CHAPTER XXV.

THE MISTRESS OF A POOR MAN'S HOUSEHOLD.

After a fortnight spent very happily in Maine, Dr. and Mrs. James came back to New York, bringing with them the doctor's youngest sister, Lucy, to make a long visit. Martha Burney had been left in charge of the house, and had received a warm invitation to consider it her home; but she only replied that she would think about it.

On arriving at home, (for it was decided to begin their married life in the house that Margaret had already bought and furnished,) and asking eagerly for her friend, Margaret was informed that Miss Burney had gone away that day, and left a note to explain. It was as follows:

"MY DEAREST MARGARET: Do not think, by my leaving your house, that I do not appreciate the hospitality that you and your husband have offered me, or that I am ungrateful for it. But I could never consent to live upon you always; and I thought it better, while I am strong and healthy, to enter on the life in which I should be glad to be found at death. I have consulted with M. Saincère, and he encourages me to hope that my vocation may be a religious one; and the sympathy and affection I feel for the Sisters of Charity, which I believe you share with me, leads me to seek my home and work among them, at the house we visited together on the Hudson River. There I shall remain for the present as a boarder, till I am quite sure what is God's will for me; but I may tell you, in confidence, that I have in mind the work of teaching the poor and abandoned little ones of this great city.

"I cannot express the joy which comes to my heart when I think that my life, which since my father's death has seemed to me aimless and unprofitable, may be devoted in the humblest way to the service of God and his holy church. Rejoice with me, my dear friend, in the midst of your own great happiness. God grant that we may both be worthy of the favors he has bestowed on us! I pray him to grant his blessing to you and yours.

"With love and congratulations to you and your husband; I remain, in the heart of Jesus, your faithful friend,

"MARTHA BURNEY.

"NEW YORK, Sept. 1."

That evening, when Lucy, tired with her long journey, had gone up-stairs, Margaret and Dr. James sat together in the parlor talking. The windows were open, and there was a refreshing breeze; the moonlight lay brightly on the floor, but except that, the room was dark.

"I tremble sometimes," said Dr. James, "when I think of the broad path of sunshine in which I am walking, and see that every wish is fulfilled. I have left Shellbeach with none but friends behind me; I have health and strength; money enough for necessaries, superfluities, and charities; the noblest and handsomest wife in the world; the best and only religion to love and serve with her; the angels and saints for friends and comrades; a living God to worship, and the hope of heaven hereafter. But O Margaret! the words of St. Paul are very often with me now, 'But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' We have not much to make us remember the cross now; but let us try, at least, to be ready for it when it comes to us."

"We will not forget it. I will write those words this night in the prayer-book Father Barry gave me for my wedding present."

And when they said their prayers, Margaret opened the blank page at the beginning of the book, and, showing it to her husband, pointed to this inscription, written by Father Barry, "The Lord is merciful to those whom he foreknoweth shall be his by faith and good works;" and below she had herself added these words,

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW-YORK.

THE REPUBLIC.

The history of Catholicity in colonial days, with its romance, its terrors, and the last impotent struggles of fanatical opposition have, we trust, not been without interest. The peace opened New-York to Catholic immigration, and the influence of the French officers, of both army and navy, had done much to dispel prejudice. The church to which Rochambeau, La Fayette, De Kalb, Pulaski, De Grasse, Vandreuil belonged was socially and politically respectable--nay, it was not antagonistic to American freedom.

The founder of the Catholic congregation had looked anxiously forward to this moment.

The venerable Father Farmer came on to resume his labors, and gather such Catholics as the seven years' war had left or gathered. His visits and pastoral care, then resumed, were continued till the arrival of the Rev. Charles Whelan, an Irish Franciscan, who had been chaplain on one of the vessels belonging to the fleet of the Count de Grasse. He was the first regularly settled priest in the city of New York. Catholicity thus had a priest, but as yet no church. Mass was said near Mr. Stoughton's house, on Water street; in the house of Don Diego de Gardoqui, the Spanish ambassador; in a building in Vauxhall Garden, between Chambers and Warren streets; and in a loft over a carpenter shop on Barclay street. An Italian nobleman, Count Castiglioni, mentions his attending mass in a room any thing but becoming so solemn an act of religious worship. The use of a court-room in the Exchange was solicited from the city authorities, but refused. Then the little band of Catholics took heart and resolved to rear an edifice that would lift its cross-crowned spire in the land. It is a sign of the good feeling that had to some extent obtained, that Trinity church sold the Catholic body the five lots of ground they desired for the erection of their church. Here, at the corner of Barclay and Church streets, the corner-stone of St. Peter's church was laid November 4th, 1786, by Don Diego de Gardoqui, as representative of Charles III., King of Spain, whose aid to the work entitles him to be regarded as its chief benefactor.

