CHAPTER III.

SCIENCE AND THE PRESS.

In the Belgian congress the section of science and the press does not treat of the same subjects that occupy the attention of that section in the Catholic conventions in Germany. At Malines Christian instruction and education are the principal questions debated; in Germany, on the other hand, the university question is the chief subject of discussion; at Malines it is slimly attended; at Würzburg, Frankfort, etc., on the contrary, there was a crowded attendance, and the proceedings were of the most interesting character. At Malines forty-five Catholic journalists met and passed important resolutions; at Würzburg, more than sixty representatives of German science held a separate conference and drew up an address to the Holy Father. Even the meeting of literati held at Munich may be called the offspring of the Catholic general conventions. At Munich, in 1861, Professor Michaelis proposed a scheme planned by Döllinger for a meeting of the German savans, which was rejected. Hereupon the project was somewhat changed and a separate meeting held at Munich. Its results are well known.

The principal debaters in this section of the Malines congress were the genial and venerable Count de Villeneuve, Lenormant the daring traveller, Lecheoni, Soudan, Léger, du Clisieux, Ducpetiaux, Chopinet, Soenens, Baeten, and Decoster. The presiding officer was Namèche, of Louvain, who, together with de Ram, Lanny, Delcour, Laforêt, and Perin worthily represented the university at Louvain. His neighbor was van der Haeghen, of Brussels, a writer whose name is well known, not only in Belgium but in foreign countries. Though an excellent linguist, he deems it his first duty to refute historical misstatements and to expose without mercy the errors of modern Protestant historians. As Onno Klopp unsparingly demolishes German scribblers, so van der Haeghen puts down the Belgian dabblers in history. He is intimately acquainted with German literature.

The subjects that occupied the attention of the section were popular instruction, the classics as a means of mental training, the establishment of professorships on social questions and discipline.

On popular instruction Monseigneur Dupanloup delivered a discourse, which was the event of the congress, and which has since been read by all Europe. Count Desbassayns de Richemout, of Paris, an orator favorably known in Germany as the spirited advocate of a Catholic university, spoke on the mental activity of society. In the Romanic world the name of Dupanloup acts like a charm. If a charity sermon is to be held, which is to move and electrify Paris and all France, the Bishop of Orleans is called upon. In 1862, when it became necessary to give a new impetus to the Catholic cause in the East, Dupanloup was summoned to Rome to {333} call the nations of the earth to a sense of their duties; thousands rushed to hear him preach at the church of St. Andrea del Galle. At Malines he met with the same success. When Dupanloup speaks every listener glows with Catholic zeal, that becomes more and more intense as he proceeds and finally bursts forth in a fiery enthusiasm, whose influence reaches far and wide. Such was the spectacle witnessed at Rome, and repeated at Paris and Malines. One of the brightest ornaments of the French hierarchy, Dupanloup on every occasion expresses the opinions of Catholic France with irresistible force. No wonder, then, that even the emperor fears the bishop's eloquence. His writings are read by all, and admired for their classic style. As an orator, he enchants the French and Belgians; on the Germans, however, he exerts a less powerful influence; they prefer Montalembert, F. Hermann, or F. Felix. His discourse at Malines was not, properly speaking, a discourse, but a familiar conversation, grand and splendid in diction, and full of brilliant turns and telling _jeux de mots_. The remarks made by Dupanloup on August 30, when returning thanks for his enthusiastic reception, were a masterpiece of eloquence, which will never be forgotten by those who listened to him. The Bishop of Orleans is a man of the people. "I do not know much; but what I know best and love best is the people." If Dupanloup's speech was the brightest gem of the congress in 1864, Montalembert, in his speech on "Religious Liberty," eclipsed all his competitors in 1863. Montalembert's discourse lasted five hours, two hours longer than Dupanloup's speech. Montalembert and Dupanloup are the most prominent representatives of Catholic France. Called by God to battle for his Church, both are leading millions of soldiers arrayed under the banner of Christ to victory and triumphs. Montalembert, the athlete of the tribune, hailed by Pius IX. himself as one of the bravest of the Christian host, cherishes for the Church an ardent, pure, and holy love. This love may sometimes carry him too far. At Malines, in 1863, he laid down many propositions not approved by the congress. The Cardinal of Malines, however, and the Bishop of Orleans, charitably threw a veil over every thing objectionable, thus resolving into perfect harmony everything discordant. Dupanloup evidently thought of his friend Montalembert when, in his remarks on August 30, 1864, he uttered the words: "Let us not confound opinions and principles, vital questions and domestic difficulties; among us let there be no differences, no disunion, no imprudence."

Count Richemont, of Paris, is a true nobleman in appearance and bearing; his black beard adds new beauty to his handsome face and sparkling eyes. His gestures are appropriate and graceful. He speaks very rapidly, however, swallowing many words, so that we Germans did not understand him well; in fact, we read his speech with more pleasure than we listened to it. A more favorable impression was made by Viscount Anatole Lemercier, of Paris, a man of agreeable manners, a true Parisian, full of wit and humor, a graceful speaker, who will be heard with pleasure by any assembly. But, great as are Lemercier's merits, he has a dangerous rival in Henry de Riancey, who unites in himself every quality required to become a general favorite. Among the French journalists he is one of the ablest. In his opinions he steers a middle course between the extreme views of Montalembert and Veuillot, or Barrier, Faconet and Chantrel, the oracles of the "Monde;" and "L'Union," the journal of which he is the editor, occupies an intermediate position between "Le Monde" and "Le Correspondant" But de Riancey's labors are not confined to his editorial sanctum; he cherishes holy poverty, is untiring in the practice of Christian charity, and justly deserves {334} the title of "Father of the Poor." These holy practices give an unction to his words, and throw a halo around his person which he does not even suspect, but which gains for him the hearts of all that see or hear of him. His speeches in the section of Christian economy excited great interest, and when speaking on matters connected with the Catholic faith he reminded us of the fathers of the Church. His discourse before the general meeting of the congress, Sept. 12, 1864, was a gem. He spoke as a soldier of Christ, as an heroic defender of the Church, showing at once that he was a veteran, who had often struggled for the triumph of principle. The future does not inspire de Riancey with anxiety or fear; he is full of hope and confidence, believing that he lives in an age destined to accomplish great things. He is not discouraged by the superior power of his opponents, for he bears in mind Christ's promise to his Church.

When speaking, a pleasant smile rests on de Riancey's lips, and his features reflect the cheerful calmness of his soul. His friendly eyes charm his listeners, who regret to see them fixed on his manuscript, for de Riancey reads his speeches. If the applause of the assembly become too long and noisy, the speaker's face beams with satisfaction, and he gracefully passes his hand through his hair. De Riancey fascinates the hearts of all his hearers.

It is hard to say which of the many eminent French orators at Malines possesses most claims to our preference. Who is the greatest orator, Count Montalembert or Bishop Dupanloup, de Riancey or Père Felix, Viscount Lemercier, Count Richemont, Viscount de Melan, Lasserée, or Lenormant? Each of them has excellences peculiar to himself that claim our admiration. In like manner, among the great Italian masters, Michael Angelo is first in grandeur of style and conception; Titian is distinguished for the grace of his figures; Correggio for their angelic purity; whilst Raphael merits the palm for fertility of invention, correctness of expression, and variety. Père Felix, we have already stated, pleased the Germans more than Bishop Dupanloup. His concluding discourse, delivered in St Rombaut's cathedral at Malines, Sept 3, 1864, was a philosophical review of ecclesiastical history; the grandeur of its conception well befitted the importance of the occasion. In appearance, F. Felix is not so majestic as F. de Ravignan, nor has he so powerful and sonorous a voice as his predecessor. His discourses betray less enthusiastic love of liberty than those of F. Lacordaire, but still he is at present _the_ orator of the day, no less than de Ravignan and Lacordaire were some years ago. F. Lacordaire, the Dominican, addressed his words to thousands of young men, who, carried away by the political and literary revolutions of 1830, were frantic with ideas of liberty, who were attracted and tormented by the "infinite," and panting for vague, undefined ideals. This yearning Lacordaire strove to satisfy, by pointing out to them that Christ and his Church were the realization of their indefinite ideals, and by teaching them to sanctify liberty by devotion and sacrifice. The vast schemes of 1830 were not carried out, and their ideals were not realized. French society felt the vanity of its aspirations, and was seized by a deadly lethargy, a kind of despair, as if it had suffered shipwreck. Like so many flaming meteors F. de Ravignan's conferences suddenly shed a stream of light on the universal gloom. How majestic was his appearance, how sublime his language, how ardent his faith, and how holy his life! All France listened to the Jesuit, and seemed spell-bound. Irreligion was banished from thousands of hearts, and thousands returned to the practice of their religious duties and were saved. The spirit of the age took another direction; men busied themselves exclusively with their {335} material interests, and they thought only of money, of steam, of machinery and other branches of industry. For many years progress has been the watchword--material progress--which has brought about all these wonders of modern times, which is due to human energy alone, and which, for this very reason, deifies itself in its pride and threatens Christianity with destruction. To combat these false notions, God raised up F. Felix. He devoted his attention to the popular idol, progress, but he dealt with it in his own way. In Lent, 1856, he began, in the church of Notre Dame, in Paris, his famous conferences on "Progress by Means of Christianity." Archbishop Sibour had blessed the orator and his subject. His success was astounding, and henceforth F. Felix will hold an honorable place among French pulpit orators. F. Felix is about fifty-five years of age; he has an intelligent countenance, a noble, manly brow, betokening a deep, penetrating mind, and a firm will. Since 1856 his voice has improved, having gained both in compass and in sweetness. It is clear and piercing, completely filling the immense church of Our Lady at Paris. The two discourses delivered by F. Felix at Malines (Sept. 2 and 3, 1864) are perhaps his most finished productions. He did not call forth any momentary burst of enthusiasm, but produced a lasting impression, that will console and strengthen us in the struggle of life.

The university question, which has been so prominent in Germany, was not discussed at Malines. The Belgians have had for thirty years a Catholic university at Louvain, which they support at a great expense, and for the maintenance of which they constantly struggle. The English speak of establishing a Catholic college at Oxford. Canon Oakley, a learned English convert, is working zealously to realize the plan, and if Newman will agree to take the helm, the enterprise will prosper. We hope the project will succeed, for English Catholics will not send their sons to the Catholic university at Dublin, which does not flourish, and numbers only some two hundred students. In Holland a Catholic university is not even thought of.

The interests of the Catholic press were not neglected at Malines. Belgium has done much to raise its character, as was shown by Count de Theux. Since the congress of 1863 the Belgian journals--especially the "Journal de Bruxelles"--have steadily progressed. In Belgium, small as it is, there are fifty Catholic periodicals, some French and some Flemish. The "Journal de Bruxelles" already rivals the Paris "Monde," and both are far in advance of any German journal. At Malines the members of the press form a section of their own, in which the principal papers are represented by their directors, editors, or correspondents. The staff of the "Correspondant" was represented by Count Francis de Champagny, Viscount Anatole Lemercier, and by Francis Lenormant, the favorite of the Parisians. "Le Monde," too, had sent its delegates; prominent among these was Hermann Kuhn, the Berlin correspondent, who contributes valuable articles on Catholic Germany. He appeared for the "Mayence Journal" also. We are already acquainted with de Riancey, the editor of "L'Union." The director of "La Patrie," published in Bruges, Neut, was president of the section. Although I earnestly desired to form the personal acquaintance of M. Neut, circumstances prevented it; but he appeared to be the leading spirit of the section. Affable and obliging, lively and ardent, he is a flowing speaker, well fitted to take the lead, and a bold, uncompromising Catholic, without a trace of fogyism. To see him is to love him. He is a man of great practical ability, and writes a popular style resembling that of Ernest Zander, of Munich. Like Zander he has grown grey in journalism. The vice-presidents of the section were Count Celestinè de Martini, {336} director of the "Journal de Bruxelles;" Leon Lavedan, who writes for the "Gazette de France;" and Lasserre, editor of the "Contemporain," well known in Germany as a controversial writer. Lebrocquoi, editor of "La Voix du Luxembourg," acted as secretary. Digard of Paris took an active part in the discussions of the section. Spain was represented by Enrique de Villaroya and Eduardo Maria de Villarrazza; Portugal by Don Almeida. The Abbé de Chelen and F. Terwecoren also deserve mention. Verspeyen, editor of "Le Bien Public," at Ghent, is one of the youngest and most spirited journalists in Belgium. He is a good speaker, very sarcastic and impressive. On his recommendation Casoni, of Bologna, who has been shamefully persecuted by the Sardinians, received a heavy subsidy from the Malines congress. Lemmens, a very clever man, is associated with Verspeyen in the editorship of "Le Bien Public," which compares with the "Journal de Bruxelles" in the same way as "Le Monde" and the "Weekly Register" compare with "Le Correspondant" and "The Home and Foreign Review." De Haulleville, formerly editor of the "Universel," and at present connected with the "Correspondant," is one of the best Belgian writers. He is not only a journalist, but also a thorough historian, well versed in German literature. I must not forget to mention Demarteau, the editor of the "Liege Journal;" A. Coomans, an able speaker, who represented the "Antwerp Journal," and Frappier, the editor of "L'Ami de l'Ordre." Among the English journalists the most prominent were Simpson, a friend of Sir John Acton, who wrote for the "Rambler" and "Home and Foreign Review," and Wigley, editor of the "Weekly Register," who writes for the "Monde" also, a worthy rival of Coquille, Faconet, Leon Pagès, Kuhn, La Tour, d'Aignan, and H. Vrignault. Among the periodicals that had sent representatives to Malines were: "L'Ouvrier," "Le Messager de la Charité," "La Revue Chrétiénne," "Le Journal des Villes et des Campagnes," "El Diario" of Barcelona, "La Regeneracion" of Madrid, "L'Union" of Valencia, "El Register Catolico" of Barcelona, "La Belgique," "La Paix," "Les Précis Historiques," "Le Courrier de Bruxelles," "Le Moniteur de Louvain," "L'Escaut," "Le Courrier de la Sambre," "L'Union de Charleroy," "Le Nouvelliste de Verviers," "Le Journal de Hainaut," "L'Impartial de Soignies," "La Gazette de Vivelles," and several others.

The assembly consisted of forty-five journalists, and their proceedings made a favorable impression. The gentlemen of the press knew why they had met. It was resolved to hold every year a general convention of Catholic journalists and to establish at Brussels an international telegraphic bureau for Catholic journals, because most of the bureaus now existing are in the hands of Jews, who frequently forge untruthful telegrams. The meeting tended to foster mutual good feeling among the representatives of the different journals, and resolutions were passed to secure unity of action in the Catholic press.

The managers of the "Correspondant" strove to obtain the patronage of the Malines congress by distributing a list of contributors. In fact, its staff comprises some of the most able Catholic journalists, and we deem it proper to give, the names of Bishop Dupanloup, the Duke d'Ayen, the Prince de Broglie, the Count Montalembert, the Count Falloux, the Count de Carné, the Count de Champagny, Viscount Lemercier, Viscount de Melun, Vicar-General Meignan, Prof. Perreyve, F. Gratry, Villemain, de Laprade, Augustine Cochin, Foisset, Leonce de Lavergne, Wallon, N. de Pontmartin, Lenormant, de Chaillard, Amedée Achard, Marmier, and de Haulleville. No doubt it would be difficult to find a greater array of talent. The "Correspondant" appears once a month, making six large volumes per year.

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I had been present at a meeting of journalists connected with the second general congress of the larger German states held at Frankfort in October, 1864. Twenty-seven representatives of the German press attended. Many resolutions were passed, but not one of them was carried out; nay, the third general congress of the larger German states never convened.

The journalists of the minor German states, also, met at Eisenach on May 22, 1864. Thirty-four members were present, and resolved to meet at stated periods in order to consult about the interests of the German press. A committee of delegates from seven journals was appointed, whose headquarters was to be at Frankfort-on-the-Main until the next general meeting in 1865. From the transaction of these assemblies, it has become evident that journalism in Germany is still in its infancy. The German journalists cannot compare with those of other countries. They form no class of their own; they lack self-respect and _esprit de corps_; in short, they are, without exception, in a lamentable state of dependence, for they are not wealthy nor do they receive becoming remuneration.

In Belgium the press is better organized; it is not oppressed by taxation, and this is the reason why Brussels alone can boast of sixty-seven periodicals. In Belgium 10 to 12 francs will procure a well-written daily paper, far surpassing our German journals.

