Part 14

_Monday, July 17._--I had a quiet walk round St. Ouen and to the Lady Chapel there. I can fancy being able to retire to that church once a day being a consolation to many a life of toil. Yesterday, after the services, we seemed fit for nothing but to mount its roof and look on the great works of God around one there. At two we took a carriage to the seminaire of M. l'Abbé Lambert, Bois Guillaume. He is a person of fortune, who to satisfy his father entered the Ecole Polytechnique, and studied there for some time; but as soon as his father would consent, became a priest, to which he had always felt a vocation, and has given up his fortune to build a college for boys of the higher class. He has a beautiful spot on the top of the hill to the north of Rouen, covered with a garden, an orchard, and rows of beech trees of some sixty years' growth. He has now fifty-two boys, and eight priests, with himself, to instruct them. The object is to give a really Christian education, without directing the boys to enter into orders, which parents generally of that rank are much set against. Thus they only hear Mass twice on week days. We had a long conversation with him. He seemed much to regret the want of independence produced by, or at least existing in, French education. He receives a government inspector every year, though his house is his own. This inspector objected to the beds of his pupils having curtains, as making surveillance more difficult. I told him of my surprise to find at M. Poileau's academy, near Paris, a rule that two sick boys should never be in the infirmary alone. He said he should have expected such a rule. He inquired with interest about the independence of the English character. It struck me forcibly here what an immense advantage the rule of celibacy offers to the Church for education. Here were eight masters for fifty-two boys, and yet the pension so moderate as 1000 francs. At Eton, where the cost is nigh four times as great, the number of boys at the same proportion would require ninety-six masters, instead of about sixteen. But here all personal advancement is given up. There is no increasing family to be supported: personal gain or honour is neither _the_ motive, nor _a_ motive, but simply the higher one of fulfilling a great duty, and winning a bright crown. This complete self-devotion seems necessarily killed by the marriage tie, so that the highest works both of the priesthood and of education are thus cut off; and it may be doubted how far, in the present relation of the state to the Church all over the world, any body of ministers who are involved in the closest ties with the world can meet the exigencies of the times, or maintain the most necessary and fundamental liberties of the Church, either as to dogma or as to discipline. The great masses seem every where to be in such a state of irritation, or ignorance, or prejudice, that nothing but the spectacle of great and daily self-denial, of zeal and learning, combined with poverty, and exhibited in the persons of those drawn from the people itself, or of those who surrender a higher rank to belong to the people, will make any great and permanent impression on them. The more I reflect, the more it appears to me that the priesthood and the ecclesiastical colleges of France have in them this element of success.

M. Lambert's college is to be a quadrangle, of the style of the old chateaux in Louis XIV.'s time. Two sides are nearly finished. It will be a very pleasing and appropriate building when completed, and is from the design of M. Robert. The boys now sleep in two dormitories, which, like all the house, are scrupulously clean and neat, the masters among them, the only discernible difference being a little wider space between a master's and the adjoining bed.

In the course of to-day, I asked a person well qualified to judge, whether the university colleges were now in a better state as to the morals of their inmates: the answer expressed a fear that they were even worse.

We left our kind host M. Picard this afternoon, and went by railway to Mantes. It is a fine and noble country all the way; the view of Rouen as one passes over the bridge, under Notre Dame de bon Secours, is of ravishing beauty. The lofty banks of the Seine, 400 feet high, accompany one at a little distance, most of the way--and twice a tunnel cuts through them, and comes out suddenly on the peaceful banks of the river again. The country is cut on a broad and large scale, which contrasts strongly with the limited and smaller prospects in England. We reached Mantes just in time to have a look at the beautiful church of Notre Dame, worthy of its builders, Blanche of Castile and S. Louis.

_Tuesday, July 18._--We attended a Low Mass at six this morning, in the Lady Chapel at Notre Dame; there were a good many people, sisters of charity, and Christian brothers, and several communicants. This church is one of great purity and chasteness, and full of symbolism. The numbers seven and three perpetually occur in the windows and bays. There are seven bays of the nave, and seven round the apse--seven great rose windows over the vaulted triforium round the apse: many most beautiful windows of geometric tracery, with trefoils arranged in threes. In each bay of the nave the triforium has three smaller bays formed by most elegant colonnettes. The western façade, up to the gallery, is of rare dignity and beauty.

