Max Turmann, LL.D., 231, 748
Glimpses of the All-Beautiful.
Hubert Hull, . . .641
" Guardians of Liberty," The.
Richard J. Keeffe, LL.D., . 97
Inward Man, The Might of the.
Walter Elliott, C.S.P., . -33
Islam./-. March Pliillipps, . . 586
lorgensen's St. Francis. Paschal
Robinson, O.F.M.. 385
Juvenile Reading: See When the
World Was Young. Joseph
Francis Wickham, . . 37$
Krogh-Tonning, Dr. Knud, "The
Newman of Norway." /. F.
Scholfteld, . . . -777
Landownership, The Abuses of
Private. John A. Ryan, S.T.D. 789
Leader, A, in Modern Surgery.
James J. Walsh, M.D., Sc.D., 352
Lister, Joseph Lord : See A Leader
in Modern Surgery. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Sc.D., . . 352
Lovelace and Vaughan: A Specula-
tion. Louise Imogen Guiney, 646
Methodists: What do the Metho-
dists Intend To Do? Francis
P. Duffy, D.D. . . .663
Modern Theories and Moral Dis-
aster. Thomas J. Gerrard, 433
Monism : See Modern Theories and
Moral Disaster. Thomas J.
Gerrard, .... 433
More, Sir Thomas, and His Time.
W. E. Campbell, . .76
Neglected, A, Great Poem. Fred-
erick Page, .... 508
Newman, Cardinal, The Life of.
Francis P. Duffy, D.D., . . 56
"Newman, The, of Norway" (Knud
Krogh-Tonning)./. F. Schol-
fteld, 777
Novels of Innocence. W. E. Camp-
bell, 1S3
Pardons, The, of Brittany. Anita
MacMahon, .... 629
Patmore's " Tamerton Church-
Tower." Frederick Page, . 508
Prayers, Saying. Charlton Bene-
dict Walker, . . . 488
Property : See The Abuses of Pri-
vate Landownership. John A,
Ryan, S.T.D. . . .789
Property, The Doctrine of the Fath-
ers of the Church on the Right
of Private. Charles F. Aiken
S-T.D ; I97
Recent Events,
127, 269, 415, 557, 700, 846
San Gimignano and Its Treasure.
Christopher St. John, . . 770
Sanctity and Racial Betterment.
Thomas J. Gerrard, . . ~ 2l
CONTENTS
in
q Mmp's Probation, A. John Ays-
cough, 737
al Apostolate in France, The.
Max Turmann, LL.D., 231, 748
Social Guild, The Catholic. Vir-
ginia M. Crawford, . . 478
Spiritual Reading. Walter Elliott,
C.S.P., 656
St Clare of Assisi. Father Cuth-
bert, O.S.F.C., . . 30, 212, 338
St. Francis, Jorgensen's. Paschal
Robinson, O.F.M., . . 383
Universal Peace, The Problem of.
W. P. S., . . . . 516
Vaughan, Lovelace and, A Specula-
tion. Louise Imogen Guiney, 646
When the World Was Young.
Joseph Francis Wickham, . 376
With Our Readers,
139, 281, 427, 566, 710, 856
Woman's Work in Bible Study and
Translation. A. H. Johns,
AM., 463
STORIES.
A New Curiosity Shop. John Ays-
cough, .... 446, 596
Christopher. E. M. Dinnis, . . 577
Consequences. Esther W. Neill,
ii, 160, 305
Passing the Love of Woman. C.
Decker, .... 495
The End of the Journey. Claude
M. Girardeau, ... 70
The Foster-Child. Katharine Ty-
nan, ..... 802
The Intruder. E. M. Dinnis, . 221
The Muffin Man. Anna T. Sadlier, 612
POETRY.
At the Abbey of The Woods.
Michael Earls, SJ., . .194
I Have Loved Thy Law. F. C.
Devas, S.J., .... 375
Lines In Memory of Archbishop
John Carroll. Hildegarde, . 108
Olivet. E. P. Tivnan, S.J., . . 69
Sir Lionel. Edward J. O'Brien, 96
The Cistercian Monk at Matins.
E. M. Dinnis, . . . 776
The Electric Storm. Julian E.
Johnstone, .... 639
The Gift. Willis Boyd Allen. . 351
The Heart of the Wind. P. /.
Carroll, C.S.C., . . . 494
The Secret Word. John Jerome
Rooney, . . . . 159
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A Biography of Father James J.
Conway, S.J., . . . .118
Agatha's Hard Saying, . .261
A Little Pilgrimage in Italy, . . 685
Alma at Hadley Hall, . . 692
American Colonial Government,
1696-1765, . . . 684
Among the Blessed ; Loving
Thoughts About Favorite Saints, 259
An American Missionary Rev. W.
H. Judge, SJ 829
An Eirenic Itinerary, . . . 244
A \"ew Conscience and an Ancient
Evil 835
A Personal Record, . . . 254
Appeal For Unity in the Faith, 260
Back to Rome, .... 678
Back to the World, . . .253
Beacon Lights, Maxims of Cardinal
Gibbons, ..... 406
Bible et Protestantisme, . . 261
California: Its History and Ro-
mance, ..... 109
Cases of Conscience, . . . 404
Catholic Ideals in Social Life, . 1 13
Catholic Studies in Social Reform, 832
Ce qui on enseigne aux enfants, 408
Christ's Teaching Concerning Di-
vorce in the New Testament, . 822
Cloister Chords, .... 692
Commercial Geography, . . 690
Conferences a La Jeunesse Des
Ecoles, ..... 693
Considerations sur 1'Eternite, . 408
Correspondance De Bossuet, . 544
Crime, Its Causes and Remedies, 833
Daily Readings from St. Francis de
Sales, ..... 406
Destitution and Suggested Rem-
edies, ... . 832
Discours Eucharistiques, . 408
Do-Re-Mi-Fa, . . . 550
Elements of English Law, . 251
Enchiridion Partristicum, . 688
Er.tretiens Eucharistiques, . 408
Everyman's Religion, . . 546
Eve Triumphant, . . 397
Faith Brandon, . . . 548
Fate Knocks at the Door, . 691
Fresh Flowers For Our Heavenly
Crown, ..... 549
Garibaldi and the Making of Italy, 399
Geschichte Der Weltliteratur, . 405
Girls' Clubs and Mothers' Meetings, 400
Hadji Murad, . . . . in
In Chateau Land, . . . 259
In Desert and Wilderness, . . 548
Innocent XI. Sa Correspondance
avec ses nonces: 21 Septembre,
1676 31 Decembre, 1679, . 836
IV
CONTENTS
J'ai Perdu la Foi 1 ... 407
Jesus All Holy 549
Jesus the Bread of Children, ' . 838
John Poverty, .... 260
Knight of the Green Shield, . 254
La Contemplation, . . -550
Lamennais et le Saint-Siege, . 682
L'Education Chretienne, . . 408
Leo XIII. and Anglican Orders, 392
Lc Pain Evangelique, . . . 408
Life and Letters of John Lingard, 246
Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph's, 538
Lourdes, . . ' . ' . . 252
Manalive, . . . . .396
Mariam'ne of the Cedars, . . 407
Marriage With a Deceased Wife's
Sister, ..... 679
Miss Billy's Decision, . . . 837
Modern Miracle Plays, . .401
Motive-Force ' and Motivation
Tracks, . . . . .113
Myths and Legnds -of the Celtic
Race, ..... 531
Naomi of the Island, . . . 261
Newman catholique d'apres des
documents nouveaux, . . 830
Nunc Dimittis, or, The Presenta-
tion in The Temple, . . 692
Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon, 260
Poems, ..... 407
Poverina, . . . . .550
Primitive Buddhism, . . . 689
Prosperity : Catholic and Protestant, 825
Psychology Without a Soul, . . 395
Race Suicide, .... 542
Rayton, A Backwoods Mystery, . 261
Robert E. Lee,. Man and Soldier, 528
Sacred Dramas, . . . .401
Scientific Mental Healing, . .681
Selections from 'the Old Testament, 691
Short Readings for Religious, . 692
Socialists at Work, . . .838
Socialism : The Nation of Father-
less Children 837
Sorrow for Sin: Must It be Su-
preme? ..... 262
Spiritual Perfection Through Char-
ity. ... .825
St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 259
St. Francis of Assisi, . . . 242
Steps in the Attack of Rationalism
Against the Gospel and the Life
of Our Savior, . . "4
St Patrick, . . . .117
Stover at Yale, .... 399
Student's Handbook of English
Literature, . . .831
Sweated Labour and the Trade
Boards Act, . . . .832
Swimming Scientifically Taught, . 692
The Acts of the Apostles for Chil-
dren, . . . 'H7
The American People: A Study in
National Psychology, . . 540
The Business of Salvation, . . 687
The Cambridge Historical Readers, 247
The Chinese Revolution. . . 827
The Civilization of China, . .251
The Coward. . . . . -04
The Credibility of the Gospel, . .;-
The Crux of Pastoral Medicine,
The Culture of the Soul,
The Dear St. Elizabeth,
The Dominant Chord, .
The Dream of Gerontius,
The Essentials of Socialism,
The Evidence for the Supernatural,
A Critical Study Made with
Un-Common Sense, ...
The Eve of Catholic Emancipation,
The Faithful Failure, .
The Fighting Blade, .
The Fighting Race (Kelly and
Burke and Shea) ; and Other
Poems and Ballads, .
The Forged Coupon, and Other
Stories, .....
The Friendship of Christ, ...
The Fugitives, .
The Girls of Friendly Terrace,
The Good .Shepherd and His Little
Lambs, .....
The Gospels for Lent and the Pas-
sion of Christ, ....
The Heart of the Gospel ; Traits
of the Sacred Heart,
The Hindu Arabic Numerals,
The Holy Mass Popularly Ex-
plained, .....
The Holy Viaticum of Life as of
Death, . .
The Indian Tribes of the Upper
Mississippi Valley,
The Individualization of Punish-
ment, . . ' .
The Interior Castle,
The Life of Madame De La Roche-
jaquelein.
The Life of St. Teresa,
The Light of the Vision,
The Living Witness,
The Mustard Tree,
The Pilgrim's Guide to Lourdes,
The Power and the Glory,
The Price of Unity,
The Principal Girl,
The Promised Land
The Reason Why, '.
The Sincere Christian, '
The Social Evil, with Special Ref-
erence to Conditions Existing in
the City of New York,
The Squirrel Cage,
The Truth of Christianity
The Wit and Humor of' Colonial
Days,
Three Quarters of a Centurv
(1807-1882),
Through the Desert,
Told in the Twilight, .
Tractus de Extrema Unctione,
Untersuchungen und L'rteile Zu
Den Literaturen Verscheidener
Volker, ....
When Mother Lets Us Travel in
Italy.
Wide-Awake Stories, .
Woman and Social Progress.
Words of Wisdom from Cardinal
Gibbons. ....
Y a-t-il un Dieu?
25S
260
401
261
118
837
261
245
118
407
257
in
824
532
692
838
tiS
400
548
549
547
537
833
533
Iio
404
406
686
677
690
404
527
687
547
686
402
403
399
403
249
543
112
550
258
686
549
833
406
407
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCV. APRIL, 1912. No. 565.
DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " AND CERTAIN OTHER
" ISMS."
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., K.S.G.
PRESIDENT OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, CORK, IRELAND.
HOSE whose business or hobby it is to read the
almost innumerable manuals, pamphlets and maga-
zine articles dealing with what is compendiously
called " Darwinism," cannot fail to be struck with
the fact that the diverse, and not infrequently con-
flicting opinions, put forward under that title are not merely ad-
vanced as biological theories, but that they are also, more often
than not, set forward, with more than pontifical dignity, as a com-
plete philosophy of life on a monistic basis, as a sound substructure
for educational and even for far-reaching political theories and,
in fact, one might almost say, as a kind of new gospel wherein may
be found help and direction in all the changes and chances of life.
It is a bold claim; and the object of these papers is to see how far
it is justifiable.
To those, at any rate, who have really studied Darwin's works
and especially those works as illustrated and commented on by his
" Life and Letters " and who consequently know something of
what his real views were, the glosses to use no stronger term
which are put upon his theories must often cause astonishment.
Not less astonishing is the calm way in which opinions put forward
by Darwin in a very tentative manner, and opinions founded upon
them which were quite unknown to that author are now enunciated
as the last and infallible word of science, and whoever denies it
will without doubt be scientifically damned.
Copyright. 1912. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
:u THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. XCV. I
2 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [April,
Now dogmatism when practised by the Church of God which
if it is what it claims to be and what we believe it to be certainly
has the right to be dogmatic is just the thing which excites the
righteous wrath of the kind of writers of whom I have been speak-
ing. " Enslaving the minds of men " " blinding the intellect "
" interfering with scientific progress," one knows the whole litany,
"bobs (I think the ringers call them), bobs and bobs-royal, and
triple-bob-majors and grandsires to the extent of their compass
and the full ring of their metal " as Cardinal Newman remarked
concerning another anti-Catholic litany now become somewhat
musty.
It does not ever seem to strike our critics of religious dogma-
tism, however, that there is an old adage concerning the pot and the
kettle, not unworthy of consideration in this connection; in other
words it does not seem to strike them that there is just the possi-
bility of the existence of such a thing as scientific dogmatism, un-
justifiable as well as justifiable. At any rate men of science, whose
claim to that title cannot be gainsaid, have in set terms complained
of such a thing. In the first days of the materialistic conflict of the
second half of the last century, two very distinguished men, Pro-
fessors Stewart and Tait, wrote a book called " The Unseen Uni-
verse," the object of which was to "confute those who (in the out-
raged name of science) have asserted that science is incompatible
with religion." In the book* replying to some of their critics who
had accused them of dogmatising, they exclaim, "Surely it is not we
who are dogmatists, but those who assert that the principles and
well-ascertained conclusions of science are antagonistic to Christ-
ianity and immortality."
Coming down to our own immediate days, let us see what Pro-
fessor Driesch has to say on this point, premising his statement by
the note that no one will deny him a position amongst the most dis-
tinguished biologists of the day. In his excellent and most convinc-
ing series of lectures delivered in Aberdeen in 1907 and 1908,1 he
says:
Strange to say, Darwinism, and the opinion of Charles Darwin
about descent of organisms, are two different things. Darwin,
the very type of a man devoted to science alone and not to per-
sonal interests, was anything but dogmatic, and yet Darwinism
is dogmatism in one of its purest forms.
*Preface to zd. ed., p. xv.
t"The Science and Philosophy of the Organism," vol. i., pp. 260-261.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 3
Again he states:
Darwin's polemics never left the path of true scientific dis-
cussions. He never in all his life abused any one who found
reason to combat his hypotheses, and never turned a logical prob-
lem into a question of morality. How different is this from what
many of Darwin's followers have made out of his doctrines, es-
pecially in Germany ; how far is " Darwinism " removed from
Darwin's own teaching and character !
But enough of this: every scientific man of middle-age will
remember this when Weismannism was in the ascendent. If dog-
matism there be, one may reasonably ask on what authority the
dogma is promulgated. In the first place, then, there are certain
things " quod ab omnibus " which nobody doubts, such as the fact
that certain living things have backbones and certain others have
not; that the composition of water and of various other common
objects is what it is ; that the earth is round and that there is such
a thing as gravitation though no one knows how, whatever it is that
causes that effect actually works. On such points no one would
object to dogmatism. No one, in the present state of knowledge,
can object to a man laying it down as a principle that there is such
a thing as the force of gravitation, and postulating that as the basis
of any other theory. Take a more debatable case, that of the ether,
a thing of contradictory attributes which cannot be isolated, or
seen, or estimated, yet, which is so generally assumed, that one may
almost say that it may be dogmatised upon but with caution and
always with the reservation that some day everything built on this
foundation may have to be re-considered. Very shortly we shall
consider how far dogmatic Darwinism falls in with the conditions
just laid down.
Or again one may be awed into accepting a dogma by the
magic of the name of its promulgator at any time a dangerous
attitude. But in the cases with which we are now chiefly con-
cerned, there is but little magic to affect us. I lay it down as a prin-
ciple that no person who has not devoted a certain number of years
to really hard original research in some line of biology, is fit to
estimate the value of many of the theories which are daily put for-
ward. Manuals written by those who have not gone through such
a discipline and received some measure of acknowledgment from
their scientific compeers, are usually not worth the paper which they
are written on. Such manuals may be wholly disregarded; and I
4 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [April,
make this statement in the belief that it would, at least in the main,
be agreed to by those whose opinion on the matter is worthy of
consideration. Tried by this test, ninety per cent, of the manuals
and articles may be ruled out of court. Written, as many of them
are, by the half-ignorant for the use of those even less well-in-
formed than themselves, they abound at once in misstatements and
bold assertions. It is this ignorant rubbish, the back-wash of the
last half of the nineteenth century, and its effect upon the unin-
structed reading population and not the opinions of the really great
exponents of, and workers at, science that we have to meet. It is
impossible to pursue these points further; but a most interesting
catena of absurd and pretentious statements might be made from
the misleading manuals. An equally interesting and much more
convincing catena might also be made of the admissions the
honest admissions the doubts, the hesitations of genuine men of
science in putting forward their theories for the consideration of
their compeers. At any rate there is one thing quite clear and it is
this : the ordinary non-scientific person cannot be expected to em-
brace, and ought not to be expected to embrace, any scientific opin-
ion until it may be asserted of that opinion, that the genuine scien-
tific world is fairly unanimous in giving its adherence to it. It may
be claimed that this is the minimum of evidence on which a doctrine
should be received as coming with authority. Tried by this test,
how very few of the theories of to-day would stand any chance of
survival ? .
The following remarks in a review of some works on evolu-
tion, by a witty writer in the Literary Supplement of the " Times,"*
sum the situation up rhetorically, perhaps, but not inaccurately, and
much more graphically than is wimin the power of the present
writer.
No one possessed of a sense of humor can contemplate without
amusement the battle of evolution, encrimsoned (dialectically
speaking) with the gore of innumerable combatants, encumbered
with the corpses of the (dialectically) slain and resounding with
the cries of the living, as they hustle together in the fray. Here
are zoologists, embryologists, botanists, morphologists, biometri-
cians, anthropologists, sociologists, persons with banners and
persons without; Darwinians and Neo-Darwinians (what a
name) , Lamarckians and neo-Lamarckians, Galtonians, Haeckel-
ians, Weismannians, de Vriesians, Mendelians, Hertwigians, and
*Jime 9, 1905.
1912.] . DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 5
many more whom it would be tedious to enumerate. Never was
seen such a melde. The humor of it is, that they all claim to re-
present " Science," the serene, the majestic, the absolutely sure,
the undivided and immutable, the one and only vicegerent of
Truth, her other self. Not theirs the weakness of the theologians
or the metaphysicians, who stumble about in uncertainty, ob-
scurity, and ignorance, with their baseless assumptions, flimsy
hypotheses, logical fallacies, interminable dissensions, and all the
other marks of inferiority on which the votaries of science pour
ceaseless scorn. Yet it would puzzle them to point to a theolo-
gical battlefield exhibiting more uncertainty, obscurity, dissen-
sion, assumption, and fallacy than their own. For the plain
truth is that, though some agree in this and that, there is not
a single point in which all agree ; battling for evolution they have
torn it to pieces ; nothing is left, nothing at all on their showing,
save a few fragments strewn about the arena.
Exaggerated, you say. Well, read Professor Kellogg's work
" Darwinism To-Day." The Professor is a man who has won his
spurs in original research; he has a very wide acquaintance with
the literature of evolution and he gives his summaries of it with
scrupulous honesty at least that is my judgment.
He cannot be accused of anti-Darwinian bias and he does not
conceal his contempt for the poor deluded Catholic. But read his
book and particularly read the excellent summaries appended to the
chapters, and then ask yourself the question, " Is the man in the
' Times ' so great an exaggerator as I thought? "
I began by saying that a scientific theory, if it is to command
the respect of the unscientific (let alone the scientific) reader should
have something like general consent behind it. If that propo-
sition is unassailable, then there are very few of the theories
grouped under the name of " Darwinism " which occupy such a
position or anything like such a position, and this statement I now
proceed to elaborate and justify.
WHAT DARWIN HIMSELF HELD.
It has already been pointed out that what Darwin held is not
exactly the same in some cases by no means the same as what is
commonly called " Darwinism." It may, therefore, be well to take
a few points seriatim with the intention of discovering what Darwin
himself thought about them and what is thought about them to-day.
i. In the first place, then, it is quite clear that Darwin held
6 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [April,
that Transformism was the explanation of the world of life as we
know it, that, that all living things came from one or more forms
and were thus genetically related to one another. But he did not
commit himself absolutely in " The Origin " to either a mono- or
a poylphyletic scheme of transformism, for in the celebrated pas-
sage which occurs at the end of that book he alludes to " life, with
its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator
into a few forms or one," and it may be noted that the words
" perhaps into only one " which represent those quoted in the latest
draft were actually written into it in pencil, as if they were an
afterthought.*
u. Darwin also believed that Natural Selection which un-
like transformism, an old theory (as we shall see) of which he made
use, was his own original idea was a very potent agent of trans-
formism. It was to prove this that his most celebrated work was
written, as its title often ignored by persons who ought to be
familiar with it quite clearly shows. " The Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life."
in. Darwin further put forward a theory of Sexual Selection,
as an adjunct factor of transformism. Accordingly to this theory
the struggle on the part of male members of a species to secure the
most desirable females also produces a form of selection by which
transformism may be brought about.
iv. Darwin put forward the theory of Pangenesis, which is
difficult to define as briefly as must be done here, but which may be
described as a means of accounting for heredity by postulating an
accumulation, in the germ from which the scion is to arise, of small
particles representing each heritable factor in the parental body.
v. Darwin held that Man, body and all, including mental char-
acteristics, was developed from some lower form.
vi. Darwin held doubtfully and tentatively to various other
matters or perhaps it would be fairer to say that he kept an open
mind upon them, such as Lamarckianism (now held by the neo-
Darwinians to be utterly opposed to his views). "He was
Lamarckian to a very far-reaching extent " says Driesch.f Again
he does not make it absolutely clear as to what he believed respecting
the importance of small and great variations respectively in the
"Origin of Species, etc.," ed. vi., p. 429; and see "The Foundations of the
Origin of Species," 1909, pp. 52, note 2; and 254, note 4.
tOp. cit., vol. i., p. 260.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 7
process of evolution, which is, no doubt largely to be accounted for
by the fact that this point, now one of crucial importance, had been
but little discussed in his own time. At any rate his own commen-
tators of to-day seem uncertain as to how his views are to be inter-
preted on this matter.*
vu. Darwin's attitude towards the idea of a Creator is a little
difficult to define, but as he has been claimed by Haekel as a monist,
something should be said upon this point. As will be gathered from
the quotation given above Darwin in the " Origin " acknowledged
the existence and work of a Creator, and what is rather remarkable,
actually added the words " by the Creator " in the second edition.
There they remained till the end, in spite of any changes which
took place in Darwin's own opinions. These, as he himself ad-
mitted, became more and more agnostic towards the end. In one
of his letters he states his " inward conviction " that " the Universe
is not the result of chance," but, he continues, " with me the horrid
doubt always arises, whether the convictions of man's mind which
has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any
value or at all trustworthy." This attitude of despair with regard
to the intellectual powers, it may be remarked incidentally, like
solipsism, must logically lead to a complete paralysis of thought.f
This change of mind may perhaps be in part attributed to the Zeit-
geist, for materialism was then in the air far more than it is now ;
partly to the unkind, unfair and unreasonable things said about
Darwin himself and his views by some of his religious, but imper-
fectly instructed, opponents ; and partly perhaps one may even
think largely, to the strange atrophying effect upon a large part
of his intellect caused by too great absorption in scientific questions.
It is well known that he admitted that whilst he had once loved
poetry, pictures and music, he had lost all these tastes, could not
" endure to read a line of poetry," found Shakespeare " so intoler-
ably dull that it nauseated me." And so on with other artistic
pleasures. " My mind," he says, " seems to have become a kind of
machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts,
but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the
brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive."t
These points have been briefly mentioned here because from the
*See the discussion on pp. 70 and 71 of "Darwin and Modern Science."
tSee "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," vol. i., p. 316. Further statements
respecting his religious attitude at same place,
tlb., vol. i., pp. loo-ior.
8 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [April,
paeans uttered by some it might be taken that Darwin himself had
led an anti-religious campaign, whereas the fact seems to have been
that his interests were not vividly excited in this direction at all,
and that in his " most extreme fluctuations " he had "never been
an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God."*
The above list of opinions is, (need it be said?) by no means
exhaustive, but some of them will suffice as a groundwork for the
historical criticism which has now to be attempted. Moreover they
will, in some measure, indicate what Darwin's own views were and
in what measure they correspond with the thing called " Darwin-
ism " at the present day.
We shall take up the various points seriatim, before proceed-
ing to the consideration of some general matters which arise in
connection with the subject of Darwinism as a whole.
I.
TRANSFORMISM.
Transformism is the theory which teaches, that one living form
or species is derived from another and not specially created. ' The
fact of organic evolution is at least as certain a part of knowledge
as the law of universal gravitation." I set down this amazing quo-
tation from a very cocksure and very misleading little manual, be-
cause it is an excellent example of the kind of nonsense which is
brought before the ignorant public by charity demands that we
should say ignorant writers. As a mere matter of fact the theory
of transformism or organic evolution is not proved; it may never
be proved ; it is perhaps incapable of complete demonstration. That
this statement is not merely the biased expression of opinion of a
mere Catholic can be proved by a quotation from the work of a
master of science who has never, I think, been accused of any
Catholic leanings. I allude to Professor T. H. Morgan. In a most
admirable and careful discussion of the whole question of so-called
" Darwinism,"! after discussing Fleischmann's views on evolution,
and deciding that his arguments have not seriously weakened the
theory, he continues : " He has done, nevertheless, good service
in recalling the fact that, however, probable the theory (i. e., of
evolution) may appear, the evidence is indirect and an exact proof
is still wanting." There is the sober word of true science as
*Ib., p. 304.
t" Evolution and Adaptation," Macmillan Co., New York, 1903, p. 57.
I 9 i2.] DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " 9
opposed to the irresponsible babble of the pamphleteer. Let us
now try to estimate temperately the position held by the trans-
formist theory to-day.
i. Unquestionably the overwhelming majority of biologists
would accept some doctrine of transformism, however much they
may and do differ as to details. Fleischmann, whose name has just
been mentioned, is perhaps the only biologist of position who has
taken up an attitude opposed to the theory, and it cannot be said
that his arguments have produced any impression on scientific
opinion. In fact, it may be said, quite fairly and definitely, that
transformism or organic evolution holds the field as the working
hypothesis generally adopted.
n. The evidence on which it is based is, as has been said, not
completely convincing, and certain pieces of evidence brought for-
ward, and formerly considered as conclusive, have not now the
weight which they once possessed. Two examples may be cited :
(a) The so-called recapitulation theory of Fritz Muller and
Haeckel (which teaches that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that
is to say, that the life-history of the individual portrays that of the
species) is, I see, described in a translation lately published in
America,* " established, now perhaps irrefutably." Yet Professor
Kelloggf says of this same theory, that it " is chiefly conspicuous
now as a skeleton on which to hang innumerable exceptions." And
further: " the recapitulation theory is mostly wrong; and what is
right in it, is mostly so covered up by the wrong part, that few
biologists longer have any confidence in discovering the right."
The evidence for transformism founded on this doctrine has then
at least been considerably weakened.
(b) The whole intermediate link evidence is not as strong as,
during earlier days, it was expected that it would become. Further,
some parts of it do not hold as strong a position as they did when
the field of geology had been less explored. For example, the well-
known and oft-cited case of the horse's foot, claimed still by ignor-
ant little books as a " conclusive proof " of the truth of organic
evolution. Yet as a real master of zoology points out.J " there are
flaws in the chain of evidence, which require careful and detailed
consideration." And, after pointing out some of these flaws and
*" On the Inheritance of Acquired Characters," Rignano, Open Court Pub. Co.,
1911, p. ii.
tOp. cit., pp. 18 and 21.
tSedgwick, " Text-Book of Zoology," 1903, p. 600.
io DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " [April,
difficulties, he adds, " It is possible that these difficulties and others
of the same kind, will be overcome with the growth of knowledge,
but it is necessary to take note of them, for in the search after truth,
nothing is gained by ignoring such apparent discrepancies between
theory and fact." This guarded statement is worthy of careful
attention, for it shows that further observations have not always
confirmed the impressions of the earlier writers.
in. Trans formism in its simplest terms has been a theory put
forward by many writers prior to Darwin, and by quite a number
of Catholic writers of the first authority. Not to labor this point,
the following quotation from Fr. Wasmann's work may suffice.*
Even to St. Augustine it seemed a more exalted conception,
and one more in keeping with the omnipotence and wisdom of
an infinite Creator, to believe that God created matter by one act
of creation, and then allowed the whole universe to develop
automatically by means of the laws which He imposed upon the
nature of matter. God does not interfere directly with the
natural order when He can work by natural causes: this is a
fundamental principle in the Christian account of nature, and
was enunciated by the great theologian Suarez, whilst St.
Thomas Aquinas plainly suggested it long before, when he re-
garded it as testimony to the greatness of God's power, that His
providence accomplishes its aims in nature not directly but by
means of created causes.f
iv. From what has been said it follows quite clearly that a
belief in transformism in no way leads up to a monistic philosophy.
It may be looked upon as a method of creation, but it does not in
any way explain the origin of things, or the origin of life, nor does
it in any kind of way help us to do without an Author and Designer
of the laws whatever they may be under which it works. These
statements cannot be further dealt with here; they form part of
quite another line of discussion, but since it has been claimed that a
monistic philosophy logically follows from Darwin's theories, it
may be said that from this one of his beliefs, no such conclusion
follows. Transformism may be looked at from a Christian or an
anti-Christian point of view. The former at least offers an explana-
tion of matters left wholly unexplained by the latter.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
"Modern Biology," 1910, p. 274.
tThe reader desirous of following this matter further may be referred to- the
concluding portion of Mivart's "Genesis of Species."
CONSEQUENCES.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARY Hartford stood upon the porch of her brother's
rectory. She made no outcry when she saw the
Senator approaching with his unconscious burden.
Her arms were outstretched in mute welcome to
any one in sore distress. She waited for no explana-
tions or introductions, but led the way to her own bedroom, and
turning down the spotless sheets of the narrow bed, she made a
place for Jane's dusty little figure.
" Doctor Staples is the nearest physician ; he lives five miles
away. I think you had better go for him at once ; we have no tele-
phone. Follow the straight road to the left. Meanwhile I'll un-
dress the child and do all that I can."
In the dim light of the shaded room, with her heavy hair fall-
ing about her, Jane had all the appealing look of a child, but the
dispassionate woman, working so skillfully with the intricate fasten-
ings of the girl's dress, did not care for children. Mary Hartford
was not an old woman, but there was a grey rigidity about her face
that seemed to preclude all emotion. Her soul had been swept by
fire and now there had come a peace, a strange unsatisfying calm,
born of her belief in her inability to feel further. Life held few
interests; she was tired tired of her world of tragedy. She held
to no particular religious creed; but death, for many years, had
seemed to her a release from suffering. She cared little 'for the
idea of immortality; it was so impossible for her to comprehend
a continued existence apart from the memories that had changed her
from a happy enthusiastic girl into a woman who moved through
life with the precision and passiveness of a machine. She never
talked of herself. Few people knew her history. Some of the more
conservative of the parishioners regarded her suspiciously; they
had heard rumors that she was a divorcee who had resumed her
maiden name because she had grown weary of explanations. The
only definite thing known about her was that years ago she had
taken a course in trained nursing and that her health had broken
12
CONSEQUENCES [April,
down before she was able to practise her profession; but her knowl-
edge made her very useful in assisting her brother with his charity
cases. The poor did not warm to her because her personality eluded
them; she gave them neither her sympathy nor her confidence, but
they called upon her in all their emergencies and she never refused
them her aid.
Above the white washstand in her room was a little closet full
of simple remedies, and as she applied some restoratives to Jane the
girl opened her eyes and looked about her wonderingly.
" Where where am I ? " she asked.
Mary Hartford's fingers were upon the girl's pulse. She tried
to welcome her back to consciousness with a wan smile. ' You are
at St. John's rectory," she said.
" But I thought the church was closed."
" This is the house."
" The house with the roses I remember now I was thrown
from a horse. Where is the Senator ? "
" He has gone for a doctor."
"Is there anything the matter with me?"
" Only a nervous shock," said the older woman with profes-
sional brevity.
" No, I'm not shocked." Jane laughed that wonderful laugh
that had startled Bainbridge with its strange likeness to her father's,
and now Mary Hartford's slim white hands tightened on the
wooden posts of the bed and she gazed at the girl with a pained
sort of intensity.
" Where did you come from, child? " she asked.
" I hardly know how to answer that question," answered Jane,
and she looked at the sleeve of her nightdress as if she realized for
the first time that she had been undressed. "I came out of the
woods just now on a horse ; I did not know how to ride. As for
my past history, I was born in France. I have spent most of my
life in Paris. I came to Mrs. Dandrey's yesterday. And now would
you please tell me who you are? "
" I am Miss Hartford," said her hostess slowly. " I wonder
where I have met you before."
' Then you are Mr. Paul Hartford's sister," said Jane eagerly.
" I met him last night. He dined at Mrs. Dandrey's. I believe we
became very good friends. I hope to see more of him."
Miss Hartford was accustomed to women's admiration for her
brother. She watched, with a sort of amused tolerance, their vary-
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 13
ing methods to individualize his attention but somehow this girl's
attitude seemed different. She had all the ingenuousness of a child.
" I am afraid I embarrassed him greatly last night," continued
Jane. " I am so hopelessly impulsive, and I'm afraid I have a very
bad temper. When my father and I lived together in a chateau just
outside of Paris, I used to stamp my foot in rage when he did not
give me what I wanted. Once I wanted to join a band of strolling
players, and when he refused his permission I ran away; and
another time I got in a row boat and nearly drowned myself, be-
cause someone had told me that no one could act who had not
suffered from terror and starvation."
" Act? " repeated Mary Hartford with a puzzled smile.
" Yes, you see I always wanted to act. My mother was an
actress. It's my only talent. Some day I may go on the stage.
The nuns used to tell me it was a life full of danger. I do not know.
But please may I get up? It is so pleasant here that I did not
realize that I was an intruder. I am sure that I am able to walk
home."
" Do as you please," said her hostess indifferently. " I think
you are quite strong. Here is a basin of fresh spring water and
some towels. I'll take your skirt out on the porch and brush it
and then perhaps you had better sit still until your escort arrives."
" I quite forgot my escort," said Jane. " It's the first time I ever
had one in my life. He ought to be angry with me. I never rode a
horse before, and I ought not to have tried it; but this morning
I was in such a humor that I believe I would have tried to ride an
elephant."
Mary Hartford was amused. Her laugh was a strange con-
trast to Jane's . It sounded faint and far away like some unused
instrument long since out of tune. The sound seemed to startle
even its maker, for she became silent and fell to wondering why this
strange girl should rouse her interest this child with no reserves.
" I hope your friends won't be anxious about you," she said,
voicing this commonplace to escape her own introspection. " No
doubt the horse has reached Mrs. Dandrey's by this time and an
empty saddle is always alarming."
" There is nobody there to care very much," said Jane with a
sudden pathetic droop to the corners of her mouth ; " Mr. Bain-
bridge is only my guardian. He never saw me but once before
yesterday. I have spent years in a convent in Paris; some of the
nuns were fond of me, but there is no one else who cares."
I4 CONSEQUENCES [April,
" But the tall man who brought you here? "
" He is a stranger too. I met him for the first time last night.
I am the most lonely person in the world."
A new look of sympathy dawned in Miss Hartford's deep
eyes. "And I, too," she said, impulsively holding out her cold
white hand. " Women know a greater sense of loneliness than men
because well, I suppose that love was meant to be life to them."
" I don't know," said Jane thoughtfully. " I think one might
find great satisfaction in work if one had great talent and longed
to express it."
"No, no," said the other quickly. "It's a fallacy that the
modern woman clings to. I tried, so I know."
" And what did you want to do? " Jane asked the question with
no consciousness of being inquisitive. She felt strangely drawn to
this sad-faced woman, whose life seemed to hold some romantic
tragedy.
" I wanted to paint portraits."
"And did you?"
" Why yes, until "she hesitated, " until some years ago. I
had a studio in California. I planned the place myself on a hill
overlooking the sea."
" And you gave it all up to come here? "
" Not exactly."
"But a talent like that one takes with one."
Mary Hartford was silent for a moment. " One needs enthu-
siasm to work at anything," she said regretfully, " and I I have
none left. My brother was very considerate and he had a studio
arranged for me here. It was very kind of him, but I rarely paint
in these days."
" Please take me there and show me your pictures," pleaded
Jane. " Perhaps some day I'll come and have my portrait painted ;
that is, if my guardian will let me, and I have the courage to ask
him. At present, he seems a bit unapproachable; he is such a
finished product of the world, while I well you see me." She
touched her disheveled hair, looked down ruefully at her dusty
boots and then, putting on the riding skirt and overlapping it at the
waist with a safety pin, she added, "I doubt if I ever shall be
finished. I'm all ravellings. Now let me see the pictures and I'll
stop talking about myself. The girls at school used to tell me that
I was very egotistical, but they were too. How is one to get ac-
quainted if one doesn't try to explain oneself? Please can't I see
the pictures ? "
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 15
The request was made with such genuine interest and childish
simplicity that Mary Hartford did not even feel inclined to refuse.
She had never admitted anyone but her brother into this sanctum,
but now, as she led the way, she asked herself why this strange girl,
dropped at her door by the merest accident, should compel her
confidence and bring a certain vivifying atmosphere into her life
again.
" It's a messy little place," said Mary Hartford with her hand
upon the door knob. " There's a disintegrating quality about me
when I work, but come in."
The crowded room was, indeed, disorderly. A faded tapestry
hung on one side of the wall completely covering the cheap paper;
some half -finished canvasses stood leaning uncertainly against the
legs of chairs and tables, while others had fallen prone upon the
floor, their faces raised rigidly to the ceiling. The wooden mantle
held some jades and porcelains of great value; palettes and brushes
were scattered over a teak-wood table, and the paint had dribbled
through the intricate carving, leaving it daubed with mixtures of
color. Next to the window, in the best light in the room, hung a
number of miniatures framed in gold.
Jane went closer to examine them. The head of a young girl
first claimed her attention. A beautiful woman, her lips parted in
an ecstatic smile, her brown hair crowned with flowers.
" How lovely," said Jane enthusiastically. " Who is she? "
The expression of tragedy seemed to deepen in Mary Hart-
ford's eyes.
" That is I."
Jane turned quickly, not in doubt, but as if she wanted to
search out the likeness of youth in this grey woman beside her; and
then, feeling that the older woman understood, she glanced quickly
away full of contrition for her rudeness. For a moment she did
not see the other pictures ; a mist was before her eyes. Old age had
never been revealed to her in this mocking way before. Now it
appeared a dark, lurking shadow imminent to all.
But she was so young so young. The mist cleared ; she stood
staring bewildered at one of the miniatures that hung below the rest.
" Why I I have that picture," she cried excitedly. ' That
that is my father."
Mary Hartford's lips were white, but the long years of self-
repression had not been borne with barrenness. The cry that rose
in her heart was stilled to a sigh.
I6 CONSEQUENCES [April,
Your-your name is-Tully, then "-she said, and her voice
fell calm and even. " I painted that picture at my studic
fornia many years ago."
" Mine is much smaller. Since my father's death I have al-
ways worn it around rny neck," and opening the collar of her dress
she unfastened the chain of a locket and laid the smaller miniature
in Mary Hartford's hands.
The older woman sank weakly down in a chair,
had grown a bit husky and she rested her hands in her lap to con-
ceal their trembling.
" He is dead then? " she said.
" Many years ago. You knew him well ? "
" Yes."
"When he lived in California?"
" Yes."
" That must have been when he was very young? "
" Yes," she said again.
" And you painted both these pictures? "
Mary Hartford lifted the locket in her nerveless hands. In the
silence she gained strength to say, " That, too, is my work."
CHAPTER IX.
When the riderless horse came galloping up the graveled road-
way, Bainbridge was standing at the library window talking to
Madge. With an exclamation of dismay he quickly opened the low
French casement and ran out just in time to seize the bridle of the
horse and swing himself into the saddle.
" Jane has evidently been hurt," he called back. "I must go and
find her." And without further explanation he turned the excited
animal back in the direction in which it had come.
Madge watched her host disappear with strangely mixed emo-
tions. She had never seen him face an emergency before, and this
exhibition of his virility pleased her, even though she was not the
object of his solicitude. She had long been interested in George
Bainbridge ; his indifference was one of his chief charms ; it made
his suspected admiration for her seem so much more of a tribute.
But there were some things that did not appeal to her : his lack of
enthusiasm, his tendency to drift always, his position as spectator in
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 17
a world of dazzling possibilities. She had often wondered how he
would meet a crisis, and now, she saw him acting promptly, eagerly
and naturally, like any other forceful man.
It had been many years since a primitive impulse had dominated
Bainbridge. All his life his motives had been weighed and sifted.
Like all egotists, he exaggerated his own complexities, until nothing
seemed simple, and spontaneity impossible. Even now, as he
searched the roadway and hedges, he began to wonder how he
should feel if he found Jane dead. It would relieve him of a great
burden, his baser mind suggested. The next moment he put the
thought from him with an outraged sense of loyalty for his friend ;
but was the feeling he had only loyalty? Did not the girl's own
personality play some part in the horror he experienced at the dread
of some fatal accident.
Every foot he traveled, finding nothing, added to his sense of
relief.
Then, just in front of Paul Hartford's cottage, he saw a hand-
kerchief lying on the road. Dismounting from his horse, he stooped
to examine the initials. J. T. was embroidered in one corner. Fol-
lowing this clue he turned into the rose-bordered path.
A group of people stood upon the tiny porch and Jane called
out a cherry greeting and came running to meet him.
" Not killed not hurt not a bone broken ! I am going to
walk home."
Senator Wurtemberg leaned against one of the posts of the
vine-covered veranda, fanning himself with his felt hat. He had
had a hard ride, for he had insisted that the doctor gallop all the
way back with him. The lean-faced little doctor, who had the dis-
position of a dyspeptic, was trying to conceal his present irritability
in the presence of the ladies. He was no horseman ; he was accus-
tomed to jogging along the peaceful country roads on his gentle
old mare ; but to go racing along like a drunken cowboy at a round
up, was an indignity that someone ought to pay for and who was
going to pay for it when the patient was in no need of his services ?
The Senator was a shrewd observer, and he watched his medi-
cal aid with some amusement.
" Everything was my fault," he said as Bainbridge came up
the steps ; " though the Lord only knows why that horse bolted as
he did. Miss Jane is all right, thank God. Her foot fell free of the
stirrup, so she was not dragged. In my country, women ride
astride and I think it is much safer."
VOL. XCV. 2
Z 8 CONSEQUENCES [April,
"And I insist that it was my fault," said Jane, smoothing
back her straggling hair from her heated face, " I never was on a
horse's back in my life. I ought to have been killed. I really de-
served to be killed creating all this excitement for nothing."
" It's a much pleasanter ending than a funeral," smiled Bain-
bridge, taking her small hand with an air of possession. " I am
very grateful to you," he said, turning to Mary Hartford. " Jane,
won't you introduce us? "
" Miss Hartford, this is my guardian, Mr. Bainbridge," said
Jane, " He was my father's best friend
Bainbridge fancied that the woman's eyes held a look of ani-
mosity, but, remembering what his sister had told him about Miss
Hartford, he attributed her expression to her dislike of meeting
strangers.
" I am sure you are most welcome," She forced the words
with no graciousness. " I regret that my brother is not here. He
had early service this morning and he has another mission three
miles from here."
" I am very sorry, too," said Bainbridge with ingratiating
regret. " We had the pleasure of having Mr. Hartford dine with
us last night. My little ward has caused you some anxiety and
trouble I fear."
" No anxiety," she answered. " I am accustomed to sick
people. I was sorry afterwards that I sent Senator Wurtemberg
for the doctor, but I acted on impulse one usually regrets one's
impulses."
" I suppose that's the reason I'm always regretting every-
thing," reflected Jane.
The Senator laughed. " You'll get over that," he said.
" What, the impulses or the regrets ? "
" Both," said Bainbridge; " the years bring some consolations
or they would be intolerable."
'They are intolerable," interrupted Miss Hartford. The
speech was as rude as it was expected. She seemed anxious to be
rid of her visitors ; she twisted her hands nervously together, more
conscious than they that her studied calm had failed her at last.
" I want to walk home," said Jane, striving to fill in the em-
barrassing pause. " I'm afraid to get on a horse's back again to-
day. I'll get my hat, I left it in your bedroom, Miss Hartford. You
have been so good to me, and I have had a pleasant time that I
didn't deserve. I should like to come again."
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 19
" Why of course come," said the older woman with no cor-
diality. She turned with a sense of relief to follow Jane into the
house.
During the short interim, the Senator had time to slip a twenty
dollar note into the doctor's willing hand.
" I've led you a wild chase this morning," he said in an under-
tone. " You've had a much more unsatisfactory time than if the
young lady's bones were broken, because, of course, setting bones
is a valuable experience and comes high. I realize that "
The doctor glanced at the color of the note and grew voluble
with gratitude. Such prompt payment of ready money to one who
was accustomed to waiting indefinitely to be recompensed, and half
the time in farm produce, was an experience not soon to be for-
gotten. Bainbridge had not noticed this little by-play. He had
walked to the end of the porch and was examining a strange variety
of vine that Mary Hartford had planted in a sheltered corner. He
wanted a moment to recover himself. He felt very weak and much
exhausted after his ride. Like most men, he hated to acknowledge
physical disability, and he did not want to add to Jane's sense of re-
morse by telling her that the short horseback ride had taxed his
every power of endurance.
" I don't know how I'm going to get home," he confessed, sit-
ting down on a rustic bench under the flowering vine. " You see,
I'm a convalescent still, and that horse was excited and needed more
strength to manage him than I had to give."
" Well, we won't let on to Miss Jane," said the Senator, " she
feels like a criminal already. Anybody to hear her talk would
think she made that horse run away on purpose. Here, Doctor, fix
Mr. Bainbridge up with something. Haven't you any brandy in
that funereal-looking grip of yours ? "
The doctor opened his black valise and busied himself with
his small array of bottles.
" Some brandy?" he said, holding out a collapsible cup such
as travelers carry. " I would not try to ride that horse home."
" Take mine," said the Senator without much sympathy, as he
was not used to commiserating men. " I suppose he and you are
both played out together. The doctor will come with us, and see us
through I know. I'll take your horse and I'll put Miss Jane up in
front of me. She's nothing but a slip of a girl, and she can't walk
in this hot sun. We have no sort of a vehicle. It's the easiest
and shortest way out."
20 CONSEQUENCES [April,
The Senator was accustomed to taking command and making
events move to his fancy. He had a way of delivering his judg-
ments with a finality that seemed to preclude argument.
When the plan was suggested to Jane, she drew back. " I'm
afraid indeed, I'm afraid."
" Now don't say that," said the Senator lifting her in the
saddle with parental tenderness. " I'm going to get on behind you
and you'll be as safe as you were in your mother's rocking cradle.
I've ridden every kind of a horse west and east of the Rockies.
This beast is as harmless as a kitten tough mouth and a bit
nervous, but he hasn't got sense nor blood enough to run away with
two of us."
And so, bidding their hostess goodbye, they rode away down
the dry, white road, together a trio of men as different as their vary-
ing worlds could make them. Some such idea passed through
Mary Hartford's mind as she turned to go into the house, but she
was too tired to think. She had been completely unnerved by the
events of the morning. She sank down upon her narrow bed, all
mussed and imprinted with Jane's frail figure, and she gave way to
a flood of tears, such as she had not allowed herself since her own
vehement girlhood.
CHAPTER X.
As a result of his anxious ride, Bainbridge was threatened with
a relapse and had to go to bed again. The guests, feeling that they
were in the way, went home and busied themselves sending flowers,
and telephoning their sympathy. Madge left with apparent reluct-
ance. She felt vaguely that she might be of some assistance, but
her week was full of alluring invitations and, following her natural
impulse, she always fled from sickness, gloom and disaster. So
Bainbridge was left with Mrs. Dandrey and Jane to wait upon him.
He preferred Jane. After her first emotional contrition she
blamed herself unmercifully for his slight return of fever she
seemed to find great happiness in his helplessness. It gave her a
chance to serve him, to mother him, to command him whichever
her mood and the state of his health seemed to demand.
When he grew stronger she brought in great stalks of dahlias
and cosmos from the box-bordered garden until his room looked
like a bower. She coaxed the old cook to let her come into the
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 21
kitchen. Once there she concocted a dainty little French dish such
as Bainbridge had never tasted before.
" How did you do it? " he asked. " It's the best thing I have
had in years."
" Oh, I'll never tell," she said, playfully tucking a napkin under
his chin. " Once when I was sick in the infirmary, I learned how
to cook all kinds of nice little messes for invalids. I know a better
one for to-morrow. You wait and see."
All through the night when he was wakeful, his mind kept
reverting to the promised dish with the eagerness of an appetite
long denied. In the weeks that followed Jane's " mess," served on
a silver plate, garlanded with flowers, was the chief event of the
days. How she contrived to get on with the cook was an unfathom-
able mystery to the other servants in the house; but after the first
few days days on which she was merely tolerated and watched
jealously the atmosphere of the kitchen changed. Old Mandy
was heard to laugh twice. True the laugh sounded like a startled
cackle from some beast or bird in a subterranean passage-way, but
it was an unmistakable sign of mirth, and one of the maids, em-
boldened by the sound, peeked through the keyhole and saw Miss
Jane sitting on Mandy's spotless table, gesticulating with a long
spoon while she and Mandy swapped receipts and talked. The
maid's space at the keyhole being limited, she had not exactly dis-
covered what they had been talking about.
These were busy days for Jane, and she gave no thought to
herself. Her whole attention was concentrated on making amends
for the trouble she had caused. She ran up and down stairs a dozen
times a day with pitchers of water, plates of ice, and needed nour-
ishment. In the long afternoons she read to him for hours, glad of
the exquisite tones in her voice that caused him to beg her to go
on, until the shadows of the fat four-poster lengthened, and seemed
to reach out encouragingly for the match box and the cherubic candle
sticks that stood upon the high wooden mantel. But when the day-
light had grown too dim to see, it amused Bainbridge to have Jane
talk to him. She was a revelation in many ways. She knew noth-
ing of the world or of men, but the supernatural was very real to
her. She spoke of angels and saints as if she was conscious of
their presence; she expounded the Catholic doctrine of a future life
with calm confidence; she spoke of praying to her mother to help
her in all her small difficulties at school. She never preached; she
never argued about her beliefs. She spoke as a child giving an
22 CONSEQUENCES [April,
older person her unreserved confidence; and yet, on the very day
that he told himself that she was an ignorant, uninformed child,
she would make some allusion or express an opinion that proved
that she had read much, and thought intelligently. She had studied
the girls about her in boarding school; she had a keen sense of
humor and a droll way of relating unimportant incidents with a
cleverness that reminded Bainbridge continually of her father.
While Jane was making a place for herself in this well-ordered
household, Mrs. Dandrey watched her critically. She was a fair-
minded woman and she wanted to be kind, but she had her preju-
dices. Jane, quite unconsciously, began to take the possessive air
of a daughter of the house. Like most young people she had
accepted her situation as a matter of course. It never occurred to
her that Mrs. Dandrey objected to her rifling the flower beds until
she pulled up some rare chrysanthemums by the roots; then she
realized that her hostess was displeased. The " messing " in the
kitchen made Mrs. Dandrey fear that she would lose her treasured
cook, and when she voiced her dread to Bainbridge, he said with a
masculine lack of understanding, " Don't worry, Jane can do all
the cooking I need."
Another thing that troubled Mrs. Dandrey's aristocratic soul
was that Jane always waited on herself. Even when Bainbridge
was in need of nourishment, it never occurred to her to ring for a
servant; she always scurried joyfully to the kitchen or pantry to
prepare it herself. Three or four times she had gone out in the
garden and drawn water from the deep-mouthed well, asking no
one's assistance.
" She will demoralize every servant I have," sighed Mrs.
Dandrey weakly. " I'm afraid the girl is hopelessly common or she
never would run so many errands with a house full of negroes."
Bainbridge smiled tolerantly. " She never has been taught
helplessness," he said. " Now, that I am better we can begin. It
seems to me that the first adjunct to helplessness is a matter of
clothes. Take her to town and get her an outfit chiffons and
things that preclude running after well water."
His sister looked at him reprovingly. " You are laughing,
George."
" Never was more serious in my life," he assured her. " If
you are going to take her to places this winter she must be suitably
dressed. We don't want to make her a cook or a ' drawer of
water.' "
CONSEQUENCES 23
" There's the White House reception next week," said Mrs.
Dandrey, rousing to some degree of interest, at the thought of
exercising his good taste, even though she was not to wear the
clothes herself, " and there is a delightful feeling of responsibility
in spending other people's money. I'm to go and buy the child a
generous wardrobe and send the bills to you ? "
" Exactly."
" And you feel well enough to be left alone to-day? "
" I'm amazingly strong."
" TKen Jane and I will spend the day in town. I think you are
very good to her George but I hope I trust you will not fall in
love with her."
He laughed gaily. " My dear sister, she looks upon me as a
grandfather; she thinks I am seventy years old."
"And she's about seven," said Mrs. Dandrey grimly; "she's
the most unconventional, impossible girl I ever knew."
He looked at her in some alarm. " Don't say that," he re-
monstrated. " Give her a little time, she is most teachable ; she has
all sorts of possibilities. Dress her up; take her to the hair dresser,
and get somebody to show her how to do her hair. She's got brains
enough to learn anything."
" It's rather a hard task you have given me," she sighed re-
signedly. "If one only knew something about her parents. She
really is hard to explain. She tells everyone that her mother was an
actress; and even you know nothing about her antecedents."
"We'll invent a family tree for her later on," he laughed.
" We can't do everything in three weeks. Let's get the problem of
clothes settled first. We are always kinder in our judgments of the
well-dressed."
But even Bainbridge was unprepared for the transformation
in Jane. She left him in the morning, a disheveled little figure in
an ill-fitting rain-coat; she returned in the evening, wearing a soft
embroidered gown that they had found in one of the most exclusive
stores. Her hair was waved softly about her face, dressed by a
deft-fingered French woman who advertised herself as an artist in
coiffures.
Jane's enthusiasm over her new clothes was delightful to see.
She brought in the boxes one by one into Bainbridge's room, insist-
ing that he guess the contents; and then, after he had made some
wild guess to humor her, she would display the gown, wrap or
material, exclaiming at their beauty, and fondling them with a
caressing touch.
24 CONSEQUENCES [April,
" I dearly love colored clothes," she said, " and I dare say if
Mrs. Dandrey had not been with me I should have bought things
like a cockatoo so gorgeous. But it seems to me I have been very
extravagant to spend so much money dressing my body that will
soon be dead."
" Why, what's the matter ? " he asked in some alarm.
" Nothing with me," she smiled, " I was talking of anybody
you me, anybody that has to die."
" Who put that notion into your head ? "
" It isn't a notion;" she objected, " it's a fact. It's just another
way of saying life is short. I used to parse that in my English
grammar ; perhaps you have forgotten. Now, tell me how you got
on here by yourself all day? "
" I missed my chef."
" Then I'll go and make you something for your supper ;"
and piling the boxes in a corner she ran joyfully away to the
servants' quarters.
She had a bundle of presents which she wanted to distribute.
She bought them out of her own pocket money while Mrs. Dandrey
was busy over some personal expenditures in another part of the
big store. Mrs. Dandrey would have been convinced that her house-
hold was demoralized if she could have heard the exclamations of
delight with which each separate package was received. The child-
like nature in the negro, always only half in abeyance, rose exuber-
antly to meet this simple effort to please them.
As Jane went upstairs with the dainty little dish she had made
for Bainbridge, her cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes
shining with happiness. She stopped on the landing of the steps
to peep in a mirror that hung above the heavy mahogany hall piece.
For the moment she was surprised at her own reflection.
" Why I'm pretty. I really believe I am pretty," she said im-
personally.
When she entered the little breakfast room where Bainbridge
had been taking his meals, he rose instinctively.
" I have allowed you to wait upon me too long," he said mak-
ing room for her on the wide sofa. " Come sit down beside me and
we will play that you are grown up."
She put the dish on the table in front of him and opened his
napkin. " But I am grown up," she insisted.
He looked at her radiant face for a moment in silence, realiz-
ing for the first time the charm of its piquancy. " You have not
seemed to be."
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 25
" That's because you are so much older," she said frankly.
" But I really am not so much older." And even as he said it,
he wondered why he should wish to prove it. " Fourteen years at
most. Is that such an impassible gulf? "
She was standing in front of the fire trying to pile up the
fallen logs; she turned and looked at him wonderingly. The look
might have been a protest. What did he mean? Had the change
come to her or to him ?
The spontaneity of her , smile faded, for the words had been
spoken in such a tone as to destroy forever her childlike attitude
towards him. Hereafter they were man and woman hopelessly,
unevenly matched. He had always been selfish. He did not see
why he should be relegated to a paternal position, when other men,
as old as himself, might rouse her interest and gain her affection.
He was not in love with her ; he did not want to be, but it annoyed
him, for some reason which he did not stop to analyze fully, to find
himself treated as if he were a bald-headed, solicitor-like guardian
of the three volume novel, with only gout and eternity closing in
about him.
CHAPTER XI.
Mrs. Dandrey did her full social duty that winter. She had
always moved easily among the formalities of life, and the isolation
of her time of mourning had been a great trial to her. Now, that
she was emerging from the penumbra of her widowhood, she
entered into the season's gayeties with real enthusiasm, and she
tolerantly included Jane in all her plans chiefly because she thought
Bainbridge demanded it of her.
She adored her brother. He was the only thing masculine she
had to cling to and being by nature vine-like in her propensities,
it was necessary to keep him in an amiable humor. She knew that
back of his calm he had a temper quite capable of uprooting her and
leaving her sprawling, as it were, on this side of the Atlantic,
while he betook himself to Europe for an indefinite term of years.
Meanwhile Jane was happy. Balls, teas, dinners were delight-
ful novelties. Her tasteful wardrobe gave her an air of confidence.
Even Mrs. Dandrey had to acknowledge that she accepted grace-
fully the conventions of life. Her fluent French made her very
26 CONSEQUENCES [April,
popular with the young diplomats, and her dramatic readings gave
her a distinction in a circle of mediocre talent.
From the first, Mrs. Van Doran had announced that she would
be glad to mother Jane. The old lady belonged to Washington's
most exclusive set, know disrespectfully as " the cave-dwellers."
She had lived and fought and triumphed through so many admin-
istrations, that she was regarded as a social arbiter. She had an
uncomfortable predilection for genealogy, and a habit of unearthing
disreputable ancestors for ambitious society aspirants who were try-
ing to forget them. Her salon, as she chose to call it, sheltered
strange combinations of people: socialists, musicians, writers, art-
ists, Civil war veterans, priests, diplomats and poverty-stricken
gentlewomen, but her invitations were valued by everyone, and
those who were left without the pale, suffered an exaggerated sense
of disappointment.
Early in the winter she gave an elaborate evening reception to
introduce Jane. Mrs. Dandrey and Bainbridge were grateful.
Every woman, who had a debutante daughter knew that Mrs. Van
Doran's patronage was worth striving for. Dressed gorgeously in
a plum-colored satin, the old lady presented Jane, the daughter of
her dear friend, James Tully, the cleverest critic of his generation.
Nobody who came had heard of James Tully, for his work had
been confined entirely to the Parisian papers ; but then, no one dared
dispute the old lady's judgment. In a city of celebrities it is diffi-
cult to differentiate the ordinary from the extraordinary without
some sort of advertising agent, and when people are once placarded,
few question the truth of any statement.
The reception was promptly followed by many invitations.
The guests went away with the vague idea that Jane was a close
relative of Mrs. Van Doran, visiting her for the winter, and the old
lady did not correct the misapprehension. She liked Jane; she en-
joyed the young life that the girl brought into the house and she
used to borrow her for weeks at a time, secretly craving the affec-
tionate tenderness that the girl showed towards her.
As the season progressed, Jane made a definite place for herself
in the younger set. Girls like her because she so frankly admired
their feminine charm in which she considered herself lacking. Men
liked her because she was always merry and so easily pleased.
Madge watched these small successes jealously; while Bainbridge
watched them both, amused at the little comedy in which he, uncon-
sciously, played the most prominent part.
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 27
Once, when Madge was spending a week end at Bainbridge
Hall, she daringly accused him of flirting with Jane. Bainbridge
laughed in his most disconcerting way.
" Do you realize that I am the only friend she has on earth ? "
" I don't believe you are capable of friendship with women,"
she retorted.
They were standing in a deep recess of one of the west wind-
ows. The sunset seemed to light the girl's face into unusual beauty,
her brown eyes were full of feeling.
" And why not? " he asked, moving a little closer to her side.
" Because, when you forget your studied air of indifference,
you assume an air of devotion towards all women which means
nothing to most of them ; but she is so young."
" Have I assumed it towards you ? " He dwelt upon the words
so that the question seemed pregnant with meaning.
She did not know how to reply. She cared so much. They
were playing a dangerous game. She could not cry out even if she
were hurt, she must parry somehow until the end.
" You are capable of great cruelty," she said at last.
" Not to you "
" No, I'll admit that," she smiled bravely. " I know you too
well. I am on my guard, but Jane "
"Well?"
" She is in danger of falling in love with you and then "
"Then?"
" Oh, I'm no prophet I don't know what will happen then."
" I'm glad you think I'm so dangerously fascinating."
" I did not say that."
" I thought you implied it."
" Jane is easily pleased," she laughed.
" Also very sensible," he said.
A sigh escaped her. She was so tired of juggling words. She
had failed to find out whether he had any romantic attachment for
Jane. She was relieved when Mrs. Dandrey came into the room
and asked her to go upstairs to look at some new embroideries that
she had just purchased from an East Indian smuggler, who was
prudently peddling his wares in remote suburban districts.
After Madge left him, Bainbridge lighted a cigarette and,
seating himself on a wide window-sill, he stared idly out into the
- gathering dusk of the garden. He was trying to analyze his real
attitude towards Jane. His position had been difficult from the
28 CONSEQUENCES [April,
first. To have a child loaded upon him was bad enough, but a ward
of marriageable age was most perplexing. It was not his fault that
they were thrown continually together. She had to live somewhere ;
she could not remain at school indefinitely. She would not enter the
sisterhood. Loyalty to his dead friend demanded kindest considera-
tion for his daughter. If she misunderstood this attitude as Madge
had hinted, and as he himself vaguely suspected, was he to blame ?
He was not in love with her. He did not want to be. He found
much entertainment in her society, but he certainly did not want to
marry her; she was too young, too uninformed, too unfinished, and
yet the thought of her leaving the house to marry anyone else was
distasteful to him. Carrying his introspection further, he knew that
he had destroyed Jane's first normal, childlike devotion for him.
Why had he been so heedless of consequences? Why had he not
seen and felt what the ultimate end might be? But perhaps the
seeing and the feeling had made him act as he did. Her filial affec-
tion had not altogether pleased him, when other men might gain
so much more. There was the Senator.
Every Saturday since the morning of Jane's accident he had
ridden a fine-blooded horse all the way from the Capitol, leading a
gentle mare for Jane to ride beside him. Mrs. Dandrey and Bain-
bridge both suspected that the little mare had been bought for Jane's
benefit, but, since he did not actually present it to her, they could
not demur at his gentlemanly offer to give her riding lessons. Jane
accepted his services quite as a matter of course ; she knew nothing
of the clamoring of constituents or the countless other demands
upon a busy man's time. To her it seemed most natural that he
should want to make some amends for what he insisted upon calling
his " cursed carelessness." Many an afternoon when the sergeant-
at-arms was struggling for a quorum, the Senator was finding new
by-paths in the fairy-wood and new fancies to lighten his toilsome
days.
He was a lonely man by nature, and he had few friends in
Washington. Occasionally he accepted an invitation if he heard
that Jane would be there. One night he met her at the British
Embassy; he was standing alone in one corner of the crowded
hall.
" You seem very unhappy," she said brightly, " Come into the
drawing-room with me."
" I was wondering how I could escape," and he looked with
.] CONSEQUENCES 29
humorous helplessness up the red carpeted stairs to the large picture
of Victoria that seemed to be guarding him with her eyes.
" I thought you were a democrat and did not care for royalty."
His eyes twinkled. " Dead queens are less objectionable than
live ones," he admitted. " I'm not built for this social thing; even
my tailor, who is an awful liar, would acknowledge that. I've been
here exactly two minutes by my watch. How can I say good-bye
when I have just said, How-do-you-do? "
" You can't," she said, " You will have to stay and talk to me."
" Now isn't it all funny," he went on, as they moved into one
of the large rooms, brilliant with prismatic lights. " Such a crowd
of people there's a little Chinaman talking execrable French to
that poor old lady who is trying to remember her French grammar
and can't. See her dazed expression. Look at that Spanish lady
with painted eyebrows. I wonder why women don't grow old
gracefully any more frizzes and rouge and curls and dye ! What
man wants to remember his mother looking like a comic supple-
ment?"
" What a savage mood you are in."
" It's all so empty."
Her eyes were laughing. She interrupted him, " I think the
house is full."
" I believe you begin to like it."
" I like the music, the lights, the people, even the noise," she
admitted. " I have not had it long enough to grow tired."
" But you will," he added hopefully. " It is such a little part of
life the shell, the husk, the chaff; the only real thing about.it is
the caterer's bill next month."
" I don't like you when you talk that way."
' Then I'll never speak again. I'm a kind of grizzly bear meant
to live in lonely woodland places."
" Where you are delightful, where you forget to say unpleasant
things, where you are just yourself," she spoke with childish sim-
plicity. His small eyes showed his pleasure.
" And I wonder what you mean by ' yourself.' I wonder what
sort of a kindly image you have drawn of a gruff customer like me."
Just then Lord Allan Hurst came up to speak to them and to
insist upon their going out to the dining room.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
ST. CLARE OF ASSISI.
BY FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
II.
LARK'S devotion to St. Francis was undoubtedly the
chief determining influence in her life. Through
him she came to accept the life of evangelical
poverty and from him she received the special form
of Catholic piety in which she found at once the
satisfying motive and the entire freedom of her religious life. But
to Clare, Francis was not merely a teacher or spiritual director in
the usual sense of the word. He entered into her life as a living
expression or embodiment of her own soul's aspiration and ideal.
He himself was an actual likeness to that which alone she loved and
desired ; and in consequence she gave him something of that rever-
ential affection and worship with which she yearned towards Jesus
Christ in the mystery of His earthly poverty and lowliness. Francis
was not altogether singular in thus sharing with our Divine Lord
Clare's worshipful love: whoever and whatever gave testimony
to the supreme Object of her worship, was placed by her responsive
spirit near to His throne; but Francis was nearest and in some
measure apart because no other on the earth was to Clare so true
a witness. And this explains how her attachment to St. Francis
was at the same time personal and impersonal : impersonal, in that
her worshipful thought went always beyond him to that of which
his life spoke to her; yet personal because it was he who thus spoke,
clearly and imperatively, of the Divine Goal of all her desire.
In later life Clare was accustomed to speak of herself as
" plantula Beati Patris Francisci " " the poor little plant of our
Father Francis;" thus describing herself in her sweet humility and
affection. But it is to be noticed that St. Francis always styled
her " Sister Clare " and quite evidently not as a mere conventional
style of address but in all courtesy and special reverence. He had
no playful appellation for her such as he had for the Lady Giacoma
di Settisoli whom he was wont to call " Brother Giacoma." His
reverence for Clare was of too intensive a quality; their spiritual
kinship too intimate and sacred. For was he not in his own thought
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 31
and in that of his contemporaries, the "bridesman" commissioned
by the Divine Bridegroom to win her entire love for Him in His
poverty and to be her friend and guardian in a treacherous world ?
It was a relationship which called for the most delicate reserve and
yet for a familiar solicitude and companionship. To one less un-
worldly or less absorbed in his devotion to his Divine Master, the
duty thus imposed upon him might have presented spiritual dangers :
but the utter unworldliness and high spiritual characters of both
Clare and Francis kept the world and its evil at bay. And so was
rendered possible the " romance " of Clare's life, which more than
all the Romances of Chivalry tended to create a new ideal of the
sanctity of womanhood in the world which knew Francis and Clare.
The story of how the two saints first met and how Clare at
the persuasion of Francis left her father's house and vowed herself
to Christ in poverty, is told with a pleasing simplicity in the Leg-
end.* It runs thus :
When she heard tell of the fame of Francis who like a new
man was renewing with new virtues the way of perfection
forgotten by the world, moved by the Father of Spirits, Clare
at once desired much to see and hear him. And Francis too
struck by the fair fame of this most favored maiden was no less
wishful to see and speak with her: for wholly eager for spoils
and being come to depopulate the world, he would fain snatch
her from the wicked world and restore her a noble prey to her
God. He visited her and she more often visited him ; and they
discreetly ordered their visits so that their visits should not be-
come known by man nor be spoken ill of by public gossip. For
she in her frequent visits to the man of God, taking one only
companion who was a loyal friend, went by a secret way; and
to her his words seemed a flame and his deeds beyond the deeds
of man. And our Father Francis exhorted her to despise the
world and with burning words made clear to her the barrenness
of earthly hopes and the delusion of earthly beauty. Into her
ears he instilled the sweet espousals of Jesus Christ, persuading
her to keep the pearl of maidenly purity for that Blessed Spouse
Who for us became man. But what need of many words?
Deftly doing the part of a faithful bridesman, Francis entreated,
and the maiden did not delay to give consent. And from that
*The Legenda S. Clarae, written about the time of her canonization, has been
published by the Bollandists and recently by Prof. Penacchi of Assist. Three
English translations have appeared: (i) By Fr. Marianus Fiege in The Princess
of Poverty; (2) By Fr. Paschal Robinson, entitled The Life of St. Clare; (3) By
Mrs. Balfour in The Life and Legends of the Lady Saint Clart.
32 ST. CLARE OF-ASSISI [April,
moment the joy of Paradise began to open out to her, and in
comparison the world seemed of little value; and her heart
melted as it were with desire and because of that joy she aspired
to the heavenly nuptials. Thus aglow with divine fire, she so
despised the glory of this world's vanity that the world's good
opinion had no longer any power over her heart. But dreading
the allurements of the flesh, she took a resolution never to know
any earthly delight; and her desire was to make of her body a
temple of God alone, and she strove so that by virtue she might
be worthy to become the spouse of the great King. Thenceforth
she put herself entirely under the guidance of Francis, deeming
him after God the guide of all her steps. And from that time
her soul leaned upon his holy counsels and with a waiting heart
she received the words he spoke to her of the good Jesus.
Assuredly he who wrote, the Legend was not unacquainted
with the literature of Romantic Chivalry. In his mind's eye he
sees the chosen knight wooing a bride for his liege-lord, not betray-
ing his trust by a false word or unfaithful thought : and he evidently
rejoices that one such has been found actually upon the earth.
That some such mental picture was also in the mind of Francis is
not improbable, accustomed as he was to express his service of our
Lord in the language of chivalry. In later years he once spoke this
parable in warning to the less discreet: "A mighty king," he said,
"sent two messengers to the queen. The first came back and reported
the queen's reply, with no further words. The second, after repeat-
ing the queen's words, spoke much in praise of her beauty. Where-
upon the king recalled the first messenger and asked him his opinion
of the queen. ' She listened in silence and spoke wisely ' was the
reply. ' But saw you no beauty in her ? ' asked the king. ' Be it
thine, my Lord, to look upon that : mine it was to deliver the mess-
age.' At these words the king was greatly pleased and he took
that messenger into his intimate service; but the other because of
his wanton eyes, he cast out of his house."*
The parable suggests the reverential purity which Francis
brought to his wooing of Clare for the heavenly King: and it is
redolent of the purest chivalry. And here it may be fitting to re-
mark upon the extreme sensitiveness with which St. Francis
guarded the purity of his relations with women : a sensitiveness
partly accounted for by the moral laxity generally prevailing in
the world of his day. He would seldom speak with any woman
*Cf. II. Celano, 113 (cd. d'Alengon).
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 33
alone; and whenever it was necessary for him to speak with any, his
words were few : nor would he look them in the face. Once dis-
cussing this matter with a companion, he said : " I tell thee, dear
brother, there are two women only whose faces I should recognize if
I looked at them. The face of such a one and such a one is known
to me : but that of no other."*
It is generally supposed that those two women were St. Clare
and the Lady Giacoma. They were both living when the chronicler
penned these words ; and that fact perhaps withheld him from men-
tioning their names. But the sensitive reserve with which St.
Francis generally ordered his relations with women only throws
into clearer relief the freedom of soul he found in his intercourse
with St. Clare and invests that freedom with a shielded purity and
unique sacredness. For it was against the world that he guarded
his vowed loyalty to Christ ; and Clare was not of the world but in
mind and heart was wholly true to Christ, and of one mind with
Francis in the new life which had been given him. Doubtless too
in the quick and intimate understanding of his vocation, which
Clare swiftly revealed; or in other words, in the manifest kinship
of her spirit with his own, Francis recognized the spiritual security
of their relationship, and saw a divine sanction. For Clare was
less a disciple of his than a co-disciple with him of evangelical
poverty itself ; so intuitively and swiftly did she fathom its meaning
and so completely from the outset did it fill all her thought and
desire.
On the night that she fled from her father's house she was
already a mistress of the domain of the Franciscan life, so entirely
was she possessed by it and did she possess it. In the after days
until her death she would drink yet deeper draughts of its wisdom ;
but already she had gained the spring whence the wisdom flowed,
and had gained it with a conscious assurance such as few ever at-
tained to after much learning and experience. And that was the
full justification of her flight from the shelter of her father's house
into the material poverty and homelessness which awaited her.
True, Francis was there to guide her and she knew he would pro-
vide the necessary shelter and sustenance; but in the eyes of the
world she was throwing herself into a state of beggary and alone
of all women. Had she been less secure of her vocation, less a
mistress of its significance, less possessed by its clear, revealing
purpose, she might have been blamed for thus setting out alone
*Cf. II. Celano, 112.
VOL. XCV. 3
34
ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [April,
upon a path untrodden by any woman. As it was, however, we
must recognize in her flight a heroic insistence on the soul's free-
dom to " love the highest when we see it." Of this we may be
certain, her family would never have consented to the step she had
resolved on, but would have used the large legal rights of a feudal
house to prevent her. It was a case of taking by violence, if she
would take at all. For the story of her flight we will again turn
to the Legend.
When the solemnity of Palm Sunday was drawing near, Clare
with great fervour went to the man of God, asking his counsel
as to her leaving the world and in what manner and at what
time it should be. And our Father Francis commanded that on
that festive day Clare should array herself with ornaments and
come to the blessing of the palms with all the people, and that
on the night following she should go forth from the camp and
her worldly joy be turned into mourning for our Lord's Passion.
And on the Sunday the maiden went resplendent in her festive
array amongst all the women and with them entered the church.
There a remarkable foreshadowing happened : for when all the
others pressed forward to take the palm-branches, Clare in
bashfulness stayed in her place, nor did she move from it.
Wherefore the bishop came down from the steps and came to
her and put a palm into her hand. The night following, Clare
set about to obey the command of the Saint and with some
trusty companions prepared to take her longed-for flight. But
she wished not to go by the usual door; but with a strength
at which she herself wondered, she broke open another door
which was barred with beams and stones. And thus she left
behind her home and city and kinsfolk and hastened to Saint
Mary of the Porziuncola, and there the brethren who were keep-
ing vigil at the little altar, with lighted torches, received her.
Then without any delay did she cast aside the defilements of
Babylon and give a bill of divorce to the world; and she put
away her ornaments and her hair was shorn by the hands of the
brethren. .And when she had received the holy habit of penance
before the altar of the Blessed Mary, and when the humble
hand-maid had been espoused to Christ as it were by the couch
of His Virgin, straightway St. Francis led her to the church
of St. Paul to abide there until the Most High should provide
another place.
Two things strike one in reading this passage of the Legend :
the fearless courage with which Clare seized her soul's life, break-
ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 35
ing down with her own hands the barriers, material and immaterial,
which blocked her path, and the equally fearless courage of
Francis. There is little doubt that the bishop of Assisi was aware
of what was to happen ; for Francis was wont to consult him in his
difficulties ;* and the bishop's action in coming down from the altar
steps, and putting the palm-branch into Clare's hand as she remained
unmoving in her place, lends color to this supposition. Nevertheless
even in that time of daring individual action, Clare's flight was
sure to arouse anger on the part of her relatives and adverse criti-
cism amongst her acquaintances, as was afterward manifest. But
neither Clare nor Francis quailed before the storm of indignation,
in which the menfolk of her family pursued her to the convent of
San Paolo, on the morrow of her flight. Clare, clinging to the
altar, proclaimed her dedication and vows: and after some days her
relatives desisted from active persecution. Then Francis obtained
for her a hospitable shelter with the nuns of Sant' Angelo in Panso,
a convent on the slopes of Monte Subasio until finally he secured
the church and house of San Damiano which then became her life-
long dwelling-place. Throughout Francis stood by her faithfully.
Not only did he provide for her a house but he charged himself to
succour her at all times in her bodily and spiritual needs.f
On her side Clare placed in him an entire and simple trust:
and what this trust meant to Clare as a spiritual asset in her life
can be understood only when we remember her character. It was
perhaps humanly speaking, the one thing needed to bring her char-
acter to its full bloom. Without it her natural strength of mind
might have developed into imperiousness or a harsh self-reliance;
the surgent loyalty which was at the root of her moral being would
have been balked of its full exercise. Had that perfect trust been
denied her, she would undoubtedly have suffered that imprisonment
of loneliness, which to some souls and these amongst the loftiest
and most generous is as the winter to a well-planted garden. It
may be said, that in religion the most perfect trust will always be
found in the trust the soul puts in God, and that the most loyal of
creatures may never lack the fullest exercise of their loyalty when
they look to Him.
But it must not be forgotten that the greatest of saints know
no such divorce between God and their fellow-creatures as this
statement may be taken to imply, but their conscious relationship
*Cf. Leg. Trium Socioram, 20, 35, 47.
tC/. II. Celano, 204 ; also Rule of St. Clare, chap. vi.
36 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [April,
with God overflows yearningly towards those who are the compan-
ions of their earthly journey: and in some way the realization of
their relationship with God in and through the creature is needful
for their spiritual freedom. And none felt this more keenly than
did the first Franciscans; it was a distinguishing note in their
spiritual lives. If Clare had not found in St. Francis a fellow-
creature in whom she could put a trust, only less absolute than that
which God Himself invites, she would have lacked something in the
realized Franciscan life of which she is so resplendent a type; and
that would not only have been our loss, but hers, too, whilst she
remained on earth. It may equally be said that something would
have been lacking in the Franciscan message to the world had St.
Francis found no St. Clare upon whom to bestow in a singular
degree that high chivalrous reverence for womanhood, so selfless
and true, which belonged to the purest romance of chivalry though
it was so seldom found in actual life.
As the years went by that companionship of the spirit which
drew these two souls together lost neither its unearthly purity nor
its effective reality, but only deepened in spiritual intensity as they
both drew nearer to the divine life and in more active co-operation
on the part of Clare as the need arose. Early in her religious life
Clare, with prophetic vision, urged St. Francis to continue his
preaching apostolate at a time when he was doubting whether he
ought not to give himself to a secluded life of prayer; and she
seems indeed to have been his counsellor frequently in his troubles.
To her he unburdened his soul as to few others ; oftentimes revealing
to her the dealings of God with him, of which he was reticent even
with the friars. He is said to have told her the secret history of the
Porziuncola Indulgence;* he certainly did not hide from her the
miracle of the Stigmata ;f into her sympathetic ears he poured out
the thoughts which came to him concerning the proper vocation of
the friars.$ The discreet reticence of the early biographers of the
saints has drawn a veil over their intercourse against idle curiosity ;
nevertheless certain illuminating facts shine like stars in the night
of our knowledge, revealing much to those who can see. There is,
for example, the somewhat disconcerting story of how in the time
of his great trouble when many of the brethren were departing from
*Cf. Bartholi, Tract, de Indulgentia (ed. Sabatier), p. 96.
tSome of the bandages she made to staunch the bleeding of the wounds, and
a pair of soft sandals to ease his pierced feet, are still preserved at Santa Chiara
in Assisi.
tCf. Anal. Franciscana, III., p. 81.
I 9 i2.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 37
the first ways of the Order, St. Francis gradually withdrew more
and more from intercourse with the Sisters of San Damiano. It is
quite evident that in this matter St. Clare was resolute to defend her
spiritual birthright, and that she drew upon all the resources of her
own gentle, but determined spirit, to prevent St. Francis from alto-
gether withdrawing his presence and the fostering care he owed
herself and her Sisters. To this incident we shall have to refer
again further on in speaking of Clare's influence upon the develop-
ment of the Franciscan Order. Here we but regard it as it affects
her personal relations with St. Francis. Well she knew from her
sympathetic intuition of St. Francis' spirit that his decision was
dictated merely by his fear, lest his example might be taken as a
sanction by those who were less unworldly in their views and pur-
pose, and lest any scandal might arise which would mar the fair
name of the Order. But Clare took a larger view. Francis' with-
drawal would mean a practical separation of the Sisters from the
Franciscan Order, and in some way it would cast a shame upon her
and those women who were with her.
Through the silences of those early biographies her protest
rings clear and consistent; and in the end she won Francis to her
own better judgment. Tradition has given us some indication of
this, her one struggle with Francis himself, in the pages of the
Fioretti : and what it tells us in nowise contradicts the more reticent
testimony of Thomas of Celano.* In truth it might well have been
some remonstrance from Clare which drew from St. Francis this
protest of his fidelity to the trust she had reposed in him :
Think not, my brothers, that I do not love them (the Sisters
at San Damiano) perfectly : for if it were wrong to cherish them
in Christ, would it not have been a greater wrong to espouse
them to Christ? Indeed it had been no wrong not to have
called them, but not to care for them when called, were utter
unkindness. But I am giving you an example, that as I do so you
also should do. For I will not that any should take upon
himself to visit them of his own accord, but my will is that the
unwilling and most reluctant men, so only that they are also
spiritual and approved by a long and worthy life, shall be
appointed for their service.f
*Vide: Fioretti, cap. 14; (2) Celano, 204. Cf. also Speculum Perfectionis,
cap. 1 08, where Clare from her sick bed requests a meeting with St. Francis at the
time that he too was sick unto death.
til. Celano, 205.
38 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [April,
In very truth Francis could say that he himself had not acted
by his own will when he called Clare to the service of Christ, but by
the compulsion of the Divine Will; and in obedience to that Will
he had charged himself with the care of her. That same rule-
having regard to other circumstances he now endeavored to im-
pose by precept and example upon the friars. Some such prudent
regulation as that expressed by St. Francis, Clare herself would be
the first to admit ; but at the same time she tenaciously held to her
right and that of her Sisters to share with the brethren the comfort
and encouragement of Francis' personal care.
And perhaps Francis in his absorption in the work of his
vocation and in his conviction of the noble strength of Clare's
character, never quite realized the value to her of her conscious de-
pendence upon him. He probably knew better the comfort she was
to him; nor is it unlikely, considering his entire self-immolation
upon the cross of Christ, that one motive which led him to cease
his frequent visits to San Damiano was to deny himself this com-
fort: for the path of the spirit in quest of sanctity is pitiless in its
exactions; the saint must lose all before he finds all. But in the
last two years of his earthly life, St. Francis entered into a greater
spiritual security and peace. It was after he had received the sacred
stigmata, and in those last days he was in frequent correspondence
with Clare.
The last time they met upon earth was when Francis was
being taken to Rieti at the request of Cardinal Ugolino, in the hope
that a physician at the Papal Court, then resident at Rieti, might
afford him some relief of his bodily suffering and prolong his life.
As they were setting out Francis desired the brethren first to take
him to San Damiano that he might take leave of St. Clare. Ar-
rived at the convent, he was unable for many days to proceed
further owing to his increasing weakness. So Clare had a cell of
wattles made for him in the garden ; and it was during his stay there
that Francis composed his " Canticle of Brother Sun." Who shall
say how much of the inspiration of that song of joyous worship
came from the unfaltering faith and heavenly peace which filled the
sacred enclosure in which Clare spent her life?
To those who understand the influence of place upon a man's
soul, the " Canticle of the Sun " will remain as much a tribute to
the presence of St. Clare as to those earlier associations which
bound the singer to the spot where he discovered his vocation : for
Clare had kept alive there the spirit of those first days of his joy.
I 9 i2.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 39
When at length they were able to carry Francis onward to Rieti, he
took with him his regained gift of song; and for Clare's comfort he
composed "certain holy words with music" which he sent her by his
companions.* The two saints never met again in their earthly life,
for Francis when he returned to Assisi was dying ; and Clare too was
so grievously ill that she thought she would die before him, without
the comfort of his presence. And this to her was a great sorrow and
the cause of bitter tears. True to herself, a few days before Francis's
death, she sent word to him of her longing desire to see him once
more ; " which when the saint heard," says the Speculum Perfect-
ionis, " for as much as he loved her above all others with fatherly
affection, he was moved with pity towards her. But considering
that what she desired namely, to see him could not be brought
about, for her comfort and that of all the Sisters, he wrote for her
his blessing in a letter and absolved her from every defect, in case
she had done anything contrary to his admonition or against the
commandments and counsels of the Son of God. Moreover that she
might put aside all sadness and sorrow he said to the brother whom
she had sent : ' Go and tell Sister Clare to put away all sadness and
sorrow because she cannot see me now, since of the truth she may
know that before her death both she and her Sisters will see me,
and will be much comforted concerning me.' "f
That promise was in some way fulfilled. On the following
Sunday, when the body of the dead Francis was carried to San
Damiano that Clare and the Sisters might pay their homage to it be-
fore the burial, Clare rose from her sick bed and came and
looked once more upon him who had been her father and guide and
friend, and kissed the hands which bore the marks of Christ's
wounds. " When he was taken away," Celano says simply : " the
door was shut which shall nevermore be opened to such woe."$
Clare out-lived Francis by twenty-seven years. Lived, one
might say, to defend and foster his work. She was constantly ail-
ing, but her indomitable spirit would not consent to die till she had
secured for all her Sisters the legal right to follow in the way
that Francis had led herself. It was a trust Francis had left her,
when from his deathbed he wrote to her :
I, poor little Brother Francis, wish to follow the life and
poverty of Jesus Christ, our Lord Most High, and of His most
*Cf. Speculum Perfections*, cap. go; Fioretti. cap. 18.
^Speculum Perfectionis, cap. 108.
tl. Celano, 117-
40 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [April,
holy Mother and to persevere therein until the end, and I
beseech you all, my Ladies, and counsel you always to live in
this highest life and poverty. And watch yourselves well lest
through the teaching or advice of anybody you ever depart from
it in anywise.*
That legacy was in reality more to Clare than the bodily pres-
ence of Francis ever could have been ; in it he confided his spirit and
life-work to her care. Clare, as we have said, would not consent
to die then, not until she had fulfilled her duty of love as the in-
heritor of Francis' last will and desire. Twenty-seven years
dragged out their course before her task was accomplished. On the
ninth of August, 1253, Innocent IV. solemnly confirmed the Rule
which was the longed-for charter of the Franciscan life for Clare
and all her Sisters. Two days later Clare died. Her work was ac-
complished; she had done her part to secure the fulfillment of
Francis' will.
Theirs was indeed a friendship and more than a friendship
in the common use of the word such as the world can but seldom
see, but should never forget : a glimpse surely of the heavenly life of
which the world's life at its best is but a type. As such we may
regard it for our own good.
*Cf. Regula S. Clarae, cap. 6.
G. K. CHESTERTON'S " THE BALLAD OF THE
WHITE HORSE."
BY JAMES B. DOLLAR0.
ILBERT K. Chesterton is not a Catholic, but in nearly
all his writings he expresses his respect and regard
for the ancient Church ; and both his philosophy and
his outlook on life are Catholic. Chesterton is an ex-
traordinary man in a literary sense. He is acknowl-
edged by all to be a master of prose composition, but when a month
or so ago he wrote The Ballad of the White Horse, people were as-
tonished to find that he was also a great poet and minstrel.
Here and there a few irresponsible critics found fault with the
work, but the general verdict agreed that it was a most notable
literary achievement. If the chorus of approval is not as loud
and as spontaneous as the "Ballad" deserves, the reason is not
very far to seek. Protestant England is more or less astounded
and stupefied to have all her modern ideals ignored, her industrial
and martial triumphs despised, to be taken back to her early Catholic
days and ordered to admire the simple faith and bravery of the old
Catholic kings and knights who asked no questions and made no
boasts, but fought unto death for the triumph of Christianity and
the glory of the Mother of God. For in the ballad it is Our Blessed
Lady herself who appears to King Alfred and orders him to muster
all Catholic England the Roman, the Saxon, and the Celt to
drive away the marauding Danes whose
Misshapen ships stood on the deep
Full of strange gold and fire,
And hairy men, as huge as sin,
With horned heads, came wading in
Through the long, low sea-mire.
It was the mystic words which the Mother of God gave to
Alfred that brought to his side, with all their retainers, Eldred,
the Saxon, and Mark, the Roman, and the Irish Prince, Colan of
Caerleon, by whose aid he drove out the Vikings and took the
town of London. In these modern days of querulousness and
42 " THE BALLAD OF THE VSHITE HORSE " [April,
doubt this most manly of poems is a sharp and salutary medicine
for the mind of any man who will take the trouble to ponder over
it. Its motto is King Alfred's own dictum : " I say, as do all
Christian men, that it is a divine purpose that rules, and not faith,"
and its lesson is this: The world was made not for pagans, or
atheists, or doubters, or wasters (as were the Danes), but it was
made by God for Christian men of faith who will keep His law and
take care of the gifts He has given them, for as Alfred says to the
Danish Chiefs :
... it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things,
For our God hath blessed Creation,
Calling it good. I know
That spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with this hand ;
But by God's death the stars shall stand
And the small apples grow.
The world and its gifts belong to men of true Christian faith,
and He will ultimately take it from the doubters and the wasters
and give it to those who hold Him and his law in love and fear.
In the end of the poem, King Alfred prophesies that though on
the present occasion they would rout the barbarian with the sword,
yet in the far distant future the " ancient barbarian " would come
again to them, not with the sword in hand but with books and
pens:
What though they come with scroll and pen,
And grave as a shaven clerk,
By this sign you shall know them,
That they ruin and make dark.
They will come again in the guise of wise scholars who " know
too much " to believe in God, and who destroy the faith of others.
They will dishonor religion and dethrone God. They will say that
man has no Master, yet that he is the slave of fate and chance.
They will go back to the old cruel superstitions of " the course in
bone and skin." They will be marked by " detail of the sinning,
and denial of the sin." In short Chesterton very plainly indicates
the agnostic philosophers, like Spencer and Tyndall and Darwin,
and the decadent infidel noveltists who have done so much by nega-
tion and inuendo to destroy the faith of men's souls :
I9I2.J " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 43
By God and man dishonoured,
By death and life made vain,
Know ye the old barbarian,
The barbarian come again
When is great talk of trend and tide,
And wisdom and destiny,
Hail that undying heathen
That is sadder than the sea.
The contrast between these shallow, faithless, modern days
of ours
. . . these days like deserts, when
Pride and a little scratching pen
Have dried and split the hearts of men,
and the glorious old Catholic days when heroes of the Cross went
forth to conflict, and against them
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime
is brought out sharply and poignantly in the poem. The artificiality
and scepticism of our days arouse the contempt and disgust of the
author of The Ballad of the White Horse, and for relief his soul
turns yearningly to the wholesome earlier times.
. . . backwards shall ye wonder and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred's days,
When Pagans still were men.
Another lesson of the poem is this : The pagan or the atheist,
though he own the world, has a soul that is cold and empty and
without hope, while the true Christian, even in the midst of trials
and adversities, has still the lamp of faith with him to dispel the
threatening shadows.
Thus the great Danish chief, Guthrum, mourns darkly about
the doom that is over all things, and says that
The soul is like a lost bird,
The body a broken shell.
Out of the skies, he says, there comes no noise but weeping, and
44 " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " [April,
because all men must die, and all the gods alike, there is a tear
in every tiniest flower :
The little brooks are very sweet
Like a girl's ribbons curled,
But the great sea is bitter
That washes all the world.
And Alfred taunts him, saying :
What have the strong gods given ?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne
And asks if he is dead?
Sirs, I am but a nameless man,
A rhymester without home,
Yet since I come to Wessex clay
And carry the cross of Rome,
I will even answer the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men,
Why they be meek and monkish folk
And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke ;
What sign have we save blood and smoke ?
Here is my answer then.
That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name ;
That though we scatter and though we fly
And you hang over us like the sky
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.
* * *
Our monks go robed in rain and snow
But the heart of flame therein,
But you go clothed in feasts and flames
When all is ice within ;
Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb
Men wondering ceaselessly,
If it be not better to fast for joy
Than feast for misery.
This, then, is the great Christian lesson of The Ballad of the
1912.] " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 45
White Horse. But the reader of the review need not hastily
imagine that this moral is written large all over the poem so that he
who runs may read. Chesterton is too much of a^ artist to spoil his
ballad by turning it into a sermon. The poem is a long sustained
effort, stretching to eight cantos or " books," and it takes a little
study to grasp its entire purpose. There are many people who will
read it and never notice the lesson of the work at all. But the
lesson is there for those who have eyes to see and who have not
voluntarily hardened their hearts. This modern world of ours is
fast drifting away from the safe moorings of the ancient simplicity
of faith and work, and Gilbert K. Chesterton is not the least of
the prophets who would warn it of its error ere the last dread doom
shall befall:
And in the last eclipse, the sea
Shall stand up like a tower,
Above all moons made dark and riven
Hold up its foaming head in heaven
And laugh, knowing its hour.
The Ballad of the White Horse is truly the utterance of a seer
and a prophet. It has an elemental force, a rugged dignity and per-
manence like a torrent-scarred mountain that grimly confronts the
restless and heaving sea. Its strength is not that of the Greek
temples, polished and fluted and chiseled; but that of the wind-
worn monolith or the ancient pillar-tower, furrowed with olden
runes and vibrant with the dim dreams and sorrowful sages of the
past. In the deep cadences of the rushing lines that toss and sway
and boil and swirl, like a mountain river over a rocky bed, or a
charge of Celtic galloglasses through a narrow Irish glen, we hear
again the din and music of those far-off battles
Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud
And the dense arrows drive
and where the Catholic King Alfred, fighting for God and altars
and home and native land, locked fast in a last death struggle with
the heathen foe:
A sea-folk blinder than the sea
Broke all about his land ;
46 " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " [April,
But Alfred up against them bare
And gripped the ground and grasped the air,
Staggered, and strove to stand.
He bent them back with spear and spade,
With desperate dyke and wall,
With foeman leaning on his shield
And roaring on him when he reeled;
And no help came at all.
He broke them with a broken sword
A little towards the sea,
And for one hour of panting peace,
Ringed with a roar that would not cease,
With golden crown and girded fleece
Made laws under a tree.
And in the turmoil of these weird battles we recognize the
echo of that immemorial conflict of Right against Wrong, of Truth
against Falsehood, of the Good against the Evil, which makes the
refrain and burden of the sadness of all the sighing winds and all
the sobbing waters of this mournful and sin-laden world of ours.
The versification of The Ballad of the White Horse is very
felicitously chosen, and goes with a swing and a rush that carries
everything with it like a mighty wind. Here and there, like a
torrent choked by boulders, it seems to pause and become uncertain
and broken, then again it rushes along in a smooth sweep that is
full of a sort of barbaric music and power. Even in the dedication
stanzas we have some impressive mood-portrayals, as, for instance,
Do you remember when we went,
Under a dragon moon,
And 'mid volcanic tints at night;
Walked where they fought the unknown fight
And saw black trees on the battle-height,
Black thorn on Ethandune!
As dreamers that walk through a visionary land see vast and
portentous shapes and figures, so tremendous images like this now
and again startle the reader:
1912.] " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 47
Where Ind's enamelled peaks arise,
Around that inmost one,
Where ancient eagles on its brink,
Vast as archangels, gather and drink
The sacrament of the sun.
We are reminded by the following of the vast plain covered
with dead men's bones, described by the Prophet in Holy Writ :
The King went gathering Wessex men
As grain out of the chaff ;
The few that were alive to die,
Laughing, as littered skulls that lie
After lost battles turn to the sky
An ever-lasting laugh.
So true is he to the primordial energy of the days he describes
that some of the images shock and startle :
And as he stirred the strings of the harp
To notes but four or five,
The heart of each man moved in him
Like a babe buried alive.
And here is another example of the same kind :
As he went down to the river-hut
He went as one that fell ;
Seeing the high forest domes and spars
Dim green or torn with golden scars,
As the proud look up at the evil stars,
In the red heavens of hell.
In The Ballad of the White Horse, indeed, there is no dearth
of large and spacious utterance. We read of " Guthrum of the
Danes "
With wide eyes bright as the one long day
On the long polar plains.
In describing the prowess of Eldred in war his images are
vast and dreadful enough to make the reader gasp :
As the tall white devil of the Plague
Moves out of Asian skies,
With his foot in a waste of cities
And his head in a cloud of flies ;
48 " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " [April,
Or purple and peacock skies grow dark
With a moving locust-tower ;
Or tawny sand-winds tall and dry,
Like hell's red banners beat and fly,
When death comes out of Araby
Was Eldred in his hour.
Then again we have intimate searchings of the human heart
strange ferretings of thought like this about the Irish Prince Colan
it was just before the fight and all had expressed their fears and
soul-concerns :
And all were moved a little,
But Colan stood apart,
Having first pity, and after
Hearing, like rat in rafter,
That little worm of laughter
That eats the Irish heart.
In mid-battle when the giant Eldred was wading in blood and
slaughter we have the same strange interior search-light turned
on him:
But while he moved like a massacre
He murmured as in sleep,
And his words were all of low hedges
And little fields, and sheep.
Even as he strode like a pestilence,
That strides from Rhine to Rome,
He thought how tall his beans might be
If ever he went home.
Spoke some stiff piece of childish prayer,
Dull as the distant chimes,
That thanked our God for good eating
And corn and quiet times
A characteristic Catholic touch is given to the ballad by the
appearance of the Mother of God to Alfred, and the bard is very
felicitous in his description of the incident:
Her face was like an open word
When brave men speak and choose,
The very colours of her coat
Were better than good news.
1912.] " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 49
She sends Alfred on an embassy to raise the people for a de-
cisive war against the pagans, and he goes joyfully on his way
" Shaken of the joy of giants, the joy without a cause." Nor does,
he fail in his embassy, for at the message of the Mother of God
the three great princes, Mark, the Roman, and Eldred, the Saxon,,
and Colan, the Gael, leap to their feet and muster all their forces..
The Virgin Mother appears again in the last rout of the Danes,,
when the fortunes of the fight still hang in the balance.
The King looked up, and what he saw
Was a great light like death,
For Our Lady stood on the standard's rent,
As lovely and as innocent
As when beneath white walls she went
In the lilies of Nazareth.
* * *
Over the iron forest
He saw Our Lady stand ;
Her eyes were sad withouten art,
And seven swords were in her heart
But one was in her hand.
Inspirited by this vision, the Christian host renew their efforts,
the Danes sway and stagger and a dreadful fear comes upon them.
They are dismayed by the fearful persistence of the Saxon and the
Roman legionaries, and the " Ghastly war-pipes of the Gael "
awaken all their latent superstitions. They fling down their arms
and rush in wide-eyed terror from the fated field :
" The Mother of God goes over them,
On dreadful Cherubs borne;
And the psalm is roaring above the rune,
And the Cross goes over the sun and moon ;
Endeth the Battle of Ethandune
With the blowing of the horn."
We will close our review of this truly remarkable Ballad
by adverting to another noticeable phrase in its contents. Chesterton
has ever been noted for his sympathy with the Irish, and his interest
in them as an ancient and illustrious race. This trait of his is well
illustrated in the work before us. To the Irish Prince, Colan of
Caerleon, is given a high place of honor in the text, and to him, as a
worthy representative of the "fighting race," falls the glory of open-
VOL. xcv. 4
5 o " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " [April,
ing the Battle of Ethandune with " the throwing of the sword."
Chesterton's description of this Irish Prince is quaint, yet charac-
teristic and typical like some weird antique painting, strangely
colored with ancient pigments :
And the man was come as a shadow
From the shadow of Druid trees,
Where Usk, with mighty murmurings,
Past Caerleon of the fallen Kings,
Goes out to ghostly seas.
Last of a race in ruin
He spoke the speech of the Gaels;
His Kin were in holy Ireland
Or up in the crags of the Wales.
But his soul stood with his Mothers' folk,
That were of the rain-wrapped isle
Where Patrick and Brandan westerly
Looked out at last on a landless sea
And the sun's last smile.
His harp was carved and cunning
As the Celtic craftsman makes,
Graven all over with twisting shapes
Like many headless snakes.
His harp was carved and cunning,
His sword was prompt and sharp,
And he was gay when he held the sword,
Sad when he held the harp.
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
He kept the Roman order ;
He made the Christian sign ;
But his eyes grew often blind and bright,
And the sea that rose in the rocks at night
Rose to his head like wine.
When Alfred came to him, Colan in disdainful fashion tried
I 9 i2.] " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 51
at once to pick a quarrel with the king, but the moment the words
of the Virgin were quoted to him his answer was quick as light-
ning:
Then Colan of the Sacred Tree
Tossed his black mane on high,
And cried, as rigidly he rose,
" And if the sea and sky be foes,
We will tame the sea and sky."
Others might warily hang back, but when there was fighting
to be done the Gael would be present eager for the fray. So when
the day of battle dawned Colan and his rude host were there " with
demon pipes that wail :"
In long, outlandish garments,
Torn, though of antique worth,
With Druid beards, and Druid spears
As a resurrected race appears
Out of an elder earth.
Splendidly and dramatically does Prince Colan open the battle
at Ethandune when the Danish chieftan Harold advances upon him.
Then was it that the life of the Gael hung in the balance as Harold
snatched a great bow from one of his followers :
.. .and bent it on
Colan, whose doom grew dark, and shone
Stars evil over Caerleon
In the place where he was born.
* * *
To his great gold earring Harold
Tugged back the feathered tail,
And swift had sprung the arrow,
But swifter sprang the Gael.
Whirling the long sword round his head
A great wheel in the sun,
He sent it splendid through the sky,
Flying before the shaft could fly
It smote Earl Harold over the eye,
And blood began to run.
Colan stood bare and weaponless
Earl Harold, as in pain,
52 " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " [April,
Strove for a smile, put hand to head,
Stumbled and suddenly fell dead ;
And the small white daisies all waxed red
With blood from out his brain.
In spite of the ringing stanzas with which the poet sings of the
exploits of Alfred, and Eldred, and Mark, one is forced to think
the Gael is his favorite, with such evident enthusiasm and such
felicitous phrase does Chesterton sing the deeds of Colan of Caer-
leon and his ghost-like bands. The bloodiest pitch of the battle
came when the Irish host upbore the dead body of their fallen
chieftan and went wildly into the last melee with their war-pipes
playing a pibroch :
And highest sang the slaughter,
And fastest fell the slain
When from the wood-road's blackening throat
A crowning and crashing wonder smote
The rear-guard of the Danes.
For the dregs of Colan's company
Lost down the other road,
Had gathered and grown and heard the din,
And with wild yells came pouring in,
Naked as their old British Kin,
And bright with blood for woad.
And bare and bloody and aloft
They bore before their band
The body of their mighty lord,
Colan of Caerleon, and the horde
That bore King Alfred's battle sword
Broken in his left hand.
And a strange music went with him,
Loud and yet strangely far;
The wild pipes of the western land,
Too keen for the ear to understand,
Sang high and deathly on each hand
When the dead man went to war.
Blocked between ghost and buccaneer,
Brave men have dropped and died,
1912.] " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 53
And the wild sea-lords well might quail
As the ghastly war-pipes of the Gael
Called to the horns of White Horse Vale,
And all the horns replied.
We have quoted extensively from the ballad, but the stanzas
are of such unusual and we had almost said elemental richness
and power, that the temptation to quote is almost irresistible. Yet
we have only touched the work on very few of its phases or aspects.
Whole papers might be written on the poet's delineation of the
character of the Danes, of King Alfred, of Eldred, the Saxon, of
Mark, the Roman, as well as on that splendid canto, a poem in itself,
that is entitled " The Harp of Alfred." How true, for instance,
is this description of the merciless Vikings:
Our towns were shaken of tall kings
With scarlet beards like blood ;
The world turned empty where they trod,
They took the kindly Cross of God,
And cut it up for wood.
Their souls were drifting as the sea,
And all good towns and lands
They only saw with heavy eyes,
And broke with heavy hands.
Their gods were sadder than the sea,
Gods of a wandering will,
Who cried for blood like beasts at night,
Sadly, from hill to hill.
They seemed as trees walking the earth,
As witless and as tall,
Yet they took hold upon the heavens
And no help came at all.
Nor have we space in this paper to do more than hint at the
great and lurid images and the luminous descriptions, though here
we might with advantage add the following to our former list:
The turning point of the great battle of Ethandune was signalized
more clearly by a certain " change " in the eyes of the Danish
Chieftan Guthrum than by any other sign, no matter how plain or
terrible :
54 " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " [April,
As a turn of the wheel of tempest
Tilts up the whole sky tall,
And cliffs of wan cloud luminous
Lean out like great walls over us,
As if the heavens might fall ;
As such a tall and tilted sky
Sends certain snow or light,
So did the eyes of Guthrum change,
And the turn was more certain and more strange
Than a thousand men in flight.
For not till the floor of the skies is split
And hell-fire shines through the sea,
Or the stars look up through the rent earth's knees,
Cometh such rending of certainties,
As when one wise man truly sees,
What is more wise than he.
Again we are told that Alfred was great and strong :
Because in the forest of all fears
Like a strange fresh gust from sea,
Struck him that ancient innocence
That is more than mastery.
In his heyday of glory he sent embassies to all the lands of the
world, even to the climes of
Scrawled screens and secret gardens
And insect-laden skies
Where fiery plains stretch on and on
To the purple country of Prester John
And the walls of Paradise.
And he knew the might of the Terre Majeure,
Where Kings began to reign;
Where in a night-rout without name,
Of gloomy Goths and Gauls there came
White, above candles all aflame,
Like a vision, Charlemagne.
When the King wrested London Town from the unwilling
1912.] " THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE " 55
Danes, the earth was red with slaughter, and dreadful conflagra-
tions lit the midnight skies :
Smoke like rebellious heavens rolled
Curled over coloured flames,
Mirrored in monstrous purple dreams,
In the mighty pools of Thames.
Taken all in all The Ballad of the White Horse is the bravest,
sanest, wholesomest, and most Christian strain of romantic song
that has been sung by an English minstrel for many a long decade.
It does not pretend to extreme literary finish or polish, but it very
often soars to splendid reaches of sublime thought and martial
melody. It is the very opposite of all that is effeminate or decadent,
and its masculine vigor and Catholic purity of tone are a much-
needed tonic to minds enervated by the cloying verse and senti-
mental and erotic fiction of our modern days. We venture to pre-
dict that The Ballad of the White Horse will continue to perpetuate
the name of the author down through future years, and be treasured
as a classic of English literature.
THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN.*
BY FRANCIS P. DUFFY, D.D.
HE long-expected Life of Cardinal Newman is at last
given to the public. It is a detailed record of his life
as a Catholic, drawn mainly from his journal and
his letters. Only one chapter is devoted to his life
as an Anglican. That is covered by his Apologia,
and by the letters published by Miss Mozley. " It is by the Cardi-
nal's own desire," Mr. Ward informs us, " that his present biog-
rapher has not added to the record given in those letters and in the
Apologia."
We are told at the outset that Newman's correspondence, on
which the present work is based, " points to a biography which is
rather an addition to his writings than an illustration of them ....
On the whole, the study of his life which is found in the corre-
spondence carries the readers of Newman into a new country rather
than illustrates one that they knew already." The story is not alto-
gether new to those who have kept in touch with the various ac-
counts of Newman's times which have been given in the biographies
of Wiseman, Manning, Ward and Vaughan, in Abbot Gasquet's
Lord Acton and His Circle, or in Canon Barry's article on New-
man in the Catholic Encyclopedia. But to the general reader this
biography opens up " a new country," and it becomes the task of a
reviewer to help in exploring it.
In a life that lasted so long, and that was taken up with so many
and such varied interests, a life that takes 1,300 pages in the telling,
it is very difficult to pick and choose points for consideration in a
single article. It would be the most congenial task to enumerate
the successes of Newman, to give a record of the lectures and con-
troversies by which he strengthened the hearts of his fellow-Catho-
lics in his own day, and to make a study of the works which have
been a help and an inspiration to Catholic thinkers for two genera-
tions.
But Mr. Ward presents Newman's own view of his life, and
*The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Based on his Private Journals and
Correspondence. By Wilfrid Ward. In two volumes. Longmans, Green & Co.
New York and London, 1912.
1912.] THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN 57
that view is very often one of disappointment and discouragement
in the face of thwarted plans and fruitless efforts. We believe that
this view will not be a permanent one. Newman accomplished
vastly more than he allowed himself to believe. He measured his
achievements by the standard of his own view as to what he might
have done. Actually he did more in his self-styled idleness than
most men can hope to accomplish in a career of strenuous activity.
But since his trials and adversities have been brought so promi-
nently before the public, it may be the duty of an admirer to con-
sider that side of his life as a Catholic. At any rate this line of
treatment will supply a thread on which may be strung various
features of his career. It may do a service by showing that he was
not a man out of all harmonious relations with his fellows, that his
trials came from the opposition of a few, rather than from a lack
of appreciation by the generality of Catholics.
The first attack on Newman's theological opinions came from
America, in a criticism of the Essay on Development written by the
vigorous and logical Dr. Brownson, a recent convert himself. New-
man at that time was busy explaining his position to Roman theolo-
gians like Fr. Perrone, and was not looking for open controversy
with fellow-Catholics so soon after his reception into the Church.
The next reference to America is in the shape of a graceful
letter written to Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore, thanking Ameri-
can Catholics for their support during the Achilli trial. In 1858,
when Newman had begun work on a translation of the Bible,
Cardinal Wiseman forwarded to him a letter from the American
Bishops suggesting that Newman should co-operate with Kenrick
in his version, part of which was already published. It seems a
pity that some such arrangement could not have been made, for
Archbishop Kenrick has shown himself in his translation and notes
a scholarly exegete and theologian, and Newman could have sup-
plied the literary finish which would have given us an English
Catholic translation of the Bible to be proud of. But Newman
balked in his quiet way, and the Cardinal had other things to think
of, so the whole matter was let drop.
Newman was interested in the progress of events in the United
States. Writing to Pusey, in 1867, he draws an argument for the
power of the Pope from our form of government. " Whatever be
the extent of ' State Rights,' some jurisdiction the President must
have over the American Union, as a whole, if he is to be of any use
or meaning at all. He cannot be a mere Patriarch of the Yankees,
58 THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN [April,
or Exarch of the West Country squatters, or ' primus inter pares '
with the Governors of Kentucky or Vermont."
Finally, it is proper to insert a letter written when he was
eighty-eight years of age, relating to the death of Father Hecker,
" the Paulist," says Ward, " whose efforts to interpret the Catholic
religion to his contemporaries in America had commanded New-
man's close sympathy."
Feb. 28, 1889.
MY DEAR FATHER HEWIT :
I was very sorrowful at hearing of Father Hecker's
death. I have ever felt that there was this sort of unity in our
lives, that we had both begun a work of the same kind, he in
America and I in England, and I know how zealous he was in
promoting it. It is not many months since I received a vigorous
and striking proof of it in the book he sent me. Now I am left
with one friend less, and it remains with me to convey through
you my best condolement to all the members of your Society.
Hoping that you do not forget me in your prayers, I am,
dear Father Hewit,
Most truly yours,
JOHN. H. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
One of the most disappointing failures of Newman's life was
in the affair of the Irish Catholic University. But the fault cannot
justly be laid to the Irish Church. Practically the whole respon-
sibility rests on the shoulders of one Irish prelate, Dr. Cullen, a
faithful and zealous churchman, but one who did not represent the
main body of ecclesiastical opinion in his own country. If Newman
had consulted the opinions of the Irish hierarchy, he would prob-
ably never have gone to Ireland. They knew that the University
was bound to be a failure. Many of them might have done better
by it, but at best they could only have delayed its death. Newman's
duties and rights as rector seem to have been too vaguely defined,
and this led to misunderstandings with the governing Board, for
which the situation itself, rather than the persons, was to blame.
It has been generally supposed that one of his chief difficulties
resulted from an undue attempt on his part to intrude English
converts into the University chairs. He did, indeed, try to introduce
Oxford men, his justification being that they were practically the
only Catholics in the islands who had personal experience of the
running of a University. It is enlightening, however, to find that
he was strongly in favor of enlisting the aid of certain brilliant
1912.] THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN 59
young Irishmen who had taken part in the national movement of
'48, and that Dr. Cullen was even more opposed to these men than
to the English converts. Mr. Ward gives the first published list
of the faculty. We select the better known names : Dr. Edmund
O'Reilly, S.J., Dr. Patrick Leahy (afterwards Archbishop of Cas-
hel) ; Eugene O'Curry; John O'Hagan; Robert Ormsby; Thomas
W. Allies; Aubrey de Vere; Denis Florence McCarthy; J. H.
Pollen; Pierre le Page Renouf. This is a brilliant array of talent,
with Irish names predominating. It would be difficult nowadays
to gather in any English-speaking land a more able body of Catholic
scholars.
From casual remarks in letters of later days, as well as in his
reply as Cardinal to the address of the Irish members of Parlia-
ment, he shows that his Irish experiences did not render him bitter
against the land in which he had made his first conspicuous failure.
Bishop Moriarity, Father O'Reilly, Aubrey de Vere, and Lord
Emly remained his close friends. When his orthodoxy was ques-
tioned, Dr. Cullen was the first to speak out for him in Rome. He
sympathized with Irish discontent, though he did not agree with
Manning in the remedy of Home Rule which, however, he expected
would come in time. His strongest statement is a phrase in a letter
written in 1887: " If I were an Irishman, I should be (in heart)
a rebel."
When one considers what a thorough Englishman Newman
was, it is surprising to find how little he was affected by the hostility
to him which prevailed amongst the Protestants of England for
twenty years after his conversion. It has been sometimes said
otherwise that his difficulties as a Catholic came from too great
sensitiveness about what Protestants thought. Quite the contrary
is true, at least so far as concerns his personal feelings. The dis-
trust and dislike of the general body of English people for him
during the years before the Apologia rested more lightly on his
mind than any breath of criticism coming from fellow-Catholics.
Naturally he was pleased, as any man must have been, with the
quick and generous recognition of his honesty and sincerity given
by his brother Englishmen when he opened his life before them.
He kept some old friendships from the wreckage of his past, such
as Dean Church and William Froude. He was considerate of the
religious welfare of possible converts, when there was question
about the way in which Catholicity should be presented to them, es-
pecially when extremists were advocating forms of devotion which
60 THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN [April,
were alien to English and American Catholics, or urging as essen-
tials of faith personal views which are not of faith at all. Finally
on grounds of religious policy, he was unwilling to make any attack
on the Anglican establishment as such, considering it as a nursery
of converts, and a bulwark against national infidelity.
But he had no regard for Protestant sensitiveness when the
interests of the Catholic faith were at stake. On two or three
occasions he denied the rumor that he was returning to the Church
of England, employing a tone of contempt that he knew would
hurt, for he was bound that no man should misunderstand him on
this point.
He never shrank from the shock of controversy when a worthy
occasion presented itself. When a recent convert, he took up the
defence of the Church during the No-Popery agitation, and the
way in which he let himself go, in the lectures in Birmingham,
showed how thoroughly he enjoyed the combat in such a cause.
When he found himself in opposition to fellow-Catholics, he drew
within himself, and bided God's time, unless a very evident call
demanded that he should speak out. It was different, however,
when an adversary of the Church entered the lists. Then it was a
joy to him to quit his tent and mount his charger and strike a
good blow for the faith. A generous-minded opponent pays him a
fine compliment on his victory over Kingsley.
All England has been laughing with you, and those who
knew you of old have rejoiced to see you once more come
forth like a lion from his lair, with undiminished strength of
muscle, and they have smiled as they watched you carry off the
remains of Mr. Charles Kingsley (no mean prey), lashing your
sides with your tail, and growling and muttering as you retreat
into your den.
This sturdy fighting spirit never left him. He was nearly
seventy-four years of age when Gladstone wrote his phamphlet on
Vatican Decrees. Newman might fairly have left the answering of
this attack to others. Some of Gladstone's strongest points against
the civil allegiance of Catholics were drawn from the writings of
men who were opposed to Newman's more moderate views. But
he undertook the task, and once more merited the gratitude of
English Catholics as the uncrowned Defender of the Faith.
Newman's relations to the " old " or hereditary Catholics of
England show an interesting development. During his early days
1912.] THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN 61
as a convert he came into momentary collision with them on account
of a scheme, largely Faber's,of a series of lives of saints which intro-
duced views of devotion alien to the solid traditional forms of piety
of English Catholic circles. Newman had taken up the scheme for
the best possible motives. He did not enter the Church to teach, but
to learn; and he thought that he was taking the broad Catholic
attitude in issuing these biographies. In matters of devotion,
however, blood and breeding count, as the Church is wise to see.
Newman was an Englishman, and he learned to respect and revere
the spiritual formation of the old Catholics. His own devotional
life was nourished from the same sources as theirs, though with
greater manifestation of warmth than they allowed themselves.
He loved the liturgy of the Mass and the Office; he had special
devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Blessed Virgin, and,
amongst other saints, first of all to his dear father and patron St.
Philip, and next to the Church Fathers and to the Apostles. His
published Meditations and Devotions instil piety of the solid
kind. He says he never read the books of his fellow-convert and
fellow-oratorian, Father Faber.
Some of the friendships he formed with hereditary Catholics
were amongst the strongest and most lasting in his life. With the
sole exception of his fidus Achates, Ambrose St. John, his most
faithful friend was his Bishop, Dr. Ullathorne. The crown of his
career, the red biretta of the Cardinalate, was obtained for him
through the efforts of Catholic laymen of the old stock, the Duke
of Norfolk and Lord Petre.
Whence, then, arose the difficulties about which there is so
much in this book? His difficulties were not to any great extent,
as we shall see, with Rome itself, but with a party at home and
abroad which was working for a greater centralization of power
in the Church. Now it was simply impossible for a man of New-
man's type to be a party man. He saw too many sides to a ques-
tion; he had too keen a sense of exactness to enlist himself with any
party. It would be wrong to call this his defect, for it would be a
perfection if the world were better made; wrong, too, to call it his
misfortune; but it was the source of his greatest trials. He lived
in a time when the dominant idea of many zealous churchmen was
the closer organization of the Catholic forces against the infidel
spirit of the age. The natural tendency of such leaders was to
adopt a policy restricting liberty of opinion, of education, of pub-
lishing, and to inculcate a view of the claims of authority which
62 THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN [April,
would not be put forward in an age of the Church when the pres-
sure of opposition is less keenly felt. Newman could not bring him-
self to these policies, which he felt were makeshift and temporary.
He was no less an opponent of Liberalism than the others. From
his Oriel days he had devoted his life to the task of combating it.
But he felt that the problems of the age remained to be met, and
would not be met by ignoring them. So he strove for the formation
of a body of educated clergy and laity who would be ready and able
to discuss the questions of the day on a footing of equality with
opponents of religion. This was the motive which actuated him,
first in the support he gave to Acton, Simpson and others in their
endeavor to carry on a Review which would be at once Catholic and
scholarly; and later in his plan to open an Oratory at Oxford, from
which he could look after Catholic students, and also help to give
a religious trend to University opinion. But even in advocating
these schemes, Newman has nothing of the partisan in him. He
was more of a check than of a spur to the activities of his friends of
the Rambler and the Home and Foreign Review. Their tone in
dealing with thorny questions exasperated him at times. He gives
a picture of Simpson " as he rides along the high road, discharging
pea-shooters at Cardinals who happen by bad luck to be looking
out of the window."
It is not our place here to hold the balance between the policies
of Newman and those of his opponents. Nor is it necessary to say
that on both sides they were zealous and honest-minded men.
It was an age in England of great Churchmen. Wiseman, New-
man, Manning, W. G. Ward, Vaughan names that are held in
honor by Catholics everywhere. Only recently the world was edified
by the revelation of the deep, spiritual nature of Cardinal Vaughan.
An adequate life of Manning remains to be written. The life of
Wiseman and also the life of W. G. Ward have been written by the
same hand that has penned the biography of Cardinal Newman.
This work should be read in conjunction with these others if an
impartial judgment is to be given.
There are two passages in the Church of the Fathers in
which Newman describes the different types of character which
God uses in His work. The first may be borrowed to illustrate the
contrast between Wiseman and himself.
The instruments raised up by Almighty God for the accom-
plishment of His purposes are of two kinds, equally gifted with
1912.] THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN 63
faith and piety, but from natural temper and talent, education,
or other circumstances, differing in the means by which they
promote their sacred cause. The first of these are men of acute
and ready mind, with accurate knowledge of human nature, and
large plans, and persuasive and attractive bearing, genial, soci-
able, and popular, endued with prudence, patience, instinctive
tact and decision in conducting matters, as well as boldness and
zeal.
Again there is an instrument in the hand of Providence of
less elaborate and splendid workmanship, less rich in its political
endowments, so to call them, yet not less beautiful in its texture,
nor less precious in its material. Such is the retired and
thoughtful student who remains years and years in the solitude
of a college or a monastery, chastening his soul in secret, raising
it to high thought and single-minded purpose, and when at
length called into active life, conducting himself with firmness,
guilelessness, zeal like a flaming fire, and all the sweetness of
purity and integrity. Such an one is often unsuccessful in his
own day ; he is too artless to persuade, too severe to please ; un-
skilled in the weaknesses of human nature, unfurnished in the
resources of ready wit, negligent of men's applause, unsuspic-
ious, open-hearted, he does his work and so leaves it; and it
seems to die ; but in the generation after him it lives again, and
in the long run it is difficult to say which of the two classes of
men has served the cause of truth the more effectually.
The second passage, which relates to the misunderstanding
that arose between Basil and Gregory-, is almost a description of
Manning and Newman. There are two main characters found in
the Church, he says, high energy and sweetness of temper.
This contrast of character, leading first to intimacy, then
to differences, is interestingly displayed, though painfully, in
one passage of the history of Basil and Gregory Gregory the
affectionate, the tender-hearted, the man of quick feelings, the
accomplished, the eloquent preacher, and Basil the man of firm
resolve and hard deeds, the high-minded ruler of Christ's flock,
the diligent laborer in the field of ecclesiastical politics. Thus
they differed ; yet not as if they had not much in common still ;
both had the blessing and the discomfort of a sensitive mind;
both were devoted to the ascetic life ; both were special champ-
ions of the Catholic creed.
Turning now to view his direct relations with Rome, we find
that he never had cause for serious complaint. He was well received
64 THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN [April,
when he went to Rome after his conversion, and he then conceived
a love and admiration for the person of Pius IX. which he kept un-
changed throughout his life. The Roman authorities were opposed
to his going to Oxford, but this was in accordance with a fixed
educational policy of the period, which was adopted for general
reasons without any reference to him. There is no question that
suspicions about him were set going in Rome, and were more or
less accredited because his line of thought and action were not in
perfect accord with the ideas which were dominant there at the time.
In the famous letter which contains the judgment that " Dr. New-
man is the most dangerous man in England," Talbot wrote to Man-
ning : " It is perfectly true that a cloud has been hanging over Dr.
Newman in Rome ever since the Bishop of Newport (Dr. Brown)
delated him to Rome for heresy in his article in the Rambler on con-
sulting the laity in matters of faith." But we know now that the
cloud so far as it existed at all was largely of Talbot's making, and
that it was not nearly so black as Newman was led to believe. If
he had stood upon his own defence more openly, he could have dis-
sipated it almost entirely. But he was slow to do this. " As to
defending myself," he says in a letter to a friend, " you may make
yourself quite sure that I never will, unless it is a simple duty.
Such is a charge against my religious faith such against my
veracity such any charge in which the cause of religion is in-
volved." When he finally made up his mind that a defence was
called for, and sent Fr. St. John to Rome, Cardinal Barnabo at once
dismissed the accusation of disobedience and heterodoxy as " van-
issimae calumniae." His experience with the great Jesuit theolo-
gians like Perrone and Franzelin was of similar kind. If they criti-
cised it was some definite and debatable point. With such men he
could deal. He respected this sort of criticism. His main lament,
indeed, was at the decay of the great theological schools in the
Church, schools in which matters of theology were once discussed
freely and fully by the master minds of Catholicity. The Holy See
showed its trust in him by appointing him as one of the theologians
to prepare the schemata to be submitted for discussion at the Vati-
can Council.
Though an Inopportunist during the Council, he was a staunch
believer in Infallibility. The wording of the definition clipped the
wings of extremists like Veuillot and Ward. In his Letter to the
Duke of Norfolk he had the satisfaction of advancing an inter-
pretation of the decree which was accepted with little question by
1912.] THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN 65
his fellow-Catholics of England. But his complete vindication
came from a glorious and large-minded Pontiff who had himself
passed through years of neglect and obscurity, and who had at-
tained in advanced years to a power which seemed to come to him
too late, but which he was to wield with a strong hand for a quarter
of a century. It was Leo XIII. who made Newman a Cardinal.
The Vicar of Christ can bestow no greater honor on a living subject,
but the whole world felt that it was a proper reward for a life
spent in steadfast devotion to the cause of Christ's Church. All the
trials of the past were now forgotten. God had perfected His
chosen servant by adversity, the school for saints. It is not always
in this life that God bestows his rewards for constant service. But
such was the meed of honor he had been holding in reserve for his
true and loyal soldier, John Henry Newman.
Since that great event, other happenings have further justified
the career of Newman. Leo XIII. set the seal of his approval on
the " open " method in historical writing, which was one of New-
man's contentions in the old Rambler days. The same Pope also
withdrew the prohibition against Catholic attendance at Univer-
sities such as Oxford, and now Catholic students are in residence
there with even lesser safeguards than would have been afforded
by the presence of a man like Newman.
In our own time when another great Pontiff, zealous for
the purity of the faith, condemned innovators, and when some of
them strove to take refuge under the aegis of the great Cardinal,
express word was sent out that nothing in the writings of Newman
was touched by the condemnations.
Cardinal Newman is dead less than twenty-five years, and yet
he looms upon the imagination of us who are almost his contempor-
aries as a great historical figure. He is even now a classic to all of
English speech, and almost a Church Father in the minds of a host
of thoughtful Catholics. What he will be in the far future it is
impossible to say with certainty. But it is not presumptuous to
expect that his Apologia, his Essay on Development of Doctrine,
his Grammar of Assent, will be studied for centuries to come, even
as we now turn to the Confessions of St. Augustine and the Com-
monitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins.
Something must be said on the subject of Newman's "sen-
sitiveness," since the first hasty notices of the biography make it
the most important, almost the sole topic of discussion. It was
of course entirely unintentional on the part of such critics, who
VOL. xcv. 5
66 THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN [April,
seized the newest and most striking matter which came to hand, but
things looked for a while as if there were a concerted attack by
Catholics on the memory of Newman. Ill-considered criticism such
as this does but give aid and comfort to the enemy. A full and
careful reading of the biography does indeed show that Newman
was sensitive, and sensitive to a fault. But it is a fault that we
must accept as belonging to his type of character, the defect of
his qualities, the point of excess in his virtues. Everybody in the
world, be he saint or hero, is judged by his contemporaries as pos-
sessing some quality in too great a degree. He is too bold or too
prudent, too rational or too emotional, too frank or too reticent,
the excess in each case being the surplus of some characteristic by
which his most striking achievements have been accomplished.
In Newman we have a man of high principles, of refined and
delicate feelings with a keen insight into himself, an almost scru-
pulous sense of duty, with a wide view of the realm of thought and
a knowledge not given to others of the trend of ideas and principles.
Such a nature thrives best in an atmosphere of peace and quiet and
study. But his knowledge of the dangerous tendencies of the times
and his sense of duty drive him forth into the hurly-burly of life,
where men who are called practical are intent on the things nearest
to eye and hand. They look upon the spiritual-minded prophet with
his lore of the past and the future as an impractical meddler, and
brush him aside. As the world runs, such a man will not get full
recognition in his own day unless he happens to live, as Newman
did, for nearly a century. Meanwhile if he is of a placid disposi-
tion, he can utter his message and retire to the easy position of the
looker-on from the heights. But if, like Newman, he feels his duty
keenly, he must suffer. Newman could suffer, but it was his defect
that he could not suffer without groaning. That, however, is but
a minor matter. It is infinitely to his credit that he cared so much.
The general circumstances of his life were to his taste. He had
friends and books and leisure. He had supreme joy in his personal
Catholic life. The only cross that tried him was enforced inactivity.
If he could only fall back on minor joys. If he could forget the
call of duty, if he could ignore the moan of his soul " Heu! vitam
perdidi, nihil operose agenda," he could have been the happiest of
men. His discontent was divine, though his expression of it was
at times all too Tinman. But it is not for men like ourselves of
narrower views and less austere ideals of duty to throw our little
darts at the giant writhing in his bonds. We may regret that some
1912.] THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN 67
of these bonds seemed to grow from his own nature, that he could
have had more ample room for activity if he were less sensitive
to opposition, less dignified, more ready to insist on a clear under-
standing and his own rights. Thoughts such as these irritate an
admirer for a while. But such thoughts cannot last. We read the
Apologia once more and they vanish. If he were the shrewd,
ready, practical man we picture, he could never have been one to
write this story of a singularly noble and sensitive soul. We
prefer to retain and love the Newman that God has given us, rather
than fashion one to our own less noble likeness.
The subject of this biography has been of such absorbing
interest that we have been neglecting the author and the work
itself. When Cardinal Newman passed away, it was the general
opinion of the well informed that there was only one man entirely
competent to write his life. Mr. Wilfrid Ward is the son of a great
and single-minded man who was one of Newman's followers at
Oxford, and who was on various questions his chivalrous opponent
during their lives as Catholics. His son, however, derives his in-
tellectual parentage from Newman. He has studied Newman
thoroughly, and has written of him under many aspects. His
knowledge of the man and his times, and his power of viewing
events and movements in England as parts of larger Catholic
wholes, render him singularly well-fitted for the task for which he
was selected.
In the writing of this work he has chosen the role of chronicler
rather than that of the philosopher of history. At least he is here
less of the philosopher than he is in his William George Ward and
the Catholic Revival, or in his articles on phases of Newman's
thought and activities. He has allowed Newman to manifest him-
self through his correspondence. Exception may be taken to the
frankness with which he presents these letters to the general public.
Much may be said on both sides of this controversy. In principle
it is not a new one. Newman himself, from what we know of his
opinion on biographical writing, would not be one of the adverse
critics. He believed that letters are the truest source of knowledge
in a matter of this kind, and rejoiced that we can know so much of
the personal character of the Church Fathers through this corre-
spondence. He loved Basil and Gregory and John of Antioch the
more for the personal traits, even weaknesses, which make these
great men of antiquity to live before us as beings of flesh and blood,
and not as the shadows of mighty names. He thought that we can
68 THE LIFE OF CARDINAL NEWMAN [April,
profit the better by their lives for their revelation. He was im-
patient with " the endemic perennial fidget which possesses us about
giving scandal; facts are omitted in great histories, or glosses are
put upon memorable acts, because they are thought not edifying,
whereas of all scandals such omission, such glosses, are the great-
est."
Mr. Ward has anticipated the criticism in reference to one
special point, but his reply covers sufficiently the whole ground of
the objection :
I have not felt at liberty to treat this portion of his corre-
spondence perfunctorily for three reasons : Firstly, it represents
a feeling which was clearly among the deepest he had during
some thirty years of his life, and an account of him which
touched only lightly on it would be inadequate to the point of
untruthfulness. Secondly, his views are so widely known, and
have been expressed to so many in writing, that it is quite certain
that any such omission on my part, even were it lawful, would
result in some letters which I might omit in these pages being
forthwith printed elsewhere. And the public would probably
think (though quite falsely) that the correspondence contained
criticisms of a more serious character which the biographer had
also omitted. But thirdly, and this is most important, such
criticisms when read in their context, and in the light thrown
on them by other contemporaneous letters which exhibit his en-
thusiastic loyalty to the Holy See, and his profound satisfaction
with the Catholic religion, take their true proportion and colour.
" Profound satisfaction with the Catholic religion " that is
indeed the deepest and strongest note in Newman's revelation of
himself. The whole work is a record of his unwavering faith in the
Church of his adoption, and of absolute peace and joy in his
spiritual life as a Catholic. Trials and reverses came to him. They
arose from the circumstances of life, from the clash of opinion,
from his own temperament. They would have come to him in
greater or less degree wherever the lines of his life might have been
cast. But there is never a word to throw a shadow of doubt upon
the sincerity of the public declaration he once felt called upon to
make:
I have not had one moment's wavering of trust in the
Catholic Church ever since I was received into her fold. I hold,
and ever have held, that her Sovereign Pontiff is the centre of
unity and the Vicar of Christ, and I have ever had and still
1912.] OLIVET 69
have an unclouded faith in her creed in all its articles ; a supreme
satisfaction in her worship, discipline and teaching, and an
eager longing and hope against hope that the many dear friends
whom I have left in Protestantism may be partakers of my
happiness.
This being my state of mind, to add, as I hereby go on to do,
that I have no intention, and never had any intention of leaving
the Catholic Church and becoming a Protestant, would be super-
fluous, except that Protestants are always on the lookout for
some loophole or evasion in a Catholic's statement of fact.
Therefore, in order to give them full satisfaction if I can, I do
hereby profess "ex animo," with an absolute internal consent
and assent, that Protestantism is the dreariest of possible relig-
ions ; that the thought of the Anglican service makes me shiver,
and the thought of the Thirty-nine Articles makes me shudder.
Return to the Church of England 1 No ! " The net is broken
and we are delivered." I should be a consummate fool (to use
a mild term) if, in my old age, I left the land flowing with milk
and honey for the city of confusion and the house of bondage.
OLIVET.
E. P. TIVNAN, S.J.
Lord, is my heart, to Thee
Gethsemane,
Where memories of faithlessness and sin,
Dark shadows of the past,
Like leaves all withered by the chilling blast,
Cling to the great gray olives there ?
When Thou hast entered in
Is there a bitter cup for Thee,
And, sadly, for Thy share
A kiss that breedest nameless treachery?
Ah, Lord, a bruised reed wert Thou ;
And sorrow maketh sad hearts kin,
Remember not my sin ;
But even now
Renew me with the flood
That flows from out Thy Heart, Thy Precious Blood.
THE END OF THE JOURNEY.
CLAUDE M. GIRARDEAU.
F the young man in the Pullman could have guessed
the opinions of his traveling companions, he would
have been neither surprised nor disconcerted. The
women considered his face, hands and clothes; the
men, who met him in the smoker, paid more atten-
tion to his manner and voice. The narrow eyes took quiet stock of
them in return with a directness and indifference which irritated
and attracted. The men would not have been astonished to discover
in him one of the directors of the road, or a mere private secretary,
or a confidence man. His appearance certainly suggested a wide
range of possibilities, and piqued a curiosity of which he was fully
aware and would have cheerfully avoided.
One of the men read a part of the title of a book which seemed
to engage the young man's serious attention, and confided it to the
others: The Real Value of Mental Suggestion. They jumped at
the conclusion that he was a " professional " of some sort, but
whether college or conjuring they could not decide. Also, it might
indicate a specialist in some line; insurance, real estate, or even
books. His clothes were absolutely non-committal.
The travelers were on a through train from San Francisco to
New York, and were now passing through one of the middle-west
states. The young man had dined not at all to his fastidious
taste but was now sleepy and bored, waiting in someone else's
seat for his berth to be arranged. He would enjoy his book much
more at full-length ease. He had been languidly observing the
fading landscape (running like a motion-picture reel beside him)
with abstracted eyes, only half-conscious of the dim fields and occa-
sional pools, now silver, now red, under the sunset, with trees and
houses in soft black. In his abstraction the scene became an etching,
and the pencil in his slender fingers traced its characteristic lines on
the window-pane with a rapid and revealing precision.
The sudden coming on of lights in the coach converted the
transparent pane into a clear black sheet of glass. He glanced up
at the globes, then turned a sly head to scrutinize his idealized
1912.] THE END OF THE JOURNEY 71
picture in the mysterious mirror at his side, when instead of meeting
the eyes of his flattered reflection, he found himself looking at a
figure perfectly unfamiliar to him, with a face in profile. The
figure was seated, the hands holding something in the lap of a pale
lilac dress. The profile was young yet strong, and his keen eye saw
that it would grow haggard in age. It was delicately colored on
cheek and lips. The hair was thick and black and snooded in the
fashion with a band of lilac ribbon. The downcast lashes were as
dark as the hair and under them he could see a gleam of blue iris.
His eyes traced rapidly the lines of chin, throat and bending nape
of neck. He noticed the shadow of the ruffle on the round white
arm whose childlike curve drew his gaze from elbow to wrist and
hands, which held a chain of bright beads, slipping one slowly after
another between the small thumb and pointed finger. He looked
again at the downcast face; the lips were moving and he could
see the pulsation of the murmured words in the throat, and memory
repeated them with her in his ear.
An old poem from a boyish book-treasure recurred to him
" she was throated like the stare " and he remembered asking his
mother what a " stare " was, and her fluty laugh as she explained.
The throat he gazed at would laugh like that. He advanced his
head more eagerly, and the instant contact with the icy glass brought
him to his senses. He glanced quickly around to discover the
original of the lovely reflection, and the heavy dark curtains of the
opposite berth checked him. There was no one beside him in the
car. He at once knew his own reflection would prevent his seeing
any one else's at such an angle. His hair and back were suddenly
chilly and he sat without moving for several seconds; then he
glanced furtively at the window. The picture was still there, as
clear and lovely as the tinted image on the photographer's camera.
The porter coming up behind him touched him on the shoulder, and
he leaped up and turned such a face that the negro retreated in
alarmed haste, stuttering and rolling his eyes, " Yo' yo'
berth's ready, sir."
The engine's persistent whistle announced their approach to
some station. The young man sank back into the seat, his heart
pumping almost audibly. He stared with a sort of fearful eager-
ness at the picture in the glass. The train was running more slowly
into the hood of the station; lights and figures flitted past, then
suddenly massed themselves on the platform. His own pallid re-
flection stared at him in return. Without stopping to think, he
72 THE END OF THE JOURNEY [April,
rushed to his berth, hunted wildly for and found his two grips, and
made for the door.
" What place is this ? " he asked in such a voice that the con-
ductor eyed him and his grips curiously.
" Why, Mr. Jeffrey, this is Middletown, Ohio. You'd better
stay aboard, for we're off in a minute."
Without replying, the young man sprang down to the platform
and hastened to the nearest cab. As he jumped in, the train he had
just left moved out of the station. Its noisy departure roused him
from his 'dream. He cursed himself for being a fool as the cab
jolted over the uneven paving. At the hotel he demanded imper-
iously what time the next train left for New York. " Nine A. M."
drawled the indifferent clerk. Jeffrey fairly ground his teeth as he
went into the room he was obliged to take for the night. He must
get to New York as soon as possible. He took one of the grips on
his knee and critically examined its contents, relocked it and flung
himself into a chair by the one window in the room. In its dark
mirror immediately appeared the figure he had pursued. He sat
up, tense as steel, holding his breath for fear it would vanish again,
his eyes eagerly tracing every line and feature of face and figure.
He watched the regular motion of beads slipping between finger and
thumb, then glanced up at the moving lips. His own eyes looked
back at him. He leaped wildly up. " Am I crazy, then ? " he cried
aloud. " Is this the way insanity shows itself ? "
He snatched up hat and luggage and hurried to the office.
" When does the next train for anywhere leave this condemned
hole ? " he asked the clerk, who thought him drunk.
" Chicago, Central station, fifteen minutes," he answered
curtly.
The young man strode into the street. The cab which had
brought him to the hotel was still at the curb. He jumped in.
" Central station quick." As he seated himself, the vision, appari-
tion, or mental picture appeared at his side in the glass of the
carriage window. He endured it for a block or two, then stopped
the cab. "I get out here," he said, suiting action to word. The cabby
took his fare, thinking as the clerk had thought that his man was
drunk, and drove off leaving Jeffrey on a street whose every nook,
corner, brick and crevice were better known to him than the features
of his own face. A square away a hall lightshone through the glassed
front door of his home. He hastened toward it, ran up the steps and
igi2.] THE END OF THE JOURNEY 73
pressed the electric bell knob. A neat maid opened the door almost
immediately. " I am Mrs. Jeffrey's son," he said, and she gave him
a respectful, unsmiling attention as if she was expecting to hear
this. She took his hat and overcoat. He set down his grips and
went into the empty reception-room. Finding it empty he drew
aside the curtains dividing it from the sitting-room, with a sudden
yearning to see his mother and be at the same time unseen. A
young girl was sitting by the open fireplace, her hands in her lap,
slipping beads between the small thumb and pointed finger.
Her material self was almost, not quite, as lovely as the vision
in the glass. Her square-necked dress was lilac, her abundant black
hair was confined by a band of lilac ribbon. As he stood amazed,
holding the curtains aside, she looked up, revealing dark blue eyes
with wet lashes. Then she rose quickly to meet him, concealing
the beads in the hollow of her left hand.
" Oh, Mr. Jeffrey, I've been hoping and praying you would
come." He glanced at the closed hand and knew that the phrase
was not the usual unconsidered form of speech. She had been
hoping and praying. Then
" Is my mother ? " he began, and could go no further for the
gripping fear at his heart.
" She is very ill, indeed, Mr. Jeffrey. But now that you have
come I'm thinking she will change for the better. She has just been
pining for you."
These last words, said with the faintest lisp of a " brogue,"
and an indescribable sweetness, penetrated the young man's heart.
Tears sprang into his eyes. He showed that he had received a
great shock. He blushed violently, then turned deathly pale.
" May I see her ? " he whispered.
" Wait just a minute till I ask," the girl replied, slipping away
quickly and quietly. Jeffrey told himself he was in truth dreaming,
or not in his right senses. He stood, gripping the curtains in a
tight hand, a prey to apprehension, remorse, and intolerable un-
certainty. But in a minute the girl reappeared.
" She is just asleep," she murmured, " and the nurse thinks
you had better wait till she wakes of herself. She hasn't slept like
this for days. Will you not sit down, then ? "
He dropped the curtains, seated himself mechanically, and sat
staring at her.
" I see that you are trying to remember me," she said with a
74 THE END OF THE JOURNEY [April,
friendly smile. " But I've grown up since you last saw me. I am
Katie Barry."
" Sure, sure," he exclaimed. " You used to come into the shop
when your- father was teaching me."
His eyes went from picture to picture on the walls etchings,
engravings, and a few paintings all well done; his own work, at
different periods of progress, which his mother had proudly pre-
served.
"Yes," said Katie in a low voice, " I loved to watch the work.
It was beautiful and interesting. Are you still an etcher? "
Some burning coals fell from the grate to the hearth and he
sprang up as if they were dynamite bombs. He put them back into
their fiery bed and sat down again.
" Or, are you an engraver? " the low voice continued. " Or, did
you finally decide upon the painting? For you were so fond of
color!"
He gave her a look of such secret poignancy, that she had a
glimpse of a tormented soul and grew as suddenly pale as he.
" Oh, Mr. Jeffrey," she whispered impulsively, " why have you
treated your mother so? Why have you stayed away all these
years ? Do you think all the money you have sent her and all the
beautiful presents have made up to her for your long absence?
And now she is ill perhaps dying. I telegraphed to you without
asking anybody. And ever since I've been hoping and praying that
you would come. Your mother's everything to me since mine has
gone."
She pressed the closed hand to her wet cheek. The young man
was unable to endure his thoughts, and at the sight of her got up
and left the room abruptly. Presently he came back carrying one
of his grips. He put it on a table, unlocked it, took out a package and
carried it to the girl.
" Miss Katie," he said in a whisper, " would you mind looking
at these?"
She took the plates in hand and scrutinized the exquisite en-
gravings with an experienced eye. " They are beautifully done,"
she exclaimed. " I never saw finer work. My father must see
them." Then their significance flashed upon her and she shrank
away, pushing them into his hands. "Not your work!" she
implored, horrified.
" Mine," he replied hoarsely. " That's the way I've made all
1912.] THE END OF THE JOURNEY 75
my money for years. Literally made it myself. Don't you think I
am clever? A great success? Quite as much so as any of the
other money-making scoundrels who infest the country? "
" Don't don't ! " she whispered with white lips. " You know
better, and perhaps they do not."
He gave a short, harsh laugh, went to the grate and jammed
the engravings into the bed of coals. Then straightened up. " By
right I should have been behind bars myself these last ten years, for
as you have said I know better. That is why I have not been to see
my mother. She'd have had my secret out of me in no time. So
I kept away besides, when you have the devil for a familiar,
you don't care particularly about seeing angels. I was hurrying
to New York to see the gang I work with and for, and had no in-
tention whatsoever of stopping here to-night. You see I never
got your telegram, Miss Katie, and I doubt if it would have stopped
me. Nothing would have stopped me short of what has happened.
Will you let me tell you about it? For I don't rightly know what
to think of it. Or am I not fit to speak to the like of you again ? "
All the vanity and hardness had vanished from his face, leaving
it like his boyish one. His vision had cleared his eyes.
" Mr. Jeffrey," Katie said in a trembling whisper, looking
attentively at him, " you are here, thank God, however you got
here. If you want to tell me what has brought you, I am glad and
willing to listen."
SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME.
BY W. E. CAMPBELL.
III.
N 1504 More became a member of Parliament, and in
1505 he married and went to live at Bucklersbury
in the parish of St. Stephen, Walbrook. He soon
distinguished himself in Parliament by his coura-
geous and resolute opposition to Henry VII's de-
mand for an excessive subsidy on the occasion of his daughter's
marriage. His efforts brought about the reduction of the subsidy
to almost a quarter of the amount demanded, and as a direct conse-
quence he fell under the royal displeasure, which lasted till Henry
VII's death in 1509. Since he himself had no money to be confis-
cated, his father was thrown into the Tower and kept there till he
had paid a fine of a hundred pounds, and we may probably connect
More's visit to Paris and Louvain in 1508 with his prudent desire
to get out of touch with the court.
But this period of about four years, though naturally one of
professional and financial difficulty, not made easier by his increas-
ing family, had its consolations. It enabled him to enjoy much
more of the company of Erasmus, who stayed with him at Bucklers-
bury and there wrote his Praise of Folly. It also enabled him to
complete his translation of the life of Pico della Mirandola,* a
work which was published in 1510, and is of great help to the right
understanding of More's own life at about the middle point of his
earthly course.
The original life, of which he has given us " a somewhat re-
duced and inaccurate version," was written in Latin by Pico's
nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico. It is significant that More
should have chosen as his subject that rare, learned, devout and
graceful figure who moved with an unspoiled faith amid the luxu-
riant paganism of Lorenzo's court. I think there can be little doubt
that it was not so much the intellectual as the spiritual side of Pico
*More's English Works, ISS7, PP- 1-34. The Life of John Picus Erie of Myran-
dula....with divers epistles and other works of the said John Picvs. A separate
edition of the Life, as translated by More, was edited with an Introduction and
Notes by J. M. Rigg, London, 1890.
1912.] SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME 77
that appealed to him. There is a temptation to over-estimate
Erasmus' influence over More; but we should remember that the
influence of Erasmus was in the main intellectual; his wit and
learning made brilliant play upon the polished surfaces of More's
mind, but into the spiritual depths of it had, I imagine, very little
entry. With Pico, on the other hand, More had something stronger
than a mere intellectual sympathy ; he found in him depths answer-
ing back to the depths within himself, and what he most needed at
the time : a rich spiritual experience which not only threw light upon
his path, but gave energy and direction to his walk.
Pico came of a noble and ancient stock which can certainly be
traced back to Charlemagne, if not to the Emperor Constantine, as
some of his family claimed. He was " of feature and shape seemly
and beauteous, of stature goodly and high, of flesh tender and soft,
his colour white intermingled with comely reds, his eyes grey and
quick of look, his teeth white and even, his hair yellow and in care-
less abundance."* A youth so handsome, noble, and suave, so
athirst for all that knowledge, beauty and wealth could procure,
and already equipped to an unusual degree with the miscellaneous
learning of his time, seemed destined to become a choice spirit of
the Renaissance. And, indeed, this destiny was fulfilled, but in a
better sense than ever at first seemed possible. We are told, in the
life of his early training, of his marvelous memory, of his studies
in canon law at Bologna (for which he showed some distaste), of
his seven years wandering among the most famous schools and uni-
versities of France and Italy in search of philosophy, divinity and a
knowledge of Eastern languages. At the end of this period, " being
yet a child and beardless " but " full of pride and desirous of glory
and man's praise (for yet was he not kindled in the love of God),
he went to Rome, and there (coveting to make a show of his skill
and little considering how great envy he should raise up against
himself) he proposed nine hundred questions of divers and sundry
matters. All of which questions in open places he fastened and set
up, offering to bear the costs himself of all such as would come
hither out of far countries to dispute." The great disputation was
never held, for certain of his enemies being jealous of his fame
began to question the orthodoxy of thirteen out of his nine hundred
theses, and were supported in their opposition by many simple relig-
ious folk, more notable for their zeal than for their charity or wis-
*More's English Works, p. 2. All further references will be signified by the
initials E. W.
7 8 SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME [April,
dom. " But he, not bearing the loss of his fame, made a defence for
those thirteen questions (which work he compiled in twenty nights),
and committed like a good Christian man to the most holy judgment
of our Holy Mother Church."* Some trouble ensued, but his or-
thodoxy was finally vindicated by a bull of Alexander VI. in 1493.
This episode and its consequences brought about a great change
in Pico's life, and no better Account of it can be given than in the
very words of More's translation : " Lo this end had Picus of his
high mind and proud purpose, that where he thought to have gotten
perpetual praise there had he much work to keep himself upright,
that he ran not in perpetual infamy and slander. But as himself
told his nephew, he judged that this came to him by the especial
provision and singular goodness of Almighty God, that by this false
crime untruly put upon him by his evil-willers he should correct his
very errors, and that this should be to him (wandering in dark-
ness) as a shining light. But after this, he drew back his mind
flowing in riot and turned it to Christ, despising the blast of vain-
glory which he before desired, now with all his mind he began to
seek the glory and profit of Christ's Church, and so began he to order
his conditions, that from thenceforth he might have been approved
although his enemy were his judge."
The reader's attention may be called to two phrases in the
above passage which seem to have an obvious parallelism. The
first, " He drew back his mind flowing in riot and turned it to
Christ;" the second, and complementary one, " Despising the blast
of vainglory which he before desired, now with all his mind he
began to seek the glory and profit of Christ's Church."^ According
to his biographer, Pico's earlier life of sensuality and intellectual
pride had led him almost to the brink of heresy ; his conversion con-
sisted in his turning away from all this, towards a holy imitation of
Christ's life and a humble devotion to Christ's Church. The latter
point of Pico's devotion to the Church is forgotten by Mr. Seebohm,
who leaves his readers with the strong impression that Pico's con-
version was of the Protestant Evangelical type and nothing more.
But Mr. Seebohm might have remembered, or at any rate might
have implied, the existence in Pico's biography of several passages
which finally demonstrate the complete nature of his conversion,
as one towards Christ and the Church and not towards Christ and
away from the Church. We have, for instance, the phrase " for
*B. W ., pp. 3, 4. More's spelling is modernized when necessary.
t. W., p. 4.
I9i2.] SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME 79
love of God and the profit of his Church;"* "Some man hath
sought cunning as well philosophy as divinity for praise and vain-
glory and not for any profit or increase of Christ's Church ;"* " He
laboured only for the love of God and the profit of his Church ;"t
and finally, " So much only set he by his learning in how much he
knew that it was profitable to the Church and to the extermination
of errors."!
Pico now became as remarkable for his good life as he had pre-
viously been for his great knowledge, and men " resorted unto him
as a market of good doctrine to hear and to take wholesome
lessons and instruction of good living : which lessons were so much
the more set by, in how much they came from a more noble man
and a more wise man and him also which had himself some time
followed the crooked hills of delicious pleasure." He burnt five
books of light poetry which he had written in his youth and from
thenceforth gave himself " day and night most fervently to the
study of scripture." In fact he summed up in himself the various
but unco-ordinated learning of his time. He had first-hand ac-
quaintance with patristic as well as with scholastic writings, espe-
cially preferring St. Thomas Aquinas among the latter. After his
conversion he turned with abhorrence from those fruitless disputa-
tions which previously he had so much affected, thinking them
dangerous alike to sound knowledge and humble piety and even, at
times, " a deadly wound to the soul and a mortal poison to charity."
On the other hand, for the love of God and the profit of His Church,
he gave himself the more earnestly to the study of all things new and
old.
The biographer then passes on to the consideration of Pico's
more definitely spiritual characteristics : his almsgiving and asceti-
cism, his calm and cheerful demeanor, his contempt of riches, his
refusal of honor and dignity, his preference of devotion to learning,
his interior habit of life, his fervent love of God, his devotion to our
Lady, his good death and Savonarola's final tribute to his holy life.
" O very happy mind," writes More, " which none adversity might
oppress, which no property might enhance: not the cunning of all
philosophy was able to make him proud, not the knowledge of the
hebrewe, chaldey and arabie language beside greke and laten could
make him vainglorious, not his great substance, not his noble blood,
coulde blow up his heart, not the beauty of his body, not the great
occasion of sin were able to pull him back into the voluptuous broad
*. W., p. 5. t. W., p. 6. tE. W. p. 7-
8o SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME [April,
way that leadeth to hell : what thing was there of so marvellous
strength that might overturn that mind of him: which now (as
Seneca saith) was gotten above fortune as he which as well her
favour as her malice hath set at nought, that he might be coupled
with a spiritual knot unto Christ and his heavenly citizens."*
No attempt will be made to describe Pico in the manner of the
modern critic or essayist, or to " appreciate " or judge him by the
standards of present day thought and scholarship. Such a descrip-
tion would bear no pertinent relation to our main interest, which
is the study of More's own life. We must try rather to see Pico
as More saw him. To More he was a saintly hero and the picture,
which he has handed down to us in an English setting, was even in
its original form a panegyric rather than a critical appreciation. It
has, therefore, both the qualities and defects of that emotionalized
form of biography. But we have other and more substantial evi-
dence as to the inner quality of Pico's life. More has translated
three of his letters, two he sent to John Francis Pico, the nephew
who afterwards wrote his life, and one to a certain " Andrewe
Corneus, a noble man of Italy."
The first letter is one of comfort and exhortation written in
answer to his nephew who, while full of generous spiritual intention,
seems to have found the practice of virtue a distressingly difficult
thing. " Why marvel," says Pico, " at the difficulties which assault
your virtuous purpose? You would have much greater cause for
wonder were you alone among mortal men permitted to reach
heaven without sweat. Even in worldly matters nothing worth
having can be got without many labours, displeasures and miseries ;
it is the same in heavenly matters, and we must expect a harder con-
flict where the end is so much nobler and the victory so much more
honorable. Certainly if this worldly felicity were gotten to us with
idleness and ease, then might some man that shrinketh from labour
rather chose to serve the world than God. But now if we be so
laboured in the way of sin as much as in the way of God, and much
more (wherof the lost wretches cry out, ' Lassati sumus in via
inquitatis,' we be wearied in the way of wickedness), then must it
needs be a point of extreme madness if we would not rather labour
there where we go from labour to reward than where we go from
labour to pain. I pass over how great peace and felicity it is to the
mind when a man hath nothing that grudgeth his conscience nor
is not appalled with the secret twitch of any privy crime. This
*E. w., p. 6.
1912.] SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME 81
pleasure undoubtedly far excelleth all the pleasures that in this life
may be obtained or desired. What thing is there to be desired
among the delights of this world which in the seeking weary us,
in the having blindeth us, in the losing paineth us? Doubtest thou,
my son, whether the minds of wicked men be vexed or not with con-
tinual thought and torment? It is the word of God which neither
may deceive nor be deceived. Cor impii quasi mare fervens quod
quicscere non potest. The wicked man's heart is like a stormy sea
that may not rest, there is to him nothing sure, nothing peaceable,
but all things fearful, all things sorrowful, all things deadly. Shall
we then envy these men? Shall we follow them, and forgetting
our own country, heaven and our own heavenly Father where we
were free born, shall we wilfully make ourselves their bondmen and
with them wretchedly living more wretchedly die, and at last most
wretchedly in everlasting fire be punished? O the dark minds of
men, O the blind hearts, who seeth not more clear than light that
all these things be truer than truth itself and yet do we not that
which we know is to be done ! In vain we would pluck our foot out
of the clay but we stick still.
" There shall come to thee my son, doubt it not, in these places
where thou art conversant, innumerable impediments every hour,
which might fare thee from the purpose of good and virtuous living
and, unless thou beware, shall throw thee down headlong." " It is
difficult," Pico continues, " to persevere in the spiritual life, but most
difficult of all when we are obliged to live among people who are not
merely indifferent to holiness but are positively averse to it, and
whose lives are on every side an allective to sin. Cry thou there-
fore with the prophet, Dirumpamus vincula eorum et projiciamns a
nobis jugum ipsorum: Let us break the bands of them and let us
cast off the yoke of them. . . .Wherefore, my child, go thou never
about to please them whom virtue displeaseth, but evermore let these
words of the apostle be before thine eyes : Oportet magis Deo
placere quam hominibus: We must rather please God than men.
And remember these words of Saint Paul also, Si hominibus
placerem, servus Christi non essem: If I should please men I were
not Christ's servant. Let enter into thine heart an holy pride and
have disdain to take them for masters of thy living which have more
need to take thee for a master of theirs. It were farre more seem-
ing that they should with you, by good living, begin to be men than
thou shouldest with them, by the leaving of thy good purpose,
shamefully begin to be a beast."
VOL. XCV. 6
82 SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME [April,
" There holdeth me sometime, by almighty God as it were,
even a swoon and an insensibility for wonder when I begin in my-
self (I wot never whether I shall say) to remember or to sorrow,
to marvel or bewail the appetites of men, or, if I shall more plainly
speak, the very madness. For it is verily a great madness not to
believe the gospel whose truth the blood of martyrs crieth, the voice
of apostles soundeth, miracles proveth, reason confirmeth, the world
testifieth, the elements speaketh, devils confesseth. But a far
greater madness is it if thou doubt not but that the gospel is true, to
live then as though thou doubtest not but that it were false. For
if these words of the gospel be true, that it is very hard for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of heaven, why do we daily then gape
after the heaping up of riches. And if this be true that we should
seek for the glory and praise not that cometh of men, but that
cometh of God, why do we then ever hang upon the judgment and
opinion of men and no man recketh whether God like him or not ? . .
And why is there nothing that we less fear than hell, or we less
hope for than the kingdom of God? What shall we say else but
that there be many Christian men in name but few in deed. But
thou, my son, enforce thyself to enter by the strait gate that leadeth
to heaven and take no heed what thing many men do, but what
thing the very law of nature, what thing very reason, what thing
our Lord himself showeth thee to be done.
" Thou shalt have two specially effectual remedies against the
world and the devil with which as with two wings thou shalt out of
this vale of misery be lifted up to heaven, that is to say, alms deeds
and prayer. What may we do without the help of God, or how shall
He help us if He be not called upon Certainly He shall not hear
thee when thou callest on Him if thou hear not first the poor man
when he calleth upon thee, and verily it is according that God should
despise the being of a man when thou being a man despisest a man.
For it is written, in what measure that ye mete, it shall be mete you
again. And in another place of the gospel it is said : ' Blessed be the
merciful men for they shall get mercy.' '
The letter concludes with a beautiful exhortation to prayer.
" When I stir thee to prayer I stir thee not to the prayer which
standeth in many words, but to that prayer which in the secret
chamber of the mind, in the privy closet of the soul, with very effect
speaketh to God, and in the most lightsome darkness of contempla-
tion not only presenteth the mind to the Father but also uniteth
it with Him by unspeakable ways which only they know that have
assayed. Nor I care not how long or how short thy prayer be, but
1912.] SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME 83
how effectual, how ardent, and rather interrupted and broken with
sighs than drawn to a length with a continual row and number of
words. If thou love thine health, if thou desire to be sure from the
snares* of the devil, from the storms of this world, from the
ambush* of thine enemy, if thou be acceptable to God, if thou covet
to be happy at the last, let no day pass thee but thou once at the
leastwise present thyself to God by prayer, and falling down before
Him flat to the ground with an humble affect of devout mind, not
from the extremity of thy lips but out of the inwardness of thine
heart, cry these words of the prophet, Delicta juventutis meae et
ignorantias meas ne memineris,-sed secundum misericordiam tuam
memento mei propter bonitatem tuam Domine, These offences of my
youth and mine ignorance remember not good Lord, but after Thy
mercy, Lord, for Thy goodness remember me. What thou shalt in
thy prayer axe of God, both the Holy Spirit which prayeth for us
and eke thine own necessity shall every hour put in thy mind; and
also what thou shalt pray for, thou shalt find matter enough in the
reading of Holy Scripture, which that thou wouldst now (setting
poets fables and trifles aside) take ever in thine hand, I heartily
pray thee. Thou mayest do nothing more pleasant to God, nothing
more profitable to thyself than if thine hand cease not day nor night
to turn and read the volumes of Holy Scripture. There lieth privily
in them a certain heavenly strength quick and effectual, which with a
marvellous power transformeth and changeth the reader's mind
into the love of God, if they be clean and lowly entreated.
" But I have passed now the bounds of a letter, the matter
drawing me forth and the great love that I have had to thee, both
ever before and especially since that hour in which I have had first
knowledge of thy most holy purpose. Now to make an end with
this one thing, I warn thee (of which when we were last together
I often talked with thee) that thou never forget these two things,
that both the Son of God died for thee and that thou shalt also
thyself die shortly, live thou never so long. With these twain as
with two spurs, the one of fear, the other of love, spur forth thine
horse through the short way of this momentary life to the reward
of eternal felicity, since we neither ought nor may put before our-
selves any other end than the endless fruition of the infinite good-
ness both to body and soul in everlasting peace."f
Such a letter must have come to More as a special grace, as
*The words with these respective meanings which More used were grinnes and
awayte.
IE. W., pp. 11-13, passim.
84 SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME [April,
dew upon a white fleece, as a shower falling gently upon fruitful
ground.
This beautiful spiritual exhortation, which was dated May 15,
1492, was followed in July of the same year by another of similar
trend to the same nephew. More has also translated a third letter
of Pico's, which was sent in 1486 to a friend who had strongly
urged upon him the duty of giving up his learned and devout se-
clusion for the more practical life of a courtier and politician, such
a life in fact as would more fitly become dignity and station. But
the appeal was in vain. Pico could not leave Mary for Martha ; he
preferred the golden mediocrity, the mean estate, which left him
free in soul and mind and not the slave of outward and material
circumstances. " I look not," he writes, " for this fruit of my study
that I may thereby be tossed in the flood and rumbling of your
worldly business but that I may .... bring forth the children that
I travail on, that I may give out some books of mine own to the
common profit .... And by cause you shall not think that my travail
and diligence in study is anything intermitted or slacked, I give
you knowledge that after great fervent labour, with much watch
and unwearied travail, I have learned both the hebrew language
and the chaldey and now have I set hand to overcome the great
difficulty of the araby tongue. These, my dear friend, be things
which, to apertain to a noble prince, I have ever thought and yet
think."*
Besides these three letters More has also given us in English
Pico's Meditation on the Psalm, Conserva me Domine, his Tzvelve
Rules of Spiritual Battle, his Twelve Weapons of Spiritual Battle
(to which More has himself added explanatory verses), The Tzvelve
Properties or Conditions of a Lover (again with an explanatory
verse upon each), and, finally, A Prayer of Picus Mirandula unto
God. I cannot refrain from quoting the briefest of these transla-
tions.
THE XII. PROPERTIES OR CONDITIONS OF A LOVER.
To love one alone and condemn all other for that one.
To think him unhappy that is not with his love.
To adorn himself for the pleasure of his love.
To suffer all things, though it were death, to be with his love.
To desire also to suffer shame (and) harm for his love, and to
think that hurt sweet.
To be with his love ever as he may, if not in deed yet in thought.
To love all things that pertaineth unto his love.
*B. W., P. 15.
1912.] SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS TIME 85
To covet the praise of his love, and not to suffer any dispraise.
To believe of his love all things excellent, and to desire that all
folk should think the same.
To weep often with his love, in presence for joy, in absence for
sorrow.
To languish ever and ever to burn in the desire of his love.
To serve his love, nothing of any reward or profit.
On the first property More himself writes :
The first point is to love but one alone,
And for that one all other to forsake ;
For whoso loveth many loveth none;
The flood that is in many channels take (en)
In each of them shall feeble stremes make.
On the seventh property of loving all things belonging to the
beloved :
There is no page or servant most or least
That doth upon his love attend and wait
There is no little worm, no simple beast,
Nor none so small or trifle or conceit,
Lace, girdle, point, or proper glove, straight,
But that if to his love it have been near,
The lover hath it precious, sweet,* and dear.
So every relic, image or picture,
That doth pertain to God's magnificence,
The lover of God should with all busy cure
Have it in love, honour and reverence.
And specially give them preeminence
Which daily doth His Blessed Body nyrchef
The quick relics, the ministers of His Church.
And on the last property he concludes :
Serve God for love then, not for hope of mede.
What service may so desirable be
As where all turneth to thine owne spede.
Who is so good, so lovely eke as He,
Who hath all redy done so much for thee,
As He that first thee made, and on the rood
Hath thee redeemed with His precious Blood.J
*More's word is Icyse, akin to luscious.
t.V.vf/ic. no'irish. An emendation for wurche made by Mr. Rigg.
tE. W.. pp. 27-32.
THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY.
BY H. P. RUSSELL.
T is asserted by some persons in the present day that
dogma is destructive of true religion and of the
spirit of Christianity, and a hindrance to faith rather
than its bulwark. By others it is contended that the
Church should modify her doctrines as time ad-
vances, in accordance with the developments of human thought ; that
she should accept the law of change as fundamental and inevitable,
and adapt her doctrines to it if she is to retain her hold upon men's
minds. To talk thus is to assert that God, though infinitely good,
having made man a rational being, treats him as though he were an
irrational creature, since having made him for an eternity of reward
dependent on his conduct as a moral agent, He has left him with-
out any certain means of knowing what to believe and do to obtain
it ; that it is consistent, forsooth, with the perfection of God to have
made man what he is and for so high an end, and yet not to have
given him what most of all he needs a revelation of his Creator
and of his Creator's will. They who talk thus show clearly that
they are ignorant of the nature of truth, whether natural or re-
vealed, as also of the nature of divine faith.
Truth is of God ; man can neither make it or unmake it : he is
capable only of seeking, finding, and receiving it; and he is thus
capable because God, in His infinite goodness, has made him so,
having bestowed upon his nature reason and conscience. " God
is love," and that same love which constrained Him to make man
what he is has constrained Him to bestow upon man a revelation
which is two-fold, natural and supernatural.
All nature is a revelation of its Creator : therefore " all men
are vain in whom there is not a knowledge of God, and who by these
good things that are seen could not understand Him that is, neither
by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the work-
man." And what the writer of these words of the Book of Wisdom
so long ago declared, St. Paul has confirmed, declaring the very
heathen to be " inexcusable " if they believe not, since " the invisible
things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power
1912.] THE NOTE OF APOSTOL1CITY 87
also, and divinity." But chief among the works of nature is man
himself a revelation in and to himself by virtue of the reason and
conscience which by nature he possesses, and by the light and sense
of which he knows that God " is," that He " is a rewarder to them
that seek Him," and that " His power and strength and wrath are
upon all them that forsake Him." " For when the Gentiles, who
have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law,
these having not the law are a law to themselves; who show the
work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing
witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing,
or also defending one another." There is, therefore, a natural
religion a natural theology, a natural law, founded on natural
morality; and this, observe, obviously one and the same in all men
for all time. It is a revelation of God by His works of nature,
and chief among them by man himself a revelation, universal,
unchangeable, abiding, involving belief in such dogmas as the exist-
ence of God, of man's soul as distinct from his body, of the immut-
ability of the moral law, of future retribution.
" God is love," and since He has created man for a supernatural
end, it follows that the love which has constrained Him to make
Himself known to man by the light of nature has constrained Him
to add to this light a supernatural revelation a revelation which
teaches truths that are beyond the horizon of natural revelation, and
the light of which pierces the darkness that clouds the natural light
of reason and conscience arising from man's ignorance and concu-
piscence: a revelation accompanied by certainty, that is, the gift of
faith, in relation to the truths it teaches ; as also by the promise of
sanctification of man's nature that he may live, as well as believe,
in accordance with the Divine Will.
That there i a revelation superadded to the light of nature,
and therefore supernatural, is the plain verdict of the world's history
in every age. The history of man is a history of religion, whether
in true or in distorted form ; and religion has ever meant the recog-
nition of supernatural powers and of the duty incumbent upon man
to render obedience to them. Thus religion has always taken the
form of dogma impressing itself upon the human intellect, and of
law penetrating the moral sense; and as thus inseparable from the
intellectual and moral tradition of the human race it is ever one as
well as universal. People sometimes observe that there is truth in
every religion, whereas it would be truer to say that religion is one,
not many, however obscured and overlaid by superstitions; it per-
88 THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY [April,
vades the darkest observations of the human intellect, everywhere
manifesting itself in forms of dogmatic theology and moral law as
pertaining both to the present life and life after death. The his-
torical books and records of the Oriental, Greek, and the Roman
worlds, despite their polytheism, idolatry, pantheism, all conspire in
bearing witness to this ; while the Hebrew scriptures and the history
of the Jewish people in their isolated dispersions among the nations
of the earth supply their own more explicit and imperishable testi-
mony.*
The Promise of the Seed of the Woman was vouchsafed even
at the time of Adam's Fall, and again and again and ever with
clearer light renewed by type and figure and prophecy; while by
long waiting and chastisement of sin men were convinced of their
need and taught to look for " the expectation of all nations," " the
Desired of all nations ;" " of all nations," since not the chosen people
only, but the pagan nations also likewise children of Adam pre-
served, though disfigured by fable, the history of the Fall and Pro-
mise, their prophets ever keeping before the heathen world an ex-
pectation of a Messiah.
But out of the many nations of the earth one was chosen
until such time as men in Christ would be capable of wider associa-
tion in religion that by the preservation which the maintenance of
the principle of unity ensures it might be the depository, and in
its dispersion the visible witness to other nations of the truth about
God and His promise that in the Redeemer to come " all the nations
of the earth shall be blessed." Thus to Israel was committed the
doctrine of God's self -existence " I am Who am " of His unity,
spirituality, and moral perfections, to Israel was given the moral
law inscribed on tables of stone, the priesthood, the typical sacri-
fice, and the prophets who so clearly and explicitly foretold the time,
place, circumstances of the Messiah's Birth, Life, Passion, Death,
Resurrection and Ascension,! until at length He came, and having
fulfilled what was written of Him, He Himself, in His walk with
two of His disciples after His Resurrection, set the seal to all that
had hitherto been revealed, when "beginning at Moses and all the
prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things that
were concerning Himself." And thus, " God, Who commanded the
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the
light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
*See further on this subject Card. Manning's Religio Viatoris.
tls. vii. 14; 1. 6; liii. 7-12; Gen. xliv. 10; Mich. v. 2; Zach. ix. 9; xi. 12-13;
xiii. 6; Ps. xv. 9, 10; cix. i ; Ixvii. 19, etc.
1912.] THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY 89
Schlegel observed that the witness of the Christian world is the
maximum of evidence in history. Its witness is essentially a
divinely revealed religion of dogmas based upon the Incarnation
of the Son of God, and of morals based upon His teaching and
example. To reject the dogmatic teaching of historic Christianity,
and to advocate in place of it a " religion not in dogmatic form,
but in pragmatic," is to renounce Christianity, and to advocate in
place of it a new religion. Historical Christianity is the Catholic
faith, which was carried by the Apostles into all the world in accord-
ance with the commission given them by Christ to " teach all na-
tions," and which by virtue of His promise has been in possession
ever since. History knows of no other form of Christianity that,
issuing from Christ through His Apostles, has been diffused
through the world and has held possession of the orbis t err arum
down the ages until now. To regard the Catholic faith as other
than revealed truth is to regard Christianity as a figment.
" All power is given Me in heaven and on earth," declared
the Divine Author of the Christian revelation by way of preface to
His commission to the Apostles to make it known to the world:
" going therefore, teach ye all nations .... to observe whatsoever I
have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days even to
the consummation of the world." " As the Father hath sent Me, I
also send you. . . .Receive ye the Holy Ghost." " He will teach
you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall
have said to you .... He shall give testimony to Me .... And you
shall give testimony, because you are with Me from the beginning. . .
He will teach you all truth .... and the things that are to come He
shall show you." " And when the days of the Pentecost were ac-
complished" how significant were the circumstances attendant
upon the coming of the Holy Spirit ! " they were all together in
one place," symbolising the visible unity of the Church; "and
suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a mighty wind
coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting,"
as though to show that the life of the Catholic Church is not of
earth by the will of earthly princes, giving it one shape in this
country and another in that, in accordance with national and tem-
poral interests, but that her life is of God, Whose Spirit informs the
whole Body with one and the same intelligence in every part, one
ruling principle, one common instinct of faith, obedience, worship.
" And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and
it Sat upon every one of them, and. they were all filled with the
90 THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY [April,
Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according
as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak," for they were sent to
" teach all nations " of whatsoever " tongue and people," and to
teach them not infallible words of wisdom, but " according as the
Holy Ghost gave them to speak," therefore infallibly; therefore
also to teach them not matter of human opinion, but the doctrines
of divine faith. And the words " as it were of fire " likewise sug-
gest a meaning: for as fire enlightens, purifies, refines, inflames, so
also is the action of the Holy Spirit in imparting the grace of
sanctification a grace which robs not the merits of Christ of their
virtue, as Protestants teach by the false doctrine of justification
by imputation,' but which sanctifies in very truth, enlightening,
cleansing, refining the sinner's soul, transforming him into the like-
ness of Christ, even as fire transforms into itself all that comes
under its influences ; inflaming him also with love for God and zeal
for His interests and glory.
And for the transmission of the truth into all the world
throughout all time there has from the day of Pentecost been a
lineal descent of Apostolic mission an Apostolical Succession
charged with the message of " the Gospel of the Kingdom " of
Christ, and for the maintenance of His Kingdom against schisms,
heresies, and the encroachments of the world-power. " Thou sayest
that I am a King," replied Our Lord to Pilate, when interrogated
by him as to His statement, " My Kingdom is not of this world."
" For this was I born, and for this came I into the world ; that I
should give testimony to the truth." And Pilate asked the question,
" What is Truth? "a question which ever since that day has been
asked, and to which the Catholic Church alone has consistently
supplied the answer. To the kingdom of Christ's Church, and to no
other religious body, still less to the kingdoms of the world, was the
commission given for the promulgation and preservation of His
truth. " Whoso shall eat the Lamb outside that House is profane,"
says St. Jerome with reference to the communion over which
Christ's Vicar and Vicegerent reigns. No bishop, however validly
possessed of Apostolic Orders, has Apostolic Mission outside this
Catholic fold. To exercise episcopal or priestly functions other-
wise than as the accredited ministers of the Catholic Church is to
commit sacrilege.
The Apostolical Succession of Holy Orders was provided, not
for autonomous dioceses and independent national Churches, but
for that one Church which has ever been manifested as Christ's
1912.] THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY 91
Kingdom in and not of this world, because everywhere transcending
human divisions and temporal jurisdictions. Apostolic Orders are
necessary indeed for the true Church, but the possession of such
Orders does not make a Church true; there is needed, besides
Apostolical Succession of Orders, the Apostolic Succession of
Mission, " Ubi Ecclesia ibi Spiritus," says S. Irenaeus ; since it is
by the Visible One Church, not by the Episcopal Orders of schisms
from her fold, that the Holy Spirit manifests His presence and the
Apostolic Mission. St. Cyprian speaks of the Church as " Sacra-
mentum Veritatis," for the Holy Spirit ever preserves her as the
outward and visible sign of the Truth, her visible unity in universal-
ity being in all ages the " testimony to all nations." To exercise
Apostolic Orders apart from her fold, that is to say in schism, as
also to teach doctrine contrary to hers, that is to say heresy, is
sinful, precisely for the reason that these are offences against the
Holy Spirit, from Whom both the unity of the Church and of the
Faith spring Who by such visible unity in every age manifests the
truth of Christ's promise that not only would the Holy Spirit
" come," but that He would " abide " also with the Apostolate of
His Church " forever."
Here, then, is the Divine Teacher for all time and of all nations
" One Body and One Spirit, as you are called in one hope of
your calling " One Church, visible, indivisible, universal, with one
lineal descent of Apostolic Mission. And St. Jude warns us that
they " who separate themselves " from the Body " have not the
Spirit;" therefore have not Mission. Schisms and sects there have
ever been. St. Augustine tells us that even before his time the
Catholic Church had condemned no less than eighty of them. Since
his time many others have appeared, and, as those that went before,
have likewise passed away. Many there are now, each of them
traceable to the date at which it separated from the Church or other-
wise came into being. But the Church founded by Christ and pro-
vided by Him with the Apostolate for the teaching of the nations,
with promise of infallibility by virtue of His own and the Holy
Spirit's abiding, remains ever the living testimony to His Truth, lift-
ing the nations into a visibly supernatural unity, though no other
kind of unity be visible amongst them, and even when they are in
mutual warfare. And, to repeat, this the Church's visible unity is in-
dissoluble, and her testimony to the truth is infallible; because both
her Unity and her Mission are Divine.
A Church that disclaims infallibility is ipso facto condemned,
92 THE NOTE OF AP.OSTOLICITY [April,
since such disclaimer is tantamount to a confession that it has not
the guidance of the Holy Spirit " the Spirit of Truth." The dis-
claimer, moreover, excludes, not only the exercise but likewise
the very idea of Faith. For Faith admits not of any shadow
of doubt or uncertainty; we cannot at the same time both
doubt and believe, be sure and yet not quite sure ; and certitude in
matters religious there cannot be unless they rest upon Divine au-
thority. Hence the faith by which we accept the truths of Divine
revelation is itself likewise a Divine gift and therefore supernatural :
" the natural man perceiveth not these things that are of the
Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot under-
stand because it is spiritually examined." Now of the many
religious bodies at present existing, none save the Catholic Church
claims to be infallible ; and, in consequence, so far from demanding
an exercise of faith in their teaching, they all, excepting her, invite
enquiry and for the most part sanction and even encourage doubt.
The Protestant sects " protest that they are but voluntary asso-
ciations, and would be sorry to be taken for anything else; they
beg and pray you not to mistake their preachers for anything more
than mere sinful men, and they invite you to take the Bible with you
to their sermons, and to judge for yourselves whether their doctrine
is in accordance with it." High-church Anglicans appeal from the
authority of their bishops, from the confusion and contradictions of
their communion and its manifestation as a whole these three hun-
dred and fifty years past, to what they term " the agreement of East
and West " or " Catholic consent;" an appeal which resolves itself
into the adoption of such doctrines and practices as by the exercise
of their private judgment they conceive to be the common heritage
of three separated branches of one visibly divided and indi-
visible Church ! The Eastern national Churches appeal to the Coun-
cils held in primitive times before the schism of Photius, and admit
no exercise of divinely constituted Apostolical authority since then,
that is to say for more than a thousand years.
Thus the Catholic Roman Church remains from age to age
without a rival in her claim to the possession of that Apostolical
Succession of Mission, as well as of Orders, to which Christ prom-
ised His own infallibility in the words " teach ye all nations .... and
behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the
world;" she alone of all religious bodies is conscious of the posses-
sion of so divine, so necessary, a gift and prerogative.
" Grace and truth came by Jesu's Christ." But since men have
1912.] THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY 93
denied as was seen in a former article on the Note of Sanctity
the grant of a grace that really sanctifies, it is scarcely to be won-
dered at that they have likewise denied the grant of an infallible
teaching authority for the promulgation of divine truth. Yet,
surely, it should not be difficult to see that unless the Divine reve-
lation has been secured from error by the grant of infallibility to the
Apostolate commissioned to teach it, He Who gave it virtually has
not given it. The duty of faith, that is of believing without doubt-
ing what God has revealed, implies an infallible teacher, else we
could not know that we were being taught the truth, could not be
certain, therefore could not believe. The Certitude of Faith rests
not upon the human reason, but upon a Grace above reason ; and in
like manner Divine Truth rests not upon the word of fallible men,
but upon an Apostolate divinely endowed with inerrancy. There is
no alternative to such an infallible teaching authority save that of a
separate revelation to each individual a gift which not even the
advocates of private judgment and the Bible only have ventured to
claim.
We see, then, the necessity of a choice from among the many
Christian bodies ; we need to know which among the successions of
bishops that claim the Apostolical Succession of Orders is possessed
of the Apostolic Mission to " all nations ;" we need to be guided
by the authorized teachers of the Catholic Church. And the starting
point in such an enquiry is not, as we have seen, the fact of a faithful
transmission of Orders from the Apostles, but the standing fact of
the Catholic Church, visible and one all over the world age after
age, authenticating herself to be the Church possessed of the Apos-
tolic mission to teach, not simply by her succession of bishops from
the Apostles, but by her notes, and primarily by the note of a world-
wide organization and unity of jurisdiction constituting her Christ's
visible kingdom in and not of this world the embodiment and the
manifestation to the world of " the Gospel of the Kingdom."
Since, therefore, a revelation of supernatural truth has been
vouchsafed and " God our Saviour will have all men to be saved and
come to the knowledge of the truth," and since of all religious bodies
the Catholic Church alone claims infallibly to teach this truth, it
should not be difficult to decide that she is the one ark of salvation.
And Rome, the centre of her Catholic unity, is notably and pre-
eminently " the Apostolic See." For not only is the Pope successor
to St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, but he is also sole successor
to the special powers bestowed upon the Apostolate. His See is
94
THE NOTE OF AFOSTOLICITY [April,
of all Sees in the world the only one that can trace its line of descent
back to an Apostle. The keys of jurisdiction were committed in-
deed by Christ to St. Peter, with charge of the entire flock of the
faithful ; but the College of the Apostles designated " Peter and
the rest of the Apostles " was associated with him, each of them
with immediate universal jurisdiction and each with infallibility,
since this was essential to the commission given them to " teach all
nations " and to lay the foundations of Christianity wherever they
went. With the exception of St. Peter, however, " the rest of the
Apostles," though they had successors by reason of the Episcopal
Orders which they conferred, had no successors in their apostolate
in its fulness, that is, in immediate universal jurisdiction and infal-
libility in delivering the divine deposit. They went out into the
world and left in the countries they visited the deposit of truth,
founding Sees without themselves occupying them.
The Episcopate of the Church thus came into being through
the missionary initiative of the Apostles, but of the Apostles not
independently of one another, but as a College with St. Peter at
their head. The Apostolate is of the essence of the government of
the Church, and this in due course was concentrated in the See of
St. Peter, which remained for all time " the Apostolic See," the one
seat of infallibility and universal government. The three principal
Sees of the early Church were Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, and
each of these in turn was a See of St. Peter, and to him as the
Prince of the Apostles they all ascribed their position: at Antioch
he temporarily resided, to Alexandria he sent St. Mark, at Rome he
reigned and died. Eventually both Antioch and Alexandria fell
into Monophysism, the former having previously espoused the cause
of the opposite heresy of Nestorianism. And thus at this day, as in
all the centuries intervening, Rome remains the one only See that
can trace its Succession in direct line from an Apostle. Hence, now,
still more clearly than in St. Cyprian's day, and in St. Cyprian's
words, " to be united with the See of Rome is to be united with the
Catholic Church ;" and in the words of St. Ambrose, " where Peter
is, there is the Church," in accordance with the appointment of her
Divine Founder; to which appointment St. Cyprian also refers in
the words " to Peter, first, on whom He built the Church, and from
Whom He appointed and showed that unity should spring.*
Alone of all Sees in the world Rome remains the See of Apos-
tolic Mission and Authority, the unfailing centre of unity, the seat
*Cp. L. Rivington's Prim. Ch. and See of Peter, p. 85.
THE NOTE OF APOSTOLICITY 95
of the world-wide government of the Catholic Church. The Church
of Christ never has known another centre of unity; nor other than
the Papal form of Catholic jurisdiction. No such other Catholic
jurisdiction, whether ecclesiastical or civil, has ever existed; there
is absolutely no approach to a parallel to it in the annals of human
history. Non-Catholic historians have marvelled at and tried to
account for it by natural causes and have signally failed. Every
effort that man in his rivalry with his Maker could devise has been
directed against it in vain. It " stands " firm as the Rock upon
which it is built, even the more clearly vindicating itself as of the
very essence of Christ's visible Kingdom in and not of this world,
sustained through the centuries " not with an army, nor by might,
but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." It " saw the commence-
ment of all the governments and ecclesiastical establishments that
now exist in the world," and Catholics at least have every assurance
that it is " destined to see the end of them all."
Meanwhile, the fact that the Episcopal successions which have
renounced this Catholic jurisdiction never have been able to rival it,
never have so much as attempted to, ought to convince those who are
in search of a Catholic jurisdiction that only in communion with
the Vicar of Christ will they find it; that upon communion with
Him depends the Apostolical Succession of Mission; that apart
from him no succession of bishops, however certainly possessed of
Apostolic Orders, has Apostolic authority to teach and govern.
Hence St. Augustine speaks of " the princely succession from the
Episcopate of Peter, to whom the Lord gave the charge of feeding
His flock, down to the present occupant of the See;" and St. Cy-
prian observes : " there is one God, and one Christ, and one See
founded on the Rock by the voice of Christ. No other altar and no
other priesthood can be set up except that one." Hence also St.
Thomas of Canterbury, within the octave of whose feast these
words are being written, asks : " Who doubts that the Roman
Church is the head of all the Churches, and the source of Christian
doctrine?"*
That the Church is assured against error in teaching Christian
doctrine is evident, since she was commissioned to teach truth. The
very fact of a divinely instituted Church includes, as we have seen,
infallibility. But if the Body cannot err, cannot fail in its mission
to teach the truth, it follows that its visible head is likewise infal-
lible; that when speaking as its head in the Name of Him Who is
*Cp. Course of Religious Instruction, John Gerrard, S.J., pp. 99. 106.
96 SIR LIONEL [April,
" the Truth," Whom he represents, he is divinely preserved from
error in matters of faith concerning Christian belief and morals.
The position of the Pope as the ultimate bond of unity alike of faith
and of hierarchical obedience necessarily implies the gift of infal-
libility. De Maistre observes that infallibility is but another name
for sovereignty. Sovereignty implies an authority which is final;
its decisions being irreversible and requiring acceptance and sub-
mission as though they were infallible, which in things temporal of
course they are not. But in things spiritual, authority being brought
to bear upon interior acts of the intellect and will, the assent and
submission of these would obviously be impossible without the
assurance that such spiritual sovereignty was endowed with infalli-
bility in its decisions and definitions concerning faith and morals.
To submit to its teaching there is needed the assurance that it teaches
naught but the truth. The three hundred million Catholics of " all
nations and tribes and peoples and tongues " who render so willing
and loyal a submission to the Pope, do so because they believe that
as the Vicar and Vicegerent of Christ he is by Christ's appointment
infallible when he speaks in Christ's Name : because, in short, they
know that he occupies the throne of Apostolic Authority and
Mission.
SIR LIONEL.
EDWARD j. O'BRIEN.
(In Memoriam, L. J. 1867-1902.)
Flame-like you sang, and singing turned to flame,
High-purified of all save joyous Light,
Passing by lovely music from the night
Into the streaming glory of His Name.
A living trumpet consecrate to Him,
You drew the breath of Life, and breathing died
To Life, your soul to purity allied,
Far-burning through the spheres of cherubim.
Dear Poet-Saint of God, withal a lad,
Triumphant rings the note of your " All Hail !"
Throned on the Siege, His youngest Galahad,
Awed in the wonder of the silent Grail.
THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY."
BY RICHARD J. KEEFFE, LL.D.
OR the benefit of some of our good people who seem
unnecessarily wrought up over the reappearance in
American politics of that fanatical and wholly un-
American society formerly known as the American
Protective Association, we submit a few facts which
we hope will be appreciated not only by Catholics, but also by our
intelligent, fair-minded, and truly patriotic non-Catholic fellow-
citizens. This Society, notwithstanding its past history, now ap-
pears in a more grotesque form than ever, masquerading under the
title of " Guardians of Liberty," whose aim it is to oppose " aspir-
ants for public office in National, State or Municipal Government
who concede superior authority to any foreign political or ecclesias-
tical power." There is, however, no need for any fear or alarm.
The very idea itself is such an insult to anyone of average intelli-
gence that we should think no one, not even the most unscrupulous
politician, would dare resurrect it from the dishonored grave to
which it was so ingloriously consigned by the good sense of the
American people some fifteen or twenty years ago. We believe that
the dissemination of the principles of A. P. A. ism is not the real
object of those people who would now pose as the " Guardians of
Liberty." We believe, moreover, that this attempt to revive the
so-called American Protective Association is, in reality, only the
weakest kind of a stratagem on the part of poor politicians, in a last
desperate effort to bolster up what they consider an almost lost
cause* and they are silly enough to suppose that in this way they
can exert an influence in favor of their candidate for the President-
ial nomination, even at the expense of the peace and harmony of an
united American people.
Or it may be, they forsee that there is a possibility of a Catholic
being the candidate for Vice-President of the United States of one
of the National Parties, and these self-appointed " Guardians " are
foolhardy enough to believe that there are still left in this fair land
of justice and liberty a sufficient number of bigots, bereft of all logic
and of even common sense, who would vote against a man merely
because he is a Roman Catholic, no matter how great his civic
VOL. XCV. 7
98 THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY ' [April,
qualifications for the office, and they hope by working on the ignor-
ance of these bigots to further their own ends.
Be this as it may, we cannot believe that, in the light of past
history, any appreciable number of our fellow-citizens could be de-
ceived by such " bunkum." The trick is too shallow to deserve even
the serious consideration of any intelligent voter. We notice it,
therefore, not because we fear its results, but because it gives us an
opportunity to expose the true inwardness of a political situation,
the discussion of which cannot fail to evoke feelings of gratitude in
the heart of every true American, because of what the Catholic
Church and Catholics have done to establish the prestige which our
beloved America enjoys to-day as an intelligent and tolerant nation
throughout the civilized world.
The agitation is so absurd that General Miles and the re-
puted leaders of the movement, as men of affairs knowing if not
appreciating the history of their country in this regard, are ashamed
to acknowledge that they can endorse its principles, which, put in
plain language, can be interpreted in no other sense than an attack
upon the Catholic Church. In their Declaration of Principles these
self-appointed "Guardians of Liberty," say, "We declare it to be our
unalterable purpose to preserve, defend and hold sacred the blood-
bought legacy of liberty inherited from our forefathers. . . .with the
earnest intent to bring about a more intense loyalty to the funda-
mental ideas of the founders of this republic." They assume against
all authority and teaching on the subject that the Pope of Rome
claims sovereignty in this country in political and civil matters, and
imply that American Catholics being in subjection to the Pope, owe
him an allegiance which is in conflict with the allegiance which, as
American citizens, they owe the government of the United States,
and, on account of this, should be excluded from holding office in it.
Any little boy or girl attending one of the parochial schools ought
to be able to refute such a gratuitous assumption.
But let us examine American history and see what " were the
fundamental ideas of the founders of this Republic," and " who
were our forefathers who transmitted to us the blood-bought legacy
of liberty." To begin with, the very land we inhabit was discovered
by Catholics, and this alone should entitle them to the gratitude of
mankind, or at least to fair treatment. In the great work of explor-
ing the land which the genius of Christopher Columbus discovered,
Catholics took the foremost part. The Cabots erected the cross of
Christ on Cape Cod more than a century before the Puritans landed
1912.] THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY " 99
at Plymouth Rock; Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, De Soto
led the first expedition across the Mississippi river. " The religious
zeal of the French (Catholics) bore the cross to the banks of the
St. Mary and the confines of Lake Superior, and looked wistfully
towards the home of the Sioux in the valley of the Mississippi, five
years before the New England Eliot had addressed the tribe of
Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston harbor."
Isaac Jogues, " having been the first to carry the cross into
Michigan, was the first to bear it through the villages of the Mo-
hawks," and at the cost of terrible suffering. " The Mohawks from
their ambush attacked the canoes. Jogues might have escaped ;
but there were with him converts who had not yet been baptized,
and when did a Jesuit missionary seek to save his own life, at what
he believed the risk of a soul ? . . . .
" Horrible inflictions of savage cruelty ensued, and were
continued all the way from the St. Lawrence to the Mohawk. There
they arrived the evening before the festival of the Assumption of
the Virgin; and, as he ran the gauntlet, Jogues comforted himself
with a vision of the glory of the Queen of heaven. In a second and
a third village, the same sufferings were encountered ; for days and
nights he was abandoned to hunger and every torment which
petulant youth could devise. But yet there was consolation: an
ear of Indian corn on the stalk was thrown to the good father ; and
see ! to the broad blade there clung little drops of dew or of water,
enough to baptize two captive neophytes ....
" Father Jogues' life was spared and his liberty enlarged. On
a hill apart, he carved a long cross on a tree, and there, in the soli-
tude, meditated the imitation of Christ, and soothed his griefs by
reflecting that he alone, in that vast region, adored the true God of
heaven and earth. Roaming through the stately forests of the
Mohawk valley, he wrote the name of Jesus on the bark of the tree,
graved the cross, and entered into the possession of those countries
in the name of God, often lifting up his voice in solitary chant.
Thus did France bring its banner and its faith to the confines of
Albany."*
Marquette, another Jesuit priest, discovered the Mississippi's
source and was the first to sail down its mighty waters; La Salle
was the pioneer navigator of the Great Lakes; De Smet, another
Jesuit priest, was the first to reveal to the savage tribes of the Rocky
Mountains the truths of the Christian religion. The memory of
*Bancroft, History of the United States. Vol. iii., p. 13 >
ioo THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY ' : [April,
these great men, all of whom were devout Catholics, will live as
long as mankind endures.
Passing on from the era of discovery to Colonization days, we
find that the American colonies were the results of religious intoler-
ance in Europe, which brought about most bitter and most merci-
less persecutions. Bigotry rode rampant everywhere. In France,
Holland and Germany millions of innocent people were put to
death, and the best and bravest of the children of St. Patrick were
murdered and nearly every acre of their productive fields confis-
cated. England, Scotland and Switzerland witnessed the same sort
of religious intolerance in the form of legalized oppression, includ-
ing burning, beheading, hanging, poisoning and torture until it
seemed " mankind was to be given up to sacrifice."
The colonies of America were made up of fugitives from these
scenes of torture, and they, in turn, became as intolerant in religious
matters in their new home as their persecutors had been in their
native land. Every colony save Maryland had persecuting laws
whereby the right of freedom of conscience was denied. Through-
out the country frightful scenes were enacted, until Lord Baltimore,
a Roman Catholic, established for the first time in the history of the
world a government acknowledging freedom of worship. The his-
torian, Bancroft, although not a Catholic, says : " The disfran-
chised orders of Prelacy from Massachusetts and the Puritans from
Virginia were welcome to an equality of political rights in the
Roman Catholic province of men, the most wise and beneficent law-
givers of all ages, who were the first in the history of the Christian
world to stand for religious security and peace by the practise of
justice; to plan the establishment of popular institutions for the
enjoyment of liberty of conscience ; to advance the cause of civiliza-
tion by recognizing the equality of all Christian sects. The asylum
of Papists was the spot where, in a remote corner of the world, the
mild forbearance of a proprietary adopted religious freedom as the
basis of the state." It will be seen from this that religious freedom
in this great country of ours had its origin in the patent for Mary-
land granted by King James of England to Lord Baltimore an-
other fact which certainly ought to make men hesitate before taking
part in a movement discriminating against American Catholics.
Nor must we omit mention of the first Catholic governor of
New York, Thomas Dongan, " an intense patriot and a bold de-
fender of the rights of his people."*
*Lossing, Cyclopedia of United States History. Vol. i., p. 401.
1912.] THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY " 101
" Dongan sympathized with the people of his province in
their aspirations for liberty, which his predecessor had denied ; and
he was instrumental in the formation of the first General Assembly
of New York, and in obtaining a popular form of government."
It was under the Catholic Governor Dongan that " The Charter
of Liberties " was passed, which declared " that no person profess-
ing faith in God by Jesus Christ should at any time be anywise dis-
quieted or questioned for any difference of opinion."*
From Lord Baltimore's time till the signing of the Declaration
of Independence, American Catholics, without exception, were most
loyal in their allegiance to civil and religious freedom. Among the
names signed to this immortal Declaration none is more illustrious
than that of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, and of the signers of the
Constitution of the United States none were foiind more worthy
than the Catholics, Thomas Fitz Simons and Daniel Carroll. If
further testimony be required in favor of the devotion and loyalty of
American Catholics to the cause of liberty, we have the words of
General George Washington in answer to an address of American
Catholics, complaining of unlawful restrictions placed upon their
worship in several states, presented to him by the grandfather of
General Meade, the hero of Gettysburg :
As mankind becomes more liberal they will be more apt to
allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members
of the commonwealth are equally entitled to the protection of
civil government. I hope ever to see America among the fore-
most nations in examples of justice and liberality ; and I presume
your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you
took in the accomplishment of their revolution and in the estab-
lishment of our government, or the important assistance which
they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic Faith
is professed.
Besides the above from the illustrious Father of our Country,
we have, also, an order issued on November 5, 1775, prohibiting
the bigots of the city of Boston from burning the Pope in effigy, in
which he said :
As the Commander-in-Chief has been apprised of a design for
the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning
in effigy the Pope, he cannot help expressing his surprise that
there should be officers and soldiers in this army so devoid of
Id., p. 787.
102 THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY ' [April,
common sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step. It
is so monstrous as not to be suffered or excused; indeed, in-
stead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to express
public thanks to our Catholic brethren, as to them we are in-
debted for every late success over the common enemy in
Canada.
Thank God, the American people of to-day are not so ignorant
of their own history, or so devoid of that gratitude which George
Washington proclaimed to be their duty, as to countenance the
hysterical efforts of these so-called " Guardians of Liberty " to
insult fourteen millions of their Catholic brethren, aye, even
more, to rob us of our " blood-bought legacy inherited from our
forefathers."
We declare and claim that we have the best right to speak of
American liberty as our " blood-bought legacy inherited from our
forefathers." Could American independence ever have been
achieved without the aid of our Catholic forefathers ? The Catholic
Irishman, General Moylan, fought side by side with General Wash-
ington ; Commodore John Barry was " the father and founder " of
the American Navy, and from his ship the Stars and Stripes were
first flung to the breeze. Our ownership of the Northwest and
the extension of our boundaries to the Mississippi at the time of the
Revolution are owing to two Catholics, Rev. Peter Gibault and
Colonel Vigo.
Can Americans forget their indebtedness to Catholic France?
Have we so soon forgotten her part in obtaining for us " the blood-
bought legacy " of liberty, consisting of a formidable fleet of ten
thousand men and three thousand dollars? Is it possible that
" General Miles and other lights," as they are described in the head-
lines of some of our newspapers, can under the cloak of " Guardians
of Liberty " disregard the services of such patriots as Lafayette, De
Grasse, and Rochambeau in obtaining for them that precious boon
of liberty which they would have a patriotic American people believe
they are striving " to preserve, defend and forever hold sacred "
by denying it to Catholics, who have since the days of its birth
proven themselves loyal and devoted subjects of this nation ?
Do they entirely ignore the fact that Canadian Catholics aided
us with two fully equipped regiments who performed heroic serv-
ices for our cause? Do they forget that Catholic Spain, now so
maligned and held up as the essence of intolerance, at that time
opened her home ports and the port of Havana to the American
1912.] THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY " 103
Marine? Besides this, she contributed to the new Republic three
thousand barrels of gunpowder, enough blankets for ten full regi-
ments and one million francs. Are they unmindful of Pulaski and
Kosciusko from Catholic Poland whose deeds are immortal? Do
they not realize that all the foreign assistance came from Catholics
and Catholic countries ? Moreover, the Catholics who were already
in this country aided greatly in the work of securing American In-
dependence. Even the Catholic converts among the Indians helped,
and a band headed by the Catholic chief Orono of the Penobscots
were a material aid.
During that struggle for life and liberty no one would think of
maintaining that it " would be inconsistent with and destructive of
free government to appoint or elect to political or military office any
person who openly or secretly concedes superior authority to any
foreign political or ecclesiastical power whatsoever." Everyone then
knew that all Catholics not secretly but openly conceded authority
to the Holy Father, the Pope, the Visible Head of their Church.
Still there was no one who thought them unworthy of entrusting
them with the command of their regiments at that crucial time.
The authority which these patriots conceded to the Pope of
Rome, in as much as it was spiritual, was to them superior, and from
this they learned the lesson of their duties to lawful inferior author-
ity, which they recognized to the extent of undergoing terrible tor-
tures and laying down their lives that their country might be free.
What greater proof of love and devotion to their land could they
give than this?
All were aware of the fact that the Pope of Rome, even though
he lived in a foreign country " like a sentinel on the watchtower of
Israel," looked out over the whole civilized world, and taught as a
Father, but in no uncertain tones, that his children if they would re-
main under his spiritual authority should " render to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."
The welfare of a nation rests eventually upon the spiritual
character of its people. Respect for law and authority alone main-
tains social order and well-being. Love of country, civil allegiance,
obedience to law, respect for constituted authority are all matters
of conscience with a Catholic ; and the Holy Father, as our supreme
spiritual Head, and the teacher of universal Christendom, inculcates
all these upon his subjects.
The more faithful a Catholic is, then, to his spiritual Father,
the better citizen will he be. The teaching of the Catholic Church on
the supreme spiritual authority of the Pope, in which " he has no
104 THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY * [April,
rival in his claim upon us," and on the obligation of obedience to
our temporal ruler and our country's laws, far from being deroga-
tory to patriotism or good citizenship is the safeguard of orderly
progress, the bulwark of the republic and the best, we will say the
only, certain guarantee of its continued life.
Washington's words are surely a safe index to the fundamental
ideas of the founders of the Republic. But Tom Watson main-
tains " it to be inconsistent with and destructive of free government
to appoint or elect to political or military office any person who
openly or secretly concedes superior authority to any foreign polit-
ical or ecclesiastical authority whatsoever." And Tom Watson is
an honorable man. All his ilk are honorable men. And, indeed,
it must be edifying to their American fellow-citizens to see these
self-styled " Guardians of Liberty " laboring so earnestly to bring
about a more intense loyalty " to these ideas."
Not only did Catholics give proof of their patriotism in war
during the infancy of the Republic, but they proved themselves just
as capable of carrying the weightiest burdens and the highest honors
in civil life. The Supreme Courts, the Cabinets of the Presidents,
and the United States Senate felt the influence of their learning
and patriotism, and never was one found recreant to the trust re-
posed in him.
The names of Taney, Gaston, Campbell, Ewing, O'Connor,
Shields, Harney and a multitude of others will ever be remembered
as illustrative of what Catholics have done towards shaping the
destinies of our nation during its great crises.
Before approaching the period of the Civil War, there looms up
before us that shameful product of intolerance and bigotry, which
the American people should have had every reason to suppose had
been stamped out from the history of the nation, the " Know Noth-
ing Movement." The members of the defunct American Protective
Association and the distinguished " Patriots of the Order of the
Guardians of Liberty " may behold their forefathers in the persons
of " a few desperate, disappointed and, for the most part, obscure
politicians, who formed what was known as ' The Know Nothing
Party.' ' After a brief life of infamy, which forms one of the
foulest blots on the fair name of our country, that " party " sank
into ignominious oblivion amidst the smoke of burnt churches,
sacked convents and the cries of inoffensive people, whose life blood
flowed not, as was its wont, for the cause of God and liberty, but
to satisfy the demands of sectarian and diabolical fanatacism.
Governor Henry A. Wise, then Governor of Virginia, thus
1912.] THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY " 105
characterizes them : " Men who were never known before on the
face of God's earth to show any interest in religion, to take any part
with Christ or his Kingdom, but were the devil's own, belonging to
the devil's church, are, all of a sudden, deeply interested for the
Word of God and against the Pope ! It would be well for them that
they joined a Church which does believe in the Father and in the
Son and in the Holy Ghost."
We do not, we cannot, we would not, say that the " Guardians
of Liberty " are as ignorant, as irreligious, and as fanatical as Gov-
ernor Wise painted their forefathers, but we do say that they are the
worst kind of unscrupulous politicians who would risk the revival,
even in the way of memory, of that one disgraceful effort in the
history of our country to introduce sectarian prejudice and bigotry
into politics. They should remember, however, that the American
people cannot be fooled " all the time." It would be well for their
own reputation, for the good of their party, and for the peace and
comfort of their fair-minded fellow-citizens, if they would meditate
now and then not only upon the incident just mentioned, but also
upon the miserable failure of a somewhat similar attempt in the
campaign of 1884 when the Hon. James G. Elaine, one of the coun-
try's ablest statesmen, was defeated for President and sent to an
untimely grave through the efforts of his fanatical friends.
The name of the Rev. Samuel Dickenson Burchard appears in
the American Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia only records of
him the following : " He was a Presbyterian minister for many
years in New York. During the Presidential campaign of 1884 a
company of clergymen, about 600 in number, called on James G.
Elaine, the Republican candidate at the 5th Avenue Hotel, New
York. Dr. Burchard made an address in which he affirmed that the
antecedents of the Democracy were Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,
and this denunciatory speech on the very eve of election created the
most intense excitement throughout the United States, and alien-
ated from Elaine many Democratic votes upon which he had reck-
oned. It is generally conceded that Burchard was thus largely in-
strumental in electing Grover Cleveland."
That is all. We have never heard of any pilgrimages to his
tomb, bearing wreaths of immortelles, symbolical of his services to
his party or to his country. We come now to the days of secession
when patriotism was tried more than at any other period of our
existence as a nation. From the very beginning, we see the great
Archbishop Hughes of New York, with voice and pen, champion-
ing in the name of Catholics the rights of the Federal Government.
'106 THE "GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY" [April,
Catholics were his own loyal spiritual subjects, and Catholics
were also the obedient subjects of the Government. The same ex-
ample of loyalty and patriotism has ever been characteristic of the
Catholic hierarchy of America. The recent unprecedented ovation
given to His Eminence, John Cardinal Farley, was the spontaneous
testimony of Catholics and non-Catholics alike to his dignity as a
churchman and his worth as a citizen. At that banquet at which
were present the President of the United States, Governor Dix and
Mayor Gaynor, His Eminence said in the course of his speech,
" I love this country second only to my Creator and here lies my
work."
The American flag that waves on festal days between the lofty
spires of St. Patrick's Cathedral is an eloquent witness to the living
patriotism of the Catholic heart ; and the De Profundis that sounded
only a few days ago from its chimes, during the burial of the Maine
dead, is but the continuation of her prayer for those who in count-
less numbers gave up their lives fifty years ago to save the nation.
When at last the Civil War became necessary what part did
Catholics take? The roster of our nation's army gives the answer.
What student of history can ever forget the names of Phil. Sheri-
dan, Don Carlos Buell of Shiloh, Thomas Francis Meagher of
Fredericksburg, or General Shields, Stanley and Whipple or Don
Piatt?
Can anyone recall, without a thrill of admiration for Catholic
valor, the story of the seven days' fight around Richmond or the
story of the great Union victory at Stone River won by the Catho-
lic General, William S. Rosecrans, or, more thrilling than all, the
story of the 6gth N. Y. Regiment, all Catholics, when in the words
of General Longstreet : " Six times in the face of a withering fire,
before which whole ranks were mowed as corn before the sickle, did
the Irish Brigade run up that hill rush to inevitable death."
No wonder that General Thomas Francis Meagher could say
of his Catholic Brigade : " A chivalrous and, I may with perfect
truth assert, a religious sense of duty and a spirit of fidelity to the
Government and the flag of the Nation, of which they were citizens,
alone inspired them to take up arms against the South."
What words more inspiring than those of the Catholic hero,
General James A. Mulligan, who distinguished himself at Lexing-
ton on the Missouri, and as he was taken mortally wounded from the
battlefield of Winchester, exclaimed : " Lay me down and save the
flag."
To these could be added a long roll of honor, the names of
IQI2.] THE " GUARDIANS OF LIBERTY " 107
Catholic Generals, Catholic officers and soldiers of the Union Army
and Navy, but space forbids their mention here.
We believe, however, that there is no veteran of the Civil War,
now surviving, no matter what his creed or nationality, who would
forgive us, if, in speaking or writing, of those dire days, we failed
to give honorable mention to the ministering angel that accompanied
his weary march, attended him in hospitals of pain, and amid the
din of battle brought God's consolations to many a departing com-
rade " the sweet-faced Sister of Charity." To describe her devo-
tion to God and country would transcend the limits of prose. Her
unrequited devotion, her self-sacrifice, her unrewarded heroism,
have caused her deeds to be enshrined in this beautiful verse of the
poet :
Unshrinking where pestilence scatters his breath,
Like an angel she moves 'mid the vapors of death ;
Where rings the loud musket and flashes the sword,
Unfearing she walks, for she follows her Lord.
How sweetly she bends o'er each plague-tainted face
With looks that are lighted with holiest grace !
How kindly she dresses each suffering limb !
For she sees in the wounded the image of Him.
The history of our late Spanish-American War is of too recent
date to require any reference to the heroism of the Catholics en-
gaged in it. Suffice it to say that it is generally conceded that there
was no greater act of heroism than that displayed by the Chaplain
of the Maine, the Rev. John P. Chidwick, D.D., now quietly and
humbly presiding over our Diocesan Seminary, instilling into the
hearts of the young Levites under his care those same virtues which
have caused him to be acknowledged one of the heroes of our
Nation.
Such is only a kaleidoscopic review of the loyalty of American
Catholics to our country froin the discovery of America to the pre-
sent day. It must be that those Catholics who are now holding posi-
tions of honor and trust, whether in the Supreme Court of the
United States, in the United States Senate or in the Senates or in
the Supreme Courts of the different states in which they are as
conspicuous as they are powerful, have proved themselves unworthy
of their heritage, if the "Guardians of Liberty" have any reason for
their existence to-day! There is absolutely no proof of disloyalty
to the Government of the United States on the part of any Catholic
in the past. We leave it to our American non-Catholic fellow-citi-
io8 ARCHBISHOP JOHN CARROLL [April,
zens, in whose calm judgment we have the greatest confidence, to
decide whether or not Chief Justice White or United States Senator
James A. O'Gorman (to mention only two) has done aught in their
tenure of office to merit even the suspicion that it is " incon-
sistent with and destructive of free government to appoint or elect
to political or military office any person who openly or secretly con-
cedes superior authority to any foreign political or ecclesiastical au-
thority whatsoever." But if the " Guardians of Liberty," knowing
our history as patriots, would have the American people think there
is danger of our disloyalty, why draw the line at our holding office ?
Why not go the whole way? Why let us vote, sit on juries or bear
arms ? Why let us live ?
LINES IN MEMORY OF ARCHBISHOP JOHN CARROLL.
BY HILDEGARDE.
For the unveiling of his statue at Georgetown University,
Washington, D. C., May 4, 1912.
