vivid. It could only have been written by one who sympathized

completely with the subject, and understood the interior illuminations and trials, and the complete detachment from the world, which distinguished the illustrious preacher whose fame at one time filled all Catholic Europe. Father de Ponlevoy has given us therefore a valuable work. He has looked at De Ravignan's life from the right point of view--the only point in fact from which it offers any important material to the biographer. In a worldly sense, the life was not an eventful one. He came of a noble yet hardly a distinguished family, who preserved their faith in the midst of the storm of revolution, and brought up their children to love the church. Gustave Xavier was born at Bayonne on the 1st of December, 1795. As a child he was remarkable for a gravity and intelligence far beyond his years, a warm affection for his parents, and a very pious disposition. After completing his school and college education in Paris, he resolved to devote himself to the law, and at the age of eighteen entered the office of M. Goujon, a jurist of some distinction at the capital. He had scarcely begun his studies, however, when France was thrown into confusion by the return of Napoleon from Elba. {113} The young man threw down his books, enlisted in a company of royalist volunteers, and after preparing himself for the campaign by receiving holy communion, marched with his command toward the Spanish frontier. His company belonged to that unlucky detachment under General Barbarin, which was surprised and cut to pieces at Hélette, in the Lower Pyrénées. General Barbarin fell, severely wounded, and would have fallen into the enemy's hands, when De Ravignan rushed forward through the fire and attempted to carry him off the field. It was a generous but desperate act, which would have led to the sacrifice of both. Barbarin saw the danger of the young hero, and, freeing one of his arms, shot himself through the head. Covered with the blood of his unfortunate commander, Gustave sought safety in flight, wandered afoot and alone through the Basque country, in the disguise of a peasant, and, after many hardships and escapes, rejoined the army on Spanish soil. He now received a commission as lieutenant of cavalry, and was attached to the staff of the Count de Damas, who sent him on a confidential mission to Bordeaux. Before he had any further opportunity of winning distinction, the war was over, and although tempting offers were made him to continue in the army, he determined to adhere to the law, and was soon hard at work again. The indomitable resolution, amounting even to sternness, which distinguished him in after life, was already one of his most remarkable characteristics. Whatever he did, was done with all his might. He studied with the most intense application, and, not satisfied with the reading necessary for his profession, applied himself closely to the German and English languages, and such lighter accomplishments as drawing and music. In due time he was appointed a _conseiller auditeur_ in the royal court of Paris, then under the presidency of Séguier. The influence of the Duke d'Angoulême got him the appointment--not, however, without some difficulty--and his colleagues received him coldly. He awaited his time in patience, beginning each day by hearing Mass, and studying thoroughly, systematically, and indefatigably. At last, one day when the advocates happened to be out of court, a civil cause of a very tedious nature was unexpectedly called. The president turned, rather maliciously, to De Ravignan, and handed him the papers, saying, "Let us see for once what can be done by this young gentleman, whose acquaintance we have yet to make." On the appointed day the "young gentleman" presented a clear and logical report, and delivered it with a perfection of utterance which caused the whole court to listen with astonishment. His success at the bar was assured from that moment, and soon afterward he was appointed deputy _procureur général_.

His life at this time presents a curious and instructive study. He devoted a part of each day regularly to religious exercises; he was a zealous member of a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin; he had already in fact formed the idea of entering the priesthood, if not of joining the Society of Jesus. But while he remained in the world, he never neglected his professional pursuits, he mingled freely in society, and showed himself, in the true sense of the term, an accomplished gentleman. He was a great favorite in company. "In him," says Father de Ponlevoy, "interior and exterior were in perfect harmony. It would be impossible to imagine a more perfect type of a young man: the expression of his countenance was excellent, his forehead high and full of dignity, his features fine and characteristic, his eyes deep and blue, by turns animated and affectionate, his figure slight and graceful. {114} To this picture must be added scrupulous attention to person and dress, perfect politeness, and a nameless something, the reflection of a lofty mind, a great intellect, and a pure and affectionate heart." Many years afterward, when he visited London, to preach at the time of the World's Fair, one of the principal Protestant noblemen of England said of him, "He is the most finished gentleman I ever saw." His modesty, like many of his other virtues, leaned toward severity. At a great dinner-party one day, before he had embraced the religious life, he was placed next a young lady whose dress was rather too scanty. He sat stiff and silent until the unlucky girl ventured to ask, "M. de Ravignan, have you no appetite?" He replied in a half-whisper, "And you, Mdlle., have you no shame?"

He was twenty-six years of age when, after a retreat of eight days, he entered the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. The resolution had been gradually formed, yet it took everybody except his mother and his spiritual director by surprise. His professional friends and associates did all they could to draw him back to the world. They sought out his retreat, and went after him in crowds. "Ah!" he exclaimed, when he saw them, "I have made my escape from you."

De Ravignan remained only six months in the seminary, and then removed to the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, for which he had made no secret of his preference. The life of a novice offers little matter for the biographer. We are only told that his course here was distinguished by a devotion which approached heroism, a zeal that tended toward excess, and a strictness that was often too hard and stern. Throughout his life, severity toward himself, far more than toward others, was his principal defect; but as years went on, this rigidity of character, always more apparent than real, disappeared little by little in the sunshine of divine love. He never spared himself in anything. He surpassed all in his ambition for humiliation and suffering; the only trouble was, that he sometimes went too far in attempting to lead weaker brethren by the hard path he himself had trodden. A novice once asked somebody for advice, and was recommended to apply to Brother de Ravignan. "In that case," he rejoined, "I know beforehand what I must do: I have only to choose the most difficult course." In the scholasticate, he was known by the _sobriquet_ of "Iron Bar." When the time came for his admission to holy orders, after nearly four years passed in the scholasticate at Paris and at Dôle, he was sent with five other candidates to the Diocesan Seminary at Orgelet, where the sacrament of ordination was to be administered. Before the party set out, Brother de Ravignan was appointed superior for the journey. His companions were seized with fear when they heard who had been placed in charge over them; but their alarm was groundless. "Nothing," said one of the company, "could exceed the kindness, the affability, the attentiveness to small wants, the simple joy of the young superior. He availed himself of his character only to claim the right of choosing the last place, and of making himself the servant of all." He was ordained priest on the 25th of July, 1828.

The war against the Jesuits in France was approaching its crisis, and the ordinance which deprived them of the liberty of teaching and shut up all their colleges was promulgated just about the time of Father de Ravignan's ordination. {115} Cut off from the privilege of secular instruction, the society resolved to devote itself more zealously than ever to the theological training of its own members. Father de Ravignan was assigned a chair of theology at Saint Acheul, near Amiens; for he was not only a thorough scholar, but he possessed a rare talent for teaching, and according to the testimony of his pupil, Father Rubillon, fully realized "the idea of a professor of theology such as is depicted by St. Ignatius." The poor fathers, however, were not to be left here in peace. In 1829, they received notice to suspend their classes; but Father de Ravignan hastened to Paris, saw the Minister of Public Instruction, and caused the order to be set aside. The next year came the revolution of July. Late in the evening of the 29th, a mob, led by an expelled pupil, attacked the college, burst in gates, and with cries for "The King and the Charter!" "The Emperor!" "Liberty!" and "Down with the priests!" and "Death to the Jesuits!" proceeded to sack the building. While some of the fathers took refuge in the chapel, and others, expecting death, were busy hearing one another's confessions, Father de Ravignan went upon a balcony, and tried to make himself heard by the rioters. He persisted until a stone struck him on the temple, and he was led away bleeding. To what lengths the fury of the mob would have gone it is impossible to say; but fortunately, in the course of their devastation they stumbled into the wine-cellar, and all got drunk. The arrival of a troop of cavalry dispersed the reeling crowd in the twinkling of an eye, and the Jesuits were left to mourn over the ruins. The next day it seemed certain that the attack would be renewed. The college was deserted, and its inmates scattered in different directions, Father de Ravignan being sent to Brigue in Switzerland to resume his courses of theological instruction.

It was not until the close of 1834 that he came back to France. Then we find him once more at Saint Acheul, where, since classes were prohibited, a house had been opened for fathers in their third year of probation. Three years later, he was appointed superior of a new house at Bordeaux. There he remained until 1842.

In the mean time he had entered, imperceptibly, so to speak, upon the great work of his life. He had preached many retreats at different times to his own brethren, and to other religious communities, but had rarely been heard in a public pulpit until, during the Lent of 1835, while he was living at Saint Acheul, he was selected to preach a series of conferences in the cathedral of Amiens. He was forty years of age when he began this apostleship, and he had been withdrawn from the world ever since he was twenty-seven; yet he had not been forgotten. There was a lively curiosity among his old friends to hear him; the members of the bar in particular were constant in their attendance; and the impression produced in Amiens was not only deep, but rich in spiritual fruit. In Advent, he was appointed to preach a similar course at the same place; and in Lent of the next year, we find him preaching in the church of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Paris. Nothing exactly like these conferences and courses of sermons, so common in France, has ever been known to our country, and some of our readers may find it difficult to appreciate the magnitude and importance of the labor in which Father de Ravignan was now engaged. {116} The audiences whom he had to address were not only poor, unlettered sinners, whose consciences needed arousing; to these of course he must speak, but with them came hundreds of the most cultivated and critical listeners, who studied the speaker's language and manner as they would a literary essay or an exercise in elocution. The court, the army, the learned professions, and the leaders of fashionable society crowded around the Lent and Advent pulpits. The appearance of a new preacher was the sensation of the metropolis. The newspapers criticised the performance as they would criticise a play at the theatre. To satisfy the exactions of such an audience as this, and yet to preserve that unction without which preaching is a waste of breath--to please the critical ear, and yet to move the callous heart, required qualifications which few men combined. The most famous of all the series of conferences had been those in the great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Father Lacordaire had there roused an extraordinary enthusiasm, and at the height of his fame had abandoned the pulpit and gone to Rome for the purpose of restoring the Dominican order to France. He earnestly desired that Father de Ravignan should be his successor at Notre Dame, and it is interesting to know that it was partly through Lacordaire's agency, that the Jesuit was obliged in 1837 to begin that grand series of discourses, extending over ten years, by which he will be chiefly remembered. "No one could claim to be the apostle of such an assembly as met in Notre Dame," says Father de Ponlevoy,

"unless he were first of all a philosopher. The subject chosen for the first year was accordingly a kind of Catholic philosophy of history, depicting the broad outlines of the struggle between truth and error. This idea is analogous to that which inspired the _City of God_ of St. Augustine; it was carried on in the station of 1838 by an explanation of fundamental doctrines, beginning with the personality and action of God, in opposition to the abstractions of the pantheists, the ill-defined forms of deism and fatalism; proceeding on to liberty, the immortality of the soul and the end of man, against materialism. For all this, it was necessary to go to first principles, to recall slumbering belief to life, and again to establish doctrines which had been corrupted by numberless errors. Some portion of the hearers were from this time forward led to embrace the last practical conclusions, and already F. de Ravignan had some consoling returns to the faith to report. At the end of the station of 1838, he wrote:

"'The attendance has been large and remarkable for the great number of distinguished persons, members of the present and former ministries, peers, deputies, academicians, well known Protestants, foreigners of rank, and a troop of young men.

"'There have been symptoms of approval, sometimes too freely manifested; conversions, a few, but not many. Moreover, no expressions of hostility, either in the newspapers or among the audience. God be praised!

"'I have been forced to have some intercourse with a great many people, and some of them persons of note. M. de Chateaubriand paid me a visit; two interviews were arranged for me with M. de Lamartine; several physicians and men of science have sought to see me; some have been to confession. How many great men there are ignorant of the faith, and sick in mind and heart.

"'God has supported me. I have felt his grace, his help to our society, and the benefit of the prayers offered for my work. I took care that none of the journals should employ short-hand writers, that my words might not be published in a distorted form.'"

From the very outset, Father de Ravignan had contemplated the establishment of an annual retreat by way of a complement to his conferences; but wishing to give his influence time to work before he carried out this plan, he waited until 1841, and then resolved to begin in the small church of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, which with great crowding holds no more than 1000 or 1200 people. {117} Should the attendance be too large for this church, it was arranged that he should remove to St. Eustache. He describes the result of his experiment as follows:

"I gave notice of a retreat for men during Holy Week, only on Palm-Sunday at Notre Dame before the conference; an instruction every evening at eight o'clock till Holy Saturday inclusively. On the Monday evening I went to the Abbaye-aux-Bois about half-past seven. I found an extraordinary crowd, and difficulty in getting places; and there was not a single woman. I had kept them all out. For nearly two hours the whole church had been full, and already a hundred people had gone away unable to get in. I wanted to cross the bottom of the church, but I could not get along. I was recognized, and with great earnestness, but without uproar, I was asked to adjourn elsewhere. I promised to do so. From the pulpit I was struck by this throng of men, almost all young, who filled the doorways, the altars and no disturbance. After having warmly congratulated them, I appointed Saint-Eustache for the next day. Then I bade them all rise for prayer. They all rose like one man. We recited the _Veni Creator_, and the instruction followed on these words: _Venite seorsum et requiescite pusillum--Come aside, and rest a little_. I advised them all to remain for benediction. All remained.

"Next day Saint-Eustache was filled five hours before the service, and the following days they came even earlier.

"My heart is full of gratitude to God. His help has been plain. I do not know that such a churchful of men was ever seen. The iron gates at the doors, the bases of the pillars, the rails, everything, was covered with people hanging on; the nave and aisles filled and crowded beyond conception, and the deepest, most religious silence--not one disturbance, no police--3000 or 4000 men's voices singing the _Miserere_, the _Stabat Mater_. The sight affected me deeply.

"I at once adopted perfect apostolic freedom of language, and, without preface, began to speak of sin, of hell, of confession, etc. I delivered my address, and appointed six hours every day which I would devote to men who might wish to see me. They have come in shoals. I have been hearing confessions all the week, six or seven hours a day, of men of all ages and positions in life--all very much behindhand. God has given me consolation. The prayers offered on all sides for this work have had a visible effect. There has been a marked movement in Paris. More Easter Communions everywhere. Our fathers have received many more confessions of men. I have not declined a single one, and I am still busy in finishing them.

"A good many came to tell me of their difficulties, and I said to them, 'Well, believe me, there is but one way; take your place there;' and all, with a single exception, made their confessions.

"On Good-Friday the Passion sermon exhausted my strength; the following day I had no voice left. I was unable to give the closing instruction of the retreat on Holy Saturday. I wrote a scrap of a note to inform the Curé of Saint-Eustache, and he bethought him of reading it from the pulpit. All went off quietly; the people waited for benediction and went home."

