CHAPTER XV.

A CHANGE.

This little mortification--and it really was one to Margaret's high spirit, owing to her anxiety to stand well in Dr. James's opinion--should have been a lesson to her to give up contradicting him, and opposing her own will to his, and for a time it was so; and yet that very wish to please, of which she was conscious and ashamed, made her often dispute with and appear to oppose him, when she would have liked to agree and do as he advised.

She began to realize something else, too, that had the effect of making her surround herself, as it were, with an armor of prickles and thorns; so that her intercourse with the doctor was far from peaceful or pleasant. She felt that the work she was doing among the poor was wholly with and for Father Barry; she was helping him, not Dr. James; and this, she felt, was the doing of the latter, and not without a reason. At first, when he had recommended her to take the priest as her adviser, she had felt a cooling of enthusiasm; still, having said she meant to persevere, she would not draw back.

It would have been sweet to her, she knew it now, to help the doctor; to be his friend, confidant, coadjutor; to feel that she was making his labor, which she revered and sympathized with, easier and pleasanter. But he had made that impossible; he had directed her to go to some one else for help, for counsel, for support, while he stood alone as before, and had never again applied to her for assistance for his patients, though she had once or twice asked if she could not relieve them. She understood the pride which prevented him from accepting her money, or placing himself under obligations to her. "He does not like me well enough to let me help him," she said to herself; and she soon abandoned all those efforts to make herself agreeable to him, which at first came so naturally to her.

The picnic lesson, therefore, though by no means forgotten, had ceased to influence her actions; and when the real spring-time came, with mild air, and young, fresh green, as May drew to its close and June was at hand, Margaret had managed to quarrel with Dr. James several times, and had made herself unhappy and him far from comfortable. He began to come less often to his old friend, Miss Spelman's, and to hear less of Margaret's plans and doings.

Miss Selina was much puzzled at the turn things were taking, and yet, when they disputed, she was half the time uncertain whether they were in fun or in earnest; and it did no good to remonstrate with Margaret; for the incomprehensible girl agreed with all she said, and acknowledged the doctor to be perfectly right.

The friendship with Martha Burney continued, however, and at her house Margaret always appeared to the best advantage, even before Dr. James. She seemed to stand somewhat in awe of her older friend, and was desirous to please; and besides, she had made a kind of agreement with herself that when she met the doctor there, she might allow herself to be as pleasant and conciliatory as her inclinations led her to be. She was in a peculiar frame of mind, and this curious compromise can be better described than explained.

In the mean time, old Mr. Burney gradually became more and more feeble; soon he lost his mind to such a degree as not to be able even to recognize his faithful daughter; and at last, early in May, he died. Margaret could not understand how Martha could grieve as she did at his loss; knowing his character and former misdoings, and seeing him a broken-down, witless old man, the daughter's sorrow seemed to her unreasonable; but when Martha talked of him as he was once, when his wife was living, handsome and brave and generous, the idol of those two fond women, it made her think of her own dear and noble father, lying alone in his quiet resting-place in the little Swiss graveyard, and she found she could give the sympathy and comfort which before were impossible.

His death made little apparent difference. Martha, after the funeral, went quietly on with her school duties, till she "could think of something more useful to do," she said; and her little household was as quiet and homely as usual, only, as it seemed to other people, much pleasanter. But Martha said,

"Oh! it was such a difference; she could not work with half the spirit now that it was only for herself; she had always had some one to live for, and now she could not feel any interest in what she did."

Margaret often went for her in her phaeton and brought her back to her aunt's to tea, and there grew up between them a sympathy and affection that was destined to last for life.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE SANITARY TOPOGRAPHY OF NEW YORK CITY.

The rapid growth of New York City is at present exciting universal interest throughout the country; and as a place of residence, or in a business point of view, it would be difficult to over-estimate the vast advantages it possesses. Nature has lavished upon the island its choicest gifts; surrounded on one side by the East and Harlem rivers, on the other by the beautiful Hudson, the "Rhine of America," as an entirety, its advantages for natural drainage and general healthfulness cannot be surpassed. But eighteen miles from the Atlantic Ocean, with an admirable harbor, the nations of the earth already vie with each other in pouring into the lap of this infant giant their most costly productions and most beautiful works of art. It is now the most populous city and the greatest commercial emporium of the western hemisphere, and stands with its youthful vigor a proud rival of the largest cities of the old world. With the vast undeveloped wealth of free America, and the energy and ambition of her sturdy sons to press it forward, is it not easy to foreshadow the prospective importance of this metropolis of the Union?

But one subject of uneasiness presents itself in this glance at the future, and that is the rather limited space which nature's barriers have allowed us, and which threatens eventually to stop the progress of the city. "Manhattan Island is but thirteen and one half miles long, and has an average width of one and three fifths miles. This gives an area of twenty-two square miles, or fourteen hundred acres."[62]

We may consider the city as pretty solidly built up as far north as Fifty-ninth street, the border of Central Park. The census of next year will probably show the population to number between thirteen and fourteen hundred thousand souls; and the rate of increase is estimated to be between six and seven per cent per annum. Thus the population of the island in 1880 will number far above two millions, and the city be extended as far northward as Ninetieth street. There are but "37,244 lots of full size, that is, twenty-five by one hundred feet, between Eighty-sixth and One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street."[63] This shows conclusively that before many more such decades of years roll round, every available portion of the island will be built upon, and our further expansion apparently prevented. But this, we hope, will be obviated by the erection of the East River bridge, and other modes of rapid transit to our sister city, Brooklyn, and the Jersey shore; thus enabling us to bring within our limits all the territory that will be required.

For the present, the rapidly increasing number of our commercial houses and the consequent greed for space shown by trade in the lower part of the city, as well as our constantly augmenting population, show conclusively that the better class of residents now occupying locations south of Thirty-fourth street will be obliged to look elsewhere for homes. That this is to be the case no one can doubt, who has studied the progress of business marts in their up-town march, during the last two years. The invasion of Union Square, the magnificent buildings on Broadway between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, the "Grand Hotel," and, more than all else, the appropriation of the lower end of Fifth Avenue for public galleries, attest this fact, and warn us that no prominent location below Thirty-fourth street will, in a short time, be safe from the all-powerful grasp of this insatiable demand. With this fact before us, the question arises, What portion of the island offers the greatest prospective permanency for private residences, and at the same time the best inducements for the happiness and physical well-being of the people?

That tract of the island bounded on the south by Thirty-fourth street, on the east by Lexington avenue, on the west by Sixth avenue, and on the north by Fifty-seventh street, is undoubtedly very desirable property; but with our rapid growth it is impossible to tell what it will be twenty years hence; and besides, we are lured past this portion by the many advantages offered by the section north of it.

We have now before us the Central Park, extending from Fifth Avenue on the east, to Eighth avenue on the west; and stretching out in picturesque beauty from Fifty-ninth to One Hundred and Tenth street. To the east and west of this, we find topographically a very different character of country. On the east side from Fifty-ninth to Ninetieth street, the surface is very uneven; in some parts ledges of rock run up one hundred and twenty feet above tide-water, and then abruptly descend into valleys almost on a level with tide-water; and here are found the beds of old streams, so many of which formerly rolled their sluggish waters through this portion of the island into the East River. The general fall is eastward, though not sufficiently so to make natural drainage into the river good. From Ninetieth street to the Harlem River, we have a perfectly flat plain; unbroken, with the exception of Mount Morris Square, by any marked elevation. The land lies but little above tide-water, and presents every appearance of being to a great extent "made ground." This supposition is further strengthened by the alluvial character of the soil. Many suppose that a branch of the Hudson once flowed across the island at Manhattanville to Hell Gate; but we believe that originally the upper portion of Manhattan was a distinct island, and have no doubt the waters of the Hudson washed freely between the two, and in time the amount of soil gradually deposited on either bank limited and eventually closed the gap, thus giving us our present formation.

On the west side of the park we have a very different topography.

"From Fifty-ninth to One Hundred and Fourth street, the Eighth avenue is nearly the central ridge of the Island. Its average height is twenty to thirty feet above the Fifth avenue. At Fifty-ninth street, the elevation of the Eighth avenue above the tide-level is seventy-six feet four inches, increasing to ninety feet at Seventieth street, reaching one hundred and twenty feet at Eighty-fifth street and one hundred and twenty-two feet at Ninety-second street; descending, it is eighty-nine feet at One Hundred and Fourth street, and gradually falls off to the general low level of Harlem plains.

"At One Hundred and Sixth street, the ridge extends north-westwardly, leaving the Eighth avenue, running nearly along the Ninth avenue to One Hundred and Twentieth street; then bending westwardly, and forming the southern hill-side of the Manhattan valley to the Hudson River. The new grade of the Eighth avenue already established, by keeping up elevations and filling depressions, will gradually ascend to and then descend from its summit at Ninety-second street, and make the finest possible grade for any avenue on the island."[64]

To appreciate, one must see the romantic beauty presented by the bold bluff of rocky formation against which the crystal waters of the Hudson dash in ceaseless waves and eddies. At points forming ascents from seventy to one hundred and forty feet above tide-water, it stretches away, with varying elevation and constantly changing scenery until it reaches Manhattanville. There, as if to make space to cradle the village in its rocky embrace, for a few blocks it disappears, only to rise in more stately proportions beyond, forming its crowning glory of landscape grandeur at Washington Heights.

"There is a high table-land between the Eighth and Ninth avenue ridge on the east, and the Hudson River bank on the west. The surface of this table-land is broken; it has high rocky ridges and mounds in central locations reaching these elevations. At

Ninth avenue and Sixty-sixth street 89 feet. Ninth avenue and Seventieth street 98 " Ninth avenue and Eighty-fourth street 120 feet. Ninth avenue and Ninety-first street 121 " Ninth avenue and One Hundred and Fifth street 117 " Tenth avenue and Seventy-seventh street 98 " Tenth avenue and Eighty-fifth street 109 " Tenth avenue and Ninety-Second street 107 " Tenth avenue and One Hundred and Fifth street 109 " Tenth avenue and One Hundred and Seventeenth street 145 "

"Between these elevations, which (except a central ridge or terrace between the Ninth and Tenth avenues from Seventy-ninth to Ninety-fourth street) are not generally continuous, are numerous hollows and valleys, the lowest having an elevation of fifty to sixty feet above the tide-level. The average elevation of this plateau is as much as seventy-five feet; in the more northerly portion, as much as one hundred feet. The surface drainage from this plateau finds its way to the river, through the valleys above indicated, at Sixty-seventh, Eightieth, and Ninety-sixth streets."[65]

With a view to the prospective physical health of the city, the authorities should do every thing possible to destroy the extensively prevailing malaria found in it, which emanates from the large tract of made ground along the East River, and from the beds of the original streams, which covered acres of land in the primitive state of the island. Few people fully comprehend the insidiousness of this poison which affects the system in such a variety of ways and shows such erratic developments that at times the skill of the physician is baffled in attempting to detect its presence. It is rendered more permanent in many locations by the miserable condition of the sewers, and, where these have not been built, by the irregular grading of streets forming obstructions to the natural drainage of the soil. Again, in many places where sewers have been provided, as along the course of Seventy-fourth street between Third and Fifth avenues, they do not seem to entirely prevent the generation of the poison, as intermittent and remittent fevers are still rife in the surrounding districts: not properly filling up the beds of the streams in many of these cases may, however, account for this.

Owing to its rocky formation, malaria has found a home in but few locations in the north-western section of the city; and if these are examined, they will generally be found to be lots which, by the grading of the streets, have been made lower than the side-walks. When these are properly filled, the deleterious influence they exert will disappear. In addition to this, the level of this section is so much above tide-water that it possesses every advantage for natural, and, when that does not prove sufficient, every facility for promoting artificial, drainage.

According to the report of the Board of Central Park Commissioners for last year, "the prevailing winds for the year were west and north-west." Let us see what comparative difference this makes to the two sections of the city under consideration. The west side receives this wind in all its bracing freshness directly after it has passed over the Jersey highlands, on the opposite side of the Hudson. It carries before it all the exhalations from this side toward the east, and imparts a healthful vigor to all who come within its influence. The east side, being so much below the level of the west, receives but little of the benefit to be derived from this wind. Again:

"When the mercury in the barometer rises, the smoke and injurious emanations are quickly dispelled in the air. When the mercury lowers, we see the smoke and noxious vapors remain in the apartments and near the surface of the earth. Now, every one knows that, of all winds, that from the east causes the mercury in the barometer to rise the highest, and that which lowers it most is from the west. When the latter blows, it carries with it all the deleterious gases it meets in its course from the west. The result is, that the inhabitants of the eastern parts of a city not only have their own smoke and miasmas, but also those of the western parts brought by the west wind. When, on the contrary, the east wind blows, it purifies the air by causing the injurious emanations to rise, so that they cannot be thrown back upon the west. It is evident, then, that the inhabitants of the western parts receive pure air from whatever part of the horizon it comes. We will add, that the west wind is most prevalent, and the west end receives it all fresh from the country.

"From the foregoing facts, M. Junod lays down the following directions: First, persons who are free to choose, especially those of delicate health, should reside in the western part of a city. Secondly, for the same reason, all the establishments that send forth vapors or injurious gases should be in the eastern part. Thirdly and finally, in erecting a house in the city, and even in the country, the kitchen should be on the eastern side, as well as all the out-houses from which unhealthy emanations might spread into the apartments."[66]

The absence of foliage is a great disadvantage in malarious districts, and here the east side of the city enjoys a marked superiority over the west in the ample and rich character of its soil, which, with proper cultivation would produce trees of luxurious foliage. On account of the small quantity and the poor quality of the soil in many locations in the north-western section of the island, trees are not as numerous as they should be; but it becomes only a greater duty to foster those we have, and to constantly increase their number by planting others in every desirable location. Too little regard has in all ages been paid to that beautiful harmony established by the wisdom of God in nature, and but few persons consider how essential the vegetable kingdom is to animal life. With each inspiration of air which we draw into our lungs to obtain oxygen, a certain amount of blood is purified, and throws off its carbon. This carbon is rapidly absorbed by plants, and nurtures them; and in return they liberate the oxygen which is absolutely necessary for our being.

"Plants absorb their food entirely in a liquid or gaseous form, by imbibition, according to the law of _endosmosis_, through the walls of the cells that form the surface; as when liquids of unequal density are separated by a permeable membrane, the lighter liquid or the weaker solution will flow into the stronger with a force proportionate to the difference in density; but at the same time a smaller portion of the denser liquid will flow out into the weaker, which process is called _exosmosis_. The fluid absorbed by the roots is thus carried from cell to cell, rising principally in the wood, and is attracted to the leaves, or other parts of the plants exposed to the sun and light, by the exhalation which takes place from them, and the consequent inspiration of the sap. Here the crude sap is exposed to sun and light, and assimilated and converted into organizable matter."[67]

Man, in his ruthless desire to utilize, according to his weak appreciation, every thing placed within his power, destroys the very breastworks against disease and death with which the foresight of the Creator has surrounded him. Many instances are recorded where the removal of a grove of trees has rendered entire villages for ever afterward a prey to the innumerable miseries produced by malarial poison. This fact has been recognized from the earliest days, and demonstrated so clearly by experience, that the more intelligent inhabitants of rural districts, where marshes abound, build their homes so that winds passing over them, and consequently laden with their pestilential exhalations, shall be intercepted by some belt of forest-trees. Many parts of Italy would be uninhabitable without the protection of its luxurious vegetable productions, and it is well known that the citizens of Rome are thus shielded from the south-west wind passing over the dreaded Pontine marshes. The salutary influence of foliage is not felt in the case of malaria alone; observers have noticed the comparative immunity from epidemic diseases also enjoyed by those whose homes are thus protected. During the prevalence of cholera in Burlington, Iowa, in 1850, this was strikingly demonstrated.

"In the houses on the west side of Main street, north of Court, more deaths took place than in any other portion of the city; and more occurred, in proportion to the number of inmates, in every other house than in the one in front of which were trees, and, what is still more convincing, the natural predisposition to cholera existed to a greater extent among the inmates of this house, than in any other. Another and more striking instance occurred in the two houses nearest the 'old saw-mill.' The house adjoining the mill was surrounded by trees, and not one of the occupants suffered from cholera; while, in the other house, which was exposed, and stood upon the bank of the Mississippi, three deaths took place; and what is more to the point, the family which escaped were new-comers, and suffering from _nostalgia_, and the effects of a change of climate, which act as a predisposing and exciting cause of the disease; while those who lived in the other house were old residents, and had been thoroughly acclimated. Dr. Buckler notices similar facts in his account of the cholera, as it appeared in the Baltimore Alms-house, in 1849."[68]

Trees are useful to us in another respect; they moderate temperature. In winter, the heat of the earth is constantly ascending their trunks to be given to the air. It is well known that large forests decidedly lessen the intense cold, and, in summer, moderate the extreme heat, by the great amount of moisture which they exhale from their leaves. Again, who has not felt the happy influence a forest has upon the mind? How our petty troubles melt away, and our hearts expand with grateful homage, when we listen to the tuneful harmony of æolian sweetness, as the feathered songsters of the grove, and the passing breezes rustling through the verdant foliage unite to form nature's orchestra, wafting upward one grand strain of praise to the Deity. And when, in the autumn of our lives, borne down by blighted hopes and ruined ambition, we seek the forest's solitude, every fitful breeze sounds a low wail of sympathy, falling in gentle cadence on the crushed heart.

The young growth of the trees is particularly noticeable in Central Park, and in this respect it will be many years before we can rival Druid Hill Park near Baltimore, where the grand old trees, raising their majestic heads toward heaven, seem whispering to every passing zephyr hymns of adoration. Here, art may carve meandering roads, span the crystal streams with elaborate bridges, erect statues in honor of man, decorate and adorn to suit the taste of the most fastidious; but high above all these, the majestic oaks wave their luxuriant foliage, and assert the superiority of the works of the Creator over the imitations of the creature. Thus it needs but a moment's consideration to see what a material advantage to our comfort, physical well-being, and happiness trees are; and to understand why our broad avenues should be bordered with them, and their growth fostered as much as possible in our parks; and we may rest assured that succeeding generations will bless us for the forethought which will add so much to the beauty and healthfulness of our metropolis.

The eastern portion of all large cities is devoted to manufacturing purposes, and New York presents no exception to this almost universal rule. By reason of the comparatively level and easily graded character of the east side, buildings were rapidly erected along the line of the Second, Third, and Fourth avenues; and the suburban villages of Harlem and Yorkville have been most remunerative to property-holders on that side of the park. The easy access to the points above named by the city railroads has drawn that kind of capital which invests in good substantial tenant-houses. These pay sufficiently well to prevent their being demolished, even with a prospect of better pecuniary results from a higher class of property; and thus are always an obstacle in the way of first-class improvements in a neighborhood.

The east side possesses a great many advantages which will in time increase its commerce, and render its entire river-side most valuable. Already numbers of manufactories, lumber-yards, and other business places occupy nearly the entire water-front as high as Fiftieth street; and the easy approach to, and gentle slope of its bank offering great facility for landing merchandise, will rapidly increase their number toward the northern extremity of the island. Again, should the attempt to relieve Hell Gate of its dangerous rocks be successful, a new era of prosperity will dawn for the East River shore, and every foot of its extent at once receive increased valuation. Piers will spring into existence, and vessels of every description bearing the precious wares of every clime, will seek this hitherto inhospitable channel, and thus lessen their tedious voyage by at least two hundred miles.

North of Fifty-ninth street on the west side, with the exception of the squatter's shanty, removable at a few days' legal notice, there is nothing to impede the numerous and beautiful improvements designed by the Central Park Commissioners, to whose judgment this work is intrusted. These improvements consist in laying out parks and public drives, and in adding in every possible way to the natural advantages of this section. First, at the intersection of Broadway, Eighth avenue, and Fifty-ninth street we will have the Circle, with a radius of two hundred and sixteen feet. This will provide at once an opening to the grand Boulevard, and also add to the beauty of the entrance at this point to Central Park. The ground around this circle will undoubtedly present one of the finest positions in the city for public buildings, and will become as valuable for this purpose as that in the neighborhood of Union Square. In this connection we would express a hope that the commissioners will reconsider the great mistake they have made in closing Sixtieth street between Eighth avenue and the Boulevard, thereby cutting off the view of the park and its grand entrance from the residents of that street. It would add much to the finish of the circle, and the beauty of the approach to the park, if Fifty-ninth street retained to either river the width it has between Fifth and Eighth avenues. Eventually a ferry will be established at either extremity of this street, for the accommodation of persons desiring to visit the park; and this with other circumstances, combines to make it very desirable that it should be one of the wide streets. Several efforts have been made to have the Belt Railroad running on this street removed to Fifty-eighth street, but so far without success. As this change is desired by the property-owners and residents in the neighborhood of the park, it is hoped it will be effected by the Legislature during their session this winter.

From the north-western portion of the circle issues the boulevard mentioned above. This will be in reality the extension of Broadway, and is designed to be one hundred and fifty feet wide, with twenty-two feet of its central portion reserved for a grass-plot, to be bordered on either side with shade-trees. It will extend along the line of the old Broadway road "crossing Ninth avenue at Sixty-fifth street and Tenth avenue at Seventy-second street, and then passing about midway between the Tenth and Eleventh avenues to One Hundred and Fourth street, where it bends to the westward, following the line of the Bloomingdale road, and strikes the Eleventh avenue at One Hundred and Seventh street, and then follows the Eleventh avenue to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street. Beyond One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street it continues as a part of the improvements of the Fort Washington district, which are now being carried out by the commissioners under the law of 1865,"[69] framed for this purpose.

Then we have the Zoölogical Garden, which is considered a portion of Central Park, and which is to occupy the space bounded by Seventy-seventh street on the south, Ninth avenue on the west, Eighty-first street on the north, and Eighth avenue on the east. It should properly be extended, taking in the same blocks from Seventy-seventh to Eighty-first street, as an arm of the park, and crossing the intervening avenues and boulevard by arched bridges, to the Riverside Park, which skirts the Hudson. This last will be one of the most beautiful improvements on the island. Commencing at Seventy-second street, with the rocky highland, it continues along the bank of the Hudson as far north as One Hundred and Thirtieth street. It will be bounded on the east by the new River-bank avenue, which runs along the crest of the highland, and is to be one hundred feet wide, and on the west by Twelfth avenue. It is difficult to imagine a more charming variety of scenery than this park must present from its many prominent points. A continuous view of the Hudson for miles will be seen, with the bold highlands of New Jersey on the opposite shore, and the limpid waters of the river adding variety to the charming landscape. Turning toward the north, Fort Washington looms up in grand proportions against the distant horizon, covered with rich foliage, and studded here and there with princely mansions. Glancing eastward, the park, with its charming intermingling of natural and artificial beauty, stretches away toward the East River in endless variety of lawn, shrubbery, and pebbly pathway; while to the south a grand panoramic view of the island city is presented, with its myriad towers and steeples of public buildings and of churches, all attesting the prosperity and wealth of the people. We hope the Park Commissioners will consider the extension we have above suggested. If made now, its expense would be light in comparison with the increased value of the property bordering the proposed connections; while the combination of the two parks, the boulevard, and the Zoölogical Garden would form a succession of grand pleasure-grounds such as no city of the world can now boast of.

We have still to mention Morningside Park, which is to commence at One Hundred and Tenth street, and extend as far north as One Hundred and Twenty-third street. It will be somewhat irregular in form and its southern portion will be bounded on either side by one of the new avenues, and the northern extremity by Ninth and Tenth avenues. It is most fortunate that the original intention of cutting down the grade of the streets in this section has been changed, and the matter left to the option of the Central Park Commissioners. We may rest assured that excellent taste will harmonize their improvements, and every notable point be reserved for some artistic design, and thus no natural advantage be destroyed which would add to the beautiful symmetry of the whole.

During the progress of these vast improvements a permanent system of sewerage should be devised for the comfort and convenience of the inhabitants of this district. At present this could be readily effected, as in many parts of the boulevard, Eighth avenue, and side streets, the grade will have to be raised several feet above the present level. This is particularly noticeable in the boulevard in the neighborhood of Eighty-fourth street, where the old Broadway road must lie twenty feet below the grade of the grand drive. It should also be a question as to the kind of sewer to be adopted. We are convinced that throwing away the contents of our sewers is an irreparable error, as all the _débris_ passing through them should be used as a fertilizing agent. Throughout the country, but more particularly in the South, is the reckless abuse of the soil noticeable. Our farmers sow and reap their crops year after year until the earth is worn out, and loses its productive power; then they seek new fields. Our territory is so vast, that the effect of this wretched mode of farming has not as yet been felt; but it must be, sooner or later. In many parts of Europe, the same ruinous policy has been pursued, and now the inhabitants are obliged to import guano to sufficiently revivify their impoverished land to raise even the lightest crop. We are happy to see that some of our public men have had their attention drawn to this fact. Senator Sprague in a recent conversation said, "We are rapidly exhausting our virgin soil, without furnishing it the means of recovery in the shape of fertilizers, and extending our railroads to new tracts as fast as we wear out the old cultivated ones." If we could deodorize the material from our sewers, and put it to practical uses, we would be gainers in many ways. In the first place, our piers would be relieved of the enormous quantity of decomposing matter which may constantly be seen festering under the sun's rays, and emitting pestilential exhalations; and secondly, a vast amount of valuable fertilizing material would be garnered from this large city, which would go far toward enriching the lands around us; and we may add that this experiment has been tried, and proved not only a success, but also highly remunerative.

"Sewerage has been advantageously deodorized and applied to agricultural uses in localities in England, where it could not be conveniently discharged into the sea, by the process of Mr. W. Higgs, of Westminster, which consists in collecting it in large tanks and admitting with it a stream of lime-water, the effect of which is to cause the precipitation of the organic matter with the phosphates, urates, sulphates, etc., and the expulsion of any free ammonia. Through the cover of the tanks the ammonia and all gaseous matters are conveyed by a pipe into a convoluted chamber, where they are fixed by various chemical reagents, and preserved. The tanks, when full, are allowed to remain undisturbed for an hour, when the liquids are drawn off clear and without odor. The pulpy sediments are then collected and dried, and rendered fit for the market. The expense of the process was rated at £1 per ton, and the manure thus prepared was sold at Cardiff for £3 per ton."[70]

It is an unquestionable fact that through the sewers of cities enormous quantities of the constituents of plants are conveyed into the sea, and unless saved and restored to the soil, the loss must be made up from other sources, or the lands become impoverished. From the London sewers, refuse matter is thrown into the river Thames; and so fearfully does this immense body of filth pollute its waters that it has been found necessary during warm weather to neutralize the impurity and destroy the foul gases by throwing large quantities of disinfectants into the river, costing the city as much as "£20,000 in the summer of 1859." They are now constructing an addition to their sewers which will carry their contents along the course of the river eight miles to Barking, into a reservoir a mile and a half long, and about one hundred feet wide by twenty-one feet deep. From this reservoir it will be, at high-tide, discharged, through numerous large pipes, into the middle and bottom of the river, at the depth of sixty feet below the surface. "The estimated cost of this vast work is about £4,000,000, and the time fixed for its completion five years."[71]

As the river Seine divides the city of Paris into two parts, so it divides the sewers into two districts, which formerly emptied their contents respectively on the right and left bank of the river. In order to prevent the infection of the water of the river, the main sewer of the left bank was made to pass its contents through a tunnel under the river, and empty them at Asnières, the same point where that of the right bank emptied, thus avoiding the current which washed the discharged material back upon the city.

Thus we see that the disposition of sewerage has always been a question of great import, even to cities situated on large streams of water, into which it could be turned. While proposing a system for at once doing away with the nuisance caused by it, and at the same time utilizing it for fertilizing purposes, we are happy to add that it is not the first time the plan has been brought forward for New York. Professor Lewis A. Sayre during his administration as Resident Physician of this city, had regular plans drawn up and calculations made as to the cost of the entire work; and also what return could with certainty be expected from the investment. The designs were made by the late John Randall, of Maryland, one of the ablest civil engineers the country has ever produced.

The professor's idea was, to have the street excavated for some twelve feet below its grade. A substantial wall of masonry was to be built on either side to sustain the sidewalk, and a convex iron girder was to cross the entire width of the street, upon which the pavement could be laid. Within the inclosure thus made, the sewer, water, and gas-pipes could be placed, and trap-doors arranged at certain distances to make it possible to get at them without disturbing the pavement. Here could be carried on a vast laboratory for deodorizing the contents of the sewers. His plan also embraced a sort of trap by which the yard of each house communicated with the main sewer, and an arrangement by which the fluid portion was allowed to drain away from the solids, which in turn were to be dumped from the temporary reservoir in which they were received into a small car at the bottom of the excavation, and then carried to the laboratory by a regular railroad intersecting every portion of the city.

This general plan of subterranean sewerage may strike the eye of the uninitiated as very expensive; but when we consider the manipulation a street is subjected to from the time its boundaries are defined by the surveyor, until it has been handed over to the city as complete, by the last contractor, we think the plan will appear in a very different light. In the first place, take a street that requires filling up to a certain specified grade. Sealed proposals or bids are received from contractors for the work, and the party making the most advantageous offer obtains the contract, and in due course of time completes the work. Then, in all probability, a second party obtains a contract to at once put down some kind of pavement. After this, houses are built upon the street, and a sewer must be laid. This completed, the gas and Croton mains must be put down. Then each house must have separate sewer, gas, and water connection. Thus the pavement is perpetually torn up and relaid, each removal rendering it more unfit for travel. Why not, when the street was low enough to lay the sewer without turning out one shovelful of earth, put in the pipes for the sewer, gas, and water, and leave the laying of the pavement until it could be done without having it torn up four or five times for necessities which every one knows will arise? Let any one calculate the vast sums of money spent on a street, in these various changes, and we are sure the amount will be larger than the cost of the plan above proposed, with this great difference, that when the work is completed, in the latter case, a yield of from six to seven per cent upon the outlay could be at once expected, while in the former there would be constant call for additional expense in repairs. Where the grade of a street requires to be raised several feet, it is doubtful if it would cost much more to put up the two walls of masonry and the iron girders than it costs to fill up the space with earth and rocks. Contractors pay from forty to seventy-five cents per load for this filling; and every one knows how very few square feet the carts used for this purpose hold. Again, the question of an underground railroad has been much discussed during the past few years. With this plan of sewerage, it would be no more expensive to carry such a railroad over the entire city, worked from given points by stationary engines and wire ropes, as is proposed for the overground railroad, than to lay such a road in the streets of the city; excepting that arrangements would have to be made at certain distances to enable passengers to go down to platforms below, for the purpose of entering the cars. This project would at once put into the hands of the city authorities a subterranean city, and also the vast revenues to be obtained from its underground railroads, and does not present half the difficulties that must have been experienced in bringing the Croton water across the Harlem River.

Having shown that nature has particularly favored that portion of the city which lies west of the park, and that, from present indications, the highest art will prevail in the magnificent improvements which are there going on, we will mention another cause, which will add weight to the many reasons already adduced, why it should in the future become the home of the fashion and wealth of the metropolis. If we look at the great capitals of Europe, we will notice the general tendency the affluent classes have shown to select their abodes in the western sections of these cities. Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Berlin, and others show this conclusively. In each, the western section is covered with the elegant palaces of the rulers and the costly mansions of the rich; while on the east side is found the bustling activity of the work-shops and manufactories. In a translation from _Le Correspondant_ published in the April number of this magazine, the writer, speaking of this subject, says,

"In visiting the ruins of Pompeii and other ancient cities, I have observed, as well as M. Junod, that this custom dates from the highest antiquity. In those cities, as is seen at Paris in our day, the largest cemeteries are found in the eastern parts, and generally none in the western. M. Junod, examining the reason of so general a fact, thinks it is connected with _atmospheric pressure_.

"M. Elie de Beaumont has since mentioned some facts which tend to prove the constancy and generality of the rule laid down by M. Junod. He noticed in most of the large cities this tendency of the wealthy class to move to the same side--generally, the western--unless hindered by certain local obstacles. Turin, Liège, and Caen are examples of this. M. Moquin-Tandon has observed the same thing at Montpellier and Toulouse."

In the first part of this article the influence of "_atmospheric pressure_" was fully spoken of, as also the effect of the winds so favorable to residents on the west side. With these facts in view, it is easy to foresee that those who possess means will always purchase homes in this portion of the city, which offers the best security against disease and the greatest guarantee for continued physical health.