Here shall his loving effigy in honor stand,
Whose name, upon the fairest archives of the land
Is writ in guarantee of all things great and good !
His highest boast, the tie of common brotherhood
That bound him to the company of valiant men,
Who gladly dedicated time, and voice, and pen
To liberty of worship, and the holy cause
Of righteousness and truth. Nor was he known to pause
Though oftentimes confronted with the threatened loss
Of all his plans his means his friends ! The holy Cross
Was ever all in all to him. He once declared
That to this chosen mystic school he oft repaired
And there, in contemplation, learned the half he knew.
Oh ! could the honored presence of this image true
Enkindle in our hearts his apostolic joy
In doing good ; it might, perhaps, in part, destroy
Our wayward worldliness, too prone to-day
To sweep the memory of the good and great away.
flew Boohs,
CALIFORNIA: ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE. By John S.
McGroarty. Los Angeles : Grafton Publishing Co. $3.50 net.
The Californian author and poet, John S. McGroarty, has made
a contribution of unusual value to the literature of the subject by
his new book called California, Its History and Romance. He be-
gins in the sixteenth century, with the first expeditions to California,
traces the activities of the missionaries, gives full accounts of the
Spanish era and of the Mexican era, and brings us through the
American conquest, down to the recent achievements of California
and the Calif ornians. He has, moreover, succeeded in the difficult
task of combining historical detail with a pleasant popularity of
style.
Mr. McGroarty is a Catholic, and has obviously given especial
care to his lengthy and detailed account of the Franciscan Missions.
His treatment is adequate, intelligent, and sympathetic, correcting
frequent mistakes and misrepresentations. After telling of the
secularizing of the Missions, which he calls a robbery, not of the
Franciscans, but of the Indians, he adds :
Very many writers who have put forth what they wrote as
historical records, and many other less ostentatious writers who
have written on the subject of the California Missions, have
invariably concluded their chronicles with the statement that the
labors of Junipero Serra and his brown-robed successors in the
work of the Missions ended in failure. They say it was a dream
that had no realization. But they miss the point. The material
aspect of the Missions was merely subsidiary and auxiliary to
their spiritual aspect. What Junipero Serra came to California
to do was to Christianize the Indians. To feed and clothe them
and to teach them trades were secondary considerations, which,
in the wisdom of Serra and his associates and successors, were
regarded as a necessary service to perform. But the dream was,
first and foremost and above all things, to convert the heathen
to Christianity. The Indians and their descendants lost the land
and the Mission establishments which the Franciscans taught
them to till and to build, but they have never lost the religion
which the Padres brought them. Their descendants have it to
this day. Wherefore, the dream of Junipero Serra is a dream
come true.
Another very interesting chapter tells of the Bear Flag Re-
no
NEW BOOKS [April,
public, the nation of twenty-six days, and of the stirring fights, led
by the "Pathfinder," Captain Fremont, Ide, Ford, and "Kit"
Carson.
To his last chapter the author gives the ambitious title, " The
Five Miracles of California." They are, he affirms, the building of
the chain of twenty-one Missions, the building of the Central Pacific
railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains, the irrigation of the
deserts, the rebuilding of San Francisco, and the Owens River
aqueduct. In concluding, the author predicts a glorious and perhaps
equally miraculous future for his state.
Mr. McGroarty is certainly to be congratulated upon the scope,
the care, and the excellence of his book. To be sure, he writes at the
top of his voice, and some of his superlatives should perhaps be
taken with a grain of salt, but breathes there a man with soul so
dead who would reprove such enthusiasm of state patriotism?
THE LIFE OF MADAME DE LA ROCHEJAQUELEIN. By the
Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co. $2.00.
Catholics readers are already familiar with the gallery of
noble women whose portraits have been sketched for us by the Hon.
Mrs. Maxwell Scott, and will welcome this new life of the Marquise
de la Roche jaquelein. It is a stirring tale, built up mainly from the
Memoires of the French woman herself, and covering the last tragic
days of the Anden Regime, the wars of La Vendee, the First
Empire and the Restoration.
Victoire, Mme.de Lescure (as it seems fitting to remember
her), spent a happy youth at Versailles, and was married at nineteen
to her cousin, the Marquis de Lescure, a studious, shy young man,
destined to become one of the great patriots of La Vendee. At the
request of Marie Antoinette, who seems to have counted upon their
devotion, the couple remained in Paris until after that terrible loth
of August, 1792. A few months later, Victoire's husband threw
himself heart and soul into the war of La Vendee that forlorn
hope of a loyal nobility, and a faithful but untrained peasantry, who
for awhile " made the Republic tremble, conquered part of Europe,
obtained an honorable peace and defended their cause with more
success and glory than all the allied Powers." Years of defeats
and victories, of arrests and releases, followed, when men grew
familiar with the face of Death, and the women and little children
learned to pray while the cannon thundered.
1912.] NEW BOOKS in
It is interesting to discover that Mme. de Lescure or de la
Rochejaquelein, as she afterwards became was not naturally of
heroic mould. She was a timid woman, with little self-reliance
and no zest for adventure. But through her great love and her great
sorrows she learned not only the beautiful, momentary lesson of
heroism, but the long, long lesson of detachment. As wife and then
widow of the two brave Vendean generals, she shared all the
scarred fortunes of her adopted province. She learned to ride alone
crosscountry, to carry pistols, to muster the peasant soldiers; she
learned to endure exile, to disguise herself en paysanne and go out
seeking news amongst the enemy. And when the long life closed in
1857, she was still working for the cause of those gallant and pious
peasants who called her their mother and their friend.
HADJI MURAD. $1.20. THE FORGED COUPON, AND
OTHER STORIES. By Leo Tolstoy. New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co. $1.25.
The lengthy realism of Tolstoy has perhaps aroused in some of
us the sentiments expressed by the old gentleman of Miss Repplier's
acquaintance, whom she one day found reading War and Peace.
" My daughter-in-law sent it to me," he explained, " and so I must
read it. Its in seven volumes. But," he added, brightening up,
" thank heaven, one volume was lost on the way ! "
Considering the matter seriously, however, it is plain that, as
Mr. Chesterton says, " You cannot ignore Tolstoy any more than
you can ignore a mountain." With the philosophy of Tolstoy,
Catholics can have very little patience. His rejection of Christian-
ity was accompanied by a frequent rejection of sanity. The theory
of the brotherhood of man (an essentially Christian theory, by the
way) probably began in his mind as a reaction against the coldness
and cruelty of his environment, but it flared into an inhuman ideal-
ism a splendid insanity. The philosophic and economic edifice
which he built upon it was a failure a towering and magnificent
failure, but a failure without doubt. Another thought, which that
clever Englishman, Mr. John Galsworthy, is quoted as having ex-
pressed of Russian writers in general, may easily be recorded of
Tolstoy in particular, namely, that by the time he had finished ex-
perimenting with life in search of the facts, he had not enough
energy left to correlate his material and use it for any socially
reconstructive purpose.
That he had experimented with life, however, that he knew
H2 NEW BOOKS [April,
how to make wonderful studies in psychology, and that his literary
art was of a high order, these things are sure. The terrible earnest-
ness of the man, and the purity and vigor of his style, impress us as
strongly as ever in these recently published posthumous stories,
Hadji Murad, and The Forged Coupon. The former is a tale of
that Caucasian life with which Tolstoy was familiarized when a
young soldier in the Russian army, and from which he drew the
material for his former great story, The Cossacks. He has told us
this time of the struggle, the surrender, and the final tragedy of the
Tartar Chieftain, Hadji Murad, basing his plot with truth, although
not with accuracy, upon historical facts. The involved picture of
Russian army life is sordid and painful to repulsiveness, but in the
character of the Caucasian hero we find nobility and grandeur,
despite his savage ethics. The story is translated and prefaced by
Aylmer Maude.
The second book consists of six stories, and takes its title from
the first and longest, The Forged Coupon. This purports to trace
the inevitable consequences of one sin. A forgery committed by a
foolish school boy in desperation is the first link in a fatal chain
of crimes that follow each other with a horrible, unreal logic, like a
thief-chase on the films of a moving-picture show. Of the other
stories perhaps the most impressive is After the Dance a quick,
vivid picture of Russian military cruelty. The volume is edited by
Dr. Hagberg Wright, who has written a long introduction, which,
he somewhat elaborately states, aims "at being less strictly bio-
graphical than illustrative of the contributory elements and circum-
stances which subconsciously influenced Tolstoy's spiritual evolu-
tion." The gentleman writes rather pompously, and is a bit absurd
in his adjectives of admiration, but we can extract much that is
interesting, and much that is explanatory of the personal whys and
wherefores of Tolstoy's beliefs. The translator, or, we understand,
the translators of these stories are not named, but a needed apology
is inserted for the haste in which their work was done.
THROUGH THE DESERT. A Romance of the Time of the
Mahdi. By Henryk Sienkiewicz. New York: Benziger
Brothers. $1.35 net.
The sure and international fame of Henryk Sienkiewicz has
received its latest confirmation by a romance of the African wilder-
ness, of which the English translation appears under the title
Through the Desert. As in writing Quo Vadis, the novelist has
1912.} NEW BOOKS 113
again departed from his usual background of Polish life and Polish
history. This time he has chosen a setting of weird fascination
the African desert, with its lure and its horror, its mysterious and
terrible desolation. Such scenery has been used very skilfully by
Robert Hichens. Sienkiewicz makes it just as vivid and just as
passionate, but relieves it by a plot healthier than any yet achieved
by the English writer. Two children, the boy of a Polish, the girl
of an English family, are snared into captivity by agents of the
Mahdi, and by them carried through the desert. Adventure is
heaped upon adventure, and horror upon horror, but little Nell
remains patient and brave, and the boy, Stasch, is a small hero.
Their story is told with the strength and brilliancy which we asso-
ciate with the name of Sienkiewicz, and is decidedly an achieve-
ment. There are ten very fine illustrations done by P. Schworm-
stadt. The translator has done his work well, but has rather un-
accountably omitted to sign his name.
MOTIVE-FORCE AND MOTIVATION TRACKS. A RESEARCH
IN WILL PSYCHOLOGY. By E. Boyd Barrett, S.J. New
York : Longmans, Green & Co. $2.50.
This work is an attempt to study will-power and character
by experimental methods. As a result of his experiments the author
even attempts a mathematical formula by which character can not
only be expressed but also measured. He leans strongly to the
Socratic concept that virtue and knowledge are one, and advocates
a predominantly intellectual training for the development of char-
acter. The experimental work was done at the University of Lou-
vain, under the direction of Professor Michotte, and presented as
a dissertation for the Doctorate in Philosophy. It was afterwards
extended and submitted to the National University of Ireland for
the degree of Master of Arts.
CATHOLIC IDEALS IN SOCIAL LIFE. By Father Cuthbert,
O.S.F.C. New York : Benziger Brothers. $1.70.
It is pleasant and encouraging to know that the first edition of
Father Cuthbert's work, Catholic Ideals in Social Life, has been ex-
hausted, and that many copies of the second edition were ordered
before it was ready for sale. THE CATHOLIC WORLD welcomed
Father Cuthbert's book on its first appearance with words of warm
praise, and we repeat now that we know of no book better fitted to
VOL. XCV. 8
NEW BOOKS [April,
inspire Catholics with the true spirit of social work, and none better
calculated to arouse them to a sense of its supreme importance. As
Father Cuthbert says, we are passing through an age of transition;
world-wide problems face the Church. It is absolutely necessary
that every Catholic, as far as in him lies, should do his part to
spread the Truth of the Gospel : to lead all that is good and worthy
in the aspirations of the world to saving Catholic truth, and by the
infusion of that same truth to reconstruct the world's social and
political ideals.
A touch of the enthusiasm with which Father Cuthbert would
inspire us may be felt from the following passage :
The true apostle of the Church is as humble and simple of soul
as he is patient and steadfast ; for whilst he walks amongst men
he walks in the presence of God. To sum up briefly, it is the
duty of every Catholic to do his part in bringing about greater
justice and charity in the world, whether by economic legislation
or by private or voluntary endeavor. This is a universal duty
incumbent upon all. But for those who have leisure, or who
have opportunity, there is a special apostolate to redeem those
who by their own fault or the fault of others, have fallen from
what a man and a Christian ought to be. The voice of Christ
calls for helpers in this work, but whoever would help must
come to the work in the spirit of Christ; they must be sincere
and consistent in their own lives ; they must be sympathetic with
those they would help ; above all, they must walk constantly in
the presence of God, and know how to seek in prayer the
strength and guidance necessary for their work.
STEPS IN THE ATTACK OF RATIONALISM AGAINST THE
GOSPEL AND THE LIFE OF OUR SAVIOR. By L. Cl.
Pillion, S.S. Paris : P. Lethielleux.*
We read the matter of this book with great interest in the pages
of the Revue du Clerge Fran^ais (April i, 1909 November 15,
1910) some time ago, and welcome it now that it has been published
in a separate volume. It is a scholarly, accurate and detailed ac-
count of the various attempts made by rationalists during the past
one hundred and thirty-five years to destroy the supernatural char-
acter of Christianity and to deny the divinity of its Founder.
Works of similar import have been written by the Anglican scholars
*Les Etapes Du Rationalisme Dans Ses Attaques Centre Les Evangiles et la
Vie De Notre Siegneur Jesus Christ. By L. Cl. Pillion, S.S. Paris : P. Lethielleux.
1912.] NEW BOOKS 115
Fairbairn and Sanday,* and the German rationalists Von Hase,
Weinel, and Schweitzer.f But we are sadly in need of a guide,
containing both orthodoxy of doctrine and accuracy of scholarship
through this bewildering labyrinth of modern destructive Higher
Criticism. The work so ably begun by the learned Sulpician, the
Abbe Vigoroux, in his Les Livres Saints et la Critique Rationaliste,
has now been completed by his confrere and pupil, the Abbe Fillion,
in this clear and convincing resume, which he calls The Halting-
Places of Rationalism.
The Abbe mentions six " Etapes " or stages of modern unbelief
on its long road of denial. The first four are named after Reim-
arus, Paulus, Strauss and Baur; the last two, representing vaguer
and more general theories, are styled the stages of Eclecticism and
Syncretism or Evolution. All these theories are based on the
fundamental dogma that God's action in the world is limited abso-
lutely by natural laws, and that therefore the miraculous element in
Christianity must be explained away, and the idea of a supernatural
Christ, i. e., a divine personality, must yield to the notion of an his-
torical Christ, i. e., a human personality, more or less imperfect,
ignorant and even sinful.
" Independent Criticism," while making a great pretense of ob-
jective treatment in its study of the New Testament records, and
often giving evidence of great erudition, is in very truth the most
abject slave to transcendent metaphysics. A certain a priori
philosophy, real or verbal theism, pantheism, idealism, etc.
forces the " free-thinker " to negative the supernatural content of
the Gospels, and to declare without warrant passage after passage
to be interpolated or of late origin, until at last in utter despair he
asserts that Jesus never existed.
The theory of Reimarus (1694-1798) asserted that fraud was
the basis of both Judaism and Christianity, and that Moses, Christ
and the Apostles were conscious impostors. Some of his followers
were so crude and blatant in their blasphemy as to disgust even
liberal critics like Weinel and Von Hase. Paulus of Jena (1761-
1851) admitted the historical reality of all the Gospel miracles, but
he considered them as purely natural events. Strauss rejected the
theories of his predecessors, and maintained that the popular imagi-
nation created unconsciously the Jesus of the Gospels ; that all the
so-called miracles were simply myths. Next came the tendency
*A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology; William Sanday,
The Life of Christ in Recent Research.
tK. A. Von Hase, Geschichte Jesu nach akademischen Vorlcsungen; H. Weinel,
Jesus in neumehnten Jahrhundert; A. Schweitzer, yon Reimarus su Wrede.
ii6 NEW BOOKS [April,
theory of Baur, which practically made St. Paul the founder of a
universal Christianity. He created an imaginary and purely ar-
bitrary division of anti-Pauline and anti-Petrine books and sought
thereby to destroy the value of the New Testament as contem-
porary documents. The Tubingen schooldied with the death of
its founder in 1860.
Most of the Abbe's book deals with the Eclectic School which
combines at will various portions of the old discredited theories.
The work of these critics is treated under a three-fold division:
i : Their literary criticism of the Gospels ; 2 : Their endeavor to ac-
count for the historical personality of Jesus ; and 3 : Their attempt
to show the relation of the contemporary Judaism to primitive
Christianity. The author's brief sketch of the ultra-radical school
is most painful reading. Still the satanic views of Holtzmann
(Oscar), Baumann, Lomer, Rasmussen, Tschiro, Nietzsche and
others are merely the logical outcome of liberal theories, despite
the fact that the better class of critics strenuously repudiate them.
The last theory is styled the Evolutionary or Syncretical stage.
Its defenders maintain that " the history and chief ideas of Jesus, as
well as the origin of Christianity, are but the material result of an
evolution due to preexisting historical beliefs or practices in the
cults of Greece, Persia, Babylon, India and the like. There is nothing
original in the teaching of Christ or the Apostles ; the New Testa-
ment merely borrows from Babylon, Greece and Persia (Bousset),
Mithraism (Cumont), Babylon (Jensen), Budhism (Seydel), etc.
A final chapter of the Abbe's book deals with the latest phase of
rationalistic criticism, Die Jesusbewegung, which denies abso-
lutely the existence of Jesus. Its chief exponent, Drews of Carls-
rohe, not content as his predecessors Kalthoff, Benjamin Smith,
Jensen, Robertson and others, with writing up this absurd
thesis, has gone from city to city of Germany lecturing with the
most bitter fanaticism against " the historical Jesus." Certainly
this stupid and blasphemous negation is the reductio ad absurdum of
the so-called independent criticism.
This entire history is most helpful to the devout Christian,
since it proves absolutely the utter impossibility of any theory of
naturalism availing to solve the question of: Who is Jesus Christ?
No explanation does explain save that which acknowledges Him
as true God and true Man in one divine Personality. How strongly
does the Catholic Church defend that fundamental dogma against
the vagaries of private judgment?
1912.] NEW BOOKS 117
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES FOR CHILDREN. Adapted
from the French of Mme. La Comtesse de Segur. By Mary
Virginia Merrick. St. Louis : B. Herder. 75 cents.
In this volume the wonderful story of the infant Church, fos-
tered by Divine inspiration and Apostolic zeal, is made to appeal
to the understanding of the youngest child. As this has never be-
fore been attempted in English, it is an especially valuable addition
to Catholic juvenile literature.
With exquisite simplicity, and tender insight into the capacity
of the child mind, the author unfolds before the little ones the
noble deeds of the Apostles, and instills into her hearers the spirit
of love of Christ which incites to imitation and high resolve. Nu-
merous illustrations lend realism to the narration. The work has
gained rather than lost in the English adaptation, and is one that
should receive a hearty welcome in the Catholic school and home.
CAINT PATRICK, by the Abbe Riguet; translated by C. W. W.
V (New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.00.) This latest contri-
bution to the series of The Saints holds matter of interest, not only
for the client of Ireland's Apostle, but for the students of her people
and customs as well.
The early chapters on the Irish Celts, their political, social and
religious state, contain much that is curious and characteristic.
Despite the fact that he is the object of great popular devotion,
the real St. Patrick is too little known. Impressed by this the Abbe
Riguet has made a critical study of authentic documents, and has
sifted, with painstaking zeal, the mass of legend which enshrined St.
Patrick's memory, interpreting literally or symbolically as the evi-
dence seems to warrant.
The sources of information are carefully given in notes and
appendices. The writer allows himself no a priori judgments ; prob-
abilities are pointed out, but there is no careless assumption of them
as facts.
The nature of the evidence makes it impossible to clear away
entirely the mist of uncertainty which rests on much of St. Patrick's
career, but through it we see the touching yet inspiring figure of the
lonely captive child, expiating the sin that rends the hearts of saints,
that of not having given all to Him, for Whom all is too little.
Gradually the figure grows until, through much prayer, patient
waiting and fearless action, it assumes the proportions of a spiritual
giant undertaking and performing a gigantic task.
n8 NEW BOOKS [April,
THE GOSPELS FOR LENT AND THE PASSION OF
CHRIST. By C. J. Eisenring, rendered from the German by
Charles Cannon, O.S.B. (St. Louis: B. Herder. 80 cents.)
Every attempt to bring popular devotion into intimate accord with
the mind of the Church and to root it in the rich soil of her liturgy,
merits a cordial welcome and hearty commendation. This purpose
has actuated Father Eisenring to popularize the beautiful sequence
of the Gospels for Lent, and through them to encourage meditation
on the Passion. In his desire to have the Gospels point invariably
to the sufferings and death of Christ, the author occasionally
strains their meaning, or breaks away from it entirely, but gener-
ally the thought developed is implied in the Gospel's lesson, and is
always full of devotion and practical profit. After each meditation
the Collect of the day is given as an unerring guide in spiritual or-
ientation. A method of hearing Mass by meditating on the Passion
of Christ, and other prayers, complete the volume.
A BIOGRAPHY OF FATHER JAMES J. CONWAY, S.J.,
TX the famous Jesuit of St. Louis, has been written by M. Louise
Garesche, and, with a preface by Archbishop Glennon, is published
by B. Herder. The book includes, in addition to a complete and
careful biography, many of Father Conway's letters, and three of
his best-known sermons. Price $1.00.
'THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS, by Cardinal Newman. Illus-
trations by Francis E. Hiley. (London: Gay and Hancock,
Ltd. Price 25 cents.) Of the making of cheap books verily
there is no end, so that the important points would seem to be, first,
the choice of worthy titles, and then a neat and durable binding
This reprint of Newman's classic upon death and judgment fulfills
both of these requirements, and should bring the poem to many nevJ
readers. It suggests itself as a peculiarly suitable and dignified
Easter remembrance, or as a prize for religious and secular schools.
THE FAITHFUL FAILURE, by Rosamond Napier (New
York: George H. Doran Co.), is a love story told in high C.
It is vivid, nervous, and feminine to a fault, but possesses a fragile,
hectic beauty that is unusual and not without appeal. There is
much nature painting, done in high, delicate colors, and really
exquisite in effect.
^Foreign periodicals.
The Church in France. Two recent judgments in the French
courts have an important bearing on the law of Separation. " In
the first case a priest who had been expelled from his cure by a
bishop disputed his successor's rights to supercede him, claiming that
his dismissal was invalid on ecclesiastical grounds. The court de-
cided that it had no powers to examine the question whether meas-
ures taken by the hierarchic chief of the two priests conformed to the
canonical law. In the second case two priests had been appointed to
the same cure one by a bishop and the other by an association
cidtuelle not recognized by the diocesan authority. The court de-
cided in favor of the bishop's nominee." Tablet, Feb. 24.
The Pontifical Biblical Institute. The Institute was founded in
May, 1909, and in November of the same year its first session was
held. Since its inauguration the Institute has acquired a permanent
home, a considerable number of books and periodicals for a library,
the nucleus of a collection for a Biblical museum, and a house in Pal-
estine to be used as a headquarters for students making excursions
to and further researches in the Holy Land. The Apostolic Letters
erecting the Institute stated that its chief purpose was to be a train-
ing school for future professors and writers. The course of studies
extends over three years. The number of students enrolled has
averaged about 120 during the three years, and so far the progress
of the Institute has been most encouraging. Tablet, March 2.
An Irishman in Chinese Service. By Henri Coridier. Sir
Robert Hart, the subject of this article, was born at Portsdown,
County Armagh, in 1835. When nineteen he entered the service of
the Superintendent of Commerce in Hong-Kong. In 1859 he be-
came associated with the Chinese Customs Department, and in four
years rose to be its head. Under Hart's able administration the
Chinese Government soon augmented the Bureaus of Customs. Be-
tween 1860 and 1864 fourteen were opened in as many Chinese
cities. The service was improved by founding two colleges espe-
cially for training young men for this work. Hart also took care to
have Chinese exhibitions at various international expositions. Each
year of his administration the revenues from this branch of the
Government increased and new ports were opened to foreign com-
merce, until to-day they number forty-five. But the Boxer uprising
120 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April,
put an end to his labors. He himself had to take refuge at the
British Legation. After the insurrection was quelled he again took
charge, but resigned finally in 1906 when the Emperor limited his
authority. Sixteen decorations were conferred upon him by foreign
governments and a baronetcy by England. Sir Robert Hart died in
England, Sept. 20, 1911. Le Correspondant, Feb. 10.
Montalembert's Centenary. By Alexander Braun. At the in-
itiative of M. Leon de Lantsheere, Belgium's Minister of Justice,
a fitting celebration commemorating the centenary of Montalem-
bert's birth was planned and carried through. The convention was
held at Brussels in February of this year, and was attended by people
from every walk in life. Fr. Rutter, O.P., represented Montalem-
bert as the learned and fearless defender of monasticism. M. de
Lantsheere pointed out that Montalembert's great ambition was to
prove both by his public and private life that religion is the mother
of liberty. " Montalembert and Christian Art," an address by Henri
Cochin, praised him as the restorer of Christian art, and recalled his
crusade against the vandals in Catholic churches. Cardinal Mercier
closed the programme by referring to the purity of Montalembert's
intentions and his docility to the Sovereign Pontiff. Le Corres-
pondant, Feb. 10.
Industrial Insurance in Switzerland. By Max Turmann. For
thirteen years the question of insurance for both sickness and acci-
dent has been agitated in Switzerland. The old law in this regard
proved unsatisfactory, and a new one has recently been adopted by
a close referendum vote. This new law provides in great detail for
the amounts to be paid and the method of certification. In case of a
misrepresentation on the part of a doctor, he is to be fined not more
than five hundred francs or imprisoned for three months. Five
classes of benefits are paid under accident insurance : medical care,
indemnity during idleness, pension during invalidity, funeral ex-
penses, pensions for surviving wife or husband, or children, or
brothers and sisters. The referendum was accepted by thirteen can-
tons and four demi-cantons and opposed by only six cantons and two
demi-cantons. In the German cantons the affirmative vote prevailed
and a negative one in the French. Le Correspondant, Feb. 10.
Did Christianity 'Abolish Slavery? By Paul Allard. M. Cic-
cotti has recently written a book to prove that the abolition of slav-
1912.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 121
ery was due to economic causes and not to Christian charity. In re-
ply M. Allard denies that the number of slaves diminished in Greece
between the Homeric times and the fourth century B. C. as claimed
by Ciccotti. Nor was there any noticeable decrease in their numbers
in the Roman Empire until the fourth century A. D., that is, until
Christianity became dominant. What diminution there was after
this date is to be attributed not to economic causes but rather ( i ) to
the cessation of offensive wars; (2) manumission from Christian
motives, (3) and the dignity conferred by Christianity upon manual
labor. When Ciccotti accuses the scholastics of sanctioning slav-
ery, he is, says Allard, confusing slavery with serfdom. Revue
Pratique d'Apologetique, Feb. 15.
Montalembert. By Cardinal Mercier. In detail is given the
address by Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, at the Con-
gress held at Brussels to honor the memory of Count de Montalem-
bert. The Cardinal pays an eloquent tribute to the Christian gentle-
man, soldier of God and the Church. He describes him as the very
fulfilment of the description which St. Paul wrote to the Corinth-
ians of the true and perfect Christian. The Cardinal concluded his
address by reading the letter written by the Countess de Montalem-
bert Merode to the Hungarian Countess Apponyi after the death
of the Count de Montalembert, in it describing those sentiments
uppermost in the mind of the nobleman during the closing years of
his life. Le Correspondent, Feb. 25, 1912.
Mind Training. By Felix Klein. The author of this article
describes the methods in vogue in the different countries of Europe,
and also in the United States, for developing the mind of the child,
thus laying a firm foundation for the more advanced studies in
later life. The Kindergarten idea originated with Froebel of
Germany and Pestalozzi in Switzerland. To-day in Italy remark-
able work is being done under the direction of Mme. Montessori.
The author takes us through the various studies constituting a
school day and describes them, such as studies of objects, clay-
modeling, working in paper, raffia, etc., and studies in nature during
the spring-time conducted by teacher on walks in the woods and
fields. Le Correspondant, Feb. 25.
Religious Troubles in Russia. Unsigned. P. Heliodore, a
Cossack by birth, and a monk at Tsarytsine, province of Saratoff,
Russia, in i9o8 started a religious revolution, which has since kept
122 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April,
the Russian Orthodox Greek Church in a state of turmoil. He in-
veighed against the corruption of the century, advocating a return
to primitive Christianity, The Holy Synod took the case in hand
and ordered Heliodore into exile. With a guard of 2,000 fanatics
he defied them. Mgr. Hermogene proved his friendship and com-
pelled the Holy Synod to revoke the sentence against Heliodore.
His victory was celebrated by a scandalous pilgrimage along the
Volga River, committing all sorts of crimes. Mgr. Hermogene
sent a telegram to the Czar denouncing the Holy Synod. As a
result he was brutally expelled. All this has led to demands for
reform of the entire Church, but at the present time the point of
reform seems to be passed over, and the question resolves itself into
re-union with some other Church. For this reason twenty-five
Anglicans went to St. Petersburg on February 1st to discuss the
question, but the Orthodox Greek Church has always regarded the
Anglicans as heretics. The only other logical Church that they
could hope to unite with is the Roman Catholic Church. Of late a
very active Jesuit working for such a re-union has been expelled
from Moscow. Yet there are many fervent advocates for such a
re-union, and none more so than Abbe Tolstoy, a relative of Count
Leo. The question is being keenly discussed in the Douma and
closely followed by the outside world as to the outcome. Le
Correspondent, Feb. 25.
The Reason for the Religious Orders. By R. P. Renaudin,
O.S.B. All associations must be justified in the object at which
they aim, and in the profit they bring to society as a whole. A
Christian must act for God and for his neighbor, and it is to accom-
plish this aim that religious orders have been founded. To vital ex-
ternal action is added vital internal action, because all outward
activity is really founded upon the inner life. There is a mutual
dependence between meditation and action. Revue Thomiste, Jan.-
Feb.
Social Teaching of St. Thomas. By R. P. Robert, O.P. The
author points out that St. Thomas was not by any means radically
individualistic. For him society was a natural and necessary insti-
tution. It was an assemblage of individuals for common action, and
private advantage had often to be sacrificed for the public good.
Pere Robert notices that St. Thomas compared society to a living
organism. Private property is lawful and necessary. But the right
I 9 i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 123
to live is more fundamental, and therefore in cases of extreme ne-
cessity property becomes common. St. Thomas has not treated
wages ex professo. But the author infers from various scattered
passages that wages must be proportioned to the work performed
and sufficient to support the workman in frugal comfort. All these
fundamental doctrines have been realized by Belgian, French and
Swiss Catholics, and have influenced their social policies. Revue
Thomiste, Jan.-Feb.
Archeological Discoveries in Central Asia. By Joseph Brucker.
During the past decade many archeological expeditions have been
made to eastern Turkestan and the country to the northeast. They
have found extensive remains showing traces of Hellenistic civiliza-
tion. Paul Pelliot saw a library containing over fifteen thousand
MSS. dating from the fifth to the thirteenth century. Pelliot brought
back three thousand MSS. and thirty thousand fragments, besides
remarkable paintings upon silk, sculptures, and mural decorations.
In his collection and others are found writings in Sogdhien, San-
skrit, Ouigour, and several unknown languages. Pelliot has been
accused, but without truth, of manufacturing the MSS. The most
interesting result of these discoveries is to show the extensive mis-
sionary activities of Nestorianism, Budhism, and Manichaeism in
the same territory. And as Nestorian Christians were cut off from
the rest of Christendom from the seventh century on, this would
seem to show that resemblances between Christianity and Budhism
are due to Christian influences rather than the reverse. Etudes,
Feb. 5.
Elective Character of the Papacy. By Gustage Neyron. The
manner of choosing a Pope is unique among governments. It em-
braces the good points, while avoiding the bad, of both hereditary
and elective systems. For hereditary succession has the advantage
of practically closing the door to ambitious schemers, continuity
of tradition, and easy transmission of power. All this the Papacy
secures while escaping the danger of incompetence due to hereditary
power, wars of succession, and long regencies. At the same time
that the Cardinals have a wide power of selecting the best man ir-
respective of wealth, birth, or race, there is no premium placed upon
mediocrity (as where the suffrage is universal) and the secrecy
of the conclave prevents bribery and machine politics. Etudes,
Feb. 5.
124 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April,
Persecution of Missionaries in Portuguese Colonies. By
Alexandra Brou. The Portuguese republic was proclaimed in
India, October 7, 1910. The new governor did not, as is customary,
receive his investiture in church, but suppressed the Christian for-
mulas at the end of the official acts. A Eucharistic Congress at
Goa was countermanded, though the exposition of the body of St.
Francis Xavier was allowed. The separation of Church and State
was announced December 3rd. The Catholics are attached to the
monarchy, but the other Hindoos salute the republic as the dawn of
liberty. The official situation of the clergy seems so far unchanged.
In Portuguese China all the religious have been banished. The
Colonial Company of Mozambique has subjected priests to constant
taxation. In the Congo many priests were imprisoned. The Fathers
of the Holy Ghost have been spared because of their firm resistance,
the devotion of their black followers, and especially because of
German intervention. Germany offered to protect the Jesuits on
condition that they leave the Society; they have refused and will
not leave the territory until expelled by force. tudes, Feb. 20.
Education in Turkey. Until recently education was left to
private generosity. The first printing press was established only
in 1727. Sultan Mahmoud in 1808 brought European teachers for
a naval school, started the first Mussulman newspaper to be pub-
lished at Constantinople, and sent students abroad. Abdul Aziz
founded a valuable secondary school in 1868, which now has over
seven hundred pupils. He established a complete school system,
but it required too much money and ran counter to 'too many ancient
customs. Under Abdul Hamid thousands remained uninstructed,
and the teachers, poorly paid and poorly trained, were afraid to
teach the truth. Oriental and European Christians have opened
many flourishing schools towards which the young Turks are none
too well disposed. Three-fifths of the Ottomans are ignorant of
their own language, due largely to the difficult spelling, but it is
forbidden to write it in Latin characters. Etudes, Feb. 20.
Origins of the Roman Missal. By F. Cabrol, O.S.B. Though
often called Gregorian, the ultimate sources of the Missal go back
much further. There was in France an original liturgy that pre-
vailed up to the time of Charlemagne. The Roman Missal had by
then been revised and improved by Gregory from an older work,
the Gelasian Sacramentary, and Charlemagne took many active
1912.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 125
steps to introduce the corrected form. As a result of the efforts of
Charlemagne and Alcuin, the work as we have it may be called
the work of St. Gregory, with certain Gelasian and Gallican addi-
tions. Thanks to them, the ancient Gallican prayers were not only
preserved, but by their union with Gregory's work spread beyond
the boundaries of France to all countries of the Latin Rite. Clerge
Francois, Feb. I.
Were Primitive Races Monotheistic? By O. Habert. Fr.
Schmidt, director of the review Anthropos, has contended in a re-
cent work, called The Origin of the Idea of God, that the monothe-
ism of primitive peoples can be proved historically. He thinks that in
the remains of the oldest prehistoric civilizations there are unequi-
vocal proofs of an original monotheism taking account of morality.
Though praising the work very highly, the reviewer concludes " that
one cannot say that Fr. Schmidt has demonstrated ' monotheism,
pure and without defect.' We believe, as he, on the authority of
Scripture, in original monotheism ; but to pretend to demonstrate it
by profane sciences seems to us a relic of that ' concordism ' which
is decreasing in favor among us." Revue du Clerge Franfais,
Feb. 15.
The Church and Marriage an Historical Sketch. By
A. Sicard. For centuries the Church was supreme in the family.-
The state only asked that the faithful observe the Christian laws
indissolubility, equality of man and woman. The Christian em-
perors were inspired by the Christian ideas when forming their
codes. The barbarian kings, the Merovingian, and Carlovingian
kings worked in harmony with the Church. From the time of the
Reformation to the Revolution, though there was not intimate union
between Church and State, yet the laws of State, relative to mar-
riage, were what the Church wished. The Revolution brought a
change. The sacrament of matrimony was no longer a sacrament.
Marriage became a purely civil contract. The state no longer rec-
ognized such impediments as " solemn vows," " disparity of cult,"
" spiritual affinity," etc. Revue Pratique d'Apologetique, March I.
Dickens and Krasinski Social Workers. By J. Overmans,
S.J. Though at first sight leagues apart, these two novelists had
much in common. Charles Dickens was raised in poverty, and had
no other education than contact with humanity in the slums of
126 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April,
London, and what little he could pick up by himself in the way of
book-learning. Zygmunt Krasinski was the son of a Polish noble-
man, with all the advantages of wealth and social position. But
both devoted themselves to social betterment by means of fiction,
one from a purely humanitarian motive, the other from the stand-
point of Catholic charity. Dickens was intensely national and in-
sular ; Krasinske Catholic and catholic. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach,
Heft. 2.
Weakness and Lack of Will. By J. Bessmer, S.J. Not only
pessimists and chronic fault-finders, but conservative investigators
have pointed out a deplorable lack of initiative and will-power in
the young men of the coming generation. What is the explanation ?
By " willing " is here meant a " specific human desire," and not a
general impulse common to men and brutes. To answer the ques-
tion raised, a thorough study of the inmates of various psychopathic
institutions was made. The causes of weakness are summed up as
follows: (i) inactivity of mental power; (2) sorrow or despond-
ency brought on by some external difficulty; (3) lack of interest
in life. Conclusion is to follow in next number. Stimmen aus
Maria-Laach, Heft 2.
IRecent Events.
After a long debate in the Senate the Agree-
France. ment with Germany concerning Morocco
was ratified by 393 votes to 36, there being
a large number of abstentions. Among those who voted against the
ratification was M. Clemenceau. He declared his inability to render
support to a Treaty which had been extorted under the guns of
German ships at Agadir, and which had given to that country con-
cessions to which she had no rightful claim. French diplomacy, in
the judgment of M. Clemenceau, had gone helplessly astray, and
although he was a friend of the present government, he could not
follow it by voting for the Treaty. Among those who abstained
from voting was M. Pichon, who for so long was the French Min-
ister of Foreign Affairs. From this it is made clear that, although
it was felt to be necessary to ratify a Treaty made after such long
and anxious discussion, there is a strong feeling that France has not
done so well as at first appeared.
M. Poincare, the Prime Minister, admitted that the price paid
for the Protectorate over Morocco was very heavy, but urged that
it would be too much of a leap into the dark to haul down the
French flag after it had once been hoisted, and to revert to the Alge-
ciras Act and the Declaration of 1909, and all the uncertainties such
a reversion would involve. He denied that the making of the agree-
ment indicated any rapprochement with Germany. On the contrary,
it was based upon the necessity of maintaining unbroken the con-
tinuity of the alliance with Russia, and the friendship with Great
Britain.
The exact shape which the Protectorate of Morocco will take
has not yet been definitely settled. A Commission has been ap-
pointed to consider the question, and has made a report which is
said to reject the idea of direct administration through French local
officials. That is to be left to the Maghzen, whilst the necessary
impulse and direction to the services of justice, finance, public works
and domestic administration generally will be given by the French
Resident-General and Councillors at the Sultan's court. The pa-
cific military occupation is to be continued under a scheme soon to be
drawn up. A system of law is to be elaborated. Great satisfaction
must be felt that at last Morocco is to be delivered from the personal
rule of the series of tyrants who have so long held the inhabitants
under their control. It is to be hoped, however, and there is no
128 RECENT EVENTS [April,
reason to anticipate that the hope will be disappointed, that France
will deal severely with the greedy aspirations of certain of her own
subjects who have secured for themeselves by unjust means the
ownership of land in the country. There has been some hesitation
in dealing with these sharks as they deserve; but the government
has promised that no injustice to the Moors will be allowed.
The new ministry is endeavoring to pass through Parliament
the measure of Electoral Reform which at the last General Election
was the chief subject before the electors. It has not committed itself
to any special plan of its own, but will accept whatever commends,
itself to Parliament, with a view to the adoption of the Reform
before the General Election of 1914. Considerable progress has
been made in the Lower House, although the opposition to all
change has shown considerable strength.
The abominable system of delation, to which officials on the
Continent are so strongly attached, has been abolished, so far as the
Army is concerned, by M. Millerand, the new War Minister. This
system, known as les fiches, came to a head under M. Combes, and
was invented to extirpate anti-Republican or clerical influences from
the Army, and soon developed into an intolerable espionage. Public
opinion in France has been brought to a condemnation of the whole
system, by the bringing to light of the secret denunciations made to
the government of officers whose sole offence, in many cases, was
their regular attendance at Mass. The War Minister last year made
a partial reform, but required from the Prefects of Departments
reports every six months upon the political attitude of officers.
Even these half-yearly reports M. Millerand has abolished, without
relinquishing the right to institute inquiries into the conduct of
officers, in case they be guilty of incorrect political manifestations.
While there has not been perfect rest among the working-men of
France, there having been one or two strikes, and a prospect of more,
yet there has been no recrudescence so far of the uprising which
characterized the past two years. Whether or no the war in Eng-
land will spread to France is at present doubtful.
The perennial question of the relations be-
Germany. tween Great Britain and Germany has been
brought prominently to the front again by
the trial of Mr. Stewart, on a charge of espionage, and by Viscount
Haldane's visit to the Emperor. The trial of Mr. Stewart was con-
ducted in secret, although the sentence of imprisonment of three
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 129
years and a half was pronounced in public. The evidence against
him is, therefore, more or less a matter of surmise, but his defender
at the trial described it as chiefly that of an agent provocateur, the
character of whom in other respects was well-known to be bad.
Considerable excitement was caused in England by these proceed-
ings, and a serious increase of bad feeling towards Germany was on
the point of being aroused. The father, however, of the man con-
victed by the German court wrote to deprecate the expression of
feelings calculated to excite international animosity. As a lawyer
of fifty years' experience, he wished to express his emphatic respect
for the judgment of the Supreme Court of an enlightened and
friendly country, and his conviction that the motives of the judges
who had arrived at the decision were absolutely unassailable. While
he stood by the side of his son, and did not commend the justice or
generosity, or even the legal soundness of his trial, he regretted any
expression of opinions tending to foment feelings of international
animosity, and would be no party to any agitation. This letter
had the effect of preventing what might have resulted in a grave
state of tension. The visit to Berlin of the War Minister, Viscount
Haldane, a personal friend of the German Emperor, and the fact
that the Emperor was thought to have expressed a desire to receive
him, raised hopes that an arrangement for the limitation of arma-
ments might be possible. For this sanguine expectation there has
proved to be no foundation, inasmuch as an increase of the German
naval programme has been announced, to which Great Britain has
responded by the declaration of its intention to keep sixty per cent,
in advance of anything done by Germany. Lord Haldane's visit,
however, may have had the good effect of removing the suspicions
entertained in Germany of aggressive designs on the part of Great
Britain at least, the attempt to do this could not but prove useful.
At the same time he would learn the opinions entertained in the
highest quarters concerning the relations between the two countries,
and what would be the best means to improve those relations. In
fact the visit is said on the highest authority to have had a distinctly
reassuring influence.
The German naval estimates for 1912 indicate that the average
cost of the Navy for the next six years will be about seven millions
and a half each year, while for the Army no less an additional sum
is required for this year than twenty-five millions, and for subse-
quent years of close on to fifteen millions. When it is remembered
that German Imperial expenditure has increased nearly seven-fold
VOL. XCV. 9
130 RECENT EVENTS [April,
since 1872, from one hundred and ten millions to seven hundred
and one millions, of which one-third is now spent on the Army, and
one-sixth on the Navy as compared to three-fourths on the Army,
and one-eighteenth on the Navy in 1872, it will be seen how great is
the burden which is about to be imposed upon the German people. No
one therefore can be surprised at the growth of the party which is
the supporter of peace. The combined debts of the Empire and the
States amount to five thousand millions of dollars, no less than two
thousand millions of which are due for totally unremunerative
expenditures. No wonder the Secretary for the Treasury should
explain : that this is an unhealthy proportion.
The new Reichstag has elected a Radical for its President, a
Socialist for its First Vice-President, and another Radical for its
Second Vice-President. In the first instance a member of the Catho-
lic Centre was elected President, but he refused to serve because he
was not assured of the continued support of the majority. The
decisions of the Reichstag were due to a majority made up of
Liberals and Socialists ; and as this coalition may not be permanent
the appointments may not receive the confirmation which is neces-
sary when the question is brought up again.
The Government has made a strong appeal for the united action
of all the parties opposed to the Socialists, in furtherance of what
it calls patriotic objects. This means, of course, the increase of
taxation for the army and the navy. For it is not the navy only,
as we have seen, that is to be increased; the army, on which so
much has for so long been spent, is to have further additions made
to its ranks. It is generally thought that for this object, the only
one for which the government supremely cares, a majority against
the Social Democrats is secure. In that case the government will
accept the situation, and the dissolution of the new Reichstag which
was thought by some to be probable, will not take place. The Chan-
cellor of the Empire has declared it to be the firm purpose of the
government to offer determined opposition to the desire entertained,
especially by Radicals and Socialists, for a reform of the franchise
by the much-needed redistribution of seats, and above all to the
making of the government responsible to the Reichstag and not to
the Emperor. This last step, he declared, would be an attack upon
the foundations of the Constitution. The German Empire was to
be governed neither by reaction nor by radicalism. The fact that
Socialists and Radicals are co-operating in favor of parliamentary
government, is one that deserves to be noticed as likely to have
great results in the future.
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 131
The death of Count Aehrenthal naturally
Austria-Hungary. raises the question as to the results of the
policy he pursued while in such control
as the Austro-Hungarian mode of government gives to a Minister.
For in the Dual Monarchy, as in Germany, the power is still to a
large extent in the hands of the monarch, by whom the Ministers
are appointed, and to whom alone they are responsible. Before
Count Aehrenthal assumed power, Austria-Hungary was contented
to pass as tranquil an existence as its many contending nationalities
permitted, and to be looked upon as a reliable Conservative power
willing to co-operate, perhaps even in the second place, with both
Russia and Germany in their different spheres of action. Count
Aehrenthal's change of policy arose from his desire that his country
should take what he considered a higher place among the Powers.
He broke away from common action with Russia in the Balkans,
and, without consulting Germany, annexed the provinces of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, thereby endangering the peace of Europe, and
violating a heretofore generally recognized principle of interna-
tional law. The military preparations rendered necessary by his
action have placed a further burden on the already over-taxed
citizens of the two countries, upon whom the new ship-building
policy has imposed a still further weight. The wisdom of the
Emperor was able to overrule the evil effects of his Minister's pro-
ceedings, and in the end made the Count a supporter of peace.
In the last days of his life he resisted the attempts of the mili-
tary party to bring about a war with Italy. Notwithstanding the
service rendered to Austria by Germany during the crisis following
upon the annexation, Count Aehrenthal strove earnestly to emanci-
pate the Dual monarchy from that subordination to Germany
which the latter country so eagerly desires. This, however, was
done in such a way as to avoid, as far as possible, any resentment
on the part of Germany, for the ultimate object of the Count, and
the goal of his desires, was the formation again of the League of the
three Emperors of Austria, of Russia and of Germany. The en-
tente of Russia with Great Britain was to him a great mortification,
standing as it did in the way of his plans, and he did all in his power
to prevent it, and to put obstacles in its way after it had been made.
A few hours before Count Aehrenthal's death his successor was
appointed. Count Leopold Berchtold, the new Foreign Minister, is
a Hungarian, with large landed property both in that country and in
Austria. He is the first Hungarian to have the management of
132 RECENT EVENTS [April,
foreign affairs since the retirement of Count Andrassy in
1879. He is considered to be the best of all possible choices.
He is very highly esteemed for simplicity and integrity of
character qualities of which the want of has made itself felt in the
recent conduct of affairs. He is entering upon a task hard enough
to tax all his energies. It is thought probable that he will continue
the efforts which have been recently made to remove the long-exis-
tent coolness of the relations of Austria with Russia. His appoint-
ment has been well received both in that country and in Italy. What
Germany thinks about it has not yet been made quite clear. Count
Berchtold has, however, lost no time in declaring that the Triple
Alliance is the immovable basis of his policy. According to a well-
informed correspondent, if wishes were deeds, Count Berchtold
would already be one of the most successful of Austro-Hungarian
Foreign Ministers. None of his predecessors have been launched
upon so broad a wave of good will.
In dealing with Austria, Hungary has often taken the attitude
of an oppressed nationality, but when dealing with her own subor-
dinate races for such she considers them she is even more of an
oppressor than Austria ever was. As a consequence, disturbances
have been renewed in Croatia. In fact throughout all the Southern
Slav Provinces, anti-Hungarian feeling is running high. At the
capitol of the newly annexed Herzegovia, the Hungarian flag has
been publicly burned as well as at Spalato.
Between Austria and Hungary a fresh misunderstanding has
arisen, or rather a revival of an old one. This has led to the resig-
nation of the cabinet of Count Khuen-Heclervary and to an in-
credibly confused situation. The question which led to the resigna-
tion was a military one involving the prerogatives of the Crown in
regard to calling out reserves. The Hungarian Premier adopted a
plan which is said to conflict with those prerogatives. Feeling here
too is running high, and a repetition has taken place of the scenes
which disgraced the Hungarian Parliament some years ago. An
agitation has begun again for the universal franchise bill which has
been promised for so many years, all of which promises have
hitherto been flagrantly broken.
What control Parliament should have over
Italy. the government in countries nominally
constitutional, seems to be a very unsettled
question. Italy's government went to war with Turkey for Tripoli,
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 133
and formally annexed the country, without consulting either the
Senate, or the House of Deputies. In fact, it put off to a later
period the assembling of the houses, in order that it might not be
hampered and impeded by discussions which it looked upon as un-
timely. No doubt was felt about the popularity of the war, for
Italy almost to a man had rallied to the flag, the Socialists being the
only critics. The government was influenced by the desire to have
absolute control. When Parliament at last met, it manifested the
most extraordinary enthusiasm. Even the dissentient Socialists
were caught in the wave of emotion, and applauded along with the
rest. The decree for the annexation of the Tripolitaine and Cyre-
naica passed into law with but slight opposition. As to the war
itself it seems as far off from an end as ever. The Italians have
penetrated no further than the line of the coast, and have had to
fight hard to retain possession of one of the places thereon which
they had seized. So far operations have been confined to
Tripoli and its coast, with the exception of the Red Sea, and
the sinking of two Turkish warships in the harbor of Beirut. The
Italians were said to have bombarded the town, but this is denied.
All the Powers are interested in preventing the extension of the war,
and there is good reason to think that they have brought pressure
upon Italy to this end. In fact Russia and several other Powers are
striving to find a way for mediation between Turkey and Italy to
bring the war to a conclusion. Even Italy itself is abating somewhat
of the high and mighty tone which they at first assumed as the suc-
cessors of the Romans, whose mission it was to rule the world. It
has given indication of a desire to find for Turkey some honorable
way of making peace. But Turkey remains obdurate.
Whether the recent attempt on the King's life is due to any dis-
like of the war, on the part of the Socialists, has not yet been
made clear.
The Liberal Ministry, of which Senor Jose
Spain. Canalejas is the head, has maintained its
position for nearly two years a very long
time when measured by continental standards. Persons who claim
a special knowledge of Spanish affairs, look upon this ministry as
the only safeguard against a revolution, to which the attempt to
place a Conservative government in power would certainly lead.
For this reason it is that, although the Premier is a strong Liberal,
he is supported by the Conservatives.
At the present moment the existence of the ministry is threat-
134 RECENT EVENTS [April,
ened for the second time within the period of six weeks. In the
middle of last January Senor Canalejas resigned office, but on the
very next day returned to power. The resignation was occasioned
by the sentence of death passed upon seven men, who had last
September murdered a judge, under circumstances of extreme bru-
tality. On the advice of Senor Canalejas, who acted in deference to
public opinion more wisely than Senor Maura had done in the case
of Ferrer, the King reprieved six of the seven. But when the King
felt called upon to urge the reprieve of the seventh, Senor Canalejas
consented, but gave in his resignation and that of his Cabinet. This
the King refused to accept, and Senor Canalejas with his Cabinet
resumed the reins. The action of the King secured for him an
immense accession of popularity. Popular enthusiasm was un-
bounded. Even Republicans declared that both as man and as
Chief of the State his Majesty had acted nobly. Addresses of
gratitude were drawn up, and popular demonstrations took place.
Never again, it was declared, is the scaffold to be raised in Spain
for political crimes. An unprecedented humanitarian wave swept
over the whole country. With one exception, every organ of public
opinion approved of the reprieve of men who were undoubtedly
guilty of one of the most atrocious of crimes a crime which was
the culminating point of the lawless excesses of last September.
Senor Canalejas has just weathered a second storm. This time
some of his colleagues have been thrown overboard, and he has now
a more homogeneous Cabinet. This crisis seems to have been due
to administrative difficulties, and to some hesitancy on the part of
the Conservatives to continue the support hitherto accorded to the
Liberal Ministry. Whether the strength of the government is
greater or less after these repeated crises, it must be left to the future
to disclose.
The settlement of the questions as to Morocco which have
arisen with France,- in such a way as to satisfy the aspirations of
the Spanish people, is a matter both of great urgency and extreme
difficulty. For generations Spain has had the desire to enter upon
the possession of Morocco, and has looked upon her claim as both
natural and just. France, however, has stepped in, and has secured
the greater part of the country. More than that, there are those in
France who grudge to Spain the rights secured by the Treaty made
in 1904. They urge as a ground for their wish to restrict the Span-
ish claims, the fact that it has been through the efforts of France
that Germany has been eliminated as a claimant. France is to be
igi2.] RECENT EVENTS 135
" compensated :" for nothing in this world is now done without
compensation. To this Spain will not listen, and a strong feeling
against France has been roused. So far has this gone that the
French have been accused of inciting the Moors to make their recent
attack upon the Spaniards in the district of Melilla an attack which
has caused great loss and necessitated an increase of the forces.
The negotiations are still going on and grave fears have been ex-
pressed that they may not prove successful.
Great uncertainty still exists as to the future
Portugal. of the Republic. All sorts of rumors are
being circulated indicating a state of unrest.
One of the latest is that a whole regiment has renounced its alle-
giance, and has crossed the border into Spain, for the purpose of
joining the Royalist bands in the border-land. Another report
accuses the Spanish government of the intention to annex the Por-
tuguese territory, thereby emulating the achievement of Philip II.
The Royalists, again it is said, have composed the differences that
have hitherto existed between them, and adjusted their claims to the
succession. A conference between ex-King Manoel and Dom
Miguel of Braganza has been held in England. At this conference
Dom Miguel, it is said, spontaneously renounced for a second time
his claims to the throne claims which he had, since the expulsion of
King Manoel, been re-asserting. He has given his promise to sup-
port by every means in his power the efforts of the late King.
Whether this be true or not, the two parties have as a matter of fact
been for some time working in harmony.
Many strikes of a serious character have also added to the sense
of insecurity, since they manifest the existence of great discontent
among large masses of the people, thereby giving to the Royalists
an additional chance of success. A general strike in Lisbon forced
the government to take the extreme step of suspending the Consti-
tutional guarantees, and of declaring a state of siege in the capital.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Army, by decree of the government,
was placed in control, showing how flimsy a bulwark of the liberties
of the people is a paper constitution. The measures taken were
effectual in restoring order, but destroyed all power to rely on moral,
as distinguished from physical force, and formed a striking contrast
to what has taken place in Great Britain where a strike immensely
larger has taken place without any thought of recourse being had to
martial law.
136 RECENT EVENTS [April,
The new government, of which the extremists are the
supporters and inspirers, continues to manifest toward the Church
a spirit of unmitigated hostility. Acceptance of the Separation Law
has been vigorously demanded and enforced under severe penalties.
The Patriarch of Lisbon has been expelled, the Bishop of Algarve
banished, the emoluments of priests who signed a declaration of fidel-
ity to their Bishops have been withdrawn. Officials who have ven-
tured to express condolence with the sufferers, are to be dismissed.
Not satisfied with the expulsion from his diocese of the Patriarch,
the government proposes to arrest him, and afterwards, two arch-
bishops and some half dozen bishops, and to put them upon trial for
the same crime for which they have been already arbitrarily pun-
ished that is to say, for having refused to accept the Law of Sep-
aration, and for encouraging the clergy to resist the anti-religious
action of the Republic. The second penalty will involve imprison-
ment for months or years. Such is justice as she is practised in
Portugal.
It is still very uncertain in what way a settle-
Persia, ment will be effected in Persia, or whether
there will be any settlement. From one
point of view things look brighter. The Russian government dis-
claims any intention of taking permanent possession of the Northern
districts of Persia, and has in fact withdrawn part of the forces
that had advanced towards the capital. In making this disclaimer
the government undoubtedly is sincere, but absolute governments
with a single head, while apparently the strongest are in reality -
the weakest in the world, since it is, as a rule, quite easy for un-
scrupulous workers behind the scenes to force the hands of the os-
tensible ruler. In Russia this has occurred many times. The recent
proceedings against Persia are but another instance of this prac-
tise. A subordinate official went behind the back of his immediate
superior, and got the ear of the Tsar, who ordered proceedings of
which his representative at Teheran disapproved.
Whether or no Russia's assurances are to be believed, any
immediate further attempt on the integrity of Persia is not to be
expected. Public opinion in this country and in Great Britain has
been sufficiently well aroused to make any open attack too danger-
ous. Professions are being made even of the desire to strengthen
the Persian government in its efforts to restore the reign of law and
order, and these professions are backed up with the offer of a
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 137
small loan at seven per cent, interest, and on certain conditions
to enable the government to enter upon this task. This is all that
can be said on the bright side of the question. There are those
who think that whatever may be the prospect of the continued exist-
ence of Persia, the last has been seen of a Parliamentary form of
government. The Mejliss has been dissolved; and while a promise
has been made of a new election no steps are being taken to bring
it about. A bad feature of the case is the almost cynical avowal
of the British Foreign Minister, that the only object which either
Great Britain or Russia could be expected to have at heart, was their
own respective financial interests, and that the liberty or good
government of the people of Persia must as a matter of course take
second place.
The Manchu dynasty having transferred all
China. its powers to the provisional President of
the Republic in a perfectly regular way, by
a series of edicts, it accordingly became the duty of all its loyal sub-
jects to renounce their allegiance to the monarchy, and to adopt this
" the best form of government." There are, however, many, and
among those are some of the best informed in Chinese methods of
thought, who look upon the proposal as preposterous, and have no
expectation of its success. Chinamen for untold generations have
worshipped their emperors; and any other form of government is
to their minds inconceivable. However, in accordance with the
Edicts, Yuan Shih-Kai has been unanimously elected Provincial
President of the Republic by the National Assembly, the repre-
sentatives of seventeen Provinces voting. The revolutionary Presi-
dent, Sun Yat-Sen, and his Cabinet thereupon resigned. The Ad-
visory Council of the Council, having searched the history of the
whole world, announced in the Official Gazette that they have found
only one instance of a unanimous election to a President, namely,
that of Washington. Many express delight at the thought that Yuan
Shih-Kai may be the second Washington of the world, and the first
Washington of the Chinese Republic.
The next step to be taken is the summoning of a National Con-
vention for the definite establishment of the new regime, the choice
of the capital, and the ratification of the Constitution. One of the
first public utterances of the President was the expression of his
determination, so far as in him lay, to remove all religious dis-
abilities, and to enforce religious toleration throughout the country.
138 RECENT EVENTS [April,
The mutiny of soldiers that has taken place in Pekin, although
much to be regretted from every point of view, scarcely furnishes
an argument against the stability of the Republic. Disorders are
almost natural under present conditions, and have taken place in
almost every city of China. The one in Pekin went to great ex-
tremes; but was chiefly due to the soldiers' fear of disbandonment
and of being cut adrift without resources ;not to any predilection for
the deposed Manchus. It has of course made the situation much
more difficult for Yuan Shih-Kai, especially as it gave to Foreign
Powers an excuse to intervene.
The Coal Strike in England ought to be
The Coal Strike in
, , mentioned rather on account of its political
England. , .
than of its economic aspect. It is the first
manifestation of the power of Democracy on a vast scale. The
working classes came into power for the first time when Mr. Glad-
stone's Franchise Bill became law. Up to the present time, however,
they have not put it into action. Now they have done so, and the
result is to completely shake the sense of security, which is the pri-
mary condition of contentment, and to fill the nation with dread and
apprehension for the future, to say nothing of the widespread want
at present. Nothing so disastrous has taken place in the memory of
Englishmen. The Spanish Armada is the only comparison which is
suggested. A vast mass of working-men have found at last the way
to pull together for the first time. Will it be for the last? And
what will be the limit of their demands? These are some of the
questions that are being asked.
That the demand for a minimum wage is just, is now generally
recognized. What is denied to be just is the particular minimum
claimed by the miners. But if the miners have the power in their
hands, they themselves must be the judge of the justice of those de-
mands. This is the bearing which the strike has upon political ques-
tions. That the strike has taken place in spite of the fact that more
has just been done for the working classes than ever before, adds to
the gravity of the outlook for the future. Old-age pensions, labor ex-
changes, trade boards to settle wages in certain trades insurance
against invalidity and unemployment have recently been established
things that would not have been dreamt of a quarter of a cen-
tury ago. But as the strike shows they have failed to bring con-
tentment.
With Our Readers.
IN the " Recent Events " of this number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
it is stated that " the fact that Socialists and Radicals are co-
operating in favor of parliamentary government is one that deserves
to be noticed as likely to have great results in the future."
But this is an age of rapid movement. It would be well and
comforting if Socialists and Radicals would act in line with the es-
tablished institutions of parliamentary government. Law and order
are the only security for justice with them as with other men. Yet the
process of destruction once started is difficult to stop. And we have
the startling, yet by no means surprising, phenomenon to-day of a
movement in which Socialism and Radicalism are outstripped in their
own going and out-played at their own game. Very little attention has
been paid to the movement in this country. It is Continental in origin.
Yet the Lawrence strike, and the effective guidance thereof by the
Industrial Workers of the World, bring it home to our very doors.
The Industrial Workers of the World present a new phase of the labor
or, it would be more proper to call it, revolutionary movement. Labor
itself through the American Federation has ever recognized our insti-
tutions of government; has always honored a contract, and seeks for
the betterment of conditions through legitimate channels. But the
principles, or lack of principles, of the I. W. W. recognize none of
the institutions of our government. Revolution is their watchword:
the turning of the world topsy-turvy ; the ultimate possession by
labor of all the agencies of production.
* * *
WHEN labor reaches that stage it will be capitalistic of course.
But logic or forethought is not characteristic of the I. W.
W. Their new philosophy of society and social " reconstruction " is
called " Syndicalism." Syndicalism knows no country. It is a world-
wide brotherhood of " laboring " men. It hesitates not to preach and
practise treason. It believes in brute force, in arson, murder, in all
forms of " direct action " as they call it. It is at home with what the
French call " sabotage," and it is in France that Syndicalism had its
birth. It wants no representation in parliament or congress. It regards
political Socialism as its enemy. The man who works with his
brains must be put down; he who works with his hands must be
exalted somehow, by any means, and eventually, he must possess
the earth. The state is the organ of the intellectuals and the capital-
ists ; therefore, must the state be overthrown. " We will accept no con-
tracts," it cries, " for contracts are the weapons of tyranny in the hands
of industrial captains. We want no reform, for reform is only palliative.
We seek to overturn the existing order. We will strike now and again
and we will advance from victory to victory. But our end will be
attained when the whole laboring world will go out on a world-wide
140 WITH OUR READERS [April,
strike, and never be reconciled until it tears down with its hands of
toil the pillars of modern civilization and stands a victor upon its ruins."
* * *
A S we have said, this is an age of speed. We may think the
jfl. Socialists are radicals, but they are outradicaled here. Even the
extreme New York Call can see the anarchy and destruction that this
movement carries with it, for it says : " Worse than the aristocracy of
intellect is the aristocracy of revolution. It is without a glimmering of
intelligence. .. .with subservient followers and unquestioned leaders."
" Subservient followers and unquestioned leaders " the terrible
pity of it all is that the preachers of syndicalism will go about with
frantic enthusiasm deceiving the laboring man and leading him to
destruction by the promise of a day that can never be.
* * *
WITH greater zeal and care and enthusiasm we should be publishing
and spreading broadcast among the peoples of every nationality
pamphlets that will instruct and enlighten them and save them from
perdition. Socialism, radicalism and syndicalism will be their own un-
doing. They carry in themselves the seeds of destruction. But we
cannot afford to refuse even the smallest effort or the least sacrifice
to save even one from the contagion.
WHEN magazines publish fiction they should confine themselves to
fiction. A magazine that dares to take the Resurrection of our
Lord and make it the subject of fiction and the plaything of a half-
baked rationalist critic like Mary Austin, as does the April American,
ought to be heartily repudiated and condemned by every sincere
Christian.
MR. Thomas M. Mulry, of New York, is the recipient this year of
the Laetare Medal. The choice of Notre Dame University will
meet with universal approval. All Catholics will be delighted that this
lay leader of Catholics, a man who has exemplified his faith by long
years of devoted service to Catholic charities and the welfare of his
fellows, has been so honored. Greater than all his public service and,
indeed, the root of it all, has been Mr. Mulry's devotion to family
and home. He is a Catholic father in the truest and worthiest sense, and
his sterling Catholic life is the best kind of an inspiration to his fellows.
His public work has gained him the respect and admiration of all his
fellow-citizens. Time and again he has refused public honors easily
within his reach.
A man of many gifts, his time and study have been devoted un-
selfishly to God's poor. Keeping abreast with the best methods of
helping them and of making effective organized charity, he has always
stood for that which alone will make charity really effective the
IQI2.] WITH OUR READERS 141
guidance and inspiration of Catholic faith. May the Laetare Medal
make his life and work better known that many others may follow
in his footsteps.
* * *
AN eminent Catholic whose work has frequently been noticed in
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Sir Francis Cruise, died last month in Dub-
lin, Ireland. Sir Francis was a physician of note, a painstaking student,
and a devout Catholic who lived and worked for the poor, never refus-
ing any appeal that came to him. He gave us a new translation of the
Imitation of Christ, and his labor vindicated beyond question the right
of Thomas a Kempis to its authorship. He received the dignity of
Knight of the Order of St. Gregory from Pius X., and was also
knighted by Edward VII. Sir Francis Cruise was born in 1834.
* * *
GK. Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse, which is discussed
in this number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, is published by John
Lane of New York. The price is $1.25 per copy.
* * *
TT is evident from all statistics at hand that in the most trying
A periods (of our history) the Catholic movement was steadily on-
ward by fidelity in faith and conversions rather than backward by
leakage." These words open a very important and timely pamphlet
just published from the pen of the Right Reverend Bishop Canevin,
Bishop of Pittsburgh. His Grace proceeds to review the history of the
growth of Catholics in this country, and by careful statistics shows
that the onward movement has continued to this day. Under the
heading " Some Causes of Leakage," His Grace places first among
these mixed marriages. " To this all the other causes that tend to make
and destroy faith seem to converge and contribute." The pamphlet
though small in size is exceptionally great in importance. It will no
doubt be the subject of much discussion and we hope to refer to it
again at greater length.
GIBBON'S " ROMAN EMPIRE " AS A PROVOCATIVE
TOWARDS CATHOLICISM.
(WRITTEN BY LIONEL JOHNSON IN 1893.)
FT was at Rome, on the isth of October, 1764, as I was musing
1 amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were
singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the de-
cline and fall of the city first started to my mind." In this famous sen-
tence Gibbon betrays the imaginative greatness of his historic grasp:
how came it about that a Christian Pontiff sat upon the pagan Caesar's
seat ; that Jupiter Optimus Maximus vanished before the revelation of
Omnipotent Dcus Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus? It was as a
Winchester scholar that I first began to read Gibbon, and I finished
142 WITH OUR READERS [April,
him at Oxford. His " luminous or voluminous " work did not say to
me Tolle, lege: yet it was one of the great books which helped me on
my way to the Catholic Church and Faith. As I read the processional
pages, which record not only the decline and fall of the Roman Empire,
but the growth and triumph of the Catholic Church, I came to see what
Newman in his Development meant by declaring, " It is melancholy
to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any
claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever
Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant." I was
not so innocent of humor as the good lady, in a once popular story,
who could not understand why Gibbon should be thought an irreligious
writer : " I am sure he makes the most religious reflections all along ;
I liked him particularly for that ! " But Gibbon, with all his ironies
and subtle scoffs, had an eye for theology : he scorns it, but he seldom
misstates it; and, though it be to his disgust, yet in his volumes the
Church is seen majestically moving on to victory. In his Oxford youth,
the study of Bossuet had made him a Catholic, and verily, as he tells us,
he " fell by a noble hand ;" nor, as I think, did he ever rid himself of
Bossuet's influence. I am old-fashioned enough to believe in that view
of history set forth by the " Eagle of Meaux " with all his strength
and splendor; the view, which discerns in the procession of the ages
the unfolding of a Divine purpose, the gradual movement towards a
Divine end. Despite all his painful elegance of superior scepticism,
despite himself, Gibbon cannot help showing us a despised and perse-
cuted Faith winning its way to spiritual empire, amid the infinite con-
fusions of a distracted world and a distraught civilization, amid perils
from false brethren, amid the decay of the ancient ages, and the labor-
ious birth of the new. Vera incessu patuit deal
# * *
OW, a religion not embodied in visible form, not realized and mani-
fested in a social organization, has at all times seemed to me con-
trary to human nature : man, says Aristotle, is naturally social, "polit-
ical," given to combination, averse from isolation. And thus, the merely
external aspect of the Church, portrayed by Gibbon, arrested me: she
held her children in a mighty embrace, destined to become ecumenical.
If that were by force of worldly genius, it was wonderful; but there
comes the inevitable question, could that be so? Was there not here
digitus Dei? When emperors, and barbarian chiefs, and even Christian
prelates, threw their protection over heresies, could sheer obstinacy and
partisan prejudice keep back the harassed Catholic from becoming
Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite ? Could it be by chance, that from the
Council of Jerusalem to the Vatican Council there has been one and
only one Christian communion, which has preserved an absolutely con-
sistent body of belief, a distinct " analogy " or " proportion of faith ?"
Carlyle, so Froude tells us, at one time used to laugh at the Athanasian
N
1912.] 1/7777 OUR READERS 143
controversy, at Homoousion and Homoiousion dividing Christendom ;
in after years, " he perceived Christianity itself to have been at stake.
If the Arians had won, it would have dwindled away into a legend."
Catholicism has persisted in remaining the same. Must not that be an
illustration of the Greek saying, that "good is one, evil is manifold?"
And Gibbon was especially impressive, in that he was an impartial
infidel, to whom the controversies of councils and theologians were
petty wranglings about meaningless nothings ; yet the Catholic Church,
with her centre of unity, dominates his indifferent pages. The serene
little great scholar, with his cosmopolitan airs and graces, sits in the
middle of Europe, encompassed by a thousand folios, and turns his
purple periods : he fascinates the lover of learning, but he has no spirit-
ual charm. His friends can draw our hearts ; Johnson, with his awe-
struck piety; Burke, so profoundly reverential a statesman and poli-
tical philosopher; the sweet-hearted Goldsmith. But Gibbon, kindly
and pleasant as he was, shows no trace of deep feeling or spiritual need.
If the Church stand forth in his vast work so vividly, it is in virtue of
no sympathy with her, but of historical necessity: facts constrained
him. There are those who say that the Church's vitality and universal-
ity spring indeed not from a spiritual source, but from the Evil Spirit ;
that, at least, is an acknowledgment of something mysterious and
mystical in her nature and office. But the altogether worldly and
material Gibbon comes to complete grief, when he attempts to account
for the success of Christianity and the Church ; his Five Reasons
are laughably inadequate. The historian who, with his almost mono-
tonous magnificence of style coupled with his laborious accuracy of
fact, wins our wondering admiration of the Church, compels us to look
elsewhere for a satisfying interpretation of her existence and claim.
No fortuitous accumulation of historical circumstance can explain the
mystery of the Church as a fact. Faber, in a sonnet upon the Papacy,
writes :
That such a Power should live and breathe, doth seem
A thought from which men fain would be relieved,
A grandeur not to be endured, a dream
Darkening the soul, though it be unbelieved.
No cynical simplicities of reasoning, from the century of rational-
ism, are sufficient and convincing here.
* * *
A SSUREDLY I do not owe my conversion to Gibbon; I owe it,
-ii- humanly speaking, to far different writers and other studies;
but the imperturbable unbeliever gave me a vision of the Faith, whose
Divinity grew clear to me from other sources. Mr. Pater, anima natur-
aliter Catholica, by his Marius the Epicurean, did more in a few pages
to draw my mind towards the ultimate conviction than all the stately
volumes of Gibbon. So did Plato and the austerer poets, whether
144 BOOKS RECEIVED [April, 1912.]
pagan or Christian; so did the standing miracles of Nature and the
aspects of society. Yet to Gibbon I owe a great debt. Some men have
been won to the Church by a single visit to a church, by something
amazing and affecting in the very air and atmosphere of her worship.
Gibbon gave me that vision of the mysterious and divine by chronicling
the footsteps of the Church from the catacombs to the basilicas, from
the shadow of death to the plenitude of sunlight and life. His very
efforts to prove that there was " nothing in it," did but the more con-
vince me that everything was in it. The more he strove to prove
Catholic Christianity a masterpiece of human device, due to favoring
events, the more he made me regard it as the greatest of the magna
opera Domini. I learned that, spiritually, " it is not good for man to
be alone ; " and in the Catholic Church I found myself in a world-wide
fellowship of believers in a Divine Society, whose Divine Head has
told us that " His delight is to be with the children of men."
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROS, New York :
A Knight of the Green Shield. By Mrs. Stacpoole Kenny. $1.10 net. Do-Ra-
Me-Fa. By David Bearne, S.J. $1.10 net. Holy Communion. By John
Bernard Dalgairns. Two volumes. $2.50 net. The Holy Mass. By Very
Rev. Eugene Vandeur, D.D. Translated from the French by Rev. V. Gilbert-
son, O.S.B. 50 cents. Fresh Flowers for Our Heavenly Crown. By Very Rev.
Andre Prevot, D.D. Translated by M. D. Stenson. 85 cents. Cases of Con-
science. By Rev. Thomas J. Slater, SJ. Two volumes. $3.50. Girls' Clubs
and Mothers' Meetings. By Madame Cecilia. 60 cents. Back to the World.
By M. Champol. Translated by L. M. Leggatt. $1.35.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York :
The Credibility of the Gospel. By Mgr. Pierre Batiffol. $1.50 net.
GINN & Co., New York:
Crown Hymnal. By Rev. L. J. Kavanah and James M. McLaughlin. 75 cents.
MACMILLAN Co., New York :
Essentials of Socialism. By Cross. $1.00 net. Socialists at Work. By Robert
Hunter. 50 cents.
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York :
The Civilization of China. By H. A. Giles. 50 cents net. Elements of English.
Law. By W. M. Geldart. 50 cents net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York :
Why Should We Change Our Form of Government? By Nicholas M. Butler.
75 cents net.
JOHN LANE & Co., New York :
The Ballad of the White Horse. By Gilbert K. Chesterton. $1.25 net.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., Philadelphia :
The American Government. By Frederick J. Haskin. $1.00 net. The Wit and
Humor of Colonial Days, 1607-1800. By Carl Halliday. $1.50.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston :
Socialism and Character. By Vida D. Scudder. $1.50. The Boy and His Gang.
By J. Adams Puffer. $1.00.
L. C. PAGE & Co., Boston :
Naomi of the Island. By Lucy Thtirston Abbot. $1.25.
THE AVE MARIA PRESS, Notre Dame:
Christian Science and Catholic Teaching. 10 cents.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
The Life of St. Teresa. Taken from the French of a " Carmelite Nun." By
Lady Alice Lovat, with a Preface by Mgr. Robert Hugh Benson. $3.00 net.
The Messiah's Message. By John Joseph Robinson. $1.00. Tabulae Fontium
Traditionis Christianae. By J. Creusen, S.J. 40 cents. The Coward. By
Robert Hugh Benson. $1.50. Daily Readings from St. Francis de Sales.
By J. H. A. $1.00.
BURNS & GATES, London :
The Catholic Who's Who and Year Book. Edited by Sir F. C. Burnand.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCV. MAY, 1912. No. 566.
CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE.
BY EMILY HICKEY.
O some of us it has been a question whether any dif-
ference should be made between the study of litera-
ture by Catholics and its study by others. May I
suggest that the key of the position is contained in
the following words of Foerster, quoted in the
Dublin Review's article on The Decay of Fixed Ideals, January,
1911.
Christianity leads from the periphery to the center
and educates mankind to see everything and work at everything
from the vantage-ground of a great central position. To find
and maintain this central position is the whole salvation of man,
and all social work is without foundation if it be not inspired
and directed from thence.
We have only to keep before us that loyalty which we owe and
from which we must never swerve. We are in many ways, as we
surely ought to be, one with our fellow-citizens. We hold, as they
do, the greatness of the virtue of loyalty to kindred, home, the
native land, and to all mankind. We desire to unite with them in
all possible ways; but it will sometimes be, of necessity from sor-
rowful circumstances for which so many are not themselves re-
sponsible, that certain lines of demarcation have to be made. I
may be allowed to illustrate this by mentioning what I was told
some time ago of the parable of the Good Shepherd having been
used by a non-Catholic teacher as a lesson in kindness to animals !
So with other teaching where motive power differs and eyes look
out and do not see alike. We can never substitute the service of
Copyright. 1912. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. xcv. IO
146 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE [May,
man for the love in brotherhood of those who know of one Father;
we cannot put morality in the place of religion, nor philanthrophy in
that of charity. And wherever this putting and this substitution
take place in the teaching of literature, as of any other subject, how-
ever artistic the teacher's treatment of his subject may be, we are
bound to a treatment different not in degree only but in kind.
Much of what is called our classical literature in English has
been created under the shadow of the Reformation. But the first
of the line of great poets, the first who handled the new English
with the hand of the master, Geoffrey Chaucer, was of the house-
hold of Faith, and his influence has never yet died out. And most
happily he whom we know as the greatest of English poets, the one
who stands preeminently as the representative of great thought
and high art, was in time very near the age of Faith ; and we gladly
and thankfully recognize that the spirit of our Shakespeare is dis-
tinctly non-Protestant. We cannot think of him as one who looked
on the Great Mother as a stranger, or averted his eyes from the
beauty of her face and the grandeur of her gait.
If we reflect on Shakespeare's way of touching on Catholic
themes; if we think of his hatred of Puritanism; of his sympa-
thetic presentation of religious, of priests, of things connected with
true belief, we shall see this. And more yet; if we dwell on his
largeness and sympathy, on all that is included in the fullest sense of
the word Catholicity, we can, I think, hope that, though uncon-
fessed as a son of the Faith, which was the faith of his father as
well as of his fathers, having fallen on evil times and being in the
company of many who were calling bitter sweet and sweet bitter,
or not caring to discern between the bitter and the sweet, he lived in
heart no alien to the native land, the patria of joy and union. We
may even, perhaps, believe, as has been told, that at the last there
came to him the fair bliss and comfort of reconcilement, with all
its infinite peace.
In Spenser, too, we even find Catholic belief underlying much
of his work, despite the hatred professed for the Pope and all his.
Nowhere in our literature can there be found a clearer presentment
of an important part of Catholic doctrine, set to high music, than
in the Tenth Canto of the First Book of the Faery Queen. Else-
where also, in Spenser, we find the same clinging to the old beauty
and truth.*
*In a paper on Catholicity in Spenser printed in the American Catholic Quar-
terly Review for July, 1907, I have tried, at great length, to show this.
1912.] CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE 147
Milton, in his greatest work, leaves Puritanism far behind. To
be oneself a poem; that was what he set forth; and to him the
greatest of the virtues the very key to the kingdom of Holiness
was chastity. Whatever mistakes John Milton made, and he made
sorrowful mistakes, he made no mistake here, and no English poet
has more nobly sung the glory of that purity, that cleanness, which
has its incarnation in the blessed Lady of Christendom. Not only
of Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton is it true in a sense deeper
than the primary one as expressed in Wordsworth's great Ode on
Intimations of Immortality.
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, Who is our home.
The Soul, the Life that rose with these and such as these came
from what had had elsewhere its setting ; and these poets and their
fellows, a noble company, came to us, not in entire forgetfulness, of
the great lovely Mother, and not in utter nakedness, because of the
shadow cast by her garments of glory.
It is a difficult thing indeed to get rid of a heritage. We may
lose the thing inherited, but we cannot shake off the influence
of all that it has been to us, and has meant to us; of all that it
has done for us and all that it has helped to make us.
This applies not to individuals only, but to generations and
to peoples. In the early days of the Protestant Reformation the
atmosphere of Catholicity had not been destroyed. Who can read
the literature of what have been called " the spacious days of great
Elizabeth " and deem it Protestant wholly ! With controversial
writings we have here nothing to do ; they are writings rather than
literature. Here and there they may rise into literature as when,
in times yet further from the days of " Merrie England," the heavy
grey clouds of Milton's prose polemic are burst through by glorious
streaks of beauty. In the Faith England received what a man may
waste, desecrate, never quite lose. And even those who would most
shrink from the imputation of having anything to do with the Holy
Catholic and Roman Church have been subjugated by her austere
loveliness, her majestic breadth of tenderness, her vision of all that
148 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE [May,
is near and all that is afar off. Poets and artists and preachers and
workers have approached her and kissed the hem of her garment;
yes, and even the feet below that hem, those feet how beautiful !
We do not, however, in any way aim at the restricting of our
reading to the work of authors belonging to the body of the Church.
Let us go out boldly and bravely and gather in all that we can of
the good gifts of Him who reveals Himself in many ways. Let us
learn from the mouths of all who have spoken truth as it was given
them to know it, and have shown us beauty as it was given them to
see it; poets of the East and of the West; writers before He, Who
was the Light of the World, had come to walk the little country
of Judea; writers who felt after Him in some way, and whose
feeling after Him throbs in their work ; His children who did not
know Him in His fulness, but who loved what they knew, and in-
deed were loved of Him. Let us study those beautiful things which
our separated brethren of genius have given us, and not in pride of
spirit nor in bitterness of judgment, but in gratitude to the Supreme
Maker Who made them makers .of fair things to teach and to de-
light. This is the spiritual side of the reason for studying such
work ; but there is also the reason that we cannot afford to be ignor-
ant of great things in our literature because they lack what is to us
the best of all. Also, it is important to recognize that to be a
Catholic, even the most pious of Catholics, is not to be an artist;
and the work of such artists as non-Catholic America and England
can boast is indeed not to be set at nought.
Religion is the mother of art and has been so at all times,
in all countries, and under all circumstances ; but this fact does not
involve the belief or supposition that religion is art, and piety liter-
ature; nor that a piece of writing is necessarily literature because
it deals with religion; nor yet that it is not literature if it show no
direct connection with religion. But though a Catholic writer as
Catholic is not necessarily an artist, yet when the gift of creative
genius is given him, he ought to expect the highest results. Taking
one example of Catholic literary genius, to what heights did not
Dante rise ! Heights they are whence he looks down with austere
benignity and splendor of royalty, as one of the world-poets, few
in number and great in honor.
In recent times, too, very recent indeed, one of the greatest
novels, showing qualities of high " imagination penetrative," to use
Ruskin's expressive phrase, in connection with finely cultivated
thought, and nobleness of style, is the work of the priest who writes
1912.] CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE 149
under the pen-name of John Ayscough. And San Celestino does
not stand in loneliness.
I have used the words " gift of creative genius." Of genius it
would be difficult to give a definition, but at any rate it is that which
creates or remoulds what it sees and discerns. Of its workings who
can adequately speak? And who can know of its consciousness or
its unconsciousness, of its declaration or its suggestion?
Horace speaks of indignation as having made certain verses of
his. Yet indignation does not create ; nothing but genius can make.
How was it then? Was it not that genius consciously or uncon-
sciously was waiting for its time, when a wave of indignation came
and swept away the barrier of silence, and so what was behind it
was revealed?
Thus with other emotions also. Love has been the occasion of
a vast body of literature and patriotism; and these do not
stand alone. But it was genius that created the work of which
these things were the occasion.
If it had not been for the reading of the account of the burial
by torchlight of a great soldier, the reading of it in a quiet Irish
home, Wolfe would not have received a place among the poets;
yet the thing was in him and that newspaper paragraph bade it
come forth ; and forth it came. This is but one of many and many
an instance of the importance of occasion.
It is one thing when the teaching, though noble morally, is
not distinctively Christian, and another thing when the teaching of
poet or artist is in contradiction, express or implicit, to the teaching
of Holy Church. Then " It is not, nor it cannot come to good."
There is then no question of " I disagree with this : that is not my
opinion," but " This is not for me, because it is opposed to her who
commands my loyalty as well as my love."
The finest literature is assertive, not controversial; universal,
not hide-bound. Finely touched spirits give us what is great sacra-
mentally; by the outward sign passing on to us that inward grace
which our Lord bestows on those whom He wills to send it forth
by those works in speech and song called the output of genius. This
is how we know the best work : by its sacramental quality.
We find also, in that best work, the power of drawing us out of
ourselves, the nourishing of the desire for something above and
beyond us; that something which, if rightly sought for, may be
apprehended within our hand-grasp, or lying at our very feet ; that
something which marks us out as the children of immortality.
ISO CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE [May,
Do you say that the finest literature may be the medium of con-
veying poison to the mind and of bringing the soul to the very edge
of destruction? This I earnestly and emphatically deny. Litera-
ture that has poison in its structure and injury in its brain can never
be classed as of the finest. For the body the expression and the
style of the expression cannot compare with the soul, that living
soul which by God's grace may partake of the quality and office of
the quickening spirit, the spirit that gives life and brings light. It is
worse than a soulless body. It is like a being possessed by those ill
spirits whose casting out is by the might of purity and discipline.
Here I may say a word about what is known as the literature of
Realism, by which we are to understand that which deals with the
looking at certain things with eyes that seek not merely for the sor-
didness of low motive and mean aim, but even for the horror of
ugliness, of parasitical abomination, and seek to palm off upon us
the result of such looking as a study of human nature ! Away with
such ! Let us not dare thus to insult the human nature once and for
love taken into God.
Finely Browning lifts his voice against that " realism " which
dwells insistently on what, one day, thank God, is to pass from the
sight of the men of His love.
" For I find this black mark impinge the man,
That he believes in just the vile of life.
Low instinct, base pretension, are these truth ? "
(The Pope, in The Ring and the Book.}
No, verily and indeed.
This is a far different thing from the recognition of great sor-
rowful depths which may indeed be shown us for warning, for the
evoking of sympathy, for strengthening by the power of contrast
the soul that might perhaps stay too long in the meadows of ease
and sweetness.
They said of Dante, " There goes the man who has been in
Hell." But if Dante could tell us of Hell and its horrors as illus-
trating God's justice, His wisdom, and His love (Inferno L, 4-6),
he had also to tell of Heaven and its glory as none other could.
He had been in Heaven also. And so with Milton. His voice
could sing of the loveliness of Eden and the beauty and love and
the happy plight of its inhabitants, and higher yet could rise in
loftiest strains to sing of the glory of God; and that voice also bore
1912.] CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE 151
on it the horror of Sin and Death and their grisly parentage and
their all-hatefulness.
But if literature deals unmotived with ugliness and wrong; if
these are represented as life, as the ordinary thing to look for and
expect; represented either with morbid delight in the painting of
them, or their callous dissection ; let us avoid that author, as one not
to be studied by those we desire in our teaching to help, as we should
avoid unwholesome, or worse than unwholesome, food or drink.
There is another kind of hindrance of which some among us
have need to beware. It is the suspiciousness of evil where evil
is not; the looking out for harm where that very looking out is
harm in itself. This is a kind of spiritual evil eye which casts a
curse on what is naturally pure and sweet. And heed has also to be
taken lest the spirit of abject literalness work us ill and grief, the
spirit that would do away with playful lightness and dainty jesting
because it must take all in the most absolute and serious sense. It
would dub the playfulness as a denizen of the Land of Lies, and
the Jest as a sitter in the chair of pestilence ! This mood or attitude
is surely not consonant with the fair liberty of Catholicity which so
thoroughly understands human nature, and finds a use for all the
sides of it. The important thing is to work affirmatively rather
than negatively. Let us in literature as in other things cultivate
a healthy appetite and a fine taste. Those who have been accus-
tomed to feed on the fair mountain will not lightly leave it to
batten on the moor. Those who have drunk pure draughts will not
lightly seek to quench their thirst where the clearest water has been
troubled and fouled by loathy feet. Those who have known the
splendors of noble thought befittingly phrased will not easily be
attracted by the crude infelicities which they may meet at times
upon their way. The house filled with the high treasure of good
things, new and old, has no room for the ill spirit to enter ; and so
there will be no need for the attempt to cast out a seven-fold evil
thing. And we go deeper and further than this, and say that it is
no exaggeration or even hyperbole to assert that those who feed fre-
quently from the Divine Table, those who are indeed " partakers of
the Altar," have in that partaking a shield against evil. As the
body by the breathing of pure air, and by wholesome food and the
discipline of exercise is able to resist septic influences, so the spirit,
made whole by the Body of the Lord, living in its pure atmosphere,
strengthened by holy charity and blessed discipline, can best repel
those assailing evils that strive to conquer and lay low.
152 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND LITERATURE [May,
And if it be true that these dangers can be thrust aside or
passed in quietness, how gloriously true it is that on the affirmative
side their gain is surpassingly great who are thus sustained and
exercised! Think of the eye open to beauty neglected or missed
by the vision imperfect through wrong conditions, or untrained for
lack of the teacher; the eye that even under its mortal conditions
can " see the King in His beauty " and discern the loveliness of the
land far off the land far off and yet so near. Think of the ear
that can hear music for another undiscerned or mute!
Oh, joy of the keenness of sight and hearing and quickness in
going in the beautiful ways of God! Oh, blessedness of discerning
sweet savors and exquisiteness of taste at the Banquet spread first
at the Holy Table, and then everywhere, all through nature and art
and the delights of home, and through sacrifice and the mysteries of
life with its sheen of joy, and its shadows of pain, and the light
streaming even through the gate of Death.
When we speak of the critical spirit, we mean, at least we fre-
quently mean, the spirit of carping, the quickness and readiness to
discern flaws and faults; the spirit that makes people hard to
please, and ashamed of being easily gratified; the spirit that insists
on the outweighing of great beauty by trivial defect. There is in-
deed a passion for perfection or for that which comes the nearest
to perfection that we may hope to gain ; but this is not what most
people mean when they describe themselves, with no little pride of
culture, as being very critical.
" Good critics who have stamped out poets' hopes," a poet has
said. The true critical spirit is that of the judge (Krites), of the
discerner of spirits ; of the one able not only to " separate the pre-
cious from the vile," but also to show what is the more precious
of the precious ; the spirit also of one who can see where there is
true merit, and set it in its right place, and not suffer that merit to
be obscured in his mind by defects, defects which sometimes belong
to the qualities of the writer.
Let us, in literature as in life, cultivate the power of seeing
the best. The true way to avoid the cultivation of the carping and
fault-finding spirit is to have before us the best and finest things,
and to exercise our judgment upon them, and love them, and study
them ; for that judgment will bid us to love them and to study them,
in fine discernment'and noble appreciation.
NOVELS OF INNOCENCE.*
BY W. E. CAMPBELL.
ARTHA Vine was a first innocent adventure into ro-
mance, and such adventures are always beautiful.
It was full of essential promise. It had also many
accidental defects of knowledge and experience, the
sort of defects that worry faithless people ; but it was
a return to an older and finer tradition in fiction the novel of inno-
cence. To begin with, Martha Vine lived too much in things outside
herself; she was much concerned with the odds and ends of her en-
vironment; she set great store by the little conceits of second-hand
knowledge and social convention, but that was given as the inevitable
result of the way in which she was brought up. In spite, however, of
these superimposed and rather tawdry wrappings her mind and soul
soon work their way to healthy freedom. At the first call of an
innocent and splendid affection she leaves all and follows it. I think
then we should rather thank than criticise the author for giving us
Martha Vine with all her tiresome but quite natural defects, and
showing us the way in which they were left behind. But Miss Viola
Meynell has done something more than give us the history of a
tiresome little maid who bravely struggled against, and finally got
rid of, her tiresomeness. In Stephen Flint she has created the
character of a living man this, to my mind, is the convincing proof
of her original power. A critic looking only at Martha Vine herself
might say that introspective imitation is an easy accomplishment, but
I think we may justly overwhelm such criticism by pointing to
Stephen Flint. What a splendidly objective creation he is ! Stephen
Flint is sufficient for my faith he is a man, the creation of a maid.
The following passage gives, I believe, strong indication of the
author's very real power :
The smell of burning leaves had been in the village for some
weeks, sometimes strong and outright, at other times faint and
delusive in the breezes. Now the fall of leaves had ceased ; and
the trees that had delayed so long to be entirely uncovered had
nothing but their plain, wooden barrenness for the cold sea
*Martha Vine, Cross-in-Hand Farm. By Viola Meynell. London : Herbert and
Daniel, 1910, 1911.
154 NOVELS OF INNOCENCE [May,
winds to press upon. Here and there a thin poplar clung to
one leaf, which looked like a young bird ragged with the wind,
that sat and shivered slightly, and dropped in flight that was
less strong than the breeze.
Martha lapsed into the habit of frequent walks with Stephen.
At the sight of her he would throw down his work and follow
her wherever she would go. She used to instruct him, as they
went, on many matters of which she did not doubt he was ignor-
ant, and tell him what was her father's opinion on this or that.
He, on his side, had one thing to teach her. She was learning
to have an intimate and true sense of the beauty of Nature, to
respond with all her heart to sight or sound of it. It had been
the most artificial and obvious prettiness in the world that she
had admired formerly ; now she saw that Nature had something
better to offer her. This knowledge could not but be learnt by
one who was the constant companion of Stephen; if she had
looked back she might have known that there had hardly been
a meeting with him when she had not half-unconsciously been
affected by the sense of his inveterate union with Nature, his
familiarity with land and wind and water.
But Martha gave little heed to the fact that Stephen had at
any rate accelerated this development in her. Such an extension
of her intellect and power only seemed to her the natural pro-
cess of her mind, so much her own possession, her right, her
gift, that it did not appear to owe itself even in part to another.
Of what Stephen failed to give her she was more conscious.
In their every-day companionship she was made both sad and a
little contemptuous by his lack of brilliance, his halting and mis-
used words. His devotion she always thought of as something
unusual ; she was not without humility when she considered that
she was the object of a love that was a rare thing in the world
rare, at any rate, in the humility, the unselfishness, the intensity
of its expression. And because his love had its perfection it was
not easily or light-heartedly that she could tolerate these barriers
that lay in the way of her journey to him. The slight sadness
with which she at first expressed her feelings changed into fits
of petty annoyance and sulkiness, which resentfully made clear
to Stephen his failings. Martha began at the same time to
correct his speech, doing it under the guise of good-natured
banter, but often leaving bare her exasperation and contempt.
At first Stephen's gentle, smiling acknowledgment of his stupid-
ity shamed her want of temper ; but soon she grew accustomed to
that, and thought of it as the least retribution he could make.
But any rights she might assume in regard to her behavior to
I 9 i2.] NOVELS OF INNOCENCE 155
Stephen she was by no means disposed to allow to others. She
had the strong, urgent wish that he should be regarded by her
family as at any rate a person of normal interest and import-
ance. She could burn with a sense of wrong to think that some-
one judged him adversely on account of the lowly position he
had elected for himself, or at the sound of an awkward sentence.
There were beautiful qualities in him, she argued, that they
ought to perceive ; and this was a situation of some pain for her,
for she had never in her life before had any judgment separate
from her parents; and she could not by any means wholly
separate it now. " If only it were possible for them to know
him as he is to me," she thought, and considered his humble,
ardent, patient love-making as something of undreamt-of per-
fection.
But to pass on to Miss Viola Meynell's second story, Cross-in-
Hand-Farm. First of all there is about it an air of established and
interior peace. It is the authentic air of Jane Haffenden herself, and
it breathes a wholesome benediction through every page; it
is the peace of innocence, the prevalent peace of one whose
gradual footsteps are set toward Zion. Jane Haffenden has a
character of unusual depth, serenity and distinction; she is at one
with herself and as a natural result she is clear in sight, simple in
motive, and definite in action. All the better things come naturally
to her both for acceptance and dispensation, but whether she is
giving, receiving, rejoicing or suffering she always remains herself,
unconscious in her modesty, beautiful with reserve.
I would dwell with some emphasis but without exaggeration
upon the notes of taste and seemliness which mark this story. They
are in such happy contrast to the dreary realism so much affected
by contemporary writers of fiction. The realism of to-day be-
speaks both mental and moral depression. " We are all realists at
times," writes a wise critic, " just as we are all sensualists at times
or liars or cowards." In the fashionable realistic novel of moral
disintegration there is so little excellence of the sustained and
healthy kind ; so little fruit that grows to a ripened moral sweetness ;
hardly anything that is simple, proportionate, beautiful and true;
no lofty criterion of high attainment ; no sufficient stimulus to an
habitual Tightness in taste and conduct. And the reason is not far
to seek. St. Thomas Aquinas long ago touched upon it when he
pointed out that no proper judgment on human excellence can be
expected from those whose taste is out of order. That must be
156 NOVELS OF INNOCENCE [May,
most pleasant, he tells us, which is most pleasing to him who has
the best taste and that good must be most complete which is pursued
by him whose affections are best in order. The realistic novel of
moral disintegration is the work and pleasure of those whose taste
is out of order and whose affections are set on the lower things.
What we need as a correction to the novel of bad taste is the novel
of good taste, the novel of innocence.
But while Cross-in-Hand Farm is a novel of innocence, it is
very far from being that most wearisome of all things the novel
with a purpose. Quite the contrary. Innocence of its very nature
is goodness shining unconsciously, and because this is so, very few
can altogether escape its natural light; only those in fact who
finally love the darkness because their deeds are evil. I may perhaps
be allowed to give two instances of the artless shining of innocence
as shown by Jane Haffenden on two different occasions and under
the stress of emotions quite opposite in character.
In the first instance, Dorcas Lilliot, Jane Haffenden's friend,
is engaged, but her fiance happens to be away. During his absence,
George Lanteglos, who is much attracted by Dorcas' wayward
beauty, makes some very definite advances. Jane, by a mere acci-
dent, becomes the unwilling witness of the most definite of these,
and its effect upon her is given with a strength and simplicity that
could hardly be surpassed.
It had already stopped raining, and by nine o'clock that night
the sky was clear and blue, and the moon shining; the wind
had subsided at the hour of sunset. Jane, tired of the long con-
finement within doors, wound a long black shawl round her, and
went out to walk a little way. She looked back at the lighted
windows of the room in which her father and aunt sat, at peace
and rest, and blest them in her heart. She wandered on and
came to the beginning of Primrose Lane. It was muddy, but she
had already resigned her boots to mud. As she strolled up its
steep grassy slope, the path became dry and firm under her feet.
The moon was radiantly full and the atmosphere still, and
dark places were only dark in comparison with the pale bright-
ness of light places. When Jane passed from the sharp shadow
of the hedge on to the moon-struck side of the lane she half
expected to be conscious of a warmer air.
She had no fear of sounds or movements close to her; she
knew the portent of those things ; she had no fear of anything in
these wonderful country nights. It might chance that she
1912.] NOVELS OF INNOCENCE 157
should see some closed flower spring free from an entanglement
of stems; or among all the sleeping birds one might be awake
and stirring, or one among the silent cattle raise a voice; but
all these little lapses tolerated by the great night were dear to
her.
She thought of all the ingeniously made little homes that had
frail, secure holding in the great trees ; and of the tremendous
chorus of promised song that would happen in a few weeks now.
She was reminded of Tom Meadows, whom she had again lately
seen at his destructive hobby. She realized when she recalled
his tense, eager face, that this was a passion with him.
Jane heard a sound, and thought at first that it was a horse
moving quietly on the other side of the hedge, but she was
wrong. She looked and saw that someone was ahead of her
two people who had paused in the path, and as soon as she saw
them something struck her heart with horror and fear. Her
recognition of those figures was immediate ; indeed there was no
reason why she should hesitate to know them, familiar as they
were to her, and with nothing between them and the moon.
She saw them kiss, and she sickened and turned and fled.
In her room she lay on the floor, faintly grateful for its in-
sensate hardness. Only one thought brought passionate relief
to the troubled and shamed horror of her mind, and that was
when she recollected the inevitable extinction of all human
bodies.
"Thank God we have to die! Thank God, Thank God!"
she said ....
It had seemed to Jane that that kiss was a dishonor to the
world.
In the second instance, Dorcas Lilliot tells Jane, quite by the
way and in the course of some good-natured chatter, that someone
thinks her beautiful. The circumstances of the story turn this reve-
lation of praise into a still more beautiful revelation.
One day Dorcas arrived at Cross-in-Hand Farm when Jane
was acting the part of Elizabeth (the servant-maid) in the kit-
chen. Jane had no longer any discomfort to be found by Dorcas
at a menial task ; she was more likely to err on the side of non-
apologetic, non-explanatory pride in her office. But Dorcas,
idling gracefully about the kitchen, and changing her chair,
and peering into drawers and bags, remembered the absent
servant.
" It has been all I can do not to smile in her face, sometimes,"
158 NOVELS OF INNOCENCE [May,
said Dorcas. " That is the way her expression affects me. I
hope she cannot overhear ? "
" She is out for the evening," said Jane. " She will soon be
married."
" Well, well," said Dorcas, marvelling. " Do you know, Jane
we never kept our cups in here? I remember distinctly that
they hung in the next room. I really think ours was the better
plan."
" It isn't only beautiful people that get loved, you know,"
said Jane, her knees trembling as she stood at the table.
" Evidently," said Dorcas, with a little laugh, remembering
Elizabeth's interrogative features.
" Perhaps those who are not beautiful are even loved more,"
said Jane, feeling bitter and controversial.
" I suppose such a thing might be," said Dorcas ; " there
would be a kind of pity yes, loved more by one man, perhaps
it is just possible. But not loved by so many men."
" I am ugly, am I not ? " Jane asked after a pause.
"You? No."
"How do you think I really look?" said Jane, blushing
deeply.
" Oh, Jane, I think you are perfectly sweet," said Dorcas,
with generous enthusiasm. " And people say so to me even
Evan, once, long ago ; he said ' beautiful.' I say ' even Evan.'
I mean, you and I are so un-alike."
Jane had been more or less diligent at her task of passing
bread through a sieve, but she paused and stared at Dorcas and
said: "Did he say so?"
She was gay all the evening with the rapture of these tidings ;
she was gay under a new condition of things. If she were beau-
tiful to him! Then she had him closer than she thought.
Nothing but some circumstances kept them apart, and circum-
stances were poor things. She had never had a word of the
approval which a lover gives to the beloved ; her love had been
starved, according to her situation. The spark of praise set
her thrilling with surprise and joy ; she was so near to Evan, so
near. . . .
But Miss Viola Meynell has not only the power of delineating
simple, strong and refreshingly innocent people, she has an equal
ability in a different kind the characterization of place. She makes
us love the homes of her people with just such a love as they them-
selves must have had. One cannot think ^without delight of that
little room which Jane Haffenden marked down for her own on the
1912.] THE SECRET WORD 159
day of the sale at Cross-in-Hand Farm. " It had a little two-foot-
square table, made of some dark wood, standing against the wall.
It was noticeable because, besides the bed, it was the only piece of
furniture left in the room. The other thing was nothing more than
a mark on the wall, a delicate outline, which showed the shape of
something that had hung there and had been removed. It was the
shape of a cross, and the cross had hung over the bed." I need not
further illustrate this genius for simple description. It marks the
book which seems in a wonderful way to inform the beauty of
nature with the strength of grace. There is nothing complex from
end to end but all things are disposed with simple sweetness the
people, places, times and incidents are usual to a degree, yet over
them all there is a lightsomeness, a charm, a power, which only the
white and beautiful magic of innocence could give.
THE SECRET WORD.
BY JOHN JEROME RODNEY.
When John was rapt to Paradise,
He knew a secret word
Which tongue of man had uttered not
Nor ear of man had heard.
Thro' agonies and ecstasies
He strove to frame again
The awful accents of the speech,
And wing it forth to men.
The wondrous language of the Greek,
Like treasure-laden ships,
Bore all the heavenly vision forth
In dread apocalypse
Save only that one secret word
All human tongues above :
It was the master-speech of God
Wherein all meanings move!
CONSEQUENCES.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER XII.
ANE soon became an accomplished horsewoman, and
was not afraid to ride any of the horses in Mrs.
Dandrey's stable. Bainbridge insisted that she
should not travel the country roads alone, so when
there was no one else available he willingly went with
her. As the days grew longer and a green mistiness began to be
faintly discernible in the sketchy winter woods, these rides became
more frequent and they often stopped at the rectory for tea.
" Tea " was the one genuine relaxation that Paul Hartford
allowed himself. He had acquired the habit at Oxford, and at five
o'clock each day he dropped all work, no matter how important or
absorbing, and gave himself up to a half hour of perfect rest,
made more delightful if his friends cared to join him.
When the weather permitted Mary Hartford spread the little
table upon the porch, and whenever she saw Jane approaching she
elaborated the simple service by adding a jar of orange marmalade.
"Girls always like sweet things," she said by way of expla-
nation.
This commonplace statement astonished all that heard her.
Mary Hartford so seldom spoke in the presence of guests that they
had begun to regard her as a sort of automaton useful to Paul's
comfort, a silent force hardly to be reckoned with. Jane had
attempted to persuade her to talk about her past, but after that
first day in the studio all her efforts had been futile.
" Girls have no respect for their stomachs or their dentist's
bills," snapped Mrs. Van Doran who happened to be present; " but
I'm glad to see that the child is altogether normal."
Paul looked reflectively into his teacup. " I never would have
suspected her of being anything else."
" One never knows," continued the old lady resignedly. " It's
the fashion to be abnormal these days. She had an actress for a
mother, and actresses are born temperamental. They have to be;
it's part of their business. How-dy-do ? " she added as Jane
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 161
joined them on the porch. " Don't kiss me ; I have rouge on my face
this afternoon. I put it there because I was as pale as a hobgoblin.
I don't know whether it's humility or vanity that makes me struggle
to look less like a scarecrow."
" You are looking very well," said Bainbridge taking the prof-
fered seat by her side.
" Don't try to compliment me," she interrupted wearily. " I
was talking about the abstract virtue of humility. Most religious-
minded people would insist that women who deck themselves out
are animated by vanity, but I insist that they are often urged on by
pure humility. They know they are but horrors bolstered up by the
beauty parlor, while the really vain woman thinks she is in no
need of adornment. Of course my theology may not be quite ortho-
dox; I took to it late in life. Are you vain or humble, Jane? "
" Both," said the girl laughing, as she helped Mary Hartford
pour the tea.
" The question is," continued the old lady, " do we dress for
ourselves or other people? If it were not for the critical ob-
server, would we be willing to modestly go round in gunny sacks
with a hole for our heads? "
"Why the holes?" asked Bainbridge. "Why not be com-
pletely extinguished ? "
She tapped his knuckles playfully with the end of her parasol.
" Now don't be absurd ; our heads are useful. There's reason for
seeing, eating and drinking tea at all times. Give me another cup,
Paul. You have a delightful brew ; you must give me the name of
your importer; this tea drinking of yours is becoming a real
function. I've been here three times this Spring, and Jane and
George come every day? "
" Not quite," answered Jane. " About three times a week
since Lent began."
The old lady's eyes narrowed suspiciously. She was more
interested in this group of young people than she cared to admit.
" You know it's a penitential season," Hartford smiled.
" I know it ought to be," grunted the old lady, " but we've
wandered far afield from praiseworthy ideas of penance in these
days. Lent has always seemed to me a dangerous season. We stop
all our formal innocuous entertainments because we are too tired to
go on, and we take to intimate, gossipy tea-tippling."
" My dear lady," remonstrated Bainbridge, " how do you know
we gossip? "
VOL. XCV. II
1 62 CONSEQUENCES [May,
" Why, what else can we talk about except our neighbors ? I
know Jane does not abuse people; she has a tender heart and a
cultivated conscience. I have neither. The dear Lord only knows
how I struggle to see the virtues of my friends, but their faults are
so much more amusing."
" But we haven't either your insight or your wit," said Bain-
bridge. " There are a few things in the world besides people there
are politics."
The old lady balanced her spoon lightly on the edge of her
teacup. " I have no politics; I'm a Whig the last of the Whigs."
" There is the war."
" What ! a European war three thousand miles away from us.
If you had lived through a real war like I have, burning and blood-
shed to your nearest and dearest, you wouldn't care to talk about
it."
" But that still leaves a few topics," said Jane humorously.
" Automobiles, muddy roads, horses, crops, travel and the weather."
" Science and religion," added Paul.
" Ah, that reminds me," said the old lady not a whit discon-
certed. " I really have something to say this afternoon, but it's a
private matter. May I see you alone, Paul? I am sure that your
sister and Jane and George will excuse you. I am going to Mrs.
Dandrey's to spend the night, and they will have quite enough of
me before morning. Take me into your little chapel. I hear that
you have a fine new window that you bought in Europe last year;
I want to see it and I want to see your church."
He rose with alacrity. Beautifying the little church had been
one of the dreams of his life; the purchase of this one window had
meant much personal self-denial, and he was anxious to gain the old
lady's cultivated artistic approval. " I meant to ask you to go look
at it before you left," he said.
She leaned heavily on his arm and they passed down the rose-
bordered path together.
" Who takes care of these beautiful flowers? " she asked. "The
hyacinths are already in bloom. I see you have some rare speci-
mens."
" My sister."
A strange silence fell between them.
" She seems very unhappy," the old lady said at last with
unusual softness. " Sometimes I wish you lived in a more cheerful
atmosphere. You have never told me what her life has been. I
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 163
remember her health was frail and she went out to California to
live with relatives. I lost sight of her after your mother died."
" She married," said Paul shortly.
" I see," said the old lady with vast understanding. " I'm glad
she finds comfort in the roses. Now if I were unhappy and cared
for flowers I should be conscious only of the thorns, and it is to
save you from the thorns that I wanted to speak to you this after-
noon. You are falling in love, Paul. I have watched you all this
winter. You are falling in love with Jane."
She made the accusation with such startling suddenness that he
was thrown completely off his guard.
" Why?" he asked weakly. He could think of nothing else
to say.
'' You have been to Mrs. Dandrey's very often." Her keen,
wrinkled face was full of kindness. " You have met her often at
my house; she stops here continually for tea; she knows nothing
of men. To me her lack of self -consciousness is her chief charm.
Mrs. Dandrey finds all kinds of absurd fault with her behind her
back. Some day she will do it in front of her and then Jane will
break away, for the child is not lacking in spirit. I am an old
woman, Paul, and I love you. Once I had a son; he came after
years of impatient waiting. If he had lived he would be your age
now. I have seen so much of the world that you may trust me to
tell you the truth. Jane is in love with George Bainbridge."
His face showed white in the strong sunlight; his hand trem-
bled on the knob of the church door.
" How can you know ? " he asked.
" I know women," she said stopping on the threshold of the
dim vestibule. " How can a doctor tell fever symptoms ? By
the eye, the tongue, the lips, the pulse. It's but a fancy with you,
Paul. It has not gone deep. You are a born celibate ; you are too
priestly to dream of marriage."
He did not know how to reply. He was not sure of himself.
He had never thus bluntly questioned himself. Romance of any
kind had seemed so remote from his plan of life. But standing thus
accused he realized that he had been dreaming unawares, and he
did not want to acknowledge it even to himself. Striving to escape
from his old friend's catechising, he opened the low-studded door
for her to pass through.
She sank down heavily in one of the cushioned pews, and
looked long and intently at the beautiful window touched into
164 CONSEQUENCES [May,
softest colors by the brilliant evening light. It represented a
heavily-laden pilgrim kneeling at the feet of a radiant Figure, who
stooped to raise the burden from the suffering shoulders of one
who had traveled far in search of Him. The small wooden altar
below the window was covered with a strip of red felt, and held
only a cross set upright in a wooden stand and an adjustable read-
ing lamp.
Paul knelt down in this his little sanctuary and buried his face
in his hands. He often came into the church at this time for an
hour of lonely prayer, but now his brain was whirling. He felt,
with a sudden illumination, that all that Mrs. Van Doran had told
him was true. Jane had attracted him from the first, ever since
she had unwittingly given him her confidence. " Was it Jane or her
religion?" he asked himself. The sense of the supernatural was
so strong in her that he had sometimes wondered a bit enviously
if he could ever attain to it. In her graver moods she had talked
to him quite frankly of her beliefs, and he had always refrained
from controversy with her. Her doctrines were so definite; her
faith so clear cut. He knew that he had no such surety to offer
his flock. He had even ceased preaching from any text of Scripture.
Everything seemed capable of so many interpretations. His ser-
mons were scholarly essays on general questions of morality that no
congregation could deny. Even Jane would have considered them
orthodox. Was it possible that her religious view-point had in-
fluenced him? And now she was to pass out of his life forever.
She was in love with Bainbridge, and Bainbridge had everything
to offer her money, position, a life of ease, a luxurious home-
while he had nothing, and a most uncertain future dependent on
the vagaries of his bishop, who already suspected him of heresy.
His thoughts were interrupted by Mrs. Van Doran, she came
up behind him and put both her hands affectionately upon his
shoulders.
" It is a wonderful window," she said, " and I understand why
it appealed to you, but the church, Paul the church is very empty.
I know, dear, that you wanted to reserve the sacrament for adora-
tion and your bishop would not let you."
" No," he admitted, rising slowly to his feet.
" Of course from my point of view I would have to agree
with the bishop, and I object to agreeing with that unpleasant
person in any way, but since you have no valid orders, you have no
power of consecration."
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 165
" But I don't agree to that," he made haste to interrupt her.
The old voice was full of tenderness as she answered, " But you
will, Paul, you will. You are on the road to Rome."
CHAPTER XIII.
A few days after this tea-drinking at the rectory, Jane was
seated in one of the big armchairs in the library of Bainbridge Hall
intent on studying She Stoops to Conquer. She often amused her-
self thus, acting whole plays at night with Bainbridge as her only
audience, and he repaid her efforts by showing his enjoyment and
by occasional friendly criticism.
This afternoon she was so much interested in her reading that
when the old negro butler shuffled softly to the door to announce a
visitor she looked up with marked impatience.
" Isn't Mrs. Dandrey at home? " she asked.
" De lady axed fer you particular," answered the old man,
respectfully extending a card.
The card presented a yellow time-worn appearance, and Jane
glanced at the name with great surprise. She had been told that
Mary Hartford never returned a visit, that she never entered any
house unless sickness or disaster of some sort demanded her charit-
able services, and yet here was her card presented in formal fashion.
Jane told the butler to ask her visitor into the library, and when
the little figure in rusty black appeared in the doorway, looking
strangely out of place against the rich brocade of Mrs. Dandrey's
portieres, Jane tried, by her cordiality, to conceal her amazement.
" I am so delighted to see you," she said, rising eagerly and
dropping her book on the floor, " come sit down by the fire. These
first Spring days are so chilly and you have had a long walk. I am
glad you found me at home. Mrs. Dandrey and Mr. Bainbridge
are both out."
" I know it," said Mary Hartford taking the proffered seat.
" I watched them as they passed on their way to the city. That is
the reason I came."
" And you thought I would be lonely all by myself ? Now
please take off your bonnet and stay to lunch."
" No, no," she answered, re-tying the strings of her beribboned
bonnet, which seemed to antedate all fashion. " I did not come
166 CONSEQUENCES [May,
to keep you from loneliness. I came I believe to make you very
unhappy."
Jane stared at her in some consternation. " You you have
some bad news ? " she faltered.
The older woman's eyes were full of tragedy. She looked out
of the window to the far-away hills across the river. " No, I have
come to talk to you with maternal tenderness," she gave a mirthless
little laugh. " Never having been a mother, of course, I don't know
how to go about it. I have wanted to come. No, I can't say ' I
wanted,' for I disliked coming exceedingly, but I felt that I must
have a short talk with you alone and so I am here." She paused a
moment, not like one waiting for a response, but as if she were
selecting her words carefully and dreaded interruption. " I have
asked myself why I, of all people in the world, should care what
became of you, but sometimes even our motives are quite beyond
our understanding. Perhaps it was the old fascination reasserting
itself. God knows I should have outlived that."
Jane was plainly bewildered. Gossips of the village had cir-
culated doubts as to Miss Hartford's sanity. Jane had indignantly
denied the rumors, but as she listened to her guest's incoherent
words, she began to suspect that the reports might be true. She
smoothed the shabbily gloved hand she held soothingly.
" Don't like me then," she said cheerfully. " I'll keep on liking
you just the same. I know I began by giving you a great deal of
trouble, and no doubt I have bored you inexpressibly many times
since."
" No," replied the older woman. " No, you have interested me
since the beginning. You are so ignorant of the world; you are
so ignorant of yourself, and it is to save you from yourself that
I am here to-day. I don't want your life to be what mine has been,
and so you must believe me; you must tell me the truth. I am
going to ask you one question. I am a blunt-spoken woman, and I
talk so little that I choose my words poorly, and blunt weapons can
wound deeply, but you will promise to answer my question and you
can trust me not to betray your confidence."
Her whole attitude was tense and at the same time pitifully
appealing. Jane banished all her suspicions in regard to her guest
as unworthy. She seemed to feel instinctively the struggle that had
preceded what, she could not help believing, was a selfless manifes-
tation of friendship.
" Yes," she said moved to excitement by the dramatic force of
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 167
the situation. " Yes, I am sure I would be willing to answer more
than one."
The usually silent, self-contained woman fell on her knees be-
fore the girl and, putting her hands on her shoulders, said,
" Now I can look into your eyes and they will tell me you are in
love with George Bainbridge ? "
" Why, yes," said the girl simply. " Is that the question? He
has been so good to me."
The woman's head drooped as if it longed for a resting place.
" Child, child, that is what I meant, you do not know yourself. It
is not gratitude you feel ; it is not the child-like affection you had
for him in the beginning; he was not willing to let you rest there;
it is love, passion, madness. I have felt them all. He is selfish,
coldly selfish. He does not care. He cannot care for a simple-
hearted girl like you. You represented novelty at first. He is but
a type a type I know so well a type that is entertained for a little
while and then passes on seeking new sensations." She stopped
for a moment, twisting her hands together nervously as if she were
steeling herself for a supreme effort. She began again huskily,
" Once I was a girl like you, happy, care-free, unafraid. I met
someone, and I loved him. We were married. I was only nineteen
when he left me."
Jane's arms closed impulsively around her guest. " Left you? "
she cried.
" Yes, left me," she repeated bitterly. " After some years he
divorced me those things are managed easily out West. He was
George Bainbridge's friend ; they met in Paris. My husband mar-
ried again a French actress your mother, child your mother "
A cry of protest rose to the girl's lips, " Don't don't say that,"
she entreated.
" It is the truth, the truth, that hurts," said the older woman
grimly.
" But my mother oh, my mother and you you? "
" I was your father's wife."
The clock ticked noisily on the mantel, the logs fell to smoulder-
ing embers in the blackened chimney place, the two women faced
each other silently with dry, unseeing eyes, one struggling with that
youthful disbelief which, at first, seems to make all tragedy untrue,
the other wincing at the girl's pain, and wondering if she could
have found another way to warn her. At last Mary Hartford
rose from her cramped position on the floor, and now that her
:68 CONSEQUENCES [May,
momentary emotion had passed she seemed to speak with cold
indifference. " Divorced women seem to have no place," she said.
" I took back my maiden name because I grew so tired of explana-
tions; the world is curious and respects no sanctity in sorrow.
My heart was broken. My life seemed ended sometimes women
love too much. Men grow tired. I loved your father devotedly.
All these years I have struggled to forget him and then you came.
Your voice, your laughter, were so like his. The normal woman,
I suppose, would have disliked you, but I I felt that we were both
his innocent victims and and we must be tolerant of the dead."
" I cannot be," said the girl like some one slowly awakening.
" It was sin terrible sin."
" I suppose he did not look at it that way," returned the other
dully. " He was seeking his own happiness, counting no costs, and
now now I am going. If I were in your place I think I should
want to be alone."
The girl clasped her hand convulsively. " Oh, stay oh, stay
with me ! "
" There is nothing more to say," said the older woman quietly.
" I have only tried to help you. She stooped and kissed the girl's
smooth forehead. " God forgive me if I have blundered; I knew
no other way."
She left the room so quietly that Jane did not heed her going.
The girl lay with closed eyes huddled among the sofa cushions, her
world in devastation around her, and she was alone in the ruins.
Even Bainbridge her heart cried out for him did not care could
not care. If her father, whom she had idealized through a lifetime,
could be capable of such cruelty, guilty of such sin, everything was
believable. No man could be trusted and her mother, " Oh, my
God," the little prayer was a despairing cry, " My mother, oh, my
mother ! "
To her Catholic mind a divorce meant no liberty nor license.
The sin seemed to beat her helplessly to earth. She forgot herself
she forgot Bainbridge in the thought of her parent's perfidy.
All afternoon she lay there suffering as only the young can
suffer, when realities seem unbearable and there is no one to whom
they can turn for sympathy or explanation.
At twilight when Bainbridge came home he found her still
there, pale, white-lipped, staring like someone terrorized by seeing
a vision. " What is the matter?" he asked in some alarm, "you
are ill. I'll ring for brandy."
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 169
" Don't," she said struggling to her feet, " I am perfectly well.
I have been thinking."
"Thinking what? My dear Jane, if thinking turns you into
such a tragedy queen, never try it."
"We have to sometimes," she said weakly striving to gain
time. " I have had a visit from Miss Hartford."
"And she said?"
" Oh ! she said many things."
" But I thought she never went to see anyone."
" She doesn't. She came, she told me, because you and Mrs.
Dandrey were out."
" Complimentary of her to mention it," he said lightly. " What
fell purpose led to the visit? "
She regarded him for a few moments in silence. He appeared
so handsome, so well groomed, so desirable, as he stood there in
the sunset light, looking so solicitously down upon her. He was
always punctiliously polite, and she realized dimly that he would
not sit down as long as she remained standing. She wondered why
this trifling fact should please her when her brain was on fire.
She was formulating a plan a test. Was he indifferent to her?
She was animated by a daring desire to find out, trusting to her
woman's wit to conceal her own feelings while she extracted from
him a hint a confession. Her every instinct seemed a nerve
center; she knew that they would register true that her judgment
would not fail her.
" Miss Hartford's real reason in coming was to warn me
against you," she began with studied coolness. " She thought that
I was beginning to care."
He was plainly puzzled by her tone. " What did you say? "
"Oh! I said many things," her laugh was admirably well
done. " I always say too many things."
"Not to me."
There was a false fervor about him that she had never
detected before. She had led him on awkwardly enough to the
brink of an avowal. She was over-wrought, and his apparent
willingness to stop and play with words seemed unendurable. She
felt that if he loved her he would have told her. He would
have shown some irritation at Mary Hartford's interference. She
was afraid that in spite of her efforts to speak calmly, she had be-
trayed herself, and he he stood there indifferent, self-contained.
She was but one of a hundred women he had met who
170 CONSEQUENCES [May,
had amused him. Her pride spurred her on to further effort. Now
was the time to act to act a part of her own improvising; now she
must conceal her humiliation and retreat, leaving him in a state of
uncertainty. Her test had succeeded. He had failed her.
" I always find Miss Hartford interesting," she said, and even
as she spoke her heart cried out in protest at the calmness of her
voice. " She is not like her brother who is so religious that
he ought to be in orders; she seems to have no faith, no hope.
Life must be very dull and dreary for her. I was reading She
Stoops to Conquer when she came in. Let us get up some private
theatricals for the benefit of something or somebody. Don't you
think we could ? "
" My dear Jane, I am no actor."
She picked up her book and walked leisurely to the door.
" I'm not so sure of that," she said as she left him.
CHAPTER XIV.
As the door closed behind Jane she gave a sobbing little sound.
Only the pitying angels knew what this afternoon had been to her.
She clung to the banisters as she walked heavily up the stairs. She
had a strange sense of faintness, and her one fear was that she
would fall and then someone would pick her up and take her to her
room, and send for the doctor and servants to wait on her, when her
one desire now was to be left alone.
She reached the second story in safety, and was half way
down the long corridor when she was arrested by the sound of
voices and words.
" Of course George did not want her but the nuns could not
keep her indefinitely."
Jane stopped instinctively, not reasoning about her position
as eavesdropper. The words fitted in so agonizingly with her own
convictions that she felt that she must hear more.
" But did her father leave her no income ? " It was Madge
now who spoke.
" Not a franc," said Mrs. Dandrey. " He must have been an
improvident creature. George has led her to believe that she has a
small income, and she has gone to him for money without hesitation.
She's the most unconventional simpleton about money matters you
ever knew."
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 171
" Do you think she will ever grow up ? "
" God knows," said Mrs. Dandrey hopelessly.
There was a slight noise of a moving chair in the room and Jane
hurried on, her first thought one of surprise that she could suffer
further. She threw herself face downwards on her great four
poster that had sheltered her so many happy, peaceful nights, and
turning her eyes to a beautiful little statue of the Virgin that the
nuns had given her she prayed aloud : " Mother of God have mercy
upon me have pity. What can I do I have no place no place."
Her nervous hands beat the pillows into grotesque shapes ; her
eyes were wide and staring. Tears would have been a relief but
they did not come. An hour went by; then she lay in silence like
one dumb with pain, until the clattering of dishes in the dining-
room which was directly below her own roused her to the fact that
she would have to go down stairs to dinner or else explain her
absence. She could not she would not. These people had borne
with her long enough. She thought, with humiliation, of the
hundreds of trifling liberties she had taken in the house, the as-
sumed possessive air of a daughter of the home. She thought of her
extravagance in procuring a wardrobe. She had known nothing
of the value of money. Her face burned when she remembered the
occasional demands she had made on Bainbridge. Once when
an old couple were to be turned out of their cabin she had asked for
money to pay the rent, and several times when there had been sick-
ness in the village, the priest had applied to her for help, and after
expending her regular allowance for medicine atid nourishing
food, she had gone to Bainbridge as a matter of course to ask for
more, and he had given it to her without question.
He had been kind to her so kind. He was her father's friend
her father who had been so cruel, so sinful, so despicable. She
could not think of her father. She must take short views views
of her own present. How could she escape from this terrible house
where she had remained too long an unwelcome intruder? She
could not stay another night. Her one idea now was flight.
She had made many acquaintances in her winter in Washing-
ton, but there seemed no one to whom she could turn in her hour of
need except Mrs. Van Doran. She had felt assured of the old
lady's friendship from the beginning. Mrs. Van Doran knew the
world too well to be surprised or shocked at anything. She knew
all sorts and conditions of men government officials, dramatic
critics, theatre managers. Perhaps she could get her a position
172 CONSEQUENCES [May,
where she could earn the right to live to live since she must not
die. She would go to Mrs. Van Doran. She looked gratefully
towards the statue on the mantel. It seemed to her that her prayer
had been heard, that the way had been cleared temporarily at least.
Getting up she began to pack some clothes in a traveling bag,
taking only the barest necessities. There were her mother's things
in the shabby hair trunk in the corner; she had the right to these
at least. As she raised the lid to select some needed underclothing
a packet of old letters fell from the ancient hat-box; she had not
examined the contents of this trunk since she had come to Bain-
bridge Hall. Anxious to leave no trace of her family history behind
her, she hastily tucked the package in one corner of her bag and
closing the clasp with a snap, she put on her long coat and the ugly
round hat she had worn on her arrival, and creeping down the
back stairs she passed unseen through the kitchen garden down a
narrow path to the open road.
The village station was only a mile and a half away. A
southern train bound for Washington would pass through at half
past six. She had a little money in her pocket, and her way seemed
plainer now that she was free of the house; she wished that she
had not made her satchel so heavy ; it was becoming a real burden,
and though she changed it repeatedly from hand to hand her muscles
ached with the unaccustomed weight.
She had not gone more than a mile when she saw another
lonely pedestrian coming towards her. For the moment she was
frightened, the road shadowed by black tree trunks and hedged by
tangled berry bushes seemed very remote from the few houses
scattered along the way. Then, with a little cry of relief, she rec-
ognized Paul Hartford. He was on his way home. She rested her
valise, and sitting down on it in the middle of the dusty road she
waited for the young minister to come up to her.
" I am on my way Mrs. Van Doran's to spend the night," she
explained, and in spite of her efforts her voice sounded strained
and tremulous. " I attempted to bring my own luggage and I find
I can carry it no further. Would you would it inconvenience you
very much if I asked you to take it to the station. It is such a
short distance now."
" I'll be delighted," he said, eagerly picking up her burden.
" Where is the carriage, the automobile, the horses, that you are
walking in all this dust ? "
She turned her head away. Even in the dim light of the
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 173
woods she was afraid he would see the gathering moisture in her
eyes. " Oh, don't ask me questions," she begged him wearily,
" I am going away. Going away to think."
" To think ? " he repeated. She had always bewildered him.
" Going away to think ? "
She looked beyond him into the gathering shadows,
" Your sister came to see me to-day," she said slowly.
" She told me the truth about my father. I suppose you
meant to be kind when you kept the truth from me all this time.
How you must have despised me."
" Despised you ! " his tone was full of feeling.
" You must have wanted to murder my father," she went on
vehemently. " A man who brought such sorrow, such shame, into
your only sister's life, while I I have no right to name to place
to existence."
" Oh, you must not say that," he protested, conscious only
of his helplessness in his great desire to comfort her. " You must
know she must have told you that your father was legally di-
vorced."
She stopped in the road and faced him. He was frightened
by the pallor of her face.
" Does that seem to make a difference to you? " she asked.
He had always found her direct questions difficult to answer,
and he had often evaded them, but now she was suffering. They
seemed to stand alone in an isolated world where all subterfuge
would be unfair.
" In the eyes of the law he was free," he said at last.
" But your church ? "
" It has sometimes admitted the right," he answered reluct-
antly.
" The right to remarry when one has a living wife? "
" Yes."
" Oh, then you cannot see things as I do. There never could
be the right ; he was not free. Surely surely, Mr. Hartford, you
would not marry a woman to a divorcee."
" I certainly would not wish to."
"But would you?"
" Perhaps if the divorced party were innocent and my bishop
ordered it."
"But would he?"
He had asked himself the same question many times. The
174 CONSEQUENCES [May,
attitude of his church towards divorce had been one of his great
stumbling-blocks. To his reverent mind marriage had always
seemed to him a sacrament dissoluble only by death. He had
written a scholarly paper to prove the truth of his convictions, but
it had been rejected by several church papers as too reactionary to
print.
" I know the Catholic point of view on the subject," he said
striving to gain time. " And I believe I share it, but I am not sure
that my bishop agrees with me. I am sorry that my sister told you
her story. The telling can accomplish no good."
" She came to me in all kindness," Jane made haste to assure
him, " and I think I think I am glad to know the truth. I
would not want to go blinded through a lifetime. The truth hurts,
but the sooner it is borne the better."
" It was a past tragedy," he said, as if he had struggled and
outlived. " Twenty-two years is a large part of a lifetime. I do not
see why it should be brought out now to shadow your life."
" It was sin," she cried, " horrible sin, and its shadow can
stretch through the centuries. Why should I be immune from
suffering for it when your sister your sister, my mother and I
are the victims. My father claimed the right to individual happi-
ness. It is the old cry the cry of the pagan soul." Her wonder-
ful voice was so full of emotion that for the moment he forgot his
self-effacing habit of reserve.
" And we all hear the cry," he responded. " We all hear it.
It comes to us at most unexpected times the cry for personal happi-
ness no matter what the cost. To live without reasoning, without
fear, without thought. Its plea is most alluring."
" Not to you," she said. " You are an ascetic and would
mistrust all happiness."
Her calm belief in him steadied him. She would never know
that he had been talking of himself and of his wild desire to claim
the right to love her.
" And we have to have confidence in ourselves before we can
attain," he said enigmatically.
Apparently she did not hear him. " Come," she said, " there
are the lights of the station. I have lingered too long as it is."
He could not understand the hidden meaning underlying her
words.
" It will be dark when you reach the city. I will go with you
to Mrs. Van Doran's."
1 9 i 2.] A CROIVN DIVINE 175
" No, no," she pleaded. " Please don't think me ungrateful,
but I would rather go alone. I'll get a cab when I reach the city.
You have been most kind but I would rather go alone."
He had a vast respect for anyone's desire for privacy. He had
suffered so much from kindly people who had insisted upon in-
truding upon him when he longed for solitude. He bought her
ticket for her, found her a comfortable seat on the train, and then
stood on the wooden platform of the station, watching with a
poet's vision the lurid shower of sparks from the receding engine,
little drej ming that Jane was passing out of his life forever.
(TO BE CONCLUDED.)
A CROWN DIVINE.
BY CAROLINE D. SWAN.
O kings of toil ! O men that wear
Stern labor's iron crown,
Half-tempted by its weight of care
To fling it down,
Be kingly, still ! Be calm, serene
Beneath its solemn state;
Keep silence! It were base, I ween,
To abdicate.
And noise and fret but ill befit
This strong, momentous hour ;
The clock of Time is striking it
From Earth's bell-tower.
176 A CROWN DIVINE [May,
'Tis noon ; o'er towns and fields afar
An earthquake hush impends.
O men and brothers, is it war ?
Or are we friends ?
In God's own sight, which shall it be,
Rich love and life, or death ?
O weary soul ! Who toiled for thee
At Nazareth?
Who labored all His lowly life
For those who paid Him scorn?
So patient 'mid embittered strife
From eve to morn.
His, the great kingliness, adore;
Praying, in silence dumb,
" O Lord, exalted evermore,
Thy kingdom come !
" Thou knowest all. Our cause of grief
Is deeper felt by Thee ;
Thy heart of love our pledged relief
Shall surely be."
Who loves and labors shall find love
Its own, its sure reward:
With thy Great Master throned above
Dwell in accord.
DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" AND CERTAIN OTHER
" ISMS."
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., SC.D., LL.D., F.R.S. K.S.G.
President of University College, Cork, Ireland.
% - II.
NATURAL SELECTION.
ATURAL Selection is the great contribution to theory
made by Darwin. I emphasize the word theory
because one must never forget the great additions
to positive science which were made by him, addi-
tions which must always remain a glory to him, even
if some of his hypotheses disappear under the destructive criticisms
of more widely-informed ages. As we have seen, transformism as
a theory did not owe its origin to Darwin, though it unquestionably
did owe to his writings its sudden rise to popularity and to that
general acceptance which it has obtained. Transformism, so to
speak, was in strong solution at the time that Darwin published his
greatest work. That work was like the crystal added which causes
the whole fluid contents of a vessel to become crystalline. But the
crystal added was the theory of the origin of species by Natural
Selection, and hence it will be necessary to devote some little space
to the consideration of this matter.
The theory is based on the knowledge which we possess that
the offspring of all living things, whilst generally resembling their
parents, still differ more or less from them, in other words, it is
based on the observed fact that variations do occur. Darwin con-
cluded that some at least of these variations would be of such a
character as to make their possessor a more successful combatant
in the battle of life, and thus more likely to be the progenitor of a
strong and vigorous race. The perpetuation and intensification of
such variation might in time lead to the formation of a new and
distinct species. " Can we doubt," he says (remembering that many
more individuals are born than can possibly survive), "that indi-
viduals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would
VOL. XCV. 12
178 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? "*
Since the theory was first brought before the public, it has been sub-
jected to every kind of criticism, favorable and unfavorable, and it
may be said that scientific opinion at this moment is much divided
as to the real value which is to be given to this supposed factor in
the process of transformism. There are those who stand by it
even more strongly than did its author, if that be possible. Lan-
kester, for example, says " in looking back over twenty-five years,
it seems to me that we must say that the conclusions of Darwin
as to the origin of species, by the survival of selected races in the
struggle for existence, are more firmly established than ever."f
On the other hand, there are writers of equal weight who will have
nothing whatever to do with the theory.
I take the most extreme expression of this form of opinion that
has come under my notice, that of Korschinsky, a Russian botanist,
who says that " the struggle for existence, and the selection that
goes hand in hand with it, constitute a factor which limits new forms
and hinders further variation, and is, therefore, in no way favorable
to the origin of new forms. It is a factor inimical to evolution."J
Then, finally, there is the middle and much the largest group of
those who, while holding that Natural Selection is a factor, even a
very potent factor in the process of transformism, hold it with
greater or less modifications, and all of whom agree in believing that
it is only a partial explanation of the process and not, as Darwinian
extremists would argue, a complete key to the secrets of Nature's
operations. Even in Darwin's own time the view was put forward
that Natural Selection was the cause of the variations which it was
supposed to control. Darwin himself comments on this view and
disclaims it : " Some have even imagined that Natural Selection
induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such
variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its condi-
tions of life." This makes Darwin's attitude quite clear, and
probably the prevalent opinion of to-day would be in accordance
with the views of de Vries when he says :||
*Origin of Species, ed. vi., p. 63.
\The Kingdom of Man, 1907, p. 124.
tAs quoted by Kellogg, op. cit., p. 333.
^Origin of Species, p. 63.
\\Daruiin and Modern Science, p. 70. The reader who is desirous of studying
a close criticism of the present position of the theory of Natural Selection may be
referred to Driesch's Science and Philosophy of the Organism, pp. 261 et seq.,
and the very full account of modern writings on this point in Kellogg.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 179
Natural Selection acts as a sieve; it does not single out the
best variations, but it simply destroys the larger number of those
which are, from some cause or another, unfit for their present
environment. In this way it keeps the strains up to the required
standard, and in special circumstances may even improve them.
Natural Selection, at any rate, is no proof of monism; for
this excellent reason: that it explains nothing. For nothing is
explained until the origin of variation is explained. What makes
the living organism vary? That is the question of questions? To
that question science so far has no certain reply, as might be shown
were it possible to devote an entire article to the point. Vitalists
and neo-vitalists say that it is the entelechy or principle of life, a
factor wholly different from the material factor of the organism,
which causes variation and, as many of them and these not Catho-
lics would also say, causes variation along fixed and predeterminate
lines. Naegeli, for example, believed in a " principle of progressive
development, a something inherent in the organic world which
makes each organism in itself a force or factor making towards
specialization, adaptation, that is towards progressive evolution."*
Most persons of ordinary common-sense would agree that if a
principle of this far-reaching character is found to be inherent in the
organic world, that inherent principle must have been put into the
organic world by some one or by something. We Catholics say
that it was put in by the Creator of all things, and the only reply
that we meet with on the part of our opponents is that no one can
know who put it in. I am now, of course, speaking of those oppo-
nents who believe in an inherent tendency: those who do not have
still to meet the initial difficulty of explaining how variations occur.
As one further development of Naegeli's views may be cited,
his statement that " animals and plants would have developed about
as they have, even had no struggle for existence taken place, and the
climatic and geologic conditions and changes been quite different
from what they have been."f It is pretty obvious that views such
as these do not compel a monistic explanation : most persons would
say that they run directly contrary to it.
Kellogg, p. 277. t/6., p. 278.
:8o DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
III.
SEXUAL SELECTION.
This was another very attractive theory put forward side by
side with that just discussed, and intended to assist in the explana-
tion of transformism.
Darwin thought that the brilliant colors, and many other
characteristics which sometimes but by no means always dis-
tinguish the males of a species from the females, might be ac-
counted for by the fact that these secondary sexual characters were
pleasing to the female, and that those males whose variations had
been in the direction of an acquisition of, or an intensification of,
these characters would be most likely to secure the most desirable
females. Now this theory was, of course, more or less vitiated by
the underlying fallacy that it depends upon an anthropomorphic
interpretation of the animal mind. There is little proof that
brightly colored members of one sex do, by that fact, attract
members of the other. As a matter of fact actual experiment has
shown that amongst insects where coloration may be said to reach
its maximum dyeing of the wings with strange colors does not
seem to have made any difference in the sexual relations between
changed and unchanged specimens. And other experiments seem
to prove, that again amongst insects, it is scent and not sight which
attracts the sexes towards each other. One must bear in mind that
just as it has been said (by Wundt) that the reason that animals
do not talk is because they have nothing to talk about, so also it may
be said, with good reason, that they do not admire the points in
their kind which seem to us so exquisitely beautiful, for the simple
reason that they have no aesthetic sense and admire nothing. Kip-
ling and others write charming books in which animals talk to one
another, and reason as if they were human beings. We must beware
of taking these things seriously, and reasoning from our own ideas
of which we know something, though perhaps not much, to those of
animals of which we know just nothing. One need not delay long
over the theory of Sexual Selection. It was never adopted by
Wallace, Darwin's great companion in broaching the theory of
Natural Selection, and it has steadily declined in popularity since
it was first formulated. The balance of the tendencies of later days,
as the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says,* " has been
against the attachment of great importance to sexual selection,"
*Art. Evolution, p. 34.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 181
and there we may leave the matter with this final remark, that
if it is a factor, it is only a factor and is no more but rather
much less an explanation than is Natural Selection.
IV.
PANGENESIS.
Strictly speaking, this theory was not original to Darwin,
for Buffon had suggested something of a similar character long
before. But Darwin's hypothesis was the first attempt to grapple
with the physical explanation of heredity which gained any
great amount of public attention. An explanation is needed of why
the child resembles its parents, sometimes too in the smallest points,
such as a birth-mark, a dimple, a curious arrangement of the eye-
brows, not less, of course, why it resembles its parents at all.
This, again, is a matter which cannot possibly be dealt with here,
but it may be said that Darwin's theory and that of the other micro-
merists, if one may use Delage's convenient term to group them
together, however those theorists may differ in detail, is governed
by the idea that in the tiny germ are still tinier infinitely tinier
they must needs be representatives of every variable portion of
the body, by the development of which representatives the new
body is built up with the necessary resemblances. Of course,
this theory is one which never could be scientifically demonstrated.
The germ is often far more often than not a microscopic object,
and it has been calculated that some trillions of the minor elements
in it would be required to meet the necessities of the case. These
could never, it may safely be said, be demonstrated by the micro-
scope, or by any other means conceivable to our present knowledge
of science and scientific methods. The weakness of this theory is
in its amazing complexity, a complexity which goes beyond the
bounds of belief when it is carefully studied. " Any theory which
involves the assumption of morphological units as representing
characters must bring us to an impasse in a very few generations,
as is demonstrated by the working out of such a theory to compara-
tively few degrees upward from offspring to parents, grandparents,
and so on."* It cannot be said that the theory of Pangenesis and
others of its kind have secured any firm hold on scientific opinion,
rather must it be said that they are losing what hold they once pos-
sessed.f
Walker, Hereditary Characters and Their Mode of Transmission, 1910, p. 121.
tSee the criticism of Pangenesis in Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation, pp.
.233 et scq.
182 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
V.
THE ORIGIN OF MAN.
On this vast and important subject but little can be said in a
brief series of articles like these, but some attempt must be made to
sketch the outlines of the controversy as it now stands.
As we have seen, Darwin believed that man, body and soul
(if we may be permitted to use the latter term in such a connec-
tion) was developed from some lower form, and we have also seen
the result which this conviction produced in his own mind. This
result, one would have thought, should have led him to doubt the
certainty of his own conclusions as to the spiritual relationship of
man and apes, rather than to doubt the dependability of human
reasoning. Now in considering this question we must separate the
two aspects of the case. There is a clear separation in the Biblical
account of the Creation of Man. " Man was made rational after
he was made ' corporeal.' The Lord God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and man became 'a living soul' (Gen. ii. 7). Here are two acts
on the part of the Creator the forming the dust and the breathing
the life."*
Let us discuss from a purely scientific standpoint the two
separately, and let us commence with the inferior, (a) The Body
of Man. Unquestionably, in a general way, it may be said that the
anatomical outlines of the human body closely resemble those of
the higher apes. There are differences, of course, but the resem-
blances are far more numerous. This at least suggests a genetic
connection through some common ancestor, and some would say
like Schwalbef that the experiments of Friedenthal and others
as to the behavior of the blood of man and other mammals strength-
ened this probability. This particular point is at present in too
inchoate a condition to be dealt with otherwise than tentatively, and
those who desire to know more about it may be referred to the
account of the discussion between Friedenthal and Wasmann, where
it would appear to be admitted that no relationship in the sense of
community of origin is claimed to have been proved by this method.J
But a suggestion is not a proof. There may be a score of ways of
explaining the likeness between two things, all or at least nineteen
*Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day, 1869, Sermon viii., p. loi.
tin his article in Darwin and Modern Science, p. 129.
JWasmann, Problem of Evolution, pp. 67 and 139.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 183
of which may be wholly illusory. Let us look at certain points of
difficulty. In the first place it may be said as will be gathered
from a previous section that the recapitulation or biogenetic theory
has proved to be a broken reed, and that the arguments once adduced
from it with regard to the descent of man can only be accepted
with great caution and with many reservations. Then, in the next
place, there is the question of the missing link or links. " There
is not, as is often assumed, one 'missing link' to be discovered, but at
least a score of such links, to fill adequately the gap between man and
apes; and their non-discovery is now one of the strongest proofs
of the imperfection of the geological record."* What an amazing
non-sequitur! Surely it might be claimed, with at least equal justice,
that the fact that the " missing links " have not turned up is some
sort of proof that they do not exist, at least in any quantity. See
the force of a parti pris! The venerable writer of the lines just
quoted has in a paragraph almost immediately preceding stated that
" all evolutionists are satisfied that the common ancestor of man
and the anthropoid apes must (his italics) date back to the Miocene,
if not to the Eocene, period." So that the line of argument is this:
Although no one has ever seen any trace of him, man and the apes
must have had a common ancestor at the time mentioned ; nothing
has ever been found of that ancestor; therefore the geological
record is imperfect. It does not need any profound acquaintance
with logic to see through that syllogism.
At any rate Wallace admits that there are a number of miss-
ing links, and Branco, who as Director of the Geological and Pal-
aeontological Institute of the Berlin University, may be accepted
as a competent authority, tells us that in the history of our planet
man appears as a genuine Homo novus. It is possible, he says, to
trace the ancestry of most of our present mammals among the fossils
of the Tertiary period, but man appears suddenly in the Quarter-
nary period, and has no Tertiary ancestors as far as we know.
Human remains of the Tertiary period have not yet been discovered,
and the traces of human activity, which have been referred to that
period, are of a very doubtful nature, but Diluvial remains abound.
Man of the Diluvial epoch, however, appears at once as a complete
Homo sapiens.^ And further to the question, " Who was the
Wallace, The World of Life, ign, p. 247.
tWasmann, Modern Biology, p. 477. The address was given in 1901. Since
then the " traces of human activity " in the Tertiary period have been practically
abandoned by authorities. Cf. Sollas Ancient Hunters.
1 84 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
ancestor of man ? " he replies, " Palaeontology tells us nothing of
the subject it knows no ancestors of man."
Let us glance for a moment at what is known at present with
regard to the earliest remains of man. There are two anomalous
and puzzling examples, and then something like a definite series.
The first of the former group is the collection of bones found near
Trinil, in Java, by Dubois, and sometimes alluded to as Pithecan-
thropus erectus. With regard to these it may be said that ( i ) there
is some doubt as to whether the objects discovered, viz., the top
of the skull, the tooth and the thigh-bone all belonged to the same
individual, since they were found at some little distance from one
another; (2) the careful explorations made by an expedition con-
ducted by Mme. Selenka to the same place, which have just been
made public,* have failed to reveal any further remains of a similar
kind, or any evidence of implements or such traces of human ac-
tivity; (3) there is the widest difference of opinion as to the kind
of animal to which the top of the skull belonged, some holding it
to have been an ape, others an ape-like man, others an individual
half-way between the two. It must be obvious that at present it
would be very dangerous to build up any theory on such a basis of
sand, though to judge from what one sees in shallow manuals and
pamphlets, we might know Pithecanthropus as well as we know the
Gorilla or the Macaque.
The other case is that of the Heidelburg lower jaw. Of this
curious and most interesting relic, all that can be said at present
is that the bony part is more monkey-like than that of any human
jaw so far examined, whilst, on the other hand, the teeth are less
monkey-like than those of some undoubtedly human examples of
the present day. Here again it is impossible to build a theory on
a single lower jaw, and especially on one with such anomalous
characteristics.
Passing away from these puzzling specimens, the significance
of which may be cleared up some day, we come to the first race
of man of whom we have something like definite information, those
of Le Moustier, to which it would appear that the much-disputed
Neanderthal skull belongs. And what do we know about them?
In the first place, we know that they were men in every sense of the
word, and big-brained men too, since the cubic capacity of their
skulls is greater than that of the average European of the present
day. And in the next place, we know that they believed in a soul and
*L'AnthropoIgie, 1911, p. 551.
1912.] DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " 185
a future life for that soul, for the very earliest interment known,
that of the valley of the Chapelle aux Saints, is one with those " ac-
companying gifts " which all the world over have but one signifi-
cance, namely, a belief in the after-life and a desire to provide the
spirit of the dead person with objects useful to it in that life. No
wonder that Professor Sollas should say that it gives one something
like a shock to run up against this world-wide custom during the dis-
appearance of the Great Ice Age.* It would appear then from the
most recent discoveries that Wallace has very good reason for ad-
mitting the need of the missing links, and for acknowledging their
present absence.
Lastly, so far as this imperfect sketch is concerned, there is
the exceeding great difficulty of explaining how man came to be
evolved, and how it was that he was not exterminated during the
process. It is held by most Darwinians that it is by the slow ac-
cumulation of small variations that evolution works its way. One
of the greatest difficulties, set in the way of Darwin's theories, was
that which pointed out that for a time every such small variation,
before it could get far enough to be of advantage to its possessor,
would or might be a positive disadvantage as requiring greater
strength to carry it, greater nutriment to provide for it, and the
like. Now in the case of man it would seem that every step in the
direction of evolution, and that perhaps for long ages, must have
made him less able to contend with his environment, must in fact
have placed him in a position in which nothing could have saved
him from destruction. The late Professor Dwight, whose lamented
death has deprived America of a distinguished man of science and
the Church of a most loyal son, sums this argument up most pithily
in his last work.f Speaking of man he says :
Not very strong of arm, not very swift of foot, without a well-
developed hairy hide, or large teeth, or strong claws, he seems
as a mere animal, an exceedingly unfortunate one, good neither
for attack nor defence, in short, very unfit for the struggle for
existence, in that imaginary period of half-fledgedness between
brute and man. His instincts and his senses, that of touch per-
haps excepted, though in the savage state undoubtedly greater
than those of civilized man, are by no means remarkable. Take
*For a careful discussion of the matters just alluded to, see Sollas, Ancient
Hunters, 1911. The Professor of Geology in Oxford is admittedly a first rate authority
on these matters.
^Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist, 1911, p. 158.
i86 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
him as a mere animal, what is he but an egregious failure ? By
what kind of evolution could such a creature rise who shows
throughout his body only instances of the survival of the
unfittest? Let us try to imagine him rising in the scale ac-
cording to the dogmas of evolution. Let us watch the arbor-
eal monkey well-fitted for his surroundings gradually losing
all that fits him for them. We see his coat growing thinner,
his arms shorter, so that he loses his " reach," his legs longer,
so that climbing becomes harder, and at the same time his brain
growing in some incomprehensible way, and for no good reason,
excepting that it is necessary for the theory to believe that
the brain-development went on so swimmingly that it compen-
sated for the physical degeneration.
So far as I am aware there has been no successful attempt to
get out of this dilemma, nor do I see any way out of it, except by
assuming under the Mutation theory that a great and wonderful
change was made, and made suddenly, by which the brute became
corporeally man. This is scientifically tenable, and would avoid the
difficulty raised by Professor Dwight, but it must candidly be ad-
mitted that there is no direct evidence for it, and indeed it is hard
to see how there could be any evidence for such a thing. Meantime
this question may be asked, still from the standpoint of science:
Suppose such a great and sudden Mutation to have occurred, and
suppose that this corporeally developed being became man, as we
know him, by the inbreathing of an immortal soul; is there any
great difference between that series of events and the special crea-
tion of man at which some scientific men look so much askance?
But apart from this surmise, for it can be no more, looking fairly at
all the facts, can it really be claimed that the origin of man is a
question on which science, which, as Ruskin puts it, " does not
speak until it knows," has said the last word or, indeed, has any
right to express anything but the most guarded hypothesis? He
would be a hardy man who claimed that the subject of the origin
of man's corporeal part was res judicata. Yet we have this very
theory of the evolution of man's body laid down as a proved fact
time after time in the manuals and articles to which I have so often
alluded. We have poor Darwin doubting his own competence to
form any opinion, because he was so sure of that one opinion that
his brain had come from that of an ape, and by his brain he meant
his sentient part. Finally we have all sorts of theories of educa-
tion, and what not else, built up on a foundation which surely is not
ipi2.] DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " 187
strong enough to carry the edifice which has been erected upon it.
To what these lead we shall later on refer.
(b) The Soul of Man. Here I must be much more brief, for
here we are in contact with a psychological argument which it is
impossible for me to develop here, and here too we are in contact
with a question which is a settled one for Catholics, namely, the
existence of a soul and its attributes and origin.
All that I propose to do here is to set down a few observa-
tions by non-Catholics, which at least show that our Catholic view
is not the hopelessly antiquated and discredited thing that many
would like to make out. I will take four instances, and they shall
all be recent ones.
(1) Dr. McDougall is Reader in Mental Philosophy in the
University of Oxford. He has recently published a book, in the
preface of which he says that " to many minds it must appear noth-
ing short of a scandal that anyone occupying a position in an
academy of learning, other than a Roman Catholic seminary, should
in this twentieth century defend the old-world notion of the soul of
man."* Scandal or no scandal, after a lengthy consideration of
what is to be said on the other side and in spite, so it would appear,
of some preliminary prejudice against the view, he does come to
a conclusion not markedly different from that which we hold as
to the existence of the soul of man.
(2) Driesch I have already quoted from, and will once more
quote from him to show his opinion with respect to the fact that
the difference mentally between man and apes is one of kind and
not of degree.
Darwinism and phylogeny laid stress on man's affinity to
animals, and with justice in respect to most details of his
organization ; that was all right so far, though there was always
a difficulty with regard to the hemispheres of the brain. In
agreement with this particular, the experiments of the last
few years, carried out by English and American authors (Lloyd
Morgan, Thorndike, Hobhouse, Kinnamann), have shown that
as far as the degree of acting is the point of comparison, there
is a difference between man and even the highest apes which is
simply enormous ; man after all remains the only " reasoning "
organism, in spite of the theory of descent.f
(3) Wallace was the co-emitter of the theory with which
*Body and Mind, 1911. tO/>. eit., it., p. 106.
i88 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
Darwin's name came to be chiefly connected. In his last work, from
which I have already quoted, he considers the question of man's
position present and future, and says that the glory and distinction
of man is
that he is continually and steadily advancing in the knowl-
edge of the vastness and mystery of the universe in which he
lives; and how any student of any part of that universe can
declare, as so many do, that there is only a difference of degree
between himself and the rest of the animal-world that, in
Haeckel's forcible words, " OUT own human nature sinks to
the level of a placental mammal, which has no more value for
the universe at large than the ant, the fly of a summer's day,
the microscopic infusorium, or the smallest bacillus " is alto-
gether beyond my comprehension.*
(4) Professor Sedgwick, of the Royal College of Science,
London, is the author of a well-known text-book of Zoology. The
terminating words of the second volume shall be my last quotation
under this heading, f
The mental qualities which are so characteristic of the genius
Homo have led many naturalists to create a special family
(Anthropidae) or even order (Bimana) for its reception. But
in this work we are concerned with man from the standpoint
of morphology, and in assigning him his position in the system
we can only take into consideration the facts of his bodily
structure, as we have done in the case of the other animals. If
psychical characters were taken into account in Zoology, the
whole of classification would be thrown into confusion, and in
the case of man how should we define the position to be assigned
to him ? For
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express
and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehen-
sion how like a god!
and again:
Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast
crowned him with glory and honor.
*The World of Life, p. 374.
tSedgwick, Text-book of Zoology, vol. ii., p. 665.
ig\2.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 189
SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE POINTS.
We are now at an end of this brief consideration of the points
which we laid down, and may rapidly summarize the conclusions
arrived at :
(1) Transformism, though widely accepted, is not proved to a
demonstration. It is an excellent working hypothesis and, as such,
need not disturb the mind of a Catholic in the smallest possible
degree.
(2) Natural Selection is held by some and denied by others.
In any case it is only a means to an end, and in no sense a cause.
(3) Sexual Selection is much less widely and definitely held
than it once was. It also, if it exists, is only a means to an end.
(4) Pangenesis is more than doubtful, and is abandoned by
most biologists.
(5) However indications may seem to point to the development
of man's body from that of some lower form, there is at present
no sufficient evidence to prove anything of the kind. All psycho-
logical evidence goes to prove that man's spiritual part differs in
kind as well as in degree from that of the beast.
Is it putting it too high to conclude that there is an air of
uncertainty about all these theories when they are dispassionately
examined in the light of modern opinion? I admit that no trace
of this uncertainty is allowed to appear in the little cock-sure man-
uals which I have so often alluded to, but the uncertainty is there
all the same, and no one can carefully study the literature of science
without becoming aware of it. Indeed no scientific man would
hesitate to admit, at least as much as has been stated in these articles,
as to the differences of opinion which exist amongst the exponents
of evolution.
Yet it is on this uncertain and shifting sand that we are asked
to build up an impregnable and unshakeable edifice of monism and
morality. " We have now," says the late Professor Dwight, " the
remarkable spectacle that just when many scientific men are of
accord that there is no part of the Darwinian system that is of any
very great influence, and that as a whole the theory is not only
unproved but impossible, the ignorant half-educated masses have
acquired the idea that it is to be accepted as a fundamental fact.
Moreover, it is not to them an academic question of biology, but, as
the matter has been presented to them, it is a system : to-wit, the
monistic system of philosophy. Thus presented it undeniably is
DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " [May,
fatal, not only to all religion, but to any system of morals founded
on a supernatural basis."*
" Thus presented " that is exactly the point. It is thus pre-
sented, because those who thus present it are either blinded by their
own prejudices or deliberately desire to blind others so that they
may not perceive the real bearings of these biological hypotheses
and discussions upon religious and moral questions. It is not pos-
sible to discuss the questions of monism and morality here with any
completeness, but it will be well to glance for a moment at the
matter and see what is entailed by an acceptance of the views of
a man like Haeckel. Haeckel's " monism " is something like the old
and well-known doctrine of hylo-zoism, but, as the last edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica says, " it is materialism dignified by a
higher title." This theory implies that " matter," i. e., the material
universe is infinite, that so is the " ether," that they fill infinite space,
and that both are " eternal," and both are " alive." So Wallace
sums it up, and continues that " none of these things can possibly
be known, yet he states them as positive facts." Further, that these
assertions are " surely not science, and very bad philosophy."!
As has been already said, we cannot here discuss the question
of whether the universe itself is eternal and alive, but it may just
be mentioned that this alternative to their view was suggested by
the learned authors of The Unseen Universe in the Preface to their
Second Edition, where they seem to anticipate the very words
of Haeckel : " To reduce matters to order, we may confidently
assert that the only reasonable and defensible alternative to our
hypothesis (or, at least, something similar to it) is the stupendous
pair of assumptions that visible matter is eternal, and that IT IS
ALIVE. If anyone can be found to uphold notions like these
(from a scientific point of view) we shall be most happy to enter
the lists with him." In this passage, the italics and capitals of which
are those of the authors, it is clear that they consider that they have
*Op. cit., p. 6.
EWorld of Life, p. 7. This is not an article on Haeckel. If it were it would
be easy to show how little count is taken of his opinions by men of science, yet how
much he counts with the ignorant. Those who wish to pursue this matter further
are recommended to consult Wallace's book as above, and to note that he says
that whilst having sympathy with Haeckel's dislike of theological dogma he has
" none with his unfounded dogmatism of combined negation and omniscience, and
more especially when this assumption of superior knowledge seems to be put
forward to conceal his real ignorance of the nature of life itself." See also : Lodge,
Life and Matter; Gerard, The Old Riddle and The Newest Answer; Dwight,
vt supra; Brass and Gemelli, L'Origine dell 'Uomo e le Falsificazioni di E. Haeckel,
and Fr. Wasmann's two books already cited.
igi2.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 191
proved their view by a reductio ad absurdum, yet this absurdum
is the theory which Haeckel and his followers would have us accept.
The real fact is that Haeckel advances the theory that " Darwin-
ism " is the main weapon in the fight for monism, because he means
by " Darwinism " his own monistic paraphrase of that collection
of hypotheses. From what has been said it is abundantly clear that
Darwin's views and the views of his predecessors in teaching trans-
formism do not compel the acceptance of a monistic philosophy of
life. That it does compel such an acceptance is the Haeckelian
statement, but it is absolutely and demonstrably false. It cannot
be too frequently pointed out that Darwin and Darwinism as
expounded by Darwin and not as " glossed " by his followers
provide no explanation of the start of things, though they may or
may not provide an explanation of how things went on once they
had been started. Haeckel says that they never were started, but
that they were always going and always alive, but that view is
no part of the depositum of Darwinism as enunciated by Darwin :
it is a Haeckelian gloss. It is unnecessary for us to explain here the
Christian attitude towards the question, and it must be left to the
candid reader to consider which view is intrinsically the more
likely to be true, and whether the idea that all matter is alive and
sentient is really one to commend itself to a sane consideration
of things as they are.
MORALITY AND MORALS.
Meantime, before passing to the last section of this series of
papers, it may be well to say a few words as to the bearing of this
question on that of morality and morals. If Darwinism, as ex-
pounded by its wilder prophets, is to be a rule of life, a guide in
education and a general gospel, we should at least take a look at the
road along which it is likely to lead us. Now, as we have seen,
of all the items included in the creed of Darwinism, that of Natural
Selection is the most important. It was set in the fore-front of his
theories by Darwin himself, and is extolled by his most faithful
followers as being a process of the highest importance in connection
with evolution. If Darwinism, then, is to be taken as a rule of life,
it behooves us to assist and co-operate with the process of Natural
Selection as it applies to our own species, which, we learn from
the same teaching, differs only in degree and not in kind from other
species in the animal kingdom. Very well; but Natural Selection
implies the Survival of the Fittest, and, if we consider for one mo-
192 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [May,
merit, that implies the Eradication of the Unfittest. If, therefore,
we are to carry out our Darwinian principles to their logical end,
we must ruthlessly condemn to the lethal chamber every weak and
sickly member of our race; the consumptive and the feeble-minded
must be exterminated as soon as their condition is conclusively
determined; charity must come to an end, and rigid justice demand
the abolition of all human beings who are not likely to conduce to
the production of a strong, healthy, and, if possible, improved race
of human beings. In a sense this is the view which underlies a
certain amount of what is now called Eugenics, though it must at
once be admitted that the professors of this doctrine have never
suggested that such measures as those just outlined should be
applied to humanity. However, once we accept a rule of life, we
must have done with picking and choosing; we must follow that
rule; and we see what a logical following of the Darwinian theory
as a rule of life a thing never contemplated by Darwin himself
would lead us to. The fact is that it is impossible to deduce a moral
code from a purely materialistic philosophy of life. Listen to
Driesch on this point : " How could I feel 'morally' towards other
individuals if I knew that they were machines and nothing more?
Machines, which some day / myself might be able to construct
like a steam engine! To a convinced theoretical materialist, to
whom his neighbor is a real mechanical system, morality is an ab-
surdity."*
To quote another writer in continuation of this train of
thought :
There is no such thing as " natural religion " or " natural
ethics," if we understand by these terms a religion or an ethical
code derived from " Nature." Nature is not a moral entity ;
there is no morality in Nature. And if we profess to derive
an ethical law from Nature, we are deriving this law, not from
Nature as she is, but from Nature as we see her, and this is
an entirely different thing. When we set about to discover a
foundation for the moral law which is to be purely rational-
istic, and when we think to discover this foundation in Nature
herself, we are crediting Nature with qualities she does not
possess, we are reading into the book of Nature metaphysical
conceptions of our own, whether we will it or not. As soon as
an appeal is made to a moral law, appeal is made to some-
thing surpassing the individual, to something the validity of
which we assume quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus.
"Op. dt., ii., 358.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 193
Consequently, this " something " cannot be contained in the
individual reason, the validity of which is purely personal ; it
must of necessity transcend individual reason; or, in other
words, it must be supra-rational. Rational moralists, once they
attempt to discover the categorical imperative, appeal to the
supra-rational.*
We do not propose to discuss Me et nunc the question of what
the world would do without a system of morality. But what we are
advancing here is the theory that no such thing as a scheme of
morality, which would be recognizable as such by ordinary decent-
minded people, can be deduced from external nature, and that the
scheme of life, morally and socially, which would follow upon a close
copy of nature of nature " red in tooth and claw " as we see it
around us, would be one which could not be contemplated without
horror even by the most thoughtless and debauched human being.
The choice then is placed before us : a materialistic world with no
moral sanction or a world on principles taught by Christianity, and
we may ask ourselves which picture best commends itself to all that
is best in our natures? And before passing away from this part
of our subject let us once more impress on our readers that " Dar-
winism," falsely so-called by many of its prophets of to-day, and
Darwinism as propounded by Darwin, are two wholly different
things; that Darwin never proposed to explain the origin of things
or to establish a rule of life, and that whatever may be said of the
truth of his theories, and it must be admitted that many of them
crumble away more or less under criticism, they in no way warrant
many of the conclusions which his followers have drawn from
them. It may seem like vain repetition once more to enunciate this
opinion, but it can scarcely be urged too often, at least so one has to
conclude from the ignorance still shown on the point by so many
writers and readers.
(TO BE CONCLUDED.)
*Chatterton-HiIl, Heredity and Selection in Sociology, 1907, p. xxvi.
VOL. XCV. 13
AT THE ABBEY OF THE WOODS.
BY MICHAEL EARLS, SJ.
INTROIT.
The woods raise high a temple's amplitude,
Adown whose aisles the organ breeze
Sing with the birds' antiphonies,
A symbol service for the Crib and Rood.
I.
BLUEBIRDS.
As vergers at a temple door
Announce the Sacred Hours,
These bluebird voices come before
The Spring's expectant bowers,
And call the woodland blooms once more
To raise their voiceful flowers :
" Arise, good folk, by hill and plain,
(Benedicamus Domino),
And to our Lord with glad refrain,
(Cantemus magno gaudio,)
Sing canticles of praise again,
(Et nunc et omni saeculo)."
II.
THE CARDINAL BIRD.
Through all the purgatorial pains
Of winter wind and snow,
His voice is hushed and ne'er complains
Of long and lonely woe :
But when the blessed woods rejoice
With Spring and heavenly days,
Exultantly returns the voice
And heart renewed for praise.
III.
OWLS.
Beyond the farthest gates of day,
Lost souls they dwell in Stygian night,
And wail with endless ululay,
In hatred of the blessed light.
1912.] AT THE ABBEY OF THE WOODS 195
IV.
SPARROWS.
A farthing's price such common things
As sparrows are we say,
All songless in their traffickings
And useless to the day.
O, men are we of little worth,
Yet may we learn of these,
" No sparrow falls unto the earth,
Without the Father sees."
OFFERTORY.
An altar is the eastern hill
Aglow at morning's hour,
The chancel dales with incense fill
From each adoring flower:
" All glory to His holy will,
And to His wondrous power."
V.
WRENS.
They sing of God at work or meat,
For all they have or need,
Their prayers of trustful song entreat
To bless each day and deed :
For this they know is godliness,
And well a Christian's part,
In plenty's peace or want's duress,
To show a praise ful heart.
VI.
CROWS.
Ah woe! Far out from peace, black scoffers brood
With atheist hate : and when the call
Rings wild with anarchy, they fall
Down the dark vales for glut of carrion food.
196 AT THE ABBEY OF THE WOODS [May,
VII.
WINTER BIRDS.
When barren lies the wintry moor,
And songless stands the air,
These birds in robes of gray endure
Like friars at work and prayer:
As if a Trappist brotherhood,
They take deserted dells,
And bless with orison the food
They reap by snow-walled cells.
VIII.
THE THRUSH.
At priedieus in a topmost tree
He chants his prayer of ecstasy,
(0, will of God! 0, blessed will,)
And here above the lanes of care,
Aloof in meditative air,
(Be God's good will mine to fulfill,)
Abides this brown contemplative,
With joys that here abundant live :
(Seek first for God with heart and mind,)
As if his far-off sight could see
That little house in Bethany,
(All other things ye then shall find,)
Where Martha busied all her days,
And Mary kept one thoughtful gaze:
(All thoughts but one are alien,)
And Christ did say that Mary's heart
Chose for its love the better part,
(The loving thought of God. Amen!)
POSTLUDE.
Adown the hills the morning runs
Unto the valleyed day,
One law goes westward with the suns,
The praise of God alway.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH ON
THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.
BY CHARLES F. AIKEN, S.T.D.
HAT view did the Fathers of the Church take in
regard to the right of private property ? What was
their attitude towards riches ? Did they, as we some-
times read in works dealing with economic questions,
denounce every rich man as a robber, and condemn
all individual ownership of property as an injustice? Or, on the
other hand, was it the abuse rather than the possession of wealth
that they made the object of their denunciation ?
None of the Fathers attempt an economic discussion of the
right of private property. They were, first and last, expounders of
Holy Scripture and preachers of the moral law. They were Chris-
tian moralists, and it is from the point of view of practical morals
that they speak of property ownership and its obligations as directly
affecting the conduct of their fellow-Christians. They had in
mind two distinct ends : first, the end incumbent on all of so con-
forming one's conduct to the will of God as to secure salvation, and
secondly, that held out to nobler souls of imitating the spirit of
self-renunciation exemplified in the life of Jesus, thus attaining
to a higher grade of Christian perfection. For the former end,
the Fathers call to mind what is of strict moral duty ; for the latter,
they gently urge, but do not enjoin, the counsels of perfection, one
of which is voluntary poverty.
Again, in order to understand the severe tone in which the
Fathers sometimes speak of riches and of its obligations, we must
bear in mind that the social world in which they lived was greatly
different from our own. The wonderful industrial developments
that have taken place in modern times have led to an enormous
production of wealth, the possession of which by private individuals
rests on honorable titles. In the days of the Roman empire, the
acquisition of wealth was but too frequently secured by the spolia-
tion of conquered lands, by extortionate tax-collecting, by excessive
usury, by the exploiting of defenseless widows and orphans, and
by other dubious means. The result was that, in the popular mind,
a certain stigma attached to the possession of great wealth. It was
198 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
a popular saying, the rich man is either an unjust man or the
heir of one (dives iniquus aut iniqui heres).
There was then a proportionately larger number of unfor-
tunate individuals, reduced to dire straits through illness and lack
of industrial employment, who were dependent for the bare neces-
sities of life on the charity of more favored persons, and on the
ministrations of the clergy of the local churches, each of which
maintained by voluntary contributions a treasury for the poor.
There did not then flourish the great variety of asylums, hospitals,
bureaus of assistance, which are the glorious flowering in medieval
and modern times of the spirit of Christian charity. And so, in
earlier times, the duty of aiding the poor bore more directly and
more urgently on the wealthy individual. And it was the obliga-
tions of the property owner, rather than his rights and privileges,
that engaged the attention of the Fathers.
The Church Fathers were careful students of the New Testa-
ment and faithful exponents of its teachings ; what they have to say
on the moral aspect of the posesssion of wealth will always be in
harmony with the teachings of Christ and His apostles.
Now, what is the New Testament teaching on this important
matter ? For here, too, advocates of communism have fancied they
have found a justification of their system of economic reform.
The New Testament teaches that the possession of great wealth is
generally an obstacle to salvation, being very apt to lead to sensual-
ity, pride, neglect of God, and indifference to the needs of those in
distress. Hence the saying of Christ : " It is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. xix. 24.)* Our blessed
Lord uses this figure to imply great difficulty, not absolute impos-
sibility, for He supplements the statement with the words, " With
men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Our
blessed Lord warns the rich to make friends of the mammon of
iniquity (Luke xvi. 9), that is, to use wealth as stewards rather than
absolute owners. In this way the rich man can become a worthy
member of Christ's kingdom, though there is a still more perfect
way, by imitating Christ's poverty and detachment from worldly
pleasures. Thus to the rich young man, He said : " If thou wilt
be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor,. . . .and
come, follow me." (Matt. xix. 21.) But Christ did not demand
*Plato, in his Laws, V., 743, says: "I can never agree with them that the
rich man will be really happy unless he is also good; but for one who is eminently
good to be extremely rich is impossible."
1912.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 199
renunciation of wealth as a requisite for salvation, provided that
it was subordinated to the proper service of God and made to min-
ister to good deeds. Salvation came to Zacheus, who, being
touched by the love of Christ, restored four-fold what he had
wrongly gained, and gave but half of his legitimate possessions
to works of charity. Among the followers of Christ were numbered
men of wealth like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. To the
wealthy class, too, belonged Mary and Martha and Lazarus, all of
whom Jesus loved so dearly.
In like manner, in the Apostolic Church, we find that riches,
when rightly used, were not viewed as an impediment to church
membership. The church in Jerusalem, being largely made up of
poor persons, who on account of their Christian faith had been
cast out of the synagogue and thus deprived of their former source
of help, had to provide a common fund for their relief. We read
of the generosity of certain well-to-do Jewish converts who sold
their possessions and gave the proceeds to the Apostles to form a
treasury for the relief of the needy.* It would be a great mis-
take to infer from this that a communistic mode of life was laid on
primitive Christians. In maintaining the common treasury for the
poor at Jerusalem, each Christian who had means gave freely and in
such measure as his generosity prompted. This is plainly shown by
the story of Ananias and Saphira, who incurred divine punishment,
not because they wished to retain possession of their goods, but
because while keeping back a part, they made pretense of giving all,
and thus lied to St. Peter and to the Holy Ghost. The story of
St. Peter's release from prison indirectly shows that Mary the
mother of John, surnamed Mark, lived in a house of considerable
comfort. Cornelius, the converted centurion, distinguished for his
liberality, was, and apparently remained, a man of means. In the
Gentile churches, established by St. Paul and others, there is abso-
lutely no trace of a communistic mode of life. Private ownership
is implied both in the Agape or love-feast of the primitive Church
of Corinth, and in the voluntary contributions collected in the
churches of Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece for the poor of
Jerusalem. Among the devout converts of St. Paul were people
of wealth, such as Crispus and Chloe of Corinth, Lydia, the seller
of purple at Philippi, and Philemon of Colossae, whose runaway
slave was the occasion of St. Paul's beautiful letter to his Christian
master.
*Cf. Acts ii., 44-45 ; also iv., 34-37-
200 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
It was not the rich, but the covetous rich, that St. Paul excludes
from the kingdom of heaven (r Cor. v. n). The right of private
property, even in slaves, he does not call in question. But the hold-
ers of property in every form are reminded o.f their strict obli-
gations so to possess wealth that it may redound to the spiritual
and temporal welfare of others as well as of themselves. He en-
courages all to be content with little, and not to give their heart
to the pursuit of wealth; in like manner he writes to Timothy
(i Tim. vi. 17-18).
Let us now turn to the writings of the Church Fathers, and
see if what they have to say on the private ownership of property is
in harmony or at variance with the teachings of Christ and His
Apostles.
One of the great exponents of Christian ethics in the early
Church is St. Clement of Alexandria. In his interesting treatise en-
titled, What Rich Man may be Saved? he shows that the possession
of riches is not of itself wrong, and need not be an obstacle to sal-
vation. Some rich men, he observes, not understanding the saying
of Christ, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, despair
of salvation and give themselves wholly to the pleasures of the
world. This is a great mistake. When Christ, in the Gospel, tells
the rich young man, " if thou wilt be perfect, go sell thy posses-
sions," He does not, as some lightly think, bid him throw away all
that he owned. He rather bids him banish from his soul the ab-
sorbing fondness and anxiety for wealth, through which true
spiritual life is stifled. Poverty of itself does not save, for a man
may be poor and still be a slave to passions ; he may be greedy of
wealth, though not having it in hand.
Riches, then, which benefit also our neighbors, are not to be
thrown away. For they are possessions inasmuch as they are
possessed, and goods inasmuch as they are useful and provided
by God for the use of men; and they lie to our hand, and are
put under our power as material and instruments which are
for good use to those who know the instrument.
While thus justifying the possession of wealth by the Christian
so long as he makes good use of it, St. Clement does not hesitate
to enjoin its renunciation on those who find it an inevitable occa-
sion of sin. " Do you see yourself overcome and overthrown by
1912.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 201
it? Leave it, throw it away, hate, renounce, flee." But for the right-
minded owner of riches, he has the following words of praise :
He who holds possessions and gold, and silver and houses as
the gifts of God and ministers from them to God, who gives
them for the salvation of men is blessed by the Lord and
called poor in spirit, a meet heir of the kingdom of heaven.*
In the writings of St. Cyprian, the illustrious Bishop of Car-
thage in the middle of the third century, the rights as well as the
duties of private property find fitting recognition. When he re-
nounced the errors of paganism to become a Christian, he sold the
greater part of his landed estates, which he had inherited from his
wealthy parents, and devoted the proceeds to the relief of the poor.
The remainder of his property he kept in his own name, employing
the income chiefly in works of charity, while he himself lived a
life of great simplicity. In a letter written from his secret place
of refuge to his church in Carthage, urging the priests and deacons
to take good care of the needy, he tells them he has left with the
priest rogation money of his own to be used to help indigent
strangers, and that lest it might not be enough, he has sent them
another sum by Naricus the acolyte, f
He was put under arrest on the eve of his martyrdom in his
private gardens. So it is plain he saw nothing wrong in the private
ownership of property, provided it was so used as to redound to the
benefit of the needy. In the beautiful exhortation to almsgiving,
which is among his extant writings, he teaches the rich that the
wealth they possess is not for themselves alone, but must be made
through liberal works of charity to minister to the common welfare.
He reprehends not the ownership of wealth, but its miserly pos-
session. The ideal use of property he finds in the manner of acting
of the primitive Christians, who willingly sold their houses and
lands to provide a common fund for the needy. J
This praise of a general communication of goods, prompted
by charity, is not to be confounded with compulsory communism
wrongly thought to be demanded by justice. St. Cyprian has in
mind a generous use of the right of private property. To abolish it
as an evil is far from his thought.
*Ante-Nicene Fathers, New York: Scribner's, 1893, vol. ii., p. 595 and 398.
iAnte-Nicene Fathers, vol. v., Epist. 35.
tAnte-Nicene Fathers, vol. v., p. 483.
5/Wrf., p. 478.
202 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
In his treatise On the Dress of Virgins, he says :
. . . .Lend your estate to God; give food to Christ. . . .Other-
wise a large estate is a temptation unless the wealth minister
to good uses, so that every man, in proportion to his wealth,
ought by his patrimony rather to redeem his transgressions than
to increase them.*
That St. Gregory Nazianzen recognized private ownership
of material goods to be in harmony with the law of Christ is shown
by His example as well as by His teaching. His parents, who are
numbered among the Saints of the Church, had considerable prop-
erty, and were distinguished for their liberality to the poor. They be-
stowed on their two sons, Gregory and Caesarius, respectable fortunes.
Though St. Gregory, like his bosom friend St. Basil, cultivated a
life of strict asceticism, he retained through life possession of
property sufficient to maintain him and enable him to perform works
of charity. Before his death he drew up a will, bequeathing the
greater part of his property to the Church of Nazianzus for the
benefit of the poor, setting free a few faithful slaves, and provid-
ing them and his kinsman, Gregory, with small legacies.
While St. Gregory condemned in severe language the class of
rich Christians who lived for themselves alone, and took no thought
of their needy brethren, he had only words of praise for those who
in their abundance gave generous help to the poor and destitute.
In his thirty-sixth sermon, he warns the rich that their use of
wealth must be made honorable by almsgiving and liberality. " You,
who are aiming at wealth," he says, " give ear to what the prophet
says : 'If riches abound, set not your heart on them.' Bear in
mind that you are leaning on a frail support. Lighten the boat
somewhat that it may sail the more easily."f
While St. Gregory thus plainly taught both by word and ex-
ample that the possessor of wealth can at the same time be a good
Christian, it is but fair to note that he viewed private property as
little better than a concession to human weakness. His ideal, which
he felt to be no longer feasible for fallen humanity, was the equality
of condition that existed in the beginning, before men set their
heart on calling things their own. In his sermon on the Love of the
Poor, after urging his rich hearers to imitate the way of God in
nature, who sends rain and sunshine on all alike, and allows beasts,
*Ibid., p. 433. ^Orat. 36, no. 12. Migne, vol. xxxvi., col. 279.
igi2.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 203
birds, and fishes common access to the fruits of land and sea, he
reminds them that the custom of hoarding riches, often with cruel
disregard of those in need, did not exist in the beginning. He would
have them bear in mind that " the distinctions of want and riches,
of freedom and slavery, like common diseases, were later expe-
riences of the human race, being the accompaniments and the inven-
tions of wickedness."* What St. Gregory has particularly in
mind in this strong passage is the abuse of the right of property,
resulting in the unjust accumulation of wealth and in slave owner-
ship. Did he consider the right of property itself to be attained in
its origin ? It is possible, for, as we shall see, this was the opinion
of St. Basil and St. Ambrose. But if he did, he certainly recognized
that it had come in process of time to rest on a legitimate founda-
tion, for not to speak again of his personal example and of his
teaching elsewhere, he leads his hearers in this very sermon to the
conclusion, not that property ownership must be abandoned as some-
thing wicked, but that it must be associated with works of charity.f
St. Basil, the life-long friend of St. Gregory, came also of a
wealthy family. His parents owned property both in Pontus and in
Cappadocia. A fair share of this property fell to St. Basil, who was
one of ten children. He was still a young man when he adopted the
ascetic life of a hermit. He sold the greater part of his patrimony
and gave the proceeds to the poor. But that he might be assured
a meagre income sufficient to meet his few daily wants, the family
house, with the farm and a small number of slaves, was committed
to the care of Dorotheus, his foster-brother, the son of his slave-
nurse, on condition that he should pay St. Basil every year a fixed
sum of money. Among the extant letters of the Saint are two that
were written to an official of the province, asking him to see that
this property of his foster-brother should not be exposed to excess-
ive taxation. $ In other letters, we find him interceding for friends
that their property may be saved from impending loss.
Thus St. Basil, who has more than once been set up as a
patristic advocate of socialism, while seeking perfection in a life
of voluntary poverty and asceticism, both respected and helped to de-
fend the right of property honorably exercised by others. It would,
then, be an extraordinary inconsistency if we were to find him
denouncing in public what he approved in private. In his sermons,
it is true, he deals severely with the question of riches, but it is
*Migne, vol. xxv., col. 890-891. 17&irf., col. 891 ff.
^Letters 36 and 37. ^Letters 32, 35, 73, 83, 107.
204 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
the abuse of riches, not the right of property, that he holds up to
condemnation.
While associating Christian perfection in its highest grade with
voluntary poverty, he admits the lawfulness of private wealth when
not excessive, and when used for the benefit of the needy as well
as for personal enjoyment.*
While laying great stress on the duty of helping the poor, he
advised against indiscriminate almsgiving. He speaks with con-
tempt of professional beggars, who displayed their sores and
maimed limbs for the purpose of gain.f
Wealth, then, when united with a generous exercise of charity
towards the deserving poor, was pronounced by St. Basil to be in
harmony with the law of Christ. But to have his full approval, the
wealth of any individual should not be excessive. The Saint was
no admirer of great fortunes.^
In the sermons of St. Basil, there are a few passages which,
taken by themselves, have a decided communistic ring, but which,
when read in their context and in their historic setting, are seen to
call for a different interpretation. They belong to sermons that
were preached during one of the worst famines that ever afflicted
the country about Caesarea. It was a time for the rich to give quick
and generous help to their suffering brethren. Yet many held back.
In his sermon on the death of St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen
relates that some of the wealthy dealers in corn and other food
products even took advantage of the great scarcity to raise the
prices, and thereby increase their infamous gain. Touched to the
core by this spectacle of human misery on the one hand and of
hardheartedness on the other, St. Basil delivered several powerful
sermons in which he pleaded with vehement eloquence the cause of
his starving people. In this common necessity, the superfluous
goods of the wealthy belonged not so much to themselves as to the
starving.
In his Homily to the Rich, he says : " The right-minded man
ought to hold the view that wealth has been given, not to squander
in pleasure, but to use in works of charity, and that even if their
riches should give out, they should be glad of being rid of what be-
longs to others rather than grieve at losing what is their own."
More striking still is the language he employs in his powerful
*Migne, Pat. Graec., vol. xxix., col. 479-482.
^Letter 150, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, viii., p. 208.
tMigne, Pat. Graec., vol. xxxi., col. 282.
Migne, Pat. Graec., vol. xxxi., col. 287.
1912.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 205
homily of the text of Luke xii. 18, "I will pull down my barns and
build greater." After reminding the rich that they are the stewards
of the wealth that God has committed to their care, he exhorts them
not to put off their benefactions to another year. Meeting the com-
mon objection that the rich man may do what he likes with his
own, St. Basil says :
The rich man argues, Whom am I wronging so long as I keep
what is my own? Tell me, just what things are your own?
Where did you get them to make them an inseparable feature of
your life?. . . .If every one were to take for himself simply what
sufficed for his use, and left what was over and above to the
man in want, there would be no distinction of rich and poor.
Were you not born naked? Shall you not return naked to the
earth? Whence, then, the goods you now possess? If you as-
cribe them to fate, you are godless, neither recognizing the
Creator nor being grateful to the giver. But you acknowledge
they are from God. Tell us then the reason why you received
them. Is God unfair in the unequal distribution of the good
things of life? Why is it that you are rich and that another
is in need? Isn't it wholly that you may win the reward of
kindness and of faithful stewardship, and that he may be
honored with the great prize of patience ? Now after seizing all
things in your insatiable greed, and thus shutting out others, do
you really think you are wronging no man? Who is the man
of greed? He that is not content with a sufficiency. Who is
the thief? He who seized everybody's goods. What are you
but a greedy miser? What are you but a thief? The things
you received to dispense to otherg, these you make your own.
The man who steals a coat from another is called a thief. Is
he who can clothe a naked man and will not, worthy of any
other name? The bread which you keep in store is the hungry
. man's bread. The cloak which you guard in the chest belongs
to the naked man. The sandals rotting in your house belong
to him who goes barefoot. The silver you hide away belongs to
the needy. Thus it is that you are wronging as many men as
you might help if you chose.*
This is strong language, but it is the language of an impas-
sioned orator pleading the cause of a starving people committed to
his care. It is not the language of an economist calmly discussing
the nature of the right of private property. While St. Basil seems
to have held the view that private property was in the beginning a
*Migne, Pat. Graec., vol. xxxi., col. 275.
206 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
selfish appropriation of what was meant to be used in common, and
that the destitute, for this reason, had a certain claim of equity on
the rich, he recognized the legitimacy of private property so long
as it was combined with the charitable help of others. In the
passage cited above, St. Basil's object was to move his rich hearers
to a sense of compassion, and to persuade them not to renounce
wealth ownership, which he felt and taught to be lawful, but to give
freely of their abundance when the extreme necessity of others
made that help a matter of justice as well as of charity.* That his
purpose was attained, we know from the sermon preached on his
death by his friend St. Gregory.
We now turn to a distinguished contemporary of St. Basil,
St. Ambrose. St. Ambrose was an ardent admirer of St. Basil,
and a diligent reader of his works. St. Ambrose has given proof
both by word and example that he saw in the possession of property,
even of great wealth, no obstacle to Christian piety. After his
elevation to the episcopacy, he was moved by the spirit of Christian
charity to donate what silver and gold he possessed to the Church
to swell the treasury of the poor. But the extensive estates which
belonged to the family he continued to own conjointly with his
sister, Marcellina, a consecrated virgin, and his brother, Satyrus.
After the death of his brother, he kept much of this property in his
own name for his own support and for that of his sister. In the
touching treatise he wrote in memory of his deceased brother,
he mentions with approbation the care with which Satyrus main-
tained his property rights, and the spirit of poverty which he ob-
served in the midst of riches.f
Nor do we find a different view of private property expressed
in other parts of his writings, where he assumes the office of bishop
teaching in the name of Christ. In Letter 63 to the Church of Ver-
cellae, then without a bishop, after insisting that greater deference
is not to be shown to any person on the mere ground of riches, he
commends poverty of spirit to the rich, and declares that wealth and
virtue can go hand in hand.$
In his treatise On the Duties of the Clergy (book i, ch. 149 ff),
he gives advice as to the proper use of riches and the proper exercise
of liberality. Among other things he says :
Blessed indeed is he who forsakes all and follows Him, but
*Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. vii., p. 407.
tC/. On the Decease of Satyrus, B. L., ch. 55-56 ; also ch. 59.
tNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. x., p. 470.
1912.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 207
blessed also is he who does what he can to the best of his powers
with what he has.*
In his Treatise Concerning Widows (ch. 12), he plainly
teaches that the renunciation of wealth is not demanded as a means
of salvation, but, like voluntary chastity, is recommended as a step to
higher perfection.!
In his Exposition of the Gospel of St. Luke, xix. 2, he assures
the rich that by a proper use of wealth they can become worthy mem-
bers of the Church. Let them learn, he says, to associate blame, not
with riches, but with the wrong use of riches.
For while wealth is a stumbling block to the evil-minded, in
the good it is an aid to virtue. Zacheus, who was called by
Christ, was surely a rich man. But by giving half of his wealth
to the poor, and restoring four-fold what he had acquired un-
justly, he received a reward that surpassed the benefits he con-
ferred.:}:
While the teaching of St. Ambrose on the lawfulness of private
property is thus plain beyond doubt, there are a very few passages
in his writings where, like St. Basil, he seems to view the right
of private property as the outcome, in the first instance, of self-
ishness and greed, as an encroachment on the original right of hu-
manity to the common use of the goods of the earth. This original
flaw in the title of private ownership was not, however, of a kind
to make it invalid. He did not, as we have seen, judge private prop-
erty to be immoral. He rather saw in it an aid to virtue and an
instrument of good, so long as it was rightly used. But he seems to
have held that a certain equity urges the wealthy to give alms, on
the ground that what is thus given is not altogether their own. Thus
while private property need not be renounced, liberal almsgiving
is deemed by him necessary to make the private ownership of wealth
equitable.
Thus in his treatise On the Duties of the Clergy, book i, ch. 28,
he says of the distinction of ownership into public or common, and
private :
This is not indeed according to nature, for nature has poured
out all things for the common use of all. For God caused all
things to be produced in such a way that there might be food
*Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. x., p. 25-26.
INicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. x., p. 403.
tMigne, Pat. La/., vol. xv., col. 1791-
208 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
common to all, and that the earth might serve as a kind of com-
mon possession for all. Nature, then, ushered in the right
to things in common, usurpation created the right of private
property.
Usurpatio jus fecit privatum. Thus, in the opinion of St. Am-
brose, the right of private property originated in acts of usurpation,
in disregard of the plan of nature which favored common use and
common ownership. To avoid this interpretation, it has been sug-
gested by some that the word usurpatio is to be taken here rather
in the sense of use, of legitimate appropriation. But a similar state-
ment found elsewhere in his writings excludes this meaning. In
his Exposition of Psalm 118, he declares almsgiving to the poor
to be a form of justice, and in proof cites the verse of the eleventh
Psalm, " He hath distributed, he hath given to the poor, his justice
remaineth for ever and ever."*
This notion that almsgiving is to some extent a debt of justice
which the rich owe to the poor by way of compensation for their loss
of the original right to the common use of nature's bounties, is
strongly emphasized in his treatise on Naboth the Jesrahelite, ch.
12. Referring to Proverbs iii. 28, he addresses the uncharitable
rich man in these words :
God says, " Do not say, To-morrow I will give." If He for-
bids you to say, To-morrow I will give, do you think He per-
mits you to say, I will not give? You are not bestowing on
the poor anything of your own, you are giving back something
that belongs to him. For what has been granted for the com-
mon use of all, you usurp for yourself alone. The earth be-
longs to all, not simply to the rich. You are, then, not conferr-
ing a gratuitous alms, you are restoring what is due.f
If it be said that St. Ambrose in these passages argues like
a communist, it is to be observed that he makes the argument
lead to a wholly different conclusion. Like St. Basil and other
Fathers, he teaches that the right of private property is legitimate,
but only when wealth is so used as to give help to the poor man and
thus universalize the benefits of nature, which were originally des-
tined for common use.
St. Jerome is the great exponent of Christian asceticism in
the Western Church, as St. Basil is in the Eastern. Like St. Basil
*Cf. Migne, Pat. Lot., vol. xv., col. 1303.
tMigne, vol. xiv., col. 747.
igi2.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 209
he inherited landed estates from his parents, and, while devoting
himself as a monk to a life of extreme simplicity, he retained for
many years possession of some of this inherited property. In his
letter (66) to Pammachius, he tells him that he is building a monas-
tery and hospice, and finding the expense greater than he had antic-
ipated, " he has sent his brother Paulinian to Italy to sell some neg-
lected villas which have escaped the hands of the barbarians, and
other property inherited from their parents."*
This example would of itself suffice to show that St. Jerome,
whose ethical views inclined to the side of rigor and severity, saw
nothing unworthy of a Christian in the possession of property, so
long as it was made subservient to charity and religion. The same
conclusion forces itself upon us from his attitude towards some of
his friends and acquaintances who belonged to wealthy families,
and who knew how to combine the use of riches with a life of
Christian virtue. For these he had great esteem and words of
praise. Such, for example, was the distinguished Roman matron,
Fabiola, the founder of a hospital at Portus, of whom he has left
a touching eulogy in his letter (77) to Oceanus. Such was Laeta,
the high-born daughter-in-law of Paula (letter 107). Such was
Lucinius, the wealthy Spaniard, whom he praises for his liberality
and right use of riches (letter 71 ). Such was the Prince Nebridius,
whose generous use of wealth in charitable deeds St. Jerome eulo-
gizes in his letter (79) to the widow Salvina.f
Again in his letter (123) to a noble widow of wealth, Ageru-
chia, in which he advises strongly against a second marriage, St.
Jerome, far from insisting that she renounce her wealth, shows how
it can be managed without the aid of a husband.J
That the renunciation of wealth is a condition, not of salva-
tion but of perfection, and hence, like a life of chastity, is some-
thing to be commended, not imposed as a duty, is clearly stated in
St. Jerome's letter (66) to Pammachius, a noble Roman who had
given up the badge of the proconsul for the garb of the monk.
" If thou wilt be perfect [the Lord says] " go and sell what
them hast and give to the poor." .... Great enterprises are always
left to the free choice of those who hear of them. Thus the
apostle refrains from making virginity a positive duty, because
the Lord, in speaking of eunuchs who had made themselves such
*Cf. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. vi., p. 140.
INicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. vi., p. 164-163.
tlbid., p. 235.
VOL. xcv. 14
210 THE CHURCH FATHERS [May,
for the kingdom of heaven's sake, finally says : " He that is able
to receive it, let him receive it.".... If thou wilt be perfect.
There is no compulsion laid upon you. . . .If therefore you will
to be perfect and desire to be as the prophets, as the Apostles,
as Christ Himself, sell, not a part of your substance, but
all that you have. And when you have sold all, give the pro-
ceeds, not to the wealthy or to the high-minded, but to the poor.
Give each man enough for his immediate need, but do not give
money to swell what a man has already. . . It is, moreover, a kind
of sacrilege to give what belongs to the poor to those who are
not poor.*
Such being the view of St. Jerome regarding the lawful-
ness of private property, we can readily see how unwarranted it is
to detach from his writings one or two sentences, which removed
from their context seem condemnatory of wealth ownership, and
to set them up as proof that he denounced the possession of wealth
as iniquitous.
Thus in his Commentary on Isaias, xxxiii. 13 ff., he says :
" It is only through the loss and injury of some one that wealth is
heaped up for another."f
Again, in his letter (120) to Hediba, he says: "All riches
come from iniquity, and unless the one loses, the other cannot gain.
And so the common saying seems to me to be well put : The rich man
is either an unjust man or the heir of one."
Now these statements, as used by St. Jerome, cannot in fair-
ness be interpreted as condemnations of the right of private prop-
erty. For in that case they would be in flat contradiction to his
iterated teaching that the ownership of wealth is lawful. The Saint
here has in mind not the right of private property, but the abuse
of that right in the unjust accumulation of wealth through un-
scrupulous means, a thing but too common in his day. How far he
is from the intention of reprobating the ownership of wealth, in
the text just cited from the letter to Hedibia, is plainly shown from
what he says immediately afterwards. In answer to her question
what a wealthy widow like herself with children should do to acquire
Christian perfection, he says :
If a widow has children, and more still, is of noble family,
she should not expose them to want. Let her give, not all her
wealth, but a part to her children, and making Christ a fellow-
*lbid., p. 137. tMigne, Pat. Lot., vol. xxiv., col. 367.
1912.] AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 211
heir with them, reserve a portion for charity. You may say,
This is hard, it is against nature. But Christ says, " He who
can take let him take it." It is a condition of perfection. He
does not lay it on you as a yoke of necessity, but He makes it a
matter of your own free choice Suppose you do not wish
to be perfect, but to hold the second rank of virtue. Give what
you possess to your children and relatives. No one finds fault
with you if you follow the lower order, provided you recognize
your inferiority to the one who may choose the higher. ... If you
have more than suffices for food and clothing, give it away in
charity. Ananias and Saphira merited the judgment of the
apostle because they held back their own in fear. Is he to be
punished, then, who will not give away what he possesses?
By no means. They were punished for lying to the Holy Ghost,
and for seeking the name of having completely renounced the
world, while they kept back things needful for their mode of
life. Otherwise one is free to give or not give.*
We might prolong the study of this interesting topic by an
examination of the writings of St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom,
and other Fathers. But the result would add nothing to what we
have already seen to be the common teaching on the right of pri-
vate property. We may sum up that teaching as follows : While
voluntary poverty was encouraged as a counsel of perfection, the
individual possession of wealth was deemed lawful provided that it
was associated with deeds of charity. A selfish use of riches with
disregard of the sufferings of the poor was absolutely condemned
as un-Christian. A few Fathers based the obligation of almsgiving
attached to wealth ownership not only on charity and the precept
of Christ, but also on equity, for they held that private property
originated in a selfish appropriation of what was intended for com-
mon use, and hence carried with it the duty of helping the poor and
destitute by way of compensation. But so long as the benefits of
nature were communicated to all through the charitable use of
riches, they recognized private property to rest on a legitimate
basis, and to be quite in harmony with the law of Christ.
*Migne, Pat. Lot., vol. xxii., col. 985.
ST. CLARE OF ASSISI.
BY FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
III.
ITH the death of St. Francis, Clare's life entered on a
new phase, and she was now cast more upon her own
individual strength of character and her own judg-
ment. Whilst St. Francis lived her personality had
thriven in her willing dependence upon him. It was
indeed the dependence of .a mind and heart having in itself a singular
reserve of clear judgment and the power to act, but confessing in
another the possession of the truth to which itself aspired. In
her humility she was only conscious of what she received from St.
Francis in the way of spiritual enlightenment and encouragement,
and during the fourteen years from the time she had put herself
under his guidance until his death, her chief thought had been
to learn from his words and deeds the wisdom of the life he had
opened out to her. He was her " mirror of perfection," and she
was happily content to spend herself in worship of the divine per-
fection which was revealed to her through him. At times she had
indeed to bring her own clear intuitions to the aid of his troubled
vision; at other times her buoyant faith in his mission had to uplift
him when he was suffering and despondent : but he was always the
anchor at which she rode in conscious security. After his death, when
she stood as it were to be the witness to his mind and intentions
against many who did not rightly understand him, or were deliber-
ately resolved to alter his work, a new factor came into the flow of
her life, calling for a greater individual initiative and activity. But
she, who in her eighteenth year could take her destiny into her hands
with calm decision and fearless courage, was not one to quail
before the responsibility which now devolved upon her. Besides her
loyalty to St. Francis, she had her own unmeasured faith in the
wisdom of his teaching to sustain her. That faith was to her no
dark mystery, but a clear light in which all her being had found its
sanctification and leading to God. With her, as with St. Francis,
evangelical poverty had become in very truth the form of her soul ;
no mere discipline of inordinate desire but a vision and joy of life,
deepening and expanding as the days went by; and to it her soul
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 213
held fast from the time she found her vocation, with the tenacity of
a woman clinging to a cherished conviction and of a saint clinging
to the possession of God.
Moreover, as it was to St. Francis, so also to St. Clare, the
life of evangelical poverty was embraced not merely as a personal
joy, but as a cause to be made known and established in the Church.
The loyalty it demanded from them was not merely the loyalty
which binds one to one's own friend or family or individual pos-
session, but it was the loyalty which sweeps across the world with
its vision, and hungers for an acknowledged sovereignty for the ob-
ject of its worship : in a word the loyalty of the apostle. It was be-
cause she possessed this larger loyalty that Clare is rightly styled
by the Speculum Perfectionis " the chiefest rival of St. Francis in
the observance of evangelical perfection "* the phrase " evan-
gelical perfection " always signifying in the early Franciscan writers
the perfection of the gospel-life as taught by St. Francis. For the
same reason the author of her Legend places her beside " the leaders
of the march, the masters of life " who brought about that " they
who walked in darkness might see the light."f
Immediately, and of direct purpose, Clare's apostolate was to
open to women the high road of that religious life which she wor-
shipped in St. Francis and his Friars. No sooner indeed had she
taken her vows than she set her heart upon sharing her own privi-
lege with others of her own sex. And first she prayed God to
inspire her favorite sister Agnes with the desire for holy poverty.
At the end of a fortnight Agnes joined her, though not without
trouble from her family. J Three years later we find Clare at the
head of a religious community recognized by the ecclesiastical
authorities, and she herself forced by obedience to accept the office
and title of abbess. It is one of the disappointments of Franciscan
history that we have but the most meagre records of the develop-
ment of the community at San Damiano the little church and con-
vent which in 1213 or 1214 became St. Clare's dwelling-place.
By 1216 several established convents of nuns had followed Clare's
example and adopted her rule of poverty. Jacques de Vitry, who
wrote a letter that same year setting forth his observations of the
Franciscan movement, says : " The women live in divers hospices ;
they receive nothing, but live by the labor of their hands ;" the prob-
*Cf. Spec. Perfect., cap. 108. fLeg. S. Clarae, prologus.
tThe pathetic story of Agnes' flight from her home, and of the cruel endeavor
of her relatives to bring her back, is told in the Legend. See also Analects Fran-
ciscana, iii., p. 173 et seq.
214 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [May,
able meaning of which is that they refused revenues and the sort of
gifts usually accepted by religious for the maintenance of their con-
vents. It cannot mean that they did not receive alms; for the
receiving of alms was an integral element in the rule of St. Francis
from the very beginning : only the alms to be received was such as
would merely provide for immediate necessity. Jacques de Vitry,
however, makes it clear that the Poor Clares worked with their
hands, and thus at least partly supported themselves;* and that
was quite in keeping with the rule of the Friars.
That St. Clare and her community did observe Franciscan pov-
erty is certain, since about the time her community was legally consti-
tuted, she obtained from Pope Innocent III. the " Privilege of Pov-
erty," which was a formal permission, endorsed by the Pontiff's own
hand, to live without property or revenues. We are left to mere con-
jecture as to how far St. Clare aspired to fashion her external life
upon that of the Friars. The office of preaching was certainly
closed to her; we are not so certain that in the first days she did
not minister to the sick-poor. In later days St. Francis sent the
sick and suffering to her, but then it was for spiritual comfort and
for the assistance of her prayers. Yet it is not improbable that even
then San Damiano did not regularly share with the outside poor
such alms as the community received. We know that this was the
custom at another convent of Poor Clares over which Blessed Agnes
of Prague presided; and she was a fervent imitator of the life
lived at San Damiano.f But whether or no Clare did in the be-
ginning exercise offices of pity outside her own convent, it is certain
that she did not consider such external activity as essential to her
vocation, else would she never have come to relinquish it, but in that
persistent way which finally secured for all her followers the rule of
poverty, she would have gained for them also this liberty.
This does not mean that Clare regarded the Franciscan voca-
tion as essentially contemplative in the ecclesiastical sense of the
word. She herself urged St. Francis to go out and preach to the
people at a moment when he was in doubt; and given other cir-
cumstances than those of her own time, it is possible she would have
sent the Sisters to take part in the missionary enterprises! of the
Friars. But her special concern was to maintain pure and intact
the fundamental liberty of " poverty with Christ." This under all
*Cf. The Life and Legend of the Lady St. Clare, Introduction, pp. 13-14.
tSee Vita B. Agnetis Bohem. In Ada, SS., Martii, torn, vii., p. 519 et seq.
JWadding {Annales ad an,, 1220) says that St. Clare on hearing of the martyr-
dom of the first martyrs in Morocco asked leave to join the mission to the infidels.
1912.] ST.CLAREOF ASSISI 215
circumstances she held to be the one essential thing ; and it may be
that when the rule of enclosure was imposed upon her community
she accepted it the more willingly since, in their exclusion from active
life in the world, their thought and desire would be concentrated
more securely upon this essential good, and so they might guard
more jealously the sacred fire whence the preaching and missionary
activity of the Friars must draw its ardor and power to subdue.
In this way the Sisters would contribute to the external apostolate
of the Order, even as, in the words of St. Francis, the prayers of a
lay brother in a hermitage would convert the hearts of those listen-
ing to a preacher in the market-place. For Clare never regarded
the Friars and the Sisters but as co-partners in the Franciscan apos-
tolate. Together they formed, in her mind, one spiritual family or
people, co-operating in the maintenance and spread of the king-
dom of evangelical poverty. And so when the legislation of Cardi-
nal Ugolino and the attitude of some of the Friars tended to bring
about the separation of the Sisters into an Order altogether distinct
from the Order of the Friars, she strenuously contended against the
separation as injurious to the Franciscan ideal.
The story of her long contention for the liberty of Franciscan
poverty and unity with the Order of Friars Minor, is an inspiring
page in the history of Catholic womanhood;* and it is the more
pathetic because St. Francis either did not altogether enter into her
own large view, or under pressure either of circumstance or sick-
ness felt himself unable to contend with her. So far as she herself
and her community at San Damiano were concerned, he supported
her manfully and loyally in preserving the privilege of poverty and
their dependence upon the Friars ; but so far as the evidence goes,
he seems to have consented to the other communities of Poor Clares
falling under another rule and another jurisdiction. But there
was a difficulty in regard to most, if not all, of these communities.
With the exception of San Damiano, the earlier Poor Clare con-
vents had originally been communities of the Benedictine Order,
which under the influence of Franciscan teaching had adopted a
stricter rule of poverty, or they were foundations made by Cardinal
Ugolino with a view to a reform based on his own constitutions.!
*Cf. The Life and Legend of the Lady Saint Clare, Introduction, pp. 11-31.
t/frirf. The Constitutions of Cardinal Ugolino were published in 1219 and, it
would seem, after St. Francis had gone to the East. But it is not unlikely that the
Cardinal had already informed the Saint of his intentions. Wadding (Annales ad
an., 1219) says St. Francis before setting out for the East had renounced all
jurisdiction over the Poor Clares, except those of San Damiano. Wadding is,
however, frequently inaccurate, especially in his dates. The probability is that the
216 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [May,
The Cardinal drew upon San Damiano for Sisters to initiate his re-
form; but St. Francis may have felt that he and the Friars were
not primarily responsible for such communities, and where he did
not feel that the responsibility was put upon him by God, he would
never take responsibility of his own will. But the spirit of Clare
was never reconciled to the closing of the Franciscan life against
those communities which desired to follow the Franciscan rule.
During St. Francis' lifetime she seems to have submitted her
own judgment to his ruling, and to have acquiesced in his renuncia-
tion of jurisdiction of these communities. But after his death, when
the duty of defending the liberty of her sisters fell more directly
upon her, she met the situation in a more militant spirit. Undoubt-
edly she felt that she was interpreting rightly the true mind of St.
Francis, and that she was loyal to his own prudence or humility
in the past in now asserting more boldly the right of her Sisters in
the spirit to inclusion in the Franciscan family; and we may trust
her judgment in this matter, since no other knew him so well as
she, nor was more loyal to his memory. Always to the end of her
days her final argument would be : " such was the teaching of our
Father Saint Francis ;" or " so our Father Saint Francis would have
us do." And she was certainly true to his spirit, in that no trace of
rebellious defiance ever entered into her relations with the eccle-
siastical authorities. She gained her purpose by the same weapon
as St. Francis won the liberty to preach from the Bishop of Imola,
namely, by a persistence of faith in humility. The incident here
referred to is related in Thomas of Celano's second Legend of St.
Francis. Francis had come to the city of Imola, and, according to
his custom, presented himself before the bishop and asked his per-
mission to preach. The bishop replied that he himself could do all
the preaching his people required. The Saint
bowed his head and humbly went out, but after a short time
came back again. The bishop said : " What dost thou want,
brother ? What art thou seeking now ? " And blessed Francis
replied : " My lord, when a father has driven a son out by one
door he must come in again by another." The bishop won by
this humility, with a pleasant countenance embraced him, say-
Cardinal claimed jurisdiction in virtue of a faculty granted him by Honorius III.
in 1218, and confirmed in 1219, empowering him to reform and establish con-
vents, and that he recognized the jurisdiction of St. Francis over San Damiano only
as a special ^concession. Cf. bulls Litterae tuae of Aug. 7, 1218, and Sacrosancta
Romano Ecclesia of December 9, 1219 (Sbaralea, Bull Franc, i., pp. i, 3-5) ; also
bull Angelis Gaudium of May n, 1238 (ibid., p. 242).
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 217
ing : " Thou and all thy brethren may for the future take my
general permission to preach in my diocese, for this thy holy
humility has earned the privilege."*
In the same spirit did Clare persist in her request that her
Sisters should be allowed to live in poverty and under the direction
of the Friars ; and gradually, though with wearisome delays, the per-
mission was won, and was granted by the Popes as, we may say,
" with a pleasant countenance." Her argument with Gregory IX.
(he who had been Cardinal Ugolino) in 1228 is typical in its char-
acter and result. The Pope had come to Assisi to canonize St.
Francis, and in visiting St. Clare he again broached the question of
poverty. It seemed to him too great a hardship that women, espe-
cially those of gentle birth and delicate up-bringing in the world,
should have to rely upon precarious alms, and sometimes be short of
the very necessities of life, as indeed happened at times to the Sisters
at San Damiano. It was not that he disvalued the heroism of their
poverty, which touched him at once with admiration and pity, but
in his pity for their hard life he wished to make some small but
stable provision for them, and offered himself to give them an en-
dowment. And lest Clare might be scrupulous on account of her
vow, he declared himself ready to dispense her from it so far as to
allow her to accept his gift. Clare replied : " Holy Father, never
shall I be willing to be absolved from following Jesus Christ."
What further took place in the interview we can only learn from a
letter the Pope addressed to her and her community two months
later, in which he formally confirmed unto them the " Privilege of
Poverty " previously granted by Pope Innocent Ill.f In this letter,
after deducing the Gospel arguments for evangelical poverty, which
in all likelihood he had listened to from the lips of Clare herself
so true are they to the voice which speaks in her own letters the
Pontiff concludes : " As you have besought, we confirm by our apos-
tolic favour your vow of most high poverty, and by the authority of
these presents, grant that by nobody can you be compelled to receive
possessions." Still this was only a concession to the community of
San Damiano ; yet it was a notable point gained ; like the securing
of the capital in an invaded country. Not long afterwards the same
concession was made by the Pope to the Poor Clares of Montecelli
near Florence, of which community Clare's sister, Agnes, was the
*II. Celano, 147.
tThis letter is preserved in the convent of San Chiara at Assisi. Cf. Sbaralea,
Bull Franc, i., p. 771.