Lacordaire was a far more brilliant and poetical preacher than De Ravignan, but the styles of the two men were so entirely different that there can be no comparison between them. The conferences of the Jesuit orator, studied in the cold light of print, lack color and imagination; but they can only be judged fairly by those who heard them delivered. The principal characteristic of his delivery we should judge must have been force--a force which amounted to majesty. He spoke with a commanding air of authority, as one whose convictions were as fixed as the everlasting hills. His power of assertion was tremendous; with all this he was animated and impassioned, although he generally commenced with a slow and measured cadence. His style was a little rough, but nervous and striking. He did not captivate, but he conquered. His gestures were dignified and impressive; his attitude was modest but commanding; his personal presence was noble. When he entered the pulpit, he remained a long time motionless, with eyes cast down, waiting until the assemblage became perfectly still. Then he made the sign of the cross with a pomp and stateliness which became famous. {118} A Protestant minister who witnessed this solemn exordium exclaimed, "He has preached without speaking a word!" It used to be said, "When Father de Ravignan shows himself in the pulpit, no one can tell whether he has just ascended from earth or come down from heaven." One day he had been describing the wilful misery of the unbeliever--his doubts, fears, melancholy, repinings, and despair; the picture was drawn with a terrible force; the audience sat as if paralyzed. Suddenly, want of breath compelled the orator to pause. He folded his arms, and with inimitable emphasis brought the climax to an end with these words: "And we-- we are believers!" The effect was overpowering. The people forgot themselves, and a signal of applause ran through the church. The priest was indignant. With glowing countenance and arm raised in air, he cried, "Silence!" in a voice of awful reproof, and the assembly was instantly hushed.

Still more effective, though less celebrated than the conferences, were Father de Ravignan's retreats. In these he was unapproached. He followed strictly the exercises of St. Ignatius, to which he gave such unremitting study that he might well be called a man of one book. His conferences were prepared with great elaboration, but the retreats were improvisations. As years went on, he devoted himself more and more closely to these latter exercises, until they became at last his proper work in the ministry; and when sickness, and the loss of his voice had compelled him to abandon formal preaching, he continued to conduct the retreats at Notre Dame, while Lacordaire resumed his place in the pulpit.

It must not be supposed that the success of the Jesuit's oratory was any indication of a growing favor for the society in France. The opposition to its existence was still active, and the government refused to acknowledge that as a society it had any existence in the kingdom at all. The wildest stories about it were published and believed. One day, in the midst of a distinguished party assembled at the Tuileries to celebrate the king's birthday, a person of influence disclosed a horrible plot: the Jesuits had arms stored in the cellars of Saint Sulpice, and only the day before, Father de Ravignan had been there concerting measures with his accomplices. "Oh! yes," interrupted a lady of the court, "I was at that meeting. We were drawing a raffle for the poor. There were two or three hundred families so lucky as to be set up with a coffee-pot or a sauce-pan." As a general thing, however, whatever might be said of the society, Father de Ravignan was treated with respect. Guizot made no secret of his esteem for him, and Royer-Collard used to say, "Father de Ravignan is artless enough to imagine himself a Jesuit." In the little book which De Ravignan accordingly wrote about this time--_On the Existence and the Institute of the Jesuits_--there was a double purpose to be gained. He wished to identify himself as thoroughly and as publicly as he could with the society to which he had given his heart, and he wished to share in the gallant battle which Lacordaire was fighting for the right of the religious orders to exist in France under the protection of the laws. The opposition in the legislative chambers had been insisting that they ought not to exist; the ministry replied that they did not exist; and right in the midst of the dispute appears Father de Ravignan, like the poor prisoner who called a lawyer to get him out of jail. {119} "But this is preposterous," said the counsel; "you can't be arrested on such a charge as that!" "I don't know," said the prisoner, "but I _am_ arrested." "Why, I tell you, you _can't_ be: it is not legal; they have no right to put you in jail." "Well, I only know that I _am_ in jail, and I want you get me out." Father de Ravignan showed clearly enough that they did exist, and had a right to legal protection. If they were to be driven out of the kingdom, the government must face the responsibility, and do it openly. A few days after the appearance of the book, Lacordaire, being present at a meeting of the Catholic Club under the presidency of the Archbishop of Paris, exclaimed, "If we were in England, I should propose three cheers for Father de Ravignan." The cheers were given with a will.

We have no space to follow Father de Ravignan in the varied occupations of the next ten years. His health, always precarious, broke down completely in 1847, and for the rest of his life he was condemned to alternations of intense suffering, and of forced inaction which was worse to him than pain. He was tormented with chronic neuralgia, with dropsy on the chest, and a severe affection of the larynx, that for long periods deprived him entirely of the power of preaching. During these ten years of suffering, he wrote his history of "Clement XIII. and Clement XIV," a book which under the guise of an apology for the course of the latter pontiff in the suppression of the Jesuits was in reality an apology for the society, and a reply to the recently published work of Father Theiner on the same subject. He founded the sodality known as the Children of Mary, assisted in the establishment of the Congregation of the Oratory, and was zealously and constantly employed in the direction of souls and the guidance of converts--gathering up, as Father de Ponlevoy well expresses it, the fruit of his ten years' preaching. There is hardly a distinguished name in the history of France at that day which does not appear in connection with his. Madame Swetchine was one of his co-laborers. Madame de la Ferronnays, whose charming life has recently been told under the title of _A Sister's Story_, was his devoted friend. Chateaubriand, Count Molé, Walckenaër, Camper the celebrated navigator, Marshal St. Arnaud, General Cavaignac, Prince Demidoff, Montalembert, De Falloux, and Bishop Dupanloup--these are some of the illustrious names which occur most frequently in his correspondence. A celebrity of a very different sort with whom he had some intercourse is thus alluded to in Father de Ponlevoy's Life:

"We cannot conclude this chapter without making some mention of that well-known American _Medium_, who possessed the unfortunate talent of turning other things besides tables, and of calling up the dead for the amusement of the living. Much has been said, even in the newspapers, about his close and pious intimacy with F. de Ravignan; and it seems that an attempt has been made to use an honored name as a passport to introduce into France, and establish there, these wonderful discoveries of the new world.

"The facts, in all their simplicity, are as follows: It is quite true that, after the young foreigner had been converted in Italy, he was furnished at Rome with an introduction to F. de Ravignan; but by this time he had given up his magic at the same time that he gave up his Protestantism, and he was received with the interest which is due from a priest to every soul ransomed with the blood of Jesus Christ, and especially, perhaps, to a soul which is converted and brought back to the bosom of the church. On his arrival in Paris, he was again absolutely forbidden to return in any way to his old practices. F. de Ravignan, agreeably to the principles of the faith which proscribe all superstition, prohibited, under the severest penalties he could inflict, all participation in or presence at these dangerous and sometimes guilty proceedings. {120} Once the unhappy _Medium_, beset by I know not what man or devil, was unfaithful to his promise; he was received with a severity which prostrated him; I chanced at the time to come into the room, and I saw him rolling on the ground, and writhing like a worm at the feet of the priest, so righteously indignant. The father was touched by a repentance which led to such bodily agony, raised him up, and pardoned him; but, before dismissing him, exacted a written promise confirmed by an oath. But a notorious relapse soon took place, and the servant of God, breaking off all connection with this slave of the spirits, sent him word never again to appear in his presence."

We shall not undertake, in the brief space that remains, to describe the beauty of Father de Ravignan's character--his touching humility, his rare sweetness of soul, his complete detachment from earth, his patience, his charity, and his unflagging zeal. He was once asked how he had attained such mastery over himself. "There were two of us," he replied; "I threw one out of the window, so that only I remained where I was." Father de Ponlevoy applies to him the description which St. Francis Xavier gave of St. Ignatius: "His character is made up of three elements; a humility of mind which we can scarcely understand, a force of soul superior to all opposition, and an incomparable kindness of heart."

In the spring of 1857, a severe attack of sickness obliged him to remove to Saint Acheul. He came back to Paris in the autumn, apparently restored to as good health as he had experienced of recent years, but he was already far gone in consumption. On the 3d of December, he passed a long time at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, conversing with a poor person who wanted to enter the church. Then he went into the confessional, and remained there until physically exhausted. One of his penitents on that occasion remarked that he spoke more than ever like a man who no longer belonged to this world. He got home with great difficulty. This was the last of his ministry. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, he celebrated mass for the last time; but it was not until the 26th of February that he passed to that blessed rest for which he had yearned so long with an eagerness that he used to call "homesickness." The account of his last days is too beautiful to be abridged. With the awe inspired by the sublime narrative, we prefer to drop our pen at the opening of this final chapter, wherein the gates of heaven seem to stand ajar, and our eyes are dazzled by the awful light which streams from the divine presence.

{121}

The Educational Question.

The articles upon popular education which have heretofore appeared in this journal seem to have produced the effects which were anticipated by the writer. The public interest has been unusually excited by the discussion; and two classes of antagonists have ventured to make an issue with the advocates of a just distribution of the school fund. The first in order, but much the least important in all other respects, is that confessed fossil, the "no-popery" party, which ever and anon intrudes itself upon the unwilling attention of our republican society, braying itself hoarse with rage because it can neither command the confidence of enlightened and liberal Protestants nor escape the galling ridicule of six millions of its Catholic fellow-citizens. This class is well represented in an elaborate tract lately issued from the office of the American and Foreign Christian Union, 27 Bible House, New York City, and purporting to be a review of the article in the January number of _The Educational Monthly_, presenting _The Roman Catholic View of Education in the United States_. It requires no great amount of logical acumen to enable the least intelligent of men to see that this tract affords the most apt illustration of one of the principal arguments we have advanced in support of the Catholic claim. We have remained silent for the last three months, resting satisfied that it would be impossible for "the stereotyped class of saints and philosophers" to rush to the rescue of a cherished injustice, without forthwith exposing its odious features in their struggle to carry it victoriously through the battle-field of a public controversy. The veil of Mokanna has fallen even before the false prophet had time to secure a victim! or, to speak more in accordance with scriptural analogies, the cloven foot has discovered itself under the clerical robe and the wickedness of the heart has burst out from the tongue. _Quare fremuerunt gentes!_ Why, indeed, shall they rage and devise vain things? Have they not fulfilled this prophecy of the royal David for three hundred years; and have they not suffered the derision threatened in the fourth verse of the second Psalm? Where shall we find a more convincing proof than this very tract of what the enemies of the Catholic faith and people design to accomplish by a school system which they insincerely profess to advocate on account of its intrinsic merits, in the face of the historical fact that, wherever and whenever they have had the power to control the state--as the early days of all New England and of several of the other American States--they never failed to use the school-room as an ante-chamber to the conventicle! After they had been stripped of this power by such men as Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and the liberal founders of American institutions, they still struggled for many years to accomplish by indirect means the injustice and iniquity which could not be openly maintained under the constitutions and the laws of the federal government and the several States. We all well remember how the poor Catholic boys and girls of the free schools were harassed by colporteurs and proselytizers, who carried baskets filled, not with bread for the hungry children of poverty, but with oleaginous tracts, cunningly devised to destroy in those little pupils of the state the faith of their fathers and the religious practices of their devout mothers. {122} Teachers were selected with especial regard to their bitter hatred of the Catholic Church and their zeal for "Evangelical" propagandism. When this failed to make any very perceptible impression upon the numerical strength of the Catholic people, then commenced the wholesale child-stealing, under the pious pretext of cleaning out the moral sewers of society; and tens of thousands of little children, stolen or forcibly wrested from the arms of Catholic parents--too poor and friendless to protect the natural and legal rights of themselves and their offspring--were hurried off to the far West, their names changed, and their temporal and eternal hopes committed to the zealous charge of pious and vigorous haters of the popish anti-Christ! In spite of all this, the Catholic population of the United States continued steadily to rise like a flood tide, not only through foreign immigration, but by reason of virtuous wedlock and the watchful and severe faith and discipline of a church which forbids and effectually prevents child-murder! The reader will find this matter discussed in an article elsewhere in this number, entitled, "Comparative Morality of Catholic and Protestant Countries."

The writer of the tract issued from 27 Bible House is annoyed by the comparison which the author of the article in _The Educational Monthly_ instituted between the violent crimes of our ancestors and the stupendous sins which have supplanted them in modern times. The comparison was close-fitting as the shirt of Nessus, and quite as uncomfortable. The Bible House replies to this with a contrast between the intellectual, material, moral, and religious advancement of the masses in England, the United States, and every other Protestant country, in the nineteenth century, and the debasement of the people of Spain, Italy, Mexico, and South America. In the first place, we reply that our present controversy concerns popular education in the United States now and for a hopeful future, and not the past nor the present of European or South American nations. In the next place, we say that this is but another evidence of the malignant spirit to which we are required to intrust the training of our Catholic youth. They are to be taught that the church of their fathers is the nursery of ignorance and vice; and that all the knowledge, civilization, and virtue which the world enjoys are the offspring of the so-called Reformation. They are to learn nothing of the true history of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and the Catholic principalities of Continental Europe. They are never to hear of the vast libraries of Catholic learning; the rich endowments of Catholic education all over the world for ages; the innumerable universities, colleges, academies, and free schools established by their church, or by governments under her auspices, throughout Christendom. They are not to be told how Oxford and Cambridge were founded by their Catholic forefathers and plundered from their lawful possession. The Bible House tractarian would not willingly read to them from the _Notes of a Traveller_ by that eminent Scotch Presbyterian, Samuel Laing, such passages as these:

"The comparative education of the Scotch clergy of the present generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of the Scotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the Popish clergy compared to the education of their people. This is usually ascribed to the Popish clergy seeking to maintain their influence and superiority by keeping the people in gross ignorance. {123} But this opinion of our churchmen seems more orthodox than charitable or correct. The Popish clergy have in reality less to lose by the progress of education than our own Scotch clergy; because their pastoral influence and their church services being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no competition or comparison whatsoever in the public mind with anything similar that literature or education produces; and are not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying instruction which, as education advances, becomes obsolete and falls into disuse, and almost into contempt, although essential in our Scotch church. In Catholic Germany, in France, Italy, and even Spain the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is at least as generally diffused, and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body, as in Scotland. It is by their own advance and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the Popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on our Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is in reality not only not repressed but is encouraged by the Popish Church, and is a mighty instrument in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are at short distances public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes in the neighborhood Rome, with a population of 158,678 souls, has 372 public primary schools with 482 teachers; and 14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university with an average attendance of 660 students; and the Papal States with a population of 2,500,000 (in 1846) contain seven universities. Prussia with a population of 14,000,000 has but seven."