We reached Paris at a quarter past ten, and in a few minutes were on our way to our Hotel Windsor; the soldiers were bivouacking in the railway station. I was then more than five hours writing my journal from the beginning. In the evening we walked to Notre Dame, along the quais, and to the Hôtel de Ville. The thoroughfares were thronged with National Guards, and an idle or unoccupied population. Woe to the nation of which these are rulers.

_Wednesday, July 19._--We went to the Séminaire d'Issy to call on M. Galais, but found him out. Returning we called on M. l'Abbé Ratisbonne, and had a long conversation with him. I explained the motive of my coming to Paris; he was astonished to hear that there were yet persons of information and good faith among us who believe that Roman Catholics adore the Blessed Virgin, and put her, in some sort, in the place of our Lord. He said it was not honourable to impute such things to them; that she was a simple creature, advanced by God to the highest possible honour of being mother of our Lord. If there were nothing else objectionable in Protestantism, the disregard of the Blessed Virgin alone would repel and disgust him. Did the Apostles, in the presence of Christ, turn their back on his mother? "If," said he, "I had the honour to be acquainted with your mother, as I have to be acquainted with you, I should take good care in speaking to you not to turn my back on her." The conversation turned on the Pope's Primacy, both in an historical point of view, and still more as a moral necessity; but when I urged that the Episcopate was as a chamber of Peers, in which the Pope held the first rank, he agreed, and said he was primus inter pares. He remarked on the bad way in which history had been written, and how little modern citers of original authors could be trusted as to expressions, which he had found numberless times in writing his life of S. Bernard. I inquired after his brother, who is now a deacon in a house of Jesuits, département de la Sarthe, I believe. Before parting he arranged for a subsequent meeting.

After dinner we walked again by the quais to Notre Dame--but it was already shut. The space round La Sainte Chapelle being part of the Palais de Justice was in full military occupation, and we did not see how to get in. Every where enormous numbers of National Guards are to be seen in possession of great public buildings, as so many garrisons in an enemy's land. We walked up the Rue S. Jacques, but there are very few traces of the very hot combat which is said to have raged here; how, indeed, that very narrow and ascending street could have been taken at all, is matter of wonder. If occupied throughout its whole extent by the insurgents, it must have been a most deadly battle field.

We called on M. l'Abbé Noirlieu, but found that he was in the country.

_Thursday, July 20._--Presented a letter of introduction to Monseigneur Parisis, Bishop of Langres. He is short, about sixty years of age, with very determined countenance. We had a rather long conversation, in which he promised to be of any service he could to me in seeing Catholic matters, and sent out for an Abbé to conduct us to different places; but as he did not find him at home, he appointed us to come at seven P.M. When I told him that the worship of the Blessed Virgin was very generally imputed to Roman Catholics, he seemed much astonished, and thought that was gone by. "We account her," he said, "a simple creature, who has received from God the highest possible grace, to be the mother of our Lord. But all that she has is derived: to have life in one self, or to derive it from another, is an infinite difference." I spoke of Dr. ---- and his book, and how little he appeared to me to have caught the Catholic idea. For instance, he had represented it as the duty of the French Bishops to defend the throne of Louis Philippe, rather than the Catholic faith. "It is wonderful, indeed," replied the Bishop, "how he can have supposed that, for we have been engaged throughout, and I foremost, in a struggle with Louis Philippe." He sketched the objects which we ought to see. "You must not look for the faith among the mass of the people here, for they have it not, but in religious houses, foreign missions, Catholic institutions, &c.--You have not had martyrs, I think, in the last twenty years: we have had many; and it is remarkable to observe how entirely the scenes of the first ages have been reproduced; the spirit of Christ has given birth to precisely the same answers to questions put to martyrs as of old by the spirit of the devil; and torments as terrible, tearing of the flesh, and hewing in pieces, have been borne. I was dining not long ago at the Foreign Missions, and was saying that the life of a missionary in China was not good, when all present cried out at once, clapping their hands; 'Oh, yes; but it is good--it is good.' French missionaries have subsisted," he continued, "for a long time without even bread, which is much for us, though not for you; while yours go out with wife and children, pour faire le commerce." I spoke with wonder of Monseigneur Borie's life, and how he had been able to eat even rats, as the natives in Cochin China did. The late Archbishop's martyrdom was mentioned by him with fervour; and he spoke very kindly of Dalgairns, whom he had ordained.