218 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [May,
abbess.* But Gregory IX. insisted upon the observance of his Con-
stitutions, which imposed the holding of property, so far as other
communities were concerned.! Meanwhile, however, under the
guiding influence of St. Clare, the Franciscan spirit and character
were fostered, with more or less intensity, in the communities which
looked to San Damiano as their mother-house. One link there was
with the Friars Minor, in that the Visitor of the Sisters, and gener-
ally speaking the chaplains, were Franciscan Friars. In the begin-
ning Cardinal Ugolino had appointed a Cistercian monk as Visitor,
being moved to this probably by the fact that his constitutions were
in some measure inspired by the constitutions of the Cistercians:
but in a very short while a Franciscan Visitor, Brother Philip,
was substituted, and from that time the Visitors seem to have been
invariably Franciscans. It is not a daring proposition to assume
that Clare's influence had something to do with the change. St.
Francis himself was at the time absent in the East. In 1230, when
Pope Gregory IX. forbade the Friars to visit the Poor Clares for the
purpose of preaching to them or conversing with them, Clare made
an effectual protest, which resulted in the practical withdrawal
of the decree.J The fact is that the Friars themselves were not
altogether in favor of maintaining their direction of the Sisters;
and one party in the Order, and that the more dominant, repeatedly
endeavored to set aside the declarations which the Poor Clares
obtained from the Holy See, charging the Friars with services for
the Sisters: and this explains much of the difficulty St. Clare had
to contend with in this matter. It also explains the insistence with
which later on she dwells in her own Rule, upon the dependence
of the Sisters upon the superiors of the Friars. || In view of the
attitude taken up by some of these superiors, there is a certain wist-
*This is evident from the letter of Agnes given in Chronica XXIV. Generalium,
Anal. Franc, in., p. 176.
tC/. Sbaralea, Bull Franc, i., pp. 47, 73, 124, 125, 127, 207, 242. The obligation
to accept revenues was implied in the express statement that the Sisters were under
the Rule of St. Benedict. When later on Innocent IV. modified the constitutions
by deleting this statement, he then expressly inserted a provision that the Sisters
should accept property. Cf. bull Cum omnis of August 5, 1247. (Sbaralea, Bull
Franc, i., p. 476.)
tin 1227 Gregory IX. had definitely placed the Poor Clares under the direction
of the Friars Minor {Cf. bull Quoties cordis of November 14, 1227 Sbaralea,
Bull Franc, i., p. 36). The bull of 1230 forbidding the friars to visit the houses
of the Poor Clares, was the famous bull Quo elongati. (Cf. Sbaralea, op. cit., p. 317.)
C/. Regula S. Clarae, capp. i., iii., iv., vi., xii.
Illn 1245 the Minister General Crescentius unsuccessfully petitioned the Holy
See to relieve the Friars from the obligation of serving the Poor Clares. In 1252 and
1254 the Friars however were more successful. (Cf. Sbaralea, op. cit., i., pp. 367,
387, 538, 619.)
I 9 i2.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 219
ful pleading in Clare's appeal in the sixth chapter of this Rule to
the promise of St. Francis. She writes :
Seeing that we feared no poverty, toil, sorrow, humiliation or
contempt from the world, nay rather that we held them in great
delight, the Blessed Father wrote us a form of life as follows:
" Since by Divine inspiration you have made yourselves daugh-
ters and handmaids of the most High Sovereign King, the Heav-
enly Father, and have espoused yourselves to the Holy Ghost,
electing to live according to the perfection of the holy Gospel,
I will and I promise for myself and my Friars always to have
for you as for them a special solicitude." This promise [Clare
adds not without point] he faithfully kept so long as he lived,
and he wished it always to be kept by the Friars.*
Amongst the Sisters themselves Clare took every opportunity
of fostering this sentiment of union with the superiors of the Friars.
Writing about 1235 to Blessed Agnes of Prague, she says: " I urge
you to follow the counsels of our most Reverend Father, Brother
Elias, Minister General of the whole Order, and put them before all
other counsels given you to follow and value them as more precious
than any other gift."f
In another letter she does not hesitate to interpret the Ugolino
constitution regarding fasting by a regulation made for San Dam-
iano by St. Francis. | The reward of her courage came to her
when her own Rule, based upon that of the Friars Minor, was
solemnly approved by the Holy See on the eve of her death; and
the right of all Poor Clares to live in Franciscan poverty, and to
be united with the Friars under the same higher superiors, was
definitely recognized and proclaimed.
It would be difficult to overestimate the influence of that long
struggle of thirty-four years upon the character and history of
the whole Franciscan order. During all that time there was a strong
tendency at work to change the original conception of the Order, to
" denationalize " its character, if the word might be used in an
ecclesiastical sense. A large section of the Friars had fallen under
the glamor of the older monastic institutes, or were attracted to the
Dominican ideal of an Order of Preachers ; and so far they were out
of sympathy with the primitive Franciscan ideal. In two principal
directions did this tendency operate to the changing of the original
*Fr. Paschal Robinson's translation : The Life of Saint Clare, Appendix i., p. no.
tC/. Epistola II., ad B. Agnetem, in Ada SS., Martii, torn, i., p. 505 ; Mrs. Bal-
four, The Life and Legend, p. 144.
tEpistola III., Ada SS., loc. cit., p. 506 ; Mrs. Balfour, op. cit., p. 149.
220 ST. CLARE OF'ASSISI [May,
character of the Order : in regard to poverty and in regard to the in-
terdependence of the three Franciscan orders of friars, nuns and
tertiaries. In the first Franciscan days the sense of the unity of
their vocation and of the fraternal relationship created by it had
been a strong link binding this three-fold family together. All
Franciscans of whatever degree were one family or people set apart
from all others, but united amongst themselves in the following of
the poor and humble life of our Lord upon earth; and their depend-
ence upon the higher superiors of the Friars was the outward symbol
and safeguard of this spiritual unity. When one considers how the
Poor Clares and the Tertiaries* and also the Friars, who clung to the
primitive life and poverty of the fraternity, cherished this unity
of the Franciscan family, and how the endeavor to cast off the di-
rection of the Poor Clares and the tertiaries who came from those
Friars who in other ways departed from the simplicity of the primi-
tive observance of poverty, the feeling grows that there must have
been some fundamental link between the sense of fraternal kinship
and the simple poverty of the early Franciscans; and that the two
ideas were intimately woven together in the pure Franciscan ideal.
The truth of the matter is that the original purpose of the Francis-
can movement was to gather together all sorts and conditions of
Catholic people in the faith and worship of evangelical poverty.
Some would be called " to leave all things and follow Christ ;" others
living in the world would yet be not of the world. But for all the
Franciscan vocation meant the gazing upon the vision of Jesus
Christ in His earthly poverty, and the endeavor to conform them-
selves to the vision they held. It was a vocation marked at once
by simplicity and universality; no proper condition of earthly cir-
cumstance need keep one from it; it required only the call of faith
in its teaching. The tendency which made against both the original
poverty and union of this world-wide fraternity was a narrowing
tendency. It had its eye at once upon the seclusion of the mon-
astic cloister and the exclusion of the camp : it would make of the
Friars monk-soldiers of the militant Church rather than the leaders
in a more civic revival of Catholic life. That this tendency did not
altogether succeed to the complete subversion of the true Franciscan
ideal is due in large measure to St. Clare.
*On the efforts made to separate the Tertiaries from the jurisdiction of the
Friars, vide P. Mandonnet, O.P., Les Regeles et le gouvernment de I'Ordo de Poeni-
tentia, p. 196 and p. 222. Eventually the Tertiaries were finally placed under Fran-
ciscan Visitors by Nicholas IV., in 1290. (Bull Unigenitus, in Sbaralea, Bull Franc.,
iv., p. 167.)
THE INTRUDER.
BY E. M. DINNIS.
VERYBODY who visits the obscure valley of the
Frent, in the west of England, does so for the
purpose of viewing the ruins of the old Priory
Church or, rather, this was the case up to within
the last few years. Now-a-days scientific agricul-
turists, social reformers, and persons of like ilk, find their way
to Frent to inspect the very matter-of-fact model farm which the
Brothers of the Poor have erected under the very shadow of the
Priory. Again, to be more exact, the Priory stands under the
shadow of the commodious " Hostel for Wayfarers," in which the
Brothers house the casual traveler who does not possess the price
of a night's lodging.
Until the monks made their appearance, attracted by the agri-
cultural conditions which made Frent famous of yore, the valley
had been a veritable place of dreams, the picturesque ruin, known
as Frent Priory, nestling alone among the hills, in a magnificent sol-
itude of green, fertile, meadow-land. It was the most poetic spot in
England, people said, and the gem of her monastic relics. Thou-
sands of tourists came annually to Frent. Poets, mystics, and occul-
tists when the latter came into fashion and romantically-in-
clined persons of all sorts, were drawn to the little, out-lying vale
by the poetry of its associations. Here in the church, now roofless,
though otherwise in a good state of preservation, St. Willibert, its
founder, beheld the famous vision, the story of which is familiar to
every visitor. Many other legends of strange sights and signs
connected with the Priory are extant. With the revival of mysti-
cism, Frent came in for a good deal of attention, and authenticated
modern legends sprung up of " psychic experiences," enjoyed by per-
sons who kept vigil on the scene of Willibert's meditations.
The old founders of the Priory had been famous for their
sanctity and for their charity to the poor. Expert agriculturalists,
they had got the whole valley under cultivation at the time of their
violent expulsion. Since that day, a dark one for the poor folk
of Frent Valley, the country-side had lain silent, and replete
with the peaceful pathos of a story told. But with the advent of
222 THE INTRUDER [May,
the Brothers the valley lost much of its charm. It became a less
comfortable place to dream in. The sturdy and matter-of-fact
community erected their " Hostel for Wayfarers," modeled a farm,
and swept the slumberous valley of its mystery by the introduction
of the latest appliances for cultivating the land, and the importa-
tion of laborers belonging to that uninspired and uninspiring class
known as the " unemployed."
The Hostel itself was not of malice made hideous, but it had
been built primarily with a view to convenience. The farm and its
out-buildings were new, bricky, and bald. Corrugated iron had been
used to roof the latter, and, as though to crown the banality of the
invasion, social economists approved of the methods employed by
the Brotherhood !
All right-minded persons deplored the desecration of the sacred
valley, and to this class eminently belonged the little group of
travelers who found themselves stranded at the hostelry of a
small village some miles from Frent. Here the leisurely branch
train, which conveys tourists to the Priory by a cautious and dis-
ingenuous route, had deposited them, owing to a break down on the
line. The journey could not be resumed before next morning, and
the little party of five prepared to make themselves comfortable at
the " Railway Inn " rather than tramp the intervening miles to
Frent. Three of the men were young fellows theological
students at Ely one possessing a pronounced taste for mysti-
cism. The fourth, for all his holiday tweeds, was probably already
in Anglican orders. These all formed one party, and an odd man,
middle-aged, friendly, though not over talkative, completed the
number.
Naturally Frent Priory formed the topic of conversation dur-
ing the meal, which was partaken of in the Inn parlor by the hungry
travelers. Two of the students had been there on a previous
occasion, and loudly lamented the intrusion of the philanthropic
venture, passing some severe comments on the anonymous donor
of the necessary funds who, rumor said, was an American million-
aire. The odd man had also visited Frent before in the old
days when the valley lay dreaming of her past sanctities, unfretted
by the sacriligious problems of to-day.
"I wonder," the mystical Clerk of Ely remarked, "that you care
to revisit the place and spoil your first impression. Frent with
no casual ward looming near to mar the illusion must have been a
place to dream in ! "
I 9 I2.] THE INTRUDER 223
The other smiled. " There was some talk then," he said, " of a
'Popish Brotherhood' buying the land, at that time for sale, and as
I happened to be possessed of some means, I was within an ace
of buying it 'over the community's head' in order to preserve it."
" But, my dear sir ! " the Clerk-in-Orders chimed in, " what
ever made you think worse of so beneficient an idea ? "
The odd man smiled again rather oddly. " There were cir-
cumstances that led to my giving up the notion," he said; and
as he volunteered no more, the others naturally did not press him.
After their repast, the little party closed round the fire, and
sitting in the subdued light of the single oil lamp, their con-
versation assumed a more or less intimate character. The four
friends soon discovered that the odd man was fully en rapport
with them. A certain interest which he had displayed in methods
of dealing with the submerged masses had not obscured his psychic
parts, and the vision of the old-time Saint, as well as visions in
general, was discussed in the dim-lit circle, together with various
personal experiences, which in other circumstances would scarcely
have been presented before a stranger.
The odd man was obviously interested in the views
set forth by the young man on whom mysticism had laid its hold.
The latter felt that he had known the fifth man all his life. It was
when the conversation veered round to the doleful topic of the
intrusion of the " Wayfarer's Hostel " within the very pale of
the haunted ruin, that the odd man prepared to contribute his share
to the discussion.
He leaned suddenly forward, as though he had made up his
mind in a hurry : " Would you care to hear," he said, " how I came
to give up the idea of frustrating the Hostel scheme? It's a strange
story, but you will hear some of it, at least, verified at Frent, if you
care to inquire of anyone who remembers the night of the great
storm."
There was a general expression of eagerness to hear the story.
Who does not love a story labelled " strange," told over the fire
when the mind is attuned to mystery? A hush seemed to fall on
the company as the odd man began his narrative.
" You will forgive me," he said, " if my story is a bit personal.
I will justify that later on, if you will bear with me for a while.
Well to make a beginning ten years ago, picture me a young
man possessed of very considerable means, a profound taste for psy-
chology, and a good will to serve Almighty God, could I but make a
224 THE INTRUDER [May,
Reality of the Divine Being. I pursued the path which, I pre-
sume, most men follow who seek the Faith. I read, and I pondered,
and I came to a conclusion academically. In fact I approved the
standpoint of the Catholic Church; but my conclusion lacked the
breath of life. My emotions could clothe the dry bones with flesh,
but the flesh and bones had yet to live. Periods of total dis-
belief overtook me, alternating with seasons when I seemed to
see a light shining through gates set ajar. I sat in my arm-
chair and thought it out. (The odd man was smiling in a peculiar
way. ) I took long country walks, leaving my motor to pick me up
motoring had just begun to come into vogue, and I had a sufficiency
to indulge in any new fancy that took hold of me and thought
the thing out, aching for some sign or sensible assurance of the
Truth. I should have told you that I was living in the United States
of America, but even American journals were full of Frent Priory,
which at that time had come under the notice of occultists. I be-
came possessed of a conviction that if I visited Frent some kind
of vision would be granted me a torch applied to the touchwood,
as it were. The idea obscured me. I would make a pilgrimage to
Frent Priory, where Willibert had his vision, and keep vigil there,
and pray Almighty God to vouchsafe me a light to guide me in the
way I should walk, for I had a sincere desire to serve Him and His
Church."
" Well," the narrator went on, " to Frent I went; shipped my
motor, booked a first-class return ticket, and figured myself a very
pilgrim." He paused, that silence might give point to the smile
that spread itself sardonically over his always pleasing, though
plain, countenance.
" At Frent, however, I found obstacles that money could not
surmount. The Priory, as you know, is the property of the Earl
of Lees. There is a care-taker to whom an entrance fee of six-
pence is paid by visitors. By squaring this individual I had hoped to
gain admittance to the Priory at night and keep vigil in Willibert's
chapel, still standing intact, and known as 'the Chapel of the
Vision.' The old fellow, however, had received orders to allow no
one into the Priory ruin after the stipulated hours, and told me
this, eyeing sadly the coin in my hand. It was, of course, a question
of offering the old man a sufficiently handsome bribe to tempt him
to disobey instructions, but just as I was about to negotiate with
him fifty dollars would have been nothing to me I suddenly
ran up against a dead wall. Here was I proposing to purchase
1912.] THE INTRUDER 225
a divine manifestation at the price of corrupting a fellow-creature!
It was grotesquely obvious that there could be no vision for me
under those conditions. I repocketed my impotent coins, find-
ing, I think for the first time in my' life, something that I coveted
beyond my means. There was nothing for it but to get permission
from the Earl himself, and the Earl, it seemed, was away on the
Continent, and would not be back for a fortnight. Accordingly, I
waited at Frent, having a sufficiently enjoyable time motoring
round the neighborhood, and spending some hours in the Priory.
It was during this period that I heard about the Brotherhood, which
was negotiating for the purchase of some land near the Priory in
order to build a hostel for the housing of vagrants, and I made up
my mind at once to buy the land myself and so preserve the valley
from this mundane inundation!
" I succeeded at last in getting my introduction to the noble
owner of Frent Priory, but not before I had received an urgent
summons to return home by the next steamer to attend to the only bit
of important business that, I believe, had ever fallen on me in my
easy, irresponsible existence! This left me with exactly one night
in which to avail myself of my permission to occupy the Priory
during the small hours. In an ordinary way I should have
anathematized the business and indulged in a fit of ill-humor, but
again the nature of my project intruded itself, and I felt con-
strained to possess my soul in patience, which does not come easy
to a man who has hitherto done the thing he wished at the moment
he desired to do it. There is practically no end to what money can
do, except when visions are in question, then the coinage of the
world ceases to be legal tender. (Again the narrator smiled.) It
was strange how this idea of a heavenly 'vision' being granted
me, if I could but watch a while in the haunted aisles of Willibert's
Priory, kept its hold on me. It had become a conviction. I was pos-
sessed of the certainty that this night I should somehow pass through
the closed gates, and I had a feeling that they might clang behind
me. It was a presumptuous feeling, you will say, and I quite agree ;
yet there was good-will, and some faith " the speaker seemed to
be regarding impersonally the portrait before him, and there was a
softness in his eyes, as he spoke of the young man of ten years ago.
" Seeing my frame of mind," he continued, " you can imagine
how eagerly I awaited that night-vigil. The last fortnight had been
a period of discipline for me, quite foreign to my experience,
spoiled child of Fortune that I was, but it served to give zest
VOL. xcv. 15
226 THE INTRUDER [May,
to my pleasure when the time at last arrived my one and only
chance of sharing solitude with the Chapel of the Vision. The
day was an unpleasant one. It thundered at intervals, and some
rain fell. The thunder cleared the air, and the sultry calm of
mid-day it was June was replaced by a cold, almost bleak, wind,
which blew down the valley and made the night distinctly chilly.
I took a good supper, and wrapping myself up cosily in my
motor coat, I set out for the Priory. It was a little before
midnight when I reached the ruin. It was then much as it
is now. The walls were practically intact. The South Chapel,
The Chapel of the Vision,' as it is called, was still roofed over and
sheltered. The soft green sward that paved the nave, open to the
stars overhead, was damp and sodden with the recent rainfall.
An immense, overwhelming silence brooded over the place. I felt
the solitude realized it with a thrill of joy. Even the eye of the
old care-taker had been enough to make meditation impossible for
me, self-conscious as I was, and possessed of the Anglo-Saxon's
objection to be 'caught praying.' But now I was free! My own
master! I thought of the old monk and his vision, 'like unto the
Son of Man' of the old-time vigils, of midnight matins, and of
many things. The moon went out and it became dark. I began to
feel as dim and unreal as the shadow-walls and spectral pillars in
the ruined aisle. The black window gaps looked out at the still
lands beyond. A thrill went through me. I would save this place
from the hideous proximity of the modern world. The excellent
brothers should house their unemployables elsewhere, and plough
unconsecrated meadows. The up-to-date tramp should not divert
his course to find a lodging at the expense of the sanctity of
this holy spot ! I vowed, tucked up cosily in my motor coat, that I
would out-bid the Goth and Vandal. This I could promise in this
place of visions ere the vision came! I knelt on the grass,
my face towards the spot where Willibert had seen his vision, and
prepared to pray, the self-conscious feeling still there, albeit that
I was certainly strung to a high nervous pitch. Then the feel-
ing that I was being observed took hold of me. I peered uneasily
into the darkness. The figure of a man appeared, coming from the
direction of the door by which I had entered. He moved slowly,
with the gait of one tired out. As far as I could make out, for it
was the dimmest outline of a figure, he was hatless and wore a long
overcoat. His face I could not distinguish. I sprang from my
knees guiltily. Could anything be more vexatious? Here was one
I 9 i2.] THE INTRUDER 227
of the very tramps from whom I was seeking to save the valley !
Evidently he had found the door open how could I have been
so careless ? and slipped in to find shelter from the wind and rain.
I stood surveying the dim shadow of the Intruder. Swiftly I told
myself I must send him off. The building was in my custody, and
it was my duty not to allow it to be turned into a hostel for
wayfaring men ! I walked towards the figure,* feeling of outrage
an angry jealousy of my rights surging in my breast. I would
make short work of this tramp, this outcast, and then return to my
vigil. To my vigil! The hot blood surged into my face. Here
was I proposing to turn from his place of shelter a fellow-creature,
obviously homeless, and then hoping to enjoy a vision from the God
of compassion! True, I might give him money, but where, even
with money, could he find a shelter at this hour? Moreover, the
wind had risen and was howling round the skeleton walls. It had
become a most appalling night.
" I peered in front of me for a sight of the intruder. He seemed
to have disappeared, but I dimly outlined him at last, seated on the
base of a broken pillar. He had his back to me, and his attitude
was that of complete weariness and dejection. His head sunk
forward on his breast. I approached him. 'You will be cold sitting
there,' I said; 'here's my rug. Wrap it round you and lie down
somewhere.' I threw the rug across his knees. It was pitch dark,
and I didn't even try to see what his face was like, neither did I
explain my presence. My voice sounded strange, as when one
speaks aloud in an empty room. The other made no reply, nor did
I wait for him to do so but walked off, intending to go straight
back to my hotel. This last frustrating of my scheme seemed to
have fairly dazed me. When I got to the door, however, I thought
better of this. Perhaps, after all, if my vagrant curled himself up
in some corner and slept, I still might keep my vigil undisturbed
in the little south chapel. My little act of charity in giving the in-
truder my rug had warmed my heart, and the prospect of getting in
touch with Heaven seemed increased. I retraced my steps. I
could see no signs of my companion. He must have
moved off with some rapidity. I made my way to the south chapel.
Here the floor was still paved, and very rough. I knelt down, fac-
ing the place where the altar had stood, and closed my eyes for
some minutes. When I opened them I became conscious that again
I had been frustrated. The dark outline of the wayfarer was
visible, stretched across the little chapel, the head resting on the
228 THE INTRUDER [May,
stone which marked the Gospel side of the vanished altar. He
was sound asleep, and never had I seen utter weariness and ex-
haustion so vividly depicted as in the dim, scarcely visible, form
before me. An enormous, an overwhelming, compassion seized hold
of me. Taking off my overcoat, I laid it gently over the sleeping
form, for the night was chilly, and the rain had started to pour
heavily. I would hurry back to the hotel, I thought, and get into
bed. The wetting would do me no harm if I walked quickly and
got out of my damp clothing at once.
" But my vigil was not destined to be thus cut short. No sooner
had I reached the door, for the second time, than it suddenly oc-
curred to me that I, the custodian of the place, was now proposing
to leave it at the mercy of a stranger with no references ! I had
completely overlooked this aspect of the case. I was at a loss what
to do. Must I go and wake up my man and insist on his leaving the
ruin with me? It seemed the only course, for I could not
leave him in possession, even if I locked him in. He might prove to
be a lunatic, or a malicious person, and inflict irreparable damage on
the ancient walls. There seemed nothing else for it. I made my
way back to the chapel and approached the figure of the sleeping
vagrant. I stooped over him, and at that moment a pang seemed to
pierce my very being. I felt that, whatever happened, I could not
disturb his slumber. His face was turned from me. I sat down on a
coping-stone and prepared to keep guard till the sleeper should wake.
It was a different vigil, indeed, from the one I had anticipated. It
was distinctly chilly without my overcoat. Soon I had to get up and
walk about to keep myself warm. The rain was falling in torrents,
and the wind howled, mingling in a most unusual way with the
sulky growl of distant thunder. It was a most amazing night.
I began to shiver. It would be no use to go in search of my rug,
which the sleeper had apparently ignored and left behind in the
nave, for it would be saturated with rain. Thoughts of a vision
were far from me now. I remembered that there was a flask of
brandy in the pocket of my overcoat, but, even if I could have got
at it, I somehow felt that I should be taking it from one whose
need was greater than mine, for there was only sufficient for one
in the flask, and the other was plainly in a state of exhaustion.
I sat there, my eyes fixed on the dim outline of the intruder, and
as I shivered, I thought of those others of his class who slept
under railway arches, not only on June nights, but in the depths of
winter. A tremendous thrill of pity of horror seemed to trans-
1912.] THE INTRUDER 229
fix me. Suddenly I seemed to realize the sufferings of the multitude
whom I had hitherto looked upon with utter callousness as 'unde-
sirables.' All the stories I had heard of destitution, both in my own
adopted country and here in England, crowded back into my brain.
With preternatural clearness of thought I reviewed the whole prob-
lem of the submerged. An immense feeling of compunction for my
past indifference, amounting almost to terror, overtook me. I felt in
my stiffened body all the miseries of starvation. I was horribly,
hideously, hungry, and yet I had supped well but a few hours before !
It was mid-summer, yet I felt in my aching bones the horrors of
frost-nip ; and, above all, an awful feeling of mental dejection took
hold of me."
The narrator paused. " It was the most terrible episode of my
life," he said, " but I cannot explain it to you. It stood some-
where outside the range of normal experience. A sweat burst out
on my brow, and the sleeper stirred. I thought he was about to
awake, but, with a sigh, he settled again to sleep. After that I
began to feel a little more normal. The sense of fear, at any rate,
had left me. I kept watch for perhaps another hour, and then I was
aroused by a vivid flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder
that shook the very earth. A large piece of masonry fell on the
ground at my feet. I sprang up, realizing the danger. The roof
itself might fall in at any moment. I looked across at the altar-
place. The figure lay there still motionless and undisturbed by
the noise. I darted across and seized my coat, 'Wake up !' I cried,
'we must get out of this or we shall be killed.' He stirred, raised
himself, apparently, on his elbow, and turned his face towards me.
Then there came a second bright flash of lightning, and by its light
I saw the sleeper's face."
The listeners bent forward, for the odd man's voice had become
scarcely audible. " It was a wonderful face," he said, " and the
eyes looked at me with a kind of pitiful reproach. The lips moved;
I seemed to hear words of some kind, and then I remem-
bered no more. I had fallen back unconscious before the
last thunder clap of that great storm. They found me next
morning lying, still unconscious, within a few inches of a huge hole
in the earth, where a thunderbolt had buried itself on the very
spot where the altar had stood, and where Willibert had seen the
Vision. Over this hole they had found my motor-coat untouched by
so much as the smell of fire. They concluded that I
had fainted away after placing my coat, for some reason,
230 THE INTRUDER [May,
over the fissure, for they had seen no trace of a second
man. My story of the Priory's other night-occupant was received
with obvious, though polite disbelief. The door had been found
locked they had been obliged to break it open and it would have
been impossible, they .assured me, for anyone to escape unnoticed.
They had found my rug draped over the base of a broken pillar in
the nave. I didn't press the matter. (The speaker made a long
pause here.) I somehow felt they might have been right, for I
I remembered the face as I had seen it for that one second, and the
sense of the words spoken came back to me : It was as though one
had said, 'Peace, be still !' "
The narrator resumed his ordinary tone : " Well, I relin-
quished my idea of preserving Frent from desecration, but I pur-
chased the land and presented it to the Brotherhood, together with
a sum sufficient to enable them to carry out their full scheme
the Wayfarer's Hostel in fact. So you see, gentlemen, my story
justifies itself, for I have been somewhat severely criticized, and
this is my apology."
The man-in-tweeds leaned forward and shook the speaker by
the hand. " You have paid handsomely for your night-vigil," he
said.
The other smiled. " Not yet," he answered, " but I hope to do
so. To-morrow I go to join the Noviate of the Order. I hope then
to pay the price of the vision "
The clerk of Ely filled in the pause :
" In the currency of the Realm," he said.
THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE.
BY MAX TURMANN, LL.D.
II.
A MODEL MILL.
I.
T is our purpose, in this series of papers on the Social
Apostolate in France, to lay before the readers of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD some examples of social
activity among Catholics in France to-day.
First, let me repeat what I have already said
in my previous article, that, contrary to the generally accepted
opinion abroad, anti-clericalism, or, to speak more correctly, anti-
Catholicism, is decidedly on the wane in France. We are, indeed,
passing through a species of religious renaissance, which shows itself
in many ways. As M. 1'abbe Thellier de Poncheville, an indefat-
igable apostle, said recently :
Anti-clericalism is now out of fashion in many places. Num-
berless occurences, big and little, verify this assertion; the
sight of a soutane evokes fewer insults; more cordiality is
shown to priests in public; a more open, at times even a sym-
pathetic greeting, is given them in the congested districts of
the large cities, and in third-class carriages on workmen's
trains, and even when entering on military service. Speakers at
public meetings testify that the popular audiences of to-day
are more amenable than they were ten years ago. A friend
of mine, a missionary, who left France just after the Dreyfus
affair, and has but just returned, declared to me that he was
impressed with the sense of religious revival upon again coming
in contact with the masses in France.
This reviving confidence of the people in the future of the
Faith is both a symptom and a force.
Various causes explain this revival, still in its infancy. I am
profoundly convinced that, among them, prominent place should be
be given to the activity of Catholic social works. My first article
232 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [May,
on this subject showed what has been done in this line by the young
agriculturists of the diocese of Dijon. We now turn from rural
life to examine a French textile mill, whose owner for the past thirty
years has lived up to the doctrines of Catholic sociologists and the
teachings of Leo XIII., for I know of no better object lesson than
the mill of Val-des-Bois, founded and managed by the Harmel
family.
ii.
In a conference which he gave some time since in Rome, M.
Leon Harmel outlined the organization of his mill near Rheims.
This work, undertaken with so much generosity and intelligence,
has received, on several occasions, the public approbation of the
Holy Father.
The " Mill Council " is, undoubtedly, the most characteristic
institution of Val-des-Bois. It fulfills the essential function of
establishing a point of contact between employee and employer.
This contact is always the most difficult thing to effect. On both
sides there exists an instinctive suspicion which militates against
good-will. Just so long as this attitude of mutual suspicion con-
tinues between poor and rich, employee and employer, the middle
class and the proletariat, very little good can be accomplished.
It is impossible, therefore, to commend too strongly all that tends to
promote intimate and cordial relations, such as the associations of
youth, where the children of the poor and the children of the rich
mingle in fraternal union, or the " Mill Council," where employee
and employer are associated in loyal collaboration.
Too often in large factories there does not exist between the
manufacturer and his work-people any sort of communication, much
less any of a sympathetic or appreciative nature. The owner does
not even know the names on his pay-roll, still less any details of their
lives. The working people only see in the owner an individual
favored by the chance of birth, whose interests are usually opposed
to theirs, or, to say the least, at variance with them. How is it
possible under these circumstances for any real, active understand-
ing to spring up between elements so foreign ?
Furthermore, between these two elements separating them
there are superintendents who frequently act as agents of disrup-
tion : foremen who arrogate to themselves excessive authority over
the world of workers, engaging, discharging, protecting or criticis-
ing, according to their fancy or their passion. For all of these acts of
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 233
authority, done in his name, although often without his authori-
zation, the owner is ultimately held responsible.
I do not say that this state of affairs exists in all factories, but
after personal investigation, I find it to be such in many large in-
dustrial establishments.
But there is one factory, at least, where the relations between
employee and employer are totally different the dyeing and weav-
ing mill of Val-des-Bois. This we assert not on hearsay, but from
personal observation. Among the members of this industrial
family there really exists a friendly understanding, brought about
and kept up chiefly by the organization known as the " Mill Coun-
cil," of which we will now speak.
m.
This Council was organized in 1889. Since that time the work-
men in every department select representatives from their number
(exclusive of the foremen) to meet every fortnight with the owner.
Together they form the " Mill Council." Apart from this council
of workmen, a council of workwomen was also organized, a most
just provision, as large numbers of women are employed in the mill
at Warmeriville.
The excellent results derived from the men's council [said M.
Leon Harmel in his conference in Rome] determined us to
organize one among the workwomen, called the " Workroom
Council." The members are chosen by their companions, and
fulfill the same functions for the women's workrooms as the
" Mill Council " does for the men's. They have, moreover,
special duties, such as seeing to the entire separation of the
sexes in the workrooms, and in their coming to and going from
work. We employ as few married women as possible (only
42 out of 218 workwomen). Those who have housework to do
leave the mill a half-hour before noon; on Saturday they all
quit work two hours sooner than the others, without loss of
salary. In our opinion [continued M. Harmel] the " Work-
room Council " is a most effective means of preventing abuses
which are but too frequent, alas ! even in establishments run by
excellent men. The superintendent or workman who forgets
himself by a coarse word or a familiarity is quickly called to
account. Their meetings, at which some lady of the Harmel
family presides, are held every fortnight in one of our homes ;
sometimes I am present, and never fail to admire the fearless
234 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [May,
way in which the counsellors defend their companions' interests
without saying a harmful word or showing any bad spirit.
What is done at the meetings of the "Mill Council?" Let
M. Leon Harmel tell us :
In our interviews we go over the events of the fortnight
past and make provision for the fortnight to come. An affec-
tionate confidence prevails, which puts everyone at ease. When
the men have any grievances, they tell them plainly, thus pre-
venting the ferments of discontent which might intensify and
increase, if not looked out for. The mill-hands know that they
have representatives, and, if necessary, advocates of their cause.
But, it may be objected, the authority of the foreman must
be considerably affected by such an organization ? M. Harmel does
not think so.
Unlimited authority [he declares] strikes the workmen as
tyrannical and arouses hatred and animosity We believe
that freedom of recourse to superior authority is a protectiom
due the working-man. As a matter of fact, this authority alone
can exercise kindness, where a secondary authority, restricted by
regulations and absence of responsibility, must confine itself
within the strict limits of justice. This right of appeal to the
owner is, therefore, energetically maintained by the mill coun-
sellors, who urge their comrades to overcome timidity and act
confidently. No fine can be exacted without the signature of the
managing-owner; the foreman cannot discharge; and when a
discharge has been decided upon, the eight days notice cannot
be given until the following Thursday, so that everyone may
have time to make other arrangements.
The small amount of the fines incurred and imposed tells its
own tale. The total amount of fines varies from ten to fifteen francs
a year on a matter of five hundred salaries. One might almost say
there are no fines.
The following incident, narrated by the manager of Val-des-
Bois, shows how fully conscious his workmen are of their dignity
and their liberty :
A strange foreman, a newcomer, threatened to discharge a
man under him, whom he was scolding very angrily. The man
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 235
folded his arms and, looking his chief in the eye, said : " Sir,
I am quite willing to be corrected by you if I have done wrong,
but don't talk of discharging me, for neither you, nor anyone
else, has the right to put me out ; I am at home here and, so long
as I do my duty, I may remain." The foreman, indignant at this
reply, complained to the owner, who informed him that he did
wrong to threaten a penalty he had not the authority to exe-
cute, and that the workman showed a good will in looking upon
the mill as his home.
This anecdote explains the great popularity of the Harmel
family with their co-operative workers. I may add that they have,
also, a sincere appreciation of the professional ability of their em-
ployers, based on a custom peculiar to Val-des-Bois. All the
young men of the Harmel family serve their apprenticeship in the
mill. In speaking of this M. Leon Harmel said :
We are determined that none of our family shall assume
the position of employer until he has worked his way up as
workman and foreman in every department. When his ap-
prenticeship in one department is completed, he fills first the
place of a workman, then that of a foreman. He must serve
two weeks as a workman and a month as foreman to prove his
ability to fill these positions in case of need. These tests are
overseen by the mill counsellors, and attested to by diplomas
signed by them and formally delivered in the presence of the
senior owners of the mill. Our young men are proud of these
testimonials, and preserve them religiously in their homes. This
system of professional education creates a tie of mutual esteem
and confidence between the youthful owner and his workmen.
They obey cheerfully the orders of a chief who has worked
with them, of whose competence they are assured. Moreover,
they look to him as to one, who, knowing by experience the labor
of hard work, will regard them with an understanding and feel-
ing heart.
I am convinced that this apprenticeship of the owners contrib-
utes in large measure to cement those cordial relations between the
members of the great industrial family of Val-des-Bois so patent
to the observer.
rv.
After settling matters of discipline, the " Mill Council " takes
up accidents, questions of hygiene, apprenticeship, work and wages.
236 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [May,
In all these various matters the assistance of the counsellors is
frequently of inestimable value to the owner. Many improvements
have been brought about, so M. Leon Harmel told me, by their
suggestions, which voiced the experience of their fellow- workmen.
The sanitary conditions at the weaving mill of Val-des-Bois
are excellent. The rooms are large, well-aired, ventilated by a
system which carries off ten thousand cubic meters of air an hour.
No night work is allowed.
The result of this happy state of things is shown at the time of
military service. Whereas statistics show that twenty per cent, of
the population of France is refused as unfit for military service,
only seven or eight per cent, of the manufacturing population of
Val-des-Bois is refused.
The longevity of the workmen is also great. Out of two
hundred and ninety-five men employed in the mill, eighty are
veterans, that is to say, they have worked in the weaving mill for
at least twenty-five years, some for more than fifty years. Four of
the pensioners are from eighty to eighty- four years of age. Thirteen
of the workmen, nine of whom are still at work, range from seventy-
one to eighty; twelve, from sixty-three to sixty-nine years of
age, still perform their daily tasks with ease.
The families are large, some numbering ten children. On
visiting Val-des-Bois we remarked, as have other visitors also,
the wide-awake faces of all these little children and the happy peace-
ful expression of their good parents, living in their little separate
houses, clean and bright, each with its little garden. One is con-
scious of an atmosphere of honest ease where black misery is
unknown. The reason for this will be apparent when we come
to speak of wages; also why the arrival of a new baby is not re-
garded as an affliction by the parents.
One of the most important duties of the " Mill Council "
regards accidents. Rules and recommendations to prevent acci-
dents are posted in all the workrooms. The findings of the engi-
neer of the Manufacturing Society and of the factory inspectors
are reported to the " Mill Council," to whom is entrusted the en-
forcement of measures for protection against accident. When, in
spite of every precaution, an accident occurs, the counsellors make
immediate investigation into the cause, and take steps to prevent
a recurrence of the catastrophe. It is also the duty of the Council
to assist the victim of the accident. Under French law the owner
cannot render material assistance to a wounded employee without
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 237
forfeiting his claim against the insurance companies. Therefore this
duty devolves upon the " Mill Council " at Val-des-Bois. One of
the council, or some competent person chosen by it, takes up the
case of the wounded man and helps him to obtain redress. Further-
more, in order not to prejudice the workman's claim against the
insurance companies, on the charge of having received damages for
the accident, his salary is not paid to him during the period of his
disability, but the accrued sum is held for him until a definite settle-
ment is concluded with the insurance companies.
v.
Special attention is given to the apprentices at Val-des-Bois.
The material future frequently the moral future of a work-
man depends largely upon his professional training: one man will
always be in demand because he was trained by a skillful, expe-
rienced, active master; another never rises above mediocrity, be-
cause he has had the misfortune to be badly taught.
For this reason the boys are put under the best workers in
the Harmel mill, and reports of the training and progress of the
apprentices are given at the Council's meetings. Every quarter a
competition is held to stimulate their industry. These last for a
month; twice a week the owner receives a report of each compet-
itor from his foreman, the counsellor of his department, and the
boss-workman. In the presence of the assembled " Mill Council "
prizes of money are awarded to the four leaders in the competition ;
the result is posted and the order of promotion determined by it.
These few details serve to show how interested the manage-
ment at Val-des-Bois is in the professional education of its appren-
tices. It has in view, not financial profits solely, but rather, and
above all, the fulfillment of a social duty. This higher concern is
even more clearly demonstrated by a fact told by M. Leon Harmel
with much frankness and simplicity :
In our mill [he said] we make certain specialties, like " novelty
weaves," which are not made in the other mills of the country ;
the young fellows, who are put to work on these specialties early
in life, run the risk of being unfitted for work in other mills,
should they leave ours. To prevent this misfortune, the appren-
tices who work on these looms have to pass an examination at
fifteen ; if they are then found incapable of earning a living on
the ordinary looms that run two hundred picks plain weave,
i
238 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [May,
they are put to work on the ordinary looms, and not allowed to
return to their specialty until they can do a standard day's work
on the ordinary looms.
It is easy to see the wisdom of this regulation, and the advan-
tage to the workman of being thus protected, in spite of himself,
against possible loss of work. A simple plan, surely, but to con-
ceive it, it was necessary to see in the worker something more than
a mere human machine. It is due to that larger view which regards
all the wage-earners, young and old, sons and fathers, as members
of one's own household, a big industrial family.
VI.
The regulation of work is of next importance ; and here comes
in the big question of the length of the working day. The manage-
ment at Val-des-Bois is in favor of short hours without reduction
of wages.
But do you really mean without reduction of wages ? Certainly,
I mean just what I say, without reduction of wages. But if a man
works one-sixth less time, in all justice his salary should be
one-sixth less? Not if in both cases the output is the same. Now
that is just what happens at Val-des-Bois, as well as in many
mills elsewhere. Hear what M. Harmel, a successful manufacturer
accustomed to dealing in figures, says on the subject :
In March, 1902, when the law fixing ten hours and a half as
the maximum working day went into effect, after consulting
with the " Mill Council," we posted a statement that wages
would remain the same as for the eleven-hour and formerly the
twelve-hour day. We were convinced that the loss in time would
be compensated for by increased efficiency, and that the output
would not diminish. The event fulfilled our expectation.
This is the declared experience of the head of an establishment
where five hundred men and women are employed. This Catholic
firm cannot be accused of having two theories, one for the plat-
form and the other for business.
h
\ r i.
The " Mill Council " of VaK ''^ois exercises a particularly
careful supervision over the rating ana i^" 'nt of wages. By an
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 239
agreement between the employers and the employees, the wage is not
fixed finally until after a certain period of trial. The owner binds
himself not to reduce wages without giving a hearing to the repre-
sentatives of those concerned.
An interesting feature of the Harmel mill is the collective
payments. A tally shows the amount earned by each member of a
family and the total amount due them; this is paid to the father
or mother, preferably the mother, for obvious reasons, on Thurs-
day, market day, of each week when they come to work. By this
means the baneful temptations of pay-day are avoided. The system
also facilitates saving. The women are allowed to leave in the
office the sum they wish to put aside, and experience proves that it is
comparatively easier for them to save a few francs out of an aggre-
gate salary than out of several rather small ones.
Great respect is paid to the aged workers at Val-des-Bois. The
management and the " Mill Council " combine to use their knowl-
edge as long as possible in employments, not arduous, where pro-
fessional experience is valuable.
We know [M. Leon Harmel says] that we render them a
service in postponing their exile from the workroom, which
the habit of years has taught them to look upon as a second
home. Life becomes a burden when they have nothing to do;
besides their modest earnings enable them to end their days
of labor honorably among their children and grandchildren
without being a charge on anyone.
When, finally, they ask to leave the mill the " veterans " draw a
pension of three hundred francs, paid by the owner out of his own
income without taxing his employees.
The " Family Fund " is, probably, the most laudable of all the
institutions in the Harmel establishment, for, as far as the thing is
possible in this age of intense industrial competition, it assures
to each family a certain minimum wage.
To quote M. Leon Harmel :
No matter what the rate of wages may be, it is impossible
to protect families from the possibility of, at least, temporary
want without some institution which enables them to overcome
what might be called a dead center in life. You know what is
meant by the dead center of a steam engine. It is the recurrent
point, at each end of the stroke, when the reciprocating move-
240 THE SOCIAL APOSTOIATE IN FRANCE [May,
ment of the piston momentarily ceases, and hence its momentum.
The energy necessary to move the piston from the dead center
is supplied by the driving wheel, which may be considered, at
this point, as a reservoir of energy, designed especially to furnish
the momentum necessary to carry the piston forward at the be-
ginning of each return stroke. With the same spirit of fore-
sight our forefathers held certain properties for the common
good, communal lands out of which the poor of the community
could gain a living. We, less wise in our generation, have done
away with these reservations, and the poverty, formerly un-
known in the country districts, has no longer any preventive.
The critical moments for the working classes are, first, when
the children are numerous and are under working age. Debts
are almost inevitable then; they are a drag on the future and
lead to hopeless discouragement; another critical moment oc-
curs when the death of the father of a family leaves the wife
and children victims of want, or when a lack of earning capacity,
temporary or permanent, renders it impossible to earn an
adequate salary.
In his Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII. expressly de-
clared that " the wage should not be insufficient for the subsistence
of a sober, honest workman." Immediately after the promulgation
of the Encyclical, the Harmels, always obedient to the pontifical
teaching, established the " Family Fund." The object of this
fund, supplied from the income of the mill owners, is to supplement
the insufficient wages earned by certain families. It is administered
by a committee of the " Mill Council " that has the right to examine
the pay-roll and ascertain the income of every family. A minimum
living-wage has been fixed upon by common consent. They esti-
mate that, with a low rent, a garden and potato patch and cheap
country markets (for Val-des-Bois is quite in the country), the
minimum wage is sixty centimes a day per capita, or four francs
twenty centimes a week per capita about eighty-five cents. In a
city, the minimum would be a per capita allowance of ninety cen-
times, or one franc a day. Consequently the manager of the mill
at Val-des-Bois computed that every family should draw weekly as
many times four francs twenty centimes as it contained members,
little or big, able-bodied or sick.
Every week the council meets and fixes the amount of the sup-
plementary sum to be allowed each family by this computation, the
owner never interfering with the decision. His part is to pay the
sum agreed upon by the committee of workmen.
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 241
To cite a few examples. The B family numbers twelve
children, making fourteen in all with the father and mother.
At four francs twenty centimes a person, their weekly income should
be fifty-eight francs eighty centimes. Now the father earns four
francs fifty centimes a day, and two of the children earn two francs
apiece, making a total for the week of fifty-one francs. Their
weekly allowance, paid out of the owners' fund, would be seven
francs eighty centimes.
Or, take the case of the widow D , who has six children,
two of whom work. One earns two francs fifty centimes, and the
other, younger, earns one franc sixty centimes a day, a weekly
total of twenty- four francs sixty centimes. The fund allows her
four francs eighty centimes each week to bring her income up to
the minimum of twenty-nine francs forty centimes.
It is easy to see that at Val-des-Bois they were not content
to proclaim verbally the Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, as the charter
of the laboring world, but actually vitalized their business organi-
zation with its spirit.
To praise the clear-sighted timeliness of the teachings of the
Holy Father is certainly excellent, but to demonstrate in
practice the social efficacy of the Pontiff's words is far more ex-
cellent.
This method was adopted long since by M. Leon Harmel and
his collaborators. Let us hope their example may beget a wider and
wider imitation.
VOL. XCV. 16
Iflew Boohs.
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. By Johannes Jorgensen. Translated
from the Danish by T. O'Conor Sloane, Ph.D. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $3.00 net.
There can never be too many books about St. Francis, pro-
vided they are written in the Catholic spirit, that incommunicable
sympathy that those outside the Fold somehow miss, be they ever
so kindly and well-intentioned. It is like some immortal aria of
which we never tire. Each great singer gives a personal interpre-
tation, but the song itself is so instinct with genius that it charms
even when rendered by the untutored voice of one who has heard
it in passing and remembered.
This new life is a valuable addition to Franciscan literature,
all the more that it has been translated with much skill and feeling.
More than this: it interprets St. Francis to the modern mind.
Many long years of study and familiarity with Italy are necessary
to make the true meaning of the " Fioretti " understandable to men
and women of the present day. They love the simplicity, the quaint-
ness; they may laugh at Brother Juniper, but they miss the great
lesson, the stark poverty, the wonderful spirituality, the soul of
St. Francis' teaching. Mr. Sloane's translation performs a great
service to those who desire to familiarize themselves with the
realities of early Franciscan life, and the scholar and critic will
find in the notes and references copious authority for each important
statement.
The book is packed with quotations from the Saint, and they
are deftly welded to the running narrative, so that there is no break
or cessation of interest. Finally, the volume is excellently printed
and easy to read. Books like this do much for the Kingdom of
God and devotion to His Saints.
THE CREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPEL. By Mgr. Pierre Batiffol.
Translated by Rev. G. C. H. Pollen, S.J. New York : Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.50 net.
We are grateful to Father Pollen for his accurate and readable
translation of the Versailles lectures of Mgr. Batiffol on the histor-
icity of Christ and the Gospels. We reviewed this book in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, October, 1910, when it first appeared under
the title Orpheus et I'Evangile. It is a dignified and scholarly
1912.] NEW BOOKS 243
answer to the attacks of modern rationalistic critics on the much-
debated questions of Christian origins. Mgr. Batiffol, while answer-
ing on every page the shallow inaccuracies of Reinach, is objective
in his treatment. As he himself says : " I have taken as the ground-
plan of my work the chapter of Orpheus on Christian origins, and
I have re-written it, correcting and bringing out clearly accepted
facts I have pointed out in footnotes the errors he has
committed, and the facts of which his knowledge is insufficient.
Finally, I was obliged to quote examples, in order to show the
childishness of some of his analogical methods."*
The various chapters treat in turn the extra-gospel references
to Christ, the Catholic Canon, the witness of St. Paul, the author-
ship of the Acts, the origin of the Gospels, and the authenticity of
the life and teachings of Jesus.
Mgr. Batiffol proves conclusively the utter falsity of the thesis
of Reinach, borrowed from the discredited Tubingen school, and
popularized to-day by Drews and Jensen, that St. Paul knew nothing
of the historic Christ. He praises Harnack's "superior erudition and
brilliant generalizations," and then makes him serve the Christian
cause by defending St. Luke's authorship of the Acts of the Apostles.
He quotes Harnack to good effect : " The most ancient literature of
the Church is, on all chief points, and in the majority of details,
veracious and worthy of belief from the point of view of literary
history In our criticism of the most ancient sources of
Christianity we are, without any doubt, in course of returning
to tradition."!
The last chapter deals with three hypotheses whereby the critics
question the authenticity of the Gospel records: ist. That the
incident recorded has been suggested by the Old Testament. 2nd.
That the miracles mentioned, when they cannot be explained by
natural means, are moral tales which have been taken as history
or metaphors, which a very primitive simplicity understood literally.
3rd. That " the method of comparative religions " will prove the
syncretic character of Christianity, and its utter lack of originality.
Worthy of notice is the brief, but very able, refutation of Reinach's
fanciful myth of the passion of Christ, borrowed from the Sacaea of
Babylon.
We sincerely hope that everyone, whose mind has been dis-
turbed by the sophistry of modern rationalistic denial, will read
carefully this able defense of the Christian position. May they,
Preface, p. xvi. tHarnack, Chronologic, vol. i., p. vii.-x.
244 NEW BOOKS [May,
as the author says in closing his lectures, " find in this inquiry the
reason for belief which have hitherto been wanting to them."
AN EIRENIC ITINERARY. By Silas McBee. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.00.
Mr. McBee says in his preface : " The tour through Europe
and the Near East, the impressions of which are the occasion and
form the larger part of this volume. . . .was one in a long series of
efforts covering many years, to know the mind and genius, as
well as to understand and to feel the spirit, of the dismembered
sections of Christendom."
His book is a record of kindly interviews with churchmen the
world over England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Egypt,
Turkey, Palestine and Syria. He is ever insisting on the evil of
divisions among Christians, and yet with all his talk about " unity
in the Family of God," he has no higher ideal than " a unity in
variety," or a Christendom which would ignore differences of
belief, and agree in the love of Christ.
Although our author traveled the world over to guide souls to
unity, he professes openly to have no idea of how it is to be brought
about. " I have nowhere advocated a scheme of unity. I know
of none that would be or could be made adequate."
We fail to see any evidence of agreement with his vague ideas
in the courtesies shown him as a well-recommended tourist by
Russian Archbishop, Coptic Patriarch, or the Pope. With usual
Episcopalian logic, he fails to grasp the Pope's mind.
His Holiness had suggested that Rome would always be ready
in the interest of Unity to yield anything except essential
dogma. When it was intimated that the crux of the whole
question would be, What is essential dogma? the Pope's reply
showed (sic) that it would depend upon the attitude of those
seeking unity. If the attitude was one of controversy, of
conflict, of war, then every defense, every outpost intended to
protect dogma must be regarded as essential, but if the attitude
was one of friendliness, if the spirit of unity prevailed, then the
fundamental mysteries of the Faith would be found to be simple
and free.
We can imagine the horror of Pius X. at such a travesty of his
words, if perchance they ever should be repeated to him. We
know that he would speak more like the procurator of the Holy
NEW BOOKS 245
Synod : " It was necessary to be orthodox ; they were orthodox,
and there was nothing for them to do unless others became ortho-
dox." Substitute Catholic for orthodox, and you have an accurate
version of the Pope's words.
We do not think that Mr. McBee appreciated the joke in the
hearty laugh of Cardinal Merry del Val, when he heard the Patri-
arch of Antioch's words, " There is no fundamental justification
for the divisions of Christians ; the Latins do give us a lot of trouble,
but not enough to justify division." But, of course, if our author
had a saving sense of humor, this book would not have been written.
THE EVE OF CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION (1803-1829). By
Monsignor Bernard Ward. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co. In three volumes. Vols. i and 2. $6.00 net.
The work is aptly named. Vicars Apostolic, French refugees,
native ecclesiastics, prominent laymen, friends and enemies, move
through it as wayfarers in a London fog. This is an excellence,
not a defect. The author did not amplify his sources with guess-
work, imagination or gossip. He followed his documents. This
makes for the enduring value of the book. Mgr. Ward wrote
of the eve, not the mid-day; and his perspective is right. If one
misses clear-cut portraits and ample statistics, he may well reflect
on the scope of the narrative and the archives on which it is con-
structed.
One figure looms large in the account; a man of tireless activ-
ity, imperturbable belief in himself, and a faculty of fighting things
out along his own lines, Bishop Milner of the Midland District. He
is the stormy petrel of the book; now in Winchester; anon in London
before Parliament; in Ireland in conference with Dr. Cullen; now
in Rome carrying things before him by the intensity of his per-
sonality. He never doubted the justice of a cause he espoused or
the expediency of the means he chose. His pastorals, his mani-
festoes, his letters, rained on England. The other Vicars Apostolic,
quiet men accustomed to conservative methods, never quite trusted
or understood him, and he was too busy and confident to spend any
time at all studying them. He was by far the strongest Catholic
figure in the England of his day, but he smashed a great deal of
china that was needed later on.
It is melancholy reading ; the squabblings, protests and recrimi-
nations of good men working for the same cause. A practical man
sighs : Why could not these excellent clerics bury their animosities
246 NEW BOOKS [May,
and work together for the Catholics of England who were placed
in their charge ?
The book brings home to the thoughtful reader the mysterious
ways in which the Holy Spirit works for the Kingdom of God
through the blindness and weakness of men. It was a difficult time
for ecclesiastical superiors. The French refugees were undepend-
able and in a strange land, the native clergy undisciplined, and
powerful laymen were afflicted with the Protestant itch for inter-
ference in church matters. The Roman Curia, somewhat mystified
at the tangle, waited and said little, and in the result things worked
themselves out.
A truthful and just narrative of a period like the one in
question is a severe test of a historian. Mgr. Ward has performed
a difficult, and one feels at times an unwelcome, task in a manner
worthy of all praise. We shall look for the third volume with
great interest. One wishes that the three might have been pub-
lished together, for impressions once formed change slowly when
the parts are fitted together, as they were from the beginning
in the author's plan. No student who wishes to understand the
England of Wiseman, Newman and Manning, and especially the
under-current of Old Catholicism (the Catholic element that bore
the brunt of the Penal Days), can afford to neglect these two
scholarly and masterly volumes.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN LINGARD. By Martin Haile
and Edward Bonney. London: Herbert and Daniel. $3.75.
One who writes a great history or poem or play, writes his own
autobiography. He reveals the height of his nobility, the wealth of
his sympathy, the measure of his justice. John Lingard's memory
needed not this book to endear his name to all who use the English
tongue, and love truth for its own sake. Yet it is a singularly
attractive and encouraging story that the collaborators have woven
from the uneventful yet overflowing days of the Vicar of Hornby.
It was the idyllic scholar's life, undisturbed by the clamor of the
world or insistent calls for action in which the man would not do
his best. A few friends, a few visits to the Continent, a brushing
on the fringe of throbbing English life of the period; but what will
linger longest in the mind of the reader of this charming book is the
vision of the historian in his Patmos among his dearly beloved
books.
Surely if ever a man was to be fashioned to write truthfully,
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 247
yet kindly, the troubled record of English history, it was this calm
and kindly priest, whose ideal of earthly happiness was his cottage
among the flowers, his little flock, his manuscripts, all in their way
ministering to the great work that will stand like the Arch of
Titus in the Forum, when lesser, careless and untruthful histories
are carted to the rubbish heap.
The reader will close this book with a new and lovable picture
of Lingard, the man. It will, unless we are much mistaken, send him
back to those ten magnificent volumes of the truest and best English
history yet written. Place this biography on your library shelf just
before Volume I. of the History, and many, who otherwise would
be affrighted at their bulk, will read every page of them with delight.
THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL READERS. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. 60 cents.
The Cambridge Historical Readers, published by the Cam-
bridge University Press, and in this country by G. P. Putnam's
Sons, New York, include five books, viz., the Introductory, Primary,
Intermediate, Junior and Senior. The price is forty cents each,
for the two first-named books, and sixty cents each for the last
three.
In the absence of any preface or explanation of plan and in-
tention in the series, one must draw one's own conclusions as to
the purpose of the publication. Owing to the exclusive nature of
the topics dealt with four, out of the five books, contain only
lessons on English History, or such events in other countries, as
influence English affairs their usefulness as a series in the schools
of the United States will be somewhat limited. However, as each
book treats of events, in a very general way, from the early
Britons to the present day, each may be considered as complete
in itself, and, one being chosen, might well be used as a Supple-
mentary Reader, at whatever point in the school course it could
be most conveniently introduced.
The Introductory Book differs from the others in this, that it
relates in very simple language stories of the heroes of Greece and
Rome. One hears so much nowadays of the teaching of ethics
and morality that it seems a pity not to begin as early as possible to
impress such teaching upon the minds of young readers. Since
the lesson of devotion to country, even to the extent of heroic self-
sacrifice is insisted on, why not also the lesson of fortitude in the
vicissitudes of life? Several of these heroes are recorded as having
248 NEW BOOKS [May,
committed suicide, and there is no word of blame for the act.
Yet suicide, aside from the commandments, is cowardice.
In looking over the contents of each volume, we very naturally
turned to such points as the difficulties between Church and State in
the reigns of the Plantagenets, the Reformation, the Suppression
of the Monasteries, etc. Often one is surprised at the fair-mind-
edness shown. Monks and monasteries, and all the works thereof,
come in for a quite unusual amount of appreciation. St. Columba,
St. Aidan, Venerable Bede, St. Gregory the Great and the mission-
aries whom he sent the lessons on all of these are fair, and even
sympathetic. Though, to be sure, St. Columba and " his friends "
are more like a company of amiable, Anglican clergymen than the
strenuous enthusiastic monk, the warlike book-lover, the voluntary
yet heart-broken exile, who, with his earnest devoted band of relig-
ious, glorified lona, and planted the Cross of Christ amid the wilds
of Caledonia.
The services of the monks in these early days to Christianity,
to agriculture, to literature, and the arts, are duly acknowledged.
From the treatment accorded to St. Thomas of Canterbury,
we judge, the books have been compiled or written by different
people. In the Junior Reader, under the heading " The Martyr
of Canterbury," a not unfavorable account of his life is given;
while in the Intermediate and Senior books a much more Erastian
view is taken of the quarrel between King and Archbishop. There
is all the difference between the two views that lies between a
Ritualist, with his ideas of Church independence, and a Broad
Churchman, to whom Convocation is less than King and Parliament.
The Junior reader uses the term " Romish," page 154, which
term is very properly resented by Catholics. The Reformation and
Suppression of religious houses are but lightly touched upon.
An impartial and true account of the Gunpowder Plot is given,
while Titus Gates is treated with the contempt he so richly deserves.
But in spite of a few blemishes, it is a great thing for the
younger generation to have history so well-written for them, such
well-considered views, so temperately expressed ; for children have
too often been the victims of bigoted views or of partisan zeal. We
have in mind a history of our youthful days, in which St. Thomas
was branded as " foolish and filthy," and likened to the Pharisees of
old. Poor St. Thomas! he seems a stumbling-block to more than
one historian.
The topics chosen are various and most interesting, and much
NEW BOOKS 249
information regarding customs, laws, dress, arms, etc., of the
different periods make them more lifelike and impressive.
The illustrations are well chosen, varied, and in many cases
extremely interesting. One almost envies the children of the pres-
ent generation the numerous pictures that make pleasant the paths
of learning. Many of England's beautiful cathedrals, ancient
castles, noble abbeys, fine monuments and quiet country places, are
pictured here, and we confess they have been to us no small en-
joyment. Finally, as we should expect of books emanating from a
University Press, the language is clear, dignified and simple; suit-
able not only to impart information, but what is too often lost sight
of in these bustling days, to aid in the task of teaching composition.
And this will be no small recommendation to a hard-worked teacher.
The typography is very good and clear, and the whole make-up
of each volume worthy of praise.
THE WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS. By Carl Holli-
day. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50 net.
Carl Holliday, Professor of English at Vanderbilt University,
known as the author of several volumes on Southern literature,
and of a very fine study of The Cavalier Poets, has written an in-
teresting and valuable book on The Wit and Humor of Colonial
Days. The account begins with the first settlement, for, we are
told, " the colonists had scarcely landed in Virginia before witty
letters telling of ludicrous sights and mishaps in the raw settle-
ment began to go back to England," and ends only with the opening
of the nineteenth century. It divides itself into three parts : early
colonial humor, humor of the revolution, and humor of the repub-
lic. In the first we read of the very earliest humorists, Nathaniel
Ward, hater of the Irish ; William Byrd ; Mather Byles and Joseph
Green, and, of course, Benjamin Franklin, who is quoted at great
length.
Much more amusing, however, is the account of revolutionary
humor. Powder and shot were not the only hostile activity of our
forefathers; they did not neglect the weapon mightier than the
sword. We are told of the battle of wits between Tories and
patriots, and the parodies, sarcasms, and invectives on both sides
are quoted for our enjoyment. Newspapers of the two parties
splashed ink briskly on their opponents, and kept up a furious war-
fare. Arnold, of course, was the target of much satire, among
which we note this :
250 NEW BOOKS [May,
" Quoth Satan to Arnold : 'My worthy good fellow,
I love you much better than ever I did ;
You live like a prince, with Hal* may get mellow;
But mind that you both do just what I bid.'
"Quoth Arnold to Satan : 'My friend, do not doubt me !
I will strictly adhere to all your great views ;
To you I'm devoted, with all things about me
You'll permit me, I hope, to die in my shoes.' "
The patriotic satirist, Freneau, is written up at especial length,
and we have extracts from his fiery, vitriolic pen, among them the
following prophecy, written in 1 782 :
" When a certain great King, whose initial is G,
Shall force stamps upon paper, and folks to drink tea ;
When these folks burn his tea and stampt paper like stubble,
You may guess that this King is then coming to trouble.
But when a petition he treads under his feet,
And sends over the ocean an army and fleet ;
When that army, half starved and frantic with rage,
Shall be cooped up with a leader whose name rhymes with cage ;
When that leader goes home, dejected and sad,
You may then be assured the king's prospects are bad.
But when B and C with their armies are taken,
The king will do well if he saves his own bacon.
In the year seventeen hundred and eighty and two
A stroke he shall get that will make him look blue;
In the years eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-five
You hardly shall know that the king is alive;
In the year eighty-six the affair will be over,
And he shall eat turnips that grow in Hanover.
The face of the Lion shall then become pale,
He shall yield fifteen teeth and be sheared of his tail.
O king, my dear king, you shall be very sore ;
The Stars and the Lily shall run you on shore,
And your Lion shall growl but never bite more ! "
The chapters on the humor of the republic concern themselves
chiefly with the Hartford Wits, especially John Trumbell, Joel
Barlow, still remembered for his Hasting Pudding; Theodore
Dwight, and Lemuel Hopkins, author of The Victim of the Cancer
Quack, and of a satire on General Ethan Allen's infidelity, from
which is quoted :
*Hal : Sir Henry Clinton.
1912.] NEW BOOKS 251
" Lo, Allen, 'scaped from British jails,
His tushes broke by biting nails,
Appears in Hyperborean skies,
To tell the world the Bible lies.
See him on green hills north afar
Glow like a self-enkindled star
* * *
Behold inspired from Vermont dens
The seer of Antichrist descends,
To feed new mobs with Hell-born manna
In Gentile lands of Susquehanna ;
And teach the Pennsylvania Quaker
High blasphemies against his Maker.
All front he seems like wall of brass,
And brays tremendous as an ass ;
One hand is clench'd to batter noses,
While t'other scrawls 'gainst Paul and Moses."
The volume concludes with a brief study of the humor of the
Colonial stage, but this is not made particularly interesting. On
the whole, however, Professor Holliday has done a fine bit of
work in collecting his material, and in presenting it with just enough
criticism and comment to be satisfactory.
HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. THE CIVILIZATION OF
CHINA. By H. A. Giles. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
50 cents.
HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH
LAW. By W. M. Geldart. New York : Henry Holt & Co.
50 cents.
The scholar may sigh at the multiplication of manuals, but it
is a condition and not a theory that confronts us. Unless the people
have good manuals to read they will go their way ignorant. But
the making of a good manual is a gigantic work. One great fallacy
under which the Occidental labors is that the Oriental is somehow
not human, at least not to our way of thinking. A vast deal of
nonsense has been written about the unfathomable mystery of the
Oriental mind. Professor Giles' little book shows us the Chinaman
as a very human being, the outcome of an ancient civilization, and
age-old customs that are to us exceedingly strange. If it did no
more than this it would have deserved well of Western readers.
But it gives beside a comprehensive and intelligible view of Chinese
history and literature. It displays a strong and consistent under-
252 NEW BOOKS [May,
current of sympathy with the people, without which no book about
a foreign people can have real value as a manual for general
reading. Especially in this country, where the nations jostle each
other, and a basis of common humanity is " a consummation de-
voutly to be wished," a book like this is excellent for young people,
who may see through older and wiser eyes the virtues and excel-
lencies of a race that they are only too apt ignorantly to despise.
Everyone ought to know something about the elements of law,
if only to avoid lawsuits. The average layman who reads a solid
law book through will ordinarily conceive a respect and fear of its
pitfalls that will be of assistance to him all his life. For it is the
man who can see only one side of a question, his side, who goes
to law and beggars himself.
This book deals mainly with English Law, and the terms and
references will sound strange to Americans, but fundamentally
the principles are the same here as in England. It is a plain and
not too technical exposition of legal matters not generally under-
stood. It is worthy of note that wherever ecclesiastical matters are
treated of, there is an absence of anti-Catholic animus.
LOURDES. By Jean de Beaucorps. Paris : Bloud et Cie. 3 frs.
This interesting volume relates the history of the apparitions of
the Blessed Virgin to the child Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes in
1858. The author quotes largely from Cros' Notre Dame de
Lourdes, and Estrade's Les Apparitions de Lourdes, but he adds to
their testimony his own personal interviews in 1909 with the sur-
viving witnesses of the wonders of the Grotto.
He describes vividly, and at length, the eighteen visions in the
hollow of the rock at Massabielle, and shows how this ignorant
peasant girl won belief in our Lady's presence despite the general
unbelief of the people, the determined opposition of the civil
authorities, and the utter scepticism of both bishop and clergy of the
diocese.
A brief sketch of Bernadette's life follows. It is a most ordi-
nary and uninteresting life from the world's standpoint, and yet
remarkable for its simplicity, truthfulness, humility and absolute
disinterestedness. Neither she nor her parents would ever accept
any money or presents offered by the thousands of pilgrims that
soon began to frequent the shrine.
A final chapter deals with the many hypotheses that have been
1912.] NEW BOOKS 253
invented to deny the reality of the apparitions, viz., suggestion,
illusion, and hallucination. Here our author quotes and borrows
largely from Imbert-Goubeyre's La Stigmatisation, Bertrin's Notre
Dame de Lourdes, and Father Bonniot's Le Miracle et les Sciences
Medicates.
No shrine in the world's history has ever attracted so many
pilgrims; no shrine has wrought so many marvellous cures. Un-
belief may shrug its shoulders, and speak sneeringly of the credulity
and superstition of Catholics, but it can assign no natural cause
to account for the many thousand miracles wrought by God in
answer to the prayers of His Mother's devout clients.
BACK TO THE WORLD. By M. Champol. New York: Ben-
ziger Bros. $1.35 net.
The chaotic condition of France, the eviction of religious from
convents and monasteries, the seizure of ecclesiastical property, the
general spirit of unrest that has settled upon the " eldest daughter
of the Church," are themes too alluring for the novelist to resist.
That this allurement was not resisted by the able novelist,
M. Champol, is a cause for delight to the readers of Back to the
World, for this story of temperaments, this narration about the
lives of three laicized nuns after the dispersion of their order, will
make a mental, a physical, a psychical appeal.
Careful character delineation, coherent relating, and good
English form the mental ; the affliction of the hero's child the phys-
ical; the moral struggles of the three nuns the psychical appeal.
Temptation tests the vocation of each, and is resisted in turn by
Mother St. Helene, who is governess to the children of irreligious
parents; by Sister St. Louis who takes up her abode in the home
of wrangling relatives, who have become contaminated with the
spirit of modernism; by Sister St. Gabriel, whose temptations are
the strongest of all the hardest to combat. Returning to the home
of her indulgent mother, she is lavished with wealth and the atten-
tions of Jean de Verniere, in whom she was formerly interested.
His motherless children, particularly the afflicted one, touch her
sympathies, but it is God who touches her heart, and she responds
to the real call.
Popular opinion and the spirit of romance induce the author
to attribute her earlier vocation to disappointment in love, but with
the development of the story disappears the only blemish that might
be noted in an otherwise faultless story.
254 NEW BOOKS [May,
KNIGHT OF THE GREEN SHIELD. By Louise Stacpoole-Kenny.
New York: Benziger Bros. $1.50 net.
To a reading public, who desire a mixture of chivalrous ro-
mance with picturesque history, tales of chivalry appeal more or
less according to the skill fulness with which the theme is treated.
The Knight of the Green Shield will appeal less than other
stories of this class, for the element of cleverness which one expects
from an English author is decidedly lacking in this story of Mrs.
Stackpoole-Kenny's, which proves of mild interest only.
Pledged by an oath taken when invested as a Knight of the
Green Shield, Raoul de Chatillon is unable to join the crusade headed
by Louis, the Saint King. Despite the taunts of Brunhilde de St.
Etoile, to whom he has sworn his fealty, he remains true to his
pledge until the king sends for him, when he places Yolande, the
child whom he has rescued from kidnappers, under the care of the
sisters during his absence.
When taken captive during the battle of Mansorah, he calls
for his horse Saladin. The Saracens' misinterpretation of this call
secures for him kind treatment and, eventually, release. Upon his
return there is strife for place in his affection between Yolande
and Brunhilde, who is now widowed. The strife ends in solving
the mystery regarding the disappearance of Brunhilde's lost child,
and in much happiness to those most concerned.
Teachers of mediaeval history may well recommend this story
for collateral reading, for in the foreword the author states, " For
the purposes of my story I have antedated the founding of the Order
of the White Lady of the Green Shield. In the other historical
events mentioned I have given correct dates and versions accord-
ing to the Chronicles of Jehan de Joinville and various histories
of France."
The map appended to the story helps the reader to follow ac-
curately the movements of the Crusaders, but accuracy is sometimes
purchased at the expense of interest.
A PERSONAL RECORD. By Joseph Conrad. New York:
Harper & Bros. $1.25 net.
The Polish seaman and writer, Joseph Conrad, to whose
work THE CATHOLIC WORLD recently called attention, has just
published a volume of reminiscences of his very full and extra-
ordinary life. It is a frank, casual, informal autobiography, its
chief fault being its brevity, for there are many paragraphs which
I9i2.] NEW BOOKS 255
might easily, and pleasantly for us, be expanded into chapters.
The writer aims, as he tells us, " to give the record of personal
memories by presenting faithfully the feelings and sensations, con-
nected with the writing of my first book, and with my first con-
tact with the sea." This first book, Almayer's Folly, was begun in
a time of idleness, and continued in a desultory fashion at odd
moments, yet there was never any question of abandoning it.
Till I began to write that novel [the author observes], I had
written nothing but letters, and not very many of these. I
never made a note of a fact, of an impression, or of an anec-
dote in my life. The conception of a planned book was entirely
outside of my mental range when I sat down to write; the
ambition of being an author had never turned up among those
gracious imaginary existences one creates fondly for oneself at
times in the stillness and immobility of a day-dream : yet it stands
clear as the sun at noon-day that from the moment I had done
blackening over the first manuscript page of Almayer's Folly (it
contained about two hundred words, and this proportion of
words to a page has remained with me through the fifteen years
of my writing life), from the moment I had, in the simplicity
of my heart and the amazing ignorance of my mind, written that
page, the die was cast. Never had Rubicon been more blindly
forded without invocation to the gods, without fear of men.
So in telling of the slow and delayed accomplishment of this
book, the author incidentally gives us an account of his surround-
ings and activities of that time, of his voyage into queer corners
of the globe, and even, parenthetically, some very interesting recol-
lections of his boyhood and of his father, a Polish patriot and exile.
And we get, of course, a clear view of his own pleasant personality,
and an informal, half apologetic, summary of his opinions, literary
and philosophical.
A gentleman, who has managed to preserve absolute silence in
the face of friendly and hostile critics for fifteen years, might well
be expected to fire some telling shots with ammunition so carefully
saved. But Joseph Conrad does not wax acrimonious on the subject
of literary criticism. It may be of interest to quote:
As was fitting for a man to whom we owe the memorable
saying, " The good critic is he who relates the adventures of
his soul among masterpieces," M. Anatole France maintained
that there were no rules and no principles. And that may be
256 NEW BOOKS [May,
very true. Rules, principles, and standards die and vanish
every day. Perhaps they are all dead and vanished by this
time. These, if ever, are the brave, free days of destroyed
landmarks, while the ingenious minds are busy inventing the
forms of the new beacons which, it is consoling to think, will
be set up presently in the old places. (Surely we cannot grudge
Mr. Conrad this quiet little bit!) But what is interesting to
a writer is the possession of an inward certitude that literary
criticism will never die, for man (so variously defined) is,
before everything else, a critical animal. And as long as dis-
tinguished minds are ready to treat it in the spirit of high ad-
venture, literary criticism shall appeal to us with all the charm
and wisdom of a well-told tale of personal experience.
Most of us feel the craving Philistine, perhaps, but unde-
niable for information as to an author's creative activity. Mr.
Arnold Bennett, to be sure, has recently instructed us as to the
correct make of pencils and erasers, and the correct size of fools-
cap for constructing " best-sellers ;" Mr. Chesterton waxes brilliant
during lunch, scribbles paradoxes on old envelopes or menu-cards,
and leaves them strewn around restaurants in Soho ; let us see how
genius burns for Mr. Conrad. First, he tells us that creation means
work for him that the writing of novels is not all beer and
skittles. Later, he speaks particularly of his work on the novel
Nostromo, saying:
All I know is that for twenty months, neglecting the common
joys of life, I had, like the prophet of old, " wrestled with the
Lord " for my creation, for the headlands of the coast, for
the darkness of the placid gulf, the light on the snows, the
clouds in the sky, and for the breath of life that had to be
blown into the shapes of men and women, of Latin and Saxon,
of Jew and Gentile. These are, perhaps, strong words, but it
is difficult to characterize otherwise the intimacy and the strain
of a creative effort in which mind and will and conscience
are engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day, away
from the world, and to the exclusion of all that makes life
really lovable and gentle.
Space fails us for further comment on Mr. Conrad's recol-
lections and opinions, but except for a couple of pages of vague,
perhaps fortunately vague, philosophy, we can safely predict that
our readers will find the Personal Record delightful.
NEW BOOKS 257
THE FIGHTING RACE (KELLY AND BURKE AND SHEA);
AND OTHER POEMS AND BALLADS. By Joseph I. C.
Clarke. New York: American News Co. $i.oonet.
Our modern our carefully modern poets offer us plenty of
neurotic sonnets, plenty of odes with the hot breath of p-p-passion,
and plenty of epics with half-baked theories for rebuilding the
universe nearer to the heart's desire. Some of the better ones even
offer us clever verse. But real, genuine, home-made poetry they
somehow do not find time to produce. After their calcium and
acetylene gas it is a joy to find poetry through which gleams the
light that never was on land or sea such poetry as makes up
this little book by Joseph I. C. Clarke. Now appearing in its third
edition, the book takes its title from the first and best-known poem,
The Fighting Race (Kelly and Burke and Shea). This, of course,
calls neither for introduction nor for praise, but irresistibly for a
bit of quotation :
"'Wherever there's Kelly there's trouble,' said Burke.
'Wherever fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's work,'
Said Kelly, 'you'll find my name.'
'And do we fall short ?' said Burke, getting mad,
'When it's touch and go for life?'
Said Shea, 'It's thirty odd years, bedad,
Since I charged to drum and fife
Up Mary's Heights, and my old canteen
Stopped a rebel ball on its way.
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs of green
Kelly and Burke and Shea
And the dead didn't brag. 'Well, here's to the flag !'
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
* * *
'Oh, the fighting races don't die out,
If they seldom die in bed,
For love is first in their hearts, no doubt,'
Said Burke ; then Kelly said :
'When Michael, the Irish Archangel, stands,
The angel with the sword,
And the battle-dead from a hundred lands
Are ranged in one big horde,
Our line, that for Gabriel's trumpet waits,
Will stretch three deep that day,
VOL. xcv. 17
258 NEW BOOKS [May,
From Jehoshaphat to the Golden Gates
Kelly and Burke and Shea.'
'Well, here's thank God for the race and the sod !'
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea."
'THE CRUX OF PASTORAL MEDICINE. (New York:
Frederick Pustet & Co. $1.25 net.) Father Andrew
Klarmann has in this fourth edition of his Pastoral Medicine made
a very interesting handbook on the subjects that create most diffi-
culties for confessors as regards the moral principles that have
to be applied in medical practice. Many of the problems are
still under discussion among theologians, some of them have been
definitely settled by Church decision, with regard to many of them
medical information is as yet not complete, for the sciences related
to medicine are only in process of development. At each new stage
of information, however, the clergyman and physician who have
practical questions to solve wish to know what present-day thought
has to offer, and that is presented here succinctly and thoroughly.
There is still room for disagreement with the author in many ques-
tions, and undoubtedly many well-informed theologians, whose
knowledge of medical science in these subjects gives them the right
to an opinion, would probably not be quite so rigorous in decision,
but if there is any fault in this matter it is in the right direction,
since there is such a tendency to laxity of morals in many of these
questions in our generation.
HTRACTATUS DE EXTREMA UNCTIONE, by J. Kern, S.J.
(New York and Cincinnati: F. Pustet. $1.50.) A strong
desire to re-establish the Middle-Age doctrine that the proximate
purpose of Extreme Unction is to give those who are physically ill
perfect spiritual health, and to fit them for immediate entrance into
heaven, had much to do with the writing of this book. It is an able,
thorough study of the subject, written in clear, easy Latin. The
topical division followed is the one usually found in dogmatic trea-
tises on the Sacraments. The most noteworthy and valuable feature
of this book is the unusual attention paid to historical evidence.
All sources are made to contribute. Popes, Fathers and Doctors
of the Church from both East and West, provincial as well as
general councils, obscure as well as famous theologians, and writers
belonging to schismatical bodies, are called to testify. Their opin-
ions are not summarized by others, but are given in their own
igi2.] NEW BOOKS 259
words. Besides, the quotations made are not mere fragments, but
are extensive enough to create the happy feeling that the author on
the witness stand is not cut short, but receives ample opportunity to
speak his mind.
A very interesting point is raised by the author's thesis, that
there are grave reasons for the opinion that Extreme Unction may
be given validly more than once "in eadem infirmitate etiam ma-
nente eodem mortis periculo."
TN CHATEAU LAND, by Annie Hollingsworth Wharton.
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $2.00.) This is a story,
in letter-form, of a trip taken by a small party of Americans from
Lake Como through Central France. Dijon, Paris, Tours, Blois, and
other well-known places, are the centers from which excursions are
taken into the neighboring country. Like most travel and descrip-
tion books that are poured forth by the press nowadays, this book
is quite attractive. Were one concerned only with its external
characteristics press-work, illustrations, style and the like one
could hardly find fault. Its intrinsic worth, however, is not great.
It is largely made up of gossip about the great, though rarely good,
men and women who visited, or lived in, or were in some way con-
nected with, the towns, or chateaux included in the itinerary.
AMONG THE BLESSED ; LOVING THOUGHTS ABOUT
FAVORITE SAINTS, by the Rev. Matthew Russell, SJ.
(New York, Longmans, Green & C6*. $1.25.) Father Russell labors
on untiringly. In addition to editing the Irish Monthly for the past
thirty-eight years, he has written twenty or more volumes, spiritual
books for the most part, both in prose and verse. Among the
Blessed is a worthy addition to these. These " loving thoughts
about favorite Saints " are expressed in both prose and verse, and
a great deal of the verse is from Father Russell's own pen. Fol-
lowing the preface, and " An exhortation to Read the Lives of the
Saints," is a splendid poem from the pen of Lionel Johnson, en-
titled, " To the Saints." We are sure the volume will have many
readers, and that it will enkindle in many hearts a deeper love for
the Saints of God.
CT. ANSELM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. Notre
P Dame Series. (St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.25.) This volume
is another valuable addition to the Notre Dame Series, and the story
260 NEW BOOKS [May,
is told with directness and accuracy. Trained in silent cloisters, and
called from obscurity to greatness in a foreign land, St. Anselm
stands out a striking figure in the struggle between expediency and
principle in the early part of the twelfth century. His was the
great spirited work that endures when kingdoms and cathedrals
crumble into dust.
'THE CULTURE OF THE SOUL, by Rev. P. Ryan. (New
York: Benziger Brothers. 95 cents.) This treatise on the
counsels of perfection is excellent in its completeness and sim-
plicity, and may be a help to many who would be repelled by the
great standard works, which are more profound, but also more
diffuse and more technical.
PIONEER CATHOLIC HISTORY OF OREGON, by Edwin
V. O'Hara. (Portland: Edwin V. O'Hara. $1.00.) This
concise and admirable history of our heroic missionaries, in the early
days in Oregon, deserves a place in every household. The part
taken by Catholic priests in the beginnings of this country are
too little known, and this readable volume should go far in diffus-
ing knowledge of men, the plain story of whose lives is, in itself, an
eulogy.
A PPEAL FOR UNITY IN THE FAITH, by Rev. John Phelan.
<**! (Chicago: M. A. Donohue & Co. $1.00.) This appeal is
not one of consecutive argument, but a collection of authorities to
prove the Four Notes of the Catholic Church. There are, also, a
number of quotations from valuable papers on the necessity for
unity by Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Ireland and others.
f\ NE of the novels by the well-known Spanish writer, Luis
* Coloma, S.J., has been translated into English, and appears
under the title, John Poverty. The story itself is a simple one, of love
and hate and tragedy, told with dignity and strength, but the especial
reason why it should command a wide and careful attention is that
it affords a graphic picture of present conditions in Spain. The
methods of the revolutionist agitators, and their effect upon the
lower classes, are made very clear. The book is valuable as a study
of Spanish character and customs, and an analysis of the present
social unrest of the nation. (H. L. Kilner & Co., Philadelphia.
$1.25.)
igi2.] NEW BOOKS 261
'"THE new book by Rosa Mulholland (Lady Gilbert) is called
I Agatha's Hard Saying. (Benziger Brothers. $1.25.) As usual
the author writes earnestly and capably, but in this instance has
overshadowed her story with gloom. The " hard saying " of the
heroine is that her sisters and she can never marry, because of the
alcohol curse which they inherit from their mother. The story
is able and sincere, but crowded with tragedy.
A MONG the new novels published by L. C. Page & Co., Boston,
** are The Dominant Chord, by Edward Kimball; Ray ton, by
Theodore Goodridge Roberts, and Naomi of the Island, by Lucy
Thurston Abbott. The Dominant Chord is a ten, twenty, thirty
thriller of the frankest kind. The very determined young hero
kidnaps the very wealthy young heroine in an electrically equipped
yacht, and adventure, love, and pseudo-science wind each other
into a serenely impossible plot. Rayton, A Backwoods Mystery, is,
like all Mr. Robert's stories, brisk and masculine; its setting is
the backwoods of New Brunswick, and its mystery proves more
comedy than tragedy. Naomi of the Island is a rather tiresome
tale of a noble, immorally self-sacrificing young lady, with advanced
(sic.) theories of " world religions." Each, $1.25 net.
DIBLE ET PROTESTANTISME, by V. Franque (Paris:
*-* Bloud et Cie.), consists of a number of letters written
to a Protestant friend, answering objections to Catholic
doctrine. The Bible was the only authority admitted in the dis-
cussion. The various topics treated are : The Church, the Papacy,
the Blessed Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance, Purgatory, the
Virginity of Mary, and the Veneration of the Saints.
There is nothing strikingly original in the volume, nor is its
style peculiarly attractive. Still we trust its very simplicity and
Catholic spirit will convert the soul this ardent Knight of St.
Gregory yearned for.
THE EVIDENCE FOR THE SUPERNATURAL, A CRIT-
ICAL STUDY MADE WITH UNCOMMON SENSE, by
Ivor LL. Tuckett, M.A., M.D. (London: Kegan Paul. $2. oo.) Mr.
Tuckett has gathered together in this volume, in brief compass,
an immense amount of material very valuable for those who are in-
terested in such subjects as spiritualism, occultism, telepathy and
clairvoyance, and the other manifestations of real or supposed
262 NEW BOOKS [May,
psychic force, with regard to which so much has been written during
the past half-century. The literature of the subject, indeed, is so
large that few, except special students, can hope to read it with any
satisfying completeness. Mr. Tuckett's selections seem to be made
with care and fairness, though his attitude of utter incredulity will
meet with little sympathy from those who have persuaded them-
selves, or been persuaded, of the reality of these phenomena. 'His
references to the exposures of mediums is especially valuable.
Since 1850 nearly one hundred persons supposed to have mediumis-
tic powers have been detected in frauds. Among the exposed are the
names of many mediums whose phenomena were accepted by dis-
tinguished men of science as surely requiring some power beyond
the physical. Here one finds references to the exposures of Monk,
the Fox Sisters, Mrs. Fay, Dr. Slade, Florence Cook, Hudson,
Madame Blavatsky and Eusapio Palladino.
Unfortunately Mr. Tuckett denies absolutely the value of
prayer, and the evidence for all miracles, including even the miracles
of Christ. In this prejudice carries him into statements that ignore
well-known facts, and show the author's ignorance with regard to
the subjects of his criticism to be unpardonable.
ORROW FOR SIN: MUST IT BE SUPREME? by Rev. T.
Nagle, S.T.L. (Dublin : M. H. Gill & Sons. 50 cents.) This book
is a study of attrition in its sovereignty, and the aim of the author
is to prove that it cannot be conceived from fear of eternal fire.
He unfolds the tattered flags of bygone theological battlefields, and
devotes some pages to the refutation of Faber's view of the requi-
sites for absolution.
^Foreign ipenobicals.
Contradictions Among Modern Evolution-Theorists. By K.
Frank, SJ. Darwinism has run its course. Few of the leading
minds of the present day still claim with Haeckel that Darwin has
for once and all solved the important question, " the origin of men."
It is now universally granted that the theory of Natural Selection
had little or nothing to do with the question of " Origin," and dealt
only with the difference of species. Such men as Plate, Wolff,
Claus, Hertwig and others fail to see where Darwin gave to the
Transmutation theory anything like a " firmer basis." Unfor-
tunately the science of biology has been revolutionized by Darwin,
not to better but to worse. Long before Darwin, a Cuvier and
Barrande had done great things along these lines, and it is now
evident that too much weight was given to the influence of Darwin.
Stimmen aus Maria Laach, Heft 3.
Universal Postage. By J. G. Hagen, SJ. In government
circles, as well as elsewhere, where international interests are at
stake, the question of a universal postage system is widely debated.
A book which recently appeared, Weltporto-Reform, by Arved Juer-
gersohn, has caused considerable stir, and has led up to the hope that
in the next Congress, which will meet at Madrid, 1913, the question
will be settled. But before any definite conclusion can be reached
two things are necessary : ist. Postage be reckoned according to an
international monetary system ; 2nd. That the engraving be done at
one place only, and with the greatest skill. Some objections against
this system are: the impossibility of distributing the income of
the sale; speculation; and increase in clerical expense. In spite of
this there are many good reasons for the change. Stimmen aus
Maria Laach, Heft 3.
The Care of Catholic Girls in France. By Mgr. Beaudrillart.
Mgr. d'Hulst, about four months before his death, conceived the
plan of supplying instruction for young women, covering the years
between graduation from school and marriage. His plan embraced
Christian doctrine, church history, political economy, sociology, etc.
Such a course was started in 1897, and has been successfully con-
tinued to the present time, and has provided admirably for those
264 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
who attend Catholic academies and schools. But it does not meet
the demands of those who are attending co-educational and non-
Catholic schools in France, and who are studying in order to fit
themselves for positions in the business world. The dangers that
they will have to meet are many and great. To instruct these girls
associations have been formed by zealous Catholic women, who have
planned and carried out opportune courses of lectures on moral,
physical and intellectual subjects. Le Correspondant, March 25.
Newman. By P. Thureau Dangin. Wilfrid Ward's Life of
Newman has attracted the attention not only of English-speaking
countries, but even those of other tongues. This article is the
first of several articles in review of this much-discussed book. M.
Dangin's review is favorable to Mr. Ward. Many have criticised
the work because it passes too hastily over the Anglican days of
Newman, giving them very little prominence. The author of the
present article explains away this difficulty by saying that enough
had been written on this subject in the Cardinal's opinion by his own
work entitled Apologia pro Vita Sna, and the two volumes of his
letters compiled by Miss Mozley. Then follow detailed descriptions
of the various periods in the Cardinal's life. A detailed description
of Newman's writings in the Rambler, and other periodicals is
given. Le Correspondant, March 25.
Newman's Ideals and Irish Realities, by Rev. T. Corcoran,
S.J., is a commentary upon the life of Newman recently published
by Wilfrid Ward. The biographer of the great Cardinal, and many
others, hold the view that the one and only success achieved by
Newman in the " Irish period " of his life was the volume of
Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education. Fr.
Corcoran disagrees. He takes note of Newman's own comments
on the University work, but regards them as largely " transient
subjectivities " and " despondencies." He believes that " there is a
nobler Newman in the considered dignity of his representative
works, an abler Newman to be found in the records of his Irish
achievements." Newman rendered great help to Celtic studies ; he
started " Atlantis," and helped greatly towards the success of edu-
cation among the young men of Dublin through the establishment
of night classes. " Newman's best work in Ireland was done by
putting aside the Oxford ideal, by setting hand to practicable work,
by forming yet more adequate ideals, and yet sounder judgments
I 9 i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 265
in view of the needs of the masses of our Catholic people."
Studies, March.
The Trans-African Railway, by J. Berge, describes the rail-
road planned to extend from the Mediterranean shore of Africa
near the Strait of Gibraltar, across the Sahara, to the most southern
extremity of Africa. He tells of what advantage it will be to such
European powers as France and Germany. Le Correspondant,
March 25.
A Commentator on Chateaubriand, by Francis Rousseau, in-
cludes private documents taken from the archives of M. le due
d'Audiffret Pasquier of a diary kept almost daily during the years
1820-1821 of the movements, ambitions, etc., of the Count de Cha-
teaubriand. Le Correspondant, March 25.
Gregorian Chant. Under the title Impressions Gregoriennes,
Dom J. Simon, O.S.B., gives a brief history of Gregorian music,
describing its place in the ceremonies of the Church, and the work
being accomplished at Solesmes and the various monasteries of
Europe to perfect it. Le Correspondant, March 25.
The Blessed Trinity and Creatures. All the works of God,
which, so to speak, are outside of Himself, are common to the
Three Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Thus the creation of
all things, of all beings, whether of the physical or spiritual order,
the redemption of man, etc., are works common alike to the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Long ago did the Church declare her
definite faith on this matter as is evident from the records of various
local synods, and above all from pronouncements of the General
Councils of the Fourth Lateran and of Florence. Some writers have
endeavored to line up the Greek Fathers as opponents of the Fathers
of the West, but a careful examination of the writers of the former
prove that they are in thorough harmony with the latter. The
teaching of the Church is definite and clear, and she argues that a
unity of nature implies a unity of operation. The practical and
personal application of this seemingly purely theoretical question is
most important, and it is that the soul of every just man is not only
a temple of the Holy Ghost, but also the actual dwelling place of the
Three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Revue
Thotniste, Jan. -Feb.
266 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
Catholicism in the United States. G. Planque, in The Religions
Movement in the English Speaking Countries, writes briefly of the
recent progress of Catholicism in our own country. He notes the
marvelous growth of the Church from the small flock of 15,000,
which it numbered under Bishop Carroll, in the last decade of the
eighteenth century, to the 14,618,761 in 1910. He comments also
on the statement that out of so many millions of immigrant Catho-
lics and their descendants, i. e., nearly 40,000,000, the present num-
ber should be so comparatively small. Then follows an account
of the efforts of Father Kelley to remedy matters, so far as con-
cerns the immigrant and other Catholics in isolated districts. After
treating of the inauguration of special missions to non-Catholics, he
describes the work of the Apostolic Mission House and the activities
centered around it, the endeavor to extend, by means of diocesan
mission bands, the non-Catholic mission work to parts less accessible
to other missionaries. Revue du Clerge Franqais, March 15.
Changes in Literary Criticism. By Louis Laurand. Wolf in
1795 denied that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the work of only
one author; he gave up the Pro Marcello of Cicero and one of the
Catilinian orations as unauthentic. His conclusions were for a
time extremely popular. But later critics have exposed contra-
dictions between confessedly genuine books of many classical au-
thors and great changes in style even in the same book; they date
modern French compositions from minute details of phraseology.
To them variety of style does not prove variety of authorship, but
only a deeper grasp of one's subject, wider experience, different
mental attitude. Wolf's theory is therefore being abandoned.
tudes, March 5.
A New Irish Review " Studies." The progress of scholar-
ship in Ireland is finely evidenced in the new quarterly that has
just reached us, Studies. This review is to contain the work of
university professors and graduates in the fields of philosophy,
letters, history and science. If we are to judge by the editor's
foreword, a distinctly Nationalist tone is to characterize the review ;
for it is planned to be a magazine " in which the results of research
and original thought can find expression in harmony with the
religious and national characteristics of the country." The initial
number of Studies measures up fully to the editor's plan ; it contains
excellent articles on subjects of present interest, for example, The
I 9 i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 267
Meaning of Evolution, The Electrical Theory of Matter, Newman's
Ideals and Irish Realities. We hope that this beginning is a sure in-
dication of good work in the future along the lines mapped out, and
that a permanent success may be in store for Studies. The editor-
ship is in the hands of Rev. T. A. Finlay, SJ.
Etudes (March 5) : Paul Geny laments the disappearance of
scholastic disputations from our schools. He considers them in-
valuable in procuring precision of thought and expression. -- Pierre
Soury Lavergne describes the rise to power of a primitive Charle-
magne, ruler of northern Imerina in Madagascar, from 1787 to
Joseph Boubee thinks that German Catholics did not really
lose much in the recent elections; they alone remain united, calm,
and sure of what they desire. Unfortunate dissensions have oc-
curred among leaders, and anti-Catholic papers are trying to stir
up feeling against the Holy See. But the masses remain loyal
religiously and politically.
Revue de Clerge Franfais (March i) : Ch. Calippe discusses
The Morality of Professional and Economic Co-operation. After
considering briefly the relation of this co-operation or " Solidarity "
to liberty, Christian charity, and social justice, and outlining the
forms of it, he gives a word on the necessity of legal and cor-
porative regulation of its duties. " The commencement, the point
of departure, the first step in this organization or rather re-organi-
zation, adapted to actual necessities, are professional syndicates,
that is syndicalism; and far from being, in itself, an abnormal,
anarchic and revolutionary institution, as men still sometimes in-
sinuate .... the syndicate is a legitimate and opportune institution,
and a commencement of legal expression of the natural bonds of
solidarity which unite one to another the members of the same pro-
fession."- Dom Fernand Cabrol, on the question of The Feast
of Easter and the Reform of the Gregorian Calendar, suggests a
number of possibilities for the better regulation of the date, of which
he considers the best is to fix the Sunday after the 25th of March
as the time for the Easter Celebration. -- J. Riviere contributes a
Chronicle of the Theological Movement, in which he reviews several
recent works on faith and symbols of faith, the Incarnation, and
other topics. - E. Vacandard presents a Chronicle of Ecclesiastical
History. - Concerning the Press is an appeal by Cardinal Amette,
268 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May,
Archbishop of Paris, towards a reform in the direction of the
suppression of the corrupt press and the substitution of a clean one.
(March 15) : P. Cruveilhier gives a study of the relation be-
tween The Code of Hammonrabi and the Civil Legislation of the
Hebrews. " The resemblances of the two codes prove the authen-
ticity of the epoch of the code of the covenant." The author of the
latter has depended on the former in a fashion restrained and per-
haps indirect; from the material and temporal point of view, the
Hebrew Code is inferior, but from a moral and spiritual point of
view is much superior to the other. T. Desers gives a Chronicle
of Pastoral Theology; E. Lenoble a Chronicle of Philosophy. The
latter reviews two works of Henri Bergson, Philosophical Intuition
and Reveiw of Metaphysics and Morals.
(April i): In this issue L. Venard reviews at length a
number of works on Biblical topics. He considers first The Odes
of Solomon in the light of a new test published a few years ago
by Mr. Rendel Harris. Another work to which he devotes some at-
tention is The Origins of the Churches of the Apostolic Age by E.
de Faye. H. Tesetre writes of Truth and Charity. " To con-
duct themselves as brothers towards one another, is, for Catholics,
to furnish to the world the most appropriate proof of the mission
and the divinity of Jesus Christ. Charity thus opens the way to
truth." M. Temozin contributes a sketch of French Socialism in
IReccnt Events*
The agreement made with Germany as a
France. final settlement, it is to be hoped, of the
question about Morocco, which for so long
has disturbed the whole of Europe, and has twice brought France
and Germany to the verge of war, has at last been signed and
ratified. With the Sultan of Morocco a Treaty has been signed,
giving to France the long-sought Protectorate over that country.
The details, however, have still to be arranged, or, at least, have
not been published. With Spain negotiations are still proceeding
for the purpose of regulating the management of the respective
shares of Spain and France in Morocco, and for defining the extent
of these shares. France claims from Spain various cessions of the
territory granted to the latter country by the agreement of 1904.
These cessions, or some of them, Spain is reluctant to make. The
negotiations have not been at all times smooth, and more than
once seemed on the point of breaking down. The feeling of the
Spanish people against France has been very strong, if the Press
may be considered to be the true expression of that feeling.
Hope is still entertained, however, that a satisfactory solution will
be found.
The French Senate did not give its consent to the
ratification of the Treaty with Germany, until a very long debate
had taken place, in which much dissatisfaction was expressed at
many of its provisions, and doubts were manifested as to the results
to be expected. Leading men, like M. Clemenceau, and M. Pichon,
could not bring themselves to give their votes in its favor. But
from entering into the question of the conduct of M. Caillaux in
the course of the negotiations with Germany, the Senate wisely
refrained. It is felt, however, that the country was on the verge
of being betrayed by the late Prime Minister, who was acting in
the interests of the money power, which is seeking a rapprochement
with Germany, and which desires to alter the whole basis of French
foreign policy. This effort has proved unsuccessful, and it is felt
to be for the best interests of the country that the steps taken by M.
Caillaux and some of his colleagues should be left to oblivion. The
270 RECENT EVENTS [May,
question about Morocco having been settled, and there being no
great internal question such as the post office or railway strikes,
the Chamber was left at liberty to proceed with the discussion of
Electoral Reform. It was with this special object in view that the
last election took place the substitution of scrutin de liste for
scrutin d'arrondissement, in combination with some method of pro-
portional representation. An unexpected opposition, however, has
been offered to the latter proposal by the strongest party in the
Assembly the Radicals. It is, therefore, doubtful whether it will
be adopted.
A measure of Social Reform sent down from the Senate
has been adopted by the Chamber. This is a Bill extending to all
categories of miners and slate quarrymen the benefits of a law of
1905 instituting an eight-hour day for certain classes of under-
ground workers. On one point, however, there is a difference
between the two houses; this no doubt will be settled when the
Parliament meets again in May.
So alarming has become the increase of violent crimes, many of
which have been perpetrated in broad daylight, and yet with perfect
impunity, that widespread anxiety and alarm are being felt by
the general public. Paris, country towns, railway trains, the
open country, have been scenes of repeated outrages, and violent
robberies. Firearms have been used and volleys fired in the open
streets. The climax was reached by the violent seizure of a motor
car not very far from Paris, the driver of which was shot dead.
The car was then made use of for the robbery of a bank some
thirty or forty miles away; the deed was done in business hours,
and the robbers escaped, and have not yet been arrested, although
something like one hundred and fifty specially trained detectives
have been employed in the endeavor to make their arrest. So much
anxiety was aroused by this attempt that special meetings of the
Cabinet were held, with M. Fallieres presiding, to devise measures
for the control of the evil. The police force is to be increased and
a special motor corps of policemen established. Secular education
has not yet shown its expected fruit of good works.
Modern science is to be represented in the army by an
aviation corps. Aviation has now become so important as
to be called the fifth branch of the service. The corps will consist
of aeroplanes, although the use of dirigibles will not be neglected.
By the end of the year twenty-seven field and five garrison squad-
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 271
rillas, each consisting of eight aeroplanes capable of carrying pas-
sengers, together with motor cars and other mechanical contriv-
ances, are to be organized for the military service with a regular
staff of officers and trained assistants. An aeronautical regiment
with seven companies will be constituted. The War Estimates de-
vote about two millions and a half to this purpose. France is in
advance of every country in this respect.
The workingmen in France have not been unaffected by the
strike in England, and signs have been shown of the chronic rest-
lessness which exists beneath the surface. A few strikes have taken
place and some little anxiety exists. On the whole, however, no
great disturbance of the ordinary course of life has taken place.
What are called by the Germans the Defense
Germany. Bills, but which would be called by some
other nations the Offense Bills, have been
published. They have formed the chief subject of discussion, both
before and after their publication, for a long time, and are now
being discussed by the Reichstag. Two new Prussian Army Corps
are to be formed, two new general commands, and two new divis-
ional staffs are to be created. There will be the new third battalions
and other additions, the precise details of which it is unnecessary to
give. This will involve additional expense for the year 1912 to
1914 of something like eighty millions. Of the Navy the increase
is not so great, and does not satisfy the German Navy League.
It is proposed to commence one battleship in 1913 and another in
1916. A third Active Squadron of the Navy is, however, to be
formed. The increase of cost will amount to about sixty millions.
How this further expenditure is to be met has led to something
like a crisis in the government. The Minister for Finance declared
that it was necessary to raise the money by new taxation. This
meant the imposition of death duties. In the attempt to impose
these, Prince Bulow was defeated two or three years ago by the
Conservatives and the Centre. To the possible renewal of the
attempt the same parties offered the same decided opposition. The
Minister for Finance thereupon resigned, and the money is to
be raised in some other way. One of the noticeable features of the
struggle which has been taking place, is the leading part that has
been taken by Bavaria, of which Baron von Hertling has recently
become Prime Minister. Baron von Hertling was formerly the
272 RECENT EVENTS [May,
leader of the Centre Party. This party, although diminished in
numbers by the recent elections, does not seem to have lost its
influence. In fact, its action was decisive in the recent struggle.
It is a thing to be regretted that it should have used its influence
in favor of the privileged classes. It is generally thought that the
defeat of Prince Bulow's attempt to impose the Death Duties led to
the remarkable increase in the Socialist vote at the recent election.
In fact, Baron von Hertling has expressed his willingness to help
to impose these duties, but would not do so because it would gratify
the Socialists, and be a triumph for them. This does not seem to be
a very far-sighted policy.
For the fact that Germany is hated by many a thing recog-
nized by not a few Germans a good reason is to be found in a book
recently published by a distinguished general, and one of the most
influential writers on current strategical and tactical questions. How
far he may he considered an authoritative exponent of the opinions,
aspirations and aims of the German people it cannot be estimated;
but so far as he is such an authority, a solution is given for the
distrust of Germany that is so widely felt. General Bernhardi, in
his book Deutschland und der ndchste Krieg, gives candid expres-
sion to the view that Germany must fight her way to predominance
regardless of the rights and interests of other people. He pro-
nounces a panegyric on war in general, and advocates deliberate
preparation not only for war, but of war, holding that France will
have to be annihilated, and England attacked and beaten, in order
that Germany may realize herself and fulfill the destinies of Provi-
dence. The influence of war he declares to be edifying and purify-
ing on public life and character. The spirit of the German people
is essentially warlike, although that spirit may for the time being be
dormant. The peace movement is poisonous. It is by the sword alone
that the duties and tasks of the German people can be fulfilled.
The right of conquest is essential to the development of the Empire.
Might is right, he declares, and right is decided by war. The
attempt to abolish war is not only stupid, but immoral and unworthy
of humanity. The maintenance of peace cannot and must never be
the goal of policy. Wars must be produced by deliberate intent.
It is lawful to conceal such intent from their possible victims.
This is justified on the ground that even in peace there is often a
suppressed state of war, and the mendacities allowed in war are
allowable in these circumstances. Belgium is mentioned as a coun-
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 273
try which cannot be left to remain permanently neutral, while Eng-
land is declared to be the enemy that will have to be beaten at sea.
With her will be the first war which will have to be fought out, in
order that Germany may obtain not only a place in the sun, but a
full share in the mastery of the world. This looks as if deliberate
deception might be practised beforehand. If so it would be foolish
to attach importance to that manifestation of better feeling towards
England which has resulted from Lord Haldane's recent visit. Most
people, however, will be unwilling to consider General Bernhardi a
reliable exponent of the purposes of the real governing class of
Germany. Of some Germans, however, he is a representative. The
existence of such a class renders it necessary for all the possible vic-
tims to be on their guard, and explains the necessity which is felt for
the maintenance of armaments. Forewarned is forearmed.
In the final election of Officers of the Reichstag, the Socialist
Vice-President was displaced. The coalition with the Radicals
was dissolved, the National Liberals helping the Centre Party and the
Conservatives to exclude the Socialist. The result of many manoeu-
vers is that the President and Second Vice-President are Radicals,
while a National Liberal is First Vice-President. The permutations
and combinations which take place of the numerous parties, render
the course of politics in Germany, as elsewhere, so uncertain, that
no basis can be formed for reasonable anticipation of what the
future will bring forth, even after an election has taken place. In
a recent division on a point which seems to be of no great import-
ance, the government was defeated by a coalition of the Centre
Party with the Poles and Socialists.
A strike of miners in Westphalia, involving something like
200,000 men, with the probability that it might become general,
caused considerable anxiety throughout the Empire. How far it
was connected with the English strike is a matter of dispute, as
also is the reason for its comparative failure. The trade unions
are divided into two groups, of which the Christian trade unions
form the one, and the Socialist and allied unions the other. The
strike, it would appear, was advocated and carried out by the
Socialist group, while the Christian unions opposed it, and have
thereby incurred the condemnation of the rest of the miners.
Bitter recriminations have taken place, but there is good reason to
think that the Christian unions were justified in the course which
they took.
VOL. xcv. 18
274 RECENT EVENTS [May,
For several weeks, Hungary has been in the
Austria-Hungary. throes of a Ministerial crisis, so serious that
the Emperor Francis Joseph, with all the
experience which his many years have given him, has not been able
to find a solution, and has in consequence gone so far as to threaten,
for the first time in many years, to abdicate the throne. The ques-
tion at issue is between the military authorities of the dual Monarchy
and the Parliament of Hungary. The latter, according to the
former, is claiming powers which will conflict with the efficiency of
the army, and which infringe the prerogatives of the crown. This
led to the resignation of Count Khuen Hedervary, who had for
nearly two years been Premier of Hungary, during which time the
affairs of the country had been carried on with almost unexampled
smoothness. The crisis was brought about by the obstruction prac-
tised for a long time by a group in the Chamber, which refused
to pass the Army Bills unless the long promised Universal Franchise
Bill should be brought in and passed. A sub-group of these oppo-
nents were won over to the side of the government by its acceptance
of a Resolution, the precise terms of which have not been published,
dealing with the army and the calling out of the Reserves. This is
the resolution which was unacceptable to the Emperor, and in fact
to the Austrian authorities, and which has caused all the trouble.
After the resignation of the Premier, the situation was so compli-
cated that no Ministry could be formed. No one was willing to
undertake the task. The Count seemed the only possible choice, and
he found it even beyond his power. Then came the Emperor's
threat. In consequence the Hedervary Cabinet will continue in office,
and the Prime Minister will endeavor to restore good feeling be-
tween the two countries. The resolution to which so much opposi-
tion has been offered, as an infringement of the rights of the sover-
eign, is to be dropped. The personal appeal which was made to the
nation not to curtail these rights, and the fear of the consequences
of the Emperor's abdication, have had the effect of at least postpon-
ing a decision. The opposition, however, still maintains that the reso-
lution involved no infringement of the sovereign's rights. The
Cabinet has a majority on its side. The question, however, still
remains unsettled, as to the way of overcoming the obstruction,
which has now again become a feature of the proceedings of the
Hungarian Parliament. The abandoned resolution was the price
offered and accepted : whether any other consideration will be ac-
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 275
cepted remains to be seen. As the opposition threatens to continue
its resistance to the Army Bills, the prospect is very dark. It is
possible that the Dual Monarchy is on the verge of a grave con-
stitutional struggle.
The launch of the second Dreadnought at Trieste serves as a
reminder that Austria, as well as Germany, is aiming at becoming a
naval Power. The first Dreadnought was launched in June of last
year. The third and the fourth, which complete the present pro-
gramme, were begun last January. The sphere of operations of
the new Austrian Fleet, and the aim it has in view, is to secure, along
with the Fleet of Italy, domination over the Mediterranean. The
sympathy shown for Italy by the government of Austria, although
not by the military element, or by a large part of the press, ever
since the beginning of the War in Tripoli, has brought the two
governments closer than ever together. The recent visit of the
German Emperor to Vienna has had the effect too, it is said, of
reinvigorating the Triple Alliance on that side although it was
not needed as far as Austria and Germany are concerned. Italy
is said to have become somewhat cool towards France and Great
Britain. They have ventured to criticise her proceedings. Hence
there is being mooted a development of the Triple Alliance by the
extension of its scope to the Mediterranean. Italy's interests in
that sea are to fall within its safeguard. To this project neither
France or Great Britain can be indifferent, and an increase of their
navies must follow. The outstanding fact seems to be that the
Triple Alliance remains the steadfast basis of Austrian foreign
policy, notwithstanding the recent efforts of the military to bring
about a war with Italy.
The attempt made upon the life of the King
Italy. of Italy by an anarchist gave an opportunity
for the people to demonstrate in a most re-
markable way their devotion to the reigning house. Dense crowds
of every class saluted the King with expressions of loyalty of a
most enthusiastic description. All parties in Parliament, from the
Constitutional opposition to the Extreme Left, gave utterance to
their feelings of loyal homage to the throne. All day long proces-
sions of vast multitudes appeared before the King's residence to
testify their joy at his escape. At Venice the Cardinal Patriarch
caused a Te Deum to be sung, at which he himself was present.
276 RECENT EVENTS [May,
King Victor Emmanuel III. is looked upon by his subjects as
having fulfilled the duties of a monarch with great simplicity and
personal unselfishness, and with complete devotion to what he con-
siders the public interest. The Royal pair, moreover, are considered
to be setting a perfect example of pure family life.
The war with Turkey still drags along its slow length. Several
fierce encounters have taken place, in which, strange to say, the
Turks and Arabs took the offensive. No advance has as yet been
made into the interior, nor do any steps appear to have been taken
for such an advance. Napoleon is said to have looked upon the
desert as a better protection against an enemy, than either the
ocean or a mountain range. If this is the case penetration into the
interior of Tripoli will be the most formidable of tasks. The
Italian government is beginning -to realize its gravity, and to manifest
a certain willingness to mitigate the harshness of the conditions
upon which peace may be made, and to be even desirous of media-
tion. While refusing to discuss the sovereignty proclaimed over
Tripoli and the Cyrenaica, it will not ask for its explicit recognition
by Turkey, provided the new state of things is implicitly accepted.
In this way it is hoped to save Turkey's face. But Turkey is
as determined as ever to make no concession. The Powers, on the
initiative of Russia, are understood to have taken steps to bring
about an agreement. Grave fear is felt that it will not be possible,
unless the war is brought to a speedy conclusion, to prevent an
uprising in the Balkans. By manifestoes widely dispersed through-
out Tripoli, the Italians are seeking to seduce the Arabs from the
Turkish side. In these circulars the Arabs are told that it is not
against them that Italy's forces have come : on the contrary it is
in order to free them from a retrograde rule, and to bring to the
country progress, prosperity and tranquility. Their religion will be
respected, and its privileges increased, and all native customs
respected. Unfortunately the breach of faith on the part of the
Italians, which was involved in the wholesale disarmament forced
upon the Arabs in Tripoli at the beginning of the war, prevents
the tribes from putting confidence in the good faith of the Italians.
The organization of the Grand Republic of
China. China is proceeding slowly. At present the
state of things is provisional. The definite
settlement will be by means of a National Assembly, which has not as
igi2.] RECENT EVENTS 277
yet been elected, nor is even the date of its meeting fixed. The pro-
visional President, whose powers have been derived in a way which
ought to satisfy even the most extreme of legitimists, by the volun-
tary cession of the late Emperor, has been installed with impressive
ceremonies in the presence of the high Lamas, the Mongol Princes,
the high civil and military officials, and a number of foreign guests.
He took an oath to develop the Republic, to sweep away the dis-
advantages of absolute Monarchism, to observe the Constitutional
laws, to increase the welfare of the country, and to cement together
a strong nation embracing all the five races. When the National
Assembly appoints a permanent president he will retire. A new
flag has been adopted ; the Dragon has been displaced.
The first trial by jury has been held. A loan has been nego-
tiated. This, however, has raised a protest from four of the great
Powers, who thought they had secured for themselves the privilege
of rendering this service to China. The need of money is just at
present the most urgent of the many under which China is suffering.
The atrocities which were committed by the soldiers in Pekin, and
which have been repeated in many other parts of China, arose not
from devotion to the Manchus for not a soul was devoted to
them but from the fact that the army had not been paid, and
there was no money wherewith to satisfy its demands. In the
present stage of the world's development money seems to be the
basis of law and order, or at least their necessary safeguard.
The next step towards organization was the formation of a
Cabinet. This the President entrusted to Tang Shao-yi, whom he
chose to be Premier, although there were those who thought that he
ought to have himself made the choice of the Ministers.
Within three weeks of the President's installation, the Prem-
ier presented his list for the approbation of the As-
sembly at Nanking. This list, including the Premier him-
self, comprises eleven persons, one of whom is a graduate
of Yale, and yet another has studied in this country, while a third
has had a course of five or six years in Germany. The rest, with
the exception of one who studied in Japan, do not seem to have had
any foreign education. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, however,
has held a diplomatic appointment at St. Petersburg. The
Assembly gave its approval to all with the exception of one. So
China is now possessed of a President, a Cabinet, and trial by Jury.
The Revolutionary President Sun Yat-sen and the Provisional Gov-
278 RECENT EVENTS [May,
eminent, with great magnanimity and self-sacrifice, laid down office
immediately after the approval of the Cabinet by the Assembly.
Sun Yat-sen retires widely respected, and intends to devote his time
to traveling in China in order to enlighten the people on the prin-
ciples of Republican government a much-needed work, for there
is every reason to think that the people as a body have had very
little to do with the recent change. They form an inert, amorphous
mass, having suffered for so long under a corrupt and corrupting
despotism, that they have come to care for nothing but mere physi-
cal existence.
The first work of the new regime, and an arduous one, is to
restore the reign of law and order throughout the country, and to
repress the excesses of the soldiers by making the payments due to
them. For this end money is required; and so the raising of a
loan became of supreme importance. Negotiations are being carried
on with certain of the Powers, all of whom are eager to oblige the
Republic for a consideration. In fact they are quarrelling among
themselves over the matter. This country especially is exciting
a certain degree of opposition on account of its disinterested action
in favor of China, and the promulgation of a Monroe Doctrine to
apply to Asia against the United States has been mentioned, although
there is no reason to think that it is a serious proposal.
It is too early to investigate the causes of the stupendous change
which has taken place. Among the various events, however, which
have led up to the expulsion of the Manchu dynasty, one especially
was very influential. In order to pay the Indemnity to Foreign
Powers which was incurred by the suppression of the Boxer rebel-
lion, the central government had to put unwanted pressure on the
Provinces of which the Empire is made up. This attempt at cen-
tralization was vehemently resisted, and led to the desire for a
Federated Republic, in which greater, not less, control of local
affairs would be given to each Province. The change is largely
due to resistance to what was looked upon as unduly centralized
power.
If the views of General Li Huan-hung, who was a candidate
for the Presidency, are shared by the authorities of the new Re-
public, a wide field will be opened in China for the missionary
efforts of the Church. " We need," the General said in a letter
to the Missionary Apostolic in the province of Hupeh, " the mission-
aries to help us regenerate China, and they will be protected in every
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 279
possible way; and we want the greatest possible harmony to reign
between us and them with God's aid, and the prayers of your Holy
Father the Pope; which desire I beg you will utter for me in the
presence of His Holiness."
On April nth Mr. Asquith presented
The Home Rule Bill, the new Home Rule Bill to the House
of Commons. Officially it is called " The
Government of Ireland Bill." The scene in the House vividly recalled
the two previous attempts made by Mr. Gladstone in 1886 and 1893
to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The new bill has the hearty
approval of the Irish Parliamentary Party, under their leader Mr.
John Redmond, who has sent a message to the American people
expressing his confidence that the bill " will inaugurate an era of
contentment and prosperity in Ireland under self-government." The
Nationalist Convention to be held in Dublin on April 23rd is to
consider and debate the Bill. The new measure is generally con-
sidered as better for Ireland in its financial provisions and other-
wise than either of the measures introduced by Mr. Gladstone.
It provides for the establishment in Dublin of two houses the
Senate and the Lower Chamber or House of Representatives. The
Senate will be composed of forty members, who will be nominated
by the Imperial Government, and who will hold office for a term of
eight years. One-fourth of these will retire every second year, and
the vacancies will be filled by nominations made by the Irish Gov-
ernment. The House of Representatives will have one hundred and
sixty-four members. They will be elected by the present Irish con-
stituencies. Ulster has fifty-nine members. At the end of three years
the Irish Parliament will have the power to change the electorate and
the constituencies. The Irish membership in the House of Commons
will be reduced from one hundred and three members to forty-two.
To the control of the Imperial Government are reserved mat-
ters that concern the army and navy; the Irish land purchase; the
Old Age Pensions and National Insurance Acts, the Irish constabu-
lary, post office savings banks, and public loans and the customs.
After six years Ireland will have control over the tariff, but will
retain free trade with England. The Irish constabulary also is
automatically to be transferred to the Irish Government after six
years, and the power is to be given to the Irish Parliament to demand
the transfer to its control of the Old Age Pensions and Insurance
280 RECENT EVENTS [May,
Acts after having given one year's notice to the Imperial Govern-
ment.
Religious liberty is guaranteed by the provision that the Irish
Parliament cannot make laws, directly or indirectly, or establish or
endow any religion, or to prohibit the free exercise thereof, or to
give a preference or privilege to any religion, or to make any relig-
ious ceremony a condition of the validity of marriage.
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland will be the head of the Irish
executive, and will have the power to veto or suspend any
bill on the instruction of the Imperial executive. Any question
regarding the interpretation of the Home Rule bill is to be settled
by appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The collection of all taxes is to remain in the imperial service,
and they will be paid into the imperial exchequer, which is to pay
over to the Irish executive an amount equivalent to the expenditure
on Irish services at the time of the passing of the act. An addi-
tional sum of $2,500,000 is to be paid to Ireland the first year,
and this will diminish by $250,000 yearly until it is reduced to
$1,000,000. The postal services are to be handed over to Ireland.
The Irish Parliament is to have power to reduce or to discon-
tinue the imperial taxes, excepting the income tax and the stamp and
estate duties. It will also have power to alter the excise duties;
but, except in the case of beer and spirits, it is debarred from adding
to the customs duties anything which will give a greater increase
than ten per cent.
As we have said, the Bill meets with the approval of the
Nationalist Party, and every reasonable man must admit that it is a
very fair measure of self-government which should have been
granted to Ireland long ago.
With Our Readers.
THE TITANIC.
Night has shrouded the earth,
And sin the soul of man:
But light gives the day rebirth
And love can lift the ban.
Out of the night sprang light,
Born of the horror came peace;
For man was man; and iveakness, might;
And sacrifice, increase.
Born of the Cross a ray
Glanced on the tragic sea.
It pierced the night: it showed the way
To the glory that shall be.
J. H. R.
'"PWO years ago the prediction was made in these pages that the
-i- Socialist administration which had just been chosen in Milwaukee,
would probably give the city a clean and efficient government. Now
that the recent municipal campaign no longer obscures our vision, we
are able to see that that forecast has been substantially realized. The
Socialist officeholders in Milwaukee have provided an administration
that compares very favorably, both in honesty and efficiency, with any
preceding administration of that city, and with the average adminis-
tration in any American city. The mistakes that the Milwaukee Social-
ists have made are by no means conspicuous or exceptional. They have
disregarded the civil service rules in order to put their own members
in office, but this is an old offense in our municipalities. They refused
to submit the million dollar park proposal to a referendum, but they
can find plenty of precedents for such action in the history of non-
Socialist administrations.
* * *
THE truth of the matter is, that the Socialists of Milwaukee were
defeated for re-election last month, and deserved to be defeated,
because of the spirit in which they carried on the city government,
282 WITH OUR READERS [May,
rather than because of any notable failure in either honesty or efficiency.
They have shown themselves to be narrow, partisan, and doctrinaire to
a degree that alarmed many persons who would have liked to see them
get another term. Their unwillingness to trust their park project to a
referendum is typical. While it is surprising to those who know the
Socialists only superficially, it was fully expected by all persons who
have any insight into the real Socialist spirit. Socialism is not demo-
cratic ; it is essentially autocratic. Socialists believe in the rule of the
people only when the majority of the people are favorable to Socialist
theories or Socialist projects. In the interest of Socialism they would
disregard the wishes of the majority. Again, the Milwaukee Socialists
have let no opportunity pass to emphasize and promote the peculiar
doctrines of revolutionary Socialism, such as class consciousness,
economic determinism, and the inevitable downfall of the capitalist
system. Hence those good persons who had expected that the Social-
ist administration would be merely " advanced reformist," have re-
ceived a rude shock. The record of the Milwaukee Socialists in office
shows that even the most moderate and most " opportunist " group
of the Socialist party in this country never forgets for a moment that
the supreme consideration is the coming of the revolution, and the
establishment of the " co-operative Commonwealth." This overshadow-
ing fact, this fact that every Socialist gain strengthens the movement
for the propagation of revolutionary, anti-property, and anti-Christian
theories, ought to prevent any intelligent non-Socialist from extending
to the Socialist movement even the temporary and spasmodic assist-
ance of a vote at municipal elections.
* * *
A LTHOUGH defeated, the Socialist ticket at the recent election
-Ti- polled three thousand more votes than it did in 1910. Hence, there
is no justification for the rejoicing of those persons who see nothing
but the fact of defeat at the polls. If the newly-elected non-partisan
officials do not give the city an exceptionally good administration, the
Socialists will certainly be returned to power two years hence. For
there are thousands of voters in Milwaukee who are willing to run
the risk of hastening somewhat the approach of far-off, complete
Socialism in order to have good city government here and now.
THE signs of the times show more and more plainly the importance of
emphasizing the essentially religious character of all successful
charity work. Charity was born of Christianity, and its work will
fail if it ever denies its Mother. Nowadays we are apt to look simply
at results, and to think little of motives. Motive, belief, inspiration
count little so long as the thing is done. All this only proves the
shortsightedness of the age. There is no one who does not rejoice
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 283
at every evidence of philanthrophy is not glad at the magnificent
examples of enthusiastic charity oftentimes displayed, and at the
studied endeavor so to reorganize and extend charity as to leave no
creature in want. Yet, too, many are apt to forget that enthusiasm
to be permanent and effective must be inspired by the right spirit. It
is the spirit that sustains and fortifies and directs. It is through
the spirit that we really come in contact with our fellows, and only
through the spirit are we really able to help them to be without want.
A man may labor so enthusiastically that he forgets to eat. The pres-
ent race of men may contribute to charity funds and neglect to think of
what, after all, will make the world go right. The former will be-
come useless ; the latter, since it is not by bread alone that man
liveth, will fail to better his fellows. The waters of life are found
only in the desert, and in prayer, in the cultivation of the religious
truths of our personal relations with God and His Divine Son will
man find that which justifies his enthusiasm, and permits him to go to
his fellows with a message of hope. The vestment that is given to
the poor is of little use unless the spirit that gave it seeks also to
cover the soul's helplessness. Leo XIII., and our present Holy Father,
have in season and out of season exhorted us to cultivate and empha-
size this spirit in all our charity work. It inspires our societies of lay
Catholic workers, and has long been admirably shown to the world by
the conferences of St. Vincent de Paul.
* * *
OUR present thoughts on the subject have been brought forth by
the recent letter of the Holy Father to the Christ Child Society,
published in its annual report for 1912. The letter tells of how this
Society has selected as the object of its zealous efforts " that portion
of the flock of Christ most dear to the Divine Infant and to His Vicar
on earth." The extraordinary work done by this Society, and its rapid
growth throughout the United States, are most encouraging. The
spirit of the work is the spirit of Jesus Christ. In His name is the
work done, and He it is Whom the workers of the Christ Child,
though they give all kinds of material aid, bring to the hearts and
souls of the little ones. Bringing Him, they bring the Joy of joys,
the Hope of us all, and their work will prevail.
THE AMBITIOUS CHURCH.
(WRITTEN BY LIONEL JOHNSON IN 1892.)
/CATHOLICS know well the sound of such a phrase: and among
Vy the many compliments paid to their Church none are more
frequent than those stock phrases, " the tyranny of Rome," " the
canker of ecclesiasticism," and " a proud priesthood." The poor Catho-
284 WITH OUR READERS [May,
lies are not much moved by such amenities : in their " proud " moments
they look upon this tall talk something in the same way as the Roman
senators may have looked upon the petulant anger of barbarians :
Hoc tu, Romane ! memento :
Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.
It is indeed true, to quote an eloquent Oratorian, writing about
the Papacy,
That such a Power should live and breathe, doth seem
A thought from which men fain would be relieved.
A grandeur not to be endured, a dream
Darkening the soul, though it be unbelieved.
But better far is it to dwell in peace with our opposing brethren,
without compromising our conscience, than to flaunt our pride of place.
Let us try to persuade them that the great Roman Church is not filled
with an ambitious spirit, nor desirous of a worldly domination. That
is to say, we grant you a great deal about the haughtiness of this
mediaeval prelate, or the worldliness of that Renaissance pontiff; we
know, what many of you do not, that infallibility is one thing, and
impeccability another : but now we merely invite you to consider
the spirit of the Catholic Church at large, in her workings with the
world. Here is a definite proposition, which we hold for truth : that
the subtile Jesuit, the powerful Irish priest, the diplomatic official of
the Vatican, the ardent French prelate, can no more be said to live
and act upon ambitious motives than the Salvation Army can be
said to exist for the purpose of controlling the money-market.
Mind you, we are not maintaining that the action of the Church
does not often go counter to the policies of statesmen : we are maintain-
ing that the legitimate action of the Church does not go counter to
the legitimate action of the State. These are two such different things !
Take two English Catholics, whose names, acts, and utterances are in
great part public property: the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster
and the Earl Marshal of England. The action of the former, and of
the Catholics who think with him, cannot but be somewhat at variance
with the Irish policy of the present Ministers : the action of the latter
and of his Catholic sympathizers cannot but have been disagreeable
to the plans of the late Ministry. But what complaint has the State
to bring against either body of Catholic citizens? Let us distinguish,
you say. The one body is patriotic, national, English, like its prede-
cessors at the time of the Armada: the other body is zealous only for
the Church's triumph, sure to come about through Home and Rome
Rule. Let the Church do what she will, someone will be found to
ascribe her action to an ambitious motive. The Papal rescript, said the
Radicals, was an intrusive act of interference with national politics:
1912.] ]\'1TH OUR READERS 285
the Nationalist activity of the Irish priesthood, say the Tories, is a
lawless intrusion upon the rights of citizens. The Encyclical upon
Labor is an open bid for democratic support : the French pilgrimages
are a deliberate demonstration against the Italian Government. It is
all show or intrigue, bluster or diplomacy, theatricals or cabals : noth-
ing honest, simple, straightforward. Surely it is a strange conception :
for, examine it well, and what is meant by clerical ambition and eccle-
siastical despotism? Is it the pride of swaying the souls of men, the
fascination of terrorism, or the vague esprit de corps of a great organ-
ization ? Single men may have such sentiments or small bodies of men,
a member of Parliament or a County Council : and in the Church a
Wolsey may plot for the Papal Chair, or a school of theologians for
the victory of their opinions. But what ambition has the poor and
obscure priest, but to do his duty, to preserve his charge, to keep clear
his conscience? Certain critics of the Church write as though in Car-
dinal Grandison and Archbishop Penruddock, Lord Beaconsfield had
summed up the ruling principles of every Catholic priest: intense
pride, intense self-will, intense asceticism, and in secret an intense
devotion to Torquemada. Let us suggest a kindlier, a reasonable
explanation of that authoritative spirit which animates a Catholic
priest. Can it be that he believes himself to possess a spiritual au-
thority, to which he may command obedience in spiritual matters, just
as he himself obeys it? "We are told," says a great ecclesiastic,
" that all other sects are religious and may be safely tolerated, but
that the Catholic Church is a polity and kingdom, and must therefore
be cast out. We accept this distinction. . . .It is the acknowledgment
that in the Catholic Church there is a Divine mission and a Divine
authority; that we are not content with tracing pictures on the
imagination or leaving outlines on the mere intellect, but that in
the name of God we command the will ; that we claim obedience because
we first submit to it." But all this is clear enough to see : now is
there any difficulty in understanding the relations of Church and State,
as laid. down by Aquinas, or Suarez, or Hergenrother, or Newman, or
Leo XIII. ? In a free State the Church is free: it is only in a State
where Falk Laws prevail, or an irreligious tyranny, that the conscience
must choose between two powers. The Established Church, in its Book
of Common Prayer, laments its loss of public discipline, of authority
over its members : the Catholic Church both has and exercises disci-
pline. Hinc illae lacrimae. To what lengths may not a Church go
which can command obedience, not merely give pious exhortation I
And the imagination pictures a crowd of terrified fanatics, ready to lie,
rob, murder in a Pickwickian sense if only the cruel Church com-
mand them. But let any priest, in England or Ireland, dare to go
beyond his spiritual rights and escape the censure of his superiors
286 WITH OUR READERS [May,
if he can; let him refuse the sacraments to one who votes for a
" Parnellite " candidate in Ireland, or a " Progressive " candidate
for the London School Board; he will be shown his mistake. But
because a priest in the discharge of his duties neither can nor should
avoid touching social questions, it does not follow that he will become
a tyrant. Influence he does exert ; and it is possible to be almost pas-
sively under the influence of a man who is in a position of spiritual
authority, commanding affection and respect. But terror he cannot
impose, except upon spiritual offenders. To Catholics, the question is
so plain that it is hard to realize the state of mind in which educated
men can confuse it. Has Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk
been after all a dead letter? At least, we may conclude with another
passage from his writings, where he states, with emphatic decision,
what are the real aims of the Church Catholic; a Church certainly
unlike that of which Dryden speaks :
How answering to its end a Church is made,
Whose power is but to counsel and persuade?
Oh, solid rock, on which secure she stands !
Eternal house, not made with mortal hands !
Oh, sure defence against the infernal gate,
A patent during pleasure of the State !
The Cardinal shall tell us what are the " ambitions of Rome."
He writes : " Protestants think that the Church aims at appearance
and effect. She must be splendid, and majestic, and influential: fine
services, music, lights, vestments. And then, again, in her dealings
with others, courtesy, smoothness, cunning, dexterity, intrigue, man-
agement these, it seems, are the weapons of the Catholic Church."
And he replies : " The Church aims not at making a show, but at doing
a work. She regards this world, and all that is in it, as a mere shadow,
as dust and ashes, compared with the value of one single soul. She
holds that unless she can in her own way do good to souls, it is no
use her doing anything: she holds that it were better for sun and
moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the
many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony,
so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say,
should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell
one wilfull untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing
without excuse Such is the Church, O ye men of the world, and
now you know her. Such she is, such she will be ; and though she
aims at your good, it is in her own way and if you oppose her she
defies you." If that be ambition, it is the " infirmity " of a " noble
mind," rather than a " Babylonian woe."
I 9 i2.] BOOKS RECEIVED 287
17" IPLING'S ridiculous outburst was a fitting climax to the senseless
-t*- display of bigotry in the agitation against the Home Rule Bill.
Bigotry has outdone itself and defeated its own purposes. For example,
one of the organs of the Protestant press in Ireland publishes a letter
from a reader who had received a copy of the Methodist organ, the
Christian Advocate:
" I was under the impression that it was a Methodist journal, and
looked for some interesting news of our work there. It appears that
the main business of the Church just now is to hold meetings against
Home Rule, and it took nearly all the pages of the Advocate to inform
me of that."
The Unionists have always condemned the Nationalists as rebels ;
it is the Unionists themselves who are now preaching rebellion, even
to armed resistance. This has been at least implicitly encouraged by
the Unionist Leader, Mr. Bonar Law. Mr. Law's sense of the relative
value of God and Heaven has been the subject of much perplexity to
others since he said at a speech at Larne :
" I have only one word more to say, and that is, that if this Irish
Home Rule Bill should by any chance be forced through, then God help
Ulster, and Heaven help the Government that tries to enforce it."
It is worthy of note that the vast majority of representative men
in the over-seas Dominions have expressed their belief that Ireland
should receive Home Rule. Judges, editors and public men of influence
agree in so expressing themselves; and among the colonial Premiers
or ex-Premiers who favor the measure are General Botha, Sir Wilfrid
Laurier, Andrew Fisher and Alfred Deakin.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROS., New York :
A Catechism of Christian Doctrine for the Third Grade. By Rev. Patrick J.
Sloan. $4.75 per hundred. The Mustard Tree; an Argument on Behalf of
the Divinity of Christ. By O. R. Vassall-Phillips. $1.75 net. For Frequent
Communicants. Preface by W. Roche, S.J. $3.00 per hundred.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
The Price of Unity. By B. W. Maturin. $1.50 net.
MACMILLAN Co., New York:
A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. By Jane Adams. $1.00 net.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York :
Eve Triumphant. By Alys Hallard. $1.23 net. The Social Evil. Edited by
Edward R. A. Seligman, LL.D. $1.75 net.
CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE, New York:
Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores. By Elizabeth Beardsley Butler. $1.08.
FUNK & WAGNALLS Co., New York :
The New Schaff-Hersog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Vol. All.
Edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson. $5.00 per vol. Life and Times of the
Patriarchs, Abraham. Isaac and Jacob. By William Hanna Thompson, M.D.
$1.20 net.
288 BOOKS RECEIVED [May, 1912.]
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York :
The Squirrel Cage. By Dorothy Canfield. $1.35 net.
JOHN LANE & Co., New York:
Manalive. By G. K. Chesterton. $1.30 net.
THE AMERICAN NEWS Co., New York:
The Fighting Race, and other Poems and Ballads. By Joseph I. C. Clarke.
$1.00 net.
THE COSMOPOLITAN PRESS, New York:
Race Suicide. By M. S. Iseman, M.D. $1.50.
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & Co., New York :
One Hundred Masterpieces of Painting. By John La Farge. $5.00 net.
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York:
A Personal Record. By Joseph Conrad. $1.25 net.
P. J. KENEDY'S SONS, New York:
The Official Catholic Directory and Clergy List for the Year of Our Lord 1012.
Complete edition ; leather binding. $3.00.
D. APPLETON & Co., New York :
Faith Brandon. By Henrietta Dana Skinner. $1.30 net.
FREDERICK A. STOKES Co., New York :
Stover at Yale. By Owen Johnson. $1.35 net.
UNITED STATES CATHOLIC HISTORICAL SOCIETY, New York:
Three Quarters of a Century (1807-1882). Vol. I. By the late Rev. Augustus
J. Thebaud, S.J. Edited by Charles G. Herbermann, LL.D. $3.00.
CATHOLIC FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY, Hawthorne :
An American Missionary A Record of the Work of Rev. William H. Judge, S.J.
By Rev. Charles J. Judge, S.J. 75 cents.
JOHN MURPHY Co., Baltimore :
Maxims of Cardinal Gibbons. Selected and arranged by Cora Payne Shriver.
$1.00. Words of Wisdom to the People. By Cardinal Gibbons. $1.00.
THE AVE MARIA PRESS, Notre Dame, Ind. :
The Light of the Vision. By Christian Reid. $1.25.
G. SCHIRMER Music Co., Boston :
Schirmer's Octavo Edition Liturgical Catholic Church Music. Mass in A.
50 cents. Mass of the Immaculate Conception. 50 cents. Mass in G. 75
cents. Veni Creator Spiritus. 5 cents. Recordare Virgo Mater Dei. 10
cents. Ave Maria. 10 cents. Salutaris Hostia. 5 cents. Tantum Ergo.
10 cents. Ave Venum. 15 cents. Collection of Masses and Vespers. 50
cents.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
The Reason Why A Common Sense Contribution to Christian and Catholic
Apologetics. By Bernard J. Otten, S.J. $1.25.
GARY & Co., London :
Mass of St. Francis de Sales. By William Sewell. 25 cents.
JAMES DUBLIN & Co., LTD., Dublin:
Lays and Legends of Ireland. By James Murphy.
BLOUD ET CIE, Paris :
La Loi et La Foi. Par A. de Boysson. 3 frs. 50. L'Objet entegral et I Apolo-
getique. Par A. E. de Poulpequet, O.P. 4 frs. Edgar Poe. Par Emile
Lauviere.
PIERRE TEQUI, Paris:
L'Education Chretienne Conferences. Par M. 1'Abbe Henri LeCamus. J at
Perdu la Foi. Par R. P. Ramon Ruiz Amado, S.J. La Contemplation on
Principes de Theologie Mystique. Par R. P. E. Lamballe. Y a-t-il un Dieuf
Par Henri G. Hugon. L'Education Eucharistique. Par J. C. Broussolle.
P. LETHIELLEUX, Paris :
Due D'Alcncon. Par Y. D'Isne.
PERRIEN ET CIE, Paris :
Lamennais et Le Saint-Siege. 5 frs.
J. GABALDA ET CIE, Paris :
Histoire des Dogmes dans I'antiquite Chretienne. Par J. Tixeront. 3 frs. 50.
GABRIEL BEAUCHESNE ET CIE, Paris :
Christus, Manuel d'Histoire des Religions. Par Joseph Huby.
EUGENE FIGUIERE ET CIE, Paris :
Les Fous. Par Renny Montalee. 3 frs. 50.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. XCV. JUNE, 1912. No. 567.
EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING.*
BY THOMAS J. GERRARD.
WO recent incidents may be set down as a suit-
able introduction to this study. The leader of the
New Theology movement, the Rev. R. J. Campbell,
has just returned to London from his preaching
tour in the United States. The editor of The
Christian Commonwealth met him on his arrival for the purpose
of the inevitable interview. " What impressed you most," said the
editor, " in the religious life of America? " The answer was, " The
growth of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church since I was
in the States, nine years ago."
The second incident contains the element of explanation of the
fact. The Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Gore, has been giving
an address to the Christian Social Union. In what he described
as a well-considered statement he said :
I have constantly sat down bewildered, before the blank, and,
as it seems to me, simply stupid refusal of the mass of Church-
people to recognize their social duties. Why on earth is it?
What produces this strange blindness of heart and mind?
Often have I tortured my mind trying to find an answer to
those questions, and tortured it in vain. I simply recognize the
fact : it stares you in the face.
Mr. G. K. Chesterton was present, and he promptly volunteered
the answer: the Church was simply not dogmatic or doctrinal
enough.
Here then lies the secret of the success of the Catholic Church
Copyright. 1912. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. XCV. ip.
290 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
in our own country, and everywhere else : she has a clear message
to offer to the people. And this is to be one of our strongest points
in dealing with the new movement for race-culture.
The professional eugenist has of late, under stress of criticism,
come to modify his claims considerably. Over and over again he
had been heckled with the objection that he did not know what he
was aiming at. Since fine race-horses could be bred, so also he
thought could fine men be bred. But then the end of the race-horse
was obvious enough. It was to run fast and perhaps jump over
hedges and ditches. A man must be bred for something other than
that. However, no matter what the final end was, he would be all
the better if he had a healthy and well-formed body. That was
something to work for, but not enough. He would also be much
better if he had a keen and trained intellect. Nor was that sufficient,
for big swindlers had keen intellects. At last the moral factor in
man was admitted for consideration. Sir Francis Galton, the
founder of modern eugenics, chose the term " civic worth " as
expressing the eugenic end to be obtained. This, for a time,
seemed to satisfy his followers.
Since Galton's death, however, the eugenists have been pressed
to state more precisely what is meant by " civic worth." Amongst
themselves they are anything but unanimous. Indeed there are
as many opinions on the point as there are eugenists. And, indeed,
it must be so as long as the doctrine is ignored which I propose
to sketch in this essay. Civic worth includes, as everybody agrees,
moral worth. But moral worth can only be judged by a moral
standard. If that moral standard consists in what each individual
feels, thinks or wills to be right, then there can never possibly be
any agreement. Or if some external standard of morals is chosen,
and each individual is allowed to choose one of the many for
himself, or allowed his own interpretation of some prominent one,
then the result comes to the same thing. The common aim at best
is a blurred ideal. And to breed for an ideal, undefined and in-
definable, is evidently absurd.
Dr. C. W. Saleeby, one of the most popular writers on eugenics,
and at once one of its most moderate and most sane exponents, feels
the difficulty. In his latest book, The Methods of Race-Regenera-
tion, he attempts to deal with it. He regrets that the objection
should come from those who are engaged in other forms of
racial and social amelioration. Dr. Saleeby evades the difficulty in
this fashion. He says :
IQI2.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 291
In advocating positive eugenics I attempt to set up no new
standards or ideals of civic, social, racial, or individual worth.
On the contrary I am content gladly to accept those variously
excellent ideals which have been recognized and acclaimed in
all ages; and, to use the argumentum ad hominetn, I would
reply to the educational critic : " But you, my dear sir, are
presumably aiming at something. You surely have some ideal
or choice of ideals towards which you direct your educational
efforts say, the mens sana in corpore sano. You admit that,
of course; very well, those are my ideals also; merely I pro-
pose, by the use of my method, which is the application of the
principle of heredity, to complement your splendid efforts to
attain them."*
So the laws of heredity are to be applied equally to the Eastern,
who aims at race-extinction, and to the Western, who aims at
race-improvement. They are to be applied equally to the material-
ist, who looks for his highest happiness in this world, and to the
Christian who looks for it in the next. Whatever ideal one has
chosen to satisfy his desires, to that is the hereditary principle to
be applied. It matters not what you choose to strive for, provided
only that you use the modern eugenic principle to help you in your
striving. Thus that which was meant to be a means to an end has
been made an end in itself; and all because no real final end has
been proposed and agreed upon.
Further, the absence of any clear set purpose renders quite im-
possible the working of any principle of selection. It is not the
slightest use trying to say by which of man's faculties or functions
he chooses what is good and rejects what is bad, until we have
first decided the question: good or bad for what? Hence, too, it
is impossible, under the supposition, to co-ordinate and to cultivate
aright the respective founts of action in man. We cannot tell, for
instance, whether the intellect, the will, the emotions, or even the
vegetative function, is the chief power in the culture of the race.
If we want only a fine body, like that of a prize bull at a cattle
show, then the vegetative function is the principle of selection. If
we want a Mohammedan heaven, then the emotional faculty is
the principle of selection. If we want the Greek ideal, then it is a
sporting chance between emotion and intellect. If we want a merely
natural ethical ideal, then the principle of selection is the will
*Methods of Race-Regeneration, by C. W. Salecby, M.D., pp. 17, 18. (In Cassell's
New Tracts for the Times.)
292 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
guided by reason. But if man has a higher destiny than that pro-
vided for him by nature and everybody must at least admit the
possibility of such then there is required something higher than
a merely natural principle of selection.
Here again Dr. Saleeby seeks to modify the claims of the more
radical eugenists. Instead of the word " fit " he would use the
word "worthy;" for a man might be "fit" for a lawyer or a
pugilist ; " fit " for parliament or for a lunatic asylum. But the
term " worthy " suggests morality. It takes us a little nearer to an
intelligible goal. A man may be worthy of praise for having
complied with or excelled in a certain code of morals. But even-
tually the question returns : Who is to decide the standard code ?
Is the predominant impulse to be the standard, as is asserted by
Nietzsche and his followers? Is mere reason to be the standard
as is proposed by the rationalists? Or is the standard to be that
which is set up by the Catholic Church, namely, right reason duly
informed by the Divine Will?
In the midst of all the confusion, there is one theory in the
field which is clear and intelligible, which is consistent with itself,
which offers to man something definite to strive for, and which
shows him how the end is to be obtained. It is the Catholic theory
of the absolutely supernatural. It provides a definite purpose, and
indicates the precise principle of selection in racial regeneration and
progress. Our information concerning the end to be obtained is
derived from a divine revelation. That of course will be the first
objection of the unbeliever. He may be told that that divine
revelation can be shown to be credible, to have a reasonable founda-
tion, and, since it offers such a tremendous reward to those who
embrace it, sheer prudence demands that it ought to be embraced.
The treatise, however, by which this is shown pertains to a special
branch of apologetics. Whilst pointing out, then, that there
exists such a scientific treatise, and reserving the right to pro-
claim it as occasion shall require, we may take up another start-
ing-point, from which the eugenist may be led to examine our more
formal credentials.
The new starting-point then is that the Catholic theory is
at least heir by default. It is the only ideal in the field which is
definite, and which is accepted by an appreciable number of indi-
viduals; for it is the theory which is followed by two hundred
million members of the human race.
What then is this universal brotherhood for which the world,
1912.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 293
mostly unwittingly, is at present crying out? It is that brother-
hood which has its foundation in the privilege of our being the
adopted sons of God. The privilege is as far removed above
the new ideals in eugenics as anything can be. It is an elevation to
a dignity infinitely superior to all the gifts of nature, superior
indeed not only to the lower endowments of vegetative and emo-
tional life, but also to the higher endowments of intellectual and
volitional life. It is a higher transformation of these powers.
The " adoption of sons " is the term used by St. Paul to
describe the new relationship of man to God. When a child is
adopted into a family in the natural order, it is admitted to the
rights and privileges of a son. When a stranger formally adopts
a new country he is allowed the rights and privileges of citizen-
ship. Similarly when the natural man is made an adopted son of
God, he is admitted to a partnership with the Only Begotten Son of
God. Hence the new relationship is one of the ripest fruits of
the Incarnation. " When the fulness of time was come, God
sent His Son .... that we might receive the adoption of sons."
The sublime language of the Fourth Gospel is the chief source
of our knowledge of this life. The prologue, in pathetic vein, marks
the different ways in which is received the Light which is intended
to enlighten every man coming into the world. He came into the
world which He Himself had made, but it knew Him not. He
came unto His own people whom He Himself had chosen, but they
received Him not. There were some, however, who did receive
Him and did believe in Him. To them He gave power to become
the sons of God. They were the twice-born. They had a second
birth, not from the ties of blood, nor of fleshly desire, nor yet of
pure psychic will. Their new life was that of the spirit. They
were born of God.
The intense reality of the new life is described by Our Lord
in that marvelous prayer of His before His passion. He had
prayed first for His disciples that they might be sanctified in truth,
for truth was to be the essential condition of the higher freedom.
Then He pleaded for the multitude who through the disciples'
word should believe in Him. It was a prayer for the Christian
demos that it should live, not the life of an incoherent noisy rabble,
but an organic life common to itself and to the Eternal Father,
analogous to that common life which already existed between the
Father and His Only Begotten Son. " That they all may be one,
as Thou, Father in Me and I in Thee; that they also may be one
in Us."
294 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
Again, the higher brotherhood was to be a criterion to the
world that the Incarnate Jesus had come from God " that the
world may believe that Thou hast sent Me .... I in them and Thou
in Me; that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world
may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou
hast also loved Me." Hence the principle of selection was not to
remain hidden and unknown. It might be invisible in itself, but it
could be recognized by its effects. Our works of love are but the
re-action of the charity of Christ in us. Our charity is a testimony
to His divine mission. The divine principle of selection builds up
such witnesses to itself as to prove that we love Him only because
He first loved us. The common life is so interpenetrating that
Christ can speak to us of " My Father and your Father." Because
of the holiness which He communicates to us, He can associate
us with Him as His brethren when rendering His praise to the
Eternal Father. " I will declare Thy name to My brethren ; in the
midst of the church will I praise Thee."
Nor is the new relationship a mere title. It is something much
more than letters patent admitting us to the nobility. It actually
makes us noble in the most real sense of the word. It is not some-
thing extrinsic to us, after the manner of the marriage certificates
proposed by modern eugenics, nor yet something, as it were,
written to our credit in a book far away above the bright blue sky.
It is a new energy and activity imparted to the soul's faculties.
" Behold," says St. John, " what manner of charity the Father
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called and should be the
sons of God." It is the very root and principle of our immortality.
The likeness which we acquire in adoptive sonship shall evolve
into a more perfect likeness through a special glorification. " We
are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we
shall be. We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like
to Him, because we shall see Him as He is."
Yet if, on the one hand, the new birth implies neither a mere
title nor a merely moral union, on the other hand, it does not
imply that the new-born man becomes identical with God, either
in substance or in action. The Catholic doctrine of the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit keeps us from stumbling into this, the other
extreme. To the Holy Spirit is appropriated that wondrous in-
fluence by which we are united to God the Father in adoptive son-
ship and to God the Son in co-hereditary brotherhood. " Because
you are sons God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
saying, Abba, Father."
1912.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 295
It is the way of monist teachers to exaggerate this indwelling
of the Holy Spirit by identifying either the Spirit of God with the
spirit of man, or the action of God with the action of man. Both
exaggerations work out to absurdity. If we are of the same sub-
stance with God, or if our actions are the same as God's actions,
then we cease to be the adoptive sons of God. If our actions are not
our own then we lose our responsibility. If we have no individ-
uality of our own, then we lose our personal dignity. If, however,
we keep the concept clear that God's substance always remains dis-
tinct from man's substance, and God's action from man's action,
then we can have an indwelling of the Holy Spirit which at once
accentuates our individuality, raises our dignity, widens our free-
dom, and increases our responsibility. Our cry to the Eternal
Father is then our own, because we are His children distinct from
Him. But it has the dignity and the effect of a cry from the Only
Begotten Son of God, because it is transfigured by that same Spirit
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, because it is quickened
with the breath of Him, Who with the Father and the Son together
is worshipped and glorified. The action of the Holy Spirit, re-
maining all the while distinct from man's action, is so intimately
commingled with it that the effect is to be attributed to the Holy
Spirit rather than to man. The actual presence of the Holy Spirit
is spoken of as the Substantial Uncreated Grace. The influence
which goes out from Him, His breath as it were, is the created
grace; and that is the selective principle by which man lives his
higher life and moves forward in his evolution towards the Godlike
ideal. In Him we live and move and have our being. The impres-
sion which He makes upon our souls is likened to a seal and a
pledge. " God hath sealed us and given us the pledge of the Spirit
in our hearts."
The temple, however, in which the Holy Spirit dwells is a
living human temple. The seal with which the Spirit signs the
sons of God is a living seal. A flock of sheep is marked with a
material sign, but the sons of God are marked with a spiritual sign.
And because the impression is spiritual it does not hinder, but only
accentuates and increases man's spiritual activities.
The study of this principle is thus beset with two dangers, one
by which we regard it as a mechanical push, the other by which we
regard it merely as a guide which indicates or perhaps persuades us
the right way. True we cannot think of the spiritual except in
terms of the material. But we must ever remind ourselves that
296 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
our material terms are but analogies of the spiritual. We must
never forget that such analogies have their limitations. So is it
with our concept of grace. It is certainly a force which moves.
But when we have received the force we are not like unto a wagon
which has received a shove from an engine. We are living crea-
tures. We are intelligent beings. We are men. We are the sons
of God. The new force is life. It is a life of love which moves
all things sweetly. It moves us, not as lifeless vehicles, but as
feeling, thinking, loving persons. It moves us according to our
own nature. But our nature is a free nature. Therefore it moves
us freely.
Nor is the force one of mere guidance and persuasion. " For
whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
St. Thomas says* that this must be taken first as showing that
the Holy Spirit is our guide in so far as He enlightens us, inwardly
telling us what we ought to do. But that is not enough. The Holy
Spirit not only instructs the spiritual man as to what he ought to do
but also moves his heart to do it. The spiritual man is moved not
as it were principally by his own will, but by the instinct of the
Holy Spirit. Yet the spiritual man does not thereby lose his free
will, for it is God Who worketh in him both to will and to accom-
plish.
The reason of this is the absolute perfection and efficaciousness
of God's will. He cannot only cause what He wishes, but He can
also cause it in any manner that He wishes. He cannot only make
things happen, but He can also make them happen either neces-
sarily or contingently. By " contingently " we mean that He can
utilize the free will of man as an intermediary cause. Therefore
if a thing happens contingently, it is not merely on account of the
proximate cause being contingent, but rather on account of God
having prepared a contingent cause for it. This may be deemed a
fine distinction, but it is nevertheless a vital one. Without it we
might just as well give away the whole of our case to the modern
eugenists, for without it the principle of selection must be the
human will alone. Moreover, the passions are not contingent
causes. They act, or at least tend to act, as soon as they are in
the presence of their proper object. Unless the will is fortified in
its choice, by the choice of the Divine Will, it may easily fall a
victim to the forces of passion.
The hindrances to freedom, therefore, are not from above,
*Commcnt. ad Rom., viii., 14.
1912.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 297
but from below ; not from the Divine Will, but from human passion.
Here then is the supreme eugenic value of what we have called
the selective principle in racial progress. By the action of God's
will moving man's will, man is able to resist and control his pas-
sions. Enlightened and moved by the divine instinct he freely
thrusts and reaches, now this way and now that, deliberately
choosing what is good for his perfection and rejecting what is
bad for it. This aptitude (potentia obedientialis) of human nature
to be thus raised above itself, and quickened to such a higher life
and energy, places the highest degree of liberty at the service of the
spiritual man. Hence we arrive at that tremendous conclusion
that the will is more free when under the influence of grace than
when not under it. The selective principle draws the passions
into its service, and steadfastly refuses to be dominated by them.
And if the human will has greater freedom when actuated by the
Divine Will than when acting alone, it has also a greater respon-
sibility and dignity. The combined distinctness and unity between
God's action and man's action involved in the Catholic interpreta-
tion of adoptive sonship, makes for an infinitely higher respon-
sibility and dignity than is possible in any naturalist system. " Con-
vert us, O Lord, to Thee," prayed the prophet Jeremiah, " and we
shall be converted." It is the call of God, distant beyond the stars,
yet near in the secret chambers of the heart. With St. Thomas we
interpret the prophet thus : " Only move me to love Thee, my God,
and I shall love Thee."
The principle of selection builds up the human character by
forming and amplifying a large number of habits. Amongst these
habits there are three which serve as the foundation or rather the
source of all the others. They put the human soul into the only
right, and consequently the most fruitful, relationship with God.
They are first of all infused by God. But the laws of psychology
require that the will, actuated by the Divine Will, shall extend their
pliability and utility by frequent exercise.
We have already seen that the rule of conduct for a son of
God is right reason informed by the Divine Will. But if reason'
is to act efficiently in such circumstances, it must be absolutely cer-
tain that God has spoken. It must have a strong tenacity to cling to
the word of God, not merely because it suits convenience for the
time being, but because it is the word of God, because God Who can
neither deceive, nor be deceived, has said it. Such tenacity is
needed to counteract a thousand lower motives, which are ever
298 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
ready to suggest something contrary to God's word. The principle
of selection, therefore, functions first of all in the formation of this
tenacity.
We have also seen that a son of God has a definite final aim.
He does not, in Bergsonian style, grope for some sort or any
sort of heaven as he goes along. Least of all does he try to create
it for himself. God's word has told him that he has a definite
final end, which consists in a far higher kind of happiness and well-
being than is possible in this life of probation. Secondly, then, there
is need of another habit of mind and heart, by which we trust that
we shall obtain that supernatural happiness and well-being. And
if we trust for the end, we must also trust for the means to the
end. The principle of selection acts as occasion demands, and forms
and extends our trust in God's faithfulness to His promises.
Thirdly, a son of God makes a high profession of brotherhood.
If he is to act in accordance with that profession he must see
something which prompts him to love them with a higher love.
He must regard them as the objects of God's love. But in order
to do this he must first love God Himself above all things. The
fact that God is infinitely good in Himself and infinitely good to
us, that is the motive which prompts the most fruitful kind of all
love, namely, love of God above all things, and our neighbor even
as ourselves, for God's sake. This love is the ultimate energy
to which the principle of selection draws and unites every other
good energy in man's complex being.
When man's relationship with God has been clearly defined and
established, then is man in a position to relate himself rightly
with his fellow-men. Hence we find that from the theological
virtues, which we have just described, there flow directly those habits
of mind and heart by which every sound eugenic reform is brought
about, and by which every sound principle of positive eugenics is
applied to the race for its higher well-being. These habits of mind
and heart are like hinges upon which the whole of man's best
conduct turns. These were indeed known and practiced by pagans.
"But now that they have been organically united with the super-
natural gifts of faith, hope and charity, they have been raised to
a supernatural plane. They are catalogued as prudence, justice,
fortitude and temperance. How the selective principle works in
dealing with the problems of our time we may now proceed to con-
sider.
Before we can take steps for the promotion of the higher
1912.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 299
well-being of the race, we must first take steps to ensure the exist-
ence of the race. The cultivation of noble men and women, the
populating of heaven with immortal saints, is all absolutely depen-
dent on one elemental fact, namely, the existence of babies. Race
suicide is the first and most alarming phenomenon which threatens
all efforts in race culture.
In another of the already quoted New Tracts for the Times,
Dr. Arthur Newsholme, the principal medical officer of the Local
Government Board, has given a minute account* of the present
state of things. He has taken into consideration not only the bare
facts of birth-rates and death-rates, but also the various modifying
influences, such as emigration, age of marriage, relative numbers
of women at a child-bearing age, poverty and even that of excessive
nutrition. His conclusion is only what every observant person
might expect, namely, that the predominant cause in the decline
of the birth-rate is the volitional limitation of the family.
Mr. Sidney Webb, the distinguished Fabian, has also given us
an instructive study. In The Times for Oct. 16, 1906, he pub-
lished the result of a voluntary and private census which had been
taken of a certain class of intellectuals. From these confessions
it would appear that out of one hundred and twenty marriages, one
hundred and seven were " limited," and only thirteen " unlimited."
Moreover the average number of children born to these marriages
was considerably under two.
There is some difficulty in deciding how far the decline is due
to an increased number of sterile marriages or to smaller families.
In those countries, where the statistics in sterile marriages are
available, it has been found that there has been no increase in such
marriages. This would seem to indicate that the decline is due to
the free will of the people. But I have been assured by medical
men that the smallness of families is only partially due to voluntary
and artificial restriction. It is also largely due to impotence arising
from venereal disease.
Professor Karl Pearson, of the Gallon laboratory, attributes
much of the decline to the factory acts. These laws control the
hours of working for women and children. Children have thus
a less economic value, and therefore, so it is alleged, they are not
wanted. Against this, however, there is the fact that the decline
in the birth-rate does not take place amongst the very poor classes.
"The Declining Birth-Rale: Its National and International Significance. London
and New York : Cassell & Co.
300 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
It is rather amongst the better working classes, and in all stages
above them, up to and including the peerage. So there is an eco-
nomic cause predisposing parents to limit the number of their off-
spring. But it is not poverty. It is prosperity and luxury. Sensual
appetite has been allowed to usurp the office of a divinely-strength-
ened and divinely-guided will.
Further, as Dr. Newsholme adds, the conclusion that the root
of the evil is volitional " is confirmed by the fact that in countries
under the influence of the Roman Catholic religion, which banns
preventive measures against child-bearing, as in Ireland, and among
the French Canadians, the corrected birth-rate remains high."*
The question as to whether the race shall survive or die out
is thus reduced to the question as to whether the human will can be
made to control the sexual appetite. The answer of Catholicism
is that it can if only no hindrances be put in the way of the Divine
Will acting upon the human will ; for directly the Divine Will gets
in active touch with the human will, the very forces are put into
operation which counteract the forces destructive of the race. The
Divine Will informs the human will with faith, hope and charity;
and then from these virtues flow the virtues of prudence, justice,
fortitude and temperance.
Let us repeat what we have said several times before, the
sexual appetite is not something bad in itself. It is one of God's
gifts, and if only used for its proper .end is directed to the glory
of God. This end is the procreation of children in lawful marriage,
and is not the gratification of sensual pleasure. The sensual pleas-
ure is but a means to the end, and when used as such is good.
All indulgence outside marriage, and all perversion within marriage,
is wrong, and tends to the destruction of the race. Normally
speaking, however, the successful battle of the will over the appetite
takes place in the resistance of the many lesser sins which invar-
iably precede the greater ones. The evil effects of sins of this kind
are so great that none of them can be regarded as a small matter.
Imperfect knowledge or consent might render a sin venial. But
the reflex attitude of the mind towards every act of impurity is
to regard it as a grave violation of the law of nature.
Supernatural prudence, therefore, dictates that the evil should
be entrapped whilst young. Little children are to be taught what the
sixth commandment means. It forbids whatever is contrary to
holy purity in looks, words or actions. To go to immodest plays
*The Declining Birth-Rate, p. 36.
i;u.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 301
and dances is sinful; likewise to look at immodest books and
pictures. Moreover, the ninth commandment forbids all wilful
consent to impure thoughts and desires, and all wilful pleasure
in the irregular motions of the flesh. Further, supernatural pru-
dence requires that children shall be warned of various other sins
which commonly lead the sins already mentioned. These are the
anti-eugenic acts of gluttony, drunkenness, intemperance, idleness,
bad company and neglect of prayer.
Amongst adults, too, supernatural prudence dictates that the
vice of impurity is overcome more easily by flight than by fight.
This principle is most important in these days when dangers are
flagrantly put in the way of the public in the names of art, drama,
and literature. Allowances may be made for different occupations,
such as those of the doctor and the artist; also for different
temperaments. But the laws of psychology must be faced. Irreg-
ular desires have their source in the imagination. Supernatural
prudence, therefore, requires that the imagination shall not be
warped by the presence of unnecessary images relating to sex;
and, also, that if through one's profession the imagination shall
have acquired of necessity a certain quantity of these images, they
shall be counterbalanced by the acquisition of others of an en-
tirely different nature.
Further, supernatural prudence enables a man to choose such a
state of life as is most suitable to his temperament and endowments.
" It is better to marry than to burn." Marriage is ordained as a
remedy for concupiscence. That is not its primary end, but rather
a secondary one ministering to the primary one. Then for those
who feel that they have a vocation for a life other than the mar-
riage state, there is the protection of a religious order or the sacra-
ment of the priesthood". Owing to the greater self-restraint in-
volved in the celibate life, the greater will-action thus put forth
reacts upon the married section of the community, tones it up,
and thus strengthens the foundations of society.
Supernatural justice is wanted both for the legislator and the
subject. The legislator who has regard for the preservation of
the race has to deal with the anti-eugenic forces of indecent litera-
ture, pictures and drama; of the white slave traffic; of abortion.
All these subjects are most delicate and intricate. The legislator,
who will deal with them requires common sense and also something
more : he requires expert knowledge in the principles of morality.
He must be able to discriminate between the various classes of people
302 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
for whom he legislates. A book, for instance, may be necessary for
doctors, lawyers and clergy, yet disastrous for the general public.
Certain surgical operations involve the most complicated adjust-
ment of the moral law. Hence both in the making and in the ad-
ministering of law in these cases the greatest perfection is attained
by allowing the supernatural selective principle to work through
its medium of supernatural justice.
Likewise the virtue helps the subjects to obey the laws when
made. Nay, it helps them to anticipate laws and even render them
unnecessary. There were no need to make factory acts if employers
were possessed of a modicum of this virtue. It enters, indeed,
into phases of human life which the statutes of the realm cannot
touch.
The scientific authority who is attracting most attention in
Europe to-day is Prof. Forel, of Zurich. He has been director
of a large lunatic asylum, has had exceptional opportunities of
observation, and, from the rationalist standpoint, has made exhaus-
tive studies of the subject. Dr. Saleeby recommends his book,
Die Sexuelle Frage, as the eugenic treatise which has no rival any-
where, and which cannot be overpraised. It is a great pity, how-
ever, that a scientist of such eminence did not examine the spiritual
factor in eugenics a little more scientifically. He regards the Church
as a hindrance rather than as a help in the solution of the problem.
It will be a sufficient criticism of his objections to note that his
chief informant was Pastor Chiniqui. It is interesting, however,
to note that when he gets away from his theological prejudices and
relies on his own observations and experiments, he comes round,
in a large measure, to what the Church has taught always and
everywhere.
First, he places the chief cause of sexual aberration in the use
of alcohol. The Church teaches every child that the sins that
commonly lead to the breaking of the sixth and ninth command-
ments are gluttony, drunkenness and intemperance. He says that
abstention from alcohol is the chief remedy. The Church says that
the spirit of impurity goes out only by prayer, fasting and alms-
giving. It is the selective principle working through the cardi-
nal virtue of temperance. Secondly, the professor prescribes im-
proved conditions of labor and better payment. The Church always
insists on avoiding not merely sin, but also the occasions of sin.
Pope Leo has said that every man shall receive as much for his
labor as will keep himself, his wife and family in reasonable and
1912.] EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING 303
frugal comfort. It is the selective principle working through the
cardinal virtue of justice. Thirdly, the professor advocates fuller
instruction in sexual matters. The Church has ever insisted on this.
It was the heresies of Manichaeism, Puritan Protestantism and
Jansenism that regarded sex as something bad or naughty in itself.
The Church stands for a sense of proportion and a due reticence
in these matters, but when plainness of speech is needed she does
not hesitate to use it. Here we have the selective principle working
through the four cardinal virtues all together, prudence, justice,
fortitude and temperance.
Most interesting is the attempt which is being made to cure
impurity by means of hypnotism or suggestion. All suggestion
is hypnotism, says Prof. Forel. So he proceeds to clear the mind
of sexual images by suggesting images of another sort in their
place. Abnormal images are dislodged by normal ones. But this
is precisely what our selective principle does in directing man to
utilize the sacramental system of the Catholic Church. Even apart
from the actual grace which is given through the sacraments and
occasioned by the sacramentals, the mere external forms and rites
and images and pictures are a means of counter-suggestion such
as no psychic or medical science has ever yet produced. If a man
hangs a crucifix round his neck he has a constant suggestion of the
sacrificial love which is to cause sacrificial love in him. If a girl
wears a Child of Mary's medal, she has a constant suggestion of
the immaculate purity of the Mother of God. So, too, we might
tell the story of the long list of sacramentals, the crosses, the medals,
the scapulars, the holy water, the pictures, the reliquaries, the
statues, the genuflections, the making of the sign of the cross. Then
over and above all these, the selective principle works through the
theological virtue of faith, filling the heart and mind with the con-
viction that the sacraments actually convey the grace which they
signify. The faithful Catholic believes that he is born again, be-
lieves that he is fortified against the assaults of the flesh, believes
that the Blessed Sacrament lessens concupiscence, believes that
marriage conveys to him supernatural strength to bear the burdens
of the state.
I have before me a number of publications of " the Psycho-
Medical Society," previously known as " The Medical Society for
the Study of Suggestive Therapeutics." It would be too much here
to attempt an examination of the various cases treated. But two
general impressions may be noted : how very limited is the faith
304 EUGENICS AND CATHOLIC TEACHING [June,
of the medical profession in the usefulness of its own psycho-thera-
peutics; and how universal is the application of the spiritual thera-
peutics of Catholicism. In both spheres the radical cure consists
in the strengthening of the human will. But the psychic society
has recourse to psychic methods, the mere action of a psyche upon
a psyche; whereas the spiritual society has recourse to spiritual
methods, the action of the Spirit of God on the spirit of man. The
thousands who are engaged in the struggle between will and appetite
need something more permanent in its action than half an hour's
suggestion or sleep in a doctor's surgery. How often though do we
hear the excuse : " Oh, but it is only human nature after all. We
are children of Adam. We are no worse than anybody else." That
is the implicit confession of the need of a higher Will to vivify and
fortify the human will in its choice. We are children of Adam,
precisely. And just because of that we need to be born again and
made co-heirs with the second Adam.
O loving wisdom of our God !
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.
O wisest love ! that flesh and blood
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail.
The Incarnate Christ, the Church and the whole sacramental
system, is but the visible organ through which the action of the Will
of God is applied to the will of man, the normal method by which
the principle of selection operates.
CONSEQUENCES.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER XV.
RS. VAN DORAN was at dinner. The Senator and a
missionary priest were her only guests. She greeted
Jane affectionately. One glance at the round hat
and the plain black uniform, and the wise old lady
had intuitively guessed half the truth. She ordered
the butler to bring in another plate of soup, and she went on talk-
ing as if Jane's advent at such an hour was the most natural and
expected occurrence.
" This is my little friend, Jane Tully, Father Jacquard," she
said. " I am glad she came in just when she did. It seems to prove
the truth of my heterodox statement, that pagans beget piety. Now
I knew Jane's father in Paris; he had no faith in God or man,
and here she is a devout little Papist."
" But she went to a convent," said the Senator, rising and
seating Jane in a chair by his side.
" And all men adore convents," continued Mrs. Van Doran.
' They are perfectly willing to go blundering through the world
learning all the wickedness they can, but they want their future
wives and sisters preserved from it all. I don't believe the world
will grow any better, Father Jacquard, until men and women are
judged by the same moral standards."
The tall missionary smiled. " I didn't know the ten command-
ments were confined to any special sex," he said.
" Well perhaps not," she admitted, " but it seems to me those
ancient Jewish women, who lived in the time of Moses, had more
freedom than we moderns. They tore their hair and clothes when
they wanted to express themselves, and weren't hampered by a
thousand conventions. We have to have manners as well as morals
if we don't want to be ostracized."
"And if one desires to be ostracized?" asked the Senator,
his eyes twinkling.
" No one desires that," said the old lady with great finality.
VOL. XCV. 20.
306 CONSEQUENCES [June,
" The Senator says that he is a social outlaw, but he doesn't mean it.
He hates parties ; he likes people. He despises functions ; he adorns
a dinner."
" But what about a hermit like me? " asked the priest.
" Missionaries defeat their own purpose if they try it. You
have to be all things to all men, and I don't know a harder under-
taking. It was to talk about that very thing that I asked you and
the Senator to come here to-night."
The Senator was not listening very attentively. He was watch-
ing Jane. She was breaking her food but eating nothing. He had
seen her wipe two tears away behind the ample folds of her nap-
kin. He did not like to question her or to sympathize for fear she
would break down outright.
Mrs. Van Doran went on. " I think the life of a missionary is
terrible. I wouldn't mind being eaten by cannibals or my blood turn-
ing to water in an African climate a quick martyr-like ending of life
you know, because of course if I ever willingly chose such an
existence I should want it over as soon as possible but I am think-
ing of the traveling you young priests have to do : traveling inter-
minably, no home, no money, no comforts. Now I'm an old woman
with a fortune, and I want to make my will. I'm sure I ought
not to talk about anything so grewsome at the dinner table, but
making a will doesn't make one die any sooner. I have made half
a dozen in my life, each one more erratic than the one that went
before."
" Why were they erratic? " asked the priest, feeling that she
had paused for some sort of response.
" Because I'm erratic." She showed two rows of false teeth
in her good-natured smile. Now I want to leave most of my for-
tune to your order, Father Jacquard, but I want to make stipula-
tions. I want it used as a traveling fund, and every young priest
who travels on it must travel in the most expensive way. He must
stay at the best hotels, purchase a whole section on the train when-
ever possible. I think the 'nightmarish' contemplation of the man
on the shelf above you is horrible. He must, in other words, buy
all the comforts he can on the journey."
" But isn't your plan a bit extravagant? "
"Of course, I've always been extravagant; that's one of the
many sins I'll have to answer for, but I contend that a man who is
fed well and housed well over night can preach more efficaciously in
the morning. You see I'm a worldly old woman, and I'm not
I 9 i2.] CONSEQUENCES 307
talking about saints and prophets. Unfortunately we are not liv-
ing in the days of locusts, wild honey and inherited sheep skins.
Tailors are importunate and butchers are not altruists. Now,
Senator, you are a lawyer, you can draw me up such a will I am
sure. I want it unbreakable this time. Jane, dear, here is the key
to my desk. Will you go upstairs and send me some paper and
pens by James. If you do not care for salad you needn't return.
You would be no use in signing my will, because I mean to make you
one of the beneficiaries."
The girl rose quickly, showing by her haste that she was so
thankful for this loophole of escape, that the old lady's promise
of future generosity was altogether lost upon her.
" The child is in trouble of some sort," said Mrs. Van Doran
as Jane disappeared. " Here I've been talking like a cracked phono-
graph for the last half hour, trying to invent some excuse to send
her up stairs, and neither of you men has rendered me the least
assistance."
" I'm afraid she is ill," said the Senator. " I think I had
better go and ask her if she needs anything."
" Please don't," commanded his hostess imperiously. " Can't
you see that she wants to be alone. Women don't cry when they
are ill. The Lord has endowed them with mighty powers of en-
durance, but He also gave them too much heart surface. It just
seems smeared out to be hurt."
"Hurt?"
" Oh, no doubt Mrs. Dandrey has hurt her feelings. You see,
Father Jacquard, Miss Tully is an orphan, a ward of a friend of
ours. The sister of the friend has never cared for the child. No
doubt there has been some unpleasantness."
" The poor child," said the priest sympathetically, " she looks
harmless."
" I'm sure it was Marian Dandrey's fault," continued Mrs. Van
Doran emphatically. " Or perhaps Bainbridge has been making
a fool of her. He is a man of the world, and he assumes a devo-
tional air towards all women. Perhaps Jane has fallen in love with
him. I suspected that it would end that way. She is only a
school girl; that's one reason I like her. The simple school girl
is almost as extinct as the dodo. Most of these fashionable secular
schools in Washington turn out such a crowd of frilled, feathered,
painted, powdered monstrosities, it is refreshing to meet a convent
girl in a plain black uniform."
308 CONSEQUENCES [June,
" I wish I might be of some service," said the Senator with his
eyes on the door.
"What! in improving the fashionable schools' curriculum?"
questioned the old lady teasingly.
" No, in helping Miss Jane. Do you really think that anyone
would be heartless enough to be unkind to her? "
" Heartless," sniffed the old lady. " Isn't the whole world
heartless ? "
" I don't think that," said the priest.
" Oh, I know there's a wave of humanitarianism sweeping
over the world at present. It seems to have no definite religious
fountain head. But after all, are we getting any better? We are
becoming more scientific and sanitary, but are we growing in grace
and virtue ? Don't the rich go on squeezing the poor, and the poor
reviling the rich ? The mere fact that we have a police force may
alter our actions, but not our desires. You see, Father Jacquard,
I lived four years in Russia. I have a great deal of sympathy
with anarchists. Now, if I were a servant and had to live with
a disagreeable, domineering old woman like me, I should have
blown her up long ago."
" My dear lady where is your religion? "
" I didn't have any when I lived in Russia," she answered.
" I acquired mine late in life. You see I was not born in the at-
mosphere, and the fact is always cropping out."
" But you don't find the atmosphere too rarefied ? " said the
priest.
The old lady smiled grimly. " Well at times I must confess
that I feel a trifle asthmatic."
The Senator laughed. " I hope you are not as bad as a friend
of mine," he said, " Dick Bowers. He was an old man when I
knew him; had been prospecting forty years; part of the time some-
body grub staked him; half the time he did without. Finally he
struck it rich, but he didn't work the mine, boarded it up and went
home with a few nuggets. Said the altitude gave him heart failure."
" I think Dick Bowers and I myself are close akin," she said
solemnly, holding up her beringed hands in front of her, and ex-
amining a swollen knuckle without much interest. " I am getting
the gout, which reminds me continually that I am an old woman.
If I had found my religious gold mine early in life, there is no
telling to what heights I might have attained. I might have joined
an austere monastic order and cultivated a genius for piety, now
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 309
now there is little time left me. I must make my will. Come,
here are the pens and paper. We will go into the library. I knew
that Jane would not come back. I'll take her an ice myself, and find
out what is the matter."
"But I thought," said the Senator hesitatingly, "that she
wanted to be alone."
" I'll find out," said Mrs. Van Doran. " When tears are
dropped surreptitiously into the soup, it may mean that the dropper
needs a feminine confidant. I am sure you think I speak unfeel-
ingly, but I have lived so long, Senator, that somehow youthful
tragedies seem to partake of the nature of melodrama. One al-
ways knows that the girl will marry someone in the end, and live
as joyfully as the rest of us in this unsatisfactory world of ours.
Now if you will go into the library, James will bring in the coffee
and cigarettes. I am going to take this ice to Jane. Pink ice
cream to young people is usually irresistible, and if she eats it-
well, I'll come and tell you."
She lifted the tempting plate from the table, and extricating
herself with some difficulty from her mahogany armchair, she
passed through the luxurious hall, up the soft-carpeted stairs, to the
room that Jane had occupied on former occasions.
She knocked once twice and then getting no response she
turned the knob and entered.
Jane was kneeling on the floor, her traveling bag open beside
her, a number of crumpled letters in her hand, her face buried in
the cushion of a chair in front of her, and she was sobbing with the
abandon that only youth can show.
CHAPTER XVI.
" Jane Jane, dear," said Mrs. Van Doran in a tone that had
quelled many a case of hysterics. " What is the matter, child ?
What can be the matter? "
The creased yellow letters convinced the old lady that she had
been wrong in all her surmising. Here was past history, twenty
years old at least, and exceedingly interesting no doubt. Her in-
satiable love of gossip almost out-balanced her genuine tenderness
and affection for the suffering girl.
" Don't tell me," she went on by way of punishing herself for
310 CONSEQUENCES [June,
her unworthy curiosity', " don't tell me, child, unless you feel you
have to. I am a prying old woman, and ought to have left you
alone."
" Oh, no," said the girl, clasping the wrinkled hand as if she
were clinging desperately to some friendliness in a whirling world.
" Please sit down, I must tell you. It is only fair that you should
know."
The old lady slumped heavily down in the big chair, while
she waited for Jane to control herself. The silence was oppressive.
In her helplessness to fathom this mystery Mrs. Van Doran fell
back upon the practicalities of the present. Her house-wifely mind
wanted to assure itself that her guest's bodily comfort had not
been neglected.
The room was very complete, the bed high and billowy and
gleaming with fresh linen. There was a telephone, and a book on the
table beside it, a low light, magazines and papers, and the door to the
private bath was just open wide enough to show the porcelain tub and
long rough bath towels. Having finished the inventory of the room
to her own satisfaction, she turned again questioningly to Jane,
who was kneeling beside her, smoothing out the yellow letters
with cold nervous fingers.
"You knew my father in Paris?" she began. "You liked
him. You thought well of him. Did did you ever know my
mother ? "
Facing those innocent appealing eyes the old lady felt that
she could not juggle the truth. She moved uneasily in her chair.
" There was some mystery," she said slowly. " I think
I think your mother left him."
" And and did you never know my father in this country? "
" No."
" But you knew Paul Hartford's mother? "
" Yes."
" And you knew Mary Hartford? "
" When she was a little girl."
" But she married."
" Yes."
"And you never heard her husband's name?"
" No, she had gone to live with people I did not know. Her
mother was dead. I had no tidings from the child for years."
The girl choked down a sob. Her voice had grown to a
whisper. " She married my father," she said.
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 311
Mrs. Van Doran sank limply back among the cushions of her
chair.
" God have mercy," she exclaimed. " Is it possible? You are
dreaming, child; you are dreaming. How do you know? "
The old lady's excitement had somewhat the effect of calming
the girl.
" She told me so herself this morning. Oh, it was a pitiful
story. She loved him, and and he was selfish and could not care.
They were married in California. He grew tired of her and de-
serted her, and then divorced her, and then then, he went to
Paris and married married my poor mother without telling her the
truth."
" My God! " cried the old lady prayerfully.
" Oh, read these letters these poor little letters," said Jane,
holding them out with trembling hands. " It is only right that the
world should know."
For the first time in her life since her babyhood, Mrs. Van
Doran was speechless. She was so amazed at herself that she could
be capable of surprise that it seemed to destroy, temporarily, her
greater emotions. She lifted the letters close to the light, and for-
getting her eyeglasses, she read with some difficulty the small
foreign handwriting. The words were French.
OH, MY BELOVED!
It seems a wonderful thing that you should love me. Some-
how I feel so humble, dear; I want to be beautiful, brilliant,
everything charming everything everything that is best, so
that I may seem worthy of that love. I am only a peasant
girl not beautiful at all, with only one talent that you have
been good enough to praise. Some day I may be a great
success and then ah, then it may not seem so strange that
you should love me.
The next was dated a month later and read :
To-morrow is our wedding day. The bells are tolling the night
away. The hours seem to pass so slowly when you are absent.
I am writing this because I want to tell you something that I
cannot tell you when I am with you. You would laugh the
words away. It is this: I have tried so hard to be good. Life
on the stage, everyone tells me, is full of temptations. I do not
know. They have not come to me. I think the angels have kept
312 CONSEQUENCES [June,
them from me. Every morning I have gone to Mass. Every
week I have received the good God. But I forget, you do not
know what these things mean. My old godfather, the cure,
is disconsolate that I should love a heretic. He does not like
the idea of a marriage so quiet. " It is a sacrament of joy," he
says. But I am an orphan with no one to care I tell him.
I grew up in Brittany, watched over by my old grandfather
and grandmother, until I was old enough to be sent to the
Sisters' school. It is not much of a life history. Now is it
not wonderful that you who have seen so much of the world
and are so wise should love me ?
The next letter dated a year later was almost undecipherable.
It was blotted with tears, and had been written by a hand palsied
with grief.
To-night I have found out the truth. In the old secretary
there was a package of papers. I looked at them not because
I mistrusted you, but because I thought they were some foolish
little notes of mine, and I was so rejoiced to think that you had
treasured them all this time. Oh, why did you not tell me
that you had a living wife? Why have you remained silent
so long ? I have no right in this house. I have no right to you
I must go. God knows where, and you must not try to follow.
I cannot leave my baby she is all I have left. I will work
for her struggle for her but my heart is broken. Oh, I have
loved you and you have deceived me.
The next papers were some fragments of leaves torn from an
old diary.
MARCH SIXTH.
Back at my old home in Brittany, but it is no longer home.
Strangers occupy the little cottage of my grandfather. The
old cure is dead. I have applied for work so often. No one
wants a baby in arms, and I cannot let her go.
MARCH FIFTEENTH.
Oh! the terrible journey back to Paris. My money is nearly
gone. I cannot act I dare not try. I have no spirit, no
heart, no life.
MARCH TWENTIETH.
If I should go upon the stage again he would find me. Would
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 313
I be strong enough to resist his entreaties? God defend me
from the ordeal of a meeting. Blessed Mother help me to find
work work no matter how humble.
APRIL SECOND.
I have spent my last franc. Last night I had to apply to
the Sisters' hospital for milk for my baby. To-morrow God
only knows what to-morrow will bring .
The next letter was a brief communication bearing the letter-
head of one of the Paris hospitals. It read :
MR. JAMES TULLY, APRIL SIXTH.
15 Rue .
Dear Sir: A poor woman, in an exhausted condition, was
brought to the hospital last night. She had a baby in her
arms. She was not able to give her name. She seemed to be
suffering from exposure and starvation. She died early this
morning without fully regaining consciousness, but towards the
end the nurse heard her call your name several times. Your
address was found on her person. Can you give us any in-
formation with regard to her relatives?
Very truly yours,
ADOLF BOUVE.
The old lady finished the reading with great difficulty, her eyes
were dimmed with moisture. She put her wrinkled cheek against
Jane's fresh one, and for a time they sat there in silence, their
minds focused on this tragedy. The girl quivering and wounded,
almost stunned by her mother's heart history, the other woman full
of sympathy, but so old in the ways of the world as to be tolerant
even of baseness.
" Only God Himself knows why He lets such things happen,"
she said at last.
" Oh, don't don't say that," pleaded the girl as if she feared
some blasphemy. " It must all be clear in eternity. It will all be
plain to us then."
" Its a long time to wait," said the old lady grimly, " mean-
while the world goes on, crying like a puling babe for the right to
happiness, just as if happiness mattered on an earth which is
peopled every hundred years with souls that don't know how we
314 CONSEQUENCES [June,
lived, and cared less how we died. Your father was a brilliant man,
Jane dear, but he cared only for himself."
The girl's eyes were fixed as if the light on the table had
hypnotized her. " My love for him is dead," she said dully. " Life
can never be the same to me after to-day."
" Now don't harbor any such notion," said the old lady. " You
are too young. You must learn to forget it. We can't live with
ghosts, or the living will have no use for us. I've tried it I know."
" But how can I live," said the girl desperately. " It was to
ask you that that I came to-night."
The old lady's lips tightened, until they seemed to leave nothing
but a deep straight wrinkle beneath her nose.
"To ask me what?" she exclaimed, conscious of a sense of
triumph that her conjectures about Marian Dandrey had been
correct.
The girl threw her arms imploringly around her old friend's
neck. " Oh, Mrs. Van Doran, help me help me," she cried. " Mrs.
Dandrey does not want me. She has never wanted me. She told
Madge Warden so to-day."
"Told Madge Warden," the old lady fairly bristled. "God
have mercy. It will be all over town before eight o'clock to-night.
Then you shan't go back. I'll not let you. I'll keep you myself."
" Oh, no, no, I can't be dependent on people any longer. I
have no income. I have nothing nothing. Mr. Bainbridge has
been very generous."
"Generous!" repeated the old lady in a rage. "Generous!
He doesn't know how to be generous. Has he ever gone hungry,
or shabby, or denied himself one luxury for you? To give a few
paltry dollars out of his millions to keep the child of his best friend
from starvation is not generosity. Oh, my child, my child, I think
he has been cruel to make you care for him."
The girl hid her face in the voluminous folds of the old lady's
dress. " I can't go back," she cried wildly. " I can't go back. I
must find something to do. Something that will give me enough
to live just to live."
The old lady's unquenchable youthful spirit rose to the
emergency.
" Then we'll find it," she said vigorously. " You are twenty-
one and mistress of your own destiny. I am so angry with Marian
Dandrey that I believe I have a new lease on life. We will go
away together. You can have the best teachers that the world
CONSEQUENCES 315
affords. You have a wonderful talent; you can go on the stage
and become a great actress. I wouldn't give a whiff of smoke for
Marian Dandrey's judgment, and as for George Bainbridge well,
I never saw anything admirable about him."
Just then there was a knock upon the open door of the room,
and the English butler, trained to imperturbability in the midst of
domestic difficulties, announced, " Mr. Bainbridge is in the drawing-
room."
CHAPTER XVII.
Mrs. Van Doran's cheeks burned beneath her rouge. She had
always welcomed excitement of any sort, and here was a situation
that seemed to call forth all her warrior-like instincts. She had
fought so many social battles, for causes right and wrong, for
people who had engaged only her passing interest, but now her
own affections were involved. She determined to keep Jane, even
at the expense of insulting Bainbridge; this much was plain. Her
other motives were so complex that she did not stop to analyze
them a primitive mother-impulse to fight for her young, a rare
sympathy for the girl's sorrow; vexation with herself that she
should ever have admitted James Tully to her friendship, anger
with Marian Dandrey for telling Madge Warden the truth.
" I'll go down and see him," she said releasing herself from the
girl's trembling grasp. " I'll make it easy for you, dear. I'll tell him
that you are going away with me."
" I think I think I would like him to see these," Jane said
gathering up the letters. "If you would ask him to read them
it would help him to understand, and then then, I think they ought
to be sent to Miss Hartford."
" Perhaps," agreed the old lady doubtfully. " But per-
haps Mary Hartford would like to go on thinking the worst
about your mother, but I'll see. I'll give them first to Bain-
bridge. Now go to bed, child; I don't want you to come down
stairs. I don't want George Bainbridge to see you until I have
explained matters. Your nose is all red from crying. I never
knew but one woman in my life who could cry becomingly, and I
don't believe in scenes unless a woman is prepared to get the best of
them, and she has to look pretty to do that."
316 CONSEQUENCES [June,
Jane sank wearily down upon the bed and looked gratefully
after her old friend, who seemed galvanized into new life and
vigor as she waddled towards the door.
Bainbridge was not in the drawing-room. Presuming upon
his intimacy in the house, he had followed the sound of voices and
joined the Senator and Father Jacquard in the library. The three
men rose as the old lady entered.
" I am so glad Jane is here," said Bainbridge, shaking Mrs. Van
Doran's hand with cordial pressure. " She rushed off this after-
noon without telling us where she was going. I drove Miss
Warden home in my car, and I thought Jane would like to go back
with me."
His conventional greeting did much towards calming the irate
old lady. Facing her three guests in the subdued light of this hos-
pitable room, that had sheltered friends for a generation, rudeness
or pyrotechnic display of temper seemed out of place. She was
too wise to belittle the formalities of the society in which she had
always lived.
" The conventions have preserved man and woman from sui-
cide," she had often declared.
" Jane is upstairs ; she is not feeling well. I made her go to
bed want to keep her with me to-night; the poor child has had
a great shock."
"A shock?"
The old lady sat down on a long sofa drawn up in front of the
fire ; the three men grouped themselves about her, the priest looked
as if he feared he was an intruder, the Senator threw away his half-
smoked cigarette, and Bainbridge stood by the old-fashioned mantel;
his fingers drumming upon the marble shelf.
" Miss Hartford came to see her this afternoon," began their
hostess.
" Yes, I know that," said Bainbridge.
" Did she tell you why she came? "
He hesitated. He had no desire to confide in any of the trio.
" Oh, some fool notion," he answered lightly.
" Then she did not tell you the truth," said the old lady with
conviction. " I suppose she did not know the whole truth until she
came here to-night and read those letters."
"What letters?"
" Her mother's letters, and I confess I was as greatly sur-
prised as she was."
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 317
" My dear Mrs. Van Doran," begged the Senator, " for good-
ness sake don't talk in riddles."
" Riddles ! My dear Senator, did you ever know a woman to
come straight to the point? They lead you through pergolas and
tangled by-paths and circuitous passageways to the illuminating
reason of their revelations, but I'll tell you the facts in one brutal
sentence if you prefer them that way : Jane found out this afternoon
that her father was a divorcee."
Bainb'ridge smiled easily and lighted a cigarette. " Is that all ?
Why I had suspected that from the beginning," he said.
" Then why didn't you tell her? "
"Why should I?"
" She has idolized him all her life."
"And why shouldn't she?"
The old lady's eyes flashed fire. " Because I think he was
contemptible. He deserted his first wife broke her heart ruined
her life for you all know Mary Hartford."
Bainbridge roused to some degree of interest, " Mary Hart-
ford," he repeated.
" She was his first wife. Did he never tell you that? "
" No, he told me nothing."
" No doubt he would have lied about it," said the old lady
crossly. " He certainly proved himself untruthful, dishonorable,
dastardly, for he married the second time an innocent angel with-
out telling her that he had a living wife. That poor French girl
was Jane's mother."
The Senator looked bewildered. " Jane's mother ! "
" Jane's mother was a peasant girl from Brittany. If you can
fancy an unsophisticated little saint upon a Parisian stage, that was
Jane's mother. When she found out the truth about her husband
she left him. She took her child and left her home, though she
seems to have had no relatives or friends to help her."
" It sounds very melodramatic," said Bainbridge.
Mrs. Van Doran's eyes flashed fire. " Don't belittle such a
tragedy," she said. " Her letters are heart-breaking, for she loved
him. She feared that he might plead with her, and that she would
be tempted to listen. Oh, why do women care for such weaklings ?
Think of that poor child and her little baby leaving the only home
they had, and going away out into the dark that would have no
dawn."
" If she had loved James Tully she would not have gone,"
3 i8 CONSEQUENCES [June,
said Bainbridge. " He was legally divorced. It all seems extra-
ordinary and unnecessary."
" Not unnecessary," said the priest slowly. " She was a
Catholic I suppose."
" And could do nothing else," said the Senator with simple
faith.
" I fail to see it that way," said Bainbridge. " After she
left him, what happened then ? "
" She tried to find work and failed. She died in a free ward
of a hospital. I suppose she had starved herself to death to feed
the child."
" And who told you all this ? "
" Mary Hartford told her about her father. These letters
explained her mother. Jane wanted you to see them because
" Because I am going away."
The words rang out clear in the half hush of the big room.
Jane stood in the doorway, her face pale and pinched with mental
suffering. She wore a soft silk negligee, and her heavy hair hung
about her shoulders.
" I did not know you were all here. It seemed so late to me ;
I could not rest. I had to come down stairs; I am going away.
I wanted to tell you that I am going away."
The girl's advent was so unexpected that Mrs. Van Doran,
conscious of all the undercurrents, felt that they were on the pre-
cipitous verge of a dramatic scene. She wanted to save Jane from
making any confessions.
" Jane has promised to go to New York with me," she said
with a calm, accumulated by long social effort. " We may be gone
some time, but then Jane is twenty-one and guardianships don't last
forever, Bainbridge."
" I don't see," and he struggled to conceal his vexation. "I
really don't see why all this past history should make any difference
now."
" But it does. Oh, it does," said Jane. " I have no love left
for my father no sense of loyalty. If I feel that way why should
you have any sense of loyalty for me? I have been a burden to
you long enough."
He moved towards her. " Not a burden, Jane."
" Yes, yes," she repeated, excitedly, seeming to be oblivious
to the fact that they were not alone. " Mrs. Dandrey does not want
me s he never wanted me. I have been so dull I did not see. Now
1912.] CONSEQUENCES 319
I shall go out into the world and earn my way earn the right to
live because because I must not die."
Mrs. Van Doran sank back in her chair, feeling helpless to pre-
vent the coming cataclysm. She forgot Father Jacquard, she for-
got the traditions of her house, she was oblivious to all the amenities
of her position as she studied the two young people in front of her,
wondering if Bainbridge really loved the girl.
For the moment Bainbridge seemed carried out of himself.
"Jane, Jane," he cried, " you are over-wrought unstrung. Bain-
bridge Hall is my home ; your place is there."
" She will go with me," said the old lady resolutely. " She
is old enough to decide for herself. She will go to New York and
study for the stage, or become a dramatic reader something of the
sort. She has a wonderful talent. I will give her every advantage.
I will make her a great actress."
" No, no, not that." The Senator was beside Jane in the
doorway. " Jane, Jane, look up, come with me back to the woods
and the mountains. I love you. Don't you know I love you?"
His arm went protectingly about her. He seemed en-
tirely ignorant of an audience. He had never regarded Bainbridge
as a rival. Being essentially masculine himself, he could not com-
prehend the charm or power of a man who was willing to trifle away
life in a world pleading for workers.
Mrs. Van Doran held her breath. In all her experience in
match-making she had never witnessed a public proposal before.
Bainbridge moved uncomfortably.
" Will you go, Jane? Will you leave me? "
Mrs. Van Doran looked at him inquiringly. If he loved the
girl why did he not tell her so?
" Oh, you blundering men," she said, striving to fill in the preg-
nant silence. " Give the child time. Give her time to think."
(THE END.)
DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" AND CERTAIN OTHER
" ISMS."
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., SC.D., LL.D., F.R.S., K.S.G.
President of University College, Cork, Ireland.
SOME OTHER ISMS.
JARWIN chiefly allowed for evolution through the
operation and accumulation of small variations. No
doubt the question of small versus great variations
had not in his time assumed anything like the im-
portance which it now has, and no doubt also he
did in some measure allow for major variations, as, for example,
in the well-known case of Pavo nigripennis.* But in the main it is
clear that Darwin chiefly relied upon small variations. Indeed
Huxley, his prophet, says that Darwin had embarrassed himself
by his adhesion to the aphorism Natura non facit saltum. Huxley
himself was tentatively at least of another mind, for he says, " We
greatly suspect that she " (sc. Nature) " does make considerable
jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these salta-
tions give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the
series of known forms. "f Huxley very clearly saw that the past
picture of Nature, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the
picture of Nature in the past as known to us, is a discontinuous
picture, just as the picture of Nature all round us is also a dis-
continuous picture. If evolution is still going on, as is assumed,
and if it is being carried out by the constant accumulation of
minute variations, as Darwin taught, it would appear as if the
picture, if not absolutely continuous, ought to be much more con-
tinuous than it actually is. By this is meant that there ought to be
a good deal less sharpness of interval between species and species,
and much more merging of one into another, than is actually
the case either in Nature at present or in that record of Nature,
though no doubt somewhat imperfect, which we possess. How is
this discontinuity to be accounted for? This is a question which
has engaged the attention of various writers, and was brought
*Animals and Plants under Domestication, ed. 2nd, i., 305.
iLay Sermons, p. 342.
I9i2.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 321
forcibly under the notice of the scientific world by Bateson in his
great work, Materials for the Study of Variation.* Here he calls
special attention to the discontinuous picture of Nature, to which
we have been alluding, and asks the question which we have just
asked. Then he gives the reply made by Lamarck and that made by
Darwin. Both of these, he shows, make specific diversity of form
consequent upon diversity of environment, diversity of environ-
ment being thus the ultimate measure of diversity of specific form.
But this reply is met at once by the overwhelming difficulty that
diverse environments often shade into one another insensibly and
form a continuous series, whereas the specific forms of life, which
are subject to them, on the whole form a discontinuous series.
Many of the vast collection of facts contained in his work go to
prove the point just stated. Bateson asks whether if the discon-
tinuity is not in the environment, it may not be in the living thing
itself. Here we approach the heart of the whole controversy.
It is, as already urged, the origin of variations which we are really
in search of : if these origins are not external they must be internal,
and we may go a stage further and argue that if they are internal,
they must have been put into that interior by the Supreme Power
which was the ultimate source of Life, for in no other way can
their presence be accounted for. And, further, since according
to the evolution theory this capacity for variation contained
within it the future plumage of the peacock, the vocal machin-
ery of the nightingale, the optical instrument called the eye, and
a myriad other things of beauty and utility, it will be difficult to
doubt that that Power must also be Supremely Intelligent. Hence
the violent struggle of the materialist to show that environment
is the factor an argument which would not serve him much,
were it true, for it still would fail to account for the power pos-
sessed by the organism to respond to the environment. And the
environmental theory having largely broken down, hence also Weis-
mann's now discredited attempt to build up a vast edifice of theories
of biophores and germinal variation and selection.
The suggestions at which we have now arrived are that the
variations come from within, and that they are discontinuous, that
is to say, that they are considerable and sudden. Now these are
views which have been put forward tentatively by various writers
previous to our own immediate period. Huxley, as we have seen,
was inclined to agree that Nature did at times make a leap. But
'Macmillan, 1894.
VOL. XCV. 21.
322 DARWIN AND " DARWINISM" [June,
the first important attempt to deal with the point was that made
by the late Sir Francis Galton* in his celebrated polygon. This
was a polygonal slab, which could be made to stand on anyone of its
various-sized edges on a level table. A push will disturb it so
that it may rest in quite a different position from that at first
assumed, yet in a stable position. Yet the figures presented in the
one and in the other position are wholly different. To put the
matter into other language, the change from one species to another
has been sudden and obvious. Now such sudden changes have long
been recognized and spoken of by breeders as " sports." Of late
years they have been more carefully considered, and the facts
dealing with them have been woven into a theory under the name of
the Mutation theory, a mutation being understood to mean a con-
siderable change, as opposed to a variation which is an alteration
of a minor character.
DE VRIES AND THE MUTATION THEORY.
The theory of Mutations is mainly associated with the name of
the Professor of Botany in Amsterdam, who first laid it before the
public, in its complete form, in a course of lectures delivered in the
University of California.! De Vries saw the difficulty of account-
ing for variation by the Lamarckian or the Darwinian theory, but
he also saw, as Lock puts it,t that
if, at this point, we find that in Nature a co-ordinated set
of structures can and does arise in an already perfected con-
dition at a single step, and that such phenomena take place
with sufficient frequency to give ample opportunities for the
survival of the new type so arising, we have at once discov-
ered an alternative way out of the difficulty.
No doubt, but the question now before us is whether there is
real evidence that such events actually do take place in nature. De
Vries relies, as indeed is quite natural, seeing the position which
he occupies, chiefly upon botanical evidence. He cites the case of
Chclidonium laciniatum, which apparently suddenly appeared in
the garden of Sprenger, an apothecary in Heidelburg, in 1590, as
*Natural Inheritance, Macmillan, 1889, p. 27.
^Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation, Chicago, Open Court Publish-
ing Co., 1905.
^Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity and Evolution. Murray,
1906, p. 115.
1912.] DARIVIN AND "DARWINISM" 323
a " sport " or " mutation " from Chclidonium inajus, the well-
known Greater Celandine. Then there is the case of the Shirley
Poppy, and finally there are the series of cases in connection with
Oenothcra Lamarckiana (the Evening Primrose), on which de Vries
himself mainly relies. Now with regard to all these cases,
it must be confessed that scientific opinion is at present in no way
satisfied that they establish the theory in question. Take the case
of Oenothera, on which de Vries built his theory. It is not clear
that this is really a wild type. It may be a hybrid, and, if so, the
forms which de Vries saw may merely represent a process of disin-
tegration or splitting up of the hybrid into its original types, per-
haps even on Mendelian lines. O. Lamarckiana, it is clear, does
generally breed true, but perhaps that is because the form has existed
so long that it has got rid of most of the possible hybrid combina-
tions which it could produce. Further, it has been urged that most
mutations with which we are acquainted are due to losses of one,
or perhaps even more than one, of the characters of the wild type.
These retrogressive mutations, as de Vries calls them, follow Men-
del's law of heredity. Yes, but all these are losses, and we are
looking for something which will give us gains or additions to the
older type. Are such things due to mutations? The question is
made even more complex when we consider that some of the things
which look like additions, in domesticated forms, are really due to
the loss of something which in the past has inhibited the appearance
of the new feature. But then these, too, are retrogressive mutations.
On the whole, then, it may be said that whilst the theory of muta-
tions would really explain the discontinuity of nature by exhibiting
for us a discontinuous method of evolution in actual operation,
it does not follow, therefore, that it must necessarily be true. It
is a fascinating theory, but we must wait for further information
before we can consider it to be scientifically established. Mean-
time we may say that the Darwinian theory within the limits above
stated we may call it the Darwinian theory that small variations
are to be relied upon for the processes of evolution, has, in the
opinion of a large number, probably the overwhelming majority, of
scientific men, completely broken down. De Vries' view may also
break down, and what then has to be said ? Only that we shall be
completely in the dark as, indeed, it may be said that we are at this
moment in the dark as to the real method of evolution, supposing
that evolution does exist. And here once more we may call the
attention of our readers to the series of assumptions upon which
324 DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " [June,
the whole of the stupendous edifice of Darwinism, as it now stands,
has been reared. At the risk of being accused of vain repetitions,
let us once more urge that whilst there is a good deal of indirect
evidence in favor of transformism, there is not much really direct
evidence for it, and it remains a theory still unproved. Further,
that if it exists or existed, we are still absolutely in the dark as to
the methods by which it came to pass. And, finally, that this is no
foundation upon which to build up theories, philosophical, educa-
tional or political. And now we may ask ourselves, is there any-
thing taught by science which is likely to survive the destructive
criticism, which, as has been shown, has been fatal to so many fair
theories of the past? Some at least would point to the theories
of Mendel as occupying such a position, and to them we must at
any rate devote some small amount of attention.
MENDEL'S THEORY OF INHERITANCE.
The story of Gregor Mendel, Abbot of the Augustinian Abbey
of Brunn, has been told so often of recent years that it need only
be repeated here in mere outline. His remarkable observations
were made at about the time that Darwin's views were being
given to the world. The Abbot hid his paper in the pages of a
not very well-known journal. It excited no attention at the time,
though its author was always sure that in due course it would do
so. He was right, for some fifty years after its publication his
paper was unearthed by several men of science, and Mendel and
his theories now occupy the premier position, for the time at any
rate, in the biological arena. It would be absurd to pretend that
scientific opinion is at one on this matter is there any single
theory on which it is at one ? but undoubtedly the Mendelian view
is one which has gained ground since it was first made known
to the world, and would appear to be still gaining ground. Its
adherents extol its importance in the highest terms, and one of
the most recent writers on the subject has not hesitated to claim
that the results which have been obtained by work on Mendel's
lines have been sufficient in themselves to show that his discovery
" was of an importance little inferior to those of a Newton or
a Dalton."*
The fundamental feature of Mendel's method is the direct-
ing of attention to single characters of the organism, not to the
*Lock, op. cit., p. 164.
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 325
organism as a whole, and to the observation of the behavior of
these isolated characteristics. When this is done it is found that
these characters, under processes of breeding, behave not hap-
hazard, but according to a very definite law. Let us take the best-
known example perhaps of his theory, that of the tall and short
peas. Mendel took two varieties of peas, which he had already
found to breed true, as regards height. The normal height of
one was six feet (tall), and of the other one and a half (dwarf).
These two strains were crossed with one another, sometimes the
pollen of the tall being used, sometimes that of the dwarf. The
results were the same in both cases. In all cases the result was that
the offspring were all " tails," some of them even taller than the
parent " tall." Mendel, therefore, called " tallness," in this instance,
the dominant, and " dwarfishness " the recessive character. It
might have been thought by the hasty observer that dwarfishness
had been wiped out, but what was the result of the sowing of the
seeds of the self- fertilized hybrids? A mixed generation con-
sisting of " tails " and " dwarfs," but most significant fact of
no intermediate forms. Further it was found that the " tails "
were to the " dwarfs " as three is to one. The seeds of this second
hybrid generation were also saved, those from each individual
plant being carefully harvested and separately sown. What was the
result ? The seeds of the " dwarf " recessives bred perfectly true,
none but " dwarfs " resulting. But not so the " tails."
Some of these bred true, producing only " tails," but some of
them acted like the first hybrid generation of " tails," and pro-
duced a generation of " tails " and " dwarfs " in the proportion of
three of the former to one of the latter. Further experiments
with other pairs of characteristics, such as yellow and green color,
etc., led Mendel to lay down the law that
in every case where the inheritance of an alternative pair of
characters was concerned, the effect of the cross in successive
generations was to produce three, and only three, different sorts
of individuals, viz., dominants which bred true, dominants
which gave both dominant and recessive offspring in the ratio
of three to one, and recessives which always bred true.*
Of his further deductions it is not possible to say more here;
inquirers will find all that they require in the works of Bateson,
*Punnett, Mendclism. ed. 3rd. Macmillan, 19". P- '8-
326 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [June,
Punnett and Lock on the subject. But this may be said, that, in
spite of much even acrid criticism, the result of the vast amount of
work which has been done during the past ten years on these
lines has tended to confirm rather than to shake the belief in Men-
del's views.
The scheme of inheritance, which he was the first to enun-
ciate, has been found to hold good for such diverse things as
height, hairiness, and flower color and flower form in plants,
the shape of pollen grains, and the structure of fruits ; while
among animals the coat color of mammals, the form of the
feathers and of the comb in poultry, the waltzing habit of
Japanese mice and eye color in man, are but a few examples of
the diversity of characters which all follow the same law of
transmission.*
But, after all, from the point of view of the present series
of articles, the really important fact which emerges from a con-
sideration of Mendel's views is that, if they are true, as would
certainly appear to be the case, they reveal a definite, orderly law,
and that such a law clamors aloud for the necessity of a Lawgiver.
Professor Plate, who cannot be arraigned either for ignorance of
science or any partiality for the idea of a Creator, in his speech
at the Berlin discussion,f said, " Personally, I always maintain
that, if there are laws of nature, it is only logical to admit that
there is a Lawgiver."
True he proceeds : " But of this Lawgiver we can give no ac-
count, and any attempt to give one would lead us into unfounded
speculations. It is there that faith begins, and many of us have
given up all faith." With this latter part of the speech this series
of papers cannot deal; what we are concerned with is the admission
surely no sane person could really doubt it that if we find a
law, that is a regular, orderly uniformity, we must postulate a Law-
giver. Further the question also arises : If variation is in any way
definite, may it not, nay, must it not, also be definite in its direction ?
Bergson,1; whilst urging the essential difference between spirit and
matter, and thus wholly dissenting from a material explanation of
the universe, seems to posulate a blind God, inherent in nature,
driving it on to an end unknown to Himself. With all respect
*Punnett, op. cit., p. 26.
^Problem of Evolution, p. 108.
^Creative Evolution, Macmillan, 1911.
igi2.] DARWIN AND " DARWINISM " 327
to this most brilliant and fascinating writer, such a conclusion
seems to be little other than an appeal to that Blind Chance which
has long seemed so unsatisfactory to anyone who dispassionately
considers the question. At any rate quite a number of scientific
writers from Lamarck, through Nageli and Eimer and others, down
to the present day, have believed, wholly apart from any religious
bias, that variation was guided in some way, that is, have accepted
a ideological explanation of nature. That the Mendelian laws may
drive even unwilling converts to the same view, may be seen from
the following quotation from a very candid man of science :
With the experimental proof that variation consists largely in
the unpacking and repacking of an original complexity, it is
not so certain, as we might like to think, that the order of these
events is not pre-determined. For instance, the original " pack "
may have been made in such a way that at the nth division of
germ-cells of a Sweet-Pea a color-factor might be dropped,
and that at the n-\-n division the hooded variety be given
off, and so on. I see no ground whatever [he hastens to add]
for holding such a view, but in fairness the possibility should
not be forgotten, and in the light of modern research it scarcely
looks so absurdly improbable as before.*
In the earlier portion of this series of articles, we spoke
of dogmatic Darwinism. Could there be a better example of
scientific dogmatism than that so naively revealed in the words
which I have italicised in the above quotation. What is it to
science, as science, whether the order of things is pre-determined
or not, that scientific men should not like to think that it was pre-
determined? Surely the object of science is to find out whether
things are or are not such and such-like, and surely also it is no
business of science to prefer one or other decision until she is quite
sure that the decision which she prefers is the right one.
At any rate we have now arrived at a point where we may try
to sum up what this account of modern-day Darwinism has tried
to bring out. Such summaries have been made up to the point
then reached more than once in the course of these essays. But
they may be set together once more here, at the conclusion of our
matter, in order that the various points brought forward may be
welded as far as possible into one continuous argument.
i. The main doctrine of Transformism is one which has
*Batcson in Darwin and Modern Science, p. 101.
328 DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" [June,
not been proved, and perhaps never can be proved to a demonstra-
tion. There is a good deal of indirect evidence for it, but not
much direct evidence. It, therefore, remains and must remain,
perhaps forever, a theory and not a proved fact.
2. Since Darwin brought it into prominence, this doctrine
of Transformism has taken stronger and stronger hold of the
scientific world, and it would not be unfair to say that in some
form or another it is held as the best working hypothesis by the
vast majority of scientific men, however much they may differ
and they do differ profoundly as to the method by which Trans-
formism has taken place.
3. This doctrine was, in all its essential features, recognized
as acceptable by S. Augustine, by S. Thomas Aquinas, by Suarez,
and by other authoritative Catholic writers. If true, it offers,
therefore, no difficulties to Catholic thinkers.