Neither would our Bible House tractarian teach his Catholic pupils to discriminate between times, circumstances, opportunities, characteristics of race, influences of climate, ancient traditional habits, and the complicated causes which affect the life and development of each nation; so as to contrast Protestant England with Protestant Denmark, and Catholic France with Catholic Portugal; or, again, to compare each of these with itself at different epochs of its own history. They are not to be told that Spain was never as powerful, covering the seas with her commerce and the earth with her conquests, and lighting up Europe by her genius, as at the time when she was the most thoroughly Catholic and the least tainted with that revolutionary infidelity which was born of Calvin and has grown to be a giant destroyer under Mazzini and Garibaldi. They are to be told, however, that the glory of a Christian nation is to be measured by its national debt, its fleets and armies, its opium trade, its Coolie traffic, its bankrupt laws, its work-houses, its prodigious fortunes mocking squalid poverty, its twenty millions of people who own no foot of land and its vicious nobles and gentry who firmly grasp it all, its telegraphic wires and cables, its huge ships and thundering factories, its luxurious merchants who toil not, and its starving able-bodied paupers who can find no work to do, its grotesque mixture of the beautiful and the vile, of the grand and the infamous, of the light of the skies and the darkness of the obscene coal-pits, of the pride of science and the ignorance of barbarism, of the perfume of fashionable churches and the stench of gin-shops, of the industrial slavery of great towns and the rotting idleness of vast lazar-houses, which make up the boasted civilization of haughty England, and extort from the Bible House the prayerful cry, "_Thank God, we are not like unto these Romish Publicans!_" Happy Pharisees! we certainly do not desire to disturb their self-complacency; but we wish to teach our Catholic children that the simple habits, the earnest piety, the manly truth and courage of the little Catholic Republic of San Marino, which has preserved its liberties and independence for over eight hundred years without losing its religion, are for the citizens of this great democratic empire a more profitable study than the doctrines of Malthus or the history of cotton-gins. {124} As we have said in our former articles, we already have here quite enough of the material, and a superabundance of animal spirits and vigor; and that what we stand in need of is a well-defined faith, moral duties clearly understood, and habits of practical virtue firmly fixed in the daily life of all the people, Without that, even temporal prosperity must be evanescent; as it was with all heathen nations that have successively ruled the world and perished. Without that, temporal prosperity is a curse, and not a blessing; for what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Men make nations; and nationalities are of no value before God, except only in so far as they conduce to the end of each individual man's creation. The Indian who goes to heaven from his wigwam in the forest attains his end. The philosopher who goes to hell from his palace in London or Paris has wofully miscalculated the worth of all human philosophy, statesmanship, and national grandeur, as the idols of his worship. The pagans measured human life and society by the standard of the Bible House, No. 27, if we are to judge it by this tract!

So also, according to this tract, our Catholic children should be taught in the schools that Voltaire became an infidel _because_ he had been a Catholic and was trained at a Jesuit college. It will nowhere appear in the lesson that he became an infidel because he rebelled against the teachings of his church, and renounced the maxims of his Jesuit tutors. When he so zealously defended his thesis in vindication of Julian the Apostate, his own apostasy was foretold by his master. His death was the answer to his life. In his agony he called for a priest; but three-score years of blasphemy had won to him the avenging disciples who then encircled his bed like a wall of fire; and no priest could reach the dying enemy of Christ!

This tract would also teach our children in the schools that it was the teachings of the "Romish Church" which drove revolutionary France from the altars of God. It would not be explained to them how that revolutionary rage was but the outburst of a volcano of passion which had smouldered during ages of long suffering under the rule of kings and nobles; and that the instincts of the people remained so true, that in the very same generation they returned, like the people of Israel, to the worship of God; and rushed to the altars of their fathers with tears of repentance and joy. _They did not become Protestants!_ How has it been with the descendants of the godly men of Plymouth Rock? Quietly and with exquisite decorum they have settled down into deists, pantheists, freethinkers, free-lovers, spiritualists, and philosophers! Will they go back to Puritanism?

"Facilis descensus Averni!"

The tract tells our children that Gibbon left the Protestant Church for the Catholic, and finally landed in infidelity. Why did he not go back to Protestantism?

The tract also tells our children that this is a Protestant country; which means that all its glories are Protestant, and that the Catholic, with Italy and Spain before his eyes, should be thankful that he is tolerated here. Are our children to learn this lesson at the schools? {125} Now, in the first place, if Bishop Coxe and other Protestant witnesses are reliable,[Footnote 47] our Bible House friends may as well begin to prepare their nerves to see our great country become Catholic, at least as much of it as will remain Christian at all. Perhaps they will then value the wisdom and liberality of that admonitory sentence in the article of _The Educational Monthly_ which reads thus:

[Footnote 47: See page 61 of this number.]

"We are quite sure that if the Catholics were the majority in the United States, and were to attempt such an injustice," (as that involved in this school question.) "our Protestant brethren would cry out against it, and appeal to the wise and liberal examples of Prussia and England, France and Austria! Now, is it not always as unwise as it is unjust to make a minority taste the bitterness of oppression? Men governed by the law of divine charity will bear it meekly and seek to return good for evil; but all men are not docile; and majorities change rapidly and often, in this fleeting world! Is it not wiser and more politic, even in mere regard to social interests, that all institutions intended for the welfare of the people should be firmly based upon exact and equal justice? This would place them under the protection of fixed habit, which in a nation is as strong as nature; and it would save them from the mutations of society. The strong of one generation may be the weak of the next; and we see this occurring with political parties within the brief spaces of presidential terms. Hence we wisely inculcate moderation and of retribution."

In the next place, although the present majority of the American people are non-Catholic, we deny that they are Protestants, as a nation, in a political sense. The institutions of the country are neither Catholic nor Protestant. They recognize no one faith more than another. Christian morality is accepted as the basis of public and private duties by common consent; that is all. Religious liberty was not born of the theocracy of New England. Hancock and Adams, under the lead of Jefferson, departed very far from the instincts of Calvinism and the traditions of Plymouth Rock when they laid the foundations of this government; and this is one of the things which we certainly intend to have our children taught. We do not intend that they shall be "poor boys at the feast," humbly thankful for such crumbs as our Bible House friends may magnanimously bestow upon the "Romish aliens;" but they shall be told to hold up their heads, with the full consciousness that they are American citizens, the peers of all others, and in no way disqualified, by the doctrines or morals of their church, to perform every duty as faithfully and as ably as any other men of any other creed. They shall not be terrified with the "_raw head and bloody bones_" of "degraded Italy," "besotted Spain," and the other terrible examples of the destroying influence of their old mother church. We shall teach them not to trust any morality which does not rest upon a clear faith; and we shall show them how that faith commands obedience to lawful authority, purity of motive in all public acts, and universal charity for all men.

Some of our readers may be surprised that we have devoted so much space to this tract. Our motive should be apparent. We said, in the beginning of this article, that this tract sounds like the voice of one of the two classes of opponents who are arrayed against us on this question; and that in itself it affords a perfect illustration of our main argument, which is this, clearly stated in the following paragraph from the article in _The Educational Monthly_:

"And more than this, Catholics know by painful experience that history cannot be compiled, travels written, poetry, oratory, or romance inflicted upon a credulous public, without the stereotyped assaults upon the doctrines, discipline, and historical life of their church. {126} From Walter Scott to Peter Parley, and from Hume, Gibbon, and Macaulay to the mechanical compilers of cheap school literature, it is the same story told a thousand times oftener than it is refuted; so that the English language, for the last two centuries, may be said without exaggeration to have waged war against the Catholic Church. Indeed, so far as European history is considered, the difficulty must always be insurmountable; since it would always be impossible for the Catholic and Protestant to accept the same history of the Reformation or of the Papal See, or the political, social, and moral events resulting from or in any degree connected with those two great centres and controlling causes. Who could write a political history of Christendom for the last three hundred years and omit all mention of Luther and the pope? And how is any school compendium of such history to be devised for the use of the Catholic and Protestant child alike?"

Now, it is very well understood that, with all their doctrinal differences and sectarian antipathies, all the Protestant sects can nevertheless, as a general rule, accept any Protestant history of the so-called Reformation, and of the wars, diplomacies, public events, and moral results springing from or connected with that episode in the religious annals of our race; but can Catholics accept such? Will you compel Catholic parents to accept for their children histories written in the spirit of this Bible House tract, which tells us (p. 3.) that the Catholic faith "_taught the people that a Romish priest is to them in the place of God; that a Romish priest can create his Creator!_"

The very encyclopedia, quoted by our tractarian is another Roundhead trooper armed against the papal anti-Christ! And so, the bright Catholic boy will be amused with the antics of the feasting and fighting monk in _Ivanhoe_; whilst graver calumnies will convince him that the church of his fathers, and of the great-grandfathers of her modern revilers, is truly a den of thieves and a house of abominations.

It may as well be distinctly understood, once and for all, that we cannot consent that our children shall receive secular education without religious training; and that we understand very well that such religious knowledge as we desire them to possess cannot be imparted by those who are hostile to us. We intend also to teach them to respect and uphold all the rights, social, political, and religious, of their fellow-citizens, upon the plain injunction of the Scriptures that they shall do unto others precisely as they would have others do unto themselves. At the same time we will teach them to love and revere their ancient mother church, as the custodian for fifteen hundred years of that Bible which she is falsely accused by this tract of "_fearing;_" as the munificent patroness of every art and the mistress of every science; as the friend and supporter of liberty when united to order and justice; as the enemy of pride, license, and disobedience to lawful authority; as the guardian of the sanctity of marriage against the pagan concupiscence of the divorce courts; as the sword of vengeance uplifted over the heads of the child-murdering destroyers of populations; in fine, as the hope and future salvation of this republic and all its precious endowments of personal manhood, honor, virtue, and faith, and all its national institutions of self-governing popular sovereignty, equal rights, and faithful citizenship, based, not upon infidel revolutionary "_fraternity_," but upon a noble Christian brotherhood. Certainly, even if we were mistaken in our estimate of the fruitfulness and power of the Catholic faith, it would be no less an evidence of our sincere patriotism, that we are anxious to impress upon the children of the church the conviction that in faithfully serving their country they are only obeying the commands of their religion.

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As we do not intend that our children shall be either untaught or mistaught in regard to this sublime knowledge and duty, we shall insist on educating them ourselves, with or without receiving our just share of the public taxes, to which we do contribute very largely, the declaration of the Bible House tract to the contrary notwithstanding.

We have devoted more space to this first, class of objectors than they could claim from our courtesy, because we believe that they nominally represent many honest men who will cheerfully admit the truth when they see it.

There is another and a far different class of persons who take issue with us upon this question, and for whom we entertain a perfect respect--first, because they treat the subject with evident fairness and commendable civility; and secondly, because from their stand-point, there would appear to be much good reason in their objections to our claim. It gives us very great pleasure to use all our honest endeavors to remove their difficulties. This class is represented by the editorial articles which appeared in _The Chicago Advance, The Troy Daily Press_, and several other papers, criticising the article of _The Educational Monthly_. The objections may be summed up as follows:

_First_, (and the most important.) That denominational education would prevent the complete amalgamation or "unification" of American citizenship, and tend to increase sectarian bitterness, to the prejudice of republican institutions.

_Secondly_. That it would destroy the harmony and efficiency of the general school system.

_Thirdly._ That the Catholic people are richer in the jewels of the Roman matron, _their children_, than they are in the _images of Caesar_, the coin of the country! and that therefore they would draw from the common fund an amount much in excess of the taxes paid by them; which would not be just.

We shall candidly consider these objections in the order in which we have stated them.

As to the first: It would be fortunate, in a temporal point of view, if all the people were of one mind in religion, especially if they happen to have the true faith; inasmuch as nothing so conduces to the general harmony and good will as the total absence of all religious strife. But we see that such a state of things cannot be hoped for here. Not only is the community divided into Protestants, Catholics, and a large body of citizens professing no faith at all, but the Protestant community itself is subdivided into innumerable conflicting sects. In defiance of any system of public education, these various religious organizations will always be widely separated from each other, and from the Catholic Church, on questions of doctrinal belief. The issue then remains nakedly before us, Shall public education be entirely divorced from revealed religion, and shall we commit the morals of our children to the saving influences of a little "_reading, writing, and arithmetic;_" or, shall we have them educated in some form or another of practical Christianity? The arguments on this point have been so fully elaborated in our articles heretofore published, that it would be superfluous to repeat them now. We may, however, recall to mind the conclusive evidence afforded us of the correctness of our theory by the actual experience of such governments as those of England, France, Prussia, and Austria; under which, as we have shown in those articles, the denominational system is carried out to the fullest extent, producing harmony, instead of discord, in populations composed, as here, of numerous religious bodies. It is an old adage that one fact is worth a dozen arguments.

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We find that, after long years of earnest study of this difficult question, and after exhausting every half-way expedient, the statesmen of the countries we have named adopted with singular unanimity the views which we are presenting for the serious and candid consideration of the American public. We shall quote briefly from a few of those statesmen who are well-known leaders of opinion in the European Protestant world.

Lord Derby: "Public education should be considered as inseparable from religion;" the contrary system is declared by him to be "the realization of a foolish and dangerous idea."

Mr. Gladstone: "Every system which places religious education in the background is pernicious."

Lord John Russell insisted that in the normal schools, which he proposed to have established, "religion should regulate the entire system of discipline."

M. de Raumer: "They have acquired in Prussia a conviction, which becomes daily more settled, that the fitness of the primary school depends on its intimate union with the church." In 1854, he writes that "education should repose upon the basis of Christianity, the true support of the family, of the commune, and of the state."

M. Guizot, the former very eminent Protestant prime minister of France, deserves to be specially quoted, although we are but repeating the extracts which we gave in another article. His words should be written in letters of gold. Let the enemies of religious education, if they can, present a satisfactory answer to this superb declaration:

"In order to make popular education truly good and socially useful, it must be fundamentally religious. I do not simply mean by this, that religious instruction should hold its place in popular education, and that the practices of religion should enter into it; for a nation is not religiously educated by such petty and mechanical devices. It is necessary that national education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere, and that religious impressions and religious observances should penetrate into all its parts. Religion is not a study or an exercise to be restricted to a certain place, and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law, which ought to be felt everywhere, and which after this manner alone can exercise all its beneficial influence upon our minds and our lives."

The first Napoleon, the restorer of order and religion in France, influenced, at the time, merely by human considerations, and speaking only as a wise lawgiver, and not as a practical Christian, insisted upon the necessity of making the precepts of religion the basis of education in the university, whose halls had echoed the blasphemous unbelief of the disciples of Voltaire.

At our very door, we have likewise the judgment and example of our Canadian neighbors, demonstrating the feasibility of connecting secular education with the most thorough instruction in the doctrines and practices of the different churches. Such opinions and facts should have some weight with our friends here who are fearful of the proposed experiment.