It is curious to go back to the commencement of the present century, and to note the changes in location the growth of the city has obliged the wealthy to make since that time. In the early days, State street, and then Bowling Green, offered to this class attractions superior to those of any other portion of the city. The ample shade of the latter, its stately forest-trees, verdant lawn, and beautiful walks, with the refreshing sea-breeze constantly blowing in from old ocean, and the magnificent moving panorama in the harbor, made it a great favorite of our forefathers. They whiled away their time in this charming resort, smoking their pipes, and watching the merry gambols of the children. It may be, they canvassed the future of this goodly city, which under their thrifty influences already promised well, never dreaming, however, of the gigantic growth its future was to develop. In time this garden spot changed into the great _entrepôt_, where emigrant ships daily landed vast numbers eager to obtain employment and homes in this new country where every thing promised wealth and happiness. Greenwich street next absorbed within its precincts the votaries of fashion; soon after, it had for rivals in public favor East-Broadway and College Place. They, in turn, were deserted for the location between Fourth and Eighth streets. But the same agency being at work here as below, soon brought Union Square into requisition. After this, Fifth and Madison avenues became the grand centres of the opulent classes; and to-day the entire course of the former, with its long line of brown-stone architecture and regal grandeur, attracts the attention and challenges the admiration of the world. But after this avenue reaches Ninetieth street, its grade descends rapidly to the low level of the Harlem plains, and is no longer so desirable for residences. At the rate it is now being built upon, it will soon be completed to this point, and then in what direction will this current turn? The Harlem Railroad will always prove an insurmountable objection to Fourth avenue, which is behind it; and it does not require a prophet's power to foresee that the Grand Boulevard, the garden parks overlooking the Hudson, and the great aids to general healthfulness possessed by the west side, will prove sufficiently attractive to cause the next move to be in the direction of the beautiful sites which border these improvements.

The proposed widening of Broadway from Thirty-second to Fifty-ninth street adds certainty to this prediction. We think it most unfortunate that this change did not commence as low down as Seventeenth street, and we hope it may yet be found advisable to do so. We would then have a noble thoroughfare starting from the Battery, crossing the various avenues diagonally until it reached the beautiful circle at the Eighth avenue entrance to the park; and then continuing as the Grand Boulevard to the upper extremity of the island. This measure, which seems to meet with the disapprobation of a large portion of the community, if carried out, would, we are convinced, prove a crowning glory to the metropolis; and it is but fitting that the thoroughfare which is to vie with any other in the world should have a continuance in the lower part of the city worthy its princely magnificence; for it would then be a subject of pride not only to us but to the whole country, which would regard it as a national ornament.

We may also look forward to an ever-increasing commercial importance for the east side, with its long line of piers fronting the harbor, always filled with vessels bearing the flags of every commercial nation of the world.

Its shore will be covered with capacious warehouses and immense manufactories, from which will resound the noisy bustle and unceasing activity of trade.

A glance at the residences in the different locations mentioned above, as being at various times the homes of those possessing wealth, will show that each successive change has been marked by an increase in the lavish expenditure of means for the purpose of producing architectural display. With this fact before us, we may form an idea of the palatial houses with which, by means of their rapidly increasing wealth, the rising generation will crown the hill-sides of the western section.

When the proposed improvements for this portion of our city have been completed, the whole, bounded on the one side by Central Park, with its many natural and artificial beauties appearing like a fairy-land, and on the other by the dancing waters of the Hudson, will give to our metropolis attractions superior to those possessed by the most celebrated cities of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] _Encyclopedia._

[63] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.

[64] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.

[65] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.

[66] "Influence of Locality on Duration of Life." CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1869.

[67] _Public Parks._ John H. Rauch, M.D., of Chicago.

[68] _Public Parks._ John H. Rauch, M.D.

[69] New York _World_, February 15th, 1868.

[70] _New American Cyclopædia._

[71] _New American Cyclopædia._

THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER.

TRANSLATED FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES, HISTORIQUES ET LITTERAIRES.

While visiting, two or three months since, the Vatican Basilica, it seemed to me there was a certain correspondence, a kind of harmony, between this monument and the great event of which it is soon to be the theatre. Since that time new observations have strengthened this first impression; then reminiscences of a different kind, the perusal of various works, unfortunately too limited in numbers, and especially a more attentive examination of St. Peter's, have had the effect of defining more clearly what at first was only a vague and confused perception.

Before my pilgrimage to Rome, I was so fortunate as to visit one of the cities which had for a long time been the objects of my most ardent curiosity. I refer to the humble Tyrolean city where, more than three hundred years ago, was held the last and most glorious of the general councils. The city of Trent presents nothing extraordinary to the eye of the traveller except, perhaps, a kind of trident of mountains which gives it its name, and which forms around it a group of natural fortifications truly grand. Certain monuments, among others the cathedral of a Roman style, and somewhat interesting, appeared to merit some attention. But that which attracts and interests the Catholic heart in the most lively degree is the church where the holy Oecumenical Council held its immortal sessions. It bears the name of St. Mary Major, the same as the great Roman basilica so generally known and venerated. In truth, this renowned title is hardly appropriate, if the dimensions of the edifice and its architectural merits alone are considered. In these respects it more nearly resembles our modest Parisian church of Notre Dame des Victoires. This comparison, without being wholly just, may yet give a good idea of the sanctuary rendered illustrious by the Council of Trent.

As to the local traditions respecting this august assembly, a sojourn far too short prevented me from collecting them as fully as I could have wished. According to the information of a respectable priest with whom I conversed a short time, a great revival of faith, the effects of which are still visible, took place in the city on the third commemorative centenary in the month of June, 1863. This same ecclesiastic likewise informed me that the memory of our great Laynez has always been dear to the popular memory, and that the greatest eulogium that can be passed upon a man who devotes himself to works of charity is to compare him to that indefatigable apostle. Probably his learned discourses are nearly forgotten even in the places where they were delivered; his preaching is only remembered because of his deeds, a new proof, among so many others, in support of the divine word, "Wisdom passeth away, ... but charity shall never pass away."

Not far from the entrance of Santa Maria Maggiore is a monument, erected in 1855 for the first anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It bears a statue of her "who has destroyed all heresies throughout the world," and for whom the fathers of the Council of Trent formally stipulated an exception in the decrees respecting the doctrine of original sin. I noticed in the interior of the church a painting representing one of the reunions of the council, and especially the crucifix which stood on a table in the centre of the nave and presided, so to speak, at those solemn assemblies. This crucifix may now be seen above one of the side altars. It is regarded with extreme veneration by the faithful. I will not attempt to depict my emotion in celebrating the holy mysteries before this sacred image with the same chalice the cardinal legate had used, which was kindly loaned me by the venerable chaplain. You can easily imagine that the place, the circumstances, and those precious relics, without mentioning my own inclinations, imposed it on me as a duty to offer up the holy sacrifice for the success of the approaching council.

On the whole, the city of Trent and the sanctuary of the council do not fully correspond with the solemn grandeur of the event which took place therein. It is unnecessary to say that this kind of contrast does not shock in the least a mind at all familiar with objects connected with the faith. This want of correspondence is frequently to be noticed even in a more striking degree. The least supernatural eye soon forgets the whole edifice and these material objects only to behold the great Christian wonders once wrought within so small a space. We say to ourselves, with profound emotion, that this is the cenacle of modern times--a real cenacle, in truth, where the light of the Holy Ghost was diffused more abundantly than had ever taken place since the day of Pentecost.

Without any great effort of the imagination I could see a figure of the religious renovation produced by the holy Council of Trent in circumstances, wholly accidental, that occurred at the time of my journey. It was during the latter part of the month of October. On the way from Botzen the country had been ravaged by an inundation of the Adige. Everywhere was a scene of desolation sad to behold. The following morning, on the contrary, just as we were starting for Italy, a glorious sun rose over the city of Trent. The bold summits that surround it were crowned with such lights as are only seen in mountainous countries. Clouds of magic brilliancy hung here and there over the deep gorges and on the heights, the fields had resumed their joyous and smiling aspect, even the traces of the inundation were less sad to behold, and our eyes could linger with a pleasure almost without alloy on the magnificence of nature.

The council of the nineteenth century, for which preparations are now being made at Rome and throughout the civilized world, cannot be less fruitful than that of the sixteenth in the regeneration and salvation of souls. The gravest reasons on every hand appear to justify this hope, and perhaps it is allowable to find a significant sign of it in the happy choice of the place where this great court of Catholicity is to be held. At all events, the basilica of St. Peter is certainly the most suitable theatre in the whole world in which to assemble an oecumenical council. Every thing about it is marvellously adapted to this purpose; every thing seems to reveal a preconceived harmony that divine Providence is so often pleased to manifest in the accomplishment of his august designs. In speaking thus, I only express differently, if I am not mistaken, the idea of Sixtus III. in the fifth century. This pontiff, having convoked in the ancient basilica of St. Peter a certain number of bishops, wrote to Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, to announce this synod, and, among other things, wrote these remarkable words: "_Ad beatum Petrum Apostolum universa fraternitas convenit. Ecce auditorium congruens auditoribus, conveniens audiendis_."[72] "The whole brotherhood meets at the tomb of blessed Peter the Apostle. Behold a place befitting both the hearers and the things to be heard."

It cannot be doubted that this suitability, so well understood by Sixtus III., also occurred to Pius IX., when he designated the tomb of St. Peter as the rendezvous of his brethren in the episcopate. It seems to me desirable that an inscription in a conspicuous place should bear the fine expression of Sixtus III. Its meaning and adaptation with regard to the approaching council would be more strikingly apparent than they could have been at the particular synod of the fifth century.

Let us now enter this august temple and regard with admiration, as we pass, the colossal portico and the vast nave, whose length and height cannot at once be taken in by the unaccustomed eye. Almost at the extremity of the nave, at the right, is the bronze statue of St. Peter, which for more than fourteen centuries has received the homage of pilgrims. Let us not forget to prostrate ourselves after their example, and press our trembling lips to the feet of the apostle, literally worn by the pious kisses of so many generations. A few steps further on, and we stand before the Confession, that is, the glorious sepulchre of the first vicar of Jesus Christ, around which a hundred lights do not cease to burn night and day. After kneeling for a few moments, not without being penetrated by a powerful but sweet emotion which stirs the soul to its very depth, let us rise and look first at the superb baldaquin of gilded bronze which rises to the height of eighty-six feet over the grand altar and the tomb of St. Peter. Above bends over us "the Pantheon raised in the air" by the genius of Michael Angelo--the incomparable dome, measuring one hundred and thirty feet in diameter, and four hundred and twenty-six feet in height on the outside.

If, from this central point of the basilica, we look to the right, we see the northern transept extending more than one hundred and sixty feet from the Confession. The altar at the end is consecrated to the Saints Processus and Martinian--two Roman soldiers, at first jailers of the apostle St. Peter, and then his disciples, baptized by his own hand. "From that time," says the Abbé Gerbet, "the remembrance of these two saints has constantly clung to that of St. Peter, their master and their friend, as the shadow follows the body." Martyred the same year as he, they were buried near the Aurelian way, not far from the Vatican. The antique statue of St. Peter, now venerated in the basilica, was formerly in a monastery connected with the cemetery where these two martyrs reposed. It was afterward placed in the oratory which Pascal I. had erected in their honor in the ancient Vatican basilica, whither he had their relics transported. The ashes of these two jailers of St. Peter always in a manner gravitated around him, until, placed here at his side, they have become for ever his acolytes in this magnificent crypt, as they were his guardians in the dark dungeons of the capitol.[73]

Another glory is in reserve for Saints Processus and Martinian. Before their altar and in the spacious chapel which is dedicated to them are to be held the solemn sessions of the council. Let us hope with firm assurance that these faithful guardians of the first pope, and his immortal acolytes, will keep invisible guard around his successor, and around the bishops, his brethren, when they are reunited in this sanctuary to continue the work of the great Fisher of Souls.

Returning from the altar of Saints Processus and Martinian, before resuming our place by the Confession, let us notice at the left, at the end of the Gregorian chapel, the tomb of Gregory XVI. and the marble statue with his hands raised to bless. Connected with him many interesting thoughts came into my mind. He is the last of the popes who joined the church triumphant. His tomb and that of St. Peter, so near each other, bring before us the two extremities of the great chain of apostolical succession which extends back from our own age to the first Christian era. The intermediate links are known to us all through the authentic records of history, and they are represented here almost entire under our eyes. Look first at the tombs and statues of the greater number of popes since the commencement of the sixteenth century. It is sufficient to name a few of them. There is the funereal monument of Pius VI. at the foot of the staircase leading to the Confession. He merited this post of honor, as has been justly remarked, because he was "the first pope who died from the martyrdom of exile and captivity after the construction of the new basilica." Two other pontiffs, Benedict XIV. and Clement XIII., are entombed close by the transversal nave where the council is to be held. They will be there on each side of the august assembly--the double personification of clerical learning and pontifical firmness. The throne of Pius IX. will almost touch the tomb of Clement XIII. A little further on, in the southern nave, is the monument of one of the greatest pontiffs of the seventeenth century--that of Innocent XI., the firm antagonist of Louis XIV. At the end of the choir, or apsis, the sixteenth century is represented by Paul III. His tomb is at the right of the symbolic chair of St. Peter, which is supported by the four great doctors. He also was worthy of this privileged spot; for his name is indissolubly connected with what have been called "two of the greatest providential events of modern times," (and I can say that the expression is certainly true of the first of these:) he convoked the Council of Trent, and was the first to give his approval to the formation of the Society of Jesus. Among the tombs of the pontiffs of the fifteenth century we select at hazard those of Sixtus IV., Nicholas V., and Eugenius IV., all three rendered illustrious by the great events of their pontificates. The ashes of the two last are in the subterranean church of the Vatican. Only six or seven tombs represent the preceding ages in the upper church. They are those of St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo the Great, Sts. Leo II., III., IV., and IX. The crypts spread before us a much longer list. Conspicuous therein is Boniface VIII., the pontiff who declared the first jubilee of the fourteenth century; and then, going back into the preceding ages, Alexander III.; Calixtus II.; Urban II., the first organizer of the Crusades; St. Nicholas I., one of the men who merited by the most brilliant claims the title of great; Adrian I., the friend of Charlemagne, and celebrated by him in that immortal elegy so worthy of the great pope and of the great emperor, and still to be read in the portico of St. Peter's; St. Agatho, made glorious by the sixth oecumenical council, held at Constantinople; Honorius I., the beautiful inscription on whose tomb so eloquently avenges undeserved calumny; St. Boniface IV., who consecrated the Pantheon; and then a great number of other glorious pontiffs, till we come to St. Simplicius, the second successor of St. Leo the Great. Dating from the latter, there is an interruption of more than two centuries in the pontifical sepulchres of the Vatican. The popes of this time repose in the catacombs, particularly in that of St. Calixtus. But until the year 202 all the others, with the exception of St. Clement I. and of St. Alexander I. in going back from St. Victor to St. Linus, the immediate successor of St. Peter, have been deposited near the Prince of the Apostles in the place where St. Anacletus, even in the first century, constructed "the memorial of the blessed Peter called the Confession," according to the expression of an ancient inscription on the walls of this sacred crypt. When a portion of the pavement was removed in order to construct the monument of Pius VI., the bones of the first successors of the apostle were exposed. Their faces were found turned toward his tomb.

Altogether, the Vatican basilica and its crypts contain the tombs of about one hundred and forty popes. Let us not fail to remark that almost all the others are in the catacombs, or the neighboring churches; only a small number of popes have been buried out of Rome. We have then here, without going out of St. Peter's, the greater part of that dynasty which is the most ancient and the most glorious in the history of the world. I refer to the privilege it possesses--and it alone--of tracing a succession, uninterrupted and of incontestable legitimacy, back to him whom Jesus Christ established as head and foundation of the universal church. Some slight shadows, I know, seem to hover here and there over certain links in this descent of eighteen hundred years, but this cannot disturb an unprejudiced mind for a moment. The glory of the whole line diffuses too powerful and subduing a light for that! Where is the rival church that can show in its history, in its monuments, its temples, and even in its tombs, a succession, a connection, an antiquity, and a proof of catholicity, worthy, I will not say of equalling, but of being compared with this? Christian tradition, the liturgy, the frequent language of schismatical churches themselves, are agreed in giving the pope the name of Apostolic. This name, as well as that of Catholic, of which St. Augustine boasted with such good reason against the Donatists, would alone be a strong title in favor of Rome. At all events, it is the unique and incommunicable privilege of the Roman Church to have been built upon the foundation of the apostles--_super fundamentum apostolorum_. And this expression of St. Paul, which has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed, is verified at Rome with a fulness of evidence truly wonderful. It has, in truth, pleased Divine Providence to consecrate this church in the eyes of all with the special characteristic of apostolicity, to collect within its walls, if not the entire bodies of all the apostles of Jesus Christ, at least considerable portions of their relics. A part of the bones of St. Paul repose fraternally beside those of St. Peter in the Vatican, and, as if to attest more strongly the brotherhood of these two founders of Christian Rome, a part of the body of St. Peter has been transported to the basilica of St. Paul beyond the walls, and their skulls are placed together at St. John Lateran; both thus taking possession of the three great basilicas of Rome. The bodies of Sts. Simon and Jude are also at the Vatican. Those of St. James the Minor and St. Philip are in the Church of the Holy Apostles, that of St. Matthias at St. Mary Major, and that of St. Bartholomew in the basilica that bears his name. Different churches at Rome possess important relics of other members of the apostolic college, as well as of St. Mark and St. Luke. One apostle delayed longer than the rest joining this rendezvous of the glorious dead, and yet it was only proper, it would seem, that he should be near Simon Peter, for it was his brother in the flesh, his elder brother. But this vacancy was at last filled up by the agency of Him who directs all human events. Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, Thomas Paleologus, King of Peloponnesus, fearing that the head of St. Andrew, preserved until that time in Achaia, would fall into the hands of the Turks, wished to preserve it by confiding it to the Roman Church. At this news great was the joy of the magnanimous pontiff whose name, destined to cast such brilliancy over succeeding ages, was just becoming renowned. Pius II., in order to receive this precious relic, had a procession and ceremonies of extraordinary solemnity, an enthusiastic description of which has been handed down to us in the annals of that time. The sacred head, which the Saviour of the world "had more than once, without doubt, touched with his hands and with his divine lips," (these are the words of Pius II., in an admirable discourse on this occasion,) was placed not far from the tomb of St. Peter, where it remained till a sacrilegious hand dared to carry it away from its sanctuary for a time. But, as is known, Pius IX. had the joy of finding it some days after with the seals intact, and henceforth the homage of the faithful will not cease to offer reparation for the outrage committed.[74] To increase devotion toward St. Andrew, a unique privilege, which had its origin in the delicate inspirations of Christian sentiment, has long been granted to him; the colossal statue of the brother of the Prince of the Apostles stands before the altar of the Confession, and on a level with the three great statues which recall the precious relics of the Saviour's Passion.

Thus, it is evident, the apostolic college is in a manner assembled in the city of Rome. "The legend, according to which all the apostles assembled together to witness the last moments of the Blessed Virgin, has in a manner been verified as to their mortal remains around the tomb of St. Peter. The first council of Jerusalem seems to be held here permanently."[75]

This idea appears to me to give an admirably beautiful significance to one of the most solemn prayers of the liturgy which is chanted at the mass of the apostles and especially on the festivals of Sts. Peter and Paul. Imagine that we hear resounding the voice of Pius IX., of a compass and harmony equal to the basilica itself, which it fills with its powerful undulations. Listen to this prayer which he addresses the eternal Shepherd: _Gregem tuum, Pastor æterne, non deseras, sed per beatos apostolos tuos continua protectione custodias; ut iisdem rectoribus gubernetur quos operis tui vicarios eidem contulisti præesse pastores._ "Desert not, O eternal Shepherd, thy flock, but through the blessed apostles grant it thy unceasing protection; that it may be governed by those rulers whom thou hast appointed to continue thy work and to be the pastors of thy people." Does it not seem that the truly providential presence of the sacred relics of all the apostles at Rome is like a continual reply of Jesus Christ to the supplication of his high-priest? Or raise your eyes toward the radiant dome, as Pius IX. often loves to do while he is chanting, and while the _sursum corda_ of his soul is manifested by his looks, do you not behold the mosaics gleaming there on high like celestial apparitions? See the eternal Shepherd who does not cease to watch over his flock, and around him his blessed apostles, his vicars on earth, who now from the highest heavens continue to protect and govern the lambs and sheep of the divine fold.

I have not yet had the great Christian joy of assisting at the festival of St. Peter in the basilica itself; but on another occasion I experienced in the same place, leaning against the balustrade of the Confession, a joy almost comparable. It was on Palm-Sunday, when the choristers of the Sistine chapel made the arches resound with the grand and solemn affirmations of the Catholic Credo. I shall never forget the quiver that passed through my frame when I heard resounding these simple words as they were taken up one after another: _et unam--sanctam--Catholicam--et apostolicam--ecclesiam_ ... "and one--holy--Catholic--and apostolic--church." Then my eyes were irresistibly attracted toward the dome, and through the light which at that moment flooded it I had a sight of the glorious figures with which it is adorned, and which appeared to me like a reflection of the church triumphant in the heavens. Then I recalled the gorgeous procession I had just seen pass through the grand nave of the basilica--Pius IX. borne on his _Sedia Gestatoria_, and before him the imposing _cortége_ of cardinals, bishops, and prelates, all bearing in their hands the triumphal palms--and it seemed to me that this immense inclosure expanded to a still larger size, or rather, its walls vanished and gave place to the church universal dispersed in the four quarters of the globe, but all bound to the tomb of St. Peter, in perpetual communion with him, receiving from him by a constant influence its divine characteristics of unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity, living by his faith and his love, ruled and governed by his authority, and always spiritually present where he is to be found, according to the words of St. Ambrose, the truth of which I had never comprehended so fully, _Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia!_ "Where Peter is, there is the church."

But let us leave these retrospective ideas and evocations, and rather endeavor to discover in the basilica of St. Peter the visible signs of unity, sanctity, and catholicity, as well as of apostolicity, the authentic marks of which we have just noticed.

And first, let us read around the dome these words in colossal letters on a golden ground of mosaic, TU ES PETRUS; ET SUPER HANC PETRAM ÆDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEA; ET TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI COELORUM. "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church; and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." And a little lower on the frieze, above the two pillars of the choir, these words recently placed on a similar ground, _Hinc una fides mundo refulget_, "Hence one faith shines upon the world;" to correspond with which these other words are hereafter to be engraved above the opposite pillars, _Hinc sacerdotii unitas exoritur_, "Hence the unity of the priesthood arises." There is a symbolic commentary on this last inscription in the urn placed on the tomb of St. Peter. It contains the palliums which the pope sends to the metropolitans. They are kept in this place to signify that that is the origin and source of all jurisdiction and all ecclesiastical authority. This urn and these inscriptions are sufficient to make us understand the whole mystery of Catholic unity. This unity, indeed, is comprehended in the decisive words which established Peter as the foundation of the church and confided to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Peter thus became the true representative of Jesus Christ and the personification, so to speak, of the divine authority. And he himself in his turn transmitted this plenitude of power to the Roman pontiff, his successor, his inheritor, his universal legatee, thus living again, as it were, in his successor, investing him with his authority, and communicating to him by a continued operation the full and entire power of feeding, directing, and governing the universal church, according to the dogmatic definition of the Council of Florence. From this centre of power the apostolic authority extends through all ranks of the hierarchy, and by a wonderful ubiquity is diffused without being weakened to the lowest grades of the Catholic priesthood. Patriarchs, primates, metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops throughout the world are all armed with the plenitude of this authority; all derive from this source their jurisdiction and the legitimate exercise of their rights; all, as they love to acknowledge, govern their own churches "by the grace of God and of the apostolic see." And this is why throughout the church there is the same government, the same doctrine, the same administration of the sacraments and divine worship. There is but one rule of government; for, as Bossuet (who was always incomparable when the whole truth illumined his soul) has somewhere said, "There is such a sympathy in all parts of the body of the church, that what each bishop does according to the rule and spirit of Catholic unity, the whole church, the entire episcopate and the chief bishop, does with him." There is the same doctrine; for the Roman see teaches all others, and these again all the faithful, or, to express it better, the different grades of teachers (it is still Bossuet who speaks) "have only one doctrine, by reason of the necessary connection they have with the chair which Peter and his successors have always occupied."[76] Finally, the administration of the sacraments and the divine worship are the same; for the central authority of Peter intervenes in some manner in all the sacramental functions, whether to render them legitimate, or, as is seen in the ministry of the confessional, to make them efficacious and valid; and besides, it is only in communion with Peter that God accepts the offering of the divine sacrifice as well as all other acts of worship and prayer.

The perfect unity that reigns in the hierarchy and the government of the church engenders a not less perfect unity in the entire body of the faithful. Indeed, all the members of the church are reunited and bound together by means of the central authority of Peter, always present in the pope, and, through him, in all the representatives of the episcopal hierarchy. All the faithful recognize this peculiar authority as that of Jesus Christ. It is by submission and obedience to it that they rise when fallen. It is by faith in this authority and its depositaries of every degree that they receive the teachings of the true faith. It is to this they have recourse in order to be admitted to the participation of the sacraments and all the treasures of the church. And thus all, whoever they may be, remain attached to this authority by the intelligence that affirms the same truth, the will that observes the same law, and the heart that draws from the same sources of life; a unity of faith, of obedience, and of the sacraments--a triple unity realized by Jesus Christ and his vicar, to whom all hearts, all inclinations, and all minds adhere as luminous rays to their centre and source. It is true that this adhesion has not among all the same strength and efficacy; sometimes it is purely exterior, and yet it exists in a certain manner till the rupture is consummated either by excommunication or by manifest schism and heresy. But, thanks be to God, the number of the faithful is always immense in whom this union is full and entire. And they accomplish thereby a mystery of unity still more close and wonderful than that which we have just considered. It is given to the authority of Peter, who visibly unites the faithful, to bind them also together invisibly by the ineffable tie of the communion of saints--the crown and full consummation of unity. But no; the vicar of Christ has yet another privilege by virtue of the power that he has received of binding and loosing in heaven as well as on earth--he opens the entrance to the eternal mansions. The souls submissive till the end to his authority, and ruled by the power of his attraction, rise and mount to become living stones in the harmonious construction of the celestial temple:

_Fabri polita malleo, Hanc saxa molem construunt, Aptisque juncta nexibus, Locantur in fastigio._

"This vast edifice, even to the pediment, is composed of stones polished by the mallet of the workman and skilfully joined together."

It is thus that the gigantic edifice of the Vatican dome, after taking root around the tomb of the apostles, springs up from the soil on its four enormous supports, binding them together by the key-stone of its vast arches, and then, gathering itself together, rises more and more resplendent, more and more transfigured, till, at the moment of uniting all its ascending lines, it half opens to form a sublime sanctuary around the Ancient of Days, whose form beams forth from its very top.

It is grand to assist in the basilica of St. Peter at one of these solemnities which are like splendid foreshadowings of the future state of souls in their glorious union with God. Behold around the choir the inscriptions engraved on marble. They recall the dearest and most solemn festival that has yet been celebrated in our age--the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. That day witnessed under these arches the triumph of Catholic unity, as well as the triumph of the Virgin conceived without sin. The accounts of ocular witnesses, still remembered by all, have made us familiar with that great manifestation of the _cor unum_ and the _anima una_, of the "one heart" and "one soul," when, at a word from Pius IX., the act of faith, full, absolute, and unanimous, burst forth in loving tones from the hearts of the two hundred prelates and bishops, and the multitudes of priests reunited in this basilica, then resounded with one accord from the souls of forty or fifty thousand of the faithful likewise assembled in the same church, and was prolonged in repeated echoes from the lips of the two hundred millions of Catholics scattered throughout the world. Since that time two or three manifestations almost as glorious have been made in this basilica, and in all cases the great episcopal hierarchy, represented by a vast deputation, have inclined before the word of their august chief, believing what he believes, approving what he approves, and condemning what he condemns; and in all cases also the universal voice of true Catholics, whether present at Rome bodily or only in spirit and in heart, has risen to hail with one acclamation the infallible decisions of the successor of Peter.

But how can we forget the last festival, so sweetly and deliciously touching, which has just been celebrated in this grand basilica? That also was a brilliant manifestation and triumph of unity; of that unity the sweetest and most beautiful of all others--that of brethren of the great Catholic family around their father and their pope, to celebrate with him the golden wedding of his old age so long and painfully tried, but ever courageous and serene, and always blessed by God. There were mingled people of all ages, of every condition, and, morally speaking, of every race and nation on the globe. And these representatives of all nations, divided among themselves not less by distance than by their interests, prejudices, and hereditary enmities, and perhaps--who knows?--on the point of renewing old fratricidal struggles, drawn in against their will by the calculations of human policy--they were all there, drawn together and united by mutual love for their common father! And doubtless there was among them another source of division. I refer to divergence of opinions--opinions more or less correct, more or less at variance with the truth. There are always such in the bosom of Catholic unity. But admire the strength of this unity, remaining still intact in the midst of these elements of discord. We know that every assent given to mere opinions is necessarily conditional in this sense--that every Catholic worthy of the name is always ready to yield them to the teachings of revealed truth. Adhesion to the faith, on the contrary, is absolute, without condition or reserve, and moreover, this adhesion extends not only to the truths that the church requires us directly and expressly to believe, but also to the whole order of truths contained in the depository of revelation. What takes place, then, when the soul of the believer finds himself clinging to an erroneous opinion? That which happens in the physical order when two forces are in opposition to one another--the more feeble is absorbed by the overruling force. By virtue of the same law of moral dynamics, faith, which is an absolute affirmation, neutralizes and absorbs an erroneous opinion, which is only a conditional affirmation; in other terms, the latter is disavowed--retracted by the very fact that he makes a genuine act of faith. And this is how, among Catholics, the unity of the faith bursts forth and triumphs even in the midst of the causes that would seem to destroy, or at least to modify, it.

You will not expect me to describe this sacerdotal festival in detail. It was at once solemn and grand, as well as simple, popular, and affecting. Besides, other accounts have made you as familiar with all this as it is possible to be with what is indescribable. I will only select from the wonderful whole one thing which perhaps escaped general attention. It was at the moment when the grandest _Te Deum_ I ever heard was resounding beneath the arches of the basilica like the voice of the great deep. When this verse of the Ambrosian hymn was being chanted, _Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur ecclesia!_--"The holy church acknowledges thee throughout the whole earth"--Pius IX. raised his hands to his eyes as if to collect his thoughts. It was as if his mind wandered off from one hemisphere to the other--to every region where there is a Catholic church--and saw the entire world communing in thought with him, praying with him, and with him rendering glory and thanksgiving to God. And indeed, as you know, at that same hour, millions of souls scattered over the globe were united in a general concert of prayer in order to join themselves more completely to him who was more than ever the great Chief of Prayer, as the savages of the new world sublimely style the vicar of Jesus Christ.

I can boldly declare that in no time, no place, did any man, any king and father of a nation, any pontiff, perhaps any saint, have such an ovation, such a manifestation of universal love; and I say further that this was not merely a triumph, but a miracle of supernatural union in the church--a miracle doubtless presaging still greater to come.

I have said that this jubilee of Pius IX. drew representatives from the whole Catholic world to Rome. The city of unity was on that day also the city of Catholicity _par excellence_. This last characteristic, however, Rome does not manifest only on extraordinary occasions, but permanently by its physical and moral position. "If a nation possessed a cathedral surrounded by a portico to which each province had furnished an arcade or column which bore its name, this monument would be a harmonious emblem of the diversity to be found in the unity of this people. There is something analogous to this in the Christian world." In the shadow of the great basilica of the popes most nations have their church, their festivals, and their national tombs. Each one finds some sacred monument bearing on the history of his country. Every one breathes here, in the atmosphere of religion, his native air. National establishments, reunited in the same city by political or commercial interests, represent concord less than division. Counting-rooms are rivals, altars are brethren. This is one cause of the sentiment that almost every one experiences who lives for some time in Rome, far from his native country. "Nowhere does one feel so much at home as in this city."[77] If one comes from a remote province of Lower Brittany or from the extremities of Ireland, from the depths of Ethiopia, the Indies, or the two Americas, he finds everywhere sanctuaries, tombs, institutions, offerings _ex-voto_, and indeed all kinds of mementoes that recall the far-off country. The prelacy, the priesthood, and the religious orders have representatives from all countries. The army itself has a cosmopolitan character. You see there, under the noble garb of the Zouave, the dark skin of the African beside the white face of the Dutchman or Canadian. Whoever you may be, you are sure not to be wholly isolated or unknown. Soon a familiar accent or an unforeseen accident will reveal a compatriot or a friend. It is impossible to forget your country; it becomes dearer to you than ever. You appreciate it perhaps more fully, but the narrowness of your former attachment is destroyed by contact with the broad spirit of Catholicity which penetrates you.

He who has the leisure to examine certain statistics will find at Rome evidences of Catholicity even in examining the list of travellers, or the missives of the mails, or even the catalogues of gifts sent to the holy father, and especially that of the offerings he recently received for the jubilee of his priesthood. All this and many other things constantly verify a proverb now misinterpreted, and too trivial to be quoted, but which the ancients expressed very nobly, "All roads lead to Rome." There is this difference--the roads leading to the Rome of Sts. Peter and Paul are far more extended than those of the Rome of Romulus and Remus. What one only accomplished by force of arms, the other has effected by the universality of evangelical preaching.