4. Whether true or not, the hypothesis in no way demands
or necessitates a monistic or materialistic explanation of the uni-
verse. On the contrary, it would seem to entail the existence
of a Code of Laws which have directed the transformations, and
this Code of Laws would seem to demand the existence of a Law-
giver.
5. Further, whether true or not, this theory gives us, and can
give us, no information as to the beginning of things, or how
the transformistic process started its operations. It had a be-
ginning, as to which the theory admittedly can tell us nothing.
6. Darwin's various theories as apart from his re-exposi-
tion of Transformism and his positive additions to scientific knowl-
edge do not hold to-day the position that they did towards the
latter end of the nineteenth century. Many would agree with this
statement so far as Natural Selection is concerned, and most so far
as Sexual Selection and Pangenesis are concerned.
7. Even if they were all proved up to the hilt, none of them
would afford real proof of a monistic or materialistic explanation
of the universe, since, again, none of them throw the slightest
light on the beginning of things.
8. With regard to the case of the theory of man's descent.
Many non-Catholic men of science would accept the theory that
man's body was developed perhaps by a " mutation " from that
of some lower form, though there is very little positive evidence
to prove this descent. Many also are prepared to accept the de-
velopment of his spiritual characters, but the psychological argu-
1912.] DARWIN AND "DARWINISM" 329
ment against this development forces at least some of them to
believe that the theory is impossible and untenable. For Catholics
the question is, of course, settled, but it is open to them to show,
as they can show, that their view is identical with the view of or-
dinary common-sense.
9. It is impossible to derive a moral law from external nature,
and no one can contemplate, without horror, a return to the prin-
ciples of the Struggle for Existence and of Sexual Selection on the
part of the human race. The very fact that all the efforts of
man of the better nature of man and of the best races of man are
at this moment being directed to frustrate the efforts of nature,
shows that " Nature's insurgent Son " is actuated and directed
by something of a higher origin than mere matter.
10. The views of Mendel, which are rapidly gaining ground,
point towards a law and an order in variation and development,
which can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that they are
the outcome of the Idea of an Omnipotent Lawgiver.
11. The glib, and often most ill-informed, utterances of the
writers of too many pamphlets, articles and popular manuals may
be very largely discounted, and persons reading them should al-
ways keep before their mind's eye the difference between a scientific
fact and a scientific hypothesis. The former, if really a fact, can-
not affect religion in any way. The latter is only the thought of
some man's mind, and may take its place any day, as many and
many a theory has done, on the scientific scrap-heap.
(THE END.)
THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN.
BY WALTER ELLIOTT, C.S.P.
RIGEN was a famous defender of Christ and His
Church in early Christian times. Leonides, his father,
(who afterwards died a martyr) had him baptized
in infancy, and used to go to his cradle while the
child was asleep, uncover his breast, and reverently
kiss it, saying that it was the shrine in which the Holy Ghost was
lodged. He had in mind St. Paul's teaching : " Know you not
that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth
in you?" (i Cor. iii. 16.)
It is true that all of God's works which are extrinsic to
Himself, are common to the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity.
But the Holy Scriptures and the saints and theologians of the
Church, and indeed the Church herself, attribute to the Third
Person the work of our sanctification. A conspicuous and dog-
matic instance of this is found in the canons of the Council of
Trent : " If anyone shall say that without the inspiration and
help of the Holy Spirit going beforehand, a man can believe,
hope, love or repent as he ought, so that the grace of justification
may be conferred on him : let him be anathema."*
Thus God is Himself the immediate source of all our good,
as far as it makes for a happy eternity; He is so by a most inti-
mate union with our souls and a constant guidance of them. This
is variously named the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the inspira-
tion of grace, the inner voice of .God; and our part is called co-
operation, fidelity to interior divine guidance, correspondence with
grace; and very generally it is named fidelity to conscience. This
condition is the object of the Apostle's prayer for his converts :
" That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened by His Spirit with might unto the inward man "
(Eph. iii. 16) strengthened in their thoughts and affections
directly by God's own holiness, nay by His very Self. Albertus
Magnus was once asked for an edifying thought, and he gave it
thus : " Man receives God spiritually in his soul, as the priest
*" Si quis dixerit, sine praeveniente Spiritus Sancti inspiratione, atque ejus
adjutorio, hominem credere, sperare, diligere aut poenitere posse, sicut oportet, ut
ei justifications gratia conferatur; anathema sit." (Con. Trid., Sess. vi., Can. iii.)
1912.] THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN 331
receives Him corporally at the altar; and this happens every time
that through love of Him he abstains from some fault, even though
it be but a word or a glance."
Oftentimes, when even instructed and faithful Christians are
bid to seek God in their own hearts, they often feel as if they were
directed to journey into an unexplored country. They can hardly
imagine that there is an inner sanctuary of God which is all their
own, and in which the closest divine intimacy is ever awaiting
them, yea, is awaiting even the newly penitent. " I ask but one
thing of you," wrote Fenelon to a recently repentant friend, " which
is to follow in simplicity the bent of your own mind for good-
ness, as you have formerly followed your earthly passions in pur-
suit of evil. Believe, then, your own heart, to which God, whom
you have so long forgotten, is now speaking in love, notwith-
standing its ingratitude." No, it must not be supposed that the
intimate guidance of the Holy Spirit is limited to persons of the
higher spiritual grades. When, indeed, one's strivings are winning
maturity of virtue, God's influence seems closer and His guiding
hand stronger. But even in the earlier stages of an earnest man's
progress, a light rises within him showing him his daily imper-
fections, revealing his past sins in their native ugliness, and at the
same time urging him strenuously to constant increase of the two
means of sanctification that lie most in his power, namely, purifi-
cation of his present life from the least defects, and the doing of
penitential works for a more adequate atonement of the past.
The Holy Spirit is as well the master of novices as the perfecter
of proficients. In the one case no less than the other, the soul
must beware of resisting the admonitions of its Heavenly Guide, lest
His voice be silenced. For guidance high and low the prayer of the
Psalmist must be offered : " Show, O Lord, Thy ways to me.
Direct me in Thy truth and teach me; for Thou art God my Savior;
and on Thee have I waited all the day long." (Ps. xxiv. 4, 5.)
Be it remembered, too, that this grace of divine guidance comes
through the sacraments, whose influence is both inner and outer,
abiding with us interiorly through the indwelling Spirit : " Because
the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost,
who is given to us" (Rom. v. 5) by Christ in His sacraments.
Certainly it is a most blessed and delightful privilege thus to pass
back and forth between the divine world of Holy Church's worship
and ordinances, and the paradise of God's grace within our own
minds.
332 THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN [June,
God makes Himself felt and understood to everyone who
offers himself to His interior guidance. This does not change
the substance of a virtuous life, but reveals its obedience and
humility and prayer and charity as the direct result of immediate
divine union. It does not make us feel like prophets of God, whose
inspiration is quite different, but it makes us know, in a light all
calm and joyful, that we are children of God. It is not a mission
to work miracles, but an invitation from the depths of the soul
to give up self-guidance, and follow the maxims of the Gospel under
the very eye of the Deity Himself. How truly does St. Chrysos-
tom say : that nothing so effectually cures a fault as the continual
remembrance of God.
How can we know that we are surely receiving God's secret
communications? Is there any plain sign? The Cure of Ars
gives an answer as clear as it is adequate : " When good thoughts
come into our mind, we may be sure that the Holy Ghost is visit-
ing us." Does your impulse incite you to do what is evidently
good, or does it beckon you towards debatable ground? Is the
after- feeling one of peace, or rather one of unrest? Is it accom-
panied by affection for superiors, or censoriousness ? Has the
new impulse come with discontent, a desire of change, or with tran-
quility? Have you confidence that God will aid you to carry out
these inward suggestions and are you willing to abide His time,
or are you hot for instant action? Instability is a bad sign; for
in all graver matters God's drawing is continuous and gentle, yet
peremptorily insistent, but never away from your usual obedience.
By this means it is that a pious soul is trained into a real spirituality.
All that is meant by sound judgment is granted the soul in full
measure, so that it " judgeth all things " in its life prudently,
being made by its interior lights competent spiritually to examine
them (i Cor. ii. 15). St. Francis de Sales, echoing the traditional
teaching, goes so far as to promise that fidelity to inner guidance
fits one to perceive the divine approval, even in spiritual matters
of every-day occurrence. " A servitor of heavenly inspirations,"
he says, " knows at what time, in what order, by what method,
each virtue must be practiced."*
The guidance of the Holy Ghost bestows the force of God
upon human endeavor, and gives the Church the benefit of souls
filled with holy initiative. But what is here meant by initiative?
What is not meant is this : to act of a sudden, even when the cause
*Lettcrs to Persons in the World, Mackey, p. 182.
THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN 333
is good and the interior impulse is sane, strong and religious. Nor
to act in grave matters without the counsel of devout and peaceful
and experienced men. Nor yet to savor novelties with joy, and
eagerly to search them out. No. Initiative is not to act with-
out good advice, nor from love of innovation, nor with precipita-
tion.
But initiative is to seek diligently for new ways of glorify-
ing God without forfeiting old ways, least of all criticising them.
Initiative is the spirit of the explorer and the pioneer, especially
in spreading God's faith and His Church. It is to have confidence
amid adverse circumstances, and to look for a betterment of religious
conditions, quickly lending a hand to bring this about. It is to
covet and ask the place of toil and of danger in dealing with
God's enemies.
Initiative is that spirit which makes little of one's own defi-
ciencies when duty or opportunity calls for action: and constantly
to make opportunity stand for duty. To have an adventurous spirit
in religious undertakings. To be the first to advance when au-
thority says " Go! " and the first (however sadly) to stop when au-
thority says " Halt ! " Never to allow oneself " to think " (we quote
Father Hecker) " or to express a word which might seem to place
a truth of the Catholic faith in doubt, or to savor of the spirit of
disobedience. With all this in view, to be the most earnest and
ardent friend of all true progress, and to work with all one's might
for it's promotion through existing organizations and authorities."*
Some say, or would wish they had the courage to say, that
all this is but theoretical if not visionary; and that it interferes with
a common sense management of religious affairs. Well, some would
manage supernatural activities, such as all departments of the
care of souls, and including the education of children, by the rules
of worldly policy. These aspire to the shrewdness of worldlings in
dealing with immortal souls. They would attend to divine things in a
human spirit. Others adopt, indeed, methods and means of a human
kind, but they are guided by the lights acquired from prayer, holy
Mass and their communions. Which kind of wisdom is the better
for a workaday life of zeal? St. Francis Xavier, one of the most
"True initiative was illustrated by St. Francis de Sales throughout his whole
career. He composed his first sermon whilst yet a young man in deacon's orders,
and preached it on Pentecost a discourse on the descent of the Holy Ghost. He
was the least innovating, and at the same time most holily ventursome, of God's
servants. Read his chapters on Inspirations in the Devout Life and in the Love of
God for a full and perfect treatment of the great doctrine here so scantily and
defectively given.
334 THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN [June,
successful among practical soul-savers, declares for the latter.
Speaking of some details in the management of hard sinners, he
wrote : " But to understand when this is proper to be done, how
far to proceed, and with what precautions, is what the guidance of
the Spirit and your own experience must teach you at the particular
time and occasion."* And again, when arranging for the instruc-
tion of converts : " After they have professed their belief in all
that the Church teaches, the catechist instructs them to pray to
the Holy Ghost for His seven gifts, those especially which can
help them to believe the Catholic faith."f
It is sometimes alleged that this rule of following God's Spirit
in all things applies entirely to recluses, and is adapted only to con-
templatives. No, not by any means. There is no guidance of the Deity
so plain as that which makes men perform their usual duty of
prayer, whether it be the prattling of the child in his petitions,
the anguish of the stricken sinner, or the rapture of the saint.
When you feel inclined to pray for a lawful object, you are now
under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. If that incli-
nation be unusually strong, if it be persistent, even vehement,
O rejoice and be glad, for it means the getting in due time of a favor
of more than ordinary value. If it be a painful yet peaceful feel-
ing, having in it the stings of remorse or the forebodings of danger,
O pray harder and harder, for these are divine warnings against
perdition.
No interior condition is more surely an inspiration from God
than an enduring tendency to observe a daily rule of mental prayer.
As to even the method of meditation, that, too, in its more deep
flowing currents, is ordered by no other than the divine power
within us. A full knowledge of St. Ignatius and his method of
meditation leaves little doubt that his method was inspired. " So
high and sovereign is the exercise of mental prayer," says De
Ponte in the first paragraph of his w-onderful book of Meditations,
" in which we meditate upon the mysteries of our holy faith, and
converse familiarly with Almighty God, that the principal master
of it can be no other than the Holy Ghost Himself. The holy
Fathers learnt it by His inspiration, and they have left us many
documents of much importance, how to exercise it with profit, fol-
lowing the motion of that principal Master." And later on that
author returns with emphasis to the same teaching : ' True it is
*Life, by Colejidge, vol. ii., p. 117.
frirf., vol. i., p. 167.
1912.] THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN 335
that the greatest certainty in these petitions and colloquies depends
principally upon the Holy Spirit, who, as St. Paul says, 'asks for us
with unspeakable groanings' (Rom. viii. 26). For with His inspira-
tion He teaches us, and moves us to ask, ordering our petitions, and
stirring up those affections with which they are to be made."
Much of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and in earlier years
by far the greater part, is granted us for resistance to evil. What
gave the martyrs their crown? Resistance to idolatrous laws; the
sovereignty of the one true God demanded that of them in
their soul's interior. The same divine help is needed for our own
daily martyrdom : " I see another law in my members, fighting
against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin."
(Rom. vii. 23.) To hold one's own against our inward evil ten-
dencies needs the inward " inspiration and help " of the principle
of good God. As a room is aired, so is a soul purified. Is a
room foul ? Open wide the windows, all of them, and all the doors ;
and the pure air and bright sunshine cleanses everything, dries up
all foul dampness, leaves everything clean and sweet. O my soul,
open thy windows and doors wide and free, and call God's Spirit
within thee. Despondency flees and hope returns; doubts are
dried up like malarious damp. God has come, bright and sweet,
all powerful and all loving. Prayer is become the breathing in of
God's holiness; self-denial is made the confession of God's suprem-
acy. Two things will give thee highest joy, and these two are one :
the first is that thou shalt be made conscious that this purifying of
thy life is the infinite God Himself; the second is, that it is love,
nay it is loving union, for " He who is joined to the Lord is one
spirit." (i Cor. vi. 17.)
How great the boon of knowing that what wakes my soul
out of the torpor of worldliness is the living God Himself, whose
force is infinite love, whose action is the communication of Himself;
that what is moving and softening and wounding and healing my
affections, lighting up the dark places, plucking out evil habits,
thawing out what was frozen, is the infinite and eternal Deity Him-
self. Nor is there in this any essential difference, as we have
already said, between souls high and low in the ranks of God's
friends. For St. Bernard testifies : " From the time of God's en-
trance into the interior of my soul, He has never made His presence
known by any extraordinary tokens, either by voice or by visible
appearance. I have felt His activity only by the movement of my
heart; and I have experienced His active power by the amendment
336 THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN [June,
of my vices, by the mortification of carnal passions, by the penitent
view of my faults, by the renewal of my life, by the enlarged
vision of all things which show forth His greatness."*
Weakness of conviction of the dogma of the indwelling Spirit
is the reason of partial failure in many religious careers. It
is especially the explanation of what is known as dissipation of
spirit. The mind of an unrecollected man is like an unfenced or-
chard, whose fruits are not for the owner but for all passers-by a
comparison used by St. Francis de Sales. The inner divine voice
is drowned by the demands of undisciplined nature, filling the soul
with excuses and questionings, and clamors for favors and demands
for " rights." Sensuality, even when it is not gross, yet deadens
the mind to what a Kempis calls the " divine whisperings," which
die away amid the pleasures of the table or the comforts of an
easy life. Even the innocent desires of the heart, such as craving
for the company of friends and relatives, may easily confuse, per-
haps wholly deaden, the tones of that voice, which will make its
plea for love only amid the silence of all other lovers. The result
is that multitudes of souls become good and never grow better.
One does religious acts and does not think religious thoughts; and
finally becomes like the man in the prophesy : " As he that is thirsty,
dreameth and drinketh, and after he is awake is yet faint with
thirst, and his soul is empty." (Isaias xxix. 8.)
Fidelity to the interior influences of grace, beginning, in the
case of ordinary souls, with the voice of God in conscience and
ending with the terrible self -exactions of the nobler kind of natures
those who are called to emulate the angels in holiness fidelity to
the inner divine Master is the fundamental virtue of religion. Even
saints find cause for regret in their faulty exercise of it. For ex-
ample, Blessed Mother Barat, although she was imbued with a wor-
shipful obedience to God's external authority, yet wrote to the
Venerable Mother Duchesne, at a difficult crisis of the Sacred Heart
Congregation which she had founded : " The fruits of an exact fidel-
ity to the Spirit of our Lord are immeasurable. I have but one regret
in the world, and that is not to have been always faithful to it.
O if I had to live over again, I would listen only to the Holy Spirit,
and act simply by His inspirations.! How well do the saints know
that every attribute of the Deity is expended upon us in the guidance
of the Holy Ghost. As God is, so is He my guide. His immensity
*Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles.
W-ife, by Baunard, vol. i., ch. x.
1912.] THE MIGHT OF THE INWARD MAN 337
envelopes me everywhere; His majesty appals me in my sin fulness;
His goodness melts the hardness of my heart a most miracu-
lous victory. And in all this His touch arouses my consciousness
that I am under immediate divine control.
The guidance of the Holy Ghost is thus both a mark of pro-
gress and its rule. It is also the promise of final perseverance. A
man's blood grows weak and thin with age. But his soul's blood,
the grace of God, never ages. O Holy Spirit of God, Thou art
eternal life, and Thou art my life. The force of Thy inspirations
grows stronger with the weakening of the forces of my natural
life. Virtue is beautiful forever. Love blooms eternally. O how
much purer is the life of God within my thoughts than the life of
man that is in my blood and wrapped about me in my flesh. The
one is always dying most miserably, the other ever increasing in
vigor, as our Savior promised : " The water that I will give him,
shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life
everlasting." (John iv. 14.)
When everything in life is done because God inspires it, or His
providence arranges it and places its interior motives, this is per-
fection. Now the mission of the Spirit within the soul is love, love
to be given, love to be obtained, and this reciprocal movement of
love is to be the stream on which at the end is carried to heaven
the merits of a lifetime. It is God who inspires the soul with
love of Himself as the supreme good, love of a son for his Father,
of a spouse for his Spouse, of a brother for his Brother. As these
relations exist in God's own inner life of Father, Son and Spirit,
so are they transferred to the inner life of the human soul, and
thus to that soul God is made all in all. " The estate of the divine
union," says St. John of the Cross, " consists of the total trans-
formation of the will into the will of God in such a way that
every movement of the will shall be always the movement of the
will of God only."*
Let us conclude with the prayer of Holy Church in the Mass for
Wednesday after the second Sunday of Lent : " O God, the restorer
and lover of innocence, direct to Thyself the hearts of Thy serv-
ants : that the fervor of Thy Spirit being lighted within them,
they may be found steadfast in faith, and effective in work. Amen."
*Ascent of Mt. Carmel, bk. i., ch. xi.
VOL. XCV. 22.
ST. CLARE OF ASSISI.
BY FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
IV.
E have spoken so far of Clare's loyalty to St.
Francis, and of her strenuous defence of the Fran-
ciscan vocation ; and we have said that it was through
her devotion to Francis and poverty that she found
her freedom of soul.
Now nowhere is Franciscan liberty of spirit more exquisitely
revealed than in St. Clare. Take up her Legend and her Letters
the one supplementing the other and in the reading you can hardly
miss a certain spiritual exhilaration, such as you will sometimes find
in the open spaces of the hills. Largeness and freedom are there, and
the freshness and buoyancy which belong to freedom. Here is a
woman who does not fear to be herself; in whose religious devotion
the proper natural self is sublimated, not suppressed.
Father Faber, in All for Jesus,* has contrasted the " beautiful
liberty of spirit which pervades and possesses " the Benedictine
mind with the " regimental sort of holiness ;" and he tells us that the
way to " real, unaffected, enduring piety " is to be found in that
Catholic liberty of spirit which modern writers on the spiritual life
for the most part are wanting in. Doubtless there are times when
the " regimental sort of holiness " is the only sort which will avail.
But, as Father Faber remarks, it is apt, when it becomes a system,
" to lessen devotion in extent," and, still more, " to lower it in
degree." Liberty of spirit is the mark of true Catholic piety. With-
out it devotion is a mere artificial growth; it is not the giving to
God of the man himself. It was just this giving to God of the real
self which the Benedictine writers, to whom Father Faber alludes,
insisted upon; and for this reason the piety they teach, whilst it
fixes the whole mind and affections upon God, and lifts a man
above his natural self, yet never destroys the personal self but
only elevates it. Much the same thing is found amongst the early
Franciscans. They develop in the sphere of their vocation as a
plant rooted in its proper soil and flourishing hardily and joyously
*Chapter viii., sections 7 and 8.
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 339
amidst the breezes of heaven. Certainly in their freedom of spirit
those early Franciscans, such as we read of in the Fioretti, bear the
mark of true Catholics. But, as we have said, none of them exhibit
this mark more exquisitely than does St. Clare. Of her it may be
said, without reservation, that even in this life she truly found
herself in her religion, and in its sublimities moved " with house-
hold motions light and free."
The secret of her spiritual freedom lies in the simplicity with
which she trusted herself to the guidance of that worshipful love
which was the encompassing form of her character, to bring her
to the divine goal of her heart's desire. Undoubtedly, her life-long
purity and singleness of aim secured to her a fuller measure of
freedom, for to the innocent spiritual liberty comes as a childhood's
confidant. But liberty itself is found in the possession of " the
highest as we see it," or rather " as the heart calls to it." They
who find their true desire are free. What then was the true desire
which gave such exquisite freedom to Clare? We may say at once
that it was " the poor Christ."
Now Clare's life was in truth a song of the heavenly love. She
loved St. Francis, she loved evangelical poverty, but above all, and
as encompassing all, she loved " Christ the Poor." It was in the
wake of this supreme love that she looked lovingly upon all things
in heaven and earth, but especially upon whatever bore the mark
of Christ's poverty. One needs the Catholic Faith, which realizes
our Lord as a living Presence, and not as a mere figure of history,
in order to understand at all the reality of Clare's love-experience in
her vision of " the poor Christ." We have here no singer's song
of unrealized sentiment, but a real experience of Catholic Faith.
In the assurance of this Faith, Clare knew herself irrevocably
claimed in mind and heart by the living Christ in the mystery of His
earthly poverty.
Her own soul was not more real to her than was " Christ the
Poor;" and in this Faith she gave to Him the worship which her
heart was restless to give to the One Who was the satisfying per-
sonal Response to the call of her spirit. " Christ the Poor " came
to her as this personal Response, and her heart found its freedom
and rest. From that moment her prayer was " to be conformed to
Christ the Poor in the little nest of poverty;" and jealous lest
she might in aught be displeasing to Him, she made the remembrance
of His poverty " as a clasp of gold with which she closed her heart
in her breast, so that no dust of earth might find entrance." Here.
340 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [June,
as in all the passages which tell of Clare and " the poor Christ,"
the Legend falls into the language of the love-story : a fitting setting
for the real story of Clare.
But we shall perhaps best come to an understanding of what
Clare's worship of " the poor Christ " meant to her, if we take a
retrospect of the ethical influences which were remoulding the
Christian world at the beginning of the thirteenth century : for if
there is one thing certain about the Franciscan movement, it is its
direct relationship with the new spirit which was breathing fresh
life into mediaeval society at the time that movement had its birth.
The Franciscan life was in fact a realization, on the high plane of
Catholic Faith, of the new ethical ideals which were then sweeping
over the world, and which were born of an awakened sense of per-
sonal freedom.
The rise of the Italian communes against the Empire, and the
self assertion of the burgher class against the feudal nobles, were
symptoms of this awakened sense. But its deepest, most funda-
mental, expression was the new literature of chivalry and love.
The chanson de geste, the chivalric romance, and the new love-song
uttered the intimate emotion of the new age. In them the world-
spirit broke through the pessimism which had settled like a London
fog upon the souls of men during the eleventh century, and endured
more or less until the close of the twelfth. I say " more or less,"
because the Christian spirit was too strong and vital not to be
aroused to resistance against the prevailing depression. Histori-
cally and psychologically the crusades on the one hand, and on
the other the new cloistral piety, which found its fullest voice in St.
Bernard of Clairvaux, were a defiance of the sterilizing gloom. But
both the crusade and the new piety were things apart from the
common life of the world, nor had they an immediate conscious
relationship with each other. The poets and singers gave to the
new spirit a more universal, if more secular, expression ; and their
tales and songs became the informing influence, mental and ethical,
of the multitude. They set forth love and action as the universal
properties of the free spirit. Moreover they took a more broadly
human view. The love-song of St. Bernard, voicing the love of
the Christian soul for Christ, is constrained in its very intensity.
Humanity breathes in all his utterances: it is the human soul
calling to the God-Man. But it is a soul fearful of the world that
lies outside the monastic cell. He admits no conscious feeling of
delight in the world outside. The beauty of the earth is to him
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 341
a mere distraction in his desired communion with the Divine
Beloved; and he accordingly shuts it out. The manifest evil in the
world stands between it and him, and warns him against it. But
the secular singer, on the contrary, found joy in the world's life,
and the earth was to him delectable, even when he found sorrow
and wrong-doing there. He set himself to free the earth from its
bondage to those who used it evilly. 'Not that his idea of evil
was in all things the same as that of St. Bernard; but according
to his faith, action and love were to overcome evil and make a
new heaven of the earth. And so his faith had a lyrical freedom,
wanting in the ardent raptures of the new cloistral piety.
Again, the crusades were a call to action for a definite pur-
pose, and the religious goal of the action was held to give a
religious quality to the hardihood and courage of the crusader.
But the poets sang of the glory of valor and chivalric adventure
as a good in itself. Valor, in the romances, was a religious quality,
even as love was : they were an end in themselves and brought
true glory. It is, however, to be remembered, that valor and love
had their ethical conditions, without which they ceased to be valor
and love in the chivalric sense: and these ethical conditions were
largely drawn from the Christian law. The valiant man must be
faithful to his plighted word, he must be liberal with his service
and goods; he is bound to defend the oppressed and the weak;
he must be courteous even with an enemy, and have the humility
of true gentleness. So, too, love had its moral qualifications. It
must issue in entire and willing service for the beloved; self must
be utterly displaced by the mere will of the loved one. In the best
of the romances love was altogether apart from the carnal desire:
even in the worst the lover has no desire save for the one object
of his love.
Thus the poets and singers set up a standard of morals, at the
same time that they put forth the new ideal of the perfect man-
hood, rooted in the fundamental facts of love and action; and,
however far the realization fell below the ideal in actual life, yet
the ideal raised the spirit of the age out of its enervating depression,
created a new moral energy and produced a new type of character.
Now it was just this new type of character, rooted in chiv-
alric valor and love, which St. Francis brought into the service
of Jesus Christ : and it is only as we keep this in mind that we can
gain an entrance into the meaning and spiritual content of the
Franciscan life. In his youth, Francis, afire with the new en-
342 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [June,
thusiasm of the Trouvere and Troubadour, and with his mind and
heart steeped in its dogmas and convictions, was ambitious to
emulate the heroes of romance, and gain glory in the battlefield
and tourney. When his conversion came, he simply transferred his
allegiance as a prospective Knight from an earthly lord to the
heavenly. But the heavenly Lord, into Whose service he then
passed, was yet the Supreme Exemplar of chivalric manhood and
character. Christ revealed Himself to this ardent believer in chiv-
alry as the Perfect Knight, Who for the love of the world debased
Himself utterly, dying for the object of His love; Who because of
His promise, and without other compulsion, set Himself to save
the world, and was true to His troth and infinitely valorous. And
to the service of this Crown of Knighthood, Francis brought the
ideal and code of chivalry. The true Friar Minor, like the true
Knight, is bound to Christ by the inviolable bond of troth a free
man's plighted pledge : this bond obliges him to serve his Lord
in His earthly adventure for the world's redemption, sharing His
poverty and hardship, and if needs be His death. His Lord's will
is His perfect law. He must serve without any prudential reckon-
ing of the chances of success, but simply to do his Lord's will, and
to glorify Him by his obedience : for glory is not so much in the
achievement as in the loyalty and valor of the attempt. He must
be courteous and liberal with his services, and whatever he has to
give, since largesse belongs to true nobility. Finally, love must be
the root of all his service and obedience. Such are the principles
underlying the life of the Franciscan fraternity as Francis gave it
to his disciples.*
Unlike St. Bernard, and more in the spirit of the Troubadour,
St. Francis did not close his eyes to all the earth save the Sacred
Humanity of Christ. Rather did he freely look out upon the earth
as one finding there witnesses to the nobleness of the Lord he served.
To him the earth itself sang of the glories of Christ the Creator and
Redeemer, and so, whether in sorrow or joy, was delectable.
Thus did the spirit of romantic chivalry elicit in Francis a new
understanding and expression of Catholic faith in the Incarnate
*E. G., see St. Francis' description of obedience in Regiila i, cap. V: per
caritatem spiritus voluntarie serviant et obediant invicem. Et haec est vera et
sancta obedientia D.N.J.C. concerning courtesy cf. Fioretti, cap 36 ; ibid., cap. 25 ;
Speculum Perfections, cap. 35. The liberality of the first Franciscans was such
that they would give whatever they had to any beggar. The improvidence with
which St. Francis undertook his missionary journeys was also in accord with the
chivalric spirit.
I9i 2.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 343
Word of God, and find through that understanding an entrance into
the sanctuary of Catholic life.*
We are now in a better position to explain what Clare's devo-
tion to Christ the Poor meant to her. In her eyes Jesus Christ in
His poverty was the mirror of Knightliness. It was not merely
because He was poor on earth that she worshipped Him, but because
His poverty was resplendent with that special perfection in which
the chivalrous soul delighted. +3
From the purely natural point of view, the most real thing in
Clare's experience was the worship fulness of that high valor, gentle-
ness, pure love and vast pity, which were the spiritual notes of the
chivalric ideal; and it was as the Supreme Exemplar of these
knightly qualities that our Lord revealed Himself to her as she
listened to the illuminating words of St. Francis when he was woo-
ing her for Christ. And then she knew herself His worshipper in
the most intimate conviction of her heart. The knowledge was
clear and undoubting. It was the faith which unites in indissoluble
union: the espousal faith of wedded souls. In that worship her
womanhood was spiritually realized, and all the desire of her heart
satisfied. For she was a true woman of the romantic spirit; with
such a woman, to live meant to love worshipfully, but her love could
be given only to high and noble valor. But Jesus Christ in His poor
life on earth was the very God of all knightly perfection. In His
poverty and suffering, assumed only by the compulsion of love and
pity, He manifested the noblest hardiness, and gained the completest
victory over the powers of the earth. In His poverty and suffering,
He was most courteous, since He made Himself the servant and
brother even of the least amongst men; and He was the most
generous, whether as Creator or Redeemer, yet still more as Re-
deemer, since He gave His very life for men. And yet all the
*We may here point out a fundamental difference between the Franciscans
and the numerous sectaries who, in the twelfth and thirteenth century, proclaimed
a message of poverty superficially resembling the Franciscan message. With the
sectaries, poverty was a protest against, and criticism of, existing abuses in the
Church. Their poverty had in it no positive element of spiritual freedom. It
served as a cry with which to arouse the multitude against the secular ambitions
and wealth of the higher clergy ; but when the sectaries came to constructive policy
they fell either into moral and social anarchy or into a state of pure legalism, which
tortured and depressed the soul. Between the sectaries and the secular spirit there
was a radical antagonism, though the secular liberationist was not unwilling at
times to use the sectary for his political purpose. No true sectary could be at heart
a troubadour as St. Francis was. Joy and sorrow had no place in the conventicle, but
were superseded by self-righteousness and moroseness. How different it was
with the Franciscans is well known.
344 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [June,
heavens and earth were His: He was noble in possession even
as in action.
Thus did Clare behold Him with her mind and heart : and the
vision became her great joy; and when through St. Francis the
poor Christ demanded her perfect love, her heart leaped gratefully
at the call, and in all the humility of a great love, she gave herself
to share His life of poverty as a bride at her husband's side.
There is nothing more beautiful in the utterances of St. Clare
than the simple confession of her joy in this spiritual espousal.
Artlessly, and often unconsciously, this joy utters itself in the
letters she wrote to Blessed Agnes of Prague, and become their
dominant note.* These letters, too few though they are, give us
a more intimate revelation of Clare's inner life than does anything
else. One must read them through adequately to gather the charm
of their perfect sincerity. But from what we have said above we
shall be able the better to understand that sincerity: as when she
advances this argument for the worship of our Lord :
His strength is greater than all power; His grace more gra-
cious, His countenance more fair than all others. His love
stands alone, exceeding all joys.
Or again this passage from another letter :
Like a poor virgin take to your heart the poor Christ. Look
upon Him, made full of contempt for your sake, and follow
Him. Make yourself full of contempt in this world for His
sake. Look, most noble Queen, upon your spouse and see how
He was lovely beyond the sons of men, and yet became unlovely
amongst men for your salvation. His body was torn by scourges,
and He died in dire torments upon the Cross. Burn with a great
longing to liken yourself to Him. If you endure pain now you
shall enjoy glory: If you share His sorrow you shall share
His joy.
The same thought appears in another letter :
Every day look into this Mirror, O Queen, Spouse of Jesus
Christ, and often contemplate your countenance therein, that
within and without you may adorn yourself with the virtues
of diverse flowers, and clothe yourself with the garments meet
for the daughter and spouse of the King most high. O best
*Vide Mrs. Balfour : The Life and Legend of the Lady Saint Clare, pp. 138-154.
The Latin text is published in Acta SS., Martii, i., pp. 505-507.
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 345
beloved, it will be seemly in you with grace divine to delight
in gazing into such a Mirror. Draw near and look therein, first
as Jesus lying in a manger in all poverty and swathed in poor
clothes. O marvel of humility, O marvel of poverty ! The King
of angels, the Lord of heaven and earth, is laid upon a manger !
Within your Mirror look upon the most joyful poverty of holy
humility. For love of it He bore much hardship to redeem the
human race. Then look therein upon the ineffable love whereby
He willed to suffer on the wood of the Cross, and even to
undergo a shameful death upon it. Your Mirror, fixed on the
wood of the Cross, reproaches those that pass by, saying:
" O all ye that pass by the way attend and see if there be any
sorrow like unto my sorrow." Let us join our heart and our
voice in answer to Him as He makes His plaint, and say : "I
will be mindful of Thee and remember, and my soul shall lan-
guish within me."
Always there is this clinging of the thought to the " hardiness "
of the Christ-life, supported by love and eventually crowned with
glory the veritable ideal of chivalric valor: and with it the re-
sponse of the woman's heart. " O sweet poverty," she cries out,
" embraced by Jesus Christ with a perfect love !" By constant gaz-
ing into the Divine Mirror she bids her correspondent to become
" transformed into an image of His Deity ;" and " then," she con-
tinues, " you shall feel what His friends feel, and shall taste the
secrets of the joy which the Almighty God keeps in hiding from
the beginning for His chosen ones, though they dwell in this de-
ceitful world." But the spouse must aim constantly at perfection,
" lest His eyes see aught in you that is not perfect." Nor is she
content merely to worship; she aspires to share with her Lord in
His redeeming work. In her humility she confesses that in this
she herself is wanting, but she rejoices that another, namely, the
Blessed Agnes, to whom she confides her thoughts, is found worthy
to " supply my defect," and to be " the helpmate of God Himself,
and the support and encouragement of the frail members of His
ineffable body." That confession of her own defect was the cry
of her sweet unconsciousness of her own merit : it voices the need
of her loyalty to be an active support to the poor Christ in His
earthly mission : and truly Clare was that.
But the letters reveal to us a further trait of her inner life
her passionate love of beauty ; and this love of beauty is wedded to
her love of the poor Christ in the freedom of her soul. Jesus Christ
346 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [June,
Himself in her vision of Him is the strong, the gracious, the su-
premely Fair. But as she looks with His eyes upon the world,
she finds beauty there too, and quite simply delights in it. She
seems in her worship like one who gathers flowers on a ramble
through the lanes and woods, because they speak to her of the joy
of her heart. Light and color irresistibly attract her: they are
respectively the glory of the heavens and of the earth : symbolically
they are, as Clare takes them, the glory of the Divine Beloved and
His faithful spouse. So the heavenly King " sits in great glory
upon His starry throne;" "the sun and the moon worship His
glory ;" " He dwells in the brightness of the saints." Again life with
Him is encompassed with light: "the glorious vision (of this life
with Him) is a splendor of glory, a brightness of eternal light, a
mirror without spot." The very ecstasy of light enters into her joy
of her Lord. Not unlikely it came to her from beholding the
wonderful light which gives to her native Umbria its glorious mystic
loveliness. But if her joy in light enters into her vision of Christ,
the heavenly King, her joy in color has free play in her conception
of His faithful worshipper. The soul which loves Him must
" adorn herself, within and without, with the virtues of diverse
flowers " an illuminating phrase which bespeaks the meditative
care with which Clare cultivated her small flower garden within the
enclosure of San Damiano. Tradition says that amongst all flowers
she loved more the violet, the rose and the lily, because they seemed
to her the flowers of humility, love and purity. Nor did her poverty
forbid her a mental appreciation of the beauty of less simple adorn-
ments. " He will adorn your breast with precious stones," she
writes to Blessed Agnes of Prague, " and your ears with jewels of
great price, and will set you around with topazes, and crown you
with a golden crown." Nor does the spiritual significance with
which she alludes to these precious things detract from the natural
pleasure she finds in them.
In truth a certain mental and spiritual splendor an adumbra-
tion of Nature's own splendor is manifest in this daughter of most
high poverty, who put on her festive robes and ornaments for her
last appearance amongst the members of her father's household,
and subsequently made her life of poverty brilliant with her joy
in earth and sky. And it was not only for the immediate beauty
of Nature that she had a true feeling. On a Christmas night,
when she was experiencing a sense of loneliness, because her sick-
ness would not allow her to join her Sisters in the Christmas-
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 347
ceremonies, she prayed to her Lord to comfort her, and thereupon
was permitted to hear " the wonderful music that was being sung
in the Church of San Francesco. . . .the harmonies of the singers
and the sound of the organ." She saw too " the manger of the
Lord " the crib the friars had fashioned in the church. And the
music and the sight of the crib brought her a perfect peace. And
then, too, there was her delight in hearing " a learned discourse."
" For though she knew how to extract profit from the sermon of
any speaker," says the Legend, " yet she listened with more relish
when the shell of the words befitted the kernel of doctrine."
One ceases to wonder at Clare's tenacious clinging to the life
of Franciscan poverty when one realizes the fullness and freedom
of spiritual life with which it endowed her. It taught her to find
Christ Himself by way of those same essential emotions and ideals
which were making the world of her time throb with a new sense
of life and self-realization. No troubadour felt so intimately, be-
cause so divinely, as she the joy of love and valor. She, too, had
the poet's possession of the earth, but exalted by her faith in the
Incarnate Word as the Lord of the earth. This faith, realized as
St. Francis realized it, gave to all creation a sacramental value,
so that it radiated reflexly the Sacred Humanity of Christ Himself.
To the Franciscan Christ appeared not merely as the glory of the
human soul, as He appeared in the cloistral piety, but as the glory
of every created thing: and as the lover in the minstrel's song
found new values in the earth because of the existence of the be-
loved, so did the spirit of the Franciscans find new values there
because of the presence of Christ. And from that faith came the
" Canticle of Brother Sun," which St. Francis composed and sang
on his last visit to St. Clare. That canticle struck a new note in
mediaeval piety : it brought all the creatures to share with man his
service of the Lord; no longer were they mere distractions to the
God-seeking soul. But Francis and Clare had lived their lives,
since they embraced holy poverty, in the faith of that song.
Clare's death was in marvelous keeping with her life. She
had, you will remember, just achieved her defence of poverty, and
won for her Sisters their Franciscan heritage after twenty-seven
years of patient struggle : and now her long warfare was over.
Around her bed were gathered some of the still surviving com-
panions of St. Francis. There was Brother Angelo, courteous as
ever, " comforting the rest in their sorrow," though he himself could
not restrain his tears. Brother Leo from time to time kissed the
348 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [June,
bed upon which the Saint lay. There, too, was Brother Juniper.
On his arrival Clare looked up smilingly, greeting her " dear jester
of the Lord," and asked him if he had anything new at hand con-
cerning our Lord. Brother Rinaldo, all kindness, thought to en-
courage Clare to patience in her suffering. She answered him:
" Dearest brother, ever since that I knew the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, through His servant Francis, no suffering has troubled
me; no penance has been too hard; no illness arduous." At the
bedside was Agnes, Clare's sister, who had hastened from Florence
at the news of Clare's illness, and was seeking by prayer to ward
off the death which would mean further separation from the sister
she passionately loved. But Clare bade her cease weeping, for that
Agnes would soon follow her. And in fact Agnes died three
months afterwards. Pope Innocent had come, and at her request
had given Clare the last absolution: though he said he needed
absolution more than she.
As the last moments drew nigh, Clare asked the friars to read
aloud the Passion of our Lord. After that she was heard to mur-
mur softly : " Go forth without fear : for thou hast a good guide
for thy journey. Go forth, for He Who created thee, hath sanc-
tified thee; and protecting thee always, loveth thee with a love
tender as that of a mother for her son. Blessed be Thou, Lord,
Who hast created me." One of the Sisters asked to whom she was
speaking. Clare replied : " I am speaking to my blessed soul."
Awhile after she turned to one of the Sisters and asked : " O
daughter, dost thou see the King of Glory Whom I behold? " At
that moment another Sister looking towards the door, saw, as with
her bodily eyes,
a multitude of virgins, clothed in white garments, all of whom
wore golden crowns upon their heads. There walked one
amongst them more resplendent than the rest, from whose crown
such splendor shone forth within the house as to change the night
itself into day. She advanced to the bed where the spouse
of her Son lay, and bending over her lovingly, embraced her
sweetly. A mantle of wondrous beauty was then brought forth
by the virgins, and, all working together with emulation, they
covered the body of Clare and adorned the couch. Thus on
the day after that of Blessed Lawrence, that most holy soul
passed away.... and her spirit soared happily heavenward.
So in her dying, as in her living, Clare's is the spirit of light
1912.] ST. CLARE OF ASSISI 349
and beauty and love in worship before the Figure of the heavenly
King, Who on earth was Christ the Poor.
From the world which judges of the value of a life by what
men do rather than by what they are, such a life as that of Clare
will hardly receive its just meed of appreciation. But happily there
is another world to whom the truth and beauty of a life is of more
concern than any mere external deed. St. Clare, as we have seen,
was more enrapt by the life of the spirit than by external activities.
Not that she lacks even in this respect a claim to greatness. The
part she took in the upbuilding of the Franciscan Order puts her
amongst the builders of the organized Catholic body. But greater
than this claim upon our reverence is the claim of that clear reve-
lation of Catholic Faith and worship which her life gives to the
world. This it was which won for her the admiration and affection
of the people of her time. To them she was as a prophetess of
the beauty of the Gospel message which St. Francis preached :
not merely of its truth but of its beauty. And it was a beauty the
world could, inadequately, perhaps, but sufficiently, comprehend.
The hardihood of her poor life, the generosity of her renunciation,
and the joyousness of her worship these things appealed to them in
their new vigor of life, as they must appeal to all men in whom the
youth of the spirit is not dead. In her the eternal chivalry of the
human soul shone as a consecrated faith: all the more wonderful
because of the grace of her womanliness.
Truly the Franciscan movement would have been less powerful
to enthuse had it lacked St. Clare. Undoubtedly the gospel of
Franciscan poverty acquired a comeliness and attraction from the
personality of the Abbess of San Damiano, which no friar could
have given it. In Clare the religion of poverty became transfused,
in the mind of the world, with the transcendent grace of that purity
which is the purity of a noble love. The unearthly purity which
hovered upon the horizon, but was too frequently lost sight off in
the chivalric romance and love-song, was in her resplendently
actualized. To the eyes of Umbria and Italy at least, she was a
sublimation of the new womanhood of the romance, fashioned in
love and joy and worship: but to this she added the glory of a
purity which compelled and justified the deepest reverence. And
so happened what the Legend recounts:
Virgins hasten after her example to keep themselves as they
350 ST. CLARE OF ASSISI [June,
are for Christ; married women strive to live more chastely.
The eager crowd of youths is incited to take part in the stain-
less conflicts, and is urged by the hardy examples of the weaker
sex to spurn the allurements of the flesh. Many joined in
matrimony by mutual consent bind themselves with the law of
continency; men passing to the Orders and women to the
cloisters All with emulous fervor desire to serve Christ;
all wish to have a share in His angelic life, which has become
resplendent through Clare.
History bears out this paean of praise: for not only did con-
vents of Poor Clares spring up over all the land, but many women
living in their homes put on the habit of the Clares and sought to
live their life: and that the fervor of womankind turned the
thoughts of men to the pure life is perhaps seen in the spread of the
Brothers of Penance the Continenti, as they are frequently styled
who did so much to save Christian society in the thirteenth
century from an invading secularism.
The Office of St. Clare, said by the Friars Minor Capuchin on
her feast day, begins with these words: Posuit me custodem in
vineis: vineae florentes dederunt odor em suum " The Lord put me
a keeper among the vines: the vines flourished and gave forth
their fragrance." No more apt summing up is there of the story
of St. Clare.
(THE END.)
THE GIFT.
BY WILLIS BOYD ALLEN.
HE laid his offering at the Builder's feet,
Amid the plaudits of the multitude
That thronged the market-place and busy street :
Columns of precious marble, many-hued,
Brought from afar the temple to adorn
Which slowly, stone by stone, its arches high,
Its sculptured walls and pinnacles, each morn
To grander height upreared against the sky.
He came again, thinking to find his name
Deep cut upon some lofty architrave ;
Proudly he mused upon the lasting fame
Of his devotion who such largess gave
To build the temple ; then with sudden shame
And grief he cried aloud : beside the way
His priceless offering of marble lay
Shattered by cruel blows from some rude hand,
Dealt by the Master Builder's own command !
The temple was complete. Once more he came,
And humbly knelt, unnoted in the throng
Of worshipers, the poor, the halt and lame,
Seeking forgiveness for his pride. Ere long
He rose. What miracle ! The gift once brought,
The poor, crushed fragments, were transfigured all,
And glowed on the cathedral's transept wall
In exquisite mosaic, deftly wrought,
Close-joined anew with loving care, until,
Touched by the Master Builder's skill,
They filled with radiance all the holy place ;
For, lo, he looked upon his Savior's face !
Joyous, as one who knows his sin forgiven,
He lifted up his heart in prayer to heaven:
" Take Thou, O God, my life, and let it be
Bruised, crushed, transformed, if in it men may see
Some faint portrayal of Thy love, and Thee ! "
A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY.
LORD LISTER.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., SC.D.
HE London Lancet, generally considered the leading
medical journal of the English-speaking world, in
closing its obituary notice of Lord Lister, said Feb-
ruary 1 7th, " No panegyrics are needed; the greatest
modern Englishman is dead." Surely the eulogium
was well merited by the man who has been declared without con-
tradiction to have saved more lives than all the wars of the nine-
teenth century destroyed.
Lord Lister placed humanity in his debt. By studying simply,
quietly, thoroughly, and with tireless persistence in spite of dis-
couragement, the causes of post-operative complications, he secured
the prevention of wound infection. He faced, at first, a most diffi-
cult problem, the reduction and wiping out of the awful post-opera-
tive mortality that carried off most hospital patients. He solved it
wondrously well; and yet his solution, now that it is done, looks
so perfectly obvious. But that is always the way with great dis-
coveries. They seem the most natural thing in the world, once
genius has come to show us how they can be accomplished. The
possibility of doing what he did scarcely entered into men's minds.
The existing conditions were accepted almost as an inevitable
part of hospital work. Probably nothing illustrates this better
than the following incident :
About the middle of the nineteenth century, one of the most
distinguished of living surgeons had a heart-to-heart talk with his
son-in-law on the prospects of a surgical career. The older man,
just finishing a very successful life-work, spoke to the younger
one regretfully of the not over-brilliant prospects of his profession.
He assured him that he could see no opportunity for any great
further development in surgery. All the forms of operation that
could well be devised had already been done. Minor details of
technique might be added, slight modifications of modes of treat-
ment; adjustments of apparatus; nice differentiation in manipula-
tion might be attained; but the outlook for any great develop-
1912.] A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY 353
ment by which a man might reach fame was very poor indeed,
practically nil.
The father-in-law in this story was Syme, the distinguished
Scotch surgeon, who did so much to enhance the reputation of
British surgery about the middle of the nineteenth century. The
son-in-law was Joseph Lister who, as Lord Lister, has just died,
with the reputation of being one of the most beneficent discoverers
in surgery that ever lived. There was not an important newspaper
in the world that did not have a lengthy biography of him. Many
of the magazines have published sketches of his life. Not only
the members of his own profession, but the man in the street, the
general public, even the young folks, knew his name and some-
thing of the reason for his reputation. It is true that a prominent
New York paper, one of our oldest and traditionally great dailies,
spoke of him the day after his death as the inventor of Listerine,
a proprietary product that impudently took his name in order to
share his fame for advertising purposes.
A little more than half a century ago Dr. Syme not only had
no idea of what his son-in-law was to accomplish, but he could not
by any possibility reach a hint of the great new surgical develop-
ments that were to come as the result of Lister's thoughtful work
and observation.* Lister was destined not only to revolutionize
surgery, but to do it in such a way that even the great surgeons of
his own time failed utterly at first to appreciate his work. His own
countrymen were the last to take his great discovery seriously.
There is no clearer illustration than this of the tendency of
men to oppose scientific discovery on general conservative grounds.
In the past such opposition was set down to religion or theology.
Apparently, however, it is rooted in the nature of man. We had
quite as striking an example in this country, almost at the end of
*Lest it should be thought that such lack of foresight is in any way peculiar
to the medical profession or to the surgical department of it, I may say that
remarks such as Syme made to Lister are not upcommon in the history of the
world from men whose knowledge and experience would seem surely to make us
think that they ought to be prophetically inspired, to some degree at least in their
own subjects. Gibbon, after his lifetime of occupation with history, declared shortly
before his death that it was quiet impossible that a great world conqueror should
ever arise again in human history, at least among civilized men. Had he lived
out the Psalmist's span of human life he would have seen the rise of Napoleon. In
the early fifties, when Syme's declaration was made, men of recognized authority
were declaring that the era of peace among mankind had begun, and that there
would never be another great war, at least not another great European war. Within
five years the Crimean War had broken out; in 1860 our Civil War began; in 1866
came the Austro-Prussian War, and in 1870 the Franco-Prussian War.
VOL. XCV. 23.
354 A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY [June,
the nineteenth century, when Dr. Joseph O'Dwyer demonstrated
his great discovery of intubation. The most distinguished au-
thorities in children's diseases in New York met at the Academy
of Medicine and told him that it could not possibly be done, and that
in any case it was of no use. Dr. O'Dwyer went home and was
scarcely seen for three days. Lister fortunately had an equable
disposition, and simply went on with his work unmindful of what
was said. His life cannot but be an inspiration to workers, es-
pecially of the younger generation, no matter what their calling
may be.
Joseph Lister was born in Upton, Essex, England, April 25,
1827. He was the son of a London merchant, who used to occupy his
leisure time in microscopic study and scientific work related to optics.
His father was a member of the Microscopical Society, and Lister
himself once declared that he never knew anyone whose thought was
more logically scientific than his father's. Lister received his early
education at the Friends' School, Tottenham, London, and took out
his university course at University College. He received his degree
of B.A. at the University of London when he was twenty, and then
studied medicine at the University Medical College for five years.
Sharpey, the Professor of Physiology, influenced Lister more than
any of his other teachers, and on his advice Lister went to Edinburgh
to take six weeks of observation in Syme's Clinic. Instead of six
weeks, Lister stayed in Edinburgh for six years, first as the resident
surgeon to Syme at the Royal Infirmary, and afterwards as assistant
surgeon there. It was at this time that he married Agnes, Prof.
Syme's daughter. For some three years he taught as an Extramural
Lecturer on surgery at the University of Edinburgh, but in 1860, at
the age of thirty-three, he was called to the Professorship of Surgery
at the University of Glasgow. He occupied this post for nine
years, and here the great work of his life was accomplished.
It would be almost impossible to give an adequate idea of the
discouraging conditions under which surgery was conducted at
this time. It is true that a great improvement had come during
the preceding decade from the introduction of anaesthetics, and
at least surgeons did not have to operate amidst the disturbing in-
fluences of the awful pain they were inflicting on their patients.
The death-rate in surgical operations of a serious nature was
however extremely high. During our Civil War amputations at
any of the large joints were fatal in more than half the cases.
In hospital practice, especially in the older hospitals, the death-
1912.] A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY 355
rate was even higher. Amputations of the hip, for instance, which
can now be accomplished with almost no mortality, then carried off
more than eighty per cent., four out of every five patients. Opera-
tions within the abdomen were so fatal as to make this region almost
an absolutely prohibited one. A distinguished English surgeon,
Spencer Wells, who had devoted himself to relieving the distresses
of women, thus beginning that development of gynecology which
has proved so beneficent, had so many deaths in his practice that
at one time he was warned by the coroner in England that further
death reports would call for legal investigation.
In hospitals the conditions were worse than in private houses.
Hospitals became, after a time, as we now say, thoroughly septic,
that is saturated with bacteria, so that every patient who was oper-
ated upon therein became infected, and had to fight for his life.
Occasionally internal operations, done under what would now
seem the most unfavorable conditions, proved successful. Mc-
Dowell, operating on a negro woman in the kitchen of his house,
performed the first successful ovariotomy, because there were no
hospital conditions to disturb his results.
Lister had noted the spread of hospital gangrene, of erysipelas,
and of other forms of infection, through the wards of hospitals.
He finally came to the conclusion, after having read Pasteur's
studies of fermentation and putrefaction, that these diseases were
due to living elements of some kind which grew in wounded tissues
and produced serious results. He resolved, therefore, to try
to employ some chemical which would kill these fermentation and
putrefaction producers. His first experiment was made with car-
bolic acid, and proved successful, though not to the extent that he
had originally hoped for. He tried various modes of applica-
tions of the substance, and various modifications of technique, for
the protection of wounds. He worked on untiringly, reporting
from time to time his progress, but attracting very little attention.
After a time it was generally agreed that his treatment of com-
pound fractures and of abscesses was a great improvement over
preceding methods. Compound fractures, that is, fractures in which
the end of the broken bone was exposed, had almost invariably been
fatal. It is easy to understand then how much this advance meant.
On the Continent the Germans took up Lister's ideas rather
enthusiastically, and long before the English gave those ideas any
credit at all, the Germans were hailing him enthusiastically as a
great benefactor of mankind. Since Lister had adopted his ideas
356 A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY [June,
from Pasteur, and frankly confessed it, the French surgeons were
very ready to take up his practical applications. Lister himself
wrote to Pasteur as follows in 1874:
Allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most
cordial thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, demon-
strated to me the truth of the germ theory of putrefaction, and
thus furnished me with the principle on which alone the anti-
septic system can be carried out. Should you at any time visit
Edinburgh, it would, I believe, give you sincere gratification
to see at our hospital how largely mankind is being benefited
by your labors.
Some idea of the revolution worked in surgical practice on
the Continent by Listerism can be gathered from the experiences of
Volkmann and Nussbaum. Volkmann actually thought of closing
his hospital, because so many deaths from all forms of infection
were taking place after his operations. The operations were success-
ful, the patients came out from the anaesthetic in excellent condi-
tion; they remained so for a day or two or three, and then some
septic condition showed itself, and there was a struggle for life,
which only too often ended fatally. Instead of closing his hospital,
however, he introduced, as a last resort, Lister's methods. The
change worked at once seemed miraculous. Volkmann was an im-
mediate convert.
Nussbaum in Munich had almost as trying an experience before
he was induced to take up Listerism. Eighty per cent, of his
patients on whom serious operations were performed died of hospital
gangrene. Erysipelas was constantly present in the wards. Out of
seventeen amputations, he had eleven deaths. Within a year after
his introduction of the Listerian principles of surgery, he was able
to write his paper Sonst und Jetzt Then and Now. Under the
column " Then " he placed hospital gangrene carrying off four out
of five of his patients, erysipelas impossible to stamp out, pyemia
and septicemia always raging. Under the column " Now," no pye-
mia, no hospital gangrene, no erysipelas.
In spite of such reports the British surgeons continued their
opposition. As has been said, by one who knew conditions well,
Lister was looked upon as a surgical heretic in his own University
of Glasgow. In 1869 he accepted the call to the Chair of Surgery at
Edinburgh, offered solely because of his surgical skill. When in
1912.] A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY 357
1874 he accepted the call to London, it was with the idea that he
would be in more sympathetic surroundings, and freer to teach.
Lister, however, was grievously disappointed. Sir William
Savaury, " the most eloquent surgeon of the day," threw ridicule
on the whole antiseptic idea. Savaury was elected President of the
Royal College of Surgeons five years in succession, so that his
power for evil under the circumstances can be imagined. As a
consequence of the ill-will stirred up in these early days, " the
Royal College of Surgeons, incredible as it cannot but seem, must
bear the disgrace it is nothing less than that of never having
elected Lister its President."
The English surgeons only began to wake up to the wonderful
effect of Lister's work, in preventing post-operation complications,
when they had the opportunity to see its effects in the practice of
the German and French surgeons during the Franco-Prussian War.
It was not until seven years later, however, that Lister received his
call to the Professorship of Surgery at Kings College, London.
One might expect that his clinics would be crowded. As a matter of
fact, he never had but a few students, and for ten years after his
coming doubt reigned. The older members of the profession in
London absolutely refused to have anything to do with it. After
Lister's transfer to King's College, their opposition took the form of
refusal to admit him to certain medical privileges and association.
As the Saturday Review said in its sketch of him just after his
death : " When he was proposed as a member of the Club of Fellows
of the Royal Society, it was still possible for an English doctor to
say, 'What, elect a charlatan like Lister, I object !' ' It is easy to
understand how much this attitude of the profession hurt the kindly
heart of Lister. It never made any difference in his work, but, on
the contrary, seemed rather to inspire him so to complete his in-
vestigations as to put his results beyond cavil.
Besides antisepsis there was one other important advance in
surgical procedure that we owe to Lord Lister. Even without his
antisepsis this would have assured him a place on the roll of great
surgeons and benefactors of humanity. Early in his career he real-
ized the necessity of having ligatures for tying up arteries that
would not have to be removed afterwards. When arteries are tied
with silk, the silk acts as a foreign body, and must be subsequently
cast off by the tissues. During this process there is grave danger
of infection of the affected part and, as a result also, of secondary
hemorrhage, that is hemorrhage which takes place from the sixth
358 A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY [June,
to the tenth day after the artery has been tied. Fatal cases of sec-
ondary hemorrhage were not infrequent, and were the terror of the
surgeon. Lister thought that he could use an animal tissue ligature,
like cat-gut, which would hold for as long as was necessary to
assure proper closure of the artery, and then be absorbed by the
tissues. He succeeded in demonstrating that this was practicable.
Then by a series of careful experiments, conducted with great
detail, he showed the various modes of preparing cat-gut so as
to secure its remaining in place long enough for healing purposes,
and yet not too long to produce inflammation.
During the course of his work, Lister found it necessary to
make experiments on animals. It would have been almost impossible
to have accomplished his work on absorbable ligatures without
the aid of animal experimentation. He himself felt that it would
have been subjecting human beings to very serious risks. Many
experiments had to be performed. It really required years to
determine what was the best form that ligatures should take.
His kindly heart never hesitated for a moment, and the modern
anti-vivisectionists, who, if they had their way, would have pre-
vented his investigations, should study his career. It so happened
that his great master, Pasteur, was just such another kindly man.
Yet Pasteur's name and work arouse bitter anti-vivisectionist feel-
ing, though Pasteur came near giving up his work on rabies be-
cause he had to see suffering inflicted on human beings.
Antisepsis and the absorbable ligature, these were Lister's
discoveries; the former was the more important. And yet prob-
ably the most surprising feature of Lord Lister's work in this
subject, and indeed of most of the surgical advance during the
nineteenth century, is that it was not new in the sense in which
it was hailed as such by our generation. While we talk of
anaesthetics having been invented about the middle of the nine-
teenth century, or discovered by Americans, we now know that
the great surgeons of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had
a number of means of producing insensibility to pain, and used
them with excellent success. There was even a method by anni-
hilation; and poets for many centuries talked of the mercies of old
surgeons who put their patients to sleep before they cut them. In
the same way antisepsis was anticipated by the use of strong wine
as a dressing for wounds, for this killed germs and produced what
these surgeons were so proud of union by first intention. They,
like Lister, insisted that wounds need not produce pus; that they
igi2.] A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY 359
might heal without serious inflammatory reaction, and that the
result might be a linear scar, which would be scarcely visible.
They boasted of their pretty cicatrices. The knowledge of this
does not lessen Lister's merit for the rediscovery, since he knew
absolutely nothing about old-time accomplishment, as indeed no
one did until the republication of the old text-books during the
last twenty years.
The characteristic quality of Lord Lister as a man is probably
best illustrated by the direction in his will that none of the in-
stitutions or foundations helped or established by his generous
bequests should be called by his name. He wanted to do good,
but not with any idea of making an enduring name for himself.
His own life had been a typical example. He might easily have
made much more mony than he did. He did make a splendid com-
petency for himself, but since he lived simply he left considerable
money. There was never any question during his life, however,
of doing anything merely for money. He gave an example that
the present day sadly needs.
Lister's personal character is the keynote of most of the
biographical sketches that have appeared since his death. His
kindness of heart it was that had originally tempted him to make
his studies for the prevention of post-operative morbidity and
mortality. He was so discouraged, it is said, by the deaths after
his surgical operations that he felt like abandoning his profession.
Once asked what was the most important quality for a good sur-
geon, he answered : " A feeling heart. People do not always be-
lieve me when I say so, but it is so."*
In spite of all opposition Lister's ideas made way, and during
the early eighties it came to be recognized that he had accomplished
a wonderful step in surgical progress. On Mr. Gladstone's rec-
ommendation, he was made a baronet in 1883, and in 1897 raised
to the Peerage. From 1895 to Z 9OO he was President of The
Royal Society, and besides being Sergeant-Surgeon to Queen
Victoria and King Edward, he was in turn President of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science and of the
*It seems not improper to recall the words of a great surgeon of six centuries
ago in the same regard. Guy de Chauliac said some six centuries ago : " The surgeon
should he learned, skilled, ingenious, and of good morals. Be bold in things that
are sure, cautious in dangers ; avoid evil cures and practices ; be gracious to the
sick, obliging to his colleagues, wise in his predictions. Be chaste, sober, pitiful,
and merciful ; not covetous nor extortionate of money ; but let the recompense
be moderate, according to the work, the means of the sick, the character of the
issue or event, and its dignity."
360 A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY [June,
British Medical Association. His appearance in America at the
meeting of the British Medical Association in Montreal, in 1897,
was the occasion for a magnificent ovation. Americans generally
had not been as slow as the English in recognizing the merit of his
discoveries. The older men had unfortunately took their cue
from the respected older British surgeons, but the close relation-
ship of the younger generation of physicians to German medicine
and surgery saved them from the old fogyism that might have
delayed the beneficent influence of Lister's great work. At a dinner
at The Royal Society in 1897, Mr. Bayard, the American Ambas-
sador, said, " My lord, it is not a profession; it is not a nation; it
is humanity itself which salutes you."
Honors, greater than any of the difficulties he had to over-
come, came to Lord Lister towards the end of his life. In 1902,
at the Coronation of King Edward, his name was first on the list
for the British Order of Merit. He received the Prussian Order of
Merit and the Grand Cross of Danebrog in Denmark. Most of the
important medical societies and scientific academies of the world
honored him by making him a corresponding member or honorary
associate.
At his death permission was asked by the members of the
Royal Society to bury him in Westminster Abbey, and the consent
of the Dean was obtained. It has been made a condition of burial
in Westminster Abbey in recent years that the bodies must be
cremated. Lord Lister had requested that he should be buried in
Hampstead Churchyard beside his wife; and so, while the first part
of his funeral services were conducted in the Abbey, his remains
do not lie there.
Lord Lister was particularly fortunate in his marriage. His
wife was always his helpmate, his confident, his inspiration when
others refused to believe in him, and his assistant in every way
possible. We have a number of closely-written volumes of notes
of his experiments and observations, in her fine handwriting, dic-
tated by him. They had no children. When his honors came, he
declared that they meant little for him; but he was glad for his
wife's sake, because they proved that her prophecies of what men
would think of him had come true.
Lord Lister's attitude towards religious questions is interesting.
He was undoubtedly one of the great minds of our time. Not long
before his death he was directly asked the question whether he
thought there was any opposition between science and religion. The
A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY
361
: 1
; f
ras put under such circumstances that he might readily
;ed to answer it without incurring any odium, or without
any publicity. He might also, if he had wished, have
it in the negative. What he did, however, was to answer
tly, " In reply to your inquiry, I have no hesitation in
lat in my opinion there is no antagonism between the
: Jesus Christ and any facts scientifically established."*
lose who unfortunately labor under the impression that
nen usually lose their faith, or at least have their faith
dimmed by their science, this fact may come as a surprise.
a further surprise for such to know that, far from any
us disturbance of faith occurring in the great men of
ience, our productive scientists have nearly all been fer-
rofound believers in all the great truths of Christianity,
n generation, in England, there stood beside Lord Lister
oughly representative scientists, Lord Kelvin and Clerk
Many of the Presidents of the British Association for
cement of Science had taken occasion during the past
i to make their confession of a faith in the truths of
In the older times such men as Faraday were of this same
mind.
in medicine, though here the danger of disturbance of
cience is supposed to be so much greater, and the old
|ns, " where there are three physicians there are two athe-
of Lord Lister's distinguished contemporaries and im-
edecessors were deeply religious men. The best example
be found in Pasteur, whom Lord Lister greeted as his
teenth cent
' ' ' i'. : *!M
362 A LEADER IN MODERN SURGERY [June,
Whewell, in his Bridgewater Treatise, emphasized the fact that
great productive scientists, those who are able to go beyond the
boundaries of the known and lead others, usually have no difficulty
with regard to faith. It is the smaller speculative minds, who think
they know much, but who have not the humility that the discoverers
always have, who are constantly ready to blame science for dis-
turbing their faith. Whewell said :
" Those who have been discoverers in science have generally
had minds, the disposition of which is to believe in an intelligent
Alaker of the universe ; while the science speculators, who exhibited
an opposite tendency, were generally those who, though they might
deal familiarly with known physical truths, and conjecture boldly
with regard to the unknown, did not add to the number of solid
generalizations."
Lister was one of the great discoverers, the leaders in thought,
one of the pioneers into the unknown along which it is easy for
others to follow. Such men are never unbelievers.
THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT.
DON PEDRO CALDERON.
BY ANNA T. SADLIER.
OPE DE VEGA on his deathbed said he found con-
solation in the remembrance of his sacramental
dramas. So, too, under the benediction of his works,
sank to rest the poet of the Blessed Sacrament, he
who raised the Autos Sacramentales to their high-
est perfection; whose prolific genius, in the opinion of many, has
done for Spain what Shakespeare did for England ; through whom,
indeed, the voice of a nation reached the heart of humanity.
Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca was born in 1600. He had
already begun his dramas, when, at the age of twenty-five, he
entered the profession of arms. The soldier's life of changing
vicissitudes, of movement and color, in a certain sense, perfected
him for his future career as author and dramatist, and gave to his
works " a peculiar manliness of style and sentiment." Philip IV.
summoned him to court in 1636, and facilitated in every way, by
favor and fortune, the output of his creative power. Drama fol-
lowed drama in rapid succession, varied in subject, sparkling with
wit, rich in imagery and grace. To this period belong " The
Constant Prince," "The Physician of His Own Honor," "The
Purgatory of St. Patrick," " The Secret in Words," " The Alcalde
of Zalamea," and " The Wonderful Magician," those gems in the
vast collection that elicited Shelley's enthusiastic comment to Leigh
Hunt : " I have lately read, with inexpressible wonder and delight,
the ideal dramas of Calderon, which are perpetually tempting me to
throw over their forms the grey veil of my own words." This
temptation, happily yielded to, has left us Shelley's incomparable
rendering of scenes from the " Magico Prodigioso."
In 1651 Calderon, covered with glory in the profession of
arms, wearing the honored insignia of a Knight of St. James,
crowned with the laurels of a successful dramatist of more than
national repute, renounced all to embrace the sacerdotal state.
He now devoted himself to the production of sacred dramas, and
" to the amazement of the public (so a fellow-countryman declares),
364 THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT [June,
surpassed himself in his Autos Sacramcntales . . . . in a sublime
flight like that of Ezechiel, he soared above his rivals and himself."
The Autos Sacramental es were the Mystery and Morality plays
of Spain. Although always associated with the Corpus Christi
celebration, it was from the early sixteenth century on that the
autos became more and more exclusively dramatic representations
of the Mystery of the Eucharist, until, in the time of Calderon, this
singleness of purpose had become a fundamental law of their exist-
ence. Occasionally on other and national holidays, but always on
the feast and during the octave of Corpus Christi, the autos were
performed in the public streets of the capital and chief cities of the
kingdom.
In the production of this distinctly religious drama, " Cal-
deron," as the Protestant Bishop, Trench, says, " found that which
met all the requirements of his soul. His two vocations of priest
and dramatist were here at length reconciled in highest and most
harmonious assent, and from the finished excellence of these works,
in all their details, he appears to have dedicated to them his utmost
care, and to have elaborated them with the diligence of a peculiar
love."
The autos were produced before a people full of faith, and
deeply interested in all that pertained to religion ; in an atmosphere
very different from the coldly critical one of our day, when religion
and the concerns of humanity are, so to speak, divorced. What
might seem to us as irreverent was then and there quite in harmony
with the solemnity of the subject and the occasion. In fact it is
impossible to compare with our own, the old glad life of the Catholic
peoples, especially the merry-hearted Latins, before the blight of the
Reformation had fallen upon them, and existence was sombred
by Puritanism and the wild gloom of the North. As in the life
of the people, so in the autos of Calderon, under apparent levity, lay
a deep and earnest purpose, a fervor and simplicity of aim, seeking
" the one thing necessary," which to moderns is barely comprehen-
sible.
The reign of learning and letters was universal a century before
Don Pedro Calderon glorified the Spanish stage with his writings,
and such it still was when his dramas were presented to the people
as powerful factors for secular and religious education.
It would be impossible even to name the titles of these multi-
tudinous dramas. Few of them have ever seen the light in Eng-
lish dress, though Trench, Edward Fitzgerald and others have
1912.] THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 365
done something toward this end, and D. F. MacCarthy has not
only published two volumes of the secular dramas, but has given
an elegant rendering of two of the chief autos, " Belshazzar's
Feast " and " The Divine Philothea," with fragments of others.*
Belshazzar's Feast, though published as early as 1637, is
thoroughly indicative of the poet's style and methods. It follows
closely the Scripture narrative. The dramatis personae are few:
King Belshazzar, Daniel, the Prophet of God, Death, Idolatry,
Vanity, Thought, Musicians and the Equestrian Statue of Nabu-
chadonosor, which speaks and utters warnings. Thought appears
in the earlier scenes in the garb of a court fool, who, chameleon-like,
reflects the mind of the king light, variable and frivolous. In
other parts of the narrative, his character changes, and he is sombre,
anxious and timorous, alarmed by the approach of Death, or the
warnings of Daniel. The Prophet is solemn and menacing, but
at the same time merciful towards the Monarch, whose doom he
foresees, and would avert, if possible, by staying the avenging hand
of Death.
Death, a gloomy, terror-inspiring knight, armed with sword
and dagger, and wearing a symbolic cloak, covered with skeletons,
declares himself
the end of all who life begin,
The drop of venom in the serpent's tooth,
* * * *
Since 'neath my feet, as victims I must make
All things that live, or think, or breathe, or grow,
Why art thou frightened at me? Why dost quake,
With what is mortal in thee, weak and low ?
Having thus reassured the prophet, to whom he at first ad-
dresses himself, he continues :
The proudest palace that supremely stands,
'Gainst which the wildest winds in vain may beat
The strongest wall, that like a rock withstands
The shock of shells, the furious fire-ball's heat :
All are but easy triumphs of my hands
All are but humble spoils beneath my feet ;
If against me no palace wall is proof,
Ah ! what can save the lowly cottage roof ?
'Mysteries of Corpus Christi, from the Spanish by Denis Florence MacCarthy,
M.R.I.A. Dublin, James Duffy, 1867.
366 THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT [June,
Beauty, nor power, nor genius, can survive,
Nought can resist my voice when I sweep by,
For whatsoever has been let to live,
It is my destined duty to see die.
In a fine passage, he proves from Scripture how his ruthless
hand is laid upon the great of earth, and, with an exquisite touch,
tells how even " the Flower of Jericho, the blood-bright beauteous
rose of Calvary," though God, will show in His human part " a
trembling fear."
and when He yields to me,
The stars will fall, spark after mighty spark
The moon grow pale, and even the sun grow dark.
This hapless fabric shall appear to fall,
This lower sphere shall feel the earthquake's shock ;
The earth shall faint as at the end of all,
And flower on flower lie crushed, and rock on rock ;
Long ere the evening spreads her purple pall,
Long ere the western sky shall fold his flock
Of fleecy clouds, the day shall die, and night
Don its dark cloak in mourning for the light.
Such sombre thoughts are strongly contrasted with the warmth,
the fragrance, the rich coloring, clothing, and speech of the world-
lings, Idolatry and Vanity.
Blinded by the pleasures of sense, Belshazzar is led by Vanity
to use, as " surest proof of victory," the sacred vessels of the
Israelites which Nabuchadonosor carried off from Jerusalem.
Throughout the play the allegory is skilfully maintained. The
menace of Death and the stern warnings of the prophet histori-
cally Daniel, but metaphorically the judgment of God, or the human
conscience runs like a dark thread through the bright tinsel woven
by Vanity and Idolatry. The descriptions are superb, particularly
those of the Deluge and the Tower of Babel given by the King. The
former opens with a beautiful allusion to the world's " primeval
summer. . . .bright with flowers painted of a thousand colors; the
vacant air .... peopled with the blithe bird's flight and flutter,"
while fish clove through the surges of the silver sea, and the sun
and moon, " day and night's undying lamps," burned with fresh
flames for God's glorious work, Creation's crowning wonder-
man. Into this harmony of perfect being came the discord of sin,
bringing its destructive punishment :
1912.] THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 367
Not red deluges of lightnings,
Forged and falling from heaven's furnace,
but flames of water
* * * *
First began a dew as soft
As those tears the golden sunrise
Kisseth from Aurora's lip's ;
then the rains, from gentle showers, swell to torrents, till the
rivulets "roused to madness .... rose to rushing rivers then
swelled to seas of seas." The air becomes a prison dark and murky,
the great hills shake and rock, the restraining bridle of the sands
are loosened, and the " white horse of the sea .... rushes upon the
prostrate shore." The confusion of bird, beast, and fish out of
their separate elements, the final collapse of the world, and ex-
tinction of life, save what " floated free " in " that first saving
ship " the Ark is pictured with consummate skill. The waters
subside, the sea withdraws, and
The pale earth, now moist and musty,
With its tangled, matted hair,
Full of wrinkles, cracked and crumpled,
Lifting up its mournful face,
salutes
O'er the Ark, the bow of peace,
Shining golden, green and ruddy.
Then there is the vain attempt of the Tower of Babel, " a huge
hindrance to the winds, the moon's plaything and obstructer." and
its fall, storm-stricken, with confusion of tongues.
Belshazzar, with full knowledge of the power of the Creator,
nevertheless proceeds from one excess to another, until the final
catastrophe of the banquet scene, when he dares sacrilegiously to
use the sacred vessels. At this point, the poet, with marvelous
art, introduces the motif of the auto the Blessed Sacrament of
the Altar. All is feasting and jollity, life at high carnival, all is
pomp and magnificence, when Death enters and offers to the King :
This rich vessel of the altar,
Holding life in it, it is certain,
Since the soul, athirst for life,
Finds in it its sure refreshment.
368 THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT [June,
But it also contains death, since its essence " is of life and
death commingled, and its liquor is the blended heavenly nectar
and the hemlock, bane and antidote together."
The King drinks to the glories of the Empire and to Moloch,
god of the Assyrians, while Thought, once again clad in the garb
of motley, declares : " that thirty thousand gods to-day seem too
few " to preside over such revels. The sacrilege consummated,
" a gloomy horror settles o'er the sky that hides the stars," and
Death exults in " darkest night " by him engendered ! Crashes
of thunder are heard; the affrighted King inquires what " tumultous
voice of terror. . . .doth call the clouds to arm on the battle-field of
Heaven?"
Suspended mid-air, hanging by a hair, an image of terror
takes the form of a hand, and the doomed monarch remembers
the prophet's threat, the punishment to be inflicted by the hand of
God. He believes it to belong to " some monstrous form unseen,"
and marvels if ever until now " arteries have been seen in lightning."
His cheek pales, his hair stands on end, his heart throbs, and his
breath chokes his parched throat, as he watches the hand form
upon the wall, in rapid strokes, a babel of letters he cannot under-
stand. Neither Vanity nor Idolatry can decipher the inscription,
the one becomes a statue of ice, the other a burning mountain; none,
in fact, save Daniel, who foretells the King's approaching end, and
thus alludes to the Sacrament of the altar :
This hath God
Done to thee, because perversely
Thou, with scorn and ribald jest,
Hast profaned the sacred vessels.
For no mortal should misuse
These pure vessels of the Temple,
Which, until the law of grace
Reigns on earth, foreshow a blessed
Sacrament, when the written law
Time's tired hand shall blot for ever,
If these vessels' profanation
Is a crime of such immenseness,
Hear the cause, ye mortals hear it !
For in them, life, death, are present
'Tis that he who receives in sin,
Desecrates God's holy vessel.
igi2.] THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 369
Tortured by Thought, the King turns vainly to Idolatry, who is
helpless in the presence of the Mystery predestined; to Vanity,
now " humbled through Heaven's mercy." Death seizes him in a
terrific embrace, and stabs him with his sword. The struggling King
inquires : " This is death then ; was the venom not sufficient that I
drank of ? " Death replies that the sacrilege was the death of
the soul, and his swift stroke the death of the body.
As Belshazzar disappears from the scene, he. realizes the mean-
ing of the words of doom: " Man6, Thecel, Phares," for:
. . . .the one Supreme God threatens;
He who dares profane God's cup,
Him He striketh down forever.
Death re-entering, renders tribute to the Sacrament prefigured
by the fleece of Gideon, the manna of the desert, the honey-comb in
the lion's mouth, the unblemished lamb, and the sacred bread of
Proposition; testifying that in these symbols is shown the "full
foreshadowing presence. . . .of the stupendous Miracle of God; His
greatest sacrament in type presented."
" The Divine Philothea," written in his eighty-first year, when
Don Pedro was preparing to lay down his pen forever, " takes
indisputably among the autos of Calderon an especial place of
honor, and few surpass it for depth of thought, as well as splendor
and boldness of composition."*
It is profoundly metaphysical, yet glowing with the richness
of a marvelous imagination both poetical and spiritual. It touches
with master hand the problems of earthly existence, and the long
struggle in which the soul of man is engaged; it portrays the
futility of poor human effort, against its all-powerful enemies,
without the assistance of the heavenly Bridegroom. The abstract
personages, each with one or more symbolic meanings, appear in the
habiliments of human life, and invested with strong human interest.
Philothea, beloved of God, is the bride of the Prince of Light,
but is destined to remain for a term in a castle of clay the body.
Towards this frail fortress the demon directs his course, arrayed as
a soldier. He surveys the scenes which, as Prince of this World,
he claims for his own.
He issues a trumpet call, summoning the World, his " most
MacCarthy, Introduction to his translation of " The Divine Philothea."
VOL. XCV. 24.
370 THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT [June,
familiar follower," and Voluptuousness, his " truest, firmest friend,"
for he seeks to gain Philothea, the soul in a state of grace,
Like some rich and radiant jewel
Flashing in its opulence.
He describes to his allies the citadel to be attacked, the earth-
works made of clay. In its defence Intelligence presides over the
council ; the Heart commands as general ; Sight, within the topmost
turret, sets two sentinels ; Hearing supplies two more, ever on
the alert; while Smell "doth round about project. . . .sweet perfumes
of saving odor." These " three invisible senses " are directed by
Faith, their captain. At the Gate of Succour watcheth Taste, the
warden and his attendant :
Touch, who needful prevent sends,
Going and coming with his men
Now in files of five divided,
Now combined in groups of ten.
Having instructed his allies how they are to proceed, the Demon
goes alone to reconnoitre; Sight and Hearing notify Philothea of
his presence. She comes forth to parley with the stranger, who
announces himself as a knight-errant come to rescue her from
captivity. He betrays himself, however, by his reference to " the
poor scanty nourishment " her bridegroom has furnished for her.
Philothea indignantly inquires how " with sacrilegious lip " he has
dared assail the " dew of milk and honey blent, the fleece of the
whitest skin, the Bread of Angels, the soul's best nutriment." The
Demon bids her appeal to the senses for evidence concerning
that food, but they, blessed by grace and informed by Faith, Hope,
and Charity, " believe with every sense." War is then declared by
the Demon ; Philothea meets his threats with confidence in her means
of defence, but he pronounces them vain :
For though thou mightest thee defend
'Gainst the outward force of arms,
Thou, assuredly, must bend
To the siege's strict blockade,
When I intercept that bread
1912.] THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 371
Which was thy chief nourishment.
Hunger, thirst those swords of lead
Then will, with their sullen strokes,
Leave thee spiritually dead.
Philothea then summons her hosts, and tells them that prayer
to " the immense mercy of her loving Spouse " must be their sole
defence. She recites the various instances in Scripture where the
weak triumph over the strong by divine aid, and all chant the
refrain : " Come! Lord, Come! "
The Prince of Light is then seen upon a throne, towards which
ascend the strains of music, and the supplications of the belea-
gured. He does not, however, immediately send succor because :
It is good for thee
To reach the crown by thine own energy.
For in the battle of eternal thought,
Nor king nor clown
Can win the crown
Who has not long legitimately fought.
The World enlists Atheism, Paganism, Judaism, and Heresy in
the Demon's army, and Voluptuousness seduces Understanding to
his service. Heresy avails himself of this opportune meeting to
persuade Understanding to his way of thinking, but Understanding
dallies with him and parries the attempt :
For so great and grand a theme
This nor place nor time presenteth;
Let us for the present go
On the task that we've accepted,
* * * *
Time itself may solve the question
By the assault or the encounter.
Meanwhile Philothea's sentinels, Faith, Hope, and Charity, re-
ceive from her as name, sign and countersign, " God, one and three,"
the " Incarnate Word " and " Bread and Jl'ine:"
Lest some enemy pretend
To pass by us as a friend.
372 THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT [June,
Atheism first seeks to penetrate their line; when challenged
he gives the name of :
Antitheos,
Like a blow,
On the face of Faith
and then, coward that he is, flies before her " zeal's red fire."
Understanding, Paganism, Judaism, and Heresy make a combined
attempt ; Paganism gives as name : " one all men know of .... One
God of God's," but betrays his polytheism, and is put to flight by
Faith ; Judaism is more successful. He passes by Faith in the name
of " the God of Battles," in Whom, since He said: " Let us make
man like unto Ourselves," there may be " plurality of persons."
He fails before Hope, however, because he will not believe in the
" Master " unless He come " in majesty and power." Heresy is
unmasked by Charity, for he
.... never will believe
That the substance can be altered,
Bread and wine to flesh and blood.
When Voluptuousness sets fire to " that defenceless quarter "
of the human fort which the starved Senses inhabit, the Senses
desert :
Let's go,
And outside this leaguered castle
Save our lives,
In its defence,
Better die beneath our banner,
reply the Virtues, who surround Philothea in this moment of the
Demon's triumph.
The Prince of Light now comes upon the scene. His ship drops
anchor, but, alone and disguised as a peasant, He comes to the land :
The thankless
Land, alas ! that knows not Me
(By the World and Devil darkened)
Through My human nature's veil,
Through its coarse, corporeal garment,
I the succour must supply.
1912.] THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 373
In Philothea's extremity He must act, but still secretly so as not
to tarnish the gift of love ;
For to grant a thing and tell it,
Is as if it were not granted.
He engages the Demon in battle; Charity disarms Paganism;
Hope, Judaism; Faith, Heresy, and Voluptuousness is overcome
by Purity. Her unknown savior bids Philothea recall her Senses and
.... command them
That they carry from this Ship
All the stores, which, at My charges,
Will be given them by the Pilot,
To whose care the ship I've handed:
Full of wheat they'll find the vessel,
Which a merchant from the farthest
Realm hath brought, the bread of which
Holds concealed the highest, grandest,
Greatest Mystery of Love:
Of a Life that ever-lasteth,
'Tis a soul-sustaining Bread;
Then no longer Bread (O marvel !)
But My very Flesh and Blood!
In scenes full of deep and subtle meaning, Heresy discusses
with Understanding about his Living Bread, then makes a last
appeal to the Senses, and flies from Faith, who engages Under-
standing in a duel.
The Prince of Light is borne in, victor, yet faint and wounded ;
His outstretched hands and feet pierced; His wounded side left
bloody by the sharp-pointed, iron arrows from the Jew's battalion.
One by one the former allies of the Demon bend before Him,
and a little child, speaking in Christ's name, points out how Under-
standing is humbled by Faith; Paganism, strong and subtle, con-
quered, and even the haughty, sullen soul of the Prince of Dark-
ness compelled to worship the Life-giving Mystery. All sing in
chorus :
Sacrament supreme, commanding,
Thee the World, at length revering,
Worships, now no proof demanding,
Save the last, that Faith, through Hearing,
Has subdued the Understanding.
374 THE POET OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT [June,
So ends Calderon's last great work.
The royal favor, which had followed the poet into the eccle-
siastical state, named him Canon of the Cathedral of Toledo. The
ancient Cathedral forms an appropriate setting to the virile, pic-
turesque, romantic figure of Don Pedro, with its Gothic simplicity,
its austerity, its poetry and intense piety. Here had sat enthroned
the powerful, indomitable Alfonso de Castillo, the wise and munif-
icent patron of learning; Mendoza and, greater than either, Fran-
cisco Ximenes, who hid, 'neath the robe of Cardinal Prime Minister,
the life of a humble, mortified Franciscan friar. Here, too, the
chivalric qualities of Don Pedro, brought with him to the ecclesias-
tical state, found a fitting niche; and, fittingly, death found him
still engaged in knightly service.
" In 1681, on the twenty-seventh day of May, the feast of Pen-
tecost, when all Spain was ringing with the performance of the
autos, occupied almost to the last moment of his life, in the com-
position of one more,"* Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca passed
to his reward. With the second auto for the Corpus but half fin-
ished, he laid down forever, at the age of eighty-one, that powerful
pen which had so faithfully served the cause of religion, and so
ardently promoted devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.
"Tickner, History of Spanish Literature.
I HAVE LOVED THY LAW.
BY F. C. DEVAS, S.J.
LORD, I have loved Thy Law.
This claim I make
To love and mercy: all else I forsake,
Knowing the hollowness of my best deeds.
For ah ! my heart still bleeds,
As when mine eyes,
With reverential awe,
First saw
Thy lightning flash of love break through the cloudy skies.
The flesh quails as the thunder booms above,
Precursor and companion to that love.
Yet was the light once seen
Cleaving the darkness : and yet lives the hope
That what has been,
Again shall be ;
And this same light, no longer strange and dim,
No longer but a type, a trope,
Mine eyes shall see,
And worship with the wondering seraphim.
Ah God ! the pain !
The emptiness of heart
No joy may ease !
The weariness of waiting : the disdain
For all less than the fullness that Thou art
Thou Crown of Mysteries
Thou Want, no words express
Boundless Completion of all consciousness!
That I may somehow hold Thee in my hands,
Unto Thy dear commands
I cleave : in them find rest
That have Thy Will expressed.
Wherefore I love Thy Law, and cling
To this one certain, one determined thing:
This measure I may follow line by line :
This rule divine,
That through the maze of night,
Shall guide my erring feet to love and life and light.
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG.
BY JOSEPH FRANCIS WICKHAM.
HEN Mr. Barry gave to the world that delectable
character, Peter Pan, we fear that some of us failed
to thank him in just measure. But the tale did not
suffer, for every sweet song will make some heart
throb faster, and every sweet story will find a wel-
come and a response from some captivated listener. There is some-
thing peculiarly winsome and fascinating about the boy who re-
fused to grow up. He symbolizes a feeling that most of us ex-
perience, an emotion which makes us cling to all that youth has felt
and seen and yearned for, and a dislike to accept the world as a
matter-of-fact, working-day place. For when the romantic in us
dies, there is dead one of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and,
saddest of all, there is no satisfying substitute for this wistful de-
siring for the things just beyond our vision. But some blest mortals
there are who live their youth always ; who wear it like the mantle
of Siegfried ; who fail to put away childish things when childhood
is over, and who live in hope that St. Paul will forgive them. For
the tender grace of a day that is not dead, while one asks it to live,
is too precious to lose in the lane one travels to manhood's and
womanhood's estate. So let us thank the gentle Scotchman again.
There are many ways in which the youthful spirit may manifest
itself. We may help some worried little miss to find a name for
her new doll ; we may aid the blue-eyed boy in teaching Carlo some
novel feats of agility. Or, what is best and most welcome of all,
we may spin them a tale of far-off, distant things in as many varia-
tions and keys as the Walrus never dreamed possible. Or, if a
best may have a better, we may bring them face to face with the
books for youth, choice volumes within whose pages will be found
portraits that will never fade from memory; that will never lose
the lustre of their first colors.
Nowadays, in this era of free libraries and children's reading-
rooms, when every girl knows her Cinderella and every boy his
Achilles, they feel a most intimate acquaintance with the heroines
and champions of a day that is gone. Let us pause at the door
some day and look in upon them as they thumb the much-read
1912.] WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 377
tomes, unconscious of all save the little girl that must eat her supper
alone, or the stout-hearted youngster that leads " the kids " to
victory on the man's size diamond. Bluebeard no longer commits
his murders for a select and initiated group of admirers; Path-
finder fires his trusty rifle in the open; both have become less ex-
clusive, and stalk beneath the free gaze of the multitude. As we
look upon the still group of young people, quite lost in a world
nearer to their heart's desire, we wonder if children were always
so, ever eager for those choice bits of horror and those delicious
incentives to mirth and laughter.
We may rest assured that to please a child by telling it a story
is no new art. No novel idea is it to wake the juvenile heart into
living ecstasy with the tale of a wondrous fairy who distributes her
favors in bountiful measure, or to thrill the youthful breast with
the glories of war and battles of long ago. Back in the dawn of
history we can picture the Assyrian mother whiling the time for her
little one with stories of his father's deeds with shield and spear;
or the proud Roman matron recounting her lord's feats of prowess
in an African campaign. It may be a Saxon dame chanting the
Song of Roland to a wide-eyed youth beside her; perhaps it is
a gentle God-fearing woman of New England who stills her baby
with tales of Indian massacre. Wherever the world has been blest
with the wondering soul of a child, there the juvenile story has
blossomed and flowered. Only the writing of it is of modern times,
all else is as ancient as the stars.
Juvenile literature, or rather juvenile fiction, has had its im-
mense growth since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Writers finally reached the conviction that the boy and the maid
occupied a particular province which needed attention, and so set
themselves to work in the fulfillment of their discovery. Not only
were stories written in which youth might wonder at the deeds of its
elders, but also tales in which it saw itself mirrored and bodied forth
in a most compelling way. Centuries before had children figured as
important characters in works of literature. We remember the
children of Medea and their pitiable fate in the Euripedean tragedy.
Beatrice, in her " modest and becoming crimson," had had myriad
lovers besides the great Italian. The innocence of the youthful
Arthur shines through the sombre gloom of a Shakespearean King
John. From Olympus to the valley is no mean leap; but the truth
is that we must wait for a nineteenth century to offer us an army
of juvenile heroes or juvenile heroines. And while we fondly
378 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG [June,
breathe the names of Tiny Tim, and Little Nell, and Father Finn's
boys, and the little women of Louisa Alcott, let us go back in spirit
to the days when merrie England was younger, and ask them what
they contributed to the storehouse of children's reading.
When one seeks the foundations of juvenile literature in
England, one's literary gropings must reach backward beyond an
age that claimed a Caxton or a Wynkin de Worde. For the be-
ginnings of children's stories are not to be found in the first printed
books for the young, nor, indeed, upon the manuscripts over which
the monks lovingly labored in the great monasteries of Britain.
The first teacher of the Celtic child was probably the Druid, and
under such tutorship it was that the little scholar heard words that
made his eyes sparkle, and his heart surge, for the love of his gods
and the rigor of battle.
But the Druid had his day, and with his passing we first meet
the Christian priest in Britain. The natives were only too familiar
with scenes of human sacrifice to appease the cravings of a shadowy
deity, but never yet had they heard the news of the self-immolation
of the God-man of Nazareth. Everyone knows the story of the
early monks in Britain. How they preached the Gospel and es-
tablished churches and schools, how they exemplified their belief
that to labor is to pray, it were idle to rehearse here. But many a
youth at Jarrow must have blessed the pen of the gentle Vener-
able Bede, and many a soul must have grown more beautiful under
his kindly guidance. During the centuries that followed him it
fell to the Saxon and Norman monks to devise books of instruction
for the youth of the land.
The invention of printing revolutionized the whole system
of education. Now the manuscripts, of necessity comparatively few,
could be multiplied on the rude presses, and the means of acquiring
knowledge were made correspondingly easy.
It may be of more than passing interest to glance within the
pages of the early books of instruction and treatises on manners
and morals designed for children. These did not appear in England
much before the fifteenth century, though on the continent they
had come into vogue at a much earlier period. One of the more
notable of these books is Stans Puer ad Mensam, one manuscript
of which, sometimes attributed to John Lydgate, dates from about
the year 1460, though the earliest known version is of a period
thirty years before. To read it now after a lapse of nearly five
centuries may provoke a smile at the naivete of the instruction,
1912.] WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 379
but the need of such teaching quite obviously has not disappeared.
The opening stanza bids
" My dere childe, first thyself enable
With all thin herte to vertuous disciplyne
Afor thi soveragne standing at the table
Dispose thi youth after my doctryne
To all norture thi corage to enclyne.
First when thu spekist be not rekles,
Kepe feete and fingeres and handes still in pese."
This book, as may be inferred from the lines quoted, was in-
tended for boys of royal blood, and is a complete treatise on table
manners. The youthful pages are advised to
" Sitte in that place thou art assigned to,
Please not to hye in no maner wise,"
reminding us not faintly of the Scriptural injunction. After re-
ceiving a catalogue of all the points thought necessary for the
proper bringing up of a child, the guardian is advised that in case
of correction of faults
" Who sparithe the yerde all vertu set aside."
The " envoye " is interesting :
" Go, litel buk, bareyne of eloquence,
Pray yonge children that the shall see or Reede,
Thoughe thow be compendious of sentence
Of thi clauses for to taken heede,
Which to al vertu shall theyr yowthe leede.
Of the writyng, thoughe ther be no date,
If ought be mysse, word, sillable or dede,
Put al the defaute upon lohne Lydegate."
The Babees' Book, dating from about 1475, is of similar char-
acter, and is a translation from the Latin. The final stanza runs in
this wise :
" And swete children, for whos love now I write,
I you beseche withe verrey lovande herte
To know this book that yee sette your delyte :
And myhtefulle god, that suffered peynes smerte,
In curtesye he make you so experte,
That thurhe your nurture and your governaunce
In lastynge blysse yee mowe yourself awaunce."
380 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG [June,
These, then, were the beginnings of printed works of literature
for children. At a little later date, not much earlier than 1550,
came the horn-book. It consisted of a printed sheet pasted on wood,
and covered with thin transparent horn. Upon the sheet were the
letters of the alphabet, a table of syllables, the Lord's Prayer, and
sometimes additional prayers. Related to the horn-books are the
little ABC books, printed in the reign of Henry VIII. They con-
tained the alphabet, the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Creed,
the Ten Commandments, and the Responses for Serving at Mass.
After the Protestant revolt the books were modified to suit the
tenets of the Anglican church, and later the Puritans added a
chapter reflecting their religious views.
Education, in the meantime, had been growing and extending,
and text-books on all subjects were in active circulation. It seems
scarcely the place here to digress on the renewed interest in book
lore during the Renascence. Everybody remembers the nervous
activity in the keen search for fresh intellectual endeavor, the quick-
ened desire for achievement in every field of energy, and the brilliant
array of talent that labored and spent itself in the writing of books.
And not alone the mature, but the youthful spent many a night in
study beneath the fitful candle gleam in hectic eagerness for knowl-
edge. Many a Lady Jane Grey there was who sacrificed the pleas-
ures of Diana for the charms of Plato.
Up to this time, with probably few exceptions, books for
children were largely of the nature of guide-books or text-books.
It is with the coming of the seventeenth century that we find a
more conscious effort, perhaps, to appeal to the younger folk. A
very considerable portion of the new work was didactic in intent,
and tinged, as it not infrequently was, with the Puritanic theology
of the times, it was not calculated to render its readers too gleeful
with the joy of living. It was the century of Bunyan, and while he
wrote one book especially for children, it is his masterpiece that is
now oftenest read by them.
While Bunyan was weaving metaphors behind prison bars, in
the outside world the spelling book was being written, of varying
degrees of difficulty and interest. And somewhat later the chap-
books, of sixteenth century origin, with their bits of history, stories
and riddles, were becoming very popular. Through their infinite
variety, the children became astir with the glory that was Rome's
and the courage of mediaeval France.
From this time onward children's literature enjoyed a rapid
1912.] WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 381
growth. Its infantile days were behind, and now of its own vigor
and life it waxed strong. About 1730 the Mother Goose tales were
translated from the French, and the immortal stories of Cinderella
and Bluebeard began their mission of delight. John Newberry
became a tireless worker in the field of juvenile literature, and
published volume after volume of entertaining and instructive
books for the little folk of his land. And so through the eighteenth
century men and women interested themselves in preparing litera-
ture for the young. The names of Maria Edgeworth, Thomas Day,
Anna Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More, only symbolize the
mighty movement that was carried along with the enthusiasm of
conscious endeavor. These are only a few of the multitude who
wrote copiously, presenting entertainment of ethical import.
In the field of poetry, composed especially for children, Dr.
Isaac Watts was one of the first of the eighteenth century school.
His Divine Songs, Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of
Children, are written, as the title implies, in language which does
not overreach the youthful understanding. In this work portions
of the Scriptures are paraphrased, and a number of very sweet
verses may be found within its pages. In 1803 appeared Original
Poems for Infant Minds, verse mainly of didactic purpose, written
by Ann Taylor and her sister, Jane Taylor. The poems were soon
read in America, and were translated into Dutch, German, and
Russian. Graceful as several of them are, the poems of the Taylor
sisters are less charming than the Songs of Innocence of William
Blake. In Blake's poems, " which every child may enjoy to hear,"
we listen to the prelude to the fuller and perhaps sweeter songs
of a later day.
When juvenile literature stepped over the boundary line and
into the nineteenth century, it found a princely patron to welcome its
coming. No one who really loves literature can stifle an affection
for Charles Lamb. We sometimes like to remember him as he
trudges homeward with a precious tome from the second-hand shop
under his arm ; we recall him in the act of unwinding himself from
the high stool at the India Company's ; but can we ever forget our
earliest acquaintance with him probably when we glimpsed first
within the magic pages of Tales from Shakespeare? What dreams
of bliss, how we loved Juliet as Romeo never did, and felt for
Miranda, and were afraid of that Shakespearean bear ! It was not
until we were older that we learned that his unfortunate sister
Mary deserved the brighter niche in the children's hall of fame,
382 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG . [June,
for she it was who accomplished the larger share of their juvenile
writings. Many a child, young and old, has enjoyed The Adven-
tures of Ulysses, and Beauty and the Beast, and the Poems, and
has blessed the Lambs for their bountiful presence.
But the Lambs were only the forerunners of the nineteenth
century movement. How many names must we needs catalogue
if this were a history of children's literature names of men and
women who toiled with loving hearts to brighten the golden hours of
childhood. And they loved their work, too, if we may judge from
the joy and gaiety that bubble from their pages. And to aid the
tireless pens of the Englishmen from cross the waters came the
wondrous tales of the Grimms and of Andersen, and the volumi-
nous writings of Canon von Schmidt.
Over the wider seas of the Atlantic the youth were reading
books imported from England, or works written in imitation of
them. To be sure they had their New England Primer as early as
1691, and through its pages, perhaps, the Puritan boys and girls
caught their first glance at the fairy world of literature. Chap-
books, Mother Goose melodies, books of instruction and devotion,
all served the pioneers well, but no distinctive American writer pro-
ducing children's books of distinctly American traits appeared for
a full century of years after the Primer. And with good reason
did the colonists look less lovingly on their quilled pens than their
descendants have done. The stern souls were too busy in the ad-
ministration of the public affairs to spare time to weave tales for
their children. No written page was required to revive the memory
of perilous voyages from England or Holland, or to recall the
Indian onslaughts in the starlit hours of a winter night. And of
those adventures they could relate tales a-plenty. The arts of
peace they could not practice when they were living beneath the
shadows of war. The spirit of independence, of resisting against
the tyranny of an impolitic prince, was growing apace, to culminate
finally in the Revolution. With the laurels of their success still
fresh, the citizens of the new-born American republic were con-
fronted with the War of 1812. It was, indeed, a time that tried
men's souls, and left them little time for the luxuries of peace.
But peace did come, and with it came the mighty expansion of the
United States. The pioneer's axe rang as it blazed the way through
the forests of Kentucky and Tennessee; the creaking wains trailed
in long caravans across the rolling plains; the Argonauts of '49
steered their barks around the Horn to the gold fields of California.
i9i 2.] WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 383
The smoke of battle had cleared away, and, as the course of empire
swept westward, in its wake were born hundreds of tales of the
wars; of Indian conflicts; of border life; of the peril of the sea;
of the conquest of the gold-veined hills ; of all the trials and tribu-
lations which brave men and heroic women endured in the struggle
for the winning of the west. An Irving had written the classic story
of Rip Van Winkle, and had so steeped his tale of Sleepy Hollow
in the warmth and joyous beauty of Dutch life that one may never
fail to breathe the aroma of a dead yesterday that arises from the
old legend. A Cooper had told the tale of the sea, and had sung
the epic of the once Last Frontier. Poe had first written the
short-story with any attempt at unified form. With the name of
Bret Harte we long conjured as a symbol for the glamor and ir-
resistible fascination of the golden west. These men wrote not
for children, but many a youth and many a maid have drunk in-
spiration and patriotism and wisdom from the wells of their writing.
These and many more beside labored in America ; quite natur-
ally they were vastly outnumbered by their English contemporaries.
Though the British novelists very obviously did not write for child
readers, the younger folk early learned to like some of their works.
If Scott had but known how boys and girls of future ages would
thank him for Rob Roy and the Disinherited Knight, his bank-
ruptcy would have rested less heavily on his shoulders; for in-
accurate and misguided as he sometimes was in history, Scott cast
the spell of romance over the freshness and beauty of a bygone day
as it had never been achieved before him. And Dickens what
a debt we owe him for the little forms that flit back and forth across
his pages; the little faces that wistfully ask our sympathy. What
an un-Christian delight we once took in Oliver's assault on Noah
Claypole, and how glad we were that Davy met Little Emily ! Pick
up Thackeray again and revive the memories of the day you first
sat with Harry Esmond in the big library, or the afternoon you
first fell captive to the glances of one, Ethel Newcombe. Can you
not imagine yourself, now, climbing, toiling patiently up that tur-
bulent stream near the Doone Valley, an unseen companion of the
little John Ridd? And Lorna above, your unsuspected guerdon?
Will one ever forget Long John Silver as he manfully tunes his
" sixteen men on the dead man's chest," or the interest one took
in the murder of the Red Fox? The Samoan tale-bearer deserves
well at the hands of our younger people, and the well-thumbed
volumes on the shelves of the public libraries attest the fact that the
384 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG [June,
debt is being paid in full. But an unfeeling heart it would be to
ask all of our good friends to file past us in never-ending procession.
Let us take leave of them all, not forgetting to allow our affections
to twine most lovingly about the little form of Alice as she slips
back into Wonderland. She was, indeed, a creation to win the
heart of a child. Each of us can almost recall the precise hour
we first accompanied her in fancy to the Mad Tea-party, or breath-
lessly awaited the long, sad tale of the Mouse.
All this was ten, twenty years ago perhaps thrice that period.
And as life gleamed for us in that vale of yesterday, so it now
offers its rainbow lights to those who do not yet look back with
lingering eyes over the receding path, who still read with hearts
full of the joy that is only given to childhood. But they should
remember who pray Time to give them back the years he has
garnered, to let them once more wear the rose of youth, that they
can win much of their souls' desiring if they but at times re-read
the tales they loved in boyhood and girlhood ; if, too, they but lend a
helping hand to the efforts of their younger friends in sailing the
Santa Maria on the uncertain seas of book lore. Let us remember
who offer such assistance that we need not ever and always hark
back to Scott and Lamb, but have at our bidding hundreds of de-
lightful little works which have seen a later birth. This little
venture in friendship will make our juvenile acquaintances love us,
and will make us love and understand them the more. It will
keep our hearts youthful ; and a heart that is young is a beautiful
thing in the eyes of heaven and earth.
JORGENSEN'S ST. FRANCIS.*
BY PASCHAL ROBINSON, O.F.M.
HOSE who have followed the trend of historical study
and research during the last three decades need not
be told that it has been characterized by a truly
remarkable upgrowth of interest in the life and work
of St. Francis of Assisi. This interest, for the most
part a literary and an academic one, may be said, roughly speak-
ing, to date from 1882. The celebrations in that year, commemora-
tive of the seventh centenary of the Saint's birth, appear to have
occasioned, if they did not actually inspire, the publication of several
important studies by men like Tocco, Bonghi, Thode, Miiller, and
Gebhart,f which appeared soon afterwards, and which deal
either directly or indirectly with the wonderful Umbrian Poverello.
But the Vie de S. Frangois, by Paul Sabatier, issued in 1894, gave
a far greater impetus to the study of St. Francis. However much
the purely biographical portion of this work may be marred by
the author's entire lack of sympathy with the religious standpoint
of St. Francis, and with the supernatural order as a whole, that
part of the book which treats of the sources of early Franciscan
history can never be overlooked by any future writers on this sub-
ject, be their opinions what they may, for it has served to open up
a new era in this particular field of study.
Witness the loving, anxious care with which seasoned scholars,
irrespective of creed or nationality, have ever since been intent upon
seeking out, gathering apart and treasuring up every authentic de-
tail, however trifling, which has to do with the life-story of St.
*Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography. By Johannes Jorgensen. Translated
from the Danish with the author's sanction, by T. O'Conor Sloane, Ph.D. Illustrated.
Pp. ix.-4io. Longmans, Green & Co.: New York, 1912.
tC7. Felice Tocco : L'Eresia nel Media Evo (Florence, 1884); Ruggero Bonghi:
Francesco d'Assisi; Studio (Citta di Castello), (1884); Heinrich Thode: Frans
von Assisi and die Anfdnge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien (Berlin, 1885) ;'
Karl Miiller: Die Anfdnge des Minoritcnordens und der Bussbruderschaften (Frei-
burg, 1885) ; Emile Gebhart : L'ltalie Mystique; histoire de la Renaissance religieuse
an Moyen Age (Paris, 1890). Cf. also Ernest Renan : Nonvelles tudes d'Histoire
Rcligieuse (Paris, 1884), pp. 323-351.
VOL. XCV. 25.
386 JORGENSEN'S ST. FRANCIS [June,
Francis. With a view to furthering this work of Franciscan re-
search, special societies have been organized in different countries,
among them being the Societa Internazionale di Studi Francescani
in Assisi, the British Society of Franciscan Studies, and the new
Societe Franciscaine d'Histoire et d'Archeologie. Series of learned
works have also been established, like the Analecta Franciscana, and
periodicals, such as the Miscellanea Francescana, the Etudes Fran-
ciscaines, and the Archivitm Franciscamtm Historicum, have been
founded for the publication of Franciscan documents exclusively.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the large literature which has
grown up round about the sources of the history of St. Francis*
has been the predominance of what might be called purely docu-
mentary questions the enumeration of codices and description of
manuscripts.f As for the books, pamphlets, and magazine articles
on or about St. Francis written during the past twenty years, and
which do not belong to the documented order, who can count them ?
And this two-fold current of Franciscan literature scientific and
popular still flows on in an ever-widening stream.J
Although this momentous movement of Franciscan study did
not indeed originate with M. Sabatier, yet he it is most assuredly
who has given it form and volume. Had the French critic not
written his Vie de S. Francois, and the other volumes with which he
has followed it up in the Collection d'tudes and in the Opuscules
de Critique Historique, it is safe to say that a large per cent of
what has been written of late years about St. Francis and the Fran-
ciscans would never have seen the light. However, be this as it may,
it is too early as yet to forecast the results likely to accrue in the long
run from the present movement. But, I suppose, anyone whose
opinion is worth noticing, will grant that up to date nothing that
is essentially new concerning St. Francis has been added to what
was known all along to the few patient workers whose lives were
largely devoted to spelling out crabbed mediaeval MSS., and poring
*For an admirable synopsis of the literature in question, see The Sources of
the History of St. Francis of Assisi, by Prof. A. G. Little, in English Historical
Review for October, 1902, pp. 643-677. See also Les Sources de 1'Histoire de Saint
Francois d'Assise, by Leon de Kerval, in Bullcttino Critico di Cose Francescane
(Florence, 1905), three articles; Rassegna Francescana, by Prof. Umberte Cosmo, in
Giornale Star, della letterat. ital. xxiv. (1902), pp. 142 fl. ; Apfunti Bibliografici di
Studi Francescani, by Luigi Suttina [Erlangen, 1904], 8vo. pp. 28.
tOn this head see Fierens, La Question Franciscaine (Louvain, 1909), pp. 3-4.
tAn attempt to classify the principal works in this field has been made by the
present writer in A Short Introduction to Franciscan Literature. (New York:
Tennant & Ward, 1907.)
1912.] JORGENSEN'S ST. FRAXCIS 387
over half-forgotten volumes of Franciscan lore before that study
became the vogue in very different quarters.
It must not be supposed, then, that there has been any recent
rehabilitation of the personality of St. Francis by means of hitherto
unpublished documents. Nothing of the kind. On the other hand,
it would be very shortsighted, to say the least, to belittle in any sort
the energetic research work and literary activity of late years in
this domain. For one thing, it has resulted not only in the recovery
of several important early texts bearing on Franciscan origins, and
in the careful re-editing and translation of all or nearly all the con-
temporary authorities upon the subject, but it has also called forth
many really fine critical studies by different scholars of note.
All this is surely a distinct asset, inasmuch as the new theories
advanced, not less than the lost MSS. refound and the old works
republished, offer so much fresh data for a more complete and more
accurate history of the life and work of St. Francis. That seems
to be what is most needed. For it is, I trust, no disparagement to
the Saint's many biographers to say, however regretfully, what we
cannot help saying, namely, that the finally acceptable life of the
real St. Francis, " in his habit as he lived," has not yet been written
at least in English nor, as far as I am aware, in any other language.
In default of such a work there is, perhaps, no volume within reach
of the general reader that gives as satisfactory an account of the
life and work of the Poor Man of Assisi as the one under review.
Its author, Johannes Jorgensen, now in his forty-sixth year,
is doubtless the most remarkable, as he is undoubtedly the most
prolific, of contemporary Danish poets. The story of his conver-
sion to Catholicism, which took place in 1895, is full of beauty and
of interest, but we may not dwell upon it here. It is enough to
note in passing that Jorgensen was led like Gorres and others
before him through St. Francis to God and His Holy Church.*
A great part of his subsequent literary work has had to do with
things Franciscan. Following upon his conversion, Jorgensen wrote
his Book of Travel,^ the second part of which is entitled An Um-
brian Chronicle.* Soon afterwards he translated the ever-fra-
*For the story of his conversion, see Jorgensen el Saint Fran(ois, by Pere
Hilarin Felder, O.M. Cap. in Etudes Franciscaines, xx.-n8 (Oct., 1908), pp. 337-387-
A translation of this article by Imelda Chambers, entitled A Convert of St. Francis,
appeared in the Ave Maria, vol. lxix.-23. Dec. 4, 1909, pp. 705-710.
iRcjsebogen, Copenhagen, 1895.
lEn Umbrisk Kroenikc, ibid., (and. edition, 1905).
388 JORGENSEN'S ST. FRANCIS [June,
grant Fioretti di S. Francesco into his native tongue.* This was
succeeded by The Book of the Pilgrim in Franciscan Italy,^ and
then came his biography of St. Francis. $ As a sort of continua-
tion of this last work, he subsequently issued a monograph dealing
with the lives of Blessed Angela of Foligno, St. Margaret of Cor-
tona, and Blessed Battista Varani. All these productions were re-
ceived with enthusiasm in the poet's own country, and they soon
became widely known in Germany through the translation of
Countess Henrietta Holstein-Ledreborg,|| herself a recent convert
to Catholicism. Jorgensen's Life of St. Francis, and our concern
here is with that work only, was soon done into French, Dutch,
Italian, and Spanish.]} At length it has come to us in an English
dress, in Dr. O'Conor Sloane's authorized translation from the
Danish, which is now before us, and which will serve to introduce
this the latest continental biography of the Poverello to a new, and
it is to be hoped, a large circle of readers.
For the benefit of those who are unacquainted with Jorgensen's
"St. Francis" in the original, it may be well to observe that its author
is fully equipped, so far as concerns the knowledge of his sources,
whether this be in the land of St. Francis itself or in printed form.
He does not indeed appear to have frequented the archives : there
is at least no evidence of any first-hand research among the MSS.
authorities or the discovery of any material not published already.
But other authorities in abundance history, legend, monuments,
and local tradition have been carefully consulted by Jorgensen in
preparation for his task. Several topics hardly touched on in most
*Fioretti, del er den hellige Frans af Assists Smaaeblomster, fra Grundtexten ved
Johannes Joergensen, med Forord af Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson (Copenhagen, 1902),
I vol. in I2mo. pp. xiv.-iQ4.
^Pilgrimsbogen (Copenhagen, 1903), i vol. in izmo., pp. 271. This work has
been translated into French and other continental languages. Portions of it have
been done into English under the title of Pilgrim Walks in Franciscan Italy.
(Sands & Co., London, 1908, i6mo, pp. 176.)
tDen hellige Frans af Assist: En Levnedskildring (Copenhagen and Christiana,
1907), i vol. in 8rao, pp. lxiv.-384.
1 det Hoje, ibid., 1908.
II These translations appeared as follows: Das Reisebuch, Mayence, 1898;
Das Pilgerbuch: Aus dem fransiskanischen Italien, Munich, 1905; Der hi. Frans
von Assist, ibid., 1908.
QSaint Franfois d'Assise sa vie et son oeuvre: traduits du Danois par Teodor
de Wyzewa (Paris, 1909), i6mo, pp. cii.-S32; De H. Franciscus von Assisie naar het
Deensch door P. Stanislaus Van de Velde, O.F.M. Tongeren, 1909, in 8mo, pp.
xcii.-392 ; Vita di S. Francesco d'Assisi trad, pel Anna M. Vallino, Palermo, 1910,
in 8mo, pp. viii.-633. I am not aware whether or not the Spanish version by
Ramon y Tenreiro, announced for publication in Madrid, has appeared.
1912.] JORGENSEN'S ST. FRANCIS 389
other lives of St. Francis are discussed by him in a most illuminating
way, and a few questions which are in controversy, such as the
historical origin of the Porziuncola Indulgence, are explained
with wonderful clearness (pp. 166-174). Better still, Jorgensen
never fails to see and admit that the shield may have two sides.
That he is in touch with all the modern developments in the wide
field of Franciscan literature and criticism is abundantly clear from
the seventy odd pages (pp. 339-410) in the present volume devoted
to the " Authorities for the Life of St. Francis of Assisi." First
in order among these are, of course, the Saint's own writings, among
which Jorgensen attaches most importance to the Religious Poems
(pp. 341-349). Then come the primitive biographies, properly
so-called, which he classifies (pp. 351-395) under four groups, as
follows: the Thomas of Celano group (about 1230) ; the Brother
Leo group (about 1245) I tne St. Bonaventure group (about 1265) ;
and the Speculum group (about 1320). These biographies are
supplemented by several contemporary chronicles and other later
works (pp. 395-409). Some of the questions dealt with by Jor-
gensen under this head are by no means lacking of interest, even
for those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies and technicalities
of early Franciscan documents. In this connection it may be noted
that in the original work, and in the continental translations of it,
I have seen this all-important chapter on the Sources put as an In-
troduction to the biography proper and that is where one would be
most likely to look for it. Nevertheless, Dr. O'Conor Sloane has
seen fit- in the present English translation to place this chapter at
the end of the volume in the form of an Appendix (pp. 339-410).
The advisability of this somewhat arbitrary departure from the
author's plan is open to question, and this for more than one reason.
Still, if the new arrangement is more satisfactory to the general
reader to whom all details as to dates and manuscripts and editions
and the like are caviare indeed then it ought, I suppose, to be
so to everybody else. This is by the way.
Jorgensen's biography of St. Francis bears not only the hall
mark of scholarship; it bears also the far rarer impress of original
thought. The very division of the Life into four books : i. " Fran-
cis, the Church Builder," 1182-1209 (pp. 3-57); 2. " Francis, the
Evangelist," 1209-1212 (pp. 145-262); 3. " God's Singer," 1212-
1223 (pp. 145-262) ; 4. " Francis, the Hermit," 1224-1226 (pp. 265-
335), is highly original. There is, indeed, a marked element of
390 JORGENSEN'S ST. FRANCIS [June,
originality throughout the volume, and it is nowhere more notice-
able, perhaps, than in the highly poetic account of the convalescence
of St. Francis (pp. 3-7), with which Jorgensen's biography begins.
To follow the story of St. Francis, as it is found in this biography,
would require more space than the Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
is at all likely to give me, so I must content myself here by giving
merely the principal dates in the Saint's life, according to Jorgensen :
St. Francis was born (Sept. 26?), 1182; he falls seriously ill, 1204;
he desires to join Walter de Brienne, 1205 ; after a pilgrimage to
Rome, he receives in the chapel of San Damiano the command to
repair that edifice, and he retires to a cave not far from it, 1207;
having in April, 1207, despoiled himself of everything before his
father, he becomes the " Herald of God," and founds the order of
Friars Minor, February 24, 1209; he writes a rule of life for his
first disciples assembled at Rivo Torto, 1210; he traverses Italy,
1211-1213, and meanwhile St. Clare joins the Order, March 18,
1212; he preaches at Montefeltro, May 8, 1213, and goes to Spain
during the winter of 1213-14; he attends the Council of the Lateran,
1215; he sets out for the Orient, June 29, 1219, preaches to the
Crusaders at Damietta and to the Sultan Malek-el-Kamel, 1219;
visits Syria and thence returns suddenly to Rome, 1220 ( ?) ; he
convokes the famous chapter of "Mats" at Pentecost, 1221,
after which the so-called Rule of 1221 is drawn up; he preaches
at Bologna, August 15, 1222, is taken ill in 1224; receives the Stig-
mata (September 14?), 1224, and dies worn out by his austerities,
October 3, 1226.
Such in barest outline is the main chronology of the life of
St. Francis as it is given by Jorgensen.* Let those alike who do
not know the story of that marvelous life, or those who are fain to
know it better still, go to the book itself, and they will be amply
repaid. For they will find that its author, while possessing all
the enthusiasm needed to do full justice to his hero, has, in addition,
those higher qualities without which no biographer can excel
fair-mindedness, truthfulness, and the story-teller's gift.
Perhaps there are pages in the book in which the historian
seems to become merged in the poet. Never mind. The one inspires
the other, and, thanks to their combined labor, we have in the present
volume a blending of thoughtful criticism and literary charm which
*It is only fair to note that not all will accept the chronology of Jorgensen,.
which presents not a few grave difficulties.
1912.] JORGENSEN'S ST. FRANCIS 391
it would be hard to match in any recent biography. One only
wonders that we have had to wait until now for an English trans-
lation of it. But Dr. O'Conor Sloane's version was well worth wait-
ing for. It is in every way deserving of a place on the same shelf
with the original. And this is no faint praise.
There are, however, a few points we should like to discuss
with the translator if space allowed of it. For example, Clare has
long been a favorite and a familiar name amongst English-speaking
people. It is not quite clear, therefore, why Dr. O'Conor Sloane
uses the Latin form of the name Clara throughout the book, in-
stead of giving us its recognized English equivalent. And this is
but one of several instances of the same sort. But let that pass.
Taking it as a whole, Dr. O'Conor Sloane's rendering of Jorgensen's
" St. Francis " is an admirable piece of work. Assuredly all the
lovers of St. Francis and who is there that loves him not! will
thank Dr. O'Conor Sloane for making the Saint's latest biography
accessible to those who read only English. The full and informing
index gives the volume a completeness which too many works of this
kind lack. The five illustrations have been well selected and re-
produced, and the format of the book reflects great credit on the
publishers. Paper, typography, and binding leave nothing to be
desired.
flew Books.
LEO XIII. AND ANGLICAN ORDERS. By Viscount Halifax.
New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $3.50 net.
In the winter of 1889-90, Lord Halifax met in Madeira the
French Lazarist, the Abbe Portal, a professor in the seminary of Ca-
hors. They became quite friendly, and in their walks together dis-
cussed the status of the English Church,and the possibilityof reunion
between Rome and Canterbury. The Abbe Portal, who had hitherto
regarded the Church of England as a Calvinistic sect, was won over
by the special pleading of his High Church friend to the cause of
corporate reunion. Finally both agreed to reopen the discussion
on the validity of Anglican Orders, with a view to having Rome
reverse her tradition of the past four hundred years.
In 1894, the Abbe Portal, under the nom de plume of Dalbus,
opened the campaign with a pamphlet, which caused quite a stir
in France, England, and Rome. Canonists like Gasparri, and his-
torians like Duchesne, commented favorably upon it, while the
English Catholics, under the leadership of Cardinal Vaughan, bitterly
attacked it. At Rome Cardinal Rampolla and Pope Leo XIII. held a
number of conferences with the Abbe, and there was question for
a time of a letter from the Pope to the Archbishops of Canter-
bury and York, and the appointment of a joint commission of
Catholics and Anglicans to discuss the validity of Anglican Orders.
The Pope was utterly misled with regard to the prospects
of reunion. As the Abbot Gasquet wrote : " the Holy Father did
not seem to have any idea of the difference between Ritualists and
others, or indeed any real knowledge of the actual state of religious
feeling in England."* Luckily Cardinal Vaughan intervened, and,
in a famous interview, said to Leo XIII. : " Your Holiness has
evidently been entirely misinformed as to the real attitude of the
English people to the Roman Church. The vast majority of Eng-
lishmen are, without question, thoroughly Protestant in every sense.
A small and energetic minority, it is true, against the protests
of the majority, now call themselves Catholics. . . .but even these
are unanimous in rejecting what we hold to be the foundation of the
Catholic religion, the authority of the Church, and the Supreme
Pontiff." (p. 164.)
Lord Halifax, in the present volume, is continually harping
* Leaves from My Diary, p. 8.
1912.] NEW BOOKS 393
on the opposition of Cardinal Vaughan to his impossible scheme
of corporate reunion (pp. 11,31, 37, 64, 70, 105, 139, 167, 214, 298,
326, 372, 424, 445). He seems from his mental makeup incapable
of appreciating the stern uncompromising logic of the loyal and
saintly English churchman. Cardinal Vaughan knew full well that
Lord Halifax and his friends were continually giving a false picture
of the present and past status of the Church of England; and he
therefore deemed it his duty to tell the truth bluntly and openly,
no matter how deeply it might offend the lovers of compromise.
Zeal for souls was his one motive.
How ignorant must the Abbe Portal have been of the entire
status questionis when he could swallow such preposterous state-
ments of Lord Halifax, as " apart from the dislocation of the canon
there was a practical identity of the service for Holy Communion
in the English Prayer Book with the form of saying Mass in the
Roman Missal! " (p. 9.) Mr. Lacey's pamphlet, De Re Anglicana,
would leave anyone not versed in English history under the im-
pression that England had never been a Protestant country, and
that the Reformation, apart from the denial of the papacy, had made
no change whatever in the Catholic faith. Yet the Risposta of
Mgr. Moyes and Abbot Gasquet, which put the historical facts in
their true perspective, is forsooth " valueless in itself, unworthy,
purely political, and founded on nothing but temporary expediency "
(pp. 360, 367).
The Abbot Gasquet is frequently and unjustly called to task for
his " errors, misleading accounts, incorrect statements, misunder-
standings," etc. (pp. 126, 163, 165, 210, 239.) Again he committed
a most unpardonable offense when he dared state " in our opinion,
the question of Orders is a purely domestic one, and only concerns
us Catholics " (p. 285). How this gave a special color to the Com-
mission, which even Anglicans considered most fair in its makeup
prior to its adverse decision (pp. 278, 281, 287, 316, etc.), we fail
to understand.
Lord Halifax repeats the false assertion made by Mr. Lacey*
that " the consulters of the Commission could not go behind the
Gordon decision ;" that, therefore, " there could be no real and free
discussion of a question which was held to have been definitely
settled already" (p. 30). Mgr. Moyes denied this absolutely in
the Tablet of Jan. 2, 1911, and the Abbot Gasquet in the Tablet
of April 13, 1912. Mgr. Moyes wrote, " the Commission not only
"A Roman Diary, p. 135.
394 NEW BOOKS [June,
went behind the Gordon case to consider the case of 1685, and the
action of the Church under Cardinal Pole, but entered minutely
ab initio into these three possible sources of invalidity, discussing
especially the various parts of the Anglican Ordinal, and its com-
parison with the most primitive form of ordination."
Lord Halifax's book reveals the disappointment and anger
of a small illogical minority of the English Church, who desired
to quote Rome in favor of their pseudo-Orders and their imitation
Mass. When the learned and impartial Pope Leo decided against
them, and insisted on the out and out Protestantism of the Es-
tablished Church, they became angry, and declared the deciding
tribunal hasty, uncritical, and unfair.
The Catholic Church while praying for the reunion of Chris-
tendom, and deploring the evil of heresy and schism, cannot accept
reunion on the basis of compromise. She cannot change her Divine
Constitution, modify Her Divine Worship, or set aside any one
doctrine of the deposit of faith. She is always sceptical of men
who talk lightly of " interpreting the Anglican formularies by the
teaching of the Council of Trent" (p. 249, 337). Submission
" a hard word to English ears " (p. 115) must always be the basis
of reunion.
THE COWARD. By Robert Hugh Benson. St. Louis : B. Herder.
$1.50.
Mgr. Benson's astonishingly tireless pen has written another
new story, called The Coward. For this the author has taken rather
a narrower scope than usual, limiting himself practically to the
workings of one mind, and, for the most part, to its workings under
the emotion of fear. " The Coward," who is Valentine Medd,
younger son of a fine, old English family, is, at the beginning, only a
boy, and a dear, lovable boy. But he is of an emotional, sensitive
and highly imaginative temperament. This it is that leads him to
alternate acts of reckless courage and of cowardice. Twice it
overcomes him hopelessly and publicly; first when he is mountain-
climbing in Switzerland and " funks " a dangerous jump, and
again in Rome, when at the last moment he refuses to fight in an
arranged duel, and allows his older brother to take his place.
But that Val is really and by nature a coward, the author does not
for an instant let us believe. The trouble is that his will is weak,
and has never been strengthened by training to safeguard him
against his nervous imagination. The end of his struggles come
igi2.] NEW BOOKS 395
in a swift climax that is artistic, satisfactory, but painful almost
beyond forgiveness. Mgr. Benson has made a mind-study that is
wonderful, and in the writing he has, as usual, managed to com-
bine his charming peculiarity of style with an unfailing charity.
PSYCHOLOGY WITHOUT A SOUL. By Robert Gruender, SJ.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00.
To the naive reader this title will seem a unique verbal paradox.
The question that will most likely come to his mind will be, " Can
there be such a thing as 'psychology without a soul ?' " Father
Gruender's book is only too cogent a proof that such a psychology
not only exists, but, that advocated or vouched for by some of the
most eminent psychologists of the day, it is exerting an ever-widen-
ing influence upon the thinking masses.
The general thesis of the book is on the old metaphysical
question of the relation of the soul and body. Its particular aim
is to establish the facts of the substantiality, the simplicity, and the
spirituality of the soul. Its method is that of a critical analysis of
the attempts at a materialistic conception of correlations of mind
and body, as expressed by such authorities in psychology as Pro-
fessors James, Wundt, and Titchener.
Father Gruender does not mince his words. He calls a spade*
a spade, not only in his own writings, but in translating the con-
text of the brilliant essays of Professor James and the " scientific "
treatises of Titchener and many others. These men, with the aid
of a delightful style, continual recourse to picturesque analogies,
and the use of most figurative terms, persuade the average reader
to believe the question " scientifically " settled ; but, in reality, they
only beat about the bush, restating incompatible evidences of con-
sciousness. The dogmatism with which they clothe the looseness of
their thinking is but a natural consequence of the hypnotic power
which the idea of " Continuity " exercises upon them.
Under the heading " Evolving Evolution," Father Gruender
tells us that the evolutionary theory no longer appeals to the
testimony of natural phenomena, but that the facts of nature must
now be dogmatically interpreted in accordance with the theory.
He goes on to elucidate such vague conceptions as the " mind-
stuff-theory," the " stream of thought," " fringes of consciousness,"
" psycho-physical parallelism," so that we can distinguish the kernel
of truth, which their title so aptly conveys, from the erroneous
philosophy in which their authors have imbedded them. He weighs
396 NEW BOOKS [June,
and finds wanting the evidences drawn from physiological psy-
chology. Finally, he proves that the still open questions concerning
abiding, personal identity, rational thought as compared with sense
perception, perfect psychological reflection and free will, are verit-
able stumbling blocks in the way of materialistic psychology. His
arguments make it very evident that scholastic philosophy, instead
of possessing only an historical interest, yielding " nothing but un-
fruitful repetitions," has proven its great " inner vitality " by its
power of adaption. Father Gruender can, therefore, assert with
right that "it alone can stem the tide of materialism and agnosticism,
which are sapping the life-blood of modern society."
The author quotes abundantly from the best source books of
psychological data. Had he seen the latest edition (1911) of Ladd
and Woodworth's Elements of Physiological Psychology, he would
no doubt have added the positive assertions therein expressed:
" The fundamental problems with regard to the nature of man's
mind and its relation to the organism, its place in the scale of
development and its destiny, remain essentially unchanged .... All
the researches of physiological and experimental psychology, thus
far conducted, do not contradict, but rather confirm the naive
metaphysics of what an expert in philosophy and its history would
call an 'uncritical dualism.' ' This critical analysis of a convenient
text-book size should be a welcome companion to that other recent
exposition of "unwarrantably extended generalizations" Thoughts
of a Catholic 'Anatomist, by Dr. Thomas Dwight.
MANALIVE. By Gilbert K. Chesterton. New York : John Lane
&Co. $1.30 net.
Mr. Chesterton's truths play leapfrog with one another, but
they always land squarely on their feet. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in his new story this boyish and hilarious story
to which he has given the characteristic title, Manalive. His fat,
bulky, boisterous hero (is Mr. Chesterton at all subjective?) calls
himself Innocent Smith, and
is happy because he is innocent He seeks to remind him-
self, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a
man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this
reason he fires bullets at his best friends ; for this reason he
arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own
property ; for this reason he goes plodding round a whole
planet to get back to his own home. And for this reason he
1912.] NEW BOOKS 397
has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved
with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak)
at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he
might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic
elopement. He seriously sought, by a perpetual recapture
of his bride, to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and
the perils that should be run for her sake.
Who but Mr. Chesterton could have built up a story around
such a theme, like a charming edifice of painted blocks? And,
moreover, the colors are fast. We are tempted to call the book
brilliant, but forego the obvious adjective in deference to Mr.
Chesterton's pathetic statement, that his enemies always call him
" brilliant " after exhausting their other epithets. So we will simply
say that it is in the author's liveliest vein; that it bumps us up
against obvious, forgotten truths, and that it is, incidentally, scream-
ingly funny.
EVE TRIUMPHANT. By Pierre de Coulevain. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net.
That very clever French woman who writes under the name
of Pierre de Coulevain, and whose books, On The Branch, The
Unknown hie, and The Heart of Life, have recently become rather
a fad in this country, is publishing just now a new edition of her
story called Eve Triumphant. It will doubtless be popular. A
newly-discovered " genius " (the quotation marks are careful) is
exploited by the really delightful unanimity of the press, and be-
comes the vogue, just like the hobble skirt, daffodils, and mission
furniture. And the critics who extol these books signed Pierre de
Coulevain can really claim cleverness for them cleverness and
wit and cosmopolitan culture. But let them scratch the veneer, and
they will find flippancy, superficiality, emptiness.
This story of Eve Triumphant tells of two American women
in Europe, portraying them the society type skilfully, faithfully,
and, perhaps, a bit maliciously, and showing their reaction on an
Old World atmosphere. If the author would confine herself to the
drawing-room she might succeed in entertaining us with her very
French cleverness, but she reverts obstinately to the pseudo-philo-
sophical, and so exposes the yawning cavities in her brain. We will
pass over in silence her dissertations on the Church, and the con-
version of her heroine, which is " funny without being vulgar."
But we really must file a protest against such near-culture as im-
398 NEW BOOKS [June,
ported with the laurel of the French Academy. All is not gold that
bears the " made in France " sign.
GARIBALDI AND THE MAKING OF ITALY. By George Ma-
caulay Trevelyan. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $2.25
net.
This volume, a sequence to Garibaldi and the Thousand by
the same author, deals with an important historical episode in the
re-making of modern Europe.
It embraces the Italian revolutionary movements, mostly in
Southern Italy, during the year 1860, which occasioned the collapse
of the Bourbon dynasty in the kingdom of Naples and the Two
Sicilies, and which had the effect of despoiling the Pope of a part
of his temporal possessions.
From the author's view-point, it is the record of glorious
happenings; the manifestation of admirable characters; the display
of heroic bravery and patriotic motives on the revolutionary side,
of course; all of which culminated in the final triumph of Italia
Unita.
We frankly and entirely dissent from this view, and from the
author's laudation of it, both as Catholics and as honest men. We
feel ourselves warranted in so doing, if for no other reason than
that advanced by Cavour, the leading mover in it all, and quoted
on page twenty-three of this volume, " if we had done for ourselves
the things we are doing for Italy, we should be great rascals."
There in a phrase is the keynote of the whole awakening of
Italy, viz., that the end justifies the means.
As we do not accept that principle, how can we view, except
with reprobation, the application of it in the broken promises; the
lying intrigues; the force and invasion of rights; the spoliation of
the weak carried on by Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, abetted by
the chicanery of Lord John Russell, and of which Garibaldi was
only a catspaw.
Mr. Trevelyan has labored to little purpose as far as Catholics
are concerned. The pity of it is that despite his industry, which is
very considerable, despite the clarity and the interest of his narra-
tive, he has harked back to the one-sidedness, the partisanship of
his illustrious namesake and kinsman in his history of England.
In William of Orange Macaulay could see no fault; Mr. Trevelyan
finds a noble poetic hero in Garibaldi, whose name will live when
Cavour and Victor Emmanuel are forgotten. Had the author came
igi2.] NEW BOOKS 399
nearer home, he would have found in his father's history of the
American Revolution a lesson of impartiality, a measure by which
to award praise and blame, which is wanting to this volume.
THE SQUIRREL CAGE. By Dorothy Canfield. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. $1.35 net.
This story aroused some interest during its appearance in
Everybody's Magazine, and is now published in book form. It is
a story of a middle-western town, and a very true account of the
life of average Americans of the tolerably wealthy classes. Its
complaint and contention, as voiced rather too ceaselessly by the
heroine, Lydia Emery, is that the social and business ambitions of
American men and women are not worth the toil and struggle which
they cost, or the family companionship which they destroy. And
there is, of course, much truth in the contention. There are many
households like Lydia's, where the father concentrates all his atten-
tion on money-getting, and the mother all hers on social affairs,
to the exclusion of a pleasant domesticity. Lydia rebels against
such a system, but instead of marrying a similar rebel in the person
of a socialistic cabinet-maker, she marries Paul Hollister, a business
man of her own father's stamp. Paul is always ambitious, finan-
cially and socially, while Lydia tries in vain to pull him in the di-
rection of " the simple life," so the result is not harmony. In
theory Lydia is generally right, but she nags her husband like Mrs.
Varden in her worst moments, and we cannot but feel that the
saving grace of humor in the author, as well as in the heroine her-
self, would have rescued the latter from her melancholy role of
fcnunc incomprise.
STOVER AT YALE. By Owen Johnson. New York : Frederick
A. Stokes Company. $1.35 net.
In a book which might fairly be called a sugar-coated essay
on college life although it is at the same time an interesting story
Mr. Johnson discusses many of the features that are most signif-
icant in the career of the American under-graduate of to-day.
Football has its place, but does not absorb as much attention as the
college societies do. The questionable influence of the frat, and the
general insufficiency of the usual college education, are the promi-
nent topics. Comments and suggestions, rather than conclusions,
abound in the author's pages. Some lessons on manliness are
400 NEW BOOKS [June,
encouraged in a way that will be very telling with the average
youth.
GIRLS' CLUBS AND MOTHERS' MEETINGS. By Madame
Cecilia. New York : Benziger Brothers. 60 cents.
This little volume of less than two hundred pages is a verit-
able compendium of information for the Catholic club-worker.
Madame Cecilia has not written solely out of the thirty-seven
years experience of her religious life, but, after painstaking and
thorough investigation, has also placed at the command of " the
earnest worker in the small town or country district " the large
and varied experience of the ablest Catholic and non-Catholic
club-workers in the United Kingdom.
No detail of practical or economic value has been omitted.
Suggestions abound as to books, amusements, sources of supply,
price lists, etc.; directions given as to non-sectarian organizations
with which Catholics may wisely affiliate; and the whole is uplifted
into that sphere x>f Catholic inspiration the abounding, self-sacri-
ficing charity of Christ.
Much of the practical information applies only to Great Britain ;
nevertheless we cannot recommend Madame Cecilia's book too
highly to American Catholic social workers. Everyone must profit
by its hopeful, common-sense spirituality, and someone, perhaps,
inspired to compile an equally complete Fade Mecum for American
Catholic club-workers.
THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL; TRAITS OF THE SACRED
HEART. By Rev. Francis P. Donnelly, SJ. New York:
Apostleship of Prayer. 50 cents.
The earlier books on devotion to the Sacred Heart were chiefly
theological, being mainly taken up with developing the grounds
upon which this devotion rested; or treating of reparation, attracted,
no doubt, by the thorn-wreathed, cross-burdened heart which was
the symbol chosen by Our Lord Himself.
Here, however, we have, in this little book, devotion to the
Sacred Heart, brought to the surest proof of all admiration and
love imitation. The title is the least attractive part of it, being,
we think, somewhat cumbersome for so small a book, and not doing
justice to its contents, which are solid, practical, and worthy of
much praise. The Heart of Christ is taken as the model of our
human hearts ; not virtue by virtue, but rather in its characteristics.
NEW BOOKS 401
In eighteen chapters the author shows us these, and leads us gently
to compare our poor hearts with the Divine Heart.
Old familiar texts take on new meanings in the light of their
adaptations; illustrations from the daily life about us bring home
each truth ; and a few searching words of application reveal a deep
insight into the wounds which our sins have inflicted on our nature.
Once or twice clearness is sacrificed to terseness, but for the most
part the terseness tells and strikes home.
MODERN MIRACLE PLAYS: SACRED DRAMAS. By Augusta
Theodosia Drane. (Mother Francis Raphael, O.S.D.) St.
Louis : B. Herder. 90 cents.
THE DEAR SAINT ELIZABETH. By Eliza O'B. Lummis. Bos-
ton: Richard Badger. $1.00 net.
Obviously, the religious drama is not yet dead : it has not alone
survived, but even among English-speaking peoples it shows portents
of a new and varied fruitfulness. Twenty-five to fifty years ago,
the story of Our Lady's Juggler, as of Sister Beatrice, would have
been well-nigh impossible upon an English stage. It was only
in quiet convent schools that the old, fine drama of hagiography
held modest but persistent place. These Sacred plays were not
ambitious they made no bid for publicity but some of them
were too good to fall into oblivion : and of these are the dramatic
legends of St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Dorothea, as put into
English verse by Mother Francis Raphael, O.S.D. It is hard, in-
deed, to find anything from the pen of this scholarly convent-
prioress which is not too good to fall into oblivion. The Christmas
Mystery of the present volume suffers, to be sure, by comparison
with Katharine Tynan's lovely Nativity plays, or with the beautiful
and spectacular Bethlehem of Lawrence Housman. But one has
really no right to draw the comparison. Mother Drane wrote for
amateur performance, with the entourage of the convent school in
view; and within this field her work deserves a warm, practical
welcome.
In quite another vein is our newest miracle play, The Dear
Saint Elizabeth. Written by Miss Eliza Lummis (founder of the
Daughters of the Faith, and writer upon many subjects of interest
to Catholic women), this life of the sainted Thuringian queen is
designed neither for convent performance nor " closet " reading,
VOL. XCV. 26.
402 NEW BOOKS [June,
but for the public stage. Its opportunities for pageantry are ex-
traordinary, and there is vital drama in the old, beautiful story.
The opening scene of Miss Lummis' drama gives us the festive
preparations for Elizabeth's marriage to the Landgrave Louis, and
includes some charming bridal hymns in verse. In the second act,
we are shown Elizabeth's ministry to the poor with that gracious
miracle of the roses and Louis' departure for the Crusade. After
his untimely death, the young queen and mother is pictured driven
from her Court, seeking vainly for shelter in the asylums she herself
had founded. Gradually is traced the Via Crucis which led her
on to sainthood; and in the final scene, Elizabeth wrapped in St.
Francis' cloak of poverty dies in her humble hut at Marburg,
mourned by the Church and the people she had served so well.
" A broken heart," cries her intrepid director, Conrad, " that gar-
nered closely up in one small crimson cup life's wealth of love
until it burst and spilled the fragrant store at Jesus' feet." A con-
cluding musical tableau, within the cathedral of Marburg, shows
the canonization of " the dear Saint Elizabeth " announced to her
people.
Beyond any shadow of doubt, this play is blazing a trail
toward new and rich things in the dramatic literature of Catholics.
Twere a consummation devoutly to be wished " not merely
that Miss Lummis' drama see early presentation upon the stage,
but that worthy successors, holy and human in theme, artistic
in treatment, preach to our modern world alike Catholic and non-
Catholic the everlasting science of the saints!
THE SINCERE CHRISTIAN. By Bishop Hay. Revised by the
Very Rev. Canon Stuart. St. Louis : B. Herder. $1.75.
This century-old book may, indeed, be somewhat out of fashion
in method and style, but it is none the less clear, pointed, instruc-
tive, convincing, and, therefore, well worthy of a long life. It
would be a pity to have so sound, so scriptural, and so cogent an
explanation of the Faith discarded or neglected because its gait
is a trifle heavy and slow. Most of us value books, especially those
that deal with serious questions, for the accuracy of their state-
ments, the thoroughness of their methods, the strength and sound-
ness of their reasoning, more than for brilliancy or sprightliness of
style. While such qualities are esteemed, this book is sure to retain
the high place it has held since its first appearance among Catholic
books of instruction.
1912.] NEW BOOKS 403
THE SOCIAL EVIL, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
DITIONS EXISTING IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. Report
of the Committee of Fifteen (1902). Edited, with additions,
by Prof. E. R. A. Seligman. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
$1.75 net.
" In consequence of the awakening of public interest in the
sex problem, a deluge of so-called sex books is now flooding the
country a few of them good, more of them indifferent, and most of
them positively bad. This multiplication of harmful literature
constitutes a real danger. It is important to separate the wheat
from the chaff to recommend what is good and to condemn what
is bad."
Among the few good books on this question may be ranked
the present work. The original report of the Committee of Fifteen
was almost entirely historical. It attempted to prove, from the
experience of those countries that had tried it, that the licensing
of vice simply aggravates the corruption. This report is now re-
printed, and, with several chapters by Prof. Seligman, brings down
to date the history of the fight against state licensing of houses of ill-
fame. A bibliography of thirty pages is added.
THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. Being an Examination of
the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in
that Religion. Compiled from various sources by Lt.-Col.
W. H. Turton, D.S.O. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Lieutenant-Colonel Turton's book is so unusual in plan, and sc
successful in construction, that we gladly draw attention to the
seventh edition, which has undergone a careful revision at the hands
of the author. The volume has excited general admiration, and is
already appreciated by many of our readers; hence a mere word of
comment is all that seems fitting just at present.
In three parts, the author clearly and thoroughly discusses the
reasonableness of natural religion, of the Jewish revelation, and of
Christianity. Good-tempered, moderate, well-informed, and per-
fectly logical throughout, he leads his readers by most persuasive
inducements to proceed with him to the conclusions : that the exist-
ence of God and of a revelation is credible; that the Jewish revela-
tion is probably true, and, finally, that the truth of the Christian
religion is extremely probable. Even sceptics will respect the method
of the author. To many an inquirer his pages must prove to be an
easily followed path from darkness to light. The book is the more
404 NEW BOOKS [June,
useful to the Catholic apologist because of the steadily increasing
number of people who are ready to agree that if the Christian
religion is true at all, then the Catholic Church is the one legitimate
form of Christianity.
THE LIFE OF ST. TERESA. Taken from the French of " A Car-
melite Nun." By Alice Lady Lovat, with a preface by Mgr.
Robert Hugh Benson. St. Louis : B. Herder. $3.00.
St. Teresa has probably left more autobiographical material
than any other Saint. She has given us a history of her life, rela-
tions of her spiritual experiences, an account of her foundations,
and numerous letters. Her life was written, too, by several con-
temporaries who knew her intimately.
We cordially welcome this work by Lady Lovat, and trust that
it will have a generous share in extending a knowledge of and a
devotion to the great Saint of Carmel. The biography does not
aim at any new presentation of the Saint's life and work. But
it will undoubtedly lead many to become acquainted with the
Saint's own inimitable writings. Monsignor Benson's preface is
also worthy of a special word of praise.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE. Volume II. By Rev. Thomas Slater,
SJ. New York : Benziger Brothers. $1.75 net.
This second volume of Father Slater's Cases of Conscience
deals with the duties of particular states of life, the administration
of the Sacraments and ecclesiastical censures. Half of them have
to do with difficulties connected with Penance and Matrimony.
The cases are all practical and interesting exactly such as are
frequently met in the confessional. In solving them Father Slater
first states briefly, but clearly, the principles involved, and then gives
his reasoned judgment on the case in hand. For the benefit of those
who desire fuller discussions of the principles, he gives frequent
references to his own Manual of Theology, and occasional refer-
ences to such well-known authorities as St. Alphonsus, Gaspaori,
Lemkuhl, and Genicot.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY. By Grace MacGowan Cooke.
New York : Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.20.
Now that public interest has been so widely aroused in the
life of the factory- worker, through the Lawrence, Massachusetts,
strike, it seems especially timely to call attention to this volume.
1912.] NEW BOOKS 405
It is the story of a girl who comes down from her native moun-
tains, radiant and joyous, resolved to " cross the bridge of toil,"
to the " power and the glory " beyond. The bridge of toil in this
case is the cotton-mill of an industrial town in the valley.
Into the girl's story many incidents are woven tragic, roman-
tic, humorous. The feature of the book which has the greatest
human interest is the picture of the mill-child, " straggling to work
in the gray dawn, sleepy, shivering, unkempt," working bravely on,
although faint for lack of air and deafened by the roar of machinery.
A series of pathetic scenes follow, culminating in the heartrending
one which shows us the little sister of the heroine caught up and
almost killed by the great wheel of the loom. But the gloom is
relieved by the brightness of the heroine's personality, which
quickens into stronger life everything with which she comes in
contact.
GESCHICHTE DER WELTLITERATUR. VI. Band. Die Italien-
ische Literatur. By Von Alexander Baumgartner, SJ. St.
Louis: B. Herder. $5.15 net.
Father Baumgartner's death occurred while the volume before
us was still unfinished, but so near completion that as it stands
it is really his. As scholar and critic the author's high standard
of uniform excellence is so widely recognized that no work of his
needs commendation. This, the sixth volume of his monumental
History of the Literature of the World, was to have been followed
by four more volumes on Spanish, Portuguese, and Romance Litera-
ture; English, Flemish, and Scandinavian Literature; Slavonic and
Magyar Literature; and German Literature. These will be under-
taken by confreres of the deceased scholar, but it is questionable
if even a group of men will bring together so rare a combination
of gifts as was displayed by the originator of the series.
In nine hundred pages we are carried from the Sicilian minne-
singers and the court of Frederick II. down to Ada Negri and
Matilde Serao. To Fogazzaro is given fifty pages and little sym-
pathy. Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio are the subjects of extended
critical essays ; Father Baumgartner's methods being that of a rather
exhaustive treatment of the great representative writers. Extracts
from the authors discussed are given with fair abundance, almost
uselessly in the case of a poet, for who could, with any show of suc-
cuss, convert rippling Italian verse into rumbling German?
40 6 NEW BOOKS [June,
The book is a fine specimen of patient and critical scholarship.
As a sound and comprehensive treatment of the history of Italian
letters, it leaves little to be desired that a single volume could aim to
achieve.
BEACON LIGHTS, MAXIMS OF CARDINAL GIBBONS. Se-
lected and arranged by Cora Payne Shriver. Baltimore : John
Murphy Company. $1.00.
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM CARDINAL GIBBONS. Baltimore :
John Murphy Company. $1.00.
These two books are very much alike in form, in purpose, and
in the spirit of their contents. As the titles indicate, they are com-
pilations. They were made partly to show forth the mind and
character of the churchman from whose writings they have been
gathered, and partly to provide readers with wholesome, suggestive
thoughts. A wide range of subjects is covered in both books, but
the view-point remains always the same, namely, that of a devout
Christian mind. The selections contained in the Beacon Lights have
to do chiefly with the progress of the soul in the ways of perfection,
while the Words of Wisdom deal almost entirely with the relations
between men and the various institutions at work in civilized society.
DAILY 'READINGS FROM ST. FRANCIS DE SALES.
Compiled by J. H. A. (St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00.)
We most cordially welcome this publication, which is most
suitable for spiritual reading. The compiler has an intimate knowl-
edge of the writings of the holy Bishop of Geneva, and we feel
that no further word of recommendation is needed for the little
work.
T3OOKS by Christian Reid are always deservedly popular, and her
*-* new story, The Light of the Vision, will doubtless prove no
exception. In Madeleine Raynor the author has moulded an un-
usually lovable heroine. After divorcing her husband for ample
reason Madeleine is looking forward to happiness in a second
marriage, when conversion to the Church demands its sacrifice.
Later, when her husband's death legitimately opens for her the
door to happiness, she turns aside, and follows " the light of the
vision " that leads her to the joy of renunciation. (Notre Dame,.
Ind. : The Ave Maria Press. $1.25.)
ig\2.} NEW BOOKS 407
DOEMS, by Rev. Hugh F. Blunt. (Concord, N. H.: The Rum-
-*- ford Press. $1.00.) It is with many a poem, and prose tale,
too, that Father Blunt has brightened the pages of our magazines;
and it is pleasant now to see the more permanent collection of his
verses going into a second edition.
The Poems are, in the main, songs of Irish life and songs of
faith. A quite " lovesome " grace and melody have stolen into
lyrics like " Our Lady's Rose Garden " indeed, into very many of
those addressed to the Virgin as also into the Easter ballad of
Magdalene Mary. The pathos and the comedy of the Irish verses
strike a more popular note; but in one or two of them, as, for in-
stance, in the " Lament for an Irish Mother," Father Blunt has
pierced through the simplicity of the commonplace to the simplicity
of a sweet and elemental reality. Godspeed to the young soggarth's
labors and to his songs !
THE woods are full of historical novels. A fairly good specimen
-* is The Fighting Blade, by Beulah Marie Dix, the story of a
young German soldier in Cromwell's army, and his love for a
Royalist heiress. (New York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.30 net.)
ATARIAM'NE OF THE CEDARS, by Ida Helen McCarty, is
a story woven around the events of Our Lord's life. The
heroine is supposed to be the sinner who annointed the feet of
Christ at the Last Supper. The author, evidently not a Catholic,
writes reverently, and doubtless means well, but no very high praise
can be accorded her work. (New York: The Shakespeare Press.
$1.20 net.)
PHERE are a number of French books in which our readers may
be interested, and which speak of the active work done in
France in the line of Catholic instruction and defence:
Y a-t-il un Dieu? by Henri Hugon (Pierre Tequi), is a short
but comprehensive collection of direct proofs that all peoples have
believed in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul,
and that even those who make a practice and a boast of irreligion
have not wholly let go of those truths.
J'ai Perdu la Foil by Father Ramon Ruiz Amado, S.J., trans-
lated from the Spanish by L'Abbe Gerbeaud (Pierre Tequi), treats
philosophically and scientifically of the rational foundations of
religion.
4 o8 NEW BOOKS [June,
Father Drexelius, court-preacher of Bavaria three hundred
years ago, enjoyed a wonderful popularity throughout Central
Europe. His works passed rapidly through many extraordinarily
large editions, reaching in Munich alone a sale of 170,000 copies.
One of his works, Considerations sur I'Eternite, has been recently
translated by Mgr. Belet (Pierre Tequi). Judged by this work, one
of four recently translated into French, the author possessed
an attractive and interesting way of presenting truth. Accurate
in statement and serious in purpose, he drew largely on Sacred
Scripture, on history, and on biography for illustrations and ex-
amples.
Two other publications of Pierre Tequi, of Paris, Entretiens
Eucharistiques, by L'Abbe Jean Vaudon, and L'Education Euchar-
istique, by J. C. Broussolle; and one of Lethielleux, of Paris,
Discours Eucharistiques, give abundant material, together with
helpful suggestions, for meditations or for discourses on the Blessed
Sacrament. The first contains eight sermons on the Holy Eucharist,
and eighteen on the Priesthood half of the latter on the occasion
of first Masses. The second consists of talks given to children pre-
paring for their first Communion. The third is a compilation of
twenty-three doctrinal discourses delivered at the Eucharistic Con-
gresses of Jerusalem, Rheims, Paray-le-Monial, Brussels, and Lour-
des. It is a particularly valuable work.
In the same class may be placed Le Pain Evangelique, by
L'Abbe E. Duplessy (Pierre Tequi). It is a catechetical explana-
tion of the Sunday and Holyday gospels from the First Sunday
of Advent to the First Sunday of Lent. Written primarily for
children, it is also highly serviceable to old folks.
L'Education Chretienne, by M. L'Abbe Henri Le Camus
(Pierre Tequi), is a series of twelve thoughtful, practical, sug-
gestive conferences on child-training and education.
A thorough, critical, and impartial examination of the text-
books condemned by the French Bishops in 1909, together with a
refutation of their chief errors, is given in Ce qiti on Enseigne aux
Enfants, by J. Bricout (Letouzey et Ane). The book shows
clearly, by copious citations from their works, that those authors,
and the educational authorities who selected their books for use
in the public schools of France, are wholly unjust and dishonest
in their treatment of the Church, and are almost incredibly ir-
religious in their spirit and purpose.
foreign penobtcals.
Anglican Orders. By Rev. Sydney F. Smith. An oppor-
tune review, in the light of the recent publication of some
contemporary records, of Leo XIII. 's decision against Anglican
Orders. Lord Halifax and Abbe Portal, in their desire for union
between Rome and England, hit on the question of these orders
as a starting point by which the Pope could show his willingness
to entertain proposals of reunion. They had persuaded Cardinal
Rampolla and Pope Leo that the English Church was thoroughly
Catholic at heart, and the Pope was on the point of writing a per-
sonal letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, when Cardinal
Vaughan arrived on the scene. He and Abbot Gasquet were able
to show conclusively that the great body of Anglicans would never
accept the fundamental dogma of papal supremacy. The publi-
cation of the work of Lord Halifax may be looked upon as the
final word on the question from the Anglican side. The Month,
April.
A Forward Movement in Social Work. By Rev. T. Wright. So-
cial Reform is defined as Catholicism in action ; practical Christian-
ity; the search for the Kingdom of God and His justice; the fulfill-
ment of the second commandment of the Law. The author welcomes
the Social programme of Bishop Keating of Northampton, embrac-
ing the Living Wage, Housing Problem, Trade Unions, Poor Law
Reform, etc. He then points out the necessity of organization,
which he thinks will probably come through the activities of the
Catholic Social Guild. The Month, May.
The Uniats in Galicia. By N. A certain Count Vladimir
Bobrinsky recently wrote at length to the London Times deliber-
ately charging the Poles of Galicia with persecuting the Ruthenian
peasants of that section. Their political superiors have oppressed
these poor people, so he claims, in every way to prevent their
joining the Orthodox Russian Church. Nevertheless, he says,
whole villages have seceded from Rome. As a matter of fact, the
Poles are in a minority in Eastern Hungary, and any oppression
is due to Masonic politicians. And where the Poles are powerful,
they are bitterly opposed to the Uniat Church. The loyalty of the
Uniats to Rome may be guessed from the bravery with which they
have borne persecution in Russia. The Month, May.
4io FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June,
The Question of the Hour. This article is a study of Irish
Home Rule, now being hotly debated in the English Parliament.
The Act of Union of 1800 was passed by buying the English and
Scotch vote in Ireland. The consequent misrule excited the indig-
nation even of some of the Protestant Irish, such as Grattan, Burke,
Lecky, and the Lord Chancellor, Plunket.
The question resolves itself to-day into a religious one. All the
important political offices are held by Protestants, and in the North
of Ireland the Orange Society holds full sway, while the expenses
for conducting the different departments of the National Govern-
ment in Ireland are greater than those of England or Scotland.
The answers of the Protestants as to why they are opposed
to Home Rule may be divided into three classes : ( i ) That the
country would be ruined by a Parliament at Dublin; (2) Racial
differences make a just Home Rule impossible. They (the Pro-
testants) are always Scotch or English, and do not wish to be
governed by the Irish; (3) They are Protestants and do not wish
to be governed by Rome. The article deals at length with Mr.
Hocking's book, Is Home Rule, Rome Rule? (London, 1912.)
It is well known that Mr. Joseph Hocking was sent by the Pro-
testants of Ulster to Ireland to investigate the question. Mr.
Hocking's long-standing anti-Catholic animus is equally well-
known. He reviews all the questions that have been so bitterly
debated ; yet Mr. Hocking, as a result of his investigations, became
a convert to the cause of Home Rule, and asserted that there was
no intolerance of Protestants on the part of Catholics. Neverthe-
less mass meetings are being held in Belfast, and leaders, such as Sir
E. Carson, are urging the Protestants to begin a civil war in case
of the passing of the Home Rule Bill. And, in Ulster, the Protes-
tants are organizing for battle. Their newspapers bear the motto,
"Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." Their columns are
filled with denunciations of the Pope, the Jesuits, etc., and the
reiteration of their determination to fight to a finish. Yet the so-
called Loyalists do not hesitate to sing, " God save the King."
Le Correspondant, April 25.
A Sea Disaster. The writer, Edgar de Geoffroy, reviews
the growth in tonnage and length of ocean vessels from the time
of the Great Eastern to that of the Titanic. The palatial fur-
nishings and equipment of the latter are described in detail. The
author gives also an account of various recent disasters at sea the
1912.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 4"
sinking of the Republic, and the collision of the Hazvke and the
Olympic (sister-ship to the Titanic) off Southampton on Sept.
20, 1911. The writer is a French naval engineer, is an ardent
believer in submarine signalling, which he thinks should be installed
in all ocean-liners. Such apparatus, he claims, would leave no
doubt in the mind of the captain of the vessel summoned as to
the direction which he ought to take to give aid. Had this been
installed on the Titanic, the writer believes that all on board would
have been saved. Le Correspondant, April 25.
Schemes for Colonizing. The history of France's endeavors
to colonize Northern Africa is presented in this article by Raymond
Aynard. At the time of the Second Empire, in order to rid Paris
of its vagrants and poor, schemes were devised to induce them
to emigrate to Algiers. Again those Frenchmen, who after the
Franco-Prussian War lived under the German rule, were also en-
couraged to settle in Africa. The history and outcome up to date
are reviewed. Le Correspondant, April 25.
Greek Philosophy and Christianity. By Dunin-Borkowsky,
S.J. There is a tendency on the part of some in our day to speak
of the " Hellenizing of Christianity," and to imply that Christianity
was indebted to Greek philosophy for the origin and development of
some of its dogmas. Textual critics of St. Paul and St. John
present at times plausible arguments for such a plea, but they fail
to see and understand that it is but natural for writers to use, as
far as possible, the language best understood by their hearers,
so long as there is no danger of misunderstanding the truth to be
conveyed. The real scientific searcher does not interpret similarities
as necessary dependancies. Movements and tendencies influence
the preacher of Christian truth, yet such influence does not impair
the integrity of his preaching, nor substantially influence him in
the delivery of his message. The article is to be continued.
Stimmen aus Maria Loach, No. 4.
Short Hours and Increased Production. By H. Koch, S.J.
The invention of machinery led many to forget a law of nature
that man's powers need time to recuperate. Desire to get the highest
interest from capital invested led employers to demand nineteen or
even twenty hours of labor out of the twenty-four. J. S. Mill,
Hume, and Ricardo advocated long hours; they were opposed by
4 i2 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June,
Smith, Morser, and Owen. The state took the matter into its
hands, and limited the hours to ten or twelve. Capitalists have
repeatedly objected to a shortening of hours, claiming that shorter
hours meant less production. After scientific investigation, it has
been found that just the opposite is the case: Stimmen aus Maria
Laach, No. 4.
Protestantism and Liberty. By G. Bourgine. The author op-
poses de Laveleye.who attributed to the democratic inspiration of the
Reformation the prosperity, order, and liberty of many Protestant
countries of the present day. In the Middle Ages were laid the found-
ations of modern liberties. The Italian Republics enjoyed so great
a freedom that it sometimes became license. England possessed its
Magna Charta ; France had no need of the Reformation to develop
the germs of liberty and social order already vigorously sprouting.
The reaction of Luther and his supporters against the peasants,
who had followed his own principles, reduced the lower class to
servitude. In 1692 Lord Molesworth wrote : " All the people of the
Protestant countries have lost their liberty since they changed their
religion." In Calvinistic countries a less complete despotism was
engendered on account of certain internal antagonisms. In England
the poor were robbed, and, through certain laws of Henry VIII. and
Elizabeth, could be made the slaves of the magistrates. Even in
the United States, while the religion of a particular colony was
distinctively Protestant, liberty was denied. In later times Catholics
were among the foremost in securing it. Revue du Clerge Frangais,
April 15.
Catholic Ethics of Taxation. By J. F. Hogan, D.D. The State
has the right to levy taxes for the promotion of the common good.
Catholic writers simply " demand justice, moderation, proportion,
precision, sufficient publicity, and economy in collection." As a
rule, however, the Church is loath to fix the amount, object or inci-
dence of the tax. Income, excise, graduated, and inheritance taxes,
are all allowable. Even taxation of the unearned increment may be
just. But it should be applied to all such increase, whether of rail-
ways, professional practice, or land. Irish Ecclesiastical Record,
April.
Work of the Catholic Workingmen's " Circles." By M.
Charles Calippe. Within the last two years Count Albert de Mun
has revived these " circles " or clubs. They were first established
1912.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 413
by M. Le Prevost, a co-worker of Frederick Ozanam. Deeply
impressed by the misery he noticed among the laboring classes, he
attributed its cause to the industrial conditions of the time. Under
his inspiration there grew up an organization to remedy the evils
then existing, to add a new work of mercy to the seven corporal
works, i. e., the prevention of the evils with which they deal. The
new organization became known as the " Catholic Workingmen's
Circle of Mont-Parnasse." Its new director, M. Maurice Maignen,
made the acquaintance of Count Rene de la Tour du Pin-Chambly,
who introduced him to Count Albert de Mun. These two soldiers
later took up the work, broadening its scope, and making the
" Circles," in addition to being schools for the study and practical
solution of social questions in the light of Catholic doctrine, kinds
of forums for the meeting and harmonious cooperation of employers
and employed. The work prospered and multiplied for a time, but
on account of divergences of opinion among its leaders, of social
polemics, and political discussions, the organization disintegrated.
But during its fifteen years sleep its ideas continued to work their
way in the minds of many, until about a year ago Count de Mun was
able to awaken it and give it new inspiration, and now the work
gives promise of a career most productive of excellent results.
Revue du Clerge Franqais, May i.
The Criminal and Pain. In the judgment of most people, the
punishment inflicted on a criminal should be of a remedial nature.
According to J. Verdier, such an opinion is a dangerous one. In
his present article he advances the reasons for his conclusion.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique, April 15.
The Encyclopedia of Islam. By Jean Cales. Professor
Houtsma, of the University of Utrecht, with the assistance of the
principal Orientalists of the world, is publishing a thorough and
scholarly encyclopedia of things Mohammedan. It is to be printed
in English, French, and German. Though called A Geographical,
Ethnographical, and Biographical Dictionary of the Mussulman
Races, it embraces religious and literary questions too. The eleventh
fascicule, carrying the work down to Bedel-i'-Askeri, has just ap-
peared. Under Allah, Duncan B. Macdonald gives an interesting
sketch of development of the idea of God among Mussulmans. Pre-
vious to Mahomet, Allah was the supreme god surrounded by lesser
deities. The great service of Mahomet was to insist upon God's
4 i 4 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June,
unity. As time went on three schools arose in Mahommedan the-
ology : the traditionalist, which was content with the Koran and cer-
tain other sayings of the Prophet; the rationalist; and the mystical,
which supplemented the Koran by private revelation. The articles
are said to be of general appeal, and to be written without bias.
Etudes, April 20.
Revue Thomiste (March- April) : A Model of Scholastic Ex-
position, by T. Richard. The form of St. Thomas' presentation
largely accounts for his supreme rank as a Doctor of the Church.
Modernist Philosophy, by R. P. Cazes, O.P. This fourth
article deals with agnosticism. Art and Apologetics, by R. P.
Marlheus, O.P., treats of the latest International Exposition
of Christian Art at the Louvre.
Le Correspondant (April 10) : The Tripoli-tan Delusion, by
Vte. Combes de Lestrade, discusses conditions in Italy and Tripoli
due to annexation. Victor Hugo et Sainte-Beuve,by Leon Seche.
The Landscape Artist, Theodore Rousseau, by Leandre Vaillat,
contrasts Rousseau's work with that of Millet. J. Bricout re-
views a recent life of Mgr. d'Hulst. A New Book on Mozart, by
Michel Brinet, is a laudatory review of a biography of the noted
composer by T. de Wyzewa and G. de Saint Foix.
(April 25) : Jean Monval reviews the letters of Franqois
Coppee to his sister, Annette. They show great attachment and
contain striking descriptions of the continental cities visited. The
Golden Key, by Charles de Moiiy, is the beginning of a new novel
which deals with diplomatic circles. Nelly Mellin reviews the
romantic courtship of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning as
gleaned from their letters.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (April 15) : The Redemption in
Modern Thought, by J. Riviere. A sketch of various theories held
by Anglican writers. Abyssinia and the Primacy of Rome, by
P. Godet. Abyssinia admits the supremacy of Rome, but sepa-
rated from her on the theory that the Roman Church fell into heresy
in the controversy regarding the wills and the Person of Christ.
Jesus or Paul, by L. Cl. Fillion, refutes modern critics who maintain
that St. Paul introduced a new world religion, and forced a novel
interpretation of the work of our Lord as the Messiah upon man-
kind.
IRecent Events,
For many months, something like a reign of
France. terror has been caused by a gang of bandits.
Motor-car bandits they are called, because
in one or two cases they have made use of motor-cars to reach
and escape from the scene of their robberies. These were committed
in open daylight, and were accompanied by murder, not merely of
the owners of the goods seized, but of passers-by in the open streets.
For several weeks every effort to discover the guilty parties proved
fruitless. At last, however, the leader was discovered. But for his
capture not merely the police, but numbers of sappers, engineers,
and of the Garde Republicaine had to give their services. Even
then it was only after he had been fatally wounded, and had held
his enemies at bay for some six or eight hours, that the leader of
the band was captured. Almost a page of this magazine might be
filled with a list of the crimes which have recently been committed.
Even the press, which is in favor of the secular education to which
the present generation of Frenchmen has been subjected, is be-
ginning to ask what is the cause of its manifest failure. By one
paper advanced democrats are warned that the kind of popular
instruction which encourages human pride, though one of the sources
of human progress, has sometimes a perilous effect in producing
wild ideas. The more ambitious democracies are, the more strict
ought they to be in the enforcement of the law. Greater strictness is
in fact needed, for in France long delays between arrest and convic-
tion often occur, and what is called humanitarianism has greatly in-
fluenced both judges and juries. Of course the real cause is the
widespread irreligion. This naturally involves the fruits of the
flesh the violence of sabotage and of the apaches, debauchery, de-
population, and, most notable of all, alcoholism. The drinking of
absinthe has made France the most drunken nation on earth. For
large numbers of the people there is no law of God to confront
human passions, and hence, as a prominent Frenchman lately said :
" We are making for the pit." Her novelists, her artists, her pro-
fessors, and men of science, seem powerless to save her.
The cordiality of the relations existing between Great Britain
416 RECENT EVENTS [June,
and France was shown by the fetes which were held on the occasion
of the inauguration of statues to Queen Victoria and King Edward
VII. in the South of France. For the first time recorded in his-
tory a British military force the Naval Brigade marched in
peaceful association on French soil in the company of French troops.
Ministers, Senators, and Deputies from all parts assembled to do
honor to the memory of the two British monarchs. M. Poincare,
the Prime Minister, made speeches at the two celebrations, in which
he paid a warm tribute to the Queen and the King, attributing to
the latter a great share in the removal of the misunderstandings
which formerly existed between France and Great Britain. To his
influence, constitutionally exercised, was largely due the friendly
cooperation between the two countries, which has made the balance
of power in Europe less insecure and peace less precarious. The
fact that the Prince of Wales, King George's eldest son, has been
sent to France to perfect his study of the language, forms an addi-
tional bond of friendship of the two countries.
The treaty with the Sultan of Morocco, recently signed at Fez,
establishes the protectorate of France over the whole of that coun-
try, with the exception of the zone which is reserved to Spain. The
exact extent of this region, and the precise relations between it and
that under more direct French control, have been the subject of the
long-protracted negotiations not yet concluded. The Sultan's author-
ity will be nominally preserved, but he is precluded from entering
into any contract, direct or indirect, from making any public or
private loan, and from granting in any form whatever any conces-
sion, without the authorization of the French government. The
right is given to France, to effect the military occupation of any
part of the Morroccan territory, which it considers necessary for
the maintenance of order, or the security of commerce.
The mutiny of the troops of the Sultan, which took place at Fez
a few weeks after the signing of this treaty, might be thought to
indicate their dissatisfaction at the loss of their country's independ-
ence. But even the soldiers of an absolute ruler like the Sultan have
lost all sense of patriotism. Their revolt was due merely to per-
sonal grievances. It has had the effect, however, of leading the
government to make a change in policy generally adopted. The
Resident-General recently appointed belongs to the rank of the
military, not of the civil servants of the State, and will consequently
be better fitted to keep the country under strict control. Such con-
trol may be necessary, not merely on account of the unruliness of
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 417
the Moors, but to correct certain abuses which have been permitted
for some time. Native chiefs, who have rendered services to
France, have been allowed to repay themselves for these services
by extortion, and by pillaging the lands of their fellow-countrymen.
In some cases this policy was extended, and even permitted, to
Frenchmen on the same grounds. Confidence is felt in the new
Resident General, that he will put an end to these unjust
proceedings, and make reparation for the wrong that has been done.
The Defence Bills, which involve so large
Germany. an increase of expenditure upon the Army
and Navy, have been referred to the con-
sideration of the Budget Committee, by which, with closed doors,
the details of the Bills will be discussed. The feeling in their favor
was so strong that no division was taken, even the Socialists offer-
ing no opposition at this stage. The government hopes that the
large increase of expenditure involved will not necessitate any in-
crease of taxation. A certain re-adjustment of the duties on spirits
is the only change proposed. The balance is found by giving a
higher estimate of the yield of the taxes already in existence an
estimate thought by many high authorities altogether too sanguine.
Other questions of a less material character have excited consider-
able attention. The repeal of the law for the expulsion of the
Jesuits has been talked of. The Centre, the Poles, and the Socialists,
who are strong enough, if united, to effect this, are said to have
agreed upon this course. It is not, of course, from any love for the
Jesuits that the Social Democrats are willing to recall them. It is
because they object to any laws which impose exceptional penalties
upon German subjects. In another form the question of the Jesuits
has been raised. The law of 1872 excluded them from Germany,
but did not absolutely forbid individual activity, the Federal Coun-
cil having interpreted this law as forbidding all corporate activity,
" especially in church and school." The new Bavarian government
proposes to interpret the activity permitted in a wider and more
liberal sense. This interpretation is held to be in conflict with the
interpretation of the law held in Prussia, and with the regulations
of the Federal Council. Considerable opposition has arisen, and the
Bavarian government has had to refer the question to the Federal
Council, with which body rests the right to give an authoritative
interpretation of the law.
The double capacity of the Emperor, both as head of the Army
VOL. XCV 27.
418 RECENT EVENTS [June,
and the Evangelical Church, places His Majesty in a somewhat
difficult position. As head of the Church he is called upon to con-
demn the practice of duelling, while as head of the Army he is
required by its regulations to visit with certain penalties those who
refuse to fight. The question has been raised through the refusal
of a Catholic officer to challenge a person who had wronged him.
The Minister of War in the Reichstag stated that an officer who, on
these grounds, refused to fight should not be brought before a
Court of Honor, but that such a man does not belong to the social
circles of the Corps of Officers. This statement called forth the
long and prolonged protests of the Centre and the Left. The
Minister of War's statement was based upon a Cabinet Order
signed by the Emperor two years ago. The spokesman of the Centre
declared that this procedure deprived Catholics of their lawful
rights. The Germania, a Catholic organ, declared it to be the duty of
Christian officers to pay more regard to God than to men, whether
those men were Ministers of War or something still higher. The
Minister of War subsequently modified and corrected the terms
of his statement, but adhered to the substance of it. The Cabinet
Order represented, he said, the views which always prevailed, and
still prevail in the German army. The refusal to fight a duel was
so sharply opposed to the views of the Army, and in wide circles
outside it, that officers who refused in a given case placed themselves
in an impossible antagonism to the deepest conviction of their
comrades. Duelling he regarded as an evil, but it was impossible
to stop it by force. The Centre party insists that the present state
of things calls for a fresh expression of the will of the Emperor.
It is not easy to discern any noticeable improvement in the rela-
tions between Germany and Great Britain. The Defence Bills make
it evident that Germany is determined to rely only on the strong arm.
The British Premier declared that the relations between the two
governments were on such a footing as to enable them to discuss
in a frank and friendly way matters of mutual interest. If that
amounted to an amicable understanding, it had been achieved, and
would, he trusted and believed, be continued. The idea entertained
by some Germans, and common among soldiers, that Great Britain
is preparing for a preventive war is being more and more recognized
to have no foundation. There are doubtless those in England
who would be willing to strike a blow while the German navy is
comparatively weak, but the vast majority is altogether opposed to
such a proceeding.
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 419
The new Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minis-
Austria-Hungary, ter, the successor of Count Aehrenthal, has
made his first statement a statement which
is considered pleasingly honest in tone. He affirmed his loyalty to
the principles of his predecessor, in whose footsteps he proposed to
tread. The Triple Alliance is to be maintained in its spirit, its
letter, in the ideal of peace for which it was made. With the Ger-
man Empire the relations are those of the most intimate agreement.
With Italy the alliance of the closest kind is to be maintained. Con-
tinued efforts, notwithstanding the recent repulse, will be made
to mediate between Italy and Turkey to bring the war to an end.
Adhesion is given to the Balkan status quo, although some misgiving
is expressed as to the results of the extension of Italian naval action
to the Aegean. With Russia, France, and Great Britain good rela-
tions exist, and are to be fostered. It is with Turkey that lies the
chief point of interest; with it the traditional neighboring friendli-
ness is to be maintained, and every effort made to avoid or to limit
complications. The Foreign Minister's view of the Monarchy's
foreign affairs was " in general not unfavorable," although he felt
it to be his duty to point out that a great change had been wrought
in the system of international relations, by the British abandonment
of splendid isolation, by the entrance of Japan into an European
alliance, by the Russo-Japanese settlements, and by the establishment
of extensive spheres of influence in Africa and Asia. Thus com-
plications of international relationships created points of friction,
and brought an element of unrest into foreign affairs. The Dual
Monarchy had no aggressive policy, no ideas of expansion, but
because it was situated geographically in the midst of military States,
he felt it necessary to appeal to the delegations to grant the means
to strengthen the army and the navy. It is curious to notice the
same contradictory line of argument in all the appeals made to
European Parliaments. The prospect is all peaceful: no anxiety
need be felt, but the armies and the navies must be increased.
In spite of all his efforts, Count Khuen Hedervary was unable to
maintain his position as Premier, and has had to give place to Dr.
Lukacs, who held in his Cabinet the Ministry of Finance. The
new Cabinet is almost of the same composition as its predecessor.
The factious character of Hungarian politics is shown by the fact
that the Emperor's threat to abdicate was treated as a political
dodge, or at least the use which was made of that threat by the
Count. What the new Premier will be able to do is very hard to
42O
RECENT EVENTS [June,
see. On the one hand, as to the Army, he has the Crown insisting
on its prerogatives, and on the other the Parliament on its rights.
The Universal Suffrage Bill is demanded by one group, and as
stoutly (although stealthily) resisted by another. The destruction
by decree of constitutional government in Croatia has stirred up all
the Serbs, both within and outside the Dual Monarchy, to the most
embittered opposition. Every party seems bent in seeking its own
interests, rather than the good of the country; or, as commonly
happens, identifying the country's best interests with those of the
party.
The highest authority, the Premier himself,
Russia. has recently declared that the idea of popu-
lar representation has taken a firm root in
the national consciousness of Russia, and that no one will to-day
think of returning to the old system of legislation. This result
he attributed to the excellent work accomplished by the third Duma.
No longer did anyone of the men engaged in the government dream
of returning to the old order of things, or strive to thwart the work
which had been begun on the Emperor's initiative. The third Duma
had not, of course, been able to settle all pending questions, but it
had done a valuable preparatory work, which must be taken up by
the Duma which is now beginning its sessions. Of this work com-
mercial treaties, and the development of commerce, would be an
important part. Free trade, however, is not to be a means to this
end; on the contrary, the future, he was convinced, belonged to
protection.
Since the conclusion of the war with Japan, there has been
a progressive increase in the material prosperity of the Empire.
The government has succeeded in remodelling the economic life of
the country. This year, for the first time, the Budget has ex-
ceeded the sum of fifteen hundred millions of dollars, and although
expenditure has increased, equilibrium is not endangered. For the
third time, in fact, there is no deficit. The five years labors of the
Duma have resulted in receipts exceeding expenditure by more
than five hundred millions of dollars. A larger proportion of the
increased expenditure has been used for education and natural
development than for the army and navy. Special efforts are being
made to develop the resources of the country, and for the fostering
of good relations, political, social, and economic, with Great Britain.
The visit paid at the end of last February to Russia by a party of
Englishmen, formed the occasion for the manifestation of the
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 421
friendly feelings now existing between the two countries. Nothing
could exceed the warmth of the reception given by the hosts, or the
satisfaction felt by the guests. Every effort is being made to pro-
mote that extension of education which the conditions of modern
life render necessary. A Bill has been passed by the Duma, and
accepted by the Council of the Empire, although in a greatly modi-
fied form, for introducing general elementary education throughout
the empire.
There are, however, certain unsolved questions which still
have to be faced. Among these the treatment of the Finns seems
the most likely to give trouble. A Bill has been passed to give
to Russian subjects, who are not Finnish citizens, the same rights
in Finland as the local citizens. This Bill is declared by the Finns
to be in conflict with Finnish laws and the Finnish Constitution,
in conflict, in fact, with what the Tsar had himself recognized as an
irrevocable fundamental law. A Commission, too, has been ap-
pointed to draw up a programme for Imperial legislation concern-
ing Finland. The subjects embraced in this programme are very
numerous, and it would seem that if carried into effect, a very small
share of legislation will be left to the Finnish Diet. The Finnish
Pilot and Lighthouse Department has been by decree made subor-
dinate to the Russian Ministry of Marine. A large number of
pilots at once resigned. These and other proceedings of the Russian
government have embittered the feelings of the Finnish people.
The Diet passed a solemn protest, calling upon the Tsar to reverse
a policy which gives precedence to might over right, and which is
standing in the way of peaceful development of Finland's pros-
perity. The Poles, too, have been experiencing the effects of the
new zeal of the Russian Nationalists, but have not suffered to the
same degree.
A recent strike at the Lena gold fields makes it evident that
while there has been a considerable improvement in the Russian
methods, these methods cannot yet be looked upon as reaching a
civilized standard. On this occasion some three thousand miners
went on strike for reasons recognized as perfectly just. With
scarcely any warning the troops shot dead on the spot one hundred
and seven of these strikers. Of the wounded eighty-four have since
died, leaving some two hundred and ten more suffering from more
or less serious wounds. The Press has made a great outcry; one of
the papers calling attention to the fact that in England a strike
had taken place of more than a million of men, which had lasted
422
RECENT EVENTS [June,
several weeks, while not a shot had been fired nor a single man
injured. The intense reprobation expressed by the public shows
that it is not the Russian people, but the government that is to blame.
All sections, save the Extreme Right, both inside and outside the
Duma, have united in deploring and censuring the method adopted
by the authorities as belonging to another age, and as unworthy
of a civilized government.
M. Sazonoff, the successor of M. Isvolsky as Foreign Minister,
having recovered from his illness, a few weeks ago made before the
Duma an exposition of the foreign policy of the Empire. A re-
markable feature of this policy is to be found in the fact that it
contains nothing new to those acquainted with the lines on which
that policy has of late been conducted. The old adventurous
methods, and often disastrous novelties, have happily passed away.
This is the peculiar merit of the present regime. All desires for
dismembering Persia are disclaimed. Help, in fact, is being given,
along with Great Britain, to the Persian government to organize
a small army, and to establish her finances. An assurance has been
given to the Teheran Cabinet that the Russian troops will be with-
drawn as soon as order is restored. The alliance with France
and the Entente with Great Britain are re-affirmed, while with Ger-
many the existing good relations are to be maintained. With
Austria-Hungary a better understanding has been reached. Con-
fidence is expressed that Italy will confine the war within such limits
that the Balkan States will not be brought into the conflict. The
status quo in the Balkan States is to be maintained. Our own is
the only country between whom and Russia a conflict exists. M.
Sazonoff evoked the approval of his hearers by declaring that Russia
would not tolerate interference in her internal affairs. When the
Dardanelles were bombarded by Italy, it was surmised by many that
an understanding, or perhaps even an agreement for common action,
had been arrived at with Italy. For this, however, there seems
to be no real foundation.
In the conflict with Italy, not only the Turks,
Turkey. but the Arabs, their often unwilling subjects,
have shown an undaunted front. There
has been no sign of hesitation, or of. divided counsels. The only re-
gret that has been felt is that no opportunity has been offered of
meeting the enemy on land. At sea the Turks are so weak as to
make resistance hopeless. The wonder is that not merely the sub-
ii } i2.\ RECENT EVENTS 423
ject-races in Macedonia, but also the independent States, Bulgaria,
Servia, Greece, have made no effort to take advantage of the exist-
ing situation. This is due, doubtless, to the pressure brought upon
them by the Great Powers, and to the restriction, up to within a
recent date, of the sphere of the conflict. Whether the extension
of the operations to the Aegean will lead to a change cannot at
present be foretold.
The peaceful attitude that has been maintained in Macedonia
may be due to the work of a Commission of Reforms that has been
sent by the Turkish government for the redress of the grievances
to which these races have so long been subjected. These have been
so great that even the warmest friends of the new regime in Turkey
have become disheartened. The Balkan Committee in April issued
a Manifesto which states that it had incontrovertible evidence of
outrages on a large and increasing scale in Macedonia and Albania.
The novel and most sinister aspect of these outrages was the im-
plication in them of Government officials. Under Abdul Hamid
the murders were indeed more numerous, but his government, the
Committee think, was less responsible. The existing authorities are
warned that unless real reforms are adopted and carried out, the
agitation will be revived to establish international control, and for
the forcible supersession of Turkish rule. This Manifesto of the
Balkan Committee has been reinforced by an appeal of the Internal
Macedonian Committee, which has renewed its activity. The appeal
states that the sufferings of the Christians in Turkey bid to sur-
pass even the Hamidian record. " The population is at the mercy
of innumerable lord-tyrants. Plunders, murders, abduction, and
violation of women and children, are of daily occurrence. The laws
of the land are a dead letter. . . .the assassination of leading Bul-
garians has become a regular system." The peasants are driven
from their lands in order that Moslem immigrants may be intro-
duced. A striking feature of the situation is that the Christians
are better educated than the Turks. This fact makes the latter
afraid of their progress and the increase of their power. This
affords the real reason for the adoption of the brutal means just
mentioned.
In the elections which have been taking place for the new
Parliament, the chief question at issue has been whether an end is to
be put to the unconstitutional domination, not only of the legislature,
but also of the executive, which has been practiced so long by the
Committee of Union and Progress. To its arbitrary proceedings,
424 RECENT EVENTS [June,
for the Ottomanization of all races, is due the oppression to which
those races have been subjected under the new regime. A Liberal
party has come into existence in opposition to the Committee. It
has, however, met with but little success in the contest that has just
taken place. The Committee of Union and Progress has made
every effort to maintain its position, and these efforts have been so
effectually supported by the authorities that there has been no real
freedom to vote. Constitutional government is rather a name in
Turkey than a reality. In Crete there has been a revival of the
efforts to effect the long-desired union with Greece. For a time
something like chaos has prevailed in the Island, the government
having resigned. For a brief interval no one was found willing to
rule. A provisional executive was at last formed. Delegates to the
Greek Parliament were chosen, but when they set out for Athens a
British war vessel seized the ship upon which they had embarked,
and took it back to the Island. The Powers, who have under-
taken to " protect " the Island, threaten to take possession of it for
a second time if the Cretans do not desist from their attempt
to send delegates to Athens. The Greek government is giving no en-
couragement to these efforts. The meeting of Parliament has been
adjourned in hopes that a settlement of the question may be found.
On Mr. Shuster's departure from Teheran,
Persia. Russia and Great Britain addressed a note
to the Cabinet, in which they offered to
advance to Persia a million of dollars at seven per cent interest,
for the purpose of restoring order in the country, upon the con-
dition that the government should spend the money under the con-
trol of the new Treasurer-General, and with the approval of the
Russian and British Legations. In return for this none too gener-
ous help, the two governments required, among other things, an
undertaking from Persia to act in conformity with the principles of
the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 a convention which had
hitherto been treated by the Persians as an impertinent interference
with the affairs of their country. This convention, however, gives
expression to the intention of the parties between whom it is made
to respect the integrity and independence of Persia. After some
hesitation, the Teheran Cabinet recognized the necessity of kissing
the rod that has been smiting them. By accepting the proffered
million, and giving the required assurances, Persia becomes by this
act a party to the Anglo-Russian Convention, and will shape its
IQI2.] RECENT EVENTS 4^5
policy according to its principles. Its constitutional experiment
has so far left the country with an empty treasury, nor have any of
the old problems been solved ; in fact they have become more difficult
of solution. Anarchy exists in many parts. The authorities have
proved themselves unable to enforce the elementary rights which
are necessary for the existence of human society. The money just
borrowed is for the purpose of forming a small army to repress the
existing disorder. Whether this purpose will be carried out, is
not at all certain. Those who claim to be well acquainted with the
situation denounce the highest officials as corrupt to the core, greedy
seekers of their own personal advantage, and utterly indifferent to
the well-being of the country. The constitutional experiment
seemed for a time to be at an end, for although new elections have
been promised, there was no sign of any real intention to hold them.
But recently it has been announced that elections will be held in
certain districts. The ex-Shah has taken his departure, but his
brother, Salar-ed-Dowleh, who has a large following, and is in pos-
session of a considerable district, has announced his intention to
found a vassal state in Western Persia. No attention is he paying to
the advice given him by Russia and Great Britain, that he should
leave the country. His forces have in fact been gaining ground
against those of the government. Strange to say the Regent it is
who proposed to depart from Persia, being dismayed at the diffi-
culties of the situation. He has, however, been prevailed on to
remain. Unfortunately, in spite of his Oxford education, he, or at
least his government, has reverted to the wonted vices of an abso-
lute ruler. A series of arbitrary arrests has taken place of members
of the late Mejliss and other constitutional leaders. As no agita-
tion is in progress, the arrests appear to be due to personal vin-
dictiveness. The Regent, it is said, is obsessed by the idea that
plots are being made against his life. It looks as if, taking account
of all that has recently occurred, the era of liberty and independence,
of which the country has had a short dream, was on the point of
departing. To use the words of a Persian : " We have been like
the thieves that found themselves -in heaven we have looted Para-
dise instead of living in it."
Little progress has been made in the restora-
China. tion of order in China. Opinions differ as
to the prospects for the future. The first
need is money. The revolution was mainly due to the military
426 RECENT EVENTS [June,
forces; and now that their efforts have been successful, they have
become exacting they are not willing, even for the good of the coun-
try, to disband without being paid. In default of payment, they have
been guilty of many outrages in various parts. For the purpose
of satisfying the demands of the soldiers, the government secured
a loan. The Powers, however, with whom China had already
entered into an engagement, declared this loan to be a breach of that
engagement. Negotiations have been proceeding for some time, and
it is reported, although the reports are somewhat contradictory, that
an arrangement satisfactory to all parties has at last been made
an arrangement which will put at China's disposal the requisite
funds.
An Advisory Council, which is a feature of the new order in
China, has recently been opened. This Council is to consist of rep-
resentatives of all the provinces of the Empire, and of Mongolia,
Tibet, and Kokonor. Among its members were many Chinese who
had been educated in Japan, and several graduates of our own uni-
versities. The opening ceremony made a great impression; the
character of the assembly appearing such a contrast to the anti-
quated reactionaries who have for so long a time misgoverned the
country. The opening address of the President of the Republic,
Yuan Shih-Kai, was worthy of the occasion. Nothing so states-
manlike has ever yet been heard in China. He reviewed the present
day conditions, and outlined the pressing reforms essential for the
country's welfare. He urged the necessity of strengthening friendly
relations with foreign powers; the necessity of reforming land
taxation and revising mining regulations; of improving education,
legal procedure, and means of communication ; advised the employ-
ment of foreign experts in reforming finance, agriculture, and
forestry. While great difficulties undoubtedly stand in the way of
the new government, arising from the lawlessness recently mani-
fested by the troops, persons intimately acquainted with the country
see no reason to fear that they are irremediable. The situation is
getting under control ; the forces tending to consolidation are
thought to be infinitely stronger than those making for disintegra-
tion.
With Our Readers.
^PHEORY and practice are oftentimes inconsistent, but we have
i. seldom seen a more glaring example of opposition between the
two than that given in the Presbyterian organ, The Continent, of April
18, 1912. Practice is shown in the account of how certain Ruthenian
Catholics in Newark, N. J., were robbed of the faith most dear to them
by the machinations of a minister of the gospel, Dr. Lusk. His un-
abashed confession of duplicity is equalled only by the evident approval
of a journal of the high standing of The Continent. We give below
under " Practice " The Continent's account of Dr. Lusk's process.
Under " Theory " we place some extracts from a praiseworthy contri-
bution to the same number of The Continent from the pen of Pr.
Jowett. Dr. Jowett's own words are a sufficient commentary on Dr.
Lusk's statement.
PRACTICE.
THAT RUTHENIAN MASS AND THE OUTCOME.
If anybody of consequence has been disturbed by published complaints
about Catholic services held in a Presbyterian mission in Newark, New Jersey,
he will assuredly feel his fears allayed by the simple but sufficient explanation
which Dr. Lusk, Newark Presbytery's statesmanlike superintendent of exten-
sion work, put into the annual report distributed to congregations of the pres-
bytery Easter morning :
" For over two years I have had the oversight of the Ruthenian work.
When I first knew them they were using the service of the Old Church from
which they came. I made myself familiar with the service and the customs
and the peculiarities of the people. I saw it would not do to start a revolution,
but rather a process of elimination. I had learned from experience how deep-
seated and strong are religious prejudices. I knew that the customs of genera-
tions were not easily given up.
" So we advanced step by step one thing, after another was thrown
out. It was a rather slow process, but it went steadily on. I gave no ear to
the critics, but held fast to the purpose and the object to be attained. We
were assailed savagely assailed by the emissaries of the Old Church, and they
did not hesitate to enlist with them some who bear our own name.
" But there was some friendly advice also. A professor in one of our
best and most orthodox theological seminaries wrote me to make haste slowly,
and not too rapidly cut these people off from the things that had meant so
much to them. However, I pressed forward just as rapidly as I thought was
wise.
"What is the result? Why, this: To-day we have a thoroughly Christian
and Protestant service. The minister faces the people ; he wears a black gown
like other Presbyterian ministers; and the reformed service only is used
this is a service with everything distinctly Catholic eliminated.
" These people deserve our encouragement. They are studying their Bibles.
They knew no Bible in the Old Church. If we have faith in the old book we
should trust it here.
" It took over seven years in Canada to get these people away from their
darkness ; in Newark we have been at the work less than half that time, and
many of them are now walking in the light. These people are facing toward
the light. Give them a chance to advance ! Besides, they came to us ; we did
not seek them."
428 WITH OUR READERS [June,
THEORY.
THE FUTILE WEAVER.
" Their webs shall not become garments." These words were spoken of
an intensely busy people We see men making haste. All is significant of
a restless people abounding in feverish activity. But the activity is possessed
by no holy inspiration. It is pervaded by the spirit of falsehood. Its creations
are built upon lies and perverseness. " None calleth for justice, nor any
pleadeth for truth." All their goings are governed by subtlety and publicity.
they are a busy people: always on the go, the shuttles of activity never
silent But an evil spirit sits at the loom.
" Your webs shall not become garments," thus saith the Lord. There shall
be a momentous stop in the process. The work of the weaver shall be futile.
There shall be a tragic lack of attainment. It shall fail just when it seemed
about to succeed. The preliminaries may be successfully accomplished, the
-initial stages may be safely passed, the ultimate triumph may be in sight, but
it shall never be reached. The shuttles have been cleverly handled, the strands
have been woven, but " their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they
cover themselves with their works." Busy weavers indeed! But the spirit
of iniquity is in the loom, and at the end of the long day there shall be no
strong garments to clothe the weaver and to shield him from the judgment
of shame our fabric may be power, but the power obtained by subterfuge
will not clothe us with the garments of peace if we have woven it with
deceitfulness and treachery, it shall never clothe us in the fine, satisfying
habit of enduring joy. The things we wanted will never arrive. It may seem
as though they are coming nearer, but we shall never meet.
And thus it is that all iniquity ends in exposure, the exposure of the naked
soul to the blasts of judgment. Falsehood fails in the long run. It cannot
possibly win. It can never perfect its purpose. Its really finished work is death.
In the last stages it faints and falls. " The wicked shall not stand in the
judgment." All its gayly designed purposes, all its clever means and ex-
pediencies, all its seeming accomplishments, shall fall into wreck and confusion,
like a house whose foundation has not been " truly laid," a house built upon
rottenness and iniquity. In the moment of apparent final triumph weakness
topples over into disorder and desolation. It is a matter of sanity to weave
the fabric of our lives with sound and healthy thread. Rotten strands never
pay. A lie is a costly expedient. One bit of crookedness affects the stability of
the entire building. Falsehood has very remote influences. We may think we
have left it far behind. We may even forget it. We may go on with our
building, but the evil thing reappears in the insecurity of the entire pile.
Or, to return to the figure of the prophet, if we weave with rotten threads
our webs shall never become garments.
Somewhere or other we meet our God, and in that crisis every man's
work shall be tried of what sort it. is. Rottenness shall be tried by God's
holiness, and in that pure and sacred flame it shall pass away like dry stubble.
All our life, with all its purposes and activities, is every moment in that fire,
"the unquenchable fire," and the good and the bad are every moment exposed
to the influences of its burning. " Now is the judgment."
Our rotten work is even now being tried, and judged, and sentenced, and
even now the sentence is being surely carried out, although the climax of final
eclipse may seem to tarry. " God is not slack as some count slackness." The
execution of judgment is proceeding; eclipse is on its way. There is a wood-
worm which eats out the insides of trees, and leaves only a skeleton standing.
Outwardly there is no appearance of destruction, but the tragedy is proceeding
in secret. And some day the sound of a tempest is heard, and in its violent
igi2.] WITH OUR READERS 429
grip the tree will shiver into ruin. Thus it is with the destructive antagonisms
of God. They work in present judgment to the sure if slow revelation of
disaster. God is at work upon our falsehoods ; they shall come to nothing !
These webs shall never become garments. The secret Presence is unraveling our
subtle weavings, and the end of the day shall bring confusion and shame.
T T NDER the title Everybody's St. Francis, Dr. Maurice Francis Egan
U begins a life of the Saint in the May Century. This first install-
ment deals with the Saint's youth. The biography covers much
ground, but is attractively done, and speaks of the growth of an interest
in the Saint which is already very great.
The same number of the Century has a humorous letter by
Hilaire Belloc, entitled On a Very Special Calling.
COME months ago a quotation said to be taken from THE CATHOLIC
^J WORLD appeared in several papers through the country. We
had intended not to speak of it to our readers, for it was false on
its very face. We had denied its genuineness to inquirers, and had en-
deavored to run it down and kill it. But it found in certain quarters
very fertile soil, and spread as rapidly as the proverbial rank weed.
They who quoted it stated it was from THE CATHOLIC WORLD: they
never gave the volume and page. Asked to substantiate the statement,
they invariably quoted some other paper, and to the other paper they
shifted all responsibility. It would be impossible for us to give the
entire story of how this vicious falsehood, so readily accepted and re-
peated by a number of Protestant journals, has grown. From the evi-
dences already received, it will, we fear, be repeated in journals, in pul-
pits or on platforms, where neither reader nor hearer will be able to con-
tradict it; and where the emphasis of statement will carry conviction
to minds only too readyto believe anything against the Catholic Church.
The quotation attributed to THE CATHOLIC WORLD is as follows:
" The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose of securing
Catholic ascendancy in this country. All legislation must be governed by the
will of God unerringly indicated by the Pope. Education must be controlled by
the Catholic authorities, and under education the opinions of the individual
and the utterances of the press are included. Many opinions are to be forbidden
by the secular arm, under the authority of the Church, even to war and blood-
shed."
We give one example of how the falsehood grows, and of how some
Christians make an apology and eagerly ( ?) seek to undo the wrong
they have done.
The Christian Observer, of Louisville, Ky., in its issue of April
1 7th, published the quotation given above, and prefaced it with the
words: "We quote from THE CATHOLIC WORLD." Shortly after its
appearance the Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD asked the Editor of
the Christian Observer for the volume and page from which he quoted.
430 WITH OUR READERS [June,
The answer returned was " the paragraph was copied by us from the
Herald and Presbyter of Cincinnati, Ohio." To this we replied, " the
quotation is absolutely false : it is a gross calumny, and we ask you in
simple justice to publish this statement of ours in as equally a conspic-
uous place as you published the falsehood."
The Christian Observer then in its issue of May isth, under
the unpleasant title of " The Spirit of Romanism," said :
" The accuracy of the quotation has been called in question, and the Editor
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD has written asking from what number of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD the quotation was taken.
"The quotation was published in the Herald and Presbyter of November 15,
1911, and credited to THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The Christian Observer had no
reason to doubt the accuracy of the quotation, in view of the fact that it had
always found this particular exchange more than usually careful and pains-
taking in their quotations.
" The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD now enters a specific denial, saying :
'The quotation never appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD.' We are also in re-
ceipt of a letter from Mr. John J. Wynne, Editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia,
who says : 'I follow this publication (THE CATHOLIC WORLD) very carefully,
and I should surely have noticed such a statement had it appeared therein.
Moreover, I have assurance of the Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD that the
statement was never contained in its pages.'
" The Herald and Presbyter, from which the quotation was made, does not
recall the date of the paper from which it quoted. In view of the fact that both
we and the Herald and Presbyter quoted the statement in good faith, and THE
CATHOLIC WORLD feels that an injustice has been done to it, we gladly give
space to the publication of the statement of the Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
that this particular quotation did not appear in that paper."
They who breathe this atmosphere of " The Spirit of Romanism "
will, we fear, think that, although this particular quotation did not ap-
pear in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, something very similar and equally as
strong will be found in its pages if one were to search long enough.
We regret to say that we do not think that the Christian Observer
has in this matter met the demands of Christian justice.
We regret this the more because some readers of the Observer,
who trust its quotations, have allowed themselves to be unduly agitated
over the matter. We quote, as an illustration, a letter written to the
Anderson (S. C.) Daily Mail. The letter repeated the quotation
wrongly attributed to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and then continued :
. " This paper is the recognized organ of the Romish church, and it is both
a challenge and a threat. A challenge to all non-Romanists to be on guard,
and a threat as to what that church will do if it ever gets the power.
Our country was founded and built upon the bed rock of civil and religious
liberty, the absolute separation of church and state, and here is a paper claiming
the right for a mere man, a piece of flesh and blood like the rest of us, who
happens to be the head of a great church, with seat of his power in a city
more than three thousand miles away from here, the right to dictate in matters
of education, religion, and the right of free speech, * even to war and bloodshed.'
Isn't that a monstrous claim to put forth in this twentieth century civilization?
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 431
It may do in Italy, but it won't do in these United States. Now, we have some
as fine people in the Romish church here in South Carolina as are to be found
anywhere, but they are not types of the Romish church. The boast of Rome
is that she never changes, and her history shows her to be the enemy of civil
and religious liberty. And this quotation from their church organ but sustains
that claim, and Americans being thus forewarned should be forearmed.
ANDERSON, S. C, April 30. D. H. RUSSELL."
The writer of this heated letter was immediately requested by
Father A. K. Gwynn, of St. Joseph's Church, Anderson, S. C., to give
the volume and page of THE CATHOLIC WORLD from which the quota-
tion was taken.
But Mr. Russell's source of information had been the Christian
Observer. To it he hastened by mail for help. The answer he
received was that they could not help him, for they had copied from
the Herald and Presbyter, and this last could not help because they
had not the copy of THE CATHOLIC WORLD from which it was clipped.
Father Gwynn has offered $100.00 to Mr. Russell if he will substantiate
his statement. Mr. Russell is silent.
We might give other instances of the wrong done by the thought-
less avidity of certain Protestants to believe anything and everything
in line with their unfounded prejudices against the Catholic Church.
But we have given enough ; and will not this exposure of the wrong,
and the injustice which their misrepresentations work, lead them to
cultivate a kindlier and fairer spirit of Christian charity. " Charity
is kind and thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in
the truth."
Such a spirit of true Christian charity was shown by the Editor
of the Presbyterian organ, The Continent, who in this matter under
discussion wrote as follows. We are happy to close the account of
this incident with his letter:
EDITOR THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
Permit me to call your attention to the fact that in a Protestant missionary
magazine of rather wide circulation I find the following printed as a quotation
from THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
(Then follows the quotation given on page 429.)
I may add that as the Editor of a Protestant paper, I am a pretty thorough-
going Protestant myself, and do not think myself at all free from anti-Catholic
prejudices; but I know something of THE CATHOLIC WORLD and its spirit,
and I cannot readily believe that this quotation, which I certainly never saw
in your pages, is accurate. I am sure at the same time that your magazine says
nothing cryptic or secret, and if this is really a sentiment which has been
editorially expressed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, you will be good enough to verify
it for me, and cite me to the issue from which it is quoted. I will appreciate
the courtesy if I may hear from you authoritatively whether this is an utterance
of yours, or of any contributor for whom you would wish to be responsible.
Thanking you for the courtesy, I am,
Yours very sincerely, NOLAN R. BEST.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
Spoiling the Divine Feast. By F. M. de Zulueta, S.J. 5 cents. The Little
Communicant. Compiled by Rev. Bonaventure Hammer, O.F.M. 25 cents.
Angels of the Sanctuary. By B. F. Musser. 25 cents.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York :
The Smaller Cambridge Bible for Schools. Edited by T. H. Hennessy, M.A.
30 cents.
F. FISCHER & BROTHERS, New York :
Catholic Church Hymnal. Edited by Edmonds Tozer. $1.00.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York :
Almayer's Folly. By Joseph Conrad. $1.25.
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York :
The Fighting Blade. By Beulah Marie Dix. $1.30 net.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York :
The Good Shepherd and His Little Lambs. By Mrs. Herman Bosch. 75 cents.
The Friendship of Christ. By Robert Hugh Benson. $1.20 net.
THE AMERICAN PRESS, New York :
Lnretto: Annals of the Century. By Anna C. Minogue. $1.50.
STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS, New York:
South American Problems. By Robert E. Speer. The Chinese Revolution. By
Arthur Judson Brown.
FUNK & WAGNALLS Co., New York:
Economic and Moral Aspects of the Liquor Business. By Robert Bagnell.
75 cents.
P. J. KENEDY'S SONS, New York:
Margaret's Travels. By Anthony Yorke. $1.25.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York :
Organ Accompaniment to the Cantate. By J. Singenberger. $3.50 net.
THE IRVINGTON PUBLISHING Co., New York:
Lawyers, Doctors and Preachers. By George H. Bruce, A.M. $1.00.
THE RUMFORD PRESS, Concord, N. H. :
Poems. By Rev. Hugh F. Blunt. $1.00.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington:
Report of the Committee of Education for the Year Ended June 30, lyn.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., Philadelphia:
Fate Knocks at the Door. By Will Levington Comfort. $1.25.
THE DOLPHIN PRESS, Philadelphia:
The Rule of St. Clare: Its Observances in the Light of Early Documents. By/
Fr. Paschal Robinson. 10 cents.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
The Promised Land. By Mary Antin. $1.75 net. Little Gray Songs from St.
Joseph's. By Grace Fallow Morton. $1.00 net.
L. C. PAGE & Co., Boston :
Our Little Polish Cousin. By Florence E. Mendel. 60 cents. The Girls of
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By Louise M. Breitenbach. $1.50.
RICHARD G. BADGER, Boston:
The Dear Saint Elisabeth. By Eliza O'B. Lummis. $1.00 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages. By Hartmann Crisar, S.J.
$4.50.
ELKIN MATTHEWS, London :
The Campagna of Rome. By Stanhope Bayley. is. 6d. net.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne :
The Church and Socialism. By J. A. Scott, M.A. Little Nelly of Holy God.
By A Priest of the Diocese of Cork. Pamphlets i penny each.
GABRIEL BEAUCHESNE, Paris :
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ALPHONSE PICARD, Paris :
Palladius, Histoire Lausiaque. Translated par A. Lucot. 5 fr.
PLON-NOURRIT ET CIE, Paris :
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LIBRAIRIE ARMAND COLIN, Paris :
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SCUOLA TIPOGRAFICA ARTiGiANELLi, Monza, Italy :
La Dotasione Immobiliare Delia S. Sede Nei Rapporti Del Diritto Pubblico
E Del Diritto Internationale. By Achille Gallarini.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCV. JULY, 1912. No. 568.
MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER.
BY THOMAS J. GERRARD.
THING cannot be and not be at the same time. This
is the sublime and eternal truth which has to be
hammered into the heads of all those modern pur-
veyors of thought who seek to establish a monistic
conception of the universe. The multitude of com-
mon-sense folk who do not trouble themselves deeply with theories
of life, but who are accustomed to look upon things as they are,
all agree to this truth, and express their belief in it by saying that
you cannot have your cake and eat it. The particular cake which
the monist wants to keep is his identity with the universe. But then
he wants to eat it by asserting his own individuality. He recog-
nizes that in some measure he is responsible for his actions. They
are his own. He is himself and not another. But all this hard
experience runs counter to his pet theory: that the universe con-
sists of one principle alone. It may be that he is a materialistic
monist, believing matter to be the ultimate reality of the universe ;
or he may be an idealistic monist, believing mind to be the ultimate
principle. But whichever line he takes he must sooner or later come
face to face with the solid fact that if he has eaten his cake, the only
pleasure which it can offer to him in the future is that of a blest
memory. He cannot renounce his individuality, and consequently
his personality and responsibility, and then hope to keep these
endowments for his future delight.
Here then is the radical disease from which modern thought
is suffering. In denying a dualistic universe, in which the Creator
is transcendently distinct from the creature, it asserts that man is
Copyright. 1912. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. xcv. 28.
434 MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER [July,
self-perfectible, and that he is a law unto himself. If there is no
Supreme Being above nature, then there is no universal lawgiver
and ruler. Or if nature is identical with God, then man, being God,
is his own supreme lawgiver and ruler. In both cases he is unable
to rise higher than himself, for he cannot give what he has not got.
Nor need the monistic concept be altogether explicit in the
mind of the monist. There is a practical, as well as an academic,
monism which may distress, even if it does not seduce, the unwary
man of common sense. Over and over again the Catholic work-
ingman has been nonplussed by a popular presentment of the
fallacy. He has been able to hold his own on the rights of prop-
erty and the exigencies of the living wage, but he has been completely
taken aback when told : " Your aims are no use to us. They
belong too much to the other world. The kingdom of heaven is
here on earth. Your kingdom of heaven is fit only for the angels
and the sparrows."
Yet out of the depths of the monist chaos a cry is audible,
a cry of dissatisfaction. The notorious atheist, for instance, Mr.
Robert Blatchford, writing in his English journal, The Clarion,
thus laments the poverty of life into which Socialism has already
fallen :
Socialism is become too much a matter of politics. Let us
beware lest we lose our souls.
The morality of our pastors and masters is as mean as their
economics; the poor have the priest as well as the capitalist
upon their backs.
Why does a child steal toys or a woman kisses? Can you
tell me that ? There is a hunger of the soul as well as a hunger
of the stomach. Our moral standard is debased.
But do you believe that labor politics are going to save our
souls? No. We want political freedom; we want economic
emancipation ; but we want more than these : we want a new
religion.
Human beings want more than wages ; they want life.
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea.
The guinea is not enough. Man cannot live by bread
alone. A mere labor programme will not save our souls. A
religion of mere economics will not save the people. You may
raise a wave of enthusiasm over tariff reform or the budget,
but when you have elected honorable members for Park Lane
and Bermondsey the wave will recede. Fight for a decade for
1912.] MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER 435
a few beggarly seats in a house of shams, and at the end you
will still have the " Song of the Shirt " and the " Bridge of
Sighs " to hurt and humble you
What then will it profit us if we win the by-elections and
lose our souls ?
We want a new religion. The Socialism I believe in and
work for is a new religion ; it is the religion of humanism ;
not the religion of class legislation and the minimum wage.
We want something more than mere machines for making
money; we want to be women and men and children.
The professional Socialist has got past the merely mechanical
and materialist doctrine of Karl Marx. Nevertheless that doc-
trine still retains a hold on thousands of workingmen. Nor does
the professional Socialist fail to fall back upon it, if he be address-
ing a crowd in the market-place and can thereby appear to advan-
tage. But, as we have seen, it is sterilizing in its effect on life.