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We know, by our own personal experience, that young men educated at the exclusively Catholic College of Mt. St. Mary's, in Maryland, and other young men, graduates of Yale and Princeton, where Catholics are rarely if ever seen, meet afterward in the world of business or politics, and immediately learn to value each other according to intrinsic personal worth, and to exchange all the mutual courtesies and discharge all the reciprocal duties of social life. It is the same with Catholics and Protestants educated together at the many Catholic colleges in the United States, where the Catholic pupils are nevertheless invariably instructed, with the utmost exactness, in all the doctrines and practices of their church. There are thousands of such living witnesses throughout the country, ready to attest the correctness of our statement. It proves this, (what _we_ know to be true without the proof,) that the education received by Catholics at their own schools, whilst rigidly doctrinal, uniformly inculcates charity, urbanity, and every duty of good citizenship. There is not, therefore, and never can be any difficulty, on the part of Catholics, to meet their Protestant fellow-citizens in all the relations of life, private and public, with the utmost frankness, fraternity, and confidence, provided that they are not repelled by harshness or chilled by distrust. Their religion teaches them that such is their duty. Certainly, if such happy results are realized even in England, Prussia, and Austria, where all barriers, whether social or religious, are traditionally more difficult to surmount, how can it be that we must expect animosities to be engendered under the free action and the liberal intercourse of our republican society?

We must, therefore, consider the fear expressed by this first objection as wholly groundless. But even were it otherwise, what then? Should we, therefore, sacrifice to such an apprehension the far more momentous considerations that our republican, self-governing community can never safely trust itself in the great work of perpetuating the liberties of a Christian nation without planting itself upon the morality of the Gospel; that the revealed doctrines of Christ are the foundation of his moral code, and that to practise the one faithfully the people must be taught to believe the other firmly; and that religion so taught, as M. Guizot admirably expresses it, "is not a study or an exercise, to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere;" and that "national education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere!"

What would the advantage of a more perfect amalgamation or unification of citizenship avail us, if, to obtain it, we were to strike from under our institutions the only solid basis upon which they can rest with any hope whatever of being able to withstand the rude shocks of time, to which all mortal works are subject, and which destroyed the grandest structures of pagan power, solely because they rested upon human wisdom and human virtue, unaided by revealed religion and supernatural grace? We cannot, therefore, admit any force in the first objection.

As to the second: How can the harmony or efficiency of the school system be disturbed by permitting a school to be organized for Catholic children in any district or locality where the requisite number may be found to render it practicable, in accordance with the general policy of the law? It is presumed that the law contemplates the education of all these children, and we cannot see that the harmony of the system consists in putting them into any one school-room rather than another. It is not proposed to withdraw them from the general supervision of the state, or to deny to the state the authority to regulate the standard of education, and to see that its requirements are complied with. This is done in every one of the countries of which we have spoken. {130} No one is so unreasonable as to expect that separate schools shall be organized where the number of pupils may be below a reasonable uniform standard; as it is not proposed to increase the expense of the system. On the contrary, as far as concerns the education of our Catholic children in the city of New York, we propose to reduce the cost considerably, as we shall explain before we close this article. It is said that the several Protestant denominations may demand the same privilege. Suppose that they do. If they have a sufficient number of children in any particular locality for the proper organization of a separate school under the law, and are willing to fulfil its requirements, how can the general system be impaired by allowing them to do so? This is the condition annexed to the privilege in all those countries which have adopted this liberal policy. The proposition seems too plain for argument. When a college contains five hundred boys, two hundred may be classed in the higher division, three hundred in the lower, and each may have separate playgrounds and recitation halls. So, if a district contains two hundred of one faith, and three hundred of another, or of several other creeds, surely the two hundred may be organized into one school and the three hundred into another, or into several others, according to the standard of numbers, as may be required by the law. The whole question, therefore, is purely one of distribution, not at all above the capacity of a drill-sergeant! The same number of children would be educated, probably in the same number of schools, and at the same cost, as now. The course of secular education prescribed by the state could be rigidly enforced in all such schools without assailing the conscience of any one, because we suppose that the state would not object that Catholics should learn English history from Lingard, whilst others might prefer Hume and Macaulay. We presume that there would be no disagreement in regard to reading, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and those things which constitute the general studies of primary and high schools. It is only with such that the state has any right to intermeddle, and it is only such that the state professes to secure to its pupils. The state may say, "The public welfare requires that the citizens of a self-governing nation shall receive sufficient intellectual culture to enable them to discharge their duties understandingly;" but the state has no right to say that its pupils shall take their knowledge and form their opinions of the great moral events of history from D'Aubigné or from Cardinal Bellarmin. It was this that troubled the great Catholic and Protestant governments of Europe, until experience discovered to them the simple solution of the difficulty which we are so earnestly endeavoring to commend to the acceptance of the American people. Have we not at least a right to expect that our motives will not be misrepresented; and that we shall be believed when we say that we are not hostile to the public schools, but, on the contrary, most earnestly anxious to secure for them the widest usefulness and the greatest efficiency. We know that that cannot be if religion be excluded; and that it must be excluded where so many conflicting creeds confront each other.

As to the third: If it were true that the Catholic people contributed almost nothing to the school fund, as is no doubt sincerely believed by some who are not disposed to do us injustice, a very serious question would, nevertheless, be suggested by such a statement as this, which we copy from the article in _The Chicago Advance_ already referred to: {131} "Our American population is principally Protestant, partly Romish, slightly Jewish, _and increasingly rationalistic or infidel_." Now, it is unquestionably true that the infidels in this country can count but very few amongst their number who ever knelt at a Catholic altar. Still, it is the theory of our opponents that ignorance is, in itself, the source of all evil, and the parent of impiety. It would certainly, therefore, be a terrible calamity for the country if the children of six millions of Catholics were deprived of education because their fathers paid no taxes! To educate them would be unanimously regarded as a public necessity; just as our police authorities remove contagion at the public expense. If this view of public economy be true, (and we need not dispute it in this argument,) then it follows that the question of educating the Catholics is altogether independent of what they do or do not contribute to the treasury. Educated they must be; but suppose that they steadily refuse to receive the knowledge offered, except upon the condition that their consciences shall not be violated, and their parental responsibilities disregarded, by subjecting their children to a training inconsistent with the spirit of their religion; how then? Will you consign the six millions to what you call the moral death of ignorance, and suffer their carcasses to putrefy upon the highway of your republican progress, poisoning the fountains of your national life? Or will you prefer, in the spirit of your institutions, to respect their conscientious opinions, and to enable them, in the manner we have already indicated, to coöperate with you in the full development of your great and noble policy of universal popular education?

But, is it true that the Catholic people have no substantial claim as tax-payers? Such might have been the case twenty-five years ago; but every well-informed man knows that it is not so now. Wealth, amongst the Catholic population, may perhaps be less perceptible, because it is more diffused than it is amongst some other bodies of our citizens; but no man who is familiar with the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and all others, from the sources of the Mississippi to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or with the Catholic farm-settlements of the Western States, can shut his eyes to the fact that our Catholic people are thrifty and well-to-do in the world; and that very many of them possess large wealth. A member of the British Parliament, in a recent work upon the Irish in America, has demonstrated this by undeniable statistics. The same is true of Catholics here of all other nationalities. We have not the time nor space, neither is it necessary, to go into the details of this question. We suppose our readers to be intelligent and well-informed, and that they can readily recall to their minds the facts which substantiate the truth of our assertion.

Are there those, sharp at a bargain, who will say, "Well! the Catholics have the resources to educate themselves, and are doing so now; let them continue the good work without calling upon the state for any portion of the public funds, to which they contribute by their taxes"? The dishonesty of such a proposition is shown in the simple statement of it. It is true, as we have said over and over again, that the Catholic people, after paying their taxes to the state, have, with a generous self-sacrifice amounting to heroism, established all over this country more universities, colleges, academies, free schools, and orphan asylums than have ever been founded by all the rest of the nation through private contributions. {132} A people capable of such great deeds in the cause of civilization and religion are not to be despised, _can never be repressed_, and certainly should not be denied justice, when they ask no more!

We hope that we have satisfactorily answered the objections of those honest adversaries, with whom we will always be happy to interchange opinions in a spirit of candor and sincere respect.

In order that our readers may obtain some idea of what the Catholic people, unaided by the state, have done and are doing for popular education in this country, we shall now present a brief summary or synopsis from Sadlier's _Catholic Directory_ for 1868-9.

In the archdiocese of Baltimore, there are ten literary institutions for young men, twelve female academies, and nine orphan asylums. We shall include the latter, in all instances, because they invariably have schools attached for the instruction of the orphans. There are in the same archdiocese about fifty parish and free schools, the average attendance at which, male and female, exceeds ten thousand.

In the archdiocese of Cincinnati, comprising a part of the State of Ohio, there are three colleges, nine literary institutes for females, two orphan asylums, and seventy-six parochial schools, at which the average attendance is about twenty thousand.

In the archdiocese of New Orleans, there are twenty academies and parochial schools for females, and ten academies and free schools for males; attended by seven thousand five hundred scholars; and one thousand four hundred orphans in the asylums.

The archdiocese of New York comprises the city and county of New York, and the counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Orange, Rockland, and Richmond. We have lately examined a carefully prepared list of schools, more complete than that given in the directory, by which it appears that there are forty-nine, with a daily attendance of upward of twenty-three thousand children. Of these schools, twenty-six are in the city and county of New York, and have a daily attendance of over nineteen thousand pupils. We shall have occasion to speak more particularly of New York City at the close of this article.

In the archdiocese of San Francisco, there are three colleges, three academies, thirty-two select and parochial schools, and two orphan asylums, providing for nearly seven thousand children, of whom about four hundred are orphans in the asylums, and upward of three thousand are free scholars.

In the archdiocese of St. Louis, there are three literary institutions for males, nine for females, and twenty parochial or free schools, with seven thousand five hundred pupils in daily attendance, besides nine hundred orphans in four asylums.

In the diocese of Albany, comprising that part of the State of New York north of the forty-second degree and east of the eastern line of Cayuga, Tompkins, and Tioga counties, there are six academies for males, and six for females, seven orphan asylums, ten select schools, and fifty-eight parochial schools, with an average attendance of between ten and eleven thousand.

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The diocese of Alton, comprising a portion of the state of Illinois, has two colleges for males and six academies for females, one orphan asylum, and fifty-six parochial schools, with an attendance of about seven thousand five hundred scholars.

The diocese of Boston comprises the State of Massachusetts, and has two colleges, three female academies, thirteen parochial or free schools, five thousand eight hundred scholars, and five hundred and fifty orphans in the asylums.

The diocese of Brooklyn comprises Long Island, and has one college in course of erection, eight female academies, nineteen parish schools, attended by over ten thousand scholars, and three asylums, and one industrial school, containing seven hundred orphans.

The diocese of Buffalo comprises twelve counties of the State of New York, and has five literary institutions for males, sixteen for females, three orphan asylums, and twenty-four parochial schools, the attendance on which is specifically set down at something over eight thousand; but it is stated (page 137) that between eighteen and twenty thousand children attend the Catholic schools of that diocese.

The diocese of Chicago comprises a portion of the State of Illinois, and has eight academies for females, seven colleges and academies for males, two orphan asylums, and forty-four parochial schools, attended by over twelve thousand children.

The diocese of Cleveland, comprising a part of Ohio, contains one academy for males and six for females, four asylums sheltering four hundred orphans, and twenty free schools educating six thousand scholars.

The diocese of Columbus, comprising a part of Ohio, has one female academy, twenty-three parochial schools, with over three thousand pupils; the exact number is not given.

The diocese of Dubuque comprises the State of Iowa, and contains twelve academies and select schools, and parochial schools at nearly all the churches of the diocese, educating ten thousand children.

The diocese of Fort Wayne comprises a part of Indiana, and has one college, one orphan asylum, eleven literary institutions, and thirty-eight parish schools.

The diocese of Hartford comprises Rhode Island and Connecticut, and contains three literary institutions for males and six for females, twenty-one male and twenty-three female free schools, the former attended by forty-two hundred, and the latter by fifty-one hundred scholars, besides four hundred orphans in four asylums.

The diocese of Milwaukee has two male and four female academies, and thirty-five free schools, attended by between six and seven thousand children, and four orphan asylums, containing over two hundred orphans.

The diocese of Philadelphia contains eight academies and parochial schools, under the charge of the Christian Brothers, with twenty-five hundred scholars; forty-two other parochial schools, attended by ten thousand pupils; twenty-four academies and select schools for females; three colleges for males; and five asylums, now containing seven hundred and seventy-three male and female orphans.

The above statement embraces but nineteen of the fifty-two dioceses and archdioceses in the United States, as it would extend this article to an unreasonable length were we to undertake to give the statistics of each; which, in regard to many of them, are not sufficiently full in the _Directory_ to enable us to present satisfactory results. {134} Although in many of them the Catholic population is small and sparse, our readers would nevertheless be surprised, no doubt, to see how each one has struggled to supply itself with schools and charitable institutions; and how amazingly they have succeeded, when we consider the comparative scantiness of their resources. We have, however, given enough to afford some idea to our Protestant brethren of the vast interest which their Catholic fellow-citizens have in this question of the public-school fund, and of the great claim to the sympathy and good-will of the country which they have established by their unparalleled efforts in the cause of popular education.

As we have shown above, the Catholics of the archdiocese of New York are educating twenty-three thousand of their children, nineteen thousand within the city limits. The value of their school property is placed at eleven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For the education of these twenty-three thousand, it is estimated that their annual expense does not exceed one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. The actual cost of the Catholic free schools in New York City is put down at $104,430 for nineteen thousand four hundred and twenty-eight scholars; which is about five dollars and a half for each. We have before us the _Report of the Board of Education for 1867_, from which it appears that "the cost per head for educating the children in the public schools under the control of the Board of Education for the year ending 1867, based upon the cost for teachers' salaries, fuel and gas, was $19.75 on the average attendance, or $8.50 on the whole number taught." Adding the cost of books and stationery, each pupil cost $21.76 on the average attendance, or $9.40 on the whole number taught. The basis of the above calculation is: _Teachers' salaries_, $1,497,180.88; _fuel_, (estimated in a gross amount of expenses,) $163,315.12, and _gas_, $13,998.96, making a total of $1,674,496.96. But in fact the _actual expenditures_ for 1867 were $2,973,877.41; which cover items that enter equally into the estimate we have given of the Catholic expenditures for school purposes. In that year New York City paid to the state as its proportion of school tax $455,088.27; out of which it received back by apportionment $242,280.04, a little more than one half, the rest being its contribution to the counties; at the same time the city raised for its own schools nearly $2,500,000; being the ten-dollar tax for each scholar taught, and the one twentieth of one per cent of the valuation of the real and personal property of the city. From this our readers will gather some idea of what popular education can cost, even with the best management.