We went again at seven to the Bishop of Langres, who arranged for M. l'Abbé des Billiers to take us round to different persons, and especially the Père de Ravignan.

_Friday, July 21._--Went at half-past ten to the Bishop of Langres, who told us of the new concordat between the Pope and the Czar, which would appear to recognise the authority of the Roman Catholic Bishops much more than the French government does. He seemed to think it a great gain. M. des Billiers then took us to the Père de Ravignan: we found M. l'Abbé de Casalès, Member of the National Assembly, with him, and had a lively conversation for about half an hour. Le Père de Ravignan and M. de Casalès both maintained that Mr. Newman's theory of developement was open ground. "Tout chemin mène à Rome," said the latter. "I know, by experience, how hard a matter it is to attain to the truth--that it is long in coming. It is the grace of God--not study, brings it. Thus, we have every feeling of charity for the great movement in England." They did not appear to think that Mr. Newman's theory and that of Cardinal Bellarmine intercepted each other; and as we were five, there was no good opportunity of setting forth our conception on that point. Le Père de Ravignan has the most pleasing and attaching demeanour of any person I have met with--he seems the Manning of France. He begged us warmly to come to-morrow, any time from seven to twelve A.M.; assuring us that he did not think it lost time to converse with us. He spoke with great respect of Dr. Pusey.

M. des Billiers then took us to Les Missions Etrangères, Rue du Bac. One of the professors accompanied us to La Salle des Martyrs; round this apartment are ranged pictures by Chinese Christians, representing the martyrdoms of Monseigneur Borie, M. Cornay, and the tortures inflicted on native Christians; against one side are five cases, with glass fronts; that in the centre contains the nearly complete skeleton of M. Borie: on each side are the bones of M. Cornay, and M. Jaccard; those of a native Chinese priest, a martyr, and reliques of S. Prosper, sent from Rome. On the opposite side is a long case containing memorials of different martyrs: chains, a letter written by M. Borie under sentence of death, his stole, parts of the cangue of native priests martyred, and also in a case the complete cangue of M. Borie, a frightful instrument of torture when fixed to the neck, and carried day and night, as it was by him under sentence of death, from July to November, 1838. The young missionaries make a visit here every evening, and pray before these relics of their brethren, soliciting their intercession,--a fitting preparation, I thought, for so difficult a task. Over the door was a print "of the seventy servants of God," martyred in Cochin China and those parts in the last few years.

In this house are about fifty young missionaries preparing to go into the East; of whom about twenty go out yearly. Many come there as priests, with strong recommendations from their several séminaires, bishops, &c. There is accordingly no fixed period for ascertaining their vocation, or instructing them. The readiness to give up friends and relations at home is a great step towards that perfect self-denial which is required for this office.

We were introduced to M. Voisin, who had been eight years in China, and returned in 1834. His account of the Chinese was that they were very ready to receive the Christian faith; that the notion of altar, sacrifice, and priest, was familiar to them; that they would not receive, indeed, a naked religion. Every house has its altar, and they burn incense before tablets containing the five words--Heaven, Earth, Relations, the Emperor, the Master. He showed us such a tablet, and a Christian one, on the other hand, which set forth the existence of one God, eternal, all wise and all good, creating all things out of nothing, The government alone stands in the way of the conversion of the Chinese. He said that the remarkable resemblance to Catholic rites and tenets found in Thibet dates from Franciscan and Dominican missionaries who laboured there with effect in the 13th century. The most ancient MS. of the Chinese are found not to go higher than the year 150 A.D., so that all discovered resemblances to Christian mysteries may have come from an early dissemination of the faith in China. They receive without hesitation the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but reason against that of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin.