Without leaving the Vatican basilica we can discover, on all sides, authentic proofs of this universality. On the day of solemn functions, when the pope celebrates the holy sacrifice, a Greek deacon officiates beside a Latin deacon, and chants the Gospel in the language of St. Luke. A Greek archbishop also assists at it as well as one of the Armenian Church. The Syriac Church has also its ministers at the holy see. The presence of these bishops and these priests of different rites is not a mere spectacle unsustained by reality. They are representatives of churches scattered throughout the East.[78] We have many other reflections to make on this subject, but they must be reserved, with a thousand things, till a future time. See now, on the tablet that perpetuates the remembrance of the formal decision respecting the Immaculate Conception, the names of the bishops who were present. The titles of a great number of their churches would be vainly sought for in the ancient diptychs. They assert the presence of the Catholic hierarchy in regions unknown to the fathers of Nice or even of Trent. See, further on, the confessionals ranged around the southern transept; the inscriptions they bear notify you that there are penitentiaries and confessors who speak all the principal languages of Europe, including that of Greece. Behold also a _bas-relief_, peculiarly significant, under the statue of Gregory XVI. It is symbolical of the most glorious event of his reign--the institution of the work of the propagation of the faith. At the feet of the pontiff are the types of almost all races, who render him their tributes of veneration and gratitude. There is another idea under this symbol: it shows that the see of Peter is the source of the apostolic missions, the centre of a power which is expansive and subjugating, and the focus of that divine light which seeks to be diffused throughout the entire heart of humanity.

It is in truth from Rome that the great evangelizers of nations have set out. To mention here only a few, and not the most ancient, Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, wished, as is said in his Acts, "to repair to the see founded on a rock. He wished to comprehend more fully the canonical laws of the holy Roman Church, and obtain for his mission and his labors the strength derived from the apostolic authority." He came then to the tomb of the holy apostles, and set out again with the benediction of Pope St. Celestin I., as at a later date the monk Augustin departed, sent by St. Gregory I. to evangelize England. Another pope of the same name, St. Gregory II., had the glory of conferring his blessing on the monk Wilfrid, the great apostle of Germany. He summoned him to his presence in the church of St. Peter, and consecrated him bishop after having changed his name to Boniface. After his consecration, he placed in the Confession of St. Peter a writing that ended with these words:

"I, Boniface, an unworthy bishop, have written with my own hand this paper containing my oath of fidelity, and, in placing it on the sacred body of St. Peter, I promise to keep this vow before God, who is my witness and my judge."...

St. Corbinian, who was also one of the first preachers of Christianity in Germany; St. Amandus, who preached on the shores of the Garonne, the Escaut, and the Danube, and St. Kilian, who evangelized Franconia, came likewise to prostrate themselves at the Confession of St. Peter, whence set forth in other times Paul, Formosus, Donatus, Leo, and Marinus, sent by Pope Nicholas I. among the Bulgarians; Egidius, Bishop of Tusculum, sent to Poland by Pope John XIII.; and Willibald, Prochorius, etc., who received an apostolic mission to Vandalia.[79] Let us also mention St. Anscharius, who was sent by Gregory IV. as legate to the Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, and all the northern nations. Two other apostles who evangelized a great race, now, alas! almost entirely given over to schism, kindled their missionary ardor at the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. After having commenced their apostolic labors among the Sclaves, St. Cyril and St. Methodius came to Rome to receive episcopal consecration, and celebrated here the first mass in the Sclavonic language.[80] Then, their second evangelical expedition being terminated, they both returned to Rome. One of them, Cyril, died here, and his tomb, placed beside that of Pope St. Clement, remains as a perpetual memorial of his attachment to the centre of unity and of Catholicity.

It would take too long to mention here the names of all the other apostles who set forth from Rome before or after the most illustrious of all--St. Francis Xavier. We will only remark that the numerous pupils that the Roman ecclesiastical seminaries have sent on a mission never fail to kindle their zeal at the Confession of the Prince of the Apostles.

One of these seminaries requires special notice, because it is in itself a proof of Catholicity and of the principle which engenders a Catholic spirit. I wish you could have been present, as I was, at the festival that the Propaganda celebrated on the Sunday in the octave of the Epiphany. You would have heard speak or chant in their own languages Greeks, Syrians, and I know not how many from other nations--even a negro from Senegambia, who was not applauded the least, for, though his _wolof_ was understood by hardly any one, his powerful and pathetic voice made an extraordinary impression on the whole audience. A composition in verse, recited some years ago at one of these exhibitions, sets forth in a happy manner the peculiar character of this house. Here is an extract from it which you will not read without pleasure:

"Toute diversité vient ici se confondre; Le Chinois parle au Turc surpris de lui répondre, Gambier par l'Indoustan se laisse interroger, Le nègre ouvre l'oreille aux doux chants de la Grèce, Et dans ce choeur de voix, qui s'aggrandit sans cesse, Dieu prépare une place au Bédouin d'Alger.

Rome! c'est dans ton sein que leur accord s'opère! Dans ce chaos de mots qui divise la terre, L'harmonie apparît des qu'on prie avec toi; Ton hymne universel est le concert des âmes, Le Dieu de l'unité, que seule tu proclames, En nos accents divers entend la même foi.

Sur tout rivage ou peut aborder une voile, Tes apôtres s'en vont, guidés par ton étoile, Des peoples renouer l'antique parenté; La vérité refait ce qu'a détruit le crime, Et Rome, de Babel antipode sublime, Du genre humain épars reconstruit l'unité."

All races are here mingled. The Chinaman converses with the surprised Turk, and Gambia is questioned by Hindostan. The negro listens to the sweet chants of Greece, and in this choir of voices, constantly increasing, Providence has prepared a place for the Bedouin of Algiers.

Rome, it is in thy bosom that this union is effected! In the confusion of tongues which divides the nations, harmony is restored by union with thee. All souls join in thy universal hymn. The God of unity, whom thou alone proclaimest, hears the same accent of faith in our different languages.

Thy apostles, guided by thy star, go forth to every shore where a vessel can land, to bind all nations to their venerable head. Truth repairs the devastations of sin, and Rome, sublime antipode of Babel, restores the unity of the scattered human race.

These verses quoted by the Abbé Gerbet, and which he had, I think, composed himself for that occasion, express with a rare felicity this unique character of Christian Rome, which is the harmonious fusion of Catholicity with unity. Besides, are not these two prerogatives one and the same thing under two different aspects? For what is Catholicity but a unity which expands and is diffusive? And what is unity but Catholicity drawn to its centre?

The name of Holy City, now synonymous with that of Rome, implies another characteristic, not less brilliant, not less peculiar of the church which is one and universal. The Vatican basilica--for it is this we are particularly studying--seems to have been constructed and arranged expressly to prove that the church is the mother of the saints. Remember, first, that this temple has been for a long time the only sanctuary used at the great festivals of beatification and canonization. It is useless to recall the ceremonies of this kind that have recently been celebrated here with so much solemnity; but what is not useless to remark is, that the public honors conferred on these heroes of sanctity have always been preceded by examinations so minute and scrupulously careful that the most distrustful critic could not, without the loss of human confidence, resist the light of evidence. Look up above the arches of the grand nave. There, on a level with the acanthus leaves of the pilasters, are the colossal representations and personifications of the Christian virtues, mingling like the flora of heaven with the vegetation of earth. Are there only mere symbols there? Look a little lower down, and you will discover something else. Ranged around the nave from the choir and the transepts to the porticoes are the statues of the founders of the religious orders, beginning with the patriarch St. Benedict and ending with St. Vincent de Paul and St. Theresa; and under the form of these great leaders, the eye of thought beholds an innumerable number of holy souls--monks or religious--who, following their footsteps, have acquired the palm of sanctity. This brilliant array of saints around the basilica does not end at the threshold of the temple. Go for a moment into the grand portico, and you will see the chain continued and prolonged on the immense colonnade of the square. There is a whole nation of martyrs, pontiffs, confessors, and virgins, ranged like a procession before the Saviour and his apostles, whose images look down from the façade of the basilica. And entering anew into the nave, you will find on the pillars of the three first balustrades at the right and left, the medallions of the first popes, almost all martyrs; and this is not a complete list of those who are honored as saints. There are more than eighty here who bear this title; and how many more are also worthy of being numbered with them! For, in spite of some stains that calumny has vainly magnified, the successors of Peter have brilliantly justified the title of _Holy See_ conferred on the Roman chair, and have left in history the most luminous train in the annals of sanctity. You see also the fine mosaics on the projecting arches of the small domes--they are the doctors and the fathers of the church; and among them you will find these grand oriental figures: St. Flavian, St. Germanus of Constantinople, and St. John Damascene. Beneath the altars of the lateral chapels you will discover the bodies of these other incomparable glories of the ancient oriental church: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, and St. John Chrysostom. The whole church is in a manner paved with the tombs of the saints.[81] Do not forget that this is the place where Nero, the greatest of persecutors, had the Christians of Rome burned as torches before his atrocious eyes. Add to all these venerable relics, the numberless others that St. Peter's possesses in its treasury, without mentioning a second time the ashes of the holy apostles, and your faith will behold a thousand times more beauty and brilliancy in the august remains that adorn this grand basilica than in one of its great illuminations, though the finest in the world.

And what would we find if we could examine all the other sanctuaries of Rome and its immense cemeteries? The catacombs alone have furnished for the veneration of the faithful an incalculable number of bones of martyrs, and the richness of these mines, so fruitful in sanctity, has not yet been exhausted. Different circumstances have contributed to bring together at Rome relics from the entire Christian world. The most humble oratories and chapels display such treasures without number. "One would say that from almost every region where the gospel has been preached--from the mountains of Armenia to the forests of America, from the shores of England to the caves of Japan--the most of those who were martyrs by the shedding of their blood, or martyrs of charity, have been desirous that some part of themselves should join this great council of catacombs. The ancient Christians sometimes designated the cemeteries of the martyrs by the name of councils." A list has been drawn up of the countries and cities which were the birthplace, the residence, or the tombs of the saints whose relics are at Rome. This geographical selection is in a manner a funereal atlas of the Christian world.... What constellations of tombs are here! An antiquary has happily said they form _the subterranean heaven_ of Rome.... If you connect in imagination with the different parts of this reliquary of the universe the virtues that each specially represents, and which altogether afford the least imperfect likeness of the God-man, you will see in the midst of this _campo santo_ of the Christian world the most sublime image of the Saviour that can be found on earth; for it is not produced by colors, or composed of pieces of marble, but of the members of those who lived the life of Jesus Christ--a kind of mosaic doubly sacred by reason of what it represents and the materials of which it is composed, in which each part contributes to reproduce more grandly the image with which it is itself stamped. Every Christian era has contributed to this work, and Rome is the sepulchre where this mysterious form will repose till the last day.[82]...

This is not all. Relics much more sacred than those of the saints are also reunited in this great metropolis. Pious pilgrims may venerate considerable fragments of the wood of the manger and of the true cross, as well as the inscription in three languages that Pilate attached to it. They can climb the staircase of the pretorium which the Saviour must have ascended and descended several times, and on which may be still seen traces of his blood. Finally, (for I cannot tell all,) from the tribune of the Vatican basilica there is exposed, on certain solemn occasions, the holy face imprinted on the veil of Veronica, a part of the true cross, and the lance that pierced the heart of Jesus after his death. What was most precious at Jerusalem providence has transferred to Rome, to show that it is henceforth a new Jerusalem--the holy city and the treasury of the merits of Jesus Christ.

This accumulation of relics and sacred memorials gives to Rome a peculiar power of profoundly moving every Christian heart. It is well known that it is particularly in thus holy city that are wrought the wonders of divine grace--the most extraordinary conversions. When one has a soul reasonable and noble enough to rise above prejudice and common views, when one is capable of tasting the gift of God, it is impossible not to feel the sweet influence of this atmosphere all impregnated with supernatural odors. All the religious monuments, all the sanctuaries, every atom of dust, so to speak, of this soil impregnated with the blood of martyrs, cause in the worthy heart, an emotion more penetrating and powerful than any other on earth. And whatever frivolity or hatred--too often agreed--may say, these impressions are not weakened by observing the Roman people in general, or the majority of the pilgrims to the Holy City, or its adopted children; on the contrary, the sight of the crowds kneeling on the pavements of the churches or proceeding with grave thoughtfulness to the stations and religious festivals, has its share in affecting the very fibres of each Christian heart. All this I know does not move those who quench the light, according to the expression of Holy Writ: these can, if they choose, repeat the insolent proverb, _Roma veduta, fede perduta_--"To see Rome is to lose your faith;" and, after all, they are right; for when the eyes are diseased, nothing blinds them more easily than the rays of the sun.

Is there any need of adding that in this respect the Roman Church defies all comparison with schismatical or Protestant churches, wherever they may be? I confine myself to one question: where is the city in England, Germany, or Russia that, after attracting to it the noblest and most sincere souls in the world, imposes on them the irresistible desire of abjuring the religion of their fathers, as illustrious Protestants have often done at Rome? This strange phenomenon, this power of converting, peculiar to Rome, and to Rome alone, suffices to prove to those who can reason from cause to effect that the Roman Church is truly a holy and sanctifying church, as it is a church indivisible, catholic, and apostolic--_unam, sanctam, catholicam, et apostolicam ecclesiam_.

All these privileges, these characteristic signs of the true church are found, as we have seen, in the basilica of St. Peter. It is more than certain that no premeditated intention has produced this lapidary and monumental synthesis. All has been brought about in a spontaneous manner--effected only by a sense of the truth here set forth, and whose inspirations have been followed. The Vatican basilica has become an immense book, which shows on every leaf the authentic proofs and characteristics assigned by Christian antiquity as the means of recognizing the true institution founded by Jesus Christ.

It seems to me there is no need of prolonging these observations to show the correspondence I mentioned at first, between this basilica and the solemn reunion which is soon to take place under its arches.

When the Council of the Vatican holds there its grand sessions, the very stones of the edifice will cry aloud, _lapides clamabunt_, to attest that the church is indivisible--one in its faith, its government, its sacraments and worship, and united in all these by the unity of its priesthood to its central authority. The stones of the basilica will proclaim by their inscriptions, their statues, and all the sacred mementoes of which they are the witnesses and depositories, that this is the church alone Catholic, the only origin and source of Catholicity; alone holy, the only mother of the saints, and the only source of sanctity. They will unite their voice to that of the monuments and tombs in declaring that this is the church alone apostolic--the only inheritor of the see and privileges of Peter, and, consequently, the only foundation of all other churches.

The Vatican basilica possesses a particular memorial which I have not yet mentioned, and which is a material proof of the legitimate succession of Peter in the Roman Church. It is the chair once used by the Prince of the Apostles. This incomparable relic was exposed to the veneration of the faithful at the eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter. Since that day it has been religiously enclosed in the walls of the basilica; but if it is no longer visible to the eye, there is, at the end of the apsis, a symbolical representation which eloquently expresses the same idea. It is the apostolic chair supported by the four great doctors of the East and West, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom. In conferring on them the glory of supporting the chair of Peter the genius of art has only expressed the constant language of their deeds and their writings, condensed in an expression of St. Augustine, "The primacy of the apostolic see has always been confined to the Church of Rome." A similar testimony in favor of the Roman primacy has been given by other doctors and founders of churches whose forms adorn the basilica, or whose bodies repose under its altars. They all proclaim the rights of the apostolic see in union with St. Jerome, "It is on this rock that the church was founded; whoever eats of the lamb out of this house is defiled." They all proclaim with St. Irenæus that "all churches ought to rally around that of Rome on account of its preponderating preëminence," as the smaller domes of the basilica surround the great dome to render homage to its royal dignity, _propter potiorem principalitatem_. Finally, the same testimony is rendered to the supremacy of St. Peter's chair by the immense "council of catacombs," by all the saints whose relics repose in this _campo santo_, this "holy field" of the Christian world. Their remains are the glory of the Roman communion in which they professed to live and die, and, all dead as they are, they speak and prophesy that this church will be till the end the true tabernacle of God with man.

Thus, when Pius IX. takes his seat to preside at the august council, he will be surrounded by all the proofs that assert the plenitude of his apostolic authority--the testimony of the martyrs and holy confessors, of the doctors and founders of churches, of the popes his predecessors and all the traditions they represent; finally, the testimony of Jesus Christ himself, whose words the Vatican basilica expresses in various ways: "_Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.... And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.... I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.... Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs._" Surrounded by so many proofs of his power, of which no other place in the world can give a recapitulation more solemnly eloquent, the successor of Peter can here claim, with more reason than anywhere else, the prerogatives of the Prince of the Apostles; he can apply to himself the words graven on the pedestal of the bronze statue of St. Peter, "Behold in my person the Divine Word, the rock beautifully wrought with gold, upon which I now stand immovable."

The bishops also will find in the basilica more monuments than in any other place in the world that attest the divine right they have received to govern the church with the successor of St. Peter, and under his supreme authority. The expressive statues of Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Flavian, and Germanus of Constantinople, the bodies of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Chrysostom will be there to proclaim the glory, the privileges, and the inalienable rights of the episcopacy. But especially the united relics of the apostolic college of whom the bishops are collectively the successors, the constant presence of this "council of Jerusalem" will be a proof that it belongs to them to judge in all matters of faith and discipline, and to appropriate the august formula, "It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us"--_Visum est Spiritui Sancto et nobis_.

The Son of God himself will give to the council of the Vatican very special pledges of his protection and love. I have already mentioned the precious relics of the Passion, the imprint of the divine face, his cross which redeemed the world, and the lance that brought forth blood and water from his heart--symbols of baptism and all the treasures of grace. The Catholic faith has the assurance of the divine assistance promised to oecumenical councils. It cannot receive from the presence of these venerable objects any substantial augmentation; but they may produce a sensible excitation, and will be a very special pledge of reasonable hope; and besides, if it is true that certain privileged places have the power of profoundly moving the soul, how can it be denied that this virtue evidently belongs to the basilica of St. Peter? Yes, it is right that the greatest event of our age should take place in this temple--the largest in the world--under these arches which astonish us the more the longer we regard them, because they give us an ever new sensation of immensity and majesty. It is right that the representatives of the universal church should be face to face with the immortal monuments of apostolicity, unity, catholicity, and sanctity; in presence of these tombs of the sovereign pontiffs and great bishops; in contact, so to speak, with the corner-stone on which whoever falls shall be broken. It is right that in looking down into the glorious tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul they should behold the very origin of Christianity; and this at a time when there is a question of the renovation and modification of Christian society. Finally, it is right that, in laboring upon this superhuman work, they should have before them the eloquent examples of their glorious predecessors in the same work, and likewise the visible signs and authentic proofs of the assistance, protection, and blessing of Heaven. All these mementoes and holy objects will inspire the fathers of the council with a more profound sentiment of the greatness of their task and a deeper consciousness of their strength; and when they behold on the dome the representation of the Father of light, from whom cometh every perfect gift, that of the eternal Shepherd surrounded by his apostles and the Queen of saints, and that of the Spirit of truth hovering over the tomb of St. Peter and over his symbolic chair, they will feel more fully that they are not vain representations; they will hear and comprehend with a more profound and intense emotion the words of the divine promises, _Behold I am with you.... As the Father hath sent me, so have I sent you.... I will send you the Paraclete, who shall teach you all truth.... He who heareth you heareth me: he who despiseth you despiseth me. He who believeth shall be saved: he who believeth not shall be condemned._

I have endeavored to present some of the reflections suggested by the Vatican basilica by reason of the coming council. From the same point of view we might find many other perspectives not less interesting, by taking new positions near the tombs of the holy apostles.

For the present, however, it is time to close. Let us leave these sacred walls after having kissed anew the revered foot of Peter. In traversing the great square, let us read the celebrated inscription graven by Sixtus V. on the obelisk, and which, it is to be hoped, will have, by means of the council, its entire verification, _Christus vincit--Christus regnat--Christus imperat. Christus ab omni malo plebem suam defendat_. "Christ overcomes--Christ reigns--Christ rules. May Christ defend his people from every evil."

And now, before separating, let us ascend for a moment one of the hills of Rome to contemplate this great basilica from a distance, at the hour preferred by visitors, when the sun is about to set behind the dome. Here listen to the lines of a poet whose name is dear to us by so many titles:

"Dall' altezza del Pincio contemplando Il disceso all' occaso Astro primiero, Ammiravam siccome egli, toccando La divina Basilica di Piero, Arricchisca di luce i suoi tesori E con celeste amor si fermi a cingerla Di rubini, zaffiri et fulgid' ori; Io quindi ammutolia. Ma intesi una più fervida, più pia Alma esclamar: 'Son quelle Le due dell' universo opre più belle Onde materia sublimata adornisi: Dio per l'uom quella Lampa in ciel ponea, Al suo Signor l'uomo quel tempio ergea.'"

"Contemplating afar from Pincio's height The monarch orb slow sinking in the west, Enrapt we stood to see him touch the shrine Of Peter, the Basilica divine-- Enriching all its treasures with his light: And how his love its grandeur did invest With robe of rubies, sapphires, and bright gold. And I withal grew voiceless at the sight; But one, a soul of purer beat than mine, Made utterance at my side, 'In these behold Two works, of all which matter can unfold Of ornament, creation's loveliest. God set for man that lamp in yonder sky: Man to his Lord this temple raised on high.'"

Yes, Silvio Pellico is right: there are before us two of the finest creations in the universe. The light that God has suspended in the firmament to shine on man, and this temple that man has erected to honor his God. But if the divine basilica of Peter appears so beautiful and radiant when the sun surrounds it with an aureola of rubies and sapphires, what will it be when the look of faith, which discovers things invisible, sees it surrounded by the rays, a thousand times more brilliant, of divine and incorruptible truth? Such, nevertheless, will be the spectacle Catholic souls will enjoy when is accomplished what the bishops in a celebrated address have styled the great work of light--_grande opus illuminationis_.

ROME, April 19, 1869.

FOOTNOTES:

[72] See _Istoria della sacrosanta patriarcale Basilica Vaticana_. By the Rev. F. M. Mignanti. Vol. i. c. xxiii. Other special synods are mentioned, held in the ancient basilica of St. Peter--the first in 386, and the last in 1413.

[73] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. c. iii.

[74] The fact to which I have alluded happened in 1848. The details are to be found in Mignanti's _Istoria_, vol. ii. pp. 203-5.

[75] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. ch. ii.

[76] Sermon on the Unity of the Church.

[77] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. ii. c. x.

[78] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. c. ii.

[79] _Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_, vol. i. c. 6.

[80] My learned _confrère_, Father Martinoff, has been so kind as to translate a passage from an ancient manuscript attesting this interesting fact.

[81] _Tutto il pavimento dell' istessa chiesa è pieno di sepolcri di santi._ _Bosio_, _Roma Sotter_, p. 33.

[82] I am sorry to abridge these quotations from the Abbé Gerbet. They should be read in their connection in order to comprehend the beautiful development of his ideas. I wished to make numerous extracts from this great writer, first, because they would be the most brilliant part of these pages, and that they might cause a book too little known, in spite of its eminent merits, to be more appreciated. Whoever truly wishes to know Rome, should read and re-read _l'Esquisse de Rome Chrétienne_. Although this work was not as fully finished as the celebrated Bishop of Perpignan intended, he implies to a certain degree what he does not say, for he possesses a suggestive talent which is the peculiarity of genius. He opens to us new perspectives. His broad religious and philosophic views of Rome direct and develop the personal views of the reader who attentively studies the place. Such has been my experience, and I wish that all instructed Christians who come to Rome could experience it more fully.

BEECHER'S NORWOOD.[83]

[Our delay in noticing this book by a distinguished author till the reading public have probably forgotten it, has been purely unintentional. We placed it, soon after its publication, in the hands of one of our collaborateurs, a genuine New Englander by birth, education, and association, to prepare a notice or a review of it, as he might judge proper. He read it, no inconsiderable feat, but was taken very ill, and lay for many months with faint hopes of recovery. During his illness and for some time after his recovery the book was forgotten. He now, at this late day, sends us his judgment, and we hasten to pay our respects to the author, and our debt to the publishers.--ED. CATH. WORLD.]

The Beecher family is certainly a remarkably gifted family, though we think the father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was the best of them all. Yet his two daughters, Miss Catharine Beecher and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, are women of rare abilities, and have made their mark on the times and sad havoc with New England theology. Dr. Edward Beecher has written several notable books, among which may be mentioned _The Papal Conspiracy_ and the _Conflict of the Ages_, which prove him almost equally hostile to Rome and to Geneva. Henry Ward Beecher is the most distinguished of the sons, and probably ranks as the most popular, certainly the most striking, pulpit orator in the country. But none of the family are remarkable for purity of taste, refined culture, or classical grace and polish as writers. They would seem to owe their success partly to their audacity, but principally to a certain rough vigor and energy of character, and to their sympathy with the popular tendencies of their country. They rarely take, never knowingly take, the unpopular side of a question, or attempt to stem the current of popular opinion. They are of the world, and the world loves them. They never disturb its conscience by condemning its moral ideal, or calling upon it to strive after a higher and purer ideal. They have in an eminent degree the genius of commonplace. There are in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and _The Ministers Wooing_ passages of rare force and vigor, but they are not very original, nor very recondite. The Beecher genius is not lyrical or dramatic, but essentially militant and prosaic. It can display itself only against an antagonist, and an antagonist at least about to fall under the ban of public opinion. They have some imitative ability, but little creative power, and rarely present us with a living character. We remember only two living characters in all Mrs. Stowe's writings, Dred and the Widow Scudder; and we are not certain that these are not copies of originals.

The author of _Norwood_ is less of an artist than his sister, Mrs. Stowe, and under the relation of art his novel is below criticism. It contains many just observations on various topics, but by no means original or profound; it seizes some few of the traits of New England village life; but its characters, with the exception of Judge Bacon, Agate Bissell, and Hiram Beers, are the abstractions or impersonations of the author's theories. The author has little dramatic power, and not much wit or humor. The persons or personages of his book are only so many points in the argument which he is carrying on against Calvinistic orthodoxy for pure naturalism. The substance of his volume seems to be made up of the fag-ends of his sermons and lectures. He preaches and lectures all through it, and rather prosily into the bargain. His Dr. Wentworth is a bore, and his daughter Rose, the heroine of the story, is a species of bluestocking, and neither lovely nor lovable. As a type of the New England cultivated and accomplished lady she is a failure, and is hardly up to the level of the New England school-ma'am. The sensational incidents of the story are old and worn out, and the speculations on love indicate very little depth of feeling or knowledge of life, or of the human heart. The author proceeds on a theory, and so far shows his New England birth and breeding, but he seldom touches reality.

As a picture of New England village life it is singularly unfortunate, and still more so as a picture of village life in the valley of the Connecticut, some twenty miles above Springfield, in Massachusetts, where the scene is laid, and where the tone and manners of society in a village of five thousand inhabitants, the number Norwood is said to contain, hardly differ in refinement and polish from the tone and manners of the better classes in Boston and its vicinity. There are no better families, better educated, better bred, more intellectual in the State, than are to be found in no stinted numbers in the towns of the Connecticut valley, the garden of Massachusetts. The book is full of anachronisms. The peculiar New England traits given existed to a certain extent, in our boyhood, in back settlements or towns not lying near any of the great thoroughfares; but they have very generally disappeared through the influence of education, the railroads, which run in all directions through the State, and the almost constant intercourse with the society of the capital.

The turnpikes did much to destroy the rustic manners and language of the population of the interior villages, and the railroads have completed what they left undone. Save in a few localities, there is no longer a rustic population in Massachusetts, and very little distinction between the countryman and the citizen. In small country villages you may find Hiram Beers still, but Tommy Taft, Polly Marble, and Agate Bissell are of a past generation, and even in the past belonged to Connecticut rather than to the Old Bay State. Strangers suppose the people of the several New England States have all the same characteristics, and are cut out and made up after the same pattern; but in reality, except in the valley of the Connecticut, where there is a blending of the characteristics of the adjoining States, the differences between the people of one State and those of another are so strongly marked that a careful observer can easily tell, on seeing a stranger, to which of the six New England States he belongs, without hearing him speak a word, and not unfrequently the section of his State from which he comes. There is no mistaking a Berkshire countryman for a Cape Codder, or a Vermonter for a true son of the Old Bay State, or a Rhode Islander. The gait, the air, the manners, the physiognomy even, tell at once the man's native State. The Vermonter is the Kentuckian of the East, as the Georgian is the Yankee of the South, and we have found no two cities in the Union, and there are few east of the Rocky Mountains that we have not visited, where the citizens of the one have so many points of resemblance with those of the other, as Boston, the metropolis of New England, and Charleston, the real capital of South Carolina. Accidental differences of course there are, but the type of character is the same, and the purest and best American type we have met with. And we are very disinterested in our judgment, for we are natives of neither city nor State. In both we have the true English type with its proper American modifications. No two cities stood firmer, shoulder to shoulder, during the American war of independence, "the times that tried men's souls," than Boston and Charleston. They became opposed not till, under the lead of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania and Kentucky politicians, Congress had fastened on the country the so-called American system, which struck a severe blow at the commerce of New England, and compelled its capitalists to seek investment for their capital in manufactures. It is a little singular that New England, which up to 1842 had voted against every protective tariff that had been adopted, should have the credit or discredit of originating and securing the adoption of the protective system. The ablest speech ever made against the system in Congress was made in 1824 by Mr. Webster, then a member of the House of Representatives from Boston. We express no opinion on the question between free-trade and so-called protection; we only say that Pennsylvania and Kentucky, not the New England States, are chiefly responsible for the protective system; the very remote cause, at least, of the late terrible civil war between the North and South, in which, if the victory was for the Union, the South are likely to be the gainers in the long run, and the North the losers.

But we are wandering. Mr. Beecher speaks truly of the diversity and originality of individual character in New England, which you discover when you have once broken through the thin crust of conventionalism; but he seems not to have observed equally the marked differences of character between the people of the several States. The wit of a Massachusetts man is classical and refined; of the Connecticut man sly, and not incapable of being coarse; of the Vermonter it is broad farce, and nobody better than he can keep a company of good fellows in a roar till morning. The Bay State man has a strong attachment to tradition and to old manners and customs, and his innovating tendency is superinduced, and is as repugnant to his nature as Protestantism is to the _perfervidum ingenium Scottorum_. He is naturally a conservative, as the Scotch are, if we may so speak, naturally Catholic; and it was only a terrible wrench of the Scottish nature that induced the loyal Scots to adopt the Reformation. The Connecticut man excels the Bay State man in ingenuity, in inventive genius, in doing much with little; is less conservative by nature, and more enterprising and adventurous, and in his exterior conduct more under the influence of public opinion. Each is proud of his State, and the Connecticut man especially, who has acquired wealth elsewhere, is fond of returning to his early home to display it; but attachment to the soil is not very strong in either, and neither will make heavy sacrifices for simple love of country. The Bay State man is more influenced by his principles, his convictions, like the South Carolinian, and the Connecticut man more by his interests.

The Vermonter has no conservative tendency by nature; he cares not the snap of his finger for what his father believed or did; is personally independent, generally free from snobbishness, no slave to public opinion, and for the most part has the courage of his convictions; but he loves his State, loves her green hills and fertile valleys, and when abroad holds a fellow-Vermonter dear as his brother. A Georgian and a Connecticut man are fighting in Georgia; the Connecticut man looking on will wish his countryman to get the better of his Georgian opponent, but will not interpose till he has inquired into the cause of the dispute, and ascertained on which side is the law. A Georgian and a Vermonter are fighting under the same circumstances; the Vermonter comes up, looks, knocks the Georgian down, rescues his countryman, and investigates the cause and the law afterward. The Vermonter pays no attention to the personal responsibility he may incur; the Connecticut man tries to keep always clear of the law; and if he makes up his mind to do a great wrong to some one, he takes care to do it under cover of law, so that no hold can be got of him. The Bay State man is much the same; and the Connecticut man has less of patriotism than the Vermonter. We speak of what was the case in our own youth and early manhood; yet the character of the whole American people has so changed during the last forty years that we can hardly any longer recognize them, and in the judgment of an old man they have changed not for the better.

We have no space to remark on the characteristic differences of the three remaining New England States. These States have still less resemblance to each other. The people of Maine differ widely from the people of New Hampshire, and the people of Rhode Island have very few traits in common with the people of any of the other New England States. The author of _Norwood_ has lost no little of his own original New England character or overlaid it with his Westernism. He is not in sympathy with the true New England character, as found in any of the New England States, and is more disposed to exaggerate, in his descriptions, its few eccentricities than to bring out its higher and nobler qualities. No doubt the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts and Connecticut set out with the intention of founding what they regarded as a Christian commonwealth, in which the evangelical counsels should be recognized and enforced as laws. They would have organized and maintained society, except in not enjoining celibacy, after the mode of a Catholic monastery. They attempted by constant vigilance and the strict enforcement of very rigorous laws to shut out all vice and immorality from their community. They were rigorists in morals, somewhat rigid and stern in their personal character, and have been generally supposed to be much more so than they really were. Their experiment of a Christian commonwealth as it existed in their own ideal failed, partly through their defective faith and the absence of supernatural grace, and partly through their exacting too much of human nature, or even of men in the flesh, except an elect few. But they, nevertheless, succeeded in laying the foundation of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan republic, or in founding the state, the first in history, on truly Christian principles; that is, on the rights of God, and which better than any other known state has protected the rights of man.