It is well known that the Catholic people, through their church organizations, and by the unpaid assistance of their religious orders, such as the Christian Brothers, possess peculiar advantages, which enable them to conduct the largest and best-arranged schools at the smallest possible cost. Why will not the state permit us to do it? Or, rather, why will not the state do us the justice to reimburse the actual expenses which we make in doing it? For it is a thing which we have already accomplished to a great extent. Suppose that the city of New York was now educating the nineteen thousand children who attend our schools; at $19.75 each, it would cost $375,250; or at $8.50 each it would cost $161,500, this last sum being sixty thousand dollars more than we pay for the same! {135} We have shown, however, that this calculation cannot be made to rest upon the basis given by the board, when you come to institute a comparison between the expenditures for the public schools and for ours. We are willing, nevertheless, to rest our claim even upon such a contrast as those figures show; and we ask the tax-payers of New York whether they are willing to follow the lead of our adversaries and add a few hundred thousand dollars extra to the annual taxes, for the satisfaction of doing us injustice?

It is universally conceded that the school-rooms of New York are dangerously over-crowded; and the Board of Education finds it almost impossible to meet the growing necessities of the city. There are still thousands of Catholics and Protestants unprovided for. Give us the means, and we will speedily see that there is no Catholic child in New York left without the opportunity of education. We will do this upon the strictest terms of accountability to the state. We will conduct our schools up to the highest standard that our legislators may think proper to adopt for the regulation of the public school system. We shall never shrink from the most rigid official scrutiny and inspection. We shall only ask that, whilst we literally follow the requirements of the state as to the course of secular education, we shall not be required to place in the hands of our children books that are hostile to their faith, or to omit giving to their young souls that spiritual food which we deem to be essential for eternal life.

In all sincerity and truth we must say, that we have not yet heard an argument which could shake our faith in the justice of our cause; and that it will ultimately prevail, by the blessing of Providence, we cannot possibly doubt; for, we have an abiding confidence in the integrity and generosity of the American people.

The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago.

"I allays thought till to-day," remarked elegant John Thomas to Jeames, as they were clinging to the back of their mistress's carriage during a shopping drive in Bond street, London, "that them 'air nuisances the 'busses was inwented in this 'ear nineteen centry."

"I allays thinked so," responded Jeames sententiously.

"Not a bit," resumed John Thomas, "them air celebrated people the Romans, the same as talked Lat'n, you know, 'ad plenty of 'em.

"'Ow d'you know that?" inquired Jaemes.

"I seed it this blessed morning in one o' master's Lat'n books. I was a tryin' what I could make out of Lat'n, and I seed that word '_omnibus_' ever so many times; and that's the correc' name for 'bus--' _bus_ is the wulgar happerlation."

"I know that," growled Jeames.

"'Ow true it is, as King David singed to 'is 'arp, there's nothing new under the sun!" exclaimed John Thomas enthusiastically.

The carriage stopped at this moment and the interesting conversation was interrupted.

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But although people who understand more Latin than John Thomas have not yet discovered that the Romans were acquainted with that cheap and convenient mode of conveyance, they may have believed, like him, that omnibuses were a modern invention, and may be surprised to learn that, more than two hundred years ago, in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, Paris possessed for a time a regular line of these now indispensable vehicles.

Nicolas Sauvage, at the sign of St. Fiacre, in the Rue St. Martin, had been accustomed for many years to let out carriages by the hour or day; but his prices were too high for any but the rich; and so in the year 1657, a certain De Givry obtained permission to "establish in the crossways and public places of the city and suburbs of Paris such a number of two-horse coaches and caleches as he should consider necessary; to be exposed there from seven in the morning until seven in the evening, at the hire of all who needed them, whether by the hour, the half-hour, day, or otherwise, at the pleasure of those who wished to make use of them to be carried from one place to another, wherever their affairs called them, either in the city and suburbs of Paris, or as far as four or five leagues in the environs," etc., etc.

This was a decided step in advance; but the prices of these hackney coaches were still too high for the public generally, and they consequently did not meet with the success anticipated. At length, in 1662, appeared the really cheap and popular conveyance--the omnibus--under the patronage of the Duke of Roanès the Marquis of Sourches, and the Marquis of Crenan. These noblemen solicited and obtained letters patent for a great speculation--carriages to contain eight persons, at five sous the seat, and running at fixed hours on specified routes.

"On the 18th of March, 1662," says Sauval, in his _Antiquities of Paris_, "seven coaches were driven for the first time through the streets that lead from the Porte St. Martin to the palace of the Luxembourg; they _were assailed with stones and hisses by the populace_."

This last assertion is much to be doubted; more especially as Madame Perier, the sister of the great Pascal, has described in an interesting letter to Arnauld de Pomponne, the general joy and satisfaction that the appearance of these cheap conveyances gave rise to in the people; a state of feeling which seems far more probable than that which _stones and hisses_ would manifest.

Madame Perier writes as follows:

"PARIS, March 21, 1662. "As every one has been appointed to some special office in this affair of the coaches, I have solicited with eagerness and have been so fortunate as to obtain that of announcing its success; therefore, sir, each time that you see my writing, be assured of receiving good news.

"The establishment commenced last Saturday morning, at seven o'clock, with wonderful pomp and splendor. The seven carriages provided for this route were first distributed. Three were sent to the Porte St. Martin, and four were placed before the Luxembourg, where at the same time were stationed two commissaries of the Chatelet in their robes, four guards of the high provost, ten or twelve of the city archers, and as many men on horseback. When everything was ready, the commissaries proclaimed the establishment, explained its usefulness, exhorted the citizens to uphold it, and declared to the lower classes that the slightest insult would be punished with the utmost severity; and all this was delivered in the king's name. {137} Afterward they gave the coachmen their coats, which are blue--the king's color as well as the city's color--with the arms of the king and of the city embroidered on the bosom; and then they gave the order to start.

"One of the coaches immediately went off, carrying inside one of the high provost's guards. Half a quarter of an hour after, another coach set off, and then the two others at the same intervals of time, each carrying a guard who was to remain therein all day. At the same time the city archers and the men on horseback dispersed themselves on the route.

"At the Porte Saint Martin the same ceremonies were observed, at the same hour, with the three coaches that had been sent there, and there were the same arrangements respecting the guards, the archers and the men on horseback. In short, the affair was so well conducted that not the slightest confusion took place, and those coaches were started as peaceably as the others.

"The thing indeed has succeeded perfectly; the very first morning the coaches were filled, and several women even were among the passengers; but in the afternoon the crowd was so great that one could not get near them; and every day since it has been the same, so that we find by experience that the greatest inconvenience is the one you apprehended; people wait in the street for the arrival of one of these coaches, in order to get in. When it comes, it is full; this is vexatious; but there is a consolation; for it is known that another will arrive in half a quarter of an hour; this other arrives, and it also is full; and after this has been repeated several times, the aspirant is at length obliged to continue his way on foot. That you may not think that I exaggerate I will tell you what happened to myself. I was waiting at the door of St. Mary's Church, in the Rue de la Verrerie, feeling a great desire to return home in a coach; for it is pretty far from my brother's house. But I had the vexation of seeing five coaches pass without being able to get a seat; all were full: and during the whole time that I was waiting, I heard blessings bestowed on the originators of an establishment so advantageous to the public. As every one spoke his thoughts, some said the affair was very well invented, but that it was a great fault to have put only seven coaches on the route; that they were not sufficient for half the people who had need of them, and that there ought to have been at least twenty. I listened to all this, and I was in such a bad temper from having missed five coaches that at the moment I was quite of their opinion. In short, the applause is universal, and it may be said that nothing was ever better begun.

"The first and second days, there was a crowd on the Pont-Neuf and in all the streets to watch the coaches pass; and it was very amusing to see the workmen cease their labor to look at them, so that no more work was done all Saturday throughout the whole route than if it had been a holiday. Smiling faces were seen everywhere, not smiles of ridicule, but of content and joy; and this convenience is found so great that every one desires it for his own quarter.

"The shopkeepers of the Rue St. Denis demanded a route with so much importunity that they even spoke of presenting a petition. Preparations were being made to give them one next week; but yesterday morning M. de Roanès, M. de Crenan, and M. the High Provost (M. de Sourches) being all three at the Louvre, the king talked very pleasantly about the novelty, and addressing those gentlemen, said,' And _our_ route, will you not soon establish it?' {138} These words oblige them to think of the Rue St. Honoré, and to defer for some days the Rue St. Denis. Besides this, the king, speaking on the same subject, said that he desired that all those who were guilty of the slightest insolence should be severely punished, and that he would not permit this establishment to be molested.

"This is the present position of the undertaking. I am sure you will not be less surprised than we are at its great success; it has far surpassed all our hopes. I shall not fail to send you exact word of every pleasant thing that happens, according to the office conferred on me, and to supply the place of my brother, who would be happy to undertake the duty if he could write.

"I wish with all my heart that I may have matter to write to you every week, both for your satisfaction and for other reasons that you can well guess. I am your obedient servant, G. PASCAL."

Postscript in the handwriting of Pascal, and very probably the last lines he ever traced: he died in August of the same year:

"I will add to the above, that the day before yesterday, at the king's _petit coucher_, a dangerous assault was made against us by two courtiers distinguished by their rank and wit, which would have ruined us by turning us into ridicule, and would have given rise to all sorts of attacks, had not the king answered so obligingly and so dryly with respect to the excellence of the undertaking, so that they speedily put up their weapons. I have no more paper. Adieu--entirely yours."

Sauval affirms that Pascal was the inventor of this cheap coach, and Madame de Sévigné seems to allude to the enterprise in a passage of one of her letters which commences "_apropos_ of Pascal." It is certain that he and his sister were pecuniarily interested in the speculation, and it is more than probable that it was he who induced his rich friend the Duke of Roanès, to take so prominent a part in the undertaking. But we must not consider Pascal in the light of a vulgar speculator--earthly interests affected him but little personally--deeds of charity, the many ills and pains of premature old age, and the sad task of watching over a life always on the brink of extinction, almost wholly engrossed his thoughts during his last years. He saw in this affair an advantage to the public in general, and if any pecuniary profits resulted, his share was intended for the benefit of the poor, as is very evident by the following extract from the little work Madame Perier dedicated to the memory of her brother.

"As soon as the affair of the coaches was settled, he told me he wished to ask the farmers for an advance of a thousand francs to send to the poor at Blois. When I told him that the success of the enterprise was not sufficiently assured for him to make this request, he replied that he saw no inconvenience in it, because, if the affair did not prosper, he would repay the money from his estate, and he did not like to wait until the end of the year, because the necessities of the poor were too urgent to defer charity. As no arrangement could be made with the farmers, he could not gratify his desire. On this occasion we perceived the truth of what he had so often told me, that he wished for riches only that he might be able to help the poor; for the moment God gave him the hope of possessing wealth, even before he was assured of it, he began to distribute it."

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In the ninth volume of the _Ordonnances de Louis XIV._, we find, concerning the establishment of coaches in the city of Paris, that these cheap conveyances are permitted "for the convenience of a great number of persons ill-accommodated, such as pleaders, infirm people, and others, who, not having the means of hiring chairs or carriages because they cost a pistole or two crowns at least the day, can thus be carried for a moderate price by means of this establishment of coaches, which are always to make the same journeys in Paris from one quarter to another, the longest at five sous the seat, and the others less; the suburbs in proportion; and which are always to start at fixed hours, however small the number of persons then assembled, and even empty, if no person should present himself, without obliging those who make use of this convenience to pay more for their places," etc.

These regulations are similar to those of our modern omnibus; but the quality of the passengers was more arbitrary; for in the tenth volume of this same _Register_, we find it enacted that "Soldiers, Pages, Lacqueys and other gentry in Livery, also Mechanics and Workmen shall not be able to enter the said coaches," etc., etc.

The first route was opened on the 18th of March; the second on the 11th of April, running from the Rue Saint Antoine to the Rue Saint Honoré, as high as St. Roch's church. On this second opening, a placard announced to the citizens that the directors "had received advice of some inconveniences that might annoy persons desirous of making use of their conveyances, such, for instance, when the coachman refuses to stop to take them up on the route, even though there are empty places, and other similar occurrences; this is to give notice that all the coaches have been numbered, and that the number is placed at the top of the moutons, on each side of the coachman's box, together with the fleur de lis--one, two, three, etc., according to the number of coaches on each route. And so those who have any reason to complain of the coachman, are prayed to remember the number of the coach, and to give advice of it to the clerk of one of the offices, so that order may be established."

The third route, which ran from the Rue Montmartre and the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache to the Luxembourg Palace, was opened on the 22d of May of the same year. The placard which conveys the announcement to the public, gives notice also, "that to prevent the delay of money-changing, which always consumes much time, no gold will be received."

Every arrangement having thus been made to render these cheap coaches useful and agreeable, they very soon became the fashion; a three act comedy in verse, entitled, "The intrigue of the coaches at five sous," written by an actor named Chevalier, was even represented in 1662 at the Theatre of the Marais. An extract from this play is given in the history of the French Theatre, by the Brothers Parfaict.

But the ingenious and useful innovation on the old hackney-coach system, though so well conducted and so well administered, so highly protected, and so warmly welcomed, was not destined to live long. After a very few years, the undertaking failed, and the omnibus was forgotten for nearly two centuries! Sauval tells us that Pascal's death was the cause of this misfortune; but the coaches continued to prosper for three or four years after that event.

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"Every one," says Sauval, in a curious page of his _Antiquities_, "during two years found these coaches so convenient that auditors and masters of _comptes_, counsellors of the Chatelet and of the court, made no scruple to use them to go to the Chatelet or to the palace, and this caused the price to be raised one sou; even the Duke of Enghien [Footnote 48] has travelled in them. But what do I say? The king, when passing the summer at Saint-Germain, whither he had consented that these coaches should come, went in one of them, for his amusement, from the old castle, where he was staying, to the new one to visit the queen-mother. Notwithstanding this great fashion, these coaches were so despised three or four years after their establishment that no one would make use of them, and their ill success was attributed to the death of Pascal, the celebrated mathematician; it is said that he was the inventor of them, as well as the leader of the enterprise; it is moreover assured that he had made their horoscope and given them to the publicunder a certain constellation whose bad influences he knew how to turn aside."

[Footnote 48: Henri-Jules de Bourbon-Condé, son of the great Condé.]