This pioneer Catholic church was a modest structure forty-eight feet in front by eighty-one in depth. Its progress was slow; and divine worship was performed in it for some years before the vestry, portico, pews, gallery, and steeple were at last completed in 1792.

The congregation, living so long amid a Protestant population whose system Halleck describes so truly,

"They reverence their priest; but disagreeing In price or creed, dismiss him without fear,"

had adopted some of their ideas, and forgetting that the mass was a sacrifice, and the peculiar and only worship of God, thought that an eloquent sermon was every thing. A vehement and impassioned preacher it was their great ambition to secure, and as the trustees controlled matters almost absolutely, the earlier priests had to endure much humiliation and actual suffering.

The reader will find this period of struggle well described in Bishop Bayley's pages, with the culmination of the evils of trusteeism in the bankruptcy of St. Peter's.

A pastor was at last found who filled the difficult position. This was the Rev. William O'Brien, assisted after a time by Doctor Matthew O'Brien, whose reputation as a preacher was such that a volume of his sermons had been printed in Ireland. Under their care the difficulties began to diminish; the congregation took a regular form, and the young were trained to their Christian duties; and the devotion of the Catholic clergy during the visits of that dreadful scourge, the yellow fever, gave them an additional claim to the reverence and respect of their flock.

Beside the church soon sprang up the school. The Catholics of New York signalized the opening of the nineteenth century by establishing a free school at St. Peter's, which before many years could report an average attendance of five hundred pupils.

This progress of Catholicity naturally aroused some of the old bitterness of prejudice.

The sermons of the Protestant pulpits at this period exulting over the captivity and death of Pius VI. produced their natural result in awakening the evil passions of the low and ignorant. The old prejudices revived against Catholics with all their wonted hostility. The first anti-Catholic riot occurred in 1806, as a result. On Christmas eve, some ruffians attempted to force their way into St. Peter's church during the midnight mass, in order to see the Infant rocked in the cradle which they were taught to believe Catholics then worshipped. The _Brief Sketch_ details the unfortunate event from the papers of the day.

From that time anti-Catholic excitements have been pretty regular in their appearance; for a time, indeed, eleven years was as sure to bring one, under some new name, as fourteen years did the pestilent locusts. Yet mob violence has been less frequently and less terribly shown in New York than in some other cities with higher claims to order and dignity.

Once we remember how a mob, flushed with the sacking of a Protestant church where a negro and a white had been married, resolved to close their useful labors by demolishing St. Patrick's cathedral. They marched valorously almost to the junction of the Bowery and Prince street, but halted on the suggestion of a tradesman there, that a reconnoissance would be a wise movement. A few were detached to examine the road. The look up Prince street was not encouraging. The paving-stones had actually been carried up in baskets to the upper stories of the houses, ready to hurl on the assailants; and the wall around the churchyard was pierced for musketry. The mob retreated with creditable celerity; but all that night a feverish anxiety prevailed around St. Patrick's cathedral; men stood ready to meet any new advance, and the mayor, suddenly riding up, was in some danger, but was fortunately recognized.

What might have been the scenes in New York in 1844, when murder ran riot in Philadelphia! The Natives had just elected a mayor; the city would in a few days be in their hands; a public meeting was called in the park, and all seemed to promise a repetition of the scenes in the sister city. A bold, stern extra issued from the office of _The Freeman's Journal_ that actually sent terror into the hearts of the would-be rioters. It was known at once that the Catholics would defend their churches to the last gasp. The firm character of the archbishop was well known, and with that to animate the people the struggle would not be a trifling one.

The call for the meeting was countermanded and New York was saved; few knew from what.

To return to the earlier days of the century. If attacks were made, inquiry was stimulated. Conversions to the truth were neither few nor unimportant. Bishop Bayley mentions briefly the reception into the church of one nearly related to himself, Mrs. Eliza Ann Seton, daughter of the celebrated Doctor Bayley, and widow of William Seton, a distinguished New York merchant. Born on Staten Island, and long resident in New York, gracing a high social position by her charming and noble character, she made her first communion in St. Peter's church on the 25th of March, 1805, and in a few years, giving herself wholly to God, became, under him, the foundress in the United States of the Sisters of Charity, whose quiet labors of love, and charity, and devotedness in the cause of humanity and education in every city in the land seek no herald here below, but are written deep in the hearts of grateful millions.

Several Protestant clergymen in those days returned to the bosom of unity, such as the Rev. Mr. Kewley, of St. George's church, New York; Rev. Calvin White, ancestor of the Shakespeare scholar, Richard Grant White; and Mr. Ironsides. Strange, too, was the conversion of the Rev. Mr. Richards, sent from New York as a Methodist preacher to Western New York and Canada. We follow him, by his diary, through the sparse settlements which then dotted that region, whence he extended his labors to Montreal. There, good man, in the zeal of his heart he thought to conquer Canadian Catholicity by storming the Sulpitian seminary at Montreal, converting all there, and so triumphantly closing the campaign. His diary of travel goes no further. Mr. Richards died a few years since, a zealous and devoted Sulpitian priest of the seminary at Montreal.