The Belgian journalists whom I met at Malines despise the Catholic press in Germany. They reproach us with not doing our duty, and sneer at us for being duped by Jewish writers.

Journalism is an important profession, whose members should be conscientious and honorable men. The journalist addresses his language to an audience far more numerous than the professor's, and at present his influence is, so to say, unlimited; he reaches every part of educated society and sways public opinion. He is called to be the standard-bearer of liberty and truth. He must, therefore, implant sound principles in the popular mind, and, standing above the reach of paltry prejudice, unite in himself a high degree of intelligence and true devotion to the eternal laws of the Church. Such are the qualities which a journalist should possess. Without independence, dignity, and moral freedom he cannot do justice to the task imposed on him by God. "_Impavidum ferient ruinae_."

In England, America, and Belgium, the press wields a powerful influence; it has become sovereign, and is necessary to the nation's life. Science feels that unless it is diffused it is powerless, and that the school-room is too narrow a field; hence it is that men of learning make use of the press. In Catholic Germany, on the contrary, there are still districts where the journalist is looked upon with a jealous eye, and where it is deemed preferable to read papers written by Jews and literary gipsies.

"Let the Church be free, let her unfold fully her immense power, let her extend her influence to every grade and station of society, and things will assume a more promising aspect. Let the Church be again respected, let her word be heeded in the palace no less than in the hut, let homage be paid to her in the courts of justice and in institutions of learning, at the university no less than at the village school, and a new and golden era will dawn upon us." These words, first addressed to the German nation by its bishops, have been repeated again and again by the Catholic general conventions. The Church has a right to watch over popular education and schools, but, as Moufang says, she has an equally undeniable title to direct the education of those who are destined to be the leaders of the people. The Church is the mother of universities, but, alas! most of her daughters have forsaken her. Germany possesses eighteen Protestant universities, but she cannot boast {338} of an equal number of Catholic institutions. The Church has been robbed of her educational establishments in the same way in which she has been deprived of her monasteries and other possessions. Of the twenty-two German universities six only are Catholic. At the mixed universities Catholics are by no means on a footing of equality with Protestants, and a professor or a fellow who is a staunch Catholic will almost certainly fall into disgrace. The Protestant professors number ten to one; a great grievance, no doubt.

Even previous to 1848, far-sighted men were penetrated with the necessity of establishing a purely Catholic university. But since the emphatic approval of the scheme by the episcopal council of Würzburg, in 1848, the Catholic conventions have displayed a lively interest in the plan and have done all in their power to further its realization. At Regensburg (1849), Mayence (1851), Münster (1852), Vienna (1853), and Linz (1856), it received the fullest consideration. The convention of Linz recommended in the warmest terms the restoration of the university of Salzburg. This recommendation was repeated by the Salzburg convention in 1857, which requested the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Baron von Farnoczky, to undertake this affair, so important to Germany. At Salzburg the debates on this question were very stormy, because Innsbruck claimed the preference. In fact, the university of Innsbruck has been much better attended of late years.

But the most decisive steps in this regard were taken by the convention of Aix-la-Chapelle. Prof. Möller, of Louvain, delivered an eloquent discourse on the establishment of the Louvain university! In glowing words he represented to the assembly how, on the opening of the first course of lectures at Malines, in 1834, but eighty-six students followed the course, how the number of students increased in 1885 to 261 and the following year to 360, whilst at the present day the three state universities together number 800 students less than Louvain alone! He spoke of the generosity of the Belgians, of their yearly subscriptions, and of their collections, to which even the poorest contribute their mite. He reminded them that the Louvain professors are among the most distinguished for mental activity, and that they form men of principle, who honorably fulfil the designs of God upon them. "And is it impossible for the great Catholic German nation to do what four millions of Belgians have accomplished? Follow the example thus set you; German laymen, raise your voices, and shrink not before difficulties or obstacles. Impossible--the word is unworthy of Germans!" By this speech of the noble Möller the assembly was aroused, and its members were ready to undergo every sacrifice in order to realize their plans. On the following day, when the convention had met in secret session, Theising, of Warendorf, brought up the university question, and a debate followed, in which Baron von Andlaw, of Freiburg, Schulte, of Prague, Count Brandis, of Austria, Thissen, of Frankfort, Möller, of Louvain, and Heinrich, of Mayence, participated. It was at first proposed to appoint a committee, which was to exert itself energetically in favor of the project. Councillor Phillips, Baron Felix von Loe, Count Brandis, Baron Henry von Andlaw, Chevalier Joseph von Buss, and Baron Wilderich von Ketteler, were appointed members of the committee and their nomination received with applause. The motion also provided for the collection of the money necessary to establish the university. A wordy discourse followed, but no definite conclusion was arrived at, when Baron von Andlaw struck the right chord. "I will give $500 for the establishment of a Catholic university," he exclaimed. "I will give $500 more," cried Councillor Phillips of Vienna, "I subscribe $300," said {339} Zander, of Munich. Count Richemont, of Paris, next ascended the tribune, addressed a few enthusiastic words to the assembly, and subscribed $500. He was rapidly followed by Counts Spee, Loe, Schaasberg, Stolberg, Hoensbroich, Brandis, and many other nobles from the Rhenish provinces and Westphalia, who came forward with generous contributions. Prof. Schulte, of Prague, and Canon Moufang each subscribed a thousand florins. Dumortier, of Brussels, Prisac, of Aix-la-Chapelle, Martens, of Pelplin, Thymus, Bachem, and Pastor Becker also gave solid proofs of their interest in the enterprise. In a short time the subscriptions amounted to $7,000, and at Würzburg, in 1864, $30,000 had already been subscribed.

The scene at Aix-la-Chapelle was more imposing than any other that marked the sixteen general conventions of the Catholic societies in Germany. Joy and enthusiasm were depicted on every countenance, and hope filled every breast. The whole of Catholic Germany shared in these feelings; for there was now substantial reason for believing in the ultimate success of the university scheme. True, subscriptions did not continue to pour in so rapidly as at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the nobility of southern Germany, in particular, were very remiss in performing their duty. To collect $7,000,000 is no easy task, especially as the German clergy have been deprived of almost all their possessions, whilst the mass of the people show little zeal for the undertaking. Still the agitation of this question has been productive of great good to Catholicity in Germany, for it has inspired all of us with redoubled zeal and energy. The Catholics have begun to claim their just rights and to insist upon them till they are granted. As the Rhenish Westphalian nobility have demanded the restoration of the old Catholic university of Münster, so in Bavaria, where there is a purely Protestant university, the Catholics should urge the establishment of a Catholic one, for it is our first duty, as was remarked by Schulte at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1862, and by Moufang at Würzburg in 1864, to insist that universities which were founded by Catholics should retain their original character. In mixed universities, the Catholic professors will, henceforth, strain every nerve to secure true equality. Where this equality is trampled under foot, they will protest and demand their rights. The professors will be supported by the Catholic students, who were ably represented at Frankfort and Würzburg by Anschütz and Baron Dr. von Hertling. Do not the Catholics outnumber the Protestants in Germany? No one knew Germany and its tribes better than Frederick Böhmer, of Frankfort, and he always maintained that the Catholics can boast of as many able men as the Protestants, and that southern Germany, far from being inferior, surpasses the northern races in mental abilities. To carry out the programme laid down above will require our best energies, but we must, moreover, found a _new university_ a purely Catholic and free institution, untrammelled by state dictation, and entirely under the direction of the Church. To do this the bishops, the nobles, and the clergy must use their best endeavors; but the professors, too, must do their share, and not look on with cold indifference, as is the case with most of them. If the state encroaches unceasingly on the rights of the Church in the realms of science, and if its tyranny persistently oppresses the most able votaries of science because they are Catholics, why should we not rely on ourselves, and seek strength in union? There is neither truce nor rest for us until we are not only equal but superior to our opponents in every branch of science.

Since its organization, two years ago, the university committee has done all in its power to promote the good cause. One of the most zealous members is the young Prince Charles, of {340} Löwenstein-Werthheim, who has been substituted for the deceased Count Brandis.

Canon Moufang, of Mayence, spoke on the university question at Würzburg in 1864. Of all the members of the convention he was best fitted to do justice to the subject. Since 1848 Dr. Moufang has been present at almost every one of the sixteen general conventions, and whatever good has been accomplished by them he has promoted and encouraged. Connected with most of the Catholic movements of our age, he understands the feelings of his Catholic countrymen and knows how to give forcible and opportune expression to them; at times his words are irresistible, like the mountain torrent. At Munich he delivered a discourse on the Holy Father and his difficulties; in Aix-la-Chapelle he thundered against the want of principle and of true manliness which distinguishes our times; at Frankfort he ridiculed anti-Catholic prejudices, and at Würzburg he convinced his hearers of the necessity of a Catholic university. But the school question, also, and the relations between capital and labor, he has lately treated in an admirable manner. "_Il faut être de son temps_," is Moufang's motto, and hence he is one of the representative men of public opinion in Catholic Germany, and when he combats the enemies of the Church the advantage is always on his side. On the nineteenth of December, 1864, Dr. Moufang celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination. Hundreds of priests from the dioceses of Mayence, Limburg, and Freiburg were present on this solemn occasion, which they will cherish for ever in their memory. Dr. Moufang's name immediately suggests that of Canon Heinrich. They are a "_par nobile fratrum_" in literature as well as in public life, emulating the example of Raess and Weiss and of Augustus and Peter Reichensperger. At the age of thirty, after promoting the organization of the first general convention at Mayence, Dr. Heinrich was appointed secretary of the national council held at Würzburg in 1848. Since 1848 he distinguished himself at almost all the general conventions by his activity and the zeal he displayed in furthering every Catholic enterprise. He is equally active in the committees, in the secret and in the open sessions. He is not only a favorite speaker, but also a skilful controversialist and a journalist of no mean ability. He published the best reply to Renan, and as a theologian and jurist he is able to cope with any adversary.

Prof. Haffner is the worthy colleague of Moufang and Heinrich. He cultivates the science which Aristotle and Plato pronounced the sublimest of all sciences--philosophy. But Haffner is a philosopher who is intelligible even to ordinary mortals; he makes a practical use of his knowledge, and is a favorite at the Rhenish clubs. In fact, there is no reason why he should not be so. His speeches are instructive, sublime in conception, and well written. The details are well arranged and he has due regard for literary perspective. His incomparable humor is unmixed with biting sarcasm, and his figures are exquisitely beautiful. Haffner's speeches are perfect gems. Long may you live, noble son of Suabia!

The Mayence delegates form an attractive group, and they all work right earnestly for the success of the conventions. Beside those already noticed, I shall mention Dr. Hirschel, canon of the cathedral, who presided at the first general meeting of the Christian art unions at Cologne in 1856; Monsignore Count Max von Galen, who delivered an elegant discourse on the Blessed Virgin at Aix-la-Chapelle; Professors Holzammer and Hundhausen, profound scholars; Frederic Schneidier, president of the young men's associations in the diocese of Mayence; and Falk, president of the social clubs or casinos.

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Councillor Phillips, of Vienna, is generally chosen chairman of the section of science and the press. Richly does he deserve this distinction, for Phillips is an ornament to German literature, and his work on canon law is a "_monumentum aere perennius_" which will be numbered among the German classics. On the Catholic press, too, Phillips has conferred a great benefit, for, in conjunction with Jareke and Joseph von Görres, he founded the "Historico-Political Journal," of Munich, which he edited for a long time, assisted by Guido Görres. Being sent as a delegate to the Frankfort Parliament, Phillips was numbered among the men of "the stone house;" that is to say, he belonged to the Catholic party, and became the associate of Döllinger, Lasaulx, Sepp, Förser, Geritz, Dieringer, Von Bally, and others who took an active part in the debate on the relations between church and state. Since 1862 Phillips has been chairman of the committee on the establishment of the Catholic university. The speeches of the learned professor were remarkable for the force of their arguments and the clearness of their ideas. His committee reports are to the point, and he presides with tact and ability.

Privy Councillor Ringseis delivered telling speeches at Aix-la-Chapelle and Munich; at Frankfort and Würzburg he did not make his appearance, being already too much bowed down by age. Ringseis was born in 1785. In the literary world he occupies a prominent position; but he has always been more successful as an orator than as a writer. His appearance is inspiring, his words enthusiastic. The simplicity of his heart, his pleasing cordiality, and the unchanging freshness of his intellect, endear him to all with whom he comes in contact; yet he is one of the men who have bravely weathered all the storms of our age. He resembles an oak that proudly withstands every hurricane.

Baron von Moy was president of the Würzburg convention. From 1832 to 1837 he lectured on constitutional and international laws, and from 1837 he was for ten years professor at Munich, at a time when the fame of the Munich university attracted hundreds of young men to the Bavarian capital, when all Germany knew that there was a great Catholic university at Munich, and when, in the words of Moufang, "Görres, Ringseis, Döllinger, Möhler, Slee, Phillips, Moy, Windischmann, and their colleagues, formed the central group of Catholic Munich." Baron von Moy presided at Würzburg with much tact and success. Age has already made its inroads, but his voice is still rich and agreeable. He is untainted by the ungenial formality of our German professors. In him solid piety is coupled with affability, cordiality, and benevolence, and adorned by true Catholic cheerfulness.

The Catholic professors, on the whole, have taken little interest in these conventions, because the majority of them are unacquainted with real life. There are exceptions, however, such as those mentioned above. Schulte, of Prague, also, has displayed a laudable zeal in every convention until 1862. He favors true progress, and earnestly wishes the Catholics not only to rival but surpass the Protestants in every respect. Sometimes he is a little too exacting in his demands; his expressions are rather strong, and his strictures on abuses are not sufficiently tempered with moderation. Schulte is no visionary, for he is thoroughly acquainted with the state of the Church, but he is carried away by a burning zeal, a kind of holy anger. Hermann Müller, professor at the Würzburg university, a jurist and philologer, and formerly well known as a journalist, was the most handsome member of the Würzburg convention, and his magnificent beard attracted universal attention. The university was likewise represented by Professors Contzen and Ludwig and by Dr. Wirsing. Long continued study has left its traces on the features of Prof. Vering, of Heidelberg, but it has not {342} hardened his heart against the claims of the Catholic cause.

At Würzburg sixty-three professors and authors signed an address and sent it to the Holy Father. In it they declare their readiness to submit unconditionally to the decision of the Holy See regarding the meeting of the German _literati_. I cannot refrain from saying a few words on this meeting, especially as it may be said to have originated in the general conventions. In fact, the sensation caused by the Würzburg meeting has by no means subsided. I have lying before me Döllinger's "Discourse on the Past and Present of Catholic Theology," and criticisms on it by the Mayence "Katholik," the Paris "Monde," and the "Civiltà Cattolica;" also Prof. Hergenröther's speech at Würzburg on meetings of European scholars, the pamphlet of Prof. Michelis, of Braunsberg, and a cutting reply in the November number of "Der Katholik." To these I may add the papal brief to the Archbishop of Munich (December 21, 1863), the despatch of Cardinal Antonelli to the nuncio at Munich (July 5, 1864), and the letter of the Holy Father to Professors Hergenröther and Denzinger, dated October 20, 1864. I fear the matter will take a disagreeable turn, and that our learned professors will bring themselves into difficulty. No doubt there is much truth in Hergenröther's reflections on his colleagues: "All our learned men are not as prudent as they should be; they have not sufficient tact, and are wanting in knowledge of the actual state of things; many a professor in his sanctum acquires ideas wholly at variance with real life."

The Catholic general conventions will not alter their character in order to busy themselves with purely scientific concerns; in short, it cannot become a congress of learned men, nor a substitute for such a congress. Fully persuaded of this fact, Prof. Denzinger declared, in the most explicit terms, that the meeting of the German _literati_ was independent of the sixteenth general convention, which was nowise responsible for its doings.

Moreover, it is a fact to be borne in mind, that the Holy See has not forbidden such meetings, that the German bishops do not wish them to be interfered with, and that no Catholic party, as Michelis says, has intrigued to prevent them.