We can give no description of this ancient omnibus; no drawing or engraving of it is believed to exist; but it is probable that it resembled the coaches represented in the paintings of Van der Meulan and Martin.

It is impossible to attribute to any other cause than that of the arbitrary choice of passengers, the failure of an undertaking which appeared to possess every element of success. The people who _needed_ the cheap coach were debarred from the use of it; the tired artisan returning from his hard day's work; the jaded soldier hurrying to his barrack before the beat of the tattoo that recalled him had ceased; the pale seamstress with her bundle; each was refused the five sous lift, and had to foot the weary way; while the aristocracy and rich middle class enjoyed the ride, not as a social want, but as a fashionable diversion, and tired of it after a time, as fashionable people even now tire of everything fashionable. It was reserved for the marvellous nineteenth century, so fruitful in good works, to endow us with the true omnibus, that is, a carriage for the use of every one indiscriminately, in which the gentleman and the laborer, the rich man and the poor man can ride side by side. This really _popular_ conveyance has now become in all highly civilized communities so veritable a _necessity_ and habit that it can never again fall and be forgotten like its faulty forerunner, or the omnibus of two hundred years ago.

New Publications.

TRAVELS IN THE EAST-INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. By Albert S. Brickmose, M.A. With Illustrations. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 553. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869.

This elegantly got up volume of travel the author tells us, in his preface, is taken from his journal, "kept day by day," while on a visit to the islands described, the object of which visit was to re-collect the shells figured in Rumphen's _Pariteit Kamer_. The author travelled from Batavia, in Java, along the north coast of that island to Samarang and Surabaya; thence to Macassar, the capital of Celebes; thence south through Sapi Strait, between Sumbawa and Floris, and eastward to the southern end of Timur, (near the northwestern extremity of Australia;) thence along the west coast of Timur to Dilli, and north to the Banda Islands and Amboina. {141} Having passed several months in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, he revisited the Bandas, and ascended their active volcano. Returning to Amboina, he travelled in Ceram and Buru, and continued northward to Gilolo. Thence he crossed the Molucca Passage to the Minahassa, or northern end of the Island of Celebes, probably the most beautiful spot on the surface of our globe.

Returning to Batavia, he proceeded to Padang, and thence made a long journey through the interior of the island to the land of the cannibals. Having succeeded in making his way for a hundred miles through that dangerous people, he came down to the coast and returned to Padang. Again he went up into the interior, and examined all the coffee-lands. From Padang he came down to Bencoolen, and succeeded in making his way over the mountains and down the rivers to the Island of Banca, and was thence carried to Singapore. This work opens a new field, hitherto but little known, to the reader of books of travel and adventure. His descriptions, if not always very vivid, are told in a clear, unaffected manner, without that egotism so often found in books of travel.

The Instruments Of The Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By the Rev. Dr. J. E. Veith, Preacher at the Cathedral of Vienna. Translated by Rev. Theodore Noethen, Pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross. Albany, N. Y. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

Dr. Veith, a convert from Judaism, is one of the most distinguished writers and preachers of Vienna. The present work is rich in thought and original in style. It is one of a series which the translator proposes to bring out in an English dress, if he receives encouragement, as we hope he may. F. Noethen, although a German, writes English remarkably well, and deserves great credit for his zeal and assiduity in translating so many excellent and practical works of piety. In point of excellence in typography and mechanical execution, this book deserves to be classed with the best which have been issued by the Catholic press.

The Life And Works Of St. AEngussius Hagiographus, or Saint AEngus the Culdee, Bishop and Abbot at Clonenagh and Dysartenos, Queens County. By the Rev. John O'Hanlon. Dublin: John F. Fowler, 3 Crow street. 1868. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

This tract is a treatise on the life and writings of an humble and laborious monk of the early ages in Ireland, who published, if we may use the expression, his _Felire,_ Fessology, or Calendar of Irish saints, as long ago as 804. From the biographical and historical value of this poetical work, St. AEngus ranks among the very earliest of the historical writers of modern Europe. In this view, no less than to draw attention to one whose holy life induced the Irish church to ascribe his name on the dyptics, it is well that the present generation should be asked to pause and look upon this life, so humble, laborious, and holy, and which so strongly commended him to the veneration of succeeding ages. The Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon treats his subject systematically, displaying great research and sound criticism, and it is to be hoped that his treatise will induce some of the publishing societies in Ireland to issue an edition of the works of this venerated father of the Irish church.

The _Felire_ of St. AEngus consists of three distinct parts: the first, the Invocation, containing five stanzas, implores the grace of Christ on the work; the second, comprising 220 stanzas, is a preface and conclusion to the main poem; the third part contains 365 stanzas, one for each day of the year. They comprise not only the saints peculiar to Ireland, but others drawn from early martyrologies. This poem was regarded in the early Irish church with great veneration, and the copies that have descended to us have a running gloss or commentary on each verse, making it a short biography of the saint briefly mentioned in the poem. {142} In this form its value has long been known to scholars, whose frequent use of it shows the light it frequently helps to throw on Irish history and topography. We trust that the work of the Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon will not be fruitless.

Essays And Lectures on, 1. The Early History of Maryland; 2. Mexico and Mexican Affairs; 3. A Mexican Campaign; 4. Homoeopathy; 5. Elements of Hygiene; 6. Health and Happiness. By Richard McSherry, M.D., Professor of Principles and Practice of Medicine, University of Maryland. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1869. Pp. 125.

The Early History Of Maryland.

The sketch of colonial Maryland is drawn with a masterly hand, showing, in the first place, the author's thorough knowledge of its history; and, secondly, the poetic language in which his ideas are couched tell plainly how completely his heart is imbued with love for his native Terra Mariae.

Dr. McSherry is right when he calls his State "the brightest gem in the American cluster." To the Catholics of this broad land it is surely so; and the names of Sir George Calvert and his noble sons, the founders of this "Land of the Sanctuary," should be enshrined with love and reverence in the hearts of all who profess the old faith and appreciate our religious liberty.

Mexico And Mexican Affairs.

The article on "Mexico and Mexican Affairs" was written at the suggestion of the editor of _The Southern Review_, and is a synopsis of the political history of Mexico from the time of the conquest to the tragical end of the ill-fated Prince Maximilian.

As a colonial possession of Spain, Mexico enjoyed a more quiet existence and a more stable government than either before or since that period of its history. "Churches, schools, and hospitals were distributed over the land; good roads were made, and, without going into detail, industrial pursuits were generally in honor, and were rewarded with success."

Political revolution again agitated the country in the commencement of this century, followed by the establishment of an empire under Iturbide; this in turn gave place to a republican form of government in 1824.

No stronger proof of the belief of our order-loving and law-abiding neighbors in the republican doctrine of rotation in office can be given than the fact that during the forty years of the Republican government "_the record shows forty-six changes in the presidential chair._" The accounts of revolution and counter-revolution among the dominant spirits of that time beggar description, and leave us to conclude that a frightful condition of strife, desolation, and misery reigned throughout the entire period. "The rulers of Mexico kept no faith with their own people; none with foreigners or foreign nations. They gave abundant cause for the declaration of war made against them by England, France, and Spain, and for the provocation of the war by France, when the other powers withdrew." The author describes the inducements held out by the assembly of notables to Maximilian, after the French occupation, to accept the throne; and how at last he unfortunately acceded to the request, and sailed for Vera Cruz in May, 1864. The subsequent career of this nobleman, who had thus linked his fate with that of Mexico is feelingly depicted. It was but a short period of three years from his "splendid reception at Guadalupe, when about entering his capital, to his fall by Mexican treachery, and subsequent murder on the 19th of June, 1867." The author blames ex-Secretary Seward for not preventing this tragical end of the amiable and highly cultivated prince, and thinks that as the Indian Juarez had been enabled to prosecute his illegal claim to the presidency by the support and comfort derived from the United States, he would not have dared refuse a claim for this boon, made in a proper spirit, by Mr. Seward.

The names of Maximilian and his devoted, beautiful Carlotta will always bring moisture to the eyes of those who can sympathize with the afflictions and sufferings of their fellow-beings.

Mexico has commenced a new chapter of her history. True, the preface so far is not encouraging; but let us hope her experience in the past may cause a better record for the future.

{143}

A Mexican Campaign Sketch.

This is an interesting account of the author's travels, as surgeon, with the army which, in 1847, under General Scott, fought its way through the historical battles of Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, to Chapultepec: and the final entrance, on the 14th of September, to the Mexican capital. The description of the appearance of the valley of Mexico, as the army descended the mountain side, is very beautiful. The author says, "The valley or basin of Mexico lay spread out like a panorama of fairy land; opening, closing, and shifting, according to the changing positions of the observers. At times nothing would be visible but dark recesses in the mountain, or the grim forest that shaded the road; when in a moment a sudden turn would unfold, as if by magic, a scene that looked too lovely to be real. It was an enchantment in nature; for, knowing as we did that we beheld _bona fide_ lakes and mountains, plains and villages, chapels and hamlets, all so bright, so clear, and so beautiful, it still seemed an illusion of the senses, a dream, or a perfection of art--nay, in the mountain circle we could see the very picture-frame."

How long the mixed races of this beautiful country are to continue their tragical and at times ludicrous efforts at self-government is a problem to be solved in the future.

An Epistle On Homoeopathy.

The doctor's logical arguments in this article we would recommend to the perusal of our friends who prefer the more palatable medicine of that school,

Lecture On Hygiene. A Lecture On Health And Happiness.

These lectures contain many sound practical hints for the general reader whereby he may avoid many causes of disease, and prolong his life to a natural limit. We give the doctor's testimony on two interesting points. He says:

"Excesses at table are disastrous enough, and in this they are worse than over devotion to Bacchus; namely, that they undermine more slowly and more insidiously; but otherwise, strong drinks are vastly worse. There are persons who think wines and liquors essential to health; but as the rule, they are useless at best; and at worst, destructive to soul, and body, and mind. Strict total abstinence is generally, I might say universally safe; while even temperate indulgence is rarely safe or salutary." (P. 119.)

"Tobacco deserves the next place. It is most marvellous how this nauseous weed has taken hold upon the affections of man. It surely is of no benefit to health, but I dare not say it conduces nothing to happiness. When I see an old friend take his pipe, or cigar, after the labors of the day, and the evening meal; when his good honest face beams beneath the fragrant smoke which rises like incense, making a wreath around his gray hairs; when his heart expands, and he becomes genially social and confidential, I can hardly ask Hygeia to rob him of his simple pleasure. A good cigar is almost akin to the 'cup that cheers, yet not inebriates.' But honestly, tobacco is pernicious in all its forms; not like whiskey, indeed, but still pernicious." (P. 121.)

As an entirety, the doctor's book presents a charming diversity of subjects, each in itself of sufficient interest to chain the earnest attention of the reader, and well repay him for its perusal.

John M. Costello; Or, The Beauty Of Virtue Exemplified In An American Youth. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.

This neat little volume contains a well-written memoir of a young aspirant to the priesthood who died a few years ago at the preparatory seminary of St. Charles.

There is a peculiar charm about the life of a pious Catholic boy whose heart has always yearned after the realization of the highest type of Christian virtue. Such a life presents a picture of simple beauty, in which the smallest details present points of more than common interest. One sees here how truly the supernatural life of grace illumines and adorns the commonest actions of the Christian, and clothes them with a merit that purely human virtue would never gather from them. There is nothing in the life of a St. Aloysius or a St. Stanislaus, however insignificant or commonplace in the eyes of the world, that can be deemed trivial or unworthy of record. {144} Whatever they do is a saintly act. Their words are the words of a saint. This is the secret of the wonderful influence which the history of these pure souls has exerted on the minds and hearts of the thousands and tens of thousands to whom it has become known. This thought was constantly before us while perusing the present beautiful tribute to the memory of young Costello. It is impossible to read the description of the most ordinary events of the life of this holy child of God without emotion. What in others of his age and general character might justly be unworthy of note in him becomes worthy to be written in letters of gold. We would say to all Catholic parents, among the hundreds of volumes standing on the bookseller's shelves inviting purchase by their gay bindings and prettily illustrated pages, and almost forcing themselves into your hands as birthday or holiday presents to your darling children, choose this one, and teach them, by the winning example of such virtue as they will here see presented to them, to emulate, not the daring exploits of some lion-killer or wild adventurer, or, it may be, the imaginary success of some fortunate youth in the pursuit of riches, but rather the heroism, the piety, the humility, the chastity, the self-renunciation of the Christian saint. All who love God and have the spiritual interests of our Catholic youth at heart will feel deeply grateful to the reverend author for having given to the world his knowledge of a life so well calculated to edify and inspire its readers with admiration of what is, after all, the highest and best within the sphere of human aim, to lead a holy life, and die, though it be in the flower of youth, the death of a saint. Let us have more books like this one, that, with God's blessing on the lessons they impart, we may have more such lives.

P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, is about to publish _The Montarges Legacy_, and _The Life of St. Stanislaus._

Books Received.

From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore:

New editions of the following books:

Practical Piety set forth by St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360, $1.

A Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days. By the Right Rev. John M. David, D.D., 1 vol. 12mo. $1.

Kyriale; or, Ordinary of Mass: a Complete Liturgical Manual, with Gregorian Chants, etc.; in round or square notes, each $1.25.

The Holy Week: containing the Offices of Holy Week, from the Roman Breviary and Missal, with the chants in modern notation. $1.25.

Roman Vesperal: containing the complete Vespers for the whole year, with Gregorian Chants in modern notation. $1.50.

From W. B. Kelly, Dublin:

The Catholic Church in America. A Lecture delivered before the Historical and AEsthetical Society in the Catholic University of Ireland. By Thaddeus J. Butler, D.D., Chicago. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 25 cents.

From KELLY, PIET & Co., Baltimore:

The Wreath of Eglantine, and other Poems: Edited and in part composed by Daniel Bedinger Lucas. 1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.

Eudoxia; a Picture of the Fifth Century. Translated from the German of Ida, Countess Hahn Hahn. 1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co.:

St. Dominic's Manual; or, Tertiary's Guide. By two Fathers of the Order. 1 vol. 18mo, pp. 533.

From C. Darveau, Quebec, C. E.:

St. Patrick's Manual, for the use of Young People, prepared by the Christian Brothers. 1 vol. 24mo, pp. 648.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:

The Fisher Maiden: a Norwegian Tale. By Bjornstjerne Bjornson. From the author's German edition, by M. E. Niles. 12mo, pp. 217, $1.25.

The Gain of a Loss: a Novel. By the author of The Last of the Cavaliers. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 439, $1.75.