New York was too far from Baltimore to be easily superintended by the bishop of that see. His vast diocese was now to be divided, and this city was erected into an episcopal see in 1808, by Pope Pius VII. The choice for the bishop who was to give form to the new diocese, fell upon the Rev. Luke Concanen, a learned and zealous Dominican, long connected with the affairs of his order at Rome. Bishop Bayley gives a characteristic letter of his. He had persistently declined a see in Ireland with its comparative comforts and consolations among a zealous people; but the call to a position of toil, the establishment of a new diocese in a new land, where all was to be created, was not an appeal that he could disregard. He submitted to the charge imposed upon him, and after receiving episcopal consecration at Rome, prepared to reach his see, wholly ignorant of what he should find on his arrival in New York. It was, however, no easy matter then to secure passage. Failing to find a ship at Leghorn, he proceeded to Naples; but the French, who had overrun Italy, detained him as a British subject, and while thus thwarted and harassed, he suddenly fell sick and died. Thus New York never beheld its first bishop.

Then followed a long vacancy, highly prejudicial to the progress of the church, but a vacancy that European affairs caused. The successor of St. Peter was torn from Rome, and held a prisoner in France. The Catholic world knew not under what influence acts might be issued as his, that were really the inventions of his enemies. The bishops in Ireland addressed a letter to the bishops of the United States to propose some settled line of action in all cases where there was not evidence that the pope was a free agent. The reply of the bishops in the United States is given in the volume before us.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Baltimore extended his care to the diocese of New York. When Father O'Brien at last sank under his increasing years, New York would have seen its Catholic population in a manner destitute, had not the Jesuit fathers of Maryland come to their assistance. Rev. Anthony Kohlmann, a man of sound theological learning and great zeal, who died many years after at Rome, honored by the sovereign pontiffs, was the administrator of the diocese. With him were Rev. Benedict Fenwick, subsequently Bishop of Boston, and Rev. Peter Malou, whose romantic life would form an interesting volume; for few who recollect this venerable priest, in his day such a favorite with the young, knew that he had figured in great political events, and in the struggle of Belgium for freedom had led her armies.

Under the impulse of these fathers a collegiate institution was opened, and continued for some years on the spot where the new magnificent cathedral is rising; and old New York Catholics smiled when a recent scribbler asserted that the site of that noble edifice was a gift from the city. Trinity, the Old Brick church, and some other churches we could name were built on land given by the ruling powers, but no Catholic church figures in the list. The college was finally closed, from the fact that difficulties in Maryland prevented the order from supplying necessary professors to maintain its high position.

To secure to young ladies similar advantages for superior education, some Ursuline nuns were induced to cross the Atlantic. They were hailed with joy, and their academy was wonderfully successful. The superior was a lady whose appearance was remarkably striking, and whose cultivation and ability impressed all. Unfortunately they came under restrictions which soon deprived New York of them. Unless novices joined them within a certain number of years, they were to return to Ireland.

In a new country vocations could be only a matter of time, and as the Ursuline order required a dowry, the vocations of all but wealthy young ladies were excluded, and even of these when subject to a guardian.

As the Catholic body had increased, a new church was begun in a spot then far out of the city, described as between the Broadway and the Bowery road. This was old St. Patrick's, of which the corner-stone was laid June 8th, 1809. This was to be the cathedral of the future bishop; and the Orphan Asylum, now thriving under the care of an incorporated society, was ere long to be placed near the new church.

During this period a strange case occurred in a New York court that settled for that State, at least, a question of importance to Catholics. It settled as a principle of law that the confession of a Catholic to a priest was a privileged communication, which the priest could not be called upon or permitted to reveal.

"Restitution had been made to a man named James Keating, through the Rev. Father Kohlmann, of certain goods which had been stolen from him. Keating had previously made a complaint against one Philips and his wife, as having received the goods thus stolen, and they were indicted for a misdemeanor before the justices of the peace. Keating having afterward stated that the goods had been restored to him through the instrumentality of Father Kohlmann, the latter was cited before the court, and required to give evidence in regard to the person or persons from whom he had received them. This he refused to do, on the ground that no court could require a priest to give evidence in regard to matters known to him only under the seal of confession. Upon the case being sent to the grand-jury, Father Kohlmann was subpoenaed to attend before them, and appeared in obedience to the process, but in respectful terms again declined answering. On the trial which ensued, Father Kohlmann was again cited to appear as a witness in the case. Having been asked certain questions, he entreated that he might be excused, and offered his reasons to the court. With consent of counsel, the question was put off for some time, and finally brought on for argument on Tuesday, the 8th of June, 1813, before a court composed of the Hon. De Witt Clinton, mayor of the city; the Hon. Josiah Ogden Hoffman, recorder; and Isaac S. Douglass, and Richard Cunningham, Esqs., sitting aldermen. The Hon. Richard Riker, afterward for so many years recorder of the city, and Counsellor Sampson, volunteered their services in behalf of Father Kohlmann....