It paints its picture grey in grey. Then the taste becomes so in-
sipid that something other and better is asked for. Humanism is
taken up as a substitute for mechanism. That is a better life, but
still not a religion. It is monist in principle, and so does not rec-
ognize that transcendent God who alone is a sufficient sanction
against the many ethical anomalies in the economic world.
Further, this is the very vice which has brought Capital and
Labor to such desperate grips as we see to-day. On the one hand,
there is a Capital which can prove itself the most heartless tyrant
in the world's history. By raising the price of the poor man's food
it can produce an artificial famine. The Standard Oil Trust and its
allies may be cited as example. On the other hand, there is a labor
which can organize a strike in such proportions as to paralyze
a whole country. Certainly a strike is a legitimate means by which
labor may enforce its rights. But before labor can know when
precisely it may not bring further pressure to bear on Capital, and
before Capital can recognize a similar duty towards Labor, there
must be some mutual acknowledgment of a Supreme Arbiter. If
monism is to prevail, then the contending parties may endeavor to
postpone the issue by friendly conversations, but the ultimate way
of settlement will be an appeal to brute force. The passions
of men here come largely into play. They can be controlled
only by intelligent wills. And if a vast number of wills, intelligent
and free, are to be reduced to harmony with each other, it can
only be by a mutual acknowledgment of an outside Will over-
ruling all.
436 MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER [July,
I have said there is a practical monism as well as an academic
one. The principle of Protestantism is a variety of this. When
the visible vicarious authority of God was rejected, the door was
opened for the rejection of the invisible direct authority of God.
There is indeed now a Lutheran sect in Germany which has changed
the Lord's Prayer from Vater unser to Unser Vater, in order to
assert that man comes before God as arbiter of his own destiny.
Consequently, whilst, on the one hand, we have an observant atheism
asking for a higher life, albeit not knowing what it asks; on the
other hand we have a Protestant subjectivism professing its im-
potence to save the situation.
Dr. Inge, the noted Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London,
speaking lately on the relations between his Church, the Anglican,
and the spirit of the age, said that the Anglican Church as an
institution had always been disposed to truckle to the powers that
be. Three hundred years ago its pulpits rang with the divine
right of kings. Now that the masses were becoming conscious of
the power which democracy put in their hands, that same Church
was making the most of the obviously socialistic leanings of her
Founder, as Dr. Inge put it. Much of the present labor movement
was opposed to Christianity, Dr. Inge maintained, and was mater-
ialistic. The workingman would ultimately find that the leaders
who were promising him an earthly paradise at the end of a flowery
path, were really conducting him to a premature hell at the end
of the way of blood.
Now if the signs of decadence are so insistent in the elemental
experiences of life, in the hunger of the body and the hunger of
the soul, in economics and in religion, much more so are they
in the freer experiences of life, in the liberal arts, in sculpture,
painting, drama, literature, music. Whether we call the artist a
sculptor, a painter, a poet, or a musician, the quality of his work
will depend on his artistic instincts. If these are fed only from
within, if they are the result chiefly of brooding over subjective
moods, then the work produced must needs be impoverished. For
art is the translation of ideas into work. A rich, varied, and univer-
sal art therefore can only be wrought when the mind of the artist
has absorbed much from universal experience. He may bring to
his work all the talent of his native genius, but his eccentricities
must be corrected by reference to the universal feeling and judg-
ment of humanity.
Further, if the artistic instinct is to produce permanent work,
it must be nurtured from the spirit world. The function of art is
1912.] MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER 437
not merely to describe the material, but also and chiefly the spiritual ;
the spiritual indeed through the material. The true artist, then,
will regard himself, last of all, as self -perfectible. He will learn his
technique in the art schools. Even there he will be correcting his
eccentricities by reference to masters who have plumbed the depths
of universal experience. Then when he leaves the schools his
progress as a master will be proportionate to the measure in which
he becomes less provincial and more catholic. And communion
with the Infinite Spirit will be the source of his finest inspirations,
for God is the archetype and origin of everything that is beautiful.
But this is precisely what is not observed in modern art. To
get into some eccentric mood, rather, and to express it somehow
in one's chosen branch of art, seems to be the governing aim.
An example in the sphere of sculpture is that of the young
American, George Grey Barnard. He has shown us his intentions
in .words as well as in stone. His early habits were formed in an
atmosphere of extremely exaggerated subjectivism.
I was dreadfully and habitually introspective [he says speak-
ing of his student days in Paris]. The concrete facts of life
meant little to me. I was steeped in the contemplation and
considerations of abstraction. Men, women, children, archi-
tecture, and machinery were merely examples of lines, light, and
shadow to me. I was roused from this state by falling in love
with the young woman who is now my wife. She took me out
of myself into the real world of life. But for her I might
have remained satisfied with watching the things in which I
was interested without trying to reproduce them. After meet-
ing her I ceased for ever to indulge my introspective moods.
TJiis shifting of his center from the ego to the nos, from the
first person singular to the first person plural, although it brought
him more into touch with reality, failed to establish a communica-
tion between him and the spiritual world. Whatever of the uni-
versal he might have gathered from Greek art he wilfully shut off
from himself.
I saw [he says] that the ideal of the Greeks was to make
gods. They created beautiful forms, beautiful symbols, which
they set on pedestals. But, in their statuary, they stopped short,
deliberately, at anything that was individual or characteristic
of humanity. The day of the gods is past. This is the day of
the people. It is the people, and the characteristics of the people,
438 MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER [July,
that I want to fix in sculpture. They say: What is the use of
making statues? Everything has been done. I answer, No.'
We are only at the beginning of sculpture. All humanity is
waiting to be expressed in bronze and stone.
What painting has recently done to express humanity, we may
be excused from relating. The grossness to which the cult of the
flesh has fallen may be inferred from two pictures which were
exhibited this last summer, one at Darmstadt, the other at Baden-
Baden. The one represented simply two sides of beef, the other
a veal bone, an onion, and two flies. The purpose of the pictures
was, so I was told by an artist who approved of them, to express
the spirit of the slaughter-house or the larder, as the case might
be, as it entered into the soul of the painter.
So, too, in a similar strain, we have the perpetrations of the
whole post-impressionist school. Corot, in giving a new acc.ent
to the subjective side of art, bid fair to provide a pleasing relief
from the exaggerated realism into which it had fallen. But alas,
his followers drifted with the time spirit. They were not content
with giving expression to some impression received from without.
They were not satisfied with taking some external beautiful reality
and reading into it something of their own reflexions. They wanted
to create things irrespective of objective truth. Hence they had
not the patience to wait until they knew their technique. The
vagueness and barrenness of morbid subjective moods could be
represented by a blur and a smudge, and a blur and a smudge they
painted.
In the realm of literature we need only mention the tribe of
writers who count Emile Zola and Anatole France as their more
luminous stars.
The symptoms of the drama are Ibsen, Shaw, Pinero, Gals-
worthy, Barker, and Brieux. The decadent movement began in
1889, when The Doll's House was produced. It would seem to have
reached the nether hell in Man and Superman, a play which still
attracts large audiences nightly in London. There is certainly a
growing feeling that Shaw is becoming played out. His brilliant
style ensures him the success which is his. But style, however
brilliant, soon palls if it be not the vehicle of truth and goodness;
since the intellect was made for truth and the will for the good.
There is just a modicum of truth and goodness in Shaw's work, and
this it is which serves as substance to support his style. He does,
for instance, lay bare crying evils. But he does not suggest the
1912.] MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER 439
right remedies. He will empty the water out of a dirty bath, but
he will also empty the baby out with it.
There is, for instance, a semblance of truth in Shaw's pro-
posal and the idea runs through the whole of modern decadent
thought that a man shall realize himself by conquering his en-
vironment. But when we see the idea being worked out in practice
we observe that it is fraught with the most subtle of psychological
fallacies. The natural impulse of conduct may derive its motive
power either from the rational will or from a blind passion. In
the effort to attain to superman no such distinction is made. If
a man wants a thing, let him get it honestly if he can, only let
him get it. The exaggerated subjectivism of the day takes account
only of the subjective mood of the moment. But the mood of
the moment is only too frequently the flame of passion. When that
is ablaze the intellect is darkened and the will weakened. If it be
allowed to have its way habitually, the intellect and the will grad-
ually lose their keenness and become atrophied. Thus is life
poisoned at the wells. Not only is the transcendent Guide and
Ruler disowned, but the very instruments of perfectibility are cast
aside. Sensuality, having become the norm of conduct, drags
every sphere of human life down to its own brutish level.
So also in music. For example, we need not go beyond our
own doors. The strong and watchful Pontiff has been successfully
active even here. For what is the stuff which has been cast out ?
It is the solo in every sense of the word. It is the soloist composer
the Wagner, the Berlioz, the Gounod the artist who is absorbed
in his own moods, thinking rather of the glory of himself than of
the glory of God. It is the soloist singer who, almost by reason of
her environment and perhaps in spite of her better self, is so self-
conscious as to distract the whole congregation from their prayers
to her sentimental melody. Yes, that is what the solo in music in-
evitably comes to express, sheer sentimentality.
And what is the ideal which is set before us instead? It is
the humble splendor of the plain chant. Its authorship is almost
unknown. It was composed in the silence of the cloister, where
prayer was the medium of inspiration. Other artists were per-
mitted to translate the sacred text into figured music, but they were
kept subordinate to the mind and sentiment of the Universal
Church. Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Vittoria, Josquin de Pres,
Bach, these are the great experts in that musical composition which
is at once an expression of the universal and the spiritual. Their
work was no sensuous dream, no mere replica in sound of oriental
440 MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER [July,
perfume and color " scented toilet water " is the description of
Gounod by another decadent it was the working out of ideas, of
universals according to universal laws. Those composers died in
order that they might live. Mere sentimentality was mortified. The
spirit being then more free, could commune more deeply with the
Great Spirit and with the whole hierarchy of the spirit world.
Hence the inspirations which they were able to embody in such
sublime musical form.
Turning to the sphere of philosophy, the figure which seems
to demand our first attention is that of Professor Henri Bergson.*
He is really the giant among the moderns. He is supple to perfec-
tion. He has glided through the whole regiment of heavy Germans,
von Kant bis Nietzsche, wielding a rapier as he passed. But his
very lithesomeness has beguiled him into some of the worst falla-
cies of exaggerated subjectivism.
Bergson, in contrast to most pantheistic writers, insists on the
free will of man. He proves conclusively that all mechanistic ex-
planations of the universe in general, and of humanity in particular,
are absurd. But then, on the other hand, he will not admit a doctrine
of final causes. Teleology has no place in his system. " The
theory of final causes," he says, " goes too far when it supposes
a pre-existence of the future in the present in the form of idea."
An original impetus of life was given to the primordial matter
of the world, and the function of this life was to put some indeter-
mination into matter. Therefore the forms which it creates in
the course of its evolution are indeterminate, that is, unforeseeable.
Intellect itself, indeed, is one of the forms which it has created.
So this impetus of life goes on, acting in man through his free
will, yet without any final purpose.
Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, -far ahead, is all her seamen know.
Life as a whole [writes Bergson], from the initial impulse
that thrust it into the world, will appear as a wave which rises,
and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.
On the greater part of its surface, at different heights, the
current is created by matter into a vortex. At one point alone
it passes freely, dragging with it the obstacles which will weigh
on its progress but will not stop' it. At this point is humanity ;
it is our privileged situation.f
*We have arranged for Father Gerrard to write a series of articles dealing more
fully with the philosophy of Bergson from the scholastic viewpoint. Ed. C. W.
t Creative Evolution, p. 284.
1912.] MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER 441
He claims that there is a God who is the center of all things,
and from whom all worlds shoot out. But such a God is not a
being who is already perfect being, but one who is a perpetual
becoming.
Apply now the foregoing doctrine to conduct. Man is simply
bound down by his subjective moods and imaginings. His efforts
to realize himself or to evolve into something better are, at most,
impulses of the mood he is in for the time being. If there is no
final purpose for which he is made, how can he strive to attain it?
If there is no pre-determined end for which he must strive, how
is he to select suitable means and reject hindrances? How is
man to know what is good and what is bad if he has not an un-
changing standard by which to judge? Refuse to accept teleology
or a final purpose in life, and there is no alternative but to follow
whim and fancy. Whim and fancy, however, ever tend to minister
to the sensual part of man. If a man is a law to himself, he will
choose that which satisfies his animal appetites. The due order
of his nature will be reversed, intelligence and volition being made
ministrant to passion. Perhaps a comparatively few men, whose
profession compels them to exercise their intellects, may be able
to keep their intellects uppermost ; but for the multitudes the theory
spells nothing else but self-indulgence, and consequently racial de-
cadence.
One would surmise that the plain man would have enough
common sense to see through the fallacy. But unfortunately it is
now being sugared over with the usual promises of the So-
cialist Utopia. Quite recently a man asked the well-known
strike-leader, Sorel, what he and his followers would do if they
really succeeded in overthrowing the present order of society. The
answer was this : " Bergson has taught us that we need not worry
about that, for all we need to do is to trust to the creative impulse."
Translated into disagreeably plain language, this means simply
that we should have to muddle through the fiasco the best way we
could. This creative " evolution," " drive," " impulse," " effort,"
or whatever else we like to call it, professedly aims at nothing.
And he who aims at nothing is extremely likely to hit it.
Mr. Balfour, in a recent number of the Hibbert Journal, has
well exposed this fallacy of aimless endeavor. But, in the latest
number of the same review, Sir Oliver Lodge comes' forward to
champion it against Mr. Balfour. Mr. Balfour had pointed out
that " the vital impulse has no goal more definite than that of ac-
quiring an ever-fuller volume of free creative activity." To this
442 MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER [July,
Sir Oliver Lodge replies : " Well, but that is a good enough goal,
a real end in view, a sufficiently controlling and stimulating im-
pulse."
I mention this incident by way of introducing another exponent
of the monist fallacy, the Rev. R. J. Campbell; for this leader of
the New Theology movement owes his reputation largely to the
patronage accorded to him in the beginning by Sir Oliver Lodge.
Mr. Campbell, preaching on the prologue of the Fourth Gospel,
spoke as follows :
Here it is evident that the writer identifies the logos with
Jesus, or at least considers that He was in a special way an incar-
nation of the logos or eternal word of God. " The Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth." This assertion amounts to nothing less than saying
that Jesus made the world and everything in it, that He was the
source and sustenance of every human life, and that when He
Himself took flesh and became a dweller in the midst of human
kind, He did so with the special object of helping those who
had fallen under the dominion of the evil inherent in material
evidence .... This is a most stupendous assertion when we come
to look into what it really means. Can it possibly be true?
The Christian Church has accepted it as true, but can we reas-
onably admit it to be true in any intelligible sense which relates
it to experience and illuminates our destiny? I may as well say
quite frankly that I should not feel obliged to believe it merely
because it was written here (pointing to the Bible) ... .But
it is not false ; it is true, although the truth of it is larger than
we are at present able to realize. It is this : There is no life
that is not in some degree an expression of the eternal Word.
What has been seen to be grandly and centrally true of Jesus
is true also in some measure of the humblest thing that breathes
in God's wide universe. But in a higher sense it is truer of man
than of the lower creation ; all life that comes to self-conscious-
ness is a ray of the eternal wisdom, a spark from the eternal
fire. The Word has been made flesh in you and me as well as
in our Lord and Master ; the difference between us and Him is
one not of kind but of degree.*
Yet Mr. Campbell asserts that he is not a pantheist. He does,
however, admit that he is a monist; so we will not quarrel over
words. The fact is that he feels that a pantheistic theology is no
*Christian Commonwealth, Oct. 18, 1911.
1912.] MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER 443
guide for moral conduct. If every man alive is essentially the
Word made flesh, then every man alive is a law unto himself, and
is responsible to no one for his conduct. If he chooses to steal,
for instance, all he need do to justify himself is to say : " I am the
eternal Word, and without me is nothing made that is made. All
things therefore are mine. What I take therefore for my own
use is my own and cannot be theft."
But, as I have suggested, the New Theologians have not been
going long enough to carry their premises to practical and ultimate
conclusions. The younger thinkers already begin to see the incon-
venient absurdities with which the doctrine is fraught. Whilst
themselves well on the move away from the old landmarks, they
are on the alert against drifting altogether in the stream with Mr.
Campbell. They speak of him in this wise : his philosophy is pan-
theistic, whilst his theology is theistic.
This aphorism holds the answer to the difficulties against our
thesis. How is it that monist systems have seemed to flourish ? And
how is it that dualist systems have fallen into decadence? It is
because that, in conduct, neither monist nor dualist was wholly
consistent with his professed principles. Man was made for a
double good, his own particular good, and the universal good. His
highest particular good, however, was to be obtained by subordin-
ating it to the universal good. Let a man strive for either of these
ends apart from the other, and his effort must issue in a confusion
both of thought and of conduct. If he strives for the particular
good alone, he fails to understand himself, for so many of his
particular aims have their meaning only in regard to their final
aim. A blind eye, for instance, is a complete failure with regard
to its particular purpose. But it may save a man from the gallows
or from hell fire. On the other hand, if a man strives for the
universal good alone he becomes merely a more inflated ego. Trans-
lating his desire into action he must try to make the world fit on
to him rather than make himself fit into the world. In either case
he is radically a monist, and in either case he comes to grief. It
is in serving ourselves rightly that we do the best thing for others,
and contribute the largest share to the universal good.
Perhaps the most remarkable instance of a dualist system
coming to naught through the intrusion of practical monism, is
that of the Greek culture. Almost throughout its history, Greek
religion remained dualist, ranging from a highly variegated poly-
theism to a much simplified theism. It stirred the imagination and
444 MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER [July,
the emotion of the people to such an extent as to produce an art and
a drama unequaled in the history of the world. No other age or
race can boast of genius like that of Homer, Aeschylus, Aristo-
phanes, Demosthenes, Pheidias, Mnesikles, and Iktinos. Then that
outburst of aesthetic enthusiasm was followed by a period of in-
tellectual activity. The mind reflected on experience. The out-
come was the work of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Yet, side by side with excellence in the artistic and intellectual
spheres of life, there was always a low tone of morality. Nay,
the Greeks had no moral code at all. Each man followed his own
inclinations, sacrificing every ethical instinct for the sake of in-
tellectual and artistic form. His morals were strictly monist.
The human spirit could not bear to be cleft thus, as it were,
with a hatchet. The human spirit is organically at one with itself,
and if the intellectual and aesthetic faculties are not in harmony
with the moral faculty, they must needs fall into decadence. And
this is precisely what happened with the Greeks. Socrates was
killed, and Plato left Athens in disgust. The majestic simplicity
of the finest sculptor gave way to florid and flaccid banality. The
lofty spirit of the best tragedy gave way to neurotic sentimentality.
Never in the history of mankind did the fallacy of self-perfect-
ibility work itself out to such utter absurdity.
The Church, however, has saved some precious salvage from
the wreck. St. Augustine has taken Plato's Republic and trans-
formed it into the City of God. Plato had tried hard to work out a
doctrine of a transcendent God, who should be so infinitely beau-
tiful as to be infinitely loveable. But that accomplishment was only
to be effected by one who had other light to guide him than that
of mere reason. This was the privilege of Augustine, who, after
much moral tribulation and purification, at last grasped the true
eras doctrine and exclaimed : " Too late have I loved Thee, O
Ancient Beauty."
St. Thomas Aquinas has taken practically the whole of the
philosophy of Aristotle, and has transformed it into the official
philosophy of the Church. And here we have the true antidote
against monism and the decadence which inevitably follows in
its train.
The system begins with the ego certainly. Man's first
intuition is his own identity. He is himself and not another.
A thing cannot be and not be at the same time. The outward world,
too, is normally what it appears to be. It is not a kaleidoscopic
1912.] MODERN THEORIES AND MORAL DISASTER 445
picture-show, the creation of man's subjective moods. It is an
objective reality. Being as certain of that as he is of his own
identity, man can argue from the existence of the world to the
existence of a transcendent God. The flux of the universe is evi-
dent. That in itself is a proof of a being who is immoveable and
uncaused. The uncaused God, however, must be the Cause of all
the finite good that is. He is present everywhere by His essence,
presence, and power. This presence, moreover, is an effective
loving presence, loving all things, loving us, and causing us to love
what He loves.
Here then is the secret of that double tendency which we all
more or less feel within us. If God is exciting us to love what
He loves, we have the double inclination to love both the self and
the non-self. In the professedly selfish monist the instinct cannot
find adequate expression, because he has set a veil upon his heart
and blotted out the chief object of love. In the monist professing
to be altruistic, it cannot find adequate expression, because his
altruistic enthusiasm is but a phase of exalted confusion. Not being
explicitly aware of the relations between the self and the non-self
he cannot order his love aright. In the scholastic, however, dual-
ism is all-insistent, and consequently an ineradicable optimism.
Omne ens est bonum. Every being is good, and each higher stage
of being is better than the lower one, because there is more being
in it.
More, the scholastic, sees in the transcendent will of God
the power to endow human nature with an obedient capacity to
be raised to a good surpassingly higher than its own highest natural
good. Dim reason cannot penetrate this supernatural cosmos. But
as with Augustine, so with Aquinas. There is a heart-restlessness
which betokens some transcendent object of desire. Another light
breaks through the clouded reason and reveals the Man on the
Cross. There is the Figure to Whom all creation moves, and in
Whom every finite ray of beauty, goodness, and truth is focused and
summed up. There is the incarnate expression also of the uncreated
Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, which is the archetype of all that is
created. The divine and human natures are united in one Person,
one Individual, Who is distinct, and infinitely distinct, from every
other individual. There is the grand refutation of the monist
concept. And there is the grand redemption from all the moral
aberrations which have issued from the fatal exaltation of self and
exaggeration of subjective moods and tendencies.
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP.
BY JOHN AYSCOUGH.
I.
HE old year lay a-dying, and his shivering successor
was within an hour of his arrival. He would have a
chilly journey, for the Weald of Kent lay deep in
snow, and a little bitter wind sobbed and gasped
round the chimney-stacks and gables of Frampton
Court, so that the naked trees outside in the desolate park flung
and tossed their black arms wildly up towards the high, cold heavens,
where the moon rode clear and white and sad. It had been a bad
year for many in all this great, round world of ours, a merry pros-
perous year for others ; but such as it was, good or bad, it was done
with. It only had about fifty minutes to do any further mischief
in ; and yet those were to prove long enough for the ruin of Marston
Street. Old Jabez Street lay dying, like the year, and he tossed
and turned uneasily on his fine bed, for his ears and mind were full
of the Voices of the Night. Upbraidings, calm but insistent re-
proaches, breathed themselves into the dying ears, and would not
be ignored.
" Has the carriage gone to meet the train yet? " he suddenly
asks, leaning up, with terrible difficulty, on his quaking elbow.
The attendant comes forward gently with admirable quietness
and respectful solicitude.
" The carriage started nearly half an hour ago, sir. It went
direct from the stables, so as not to disturb you by coming to the
front. Is the pain easier, sir? "
The old man growled what might have been an assent or a
denial, and turned away as though to close the conversation.
The attendant went back to the armchair by the fire.
Presently one of the doctors (two slept in the house, but
twenty could not prevent the millionaire from starting on his jour-
ney, from going out into the wild wintry night to keep his tryst
with the inexorable King that we shuddering creatures christen
Death) entered the room.
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 447
" Any easier? " inquires the physician, softly taking the with-
ered hand and pressing the feeble, vacillating pulse.
The old man shakes his head impatiently.
" It's never very easy dying," he snaps, " as you'll find when
your time comes. It's as bad for me as for others."
" Trenchant to the last ! " declares the doctor, appealing, as it
would seem, to the heavy canopy of damask over the patient's head.
To this the old man vouchsafes no retort.
" What o'clock is it ? " he demands presently.
The physician consults a very resplendent presentation watch,
and announces that it wants twenty-nine minutes of midnight.
" And the train's due at Horley at eleven twenty-five. They
ought to be here in half an hour."
He spoke more to himself than to the doctor, and again turned
to the wall.
The doctor nodded and smiled to the attendant, nodded and
smiled as though there was something specially sweet and noble in
the old man's doing this, and left the room on tiptoe.
He found his chief, Sir Junket Paine, fallen into a light doze.
" Our dear friend," he whispered, having jogged the great
man awake, " our dear friend is as easy as can be expected."
Sir Junket Paine tried to combine in. his expression his pro-
fessional interest in a patient who was reputed to have amassed a
fortune of a million and a half, and his recollection that it was
usually in the ante-chambers of dukes and princes that he awaited
" the end."
" He keeps asking for the son," continued the junior. " He
seems very impatient to see him."
" He has got on without seeing him for more than twenty
years," remarks Sir Junket. " They have never met since the
son's marriage. The old fellow expected him to marry a title, and
he married for love a young person of much their own rank."
" Mr. Street began in a very small way, I suppose ? " inquired
the junior, who thought Sir Junket looked as if he wanted to tell
the story.
" He was a bargeman. But he was wonderfully clever, and
plucky and industrious, and above all fortunate. He had the true
trade instincts, always knowing what to buy and where to sell.
And his larger investments were unprecedentedly lucky. He doubled
his capital in five months over the American war. He is worth
at least a million and a half now."
448 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
" And only one child ! "
Sir Junket shook his head.
" To whom he has not spoken for nearly quarter of a century."
" But he has sent for him now," urged the junior.
" Certainly. Oh, quite so ; but he has not commanded the
presence of a lawyer : there is no sign of his intending to revoke
any unfavorable will, and it is known that there is something of
the kind."
The two doctors sighed. They had a pleasant comfortable
sympathy for the only son of the millionaire.
The gentlemen had dined well, and found Mr. Street's port
undeniable. It was sleepy work, waiting and doing nothing. Pre-
sently they were both dozing. But the dying man could not sleep.
With muttered peevish ejaculations of impatience he tossed and
twisted in his bed, and listened for the sound of carriage wheels.
He wanted to set right a great and cruel injustice. Would there
be time?
Again he suddenly raises himself, but with still greater diffi-
culty, on to his weak and quivering elbow, and peers out of the
shadow of the bed to the ever-wakeful attendant.
A slight sound makes the latter turn. In a moment she is by
the bed.
" Can I do anything for you, sir ? " she asks, rearranging a
pillow.
But the old man frowns impatiently. Then a thought strikes
him.
" Open the door into the next room," he says.
The next room is his private study, where he was used to do
his writing, where his writing bureau stood. He peers towards
the opened door inquisitively. He sees that the room is not in dark-
ness. The attendant has in fact been sleeping there for a night or
two. How he would like to be there now alone for five, nay, for
three minutes.
Far, far away down some distant corridor a door bangs.
" Go, go ! " shouts the old man. " Go at once and stop that
banging; find out where it is, and stop it instantly."
The nurse looks half doubtful about leaving him, and makes a
gesture as if to ring for someone else.
" Go ! " shrieks the old man. " If you wait it may bang again,
and it will kill me. Go, I tell you ! "
And so violent was he, so peremptory, that she went.
I 9 i2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 449
It was not at all easy to find the door; she was gone five or
six minutes. She had scarcely left the room before the dying man
dragged himself, with incalculable difficulty and pain, from the soft
and warm bed, and staggered towards the inner room.
His legs quaked beneath him, his hands shook and quivered, his
head swam, and he thought he would reel and tumble. But somehow
he reached the goal of his desires the splendid Louis XV. cabinet
where his most private papers were locked up. He dragged a chair
to it, and fumbled for the key that hung around his neck on a thin
chain of old-fashioned gold work. As he fitted the key in the lock
there came the crushing sound of the gravel beneath the wheels
and horses' feet. The carriage from the station had come.
The two wills were easy to find, being in fact tied up together.
One was nearly twenty-five years old; it had been executed after
the death of his wife. In it everything that he possessed, without
reserve, was left to his dear and only child, Marston Street.
The other was two years more recent. In it all his property,
real and personal, was bequeathed to the Commissioners for the
Reduction of the National Debt, in trust for twenty years after
his own demise; the money to be allowed during that time to in-
crease by natural process of compound interest, at the end of which
period it should, as thus augmented, be applied to the reduction of
the National Debt.
Externally the two wills were precisely alike. The old man's
eyes were blurred with the gathering gloom of death. He wished,
standing on that silent threshold, to undo the mischief planned in
the petty spite of health. Close at hand was the red heart of the
pleasant flickering fire. Very, very painfully he tottered towards it,
almost falling more than once. But without accident he reached
the hearth rug, and was able to clutch the mantle for support, with
his quavering left hand. With the right he dropped into the throb-
bing flame the will, which, if undestroyed, would do so much and
such hard injustice. Then he turned to regain his room and bed;
it was slower work now, the flickering feeble lamp of life had been
so roughly shaken that it must soon, soon burn out.
Other steps, hurried and nervous, were hastening down the
corridor. As the old man reached the door of communication
between the two rooms, his son stood in that leading into the
corridor. For the first time for three-and-twenty years they looked
in one another's faces. The son trembled at the near presence of
the cold King Death, who peered so chilly over his father's shoulder.
VOL. XCV. 29.
450 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
For a moment the dying man leaned against the door jamb,
steadying himself with his tremulous left hand; in his right he
held out a folded document to his son.
" I sent for you," he stammered, " to to give you this ! " and
staggering he fell forward.
They were his last words. Henceforth he must keep the great
silence that is laid upon the lips of all who have been before us, the
wise who taught it, and the fools who filled it with their babbling
folly, the silence that soon or late comes to the kindly tongues who
comfort, and the bitter, wounding tongues that make us smart.
They lifted the old man in their arms and laid him in his bed,
and gently drew from the dead fingers the paper that they held.
It was his will. In which all he possessed of real or personal
property was devised to the Commissioners of the National Debt.
He had burned the wrong one.
The horses that had brought his son were not yet stabled before
the rider on the Pale Horse had taken the father to ride with him
out into the wild night; out into the Unknown Waste that lies be-
yond our life.
%
II.
It was only too true that the whole of the late Jabez Street's
colossal fortune was lost to his natural heir. By the death of his
father Marston Street was only the richer by a thousand pounds,
which had belonged to his late mother. This she had herself left to
her husband for his life, afterwards it was to go to her son.
" Well," said Marston Street to his wife, " a thousand pounds
is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."
But the lady did not seem to think such an accident the neces-
sary and only alternative.
" Fifteen hundred thousand would have been even better,"
she remarked with some asperity.
" Yes. But then, you know, we never expected him to leave it
tome!"
" Not till he sent for you ; but why should he have sent for you,
if he did not mean to do the right thing by you? "
" Perhaps he did. Perhaps he meant to destroy that will and
make a new one. But he had not time."
" He was ill three weeks."
" Yes. But he was a very obstinate, proud man. It was only,
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 451
as I think, at the last that he thought better of it; only that last
day when he sent for me."
Mrs. Marston Street had her own opinion. She believed the
old man had kept his spite to the last, and had deliberately sent for
his only son to bring his ill-treatment of him to a climax by thus
handing him the will that was to disinherit him. ft was of a piece,
she declared to herself, with his whole behavior towards them, and
people, she said, do not change their natures on their deathbeds.
She did not reason amiss, but she was wrong. Her husband
shrank from the plain and apparent explanation of his father's
action, and so doing he was right.
It is to be regretted that Mr. Marston Street was not also dis-
inherited of the small legacy that his mother had left him. One
afternoon he was coming home from his counting-house when he
was overtaken by a gentleman he knew well a cousin, in fact,
of his wife's.
" Hulloa, Street ! Awful business this !"
"What business?"
" Why, the Galwegian and Caledonian Bank."
"What's up with it?"
" It has gone smash," remarked Mr. Brand familiarly. " I
have just left Harcourt Brown," he continued; " he's all smiles, for
he had shares in it and sold out six months ago."
" I've got ten shares in it," observed Marston Street. " Its a
bore to lose a thousand pounds. But I only got it a legacy from
my mother after my father's death four months ago. So after all
I shall not miss it much."
"I remember Carry saying you had a thousand under your
mother's will," said Mr. Brand, in a low tone; "but you do not
mean to say it was invested in that bank ? "
" It was, though. It seemed a goodish thing, too."
" And you never sold the shares ? "
" Sold them? No. Why should I sell them? There was no
suspicion of this smash up. You're uncommon cautious after the
event. And they were regular dividend payers."
Mr. Brand looked straight in front of him, then hailed a han-
som. They got into it together. He kept peeping guiltily at his
companion out of the corner of his eye.
Presently the latter caught him.
" What is the matter with you, Brand? " he exclaimed irritably.
" As I said before, nobody exactly cares to lose a thousand pounds,
452 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
but though my father did not leave me his fortune, I am not going
to break over a thousand."
" Unfortunately," thought the other, " that is precisely what
you are going to do. That's the tragedy ! " But aloud he said
nothing. He had not the moral courage.
At the railway station the boys were crying the evening papers :
" Scotch bank stopped payment, sir ! Evening 'Erald, sir !
Galwegian and Caledonian Bank stopped payment, sir ! Hunlimited
liability, sir! "
" What's that they're calling out ? " asked Marston, turning
suddenly giddy.
" Unlimited liability, I think," responded Brand, " but perhaps
it's a mistake." He found it very hard to say anything. He did not
flatter himself that what he did say was very brilliant. His throat
felt dry ; he wished himself, as he said, at Jericho. How populous
a resort that little oriental city would become if everyone who wished
himself there, or was wished there by his friends, could be there
in reality! Unlimited liability! What a simple thing to say; what
a terrible thing to realize in the results it may imply. By those two
little words together Marston Street found himself reduced from
affluence to beggary.
III.
When Sir Junket Paine discussed the fortunes of Jabez Street
with Dr. Urban Bland he fell, like other great men before and since,
into some errors, of which I would like to set the reader right as
regards two of them.
In saying that Jabez Street had been a bargeman he was a
generation out, for the bargee was not Jabez, but his father, old
Hiram Street, who was the first member of his family, as he was
apt, at a later period of his life, to boast, who had ever worn a collar.
Still Sir Junket was right as to the beginnings of the million-
aire having been very obscure.
He was, however, again wrong in giving his colleague to under-
stand that Mrs. Marston Street had also belonged to the bargee
class. She was the pretty and almost penniless daughter of a Sussex
parson of good family, and about as lacking in the qualities that
make up a useful wife as she could have been. Fortunately her
husband had already made some way in life at the time his father
quarreled with him for marrying her, and he had risen to partner-
I 9 i2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 453
ship in a well-known house. He had since gone on making money,
and had lately bought out the son of his late partner, who had no
taste for business.
Mrs. Marston Street took her husband's ruin very hardly. It
seemed as if she was impressed with the notion that he had done it
on purpose, and personally rather enjoyed the process. It was, she
realized, a most terrible thing for her to be reduced, at her time of
life, from affluence to beggary. (Not that Mrs. Street would ever
have had the energy to beg for anything. ) But she entirely failed to
understand that it was quite as terrible for her husband, and not
much more agreeable for her children. She wailed persistently, and
if reproaches had had any market value, poor Marston might have
started a wholesale business of the very largest description.
That he felt he had been foolish in investing that luckless thou-
sand in a concern of unlimited liability, did not make these up-
braidings any easier to bear. If he had consulted his own con-
venience, I think the unlucky gentleman would have quietly broken
his heart and died ; but he had always been a very unselfish fellow,
and he determined to live and work as well as he could, and as long.
If only Mrs. Marston would have taken up the notion of break-
ing her heart! But she contented herself with doing all in her
power to break those of her family.
About two things the world at once made up its mind. That it
had been inexcusable of Marston Street to lose his fortune through
neglecting to transfer an investment, and that Francis Jabez Marston
Street, his eldest son, would certainly never do anything to restore
the ruin.
" He has never been taught anything except how to be a fine
gentleman," they declared. " What has he learned at Eton, except
to dress himself up to the eyes ? What has he learned at Cambridge,
except to spend as much money on ridiculous fads and extravagances
as would keep many of us for the whole year ? "
Some declared he was conceited, " though it seems almost
impossible," they charitably added.
" Why, what on earth has he but his looks ? "
" Looks, indeed ? I'd rather have a downright ugly chap than
those sort of mamby-pamby good looks."
It was generally agreed that the younger sons, having all along
known they would be expected, as is the way with younger sons in
England, to make their own way, would shake down into their fallen
fortunes much better.
454 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
One gentleman came forward and offered to take Hiram, who
was nineteen, into his office at a small salary, an offer that was gladly
and gratefully accepted. Another friend, who had a West Indian
branch, gave Phil, who was a year younger, a berth out at St. Kitts.
But no one had anything to offer which the young " swell " would
be any good at.
It need hardly be said that Marston himself had no difficulty in
finding a billet ; but it was pathetic to see the elderly man, who had
stood so high, starting again up the ladder of life from the lowest
rung. Before the smash Francis Street had lived a good deal in
rooms of his own, in one of the smartest parts of the town, for he
detested the suburban residence of his family : and when not actually
in London liked to be out of it altogether, and was often abroad
" mooning round the picture galleries," as his critics scoffingly said.
Of course these rooms were at once given up. But they had
been furnished partly by the fittings of Frank's Cambridge quarters,
and partly by furniture, pictures, china, etc., he had picked up since.
He was five-and-twenty, and he had had an excellent allowance,
had even saved a little each year out of it, a fact which would have
much surprised his critics. Some people have the art of buying a
great deal with their money. And those who only spend their
money and never buy anything can never understand it.
When the crash came, Frank was at first very much of the
opinion of his critics. What could he do? It was by no means
lost on him that not one of all their friends had a word of encour-
agement for him, though his brothers were patted on the back all
round. His mother had always failed to understand him, and was
annoyed that he had none of the out-door sporting tastes of her
own brothers.
" You may buy a place, Marston," she had often said, " or
the old man may relent and leave you Frampton Court after all;
but nothing will ever make a squire of Francis. He's finnicky ! "
Poor Frank ! It was well that his gentle, meek little father was
kind and tender to him.
' The lad's no fool," began Marston mildly.
" Fool ! Why should he be a fool ? Goodness knows he takes
after you enough in other ways," snapped the lady. " But he's I'll
tell you what he is," she concluded, as if it was quite a new sug-
gestion " he's finnicky ! "
Perhaps her husband was not sufficiently instructed to know
whether his eldest son was so or not, so he held his peace.
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 455
" For my part I can't stand a finnick ! " declared the lady,
rather pleased with her substantive.
When they moved out of their handsome villa, it was, of course,
Mrs. Street who decided where they should go and live, and then
what house should be taken.
There was just room in it, as it turned out, for the parents and
their younger son (Phil had already sailed for St. Kitts). Marston
ventured some remark as to Francis, which his wife snubbed in-
stantly. }
" Francis never did care to reside at home when home was
home indeed," she observed loftily. " There is no need to provide
room for him now, when 'home' is a mere exiguous shelter from the
weather ! "
For my part I think Mrs. Marston wallowed in her reverses,
like a pig in a puddle ; she certainly never lost a chance of smacking
her lips over them, as it were. If she had to be a martyr, she liked
to wear her crown over her bonnet, so to speak, while she could
enjoy it.
" But, my dear," murmured Marston, " the boy must live some-
where!"
" By all means, my love. And you may be sure he will reside
in the best quarter. He always has ! "
" Don't worry about me, dad," said Frank, when his father,
with a very red face, made him understand that there was no provi-
sion for his reception at Malabar Cottage. "To tell the truth, dad," he
continued, " it fits in better. I have a sort of notion of doing some-
thing, but would much rather none of them knew anything about it
till I see how it turns out. I don't think I shall even tell you ! "
" Frank, my boy, I feel very much the breakdown of all your
hopes."
" Dad, don't talk nonsense ! My hopes are only just beginning.
I fancy you have forced me to make my fortune, which otherwise I
might have not troubled about. After all, its in the family making
fortunes, I mean. You will see that I inherit the family taste.
Should you be surprised to hear I intend to start shop-keeping? "
" Shop-keeping ! "
" Yes. I dare say you think I shall hate it. My tastes have not
hitherto seemed commercial. But I shall like it. What is more,
I shall succeed at it. I can't run a barge," he added, with a
laugh, " or I would try and build the family fortunes afresh from
the start."
456 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
The allusion to the barge would have infuriated his mother,
though she, of course, was not " finnicky."
" His present Grace of Lulworth," the young man went on,
with a grin, " used constantly to remind me, at Eton, during his
first term, before he had the nonsense knocked out of him, of my
bargee ancestor. I blacked his eye once, and I do not think he was
a bit grateful to me for it. He was only called Algy Beaudesert
then, for the late duke was, as you know, only his uncle."
Marston Street smiled. He liked a quiet chat with his son, who,
as we have seen, he believed not to be a fool.
" But, my dear Frank, how are you going to stock a shop ? It
wants a lot of capital."
" Ah, I suppose it might. All the same I am going to stock one.
Will you come and have tea with me behind my counter the first
Sunday?"
" If you intend to keep your establishment open on Sundays, I
presume you are going to be a tobacconist."
" No, I'm not ; nor a stale fruiterer either. In fact, my shop
will not be open to the public on Sunday, only to you. That will be
my 'at home' day. Mind you come."
" You have not told me the address yet."
" No. Do not be so dreadfully inquisitive, dad. I shall tell you
in good time. But, mind, the information is for yourself only. I do
not propose to tell the family."
The father promised, and went his way, smiling quietly. He
was thinking that, to his mind, Frank did not seem altogether " fin-
nicky."
" I'm sure," he told himself, " none of us have been pluckier
about our ruin than Francis. It means to him the loss of every
friend, of every hope and expectation of his life. And he has never
once groaned or grumbled."
IV.
It is probable that Marston Street hardly took his son literally
when he stated his intention of keeping a shop, but it was, never-
theless, true that the young man did seriously propose a venture in
that direction.
" Poor dad ! " the young man thought to himself, as he watched
his father from the window slowly cross to the shady side of the
street. " He feels it much worse than our mother, though he says
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 457
so much less. It has broken him. He is very brave, but he has
finished his life."
The young man turned back into the room with a lump rising
in his throat, and a suspicious dimness about the eyes. Like thou-
sands of us he was a much better fellow than people ever thought.
Underneath the rather artificial, fine-gentleman manner there was
an honest, wholesome heart, and plucky, manly self-reliance. Only
hitherto there had, he thought, been really no necessity to rely upon
himself. Francis Street was the great grandson of a bargeman, and
he had blacked the ducal eye of his schoolfellow for thinking it
necessary to remind him of the fact, but the young man was a
gentleman, not in mere tastes and training only, but in every thought
of his mind.
There was something about his father that always touched him,
a sort of appealing deprecation of criticism. His father having so
nearly succeeded, had so utterly failed. And what, thought the
son, is so wholly pathetic as failure?
Poor Marston Street had failed to secure his natural inherit-
ance ; he had lost it to secure, as he fancied, a wife worth all else that
the world could offer. And how he had failed there ! He had made
a fortune, and had failed to keep it.
And he was such a harmless creature ! Gentle, sweet-tempered,
without a rancorous thought for anyone.
Francis glanced round his room; he had the rooms till the last
day of June, so he had stayed on in them, for there would be no
economy in moving out. But this was his last day in them. And
now he looked round on the beautiful and interesting things he had
collected, with so great interest and pleasure, in such various places.
" Please, sir," remarked the landlord of the rooms, who had
once been a butler in his father's service, throwing wide the door,
" Lord Hounslow wants to see you. I told him 'Not at 'ome,' and
he only laughed. He said he saw you just now at the winder. He
begs as you'll let him come up."
" Very well, Perkisett," and the man went down much pleased.
He had a feeling that it was almost profane to turn away the eldest
son of a marquis, and a marquis who would certainly be made a
duke at the next change of ministry.
Hitherto Frank had rigorously refused himself to every-
body.
" It will have to come," he had told himself ; " all that life will
have to be dropped, and it will be easier to do it now than later.
458 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
It's all part of one thing now. Later on it would seem like a fresh
misfortune."
He was rather touched by Lord Hounslow's coming and per-
sistence. They were only fairly good friends. But he had always
thought the young man nice.
Perkisett announced " The Hurl of 'Ounslow " with a rolling
emphasis that suggested the deliberate tasting of port wine.
Lord Hounslow made no mistakes. He came forward exactly
as if nothing had happened since their last meeting. There was no
irritating air of compassionate patronage. Still he was perfectly
direct.
" Of course we've heard of your worry," he said, sitting down
leisurely, as if he meant to remain, and drawing out his cigarette
case. " It does seem outrageous that unlimited liability business.
I am not going to bother you about your plans ; I expect its not easy
to make up your mind all in a hurry about them. But my father
asked me, if I should succeed in catching you, whether you would
come and stay with us for a bit. Perkisett tells me he's losing you."
" Of course," replied Frank. " You see, I have really no in-
come at all now. I happened to have saved a hundred or two out of
my allowance."
" Saved ! " cried the visitor. " In all my days you're the first
chap I ever heard say that. And you always seemed pretty extrav-
agant too," he added, with a glance at the opulent surroundings.
Frank laughed.
" Well, my father did give me a ripping screw. And, you see,
I was always buying things. Half the fellows one knows only
spend and never buy. So everyone thought me extravagant, when
I really was saving up."
" Saving up ! " ejaculated Lord Hounslow, with another glance
at the china and pictures and furniture.
" Certainly. I've got it all. It was bought with money that
was my own, and there is no claim, either legal or moral, against all
this. It is really mine."
" Yes. Of course. But I fancy the dollars would be more to
the point now."
" I do not know. I knew what to buy, and what to give for
what I did buy. I think these things are worth a heap more now
than when I bought them. I think I will tell you something that was
to have been a dark and mysterious secret. I am going to keep a
shop."
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 459
" Oh, nonsense ! " exclaimed Lord Hounslow. " By the way,
we've wandered from the point. My father wants you to come and
stay with us. We are leaving town to-morrow; the rest of the
season (it will only be a couple of weeks, they say) we shall stop at
Hounslow Court, and my father will drive backwards and forwards.
The doctors don't want him to stick in London any longer. Will
you come with us? Father thinks if you and he have a talk, he
may be of some use to you."
" It is very kind indeed of him to think of me; and, of course, I
should enjoy it. But, my dear Hounslow, enjoyment is scarcely to
be my object in life yet awhile. And I think I must just say 'No'
straight."
" Ah, but this is not merely a pleasure visit. If you talk things
over with the governor, it may do some practical good. He thinks
he might get you a private secretaryship."
Frank was more upset by this eager friendliness than he had
been by all his misfortunes. He could scarcely command his voice
to reply. But all the same he was firm.
" Hounslow," he said, " I really do not know how to thank you
for this friendliness. But I think my own idea is better. I have, as
I told you, a hundred or two; but I have no income whatever.
Secretaryships are so much sought after nowadays for the sake of
the introduction to political life, or diplomatic life, and so on, that
they are generally unpaid for some time. I have to make money."
"If my father decided to offer you his own secretaryship, he
would know about your circumstances, and would, of course, pay."
Frank shook his head.
" No," he said, " that would not do. It would be to suit me, not
to suit himself, and I should hate it. Why pay for what you can
easily get free ? "
" Sometimes one gets a better article by paying for it."
" Yes. Often. But I do not know that I should be a good
article. I do not feel at all sure that I should make a good private
secretary. The list of things he is supposed to know, and do (in
the 'Caxtons,' I think it is) always terrified me. No, I had better
stick to my shop."
"Your shop?"
" Yes. I told you I intended starting a shop, and I do. It
was not a little joke. After all, it is only a 'Recrudescence of Family
Tradition.' As you are doubtless aware, my great grandfather
was a bargee."
460 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
Lord Hounslow laughed.
" So I've heard. I remember you leathered Algy Beaudesert
at Eton for saying so, though."
" Certainly. It was horrid cheek his saying so. All the same
it was true, only I think he said it was my grandfather. Well, I
am going in for trade again. That's my line, I fancy. But naviga-
tion isn't, so I am obliged to forsake the traditional line and strike
out on a new one."
" Of course you're inventing," observed the hope of the house
of Hounslow.
" No, I'm not. But my original idea was to keep it as dark as
possible. That I already see was a mistake. A shop like mine
wants advertising among the higher classes. So I tell you, 'soliciting
the favor of your patronage and recommendation.' "
" What sort of shop are you going in for, anyway? "
" A curiosity shop."
" Ah ! We now begin to smell daylight. Your stock-in-trade
I see before me, is it not ? "
Frank laughed at his friend's English, and admitted the correct-
ness of his surmise.
"I wish," cried Lord Hounslow, "you'd take a partner. I
should wallow in it. You should interview all the old lady customers
and I would interview well all the new ones ! "
Frank laughed, but did not at otice close with his friend's offer.
" 'Lord Hounslow, Jokes & Co.' would, of course, sound very
well," he admitted, " but at present 'Jokes & Co.' has no partner.
I must make my business first, then develop it."
" Is 'Jokes & Co.' the title of your firm ? "
Frank nodded.
" Sounds cheery anyway," said Lord Hounslow.
" Would you like to come and see the premises ? "
" Ra-ther ! " replied this painfully vernacular young man.
" Get your chap to call a hansom."
" Hansom ! Nonsense. If you come you'll have to come in a
green 'bus."
" Forgive my saying," laughed Lord Hounslow, " that Time is
Money. A sentiment all my own, and hot out of the oven. In
business Time is Everything."
The window stood open. Outside was a small balcony. Lord
Hounslow stepped out, and blew a silver whistle shrilly. Twenty
seconds later a hansom was at the door.
I 9 i2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 461
V.
"How did you find it?"
" By accident," replied Frank. " Doesn't it look promising? "
" De la premiere classe! Is it dear ? "
" No. And, you see, mine is much the bigger half."
The shop was a double one. Half was used as a post office ; but,
as Mr. Street observed, his was the better half.
" I've got it for three months, with option then to take on for a
year. At the back is a small parlor, but that the tenant keeps (his
jut-tenant), viz., the old lady who has the post office."
" She doesn't look so very old ! " remarked Lord Hounslow.
Street laughed.
" Oh, the girl you saw downstairs ! That's her great-niece.
Miss Priddy was not there. I expect she is playing shut-eye in the
parlor we spoke of."
(" Charming game," observed Lord Hounslow. " I play it
splendidly myself.")
The latter remarks were not made in the shop, but upstairs,
where Frank had two good rooms and a sort of scullery, or house-
maid's closet; the rest of the house belonged to Miss Priddy, and a
lodger.
" In these upstair rooms, of course, I shall live," Frank ex-
plained. " They will also be my warehouse, for, needless to say,
the little shop won't hold a tithe of my things."
" And when they're all sold? What then? "
" I intend to buy as well as sell. I have my own ideas as to
that I am always, as it is, getting offers of bric-a-brac, pictures,
etc., that people want to sell to me. I shall get many more when
I sell them."
" I do wish," murmured Lord Hounslow plaintively, " you'd
take me as a partner sleeping partner even. I'm unsurpassed in
that line."
But Frank was obdurate. There could be no partner till there
was a business to share.
" There's one thing," declared Lord Hounslow, " that I insist
on, so it's no use your being pig-headed about this. All your things
have to be moved from Jermyn Street here. I'm going to move
them!"
"You!"
" Yes, me! " reiterated the ungrammatical young man. " My
462 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [July,
father has a lot of big covered wagons like carriers' carts, wherein
we send our produce to Covent Garden Market, for we too are
shopkeepers, only we haven't exactly got a shop, and we're in the
greengrocery and dairy produce line. To-morrow morning, after
emptying themselves of the cabbages and things, these will call at
Jermyn Street and bring all your stock here. I'll superintend."
And this the good-natured young man did, thereby saving
Frank a very considerable expense.
The shop was well stocked, and the rest of the things were
taken upstairs to be brought down as required, and meanwhile to
furnish Frank's living rooms.
Miss Priddy watched the arrival of the wagons with devouring
interest, but she was not permitted to see the shop itself till all was
arranged. Between the post office and the shop Frank had had a
screen erected, the lower half of wood, the upper of glass. But a
long curtain could be drawn across the latter, which was done now,
and only when all the quaint and pretty things were in place did
Frank allow them to be seen.
By luncheon time all was in order, for they had been at work
since six o'clock in the morning, so that Lord Hounslow said he had
never sat up quite so late before! Then the two young men had
luncheon upstairs, their meal consisting of a veal and ham pie and
some fruit. But in the midst of it came an interruption.
(TO BE CONCLUDED.)
WOMAN'S WORK IN BIBLE STUDY AND TRANSLATION.
BY A. H. JOHNS, A.M.
URING the past year much has been said and written
regarding the King James version of the Bible
a version which, fortunately for our glorious English
speech, was made when England, as has happily been
expressed, was " a nest of song birds." The cele-
bration of the tercentenary of the completion of this notable under-
taking was, among other things, a tribute to the memory of those
who builded a monument of literature that will endure as long as
the imperishable creations of Milton and Shakespeare. But, while
the Protestant world recalls the labors of those whose purpose,
three centuries ago, was to bring the Word of God to the knowledge
of the masses, and who, in doing so, fixed for all time the vigorous
and solemn character of " English undefiled," let us not forget those
who, twelve centuries before, were engaged in similar labors, and
whose efforts, notwithstanding all kinds of handicaps, were crowned
with even more signal success.
I refer to the Latin translation of the Bible, usually known as
the Vulgate. In the opinion of most people, this stupendous work
was wholly and solely the work of one man the famous father
and doctor of the Church, St. Jerome. In a certain sense this
opinion is well founded; in another it is entirely erroneous. Most
of the actual work of translation, it is true, was performed by St.
Jerome, but, had it not been for three Roman women of noblest
patrician birth, it is safe to say that the Vulgate, as we now know it,
would never have been completed, and most probably never have
been begun.
The story of this herculean task reads more like a romance
than veritable history. It is the story of genius overcoming untold
difficulties, of energy and perseverance in the face of the seemingly
impossible. But it is above all a story of the value of woman's co-
operation in a noble cause, of the far-reaching effects of woman's
influence in something that is, at first blush, without her proper
sphere of action. Indeed, it may safely be said that we have not in
all history a more extraordinary instance of the paramount impor-
tance of feminine collaboration in things of the mind, or of the
464 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
efficacy of her benign influence, when guided by affectionate zeal
and by keen and lofty intelligence, than in the production of the Vul-
gate. It is above all a story of surpassing interest for people of our
own time, when opinions respecting the higher education of women
are so divided, and when discussions about the proper sphere of
woman's activity are so animated and so contradictory.
The chief characters in our story are Jerome, Marcella, Paula
and her daughter Eustochium, all four of whom are honored as
saints in the Catholic Church.
The Church of the Household is notable in Church history,
for the lectures and instructions on Scripture and cognate subjects
which Jerome, after his return from the desert of Syria, gave
in it for a period of three years. Never before had Rome
witnessed such ardor in the study of Scripture, and never before
or since was there assembled for such study so distinguished and
so intelligent a group of women of every age. So great progress in
the knowledge of Scripture had some of them made notably Mar-
cella, a woman of remarkable mentality that they were consulted
by laity and clergy alike on difficult passages of Holy Writ. But
such was the modesty of Marcella that she never gave an opinion
as her own. She always said she but repeated what she had learned
from her master.
After the death of his friend and protector, Pope Damasus,
Jerome was unable to resist any longer the lure of the Orient,
where he had spent so many happy years. The desert and a life
of solitude had, during his sojourn in Rome, lost none of its at-
tractions for him. Accordingly, in May, 385, he set sail from
Ostia for Antioch, accompanied by the regrets and the tears of
the inmates of his loved school on the Aventine. They had all
learned to revere him as their father and master in the spiritual
life, and for them his departure was regarded as little less than a
calamity.
But Jerome was not the only one who had felt the lure of
the desert, or who had been impressed by the charms of the life led
by the solitaries of the Thebard. After the death of her husband,
and still more after the death of her cherished daughter, the bril-
liant Blesilla, Paula determined to flee from the distractions and
commotions of Rome, and seek peace and tranquility where it
had been found by so many thousands of others in the wilderness
of Syria or Egypt. Years previously a noble Roman matron,
Melania by name, and a friend of Paula's, and descended from the
\0i2.] WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 465
same gens as herself, had, with a number of women friends, sought
and found peace and happiness in the Thebaid, where they spent ten
years. After this Melania built a convent for herself and compan-
ions on the Mount of Olives, whence they wrote such glowing ac-
counts of the delights of monastic life, away from the noise and
turmoil of the world, that many were induced to follow their ex-
ample.
It was only a few months after Jerome's departure from
Rome, when Paula and Eustochium, accompanied by a large number
of consecrated virgins and widows, set sail from Portus Romanus,
at the mouth of the Tiber, for Cyprus, where Paula received a
cordial welcome from her old friend, St. Epiphanius, bishop of
Salamis. After a short visit here, the travelers continued their
voyage, and soon arrived at Antioch, where they were met by their
father and friend, Jerome.
So eager was Paula to see the holy places in Palestine, and to
visit the monasteries in Egypt, about which she had heard so
much through her friend Melania, that she made preparations to
continue without delay the rest of the journey by land. She in-
duced Jerome to accompany the party, in order that all might
profit by his knowledge of the places visited, and of the history
and traditions in which the countries to be visited were so rich.
They could not have had a better guide, or one more competent to
make their pilgrimage interesting and profitable. Their journey-
ings in the Holy Land and Egypt, in both of which countries,
under the guidance of Jerome, they investigated everything with the
keen interest and thoroughness of trained Scriptural students, lasted
a whole year. The Holy Land first engaged their attention, after
which they went to the land of the Nile. So fascinated was Paula
with the lives of the anchorets, whom she visited in their desert
homes in Nitria and Arsinoe, that she wished to spend the remainder
of her days in Egypt in a life of penance and contemplation.
Jerome, however, was averse to this, and persuaded her to establish
a home for herself and companions in Bethlehem, near the grotto
of the Nativity. Returning, then, from Egypt to Bethlehem, Paula
had two monasteries erected, one for women two more were sub-
sequently constructed over which she presided, and one for men,
under the direction of Jerome.
Paula and Eustochium lost no time in resuming those studies,
interrupted by their long voyage from Rome. While their
monasteries were being built they begged Jerome to read with them,
VOL. xcv. 30.
466 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
in Hebrew, the entire Bible from the beginning to the end, and ex-
plain all difficulties as they presented themselves. They had hitherto
studied the Sacred Books according to their special attraction at the
time, now one, now another. Jerome tried, but in vain, to decline
this delicate and laborious task. But, as in Rome, he was finally
forced to yield to the entreaties of Paula and Eustochium. Writing
of Paula many years afterwards, he says, " She compelled me "
compulit me " to read, with explanations, the Old and the New
Testament to her and her daughter."
This reading of the Bible together excited in the two women
a desire to make a still more profound study of each of the books
of the Sacred Text especially the epistles of St. Paul. In search-
ing for commentaries on the perplexing letters of the Apostle of
the Gentiles, they discovered that there was practically nothing in
Latin, and that, in Greek, only Origen had written a few authorized
tracts. Commentators had hitherto recoiled before the attempt to
explain writings that bristled with such countless difficulties. Paula
then begged Jerome to undertake an exegesis of the great apostle,
but he shrank in terror from so gigantic a task. Unable to over-
come his objections directly, Paula tried to secure by address
what she so much desired. She accordingly besought him to inter-
pret the short epistle to Philemon, which consists of but a single
chapter. In this wise Jerome found himself committed, in spite of
himself, to the great work which the noble matron had so much at
heart. For, after the exegesis of St. Paul was once begun, she would
no longer accept any further excuses from the reluctant master, and
thus she obtained one commentary after another on all the books of
the Bible.
From this time dates that holy and happy influence which
Paula and Eustochium began to exercise over the genius and the
labors of St. Jerome, an influence which persisted until the time of
their death; an influence which, as we shall soon see, ripened in
the most abundant and beautiful fruitage.
Jerome and shall we not say the same of Paula and Eusto-
chium? was at last fairly started on his great life-work the work
that has won for him the admiration and the gratitude of all suc-
ceeding ages. All that he had previously accomplished was but
a preparation for the grand achievements that were to follow,
under the inspiration of the two peerless women that were always at
his side to assist and encourage him in times of difficulties and trials.
It was now that his studies in Rome, his travels and researches in
1912.] WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 467
Gaul, Italy, Greece and Syria, Egypt and Palestine stood him in
good stead, and enabled him to achieve what would otherwise have
been impossible, and what would have been far beyond the strength
and ability of any of his contemporaries.
Jerome was now fifty-five years of age, in the zenith of his
magnificent intellect, in the full vigor of a mind stored with the
accumulated learning and wisdom of a life devoted to unremitted
study and contemplation. But what was incomparably more to him
and to the world, he had near himtwo extraordinarilygifted and sym-
pathetic souls, who thoroughly understood him, and who knew how
to direct his prodigious energy and stimulate his genius to the loftiest
flights. Most of his work was undertaken at their instance, and com-
pleted through their enthusiastic co-operation. Their wish was his
pleasure ; their request a command which he made haste to execute.
This is evidenced everywhere in his letters, and especially in the
prefaces to his many translations and commentaries.
On one occasion Paula desired to have a translation of Origen's
commentaries on St. Luke for the use of the inmates of her
convent. Although Jerome was then engaged in a work by which
he set great store, he at once interrupted it in order to comply
with Paula's desire. " You see," he writes her, " what weight a
wish of yours has with me, for I have, without hesitation, discon-
tinued my great work on Hebraic Questions to assume, at your
request, the dry and ungrateful role of translator." On another
occasion, when, in spite of his ardor, he seemed on the point of
losing courage on account of the magnitude of the difficulties which
confronted him, he was prevailed on by the incessant entreaties of
Eustochium Quid tu, Eustochium, indesinenter, flagitas to com-
plete one of the great works which had been begun at the request of
herself and her mother. On still another occasion, he was on the
point of leaving a peculiarly difficult task unfinished, but after listen-
ing to Paula's arguments against such a proceeding, he ended by
gratifying her wish, remarking, " Obsequar igitur voluntati tuae
I shall submit to your will."
The intellectual activity of Jerome, while working under the
inspiration of his two incomparable friends, was marvelous, and the
amount of work which he accomplished under their benign influence,
and with their efficient co-operation, was enormous. There were
commentaries on the Old and New Testament, translations from
the noted Greek doctors, and letters innumerable to all points of the
compass. From all parts of the Roman empire Jerome was appealed
468 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
to as an oracle on all matters pertaining to Scripture, or to tradi-
tions and doctrines based on Scripture. Besides this, he found him-
self engaged in the violent controversies concerning the teachings
of Origen and Pelagius controversies which demanded much of
his time, and withdrew him from his more congenial work on the
Bible. But Paula and Eustochium saw to it that these interruptions
did not interfere with their plans for an undertaking on which they
had so long set their hearts a work which was to be the culmination
of the master's achievements. This was nothing less than a complete
Latin version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew original.
All Jerome's previous labors, before the inception of this colossal
task, had paved the way for this supreme effort, and nothing, after
the task was actually begun, was permitted for long to retard its
progress or to militate against its ultimate termination.
At the urgent request of Paula, Jerome had, shortly after the
completion of the monasteries in Bethlehem, made what was partly
a new Latin translation of the Bible from the Septuagint, and partly
a revision of the old Italic version, which was in many respects
seriously defective. This great work, however, which, unfortu-
nately, has been almost entirely lost, was but a prelude to the more
difficult and more important translation from the Hebrew.
M. Ozanam does not hesitate to declare that this version of
the Bible from the original text was one of the most daring,
as well as one of the greatest, projects ever conceived. It was
also one of the most important to the western or Latin Church, for
as yet it had no direct translation from the Hebrew, while the
Greek Church had no less than three, besides the Septuagint. The
old Italic version, as well as Jerome's revision of it, and version
from the Septuagint, was nothing more than a translation of a
translation. The time had come, however, when a Latin version
from the original Hebrew was an imperative necessity. Jerome,
with his vast encyclopedic knowledge, was the only man who was
then sufficiently versed in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaic to
attempt such a work. But no one realized more clearly than he
did the magnitude of such a bold and difficult enterprise. Never-
theless, stimulated and encouraged by Paula and Eustochium, he
set himself to work with his usual energy, and with all the ardor of
one in the bloomy flush of early manhood.
This is not the place to recount the part which Paula and Eus-
tochium had in this huge undertaking, but it can be truthfully
said that its history is intimately woven with their own history,
1912.] WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 469
and that the great fecundity of their lives in Bethlehem, or rather
their providential mission in the Church, is exhibited at its best
in Jerome's version of the Bible, long known as the Vulgate.
When Jerome began actual work on his opus ma jus, he was
in his sixtieth year at an age when, according to certain modern
pseudo-economists, men should be retired from the sphere of active
life. He was also in delicate health, but his intellect was as clear
and his mind as active and as vigorous as ever. But neither weight
of years nor impaired health could restrain his impetuous nature,
or render him less eager to comply with the wishes of his per-
fervid friends, respecting a work before which any other man of
his age and infirmities would have recoiled as before the impossible.
The version from the Hebrew was not made in the usual
sequence of the Sacred Books, beginning with the first and ending
with the last, but according to the demands of the polemic of the
time, or the expressed preferences of Paula and others, to whose
wishes he cheerfully deferred.
The part of the Bible first translated was the first Book of
Kings. No sooner had he completed this portion of his work than
Jerome submitted it to Paula and Eustochium for their criticism,
so great was his confidence in their capacity and judgment. " Read
my book of Kings," he writes. " Yes, my book, for it is truly ours
which has been produced by such profound study and such arduous
toil. Read also the Latin and Greek editions and compare them
with my version."
And they did read and compare and criticise. And more than
this, they frequently suggested modifications and corrections, which
the great man accepted with touching humility and incorporated in
a revised copy. It may indeed be confidently asserted that no two
persons since their time have more thoroughly and more lovingly
studied and compared the Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts of the
Scriptures, or have more completely made this occupation the work
of their lives, than did Paula and Eustochium. And it would be
difficult to name any other two persons that possessed a greater
mastery of the three languages required, all of which they spoke
with precision and fluency. Even that eminent doctor of the
Church, St. Augustine, who devoted so much of his life to the
study and interpretation of Scripture, was far from being profi-
cient in Greek, and knew practically nothing of Hebrew.
But the service which Paula and Eustochium rendered to the
venerable hermit was not limited to their criticism, advice and
470 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
encouragement, to which he attached so much importance, and on
which he so greatly relied for the perfection of his work. Far from
it. It was Paula, who procured for him at her own expense, the
books and rare manuscripts which were essential to the successful
execution of his work. This was no small assistance, for in those
days the books and manuscripts that Jerome most needed like
Origen's Hexapla for instance were exceedingly rare, and were
worth their weight in gold.
Yet more. Much as has already been said of the share of
these noble women in the great scholar's translations and commen-
taries, the most remarkable fact a fact almost unknown remains
to be told. Under Jerome's direction, they undertook the delicate
and important work of copying and revising Biblical manuscripts, in
which they were aided by the inmates of Paula's convent. This was.
particularly true in the case of the Psalms, for, wonderful to relate,
the Psalter which has been adopted in our Vulgate, is not the trans-
lation made by Jerome from the Hebrew, but a corrected version of
the Septuagint executed by Paula and Eustochium.
While reading of these arduous labors of Jerome's illustrious
friends and collaborators,
one loves [writes Armedee Thierry] to picture them seated
before a large table on which are spread numerous manu-
scripts in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin; here the Hebrew
text of the Bible, there the different editions of the
Septuagint, the Hexapla of Origen, Theodotion, Symma-
cus, Aquila, and lastly the Italic Vulgate; to observe these
learned women controlling, comparing, copying with their own
hands and with piety and joy this Psalter. . . .which we still
chant, at least in great part, in the Latin Church to-day. The
mind is then involuntarily carried back to their palaces in Rome,
their ceilings of marble and gold, the army of eunuchs, servants
and clients, and to their life there, surrounded with all the
delicacies of fortune and all the pomps of rank. Like Mary,
the sister of Martha, they believed they had chosen the better
part, and they rejoiced in all the fullness of their hearts.
It was thus in Paula's convents, which were likewise schools
of theology and languages, and in which every one of her religious
was obliged to study Scripture, where originated that important oc-
cupation of copying manuscripts, which became a universal practice
in all the monasteries of succeeding ages an occupation to which
1912.] WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 47*
we are indebted for the preservation of the treasures of Greek and
Roman letters and science, as well as of the writings of the Fathers
and Doctors of the Church, and an occupation, which, when we
consider what it has saved for us, was probably one of the most
useful which was ever instituted.
The mind dwells with pleasure on the work accomplished dur-
ing mediaeval times in the scriptoriums of the Benedictines, Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans, and on those presided over by Hroswitha,
St. Hildegarde, and the princess-abbess of Whitby, St. Hilda, the
inspirer and patroness of Caedmon, who was the precursor by a
thousand years of the author of Paradise Lost, but when recalling
what we owe to these noble institutions, let us not forget that the
origin and exemplar of all of them was the one that owed its exist-
ence to Paula and Eustochium in their famous convent in Beth-
lehem.
So highly did Jerome value the assistance given him by his
two devoted co-workers, that he dedicated nearly all his works to
them. Those that were not dedicated to them were inscribed to his
old friend, Marcella, who, from her convent on the Aventine, kept
up a constant correspondence with her friends in Bethlehem, and
exhibited an unabated interest in the study of Scripture, and as well
as in the labors of her former teacher, in whose achievements she
gloried as much almost as did Paula and Eustochium.
The Pharisees of the time reproached Jerome with his per-
sistence in dedicating his books to women, and denounced the aged
hermit's action as a scandal. His reply to his accusers, in his
preface to the commentary on Sophonias, reveals the character of
the man and his nobility of soul so well that I reproduce from it the
following paragraph :
There are people, O Paula and Eustochium, who take offence
at seeing your names at the beginning of my works. These people
do not know that Olda prophesied when the men were mute,
that while Barak trembled, Deborah saved Israel, that Judith and
Esther delivered from supreme peril the children of God. I pass
over in silence Anna and Elizabeth and the other holy women
of the Gospel, but humble stars when compared with the great
luminary, Mary. Shall I speak now of the illustrious women
among the heathen ? Does not Plato have Aspasia speak in his
dialogues? Does not Sappho hold the lyre at the same time as
Alcaeus and Pindar? Did not Themista philosophize with the
sages of Greece ? And the mother of the Gracchi, your Cornelia,
472 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
and the daughter of Cato, wife of Brutus, before whom pale
the austere virtue of the father and the courage of the husband
are they not the pride of the whole of Rome? I shall add
but one word more. Was it not to women that Our Lord ap-
peared after His resurrection? Yes, and the men could then
blush for not having sought what women had found.
Could any modern champion of woman be more eloquent and
more chivalrous than this roused " Lion of Bethlehem? "
Paula did not live to see the completion of the version from
the Hebrew, of which she had been the chief inspirer and promoter.
Little, however, remained to be done after her death. This Jerome,
although almost crushed by the loss of one who had been his con-
solation and support in countless trials and difficulties and persecu-
tions, hastened, under the gentle but unceasing stimulation of Eusto-
chium, to bring to a happy termination. When, finally, the last
page was finished, he placed it, as it were, on the tomb of his sainted
friend as a pious tribute to her memory. " Now," he writes in the
preface of this great work, " now that the blessed and venerable
Paula has slept in the Lord, I have not been able to refuse you,
Eustochium, virgin of Christ, these books which I promised to
your mother."
Thus, then, after fifteen years of the most strenuous toil, was
finally completed, about the year 405, this first and unique version
of the Scriptures from the Hebrew into Latin a version, which,
under the name of the Vulgate, was adopted by the Council of
Trent as the authorized version for the entire Catholic Church.
It was a marvelous achievement, which, all things considered, is
without a parallel in the annals of letters.
When Johnson's dictionary was published, " the world," Bos-
well informs us, " contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work
achieved by one man, while other countries had thought such under-
takings fit only for whole academies." The statement is no doubt
warranted, but with how much greater truth could it be made
of the Vulgate a work involving incomparably more preparation
and labor, and requiring much greater equipment and a much higher
order of genius.
The English " Authorized Version " of the Bible was the joint
work of six committees, composed of forty-seven of the most noted
scholars of England, who labored nearly five years on a translation
which was, in reality, little more than a revision of previous versions.
WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 473
Compared with the translation of Jerome, a noted Scriptural author-
ity in the Encyclopaedia Britannica writes as follows : " It "
The Authorized Version whose genealogy is to be traced up in a
direct line through every stage of Biblical revision to the Latin
Vulgate " stands pre-eminent for its accurate representation of
the original Hebrew and Greek, and may challenge favorable com-
parison in this respect.. . .with the Latin Vulgate." Could more
be said of the transcendent excellence of Jerome's work, or give a
clearer idea of its magnitude than these two statements? But then
the translator of the Vulgate had the supreme advantage of laboring
under the benign influence of a twin-star Paula and Eustochium
the most brilliant luminary of the kind that ever appeared in the
ecclesiastical firmament during the long course of the Church's
history.
Jerome was seventy-five years of age when the Vulgate was
given to the world. But his labors were not yet ended. He had
promised Paula, during her life, to write commentaries on all the
prophets. A part of this task had been completed, but the most
difficult part of it still remained untouched. But the weight of
years, failing eyesight, and broken health, did not deter him from
making good a promise made long years before. With the assistance
of Eustochium, who was always near him to sweeten his task and
alleviate his sufferings, he labored on with amazing ardor. Paula
in the tomb still animated him no less than when she was alive, and
acted as his inspiring guardian angel. Under the magic of her name
and ever persisting influence, under the spell of her sweet and
cherished memory, his indomitable energy never flags, and his
wonted activity never abates.
Paula had dreamed of a monument of exegesis in which should
be embalmed all the knowledge accumulated by the venerable soli-
tary during his long and busy life, a monument that should forever
endure to the glory of the Church and to his own glory. " And
shall this monument," queried, with anxious mien, the gentle, ardent
Eustochium, " remain unfinished ? " " No," exclaimed, in the
language of Virgil, the high-minded old man, " dum spiritus has
regit artus while the breath of life remains I shall remain faith-
ful to my promise."
The day was not long enough for him, so, by the aid of the
flickering light of a small lamp, he continued his labors far into
the night. Finally enfeebled by his great age, his eyes refused
to serve him any longer, and he was unable to decipher his Hebrew
474 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
manuscripts without the aid of some of his brethren in the monas-
tery. They read to him the interpreters he could no longer read
himself, and he dictated to them his commentaries. At last, in
his eightieth year, his task was finished, and he was able to say
to Eustochium, who, after her mother's death, had been his un-
failing support and comforter: " You force me, O virgin of Christ,
Eustochium, to pay you the debt which I owe to your sainted mother.
My affection for her is not greater than that which I have for
you. But you are present; in obeying you, I acquit myself of the
debt I owe both of you." The picture of the venerable octogenarian
handing this final volume to Eustochium, Paula's heiress and execu-
trix, and thus acquitting himself of what he considered the most
sacred of obligations, is one of the most touching spectacles in the
history of letters and sanctity.
Shortly after seeing all of Paula's dreams realized and her
own as well, the gentle, ardent, gifted Eustochium, the first of
patrician maidens to make the vow of virginity, followed her
mother to another world. Jerome's only consolation after her death
was the granddaughter of Paula, who, some years previously, had
come from Rome and who, like her aunt and grandmother, had the
ineffable happiness of studying Scripture under the same master,
who, thirty years before, had inaugurated a course of Bible study
in the Ecclesia Domestica on the Aventine, and who had there,
under the inspiration of those who were nearest and dearest to her,
as well as to him, begun that brilliant career which issued in his
being ranked among the most eminent fathers and doctors of the
Church.
Young Paula, who was now a maiden of twenty years, and
inheriting all the rare qualities of mind and heart, which so dis-
tinguished the other members of her family, was the light and life of
the venerable and venerated patriarch during the year which he sur-
vived the death of his devoted daughter in Christ, Eustochium.
And when the end came, after his long and faithful service in
the cause of Biblical science, it was young Paula who closed his
eyes in death, and who had his precious remains laid away near the
grotto of the Nativity not far from those of the two exalted souls
" in goodness and power pre-eminent "
who, for more than a third of a century, had watched over him
with the most tender solicitude, and who by developing to the
1912.] WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 475
utmost all the resources of his matchless intellect, had converted
the retiring and diffident monk of Chalcis into the brightest luminary
in Christendom.
Jerome is usually characterized as a man of exceedingly aus-
tere, almost savage, nature. He was indeed an implacable foe
to idleness, frivolity and luxury, but the foregoing pages regard-
ing his relations towards his friends and pupils in Rome and Beth-
lehem exhibit him in a different light. He may not have been of the
effusive and demonstrative disposition of his illustrious friend and
contemporary, St. Augustine, as portrayed in Ary Scheffer's splen-
did painting of St. Monica and her son, but he was nevertheless
a man of a deeply affectionate nature, of rare generosity and nobility
of soul, and, above all, a man of unswerving loyalty to his friends.
No man, probably, was ever so completely under the sublime
inspiration of the " eternal womanly " as was this exemplar of
penance and mortification. From the time he came under the
potent influence of Marcella and her gifted friends in the convent
on the Aventine, until he gave young Paula her last lesson in
Scripture, it was this inspiring force that kept him on the highest
plane of intellectual effort. We admire " the eternal womanly "
in St. Hilda, who unsealed the lips of Caedmon and made him the
first of English bards; we admire it in Vittoria Colonna, who stimu-
lated Michael Angelo in his sublimest conceptions ; we admire it in
St. Clare, who sustained St. Francis, the poverello of Assisi, in
his great, world-embracing work of charity and reform; we admire
it in Aspasia, who was the inspiration of the most brilliant geniuses
of Attica in the golden age of Greece; we admire it in Beatrice,
the sovereign influence in the production of Dante's immortal
Divina C ommedia, but in none of these ihspirers of great things
do we find that long-continued, ever-present, all-dominating, su-
premely effective power of the " eternal womanly " that so dis-
tinguished Paula and Eustochium, and which has forever identi-
fied them with Jerome's masterpiece, the Vulgate.
Dante, at the conclusion of his New Life, in referring to his
great work the Divina Commedia, which he then had in contem-
plation writes concerning Beatrice, the lady of his heart, " I hope
to say of her what was never said of any woman." Jerome, in
addressing his last farewell to Paula, in his famous funeral eulogy,
expresses himself to the same effect, but in a different manner. In
words broken by sobs and tears, the grief-stricken old man ex-
claims, " Vale, Paula, Adieu, Paula sustain by thy prayers
476 WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY [July,
the declining years of him who has held thee in such veneration and
affection. Thy faith and thy works unite thee to Christ. In
His presence thy petitions will readily be granted." Then, re-
calling his life-work, a work which he is always pleased to regard
as her work, as well as his own, he is comforted in his deep affliction,
for he feels that her memory will endure as long as men shall
be moved by the deeds of heroic lives or stirred by the records of
pre-eminent merit and achievement. And giving a beautiful turn
to a well-known sentiment of Horace and Ovid, he rejoices even
in his sorrow, for he can say in the language of solemn prophecy,
" Exegi monumentum tuum aere perennius, quod nulla destruere
possit vetustas I have raised to thee a monument more durable
than bronze, which time shall never destroy."
What a wonderful prophecy, and what a marvelous fulfillment
of it has been witnessed during the ages which have elapsed since
these words were pronounced! Paula's monument was Jerome's
life-work his letters, his doctrinal treatises, his commentaries, but
above all, his Latin version of the Hebrew Scriptures the Vulgate.
And what a unique monument it is !
All the Anglo-Saxon translations, not to speak of others, were
made from it, as was also the English version of Wyklif, while
its influence in Tyndale's and subsequent English versions was most
profound. It was the first book to come from the press of Guten-
berg, a copy of which Bible is the most prized volume in the
world to-day. But a still more signal honor awaited it, for it was
decreed by the Council of Trent, that " the old and Vulgate edition,"
approved " by the usage of so many ages," should be the only Latin
version used in " public lectures, disputations, sermons and exposi-
tions." And so far-reaching has been its influence through the
centuries that the religious terminology of the languages of Western
Europe has in great part been derived from or colored by the
Vulgate.
Nor is this all. As is well known, most of the modern lan-
guages of Europe have been formed under the influence of, and as
the result of the fecundity of, the ancient Latin. But the Latin
from which these languages have been fashioned was not the lan-
guage of Cicero, or of Virgil, popular as he was during the Middle
Ages, but the language of the Church and of the Bible the lan-
guage of the Vulgate which was created by Jerome acting under
the inspiration of Paula. It is the Vulgate, which was the first
book of which the nascent languages of mediaeval times essayed a
1912.] WOMAN'S WORK AND BIBLE STUDY 477
translation, the first book of which an attempt at translation was
made in the French of the twelfth century, and in the German of
the eighth century. It is the Vulgate, with its admirable narra-
tives, with the fascinating simplicity of Genesis, with its charm-
ing pictures of the infancy of the human race, that supplied the
needed language in which to address the barbarians from the North,
when they first came under the beneficent influence of Christian
civilization.
Our fathers were wont to cover the Vulgate with gold and
precious stones. And they did more. When a council was as-
sembled, the Sacred Scriptures that is the Vulgate were placed
upon the altar in the midst of the assembly which it, in a certain
sense, dominated, while, on the occasions of great and imposing out-
door processions, the Bible was carried in triumph in a golden
reliquary.
Our ancestors had good reasons to carry the Vulgate in triumph
and covered with gold. For this first of ancient books, is, as Oza-
nam truly observes, also the first of modern books. It is, as it
were, the source of modern books, because from its pages have
sprung all the languages, all the eloquence, all the civilization of the
later centuries.
St. Jerome was right. The monument he erected to Paula,
or rather to Paula and Eustochium for mother and daughter may
not be separated is imperishable. And the glory of their work, far
from diminishing with the passing ages, becomes, on the contrary,
greater as the world grows older and wiser. Who, then, that
has read the story of the labors of the Dalmatian monk, and of
the heiresses of the Scipios and the Gracchi, can any longer
question the supreme importance of woman's influence in every
sphere of human endeavor, or seriously contend that inspiration,
of the kind noted in the preceding pages, is of lesser moment than
execution? And who can fail to see that Goethe expressed a
profound and beautiful truth when, in the closing verses of Faust,
he declared it is " The eternal womanly that leads us on "
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan?
THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD.*
BY VIRGINIA M. CRAWFORD.
EVERAL events of recent years have testified to the
growing participation of English Catholics in all
that pertains to the public life of their country, and
to the development among us of that much-needed
quality, the social sense. The marked success of
the newly-organized Catholic Congresses held at Leeds in 1910
and at Newcastle in 1911 with the representative audiences they
brought together, and the broadly inclusive programmes they of-
fered, has been an outward manifestation of healthy national life,
about which there could be no dispute. Such gatherings would have
been impossible even ten years ago. The complete concord between
priests and laity, which the long controversies over education and
the fight for our schools have had the result both of demonstrating
and consolidating, has brought home to Catholics, accustomed to
regarding themselves as an almost negligible quantity in public
affairs, how much may be achieved by concerted action. Un-
doubtedly also the religious enthusiasm aroused by the Eucharistic
Congress at Westminster (1908), and the deep resentment evoked
by Mr. Asquith's prohibition of the procession of the Blessed
Sacrament round the precincts of the Cathedral, helped to build up
a cohesive Catholic sense. Month by month, too, and year by year,
as the old spirit of exclusiveness and self-effacement among Catho-
lics a relic of penal times has waned, and the old spirit of anti-
papistical intolerance among Protestants has grown less bitter, we
have been brought naturally and inevitably into cooperation with
all religious denominations in those wide fields of philanthropy
and civic activity in which in England, happily, men and women
of every creed can work harmoniously and with mutual respect.
Thus it was at once as a result and as a cause that over two years
*THE CATHOLIC WORLD aims to make the Catholic world better known to all
its readers. From the activities of the faithful in every part of the globe we may
gain both instruction and incentive. The rays of Catholic truth and Catholic in-
spiration wherever shed will energize and warm us. The aims of the Catholic
Social Guild in England are the aims of various agencies here, and, keeping intact
those national characteristics necessary to make any work effective, we believe
that the invitation extended in this article should be heartily welcomed, and that
cooperation would yield mutual benefit. Ed. C. W.
1912.] THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD 479
ago the Catholic Social Guild* came into existence, a testimony to
our concern in social and economic problems, and a recognition
of the need for a clearer understanding of the Catholic principles
involved in them.
The birth of the Guild indicates, indeed, how great a change
has come over the mentality of English Catholics within the last
quarter of a century. To-day it seems scarcely credible that when
the Encyclical Rerum Novarum was published, it fell, as far as
England was concerned, upon almost deaf ears. With a few
notable exceptions Cardinal Manning, Bishop Hedley, and the
late Mr. C. S. Devas no one seemed to grasp the epoch-making
character of the document, or to realize the desirability of studying
it. Not only so, but when, two years previously, Cardinal Man-
ning played his great role of peacemaker in the dock strike an
event which made his name venerated in every Catholic working-
men's club throughout Europe his action was looked on as dan-
gerous and quixotic by many of his own flock, and he received
neither support nor applause from some who stood nearest to
him. At that time neither Leo XIII., with his pen, nor Cardinal
Manning, with his fearless advocacy of the rights of labor, was
able to stir into any sort of effective life the still dormant social
sense of English Catholics.
To-day there is an awakening all along the line. Many new
organizations have sprung into existence; there has been a con-
siderable coordination of detached associations and isolated
workers, while cooperation with non-Catholics has become the
basis of much beneficent activity. The Catholic Federation for
men and the Catholic Women's League for women supply useful
platforms for the discussion of Catholic interests and the develop-
ment of a Catholic public spirit. It would be absurd and mislead-
ing to give too roseate a picture of our position, or to assume for
a moment that we may rest on our laurels, but no one save a con-
firmed pessimist would deny that in everything concerning our
civic and national life substantial progress has been made.
Until very recently Catholics have been manifestly deficient
in their realization of the need for definite social study. We have
had nothing corresponding to the systematic courses planned by the
Action Populaire or the Action Sociale de la Femine, in France, or
by the Volksvcrein, in Germany ; no organization prepared to under-
take careful research work into industrial conditions such as is
'General Hon. Sec., Mrs. Crawford, 105 Marylebone Road, London, N. W.
480 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD [July,
carried out both in France and Switzerland by the Ligue Socials
des Achetenrs. Hence in the purely charitable field our district
visitors and others have been content to exhaust their slender
means in somewhat indiscriminate almsgiving; and while bewail-
ing the destitution and squalor of our slum areas, they have made
no effort to probe the causes of the misery around them, or to
establish the co-relation between poverty on the one hand, and bad
housing, a disorganized labor-market, and inefficient education on
the other. Our priests have been so absorbed in their heavy
parish duties, and often so burdened with debt in their struggle
to keep their schools in existence, that they have been unable to
give the laity any lead in these matters. We have no Catholic
University to serve as a center for the dissemination of Catholic
teaching on social ethics, and it is only of quite recent years that
the study of social problems has begun to penetrate tentatively
into one or two of our seminaries. The need for such study had,
indeed, entered so little into the Catholic conscience that even such
opportunities as we possessed were not made use of. Thus no
effort was made indeed is still but rarely made to interest
the older pupils of our boys' colleges and our convent schools
either in social questions of the day or in practical work among
the poor, whereas for years past each of the big English public
schools has taken an active share in settlement work in East or
South London, with the special object of initiating the boys into
social service. Hence it has come about that our young people have
grown up more ignorant of and more indifferent to their social
and civic duties than their non-Catholic contemporaries, and quite
unprepared to take their share in solving those industrial problems
sweating, destitution, overcrowding that press so heavily to-
day on our English poor. Similarly, of our well-to-do Catholic
girls it has been asserted, not without truth, that in their conception
of life they seem to arrive at no via media between a religious
vocation and extreme frivolity. In other words, problems of pov-
erty and the duties they entail have been to them as a sealed book.
This indifference and ignorance in the upper classes have had their
counterpart in the lower, and no one would assert that our Catholic
workingmen have been duly equipped by education and training
to discriminate between true and false principles of reform, or
to discern when and where their faith may be endangered.
For those of us who had been in touch with Catholic activity
on the Continent, whether in France or Belgium, in Germany,
THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD 481
Switzerland, or Northern Italy, it was comparatively easy to put
a finger on the weak spot in our Catholic armor. The remedy
lay in organized study, in the elucidation of Catholic social prin-
ciples, and in the cultivation of the social sense. A first definite
impulse was given by a young Jesuit, at that time not yet ordained,
the Rev. Charles Plater, whose name has already penetrated across
the Atlantic. In a series of articles in The Dublin Review, under
the title Catholic Social Work in Germany * Father Plater told the
stimulating story of German Catholic achievements during the later
half of the nineteenth century. The articles were a revelation
to many English readers, and excited widespread interest, all the
more as parallels between the two countries were boldly drawn.
From the same eloquent pen came a number of articles in the Month,
and other periodicals, pleading on the intellectual side for organ-
ized study, and on the spiritual side for workingmen's Retreats.
These, in the writer's opinion, were the means by which the faith
in England was to be brought to fruition. Meanwhile, in Man-
chester, in connection with St. Bede's College, Bishop Casartelli
was founding a Catholic school of social science, and from the
seminary at Oscott, Monsignor Parkinson was taking an active
part in the campaign for the abolition of the Poor Law, and the
prevention of destitution organized by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb.
A Catholic Conference, summoned by the Catholic Truth
Society, and held that year in Manchester, saw the birth of the
new society. A number of prominent Catholic laymen attended
the Conference: Mr. J. Britten, Secretary to the Catholic Truth
Society; Mr. Leslie Toke, an Oxford man, and an authority on
rural housing; Dr. Mooney, a leader of Catholic life in Preston;
Mr. B. W. Devas, a son of the well-known writer and himself
an energetic social worker, together with two or three ladies
Miss Fletcher, founder of the Catholic Women's League; Mrs.
Philip Gibbs, and the present writer, and a handful of clergy
headed by Monsignor Parkinson took the opportunity of meeting
together and launching the new venture. The Bishop of the dio-
cese, Dr. Casartelli, gave the scheme his cordial approval, and its
inauguration was announced the same day to the Conference,
and received an encouraging welcome. Monsignor Parkinson ac-
cepted the presidency, a temporary executive was nominated, and
the minimum subscription for membership fixed at half a crown,
to be lowered later to one shilling. Two months later, under the
'Afterwards reproduced in book form by B. Herder, St. Louis, Mo.
VOL. XCV. 31.
482 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD [July,
hospitable roof of Oscott College, and the able guidance of its
president, progress was carried a step further. A general secretary
was secured in the person of Mr. G. C. King, an experimental
scheme of work was drawn up, and the infaat society had con-
ferred upon it the name of the Catholic Social Guild.
On this occasion, too, the aims of the Guild were officially
defined to be as follows :
To facilitate intercourse between Catholic students and
workers.
To assist in working out the application of Catholic principles
to actual social conditions.
To create a wider interest among Catholics in social questions,
and to secure their cooperation in promoting social reform on
Catholic lines.
Looking back over the two years of somewhat strenuous
life that have intervened since the Oscott Conference, it may be
asserted that the aims have been strictly adhered to, although the
means adopted have not been precisely those that the founders
had in their mind at the outset. Very wisely the Guild set to work
with no cut and dried programme, but with a determination to do
whatever at the moment might seem most feasible. Hence it has
come about that the two information bureaus, with reference libra-
ries, and a staff of competent lecturers attached, which, in Father
Plater's buoyant imagination, were to diffuse sound social prin-
ciples respectively throughout the North and the South of England,
still exist only as dreams for the future. The Northern Committee
has indeed never properly got to work owing to a variety of causes ;
the Southern Committee, having London as its basis, has happily
developed a useful sphere of activity, though not precisely what
was at first anticipated. Again, the idea of local branches of the
Guild not having proved very feasible, a plan of affiliating already
existing societies has been adopted with success. It would be
idle to deny that the work of the Guild has been carried on with
some disappointments, and amid very considerable difficulties
lack of means, lack of efficient workers with leisure to devote
to the cause, and on the other hand no lack at all of criticism that
has not always been friendly. It has had, however, firm friends
in the hierarchy and in the religious Orders, notably in Dr. Keating,
Bishop of Northampton, who has both written and spoken in its
favor, and it has enjoyed the approval of H. E. Cardinal Bourne;
.it has evoked not a little enthusiasm and a great deal of interest
in various quarters, and it is, without question, slowly but
1912.] THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD 483
surely taking its place as one of the living forces of the Church in
England.
What then, precisely, it may be asked, is the Guild doing at this
moment to further its own aims ? Briefly it is doing four things :
It is publishing literature on social subjects.
It is developing study-circles.
It is circulating book-boxes.
It is organizing a study scheme with a Board of Examiners
and a system of certificates.
Besides these definite undertakings, it is unquestionable that
in many intangible ways the Guild by its very existence keeps
the social question to the front. One of its most useful func-
tions, which yet does not yield results capable of enumeration,
consists in the giving of advice gratis. The President, the various
Secretaries, the members of the Executive Committee, all find
themselves regarded as experts in social science, and if no informa-
tion bureau exists in name, between them they carry on many of
the functions of such a bureau, answering inquiries concerning
books, lectures, and courses of study, and putting students in
touch with the organizations they require. It was partly to facili-
tate this work that the Guild last year resolved on starting a
Quarterly Bulletin, sent free to every subscriber. The bulletin not
only contains all Guild news, and announces the Guild publications,
but it notes social developments of interest to Catholics, and pro-
vides a carefully compiled bibliography of books, both Catholic
and non-Catholic, bearing on social questions. It has already
proved itself extremely useful, and may, it is hoped, in the near
future take its place among monthly publications.
From the publishing point of view the Guild undoubtedly
scored its first success with its Catholic Social Year Book (Catholic
Truth Society, 6d. net). Nothing of the kind for Catholics had
appeared before, and its utility was at once apparent. The little
book, whose annual appearance seems assured the third volume,
1912, is in the press at the moment of writing aims in the first
instance at supplying practical information for students and work-
ers, and in the second at ventilating the ideals of the Guild and
urging the need of social study. A variety of expert writers con-
tribute to each volume short articles on topics of the day; the
industrial and legislative events of the year, both at home and
abroad, are briefly summarized, and the year's progress of the
Guild chronicled. The result is a pleasant medley of " actual "
topics, which has proved extremely popular.
484 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD [July,
A number of pamphlets dealing with social principles have
also been issued in conjunction with the Catholic Truth Society.
Penny pamphlets, essential weapons as they are for popular prop-
aganda, are seldom of more than local and temporary interest. An
exception must, however, be made for the penny edition of the
Encyclical Rerum Novarum, annotated by Monsignor Parkinson,
who also contributes an explanatory introduction ; a pamphlet which
brings the words of Leo XIII. within reach of every workingman.
Another admirable pennyworth is contained in the Books for Catho-
lic Social Students, the books being arranged according to subjects
and the lists supplemented by useful hints to readers.
A far more important venture is the sixpenny series of Catho-
lic Social Guild Manuals (P. S. King, Orchard House, West-
minster). Here the aim is to examine "current problems of
citizenship in the light of Christian principles, thus furnishing. . . .
some means of distinguishing what is ethically sound from what
is based upon false or distorted ideals." The series will treat
successively of the various industrial and social problems of the
day by expert Catholic writers, who will first give a sketch of
the history of the question, and then indicate to what extent
Catholic doctrine is involved; what remedies are in accordance
with Christian principles, and what Catholic agencies are already
at work. The first to be published, Destitution and Suggested
Remedies, with an introduction by Monsignor Parkinson, deals
with the various aspects of the proposed reform of the Poor Law,
a very urgent problem in England at this moment; the second,
Sweated Labour and the Trade Boards Act, edited by Father
Wright, of Hull, claims to present for the first time with any
fulness the Catholic aspect of the sweating evil in England. It
is an ably edited and outspoken volume, and it contains a masterly
exposition of " the traditional Christian view " of a living wage
by Mr. Leslie Toke, who, it is needless to add, quotes freely from
the standard work on the subject by Dr. J. A. Ryan. Two more
volumes, already in preparation, deal with the housing problem and
the rights and duties of citizenship. This important series, when
complete, will constitute a valuable guide to social students, and
should form the basis of that practical programme of reform
which it should be the aim of the Guild to evolve and to identify
with the Catholic voter. Current problems are thus being provided
for one by one. What we need, in addition to the manuals, is a
text-book of sociology, something to put into the hands of all the
young students in our study circles. So far, unfortunately, no one
1912.] THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD 485
has felt equal to supplying the need. Possibly the book may yet
come to us from across the Atlantic. The Guild has, however, been
the means of supplying a comparatively cheap edition of the late
Mr. C. S. Devas' standard work on Political Economy, which,
hitherto issued only at seven and sixpence, can now be bought
through the Guild for two shillings and ninepence.
Next to the providing of literature comes its distribution
into the right hands, often the more difficult task of the two.
Among the minor activities of the Guild none has been more
successful than the circulation of book-boxes. In the United States
this work has-been initiated and extended by the Catholic World
Press, and is, we understand, doing great good. Here also we have
found it an invaluable supplement to our Guild activities. Study
circles scattered over the country often encounter real difficulty
in securing the books they need, while the multiplicity of works
dealing with social and economic questions issued week by week
renders the task of selection by no means easy. This duty is
undertaken by the Guild librarian. Each solid wooden book-box
sent out contains some twenty-two volumes dealing with whatever
subject the study circle may be engaged upon Trade Unionism,
Poor Law, Socialism, Women's Work and Wages, Economic Hist-
ory, Unemployment, and so on. Or a box of books on a variety
of social subjects suitable for general reading may be supplied.
Politics are excluded, and extreme views in any direction are
avoided, but an effort is made to give an all-round view of any
subject studied, as well as the most recent authorities. Catholic
books are included whenever possible such authors as C. S. Devas,
Ming, Cathrein, Charles Plater, Garriguet, and Belloc are in
constant demand but necessarily the majority of books issued are
by non-Catholic writers. A box may be retained three months,
and the subscription is only five shillings a sum which covers
expenses and serves to replenish the boxes when needful, but not
to stock them in the first instance. This can only be done by dona-
tions, the value of the books in each box being about 3; hence
the Guild does not yet possess as many boxes as it might usefully
circulate.
Another and more recent development, always with the aim
of fostering social study, is due to the zealous initiative of Mrs.
Philip Gibbs and Father Th. Wright. They have devised and
circulated a scheme consisting of three separate courses of study,
each based on a text-book supplemented by a list of carefully
selected reference works. Each course is divided into two stages,
486 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD [July,
elementary and advanced, and it is intended to set examination
papers and grant certificates to those students who pass successfully
through both stages. A number of well-known Catholics, such as
Monsignor Parkinson, Dr. Mooney, Mr. Leslie Toke, and Mr.
F. F. Urquhart, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, are cooperating
in the scheme, and have consented to act as examiners. Course
A deals with economic theory, and demands the study of several of
the Leonine encyclicals and of the various works of Mr, C. S. Devas.
It might be specially commended to Catholic Trade Unionists and
to workingmen generally. Course B is devoted to the economic
history of England in the eighteenth century, and even in the
elementary course the student will have to cover a fairly wide
field of reading. Indeed this course should only be entered upon
by men and women of solid education. Course C, on the other
hand, has been planned to meet the needs of the practical social
worker anxious to familiarize him or herself with the causes of
existing misery and destitution, and would be eminently suitable
for the older boys and girls of our colleges and convent schools.
In this course the two Catholic Social Guild manuals already pub-
lished afford most suitable text-books.
This comprehensive scheme is still quite in its infancy. In-
deed only the preliminary courses have been issued, and the first
examination takes place this July, but it has met with a wider
response than its originators dared to hope for. Already there
can be no question that it will stimulate and systematize the read-
ing of the study-circles, which, thanks to the Guild, are springing
up all over the country. It will help to create an elite of Catholic
students, who will become the lecturers and teachers of future
years, and it should enable the Catholic workingman to obtain a
clear grasp of the principles on which to fight for industrial reform,
and of where to join issue with reformers of other schools. That
its advantages should have been so quickly seized by students
of all ranks is a testimony to the progress already made in the
task of kindling the social sense among us. Is it too much to
hope that this study-scheme, starting on so unpretentious a basis,
may prove in time the nucleus of a real school of social study, with
premises of its own and a highly qualified staff of lecturers such
a school as, I am told, is being organized to-day by the Catholics
of New York?
Here I am tempted to ask how far it might be possible for
the Catholics of the United States and of the British Isles to
cooperate in a work, mainly educative, which has been created
1912.] THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD 487
in both countries by the exigencies of the time ? Judging from the
very candid and interesting papers on Catholic Social Reform read
at the First National Conference of Catholic Charities at Washing-
ton, the problems that the Church has to face in the States are
practically identical with those we have in England. I venture to
think that Dr. J. A. Ryan, who honored the Catholic Social Guild
not only with his presence, but with a weighty contribution to the
debate at their sectional meeting at the National Congress of New-
castle last year, found the matters under discussion not dissimilar
to those on which a body of his own countrymen might have
been engaged. Internationalism is the note of every powerful
movement of the present day, and to none should it come more
easily and more spontaneously than to members of the Catholic
Church. If some connecting links could be forged, if a free
exchange of year-books and pamphlets and manuals might be
organized, if there could be a frequent interchange of ideas and
schemes between Catholic social leaders on both sides of the Atlan-
tic, the results could only prove mutually beneficial. This is specially
true as to literary output. Clearly some of the books and pamph-
lets produced might serve indiscriminately in the Old and the New
World, and the translation of standard works from the French or
German, such as those of Antoine and Garriguet and Max Tur-
mann, would not need duplication. Catholics in the United States
are incomparably more numerous and considerably more wealthy
than in England and Ireland, but it is possible at the moment that
our social forces are the more thoroughly organized. Towards a
fraternal understanding such as I have outlined, the Guild would
gladly cooperate. It has itself been inspired in great measure by
a knowledge of what Catholics have effected in the field of social
reform in Germany and in Switzerland;* hence it is free from
any tendency to the insularism with which English Catholics have
sometimes been reproached. Moreover we are accustomed to look
across the Atlantic for examples of enterprise and democratic
progress. To-day, in England as in America, we want to be sure of
our social principles, and we want so to better our industrial condi-
tions that they shall no longer prove a hindrance to religious
progress. If in any real sense we can join forces in this campaign
we shall gain appreciably in influence and in fighting strength.
*See Switzerland To-day; A Study in Social Progress, by V. M. Crawford. B.
Herder, St. Louis, Mo.
SAYING PRAYERS.
BY CHARLTON BENEDICT WALKER.
HE liturgical prayer of the Church had 'its origin
in the private devotion of the individual. The in-
spiration given to the Christian prophet, a recog-
nized order in the Christian ministry of the first
century, was publicly expressed in the meetings for
prayer and worship. Not only publicly but freely. But the pres-
ence of authority in the person of the Pontiff is shown by the
gathering up, or " collecting," of these divinely inspired utterances
into a short prayer which in time, perhaps from the very begin-
ning, was based upon a certain frame-work the address to God,
the reason for making the address, the petition, the ascription to
the mediation of Our Lord of the power by which the whole prayer
is made efficacious. It is quite clear that the Prophetic Order in
the Church disappeared from the sphere of practical organization
in very early times. How this came about is not so clear, but if I
may venture a conjecture that I make with all humility, it did
not come to an end at all in any real sense. I believe that the
real truth lies in the realization of the promise of the abiding of
the Holy Ghost, to a special degree it is true, in the person
of those to whom it was imparted as part of their office; the
priest, the bishop, but in a far wider sense the prophecy of Joel
was realized in the Catholic Church, and is realized at the present
day this Spirit rests upon all. Someone has called Confirmation
" the ordination of the laity," and in my view this special gift of
the Holy Ghost has incorporated the whole body of Catholic Chris-
tians into the order of Prophets. It is a matter of common knowl-
edge that the greatest masters of prayer have no greater claim upon
the attention of Almighty God than the smallest child. Our
equality before Him is absolute, and we ought to realize our privi-
lege in being admitted to the presence-chamber of His Divine
Majesty by constantly addressing Him in our own words. They
may not be eloquent, they may even be a jumble of imperfections,
but if we realize to Whom we are speaking, this will not dismay
us. On the contrary, knowing that practice makes perfect, we shall
I 9 i2.] SAYING PRAYERS 489
go on boldly towards perfection by the constancy of our practice.
Whether we ever attain perfection or no is not our immediate
concern. In fact to trouble about perfection, apart from feelings
of reverence, is likely to lead to scruples. But we, all of us, from
time to time need help.
I ventured to suggest in a former article A Forgotten Book of
Devotions that we ought to endeavor to make the liturgical prayer
of the Church our own. This, as the highest expression of the soul
to God, must always remain as the standard towards which we
strive, remembering always that even this standard has to bow
before what, for sake of convenience, we call Mental Prayer.
Having this official prayer of the Church in mind, let us see
what good scheme of Vocal Prayer we may lay down for our-
selves in our endeavor to realize our prophetic 'office. I propose
to be as practical as possible, and to leave to Catholic good sense
the much greater task of filling in details.
First, it is most necessary to have a regular time for prayer.
For busy people morning and evening prayers are the rule, and
prayers at other times when possible. Now with regard to morn-
ing prayer, the difficulty lies very largely in getting up in good time.
This is really a matter of habit, a difficult matter, but one which
can be formed. Fervor in this case will suggest impracticable
schemes. It is not the slightest use to make a resolution forthwith
to rise daily at half-past six when all our lives hitherto we have
been rising daily at half-past seven. For a few mornings we shall
doubtless rise at half-past six; a very few if experience is to be
trusted. And then ! It is excellent to make a fixed
endeavor early in life, as far as we can, to hear Mass every
day. Mass is at a fixed time and it is early. Perhaps not very
early, but sufficiently so for anyone who finds a difficulty in getting
up in the morning. If we are too far from church to be able to
get to Mass, we will at least arise in time to get there. And with
regard to evening prayers. If we are obliged to be up late at night,
and some of us have to do most of our work when the rest of the
world is in bed, then evening prayers are much better said early in
the evening. It requires no great preparation to retire to one's bed-
room for a quarter of an hour or so in the evening; no very elab-
orate excuses need be made, so long of course as one's absence entails
no neglect of other duties. And then the saying of the De Pro-
fundis as we are undressing is no irreverence, and the Nunc Dimittis
as we get into bed, and an unfinished Hail Mary as we drop asleep,
490
SAYING PRAYERS [July,
" directly our head touches the pillow," as we say. Surely not !
But our evening prayers would have been but of a poor kind had
we deferred them so long.
Secondly, there is the question of place. Now the bedside has
an honorable tradition, but I suggest it is not always quite suitable.
A bedside, both night and morning, has its obvious disadvantages.
It is better to turn our backs upon our bed at both times. Every
Catholic will, of course, endeavor to have at least a crucifix in the
bedroom. A crucifix in every room in the house is a good rule, and
a crucifix near the entrance door, where it can be seen by everyone
who enters or leaves the house, and by the casual visitor who will
not enter and who is yet loth to leave, is excellent. But the bed-
room crucifix is essential, and that will be naturally the place of
prayer, and round it we may collect such objects of piety as the
memorial of our First Communion, the mortuary cards of our de-
parted friends, a picture or statue of our Blessed Lady and our
Patron Saint, one of the many excellent calendars containing the
Saints of every day in the year, all connected in one way or another
with our life of prayer. A rosary, of course, we shall always carry
about us. Such a place of prayer as I have described is in no
sense obtrusive, nor is it any more than a means to a good end.
Time and place having been settled to the best possible ad-
vantage, there remains the most difficult, but specially important,
question of the books which help us to prayer. These fall into
two classes: books which contain forms of vocal prayer and books
which contain spiritual reading which suggest prayer. With regard
to the former class, which we shall consider exclusively here, their
number is legion, and their value varies almost as greatly as their
number. The best prayer-book I know is the Holy Bible, and it
has two supreme advantages. The first of them is that it contains
the message of God to His Church, and was written by men under
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost Himself ; and the second, depend-
ing upon this, is that it has been recognized by the Church
as the Word of God, written in obedience to God's will. It
is not one book, but many, a library containing all that is noblest
of the world's literature in history, poetry, drama, and philosophy.
It is such a marvelous book in itself, apart from its special character,
that we find all manner of people using it. Indeed if we were to
believe all we hear, we should be tempted to believe that it was the
exclusive possession of everyone, and that one only needed a
Bible to be sure of having a perfectly satisfactory " religion." Of
1 912.] SAYING PRAYERS 491
course this last notion has produced sufficient confusion of thought
in the world's history to carry its own confutation.
As to its use. The Holy Bible is, as I have said, not one book,
but many. If we desire to study the history of nations we do not
take down our Longfellow from our book shelf; if it be drama that
our mind craves for we do not lay hands upon Buckle or Adam
Smith. So if we desire to pray we shall turn to those parts of the
Sacred Library which contain prayer later on, as I hope to
show in a future article, we shall come to regard the whole Library
as one vast Prayer-book; for the present we turn to the special
prayer section. Was there ever such a Prayer-book as the Psalter !
Almost every line of it puts thoughts into the mind and words
upon the lips for every conceivable human need. Hard and stern
it seldom is, though hardness and sternness have their right place
in prayer ; bitter and biting are the words we have to use to God in
our entreaty that sin may be no more ; sharp and keen must be the
word which denounces the transgression. But love and peace, and
a great longing for a clearer knowledge of God, are the prevailing
notes, and upon these rises that deathless song of praise and peti-
tion, of intercession and thanksgiving, the symphony with its
war-song of the Church Militant, its wail of the Church Suffering,
and its endless Alleluia of the Holy Host of Heaven, responding
with one voice to the beating of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So,
in part at least, the Bible must be considered a very important
book when we kneel down to pray.
Then with regard to other books. I am not wishing to be so
rash as to recommend one book more than another. But to be very
practical, as we must, there is need that we do not immediately con-
clude that a prayer-book is suitable because it is our own. All books
need testing by use before their proper value for ourselves can
really be ascertained. That is why I have put the Bible, and, in
a former article, the Missal and the Breviary, apart by themselves.
In this matter we are allowed a wider choice, and we must make
experiments. Only one word of warning. The book which we
were given at our First Communion will not have quite the same
value, for prayer, in ten years' time. We must not, on the other
hand, change our prayer-book too easily. It is the happy mean
that we have to find, and often when we find that our book tires
us, and that we are saying our prayers and not praying them,
the very best thing is to shut the book up for a week and try to get
along without it. The exercise of the memory will tend to devotion,
492 SAYING PRAYERS [July,
and perhaps in time, a week or so, the old book will seem fresh to
us once more. But there will come a time when we feel that we
have grown out of our book. The only safe course under the cir-
cumstances, and the practical course, is to state the case clearly
and at once to our director, and to ask for suggestions as to a
new help. It will be given at once, for this is a real part of direc-
tion, and we may with confidence accept the opinion of one who
knows all the circumstances. Don't sell the old book to be
battered on the cheapest shelf of a second-hand book-stall. An
old servant deserves better things. Give it to the priest. He will
know exactly what to do with it. Or keep it for the children. Did
you never know the pride of possession in " Father's book," or
have you ever come across those treasured prayer-books of past
days inscribed with the names of whole generations of families,
the witness of whose faith is thus handed on to ages who have
never known them ? At least see that an old friend has an honorable
resting-place !
The use of a prayer-book is to teach us to pray in our own
words. The recitation of someone else's prayers is not a very
good prayer. So when we kneel down we do by instinct sign our-
selves with the cross and begin : " In the name of the Father, and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Next we have in our minds
a clear idea of the order in which we are going to pray. For a
moment we shall draw God towards us, putting ourselves in His
presence. One moment, we are there, and He is listening. Then
surely we shall know we are as nothing in His sight, and begin
an act of humility, passing into a very short collecting of our many
reasons for being humble, our sins, venial and, alas! mortal, and
our whole unsatisfactory state of imperfection. This will lead,
again by instinct, to the Confiteor, said very slowly and with great
attention, and followed by an act of contrition not formal, though
it be the act we use in the confessional, but earnest. Next, and
naturally, comes a sense of relief that we are in a right relation to
God the sort of relief which we experience in the sacred tribunal
as we tell our offences, and we go on to praise. " Glory be to the
Father " comes naturally to our lips, and when that is done the
Laudate dominum of Benediction, which we all know by heart, is
remembered at once, such a fine piece of praise, and a Psalm too
make a mark against it in your Bible some other time, and a
similar mark against the last three or four Psalms too. The
Psalter is already becoming suggestive! However, we are busy
19 1 2.] SAYING PRAYERS 493
people, and there is another need : we have a host of things to ask.
Be careful to put God's will first, and then pour them all out. We
want to-morrow to be better than to-day the Miserere is a long
prayer, a Psalm again. Temporal needs for ourselves and others,
little difficulties which seemed so enormous before we knelt down,
but seem so easy to talk to God about, just confidentially as to a
friend who can keep secrets. Enough for ourselves, ask for
others too. And the Holy Souls too the De Profundis, yet
another Psalm. And now look round. Close to God stands our
dear Mother and our patron saints, loving our prayers and helping
them to Him, and adding little touches here and there to make them
better and truer. And close to us stands the Angel-guardian, who
has indeed been silently directing all this happy business with us.
A word with these of gratitude and love and petition, and then,
slowly and with closed eyes, that most perfect of all prayers, the
Our Father, and that most loving of all aspirations, the Hail Mary,
very slowly and very thoughtfully, and we have done.
You will see at once that I have suggested practically nothing
which requires a book of any kind. And this brings me back to
my first remark. In this scheme of private prayer, it is after all
nothing but a scheme, and perhaps hopelessly old-fashioned at that,
but in this scheme we have been exercising a mighty power. We
are ordained for this purpose, and we have been exercising our
functions, our prophetical office we have said our prayers. The
importance of this cannot be measured; it is infinite. It is so
important that its neglect would produce infinite disaster sooner or
later. But we cannot neglect it. Long or short, it may be varied by
all the countless circumstances of human life. In times of dryness
and weariness it is spelled out laboriously from the printed page ; in
times of happiness and fervor it is poured out from hearts which
exceed in their desire all power of expression. We cannot neglect it
because we love it, and in that love, which is a Divine Gift, without
price, we enter into Our Lord's promise by the mouth of the Prince
of the Apostles : " Whom having not seen, you love : in Whom
also now, though you see Him not, you believe : and believing shall
rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorified; receiving the end of
your faith, even the salvation of your souls."
THE HEART OF THE WIND.
BY P. J. CARROLL, C.S.C.
THE wind's tread is soft : he never crushes the lily that blows ;
His sandals are sweet with the perfume they lift from the heart of the
rose.
He eases the fevered pulse, brings bloom to the pallid face ;
To the toiler hot at the furnace front he carries a grace.
In the summer dawn he quickens the meadow lark into song,
He shakes the dew from drowsy poppies, sweeping along.
When he glides o'er the ripening grain it rolls at his touch like the
sea;
The woods are his organ with notes as deep as eternity.
He's abroad on the hills at the warm noon hour, when the sun on high
Shines like a spotless Host from the altar blue of the sky.
He glides along the valleys where violets dream in the shade,
Or beats about dark caves with the roll of cannonade.
He rushes upon the waters, they leap on the rocks at his lash ;
Or he bounds away o'er treeless plains at hurricane dash.
The heart of the wind ? Who knows ? To me 'tis a heart that's strange :
I've felt its caress as soft as a child's, and seen it change
To the rough hand of the man who, weary grown, loves you no more,
Who never kisses you now when he bids you good-bye at the door,
Nor stops to look back through the mist in his eyes as he used to of
yore.
The wind's tread is soft as the panther that steals on his prey ;
But he changes a thousand times like a wayward child at play.
For he will caress you and coax you away to a mountain that's steep,
And then his heart will grow wild and he'll blow you into the deep.
Often he speaks in a whisper, and often his voice is a roar ;
He has saved a million lives, and wrecked a million more.
The wind's heart ! I have wooed it long on the houseless plain,
And when my head was afire I know it eased my pain,
For I caught in its breath the smell of the salt from the rolling main.
The wind's heart, like the heart of the world, is working His will :
A peace is over it now, to-morrow its roarings may fill
The Sea ; but He is abroad on the waters to bid them be still.
PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN.
BY C. DECKER.
I.
HE thrill of Springtime was in Central Park.
Winter had returned to her far, white spaces in
the north; the old ancient miracle was once again
repeated, and Nature renewed the face of the earth.
In warm hours of soft-falling rain the grasses
had taken on their green livery, and the trees had thrust out tender
buds well-sheathed against the stabbing treachery of late frosts.
Nature spoke of calm hope and quiet certain purpose.
John Osborn walked in the park on that Spring morning.
A bird trilled near at hand, and a cluster of daffodils, in the full
pageant of their green and yellow, nodded as the breeze passed.
He felt the beauty of life and the fine gladness of living. In the
optimism of the moment the old words sang to him :
" God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay."
He realized a new strength and inspiration in their quaint
setting. Scanning the thirty years of his life, he looked back and
realized that his philosophy had been dogmatic ; that it had not dealt
in vague theories. He had not sought for the many inventions of
passing vogue. He had searched for and found definitions,
which had become more firm and steadfast with time and ex-
perience. No man, he argued, who followed the unstable fashions
of thought, often so pleasant and plausible, could expect to pre-
serve that stability upon which character is based; for to those
who art not facile to the whim and will of the world, how restless
is the manner of her warfare against them!
Osborn was tall and well-knit, and his brown eyes looked at
one with the patience often seen in the student. He had been
told his attitude to the questions of life had none of the sharp
bluntness common enough with those who hurry through life with-
out thinking, but that it, showed a delicate firmness of perception,
a sense of the fitness of each point to the essentials of the moral
issue which lay at the root of each. He had an air of pre-occu-
496 PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN [July,
pation as if his mind busied itself with the traffic of internal
visions. It was obvious that his intellect was in command, that his
spirit served not the material.
*****
Phyllis Eden had lived a life that had not been able to bring
out the full development of her character. There are many forms
of poverty not so fearful to the poor, because the poor have never
felt the want; upon those to whom have been given the want and
the appetite such poverty presses hard. Phyllis Eden possessed
the imagination, the active discriminating mind which should be
a kingdom in itself. To her criticism was rather an aid to build
up and sustain than to demolish or destroy. Iconoclasts found no
sympathy in her eyes. She lived with her mother not far from the
sounds of Broadway, and at no great distance from where the
Hudson moves the imagination with thoughts of its long journey.
She had often gone with Osborn to watch a certain bend of
the river as it fell away into the mysterious distance of the horizon.
" Corot," she had once said, " would have loved it shimmering
beneath hot suns or under the first brave light of a Summer dawn."
Rich in mind but poor in the treasures of the world, she had
felt the charm of far-off cities, of " perilous seas forlorn," of dewy
eves haunted with ghosts from the old forgotten days. Kindness
lit up her blue eyes, and softened the firmness of her lips. It could
be seen in her smile and heard in the tones of her voice; and its
fruits witnessed in the works of her hands. Ofttimes people
speaking about her would end with the amen, " how kind she is ! "
It was the afternoon of that Spring day and she was await-
ing the arrival of Osborn. Her power of discrimination had
accurately gauged his character even to his splendid limitations.
But she had not yet dared to turn that power on her own heart,
to weigh and test there the measure and the character of her regard
for him. She assured herself that to force such a question was
unwarranted, when Time, the great ally, the strong healer and
solver, was more final than all the prophets.
" Well," he said after the first greeting, " this is a day to live
and to let live; a day that should bring confusion to the breed of
pessimists ! "
" Let live for a day," she asserted, " but not forever and a
day, for then how could there exist all that we hope and expect
from good? "
She looked beautiful to him in that quiet room with its
1912.] PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN 497
atmosphere of culture and refinement. He was disturbed, troubled;
the fact did not escape her; yet how could he cast a hazard
with that which might close the door upon himself? Why should
he not remain silent on this day, when every hour had been fra-
grant with the sense of mercy and good will ?
" Yes, yes," he sighed, " tolerance has its limits defined by
that which it must protect: if tolerance rebels it means the sur-
vival of those very antagonisms which tolerance sought to destroy."
Glancing at the table his eyes fell on an unopened copy of
a magazine, which contained an article from his pen, The Reason
for Dogma. He called her attention to it.
"Will you not read it carefully?" he asked, "and later
perhaps in a week or two we can discuss it."
" In less time," she replied smiling.
He arose and went to the window. The power of the sun was
waning as it moved to its setting, but the light was still fair and
strong. How often had that sun looked upon days of blood, on
the dripping shambles of revolution, on black evils, and also upon
supreme self-sacrifice. The old mystery of a world of pain in a
world of so much beauty stabbed him with questionings; the
noblest music of the poets, was it not of sorrow rather than of
joy?
He made an effort to move from deep waters. With a motion
of his hand he called attention to the mass of flowers in the room
yellow daffodils, and pensive violets that
" Plead for pardon
And pine for fright,
Before the hard East blows,
Over their maiden rows."
" A feast," she explained. " We celebrate each season's advent
with an array of its flowers, thus each season swings a censor in
this room."
Her genius for the discovery of beautiful things always pleased
him, and he smiled appreciation. Coming to the table his eyes
again fell on the magazine ; it lay between them like " the sword
of the Lord and of Gideon."
" You will not forget this," he said.
But the questioning at his heart was too much, and he left
with an abruptness which she had never seen him exhibit in the
past.
YOL. xcv. 32.
498 PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN [July,
II.
John Osborn had stumbled on a discovery which had shaken
the very roots of his being. At the first shock of surprise he had
called it an " insolent intolerance," but later, when the delicate
acumen of the man's mind had been able to make itself felt, he
examined it long and searchingly.
He was led to the discovery by a study of the law, civil
and moral. In due course this had suggested to him the phrase
"by what authority?" His grasp of the moral side of a ques-
tion had always been marked by an unbending dogmatism, and a
disregard of compromise very alien to the shifty modernism of the
present. The spiritual side of his character, weighted by the
cloudy generalizations of his Church's teaching, stood ready for
higher nights if it could only be set free. He had once met an
ascetical-looking man, whom he had been informed was much
concerned about the "Inner Life;" and still more recently, while
paying a visit to his favorite bookstore, he had turned over the
pages of a curiously named book by an author with a name equally
as curious Interior Prayer, by Grou.
One evening under the quiet lamp, while endeavoring to trace
the roots of the moral law to religion as a reason for its validity,
he was forced to consider the validity of religion itself. And the
incisive phrase came again as if it had been whispered from across
the room " by what authority? " Civil laws were formulated by
legal processes; by duly constituted authorities. There were not
a hundred separate authorities in a city, each trying to impose its
will through its own method which each believed to be superior to
any other. He began to realize that here was a question which he
had never applied to the problem of the Churches. The veil through
which he was trying to see lifted slightly. In a vague way it
was borne down upon him that here lay a new world of thought.
The zest of the intellectual explorer began to urge him forward to
the high adventure. After the first glow the challenge had touched
the sensitive places of intellectual pride, from which had sprung
the exclamation of an " insolent intolerance." He became aware
of the limitations of common sense, with its poverty of exaltation
and the mechanical caution of its procedure; it was this common
sense which slew the Founder of Christianity, branding Him as a
disturber of comfortable peace. Its lack of imagination could
1912.] PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN 499
never have produced a St. Francis, nor sent across the face of the
waters the humanizing power of the Christian ideal. Doubtless
common sense held many from joining the Magi.
Such thoughts surged in him with an extraordinary force.
He had discovered a strange land, and his eyes were not yet accus-
tomed to the light of it, nor his ears to its sound. The landscape
glimmered before him, but it was not yet bright and luminous.
Ideas crowded upon him, hinting at conclusions he was still to
find; and his mind was dazed by the very abundance of the im-
pressions. Yet the autocratic words " by what authority " was
the angel that stirred the pool of his religious reflections.
An immense impetus bore him on; he became fascinated into
an intense mental activity. The procession of hours on that night
saw the stars move along their accustomed courses, with their
silver dimming before the approach of the dawn, but they did
not see the ardor of his mind weary at its task. That questioning
phrase, like the finger writing on the wall, had eliminated a hun-
dred noisy " isms," and he perceived that, carried to its ultimate
conclusion, one authority still remained. Christianity, instead of
being general, had specifically evolved itself into the single word
Rome.
" Why had he never thought of this before? " he said to him-
self over and over again. In the intensity of his interest he had
completely forgotten Phyllis Eden, with the comeliness of her heart
and soul, and the tender appeal of her womanhood. But now this
aspect of the question sank deep, and grappled with his conscience.
The tremendous issues it involved met, and his heart became a
battle ground on which the shock of conflict pressed to and fro.
Before his mental vision two paths loomed up : one fragrant
with the woman by whom he believed he was loved; the other
smitten and solitary with renunciation and aloofness. With re-
gard to the latter, he vaguely understood even then something of
its uncompromising attitude, upon which the world had laid the
stigma of her condemnation. He shivered as imagination drew the
shadows round about him. Overwrought and worn out by the
long vigil, he buried his face in his hands; and then sleep, like a
soft garment, wrapped him round.
With the dawn massed clouds had marched in, until the blue
of every horizon had been blotted out, and now a grey rain was
falling.
500 PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN [July,
III.
John Osborn did not disregard the questions of that night. His
nature, when once aroused, forced him to lead on and not to
retreat. The meeting of incidents or accidents on the road was
trivial compared to reaching the point at issue. To his type,
moral cowardice was an unpardonable sin ; the one dire, mournful
transgression from which there was no appeal.
For months he had toiled with the subject after that call had
roused his soul. Deep was answering to deep, and not so far away
he could see the haven under the hill. It was this that led him
to writing The Reason for Dogma. After analyzing the social
and the civic code, he proceeded to prove how the fabric of civili-
zation was made possible by the protecting and sustaining power of
dogma. Tolerance led to decay, which was not for the quick but
for the dead. One of Nature's first laws is intolerance. She is
incisively dogmatic in her demands, showing no mercy to invincible
ignorance nor to the arrogant pride which defied her. With mod-
eration and patience he applied the idea to religion. Only in the
last sentence did he make it plain where his conclusions might lead :
" No one can deny that Rome was the alpha of dogmatism ;
fewer will admit she is the omega."
Since those lines had been written, sight had come to his eyes,
hearing to his ears. Duty stood before him, and her demands were
plain. The thoughtful look in his face had deepened, and the light
in his eyes was brighter.
He was now, after several months had passed, one of several
who were dining on a hot Summer evening at the home of his
friend Orlway. Orlway was the great authority on the cathedrals
of Europe. He could take one down Fifth Avenue, halting here
and there before some large ecclesiastical picture or engraving in
store windows, and talk eloquently on their architecture.
His prolixity was redeemed by his ability to interest; white
haired and very cheerful, he gave the impression that the world had
gone particularly well with him. Osborn was talking with him,
as they awaited Phyllis and her mother, and a certain Cecil Drake,
a dramatic critic with an enthusiasm for tapestry. They could see
the green roof of the Plaza with its sheer slope, and below stretched
the noble length of the avenue.
Presently Mrs. Eden and Phyllis were announced.
PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN 501
" And how are the cathedrals ? " said Mrs. Eden to Orlway.
" And the drama, Mr. Drake ? Or is it that tapestry is the
thing?"
" Ah, Mr. Osborn the obscure ! "
Mrs. Eden's sallies were always meant kindly. Well past
middle age, the silver was rapidly conquering the nut-brown tints
of her hair. Time had taught her that a kindly exaggeration in
word and deed was a type of diplomatic bread cast upon the waters.
The mood of the house dominated the dinner table. It was
an estimable mood of intellectual guardian angels keeping the pos-
terns against the stupidity of sheer worldliness.
Osborn sat with Phyllis on his right. There was a peculiar
constraint in his manner, which she did not fail to observe.
" Those four tapestries recently lent to the Metropolitan Mu-
seum," Drake was saying, " large, spacious, and glowing with the
brightness of la belle France the gift of a Cardinal to some great
personage of a bygone century all four of them all glorious!
Has anyone seen them ? " Drake found none among the righteous.
An age of sky-scrapers, with ardent faith in its own individualism,
discredits the things of old.
" Tapestry and 'trappistry,' " chimed Orlway, " have at least
one thing in common : both of them observe perpetual silence." His
" cathedralism " as his wife termed it had at times led him
down bypaths.
" And therefore exclude themselves from New York," re-
marked Mrs. Eden with assurance. She always complained of the
noisy city, but was seldom happy when absent from it for any
length of time.
" But if both are beautiful, there is always room for more
beauty," pursued Phyllis. The appeal to the sense of beauty was
one of .her favorite tests.
" Surely," continued Osborn, " beauty is a perpetual light to
save us from the utilitarianism which would take us back to Egyp-
tian darkness ? "
' The ayes have it! " said Orlway with cheerful mummery.
They moved to wide, generous windows, through which the
moonlight could be seen bathing the park in silver mist. Drake,
with capable social instincts, drew pleading chords from the piano
as he sang an old English melody of a white rose in a red-rose
garden; of flower ghosts from the dead, splendid summers still
dreaming of the spent treasury of time long past.
502 PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN [July,
The mournful cadences touched every imagination. Osborn,
with his tense, vivid mind, seemed to hear a stream of falling tears
stretching back through incomprehensible hours of time of mil-
lions and millions of men and women whose love had blossomed
into sweetness and glory, only to be smitten with the hard silence
of dead mouths, and the shuddering chill of the tomb. At that
moment the sadness of life overshadowed him. He glanced at
Phyllis, and saw the white, slender lift of her throat. Her pen-
siveness showed she was touched, and he kept silence for a moment.
" Did you read it, the magazine the article? "
" I read it all carefully."
" And then ? Did it suggest anything ; did you draw any
conclusion from it?" Without waiting for an answer he signed
to her to go to the balcony. Great calm stars looked down upon
the lesser ones of man's making as the electric lights tipped the
darkness with points of silver as if a vast constellation lay rest-
ing before soaring to infinite skies.
"Beauty and truth; truth and beauty are in high kinship,"
Phyllis mused as she gazed upon the glowing enchantment of the
city.
" I drew this conclusion," she resumed, " that your constraint
coincided with the appearance of the article."
" It conveyed nothing else? "
" Nothing else."
Osborn now realized that the last sentence of the article
which had blazed before his own mind, thrusting the rest of it
into the background had meant nothing to her. Phyllis had re-
garded the whole as an interesting generalization. To her the
" Roman question " was one of those abstract matters which
aroused no interest.
The spiritual indifference, with its thick woof and web, char-
acteristic of broad Anglicanism, passed by many things in its muted
self-sufficiency. Prejudices she had, but they had never flocked
for fight, because Rome had never touched her closely through kith
or kin. Converts, to her mind, were incredible, irresponsible, and
inexplicable; her imagination had never even toyed with the pos-
sible process of their manufacture.
" Go on," she said after a pause.
" I am going to Rome," he said with impressive gravity.
"To the Eternal City?"
" In a particular sense."
1912.] PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN 503
" What? " she half whispered as her hand pressed the arm of
her chair, " you. . . .a Romanist? "
" Phyllis, Phyllis ! " he cried, holding out his hands as if
pleading forgiveness. She shrank back quickly as if suddenly
smitten by an invisible foe. With incredible swiftness a thousand
insinuating prejudices sprang into life. History, education, and en-
vironment spoke in monstrous whispers to her. Veiled words,
dropped here and there in newspapers and articles, with their in-
sensate shallowness, massed themselves before her mind.
From a distant room the voice of Drake floated out into the
night with the haunting loveliness of an old song, tender and plead-
ing. White and silent, Phyllis passed through the room. An hour
ago life had stood before her as a bearer of gracious gifts, and
now it had changed into a hard, brutal Caliban.
Forlorn and weary Osborn made his way. He was very tired.
A frail, trembling breeze flew over the now quiet spaces of the
avenue, as if it sought refuge before the coming of the dawn in
the cool, dewy hollows of the park. He looked up at the cathe-
dral wrapped in its own silence and shadow. How the paradox of
life had beaten round the creed of that Church! Crab-like souls,
crawling through their dreadful days, had striven to rend its seam-
less garment, while the Church had inspired dazzling heroisms and
shining nobilities. It was the paradox of life again.
A great spiritual hunger awoke within him, and he knew tkat
his soul was starving.
IV.
After the first staggering shock of surprise had passed, Phyllis
turned here and there in search of a reason, for the retrogression
as she termed it of Osborn. A few days later she picked up the
magazine, and re-read the article very slowly and very carefully.
Sentences which had struck her with a sense of obscurity were
now shot through with new meanings; she listened for their inner
counsels, but they merely whispered to her. The question remained
an intricate problem, and she could not join each joint with his
fellow. The dry bones would not knit themselves into a goodly
fellowship. Her heart was hurt, while her pride itched with irrita-
tion at not being able to formulate an answer with the satisfaction of
a Q. E. D. as an amen. She felt that she had been struck, and was
helpless to retaliate.
Phyllis was not one of those who answered often to impulses,
504 PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN [July,
but as she sat there thinking deeply, one came and played before
her, suggesting possibilities that if followed might be the means,
if not of solving the question, at least of throwing a great light
upon it. She would dare that which she had never dared before ; she
would take the article and go over the matter viva voce with a
" Roman priest."
" Why not? " she thought to herself, " why not? "
The very next morning she acted on her determination.
She was shown into a small room. There was a large cruci-
fix that did not pass the examen of her artistic conscience. A few
chairs, with incredible age stamped upon them, guarded each corner
like silent veterans from forgotten wars ; one indeed leaned heavily
to one side as if weary of perpetual service.
The first sight of Father Thorn was not impressive. He was
very bald, and wore a black skull cap, and his countenance had
that ruddiness which is sometimes seen at the healthy meridian of
life. His tendency to stoutness heightened the sense of geniality
his figure expressed. Phyllis made her preface a concise epitome.
" Just a few moments, Father Thorn, I am sure you can spare me,
and possibly throw some light on a religious question."
" Well, well, that is a large question," he said kindly.
She opened the magazine and asked him to read the article. The
priest had long ago ceased to be surprised at the motley array of
questions with which he was often interrogated. Live or dead wires,
were they not part of the day's work ; for in the strange vicissitudes
of life there is nothing stranger than the workings of the human
mind. He took the magazine and began to read.
" Capital," he said, when he had finished. Its logical precision
appealed to his sense of orderly thought.
"Does it indicate anything? Can you draw any conclusion
from it? " she said using Osborn's words.
" I should say," he answered, tapping the magazine with his
steel-rimmed glasses, " that it is a prelude to a change of faith."
Phyllis looked up at him too surprised to speak.
" But pardon me, Miss Eden," he continued laying the maga-
zine on the table, " to what Church do you belong? "
" Episcopal," she replied.
"Higher Low?"
" Low."
Father Thorn always made it a rule to ascertain as soon as
possible to what Church, and to what part of it, they belonged who
1912.] PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN 505
sought his advice. It cleared the ground and saved an immense
amount of fruitless verbiage.
" And you are happy in your Church ? "
" Entirely so."
"Then is there anything further to say?" asked the priest
in the same kindly tones.
" But I am unhappy about the writer of ;'.e article," continued
Miss Eden. " I cannot understand how it should lead to leaving
the Church of his birth?"
" Ah ! " remarked the priest. It was not the first time the
Low Church had sent stumblers to him overweighted with " Whys "
and " Hows." Nor was it the last. He felt sorry for her, knowing
that in her eyes Rome stood like a gigantic monster of a pre-
historic age.
" What would you do? " she said after a pause.
" Nothing."
"Nothing?" she echoed with incredulity. She was infinitely
perplexed by the directness of his simplicity and his brevity.
" But that cannot be the right way," she went on with a rising
feeling of impatience.
" Leave him to his own way," he replied in the same tranquil
voice.
Now this was all very extraordinary to Phyllis. After the
surprising comment on the article she had anticipated remarks with
appropriate pauses; hints about the mysterious ways of the Lord;
texts quoted and duly labelled with chapter and verse, emphasized
by a handful of tracts.
" Thank you, Father Thorn," she said rising.
" Not at all," he said, " not at all."
V.
Phyllis was impressed, depressed, and mystified by the result of
her interview. She was at a loss to find a reasonable terra firma.
What she did realize was the intense pain in her heart, and a feel-
ing of bitterness that out of a fair and beautiful sky a bolt had
fallen and left her dazed and stricken. In the experience of life
she had naturally seen such things happen. " Suffering was inevit-
able," she had assumed, and " victims there were bound to be to
maintain the average. There was a death rate, a birth rate, and
so, too, there must be a sorrow rate." The logic was accurate
enough, but she had never imagined, except in the haziest way,
that the lightning would strike at the time it did, nor that she would
5o6 PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN [July,
be so soon called upon to swell the numerical factor of the " sorrow
rate."
She was sitting in the park, watching the setting sun. Pres-
ently she observed Osborn approaching.
" Dreaming, I am quite certain, of many things not found in
other people's philosophy," he remarked, as if he too had been
philosophizing.
" Not even Horatio could have dreamt them," she replied.
Then the weight of the problem pressed itself for utterance.
" Do you know whom I have been to see ?....! have shown
your article, and discussed it with .... a priest."
" A priest ! " he said, as if thinking aloud.
" Yes, and he astonished me."
"And then?"
" Why, he said without the least hesitancy, that it is a prelude
to a change of faith; but I cannot understand in the least," she
continued with a rising inflexion in her tones, " with the generous
latitudinarianism of the Episcopal Church, why you cannot remain
within its fold?"
" Ah ! that is just the point."
"Well, and what of it?"
" This : to you the point is unintelligible, the reasons which
follow unintelligible, and the final conclusions unintelligible. Three
unintelligibles which apparently cannot be made clear to the twelve
just men of the jury."
" But do you not see ? " she urged with a sign of impa-
tience.
" I see many things I never saw in the past," he said.
They walked on through the dusky twilight. In the west,
where a faint glow of the sunset still lingered, the houses ranged
themselves against the sky-line like a great rampart as if the
men-at-arms were proceeding about their business and the sentries
were being posted as watchers for the night.
Osborn realized the price he must pay, and the overwhelming
sacrifice which he would be compelled to make, by renouncing the
Church of his birth. The strengthening tenderness of a woman's
love of the woman who walked at that very moment at his side
whose ever-ready, sustaining sympathy, woven into the thread of
his life, had fashioned a goodly companionship, stretching through
long years to the evening of life, and growing more precious with
the beauty of holiness as Time deepened the consecration of it all
such gracious benedictions could not be his. His heart must
1912.] PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN 507
know the empty desolations and the void as of a boundless desert
untrodden by man. Then the conquering thoughts returned as he
gazed up at the brightening night and saw the North Star busy
with its steadfast vigil; for was there not a love passing the love
of woman, a peace like the wonder of the beatitudes?
" On such a night," he began to quote playfully.
" Is it irrevocable ? " she said disregarding the allusion.
" As the superlatives can make it," he said smiling.
VI.
A great exaltation filled Osborn as he left Phyllis at her door.
The word had not been spoken, yet she knew that his heart was
hers, with its many gifts for her cherishing and her finer moulding.
But withal she had made it clear there could be no home if there
was question of compromise with Rome or its works. She had
not spoken in this definite way, but both had realized the con-
ditions. On one side home stood with its benignant appeal thrill-
ing along the tender chords of his life; on the other side, Rome
with the majestic marvel of its militant past and its ever militant
present ; but still stronger were the stern, merciless words : " What
shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own
soul ? " They drove out all that was sluggish and all that was
fluttering or volatile in his conscience; they stood before him with
a power which no argument could refute; they were that terrible
white light peering upon a thousand littlenesses.
Meditating thus, Osborn made his way to the Cathedral. He
looked up at the great vaulted roof lost in its own night ; he marked
the massive pillars, with their tireless, mighty arms, vigilant before
the gleam of snowy altars. " Here is peace, here is Home," he
said to himself, " here is a love that passeth understanding; fathom-
less in its depths, and in its height measureless." Even as the
thoughts swept through his mind the lure of the world strove to
entice him temptations mocking his seriousness with the levity
which forgets.
He knelt before the High Altar. Slowly he made the sign
of the Cross, then the everlasting mercy and pity of the Church
crept into his heart, and the perpetual wonder of the eternal Love
of God, as a great light shining, lit up his soul with peace and
understanding. He bowed his head. Their tender unction rested
upon him; they sealed and signed him, and made him their own
forever.
A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM.
PATMORE'S "TAMERTON CHURCH-TOWER."
BY FREDERICK PAGE.
" Set love in order, thou that lovest Me." St. Francis of Assist.
F the critics, biographers, and anthologists who have
done most to serve the fame of Coventry Patmore,
not one has done justice to this predecessor of The
Angel in the House. Dr. Garnett indeed has done
flagrant injustice to it, and that in a place of which
the public character serves to invest his pronouncement with some-
thing of an ex cathedra authority, making it (for the jealous lover
of the poem) a veritable sentence of excommunication: in the
Dictionary of National Biography he writes of Tamerton Church-
Tower, " It is a narrative poem, and as such quite pointless and
uninteresting, but full of exquisite vignettes of scenery."
Mr. Basil Champneys' brief reference to the poem involves a
radical misunderstanding; he finds " the description of one at least
of the female characters and the love-making generally less delicate
and refined " than in The Angel in the House, but that happens
to be the very gist of the poem : the poet's intention.
Mrs. Meynell almost ignores the poem, only mentioning it
once, in an unreprinted essay, to bracket it with The Angel in the
House as a poem of great exquisiteness lacking, that is, the greater
passion of the later odes.
Mr. Edmund Gosse, alone, devotes any detailed criticism to it,
and this I propose to examine at some length; thereby to establish
the thesis, that Tamerton Church-Tower is a deliberately-planned
exposition of the Catholic doctrine that marriage amongst Chris-
tians derives its sanction only from religion, that is, it is either
a sacrament or a profanation.
Mr. Gosse* commences by quoting from Dr. Garnett's remin-
iscences of Patmore's conversation in the early fifties, concerning
the art of poetry, in which he used to insist on
the subordination of parts to the whole, the necessity of every
""Coventry Patmore. By Edmund Gosse. Literary Lives. New York : Hodder
& Stoughton, 1905.
1912.] A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM 509
part of a composition being in keeping with all the others, the
equal importance of form with matter, absolute truth to nature,
sobriety in simile and metaphor, the wisdom of maintaining a
reserve of power,*
and, in addition, Mr. Gosse refers to the attention Patmore was
then giving to the theory and practice of prosody, and he thinks
that when, with this in our mind, we turn to the actual pages of
the 1853 volume, Tamerton Church-Tower, and other Poems, we
shall be
unable to restrain a certain expression of surprise. The pieces
are not, at first sight, what we should have expected to receive
from so serious and so learned a student of poetic art. [Tamer-
ton Church Tower] is a strange sort of Coleridgean improvisa-
tion. What we miss in its composition is precisely that literary
finish, that last polish given to the mirror, of which we have
been hearing so much.f . . . .It bears the appearance, which may
however be illusory, of having been thrown off with extreme
rapidity, and subjected to no revision, by a bard desirous of
producing an absolutely fresh impression. .. .Neither newness
nor boldness is wanting. . . .the main fault is its extreme slight-
ness.
To prove this charge Mr. Gosse gives a summary of the poem,
which I will quote, with an interruption here and there.
The poet and his friend Frank ride from North Tamerton.. .
through Tavistock, to Plymouth, and are caught in a thunder-
storm. They celebrate, in mock-heroics, the charms of Blanche
and Bertha, whom they are about to marry.
( Mr. Gosse is not quite accurate here : Frank is riding to meet
his affianced Bertha; the poet has never yet seen Blanche. They
talk of Bertha, and she is described in four exquisite lines. Frank
is then asked to describe Blanche, which he does in mock-heroics,
if you will, or, to adapt Mr. Champneys' words, with less than
delicacy and refinement.) The next division of the poem tells of
the poet's successful wooing of Blanche; and then, as Mr. Gosse
writes,
the curtain falls, and rises on the couples already married ;
they go out in a boat on the Cornish coast, are caught by another
*Saturday Review, Dec. 5, 1896.
t" It is the last rub which polishes the mirror." A motto of Patmore's in The
Germ, 1850, and repeated later as a line in one of his Psyche odes.
5 io A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM [July,
thunder-storm, are wrecked, and Mrs. Blanche is drowned.
The curtain falls again, and rises on the widower poet riding
alone, accompanied by his sad thoughts, from Plymouth through
Tavistock back to Tamerton.
With the poem so summarized, Mr. Gosse says, "It will be seen
that the subject-matter. . . .is exiguous in the last-degree, and that
its attractiveness depends entirely upon its treatment. In this the
influence of the pre-Raphaelite ideas is very strongly seen;" and
he concludes : " Patmore writes as the young Millais painted, and
sometimes he produces an effect precisely similar," as in an instance
to be quoted later on.
Thus it will be seen that both in praise and blame he agrees
substantially with Dr. Garnett; but then, as I think, his summary
is most inadequate, and I shall attempt to supplement it. But firstly,
to the charge that the poem is exiguous in the extreme, it may be
replied on the poet's behalf, in the words of Browning : " My stress
lay on the incidents in the development of a soul : little else is
worth study." The subject of the poem, the whole to which all the
parts are subordinated, is the development, in the soul of its protag-
onist, of the idea of love. The necessity of this development,
and its practically unlimited scope, is the one only subject of all
Patmore's philosophy.
This little germ of nuptial love,
Which springs so simply from the sod,
The root is, as my song shall prove,
Of all our love to man and God.
This poem introduces the theme.
The poet's sense of impending catastrophe, before his wife
is drowned, and his sense of guilt afterwards, are due to his con-
sciousness that he has not brought his love into line with religion,
to " love her in the name of God, and for the ray she was of Him,"
and so much is religion the first necessity that he can wish no
better for his readers than that, at whatever price of sorrowful
experience, they shall know the peace which came to him with his
repentance.
This reconciliation of love with religion could, as Patmore
held, be effected triumphantly and at all points, but as yet this
lover has not even attempted it. He has, indeed, desired love, as
ennobling and interpreting life :
1912.] A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM 511
" Is Blanche as fair? " ask'd I, who yearn'd
To feel my life complete;
To taste unselfish pleasures, earn'd
By service strict and sweet ;
but when this love is granted to him, he does not " pitch it at the
true and heavenly tone."
Frank, with his physical way of looking upon a woman, and his
coarse songs, represents a lower level of spiritual apprehension, and
when, by chance, he enunciates a truth, does it without understand-
ing his own words :
" Sure he for whom no Power shall strike
This darkness into day
Is damn'd," said Frank, who morall'd like
The Fool in an old Play ;
or he speaks truth only to wrest it to his hearer's destruction,
as when, to his friend's doubts concerning love, his God-sent ques-
tionings whether " aught on earth could quite content the soul,"
Frank answers,
" What you faint for, win !
Faint not, but forward press.
Heav'n proffers all : 'twere grievous sin
To live content in less."
This is his sanction for that love which is little better than self-
indulgence, and the poet soon sinks to his friend's level. His
upward journeying begins with his bereavement, and his repentance
is perfect when he can repeat Frank's words in their full and true
sense : " Heaven proffers all," first the natural, afterwards that
supernatural which seems to threaten the natural : that " uncon-
ceiv'd superior love," the possibility of which, even in the Res-
urrection-life, is so dreadful to the happily-wedded lovers in The
Angel in the House. How, they ask, can we
Take the exchange without despair,
Without worse folly how refuse?
The inexorable necessity of solving this problem is insisted
upon in Tamerton Church-Tower.
5 i2 A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM [July,
Heav'n proffers all : 'twere grievous sin
To live content in less.
For the present the poet's love is unchastened, soiled with
selfishness, unconsecrated, and unreconciled with Divine love. He
is not conscious, with Felix Vaughan, of a shrine in his beloved,
sealed from him, sacred to Heaven. In consequence, he is moved
by " no wish unwon :"
I could not toil : I seldom pray'd :
What was to do or ask?
Love's purple glory round me play'd,
Unfed by prayer or task.
All perfect my contentment was,
For Blanche was all my care;
And heaven seem'd only heaven because
My goddess would be there.
And, also by consequence, " his erring conscience damps de-
light " (to apply a line from the later poem), and he sees " threats
and formidable signs in simply natural things :"
It smote my heart how, yesternight,
The moon rose in eclipse ;
And how her maim'd and shapeless light
O'erhung the senseless ships.
But this fear which might have worked repentance passes, and
the blow falls; but with what terrible austerity is the acknowledg-
ment of sin made, and the purgative punishment accepted :
What guilt was hers? But God is great,
And all that may be known
To each of any other's fate
Is, that it helps his own.
Surely this little stanza is as terrible, and as stern a self-chas-
tisement, as the later odes, Tristitia, Eurydice, and // I Were Dead,
and as instantly removes its speaker from the reach of our facile
sympathies.
The necessary purification of desire (necessary since " unblest
good is ill ") is the theme of the poem, and the landscapes are not
vignettes providing it with its only excuse for existence; they all
1912.] A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM 513
have their significance or their symbolism; as Mr. Gosse has well
said of the descriptive passages in Amelia, but has failed to perceive
of these in Taincrton Church-Tower. The sultry weather, the sea-
mist, the storms during the ride southward and during the honey-
moon, typify well the passion of unchastened desire. But when
the poet rides back to Tamerton after his wife's death, the air is
" dark and clear," " sweet, sharp, and fresh," and at evening
So lay the earth that saw the skies
Grow clear and bright above,
As the repentant spirit lies
In God's forgiving love.
The lark forsook the waning day,
And all loud songs did cease;
The robin, from a wither'd spray,
Sang like a soul at peace.
Mr. Gosse calls this poem an improvisation, and thinks that it
needed revision. He may be right,* but the poem is an improvisa-
tion in only the same sense as was the first book of The Angel in
the House, concerning which he quotes Patmore as saying that it
took only six weeks to write, but that he had thought of little else
for several years before; and if Tamerton Church-Tower needs
revision, it matters little, seeing the prevision was so perfect.
Every detail is arranged for, and Patmore wrote not only as the
young Millais, but as Holman Hunt always painted: the whole
composition being a parable, and every detail bearing its ancillary
symbolism.
The main design of the poem is in the perfect balance of the
hot, excited, dusty, tired ride southward in the company of Frank,
and the lonely ride northward of the widower poet. As though to
mark the reflex action implied in the very word " repentance,"
" by the which we do untread the steps of damned flight," every
place mentioned on the first ride is described again, in reversed
order, and always with a subtle distinction of weather or cir-
cumstance :
At noon, we came to Tavistock;
And sunshine still was there,
*As a matter of fact he is wrong. There are letters in the biography which
show that Patmore was at work upon this poem for at least two years, and that
it was not published till five years after its inception. One of these letters asks,
with reference to it, "What do you think a fair day's work? Four lines? I do."
So much for the supposed " extreme rapidity " with which it was " thrown off ! "
VOL. xcv. 33.
514 A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM [July,
But gloomy Dartmoor seem'd to mock
Its weak and yellow glare.
The swallows, in the wrathful light,
Were pitching up and down ;
A string of rooks made rapid flight,
Due southward, o'er the town.
The second sight of Tavistock and Dartmoor forms part of the
passage which Mr. Gosse quotes as an example of Patmore's
Millais-like effects:
Then rose the Church at Tavistock, .
The rain still falling there ;
But sunny Dartmoor seem'd to mock
The gloom with cheerful glare.
And, as I passed from Tavistock,
The scatter'd dwellings white,
The Church, the golden weather-cock,
Were whelm'd in happy light ;
Across a fleeting eastern cloud,
The splendid rainbow sprang,
And larks, invisible and loud,
Within its zenith sang.
This balance of contrasts is carried out, not only with the land-
scapes and the weather, but in descriptions of states of mind, and in
verbal repetitions with a difference; yet, as the poem is a fairly
long one, the artifice is not unduly prominent. The repetition of
Frank's words, with an entirely new connotation, has been already
mentioned, and a few more instances may now be noted. Against
the poet's perfect contentment, with nothing " to do or ask," is
set his subsequent rising " to prayer and toil ;" on the honeymoon
the weather is a " strange and weary lull," the sun is rayless, the
sky pale, the distance thick with light, the ships becalmed, and he
adds, " The peace within my soul was like the peace upon the
sea." But not as the world gives, does Christ give peace, and
against that peace is set this :
O, well is thee, whate'er thou art,
And happy shalt thou be,
If thou hast known, within thy heart,
The peace that came to me.
1912.] A NEGLECTED GREAT POEM 515
O, well is thee, if aught shall win
Thy spirit to confess
God proffers all, 'twere grievous sin
To live content in less.
There is a further contrast which is of the very essence of
the poem, and is yet, with a " reserve of power," never insisted
upon, and was only slightly emphasized when, in a later edition,
Patmore expanded the title of the poem to Tamerton Church-
Tower; or, First Love. On his second ride the widower thinks
of the friends whom he shall meet at Tamerton, and, amongst
others, of his tutor's daughter, Ruth, whom he had known of old,
but had not then appreciated :
Charms for the sight she had ; but these
Were tranquil, grave, and chaste,
And all too beautiful to please
A rash, untutor'd taste.
And in the maiden path she trod
Fair was the wife foreshown,
A Mary in the house of God,
A Martha in her own.
Contrasting this with Frank's voluptuous description of
Blanche, we may surmise that it is the second wife of the poet who
is thus foreshown; and if this be so the poem becomes the natural
companion to Amelia, where also the necessity of a development
of the idea of love is marked by a dead " first love," who had been
loved with all a boy's crudeness; and a second loved with rever-
encing self-restraint. " Amelia had more luck than Millicent,"
says the later poem, and surely that word " luck " is bitter with
self-satire. " Sore were my lids with tears for her who slept
beneath the sea," says the widower in Tamerton Church-Tower,
and the tears are those of remorse. Dr. Garnett thought this
narrative poem pointless; many a reader must have found it pierc-
ing enough.
THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE.
BY W. P. S.
Are all, then, mad or is it prophecy?
" Sons now we are of God," as we have heard,
" But what we shall be hath not yet appeared."
remember thee,
That man is none,
Save one. Patmore.
HE volume that reports the proceedings of the first
Universal Races Congress, held last year in London,
has been published.* It is ably edited, and presents
the views of " the representatives of more than
twenty civilizations." The Honorary General Com-
mittee included, as representatives of our own country, over two
hundred prominent scientists, linguists, historians, lawyers, and
university professors. Great Britain had nearly three hundred;
Germany eighty-three; Belgium forty, amongst whom were three
well-known Catholic ecclesiastics, while the French list of seventy
included the names of M. 1'abbe Adrien Lannay, Seminaire des Mis-
sions Etrangeres, Paris, and Monsignor Alexandre Le Roy, Bishop
of Alinda and Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy
Ghost. Afghanistan, China, Japan, Peru, Persia, and Turkey
were also represented. The list contains the names of the Arch-
bishop of York (Dr. Lang), General Booth, Frederick Harrison,
and Father Bernard Vaughan, SJ. The editor, Mr. Spiller,
claims that the writers of the fifty-nine papers " have, as it were,
reduced to reasoned statements the generous sentiments prevailing
on the general relations subsisting between the peoples of the West
and those of the East, among the most cultivated and responsible
section of humanity." To discover these was the general object
proposed in the " invitation " to the Congress, and the further
result was to be eminently practical " encouraging between them a
fuller understanding, the most friendly feelings, and a heartier
cooperation." Truly a magnificent ideal!
Abundant citations might be given that would show the per-
sonal enthusiasm and faith of the speakers in the race which
they represented. The representatives were most evidently in
*Papers on Inter-Racial Problems. London : P. S. King & Son.
1912.] THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 517
earnest with themselves and with one another, and their earnest-
ness sprang precisely from their conviction that they were mar-
shaled for the first time on the battlefield of the future, the bound-
less plains of Peace, with a shibboleth worthy of their manhood
and their cause " the furtherance of International Good Will
and Peace " in the " highest of all human interests."
What then has been the concrete result? In the first place,
as we have seen, it has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt
that desires and aspirations, sincere and heartfelt, do exist for unity
and union of the peoples dwelling 'twixt East and West. The
second half of the problem, then, naturally comes to the fore.
Granted the fact, what of the force to galvanize the fact into
a reality?
As to the answer we must turn to the papers for enlighten-
ment. The only subject excluded of set purpose was that of poli-
tics. " Resolutions of a political character will not be submitted,"
stated the invitation. The only question about which there seemed
to be uneasiness, if not altogether an ominous silence, was the
question of Religion as a Consolidating and Separating Influence,
to borrow the title of Professor and Mrs. Rhys David's unsatis-
fying paper. Clearly this is a deficiency we may not lightly pass
over, because it means everything to us Catholics, with our ideals
and our belief in the eternal mission of the Church for the unity
of all nations under heaven. Let us consider it closely. We all
love and revere the peasant who was born in Italy over seventy-
five years ago, who became a saintly priest, and is now Pontiff in
Peter's Chair. At the outset of his reign we remember how he an-
ticipated the Universal Races Congress by his message to all lands
" renew all things in Christ." To some it was more than a mes-
sage : it partook of a prophecy. Those authoritative words have
been caught up in the East as well as in the West. Civil govern-
ments have trodden underfoot the symbols of Christ, and have
exiled the servants of Christ, but the Holy Father's appeal is
still resounding, is still a " consuming fire." The Church in Ger-
many, with the aid of solid organizations, is growing from strength
to strength; in France* she is being re-throned amid the fires of
persecuting laws; in Portugal, after her many sufferings, she is
eager for the future; in America and England she is silently ful-
filling the eager hopes of the two great Pontiffs long passed away.
*The Evangelisation of Paris an article of great interest by Georges Goyau
in the Oxford and Cambridge Review for October, 1911.
5i8 THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE [July,
Everywhere the message of " Beppo " Sarto has found a response
in the hearts of worthy priests and people. It could not be other-
wise, for religion, as a Catholic understands it, is not primarily of
social or ethical value; it is no mere natural, but a supernatural
quickening force. It is the force that removes barriers, that fuses
strangely discordant customs, and that consumes only to recreate.
No measurement of human skulls will help here, no analysis of
color differences will afford a clue. We must try and gauge the
human soul of the Negro and Caucasian, of the Mongolian, Asiatic,
and Amerindian. Can it be better expressed than by the oft-told
tale of the dark-skinned sepoys, who were found lighting candles
before a shrine of Our Lady in a London church, in proof that
the Church in India was even as the Church in England? Surely
this is no trivial omission from the papers of the Inter-Racial Con-
gress. Indeed, what if religion is the one and only force that can
galvanize into reality the fact of the longing for union and brother-
hood between East and West? Yet, as we see, this question was
not considered to be within the scope of discussion.
We are not ignoring the papers of Professor Rhys David or
the sympathetic treatment of The Influence of Missions by Pro-
fessor Caldecott, Lecturer in Moral Philosophy in the University
of London. The latter is especially excellent for its breadth of
view and generous appreciation. Thus we read:
Over and over again a single individual has meant " civili-
zation " as well as the Gospel to a whole community. From
him have flowed influences regenerating every part of their
social life. From one man's heart and brain have issued not
only the abolition of degrading and cruel customs, but the
beginnings of new industrial organization, glimpses of science
and literature, new forms of social order. . . .On the whole we
may claim that the indigenous inhabitants whom Europe found
in tropical and subtropical lands have passed through the valley
of bitterness, and are now entered upon open fields, and that
the chief instrument of their salvation in the hour of peril
has been the sympathetic ardor of religion, which moved mes-
sengers to devise and initiate the ethical and social reformation
which stands on record, (p. 307.)
Nothing could be truer than this or the two principles con-
cerning " freedom to hear religious messages " to be sought from
governments. These, he boldly asserts, " express a right which
1912.] THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 519
may be generally accepted as lying at the root of the unification of
mankind." Many striking phrases mark Professor Caldecott's
conclusion. " Religious propaganda," he says, " is a standing wit-
ness for altruism in a world which now, as ever, needs such writers
.... it is a standing appeal to the Singleness of the Spiritual King-
dom. ..." His last sentence formulates our position and attitude
regarding the Inter-Racial Congress Problems.
Religion must be able to show that its cooperation is needed
by proving that it can impress the imagination and stimulate
enthusiasm in the heart, generating and sustaining a degree
of faith in the advance of men towards a unity of mankind such
as cannot be attained without its aid. (p. 312.)
What else has the Church, whose note is oneness, ever done
in the past save stimulate and unite? And is her history other-
wise in the present, amid the ever-increasing discord of ever-mul-
tiplying sects ? This question it is we have to answer here. No one
will deny that Professor Caldecott's sentiments are deeply grati-
fying after Professor Fouillee's confident assertions in his paper
Race From the Sociological Standpoint. We select a few.
It is idle to count on religion for bridging over the gulf
of the race There is not a religion which has not, like
Lady Macbeth, stains on the hand which all the vast oceans
could never wash away Men of science are to-day the true
and only missionaries. The inventors of railroads and tele-
graphs have done more to link different races together than all
the Francis Xaviers and Ignatius Loyolas. . . .Religion is not an
"article of export" the only universal, the only really
" catholic " things, in the Greek sense of the word, are science,
philosophy, and morals. It is these things we must peaceably
introduce among races the most distant from our own. (p. 28.)
Of course it is easy to exaggerate the significance of isolated
phrases such as these. The professor's paper affords valuable
suggestions to a thoughtful mind on missionary methods, which
makes his inadequate conception of religion all the more pitiable.
Even the allusion to Xavier is helpful. We know what St. Francis
Xavier's answer to the Congress would be, or rather has been, for
it was given three centuries ago, just as Paul of Tarsus gave his
fifteen centuries before Xavier. Surely " railroads, telegraphs,"
5 2o THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE [July,
and the like, were the very things their zeal demanded to remove
those irksome bounds that alone prevented their linking together
the races of mankind in oneness of Brotherhood, the Brotherhood
of Christ. What would be easier, in answer to Professor Fouillee
and those of his way of thinking, than to trace Francis Xavier's
footsteps through India and Japan, to treat his methods of solving
problems that were discussed at this Congress, and to point to the
frequent crowds of Pagans and Christians kneeling side by side at
the shrine of his incorrupt body in Goa to-day?
One of the papers in the volume we are considering, to which
many an interested reader will first turn, is the masterly article
on East and West in India, by the Hon. G. K. Gokhale, C.I.E., the
late President of the Indian Congress. Amongst the many condi-
tions of progress in India the writer sets a very high value on
" the effect of Western teaching " on recent generations. He
states :
under this influence they bent their energies, in the
first instance, to a re-examination of the whole of their ancient
civilization their social usages and institutions, their religious
beliefs, their literature, their science, their art: in fact, their
entire conception and realization of life. This brought them
into violent collison with their own society, but that very col-
lision drove them closer to the Englishmen in the country, to
whom they felt deeply grateful for introducing into India the
liberal thought of the West, with its protest against caste or
sex disabilities, and its recognition of man's dignity as man
a teaching which they regarded as of the highest value in serv-
ing both as a corrective and stimulant to their old civilization,
(p. 160.)
Noteworthy words, and all the more so because they form such
a strange echo to a few sentences of St. Francis Xavier in a letter
from Goa to Rome in 1542. He is speaking in his open, earnest
way about the newly-founded college.
A great number of pagan youths of different nations are
taught there. Some learn Latin, others to read and write ....
The college is very large; it will hold as many as five hundred
students, and has revenues enough for their support. .. .well
indeed may all Christians give thanks to God for this seminary,
which is called the College of Sante Fe : for we hope that in
a few years multitudes of heathens will by God's favor have
become Christians, and that the pupils of this college will shortly
1912.] THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 521
be the means of extending the limits of the Church far and
wide in the whole East.*
Substitute Portugal for England, and 1542 for 1911, and can
we honestly say the progress is great since Francis penned these
simple, trustful lines? His work still abides in India, though the
fury of persecution and the torpor of peace have striven against
it. Again, the Hon. G. K. Gokhale pleads for " fewer and better "
Englishmen to be sent out in positions of authority to India, so
that the prestige of England may not be lowered by " inferior "
men. Francis Xavier's plea, also from his " blessed Father Igna-
tius," was for superior men of solid learning, holiness, and great
perseverance ; in short, for those of the Society who had been most
brilliant at the University of Paris or Alcala, for Xavier too be-
lieved " wholeheartedly in a great destiny for the people of this
land." Neither did he shrink from those practical questions of
morality that were fully treated at the Congress, and he had effec-
tive methods of solving them that were peculiarly his own.
In India, as in Japan and elsewhere, Francis Xavier was al-
ways most ingenious in seeking for those beliefs or customs of the
Brahmins and Bonzes that had some resemblance to the practices of
Christianity. " Points of contact " we call them nowadays. At
one time he notes with joy their celebration of a day bearing a re-
mote likeness to the Christian Sunday; at another a conception
of punishment after death interests him, even though crude and il-
logical. Amongst the Japanese he was dismayed and yet consoled
by their grotesque ancestor worship, for he seems to have reflected
how easily the full import of " the Communion of Saints " ought
to sink into such minds. We need not recall the words of so many
of the Japanese martyrs to testify that this was actually the case.
This will suffice to show that the spirit of Xavier was the
spirit of the Church, because it was unceasing in its solicitude, un-
abating in its longing " to restore all things in Christ." The names
of Claver, Lallemand, De Breboeuf, De Smet, are a few of the
many that bear ample testimony to its faithful transmission through
the ages. And is God's arm shortened to-day? Has the Bride of
Christ lost her fairness or her loving anxiety for the sons of God,
who are all the sons of man dwelling from East to West? We
know it is not so. There is only need to glance at the practical
zeal of two such widely different countries as France and Germany.
"Coleridge's Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. Letters xi. and xii.
522 THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE [July,
It is revealed in two fine works.* Missionsstatistik by Father
Krose, and Les Missions Catholiques Frangaises au Dix-neuvieme
Siecle by Father Piolet. One of the most pressing needs which the
publication of these volumes strongly emphasized was the need of a
" Mission Science " to organize what otherwise might have become
chaos. The appeal has not fallen on deaf ears. Each year of the
decade, 1892-1902, has witnessed the erection of a missionary house
and center in Germany, from which zealous men and women pass
unceasingly to distant lands. In 1909, the German Catholic Con-
gress voted the erection of a Chair of Mission Science.f The laity,
too, were to cooperate with the clergy in this great work, and
so in the following year an Academischer Missionsvercin was
founded at Munster. In this city the society has already enrolled
six hundred students, and possesses flourishing branches in Breslau,
Tubingen, Munich, and the other great Catholic centers.
Within the last year (1911) the work has grown beyond the
hopes of the originators. We may mention a large Mission Science
" Seminar " at Munich for the purpose of special study, the es-
tablishment of a vast Mission Library, the inauguration of courses
of lectures, and, lastly, three or four months ago, the organization
of an International Institute for Mission Science Research at
Miinster under the presidency of the Prince of Lowenstein, to-
gether with the publication of the first number of the Catholic
Mission Science Review, Zeitschrift fur Missionwissenschaft,
edited by Dr. Schmidlin.
We have not space to enter into detail about this truly re-
markable movement. The power of earnest missionaries, who, be-
sides the divine gift of vocation, are trained to adapt their learn-
ing and methods to meet most successfully the needs and capacities
of those amongst whom they labor, will be readily understood. In
that training no natural help seems to be overlooked that can further
Christian sympathy and Christ-like zeal.
We need only take up the Acts of the Apostles or the Epistles
of St. Paul to realize the spirit of which we are speaking in the
'nil vigor of its origin, undaunted, unwearied, ever tactful and re-
~eful, that spirit of " all things to all men," which is the true
1 Brotherhood of Peace and Good Will. To the Gala-
indeed of this book will be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia under
which \<* T *' believe an English translation from the original German is
a lew yeai' e rj r Schmidlin, one of the most prominent professors of the
become Christnster, in Westphalia.
1912.] THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 523
tians the Apostle wrote : " It pleased God, Who separated me even
from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, to re-
veal His Son in me that I might preach Him among the nations."
And to the Romans he wrote words that might fittingly be inscribed
on the title-page of the future Congress volumes, " I am debtor
both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the educated and unedu-
cated classes," and so he feels bound to repay benefit for benefit.
Hence arose that boundless desire to hasten ever onwards, to or-
ganize and consolidate his conquests in all parts of the Empire.
Rome had advanced from the West to conquer the East, the cradle
of Christ and Christianity. Paul would speed Westwards to make
Christ victor from East to West. Cities do not content him.
He thinks, as it were, in Roman provinces He classifies
his newly- founded churches according to the Imperial Prov-
inces. He estimates his progress according to provinces Syria
and Cilicia, Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, Achaia, Illyricum and as
he goes forward he plants his steps and his institutions in their
capitals. This is the language, these are the thoughts, of a
man whose aim is co-extensive with the Empire, the creation
of a unity within the Church as extensive as the Imperial or-
ganization.*
Tradition seems to say that even the insatiable longing " to
see " Rome was partly that he might push his conquests for Christ
to Gaul and to Britain, the northernmost limit of the mighty empire,
thus to complete his subjugation of the world as it then really was.
Here again our thoughts are forcibly turned to the prevailing
thought of the Races Congress. " Are we ready for the change ?
Have we duly considered all that it signifies, and have we tutored
our minds and shaped our policy with a view of successfully meet-
ing the coming flood ? " asked Lord Weardale. Paul and Xavier
have answered for the one Church founded upon Peter the Rock till
the end of days. We may fittingly close this part of our subject by
a noble tribute from a great son of the Church in these latter days.
Is then nationality to be ignored and all nations treated as
though they were identical? Not so; for this would be to deny
the providential distinction of nations each bound to use its
special character for the glory of the Most High, and would
*Pauline and Other Studies, III. The Church in the Roman Empire, by Sir
W. M. Ramsay, D.C.L. ; also Abbe Fouard's Missions of St. Pal.
5 2 4 THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE [July,
be to deny the fitness of the Church to deal with each. All
alike must be addressed, but each addressed in its own peculiar
way, nor any rigid uniformity preserved of outward expression.
For indeed the fashions of speech and action vary so much
with race and nation that what would imply evil in the one,
say falsehood or irreverence, implies no evil in the other; not
that the principles of morals vary geographically, but the sig-
nificance of eternals ; and thus each man feels, and feels rightly,
that a foreigner is no judge of his conduct, and lacks the
subtle appreciation needed for a fair estimate. But the Church,
precisely because in one sense she is a foreigner to all, is a
foreigner to none; and brings with her not only the general
graces needed to correct the particular form of human corrup-
tion prominent in the natural character of each nation ; min-
istering as a common source of grace to each varied necessity.
Unity is her mark ; unification her work ; by nature the mem-
bers of the Church are not one, and would not become one;
yet in the essentials of their faith, their devotions, and their
moral ideas, she makes them one. And thus evil once more,
as it only exists for the sake of good, has to yield to good ; and
the struggle of nationalities, that is ever a trouble to the Church
and a difficulty, becomes the witness of her unifying powers,
and the very material of her triumph.*
Thus far we have considered what may be vaguely termed the
negative treatment given to Religion by the Universal Races Con-
gress. We turn now to the more positive aspect. This is contained
in the note on the Babai Movement and the letter from Abd'l Baba
to the First Universal Races Congress. In America and England the
prophet and his followers are well known, especially since his
visit to this country some months ago. In a few lines we will re-
call the origin of the movement.
At Shiraz in Persia, in 1844, a youth, by name Sayyid Ali
Muhammed, announced himself the herald of a great spiritual
teacher to come. The fiery zeal of the Bab (Gate), as his followers
called him, soon rendered him famous throughout Persia. Six
years later, however, he fell under the suspicion of the Persian
Government, and was shot at Tabriz. In spite of subsequent per-
secution (from thirty to fifty thousand are said to have perished)
the Babis grew rapidly, till in the early sixties "the great teacher" of
the Bab actually manifested himself. At once multitudes through-
out Persia were attracted by the personality of this Baba'u'llah,
"The Key to the World's Progress, p. 36, by C. S. Devas, M.A.
1912.] THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 525
" the Glory of God." Persecution at the hands of the orthodox
Moslems was not abated, and within a short time the Babis could
claim twenty thousand " martyrs." Death, exile, and imprison-
ment only strengthened the fervor of the teacher and his adherents,
so that the movement had spread in every direction on Baba's death
in 1892. Before that date he entrusted to his eldest son, Abbas
Effendi, the task of continuing his work and expounding his writ-
ings. The same life of perpetual incarceration at Acre was con-
tinued for the son, until 1908 brought him release under the Young
Turkish constitution. In that year Abdu'l Baba Abbas (i. e., Abbas,
servant of Baba) found a refuge at Haifa, on Mount Carmel.
Baba'u'llah first appeared before the European world in his his-
toric letters to Pius IX., to Queen Victoria, and to the sovereigns
of Europe in 1867, pleading a conference of governments and the
disarmament of nations. This, indeed, seems to be the mission
claimed by the teacher and his sect. Throughout his writings, of
which the chief are Hidden Words and the Kilab-i-Akdas,* the
dominant note is the longing for universal peace. This is the
gospel preached by Baba'u'llah, and by Abbas his son and servant
in his message to the Congress.
And as we suggested above, the spread of the Babai Movement
might be attributed partly to the noble and generous ideal it pre-
sents.
But when we come to the definite teachings, precepts, cere-
mony, and ritual of Baba'u'llah the lustre grows dim. It is good
to forbid war, suicide, injustice of all kinds ; it is excellent to teach
and practice the charity of universal brotherhood, but what does all
this avail when dogma is rejected, and pantheism preached? The
Babai religion inculcates prayer, and what is prayer without sacri-
fice and sacramentals, those essential visible bonds uniting man to
the invisible, of the life of the soul by grace. Without these
mysticism, on which Babism lays such stress, is a delusion.f Babai
repudiates priesthood and sacrifice; the solitary life of monk and
nun is banned, and marriage is enjoined upon all as the highest
estate of man. Moreover Babism denies of course the divinity
of Our Lord, and teaches that Christ was only a type of the greatest
of the world prophets, and with His Sacred Name it links those of
Moses and Buddha, nay, Baba'u'llah himself and Abdu'l Baba the
Translated by Mirza Amcen Farced. Printed for the London Babais, 1911.
\A Brief Account of the Babai Movement, by Ethel Rosenberg. Published for
the Babai Society of London, 1911, by the Pripry Press, Hampstead.
526 THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL PEACE [July,
dweller on Mount Carmel. It is vain, with these incongruities be-
fore our eyes, for the Western adherents of the Baba to declare
their belief identical with the " doctrine of the logos " in the West.
The Universal Races Congress deemed its discussion incom-
plete without a reverent consideration for the words of the oriental
stranger from Mount Carmel. We do not read the name of the
great solitary of the Vatican in the papers of the Congress, nor
does his scheme find place in the volume of Inter-Racial Problems,
though they embrace " the problem of pacification in its whole
range," as M. Leon Bourgeois confidently states. What, as we
have suggested, if his were the only force that could galvanize
into life this titanic desire for universal brotherhood? What if
he holds the talisman that alone can draw into sympathy the
strangely alien nations of God's Orient and God's Occident?
Georges Goyau shall answer for us :
The Bible relates how Elisha, stretching himself at full length
on the young man whom he wished to restore to life, seemed
to mould his body on that other which was to be requickened :
even as that young man the masses of to-day await the return
of life; and, like Elisha, the Church bends over them, adapts
itself to them, and aspires to cover and overshadow them, and
to make the field which they occupy coincide with the field over
which the Cross sheds its rays.
IRew Boohs.
THE PRICE OF UNITY. By the Reverend B. W. Maturin. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50 net.
In one of his recent lectures in America, Monsignor Benson,
himself a convert from the Church of England, made a graceful
reference to a fellow-convert from Anglicanism as one to whom
he had long looked as a master. There are many others, converts
and Catholic-born, who can bear similar testimony to the influences
Father Maturin has left upon their intellectual and spiritual life
through his spoken words and writings. The sturdy, thorough, and
penetrating mind that has so profoundly and so perspicuously
analyzed the human soul in Some Principles and Practices of the
Spiritual Life, and in other works, has placed many and we
venture to think now will place many an Anglican inquirer under
a deep debt of gratitude to the author of The Price of Unity.
It is a book marked from beginning to end by the notes of justice
and charity. As an apologetic work for it is that rather than
controversial it is unvaryingly kind and consistently fair to that
class of persons for whom it appears to have been chiefly written
the small but earnest and sincere body of High Church Anglicans.
And as such we welcome the book as the most intelligent and
appreciative irenic of our times.
It would be difficult, in a brief review, to give any adequate
conception of a work that, from first to last, does not falter in its
suggestiveness of ideas. We hope, and we have reason to believe,
that the book will be widely read, for it ought to serve both as a
persuasive to non-Catholics and as a very clear and intelligent
treatment for our own people of a subject upon which they are
often insufficiently informed.
Father Maturin has, in a measure, opened his own heart and
told us of his experiences before and since conversion of the deep
searchings of soul ; of the misgivings felt lest one forsake a known
good for something that might turn out to be an illusion; of the
suffering that necessarily accompanies the breach with a long and
happy past; of familiar confidences unregarded; and, finally, of
the supreme joy of a great and unshaken certainty. For he has
at last spoken to declare, what only that native injustice or mental
528 NEW BOOKS [July,
impenetrability of certain strange people could have failed to see,
that his present conviction is the same he has held from the begin-
ning of his conversation :
Rome is no mere rival of Anglicanism. She has nothing what-
ever to do with it. She existed ages before it was thought of,
and will continue to exist ages after the destructive forces in
the English Church have done their work .... She is not the
refuge of despairing wanderers, but only of those who believe
that she is the one unrivaled representative of the Church of
God.
And the book makes more clear than one has often found it
expressed the untenableness of the High Anglican hope that is
intimated in the words just quoted. To Rome, the ideal of reunion
based on mutual concession is, and ever will be, like a rainbow and
its pot of gold. To the Roman Catholic, Anglicanism is a schism,
a religious institution that may appear to possess a Catholicity, but
lacks a great essential : unity with and submission to the Apostolic
See; a democracy not a kingdom, persisting for the fourth cen-
tury of its existence in rebellion against that divine authority of
St. Peter, the corner-stone of Catholic unity.
The Price of Unity, we think, will be found to be an exceed-
ingly valuable contribution to a subject that occupies the minds of
a large number of devout Christians, and it is all the more service-
able in the just balance it preserves between the severest truth-
fulness and the broadest charity. Those non-Catholics who are
still estopped from conversion by their admirable loyalty to the
principles of orders and sacraments will discover much that is
fresh and illuminating in the presentment of these principles.
ROBERT E. LEE, MAN AND SOLDIER. By Thomas Nelson
Page. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net.
In taking up a book of this kind we look first for the motif
the recurring theme or object of the reasoning which runs
through it and here it is repeated often. In chapter i., Mr. Page
says : " One familiar with the life of Lee cannot help noting the
strong resemblance of his character in its strength, its poise, its
rounded completeness, to that of Washington, or fail to mark what
influence the life of Washington had on the life of Lee."
It is a wonderful thing that the great hero of the cause of se-
cession and slavery should have believed that the Union ought to
IQI2.] NEW BOOKS 529
be preserved and the slaves ought to be freed. How Lee came to
embrace a cause in which he did not believe until he had embraced
it is thus explained by Mr. Page :
At the time when Lee and his brother officers received their
education at the Military Academy they were sent there as
State cadets, and the expense of their education was borne
at last by the several States, which, there being at that time
no high tariff and no internal-revenue taxation to maintain
the National Government, made a yet more direct contribution
than since the war to the government for its expenses. In
recognition of this fact, and as compensation for the contri-
bution by the States, each representative of a State had the
right to send a cadet to each academy and the cadet con-
sequently owed first allegiance to the State.
Mr. Page is wholly mistaken. The truth is that the federal
government was supported then almost entirely by customs duties,
and that there was an internal revenue tax also; that military
cadets were appointed by the President without geographical re-
strictions; that the expense of their education was borne then,
as it is now, by the federal treasury; that the States made no'
direct contribution to the federal treasury, and that Robert E. Lee
was no more a State cadet in 1825 than any Virginia boy ap-
pointed to West Point yesterday is a State cadet. Mr. Page gives
us another reason which is nearer the mark, although it is a doubt-
ful compliment to freedom or progress of opinion in Virginia. Lee,
he says, had been "reared in the Southern School of States' Rights ;"
his father regarded Virginia as his country, and " political views
were as much inherited as religious tenets." If Lee's conscience
required him to resign from the Army of the United States and
join the Army of Virginia that settles the question, as it seems
to us.
When Lee was born, January 19, 1807, at Stratford, West-
moreland Co., Va., one appeared, says Mr. Page, " whom many
students of military history believe to have been not only the
greatest soldier of his time, and, taking all things together, the
greatest captain of the English-speaking race, but the loftiest char-
acter of his generation; one rarely equalled, and possibly never
excelled, in all the annals of the human race " a statement not
wholly consistent with that found in the last chapter : that ten thou-
sand of Lee's soldiers were his peers in character.
VOL. xcv. 34.
530 NEW BOOKS [July,
Mr. Page gives us nothing about Lee's earlier years before
he went to West Point, except some utterly trivial and common-
place anecdotes, which he ought to have omitted. For instance:
" 'The other boys used to drink from the glasses of the gentlemen,'
said one of the family; 'but Robert never would join them. He
was different.' ' At West Point the same story of tame perfection
continues. " The impress of his character was already becoming
stamped upon his countenance," and so forth. The reader can
supply the rest of the sentence.
We regret, too, that Mr. Page tells us so little about Lee from
the time he left West Point until the Civil War, a period of thirty-
two years. He quotes a letter, however, from Lee to his eldest
son, then a cadet at West Point, written from Arlington, April 5,
1852, laying down the rules of duty for a young man; and adds:
" Such, in brief, was Robert E. Lee, when at the age of fifty-four
he found the storm of Civil War about to break on the country."
The reader is surprised when he finds this foot-note to the page :
" It is said that this letter as a whole was made up by a clever
newspaper man out of parts of different letters by Lee." In form
and substance the letter is not in the least like Lee. It is plain that
he did not write it, and Mr. Page cannot excuse his use of it as
evidence of Lee's character.
The greater part of the biography is devoted to the narrative
of Lee's operations at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia
in the Civil War, which show him, Mr. Page says, as " one of the
great captains of history whose genius was equal to every exigency
of war to which human genius may rise." The reviewer is ignorant
of military science, and cannot judge whether this part of the
book is better than the other parts. But of that part which covers
the time from the close of the war up to Lee's death, we are obliged
to say that Mr. Page has given us for the most part apostrophies
and rhapsodies of words without any solid foundations to support
them, and we remain in ignorance of what constituted the greatness
of Lee, the citizen and college president. The anecdotes Mr. Page
has recorded illustrate the fatuous adulation of Lee's neighbors,
and do nothing for Lee.
Doubtless it is too early yet to expect a calm, discriminating
biography of General Lee. He was a great soldier and a great
character, but the Southern people only want to hear him praised.
We submit, however, that his fame is not enhanced by such unreas-
oning praise as this book bestows.
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 53i
MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE CELTIC RACE. By T. W.
Rolleston. New York : Thomas J. Crowell Co. $2.50.
This work is a collection of the tales, folk lore, and legends
of the Celts, whether domiciled in Ireland, Wales or Brittany. Of
the eight chapters composing the book, six are devoted to the myth-
ical element. In the first two chapters the author, following the
great French authorities D'Arbois de Jubainville and Bertrand,
strives to find foothold on historical fact. Mr. Rolleston believes
that the Celts had a North African origin, and that their language
and beliefs were closely allied to those of the Egyptians. The
fourth and fifth centuries before Christ he considers the " golden
age of Celtdom in Continental Europe." Then it was they
wrested Spain from the Carthaginians and North Italy from the
Etruscans. The names Mediolanum (Milan), Virodnnum (Ver-
duno), Addua (Adda), and perhaps Cremona, testify to Celtic
occupation. The name of Vergil, and the quality of his writings,
seem strong arguments to Mr. Rolleston of the Celtic ancestry of
Rome's greatest poet. To us this last inference appears rather
un pen fort. The author sums up well Europe's debt to the Celt :
For some four centuries about A. D. 500 to 900 Ireland
was the refuge of learning, and the source of literary and
philosophic culture, for half Europe. The verse forms of
Celtic poetry have probably played the main part in determining
the structure of all modern verse He (the Celt) had
little gift for the establishment of institutions, for the service
of principles; but he was and is an indispensable and never-
failing assertor of humanity as against the tyranny of principles,
the coldness and barrenness of institutions It is true that
he has been over eager to enjoy the fine fruits of life without
the long and patient preparation for the harvest, but he has
done and will still do infinite service to the modern world in in-
sisting that the true fruit of life is a spiritual reality, never with-
out pain and loss, to be obscured or forgotten amid the vast
mechanism of a material civilization.
In more than one place the writer's anti-religious bias betrays
itself in the most naive manner. On page 47 he attributes the
political weakness and final downfall of the Celts to the predom-
inance of the priestly caste amongst them.
On page 66 he is credulous enough to adopt the assertion of a
Mr. Bell that to-day the priests of Brittany take part in stone wor-
532 NEW BOOKS [July,
ship though against their will and better judgment! A photo
of an ordinary sodality procession, accompanied by priests and
sacred banners, is produced to substantiate this calumny or at least
absurdity. The holy wells of Ireland too are considered as sur-
viving examples of immemorial superstition. " And the cult of the
waters of Lourdes may, in spite of its adoption by the church, be
mentioned as a notable case in point on the Continent." (!!!)
What can we think of the critical sense and historical competence
of a writer in whom common sense is so egregiously lacking?
THE FUGITIVES. By Margaret Fletcher. New York : Longmans,
Green & Co. $1.35 net.
How far a novelist is justified in bringing the unsavory side
of life into public view is a vexed question. Some there are who
deny that it is under any circumstances justifiable to do so. Others
are of a different opinion, and consider that every aspect of the
world's life is a legitimate subject for the novelist's art. Between
these two extreme views are a variety of shades of opinion. Zola
stands for a realism against which there is already a healthy reaction
in French literature. It was a realism which dabbled in the mire for
mere delight in the mire. Present-day realists amongst English
writers at least some of them, and they amongst the most widely
read go to work more subtly. They avoid any flagrant breach
of the conventions, yet call in question the moral principles to which
the conventions are related. And the poison works the more in-
sidiously because of a certain artistic flavor which is given it.
This kind of literature is too common and too eagerly sought after
in our day. This is a fact to which it were foolish to close our eyes.
The truth is that the young people of the present day are curious
as to the life around them, and they seek out the literature which
satisfies their curiosity. The question then arises whether this
curiosity might not be satisfied in a way to cause no moral harm,
with the antidote of sound religious principle set against the possible
poisons?
It seem to us that this is what Miss Margaret Fletcher has
set herself to do in her latest book, The Fugitives. The story takes
us into the inner life of the Q natter Latin of Paris. There we meet
the two girl-students, Stephanie and Patricia, and their circle, and
much besides. Stephanie has been brought up without religion
of any sort; she had jumped from the narrow conventionalities
of a comfortable home into the bohemian but free life of the art-
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 533
student in Paris. She is a creature of strong vitality ignorant
of evil, wholly absorbed in her art. Patricia is a devout Catholic,
who also is seeking a freedom of soul in the arduous studies of the
atelier. Both are strongly drawn to each other, though so differ-
ent in character. IJow they both come to realize themselves
Patricia through the oncoming of a great, pure love; Stephanie
through the awakening to the fact of religion and how in each
case the realization is accompanied by fierce temptation, which
searches the innermost soul, is the burden of the story. The author
throughout deals frankly with the situation in which her heroines
find themselves, and one can imagine how some of our realist
novelists would have handled the theme. But apart from the high
moral purpose which runs through the book, a true artistic instinct
enables Miss Fletcher to tell her story with an evident fidelity to
facts, and yet to produce a book which is essentially clean and
morally bracing. She avoids the mistake of moralizing: her char-
acters and situations speak for themselves. The book is not one
to put into the hands of a schoolgirl ; but for the young woman bent
on searching for the " facts " of life, we can imagine no more
opportune novel than this. If realism is to be the fashion in litera-
ture, then Miss Fletcher has shown how it can be dealt with
worthily and usefully. The Fugitives, in fact, sets a new and de-
sirable standard in the treatment of the realistic novel.
THE INTERIOR CASTLE. Saint Teresa. Translated by the
Benedictines of Stanbrook; Introduction and Additional Notes
by V. Rev. Benedict Zimmerman, O.C.D. London: Thomas
Baker. 43.
Teresa of Jesus is probably the only woman-saint who attracts
all categories of Christians, inside and outside the Catholic Church;
but her fascination goes further than the religious-minded. Round
her name many a battle has been fought in the laboratory of medical
science, and no doubt her influence has been great with those modern
philosophers who teach a more spiritual conception of the universe,
as well as with the students of psychology and physiology whose
labors have done so much to prove the realities of mystical ex-
perience, and to bring into discredit the scepticism of a past genera-
tion. It is indeed remarkable that the books which St. Teresa
wrote in the sixteenth century, for the edification and spiritual
guidance of her contemplative Carmelite nuns, should in these
days have become text-books for the use of the most learned theo-
534 NEW BOOKS [July,
logians of all creeds, as well as for those whose scientific pursuits
bring them into touch with the phenomena of psychology, either
through its mental or more physical manifestations. But it is to
the mystic experimental and theoretical that St. Teresa speaks
with the greatest authority, and it may be safely said that it would
be almost impossible to dive very deeply into such a vast and com-
plex subject as " Mysticism " without frequent reference to her
life and writings. She has been picturesquely described as the geo-
grapher and hydrographer of the soul. She has drawn the map
of its poles, marked its latitudes of contemplation and prayer,
and laid out all the interior seas and lands of the human heart.
Other saints have been among those heights and depths and deserts
before her, but no one has left us so methodical and so scientific a
survey.
It is unfortunate that the popular conception of mysticism and
of sanctity (they do not necessarily go together unless taken in
a strictly Catholic sense, when sanctity includes mysticism; but all
mystics are not saints, although in each case it would depend on the
exact meaning we give to words capable of such varied definitions)
associates with them the accidental phenomena of ecstasies, visions,
trances, locutions, or more apparent physical marvels, such as the
stigmata, or the raising of the body from the ground. These
mysterious psychical and physical experiences do certainly abound in
the lives of the saints, but they have frequently been given a too
great prominence in our idea of what constitutes sanctity, and thus
obscured in our minds the teaching of the Church, and of the
Saints themselves, that sanctity does not imply the experience of
these extraordinary states, but in doing ordinary things extraordin-
arily well. Both St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa knew from
practical experience that such phenomena were veritable quick-
sands on which many a soul had found shipwreck, and we in our
own time have been able to judge of the effects of the pseudo-
mysticism of the many sects around us, whether they are called
revivalists, theosophists, spiritists, or claim to be the Church of
the Future !
But such spurious mysticism has nothing in common with
God's mysterious dealings with the saints; in studying the ac-
counts of their spiritual life, there is an entirely safe standard and
test. Does the vision or revelation harmonize with the divine mag-
isterium of the Church? Does the ecstasy or communication leave
behind a spirit of peace, strength, and health, both of mind and
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 535
body, as well as a deep humility and complete submissiveness to the
authority of the Church? For these are the beneficent effects of
Christ's dealings with chosen souls; while, on the other hand, the
false mystic is but the victim of mental excitement and hysteria,
leading on to disintegration both physical and moral. In St. Teresa's
case we have a wonderful example of the progression of the soul
through every variety of mystical and extraordinary experience;
she saw visions, she fell into trances, she heard interior voices,
and finally reached to the culminating point of her relations with
the spiritual world, when an angel thrust a flaming spear of gold
through her heart, and left her " all on fire with a great love of
God." What then was the result on the Saint of these strange
favors and mysterious illuminations? She made a vow to do
always in everything that which appeared to her to be the most
perfect and best pleasing to God! We are indeed far from the
weakening, the vulgar, and sensational manifestations of the pseudo-
mystic! Throughout her life St. Teresa ever became more calm
and vigorous. From her raptures and visions she ever derived
more and more of that " apostolic strength," which is one of her
great characteristics. She has been aptly called " the Saint of
Common Sense," and I know of no better example of the " unifi-
cation of the faculties," where soul, heart, intellect, judgment,
wit, humor, and power of concentration of thought and word,
brought into cohesion and direction by the power of religion, have
produced so perfect a type, not only of saint, but of woman. No
wonder then that this " mystical doctor," this " seraphic mother,"
with her intense interest in life, and her breadth of view of the
world within and without the cloister, should exercise such a spell
over men and women of every creed and every clime ! But many
of us know St. Teresa mainly through books written about her
rather than through those books in which she reveals herself, and
in spite of the whole-hearted admiration she has inspired in many
non-Catholic writers, the portrait they draw of her is not that of
Teresa the Catholic, who founded her Reformed Discalced Car-
melites in order that they might pray for the sanctification of the
priesthood, and help repair by prayer, penance, and a life of per-
fection some of the ravages committed by the heretics of northern
Europe, but a Teresa deprived of the mainspring which regulated
her whole spiritual life, who ought to have turned her great natural
powers into other channels, and whose great loss was that she
did not come under the influence of the Reform !
536 NEW BOOKS [July,
St. Teresa wrote (under obedience) four immortal books,
The Life, The Way of Perfection, The Foundations, and finally The
Interior Castle, in which she sums up, as it were, the whole of her
teaching on prayer and union with God. It is not a treatise of
mystical theology, but the autobiography of the life of her own
soul. Full as the book is of the most heavenly doctrine, and of
her own transcendental experiences, never once does she hazard
on ground over which she herself had not already trod, or venture
to make dogmatic statements concerning the road by which God
may lead other souls to Him. The strong personal note which
runs through all her writings inspires the reader not only with
confidence and delight, but attracts him so forcibly to the Saint,
and to the love of virtue, that it may be safely said that she makes
as many converts as she has readers. Teresa received extraordinary
graces, doubled with the power of understanding and describing
them. She owes this partly to the delight she took throughout her
whole life in talking of God and His ways of sanctifying souls
with learned theologians. This veneration for learning, and her
submissiveness to the teaching of qualified men, give her writings
such sureness of touch that to read them as they ought to be read
is the safest and swiftest way of becoming a master of the spiritual
life.
The present translation of The Interior Castle has been done
by the Benedictine nuns of Stanbrook, and forms part of the com-
plete edition of the works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa,
which is being brought out under the editorship of Father Zim-
merman, who has written an Introduction, as well as supplied
an index and foot-notes. These elucidate any obscurities in the
text, and contain numerous cross-references to parallel passages
found in other parts of St. Teresa's works, showing how con-
sistent she is in all her writings. The translation has been made
from the photo-lithographic edition of the original autograph,
brought out under the direction of the Archbishop of Seville, in
1882, on the occasion of the tercentenary of St. Teresa's death.
Father Zimmerman says in the Introduction that " it has been
thought advisable, as far as the genius of the language allows
it, that the wording of the author should be strictly adhered to,
and that not a shade of her expression should be sacrificed. For
Teresa is not only a Saint whose every word is telling, but she is
a classic in her own language, who knows how to give expression
to her deepest thoughts." He further adds "that having compared
1912.] NEW BOOKS 537
word for word the translation with the original, he is in a position
to affirm that this programme has been faithfully carried out. Un-
doubtedly we have here the thought of the Saint more accurately
translated than in any other English edition, of which, by the way,
there have been only two, that of Woodhead (1675) and Dalton
(1852). The style has none of the awkwardness of a translation;
the English is dignified and chiseled; it flows with suppleness and
grace, and is worthy to rank by the side of Lewis' translation of
The Life, which competent authority says to be the best in any
language. We cannot do better than conclude by quoting the
editor's own words at the end of the Introduction, where he ex-
presses the hope " that this new translation will be found helpful
by those who feel called to a higher life."
THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
AND REGION OF THE GREAT LAKES. Translated, edited,
annotated, and with bibliography and index, by Emma Helen
Blair. Two volumes. Cleveland : The Arthur H. Clarke Co.
$10.00.
Unhappily the editor of these two handsome volumes died
before they got well into circulation; but the satisfaction which she
would have derived from the approbation of the world of historical
scholarship would have been only an addition to the greater satis-
faction she must have felt from the performance of the task itself.
The work covers only the upper Mississippi Valley and the region
of the Great Lakes. It ought to serve as a model for similar com-
pilations covering the Indians who inhabited the rest of the United
States.
Miss Blair would have the reader approach the study of the
Indian with sympathy, and to those who think that the only good
Indian is a dead Indian she says : " Complete refutation of that
is found in the many instances of noble words and deeds by Indians ;
in the progress made by some of the tribes in civilization and
religious life." Miss Blair affirms, moreover, that one who applies
to them the Golden Rule will find them hardly more worthy of
censure than their white brothers on the frontier. The accounts
of the Indians which are reproduced are those of Nicholas Perrot
(1605), which was first published in French by Rev. Jules
Tailhan, S.J., in 1804, and which now appears in English for
the first time ; of Charles Claude Le Roy, Bacqueville de la Potherie
(1689 about), the second volume of which appears in English for
538 NEW BOOKS [July,
the first time, and several later accounts, which become even con-
temporaneous, in the shape of letters to the editor from Rev. Henry
I. Westroff, S.J., a missionary among the Sioux, and others now
or recently engaged in working for the spiritual and moral better-
ment of the Indians. The compilation as a whole is a great con-
tribution to American history, and the publishers deserve great
praise.
LITTLE GRAY SONGS FROM ST. JOSEPH'S. By Grace Fallow
Norton. Boston: Houghton Mifm'n Co. $1.00 net.
" In the winter of 1903 a cold night and a colder dawning
sent girls shivering to their work in the factories of an American
town. Among them Leonie X , the still girl who never told
her name. She, frail as she was and weary, slipped upon the icy
pavement and fell. The hurt proving dire, she was carried to
a small Franciscan hospital hard by, where she lay for two years
true to herself saying little with her lips and much with her mourn-
ful eyes. Here she wrote many 'little letters to herself,' which
were hidden beneath her pillow, and which the good Sister Jerome,
who was her sole nurse, lovingly preserved after her death."
With this preface is published a slim volume of Little Gray
Songs from St. Joseph's, by Grace Fallow Norton. Queer, wonder-
ful little poems they are, with a stinging, stabbing pathos; little
minor melodies of pain, broken always by a staccato overtone of
proud, childish courage. These lines, for instance :
Best I love Sister Jerome;
Her arms are my only home,
Her strong arms and the white bed
Where they laid my weary head.
Sister Jerome how does she know
'Tis the heart that hurts one so?
Not the fever, not the wound,
But the lone heart, burned and ground.
Not the body-bruise that stings,
Just the heart's poor broken wings.
In several of the poems there is the spiritual note, as in this
tender, exquisite bit :
1912.] NEW BOOKS 539
O Jesu, how my soul goes forth
To be a friend to Thee,
Who had no friend to know Thyself,
Who ever walked lonely ;
And whom the ages lonelier make,
Upon Thy lifted tree.
Jesu, how my soul goes forth
To be a friend to Thee.
But for the most part they reveal a faith that is incomplete,
puzzled, overclouded. How cruel a mystery pain becomes without
religion, and how hopeless to believe oneself only " the luckless pot
He marred in making ! " From such suffering, thrice bitter because
meaningless, comes this piteously, brave little utterance :
With cassock black, " biret " and book,
Father Saran goes by;
1 think he goes to say a prayer
For one who has to die.
Even so, some day, Father Saran
May say a prayer for me ;
Myself meanwhile, the Sister tells,
Should pray unceasingly.
They kneel who pray: how may I kneel
Who face to ceiling lie,
Shut out by all that man has made
From God Who made the sky?
They lift who pray the low earth-born
A humble heart to God ;
But O my heart of clay is proud
True sister to the sod.
I look into the face of God,
They say bends over me ;
I search the dark, dark face of God
O what is it I see ?
I see who lie fast bound, who may
Not kneel, who can but seek
I see mine own face over me,
With tears upon its cheek.
540 NEW BOOKS [July,
There are other poems of this theme, like Tennyson's
Infant crying in the night
And with no language but a cry,
and there are others that give us in incidental, plaintive phrases the
cruelty of child-labor, like Mrs. Browning's The Cry of the Chil-
dren. There are even two or three that touch, in a weary, per-
plexed fashion upon greater problems, dark indeed when not illu-
minated by faith.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: A STUDY IN NATIONAL PSY-
CHOLOGY. By A. Maurice Low, M.A. Volume II. The
Harvesting of a Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $2.25.
This is a study of some of the phenomena of the mind of
the American people historically and contemporaneously, the broad
divisions of the work being the commercial efficiency of the colonial
Puritans, who dominated in forming the American people; the
discontent which caused the Revolution; the overthrow of the
Puritan State Church, and the substitution of political interest for
religious interest, whence " the dawn of a new era ;" the creation
of American union in opposition first to French and then to English
policy; the forces which made the American constitution; the in-
fluence of immigration on the American character ; the influence of
slavery; the expansion of the American political horizon in con-
sequence of the war with Spain.
The book is interesting and suggestive, and the style is good.
While it does not belong in the front rank either as philosophy or
commentary, it is better in both fields than books on America
by foreigners usually are. The best chapter is that on the influence
of immigration on American development, in which the theory
is advanced that immigration has elevated the native stock by forc-
ing it out of the lowest place in the industrial scale ; that the aim of
the foreigner is to become like a native, and that the result is his
rapid and complete absorption.
A good chapter is that in which Mr. Low shows how the tariff
has helped to make us a self -centered and politically detached
country, and has had a distinct psychological effect; and another
is on the enlarging influence on the American mind of the war with
Spain, compelling us to notice world problems, and share in our
responsibilities as one of the family of nations. Sympathetic and
1912.] NEW BOOKS 54i
optimistic in most of his comments, Mr. Low occasionally admin-
isters rebukes which should cause no protest, because they are de-
served and come in a kindly spirit. His denunciation of the latter
day demagogue, who stirs up discontent merely to further his own
political fortunes, and deals in indiscriminate abuse of his fellow
citizens, so that foreigners have come to believe us a dishonest
people, is timely and deserved. So are his remarks about our pas-
sion for organization, which causes us to do everything through an
association, and robs the individual of much of the happiness and
elevating influence which come from personal effort.
These are some of the points on which we agree with Mr.
Low ; there are many in which we think he is in error. For one, we
do not admit that there are many intelligent people in America
who find a political parallel between this country and ancient Rome.
When speakers and writers point to Rome as a horrible example
for America, it is because of the parallel in the great heights reached
by both civilizations, their extravagance, magnificence, and luxuries,
and not, as Mr. Low seems to think, because we see similar tenden-
cies in government and state policy. Mr. Low really demolishes a
man of straw when he shows the fundamental difference between
the Roman Republic and the American state.
We think, too, that he misses the point in the chapter in which
he demonstrates that America has no capital. Is it true that our
life has never been influenced by " the centripetal force of the
metropolis, and it no more exists to-day than it did three hundred
years ago when the land was unbroken and the Indian roamed at
will ? " We have no London or Paris : the great extent of the coun-
try forbids ; but we have a number of them New Orleans for the
southwest ; Boston for New England ; Chicago for the middle west,
and so on. Mr. Low says that the decentralization has produced
greater local pride than we find in other countries. We suggest
that the local pride follows local ownership and local self-govern-
ment. The people of Denver, which city Mr. Low gives as an
example, are proud of the city because they built it and own it.
The chapter " where woman neither reigns nor rules " is in-
teresting, but Mr. Low should not have cited as an exception " that
charming and witty social firebrand, Peggy O'Neill;" for Mrs.
Eaton has left no record of charm or wit. Being a woman who had
been talked about, the ladies of Washington would not receive her
when her husband became Jackson's Secretary of War, and in con-
sequence he reorganized his cabinet, leaving Eaton out. Her per-
542 NEW BOOKS [July,
sonality played no part in the proceedings, however, and she really
illustrates Mr. Low's argument, and is not an exception to it. The
reason why our political history has been notably free from woman's
influence is not, as Mr. Low supposes, because we follow the Salic
law, excluding woman from governing, but because there is no
governing class in America. Given a governing class, which is
also a leisure class, as in England, and you have a commingling of
social and political life, and woman's influence in social life being
dominant will necessarily extend itself to political affairs.
In treating of the Constitution, Mr. Low is singularly incor-
rect in finding the reason why it excluded all provision for a State
Church. " It was less due," he says, " to the tolerance of the men
who gathered in Philadelphia and more to their intolerance,
that the Constitution contains no mention of God. Each man was
so firmly set in his own convictions, each man held so intolerantly
to his own religion, and would yield nothing to any other, that the
only possible compromise was to ignore the whole subject."
The fact is that James Madison, who drew up the Virginia
plan, which was the foundation on which the Constitution was con-
structed, was one of the fathers of religious freedom in Virginia,
and there was not a single influential member of the constitutional
convention who would have had a State Church if he could.
In his chapter on American manners, Mr. Low fails again
to find the true reason for the fact. He attributes our bad manners
largely to the influence of the Irish immigrant and negro slavery,
but it is our experience that the Irish immigrant is a man of some
elegance, and is more of a gentleman than his American-born son.
We are certain that the old-fashioned Southern negro is often a
Chesterfield and never a boor, and that the best manners in America
are to be found in the South where slavery flourished. Whatever
the reasons for our lack of manners may be, Mr. Low has not found
them.
This is a long book and covers many subjects. We are sur-
prised, therefore, that it has no discussion of religion in America.
Surely a study of the psychology of the American people is incom-
plete which fails to notice the great advance, without tithe or tax,
of the religious bodies, and notably of the Catholic Church.
RACE SUICIDE. By M. S. Iseman, M.D. New York : The Cos-
mopolitan Press. $1.50.
The author covers the question of Race Suicide among savages,
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 543
the ancient Hebrews, Tyrians, Phoenicians, Syrians, Carthaginians,
Sabines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Celts, Norse, in Greece,
Rome, the Turkish Empire, India, Japan, China, Hottentot-land,
Madagascar, Greenland, Hawaii, the Philippines, ancient Mexico
and Peru, modern South America, Europe, Russia, and North
America; and by the term Race Suicide he seems to embrace all
limitation of increase in population from whatever cause. In ad-
dition he has a chapter on the relation between population and food-
supply, and the causes of infanticide. The style is often journalistic
and flamboyant. There are broad statements without proof, and
quotations without exact references.
THREE QUARTERS OF A CENTURY (1807-1882). By the late
Rev. Augustus J. Thebaud, S J. Edited by Charles G. Herber-
mann, LL.D. Vol. I. Political, Social, and Ecclesiastical
Events in France. New York: The United States Catholic
Historical Society. $3.00.
In 1904 Charles G. Herbermann, LL.D., edited for the United
States Catholic Historical Society the third volume of Father
Augustus J. Thebaud's reminiscences dealing with his experiences
during forty years of residence in the United States. He has now
performed the same task for Father Thebaud's reminiscences from
1807 up to the time when he came from France to the United
States, and it appears as volume one published by the same society.
We have here the simple story of a single-hearted man, who
paints a picture with the touch of a true artist, giving us something
pleasant and profitable to remember without arousing conflicting
emotions. Father Thebaud lived in Nantes, and his experiences
and observations pertain to provincial France; and the reader has
the novel experience of hearing much about France and little about
Paris. He came after the great Revolution ; but gives at first hand
a number of incidents concerning it. He speaks from a nearer view
of the reign of Napoleon I., and of the succeeding French govern-
ments he had personal knowledge. From his childhood he had
determined to be a priest, and the effect of the government upon
religion and morals is the theme of his observations. Always
kind in his judgments when the facts permit it, he is severe only
against the Jacobins and Napoleon, who, he declares, was always
a Jacobin at heart. He was himself a legitimist and a Vendean,
and his account of the old French nobility, their unostentatious life,
charitable activities, and retention of religious devotion, is undoubt-
544 NEW BOOKS [July,
edly true, at any rate as far as it goes. The most charming part
of this charming book, in the reviewer's opinion, is the description
of the peasant family with which he spent his summers when a
child of Mere Richard, who managed the little farm with such
efficiency, and with authority undisputed by her grown up son
and daughter; of Renaud, the son, and Donatienne, the daughter,
who began work at five o'clock in the morning in winter and at
three in mid-summer; of the simple purity and happiness of the
household. But we suppose the most substantial value lies in Father
Thebaud's account of religious education in France, and the vicis-
situdes it suffered at the hands of successive governments, most
of which were openly or covertly inimical to it.
The Historical Society is to be congratulated on this excellent
selection, and Dr. Herbermann upon a piece of flawless editorial
work of a book which has the added merit of being well printed,
of convenient size, and tastefully bound.
CORRESPONDANCE DE BOSSUET. Publiee sous le patronage
dl 1'Academie Franchise. Par Ch. Urban et E. Levesque.
Volumes I. to V.
It would hardly be proper to speak of a re-awakening of
interest in Bossuet; for he has never been an author who fell into
the sleep of honored, but rarely disturbed repose, like, for instance,
the great English divines whom Newman startled for a brief hour
from centuries of slumber. Bossuet has always been read, dis-
cussed, and quarreled over. We may say with truth, however,
that he has been more talked about and written about, assailed and
defended, during the past two decades than for a long time pre-
vious. Brunetiere set the fashion when he fell under the spell of
Bossuet's masculine and majestic genius. His keen mind pierced
through the eloquence of the orator to the good sense, the reason-
ableness, and the consistency which characterized his thought.
Brunetiere's enthusiasm and forceful championing gave a fresh
impulse to the study of Bossuet, and his rapier thrusts roused strong
opposition. Critics, with their natural delight in hitting their elo-
quent foe, have been girding at him unceasingly, and often suc-
cessfully, we must admit, for sharp minds have not been on the
watch for two centuries without discovering weak spots in the
giant's armor.
This wide interest gave rise to the Revue Bossuet, edited by
M. Levesque of St. Sulpice; and later the same learned and pains-
1912.] NEW BOOKS 545
taking scholar, in collaboration with M. Urban, and under the
patronage of the French Academy, undertook a new edition of
Bossuet's correspondence. It forms part of Hachette's standard
collection, Les Grands Ecrivains dc la France, which aims to be
the definitive edition of the great French classics. The five volumes
already published bring us from 1651 to 1693, a period of forty-
three years. The same number of volumes will be needed for the
correspondence of the last nine years of the prelate's life, which
include the troubled time of the Quietist controversy. This new
edition was needed, and the work has been done with all the care
and thoroughness and intelligence which two fully-equipped scholars
could bring to the task. One-third, or more, of the material is
new, and very many of the letters which, as hitherto published,
were inaccurate or garbled, are here presented for the first time
in their original form, most of them from the very manuscripts of
Bossuet. The correspondence, as now edited, can be accepted with
all the confidence due to the best scholarship. The letters are co-
piously annotated, and all, whether from Bossuet or his corre-
spondents, are arranged chronologically. The reader now has every
facility for following the multifarious activities and pre-occupations
of this great genius and churchman, who for almost half a century
was an important factor in the ecclesiastical history of France.
No one will turn to Bossuet's letters for light reading, or for
spirited sketches of Le Grand Siecle. For that one had better go
to his contemporary, Madame de Sevigne. Sprightliness, play-
fulness, wit and small talk are not characteristic of this grave eccle-
siastic. The interest of the letters is mainly personal, in the light
they throw upon Bossuet himself. His life was one of incessant
activity. We marvel at the industry of the man, at the variety of
his occupations, and the multiplicity of his relations with persons
of all classes; and we marvel still more that in the midst of them
all he remained so constant a student and so completely a man of
God. And yet, in spite of his nobility, our heart rarely or never
warms to him. Why is it? We read the letters of St. Francis de
Sales and we love the man; we read Fenelon and we are charmed;
we read Bossuet, and we are enlightened, we are exalted, we admire
and we remain cold, or if he touches the deep springs of emotion
in us, we feel no affection towards himself. Perhaps it is because
he is more like a presiding principle of uprightness than a soul of
love; and the children of God, Who is not a ruling law, but a
special providence to each of his creatures, never give their heart
VOL. xcv. 35.
546 NEW BOOKS [July,
except to one who seems to feel for them an individual interest and
love. The exact opposite of this is Newman. Bossuet in his letters
reveals little of special affection or capacity for friendship; yet
he was by nature a tender, considerate and amiable man.