If, in spite of all this, the matter does not prosper, the learned men alone are to blame. It seems to be extremely difficult to prevent dissensions among men who devote themselves to different branches of science, to unite in the bonds of friendship and concord the disciples of the speculative, the historical, and the practical sciences. If I belonged to the class of men of which I am speaking, I would express my opinions more fully. Why did not the illustrious theologians of Tübingen deign to come to Munich in 1863? Why is there so slim an attendance of German professors at the Catholic congresses? Why do the representatives of sciences so intimately connected remain estranged from each other? A closer union would bring about renewed activity, prejudices would be dispelled, the jealous reserve with which we now meet on every side would give way to a more healthy state of things, and youthful genius would be encouraged by the conviction that they are stayed and supported by men of experience and acknowledged merit.

Will the congress of 1863 remain a fragment, as the general meeting of the art unions in 1857? We hope not. The best rejoinder to all that has been said on such meetings would be a general European congress of all learned Catholics, at Brussels, Greneva, or Frankfort--attended by Döllinger, Phillips, and Alzog, as the representatives of Germany; by Perin, Delcour, and de Ram; by Newman, Oakley, Acton, and Robertson; by Meignan, Montalembert, and Rio, and by the Italians Nardi, Cantu, and Casoni. The union between the civilized nations of Europe is becoming {343} closer day by day; will our scholars alone remain stationary and isolated? If they follow this course, the day of retribution will soon arrive.

Foremost among the promoters of scientific progress, during the second half of the nineteenth century, stands a Catholic prince, King Maximilian II. of Bavaria. History tells of few princes who have so liberally patronized men of science. With royal munificence he has founded and endowed institutions of learning and fostered scientific enterprise. He will always be praised as one of the most generous patrons of German science, and in the history of literature and science will occupy an honorable position. Unfortunately, however, the ideas of the noble prince were not realized by the men he protected. He lived to be sorely disappointed, and to discover that he had bestowed his benefits on men unworthy of his confidence. Döllinger, without mentioning the king's mistakes, has done full justice to his merits. Döllinger himself holds a princely rank in the European republic of letters. With skilful hand he is rearing the immense edifice of a universal Church history. The corner-stone is already laid and the foundation completed. May God give life and vigor to the architect, that he may finish his vast undertaking. Since his famous lectures at the Odeon at Munich, delivered before a mixed audience in April, 1861, Döllinger has fixed the attention of men holding the most contrary opinions both in and out of the Church. Of late, many have been disappointed in Döllinger, though without any reason; they have given a false meaning to his words--misinterpreted his intentions. True, he speaks with a boldness to which all cannot immediately accustom themselves, for he is a thorough enemy of all mental reservation in theology. He stands on an eminence, surveying not only our own times but the whole extent of sacred and profane history, and combines a correct estimate of the necessities of the age with a fervent love of Christ and his Church.

Hergenröther, our revered professor, is in many respects the scientific complement of Döllinger. If Döllinger at times goes too far, Hergenröther knows how to explain, to correct, and to limit his expressions; this he has done several times of late. Hergenröther is a man of great learning, acquired by continued mental activity; but he is likewise well acquainted with the ideas of the present age. His speech at the Würzburg convention was a masterpiece, full of clear and well-defined ideas.

His most active colleague in the Würzburg committee was Professor Hettinger. He is perhaps the most eminent of living controversialists. He teaches apologetics, which forms the transition from philosophy to theology. Hettinger takes a large and philosophical, but at the same time truly Christian and Catholic, view of the world. Every grand and beautiful idea, both ancient and modern, he has made his own; he has analyzed every philosophical system, separating truth from falsehood, and has gathered every sound principle scattered over the wide range of philosophical literature. His controversial works deserve to be ranked among the classics of the nineteenth century. His discourses are listened to with pleasure, whether he speaks from the pulpit, the professor's desk, or the tribune. At Frankfort and Würzburg he spoke in a masterly style.

Denzinger presided at the Würzburg conference which sent an address to the Holy Father. He is a deep theologian, well versed in all philosophical systems. His mind is admirably trained, his character settled and determined, and in learning, notwithstanding the frailty of his body, he has attained an eminence to which few can aspire. Self-possessed in debate, sure and cautious in his remarks, a deep thinker, he exhorted all to forbearance, and gave universal satisfaction.

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The Würzburg professors do honor to every assembly of scholars and to every Catholic convention.

Abbot Haneberg, of Munich, perhaps the most venerable of our German monks, bishop elect of Treves, a linguist who speaks fifteen languages, a first-rate teacher, who will ever be remembered by his many disciples as one of the best pulpit orators in Germany, was a zealous advocate of the Munich congress of literati. The circular was signed by Haneberg, Döllinger, and Prof. Alzog, of Freiburg. Alzog's manual of ecclesiastical history is the text-book, not only in Hildesheim and Freiburg, but in almost every seminary in Europe. The work resembles one of the beautiful mosaics so much admired in St. Peter's at Rome, and has been of great use. Alzog was present at the Frankfort conventions.

Prof. Reusch, of Bonn, is one of our best commentators. He has rendered the Catholics of Germany a great service in translating the works of the English cardinal, for Wiseman's writings are read by the whole Church. About a hundred years ago all Germany perused the productions of the English free-thinking deists, Shaftesbury, Locke, Morgan, Woolston, and Toland; at present all read the works of Wiseman, Faber, Newman, Marshall, Dalgairn, and Manning. Toward the close of the last century, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, Diderot, and the other infamous encyclopaedists furnished the educated portion of Germany with intellectual food; now we eagerly study the writings of Dupanloup, Montalembert, L. Veuillot, Ségur, F. Gratry, and Nicolas. True, Renan too and "Le Maudit" have their admirers, but the admirable replies of Dupanloup, Felix, Freppel, Lasserre, Veuillot, Ségur, Pressensé, Parisis, Scherer, Coquerel, Lamy, and Nicolas, have likewise found an extensive circle of readers. Catholic controversy has never flourished more than at present, when hundreds of able writers plead the cause of Christ and of his vicar on earth.

Professor Vosen, of Cologne, is another eminent controversialist; he is a skilful debater, and possesses a thorough knowledge of parliamentary rules and of the social condition of Germany. His utterance is rapid, but he uses no superfluous verbiage, and every sentence is clear and well brought out.

Prof. Reinkens, of Breslau, and Floss, of Bonn, were members of the executive committee at the Munich convention of scholars. Not long ago he dedicated to us his biography of "Hilary of Poitiers," a work that may be classed with Möhler's "Athanasius."

Prof. Reischl, of Regensburg, repeatedly a member of different committees at the general conventions, and an excellent teacher, whose memory will ever be cherished by his students, is on the point of finishing, in the course of the present year, his laborious translation of the Holy Scriptures. For twelve years he has labored unceasingly, and the work is the golden fruit of his labors, and will outlive many generations. We may justly place Reischl's translation of the Bible among our Catholic classics, such as Möhler's "Symbolism," Döllinger's "Paganism and Judaism," Hefele's "History of the Councils," Phillips' "Canon Law," Hettinger's "Apologetics," Amberger's "Pastoral Theology," Dieringer's "Book of Epistles," Lasaulx's "Philosophy of the Fine Arts," Stöckl's "Philosophy of the Middle Ages," Kleutgen's "Theology of the Past," "The Legends of Alban Stolz," etc. Most of these have appeared since 1848, or rather within the last twelve years, and are the precursors of a great Catholic literary period, for which every preparation seems to be already made. That our writers are improving in beauty of style no observer can fail to notice; as a proof, I need only mention the names of Haffner, Molitor, Redwitz, and Hahn-Hahn. I cannot pass unnoticed {345} Stolberg's "History of the Church," Danberger's "History of the Middle Ages," Gfrörer's great work on Gregory VII. and his times, and the works of Frederick von Hurter. "Sepp's Jerusalem," also, is a work of undoubted merit. Professor Sepp delivered some brilliant speeches at the first Catholic general conventions. His last book is a telling refutation of Renan and other modern infidels who deny the divinity of Christ, and deserves to be ranked with the writings of Heinrich, Haneberg, Deutinger, S. Brunner, Wriesinger, Michelis, Daumer, and Hahn-Hahn on the same subject.

Michelis, of Braunsberg, shows some of Tertullian's violence; nay, sometimes he becomes personal in debate, owing to his passionate temper and his somewhat peevish character. These qualities are coupled with an ardent love of his religion and his country, and manly honor and straightforwardness. His speech at Frankfort, in 1862, was well-timed and called forth immense enthusiasm. Michelis bears a close resemblance to Prof. Remirding, of Fulda, who has lately acquired a great reputation as a dogmatic theologian. Remirding has for a long time been a teacher in England, and is thoroughly acquainted with English affairs. To him we may apply the adage: "Still waters run deep." He is silent, uncommunicative, and fond of thought. His bright eyes beam with intelligence, gentleness, and benevolence. Prof. Janssen held his maiden speech at the convention of Frankfort, in 1863; it was very successful. Janssen is a disciple of Böhmer, and he, as well as Ficker, of Innsbruck, and Arnold, of Marburg, is a worthy successor of that great historian. He is well fitted to write a satisfactory history of Germany, for Giesebrecht's "History of the German Emperors" fails to do justice to the Church during the middle ages. There is no longer any lack of Catholic historians in Germany, and the labors of Protestant writers have rendered the task easy for them. Among our Catholic historians I shall mention Onno Klopp, of Hanover; Hoefler, of Prague; Bader, Huber, Hergenröther, of Würzburg; Marx, of Treves; Dudik, Gindely, Kampfschulte, of Bonn; Niehus, Rump, and Hülskamp, of Münster; C. Will, of Nuremberg; Lämmer, of Breslau, who has lately been appointed professor of theology; Remkens, of Breslau; Alexander Kaufmann, of Werthheim; Cornelius, Friedrich, and Pichlcr, of Munich; Roth von Schreckenstein, Watterich, Dominicus, Ossenbeck, Ennen, Remling, Junckmann, Kiesel, Bumüller, Weiss, Kerker, and Alberdingk-Thijm.

These gentlemen should try to meet very often, for by seeing ourselves reflected in others we learn to know ourselves. Böhmer, Pertz, Chmel, and Theiner have laid the foundations of historical research; on their disciples devolves the task of continuing the building, and of completing it according to the intentions of their masters.

My subject is carrying me away, and I am passing the limits I had marked for myself. How many other names connected with the Munich reunion of scholars, or the last Catholic congress, should I notice in order to do justice to all! Professors Reithmayer, Reitter, and Stadlbauer, of Munich; Mayer, of Würzburg; the learned Benedictines, Rupert Mettermüller, of Metten, Gallus Morel, of Einsiedeln, Boniface Gams, of Munich; Professors Schegg, of Freising, Hähnlein, of Würzburg; Zobl, of Brixen, Uhrig and Schmid, of Dillingen, Engermann, of Regensburg, Scheeben, of Cologne, Oischinger and Strodl, of Munich, Hagemann, of Hildesheim, Pfahler, of Eichstadt, Kraus, of Regensburg, Brandner and Schoepf, of Salzburg, Nirschl and Greil, of Passau; among our rising scholars, Messrs. Constantine von Schaetzler, of Freiburg, Langen, of Bonn, Wongerath, Silbernagel, Friedrich, Pichler, and Wirthmüller, of Munich, Hitz, Kaiser, Kagerer, J. {346} M. Schneider, J. Danziger, Bach, H. Hayd, Pfeifer, Kaufmann, of Munich, and Thinnel, of Neisse; among the clergy, Dr. Westermayer, a celebrated preacher; Schmid, of Amberg, Dr. Gmelch, of Lichtenstein, Dr. Clos, of Feldaffing, Dr. Zinler, of Gablingen, Wick, of Breslau, Dr. Zailler; and finally, Canons Rampf and Herb, of Munich, W. Mayer, of Regensburg, Düx, of Würzburg, Freund, of Passau, Werner, of St. Pölten, Provost Ernst, of Eichstädt, Canon Eberhard, of Regensburg, Lierheimer, of Munich, and a host of others.

Truly Providence has blessed Germany with many great intellects, and a glorious period seems to have begun for Catholic literature. Our leading men should be animated with a fervent love of their faith, and true patriotism; thus they will be enabled to take a truly Christian view of the world.

I cannot refrain from saying a few words on the representatives of the German press.

Dr. Ernest Zander, of Munich, is the spokesman of the German journalists at the general conventions.

Zander has now been connected for twenty-seven years with the press, but he is still quite hearty and ready to do battle, and the subscribers of "Der Volksbote" read his spicy articles with undiminished pleasure.

Although a poor speaker, his appearance is always greeted with applause, and at the close of his remarks there is no end of cheering.

He calls things by their proper names, spares nobody, and has an inexhaustible fund of wit and humor.

His numerous decorations, his bushy eyebrows, his twinkling eyes, and his sarcastic smile, make his remarks doubly interesting.

On matters connected with the Catholic press, there are no authorities more reliable than Zander and Jörg, of Munich, Sausen, of Mayence, and Sebastian Brunner, of Vienna.

J. B. von Pfeilschifter, of Darmstadt, is older than the gentlemen above mentioned; in fact, he is the oldest Catholic journalist in Germany.

Pfeilschifter, says Maurice Brühl, combines varied learning and extensive reading with the experience of many years.

Since 1815 he has been actively engaged as a journalist, and for a long time he was the only champion of lawful authority and political order, and for this reason he was continually scoffed at and slandered by his revolutionary colleagues. Zander has a worthy rival in Bachem, of Cologne. Properly speaking, Bachem is a publisher, but he is likewise a very able editor. At the conventions he is the most business-like representative of the press, and seems to know more about journalism than the editors. In 1865 Bachem's paper will probably number 6,000 subscribers, which is a very respectable circulation. His journal is one of the most influential Rhenish papers, and very ably edited. If papers of equal merit were published at Mayence, Carlsruhe, Stuttgart, Augsburg, Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna, Prague, Breslau, and Münster, our political press would satisfy every reasonable demand.

Francis Hülskamp, of Münster, is one of the youngest among our German journalists, but he has outstripped many older men, for he was the first to give a decisive impetus to the Catholic press. Three years ago Hülskamp and his friend, Hermann Rump, founded the "Literary Index." Now, in December, 1864, the "Index" can boast of 6,000 subscribers and 30,000 readers. All the other German literary papers together, Protestant as well as Catholic, do not equal the "Index" in circulation. Success like this is unheard of in Germany, and proves that for the Catholics the time of inaction is past. Hülskamp is not only a critic, but also well-versed in philology, exegesis, and ecclesiastical history. In poetry, too, he has made some creditable essays, and at Frankfort, in 1863, he proved conclusively that he is a promising {347} speaker. Long may this energetic son of Westphalia's red soil live and flourish!

Among the most regular members of the Catholic conventions is Dr. Louis Lang, of Munich, who has distinguished himself by his ability as secretary. The Catholic press also owes him a debt of gratitude. He has greatly enlarged and improved the Munich "Sonntagsblatt" and secured for it the services of the best writers in Germany, succeeding, by these means, in making it rival the "Heimgarten" and the "Sonntagsfreude." The "Josephsblatt," a monthly published by Lang, has already a circulation of 40,000 subscribers, and bids fair to number 100,000 by the end of 1865. Our illustrated papers, too, have improved wonderfully since 1862; therefore let us not despair, but trust in God.

At our Catholic conventions there were no meetings of journalists exclusively. But there were many complaints of the inefficiency of the press, and the journalists were severely blamed. Nor is the press so numerously represented as at Malines, and the journalists present are not so independent as the members of the Belgian, English, and French press, who are fully conscious of the importance of their position.

Among the journalists whose acquaintance I formed at the Catholic conventions, the most distinguished are Dr. Max Huttler, of Augsburg, a man who has the welfare of the Catholic press deeply at heart; Hoyssack, of Vienna, Dr. Krebs, of Cologne, Dr. Stumpf, of Coblentz, Hermann Kuhn, of Berlin, Daumer, of Würzburg, Planer, of Landshut, Dr. Frankl, of Gran in Hungary, Dr. von Mayer, of Hungary, Aichinger, of Pondorf, Riedinger and Hällmayer, of Spires, Stamminger, the enterprising editor of the "Chilianeum" at Würzburg, Thüren, of Cologne, and a number of others.

It is but proper to give at least a passing notice to the latest offspring of the Catholic conventions, the "Society for the Publication of Catholic Pamphlets." It was founded at Würzburg, but the seat of the executive committee is at Frankfort. On motion of Heinrich and Thissen, of Frankfort, it was recommend by the Catholic convention at Würzburg. Previous to the Würzburg convention, Thissen had already made some attempts at Frankfort.