The Puritan did not separate from the Church of England on the principle of liberty of dissent, or because he wished to establish what liberals now understand by religious liberty. The principle of his separation was the Catholic principle, that the magistrate has no authority in spirituals, and no right to prescribe any forms or ceremonies to be used in worship. It was a solemn protest not against the doctrines of the Anglican Church, but against the authority it conceded in spiritual matters to the civil power--or the civil magistrate, as they said then. The Puritan was logical; he had a good major, and his conclusion would have been just, if his minor had only been true; and we are, in our opinion, indebted to him far more than to Lord Baltimore or to Governor Dongan of New York for the freedom of conscience secured by our institutions. Lord Baltimore and Governor Dongan sought the free exercise of their own religion for their co-religionists, and asserted, and in their situation could assert, only toleration. Neither could assert the principle of true religious liberty, the incompetency of the state in spirituals, holding, as they did, their power from the king of England and head of the Anglican Church. The Puritan abominated toleration, called it the devil's doctrine, and proved himself little disposed to practise it; but in asserting the absolute independence of the church or religion before the civil magistrate, he asserted the true principle of religious liberty, which the Catholic Church always and everywhere asserts, and laid in the American mind the foundation of that religious freedom of which our religion, which they hated, now enjoys the benefit.

We have nothing to say of the virtues of the Puritans in relation to the world to come; but they certainly had great and rare civil virtues, and they have had the leading share in founding and shaping the American state. They were grave, earnest--too much so, if you will; but however short they fell in practice, they always asserted the independence and supremacy of the moral order in relation to civil government, and the obligation of every man to obey God rather than men, and to live always in reference to the end for which God makes him. Their moral standard was high, and they set an example of as moral a people as can be looked for outside of the church. They had only a faulty religion, and perhaps were Stoics rather than Christians in their temper; but they always put religion in its right place, and gave the precedence to its ministers. They placed education under charge of the church, and the system of common schools which they originated or adopted was really a system of parochial schools, under the supervision of the pastor, and supported by a tax on the parish, imposed by the parishioners, in public meetings, on themselves. The centralized system of godless schools, borrowed from the Convention that decreed the death of Louis XVI., generally adopted by the Middle and Western States, is hardly yet fully adopted in Massachusetts, though since 1835 it has been gradually gaining the ascendency; and Cambridge University, founded for God and the church, has only this very year thrown off its religious character, dispensed with morning prayers,[84] and become a purely secular institution--an inevitable but a lamentable change.

The Puritans not only adopted a high moral standard, but they lived as nearly up to it as is possible for human nature alone since the fall, and few examples of a more rigidly moral people can be found than were the New England people for a century and a half after the landing of the Pilgrims, and to them, in no small measure, the whole Union is indebted for its moral character as well as for the greater part of its higher institutions of learning. There have been as learned, as gifted, as great men, found in other States, and perhaps even more learned, gifted, and greater; but there is no part of the Union where the intellectual tone of society is so high, or intellectual culture so general as in New England, especially in the States founded by the Puritans, as were Massachusetts and Connecticut. New York leads in trade and commerce; Pennsylvania latterly, Virginia formerly, in politics; but the New England mind has led in law, jurisprudence, literature, art, science, and philosophy; though since Puritanism has been lapsing into liberalism its preëminence is passing away. We speak of New England as it was thirty or forty years ago, or a little earlier, when the majority of the supreme judges, and two thirds of the members of the legislature of New York were Connecticut or, at least, New England men. New England, we fear, is no longer what she was when we were young, and she appears only the shadow of her former self. She is attempting to do, from sheer calculation, and purely secular motives, what even in the heyday of Puritanism was more than she could effect, aided by strong religious convictions and motives. Still, if the substance is wanting, she keeps up the appearance of her old moral character, and in no part of the Union will you hear finer moral sentences, or better reasoned orations on the beauty of virtue and the necessity of religion to the commonwealth. Even New England infidelity is obliged to assume a moral garb, to express itself in Christian phrases, and affect to be more Christian than Christianity itself.

The author of _Norwood_ does not do justice to the intellectual character of New England life, to the thought, the reflection, and movements of a New England village of five thousand inhabitants. His village philosopher, Dr. Wentworth, is very shallow, being very narrow and very prosy. We could easily find any number of farmers in the valley of the Connecticut able to see through his paganism at a glance, and refute it with a word. Especially is the author unjust to New England women. No doubt such women as Polly Marble, Rachel Cathcart, Agate Bissell, and Mother Taft can be found in a New England village, but they are not representative characters. New England Puritanism was never so stiff, or so annoying to one's self or to others, as it appears in these exceptional characters. The women of New England are in general remarkable for their intellectual culture, their gentleness, their refinement, their grace and dignity of manners, the elevation and breadth of their minds, and the extent and variety of their information, no less than for their domestic tastes and habits, or superior _faculty_ as housekeepers. There are, no doubt, blue stockings in Yankeeland which their wearers' skirts are too short to conceal; no doubt, also, there are women there who encroach on the rights and prerogatives of the other sex, and aspire to be men; but your leading woman's rights women and men are not New Englanders. Our old friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is a New Yorker, and Susan B. Anthony, if born in Nantucket, is a Quakeress, and the Quakers are of no country, or simply are their own country.

Many movements are accredited to New England which originated elsewhere, and are simply taken up by a certain class of New Englanders in easy circumstances, as a diversion or a dissipation, instead of whist, balls, routs, and plays. Yet they are only a class. The Massachusetts legislature voted down, by a large majority, the proposition to give the elective franchise to women, and the legislation of the Old Bay State continues far more masculine and conservative than that of the State of New York.

_Norwood_ leaves the impression on the reader that the Puritans were a set of gloomy fanatics, austere and unbending, harsh and cruel, minding every body's business but their own, and seeking, in season and out of season, to cram their horrible doctrines down every neighbor's throat, and that the only sociable and agreeable people to be found among them were precisely those who had broken away from the Puritan thraldom, and returned to the cultivation and worship of nature. The wish is father to the thought. More social, neighborly, genial, kind-hearted, hospitable people it would be difficult to find in the Union than were the great body of these New England Puritans, than perhaps they are still; though they have by no means improved since they have abolished the dinner-table, as they suppose in the interest of temperance, and substituted opium for Santa Cruz rum and old Jamaica spirits, as they have philanthropy for devotion. Intellect, morals, and sociality seem to us to have sadly deteriorated under the misdirected efforts to advance them.

But Henry Ward Beecher has had a far other purpose in _Norwood_ than to produce a work of art, to construct a story, or to sketch New England village life. He is willing enough to correct some of the misapprehensions which Southerners have, or had, of New England character; but his book, after all, has a serious purpose, and is intended to be a death-blow to New England theological and moral doctrines.

The author, though nominally a Christian, and professedly a Congregational preacher, is really a pagan, and wishes to abolish Puritanism for the worship of nature. But it is less the Puritan than the Christian he wars against; and if he understands himself, which is doubtful, his thought is, that a child, taken as born, without baptism or regeneration, may be trained up by the influence of flowers and close communion with nature, beasts, birds, and fishes, reptiles and insects, to be a Christian of the first water. Dr. Wentworth represents this theory, and reduces it to practice in the training of his daughter Rose, whose chief educator is the half-idiot negro, Pete, "no great things in the intellects, but with a heart as big as that of an ox." The theory recognizes Christ only in nature, and really identifies him with nature, and resolves the Christian law of perfection into the natural laws of the physicists. The author holds, if any thing, that heaven, the crown of life, is in the order of generation, and is attainable as the result of natural development.

The theory, of course, rejects the very fundamental principle of Christianity, which declares that "except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." The author, indeed, does not deny in words the new birth; nay, asserts it, but resolves it into a natural operation, a sort of mental and physical crisis, and recognizes nothing supernatural, or any infusion of grace in it; which is in reality to deny it. We have as hearty a dislike of Calvinism as any one can have, and we know it passably well by our own early experience; but we confess that we have no wish to see old-fashioned Puritanism exchanged for pure rationalism or mere naturalism, and as against Henry Ward Beecher, we are strongly tempted to defend it. Any one who knows New England at all, knows that its morals have deteriorated just in proportion as its old Puritanism has declined, or been liberalized. The fact, whatever the explanation, is undeniable. In our judgment, it is the natural result of loosening the restraints which Puritanism undoubtedly imposed on the passions and conduct, and leaving people to their natural passions, instincts, and propensities, without any restraint at all. Despotism is bad enough; but it is better than no government, better than anarchy. As it affects the question of conversion to the church, we see no gain in the change. We think a sincere, earnest-minded Puritan a less hopeless subject than a liberal, like an Emerson, a John Weis, a John Stuart Mill, a Mr. Lecky, a Herbert Spencer, or such men as were the late Mr. Buckle and the late Sir William Hamilton, who despise Christianity too much to offer any direct opposition to it. The honest Puritan is prejudiced indeed, and unwilling to hear a word in favor of the church; yet he believes in Christian morals, and has some conception of the Christian plan of salvation, and therefore really something for the missionary to work on; but men who have resolved Christianity into naturalism, and measure reality or even the knowable by their own narrow and superficial understandings, are beyond his reach. Their case is hopeless.

Puritanism keeps alive in the community a certain Christian habit of thought, a belief in the necessity of grace, and more or less of a Christian conscience. The greater part of the common people gathered into the sects in seasons of revivals, if our missionaries were present, could just as easily be gathered into the church, and be saved. We suffer terribly in this country for the want of missionary priests, who can go wherever their services are needed by those who know not yet "the faith once delivered to the saints." Our priests are too few for the wants even of our old Catholic population, and what with hearing confessions, and attending sick calls, building churches and school-houses, and providing for the most pressing wants of a Catholic people, are over-worked, and soon exhausted. The great majority of our priests die young, from excessive labor. There is with us a vast missionary field, not indeed among the sects, but among the so-called Nothingarians, who comprise the majority of the American people, and who, though without any specific belief, are yet far from being confirmed unbelievers. But let the Beechers and their associates succeed in reducing Christianity to naturalism, and you soon make this whole class downright infidels. We can have, therefore, no sympathy with Beecherism, or pleasure in seeing its success against even old-fashioned New England Puritanism.

We should say as much of the Presbyterianism of the Middle, Western, and Southern States. We believe any of the older Protestant sects that retain a belief in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and future rewards and punishments, and that practise infant baptism, are preferable by far to any form of modern liberalism, which discards dogma for sentiment and reason for the soul, and are really nature-worshippers, and as much idolaters as were the old pagans, whose rivers and ponds, whose gardens and orchards were overrun with gods. Even a Methodist is upon the whole better than a Liberal, however puffed up he may be by the successful worship of mammon by his sect, and its growing respectability in the eyes of the world.

We have bestowed, perhaps, more attention on Mr. Beecher and his novel than they deserve, but we have made them the text for a desultory discourse, partly in defence of New England against her denigration attempted by one of her prominent sons, and partly in protest against the revival of heathen nature-worship favored by the author. We have not aimed at exalting New England above other sections of the Union. Each section of our common country has its peculiar merits, which are essential to the welfare and development of the whole. New England has hers, which, in some respects, excel those of other sections, and in other respects fall short of them. It is not for us to strike the balance, and to decide which upon the whole preponderate. We have wished to give New England her due, without detracting any thing from what is due to any other section of the Union. We should be sorry to see the effort now making to New Englandize the South succeed. There are some things in the New England character that could be corrected with advantage; and there is much in the Southern character, its openness, its frankness, its personal independence, its manliness, its aristocratic tone and manner, that we should be sorry to lose. But we do not like to find any man decrying his own native land or insensible to its merits.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Norwood; or, Village Life in New England. By Henry Ward Beecher. New York: Scribner & Co. 1868. 12mo, pp. 549.

[84] Since this was written, we learn that morning prayers are not dispensed with, only they are held at eight o'clock instead of an earlier hour, as formerly.

CHURCH MUSIC

I.

"The Prayer of the Church is the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore the most efficacious of all prayers." While we have been perusing the various works on church music that have come before us in the shape of book, pamphlet, tract, and magazine article, we could not keep the words we have quoted above from the celebrated Dom Gueranger out of our mind. In Europe, both in England and on the continent, it is evident, from the numerous publications pertinent to the subject which have been lately issued, that the due celebration of the divine offices of the Church is becoming more and more the object of no little anxiety on the part of the hierarchy, and that the clergy are everywhere making strenuous efforts to get rid of the abuses which since the Protestant reformation, the straitness of the times has tolerated. One of the most notorious of these abuses, fully naturalized amongst us, is the profane character of church music. Several writers, among whom stand preëminent two English priests--the Rev. Canon Oakeley and the Rev. James Nary--have crossed swords on the subject of reform, and we have thus been enabled not only to get at the merits of the particular dispute between these two amicable combatants, but have been led as well to reflect upon the primary object of music in the divine offices, the intention of the Church, and the means she has ordained for realizing it; although we must confess that, with Dom Gueranger's words ringing in our ears, we have not heard from the pages of the publications in question quite so clear an echo to their truth as we would have wished.

The ritual service of the Church is her prayer, and melody is the almost universal form of expression employed in its celebration. Whatever music is sung or performed at her solemn rites is supposed to be sung and performed by her not as a musical performance, but as a prayer. These are the points more or less ignored in all the discussions on what is or may be made suitable music for the Church. The different sentences, anthems, psalms, etc., appointed to be sung by the choir, are all so many prayers offered by the Church. Therefore it is plain that what is proper as music at her offices must as a first principle be a worthy expression of the voice of the Church lifted in prayer. When the priest, robed in his garments of sacrifice, intones the Gloria at the altar, he does so in the name of the Church, not as the Rev. Mr. ---- performing a short, effective, and fine tenor solo; and when the choir continues the same angelical anthem, they do so--or rather, are supposed to do so--as his assistants in the divine action. The priest takes his seat to await its conclusion, not to make one of an audience who for the time being are to be relieved from the more engrossing thoughts of prayer by criticising the _Gratias_ as rendered by Mr. A., enjoying the _Qui tollis_ by Miss B., or the _telling_ chorus of the _Cum Sancto_.

That the musical portions of the church offices are in a true sense prayer, and are based upon that idea alone, namely, the union of the soul with God; that such is the chief intention of the Church, and should be the only object sought in the choice of music and the execution of it, to the absolute subserviency, even if not to the completely ignoring, of every other sentiment, is therefore beyond question; but who will not be able to count upon his ten fingers the churches in the United States where the music would be likely to leave any such impression upon the minds of the worshippers?

We say this not in any cynical spirit. We know the "straitness of the times," and we ourselves have been straitened, and are still, as well as our neighbors; but the general uneasiness and discontent felt among all classes because of the wretched performances of sacred music to which we have been subjected, utterly at variance as they are with the spirit of the sublime and solemn functions of religion, is beginning to find a voice to make audible complaint, and exciting some laudable efforts to rid the holy place of harmonies which savor more of the world, the flesh, and the devil than they do of divine prayer. So common is the ignorance of what the true music of the Church is, that it is a rare thing to find even a Catholic who has any idea that the Mass has not yet been fully sung when he has heard the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, and not a note of the Introit, Gradual, Prose, Offertory, or Communion. And as for the Vespers, we think the fingers of one hand might suffice to count the churches where any attempt is made to perform them entire. Of the compositions executed in every style of musical art at Mass, will not the first person to whom you may address yourself, be he a devout Catholic well instructed in other matters, or a music-loving Protestant who is fond of "attending service" in our churches on account of the "glorious music of the Catholic Church," which he thinks he hears there--will they not both tell you, if you are at the pains to interrogate them, that Mozart and Haydn hold the place of angelic doctors of music in the Catholic Church, and Webbe, Farmer, Concone and Co. have equally honorable titles for small churches and country choirs?

Would not either of them return you a stare of incredulity if you told them that not one composition of any of these authors has ever been recognized by any authority in the Church, and that the singing of them has, in point of fact, been only barely tolerated; that the great mass of these musical _morceaux_ are wholly unfit for the purpose for which they were written, and that, ten chances to one, neither of these good friends have ever heard, save the chanting of the priest, one single note of the music sanctioned by the Church in all their lives? Yet all this is true to the very letter. Lamentably true; for religion, in the grandeur, power, and spiritual beauty of its sacred offices, is the loser by it, and the devout and prayerful spirit which such offices are calculated to excite in the souls of the faithful is to a great extent hindered, and replaced by a spirit of sensuousness and worldly amusement.

The fact beyond dispute is, that the faithful are deprived of the true expression of the divine prayer of the Church, both on account of the profane character of the music performed and the entire omission of those portions of the Mass and Vespers which give a distinctive color, tone, and meaning to the seasons and festivals, such as the Introit, the Gradual, Prose, Offertory, Communion, and Antiphons.

Not to speak of the wholly inexcusable practice of reproducing well-known arias from different operas to which the words of some devout hymn are adapted in the most shockingly garbled manner, without regard to grammar or sense, a cursory examination of "the masses" popular among us, and sung, without distinction, at any season and on any festival, would be sufficient to condemn them as totally unfit as vehicles of expression for the words set to them, or the occasion of their performance. Let us quote some true words from the Rev. Mr. Nary:

"Would any one contend that the rollicking tunes of many a modern Kyrie express the meaning of the supplicatory ejaculation, _Lord, have mercy on us_?... It may fairly be questioned whether any one unaccustomed to our florid church-music, upon hearing one of the jigs which render the sweet prayer, _O Lord, give us peace, dona nobis pacem_, in some of our modern masses, would be able to tell, not only that it aptly describes the words, but even that it expresses any religious feeling at all. That in numerous instances, modern church music, instead of being descriptive of the holy words to which it is joined, rather expresses the sensuous languor of the stage, or the airy joy of the ball-room, could not well be disputed.

"Indeed, it is exceedingly remarkable that what Haydn, Mozart, Weber, and others would have been ashamed to do for the stage, they have, seemingly without a qualm of conscience, done for the house of God. They knew that they must have been accused of folly, had they in one of their operatic works given to earnestness the tones of jesting, to prayer those of mirth; but this is precisely what they have done for the services of the Church. The most touching supplications of the liturgy are often clothed by them in strains of mockery.... It is not implied here that there are not in the works of the great modern composers beautiful passages full of genuine religious feeling; but will any impartial judge contend that there are many masses in which there is no blundering at all between the words and the music?... Nay, is it not true that certain masses by those composers, if separated from the sacred words and applied to some libretto of the late Eugène Scribe, would only gain in naturalness and meaning by the change? What, then, it may be asked, is there no other music for the Almighty than that of the theatre?... It can hardly be disputed that some of our own churches have too often, in their musical efforts, exhibited scenes bordering very closely upon downright desecration of the house of God.... There is no need to describe the sad feelings which arise in the heart of a Catholic who finds the adorable sacrifice of the Mass turned into a Sunday morning amusement.

"Some people, who allow that the music of some of our churches is thoroughly profane, still justify its use on the plea that it allures strangers, who may be favorably impressed with other and more religious portions of the service. But this is a poor justification of practices which annoy the real congregation, and hinder devotion. No doubt a priest should seek to draw strangers to his church, but all means are not equally legitimate toward attaining this laudable end. Besides, the writer though entirely unable to form any judgment which he could commend to the belief of others, much doubts whether any priest could trace more than a few conversions, if any at all, not to his church music, which may partly be very ecclesiastical, but to his florid or orchestral music, as to their origin."

We need to add little to this. The impressions left upon the mind after being subjected to any one of such performances is well known to all who have suffered. What religious feelings might one reasonably expect to have pervaded (may we not say the audience?) or what devotion could possibly be excited in the hearts of any unfortunate worshippers present on the occasion of which the following is a report:

"Haydn's Mass No. 16 was the great selection. The _Kyrie_ was coldly given, the alto and bass, in the _soli_ parts, being hardly strung up to tune. In the _Gloria_, however, both chorus and soloists warmed to their work, and several of the finest choral passages were given with great power and precision. The _Credo_ was not taken up firmly, but every praise is due to the manner in which the choir acquitted themselves at the finish, and in the exquisite _Et Incarnatus_ and succeeding quartette the four principal voices blended beautifully together, and the alto (Miss ----) told well in the delivery of the leading and interwoven subject, the _Sub Pontio_. The most critical would have been satisfied with the evenness with which the principal voices were balanced in this and the subsequent _soli_ passages. The _Sanctus_ and _Hosanna_ were very fairly given, the _Benedictus_ being perhaps the most telling effort of all. The opening of the _Agnus_ was not delivered sufficiently _staccato_, as the chorus did not hang well together. The _Dona Nobis_ made up for all, and throughout the principals acquitted themselves in unexceptionable style, being well supported at the finish by the chorus."

We are aware that some, while agreeing with us, as they cannot help but do, that "masses" in figured music, and "figured vespers," are in the style of their composition essentially profane, yet choose them, and cause them to be performed, on the plea that the sacredness of the place and the occasion of the divine office is a sufficient corrective of their innate profanity, or that, being "magnificent," "sublime," "classic," etc., such music may justly be employed to adorn the grand functions of religion, and that the theatre ought not to boast of _better_ music than the house of God; that--as one such admirer of classic music said to us--we ought to "spoil the Egyptians;" or again, that Protestants are attracted to churches where such music is given, and may be led by the charm of the music to inquire into the truths of our religion; and finally, that there is nothing else to take its place; the antiquated Gregorian chant being wholly unfit for the cultivated musical ears of the nineteenth century, and to banish this music from Catholic churches would be to do an irreparable injury to high art. But all these pleas fail absolutely in producing any influence upon our judgment, the words of Dom Gueranger sounding so loudly in our ears as they do, and our own experience to the contrary. In point of fact, the sacredness of the place where this kind of music is sung is no corrective of the unworthy nature of the music itself. Doubtless the cantatrice is denied the clapping of hands and the _encore_ which her splendid singing calls for, and the _primo basso_ retires from the front of the organ-gallery without a bow to his fashionable auditory--nevertheless interiorly disgusted, we warrant, by the lack of some visible appreciation of one of his best efforts--and a well-behaved congregation will quietly resume their attitude of prayer at the close of some crashing _finale_; but are these sufficient evidences of the very opposite impression being produced upon the worshippers to that which the music from its character, aside from the similar manner of its rendering, is not only calculated but is expected to produce? "I hold it for certain," said good old Saint Alphonsus, "that vanity and the devil usually get more by it than God."

What those who defend the use of figured music in our solemn offices must show is, that it not only edifies the faithful, but that it edifies equally with, or more than, the authorized chant. That it is the source of no little disedification; that it distracts the soul from the great object upon which all its powers ought to be concentrated; that it is always more or less an imperfect performance, and, in most cases, a mere makeshift; and that where the organist and singers are in power the sacred ministers play but a subordinate part in a scene in which, as it has been well said, the music from the choir gallery is the magnet which attracts the gold and silver, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt.

But this is not all. Is figured music in conformity as to its style with the spirit of the other portions of the divine office? Will its most strenuous adherents claim for it the title of being a fair and true expression of the Church's prayer? Does it harmonize with those other parts of the office performed in the sanctuary? Here we can speak feelingly. How often have we not been tempted to smile at our own voice intoning the _per omnia sæcula sæculorum_, as the echoes of that galloping _finale_ of an interminable "offertory piece" or Benedictus were yet resounding in the aisles of the church! What feelings of vexation have not arisen in our breast as the response came back to our ears in slovenly haste, as if our inharmonious cadence had too quickly disturbed the well-merited repose of our choir after, we must confess, their too successful effort to captivate the attention of the congregation, and put the priest in the very pillory of singularity and discord! Why must our mind at such times suffer the painful distraction of remembering the well-known sarcastic remark, that "the Rev. Mr. ---- then put up a supplication which was one of the most eloquent prayers ever offered to a Boston audience!"

The second plea, that these classic harmonies, so rich, so melodious, so sublime, etc., etc., should not be denied to the greater glory of God, is of equally small weight, since there are many other things in nature and art extremely beautiful in themselves, truly classic in their conception and execution, which, it must be confessed, would hardly bear transporting to the house of prayer, and which it would take the heroic virtue of a saint to refer to the greater glory of God if exhibited in any place. We do not object to the offering of these harmonies to God, but the question is, Do these harmonies, by their religious tone and devout style, offer themselves to God? Does the Church judge them to be suitable for her divine offices? Let these questions be answered in the affirmative, and our own personal judgment and sentiments shall go to the wall.

The plea that the music as now commonly heard in our churches allures Protestants, and thus brings them within sight and hearing of Catholic truth, has been already well answered in our quotation from Mr. Nary. For ourselves, judging from the behavior of the mass of these visitors, we are forced to the conclusion that they frequent our churches where fine music is given because they can get it at a cheaper rate than they would have to pay for it elsewhere.

That there is nothing else to take its place, and that the antiquated Gregorian chant is unfit for our ears of modern cultivation, is simply the plea of ignorance. The established chant of the Church not only _can_ take its place, as we shall attempt to show further on, but as a fact it has never ceded its right to any other style of music; and those who know any thing of the Gregorian chant scientifically, know that it is our modern ears that are at fault, perverted as they have been in their sense and appreciation of true religious melody by the sensuous and effeminate spirit which pervades all modern art.

It is strongly urged that the reintroduction of the Gregorian chant in our churches, now wholly committed to the use of modern music, is impossible, for the hired singers will have nothing to do with it. To which we answer that, as the execution of the Gregorian chant necessarily excludes female vocalists from the choir in accordance with the sacred canons, the _prima donna_ will undoubtedly have to look elsewhere for an engagement, and very likely the _tenore_ and _basso_ who sing in the Mass on Sunday in our church, and perform in the _opera buffa_ all the rest of the week, may refuse to employ their highly cultivated voices in singing music that affords them so little opportunity of exhibiting their artistic powers; but, we may ask, are these the only favored beings whom God has endowed with good voices and the ability to use them? We propose to enter more fully into this question of difficulty, and think we shall be able to show that in this as well as in other matters, "where there's the will, there's a way."

In the interests of art, it is asked, ought not the composition, and by consequence the reproduction of sacred music be encouraged? Will not its banishment from our churches be a species of vandalism in art greatly to be deplored? Let us look at this fairly. What is this so-called "sacred" music? Is it more or less than the adaptation of the words of prayer uttered by the church to concerted harmony composed as an artistic expression of the sentiment conveyed by the sacred words? Surely nothing more. But what is concerted harmony, as a rule, "sacred" or "consecrated" to? To the words of the offices of the church? By no means. There is but one kind of music consecrated to that--the Gregorian chant. And, with our hands upon our hearts, can we say that modern music has received such an aid in its development through the composition and execution of Masses, Magnificats, Offertories, Tantum Ergos, and the like, that its present state of advancement is as much indebted to them as is popularly supposed, or that their withdrawal from the service of the Church would prove any very serious detriment to it? As pieces of musical art, the operas and oratorios of composers are far superior to the masses they have written, and we who may choose would much rather listen to them. We must not be understood to decry the composition of so-called sacred music, or the singing of it. On the contrary, we would do all in our power to encourage it; but we object to its usurping the place of music better fitted for the divine offices of the Church, and vastly surpassing it for such use in every particular. There is plenty of time, outside of the hour or two in which we are present at Mass or Vespers, to hear all the sacred music we desire or can bear. All we ask is, let the Church pray her own prayers and sing her own divine song without hinderance, or the intrusion of harmonies as ill-suited to her voice as they are powerless to express the emotions of her more than human soul.

This leads us to the utterance of a grave complaint against modern sacred music, namely, the absurd settings of words by which the divine offices are not only prolonged to a tedious extent, but the Holy Church is made to stammer, repeat, hesitate in her speech, and fall at last into an inextricable confusion of tongues. Did our pious congregation below stairs know what their singers are singing up aloft, they would not unfrequently be reminded of certain warnings against "vain repetitions." The Masses of composers who wrote in the seventeenth and eighteenth century are not only open to the charge of being replete with these vain repetitions, but are full of the most ridiculous blunders.

We subjoin a specimen. The words given are those sung by the leading soprano; the lines (--) show where the text is broken up by instrumental interludes:

"Glory to God in the highest----in the highest----to God glory----to God glory----to God glory, glory to God in the highest, to God in the highest, to God in the highest, to God in the highest----to God in the highest----and on earth peace----peace----peace to men, and on earth peace----peace----peace to men----of good, good----will----will----of good, good will, of good, good, good will----of good, good will, of good, good, good will----of good will----of good will----of good will----We praise, we bless----we adore----we glorify----we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, for thy great glory, for thy great glory, for thy great glory----thy glory----thy glory----O Lord God, God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty----O God the Son----only begotten----Jesus Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father----Son of the Father----Son of the Father----Son of the Father----O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father----O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Son, Son of the Father----who takest, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy on us----who takest away, who takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer, our prayer, our prayer, our prayer, our prayer----who sittest, who sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy, have mercy on us----have mercy, have mercy on us----For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord----only art the highest, Jesus Christ----For thou only art holy----thou only, thou only art the highest----thou only, thou only art the highest, Jesus Christ----Jesus Christ----For thou only----thou only art holy, thou only art highest----Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For thou only, thou only art highest, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord----thou only art highest, Jesus Christ----For thou only art holy, thou only, only art holy, thou only, only, art the Lord.----For thou only art holy----thou only art the Lord----thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord, only, art highest. For thou only, thou only art holy----thou art the Lord----only art highest, thou only art highest, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For thou only----thou only art highest----Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ----For thou only, thou only art highest----Jesus Christ----Jesus, Jesus Christ----Jesus, Jesus Christ----Jesus----Christ----With the Holy Ghost----in the glory of God the Father. Amen, amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen, amen----Amen, amen----With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, in the glory of God the Father----Amen----Amen----Amen----Amen, amen, amen, amen.----With the Holy Ghost----in the glory of God the Father. Amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen.----With the Holy Ghost----With the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen----With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen----in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen----of God the Father, Amen; in the glory of God the Father, Amen; in the glory of God the Father, Amen----of God the Father, Amen. With the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father, Amen, amen----of God the Father, Amen----of God the Father, Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen."

And this from Doctor Mozart's renowned Mass No. 12, which we have heard so often, and enjoyed so much! But he is not alone. We quote from an able paper from the _Dublin Review_ on "Church Music and Church Choirs:"

"Thus we have a 'Credo' beginning with the four phrases, _Credo in unum Deum_--_Genitum non factum_--_Qui propter nos_--and _Et ex Patre natum_--all sung simultaneously by the four voices. Again, we have a 'Gloria' beginning with the four phrases, _Gratias agimus_ (for the soprano)--_Domine Fili_ (alto)--_Domine Deus_ (tenor)--_Et in terra pax_ (bass)--the whole being dispatched in two short pages of music!

"As for instances of garblings by the omission of words and clauses in much of the popular mass music, they are too numerous to be mentioned.

"One of the most grotesquely absurd settings, perhaps, is that of the 'Alma Redemptoris' of Webbe. The words are divided into three parts, the first ending with 'cadenti,' the second with 'genitorem,' the same music being used for each, _and a repeat and musical interlude coming between_. The consequence is that the adjective '_cadenti_' is entirely cut off from its substantive '_populo_;' and the whole, as sung, is of course sheer nonsense. The reason is plain. Webbe found an air which, by a threefold repetition, could be applied to the words of the antiphon, and for this every thing, even to the grammar of the piece, was sacrificed. No doubt this is the history of many of the absurd adaptations we meet with.

"Nothing can go beyond the examples we have quoted, except, perhaps, the instance of a composer of the 'light Italian school,' who by way of producing an original and striking musical effect in the 'Credo,' made one voice sing 'Genitum non factum,' and another respond 'Factum non genitum!' It will be said that these are extreme cases, and that many of the pieces are not likely to be used in our churches. Be it so; still they show what it was the fashion of certain composers to provide for the use of the Church, and what is apt to come of the theory that it does not matter what is sung by the choir, provided the people do not hear it. But whether heard or not, the rules of the Church (and we see how strict they are on these points) remain the same. Besides, do we sing merely to satisfy the ears of an audience? Rather, is not this the true principle--_In conspectu Angelorum psallam tibi, Domine_?"

To the ignorance, alas! so general, of what the Church is actually saying in her holy offices, and what the choir is singing in her name, as well as of what they are omitting to sing as in duty bound, may be attributed in great measure the apparent indifference with which the people of our congregations listen to any musical production from the choir, be it in harmony with the season or the festival, as the case may be, or not, provided only that the voices are in harmony with each other. Did they know better, they would say with Pope Benedict XIV., who, it seems, had some of our own abuses to contend with and reform in Rome itself, as other popes have had since his time. Speaking of St. Augustine, who used to be moved to tears by the singing (be it well understood, not of such music as we possess) in the churches, he says that "the music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for grief; for, although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish the words."

Let us hear something more of the opinions of the same holy pope about figured "sacred music." "The Gregorian chant is that song which excites the minds of the faithful to piety and devotion; it is that music, therefore, which, if sung in our churches with care and decorum, is most willingly heard by devout persons, and is justly preferred to that which is called figured or harmonized music. The titillation of figured music is held very cheaply by men of religious mind in comparison with the sweetness of the Church chant, and hence it is that the people flock to the churches of the monks, who, taking piety for their guide in singing the praises of God, after the counsel of the prince of psalmists, skilfully sing to their Lord as Lord, and serve God as God with the utmost reverence."

Did we add no more, we think we have said enough to show that the employment of figured music for the divine offices is an abuse. It does not answer its purpose, and its permission is nothing better than a winking at our weakness, (the wisdom of which, considering all things, we by no means presume to condemn for the past,) while the prevailing sensuousness and libertinism of the times has debased and emasculated our taste in true religious art.