We may signal, as possessing the greatest intrinsic interest,
the celebrated letters addressed to Madame Cornuass, a charitable
and devout widow who entered the cloister, and was directed for
several years by Bossuet. They are letters of spiritual direction,
marked by the union of sobriety and elevation, and dealing with the
difficulties of her inner life. They are most admirable in them-
selves, but have probably profited later readers more than their
recipient, who is described as a very insinuating, flattering, and
enterprising woman; and she was clever too. As her difficulties
seldom failed to bring her a beautiful letter from the most famous
of prelates and divines, it is not surprising that she continued, so
long as he lived, to discover difficulties and to receive beautiful
letters. We have heard of the lady who loved humanity but did not
care for individuals. Bossuet knew human nature wonderfully,
as his sermons show, but he was at times strangely deceived by in-
dividual men and women. His mistakes were the product of a
great and simple nature ; in the years that succeed the period covered
by these letters, he fell into similar mistakes of far greater conse-
quence. The sixth volume will be published before the end of the
year, and the whole correspondence, when completed, will be an
essential part of every good library of French or ecclesiastical
literature.
PVERYMAN'S RELIGION, by George Hodges. (New York:
^ The Macmillan Co. $1.50.) De Quincey, in one of his
delightful, though paradoxical essays, says the true orator is
the man who can say the same thing three times over
in every paragraph without letting his hearers notice the
repetition. Of this kind of oratory Mr. Hodges possesses a
large share he is well able to say little in many words. His loosely
connected pages, wherein sequence of thought is scanty and often
non-existent, remind us of those lower organisms that may be de-
prived of large portions of their anatomy without any great incon-
venience. Mr. Hodges is a modern Christian and theologian to the
very tips of his fingers. He is quite prepared to " meet the mini-
mizing of the miraculous " with " a serene mind," and so thorough
is his process of " subtraction " that there is practically nothing
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 547
left. On page 120 the text, " the devils believe and tremble "
(James ii. 19), is ascribed to Christ Himself.
Everyman's Religion is not a book for Catholics. On nearly
every page occur views and ideas offensive to Catholic faith or
Catholic reverence; while even along its own lines of eclectic and
" liberal " Christianity the book can boast of neither novelty nor
superiority of treatment.
AN interesting and really valuable book is The Promised Land,
by Mary Antin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.75 net),
which, very recently published, has already demanded its second
edition. It is an autobiography, written in a style of exceptional
purity and vigor, and narrating the events of a life that is worth
understanding, because it is typical of so many. Mary Antin, who
by the way, is not yet thirty years old, is a Russian Jewess, an
immigrant at the age of thirteen. Her book divides about evenly
into the account of her childhood in Russia, including a vivid
portrayal of what she calls " the survival of mediaeval injustice to
the Jews," and the story of her adjustment and development in
the freedom and the intellectual atmosphere of Boston.
journey of the youthful St. Stanislaus from his native
Poland to Vienna, and from thence through Italy to Rome,
is used by Father Dever in his small volume, The Holy Viaticum
of Life as of Death (New York: Benziger Brothers. 75 cents),
as a slender thread whereon to weave many devotional thoughts
concerning the Holy Eucharist, and the practice so earnestly recom-
mended by our Holy Father of daily communion. We are told in
his life that when the Saint lay at death's door, unable to obtain
the services of a priest, the angels brought Holy Communion to him,
and it is believed that this was not the only time that Heaven
bestowed so wonderful a favor on his angelic innocence. The writer
takes these wayside Communions, Viaticums in very truth, as the
type of what daily Communion should be to each soul. Our author
is remarkably devout to the Saint, and this, no doubt, accounts for
the enthusiasm of his description ; but to one less attracted the idea
and the comparison seem somewhat strained and fanciful. In fact
the abundance of superlatives becomes a trifle wearisome. For
ourselves, we confess that the chapter which made the most appeal
was that entitled " The Present Hour," wherein no mention of the
leading idea occurs, but where the realities of life and death are
548 NEW BOOKS [July,
dealt with, and where the solid practical application brings out
the truth and beauty of the title, Viaticum Vitae Mortisque, the Holy
Viaticum of Life as of Death.
'THOSE readers who remember the quiet charm of Espiritu Santo
will be glad to know that the author, Henrietta Dana Skinner,
has published a new novel called Faith Brandon. (New York:
D. Appleton & Co. $1.30 net.) It is the singularly sweet love-story
of a Russian prince and a very young American girl ; but it is more
than a love story. It is a thoughtful novel, written with grace
and cleverness, and underlaid by a Catholic sentiment that is at
once romantic, intelligent, and true. And it gives a really unfor-
gettable picture of a pompous and pathetic Episcopalian bishop,
with a tinsel-decked dream of uniting his communion with the
Greek Orthodox churches into an " American Catholic Church."
'THE HINDU ARABIC NUMERALS, by David Eugene Smith
-* and Louis Charles Harpinski. (Boston: Ginn & Co.) The
story of our so-called Arabic Numerals is one of absorbing interest.
It is indeed hard to realize that this method of calculation has only
been in common use among us for the last four centuries, while
it is still unknown to millions of the human race. Step by step
the authors trace the history of these characters from the earliest
known forms to their full development. And slow, indeed, was
their progress from the Far East to our Western civilization. How
the symbols grew, how the cipher giving place value came to be
adopted, and, finally, how they supplanted numerous other methods,
is the story which this volume undertakes to tell. And the curious
who delight to wander in the by-paths of literature will find much
pleasure in the telling.
TN April we noticed the new novel by Sienkiewicz, as published
by Benziger Brothers, translator unnamed, under the title,
Through the Desert. ($1.35 net.) The same story, as translated
by Max A. Drezmal, is published by Little, Brown & Co., of Boston,
$1.25 net, with the title, In Desert and Wilderness. This volume
lacks the ten very good illustrations of the Benziger edition, but
substitutes a frontispiece portrait of the author. As for the text
itself, Max Drezmal has evidently taken greater liberties with the
Polish than has the other translator, but we cannot say that he has
succeeded any better.
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 549
TESUS ALL HOLY, by Father Alexander Gallerani, SJ. Trans-
J lated from the Italian by F. Loughnan. (New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. 50 cents.) " If it is a duty to pray, it is no less an
absolute necessity. Who, indeed, has all that he honestly desires
here below? Who can say: I lack nothing; I am happy? To
obtain what we need we must pray. The praying soul prostrate
before God is a new Abigail, a new Esther. To her prayers, her
sighs, her tears, the Heavenly David must yield ; by them the divine
Assuerus be moved to pity. He assures us himself that 'everyone
that asketh receiveth.' Prayer is the sword of the weak: without
it he is nothing; with it he is all-powerful. It is his strength; his
life. If you snatch it from his hand, you kill him." This has been
quoted to show the warmth, the attractiveness, of this sweetly,
simple book. It glows with the author's fervent, practical faith.
PRESH FLOWERS FOR OUR HEAVENLY CROWN, by
the Very Rev. Andre Prevot, D.D., S.C.J. Translated by
M. D. Stenson. ( New York : Benziger Brothers. 85 cents.) This
is a book primarily for those in religion, but it is not to be denied
to those in the world. We read on the title-page that it is " A month
of meditations on some virtues which are little known, and too rarely
practiced, after the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas." Those
chapters are especially good that deal with the cardinal virtues
prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
WIDE-AWAKE STORIES, by Mother Mary Salome. (New
York: Benziger Brothers. 75 cents.) What fortunate babies
those must have been who first heard the Wide-Awake Stories from
the lips of Mother Mary Salome ! Put down in black and white on
the pages of a book, they loose so much in charm. Let it be hoped
that this book will fall into the hands of mothers and teachers re-
ceptive enough to get and to give out again some of the delightful
whimsicalities of the author.
'THE HOLY MASS POPULARLY EXPLAINED, by the
Very Rev. Eugene Vandeur, D.D., O.S.B. Translated from
the French by the Rev. Vincent Gilbertson, O.S.B. (New York:
Benziger Brothers. 50 cents.) A creditable piece of work. The
actual rite of the Holy Mass is explained in detail, well and briefly,
but not quite as popularly as the heading would have us believe.
Written in a deeply reverential tone, it is nevertheless to be pitied
550 NEW BOOKS [July,
that the brevity of the work must make it seem in some instances
cold and formal.
'TOLD IN THE TWILIGHT, by Mother Mary Salome. (New
York : Benziger Brothers. 85 cents.) This handsome book by
Mother Mary Salome is for older boys and girls than her other vol-
ume, Wide-Awake Stories. This clever, broad-minded, well-read wo-
man has recounted delightfully here a fund of stories drawn from all
sources. There are mythological stories ; tales of the Saints ; legends
of all kinds; little talks on various helpful subjects, and so on.
Surely one could not find a book dull with such a variety of
subjects.
FjO-RE-MI-FA, by David Bearne, SJ. (New York: Benziger
U Brothers. $1.10.) Do-Re-Mi-Fa is styled on the title-page
a family chronicle, and so naturally and convincingly does the book
unfold itself that one is tempted to believe it a chronicle of the
author's own boyhood days. It is a book mostly about boys here
are eight of them in all sons of a converted Anglican minister
whose great fondness for music caused him to shorten their names
to the familiar scale terms Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si.
DOVERINA, by Evelyn Mary Buckenham. (New York: Ben-
^ ziger Brothers. 85 cents.) This is an optimistic, entertaining
story that will appeal to girls of all ages. In the beginning of the
tale everything is at sixes and sevens. Poverina is a tiny, helpless
invalid. Her hard-working widowed mother is a sufferer for her
conversion to the Catholic Faith. And nobody has enough money
to live on comfortably. But the " nearer the dawn the darker the
night," and so after passing through a very dark night, a bright
day dawns for Poverina and her friends.
A CAPABLE summary of the principles of mystical prayer, which
*"* is fast becoming a subject of increasing study and interest
on the part of the Catholic world, may be found in La Contempla-
tion, by Pere Lamballe (Paris: P. Tequi). The author takes as
his authorities four great writers : St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross,
St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Francis de Sales.
jforefon
What is " The Church of England?" In the Church Times
the Rev. T. A. Lacey presents a theory that the Church of England
is nothing but the Church of Christ (the Catholic Church), in as
far as it exists in England. Therefore every baptized Englishman
is a member of the Church of England. The fact that among bap-
tized Englishmen there are many divergences of religious opinion,
does not affect the main issue. These are merely troubles within
the Church of England. When it was recalled that there are some
baptized Englishmen who are atheists, who openly reject every kind
of Christianity, as such, the theory had to be modified. It was
made to exclude all who have formally and openly renounced the
profession of Christianity. This concession undermines the whole
theory. But it is not the only one that must be made. The theory
must be modified in two more -particulars before it will suffice.
These two are: acceptance of the faith of a definite Church, and
inter-communion with other members. Tablet, May II.
Protection for the Common People. By Albert Gigot. This
article is an exhaustive study of the rather complicated bill for the
insurance of the working classes of England, which went into
effect on May i, 1912. All classes of working people, in every
branch of labor, are protected by this bill from sickness, accidents,
and enforced idleness. It is expected that the passage of the bill
will tend to lessen the miseries of the laboring classes, and on the
whole create a happier and contented nation. Le Correspondant,
May 10.
Of Importance to Biblical Scholars. By R. P. LaGrange.
Father LaGrange, the great Catholic Biblical scholar, describes in
this article the value of the recent inscriptions unearthed in the
island of Elephantine in Africa; the relics of a Jewish colony on
that island, and the history surrounding the period. Le Corre-
spondant, May 10.
Army Enlistment. By General Maitrot. Since the Franco-
Prussian War in 1870, France has had three laws for military
affairs. In 1872, a law was passed fixing the time for enlistment at
552 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July,
five years, but this did not apply to all citizens. In 1889, the time
for enlistment was reduced to three years. In 1905, this latter law
was reduced to two years, making enlistment for all obligatory.
This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each
of these three laws. The author is favorably disposed to the laws
of 1872 and 1889, but does not approve of that made in 1905.
The writer shows the difference existing between France and Ger-
many, and why the same laws are not applicable to both. Le Cor-
respondant, May 25.
Man and His Environment. By Joseph Ferchat. The study
of geography is being revolutionized as well as emphasized. De-
scription of the earth is giving way to a science of the relations
between man and his environment. Man has chained the sea and
irrigated the desert plain; has tunneled the mountains and laid
bare their stores ; yet he is baffled time and again by natural barriers.
M. Brunhes' manual, La Geographic Humaine, covers all phases
of this subject. Etudes, May 5.
The Task of Biblical Theology. By Paul Galtier. There is
a prejudice against the word " theology " to-day, and also against
the study of it. Yet the confused thought and speech which pre-
vail outside the Church make clear thinking and exact knowledge
on the part of priests an obvious necessity. The battle ground,
however, has been transferred controversy with sixteenth century
Protestantism has ceased. Modernism questions fundamentals :
revelation, the Divinity of Christ, the efficacy of the sacraments.
Especially does it claim that these and other doctrines are but the
products of evolution, and were unknown to the primitive Church.
It is the task of Biblical theology to refute these errors, and the
recent volume on the Theology of St. Paul, by P. Ferdinand Prat,
is an excellent example of the work to be executed by Catholic
exegetes and apologists. Etudes, May 5.
A Great French Leader. By Adhemar d'Ales. The first
volume of the life of Monsignor d'Hulst by his successor, Mon-
signor Baudrillart, has appeared. Born in 1841 and dying in 1896,
he exercised from 1875 onwards an important influence on the
destinies of the Church of France. He took the initiative in the
creation of the Catholic University of Paris, and saw it pass through
stormy experiences. In 1888, he organized the Catholic Scientific
I 9 i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 553
Congresses, which, however, swerved from his original plans. The
volume gives glimpses of a religious side to his character hitherto
little known. Le Correspondant, May 25.
Publication of the "Ada Tridentina." By Adhemar d'Ales.
The Gorresgesellschaft has undertaken this task with a view of
providing the materials for a true history of the Council of Trent
a history that shall supplant both Sarpi and Pallavicini. The open-
ing of the Vatican archives by Leo XIII. made the work of pub-
lication possible. Under the direction first of Dr. Werkle and
afterwards of Father Ehses, many of the Vatican manuscripts have
been published. The editors have also searched through the libra-
ries in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany for documents that bear
upon the Council of Trent. Among the documents of singular
importance are the redactions of the decree on Justification and
the " Vota " of consulting theologians on the question of Grace.
This present publication is of the greatest importance, and most
needful, because of the defective publication of certain Tridentine
sources by Doellinger and Aug. Theiner. Etudes, May 20.
Is There a Moral Law? By E. Bruneteau. Pessimists deny
the existence of moral responsibility, because everything is the
result of chance ; optimists because everything turns out good in the
end; and determinists because everything is necessitated. But all
deny their theories in their actions, and the state is organized upon
the assumption that men are morally free, and exists only because
the majority fulfill their responsibilities. But if men are morally
free, what is the norm by which to judge the goodness or badness
of their actions? Not pleasure; not private, nor even public,
utility ; not " honor " but God's will. Revue Pratique d'Apolo-
getique, May 15.
Ozanam's Intellectual 'Apostolate. By Georges Goyau. This
article dwells particularly on the intellectual side of young Oza-
nam's career. His period of intellectual doubt and torment came
during his college course. After having been restored to peace
of mind through the influence of Abbe Noirot, he resolved to
devote his intellectual powers to the defence of the faith. Accord-
ingly he wrote much especially in the Abeille, Abbe Noirot's paper
for the purpose of imparting light to those either in doubt or in
actual error. Revue Pratique d'Apologetique, June i .
554 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July,
St. Paul and the Revelation to St. Peter. By D. J. Chapman.
St. Paul, it is here claimed, was acquainted with the words of
Christ to St. Peter: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona," etc.
(Matthew xvi. 17.) James, Cephas, and John recognize that
Paul had been made an apostle by God the Father, Who had re-
vealed His Son to him "in the same way " in which Peter had been
made an apostle. Dom Chapman thus alters the accepted transla-
tion and interpretation of Gal. ii. 7-9. Furthermore, in this pas-
sage, the name "Peter" occurs twice; everywhere else in his
Epistles St. Paul uses " Cephas." It is suggested that he is here
thinking of Christ's declaration to Simon Peter after the latter's
confession of His Divinity. The article is written in English.
Revue Benedictine, April.
A Brief Treatise of St. Augustine. By D. A. Wilmart. This
paper is a review of a fragment of a treatise against the Donatists.
The Latin text, with notes, is given. It was written apropos of
the re-baptism of a sub-deacon, setting forth the uselessness of such
a ceremony and lamenting the evils of the schism. St. Augustine
uses the same line of argument, the same Scripture texts, that he
uses on many other occasions when writing against the Donatists.
Revue Benedictine, April.
The Tablet (May 18) : Sir William White, "the greatest
living expert on the construction of ships," writing on the lessons
to be drawn from the Titanic disaster, predicts that " when natural
but temporary excitement has disappeared, and when calmer con-
sideration of the subject becomes possible, it will be seen that the
question of boat equipment, important as it undoubtedly is, must
be treated as subordinate to that of efficient watertight subdivision."
The story of the conversion of the late Father Byles, " who
died so heroically at the post of priestly duty in the wreck of the
Titanic," is contributed by his brother, Mr. W. E. Byles, of New
York. The second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill has been
carried without a division.
(May 25) : Canon Moyes, reviewing Lord Halifax's work on
Anglican Orders, welcomes it as highly important. But he adds
that it contains some strange inaccuracies, and reveals very clearly
the unreality of the conditions under which union was proposed.
The Month (June) : The Edinburgh Review on Cardinal
I 9 i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 555
Newman, by Rev. Sydney F. Smith, reviews an article in the cur-
rent number of the Review, which is marked by an unpleasant
animus against the Cardinal. Father Smith claims to show how the
entire article is built on strange misconceptions of Newman's phil-
osophy and theology. Feasts and Folk-Lore, by Mildred Par-
tridge, gives an interesting history of many old-world customs and
sayings, especially those in connection with the important religious
feasts throughout the year. The Figment of a National Church,
by Rev. Herbert Thurston, is a defence of Mr. Maitland, occasioned
by a recent attack on him in connection with the dis-establishment of
the Welsh Church.
The National (June) : Lovat Fraser, writing on the Baghdad
Railway, strongly opposes England's participation in the proposed
scheme, believing that a partnership with Germany, such as the
negotiations call for, would enmesh England in innumerable diffi-
culties. A. D. Steel-Maitland, M.P., in his article The Finance
of the Home Rule Bill, presents a short survey of the financial
aspect of the Home Rule Bill. " Irish Nationalists," he writes,
" must be judged, not by their present smooth assertions, but by
the whole of their past conduct and professed principles, with which
the restrictions and the working hypothesis of the Bill are entirely
incompatible." A Mariner of France, by Austin Dobson. A
French pre-revolutionary soldier, the Bailli de Suffren, who, about
1782-1783, gave England much trouble in the Bay of Bengal, is the
subject of this paper. The writer describes him as a " military
genius who, had he been better backed from home and better served
afloat, might well have succeeded in 'destroying the English squad-
ron.' " " We live in an age of politics and intrigue," writes L. J.
Maxse in his paper The Ethics of Political Intrigue, so there must
be some code of ethics even though it has not been authoritatively
laid down, and very different principles animate different people.
The author does not define any particular code, however, and asks
in conclusion the opening question of his article : " What are the
ethics of political intrigue?" The Birth-Rate and Afterwards
is an extravagant article from the pen of James Edmond.
Revue du Clerge Franyais (May) : Jesus or Paul? by L. Cl.
Fellion. A further study of the theory that Paul rather than
Christ is the founder of Christianity. The point is made and
proved that Paul was intimately conversant with the earthly life of
556 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July,
Christ, and was stirred by it " to the very marrow of his bones."
- A New Series of Religious Pictures, by F. Martin. A descrip-
tive account of several modern styles of religious imagery.
J. Riviere reviews many recent apologetical and theological works.
E. Vacandard reviews recent historical works. Jean Marie
Meunier writes to show that the Italian is not the Ciceronian pro-
nunciation of Latin.
Le Correspondant (May 10) : Vte. de la Loyere writes of
the Mont Pelee eruption of 1902, when the cities of Port-de-France
and Saint Pierre were destroyed, and 29,933 souls perished. The
complete blame for the loss of so many lives is placed against the
Government officials of the Island of Martinique for taking no
precautions in spite of the timely warning given by a preliminary
shower of ashes from the volcano. The Great Roman Menag-
eries and the Combats of the Theatre gives the history of the Roman
circus from 273 B. C. to Constantine. The numbers and kinds
of beasts and the combats are given in detail. The Basis of the
French Protectorate in Morocco, by Eugene Godefroy. The French
have full control of Morocco, and all positions of trust are in their
hands. In order to encourage literary aspirants, the Countess of
Saint-Gricq has founded a prize of 3,000 francs to be bestowed
every three years. The award is entrusted to the French Academy.
It is commemorative of two great families who have done much
for literature in France the Saint-Gricq and The'is families.
(May 25) : Leandre Vaillat makes a study of the works of
art on exhibition at the close of this season in Paris. A char-
acter study of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, the poet, is con-
tributed by Fortunat Strowski. Selections from the author's
works are given.
Etudes (May 5) : The Virginal Heart of Mary, by Jean
Bainvel, is an attempt to make a psychological study of the Blessed
Virgin's attitude towards God. Joseph Vassal describes the
Congress of Catholic Youth, and reviews the life of M. Henri
Brisson, the late anti-clerical president of the Chamber of Deputies.
IRecent Events.
The election of a President of the Chamber
France. of Deputies as successor of the late M. Bris-
son rendered manifest the fact that a new
grouping has taken place of the various parties into which the As-
sembly is divided. The strongest single party is that of the Radi-
cals, to the influence and power of which the anti-religious char-
acter of recent legislation is chiefly due. It has persisted in this
opposition even after it has succeeded in attaining the full accom-
plishment of its programme. When M. Briand adopted the policy
of reconciliation, and of the fair treatment of every French citizen,
this opposition led to the fall of his Cabinet. Now that Electoral
Reform is being debated, it sees in the proposals of the Bill for the
substitution of scrutin de liste for scrutin d'arrondissement, and for
the adoption of a system of proportional representation to enable
minorities to get a hearing, a danger to the policy of which it is
the supporter. Proportional representation in particular, as it
would strengthen the Right, and give the supporters of religion an
accession of strength in the Chamber, has met with the most strenu-
ous resistance from M. Combes and his followers. The election of
the new President turned upon this point. M. Paul Deschanel, the
successful candidate, was elected as an avowed supporter of pro-
portional representation, and as the choice of the anti-Radical
coalition of all the other parties. The Extreme Right and the Ex-
treme Left joined hands. The recent municipal elections have
been remarkable for the numerous defeats which the Radicals have
suffered. A like fate has befallen them in a long series of by-elec-
tions. There are in fact some signs of a revolution of feeling
against the anti-religious domination under which France for so
long a time has suffered. A proposal has been made in the Chamber
to institute a national festival in honor of Joan of Arc, and at the
instance of the Government, without any open opposition, a Com-
mittee has been appointed to take it into consideration. The Prime
Minister, M. Poincare, in supporting this proposal, declared that the
heroine belonged to all parties. Not long ago any such suggestion
would have led to an angry scene. The Radical Party, once so
potent, finds itself without a leader or a guide, two of its chief
558 RECENT EVENTS [July,
members being dead, another having gone to the Senate, while M.
Combes is himself too despondent to inspire confidence in others.
Electoral Reform, however, has no very bright prospect of
speedy adoption. Long debates have already taken place, but no sat-
isfactory system has so far been evolved. Proportional representa-
tion, in particular, presents many difficulties. No fewer than eight
different methods have been brought before the Chamber, not one
of which has met with general acceptance. So hopeless is the
prospect that the government has decided to lay before the house
a scheme of its own in substitution for the proposals of the Com-
mittee appointed for the purpose of preparing a Bill. How success-
ful this attempt will prove remains to be seen. Perhaps scmtin de
liste will secure adoption, while proportional representation may be
postponed. For scrutin de liste, it is hoped, will improve the char-
acter of the Chambers. The present system of small constituencies
gives the ascendency to petty local interests and to their advocates,
and results in the choice of undistinguished men with largely selfish
aims. Under the new system, if adopted, the appeal of candidates
will be to the whole Department.
The shooting down of men like wild beasts, as in the case of the
motor-car bandits, necessary though it was, is not pleasant to read
about, nor does it make it easy to feel much respect for the new or-
ganization of society which France has undertaken. This country,
of course, is not without events which indicate how thin is the
veneer of civilization. The recent outrages at Hillsville, in Vir-
ginia, to say nothing of the frequent lynchings in various parts of
the country, render it impossible to put ourselves upon too high
a pinnacle. However, the recent occurrences in France ought to
make the prophets of its modern gospel a little more modest.
The statistics of the birth-rate recently published should have
like effect if they are taken into serious consideration. The statis-
tics for 1911 again show a serious decline. In fact the deaths
exceeded the births by 34,889 ; the number of births registered being
the lowest ever recorded. The diminution in the birth-rate has
been going on for a long time, although not in so serious a degree.
During the period 1901 to 1905 the excess of births over deaths
was, in France, to every 10,000 inhabitants 18; in Italy, 106; in
England, 121 ; and in Germany, 149. In the period 1906 to 1910
the excess of births over deaths was lowered in France by fifty
per cent., while it remained practically stationary in the other
countries.
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 559
Reference has been made elsewhere to the proposed formal
alliance of France with Great Britain, which Italian action in the
/Egean has brought into discussion. The near future may have
more or less startling developments in store; this, however, is a
matter of pure conjecture. Rumors have been circulated of dif-
ferences between France and Russia. These, however, have proved
to be quite unfounded. The diplomatic discussions with Spain as
to the latter's position in Morocco have not come to an end ; in fact,
there has been no progress. France will not be able to extend
her protectorate over Morocco by purely peaceful means. The
tribes throughout the country are offering active opposition. Fez
itself has been besieged and assaulted by opponents of the new
regime. A Pretender has proclaimed himself Sultan, and his claims
have been widely accepted. Mulai Hafid, the present Sultan, is
anxious to retire into private life. The French, however, wish to
retain him as a figurehead. Reinforcements have been sent from
France to enable the new Resident-General to restore order. There
is reason to think that the task which France has taken upon her-
self will prove by no means a light one.
With absolute unanimity, as a demonstra-
Germany. tion of national unity, the Reichstag passed
the new Army Bill, and the new Navy Law
Amendment Bill, in a single vote, without a division. A Socialist
Deputy entered a formal protest, but there were no other speeches.
These Bills, as has been mentioned before, involve a further large
increase of the burden of taxation. The increase of the Army is
greater than was expected, for last year a scheme for five years had
been passed, which it was expected would render unnecessary any
further legislation. The proposed increase of the Navy is not
large enough to satisfy the most ardent of the German patriots. It
is largely a matter of reorganization. The British reply to the
new naval programme of Germany was made in a speech of the
First Lord of the Admiralty. " If three ships were laid down by
Germany in the six years (covered by the programme) our construc-
tion would become five, four; five, four; and five, four, an alterna-
tion of fives and fours, as against the German alternation of threes
and twos."
The appointment as Ambassador to Great Britain of Baron von
Marschall, who has so long represented Germany at Constantinople,
has called forth no little discussion throughout Europe. The Baron
S6o RECENT EVENTS [July,
is one of the most distinguished members of the Diplomatic Corps,
perhaps he might be described as the most distinguished of all. He
accomplished the remarkable feat of maintaining at Constantinople
the predominance of German influence, not only during the reign of
Abdul Hamid, but also under the regime of the Young Turks which
followed. He has always proved himself what is called a " good
German." What that means it would take too much space here to
particularize. The idea has been ventilated that his mission to
London is to detach Great Britain from her entente with France;
and to remove those causes of dispute with the United Kingdom
which have caused for so long such great anxiety. All will hope
that success may attend the last mentioned object, however little
expectation there may be that he will succeed in the former. The
retiring Ambassador, Count Wolff-Metternich, describes the mo-
ment as auspicious. Unless, he declared, all signs are deceptive, an
impulse for reconciliation and peaceful neighborliness is passing
through the two great peoples. " It will repay the toil of noble
minds to pursue its cultivation."
The recent discussions in the Reichstag about duelling in the
Army resulted in the passing of two motions : one, proposed by the
Catholic Centre, requiring the provisions of an old Cabinet Order
to be carried out with greater strictness; the other, proposed by
the Radicals, requesting the Imperial Chancellor to bring about an
amendment of the Military Code. The first of these motions was
carried against the Conservatives and Socialists ; the second against
the votes of the Conservatives alone. The House then adopted a
Socialist motion requiring that an officer who refused to fight a duel
should in no circumstances be dismissed from the Army. It is
not thought, however, that these proceedings will have any practical
importance. It is not the Reichstag that rules in Germany.
Its power of asking questions has, however, been extended. On
two days of each week an opportunity is to be given to interpellate
the government : but as there is no corresponding duty imposed
upon Ministers to reply to the questions that are put, as was
proved upon the first occasion in which the new privilege was made
use of, the fruitfulness of the new procedure may be a matter
of some doubt.
The Emperor has relapsed into the old habit of giving ex-
pression to opinions on public affairs. In conversation with the
Burgomaster of Strassburg, he threatened to suppress the Consti-
tution granted last year to Alsace-Lorraine, and to incorporate the
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 561
Reichsland into Prussia. The new Alsace-Lorraine Diet has not
been giving satisfaction to his Imperial Majesty. The trouble arose
over a somewhat sordid affair. A certain Company had been de-
prived of orders for the equipment of the German State-Railways
because its managing director had given, it was said, expression to
sympathy with France. The official concerned in the matter was
censured by the unanimous vote of the Diet. Upon this official
the Emperor thereupon proceeded to confer a mark of his high
approval in the shape of a decoration, and gave utterance to the
above-mentioned remarks. They raised a storm of universal criti-
cism. Condemnation was passed by the whole South German Press,
as well Clerical as Liberal. Violent scenes occurred in the Reich-
stag. For His Majesty's utterances the Chancellor assumed full
responsibility, but explained that they meant that any proceedings
that might be taken would be in a legal manner. The Emperor per-
sonally of course had no power to suppress the Constitution, or to
incorporate Alsace-Lorraine into Prussia.
This incident has called attention to the fact that Germanism,
or rather Prussianism, has been hopelessly worsted in its endeavor
to attain supreme influence over the minds and hearts of the in-
habitants of the Reichsland during the last forty years. Violent
and even passive protest against the annexation has passed away,
but no moral conquest has been made, and Alsatian sentiment to-
wards French culture 'has become stronger not weaker. Without
rejecting German culture, the Alsatians have given themselves to
a more careful and assiduous cultivation of the French language,
French literature, and the French spirit than ever before. They
have, without being politically disloyal, resolutely resisted the in-
fluences of Prussia and Germany upon their life and education.
The endeavor to conquer Tripoli, which the
The Turco-Italian War. Italians began last October, seems as far from
success as ever. No advance has been made
into the interior, and at present no efforts are apparent for such
an advance. Of the coast line, however, and the cities upon it, pos-
session, which is meant to be permanent, has been taken. Railway
lines have been built, cables laid, wireless telegraphy established,
a police service, with a criminal and civil judiciary system, has been
instituted, water supply, sanitary stations, municipal pharmacies,
elementary, commercial, and industrial schools for the Arabs, and
other constituents of modern civilization, have been opened. The
VOL. XCV. 36.
562 RECENT EVENTS [July,
Italians have declared themselves the protectors and guardians of
the Moslem religion. Contrary to all their expectations, none of
these efforts have won over the oppressed subjects of the Turks.
Their proceedings at the beginning, whether rightly or wrongly
reported, gave them a bad name throughout the whole of the coun-
try occupied by the Arabs. Everywhere tales were circulated of
wanton destruction, of the massacre of defenceless men, the slaying
of women and small children, even children at the breast. Accord-
ing to these accounts even fruit trees were not spared. The use
of dirigibles for dropping down bombs did little harm, but
caused great exasperation. The leaflets distributed from the same
dirigibles telling the Arabs that Italy is the greatest, the strongest,
the richest power in Europe, and that her sole desire was to teach
and befriend the Arabs, only excited the derision of the natives of
the desert. A more sordid motive has given strength to their op-
position. Italian workmen are content with low wages, and would
supplant the native labor, and take the bread out of their mouths.
The result has been that the people are arrayed as one man against
the invaders, and the difficulties of Italy have been quadrupled.
From the distant interior of Africa men are flocking to the Turkish
standard. El Senussi, the Sheikh who wields so mighty a power
throughout the interior, has formally declared war with the in-
vaders. There is no small probability that this new effort in the
north of Africa may meet with the same fate that befell the attempt
to conquer a part of the northeast.
Baffled in Tripoli, and warned off the Adriatic coast of the
Balkans by Austria, Italy has seized upon a dozen, more or less, of
the defenceless islands of the ^igean. Greeks are the chief inhab-
itants of these islands, and they have welcomed the invaders. Over
them the Italian flag is now flying, and the government is being
carried on in the name of the King of Italy. The Powers, at first
acquiesced in these measures, but are now becoming apprehensive
of too great an aggrandizement of the Italian kingdom. They are
beginning to ask in what manner the occupation is to be brought
to an end; or, if it is to be permanent a thing, however, scarcely
to be contemplated in what way they respectively are to be com-
pensated. Italy has allies, and one of these is Germany. Hence the
suspicions of France have been aroused, and there has been a good
deal said about a formal alliance with Great Britain to take the
place of the informal entente which has worked so well. The
question of the control of the Mediterranean has been raised. The
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 563
fact that the British Premier, as well as the First Lord of the Ad-
miralty, have gone to Malta, and have held a conference there with
Lord Kitchener and the Inspector General of the British Army, has
given ground to a good deal of speculation as to what developments
the near future may have in store. That the conference had any
special significance has been expressly denied : how much this
denial is worth is left to the future to disclose. The substitution
of a formal alliance between Great Britain and France, of which
there has been so much talk, does not meet with general approval.
The present entente is more elastic, and, therefore, more efficient
than formal terms of duties and obligations would be, because, at the
back of it, there is the heart of both peoples, with mutual confidence
in each other and the common interests of both. The maintenance of
the present balance of power in Europe is looked upon as essential
by Great Britain, and as a condition of such maintenance, the power
of France is essential. In its support Great Britain will put forth
all its strength, and France is ready enough to accept this support.
The new disposition of the British Fleet in the Mediterranean leaves
to France a greater part in the control of that sea. It does not,
however, as some have said, involve its abandonment by Great
Britain. Tke Cruiser Squadron remains based upon Malta, and
while the battle-fleet has been withdrawn to Gibraltar, it will face
both ways, north or east, as circumstances may require. There
it will remain, nor is it likely to be required elsewhere, for the Fleet
in the home waters has been made overwhelmingly strong. Ar-
rangements of this character indicate how perturbing an influence
the war between Turkey and Italy is becoming on account of its
long continuance, and the developments which have already taken
place, and others that may be anticipated.
The elections which have recently been held
Belgium. in Belgium have proved a surprise to all.
Since 1 884 the Conservatives have held office,
but the majority which they had at that time has been gradually
dwindling. A few months ago their prospects were so poor that the
Ministry was reconstructed with a new Premier at its head. When
the dissolution of the Chamber took place, the majority by which
they had for some time been retained in office numbered only six.
To secure their defeat the Socialists and Liberals, although differing
upon fundamental points, and sure to quarrel if they had been re-
turned, united their forces. The Socialists are collectivists of a
564 RECENT EVENTS [July,
pronounced type, whereas the Liberals are strong individualists
of the Manchester School. The elections increased the majority
of the Conservatives to sixteen. So complete a victory in a country
which has universal suffrage, and of which so large a number of
the voters are men working in factories and mines, has excited
a good deal of attention, being, as it is, a step contrary to the general
trend of modern movements. It must be said, however, that
although the franchise is universal, it is combined with what are
called in England " fancy " franchises. It is far from being " one
man, one vote." Fatherhood, and a small money qualification,
entitle to a second vote, while certain educational attainments entitle
to a third. The exercise of the franchise, too, is compulsory, a
fine being exacted of everyone who fails to go to the polls. Pro-
portional representation, too, has been adopted. All these features
are thought to be favorable to the Conservatives, as the strength of
the Socialists is largely made up of single young men of the manu-
facturing centres. Moreover, under the successive Conservative
governments, Belgium has enjoyed extraordinary prosperity. All
these circumstances have contributed to a result which makes the
new Chamber consist of one hundred and one Conservatives, forty-
five Liberals, thirty-eight Socialists, and two Christian Democrats.
So little did the Socialists like the outcome that they made riotous
demonstrations in several places. The government, however, easily
succeeded in maintaining the peace. A general strike, however, is
talked of as a means to secure unqualified manhood suffrage.
The Republican form of government in Por-
Portugal. tugal still maintains its existence, nor is it
likely to give place to a better. So great is the
national deterioration that there seems to be no basis of amendment.
If the Republic has failed, it is only because Royalty has proved itself
unable to find a remedy for so many evils. Unrest of every kind
is widely prevalent. Labor strikes, attended by outrages; conflicts
with Royalists on the frontiers, where the ex-King Manuel is said
to have gone, although this is denied; mob violence because it is
thought the imprisoned Royalists are being given too fair a trial ; a
large deficit in the Budget; these are but a part of the troubles
under which the nation is suffering. The Radical ministry now
in power, under the influence of Senhor Costa, has entered upon
what cannot be called anything less than a persecution of the Church.
The Law of Separation from the State, which this government is
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 565
rigidly enforcing, while it confiscates all Church property for secu-
lar purposes, places all religious observances under official direction.
In practice this means that religious worship is controlled by the
local Republican Committees, bodies which consist largely of free-
thinkers. By these bodies priests are forbidden to wear ecclesiasti-
cal dress in the streets, or to say Mass without authorization ; long-
established religious festivals have been suppressed; the parish
priests have been put under the ban as the enemies of the Republic.
Starting out with flamboyant declarations of liberty and fair treat-
ment for all, the outcome at the present is a regular system of ar-
bitrary arrests, illegal detention, and inhuman treatment of political
opponents and suspects. Royalist prisoners, many of whom are
acknowledged to be innocent, have been kept for months without
trial in foul and overcrowded dens, worthy of the Middle Ages, suit-
able perhaps to the methods of the expelled Monarchy, but altogether
alien to the professions of the new era. Something has been done,
however, and this gives some little ground for hope that a change for
the better may be made even in the matters just mentioned. Zeal
has been shown for an improvement in the method of public educa-
tion ; an improvement has been made in the terms of military serv-
ice, and steps have been taken for the betterment of the frequently
deplorable condition of the laboring and artisan classes. The public
service has been somewhat more efficiently administered than in
the past. The system of veiled slavery existing in some of the
African possessions of Portugal has been abolished. It is to be
hoped that the power now in the possession of the extremists will
pass into the hands of the more moderate, wiser, and saner elements
of the nation. In fact the moderate members of the Cabinet have
brought about a ministerial the resignation of the Ministry.
With Our Readers.
CATHOLIC WORLD referred not long since to the bigoted
-1 verses of Rudyard Kipling on the question of Home Rule for
Ireland. The following extracts from an open letter to Kipling from
the pen of the Irish poet, George W. Russell ("A. E. "), are worth
quoting :
I speak to you, brother, because you have spoken to me, or rather you
have spoken for me. I am a native of Ulster. So far back as I can trace
the faith of my forefathers, they held the faith for whose free observance
you are afraid.
I call you brother, for so far as I am known, beyond the circle of my
personal friends, it is as a poet. We are not a numerous tribe, but the world
has held us in honor because, on the whole, in poetry we found the highest
and sincerest utterances of man's spirit. In this manner of speaking, if a
man is not sincere his speech betrayeth him, for all true poetry was written
on the Mount of Transfiguration, and there is a revelation in it and the
mingling of heaven and earth. I am jealous of the honor of poetry and
I am jealous of the good name of my country, and I am impelled by both
emotions to speak to you.
* * *
I would not reason with you, but that I know there is something truly
great and noble in you, and there have been hours when the immortal in you
secured your immortality; in literature, when you ceased to see life with
that hard cinematograph eye of yours, and saw with the eyes of the spirit,
and power and tenderness and insight were mixed in magical tales. Surely
you were far from the innermost when, for the first time, I think, you wrote
of your mother's land and my countrymen.
* * *
I have lived all my life in Ireland, holding a different faith from that
held by the majority. I know Ireland as few Irishmen know it, county
by county, for I traveled all over Ireland for years, and, Ulster man as I
am and proud of the Ulster people, I resent the crowning of Ulster with
all the virtues, and the dismissal of other Irishmen as thieves and robbers.
I resent the cruelty with which you, a stranger, speak of the most lovable
and kindly people I know.
* * *
You are not even accurate in your history when you speak of Ulster's
traditions and the blood our forefathers spilt. Over a- century ago Ulster
was the strong and fast place of rebellion, and it was in Ulster that the Volun-
teers stood beside their cannon and wrung the gift of political freedom for
the Irish Parliament. You are blundering your blame.
* * *
You speak of Irish greed in I know not what connection, unless you speak
of the war waged over the land; and yet you ought to know that both
Parties in England have by act after act confessed the absolute justice and
Tightness of that agitation, Unionist no less than Liberal, and both boast
of their share in answering the Irish appeal. They are both proud to-day
of what they did. They made inquiry into wrong and redressed it. But
I 9 i2.] WITH OUR READERS 56?
you, it seems, can only feel sore and angry that intolerable conditions im-
posed by your laws were not borne in patience and silence. For what Party
do you speak? When an Irishman has a grievance you smite him. How
differently would you have written of Runnymede and the valiant men of
England who rebelled whenever they thought fit. You would have made
heroes out of them.
* * *
I am a person whose whole being goes into a blaze at the thought of
oppression of faith, and yet I think my Catholic countrymen infinitely more
tolerant than those who hold the faith I was born in. I am a heretic, judged
by their standards ; a heretic who has written and made public his heresies,
and I have never suffered in friendship or found my heresies an obstacle in life.
* * *
I set my knowledge, the knowledge of a lifetime, against your ignorance,
and I say you have used your genius to do Ireland and its people a wrong.
You have intervened in a quarrel of which you do not know the merits,
like any brawling bully who passes and only takes sides to use his strength.
If there was a high court of poetry, and those in power jealous of the noble
name of poet, and that none should use it save those who were truly knights of
the Holy Ghost, they would hack the golden spurs from your heels and turn
you out of the court.
* * *
You had the ear of the world, and you poisoned it with prejudice and
ignorance. You had the power of song, and you have always used it on
behalf of the strong against the weak. You have smitten with all your might
at creatures who are frail on earth, but mighty in the heavens; at gener-
osity, at truth, at justice; and heaven has withheld vision and power and
beauty from you, for this your verse is only a sallow newspaper article made
to rhyme. Truly ought the golden spurs to be hacked from your heels and
you be thrust out of the court.
" THE HOLY COURT."
(WRITTEN BY LIONEL JOHNSON.)
Habent sua fata libelli ! And, though The Holy Court of the staunch
Jesuit, Father Caussin, is anything but a libellus, being voluminous
to excess, it has had its fate of wide fame followed by profound ob-
livion. From oblivion it has been saved by the piety and taste of Mr.
C. T. Gatty,* who has made a golden anthology of its riches, chosen
from the contemporary version of Sir Thomas Hawkins. Nicholas
Caussin, S.J., and Thomas Hawkins, Kt, are two attractive figures in
the fascinating seventeenth century. The French Jesuit was con-
fessor to Louis XIII., victim of Cardinal Richelieu, a whimsical and
great scholar, a divine of true unction and devotion. And Bayle was
right in saying that, of all his works, The Holy Court is the " most
honorable," even as its many translations into many tongues prove
*The Spirit of the Holy Court. Written in French by Nicolas Caussin, SJ.
Translated into English by Sir Thomas Hawkins, and reprinted from the edition of
1634 by Charles T. Gatty, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. London: Simpkin,
Marshall & Co.
568 WITH OUR READERS [July,
it the most admired in its own age. Well said the wits, upon Caussin's
banishment from the Court of the Most Christian King, that he suc-
ceeded better in The Holy Court than in the Courts of princes. The
English Knight, his translator, was of an ancient and very Catholic
family in Kent: he was a close friend of Ben Jonson, a correspondent
of Howell, and Antony a Wood sings his praises. Lettered, leisured,
an impassioned Papist, he found in the vast utterances of Caussin
a fount of spiritual and literary inspiration ; and his -version of The
Holy Court is written in an English nobly beautiful and moving. Mr.
Shorthouse, who knows a good seventeenth-century thing when he
sees it, has not disdained to convey certain passages from Hawkins
into the pages of John Inglesant. But Caussin and Hawkins were very
greatly of their own time and its tastes ; their full, elaborate, spacious
volumes are not for the hasty reader of our day. Mr. Gatty, with
perfect tact and insight, sought out separable passages of characteristic
beauty and charm from the version of 1634, arranging them judiciously
in order. His litttle book of one hundred and seventy pages should
take a firm place among the treasures of all who love either " the
beauty of holiness " or the beauty of fine prose. This little Spirit of
the Holy Court is a thing of pure gold. Would that French priests
and English squires to-day were more like Father Caussin and Sir
Thomas Hawkins!
* * *
The original work is almost an " Whole Duty of Catholic Man,"
written with a singularly sustained fervor, not impaired by persistent
illustrative excursions into ancient history, sacred and profane, nor
by a profusion of appeal to authors of authority : " As Cyprian saith,"
or " As Austin hath it." But the good Caussin's French is none of the
best : it has neither the measured splendors of Bossuet nor the re-
strained sweetnesses of Fenelon. An ardent, urgent preacher, Caus-
sin writes with no care for academic sanctions ; he scatters images, he
abounds in rhetoric, which remind us of that trying work, the Bible,
in any French version you please. But what French prose abhors is
congenial to English, and in Hawkins' brave periods the audacities of
Caussin seem native, natural, and at home. Hawkins had at his com-
mand those " solemn planetary wheelings " of which De Quincey
speaks; stately harmonies of sentence, majestically musical, and of
strong wing. Yet even more characteristic, may be, are certain brief
sayings, veritable pensees, phrased with perfection of swift loveliness.
Thus : " The just are here below as little halcyons on the trembling
of waters, or nightingales on thorns." Or thus : " To come into the
world is to come upon a cross ; to be man is to stretch out the hands
and feet to be crucified." The Holy Court, as becomes its title, is full
of such purely fair and touching utterances ; no tiresome moral trite-
WITH OUR READERS 569
nesses, but common thoughts uncommonly realized, and therefore ex-
pressed with moving strangeness of beauty. Caussin clearly delighted,
and Hawkins echoed his delight, in the visible wonder of the world :
flowers, and the glory of sunlight, and crested waves are ever on their
pages, and never with convention ; there are no " nodding groves,"
nor " purling streams," nor " whisp'ring gales," for these men of the
seventeenth century. They show an innocent candor of delight in
Nature mirabilia opera Domini! And their incessant moral applica-
tions, if sterner, are yet always somewhat in the sweet spirit of Izaak
Walton upon nightingales : " Lord, what music hast Thou provided
for the saints in heaven, if Thou affordest bad men such music on
earth ! " It is no poor imagination which describes the saints as " eagles
in a storm, surcharged with sufferings, but made invincible with the
arms of patience." The instruction of this book is stern; but how
chivalrous, and in true seventeenth-century meaning " insolent ! "
* $ *
The little volume rings with proud challenges to the world, the
flesh, the devil : it taunts them with their extreme futility, the utter
penury of their gifts contrasted with their promises. I do not know,
but I would wager that Michael Archangel was one of Caussin's
patrons, and that Hawkins loved Saint George. The Church Militant
and Triumphant dominates these pages : Vexilla, Regis prodeunt. And
a point of especial charm is their view of Christianity, as a thing of
warfare, glory, honor, chivalry; they do not whine, cringe, or beat
the breast with humble ostentation. Caussin was at home in kings'
houses ; Hawkins was of ancient lineage and, most fatuous of phrases,
a man of the world. But author and translator " trod upon Plato's
pride, with a greater :" The Holy Court is not the work of saintly
imbeciles. Expertis credite! cry original and translation. From their
large experience of life, Caussin and Hawkins had learned the precise
values of it; and their joint work inexact, but accurate de-
scription is manly. They touch upon emperors and kings and
captains of armies with an Imperial Christian touch; they reverence
such potentates, they are no iconoclasts of earthly greatness ; they are
gentlemen of the early seventeenth century but they owe a higher
allegiance, pay a dearer homage, to powers more august. Caussin
was a legitimate child of the knightly Loyola, his founder ; Hawkins
was a " Helbeck of Bannisdale," without that gentleman's hectic
quality. The Holy Court is brave and chivalrous. Here, surely, is a
gallant counsel : " Remember, our life is a music-book ; seldom shall
you find there many white notes together in the same line; black are
mixed among them, and all together make an excellent harmony. God
gives us a lesson in a little book which hath but two pages the one
is called consolation, the other desolation. It is fit for each of them
570 WITH OUR READERS [July,
to take its turn." Cromwellian Puritanism, with all its iron ecstasies,
was often absurd and graceless; the Catholic Puritanism of the
"Counter-Reformation" was severe, but beautiful and unlaughable;
high-wrought, but never mad. Caussin and Hawkins are good com-
pany, courteous and debonair in the strictness of their faith: The
Holy Court might be called full of a devout and excellent Euphuism.
After all, to be " Saxon " and " homespun " is not the only virtue pos-
sible to religious literature in English ; some of us do not hold Bunyan
greater than Crashaw, or Baxter than Spenser.
* * *
" Unction," a rich and fragrant spirituality both natural and
artistic, is now rare: our Christian writers seem afraid to dwell beau-
tifully upon the beauty of holiness. But the seventeenth century, with
its artistic passion, preferred to err by excess of beauty, by prodigality
in it, rather than to do without it. This sometimes led to obscurity,
to the vice with which Corinna reproaches the youthful Pindar, of
sowing " with the whole sack," not with the hand. It can hardly be
charged against the English of Hawkins; he is absolutely lucid, of a
musical clearness; a master of prose cadences, which compel the
understanding. He never lumbers along in huddling sentences, nor
loses his way in labyrinthine periods ; clearly, he studied to write well
and with distinction. Like Marcus Aurelius, he " drives at practice ;"
but beauty of style is one of his instruments. He loves to make a lin-
gering melody of his words, to leave them in alluring order. " Behold
you not in a garden bed how those poor tulips are shut up with
melancholy under the shady coldness of the night?" A simple piece
of imagery, leading up to a pious precept; but how perfect a piece
of prose ! Non semper ingenii vena respondet ad votum, says Seneca ;
Hawkins evidently knew that truth, and waited for the times of in-
spiration. There is not a careless sentence in Mr. Gatty's extracts;
each is pure and gracious English, many are unf orgetable ; amenity,
joyousness, grace are upon them all, upon the most plangent as upon
the most triumphant. This is one of the writers who give, not pleasure,
but that higher thing, delight; no merely clever man could write so,
but only one of a " courteous soul," in the full sense of Dante's
address to Virgil. And what but this interior courtesy should mark
a dealer with The Holy Court? We see him in his ancient Kentish
home, busy with his books, with his letters to Ben Jonson and the
London scholars; we see the gentleman of the Stuart time, cultured,
refined, polite. But beneath that outer life, we feel the hid passion
of sanctity and care for things eternal ; and when he betakes himself to
Englishing the French priest's noble work, he does it with such rap-
ture of reverence and devoted pains that the work becomes his own,
and a native piece of lovely English literature.
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 571
CECIL CHESTERTON writes in The Oxford and Cambridge Re-
view for June an article entitled : The Technique of Controversy,
which is of particular interest just now. It deals with controversy as
an art. Let us add also that Mr. Chesterton's principles concerning
art, which he just touches upon, are sound and healthy. He chooses
Macaulay, Huxley, and Newman as three controversial experts. Their
different methods illustrate their varied effectiveness. Macaulay
failed with regard to the ultimate end of controversy. He does not
convince us. But it would be foolish to deny that he showed extra-
ordinary genius as a controversialist. Macaulay trained his guns upon
one point and pounded away at it, first with light, then with heavier
shot. The thunder of his batteries increase. The effect is superb.
Huxley's method was somewhat akin to Macaulay's, and yet an im-
mense difference in moral and intellectual make-up separated the two
men. Huxley loved truth; Macaulay sometimes repudiated it, as in
the latter part of his essay on Bacon. Huxley fought, therefore, for
ultimate ends. He trained his guns not upon one point only, but upon
the enemy's entire line. He even suggested difficulties that he might
destroy them. He aimed not only at defeating an army, but at con-
quering a province. The master of the art is Newman, for " the dif-
ference between Newman and almost all other controversialists is that
he is not only a tactician but a strategist. Macaulay, as I have said,
tries to break his opponent's line ; Huxley tries to defeat him all along
the line. In Newman alone do you find an elaborate series of opera-
tions, patiently worked out without reference to the temptation of
immediate 'scoring,' and intended to end, so to speak, in the sur-
rounding and obliteration of the enemy. He alone seems to look past
the battle to the campaign.
"It is of the very nature of this method that it cannot be shown,
as I have tried to show the method of Macaulay, by quotation. The
ultimate blow when it comes is indeed as smashing or more smashing
than the most vigorous strokes delivered by Huxley and Macaulay.
But it has always been carefully prepared, and its force really depends
upon the preparation.
" The best way in which I can illustrate the methods I am trying
to describe will, perhaps, be to take a particular example and follow
it out in some detail.
" The third of Newman's lectures on 'The Present Position of
Catholics in England' is devoted to showing the true nature of the
traditions upon which Protestant condemnation of the Catholic religion
rests, and the flimsy and unreal character of their historical founda-
tion. To this end he takes three instances, with only one of which I
am at the moment concerned.
" The historian, Hallam, in his View of the State of Europe during
572 WITH OUR READERS [July,
the Middle Ages, had remarked that 'in the very best view that can
be taken of monasteries their existence is deeply injurious to the
general morals of the nation,' because under their influence men of
the highest character 'fell implicitly into the snares of crafty priests,
who made submission to the Church not only the condition but the
measures of all praise.' And to illustrate this fact he proceeds :
" He is a good Christian," says St. Eligius, a saint of the seventh century,
" who comes frequently to church, who presents an oblation that it may be
offered to God on the altar; who does not taste the fruits of his land till
he has consecrated a part of them to God; who can repeat the Creed or
the Lord's Prayer. Redeem your souls from punishment, while it is in your
power: offer presents and tithes to churches, light candles in holy places,
as much as you can afford, come more frequently to church, implore the pro-
tection of the saints; for, if you observe these things, you may come with
security at the day of judgment to say, 'Give unto us, O Lord, for we have
given unto Thee !' " With such a definition of the Christian character, it is
not surprising that any fraud and injustice became honorable, when it con-
tributed to the riches of the clergy and glory of their order.
" Now the statement that St. Eligius ever gave 'such a definition
of the Christian character' is, as will presently be seen, a lie. One
can readily imagine with what promptitude and energy Macaulay
or Huxley would have pounced upon that lie, how they would have
torn it in pieces, and scored heavily by exposing and denouncing it.
Not so Newman.
" Newman proceeds, while leaving the statement as yet uncon-
tradicted, to point out to the reader that Hallam gives as his reference
for that statement Dr. Robertson, the historian of Charles V., and
the German Lutheran historian, Mosheim. To Dr. Robertson then
Newman turns, and quotes him as stating that in the dark ages 'the
barbarous nations, instead of aspiring to sanctity and virtue, imagined
that they satisfied every obligation of duty by scrupulous observance
of external ceremonies,' and in support of this giving what he calls 'one
remarkable testimony,' namely, the foregoing quotation from St.
Eligius, adding what he describes as 'the very proper reflection' of
Dr. Maclaine, Mosheim's translator: 'We see here a large and ample
description of the character of a good Christian in which there is not
the least mention of the love of God, resignation to His will, obedience
to His laws; or of justice, benevolence, and charity towards men.'
" Newman now turns to a certain Mr. White, an Oxford Pro-
fessor who, in lecturing on the life and work of Mahomet, remarked
that 'no representation can convey stronger ideas of the melancholy
state of religion in the seventh century than the description of a good
Christian as drawn at that period by St. Eligius,' and proceeded to
quote as before. A further step backward carries him to Archdeacon
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 573
Jortin, who made the same quotation in his Remarks on Ecclesiastical
History, introducing it with the observation that it constitutes 'the
sum and substance of true religion as it is drawn up for us by Eligius,
one of the principal saints of that age.'
" Newman now takes us to Mosheim himself, who in his Ecclesias-
tical History observes that while the religion of the earlier Christian
was spiritual, the later ones 'placed the substance of religion in external
rights and bodily exercises,' and proves this by the same quotation.
" Now Newman has manoeuvred his guns into position, and he
proceeds to open fire as follows:
'Brothers of the Oratory, take your last look at the Protestant Tradition,
ere it melts away into thin air from before your eyes. It carries with it a
goodly succession, of names, Mosheim, Jortin, Maclaine, Robertson, White,
and Hallam. It extends from 1755 to the year 1833. But in this latter year,
when it was now seventy-eight years old, it met with an accident attended
with fatal consequences. Some one for the first time, instead of blindly
following the traditional statement, thought it worth while first to consult
St. Eligius himself.'
" He then proceeds to show that the quotation is made up by
picking out and putting together odd sentences scattered through a
very long sermon, and that the surrounding sentences actually contain
those very recommendations to general piety and benevolence which
poor St. Eligius had been so vilely abused by Mosheim, Maclaine,
Robertson, Jortin, White, and Hallam for omitting. Thus: 'Where-
fore, my brethren, love your friends in God and love your enemies
for God, that he who loveth his neighbor has fulfilled the law he
is a good Christian who receives the stranger with joy as though he
were receiving Christ Himself. . . .who gives alms to the poor in pro-
portion to his possessions .... who has no deceitful balances or de-
ceitful measures who both lives chastely himself and teaches his
neighbors and his children to live chastely and in the fear of God. . . .
Keep peace and charity, recall the contentious to concord, avoid lies,
tremble at perjury, bear no false witness, commit no theft. . . .Do as
you would be done by .... Visit the infirm .... Seek out those who
are in prison.' And then St. Eligius adds: 'If you observe these
things you may appear boldly at God's tribunal in the day of judgment
and say, 'Give, Lord, as we have given.'
" Now observe the controversial effect of Newman's superb strat-
egy. He has nailed the particular lie about St. Eligius to the counter
as Macaulay or Huxley would have done. But he has done much more
than that. By his patient tracing of the tradition, by his careful mar-
shaling of all the authorities that support it, before he smashes it, he
has created in the mind of his readers an indelible distrust of all
Protestant traditions however venerable and apparently authoritative.
574 WITH OUR READERS [July,
The victory is complete. The enemy is simply obliterated; his guns
and baggage have fallen into the hands of the victor.
" I could give a hundred other instances, did space permit, of
this method in Newman's controversial writings. There is that amaz-
ingly effective chapter, in The Development of Christian Doctrine,
which deals with the early Christians, where the attitude of the Roman
world towards the new Faith is carefully delineated and illustrated
by numerous quotations from pagan writers, and the reader gets to
the end of it without a suspicion of the masked battery which Newman
has prepared, until he is suddenly reminded that the accusations which
he has been reading are almost word for word the same as those
now brought against the Catholic Church. If there be now in the
world, says Newman, a form of Christianity which is accused by the
world of superstition, insane asceticism, secret profligacy, and so on,
'then it is not so very unlike Christianity as that same world viewed
it when first it came forth from its Divine Founder.'
" How triumphantly Newman used the method here described is
best shown in his famous controversy with Kingsley. In reading
the earlier phases of that controversy one is inclined to fancy that
Newman is missing points, and not taking full advantage of his ad-
versary. But he misses nothing. He has ruthlessly taken every ad-
vantage. His guns command every position. And at the end his
adversary, surrounded and already doomed, dashes backwards and
forwards, striving wildly to find somewhere the mercy or the escape
which are alike forbidden him. That is what I call great Controversial
Strategy."
T^DUCATIONAL activity in Ireland, which will be brought to greater
-L' fruition by Home Rule, secured some years ago the National
University of Ireland. The new University was formed by the in-
stitution of University College, Dublin, and by reconstructing, as con-
stitutent colleges, Queen's Colleges of Cork and Galway. It is only
a year ago that the Commissioners entrusted with the formation of the
new University completed their work ; the Senate has entered upon
the full exercise of its powers, and it is possible to give some idea of
the actual situation, which we feel will be of interest to our readers.
By the act establishing the National University, Dublin will re-
ceive an annual grant of $160,000; Cork $100,000 and Galway $60,000.
The old endowment of the defunct Royal University of Ireland was
divided between the new National University and Q'ueen's University,
Belfast. Of its share, the National University has given $750,000 for
building the new University and College in Dublin, $70,000 to Cork,
and $30,000 to Galway.
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 575
It is interesting to note that the Cork College has built chemi-
cal and physical laboratories, which are not surpassed in the British
Isles. St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, was admitted to " recogni-
tion " by the Senate of the National University.
* * *
The increase in the number of students has been very gratifying.
It will be still more rapid when the buildings at Dublin are finished,
and because the monopoly that up to date belonged to Trinity College
in the matter of law students has been removed. The Benchers of
King's Inns a body that has the sole right to admit a barrister to
practice in the courts made it a sine qua non that every prospective
barrister should pass one year in the study of law at Trinity College.
Through the work of Archbishop Walsh and others this injustice has
been removed, and the student may now study at either the National
University or Trinity College.
The study of Gaelic is compulsory in the new University. County
and Municipal Councils have given many scholarships at the new
colleges. The income of the National University from these sources
is estimated at more than $60,000 a year. The interest of individual
and corporate bodies for the promotion of higher education is wide-
spread. For example, Miss Belle Honan of Cork gave $50,000 for
scholarships, open to students of poor parents of the county of Cork,
of all denominations.
* * *
Our review shows the great strides that are being made in the
way of higher education, and how the people of Ireland are coming
into that which is justly their own, but which for- so long a time has
been denied them. The working of the present National University
is not free from grave difficulties. To carry on a federated University
whose colleges are quite distant one from another, and in which all
questions of change in curriculum, etc., must be submitted to a Board
difficult at times to assemble, is a task that necessarily presents many
difficulties. As the constituent colleges grow stronger, they will seek
to acquire the dignity and power of independent universities. The
solution of these necessary problems may safely be left to the Irish
people and their leaders, for the success already attained is a safe
index for the future.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
The Science of Logic. Vol. I. By P. Coffey, Ph.D. $2.50 net. The Fugitives.
By Margaret Fletcher. $1.35 net. Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister.
By T. W. Puller. $1.20 net. An Experiment in Teaching. By Edward
Rockliff, S.J. $1.00 net. Introductory Philosophy. By Charles A. Durbray,
S.M., Ph.D. $2.60 net. Theodicy: Essays on Divine Providence. Vols.
I., II., III. By Antonio Rosmini Serbati. $7.00 net. The Mass: A Study
of the Roman Liturgy. By Adrian Fortescue. $1.80 net.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
Christ's Teaching Concerning Divorce in the New Testament. By Rev. Francis
E. Gigot, D.D. $1.50 net. Round the World Series. Vols. IX. and X. $1.00.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Woman and Social Progress. By Scott Nearing, Ph.D., and Nellie M. S.
Nearing. $1.50 net. A Living Wage. By John A. Ryan, S.T.D. 50 cents.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York :
The Office With the New Psalter. By Rev. John T. Hedrick, S.J. 10 cents.
BROADWAY PUBLISHING Co., New York :
The Battle of Gettysburg, and Other Poems. By Thomas A. T. Hanna. $1.00.
THE CENTURY Co., New York :
Changing America. By Edward Alsworth Ross. $1.20 net.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York :
The Holy Mass According to the Greek Rite. By Andrew J. Shipman, LL.D.
L. C. PAGE & Co., Boston :
Chronicles of Avonela. By L. M. Montgomery. $1.25 net.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
The Story of Christopher Columbus. By Charles W. Moores. 75 cents net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
Catholic Studies in Social Reform. I. Destitution and Suggested Remedies.
Preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor Henry Parkinson, D.D. II. Sweated
Labour and the Trade Boards Act. Edited by the Rev. Thomas Wright.
20 cents each. Prosperity; Catholic and Protestant. By Rev. Father Graham,
M.A. 15 cents. Where We Got the Bible. By Rev. Father Graham, M.A.
15 cents. The Pilgrim's Guide to Lourdes and the Chief Places En Route.
By Rev. G. H. Cobb. 40 cents. Bibliotheca Ascetica Mystica. Theologia
Mystica et Epistola Christi Ad Hominem. Auctore Joannes a Jesu Maria.
$1.25 net.
SANDS & Co., London :
The Life and Religion of Mahommed the Prophet of Arabia. By Rev. J. L.
Menezes. 60 cents.
M. H. GILL & Co., Dublin :
The Ways of Mental Prayer. By the Rt. Rev. Dom Vitalis Lehodey. Trans-
lated from the French by a Monk of Mount Melleray.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne :
Memoir of Father James Dixon. By W. H. Gratton Flood. A Great Historic
Event. By Edward J. Sydes, S.J. Pamphlets, i penny each.
PIERRE TEQUI, Paris:
Vendeenne. Par Jean Charruau. 2 fr. Le Pain Svangelique. Par Abbe E.
Duplessy. 2 fr. Vivre, ou se laisser vivref Par Pierre Saint-Quay. 3 fr. 50.
Pensees Choisies du R. P. De Poulevoy. Par Le P. Charles Renard. i fr.
Le Mystere D' Amour. Par R. P. Lecornu. 3 fr. 50. Manuel Pratique de la
Devotion Au Sacre Coeur de Jesus. Par Abbe Vandepitte, D. H. i fr.
PLON-NOURRIT ET CIE, Paris :
Histoire Religieuse de la Revolution Franfaise. Tome II. Par Pierre de La
Gorce. i fr. 50.
A. TRALIN, Paris :
De Dante a Verlaine. Par Jules Pacheu. 3 fr. 50.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCV. AUGUST, 1912. No. 569.
CHRISTOPHER.
BY E. M. DINNIS.
T'S a queer thing that influenza takes all a man's
strength from him in a moment, and leaves the most
extraordinary after-effects."
The speaker who offered this trite diagnosis of
the familiar malady, which had depleted the party as-
sembled on the veranda after dinner at the Grange, was a grave
gentleman with a slightly pompous manner. His remark, received
respectfully enough by the company in general, provoked an enig-
matic smile from Father Christopher Hulbert, whose large and
gloriously muscular form filled one of the basket chairs.
The smile was observed and misinterpreted.
" Have you ever had influenza? " the speaker inquired, rather
sharply, of the Reverend Father, who had that appearance of rude
health which constitutes an irritant to the nervous system of a
certain type of onlooker.
" I had it some years ago," the big man answered ; " or they
told me it was that. It certainly left the most peculiar after-effects."
"What were they?"
It was the local doctor who interpolated the question a quiet,
shrewd-faced young man, who narrowed his gaze on the other as he
spoke.
" Well," Father Hulbert said, " for one thing, it found me a
Protestant and left me a Papist ! " His eyes twinkled as he said
this; yet it was a clear, steady gaze that met the doctor's scrutiny.
" A long illness often gives a man time to think," the first
speaker observed, in rather unctious tones.
Copyright. 1912. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. XCV. 37.
578 CHRISTOPHER [August,
" Mine wasn't a long illness," the Father retorted, in his blunt
way. " It only lasted the normal forty-eight hours I'm not sure
that it was 'flu' at all. It was the only illness that I've ever had,
anyway."
" Did it leave any other after-effects? Physical ones, I mean,"
the doctor asked.
The Father laughed. " Do I look it?" he inquired. "No,
I don't know what it means to ail anything."
The doctor looked at him hard. " I thought you seemed rather
off color in church yesterday," he observed. " I was at Mass at the
priory. I go sometimes. I like your music." He colored slightly;
the doctor was a non-Catholic. The Reverend Father turned and
looked quickly at the speaker. " What made you think that I was
ill," he asked.
" It was during what you call the Elevation," the medical man
replied. "When you lifted up the Wafer I had an idea that you were
not feeling well." He paused. Their host, a man of admirable tact,
feeling that the conversation was becoming too " denominational "
for a mixed assembly, here contrived to insert an irrelevant remark,
which had the effect of diverting the conversation. A few minutes
later the Father rose to go. " We have to keep boarding-school
hours at the priory," he remarked gaily. " As it is, I've got special
permission to be out as late as this." " I must be going, too," the
doctor said, so the two guests made their adieu and departed
together.
" Do you go my way, sir? " the priest asked.
" I'll make your way mine, if you don't mind," the doctor re-
plied. " I I'd rather like to ask you something if you won't think
it impertinence."
" I wanted to ask you something, too," the other replied. " I
should like you to tell me what you noticed about me at Mass yes-
terday? Tell me exactly how it struck you as a medical man."
" Well," his companion said, " you've relieved me of the neces-
sity for being impertinent, for that's just what I wanted to ask you
about as a medical man ! "
"What did you notice?" the priest asked. "I'd be uncom-
monly grateful to you if you would tell me."
The doctor thought. " You seemed," he said slowly, " sud-
denly to lose your strength. You you lifted the Wafer (though a
non-Catholic, his tone was not irreverent) as though it were a ton
weight. I could see your arms trembling. I thought for a moment
1912.] CHRISTOPHER 579
that you were going to drop it; and I noticed, when you turned
round, that you were perspiring like a man who has undergone some
violent exertion. I wondered if at any time you had overdone it.
I know that in the old days you were famous as an athlete. I re-
member your name as winning the championship for throwing the
weight. I was astonished to hear you say that you ailed nothing
this evening." The doctor paused and looked the priest fairly and
squarely in the face.
The other's answer was some few moments in coming ; then it
came with characteristic bluntness :
"You thought I was telling fibs?" he queried.
The medico was also a plain man. " Yes, I did ! " he said.
" Well," the priest answered, " I consider that what I said was
perfectly true, for I don't regard that particular seizure I have
experienced it four times in all as, well, a physical ailment." He
looked at the keen, candid face, visible in the moonlight, and
came to a decision.
" Suppose I tell you how I came to be attacked by influenza? "
he said, " and perhaps, as a medical man, you will be able to tell me
if my symptoms were normal."
" I should be immensely interested," the doctor replied. " I
have made a study of influenza; it's a most uncanny complaint."
" Mind," the other said, " I wouldn't be telling you this story if
you hadn't noticed my condition yesterday that bit of corrobora-
tive evidence may help you to believe that I am not exaggerating."
The doctor nodded silently, and the priest started his narrative.
" You know something of my history," he said. " At the
time when the thing took place that I am going to tell you about, I
.was living near here a gentleman at large, with enough money to
amuse myself in the quiet way that I preferred. I was a great
sportsman in one way and another, and I possessed a rather wide
reputation for brute strength; I dare say my fame reached you? "
" Rather ! " the doctor rejoined. " I remember that they used
to tell a story of how you once walked down stairs with a Shetland
pony under each arm."
The priest laughed. " That was unauthenticated," he said,
" inasmuch as I have never been intimate enough with a Shetland
pony to try, 'but I dare say it wouldn't be beyond me." The doctor
at that moment experienced the sudden sensation of being lifted off
his feet, raised high in the air, and set down again. He was, him-
self, a man of no mean proportions.
580 CHRISTOPHER [August,
" Hope you'll forgive me, but that's a practical illustration,"
the priest said, " and it bears on my story."
The doctor laughed. " For a moment," he said, " I had the
feeling of reentering my childhood. You handled me like a kiddie
five years old ! "
" Well," the other continued, " if I was anything besides a
sportsman, I was a Protestant Episcopalian, that is to say, I attended
church on Sundays, and showed a proper resentment when . the
Fathers who now occupy the priory where I am staying intruded
themselves upon the neighborhood. My contempt for a 'petticoated'
parson in those days was intense, and the fact that the prior and
his colleagues all happened to be men of poor physique added con-
siderably to the mean opinion that I already held of the monkish
tribe. Well, now for the influenza. You must be dying to make
your diagnosis, doctor! One night I happened to be returning
home, and taking a short cut across the meadows. I was absolutely
in my ruddiest health (the speaker's eye twinkled, as though he were
enjoying a joke against himself); swinging along at a great pace,
and whistling as I went. There was a moon shining, and presently
I made out the figure of a man sitting on the bank under the hedge.
A small lantern burned on the ground beside him. At first I thought
that it was a tramp, but looking again I saw that it was one of
the Fathers from the priory. I crossed over to where he
was sitting, for obviously it was not a normal proceeding,
even for an eerie creature like a monk, this sitting under
the hedges after dark. He was leaning forward in a rather curious
position, with one hand thrust inside the breast of his habit. 'Can
I do anything for you?' I asked, rather gruffly, for I had no desire
to appear over-friendly. He looked up, with a queer, half-embar-
rassed expression. When he spoke his tone was half a whisper as
though we were in church. He was, I think, the puniest little bit of
a man that I have ever seen. 'I've had the misfortune to hurt my
ankle,' he said, 'and I'm on my way to see a sick man. I wonder
if you would be so very kind as to let them know at the cottage
yonder; that's where I'm bound. I can't get there without
assistance.' I could see the lights of the cottage that he indicated
away across the fields, less than a quarter of a mile off. It belonged
to an Irishman named Macgill. Til take you there, if you like,' I
said. 'Can you walk with my arm?' The little puny man mur-
mured his thanks, and taking hold of my arm raised himself to his
feet, or rather, to his foot, for the injured ankle gave way under
1912.] CHRISTOPHER 581
him as he set it to the ground. 'It's no good/ he said, after he had
hopped a yard or two, breathing hard through his clenched teeth,
for he was evidently in great pain. 'I'm afraid I can't walk. I must
wait here till I can be carried,' and he collapsed gently on to the
bank again.
" I looked down on the little man, hardly knowing whether
to be amused or irritated at his na'ive disbelief in my powers to
perform that service for him. 'Why wait?' I asked, 'I can carry
you.' 'But you would find me too much for you,' the small man
said, eyeing me dubiously. I laughed out loud. 'Pooh,' I said,
'I could carry six of you at once.' I was piqued at this wisp of a
man's exaggerated idea of his weight. My tone was more than
half contemptuous. I was resenting a kind of dignity that adhered
in some way to the little undersized figure in a cassock.
" He sat and surveyed me thoughtfully for a moment, taking
counsel with himself. 'It is most important that I get there with-
out delay,' he murmured at last. 'I've lost an hour sitting here, and
the man may be dead. I think I must accept your kind offer, sir,
but I am afraid that you will find me heavy.'
" I smiled indulgently, by way of answer, and prepared to pick
up this very small man, as I had picked up a wounded trooper on
the battlefield, like a baby, but before I had realized what he was
proposing to do, he had raised himself, hopped behind me, and
there, placing his hands on my shoulders, he reared himself on to
my back pick-a-back fashion. 'This will be the easiest way for
you, I think,' he said courteously, but before I could disclaim the
necessity for the easiest method a queer thing happened. I made
the discovery that the little man on my shoulders was weighing me
down, so that it was with the utmost difficulty that I could straighten
myself; or, rather, to be exact, straighten myself I couldn't, and I
remained bent nearly double, as I started to stagger forward. The
sweat burst out on my forehead at the first few steps. What ex-
traordinary access of weakness had suddenly overtaken me? I
didn't think of 'flu' at that moment, although there was a lot of it
about. 'Stop a bit!' the little monk cried, 'I've not got my lantern.'
'We can see without it,' I replied, 'but of course we must not aban-
don your property. Shall I put it out, though, the moon's up?'
'No, no,' he said, 'I can hold it.' So I retrieved the precious lan-
tern, and it was just as much as I could do to get myself up again
after stooping for it. As it was I stumbled on to one knee, and
seemed likely to remain in that position as long as the other con-
582 CHRISTOPHER [August,
tinued to weigh me down. 'I fear you are finding me very heavy?'
the owner of the pitiful legs, thrust out on either side of me, said.
I made a husky disclaimer. I had very little breath left. I was
feeling well I can best express it unreal, as though the world
around me had become fantastic I believe that is a mental state
that accompanies a seizure of 'flu?' "
The doctor nodded. " The brain affected by the weakness,"
he said.
Father Hulbert smiled.
" So we progressed," he went on. " A quaint sight, you can
imagine, could anyone have seen us. I carrying the lantern, and
the padre seated on my bent back rider-fashion. The singular
thing was that there was no hint of the ludicrous about it. I have
since tried to picture the rector of the Episcopalian church in
the little monk's position, and the thing became at once comic,
and not permissibly comic, either! But our mode of progress
seemed, well, more mediaeval than anything else. One could imag-
ine it pictured on the margin of an illuminated missal as the legend
of some saint! The little priest had not lost one iota of his
dignity, and I, strange to say, was experiencing no sense of humilia-
tion in having thus become a beast of burden.
" I shall never forget that journey ! My 'rider' still expressed
concern for me at intervals, but it no longer ruffled my pride. The
feeling of chagrin that I had first experienced had vanished. I
declined the priest's suggestion that I should sit down and take a
rest with all due meekness. 'You big men are not so strong as you
look,' he remarked, in kindly tones, and still I felt no resentment.
I seemed to have accepted the fact that the task of carrying this
wizen little scrap of a man was one likely to prove beyond my
strength, but no sense of mortification or ignominy accompanied
the discovery. The world, as I say, had become fantastic. The
cottage the goal of a gigantic quest ! The intervening fields a life's
pilgrimage; and the accomplishing of that amazing journey an
achievement compared with which nothing else mattered. Every-
thing assumed new and unearthly proportions. I had an extra-
ordinary idea, too, that I must hang on to the lantern whatever
happened, although I had scarcely strength left even for that extra
burden !" The narrator paused and looked at the doctor. " You
recognize the symptoms? " he said.
" Undoubtedly," was the reply, " the mental weakness attend-
ant on the physical breakdown."
I 9 i2.] CHRISTOPHER 583
" The queer thing was," said the other, " that I had no idea
that I was ill at the time. There was no sense of depression. On
the contrary, I could have sung for joy as I struggled on, had I had
the breath in my body, and this sensation ran concurrently with the
most agonizing physical experience. It became a question whether
I should be able to cover that quarter-mile. I can't describe the
weariness; but of course you have heard your patients speak of the
'tired' symptom ? " The priest was looking sideways at the medical
man. " Well, at last, bent nearly double, soaked with perspiration,
my knees trembling, and the very tears standing in my eyes, I
reached the door of Macgill's cottage. There was a light in
the window. I rapped on the door, and then I said, 'I will kneel
down. You'll be able to get off better that way.' The fact was I
had fairly come to the end of my tether carrying this little shrivel-
led priest for a quarter of a mile ! I sunk on my knees in a sheer
state of exhaustion. As I did so the door opened, and a young
fellow stood within. He glanced at the priest, now dismounted and
leaning up against the threshold, and at me, down on my knees,
and then he did a curious thing: he, too, dropped on his knees!
'Am I in time ?' the priest asked. 'Yes, Father,' was the reply, 'he's
conscious, but he's going fast.' 'God be praised !' the little man
exclaimed, fervently. Then, turning to me, he said : 'I can never
thank you, sir, for the service that you have done to a fellow-crea-
ture. Take Almighty God's blessing for it,' and taking his hand
from his bosom, he made the sign of the cross over me as I knelt
there, still too exhausted to get back on to my feet.
" I will let them know at the priory," I said to the lad, as he
prepared to lead the crippled man to the sick room. There was a
seat in the porch, and there I sat until I felt more or less revived.
Then I set out for the priory. I reached it feeling somewhat re-
covered, and beginning to ask myself seriously what it all meant.
You see, I had no experience of illness, sudden or otherwise. I
was feeling now merely as I had often felt after an abnormal
physical effort. My back ached, and my knees still had a tendency
to knock together, otherwise I was perfectly fit. I saw a huge
block of stone lying in the road. I stooped and lifted it without
the slightest difficulty. My muscular power appeared to be normal."
The priest glanced at the doctor, but he made no comment.
" It was the prior himself who answered my bell at the priory
a little, bright-eyed Irishman. I told him what had happened. He
was overwhelmed with gratitude. His first anxiety was to learn
584 CHRISTOPHER [August,
whether we had been in time. I told him, yes, just in time, and the
tears of joy started to his eyes. His next concern was as to whether
I had not found it a terribly difficult business conveying Father
Paul to the cottage. He blinked up at me with real apprehension.
'I managed somehow,' I answered. 'It was not a great distance, and
I took my time.'
" The Father was reading the name on my card, which I had
presented on my arrival. 'Ah !' he exclaimed, 'Christopher ! Surely,
but that's all right, for Father Paul had the Blessed Sacrament
with him, and ye've been carrying Christ Himself, as St. Christopher
did !' Then I began to feel dizzy again. It was rather a big
discovery! That of course explained a certain restraint in the
priest's manner, and the lighted lantern, and the hand that re-
mained in the breast of the habit my rider had held on with one
hand only and kept the other inside his bosom I had felt his
knuckles digging into my back, and the pain had been excruciating.
I could feel it still! This explained the action of the young man
at the door. Did it explain why I had felt as though I were carry-
ing not one puny, diminutive, human being, but the whole world
itself? 'But you are feeling ill?' the prior exclaimed. And then
I did a thing that I have never done before or since a very com-
mon feature of influenza, though I fainted. A doctor was sent
for, and they put me to bed and pronounced it influenza. I was laid
up for about forty-eight hours, and I was a trifle light-headed, they
tell me, and at the end of that time I was as well as ever."
" And the after-effects ? " the medical man enquired.
" The after-effects? " The priest spoke slowly and carefully.
" The after-effects didn't appear for some two or three years. It
was after I was ordained (I told you that I became a Catholic 'after
influenza') that I had a sort of recurrence of that curious seizure.
I have had it altogether on four occasions, so I suppose the com-
plaint left me susceptible. Each time it has come when I was saying
Mass a sudden weakness at the moment of consecration, which
makes it almost impossible to elevate the Sacred Wafer. I ex-
perienced it the first time when I had been taking a mission. I had
been overworking myself, you will say. On the second occasion I
was saying Mass in the presence of my favorite sister, a critical
Protestant, who had never seen me perform my priestly functions;
it was the first time I had got her to Mass. No doubt I was nervous
and highly-strung. She is a sister of Nazareth now. The third
time I was saying Mass in my own Church. It was rather awful
1912.] CHRISTOPHER 585
that time. The effect of it lasted all day. I remember my house-
keeper had to dose me ever so often to get me well enough to hear a
confession that evening. It was the confession of a man who had
been at Mass in the morning for the first time in twenty years, and
he had sent round to know if I would hear him. His was a won-
derful case of conversion. The fourth occasion was the one that
you noted yesterday when you were present at Mass listening to
the music."
The two men paced together silently for some moments.
" Well, doctor, there is my case; will you go home and diag-
nose it? Here's the priory. I have timed my story well, but I'm
afraid I've brought you miles out of your way, and I can't ask
you in because everybody will be in bed."
" I'd like to call on you some day, if I may," the medico said.
" We doctors aren't all materialists, you know, Father."
" Come here any time during the next fortnight, and after that
to my own address." Christopher Hulbert handed his card to the
other.
" There's just one thing that I'd like to ask you now," the
young man said. " How do you account for having those seizures
on certain occasions only under peculiar circumstances?" His
tone of matter-of-fact inquiry was not entirely convincing. The
Father looked him in the eyes under the light of the lamp in the
priory doorway.
" I always think," he said, very gently, and very reverently,
" that it is when virtue goes forth from Him ; and that it means
that someone present has stretched out a hand and touched the hem
of His garment."
ISLAM.
BY L. MARCH PHILLIPPS.
HE tendency which religious creeds commonly exhibit
to fall to pieces, and, as time goes on, dissolve into
their human particles, is perfectly familiar to all
Catholics. It is the unfailing characteristic of all
those forms of religion, of which the vitality con-
sists not in themselves but in the individuals composing them. Dis-
integration is the law of their being, for their activity is all in
their atoms. That which binds them is inanimate and artificial;
that which separates is constantly operating. Hence no sooner does
the schismatic act transfer volition and initiation from a corporate
church to its individual members than the process of disruption sets
in. We are, I say, accustomed to see this law of dissolution operat-
ing, and it has, indeed, become so usual a spectacle that any inter-
ruption of its action at once catches our attention. The appearance
of a faith capable of preserving a kind of unity through lapse of
time and outward changes is a phenomenon which is interesting
in proportion to its rarity.
This is the source of interest which the writer long since de-
tected in Islam. The Mohammedan religion is indeed moth-eaten
and falling to bits through sectarian initiative, but it possesses a
solid central core of orthodoxy which, still cast in the original
form of the faith, seems capable of resisting all the usual processes
of decomposition. This is the Sunnite body, whose boast that they
have been able to preserve inviolate the doctrines of their founder
is by no means an idle one. They are in a sense the Catholics of the
Moslem world. Both Mohammedanism and Christianity, besides be-
ing tormented by recurring epidemics of schisms and heresies, have,
in the early phases of their career, been split asunder almost from
head to foot. The Shiite and Sunnite controversy, which divided Mo-
hammedanism, left the Sunnite party triumphant in the west. The
division between the eastern and western churches in the same way
bequeathed western Christendom to the guidance of the Catholic
Church. Thenceforth the Sunnite party, based on the sunna, or
orthodox tradition, might, in so far as its efforts were directed
to securing the continuity and uniformity of the faith, challenge
1912.] ISLAM 587
certain comparisons with Catholicism itself. Both stand for au-
thority as opposed to license. Both, in the war of sects and schisms,
represent the weight and majesty of the established order of things.
Both oppose the same inveterate opposition to the forces of disin-
tegration. Individual initiative and temporary explanations are
sternly opposed by both, while both confront the eager claims of
the present moment by similar appeals to the weight of tradition
and things hallowed by immemorial usage. Both are defenders of
the faith, and the natural but fatal instinct of each generation in
turn to formulate religion " in terms of modern thought " breaks
on both as against a rock. Even in their outward and apparent
surroundings there is a similarity; for not only do both, in numbers
and discipline, represent the main body of their faith, but they
are circumstanced alike. Both possess an earthly headquarters,
a sacred site, recognized by all in common as the source of inspira-
tion of the faith, and just as the eyes of all Catholics turn to the
See of Rome for light and guidance, so, in something the same way,
the thoughts of the faithful of Islam turn to their holy city. It is
to Meccah that pilgrimages of incredible hardship bring an-
nually hundreds of thousands of true believers; and it is towards
Meccah that the whole Moslem world turns with pious gaze and
prostrate attitudes in the recurring motions of daily prayer.
But the question naturally arises : if Islam possesses within
itself this solid core of orthodoxy, whence and from what source
does it derive the inspiration which confirms orthodoxy and pre-
serves it? Catholics can lay a finger on the source of their inspira-
tion. They can say " this inspired individual is the guardian and
interpreter of truth. Within the sphere of faith and doctrine his
voice is the supreme guide." But this Mohammedans cannot do.
They can appeal to the teaching of their prophet, thirteen hundred
years old, as embodied in the Koran. They can appeal to the more
doubtful authority of the Sunna tradition, a thousand years old.
But authorities of this order, propounded ages since, inflexible in
their operation, "liable to diverse interpretation, doubtful in their
exact significance, and needing fresh elucidation to adjust them to
the life and thought of later generations, have never in the world's
experience sufficed for the preservation of unity. It was as long
ago as the tenth century that the standard of Moslem orthodoxy
was propounded by Al Ashari, and no authoritative voice has spoken
since.
As we know life, life with its perpetual developments, its alter-
588 ISLAM [August,
ing conditions, its ceaseless intellectual curiosity, and eager investi-
gation of all subjects given to human contemplation, we can- with
certainty say that no body of doctrine, however true in itself, can
permanently suffice for it in any given, finite form. The altered point
of view, the altered mental outlook of later generations, are sure to
make demands for a fuller application of the faith to life in given
directions, and unless the faith itself can respond to these demands,
there will arise those who will undertake in its name the task of
interpretation, with the disintegrating results which are so familiar
to us.
Looking, then, at Moslem orthodoxy from the outside, studying
it as a student might study it in his library among his books, and
from the standpoint of European knowledge, it is difficult to see
how a satisfactory solution of its continued existence could be
arrived at. Such a student would have the fact of orthodoxy
staring him in the face. He would perceive at once that it was not
sustained and guarded by any operating authority, but, as osten-
sible guardian, had merely such sources to rely on as are commonly
the arsenals whence heresy and schism draw their ammunition.
How would he account for the presence of such orthodoxy?
Whether or not he ever arrived at a right solution of the prob-
lem, this much, I think, is certain, that he would hit upon it with
much greater ease and certainty if he were to quit for awhile his study
and books and the intellectual environment of his own age and race,
and go off himself on a pilgrimage to Meccah and those desert
regions in which Islam was cradled, and amid which the purity of
the faith is still best preserved. Seen from the western standpoint,
from the vortex of intellectualism in which he himself lives, from
the midst of the crossfire of doubts, speculations, questions, and
theories, which make up the mental atmosphere he is accustomed
to, the problem he has set himself may well seem insoluble. Let him
go into the desert and adjust himself to the desert's point of view,
and see how it will look from there.
It will look different. Viewed with the desert for a back-
ground, Moslem orthodoxy shares in the immobility of nature.
These monotonous wastes of sand, these stony reefs and plateaux
and mountain chains cut out of naked rock, seem at least an appro-
priate setting for a thought as fixed and changeless as themselves.
The stillness in which the landscape is locked, its grim sustained
rigidity, is in strange sympathy with the inflexible spirit which
watches over the unity of the faith. And if this sounds to the
1912.] ISLAM 589
reader a mere play of the fancy, and the connection betwixt a
landscape and a creed seems an imaginative fiction, let him set up
man as the connecting link between them, and the strangeness will
disappear. Let him say " this landscape has produced a race of
men like to itself in the changeless and undeveloping habits of their
lives, men who do to-day precisely what their forefathers did a
thousand or five thousand years ago ; who water their camels at the
same springs, and drive their flocks to the same scanty pastures,
and make and pitch their tents in the same way, and preserve with
unvarying monotony the immemorial usages and customs of their
forefathers " let him say this, and he will see that if this desert
has not guarded the faith directly, it may have done so indirectly.
It may have done so by establishing and perpetuating a routine of
life which not only found the original enunciation of the faith suit-
able and sufficient to itself, but which, remaining itself unchanged,
finds that enunciation suitable and sufficient still.
Here is a factor which civilized and progressive races are
very apt to overlook. Accustomed to their own circumstances,
they instinctively regard life as perpetual development: constant
growth. Man begins as barbarian or savage, and by slow degrees
advances through phases of self-discipline and self-culture to com-
plete intellectual emancipation. This is what life means to us.
When we speak of the need of adapting faith to life, we make the
assumption that it is the law of life to change, to develop, to
be always asking new questions and making new demands. But
what if this tendency be obviated? What if life be lived under
circumstances which prevent any development from taking place,
or any new questions or new demands from arising? In that case
it is obvious no adaptation of the faith will be called for. It fits
life as perfectly to-day as it did a thousand years ago, because it is
the same life.
Whoever is unable to undertake a journey of his own to Arab
countries let him pore over the pages of Doughty's Arabia Deserta,
the only book in any language which will give him an adequate
idea of the simple, unvarying routine of desert manners. There
he will see the way of life of the nomad tribes portrayed, in each
minute detail, with such vividness as belongs only to those who feel
the human meaning in all that passes before their eyes. The daily
wayfaring the sheykhs riding on together, the harem following on
the baggage-camel, the wives, dismounting sometimes, walking to-
gether barefoot beside their beasts, spinning as they go, each family
590 ISLAM [August,
of the clan moving by itself, yet forming part of the tribe, the camp-
ing at night, the " building " of the camel's hair " houses," as they
call their tents or booths, the least rites of hospitality, of salutation,
coffee-drinking, the stern courtesy and etiquette of desert usages
these daily and hourly observances in which the life of the tribes is
passed form one and all the life-like touches in this greatest of books
of travel. But, as the reader will find, they are more than touches
of a present likeness. They depict not only what is but what for
long ages has been. Each smallest trait is durable, bitten into a
meagre, monotonous . existence as the acid bites into a steel en-
graving.
It is the country itself that has charge of these hourly customs.
The desert is what it was; its vast expanses retain their ancient
haggard bareness; the sun heats the yellow sand and glittering,
polished stones to the same degree of intensity; water is as hard to
come by; it is still the same distance to the next well. In a few
ravines and nullahs, whose water-courses from the mountains carry
now and again in the wet season a fitful spate of water, a thin
growth of scrub and scanty pasture lingers, and when the spring
rains have set in there are regions fertile enough to call tribes from
afar to their grazing grounds. These interludes the desert has.
A mouthful of water is yours if you know where to look for it,
and a hummock of grass for your camel if you can find it. But
these delicacies are as scanty as ever they were. They can but
sustain the same sparse population of gypsies, inured to the desert's
hardships, trained to its privations and long marches, pitting their
vigilance, their tough frames, and practiced asceticism against the
many obstacles to living which the desert puts in their path.
Necessarily, where all his surroundings and the conditions of
his life remain unchanged, man himself remains unchanged also.
Like to these " houses of hair," as used at the present day, " was
Moses' adorned homes of the nomad God in the wilderness," and
similar to these wooden coffers painted with vermilion from Medina,
containing some few treasures and relics and trussed upon a bearing-
camel, was " that ark of things sacred to the public religion which
was in the nomad life of Beni-Israel." Each slightest observance
of daily life under this uniform pressure of circumstances becomes
a ritual sanctified by usage, and changing, as Mr. Hogarth says,
" as little with the procession of the centuries as anything human."
The imagined freedom of the desert is largely illusory. No
race in the world are more bound by a rigid conservatism to the
1912.] ISLAM 591
detail of a strict routine than the Arabs. They are imbued with the
true aristocratic distrust and contempt for innovation in any sense
or form. And with this physical conformity to the desert's neces-
sities, their minds have become impervious to any ideas from with-
out. They cannot, as Doughty in the course of his endless wander-
ings again and again discovers, even imagine countries differently
endowed to their own. " The Ottoman Empire they could only
think to be a tribe," and a sheykh's son " having inquired of us
in which part of the world lay the dirat of the Engleys," would
know further the name of our market village ; and said earnestly :
" Tell me, Khalil, the names of the tribes of our foemen." If
he heard them, he thought, he might happen to know them. He
could understand that we were " kafirs," but not that we should be
other than the tribes of Arabs.
Such is the influence of the desert, despotic, inflexible, un-
changing. It was amid such an environment that Islam was matured
and nourished, and it is this same environment which guards it still,
exacting in matters of religion the same deadly uniformity which it
enacts in matters of life. The authority which stands sentinel over
Moslem orthodoxy is voiceless and lifeless. It can answer no ques-
tions, settle no disputes, define no points of doctrine. Its strength
consists in and depends upon an iron immobility of outward cir-
cumstance, which precludes it from ever contemplating the possi-
bility of change. Hence, in order to maintain inviolate its form of
doctrine, orthodox Islam relies on an attitude of negation. It does
not say " You shall accept the answers of a certain authority to your
questions;" it says "You shall not ask questions." It may almost
be said that active thought is, within the limits of orthodoxy, prac-
tically extinct in the Moslem world.
It must be remembered that Islam controls much beyond
religion. It is as much a political as a religious institution. Re-
ligious and civil law are alike derived from the tradition of the
Prophet and the Koran. The first step in education is to acquire
the Koran by heart, and the same system is applied to commentaries
handed down by tradition. Their explanations are learned -ver-
batim without the addition of a word. In a carefully thought out
article contributed by Wilhelm Spilta Bey to the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, the consequences of the absence of lay education, com-
bined with the stopping short of all mental initiative in connection
with matters of faith, are trenchantly exposed. The Moslem
student " deems all non-theological science to be vain or hurtful,
592 ISLAM [August,
has no notion of progress, and regards true science, i. e., theology,
as having reached finality," so that a new commentary or a
new student's manual is the only thing perhaps that is still worth
writing. How the mental faculties are blunted by scholasticism
and mere memory work must be seen to be believed ; such an educa-
tion is enough to spoil the best head. All originality is crushed out,
and a blind and ludicrous dependence in written tradition even
in things profane takes its place. Acuteness degenerates into hair-
splitting, and clever plays on words after the manner of the rabbis.
The Azhar students not seldom enter government offices, and even
hold important administration posts, but they never lose the stamp
of their education " their narrow, unteachable spirit, incapable
of progress, always lost in external details, and never able to grasp
principle and get beyond forms to the substance of a matter."
These are strong words, but I doubt if anyone with knowledge
of the subject nay, I doubt if anyone who has even stood in the great
Azhar university and listened to the monotonous droning of thou-
sands of voices in vacant recitation, booming through the vast
interior as waves boom in a cave will deny the truth of the descrip-
tion. The present writer is not without admiration for certain as-
pects of the influence of Islam, and in particular he must respect
that influence as, in many cases, exercised upon backward and
degraded races. The Moslem insistence on what is humanly dig-
nified in man has acted on many a down-trodden people like a dash
of cold water in the face, stinging them back to vigor and conscious-
ness. Our present purpose, however, is not to attempt any general
estimate of the characteristic of Islam, but merely to analyze, as far
as may be, that trait in it tending to orthodoxy, the semblance of
authority it bears, the something in it, as it would seem, superior
to the individual will and making for uniformity, which is so marked
an attribute of the faith.
Moslem unity is not a unity maintained and perpetuated in
the midst of much change and development. It is a unity main-
tained in a world where all is still. In the bleak landscape of
Islam all objects share the stony immobility of the faith. I cannot
see, since it does not pretend to emanate from the faith itself, where
we should look 'for the origin of this fixity unless in certain fixed
conditions of life, in themselves powerful and unyielding enough to
exert an adequate influence on life and character. The more clearly
the problem defines itself, the more inevitably we are forced back
upon the desert for a solution. Not only is the desert an adequate
1912.] ISLAM 593
authority, but it is an authority of exactly the character and quality
we require. It is an authority, that is to say, which acts not by any
exercise of intelligence or thought, but by the imposition of a cast
iron, rigid routine of habits, manners, customs, daily observances,
and prejudices as an inviolable system of life.
I can give to the reader but a feeble idea of the deadly sense
of power which the apparently limitless tracts of the wilderness
possess ; nor of the sure degrees by which that power is exercised on
all who come within its reach. Keane, writing of the desert round
about Meccah, describes how " every yard into that dead barren
waste with its constant flitting mirage phantoms " adds to the feel-
ing of " helplessness " which the traveler experiences ; and, in more
nervous language, Burton speaks of the same tracts as " a desert
peopled only with sand : a place of death for what little there is
to die in it. Nature scalped, flayed, discovering all her skeleton to
the gazing eye." With even more of scientific accuracy, Professor
Schirmer has shown how the rocks and reefs of the desert's struc-
tural form are by slow degrees, under the action of the sand's fric-
tion, dissolving like a skeleton into dust. But this picture of death
and immobility, which all have felt in the desert's presence, is not
restricted to the outward aspect of the scenery.
The desert journals of the present writer are full of allusions,
not only to the deadly stillness and lifelessness which brood visibly
over those desolate landscapes, but to the effect of such appear-
ances upon the mind. There is nothing in all this scenery to think
of, no changes and developments to observe and analyze, nothing to
excite curiosity, to make us think, to tempt us on to trace the
sequence of cause and effect, and so to cherish the habit of reason-
ing in the mind. It would be impossible to conceive " land more
destitute of any features that can suggest a connected train of
reasoning. The rich and varied scheme of development to which
dwellers in other countries adapt themselves does not operate in
these wastes. Here, day by day, and year by year, everything
remains almost entirely unchanged. Nothing, or almost nothing,
we see invites us to reason forward or to reason back, but the mind
is left in idle or stationary contemplation."
It is not only physical immobility which exists here, but mental
immobility also. The desert influence is one which works directly
upon the character and temperament of men. It cherishes certain fine
and virile traits, but it records as clearly its own deficiencies, and
of these the chief is its entire lack of all intellectual provender.
VOL. XCV. 38.
594 ISLAM [August,
In the cultivation of what we call ideas, the desert
nomads are to-day, as far as may be gathered, exactly
where they were in Mohammed's time, and who knows for
how many thousand years before that? It is the desert itself which
watches over their uniformity, and by slow processes of impression
communicates its own rigidity to the minds of its children. It is
difficult for races situated as we are to tear ourselves out of our
setting and imagine what such an existence as the Arab's must be
like. " But," I have written, " if we try to realize the effect that
such an empty life must gradually produce on the mind, and con-
ceive it operating on a race for countless generations, we can recog-
nize, perhaps, the consequences of it on Arab character."
The desert, indeed, has known of but one type. Of the nomad
tribesmen, who in the seventh and eighth centuries carried the law of
Islam east and west, the ballads of the Arabian poets have left
descriptive portraits, drawn with unexampled vigor and decision.
It seems to have been designed that the Arab race should go into
action singing, for the age of fruition of their poetry led up to and
culminated in the furious effort which scattered its hosts like burn-
ing seed through the world. The moment of their prime,
the moment when, in the midst of surrounding decadent civilizations,
they were being insensibly stirred and inspired by the purpose that
was drawing them on, when the many clans of the peninsular were
uniting in the bond of nationality, and the prevalence of a single
language over the various local dialects was preparing the way for
united action this very moment is the time chosen for the painting
of that gallery of portraits which these Arab ballads have preserved.
Let the reader study the collection. Figure after figure, taken at its
best, caught with the gesture and look that most becomes it,
passes in review. Proud, fierce, and courageous, cruel to their
enemies, but courteous to their friends, each one of these figures
is the facsimile of all the others. But not only are they that, they
are the facsimiles also of the Arabs you meet to-day in desert
travels. They are the facsimile of the Bedouins who even now
drive their flocks among the scanty pastures of the desert mountains,
of the sheykh who invites you to his tent, of your own camel-
driver even. If differences exist they are only in degree. The
heroes of Arab song may be more virile, more dauntless, more ardent
and irresistible than their modern representatives. They had oppor-
tunities which these have not. The season was favorable to them.
Their qualities were fostered by the circumstances in which they
igi2.] ISLAM 595
found themselves. But in kind they were the same. What they
were these of to-day would gladly be, and would under similar con-
ditions again become. They know of no other excellence. In
their fits of enthusiasm they still achieve the old level. The Mahdi,
who in 1855 sent a proclamation before his oncoming fanatics to
the effect that it was their mission to subdue all Europe to the true
faith, was of much the same stamp probably as the followers of
Kaled and Omar. Why, indeed, should they be different? The
same circumstances bred them and the same faith inflamed them.
Accordingly it is to the sameness, the immobility, of the
desert that we return. Here, in what has kept life stationary, we
discover the cause of that influence which has kept faith stationary.
It would be interesting to consider what exactly is the point of ad-
vance thus attained, what are the ideals sanctioned and counte-
nanced by such a faith, and which renders it capable of acceptance
by certain races which dwell outside the desert's sphere and reach.
Such a consideration must, however, be reserved for a future occa-
sion. Here it is sufficient to have brought together, if I have
succeeded in doing so, the idea of the immobile, sterile, yet per-
sistently enduring, spirit of Moslem orthodoxy on the one hand, and
the equally immobile, equally sterile, yet equally enduring, image
and aspect of the desert on the other.
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP.
BY JOHN AYSCOUGH.
VI.
HE interruption was a customer !
They had bolted the shop door on the inside
when they went upstairs to lunch, but Miss Priddy,
breathless with excitement, came up the private
stairs to tell them " a grand lady in a carriage and
pair wanted to get into the shop to buy a vause."
" She might see for herself," said Lord Hounslow, " that
there's really no room in the shop for a carriage and pair. I doubt
if it would conveniently hold a four-wheeler. She must be an un-
reasonable female."
" Female, indeed ! " cried Miss Priddy, much scandalized.
" You should see her rings ! "
Miss Priddy had no notion that he was a lord.
" Meanwhile," said Frank, " my first customer is waiting."
So he left Lord Hounslow and Miss Priddy to fight it out, and
without delay went down to the shop.
He bowed very respectfully as he admitted the lady, and apolo-
gized for having kept her waiting.
" I only moved in this morning," he explained, " and the
stock has not been arranged many minutes. I did not venture to
hope for so early a customer."
" Perhaps I shall not be a customer," said Miss Priddy's
female. " But I want to inquire about that bowl. I saw it through
the glass-screen from the post office. I had come to send a tele-
gram."
Frank placed the bowl in her hands, and she turned it about
with undisguised admiration.
" Is it very dear? " she inquired.
" No, madam. At the price for which I would sell it to you it
would not be dear. But the price is a high one. I ask thirty guineas
for it".
The lady said nothing, but continued to twist the bowl about.
" I saw a similar bowl, but not nearly so fine as this, in a Bond
Street shop priced forty guineas -last week," observed Frank.
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 597
" I bought it," said the lady quietly. " It was, as you say, not
nearly so fine as this. It has a crack all across the back too. Yet I
am told it was a bargain. I will certainly give you thirty guineas for
yours. I will take it with me ; I have a carriage here."
Frank began to wrap the bowl carefully in paper. The lady
moved about.
" What price do you ask for this figure ? " she inquired, touch-
ing a beautiful Chelsea statuette of Shakespeare.
" If I sold it without its companion, madam, the price would
be sixty guineas. For the pair I would take one hundred pounds."
" They are very fine," said the lady. " Your things are very
cheap. I will buy the two figures. But I have not enough to pay
for all three in my pocket. I have enough to pay for the bowl ; but
you must put the figures aside for me. I will return for them after
luncheon."
" Please take them, madam. Send me your check by post.
I would rather you bought them if you would not mind."
" I am Lady Salford." And she handed him a card. " I live
quite near."
This did not surprise Frank at all, for, rather slummy as his
own street was, it lay, as often happens in London, cheek by jowl
with one of the smartest squares in Belgravia.
When his customer was gone Lord Hounslow came down,
having been strictly forbidden to come into the shop before.
" Did the female buy anything? " he inquired eagerly.
" She bought a bowl and two figures for one hundred and
thirty-one pounds ten shillings," replied Frank.
" Oh, my aunt ! " cried Lord Hounslow. " Are you sure you
don't want a partner."
They both laughed.
" Nothing seems to be gone, either. Now one would have
missed that sideboard."
" But it would not have fetched so much. All the same the
things were cheap."
Frank told his friend about the bowl. " the figures
would fetch perhaps as much again in a season-sale at Christie's,"
he added.
" I'll step round to Salford House," said Hounslow, " and ex-
plain that the price was really two hundred guineas."
Again they laughed.
" All the same," said Frank, " I did well enough, for I did not
598 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
give sixty for the three. They were some of my bargains. Be-
sides when I picked them up that sort of thing wasn't so much
sought after."
Lady Salford was a well-known figure in the world to both
young men. She was not exactly a beauty, but she had the much
rarer gift of charm, which some people say is nearly obsolete. Her
story was a little romantic, for at twenty-two she was a widow, as
well as being one of the richest women in London. But that story,
if it has to be told, shall be told separately. It would take up too
much space here.
She was not Frank's only customer on that first day of his
shopkeeping, but she was his best. In the course of the afternoon
nineteen persons came into the shop, of whom eleven made pur-
chases. Three of the others came to look and handle, and declare
that all the articles were very dear. One came in to ask if Frank
would give a small subscription to the Royal Society for Preventing
Cruelty to Flowers. One wanted to sell him some watercress, and
another to sell him some muffins (also, he guessed, they wanted to
have a peep at the pretty things) ; one asked change of a sovereign,
and one inquired the shortest way to Pimlico.
The eleven purchasers chiefly made small purchases, but it
was a very good day's work for an opening in such a busi-
ness.
Lord Hounslow went away for a couple of hours, but his
curiosity was too great for him to keep away altogether, and about
six he came back, full of eagerness to hear what business had been
done.
" You've sold nothing since ! " he complained, with a disap-
pointed glance round.
" Sorry to disagree with you. I have sold thirty-two articles,
including a big screen that you might have missed. I know you
long to know what they fetched. Well, altogether, they fetched
forty-one pounds five shillings. Not quite so good as one hundred
and thirty-one pounds for three things. But it would not have
been a bad day's business even if I had not sold those three."
Lord Hounslow could scarcely tear himself away, but he was
dining out, and from Frank's shop to the " Haunt of the White
Man," as he called it, was some distance.
" Old Gummy St. Roe," he said, thus profanely alluding to a
noble marquis, " is marrying one of his daughters, and I will
make him buy her a wedding present here. I know she goes in for
IQI2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 599
these sort of things. Good night, Jokes & Co. If you won't have
me for a partner, have me as a traveler to take in custom."
Very soon after he had departed, Frank's shop door opened, and
an anxious-faced lady entered and glanced nervously about the
shop. She had a good expression, and her sad, tired eyes were
kindly and refined, but there was an unmistakable air about her of
being ill-to-do in the world and troubled. Nevertheless she was un-
mistakably a lady, and Frank felt sure that if misfortunes had
overtaken her, they had not been deserved.
He bowed with a grave and quiet respectfulness that seemed to
put the poor lady rather more at her ease.
From beneath her cloak she produced a little parcel, and he
had no difficulty in seeing that she had come to sell and not to buy.
" I suppose," she said, in a low, shy voice, " that you buy as
well as sell."
" Certainly," he answered, with a little laugh. " I have been
buying for a long time; I only began to sell to-day."
His cheerful, unaffected manner seemed to relieve the lady of
much of her embarrassment.
" I know it is a new shop," she remarked. " I often come to
the little post office, and an hour ago I was there and saw that this
shop had been opened. Miss Priddy told me that you seemed to
have had a good deal of custom already. So I went home and
brought them to show you."
She began, as she spoke, to untie her parcel.
" They are miniatures," she continued, unfolding the paper,
" and they are by Cosway."
Now Frank had very often been offered miniatures, and very
often had been told that they were by Cosway, but he had very
seldom had the refusal of any that were genuine.
" Ah," he said, courteously, " genuine Cosways are scarce and
valuable."
' There are six. And they are all, as you see, in real old ivory
frames, and the name of each is at the back."
The paper was now all unfolded, and the miniatures were
lying on the Empire table that seemed the most convenient place
for them. In Frank's shop there was no counter. He picked them
up one by one, and examined each carefully, but at the first glance
his doubts vanished, and he was quite sure they were genuine.
" And you really want to sell them? " he asked.
" Yes. None of them are portraits of any family interest. But
6oo A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
a member of my family was a collector. Of course I admire them.
They are beautiful. But I would much rather have the money.
Indeed I have no choice "
She paused, with a faint flush on her pale, tired face.
" They are, I have no doubt at all, perfectly genuine," observed
Frank, not seeming to hear her last words or noticing her slight
confusion; "and they are very fine. Some quite genuine antique
miniatures are not fine at all. These are exquisite, and they are in
splendid state. The proper way to sell them would be in a season-
sale at Christie's."
" I should have to wait months for that. No, I cannot wait
at all. I would rather sell them now and get a quarter, than wait
and sell them after weeks' and months' delay."
" The truth is," he explained, " I could not offer you even a
quarter of what you might get at Christie's. They might fetch as
much as ninety guineas each there. I could certainly not offer you
more than twenty guineas each."
" Would you give me that ? Would you give me a hundred and
twenty guineas for them ? "
The pale flush deepened, and the tired eyes glistened
eagerly.
" Certainly I would give you that. But you know it is throw-
ing them away. I could not advise you to sell them for so
little."
" So little ! I have offered them half over London and have
not been offered nearly so much."
She pushed them towards him, as though joyfully willing to
part with them.
"Will you, could you buy them to-day?" she inquired with
ill-dissembled suspense.
" Yes if you really wish it. I must of course give you a
check. I have not got the money in cash in the shop. But if you
like to bring them again to-morrow I would pay you in notes and
gold."
" Oh, no. The check would be best. I would rather finish it
all up to-night."
Frank bowed and inquired as to whose order the check should
be payable, and was told the name of Margaret Dene; whether
Miss or Mrs. he was not told, and did not inquire. He withdrew to
write the check, and soon returned with it in his hand.
" A hundred and twenty-six pounds. I think that is right."/
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 601
" Oh, I had forgotten they were guineas. It is six pounds
more than I expected."
" It is little enough," he answered, smiling.
The lady smiled too, and with a lighter step and much more
cheerful air than at her entry, she bade Frank good night and left
the shop.
VII.
After he had shut his shop and balanced his accounts, Frank
had some supper, a very frugal one ; and after that he went out for
a walk, with the parcel for Lady Salford in his hand.
Half an hour later he bent his steps towards Salford House.
He knew it very well, for a year ago it had been let furnished for a
few months to some great friends of his. He rang the bell, and the
big doors were promptly opened by the hall porter.
" Oh, are you the young man from Jokes & Co. ? " he de-
manded, surveying Frank rather critically.
Frank admitted that he was.
" Well, then, her ladyship's instructions was as she should see
you personally."
The young man from Jokes & Co. did not inquire whether it
was Lady Salford's ordinary custom to see people impersonally;
but he obeyed the rather imperious gesture by which the hall porter
had signified that he was to walk in.
A footman received him, as it were, from the hands of the hall
porter, who promptly went back to his hooded wicker-chair, like a
dog into its kennel, and the footman led him up the wide, red
staircase that he knew so well, to a small ante-room, in which he had
sometimes waited before.
The whole thing amused Frank hugely. He was not at all de-
pressed at the memory of his former gentility, and the contrast
of his present mean estate. On the contrary he was rather elated.
It was the first day of his life on which he had earned money instead
of spending it.
" Please take a seat. Her ladyship has not come up from
dinner yet."
Frank obeyed. It was the first time in his life a footman had
addressed him without saying " sir." It sounded a little odd, that
was all. There was nothing insolent or uncourteous in the man's
manner. He was much too good a servant.
As he left the room Frank fancied he caught him " taking
602 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
stock " of the young man from Jokes & Co. But that might easily
be fancy, or the footman might merely be a little curious as to the
contents of the parcel.
Presently the door was thrown open by another footman, and
Lady Salford entered.
" The young man from Jokes & Co., my lady," the lackey
announced.
Sha smiled a little as she came forward, and the door closed
behind her.
" I think you are Jokes & Co.," she said.
She looked far more beautiful in her evening dress of black
and lilac; and Jokes & Co. admitted instantly to himself that she
was the most lovely person he had ever seen. And yet she was not
supposed to be a beauty. She was generally called the triumph
of grace over feature.
" I have no messengers at present," he replied, " my business is
in its infancy it was born in fact to-day. We shall have, of course,
to get a messenger. At present, I must be my own. I have brought
the china."
" The reason I asked you to bring them," the lady explained,
" was that I would like to ask your opinion as to the genuineness
of a Plymouth group that has been sent me on approval. It is
unmarked, as Plymouth so often is, but I think it is genuine."
She opened an inner door, and led the way into a much larger
room.
Jokes & Co. glanced round. He had known the room very
well. The furniture was mostly familiar, though a few bits of
special interest had been added; but the china, photographs, etc.,
were not those he had been used to see here.
" Ah, how stupid of me ! I forgot to bring it down from my
boudoir. I was rather late and dressed in a hurry. I will ring and
send for it."
Before the lady had finished speaking, the young man had
hastened to save her the trouble, and had rung the bell for her.
Now he had scarcely done so, before he perceived that he had
made a mistake. For the bell, as he had remembered, was in an
unusual position behind the portiere that draped the door.
As his eyes met Lady Sal ford's, he could see that the little
episode was not lost upon her.
" How clever of you," she remarked with a little laugh, " to
know by instinct that the bell was behind that curtain."
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 603
" I am not really very clever, I am afraid," he replied.
She was, he knew, still watching him. He stood, not far inside
the door, in such a position as he imagined a man of his supposed
class would adopt.
" I wonder," the lady said aloud, " if you were ever in this
room before."
" Yes, madam." The young man from Jokes & Co. answered
frankly. " Yours is not the first piece of china I have been asked to
give my opinion of in this room."
The lady seemed a little puzzled, perhaps a little disappointed.
It was quite true that -Frank had been asked in that very place to
pronounce upon a bit of china. And she saw that he spoke the
plain truth. But her next remark was to the footman who an-
swered the bell, and whom she sent to her maid for the box con-
taining the Plymouth group.
While he was absent about his errand, a rather awkward
pause occurred.
To see the young man standing there doing nothing, " at at-
tention " as it were, embarrassed her somehow, though it scarcely
seemed to embarrass him. And yet how could they sit down and
wait together, talking as they would have done, had he been what
he seemed and not what he chose to wish to seem ?
The footman seemed very long.
" Do sit down," she was beginning, when a better idea struck
her.
" These Chelsea figures," she said, " are neither so large nor
so fine as those I got to-day ; but they cost very much more."
Her allusion to them was evidently an invitation to examine
them; he moved forward and did so. But not as he would have
examined a piece of china in that room twelve months ago. He
studiously affected a professional air, and he kept as far from her
as possible.
" No, madam," he observed, with a dry manner that was ab-
surdly unlike his own, " they are not so good not nearly so good as
the Milton or Shakespeare you purchased from us."
The " us " struck her ear.
"Have you a partner?" she inquired half carelessly, but
watching him all the same. " I thought I caught a glimpse of
another er gentleman in the inner room."
" At present, madam," replied the young man in his dry defer-
ential voice, " I represent the firm."
604 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
He did not tell her much.
" The gentleman that I thought might be your partner seemed
so very like a gentleman I have often met."
" Indeed, madam? "
" Yes. Young Lord Hounslow."
" Indeed, madam ? "
" Yes. If you had ever seen Lord Hounslow, you would be
as much struck by the likeness as I was." She watched him cur-
iously as she said this.
" Likenesses, madam " at this point the footman returned
" are very interesting."
Lady Salford felt herself baffled. But she had other arrows
in her quiver.
The footman opened the box and drew forth the costly piece of
bric-a-brac in its multitudinous wrappings of silver paper. Having
unfolded these with as much awe and as little enjoyment as if he
had been undressing an important baby, he left the room.
" And now," inquired the lady, " what do you think of it? "
" I could tell, I think, with my eyes shut, that this is true
Plymouth. There is no other paste at all like it."
Lady Salford watched his long, pointed fingers as they seemed
to caress the white china.
" You say the question of likeness is very interesting," she
observed. " What do you think of chirology? Do you think one's
hands really tell much ? "
" No," he replied, with a light laugh, and forgetting his
" madam," " for if chirology were true, I ought to be a duke at
least; and my grandfather was the son of a bargeman! "
" Nowadays," remarked Lady Salford, " one meets plenty of
pe'ople in society who never had a great-grandfather of any sort!
And besides one has eight great-grandparents perhaps yours
weren't all bargemen."
"Four may have been barge-women," Frank was beginning;
but it struck him that the conversation was no longer professional.
He swallowed his remark and coughed it down sepulchrally, in a
way that really was quite professional as though he had come
to " request a small payment on account."
" It is certainly Plymouth," he declared, setting the group
down upon the flat top of the piano, at which he had often sung.
" May I, madam, hope that you will continue your custom and
patronage? "
if)i2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 605
Lady Sal ford looked somewhat surprised, and perhaps a little
annoyed. She had not intimated that the interview was at an end.
" I have to-day acquired some very splendid miniatures," con-
tinued Jokes & Co., with its hand upon the door-handle. " They
are worth your inspection, madam, if you wish they will be put
aside until you have seen them."
The lady at once expressed her intention of inspecting them on
the following day, and Jokes & Co. withdrew.
VIII.
During the course of the next day Jokes & Co. did a very fair
business, though the purchases did not amount to anything like what
they had reached on the opening day. A very large Chesterfield
sofa, covered with a beautiful silk tapestry, was sold, and for a
couple of pounds more than it had cost, the purchaser being an old
gentleman, who made a specialty of Italian art fabrics.
" I bought that tapestry at Siena," Frank explained to Lord
Hounslow, who had looked in to see how things were going. " It
was filthy then, but I spotted it at once."
" It would have been more to the point to get the previous spots
removed," suggested the jocular young man.
" I did that afterwards. I am delighted to have sold that sofa ;
it took up such a dreadful lot of room, and it was such a temptation
to customers to sit down. It would soon have needed cleaning
again if it had not gone off."
But most of the things sold that day were small and cheap;
nevertheless when closing time arrived the firm was well satisfied.
" Old Gummy St. Roe is coming down here to-morrow," Lord
Hounslow announced. " He is quite keen about buying Lady Olivia
a Virtu-ous present here. I invented that joke while he was talking
to me, and I practiced it on him first. I said : 'Cousin Plantagenet,
Olivia is such a piece of virtue that you ought to go to Jokes & Co.
and buy her one for a wedding present.' The pleasantry can be
varied by turning it that way. He asked who Jokes & Co. was, and
I said they were the people where everybody was going now to
get art bargains. Mind you ask him twice what you intend to take ;
he doesn't care for anything unless he bargains for it. He would
rather give one and ninepence for something marked two and six,
than pay eighteenpence for exactly the same thing if that was the
price asked for it. And he would fancy he had cleared ninepence."
606 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
Having given this advice as to the treatment of his eccentric
old cousin, Lord Hounslow lit another cigarette and sauntered off,
not, however, before promising that one of his father's wagons
should call early the next morning for the sofa, to remove it to the
house of its purchaser.
In the afternoon a short note came by post from Lady Salford.
It was addressed to the firm in the third person, and apologized for
being unable to call at present and inspect the Cosway miniatures.
Lady Salford had been called out of London by the illness of a
relative, but she hoped to be able to return in a few days, and would
then look forward to seeing the miniatures if they were not already
sold. As it turned out, she did not return for a fortnight.
Meanwhile many other articles had been brought to the shop by
persons anxious to dispose of them. Some were of no use, and some
were valued absurdly high by their possessors, especially when the
latter happened to be entirely ignorant of the subject. But a fair
proportion were good enough to purchase, and their owners were
sensible enough to bear in mind that a dealer buys to sell again at a
profit, and that, though he may ultimately realize a very good one,
he may not be able to sell the article at all for years, so that it is so
much absolutely dead capital.
As a rule Jokes & Co. found that the vendors of art objects
were only too anxious to part with them, very much more anxious
than the firm was to purchase them, and there was no need for any
bargaining at all. In fact, Jokes & Co. would not bargain over their
purchases.
" What price do you ask? " the firm would say. If the price
named was such as to suggest a reasonable likelihood of profit, it
would be given at once. If not, Jokes & Co. never offered a smaller
price. They simply declined the article altogether.
A great many of the customers bought nothing but prints, and
some of them would look through a whole portfolio and only buy a
sixpenny print, or perhaps buy nothing at all. It must not be
supposed that Jokes & Co. were always selling articles whose price
was counted by guineas.
One day a very smart landau stopped outside, and a resplendent
footman helped a very resplendent lady to descend. From the ducal
coronet on the panel, and the large single letter under it, the firm of
Jokes & Co. had no difficulty in arriving at the identity of the lady.
The Duke of Fulham is the only duke whose title begins with F, and
as there is no dowager alive, this must be the reigning duchess. Her
1912.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 607
accent soon clinched the matter, for it was unmistakable New Eng-
land.
" I want to look at that round print of John, Earl of Lambeth,"
she announced, with a brief stare of surprise at the shopman, " the
one in the gold olive-leaf frame in the window."
She need not have informed Jokes & Co. of the identity of the
portrait, but the firm did not say so.
The print was taken down and placed in the great lady's hands.
" He was our great-grandfather," she remarked, in a slightly
loud voice, and speaking almost as though she also belonged to a
firm. " Lambeth is the second title in our family."
Jokes & Co. bowed with solemn respect. In the family of
McSlay there had been as yet no first title, as the firm was amusedly
aware.
" It is a very fine print apart from any family associations,"
the young man observed gravely. " It is also very scarce, for the
plate was accidentally destroyed when only a few impressions had
been pulled off. It is after Sir Joshua Reynolds. The original is
at Fulham Court."
" I guess I know that," answered the lady. " I'm the duchess."
She stared at the portrait with her pretty head on one side.
" My husband has a birthday week after next," she announced.
" It would be just lovely for one of my presents. What's the cost
of it?"
" It is ten pounds. But I have a Cosway miniature of the
earl's wife Lady Agneta Bohnn, the beautiful Countess of Lam-
beth. Would your grace care to see it? "
She certainly would, and in spite of its very high price she
bought it. Both print and miniature went away in her carriage, and
next morning a check arrived fof a hundred and ten guineas.
When Jokes & Co. had bought the miniatures they had been
paid for by check, and now the firm made it its business to ascer-
tain through what bank the draft had been cleared. As he ex-
pected Frank found that the check had been cleared through a
bank in the neighborhood, and through it he ascertained the address
of Miss or Mrs. Margaret Dene.
To her he wrote as follows :
MADAM : We recently purchased from you, for the sum of
twenty guineas each, six miniatures by Cosway, one of which we
have now sold for one hundred guineas. We have pleasure in
608 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
now enclosing a check for sixty guineas. Our own profit has
been quite satisfactory, considering the quick turnover, and we
remain, madam,
Your obedient servants,
JOKES & Co.,
p. p. F. S.
The firm did not mention this transaction to Lord Hounslow
or anyone else. But its commercial conscience pricked it.
" Its not business ; no, its not business ! " the original partner
admitted to himself as he wrote the check. " Perhaps I may never
sell the other five at all. No, it isn't business, and there's no use
pretending it is. And 'business first,' but 'pleasure after;' its
pleasure after."
IX.
Half an hour after Jokes & Co. had stepped in next door to
post that unbusiness-like letter, the postman delivered one to the firm
informing it of the return to town of Viscountess Sal ford, and
requesting that if the Cosway miniatures were still unsold they
might be submitted to her. " Lady Salford," said the note, " will
be at home and disengaged to-night at 8 145 ; and if the miniatures
could be sent then, it would give her great pleasure to see them.
Perhaps the representative of the firm whom she already knows
would bring them."
One soon gets used to a new state of life; and Frank did not
now feel it particularly odd to be a shopkeeper. As he was a trades-
man, he was glad that it seemed likely that he should be a successful
one, that was all.
Lady Salford received him in the same room as before, and he
was conscious that she still scrutinized him in the same watchful
manner ; but he found it much easier already to act his simple part
and appear impervious to her conjectures.
The lady was an instant victim to the miniatures. They were
the most beautiful she had ever seen, and several of them were of
family interest.
" I will keep them all five," she said quietly. " I wonder you
can bear to part with them."
" I only bought them," he answered, " to sell again at a profit.
That is our trade." He paused a moment, and then reminded the
lady that she had not inquired the price.
" No, I forgot. Well, what is it? "
I9i2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 609
" Five hundred guineas," he replied. " It is a good deal of
money."
" Yes, it is. But I should rather have the miniatures than the
money."
She sat down at an open bureau of tortoise-shell inlaid with
jasper and ivory and cornelian and wrote the check.
" To the order of the firm, I suppose? " she said.
" Yes, madam, if you please."
Her back was turned to him, but by her side was a small mir-
ror, and, framed in its silver round, was the charming portrait of
herself. The firm of Jokes & Co. sighed a little, catching sight
of it, and wondered which of the miniatures was equal to it. On
the bent face was a sort of smile or so it seemed to the firm of
Jokes & Co.
The young man drew still further back, and seemed to wrap
himself closer than before in his quiet disguise of chill respect.
When the lady had blotted the check, she stood up and turned
to face him.
" When are you going to take a partner? " she inquired.
" Our business, madam, is not yet large enough to justify the
firm in extending itself," he answered.
" I know someone who wants to join it," she said.
Though she watched his face so carefully he betrayed nothing.
" He is quite sound financially," she continued, still
watching.
Jokes & Co. bowed again.
" Anyone, madam, who obtains your recommendation is for-
tunate."
' The young man whom I allude to who would like to join
you in business," continued Lady Salford, " is called Lord Houns-
low; his father, Lord Mortlake, is a very rich man."
Jokes & Co. bowed.
" You know Lord Hounslow, perhaps ? " continued the lady,
with the same watchful carelessness of manner.
' The name is quite familiar to me, madam," admitted the
young man.
At that moment their eyes met, and the lady's was full of
laughter.
" He is dining here to-night," she went on. " I thought he
would be company for my younger sister, whom I brought back to
London with me "
VOL. XCV 39.
610 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP [August,
The lady's blue-grey eyes were still laughing, but her voice was
quite steady and innocent. As for Jokes & Co., that firm was
beginning to look distinctly annoyed. The expression of its face
demanded of the universe what possible concern it could be of his
what dinner guests Lady Salford might invite.
" Besides," added that lady calmly, " I know that Lord Houns-
low would be so glad to meet you."
A sudden flush swept across Frank's expressive face ; his man-
ner grew ten degrees icier than before. He gave no other sign of
having heard the lady's last words, and with a stiffly respectful
salutation, he turned to take his leave.
" If, madam, I can be of no further service to you, I will en-
croach no further on your goodness," he began, but Lady Salford
laughed gently.
" Oh, but you can ! " she declared easily. " You can help me
to amuse Lord Hounslow."
Her eyes traveled behind the firm of Jokes & Co., who turned
involuntarily to follow them. Framed in the wide doorway, leading
to the saloon, stood Lord Hounslow and a lady younger than the
Lady Salford, but singularly like her.
The doorway was an arch which could be filled by a rolling
double door, sliding into the wall at either side; a heavy velvet cur-
tain also draped the opening, and this Lord Hounslow was now
holding aside.
The red flush deepened on Frank's face, and all three saw that
he was annoyed.
" Now, my dear young man," begged Lord Hounslow persua-
sively, " do not look so savage. It is fortunate that the Evil Eye is
not a British Institution or I should shiver in my shoes."
" I am afraid," said the gentle voice of Lady Salford, " you
accuse your friend of playing you false and not keeping your secret."
" I did my best," protested Lord Hounslow meekly. " It was
not my fault if Jokes & Co. looked suspiciously like a gentleman."
Lady Salford's sister laughed. She had been considering the
firm with obvious and undisguised interest.
" I should not have been deceived for an instant ! " she de-
clared in a subdued aside to the company in general.
" It is very tiresome ! " ejaculated Jokes & Co., as if it meant it.
" What is ? " inquired the company.
" Being found out," explained the firm, with a short laugh of
considerable irritation.
I9i2.] A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 611
" Found out ! " cried Lord Hounslow. " Did you think we
should serenely pass for a few curio dealers ? "
" I said nothing about passing for a few," protested Jokes &
Co.
" Why, you were bound to be spotted by the very first customer
who entered the shop ! " declared Lord Hounslow.
" I was the first customer," remarked Lady Salford mildly, but
with complacence. " I certainly spotted ! "
" For my part," declared Lady Salford's sister, " I object to all
the laugh being turned against the eminent firm of Jokes & Co. It
is not justified by the facts. Mr. Street "
" Margaret! " cried Lady Salford.
" Miss de Senlis ! " shouted Lord Hounslow.
" You're not going to turn the tables against us? " expostulated
her sister.
" Aren't I, though; " laughed Miss de Senlis, with a fine indif-
ference to grammatical restrictions. " Mr. Street," she continued,
turning to our hero, " I am rather hurt by your failure to recognize
me again. I did think I had made a deeper impression."
The firm bent all its attention on the lady, with some glimmer-
ing of a suspicion that the voice was somehow familiar.
" Don't you remember writing to me ? " she demanded. "Don't
you even recall the little fact of having bought six Cosway minia-
tures of me? "
"Were you the distressed Miss Margaret Dene?" inquired
Frank, with a dawning and rather grim amusement.
" I was I was ! But remember it was not my scheme ; it was
Annette and Lord Hounslow who invented the shameless plot.
And it was Annette's miniatures I sold to you, and of which you
have sold one to the Duchess of Fulham. Oh, dear, oh, dear! "
All four burst out together into peals of laughter.
And thus it was that the great intimacy began between Lady
Salford and her sister, and Mr. Street and his friend Lord Houns-
low, which ended, as may be told elsewhere, in a certain " Double-
Wedding in High Life."
(THE END.)
THE MUFFIN MAN.
BY ANNA T. SADLIER.
I.
USK was falling over the distant empurpled hills. The
peaks of the Laurentian chain and the misty shad-
ows were scarce discernible in the distance. From
the summit of Mount Royal, in the foreground, it
was stealing down from the Northern city. It was
Autumn, when the short days, robbed of their midsummer glory,
seemed to hurry into the shadows of night, but sunset still lingered
over the river St. Lawrence in long horizontal lines of clear topaz,
vivid scarlet and purple. The air had that peculiar clearness which
belongs distinctively to that season in Canada. The trees, which a
month earlier had indulged in a very carnival of color, crimson,
amber, carnation, retained only here and there faded samples of
those glories, or, leafless, shivered at the approach of Winter.
In a dwelling that occupied a corner in a quaint street of Mon-
treal, the candles were already lighted. Over a quilting frame,
which held in process of manufacture a coverlet composed of
squares of silk and satin, were bent three women Mrs. Warring-
ton, the mistress of the house, Elinor, her daughter, and Philo-
mene, who had been nurse to a succession of children, and was now
something between an upper servant and a housekeeper. A sound
presently broke the stillness of the room. A bell rang merrily on
the street without. " Oh, the Muffin Man," cried Mrs. Warrington,
arising and throwing up the nearest window. A whiff of bracing
air entered the apartment, and with it the odor of burning maple
wood, so suggestive of comfort and so characteristic of Montreal.
Mrs. Warrington saw the short, wiry but familiar figure of the
Muffin Man. A large basket was suspended from his shoulders.
This was covered with green baize, though underneath a clean white
napkin protected the muffins.
" Good day, Michel," said Mrs. Warrington.
" Good day, madame," replied the man, touching his cap re-
spectfully. "You want some muffins to-day?"
" To be sure; go round to the door; Philomene will be there in
a moment. You may give her two dozen."
1912.] THE MUFFIN MAN 613
"And the Missy, is she well?" asked the Muffin Man in a
voice that penetrated the apartment.
" Oh, yes, very well," answered Mrs. Warrington, carelessly.
Elinor, rising from her place, went to a window, other than that at
which her mother stood. Her eyes were fixed anxiously upon the
vendor, who contrived to make her a sign. Instantly she withdrew
her head, saying to her mother :
" Philomene need not stir. I will go and take the muffins.
I love to see them, looking so fresh and tempting in the basket. ..."
So saying Elinor hurried out of the room. It was characteristic of
her to be prompt in little as well as in great things. She ran
along the darkened halls, opened the front door, and paused upon
the threshold. The street without was bleak, the gray stone houses
opposite dull and dreary. All the color had faded from the sky,
leaving only a rim of pale gray and white at the horizon.
There were but three steps from the pavement to the door,
and Michel, seeing Elinor, rapidly ascended them. He withdrew the
covering and displayed the muffins, lest the watchful eyes of Mrs.
Warrington might observe him speaking the while in a rapid mono-
tone.
" Will you be in the garden this evening, at the corner far-
thest from St. Urbain Street, just before the bell rings for the
dead?"
"You have news?"
" News that presses. There are the muffins."
He covered up the basket, touched his cap, and went down
the steps. Elinor shivered despite the warmth of the big hall stove,
as she pursued her way towards the larder.
The comfort of the house struck her forcibly. The stove gave
out heat, and the aromatic odor of spiced pears mingled with savory
herbs from roasting chickens. Returning to the quilting, Elinor
stitched away at the squares which Philomene marked out, fear-
ing lest her mother might notice the trembling of her hands. Being
eager to finish their allotted work, all three continued to sew
until the Angelus sounded from the great tower of Notre Dame.
With one accord they knelt, and Mrs. Warrington gave out the
prayer, after which came the signal for the cessation of labor.
II.
A northerly wind swept down from Mount Royal. The pale
crescent of a moon converged towards its zenith in the sky. The
garden's quaint rows of bachelor's buttons, phlox, carnations, and
6 14 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
mignonette had long since settled down to a serious gray green-
ness of branch and leaf. Elinor noted these signs with a pang of
regret, as she passed hastily through the paths. Having arrived at
the far corner of the garden, she paused and looked anxiously about
her. Michel did not keep her long in suspense. His brisk step soon
echoed on the pavement, and in a little while he lifted the latch of
the gate.
" You are punctual, mademoiselle," he said touching his hat
with grave respect. " It is well, for time presses."
Elinor's serious eyes were fixed upon the peddler's face. "Your
news concerns Monsieur de Laverdure? "
" Yes, yes," answered the Muffin Man, " What have you
heard?"
" Of the fight at St. Denis, and a rumor that he has been taken
prisoner."
" He has been taken prisoner," declared Michel.
" And can it be true," inquired Elinor, " that Sir John Col-
borne, having come into power, has proclaimed martial law, and
that the prisoners will be shot? "
" If worse does not befall," answered the man grimly.
Elinor gave a low cry and shrank from Michel, as though he
had been the executioner, and was prepared to carry out the sen-
tence.
" That is what I have come here about," went on Michel,
rapidly. " Monsieur Maurice is indeed in the jail, but if all goes
according to my plan, he shall not remain there."
The girl's eyes devoured the man's face, but she asked no
questions.
" I have been down there to-day with muffins, you understand.
My basket had other contents : a rope, a file, a word of instruction."
Elinor drew in her breath sharply.
" How brave, how splendid of you, Michel," she cried.
" To-night, as quickly as I can return, he shall leave there. I
have come here for a disguise such a costume as will not excite
attention. In fine, I want a bonnet, a dress, a cloak, some hair."
" You shall have them," cried Elinor, " as soon as the eight
o'clock prayer is said. My absence from that might be noticed."
" True," said Michel. " I can wait here."
" But where will he go ? " inquired Elinor. " Every place is
watched."
" We must get him across the river," answered Michel with de-
termination. " Were it not for this right arm which is paralyzed,
1912.] THE MUFFIN MAN 615
I could row a boat, and all would be easy. But as it is, whom can I
get. Whom can I trust ? "
There was a note of despair in these questions. " But the
attempt must be made," he added quickly.
" Michel," whispered Elinor, looking about her as though she
feared some lurking eavesdropper, " I can row a boat."
" You? " cried the man in horror. " No, it would never do.
Monsieur Maurice would be the first to object. Besides you could
not row so far." t
" I am strong. I can use my arms, and there is Philomene."
Michel's face brightened. " Philomene. Oh, I forgot ; she
will do. She is one with us, and can be trusted. She, too, was a
tenant of the Laverdures."
His rugged face worked with irrepressible emotion.
" But to think," he cried, " that I am of no use. Like a tree
with its branches withered. Oh, were I young again! If it had
not been for that accident "
" You would perhaps have been at St. Denis yourself," sug-
gested Elinor.
Michel shook his head. " I am not so sure of that," he said.
" Though it is not that I fear fighting. I have seen some, you under-
stand, with de Salaberry at Chateaugay. I was a boy, then, but
to-day, well wiser heads than ours have said that we should keep
out of this business. I obey. But with Monsieur Maurice it is
another thing. He is foolish; he has the hot blood of youth in his
veins, but we must save him."
" With the help of God and our Blessed Mother, we shall do
it, Michel," cried the girl.
" Yes," said Michel. " Wonderful things ma foi are done by
prayer. Some time I will tell you of those I have seen, but not now.
It must be time for the bell."
With a swift direct movement Elinor hurried towards the
house, just as the bell of Notre Dame solemnly tolled its appeal for
the remembrance of the departed. In answer to the summons, the
entire Catholic population of Montreal knelt, forgetful of the strife
and uneasiness of the hour. As Elinor prayed for the dead, she
added a supplication, that likewise came from the depths of her
heart, for the success of the desperate undertaking wherein she was
to have a part.
She found, a few minutes later, that her plan commended itself
to the French woman, who had the daring and the resourcefulness
that had enabled her forefathers to penetrate the all but inaccessible
616 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
wilds of New France. Yet she felt it a duty to offer a remonstrance
against the peril and grave inconvenience to which her young mis-
tress would be exposed. She was met by a response from which
there was no appeal.
" If you do not come with me, I will go alone."
Philomene knew that, under pressure, her young mistress
was capable of carrying out such a threat, and, moreover, she herself
was deeply moved by the spirit of feudal loyalty that inspired the
censitaires, or tithe-payers of each manorial domain. Like Michel
she had passed her youth on the Laverdure estate, and had a special
devotion to Monsieur Maurice, the last scion of that fine old stock.
She quickly understood what was required as to costume, and has-
tening to the garret she procured some clothing, and some false
hair that had been used in private theatricals. The Muffin
Man was waiting in the garden. She placed all these in his posses-
sion, and, receiving from him a few precise instructions, she and
her young mistress followed him out through the garden gate.
III.
It was a dark night. The pale crescent of the moon had gone
down behind the misty rim of the horizon. The jail loomed gloomy
and forbidding. Within all was still as death. The round had just
been made, and the guards yawned at their posts. Only in one cor-
ner of the building was there life and activity. That was in the
cell of Maurice de Laverdure.
This young man was not robust, but his frame bespoke cap-
abilities of endurance. His limbs were supple through constant
exercise in the open. He stood erect, alert, with his keen eyes fas-
tened on the grated window, waiting the signal from below. He
could only surmise the hour from the setting of the moon. Presently
his strained ears caught the low but distinct call of a bird. It was one
which he had learned from Michel in the woods, surrounding the
manor. That was long ago before this dream, foolish and fal-
lacious, as many wise men thought, had carried away his ardent
spirit. On the instant he knotted a rope around his waist, one end
of which had already been made fast. Then, with such a prayer
as men pray in the face of death, he mounted the sill of the window
and steadied his nerves for the descent. He fancied he heard steps
in the corridor. He paused, but it was some steps from afar which
his imagination had brought near. He glanced downwards, but
there was nothing to be seen. Still hesitating he looked upwards
into the dark, blue vault, studded at irregular intervals with planets
1912.] THE MUFFIN MAN 617
that glowed and burned. Into his mind came the line, from a dimly
remembered page of the classics, " through difficulties to the stars."
The words harmonized well with his character, eager, impetu-
ous, swift to dare, prompt to accomplish. What if this attempt
failed, and he were re-captured? Would it not be better to die in
effort than in inglorious waiting? He lingered no longer, but
slung himself over the sill and went down, half enjoying the swift
movement and even the very consciousness of danger. In the twink-
ling of an eye he had reached the bottom, and forth from the shelter
of a tree darted a shadow, endowed with life and motion. The
rope was cut and Maurice stood free. He hurried away at a fearful
speed, always keeping pace with the shadow. Suddenly, the shadow
began to speak, and the voice was the voice of Michel, explaining
that the fugitive must array himself in the clothes offered him.
Maurice betrayed an expression of disgust and repugnance. Into
his ear came the admonition," " Don't be a fool, Monsieur Maurice,
and spoil everything." In a few moments of rapid walking the two
reached the shore. The river glimmered through the darkness, as
it lapped sullenly against the wharf, its swiftly flowing current
rushing downwards towards the gulf. Soon they were within sight
of a boat, wherein were two figures. " Enter, Monsieur Maurice,"
the shadow whispered, " and not a word until you are across. The
human voice carries far."
Maurice, awkward because of his unfamiliar apparel, took his
place in the craft, and the boat, skirting the shore for some distance,
suddenly pushed out into mid-stream. Purple black, at first, was
the vast plain of water, save where it was lightened by wavelets,
that caught the light of the stars. A dreary wind whistled by,
driving the water into formless eddies and propelling the boat
onwards. From the receding shore the turrets of Notre Dame and
the pointed steeple of the Bon Secours stood out in bold relief.
The farther bank, towards which the boat was heading, lay, as yet,
formless and indistinguishable.
Upon Maurice came a sudden realization of the situation : that
he was flying for his life, and that, at any moment, his flight
might be discovered. How interminable seemed that distance ! How
slow their progress despite the strenuous work of the rowers ! He
strained forwards, as if to grasp the oars, only to remember his
disguise, and the possibility that his identity was unknown even to
his companions. With a shock he suddenly discovered that they
were women. He watched them eagerly, with a growing suspicion
that delighted while it appalled him. The idea became so over-
6i8 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
powering that, as his eyes fastened themselves on that one of the
rowers who sat farthest from him, unmindful of Michel's warning,
forgetful of aught else, he leaned towards her with the single word,
" Elinor."
There was no answer, and he saw immediately the imprudence
of mentioning her name, for his suspicions might be unfounded.
The possibility that they were not filled him with a new exhilaration,
and served to shorten the period of enforced inaction and suspense.
He could at least anticipate that moment of landing when he should
find himself face to face with this being so dearly loved, who had
risked so much for his sake. He worked himself, meantime, into
a very fever of gratitude, and he told himself that his love could
neither change nor waver until the stars above grew pale. He had
no eyes for the other rower, and it was only after reaching the
shore that he discovered it to be Philomene. That excellent woman,
in stepping aside to allow him a few undisturbed moments with her
companion, did him another service. Fervent was their greeting
and earnest the vows of life-long constancy; so easy in the light of
hope and love; so difficult in the darkness of absence, doubt and dis-
couragement.
Philomene, chafing with impatience, at last interrupted their
interview : " Children," she said, " there is not a moment to be lost.
Everything, as the excellent Michel has declared, depends upon
haste. And see there "
The two turned, and beheld in the shadow of the high-steepled
parish church of Laprarie, motionless as a figure of fate, the driver
of a horse and light wagon. Yet still the lovers lingered, and it
was Elinor, who first found courage to say :
" You must not wait a moment longer, Maurice."
Convulsively he clasped her hands, as she exclaimed through
her tears :
" May God keep us both till we meet again."
Then Maurice, approaching the driver, repeated the bird call
that had been Michel's signal. It was answered instantly, and the
young man sprang into the vehicle, and was whirled into the shad-
ows, but not without many a backward glance for a glimpse of the
face that had paled in the agony of farewell. When he could see
her no longer, he folded his arms resignedly, making no inquiries
as to his destination. In many a farm house along the route sleepy
habitants stumbled to the window for a sight of that flying vehicle.
Some crossed themselves and shook their heads, while in all the
neighborhood legends were set afloat of the strange conveyance
I 9 i2.] THE MUFFIN MAN 619
which, in the dead of night, dashed at full speed through the shad-
ows of the trees. It was not until a considerable distance had
been covered that Maurice was informed that his hiding place was
to be in the Beloeil Mountains, where pursuit would be practically
impossible. Suspicion was little likely to be directed to such a place.
There he was to remain until it would be safe to make his way to
the United States. He would be supplied with food by this same
cousin of Michel's, who had agreed to convey him thither on the
condition that he should not be asked to cross the river.
IV.
During all this time the Muffin Man was left to anxious re-
flections. His anxiety for the safe departure of Monsieur Maurice,
for his own safety and the convoy homewards, through sentry-
haunted street, of the two women, caused him no little fear. A
quaint figure he made, as by the light of the stars, he watched the
boat upon its way, praying in simple but devout fashion, until it
had passed from his range of vision. He then took up his station
in a doorway that was surrounded by the impenetrable blackness
of the deserted wharf. There he waited ; his thoughts moving back-
wards and forwards like a shuttle cock. He thought of the Maurice
whom he had known as a boy, as well as of the Maurice who had
become involved in the revolutionary attempt.
When, at last, he helped ashore the two weary and exhausted
women, and drew the boat into hiding, the three took their way
through the least frequented streets of the drowsy old city, which
had lately taken on a sinister activity. More than once, by Michel's
quick-witted ingenuity, they eluded the sentries stationed at regular
intervals. At the garden gate, Michel parted from his companions,
and took his way secretly to his tiny, white-walled house.
V.
During the absence of Elinor, her father, who sat smoking
while his wife knitted in the living-room, suddenly inquired where
the girl had gone. He appeared to be satisfied when Mrs. Warring-
ton explained that she had probably gone to her aunt's, and that
Philomene was with her. He made some grumbling remark as to
the folly of women gadding abroad in such unsettled times, and
that he would have to go and bring them home. By some inex-
plicable instinct Mrs. Warrington combated this latter suggestion,
reminding him that either uncle or cousin would be sure to act as
escort. The master of the house was easily persuaded that he
620 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
should not have to inconvenience himself by stirring out. He was
a thick set, pursy man, of a type that made people wonder why his
wife had married him, and who delighted in that petty despotism
which forced the women of his household into unnecessary conceal-
ments. He began to talk presently of the arrest and almost certain
condemnation of young La verdure, who, other matters apart, was
the son of an old neighbor, since the Laverdures commonly took
a town house for the winter. Mrs. Warrington reminded her hus-
band that they had a deeper interest in the affair, because of the
engagement existing between the young rebel and their daughter.
To this the father replied that it was an engagement of which he
had never approved, since Maurice had but little money, and that
his connection with the insurgents would now bring the matter to
an end, even if the hangman did not save them any further trouble.
Having worked himself up into decided ill humor, he took himself
off to bed, leaving the mother a prey to misgivings for which she
could scarce account. She frequently went to the window, but she
seemed to watch in vain. It was, in truth, through the garden
that Elinor finally came, and by this very circumstance the mother
inferred that the two had come home unattended, and that they had
not been to her aunt's. She said nothing, however, waiting quietly
in the hall, while Philomene passed upstairs, and Elinor came
directly towards her, with pallid, weary face, and eyes unnaturally
bright.
" Mother," she began hurriedly, " do not ask me where I have
been. It is better, far better, that no one should know."
" It is not better," declared the mother gravely, " that I should
be kept in ignorance. In fact, it is imperative that I should be told."
Elinor's serious eyes, startled out of their usual expression,
met her mother's glance frankly. In them was neither fear of
reproach nor displeasure, but their expression conveyed that the
girl had gone far past that point, and had entered into the tragic
realities of existence.
" If you wish," she said quietly, " I will tell you, but it would
be much better not."
" Tell me," said the mother with some sternness.
" There was a life to be saved," confessed Elinor, " I have
given what help I could."
"But, how, where?" the mother cried, frightened out of her
composure.
" Maurice was a prisoner. It was said that Sir John meant all
prisoners to be executed. There was no other hope."
1912.] THE MUFFIN MAN 621
Then throwing one arm round her mother's neck, she added :
" Don't look like that, you must forgive me. I had to do it,
and now I am tired, very tired."
She seemed, in fact, so utterly exhausted that there was nothing
to be done but help her up to bed, where, with a long sigh of relief,
she closed her eyes and lay motionless. Mrs. Warrington stole
away, only to return now and then to see if all was well with Elinor.
Each time as she stood looking down upon her, the conviction grew
that whatever might be the rash indiscretion into which Elinor had
been betrayed, her work was done, and she could sleep. Not so
the mother. She was full of a torturing anxiety as to the conse-
quences of her daughter's act, through which gleamed the hope that
the venture had been successful, and that the bright, impetuous,
lovable youth whom she had seen grow up almost from infancy
might be saved. By the intensity of her own feelings, too, she
gauged what would be those of Maurice's parents, as well as of her
own Elinor, who from early childhood took everything so poig-
nantly to heart. She could understand even while she wondered.
VI.
When Michel reached his dwelling upon that eventful night, he
looked up at the roof and down at the walls, as though in the
stirring events of the last few hours they must have changed. But
without and within the cottage was the same. Even the muffin
basket stood waiting in its accustomed place for those rounds which
he should have to make in the morning.
It was a bright morning that followed. The grayness of the
previous day having departed, and stifling those misgivings which
oppressed him, he started upon his customary route. He was aware
that nothing must make him omit a single step in his itinerary, lest
that circumstance might excite remark.
As he went from street to street, from house to house, some-
thing of the excitement that possessed the ordinarily quiet city crept
into his mind. On the one hand he seemed to feel the thrill of those
incendiary meetings which, with the engagements at Charles and
St. Denis, had added fuel to the flame of popular agitation. On
the other, of those nightly parades, the enrollment of volunteers,
and the enforcement of martial law. The more prominent leaders
had nearly all been arrested, and in some instances had broken jail,
with a facility that argued the connivance of a friendly or indiffer-
ent official. That stern soldier, Sir John Colborne, had been sent
622 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
as military commander, with the avowed purpose of taking drastic
measures to put down the insurrection.
Everywhere Michel found the city divided in sentiment. The
sympathizers with revolt were chafing under new restraints, and
the partisans of the existing order were ready to condemn their
adversaries. Everywhere there was an eager seeking for news, and
an expectation of momentous happenings. Michel feared to ask
a question, or to hear tidings which might point to the latest feature
in the highly colored panorama of the time : the escape of Maurice
de Laverdure.
As the muffins disappeared from his basket, and the cold
November day merged into early darkness, he was both relieved
and astonished that no fresh sensation had agitated Montreal.
It was only as he sat quietly at his frugal supper, that he became
convinced that the flight must have been discovered, but that the
authorities for reasons of their own were keeping the matter pri-
vate. In considerable agitation of mind, he rose and paced the
room, mechanically putting away the remnants of his supper, and
regarding his muffin basket where it stood against the wall. He
had come to regard it almost as a companion, so long had it accom-
panied him on his rounds.
All the old soldier was alive in him at the rumors of battle
that were all around him, but his common sense informed him that,
just as might be the demands of these insurrectionists, no man who
had passed three decades could deceive himself as to the military
outcome of the struggle. Not even the wisest could see with pro-
phetic eye that near future when the demands of those same rebels
would be the foundation of the new, national policy, lending fresh
vitality to the State.
The thread of his meditations was cut short by a knock at
the door, that filled him with instant and sure foreboding. He sel-
dom had visitors. Throwing the door open, he found those without
whom he expected to see. When placed under arrest, he made no out-
cry, only expressed his wonder that so insignificant a person as him-
self, so infirm physically and of advanced age, should be suspected.
" All that, Messieurs," he said, " is for youth." But farther
than that, he neither affirmed nor denied, listening with composure
to the charge against him. Next day the town was treated to a
new sensation. The news spread like wild fire that the Muffin Man
had been arrested for the rescue of a young and popular prisoner,
Maurice de Laverdure. The public was still talking of the capture
of that brilliant social favorite in the engagement at St. Denis, and
1912.] THE MUFFIN MAN 623
now it had to fix its astonished eyes upon a less picturesque but no
less daring figure, that of the Muffin Man.
Despite the utmost efforts on the part of the authorities, nothing
could be discovered of the whereabouts of Maurice de Laverdure.
It was presumed that, like other fugitives, he had found his way to
American soil and successfully eluded justice.
VII.
The trial of the Muffin Man was the next sensation. The court
room was crowded by all who could gain access thereto, and every
eye fixed upon that familiar but hitherto insignificant figure. Called
to the bar, Michel comported himself with singular dignity. His
name was taken and his occupation demanded. His answer con-
tained so much of drollery that there was a speedily repressed burst
of merriment in the audience.
Question followed question as to his movements upon
that eventful night, and his answers displayed a rare ingenuity in
telling little, while adhering to truth.
He baffled his questioners at every point. The case against
him rested solely upon his visit to the jail on the morning preceding
the escape, and so the prosecuting attorney had presently to change
his ground, and seek to establish a motive through the relations
of Michel with the prisoner.
It was then that the impassive countenance changed, and a
light came into the faded eyes and behind the dull coloring of the
skin, as though a lamp had suddenly been lit. There was deep silence
in the court. Everyone listened for the reply of the prisoner. It came
swiftly, impetuously, as if the accused had thrown off all disguises :
" I would die for Monsieur Maurice."
The applause that broke forth was genuine and spontaneous.
The little gray man in the rough, frieze suit had suddenly attained
heroic proportions. It was presumptive evidence, however, of the
strongest kind, and, together with his visit to Maurice and a frag-
ment of conversation which had been overheard by a gaoler,- suf-
ficed for his condemnation.
VIII.
Meanwhile at the house on the corner of St. Urbain Street,
the father alone went his ordinary way, openly rejoicing that Mau-
rice de Laverdure was likely to be out of his daughter's way for an
indefinite period. The rest of the family were possessed by a
subtle uneasiness. They were in constant terror lest the result of
624 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
that memorable night's adventure might become known. Mrs.
Warrington was well aware that to Elinor the absence of Maurice
would be a merely accidental circumstance, with no bearing upon
her engagement.
At first Elinor rejoiced at the success of that desperate ven-
ture, and went about the house gayer than was her wont. Her sep-
aration from Maurice was indeed an evil infinitely less. But the
arrest and condemnation of Michel to imprisonment threw her into
a tumult of feeling. She suffered acutely from remorse, and a pas-
sionate self-reproach that he alone should be punished for an offense
wherein she had played a conspicuous part. Nor was she comforted
by the reflection that Michel had originated the plot, and would
doubtless have found other instruments for its execution; nor yet
by the peremptory message which the Muffin Man contrived to send
her: that she would only make matters worse, and possibly lead
to the re-capture of Maurice, by any confession of her share in the
undertaking.
Elinor was not of a nature to sit down under such a condition
of affairs. With her mother's consent, and the reluctant concur-
rence of her father, she went about the city, in company with Madame
Laverdure, obtaining signatures to a petition for Michel's pardon.
Apart from the influence of those instrumental in framing this docu-
ment, there was scarcely one of the Muffin Man's customers who
did not affix his signature. Armed with the petition, and ac-
companied on that occasion by her mother, she sought an interview
with the military commander. In Elinor's mind was the resolve,
which she did not confide to her mother, of confessing to the Gov-
ernor her own share in the rescue, and permitting him to take such
steps as he thought fit.
Sir John, who had purposely departed from the conciliatory
methods of the Earl of Cosford, late ruler of the colony, found his
stern principles put to the test when confronted with a pale, slender
girl, scarce out of her teens, who, fixing soft and serious eyes
upon him, inquired if it were just that a poor, illiterate man should
suffer the whole vengeance of the law for an attempt in which she
took a leading part. Never was man or soldier placed in a more
difficult position. And yet, even if his heart or his humanity had
permitted him to arraign this self-confessed offender, what a storm
would be raised and what sympathy evoked for the cause! In his
secret heart he knew, moreover, that the offence committed had, in
fact, saved the government from the onus of putting to death, on a
charge of high treason, a young and popular son of the soil.
1912.] THE MUFFIN MAX 625
He paced up and down, deep in thought. Finally, he halted
before Mrs. Warrington, who was pale and dismayed by the turn
which Elinor had given to the interview. The Governor found her
a person upon whom he might vent some of those emotions which
were agitating his mind.
" And may I inquire, madanie? " he said gruffly, " if you were
aware of this unspeakably rash and culpable proceeding on the part
of your daughter? "
" Most emphatically, I was not," Mrs. Warrington answered.
" You would have prevented it? "
" There is little doubt that I should, but " and pausing she
looked the Governor steadily in the face, " I cannot say that I regret
that ignorance on my part, since you know as well as I that the
generous enthusiasm of youth is its own best excuse."
There was something in her frankness that the Governor liked,
but he said: " Just now that enthusiasm has created a very unfor-
tunate situation."
"Is that so certain?" inquired Mrs. Warrington quietly.
" Monsieur de Laverdure has practically banished himself from the
country, to which some day, if so permitted, he may return a wiser
man, with the capabilities of a useful citizen. Or he may remain,
where we suppose him to have gone, and be one more exemplifica-
tion of that saying of a British king : 'Cursed be the laws that de-
prive me of such subjects.' '
Sir John would not, of course, discuss that part of the subject,
though, in truth, he was surprised at the superior intelligence of
the woman, the sane and just view she took of matters, and the
courage and resolution which made her thus bold to speak. He
saw the same qualities reflected in the deep, steady gaze of the
daughter. After a few denunciatory sentences against rebels in
general and Laverdure, and the leaders of the movement in par-
ticular, punctuated by moments of silence, which neither of his
visitors broke, he asked abruptly :
" And what would you expect me to do in such an emergency?"
' To keep what my daughter has confided to you inviolably
secret," answered Mrs. Warrington boldly.
" Still more," added Elinor, fixing her gaze, wistful, innocent,
appealing, upon the rugged countenance of the soldier governor, " to
give your favorable attention to this petition."
" Petition what petition ? " cried Sir John, as one who, when
drowning, catches at straws.
VOL. xcv. 40.
626 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
Elinor silently presented to him the scroll praying for Michel's
pardon, and bearing the names of Montreal's chief citizens, loyal
or disloyal. Sir John, having glanced hastily over it, responded :
" Leave this with me. I will see what can be done. All I
promise at present is to take the document into consideration."
As the women rose to go, he added :
" Of course the details of this visit must be kept absolutely
secret by you as they shall by me. No more confessions, if you
please, young lady, and no more tampering with rebels, or I shall
be obliged to order you into captivity. Unless, indeed," he concluded
with a grim smile, " you would prefer a sentence of banishment."
The smile, the blush, the glance of humorous intelligence, with
which Elinor received this witticism captivated the governor, who
stood looking after the mother and daughter, reflecting that some of
these colonials were particularly charming women.
So in that instance, at least, Sir John Colborne showed ex-
ecutive clemency, and very soon Michel was ringing his bell and
peddling his muffins as of old. In fact he was better off than ever,
for his custom was enormously increased. Not only did his old
customers support him, but others through interest, sympathy, or
mere curiosity were led to make purchases from the now cele-
brated basket.
IX.
The excitement caused by that rebellion, which, though in-
effectual at the time, caused such important results, had long sub-
sided. Eleven years after Montreal could scarce realize why it had
been stirred to its depths by the capture, condemnation and escape
of Maurice de Laverdure, in which the Muffin Man had been im-
plicated. Many of the chief actors in that brief but momentous
drama had passed beyond the bourne, or had faded into the obscur-
ity of private life, when suddenly it was announced that a general
amnesty had been proclaimed by the British government, permitting
those who had been exiled or had escaped to return to their native
country.
Elinor Warrington heard the news with a curious mingling of
emotions. Many months had elapsed since she had last heard from
Maurice de Laverdure from a town in the middle West of the
American States. She had decided that he must be dead, that he
had forgotten, or was married to some one else.
His earlier letters had been so full of ardor. In fact, there
had been times when she could scarce restrain him from braving all
IQI2.] THE MUFFIN MAN 627
things by returning for a sight of her. As the years went by, his
letters changed in character. He had apparently accepted his sit-
uation, and recognized the folly of such an attempt, declaring, more-
over, that he would never ask her to accept the rude conditions of
his present abode. This common sense view of the matter had been
dispiriting to the ardent girl, and the total cessation of correspond-
ence had seemed its natural corollary.
The years which stretched between had brought Elinor from
sweet nineteen to thirty, and robbed her figure of something of
its slenderness, and her face of its first elusive charm. To the girl
herself, it had seemed as if she had grown old. She exaggerated
the changes with the hypercriticism of one who sees not with her
own eyes, but with those of another. Her first gladness of spirit
on reading the headlines in the paper announcing that a long de-
ferred hope had been realized, therefore, gave way to a sickening
fear. If Maurice came back at all, it might be under circumstances
that would end the old romance forever. Or he might perceive the
alteration in her with a chill disappointment, which honor and
gratitude would compel him to hide.
It was November once again, and the same monotonous round
was going on in the Warrington household. Again, the three wo-
men sat at the quilting frame, engaged upon a coverlet, the dull
green whereof was faintly outlined with red. It seemed in har-
mony with the landscape, for the sun of late Autumn was sending
pale gleams from the misty atmosphere, and scarce a leaf of green
or yellow or crimson lingered upon the trees.
It seemed to Elinor, when suddenly she heard the Muffin Man's
bell, as if all the intervening years, including that night when she
had gone forth with Philomene, were a dream. She went, as she
had done upon that other day, to the door, and there stood Michel,
more bent, more frizzled, but substantially the same quaint figure.
" Oh ma'amzelle," he cried, at sight of her, " the splendid news
Monsieur Maurice has come home."
The old man could not contain himself for joy, but with tears
streaming down his cheeks related how, on the previous evening,
there had come a knocking at his door, and how on opening it he
had found Maurice. Elinor's heart sank. The fact that her lover
had been so many hours in the city and had not come to seek her,
seemed a confirmation of her worst fears. The Muffin Man, how-
ever, seemed to take for granted that all would be as before, and
Elinor, giving him no clue to her feelings, listened with smiling
countenance to whatever he had to recount.
628 THE MUFFIN MAN [August,
After Michel had gone, the girl stood a moment chilling her-
self upon the threshold, and looking down the cheerless street
where the dust blew in eddies. Quietly, as such things happen in
life, she suddenly saw the figure of Maurice, familiar, yet how
unfamiliar, coming around the corner. This was no brilliant youth
walking as if the world belonged to him, but a quiet subdued man,
whose very gait showed self-restraint and the wholesome discipline
of years.
Something of his old impetuosity appeared when, as they
were seated together in the drawing-room, he cried :
" When can we be married, cherie? The time has been so
long."
To which he added more soberly, as if in consonance with his
new character :
" You know, since the dear father is no more, I have the
scignorie, together with the money I have made out yonder."
And Elinor had responded rather irrelevantly :
" Then you do not find me changed? "
" Changed ? No, let me look at you. Well, yes, perhaps a
little. But you are more beautiful and dearer a hundred times.
And you must not keep me waiting long, for you see we have
already lost eleven years."
" And," said Elinor, hesitating and blushing, " we shall take
Michel with us to the manor. He is getting too old for selling
muffins, and Philomene, too, if she can be spared from here."
" Oh, yes," assented Maurice, " I owe her also a debt of
gratitude."
That was a great wedding shortly after at Notre Dame. Those
directly concerned would have preferred it to be quiet, but it was
the universal wish of friends and acquaintances to be present.
Never was there a more popular pair, for their romantic story, of
course, had been widely circulated. The bridal gifts included an
ancient silver loving-cup from Sir John Colborne, though he had
long ceased to govern Canada.
The most interesting figure, next to the bridal pair, was that
of the Muffin Man, who thenceforth and forever more had re-
nounced his avocation. His baize-covered basket and its contents
were likely to be sorely missed by many of the inhabitants of the
Northern city, which was even then beginning to undergo, with the
disappearance of many of its primitive customs, evolution into a
metropolis.
THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY.
BY ANITA MACMAHON.
One must be a native born ; one must have been cradled in the homely
dreams of the race, if he is to understand what an all-important part the pil-
grimage to his parish church or that of his province plays in the life of a
Breton. The Breton's finest and deepest feelings are one with his lowly house
of prayer ; with its moss-grown enclosure, planted with elm or beech, its
mystical atmosphere sweet with the odor of incense. Anatole Le Brae.
LL the old chroniclers of Brittany write as though
this province were an island, " bois an milieu mcr
alcntoitr," and even to-day the national stamp is
still so strong that one receives the impression of a
land surrounded and protected by the sea.
This effect is particularly striking if, instead of landing at any
of the populous seaports, the stranger sails up one of the lovely
rivers which form natural roadways leading into the heart of the
country, where a Celtic people have retained their language, their
customs, their costumes, and their Faith.
Part of Brittany has of course long been gallicized, and it is
only in Basse Bretagne and especially in the department well
named Finis-terre that life still has that distinctive individuality
which is fast disappearing from the world of to-day, where no spot,
however secluded, is safe from the descent of the tourist in his
motor-car. A line drawn from Plouha, on the English Channel,
to the estuary of the river Vilaine, on the Atlantic coast, would mark
the division of the language : all the country to the west speaks
Breton, all the country to the east French.
Where the Breton language has held its own, we find, as a
rule, that the people have successfully resisted all foreign influence,
and if old King Grallon, looking down from the porch of Quimper
Cathedral, could take note of what passed beneath him, he would
have no difficulty in recognizing his people in the Bretons of to-day.
No other country is perhaps so distinctively Catholic as Brit-
tany. There is an absolute harmony between the people and their
surroundings, which only comes after many centuries of undis-
turbed union, and one becomes immediately conscious that in this
land the Catholic tradition has continued unbroken from the time
that the Gospel was first preached in Brittany.
630 THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY [August,
There is something Catholic even in the physiognomy of the
country: in the meditative beauty of the fertile valleys; in the
austere grandeur of the wild moor lands; and, above all, in the
cathedral silence of the cool green woods, where the veneration
of the early Celt for the forest still finds an echo to-day in the
Breton saying: "The woods are kind to those that suffer; God
has made them a sanctuary, where peace abides and the harmony
of the universe reveals itself."
In this naturally harmonious setting the actual symbols of
Catholicism seem to crystallize the general impression, and to supply
the " high-lights " of the landscape. The clocher-a-jour of the
Breton church, rising among the trees, is everywhere the pivot of
the village. Along the routes, and in the midst of lonely waste-
lands, the crosses and calvaries are so numerous as to appear in-
tegral to the landscape; and interwoven with the hum of Breton life
whether of work or play we always hear the sound of church-
bells, dominating even the clack of the sabots.
It was chiefly the followers of St. Patrick* who brought the
Faith to Brittany, and, here, as in Ireland, realizing that the Celt
had need of beauty and color, the missionaries were, when possible,
tolerant of ancient customs.
The Breton thus retained his veneration for all the wonders
of nature: the sun, the storm-cloud, the forest solitude, the bub-
bling spring, the unfolding of the wild flower, the rustle of the wind
in the trees each continued to have its individual life, with the
difference that the Christian Celt, believing that all life comes from
God, henceforward worshipped the Creator in every living thing.
The importance of the pardons or religious pilgrimages of
Brittany lies in the fact that in them we find not only the religious
feelings of the people manifested in the utmost intensity, but also
all the unconscious, artistic, and poetic sentiments of the race.
These fetes run like a thread of gold through the otherwise some-
what grey life of the Breton peasant.
*Apropos of the fact that Ireland is the traditional cradle of most Breton
saints, the following charming legend is told by M. Anatole Le Braz, who once
asked an old woman at Begard where she thought Hibernia was situated : " I've
heard tell," she replied, " it was a bit dropped from heaven. God formed it into
a steep and solitary land, and anchored it with diamond cables in regions of the
sea unknown to sailors An impenetrable fog encircled it, hiding the island
from the eyes of all, but within it was illumined by a soft, unfailing light. There,
under the form of great, white birds, floated the souls of the saints elect ; thence,
when called, they set forth to evangelize the world. In the beginning, it is said,
they numbered eleven thousand souls. When the call came for the very last
one, the diamond cables parted, and, with the lightness of a cloud, the island
returned to heaven."
THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY 631
The pardons begin in March and end in October, the vast
majority coming between Easter and Michaelmas. During this
period it would be difficult to pass a week in any part of Basse
Bretagne without witnessing one of these fetes, which are often
held round shrines of Druidic origin, as ancient as the race as
in Rome the pagan temples were converted into Christian churches.
The pardons vary in minor points of ceremonial in each diocese,
and even in each parish, but the chief traits are everywhere the
same. The lighting of a bonfire on the eve of the pardon generally
announces the beginning of the fete, which always lasts two days :
the first devoted to religious ceremonies, and the second to popular
amusements. The pardon is, however, essentially a religious
fete, to which people come to obtain an indulgence or
ask some grace or blessing, and if on the morning of
one of the celebrated pardons one could obtain a bird's-
eye view of the country around, one would see on all sides
streams of people moving towards the church, as though drawn
by a magnet. Delegations are sent from all the neighboring par-
ishes, and these march, banners flying and pipers playing, with the
parochial cross at the head of the procession. The pilgrims pro-
ceed to their destination with the utmost gravity, reciting the rosary
or litanies until they come in sight of the church spire, when they
kneel to salute the patron saint they are coming to visit, and then
resume their march, intoning a canticle. Many of the pilgrims
come barefooted in fulfillment of some vow of thanksgiving, and
when the shrine is a famous one they begin to arrive at nightfall,
and spend the night in or about the church, unless they are lucky
enough to have a friend at one of the farms around, where the
women folk have been busy for days beforehand getting provisions
ready.
The Masses begin at dawn, and the day is occupied by High
Mass, vespers, and the procession.
The procession is, in some ways, the most attractive feature
of the pardon, for all can take part. It would be difficult to
imagine a more impressive sight than one of these sacred pageants
such as that of the Pardon of Notre Dame de la Palude, or that of
the Pardon of St. Yves at Treguier. By their antique splendor
they recall the frescoes of the early Renaissance painters. A joy-
ous carolling of bells, answered by all the churches in the neigh-
borhood, announces the departure of the procession, which winds
either through gaily decorated streets, or through country lanes
632 THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY [August,
and fields, where nature supplies a still more effective mise-en-scene.
The musicians fifers, drummers, and pipers usually precede,
the sailors of the French navy, who take a prominent part in Breton
pardons, lining the aisle during High Mass and vespers, and carry-
ing a little frigate gay with bunting, at the procession. The real
eclat of the procession, however, comes from the Breton costumes,
which are then seen in their full splendor these gala dresses, so
stiff with silver and gold embroidery that they stand upright if
placed on the ground, are veritable heirlooms, and are laid by in
tissue paper and lavender for the rest of the year. At all times
much of the charm of Brittany lies in the survival of the national
costume, which gives a touch of mediaeval picturesqueness to the
ordinary routine of every-day life, and, like everything else that is
distinctively Breton, this too has a Catholic stamp. The white
coiffes and stiff-goffered collarettes of the women give them quite
a nun-like appearance. This is heightened by the conventional so-
briety of the long-waisted, pointed bodice with hanging sleeves,
and pleated skirt bound with bands of velvet and embroidery. In
the beautiful Breton embroidery, as in the old Breton furniture,
some sacred emblem is usually interwoven with the arabesques and
garlands, showing us in yet another instance how the spiritual
fervor, which found its most striking expression in the symbolism
of the calvaries and shrines, really pervaded the whole of Breton
life.
There is a noticeable difference between the pardons of the
Spring and those of the Autumn, and it is necessary to witness
both if one would understand the Breton character. In Brittany
the Spring has a peculiar charm, a freshness and delicacy of color-
ing only to be found in humid countries. The sky is veiled in a
sort of luminous mist, and the gorse and broom are spreading over
the land. From the first days of March when, according to the
picturesque Breton expression, " the heavens expand," it is as
though the face of Mother Nature softened into a tender smile, and
the Breton is too true a Celt not to respond. The first volley
of bells ushering in the pardon season seems to set a world of
unsuspected sentiments vibrating in the heart of the people, and
the Breton, ordinarily so grave, becomes gay and insouciant as a
child. The young girls take out their most delicate coiffes and
ruffles, their gayest ribbons and aprons, and all their silver finery.
The young men not a whit behind the girls in naive vanity don
their velvet suits, their embroidered vests, and their summer hats
1912.] THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY 633
of white felt, adorned with silver buckles and long velvet streamers.
The roads become crowded with all sorts of conveyances and
pedestrians, and after the long silence of the Winter there is every-
where a revival of hope and energy, which gives the pardons the
nature of a fete champetre, especially as at this season they are
often held in some tiny oratory in the heart of the country instead
of in the parish church.
This Spring blitheness rises in a sort of crescendo up to Mid-
summer-Day, when the fete of the Summer solstice is celebrated
with ardor throughout Brittany, where it would be difficult on St.
John's Eve to find a village, or even a farm, in which the symbolic
bonfire (the Tantad) is not kindled.
After Midsummer-Day there is a noticeable change in the
pardons, which begin to lose their festive character just as, by a
curious coincidence, the sombre note of the heather becomes the
distinctive color of the landscape. As the momentous question of
the harvest begins to preoccupy the people, the joyousness of the
Spring disappears, and the Breton resumes his habitual gravity.
The two great pardons in honor of Saint Anne are grave in
character. Ste. Anne d'Auray is entirely a religious fete, a pil-
grimage rather than a pardon, and it is justly called the Lourdes
of Brittany. And despite the magnificence of the procession at Ste.
Anna de la Palude, of which mention has already been made, the
general impression is melancholy owing to the tragic evidence of
the havoc wrought by the sea during the year, which is presented
by the mourning groups of the widows and orphans of shipwrecked
sailors and fishermen, and by the pathetic remnant of " survivors "
a special feature at this pardon who follow the procession clad
in the weather-stained clothes they had on at the time of the catas-
trophe.
To a population which mainly draws its living from the sea,
the stormy Winter months are typical of danger and want, and as
the Autumn advances the shadow of coming disasters seems to cast
a gloom over the pardons; until these, having begun in the Spring
when everything was full of joy and hope, come fitly to a close on
All Soul's Day, well placed by the Church at the season of the year
when nature speaks of the ultimate decay of all things terrestrial,
and in Brittany grey skies and rolling mists seem to enclose the
land in a perpetual twilight.
******
Such is the Breton Pardon the fervent religious pilgrimages
634 THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY [August,
and fetes in honor of a patron saint. It is the expression of the
highest aspirations of a people, and occupies in their national life
an importance beyond that of the fetes of any other country.
Such is the Breton Pardon; but now, alas ! one is obliged
to make the melancholy admission that it is extremely doubtful
whether it will be possible ten or even five years hence to say the
same.
It is always perilous to generalize about a country, and this
is particularly true of Brittany, where the old Celtic individualism
still survives, giving each commune its own peculiar characteristics,
so that in one village will be found all the old religious fervor; in
another a strong anti-clerical element; in another indifference
hence the conflicting accounts of the Bretons given by tourists ac-
cording to the part of Brittany visited.
Taking, however, Basse Bretagne as a whole, it must be evident
to any close observer that though the pardon still flourishes, though
the framework is still intact, the fine spirit which created it and
gave it its vitality is dying out. For the last ten or twelve years,
owing to a variety of causes which will now be briefly indicated, an
insidious change has been working beneath the surface of Breton
life, undermining the whole structure, and now only a resolute
and united effort on the part of all people of good-will can save
Brittany from the modern blight of scepticism and materialism
a truly lamentable fate for a race which remained tenaciously
faithful to its old traditions throughout the turbulent period of the
Revolution.
Brittany has suffered the usual fate which overtakes pictur-
esque countries where the national life has been maintained. Art-
ists, flying from the horrors of our spurious civilization, discovered
a veritable el dorado in this primitive country, peopled by simple
folk with beauty in their lives: a .beauty which is never
found in non-Catholic countries, as an artist (not of our faith)
observed to the present writer in a little out of the way Breton
village. These colonies of artists made little difference at first.
Workers themselves, and generally impecunious, they gladly adapted
themselves to the life around them. There as elsewhere, however,
they were placed in the unfortunate position of being obliged " to
kill the goose that laid the golden eggs." These artists had to
paint in order to live, and by the pictures which brought them fame
they revealed the beauties of Brittany to the wealthy tourist, who
promptly proceeds to destroy the picturesqueness and simplicity
1912.] THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY 635
he has ostensibly come to admire. To supply the tourist with the
luxuries he requires, the whole life of the country is disorganized,
and monstrous hotels, fitted with all modern requirements, soon
replace the old-fashioned inns. Even in more sophisticated countries
every year brings fresh evidence of the deteriorating effect which the
introduction of a visitor's season has on simple village folk. Among
primitive people like the Bretons the advent of the tourist bids fair
to rub all the bloom off the native life. The short tourist season,
with its extravagant prices, upsets the economic conditions, and
introduces the fever of money making among the people quite
a different thing from the love of money, or closeness, which has
always been a characteristic of the Breton peasant and the evil
is increased by the ill-judged lavishness, or ostentation, of the
tourist, who scatters coppers about and then declares that all Bre-
tons are beggars. The result is that in many of the well-known
resorts the natives regard the tourists simply as " purses," out of
which they try to get enough during the Summer season to support
them for the rest of the year.
How would it be possible for the people to remain simple and
unaffected when they find their whole life their religion, their
amusements, their costumes and customs regarded as a curious
survival of archaic days by a host of inquisitive strangers? Tour-
ists crowd to all the pardons, where, as a rule, their attitude is
either one of contemptuous superiority or of indulgent amusement.
They smile discreetly at the air of grave recneillement with which
the peasants accompany their parochial cross in the procession.
They endeavor to secure snapshots of the most striking incidents,
that is, of the most solemn moments of the ceremony. Some of
them " vote the whole thing delightfully quaint," and the people
" dear simple creatures ;" others " find the show over-rated," and
observe with a certain indignation that " when you have seen one
pardon you have seen them all." Others again, and happily these are
numerous, behave in a manner more creditable to their intelligence
and breeding to one and all the pardon is simply a spectacle.
Besides the tourists a large number of natives also attend the
pardons as spectators, estranged from the Breton spirit by educa-
tion, residence in the larger towns or absence from Brittany. Such
people think it " the correct thing" to treat the pardon as a partie
de plaisir, arriving in char-a-bancs and motors to picnic al fresco,
and amuse themselves at the expense of the simple villagers. Nat-
urally the result is that, except at the lesser pardons which by their
636 THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY [August,
obscurity have preserved their original character, the Bretons are
gradually giving up many of their most touching pieties delicate
flowers of devotion which have withered under the inquisitive gaze
of the spectators.
There is indeed danger that all the beauty of Breton life will
be destroyed as the modern spirit, with its false ideals of culture, ad-
vances into Brittany. All the characteristic features of Breton
fetes are now threatened by some modern innovation: the biniou
and bombarde, by the pianola or the concertina; the gavotte by the
valse; the folksongs by dubious music-hall ditties; the national
costume by the latest Parisian mode; the bard with his gwerz by a
sensational newspaper. In this arcadian land, until quite recent
times, important national events were made known by wandering
bards, and even to-day at the pardons an attentive crowd always
gathers to listen to the rhymed tale of any dramatic occurrence.
The position of the Breton pardon is therefore, as can be im-
agined, seriously imperilled, but real irreverence except that
caused by drunkenness is still happily very rare, and though there
is a decided and annually increasing leakage in the ranks of prac-
tical Catholics, there is on the other hand no country where one
can find examples of a more perfect Faith. At pardons, in the
churches, by the wayside calvaries, one sees immobile figures ab-
sorbed in a very ecstasy of prayer : men and women lifting up their
hearts in supplication or thanksgiving, with an absolute confidence
in the power of the Almighty to work miracles for their sake.
In spite of the ravages caused by alcoholism the curse of
Brittany the people have not yet degenerated in physique, and,
except in certain unhealthy districts, the Bretons, men and women,
are fine types of humanity. Among the women one frequently sees
types full of mystical charm; the men, well-grown and muscular,
have a real dignity of carriage, and express themselves with a
grave courtesy.
As to the excellence of the material from the moral point of
view, one cannot do better than quote a non-Catholic writer, the
Rev. S. Baring-Gould, who writes thus of the Bretons : " Chris-
tianity that is Christian morality has steeped their lives in its
principles. There is drunkenness; it is almost their only vice.
Their religion has made them honest, God-fearing, tender-hearted,
and leading pure lives."
In considering the causes which are undermining the religion of
the Bretons chiefly the anti-clerical war waged by the government,
1912.] THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY 637
the demoralizing influence of the tourist and the spread of alcohol-
ism it is scarcely necessary even to allude to the efforts of Welsh
Xon-comformist ministers, and others, to substitute some form of
Protestantism for the national faith. They have not, and never
can have, any success, though their charitable gifts of fire-wood,
remedies, and linen are naturally very acceptable to the poor, with
whom they are able to establish an unusual intimacy, owing to the
close affinity between the Welsh and Breton languages.
The Breton will be Catholic or nothing. Religion to him is the
Catholicism which is interwoven with the web of Breton life; the
Faith he may be said to imbibe with his mother's milk. It is for-
tunate, therefore, that the clergy have realized in time the danger
of exalting distant places of pilgrimage, as the Breton is much at-
tached to his national saints, whose intercession he usually implores
with a touching humility as though feeling himself too unworthy to
address himself directly to the Almighty.
The extraordinary increase of temperance in Ireland shows,
however, what can also be done in Brittany to eradicate the evil of
intemperance, and in this, as in everything else, we must place our
hopes for the future of Brittany in the success of the Celtic re-
naissance now stirring throughout the land.
Brittany was made part of France in 1532, but was practically
independent up to the Revolution, when all her privileges came to
an end. From this on the French Government systematically en-
deavored to destroy the spirit of local patriotism under the mistaken
impression that by ceasing to be a Breton one would become a
better Frenchman. All the ancient divisions were broken up, and
the country divided artifically into departements, confusing the
different dialects and uniting quite different peoples in short, pur-
suing that disastrous system of centralization which necessarily
creates a race of deracines.
In spite of all repressive measures, the limits of the two lan-
guages have changed little since the sixteenth century, and Breton
is still the ordinary vehicle of speech with one million two hundred
thousand people in Basse Bretagne, though owing to its exclusion
from the school curriculum it has in many places assumed a corrupt
form. In the churches Breton necessarily continued in use for
sermons, confessions, and catechisms in spite of a law which re-
mained a dead letter ordering that no language but French should
be used in the pulpit, and when M. Combes, who fully realized the
advantage the Church gained by the use of the national language,
638 THE PARDONS OF BRITTANY [August,
tried to enforce this law the Bretons raised such an agitation that
the Government had to yield. Since the separation of Church and
state the clergy are of course free to do as they please.
In France, even more than elsewhere, political differences im-
pede all progress, and here again, but for the example of Ireland,
one would despair of the possibility of getting all to work together
for the common good of the country. At the present union is ren-
dered impossible by the intransigent attitude of the Royalist party,
which, in the opinion of the present writer, works incalculable harm
to the Catholic cause. The Republic is fixed in France, and, instead
of wasting time in chimeras of a restored monarchy or empire,
all should unite in endeavoring to make the Republic worthy of a
great people, with a fine history behind them and, let us hope, a
glorious future. Even in Brittany the old attachment to
the monarchy is dead, and the mass of Bretons are republicans, so
that they are placed in a most awkward dilemma at elections, where
the only choice is between a royalist candidate and a supporter of
the government's anti-clerical policy, which, as Catholics, they of
course condemn. If, on the other hand, all the Catholic votes went
together, a far greater number of deputes of moderate views
could be returned. In the same way the position of Catholic func-
tionaries, a numerous class in Brittany, is made peculiarly difficult :
on the one hand they are threatened by the government (directed
by the small section which has unfortunately obtained control in
France), who declare that no good republican can be a Catholic,
and on the other hand they are attacked by the royalist party,
who are equally vehement in declaring that no good Catholic can
be a republican. Thus all the Catholic employees of the government
are deprived of the support of the wealthy and influential Catholic
families, who stand aloof from the life of the country, and by
their avowed anti-republican propaganda furnish their enemies with
a pretext for their policy of tyranny and persecution which they
could hardly wage in the name of Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity !
The masonic system of espionage is too well-known to need de-
scription here, but it may just be mentioned that to the personal
knowledge of the writer, not content with stationing emissaries
at the church doors on Sundays to note down the officials who
attend Mass or who permit their families to do so, they also in-
troduce themselves into private dwellings, and question the con-
cierges as to the newspapers taken by the occupants, their mode
of life, their visitors, etc., etc.!
I9i2.] THE ELECTRIC STORM 639
Brittany has an association similar in idea to the Gaelic League,
L' Union Regionaliste Bretonne, founded in 1898 for the recon-
struction of Breton life in all its forms: artistic, literary, linguistic,
and economic, and here all political opinions are supposed to find
place, the one point in common being that all demand that the
government should raise the interdict against the language in the
State Schools. L' Union Regionaliste issues many Breton publica-
tions, arranges exhibitions and fetes, and organizes the representa-
tion of Breton mystery plays, notably that of Nikolazig, now given
annually at Auray during the Pardon of Ste. Anne, but it cannot
be said that it has as yet reached the mass of the people, and many
of those most interested in the language have never even heard of
the Union, which is confined to a few centers.
The wonderful Celtic renaissance which has transformed Ire-
land during the last ten or fifteen years, expanding the life of the
people physically and intellectually, has yet to take place in Brittany,
and it remains to be seen whether here too the movement started
by a cultured group will finish by gaining the popular classes.
THE ELECTRIC STORM.
BY JULIAN E. JOHNSTONE.
WITH the brilliant pen of the lightning golden,
An angel wrote on the blazing walls
Of Night that palace of Belshazzar olden
Impending doom to the ancient halls.
On the silver throne of the moon in Heaven,
The King sat trembling as he saw the hand
Move over the walls in the halls of even,
While white as spectres his satellites stand.
640 THE ELECTRIC STORM [August,
The stars are the cups of gold and amber
That shake and shiver in their quivering hold,
And the gorgeous guests, in the banquet chamber,
Gaze terror-stricken on the scroll of gold.
Is there any sage, saith the King Belshazzar,
That fiery scripture on the wall can spell ?
And the sovereign shook till the golden mazer
He held in his jewelled fingers fell.
Then into the hall came a man of wonder,
The prophet Daniel, the portentous cloud,
With an eye of fire and a voice of thunder,
And he read the ominous meaning loud.
Thy soul is weighed in the mighty balance,
The rainbow balance in the Hands of God !
Thy reign is over. Like a tattered valance
Thou shalt be shattered, and under-trod !
Day dawned, and the sun, like a splendid Cyrus,
Assailed the City of imperial Night:
And the stately palace like a purple iris,
He wracked and razed with its banners bright.
In the House of Life, like Belshazzar olden,
There sits a King on a silver throne :
And he drinks the wine of melody golden,
And he calls the pearl of the world his own.
But the time will come when an angel argent
Will write his doom on the crimson walls,
And the prince shall pass o'er the purple margent
Of the world where the Judgment trumpet calls.
GLIMPSES OF THE ALL-BEAUTIFUL.
BY HUBERT HULL.
"Or if that language yet with us abode,
Which Adam in the garden t'lked with God."
Francis Thompson.
OR all the commonplaces that follow I plead youth,
a fatigued body, and the road. It came up towards
me, the road, in little leaps, as it were, over the
folds in the ground, and I was reminded of that
old way between Stow and Cirencester which the
natives, I am told, liken to the road through life, since in sixteen
miles there are seventeen hills. With that, as the day was
drawing towards evening indeed the sun, even now, was lost in the
mists of the plain I was led to consider how apt is the old simile
which speaks of the life of man as a journey along a strange road.
Most of all the manner of our end seemed to me like the coming
of a traveler round a sudden bend to the sight of the place which
was the goal of all his journeyings.
As I sat and considered these things a man came up the path
towards me. He was tall and walked fast. A knapsack was round
his bent shoulders. As he drew closer I could see that his eyes
were full of dreams, and that he was talking to himself, as men
do who live much alone. I called out, and he came up and asked for
a match, lit his pipe, and sat silent. I asked him where he was
going. He said " nowhere," and added that if he sought anything
at all it was Pan. He said this with a queer smile, which showed
me I need not fear ridicule, and so I told him of what I had been
thinking, and how apt it seemed to me was that ancient simile
which declared a man's life to be like a journey along an unknown
road.
Now when I had told him of these things, he was quiet again
for a little, and when he spoke it was as to himself and of things
very familiar. He said : " Yes, it is a good comparison, though
wanting of course in many things which are important, as must be
any attempt to sum up in a single simile such a complex and in-
constant thing as the life of man. For myself I have often thought
that in our lives we are like men born in exile, coming at last to
VOL. xcv. 41.
642 GLIMPSES OF THE ALL-BEAUTIFUL [August,
their own country, to sights and sounds strange, yet in some way
familiar, of which though they have no memory, yet the meaning
sleeps in their blood. Or again it is as though we traveled by night
in a strange country, and every now and then a flash of lightning
lit up the way and the place towards which it made. For a moment
the road is plain, and we get a glimpse of the goal. It is only a
moment, and the vision is not long enough for us clearly to under-
stand. Yet in our blindness it heartens us and gives us strength."
At this I was somewhat puzzled, and asked him whether he
had in his mind such high moments as when the sight of a belt of
trees lined against the dawn, or a strange sunset brings one a
flash of understanding, so that one reads a sudden meaning in the
flaming characters of the sky.
" In part that is my meaning," he replied. " Coeli enarrant
gloriam Dei. But surely it is not only through our eyes that these
sudden meanings reach us. I sometimes think of a sixth sense,
which can take sensations received by the other five, but too delicate
for them, and interpret vibrations unmeasured by eye or ear.
For yourself you say that this experience is born of the es-
pecial glories of Nature. In that way, I suppose, most men are so
touched and inspired. But one may find this same thing in painting
and architecture and literature. Indeed, the highest in all these
arts is to be found in these sudden flashes of enlightenment. I
seek and find them most often in music."
A phrase of Newman's sprang to my mind. I remembered
how he spoke of such music as " Echoes from our home," and the
meaning of his words grew plainer.
He went on : " More, it is given to some men to see these
things, not only in the grander and more arresting moments of
Nature, and the greater achievements of Art, but even in things
which we others call common. Such a man once told me that had
men but eyes to see, this hidden meaning is to be found in the
bluff bows of an ordinary boat, or the strenuous framework of
the plough, no less than in the 'pomp of eve and the cold glories
of the dawn.' He would quote these words, for he loved Stevenson,
and used to say that he had some unconscious knowledge of this
great fact. St. Francis, of course, had it to an extraordinary degree.
That is why he used to talk of his little sister the well. Where we
stumble as exiles he walked as a child at home."
He sat silent for a while after this, and I was too full of what
he had said to speak. After a while he went on again :
I9i2.] GLIMPSES OF THE ALL-BEAUTIFUL 643
" Some people think of such moments as merely the revelation
of the Beautiful. For myself I would rather, though the word is
almost as inadequate, call it Truth. I think of such moments
as of words caught here and there in a tremendous answer; as if
we were eavesdroppers on a tremendous secret. That is what I
meant when I said that I sought Pan. I did not mean that old
Greek god of Fear. I meant that I sought what all men seek : the
answer to all their half-understood questionings, the X of the
world's equation, the solution which shall make the crooked ways
straight and the rough ways plain."
He stood up to go. We said good-bye, and he swung off
over the hill. As I went down I came on a small child standing
in the last rays of the setting sun, and in the light of that child's
face, its plain features strangely beautified, I began to see a fuller
meaning in what my friend had said.
What was it that gave the child that subtle something which,
for lack of a better word, must be called Beauty. Its features were
plain ; its clothes unlovely ; its gesture common. It came to my mind
how it is in the eyes of little children that Thompson makes the
soul come nearest to peace in its frenzied flight from the all-pur-
suing love of God. Like calls to like, and surely that which shines
in the eyes of the child is the soul. This is its beauty. It disappears
soon, that timid shining spirit, before the splendors of our mortal
experience like a fairy at the coming of dawn. But, at the begin-
ning of life, and some say, at the end, also, the soul trembles on the
senses' threshold. They are weak these sentinel senses; the
mind, their master whom they serve, is half asleep. Only the soul,
the unresting soul, stands at the door of its sepulchre of clay.
Hence, then, I thought, comes the rare spiritual beauty of a child
the mind still sleeps, only the soul, made in the image of the All-
Beautiful, stirs.
Now it is a thing difficult, nay, almost impossible to separate
the idea of the soul from that of the mind. We live, the most of us,
in and by things of sense; a taste in the mouth; a scent in the
nostrils; sounds ringing in our ears; the subtle learning of the
fingers ; the watchful vision of the eyes. By the miracle of memory
these impressions live. Imagination rummages among them,
shakes and shuffles the kaleidoscope. But imagination does not
create; it combines old experiences. Through the five channels of
our senses runs all the flood of our daily lives.
644 GLIMPSES OF THE ALL-BEAUTIFUL [August,
At one time or another everyone must pass through the stage
of wondering worship of this intellect of ours and its victories. By
everyone I mean those whom Providence has seen fit to confront
with such things. It is not to be considered here how their lot com-
pares with that of those whose lives are fed with simpler things.
Newman, at any rate, poor tortured soul, considered that, as a
critical analytical instrument, our intellect is one of the penalties
of the Fall. Poor, timid, groping, lonely thing, strong and weak,
clumsy and subtle, curse and blessing, this intellect of ours, at any
rate, stands sentry over the garden of our lives. Yet, as I say, some-
times the sentry seems to doze. For beyond all this, separate from
and independent of the mind and its gropings, there lives the soul.
" II y a entre les idees d'ame et de pensee une telle connexion
qu' on ne peut en aucune maniere imaginer 1'une sans 1'autre. Je dis
imaginer, et je dis bien, car si on se contente d'avoir une notion
obscure, vague, et presque nulle, de 1'une et de 1'autre, on peut
aisement 'supposer que Tune peut etre sans 1'autre." (Joubcrt,
Pensee s I. 78.)
Of this notion, I thought, the child was an example. Its beauty
the word is inadequate, for its appearance satisfied no canons of
beauty its beauty lay just in this : that the mind was dormant,
and the truant soul shone from its eyes. And, I say, in the light
of its face, I began more clearly to understand what my friend
had said, and to find it inadequate.
lie had spoken of Truth and Beauty and a sixth sense, but
his thoughts, obviously overflowed the shallow vessel of his words.
I began to be certain that that sixth sense we should do better
to call the Soul.
These sudden moments of feelings, these stabs of high ex-
perience, surely mean more than a special quickening of eye or ear.
Through eye and ear they come, in truth, these subtle vibrations, but
surely the chord they touch is not that on which we play the common
tune of life. These high moments are something greater than the
senses' daily food. We are told of Heaven that " eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man
to conceive what things God hath prepared for them that love him,"
and we whose pains and pleasures come from the mind and its
servants, the senses, find it a dark saying. But the saints, even
within their mortal experience, speak of such things with evident
conviction, and, indeed, we cannot think that all God's rewards
1912.] GLIMPSES OF THE ALL-BEAUTIFUL 645
are on the other side of the grave. And so, for us lesser beings,
may we not think, then, of these high moments as some dim shadow
of the joy of Heaven.
There is an old fable which can be bent to this meaning " the
fable," as Stevenson tells it, " of the monk who passed into the
woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two,
and found himself on his return a stranger at his convent gates; for
he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there re-
mained but one to recognize him." Here surely was an " outpour-
ing of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound," " an echo
from our Home." It affects something greater than the senses,
and therefore time, which is a thing of the senses, vanishes, and the
monk, as it were, steps out of the plane of space and time. We have,
inevitably, to fall back on sense-words to speak of such things.
For my part I would think of them, as though for a moment we
overheard the everlasting conversation of the soul. As my friend
had said, these moments are words caught here and there in a tre-
mendous colloquy, as if we were eavesdroppers on a tremendous
secret. We may call it Truth or Beauty, but we are clutching at the
hems of something greater and stronger and more real than these,
which is the Revelation of God.
So thinking and very hungry I came down to the smoke of
home.
LOVELACE AND VAUGHAN: A SPECULATION.
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.
HE poem To His Friend (whose surname is not
hinted at), is one of the best examples of Henry
Vaughan's spirited " second manner," which covers
the years 1645-1650. It has never been annotated
in any way. It is a deeply-felt meditation, in ade-
quate verse, on the old familiar conjunction of genius and the
garret, such as already had been partly foreshadowed in Randolph's
Parley With His Purse.* Vaughan's epistle seems to have been
addressed to some highly sympathetic fellow-craftsman. His name
was James, a name which in those days was not common. Vaughan
knew the not very admirable James Philips of the Priory, Cardigan,
the Matchless, Orinda's husband, whose sympathy with poets would
be assured ; he -also knew James Herbert, afterwards Sheriff for
Montgomery, who had been with him at Jesus College, Oxford ; and
James Vaughan, Tutor and ejected Fellow, apparently no relative
of his own. These academic amateurs, like all their world, com-
mitted occasional verse in local publications. Then there were two
professional literary contemporaries bearing the name who were
well known : Shirley and Howell. The first is almost out of reck-
oning in this case; but there are several indications (which need
not here be examined), of a connection between the young Vaughan
and his distant kinsman and senior countryman, the celebrated
author of Ho-Elianae. Miss Morgan, the best biographical au-
thority on Vaughan, is of this opinion in regard to the possible
identification of " James."f Posterity has not taken that engaging
gentleman very seriously as a writer of verse. There is plentiful
evidence, however, that he considered himself a poet first and fore-
most, and that he was so considered by the Tribe of Ben, into which
he had been regularly adopted. It would be at least perfectly of a
piece with Howell's known temper, and not otherwise than highly
welcome to him, had Vaughan chosen him for confidant of this
little poem ex intimo cubiculo cordis, with its unaffectedly rueful
*In one of the British Museum copies of Olor Iscanus, (King's Library 238, b.
41), this poem is subtitled in ink, in a contemporary handwriting on p. 7, De
Inopia Poetarum. The book belonged to one Thomas Leach.
tSee Muses Library ed. of Vaughan, 1896: ii., 336.
1912.] LOVELACE AND VAUGHAN 647
" we " and " us," implicitly inclusive of speaker and hearer, and all
their luckless rhyming clan. As it happens, moreover, James
Howell in person provides us with the very text on which Vaughan's
decasyllabics may have been hung, fringe-wise. --*
The first edition of the ever-charming Ho-Elianac was issued
in 1645. O ne f tne Letters to Dr. Prichard contains this passage:
" I have read that it hath been the fortunes of all Poets to die
Beggars; but for an Orator, a Lawyer and Philosopher as he [Sir
Francis Bacon] was, to die soe, 'tis rare."* Such a sentence, out
of a book very much in everybody's mouth, may well have struck
Vaughan, who cared always and most sensitively for the honor
of his Royalist Muse. " It hath been the fortunes of all Poets to
die Beggars ! " Strange, this grim old circumstance ! older far than
the Greek and Latin pens which mused upon it thousands of years
ago. So Henry Vaughan breaks forth into protest, worded as with
ribboned steel.
I wonder, James ! through the whole history
Of ages, such entails of poverty
Are laid on poets
In all the witty score
Thou shalt not find a rich one ! Take each clime,
And run o'er all the pilgrimage of time,
Thou'lt meet them poor, and everywhere descry
A threadbare, goldless genealogy.
When I by thoughts look back
Into the womb of time, and see the rack
Stand useless there, until we are produced
Unto the torture, and our souls infused
To learn afflictions, I begin to doubt
That as some tyrants use, "from their chained rout
Of slaves to pick out one, whom for their sport
They keep afflicted by some lingering art,
So we are merely thrown upon the stage,
The mirth of fools, and legend of the age.
When I see in the ruins of a suit
Some nobler breast and (his tongue sadly mute)
Feed on the vocal silence of his eye,
And knowing, cannot reach the remedy;
*Jacobs ed., Vol. i., Book iv., No. 8. Jan. 6, 1625, is the date; but Howell's
dates are arbitrary.
648 LOVELACE AND FAUGH AN [August,
When souls of baser stamp shine in their store,
And he of all the throng is only poor;
When French apes for the foreign fashions pay,
And English legs are dressed the outlandish way,
(So fine, too, that they their own shadows woo,
While he walks in the sad and pilgrim shoe),
I'm mad at fate, and angry even to sin
To see deserts and learning clad so thin.
To think how th' earthly usurer can brood,
Upon his bags, etc., etc.
Here the indignant Silurist is overwhelmed by the maleficent
mood into which mention of usurers generally throws him, and he
whacks them right and left. No proceeding, by the way, could have
been more pleasing to Howell, if "James" indeed were he: for
that cheerful and philosophical spendthrift was always in debt, and
even more familiar with the bailiff and the gaol than with " the
carelesse neglects and despisements " of the profession of letters.
The duty of castigation performed, Vaughan ends in a sweet C
major strain of utter and ultimate compensation.
But we'll be wiser, knowing 'tis not they
That must redeem the hardship of our way.
Whether a Higher Power, or that star
Which, nearest heaven, is from the earth most far,
Oppress us thus, or, angel'd from that sphere
By our strict guardians [we're]* kept luckless here,
It matters not: we shall one day obtain
Our native and celestial scope again !f
Even in these excerpts, which exclude the less immediately
relevant passages, there is much to arrest the critic. Every twist
and turn of the masculine couplets is packed with meaning. They
have verbal echoes of Marlowe, Randolph, Herbert, Drummond,
and Crashaw; they gird at the imitative London men of fashion as
Peacham does before them, and Evelyn after; they furnish a hint
of the writer's early astrological studies; they negotiate gracefully
and tellingly a simile drawn from the Biblical fall of man, that
primeval casualty with which Vaughan's sacred verse is passionately
preoccupied, but which in his secular pages shows rather unex-
pectedly. In neither does he advert to the fatal break in " the
*" Are " in all editions, ancient and modern ; which makes no sense.
tVaughan : Muses Library ed., ii., 70-72.
I9I2-] LOVELACE AND VAUGHAN 649
chime and symphony of nature " without instant recurrence to the
correlated theme, the final re-tuning and inter-harmonizing of
the jangled universe, " when Thou shalt make all new again." Our
young moralist sings of humanity as " angel'd from that sphere "
of Eden : that is, driven out by angels, here equivalent to a celestial
police force. The curious verb is also employed by Fulke Gre-
ville, Lord Brooke, in Mustapha:
" So bless'd are they, so angel'd, so eternized,"
where it stands obviously for something much more passive and
conventional. Vaughan's usage, an unique one, has escaped even the
scholars of the New English Dictionary.
Now by far the most interesting stanza of this interesting out-
burst of Henry Vaughan's is the fourth one quoted. One phrase
in it, that about " the vocal silence of his eye," may now in our
day be called even famous. As a descriptive stroke indicating the
pathos of gallant uncomplaining anguish which is yet guessed-at
by the wise, it would be hard to beat. There is something like it,
but not nearly so fine, in Habington.
Vaughan's sincere generalities on the sorrows of poets bring
forward one, and only one, personal instance, to give them point
and the color of a concrete tragedy. Does it not seem probable, on
the face of things, that a photographic negative lies hidden among
the lines, and is, perhaps, the very norm and motive of the whole
poem? For Vaughan is a quite formidable psychologist, a lover
and a hater like few. It is a mistake to consider as an abstract
dreamer one who describes himself in his very first Preface as a
deliberate satirist of persons and events under his eye. He misses
not many major actors on that wonderful stage of " the Warres "
and the iron Commonwealth; now in verse, now in prose, he casts
on the wall of his dim cell, like a sorcerer, the strange ghost-like
profiles of the great who tread Whitehall, or even of the little clash-
ing partisans of that Breconshire where he is never quite happy save
when alone with woods and streams. This street-sketch of " some
nobler breast "* beheld in 'ignominy and rags, while the children
' Some " is a favorite circumlocution of Vaughan's " proud and humorous "
mind. With him "some son of a butcher" is, pretty conclusively, Major-General
Harrison, the Regicide; Keeper of the Rolls for Breconshire; "some of those
desperate adventurers. . . .the principal or most learned writers of English verse,
who dash the Scriptures with their impious conceits," etc.; Milton, in his pamphlet
propaganda; and so on.
650 LOVELACE AND FAUGH AN [August,
of darkness swagger past him, is it a mere exercise of rhetoric?
has it no application? or, Vaughan being Vaughan, is it not at
least as likely to be history, the intensely emotional presentment
of some fellow-royalist, an unfortunate but blameless brother of
the lyre ?
By the intrinsic evidence of style and theme, this poem of
Vaughan's could hardly have been written before 1645, nor after
1650. Was there indeed any English poet at that period whose
circumstances the poem would, without undue stretching, fit ? And
secondly, was the writer so placed at the time that he would be likely
to have met with such a person, and to have taken his troubles to
heart? The answer to the first query is a simple matter. As all
the world knows, the poets of the, reign were almost without ex-
ception King's men, and adverse destiny singed them sorely with
" the travelling flame " which overtook and devoured their master.
By 1645-50, Carew, Suckling, Francis Quarles, Cartwright, Godol-
phin, Falkland, had passed from the scene, the two latter on the field
of honor; Drummond was at Hawthorndean, a non-combatant, but
moping, desperately, it is said, over the turn things were taking;
Stanley and Habington, both good passive Royalists, were wisely
keeping out of the way. Sherburne, Fanshawe, Cowley, Denham,
Davenant, 1'Estrange, Cleveland, figures in the van of Royalism,
were hard hit by the Parliament's triumph, and were driven into a
pinched and retired private life. Of these, Davenant was the great-
est sufferer, inasmuch as he lay in prison for three years, although
allowed to pursue his literary labors. Crashaw came temporarily
to real destitution, until Cowley rescued him. The favorite of Court
circles in that mid-century, the most conspicuous personality of all
the Cavalier poets, Colonel Richard Lovelace, was also that one
among them whose fortunes fell into irretrievable ruin, and who
had to look beggary squarely in the face. Unlike Crashaw, Love-
lace was never rescued at all. As the mouthpiece of an unpopular
petition, he had been cast into Westminster Gatehouse, and he had
borne part in many a losing fight in England and abroad, but none
of these things gave the final blow to his spirits. Everyone remem-
bers his tragic story, how on his return home in 1648, after having
been reported dead of his wounds at Dunkirk, he found his unknown
Lucasta or Althea married to another suitor. Utter affliction and
discouragement, due to the loss of her love, may have disabled
him from profiting by such common measure of alleviation as fell
to his colleagues. He sank slowly ; he sank in the public view. His
1912.] LOVELACE AND VAUGHAN 651
fate made the deepest possible impression on the contemporaries
who, so to speak, yet watched him die.
There is an exquisite account of him by Anthony Wood :* it
most remarkably corroborates and supplements Vaughan's picture
of genius in distress. Lovelace, says Wood in his most sympathiz-
ing mood, was a man "accounted the most amiable and beautifull
Person that ever eye beheld " " adored by the female sex "
even as an Oxford undergraduate (he matriculated at Gloucester
Hall, 1634) ; and " as much admired by the male;" in bearing
and conversation " incomparably gracefull;" one who had " a most
generous mind in his prosperity," and failed not to be " a great
Patron to all ingeniose men in want." The Muses' darling, in
short, and of the true breed and mould : another Sidney, as knightly,
and almost as short-lived : one who had no living peer in Britain for
sheer ideal nobleness of character, except Montrose.
Vaughan's eulogy is for a " nobler breast," and " deserts :"
Wood's Lovelace " drew respect from all men and women," and
was "of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment." (How
fine is this last touch, characteristic of an age which still looked
on manners as a necessary symbol of moral perfection!) Vaughan
mentions " learning," a quality hardly conspicuous in Lovelace's
divine hurried lyrics, struck out in the scant leisure of a soldier's
life. But learning then meant culture, not that very different
modern thing, information. Wood again bears out the statement
fully. " He was accounted by all those that well knew him to have
been a Person well-versed in the Greek and Latin poets ; in Musick,
whether practicall or theoreticall, instrumentall or vocall; and in
other things befitting a Gentleman." Vaughan dwells upon the
" ruins of a suit," the " sad and pilgrim shoe " in which his man is
" clad so thin," and contrasts him most graphically with the " souls
of baser stamp " in their " foreign fashions," the " fine " and " out-
landish " dandies of the hour. Now singularly enough, Wood
dwells on this very matter of dress : singularly, inasmuch as all
human males of the upper class were then veritable birds of Para-
dise, entirely eclipsing their womenkind ; and as to excel in the arts
of apparel, while these were so sensitively understood and so fear-
lessly practiced, was no small prerogative. This Lovelace who went,
Wood says, " in ragged cloathes," had been a brave sight once :
" in his glory," he assures us, " he wore cloth of gold and silver! "
And then he goes sadly on: "Having by that time (1649) con -
*Athenae Oxonienses: iii., pp. 461-2.
652 LOVELACE AND VAVGHAN [August,
sumed all his Estate, he grew very melancholly, which brought him
at last into a consumpcion ; became very poore in body and purse.
became an object of Charity and mostly lodged in obscure and
dirty places." For ten years he wandered about Cromwell's Lon-
don, his bright courage quite broken. He died, according to Aubrey,
" in a cellar in Long Acre;" according to Wood, " in a very mean
lodging in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane." From the door of
one or the other, he was taken in the year 1658 to the vault of St.
Bride's, Fleet Street, where some of his kinsfolk were buried, and
there left to his long-sought rest.
Henry Vaughan was in London throughout 1640-42, the
heyday of Lovelace's " glory." This has nothing to do with the
date of the poem, but may have supplied its contrasting memories.
He may have been in Oxford during the Winter and Spring of 1645-
46. His King Disguised seems to have been written there in April.
Charles resumed in the loyal City his court and camp, so soon as he
had beaten his retreat from the disastrous campaign ending at
Rowton Heath. Henry Vaughan had been one of his Welsh body-
guard of cavalry troopers at Rowton,* whose natural place, it
would seem, was still at the royal fugitive's side; and if he were
there, he must have seen Lovelace every day, as well as Denham,
Cleveland, and Crashaw.