The scheme was well received in Germany. Already the number of subscribers amounts to 2,000 and at the end of 1865 it will probably reach 25,000. Canon Thissen has been one of the leading spirits at every convention which he attended. He has an artful way of suggesting ideas and gaining for them the favor of the assembly; to carry them out, however, he needs the help of others. A thorough master of parliamentary tactics, he is a capital manager, and in debate he may safely trust to the inspiration of the moment. His brother, A. Thissen, of Aix-la-Chapelle, is well suited to be the secretary of our conventions.

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From The Month.

FALLING STARS.

(FROM THE GERMAN.)

Oh, know'st thou what betideth When from the heavens afar. Like fiery arrow, glideth An earthward-falling star?

Yon glorious myriads, streaming Their quiet influence down, Are little angels gleaming Like jewels in a crown.

Untiring, never sleeping, God's sentinels they stand; Where sounds of joy and weeping Rise up on every hand.

If darkling here and dreary, One patient cheek grow pale; If in the conflict weary One trusting spirit fail;

If to the throne ascendeth One supplicating cry,-- Then heavenly mercy sendeth An angel from on high.

Soft to the chamber stealing, It beams in radiance mild. And rocks each troubled feeling To slumber like a child.

This, this is what betideth When from the heavens afar. Like fiery arrow, glideth An earthward-falling star.

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From Once a Week.

A BUNDLE OF CHRISTMAS CAROLS.

Carols, as the name implies, are joyous songs for festive occasions, at one period accompanied with dancing. In an old vocabulary of A.D. 1440, _Caral_ is defined as _A Songe;_ in John Palsgrave's work of A.D. 1530, as _Chanson de Noël;_whilst in Anglo-Saxon times the word appears to have been rendered _Kyrriole,_ a chanting at the Nativity. The earliest carol in English, known under that name, is the production of Dame Berners, prioress of St Alban's in the fourteenth century, entitled _A Carolle of Huntynge_. This is printed on the last leaf of Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Christmas carols, A.D. 1521, and the first verse modernized runs thus:

"As I came by a green forest side, I met with a forester that bade me abide, Whey go bet, hey go bet, hey go how. We shall have sport and game enow."

Milton uses the word carol to express a devotional hymn:

"A quire Of squadron'd angels hear his carol sang."

And that distinguished light of the English Church, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, speaks of the angels' song on the morning of the Nativity as the first Christmas carol: "As soon as these blessed choristers had sung their Christmas carol, and taught the Church a hymn to put into her offices for ever," etc.

According to Durandus, it was customary in early days for bishops to sing with their clergy in the episcopal houses on the feast of the Nativity. _"In Natali praelati cum suis clericis ludant, vel in domibus episcopalibus."_ These merry ecclesiastics sung undoubtedly Christmas carols.

But carols, like everything else, must be divided into two sorts, religious and secular--the carols "in prayse of Christe" and the merry songs for the festive board or fireside. These may be broken up into further varieties, thus:

RELIGIOUS Scriptural, Legendary, Lullaby.

SECULAR Convivial or festive. Wassail, Boar's head, In praise of holly and ivy.

Of the variety called _Legendary_, I propose now to speak. These are, as a rule, the most popular of all carols, deriving mainly, as I said before, their origin, and many of their expressions, from the ancient mysteries. In the old plays songs are frequently introduced which resemble, in a very striking manner, what are commonly called carols. The following song of the shepherds occurs in one of the Coventry pageants:

"As I rode out this endenes [Footnote 50] night, Of three Jolly shepherds I saw a sight,' And all about their fold a star shone bright; They sang terli, terlow, So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow."

[Footnote 50: Last]

The last lines actually form the chorus of one of the carols in the fifteenth-century manuscript formerly in the possession of Mr. Wright:

"About the field they piped full right, Even about the midst of the night; Adown from heaven they saw come a light, Tyrle, tyrle, So merrily the shepherds began to blow."

Again, in _Ludus Coventriae_:

"Joy to God that sitteth in heaven, And peace to man on earth ground; A child is born beneath the levyn, Through him many folk should be unbound."

A sixteenth-century carol commences:

"Salvation overflows the land. Wherefore all faithful thus may sing, Glory to God most high And peace on the earth continually, And onto men rejoicing."

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In the Coventry Plays again we find:

"Of a maid a child should be born, On a tree he should be torn, Deliver folks that are forlorn."

A genuine carol of the sixteenth century supplies us with the following:

"Jesu, of a maid thou wouldst be born. To save mankind that was forlorn, And all for our sins."

And one of the reign of Henry VI.:

"Thy sweet Son that thou hast borne, To save mankind that was forlorn. His head is wreathed in a thorn. His blissful body is all to-torn."

The "Cherry-Tree Carol," formerly a great favorite throughout England, recollections of which yet linger amongst the country-folk, is in many instances a literal copy from the Coventry Mysteries. I give the popular version of the "Cherry-Tree Carol:"

"Joseph was an old man. And an old man was he. When he wedded Mary In the laud of Galilee.

"Joseph and Mary Walked through an orchard good. Where were cherries and berries As red as any blood.

* * * * *

"O then bespake Mary With words both meek and mild, 'Gather me some cherries, Joseph, They ran so in my mind.'"

St. Joseph refuses "with words most unkind" to grant her request, apparently unaware that his spouse is about to become the mother of the Son of God. The unborn Saviour, however, directs the Blessed Virgin to

"'Go to the tree, Mary, And it shall bow to thee, And the highest branch of all Shall bow down to Mary's knee.'

* * * * *

"Then bowed down the highest tree Unto his mother's hand: Then she cried. 'See, Joseph. I have cherries at command.'

"O eat your cherries, Mary, O eat your cherries now, O eat your cherries, Mary, That grow upon the bough.'"

Another version gives the following reply of S. Joseph:

"O then bespake Joseph. 'I have done Mary wrong. But cheer up, my dearest. And be not cast down.'"

I give a portion of the rest of the carol, some of the verses being remarkably touching and beautiful:

"As Joseph was a-walking, He heard an angel sing, 'This night shall be born Our Heavenly King.

"He neither shall be born In honsen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise. But in an ox's stall.

"He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But all in fair linen As were babies all.

"He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in a wooden cradle. That rocks on the mould.

"He neither shall be christened In white wine nor in red. But with the spring water With which we were christened.'"

In the fifteenth pageant of the Coventry Mysteries the following lines occur:

"_Mary_, Ah, my sweet husband, would you tell to me What tree is yon, standing on yon hill?

"_Joseph_, Forsooth. Mary, it is yclept a cherry tree. In time of year you might feed you thereon your fill.

"_Mar._ Turn again, husband, and behold yon tree. How that it bloometh now so sweetly.

"_Jos._ Come on, Mary, that we were a yon city. Or else we may be blamed, I tell you lightly.

"_Mar._ Now, my spouse, I pray you to behold How the cherries (are) grown upon yon tree; For to have thereof right fain I would. And it please you to labor so much for me.

"_Jos._ Your desire to fulfil I shall assay sekerly, How to pluck you of these cherries, it is a work wild. For the tree is so high, It would not be lightly (easy).

* * * * *

"_Mar._ Now, good Lord, I pray thee, grant me this boon, To have of these cherries, and it be your will; Now I thank God this tree boweiht to me down, I may now gather enow, and eat my fill.

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"_Jos._ Now I know well, I have offended my God in trinity. Speaking to my spouse these unkind words. For now I believe well it may none other be, But that my spouse beareth the King's Son of Bliss."

It is interesting to note the way in which the more modern composition retains all the incidents and traditions of the mediaeval mystery. Our popular carol speaks of St. Joseph as _an old man, and an old man was he,_ while the mystery represents him as saying (p. x.), _I am an old man, and I am so aged and so old._The tree is the same, there is the same desire of the Virgin Mother to taste the fruit, the same refusal and bitter retort of her husband, the bowing-down of the tree, and the regret of St. Joseph for his unkindness. Mr. Hone was not ashamed to say of the "Cherry-Tree Carol:" "The admiration of my earliest days for some lines in it still remains, nor can I help thinking that the reader will see somewhat of cause for it."

The following example is still given on almost every broadside annually printed: it is called "The Three Ships." I ought perhaps first to state that the Three Ships are supposed to signify the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation being, as the _Speculum Vitae Christi_ hath it, "the high work of all the Holy Trinity, though it be that only the Person of the Son was incarnate and became man:"

"I saw three ships come sailing in, On Christmas day, on Christmas day: I saw three ships come sailing in On Christmas day in the morning.

"And what was in those ships all three, On Christmas day? etc., And what was in, etc., On Christmas day in the morning?

"Our Saviour Christ and our Lady, etc.. On Christmas day in the morning. Pray whither sailed those ships all three? etc., On Christmas day in the morning.

"O, they sailed into Bethlehem, etc.. On Christmas day in the morning; And all the bells on earth shall ring, etc., On Christmas day in the morning.

"And all the angels in heaven shall sing, etc, On Christmas day In the morning. And all the souls on earth shall sing, etc., On Christmas day in the morning.

"Then let us all rejoice amain, etc.. On Christmas day in the morning."

Another rude and rather amusing version is sometimes given of this carol, called "The Sunny Bank:"

"As I sat on a sunny bank, A sunny bank, a sunny bank. As I sat on a sunny bank, On Christmas day in the morning,

"I spied three ships come sailing by, etc.. On Christmas day, etc.;

"And who should be with those three ships? On Christmas day, etc.,

"But Joseph and his fair lady, etc., On Christmas day, etc.

"Oh, he did whistle, and she did sing, And all the bells on earth did ring. For joy that our Saviour they did bring On Christmas day in the morning."

An old Dutch carol, given by Hoffman, commences:

"There comes a vessel laden. And on its highest gunwale Mary holds the rudder, The angel steers it on."

And thus explains the mission of the ship:

"In one unbroken course There comes that ship to land: It brings to us rich gifts, Forgiveness is sent to us."

This translation is taken from Mr. Sandys' book on "Christmas-tide." About the sixteenth century a similar carol was sung at Yule, which is given by Ritson:

"There comes a ship far sailing then, Saint Michael was the steersman; Saint John sat in the horn: Our Lord harped, our Lady sang, And all the bells of heaven they rang On Christ's Sunday at morn."

Another specimen I take from a Birmingham collection; it is called "The Seven Virgins." This is given also by Mr. Sylvester from "the original old broadside." It is singular, however, that his old copy should include a line which he confesses to be a "modern interpolation!"

"All under the leaves, and the leaves of life, I met with virgins seven. And one of them was Mary mild. Our Lord's mother in heaven. O, what are you seeking, you seven pretty maids. All under the leaves of life?"

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'We're seeking for no leaves, Thomas, But for a friend of thine. We're seeking for sweet Jesus Christ, To be our heavenly guide.' 'Go down, go down to yonder town, And sit in the gallery, And there you'll see sweet Jesus Christ Nailed to a yew tree.' And they went down to yonder town As fast as foot could fall, And many a bitter and grievous tear From our Lady's eyes did fall. 'O, peace, mother, O, peace, mother, Your weeping doth me grieve, I must suffer this, he said. For Adam and for Eve.

* * * * *

'O mother, take you John Evangelist To be your favorite son, And he will comfort you sometimes. Mother, as I have done.'

* * * * *

"Then he laid his head on his right shoulder. Seeing death it struck him nigh, 'The Holy Ghost be with your soul, I die, mother. I die.'"

Many of my readers will recollect the famous carol of "The Seven Joys," still croaked out in the streets of London and elsewhere about Christmas time. Very similar carols to this exist of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one of which I select from Mr. Wright's manuscript. I have, as in all other cases, modernized the orthography:

OF THE FIVE JOYS OF OUR LADY.

* * * * *

"The first Joy that came to thee Was when the angel greeted thee. And said, 'Mary, full of charity, Ave, plena gratia.' The second joy that was full good When God's Son took flesh and blood. Without sorrow and changing of mood, 'Enixa es puerpera.' The third joy was full of might, When God's Son on rood was put. Dead and buried, and laid in sight, 'Surrexit die tertia.' The fourth joy was on Holy Thursday, When God to heaven took his way, God and man withouten nay. 'Ascendit supra sidera.' The fifth joy is for to come. At the dreadful day of doom, When he shall deem us all and some 'Ad coeli palatia.'"

* * * * *

The following carol for St. Stephen's day is from a manuscript of the time of King Henry VI. The reader will be amused to find the great proto-martyr here introduced as a servant of King Herod, and intrusted with the task of bringing in the boar's head, a famous dish, and "the first mess" at Christmas and other high festivals. There was evidently some honor attached to this office, for Holinshed tells us that King Henry II., in 1170, on the day of his son's coronation, served him as sewer, bringing up the boar's head, _according to the manner_; and in 1607, at St. John's College, Oxford, the "first mess was carried by the tallest and lustiest of all the guard."

"Saint Stephen was a clerk in King Herod's hall. And served him of bread and doth as ever king befall.

"Stephen out of kitchen came, with boar's head in hand. He saw a star was fair and bright, over Bethlem stand.

"He cast adown the boar's head, and went into the hall, _S. Stephen._ I forsake thee, King Herod, and thy works all,

"I forsake thee, King Herod, and thy works all, There is a child in Bethlehem born, is better than we all.

"_Herod._ What aileth thee, Stephen? What is thee befall? Lacketh thee either meat or drink in King Herod's hall?

"_S. Stephen_. Lacketh me neither meat nor drink in King Herod's hall. There is a child in Bethlehem born, is better than we all.

* * * * *

"_Herod_. That is all so sooth, Stephen, all so sooth, I wit, As this capon crow shall lyeth here in my dish.

"That word was no soon said, that word in that hall. The capon crew _Christus natus est_ among the lords all."

* * * * *

This brings us to the more modern legendary carol of "The Carnal [a bird] and the Crane," in which the same incident occurs of the bird crowing in the dish:

"As I passed by a river side. And there as I did rein [run], In argument I chanced to near A carnal and a crane.

"The carnal said unto the crane, 'If all the world should turn, Before we had the Father, But now we have the Son.'

"'From whence does the Son come? From where and from what place? He said, 'In a manger, Between an ox and ass.'

* * * * *

"'Where is the golden cradle That Christ was rocked in? Where are the silken sheets That Jesus was wrapt in?'

"'A manger was the cradle That Christ was rocked in; The provender the asses left So sweetly he slept on.'

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"There was a star in the west land, SO bright it did appear Into King Herod's chamber. And where King Herod were.

"The wise men soon espied it, And told the king on high, 'A princely babe was born that night, No king could e'er destroy.'

"'If this be true,' King Herod said, 'As thou tellest unto me. This roasted cock that lies in the dish, Shall crow full fences three.'

"The cock soon freshly feathered was, By the work of God's own hand, And then three fences crowed he In the dish where he did stand."

Herod then gives orders for the general massacre of the young children, and the Saviour, with Joseph and his mother, travel into Egypt amongst the "fierce wild beasts." The blessed Virgin being weary, "must needs sit down to rest," and her son desires her to "see how the wild beasts come and worship him:"

"First came the lovely lion, Which Jesu's grace did spring. And of the wild beasts in the field The lion shall be the king."

The Holy Family continuing their flight, pass by a husbandman "just while his seed was sown:"

"The husbandman fell on his knees, Even before his face; 'Long time thou hast been look'd for, But now thou'rt come at last.'

* * * * *

"'The truth, man, thou hast spoken, Of it thou mayst be sure. For I most lose my precious blood For thee and thousands more.

"'If any one should come this way, And inquire for me alone. Tell them that Jesus passed by, As thou thy seed did sow.'"

King Herod comes afterward with his train, and furiously asks of the husbandman whether our Saviour has passed by; the husbandman replies that

"'Jesus passed by this way When my seed was sown.

"But now I have it reapen, And some laid on my wain. Ready to fetch and carry Into my barn again.'"

Herod, supposing that it must be "full three quarters of a year since the seed was sown," turned back, and "further he proceeded into the Holy Land." A manuscript of the fifteenth century, preserved in the British Museum, contains a representation of the flight into Egypt, in which the above legend is introduced. The city of Bethlehem stands in the background, and on the right, in the distance, a field of corn and a reaper, who is in conversation with a soldier by his side. A curious Scotch tradition states that when Herod and his soldiers made their inquiry of the husbandman, "a little black beetle lifted up his head, and exclaimed, _The Son of Man passed here last night_." Black beetles are probably not more popular here than in Scotland, but Highlanders, whenever they find the dastardly insect, kill it, repeating the words, "_Beetle, beetle, last night_."