But it is a comfort to know that such music has never received from the supreme pastors and rulers of the church any thing more than a reluctant permission, that the concessions they have made in its favor have always been exacted by the force of circumstances, and that they have constantly raised their voice in opposition to it as an abuse, and urged in the strongest terms of command and persuasion its abolition, and a return to the authorized chant, the universal song of the Church, ever ancient and ever new.

Dilettanti talk, with an air of superior knowledge, of the Gregorian chant as if it were something obsolete, the uncouth production of a barbarous and unartistic age. We think there are not a few other fashions and modes of religious expression besides her chant, that the Church has persistently adhered to, which modern ideas might with equal justice denounce as obsolete and of unartistic origin. As has been well remarked,

"This conservatism, if we may so call it, of the Church, is not confined to plain chant. The same may be said of the language and the style of her offices, the dresses of her clergy and religious orders, and many of her rites, ceremonies, and customs. The chant is, therefore, no stranger than any part of the Church system; and that system being what it is, the antique character of the music seems in every way suitable."

To be sure. What would we think of an archbishop to-day standing before the altar dressed in a frock-coat with a stove-pipe hat on his head, and a pair of patent leather boots on his feet, giving his solemn benediction _en roulade_?

What we have said in regard to the wishes and commands of the Church, as expressed by the papal bulls and decrees of councils in regard to this matter, we propose to prove by referring the reader to several of these authorities.

Alexander VII., in his Constitution 36, _Piæ sollicitudinis_, 23d April, 1657, excludes all singing of pieces not contained in the liturgy or approved by the Congregation of Rites, and all profane styles of music. (Bullar. t. 6.)

The Congregation of the Apostolical Visitation, July 30th, 1665, enforced and explained more fully the constitution of Alexander VII. The character of the music at Mass and Office is to be ecclesiastical, grave, and devotional. Only what is prescribed for the day or season is to be sung. It prohibits prolonged solos. It prescribes that the words are to be sung as they were written, without any inversion, addition, or other change.

The popes, Innocent XI., 1678, and Innocent XII., 1692, renewed and enforced similar rules, imposing, as their predecessors had done, heavy penalties on choir-masters for disobedience. (V. Bullar. t. 7.)

In the Council of Rome, 1725, Benedict XIII. insists upon the ecclesiastical character of the music to be used in church. (Tit. 15, cap. 6.)

Benedict XIV., in a circular letter, enters at large into the subject of church music, and, while he does not wholly condemn the use of figured music, yet deplores the bad taste of those who employ it, as well as the great neglect of religion which he attributes to the careless performance of the divine offices of the church. As we have seen already, he distinctly prefers the Gregorian chant, and refers in this letter to the decree of the Council of Trent in regard to it.

Clement XIII., Sept. 17th, 1760, issued an edict against the abuse of prolonging the music in church "to the detriment of devotion and of the approved rites, and in violation of the canons and rubrics."

The cardinal vicar of Gregory XVI., 1842, inveighs against tiresome repetition and arbitrary inversion of words.

Pius IX., June 28th, 1853, showed his great wish for the thoroughly religious character of church music; for in his letters establishing the Seminario Pio, in connection with the Roman Seminary, he ordered that the students should be taught the Gregorian chant, and no other. "Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur." (Tit. 5, de studior. ratione.)

The latest instruction issued by the cardinal vicar, Nov. 18th, 1856, denounces the scandals caused by the introduction of profane theatrical music in the churches, and the interminable length of their execution, and, "by express command of his holiness," lays down a set of rules which are to be observed in future. At the same time the cardinal issued a series of instructions to composers, from which it is evident very little encouragement is given them to write for the Church, and they are so restricted that we very much doubt if they care to put their Pegasus in such a cumbrous harness as the good cardinal prescribes.

The late Plenary Council of Baltimore confirms a decree made in the former one, which reads as follows:

"That all may be done according to prescribed order, and that the solemn rites of the Church be preserved in their integrity, we admonish pastors of churches to earnestly labor in removing those abuses which, in our country, have crept into the church chant. Let them, therefore, provide that the music be subservient to the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and other offices, and not the divine offices to the music. Let them also bear in mind that, according to the ritual of the Church, it is not lawful to sing hymns in the vernacular language at High Mass nor at solemn Vespers."[85]

The wishes of the fathers of the Council in regard to the Gregorian chant may be seen in the decree _De Vesperis_:

"Moreover, we judge it to be most desirable that the rudiments of the Gregorian chant be taught and practised in parochial schools, and thus, the number of those who can chant the psalms well increasing more and more, gradually the greater part, at least, of the people, according to the usage of the primitive church yet preserved in many places, may be able to join with the sacred ministers and choir in singing Vespers and other similar offices; which will be the source of edification to all, according to that saying of St. Paul, 'Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles.'"[86]

In the same strain many bishops in Europe have raised their voices against the profane music which has crept insidiously into the holy place, and urged a speedy return to the use of the ancient chant.

From the authorities we have adduced we get at the mind of the Church, and see that it is plainly adverse to the introduction of the modern style of music in our sacred offices, and we have not been able to find one instance where its use has been officially permitted in any particular diocese but with the utmost reluctance, and not without expressing at the same time an earnest wish that the old chant of the Church might be restored to its primitive universal use.

There is also a significant fact not unworthy our notice. Looking at the Protestant churches around us, we see that it is only in those which are fast losing their former hold upon some form of ritual in their religious meetings, that elaborate figured music is finding a home, and garbled portions of "the masses" of Mozart, Haydn, and other Catholic composers are being sung to a nauseating adaptation of English words: while, on the other hand, those which are with equally rapid advances returning to the bosom of unity with the Catholic Church are cultivating the Gregorian chant to a degree which ought to put us to the blush, and imitating, as best they may, the ecclesiastical and devout order of Catholic worship, and hold our figured and florid music in deserved contempt. Straws show which way the wind blows.

Sudden revolutions, however, are not to our mind; and we know something of the difficulties in the way of such a reform in the matter of church music as the Church evidently desires, and a general movement toward the ancient discipline which she would encourage and bless. Because we cannot do all in a day is no reason why we cannot do something in a week. In England, the clergy have taken the whole subject to heart, and have already accomplished wonders. There are many churches where the whole services are given entire. All that is prescribed _de rigueur_ to be sung at Mass is sung. Vespers and Compline strictly according to the breviary are chanted in more than one church by the whole congregation. They have not entirely eliminated figured music, but are reducing it to its lowest terms.[87] Few churches are without their boy choirs, trained to sing the devout song of the sanctuary. The zealous Archbishop of Westminster has issued an order that no new church be opened in his diocese unless provision be made for a sanctuary choir. He has not thought it right, as he says, to enforce the orders of the former vicars apostolic, "_Foeminæ voces ne audiantur in choro_," yet he adds, "All that I can effect by the strongest expression of desire and by persuasion, I shall endeavor to effect."

Surely we can also do something toward aiding the Church in liberating herself from this captivity to an expression of her majestic offices so foreign to the true sound of her own voice. Looking back upon the days when the untiring voice of prayer was ascending to heaven from the holy sanctuaries of religion, when the festival days were kept and the faith was strong and the people devout, a faith and devotion due in a great measure to the sacredness of liturgical worship and the inspiration of the holy chants, may we not justly mourn the loss of this ancient fervor, and earnestly strive to awaken an interest in what, for so many good reasons, appears to hold more than an accidental relation to it?

We have no doubt that the coming Oecumenical Council will speak in yet stronger terms in favor of a reform so vital to the interests of religion in the whole world.

In subsequent articles we propose to consider some propositions made to ameliorate the present state of things, the characteristics of the Gregorian chant as the true song of the Church, and offer some hints as to the manner of its execution, and the means of obtaining and holding a permanent chorus of singers who shall make the divine praises resound in our consecrated Houses of Prayer in a manner more edifying to the faithful, and more becoming the Divine Majesty.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] "Ut omnia juxta ordinem fiant, et solemnes Ecclesiæ ritus integre serventur, monemus rectores ecclesiarum ut sedulo invigilent ad abusus eliminandos qui in cantu ecclesiastico in his regionibus invaluerunt. Curent igitur ut sacrosancto Missæ Sacrificio et aliis officiis musica, non vero musicæ divina officia inserviant. Noverint, juxta Ecclesiæ ritum, carmina vernaculo idiomate, inter Missarum solemnia, vel vesperas solemnes, decantare non licere."

[86] "Insuper valde exoptandum esse censemus, ut rudimenta cantus Gregoriani in scholis parochialibus exponantur et exerceantur, sicque numero eorum qui psalmos bene cantare valeant, magis magisque in crescente, paulatim major saltem pars populi, secundum primitivæ ecclesiæ adhuc in variis locis vigentem usum, Vesperas et alia similia cum ministris et choro decantare possit. Qua ratione omnium ædificatio promovebitur, juxta illud S. Pauli, 'Loquentes vobismetipsis in psalmis et hymnis et canticis spiritualibus.'"

[87] We are not a little surprised to see the _Rules for Singers and Composers_ issued by the cardinal vicar of Rome, only, as far as we can learn, for Rome itself, taken by certain English musical authors and publishers as a positive sanction of figured music, which has resulted in the recent publication of several masses both in unison and in parts, named after some saint. We commend most heartily the well-meant effort, but augur for them but a very mediocre success. If figured music is to be permitted at all, it will be found that neither priest nor organist, singers nor congregation are going to put up with what is second-rate.

We hope the prospectus of the publishers will be faithfully carried out and the rules of the cardinal vicar will be strictly adhered to. "The masses," although baptized with the names of all the saints in the calendar, will soon disappear from the "holy courts of Christian song," where, in our humble judgment, they have ever done more harm than good.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW YORK.[88]

THE COLONIAL DAYS.

The appearance of a new edition of the brief but valuable and attractive work which the present Bishop of Newark issued in 1853, is a matter of congratulation. The Catholics of New York City have a history in this land, and it is too little known. Bishop Bayley was the first to supply the want; he wrote, as the title-page shows, while still connected with the diocese of New York as secretary to the late distinguished archbishop; and of course with singular advantages for correctness of details and for a just view of his subject. We may here ask our readers to pause and look back with us at the early history of Catholicity in this busy metropolis, and trace the progress of the church from its small beginning toward its present development, when we behold it with its archbishop, its zealous and active secular clergy, its regular clergy, embracing Franciscans of the Observance and Capucins, Dominicans, Jesuits, Redemptorists, Priests of Mercy, Paulists; its various orders and congregations devoted to the instruction of youth, the care of the orphan, the foundling, the wayward and the erring, whom it shelters in its asylums, hospitals, and protectorates, with a Catholic Publication Society, and several publishing houses and journals.

This progress the _Brief Sketch_ of Bishop Bayley enables us to trace down to the year 1853, his duties as bishop depriving him of the leisure needed to collect and arrange materials to continue it to the present time, by including an account of the progress since the work originally appeared. But even then, as the title shows, it professed to treat rather of the earlier history than of that which is almost contemporaneous.

The early history of the Catholic Church on the island of New York is indeed an attractive and interesting theme. It opens with the romantic story of the early Jesuit missions; for of the visits of the Catholic navigators, Verazzani and Sebastian Gomez, we have too little detail to know whether a priest actually said mass on our island.

The first priest who is known to have set his foot on the island of Manhattan was an illustrious missionary, who, while on his way from Quebec to his mission ground on the upper lakes, was in 1643 taken by the Mohawks, tortured almost beyond the power of human endurance, spared to become the slave of savages, bearing their burdens in their winter hunts, in their fishing trips to Saratoga Lake and the Hudson, on their trading visits to the Dutch Fort Orange, where Albany now stands, bearing all, enduring all, with a soul ever wrapt in prayer and union with God, till at last the Dutch overcame his reluctance and saved him from the hands of his savage captors, as they were about to put him to death. Covered with wounds and bruises, mutilated, extenuated, scarce human in dress or outward form, such was Isaac Jogues, the first Catholic priest to enter our great city, then in its infancy, to meet with respect and kindness from the Dutch, with the reverence due to a martyr from the two Catholics, sole children of the ancient faith then in New Amsterdam.

The stay of this illustrious missionary was brief, and his ministry was limited to the confessional, his chapel and vestments having fallen into the hands of the Indians, and greedily seized as trophies.

Governor Kieft displayed great humanity in his care of the missionary, and seized the first opportunity to enable him to return to Europe. Panting for martyrdom, Father Jogues remained in his native land only to obtain needed dispensations and permission to return to his labors. On reaching Canada, he found peace almost made with the Mohawks, and, proceeding as envoy to their territory, concluded a treaty. He was invited to plant a mission among them, as his associates had done among their kindred, the Hurons. But when he returned to do so, prejudices had sprung up, a hatred of Christianity as something baneful had seized them, the missionary was arrested, treated as a prisoner, and in a few days put to death on the banks of Caughnawaga Creek, on the 18th of October, 1646.

The next priest known to have visited New York was the Italian Father Bressani, who underwent a similar course of suffering, was captured, tortured, enslaved, and ransomed by the kindly Dutch; and by them sent to France. Although he subsequently published a short account of the Huron missions, he is entirely silent as to New Amsterdam, and we know nothing in regard to any exercise of the ministry during his stay on our island.

The first priest who came here actually to extend his ministry to any Catholics in the place was the Jesuit Father Simon Le Moyne, the discoverer of the salt springs at Syracuse, and the successful founder of the Mohawk and Onondaga missions. His visit was repeated, and there would seem to be a probability that he may have actually offered the holy sacrifice. The real field of his labors, and those of his associates, was, however, the castles of the Five Nations of Iroquois, in which, for many years, regular Catholic chapels subsisted, winning many to the faith, and saving many by baptism in infancy or in fatal illness. The converts at last began to emigrate to Canada, where three villages of Catholic Iroquois still attest the power of the gospel as preached by the early missionaries. Political jealousies, infused by the English, gradually intensified the innate dislike of the pagans to Catholicity, and prejudice, debauchery, and penal laws at last drove the Catholic missionaries from a field in which they had labored with such courageous and unremitting zeal.

For years the only Catholic missionary in their territory was Father Milet, held at Oneida as a prisoner. Flying visits alone after this kept up the faith, and in 1709, Father Peter Mareuil, on the outbreak of war, retired to Albany, and the mission in the Iroquois country virtually closed. The later and tardy Protestant efforts were in a measure built on these early Catholic labors, and from Dellius to Zeisberger they gladly availed themselves of the pupils of the Jesuits to form their own instructions.

This Iroquois church has its martyr missionary Jogues; its martyred neophytes, who died at the hands of their countrymen rather than renounce Jesus to bow the knee to Aireskoi; and its holy virgin in Catharine Tehgahkwita, the Genevieve of New France. Then came the growth of mustard-seed in the Dutch colony. We hear of the freedom of worship achieved and established by the founders of the Dutch republic. It is indeed a favorite theme. Catholic and Protestant alike battled with Spain, and the blood of both won the liberty of the Seven United Provinces. Then as now Catholics formed nearly half the population of Holland. But as soon as freedom was obtained, the Protestants turned on the Catholics, who had fought by their sides, deprived them of civil rights, put their religion under a ban, expelled them from their ancient churches. In fact, they halted in their course of tyranny and oppression, only when fear dictated a little prudence.

The very church given to the English Puritans under Robinson, by the Dutch authorities, was the church of the Catholic Beguines, whose residences encircled the chapel of which Dutch laws deprived them, in order to give it to foreigners who reviled the creed that erected it and the worship of the Most High so long offered within its walls.

When New Netherland was colonized, this fierce intolerance of the dominant party in Holland excluded Catholics from the new settlement as rigorously as Puritan fanaticism banished them from the shores of New England. The Catholic Hollander could not emigrate to the new land. No worship was permitted but that of the Protestant church of Holland. It is well to talk of Dutch toleration, but it is the veriest myth ever concocted; and in New Netherland, though men were received who had denied Christ and been pirates on Salee rovers, Catholicity was excluded.

Gradually a few Catholics did creep into the colony. Father Jogues on his visit in 1643 found an Irishman and a Portuguese woman, forerunners of the four hundred thousand now on Manhattan Island. Le Moyne, as we have stated, subsequently visited the island, and a Dutch domine avers that he did so in order to give the consolations of religion to some Catholic sailors and residents; but the fanaticism of Holland was here, and as an illustration of the freedom of worship supposed to exist, we find that in 1658 a Catholic in Brooklyn was punished for objecting to support a Reformed minister.

By the reduction of New York, in 1664, to the English sway, restrictions were really if not explicitly removed. James, Duke of York, was a Catholic, and his province of New York was for a time governed by Colonel Thomas Dongan, also a Catholic. His character and career are known to our readers. Under his administration Catholic priests for the first time took up their residence on the island. Unfortunately, we have little more than the names of three clergymen and some indication of the period of their stay; though hostile notices tell us of one terrible crime they perpetrated--they actually did erect a "Jesuit colledge," and taught boys Latin. The King's Farm was assigned as the place for this institution of learning; but before Catholicity could take an enduring form, James II. was hurled from his throne for trying to make the Anglican bishops speak a little toleration. As has often happened, intolerance, with the banner-cry of "Liberty," became the order of the day. New York soon enjoyed the benefit of a governor of a true bigot stamp, grandson of one of the bloodiest butchers in the blood-stained annals of Ireland, Coote, Earl of Bellomont. He disgraced the colonial legislation with penal laws against Catholics, and characteristically lied in the preamble of his act. But he was a stanch Protestant, and had some curious dealings with Captain Kidd. The result of this change in New York affairs was that the King's Farm slipped into the hands of the Episcopalians, and they built Trinity Church on it. There is some squabbling now about this property; why not settle the matter amicably by devoting it to the object originally intended--"a Jesuit colledge"?

Under the harrying that began with Leisler's usurpation of authority in the province on the fall of James, and his mad brain full of plots and "diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel papists," such Catholics as had settled in New York seem gradually to have removed elsewhere; or, if they remained, reared families who were strangers to the faith.

Thus far Catholicity in New York had a strange history. Is it a dream? Fact first: Enlightened Dutch Protestants, champions of liberty of conscience, exclude Catholics, and when they creep in, tax them to support a church against the dictates of their conscience. Fact second: Enlightened English Protestants, after a great and glorious revolution, and of course full of toleration, passed penal laws subjecting Catholic priests to imprisonment for life with murderers and criminals. Fact third: Catholics during the brief period of their influence gave the colony a legislature, a bill of rights, freedom of worship to all Christians, and a college, and first attempted to elevate and christianize the negro slave. Bishop Bayley thus narrates one of these glorious works:

"The first act of the first assembly of New York convened by Colonel Dongan was the 'Charter of Liberty,' passed October 30th, 1683, which, among other things, declares that 'no person or persons which profess faith in God by Jesus Christ shall, at any time, be any ways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion, or matter of religious concernment, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the province; but that all and every such person or persons may, from time to time and at all times, freely have, and fully enjoy, his or their judgments or consciences in matters of religion, throughout all the province--they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance of others.' By another enactment, all denominations then in the province were secured in their liberty and discipline, and the like privilege was granted to others who might come into it."

For fifty years the history of Catholicity on New York island is a blank. A priest was occasionally brought in as a prisoner on some Spanish ship taken by a privateer; that is all. Catholics are scarcely alluded to. But an awakening came in 1741 in one of the wildest excitements in our annals. Catholics had, indeed, nothing to do with it, and for a long time no breath implicated the few Catholics with the supposed dangers, till a silly letter of General Oglethorpe put the idea into the heads of the New York authorities. Then the negro question and the Catholic question, which have so long alternately afforded a topic for sensation, and have at times been so oddly combined, met for the first time in New York annals.

Bishop Bayley thus describes the negro plot:

"The year 1741 was made memorable by one of those popular excitements which shows that whole communities as well as individuals are sometimes liable to lose their wits. Upon a rumor of a plot made by the negroes to burn the city and massacre the inhabitants, the whole body of the people were carried away by a sudden excitement. The lieutenant-governor offered a reward of one hundred pounds and full pardon to any free white person who would make known the author or authors of certain attempts to set fire to houses in various parts of the city. A servant-girl, named Mary Burton, living with a man named Hughson, who had been previously condemned for receiving stolen goods, came forward to claim the reward, declaring that certain negroes who frequented her master's house (he kept a small tavern) had made a plot; one of the accused, named Cuffee, she declared had said that 'a great many people had too much, and others too little,' and that such an unequal state of things should not continue long.[89] The pretended disclosures increased the excitement, and the lawyers of the city, to the number of seven, with the attorney-general, were called together to take council in regard to the matter. They certainly manifested very little coolness or judgment, and may be said to have led on the unfair and unjust trials which followed. The accused had no counsel allowed them; the attorney-general and the whole bar were on the side of the prosecution; the evidence was loose and inconclusive, and came without exception from the mouths of interested persons of bad character. Yet, upon such evidence as this, four white persons were hanged, eleven negroes were burned at the stake, eighteen hanged, and fifty were transported and sold, principally in the West Indies.[90] Among those hung was the unfortunate Mr. John Ury. Whether he was really a Catholic priest or not, he was certainly condemned and hung as such. We have no other evidence upon the matter than Horsmanden's account, and from this it does not clearly appear whether he was really a priest or a nonjuring clergyman of the Church of England.[91] The most conclusive fact in favor of his being a priest is founded upon the circumstance that, when arraigned as a priest, tried as a priest, and condemned as a priest, he never formally denied it, nor exhibited any evidence of his being ordained in the Church of England.[92]

"The persons most to blame were the judges and lawyers. The speech of the attorney-general on the trial of Ury, the sentence given by Horsmanden upon certain of the negroes, and that by the chief-justice on others, are so harsh, cruel, and abusive that we could hardly believe it possible that they had uttered them, if they were not published with the authority of Horsmanden himself. It is evident, however, that their 'holy horror of Popery' had as much to do with the whole matter as their fear of insurrection among the blacks."

Of course after this attack of insanity New York was scarcely a place for a Catholic to reside. There must have been a few; but evidently they avoided attracting attention. The next Catholic sensation was that of a poor creature whose life had been a sad defiance of all religion and morality, but who, at her death, sent some money to the Rev. Mr. Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, with a request that she should be buried in the church. She was indeed interred there, till a clamor rose fierce and loud. She was not only a public sinner but a Catholic; the latter, too terrible a sin to forgive, so she was taken up; but Mr. Inglis never recovered from the stigma.

Not long before the Revolution, the few Catholics in New York were again the object of the zeal of the Jesuit fathers, with whom so much of our history is connected. The mission of the sons of St. Ignatius, which in Maryland was coeval with the settlement of that colony, gradually extended to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, aided chiefly by the bequest of Sir John James. The mission was one involving some danger, and hence required great caution; but finally a Catholic priest stood in New York to begin to gather the faithful, and administer the sacraments of which they had been so long deprived. The priest who formed this first congregation, the nucleus of St. Peter's, and thus of all the Catholic institutions on the Island of Manhattan, was a German Jesuit, Father Ferdinand Steinmeyr, known on the American mission as Father Farmer. A man of extensive learning, not only in the theological studies of his church, but in the natural sciences, the Royal Society of London had been glad to add his name to their list of members. Here he would have been a fit associate for Colden, Franklin, and Barton, but the gratification of this taste would have made him too conspicuous in a prejudiced and hostile community; and the man of science submitted to be passed by without notice, anxious only to do his duty as a missionary, and gather the lost sheep of Israel. The reticence required unfortunately leaves us without any direct information as to his visits, and we do not positively know when or where this man, whose learning would have adorned the colony of New York, first offered the holy sacrifice for the pioneer congregation of Catholics in this city. Bishop Bayley has collected the various early notes and hints on this interesting point, but it is after all involved in great obscurity. Yet this founder of Catholicity in New York City lived so recently, that the writer, who can claim neither gray hairs nor advanced years, remembers several who had received the sacraments of the church at his hands.

Father Farmer came undoubtedly with the address of some German Catholic, and his visit would thus be less likely to attract attention, as German clergymen of various denominations often passed through the city. Mr. Idley, a German of the early day, claimed that mass was first said in his house in Wall street, and the claim may not be unfounded.

Father Farmer continued these occasional visits until the breaking out of hostilities with England. The defeat of Washington on Long Island threw New York into the hands of the English, and for the next seven years his pastoral visits became impossible.

So long as the colonial dependence prevailed, the British government stimulated anti-Catholic fanaticism, because while this spirit was fanned the colonies readily gave men and money to aid in the reduction of Canada. That French colony, after many fruitless attempts, at last fell under the combined efforts of the mother country and the colonies; but Canada, once reduced, became the object of sounder and more dispassionate statesmanship. By the surrender, the Canadians were guaranteed certain rights, as the Irish were by the treaty of Limerick. Protestant governments have never been over-scrupulous on such points, and it was as easy to break faith with the Canadians as with the Irish, but this time England was honest. The Catholic Church was left almost intact in Canada; nay, its clergy continued under British rule to gather tithes and receive certain traditional honors.

This was too much for the people of the older colonies to brook. They had not lavished blood and treasure for this. The very bigotry nurtured by English rule now turned against it. And what wonder, then, that the first standard of revolt reared in New York expressed this long-cherished feeling, this hatred of Catholics so long encouraged by government, what wonder that the flag of American freedom that first floated to the breeze in New York bore the motto, "No Popery"!

How little we can fathom the designs of the Almighty! Who looking on that flag could see in it the germ of a freedom of the church which she then nowhere out of the patrimony of St. Peter really possessed? Yet it was there. Down to the French alliance, this anti-Catholic feeling nerved the Whigs and discouraged the friends of British rule. Then it changed, and the Tory papers caught up every occasion to show how zealously Protestant the British party was. While the selectmen of Boston followed a Catholic procession through the streets, and Congress went to mass, the British authorities in New York are pointed out by a pamphleteer of the day as beyond reproach. They showed their anti-Catholic zeal in this way:

"In 1778, in the month of February, a large French ship was taken by the British, near the Chesapeake, and sent for condemnation into New York, at that time still in possession of the English. Among her officers was a priest, of the name of De la Motte, of the order of St. Augustine, who was chaplain of the vessel. Being permitted to go at large in the city, he was solicited by his countrymen, and by those of his own faith, to celebrate mass. Being advised of the existence of a prohibitory law, he applied to the commanding officer for permission, which was refused; but M. de la Motte, not knowing the language very well, mistook what was intended for a refusal as a permission, and accordingly celebrated mass. For this he was arrested, and kept in close confinement until exchanged. This was under Governor Tryon's administration."

Benedict Arnold--for even this precious worthy may come in as an illustration--when he sat down in New York in his uniform of a British brigadier, to write his address to his countrymen justifying the step which he had taken, and which we are accustomed to characterize by the ugly name of treason, made his strong anti-Catholic feeling justify his course. He had entered the movement as a thorough Protestant; but when Congress began to favor popery, he foresaw the ruin of his country, and as a true Protestant made his peace with England. Strong as the anti-Catholic feeling had been in the hearts of the colonists, we do not find that this appeal of Arnold to their prejudices induced a single man to desert the American ranks; it is far more likely that it may have sent some Irish soldiers from the British ranks to swell Washington's regiments.

We are apt to associate our republic with the idea of unbounded religious toleration. As we have shown, hostility to Catholics was a potent element in arousing the people to declare against Great Britain, and the State governments as originally framed bear deeply impressed the traces of that common feeling which once, in Lyons, proclaimed in one line free toleration in matters of religion, and in the next prohibited the mass under terrible penalties. If freedom was dreamed of, it was to be one which we were not to enjoy.

The anti-Catholic feeling that characterized the first national movement was displayed in the convention which in 1777 formed a constitution for the State of New York. There no less a personage than John Jay, subsequently minister to England and chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was the ardent, fiery advocate of intolerance. Catholics of New York owe a debt of gratitude to Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston for the manliness with which in that convention they fought the battle of human freedom and sought to check the onslaught of intolerance. But they failed. Under that constitution no Catholic could be naturalized, and the liberty of worship granted was couched in such terms as to justify the legislature at any time in crushing Catholicity, and in point of fact they at once adopted an iron-clad oath that effectually prevented any Catholic from holding office.

The _Brief Sketch_ gives the debates on the interesting questions before the convention; and it notes how, in that curious system of language so common with our public speakers and writers, this constitution found an advocate in the late polished Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, who praised it in an address before the New York Historical Society for its liberality in containing no provision repugnant to civil and religious toleration, as though laws excluding Catholics from citizenship and office were not slightly repugnant.

In point of fact, however, the hostile feeling of the earlier days was soon neutralized, and at the close of the war New York was virtually free to receive a Catholic Church.

How, then, Catholicity took root and grew under the protecting work of men who

"Builded better than they knew,"

how it has spread and done its work of struggle and triumph under the federal government, will be the matter of another article.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] _A Brief Sketch of the Early History of the Catholic Church on the Island of New York._ By the Rev. J. R. Bayley, Secretary to the Archbishop of New York. Second edition. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1869.

[89] The city of New York at this time contained about 12,000 inhabitants, of which one sixth, in all probability, were negro slaves. (Preface to second edition _Negro Plot_.) The foolish fears and prejudices of the inhabitants were not a little increased by a silly letter written to them at this time by the good-intentioned but visionary founder of the colony of Georgia, in which he warned them to be on their guard against Spanish spies and incendiaries, especially priests, whom he accused of having made a plot to burn the chief cities in the Northern colonies.

[90] Several of the negroes were Catholics. Horsmanden mentions that they held crucifixes in their hands and kissed them before they died. This act of faith and piety on the part of these poor victims of prejudice of course only served to confirm the enlightened inhabitants of Manhattan in the conviction that they had a very narrow escape from being delivered over body and soul to the pope. It is a curious circumstance that a law made against Catholic priests should have been enforced only once, and then resulted in the death of a Protestant clergyman.

[91] Campbell, in his _Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll_, has given a clear and able analysis of the trial and of the evidence, upon which he concludes that the unfortunate Ury was undoubtedly a priest. Horsmanden always speaks of him as "Ury the priest," in his history of the plot. It is my own opinion that he was a nonjuror.

[92] Smith, in his _History of New York_, vol. ii. p. 73, says "that Mr. Smith, his father, assisted at the request of the government on the trial against Ury, who asserted his innocence to the last. And when the ferments of the hour had subsided, and an opinion prevailed that the conspiracy extended no further than to create alarms for committing thefts with more ease, the fate of this man was lamented by some and regretted by many, and the proceedings against him generally condemned as harsh, if not cruel and unjust." Ury was the son of a former secretary of the South Sea Company. He was executed on an island in the Collect, near where the Halls of Justice now stand. "Hughson was executed on the south-east point of H. Rutgers's farm, on the East River, not ten rods from the south-east corner of Cherry and Catharine streets."--_Notes on New York in the Appendix to Watson's Notes on Philadelphia._

MATTERS RELATING TO THE COUNCIL.

The following items are condensed from a letter written to the _Correspondant_, and from other European periodicals.

Tribunes have been prepared in the chapel of SS. Processus and Martinus, where the council will be held for princes, or their ambassadors, who will be permitted to attend the sessions, without, however, enjoying the privileges conceded to them in former councils. It is in contemplation to cover the chapel with a roof of glass, in order to make the voices of the speakers more easily audible, as the chapel is equal in size to an ordinary cathedral. If this is not done, the ordinary sessions will have to be held in the great hall, where the mandatum is performed on Maunday-Thursday. It is probable that the public will not be admitted, even to the solemn sessions, although the doors leading into the basilica will be thrown open. The entire pavement of the chapel will be covered by the magnificent carpet presented by the King of Prussia. It is definitely decided that the council shall be called the First Council of the Vatican. The first stone of the monument of the council was laid on the 14th of October. It has been determined to admit the generals of orders and honorary abbots without jurisdiction to seats in the council. Two of the four legates who are to preside in the absence of the sovereign pontiff have been named, the Cardinals Bilio and De Reisach. The preliminary labors of the theologians have been completed, the commissions dissolved, and the results of their work have been formulated ready for presentation to the council. The Holy Father has declared that the most complete liberty of discussion will prevail, and that no decisions will be approved which have not been passed by a vote approaching to unanimity. Mgr. Gianelli, secretary of the permanent congregation of the council, has said that the session of the council will necessarily be a long one, on account of the great number of questions to be proposed for discussion. The mode of publishing the decisions has not yet been determined. Some propose that the official journal of Rome publish a daily _compte rendu_ of the acts of the session; others, that the _Civilta Cattolica_ be published more frequently, with an account of the debates and decrees; while others think that no publication will be made until the close of the council. The report that the Holy Father was displeased with the _mandement_ of the German bishops assembled at Fulda is contradicted. On the contrary, he was well satisfied with it, and a favorable notice of it has appeared in the _Civilta Cattolica_. It is reported that M. l'Abbé Freppel has been charged with an important commission in reference to those English Protestants who may be disposed to come to the council.

A superb history of the council, illustrated in the highest style of art, is to be published at Rome as a private enterprise, in six folio volumes. The first will contain the life of the sovereign pontiff, Pius IX.; the second, the biographies of the cardinals; the third will contain a description of all the grand functions and ceremonies which are celebrated at Rome; the fourth will contain a history of all the preceding councils; the fifth will contain the biographies of all the prelates who assist at the council; the sixth will contain the acts of the council. These volumes will contain a great number of lithographic portraits, and of chromo-lithographic illustrations of the places, scenes, costumes, etc.