University life had become quite disorganized before the King's
flight to Newark, but the Bodleian Library was in use, well-pro-
tected up to the surrender of the garrison, and equally well-pro-
tected afterwards, thanks to Fairfax's chivalry. It is by no means
improbable that Vaughan's grateful and affectionate Bodleyf poem
belongs to this year, " the author," as a clause of its' title tells us,
" being then in Oxford." In 1650, he may have gone up to London
from Brecon, in order to put through the press a book of his own
which he very much cared about : the first part of his Silex Scin-
tillans, bearing that date. The guess is purely tentative, that either
at this time, or during a subsequent visit to his brother after the
Restoration, Vaughan may have produced To Lysimachus,% a poem
which has its depreciating touches concerning " trimmed gallants "
in their " lace " and " gold," much in the vein of similar strictures
quoted in this paper. The plain country gentleman evidently bore
a grudge against all beaux! In London also, getting news in its
"There is unpublished documentary evidence on this interesting and disputed
point.
tVaughan: Muses Library ed., ii., 197. tldem: p. 195.
igi2.] LOVELACE AND VAVGHAN 653
freshness of so mournful a fate, he may well have penned his lovely
and touching elegy* on the little Princess Elizabeth, who died at
Carisbrook Castle in September. The elegy is full of the same
passion of pity, the same reaching forward towards the eternal
righting of the wrongs of earth, which light up To His Friend with
a quite intimate beauty. Were Vaughan during 1650 in London
(the little London of the Carolian writers, where to know one was
to know all ) , he could hardly have avoided meeting Lovelace in the
streets, if nowhere else. The order of his release from Peterhouse,
Aldersgate, had been signed on the tenth of the preceding December ;
he was in town again, wan and changed, for Vaughan or any other
spectator to moralize over. In the year 1646, the troubled poets
under arms in Oxford had all been poor together; but should the
line,
" And he of all the throng is only poor,"
be meant for Lovelace, it can only apply to him while haunting the
hostile Roundhead capital of 1650, and at no other time before
1651, when Vaughan's poem to "James" was published in Olor
Iscamis.
The Silurist, a child of South Wales, would be aware that the
Kantish Lovelaces had their own ties with his then not very populous
native country. Sir Richard's younger brother Francis, himself a
Colonel of distinction in the King's army, had been Governor of
Caermarthen Castle from January, 1644, until it was captured by
Laugharne in the October of 1645 '< a "d William Lovelace, who had
served under his poet-brother in the field, was killed at Caermarthen
at the time of the surrender.
Wood's pathetic and startling detail, especially were there no
other contemporary report on the same subject, would carry one's
thoughts back to the passage in Vaughan ; and Lovelace himself was
such an acknowledged pattern of chivalry, and so filled the eye of
England in his poetic prime, that did Vaughan's lines not exist, a
really thoughtful critic, knowing the latter's habits of observation,
might still be tempted to search for Lovelace in just some such
characterization in Olor or Thalia. Moreover, were there within
reach, in real life, such a tragic fact to prove Vaughan's thesis
in hand, would it not be fantastic indeed to whip oneself into a
rhetorical fury over an imagined injustice ?
*Idem: p. 102.
654 LOVELACE AND VAUGHAN [August,
Thus in the crowded alleys, or in St. James' Park, Henry
Vaughan may have looked again upon a man who had suffered far
more than himself for that ever-sacred cause of the martyred King:
upon the Lovelace, once so " adored and admired," now penniless
and infirm, who has become
" The mirth of fools, and legend of the age."
He is the living victim of the cruelty of that new order which
Thomas Vaughan, Henry's twin, accuses of " some strange desa-
mour to poesy." The two poets accost each other with glances if
not with words, and go their ways. Henry Vaughan too, is poor,
and will always be so until his medical practice shall have brought
him .a competency. But the heir of Trenewydd is not so destitute
as this man ; and this man is Lovelace : Lovelace the heroic singer,
the heartener of no mean generation, through his glorious lyrics,
instinct with moral power ; Lovelace, the bugler of
" Stone walls do not a prison make,"
the banner-bearer of
" I could not love thee, Dear, so much
Loved I not honour more ! "
Hot unshed tears over the terrible irony of this world, smart
in Henry Vaughan's generous eyes; and when he gets back to his
lodgings at night, he goes to his writing-table, and pours forth to
his friend his impressions and opinions, out of that " anger even to
sin " which does the very greatest honor to his own mind and heart.
Such is our theory.
One point further. James Howell was acquainted with Love-
lace, who was his junior by nearly a quarter of a century, and only
by three or four years older than Vaughan ; moreover, he cherished
his memory with much affection. Dudley Posthumus Lovelace,
the youngest of that brilliant family, had his brother's poems pub-
lished in 1659. Appended to this rare Lucasta are a number of ele-
gies on its author " by severall of his Friends;" " D. P. L." having
" collected " them for the press, under the date 1660. And among
these commemorative verses is this, signed " Jam. Howell."
1912.] LOVELACE AND VAUGHAN 655
Upon the Posthume and Precious Poems of the nobly ex-
tracted Gentleman, Mr. R. L.
The Rose and other Fragrant Flowers smell Best
When they are pluck'd and worn in Hand or Brest :
So this faire flow'r of Vertue, this rare bud
Of Wit, smells now as fresh as when He stood ;
And in these Posthume Poems lets us know
He on the Banks of Helicon did grow.
The beauty of his Soule did Correspond
With his sweet out-side, nay, it went beyond!
LOVELACE, the minion of the Thespian Dames,
Apollo's darling, born with Enthean flames,
Which in his numbers wave and shine so cleer
As Sparks refracted in rich gemmes appeare:
Such flames that may inspire, and atoms cast
To make new Poets (not like him in hast.)
James Howell is the only " James " among the not circum-
scribed group of friends who thus honored poor Lovelace in his too
early grave.
Around Vaughan's poem we have woven a web of conjecture :
as conjecture, can it be deemed altogether wild? It is interesting,
this full descant on the hardships of a literary career, because
chronologically it is the first thing of its kind in the English lan-
guage. It would take on, in addition, a deeply dramatic value,
could it be proved to have drawn inspiration from a casual meeting
with Richard Lovelace in the year 1650; and doubly, could we
learn that the young Vaughan was walking with Howell when the
piteous apparition crossed their path of " the faire flow'r of Ver-
tue as he stood .... with his sweet out-side," now dimmed and
harmed by the usages of life, yet innocent of all blame: the best
possible text for a vehement indictment of unjust fate. But the
true piece justificative of such a meeting will never be forthcoming.
SPIRITUAL READING.
BY WALTER ELLIOTT, C.S.P.
ART of Ezechiel's commission as a prophet was to eat
the written words of his prophecy.* It shall not be
otherwise with any energetic servant of God.
Whether for self-discipline or the saving of his neigh-
bor, the Holy Scriptures, and all other devout books,
must be eaten and drunk and assimilated into our soul's very sub-
stance before we can rightly play our part in life. As to self-dis-
cipline, spiritual reading, when it forms part of one's daily routine,
has a most elevating influence. It so refines our nature that tempta-
tions are easily rejected, and our passions are effectually tamed.
In addition to the ordinary feelings of faith, of hope, of love, and
of sorrow for sin, we gain a deep insight into the principles, the
reasons, the inspirations, the heroes, of these virtues.
In some ancient Benedictine monasteries, it was customary
that each novice at his entrance should present the community with
one or two books. These were the substitute for a dower of money,
it would seem; and for so enlightened a career as that of a servitor
of holy wisdom, what gift to his brethren could be more appro-
priate than a good book? The great Abbot Thrithemius gave out
as a maxim: " The neglect of study and the breakdown of disci-
pline ever go hand in hand." Holy study and holy living are the
weft and woof of the tapestry of life. The history of Christ and
of His saints should be made to us both a perpetual joy and a
stimulating reproach. What ails us that ten minutes reading about
Christ and His heroes tires us out, and hours and hours of reading
inconsequent stuff entertains us highly ? Blessed is the man who can
say that at the day of judgment he will stake his fate on the kind
of reading that best pleased him during his life.
Thomas a Kempis adopted as a motto : " I sought for rest,
but found it not, save in a little corner with a little book." What
*" And He said to me : Son of man, eat this book, and go speak to the children
of Israel. And I opened my mouth, and He caused me to eat that book. And
He said to me : Son of man thy belly shall eat and thy bowels shall be filled. And
I did eat it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth. And He said to me : Son of
man, go to the house of Israel, and thou shalt speak My words to them " (Ezech.
iii. 1-4).
1912.] SPIRITUAL READING 657
he found he gave forth. His own " little book " was the Xcu
Testament, and reading it in a quiet cell, or within a
shady nook among the trees, he learned how to write his Imitation.
Many an hour of heavenly rest has he furnished us by that " little
book."* A daily custom of good reading is like prayer. It may
be left in God's hands for a future often a very near future of
advancement in virtue. Speaking of so practical a love of holy
wisdom, the Wise Man says : " Come to her as one that plougheth,
and soweth, and wait for her good fruits" (Ecclus. vi. 19).
St. Philip Neri says that perfection is a life of toil. Toiling
at what tasks? Intellectual and moral tasks of the greatest interest,
reading and studying and resolving and acting in the ways and
wisdom of the Most High. His biographer, Bacci, tells us that
when St. Philip came to the last day of his life, which he knew well
and had foretold, he spent the hours in saying farewell to his
closest friends, and in listening to the lives of the saints, especially
that of St. Bernardine of Siena, " which he caused to be read over
to him a second time." St. Teresa said : " I am always wishing
I had time for reading, for I have ever been fond of it. But I
read very little, for when I take up a book I become recollected
through the pleasure it gives me, and thus my reading is turned into
prayer " (Relations i. 7). Herein is a solution of the problem of
distractions in meditation, as well as of that painful vacancy of
mind so common to busy mortals when they strive to pray. Listen
to another master in spiritual lore : " Use books when you find your
soul weary ; that is to say, read a little and then meditate, then again
read a little and meditate, till the end of your half hour. Mother
(St.) Teresa thus acted in the beginning, and said that she found
it a very good plan for herself. And since we are speaking in
confidence, I will add that I also have tried it myself and found it
good for me " (St. Francis de Sales, Letters to Persons in Religion,
Mackey, Lett. ix).
No mental prayer is better, none is easier, than reading divine
truth in a leisurely, thoughtful frame of mind. Are you troubled
by distractions in vocal prayer? Substitute the reading of the
Psalms or of the Book of Job, or of Our Savior's sayings and
doings in the Gospels, or St. Paul's Epistles. The eye is thus en-
listed in the work of prayer, and the holy questioning of the mind
*The late George Ripley, in his day one of our foremost literary critics, being
hard pressed by debt, sold his library. As he saw the books he loved so dearly
being carted off, he said : " I can now understand how a man would feel if he
could attend his own funeral."
VOL. XCV. 42.
658 SPIRITUAL READING [August,
is stimulated, double interest is aroused, relieving the monotony of
the recitation of words. The writings of all approved authors
contain God's teaching, and their reading is at once the joy and the
guidance of intelligent Catholics. St. Augustine says, that when
we pray we speak to God, and when we read a religious book,
God speaks to us.
" And take unto you the sword of the Spirit, which is
the word of God " (Eph. vi. 17). The word of God here named by
the apostle is primarily the instruction of the pastors of God's
Church. But it includes the Holy Scriptures, especially those of
the New Testament, the reading of which is a principal means of
enlightening our souls unto salvation (2 Tim. iii. 16). Hence our
Holy Father, the Pope, has bestowed an indulgence on all who de-
voutly read the Gospels of Christ, whether in the official Latin ver-
sion or in any authorized translation. " God's words are deeds "
is an expression of a saint, referring to words spoken in the soul
during the higher states of contemplation. But the saying is true
of God's words in Holy Scripture, spoken as they are through His
inspired writers, for they work a work upon us so strong, so sweet,
so enduring, that their force often equals that of the divine locu-
tions of a saint's ecstasy.
Thus is meditation fed by reading; and the same words might
be used in the reverse order, for reading is most fruitful of virtue
when it is fed by meditation. Book in hand does it happen that
our souls grow warm with sympathy for Christ crucified, or with
zeal for His lost sheep : " My heart grew hot within me ; and in my
meditation a fire shall flame out" (Ps. xxxviii. 4). Prayer and
the sacraments will lead us to read that we may hold fast to the
good which they produce; that such good may be deepened and in-
creased in our souls. Each virtue as practiced has a literature which
tells of its extension, amplification, development, illustration. By
reading we learn its history, praise, defence ; we are warned against
its counterfeits, we are instructed in its dogmas. And conversely,
whatever good and true thing we read, breeds thoughts that are
prayers, or that are resolves of a practical kind, or pictures for the
memory, or discipline for unruly tendencies.
St. Hugh of Grenoble, during whose episcopate and in whose
diocese St. Bruno founded the Carthusians, wept tears of emotion
whenever he heard the Scriptures read. And no part of them is so
fruitful of useful lessons as the history of Our Lord's Passion.
In early days this love of the Scriptures was a prominent
1912.] SPIRITUAL READING 659
trait of Christians, and it won many a martyr his crown. In Dio-
cletian's persecution there was one named Emeritus, who, while
undergoing torture, was interrogated by the pagan judge : " Have
you any Scriptures in your house ? " He answered : " I have some ;
but I also have them in my heart." But the judge repeated his
question, wishing to get the holy books to burn them publicly ; and
the martyr never changed his answer: " I have them in my heart."
And thus he suffered martyrdom, according to the prophet's boast
to the Most High : " Thy words have I hidden in my heart, that I
might not sin against Thee " (Ps. cxvii. n).
" Philip said to Him : Lord show us the Father, and it is
enough for us" (John xiv. 8). This petition was the longing of
a contemplative spirit for the unveiled vision of God. Our Re-
deemer's answer is the practical method of all prayer, even of the
highest contemplation : " Philip, he that seeth Me, seeth the Father
also." Now the pages of the Gospel are as it were the Beloved's lat-
tices : " Behold He standeth behind our wall, looking through the
windows, looking through the lattices" (Cant. ii. 9). Through those
inspired pages He darts the glances of His eager love, those fleeting
glimpses of the Deity which are all that we may hope for now, and
which, in very truth, are all that we can now endure.
" If thou shalt seek wisdom as money, and shall dig for her as
for a treasure, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord,
and shalt find the knowledge of God" (Proverbs ii. 4, 5). From
some writings you dig ore, and then you must smelt it by set
meditations; that makes the treasure more intimately your own.
Out of other books you get some ore and some virgin metal ready
smelted by the authors ; and these are very delightful books. Out of
others, again, you get money ready made the ore dug, smelted,
stamped and delivered to you in current coin of God's realm of
truth and love. Holy Scripture contains all these treasure troves
by turns. But one must always do some digging even the minted
coin of holy wisdom is hidden treasure to millions of careless
spirits. Do you want a watchword for Scripture reading? It is
dig! dig! dig! "If thou shalt seek wisdom," says the Sage, "as
money, and shalt dig for her as for a treasure, then shalt thou
understand the fear of the Lord, and shalt find the knowledge of
God " (Prov. ii. 4, 5). A fondness for God's written word is like
the prospector's zeal for finding rich diggings in the gold-mining re-
gions of the west.
St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, met St. Ignatius of Antioch
660 SPIRITUAL READING [August,
on his way to Rome to be martyred, and he reverently kissed his
chains. Afterwards St. Polycarp himself was crowned a martyr.
So we, by reading of the martyrs, kiss their chains in spirit and
receive their benediction, and thus we are ourselves made martyrs,
at least in holy envy. It is a unique honor paid to the lives of the
saints, that from the earliest days of Christianity our forefathers
publicly read the acts of the martyrs during divine service, especially
on the anniversaries of their triumph. Apart from Holy Scripture
this was the only liturgical reading of the early Church. In reading
such books as Butler's Lives of the Saints, what a wealth of virtue
is there found on deposit as in a bank, from which we draw out
and which we spend in every practice of faith and hope and love.
Annuities and daily doles; food and drink; rich garments; all the
soul's heavenly furniture are there, especially the imitation of Christ,
which is the bequest of God's blessed martyrs.
One should read the lives of the saints so constantly as to live
a life apart with them and among them. Our usual environment is
men like ourselves, of imperfect spirit and abounding in faults.
But the true Christian should at close intervals be back and forth
with Christ's dkcipleship of perfect souls, whereby the virtues of
our Master and His maxims shall form our familiar atmosphere.
The saints should be our only heroes. Why read of men's warlike
deeds, when these champions of the Prince of Peace are given us
for our models ? " They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they
were tempted, they were put to death by the sword being in
want, distressed, afflicted; of whom the world was not worthy"
(Heb. xi. 37, 38). Great from statecraft? No, but from holy sim-
plicity. Great by the might of their swords? No, but from un-
daunted endurance of the swords of tyrants for God's true faith.
It is related of St. Ignatius, in the earlier period of his saint-
hood, that he and two or three devout companions journeyed
through Spain teaching the little catechism, going always on foot,
and carrying each his own pack on his back. An ignorant but
kindly-disposed peasant joined them once, happening to be bound
in the same direction. Edified by their cheerful and pious ways, he
now and then induced them to let him carry their packs. When
they came to an inn he saw them each retire to a quiet corner apart,
kneel down and meditate for some notable time. Struck by their ex-
ample he did the same. A bystander asked him what he was doing.
He answered : " I do nothing else but this ; I say to God, Lord, these
men are saints, and I have been glad to be their beast of burden.
1912.] SPIRITUAL READING 66l
And what they do, I wish also to do." It afterwards turned out
that this rude clown became a very spiritual man.
Many a thing in the lives of the saints we cannot understand.
But we can understand at least their virtues of the more common
kind, and these we can practice because we see them done by God's
saints. " Be ye imitators of me," says the apostle, " as I also am of
Christ" (i Cor. iv. 16). "Giving thanks, with joy, to God the
Father, Who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the
saints in light " (Col. i. 12).
All really devout souls have some stated time for daily spiritual
reading. Spiritual reading holds rank second only to the sacraments
and to prayer in every plan of a perfect Christian life. Give some
part of the day to such reading if it be no more than
fifteen minutes; and you will soon experience a wonderful deep-
ening of religious motives. Take the time before breakfast,
for instance, rising just a little earlier for the purpose, or some other
part of the day that you may claim for private use. Let not your
first daily mental occupation be the newspapers, reading things that
you intend to forget, but rather the reading of the things of God
and of paradise, whose sweetness and glory are eternal.
It is well to keep more than one book for daily use, if only to
have the advantage of variety : as a portion of the Old Testament
and a portion of the New; something from the lives of the saints;
a few pages from a book on ascetical doctrine. A daily choice of
two, even three, from a list embracing half a dozen volumes is a
good plan; experience proves that it makes the devout task easier.
Another help is the custom of making short notes and copying
out selections, whether for use in prayer or as an aid to memory.
Remember that when you learned to read you learned to write. As
these two endowments came together, so should they continue work-
ing together. Jot down any thought that particularly pleases you.
Of matter that is not worth writing down read little; and this may
be said of nearly the entire bulk of the daily papers, especially the
Sunday editions. What is not worth writing down is hardly worth
reading.* It is thus that " Wise men lay up knowledge " (Prov. x.
14). The Son of Sirach says that the wise man " Will keep the
sayings of renowned men " (Ecclus. xxxix. i) keep them close at
*"- As ideas occurred to him, he wrote them down on slips of paper, and whn the
meeting drew near, after weighing every thought, scrutinizing every sentence, and
pondering every word, he fused them together into a connected whole." This was the
method of Lincoln as described by the historian Rhodes.
662 SPIRITUAL READING [August,
hand; write down their gems of wisdom; learn portions of them
by heart.
Acquiring spiritual doctrine is not learning a science, even a
spiritual one. It is rather like learning how to paint pictures, an
accomplishment gained by constant repetitions, which gradually
develop taste and appreciation in equal step with manual dexterity.
So it is by spiritual taste and appreciation (sapere) rather than by
understanding that one benefits by the study of divine literature.
It is not truth that we seek in this exercise, but the beauty of truth.
As a novice to the pictorial art copies masterpieces over and over
again, so does a novice to the art of holy living make of his memory
a veritable picture gallery, filled with his own copies of the events
of Christ's life, and of the lives of those of His saints for whom
he has a special attraction.
Here are some tests for guidance in choosing a book for con-
stant use : I have read this book, and I wish I had it new to read
over again so as to enjoy the charm of novelty. I wish I had read
it years ago. I wish I could stand examination in it. I wish I
had it by heart. This book is too short yet all too long for my
keeping its instructions. Here is a book I will give to the friend
I love best. O what an immense grace to be able to write a book
like this !
WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO?
BY FRANCIS P. DUFFY, D.D.
FEW months ago eight hundred and twenty dele-
gates, representing the American Methodist Epis-
copal Church and its missions, met at Minneapolis in
General Conference. It was not an epoch-making
occasion, but it is of sufficient importance for chron-
icle and comment. The Church they represent is insignificant when
compared with great religions ; it is recent in origin and far from
Catholic in spread. But, as Protestant organizations go, it is large,
compact, and vigorous. Judging from the detailed report of the
proceedings in the Daily Christian Advocate, there is a fine spirit
of energy and hopefulness among the leaders of the Church. They
have their own difficulties arising from divergent views and per-
sonal ambitions, but these are not the sort of things we care to
dwell upon. They are family matters, and, as Catholics and gen-
tlemen, we do not concern ourselves with them. It is more pleasing
to note that the religious element in the Conference was strong
and earnest. The prayers and addresses show no wavering on
the Divinity of Christ or the Inspiration of Holy Scripture. So
many Protestant organizations are dropping away from dogmatic
beliefs, it is refreshing to find one that keeps a firm position on
the most essential ones. We hope that they will remain constant
in the beliefs they have inherited from the Elder Church of Chris-
tendom.
It is no gratification to anyone who worships Christ to hear
that the Methodist connection is not keeping up its normal rate of
increase. The opening Episcopal Address says : " We have a re-
ported increase of but fifty-five thousand to our Church member-
ship, less than two per cent, as the outcome of a year's activity and
the outlay of so many millions of dollars The statistical para-
dox stares us out of countenance. It shames and humiliates us."
It is to be hoped that the losses are really accounted for by lack
of proper registration on change of domicile. Those who are lost
to Methodism are in the main lost to organized religious worship,
and tend to lapse into a vague religiosity, or into the deeper depths
of indifference or agnosticism.
664 WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
It would be a pleasure to us, as believers in Christ, and as fel-
low-citizens of the Republic, if we could dwell on points of agree-
ment between ourselves and them ; the positions, for instance, which
they hold on the great moral and social problems which agitate
the public mind. On most such questions all' the Churches have
ideals and principles which are identical. We would be glad to
work with the Methodists for the common good. We can do this
without any sacrifice of religious principle on our part or on theirs.
As a matter of fact we do meet and deal with individual Methodists
on terms of friendly intercourse and mutual help as neighbors,
partners, or fellow-citizens. We do business with them, work for
or employ them, mix with them in political parties or in schemes for
social betterment. Some of the delegates hold office to which they
were elected by the votes of Catholics, who never gave a thought
to the candidate's religious opinions.
It is therefore astounding and disconcerting to find that the
whole spirit of the Conference was one of bitterness and hostility
against the Ancient Church. This spirit manifests itself not only
in special formal resolutions, which we shall consider, but in inci-
dental and frequently recurring remarks on topics which bore only
the most distant reference to the principles or polity of the Catho-
lic Church. Much of this could be forgiven in their missionaries to
Catholic countries, who have passed through disagreeable expe-
riences at the hands of a people who resent being classed as pagans
with Tartars and Hottentots. But it comes also from men who
have been in constant touch with us here in this Republic ministers,
business and professional men, office-holders men who pretend to
be friendly with us.
During the whole Conference there was scarcely a single kindly
reference to anything Catholic. One man mentioned the work of
the Catholic press against Socialism; another admired our unity,
and was promptly rebuked for so doing; a third admitted that there
are some good people amongst us, as one might admit that there
are some innocent men in jail. Sympathy was shown only with
Modernists. Now, one somehow does not expect much display of
scholarship in the Methodist body. But after all, one has the
right to expect that a group of fairly educated men should not
put themselves on record in approval of a system with which their
own beliefs are entirely in disagreement. The Syllabus and En-
cyclical are available in English, and it is not necessary for one
to be a trained theologian to get a general idea of the theories which
1912.] WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? 665
are there condemned. Was there no Methodist brother in the
Conference who could tell the others what Modernism means? For
\ve cannot believe that the Methodist body approves the doctrines of
M. Loisy and others on the Divinity of Christ, the Inspiration of
Scripture, the pragmatic interpretation of doctrine, and the rest.
It was a manifestation of sheer ignorance; ignorance that would
be excusable only if it were mute.
So far as we Catholics are concerned, olive branches were as
scarce in the Conference as icebergs in the Gulf of Mexico. When-
ever anything came up to remind them of the existence of the
Catholic Church, the brethren saw red, and lashed the air with
vigorous cudgels. They got a good start in the Episcopal Address
read by Bishop Cranston at the opening of the Conference. One
important reason for deploring the slow increase in membership
was " the presence of a formidable political-ecclesiastical organiza-
tion, which carries its rapidly increasing cradle-roll through life,
if not beyond the grave, and claims and secures political influence
largely on its supposed numerical strength, transmuted into votes."
The Address calls for a Federal Council of American (Prot-
estant) Churches, the main argument being that such a body could
bring influence to bear on the government. This Council would
keep a lobbyist in Washington. " The voice that speaks for seven-
teen millions of Protestant communicants, concerning matters of
common interest and vital movement, would be respected." The
Bishops then donned the mantle of the seer, and announced the awful
conflict that is even now brooding for this land of liberty. The
Papacy the brethren heard with shuddering the Papacy is grow-
ing desperate. In its despair it is concentrating its forces for an
attack on the strongest position of its adversary, and aims at the
destruction of American Protestantism and American institutions,
which, of course, are altogether Protestant. " No disclaimer can
change the meaning of events. Indeed, nobody is authorized to
disavow its manifest purpose. It is boldly avowed." Evidently
there is no use in trying to reason with the good Bishops. They
know all about it. And so, if we made all the Methodists good
Catholics, as we would dearly love to do, the Republic would cease
to exist. There is a certain kind of satisfaction in dealing with
a man who tells you that nothing you can say will convince him,
for it is a weary business arguing with some people.
When they came to the question of divorce, we expected to
find some recognition of our services to the common weal; some
666 WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
indication of a willingness to cooperate with us. But no. We
are quite useless. The Ne Temere decree, in default of any handier
reason, has settled that matter. From us the American people " can
expect no aid in their laudable efforts to secure for home and
family more effective protection against the reckless laws and bur-
lesque courts of some of the states." There seems to be no good
that we can do anywhere. It is dreadfully discouraging to feel
that one is so much in the way.
When the Episcopal Board got through with us, the foreign
mission people had their innings. Their assault lacked the ordered
solidity of the Episcopal charge; but in their guerrilla way they were
very thorough and energetic. They had their bishops too. Bishop
Burt Rome is in his diocese, by the way was the hero of the
hour. In his mild objective manner of stating facts, he informed
the brethren that " Roman Catholicism is substantially paganism
in its conceptions, doctrines, traditions, fears, hopes, and promises."
With the exception of these few points, he would probably be willing
to admit that there is a leaven of Christianity in the Church of
the ages. Further on he makes a remark which reveals the real
cause of the persistent spitefulness of the brethren. "Admiration for
this anachronism of autocracy seems to have been transferred to
this enlightened and democratic Republic, if the daily press at all
represents public sentiment."
Bishop Bristol told the delegates how dreadfully wicked are
the Romanists in South America; how, as the result of four hun-
dred years of Jesuit teaching, the people there have come to be-
lieve that religion and morality are separate things; how eagerly,
too, the Spanish-speaking people take to the saving doctrines of
Methodism. " But, to my sorrow, I have often been asked : why,
then, have we not more encouraging results of our work in South
America? " A very pertinent question, one should say, from those
who put up the money. The answer he gives is that one in every
two thousand in those countries is a Methodist. That reply sounds
rather well, until one begins to seek more definite figures. The
population of the eight republics in which he works is given by
him as 12,000,000. On his own ratio, that would give
him 6,000 members, enough to make two or three good
parishes. The Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions,
however, puts the number for South America at 10,336.
Since it cannot be supposed that Bishop Bristol under-
stated his own victories over the wicked Romanists, it may be
1912.] WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? 667
inferred that the secretary's total includes Americans residing
abroad. At any rate the discrepancy arouses a reasonable suspicion
concerning missionary statistics. The same difficulty arises in the
reports from Mexico. One statement gives the number of Mexican
Methodists as 6,583. Another says that there are 4,344 proba-
tioners (it must pay to be a probationer) and 3,310 full members.
After forty years of work in Mexico, and the outlay of vast
amounts of money, such a report, in the words of the Episcopal
Address, should " shame and humiliate " them. In Italy they claim
" about 4,000." If we had the expense account we could calculate
how much a head these Italian adherents cost them in good Amer-
ican dollars. In Austria-Hungary they claim 570 members; in
France 174. Spain and Portugal are still without the Gospel, but
they have hopes of Portugal as a land into which the principles of
religious liberty have at last penetrated. In the Philippines they
assert a membership " fast approaching 40,000," with a following
of "perhaps 100,000." This sounds serious. If there be any
truth in these claims, there is a matter for the American Church
to look into. At home, they have missions for the Italians and
Slavs. The figures are of the vaguest. " The statistical part of
our work is one of the discouraging features." The people move
around too much. But they lay claim to " about 3,000 members
and probationers." Probationers come in convenient in making up
statistics. There are thirty-eight ministers and missionaries in the
Italian work.
To get an idea of the attitude of the Conference towards the
Catholic Church, we shall give space to the description of a pas-
sage-at-arms, in which the more liberal members gained a victory.
It is enlightening to view our critics in their most genial mood. A
missionary from South America, Rev. W. F. Rice, introduced a
resolution, the text of which we do not find in the report. It must
have been hot reading. The good brother was much irritated by
the fact that missionaries to Catholic and Greek countries were
excluded from taking part in the World Missionary Conference at
Edinburgh. One of the delegates demurred at the resolution. He
saw a leaven of grace working amongst us in the form of Modern-
ism. " With China turning," he exclaimed ; " with the whole of
Hinduism stirred; with the old and gray heathenism of the East
failing and falling; do you not dare believe that in His time the
power of the Son of God can also reach Roman people ? " Strange
as it may seem, we rather like this brother. He sympathizes with
disturbers, and ranks us with pagans, but there is something relig-
668 WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
ious and Christian in his spirit towards us that is surprising and
refreshing in the records of jealousy and spitefulness which blacken
the annals of this Conference.
Then up rose a figure familiar to North of Ireland Catholics,
a perfect type of the never-surrender, croppy-lie-down, Protestant
Ascendency Ulsterman. He assumed the role of the persecuted
but patient and tolerant Christian man. He addresses the brethren
as if he were about to announce a ninth beatitude. His speech
should be given in full, but we must deny ourselves some of the
joys of it, and be content with specimens. " It is well known," he
began, " that I am, wherever known, a man of peace. I am never
guilty of appealing to passion or prejudice." A very fair and pa-
cific beginning. But Brother Watt is Irish, and not too pacific.
" But you do not need to put on padded gloves when you are deal-
ing with the Roman hierarchy .... I have a right to speak on this
question with a good deal of feeling. My ancestors, to the number
of four, were massacred by Roman Catholics in the North of Ireland,
and the same spirit that disemboweled those ancestors and meas-
ured their intestines with the intestines of a dog, is the same spirit
that animates the Roman hierarchy to-day." No prejudice, nor
stirring up of strife; nothing but Christian forgiveness and Amer-
ican toleration, and broad views of the memories of the past, and
s\veet reasonableness. Brother Watt pays his respects to " a cer-
tain distinguished prelate," probably Archbishop Ireland. We need
not pause over this passage. The old lion of St. Paul showed the
delegates more than once during the Conference that it was a
foolhardy experiment to venture into his territory. In conclusion,
the speaker called upon the Conference " to send its answer around
the globe, and say to the Roman hierarchy: We, too, be children
of the living God; heirs of a common redemption; lovers of liberty
and of God, and thus far shalt thou come and no further." This
speech was received with " applause," even " tremendous applause."
Were there no delegates in the convention with sufficient knowledge
of Irish history, or sufficient sense of the delightfully absurd, to
punctuate it with laughter? The Methodists will remain hopeless
until they learn when to smile.
We think that at least one member smiled discreetly behind
his hand, the most level-headed man in the Conference, Rev. Dr.
James M. Buckley. At any rate, he thought it time to interfere.
" This affair," he said, " if published as it is now, will divide the
American people. If I was a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church,
I would rejoice in this thing as it is now; I would publish it and
1912.] U'llAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? 669
show it to everybody." Therefore let a committee be appointed to
revise it.
The revisionists won the day. The great Methodist body was
to put itself on record in a way that would not stultify themselves,
nor unduly hurt the feelings of their Catholic fellow-citizens. And
here is what they made of it :
Whereas, the limitations imposed on the recent World Mis-
sionary Conference in Edinburgh set aside all Protestant mis-
sionary work in Greek and Roman Catholic countries, which
action saddened and outraged our growing native churches ; and
Whereas, Methodism, since its birth in a protest against dead
formalism and ceremonial, has ever stood for aggressive evan-
gelism in all lands; and the Methodist Episcopal Church has
been for more than seventy-five years actively engaged in work
in those lands where Greek or Roman Catholicism predom-
inates ; and
Whereas, in all those lands, which form a large part of the
missionary field of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the teach-
ings and practices of Romanism deprive the people of the Bible,
pervert many of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and
foster superstitions which alienate the thinking classes and
bind heavy burdens upon the poor ; therefore
Be it Resolved, that the Methodist Episcopal Church recog-
nizes its plain duty to prosecute its missionary enterprises in
Greek and Roman Catholic countries with increasing zeal; and
Be it Resolved, that we will most vigorously protest against
any future exclusion of missions in Greek or Roman Catholic
countries from ecumenical or other similar missionary gather-
ings ; and
Be it Resolved, that it is our duty to oppose the machinations
of Romanism, and to counteract its attempts to gain an ever-
increasing control of our public schools or to use the public
funds for sectarian schools ; and finally
Be it Resolved, that we feel the deepest sympathy with as
well as love toward the priests and people within the Greek
and Roman Catholic Churches who are working toward a more
spiritual interpretation of the Christian faith.
There are statements made in the third paragraph of this
resolution, and many wilder ones elsewhere, some of which we have
already quoted, which might seem at first sight to demand a reply.
But when one considers the charges and the people who made
them, to reply seems such a futile waste of endeavor. Take, for
example, the statement that Catholicism is nothing but paganism,
6;o WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
or that the Pope is framing an attack on American liberties, or
the above, that " the teachings and practices of Romanism de-
prive the people of the Bible," and the rest of it. How can any-
one who is trained to exactness in logical reasoning and historical
method answer statements such as these ? " The absurd," says
Paulsen, " has this advantage in common with the truth : that it is
unanswerable." And if one did answer it, what good would be
effected? Intelligent people know the answer already argument
would only weary them. And those who believe in the absurdity are
far beyond facts or reasonings. The more powerful the refutation,
the more they will feel in their dim minds that there is a cleverness
of sophistry in the argument that shows the ingenuity of the evil one.
A more inviting opening is to study the intellectual standing
of a body that can satisfy itself with such statements. Different
religious bodies have different standards of intellect, which may be
observed in their pronouncements. For instance, to take two ex-
tremes, one does not expect to find the same breadth of view or
ripeness of scholarship in the War Cry of the Salvation Army as
in the pronouncements of the Episcopal Bench of the Church of
England. Where then does the Methodist Church rank itself ? The
answer is not far to seek. There were, no doubt, educated gentle-
men in the Conference, but the Church as a whole cannot be
placed intellectually far above the level of the Salvation Army.
The speakers use better English than most Salvationists ; they have
had superior educational opportunities; but they lack the essential
qualities of a really educated man fairness, and clearness, and full-
ness of knowledge, and calmness of judgment, and breadth of
mind. Do they want an example of what we mean? This
quotation from Zion's Herald, a Methodist organ, will give them
an inkling of it. " The article on Methodism in the Catholic En-
cyclopedia is absolutely accurate, and contains no word which we
would ask to have altered or omitted." Why should not the mem-
bers of the Conference treat us and our doctrines in similar fashion,
instead of making their appeal to ignorance and prejudice?
We had hoped for better things. There has been a wonderful
broadening of view in the whole community during the past fifty
years. The Methodists, in the North at least, have improved in
education since the days of the campmeetings, and one might ex-
pect that they have lost most of the intolerance and narrowness of
the first half of the last century. But no! we find the same silly
charges ; the same bitterness and bigotry. They talk like ancestors.
Only one conclusion is possible : that the broad-minded, thoughtful
IQI2.] WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? 671
men that the Church has produced have been driven out by the
narrow and intense members. When they began to be reasonable,
they had to cease being Methodists. Men whose views of life
have been broadened by education and travel, by intercourse with
books and men, have found their old Methodist home too straitened
for them, and have passed over to the Episcopalians or Unitarians
or Catholics, or help to swell that numerous class who tell us priests,
when they meet us, that they have no definite religion, but, what-
ever religion there really is, we represent it. As a result the Wes-
leyan connection is left without the men who could keep it from
making itself look foolish; and religion for a large body of Chris-
tians is made to be a prop for ignorance and bigotry. Such lan-
guage is strong, but the report of the Conference justifies it. We
Catholics do not go out of our way to assail our separated brethren,
or to stir up needless strife in this Republic. Our bishops do not
hold meetings to denounce them, or to lie about them, or to plot
against their use of their rights as citizens. But we cannot let
unwarranted attacks go by without characterizing in proper lan-
guage the spirit that has prompted them.
And we have not stated the worst of these assaults on Catho-
lics. This time it is not against the Church in general, but against
us, their fellow-citizens and, in many cases, their personal friends.
Before the Conference closed the following resolution was adopted :
That an ancient foe of human liberty, the Papacy, as it gains
in numbers in the nation, is becoming bolder and more menac-
ing by means of alliance with corrupt politics and scheming
politicians. With a secret military organization numbering
hundreds of thousands, its priestly dictation over two million
voters, its Jesuitical influence over the nation's President, it
demands of American Protestantism a sleepless vigilance and
the most earnest, prayerful, and persistent effort to give its
blinded millions the true gospel of Christ.
There is no need to devote space to the refutation, or even to
the denial, of the accusations contained in this resolution. Every
man of sense in the Republic knows that they are not true. We pre-
fer to take up the more practical question : What do the Methodists
intend to do ?
It must be evident to everybody that there is a lack of logical
sequence between the charges they make against us, and the methods,
at least the avowed methods, they propose as a way of meeting
the danger. The same inconclusiveness is to be found in the Epis-
672 WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
copal Address. The Bishops announce an imminent and terrible
conflict between Rome and America. Such a sounding of trumpets
and noise of approaching war; and then they fire a broadside of
platitudes. ' True to the spirit of its founder, Methodism breaks
with no man for his opinion's sake. We think and let think, but
we exact from all men the same concession we freely yield them."
In the resolution the danger from Catholicism is put in more
definite form. We are foes to liberty; a menace to the state. We
have a secret army to carry out our schemes when the opportune
time comes. Meanwhile we are corrupt and intriguing. In short,
the Methodists say that we are now just what Nero and his suc-
cessors said we were a good many centuries ago a suggestive coin-
cidence. Well, if Nero and his successors were right then, they
are scarcely to be blamed for the measures they adopted. And if
the Methodists are right now, the country is face to face with a
situation that would justify extreme measures. It would not be
an occasion merely to call a prayer-meeting, except as a preliminary
to an active campaign. It is evident that either the Methodists do
not believe all they say against us ; or they do not dare to acknowl-
edge all they want to do to us. What they propose to do is to
keep an eye on., us, and to pray for us. Pray for us ! We may be
" blinded millions," but we can see some things. They lie about
us, and then offer to pray for us. We know how much religion,
how much charity, there is in such prayers. ' These Catholics are
a menace to the nation let us pray for them. One of them is even
now running for Congress he stands in much need of our prayers,
for he belongs to their secret military organization. Melchior
Braun, the grocer, is a Papist, and some of our people deal with
him better pray for him. And Mary McCarthy is a school-
teacher; they say she is a Jesuit we shall ask our brethren on the
Board of Education to wrestle with the Lord in prayer for her."
Of what avail is prayer with lies on the tongue and hatred in the
heart ?
What do the Methodists really intend to do besides praying
for us ? Do their business men take the position that they shall not
deal with Catholics nor accept our trade ? Do their political leaders
propose that they shall not vote for Catholics; nor look for our
votes? We have shown in a myriad of instances that we have no
such prejudices. During the political conventions the present writer
canvassed the opinions of a large number of priests on the leading
candidates for the Presidential nomination. At least six of these
candidates had supporters, and in no case was the religious creed of
1912.] ll'IIAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DOf 673
any one of them even mentioned. The discussion was entirely on
the basis of political and economic policies. We stick to the
good American way of estimating public men by standards of
character, ideals, and achievements, rather than by private beliefs.
We would like to know whether the Methodists intend to practice
a true American policy as generous as our own, or whether they
will force us to stand on our defence against them ?
Our desire that they cease dealing in subterfuge comes from
curiosity, not from fear. We are tranquil and serene. We place
our trust, first, on Christ, Who is with His Church; next, on the
fairness and good will of our fellow-citizens who are guided by
American principles, and will not permit persecution; and, to be
frank, somewhat on our own strength, which is sufficient to make
selfish bigots sorry for the day they began a needless quarrel with
us. Anyone who knows anything about our official pronounce-
ments, our public activities, or our private dealings, knows that we
are not trying to start a quarrel. But we are not of a sort to run
away from one.
Once more, what do the Methodists intend to do besides pray-
ing for us? They dare not tell. They are in an awkward posi-
tion. They hate our religion and are jealous of our success. They
will not acknowledge that these detested Romanists are stronger
religiously than they, better organized, more self-sacrificing, more
devoted to their faith, and destined to win this country by sheer
force of religious superiority. So, like Nero and Diocletian, like
Tacitus and Celsus, they invent a bogie-man and call it Catholicism.
Nor can they use in this day and place the means which those of
old employed against us. They cannot ask the American people,
who are devoted to the principle of religious toleration, to adopt
repressive measures against us. Such a request would be fore-
doomed to failure. It would be only a confession of defeat. They
cannot even suggest, at least openly, the use of the petty tricks
of the persecutor, boycotting and discriminating, and cutting Catho-
lics on the ballot. Therefore they disavow persecution, and they
only lie about us. If the lies should be believed, the public attack
on our Church must follow.
But it is too late for that. It was tried seventy years ago;
it was tried twenty years ago. In both cases it failed. It failed the
first time because freedom of worship is, with the citizens of this
Republic, not a hollow phrase but a living principle. It failed the
second time for that reason too, and also because the American
VOL. XCV. 43.
674 WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
people in the meantime had received first-hand knowledge of the
loyalty and good citizenship of an increasing number of Catholics.
It will fail this third time too. All that the Methodists will get for
their pains will be the verdict of the American people : that theirs is a
Church narrow-minded, trouble-making, rancorous, un-American.
The Methodist Episcopal Church affects to view with alarm
the growth of Catholicism as a danger to American institutions, but
the American people do not view the progress of the Church as a
danger. Most Methodists, we feel sure, do not share in such alarm.
The American people look upon the growth of the Church as a
support to true American principles. " By their fruits ye shall
know them " is the criterion of Our Lord. It is the criterion of
common-sense. It is the criterion that has always been used by
the people of this Republic. We Catholics are willing to stand or
fall by it.
The Catholic Church in America has no apology to make for its
existence. It is no newcomer here. It was here centuries before
John Wesley, that great and justly honored man, was born, and
before Methodism was dreamed of. This America, as all men
know, was discovered by Catholics before Protestantism in any
form was invented. The larger part of it was first explored and
settled by Catholics. In the Colonial period of this country, two of
the first charters of religious liberty were granted by Catholic gov-
ernors, Lord Baltimore in Maryland and Governor Dongan in New
York. American Catholics performed an honorable part in the
War of Independence, and the Republic could not have been victo-
rious without the aid of two foreign Catholic powers. Our Church
in this country has always been a patriotic Church, and a democratic
Church. It was for a long time weak in numbers, but never for
an instant weak in its Americanism. During the course of years,
it received accessions from king-ruled lands, and it has made of
these newcomers the most intense and loyal devotees to American
ideals of liberty.
There were times when our people had to contend with relig-
ious prejudice and race prejudice. But even in those bad days, the
calm judgment and sterling Americanism of the vast majority of
our Protestant fellow-citizens saved us from at least the worst
assaults of bigotry. At the present day we base our claims to
brotherhood in this great family not merely on a general principle
of toleration, but on our record as Americans. We take our place,
not through sympathy or generosity, but by right by the right
1912.] WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? 675
of loyal citizenship; by the right of work done for the upbuilding of
this great land; by the right of full acceptance of its institutions;
by the right of blood the blood of Catholics which was so freely
poured forth to save this Republic from domestic or foreign foe.
If blood be the price of citizenship, we Catholics have paid in full
for our franchise.
The last wave of bigotry began with the Columbus celebration.
It ended with the Spanish War. A member of a back-country
regiment once told the writer of the astonishment of his mates
when they went in swimming at Tampa with a number of New
York soldiers, and found them all wearing scapulars. They thought,
poor boys, that it was somehow a war with the Pope, and that all
Catholics would be against the United States. They discovered that
about every third man they met was a Catholic. There was no
bigotry in the returning army when it reached Montauk Point.
And the country at large learned the same lesson as its soldiers.
Now, it seems, after fourteen years of quiet, we are face to
face with another attack. The Guardians of Liberty lead the way.
The Methodist Episcopal Church is urging them on. Like Na-
buchodonosor, when he planned his wanton war of conquest, they
are only going to " defend " themselves.
It is too late for that sort of thing. The hypocrisy of it will
no longer delude, nor the intolerance of it attract. The people
of this Republic know the Catholic Church. They have become ac-
quainted with us as neighbors, as fellow-workers, as soldiers fight-
ing side by side. They admire our religious staunchness, our char-
ities, our loyalty to Church and country, The Methodists them-
selves are aware that such is the estimate of our fellows. In a
grudging, snarling way, Bishop Burt, as we have seen, acknowledged
it. Recent celebrations which have been held by Catholics in our
great cities have attracted the attention of the country to our num-
bers and enthusiasm. They have been as gall and wormwood to the
bigots. But they have been a source of honest satisfaction to most
of our fellow-citizens. Our Church is an American Church. Our
success is another triumph of American energy; another proof
of the wisdom of the American ideal of religious independence
and freedom. The increase in the number of our Cardinals is a
tribute to the greatness of our country, and a strengthening of
American power and prestige in the most far-reaching institution
in the world.
The Catholic Church is in the lime light now. She is not
676 WHAT DO THE METHODISTS INTEND TO DO? [August,
shrinking from inspection. Students of social factors, statesmen,
jurists, professors, publicists, have been observing us for some time
past. If a brief symposium were made of the opinions that have
been expressed, it would run somewhat as follows : " In the Catho-
lic Church the United States possesses a powerful organism which
receives foreigners, offering them the one great institution of en-
lightenment and betterment which is not alien to them when they
land on our shores, thus holding them to their moral practices, while
instilling into them our political ideals. This organization is, first
of all, a religious one. It preaches Christ. It does not use its pulpit
to advocate political measures, nor to stir up sectarian strife. It
makes heroic sacrifices for the religious education of its children,
the future citizens of the nation. It is incessant in its labors for
the relief of all forms of human misery, and has the power of calling
forth in its members, especially its sisterhood, a divine altruism
which makes one proud that human nature can reach such heights.
The Church sets itself in opposition only to those who threaten the
foundation of religion, the family, the state. It has stood almost
alone in the fight for the preservation of the American home. It
is looked upon by our most penetrating thinkers as the strongest
force at work for the maintenance of our political and economic
principles. It deals with reforms with prudence, temperance, and
breadth of view which comes from nineteen centuries of experience
with all classes of men. Even if one apply the test of business
success, one finds activity, enterprise, ability to meet new conditions,
equal to the best America has to show. Its business integrity, too,
is at the highest. Crises .come and go ; scandals arise in the world
of finance; reputations suffer; but the old Church retains a financial
credit and a reputation for just dealing which the proudest banking
houses in the world might envy."
Such is the institution which the Methodist Conference sets
itself to criticise and oppose. Their attack will fail, as stronger
attacks than theirs have failed. Their calumnies will not be be-
lieved; their shafts will return upon themselves. We need not
fight with them; we can commit our defence to our fellow-country-
men. Meanwhile, the old Church will go on serenely with her
noble work, forming her children up to the level of their vocation
as Christians and as freemen ; showing to all the world that loyalty
to Faith and loyalty to Country is "a double, but not a divided duty."
IRevv Books.
THE MUSTARD TREE. By Rev. O. R. Vassall-Phillips, C.SS.R.
New York : Benziger Brothers. $1.75 net.
The average Catholic apologist first proves the Divinity of
Jesus Christ, and then argues the existence of the divine, infallible
authority of the Catholic Church which He founded. " But in
modern days," as Monsignor Benson says in the preface to this
book, " minds are beginning to scrutinize phenomena from a new
angle .... Once men established the principle first, and examined
later its manifestations; now it is the phenomena first and the cause
second. Men must have facts first and explanations afterward."
Father Vassall-Phillips, while fully appreciating the value of
the usual method of deductive reasoning, believes " it may be
well sometimes to reverse the procedure, and argue now not from
cause to effect, from Christ to the Church, but from effect to cause,
from His Church to Christ. And this on the admitted principle
that not only must every effect have a cause, but also that every effect
must have an adequate and proportionate cause." . ..." If the
Catholic Church answers to the promises and conceptions of her
Founder so precisely as to stand before the world a superhuman
work, beyond the power of man to accomplish, then the Founder is,
as He declared Himself to be, the Lord our God."
The early Fathers of the Church frequently used this method
of argument, which appealed then as now to the man in the street,
who is dominated by imagination rather than ruled by reason.
St. Chrysostom uses it when addressing " slaves, maid-servants,
pedlars, sailors, and farm-laborers." (Contra Judaeos et Gentiles
quod Christus sit Deus.) St. Augustine also employs it in one of
his sermons on the Resurrection. He says : " Throughout all
the earth the Church has been spread She it is who is true ;
she it is who is Catholic. Christ we have not seen, but her we
do see; then let us have faith concerning Him They (the
Apostles) beheld Christ, and believed in the Church, which they
saw not. And we behold the Church, so let us believe in Christ,
Whom we see not." (Sermon 137. In diebus Paschalibus, IX., 3.)
The Bishops of the Vatican Council mentioned particularly
678 NEW BOOKS [August,
the evidential character of the Church's life. " Nay, more, the
Church also, by reason of her wonderful growth, of her marvelous
holiness, and unexhausted fruitfulness in all good works by reason
of her unity throughout the world, and her unconquered stability
is in herself a great and ever-living motive of credibility, and an
unimpeachable witness to her commission from God." (Const, de
Fide Cat. Cap. III.)
Father Vassall-Phillips centers the attention of his readers
upon certain facts and doctrines, such as the Unity of the Church,
the Papacy, Confession, the Real Presence, Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, the Religious Life, etc., and then shows in a most eloquent
and convincing manner their witness to the Divinity of Him Who
instituted them all.
In developing his thesis the author continually calls his Prot-
estant and rationalist opponents to task for their unreasoning
prejudice, their confusion of thought, their faulty exegesis, and
their inaccurate history, while he utilizes to good effect their many
admissions.
The book is not intended for scholars, but, as the author him-
self, says, " for the busy men and women of English speech, who
are seeking the kingdom of God in sincerity " for the use of any
ordinarily educated person." Its argument is convincing, its spirit
kindly, and its style lucid and eloquent.
The Epilogue by Hilaire Belloc is most suggestive. He insists
on the apologists of the day addressing the age in the language it
understands. He says : " When you are dealing with a state of
mind to which the labor of thinking is unusual and commonly dis-
tasteful, you may not only try to re-arouse the love of thinking
by the presentation of first principles, and, these presented, by
proceeding to show how, in the light of such principles, facts
confirm your thesis; you may also approach that state of mind from
exactly the opposite direction, and say : 'Since you do not like
thinking, here are some facts.' And it is, of course, the Greatest
Fact of all which Father Vassall-Phillips has made the business of
his book. He presents the Catholic Church."
BACK TO ROME. By J. Godfrey Raupert. New York : Benziger
Brothers. $1.00.
Many will welcome this new edition of Mr. Raupert's ex-
cellent volume of Catholic apologetics. Its spirit is evidenced by
the following quotation from W. S. Lilly : " As a matter of fact,
1912.] NEW BOOKS 679
there is only one way which Christianity has ever made, or ever
will make, proselytes in the world. Its victories have been won,
not by mere argument arguments have been called the symbols of
something deeper not by mere eloquence, not by the wisdom of
this world, but by an appeal to those fundamental spiritual instincts
of men whereunto it supremely corresponds."
The author's aim throughout is to view the objections of
his Anglican friend " from the philosophic and common sense stand-
point, rather than from the distinctly theological one." He treats
the usual questions of Protestant controversy : the Papacy, the
Bible, Confession, the Real Presence, Purgatory, Celibacy of the
Clergy, Use of the Latin Tongue, etc. ; and while he does not give
forth any new arguments, he presents the old ones with a persua-
siveness that wins assent. Only rarely does he lapse into the spirit
of old-time polemics, which seems occasionally to be the fault of
converts from Anglicanism.
Mr. Raupert quotes such widely different writers as Mallock,
Gladstone, Calvin, Voltaire, Bishop Lightfoot, Scott, and Thack-
eray. Indeed his selection of non-Catholic witnesses to the truth
and beauty of Catholic teaching is one of the best features of his
book.
If the earnest seeker after truth reads this volume, fully realiz-
ing that the religious problem " is not an intellectual question only,
but a moral and a spiritual one;" if he does his utmost "to place
his soul in rapport or affinity with that transcendental world from
which he is seeking a disclosure," he will assuredly " know the doc-
trine that is of God."
MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. By F. W
Puller. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.20 net.
It is rather interesting to find Mr. Puller, " in a lengthy but
curiously unconvincing book, trying to make out a case in favor "
of the false position of the Anglican Establishment regarding mar-
riage with a deceased wife's sister.
Ever since the dishonest and subservient Cranmer declared
the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine of Aragon null and
void on the plea of affinity due to a former marriage with Prince
Arthur, the Anglican Church has been forced in very shame to
declare all similar unions " incestuous and unlawful, and prohib-
ited by the laws of God." But in 1907, the Imperial Parliament
forsooth changed the " divine " law, and passed an Act declaring :
680 NEW BOOKS [August,
"No marriage heretofore or hereafter contracted between a man and
his deceased wife's sister, within the realm or without, shall be
deemed to have been, or shall be, void or voidable, as a civil con-
tract, by reason only of such affinity."
Some High Churchmen, on conscientious motives, began re-
fusing communion to those who had contracted such a union. But
a certain Mr. Banister, who had married his deceased wife's
sister, indignantly protested against such a gratuitous insult by a
state-made church, and appealed to the courts. The Dean of
Arches, Sir Lewis Dibden, sustained Mr. Banister in his right to
receive communion, and admonished Canon Thompson " to re-
frain from similar action in the future."
This " amazing action," which deliberately set at naught the
99th and logth canons of the Anglican Church, was the reason of
Mr. Puller's book. As he clearly perceives, this new marriage Act
of 1907 " cuts away the ground on which the Church of England
has stood for nearly four hundred years." For it brings out, as
clear as the noon-day sun, the utterly Erastian character of English
Protestantism. The same Parliament, which in the sixteenth
century changed the divine constitution of the Church by denying
the Papal supremacy, and abolished the Divine Worship of Chris-
tianity by legislating against " the blasphemous fable " of the Mass,
now in the twentieth century changes the so-called " divine " law
of marriage. The Anglican Churchman must now call black white
and white black, because the state has so decreed.
In the present volume, Mr. Puller attempts the impossible task
of proving that the marriage laws of Leviticus xviii., with regard
to the forbidden degrees of consanguinity and affinity, are for all
time, binding both Jew and Christian alike, and that no power on
earth can dispense therefrom. Needless to say, thousands of his
co-religionists, in the full exercise of the private judgment of a
" comprehensive " church, fail to see the force of his arguments, as
they have long since come to regard the state as absolute in all
that concerns marriage.
The Catholic Church maintains that these laws were binding
upon the Jews alone, except when she enforced them anew as the
infallible mouthpiece of Christ's divine teaching. It is, therefore,
always within the competency of the Pope to grant dispensations
in cases of consanguinity and affinity, when in his judgment the
particular carrying out of the law would do more harm than good.
There is little that is new in Mr. Puller's book. He simply
1912.] NEW BOOKS 681
repeats the statements made by some of his abler predecessors,
adding now and again to their already long list of mis-statements
and inaccuracies. Like many of his confreres, he shows his dilet-
tante scholarship by wantonly accusing great doctors of the Church
like St. Ambrose and St. Gregory of error; by unfairly citing in
his favor great scholastics like St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure;
by misinterpreting canonists like Cardinal Parisio; by ignorantly
tracing the Catholic claim to dispense in cases of affinity to Pope
Alexander VI., and by impudently asserting that " the formal de-
cision of Clement VII. against Henry VIII., in the matter of the
divorce, was in manifest opposition to the teaching of Scripture
and the Fathers, and to the general tradition of the Catholic
Church."
Prior to the Council of Trent, theologians as a matter of fact,
did dispute whether all the prohibitions of Leviticus xviii. belonged
to the divine natural law, or whether some of them belonged to the
divine positive law. But both schools agreed, pace Mr. Puller, that
the Popes could actually dispense, either strictly speaking, or, as
Cardinal Parisio held, by declaring that the divine law did not apply
in a particular case.
Fifty years ago Dr. Pusey tried to prove this same thesis, and
singularly failed. We recommend Mr. Puller to re-read carefully
a book that he sets aside with a sneer, Father Harper's Peace
Through the Truth. Had he digested it, he would at least have
learned how to be fair in setting forth the views of the Catholic
scholars of the past, whom he so lightly accuses of ignorance and
error.
SCIENTIFIC MENTAL HEALING. By H. Addington Bruce.
Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $1.50.
" The chief aim of the present volume," says the author in
his preface, " is to provide the general reader with a brief yet, it is
to be hoped sufficiently, comprehensive account of the principles
underlying scientific psychotherapy ; and to afford some idea of
the method by which it is applied in the treatment of disease,
and also of the maladies to which it is applicable."
A very meagre and superficial account of the history of hypno-
tism is given from the days of Mesmer to the present famous
scientific schools of Nancy and Paris. The value of hypnotism
as a therapeutic agent in certain functional diseases is clearly
brought out, and its triumphs abroad contrasted with the failure of
682 NEW BOOKS [August,
physicians in the United States to realize its importance. While
mention is made of the pseudo-mental healing of Dr. Ouimby,
Mrs. Eddy, and the New Thought School, who borrowed the " sug-
gestion " idea of hypnotism, and from it manufactured a new re-
ligion, there is no attempt made to stigmatize such charlatanism as
it deserves.
A rather interesting chapter discusses the debt of education
to psychology with regard to defective and backward children,
who are treated so effectively to-day in the New York public
schools, and in psychological laboratories like that of the University
of Pennsylvania. He says : " Not all of these backward children
are susceptible of improvement, for sometimes their deficiencies
represent a congenital feeble-mindedness, which not even the most
skillful educational methods can remedy. But in a great majority
of cases, as the results obtained in Prof. Witmer's psychological
clinic and hospital school indicate unmistakably, the trouble is
due to remedial causes. The teacher may be at fault, or, as often
happens, the child may be suffering from some physical trouble,
in itself slight, but sufficient to affect his mental development
adversely. Eye, throat, nose, ear, and dental trouble, it has been
conclusively demonstrated, are frequently productive of intellect-
ual deficiency."
The final chapters on " Half a Century of Psychical Research
and " William James " are rather out of place in the present volume,
as the author seems to realize in his rather poor plea for their
insertion.
LAMENNAIS AND THE HOLY SEE. From Unedited Docu-
ments and the Vatican Archives. By Paul Dudon. Paris :
Perrin et Cie. $1.25.
Many of the non-Catholic biographers of Lamennais, accept-
ing without reserve his own ex parte statements, have contended
that Rome treated him harshly and unjustly, and finally drove him
out of the Church at the instance of the absolutist governments
of Europe, who detested him for his great defence of modern
democracy.
The Abbe Dudon thoroughly refutes this fanciful thesis* from
the original documents preserved in the Archives of the French
government and the Vatican. A great deal of this material is here
*Lamennais et le Saint-Si&ge. D'apres des Documents inedits et les Archives
de Vatican. Par Paul Dudon. Paris : Perrin et Cie.
iyi2.] NEW BOOKS 683
published for the first time. In letter after letter of Pope, Cardinal,
Nuncio, Bishop, friend, and opponent, he proves conclusively that
"the apostasy of Lamennais was due to himself alone; that his
friends did 1 him more harm than his adversaries ; that the Pope,
Gregory XVI., treated him throughout with the utmost Christian
courtesy and patience; that the condemnations of 1832 (Mirari
Vos) and 1834 (Singulars Vos) were perfectly justified."
Lamennais for many years was a most vigorous defender of
the Church against liberalism and Gallicanism, although his lack
of balance and his pride of intellect brooked no opposition or cor-
rection. Within the first year of his ordination (1817), he pub-
lished the first volume of his famous Essai sur ['indifference en
matiere de religion, which, despite evident errors, was welcomed
by Catholics everywhere with delight : he was at once classed with
writers like Bossuet, Pascal, and Mallebranche.
The second volume appeared in 1820, and advocated a new
theory of certitude, derived not from evidence, but from the au-
thority of the common sense of mankind. He was at once most
bitterly attacked, his opponents declaring that such a philosophy
led to scepticism by utterly denying the validity of the individual
reason, and ignored the distinction between the natural and the
supernatural. He answered his Jesuit and Sulpician critics by
claiming, in his exaggerated way, that Rome had pronounced in
his favor. De facto Rome was not at all favorable to his views,
but Padre Anfossi, the Master of the Sacred Palace, had simply
given his imprimatur to Orioli's Italian translation of the Defense
de I' Essai.
Leo XII. was undoubtedly his friend. He had a portrait of
Lamennais in his room, and would have made him a Bishop in parti-
bus, if not a Cardinal though the Abbe disputes this fact had not
the French government put in its veto. While the Pope welcomed
him most heartily to Rome on his first visit in 1824, he still spoke
of him to Cardinal Turiozzi as " un de ces amants de la perfection,
qui, si on les laissait faire, bouleverseraient le monde."
For the next nine years, Lamennais was-continually engaged
in the most passionate controversies. His bitter tongue spared no
one Pope, King, Bishop, religious order, friend or foe unless
that one admitted unreservedly his new method of apologetics, and
his fake views on the liberty of the press, the liberty of conscience,
the right of revolt, etc., etc. In 1830, the better to propagate his
ideas, he founded a new magazine, L'Avenir, and his " General
684 NEW BOOKS [August,
Agency for the Defence of Religious Liberty." Both were con-
demned by the Pope within two years, and although Lamennais
openly professed submission to the Encyclical Mir an Vos, he never
changed his views.
After one year of correspondence with the Pope, Cardinal
Pacca, and the Archbishop of Paris, in which he strove to qualify
his acceptance of the Pope's public and private condemnation, he
abandoned his priesthood and faith forever. The Paroles d'un
Croyant was the apostate's answer to the most insistent and kindly
entreaties of his friends to be loyal to the Holy See.
No one can read the letters published in this most interesting
volume without realizing that everything possible was done by
those in authority to make the way of submission easy. They
warned him of his errors in the most kindly tone, they praised his
talents, they gave due credit to his work as an apologist, they were
most patient under his bitter and unfair attacks but he died im-
penitent, convinced of his own infallibility, and despising Lacor-
daire, Montalambert, Gervet, Salinis, and other friends for their
loyal submission.
AMERICAN COLONIAL GOVERNMENT, 1696-1765. A Study of
the British Board of Trade in Relation to the American Col-
onies. Political, Industrial, Administrative. By Oliver Mor-
ton Dickerson, Ph.D. Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co.
$4.00 net.
During the period which this book covers, the American
colonies acquired self-government to a large extent, and were not
prevented from doing so by the Board of Trade, which was the
Department of the British Government officially charged with co-
lonial affairs. The Board itself had varying power, however, being
at one time the source of all colonial authority, and at another only
an advisory body. Often it was an inefficient guardian of British
colonial affairs, and at those times the colonies increased their
powers of governing themselves. They would have been in straights
for any government at all if they had not done so. The Board
was created in 1696 as a committee under the immediate control
of the crown, but it came naturally to be a part of the parliamentary
executive. It understood the political tendencies of the colonies,
and sought to check them, but the Ministers would not support it
in many of its most important recommendations. It had power
to approve or disapprove colonial legislation ; and disapproved many
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 685
bills, and acted with scrupulous fairness in doing so. It decided
disputed boundary questions in the colonies, and prevented them
from enacting regulations inimical to the interests of one another.
The cause which led the colonies to revolt against the mother
country was the bad government given them by the home govern-
ment. Here we have a description of the machinery of that
government for seventy formative years. It shows that the defects
of the machinery were as much the cause of the bad government
as anything else, but that the Board of Trade was as efficient as
other departments of the British government were at that time.
Systematic and expeditious government by the Board was out of
the question, but England was not governed systematically or ex-
peditiously at home.
In writing his book Dr. Dickerson has kept steadily to his
purpose of developing the machinery of the Board, showing what
its duties were with respect to the American colonies, and how it
performed them. The various colonial measures and the conflicts
concerning them are another subject, and have been wisely left
out. It is hardly too much to say that an understanding of the
important preliminaries of the American Revolution is not possible
without an understanding of the vital phase of it, which Dr. Dicker-
son has presented in this volume.
A LITTLE PILGRIMAGE IN ITALY. By Olave M. Potter. With
eight colored plates and illustrations by Yoshio Markino.
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co. $4.00 net.
That there have been many books written on Italy has nothing
to do with each new book's claim. Why should there not be an un-
ending series of such volumes ? Or, rather, have we not actual need
of them? After all, a book on Italy must be like a poem or a
sketch and of poems and sketches we shall never cry " enough "
as long as beauty remains unexhausted and art sincere. So no
apology is needed for the publishing of A Little Pilgrimage in Italy
well-named indeed, for the reader of it can revisit familiar scenes,
view them from an angle that reveals new loveliness, or new sug-
gestions, and return refreshed in spirit. So we may go to Arezzo,
Cortona, Perugia, Siena, Assisi, Loreto, Ravenna, Foligno, Or-
vieto, and many another spot wisely selected and well-described
by our guide, cleverly pictured in line and in color by our artist.
Not Catholic, yet generally sympathetic, the author has with
fair success depicted outlooks for one and recalled sacred memories
686 NEW BOOKS [August,
to another class of readers. The book is beautiful, too; in every
sense worthy of a discriminating public.
UNTERSUCHUNGEN UND URTEILE ZU DEN LITERA-
TUREN VERSCHEIDENER V6LKER. By Alexander Baum-
gartner, SJ. St. Louis : B. Herder. $4.25.
Since the preceding notice was written,* the W ' eltliteratur
series has been enlarged by the addition of a volume made up of var-
ious essays contributed by Father Baumgartner to the Stimmen aus
Maria-Laach, the Literarischen Rundschau, and the Kirchenlexikon.
It forms a noble monument, including, as it does, discussions of
Spanish, German, British, and Scandinavian literature; and even
America in the person of Poe comes into this wide field of
criticism. The learning and critical acumen of the author make
every opinion of his a thing of weight.
THE REASON WHY. By Bernard J. Otten, SJ. St. Louis : B.
Herder. $1.25.
The classical apologies of Christianity are the works of Het-
tinger, Schanz, and Weiss. All of them are very lengthy, very
learned, and soar beyond the capacity and leisure of ordinary mor-
tals. Father Otten terms his little work A Common Sense Con-
tribution to Christian and Catholic Apologetics. The usual topics
of " Religion in General," " Supernatural Religion," and " The
Divinity of Christ " are well and succinctly treated. This work
is admirably suited for the busy non-Catholics of our own
country. Many a man who, absorbed in worldly cares, has become
indifferent to all religion; many another, who insensibly has lost
all belief in the sect of his nativity, will be edified and perhaps con-
verted by Father Otten's book. Two chapters in particular, " Re-
ligion and Morality " and the " Establishment and Growth of
Christianity," struck us as models of brief, lucid and felicitous ex-
position.
THE LIVING WITNESS. St. Louis : B. Herder. 50 cents.
This is a little booklet of 106 small pages, wherein the author,
a Catholic lawyer, gives reasons for the faith that is in him, and
extends a helping hand to those hesitating on the threshold of the
Church. The work contains in an elementary form the considera-
tions put forward by theologians in their treatises De Vera Relig-
*THE CATHOLIC WORLD, June, 1912, p. 405.
igi2.] NEW BOOKS 687
tone. We think the author deserves to be congratulated, both on
the work he has undertaken and on its execution. Likely enough
other works of greater length and more ambitious endeavor are
fermenting in his brain. We would suggest that next time he give
his name. The days are past when a self-effacing Idiota or Auctor
operis iinpcrfecti penned masterpieces. Anonymity now generally
means that a writer has not the full courage of his convictions, or
shrinks from facing consequent criticism. Certainly the author has
no reason to be ashamed of the present work.
THE PRINCIPAL GIRL. By J. C. Snaith. New York: Moffat,
Yard & Co. $1.25 net.
A clever, clean, entertaining story is The Principal Girl, written
in a playful vein that might grow monotonous were the story longer.
There is much wisdom conveyed through the medium of delicate
wit, and the tale leaves a pleasant taste with the reader. The ro-
mance, built upon the love of a British peer's son for the daughter
of an " old theatrical family," gives occasion to many amusing situa-
tions. In picturesque playing with words, the author shows really
a quite phenomenal power.
WHEN MOTHER LETS US TRAVEL IN ITALY. By Charlotte
M.Martin. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. $1.00 net.
To write a travel book for children without overloading the
pages is no easy task, and yet no reader will accuse Charlotte Martin
of having committed that blunder. The children of an American
family traveling in Italy are taken from place to place Genoa,
Naples, Rome, Perugia, Assisi, Florence, Siena and the record of
their journey is set down for the most part in just such conversa-
tion as real human beings indulge in. Enough information is
conveyed to stimulate a child's interest and provide useful sug-
gestions.
THE BUSINESS OF SALVATION. By Bernard J. Otten, SJ.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.25.
In this volume Father Otten has gathered together more than
forty sermons delivered in the St. Louis Cathedral during the Lent
of 1911. The only thing unusual about the sermons is their rather
novel dress in the language of the market-place and counting-house
688 NEW BOOKS [August,
the old themes proposed under new metaphors. But though these
discourses cover well-trodden ground, they are none the less ex-
cellent, being plain, brief, practical, and to the point.
Busy pastors who in spite of the best resolutions experti
loquiinur often find themselves Saturday night without a sermon
for Sunday, will be helped by this book. It is also most suitable for
home and family reading.
ENCHIRIDION PATRISTICUM. By M. J. Rouet de Journel, S.J.
St. Louis : B. Herder.
This thesaurus of patristic texts forms a good companion
volume to Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolontm and Kirch's En-
chiridion fontiiim historiae ccclesiasticae antiqiiac. It has been com-
piled chiefly for theological students, who hitherto had no text-book
of the kind to consult, save the bulky six-volume Thesaurus Patristi-
cus, or Waterworth's uncritical three-volume Faith of Catholics.
The Greek and Latin texts are given in the original, the former
always with a Latin translation; the Oriental texts are given only
in a Latin version. The latest and most critical editions of the
Fathers are used whenever possible, although references are made
throughout to the Abbe Migne's well-known edition, and to Funk's
Apostolic Fathers.
The choice of texts has been determined by the author's prac-
tical viewpoint. Many of the current manuals pay little attention
to the proofs from the Fathers, which were so well treated in the
classical treatises of a Petavius or a Thomassinus. In this manual
the student will find the most important passages arranged in chron-
ological order, with marginal numbers referring to the entire sub-
ject matter of theology from the tract De Revelatione to the treatise
De Novissimis. Other numbers in smaller type give us all the parallel
passages, while another index includes all the Biblical texts cited.
The chief value of the book is its critical and careful classifica-
tion of texts, and the ingenious method devised by the compiler to
make it of practical utility. He himself deprecates all claims of
having given us a perfect work, for he knows that no two scholars
in the world would be in complete agreement as to what texts
should be omitted or retained. He asks all students to send him
suggestions for future editions. They will all be grateful to him and
his helpers, Fathers Browe and Burdo, for their scholarly intro-
duction to the fascinating study of the Fathers.
igi2.] NEW BOOKS 689
PRIMITIVE BUDDHISM. By Alfred Roussel. Paris: Pierre
Tequi. $1.00.
Alfred Roussel, the Professor of Sanskrit at the University of
Fribourg, Switzerland, has published in the above volume the con-
ferences he delivered on Buddhism at the Catholic Institute of
Paris.
His aim is to present a critical yet popular study of Buddhism
in its primitive state, and incidentally to refute those Neo-Bud-
dhists who endeavor to set up the atheism of India as a formidable
rival of Christianity. He is most anxious to be fair and objective,
avoiding, as he says himself, " false estimates of either prejudiced
apologists or uncritical antagonists."
His subject naturally falls under three headings: the life of
Gotama (Buddha), his teaching (Dharma or Dhamma), and the
community of monks which he founded (Sangha).
It is practically impossible to write an authentic life of the
founder of Buddhism. As well try to construct a life of Christ
from a volume of modern sermons, or to write the life of a med-
iaeval saint from the pious imaginings of an uncritical convent
annalist. The historians and chroniclers of India never bothered
about distinguishing legend from historical fact, and her documents
are so oblivious of chronology, so full of interpolations, so fre-
quently changed and rewritten, as to be very unreliable.
The thesis of Bunsen, Seydel, and other rationalistic scholars
who maintain that the Gospel incidents are borrowed from Bud-
dhistic texts, is ably refuted. Christianity reached India in apos-
tolic times, and the Gospels were beyond doubt used to enrich the
Buddhist legend; some of the so-called primitive documents, like
the Lalita-Vistara, were compiled, according to Senart and Rhys-
Davids, from six hundred to a thousand years after the death of
Gotama; the differences in the alleged borrowings are for the most
part greater than the similarities, e. g., the presentation in the temple
of Mahapajapati, the temptation by Mara, the sermon at Benares,
etc., etc.
Roussel shows clearly from many citations that Buddhism
is in no true sense a consistent philosophy. He agrees with Barth
in holding that the many contradictions of its pseudo-metaphysics
argue "cerebral paralysis;" instead of being a chef d'oeuvre of
the human mind, our author stigmatizes it as a chef d'oeuvre d 'ex-
travagance et de delire.
VOL. xcv. 44.
690 NEW BOOKS [August,
Nirvana is the raison d'etre of the whole ethical system of
Buddhism. But what is Nirvana? According to De la Vallee
Poussin "it is not annihilation, nor is it a beatific existence; it is
neither a place nor a state. Buddhists heap argument on argument
to prove that Nirvana is a pure emptiness, the destruction of an
apparent individuality, the end of all activity of thought."
The four noble truths are: first, that existence is painful;
second, that existence is produced and renewed from life to life by
desire; third, that man may be delivered from existence; fourth,
but only by deliverance from desire. The absence of desire there-
fore is the royal highway to Nirvana.
The five moral precepts of Buddhism are wholly negative:
they forbid murder, lying, theft, fornication, and alcohol. Buddhism
is in no sense a religion, for it denies the existence of a Supreme
Being; its love of the neighbor so often unjustly praised consists
rather in a prohibition not to hate, based on indifference and the
absence of desire.
The third part of the book discusses in detail the convent life
of the Buddhist monks and nuns; their rules, vows, novitiate, cus-
toms, fasting, public confession, pilgrimages, etc. A final chapter
deals with the present state of Buddhism in India and Ceylon.
We recommend this book most highly for its subject matter,
but hope that in a future edition the author will simplify some
of the lengthy and involved sentences which disfigure its pages.
'THE PILGRIM'S GUIDE TO LOURDES, by the Rev. G. H.
Cobb (St. Louis: B. Herder. 40 cents), will give the reader
interesting details of the routes to Lourdes, the hotels and offices
there, etc. But it does not take up the traveler till he arrives in
London, and it omits to state how long the journey takes from
place to place, e. g., from Bordeaux to Lourdes. If these details
were included, the little book would be more valuable.
COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY. By Albert Perry Brigham.
^ (New York: Ginn & Co. $1.30.) Though objecting to the
multiplication of text-books, we must own that to the wearied
teacher they are oftentimes a blessing, giving variety in matter,
and method of treatment. Of late years the cords of the geograph-
ical tent have been stretched unduly in order to shelter many cor-
related subjects, and not the least significant symptoms of the
tendency of modern education is the fact that great prominence
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 691
is given to Commercial Geography. In old days children learned
whence were obtained the various commodities of life, but now
they learn how they are produced; how much has become more
important than whence, and commerce has crowded out geography.
The result is that while the topography of the world has grown
more detailed, children are ignorant of countries and cities. After
having entered this protest one may with an easy conscience pro-
ceed to discourse on the excellencies of the book in question.
The author is well known in the educational world, and his
presentation of the subject proper is interesting and methodical.
This book, therefore, deals more with commerce than with geog-
raphy. His chapters on the History of Commerce and the many
historical facts scattered throughout the volume lift up the whole
from the dead level of tons, bushels, and dollars. And a word
of special praise is due to the numerous maps, charts, and illustra-
tions, of which there are two hundred and seventy. The illustra-
tions really illustrate, and give the impression, which few text-book
pictures give nowadays, of having been chosen because of their
appositeness and utility.
CELECTIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT, with intro-
^ duction and notes by Henry Nelson Snyder, of Wofford Col-
lege, is designed to meet a recommendation that some knowledge
of the Bible as literature should be required for College entrance.
The book contains the stories of the Creation and the Deluge, and
accounts of some of the chief personages of the sacred record from
Abraham to Daniel, so arranged that the unity of each story is
preserved. A chapter is added on the poetry of the Psalms, the
Canticle of Canticles, etc. The notes contain only explanation of
difficult words and phrases, but the introduction is not so satis-
factory. The translation used is the King James' version. The
book is published by Ginn & Co., Boston.
PATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR (Philadelphia: j. B. Li P -
* pincott & Co. $1.25) is the name of a new story by Will
Levington Comfort, author of Routhledge Rides Alone and She
Buildeth Her House. Nor is it altogether a bad story, though
the various chapters depict so many countries that one gets the effect
of a patch-work quilt. But when, oh when, will some kind person
fence off the field of theology and put up a sign, " No Admittance
to Novelists ? "
692 NEW BOOKS [August,
CHORT READINGS FOR RELIGIOUS, by Father Cox, O.M.I.
^ (New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.00), contains fifty-two
short talks on practical points of the religious life in general. As
a manual of meditation, or points of instruction for novices, it
will prove a useful aid; also for spiritual reading, when that duty
is restricted to a very short period of time.
pLOISTER CHORDS, by Sister Mary Fides Shepperson (Chi-
^- / cago: Ainsworth Co. 50 cents), touches on many topics of
the High School course. It will be to the graduate of St. Mary's
Convent, Pittsburgh, Pa., when school days are a thing of the past,
a pleasant reminder of the months that sped so swiftly when life
was free from care.
NUNC DIMITTIS, or THE PRESENTATION IN THE
TEMPLE. A mystery play by a Religious of St. Mary's Con-
vent, Cambridge, England (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons),
is a simple, quaint recital of the Presentation of Our Lord
in the temple, and will be found suitable for the Christmas season.
T C. PAGE & CO. publish two new stories for girls, 'Alma at
*-* Hadley Hall, by Louise M. Breitenbach, and The Girls of
Friendly Terrace, by Harriet Lummis Smith. The second is espe-
cially commendable, because, instead of golf or literary ambition, its
young heroine possesses the cardinal talent of cookery. Each $1.50.
CWIMMING SCIENTIFICALLY TAUGHT, by Prof. Frank
^ Eugen Dalton (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co. $1.25 net),
is intended to help beginners to learn and swimmers to improve.
Of course no book can be a satisfactory substitute for an instructor
in a matter so eminently practical, but the present volume is even
less helpful than might reasonably have been expected.
PHERE is no more effective counter-irritant to the pernicious
* literature that is the order of the day than the history and
the example of the Saints. Nor may it any longer be said that their
lives are presented to us without that practical inspiration so needful
to us sinners who live and work in a valley of tribulation. The din
of new theories that blatantly decry all tradition and pretend to re-
make the world sounds in our ears yet the still small voice of the
Saints of God alone speaks wisdom unto men. Nothing is more help-
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 693
ful to the Christian home than the lives of the Saints. It matters
not in what field the children of that home will labor, the light that
will safely guide them, and the example that will best inspire them,
are found in those who, living with God, help us all in our work for
God and our fellow-men. St. Paul was a tent-maker ; St. Ignatius a
soldier; St. John Capistran a magistrate.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD has already recommended to its readers
the series of the Friar Saints published by Longmans, Green & Co.,
New York. These volumes are presented in an attractive size and
makeup, and cost but fifty cents a piece. They are within the reach
of everyone, and our people should show their appreciation of the
labor and devotion of the editors and of the work of the publishers.
The series includes the lives of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bona-
venture, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Antony of Padua, St. Pius V., and
St. John Capistran. Each life is ably written with a view to its
practical, popular appeal. The books will be a treasure in every
Catholic household.
CONFERENCES A LA JEUNESSE DES ECOLES. Par Ch.
^ Vandepitte. (Paris: Pierre Tequi. 2 fr.) A slender volume
of 209 pages, containing nineteen catechetical lectures to French
school children. The work is divided into two parts : thirteen lec-
tures being on "Duties to God," and six on "Duties to Our
Neighbor." The lectures, though of course in elementary style,
are well and interestingly written. Many examples and historical
episodes are given to sustain the reader's attention; while a page
of reflexions et pratiques after each discourse sums up and crystal-
lizes the lessons just taught.
^foreign periobicals.
r A House Divided Against Itself. By S. F. Darwin Fox. The
present chaotic condition of the Anglican Church is simply the
legacy of the compromise known to history as the Elizabethan
Settlement. Elizabeth demanded obedience to herself in matters
temporal and ecclesiastical. J. R. Green has shown how she looked
at theological matters in a purely political light. J. A. Froude
also contributed similar testimony. Elizabeth made the Anglican
Church. She denied the Mass. But the Mass is the test of Catho-
lic Faith. As Mr. Birrell has said, " It is the Mass that matters."
The Anglican Church has abrogated Baptism: it recognizes at
least three conflicting sacramental theories. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to determine what the Anglican Church teaches as de
fide. Oxford and Cambridge Review, July.
The Italian Futurists. By A. M. Ludovici. The work
and aims of this school of Italian artists demand serious at-
tention as indices of the trend of modern art. When using
such terms as art, reality, realism, etc., one must take great
pains to define them with precision, so the author opens
his paper with a number of definitions that clear the ground.
He goes on to show that ever since Whistler, inspired by
Manet and the Pointillistes, declared that the subject did not matter,
the mode of expression has grown to be the sovereign concern of the
more advanced school of modern painters. Art became divorced
from any definite attitude towards life. Artists who were born in
an age of chaos, in an age of the clashing and mixing of values,
and among a people who had lost all notion of a direction or a
purpose in life, could never feel that intense passion for any par-
ticular phase of life which the Gothic or Pagan artists had once
felt. They were thrown back upon art forms. As a result tech-
nique, decorative effect, color schemes, contours took precedence.
The substance was neglected. The ranks of artists were swelled
by thousands of mediocrities, incapable of any supreme, masterly
vision. The only love that inspires the Futurists is a love of the
modern age of chaos : a weak love which has not the power to rise
above technical controversies, which has not the power to break
FOREIGN PERIODICALS 695
with the past save in manifestoes in words. The Futurists have
introduced merely a fresh convention for depicting objects in move-
ment; but they are slaves of the past. They have carried to its
logical conclusion every tenet of the studios for the last fifty years.
The Futurists then, instead of a beginning, are an end, the last
offspring of a senile race of artists who are utterly bankrupt and
devoid of all love, ideas, vigor, or promise of life. Oxford and
Cambridge Review, July.
Secret Societies in European Politics. Unsigned. The Grand
Lodge of Freemasons was founded in England in 1719, and ever
since the accession to the throne of the House of Hanover they
have enjoyed the protection of the reigning families. So great has
been this protection that when in 1799 Parliament passed a law
for the suppression of secret societies, only one escaped this law,
and that was the Freemasons of England. The writer gives a
brief history of Freemasonry in England.
The English Freemasonry was not confined to England alone,
but as early as 1721 the Duke of Montagu founded a lodge at
Dunterque, France. The Order now spread with amazing rapidity,
and before the end of the first half of the eighteenth century every
country of Europe was represented by at least one lodge of Free-
masons, all founded by the Grand Lodge of England, and depend-
ant solely upon it. In 1826 Mr. Canning, a prominent Mason,
in a discourse, made known the mysterious power in the hands of
the Masons. The Order was Protestant, and in favor of Monarchy
in England, but anti-religious and of Republican tendencies on the
Continent.
In Italy, for instance, all the political leaders from Cavour
to Crispi, including Mazzini, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel and King
Humbert, have been Freemasons. Jews were admitted to member-
ship in 1831, which accounts for the wretched treatment accorded
Catholics during the Jubilee Year at Rome, under the Mayoralty
of Ernest Nathan, a Masonic Jew, and of English origin.
Of the numerous " Young Turks," who took refuge in the
various countries of Europe, who conspired against the government
of Abdul Hamid, the majority of these made their studies in Paris
and London, and during this period of study became affiliated with
Freemasonry. A short while after the Turkish Revolution, the
" Young Turks " declared openly that Freemasonry played an
important part in the overthrow of Abdul Hamid's government.
696 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [August,
After the revolution, all important posts of the government were
filled by Freemasons, following the custom of the other countries
of Europe in which Freemasonry holds a strong place.
The massacres breaking out at the present time in Armenia,
which have been laid against the Levantine Jews, have been
traced to a Mason Ishan Tikri, director of one of their papers.
The " Young Turks " allow these massacres to go on, thinking
that they are adding a great help to the cause of Freemasonry, to
which they have become allied.
The writer ends his study of the question by these all-im-
portant words : " And on the day when the Italo-Turkish war
ends, the mask will fall, and will show the Ottomans that in the
country of the Mussulman, as in the Catholic countries, Free-
masonry, sooner or later, brings to that country ruin and abase-
ment." Le Correspondant, June.
The Belgian Elections. By B. Van Den Heuvel. Until the
revision of the Belgian Constitution in 1893, that country had but
two political parties the Catholic and the Liberal. In 1894 the
Socialist Party came into existence. As usual it planned at once
radical changes of all kinds that were to be effected by revolutionary
methods. But it has since been forced to learn that if it is to ac-
complish anything, it must accomplish it by methods slower and
more peaceful.
The Catholic Party, which includes many non-Catholics, is the
one chosen by all right-thinking men, of all shades of belief, and
holds, now as ever, the supreme place in politics. It has endeavored to
conciliate the interests of all social classes; to do everything that
will promote the welfare of the state; to safeguard the vitality of
local institutions ; to encourage initiative, and to promote the moral
and intellectual growth of the citizens of Belgium. The good work
which it has accomplished has met with wide praise, and excited
even the admiration of a Liberal Propagandist, M. Barich, who
some months ago wrote a book entitled The Clerical Regime in
Belgium, in which he set forth the social and economic works which
have been due to the zeal of the Catholic Party.
The Liberal Party is absolutely opposed to the Church. It
demands absolute separation of Church and State; severe neutrality
in public education, and the withdrawal of financial aid to religious
institutions.
The Socialist Party, even more radical than the Liberal, is
I9i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 697
making strenuous efforts to gain a foothold in every part of the
kingdom. The elections of this year were most important. The
Liberal and Socialist Parties were quite sure of success, but the
result proved a victory for the Catholic Party. The writer ends
his article by tabulating the results of the elections, showing the
gains and losses of the different parties. Le Correspondent, June.
The Tablet (June 29) : The Insurance 'Act gives directions as
to the content and observance of the law regarding the insuring
of employees. The Boy Scouts invites the cooperation of Catho-
lics in this National Movement, and suggests the propriety of such
cooperation with an organization whose attitude to Catholics is
evidenced by the presence of the Archbishop of Westminster on
its Board of Directors. In The Belgian Elections Dom Bede
Camm, O.S.B., gives a graphic account of the Catholic triumph in
the recent elections due to a magnificent union of work and prayer.
Belgians entitled to more than one vote by educational or property
qualifications were summoned from all parts of Europe; mission-
aries and members of teaching orders congregated to save Belgium
from the " hands of the enemy." The vanquished Liberals la-
ment too late their unhappy alliance with Socialism. The Pri-
mate and The Marriage Law questions the effect upon Anglicans of
the decision of Parliament in the Banister case. The English
Prayer Book declares marriage to a deceased wife's sister to be
against " the law of God ;" and the Rev. Mr. Thompson " failed to
note that 'the law of God' had recently been amended by the House
of Commons." " The effect of the decision is to establish
the right of Parliament to settle the terms of admission to Holy
Communion in the Established Church." The Primate protests
personally against the act, but yields officially by pronouncing such
marriages only " ecclesiastically irregular." Up to the time when
Henry VIII. first saw Anne Boleyn, everyone in England knew
that the law forbidding marriage with a deceased wife's sister
was an ecclesiastical law, from which the Holy See could grant
dispensation ; " to oblige the King, Parliament affirmed that such
marriages were contrary to 'the law of God.' Now Parliament
has changed its mind, and the Church of England must do the
same."
(July 6) : Oxford, Ottawa and The Marriage Law gives the
" lonely protest " of the Bishop of Oxford, who " seems not to have
apprehended the full force of an Act of Parliament." The situa-
698 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [August,
tion demands a revision of the Book of Common Prayer " for
the peace of souls." In this connection the recent decisions of
the Supreme Court of Canada regarding the civil standing under
the law of the Province of Quebec of marriages between two
Catholics, and of mixed marriages not " contracted before a Roman
Catholic priest " are discussed. Catholic Federation in France
is an encouraging picture of the earnestness and success with which
both priests and people are working in France to repair the heavy
losses sustained under the Separation Law.
The National (July) : Episodes of the month speaks of the
attitude of England towards Germany in view of recent English
political happenings. Comments unfavorably and in a very big-
oted way on what it describes as the disgraceful Home Rule Bill
" the House of Commons is dominated by a gang of sorted dema-
gogues and needy-greedy lawyers." Rudyard Kipling writes a
rabid, unpleasant article, entitled The Benefactors, against Trade
Unionism. How England can maintain its naval supremacy in
the Mediterranean is treated by H. W. Wilson. Coulson Kern-
ahan protests against political activities of the Free Church in an
article entitled Politics and the Pulpit. Young China and Young
Turkey, by J. O. P. Bland, compares the recent revolutions in both
countries. The writer seems to think that in the latter it will be
successful; in the former it will prove a failure.
Oxford and Cambridge Review (July) : Discusses current
topics. Second installment of an exhaustive article on the present
industrial conditions in England by E. F. Smith. W. S. George
discusses Daudet's Tartarin. Freemasonry and Christianity, by
Flavien Brenner, is a review of the growth and organization of
Freemasonry in Germany and its war against Christianity.
Le Correspondant (June 10) : In Crumbling Shrines of the
Faith, Max Doumic records a tour he made through the southwest
of France. He describes the architectural beauty of the churches
there, and then tells how they have been allowed to fall into decay
by that indifferentism that has of late been sweeping over the
country. Master of the Sea, by L. de St. Victor de St. Blancard,
reviews the rivalry in naval supremacy now engaged in by England
and Germany.
(June 25) : Social Reform, by Georges Goyau, tells of the
1912.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 699
work inaugurated on January 26, 1903, at Rheims by the Abbe
Leray to combat the social evils of the day. At its own expense
this society published brochures on every subject pertaining to
these great questions, and has scattered them broadcast. At the
end of each year they publish a " Social Guide," which gives a
summary of problems handled and work done. As yet only in its
ninth year, it gives great promise of fruitful work for God, the
Church, and the state. Naval Study, by Edgar de Geoffroy,
is a scientific study of submarine boats of every description.
Turkish Persecutions, by Andre Cheradame, deals with the perse-
cutions which the Albanians are subjected to by the treachery of
the " Young Turks," who solicited the help of the former at the
crisis of the Turkish Revolution, promising them every advantage
if they were successful in dethroning Abdul Hamid. France to
Canada, by Etienne Lamy, is the speech which Etienne Lamy de-
livered on the 25th of June, 1912, as a representative of the Aca-
demic Franchise at the Congress of French-speaking people held at
Quebec.
Revue Thomiste (May- June) : The Idea of God and the
Psychology of the Subconsciousness, by R. P. Montague, O.P.,
is an answer to unbelievers who maintain that the Subconsciousness
in us is the source of man's idea of God. The Vital Principle
and the Traditional Philosophy, by R. P. Melizan, outlines the
teaching of Christian Philosophy on life and its principle, and
then shows that spontaneous generation is incompatible with this
philosophy. The article is for the most part a refutation of the
opinions advanced in favor of spontaneous generation by M. Bonys-
sonic. The author denounces such theories as irrational and un-
philosophical.
IRecent Events,
The Chamber of Deputies has been devoting
France. the greater part of its time to the discussion
of the Bill for Electoral Reform introduced
by the government. To this measure the most numerous, and
hitherto the most influential, of the parties in the Chamber has
offered a determined opposition; and at one time the existence of
the Cabinet was seriously endangered. The rank and file of the
Socialist-Radicals feared that its passing would result in their losing
their seats. No French government, under present circumstances,
can retain office, even if supported by a majority, unless that ma-
jority is made up of strictly Republican votes. The Bill is sup-
ported by those members who sit not only on the Extreme Left, but
also by those who sit on the opposite Extreme, that is the Right.
The support of the latter has to be eliminated in a vote which in-
volves an expression of confidence. On one occasion in the dis-
cussion, the government barely secured a majority of the required
kind of supporters. Its passage through the Chamber may now
be looked upon as assured. It has, however, still to make its way
through the Senate, and no one can tell how it will be treated by
that body. The Bill, in the shape in which it leaves the Chamber,
provided for the election of all its members by scrutin de liste and
for the representation of minorities. The electoral area is in all
cases the Department. The means to secure the representation
of minorities seem to be very complicated. This is in fact the
great objection to every form of proportional representation. Sup-
porters of the Bill, however, maintain that it will work perfectly
well in practice.
Both the Chamber and the Senate have been discussing the
virtues and the vices of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the government
having called upon Parliament to make a grant of money in order
to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of his birth. Con-
siderable opposition was offered in both of the houses. In the
Chamber M. Maurice Barres pointed to the singular inappropriate-
ness of showing honor to the father of anarchist theories, at the
very time when the government was engaged in shooting down like
dogs his anarchist disciples. There was no essential difference of
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 701
theory, he maintained, between Kropotkin and Rousseau. The
opponents of the vote in the Senate' insisted, among other things,
on the despotism of the masses of which Rousseau was an advo-
cate. He taught that the state might banish everyone who did not
believe in its dogmas, and even put to death anyone who, after
having publicly accepted them, behaved as if he did not believe
them. Moreover, although an enemy of property, he has always
lived on the property of others. Both Houses, however, passed
by large majorities the grant for which they were asked. The
supporters of the vote, while recognizing the numerous vices of
their hero, thought honor was due to one who first had the vision
of the 1 new city which was being built in modern times on the
foundations of social justice and humanity. The Bi-centenary
was duly celebrated in the Pantheon in the presence of the President,
and with all the pomp of state and circumstance.
Two years and a half ago the Chamber passed a resolution
inviting the legal authorities to consider the advisability of estab-
lishing an organization for the examination of criminals, and the
investigation of the social causes of criminality. It was the increase
of crime, and particularly of juvenile crime, that led to this step
being taken. M. Briand went further, and established a central
Bureau of criminology. This Bureau devotes itself to the study
of the physical and biological characteristics of criminals, their
physical condition and their social environment. But when the
spectacle is presented to the youth of the country of the highest
honors being paid by the Chief of the State to a man notoriously
guilty of the worst moral crimes, it seems unnecessary to inquire
into one at least of the causes of this increase. The labor unrest,
of which so many countries are feeling the effects, has led to a
large strike of French seamen. Great inconvenience has been
caused. On the whole, however, due bounds have been kept; the
strikers, although firm in their attitude, have refrained from violent
action, and from interference with the rights of others.
The Foreign relations of France remain unchanged. With
Russia and Great Britain, the Premier affirms, never were they
better. The three governments keep permanently in touch, and
exchange views confidentially on all international questions. Be-
tween Great Britain and France the warm feeling was so strong
that no written documents were needed to secure common action.
The fact that in Italy irritation was shown at the reference made
to the war by M. Poincare, in his speech in the Chamber, may be
702
RECENT EVENTS [August,
taken rather as an indication of the extreme sensitiveness of Italians
since the war began, than of any real difference between the two
countries or of any impending conflict.
With reference to Morocco, the situation is recognized by the
government as serious. The opposition of many tribes had ren-
dered it necessary to send reinforcements. But the government is
determined to carry the enterprise it has undertaken, however long
and arduous it may prove, to a successful conclusion. As soon as,
by means of the Army, the country has been pacified, its civilization
will be undertaken. A regular Budget will be the first step, to be
followed by a proper system of education. Franco- Arab and Franco-
Berber primary schools will be established and a French College
opened at Tangier. A stop will be put to the abuses in the sale
of land. The loyal cooperation of the natives is looked upon as
essential, and therefore every effort will be made to win their con-
fidence, so that France may not only be respected but also loved.
With Spain the negotiations are still going on. There are indeed
great difficulties still to be settled, but every hope is entertained
that they will be surmounted, and that the good relations between
France and Spain will in no way be impaired.
Very little has to be said about German
Germany. affairs, for very little has taken place. The
Emperor has made a couple of speeches, in
one of which he expressed his strong desire that Great Britain
and Germany may long remain on friendly terms. The relations
between the two countries have been under discussion in a Sympo-
sium, in which leading statesmen on both sides have taken part. All
of them express the strong desire that peace may be maintained, and
some even entertain the hope. The Navy League of Germany is
- again in the field trying to bring home to Germans the necessity
of a still further increase of the Navy.
That the birth-rate is diminishing in Germany is a fact which
will be a surprise to many. Such, however, is the case. Statistics
of births and deaths for 1911 show that in Prussia and Bavaria
the growth of population has fallen off by more than 100,000. It
seems certain that the returns for the whole Empire will show an
increase of population of less than three-quarters of a million
the least favorable return for more than twenty years. It is feared
that in Germany the same causes are coming into operation which
have been working so disastrously in many other countries. To
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 703
settle this question the Prussian government is organizing an in-
quiry, which doubtless will be conducted with characteristic Ger-
man thoroughness, and so be of great use to all students of the
question. The Ministry of the Interior has issued a rescript to
the provincial Governors, requiring them to obtain information from
doctors, teachers, lawyers, the clergy, and all available sources. The
main questions are whether the limitation is intentional, and if so,
what are the principal social and economic causes, and whether the
birth-rate is falling among the working as well as among the
middle classes.
Friends of parliamentary government can-
Austria-Hungary, not feel satisfied with the way in which it is
working, even in the countries in which it
has long been adopted. As the ideal form, it should bring to the serv-
ice of the people the best and the most intelligent who are to be
found among them for the discussion of their needs. As a matter
of fact even in Great Britain, which is supposed to be the model
constitutional government, discussion has been largely superseded
by the closure by means of the guillotine. In France, efforts are
being made by a Reform of the Chamber to restore to it the respect
which has been lost. In Italy, the government took special pains to
begin the recent war without consulting the representatives of the
people, and to carry it on without having recourse to them. The
most flagrant example of failure is, however, afforded by the Par-
liament of Hungary. For nine years, with a few brief intervals,
even the semblance of discussion has disappeared, obstruction of the
most determined character having been systematically practiced by
an obstinate minority. This obstruction has been directed against
the increase of armaments, and in support of certain national de-
mands, and more recently in behalf of the universal suffrage bill
which has for so long a time been promised. It is said that the
practice was favored by the electorate of the country, and up to a
recent date the government was powerless to deal with it. But at
last a way has been found, of such a character, however, as to
destroy constitutional government, and to establish a new form of
absolutism in its place. The way out was found by electing the
celebrated or shall we say the notorious? Count Stephen Tisza
as Speaker. In a single sitting he secured the passing of the Army
Bill, which had been before the House for more than two years.
This he did by avowedly over-riding the rules of procedure, by ig-
7 04 RECENT EVENTS [August,
noring all protests, and finally by the use of force policemen being
called to eject the opponents. Not satisfied with removal from the
House, he proceeded to the arrest of many. So great was the
exasperation that an attempt was made to shoot the Count. He
was, however, in no way to be baffled, and by these methods the
Standing Orders, under cover of which obstruction has for so long
been practiced, have been revised. Within a few days the work of
years has been done. The House of Magnates has given its con-
sent, and the Emperor-King his approval and benediction. There
are those, however, who hold that laws made by violence, and in
disregard of all rules of procedure, are in reality not laws at all,
and that they will not be recognized by the Courts, or, what is
more important, by the public judgment of the country. But is
there such a thing? There does not appear to be the possibility of a
considered public judgment. Politics in the Dual Monarchy are
nothing more than the wrangling of one nationality with another.
The Magyars are engaged at the present time in suppressing the
rights of the Croatians. They have been put under the absolute
rule of a M. de Cuvaj. To his high-handed proceedings an assassin
has just made an unsuccessful attempt to put an end. Now the
police are making efforts, as in the Agram case, to discover and,
if not successful in this, to concoct a general conspiracy of the
Slavs. In other parts of the country proceedings are of a like
character, although not so violent. A few days ago, the Emperor
made an earnest appeal to the Ruthenes to lend their support to
an Army Bill which he had at heart. Thereupon the Polish repre-
sentative in the Austrian Cabinet gave in his resignation, on account
of the recognition thereby accorded to a race with which the Poles
are in continual conflict. This matter, however, was soon arranged,
and hopes are even being entertained that between Poles and Ruth-
enes terms of mutual agreement may be found. The same hopes are
also felt of a settlement being made of matters in dispute between the
Germans and Czechs of Bohemia. This is eminently desirable ; for
the Emperor is a very old man, and has an influence for good which
it is not expected that his prospective successor will wield. A settle-
ment, if possible, should therefore be made at once.
The development of sympathy, and even of
Russia. common political action, between Russia and
Great Britain have been greatly imperilled
by the savage sentence of a Russian Court of Justice passed upon a
I9i 2.] RECENT EVENTS 705
lady who claimed to be a British subject. By this Court Miss
Malecka was condemned to deprivation of all civil rights, to four
years penal servitude, to be followed by exile to Siberia for life,
for belonging to a revolutionary organization. The defendant ad-
mitted that she had made the acquaintance of a noted Polish
Socialist, whom she knew to be a political exile, but denied that she
sympathized with his ideas. Strong feeling was excited by what
appeared to be so unjust a sentence, especially in the ranks of the
Radical supporters of the government. Meetings were held, and
repeated questions were asked in Parliament. The Foreign Secre-
tary found himself in a very difficult position. On the one hand,
the good relations with Russia were involved, for no foreign inter-
ference with internal affairs would have been tolerated ; and on
the other, there was the danger of alienating an influential section
of his own supporters. A way out of the difficulty was found in
the end. A petition was addressed to the Tsar, by friends of Miss
Malecka, for her free pardon. This petition was granted upon the
condition that she should leave the country a condition with which,
no doubt, she was very glad to comply.
Another question has arisen threatening in some degree the
existing relations between the two countries. It also illustrates
how easily credence is given in Russia to accusations made against
the Jews. In the Middle Ages charges of the same kind were con-
demned by the Popes. In this case a charge has been made of a
Ritual Murder, commonly called the Blood Accusation, against
the Jews of Kieff. A Protest against such a charge was signed
by so large a number of the leading men of Great Britain that the
signatures filled, closely printed, more than a column of the
Times. Among the signers were Archbishops and Bishops, Dukes,
Earls, and Barons, Deans, Canons, and clergy of the Establishment,
with Presidents and ex-Presidents of the various Free Churches,
scores of Professors, Artists, Literary men and Scientists and
Editors of newspapers. The feelings of many Russians was con-
siderably hurt that a charge of such a kind should be brought
against their country. They looked upon the Protest as an unjusti-
fiable interference with lawful order and justice in Russia, and as
an aspersion upon the intelligence and humanity of its people.
The projected Trans-Persian Railway has also a certain bear-
ing on the relations of Russia and Great Britain. Such a project
would not have been listened to for a moment a few years ago, and
there are people in Great Britain, whether they are to be looked
VOL. xcv. 45.
7 o6 RECENT EVENTS [August,
upon as unduly suspicious, or as really extremely far-sighted and
sagacious, it is hard to say, who think it ought not to be listened
to now. The railway if built would bring the enemy up to the
very gate of India, were Russia ever again to become an enemy
and who can say that she will not? The project, however, is on
the road to accomplishment, at least the first steps are being taken.
If carried out it will be possible to travel from London to Delhi
within a period of shortly over a week.
Russia has been foremost in promoting, so far as practicable,
mediation between Italy and Turkey to bring to an end the war which
has for so long a time been waged between the two. It is the com-
merce of Russia that is chiefly affected by this war. Moreover,
she is very desirous that the state of things in the Balkans should
remain unchanged. Italy, although a member of the Triple Alliance,
has a special understanding with Russia, formed at the time when
war with Austria was very probable. The interests of Italy and
Russia in the Balkans were then declared to be identical they
had the same objects in view : the strengthening of the status quo.
The action in Italy in bombarding forts at the entrance to th'e Dar-
danelles, an event which led to the closing of those straits for
some time, and the consequent protest of Russia, led to the impres-
sion that something more than an understanding existed between
Italy and Russia. Nothing, however, so far, has been done to
confirm this impression. The drawing together of Austria and
Russia, which a few months ago was thought to be near, has made
no progress. Things are as they were. The Foreign Minister of
Russia, speaking of the good relations which subsisted between his
own and other countries, mentioning them by name, placed Austria
in the fifth place. So sensitive are the feelings of some Austrians,that
one of the leading papers took umbrage at this, and declared it
showed a growth of coldness of feeling on the part of Russia.
What effect the recent visit of the German Emperor to the Tsar
may have upon the relations between Germany and Russia, it is
too soon to learn. Some think, or at least say, that the Kaiser
has persuaded the Tsar to throw in his lot with Germany in the
struggle with Great Britain, of which so much apprehension is felt.
To this we would advise our readers not too readily to assent.
The war with Japan practically destroyed the Russian Fleet. It
has ever since been a question whether the nation should be put to
the expense of building a new Fleet to take its place. The Duma at
last has accepted the proposals of the Admiralty, and a Bill has been
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 707
passed appropriating something over two hundred and fifty millions
of dollars for ship building and construction during the period
1912-17. Four armored cruisers, eight small cruisers, thirty-six
destroyers, eighteen submarines, together with auxiliary vessels, are
to be built. Ports are to be equipped, one of which is specially
suitable to guard against Germany. A new base is to be established
in the Baltic. The purely defensive policy, advocated by not a
few, has been set aside. Russia will thus be enabled to give addi-
tional strength to the fleets of her ally France, and her friend
Great Britain, in any conflict that may arise with the forces of
Germany or even of the Triple Alliance. With the passing of the
Navy Bill, the work of the Duma's Session was brought to an end.
On the occasion of the prorogation the Tsar made a speech in which
he said that he was pleased to inform its members that he had,
for the past five years, followed with attention the work it had been
doing. He would not, he said, conceal the fact that some
questions had not been handled in the way which appeared
to him desirable. The debates had not always been calm, and work
required calmness above all. On the other hand, he was glad to
state that much care and industry had been devoted to the solution
of the questions which he looked upon as of the greatest importance,
namely, the organization of farming among the peasants, the in-
surance and care of working people's families, the education of the
masses, and all matters touching defence of the Fatherland. On
the whole it is gratifying that among the many experiments in
constitutional government that are now being made in various parts
of the world, so large a measure of success has been accorded to
that which has been made in Russia. That so much attention too
has been paid to the bettering of the lot of the peasant, and of the
social condition of the people, is a proof of the benefits that have
come within a few years as the result of the change from an auto-
cratic and aristocratic government.
Even in her internal affairs Turkey has to
Turkey. contend with serious difficulties. The elec-
tions for the second Parliament resulted in
the victory of the Committee of Union and Progress a body which
has proved such a maleficent influence, having practically by its
usurpation of extra-Constitutional powers taken control of every
thing, and by its extreme efforts to strengthen the Ottomans alien-
ated all the subject nationalities. A third revolt of Albanians has
7 o8 RECENT EVENTS [August,
been for some time on the point of breaking out, although various
concessions have been promised to their just demands. Some of
the Young Turks have so far yielded to the necessities of the case
as to propose the re-appointment of the European inspectors who
were doing a good work under the old regime, and who were re-
moved on the establishment of the new. The dissatisfaction with
the proceedings of the Young Turks has extended to the Army, and
on a day very near the fourth anniversary of the uprising against
Abdul Hamid, and in the very same neighborhood, a number of
officers and men did the precise thing which the Young Turks had
done deserted their ranks and took to the hills. The authorities
long hesitated to take action, lest the troops should refuse to serve
against their comrades. This trouble, and what led to it, have re-
sulted in the resignation of the Cabinet. The immediate cause of
this mutiny was the arbitrary methods adopted by the Committee
of Union and Progress in order to secure their majority in the
recent elections the destruction of the Committee being now rec-
ognized as the best way of serving the country. The inhabitants
of the dozen or so of islands in the ^Egean which have been seized
by the Italians have formed themselves into a new state, confirming
with a vow their determination never again to submit to the rule
of the Turk, hoping to preserve their independence, but willing to
be annexed to Greece. It is taken for granted that Italy will not
continue to hold permanent possession. Little progress has been
made with the war, although a few successes in Tripoli have to be
credited to Italy. No real advance into the interior has been made.
Discouraging rumors about the progress, or
China. rather the want of progress, in the estab-
lishment of the new order in China have
been published from time to time, but there is reason to believe that
these reports are considerably exaggerated. There have, of course,
been various disturbances. A revolution effected by soldiers could
scarcely be entirely peaceful. The troops are, however, being
steadily disbanded in many centers. The number said to have been
under arms at first was indeed greatly exaggerated. The rumored
intention of Canton Province to declare its independence is be-
lieved to have no foundation. Trade throughout China is good,
the Customs returns have exceeded anticipations, the harvests in
nearly every province are unusually bountiful, and the railways
in Northern and Central China are earning the largest returns ever
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 709
known. The attempt to raise a vast loan of three hundred millions
from the Six Powers has indeed broken down, because China would
not accept the supervision over the expenditure which the Banks
made a sine qua non. But there is a prospect of China being able
to manage with a far less sum, and this there will be no difficulty in
securing. Increasing remittances are being received from the Prov-
inces by the Central Government. The Premier, Tang Shao-yi,
has given in his resignation on account of the breakdown of his
health. His place has been taken by the former Foreign Minister,
who is said to be more familiar with the affairs of Europe than
with those of his own country. One disheartening thing is the
fact that no power has so far recognized officially the New Republic,
and this, many Chinese believe, for the still more disheartening
reason that the Powers wish to encroach on its integrity.
For this we believe, or at least hope, that there is no
foundation. The Portuguese Republic did not receive recognition
for an even longer period. A difficulty has arisen about the cul-
tivation of opium. Under the Empire it had been suppressed;
under the Republic in several Provinces it has revived. This is in
violation of the Treaty with Great Britain, and may bring about
complications with that country, not, however, of a serious char-
acter, or at all likely to endanger the existence of the Republic.
With Our Readers.
TO MY MOTHER.
(In Honor of Our Lady's Assumption, August isth.)
BY EMILY HICKEY.
MOTHER MY BELOVED : Let me sit at your feet and look up into
your most lovely face, that face, of all faces, most like the face of Him,
the altogether lovely. I am your child, yours, given to you when
on the cross-shapen throne the King with the crown of thorns gave to
His Mother who stood at His right hand there, as now she sits at His
right hand in glory gave to her His Church and to His Church her, in
Motherhood and Daughterhood most perfect.
I want, as I sit here in your presence, most dear and gracious
one, to talk to you, as I think of you in the small degree and measure
in which it is given me to think of you. Assuredly none here below
can think of you wholly and entirely as it would be their hearts' de-
sire that they might attain to think; but we love you, and you love
us, with the love that pardons all shortcomings, the love that seeks
most utterly to show us the beauty of that fair Son of yours, the love-
liest of all.
This is something of how I think of you: It is in my mind how
you came to bless the age and quicken the dead hope of your father
and your mother ; the hope that one day their seed might be the seed
to bear the Flower of high promise, the Fruit of the Tree of Life, for
the healing of the peoples. I think of their faith and love in the
giving outwardly to God her who was ever inwardly His own; the
giving of her when she was as yet one of the babes of whose like
the Blessed One said, Suffer the little children to come unto Me.
I think of the sweet stories that have floated down to us through
the ages; the tale of your mystical joy in the dance on the altar-steps,
and of the gradual psalms borne in singing on your baby voice, as you
went up those steps with unfaltering feet. I think of you as God's
handmaid, waiting on His servants, perhaps most of all on Anna, even
then the aged prophetess; waiting in all the ways becoming a young
maidchild. I think of the virtues that were your comrades and hand-
maids, yours, in whom was all virtue enclosed as in the fairest of
gardens.
Your prayer comes to me, your prayer that to you it might be
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 711
given to see the Lady who should bear the Christ of God, and to wait
on her in service most loving and most tender.
I think, my Mother, of your home-coming, and of your making all
around you wondrous fair and sweet ; you, a girl with all the grace and
beauty of girlhood, and with all the comeliness of the Spirit Divine,
heightening and hallowing that beauty and that grace. I love to think
of you as dowered not only with the sinless soul, but also with the
open eye and the open ear for all the glory of sight and sound in the
world that God made good.
You come before me as the worshipper, as the keeper of the out-
ward law and ceremonial wherein the Spirit of God was hiddenly
abiding. And I know you were comforter and helper of all who came
within your love and your smile; you, the peasant-princess to whom
work was a crown, and humility high honor, and charity a robe royal.
Quiet days of your betrothal, my Mother, were to come ; your out-
ward betrothal to the glorious workman-knight, in his humility and
tenderness; him whom now the heart of Christendom holds in such
supreme honor and such reverent love.
And then, O my Mother, my Mother, the mystery and the glory
of your divine Espousals proclaimed by the angel tongue that had
brought you the news of the Choice of God, that Choice which the
courtesy of Heaven left you free to confirm. Who can know the
height and depth and breadth and length of the meaning of that Fiat
of yours. On and on it reverberates down the ages on and on.
Always your will had been one with the Will of God, and your word
was only the utterance of what had been and was always to be indeed
your life itself. Oh, do we not thank you and bless you for that Piat,
without which the redemption of the world had not been; for it took
the will of a girl to work with the Will of God! Blessed art thou
among women!
I think of the days that went by, bringing anguish and fear and
horror to him who thought of you, of you, O God's stainless one,
thought of you thus. You had risked all in that Fiat, risked even
the imputation of ill, and the facing of the possibility of that dread
punishment which extremity of law might have inflicted on you. There
was nothing you could have borne for God that you would not have
borne for Him, as there was nothing asked of you that you would not
have done for Him, even to the giving up of your life.
Mother of the Joys and the Sorrows and the Glories !
Mother of the Joys, and joys which your children are too prone to
forget the importance of as joys. They were the first to come in the
perfect scheme, the first to come upon you with their strength-be-
stowing power, and their strength-sustaining grace. You had much
7I2 WITH OUR READERS [August,
joy, my Mother; joy beyond our knowing or conceiving; and your ca-
pacity for joy was as greatly above ours, as your capacity for sorrow
exceeded far that which is given to us.
It is dear to us to think how you went, in the generous speed
that would not have a moment's delay in the sharing of joy, to the
house of Elizabeth ; and how your greeting of Peace brought the deep-
est peace as the highest joy. Peace. Yes, in that greeting, common
to all of your country, you gave the peace of God; you who were
carrying in your womb the Prince of Peace, Who left with us His peace,
Who gave His peace to us.
Of your Sorrows, O Mother, what heart can conceive, what tongue
can tell ? O Mary, Mother of the Church of Jesus, great exceedingly
was the anguish of your travail, yours, to whom was given the Com-
passion, the fellowship of -the Passion of the Lord. You were always
the woman of the keeping of things and the pondering of them in your
heart, and we have no record of one word of anguish, one cry of
agony, at the piercing of the sword. O bravest of the brave! most
valiant of all the valiant !
What of the waiting-time, O dearest Mother, can I think? What
of that last waiting between the time of the healing of your anguish
by the joy and glory of His Risen presence? Still, as long before,
you were standing outside, desiring to speak with Him, to be with
Him for evermore. It was not very long to wait for the glory beyond
conceiving, when He called you to Him never again to be parted from
His presence.
You grew old, my Mother ; you lived to a time at which you may
well have known weakness, and perhaps the suffering of some out of
the many troubles that come when the shadows of age gather around
the body. And, O Mother, I may say to you how I feel that here is
comfort and consolation for the many women who dread the drawing
near of old age, in that you too grew old even as they are doing, and
that you know and understand.
I have heard this last waiting-time of yours spoken of as a time of
pain and trial and hardness. For you knew of the troubles of the
Church, your child. You knew of the contempt poured upon the fol-
lowers of your Son. You suffered with them in their persecutions ; in
the beheading of James, and the imprisonment and threatened death
of Peter. And the martyrdom of Stephen was upon your heart.
But you knew also of the calling of Paul, and you saw the beginning
of his response to his glorious vocation; his, for whom Stephen, in
his agony, had prayed: and you knew of the deliverance of Peter.
As you knew of the fight, you knew also of the victory assured. And
as you sat in your home, the home made for you by the love of the
J9 i2.] WITH OUR READERS
beloved of your Son, such an amplitude of peace most perfect must
have been yours as none but yourself could know. For your heart
was His, and His unseen presence was with you, and the Fiat was for
the waiting-time as well as for the time of the preparation. His will
is our peace, O my Mother, and that will was your will and that peace
was yours.
Surely He was with you through those days, those years, set be-
tween His going-up and that sweet birthday when He loosened for you
the cord of mortal life, to break for you the power of death. You went
by the way that your children all must go. You departed softly, passing
through the gate of death that was to you even as the gate of sleep.
Softly great Michael Archangel came to carry you through that gate.
Softly he bore your soul to wait yet a very little while ; to wait till the
body wherein the Lord of all had lain should rise in its fadeless youth
and fairness, and the loveliest of souls once more should have therein
its immortal dwelling.
Mother of mine, Mother my dearest, your child has been talk-
ing to you. Forgive her all that is weak, and all that is and must be
inadequate in her thoughts of you. Speak to her, dearest ; tell her of
what the thought of your life, the thought of all belonging to you,
must ever, as you would have it, bring; tell her of the love you know
as none other knows and none other can know. And show her, O
Mother, show her, that love as the Blessed Fruit of your womb, Jesus.
IN MEMORIAM.
The Very Reverend William Lockhart, O.C.
(WRITTEN BY LIONEL JOHNSON, MAY, 1892.)
THE sudden death of Father Lockhart (May, 1892) has taken away
a man of no little worth and interest to students of the Catholic
revival in England : a priest honored and valued by the Catholic
Church in England, in Ireland, and at Rome; and a personal friend
very dearly loved by very many. So strong was his distaste for all
kinds of notoriety and publicity, so great his devotion to his immediate
work, that his name and his fine qualities are but faintly known to
the general world; and even his more intimate friends and acquaint-
ances, in the attempt to sum up their knowledge of his life, are sur-
prised to recognize how little they know, in this instance, of those
714 WITH OUR READERS [August,
personal details which most men are wont to reveal about themselves.
The present writer can do no more than give a summary of the more
important facts.
Father Lockhart was born upon August 22nd, in the year 1819.
He belongs to the well-known Scotch family of which Scott's bio-
grapher and son-in-law is the most famous member. Of his early
life nothing can be said here; but he always took a just pride in his
Scotch nationality, which may, as he suggests, have had something to
do with his readiness to enter the Catholic Church. In his article upon
Cardinal Newman in the Dublin Review, October, 1890, he writes,
speaking of the reasons which kept most of Newman's Oxford
followers waiting in suspense:
Three of us younger men, however, went off and were received into the
Catholic Church; and it is somewhat singular that these three men were
Scotsmen Johnstone Grant, of St. John's College, now a Jesuit; Edward
Douglas, of Christ's Church, now a Redemptorist ; and his friend Scott-Murray,
squire of Danesfield, deceased. I was soon to be another Scotsman added to
the list. I suppose our coming from Jacobite and Scotch Episcopalian stocks,
and not being so rooted as Englishmen are in favor of everything English,
left us freer to criticise and condemn Church of England Christianity.
He went up to Oxford, entering at Exeter in 1838, " when New-
man's influence was at its highest point." There is no need to tell once
more the familiar story of that momentous time. Father Lockhart's
contributions to its history are contained in his three articles upon
Newman, simultaneously published in the Dublin Review, the Irish
Ecclesiastical Record, and the Paternoster Review. These most in-
teresting and sympathetic reminiscences were written " in loving ven-
eration of one to whom, under God, I owe my soul;" and he is care-
ful to say, with unaffected humility, " I shall necessarily have to
speak of myself, but of myself merely as a type of the ordinary young
Oxford man who came under Newman's wonderful influence." He
dwells upon Newman's " wonderful caressing way, which had in it
nothing of softness, but which was felt to be the communication of
strength from a strong soul, a thing that must be felt to be under-
stood." By Newman's spiritual genius he was impressed as only one
other man's genius impressed him " the great master of thought
under whom I passed when I left Newman: another of the greatest
minds of the age, Antonio Rosmini, the founder of the Order to
which I have the honor to belong."
Father Lockhart's conception of the Church was that entertained
by most of the Oxford Tractarians; but he felt, in an especial way,
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 715
what, to Ward also, was all important, the reality of conscience and of
its accusations. Pusey's teaching on baptism and sin after baptism
came home to him with tremendous force. He notes how all moral
training of a strict kind was ignored by the English traditions of relig-
ion and education ; and the question for him was not, as with many, an
impersonal estimate of probabilities, but a search for the repository of
absolving power, the source of jurisdiction. In the midst of this
anxiety he came across Bishop Milner's celebrated End of Controversy:
he had taken away the book from a friend, angrily telling him that he
had no right to read Roman works. A glance at this showed him the
full Catholic view of sacramental penance, and, also, that the Eng-
lish Prayer-Book contained the same doctrine. But the English Church
had simply neglected the practice, in contempt of all ancient authority
and of her own formularies. A " very High Church cathedral dig-
nitary," to whom he once went for confession, refused to hear a con-
fession without first consulting the Archdeacon. Manning, to whom
he used to go in Merton College chapel, advised him to put himself
under Newman, and to take orders if he could honestly do so. By this
time he had taken his degree ; and in 1842 he was accepted by New-
man as an inmate of his monastic retreat at Littlemore. Of that
austere life he has left striking accounts, which correct the morbid
and sarcastic notions of Mark Pattison. That melancholy scholar
writes : " It was a general wonder how Newman himself could be
content with a society of men like Bowles, Coffin, Dalgairns, St. John,
Lockhart, and others." We need not speak of the living; but Coffin,
the Bishop of Southwark, Dalgairns, with what Dean Church calls
his " subtle and powerful intellect," St. John, Newman's dearest friend,
and Father Lockhart, require no apology on the score of inferior minds.
The rest of the story may be told in Father Lockhart's own words,
and those of Newman. The former writes to Mr. Wilfrid Ward, in a
letter contributed to his Life of Dr. Ward :
When I had been a very few weeks at Littlemore, I found my doubts
about the claims of the Church of England becoming so strong, that I told
Newman that I did not see how I could go on. I doubted the orders, and
still more the jurisdiction of the Church of England, and could feel no cer-
tainty of absolution. If I remember clearly, I said to Newman, "But are you
sure you can give absolution ? " To which I think his reply was, " Why do
you ask me ? Ask Pusey." He came to me a little later and said, " I see you
are in such a state that your being here would not fulfill the end of the place.
You must agree to stay here three years or go at once." I said, " I do not see
how I can promise to stay three years. Unless I am convinced that I am safe
in staying, I cannot do it. And if I went, I do not feel that I know enough to
make my submission to Rome, when so many better and more learned men do
not see their way to do so." He said, "Will you go and have a talk with
716 WITH OUR READERS [August,
Ward ? " I assented, and I think the next day I had a talk for three hours
round and round the parks. In the end I felt unconvinced and mystified.
Ward talked, in the strain of his Ideal, upon the possible warping
of intellect by an imperfect moral state.
In the end I went back to Newman, and told him (as I learned afterwards,
to his surprise) that I had made up my mind to stay three years before taking
any step Romewards. I meant it, but I could not stay more than a year. What
brought matters to a crisis was my meeting Father Gentili at your father's
rooms with Mr. and Mrs. de Lisle. When the summer came, I went to take
my mother and sister into Norfolk, and there to make a short tour to see the
places in Lincolnshire connected with the life of St. Gilbert of Sempringham,
which I was writing. I thence went to Loughborough, where I saw Father Gentili.
He saw I was in a miserable state of perplexed conscience, feeling that nothing
bound me back from Rome but my promise to Newman. By his advice I
made a three days retreat, which ended in my making my confession, being
received into the Church, and three days after entering as a postulant into
Rosmini's Order.
In his distress of mind, Lockhart appealed to a kind of Sortes
Virgilianae, opening at random Rosmini's Maxims of Perfection, given
him by his friend, Sir William White, a Catholic, late Ambassador at
Constantinople ; and the result helped him in his choice. The decision
was made in August, 1843. Newman wrote to Keble:
I have just received a letter from Lockhart, one of my inmates, who has
been away for three weeks, saying that he is on the point of joining the Church
of Rome, and is in retreat under Dr. Gentili, of Loughborough You may
fancy how sick it makes me.
To Mrs. Mozley :
It has taken us all by surprise When he came here I took a promise of
him that he would remain quiet for three years, otherwise I would not receive
him. This occurrence will very likely fix the time of my resigning St. Mary's,
for he has been teaching in our school till he went away.
Later, to Keble:
Lockhart's affair gives a reason for my resigning, as being a very great
scandal. So great is it that, though I do not feel myself responsible, I do
not know I can hold up my head again while I have St. Mary's His friends
got me to take him by way of steadying him He has gone on very
well, expressed himself several times as greatly rejoiced that he has made the
promise (though I saw in him no change of opinion), and set himself anxiously
to improve the weak points in his character.
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 717
To Dr. Mozley :
This matter of Lockhart's (who seems regularly to have been fascinated
by Dr. Gentili against his will), may have the effect of delaying my measure,
but I shall be guided by others.
In a few days he resigned St. Mary's, and preached at Littlemore
his last Anglican sermon, that most touching farewell, The Parting of
Friends. When, two years later, he became a Catholic, one of his first
acts was to visit Father Lockhart at Ratcliffe College, a Rosminian
house, near Leicester, where he was studying for the priesthood. A
year later, Father Lockhart repaid the visit, staying with him, Faber,
Dalgairns, and others at St. Wilifrid's, Staffordshire, where Newman -
insisted upon serving his Mass. Since then the two friends met once
a year at Edgbaston; the last meeting was three months before the
Cardinal's death.
We need not dwell upon the details of Father Lockhart's Catholic
life; it was characterized by quiet zeal for his work, as a Catholic mis-
sionary priest, and as a Father of the Institute of Charity, the Order
founded by Rosmini, one of the few very great names in the history of
modern philosophy. Father Lockhart did mission work in Ireland;
he labored in the difficult mission of Kingsland, in the north of London ;
since 1879 he was rector of St. Etheldreda's, Ely-place, Holborn, that
beautiful church of the fourteenth century, which, after so many vicis-
situdes and desecrations, has been reconciled to the service of the
Catholic Church, and restored by the antiquarian zeal of its rector.
For some ten years he has been Procurator-General of the Order at
Rome, where he spent some months every year. He was on very in-
timate terms of affection with Cardinal Manning; an experience com-
moner among Cardinal Newman's friends than much impertinent gos-
sip might lead the ignorant to suppose. His intellect, clear and strong,
found perfect satisfaction in the philosophy of his venerated founder,
whose Life he wrote, and whose Catholicity he defended against
wanton attack. In all his acts there was a dignified simplicity and
kindness, very visible also in his commanding form and winning look ;
and there are many, besides the present writer, who owe to him the
chief happiness of their lives.*
His chief published works and pamphlets are: The Life of Ros-
mini; The Old Religion, or, How to Find Primitive Christianity; The
Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes; The Communion of Saints; Who
is the Anti-Christ of Prophecy? St. Etheldreda's and Old London:
The Roman and Gothic Chasuble; three articles upon Cardinal New-
Lionel Johnson was received into the Church by Father Lockhart at St.
Etheldreda's, in London, on St. Alban's Day, June, 1891.
718 WITH OUR READERS [August,
man, and one, his last writing, upon Cardinal Manning; and a review
of Pusey's Eirenicon, of great power and importance. He has also
taken a part, with other Fathers of the Institute, in editing English
versions of Rosmini's greatest works.
LAST January our Holy Father, Pius X., appointed a Supreme Coun-
cil for the celebration in 1913 of the Centenary Festival of the
proclamation in 313 of the peace of the Church. The celebration is
in charge of the Head Association of the Holy Cross and the Society
for Rendering Honor to the Christian Martyrs. The President is
His Excellency, Prince Mario Chigi, and its Secretary for English-
speaking countries is Monsignor John Prior. The celebration is one
in which every Catholic will enthusiastically share. The following is
the programme, so far published, of the centenary celebration :
The year 1913 brings the sixteenth centenary of the granting of freedom and
peace to the Church, through the official recognition of Christianity and of
the essential rights of Christian society, proclaimed by the Emperor Constan-
tine in the Edict of Milan in the spring of the year 313.
This great fact, which followed closely the glorious victory won by
Constantine over Maxentius under the walls of Rome on the 28th October, 312,
has a weight and a meaning of the highest import in history, and calls for a
special commemoration in our own days. It changed the fortunes of the
world, and in its centennial celebration all the nations should rejoice, for to
Christianity they owe their highest glories, their chief progress in material
and moral welfare, and generally their advance in civilization. Catholic nations
have special reasons for joy in this commemoration, and above all Italy,
which more than all the others felt the beneficent influence of the new civi-
lization in religion, manners and customs, sciences, literature, and the fine
arts. And among all the cities of Italy, Rome has its own peculiar grounds
for exultation, as this seat of the Successors of St. Peter shone with a new
glory, and shed the light of its supremacy, of faith, of justice, and of charity
over the whole civilized world.
Under the inspiration of these lofty ideas and noble sentiments, two Roman
Associations the Head Association of the Holy Cross and the Society for
rendering Honor to the Christian Martyrs have initiated a movement to
make a solemn commemoration in the year 1913 of the great event of the
year 313, which in its importance reaches far beyond the bounds of indi-
vidual nations, and belongs to the world's history.
The chief lines of the programme, which the Supreme Council appointed
by the Pope intends, with the aid of local Committees, to carry out, are the
following :
i. The erection of a sacred monument near the Milvian Bridge, where
the Emperor Constantine defeated Maxentius, which will serve as a memorial
of glorious deeds to future generations, and at the same time minister to the
spiritual needs of the population in that new quarter.
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 719
2. The promotion in Italy and elsewhere of solemn acts of thanksgiving
to God, and of special festivities, together with publications, learned as well
as popular, so that all may know the importance of the great religious and
historical fact that is being commemorated.
All Catholics, therefore, are invited to take part in this celebration, through
the constitution of local Committees under the direction of their own Bishops,
and in touch with the Supreme Council of Rome, so that everywhere there
may be a common commemoration of so great an event in the manner best
suited to each individual place.
A remembrance of this first triumph of the Church, and of the liberty
and true peace brought by Jesus Christ to the world with the conquering
sign of the Cross, is all the more opportune in the times in which we live,
that the powers of darkness are waging fierce war on all sides against the
Christian Religion, with tendencies and insinuations of a return to paganism.
The Cross of Christ was the banner under which were proclaimed those
principles that freed mankind from the shameful yoke of idolatry and from
the barbarism of slavery, taught the true equality and brotherhood of men,
raised woman to her noble mission in life, and gave rise to the marvelous
formation of the nations, which, by virtue of the supernatural principles of
Christianity they embraced, have for so many centuries been the safeguard
of human society and the bulwark of true civilization.
This solemn commemoration of the victory of the Cross should also be
the expression of our heartfelt prayer, that under this glorious sign all men
may join with us in the profession of the true faith, of sincere and ardent
love towards the Divine Redeemer of souls, and that all may be united as
brothers in that Christian charity, which is the best pledge of enduring peace
and the source of moral and material well-being.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
The Reign of Jesus. By Abbe Granger. $1.25 net. God Made Man. By Rev.
P. M. Northcote. 90 cents net. Sermon Notes. By F. P. Hickey, O.S.B.
90 cents net.
MOFFAT, YARD & Co., New York :
When Mother Lets Us Travel in Italy. By Charlotte M. Martin. $1.00 net.
The Principal Girl. By J. C. Snaith. $1.25 net.
FUNK & WAGNALLS Co., New York :
Swimming Scientifically Taught. By Frank Dalton. $1.25 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York :
Davidee Birot. By Rene Bazin. $1.25 net.
JOHN MURPHY Co., Baltimore :
Student's Handbook of English Literature. By Rev. O. L. Jenkins, A.M. $1.25.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
Henrik Ibsen: Plays and Problems. By Otto Heller. $2.00 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
Sancti Benedicti Regula Monachorum. By D. Cuthbertus Butler. $1.10 net.
CATHOLIC PUBLISHING Co., Huntington, Indiana :
For Our Catholic Friends. By Rev. John Noll.
F. H. McGouGH & SONS, Grand Rapids :
How to Get Married. By Rev. John A. Schmitt. 10 cents.
LAIRD & LEE, Chicago :
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XCV. SEPTEMBER, 1912. No. 570.
SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT.
BY THOMAS J. GERRARD.
INCE the selective principle in race culture is the
Will of God acting upon the will of man,* the most
notable results will appear in those persons in whom
the Divine Will has been least interrupted. For
every pauper, said Carlyle, there is a sin. Yes, but
the sin is not necessarily that of the pauper. There is this amount
of truth in the saying, therefore, that sin does tend to produce
racial degeneration. We are so truly members one of another that
every sin of an individual must leave a blight on the race. Con-
versely, however, love tends towards racial regeneration. And
again, so truly are we members one of another that those who exer-
cise the strongest love must of necessity act as a tonic to the race.
Sin is essentially the resisting of God's Will, and as such spoils
the race. Love is essentially the yielding to God's Will, and as such
builds up the race. God works on man's will only in so far as man
does not deliberately put obstacles in the way. The saints, there-
fore, are at once the finest result of the working of the selective
principle, and the most efficient means of extending its operations
among the various members of the race.
Above the saints who thus regenerate society we must place the
Saint of saints from Whose sacrificial will all the other saints derive
their dignity and their energy. First of the saints we count the
Queen of saints, the one pure creature whom sin never touched.
The two wills in which the Divine Will found the fullest unimpeded
activity were the human will of Christ and the will of His Blessed
*Sce Eugenics and Catholic Teaching, in the June, 1912, CATHOLIC WORLD.
Copyright. 1912. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. XCV. 46.
722 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
Mother. Had the Monothelite heresy succeeded it would have
deprived us of the eugenic value of that supreme example in which
the Divine Will retained its own freedom, and yet, at the same
time, moved a human will with the highest degree of energy and
freedom compatible with a created human will. Our Lady's will too
was so magnetized and quickened by the Divine Will as to be
absolutely independent of any attraction from the lower appetites.
Its energy or love was second in degree only to the human will
of her Divine Son.
Similarly, amongst the other members of the race, the experts
in morality are those in whom the Divine Will has had the least
interrupted sway. All men, more or less, have felt the divine im-
pulse; and all men, more or less, have responded to it. Those,
however, who have become expert in it are known as saints. They
are the true supermen. Filled with the spirit of Christ in greater
measure than others, more abundantly do they extend the life of
Christ down the centuries and across the seas and continents. In
their lives we can get glimpses of the life of Christ as it would have
been in other than Eastern land and climate. In St. Francis, for
instance, we see a revelation of Christ's spirit adapted to mediaeval
Italy, whilst in St. Rose of Lima we can hear the same uttering itself
to modern South America. The saints have been the true regen-
erators of the race, because they have been possessed, in the
highest degree, of that wisdom whereby they have been able to
contemplate the greatest measure of truth, and to apply the same
to the evolution of the richest forms of life. They were the
giants of volition ; princes amongst lovers ; specialists in the science
and art of charity.
But Christ and His Mother and the saints were organic mem-
bers of human society. Even more intensely were they organic
members of the communion of saints. God had so willed that all
His favors should come through Jesus Christ. By His human
will pouring out the strongest human love, the Divine Man drew
down the divine love of God upon the race. This love fell upon
all men. But as it fell upon the saints it found there the least of
hindrances, and therefore the greatest re-action. Nor was it thus
given to the saints in such measure merely for their private happi-
ness. It was to be the prime factor in eugenics. The saints had to
use it for the regeneration of the race. This is what theologians
mean when they divide God's favors into sanctifying grace (gratia
sanctlficans) and grace freely given (gratia gratis data). The
1912.] SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 723
" sanctifying grace " is that which God gives to men for their own
use; the "grace freely given" is that which is given for the use
of others. All grace, of course, is freely given. But this which is
given for the benefit of others receives the special name, so that
the possessor may remember that the principle of selection is chiefly
God's Will, and only secondarily and instrumentally man's will.
He has to translate into conduct the precept to give freely even as
he has received freely.
Since moral excellence is the one thing needful for the regen-
eration of modern society, it is to the experts in morality that we
must turn for guidance and inspiration. As in every other sphere
of human activity, so also in morals, it is the elite who tell. The
eugenists and social reformers are all clamoring for such specialists,
albeit unconsciously. So insensitive, however, has the modern
mind become to what constitutes true greatness, so blind to the real
nature of man's destiny, that it simply cannot judge of eugenic
worth. Quite recently the editor of The Review of Rezicws asked
a number of well-known men to give their opinions as to who were
the twenty greatest men in the world's history. But, unfortunately,
he did not specify in what line they were to be great, whether great
philosophers, great boxers, great statesmen, great money-makers,
great painters, or great tight-rope dancers. This neglect made the
confusion complete. Mr. Carnegie thought that no one was great
who was not a discoverer or inventor, with the exception of Shakes-
peare and Burns. The Positivist, Mr. Frederic Harrison, gave
the Positivist calendar, beginning with Moses and ending with
Comte. St. Paul was the only expert in morality who was deemed
worthy of special notice. He got eight votes and a place in the
final list, together with Martin Luther. St. John, St. Benedict,
St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bernard, St. Francis
Xavier, Blessed Thomas More, and Blessed Joan of Arc were
merely mentioned, whilst anarchists, such as Bruno and Voltaire,
were also reckoned to be great.
Perhaps it will be more scientific, therefore, if, in studying the
eugenic value of saintship, we ignore the journalist and consult
a philosopher. Professor William James* shall be asked for his
testimony. His severe criticism of some of our saints, such as
St. Teresa and St. Aloysius, is enough to show that he is anything
but a witness prejudiced in our favor.
The first feature of saintliness which he observes is " a feeling
*The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 271 et seq.
724 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little inter-
ests; a conviction, not merely intellectual, but, as it were, sensible of
the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian saintliness this
power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals,
civic or patriotic Utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right, may
also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life." Secondly,
there is " a sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with
our own life, and a willing self -surrender to its control." Thirdly,
there is " an immense elation and freedom as the outlines of the
confining selfhood melt down." Fourthly, there is " a shifting of
the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections,
towards 'yes, yes,' and away from 'no,' where the claims of the
non-ego are concerned." Thus has the effect of the selective prin-
ciple been observed by the non-Catholic philosopher. He sees it
enlightening the mind to the interests of other-worldliness, and
convincing the heart of the presence of God. He sees the Divine
Will acting on the human will, enlarging its freedom and quicken-
ing it to altruistic sacrifice.
His observation of the effects of the principle as manifested
in conduct is no less remarkable. He summarizes them under four
heads : Asceticism, Strength of Soul, Purity, and Charity.
The self-surrender [he says] may become so passionate as to
turn into self-immolation. It may then so overrule the ordinary
inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure
in sacrifice and asceticism, measuring and expressing as they
do the degree- of his loyalty to the higher power. The sense of
enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motives
and inhibitions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant
for notice, and new reaches of patience and fortitude open out.
Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes their place.
Come heaven, come hell, it makes no difference now. The
shifting of the emotional centre brings with it, first, increase
of purity. The sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced,
and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements
becomes imperative The shifting of the emotional centre
brings, secondly, increase of charity, tenderness for fellow-
creatures. The ordinary motives to antipathy, which usually
set such close bounds to tenderness among human beings, are
inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, treats loathsome beggars
as his brothers.
That such asceticism, strength of soul, purity, and charity
1912.] SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 725
should be found in an ordinary degree amongst non-Catholics
is satisfying to Professor James' taste for the normal; but that they
should be manifested to such an intense degree, as they are, amongst
Catholic saints, makes him shudder. That St. Francis of Assisi
should kiss his lepers, or that Blessed Margaret Mary, St. Francis
Xavier, and St. John of God should cleanse the ulcers of their
patients with their respective tongues, that would appear to be
only fantastic excess; an excess, however, to be grudgingly ad-
mired. To Professor James' credit, however, let it be said that he
claims to speak only as an outsider. Just as no American can ever
attain to understanding the loyalty of a Briton towards his king,
or of a German towards his Emperor, so can no Briton or Ger-
man ever understand the peace of heart which an American feels
at having neither king nor kaiser. If we would interpret aright
the phenomena of Catholic saintship, we must be somewhat familiar
with Catholic principles.
Let us notice a few differences between the great men in the
worldly sense and the great men in the saintly sense. The worldly
heroes found their chief energy of life in external action; the saints
in the interior life. The worldly heroes won the admiration of
those who knew them rather from a distance. No man of the kind
was a hero to his own valet. But the saints made their influence
felt most of all on those who knew them intimately. The worldly
heroes enjoyed little of personal happiness. If as soldiers they
conquered nations, or as statesmen had outwitted their rivals, they
still had their own passions to torment them. Carlyle, the hero
worshipper, even tried to justify this misery by saying that man
wanted not happiness but blessedness, the blessedness, of course
whatever it consisted in, being something other than happiness.
The only blessedness which the saints knew was that which was
identical with happiness. They were in fact filled with such happi-
ness that all the inconveniences of life which the great men of the
world counted as miseries only served to increase the verve and
the joy of the saint. The saint had that inward peace and satis-
faction which came to him from having conquered his lower self.
Passion and appetite were subdued to a divinely-guided mind and
grace-informed will. The saint's growth in holiness persevered
to the end of his life. When the body fell into decay it had per-
formed its duty, and the spirit remained free for its richest activity
until it should wing its flight " to the dear feet of Emmanuel."
Their earthly life is, in the highest degree imaginable, the begin-
726 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
ning of the eternal life of supreme happiness, the vita oeterna
inchoata. But when the man of the world has had his day in
public, he sinks into insignificance, if not something worse. Alex-
ander the Great died of drink; Napoleon was a broken man in
every way.
The first eugenic function of the saints, therefore, is to give
to the weaker brethren a right will-attitude towards every kind of
wrong. This at once inspires men to face the ills of life with a
view to overcoming them, either by dissolving them or bearing them.
In both cases the evil dross is touched and turned into golden happi-
ness. Even where the selective principle is allowed only partial
scope, the result is good in proportion. If actual happiness does
not supervene, at least the force of the misery is dulled.
This will-attitude, however, is not a blind attitude. Love dis-
criminates wisely. When the divine choice guides the human
choice, it does not narrow its field but rather widens it. The cul-
tivation of sanctity involves the cultivation of intellect. And by
cultivation I mean cultivation. A certain amount of pruning will be
needed. There are times when we have to deny knowledge to the
mind, and times when we must love to make it poor. That is a
condition of fruitful cultivation. The Holy Spirit, indeed, at the
beginning of Christianity, purposely chose the weak things of this
world in order to show that a stronger intelligence could be ful-
filled in them by Christ, an intelligence strong enough to put to
confusion a merely worldly intelligence. Later, when this power
of the Holy Spirit had been demonstrated, men stronger by nature
were also chosen for the office of preaching the new kingdom.
Natural intelligence is a gift of God, even as supernatural intelli-
gence, and saints were singled out to exemplify this truth. First
the naturally simple, weak Peter was chosen, then the naturally
strong and intelligent Paul. So, too, we have such intellectual
giants as St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and St. Thomas, all instances
of intellectual genius made perfect through being made subordinate
to and thus permeated and possessed by sanctity.
St. Teresa, herself an intellectual as well as a moral genius,
indicates the secret bond between intelligence and sanctity when she
says that " an intelligent mind is simple and submissive ; it sees its
faults and allows itself to be guided. A mind that is deficient
and narrow never sees its faults, even when shown them. It is
always pleased with itself, and never learns to do right." She
also carried her doctrine into practice, as is evident from her re-
1912.] SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 727
luctance to receive a certain novice who was said to have piety
without intelligence. " You see, father," she said to the priest who
recommended the postulant, " even though Our Lord should give
this young girl devotion and teach her contemplation while with
us, nevertheless, if she has no sense, she will never come to have
any, and then, instead of being of use to the community, she will
always be a burden." St. Ignatius, too, held to the same principle.
When he was asked what sort of man was most likely to succeed
in his order, he replied that it was the man who would be most
likely to succeed in any other kind of work.
The next eugenic value of the saint, therefore, is to improve
the intellectual quality of the race. By his intense interior life he
exhibits to the race the selective principle at work, cultivating in
men that power which conies of self-knowledge. By his super-
eminence in purity, he stimulates men to resist the tendency to im-
purity, that blackest cloud which darkens man's understanding.
By his mortifications he encourages men to practice temperance
in food and drink one of the essential conditions of strong intel-
lectual work. By his constant gaze upon eternal truth, he keeps
before the race the one condition of intellectual progress, namely,
intellectual humility, a determination not to be carried away by
every new thought simply because it is new.
Thirdly, the saints improve the aesthetic quality of the race;
and this in the most radical fashion. They give inspiration to
the artist. They keep before the artist the ultimate beginning and
end of art, namely, the glory of God. They keep before the artist
the proximate beginning and end of art, namely, the happiness of
man. It is true that we do not find the great poets, painters, sculp-
tors, and musicians amongst the canonized saints. But that is be-
cause the saints' time was occupied in learning and practicing their
own proper art; for sanctity is the most difficult of all the arts.
We might as well ask why a painter is not a poet, as ask why a
saint is not a sculptor. But since the aesthetic sense is common to all
artists, we do find an artist in one sphere giving an inspiration to
an artist in another. A poet draws an inspiration from a picture.
A musician draws an inspiration from a poem. So can all other
artists draw inspirations from the saints. Dante derived inspira-
tion from St. Francis, and actual thought from St. Thomas. There
is no painter of any repute who has not chosen the Madonna
for his theme. There is no musician worth the name who has
not wanted the words of the prophets or the evangelists, or the
728 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
Mass, for complemental embodiment of the emotion which they
could not express in music alone. By the study of masterpieces
like Bach, Palestrina, the artist learns the technique of the art.
By the study of the saints, he gets glimpses of its soul. He sees
St. Francis, for instance, when, like a little child, he took a piece
of wood and a ruler, and pretended to play the violin to accompany
the silent music which enraptured his soul. He sees St. Teresa
making merry on feast-days with a flute and a tambourine. Real
artistic inspiration is nothing else but the reflex action of the Divine
Beauty on the human temperament. The saints were those who
were most receptive to that Divine Beauty, and the re-action showed
itself in the saints' own proper art, the beauty of sanctity.
The full development of the volitional, intellectual, and emo-
tional faculties involves their right coordination amongst each
other, and all under the Will of God. Saintship has the eugenic
value of showing us the process of such coordination in working
order.
The most prominent characteristic which the saints discover in
their analysis of the operations of their own souls is the paramount
supremacy of the faculty of will. " We are nothing but wills," says
St. Augustine. (Nihil aliud quam voluntates.) The struggle to
attain and to maintain this supremacy is the very substance of the
religious effort. We all feel the struggle, and very frequently
we are tempted to give up. This trying to be good is so tiring.
The saints exhibit the struggle in themselves as one of the signs
that the Divine Will is acting on the human will. The more struggle
there is, the more surely is grace operating. This will effort is the
weft which is woven through the warp of intellect and emotion in
the making of the fabric of the perfect life of man. The intellec-
tual and the aesthetic faculties may be cultivated alone to a certain
extent, but if they are not worked into the fabric of the spirit life
by the volitional faculty under the direction of the Finger of God's
Right Hand, they degenerate into gross sensuality, and eventually
cease to be.
Once again must we quote the culture of Greece in illustration.
There was no branch of science, art, or literature which the Greeks
touched, and in which they did not rise to the highest eminence. Their
athleticism, their intellectual proficiency, their literary and artistic
attainments, all these constituted a most magnificent praeparatio
Evangelica, but alas, had to totter and crumble away because there
was no charity, nay, not even ethical uprightness, to hold them to-
1912.] SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 729
gether. 'Fragments remain, and of those fragments we may still make
use. Our schoolmen have picked up their philosophy. The Benedic-
tines of Beuron are picking up their art. There is still plenty of work
for our Catholic Social Guild to pick up their hygiene. Catholic
eugenics must spiritualize their athletics, or Galtonian eugenics
will pervert them. This is saintly doctrine. St. Francis of Sales
became an expert in the art of fencing, so that the grace of his
bodily movements might predispose his hearers to his higher doc-
trine of eternal salvation.
In emphasizing, however, the supremacy of the will-faculty,
the saints did not under-rate the emotional faculty. Nay, rather,
they demonstrated that when the emotions were thus brought under
the control of intelligent will, they had the highest eugenic worth.
Take first the imagination. We need only mention the con-
nection between imagination and sexual restraint in order to indi-
cate the eugenic importance of the control of the imagination. The
saints made it one of their first concerns not only to keep the
imagination from wandering into forbidden pastures, but also to
cultivate it even more and more in a spiritual direction. Moreover,
they have left us valuable directions drawn from their own ex-
periences. St. Teresa, for instance, warns us against the other ex-
treme of trying to do without the imagination when it is wanted.
" It is doubtless a good thing," she says, " to set aside material
imaginings, since spiritual persons say that it is so, but, in my
opinion, this should not be attempted before the soul is very far
advanced, as it is clear that, till then, it ought to seek the Creator
by means of creatures. To do otherwise is to act as if we were
angels."* The imagination must be taken as summing up the
interior and exterior senses. It is through the imagination that
past sense impressions are utilized for present purposes. If the
imagination is purified, it can be allowed an enormously wider range
of freedom without bringing its owner to disaster. Is there any-
thing, for instance, more imaginative in all literature than the de-
scription of the romance of God with the human soul which we
have in the inspired Song of Songs? Is there any nature poet
who has even distantly approached St. Francis of Assisi in his
Canticle of the Sun? And has not St. Gertrude shown us how to
enjoy God through all the senses, speaking of spiritual perfumes,
potions, and harmonies? And has not St. Ignatius made the use
of the imagination a practical exercise for our retreats? By the
*L%fe of St. Teresa, p. 229.
730 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
" application of the senses " the soul nourishes itself at leisure on
all that the mystery offers it to see, to hear, to taste, to feel, almost
as if the fact, present to the imagination, passed before the eyes
and affected all the bodily senses. It is the common sense philos-
ophy that nothing is in the intellect which was not previously in
the senses. It is the teaching of the greatest of all psychologists,
Who said : " Blessed are the eyes that see what you see ; blessed
are the ears that hear what you hear; for I say to you, that many
prophets and kings have desired to see these things, and have not
seen them."
Again, just as the senses minister to the intellect and in re-
turn are sanctified, so also does the intellect minister to the will,
and in return is sanctified. Common sense tells us that nothing can
be willed which has not been previously understood. Much more
so is this a necessary truth of the spiritual plane. " This I pray
you," writes St. Paul, " that your charity may more and more
abound in knowledge and in all understanding: that you may ap-
prove the better things." And conversely he pities those, amongst
whom he himself had been, who " have a zeal of God, but not
according to knowledge."
The ministrant relationship of knowledge to charity furnishes
us with an extra criterion of what is true knowledge. If a new
scientific theory does not minister to charity it must be suspected.
Here we have the reason of the Church's attitude towards science.
Her sole function is to save souls; that is, to keep men's wills in
a right attitude towards the Divine Will. If, therefore, any scien-
tific theory is propounded which militates against her sure and
certain knowledge of what guides and fosters charity, or which
even-seems so to militate, then she has no alternative but to attach
to that theory at least a note of suspicion. Even though in an odd
case she may turn out to have been wrong, not having spoken in-
fallibly, still her action makes for racial progress. The mere
seeming opposition to the great body of truth already possessed
would unsettle many minds, and consequently many hearts. Her
conservative genius is but common sense divinely guided. A Fel-
low of the Royal Society has been defined as a man who knows the
last thing but one in science. He declines to accept as truth every
scientific theory the moment it is proposed. Hence he is not under
the necessity, as is said of a certain well-known eugenist, of chang-
ing his opinion every week.
The saints were conspicuous in the eugenic effort of subor-
igi2.] SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 731
dinating knowledge to wealth of life. They gave up books and
studies in order to have a first-hand experience, and a clear idea
of the science and art of morality. They learnt the first requisite
of all intellectual progress, namely, the power of avoiding distrac-
tions. When, however, they had once acquired what they called
a " pure intention," then they returned to their books. But never
did they underestimate intellect as such. St. Teresa never tired of
insisting on the need of intelligence for the spiritual life. " Piety
without science," she declared, " may fill souls with illusions, and
inspire them with a taste for childish and silly devotions." And
once she said to her nuns at recreation : " Let each one give us the
benefit of her intelligence to-day. No one has too much." It
was the half-educated whom she distrusted. " I have found," she
said, warning her nuns against them, " that, provided they are
men of good morals, they are better with no learning at all than
with only a little, for in the former case, at least, they do not trust
to their own lights, but take counsel of really enlightened persons."
St. Ignatius, in his Ratio Studiorum, has given us one of the most
efficient methods of intellectual training which the world has yet
seen. No one who knows the saint will doubt his intention of
subordinating the faculties of man to the spirit-life and to the
glory of God. Yet so thoroughly has he provided for the develop-
ment of the various faculties that he has been charged at different
times with exaggerating each one of them : he has developed reason
to the exclusion of all emotion and feeling; he has trained the
memory at the expense of the intellect; his intellectual training
has been so one-sided as to produce men like Rousseau.
Although the saints set such a high value on intelligence and
feeling, yet they always directed these things to action. Even in
the contemplative saints who were absorbed in prayer and rapt in
ecstasy, their prayer and ecstasy was not a state in which the powers
of intelligence, will, and feeling were reduced to a kind of stupor,
but one in which they were quickened to their utmost capacity. If
the senses and the imagination and the discursive reason were in
the higher flights of prayer rendered quiescent, it was because they
had done their work of ministering to the activity of the will. Their
activity was transformed into love. They were actually loving
God with their whole heart and whole mind and whole soul. And
when this was accomplished, the will was enjoying its highest
degree of freedom: it was independent of the lower interior
motives.
732 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
This higher love, with its wider freedom, is one of the most
needful requisites for all eugenic reform. When the soul has learnt
to love God in this manner, it has learnt to love what God loves.
It has learnt to love all His creatures. It now possesses the strong-
est possible motive for organized charity and social justice. It is
not dependent on concrete sights of misery for a motive of action.
Nor yet is it deterred by such obstacles as the ingratitude of those
whom it helps, failure of schemes, adverse criticism. Here is the
difference between the optimism of the saints and, let us say, the
optimism of Browning. The saints knew that none of their labor
was lost. It was no blind determination to deny the mind by the
constant reiteration that all was well. St. Augustine carried this
optimism to the most daring form of expression when he said :
" Love God and then do what you like." Professor James calls
this antinomian. And so it is if one does not realize the " love
God " concept, at least as intensely as the " do what you like "
concept. To love God means to act in response to His love, and to
follow the guidance of His law. If we do this then we never want
to do anything wrong. We always like the right thing, and thus
we are always free to do what we like. This is the supreme free-
dom wherewith Christ has made us free. The freedom to indulge
appetite outside all law, as is advocated by Nietzsche, is but the
freedom to sacrifice our freedom.
But, asks Professor James, are we all called upon to practice
the extravagances of the saints? And if so, where does the eugenic
value come in? The typical case is that of St. Aloysius. Professor
James considers him a type of excess in purification, which destroys
his utility to the world. He sums him up thus : "But when the intel-
lect, as in this Aloysius, is originally no larger than a pin's head, and
cherishes ideas of God of corresponding smallness, the result, not-
withstanding the heroism put forth, is on the whole repulsive.
Purity, we see in the object-lesson, is not the one thing needful ;
and it is better that a life should contract many a dirt mark than
forfeit usefulness in its efforts to remain unspotted."*
Beside all theorizing, for or against the saint, we must place
the indubitable fact that he has kept thousands of young men pure.
Generation after generation of the youth of the Catholic world has
gone to him to ask for his help to lead clean lives. Let us say
it again : waiving for the moment all theories for or against the
extraordinary things done by Aloysius, for or against the power
*The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 354.
igi2.] SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 733
of his intercession, the fact remains that he has kept and still keeps
thousands of young men from illicit sex-indulgence. That in itself
is a useful thing for the race. Looked at as a factor in eugenic
development, it touches directly one of the gravest problems which
the eugenist has set himself, and, what is more, it solves the problem.
It shows the salvific will of Christ, brought down to our times,
acting through the personality of a well-known youth upon the
personalities of thousands of youths, urging them with a super-
natural motive to keep the natural laws of racial progress. Aloy-
sius' method of coming to self-knowledge may have been quaint.
But it was his own, and being his own, it was more successful than
any other. That self-knowledge combined with his knowledge of
God set free a will-energy which marks him out as one of the world's
supermen. " God is the only real loveliness." That was his clear
objective. When he found that he could not think over it for one
hour without distraction, he lengthened out his one hour into five.
By that act alone, embodying as it did the eugenic effort in such
heroic degree, Aloysius claims the admiration of every true eugen-
ist. It was a master stroke for volitional, intellectual and aesthetic
perfection.
I have been asked by some disciples of Tolstoi to give the
Catholic interpretation of Christ's doctrine of non-resistance. It
has an important bearing on the eugenic problem. It is the middle
way leading to racial peace between the two extremes represented
by Tolstoi and Nietzsche, both ending in racial anarchy. It deals,
too, with an element in man's character, the use or abuse of which
tends to improve or to mar the man I mean the fighting element.
Well, there was certainly a fighting element in the psychology
of Christ. We cannot overlook that scene when He flung the fur-
niture about the Temple. That was a show of temper; a beautiful
temper, however, absolutely controlled by will. The human will
which thus controlled the temper was in turn controlled by the
Divine Will. Here then is a revelation of God's intention as to the
use of force when occasion requires it. On the other hand Christ
said : " But I say to you not to resist evil."* St. Thomas interprets
this to mean that evil must not be resisted by way of taking ven-
geance with a passion for vengeance. If, however, force is needed
for the defence of one's country, or for the defence of the weak,
or for the defence of companions, then it not only may but ought
to be used. The whole question is as to whether the force is used
*Matt. v. 39.
734 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
according to the dictates of reason or according to the mere impulse
of passion. Is the passion for fight to be allowed unrestrained
license? is it to be suppressed altogether? or is it to be utilized ra-
tionally? Nietzsche says the first, Tolstoi the second, Aquinas
the third.
After making every allowance, however, for just war, just
anger, and just resistance, there is still left a very wide field for the
exercise of the policy of non-resistance. If passion is to be con-
quered by volition, someone must make a beginning. The fear of
resistance has its legitimate function. Force is a temporary pal-
liative. The lasting peace between individuals, communities, and
nations can only be secured by mutual confidence. But someone
must lead the way in the work of disarmament. Somebody must
show his faith in the doctrine that non-resistance, even as resistance,
has its function in the world's salvation. The saints are the pio-
neers of this policy. Let Professor James speak for them. He
says :
The saints, with their extravagance of human tenderness,
are the great torchbearers of this belief, the tip of the wedge,
the clearers of the darkness Momentarily considered, the
saint may waste his tenderness, and be the dupe and victim of
his charitable fever, but the general function of his charity in
social evolution is vital and essential. If things are ever to
move upward, someone must be ready to take the first step,
and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try
charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can
tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. When they
do succeed, they are far more powerfully successful than force
or worldly prudence. Force destroys enemies; the best that
can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have
in safety. But non-resistance, when successful, turns enemies
into friends; and charity regenerates its objects. These saintly
methods are, as I said, creative energies ; and genuine saints
find in the elevated excitement with which their faith endows
them an authority and impressiveness which makes them irre-
sistible in situations where men of shallower nature cannot get
on at all without the use of worldly prudence. This practical
proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the
saint's magic gift to mankind.*
Nay, the strenuous life which used to be provided by war seems
to be on the decline, and this all to the detriment of the hardihood of
"The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 357-358.
igi2.} SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT 735
the race. Quite recently the German Emperor has had to warn
his officers against it. Nor do athletics alone suffice. The athletic
expert in fact is subject to temptations from which ordinary men
are free. What is wanting to the athlete, even as to the soldier,
is a rightly informed will. St. Paul indeed chose the athlete to
exemplify the spiritual combat. Then, as now, the motive wanted
changing. It was precisely this motive which was needed in order
to convert all athletics, physical, intellectual, moral, or aesthetical,
into sound racial quality and tone. It is precisely this motive which
is now needed in order to provide a moral equivalent for war.
If war is to cease the fighting spirit must be directed against social
and industrial evils. Professor James thinks he sees the potentiality
for such a movement in the Catholic teaching and practice of volun-
tarily accepted poverty.
Poverty indeed [he says] is the strenuous life without brass
bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circum-
locutions ; and when one sees the way in which wealth-getting
enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our genera-
tion, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that poverty
is a worthy religious vocation may not be " the transformation
of military courage," and the spiritual reform which our time
stands most in need of.
Here again it is the saints who make the first ventures. We
should have to write out the calendar in order to name those who
have improved the race in this respect. Moreover, they did it in-
telligently. This is the difference between the poverty preached by
the Catholic saint and the poverty preached by Tolstoi. In making
the venture one must be careful not thereby to render himself desti-
tute. His purpose is to strengthen the race, not to weaken it.
Hence the saints founded the great religious orders where men
and women could practice poverty without making themselves
chargeable to the poor-rates. Even the professedly " mendicant "
friar always had a monastery which he could call his home. Tolstoi's
method was both anti-social and anti-eugenic ; for on the one hand it
did not provide against imposition on the community, nor on the
other hand against the destitution of the individual.
The religious orders are, therefore, the normal means by which
men devote themselves to the practice of poverty. When advice
is given in the confessional, a Catholic is only very rarely allowed
736 SANCTITY AND RACIAL BETTERMENT [Sept.,
to take a vow of poverty outside a religious order, indeed almost
never. Personally, I have never known a case. But the saints have
done it. They were people of abnormal will-power, and therefore
they could bear the inconveniences of poverty without inflicting
themselves on the community, or rendering themselves unfit for their
purpose in life. Even now they are fertilizing the race. Listen
once more to Professor James :
Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises
of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown
literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to
be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does
not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making
street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have
lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization
of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material
attachments; the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference; the
paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we
have; the right to fling away our life at any moment irrespon-
sibly the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.
When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were
never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship ; when
we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake
at the thought of having a child without a bank account and
doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to pro-
test against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion I
recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is
certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated
classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization
suffers.*
*The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 368.
A SCAMP'S PROBATION.
BY JOHN AYSCOUGH.
T is odd to note how lightly the English critic has,
for the most part, leaned upon the faults of Henry
VIII., and how heavily he has dealt with the memory
of Charles II. One, indeed, had the great merit of
being a Tudor, and the other was so ill-advised as
to be a Stuart. Tudor despotism has never deeply scandalized
even the devout Constitutionalist, because it was successful : Stuart
unconstitutionalism shocks everyone, because it failed ignomin-
iously. When monarchs go about disregarding popular liberties,
they are unpardonable when they fail. To compare one historical
character with another is always a seductive employment, though
it does not always lead to much. A comparison between Henry
VIII. and Charles II. does not obviously suggest itself, yet in one
particular it is justified by a queer resemblance in their circum-
stances; and the divergence of the event allows pretext for a
little praise of a man who has never been overpraised.
The idea of comparing Henry and Charles could not be sug-
gested by their portraits. Henry in his youth was attractive, fair
and blonde. Even in his youth Charles was ugly, black and lean.
Henry became heavy and fat, his body ponderous and ungainly,
much too big for his legs : his face, no longer comely, grew coarse
and bloated, and he was florid and ruddy. His later portraits
suggest neither distinction nor high breeding. Charles had a sin-
gularly graceful figure, light and active : his face, in spite of its
harsh lines, was interesting and clever; and no one could have
looked more well bred. For all his plainness he had, as people used
to say, " so much countenance." Nor was there in their circum-
stances more than one important parallel; of that we shall speak
presently. Both, indeed, succeeded to a crown to which for a time
neither seemed destined, but the cause was not the same. Henry
was born a younger son, and only became heir apparent after
Prince Arthur's death, when he was himself eleven years old : at
nineteen the peaceful death of his father made him king. Charles
was also a second son, but his older brother had not survived
his birth, and he was apparent from his own. At nineteen the
VOL. xcv. 47.
738 A SCAMP'S PROBATION [Sept.,
execution of his father made him king de jure, but he was an exile,
and for eleven years England was no longer a kingdom : his chance
of reigning appeared, during a long time, more than problematical.
Henry was born in the old religion, his parents both belonged
to it, -and he was bred in it. Charles was born of a Protestant
father, baptized in the English Church, and brought up in it.
Charles I. was High Church, and had apparently, for some time,
dreams of an Anglican reunion with Rome, but he had no more
idea of becoming a Catholic himself than Lord Halifax, and he was
determined none of his sons should follow their mother's religion.
Henry had a weakness for theology, and wrote the famous
treatise, against Luther, on the Seven Sacraments, which gained
him, from Leo X., in 1521, the title of Defender of the Faith;
in later life his fondness for monks was like Tom Tulliver's for
birds he liked throwing stones at them. Charles II. was not
ecclesiastically-minded, and wrote no tracts: but he hated seeing
helpless priests and friars falsely accused and persecuted, and, at
considerable risk to his own popularity, tried to stop it.
Henry and Charles were both vicious, both sensualists : but
Henry, we hear, was virtuous in youth, and Charles was not:
his first illegitimate son was born to him when he was not more
than sixteen. Henry certainly had at first been destined to the
priesthood, and his early teaching was in good and wise hands;
Charles had a goose for his first governor, and for his second
a notorious scamp, without faith or morals; at twelve he was in
command of a troop of horse, and at fifteen he was a general
living the reckless life of a cavalier soldier.
Henry had a taste for matrimony and indulged it six times ;
Charles only married once, and his wife had the good fortune to
survive him. Both were bad and faithless husbands, but Charles
was neither brutal nor cruel; if he tired of his wife he stuck to
her, and neither brought her to the scaffold nor divorced her.
No attempt will be made here to defend Charles' morality: no
human being who reverences purity, or even decency, can defend
it. Not a word can be said in defence of it: it was, plainly, too
bad to bear speaking of. It cannot even be urged in mitigation that
he was no worse than his contemporaries; for, if his court was
flagrantly and shamelessly bad, it was chiefly because of his own
flagrant and shameless example. But if it is impossible to exten-
uate Charles II.'s vices, there is no necessity for insisting upon
them, because they never have been extenuated, and they always
have been insisted upon. Henry's vices did not make him un-
1912.] A SCAMP'S PROBATION 739
popular with his contemporaries, nor have they much injured him
with posterity. Nor did those of Charles ever make him unpopular
while he lived, for he was, in fact, extremely popular : but they
have ruined him in history. Henry broke with the old Church and
died under her ban; Charles laid his dying head upon her breast,
and with his dying lips sought to obtain, from her promises of
mercy, all the consolation and hope his misspent life so sorely
needed. In the verdict of England it could not be counted to him
for righteousness. Henry had been the enemy of France, and
it was so counted to him ; Charles had been her friend, and worse :
for he was her tool and her pensioner.
So much must be laid to the charge of Charles, and so little of
it can be explained away, or softened, that it is an office of justice,
as well as of charity, to point out one important matter in which
he compares most favorably with his more-admired predecessor.
Of his wit and his good nature we do not intend to speak : that he
was witty all bore witness, but his wit was foul. He was extremely
good-natured, but he was more indolent : and his indolence usually
got the upper hand when they came in conflict. He was much
more grateful to those who had served him than kings are wont
to be, and he was most grateful to those who had befriended him
in adversity, as was natural in so clever and so shrewd a man :
for services rendered to a sovereign in prosperity are more apt
to eye rewards than to deserve them.
It seems certain that this scapegrace prince was a good fel-
low: which of course does not imply that he was good. He
had also much more claim to the title of gentleman than George
IV. : how Charles would have treated a wife like Caroline of
Brunswick we can only surmise, but we can surmise without un-
certainty that he would not have treated her as she was treated
by Mrs. Fitzherbert's husband. Charles II.'s portrait is that of an
ugly man, but it is unmistakably that of a gentleman; and the
face, harsh and forbidding as it is usually called, is intensely in-
teresting: none the less so from its invariable melancholy. The
portrait of the First Gentleman in Europe can interest no one
except a student of poses and deportment: its serious simper is
more repulsive than any scowl, and it suggests a wax dummy rather
than a man if wax dummies could tell lies and betray other
dummies silly enough to trust in them. It is not, however, with
George IV. and his treatment of his queen that we wish to com-
pare Charles II. in his behavior towards Catherine of Braganza,
but with Henry VIII. and his behavior as a husband.
740 A SCAMP'S PROBATION [Sept.,
Catherine of Aragon had been Henry's wife for many years;
and her conduct as a wife and queen had been faultless. She
had borne him several children, of whom one survived, and that
one outlived her father: there was no question of the succession
involved, as there was in the case of Charles II. and his childless
wife. For there was no reluctance to accept Princess Mary Tudor
as her father's heir, and, until he suggested it, no one imagined
there could be the least flaw in her claim. Her religion was the
same as his own, and was that of the realm. Whereas the next in
succession to Charles, were he to leave no lawful issue, was a brother
unpopular with those who would become his subjects, a convert to
Catholicity at a time when England had long renounced the ancient
faith, and widely suspected of an obstinate determination to bring
it back. But Catherine of Aragon was six years older than Henry;
she had no beauty, and the king was tired of her. Of the delicacy
of conscience pretended by him as an excuse for seeking divorce,
we need say no more than that it did not prevent him from taking
as his mistress the woman he wanted before he married her, whom
he married before Cranmer pronounced the divorce, and whom he
ruthlessly beheaded three years later whom, within three months
of his marriage with her, he had warned " to shut her eyes to his
unfaithfulness, as her betters had done, for he could abase yet
more than he had raised her." The day after her execution he
married Jane Seymour ; and less than three months after her death
he married Anne of Cleves, whom he divorced in half a year
in July, 1540. His fifth wife he beheaded eighteen months after his
marriage with her, and his sixth had the good luck to survive him.
Charles II. in one way treated his wife as badly as any man
could treat the woman he had married: that is in the matter of
faithfulness. But he did not behave to her with brutal cruelty,
nor did he divorce her : and to this last course he was urged
repeatedly and strongly. An important clause in the marriage
contract remained unfulfilled, for the immense dowry agreed upon
was never paid. But poor Catherine's great failure was in bring-
ing no heir to the crown. Her religion made her many enemies
in England, and Charles would have found nothing easier than
to rid himself of her if he would but have consented. Henry's
divorce from Catherine of Aragon was a most unpopular measure
with his subjects, by whom his religious scruples were not ap-
preciated; by whom, too, the queen was liked and respected. A
divorce between Charles and Catherine of Braganza would have
been popularly approved, and it was persistently urged upon him.
I 9 i2.] A SCAMP'S PROBATION 741
Charles was certainly not a good man : had he been as bad as
Henry he would have yielded. He liked his wife, but he had never
loved her; she was not beautiful, and she was not always com-
plaisant: she could make scenes, and she could give trouble. She
had cause, if ever woman had, for jealousy and indignation, and
she showed both very early in her reign. Charles was angry, but
he had heart enough and conscience enough not to respect her the
less. It was her desperate yielding that half lost her that respect.
Then there came one disappointment after another in the matter
of an heir. Repeatedly the queen said there was to be one, and as
often it came to nothing. Meanwhile those most opposed to the
Catholic Duke of York became more and more resolved that he
should never reign, and more and more open in their suggestions
that the king should get rid of his wife, and marry another. There
were all sorts of pretexts to advance besides the real one that the
poor queen was childless some urged that even the necessary dis-
pensation from the Pope had never been obtained, or had been
granted only after the marriage had taken place; that Catherine
had not responded in the marriage service; that the king had
plighted his troth but she had not. And it was remembered that
Charles before the marriage, while Catherine was still in Portugal,
had stipulated that if the articles of the marriage treaty were not all
performed the marriage should be null and void and they had
not all been fulfilled. It is not our point, however, to try and see
what sort of a case against the royal marriage those might have
made out who were eager to dissolve it: the point is merely to
remind ourselves that they were eager, and that they could and
would have succeeded but for one obstacle. The queen was quite
powerless to help herself, as powerless as Catherine of Aragon
had been : at one time she was within measurable distance of losing
not only her crown but her life; and between her and death there
stood again but one obstacle. In both cases the obstacle was the
same: the honest resolve of her faithless scamp of a husband
to save her from either divorce or death.
Even in the Tudor age Henry was not the more admired by
his subjects for the bloody justice he caused to fall on Anne Boleyn
and Catherine Howard. Had Charles merely stood aside and left
Catherine of Braganza to the fate prepared for her by those who
invented and engineered the Popish Plot, there can be no doubt he
would have been himself more popular and more secure. His
manly determination that no harm should come to the wife he had
neglected and dishonored by his infidelities, by no means made him
742 A SCAMP'S PROBATION [Sept.,
more popular at the time. His stiffness in the matter only made
those who had gone crazy about the plot hint that the king himself
was shielding those who were plotting. Catherine stood in grave
peril. Titus Gates swore that her own physician, Sir George
Wakeman, had been offered 10,000 to poison the king's medicine,
and that the queen was in the scheme. Later he swore that he
had heard her say she would help Sir George to poison Charles.
On November 28, 1678, Oates and Bedloe brought these
charges against the queen before the Parliament. " I, Titus Oates,"
that miscreant cried aloud at the Bar of the Commons, " accuse
Catherine, Queen of England, of high treason." We may wonder
what Henry VIII. would have done had such charges been brought
against a wife who had borne him no child; had he been without
an heir; had the next in succession been obnoxious to the country,
and the wife in question been as helpless and friendless as was
Catherine of Braganza, and one who had vehemently resented her
husband's infidelities and made scenes. What Charles did was to
send at once for the queen from Somerset House, whither she had
withdrawn from court in 1674, when the Duchess of Portsmouth
was in the zenith of her popularity. He brought Catherine back
to Whitehall, and fixed her in her apartments next his own. He
took pains to prove his entire trust in her, and respect for her, by
the most careful marks of honor and attention. " If the king
had given way in the least Queen Catherine would have been very
ill-used," says Roger North, " for the plotters had reckoned on
his weakness with regard to women, and flattered him with the
hopes of having an heir to his dominions." "I believe," said Charles,
" they think I have a mind for a new wife, but I will not suffer
an innocent woman to be wronged."
Oates was put in prison and kept under guard, till the king was
himself charged with muzzling a witness, and obliged to let the
miscreant out again. Charles himself examined him and proved
him to be a liar, and a clumsy one, on more than one occasion.
Meanwhile Titus Gates' accomplice, Bedloe, stuck to it that Sir
Edmondsbury Godfrey had been murdered by the queen's servants
in the queen's house; at first saying that he was smothered with
pillows, then that he had been strangled with a linen cravat. It
does not matter to us here that this informer was a felon lately
come out of Newgate, and that 500 reward offered for the dis-
covery of the murderer or murderers naturally appealed to him.
It did not matter to the hatchers of the plot : on his evidence
three of Catherine's servants were executed, one of them a Prot-
I9 i2.] A SCAMP'S PROBATION 743
estant. What concerns us is that if Charles had been a villain as
well as a scamp, he might have been rid of his wife without him-
self lifting a finger. It was not only Gates who offered him the
chance. A Mrs. Elliott was sent to the king on October 23, 1678,
and informed him that the queen was concerned in the plot against
his own life. He heard her with displeasure and impatience. When
the woman had the insolence to add that she thought he would
have been glad to part with her majesty on any terms, Charles
turned fiercely on her, and had her removed from his presence,
saying angrily, " I will never suffer an innocent lady to be op-
pressed." Everybody wanted him to believe in the plot, and he
would not oblige them, though he was quite able to see how greatly
it would have been counted to him for righteousness. It was he
who proved the absurdity and falsehood of Gates' evidence against
Catherine. Indolent, easy-going, and scapegrace as he was, he
behaved throughout like a loyal, conscientious gentleman. When
it seemed, for the moment, that even the sovereign's championship
of the queen's innocence of any plot against the sovereign's own life
might be unavailing, he took secret precautions for her removal
from England, if such a measure should prove necessary to her
safety. But Charles was not only steadfastly resolved against
such a crime as that of ridding himself of his wife by allowing her
enemies to take her life: he was equally steadfast in refusing to
avail himself of the milder remedy of divorce.
Long before the Popish plot suggestions had been made to
the king in reference to getting rid of the queen, Buckingham urged
it upon Charles, one of his schemes being that Catherine should be
kidnapped and spirited away to the American plantations, where
she would be well treated but no more heard of. Her husband
could thus obtain a divorce on the plea of his wife's desertion
of him. Bishop Burnet, who was the profligate Buckingham's
dependant, is authority for this delightful story. Charles rejected
the proposal with honor. But Burnet himself was willing to play
Cranmer to Charles II. 's Henry VIII. The future Bishop of
Salisbury concocted a brace of tracts on polygamy and divorce,
and tied them together under the name of A Solution of Two Cases
of Conscience. His own conscience as a minister of the gospel he
seems to have held in complete solution. The annulling of marriage
on account of the wife's childlessness may, he teaches us, "be
easily justified both before God and man." His talents, had he
been at leisure to write thus a hundred and forty years later, might
have recommended him to the favorable notice of Napoleon I.
744 A SCAMP'S PROBATION [Sept.,
As for polygamy, he was even more ingenious and even less correct.
Before the Fall, he allowed, one woman was meant for one man;
a handsome admission when one remembers that for the one man
in existence, there was only one woman at the period in question.
Things had, however, changed since. Disease and other dis-
abilities had supervened. Monogamy might be the more perfect,
but polygamy was noway sinful. Even in the new law there was
no "simple and express discharge of polygamy:" and he himself
saw " nothing so strong against polygamy as to balance the great
and visible hazards that hang over so many thousands if it be not
allowed." This successor of the Apostles was certainly one born out
of due time too late for his talents to be available against Catherine
of Aragon, too early for them to be used against Josephine. Those
talents did not, however, recommend him to Charles II. Instead of
making Burnet a bishop he, later on, turned him out of the Chapel
Royal. It was to William III. this would-be Cranmer owed his mitre.
But there were always plots against Catherine's position as
queen, though the arch-plotter might change. In 1671 the Duke
of York had made open avowal of his conversion to the Catholic
Church: the Parliament answered, early in 1673, by passing the
Test Act, which required all naval and military officers to receive
the sacrament in the Church of England, and to sign the decla-
ration against Transubstantiation : this obliged the king's brother
to resign the office of Lord High Admiral, which he had filled with
ability and distinction. His second marriage with a Catholic prin-
cess, Maria d'Este, daughter of the Duke of Modena, suggested
to the Parliament two measures, in both of which it failed: one
was an Exclusion Bill, by which the Duke of York should be
declared incapable, on account of his religion, of succeeding to
the crown; the other was a renewal of the project of the king's
divorce. In the Commons one Vaughan was to move that without
a Protestant queen there could be no security for the Protestant
religion. Charles, always needy, was to be bribed by the offer
of 500,000 if he would provide himself with a Protestant consort.
He only heard of it when the day for the bringing forward of
this motion was fixed. Here was a fine chance for him. Money
he always was in want of : the divorce could have gone merrily on,
and it would have been by none of his contriving. He at once
declared that if his conscience would let him divorce his wife
it would let him murder her.
This beautiful scheme had been hatched by Shaftesbury: its
failure did not discourage him. His irritably mischievous brain
I 9 i2.] A SCAMP'S PROBATION 745
presently devised another. Of all Charles' sons the Duke of
Monmouth was the most popular, and he was regarded as a Prot-
estant champion. Monmouth himself seems to have been cajoled
and managed by the evil Achitophel. To Charles himself the
matter was opened. The king was reminded that Monmouth was
his eldest son, which he knew if Shaftesbury did not, was untrue,
his eldest son being another James, James de la Cloche du Bourg
de Jarsey. That James was a Catholic and useless for Shaftes-
bury's purpose. The king was flattered by being told of Mon-
mouth's popularity and cleverness : he had much affection for his
children, though they had no business to exist. If Charles would
agree to give his bastard to England as heir to her throne, it could
be managed quite simply : he would merely have to declare that
he had been married to Lucy Walter, and Shaftesbury would
himself provide witnesses to swear to it. Charles undoubtedly
believed himself to be Monmouth's father: Shaftesbury must
have known that it was at least as likely that the Protestant duke
had no royal blood at all, but was the son of Colonel Robert Sidney.
When the king heard this disgusting and infamous proposal, he
was amazed at its iniquitous effrontery. " I would liefer," he
said, " see James hung up at Tyburn than entertain such a thought."
Having failed in two attempts to oust Catherine from the
throne, Shaftesbury's efforts were bent in a more sombre direction,
and the Popish Plot followed. From this also she was, as we have
seen, saved by her husband. When the Plot had done its bloody
work, and the queen was seen to be strong in the king's loyal
protection, Monmouth again became the pawn to be played. In 1679
he was encouraged by the Protestant party to figure as Prince of
Wales; he had the three feathers painted on his coach; his health
was publicly drunk with royal honors to the title of Prince of Wales,
and he paraded himself before the Protestant mob as their hope and
leader, all uncovering to him as to a prince of the blood.
Charles, however, was determined in no way to connive at
so monstrous an injury to the rights of his wife and of his brother:
and on March 31, 1679, he published a proclamation from
Whitehall as follows : " To avoid any dispute which may happen
in time to come concerning the succession to the Crown, the King
declares in the presence of Almighty God that he never gave or
made any contract of marriage, nor was married to any woman
whatever but to his present wife, Queen Catherine, now living."
Charles had by no means forgotten Shaftesbury's insolent pro-
posal of the year before, and, in the High Court of Chancery, he
746 A SCAMP'S PROBATION [Sept.,
proceeded to record that " On the word of a King and the faith
of a Christian he was never married to Mrs. Barlow, alias Walter,
the Duke of Monmouth's mother, or to any woman whatsoever,
besides the now Queen."
Another attempt to destroy Catherine's position as lawful
queen had failed : and again the failure was due to the firmness and
conscience of the king. But the efforts against her swayed up
and down like a see-saw from schemes against the legality of her
marriage to plots against her life.
On July 9, 1679, a month after Charles had registered his
protest in chancery as to his never having married Monmouth's
mother, or anyone but the queen, his brother wrote to the Prince
of Orange that some new plot against Catherine would be sure
to be laid. And not many days later a servant of Monmouth's
came to Shaftesbury and his committee and declared that in the
previous September, when he was at Windsor, he had heard
Hankinson, of the queen's chapel, bid her confessor have care
of the four Irishmen he had brought along with him " to do the
business for them." The Privy Council moved that the queen
should stand her trial, but Charles indignantly refused to allow
" so injurious aspersion on so virtuous a princess." This was in
the Summer of 1679. In November the Exclusion Bill was thrown
out, and Shaftesbury, then in the Lords, moved for a Bill of Divorce,
which by separating the king and Queen Catherine might enable
him to marry a Protestant consort, and thus leave the crown to
legitimate issue. This he affirmed was the " sole remaining chance
of security, liberty, and religion."
Achitophel's love of religion was notorious: it was edifying
to see him, who had been so lately willing to see Colonel Sidney's
son on the throne of England, thus eager for the descent of the
crown to legitimate issue. Here was another chance for Charles
to be rid, without any efforts of his own, of a childless wife, who
had often quarreled with him, and whom he did not love, though
he liked and respected. But, if he did not love her, he had a manly
pity for her defencelessness, and pity is akin to love in hearts
that are not base. Shaftesbury's motion was warmly seconded by
the Earls of Salisbury and of Essex, and by Lord Howard of
Ettrick; had the king allowed himself to be supposed favorable
or neutral, Catherine's fate, as queen, would have been sealed. But
Charles was by no means neutral. He took the pains of seeing each
peer severally, showed his anger and disgust plainly, and begged
each lord to vote against the wicked measure. There was no mis-
Jy i2.] A SCAMP'S PROBATION 747
taking his earnestness and righteous horror. The lords did as he
wished, and the shameful bill was discarded.
Once again Charles showed his determination that no injustice
should be done to his brother, whatever his interference might
cost himself in the way of popularity. On March 26, 1681, the
Exclusion Bill was brought up again by the Parliament at Oxford.
On the 28th, while the Commons were all agog with eagerness
to push it through, the king came down. He had hastily donned his
state robes, and had himself carried to where the Parliament was
sitting in a chair, with curtains close drawn. Without escort or
attendance he entered the Lords Chamber, and took his seat upon
the throne, bidding the Commons be called to the Bar. They came
hurriedly, and he briefly told them that proceedings so ill begun
could end in no good, and forthwith dissolved the Parliament.
As stoutly had Charles stood faithful to the lonely queen through-
out her dark hour. Through all the evil days of the Plot he kept
her close to him, studiously showing his deep respect and full
confidence. Her last accuser, Fitzharris, who, like the others, had
trumped up against her charges of conspiring to poison her faith-
less husband, Charles himself detected, as he had detected the
others, in false witness : and he himself was brought, by the king's
orders, to trial for high treason. He was found guilty and con-
demned to death, and Charles flatly refused any pardon for the
false accuser of his wife.
What we have said has been said briefly and hurriedly. What
Charles II. did, to his great and undying honor, has not been
purled out or magnified; but it amounts at least to. this: that a
man confessedly a scamp and a scapegrace had a conscience, though
it was not overworked ; that there were temptations he could resist ;
that when it came to persecuting an ill-used and helpless woman,
he would not hold any hand in the game, whatever he might
seem to stand to win by it : but laid aside his habitual indolence to
work in her defence. That he would purchase neither popularity
nor personal gratification and profit at the cost of baseness, or by
consenting to let injustice be done to wife or brother. That,
where a much-glorified king failed, he, who has never been glorified
at all, did not fail. Not once but on many different occasions,
there came to him an easy chance of doing, or allowing to be done,
something which would have been convenient to himself and he
would not : it was too bad for him potuit transgredi, et non est
transgressus: facere mala et non fecit.
THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE.
BY MAX TURMANN, LL.D.
III.
THE EDUCATION OF POPULAR LEADERS.
HE work of French Catholics in organizing associa-
tions for the promotion of the social well-being
of the people is of far greater obligation and far
more important consequences for the welfare of the
country than the vain political agitation with which
certain conservatives content themselves. These associations effec-
tively influence the public. Results may come slowly, but when
they come they are worth the waiting for.
Among these social associations there are probably none called
upon to render a larger service than the industrial federations.
We are, therefore, particularly solicitous that Catholics should en-
courage and effectively support all federations which are truly in-
dustrial. But under this head we do not include any which are
subservient to politicians or selfish leaders, no matter who they may
be. A federation should have exclusively at heart the defence of
the just rights of its members; it should never become a political
tool; nor, on the other hand, should it be an indirect means of
economic subjection.
In the last two years distinct progress has been made by French
Catholics in the sphere of industrial organization, especially in
their associations of employees and employers, which rival in im-
portance the Socialistic organizations.
In the recent elections of aldermen' the Catholic Federation
of Employees of Commerce and Manufacture entered the lists
against the Socialists in several cities, and came off splendidly vic-
torious at Paris and at Mans notably at Paris, where M. Charles
Viennet, General Secretary of the Federation of Employees, was
elected on the twenty-sixth of last November as alderman in the
first class of the section of commerce in place of the candidate
of the revolutionary Confederation of Labor. A few days later, in
a public meeting at Bourget, a Socialist orator, Mr. Auray, com-
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 749
mented as follows upon Mr. Viennet's election : " It is a dis-
quieting sign for us. The Catholic federations are perfectly or-
ganized; they have been put on a professional and scientific basis,
and are composed of men whose loyalty commands our respect.
From them alone have we anything to fear."
This appreciation is somewhat exaggerated; for it is useless
to try to conceal the fact that federated organization is one of
the weakest spots in French Catholic activity. We have, in fact,
comparatively few federated workingmen when we consider the
large number of wage-earners. This admission once made in all
sincerity, it is but just to add that there is every reason to expect
constant progress in this direction; professional groups of work-
ingmen are growing in strength in many cities, and the Catholic
societies are now directing the young men in the way of federa-
tion. Once the directors of our young men's Associations become
convinced that the Catholics of France should turn their attention
towards organizing federations of professional and laboring men,
a great step will have been taken towards drawing the people to
the Church. We have good reason to hope that this day is not as
far distant as some imagine. This hope is not without much war-
rant in facts.
In the first place, the " Popular Union," a Catholic organiza-
tion with whose unceasing social propaganda in France for right
social principles our readers are doubtless familiar, has deter-
mined to direct its energies towards the development of organiza-
tions of professional and working men. Not content with pub-
lishing pamphlets on the subject, it has undertaken to increase the
number of Catholic labor leaders who may devote themselves to
this work of primary importance. And whatever the " Popular
Union " undertakes, succeeds ; of this we have had recent proof.
Last year on the I3th, I4th, and I5th of August, the Abbe
Desbuquois and his co-workers assembled at Rheims about forty
workingmen for " Days of Federation," for a discussion or sym-
posium, extending over some days, on the federation of working-
men.
The meetings of the delegates were not held in a hall, but
most frequently in the beautiful grounds of St. Joseph's College.
The meetings gained much in simplicity and naturalness from this
arrangement. There was no rostrum, only chairs and tables with
paper and pencils. Thirty-eight workingmen, from all parts of
France, gathered together there; a small group, certainly, and a
750 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [Sept.,
varied one, but most sympathetic, composed of weavers, mechanics,
millers, plasterers, masons, printers, and engravers. Each was
auditor and speaker in turn. They were assembled as comrades
to share each other's ideas, efforts, difficulties, and hopes. Not
speeches, but simple wide-awake talks were the order of the day.
These were followed by frank discussions full of lively and cour-
teous repartee.
Two lectures on Catholic Social Work by the Abbe Desbu-
quois, another by the Abbe Guitton, and two talks on the legal
aspect of federations and old-age pensions by M. Hachin, empha-
sized, rather than weakened, the exclusively popular character of
the meetings. Each day opened with the celebration of Mass
and an instruction, and finished with Benediction of the Most
Blessed Sacrament.
From the outset the Abbe Desbuquois made very clear the
character of these meetings; his lectures on the social teachings
of the Church may be thus summarized:
There are two elements in labor: the material element and
the moral element. By reason of the first it belongs to civil
society; by reason of the second it interests religious society
the Church. Hence the Church has a word to say on the subject
of labor, although labor does not originate with her. God did
not create man idle ; He ordained that each man should work
for his living; at the same time He placed him upon the earth
to work out his salvation, hence our whole life should tend
towards God. Man is, therefore, under the two-fold neces-
sity of working for a livelihood and for salvation as well.
God has, moreover, established very close relations between
these two necessities. He has infused the supernatural into
work, and has made the necessity of work a duty and a means
of sanctification. Into the very warp and woof of labor
God has woven the moral elements ; for instance, if we but men-
tion the question of wages, instantly we have before us ideas
of justice; of the rights of contract; of respect for property;
of harmony between the classes. How could the Church be
indifferent to questions such as these ? The question, therefore,
is asked : should labor organizations bear a distinctly moral and
religious character ? Both a negative and an affirmative answer
have been given. In our opinion [declared the Abbe Desbuquois]
it is unquestionably better for them to profess their Catholic
principles. At a time when the tendency is to secularize every-
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 751
thing, not only the State and the school, but even the family,
if we consent to secularize the federations, also, we will play
into the hands of our adversaries, and relegate religion to the
class of private affairs. In theory we must endeavor to be
avowedly Catholic ; in practice we must adapt ourselves to
circumstances. Our efforts in this direction should vary accord-
ing to countries and customs. In Italy, a Catholic country,
the Holy Father wishes the labor federations to bear a frankly
Catholic stamp; in Germany, a country rather more Protestant
than Catholic, and even in Austria, inter-confessional federa-
tions are approved; in Holland there exist purely Catholic
federations, but their leaders work with the Protestants; in
Belgium the distinctly Catholic character of the federations
is well known, although they do not advertise the fact.
A federated laborer from the north observed that in a country
like France, where the majority of the people are Catholic at heart
but not in practice, we cannot exact too much from the masses;
and a non-hostile attitude towards religion must be tolerated. It
suffices to have the federation leaders frankly and resolutely Cath-
olic, the masses will follow them. This was not the opinion of all
present; some declared it better, especially in the larger cities, to
organize distinctly Catholic federations, for which recruits would
come from the Catholic young men's associations. The Abbe
Desbuquois finally suggested a compromise satisfactory to every-
body: i. e., a federation under Catholic leadership is good, but a
distinctly Catholic federation is better and, where possible, should
be established.
We will not insist further upon this controverted point of
the more or less confessional character of the federations. We
have sufficiently indicated the line of thought dominating the
three days of discussion at Rheims. We prefer to review a few
other matters treated of in these meetings.
A certain M. Broutin stated that a primary condition for
federation is the education of popular leaders, that is to say, of a
group of active leaders possessed of professional ability, experts
in federation, with a strong sense of justice and a solid social
training. To-day in every country where federations are growing,
one recognizes the results of this work of special propagandists.
M. Pary, a Belgian miner, gave an interesting account of the agents
of the Catholic Social Movement. In Belgium the Secretary of the
752 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [Sept.,
Christian Professional Federation receives yearly for the propa-
ganda a contribution of a franc from each member of the clergy;
the Democratic League gives him a subsidy; each federated work-
ingman contributes three centimes a month, and the Catholic Al-
liances furnish help also. In this way the secretary is able to maintain
a band of propagandists until the federation itself can afford
to support them. This requires an annual outlay of 2,200 francs
($440.00) per man. They select for propagandists active, intelli-
gent workingmen, conversant with their trades, and willing to give
up their work to devote themselves to the propaganda. Every
fortnight each gives an account of his work; of the pamphlets
distributed; of the meetings attended; he receives at his office the
members of the federation, gives them any information and ad-
vice they may desire, and provides them with the by-laws; they
stimulate dormant federations; establish new industrial groups;
send question blanks to the members of the federations, and, at
need, tell them some wholesome truths. When necessary, they
must be able to refute adverse criticism, and, consequently, need
to be really well-informed.
Second only in importance to the propagandist, is the news-
paper. If an organization cannot have a big one, let it have a
little one, for there is no better medium of dissemination. A news-
paper will set forth the practical use of labor legislation; show
the ameliorations to be introduced into the conditions of work,
and call attention to the weak points of its adversaries. As many
workingmen as possible should write for the paper : " How about
the spelling? " asked one of the audience, " All the better if there
is none," was the reply ; " it will be all the more evident that it is
written by a workingman, besides it is the printer's business to
correct mistakes."
No better example could be given of these methods than the
account of the organization of the federation at Halluin in the
Department of the North, which one of its members, M. Beckaert,
related at the Rheims discussion. It shows conclusively how, with
initiative and perseverance, a powerful federation may be or-
ganized and developed.
In 1902, some seminarians and professors instituted a study-
circle at Halluin. As usual the beginnings were slow and difficult ;
there were defections within and suspicions without. In spite of
this the circle was kept alive and even prospered. In 1903 the
creation of a federation was decided upon. A strike which oc-
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 753
curred in October of that year showed which workingmen \v<>;iLl
be eligible as members. The first meeting was held in February,
1904. Out of two hundred men convoked, only sixty-three pre-
sented themselves, but every man present was enrolled. A com-
mittee was formed of three of the most active members of the
study-circle. Some generous contributions met the initial expenses.
From that moment the federation went ahead slowly but surely.
At the end of 1904 it counted one hundred and ninety-six mem-
bers; in 1906 three hundred; at the beginning of 1910 five hun-
dred and thirty-four. Just at that time a strike broke out in the
cotton mills under the violent leadership of the Reds, or the Revo-
lutionary Socialists. At the end of thirteen weeks a proclamation,
posted on the walls of the city, urged men to go out on a general
strike. The Christian Federation paid no attention ; their numbers
had increased during the strike to seven hundred and thirty-two.
Soon, however, the Socialists took possession of the workshops,
and by their violent threats forced the federation to quit work, or
seek it elsewhere.
Thanks to the Independent Federation of Armentieres, a
neighboring town, which threatened to withdraw the strike funds
unless the Socialists consented to enter into negotiations with the
Christian Federation, the Socialists finally yielded, and a joint
committee was formed of the workingmen's federations of that
section. This committee negotiated with the employers and ob-
tained a settlement of the differences. From that time on, the
federation steadily increased; it now counts one thousand and
thirty members. Its success has led to the establishment of a co-
operative bakery as a practical help to sick workmen, strikers, or
the unemployed. The cooperative association has met with the
same success as the federation ; it supplies more than four thousand
loaves of bread weekly, and assists all of its members who are
temporarily unable to work.
Needless to say this suggestive object lesson was appreciated
by the delegates to Rheims, and proved an effective stimulus to
further effort. The Abbe Desbuquois was quite justified in say-
ing at the opening of these meetings : " This convention, modest
though it be, will prove an episode in the social history of the
Church." For this reason we feel justified in giving it a place in
these studies of the Social Apostolate in France, with the hope
that its example may be followed elsewhere.
It seems fitting to associate with this discussion at Rheims
VOL. xcv. 48.
754 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [Sept.,
the "Rural Week" organized at Lyons, from the third to the tenth
of last December, by the directors of the Chronique Sociale de
France. This appealed to the rural workers, while the other
attracted the city workmen. But, at Lyons as well as at Rheims, the
delegates were all men earning their bread by the sweat of their
brow, and there were many other points in common. We find
the same absence of bluster; the same effort to form popular
leaders; the same generous enthusiasm and professional compe-
tence among both those who listened and those who spoke; we
might add, the same success and the same efficiency. The news-
papers scarcely mentioned these Lyonaise reunions, but they can-
not be passed over in silence in pages where we propose to bring
to light the characteristic facts of the Catholic Social Movement
in France, however insignificant in appearance they may be, for
these apparently minor happenings have frequently a more im-
portant bearing on the future of our country than many events
and manifestations with which the columns of the daily press are
filled.
During this week in the early part of last December, nearly
a hundred young countrymen gathered at Lyons to attend a course
of Agricultural Social Lectures, i. e., during the " Rural Week."
At dawn they assembled for Mass, and an instruction suited
to their tastes. Mass over, studies began; two lectures in the
morning; in the afternoon a visit to the Agricultural Museum
or to the Social Institute; at half-past five a third lecture; after
dinner an informal discussion. We can form some idea of the
carefully planned propaganda from the following outline: I. The
Agricultural Question (nature and characteristics: causes, eco-
nomic, moral, and social). II. The Professional Organization of
Agriculture (federation the basis of professional organization;
the life of a federation told by its founder; the actual status of
agricultural federation in France; agricultural insurances; insur-
ance against sickness and accidents; the laws concerning old-age
pensions and agriculture; mutual fire insurance; insurance on live
stock; account of the institution of a Mutual Fire Insurance Com-
pany by its founder). III. The Economic Organization of Agri-
culture (agriculture and loans; Farmers' Loan Associations; the
economic value of cooperation in agriculture; cooperation in
production; cooperation in consumption). IV. The Agricultur-
ist's Home (the family and the home; the conservation of the
home by the family property; the utilization in the home of the
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 755
waste product of the farm; small industries as a help to the home).
V. Agricultural Social Education (study groups in rural districts;
how to arouse emulation between rural study groups; how to
cooperate in rural social organization).
Certainly in these twenty to thirty lessons or talks it was
impossible to take up every phase of the social and economic
problems so ripe nowadays in rural districts, but the principal
points were brought out the headings of the chapters, so to
speak, to which one may easily add the secondary matter.
The corps of professional speakers was of unquestioned ability.
The students were delighted with their teachers. We have before
us letters from several of them, quite unanimous on this subject:
" I could not mention a single lecture that I did not find most in-
tensely interesting," says one. " My preference," writes another,
" was for the lectures which were delivered slowly enough to allow
of taking notes, and in such plain language everyone could under-
stand, avoiding scientific terms which we peasants would have had
to have explained to us."
In spite of the diversity of sections they represented, the au-
dience soon formed a big, happy, enthusiastic family. During free-
time, at the common table, when visiting the city or the suburbs,
and especially during the recreation evenings, they fraternized
freely. The most interesting sight of all, however, was the sus-
tained attention of the young auditors, pencil in hand, during the
study periods and the awakened intelligence shown by this new
type of student in the discussions following the lectures.
A priest, who is accustomed to talk to young men, attended
the courses of the "Rural Week" for the express purpose of
studying the audience, anxious to understand these youths, who
are the outcome of the Country Study Circles. As often as pos-
sible, before and after the lessons, he engaged them in conversa-
tions that speedly took on a very intimate character. From the
long letter in which he set forth his impressions we quote a few
lines for our readers:
What beautiful things one found in the souls of these youths 1
how comforting! how full of hope for a future, not distant,
even at our very doors! I would sum it up as follows: We
have in the country a select class, conscious of the evils in
agriculture and of their remedies, desirous of doing all in
756 THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE [Sept.,
their power to make the sections where they live more Christian.
Although their early education was but modest and rudimentary,
these young men are capable of following, without being bored
and for eight consecutive days, studies, most interesting, cer-
tainly, but all very advanced, and some very difficult of fol-
lowing them and of understanding them. To be convinced
of this it was only necessary to be present at the discussions
after the lessons, so observant of facts, or indeed to have
watched during the lessons the suspended pencils apply them-
selves just at the right moment to note down the dominating
ideas of the exposition or of the proof. These young country-
men proved themselves capable of thinking for themselves
and of presenting their thoughts clearly, capable of elevating
their habitual occupations above the level of the vulgar pleasures
and material interests, so frequently the sole spiritual nourish-
ment of our farmers they are filled with a high ideal.
This critic goes on to say that if their fathers have taught
them to farm, the study groups have familiarized them with agri-
cultural institutions; they form a body of industrial leaders ready
to devote themselves to the work. To tell the truth such young
men are not exceptions in our country, at least not in certain parts
of it. And then this eminent priest, whose observations we have
noted, concludes :
When we notice that these young men are not isolated in
their villages, but are a part of a group of thinkers who are also
active, we dare say, our hearts full of hope and enthusiasm,
that here is the wheat ripening for harvest in the near future
wheat not only in the blade but already in the head, scarce
undoubtedly, but which little by little will seed the whole field
with true brotherhood and Christian spirit.
This was written the day after the "Rural Week." The
good dwelt upon in these appreciations has been amply proved by
the results. The practical utility of these novel lectures has been
demonstrated.
As soon as they returned to their homes our students began
their social work. From a package of letters received, we extract
the following lines : " We had an Agricultural Association at
home but it had never worked well. As soon as I returned I
1912.] THE SOCIAL APOSTOLATE IN FRANCE 757
hastened to join it, and at the first meeting I attended I was asked
to accept the position of secretary and treasurer. I am now
studying the workings of a Farmers' Loan Association which I
propose to create." Another says : "I gave before our Study
Circle a synopsis of the lectures with my impressions of the life
of the 'Week.' We are going to continue our work of federation
for the farm laborers after the example of Forez, of which they
told us at Lyons." Again a third : " I returned to my home with
the ardent desire of making myself useful. With the help of
some good farmers we are now feeling our way towards the
formation of an Agricultural Federation." I will not quote
further, although many other letters give equally encouraging views.
To be sure these are but a few dozen intelligent men of good will,
but some of the parishes that did not send representatives to this
" Rural Week " have Study Circles, in which the young countrymen
are quietly but persistently preparing themselves for devoted and
efficient action. This year another session of Rural Lectures will
be held at Lyons. Undoubtedly the attendance will show a great
increase over last year. Truly, as has been said, to us it is given
to see in France fields ripe for the harvest. Let us work with en-
ergy, wilfully optimistic; and to us, too, may be given the joy of
reaping a hundredfold.
DIGBY DOLBEN.
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.
N the Spring of 1865, the squire of Finedon Hall,
Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, asked his
youngest son to write a little verse sometime about
the beautiful great garden of their home, which was
the father's pride. The family was an ancient one;
it had been much thinned out by death, even within the boy's
memory. His dear eldest brother, who was in the Navy, had
been drowned in the harbor of Lagos not long before. Thus he
fell to thinking of eternity rather than of trees and blossoms, when
he granted the request, and penned his poem.
There is a garden which I think He loves
Who loveth all things fair;
And once the Master of the flowers came
To teach love-lessons there.
He touched my eyes : and in the open sun
They walked, the holy dead,
Trailing their washen robes across the turf,
An aureole round each head.
One said, with wisdom in his infant eyes :
" The world I never knew ;
But love the Holy Child of Bethlehem,
And He will love you too."
One said : " The wine- vat it was hard to tread,
It stained my weary feet;
But One from Bozra trod with me in love,
And made my vintage sweet."
One said : " My human loves were pure and fair ;
He would not have them cease.
But knit to His, I bore them in my heart
Into the land of peace."
1912.] DIGBY DOLBEN 759
One came, who in the groves of Paradise
Had latest cut his palm.
He only said: " The floods lift up their voice!
But love can make them calm."
I heard a step. I had been long alone,
And thought they might have missed me.
It was my mother coming o'er the grass:
I turned ; and so she kissed me.
Those with a sense of poetry, a relish for naturalness, and
an appreciation of human pathos, will see at once that these are
most remarkable lines for an English boy barely seventeen, or
in fact for anybody, to write. The boy was Digby Mackworth
Dolben. He himself was fated to die two years later. His name
has indeed been cherished by some who have zealously searched
certain out-of-the-way modern anthologies, and one of his poems,
the exquisitely filial one called The Shrine, may be said to be pretty
well known; but his work has never been gathered together until
now. Last Christmas Mr. Frowde, of the Oxford University
Press, issued a generous selection, edited by one to whom we all
owe most deferential thanks for some of the most subtly beautiful
poetry of our generation. But Mr. Robert Bridges has uncon-
sciously done much to spoil that labor of love devoted to his own
kinsman, the friend of his youth. On every page of the not very
full, but useful and charming memoir, his own temperamental
brakes are put hard down upon the glowing seraph with whom he
has to deal. This memoir's first word is " I," and " I " throughout
is almost incredibly doctrinaire. The book is annotated all through
with a full statement of the editor's prejudices, with deprecating
criticisms, illiberal regrets, and even sneers at the Jesuits and
at Newman. As such a treatment inevitably confuses the issue
(even to that limited but highly-cultivated public who welcome
Mr. Bridges' every utterance), it follows that the most intimate
appeal of Dolben's genius is virtually bound and gagged. That
appeal is really to Catholics. This poet has only to be set amongst
them to find himself triumphantly at home.
Digby Dolben, in life as in art, struck quickly into his own
vein, with a mind rooted in what Sir Thomas Browne grandly
calls " the magnalities of religion, and the honor of God." He had
every grace which perfect home life, the most careful education,
760 DIGBY DOLBEN [Sept.,
and a striving spirit could lend him. The sixties were romantic
times; the second and more exoteric wave of the Oxford Movement
was running high, and doubtless there was much in such religious
impulses as Digby's which might look, or even be, as " fantastic "
and " disordered " as his editor thinks they were. For one well-
born and well-connected, one with beauty of mind and person, one
of average and very virtuous Protestant up-bringing, to turn his
back on banquets and shooting-parties and the ordinary career of
a country gentleman in England, was debatable matter indeed.
Standing at the knees of the new Anglicanism, he saw with dis-
may, yet with growing desire, the apparition of a Church of which
that other is not even the shadow. At Eton, where he spent five years,
and had no guidance whatever, Digby was looked upon as a mis-
chievous and disturbing young zealot. He crossed himself at meals ;
he left his books of " foreign " piety about ; he stole his companions'
buns on Communion days in order that they might go fasting to
chapel: small wonder if he was sent home for the good of souls!
But he came back, went farther, and fared worse. While still a
nominal Etonian, under the care of one of his many tutors, he
linked his fate with that of the late apostle Ignatius of Llanthony
Abbey, and blossomed forth in signatures as " Your loving friend
in Jesu and S. Benedict, % Dominic, O.S.B., III.," known to Dr.
Pusey and Miss Sellon as a neophyte afraid of nothing, who in full
monastic habit, tonsured, and shoeless, went on horseback over the
Welsh mountains, and on foot through the astonished streets of
Birmingham. He was not so much feeling as pole-vaulting his
way into the inner Courts of the King. Of course he discovered
a " Lodge," (whatever Mr. Bridges means, or thinks he means,
by that), "of Jesuits at Windsor;" of course he sought out Dr.
Newman, missing him, and coming face-to-face with another Ora-
torian, a fellow-poet who was " most civil, and not at all contemp-
tuous;" of course he went to Mass and was much affected, and
was tormented afterwards with remorse for his supposed and im-
puted " disloyalty."
" With such friends as Coles, Hankey, Lionel Muirhead,
Bickersteth, and Manning, he was well off," says his only
biographer ; " he could not have had more congenial com-
panions. But without them, he would have been miserably isolated
at Eton, for he had no common interests of any kind with the
average school boy, scarcely even the burning question of the
quality of the food provided to develop our various potentialities !
I 9 i2.] DIGBY DOLBEN 761
He seemed of a different species : among the little ruffians a saint,
among sportive animals a distressful spirit." The few boys to whom
Digby felt himself attracted had his own manliness, modesty, and
gentle temper: those who survived were, or are, remarkable men.
The two portraits which adorn the Poems are from faded negatives
both taken at Eton. The sitter is tall, slender, dark-eyed, with a
firm young hand and a determined chin and brow : the whole face
is stamped with idiosyncratic and most winning charm. Digby
was altogether modest, but argumentative, at least where a principle
was involved, and his playful good-humor is remembered as almost
his chief characteristic. He was full of fun : are not all the saints
so? He did not love Eton, or his unquiet life there. " The place
is full of mental temptations which you know nothing of," the boy
wrote to a friend. He was leading all the while a most devout,
ascetic, and angelic life, and was a very hero of prayer. His
friends, his parents, his tutors, all saw whither he was tending,
and hated or deplored the tendency, after the manner of this world.
Many inconveniences, some snubs, much sadness, fell to his lot
because of the threatening estrangement.