"The Holy Well" is a very favorite carol with the broadside printers; I have seen it side by side with a very lively "legendary" production, "Flyaway Carol:"

"There good old Wesley, and a throng Of saints and martyrs too, Unite and praise their Saviour's name. And there I long to goo. Fly away! Fly away! While yet it's called to-day!"

The Magi or three Kings of Cologne form the subject of many an old carol. The names of these "famous men" are supposed to have been, Kasper or Gaspar, King of Tarsus, young and beardless; Melchior, King of Nubia, old, with long beard and grey hair; and Balthazar, King of Saba, a negro. Their offerings were, as is well known, symbolical; to use the words of the Anglo-Saxon Hymnary, translated by the recorder of Sarum:

"Incense to God, and myrrh to grace his tomb, For tribute to their King, a golden store; One they revere, three with three offerings come, And three adore."

From an old commentary on the gospel of St. Matthew, we gather some curious matter relating to the history of the Three Wise Men. A certain nation dwelling close to the ocean, in the extreme east, possessed a writing, inscribed with the name of Seth, concerning the star which was to appear:

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"Twelve of the more learned men of that country * * * has disposed themselves to watch for that star; and when any of them died, his son or one of his kindred * * was appointed in his place. These, therefore, year by year, after the threshing out of the corn, ascended into a certain high mountain, called _Mons victorialis_, having in it a certain cave in the rock, most grateful and pleasant, with fountains and choice trees, into which, ascending and bathing themselves, they prayed and praised God in silence three days. And thus they did, generation after generation, watching ever, lest peradventure that star of beatitude should arise upon themselves, until it appeared descending on the mountain, having within itself, as it were, the form of a man-child, and above it the similitude of a cross; and it spake to them, and taught them, and commanded them that they should go into Judaea. And journeying thither for the space of two years, neither food nor drink failed in their vessels."

Other old accounts state that their journey occupied twelve days only: "they took neither rest nor refreshment; it seemed to them indeed as one day; the nearer they approached to Christ's dwelling, the brighter the star shone." [Footnote 51]

[Footnote 51: Early Christian Legends.]

There appears to have been no decided opinion or tradition as to the form of the star; it is shown thus by Albert Durer, in an old book which I have by me of 1519: it is drawn with eight points, the lowest one being much longer than the others; in another book, 1596, I find it represented as a star of six points; in some old pictures it is shown as a sort of comet, and it is described to have been "as an eagle flying and beating the air with his wings," having within the form and likeness of the Holy Child.

In "Dives and Pauper," printed in 1496, we gather the following account of it:

"_Dives_. What manner of star was it then?

"_Pauper_. Some clerks tell that it was an angel in the likeness of a star, for the kings had no knowledge of angels, but took all heed to the star. Some say that it was the same child that lay in the ox-stall which appeared to the kings in the likeness of a star, and so drew them and led them to himself in Bethlehem."

I wish it were possible to give here a quaint illustration of the journey of the Three Wise Men, from a sheet of carols printed in 1820, which forms one of the wood-cuts procured with no little difficulty from the publisher by Mr. Hone, and is but little known.

The history of the Magi is even traced further; after their return to their own country they were baptized by St. Thomas the Apostle, became missionaries with him, and were, it is said by some, martyred.

Their journeyings did not, however, end with their deaths--their bodies were translated to Constantinople, thence to Milan, and afterward to Cologne, where they are still preserved in the cathedral, and their history recorded in a series of frescoes. Their shrine at Cologne was once exceedingly rich and magnificent, but during the excitement of the first French revolution many of the jewels which adorned the monument were sold and replaced by paste or glass counterfeits. The following description of their tomb I gather from Mr. Fyfe's book on "Christmas:"

"The coffin is stated to have two partitions, the lower having a half, and the upper a whole, roofing. The former compartment contains the bones of the three kings, whose separate heads appear aloft through the aperture in the half-roofing; and on this roofing are inscribed the names _Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar_, encrusted in rubies. {355} The heads are adorned with crowns weighing six pounds apiece, of gold, diamonds, and pearls. It is asserted (but doubted) that the tomb and its contents are of the value of £240,000."

From the offerings of the three kings arose the practice of Christmas gifts, and the festival of the Epiphany has always been observed in remembrance of their visit to Bethlehem; it has also been the custom from earliest times for our sovereigns to offer the three mystic gifts of gold, myrrh, and incense at the altar on the day of the Epiphany, which custom is still observed at the Chapel Royal, the royal oblations being received by the dean or his deputy in a bag of crimson and gold. The Epiphany is also a "scarlet day" at the universities. After this long roundabout discourse, I am almost afraid to weary my readers with a second edition of the wanderings of the Wise Men, but I must rely upon their generous forbearance; the accompanying carol is from a manuscript of the time of King Henry VII.:

"Now is Christmas i-come, Father and Son together in One, Holy Ghost, as Ye be One, In fere-a: God send us all a good new year-a.

"There came iij kings from Galilee Into Bethlehem that fair city To seek him that ever should be, By right-a, Lord, and King, and Knight-a.

"At they came forth with their offering, They met with Herod that moody king, This tide-a, And this to them he said-a.

"_Her_. Of whence be ye, you kings iij? "_Mag_. Of the East, as ye may see, To seek him that ever should be, By right-a. Lord, and King, and Knight-a.

"_Her_. When you at this child have been, Come home again by me, Tell me the sights that you have seen, I pray you, Go no other way-a.

* * * *

"The Father of heaven an angel down sent, To these iij kings that made present This tide-a. And this to them he said-a, My Lord hath warned you every one By Herod King you go not home For an you do, he will you slay, And strew-a, And hurt you wonderly-a.

"Forth then went these kings iij Till they came home to their countree. Glad and blithe they were all iij, Of the sights that they had seen. By dene-a. The company was clean-a."

* * * *

I will conclude with a modern specimen of a legendary carol written by the Rev. Dr. Neale, and published in Novello's shilling collection. The story of St. Wenceslaus, the good King of Bohemia, is given by Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his "Life of Christ:"

'"One winter night, going to his devotions in a remote church, barefooted in the snow, * * his servant Podavius, who waited on his master's piety, and endeavored to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold, till the king commanded him to follow him, and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him; the servant did so, and either fancied a cure, or found one, for he followed his prince, helped forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow."

"Good King Wenceslaus look'd out. On the Feast of Stephen; When the snow lay round about. Deep and crisp and even: Brightly shone the moon that night, Though the frost was cruel, When a poor man came in sight, Gath'ring winter fuel.

"'Hither, page, and stand by me. While thou know'st it telling, Yonder peasant who is he? Where and what his dwelling? "'Sire, he lives a good league hence Underneath the mountain; Right against the forest fence, By Saint Agnes' fountain.'

"'Bring me flesh and bring me wine. Bring me pine logs hither; Thou and I will see him dine, When we bear them thither.' Page and monarch forth they went. Forth they went together: Through the rude wind's wild lament, And the bitter weather.

"'Sire, the night is darker now. And the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer.' "'Mark my footsteps, good my page; Tread thou in them boldly; Thou shalt find the winter's rage Freeze thy blood less coldly.'

"In his master's steps he trod. Where the snow lay dinted; Heat was in the very sod Which the saint had printed. Therefore, Christian men--be sure-- Wealth or rank possessing, Ye who now will bless the poor, Shall yourselves find blessing."

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From The Dublin Review.

THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM.

_The Formation of Christendom_. Part First. By T. W. ALLIES. London: Longmans.

It is somewhat paradoxical, but strictly true, to say that the greatest and most important revolution which ever took place upon earth is that to which least attention has hitherto been paid, and concerning which least is known--the substitution of "Christendom" for the heathen world. Before our own day no historian, no philosopher of modern times has felt any interest in this vast theme, and whatever information with regard to it is attainable must be sought in the fragmentary remains of ancient writers, or in works very recently published on the continent. In the volume before us Mr. Allies has taken ground not yet occupied by any English author. He has availed himself of two works--Döllinger's "Christenthum und Kirche" and Champagny's Histories--and he acknowledges in the most liberal and loyal manner his obligation to them; but, in the main, he has been left to find his way for himself, and no man could well be more highly qualified for the task, whether by the gifts of nature or by the acquirements of many years. We infer from the work itself that his attention was immediately turned to the subject by his appointment as professor of the "Philosophy of History" in the Catholic university of Dublin, under the rectorship of Dr. Newman. The duties of his post obliged him to weigh the question, "what is the philosophy of history?" and the inaugural lecture with which the volume before us commences, although it gives no formal definition of the phrase (which is to be regretted), supplies abundant considerations by the aid of which we may arrive at it. History, in its origin, was far more akin to poetry than to philosophy, and even when it passes into prose it is in the half-legendary form, which makes the narrative of Herodotus and of the annalists of the middle ages so charming to all readers. They are ballads without metre. Next came that style of which Thucydides is the model, and which Mr. Allies calls "political history." "Its limit is the nation, and it deals with all that interests the nation." "Great, indeed, is the charm where the writer can describe with the pencil of a poet and analyze with the mental grasp of a philosopher. Such is the double merit of Thucydides. And so it has happened that the deepest students of human nature have searched for two thousand years the records of a war wherein the territory of the chief belligerents was not larger than a modern English or Irish county. What should we say if a quarrel between Kent and Essex, between Cork and Kerry, had kept the world at gaze ever since? Yet Attica and Laconia were no larger."

And yet it needed something more than territorial greatness in the states of which he wrote to enable even Thucydides himself to realize the idea of a philosophical history. For the five hundred years which followed the Peloponnesian war brought to maturity the greatest empire which has ever existed among men, and although, at the close of that period, one of the ablest and most thoughtful of writers devoted himself especially to its history, yet, says our author, "I do not know that in reading the pages of Polybius, of Livy, or even of Tacitus, we are conscious of a wider grasp of thought, a more enlarged experience of political interests, a higher idea of {357} man, and of all that concerns his personal and public life, than in those of Thucydides." Great, indeed, was the genius of those ancient historians, magnificent were the two languages which they made their instruments--languages "very different in their capacity, but both of them superior in originality, beauty, and expressiveness to any which have fallen to the lot of modern nations. It may be that the marbles of Pentelicus and Carrara insure good sculptors." "In the narrative--that is, the poetic and pictorial part of history--they have equal merit. Their history is a drama in which the actors and the events speak for themselves. What was wanting was the bearing of events on each other, the apprehension of great first principles--the generalization of facts." And this no mere lapse of time could give. It is wanting in the works of the greatest ancient masters. It is found in moderns in all other respects immeasurably their inferiors. "What, then, had happened in the interval?" Christianity had happened--Christendom had been formed. '"There was a voice in the world greater, more potent, thrilling, and universal, than the last cry of the old society, _Civis sum Romanus_, and this voice was _Sum Christianus_. From the time of the great sacrifice it was impossible to sever the history of man's temporal destiny from that of his eternal; and when the virtue of that sacrifice had thoroughly leavened the nations, history is found to assume a larger basis, to have lost its partial and national cast, to have grown with the growth of man, and to demand for its completeness a perfect alliance with philosophy."

Thus, then, the "philosophy of history" is the comparison and arrangement of its great events by one whose mind is stored with the facts which it records, and who at the same time possesses the great first principles which qualify him to judge of it. We may, therefore, lay it down as an absolute rule, that without Christianity no really philosophical history could have been written.

Not unnaturally, then, the first example of the philosophy of history was given by a man whose mind, if not the greatest ever informed by Christianity, was at least among a very few in the first class, was moreover so thoroughly penetrated by Christian principles, that to review the events of the world in any other aspect, or through any other medium, would have been to him as impossible as to examine in detail without the light of the sun the expanse of plains and hills, rivers and forests, which lay under him as he stood on some predominant mountain peak. God, the Almighty Creator--God incarnate, who had once lived and suffered on earth, and now reigned on high until he should put all enemies under his feet, and who was coming again to judge the world which he had redeemed--the Church founded by him to enlighten and govern all generations throughout all nations, and in which dwelt the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost--the evil spirits, powerless against the divine presence in the Church, but irresistible by mere human power--the saints, no longer seen by man, but whose intercession influenced and moulded all the events of his life,--all these were ever before the mind of St. Augustine, not merely as articles of faith which he confessed, but as practical realities. To trace the events of the world without continually referring to all these, would have been to him not merely irreligious, but as unreal, unmeaning, and fallacious as it would be to a natural philosopher of our own day to investigate the phenomena of the material world without taking into consideration the attraction of the earth and the resistance of the air. This should be noticed, because we have all met men who, while professing to believe most, if not all, of these things, would consider it bad taste to introduce such considerations into any practical affair. They are, in short, part of that very {358} remarkable phenomenon, the "Sunday religion" of a respectable English gentleman, which he holds as an inseparable part of his respectability, but which is well understood to have no bearing at all upon the business of the week. Living as St. Augustine did at the crisis at which the civilization of the ancient world was finally breaking up, his eye was cast back in review over the whole gorgeous line of ancient history, which swept by him like a Roman triumph. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, each had its day; the last and greatest of them all he saw tottering to its fall. But far more important than this comprehensive survey, which the circumstances of his times made natural to so great an intellect, was his possession of fixed and certain principles, the truth of which he knew beyond the possibility of doubt, and which were wide enough to solve every question which the history of the world brought before him. Great men there had been before him, but the deeper their thoughts, the more had they found that the world itself and their own position in it were but a hopeless enigma without an answer, a cypher without a key. A flood of light had been poured upon the piercing mental eye of St. Augustine when the waters of baptism fell from the hand of the holy Ambrose upon his outward frame. Every part of the Old Testament history glowed before him, as when from behind a cloud which covers all the earth the light of the sun falls concentrated upon some mountain-peak; and the man who reverences and ponders as divine that inspired history has learned to read the inner meaning of the whole history of the world as no one else can. In every age, no doubt, Almighty God rules and directs in justice and mercy the world which he has created; but in general he hides himself behind an impenetrable veil. "Clouds and darkness are round about him, justice and judgment the establishment of his throne." To many an ordinary spectator, the world seems only the theatre of man's labor and suffering. He passes through it as he might through one of the arsenals of ancient Greece or Rome, where indeed great works were wrought, but where the hand of the workman was always as visible as the result produced. A more thoughtful man might see proofs of some unknown power, just as in an arsenal of our day works, compared to which the fabled labors of giants and cyclops were as child's play, are hourly performed by the stroke of huge hammers welding vast masses of glowing metal, while nothing is seen to cause or explain their motion. All this is understood by one who has once been allowed to see at work the engine itself which sets all in motion. So does the Old Testament history unveil to the eye of faith the hidden causes, not only of the Jewish history, but of the great events of secular history. All that seemed before only results without cause, is seen to be fully accounted for; not that we can always understand the ends which the Almighty Worker designs to accomplish, or the means by which he is accomplishing them, but everywhere faith sees the operation of Almighty power directed by infinite wisdom and love, and, while able to understand much, it is willing to await in reverent adoration the development of that which as yet is beyond its comprehension. It sees that the history of other nations is distinguished from that of the children of Israel, not so much by the character of the events which it records (for the extraordinary manifestations of divine power were chiefly confined to a few special periods), as to the principle and spirit in which it has been written, and that secular history viewed by eyes supernaturally enlightened assumes the same appearance.

In fact, it is not difficult to write a history of the reigns of David and Solomon and their successors down to the fall of the Hebrew monarchy which sounds very much like that of any other Oriental kingdom. The {359} thing has been done of late years, both in Germany and in England. It was by this that Dean Milman, many years ago, so greatly shocked the more religious portion of English readers. Nor were they shocked without cause; for his was a history of the Jews from which, as far as possible, Almighty God was left out, while the characteristic of the inspired narrative is, that it is a record not so much of the doings of men as of the great acts of God by man and among men. Only Dean Milman was more consistent than those who condemned him. He was right in perceiving that the greater part of the history of the Jews is not materially different from that of other nations. But he went on to infer that, therefore, we may leave God out of sight in judging of Jewish history, as we do in that of other nations, instead of learning from the example of the Jews that in every age God is as certainly working among every nation. That by which he offended religious Protestants was the application of their own ordinary principles to the one history in which they had been taught from childhood to see and acknowledge with exceptional reverence the working of Almighty God in the affairs of the world.