From Clark & Maynard, New York:

A Manual of General History: being an Outline History of the World from the Creation to the Present Time. Fully illustrated with maps. For the use of academies, high-schools, and families. By John J. Anderson, A.M. Pp. 400.

From Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., New York: A

Dictionary of the English Language, Explanatory, Pronouncing, Etymological, and Synonymous. Counting-House Edition. With an appendix containing various useful tables. Mainly abridged from the latest edition of the Qutarto Dictionary of Noah Webster, LL. D. By William G. Webster and William A. Wheeler. Illustrated with more than three hundred engravings on wood. Pp. 630.

From Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, London:

The Formation of Christendom. Part II. By T. W. Allies. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 495. The Catholic Publication Society having made arrangements with Mr. Allies to supply his book in America, will soon have this volume for sale. Price, $6.

From James Duffy, Dublin:

The Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary. By the Rev. M. B. Buckley. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 410.

From W. W. Swayne, New York and Brooklyn:

The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. Vol. 1, paper, 25 cents.

From Harper & Brothers:

The Poetical Works of Charles G. Halpine. With a Biographical Sketch and Explanatory Notes. Edited by Robert B. Roosevelt. 1 vol. pp. 352.

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The Catholic World.

Vol. IX., No. 50.--May, 1869.

The Woman Question. [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: 1. _The Revolution_: New York. Weekly. Vol. III. 2. _Equal Rights for Women_. A Speech by George William Curtis, in the Constitutional Convention at Albany, July 19, 1868. 3. _Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?_ By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.]

The Woman Question, though not yet an all-engrossing question in our own or in any other country, is exciting so much attention, and is so vigorously agitated, that no periodical can very well refuse to consider it. As yet, though entering into politics, it has not become a party question, and we think we may discuss it without overstepping the line we have marked out for ourselves--that of studiously avoiding all party politics; not because we have not the courage to discuss them, but because we have aims and purposes which appeal to all parties alike, and which can best be effected by letting party politics alone.

In what follows we shall take up the question seriously, and treat it candidly, without indulging in any sneers, jeers, or ridicule. A certain number of women have become, in some way or other, very thoroughly convinced that women are deeply wronged, deprived of their just rights by men, and especially in not being allowed political suffrage and eligibility. They claim to be in all things man's equal, and in many things his superior, and contend that society should make no distinction of sex in any of its civil and political arrangements. It will not, indeed, be easy for us to forget this distinction so long as we honor our mothers, and love our wives and daughters; but we will endeavor in this discussion to forget it--so far, at least, as to treat the question on its merits, and make no allowance for any real or supposed difference of intellect between men and women. We shall neither roughen nor soften our tones because our opponents are women, or men who encourage them. The women in question claim for women all the prerogatives of men; we shall, therefore, take the liberty to disregard their privileges as women. They may expect from us civility, not gallantry.

{146}

We say frankly in the outset that we are decidedly opposed to female suffrage and eligibility. The woman's rights women demand them both as a right, and complain that men, in refusing to concede them, withhold a natural right, and violate the equal rights on which the American republic professes to be based. We deny that women have a natural right to suffrage and eligibility; for neither is a natural right at all, for either men or women. Either is a trust from civil society, not a natural and indefeasible right; and civil society confers either on whom it judges trustworthy, and on such conditions as it deems it expedient to annex. As the trust has never been conferred by civil society with us on women, they are deprived of no right by not being enfranchised.

We know that the theory has been broached latterly, and defended by several political journals, and even by representatives and senators in Congress, as well as by _The Revolution,_ the organ of the woman's rights movement, that suffrage and eligibility are not trusts conferred by civil society on whom it will, but natural and indefeasible rights, held directly from God or nature, and which civil society is bound by its very constitution to recognize, protect, and defend for all men and women, and which they can be deprived of only by crimes which forfeit one's natural life or liberty. It is on this ground that many have defended the extension of the elective franchise and eligibility to negroes and the colored races in the United States, and hold that Congress, under that clause of the Constitution authorizing it to guarantee to the several States a republican form of government, is bound to enfranchise them. It may or may not be wise and expedient to extend suffrage and eligibility to negroes and the colored races hitherto, in most of the States, excluded from the sovereign people of the country; on that question we express no opinion, one way or the other; but we deny that the negroes and colored men can claim admission on the ground either of natural right or of American republicanism; for white men themselves cannot claim it on that ground.

Indeed, the assumption that either suffrage or eligibility is a natural right is anti-republican. The fundamental principle, the very essence of republicanism is, that power is a trust to be exercised for the public good or common weal, and is forfeited when not so exercised, or when exercised for private and personal ends. Suffrage and eligibility confer power to govern, which, if a natural right, would imply that power is the natural and indefeasible right of the governors--the essential principle of all absolutism, whether autocratic, aristocratic, monarchical, or democratic. It would imply that the American government is a pure, centralized, absolute, unmitigated democracy, which may be regarded either as tantamount to no government, or as the absolute despotism of the majority for the time, or its right to govern as it pleases in all things whatsoever, spiritual as well as secular, regardless of vested rights or constitutional limitations. This certainly is not American republicanism, which has always aimed to restrain the absolute power of majorities, and to protect minorities by constitutional provisions. It has never recognized suffrage as a personal right which a man carries with him whithersoever he goes, but has always made it a territorial right, which a man can exercise only in his own State, his own county, his own town or city, and his own ward or precinct. If American republicanism recognized suffrage as a right, not as simply a trust, why does it place restrictions on its exercise, or treat bribery as a crime? If suffrage is my natural right, my vote is my property, and I may do what I please with it; dispose of it in the market for the highest price I can get for it, as I may of any other species of property.

{147}

Suffrage and eligibility are not natural, indefeasible rights, but franchises or trusts conferred by civil society; and it is for civil society to determine in its wisdom whom it will or will not enfranchise; on whom it will or will not confer the trust. Both are social or political rights, derived from political society, and subject to its will, which may extend or abridge them as it judges best for the common good. Ask you who constitute political society? They, be they more or fewer, who, by the actual constitution of the state, are the sovereign people. These, and these alone, have the right to determine who may or may not vote or be voted for. In the United States, the sovereign people has hitherto been, save in a few localities, adult males of the white race, and these have the right to say whether they will or will not extend suffrage to the black and colored races, and to women and children.

Women, then, have not, for men have not, any natural right to admission into the ranks of the sovereign people. This disposes of the question of right, and shows that no injustice or wrong is done to women by their exclusion, and that no violence is done to the equal rights on which the American republic is founded. It may or it may not be wise and expedient to admit women into political, as they are now admitted into civil, society; but they cannot claim admission as a right. They can claim it only on the ground of expediency, or that it is necessary for the common good. For our part, we have all our life listened to the arguments and declamations of the woman's rights party on the subject; have read Mary Wollstonecraft, heard Fanny Wright, and looked into _The Revolution_, conducted by some of our old friends and acquaintances, and of whom we think better than many of their countrymen do; but we remain decidedly of the opinion that harm instead of good, to both men and women, would result from the admission. We say not this because we think lightly of the intellectual or moral capacity of women. We ask not if women are equal, inferior, or superior to men; for the two sexes are different, and between things different in kind there is no relation of equality or of inequality. Of course, we hold that the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman, and that the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, not the wife of the husband; but it suffices here to say that we do not object to the political enfranchisement of women on the ground of their feebleness, either of intellect or of body, or of any real incompetency to vote or to hold office. We are Catholics, and the church has always held in high honor chaste, modest, and worthy women as matrons, widows, or virgins. Her calendar has a full proportion of female saints, whose names she proposes to the honor and veneration of all the faithful. She bids the wife obey her husband in the Lord; but asserts her moral independence of him, leaves her conscience free, and holds her accountable for her own deeds.

Women have shown great executive or administrative ability. Few men have shown more ability on a throne than Isabella, the Catholic, of Spain; or, in the affairs of government, though otherwise faulty enough, than Elizabeth of England, and Catharine II. of Russia. The present queen of the British Isles has had a most successful reign; but she owes it less to her own abilities than to the wise counsels of her husbands Prince Albert, and her domestic virtues as a wife and a mother, by which she has won the affections of the English people. {148} Others have shown rare administrative capacity in governing religious houses, often no less difficult than to govern a kingdom or an empire. Women have a keener insight into the characters of men than have men themselves, and the success of female sovereigns has, in great measure, been due to their ability to discover and call around them the best men in the state, and to put them in the places they are best fitted for.

What women would be as legislators remains to be seen; they have had little experience in that line; but it would go hard, but they would prove themselves not much inferior to the average of the men we send to our State legislatures or to our national Congress.

Women have also distinguished themselves in the arts as painters and sculptors, though none of them have ever risen to the front rank. St. Catharine of Egypt cultivated philosophy with success. Several holy women have shown great proficiency in mystic theology, and have written works of great value. In lighter literature, especially in the present age, women have taken a leading part. They almost monopolize the modern novel or romance, and give to contemporary popular literature its tone and character; yet it must be conceded that no woman has written a first-class romance. The influence of her writings, speaking generally, has not tended to purify or exalt the age, but rather to enfeeble and abase it. The tendency is to substitute sentiment for thought, morbid passion for strength, and to produce a weak and unhealthy moral tone. For ourselves, we own, though there are some women whose works we read, and even re-read with pleasure, we do not, in general, admire the popular female literature of the day; and we do not think that literature is that in which woman is best fitted to excel, or through which she exerts her most purifying and elevating influences. Her writings do not do much to awaken in man's heart the long dormant chivalric love so rife in the romantic ages, or to render the age healthy, natural, and manly. We say _awaken_; for chivalry, in its true and disinterested sense, is not dead in the coldest man's heart; it only sleepeth. It is woman's own fault, more than man's, that it sleeps, and wakes not to life and energy.

Nor do we object to the political enfranchisement of women in the special interest of the male sex. Men and women have no separate interests. What elevates the one elevates the other; what degrades the one degrades the other. Men cannot depress women, place them in a false position, make them toys or drudges, without doing an equal injury to themselves; and one ground of our dislike to the so-called woman's rights movement is, that it proceeds on the supposition that there is no inter-dependence between men and women, and seeks to render them mutually independent of each other, with entirely distinct and separate interests. There is a truth in the old Greek fable, related by Plato in the _Banquet_, that Jupiter united originally both sexes in one and the same person, and afterward separated them, and that now they are but two halves of one whole. "God made man after his own image and likeness; male and female made he _them_." Each, in this world, is the complement of the other, and the more closely identified are their interests, the better is it for both. We, in opposing the political enfranchisement of women, seek the interest of men no more than we do the interest of women themselves.

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Women, no doubt, undergo many wrongs, and are obliged to suffer many hardships, but seldom they alone. It is a world of trial, a world in which there are wrongs of all sorts, and sufferings of all kinds. We have lost paradise, and cannot regain it in this world. We must go through the valley of the shadow of death before re-entering it. You cannot make earth heaven, and there is no use in trying; and least of all can you do it by political means. It is hard for the poor wife to have to maintain a lazy, idle, drunken vagabond of a husband, and three or four children into the bargain; it is hard for the wife delicately reared, accomplished, fitted to adorn the most intellectual, graceful, and polished society, accustomed to every luxury that wealth can procure, to find herself a widow reduced to poverty, and a family of young children to support, and unable to obtain any employment for which she is fitted as the means of supporting them. But men suffer too. It is no less hard for the poor, industrious, hardworking man to find what he earns wasted by an idle, extravagant, incompetent, and heedless wife, who prefers gadding and gossiping to taking care of her household. And how much easier is it for the man who is reduced from affluence to poverty, a widower with three or four motherless children to provide for? The reduction from affluence to poverty is sometimes the fault of the wife as well as of the husband. It is usually their joint fault. Women have wrongs, so have men; but a woman has as much power to make a man miserable as a man has to make a woman miserable; and she tyrannizes over him as often as he does over her. If he has more power of attack, nature has given her more power of defence. Her tongue is as formidable a weapon as his fists, and she knows well how, by her seeming meekness, gentleness, and apparent martyrdom, to work on his feelings, to enlist the sympathy of the neighborhood on her side and against him. Women are neither so wronged nor so helpless as _The Revolution_ pretends. Men can be brutal, and women can tease and provoke.

But let the evils be as great as they may, and women as greatly wronged as is pretended, what can female suffrage and eligibility do by way of relieving them? All modern methods of reform are very much like dram-drinking. The dram needs to be constantly increased in frequency and quantity, while the prostration grows greater and greater, till the drinker gets the _delirium tremens_, becomes comatose, and dies. The extension of suffrage in modern times has cured or lessened no social or moral evil; and under it, as under any other political system, the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. Double the dram, enfranchise the women, give them the political right to vote and be voted for; what single moral or social evil will it prevent or cure? Will it make the drunken husband temperate, the lazy and idle industrious and diligent? Will it prevent the ups and downs of life, the fall from affluence to poverty, keep death out of the house, and prevent widowhood and orphanage? These things are beyond the reach of politics. You cannot legislate men or women into virtue, into sobriety, industry, providence. The doubled dram would only introduce a double poison into the system, a new element of discord into the family, and through the family into society, and hasten the moment of dissolution. When a false principle of reform is adopted, the evil sought to be cured is only aggravated. The reformers started wrong. {150} They would reform the church by placing her under human control. Their successors have in each generation found they did not go far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church life, without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if there be even a God. So, in politics, we have pushed the false principle that all individual, domestic, and social evils are due to bad government, and are to be cured by political reforms and changes, till we have nearly reformed away all government, at least, in theory; have well-nigh abolished the family, which is the social unit; and find that the evils we sought to cure, and the wrongs we sought to redress, continue undiminished. We cry out in our delirium for another and a larger dram. When you proceed on a true principle, the more logically and completely you carry it out the better; but when you start with a false principle, the more logical you are, and the farther you push it, the worse. Your consistency increases instead of diminishing the evils you would cure.

The conclusive objection to the political enfranchisement of women is, that it would weaken and finally break up and destroy the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without family ties or affections. The family has already been much weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying associations that gathered round it, and live away from home in hotels and boarding-houses. We are daily losing the faith, the virtues, the habits, and the manners without which the family cannot be sustained; and when the family goes, the nation goes too, or ceases to be worth preserving. God made the family the type and basis of society; "male and female made he them." A large and influential class of women not only neglect but disdain the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential duties--the drudgery, they call it--of wives and mothers. This, coupled with the separate pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, and the facility of divorce _a vinculo matrirmonii_ allowed by the laws of most of the States of the Union, make the family, to a fearful extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be.