It seems always to have been understood that Digby Dolben
was to be entered at Balliol College, Oxford. Then, as now, the
standard was high there, and the difficulties not a few. A good
tutor, though not an especially sympathetic one, had been secured
for him; his reluctance in going to Herefordshire to join Mr. de
Winton was based on a reason characteristic enough. ' To tell
you all about it," he says in a letter written during an illness, " there
are more important things in this world than getting into Balliol
even ! And indeed there is a place into which we hope to get some
day which needs harder preparation than Oxford, and is well worth
all we can give it." He goes on to object categorically to house-
mates with whose religion (nominally his own) he could not be at
one; to a country life " without a confessor, without any means of
more than monthly Communion, without (must I use it?) any
Catholic advantages. This may be a good way to get into Balliol,
but not, I think, into Heaven." So unworldly and single-hearted
a point of view persevered to its obvious end. During the winter
of 1866, about the date of his eighteenth birthday, Digby told his
father that he wished (to use Mr. Bridges' frequent and amazing
verb) " to Romanize :" that is, to seek admission into the Church
Catholic in communion with the See of Peter. Mr. Mackworth
Dolben showed distress, and some anger: however, he succeeded
762 DIGBY DOLE EN [Sept.,
in extorting a promise that the step should not be taken while
his son was a minor, nor, in fact, until he had finished his course
at the University. So much was settled.
In the following May, Digby came up from his tutor's to
take his examination. He had never been strong, and his mind,
from one cause and another, was sufficiently overwrought: the
conjoint result was that he weakened under the ordeal, and failed to
pass. After that he returned to a former tutor whom he loved
better, the Rev. Mr. Pritchard, Rector of South Luffenham, near
Leicester. It was decided that in default of Balliol, Digby was to
go up to Christ Church when Michaelmas Term began. Towards
the end of June he wrote to his father, begging release from his
promise to defer being received into the Church; begging at least
that he might, for his soul's sake, have leave to take that step,
in case of impending grave illness or accident. This letter he had
no time to finish for the post. A very few days later, after con-
struing aloud the unbewailing speech of Ajax taking leave of life,
and commenting on its beauty, he went to bathe in the river Wei-
land with one of the rectory children, to whom he was a most
beloved playfellow. Digby, an excellent swimmer, had the child
on his back, when without a word he fainted in the deep water,
and quietly sank. The little fellow kept himself afloat, cried out
to some reapers in the meadows, and was rescued. Hours after-
wards, they found Digby Dolben, and carried him to his desolate
home. He was buried under the altar of Finedon Church, of course
with Anglican rites : this was on July 6, 1867.
He came, the Strong, the Terrible, whose face the strongest fear,
(O world, behold thy Spoiler spoiled ! the stronger Man is here).
He came, the Loved, the Loveliest, whose face the saints desire,
To be his fellow-pilgrim through the water and the fire.
Thus, in one of the most intensely devotional of his own poems.
With the sad uncompleted letter just mentioned, two latest
lyrics were found in Digby's desk. One, " Unto the central height
of purple Rome," is a majestic fragment, a vision from afar of
" the unconquerable Faith " in Peter's keeping : its tone is strik-
ingly like the tone of Lionel Johnson, then in his cradle. The
other posthumous lines are vaguely and sweetly prophetic of some
purgatorial passage to bliss, and fitly close Digby Dolben's book,
which enshrines the first and only fruits of a priceless spirit shown
1912.] DIG BY DOLBEN 763
to earth but for a little while. Mr. Bridges rightly claims that no
English poet had, at his age, attained so high a level, acquired so
unerring a touch. One thinks of Chatterton, indeed, but that stormy
genius stands apart. Some notable single modern poems have been
written at nineteen : Rossetti's wonderful Blessed Damosel, Bryant's
grave Georgian Thanatopsis, Myers' sustained and haunting Saint
Paul. But Dolben's is a body of verse which, in the sincerity and
poignancy of its art, is " the glory of all boyhood." The rushing
torrent of this sincerity, like Emily Bronte's or Emily Dickinson's
in kind, utterly unlike theirs in its application, carries everything
before it. One marvels that technique does not go to pieces under
the impact of such emotion upon mere words. True passion, with
all its confusion and extravagance, its sudden immortal graces,
shapes the unpondered phrase. There are echoes, of course, as
there should be in a young poet's speech, of the masters, but they
are unobtrusive, and quickly past. Dolben's ecstatic harp-music,
hurried, remote, Uranian, is his own.
Mr. Bridges plays with the idea that Greek thought, newly
brought home to Digby's mind, implying delight in created beauty,
and in life with its ordered peace, was perhaps in his later years,
and as expressed in some of his almost incomparably lovely verses,
drawing him away from his deplored " mediaevalism." But even
Greek thought is a surface force to pit against the love of God,
and the final manuscripts left in Digby's desk are overshadowed,
not with the wistful spirit of an exquisite paganism, but with a far
more concrete and grappling thing: the workings of an oncoming
and supernatural vocation. The love of God " sticks fiery off in-
deed " in these precious pages. Their editor sees it; he sees also
the capacity for unregulated human love, the love of one friend in
particular; but he cannot understand, as an instructed Catholic
can, the full correlation of the two. A schoolfellow at Eton, some-
what older than Digby, became the subject of " the most romantic
of all his extravagances, that idealization and adoration which,
long after they were parted, went on developing in his maturer
poems." Archibald Manning, with a nature full of noblest charm
from infancy to the grave, was entirely worthy of these utmost
chivalries of affection; yet he was never shown one line of all the
enthusiastic song which a shy contemporary at his side was de-
voting to his recognized excellence. Of Manning it is said that no
one who ever knew him well " would admit that for combined
grace, amiability, and beauty of person and character, he had an
764 DIGBY DOLBEN [Sept.,
equal." Some interesting details, given in Mr. Bridges' perfect
language, will throw light on our young poet's interior dispositions.
Dolben's love for Christ's human personality was the heart
and motive of his religious devotion. Christ was his friend
and his God; and his perpetual vision of the Man of Sorrows,
calling him out from the world, could not be so vivid as this
actual image of living grace that made mortal existence beauti-
ful. The human face full of joy came up between him and the
shadowy divine Face, the "great eyes deep with ruth;" and
this was the cause of his vain scruples, as plainly exhibited in
the poems .... Already in the Summer of 1863 the mutual
friendship between him and Manning was at its full height, and
he already perceived the vanity of it, foreseeing that Manning
was destined to go out into the world with the certainty of
admiration and distinction, while he was pledged to renounce the
world and all its delights. The thought of complete separation
overclouded his present enjoyment: he even found excuses
for making a rule of not going to Manning's room ; and when
it was doubtful whether or no he should return to Eton, he
showed no anxiety to return, though it was only on that con-
dition that he could hope to enjoy his friend's society ; and when
he did return, he recorded his indifference. Manning was never
at Finedon, nor did Digby ever visit Manning's home. His
affection was of the kind that recognizes its imaginative quality,
and, in spite of attraction, instinctively shuns the disillusionment
of actual intercourse. In absence it could flourish unhindered,
and under that condition it flowered profusely.
To all artists a little deepening of the given pigment is natural
and necessary. There is nothing morbid in the following phrasing
of a seventeen-year-old boy ; there are few deeper sighs in the love-
poems (in any usual sense) of English letters. Not literary skill,
but self-knowledge and wide prescience give a strange value to the
ending of what is called A Poem Without a Name.
O ever-laughing rivers, sing his name
To all your lilies !
A little while it was he stayed with me.
And taught me knowledge sweet and wonderful,
And satisfied my soul with poetry:
I 9 i2.] DIGBY DOLBEN 765
But soon, too soon, there sounded from above
Innumerable clappings of white hands,
And countless laughing voices sang of love,
And called my friend away to other lands.
* * *
Weed-grown is all my garden of delight ;
Most tired, most cold without the Eden gate
With eyes still good for ache, though not for sight,
Among the briers and thorns I weep and waft.
Now first I catch the meaning of a strife,
A great soul-battle fought for death or life.
Nearing me come the rumors of a war,
And blood and dust sweep cloudy from afar,
And, surging round, the sobbing of the sea
Choked with the weeping of humanity.
Alas, no armor have I fashioned me,
And having lived on honey in the past
Have gained no strength. From the unfathomed sea
I draw no food, for all the nets I cast.
I am not strong enough to fight beneath,
I am not clean enough to mount above:
Oh, let me dream, although to dream is death,
Beside the hills where last I saw my love !
There are many verses as heartfelt and as lonely dedicated to
" Archie," among them one of the sonnets dated 1866, which closes
with a chord of Shakespearean valor. Digby Dolben's Muse was
his examen of conscience and his autobiography. He wrote of
his innocent friendship, with its reticence more than English, in a
way hardly to be understood except by some master of the spiritual
life. Such a one can discern the strife of affections in one born
not to rest in any of them, but out of all lesser (not counter) hom-
ages, to come home clear and straight in the end into a Love able
to transform and re-embrace them all. At fifteen he seems to have
recognized the hunger and unrest of his most sensitive nature ; and
in four years' time, without a touch of cynicism, he was on the
point of attaining the complete detachment of the saints,
That sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be.
His verses (never published or printed by himself, be it re-
membered) are full of the premonition, or at least of the chosen
metaphors, of narrowed activities, things foregone, and early death.
766 DIGBY DOLE EN [Sept.,
Oh, not for me the angel-haunted south !
he cries, thinking of Italy in unlovely Lincolnshire, during his least
happy year. This note of renunciation extends far, and is dom-
inant in
Strange, all-absorbing Love, who gatherest
Unto Thy glowing all my pleasant dew ;
in
Christ, for whose only love I keep me clean
Amid the palaces of Babylon;
(what magical lines are all these for one so young!) in the apocalyp-
tic Letter, in Sister Death; in the touching and manly Pro Castitate.
Dolben's utterance fulfills his own definition of poetry :
Poetry, the hand that wrings
(Bruised albeit at the strings)
Music from the soul of things.
They will come nearest to readers who understand not only the
difficult soul of art, but the unfrequented world, a sober and simple
world, miscalled difficult, of Catholic mysticism. There are those
who will remember Dolben not by The Shrine, or Core, or Sing
Me the Men, that flawless verbal crystal which might have come
from a scriptorium of the fourteenth century, but by the loose-
knit, passionate, eight-page medley, called Dum Agonizatur Anima.
It is full of gaps, some of them figuring in the original copy, some
added by the scholarly editor, unscholarly and ungenerous only in
his whim against " ecclesiasticism." " It is exactly where Dolben
falls into this vein," he says, " that he falls from poetry." Even
were that uniformly true, who does not grudge the lightest touch
of the practiced hand on these virginal and intimate meditations?
Dum Agonizatur Anima, despite its title taken from the
Prayers for the Dying in the Roman Breviary, is no rival of The
Dream of Gerontius, no rune of actual dying, but of a passage more
bitter. It is the cry of the intending convert, nowhere else expressed
with such tumultuous fullness and force; and it was, by internal
evidence, written in March or April, almost at the very end of the
young poet's life. From mood to mood it turns, wrestling with the
Angel of the Lord. It recalls a time when love and resolution
were strong, when as yet faith had not been so fully received.
1912.] DIGBY DOLE EN 767
....I half believed
But wholly loved: once (Thou rememberest ?) prayed:
" I love Thee, love Thee! Only give me light,
And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest."
" I will," I said, and knew not. Now I know,
And will not, cannot will.
On this analysis of indecision falls the voice of the Beloved.
Son,
Thou sinnest, I have suffered. Mount and see
The fullness of My Passion: though these steps
Be hard to flesh and blood, remember this
That along all intolerable paths
The benediction of My feet hath passed.
Poignant thoughts surge in again of the calm years that are
gone; images of his own aureoled dead, of " the noiseless bells " of
snow-drops on the banks at home, of " that perennial love we
hardly thank " of father and of mother, of the worshipped beauty
of earth, and of joyous exercise in the open air these crowd in
upon the boy's mind until it runs up into a query which is a thrilling
challenge to a great passage of St. Paul's.
Suppose it but a fancy that it " groaned,"
This dear Creation?
Suppose sin and the Fall do not exist, that souls are saved
automatically, that the Christian warfare is unnecessary and un-
availing Any escape from the agony of having to undergo a
change! And on all these negations and abstractions bursts like
a pent-up torrent the entirely personal refutation :
No, Love, Love, Love! Thou knowest that I cannot,
I cannot live without Thee.
And so tossed about and perturbed at heart, the young poet falls
asleep, and dreams his broken dream.
I stood amid the lights that never die,
The only stars that dawning passes by,
Beneath the whisper of the central Dome
That holds and hides the mystic heart of Rome:
768 DIGBY DOLBEN [Sept.,
But in mine eyes the light of other times,
And in mine ears the sound of English chimes ;
I smelled again the freshness of the [dawn],
The primal incense of the daisied lawn.
He knows whither he has come, and he asks what the distance
may be, over that thorn-bordered, heart-breaking pilgrim way of
Abraham; he asks how far it is from the tents of Haran and all
the treasured past, now that he is in the strange place, " the land
which I shall show thee."
The everlasting murmur echoes : " Far
As from green earth is set the furthest star
Men have not named. A journey none retrace
Is thine, and steps the sea could not efface."
The sleeper hears this grand processional chant before he wakes :
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, He
Has conquered, but in wounds and agony ;
The ensign of His triumph is the Rood,
His royal robe is purple, but with blood.
And we who follow in His martyr train
Have access only through the courts of pain,
Yet on the Via Dolorosa He
Precedes us in His sweet Humanity.
A Man shall be a covert from the heat
Whereon in vain the sandy noon shall beat ;
A Man shall be a perfect summer sun
When all the western lights are paled and gone;
A Man shall be a Father, Brother, Spouse,
A land, a city, and perpetual house ;
A Man shall lift us to the angels' shore ;
A Man shall be our God for evermore.
The irregular verses end in courage and peace, steadying
themselves on the Passio Christi confortet me, and reverting to their
own familiar pledge.
By that Thine hour of weakness be my strength !
And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest.
1912.] DIGBY DOLBEN 769
Yes, Catholics will make a place by their fireside for Digby
Dolben. He is the lost child of the poets' road which in one English
generation brought to the ancient Mother of all the Arts Gerard
Hopkins and Edward Caswell, Adelaide Procter and Frederick
William Faber, Aubrey de Vere and Coventry Patmore.
Mr. Bridges deprecates much of Dolben's work as the de-
plorable surplus of a rich young mind. But for such things (and
capital reasons could be given for it) there is a living and not
critical public. Dolben, who cared nothing for fame, runs, since
the publication of his book, no least chance of being forgotten by
the lovers of true literature. There is no aesthetic height to which
he might not have attained. But more beautiful than his promise,
or his arresting and satisfying achievement, is himself. " Un-
spotted youth is grey hairs :" the Church has set her seal and kiss
upon many such. Judged by her standards, several verses in this
slim book should live on, which the choirs of Parnassus will not
need: among them should be the radiant Christmas hymn:
Come to me, Beloved,
Babe of Bethlehem!
and the more Eucharistic
Tell us, tell us, holy shepherds ;
the joyful popular paean to Our Lady,
On the silent ages breaking,
and Brother Francis' brief song:
As pants the hart for forest streams.
One would like to hear these on the lips of Catholic children.
It would perhaps help to keep Digby Dolben's pure and pathetic
memory alight beside the Altar of his unfulfilled desire.
VOL. XCV. 49.
SAN GIMIGNANO AND ITS TREASURE.
BY CHRISTOPHER ST. JOHN.
"La nobile piit citta che Terra di San Gimignano."
"Infinite Riches in a Little Room."
HEN you have once fallen under the spell of Siena,
that Turris eburnea of modern Italy, shining out, in-
violate in her mediaeval beauty, over the great Tus-
can plain, you find it hard to leave her. Only in this
way can I account for the fact that so few people
visit San Gimignano, which is easily accessible from Siena.
City of the Beautiful Towers it was named in far-off times,
and the name does not mock us with a reminder of some glory
that was, but is not, something that we can never see. You have
driven but a little way along the road from Poggibonsi (which
looks as prosperous and respectable as it sounds), and there are
the belle torre before you on the hillside, plain austere brick towers.
In many other little Italian battlemented towns, piled up closely on
their little hills, you have recognized a Bethlehem or a Jerusalem
which you have loved in an illuminated manuscript, but these
stark towers are wholly strange.
Everything shines in the sunlight the bright-leaved vines
festooned in garlands from fruit tree to fruit tree ; the waving grass
fields, with their wealth of wild flowers, deep in color like jewels;
the winding white road; the olive plantations (bring pewter rather
than silver to conjure up their color). Only the towers are
gloomy and opaque. They seem like brown, wrinkled faces in a
crowd of fresh young beauties.
Yet they are " belle ! " As you watch them and a fresh
one seems to rise up at every turn of the road until you count at
least thirteen you wonder why people care so much for ornament,
when ascetic brickwork can be so beautiful.
" In all excellent beauty there is some strangeness in the
proportion." These lean towers, slim and massive at the same
time, have that element of strangeness, of wonder. Mounting
the hill slowly in the rattling little Poggibonsi carriage (like the
Promised Land, San Gimignano looks nearer than it is), I am glad
to have remembered that Bacon phrase : " In all excellent beauty."
igi2.] SAN GIMIGNANO AND ITS TREASURE 771
It was like a recurring motif that, as in a piece of music, bound
together all my thoughts, here and in Siena too, before the altar
piece of Duccio and the pictures of Simone Martini and the brothers
Lorenzetti, no less than in the Duomo, and in that weak and austere
church of San Domenico, where, " disposing wondrous ascensions
in her heart," St. Catherine used to meet Christ, her Spouse.
" In all excellent beauty " not in all beauty, notice. May it
not have been a dislike to an element not wholly explicable, to
mystery in short, which led to the vandalism of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, when pictures expressing something hidden
from ordinary eyes, something only to be apprehended dimly, were
ruthlessly torn down from our altars, and replaced by paintings
which, apart from all else, certainly lack any strangeness in the
proportion?
The question presented itself in the sweet sparkle and glitter
of the light on the hills outside. But now you have entered the
little city, built as it were in one piece, sufficient unto itself. The
walls that once shut out turbulent invaders and shut in turbulent
inhabitants, seem now to shut out the mean utilitarianism which has
made such terrible breaches in the walls of many of the lesser
Italian towns, and has marched unpityingly through the streets
of Florence and Rome. The only traffic that passes up and down
the narrow paved streets of San Gimignano are wagons drawn
by the patient white oxen, whose horns almost touch the houses
on either side ; or mules laden with wood from the mountains. Yet
it is lively enough, and noisy enough. The women sit before their
doors sewing; and every woman seems to have a baby on her lap,
uttering inarticulate cries of pleasure or of rage. The elder children,
who form the main part of the population, shout and quarrel in-
cessantly over a game that seems to be a mingling of quoits and
pitch-and-toss. There is often a fight, conducted with what looks
like ferocity to the Northern-bred. But let a forestiere appear,
Northern-bred or Transatlantic, it matters not, and the bambini will
even relinquish their fighting to pester the visitors for soldi or
francobolli, and to confuse them by voluble offers to act as guides.
In a history of the town, I read that the Sangimignanesi
of to-day are full of " old-world dignity and courtesy." It may
have been my fault, but they did not strike me in that way. It
was easier to see them as descendants of a people who, even for
Tuscans in the Middle Ages, were exceptionally quarrelsome, fac-
tious and excitable; a people apparently incapable of existing
without strife. From the tenth century onwards we find San Gimig-
772 SAN GIMIGNANO AND ITS TREASURE [Sept.,
nano intermittently at war with its neighbor Volterra, and grabbing
the fortresses of the small feudal lords round about to increase
its own dominions. We see it plunging up to the neck into the
deadly Guelf and Ghibelline struggle, and carrying on within it
another struggle between magnates and democracy ("Grandi e
popolani "). The history of San Gimignano is obscured by a rain
of bolts and arrows; a perpetual uproar in the streets prevents us
from hearing the voice of any individual protagonist.
The loss is not great. You may have read that San Gimignano
was once known as " II Castello della Silva " (the Fortress of the
Wood), and that it changed its name in commemoration of an
apparition on its battlements of Saint Geminianus, the martyred
Bishop of Modena, who turned back an invading horde of Attila's
Huns. You may have read that, after a period of subjection under
the Prince Bishops of Volterra, the town gained its independence,
and was ruled for a time by twelve rectors and twelve captains.
You may have read how it finally passed under the Republic of
Florence, and remained a Florentine tributary until Florence her-
self lost her independence. You may have heard that when an
embassy was sent from Florence in May, 1300, to invite the
Commune of San Gimignano to send representatives to a special
parliament summoned on business connected with the Tuscan Guelf
league, there rode among the Florentine burghers on the mission
a young man called Dante Alighieri. All this is of interest truly,
but it is not the treasure for which you have come to search. Nor
is it the lofty and noble situation of the place, its celestial aspect,
its towers of brick, and houses of massive stone. What does it
matter if you have never even heard the names of Ardinghelli and
Salvucci (the Capulets and Montagues of San Gimignano), to
whom some lover of peace in the fourteenth century may well have
said, "A plague on both your houses?" You have reached the
Church of the Collegiata in the Piazza delle Pieve (foolishly re-
named Piazza. Vittorio Emmanuele by United Italy), and all that
past of fire and sword and pestilence becomes insignificant. There
remains a past of beauty and of piety. There remain on these
venerable walls frescoes painted by poetic and orthodox interpreters
of the faith, and we have found your treasure, little town, though
all your material splendor has decayed.
The church is very dark and silent after the noisy and sunny
piazza. It is difficult to see anything clearly at first. The archi-
tecture, a curious combination of Romanesque and early Renais-
sance styles, has its charm, but is not overpoweringly distinguished
1 9 12.] SAN GIMIGNANO AND ITS TREASURE 773
or beautiful. You hardly notice it, however, in your amazement.
To right and left of you shine frescoes setting forth the entire
creed of Christianity. That is the " scheme of decoration " in the
Collegiata, no more, no less !
The painters of this stupendous work were not Sangimignanesi.
It was San Gimignano's gain that in the middle of the fourteenth
century Bartolo di Fredo, Barna di Siena, and his pupil Giovanni
da Ascanio sacrificed their country to their vocation, and, leaving
Siena to those artists who were willing to lend their brushes to
the service of capricious demagogues, came to San Gimignano for
refuge. (Surely not for peace and quiet!) Bartolo di Fredo
undertook the Old Testament scenes : Barna and his pupil the ones
from the New Testament. But Barna fell from his scaffolding in
the early days of the work and was killed. It was the strong,
vigorous, and pure brush of Giovanni da Ascanio that painted the
memorable Marriage Feast at Cana, with St. John in ecstasy; and
the betrayal by Judas. Never perhaps has any painter given us a
finer rendering of the first apostate. Who that has seen it can ever
forget the face of Judas, with its terrible, Lucifer-like beauty?
Alas, it is impossible to describe a painting in words, and next
to impossible to give an impression of it. One always feels this, but
one feels it more acutely when the painting has a mystical element,
that element in the presence of which the competence of the con-
noisseur to judge a work of art begins to fail. " Mysticism rs
to painting what ecstasy is to psychology." That indicates perhaps
how elusive and delicate are the materials with which one is dealing.
It is as if one said: " See how bright the glass is! " and in one's
eagerness to examine the nature of that brightness, breathed on it
and extinguished at once both translucency and lustre.
There seems to have been something in the air of San Gimig-
nano very favorable to the flowering of what we may call Christian
imagination. Lovely as are the frescoes illustrating scenes in the
life of Our Lady and the life of St. John the Baptist, which Ghir-
landaio painted in the choir of S. Maria Novella at Florence, they
do not show the same sainte pensee du coeur as his frescoes in the
Collegiata. So much fascinated was I by Bartolo di Fredo's sim-
plicity on the other side of the church, by his " How Noah made
the Ark," where the toil of energetic carpentering is being eased
by a jug of wine; by his " Joseph's Dream," where Joseph's bed,
covered with a patchwork quilt of many colors, occupies the whole
room, and nearly the whole picture; by the lovely beasts, intended
T suspect for camels, crossing the Red Sea, that I did not see
774 SAN GIMIGNANO AND ITS TREASURE [Sept.,
S. Fina's chapel until my second visit. And I am glad to have
received a solitary impression. It was here that Ghirlandaio flew
into the regions familiar to mystical painters, and produced a
work in the spirit of Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, with his
own peculiar grace added unto it.
The chapel itself was designed by Giuliano da Maiano; the
shrine in white marble and gold, and all the sculpture work were
executed by his brother Benedetto. The little place is a quattrocento
poem. No saint ever inspired artists to a more lovely memorial
of sanctity. What was there in the little life of this local saint
which appealed to them with such strange power? I know little
of S. Fina, except that she died in the very bud of her youth after
five years of horrible suffering. Un fruit de souffrance, she seems,
which God pressed and crushed and drained until He had extracted
the last drop, until only a little half-decomposed husk was left
to die. It was this death which Ghirlandaio had to depict on the
walls of the chapel. And what does he show us ? On the one side,
St. Gregory appears to the young saint, who is reduced to the last
stage of emaciation, but transfigured by suffering, to tell her
that on the day of his feast she will be in Paradise; the rough
plank bed of her " supplice " is already bursting into flower.
On the other side, we see her lying dead ; her face expresses " the
joy of all the saints." Her two first miracles, the curing of the
nurse whose hand had been blasted by S. Fina's loathsome disease,
and the healing of a blind child, are depicted in the same fresco ; and,
to express the joy of Heaven at the acquisition of such a soul,
an angel is ringing the funeral knell of the parish church.
There is much more to see in the Collegiata the Dantesque
fresco of the last Judgment by Taddeo di Bartolo (the painter
of that unequalled Assumption in the Palazzo Communale at Siena),
who drank always at the purest flood of inspiration; and the less
strong work of Mainardi, Ghirlandaio's idolized brother-in-law.
But let us go now to the Church of S. Agostino, that lonely church,
barren of worshippers, where the paintings bloom like flowers in
the desert. Whatever one might be obliged to overlook during a
short visit to San Gimignano, it would be a reproach and a loss
to come away without seeing the frescoes illustrating the life of
St. Augustine which Benozzo Gozzoli painted in the choir of
the church dedicated to the saint.
In Gozzoli it always seems to me that we get very near the
perfect painter, the one who developed his genius in all possible
directions. Mystical he was, the true disciple of Fra Angelico in
igi2.] SAN GIMIGNANO AND ITS TREASURE 775
his point of view; but it is rather Masaccio that he resembles in
the science of composition and nobility of pose; rather Pisanello, as
a painter of character, as a naturalistic painter, using the word
naturalistic to embrace not only man, but all that pertains to man
and his aspirations. He loved horses, too, and represented them
splendidly in pictures of processions and triumphs. He delighted
to paint the plumage of birds. He was a landscape painter, whose
cypresses and pines are beyond compare.
These St. Augustine frescoes, where the Confessions live a
second time, are not considered by some connoisseurs to be Gozzoli's
best work. It is said that in some of them he was assisted by a
pupil, Andrea di Giusto. It is said that he failed in his conception
of St. Augustine, endowing him with more beauty than strength.
You may listen to experts with respect, but you must see pictures
with your eyes, not theirs. To me this is the very portrait of the
Saint of the Confessions, whether at the grammar school in the
days of the theft of the apples, whether at the University in the
days of license and Manichaean error, whether teaching rhetoric
at Rome, whether listening to S. Ambrose's sermons at Milan,
whether hearing the voice from heaven; Tolle, lege; tolle, lege.
The death of St. Monica has a pathos and dignity, a simplicity,
worthy of St. Augustine's own verbal picture; and what can we
say of the fresco where the great Bishop of Hippo is represented
blessing his flock? In St. Augustine's face throughout the series
the genius of Gozzoli for painting character is revealed. The face
is wistful even to the end ; at first in the world because " now these
things did not yield me any delight, in comparison of Thy sweetness
and the Beauty of Thy House with which I was in love," and later
because " I have tasted Thee, and am hungry after Thee."
We miss the true character and meaning of San Gimignano's
treasures if we take them only for treasures of art. Here are also
the greater treasures of faith and of humility. It is impossible to
misunderstand the attitude of the painters who enriched this little
town. The Preamble to the Statutes of the Siena Corporation of
Painters issued in 1355 says that "our mission by the grace of
God is to manifest to the ignorant and unlettered the marvelous
things that can be done by virtue and in the strength of holy faith."
Humility is as difficult a virtue to artists as to poets, but in the
lives of the painters of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries we rarely encounter pride. Sano di Pietro, in the heyday
of his powers, assisted an inferior artist, Vecchietta, in an Assump-
tion piece for two shillings a day ! And one is sure that his epitaph,
776 THE CISTERCIAN MONK AT MATINS [Sept.,
Pictor famosus et homo totus deditus Deo, was a true summary
of his life. These artists were nourished on the Liturgy and on
Dante. They had confidence in the help of God and of the Mother
of God, in whose glory they did their work. Domine dilexi decorem
domus tuae et locum habitationis gloriae tuae was their motto,
rather than " Art for art's sake." When Brunelleschi told Dona-
tello that a peasant put upon a cross was not a crucifix, he expressed
an undying truth. And it is by the light of that truth, I think, that
we are able to see what the treasure of San Gimignano really is.
THE CISTERCIAN MONK AT MATINS.
BY E. M. DINNIS.
" They labored in the fields by day and rose up at night for prayer."
MASTER, these hours I labored in the field
Reaping Thy poor man's harvest : in Thy name
The cup of water gave to those who came,
So that I might, afar off, service yield
To Thee, whose wounds are with the sick man's healed.
Obedient there Thy praises did I frame,
Where all Thy works Thy Fatherhood proclaim ;
But, lo ! the night Thy fiat hath repealed !
Here, from Thy bounty's token set apart,
Where no man's cry diverts the gift outpoured,
Master, I claim the right to call Thee " Lord ! "
Here, in the night's great void, my soul shall start
To seek Thee in the Realms by love explored
Where, out beyond Thine utmost work, Thou art!
" THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY."
KNUD KROGH-TONNING.
BY J. FABER SCHOLFIELD.
ARELY does a conversion to the Catholic Church
create such a profound impression in the convert's
own country as was caused eleven years ago in
Norway, when the most learned and influential of
the Lutheran clergy, a parish minister and Professor
of Theology in the University of Christiania, made his submission
to the Holy See. It was an event that could only be paralleled
by that October day two generations since, when John Henry
Newman, facile princeps among the English Protestant ecclesiastics
of his day, was received into the One Church by the ministry of
Father Dominic, the Passionist. Little is known, indeed, by Eng-
lish-speaking Catholics, of the recent revival, and the present for-
tunes, of the Church in Norway, and it may well be that the very
name of Krogh-Tonning is strange to all but a very few. The
strong personality of the man, however, his splendid intellectual
gifts, and the saintliness of his character, deserve that his name and
his career should be acclaimed far and wide, wherever devotion
to the search after truth, and transparent honesty of purpose, are
held for precious things. And beyond the commanding figure of
the illustrious convert himself, there is a still wider interest attached
to his " coming home " to the City of God. His conversion marks
a point in the history of the Catholic revival in his country.
Gladstone said of Newman's submission that " the Church of
England reeled with the blow ;" and it might be said with truth that
the State-Lutheranism of Norway reeled with the blow she felt
when her greatest son embraced the Religion of his fathers. An-
glicanism has never been at rest since 1845; two currents, the one
seething to the Faith, the other towards the solution of all dogmatic
belief, have made even a semblance of unity an impossibility. So,
to those who have followed in any degree the history of religious
feeling in Norway during the last decade, there has been revealed
a picture of the same kind, if not on the same scale. " Orthodox "
Lutheranism, as it is called, which retains much of Catholic senti-
ment as well as of Catholic belief, is at grips with the probably
778 "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY" [Sept.,
larger, and certainly more influential, party whose aim appears to
be the destruction of all definite Christianity. The laity at present
appear to be still, on the whole, in sympathy with the old dogmatic
Lutheranism; and on this account are turning in numbers to listen
to the clear, unvarying voice of the Divine Teacher, if as yet only
a few here and there are prepared to accept her message. The
life and influence of Dr. Krogh-Tonning cannot fail to act as an
immense motive power in this direction for many years to come.
As to the great English convert to whom he has been compared,
thousands upon thousands owe, directly or indirectly, the grace
of their conversion, so to the famous Scandinavian theologian an
ever-growing multitude of his fellow-countrymen are, and will be,
indebted for that same unspeakable gift. A brief resume, then,
of his life story should appeal to the mind and heart of every son
and daughter of the Church.
Knud Krogh-Tonning was born on December 31, 1842, at
Stathelle on the Skiensf jord, in the south of Norway. The Catholic
Religion in those days barely existed in the Scandinavian peninsula ;
yet the old traditions still lingered in the hearts of many of the
people, whose ancestors had never deliberately apostatized from
the Faith, but who had been robbed of it partly at the point of the
bayonet, and still more through an unprincipled cunning which
had left much of the old forms and phraseology, while taking from
them all reality. In the atmosphere that surrounded the child's
early years there was much of this traditional clinging to the an-
cient Faith, so far as its fragments were still preserved. His
father was a lawyer, but the boy soon decided that his own life
must be dedicated to the ministry of the State Church, which to
him was, of necessity, the sole representative of religion. His
mother appears to have been a deeply pious woman, whose influence
unconsciously prepared the way for her son's advance in Catholic
feeling and conviction. Her Christian faith was profound, mani-
festing itself in many works of charity, and formed a striking
contrast to the pietistic, sentimental system which then was too much
the ideal of Norwegian Lutheranism. Around her beloved image
were grouped all the treasured memories of her son's childhood and
youth. Her letters to him during his residence in Christiania, where
he was one of the most eminent students of the University, he
carefully preserved, and had bound in a volume which contains
between eight hundred and nine hundred quarto pages, and which
has been described as one of the most valuable treasures in his
large and comprehensive library. With him, as with so many great
1912.] "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY" 779
servants of God, his mother's influence and character seemed the
very guiding-star of his life. We are told that in his boyhood he
even troubled his conscience as to how he could reconcile his devo-
tion to her with the supreme love of God; that he prayed earnestly
about this, and with no result, as he thought, because his feelings
still centred round his mother. There was no one to tell him that
the fulfillment of the " first and greatest commandment " is a matter
of the will, and not of the emotions.
As his education proceeded, the young student came to see
more and more clearly the insufficiency of the dogmatic system in
which he had been brought up. His own earnest thought and his
ever-extending knowledge were leading him to a fuller and more
coherent belief. Yet he was entirely unconscious that he was
gradually drawing nearer the Catholic Faith. He tells us himself :
" I lived in an environment which, whatever its disagreement, was
fairly agreed in one thing: that whatever was Catholic and led in
the direction of Rome, was proved by that very fact to be some-
thing one must reject." This was an impossible position for any-
one of Krogh-Tonning's intellect or deep piety, and yet he believed
that his duty was to act in absolute loyalty to the religion in which
he had been reared, and whose ministry he was about to exercise.
We are told that the Imitatio Christi and the Dogmatik of the
Danish' Protestant Bishop Martensen had each a profound influence
on his mind. The popular teaching of Norwegian Lutheranism at
that time, however, banned Martensen as no true Lutheran, because
he had declared war on the " reformer's " theory of justification,
and maintained the Catholic doctrine that the justice of Our Lord
is infused into the soul by grace, and not merely thrown over her
as a cloak to hide, not to remove, spiritual deformity.
In 1867 Krogh-Tonning passed his theological examination,
received the degree of Doctor in Theology, and entered the ministry
of the Lutheran Church. Three years later he was appointed to
the parochial charge of Porsgrund, a small town near his native
place, which he held for thirteen years. In 1883 he was presented
to the " Gamle Akers " Church in Christiania, a large and important
parish, and was also appointed Professor of Theology in his own
University. For seventeen years he administered his pastoral
charge and filled the professorial chair amidst the ever-growing
regard and admiration of his fellow-countrymen, and of the learned
world of the North. His literary labors began in early manhood,
and soon attracted keen attention. In 1870 his first important work,
The Doctrine of the Christian Faith, appeared. This was not so
780 "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY' [Sept.,
much an independent work as the result of his theological studies,
and shows the young author as standing unhesitatingly on the
Lutheran platform. His next publication, however, Word and
Sacrament, exhibits a great development in the Catholic direction,
especially in his exposition of the effects ex opere operato of the
Sacraments. In spite of the Lutheran teaching as to the Real
Presence in the Eucharist by way of Consubstantiation, Lutherans
generally regard the communion in a purely subjective light, and
Krogh-Tonning was advancing far beyond such barren theology.
What he hoped and prayed for, during many years, was the cor-
porate awakening of the established religion of his country to a
sense of its needs, and the return of Scandinavian Protestantism
to the ancient Faith. It was very long before the conviction came
that for each soul there is only one way back, the path which by
submission, unquestioning and entire, leads straight to Peter's
Throne. But during these long years he was seeking, and with
each new gleam loyally following, the light. There is no wonder
that we hear of his deep sympathy with the " Anglo-Catholic "
revival in England ; he saw its deep earnestness, its good faith, and
its high ideal; he could not see, any more than earnest Anglicans
can see, its hopeless lack of coherency and its illogical and forlorn
hope of corporate submission Catholic Authority. That this
should be so is a strange intellectual and spiritual phenomenon,
and must seem an almost insoluble problem to hereditary Catholics ;
but those who have come to the Church from without know how
many of the most sincere and pious minds are honestly convinced
that their position is a consistent one.
Krogh-Tonning's administration of his parish was such as was
to be looked for from one of his zeal and spiritual depth. Both
in the matter of external organization, and in the services of his
church, he made Porsgrund, and then his parish in the capital, a
pattern for his fellow-ministers to emulate. It will be unknown
to many Catholics that Lutheranism, in Norway at all events, re-
tains a shadow of the Sacrament of Penance in the shape of the
confession, to which all communicants were until lately expected
to resort before receiving the very rarely administered communion.
This confession, however, is little more than a form; it involves
no real acknowledgment of personal sins ; in the most general way
assent is given to a sort of self-accusation recited by the pastor;
and a prayer known as " absolution " follows. The minister of
Porsgrund was determined to turn this somewhat meaningless cere-
mony into a reality, and in doing so he certainly had the theory of
1912.] "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY" 781
the Lutheran Church on his side. In 1881 he put forth a strenuous
plea for the restoration of confession in its ancient and proper sense.
He relied upon the Lutheran declaration that the Sacrament of
IV-nance, " with respect to its essence, Divine origin, dignity, and
necessity, is of like rank with Holy Baptism and the Holy Supper ;"
he would remember how the early Lutherans were disposed to reckon
three, instead of seven, sacraments; how such a Protestant au-
thority as Melanchthon had written : " Vere igitur sunt sacramenta,
baptismus, coena Domini, absolutio, quae est sacramcutnm peniten-
tiae."* As was to be expected, Krogh-Tonning found no response
among his co-religionists, and a royal decree subsequently made the
Lutheran practice of " confession " no longer obligatory on com-
municants. This seemed to him a downward step, and for the first
time he appears to have wondered if the State Church of his country
was indeed capable of a true reformation. The study of the
Fathers, Mohler's Symbolik, and Cardinal Wiseman's Fabiola (that
wonderful story that exhibits far more vividly than many weighty
treatises the faith and practice of the first Christian ages), led him
to the vision of a Christianity beside which the religion that he
professed seemed a sad corruption. In his private devotions he began
to use the Hail Mary, the Divine Office (at least in part), prayer
for the departed, and the observance of the fast-days. He was
already a Catholic at heart, but it was still twenty years before his
intellectual conviction made Protestanism an impossibility for him.
His transparent honesty made him go slowly; he would never act
in advance of what he was absolutely convinced of; and his sincere
humility made him slow in committing himself to his own conclu-
sions. Yet his works continually showed the advance of his mind
towards the fullness of the Faith. His book, entitled Christianity
and the Unbelief of the Time, is especially noticeable as being
Catholic in its whole tone and argument.
The " orthodox " clergy and laity of the Lutheran body hailed
him as their protagonist against the growing unbelief that is
honeycombing Norwegian Protestantism. There was no one on
the other side to compare with Krogh-Tonning, and among them-
selves he was facile princeps. In this, as in so many points, the
" Newman of Norway " recalls the great Tractarian leader. In
both cases the conflict was against Liberalism in religion ; both were
trusted by the " orthodox " of their respective communions as no
other leader was trusted ; both had at last, in obedience to the
"Afolog., art. v.
782 "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY' [Sept.,
paramount claims of reason and conscience, to renounce a position
they had come to realize was impossible.
Krogh-Tonning's pastoral, professorial, and literary labors
were interrupted in the Winter of 1866-7 by a severe attack of
bronchial catarrh, that quite incapacitated him, and in the following
Spring he left his northern home for a sojourn in Germany. The
Catholic Rhineland, with its splendid religious activities, was an
unspeakable joy, as well as a true revelation, to the traveler. At
last he saw the ancient religion of his native land in all its living
power. Here was a country that had never apostatized from the
Faith, and which had only just emerged from the war of the
Kulturkampf ; the persecuted were the victors, and the Iron Chan-
cellor of Germany had " gone to Canossa," acknowledging the
futility of the " May Laws " that were to have made the religion
of Germany, like her conquering armies, subject to the secular
arm. We can imagine how Krogh-Tonning rejoiced in the splen-
dors of Cologne, the pilgrimage to Kevelaer, the great religious
houses of the Dominicans at Dusseldorf, and the Benedictines at
Beuron. Mass and Benediction, the procession of the Corpus Do-
mini, the gladness of the great Feasts, the fervor of the popular
devotions, were all to him as the uplifting of a veil that had con-
cealed the divine consolations and splendors for which he had
been longing. No wonder that his experience in Germany brought
the cry from his lips : " Luther, Luther, of how much beauty thou
hast robbed us ! " Before this journey, even, he had scarcely be-
lieved the misrepresentations and calumnies so freely levelled
against the Church; now he saw for himself their absurdity and
their malice, and his earnest desire was to bring this home to his
fellow-Protestants in Norway. With the view of correcting the
extraordinary delusions cherished by them, and of showing them
how much they could learn from the Catholic Church, he published,
under the title of Epilogue to the Conferences of Father Scheer
(a celebrated Dominican who had been preaching in S. Olaf's
Church at Christiania), a pamphlet embodying the convictions he
had arrived at when abroad. The Epilogue had an extraordinary
success, and an epitome of it appeared in the German historico-
political journals. The picture he drew of the existing Lutheranism
was not drawn in glowing colors, but he still dreamed of a real
reformation that should bring it again into line with the ancient
Faith. He saw before him two communities, the Catholic Church
and the Lutheran Church : could not the objective faith of the one
1912.] "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY" 783
and the subjective system of the other be assimilated in some Via
Media? Rome seemed to him, as yet, one-sided in her view of
authority, sacraments, and creed. He compared her unity to that
of a house rather than of a body. On the other hand, the reforma-
tion introduced a one-sided subjectivity, a supposed freedom that
led to weakness and loss. The Lutheran Church, as set forth in
its own ideals of belief and worship, Krogh-Tonning still believed,
might be a centre of unity between the Roman Church and the de-
caying Protestantism of our time, and so the longing that possessed
his soul in these later years he turned to fact the fulfillment of the
Divine Prayer : Ut omncs unum sint.
It is interesting to note how parallel were the roads by which
he and the great English convert, to whom we have often com-
pared him, were led to the light of the full Faith of Christ. The
dream of a Via Media, so attractive and so impossible to realize,
for a time held the intellect of both these great seekers after truth.
Both would have given anything, short of disloyalty to that truth,
to have found a reconciliation between their inherited ecclesiastical
position and the claims of revealed religion as presented by history
and by present facts. When we hear of Krogh-Tonning studying
the various " confessions," hoping to find a common ground of
union, we are reminded of Newman and Tract XC. The one was
determined to be a loyal follower of Luther as long as he could
be such with fidelity to his conscience; the other would not swerve
from his whole-hearted adherence to Anglicanism until the sum-
mons of Truth was so imperative that he could not but obey. Both
men seem incapable of self-will, of haste, or of worldly calculation
in the things of God. Each for a while believed that if the truth
were only presented to it, the communion to which he belonged
would, by what Krogh-Tonning called " the silent reformation,"
gradually find its way back to all that had been lost.
There was an element in the Norwegian's outlook that there
could not be in the Englishman's. His learning brought him to see
how utterly at variance present-day Lutheranism is with the system
taught by the " reformer " whose name it bears. Luther's immoral
theory of justification, his denial of the distinction between mortal
and venial sin, his doctrine of grace, appear to be a dead letter
among his professed followers, however they may still appear in
" confessional " documents. These gone, the very foundation of
the German revolt against Catholic theology was gone. " Our
Lutheranism," he wrote later, " is a journey under false colors."
784 "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY' [Sept.,
It was different with the Anglicanism of the first half of the nine-
teenth century. The English apostasy was committed to the opin-
ions of no individual teacher; it had been in the first instance the
work, not of heretical theology, but of royal tyranny, lust, and
greed. It had made havoc of the dogmas of the Faith, and at the
same time its leaders had pretended to take the first ages of the
Church as their guide and model. The Oxford Revival attempted
the impossible task of recalling the Established Church of England
to this profession of " primitive " faith and practice, and bidding
her carry it out in very deed. That was quite the last thing British
Protestantism was prepared to do. It did not in the least object
to giving up the theory put forth by Messrs. Cranmer and the other
lights of the Anglican revolt, so long as it might persevere in their
practice of private judgment as regards faith and rebellion against
authority.
At first sight the prospect before Krogh-Tonning was more
hopeful. It was evident that the Lutheranism of to-day had little in
common with the Lutheranism of Dr. Martin Luther. There had
been a happy inconsistency developed between the dogmatism of
the founder of the system and the actual teaching of its ministers
and theologians. This latter had come to approximate more nearly
to the Catholic doctrine in various ways ; that is, among the " or-
thodox " school ; as we shall see later, this school is by no means
in a clerical majority, though it includes the laity, as a whole, who
are practicing followers of the State religion. Krogh-Tonning
felt that here was a constituency to which he might appeal with
some hope of the " silent reformation," back to truth and unity,
for which his whole heart yearned. A dear friend of his, Frau
Julia von Massow, a woman alike of conspicuous intellect and deep
piety, and in later years a convert to the Church like himself, was
filled with the same enthusiasm as himself, and was accustomed
to hold, at her house in Christiania, meetings of sympathizers in the
cause. It seemed as if a really helpful propaganda was about to
be established ; but the fact that a Catholic, lately come from Rome,
was admitted to a meeting was the occasion of such opposition and
bitterness that the bright hopes of the promoters of these reunions
were brought to premature disappointment, to Krogh-Tonning's
intense grief. The lack of real desire for unity came home to him,
and sorely wounded his generous spirit. Was it possible that the
unity promised by Our Lord was after all but an unattainable ideal,
with no correspondence in fact? Could that be the real Church
1912.] "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY" 785
of Christ that thus ignored, and indeed rejected, the very idea of
unity amongst Christian people? He felt what thousands of An-
glican seekers after truth have felt: that all theory, all talk, of
unity is worse than futile, which at once puts out of court the claims
of that Christian society which is confessedly the most ancient,
and incomparably the vastest, of all religious bodies that bear the
name. Yet he dared not leave the religious organization to which
he belonged, so long as he could believe that it possessed the chan-
nels of spiritual life, though he was clear by this time that the
Catholic Church was the home of that life in greater purity and
fullness.
There are many converts who have gone through this
phase of development, and many now outside the Church freely
confess that she is incomparably the best, though they do not yet
recognize her as the one Divinely-appointed home for the wander-
ing souls of men. For some ten years from 1890, this was his
mental position. He in no way relaxed his efforts after Christian
unity. Catholicity and Lutheranism, he trusted, might still find
an entente that could lead to the restoration of his beloved country
to the Faith. The original heresy of the Lutheran Church had
centred round the doctrine of grace; and the result of Krogh-Ton-
ning's meditations and studies during those years of anxious thought
was apparent in his book entitled The Doctrine of Grace and the
Silent Reformation, published in 1894, and his De gratia et liber o
arbitrio, founded on St. Thomas, which he brought out four years
later. This latter publication Cardinal Satolli, himself an illustrious
Thomist scholar, pronounced to be written " with a master hand,"
and one Vicar-Apostolic in Christiania was so struck with its depth
and fidelity to truth that he gave it his private imprimatur.
These last years outside the City of God were full of suffering
to Dr. Krogh-Tonning. Outwardly none could be more happily
placed than he; as rector of an illustrious city parish and professor
in his university, he enjoyed universal respect; learned men recog-
nized in him one of the highest ornaments of Norwegian erudition ;
in 1883 he had been elected Fellow of the " Scientific Association "
of Norway; in 1890 King Oscar II. of Sweden and Norway had
created him Knight of the first class of the Order of S. Olaf " on
account of his scientific and ministerial merits;" his family, his
friends, his parishioners, loved him devotedly. And yet the spirit-
ual isolation of these years was a veritable martyrdom. He had to
struggle alone through difficulties and misunderstandings, through
VOL. xcv. 50.
786 "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY' [Sept.,
doubts and perplexities, such as might well have daunted a weaker
spirit. His ecclesiastical position was becoming more and more im-
possible to him. One Sunday, as he stood at the altar, he had to
sing, in the collect for the day, the following extraordinary words
of the Lutheran rite : " Lord God, Heavenly Father ! we heartily
thank Thee that Thou hast imparted to us Thy word, and delivered
us from the errors of the horrible Papacy." (We are reminded of
the prayer in the first " reformed " edition of the Litanies of the
Saints : " From the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormi-
ties, O Lord, deliver us.") He could not take the words of false-
hood and calumny on his lips, and altered them.
In 1896 he published another book, The Church in Process of
Dissolution, which was in some sense a formal breaking with the
Lutheran system. It draws a sad picture of the present break-up of
Protestantism, and shows how from its beginning it contained the
inevitable seed of dissolution, and how that seed has grown and
developed in each succeeding generation. The Lutheran Church,
he points out, is itself divided into what, following English nomen-
clature, he calls " High " and " Low Church." It must be remem-
bered, however, that these two divisions do not at all exactly corre-
spond to the sections of the Anglican Church so denominated. Lu-
theranism is composed of the "orthodox" party, who hold fast to the
main truths of Christianity as preserved in the schism of the six-
teenth century, and of the more influential and more numerous party
represented, for example, by Professor Harnack. Those who would
be known as " Low Church " in the Anglican communion seem to
be either non-existent or, at all events, of no practical account in
Germany, but, to judge from Krogh-Tonning's words, still linger
among the phenomena of Norwegian Lutheranism. He asks
whether such a body can be indeed the pillar and foundation of
the truth a body in which such doctrines as expiation, Christ's
resurrection, inspiration of Scripture, and belief in miracles are
treated as open questions. That his reconciliation was very near at
hand is obvious by his words : " Among all the principal confessions
[of faith], there is only one that has kept the positive and dog-
matic Christian Faith whole and unabridged, and that is the Catho-
lic Church." The reproach was inevitably cast upon him : " Your
opinions lead towards Rome." His answer was : " I only care that
my way leads to the Truth; if it leads thither I shall take it, though
I must go towards Rome."
The final grace soon came. He resigned his parish in 1899,
1912.] "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY" 787
and in January of the following year applied to the king for leave
to vacate his professorial chair. The most he could now feel was
that perhaps, as a Lutheran, he was in possession of the means of
salvation; and he could not teach on a "perhaps." For thirty-
three years he had been an accredited teacher in his communion;
during the last seventeen years he had been looked up to as the most
conspicuous and most honored leader in the State Church of his
country; he loved his parish and his beautiful home; his children
were unprovided for except through his professional income; his
wife delicate and often sick. A small pension was all he could
claim, and as a convert how could he reckon even on that? The
future held nothing for him and his but a life of hardness and
poverty. In many ways the Vicar of St. Mary's and Fellow of
Oriel had not so much to sacrifice or to endure as the pastor and
professor of Christiania. Newman had none dearer than his own
life depending on him; and he could look forward to the unutter-
able happiness and dignity of the Priesthood. Neither of these
consolations was possible for Krogh-Tonning. Newman, again,
was in the very prime of his life's strength; the great Norwegian
convert was already fifty-seven not indeed an old man, but with
the best of his strength and vigor behind him. There were certainly
conditions of special pain and difficulty in the home-coming of
Knud Krogh-Tonning.
Like the recluse of Littlemore, he did not feel at liberty to act
at once when he had laid down his active work as a Protestant.
He retired to the Jesuit house at Aarhus, on the east coast of Den-
mark, with the view of securing some months of quiet, in which
he might work out the last questions to which his sensitive con-
science and his keen intellect demanded an answer. Thence he
wrote to his old friend Frau von Massow : " I have withdrawn here
into a monastic repose. I feel like a sailor who has come home after
a stormy and dangerous voyage among rocks and perilous cliffs.
And if I am not yet in port, at least I am under the shelter of the
coast of my dear fatherland." He had been here but a short while
from April 2ist, the day of his arrival, when the final impulse of
grace came. As one of the priests entered his room he exclaimed :
" I can wait no longer, reverend father, I must become a Catholic."
On June I3th he was received into the Church the Feast of S.
Antony of Padua, the saint of self-sacrificing charity, whose spirit
the convert so truly shared.
There followed ten years of inward calm and silent work on
788 "THE NEWMAN OF NORWAY' [Sept.,
behalf of the truth he had found after so long a way of pain. They
were years of intense joy, as the great intellect and greater heart
found their full satisfaction in the glowing light, the royal beauty,
and the abounding grace of the one Kingdom of God. A Lutheran
clergyman might well write of him, with singular insight and
charity : " If such a man as Dr. Tonning has become a Catholic
in order to find rest and peace, must one not suppose that the
Catholic Church possesses the truth more clearly and more perfectly
than our own?" The celebrated Norwegian poet, Bjornstjerne
Bjornson, wrote of him : " It is not often that we hear of anyone,
especially at his age, giving up so much as he has done for con-
science' sake;" and spoke of him with the highest encomiums in
the national parliament. So highly were his theological attainments
esteemed at Rome, that in November, 1905, he was created honor-
ary Doctor of Theology by the Congregatio pro Studiis surely
an exalted and almost unique honor for a layman.
On Sexagesima Sunday, February iQth, of this year, as he
was waiting on a bench for the tramcar that was to take him to the
Catholic Church at Christiania for High Mass, the eminent convert
was suddenly called to a greater rest than even that of the Church
on earth. An attack of heart failure was the immediate cause of
a death that however " sudden " was emphatically no " unprovided "
end. The whole of Norway mourned her famous son, and the
press was full of notices that rang with the deepest respect and
admiration. The Lutheran Aftenposten spoke of him as one of the
most distinguished combatants for the Faith in the fight against
the ranks of unbelief. In fact, " orthodox " Lutheranism recog-
nized that, whether Catholic or Protestant, the loss of Krogh-Ton-
ning was the loss of Norway's leading champion in the cause of
revealed religion.
Such a life is surely that of a heroic soul. Its strength of
purpose, intense devotion to truth, and direct simplicity, have a
message not only to the land of the fjords and f jelds, but to every
land where the Faith is slowly winning back her own. There are
thousands who are on the verge of their true spiritual country, and
who yet are delayed by some intellectual self-assertion, or spiritual
sloth, or (not many, one trusts) by. worldly greed of comfort, or
position, or honor. To all these the great Norwegian convert's
message comes: To follow the light wherever it may lead. Vvr
obediens loquetur victoriam.
THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP.
BY JOHN A. RYAN, S.T.D.
N the June, 1911, issue of this magazine, the writer
called attention to the lately revived Single Tax
propaganda, and in that and the following issues
submitted to examination the ethical arguments upon
which Henry George and most of his followers de-
fend their scheme of land tenure. Inasmuch as the practical strength
of the Single Tax theory is largely derived from certain defects
in the system of private landownership, the readers of THE CATHO-
LIC WORLD may perhaps be interested in a short study of these
defects, and in an attempt to suggest appropriate remedies. To ig-
nore the defects and abuses of the present system means indirectly
to promote the agitation for its abolition. All the existing abuses
may be grouped under the three following heads : Monopoly, Ex-
cessive Gains from Landownership, and Exclusion of a Large Part
of the People from the Benefits of Land Tenure.
Private ownership of land may become a monopoly, and it may
promote the formation of other monopolies. To what extent is it a
monopoly in itself? In the literature of the Single Tax movement,
the phrase " land monopoly " occurs with great frequency, but the
expression in scarcely accurate. The system of individual land-
ownership is not precisely a monopoly. There is, indeed, a certain
resemblance between the two forms of control. Just as the owner of
every superior soil or site has an economic advantage over the owner
of the poorest soil or site, so the monopolist obtains larger profits
than the man who must do business in conditions of competition.
In both cases the advantage is based upon the scarcity of the thing
controlled, and the value of the advantage is determined by the
degree of scarcity.
This resemblance is undoubtedly of great practical importance,
inasmuch as it points to the common phenomenon of large pay-
ments from the consumers to the owners of the supplies, and to
the owners of the sources of supply. Nevertheless there is an
important difference between landownership and monopoly. The
latter is usually defined as that degree of unified control which
enables the controller arbitrarily to limit supply and raise price.
As a rule, no such power is exercised by individuals or by com-
790 THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP [Sept.,
binations of individuals with regard to land. The pecuniary ad-
vantage possessed by the landowner, that is, the power to take rent,
is conferred and determined by influences outside of himself, by
the natural superiority of his land, or by its proximity to a city.
He can neither diminish the amount of land in existence nor raise
the price of his own. The former result is inhibited by nature ; the
latter by the competition of other persons who own the same
kind of land. To be sure, there are certain kinds of land which
are so scarce and so concentrated that they do fall under true mo-
nopolistic control. Such are the anthracite coal mines of Pennsyl-
vania, and some peculiarly situated plots in a few great cities; for
example, land that is desired for a railway terminal. But these
instances are exceptional. The general fact is that the owners of
any kind of land are in competition with similar owners. While
the element of scarcity is common to landownership and to mo-
nopoly, it differs in its operation. In the case of monopoly it
is subject, within limits, to the human will. This difference is
sufficiently important, both theoretically and practically, to forbid
the identification or confusion of landownership with monopoly in
economic discussion.
Many notable instances of such confusion are to be found
in Dr. F. C. Howe's Privilege and Democracy in 'America. More-
over, the author exaggerates considerably the influence of land-
ownership in the formation of monopolies. He fails to show that
bituminous coal, or copper ore, or natural gas has been brought
under unified control to a. sufficient extent for arbitrary limitation
of output and regulation or price. His attribution of the monopoly
in petroleum to ownership of oil-producing lands is certainly in-
correct, since this is a monopoly of manufacture and of transporta-
tion facilities rather than of raw material. ' The power of the
Standard does not rest upon a direct monopoly of the produc-
tion of crude oil through ownership of the wells."* Perhaps the
most remarkable misstatement in the volume is this : " The rail-
way is a monopoly because of its identity with land" (p. 138).
Now there are a few important railway lines traversing routes, or
possessing terminal sites, which are so much better than any alter-
native routes or sites as to give all the advantages of a true mo-
nopoly. But they are in a small minority. In the great majority of
cases, a second parallel strip or parallel site could be found which
would be equally or almost equally suitable. Neither the amount
*Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Petroleum Industry, part
i., p. 3.
1912.] THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 791
nor the kind of land owned by a railroad, nor its legal privilege of
holding land in a long, continuous strip, is the efficient cause of a
railway monopoly. To attribute the monopoly to land is to con-
found a condition with a cause. One might as well say that the
land underlying the "wheat king's" office is the cause of his corner
in wheat. It is true that in a few of the great cities the existing
railroads may, through their ownership of all the suitable terminal
sites, prevent the entrance of a competing line. In the first place,
such instances are rare; in the second place, the fact that there are
several roads in existence shows that competition was possible with-
out the entrance of another one. The influence impelling them to
form a monopoly for the regulation of charges is not their owner-
ship of terminal sites. No sort of uniform action with regard to
terminals would produce any such effect. The true source of the
monopoly element in railways is inherent in the industry itself.
It is the fact of " increasing returns," which means that each addi-
tional increment of business is more profitable than the preceding
one, and that in most cases this process can be kept up indefinitely.
As a consequence, each of two or more railroads between two
points strives to get all the traffic; then follows unprofitable rate-
cutting, and finally combination.* The same forces would produce
identical results if railroad tracks and terminals were suspended
in the air.
Dr. Howe asserts that the monopolistic character of such pub-
lic utility corporations as street railways and telephone companies
is due to their occupation of " favored sites " (p. 133). How can
this be true, when it is possible to build a competing line on an
adjoining and parallel street? If the city forbids this, and gives
an exclusive franchise to one company, this legal ordinance, and not
any exceptional advantage in the nature of the land occupied, is the
specific cause of the monopoly. If the city permits a competing
line, and if the two lines sooner or later enter into a combination,
the true source and explanation are to be found in the fact of in-
creasing returns. Combination is immeasurably more profitable
than cut-throat competition. Moreover, the evils of public service
monopolies can be readily remedied through public control of
charges and through taxation. Neither in railroads nor in public
utilities is land an impelling cause of monopoly, or a serious hin-
drance to proper regulation.
Most of Dr. Howe's exaggerations of the influence of land
upon monopoly take the form of suggestion rather than of specific
*Cf. Ely, Monopolies and Trusts, pp. 59, et. seq.
792 THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP [Sept.,
and direct statement. When he attempts in precise language to
enumerate the leading sources of monopoly, he mentions four;
namely, land, railways, the tariff, and public service franchises
(pp. 68, 69). Nor is he able to prove his assertion that of these
the most important is land.
Nevertheless, land is one of the foremost causes. The most
prominent examples of land monopoly in this country are the an-
thracite coal mines and the iron ore beds. Fully ninety per cent
of our anthracite coal supply (exclusive of Alaska) is now under
the control of eight railway systems, which in this matter act as
a unit.* According to Dr. Howe, the excessive profits reaped from
this monopolistic control amount to between one hundred and two
hundred million dollars annually, t In other words, the consumers
of anthracite coal must pay every year that much more than they
would have expended if the supply had not been monopolized.
Nevertheless, the formation of monopoly would have been much
more difficult if the railroads had been legally forbidden to own
coal mines. As things stand, railway monopoly is an important
cause of the anthracite coal monopoly. Some authorities are of
the opinion that a similar condition of monopoly will ultimately
prevail in the bituminous coal mines. Iron ore has been brought
under the control of the United States Steel Corporation to such an
extent that the Commissioner of Corporations writes : " Indeed, so
far as the Steel Corporation's position in the entire iron and steel
industry is of a monopolistic character, it is chiefly through its
control of ore holdings and the transportation of ore."t From
this statement, however, it is evident that the monopoly depends
upon control of transportation as well as upon ownership of the ore
beds. If the former were properly regulated by law, the latter
would not be so effective in promoting monopoly.
Speaking generally, we may say that when a great corporation
controls a large proportion of the raw material entering into its
manufactured products, such control will supplement and reinforce
very materially those other special advantages which make for
monopoly.! Prominent examples are to be found in steel, natural
gas, petroleum, and water powers. In his report on the last-named
subject, the Commissioner of Corporations (March 14, 1912) de-
clared that the rapidly increasing concentration of control might
*Final Report of the U. S. Industrial Commission, p. 463 ; Bliss, New Encyclo-
pedia of Social Reform, pp. 245, 770.
^Idem, pp. 46, 47 ; cf. Final Report of Industrial Commission, pp. 463-465.
^Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Steel Industry, part i., p. 60.
C/. Hobson, The Industrial System, pp. 192-197-
1912.] THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 793
easily become the nucleus of a monopoly of both steam and water
power. Ten great groups of interests, he said, already dominated
about sixty per cent of the developed water power, and were pur-
suing a policy characterized by a large measure of agreement.
As a rough generalization, it would be fair to say that in one or
two instances, at least, landownership is the chief basis, and in
several other cases an important contributory cause of monopoly.
Even an approximately accurate estimate of the amount of
money which consumers are compelled to pay annually for the pro-
ducts of such concerns, over and above what they would pay if the
raw material were not wholly or partially monopolized, is ob-
viously impossible. In all probability it runs into hundreds of
millions of dollars.
The second evil of private landownership to be considered
here is the general fact that it enables some men to take a larger
share of the national product than is consistent with the welfare of
their neighbors and of society as a whole. As in the matter of
monopoly, however, so here, Single Tax advocates are chargeable
with a certain amount of overstatement. In the first place, they
contend that the landowner's share of the national product is con-
stantly increasing, that rent advances faster than interest or wages,
nay, that all of the annual increase in the national product tends
to be gathered in by the landowner, while wages and interest re-
main stationary, if they do not actually decline.*
The share of the product received by any of the four agents
of production depends upon the relative scarcity of the correspond-
ing factor. When undertaking ability becomes scarce in proportion
to the supply of land, labor, and capital, there is a rise in the remu-
neration of the business man; when labor decreases relatively to
undertaking ability, land, and capital, there is an increase in wages.
Similar statements are true of the other two agents and factors.
All these propositions are merely particular illustrations of the
general rule that the price of any commodity is immediately gov-
erned by the movement of supply and demand. In view of this fact,
it is not impossible that rent might increase to the extent described
in the preceding paragraph. All that is necessary is that land
should become sufficiently scarce, and the other factors sufficiently
plentiful.
As a fact, the supply of land is strictly limited by nature,
while the other factors can and do increase. There are, however,
several forces which neutralize or retard the tendency of land to be-
"Cf. Progress and Poverty, book iv.
794 THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP [Sept.,
come scarce, and of rent to rise. Modern methods of transporta-
tion, of drainage, and of irrigation have greatly increased the
supply of available land, and of commercially profitable land. Dur-
ing the nineteenth century, the transcontinental railroads of the
United States made so much of our Western territory accessible that
the value and rent of New England lands actually declined; and
there are still many millions of acres throughout the country which
can be made productive through drainage and irrigation. In the
second place, every increase of what is called the " intensive use "
of land gives employment to labor and capital, which otherwise
would have to go upon new land. In America this practice is only
in its infancy. With its inevitable growth, both in agriculture
and mining, the demand for additional land will be checked, and
the rise in land values and rents will fall behind the augmentation
of capital and labor. Finally, the proportion of capital and labor
that is absorbed in the manufacturing, finishing, and distributive
operations of modern industry is constantly increasing. These
processes call for very little land in comparison with that required
for the extractive operations of agriculture and mining. An in-
crease of one-fifth in the amount of capital and labor occupied in
growing wheat or in taking out coal, implies a much greater demand
for land than the same quantity employed in factories, stores, and
railroads.*
So much for the forces that counteract the tendency toward in-
crease in land values and rent. As to their effects, it is certain
that they have prevented the additions to the national product from
going entirely to the owners of land. During the last century, the
amounts received by the owners of capital and by the laborers have
undergone a large increase. Whether these increases have been
greater or less than the increase in the share of the landowners, is
a question that, owing to the lack of statistics, cannot be answered
even approximately. Between 1899 and 1900 " the value added by
manufacture to products," most of which went to the owners of
capital and labor, increased 76.6 per cent; the expenditures for
farm labor, 80.6 per cent; and the value of farm lands, 117.4
per cent.f However, a part of this gain in the value of farm lands
did not represent an actual return to the landowners in the form
of rent; for it was purely speculative, and hence profitable only
to those who sold their farms during this ten-year period. More-
over, the growth in farm values was greater, in all probability much
*Cf. Walker, Land and Its Rent, pp. 168-182; Boston, 1883.
tTaken from Advance Publications by the Census Bureau, 1911 and 1912.
.] THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 795
greater, than in any preceding decade. If we turn from amounts
of return to rates of return, we find that, during the last one hun-
dred years, the rate of interest has fallen considerably, while the
rates of rent and wages have notably risen. While the average rent
per acre or per lot of all the land that was in use a century ago has
probably advanced faster than average wages, the substantial rise
of the latter is undeniable, and remains the most encouraging fact
of the whole situation.
Let it not be forgotten, however, that the value and rent of
all kinds of land are steadily and rapidly increasing everywhere.
During the first decade of the present century this advance reached
the astonishing figure of 108.7 P er cent per acre on the farms of
the United States. In all our larger cities the increase is likewise
remarkable. Between 1904 and 1908 the value of the land in
Greater New York rose a little more than twenty per cent.* Almost
as great advances have taken place in many if not in the majority
of the other important cities of America.t The same phenomenon
is observable in all the principal European cities, though not gener-
ally in the same degree as in this country.?
That this upward movement in the value of both rural and
urban land will continue without serious interruption, seems to be as
nearly certain as any economic proposition that has reference to
the future. Although millions of arable lands are still unoccupied
in the United States and Canada, they cannot, as a rule, become
productive without a comparatively large initial outlay for drain-
ing, irrigation, clearing, etc. Hence there is no likelihood that they
can be brought under cultivation fast enough to halt or greatly re-
tard the advancing values which follow upon the growth of popu-
lation and the increased demand for agricultural products. In all
probability the most of these lands will not come into use until the
prices of farm products have risen above their present level. Ob-
viously this supposes an increase in the value of all farm land, old
and new. The adoption of better methods of farming will moderate
the upward tendency of values, but is quite unlikely to bring it
to a full stop. The same trend will prevail in the cities. Between
1900 and 1910 urban population in America increased 34.8 per
cent as against a gain of only twenty-one per cent in the total popu-
lation. While there will be retardations and temporary interruptions
*Howe, op. cit., p. 127.
tC/. Marsh, Taxation of Land Values in American Cities, pp. 21, 22 ; N. Y., 1911.
tCf. Camille-Husymans, La plus-value immobilize dans les communes beiges;
Gand, 1909.
796 THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP [Sept.,
in many places and through various influences, such as business de-
pressions, inter-city rivalries, and the development of rapid transit,
urban values and rents must on the whole continue to advance.
The conditions described in the two preceding paragraphs are
peculiar to recent times. Before the end of the eighteenth century
they were comparatively insignificant. Hence they have not yet
received the attention that they deserve, either from the general
public or from students of economic and social problems. The
practical side of the situation is that the average owner of a unit
of land, an acre or a city lot, will receive an ever-increasing share
of the national product in the form of rent. Even in America, this
class constitutes only a minority of the population. In 1900 only
46.5 per cent of the families owned any quantity of land.* The
majority not only have no share in these gains, but must bear, in
one way or another, the greater part of the burden of paying them.
Moreover, this constantly advancing value of land is unique among
the forms of productive property. Except where monopoly obtains,
buildings and mechanical contrivances do not increase in value.
The statements in the foregoing paragraphs are probably as
definite as can safely be made concerning the increase of the land-
owners' share of the national income. About the size of this share,
either as a proportion or as an absolute amount, we are compelled
to be still less definite. We have no government statistics showing
how much of the annual product goes to the landowners, or to any
other of the four classes of productive agents. Even if we knew
the value of all the land in the country, we could not tell the amount
of rent, because much of the land is unused. But we have no such
knowledge. The United States Census gives the value of acre
property and of farm land, but not of city lots, except those occupied
by factories.! Only a few of the states assess land separately from
improvements. The attempts made on the basis of such incom-
plete statistics by private individuals to estimate the total value of
land in the United States are interesting, but are either too inde-
terminate or too conjectural to afford guidance or inspire confidence.
Dr. Howe declares that " the pure land values of the country are at
least $35,000,000,000, and undoubtedly amount to twice that sum." $
This estimate covers a pretty wide range. According to Mr. John
Moody, who is perhaps the highest authority in America on subjects
*Abstract of the Twelfth Census, p. 28.
tC/. volume on Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, pp. 11-13.
%0p. cit., p. 307.
igi2.\ THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 797
of this nature, the total wealth of the nation in 1907 was $120,000,-
000,000, one-half of which he called " created wealth," and the
other half " spontaneous or uncreated wealth."* From the context,
however, we see that the " uncreated wealth " is not composed of
land values alone, but includes the franchise and monopoly values
of railroads and urban public utility corporations. These form a
large part of the $60,000,000,000, but, as we have seen above, they
are only in a slight degree attributable to land as their specific and
efficient cause.
While it is impossible to say how much rent is obtained by the
entire landowning class, one or two significant statements can be
made concerning the gains of sections and individuals. In the first
place, the great majority of landowners have not received, nor are
they likely to receive, from their holdings amounts of rent suf-
ficiently great to be called unreasonably large individual shares of
the national product. Their gross returns from land have not ex-
ceeded the equivalent of fair interest on their actual investment,
and fair wages for their labor. Only a small minority of land-
owners have been enabled through their land holdings to rise above
the level of moderate living. These statements are true of both
agricultural and urban proprietors.
In the second place, however, a considerable number of indi-
viduals have amassed great wealth out of land. It is a well-known
fact that land was the principal source of the great fortunes of
mediaeval and post-mediaeval times, down to the end of the eight-
eenth century. " The historical foundation of capitalism is rent."t
Capitalism had its beginnings in the rent of agricultural lands, of
city sites, and of mines. A conspicuous example is seen in the rise
of the great Fugger family of the sixteenth century, whose wealth
was mostly derived from the ownership and exploitation of rich
mineral lands. % In the United States very few great fortunes have
been obtained from agricultural land, but the same is not true of
mineral lands, timber lands, or city sites. " The growth of cities
has, through real estate speculation and incremental income, made
many of our millionaires."! " As with the unearned income of city
land, our mineral resources have been conspicuously prolific pro-
ducers of millionaires."!! The most striking example of great
*The Arena, May, 1907, p. 479.
tHobson, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, p. 4; London, 1907.
\Cf. Harper's Magazine, Jan., 1910.
SWatkins, The Growth of Large Fortunes, p. 75; N. Y., 1907.
\\Idem, p. 93.
798 THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP [Sept.,
wealth acquired from land is, of course, the fortune of the Astor
family. While the gains derived from his trading ventures formed
the beginnings of the wealth of the original Astor, John Jacob,
these were " a comparatively insignificant portion of the great
fortune which he transmitted to his descendants."* At his death
in 1848, John Jacob Astor's real estate holdings in New York City
were valued at eighteen or twenty million dollars. To-day the Astor
estate in that city is worth between four hundred and fifty and five
hundred million dollars, and in fifteen or twenty years will not im-
probably have increased in value to one billion dollars.f According
to an investigation made in 1892 by the New York Tribune, 26.4
per cent of the millionaire fortunes in the United States at that time
were traceable to landownership, while 41.5 per cent were derived
from competitive industries which were largely aided by land pos-
sessions. $ The proportion of such fortunes that is due, directly or
indirectly, in whole or in part, to land has undoubtedly increased
greatly since 1892.
As to the actual conditions of ownership in great land hold-
ings, there is no adequate compilation of statistics. Following are a
few conspicuous instances : The holdings of the United States
Steel Corporation in iron ore, timber, coal, and coke are valued by
the Commissioner of Corporations at nearly two hundred and fifty
million dollars, and by the Steel Corporation itself at more than
eight hundred million dollars. Three corporations own nearly
eleven per cent, and one hundred and ninety-five individuals or cor-
porations own forty-eight per cent of all the non-government timber
in the United States. || The United States Census of 1910 shows
that the number of farms containing five hundred acres or over
was about 175,000, and comprised ten per cent of the total farm
acreage. One hundred and fifty persons and corporations are said
to own two hundred and twenty million acres of various kinds of
land. None of these holders has less than 10,000 acres, and two
of the syndicates possess fifty millions each.fi
The third evil of the present system that we shall consider is
the exclusion of a large part of the population from access to the
*Youngman, The Economic Causes of Great Fortunes, p. 45; N. Y., 1909.
tHowe, op. cit., pp. 125, 126.
%Cf. Commons, The Distribution of Wealth, pp. 252-257; N. Y., 1893.
See Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Steel Industry, part i.,
P- 3'4-
IITaken from the Report of the Commissioner of Corporations to President Taft,
Feb. 13, 1911.
IITaken from articles in The Single Tax Review, vol. ix., nos. 5 and 6.
1912.] THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 799
land. By " access to the land " is meant not only ownership, but use
on reasonable terms. Between 1880 and 1910, the per cent of farm
occupiers who were also farm owners fell from 74.5 to 62, while
the per cent of tenants increased from 25.5 to 37.1.* In 1900 only
36.3 per cent of urban families owned their homes, and 12.9 per
cent of these homes were mortgaged. The combined figures for
city and country were: Houses owned by occupiers, whether free
or mortgaged, 46.5 per cent, of which about one-third were en-
cumbered; families living in hired houses, 53.5 per cent.f In that
year, therefore, more than one-half the families of the country did
not own the land on which they lived.
One of the most common charges against the present system of
land tenure is that it keeps a large proportion of the natural boun-
ties out of use. This happens in three principal ways : Owners of
large estates refuse to break up their holdings by sale; many pro-
prietors are unwilling to let the use of their land on reasonable
terms ; and a great deal of land is held at speculative prices instead
of at economic prices. So far as America is concerned, the first of
these contentions does not seem to represent a condition that is at
all general. While there are many holders of large amounts of
timber and mineral lands who are in no hurry to sell portions of
their holdings, their probable purpose is rather to wait for higher
prices than merely to continue as large landowners. As a rule, the
great landholders of America are without those motives of senti-
ment, tradition, and social ascendancy which are so powerful in
maintaining intact the immense estates of Great Britain. On the
contrary, one of the common facts of to-day is the persistent effort
carried on by railroads and other holders of large tracts to dispose
of their lands to settlers. While the selling price is frequently
higher than is warranted by the present productiveness of the land,
it is as low as that which is demanded by the owners of smaller
tracts. The general fact seems to be that the large holders of
arable and grazing land do not put exceptional obstacles in the way
of its purchase in small quantities.
The assertions that unused land cannot be rented on reason-
able terms is in the main unfounded so far as it refers to land which
is desired for agriculture. All the evidence tends to show that any-
one who wishes to cultivate a portion of such land can realize his
desire if he is willing to pay rent in proportion to the productiveness
^Abstract of the Twelfth Census, p. 218, and Advance Publications of the Census
Bureau for the Thirteenth Census.
^Abstract, p. 28.
Soo THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LAND OWNERSHIP [Sept.,
of the land. After all, ttie landowners are neither fools nor fanatics.
While awaiting a higher price than is now obtainable for their
land, they would much prefer some revenue from it to none at all.
Apparently the main reason why so much arable land is out of cul-
tivation, lies in the fact that the land is either not sufficiently
fertile, or requires too large an initial outlay in the form of irriga-
tion, clearing, or draining. In both cases, it is the relative poverty
of the land, not the stupidity or greed of the owners, that keeps
the land out of use. As to mineral and timber lands, there is some
reason to believe that the expectation of a rise in the price, or the
desire to limit the supply of the product, sometimes impels the
owners to withhold them from use at fair rentals. Some such con-
dition is said to obtain in connection with the coal deposits in some
of our Western states. Finally, the contention that we are now
considering is generally true with regard to urban land. The
system of leasing land to persons who wish to erect buildings
thereon does not prevail on residence sites, nor, indeed, on business
sites, except in the case of those suitable for unusually large
structures. Outside of such pieces of ground, the general rule is
that a man cannot get the use of city land unless he acquires it by
purchase. We are speaking, of course, of conditions in the United
States.
Cannot the land be bought at a reasonable price? This brings
us to the third and most serious of the complaints concerning hin-
dered access to land. The complaint in brief is this : Owing to the
predominant fact that in most cities the value of land is rising
(although the movement is subject to interruptions and set backs),
the price at which it is held and purchasable is not an economic but
a speculative price. That is to say, it is higher than the capitalized
value of the present revenue or rent. For example, a lot which re-
turns six per cent net on a capital of one thousand dollars (assuming
six per cent to be the prevailing rate of interest on investments)
cannot be bought for one thousand dollars. The purchaser is will-
ing to pay more because he hopes to sell it for a still higher price
within a reasonable time. His valuation of it is determined not
merely by its actual income-producing power, but by its anticipated
revenue-value and selling-value. ("In a growing city, an advan-
tageous site will command a price more than in proportion to its
present rent, because it is expected that the rent will increase still
further as the years go on.")* The buyer will pay more for such
*Taussig, Principles of Economics, ii., 98; N. Y., 1911.
1912.] THE ABUSES OF PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 8or
land than for a house which yields the same net return; for he
knows that the latter will not, but hopes that the former will, bring
a higher price in the future. Wherever this discounting of the
future obtains, the price of land is unreasonably high, access to
vacant land is unreasonably difficult, and the inevitable result is
congestion of population.
Now, this condition undoubtedly exists the greater part of the
time in the great majority of our larger cities, in many of our
smaller cities, and possibly with regard to a considerable part of
our unused arable land. Men will not sell vacant land at a price
which will enable the buyer to obtain immediately a reasonable re-
turn on his investment. They demand in addition a part of the
anticipated increase in value. As already intimated, this evil is
incomparably greater and more widespread in the cities in the rural
regions ; for the owners of unused and uneconomically used arable
land are much more anxious to sell their holdings than the average
urban proprietor of a vacant lot. Hence reasonable access to such
lands by purchase is impeded in a much smaller degree. While no
general or precise estimate can be given of the amount by which the
speculative value exceeds the present rent-producing value of land
in cities, twenty-five per cent would not improbably be a moderate
statement. Even when a reaction occurs after a period of exces-
sive " land-booming," or in connection with a general industrial
depression, the lower prices do not bring the manless land any
nearer to the landless men. Only the few who possess ready money
or excellent credit can take advantage of such a situation. On the
whole, the evil that we are now considering is probably greater
than any other connected with the private ownership of land. It
is comparatively new simply because general and rapid urban
growth is of comparatively recent origin.
All the tendencies and forces that have been described in the
present article under the heads of Monopoly, Taking too Large a
Share of the Product, and Hindering Access to Land, are in some
degree real evils and abuses of the present system. Most of them
do not seem to be sufficiently understood or appreciated by the active
defenders of private ownership. To recognize these evils, and to
seek suitable remedies for them, would seem to be at once expedient
and right. In a subsequent article, we shall consider the remedies
that seem to be just and effective.
VOL. XCV. 51.
THE FOSTER-CHILD.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
T was a long, long time ago since Jimmie Brady had
been carried out of the Union, snugly wrapped in
Jane Brady's shawl, to be made a nurse-child of.
It was so long ago, and Jimmie had been so young
when it happened, that he had only the remotest
memory of the stars in the purple sky, as he lay among the hay
in the little cart while Jane drove the old pony up the Glen. But
he did remember the change which had come upon his little life
in the transplantation, from the walled-in workhouse and the
nursery wards, with their high walls and barred windows and hardly
a peep of sky, to the Glen and the mountain cottage, and the strange
special love which was suddenly lavished upon him, who had been
hitherto only as a cog, a very small cog, in a machine.
He knew perhaps it was not memory but something he had
learned from Jane Brady, his nurse that he had not known how to
play nor how to kiss, nor how to receive kisses. He was ignorant of
the very commonest things. He did not know a horse nor a cow
when he saw them; he roared lustily when Shep, the house-dog,
came to inspect him in a quite friendly manner. He had never
seen a daisy and he was quite sure he remembered his amazement
at his first sight of a rose, one of the pink, monthly roses which
grew in great profusion all over the Bradys' cottage.
There was an old brother and two sisters of the Bradys, and
they had never married. John and Sally and Jane, they would
never marry now: and strangely enough in Ireland, of the long
families, they had neither kith nor kin. They had a little mountain-
farm of about twenty acres, with the cottage and a horse and cart,
a couple of cows, a few calves and pigs, altogether a nice little
property.
It was Jane who had applied for the nurse-child. Jane was, as
John put it, a fool about children. She ought to have been married
and the mother of a household; but she had set her heart on
a showy scoundrel, who had gone away to America and forgotten
her.
Now she took the workhouse child to her heart with a starved
avidity. John and Sally had been rather against it in the beginning.
THE FOSTER-CHILD 803
They were too proud to stomach the idea of a workhouse child on
their hearth; but when Jimmie came in with his head of shining,
curly hair, his blue eyes, his soft, somewhat wandering, smile, his
gentle manner, they capitulated to him after a very short resistance.
He grew up a very simple boy. He kept his innocence and
simplicity beyond the allotted age, because he never associated, or
desired to associate, with other boys. His mammie, as he called
Jane, his uncle and aunt, were enough for him ; with the calves and
the pigs and the fowls; with Bob the old horse and Shep, now
grown quite ancient ; and the fields and the hills, the kind winds, the
warm sun, the sweet rain.
If it were not for an occasional visit from Miss Keenan, the
lady guardian through whom Jane had procured her nursling, they
might have forgotten that Jimmie did not belong to them. Her
characteristics were entirely masculine, but the masculine exterior
covered a kind, womanly heart.
Miss Keenan was especially interested in Jimmie and his
foster-parents. She used to give glowing accounts of Jimmie's
well-being to the other members of the Ladies' Committee. " The
old woman has reared the child in her bosom," she would say, with
a touch of poetry; and she looked forward with confidence to
Jimmie's adoption by the Bradys.
Jimmie knew many things which are not to be learnt at school :
intimate secret things of the fields and the streams, of the birds
and the trees, the animals and the flowers; but he was very slow
at the " ould a-bay-say," and the higher walks of learning which
he entered upon when he had conquered the alphabet.
The old schoolmaster understood. He was a bit of a poet, and
he could read the passion in the boy's wistful glances as they
wandered from the heated schoolroom out to the shining country
beyond. He was patient with Jimmie. He even devised messages
which would give Jimmie an escape from school for a while. He
bore with the boy's slowness, his difficulty in learning. It was
a bad thing for Jimmie when, somewhere in his thirteenth year,
the old schoolmaster got "an impression" in the chest from a
drenching received in a Winter storm, and died of it after a few
days' illness.
The new master was young and he was choleric. He was very
keen about his school, and impatient of slackness on the part of
the scholars. Jimmie by this time was in the Fifth Class. He had
really attained by very slow degress a measure of learning, of which
he and the old people were inordinately proud. But he was slow.
804 THE FOSTER-CHILD [Sept.,
He had a mild placidity like that of the cattle. Ask Jimmie a
question from a school book, which he was quite competent to
answer, and he would look at you with a wandering gaze. He
would have to recall his spirit with a great effort from the moun-
tains and the fields, where it was wandering, before he could answer.
Mr. White, the old schoolmaster, had recognized this, and
given Jimmie his time. Mr. O'Laughlin, the new master, would
watch Jimmie with a lowering eye while the boy tried to recall
his straying thoughts. He had a sharp tongue, with a sting at the
end of it. He began to make a butt of Jimmie. At first Jimmie
did not understand. Satire was a weapon beyond him. When he
realized that the master meant to be hurtful, when the other
boys laughed and copied the schoolmaster out of school hours, he
began to understand. The blood would come to his cheek by and
by on slight provocation. It became a base pleasure to the master
presently to bring that hurt and uncomprehending flush. Let
him be excused ! He was not a bad-hearted man, but his nerves
were often strained to breaking point after a day of the school.
He was a brisk, eager, energetic person. Jimmie's slow eyes
they were beautiful eyes by the way turned on him in that un-
comprehending manner made him want to strike the boy.
The day came when he struck Jimmie: not only struck him,
but beat him about the head and face with his clenched fists in an
uncontrollable fit of rage. He was sorry immediately his fury
was exhausted : but he was not the man to show it. Jimmy ran
home with a bleeding mouth and a blackened and swollen face.
Old John got up from his chimney corner, and, with the old fire in
his eye, vowed vengeance against the schoolmaster. The two old
women wept, while Jane bathed her nursling's face and applied
washes of herbs known only to the country dwellers. It was a
week before Jimmie could see out of one eye, and all the Glen
and the hillside were talking about the schoolmaster's attack on
the boy.
Something might have been done if old John had not suddenly
developed influenza, for he had vowed to carry his case against
the schoolmaster before the guardians; but he rose up from his
short and sharp attack a very weary old man, with no fight left
in him at all, and his nerves shaken to that degree that he could
not bear a rough or loud voice.
Miss Keenan was in the throes of a more deadly malady; and
a lady whose strongest point was the necessity of discipline visited
in her place. She rated Jane soundly because she had spoiled the
I9i2.] THE FOSTER-CHILD 805
boy. She dismissed as unworthy of belief the allegations against
the schoolmaster. She treated Jimmie as a wilfully disobedient
and intractable boy, likely if he was not sternly repressed to do
serious mischief by his example ; it was a case Miss Synnott thought
for corporal punishment and plenty of it. " Always remember, my
good woman," she said to Jane, " that too much tenderness is at
least as bad a thing as a mistaken cruelty."
Jane bore with her with the incredibly humble and helpless
patience of her class. Whatever she thought, whatever she felt,
there was no indication in her little, meek, brown face, and the
silence with which she received Miss Synnott's rebukes. She might
have demolished the lady's self-satisfaction if her little closely-
locked lips had let through their barrier the flood of speech behind.
Jane had her reasons for keeping silence. In four months
time Jimmie would be fourteen. He would be beyond the age for
compulsory school attendance. If all was well, if no complaint had
gone to the guardians, if Miss Keenan was back she had just
begun to creep back to life slowly and painfully they could apply
to the board for permission to adopt Jimmie. He would be theirs ;
no terrible and capricious monster of a board, that might at any
moment snatch the child from them, to be found any longer, but
their own to take up the work on the little farm which he delighted
in; to comfort them in their old age; to succeed them when they
should be gone.
Jane dissembled. She was not as meek as she looked, and she
stored up a good many things that she might relieve herself of
next year, when the boy was unchangeably hers. She listened to
Miss Synnott patiently, and made promises for the boy's amend-
ment, which were received with an air coldly discouraging. She
paid a visit in her simplicity to Mr. O'Laughlin, with an intention
of propitiating him, offering him gifts, which were too nakedly a
bribe to serve their purpose. She coaxed and persuaded Jimmie
to return to school, and having achieved so much, Jimmie, in blind
terror of the schoolmaster, let slip whatever of learning he pos-
sessed, and was degraded not only to the Fourth Class, but to wear
a dunce's cap for the remainder of the sitting.
That dunce's cap was the last straw. Jimmie's endurance was
at an end. Doubtless the man who inflicted the punishment had no
idea of how it seared a young and sensitive soul. A workhouse brat !
Was it likely a workhouse brat could find unendurable the dunce's
cap and degradation to a lower class? Jimmie seemed to suffer
stoically a punishment at which most of the elder boys would have
806 THE FOSTER-CHILD [Sept.,
mocked. As a matter of fact he endured tortures wearing the
ridiculous pointed cap, which Mr. O' Laughlin had hastily concocted
out of a brown paper, grocer's bag. To be set up there for the little
world of school to mock at was worse to Jimmie than the degrada-
tion to the Fourth Class, although that would be bad enough, pres-
ently, when he came to think on it : he had ascended by such painful
degrees.
He arrived home with the fixed determination to go to school
no more ; and this time no one could move him. Father Meredith,
brought into the matter for the first time, came on hearing of
Jimmy's contumacy; but the culprit was out of the house at the
first wind of his coming and up on the mountain side. Jane, in
bitter grief and trouble, did not present the most favorable side
of the question. Father Meredith, a young priest newly come to
the Glen, which was his first mission, knew nothing of Jane and
her nursling. A mass of incoherent and rambling accusations
against everybody in general and nobody in particular; so Jane's
story seemed to Father Meredith. Father O'Connell, who had
lived in the Glen forty years, would have known more about it.
The young priest, new from the seminary, left the Bradys' cottage
with the opinion that Jane, a wrong-headed and doting old woman,
was in danger of spoiling the boy beyond redemption. Discipline
must be upheld. Jimmie must submit to lawful authority. All
the priest had seen of Mr. O'Laughlin had impressed him favorably.
He could sympathize with the difficulties of his position, and was
quite determined to uphold him.
However, to get Jimmie to go back to school was no easy
matter. Seeing that the boy was off like a hare up the mountains
the minute anyone in authority came in sight, that he seemed to
sleep like the fox with one eye open and could not be surprised,
it was easier said than done that he must submit himself to au-
thority and return to school. Jane was not now perhaps the best
adviser for him. She secreted the boy when John would have per-
suaded him to go back. For three months Jimmie set the authori-
ties at defiance, living a hand-to-mouth existence, half the time in
hiding in the mountains or the fields.
It was quite true that his example was a bad one for the
other children. He was somewhat of a hero to the elder boys.
A certain insubordination showed itself in their manner to the
master. They did things they would not have thought to do before
Jimmie Brady had awakened in their hearts the desire for an
outlaw's life.
I 9 i2.] THE FOSTER-CHILD 807
For three months Jimmie had set the authorities at defiance,
and nothing had happened. The episode of the night-capping had
occurred somewhere early in December. It had come to March.
Nothing had happened. At the Bradys' cottage they began to feel
that nothing would happen. Jimmie ceased to fly to the mountains
at the first glimpse of a figure which was not that of one of the
neighbors. He began to show himself more freely. He even ven-
tured to take Bob to the forge to be shod one day, paying for the
shoe proudly with a shilling which had been given to him by a lady
to whom he had rendered some little service on one of his mountain
wanderings.
To be sure Mr. O'Laughlin as an active enemy and Jimmy
had the most painful fear of Mr. O'Laughlin was out of the battle
in these days. He was in fact watching the last expiring flicker
of life in his one son, a delicate tuberculous lad of about Jimmie's
age. Heaven knows what aberrations of temper were not to
be accounted for in him by the torture of his apprehensions for
the boy. Now doubts and fears were at an end. There was no
longer the cheating hope followed by black despair. The boy was
dying slowly in these days of Jimmie's contumacy. The school-
master was quite beyond caring anything about it, or about the
growing insubordination in the school. School was conducted in
those days without any discipline whatsoever. The schoolmaster
went through his work like an automaton : only the filmed suffering
of his eyes might rouse even school boys to compassion.
He did not hear what everyone was talking about : that Jimmie
Brady's glorious days were over. The blow had fallen with a sud-
denness : and it was a more crushing blow than anyone would have
expected. The fiat of the board had gone forth. The boy was
to be taken from the Bradys and re-assumed into the guardianship
of the board. An application was to be made to commit him to a
Reformatory School.
It was Jane Brady herself who brought the news to Father
Meredith. He was a refined, scholarly young man, better suited
for a Benedictine cloister than the care of a wild mountain parish.
He looked up from the book he was reading as Jane was shown in
by his housekeeper. A bitter north wind, gathering force every
minute, rattled the windows and sang through the keyholes, and
made the rather delicate young priest appreciate his own fireside.
He stared at the disordered, dishevelled appearance old Jane
presented. She had struck him as a singularly decent-looking and
tidy old woman, and he had wondered at her abetting the boy
8o8 THE FOSTER-CHILD [Sept.,
in his evil doing. Now the snow was on her white hair. She
had come out without a bonnet, and had run fast, and she was breath-
less. For a few minutes, while he tried to compose her, her words
only came in sobs. Her apron was awry, and she had an air
of being blown about and beaten by the wind. He hardly thought
of these things for the bleached pallor of her face.
"Did ye hear?" she asked, "did ye hear that they're goin'
to take the boy from us ; him that I nursed in my bosom ; that was
the delight of our eyes; that was to take care of us in our old
age? They're comin' for him to-morrow. I'll never see him
again. Don't I know it? Didn't Biddy Neal have the foster-child
took from her, an' didn't she lie on the road in her agony whin
the Union van rowled away wid him, an' didn't she die widin the
year, the poor woman, an' she callin' out on her dyin' bed for the
little boy they'd robbed her of? Och, God help the poor! 'tis
them that is helpless and trampled on ! Sure there's no pity in earth
or heaven !"
Father Meredith was horrified. His beautiful little edition
of a classic fell from his hands. He had never imagined that
Jimmie's contumacy was going to have such results. He stammered
before the little distracted old woman who, he felt, had arraigned
him.
" Oh," he said, " it won't go so far as that. The boy must
be brought to see some sense, and the whole matter will blow over.
I'm afraid Mr. O'Laughlin was unduly harsh with him. Poor man,
he was hardly accountable for what he said or did. His boy is very
bad to-night. I doubt that he'll see the morning."'
" Do you know what they'll do with Jimmie ? " Jane Brady
asked, sternly waving away the question of another's grief. "They'll
put him in the Reformatory School. Maybe ye know what that's
like and maybe ye don't. Three months '11 destroy him: there
won't be a disgraceful wickedness he won't know, him that's as
innocent as wan o' them young lambs, the crathurs, shelterin'
by the side o' their mothers from the cruel blast. Oh, I'm not
say in' that ye're not kind, that ye won't help us, if you can. But
the board doesn't move in a day. The van 'ill come for him to-
morrow, an' if it takes him I'd rather he'd lie where Willie O'Laugh-
lin 'ill be lyin' to-morrow. I'd rather he'd be dead in his innocence.
It'll be murder done on the white soul of him. He'll never be my
Jimmie any more, in this world or the next."
Father Meredith was at his wit's end. It was quite true
that the board was not to be moved in a day. It had moved, and
1912.] THE FOSTER-CHILD 809
it could not undo its work for, at the very least, a week. Probably
there would be arguments, discussions. The thing might drag it-
self out over several weeks. He remembered the Reformatory
School; the boys sitting on the benches in the workshops, furtive-
eyed, charged to the lips in many cases with the evil knowledge
of the slums. Poor Jimmie! A soul might be murdered in less
than a week. Absolute innocence is more easy to corrupt than
innocence tempered by experience. A week, even less, of such
company might mean, as the old woman had said, the murder of
Jimmie's soul. He was their shepherd : the one answerable for
the lambs !
Wild thoughts came to his mind of kidnapping Jimmie, of
aiding and abetting his escape from that stony-hearted stepmother,
the State. He was humble before the little old woman's accusing
eyes. He did not excuse himself. He could be very rigid with
himself; and now perhaps he was a sterner judge of his own ac-
tions than Jane Brady herself.
" I am coming with you," he said, huddling into his overcoat.
It was a thin one, too thin for the season and for the attenuated
form it covered. Father Meredith was a born ascetic. He needed
little for himself, and he would not allow kindness to supplement
his scanty allowance. As he took his stick and put on his soft
hat under the light of the hall-lantern, his over-bright color, the
stooped shoulders, and huddled air appealed to the old woman's
motherly heart.
" Sure, God help your reverence, don't come out to-night ! "
she said. " The wind is bitter cowld that does be sweepin' down on
us from the mountains. There'll be snow before the mornin'."
" It is all right, thank you, Jane," Father Meredith said
gently. " I'm really very hardy. Whew ! The wind is strong ! "
He had a battle with the wind before he could get out of the
house. The sudden rush of it blew out the little hall-lamp and
slammed all the doors in the house.
They stepped out side by side, not talking. The force of
the wind was against conversation. They had as much as they
could do to walk against it. The night was wild overhead. Now
and again a dreary sough of wind came down from the mountains
and clapped about their ears. There were flakes of dry snow in
the wind. Overhead the moon sailed in a hurly-burly of cloud.
When at last they arrived at the little farmhouse at the end
of the long boreen, John Brady opened the door, the pale frightened
face of old Mary peeping over his shoulder. " God bless us all,
8io THE FOSTER-CHILD [Sept.,
what a night," he said. " So ye've brought him home, Jane !
Mary an' me was distracted wid you out an' the boy. He follied
ye maybe. Ye weren't gone ten minits when he gave us the
slip. Why, 'tis the priest. Where is the misfortunate boy strayed
to, at air? An' him desperate. Och, glory be to God, he couldn't
have took to the mountains on such a night ! "
" He said he'd never be took alive," whimpered Mary in the
background.
There was nothing to be done till morning, and meanwhile
the priest did what he could to comfort the afflicted family. To
be sure there was always the chance that Jimmie might come back,
or might be in hiding somewhere nearer home than the mountains.
He left them at last on their knees, saying the Rosary, and started
out on the walk home, refusing to be driven. He was too wet
to face the drive in the open cart in bitter weather. It would be
better for him to walk, so as to keep warm on the way.
He faced steadily down the valley; his head bent before the
wind and the snow; his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. He
was really very cold. His teeth chattered in his head as he went.
He said to himself that he must get into bed and have hot bricks
rolled in flannel the hot-water bottle proper was unknown in the
Glen to his feet to get the frozen feeling out of them. He would
drink a cup of hot tea, and pile all the available blankets on his
bed. He did not want to be laid up with a chill.
A bright light flashing in his eyes made him aware that he
was near a cottage. He looked about him. He had not realized
that he was so close to the schoolmaster's cottage.
He turned in at the little garden gate. The trim flower beds
he had often admired, were blotted out by the falling snow. He
fumbled for his handkerchief to wipe his glasses, and did it insuf-
ficiently. The window was a blur of light when he had put on the
glasses again.
He knocked at the door and no one came. The schoolmaster
was a widower. He had one old servant, rather deaf. Father
Meredith supposed she must be out of hearing. Because of the
sick boy he did not like to knock too loudly. But his second sum-
mons brought someone O'Laughlin himself.
" Is it you, Father ? " he asked, in a queer monotonous voice.
" Old Bridget went to look for you a long time ago. I don't know
why she went for you. There's nothing you can do. Willie died
at five o'clock."
" My poor fellow ! "
I9I.2.] THE FOSTER-CHILD 811
" I've nothing left now," said the man, closing the door upon
the night, and opening the door of the little room beyond.
There, on a small bed, lay the dead boy. Someone had al-
ready performed for him the last offices. He lay in clean linen,
his hands crossed on his breast, his golden hair smoothed, his
eyes closed, in the strange majesty of death.
" He was a beautiful boy," said the man, in a dull voice. " He
took after his mother. I used to wonder why she ever looked
at a rough fellow like me."
Forgetting his wet garments, his fatigue, the priest sat down
in the room where the fire had gone low. He set himself to the
task of consolation, but he discovered after a while that what he
said was not reaching the bereft man. He sighed to himself over
his own helplessness, and he began to be acutely aware of his
soaked garments. The most intense fatigue began to master him.
He wondered if he should be able to get to his own house, nearly
two miles further on. By accident he struck the right note for the
distraction of the father's grief.
"If you could make up the fire and lend me a few things
while my own are drying, I should be very grateful," he said.
" I've been up to the Bradys, and I'm soaked through and dead-
tired. I had pneumonia two years ago."
" To be sure," said the man, coming out of his stupor. " The
Bradys, did you say? I'll have a fire and a cup of something hot
in a minute or two. Come and change now. By the greatest of
good luck I've a suit I never put on my back."
He led the priest into the little bedroom beyond, and found
him the necessary clothes. When Father Meredith returned to the
outer room he found that the fire had begun to burn briskly. The
schoolmaster on his knees before it was watching a kettle, which
was already singing.
" You were talking of the Bradys," he said after a silence.
" A queer thing happened in the night. Willie was dozing and wak-
ing, dozing and waking. He'd start if there was the slightest
sound inside or outside the house, and his hand in my hand was
as wet as water. 'Father,' he said, 'I had a dream.' 'And what
was your dream, Willie?' I asked. 'I dreamed, father,' he said,
'that Jimmie Brady was in the cave at the North Chimney, and
that the snow was beating in at the door. I could see him where
he lay asleep, and the snow wasn't whiter than his face.' '
Father Meredith, beginning to nod in the big armchair with
the broken springs, roused himself.
812 THE FOSTER-CHILD [Sept.,
"Willie said that, did he?" he asked in a tone of subdued
excitement. " Supposing it was true ! Jimmie Brady's run away.
They were sending for him from the Union to-morrow, going to
shut him up in the Reformatory School, the boy that was always
as free as a blackbird. We were wrong, you and I. We might
have been more patient. He's gone. He and your Willie used
to climb up there together in the Summer."
" I know. Willie showed me the spot. Don't blame yourself,
Father Meredith. It was my fault. I couldn't bear to see him
strong and Willie dying. I hated all the strong children, God
forgive me: and this poor lad opposed me. I ought to have re-
membered that he was good to Willie last Summer, when they
went up the Chimney together. The little cave was full of dead
leaves. The snow would be blown in at the mouth of it with this
wind."
" He might be safe enough in the cave if Willie's dream
was true," said the priest.
" If Willie's dream was true," assented the father, " Jimmie's
face was whiter than the snow and he asleep. If he was to die
it would be at my door."
" We must have search-parties out as soon as it's daylight,"
Father Meredith said; and remembered that he had not eaten
for hours and was faint, despite the hot tea which the schoolmaster
had provided.
" I think I'll be going," he said, getting up.
" You won't be going out of it to-night," returned the school-
master, with a rough kindness. " I'll get you a bit to eat : and
then I'll step down and let your housekeeper know. You can say
your Office by Willie when you've eaten a bit. I'll be back as soon
as I can."
Father Meredith dozed in his chair. The schoolmaster had
heaped on fuel before he went, but the fire was all but out, and
the room turning chilly, when the priest woke with a start. He
recognized that he must have slept for some hours, even before
he looked at his watch, and found that it was eleven o'clock.
Eleven o'clock; and there was no sign of the schoolmaster. The
storm was raging about the house. Snow was falling thickly.
When he pressed his face to the pane, he could make out nothing
for the snow. It was the prelude to a blizzard which the people
still talk of in the Glen.
Perhaps no man who cared for his life would have tried to
climb the Chimney on such a night. Andrew O'Laughlin, having
1912.] THE FOSTER-CHILD 813
come to the end of his joys, did not care; but, nevertheless, going
forth, he had made his preparations as collectedly as though life
were still dear to him. He had taken his lantern, with an addi-
tional candle in case he should need it, and a box of matches. He
had put in his overcoat pocket a flask of whiskey. He had put
on his hobnailed boots, which would give him purchase in the snow
or on a precipitous slope. When he had made all his preparations
he went quietly so that he should not waken the priest, who was
nodding in his chair before the fire. He had a curious idea, as he
strode through the night, that it was not Jimmie Brady, the boy
who had fretted and worried him, that he must go out to seek and
save, but Willie, his own boy, whom he had left quiet and cold in
the lit room. Willie and Jimmie Brady it was not Willie it
was the strange boy he had hated: no, it was Willie. The con-
fusion of his thoughts helped him as he struggled up the mountain
side in the wind and the snow, unconscious of the dangers and dis-
comforts of the way.
The Chimney is a steep precipitous wall of rock, rising above
a mountain tarn, beautiful in Summer, but most desolate in wild
weather. There is no ascending the Chimney from the water-side,
but it is easy enough, although a stiff climb, from the land side.
From the top it is possible, if you have a good head and plenty
of courage, to climb some little way down the face of the Chimney.
There is a cave which some people have cared to visit, because a
certain famous outlaw found refuge there in the Rebellion of '98.
But it would be a passionate pilgrim indeed who would attempt
it on such a night as Andrew O'Laughlin accomplished it, in the
teeth of the famous blizzard.
No man perhaps could have achieved it in cold blood. But
to a man half-crazed with grief, possessed of only one idea, and
that that the child of his love needed pity and help, was beyond
there in the cave in the face of the Chimney, perishing of cold and
hunger, it was possible. Andrew O'Laughlin could never tell
afterwards how he accomplished the descent, but he did it. He
stood upright in the cave, holding above him the lantern which he
had pushed before him as he wriggled along the narrow paths, and
saw in the further corner, with the snow creeping up to the bed of
dead leaves, the form of a sleeping boy.
At the same moment something came wriggling towards him
a dog. Shep, the Bradys' dog, the son of the old Shep, had found
the lost boy first. He had slept across the body, keeping it warm.
It was no dead child, but a living one, that looked at Andrew
8i4 THE FOSTER-CHILD [Sept.,
O'Laughlin out of the heap of dead leaves, looked at him with a
blind terror that smote the man to the heart, as though his own
dead child had looked at him like that.
" Whisht, Jimmie," he said, " don't look at me like that. Twas
Willie sent me to you. Poor Willie's dead. I've come to save you.
You won't go back to the Union, child, not if I was to hide you
from them myself. I think Willie meant us to be friends."
As a matter of fact the Union messengers did not find Jimmie
the next day, nor the next. The Glen was snow-bound for some
three weeks, during which both the schoolmaster and Father Mere-
dith had been almost at death's door. When once more the Glen
was in touch with life the menace was over. Miss Keenan had come
back to affairs, looking rather bleached, but indomitable as of old,
and had swept the committee off its feet with her wrath when she
heard what had nearly befallen in her absence. The order for
Jimmie's recall from the Glen was rescinded. The committee, with
quite astonishing unanimity, recommended that the proposal of
the Bradys to adopt their foster-child should meet with the sanction
of the Board of Guardians : and the Guardians were quite willing
to adopt the recommendation of the Committee.
So peace reigned in the Glen. Jimmie could never again be
threatened with the death in life of the Reformatory School. Jane
and John and Mary were more devoted to the lad than ever, seeing
how narrowly they had escaped losing him. All the Glen was
inclined to make much of him; and a strange, touching tenderness
had grown up between Jimmie and Andrew O'Laughlin since the
night they had crept together for warmth, Shep making a third,
in the cave on the Chimney the night the great blizzard began,
waiting for daylight and a little cessation in the falling snow to
make the return journey. There was no more difficulty about the
boy's going to school. If you had seen him stepping down to
the school with a shining morning face any day of that Summer,
you would never have believed he was the boy whose enemy had
been the schoolmaster.
" I'll never make a scholar of him," Andrew O'Laughlin
would say regretfully, " but he's a good boy, a good boy. We
can't all be scholars."
" He'll be more useful to the old people without too much
scholarship," Father Meredith said; looking benignly at the man
who had found courage to live because his dead son had made a
pact of love between him and the child he had hated.
RENE BAZIN.
BY JOSEPH L. O'BRIEN.
E are told that the literature of an epoch is the truest
interpretation of the inner life of a nation which is
handed down to posterity that a nation's literature
is always the biography of its humanity. If there
be any truth in these aphorisms, then recent French
fiction gives Catholics a ray of hope for better things of a country
which on the surface offers us a picture which saddens the heart.
The French political world of the hour gives no evidence of re-
lenting in the bitter persecution of Christianity, which has marked
its course of action since the rise of the third republic a course
which has piled wrong upon wrong and insult upon insult with-
out shame or blush. On the other hand, the literary world pre-
sents an aspect which at first sight appears incredible. Perhaps,
outside of France, the literary movement, which has been working
for the past twenty years, has not been appreciated. But at home
its influence has been recognized and encouraged. To-day the
fact is evident the country which has offered to the world the
most consistent and the most relentless persecution of the Church
in modern times, is in the midst of a Catholic revival of letters.
For the first time in decades, French literature of the very highest
class is Catholic in tone and spirit.
Within the last twenty years such masters of literature as
Coppee, Brunetiere, Verlaine, Huysmans, Rette, and Bourget have
renounced their old ways, deserted the irreligious schools in which
they had been trained, and have openly avowed that Christianity
was the only force in the world which could give a vital and lasting
spirit to art. Under their guidance and example, an army of young
disciples has sprung up and infused new life and vigor into a litera-
ture which was dying of dry rot, the aftermath of realism run riot.
It is not our intention to catalogue the names of the many able
writers who at the present time are in the front rank of the move-
ment, or even to enter into details on the history of its progress. We
shall confine ourselves to the position of one man, and give a sur-
vey of the principles which underlie his work. A man who repre-
sents the movement at its best, and who from the beginning of his
literary career has been one of the most ardent workers for the
regeneration of French literature; a man who has done more to
8i6 REN BAZIN [Sept.,
rescue the French novel from the mire into which Zola and his
school dragged it than any of his contemporaries, and who is
acknowledged, even by critics who are opposed to his principles,
as one of the greatest of French romancers Rene Bazin.
Bazin was born at Angers, December 26, 1853. His father,
educated as a lawyer and for some years a practitioner at the bar,
retired and successfully engaged in commercial pursuits. The
future novelist received his early education at the Lycee of Angers,
and at the College of Montgazon conducted by secular priests.
Owing to delicate health, and on the advice of physicians, his
vacations were regularly passed in the country amidst the sturdy
peasant people, to whom he became very much attached. Of his
days in these surroundings he writes : " I worked little enough on
De Viribus illustribus, but I learned that which is not taught to
see and to hear the mysterious life of nature. In place of having
a class-room or a courtyard for a horizon, I had the forests, the
meadows, the ever-changing sky, and the waters of a winding
river which reflected the heavens." This daily communion with
nature was the apprenticeship of the future artist. The scenes of
natural beauty which then sank into his boyish soul were later to
furnish the background for his greatest novels.
After completing his preparatory studies, from 1872-1875, he
studied law at the University of Paris. When he had received
the degree of licentiate there, he returned to Angers, where he
prepared for his doctorate in the Catholic University of that city.
In 1878 he was appointed Professor of Law at the University of
Angers, a position he holds to-day despite his great literary activity.
But for three years Bazin passed as a student at the Univer-
sity, he has avoided Paris, and has been content to remain a pro-
vincial. Had he fallen under the spell of the great city, it is doubt-
ful if he would have won the place in letters he now occupies.
At least it can be asserted that his originality never would have
developed along the lines which are to-day his greatest asset if his
environments had been Parisan rather than provincial. " That
which is best in him I attribute for the greater part to the sur-
roundings in which he has lived, to the education which he has
received, and to the impressions which he has gathered from his
exterior environments. We, others, who have not been brought
up in the country, have lost forever a world of joys and emotions.
For us the charm of nature will remain forever a dead letter
We can never know the secrets which nature confides to those who
at an early age learn the mysteries of her language." Thus writes
1912.] REN BAZ1X 817
one of the ablest French critics, Rene Doumic, in his Etudes snr la
litterature franfaise, when he writes of Bazin and his work.
When Bazin, early in the eighties, began his work as a novelist,
Zola and his school were the dominant factors in French fiction.
Naturalism was the cry of the day. All the sores of human nature,
all the moral ills of man, furnished the themes for the writers of
this school. The finer qualities of human nature were scoffed at
and ridiculed. Religion, love, and tenderness were made the butt
of their poisoned darts. License in everything was their standard.
Detailed pictures of infidelity, immorality, brutality, cruelty; de-
based workmen and peasants, profligate men and women of the
world, and corrupt society filled their pages. Under the influence
of this school modern French literature fell so low that decent
people in other countries turned away in disgust. In America
and in England the French novel and indecent reading were placed
upon the same level.
All through his career Bazin has been hostile to the writers
of the naturalistic school. He saw the contradiction of their position,
and tried to make others see it. Calling themselves naturalists they
were unnatural; realists they were unreal. He contends that they
overshot their mark, and missed the truth which they so blatantly
boasted was the sole aim of all their work. They missed the truth
because they abused the mission of the writer, which is to make
life worth living, to spread comfort and peace among his readers.
They missed the truth because they were incapable of pity, and
because they ignored the goodness and the sorrows of the humble,
and finally they deceived themselves in depicting vice so compla-
cently and so crudely, which is not only useless, but dangerous.
Among the many sins which can be laid at the door of the
naturalistic school of fiction, none is more crying than the corrup-
tion of popular taste. Under the influence of books which, with
the keenness of a surgeon's knife, cut into the sins of society and
exposed to, popular imagination vice and depravity in every form,
little by little false ideas of the novel crept into the minds of the
greater part of the ordinary reading public, taste was spoiled, and
the finer feelings dulled. Outside of the lurid novel, where decency
was outraged, everything was insipid. There was one Zola, but
he had a thousand imitators, not only in France but elsewhere.
The litterature brutale became the food for the people the littera-
ture brutale without beauty, without morality, and for the greater
part without any pretence at literary finish.
VOL. xcv. 52.
818 REN BAZIN [Sept.,
M. Faguet, a noted French essayist, in his work Politiques et
Moralistes, holds that popular art is an impossibility. " Literature
and Art," he says, " are popular only when they are mediocre," and
in so saying he reflects a very common opinion. The educated and
the aristocratic feel that art of any kind is their special property
that it is above the common level, and that it is a sphere only for
the initiated. According to this opinion a novel which is artistic
must sacrifice popularity. Bazin shatters this contention, and shows
that an artistic novel should first of all be a work for the people.
According to him, art and literature are not the privilege and the
distraction of the few. They have other means at hand to amuse
themselves. The people, on the contrary, have need of something
which will not only offer them means of enjoyment, but which will
educate them as well. Popular art can exist in literature as well
as in the other fields of art. The builders of the great cathedrals,
the painters and the sculptors who decorated and adorned them,
worked for the people. Plain chant, the most magnificent form of
religious music ever devised, is essentially popular. The people
of Germany, Belgium, and France (unfortunately the same is not
true of England and the United States) are satisfied only with the
music of the greatest masters. Popular taste has been cultivated
to appreciate only the best of the musical art. And so Bazin holds
that the people will appreciate good literature if it is offered to
them. There is no incompatability between literary excellence and
popular intelligence.
Against those who on the one hand hold to the exclusiveness
of art, and on the other hand against the writers whose only aim
is to pander to a perverted taste, Bazin draws his sword. " Every
great work of art," he says, " is a work of elevation and of educa-
tion. It can be morally indifferent, but it must at least refresh
the spirit by the presentation of beauty, it must lighten the burden
of life, and give an hour of peace and rest. It fulfills its destiny
when it soars above, when it elevates man and makes him better,
strengthens him for sacrifice and for the service of God. It can
never legitimately drag down humanity."
A great novel can be popular, provided it be written with an
aim other than the amusement of the cultured that the author
choose his subjects from common life, and not from the narrow
world of society. The common people, the backbone of a nation,
may lack the delicacy of spirit and the refinement of taste which
characterize the educated and the aristocratic, but withal they are
not without a certain element of culture. Humble they may be,
1912.] REN BAZIN 819
but they have a heart which is touched by the joys and the sor-
rows of their fellowmen, a soul which expands under the influence
of beauty. And in general they have more humanity than their
brethren who are endowed with the good things of this world.
The novelist who knows how to interpret the popular emotions
will be well on the way to create a popular novel. This is the secret
of Bazin's immense popularity. Shunning the false philosophy of
modern preachers, leaving aside the world of society, he turns to
the people for his inspiration. In their joys and sorrows; in their
ups and downs; in a study of the questions which confront them;
in their struggle for daily bread; he has found the vital material
for his books. By bringing home to the people a sympathetic
delineation of their own life, he has struck the key-note of interest.
The peasant and the workman have all the sympathy of Bazin.
True it is that many other writers have treated of them, but the
greater part of these novelists have approached them the wrong
way. They understood the common life little; they loved it less.
The type of toiler they offer us is very seldom a pleasant acquaint-
ance. Brutal, drunken, repulsive, the character is for the most part
unnatural, and not representative of the class. With Bazin the
treatment of the character is different. He is not drawn toward
the humble of the earth through curiosity or false charity, but
through love. He studies the toiler from his human side, and
pictures him as a man. If he sees his faults he also sees his vir-
tues, and if he lays bare his failings he offers a wholesome remedy.
Bazin has the interest of the toiler at heart, and seeks not only to
elevate him, but to make him better understood by his fellowmen
in the other walks of life.
After making clear Bazin's attitude against Faguet and those
who hold that an artistic popular literature is impossible, let us ex-
amine what he has to say against the advocates of naturalism in
fiction. What Bazin urges against this school in France is appli-
cable especially at the present time to the writer of English fiction.
Of late years the tendency toward the litterature brutale has become
more pronounced in England and America. Continental influences
were slow to take a firm hold of our novelists. But realism has
crept in, and has marred the work of many of the leading English
and American writers. It is but a few months ago since a writer
in a leading English review pointed out that Bernard Shaw and
his like represent the greatest force in our modern literature. If
this be true then we have reason to fear the outlook, and have much
to learn from the strong words of Bazin, who is the greatest re-
8ao REN 6 BAZIN [Sept.,
former of the modern novel. His three principles which govern the
novel and novel writing are summed up in the following :
1 i ) The romancer must know vice, but he must not dwell on it
alone. He must see health as well as disease, the remedy as well
as the malady, and when he touches wounds he has not the right
to aggravate them or to treat them as a mere matter of description.
(2) The romancer should draw or at least imply a healthy con-
clusion; I do not say an optimistic conclusion. I do not mean to
celebrate the triumph of good over evil, which, alas! is not always
the case in life. I simply hold that a book will be a good book
if the reader, when he has finished it, has felt more vividly the
danger, personal or social, of the point which the author had in
view; or if he has more clearly understood the grandeur and the
necessity of the moral law to which he as a man is bound.
(3) The right to say everything does not exist. I know well
that this right is proclaimed as a dogma by a whole school of pub-
licists, who maintain that art knows no rule, no shame or no danger.
I hold that this principle is absolutely false.
And a careful reading of Bazin's works proves beyond all
doubt that he has never deviated from these principles that he
has at all times been true to himself. He has written novels over
thirty of them which can be read and understood by the majority,
and which are read and understood if the repeated editions of his
books furnish a criterion. He has avoided theories and analysis
which serve to no purpose other than to expound some philosophy
which the writer has to offer, and to confuse the ordinary reader.
He takes no pleasure in psychological subtleties, makes no pretence
at writing a " psychologic novel," and yet at all times he portrays
man's inner self with exactness and depth of feeling. Action is
preferred to reasoning, and demonstration to explanation, by novel
readers, and in his novels action and demonstration are the char-
acteristic points. He knows the secret of avoiding what not to say,
the great fundamental rule of the story-teller's art. He has avoided
the means usually employed by popular writers to gain the attention
of the reader. Complications, intrigues, accumulation of incidents,
a mixture of vulgarity, and strained tragedy find no place in his
books. Everything is perfectly balanced adventures and vicissi-
tudes and reduced to a minimum. Characters are developed in
a normal manner, with the least number of circumstances required
to show them forth. His stories are simple, logical, harmonious,
and measured. He has the happy faculty of finding the most sig-
nificant trait, the revealing detail which puts us in touch with the
REN BAZ1N 821
inner workings of the thought and sentiment of the character. Such
powers as these betray the real artist.
He has avoided the exaggerations, the vulgarity, and the
violence of the realistic school. He knows that of which he writes,
and says nothing of which he is not certain. He had living models
under his eyes when he worked out the sketches of his characters.
He has neither embellished nor deformed reality. Yet his books are
neither coarse nor cynical. He never shocks his reader. He pre-
serves at all times cleanness of thought, prudence in expression, and
the desire to speak well of men and things which mark an honor-
able man. His realism rings clear and true, and shows the resources
common life offers to a writer of taste and tact.
He instructs and elevates. All his work is a defence of order,
of authority, and of religion. Bazin is a man of strong faith, who
has the courage of his convictions. This courage he instills into
his books, not by exaggerations nor by heated polemics, but by gentle
persuasion. He inspires confidence, because he knows that every
fault has its excuse; that every offence merits pardon; that love
and joy, peace and comfort, are to be found in life, as well as misery
and suffering. He has sought the spirit of the eternal youth and
beauty of nature, and he infuses this spirit into his work. The
world is beautiful ; life is good because God has made them so. This
is the moral which is evident throughout all of his writings. The
moral which has the power of giving the reader a more healthy and
more optimistic outlook of life, and which is altogether too uncom-
mon in the popular novel of the day, which seems to have taken
unto itself the duty of demolishing the present order of things, and
reconstructing the world on a different scale.
Bazin has fulfilled to the utmost his ideal of what a novelist
should be, and to-day is acknowledged one of the few great, if
not the greatest, of French romancers. Quietly he pursues his
course of writing novels, which satisfy all the requirements of liter-
ary art, and at the same time uphold and defend the teaching of
Christian morals. Difficult as it is to follow the middle course in
analyzing human nature, Bazin has proved that such a course is pos-
sible. He is a realist in the proper sense of the word, for his realism
is not the representation of the part nor of the external. It is the real
whole and entire. The real in which the soul is considered as well
as the body. Latouche has well said that the novel is " life related
with art," and this is just what Bazin's novels are : life and art.
IRevv Books.
CHRIST'S TEACHING CONCERNING DIVORCE IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT. By Rev. F. E. Gigot. New York : Benziger
Brothers. $1.50 net.
Father Gigot of the New York Diocesan Seminary has written
" the present exegetical study to vindicate the indissoluble nature
of Christian marriage, as distinctly maintained by the living tra-
dition of the Roman Catholic Church, and solemnly proclaimed by
the Council of Trent." He examines in turn all the New Testament
texts bearing on divorce, viz. : Mark x. 2-12; Luke xvi. 18; I Cor.
vii. 10, ii ; i Cor. vii. 12-16; Matt. v. 31, 32; Matt. xix. 3-12, and
shows conclusively that " the Church of God is simply re-echoing
the voice of her Divine Founder, concerning the absolute indis-
solubility of holy matrimony, when she proclaims that whoever
avails himself or herself of a legal form of divorce and contracts
a new marriage is guilty of the sin of adultery."
The words of Christ and St. Paul are so clear that Father
Gigot has no difficulty whatever in proving their absolute pro-
hibition of remarriage after divorce. " And the two shall become
one flesh. . . .What therefore God has joined together, let not man
put asunder. . . .Whoever shall put away his wife and shall marry
another, commits adultery against her; and if the wife shall put
away her husband and be married to another, she committeth
adultery." (Mark x. 8, 9, 1 1, 12.) " But to them that are married,
not I, but the Lord, commandeth that a wife depart not from her
husband. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or let
her be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away
his wife." (i Cor. vii. 10, n.) "A woman is bound by the law
as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband die, she is at
liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord."
(i Cor. vii. 39; cf. Rom. vii. 2, 3.)
Perhaps the best part of Father Gigot's book is his exegesis
of the clause " except because of fornication " in Matt. v. 32 and
Matt. xix. 9, which so many Protestants cite as allowing divorce
for adultery. He points out clearly the decided opposition between
verses 31 and 32 of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew, which is
absolutely disregarded by the scriptural defenders of divorce for
adultery. The Jewish official intrepreters of Deut. xxiv. 1-4, in Our
Lord's time, made Moses the legislator of easy divorce. But as
our author well states : " Jewish tradition notwithstanding, Israel's
1912.] NEW BOOKS 823
lawgiver had not been prompted to require a bill of divorce by
the desire of supplying the Jews with a simple and safe means
lawfully to sever the marriage tie, since dismissal for the cause of
fornication and with a bill of divorce leaves the marriage tie intact
in the eyes of Moses, who expressly qualifies as adulterous ('after
she is defiled,' Deut, xxix. 4) the subsequent remarriage of
which he speaks. Moses had really been actuated to legislate con-
cerning divorce by the purpose of discountenancing its practice as
far as this lay in his power. He was so opposed to this 'abomina-
tion before Yahweh' that he stopped only short of its abolition, re-
stricting its practice to the case of a husband who has the cause of
unfaithfulness against his wife."
Matt. v. 32 is the " doctrine of One Who, like the Mosaic
lawgiver, looks upon remarriage after divorce as an adulterous
defilement; the dismissed wife commits adultery if she remarries,
and 'whoever marries one put away commits adultery.' It is a
doctrine entirely opposed to the false Pharisaic interpretation that
any reason was valid for a man to divorce his wife."
A very clear exposition of the Pauline privilege is given in
Chap. v. St. Paul in this passage, i Cor. vii. 12-16, " is dealing
only with marriages contracted by two parties when as yet non-
Christian, and transformed into, so to speak, 'mixed' marriages
by the subsequent conversion of either husband or wife to Chris-
tianity." Marriage in this case is viewed by the Apostle " as a
simple contract which one of the parties might either give up, or,
on the contrary, ratify, because the other party had materially
altered his condition in relation to it, and the binding force of
which persevered only when the latter alternative was actually
realized."
The two appendices on the harmony of Matt. xix. 3-12 with
Mark x. 2-12, and the exact meaning of the Mosaic decree, are meant
to complete the discussion of the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew.
The book concludes with a copy of the usual form of a Jewish
bill of divorce, and a brief bibliography mentioning the principal
works on the question of divorce.
More care might have been taken with the literary makeup
of the book. We rather tire of such verbal repetitions as: "The
careful interpreter," "the interpreter of," "the impartial exam-
iner," " the impartial interpreter," and the same idea is frequently
repeated over and over again. But these are blemishes that may
easily be corrected in a new edition.
824 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
THE FRIENDSHIP OF CHRIST. By Robert Hugh Benson.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.20 net.
This series of sermons was preached by Monsignor Benson in
London (1910), Rome (1911), and New York (1912). During
his stay in this city the past Lent his charming personality gained
for him many new American friends. While lacking many of
the graces of the orator voice, manner of delivery, gesture were
in a measure defective he still attracted many; first, perhaps, be-
cause he was a convert son of a Protestant Archbishop come to us
from afar, and, secondly, because of the simplicity and earnestness
of his direct appeal.
As a writer in the London Tablet said lately : " He has
identified himself with a special understanding of the meaning
of the Church that understanding of the life of Christ within
Her which makes Her one; and with the fertility of adaptation
which approaches to genius, he preaches this doctrine in almost
everything he writes." He adds the following critique : " More
than once we have felt impressed perhaps we should rather say
depressed with the breathless hurry in which they have been
produced. The ideas merely suggested and left undeveloped, the
very sentences and paragraphs sometimes incomplete, the content-
ment to skirmish where battle has been offered, all these are particu-
larly striking in this collection of sermon notes."
There is none of the literary finish of Newman, there is none of
the eloquence of Lacordaire, there is not the slightest evidence
of the keen intellect of D'Hulst; but still Monsignor Benson gives us
always good orthodox spiritual doctrine, and says many things
that linger in the memory. Let us quote a few of his sentences :
" There is no obstinacy like religious obstinacy ; for the spiritual
man encourages himself in his wrong course by a conviction that
he is following divine guidance " " While it is compara-
tively easy to distinguish between Christ, and, let us say, ecclesias-
tical music, it is not easy to distinguish between Christ and grace."
" The stronger the interior life, and the higher the degree
of illumination, the more is the strong hand of the Church needed."
" We cannot know Christ in His most characteristic aspect
until we find him among the sinners." .... " The only charge
against Her (the Church) is that She is no friend of Caesar no
friend, i. e., to any system that seeks to organize society apart
from God " " We seek to bend the Divine Will to ours, ....
and we fail of course, lamentably and ignominiously, every time."
I 9 i2.] NEW BOOKS 825
The best sermons in the whole book are those on the Seven
Words of Christ.
SPIRITUAL PERFECTION THROUGH CHARITY. By Rev. H.
Reginald Buckler, O.P. New York: Benziger Brothers.
$1.50 net.
The title-page of this book announces that it is " Superseding
The Perfection of Man by Charity.' ' Learned, solid, and prac-
tical, the treatise consists of two parts or books, " The Study of
Perfection " and " The Life of Charity."
In Part I. it is thus described : " The Perfection of Charity
means the full subjection of nature to grace, of man to God, of self-
love to Divine love." On this principle, Part I. approaches the
study of the perfection requisite to dispose the soul for the in-
dwelling of Divine Love.
In Book II. this life of charity is depicted with clearness and
unction. " Here is the vastly practical principle. It may be called
the indirect but very effectual method not engaging immediately
and directly with the lower man, but grasping the higher power
of the spirit by the light and love of God. There God and the
soul meet together in mutual love: and thus by the strength
of Divine Charity the natural man is ruled into order."
This idea runs like a golden thread through the book
linking up the soul's progress from one degree to another, finally
leading it to the feet of God. Very beautiful is the chapter on
the " Love of God Above All Things," and even more full of
unction is the one entitled " The Degrees of Charity." But this
latter would perhaps have been still more effective had it been
the last in the book, rather than the last but one. Prayer is treated
in an extremely lucid manner, also the active life, while the
practical appeal of the chapter on " Suffering " and its uses may be
summed up in the prayer quoted from St. Augustine : " O God
Thou commandest that these things should be endured, not that
they should be loved ; for no one loves what he endures, though he
loves to endure it." In conclusion we would say that the study of
perfection under Father Buckler's guidance will be found an effec-
tive aid in the spiritual life.
PROSPERITY; CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT. By Rev.
Father Graham. St. Louis: B. Herder. 15 cents.
It seems to many Protestants that one of the most conclusive
826 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
arguments against the Catholic Church is the present material
prosperity of certain Protestant nations. Why is it, they are
continually asking, that Catholic nations like Italy or Spain are less
prosperous than Protestant nations like England, Germany, or the
United States. They point to wealth, worldly greatness and com-
mercial success as if these were certain divine marks, character-
izing the Church of Jesus Christ. As Bishop Vaughan says in his
Foreword: " Such a strange theory may commend itself to
persons who never think, but its utter absurdity grows evident
to any sincere student, so soon as he begins to form even a distant
acquaintance with history; and melts away altogether when he has
read enough to convince himself that (a) the most prosperous
nations were at one period not even Protestant but pagan; that (b)
at another period the most prosperous were precisely those which
were likewise the most Catholic, and further that it is (c) only
in these latter days that Protestant nations are having their turn."
Father Graham in a clear and convincing volume shows that
Our Lord never intended His gospel to make men or nations rich
and powerful or progressive ; that the prosperity theory is contrary
to the whole trend of Our Lord's teaching; that real temporal
prosperity, which consists in the social and economic welfare of the
people as a whole, did exist in Catholic England before the Reform-
ation, and does exist in Catholic Belgium to-day; that the Church
teaches that the main object of life is not to make money but to
save one's soul ; that if de facto Protestant nations are more wealthy
on account of their religion, this only proves that Protestantism is
more worldly and material-minded than Catholicism.
Since many speak of England's greatness and riches, and
accept without criticism her wonderful prosperity as something that
cannot be surpassed, he calls attention in three chapters to a few
aspects of her national life, which show conclusively that no typically
Catholic land should in any way envy her. He discusses in turn
pauperism and destitution, the disgraceful housing of the poor,
the general ignorance about religious truth, and the falling off
in church attendance, the besetting sins of drunkenness and im-
morality, the evils of divorce, infanticide, dishonesty, and crime
of every description, and lastly the industrial discontent shown by
the rise of Socialism, and the great strikes that lately have all but
paralyzed English commercial life. He compares the England of
to-day to the Merrie England prior to the Reformation, referring
his readers to books like Dr. Jessop's Before the Great Pillage,
1912.] NEW BOOKS 827
H. W. Lee's The First of May, Keir Hardie's From Serfdom
to Socialism, and Abbot Gasquet's Eve of the Reformation. " In
the old Catholic days the Church was the centre of life of town or
village; everything gathered around it and everybody was attracted
to it as to a magnet; its welfare was the common care and business
of the parishioners, and it formed the one enduring bond of unity
and brotherhood among them. There was a beautiful and edifying
equality, too, among people of all classes, a homely familiarity
between landlord and tenant, master and servant, without loss of
respect and authority, which can only be seen in a community framed
on Catholic ideals Their successors to-day are mere machines
or beasts of burden in comparison, whose main interest is to wring
as much cash as possible out of their employers."
THE CHINESE REVOLUTION. By Arthur Judson Brown. New
York: Student Volunteer Movement. 75 cents.
War is always a great educator. Few of us knew anything
about South Africa before the Boer War, or about Japan and Man-
churia before the Russo-Japanese War; in like manner the Boxer
troubles of 1899 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 have caused
us to ask questions about China and its future. The present volume
by an American Presbyterian missionary gives a brief account of
the origin and progress of the Chinese revolution, and a rather
superficial picture of present conditions in China.
He has a good chapter on the anti-Western attitude of the
Chinese.
The victory of Japan over Russia, which had been regarded
by the Chinese as the most powerful of western nations, awak-
ened new hopes of successful resistance. They, like the Japanese,
are more and more disposed to resent the leadership of for-
eigners. They feel an irritation, which we should be reasonable
enough to understand, in realizing that the new railway
thoroughfares of the country are largely in the hands of out-
siders. Only 1,930 miles of the 6,300 in the Empire are
under Chinese control.
Intense resentment was felt by the Chinese on account of
the brutalities perpetrated by the allied armies after the Boxer
troubles. Their exasperation increased when most of the lega-
tions took advantage of the panic which followed the raising of
the siege of Pekin, to seize large tracts adjoining their former
compounds. Massive walls were built and cannon mounted
upon them. The allied troops took possession of a great part
828 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
of the city wall, constructed several barricades, and built a fort
there. Of course the legations were bound to guard against the
repetition of their grievous experiences during the Boxer up-
rising. But looking at the matter from the viewpoint of the
Chinese can we marvel that it is resented? Would Americans
endure it at Washington?
The author has some interesting chapters on the progress
of railroad building, commerce, education, constitutional and social
reform, the leaders of the New China, and the constructive influence
of Christianity. Only one page is given to the work of the Catholic
Church in China from the thirteenth century to the present moment.
While admitting that " it is not to the credit of Protestantism that
it was centuries behind the Roman Church in the attempt to Chris-
tianize China," he still speaks as a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical of
" the new era for the mightiest reconstructive and uplifting force
in the world (sic.) the preaching of the open Bible." He speaks
with pride of the 46,400,000 copies of the Bible that have been
printed and distributed, but we have only to turn to the pages of
Father Wolferstan's Catholic Church in China to find out to what
profane purposes these pages have been put.
The wonderful results wrought by Protestant revivals in
China, with their " waves of confession and prayer," may be taken
cum grano salis. With regard to educational work, however, we
must admit that Protestants have been far more active than our-
selves.. Father de la Serviere, S.J., says in the June number of the
Oxford and Cambridge Review: " Even in Kiangnan, the educa-
tional work performed by Catholics is inferior to that of the Prot-
estant mission, if not in so far as regards the value of the second-
ary and higher education given, at all events in respect of the num-
ber of institutions and students. Nanking, the southern capital,
and such provincial chief towns as Soochow and Nganking possess
no higher Catholic educational establishments than elementary
schools, whereas the Protestant missions have everywhere founded
magnificent institutions to which students flock by hundreds. In
other vicariates the disproportion is even more striking still."
The progress of Catholic missions in China since 1899 has been
most gratifying. There were then in all 542,664 Catholics; to-day
there are nearly 1,500,000. " The annual increase in the number of
Catholics has for several years past," writes Monsignor De Gue-
briant, Vicar Apostolic of Kientchang, "exceeded 50,000; last
year it rose to 84,000, and this year (1911) will reach 100,000."
1912.] NEW BOOKS 829
Some of these Chinese Christians have accepted important
positions under the new government; one is director of the military
arsenal at Shanghai, the first in China; another, as Governor of
Nanking, received the votes of the National Assembly for the
election of the president, Yuan Shih-Kai. Many Christian officers
are to be found among the general staff of the Republican army,
and peasants and workmen have joined its ranks in multitudes.
When we reflect that for nearly two hundred years the Manchu
dynasty has been a most bitter persecutor, and that the Mandarin
government now overthrown was most corrupt and dishonest, we
cannot wonder that the Chinese Christians are flocking to the
standard of the revolution.
The future of China will depend upon the character of those
now at the head of affairs. Many of these have passed through
American and English schools. While a great number are "liberal"
Protestants, they still adhere in part to the morals and civilization
of the Gospel. What the future of the Chinese Republic will be
it is impossible to foretell. Some critics have declared " that they
have been painfully impressed by the self-sufficiency, levity, and
incapacity of the literati of the new school," while others assert
" that among them are many upright souls capable of all truth."
Mr. Brown calls for hundreds of American volunteers for the
Chinese missions. We trust that the Missionary College of Haw-
thorne, N. Y., may soon be sending some American apostles to
China to help offset the false teachings of an imperfect gospel.
AN AMERICAN MISSIONARY REV. W. H. JUDGE, S.J. By
Rev. Charles J. Judge, S.S. Hawthorne, N. Y.: Catholic
Foreign Mission Society. 75 cents.
We gladly welcome the third edition of the life of Father
Judge, S.J., which has just been published by the Catholic Foreign
Mission Society of Hawthorne, N. Y. A book of this kind will
prove a most effective pleader for the cause of foreign missions.
It tells of a Jesuit of to-day, full of the spirit of St. Francis Xavier,
gladly giving up his life as a sacrifice for souls in far-away Alaska.
Nothing seems to daunt the soul of this zealous apostle. He loses
the trail on a long sledge journey and trudges along up to his
waist in snow; he camps out in a lonely hut with the thermometer
registering fifty below zero; he makes frequent trips of hundreds
of miles, visiting the sick, baptizing the dying, teaching catechism
to the little ones, combating the superstition of the Indian Medicine
830 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
Man, eating the most unpalatable food, and suffering untold hard-
ships; yet through it all he is ever bright, cheerful and hopeful.
His work at Dawson City among the gold miners, especially
his care for them in the hospital, endeared him to many of these
rough souls. Many careless Catholics were won back to the practice
of their religion, and many non-Catholics learned to love the
Church in first loving her saintly and untiring apostle.
The writer of this review can recall vividly some of these
letters which were read to him by the missionary's brother, Rev.
Charles Judge, at St. Charles College, Maryland, in the early
nineties. The saintly Sulpician was proud of his brother's labors,
and realized at once their effectiveness in arousing apostolic zeal.
Any priest who wishes to foster vocations in his parish would do
well to present this book to some of his boys.
NEWMAN AS A CATHOLIC.* By Paul Thureau-Dangin. Paris :
Plon-Nourrit et Cie.
The Catholic Renaissance in England during the nineteenth
century has been most eloquently described for the French public by
Thureau-Dangin. He has already contributed five volumes to this
important study; namely, Newman and the Oxford Movement,
From the Conversion of Newman to the Death of Wiseman, From
the Death of Wiseman to the Death of Manning, Catholicism in
England in the Nineteenth Century, and a Life of Cardinal
Vaughan.
In the present volume he gives us a brief sketch of the Catholic
life of Cardinal Newman. It is based entirely on the letters, diaries,
and other documents recently published by Wilfrid Ward in his
new life of the English Cardinal. He brings out clearly Newman's
idea of winning over to the Catholic Church the scholarly world
of to-day which has gone over in such numbers to agnosticism, and
of confirming the faith of those inside who are troubled with
modern intellectual difficulties. He gives an accurate synopsis
of all the controversies that arose in connection with the Irish
University, the proposed foundation at Oxford, the liberalism of
the Rambler Review, the definition of papal infallibility, and shows
us Newman in all his keenness of intellect, fervor of piety, and
sensitiveness of soul.
We may say of his book as he says of Mr. Ward's life of
*Newman catholique d'apres des documents nouveaux. Par Paul Thureau-
Dangin. Paris : Plon-Nourrit et Cie. 3 fr.
NEW BOOKS 831
Cardinal Newman : " By revealing to us the soul of Newman in
its hour of trial, by describing in most minute detail the part he
played in the controversies of his age, by picturing him in his
worries, his sadness, and if you will, his weaknesses, he has brought
out at the same time the depth of his intellectual viewpoint, and
the generosity of his ardent faith. His soul speaks to us now with
even a more human appeal, for it has been laid bare to us in all its
beauty and purity. We are forced to love him the more without
admiring him the less."
This life is written throughout with that clearness and beauty
of style which always characterize a member of the classic French
Academy.
STUDENT'S HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. By
Rev. O. L. Jenkins, A.M., S.S. Baltimore : John Murphy Co.
$1.25.
Jenkins' handbook of British and American literature has
long been honorably known ; and the present twenty-second edition
bringing the immemorial record quite up to the moment by the
inclusion of such names as Chesterton, Henry James, Thomas
Hardy, et cetera can scarcely fail of a welcome by the Catholic
public: one hopes by the non-Catholic public as well! If there
exists a more generally sound and comprehensive review of Eng-
lish letters, popular in style and compact in a single volume of read-
able type, it is unknown to the present reviewer.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of a wise study of
literature that queen of the " humanities," so inextricably bound
up with the history of man, his aspirations and his philosophies.
" More than anything," Aubrey de Vere declared, " a great and
sound literature seems to be now the human means of promoting the
cause of divine truth." Every intelligent effort to foster the taste
for such literature, to provide a touchstone for determining such
literature, is a service to the race. Catholic students, then, Catholic
teachers and Catholics schools are to be congratulated upon the
possession of this volume, which comes to them with the approba-
tion of Cardinal Gibbons and the rector of the Catholic University.
Perhaps a not-impossible twenty-third edition may further add to
the usefulness of the handbook by bringing certain nineteenth-
century authors into stricter historical sequence. It is to be hoped,
also, because of their influence upon present-day letters, that room
may be found for a more liberal consideration of Mrs. Humphrey
832 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
Ward and George Bernard Shaw; while Catholic readers will as-
suredly profit by some brief appreciation of the poetry of Katharine
Tynan and our own Miss Guiney, as of the delicate subtlety and
finality of Alice Meynell's essays. To be sure, these judgments
upon contemporary writers enter upon the most difficult field of
critical work, and from the very nature of the case must be either
tentative or personally dogmatic! But one has learned to expect
all but the impossible from Jenkins' handbook !
CATHOLIC STUDIES IN SOCIAL REFORM. A Series of
Manuals edited by the Catholic Social Guild. London : P. S.
King & Son.
/. Destitution and Suggested Remedies. With Preface by
Monsignor Henry Parkinson. 12 cents net.
//. Sweated Labour and the Trade Boards Act. Edited by
Rev. Thomas Wright. 12 cents net.
A Series of Manuals has been planned by the Catholic Social
Guild, " with the express object of examining current problems of
citizenship in the light of Christian principles, thus furnishing,
for the benefit of those who are bewildered by the number and
variety of the social panaceas proposed, some means of distinguish-
ing what is ethically sound from what is based upon false or dis-
torted ideals In this series, then, it is proposed, after a sketch
of the history of each question, to show in what points and to
what degree Catholic doctrine is involved, what projects are, at
least negatively, sound, what motives exist for energetic action, and
what Catholic agencies are already at work."
The first volume discusses three solutions of the problem pre-
sented by the indigent poor. It is a debated discussion of the
different opinions brought out in the Report of the Royal Com-
mission on the Poor Man a matter of particular interest to the
English people of course, and yet involving principles and con-
siderations of very general interest. The questions are discussed
most practically.
The second volume collects data on the new phases of the
sweating evil, suggesting to Catholics in particular the motives
and the means that may make for cooperation in the eliminating of
sweating. The essays are by Leslie A. Toke, Father John A.
Stratton, S.J., and the Editor, and are well done. The frequent
citation of Father Ryan's A Living Wage we note with satisfaction.
igi2.} NEW BOOKS 833
WOMAN AND SOCIAL PROGRESS. A Discussion of the Bio-
l';ic, Domestic, Industrial, and Social Possibilities of Ameri-
can \Vomen. By Scott Nearing and Nellie M. S. Nearing.
Xuw York: The Macmillan Co. $1.50 net.
Though not particularly distinguished for accuracy or for
depth, this study of contemporary women draws attention to cer-
tain urgent questions, and does something toward the suggesting
of practical answers. The writers are over-hasty sometimes, and
inclined to be extreme in their partisanship. They have gathered
too many generalizations, and quote too freely at second-hand. Yet
they do uncover not a few marks of progress, and raise issues to
which conventionality will be hard put to reply. The chapters
which relate to the industrial opportunities of women are the
most practical and the most useful.
CRIME, ITS CAUSES AND REMEDIES. By Caesare Lombroso.
45 cents net.
THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF PUNISHMENT. The Modern
Criminal Science Series. By Raymond Saleilles. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co. $4.50.
These two volumes form part of a series, nine volumes in
all, now being published under the auspices of the American In-
stitute of Criminal law and Criminology. Realizing that the United
States is many years behind European nations in the study of
modern criminal science, the Institute purposes to translate the most
important works of foreign authors on this subject. " The great
need of a thorough study of criminal science is recognized not
only by those engaged in the practice of criminal law, but by
judges, professors, sociologists, penologists, physicians, police of-
ficials, and other professional classes."
Lombroso is best known by his arbitrary and now commonly
rejected theory of the criminal type. Professor Saleilles, one of
the most brilliant jurists in France, gives the following critique
of it in his chapter on the Italian school of criminology :
It is well to recognize that the criminal type, which forms
the sole reliance of this system, does not exist; or if it does,
it is not yet determinable by any exact method. Unquestion-
ably no one can deny that pathological abnormalities are found
among the majority of criminals. Marks of degeneracy, in part
VOL. xcv. 53.
834 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
hereditary, in part acquired, are almost always present. But
it is not possible to interpret such symptoms as a characteristic
sign, infallibly, universally, and necessarily indicative of crim-
inality; and still less is it possible thus to determine particular
varieties of criminals. There are born criminals who are
thorough perverts, who lack every moral sense, and have lost
all feeling of compassion and uprightness, and who yet bear the
normal features of honest men ; and on the other hand there are
persons who conform to the degenerate type, who present all
the Lombrosian abnormalities, who may be, and probably are,
neuropathic and ineffective, who have not committed crimes,
and are not likely to do so.
After destroying the basis of Lombroso's system, the French
jurist asks : What is there left of the Italian school? His summary
is as follows : ( i ) Punishment is but a simple measure of pre-
vention, in no way different from the precautionary measures taken
with reference to the insane. (2) Punishment is not the sole
measure of prevention to be taken against criminals, for in place
thereof use may be made of a whole series of measures, in part
economic or social rather than purely individual. (3) Punishment
is not a penalty but a sort of individual treatment, which must not
be fixed in advance by law in terms of an abstract crime considered
solely as to its objective character. (4) Crime retains its purely
symptomatic value.
Naturally these views are influenced by Lombroso's brand
of Italian infidelity and his philosophic determinism. " He cannot
find in religion a remedy against crime." " Religion is always
individual, limited, and less effective than the economic influence
which alone is universally felt by the masses." " Crime is not
dependent upon free will." He brings together a mass of statistics
to show the effect on crime of variation of temperature, climate,
soil, and race. He tries to prove that crime increases with civiliza-
tion, the chief difference being that new crimes are substituted
for the old. The factors of density of population, subsistence, al-
coholism, education, heredity, sex, civil status, etc., are discussed
at length, although the reader frequently remains unconvinced by
many of the deductions of this over dogmatic statistician.
A teacher who maintains that suicide is a real advantage to
the security of the state, " that by abortion no right is injured,"
that infanticide is practically unimportant, etc., can hardly be a
safe guide for a Catholic jurist.
NEW BOOKS 835
Prof. Saleilles discusses at length the means of attaining a
system of individualization of punishment; viz., that punishment
should not be classified objectively according to the crime committed,
but should in all cases be adapted to the character and circumstances
of the individual criminal. Criminals must be punished, not crimes
this is the party cry of his school.
While we differ totally from his rationalist philosophy regard-
ing free will and responsibility as set forth in Chapters VI. and VII.
of his book, we find him courteous and scholarly throughout, a
marked contrast to his unbelieving Italian confrere. Of course,
like most of the criminologists of to-day, he insists too much on the
remedial and deterrent ideas of punishment, ignoring totally the
vindictive. He has something good to say about the indeterminate
sentence, release on parole or under suspended sentence, and ap-
proves of reformatories of the Elmira type, which, with some modi-
fications, he commends to the French people. It is a book to be read
by every lawyer and judge.
A NEW CONSCIENCE AND AN ANCIENT EVIL. By Jane
Addams. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.00 net.
Miss Addams has written from a sense of her own " need for a
counter knowledge " to the information daily brought to her
through the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago. That she
felt such need is not surprising to anyone familiar with that ghastly
document, the Report of the Vice Commission of Chicago. Rather
it seems wonderful that she has been able to find so many grounds
of sober hope, and to preserve undaunted her old spirit of bound-
less sympathy and quenchless zeal.
In a sense her book is a review of the conditions made known
by the Vice Commission, and may serve as a politer resume of its
contents. The details refer to Chicago, but the problem is the
common one of large cities. The unspeakable horrors and the
incredible degradation forced upon public attention so repeatedly
in the last few years, might well appal the bravest optimist. Yet
clearly there are means of at least improvement ready to hand, and
if any notable number of us assimilate the sympathy and the courage
embodied in Miss Addams, a fair measure of relief cannot be long
delayed. Both in principles and in practical judgments, we would
sometimes differ from Miss Addams, but in the present matter
there is no gainsaying either the justice of her cause, the fitness
of the measures she advocates, or the power of her presentation.
836 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF INNOCENT XI. WITH HIS
NUNCIOS, SEPTEMBER, 1676 DECEMBER, 1679.* By F.
D. Bojani. Two Volumes. Rome: Desclee et Cie.
The first volume of this scholarly work embraces the corre-
spondence of Pope Innocent XL, with his Nuncios at the various
European courts, on the most important political affairs of the years
1676 to 1679. The second volume records all the dispatches relating
to ecclesiastical matters.
" In political affairs," writes the author in his preface, " Inno-
cent is always reserved, and advocates peace and concord for the
well-being of the nations; but in ecclesiastical affairs, on the other
hand, he speaks with all the might of his Pontifical authority.
His words are no longer mild and conciliatory, but energetic and
unyielding; he never tolerates the least questioning of the rights of
the Church. Still he is always most patient and prudent when face
to face with determined opposition, and ever most kindly to those
who show signs of penitence."
These letters reveal an austere, reforming Pope of extra-
ordinary ability, an enemy of clerical abuses and of nepotism, a
firm defender of the Faith, a stern denouncer of error, and an ab-
solute opponent of compromise with recalcitrant kings and bishops.
He made many a strong protest against the abuses of the
regale; he fought the ambassadors of France and Venice, who in
Rome acted like soldiers in a foreign country, rather than repre-
sentatives of Catholic princes at a friendly court ; he did his utmost
to arouse the old-time mediaeval enthusiasm for a crusade against
the Turks; he was always a most ardent advocate for peace; he
spoke plain though unavailing words to the despotic Gallican king,
Louis XIV. of France, when, forgetful of his Catholic loyalty,
he tried to make the State override the rights of the Church.
Every scholar will welcome these original despatches, which
have been transcribed with the greatest accuracy from the Vatican
archives. Some of these pages make most tedious reading, for we
of to-day are not very much interested in minute details of ancient
court etiquette and precedence, the petty squabbles of the seven-
teenth century princes and ambassadors, etc. But still letters of
this kind, written with no idea of the future, give a perfect picture of
conditions in those far-off days.
*Innocent XI. Sa correspondance avec ses nonces: 21 Septembre, 1676 31
Decembre, ibjg. Par F. D. Bojani. Two Volumes. Rome : Desclee et Cie.
NEW BOOKS 837
MISS BILLY'S DECISION, by Eleanor H. Porter. (Boston:
L. C. Page & Co. $1.25 net.) Miss Billy is an emotional
creature who, after falling in love more than once, finally accepts
a suitor she had rejected. Of this suitor she had once thought:
" Bertram never was and never will be a marrying man." So
argued all his relatives and all her friends. " He is too tempera-
mentaltoo thoroughly wrapped up in his art. Girls have never
meant anything to him but a beautiful picture to paint." But she
discovers that he loves her for herself alone, and promises to marry
him within a week.
There is much talk of wonderful tenors and wonderful mu-
sicians, who are able to express at will any mood of the human
heart; but most of it is forced and unnatural. Some characters
are fairly well drawn, like Aunt Hannah with her many shawl?,
Mrs. Greggory and her daughter, " who have known better days."
and Billy herself, a rather impulsive creature without much depth.
'THE ESSENTIALS OF SOCIALISM, by Ira B. Cross. (New
York: The Macmillan Co. $1.00.) In a little handbook,
Professor Cross gives very clearly the terms and issues pertinent
to the question of Socialism. What is set down in his pages is
purely expository, and, though very succinct, is enriched with
bibliography quite sufficient to carry the reader as far as he
may desire to go, It is just the kind of primer which the general
reading public demand in order " to know what Socialists and their
opponents are talking about."
COCIALISM: THE NATION OF FATHERLESS CHIL-
DREN, by David Goldstein and Martha Moore Avery.
(Boston: Thomas J. Flynn & Co. $1.25.) The Preface to the
second edition of Mr. Goldstein's book contains excerpts from a
number of Socialist writers, who were made very indignant by the
first edition. They are sufficiently abusive to raise antecedent
suspicion in the disinterested mind that the author must have pretty
nearly hit the mark. The reading of these pages will make it plain
enough that the author has nailed the Socialist party fast to prin-
ciples and tendencies which of late it has endeavored to repudiate.
The philosophical basis, the historical associations, and illuminating
chance incidents which proclaim Socialism to be something more
than a mere economic question cannot be counterbalanced by the
affirmation of a party platform. We do not say that the present
838 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
writer is always dignified and always temperate. But his work
will help to open many an eye, and to furnish many an unanswerable
argument.
COCIALISTS AT WORK, by Robert Hunter. (New York:
^ The Macmillan Co. 50 cents.) This book, first published
in 1908, has since then been four times reprinted. It describes
the recent phases of socialistic activity, and sketches the men who
have ranked as leaders in the political struggles. Written from the
standpoint of the journalist rather than the scholar, and in the
tone of a panegyric rather than a critical study, it gives a glorified
and consoling account of the great strides toward universal happi-
ness that humanity has made in the last few years. It is not dis-
criminating.
TESUS THE BREAD OF CHILDREN, by Rev. F. M. de
J Zulueta, SJ. (St. Louis: B. Herder. 35 cents), is inspired
by some lines of the beautiful Lauda Sion, " Vere panis ftiorum,"
etc., in which the children's claim to the Holy Eucharist is set forth,
and very simply explained. Father de Zulueta has been indefat-
igable in his devotion to the cause of Frequent Communion since
the Pope's decree. Here he labors earnestly to convince parents
of the happy effects of an early reception of Our Lord on the
hearts of children while yet in their first innocence.
'THE GOOD SHEPHERD AND HIS LITTLE LAMBS, by
Mrs. Herman Bosch. (New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
75 cents.) Happy the mother who early endeavors to open her
child's soul to the sweet influences of piety. The little ones in
this book may seem precocious to some, but to those accustomed to
observe the development of the child mind under the most favorable
circumstances of combined piety, culture, and refinement, there is
nothing abnormal. Long may the serpent be excluded from such
paradises veritable pastures where the Good Shepherd folds His
lambs. The expression " littlest lamb," used by an adult several
times, is the only thing to which we take exception ; it adds nothing
to the simplicity, and seems uncalled for.
foreign iperiobicals.
Preliminaries to Social Reform. By Hilaire Belloc. The
problem of the healing of Industrial Society is not merely an eco-
nomic one. Its three factors are the philosophy, or state of mind,
which produced it, the economic circumstances which characterize
it, the method of government which holds and moulds it. Of these
the first is fundamental, yet is untouched by every specific plan of
reform. England is sick economically because the institution of
property has decayed. England is sick politically (although less
grievously) because her legislative organ has fallen into contempt.
English law and traditions presupposed every man subject to its
jurisdiction to be an owner, with the responsibilities of owner-
ship. To-day economic realities are at variance with traditions
and laws which presuppose freedom, for even the name of freedom
cannot long survive where most men politically free do not enjoy
property. Two courses lie before us. We must choose between
the re-establishment of servitude and the re-establishment of prop-
erty. Every experiment in so-called "Social Reform" to-day
tends to establish a state of society in which the proletarian class
shall produce wealth by force of law under the guarantee of suf-
ficiency and security alone, and this tendency is a diseased one.
Oxford and Cambridge Review, August.
The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Socialism. By W. H. Mallock.
The essential doctrine of Socialism is that only one agency labor
is concerned in the production of material wealth. Consistently to
act on this principle means the abolition of all private capital.
And to abolish private capital would destroy the advantages which
property at present confers upon its possessors : the means of living
without work which brings material gain; the freedom to save by
investment; the freedom to use such savings as capital for one's
self. Besides, Socialism would mean not less, but more slavery
for wage earners. For the State, being the employer of all and
unable simply to discharge a workman, would enforce a certain
standard by penal discipline. Nor does Syndicalism, the ownership
of the capital of all industry by all those engaged in it, offer any
great advantage to the laborer. For as soon as adopted on a large
scale, one syndicate of laborers would be fighting another, just as
capitalists do now. Syndicalism is a " harking back to everything
840 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
in the Socialism of the past, which the educated Socialists of to-day
have rejected as crude and obsolete." National Review, August.
The Legal Minimum Wage in the British Coal Industry. By
Constantine Noppel, S.J. The basis for the great strife between the
employers and employees of the English Coal Industry was the
question of an individual Minimum Wage. To put an end to the
long-drawn out strife legal action was taken, and a law passed
entitling every laborer to what may be called a " natural wage."
This law was sanctioned on March 29, 1912. Opinions differ
as to its probable effects. Some think it will react to the disad-
vantage of the employer, because the smaller capitalists will be put
out of existence by the larger ; some hold it places the laborer at the
mercy of the employer, who can judge as to the exact wage a man
is worth. This legal action is in perfect harmony with the words
of Pope Leo XIII. in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, that it is a
law of nature that every laborer is worthy of his hire, and the State
is responsible, if not carried out, for his getting a fair wage for
fair work. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, No. 6.
Agricultural Vocation and the School. By Dr. Emmanuel
Labat. Agriculture and the love of the soil, in the author's opin-
ion, are the remedy for the low birth rate in France. He points
out that the schools are the principal instruments in furthering a
desire to farm, as the power lies chiefly with them to present in an
attractive light that occupation to the child, and to prove to him
that being born a peasant is a great boon rather than a dishonor.
Revue des Deux Mondes, July.
Social Movements. By Charles Calippe. A summary ac-
count of conditions in the working world of France, together with
an examination of French, Danish, German, English, and Austrian
laws for the welfare of the working classes. There is also in the
article an account of the efforts made by private organizations to
improve the working people's lot, and some suggestions as to the
duty and ways of public cooperation in the work. Revue du
Clerge Frangais, July.
A Social Spiritualism. By Paul Archambault. An apprecia-
tive analytical review of Abbe Laberthonniere's book: Positivism
and Catholicity, a Study of L' Action frangaise. Both authors
i9i2.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 841
are decidedly of the opinion that this society, despite its apparent
and professed reverence for Catholic ideas and institutions, despite
the approval it has won from many Catholic priests, is essentially
pagan and materialistic, rejecting everything that savors of or
makes for spirituality. The second and longer part of the essay
deals with Abbe Laberthonniere's ideas concerning the role of
authority, both spiritual and temporal, and with the system of
social philosophy which he outlines. Annales de Philosophic
Chretienne, July.
The Belgian Elections of 1912. By M. Leon de Lantsheere.
The Catholic party in Belgium has been in power for twenty-eight
years, and the elections in June have further strengthened its posi-
tion. This long enjoyment of power has been due to an enlightened
social and political policy, which has brought peace and prosperity to
the country. In Belgium every male twenty-eight years of age, who
has lived in the commune a year, is entitled to one vote, and must use
it by law. " Additional votes, never more than two in number,
are conferred by the holding of certain situations, the possession of
a certain amount of property or of a presumed intellectual
capacity." The appeal of the Catholics to their record was effective
against a coalition of the Liberals and Socialists called the Cartel.
Dublin Review, July.
The Decline of Religion in England. By John Straight. In
spite of the inference of the Archbishop of Canterbury, figures show
that the Catholic Church is holding her own in England. The
figures point to a decline in the proportion of Protestant marriages,
especially in the Church of England. The Church of England
schools have also declined, while the Roman Catholic and Council
schools have increased. Out of twenty-one million nominal mem-
bers of the Church of England, less than two million and a half ful-
fill the minimum requirement of the Book of Common Prayer.
The registration of the Wesleyan Methodists and other Non-con-
formist bodies shows a decrease of about seven thousand in a year.
Altogether less than twelve per cent of the population give a whole-
hearted allegiance to some form of organized Protestant Chris-
tianity. The figures showing the proportion of marriages in Cath-
olic Churches give the minimum of the Catholic population about
two millions. This analysis is borne out by comment of Prot-
estant authorities. The judgment of the same authorities on the
842 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
place of the Catholic Church in English life is totally different.
Oxford and Cambridge Review, August.
Is the Catholic Church Persecuted in Russia? The Russian
government has, in practice, distorted the meaning of the imperial
ukase of April 17, 1905, concerning religious toleration. The ad-
ministration tries to stop the movement towards Rome by intimi-
dating the peasants, by using every effort to bring them back again
to the official Church. It aims at wrenching from the Polish
kingdom the districts of Lublin and Siedlees, inhabited by former
Uniats. " Intolerance is, in Russia, a method of government.
Every man who obstinately refuses to become orthodox and Rus-
sian is a rebel." La Civilta Cattolica, July 20.
Freemasonry versus Christianity Russia. By Flavien Bren-
ier. Late in the eighteenth century Catherine II. introduced Free-
masonry into Russia. The horrors of 1792 and 1793 opened
Catherine's eyes to the anti-dynastic propaganda of Freemasonry,
and she threw herself into a course of vigorous reaction. The
lodges ostensibly closed their doors, only to foregather in secrecy
and devise plans for the revolutionary upheaval of the Russian Em-
pire. In 1822 the Societies of the North and the South and the
United Slavs sprung from the Masonic lodges, with the establish-
ment of a vast Slav Republic as a common project. In 1825 oc-
curred the mysterious death of the Tsar. The Society of the
North attempted the overthrow of Nicholas I. by declaring Con-
stantine's abdication apocryphal. The energy of Nicholas stamped
out the revolt, and under his conservative reign Freemasonry
waned. A period of silence ensued; then the second period of the
revolutionaries began with Alexander Hertzen as the father of
Nihilism. Freemasonry cannot disown this movement, the leaders
of which sprang from its bosom. Bakunin inherited the influence
of Hertzen in 1862. His catechism preached the doctrine of Rev-
olution; to him the anarchist party of to-day owes its existence.
The ukase of October 17, 1905, has, however, removed from it
the ban of law. In six years more than thirty lodges have been
formed, affiliated to the French Grand Orient; others are forming.
Generals, governors, members of the Imperial Council have become
initiates. Oxford and Cambridge Review, August.
The Centenary of William George Ward. By Canon William
1912.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 843
Barry. Ward's prominent part in the Oxford Movement was not
recognized in his lifetime. Only afterwards was he seen to be a
great dynamic force to whom Tract XC. owed its existence. He
antedated even Newman in his conception of the Church as ecu-
menical in fact as well as nature, and he effectually shattered the
future Cardinal's illusion of a Via Media. In later years Newman
and Ward drifted apart, because their natures were essentially
different. Ward had little knowledge of history and no " historical
sense." Hence his misconceptions of papal infallibility. Ward's
suspicions of Newman and his sympathizers and the actions they
inspired, did much to keep the Catholic body divided against itself,
but on the whole he rendered valiant service. He has left us
" a vision of the Church not as a memory or an antique, but
as here and now speaking to all men; a method of silencing the
skeptic by compelling him to see primary truths with his own
intellect; a way into the realm of Ethical Law by conscience guid-
ing and judging." Dublin Review, July.
Probabilistic By Rev. C. J. Shebbeare. The author defines
the various opinions of Catholic schools of theology on the question
as to what is permissible when there is a doubt what course of
action one should take. Among these opinions is Probabilism.
He defends this system, and shows that it is " not the frankly
immoral doctrine that it has sometimes been thought to be " by
those outside the Church. He concludes by recommending " sen-
sible and responsible Anglicans " to study " with care and respect
the works of those systematic moral writers whom the Roman
Church has so plentifully produced." Church Quarterly Revieiv,
July-
Failure of Modern Educational Systems. By M'Hardy Flint.
Modern educationalists fail to distinguish between what is meant
by learning and by education. To-day those things that tend to
develop the soul-qualities of the youth are eliminated. They are
said to be unnecessary. The fine arts, music, drawing, etc., must
give way to the present scientific trend of learning. And it is just
those things that are being done away with that lead our boys and
girls to cultivate a true moral taste. Again our present system is
one of the moulding type; all are to bear the impress of the teacher,
and individuality is put wholly in the background. The responsi-
bility for the errors to be found in the present educational methods,
844 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept.,
the author thinks, rests with those who are legislating. They are
erudite indeed, but are little acquainted with the psychology of the
child's mind. School days, therefore, instead of being bright and
happy are to the youth of to-day a burden and hardship. Irish Ec-
clesiastical Record, August.
The Futurists. By Thomas J. Gerrard. A Futurist picture is a
" synthesis of what you see and of what you remember. It is the
dynamic sensation of the moment. The sensation of the artist is
the first and last of all things." The philosophy underlying the
school is what " troubles every lunatic in the asylums and out of
them, namely, that things are something different from what they
normally appear to be. If the human mind cannot penetrate such
appearances and come to realities, then is there nothing left for it
to feed upon but merely subjective sensations." Logically such
subjectivism and rejection of reason must lead to a renouncement
of morality. " Nothing is immoral in our eyes," says the Futurist
manifesto. Inevitably, too, it must lead to a cult of the hideous.
But while a mad and degenerate tendency, the Futurist movement
should not be taken too seriously. Its exponents are little more
than naughty children. Dublin Review, July.
Studies (June) : William Boyle discusses Types of Irish
Character in fiction. A Pioneer in Modern Geometry, by V.
Bergeja, tells how Fr. Jerome Saccheri, S.J., almost became the
discoverer of non-Euclidian geometry. G. O'Neill traces back
to Jewish sources the attempt called The Legend of the Hermit and
the Angel to explain the problem of evil. According to L. A. J.
MacKenna, The Educational Value of Irish is second only to that
of the classics. In The Intolerance of a Church, J. Gwynn lays
it down that truth must be intolerant. He complains of the false
sentiment that only in religious matters attaches a stigma to " in-
tolerance."
The Irish Theological Quarterly (July) : Rev. Matthew
Power, S.J., discusses the interpretations of the Greek of Luke
ii. 49, 50. In his article entitled Who Were They " Who Under-
stood Not? " he posits arguments for the different interpretations
of the Greek aut&t? and ajviQKav. The conclusion will appear in
the next issue of the Quarterly. The Genesis of Present Indus-
trial Conditions, by Father Kelleher, narrates the social and indus-
FOREIGN PERIODICALS 845
trial conditions of mediaeval times, and traces their progress
through the terrible days of the Black Death, the stormy times of
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and concludes with a resume of the pres-
ent influence of Trades Unions. Rev. E. J. Cullen, CM., in
The Validation of Marriage, briefly reviews the interest which non-
Catholics take in the Catholic doctrine of marriage, and corrects
the false impressions current among them regarding the Ne Temere
decree. He emphasizes and explains the Pope's validation of cer-
tain marriages in Germany by his Provida of April 15, 1906.
The concluding article entitled Literature of Investiture Struggle,
by Rev. Ghellinck, S.J., not only points the way to much reading
concerning that great conflict, but also expresses many opposing
views held in the Middle Ages concerning the Church, the Holy See,
and the Sacraments.
The Tablet (July 20) : A brief review of the history of the
Catholic Party's twenty-eight years of power in Belgium. W. H.
K. defends Dickens against the charge of bigotry.
(July 27) : The Price of Catholic Freedom in Canada, ac-
cording to Abbot Gasquet, was the loss of the American colonies.
Not taxation without representation, but fear that Protestantism
was doomed on this continent caused the Revolution.
(August 3) : Rev. Herbert Thurston reviews the very small
results of the Anglican delegation to St. Petersburg. The
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Canada has declared
in effect that " what the marriage law of Lower Canada was yes-
terday, it is to-day." The question Is There a Catholic Vote
That Matters? is answered negatively by Robert Segar.
(August 10) : An extensive account of the Catholic Congress
at Norwich. Text of Cardinal Bourne's inaugural address, in which
he dwelt upon the mission of the English language in restoring
Catholicity throughout the world. The pastoral of Pope Pius X.
to the Bishops of South America. He condemns the Putumayo
horrors in strong language, and urges action by the hierarchy.
Revue de Clerge Francois (July 15): Vacandard thinks
Aymar probably composed the Salve Rcgina about noo. He dis-
credits the authorship of St. Bernard for any part. According
to Venard, Harnack is getting closer and closer to Catholic tradition.
A full account of Holland's educational laws giving equal
rights to private and State schools.
IRecent Events,
After a long contest, and with considerable
France. modification, the government succeeded in
securing the passing through the House of
Deputies of the Bill for Electoral Reform. It will now have to
go to the Senate, where it will meet with determined opposition.
M. Clemenceau has published a Manifesto filling something like
three newspaper columns, in which he points out what seem to him,
and to not a few others, serious faults and dangerous consequences
involved in the proposal. A Committee has been organized to give
practical effect to these views. The Manifesto declares that re-
actionaries and revolutionists have joined their forces to perpetrate
a crime against universal suffrage, and accuses the govern-
ment of collaborating with the enemies of the Republic.
Proportional representation is denounced as the contrary of
the Revolution. It was by the principle of the majority's
right to rule that the Monarchist and Church influences were con-
quered, and the preservation of this right of control, endangered
by this Bill, is necessary to save the Republic from the same dangers.
These influences are still, in the opinion of M. Clemenceau, quite
powerful. In fact the Bill is supported by those who are in favor
of the Church, because they realize that no hope exists of its res-
toration to power so long as election by majorities prevails; hence
they have declared war against the existent electoral system. " It
is," says M. Clemenceau, " the revanche of the Due de Broglie that
is being proposed." Another objection is found in the allegation
that the system is so complicated, and the result of voting under it
will prove so disappointing, that the mass of the people will lose
all interest in elections, and in consequence cease to go to the polls.
Even in scrutin de liste M. Clemenceau sees the danger, through
the abolition of the representation of local interests, of the estab-
lishment of an all-powerful central bureaucracy, to which even
Cabinet ministers will be subject. The government, however, seems
determined to push the Bill through the Senate, even staking their
own existence upon their success. It makes no bid for the support
of Catholics, for the Premier has recently given utterance to his
satisfaction at the establishment of the ecole la'ique, and has declared
that it was his intention, by administrative action, and the enforce-
ment of the law, to defend the independence of the national school,
and the neutrality of public instruction.
RECENT EVENTS 847
It is in accordance with the same devotion to the complete
secularization of the nation that the proposal is being made, by
classing the Grand Chartreuse as an historic monument, to secure
its preservation as a museum of geology, forestry, and zoology,
and to affiliate it to the University of Grenoble.
Nothing has happened to diminish the warmth of the entente
cordiale with Great Britain. In fact, perfect agreement with that
country's policy, as stated by its Foreign Secretary, is generally ex-
pressed. A new bond is found in the fact that the Prince of Wales
has been spending some time in France for the purpose of perfecting
his knowledge of the language. On his departure he was decor-
ated by the President with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor.
The meeting of the Kaiser and the Tsar is believed not to have
affected the alliance between Russia and France. If there be any
doubt on this point, it will in all likelihood be removed by the visit
which is being paid to Russia by the Prime Minister, who is also
the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As between France and Ger-
many things remain as they were. A Commission is at work de-
limiting with exactitude that part of the French Congo which, under
the recent agreement, is to be ceded to Germany. Nothing has hap-
pened in Morocco calling for particular mention, although it is too
early to conclude that perfect peace is fully established, or that the
country is as yet properly organized. Mulai Hafid has brought an
end to his utterly detestable misrule by carrying out the resignation
which he so long has threatened. His place has been taken by a near
relative: but as the French are now in control, the last has been
seen, it is to be hoped, of the evils brought about by absolute
government.
The German Emperor paid to the Russian
Germany. Tsar the visit in return for that of the latter
to Potsdam some eighteen months ago.
An official report, issued by agreement, says that this meeting was
of a particularly cordial character, and that it gave a fresh proof of
the relations of friendship which had united the two rulers for
many years. The time-honored traditions between the two coun-
tries are to be observed. For the preservation of the general peace
the mutual contact, based upon reciprocal confidence, is to be main-
tained. No new agreement was made, as no new question had
arisen, nor yet was there any idea of producing alterations of any
kind in the grouping of the European Powers. The value of this
848 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
grouping, the two monarchs declared, for the maintenance of the
equilibrium and of peace has already been proved. The last dec-
laration is looked upon as giving the German Emperor's approba-
tion to what is called the Triple Entente of France, Russia, and
Great Britain. If complete confidence could be taken in its being
the sincere expression of his mind, the apprehensions felt by many
would be relieved. Of this sincerity, however, no one can form a
judgment. Nor does the Emperor, whether sincere or not, carry
with him the acquiescence of his people as a whole. The German
public, to a large extent, look upon the Entente as either a fiction
or a conspiracy. Peace is to be preserved only by the sharpness
of the German sword and the solidity, not indeed of the Triple
Alliance, but of the Austro-German Alliance. There are those
who go so far as to say that it is the duty of Germany to throw
precaution to the winds, and by force of arms to destroy all of those
who are keeping her from taking her proper place in the sun.
And to judge by the action of the government, not by its pro-
fessions, it would seem that it shares in this view. The result of
the recent legislation in Germany, legislation made with absolute
unanimity, so far as voting was concerned, is to place four-fifths
of the German Fleet in a state of instant and constant readiness
for war a thing never before attempted by any nation in time
of peace. This is the result of a policy which for several years
has been marching unswervingly to its goal across the lifetime of a
generation. There have been five Navy Bills within fourteen years.
Naval expenditure has been doubled since 1900, quadrupled since
1898. In view of this action, it is not to be expected that the
satisfaction expressed by the German Emperor with the present
balance of power and the means taken to preserve it should inspire
complete confidence. It certainly will not prevent the possible
victim from making every effort to escape. No longer does Great
Britain talk of a limitation of armaments. Two keels for every
one built by Germany is called for by many. The government,
however, is content with surpassing Germany's rate by sixty per
cent, and to this it is now committed.
One of the most disquieting aspects of the case, and one
which greatly increases the chances of war, is the bad feeling exist-
ing in Germany towards Great Britain, if the attitude of the German
Press may be taken as representing the mind of the German public.
The recent atrocities in the Putumayo district of Peru gave an
occasion for the manifestation of that feeling. Although it was
I 9 i2.] RECENT EVENTS 849
to the efforts of the British government that the disclosures were
due, and by it, along with that of this country, due punishment de-
manded, although not a single Englishman has been proved to have
even known about what was taking place, certain German news-
papers threw the whole responsibility upon the English, accused them
not merely of complicity, but of the actual perpetration of the
outrages, spoke of the " English Butchers of Indians," and declared
them to be as bad as the late King of the Belgians. The only
object for which this is mentioned is to show the existence of that
bad feeling which is more often the cause of war than any real
reason. At least, it more often brings things to a climax. The
question, of course, may arise whether, and how far, the German
Press represents the German people. On the whole, however, the
prospect of the establishment of solid peaceful relations between
Great Britain and Germany is by no means bright.
Senor Canalejas, the Liberal Prime Minister
Spain. of Spain, is coming to be looked upon as
the one man necessary for the well-being of
the country, at least for the present. Even the Conservatives ad-
jured him to withhold the resignation which he was threatening.
It is not that he is a statesman of commanding ability, able, as M.
Venezelos has done in Greece, to find a remedy for the more urgent
needs of the country. The fact is the political position is so
chaotic, everything, it is thought, would go to pieces, in the event
of his retiring. The Liberals are divided among themselves. The
advent of the Conservatives would, many think, lead to a revolu-
tion. The Republicans are strong enough to prevent legislation,
but would not, of course, be permitted by the other parties to form a
government, and so a state of great uncertainty exists. Senor
Canalejas is retained in view of greater evils that might ensue.
The Cortes has had under consideration a Bill of which the
effect would be to diminish the powers of the central government,
and to extend the scope of the various local administrations grant-
ing in fact autonomy, under certain conditions of State control, to
all the departments of local and provincial administration. The
Bill has been under way for fifteen years. Some statesmen of long
experience entertain the apprehension that undue strength might be
given to separatist tendencies. The Catalans, especially, are known
to have particularist aspirations, and as these provinces constitute
the most industrious, richest, most hard-working and best educated
VOL. xcv. 54.
850 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
in Spain, the " Mancomunidades " Bill, as it is called, might,
it is feared, lead to the creation of a State within the State.
The negotiations which have so long been carried on with
France, for the settlement of Spain's position in Morocco, have
not yet come to a conclusion. In the early stages, there was almost
a state of tension. Now, however, it is somewhat confidently
expected that a solution, satisfactory to both countries, will be
found.
Great efforts have been made by Royalists
Portugal. to overturn the Republican government,
and at one time these efforts gave consider-
able promise of success. Not only from the outside, but also at
a few places within the borders of the country, did sympathizers
with the monarchy give trouble to the supporters of the existing
institutions. At a place near Oporto, some weeks ago, a large
crowd paraded the principal streets, cheering for the monarchy,
and raising seditious cries. These feelings of discontent encour-
aged the refugees in the Portuguese frontiers to organize expedi-
tions for the capture of two towns, from which, had success at-
tended their efforts, they would have been able to march upon
Braga and Oporto. These refugees, it is said, were well provided
with money and with arms. Strange to say, the money came, to a
large extent, from the New World. At least it is reported that it
was Brazilian supporters of the late dynasty that, to a large extent,
furnished the funds. This would seem to have been the first time
that the influence of the New World has been exerted in favor of
royalty.
The hopes of the Royalists were, however, doomed to dis-
appointment. The peasants of the North, although they were sup-
posed to be favorable to the movement, proved quite apathetic:
while the inhabitants of the towns were actively hostile. One of
the towns which the Royalists hoped to seize was by stratagem
denuded of the soldiers. The citizens themselves, however, made
so vigorous a defence that the assailants at once abandoned the
attempt. Within a few days as many of the Royalists as escaped
capture were scattered in small bands, some of them in Portugal,
some in Spain. The harboring by Spain, for so long a time, of
persons preparing to overturn a friendly government has naturally
given to the latter grave ground of complaint. The Portuguese
government, in consequence, sent to the Spanish a strongly-worded
protest demanding that it should take the measures to which the
igi2.] RECENT EVENTS 851
Republic was entitled by international law, at the same time re-
serving the right to make such claims for compensation as might
be just. The Spanish government has repeatedly made promises
which it has failed to keep. The fault, however, may rather be that
of the local authorities than of the government. There is, how-
ever, some reason to think that no small degree of sympathy
exists in influential circles in Spain for the attempts of the refugees.
A subsequent demand made by Portugal for their expulsion from
Spain was refused by the Spanish Premier. Hence apprehensions
are entertained that diplomatic relations between the two countries
may be interrupted : this would complicate an already very intricate
situation. Hundreds of starving emigres are at present in Spain.
According to the most recent reports, large numbers are now on
their way to Brazil. Many royalists have been arrested, and have
at once been brought to trial. This is in itself a sign of progress,
for on previous occasions such offenders have been left to languish
for many months in prisons of a horrible description. The sen-
tences, too, do not seem excessive six years' imprisonment with
subsequent deportation.
The difference between the Spanish and the Portuguese gov-
ernments is aggravated by the fact that the Republicans of Spain
are manifesting open sympathy with Portugal. A leading Repub-
lican Deputy to the Cortes has recently paid a visit to Lisbon, where
he was received with the greatest enthusiasm by the population.
As this Deputy has been the chief critic in Spain of its government's
attitude toward the refugees, this visit and the reception given to
it, do not tend to the promotion of good relations. In fact, it is
strongly suspected that between Spanish and Portuguese Repub-
licans a close understanding exists, which may not be without a
detrimental influence on the Spanish throne. Practically the whole
press of Lisbon has been making violent attacks upon the Spanish
government, and especially on the Premier Senor Canalejas.
As it is to be expected, the internal affairs of Portugal offer
few signs of improvement. The country is sinking deeper into debt,
the Royalist attempts having, of course, an aggravating influence.
An internal loan has been raised to meet the demands of the mo-
ment. The Coalition Cabinet, which was formed in June, is not
so completely under the influence of the extreme Radicals as was
its predecessor. It resisted the attempt to suppress the Legation
to the Vatican, 'not indeed from any religious motive, but in order to
preserve the political influence of Portugal in its colonies. Some of
852 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
the workingmen in Lisbon have manifested their discontent with
their condition by a strike, attended with violence and bomb-throw-
ing, for the suppression of which the Republican Guards had to
be called out. That the Republicanism of Portugal is by no means
Puritanical is shown by the fact that the Senate has framed a
Bill which legalizes gambling. If it passes the Lower House this
demoralizing practice will be lawful at seaside and country pleasure
resorts. In most cases, the Municipality is to grant the license,
and this is to be given to the highest bidder. A percentage of the
profits is to go to the State. Some effort is made to guard
against the evil effects of such a measure by the provision which
prohibits any person under twenty-one years of age from entering
a gambling house.
There have now been two sessions of Parliament since the
establishment of the Republic. During this period one hundred
and eighty-seven Bills have been passed into law. A fund has
been created for disabled workmen; a new Civil Code has been
elaborated; the building of new warships has been authorized.
A'n enormous amount of time has been passed in petty discussions
and constant bickerings. The cleavage between the Conservative
and the Democratic parties has been widened. At the present
moment, however, a truce has been made. The head of the Cabinet
is a non-party man of considerable reputation, and of no little
energy. The recent strike in Lisbon, which was causing great
anxiety, was put an end to by his arrest of all the agitators. These
he put on board a ship lying in the Tagus, and then proceeded to
guarantee the right to work of anyone who wished to do so. Most
of the men at once returned to their posts. The dissatisfaction of
the working classes is widespread. They are constantly clamoring,
as everywhere else, for better conditions of living and higher wages.
For the Portuguese government, however, the difficulty is greater
than for other governments, because the belief was strong among
the mass of the population that the change to a Republic would
bring an end, not merely to political, but also to economic evils.
It is expected, should the present Cabinet be able to retain its power,
that a revision will be made of the Dictatorial Decrees framed
under the Provisional Government, of which the most detrimental
were the law of the separation of Church and State, and the Divorce
Law.
Whether the Republican government has kept the promises
it made in its advent to power to put an end to the abuses connected
RECENT EVENTS 853
with coolie labor in the cocoa islands of San Thome and Principe
is a matter which admits of considerable doubt. Those who are
interested in the matter, and who have devoted themselves to the
work of reform, are by no means satisfied. They indicate their
intention, unless the official attitude undergoes an immediate
change, of making a straight fight to cause pressure to be brought
by the Powers upon the Portuguese government in order that a
real remedy may be found. The truth seems to be that the authori-
ties in Lisbon are quite willing to put an end to the existent evils,
but are not able to find agents capable of emancipating themselves
from the control of the planters who derive their profits from the
abuses.
The internal situation in Turkey is in a
Turkey. high degree critical. That it may be at all
understood, the events of the past few years
must be called to mind. The Young Turks who brought about the
revolution were ardent Ottomans, and to a large extent army
officers. They were mortified and chagrined at the weakness of
Abdul Hamid in his dealings with foreign Powers, with the Com-
missions appointed under their auspices to supervise and, to a
certain extent, to limit the powers of the Turkish government in
its internal affairs. To strengthen Turkey was their main motive
they were Turks of the Turks. Abdul Hamid was a traitor.
The loathsome methods of his government espionage and dela-
tion, arbitrary banishments, and wholesale murder rendered it
easy for them to excite the feelings of the people against him. And
when they succeeded in dethroning the detested tyrant, the sym-
pathies of the whole world went out to them. Such confidence
was felt in their profession of a desire to establish constitutional
rule, that the Powers removed the officials who had been serving
in Turkey for the protection of the subject races. This confidence
they have abused. They have become themselves oppressors in
their turn. The privileges which for centuries the various nation-
alities had possessed, they made every effort to take away. In
this respect they have proved themselves worse than the deposed
Sultan. Parliamentary government has been a mere pretense, for
the Committee of Union and Progress exercised an extra-constitu-
tional control, usurping to itself by various devices the executive
and legislative power. When the Parliament was dissolved a few
months ago, they "made" the elections so thoroughly that two days
854 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
before the late Cabinet fell it succeeded in obtaining a vote of
confidence by a majority of 194 to 4. These proceedings
naturally aroused opposition. The Albanians in particular have
revolted in three successive years. But opposition was not confined
to these subjects. It spread to the army itself. A considerable
number of officers and soldiers broke out into open mutiny : and as
Mussulman will not as a rule fire on Mussulman, the soldiers who
remained loyal could not be trusted to suppress it by force, and in
fact refused to do so. This led to the fall of the Cabinet, which
had been formed immediately after the outbreak of the war with
Italy, of which Said Pasha was the head, and which had been
completely under the control of the Committee of Union and Pro-
gress. Its fall was the culmination of the efforts of the Moderates,
and of those who are supposed to wish to govern on lines really
constitutional. It does not represent the victory of the civil element
in contradistinction to the military, for the active agents in the
movement were to a large extent officers in the army. In fact it
may be doubted whether in Turkey there is any civil element
worthy of consideration, for the power of Turkey is essentially
that of an army encamped among subjects whom it controls by
force.
The new Cabinet the first one freed from external domina-
tion includes men of the highest reputation and of the greatest
experience. They may in fact be looked upon as Turkey's " elder
statesmen," corresponding to those of Japan. Its head is the veteran
Mukhtar Pasha, styled the Victorious, who served in the Crimean
War, and among its members are three who have been Grand
Viziers. The great question is whether it will be able to hold its
ground against extremist opponents on both sides. The Committee
of Union and Progress is not likely to relinquish the power which
it has so long and so disastrously wielded. It, in fact, threatens
violent resistance, and even the recall of Abdul Hamid. On the
other side, the demand is made for the dissolution of the Parlia-
ment elected quite recently, but in such a manner as to be in no-
wise a representative body. Those who made this demand
were almost as violent as their opponents, and they have ac-
complished their purpose. Between the two the Turkish
Empire runs the risk of being rent apart, and its much-to-be-de-
sired dissolution brought about. The situation gives renewed
hopes to the various Balkan States that the time may at last have
arrived for them to shake off the accursed yoke. Their mutual
1912.] RECENT EVENTS 855
jealousies have for long kept them asunder, and thereby helped to
hold them in bondage. But recent events have brought them
closer together than ever before. Greeks and Bulgarians have
become quite friendly. The Moslem Albanians are fraternizing
with the Christian. The great obstacle, however, is the mutual
jealousy of Austria and Russia, and their selfish interests and
desire of aggrandizement. So far as appears, there is no prospect
of this being removed. The whole situation is very uncertain; but it
seems likely that we are on the eve of great events. In favor of
Turkey the patriotic resistance to Italy has had no small influence.
The fact that the Committee of Union and Progress had not taken
the necessary measures in advance, and that Italy's attack found
the country unprepared, contributed in some measure to its down-
fall. In the war between the two countries, no event of great
importance has taken place.
Although Japan does not as a rule come
Japan. within the scope of these notes, it is scarcely
fitting to omit all mention of the recent
death of the last Emperor, especially as it was in his reign that
Japan was freed from complete subjection to his absolute rule, and
endowed with the blessing of at least some degree of self-govern-
ment. It was from the Regent who had charge during his minor-
ity that the Emperor in early youth derived the liberal views which,
after the abolition of the office of Shogun, first made him open
Japan to freer intercourse with foreigners, abandon the seclusion
in which his predecessors had lived, and enter into Treaties with
other nations. When the time came he willingly divested himself
of a large portion of his prerogatives for the good of the people
over whom he ruled. He lived to see the result, for now Japan
must be numbered among the Great Powers of the world. He is
succeeded by his son, who will be the one hundred and twenty-third
representative of a line of sovereigns whose record goes farther
back than that of any Imperial or Royal Family in the world.
Japanese annals claim that in the year 600 B. C. the first Emperor
of the line came to the throne. This claim, indeed, is not corrob-
orated, but from 461 A. D. no reasonable doubt exists that the
Emperor's ancestors in an unbroken line on the father's side have
succeeded one another.
With Our Readers.
IT is with great regret that THE CATHOLIC WORLD records the death
on August 9th at San Francisco, California, of its former Editor, the
Reverend Alexander P. Doyle, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul
the Apostle. In his death the Congregation lost one of its most zealous
and influential members; Catholic literature an able representative;
and the entire Church of this country an untiring apostle. Father
Doyle's name and work were known from one end of the country to
the other, to every class of citizen Catholic and non-Catholic, high
and low. The recognition which his work received, and the many
channels into which his influence extended, are the more noteworthy,
because he never received any ecclesiastical dignity. As often as it
was offered he humbly refused.
Father Doyle was born in California, February 28, 1857. He was
the first native Californian to be raised to the priesthood. In 1875 he
entered the Paulist novitiate, and was ordained priest on May 22, 1880.
He immediately went out into the mission field, and with others of the
Fathers gave missions in many parts of the country. In 1892 he left
that field of work, and was appointed Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
and Manager of the publishing house of the Paulist Fathers, known as
the Columbus Press. It is to Father Doyle that we owe the cheap-
ening in price and the popularization of Catholic doctrinal and apolo-
getic literature. As Editor and Manager he labored from 1892 to
1904. In the last-named year he was appointed Rector of the Apos-
tolic Mission House at the Catholic University, Washington, D. C. He
retained that office till his death. Many years ago he formed plans for
the erection and endowment of this Apostolic Mission House. Father
Doyle put his whole heart and soul and body into that work, and it may
be said in all truth that the work cost him his life but not until after
success had crowned his efforts, and the Mission House was made such
an institution as will live after him, and carry out his ideals for the
conversion of America. The story of its growth and its success is
familiar to our readers. Father Doyle not only built and endowed the
Mission House he also founded and edited The Missionary, and
made known the worth of missionary labor in every town of the
country. He gained for the movement thousands of supporters;
brought the necessity of it home to our Catholic people, and guided
an army of children Holy Innocents who daily pray God for its
success.
It would be impossible to chronicle the many labors to which he
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 857
gave himself during these years. A true disciple of Father Hecker,
one great enthusiasm possessed him the conversion of America to
the true Faith. This was the secret of his unbounded enthusiasm and
his untiring zeal. The conversion of America was the end toward
which he bent his every effort. He never counted the cost ; physical
health, personal comfort might be neglected; he might feel now and
again the strain of untiring work, but such things were of little
moment when the one great call was so urgent, so imperative. To
promote zeal and knowledge among Catholics ; to lead Catholics to
greater holiness of life, that their light might shine before men and be
the beacon for others into the true Church of Christ ; to stand valiantly
for the rights of the Church at all times and in all places ; to take away
by kindness and charity the prejudices of the non-Catholic ; to lead the
other sheep into the true fold, was the passion we may call it such
that possessed Father Doyle. If to this great passion for the cause of
Christ, one adds steadfastness of purpose, and an almost incredible
physical energy, he will realize in some measure the characteristics of
Father Doyle, and the things which, under God's grace, crowned his
work with success.
He was zealous for the conversion of America. The zeal
of God's house had devoured him. He was steadfast in purpose.
No one ever accused Father Doyle of weakness or vacillation
in the execution of what he knew to be his duty. He was steadfast in
his duty; and steadfast in his friendships. Because he had given
his life to a cause more than human, he possessed, what is so very rare
among men, an immense grace of charity. His work was subject to
much criticism. Oftentimes with good reason might he have resented
in anger a false charge. But he would never be party to a quarrel.
No one could forgive an injury quicker than Father Doyle. What to
many would have been an unforgivable insult, and would have led to
years of estrangement and even enmity, was brushed aside by him,
and treated almost as if it had never happened. He would
serve an enemy as quickly as a friend. Criticisms of others never
marked his conversation. His charity was not limited to the deserving.
Sympathy with him was a habit. No one was excluded from his
far-reaching affection. Hence the desire by which he sought to bring
as many as possible to the all-encompassing and saving charity and
truth of Jesus Christ and His Church. Every field of labor that he
could reach was tilled for this holy purpose. For years he was Na-
tional Secretary of the Total Abstinence Union of America, and one of
the foremost Catholic lecturers in the cause of temperance.
Father Doyle stood as a representative of the Church in this
858 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
country to our government in the matter of appointing Chaplains for
our Army and Navy. His eye was vigilant to see where our Catholic
priests were needed; his soul eager to see that Catholic sailors and
soldiers were not neglected, and he enjoyed the confidence and respect
of the heirarchy and the government.
Father Doyle had the power to plan and to accomplish. He
was the embodiment of human force. How he worked so unceasingly ;
how he handled the numerous problems and questions that he had to
meet, was a mystery to those who knew him well. Not gifted with
natural oratory, he was a successful speaker. He elicited from all
his hearers this feeling: "There speaks a strong man whose con-
victions overmaster him; whose purpose to win us is entirely disin-
terested." That is why, finding men of one frame of mind, he was
able to change them to another. The divine art of persuasion was
in him; not indeed of the highest kind, but his force of character
compensated for this by raising it to the supreme degree. He had the
drive of a powerful nature; and when God called him to use it for
divine purposes, he responded with a devotedness which never relaxed
its earnestness till he fell dead in his armor.
Father Doyle truly spent himself in the service of God. He never
delivered a good stroke against error, or paid a ringing tribute to truth
and virtue, but that his single motive was the expenditure of every
resource for the honor and glory of God as embodied in Holy Mother
Church. May his soul be at peace with God !
* * *
OUR readers will be pleased to read the following words of appre-
ciation of Father Doyle and his work from President Taft,
Cardinal Gibbons, Cardinal Farley, Archbishop Ireland, and Theodore
Roosevelt :
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C,
REV. JOHN J. BURKE, Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
I deeply regret to hear of the death of Father Doyle. Under the law and
the regulations each Church has a representative to recommend and become
sponsor for the Army and Navy Chaplains selected from their denomination. I
knew Father Doyle as the representative of the Catholic Church in this con-
nection, and I always found him most careful, conscientious, and candid in
his recommendations. I shall miss him much as a valuable assistant in the
discharge of a delicate duty.
WILLIAM H. TAFT.
MY DEAR FATHER HUGHES: August 10, 1912.
I was painfully shocked on learning a few moments ago of the death of
Rev. Father Doyle. Few clergymen were more conspicuously before the
American people, or enjoyed their esteem more, than this distinguished Paulist.
ig\2.} WITH OUR READERS 859
As a member of the Apostolic Mission House in Washington, he was thrown
into relation with several of our leading Prelates, who learned to admire his
apostolic zeal. The conversion of America was the aim of his life and activity.
I regard his demise as a distinct loss to the American Church. It is an
event of peculiar sadness to myself, for I kept up with him a steady corre-
spondence. Faithfully yours in Christ,
J. CARDINAL GIBBONS.
NEW YORK, August 13, 1912.
VERY REV. JOHN J. HUGHES,
Superior General of the Paulitt Fathers,
MY DEAR FATHER HUGHES:
When your telegram came to my house, some days ago, announcing the
death of our lamented friend, Father Doyle, I was in Syracuse presiding at the
solemn obsequies of the late Rt. Rev. Bishop Ludden. I now hasten to express
to you and the Paulist community my deepest sympathy in the great loss your
community has suffered, a loss which will be keenly felt by the Church through-
out the United States.
Outside of his own Fathers I presume my relations with him, during his
religious and priestly career, were amongst the most intimate he had; and the
knowledge of his beautiful character thus gained has left on me an impression
which will last during my life.
His great and large love for the Church in everything that made for the
extension of the Kingdom of Christ was the most prominent and inspiring note
in his many and varied activities. His boundless zeal in imparting to others
his ardent missionary spirit left no place in his heart for self. I do believe
he spent himself, and was spent unto death, in ceaseless and devoted service
for our Blessed Master.
" He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me "
seemed to have seized and possessed his whole being. One cannot but think
that he died a martyr of charity.
It is at least one consolation for us to know that when Our Heavenly
Father was pleased in His mercy and goodness to call him to his reward, He first
led him into the bosom of his family that his own might have the comfort of
closing his dying eyes, and that he might have the joy of giving to them face
to face his last blessing and farewell.
I shall miss him very much. We were associated together in many under-
takings for the good of religion, the last, and not the least, of which was the
work of the Apostolic Mission House in Washington. No nobler monument
could be erected to his memory and to the zeal aflame within his apostolic
soul. He beheld, with the clear vision of faith, America ready for the seed
and the harvest, needing here the sowers and there the reapers, so that the
Catholic Church would be recognized and accepted by the people of the United
States as the one true exponent of Christianity, the staunchest bulwark of
stable society, and the best guarantee of the permanency of American in-
stitutions.
May his great and gentle soul rest in peace !
Faithfully yours in Christ,
J. M. CARDINAL FARLEY,
Archbishop of New York.
86o WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, August n, 1912.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD :
The unexpected announcement of the death of my dear and revered friend,
the Paulist, Rev. Alexander P. Doyle, has given to me grief more poignant
than words of mine can tell. Is it possible, I ask myself in confusing wonder-
ment, that I shall not again meet my olden and true friend, Father Doyle; take
cheer and brightness of soul from his ever-welcomed presence; talk with him
on so many matters in which he and I found equal interest? To meet Father
Doyle, in New York, Washington, St. Paul, was one of the ever-to-be-remem-
bered charms now and then allotted to me by a Gracious Providence. And
the oft-coveted favor is not again to be mine! I bow in submission to God's
mysterious orderings : Thy will be done. How much is lost to religion in
America in the death of Father Doyle? A noble, true-hearted priest he was;
priestly in every stepping; utterly void of selfishness; wholly wrapt in work for
God and his neighbor.
Always the enduring thought of his mind was what he might do for
religion, and when the opportunity for action came, it was boundless joyous-
ness to him to seize upon it promptly, to throw into it all his talent, all his energy.
Pen and tongue were so ready for the task, and both moved so eloquently, so
touchingly, that rich fruitage did not fail to crown his labor. The soldier
of the faith, he was firm and dauntless ; quick, yet measured in the advance ;
ardent, yet tactful and prudent in the execution. The Apostle he was, embody-
ing in himself the best traditions of the Heckers, the Hewits, the Deshons of
that community of modern apostleship to which the Church in America owes
such a heavy debt, the Order of Paulist Fathers. Two works for which Amer-
ican Catholics should hold Father Doyle in grateful remembrance marked the
latter years of his noble career. The Mission House in Washington, and the
directorship, under the guidance of the Archbishops of America, of the Catholic
Chaplaincies in the Army and Navy of the United States. The Mission House
in Washington was the creation of Father Doyle and of his brother Paulist,
Father Elliott. The active management of the work fell largely into the hands
of Father Doyle, and in those hands it was eminently successful. It will be
his lasting monument. The work is too important for religion not to call for
the continuous encouragement of the Hierarchy, not to be deemed by the
Paulist Order one of the chief glories, one of the chief blessings, bestowed
through it upon the Church in America. Few others, perhaps know and
esteem, as I have been permitted to know and to esteem, the labors of Father
Doyle with regard to Catholic Chaplaincies in the Army and Navy. The work
was much needed, and few could do it well. Tact, patience, intelligence, pru-
dence were the requisites in the work All these qualifications were God's
gifts to Father Doyle. Through those gifts he won the esteem and willing
cooperation of the officials of the government, and also the trustful confidence
of the Chaplains themselves. His presentations of candidates for the Chap-
laincits were the fittest; his counsels to Chaplains in active service were the
wisest. The records of Catholic Chaplains is an honor to country and to
Church; the honor is largely the result of Father Doyle's wisdom and zeal.
The gentleman, the patriot, the priest, the apostle, be these words my epitaph
to the memory of Father Doyle. Peace to his soul in a better world!
JOHN IRELAND,
Archbishop of St. Paul.
WITH OUR READERS 86 1
To FATHER JOHK J. BURKE, NEW YoB ic, August 13, 1912.
Editor THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
MY DEAR FATHER BURKK :
I am genuinely shocked and grieved at the death of Father Doyle. I have
known him ever since I was Police Commissioner, seventeen years ago, when
[ became closely associated with Father Doyle, the late Father Casserfy. and
others of the Paulist Fathers. For Father Doyle, as for Father Casserly^ I
had a peculiarly strong feeling, and I worked hand in glove with both of
them, and after Father Casserl/s death with Father Doyle for many years.
It was with Father Doyle that I first discussed the question of my taking
some public stand on the matter of race suicide, it having been developed in
one of our talks that we felt equally strong on the matter. I have never known
any man work more unwearily for the social betterment of the man, woman or
child whose chance of happiness is least in our modern life. Their welfare was
very dear to him. Again and again in speeches which I made I drew largely on
the great fund of his accumulated experience. I mourn his death, not only
because he was my friend, but because he was so fearless and resolute a worker
for the betterment of mankind.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
A N uncommonly stimulating pleasure is being offered to readers of
t* Scribner's Magazine these days in the advance publication of
George Meredith's letters. Many are the facets of that vital and varied
personality which flash from the pages of this correspondence now
half a century old! The August installment reveals Meredith in his
young manhood in those thirties and early forties when the strong
man rejoices to run his race for life. There are playful and affection-
ate epistles to Janet (Duff Gordon) Ross, a youthful bride whom he
had known in childhood ; and there is one blithe fragment to William
Hardman, written in the inebriation of a May morning, only less
Greek than Elizabethan in its rollicking abandonment. Literary dis-
cussions with Swinburne and the Rev. Dr. Jessop, weighings of real-
ism and idealism, comments upon the novelist's own poems ("flints,
perhaps, not flowers," as he called them), and confusions of his dis-
couragement in the old cry, gay yet heartsick " Do you know Vexa-
tion, the destroyer ? " these alternate with letters to the son of Mere-
dith's first marriage, his " Darling Little Man," Arthur, off at school
and eager for vacation time.
The virile humanism of Meredith, the tenderness which went
coupled with his irony, is nowhere more conspicuous than in his cor-
respondence with Captain Maxse, culminating as this does in the
revelation of his love for Marie Vulliamy. To his union with her
Meredith looked forward, in spite of material difficulties and the
probable head-shakings of friends, with a hope which burned " like
a fixed lamp in his brain." " My friend," he wrote, " I cannot play
862 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
at life I have written of love and never felt it till now." In
view of Meredith's later theories about marriage, it is interesting to
note his opinion when touched by this pure and compelling passion:
" I know that I can work in an altogether different fashion, and that
with a wife, and such a wife at my side, I shall taste some of the
holiness of this mortal world and be new-risen in it. Already the
spur is acting, and health comes, energy comes ! " All this is precisely
the beautiful, inevitable sacramentalism so poignantly expressed
throughout The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
OUR Catholic educators have much to feel proud of in the past
Summer. The meetings of the Catholic Educational Associa-
tion in Pittsburgh were well attended by representatives of all the
great educational agencies of the Church, and the discussions were
sincere and scholarly. Several Catholic Summer schools, principally
for sisters, attracted large numbers, and there is every reason for
enthusiasm at the spirit shown. While not primarily educational,
the Convention of the Ancient Order of Hibernians showed the interest
of laymen in our schools by founding several additional scholarships
at the Catholic University in Washington. It has long been a com-
plaint of our colleges that they get no such magnificent gifts as the non-
sectarian institutions. Let us hope that the generosity shown by
the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Knights of Columbus in
this regard is but the prelude to further splendid gifts, such as Mrs.
Ryan's $250,000 to a Philadelphia academy and Miss Hill's $110,000
to another sisterhood.
Boston College is to move out into its new home this month. A
magnificent site has been secured on Commonwealth Avenue in the
beautiful suburb of Newton. One building has already been erected,
and twenty more will eventually follow. The whole scheme of develop-
ment has been carefully worked out, and the style of architecture se-
lected is that English Gothic known as collegiate. This move of Boston
College, however, means more than simply a change of location, more
even than the launching out of a college into a University, for it marks
a very radical change in policy on the part of the Maryland-New York
province of the Society of Jesus. The old Boston College in the heart
of the city is to be simply a high school, and only the college classes
go to Newton. Heretofore the Jesuit Colleges in the East, unlike
the great non-sectarian institutions, have had preparatory schools
attached to them in the same buildings or grounds. This plan has some
advantages, but it tends to make the average age of the college stu-
dents lower than elsewhere, and on this account reduces the standard
of scholarship, while increasing the difficulties of discipline. Under
the new plan (which has also been put into effect in New York by re-
ducing St. Francis Xavier's College to a high school and transferring
1912.] WITH OUR READERS 863
the college classes to Fordham) older and hence better college students
are expected, which in the long run will greatly strengthen the college
in numbers and efficiency. It is thought that this is but the prelude
to similar changes in all the Jesuit Colleges.
THE National Conference of Catholic Charities will hold its second
meeting at the Catholic University, September 22d, 23rd, 24th,
and 25th. This Conference was organized in February, 1910, at the
Catholic University, and it held its first meeting in the following
September. There were approximately four hundred delegates pres-
ent. Our readers will recall an extended review of the work of that
meeting which we published in our November, 1910, issue.
Abundant proof of sustained interest in the aims of the Con-
ference is not lacking. Prospects point to a very large attendance at
this year's meeting. Twenty-two States are represented in the mem-
bership of the Committees of the Conference, and eleven States are
represented among the authors of the papers to be presented.
The aims of the Conference are :
1. To bring about exchange of views among 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
modern questions in relief and prevention, and toward 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 expression.
The programme of the Conference will embrace a general evening
session, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; committee meetings in the
morning, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday ; and meetings of various
organizations each afternoon.
The much-loved presence of Monsignor White, of Brooklyn, will
be sadly missed. His energetic, progressive, optimistic spirit did much
to make the first Conference a success, and his death was a blow not
only to Catholic charitable work in Greater New York, but through-
out the whole country.
The following are the officers of the Conference : Honorary Presi-
dent, His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons; President, Rt. Rev.
Monsignor T. J. Shahan, Rector Catholic University ; V ice-Presidents,
Hon. Chas. A. DeCourcy, Lawrence, Mass.; C. C. Desmond, Los
Angeles, Cal.; John A. Grehan, New Orleans, La.; John C. Hagan,
Richmond, Va. ; Mrs. Thomas H. Kelly, New York, N. Y. ; James F.
Kennedy, Chicago, 111. ; Secretary, Rev. Dr. Wm. J. Kerby ; Treasurer,
Hon. William H. De Lacy.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
The Unbeliever; a Romance of Lourdes. By a Non-Catholic. $1.25 net.
Peronne Marie. By a Religious of the Visitation. $1.25 net.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York :
English Songs of Italian Freedom. By George Macaulay Treyelyan. $1.25 net.
Early History of the Christian Church: From Its Foundation to the End of
the Fifth Century. Volume II. By Monsignor Louis Duchesne. $2.50 net.
CHARITIES PUBLICATION COMMITTEE, New York :
The Delinquent Child and the Home. By S. P. Breckinridge, Ph.D., and Edith
Abbott. $2.00.
ROBERT APPLETON Co., New York:
The Catholic Encyclopedia. Volume XIV.
G. W. DILLINGHAM Co., New York :
The Decision. From the French of Leon de Tinseau. Translated by Frank
Alvah Dearborn. $1.25.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York :
A Prisoner of War in Virginia, 1864-5. By George Haven Putnam. 75 cents net.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
Around the World. By Rev. J. T. Roche, LL.D. $1.00.
MEANY PRINTING Co., New York :
A Study of Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven. By Rev. J. F. X. O'Conor,
SJ. Pamphlet.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York :
The Fool of Gold. By Andrew Klarmann, A.M. $1.00 net. Educating to
Purity. By Dr. Michael Gatterer, S.J., and Dr. Francis Krus, SJ. Translated
from the German by Rev. E. Van der Donckt.
THE ALICE HARRIMAN Co., New York :
Naples, City of Sweet-Do-Nothing. By an American Girl. $1.35 net -
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
God, the Author of Nature and the Supernatural. By Rev. Joseph Pohle, Ph.D.,
DD $i 75 The History of the Royal Family of England. By Frederic G.
Bagshawe. Volumes I. and II. $6.00. The Dark Beyond. By Rev. John
Walcher. 15 cents. Politeness. Pamphlet. 5 cents.
CATHOLIC CHURCH EXTENSION SOCIETY 01 AMERICA, Chicago :
The Catholic Church from Without. By Rev. James A. Carey. $5.00 per 100.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington:
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year Ended June 30, ion.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
A History of the United States for Grammar Schools. By Reuben Gold
Thwaites, LL.D. $1.00 net.
L. C PAGE & Co., Boston :
Miss Billy's Decision. By Eleanor H. Porter. $1.25 net. The Pleasuring of
Susan Smith. By Helen M. Winslow. $1.00 net. Blue Bonnet's Ranch
Party. By Caroline Elliott Jacobs and Edyth Read. $1.50.
EAGLE PRINTING HOUSE, Philadelphia:
The Aryans and Mongrelised America: The Remedy. By Tunius Aryan.
Pamphlet. 15 cents.
P. S. KING & SON, London :
Catholic Studies in Social Reform. III. The Housing Problem. Edited by
Leslie A. St. L. Toke, B.A. 6 d. net. IV. The Church and Eugenics. By
Rev. Thomas J. Gerrard. 6 d. net.
P. LETHIELLEUX, Paris :
La Predication Contemporaine. Par Monsignor de Keppler. 6 fr. Lettres
de Louis Veuillot d Mile, de Grammont (1863-1876). 6 fr. Historic de
la Philosophic Ancienne. Par Sortais. 6 fr.
PIERRE TEQUE, Paris :
Le Pain Zvangeiique. Par Abbe E. Duplessy. 2 fr.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne :
Tales of Converts. By One. Jack's Vocation and Other Stories. By Miriam
Agatha. Pamphlets. One penny each.
AP The Catholic world
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