This it is which gives its peculiar character to many of the chronicles of the middle ages. It is impossible not to feel that the writers see no broad distinction between the history of the nations and times of which they are writing and that of the ancient people of God. And hence in their annals we have far more of the philosophy of history, in the true sense of the word, than was possible to any ancient author. For with all their ignorance of physical causes, which led them into many mistakes, their main principles were both true and vitally important, and were wholly unknown to Thucydides and Tacitus. But the circumstances of their times made it impossible that they should survey the extensive range of facts which lies before a modern historian. In many instances, also, they were led by the imperfect state of physical science to attribute to a supernatural interference of God in the world things which we are now able to refer to natural causes. That God has before now interfered with the course of nature which he has established in the world, and may whenever he pleases so interfere again, these were to them first principles. And so far they reasoned truly and justly, although their imperfect acquaintance with other branches of human knowledge sometimes led them to apply amiss their true principle. Their minds were so much accustomed to dwell upon the thought of God, and upon his acts in the world, that they were always prepared to see and hear him everywhere, and in every event. When they heard of any event supposed to be supernatural, they might be awestruck and impressed, but could not be said to be surprised; and hence, no doubt, they sometimes accepted as supernatural events which, if examined by a shrewd man who starts with the first principle that nothing supernatural can really have taken place, could have been otherwise explained. Beside, their comparative unacquaintance with physical science led them into errors in accounting for and even in observing those which they themselves did not imagine to be supernatural. But their first principles were true. And the modern who assumes, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the course of the world is modified and governed only by the passions and deeds of man, is in his first principles fundamentally wrong. They fell into accidental error; he cannot be more than accidentally right.

Our author says:

"In the middle ages, and notably in the thirteenth century, there were minds which have left us imperishable memorials of themselves, and which would have taken the largest and most philosophical view of history had the materials existed ready to their hand. {360} Conceive, for instance, a history from the luminous mind of St. Thomas with the stores of modern knowledge at his command. But the invention of printing, one of the turning points of the human race, was first to take place, and then on that soil of the middle ages, so long prepared and fertilized by so patient a toil, a mighty harvest was to spring up. Among the first-fruits of labors so often depreciated by those who have profited by them, and in the land of children who despise their sires, we find the proper alliance of philosophy with history. Then at length the province of the historian is seen to consist, not merely in the just, accurate, and lively narrative of facts, but in the exhibition of cause and effect. 'What do we now expect in history?' says M. de Barante; and he replies, 'Solid instruction and complete knowledge of things; moral lessons, political counsels; comparison with the present, and the general knowledge of facts.' Even in the age of Tacitus, the most philosophic of ancient historians, no individual ability could secure all such powers" (p. 12).

Thus philosophical history is one of the results of Christianity. Professor Max Müller makes a similar remark with regard to his own favorite study of ethnology. Before the day of Pentecost, he says, no man, not even the greatest minds, ever thought of tracing the genealogy of nations by their languages, because they did not know the unity of the human race. The unity of mankind is naturally connected in the order of ideas with the unity of God. Those who worshipped many gods, and believed that each race and nation had its own tutelary divinity, not unnaturally regarded each nation as a separate race. So far was this feeling carried by the most civilized races of the old world, that they thought it a profanation that the worship of the gods of one race should be offered by a priest not sprung from that race. The most moderate and popular of the Roman patricians rejected the demand of the _plebs_ to be admitted to the highest offices of the state, not as politically dangerous, but as profane. The Roman consul, in virtue of his office, was the priest of the Capitoline Jove, to whom, on certain solemn occasions, he had to offer sacrifice. It would be a pollution that a plebeian, not sprung from any of the tribes of Romulus, should presume to offer that sacrifice. In fact, the consulship would hardly have been thrown open to the _plebs_ until the long continued habit of intermarriage had welded the two portions of the Roman people so completely into one that the plebeian began, at last, to be regarded as of the same blood with the Furii, the Cornelii, and the Julii. The first measure by which the tribunes commenced their attack upon the exclusive privilege of the great houses was wisely chosen; it was the Canuleian law, by which marriages between the two orders were made legal and valid. Before that, patricians and plebeians were two nations living in one city, and, according to the universal opinion of the ancient world, this implied that they had different gods, different priests, a different ritual, and different temples. But the day of Pentecost blended all nations into a new unity--the unity of the body of Christ; and its first effect was, that the preachers of the new law proclaimed everywhere, that "God had made of one blood all nations of men, to dwell upon the face of the whole earth." The professor points out what curiously completes the analogy between the two cases, that while Christianity, by collecting into one church all the nations of the world, and by teaching their original unity, naturally suggested the idea that all their different languages had some common origin, any satisfactory investigation of the subject was long delayed by the unfounded notion that the Hebrew must needs be the root from which they all sprang. Thus, in both cases, the germ of studies, whose development was delayed for ages by the {361} imperfection of human knowledge, appears to have been contained in the revelation of the gospel of Christ.

It is important to bring these considerations into prominence, because the knowledge which would never have existed without Christianity, is, in many cases, retained by men who forget or deny the faith to which they are indebted for it. Our author draws comparison between Tacitus and Gibbon (page 14):

"The world of thought in which we live is, after all, formed by Christianity. Modern Europe is a relic of Christendom, the virtue of which is not gone out of it. Gregory VII. and Innocent III. have ruled over generations which have ignored them; have given breadth to minds which condemned their benefactors as guilty of narrow priestcraft, and derided the work of those benefactors as an exploded theory. Let us take an example in what is, morally, perhaps the worst and most shocking period of the last three centuries--the thirty years preceding the great French revolution. We shall see that at this time even minds which had rejected, with all the firmness of a reprobate will, the regenerating influence of Christianity, could not emancipate themselves from the virtue of the atmosphere which they had breathed. They are immeasurably greater than they would have been in pagan times, by the force of that faith which they misrepresented and repudiated. To prove the truth of my words, compare for a moment the great artist who drew Tiberius and Domitian and the Roman empire in the first century with him who wrote of its decline and fall in the second and succeeding centuries. How far wider a grasp of thought, how far more manifold an experience, combined with philosophic purposes, in Gibbon than in Tacitus. He has a standard within him by which he can measure the nations as they come in long procession before him. In that vast and wondrous drama of the Antonines and Constantine Athanasius and Leo, Justinian and Charlemagne, Mahomet, Zenghis Khan, and Timour, Jerusalem and Mecca, Rome and Constantinople, what stores of thought are laid up--what a train of philosophic induction exhibited! How much larger is this world become than that which trembled at Caesar! The very apostate profits by the light which has shone on Thabor, and the blood which has flowed on Calvary. He is a greater historian than his heathen predecessor because he lives in a society to which the God whom he has abandoned has disclosed the depth of its being, the laws of its course, the importance of its present, the price of its futurity."

A very little thought will show that, constituted as man's nature is, this could not have been otherwise. Man differs from the inferior animals in that he is richly endowed with faculties which, until they have been developed by education, he can never use, and appreciates and embraces truths, when they have been set before him, which he could never have discovered unassisted. This is the most obvious distinction between reason and instinct. The caterpillar, hatched from an egg dropped by a parent whom it never saw, knows at once what food and what habits are necessary for its new life. Weeks pass away, and its first skin begins to die; but (as if it had been fully instructed in what has to be done) it draws its body out of it as from a glove, and comes forth in a new one. A few weeks later it forsakes the food which has hitherto been necessary for its life, and buries itself in the earth, which up to that very day would have been certain death. There a mysterious change passes upon it, and it lies as if dead till the time for another change approaches. It then gradually works its way to the surface, and comes out a butterfly or a moth. It is now indifferent to the plants which in its former state were necessary to its existence, but yet it chooses those plants on which to deposit its eggs. {362} We are so apt to delude ourselves with the notion that we understand everything to which we give a name, that ninety-nine people out of a hundred seem to think they account for this marvelous power of the inferior animals to act exactly right under circumstances so strangely changed, by calling it "instinct." But, in truth, why or how the creature does what it does, we no more know when we have called it "instinct" than we did before. All we can suppose is that as the Creator has left none of his creatures destitute of the kind and degree of knowledge necessary to enable it to discharge its appointed office in creation, the appetites and desires of the insect are modified from time to time in the different stages of its existence so that they impel it exactly to the course necessary for it to take, with much greater certainty than if it understood what the result was to be. How different is the case of man. Not only is he a free agent, and therefore to be guided by reason, not by mere propensity, but neither reason nor speech, nor indeed life itself, could be preserved or made of any use except by means of training and education received from others. A man left to shift for himself like the animal whose changes we have been tracing, would die at each state of his existence for want of some one to teach him what must be done for his preservation. This same training is equally necessary for his physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. But he is so constituted that the different things needful for him to know for each of these purposes approve themselves to him as soon as they are presented to his mind from without, and the things which thus approve themselves, although he could never have discovered them, we truly call natural to man, because no external teaching would have made him capable of learning them unless the faculty had been as much a part of his original constitution as the unreasoning desires which we call instinct are part of the constitution of brutes. And therefore, when once developed by education, they remain a part of the man, even when he casts away from him those teachers by whom they were developed. Nero would never have learnt the use of speech if he had not caught it from his mother; yet when he used it to order her murder he did not lose what she had taught him, because it was a part of his nature. And so of higher powers, the result of a superior training. Principles which men would never have known without Christian training are retained when Christianity itself is rejected, because they are a part of the spiritual endowment given to man by his Creator, although without training he would never have been able to develop them. His rejection of Christianity results from an evil will. The parts of Christian teaching against which that will does not rebel he calls and believes to be the lessons of his natural reason, although the experience of the greatest and wisest heathen shows that his unassisted natural faculties never would have discovered them.

Nor is this true only of individuals. Nations trained for many generations in Christian faith have before now fallen away from Christianity. But it does not seem that they are able to reduce themselves to the level of heathen nations in their moral standard, their perception and appreciation of good and evil, justice and wrong, or of the nature and destinies of the human race. In some respects they are morally much worse than heathen. But it does not appear that in these points they can sink so low, because their nature, fallen though it be, approves and accepts some of the truths taught it by Christianity. Hence, in order to judge what man can or cannot do without the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we must examine him in nations to which the faith has never been given, rather than in those which have rejected it. Unhappily, there are at this moment parts of Europe in which the belief in the supernatural {363} seems wanting. An intelligent correspondent of the _Times_ a year ago described such a state of things as existing in parts of northern Germany and Scandinavia. The population believes nothing, and practises no religion. Public worship is deserted, not because the people have devised any new heresy of their own as to the manner in which man should approach God, but because they have ceased to trouble themselves about the matter at all. Lutheranism is dead and gone; but nothing has been substituted for it. The intelligent Protestant writer was surprised to find a population thus wholly without religion orderly and well-behaved, hard-working, and by no means forgetful of social duties. The phenomenon is, no doubt, remarkable; but it is by no means without example. Many parishes (we fear considerable districts) in France are substantially in the same state. The peasantry are sober, industrious, and orderly to a degree unknown in England. They reap the temporal fruits of these good qualities in a general prosperity equally unknown here. They are saving to a degree almost incredible, so that it is a matter of ordinary experience that a peasant who began life with nothing except his bodily strength, leaves behind him several hundreds, not unfrequently some thousands, of pounds sterling. But in this same district whole villages are so absolutely without religion, that, although there is not one person for many miles who calls himself a Protestant, the churches are almost absolutely deserted, and the _curés_ (generally good and zealous men) are reduced almost to inactivity by absolute despair. Some give themselves up to prayer, seeing nothing else that they can do; some will say that they are not wholly without encouragement, because, after fifteen or twenty years of labor, they have succeeded in bringing four or five persons to seek the benefit of the sacraments out of a population of as many hundreds, among whom when they came there was not one such person to be found. [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: It should be observed that the morality said to exist in those parts of France which have so nearly lost the faith is not Catholic morality: in fact, the population in those districts is decreasing, and that (it is universally admitted) from immorality. It should also be remember that there is a most marked contrast between these districts and those Lutheran districts of which the _Times_ spoke: In the latter, Lutheranism has died out of itself. In the worst districts of France, the Catholic religion has not died out, but has been displaced by a systematic infidel education inflicted on the people by a godless government. Lastly, even where things are the worst, there are a few in each generation who, in the midst of a godless population, turn out saints, really worthy of that name. It is seldom that a mission is preached in any village without some such being rescued from the corrupt mass around them. Nothing, in fact, can more strongly mark the contrast between the Catholic religion and Lutheranism. The subject is far too large to be discussed here, but we have suggested these considerations to avoid misconceptions of our meaning.]

Appalling as is this state of things, the natural virtues (such as they are) of populations which have thus lost faith are themselves the remains of Christianity. History gives us no trace of any people in such a state except those who have once been Christians. For instance, in all others, however civilized, slavery has been established both by law and practice; no one of them has been without divorce; infanticide has been allowed and practised. Nowhere has the unity of man's nature been acknowledged, and, what follows from that, the duties owing to him as man, not merely as fellow countryman. And hence, nowhere has there existed what we call the law of nations, a rule which limits the conduct of men, not only toward those of other nations, but, what is much more, toward those with whom they are in a state of war, or whom they have conquered. In the most civilized times of ancient Greece and Rome no rights were recognized in such foreigners. All these things are the legitimate progeny of Christianity, and of Christianity alone, although they are now accepted as natural principles by nations by whom, but for the gospel of Christ, they would never have been heard of.

{364}

We have enlarged upon this point because, not only in what he says of Gibbon, but in many parts of his subsequent chapters, Mr. Allies attributes to the influence of Christianity things which a superficial observer may attribute rather to some general progress in the world toward a higher civilization. We shall see instances of this as we proceed. We are satisfied that the objection is utterly unfounded. We see no reason to believe that without Christianity any higher or better civilization than that of Rome under Augustus and Athens under Pericles would ever have been attained. That those who lived under that state, so far from expecting any "progress," believed that the world was getting worse and worse, and that there remained no hope of improvement, nor any principles from which it could possibly arise, is most certain. Nor do we believe that those who thus judged of the natural tendency of the world were mistaken, although by a stupendous interference of the Creator with the course of nature an improvement actually took place.

The philosophy of history then sifts and arranges the facts which it records, and judges of them by fixed and eternal principles of right and wrong; drawing from the past lessons of wisdom and virtue for the future. It will approach nearer and nearer to perfection as the range of facts investigated becomes wider, and as the principles by which they are judged are more absolutely true, and applied more correctly, more practically, and more universally. Hence, it would never have existed without Christianity, and although in Christian nations it is found in men partially or wholly unworthy of the Christian name, but who retain many ideas and principles derived from Christianity alone, yet even in them it is exercised imperfectly in proportion as they are less and less Christian.

Mr. Allies thus compares Tacitus and St. Augustine:

"The atmosphere of Tacitus and the lurid glare of his Rome compared with St. Augustine's world are like the shades in which Achilles deplored the loss of life contrasted with a landscape bathed in the morning light of a southern sun. Yet how much more of material misery was there in the time of St. Augustine than in the time of Tacitus! In spite of the excesses in which the emperors might indulge within the walls of their palace or of Rome, the fair fabric of civilization filled the whole Roman world, the great empire was in peace, and its multitude of nations were brethren. Countries which now form great kingdoms of themselves, were then tranquil members of one body politic. Men could travel the coasts of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, round to Italy again, and find a rich smiling land covered by prosperous cities, enjoying the same laws and institutions, and possessed in peace by its children. In St. Augustine's time all had been changed; on many of these coasts a ruthless, uncivilized, unbelieving, or misbelieving enemy had descended. Through the whole empire there was a feeling of insecurity, a cry of helplessness, and a trembling at what was to come. Yet in the pages of the two writers the contrast is in the inverse ratio. In the pagan, everything seems borne on by an iron fate, which tramples upon the free will of man, and overwhelms the virtuous before the wicked. In the Christian, order shines in the midst of destruction, and mercy dispenses the severest humiliations. It was the symbol of the coming age. And so that great picture of the doctor, saint, and philosopher laid hold of the minds of men during those centuries of violence which followed, and in which peace and justice, so far from embracing each other, seemed to have deserted the earth. And in modern times a great genius has seized upon it, and developed it in the discourse on universal history. Bossuet is worthy to receive the torch from St. Augustine. Scarcely could a more majestic voice, or a more {365} philosophic spirit, set forth the double succession of empire and of religion, or exhibit the tissue wrought by Divine Providence, human free will, and the permitted power of evil."