All anxiety which may have been felt in regard to the disposition of the French Liberal Catholics toward the council is completely set at rest by the clear and emphatic declaration of their principal organ, the _Correspondant_, that they will submit most unreservedly and joyously to all its decisions, as expressing the infallible judgment of the church.

The Grand Master of the Free-Masons of France has published a circular calling an extraordinary convention of the order, to meet on the 8th of December, in order to issue a manifesto declaring the principles of universal human right. The Anti-Council of Free-Thinkers will also assemble at Naples on the same day.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

It was simply natural that the universal desire to hear and learn something concerning the approaching Oecumenical Council--a desire that with some meant anxiety for serious knowledge and with others mere idle curiosity--should be responded to by writers willing and able to gratify it. We should far transcend our prescribed limits were we to undertake to do more than give a list of works on the subject possessing the mere qualities of serious treatment and some degree of merit. Of a large class of works on the council whose object is to vulgarize the subject we of course make no mention. Not to speak of pamphlets without number, France and Germany have been most prolific in literary productions concerning the council. Indeed, in these two countries alone, books of solid erudition and elevated tone are so numerous as almost to form a special encyclopædia, treating of the council from the various stand-points of history, law, politics, social philosophy, liturgy, and theology. And now, scanning more narrowly the long list, we find ourselves obliged to pass over in silence many of them that present the subject simply as historical, doctrinal, or specially theological, and to confine our brief mention to those which distinguish themselves from the mere treatise by an exceptional style and tone that render them more spirited and militant. We begin with _La Société devant le Concile, par le Chanoine Martinet_. For the great majority of persons outside of the Catholic Church in England and the United States, the mere title of this work is in itself a surprise. They have been so absorbingly occupied in arraigning the council before society in general and before their own little societies in particular, that it never appears to have occurred to them that a counter-arraignment was among modern possibilities. They have busied themselves, and for that matter still busy themselves, in squaring the ability and jurisdiction of the church by what they are pleased to call the demands of modern society--the ideas of modern civilization; as though these demands and these ideas were so perfectly recognized, classified, and codified as to present a compact and intelligible system. And yet, if, going from one to another of the entire chorus so loudly chanting the hosannas of the assumed system, we ask what is this system, you will find that no two of them agree. If the Oecumenical Council were to commence its work by a decree that should meet the views of any given one out of a hundred of them, there would arise a shout of malediction from the other ninety-nine. Suppose the orthodox Episcopalian to be satisfied, the Unitarian would inevitably be discontented. And if the Socialist could with any reason approve of what was done, just so certainly it would not suit his Presbyterian neighbor. Thus, for instance, take the first fourteen articles of the so-called "Papal Syllabus," of December, 1864, and will any one undertake to point out the Protestant country in Europe or in America in which one half the community would not be at once arrayed against the other half on the question as to whether they are truth or error? People talk of modern civilization and the spirit of the age as though these expressions conveyed a clear and definite meaning, and represented certain ideas distinctly recognized as truth by all; as though this so-called spirit of the age were something as definite, as tangible, and of as efficacious an application as a code of civil law; and as though its practical working were one of truth and harmony; whereas, in reality, no incomprehensible jargon of words, no jumble of ideas, no jungle of thicket is so helplessly confused and impenetrable as the maze of struggling, confused, and contradictory theories supposed to constitute the spirit of the age and serve as the exponent of modern enlightenment. We are not aware that the author of the work before us takes this view of the matter; but it is one so irresistibly suggested to us by the juxtaposition of the two statements--society before the council, and the council before society, that we cannot avoid expressing it. The enemies of the church, whose fear of her and whose ignorance concerning her are equally great, have long announced that she is in her decline; and yet she is now about to affirm her existence by a movement of prodigious vitality--an oecumenical council. The council, pronounced impossible by a great number, will obtain its first success by showing the falsity of the asserted impossibility of the attention of the world. "The council," says the Abbé Martinet, "will do all that needs be done to classify and render coördinate without destroying, all those ideas whose want of unity distracts us, whose opposition, real or apparent, creates strife and destructive collision among social classes and nations. Not only will it place in the light grand principles, great truths, but it will show to all right-minded men universal Catholic truth, which, in enlightening and conciliating all truths, all principles, prevents them from degenerating into serious errors in theory, into great iniquities in application. Possessing the centre of lights that do not deceive, it will elevate the source of the vital forces which save individuals, families, and nations."

* * * * *

_Le Concile Oecumenique et la Situation Actuelle, par M. l'Abbé Christophe_, presents the main ideas of the preceding work, with more concision.

* * * * *

_L'Influence Sociale des Conciles_ is by M. Albert Du Boys, already known as the author of a meritorious work on jurisprudence.[93] The work now under consideration is a historical study in which the author describes the influence former councils have exercised upon the past. From a social point of view, the author shows that the councils have powerfully contributed to the enfranchisement and amelioration of humanity by victoriously combating the material and moral disorders of rude and barbarous ages, by their promotion of the foundation of hospitals and institutions of charity, by their denunciation of errors and superstitions injurious to public order or social well-being, by their gradual renunciation of clerical privileges and immunities whenever those immunities and privileges appeared to have become anomalous in a new social order. Showing that all the elements of modern civilization come to us from and through the church, the author concludes that the coming council will not be less inspired by the spirit of the gospel than the councils that have preceded it. The work is accompanied by a complimentary letter of the distinguished Bishop of Orleans, who says in it that the council assembles no less for the good of civil than of religious society.

FOOTNOTE:

[93] _Du Droit Criminel des Peuples Anciens et Modernes._

* * * * *

The _Lettre sur le Futur Concile Oecumenique_, by the Bishop of Orleans, a translation of which was given in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, has already reached its seventh edition. The immense notoriety acquired by this small book in the Catholic world, and the letter of felicitation received by its author from the sovereign pontiff, have made it so generally known as to dispense us from very special mention of it. Bishop Dupanloup thus assigns the council its place in the firmament of truth. "It will be," he says, "a rising, not a setting sun." Addressing himself to the human mind separated from the church, he says, "While you disperse, we unite; while you lose, we retain." And again, "In all this world, only the church and the sun are able to affirm positively that they will arise the next day, and this is what the church does in daring, amid the existing tumult, to announce a council."

* * * * *

_Le Concile Oecumenique, son Importance dans le Temps Présent_, is the title of a work equally well known in Germany and in France. It is translated from the German, and is from the pen of the Bishop of Mayence, Rt. Rev. Dr. Ketteler. He demonstrates, with his well-known learning and eloquence, than for eighteen centuries the infallible teaching of the church has had no eclipse.

* * * * *

Another work not less remarkable is by Monseigneur Deschamps, Archbishop of Malines, and entitled, _L'Infaillibilité et le Concile Général_. It discusses the question of the infallibility of the head of the church.

* * * * *

Finally, the Abbé Jaugey, in his _Petit Traité Théologique sur le Concile Oecumenique_, appears to have addressed himself to the class commonly known as "worldly people." In an easy and pleasant style he explains on this grave subject all that such people desire to know, and at the end of his work groups under five headings the subjects most likely to be passed upon by the council. These are,

First. Speculative truths, or the natural and supernatural orders and their mutual connection.

Second. Moral truths concerning civil society.

Third. Truths concerning marriage.

Fourth. Truths concerning the authority and the infallibility of popes.

Fifth. Truths concerning the rights of the church, and its relation to the state.

* * * * *

Catholic England has lately made a solid contribution to the historic-critical literature of the Pentateuch in _The Book of Moses, or the Pentateuch in its Authorship, Credibility, and Civilization_. By the Rev. W. Smith. Vol. I. London. 577 pages. It is highly spoken of by the best German biblical critics, and specially commended for its strength in the historical treatment of the subject.

* * * * *

Some two years since, Alfred Ritter von Arneth edited a volume of the correspondence between Maria Theresa and her daughter Marie Antoinette, and a collection of the letters of the unfortunate queen of France to her brothers Joseph and Leopold. Both these works were not only valuable contributions to history, but of the most touching interest to every class of readers. The same author has now published[94] at Vienna, the remarkable correspondence between Catharine, Empress of Russia, and Joseph II., Emperor of Austria. Better than the most eloquent essay or the most erudite history, these letters show us these two personages in the truest of colors, and they form edifying reading for any one not fully and blindly committed to the belief in the "right divine of kings to govern wrong." Under profound assurances of esteem and the most hyperbolical compliments, you see an utter absence of respect or of belief in the honesty, the one of the other. Each had his or her designs to accomplish--that is to say, the stealing of other people's land and the annihilation of other people's rights; the manner of the transaction proposed being similar to the disposal of a flock of sheep or the transfer of a turnip-field. Of their sincerity, take a single specimen. Joseph writes to Catharine, January 9th, 1781, and forwards the letter to his prime minister Kaunitz, with the following confidential note:

"MON CHER PRINCE: Voici ma lettre à l'impératrice; je vous prie d'y ajouter ou retrancher ce que vous voudrez, mais il faut savoir qu'on a à faire avec une femme qui ne se soucie que d'elle et plus de Russie que moi; ainsi il faut la chatouiller. Sa vanité est son idole; un bonheur enragé et l'hommage outré et à l'envie de toute l'Europe l'a gâtée. Il faut déjà hurler avec les loups: pourvu que le bien se fasse, il importe peu de la forme sous laquelle on l'obtient."[95]

Death could not wait for the fruition of most of their selfish combinations. Even at this day, nearly a century later, several important projects discussed between them have not yet received a solution.

FOOTNOTES:

[94] _Joseph II. und Catharine von Russland, ihr Briefwechsel._ Wien. 1869.

[95] "MY DEAR PRINCE: I send you my letter to the empress. Make such alterations in it as you please, bearing in mind that we have to do with a woman who cares only for herself, and more for Russia than for me. So then tickle her vanity which is her idol. An insane good luck and the exaggerated homage of all Europe have spoiled her. We must howl when others yell; provided good is effected, it matters little how or in what manner it is obtained."

* * * * *

An elaborate work on China is _France et Chine. Vie Publique et Privée des Chinois Anciens et Modernes, etc. etc._ Par M. O. Girard. 2 vols. 8vo. This is not a mere book of travels, but a work descriptive of the political, social, civil, military, and religious institutions of China, its philosophy, literature, science, and art. It appears to be the joint result of personal observation during a residence in the country, and of long and careful study of Chinese history and literature. Coming from an ecclesiastic, we might naturally expect to find a large portion of the book filled with accounts of the missions of the church in China. That subject, however, receives scarcely more than mere mention, the author evidently thinking that such information is already elsewhere accessible, and that it is now of more importance to make the country known in its more peculiar aspects. The book is too ambitious in its scope to be thorough, and we think it is to be regretted that the author did not rather give us an account of his residence (if residence he had) in China, grouping about facts and incidents as they arose the varied and extensive knowledge he appears to possess of the Flowery Kingdom.

* * * * *

In accordance with the desire of several American bishops of the Catholic Church, and under the auspices of the Bishop of Münster, (Westphalia,) the college of St. Maurice, near Münster, was founded in the spring of 1867, expressly for the education of theological students destined for the priesthood in missions of the United States. Not only young men from Germany but from America, enter the college, of whose course of studies the English language forms an important feature. The institution has already sent forth seven priests. Persons desiring special information concerning the institution, may address, "Rev. Mr. Witte, St. Maurice, Münster, Westphalia, Germany."

* * * * *

There has lately appeared at Venice a work[96] equally curious and interesting on Abyssinia, (Ethiopia,) or rather on its relations with the republic of Venice. It shows that centuries ago Abyssinia had reached as high a degree of civilization as Europe.

FOOTNOTE:

[96] _Lettera sulla cogniziani che i Vèneziani avevano dell' Abissinia, etc. etc._ 1869. 8vo.

* * * * *

On the occasion of the late centennial anniversary in honor of Macchiavelli, there was produced a singular literary work of his, hitherto entirely unknown.[97] It is a translation, made by Macchiavelli himself, of a work written by Saint Victor, Bishop of Utica, on the persecution of Christians in Africa, under the reign of Huneric, King of the Vandals, in the year 500.

FOOTNOTE:

[97] _Niccolo Macchiavelli ed il suo centenario, con una sua versione storica non mai publicata._

* * * * *

The question so familiar to all Americans some dozen years ago, Have we a Bourbon among us? is now practically asked in England,[98] and one Mr. Augustus Meves disputes the place claimed for the Rev. Eleazar Williams. For any one who has seriously examined the historical paradox involved in this question there can remain no doubt that the son of Louis XVI.--called Louis XVII.--died in Paris, and was buried in the cemetery of the church of St. Margaret, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, on the 10th of January, 1795. There can also be as little doubt that Messieurs Williams and Meves were, with more less sincerity, impostors.

FOOTNOTE:

[98] _The Authentic Historical Memoirs of Louis Charles, Prince Royal, Dauphin of France, second son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, etc. etc. The Memoirs written by the veritable Louis XVII., etc._ London. 8vo.

* * * * *

The great and justly celebrated work of the Chevalier Rossi on subterranean Rome has just been published in England in a translated abridgment.[99] It is a superb volume, beautifully and profusely illustrated. All that is essential in Rossi's work has been preserved in the present, and important additions made. The work is especially full and satisfactory concerning the frescoes of the catacombs, the transition from pagan art to Christian symbolism, the sarcophagi, the ceremonies of the primitive church, and other similar subjects. MM. Northcote and Brownlow establish irrefutably that the catacombs were never used as a burial-place for any but members of the Christian church, and moreover, conclusively show that the objections presented to this hypothesis will not bear examination.

FOOTNOTE:

[99] _Roma Sotterrenea._ Compiled from the Works of Commendatore Rossi. By J. S. Northcote, D.D., and Rev. W. Brownlow, M.A. London: Longman. 1 vol. 8vo.

* * * * *

M. Athanase Coquerel fils is well known as a preacher in one of the Protestant churches of Paris, and as the author of two or three works on literature and the fine arts. During the past year he delivered a series of lectures at Amsterdam, Strasburg, Rheims, and Paris, which, being revised and corrected, have lately appeared in a small volume under the title of _Rembrandt et l'Individualisme dans l'Art_. M. Coquerel is troubled--and very much troubled--by the superiority of Catholicity in art--is desirous of convincing the world that it labors under a mistake, and, if we will consent to look through M. Coquerel's spectacles, we will see that it is not only doubtful if Catholicity possesses the superiority so generally attributed to it, but rather certain than otherwise that Protestantism rightly claims it. Here are two of the processes by which M. Coquerel arrives at the results mentioned, and they are remarkable for their simplicity. First. Rembrandt was a great genius, and he owes his greatness to the liberal element, to the spirit of individualism of the reformation. Second. Leonardo da Vinci, says M. Coquerel, "was certainly great in the domain of art, and we cannot say that he was absolutely a stranger to Christian sentiment." Really, a very handsome admission on the part of M. Coquerel when we remember that da Vinci is the painter of the immortal "Last Supper." "But what is there in all this," continues our author, with an apparently serious countenance, "what is there in all this that is Catholic?--a Protestant would not have conceived the subject otherwise!" And here was the opportunity for M. Coquerel to mention the names of half a dozen or so of Protestant da Vincis; but, strange to say, he neglects it. The gentlemen referred to have thus far eluded public observation. One fact in connection with this subject is very suggestive. It is that the superiority of Catholicity in art may sometimes be disputed by Protestant ministers and controversialists, but by artists, never.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A LITTLE BOY'S STORY. (MÉMOIRES D'UN PETIT GARÇON.) By Julie Gouraud. Translated from the French by Howard Glyndon. With eighty-six illustrations from designs by Emile Bayard. New York: Published by Hurd & Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press. 1869.

This is a pleasant story for children; simple, full of real life, and the more interesting from being apparently written by one of themselves. It will interest American boys and girls to know how French children live, how they play and think and study. The illustrations are excellent, and will be a perfect delight to the little ones.

* * * * *

A MEMOIR ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE REV. PRINCE DEMETRIUS A. DE GALLITZIN, FOUNDER OF LORETTO AND CATHOLICITY IN CAMBRIA CO., PA.; APOSTLE OF THE ALLEGHANIES. By Very Reverend Thomas Heyden, of Bedford, Pennsylvania. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.

It is impossible that any one at all interested in the history of the faith in our country should fail to welcome the appearance of this memoir of the great and good priest Father Gallitzin. A Russian prince of high rank, baptized and educated as a child in the Greek schismatical church, he early became a convert to the Catholic faith. Though destined by his father, the Prince Demetrius, for the military service, Providence directed his steps to America, where he had scarcely landed when he felt himself urged, as he says, "to renounce all his schemes of pride and ambition, and to embrace the clerical profession for the benefit of the American mission."

Ordained priest by Bishop Carroll in 1795, he was sent as a missionary to labor single-handed in the immense district of country which now embraces the dioceses of Pittsburg, Erie, and Harrisburg. One can easily imagine the severe hardships and sacrifices that fell to his lot, and which were nobly sustained for forty-six years with that apostolic zeal which always and in every place distinguishes the Catholic missionary.

Amid the incessant labors and unrespited fatigues of his career he still found time to devote himself to literary pursuits. His _Defence of Catholic Principles_, and _Letter on the Holy Scriptures_, to-day so widely known, are clear, logical expositions of the Catholic faith surpassed by few controversialists. This little memoir of the learned, holy, and self-sacrificing priest needs no commendation from us to insure its extensive circulation among the Catholics of our country, while we would say to those who are not of us: Read here the life and character of a true priest, and the labors of a real, _bonâ-fide_ missionary.

* * * * *

CANTARIUM ROMANUM: PARS PRIMA: ORDINARIUM MISSÆ. Studio et sumptibus Monachorum Ord. S. Benedicti. Conv. St. Meinradi, Ind. 1869. Benziger Brothers. New York and Cincinnati. Harmonized edition.

We are sorry not to have had this volume before our eyes when called upon to notice the same work, in simple melody without accompaniment, issued some months ago. The harmonies enable us to interpret the movement, which alone we deemed ill regulated. We are aware that it is extremely difficult to express in musical notation the melodic movement of Gregorian chant, and that even the same phrase is dependent, as to the style of its execution, upon the spirit of the season or festival when it is sung. Pure Gregorian chant is not rhythmical in its measure, yet we think that a work intended for the use of our singers and organists, who, as a class, are utterly ignorant of its traditional expression, might very well be so arranged as to afford an approximative notion of it. The notation in this work does not make any such attempt, but gives a simple translation of the ancient Benedictine melody into semibreves and crotchets, without further direction. If sung rigidly according to the relative length of the notes as they are written, most certainly the singer would fail to give the true expression either of the Latin or of the melody in several phrases. A careful study would perhaps correct this in many instances. Since our reception of the book we have had the pleasure of hearing this chant rendered by one perfectly competent to give its true meaning, and must confess that it disarmed all adverse criticism. On principle we object to the introduction of the sensible note which prevails throughout, but do not wish to quarrel with those who, contrary to us, deem it only a matter of taste. Every organist would do well to procure and study this most praiseworthy contribution to the much to be desired reformation in our church music.

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GERMAN TALES. By Berthold Auerbach. With an introduction by C. C. Shackford. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

This volume, containing five short German tales, is a charming book, replete with life and spirit, full of beautiful descriptions of quaint German customs, and overspread with wise and gentle teachings that are "like apples of gold in pictures of silver."

Pure morals, kindliness, and heartfelt interest in the brotherhood of man breathe through these pages.

It is entirely free from that vein of self-conceit so visible in _Villa Eden_, by the same author, and the pages are not sullied by the infidel opinions which mar that volume; opinions "that have no sure, firm soil out of which they grow, but skip about like a 'will-o'-the-wisp' in the blue ether, very readily changing from transcendental to nonsensical." Indeed, we think these early German tales a great _improvement_ on his later works.

Auerbach displays a keen power of analyzing hearts and motives, bringing to light the hidden springs of action; and in these stories it is done with such kindliness and evident desire to look on the best side of human nature, that his searchings of the heart leave no sting.

The book is in excellent type and paper, and, being of the "Handy Volume Series," would make a most comfortable and pleasing travelling companion.

* * * * *

THE MYSTERIES OF THE OCEAN. Translated, edited, and enlarged from the French of Arthur Mangin, by the translator of _The Bird_. With one hundred and thirty illustrations by W. Freeman and I. Noël. London: T. Nelson & Sons, Paternoster Row; Edinburgh and New York. 1868.

M. Mangin has chosen a grand subject, and treated it in a masterly and comprehensive manner. He takes us back to the very beginning of Old Ocean, when "Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." These ages of chaos give him an opportunity of setting forth innumerable theories--enough to suit even the most scientific; and fancies enough to please the most imaginative. Here is his picture of the primeval ocean: "Imagination not unwillingly pictures to itself the strange and superb spectacle of a limitless ocean seething over its volcanic bed, and heaving in every direction its contending billows, kindled here and there by the blood-red lustre of a glowing sky, struggling through a dense and stifling mist; while in its waves myriads of invisible beings, embryos of future organisms fighting for life, and rising to the surface in quest of inspiring light, wait expectant, amidst the throes of the terrible stir and tumult all around them, the dawn of the true day upon a completed world." However, from the time that ocean becomes the ocean that we know it, he gives innumerable facts regarding its tides, circulation, convulsions, atmosphere, winds, and tempests. The living sea-weeds, the plant animals, the fishes of the ocean and even the sea-birds, are not forgotten in this study of the mysteries of the ocean.

The relations of man to the ocean are also treated of--navigation, whale and seal fishing, etc. Altogether the book is most interesting, is finely got up, and is fully illustrated with excellent engravings.

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ADVENTURES ON THE GREAT HUNTING GROUNDS OF THE WORLD. By Victor Meunier. Illustrated with twenty-two wood-cuts. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 297.

This is another volume of the interesting series of _Library of Wonders_, the object of which is to present to the reader a collection of well-authenticated facts illustrative of the nature, habits, and various modes of capturing some of the largest and fiercest of the animal world, and to describe some of the numerous adventures, terrible fights, and hairbreadth escapes to which the hunting of the animals has given rise.

* * * * *

THE DESERT WORLD. From the French of Arthur Mangin. Edited and enlarged, by the translator of _The Bird_. With 160 illustrations. London, Edinburgh, and New York: T. Nelson & Sons. 1869.

This is a companion book to the _Mysteries of the Ocean_, and the best notice we can give this elegantly printed and illustrated volume is to let the author, in his preface, speak for himself:

"The area of our present work would be very limited if we understood the word _desert_ in its more rigorous signification; for we should then have only to consider those desolate wildernesses which an inclement sky and a fertile soil seem to exclude for ever from man's dominion. But by a license which usage authorizes, we are able to attribute to this term a much more extended sense; and to call _deserts_ not only the sandy seas of Africa and Asia, the icy wastes of the poles, and the inaccessible crests of the great mountain-chain, but all the regions where man has not planted his regular communities or permanent abodes; where earth has never been appropriated, tilled, and subjected to cultivation; where nature has maintained her inviolability against the encroachments of human industry."

The author has made a most interesting and instructive work, one that can be read with much interest and profit. His description of the mountain regions of the world is especially good.

* * * * *

NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

A very good description of New York City. The illustrations of its churches, public and other buildings, are well executed, and the description of each must prove a valuable assistance to strangers visiting our city.

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AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC; OR, A MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE. By the Rev. Father Lacordaire. Member of the same Order, of the French Institute, etc. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay Street. 1869.

All that was mortal of the great Lacordaire sleeps in the grave; but men such as he are not born to die--they belong to all time; their spirit for ever lives and breathes in their works. His was the eloquence that possesses the true trumpet ring that stirs men's souls; even when read, it is powerful.

The work before us was first published in 1839. In a masterly manner it exposes the absurdity of liberty proscribing liberty; of giving license for all things save serving God in the most perfect manner, and according to the very _beau ideal_ of Christianity. Then, in a summary and graphic manner, it sketches the history, and points out the great names and the eminent services of one of the great bodies of the church militant--an order from whose ranks have been taken four popes, seventy cardinals, archbishops by hundreds, and bishops by thousands; which has produced theologians, artists, and architects who rank with the first; which has sent forth tens of thousands of missionaries, who have preached the Gospel in every language under the sun, and which has the glory of being able to point at the same time to Aquinas, the Corypheus of theologians, and to Las Casas, the slave of the enslaved Indians.

This book is especially _à propos_ at the present, when the dogs of the press, after scouring the world through years of famine and lack of popish horrors, have just dropped the sorry bone picked up four thousand miles away in Cracow, hungrily passed from mouth to mouth, and found, alas! to be in reality without a vestige of consolatory meat--dry bone, "and nothing more."

Let those who love "fair play" read this short defence of a religious order by the Bossuet of the nineteenth century.

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THE BOOK OF MOSES; OR, THE PENTATEUCH IN ITS AUTHORSHIP, CREDIBILITY, AND CIVILIZATION. By Rev. W. Smith, Ph.D. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society. (Second Notice.)

At the time of writing our first notice of the first volume of this great work, we had merely glanced at its contents, and were only able to give a first impression of its merit. Since that time we have read it carefully, and made use of it in giving a course of lectures to a theological class. We deem it, therefore, due to the author and to the interests of sacred science that we should express our deliberate judgment that it is a work of the highest erudition and merit. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is proved by the learned author with all the cogency and conclusiveness of a complete moral demonstration. Not only is it by far the best work on the subject in the English language, but it is admitted by Dr. Reusch, the learned editor of the Bonn _Litteratur Blatt_, to be equal to the best of the German treatises, and acknowledged by the _Katholik_ of Mayence to be superior to any of them. The latter periodical criticises Dr. Smith for the statement made by him that Moses imitated several things in the Egyptian sacred rites in his ritual laws. The critic admits the similarity between them, but asserts that Moses prescribed these rites by divine revelation. We venture to suggest that this is an irrelevant remark. The inspiration of the Divine Spirit may have directed him to imitate whatever was really excellent in Egyptian institutions, whether sacred or secular.

We hail this admirable work with the greatest joy, and await with anxious expectation the publication of the succeeding volumes. No professor of sacred science or student of the Holy Scriptures should be without it. Neologians and irrationalists are being crushed by the very science of criticism which they have so loudly vaunted as their own peculiar and irresistible engine of destruction for the overthrow of revelation. It is perhaps needless to add that Dr. Smith is a young, hitherto unknown priest of a small country mission in Wales.

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LANGE'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

This is one volume of a commentary on the Old and New Testament, prepared by several learned Protestant divines of Germany, and translated by competent scholars into English. It is esteemed among the orthodox Protestants as the ablest work of the kind which they possess. It is certainly far superior to the dull, old-fashioned commentaries which were formerly used to produce compression of the brain in their unfortunate readers. To a Catholic scholar the work may be useful in so far as it throws the light of patient German investigation on critical and historical questions. Its exposition of doctrine is chiefly interesting as showing the views at present prevailing among the sounder portion of Protestants, which we may add are a decided improvement on the original doctrines. In the volume on Genesis we were surprised to see two ridiculous statements dictated by anti-Catholic bigotry, one that a pope condemned the doctrine of the antipodes, the other that Cardinal Cullen denounced the Copernican system. This is not creditable to a professor in Bonn University.

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MORAL TALES. By Maria Edgeworth. With original designs by Darley. A new edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.

POPULAR TALES. By Maria Edgeworth. With original designs by Darley. A new edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.

THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT; OR, STORIES FOR CHILDREN. By Maria Edgeworth. A new illustrated edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.

These are new editions of what were in their day among the best known and most popular of books. They deserve to become well known and popular again. When Miss Edgeworth, at the beginning of the present century, commenced her series of novels, the public, says one of her later critics, "was surprised by novels which contained neither ruinous towers, terrible subterranean cells, nor mysterious veils, and in which the characters were neither peers nor foundlings." The works, too, were remarkable for their humane sympathies and their moral tendencies, as well as for their disregard of the materials out of which it was then the fashion to construct romances. The same writer mentions the fact that among the most ardent admirers of them was Sir Walter Scott, who avows that it was her humorous, tender, and admirable delineations of Irish character which prompted him to attempt similar portraitures of his own country.

We trust that the publishers will continue the series thus begun, and give us others of her numerous and excellent works.

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MINOR CHORDS. By Sophia May Eckley. London: Bell & Daldy. 1869.

The poems of Mrs. Eckley have received some very high encomiums from the British press, more flattering though no truer than what we ourselves are disposed to award them after a sufficiently careful perusal. They possess a pure, elevated tone, are deeply religious in sentiment, smooth in their rhythm, with here and there a rhyme a trifle too mechanical, yet abounding in evidences of poetic genius.

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MANUAL OF THE THIRD ORDER OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, CALLED ALSO THE ORDER OF PENANCE. 2 vols. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society.

This manual has been compiled in order to enable members of the Third Order of St. Francis to follow the precepts and the spirit of their rule. They are, we believe, quite numerous in this country, and many of them will be very glad, no doubt, to obtain this book, well calculated as it is for their instruction and edification.

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CASEINE: being Rural Meditations. By Joseph Fitzgerald, A.M. Cincinnati: John P. Walsh. 1869.

To those persons especially who have a leisure hour to while away in reading a pleasant, chatty book, we commend this volume with hearty good-will. The first paper, "Concerning Boys," abounds in sallies of wit, with a good deal of what we would call "wholesome thought." The author need not have given us an apology for its publication, as he does in his preface; but we think the one he offers deserves more than a favorable notice on account of its singularity. We reproduce it, therefore, in this place, hoping that many will purchase Father Fitzgerald's little work, not only because of its intrinsic merits, but with a view to thereby increase their own:

"I must build a church for a poor and sparse congregation, and I propose to get a portion of the necessary funds from the sale of my book.... I do not rush into print because I judge that these, my literary wares, of themselves and on their own merits, have any valid claim to acceptance; nor because I suppose that I have any thing novel or striking in point either of expression or matter to offer. Far from me be such presumptuous thoughts! In sending forth this little volume I do but, as it were, don my beggar's garb, and take my stand in public places, which any beggar may do without offence. It is by this view of the case alone that I justify my cause, which else would surely require an ampler apology. This consideration alone led me to address a circular to the reverend clergy which, I doubt not, was by many regarded as the height of impudence. Now, however, after this explanation, I hope I shall be pardoned my intrusion, and aided in a good work, in spite of my awkward presumption. I will say this, however, that I was encouraged to try this means of collecting money for my church by two considerations. The first was, the well-known generosity of the clergy as patrons of books; and then the novelty of the thing, which could hardly fail to get me some subscribers."

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THE FIRST CLASS BOOK OF HISTORY. Designed for pupils commencing the study of history. With questions. Adapted to the use of academies and schools. By M. J. Kerney, A.M., author of _Compendium of Ancient and Modern History, Columbian Arithmetic_, etc. etc. Twenty-third revised and enlarged edition. Enlarged by the addition of Lessons in Ancient History. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869. Pp. 396.

In this small volume we have an abridgment of the world's history, ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Commencing with the creation, it brings its well-digested record of events down even to the present day. We are positive that there has not been, and we are morally certain that there never will be an abridgment of history satisfactory to all. This being premised, we can safely assert that this little book is, of its class, as nearly perfect as is possible. While as a text-book this work has deservedly enjoyed a very large circulation in its previous editions, the present one has several additional and weighty claims to general approval. We are told in the preface "that the portion embracing sacred and ancient history has been, in a measure, rewritten. In modern history, the chapters on Greece and Switzerland, and portions of other chapters, are new, the whole being brought down to the present time. Errors and inaccuracies of whatever kind have been carefully rectified. Superfluities have been retrenched, and facts equally important to be known as those already stated, introduced." After a thorough and careful perusal of the book, we can fully indorse the above, and give the publishers our best wishes for its success, trusting with them that "it will now find its way into a still wider circle of institutions than those in which it has been heretofore known and appreciated."

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THE PATRIOT'S HISTORY OF IRELAND. By M. F. Cusack, author of _The Illustrated History of Ireland_. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1869. Pp. 320.

This _History of Ireland_ has been written in order to comply with a very generally expressed desire that the author of _The Illustrated History of Ireland_ would furnish a compendium of Irish history for the use of schools, and for the benefit of those who have not time to read a larger work.

The good sister has, we need hardly say, well performed her task, and literally left nothing to be desired. The book is very neatly got up, well illustrated, and sells at a low price. As the profits are entirely devoted to purposes of charity in Kenmare, Ireland, we earnestly hope for it an extended circulation.

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A TEXT-BOOK OF CHEMISTRY. A Modern and Systematic Explanation of the Elementary Principles of the Science. Adapted to use in high-schools and academies. By Leroy C. Cooley, A.M. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

This text-book lacks one important chapter, no attempt being made to explain the manner of preparing the necessary articles for successful experiments. The fundamental principles are well presented and clearly explained, while the carefully arranged nomenclature is all that can be desired in an elementary work. The series of illustrations are excellent. The book will be found useful to all teachers who wish to give their pupils a general knowledge of chemistry.

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FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS. Popular Edition. 2 vols. 12mo. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1869.