Extend now to women suffrage and eligibility; give them the political right to vote and to be voted for; render it feasible for them to enter the arena of political strife, to become canvassers in elections and candidates for office, and what remains of family union will soon be dissolved. The wife may espouse one political party, and the husband another, and it may well happen that the husband and wife may be rival candidates for the same office, and one or the other doomed to the mortification of defeat. Will the husband like to see his wife enter the lists against him, and triumph over him? Will the wife, fired with political ambition for place or power, be pleased to see her own husband enter the lists against her, and succeed at her expense? Will political rivalry and the passions it never fails to engender increase the mutual affection of husband and wife for each other, and promote domestic union and peace, or will it not carry into the bosom of the family all the strife, discord, anger, and division of the political canvass?

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Then, when the wife and mother is engrossed in the political canvass, or in discharging her duties as a representative or senator in Congress, a member of the cabinet, or a major-general in the field, what is to become of the children? The mother will have little leisure, perhaps less inclination, to attend to them. A stranger, or even the father, cannot supply her place. Children need a mother's care; her tender nursing, her sleepless vigilance, and her mild and loving but unfailing discipline. This she cannot devolve on the father, or turn over to strangers. Nobody can supply the place of a mother. Children, then, must be neglected; nay, they will be in the way, and be looked upon as an encumbrance. Mothers will repress their maternal instincts; and the horrible crime of infanticide before birth, now becoming so fearfully prevalent, and actually causing a decrease in the native population of several of the States of the Union as well as in more than one European country, will become more prevalent still, and the human race be threatened with extinction. Women in easy circumstances, and placing pleasure before duty, grow weary of the cares of maternity, and they would only become more weary still if the political arena were opened to their ambition.

Woman was created to be a wife and a mother; that is her destiny. To that destiny all her instincts point, and for it nature has specially qualified her. Her proper sphere is home, and her proper function is the care of the household, to manage a family, to take care of children, and attend to their early training. For this she is endowed with patience, endurance, passive courage, quick sensibilities, a sympathetic nature, and great executive and administrative ability. She was born to be a queen in her own household, and to make home cheerful, bright, and happy. Surely those women who are wives and mothers should stay at home and discharge its duties; and the woman's rights party, by seeking to draw her away from the domestic sphere, where she is really great, noble, almost divine, and to throw her into the turmoil of political life, would rob her of her true dignity and worth, and place her in a position where all her special qualifications and peculiar excellences would count for nothing. She cannot be spared from home for that.

It is pretended that woman's generous sympathies, her nice sense of justice, and her indomitable perseverance in what she conceives to be right are needed to elevate our politics above the low, grovelling and sordid tastes of men; but while we admit that women will make almost any sacrifice to obtain their own will, and make less than men do of obstacles or consequences, we are not aware that they have a nicer or a truer sense of justice, or are more disinterested in their aims than men. All history proves that the corruptest epochs in a nation's life are precisely those in which women have mingled most in political affairs, and have had the most influence in their management. If they go into the political world, they will, if the distinction of sex is lost sight of, have no special advantage over men, nor be more influential for good or for evil. If they go as women, using all the blandishments, seductions, arts, and intrigues of their sex, their influence will tend more to corrupt and debase than to purify and elevate. Women usually will stick at nothing to carry their points; and when unable to carry them by appeals to the strength of the other sex, they will appeal to its weakness. When once they have thrown off their native modesty, and entered a public arena with men, they will go to lengths that men will not. {152} Lady Macbeth looks with steady nerves and unblanched cheek on a crime from which her husband shrinks with horror, and upbraids him with his cowardice for letting "I dare not wait upon I would." It was not she who saw Banquo's ghost.

We have heard it argued that, if women were to take part in our elections, they would be quietly and decorously conducted; that her presence would do more than a whole army of police officials to maintain order, to banish all fighting, drinking, profane swearing, venality, and corruption. This would undoubtedly be, to some extent, the case, if, under the new _régime_, men should retain the same chivalric respect for women that they now have. Men now regard women as placed in some sort under their protection, or the safeguard of their honor. But when she insists that the distinction of sex shall be disregarded, and tells us that she asks no favors, regards all offers of protection to her as a woman as an insult, and that she holds herself competent to take care of herself, and to compete with men on their own ground, and in what has hitherto been held to be their own work, she may be sure that she will be taken at her word, that she will miss that deference now shown her, and which she has been accustomed to claim as her right, and be treated with all the indifference men show to one another. She cannot have the advantages of both sexes at once. When she forgets that she is a woman, and insists on being treated as a man, men will forget that she is a woman, and allow her no advantage on account of her sex. When she seeks to make herself a man, she will lose her influence as a woman, and be treated as a man.

Women are not needed as men; they are needed as women, to do, not what men can do as well as they, but what men cannot do. There is nothing which more grieves the wise and good, or makes them tremble for the future of the country, than the growing neglect or laxity of family discipline; than the insubordination, the lawlessness, and precocious depravity of Young America. There is, with the children of this generation, almost a total lack of filial reverence and obedience. And whose fault is it? It is chiefly the fault of the mothers, who fail to govern their households, and to bring up their children in a Christian manner. Exceptions there happily are; but the number of children that grow up without any proper training or discipline at home is fearfully large, and their evil example corrupts not a few of those who are well brought up. The country is no better than the town. Wives forget what they owe to their husbands, are capricious and vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and foolish, bent on having their own way, though ruinous to the family, and generally contriving, by coaxings, blandishments, or poutings, to get it. They set an ill example to their children, who soon lose all respect for the authority of the mother, who, as a wife, forgets to honor and obey her husband, and who, seeing her have her own way with him, insist on having their own way with her, and usually succeed. As a rule, children are no longer subjected to a steady and firm, but mild and judicious discipline, or trained to habits of filial obedience. Hence, our daughters, when they become wives and mothers, have none of the habits or character necessary to govern their household and to train their children. Those habits and that character are acquired only in a school of obedience, made pleasant and cheerful by a mother's playful smile and a mother's love. {153} We know we have not in this the sympathy of the women whose organ is _The Revolution_. They hold obedience in horror, and seek only to govern, not their own husbands only, not children, but men, but the state, but the nation, and to be relieved of household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the duty of bringing up children. We should be sorry to do or say anything which these, in their present mood, could sympathize with. It is that which is a woman's special duty in the order of providence, and which constitutes her peculiar glory, that they regard as their great wrong.

The duty we insist on is especially necessary in a country like ours, where there is so little respect for authority, and government is but the echo of public opinion. Wives and mothers, by neglecting their domestic duties and the proper family discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to growing lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, by the false notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained. It is only by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and obedience to which our children are trained, that the license the government tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to restrain, can be counteracted, and the community made a law-loving and a law-abiding community. The very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism. Social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted, and chiefly because wives and mothers have failed in their domestic duties, and the discipline of their families. How, then, can the community, the nation itself, subsist, if we call them away from home, and render its duties still more irksome to them, instead of laboring to fit them for a more faithful discharge of their duties?

We have said the evils complained of are chiefly due to the women, and we have said so because it grows chiefly out of their neglect of their families. The care and management of children during their early years belong specially to the mother. It is her special function to plant and develop in their young and impressible minds the seeds of virtue, love, reverence, and obedience, and to train her daughters, by precept and example, not to be looking out for an eligible _parti_, nor to catch husbands that will give them splendid establishments, but to be, in due time, modest and affectionate wives, tender and judicious mothers, and prudent and careful housekeepers. This the father cannot do; and his interference, except by wise counsel, and to honor and sustain the mother, will generally be worse than nothing. The task devolves specially on the mother; for it demands the sympathy with children which is peculiar to the female heart, the strong maternal instinct implanted by nature, and directed by a judicious education, that blending of love and authority, sentiment and reason, sweetness and power, so characteristic of the noble and true-hearted woman, and which so admirably fit her to be loved and honored, only less than adored, in her own household. When she neglects this duty, and devotes her time to pleasure or amusement, wasting her life in luxurious ease, in reading sentimental or sensational novels, or in following the caprices of fashion, the household goes to ruin, the children grow up wild, without discipline, and the honest earnings of the husband become speedily insufficient for the family expenses, and he is sorely tempted to provide for them by rash speculation or by fraud, which, though it may be carried on for a while without detection, is sure to end in disgrace and ruin at last. {154} Concede now to women suffrage and eligibility, throw them into the whirlpool of politics, set them to scrambling for office, and you aggravate the evil a hundred fold. Children, if suffered to be born, which is hardly to be expected, will be still more neglected; family discipline still more relaxed, or rendered still more capricious or inefficient; our daughters will grow up more generally still without any adequate training to be wives and mothers, and our sons still more destitute of those habits of filial reverence and obedience, love of order and discipline, without which they can hardly be sober, prudent, and worthy heads of families, or honest citizens.

We have thus far spoken of women only as wives and mothers; but we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and cannot be wives and mothers. In the older and more densely settled States of the Union there is an excess of females over males, and all cannot get husbands if they would. Yet, we repeat, woman was created to be a wife and a mother, and the woman that is not fails of her special destiny. We hold in high honor spinsters and widows, and do not believe their case anywhere need be or is utterly hopeless. There is a mystery in Christianity which the true and enlightened Christian recognizes and venerates--that of the Virgin-Mother. Those women who cannot be wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both in the spiritual order, if they will. They can be wedded to the Holy Spirit, and be the mothers of minds and hearts. The holy virgins and devout widows who consecrate themselves to God in or out of religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order their proper destiny. They are married to a celestial Spouse, and become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, the destitute, the homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray for the unbelieving and the cold hearted, and elevate the moral tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway of life. They are dear to God, dear to the church, and dear to Christian society. They are to be envied, not pitied. It is only because you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic Church, and have become gross in your minds, of "the earth, earthy," that you deplore the lot of the women who cannot, in the natural order, find husbands. The church provides better for them than you can do, even should you secure female suffrage and eligibility.

We do not, therefore, make an exception from our general remarks in favor of those who have and can get no earthly husbands, and who have no children born of their flesh to care for. There are spiritual relations which they can contract, and purely feminine duties, more than they can perform, await them, to the poor and ignorant, the aged and infirm, the helpless and the motherless, or, worse than motherless, the neglected. Under proper direction, they can lavish on these the wealth of their affections, the tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their charity, and find true joy and happiness in so doing, and ample scope for woman's noblest ambition. They have no need to be idle or useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow, sickness and suffering, there is always work enough for them to do, and there are always chances enough to acquire merit in the sight of Heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter for ever.

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We know men often wrong women and cause them great suffering by their selfishness, tyranny, and brutality; whether more than women, by their follies and caprices, cause men, we shall not undertake to determine. Man, except in fiction, is not always a devil, nor woman an angel. Since the woman's rights people claim that in intellect woman is man's equal, and in firmness of will far his superior, it ill becomes them to charge to him alone what is wrong or painful in her condition, and they must recognize her as equally responsible with him for whatever is wrong in the common lot of men and women. There is much wrong on both sides; much suffering, and much needless suffering, in life. Both men and women might be, and ought to be, better than they are. But it is sheer folly or madness to suppose that either can be made better or happier by political suffrage and eligibility; for the evil to be cured is one that cannot be reached by any possible political or legislative action.

That the remedy, to a great extent, must be supplied by woman's action and influence we concede, but not by her action and influence in politics. It can only be by her action and influence as woman, as wife, and mother; in sustaining with her affection the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband or her sons, and forming her children to early habits of filial love and reverence, of obedience to law, and respect for authority. That she may do this, she needs not her political enfranchisement or her entire independence of the other sex, but a better and more thorough system of education for daughters--an education that specially adapts them to the destiny of their sex, and prepares them to find their happiness in their homes, and the satisfaction of their highest ambition in discharging its manifold duties, so much higher, nobler, and more essential to the virtue and well-being of the community, the nation, society, and to the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or kaiser, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted? or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their home; their chief ambition in making it cheerful, bright, radiant, and happy. Whether destined to grace a magnificent palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this should be the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained to love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and performing its duties, however arduous or painful.

There are comparatively few mothers qualified to give their daughters such an education, especially in our own country; for comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or are able fully to appreciate its importance. They can find little help in the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young ladies; and in general these schools only aggravate the evil to be cured. The best and the only respectable schools for daughters that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might be wished. {156} The good religious sometimes follow educational traditions perhaps better suited to the social arrangements of other countries than of our own, and sometimes underrate the value of intellectual culture. They do not always give as solid an intellectual education as the American woman needs, and devote a disproportionate share of their attention to the cultivation of the affections and sentiments, and to exterior graces and accomplishments. The defects we hint at are not, however, wholly, nor chiefly, their fault; they are obliged to consult, in some measure, the tastes and wishes of parents and guardians, whose views for their daughters and wards are not always very profound, very wise, very just, or very Christian. The religious cannot, certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils that practical home training so necessary, and which can be given only by mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but they go as far as is possible in remedying the defects of the present generation of mothers, and in counteracting their follies and vain ambitions. With all the faults that can be alleged against any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it must be conceded, are infinitely the best schools for daughters in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure them. We have seldom found their graduates weak and sickly sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful and healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral and religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and religious affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes, and send them out feeling that life is serious, life is earnest, and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal responsibilities, and meet whatever may be their lot with brave hearts and without murmuring or repining.

We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great measure, rest on these conventual schools. As they are multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education will be come higher and broader; a nobler class of wives and mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion will become a real power in the republic; the moral tone of the community and the standard of private and public morality will be elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the virtues that will enable us as a people to escape the dangers that now threaten us, and to save the republic as well as our own souls. Sectarians, indeed, declaim against these schools, and denounce them as a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters "Romanists;" but Satan probably dislikes "Romanism" even more than sectarians do, and is much more in earnest to suppress or ruin our conventual schools, in which he is not held in much honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At any rate, our countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is our glory to profess that they cannot call it by its true name, would do well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better schools for daughters of their own.

Now, we dare tell these women who are wasting so much time, energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would only make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their attention to the education of daughters for their special functions, not as men, but as women who are one day to be wives and mothers--woman's true destiny. {157} These modest, retiring sisters and nuns, who have no new theories or schemes of social reform, and upon whom you look down with haughty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow-minded, have chosen the better part, and are doing infinitely more to raise woman to her true dignity, and for the political and social as well as for the moral and religious progress of the country, than you with all your grand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring lectures, and spirited journals.

For poor working-women and poor working-men, obliged to subsist by their labor, and who can find no employment, we feel a deep sympathy, and would favor any feasible method of relieving them with our best efforts. But why cannot American girls find employment as well as Irish and German girls, who are employed almost as soon as they touch our shores, and at liberal wages? There is always work enough to be done if women are qualified to do it, and are not above doing it. But be that as it may, the remedy is not political, and must be found, if found at all, elsewhere than in suffrage and eligibility.

Daybreak.