After this estimate of St. Augustine, he speaks of

"A living author--at once statesman, orator, philosopher, and historian of the higest rank--who has given us, on a less extensive scale, a philosophy of history in its most finished and amiable form. The very attempt on the part of M. Guizot to draw out a picture of civilization during fourteen hundred years, and to depict, amongst that immense and ever-changing period, the course of society in so many countries, indicates no ordinary power; and the partial fulfilment of the design may be said to have elevated the philosophy of history into a science. In this work may be found the moat important rules of the science accurately stated; but the work itself is the best example of philosophic method and artistic execution, united to illustrate a complex subject. A careful study of original authorities, a patient induction of facts, a cautious generalization, the philosophic eye to detect analogies, the painter's power to group results, and, above all, a unity of conception which no multiplicity of details can embarrass; these are some of the main qualifications for a philosophy of history which I should deduce from these works. Yet, while the action of Providence and that of human free will are carefully and beautifully brought out, while both may be said to be points of predilection with the author, he has not alluded, so far as I am aware, to the great evil spirit and his personal operation. Strong as he is, he has been apparently too weak to bear the scoff of modern infidelity--"he believes in the devil"--unless, indeed, the cause of this lies deeper, and belongs to his philosophy; for if there be one subject out of which eclecticism can pick nothing to its taste, it would be the permitted operation of the great fallen spirit. Nor will the warmest admiration of his genius be mistaken for a concurrence in all his judgments. I presume not to say how far such an author is sometimes, in spite of himself, unjust, from the point of view at which he draws his picture. Whether, and how far, he be an eclectic philosopher, let others decide. It would be grievous to feel it true of such a mind; for it is the original sin of that philosophy to make the universe rotate round itself. Great is its complacency in its own conclusions, but there runs through them one mistake--to fancy itself in the place of God" (p. 31).

Those who have ever made the attempt to analyze in a few lines the genius of a great writer will best be able to estimate the combination of keen intellect, patient thought, and scrupulous candor in this criticism. We must not deny ourselves one more quotation:

"St. Augustine, Bossuet, Guizot, Balmez, Schlegel: I have taken these names not to exhaust but to illustrate the subject. Here we have the ancient and the modern society, Africa and France, Spain and Germany, and the Christian mind in each, thrown upon the facts of history. They point out, I think, sufficiently a common result. But amid the founders of a new science, who shall represent our own country? Can I hesitate, or can I venture, in this place and company [_i.e._, before the Catholic University of Dublin, in the chair of which this lecture was delivered], to mention the hand which has directed the scattered rays of light from so many sources on the wild children of Central Asia, and produced the Turk before us in his untameable ferocity--the outcast of the human race, before whom earth herself ceases to be a mother--by whom man's blood has ever been shed like water, woman's honor counted as the vilest of things, nature's most sacred laws publicly and avowedly outraged,--has produced him before us for the abhorrence of mankind, the infamy of nations? To sketch the intrinsic {366} character of barbarism and civilization, and out of common historical details, travel, and observation to show the ineffaceable stamp of race and tribe, reproducing itself through the long series of ages, surely expresses the idea which we mean by the philosophy of history" (p. 38).

We have given a disproportionate space to this inaugural lecture, both for its intrinsic importance and because it gives a shadow of the whole plan of Mr. Allies's work, both that part which lies before us and that which remains to be published; for the volume before us is "only a portion, perhaps about a fourth, of the author's design." In the six lectures which it contains, he gives us an estimate, first, of the physical and political condition of the Roman empire in its palmy days; then, of the force by which it pleased God to constitute the new creation in the midst of it. In the last four lectures he compares the vital principles of these two vast social organizations--the heathen and the Christian--first in a representative man of each class, then in the effects produced upon society at large by the influence of each; then in the primary relation of man to woman in marriage; and, lastly, in the virginal state; although under this last head there can hardly be said to be a comparison, as heathen society has simply nothing to set against that wonderful creation of Christianity--holy virginity.

We know not where we have met any painting of the Roman empire so striking as that contained in the first lecture. Of the multitude of Englishmen who read more or less of the classical Latin authors, a very small proportion have ever paid any attention to the Roman empire, as it is displayed by Tacitus and Juvenal. This is the natural result of the grace and eloquence of Livy and Cicero, much rather than of any strong preference for republican institutions. Indeed it is impossible not to be struck with the vast influence which Roman republicanism exercises in France compared with England. Nor is it difficult to account for this. France, except to a limited degree under the monarchy of July, has never enjoyed constitutional liberty. The Frenchman, therefore, who dreams of liberty at all, places his dreamland in a Roman republic. Boys who in England would rant about John Hampden are found in France ranting about Junius Brutus. For what the Englishman means when he talks about liberty is "English liberty;" the Frenchman means the Roman republic. So much has this been the case, that even in America the war of independence began, not in any aspiration after a republic, but for the rights of English subjects. The sword had been drawn for a year before the colonies claimed independence, and very shortly before Washington had declared that "there was no thought of separation, only of English liberty." What proves that these were not mere words was, that even after independence had been achieved, the leaders, who met in congress, agreed almost to a man in expressing their preference for "an English constitution," if circumstances had placed it within their reach. All the world knows that France became a republic chiefly because Rome in her palmy days had been so called; nay, to this hour all the terms adopted by the revolutionary party have been borrowed from classical times. Such was the term "citizen," so appropriate to a people whose boast was that they were free of a city which had conquered the world, so absurd as denoting the members of a great nation in which not even centuries of extreme centralization have prevented political rights from being exercised by each man in his own province. Such, again, was that inundation of pagan names which the revolutionary times substituted for those of the saints, and which are still characteristic of France--Camille, Emile, Antonine, and even Brute and Timoleon. This we take to be one great reason why many sensible {367} persons in France are so greatly afraid of classical studies in schools and colleges. They say that they turn the heads of boys, especially French boys. It is highly characteristic of the man, that the officers of the House of Commons, who made forcible entry into the house of Sir Francis Burdett when he was committed by order of the House, found him reading with his little son, not Plutarch's life of Brutus or Cato, as would assuredly have been the case with a Frenchman, but "Magna Charta." He was not less theatrical, but he was a thoroughly English actor.

And yet we strongly suspect that out of a hundred boys who leave a classical school more than ninety believe that Roman history ends with Augustus. The university no doubt, gives a somewhat more extended view. But even there Tacitus is usually about the limit. We wonder how far this feeling was carried before Gibbon published the "Decline and Fall."

Hence we especially value the wonderful picture of the empire painted by our author.

It was in fact a federation of civilized states under an absolute monarch; the municipal liberties were left so entire that Niebuhr mentions Italian cities, in the immediate neighborhood of Rome itself, which retained all through the times of the empire and the middle ages, down to the wars of the French revolution, the same municipal institutions under which Rome had found them. They were swept away by that faithful lover of despotism, Napoleon I., to make way for the uniform system of a _préfet_ and _souspréfet_ in each district. It is more important to bear this in mind because, as the revolutionists aped the manners and names of the Roman republic without understanding them, the imperialists of France are apt to assume that they faithfully represent the Roman empire. Now the one striking characteristic of the French empire is that it raises yearly 100,000 military conscripts, beside the naval conscription, the police, and the very firemen, all of whom are carefully drilled as soldiers. How was it under Augustus?

"It is hard to conceive adequately what a spectator called 'the immense majesty of the Roman peace' (Pliny, 'Nat. Hist,' xxvii. 1). Where now in Europe, impatient and uneasy, a group of half-friendly nations jealously watches each other's progress and power, and the acquisition of a province threatens a general war, Rome maintained, from generation to generation, in tranquil sway, an empire of which Gaul, Spain, Britain, and North Africa, Switzerland, and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt formed but single limbs, members of her mighty body. Her roads, which spread like a network over this immense territory, from their common centre, the golden milestone of the Forum, under the palace of her emperors, did but express the unity of that spirit with which she ruled the earth her subject, levelling the mountains and filling up the valleys for the march of her armies, the caravans of her merchandise, and the even sweep of her legislation. A moderate fleet of 6,000 sailors at Misenum, and another at Ravenna, a flotilla at Forum Julii, and another in the Black sea, of half that force, preserved the whole Mediterranean from piracy; and every nation bordering on its shores could freely interchange the productions of their industry. Two smaller armaments of twenty-four vessels each on the Rhine and the Danube secured the empire from northern incursion. In the time of Tiberius a force of twenty-five legions and fourteen cohorts, making 171,500 men, with about an equal number of auxiliary troops, that is, in all, an army of 340,000, sufficed, not so much to preserve internal order, which rested upon other and surer ground, but to guard the frontiers of a vast population, amounting, as is calculated, {368} to 120,000,000, and inhabiting the very fairest regions of the earth, of which the great Mediterranean sea was a sort of central and domestic lake. But this army itself, thus moderate in number, was not, as a rule, stationed in cities, but in fixed quarters on the frontiers, as a guard against external foes. Thus, for instance, the whole interior of Gaul possessed a garrison of but 1,200 men--that Gaul which, in the year 1860, in a time of peace, thought necessary for internal tranquillity and external rank and security to have 626,000 men in arms. [Footnote 53] Again, Asia Minor had no military force; that most beautiful region of the earth teemed with princely cities, enjoying the civilization of a thousand years, and all the treasures of art and industry, in undisturbed repose. And within its unquestioned boundaries, the spirit, moreover, of Roman rule was far other than that of a military despotism, or of a bureaucracy and a police pressing with ever watchful suspicion on every spring of civil life. The principle of its government was not that no population could be faithful which was not kept in leading-strings, but rather to leave cities and corporations to manage their own affairs themselves. Thus its march was firm and strong, but for this very reason devoid alike of fickleness and haste."

[Footnote 53: Surely the author should have added the Belgian army (fixed by the laws of 1853 at 100,000), and that part of the Prussian, etc., which is raised west of the Rhine, in comparing the military force of ancient Gaul with that of the same district in our day.]

It might have been added, that, as a general rule, the army which guarded each portion was composed of the natives of the country in which they were stationed. Roman citizens they were, no doubt, but citizens of provincial extraction, and posted to guard on behalf of Rome the very country which their fathers, sometimes but a very few generations back, had defended against her. [Footnote 54] This is a policy the generosity of which France dares not at this day imitate, even in her oldest provinces. To say nothing of the British army in Ireland, the Breton conscripts are still sent to serve at Lyons and Paris.

[Footnote 54: Champagny, Rome, and Judea.]

The extracts we have given will doubtless lead every reader to study for himself Mr. Allies's descriptions of Rome, and the life of the Thermae, and of the colonies, everywhere reproducing the life of Rome. Every page breathes with the matured thought of a mind of remarkable natural acuteness, and stored with refined scholarship. There is nothing of beauty or majesty in that magnificent old world which he does not seem to have witnessed and mused over.

It is hardly possible to realize all this greatness without being tempted to repine in the remembrance whither it was all hastening--that the peace of the Roman world was but "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below;" its magnificence only the feast of Baltassar in that last night of the splendor of Babylon, when the Medes and Persians were already under her walls, and the river had been turned away from its course through her quays, and a way left open for the rush of the destroyer into her streets and palaces. Already the mysterious impulse had been given which, during so many centuries, drove down horde after horde of barbarians from the wild north-east, to overflow the favored lands that surrounded the Mediterranean. In the early days of Roman history the Gauls had rushed on, sweeping away those earlier races whose remains we are now exploring in the shallows of the Swiss lakes, and whose descendants are probably to be found in the Basques, and in some of those degraded castes which, in spite of the welding power of the Church, left proscribed remnants in France and elsewhere until the great revolution. That mighty wave burst upon the rock of the Capitol, threatened for a moment utterly to overwhelmed it, and then fell broken at its feet. But it is not by repelling one wave, however formidable, that a rising tide is turned back. In the day of Rome's {369} utmost power her very foundations were shaken by the torrent of the Cimbri and Teutones. They, too, were broken against the steel-clad legions of Marius, and fell off like spray on the earth. But the tide was still advancing. What need to trace its successive inroads? Every reader of Gibbon remembers how the time came at last when the very site where Rome had stood had been so often swept by it, that of all its greatness there remained nothing more than the sea leaves of some castle of shingles and sand, after a few waves have passed over it.

"Quench'd is the golden statue's ray; The breath of heaven hath swept away What toiling earth hath piled; Scattering wise heart and crafty hand, As breezes strew on ocean's strand The fabrics of a child!"

There even came a time when for many weeks the very ruins of ancient Rome were absolutely deserted, and trodden neither by man nor beast. No wonder that the world stood by afar off weeping and mourning over the utter destruction of all that the earth had ever known of greatness and glory. So the sentence had been passed, in the day of her greatest glory, by the prophetic voice of the angel, who cried with a strong voice:

"Fallen--fallen, is Babylon the great, and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of every unclean spirit, and of every unclean and hateful bird. And the kings of the earth shall weep and bewail themselves over her, when they shall see the smoke of the burning; standing afar off for fear of her torments, saying, Alas! alas! that great city Babylon, that mighty city; for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, and shall stand afar off from her for fear of her torments, weeping and mourning, and saying, Alas! alas! that great city which was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and was gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls. For in one hour are so great riches come to nought." (Apocalypse, chap, xviii.)

It was not the ruin of one city, however glorious, but the sweeping away of all the accumulated glories of the civilization of the whole civilized world, during more than a thousand years. All had been embodied in imperial Rome. In the words of our author--

"The empire of Augustus inherited the whole civilization of the ancient world. Whatever political or social knowledge, whatever moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts, 'the enterprising race of Japhet' had acquired, preserved, and accumulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of history had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of Egypt and of all the East had been stored up. For her Pythagoras and Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and all the schools beside of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought. For her Zoreaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated. For her Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a portion of her empire. Every city, in the ears of whose youth the poems of Homer were familiar as household words, owned her sway. The magistrates, from the Northern sea to the confines of Arabia, issued their decrees in the language of empire--the Latin tongue; while, as men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa and the west, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so, but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces, from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to her senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigor of {370} new and the culture of long-polished races were alike employed in the vast fabric of her power. Every science and art, all human experience and discovery, had poured their treasure in one stream into the bosom of that society, which, after forty-four years of undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius" (p. 41).

No wonder the ancient world had assured itself that, as nothing greater, nothing wiser, nothing more glorious than Rome could ever arise upon earth, so its greatness, wisdom, and glory could never be superseded. It was "the eternal city." It was "for ever to give laws to the world." The contemporary poets could imagine no stronger expression of an eternity, than that of a duration while Rome itself should last. Yet was it at that very time that the eyes of a fisherman of the lake of Tiberias were opened to see the angel "coming down from heaven with power and great glory," from whose mighty cry over the fall of Babylon we have already quoted some words. No wonder when the time came that his prophecy was fulfilled, the world stood by weeping and mourning, not over the fall of a single city (such as Scipio Africanus had forecast as he watched the smoke of old Carthage rising up to heaven), but over the ruin of the civilization of the whole world. No wonder that, even in our own age, those whose hearts have so far sunk back to the level of heathenism as to value only material prosperity and worldly greatness, still re-echo the cry--

"Alas! the eternal city, and alas! The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away. Alas! for earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she wore when Rome was free."

But the voice of divine wisdom was far different: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath judged your judgment upon her. And a mighty angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, 'With such violence as this shall Babylon, that great city, be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all; and the voice of harpers, and of musicians, and of them that play on the pipe and on the trumpet, shall no more be heard at all in thee; and no craftsman, of any art whatsoever, shall be found any more at all in thee; and the sound of the mill shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of the lamp shall shine no more in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth, for all nations have been deceived by thine enchantments.' And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth."

Thus total, according to the prophecy, was to be the destruction of the wealth, civilization, greatness, and glory of the ancient heathen world, gathered together in Rome, that in the utter sweeping away of that one city all might perish together. How fully the words were accomplished we know by the lamentation of the whole world over Babylon, the echoes of which still ring in our ears. But to us Christians it rather belongs to weigh the words which follow without any break in the sacred text (although the division of the chapters leads many readers to overlook the close connection). "After these things I heard, as it were, the voice of much people in heaven, saying, 'Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. For just and true are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornications, and he hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands.' And again they said, 'Alleluia. And her smoke ascendeth for ever and ever.'" Here is the answer to that cry of the angel, "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye apostles and prophets."