Of the literary merit of these sermons there can be no two opinions. It is also undeniable that there is much to admire in the character of the man, and much that is true and valuable in his discourses. There is too much of the poison of rationalism in them to make them profitable or even safe reading for any except well-instructed theologians. Clergymen will find them, however, valuable to themselves as models of style and of the art of sermonizing, especially in regard to the use to be made of the narratives of Scripture history, and the application of religious doctrine to the affairs of human life. The portrait of the author presents him before us as a man of strikingly handsome and prepossessing physiognomy, and accords perfectly with the idea we have formed of his manly character.

NOTE.

THE LIFE OF FATHER FABER.--We have received from Mr. Murphy a copy of this work, reviewed in our last number, printed on tinted paper, and very handsomely bound. It is one of the most tastefully and beautifully executed books which we have ever seen from the press of any American publisher, and we take occasion with the greatest pleasure to make this acknowledgment to Mr. Murphy of the favor he has conferred on us and the Catholic public in reproducing an edition of Father Bowden's excellent biography which is worthy of the gifted and beloved subject. The portrait of Father Faber is very fine, and adds much to the value of the book.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. X., No. 58.--JANUARY, 1870.

THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICITY.[100]

This work of serious and conscientious learning by the Abbé Martin, former curé of Ferney, noted as the residence of Voltaire when exiled from France, has been written mainly for the purpose of making known to Catholics of the old Catholic nations of Europe the real character and tendencies of contemporary Protestantism--a work not uncalled for, since those old Catholic populations, seldom coming into personal contact with Protestants, have not kept themselves well posted in the changes, developments, and transformations that Protestantism has undergone during the last two centuries, and are hardly able to recognize it in its present form, or to meet and combat it with success. The great controversial works of the seventeenth century, excellent as they were in their time, only imperfectly serve the present wants of Catholic polemics; for the dogmatic Protestantism they met and vanquished is, save in its spirit, not the Protestantism that now confronts the church. That primitive phase of Protestantism has passed away, never to reappear, and a new and a very different phase has been developed, which demands a new study and a new and different mode of treatment.

The learned Abbé Martin, favorably situated for his task, during several years, at the gate of Geneva, the Protestant Rome, has embodied in his volume the result of much serious and conscientious labor devoted to this new study, and has so well accomplished his task as to leave nothing to be desired, till Protestantism undergoes another metamorphosis, which it is not unlikely to do; for to assume new forms or shapes according to the exigencies of time and place, is of its very essence. For this reason, the labor of refuting or even explaining it can never be regarded as finished.

It is the characteristic of Protestantism to have no fixed and permanent character, except hatred of Catholicity. It has no principles, doctrines, or forms, which in order to be itself, it must always and everywhere maintain. It may be biblical and dogmatic, sentimental or sceptical, combine with absolutism or with the revolution, assert the divine right of kings and passive obedience with the old Anglican divines, or shout, _à bas les rois_, and _vive le peuple! vive liberté, égalité, et fraternité!_ with the old French Jacobins and contemporary Mazzinians and Garibaldians, as it finds it necessary to carry on its unending warfare against the church, without any change in its nature or loss of identity. It is not a specific error, but error in general, ready to assume any and every particular form that circumstances require or render convenient. It, like all error, stands on a movable and moving foundation; and to strike it we are obliged to strike not where it is, but where it will be when our blow can reach it. The abbé is well aware of this fact, and sees and feels the difficulty it creates. Hence he regards Protestantism as imperishable, and holds that our controversy with it must, under one form or another, continue as long as error or hostility to the church continues, which will be to the end of the world.

To those of us who were brought up Protestants, who have known Protestantism in all its forms by our own experience, the Abbé Martin tells little, perhaps nothing that had not previously in some form passed through our own minds, and not much that had not already been published among us by our own Catholic writers. It is not easy to tell an American Catholic any thing new of Protestantism. There is no country in the world where Protestantism is or can be so well studied as our own; for in no other country has it had so free a field for its development and transformations, or in which to prove what it really is and whither it goes. It has suffered here no restraint from connection with the state, and till quite recently the church has been too feeble with us to exert any appreciable influence on its course. It has had in the religious order every thing its own way, has followed its own internal law, and acted out its nature, without let or hinderance. Here it may, therefore, be seen and studied in its real character and essence.

But if the Abbé Martin has not told us much that we did not already know, or which American writers had not already published, he has given us a true and full account of the present aspects and tendencies of Protestantism throughout Europe, very instructive to those Catholics who have had no personal acquaintance with it, and not unprofitable even to those who, though converts to the church, were familiar with it only as seen in some one or two of the more aristocratic sects, in which large portions of Catholic tradition have been retained. We in fact wonder how a man who, like the abbé, has had no personal experience of Protestantism, who has never had any internal struggle with it, and has been brought up from infancy in the bosom of the church and in the Catholic faith, can by study and observation, by prayer and meditation, make himself so fully master of its real character, and come so thoroughly to understand its spirit, its internal laws and tendencies. No doubt one who has been a Protestant, and knows thoroughly its language, can find in his work proofs that Protestantism was not his mother tongue, and that he knows it only as he has learned it; but learned it he has, and knows it better than it is known by the most erudite and philosophical Protestant ministers themselves, and the Catholic reader may rely with full confidence on his expositions. The work is, in fact, an admirable supplement alike to Bossuet's _Variations_ and to Moehler's _Symbolik_.

It will startle some Catholics, no doubt, to hear the well-informed author assert, as he does, that Protestantism is not dead or dying, that it is imperishable, its principle is immortal, and never was it a more formidable enemy to the church than it is at this present moment; but they will be less startled when they learn what he means by Protestantism.

"Protestantism," he says, "differs essentially from all the heresies that have previously rent the bosom of the church. It is not a particular heresy, nor a union of heresies; it is simply a frame for the reception of errors. Vinet, one of the most distinguished Protestants of the day, softens, indeed, this expression, and says that 'Protestantism is less a religion than the place of a religion.' He would have been strictly exact, if he had said Protestantism is less a religion than the place of any negation of religion under a religious garb. It is a circle capable of indefinite extension, of being enlarged as occasion requires, so as to include any and every error within its circumference. A new error rises on the horizon, the circle extends further and takes it in. Its power of extension is limited only by its last denial, and is therefore practically illimitable. What it asserted in the beginning it was able to deny a century later; what it maintained a century ago it can reject now; and what it holds to-day it may discard to-morrow. It may deny indefinitely, and still be Protestantism. It can modify, change, metamorphose, turn and return itself without losing any thing of its identity. Grub, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly, it is transformed, but dies not." (Pp. 1, 2.)

All this is perfectly true. Protestantism undoubtedly differs essentially from all the particular heresies of former times, such as the Arian, Macedonian, Nestorian, Eutychian, Pelagian, etc.; but we think it bears many marks of affinity with ancient Gnosticism, of which it is perhaps the historical continuation and development. Gnosticism was not a particular or special heresy, denying a particular article, dogma, or proposition of faith. The Gnostics held themselves to be the enlightened Christians of their times, men who had attained to perfect science, been initiated into the sacred mysteries concealed from the vulgar, professed to be spiritual men, spiritually illuminated, and looked down with contempt on Catholics as remaining in the outer court, sensuous and ignorant, knowing nothing of the Spirit. This is no bad description of contemporary Protestants. They call themselves the enlightened portion of mankind, claim to be spiritual men, spiritually illumined and instructed in the profoundest mysteries of heaven and earth; while from the height of their science they look down on us Catholics as simply sensuous men, having only a sensuous worship, and hold us to be a degraded, ignorant, superstitious, and besotted race. We are very much disposed, for ourselves, to regard Protestantism as Gnosticism modified to suit the taste, the temper, the mental habits, and the capacity of modern times.

The author makes Protestantism not a special heresy, nor yet a union of heresies, but the receptacle of illimitable denials; yet he throughout distinguishes it from absolute unbelief in Christianity, and maintains that even as so distinguished it is imperishable, and its principle immortal. We confess that we do not see how he can make this distinction without giving to Protestantism a specific character and making it a positive heresy, and not simply a frame for the reception of heresy or heresies. Assuming it to be a positive heresy, and not the general spirit of error adapting itself to any and every form of error, his reasoning is far from satisfying us that it is imperishable. The assertion that "its principle is immortal," can in no case be accepted; for all error must ultimately die, and only truth survive, if our Lord is to overcome all his enemies, and God, who is truth itself, is to be all in all. It is not to be supposed that they who are eternally lost continue to err and to sin for ever. They know and confess the truth at last, and it is their severest hell that they know and confess it when it is too late for it to liberate them. Understanding Protestantism to be the general spirit of error, we can concede it to be imperishable, in the sense that the world is imperishable; for men will hate Christ and deny him as long as the world stands; but in no other sense are we prepared to concede it.

The author defines the essence of Protestantism to be hatred of the church, and yet throughout his book distinguishes it from absolute infidelity or unbelief. We do not see the propriety of this distinction, nor understand how he can consistently exclude from Protestantism any form of error that hatred may assume. He makes Protestantism not a particular, a specific heresy, but the frame in which any negation of religion under a religious garb may be set. We see no ground for this restriction, and it seems to us that it contradicts his own assertion that Protestantism is a circle capable of indefinite extension, and practically illimitable; for if the circle can include only the denials of religion that wear a religious garb, it is not illimitable, or capable of indefinite extension.

The learned abbé, we suspect, has been led into this real or apparent contradiction by neglecting to distinguish sharply between Protestants and Protestantism. Protestants are of all shades, from the Calvinist down to the unitarian or rationalist, from the high-churchman down to the no-churchman. The great majority of them retain some shreds of Christian belief, read the Bible, look to Christ as the redeemer of mankind, and are governed more or less in their opinions, sentiments, and conduct by Christian tradition. It would be a great mistake as well as gross injustice to represent all or even many of them as actually or intentionally unbelievers in Christ, or to hold them to be, in the way of error, any thing more than heretics. But Protestantism is not a form of heresy, is nothing in itself but hatred of Catholicity or hostility to the church of God; and there are no lengths in the way of denial it will not go, if necessary for its gratification. It is potentially absolute infidelity.

This seems to be in reality the abbé's own doctrine, and its truth is evident from the fact that the general tendency of Protestants is not toward Catholicity, but farther and farther from it. Individuals among them, in certain times and places, even in large numbers, manifest decided Catholic tendencies, and ultimately find their way back to the church; but whoever knows Protestants well, knows that the mass of them, if driven by Catholic polemics to choose between the church and the denial of Christianity, indeed, of all religion, will not choose the church. "If I can be saved only by becoming a Catholic, I do not wish to be saved," said a Protestant minister to us one day. "I would rather be damned than be a Catholic." We politely assured him he could have his choice. This minister expressed only the too common sentiment of Protestants. A certain number among them, when convinced that Catholicity and Christianity are identical, will, the grace of God moving and assisting, become Catholics; but every day's experience shows that the larger number of them love Christianity less than they hate Catholicity, and will become infidels sooner than they will become Catholics. In doing so, are they illogical? Do they reject Protestantism, or simply follow out its spirit to its last logical consequences?

The learned abbé restricts Protestantism to such negations as wear a religious garb. But with us, in what is called Free Religion, we have seen infidelity itself wearing the garb and speaking the language of religion. In France there are the positivists, real atheists, who clothe themselves with a religious vestment, adopt a ritual, and observe a regular worship. These, if the author insist on his restriction, must be included within the Protestant circle, and if these are included, it will be difficult to say what class of enemies of Christ and his church are to be excluded. We see no good reason, therefore, for any restriction in the case. Protestantism is made up of negations, without any affirmation or positive truth of its own; and no reason can be assigned why we should not hold it capable of including within its circumference, without loss of identity or essential alteration, any or all errors against the Catholic Church, and if as yet only heretical with the many, why it is not capable in its developments of becoming downright apostasy or complete denial of Christianity.

Taken in this sense, we admit that Protestantism is not dead, nor dying; but will continue to confront the church to the end of time. The church in this world is always the church militant. She will always have her enemies with whom she can never make peace so long as she remains faithful to her Lord. "Think not," said our Lord, "that I am come to send peace on the earth; nay, a sword, rather." The synagogue of Satan stands always over against the church of God, and the world will always hate the church as it hated our Lord himself; for she is not of the world as he was not of it. Yet we attach no great importance, if this be its meaning, to the proposition, "Protestantism is imperishable," which the Abbé Martin labors hard and at great length to sustain; for it is only saying in other words that hatred to the church will continue till the consummation of the world.

But if the proposition means that Protestantism under its original or even its present form, as held by the mass of Protestants, is imperishable, we can only say, nothing proves it to our satisfaction. That the essence of Protestantism, which the author defines to be hatred of Catholicity, will continue as long as the world stands we do not doubt; but nothing proves to us that it may not change its form in the future as it has done in the past, or that the great body of Protestants may not gradually eliminate all that they have thus far retained of Christian tradition or Christian belief, reject even the Christian name, and lapse into pure Gentilism, as they are already lapsing into carnal Judaism.

The abbé, while he is strictly correct when telling us what Protestantism is, that it is less a religion than the frame for the reception of all possible anti-Christian negations, yet seems in much of his reasoning with regard to its future to proceed as if he held Protestantism to be, not an immutable system indeed, but, after all, something definite and positive or affirmative. He knows as well as we do, and abundantly proves in his book, that Protestantism affirms nothing, contains as peculiar to itself no affirmative proposition whatever. The affirmative propositions held by Protestants are simply fragments of Catholic truth taught and held fast in their integrity by the church long ages before Luther and Calvin were born, and constitute no part of Protestantism. The Protestantism is all in the perversion, corruption, or denial of Catholic truth. There is nothing in it of its own but its negations and hatred of the church, her faith, her discipline, and her worship, to be continued, or that can be the subject of any predicate. Protestantism receives into its bosom one form of error as readily as another, and complete unbelief as the inchoate apostasy called heresy, though we readily grant that the majority of Protestants are not, as yet, prepared to accept infidelity pure and simple; and many of them, we trust, are, in their intentions and dispositions, prepared to accept and obey the truth when made known to them, and may yet in God's gracious providence find their way into the Catholic communion and be saved.

The Reformers, or the fathers of the modern Protestant movement, did not intend to give up Christianity or the church. They thought they could reject the papacy and the sacerdotal order, and still retain the Christian faith and the Christian church. But they were not slow to discover that this was impracticable, and that, if they gave up the papacy and the sacerdotal order, they must give up the sacraments, save as unmeaning rites, infused grace, the merit of good works, the church as a living organism, the whole Mediatorial work of Christ in our actual regeneration, and fall back on immediatism, and deny all living or present Mediator between God and man. Their successors have found out that an irresistible logic carries them farther still, and requires them to reject all creeds and dogmas as superfluous, to resolve faith into confidence, and to rely solely on the immediate internal illumination and operations of the Holy Ghost. A new generation is beginning to discover that even this is too much, and is preparing to attribute to nature and the soul what its predecessors had attributed to the immediate supernatural operations of the Spirit. There is but one step farther, and you have reached the goal, that of resolving God himself into the human soul, or the identification of God with man and man with God, and not a few have already taken it.

Protestant experience has proved that the Catholic system is homogeneous, self-consistent, all of a piece, so to speak; woven without seam, and not to be parted; that it must either be accepted or rejected as a whole. We do not say that all or the majority of Protestants see this; but many of them see it, and their vanguard loudly proclaim it, and declare the issue to be, Catholicity or rationalism, that is, naturalism. There is no middle ground tenable, to a logical mind with a courage equal to its logic, between the two. It must be either the church or the world, Catholicity or naturalism, God or atheism. We know great bodies move slow, and the great body of Protestants will not come to a full conviction of this to-day nor to-morrow; but they are tending to it, and can hardly fail, in the natural course of things, one day to reach it. Having reached it, we think the sincere and earnest Protestants, who love and study the Bible and mean to be Christians, will be gathered into the Catholic fold, and the others most likely, other things remaining as they are, will follow their Protestant spirit into naturalism, and give up Christian baptism and Christian faith altogether.

The author tells us that there are two very obvious tendencies among Protestants: the one a tendency to return to the church, and the other a tendency to rationalism and complete infidelity; but he thinks there will always remain in the non-Catholic body a certain number of honest, pious souls who shrink from unbelief, and yet, while they hold on to certain shreds of Christianity, will, from ignorance, prejudice, and other causes, continue to protest against the Catholic faith. He supposes that among Protestants there are large numbers of such persons, who really believe in Jesus Christ, who really love his religion as far as they know it, who have real Christian piety, and actually believe themselves to be true Christians in faith and practice. These, he contends, preserve to Protestantism a certain religious and Christian character, and will prevent it from ever lapsing into complete unbelief and irreligion. They will always insist on some form of Christianity; and whatever the form they adopt, it will be Protestantism. He may be right; but we think, in discussing the future of Protestantism, he makes too much account of these pious persons; for if as well disposed as he assumes them to be, they can hardly fail, as time goes on and the real character of the Reformation becomes more and more manifest, to follow out their Christian tendency, and return to the communion of the Catholic Church.

Looking at the two tendencies among Protestants, studying them as thoroughly as we are able, and considering especially the essential nature of Protestantism, together with what we may call the logic of error--for error as well as truth has its logic--we think Protestantism as pretending to be Christian will, as we have said, finally disappear, and prove itself practically, as it is logically, the total rejection of the Christian religion, and therefore of Christ himself. In point of fact, Protestantism in its spirit and essence, as the author shows beyond contradiction, is only the revival under a modern form of the great Gentile Apostasy that followed the building of the Tower of Babel, and must, if it run its course, lapse either into no-religion, as it has already done with our modern scientists, or into demon-worship and gross idolatry and superstition, as it is actually doing with modern spiritists right under our eyes. We look, as we have already intimated, for a separation of the wheat from the chaff, and believe the time will come when the real issue will be made up, and the battle we must wage be not with heresy, but with undisguised and unmitigated infidelity, rationalism, naturalism, or pure secularism.

We cannot give a complete analysis of the Abbé Martin's work; for it is itself little else than an analysis. But an interesting and important portion of it is devoted to the Protestant revival and propaganda, beginning in the latter half of the last century, and continued so vigorously in the present. Protestantism, seeking from the first the aid and protection of the princes, soon assumed in each country that adopted it the form and state of a national religious establishment, defended and governed by the secular power. Having no true spiritual life within, and defended without and provided for by the government, it fell, as soon as the religious wars occasioned by its origin had subsided, into a state of torpor, and the people under it fell almost universally into a religious somnolence. The establishment was sustained even with rigor, but personal religion was generally unknown or disregarded. Some individuals, seeing this, applied themselves to awaken in the torpid masses a personal interest in religion. From them began a religious revival, or a movement in behalf of personal religion, known in Germany as Pietism, in Great Britain and elsewhere as Methodism, which holds principally from John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Lady Huntington. This revival, which has done much to increase individualism, and to weaken the influence of dogma and church principles, and which has developed a species of evangelical illuminism resulting in a sort of infidel illuminism, as seen in our American transcendentalists and free religionists, has, upon the whole, the author thinks, injured more than it has advanced Protestantism. Such, we are sure, has been the fact in this country, unless we identify Protestantism with pure unbelief and indifference. Not one fourth of those assumed to be "hopefully converted" in revival seasons stay converted, while the backsliders are worse Christians, and those who remain pious are no better Protestants, than they were before their conversion.

The revival has, however, given birth to a vigorous propaganda in pagan and Catholic countries, and even in Protestant countries themselves, by means of Bible societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies, supported on a large scale and with apparently inexhaustible means. The author discusses this Protestant propaganda in relation to infidel nations; to mixed nations, or nations composed of Protestants and Catholics; and finally to old Catholic nations. In infidel or pagan nations he maintains that it has thus far been null. He maintains also that in all those Protestant nations, or nations in which Protestantism became the established church, but in which some remnants of the old Catholic population still remained and adhered to the Catholic faith and worship, the propaganda has, upon the whole, proved a failure, and in nearly all of them Catholicity has gained, and is still gaining, on Protestantism. This, counting from the date of the institution of the Protestant foreign and home missions in the beginning of the present century, is certainly true in Great Britain and Ireland, in Holland, Switzerland, especially in Sweden and Norway, and in this country; though the principal gains in England, Scotland, and the United States are due to the immigration of Catholics from countries under Protestant governments, or governments not friendly to the church. In the United States we are almost wholly indebted for the astonishing growth of the church to the migration hither of Catholics from Ireland and Germany. We have numerous conversions, indeed; but they form hardly an appreciable element in our entire Catholic population. In the English-speaking world there have been many conversions from the upper classes and from the ranks of the Protestant ministry, especially of the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal communions; but very little impression is as yet made on the middle and lower classes, who must be converted before much progress is made in the conversion of a nation. We have certainly gained ground in Protestant nations, but probably not much more than we have lost in old Catholic nations.

While the Protestant propaganda has failed with infidel or pagan nations, and with the Catholic populations of Protestant nations, the author maintains that, allied with rationalism and the revolution, it has not been wholly unsuccessful in old Catholic nations, as France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Hungary. It is, he maintains, "worse than idle" to pretend that Protestant missions in these nations are wholly barren of results, or have met with only insignificant success. Their success has been considerable, not perhaps in making Protestants, but in unmaking Catholics. Their missions are generally favored by the press, by the higher literature, and by the governments, which, even though nominally Catholic, are always jealous of the church, and ever encroaching on her rights and restraining her freedom.

The success of the Protestant propaganda in these old Catholic nations, the author thinks, is due to the reputation Protestant nations have of surpassing Catholic nations in material well-being; of having founded civil and religious liberty; and chiefly to the unpopularity of the clergy, the supineness of Catholics, and the ignorance of the Catholic clergy of the real character of contemporary Protestantism. All these causes no doubt are operative; but the real cause, we apprehend, is to be sought in the ascendency acquired by the world in the fifteenth century, and which has invaded Catholic nations hardly less successfully than Protestant nations. Protestantism is the child of this ascendency, and its legitimate tendency is to place the world above heaven, and man above God; or the complete supremacy of the secular over the spiritual.

In its origin Protestantism seemed to be an exaggerated supernaturalism, denying to the natural all moral ability since the fall, and consequently assigning to the human will no active part in the work of justification or sanctification. But extremes meet; and the exaggerated supernaturalism in relation to the world to come proved to be only an exaggerated naturalism in relation to this world. To deny all activity of the natural in the work of sanctity is only emancipating the natural from the supernatural, from the moral law, and leaving it therefore free from all moral accountability, to follow without restraint its own inclinations and tendencies; for what is incapable of meriting is necessarily incapable of sinning. As the affections of the natural fasten on this world and the goods of this life, Protestantism soon lost practically all sense of the divine, as it is now rapidly losing it theoretically, and turned the whole activity of the nations that embraced it to the cultivation of the material order and the acquisition of material goods, leaving the spiritual order behind as a popish superstition, or an invention of priestcraft for enslaving the soul and restraining the natural freedom of mankind.

The spirit that generated and operates in Protestantism, and which its doctrine of free or sovereign grace only fortifies, is, in fact, only the old heathen spirit that seeks only the goods of this life, and so pointedly condemned by Christianity. It reverses the word of our Lord, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you;" and says, "Seek first these things--the goods of this life--and the kingdom of God and his justice shall be added; if, indeed, such kingdom or justice there be." This spirit was not originated by the Reformation. It had preceded it. It had originated the great Gentile Apostasy, and caused the carnal Jews to misinterpret the prophecies and to expect in the promised Messiah a temporal prince instead of a spiritual redeemer and regenerator. It had even entered the garden and induced the fall of our first parents. It has always subsisted in the world; nay, is what St. Augustine called the City of the World as opposed to the City of God, and which had its type and representative in the Roman republic and empire. It is the purely secular spirit emancipated from the spiritual, and substituting itself for it.

This spirit is everywhere warred against by Christianity, therefore by Catholicity; and during the temporal calamities of the barbarous and middle ages was held in check by the church; but the advancement of political and social order, the progress of well-being, the revival of pagan literature and art, the opening of new or long disused routes of commerce, and the discovery, in the fifteenth century, of a new continent with its untold treasures, gave new force and activity to the pagan spirit, and enabled it to pervade and take possession of the governments, never very submissive to the church, of the emperor, of kings, princes, and nobles, and, in general, of the upper classes of European society. Christendom was well prepared at the opening of the sixteenth century for a revival of Gentilism, which found able and magnificent supporters in the Medici of Florence, so dear to modern uncatholic scholars, but so fatal in their influence on Catholic interests.

With the revival of Gentilism or secularism there came the revival of the quarrel of pagan times between Germany and Rome; and Luther's movement derived its chief strength from its appeal to the old German hatred of Roman domination, represented in the fifteenth century, it was assumed, in part by the pope, and in part by the emperor, who pretended to revive the old Roman empire and to succeed to the Roman Cæsars of the West. The Germanic nations, never thoroughly Romanized, rebelled against the church, not because the secular spirit was more or less rampant with them than with the Romanic nations that remained Catholic, but because the centre of her authority was the old hated city of Rome; and they looked upon her authority as Roman, and incompatible with their own national independence. Nothing is farther from the truth than to suppose that they were moved by a desire to emancipate the human mind from its pretended thraldom under the pope, or to establish free inquiry and the liberty of private judgment; for they yielded from the first to the secular or national sovereign all the authority in spirituals which had been previously exercised by the Roman pontiff. Wherever Protestantism gained a political status, the two powers, as under paganism--unless we except Geneva, Scotland, and, subsequently, New England--were united in the secular sovereign or the state. Calvin in Geneva, Knox in Scotland, and the Puritans in New England, though they sought to unite the two powers in the same governing body, sought to unite them in the hands of the church rather than of the state, in consequence of their misinterpretation of the Hebrew commonwealth, which, in fact, gave us the first example in history of the separation of the two powers, the sacerdotal and the secular, always asserted and insisted on by the Catholic Church.

The real character of the Protestant movement was a movement in behalf of nationalism--the distinctive feature of Gentilism--revived by the insurgent worldly spirit. The church herself, in the nations that adhered to her, was defended against the so-called Reformation, except by the theologians, not on Catholic principles, but on national principles; and hence the secular authority sought constantly to exercise a supervision over the church, and, as far as possible, to convert her into a national church. The so-called Catholic governments did not differ in principle from the Protestant governments, and have never done so since. They protected the church, to a certain extent, from recognized heresies, and provided for the pomp and splendor of her worship; but restrained in every possible way her full freedom of action, and compelled her to yield to their respective national policies in order to avoid a greater evil. The church could not fully instruct the people in any Catholic nation in the principles which should govern the relations of church and state without incurring the persecution of her pretended protectors. Hence, there grew up in all Catholic nations a false view of those relations, which greatly weakened the church and aided the growth of the secular spirit. Catholicity, having been supported, not as Catholic but as a national religion, by Catholic governments and their courtiers, we find now, when the governments cease to defend it even as a national religion, and are more hostile than friendly to the church, that the Catholic populations of old Catholic nations, never allowed by the secular authority to be fully instructed in the secular relations of their religion, and never accustomed to act personally in the intellectual defence of their faith, incrusted over with the secularism encouraged by their governments, are almost universally unarmed and defenceless before the Protestant propaganda, having in its favor the prestige of the worldly power and supposed well-being of Protestant nations, and of the championship of civil and religious liberty.

Here, we apprehend, is the real secret of the success of Protestant missions in old Catholic nations; not in the ignorance of the Catholic clergy of the real character of contemporary Protestantism, as the Abbé Martin maintains. He shows, perhaps exaggerates, the danger which the church runs in these old Catholic nations, and admits that it is becoming apparent, if not to all, at least to many of the clergy, and asks,

"How could it be otherwise with the French clergy, so learned, so pious, so vigilant, and so zealous? They are preparing themselves for the struggle; they proceed to the battle with the energy of faith; they lack not ability; but they _lack a knowledge of contemporary Protestantism_. If they would struggle with success, if they would revive the glorious days of the Catholic apologetic of the seventeenth century, or rather, if they would create a new apologetic in harmony with the wants and errors of the times, they must study Protestantism in its latest evolutions and in its actual physiognomy." (Pp. 178, 179.)

No doubt there is more or less ignorance even among the French clergy as to the various phases and wiles of Protestantism, and which their text-books will hardly help them to dissipate; but what seems to us to stand most in their way is precisely their need of studying Catholic theology more thoroughly in its relations to human reason and the secular order--a study they could hardly prosecute under what are facetiously termed "the Gallican liberties;" that is, liberties of the government to enslave the church. No man who has learned Catholic theology as catholic instead of national, who has learned that the church represents on earth the spiritual order, and has the freedom and courage to maintain that the spiritual is superior to the temporal, is, in fact, the end for which the temporal exists, and therefore that which prescribes to the temporal its law, can ever be at a loss to understand or to know how to meet Protestantism the moment he sees it, whatever the particular phase it may exhibit. Protestantism is not and never was any thing but a series of negations, and all the advantage it has ever had or ever will have over Catholics is precisely in their ignorance of the real or intrinsic relation of the Catholic doctrine or doctrines it denies to the whole body of Catholic truth.

Protestantism, the author himself sees, is simply revived paganism; but what he does not see is, that the state in all European nations has always been pagan, and never in its principle or constitution been truly Christian. Our own political constitution may be very imperfect, may be destined to a speedy end; but it is the first and only instance in history of a political constitution based on Christian principles; that is, on the recognition of the independence of religion and the supremacy of the spiritual order. It recognizes, in our modern phrase, the inalienable rights of man as its basis; but what the American statesman calls the rights of man are, in reality, the rights of God, which every human authority must hold sacred and inviolable. We pretend not that the American people or American statesmen fully understand or adhere practically to the American constitution, or that they ever will till they become Catholics and understand, as comparatively few Catholics even now do, the principles of their church in their political and social applications. Nevertheless, the constitution is based on the independence and supremacy of the spiritual order, which the secular order must always and everywhere recognize, respect, and defend. This is in direct contradiction of the principle of the pagan republic, which asserts the independence and supremacy of the state alike in temporals and spirituals.

But this pagan principle of the supremacy of the state has always been the basis of the European public law, and the church, though she has always maintained the contrary, has always been held in the civil jurisprudence to have only the rights accorded her by the civil government. This has always been the doctrine alike of the Civil Law and the Common Law courts, always rigidly enforced by the French parliaments, and not seldom yielded by courtly prelates afraid, as in England, of the statute of _præmunire_. There have been individual sovereigns who personally understood and yielded the church her rights; but their lawyers never recognized them save as grants or concessions by the prince. Hence the interminable quarrel of the legists and the canonists, and the sad spectacle of the bishops of a nation not seldom deserting almost in a body the supreme pontiff in his deadly struggle with their civil tyrants in defence of their own rights, and the freedom and independence of the spiritual order. Hence, too, we see Italian statesmen, while pretending to acknowledge and confirm religious liberty, confiscating the goods of the church, and prescribing in the name of the state the conditions on which the bishops of the church will be permitted to exercise their pastoral functions. Hence it is, also, that we have seen pious and devout Catholics defend the revolution and preach political atheism in one breath, and the most rigid orthodoxy in another.

With all deference to M. l'Abbé Martin, we must think that what is wanting in the Catholic populations of old Catholic countries in order to resist the Protestant propaganda, is not so much a better knowledge of Protestantism, as a more thorough knowledge of their own faith, and of Catholic principles themselves, in relation to one another and to the secular order--a knowledge which has been hindered, and to a great extent prevented, by the paganism of the state, which has disabled the church from freely and fully giving it. Happily, the European governments by ceasing to be protectors of the church have in great measure lost the power, if not to afflict and persecute, at least to enslave her. The bishops, with only here and there an exception, no longer take the side of Cæsar against Peter, and see that their interests and those of the church can be saved only by the strictest union with and submission to the supreme pastor, the vicar of Christ. The supreme pastor himself, without consulting earthly potentates or conferring with flesh and blood, has pronounced in his Encyclical and Syllabus, a rigorous judgment on political atheism and paganism in modern society, and set forth the Catholic principles in which the faithful need to be instructed in order to resist the Protestant propaganda, supported by rationalism and the revolution. He has asserted the independence and freedom of the church in convoking by his own authority, almost in defiance of the secular powers, an oecumenical council, to be held in his own palace of the Vatican, in which the universal church, aided by the Holy Ghost, will, we presume, deliberate and pronounce upon the errors of the times, and indicate the means of arresting the evils that now so grievously afflict society, both spiritual and secular. Hereafter, we may hope, the faithful, cost what it may, will be more thoroughly instructed as to the relations of the two powers, and of faith to reason and civil society, so that an end will be put to the progress in Catholic nations of Protestantism, rationalism, and political atheism.

The Abbé Martin succeeds better in describing Protestantism as it is, and in setting forth the danger it threatens, than in pointing out the remedy to be applied by Catholics, or in assigning the causes of the defects he finds or thinks he finds among them. He does not see that these defects, in so far as general, are almost wholly due to the pagan constitution of the state, which has survived the downfall of pagan Rome, and to the fact that the church has never yet in the Old World had her full freedom and independence, but has always been more or less restrained in her action by the jealousy or hostility of the state. The lack of individual energy and self-reliance of Catholics in asserting and defending the rights of the church, which the abbé deplores, has its origin in the restraint imposed by the civil authority on the freedom of the church.