We saw here a professor who was under sentence of death in Cochin China, but escaped.

M. Galais took us this evening over the garden of the séminaire at Issy. I asked him for his view of the last revolution. He said he had two, and could not, unhappily, see which was most likely. First, that it was the purpose of God to punish to the utmost the wickedness, sensuality, and unbelief of the rich bourgeoisie, the middle class, who were willing to have religion as a police for the lower orders, but not as a spiritual rule of life; and in this point of view the most terrible convulsions might be expected. But, also, he was not without a hope that, as the Church in the 5th century had laid hold of the barbarians and moulded them into Christian polities, which for so many centuries bore noble fruits, so now, if she faithfully fulfilled her mission, if her priests were seen devoting themselves with a fervent charity to the task of teaching and converting the masses who are without God, and set bitterly against his Church, a like result might ensue, and society be saved from these extreme horrors. If the new archbishop was a man of organisation and capable of setting up institutions to penetrate the masses, there were many men of the most devoted charity among the clergy of Paris, who would second and carry out his design. I asked what had been the especial merit of the Bishop of Digne, for which he had been chosen to succeed at Paris. He said that there had been for some time complaints among the clergy respecting that excess of power given to the bishops by the last concordat, by which three-fourths even of the curés of their dioceses are 'amovibles' at their pleasure; so that only the curés in cities and towns are 'inamovibles;' whereas according to the ancient canon law all were so, except upon a regular ecclesiastical judgment. Now it not unfrequently happened that the bishop, for good reasons doubtless, but not always acceptable to the incumbent, removed a curé, and hence a strong desire had arisen to limit the bishop's power in this respect. The late archbishop had it in contemplation to erect a tribunal in his diocese, without the judgment of which a curé should not be displaced. The Bishop of Digne had already done this, and likewise given a constitution to his chapter, which also was a thing much desired by the chapters generally.

_Saturday, July 22._--The Père de Ravignan received us this morning with the utmost cordiality. We had a full hour's conversation,--not at all polemical, for with that fraternal charity of his polemics never came to one's thought. He seemed to think the future state of France in the highest degree uncertain: that for the Church little was to be hoped from the false liberalism of the day--they would maintain, as long as they could, the state of subjection in which the Church is held. I observed that the Holy See alone was a defence to the bishops in such a state of things; otherwise the National Assembly might take it into its head to meddle with doctrines. It will not do that, he said: Elle se briserait. Yet even the abject poverty of the bishops has turned to good. It is known that they have not the hundredth part of what is wanted for the good of their dioceses--nothing for the petits séminaires, and very little for the grands séminaires; and so they are largely assisted by the charitable. He spoke of the delight it was to him in reading the Fathers to see that it was the very same Catholicism then as now. I asked if he found _every thing_ in them. That, for instance, one of our most eminent theologians and preachers had told me that he had searched throughout St. Augustine for every single mention made of the Blessed Virgin, by means of the Benedictine Index, and had not been able to find one instance of her intercessory power being recognised, nor that any other relation of her to the Church, save an historical relation, was supposed. He replied that it was not St. Augustine's subject to speak of the Blessed Virgin; that he wrote against the heresies of his day, as the other Fathers, against the Pelagians, Donatists, Manicheans: that, however, he mentioned the Blessed Virgin's fêtes, which involved her culte. St. Jerome, however, who was a little earlier, in his work against Jovinian, had treated of that subject. I inquired after M. Alphonse Ratisbonne: he said he had been his confessor shortly after his conversion. The facts of that, and its lasting effects, could not be denied: his sacrifice of his betrothed, his fortune, everything,--his sudden change from an obstinate Jew to a Christian. He was baptized in their Church in Rome, after a retreat of eight days. The Père de Ravignan, at parting, gave us each a copy of his little book, "De l'Existence des Jésuites." I asked if I might come again: he replied, Come ten times,--as often as you like. We were both charmed with the calmness and charity of his manner. He speaks slowly, and seems to weigh every word. Logical force is said to be the great merit of his preaching.