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Were any comment needed upon such prophecies--any explanation of the sentence passed upon a civilization so great, so ancient, so widely extended, and so refined--anything to reconcile us to the utter destruction of so much that was fair and mighty, we may find it in the latter half of the lecture before us. Not that our author is insensible to the marvellous beauty of that glow with which classical literature causes the figures of those days to shine before us. That would be impossible for a man of his studies. He says:

"Is not the very language of Cicero and Virgil an expression of this lordly, yet peaceful rule; this even, undisturbed majesty, which holds the world together like the regularity of the seasons, like the alternations of light and darkness, like the all-pervading warmth of the sun? If every language reflects the character of the race which speaks it, surely we discern in the very strain of Virgil the closing of the gates of war, the settling of the nations down to the arts of peace, the reign of law and order, the amity and concord of races, the weak protected, the strong ruled: in a word,

'Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam.'"

Neither, need it hardly be said, has he set the hideous pollutions of that civilization fully before us: that is rendered impossible by its very hideousness. Let those who recoil from the horrors of what he has said--but a faint outline of the miserable truth, though traced with singular artistic form and beauty--bear in mind the while the words of the inspired prophecy, "All nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her"--"Her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord shall reward her iniquities"--"In her was found the blood of prophets, and saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." The crimes, as well as the civilization of a thousand years, were accumulated at Rome, and both were swept away together by that overwhelming flood of fierce barbarians. Little were it worthy of Christians to mourn over a civilization into whose very heart-strings such unutterable pollution was intertwined; especially as it was removed, not like Babylon of old, to leave behind it nothing but desolation, but to make room for that kingdom of God which was to be enthroned upon its ruins; for such was the purpose of God, that the very centre of Christendom, the very seat of the throne of Christ upon earth, on which he would visibly sit in the person of his Vicar, was there to be established, whence the throne of the Caesars and the golden house of Nero had been swept away in headlong ruin. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth was gone. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, 'Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'" "And he that sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'" The full accomplishment of these words we expect, in faith and hope, when "death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more; for the former things are passed away;" yet, surely, whatever more glorious accomplishment is yet to come, it were blindness not to see how far they are already fulfilled in the substitution of Christendom for the civilized pagan world, the setting up the throne of the Vicar of Christ upon the ruins of the palace of the Caesars.

First among the causes of that hideous accumulated mixture of blood and filth in which heathen civilization was drowned, Mr. Allies most justly places the institution of slavery as it was at Rome, because by this the springs of human life were tainted. It is certain that during all the long years of the duration of the Roman {372} empire, there was among its heathen population no one human being, who lived beyond the earliest childhood, who was not polluted, and whose very soul was not scarred and branded, by the marks of that hideous moral pestilence. We say "its heathen population," because great as must have been the evil it wrought upon ordinary Christians, we doubt not that there were those who gathered honey out of corruption, and whose justice, charity, and purity came out from that furnace of temptation with a brightness which nothing but the most fiery trial could have given to them. From slavery the whole of Roman society received its form. Our author most truly says, "The spirit of slavery is never limited to the slave; it saturates the atmosphere which the freeman breathes together with the slave; passes into his nature, and corrupts it." This miserable truth can never be too often impressed upon men, because, unhappily, there are still advocates of slavery who think that they apologize for it if they can prove, as they think, that the slave is happy. As well might they argue that the introduction of the plague into London would be no calamity, if the man who brought it in upon him entered the city dancing and shouting. In ancient Italy slaves replaced the hardy rustics, that "_prisca gens mortalium_" who, though doubtless far less virtuous than they appeared in the fevered dreams of men sick of the vices of Rome in the last days of the republic, were still among the best specimens of heathen life. Wherever slavery extends, labor becomes dishonorable as the badge of servitude, a few masters languish in bloated luxury, but the nation itself grows constantly poorer, as an ever-increasing proportion of its population has to be maintained in indolence. At Rome slaves were the only domestic servants, and after a time the only manufacturers. And yet even this is nothing compared to the evils of a state of society in which the great majority of women as well as of men are the absolute property of their masters. Horrible as was this state of things, it offered so many gratifications to the corrupt natures of those whose hands held the power of the world, and without whose consent it could not be abolished, that it would have seemed to any one who had ever witnessed the life of a wealthy Roman noble no less than madness to imagine that any man would ever willingly surrender them.

As a matter of fact, so far was this state of society from holding out any hope of its own amendment, whether sudden or gradual, that, as our author remarks--

"Of all the minds which have left a record of themselves, from Cicero to Tacitus, there is not one who does not look upon the world's course as a rapid descent. They feel an immense moral corruption breaking in on all sides, which wealth, convenience of life, and prosperity only enhance. They have no hope for humanity, for they have no faith in it, nor in any power encompassing and directing it."

Faithless and hopeless they were; but whatever this world could give they had in abundance:

"In the time of heathenism the world of sense which surrounded man flattered and caressed all his natural powers, and solicited an answer from them; and in return he flung himself greedily upon that world, and tried to exhaust its treasures. Glory, wealth, and pleasure intoxicated his heart with their dreams; he crowned himself with the earth's flowers, and drank in the air's perfume; and in one object or another, in one after another, he sought enjoyment and satisfaction. The world had nothing more to give him; nor will the latest growth of civilization surpass the profusion with which the earth poured forth its gifts to those who consented to seek on the earth alone their home and their reward; though, indeed, they were the few, to whom the many were sacrificed. The Roman noble, with the pleasures of a vanquished world at his feet, {373} with men and women from the fairest climes of the earth to do his bidding--men who, though slaves, had learnt all the arts and letters of Greece, and were ready to use them for the benefit of their lords; and women, the most beautiful and accomplished of their sex, who were yet the property of these same lords--the Roman noble, as to material and even intellectual enjoyment, stood on a vantage-ground which never again man can hope to occupy, however--

'Through the ages an increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.'

"Caesar and Pompey, Lucullus and Hortensius, and the fellows of their order, were orators, statesmen, jurists, and legislators, generals, men of literature, and luxurious nobles at the same time; and they were this because they could use the minds as well as the bodies of others at their pleasure. Not in this direction was an advance possible" (p. 159).

Our author draws with great skill and vigor a picture of the moral society of the heathen world, and of the beliefs upon which the practice of the heathen rested. Into these we have no room to follow him. At the end of this lecture he shows what sights they were which met the eyes of a stranger coming from the east in the days of Nero--an execution in which four hundred men, women, and children were marched through the streets of Rome to the cross, because their master had been killed by one of his slaves. In all such cases the Roman law required that every slave in the house, however innocent, however young or however old--man, woman, or child--should be put to death. Thence the stranger passed to a scene of debauchery such as the world has never imagined, in the gardens close to the Pantheon. This stranger--

"Why has he come to Rome, and what is he doing there? Poor, unknown, a foreigner in dress, language, and demeanor, he is come from a distant province, small in extent, but the most despised and the most disliked of Rome's hundred provinces, to found in Rome itself a society, and one, too, far more extensive than this great Roman empire, since it is to embrace all nations; far more lasting, since it is to endure for ever. He is come to found a society, by means of which all that he sees around him, from the emperor to the slave, shall be changed" (p. 101).

What madness can have inspired such a hope, or what miracle, real or simulated, could fulfil it? And that, not in the golden age of pastoral simplicity, in which men looked for wonders with an uncritical eye, but "amid the dregs of Romulus," when all the world seemed to have fallen together into the "sere and yellow leaf."

"He has two things within him, for want of which society was perishing and man unhappy: a certain knowledge of God as the Creator, Ruler, Judge, and Rewarder of men; and of man's soul made after the image and likeness of this God. This God he has seen, touched, and handled upon earth; has been an eye-witness of his majesty, has received his message, and bears his commission. But whence had this despised foreigner received the double knowledge of God and of the soul, so miserably lost (as we have seen) to this brilliant Roman civilization?

"In the latter years of Augustus, when the foundations of the imperial rule had been laid, and the structure mainly raised by his practical wisdom, there had dwelt a poor family in a small town of evil repute, not far from the lake of the remote province where this fisherman plied his trade. It consisted of an elderly man, a youthful wife, and one young child. The man gained his livelihood as a carpenter, and the child worked with him. Complete obscurity rested upon this household till the child grew to the age of thirty years" (p. 104).

Then follows in few words the history of his life, death, and resurrection. These things the fisherman had {374} seen, and in this was the power which was to substitute a new life for the corrupt civilization of a world.

The details of the comparison which follows we may leave to be considered when the work is continued. They are drawn out with great spirit, thoughtfulness, and artistic beauty. For the comparison of the two systems in an individual, Mr. Allies selects on the one side Cicero, on the other St. Augustine. An able reviewer has maintained that "Marcus Aurelius was the person to compare with St Augustine." Mr. Allies has given his reasons for not selecting either Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus in the defective religious system of both. There were, however, other grounds which seem to us even stronger. To test what heathenism can do, it was necessary that the example selected should, as a chemist would say, present not "a trace" of any other influence. Now this was impossible in the days of Epictetus or Aurelius. Christianity had then been taught and professed publicly and without restraint for many years, with only occasional bursts of persecution since Nero first declared war upon it. Its theology, indeed, was fully known only to the faithful, but its moral code was publicly professed. The Christian teachers came before the people as philosophers. It is absolutely certain that all the great Stoics, and especially the emperor, must often and often have heard of the great moral and religious principles laid down by the Christian teachers, however imperfect was his knowledge of their religious practices. But we have already had occasion to remark that men are driven, whether they will or no, to approve and admit these great principles when they are only publicly stated and maintained, although certain not to have discovered them by their unassisted reason. We cannot, therefore, but regard the religious and moral maxims of the later Stoics as an imperfect reflection of the full light of Christianity, like the moonlight illuminating without warming, but still taking such hold of the minds which have once embraced them, that they could never be forgotten. The life and practice of the imperial philosopher, we have every reason to believe, was, for a man without the faith and the sacraments, wonderfully high. Far be it from us to depreciate it, for whatever there was in it that was really good we know resulted from that grace which is given even beyond the bounds of the Church. But our knowledge of details is most meagre, while Cicero we know probably more familiarly than any great man in whose intimacy we hare not lived. The thoughts and speculations which approved themselves to the deliberate judgment of Marcus Aurelius, these we know, and in many respects they are wonderful. Of his life we know little more than he chose publicly to exhibit to his subjects. The failings of Cicero were petty and degrading; but if he had been firmly seated on the throne of the Caesars, and if we had possessed no more exact details of his life than we do of the life of Marcus Aurelius, we much doubt whether we should have been aware of them. Merivale says: "The high standard by which we claim to judge him is in itself the fullest acknowledgment of his transcendent merits; for, undoubtedly, had he not placed himself on a higher level than the statesmen and sages of his day, we should pass over many of his weaknesses in silence, and allow his pretensions to our regard to pass almost unchallenged. But we demand a nearer approach to the perfection of human wisdom and virtue in one who sought to approve himself as the greatest of their teachers." He was condemned indeed by his heathen countrymen, but their censure was rather of his greatness than his goodness, and they would probably have been even more severe had he attained what he did not even aim at --Christian humility.

Considering these things, and especially that Cicero belonged almost to {375} the last generation, which was wholly uninfluenced by the reflected light of Christianity and in which, therefore, we can to a considerable degree measure the real effects of heathen philosophy, we venture to think that Mr. Allies has judged well in comparing him as the model heathen with St. Augustine as the model Christian. The comparison is drawn with a masterly hand.

On the whole, however, we incline to think that the two last lectures are of the greatest practical value, especially at the present crisis. The salt by which Christianity acts upon the world seems to be martyrdom and holy virginity. Both of them have been always in operation since the days of John the Baptist. But there are periods of comparative stillness in which martyrdom is hardly seen, or at least only at the outposts of the Christian host. At such times, it is by holy virginity that the Church acts most directly and most powerfully upon the world. This was the case in the Roman empire as soon as persecution relaxed.

Our author says:

"A great Christian writer [St. Chrysostom], who stood between the old pagan world and the new society which was taking its place, and who was equally familiar with both, made, near the end of the fourth century, the following observation: 'The Greeks had some few men, though it was but few, among them, who, by the force of philosophy, came to despise riches; and some, too, who could control the irascible part of man; but the flower of virginity was nowhere to be found among them. Here they always gave precedence to us, confessing that to succeed in such a thing was to be superior to nature and more than man. Hence their profound admiration for the whole Christian people. The Christian host derived its chief lustre from this portion of its ranks.' And, again, he notes the existence, in his time, of three different sentiments respecting this institution. 'The Jews,' he says, 'turn with abhorrence from the beauty of virginity; which indeed is no wonder, since they treated with dishonor the very Son of the Virgin himself. The Greeks, however, admire it, and look up to it with astonishment, but the Church of God alone cultivates it.' After fifteen hundred years we find the said sentiments in three great classes of the world. The pagan nations, among whom Catholic missionaries go forth, reproduce the admiration of Greek and Latin pagans; they reverence that which they have not strength to follow, and are often drawn by its exhibition into the fold. But there are nations who likewise reproduce the Jewish abhorrence of the virginal life. And as the Jews worshipped the unity of the Godhead, like the Christians, and so seemed to be far nearer to them than pagan idolaters, and yet turned with loathing from this product of Christian life, so those nations might seem, from the large portions of Christian doctrine which they still hold, to be nearer to Christianity than the Hindoo and the Chinese; and yet their contempt and dislike for the virginal life and its wonderful institutions seems to tell another tale. But now, as fifteen hundred years ago, whether those outside admire or abhor, the Church alone cultivates the virginal life. Now, as then, it is her glory and her strength, the mark of her Lord, and the standard of his power, the most _special_ sign of his presence and operation. 'If,' says the same writer, 'you take away its seemliness and its continuity of devotion, you cut the very sinews of the virginal estate; so when it is possessed together with the best conduct of life, you have in it the root and support of all good things: just as a most fruitful soil nurtures a root, so a good conduct bears the fruits of virginity. Or, to speak with greater truth, the crucified life is at once both its root and its fruit'" (p. 382).

We must conclude by expressing our deliberate conviction that no study {376} can be more important at the present day than that of the change from heathen civilization to Christendom, the means by which it was brought about, and the effects which it produced. For in our day, most eminently, the Protestant falling away is producing its fruits in restoring throughout all Europe more and more of the special characteristics of heathen society. We have not room at present to offer any proofs of this, but we would beg every reader to observe for himself, and we are confident that his experience will confirm what we say. Nor is it only Catholics that are aware of this tendency. A thoughtful writer in the _Saturday Review_, six months back, devoted a whole article to trace the points of resemblance between an educated English Protestant of our day and a heathen of cultivated mind. Those who feel disposed at once to regard the idea as an insult are probably judging of heathen civilization by Nero and Domitian. Mr. Allies's book will at least dispel this delusion. In fact, it is only too obvious that there is, even in our own day, no want of plausibility in what is at the bottom only revived heathenism; and in consequence of this remarkable resemblance, nothing could be more strictly practical at the present moment than any studies which show us the old heathen civilization as it really was, in its attractive as well as its repulsive qualities.

From The Month.

SAINTS OP THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.

1. Abbot Antony said: Without temptation there is no entrance possible into the kingdom. Take away temptations, and no one is in the saving way.

2. Some one asked blessed Arsenius, "How is it that we, with all our education and accomplishments, are so empty, and these Egyptian peasants are so full?"

He made answer: We have the world's outward training, from which nothing is learned; but theirs is a personal travail, and virtue is its fruit.

3. It was heard by some that Abbot Agatho possessed the gift of discrimination. Therefore, to make trial of his temper, they said to him, "We are told that you are sensual and haughty." He answered: That is just it.

They said again, "Are you not that Agatho who has such a foul tongue?" He answered: I am he.

Then they said, "Are you not Agatho the heretic?" He made answer: No.

Then they asked him why he had been patient of so much, yet would not put up with this last. He answered: By those I was but casting on me evil; but by this I should be severing me from God.

4. Holy Epiphanius was asked why the commandments are ten, and the beatitudes nine. He answered: The commandments are as many as the plagues of Egypt; but the beatitudes are a triple image of the Holy Trinity.

5. It was told to Abbot Theodore, that a certain brother had returned to the world. He answered: Marvel not at this, but marvel rather that any one comes out of it.

6. The Abbot Sisoi said: Seek God, and not his dwelling-place.

7. It is told of a certain senior, that he wished to have a cucumber. When he had got it, he hung it up in his sight, and would not touch it, lest appetite should have the mastery of him. Thus he did penance for his wish.

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From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.