"Catholics," he says, "relying on authority, full of confidence in its unfailing promises, are quite ready to think that it is enough for them to preserve the faith in their hearts, and to perform its works, while the defence and preservation of the church is the care of Providence. This sentiment, very commendable, no doubt, is yet, when not joined to a masculine energy which counts no sacrifices, if needed, in sustaining the work of God, only an enervating sloth. Catholics--may I say it?--need the activity of individual forces, not, indeed, of that excessive individualism which, puffed up by pride, drives the Protestant over the dark waves of doubt, but that Christian individualism which, accepting by conviction the compass of authority, knows how to employ all its personal forces in its service. This individualism, Protestants reproach us with lacking; let us prove to them the contrary, and show that individual action is quite as powerful and far more productive, when it is well balanced, measured, and subjected to wise rules, as when it wanders without law or discipline, and acts only under the varying impulses of free inquiry. It is, moreover, necessary to enter into this way; for the time has come for Catholics to understand that they can henceforth nowhere on earth count on any support but from God and themselves." (Pp. 175, 176.)

The author adds that Catholics, not only nominal but even many practical Catholics, lack the individual energy that

"springs from profound faith, the faith which goes to the marrow, and enters even the centre of the soul, and radiates from it in earnest convictions over all religious practices, over the entire life, giving to them their true sense and to it the right direction and end. Protestants accuse our church of materialism in her worship....

"The charge is false when applied to the church and her worship, but is only too true when applied to her members. Hence the painful inconsistencies in their conduct. They are Catholics in the church, Catholics in essential religious practices, sometimes even in works of supererogation, but are elsewhere and in other matters hardly Christians. The _petit devotion_ is sterile; manly, robust piety alone is productive, and it is it alone that we must labor to diffuse. We should seek to make it enter into souls and become fused with their very substance. Catholic worship is the most admirable vehicle of the spirit of life; but souls must comprehend it, and be instructed to draw the spirit of life from it." (Pp. 176, 177.)

There is no doubt truth in this, and with but too many Catholics their religion is little more in practice than a lifeless form; but this, so far as due to the clergy, is due rather to their want of earnestness and zeal, which the author says they do not lack, than to their ignorance of contemporary Protestantism. We pay little heed to the reproaches of Protestants, more likely to mislead than to instruct Catholics; but we are quite willing to concede that in old Catholic nations there may be a want among Catholics of the sort of individual energy defined and demanded by the author; but, in the first place, we are disposed to think that his long study of Protestantism, which is based on individualism, and his observation of the part played by what Protestants call personal religion, have led him to overrate the importance of this outward individual zeal and energy in the church; and in the second place, he seems not to have sufficiently considered that they can hardly be looked for in a community accustomed for ages to rely on the civil power to look out for the defence of the church, and for her protection against heretics and heresies. In such communities the free action of the church has been crippled by the attempt of the state to do her work and only bungling it, and in which no call for personal effort in preserving and defending the church externally has been made on Catholics as individuals. The evil results naturally from the condition in which Catholics must be found when abandoned by the government that had hitherto saved them from all necessity of any personal activity in their own defence against external enemies. It can be only temporary, if the church is left henceforth free by the government to appeal to the individual faith, love, and exertions of the faithful under her direction.

There is, no doubt, much tepidity, formalism, and momentary imbecility in the face of the enemy in old Catholic populations; for not the just nor the elect only are members of the church; but abandoned or opposed as the church now is by the governments, and thrown back as she is everywhere upon her own resources as a spiritual kingdom, forced to be even in old Catholic nations once more a missionary church in every thing except in outward form, and obliged to appeal directly to the faithful individually, there can hardly fail to be developed in Catholics the personal qualities which the author thinks they do not now possess. The need of a robust and manly piety to struggle with the world and the enemies of the church will very soon call it forth, where religion is free and faith is not extinct.

We cannot but think, if the author had experienced the vexations and annoyances that we have from the personal and individual zeal and activity of Protestants of the revival stamp, each one of whom acts as if he were an Atlas and bore the whole weight of the religious world on his individual shoulders, he would much prefer its absence among Catholics to its presence. Not more troublesome were the frogs of Egypt, that came up into the kneading-troughs and the sleeping-chambers. It is not easy to describe the sensation of relief a convert from Protestantism feels on coming into the church and learning that he has now a religion that can sustain him instead of needing him to sustain it. With Protestants, the member bears the sect; with Catholics, the church bears the member. The sacraments are effective _ex opere operato_. We are disposed, moreover, to believe that Catholics best serve the Catholic cause by each one's doing in his own sphere his own allotted work. The unity of faith, and the unity of the spirit that works alike in all the faithful to will and to do, are sufficient to secure unity of action, and action to one and the same end, and to effect with marvellous rapidity the grandest and most magnificent results. This, we think, is the Catholic method, quiet, peaceable, orderly, and, if less showy and striking than the Protestant method, less noisy and prosy, far more fruitful in results. The Catholic is sustained, the Protestant must sustain.

For our part, we are grateful to the author for his masterly exposition of contemporary Protestantism; but we hope we may be permitted to say that, while we do not deny the danger with which it threatens the populations of old Catholic nations, we think he exaggerates it, and supposes Protestant negations are more powerful than they really are. It may be that the Catholic populations are not at present very well prepared to withstand the Protestant propaganda, allied as it is with rationalism and the revolution; but they cannot long remain unprepared. The revolution having, wherever attempted, resulted in the loss of old liberties without the acquisition of any additional civil freedom, must gradually lose its credit with the people, who must ere long be disillusioned; rationalism is too cold, too absurd, and too destitute of life to hold them in permanent subjection. Scientists and sciolists may adhere to it while its novelty lasts, but both the reason and instincts of the people reject it, and demand faith, religion. Protestantism severed from the revolution and rationalism is too much what the great Catholic controversialists met in the seventeenth century and vanquished for its revival to be able to gain and hold much new territory.

The real danger, in our judgment, is in the spread of secularism or the secular spirit among Catholics themselves. This is the only serious obstacle we see to the conversion of the American people to the church. Catholics here and elsewhere conform to modern civilization, and are carried away by its spirit. They follow the spirit of the age without knowing it; and though a Catholic may accept without scruple all the positive results of what is called modern civilization, he cannot imbibe and follow its spirit without great loss on the side of religion, which requires the renunciation of the world as the end for which one is to live and to labor. But there are even among Catholics very worthy men, men of excellent parts and rare learning, who virtually subordinate the spiritual to the secular. They have so far yielded to the secular spirit of the day as to place the defence of the church on secular rather than on spiritual grounds, and defend her claims as the church of God rather as necessary to secure civil liberty and advanced civilization than as necessary to save the soul and secure the beatitude of heaven. They are, in some degree, affected by the philanthropy or humanitarianism of the age, and occasionally confound it with Christian charity, which loves God supremely, and our neighbor as ourselves in God, or for the sake of God.

These men pursue a line of argument that draws off the Catholic mind from the kingdom of God and his justice, and fixes it on those things after which the heathen seek, secularize it, and lead it to think that our Lord's mission had for its object the multiplication of earthly goods and securing earthly felicity. They unintentionally play into the hands of radicals and revolutionists, by influencing Catholics to strive after social instead of spiritual progress, and making them feel that the great work for the church is less to train men for heaven than to make the earth a more pleasant abode for them; or that the proper way for men to work out their salvation hereafter is to work earnestly and perseveringly for the progress of civil and political liberty, and the reform of political and social abuses. It can hardly have any but a bad influence on the Catholic mind to find prominent Catholics urging their Catholic fellow-citizens to make common cause with the most notorious and irreligious infidel and radical leaders of the revolution, as if there could be any thing in common between Catholics and men who demand liberty only to emancipate themselves from the divine law and to suppress the church, or at least to restrain her freedom.

But we are forgetting our author. Of the three causes he assigns for the partial success in old Catholic nations of Protestant missions, we have considered only the third and last--the alleged ignorance of the clergy of contemporary Protestantism, the supineness of Catholics, and their lack of individual zeal, energy, and self-reliance. We have ventured to differ in some respects with regard to this alleged cause from the eminent author, and to take a deeper and a broader view of the real cause of Protestant success. We have traced it to the ascendency of the worldly spirit which has given birth to Protestantism itself, and, even in Catholic countries, deprived the church of her rightful freedom of action. We see the cause in the false relations of church and state that have hitherto subsisted in Christian nations, in the oppression and restraint of the church by the state. The other two causes, the impression that Protestant nations surpass Catholic nations in material wealth and well-being, and that Protestantism has founded and sustains civil and religious liberty, we must reluctantly reserve for a future article.

FOOTNOTE:

[100] _De l'Avenir du Protestantisme et du Catholicisme._ Par M. l'Abbé Martin. Paris: Tobra et Haton. 1869. 8vo. pp. 608.

HURSTON HALL.

The great avenue of Hurston was all aglow with the golden sunset. Stray beams trembled among the shadows of the massive oaks, bathed the stone terrace in a flood of crimson radiance, and lingered lovingly among the quaint parterres, where all day long they had given life and beauty to the flowers. The "parting smile of day" illumined lawn and garden, mellowed the rugged outlines of the ancient hall, and threw over its gloomy grandeur a golden mist that seemed to spiritualize it.

But more brightly and lovingly than elsewhere it rested on the fair brow and golden curls of young Lord Hurston, as, reclining on his couch with his face turned to the sunset, he watched with boyish delight the beauty of the scene.

"Close the book, Aunt Caddy," he said, turning to a pale, graceful lady, who, seated on an ottoman beside him, had been reading to the young invalid the most beautiful of the great poet's _Idylls_. "Close the book; for you are tired, and I want you to look at the sunset and talk to me. Isn't it beautiful? See that great oak at the bend of the avenue! Every leaf seems woven with gold. I wonder if that little squirrel has his nest among the roots yet. What a pile of nuts I found there long ago, before I was sick! I wonder if I will ever be well enough to hunt squirrels again?" And the little speaker sighed as he turned restlessly on his couch.

"I hope so, darling," Aunt Caddy replied fondly. "But we must be patient, you know."

"Yes, I know. But it is hard sometimes--only sometimes--Aunt Caddy; for boys are not like girls; _they_ might lie still and not care so much. But when Lady Rayburn and Percy and George were here, and I saw how the boys could climb and ride and jump; and when I had Floy brought out from the stable for them and I heard her call me just as she used when I could ride--I wouldn't tell any one but you--but O Aunt Caddy! I cried when I was all by myself--cried like a great baby girl."

Aunt Caddy's eyes were bright with tears of pity.

"My poor pet! was it so hard for you? Then grandmamma will not ask them here again."

"No, no! dear auntie; that would never do. I am not such a coward as to mind feeling badly; and then, I would bear it better next time. No, no! Hurston Hall must be open to every one, as it was in grandpapa's time, as it would be if papa had lived, even though its lord is only a sick boy who can but lie on his cushions and let his guests amuse themselves as they please. Only I wish I were as good and patient as you would be in my place. You are just like Elaine. If you were grieved or sorrowful, no one would ever know it. You would only grow pale and quiet and silent, until some morning you would float away from us over the dark waters with the story of your sorrow folded over your still heart."

The crimson glow of sunset seemed to flush Aunt Caddy's cheek as she bent to kiss the pale, little, earnest face.

"You are a poet yourself, Arthur. Who knows but that you may prove a second Sir Philip Sidney. We have had so many bold barons of Hurston that Sir Arthur may well afford to win gentler fame and more peaceful laurels."

The boy was silent for a moment; then replied with touching seriousness,

"Auntie, dear, you are all kind and loving to me; but you try to deceive me. I saw Doctor Woodley's face when he sounded my lungs the other day, and I know what it meant. Poor papa did not live to be twenty-four; and I--I was reading a book the other day, and I saw in it the sentence, 'Born to die.' It seemed as if it were written for me--born to die, not to live and win laurels, Aunt Caddy."

"My darling, you must not talk so! Think of poor grandmamma, think of us all if we should lose you. You are only twelve, and youth can hope for every thing."

But even as she spoke a flood of memories welled up from her heart; sweet yet mournful voices of the past, whispering sadly of _her_ youth--its vanished hopes, its faded dreams. The sunset radiance had paled now, and dim shadows were gathering over the rosy, western horizon as Aunt Caddy thought of her life, with its early sunset, its shadowy twilight, that would be so cheerless did not the starry gleam of other worlds sometimes pierce the gloom.

But Arthur's voice aroused her from her reverie.

"I don't think it seems so dreadful now to die, Aunt Caddy. When I was well and strong, it seemed so; and I used almost to shiver when I passed the tomb where poor papa and mamma lie side by side, beneath the painted window in the chancel. It seemed so hard that he should not live long enough to bear the title. But now I sometimes lie awake at night and think how strange it will look to see beside grandpapa's monument that tells how very, very old he was, another with a broken column, or something like that, and the inscription, _Arthur, seventeenth baron of Hurston, aged twelve_, or _thirteen_--not any more I think, auntie."

"My darling, my darling, these morbid fancies grieve me sadly."

"I don't want to grieve you, Aunt Caddy; but why should we fear to talk of what must be? I will leave you here in my place--you and grandmamma. You will be the lady of the hall, and help the poor people around, and keep the old place from getting ruined and desolate; and make Johnson spare those oaks that he wanted to cut down; grandpapa's oaks must not be touched. O Aunt Caddy! you will always stay at Hurston, even when I am gone, won't you?" And the earnest eyes pleaded eloquently.

"Your Uncle Charles would be the owner of Hurston, my darling," was the low reply. "He would live here or send some one in his place. Grandmamma and I would have a right here no longer. So you must get well and strong, if you want to keep us at Hurston," she added with an attempt at playfulness.

"My Uncle Charles!" said the young lord in amazement. "Why must he come here? Where is he now? Why should he be owner of Hurston?"

"He is next heir--your father's younger brother; he has been with his regiment in Canada for a great many years," she replied hurriedly. "But do not let us talk of sad fancies any longer. You will be strong as Cousin Percy in the spring, and will ride Floy as gayly as ever."

"But I want to hear about my Uncle Charles," said Arthur eagerly. "Did I ever see him?"

"When you were a little baby, perhaps. He has been in America ten years."

"Did _you_ ever see him, Aunt Caddy?"

"Very often, dear," was the low reply.

"But why does he not come to England? Why did not grandpapa hear from him?" continued the eager little questioner.

"My dearest, you are too young to weary yourself with others' troubles. Your grandfather and his younger son parted in anger. They were both proud and passionate, and neither would forgive or yield; and now death has come between them," Aunt Caddy said sadly.

"And would he come to Hurston if I should die?"

"I scarcely think so, dear; he has few pleasant memories connected with it."

"Then you would stay, dear auntie?"

"No, dearest, I could not," she replied with deepening color. "When my sister wrote to your grandma and to me that she was dying, and we must take her place to her orphaned boy; when your grandfather, old Lord Hurston, placed you in my arms, then Hurston Hall became our home; but when Colonel Charles Thornbury is its master, it ceases to be so."

"How old is my uncle, Aunt Caddy?"

"Thirty-one, I think, Arthur."

"Thirty-one," was the thoughtful reply. "And he will be Lord Hurston when I die. I wish I knew him, Aunt Caddy. Do you think he would come to England if you wrote him? You knew him, auntie. I want to see him; I want to ask him not to leave Hurston to ruin and desolation; I want to ask him to let you stay and take care of the dear old place that grandpa was so proud of. I want to ask him not to let Johnson cut down the oaks that he wanted to thin out last fall. Dear, dear Aunt Caddy, won't you write for me?" pleaded the earnest little speaker.

"My darling Arthur," she replied with a deepening blush that freshened her pale face wonderfully, "I cannot. It--it--would be impossible."

"But _why_, Aunt Caddy?" continued the persevering boy. "Is he so very bad, so wicked, that you never speak? Is my uncle a bad man, Aunt Caddy? Has he"--and the boy's cheek flushed with the pride of his noble race--"has he disgraced us in any way?"

"My dear Arthur," was the hurried response, "oh! no; a thousand times no! Your uncle was proud, passionate, headstrong; but he was--he is, I am sure, all that is noble, brave, generous; and, Arthur, he loved your father as fondly as brothers could love."

"But why did he go away? Why do we not hear from him?"

"My darling," the words came reluctantly, "your grandpapa--in short, they had some disagreement when your uncle came of age about--about a marriage that the old lord had set his heart upon. But your uncle was unwilling; that is--the lady was rich, and he feared he would be thought mercenary--and--and--we must speak reverently of the dead, dear Arthur," and she bent to kiss his pale, pure brow; "but your uncle was not to blame. Let us talk no more about it now. See, the moon is rising. Look how large and beautiful it is! Have you no sonnet for such a scene, my gentle troubadour?"

But Arthur was not to be deceived. Spite of the gathering twilight, he could see the large tears brimming Aunt Caddy's still beautiful eyes; could hear the tremor in her playful tone; could feel, boy as he was, that some chord had been touched that thrilled with saddening memories.

The boy baron almost idolized the fair, gentle aunt who had replaced to him the mother he had never known, and it was with a remorseful sympathy that he flung his arms around her neck, kissed her flushed cheek, and whispered fondly, "Your tiresome little troubadour knows but one, and that is for you alone, dear auntie--_Je t'aime, je t'aime_; yes, more than any one in the world, dear Aunt Caddy."

He was not prepared for the long, low sob that shook her slight frame as she replied, in trembling accents,

"I believe you, my darling, my own Arthur; the one sunbeam of a cheerless--but never let us talk again as we have done to-night."

So Arthur was silent; but with a strange, precocious wisdom he "pondered these things in his heart."

And the result was that a letter, indited in a clear, boyish hand, sped like a white-winged messenger of peace across the broad Atlantic, bearing the address of Colonel Charles Thornbury, --th Dragoons.

And months after that twilight talk, when the leaves of Hurston Park fell in showers of crimson and gold on the broad avenue, when the last roses breathed their sweet farewells around Arthur's latticed window, and the autumn winds began to sigh through the leafless vines, far away beneath the clear blue sky of another hemisphere a bronzed, bearded man read those frank, boyish words of welcome that bore the proud seal of his ancient race, and, with a tear and a smile, whispered a blessing on "_Arthur's boy_."

Christmas snow lay white and pure on the fields and groves of Hurston, and Christmas moonlight fell like a benediction on the spotless earth. The old hall stood boldly out with every rugged outline clearly defined against the frosty winter sky. A strange, irregular old pile, with little architectural symmetry; for it had grown with the fortunes of the race that had ruled there for generations, dating its foundation far back in the mist of centuries before England bent to Norman William's sceptre. Tradition pointed to the grove where the mistletoe was culled with many a sacred rite; to the tower where the fair bride waited and watched in vain for her lord, who lay cold and stiff on the lost battle plain of Hastings; to the gate whence issued the stout Baron of Hurston, stern in his demand for right, to the rendezvous at Runnymede. The long, low building stretching into the shadows of the grove was said to have been built by Ethwold the Saxon, when, weary of the toils of war, he retired into the quiet "Hurst," beneath whose leafy shelter his race grew and flourished for generations.

Remnants of fearful tales still were heard around the cottage fires--tales of awful orgies held by the fierce Saxon, and of invocations of Woden and Thor, and rude banquets when the wild chant of the bard and the pledge of Waeshael echoed through the ancient Hurst. It was even whispered that these fierce, unbaptized spirits still lingered around their earthly haunts, watching the fortunes of their race and guarding it from extinction.

But the young Baron of Hurston resting in his dainty sick-chamber, surrounded by all that wealth and affection could bestow, yet feeling with a strange, peaceful resignation that his young life was fast ebbing away, bestowed little thought on the name and fame of the proud ancestors that had ruled Hurston before him.

"I can do nothing, Aunt Caddy," he said with gentle sadness; "nothing great, noble, glorious; I am only a sick, helpless boy. But for the little while I am with them, I would like my people to be happy. I would like every heart to be light and free that I can render so. I will never live to add any thing to the lustre of the old name, never win fame or laurels in camp or court. Only I would like, when I am gone, to have it said that Sir Arthur, their boy-lord's rule was a light and happy one. So don't let me hear any more of unpaid rents, Johnson," he would add, smiling merrily at the faithful steward. "What do I want with poor Farmer Cropper's few guineas? Let my heir attend to all such matters, if he will; no one must be troubled while I can prevent it."

They had learned ere this not to be astonished at these strange, unchild-like speeches, and all tried to carry out their young lord's wishes with almost worshipping fondness and devotion.

So it happened that this Christmas the old Saxon hall was decked gayly with holly and ivy; mistletoe boughs hung temptingly from the dark old rafters, and the oaken floor was polished till it shone again.

Sir Arthur had determined that the servants' ball this year should be an unprecedented success; and he himself--"blessings on his sweet young face," as the good old housekeeper said when she announced the great event--was "to be present in person."

Scores of wax lights winked merrily between the heavy wreaths of ivy, and a yule log, parent of a hundred oaks, blazed like a royal bonfire on the spacious hearth.

Already the old fiddler, blind of one eye, and the old harpist, lame of one leg--a pair of musicians whom Sir Arthur patronized extensively, had taken their places; already many a bright eye and nimble foot danced expectant, and many a rosy cheek flushed deeper with anticipated pleasure. Stately Lady Nesbitt, Arthur's grandmother, was there, smiling benignantly; Aunt Caddy--or the "sweet Lady Caroline," as some of her devoted pensioners called her--with her Madonna face, waving hair, and soft silvery robe, looking like some gentle moonlight spirit; and Arthur, his fair cheek flushed--ah! too brightly--his golden ringlets, soft as a maiden's, clustering on his pale white brow, his clear blue eyes radiant with pleasure, sat looking on, the happiest baron of Hurston that ever reigned in that grim abode.

Old Johnson, the steward and master of ceremonies, alone was wanting; and the impatient dancers began to grow restless awaiting his signal to open the ball. "Where _can_ Johnson be?" questioned Arthur for the twentieth time; when the door suddenly burst open, and Johnson appeared, not a vestige of color in his usually ruddy face, and every white hair on his aged crown bristling with terror.

"Great heavens!--I beg pardon, my lord and ladies," panted the old man breathlessly. "But I've seen him at last! The Lord forgive me! I'll never doubt that there be spirits return again. I saw him with these very eyes--the master, old Sir Ralph himself. O my poor blessed lamb! I beg pardon, my lord--Sir Arthur, I mean. I hope this portends nothing awful." And the faithful old servitor wiped the great beads of moisture from his brow.

"What _do_ you mean, Johnson? What has terrified you?" asked Lady Nesbitt, calming in her stately way the excited group that had gathered around her.

"This, madam--simply this, my lady," replied the terrified old man. "I was in the chapel, putting the last wreath on Lady Edith's, my young lord's blessed mother's tomb, when I felt a sort of cold chill creep over me, and says I to myself, 'It's only the dampness'--for I have the rheumatics occasionally, as my Lady Caroline well knows. So says I, 'It's only the dampness;' for I never believed the stories the country folk tell about the barons of Hurston leaving their holy graves to walk on earth again. And so I was walking slowly out, when I heard a sort of groan, and I turned, and, O my lord and ladies! sure as the Lord sees me here, I saw old Sir Ralph, our young lord's grandfather, standing beside his own tomb, with his head bent down and his arms folded, as I've seen him over and over again in life. O my dear young lord! I couldn't be mistaken; it's he himself and no other. I could take my Bible oath to his back and legs; begging your pardon, ladies, I could indeed." And poor Johnson paused for breath.

It was Arthur's clear tone that broke the silence. "If it be my grandfather," he said with that reverence that pure young minds feel for the unseen, "it is my place to go and speak to him; he has returned from the other world for some good purpose, and I will speak to him."

"O my blessed lamb!--my dear young lord, I mean," cried poor Johnson in a fresh fit of terror; "don't, for heaven's sake; don't go near him! I am only afraid," and the faithful old man fairly sobbed, "it is to take you away that he has come."

"Yes," and though the boy's cheek grew pale, his voice was firm, "it is my place to go. Aunt Caddy," he whispered, "he died, you know, without having forgiven my uncle."

"Arthur, my dear, this is nonsense!" began Lady Nesbitt nervously.

"Grandmamma, I must go," was the firm reply.

"Come then, Arthur," said Lady Caroline in a low voice; "for it is my place as well as yours, to hear the message of peace and forgiveness."

"My lord, my lord!" pleaded the terrified servants. But he had gone. With his little, thin hand clasped in Aunt Caddy's, he ascended the winding stone staircase that led to the chapel.

The lords of Hurston had adhered through poverty, change, and persecution to the ancient faith, and worshipped for centuries beneath their own roof.

The chapel of Hurston was rich with quaint carving and mediæval ornament. Six graceful columns supported the Gothic roof, each column bearing tablets to the memory of the lords of Hurston who slept beneath. Old Sir Ralph's tomb lay in the shadow of the altar, while that of Arthur's parents--a snow-white shaft supporting a broken pillar--stood in the full light of the chancel window, whose richly-colored panes bore witness to the virtues of the early dead who slept beneath. Lady Caroline felt Arthur's hand tremble, and she herself grew pale with awe; for there indeed, in the bright moonlight that streamed through the painted window--there, close to the tomb of old Sir Ralph, in the shadow of the altar, there stood a form with bowed head and folded arms, a form that Arthur's silver, trembling voice called "Grandfather!"

"Grandfather!" and the boy with his pale face and golden curls looked in the falling moonlight like a seraph. "Grandfather, speak to me! What is it that you wish of me? Speak, dear grandfather! It is your little Arthur; he does not fear you. Grandfather," and his voice grew lower and more musical, "is it the thought of my uncle that disturbs your rest? I will tell him that he is forgiven; that you sent him the angels' Christmas greeting--'_Peace on earth to men of good-will_--'"

"My brave, my saintly boy! Arthur's boy!" sobbed a deep, manly voice; and the young lord found himself clasped in a warm, living, loving embrace, while a bronzed, bearded face with great luminous dark eyes looked almost reverently into his.

"Nephew, you have done what I believed no mortal could do. You have brought tears into Charles Thornbury's eyes, and peace into his heart!"

"O Aunt Caddy, Aunt Caddy!" cried Arthur joyfully; "speak to him. It is Uncle Charles; dear Uncle Charles, that I wrote to so long ago!"

Aunt Caddy was pale and speechless as the marble shaft against which she leaned for support; but Colonel Thornbury had a more potent spell. "Caroline!"--the low whisper brought a flush to cheek and brow--"Caroline, my long lost love, whose tender heart I wounded so deeply, can you too join your voice to this angel boy's, and whisper peace? Caroline, I was mad with wounded pride and jealous love--love that scorned the thought of gain, that snapped every tie when they said it was for your wealth I sought you. God forgive me! I cast the words back in their teeth, and swore I would roam the world a penniless adventurer rather than be enriched by my wife. Caroline, if my sin was great, my punishment has been bitter. Ten years; ten long, weary, loveless years! Arthur has welcomed me with the voice of peace. Have you no Christmas gift for the penitent wanderer? None for the faithful heart that has ever been yours alone?" Lady Caroline was pale again; but a radiance fairer than moonlight seemed to light up her brow.

"Arthur has given you peace; and I--I, Charles, have only the love that has waited for you these long, weary years--that would have waited for you until death!"

* * * * *

And the sequel to this little Christmas romance? Need we tell of the wild joy and amazement that reëchoed through the hoary old hall? Of the girlish roses that deepened in Aunt Caddy's still beautiful cheek, and the radiant light in the wanderer's clear dark eye as, a few months later, the merry peal of wedding-bells succeeded the Christmas chimes?

"A blithe bridal for a bonnie bride," Arthur had said when the long-parted lovers pleaded his fast failing health as a reason for a quiet wedding.

"Uncle Charles, if you don't have a real glorious wedding, I'll marry Aunt Caddy myself." Brightest and merriest of all was the lordly young host as he welcomed his guests with the princely grace that so well became him, though many a living heart was sad, and kindly eye grew dim, as they marked in the glowing cheek and wasted form the fatal heritage of his youthful parents.

Once only he himself betrayed amid his graceful gayety the consciousness of his early doom.

After their young lord had been repeatedly toasted by the joyous tenantry, some one merrily proposed, "Sir Arthur's bride;" and "Our future lady" was pledged in brimming bumpers.

Arthur's face flushed for a moment as he caught the unthinking shout; then, raising his own glass to his lips, he bowed to his uncle's bride. "Aunt Caddy, we drink your health. Long life and happiness to the future lady of Hurston!"

* * * * *

A year later, and hushed voices and noiseless steps alone were heard around the dying couch of the fair boy-baron. Patient and gentle as ever, he waited with his own angelic smile upon his lips the summons that was to call him from life.

His uncle, pale with anxiety and sorrow, watched with paternal love over the dying boy's pillow, until an attendant whispered something which Arthur's fast failing ear caught.

"Bring him here, uncle; let me see him before I go; let me see Aunt Caddy's boy."

Colonel Thornbury called the attendant, and they laid a little slumbering babe in the dying boy's outstretched arms. "Call him Arthur for me, dear uncle, and do not grieve. He has come to take my place; to perpetuate the glorious old name; to be all that I would have been if God had so willed it. I am happy now; so very, very happy!" He died with the words yet on his lips, the smile still on his face, the light scarce faded from his eye.

* * * * *

Years afterward, when the proud spirit of her impetuous boy threatened to burst from her gentle restraint, and the fierce blood of his fiery ancestors showed itself in his kindling eye and mantling cheek, the gentle Lady Hurston had one spell that calmed his angriest moods. She would whisper of that young cousin who had breathed his last sigh with her Arthur's first breath, with the baby form clasped to his dying breast, of those last words of hope and happiness murmured over the slumbering babe from the very portals of eternity. "He said you were to take his place, dear Arthur; be worthy of him and of his name." And the boy's eye would grow calm and peaceful as it rested on the snowy column--the column of which Arthur had spoken when he foretold his own doom:

ARTHUR,

SEVENTEENTH BARON OF HURSTON.

BORN MAY 2, 1830. DIED MARCH 5, 1844.

AGED 14 YEARS.

_Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God._

DECEMBER EIGHTH, 1869.

I.

There came an hour, and words were uttered then That live to-day and echo evermore. ONE spoke them to a knot of simple men, Who simply took the simple sense they bore: A promise--such as never tongue or pen Of sage oracular had made before; And a design no _wisdom_ could have planned, Save His who holds the nations in his hand.

II.

Had less than God so spoken, he had been The wildest of all dreamers. What! to make A poor rude fisher, who had never seen A gloom upon his Galilæan lake But feared the menace of its boding mien, A rock no surge should fret, no tempest shake-- The baffled ages foaming at its feet The broken malice of their ceaseless beat!

III.

God saith; and who shall gainsay? Devils first; Then fools, their ready dupes. To these, forsooth, 'Tis nobler to resist, and dare the worst, Than own the gentle majesty of truth-- As came the church to free a world accurst, And heal its heartache, and renew its youth: A spring to thaw the universal frost-- Fire-dowered from her natal Pentecost.

IV.

But principle is something to defy, That may not swerve to give a falsehood breath; Or call masked anarchy its stout ally, And offer God an honorable death. And so along the ages rolls a cry-- The din of onset at the gates of faith: 'Tis Arius now, now Luther heads the fray; Or bristles up the hydra of to-day.

V.

And patient Rome sits victor over all: Her strength in seeming feebleness increased. She smiles to hear "the storm against the wall," And lavished names of harlot and of beast, And prophets raving of her speedy fall: While Satan counts his failures with at least The joy that such solidity of rock Draws none the fewer to the fatal shock.

VI.

Press on, close in, ye gallant ranks of hell! Concentrating the might ye think to bow. Stood ever Holy Church, do records tell, More one, more conscious, more herself than now? When was the chair of Peter loved so well? Wore ever pontiff a serener brow? He calls: earth hears; her utmost realms resound; And lo, a thousand mitres gird him round!

VII.

And they who trembled, and had been content To scorn with quiet mirth a voice so weak, Are forced, they find, to yield their panic vent. "Another Trent!" rings out the indignant shriek; "This nineteenth century, another Trent!" 'Tis not so sweet to have the Master speak, When passion, weary of his peaceful sway, No longer deems it freedom to obey.

VIII.

But speak he will--the blessed words of life; How welcome to the soul that thirsts to know, Or views alarmed the too successful strife Of earth with heaven--truth's ebb and error's flow. We murmur through, our tears, "Decay is rife! The sound, the old, the sacred--all will go!" Fond fear! Whatever faithless thrones expect, _Christ's_ kingdom stands: he garners his elect.

IX.

The serpent writhes--his last convulsions these-- Beneath the foot that tramples his crushed head. O Lady! worker of thy Son's decrees, Thy Rome, thy Pius trust thee. Deign to shed Thy gracious light, lone star of troubled seas, At whose sweet ray the ancient darkness fled! The serpent writhes beneath thee: deign to show He is indeed the Woman's vanquished foe!

X.

This day we hymn thy victory; and claim Thy prayer omnipotent. Nor let it rise For us alone, that boast to love thy name, But those, unhappy, that have dared despise! Who came for them, by thee it was He came, Through thee must break unclouded to their eyes. Ah Mother's Heart! How long, then, wilt thou wait Till _all_ thy children sing "IMMACULATE"?

B. D. H.

VANSLEB, THE ORIENTAL SCHOLAR AND TRAVELLER.

"Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires et des hommes est souvent la vérité. La justice qui nous est quelquefois refusée par nos contemporains, la postérité sait nous la rendre."[101]

LA BRUYERE.