"The decision was given by De Witt Clinton at some length. Having shown that, according to the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church, a priest who should reveal what he had heard in the confessional would become infamous and degraded in the eyes of Catholics, and as no one could be called upon to give evidence which would expose him to infamy, he declared that the only way was to excuse a priest from answering in such cases."

This decision, by the influence of De Witt Clinton, when Governor of the State, was incorporated into the Revised Statutes as part of the _lex scripta_ of the State.

With this period, too began the publication of Catholic works in New York, which has since attained such a wonderful development. Bernard Dornin stands as the patriarch of the Catholic book trade of New York, of which an interesting sketch will be found in the appendix to Bishop Bayley's work. He also gives a list of subscribers to some of the earliest works, which will possess no little interest to older Catholic families, who can here claim ancestors as not only Catholic, but devoted to their faith, and anxious to spread its literature. We have looked over the list, and amid familiar names have endeavored to find the oldest now living. If we do not err greatly, it is the distinguished lawyer Charles O'Conor, Esq.

When Pope Pius VII. was restored to Rome, another son of St. Dominic was chosen; and the Rev. John Connolly was consecrated the second bishop of New York. After making such arrangements as he could in Ireland for the good of his diocese, he set sail from Dublin, but experienced a long and dangerous passage. From the absence of all notice of any kind, except the mere fact of his name among the passengers, his reception was apparently a most private one. He was utterly a stranger in a strange land, called from the studies of the cloister to form and rule a diocese of considerable extent, without any previous knowledge of the wants of his flock, and utterly without resources.

His diocese, which embraced the State of New York and part of New Jersey, contained but four priests, three belonging to the Jesuits in Maryland, and liable to be called away at any moment, as two were almost immediately after his arrival. The college and convent had disappeared, and the church seemed to have lost in all but numbers. Thirteen thousand Catholics were to be supplied with pastors, and yet the trustee system stood a fearful barrier in his way. As Bishop Bayley well observes,

"The trustee system had not been behind its early promise, and trustees of churches had become so accustomed to have every thing their own way, that they were not disposed to allow even the interference of a bishop.

"In such a state of things, he was obliged to assume the office of a missionary priest, rather than a bishop; and many still living remember the humility and earnest zeal with which he discharged the laborious duties of the confessional, and traversed the city on foot to attend upon the poor and sick.

"Bishop Connolly was not lacking in firmness, but the great wants of his new diocese made it necessary for him to fall in, to a certain extent, with the established order of things, and this exposed him afterward to much difficulty and many humiliations."

Yet he secured some good priests and ecclesiastical students from Kilkenny College, whom he gradually raised to the priesthood, his first ordination and the first conferring of the sacrament of holy orders in the city being that of the Rev. Michael O'Gorman in 1815. One only of the priests ordained by this first bishop occupying the see of New York still survives, the Rev. John Shanahan, now at St. Peter's church, Barclay street.

Under the care of Bishop Connolly the Sisters of Charity began their labors in the city so long the home of Mother Seton; and, so far as his means permitted him to yield to his zeal, he increased the number of churches and congregations in his diocese.

The _Brief Sketch_ gives his portrait, as well as that of his predecessor.

After an episcopate of nearly ten years, the bishop was taken ill on his return from the funeral of his first ordained priest, and soon followed him to the grave. He died at No. 512 Broadway, on the 5th of February, 1825, and was buried under the cathedral, after having been exposed for two days in St. Peter's church. The ceremonial was imposing and attracted general attention, and the remarks of the papers of the day show the respect entertained for him by all classes of citizens.

The next bishop of New York was one well known in the country by his labors, especially by his successful exertions in giving the church in our republic a college and theological seminary suited to its wants--Mount St. Mary's College at Emmettsburg, Maryland. The life of the Rev. John Du Bois had been varied. Born in Paris, he was in college a fellow-student of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins; but actuated by far different thoughts from those which filled the brains of such men, he devoted himself to the service of God. The revolution found him a laborious priest at Paris. Escaping in disguise from France during the Reign of Terror, through the connivance of his old fellow-collegian, Robespierre, he came to America, bearing letters of introduction from La Fayette to eminent personages in the United States.

"Having received faculties from Bishop Carroll, he exercised the holy ministry in various parts of Virginia and Maryland. He lived for some time with Mr. Monroe, afterward President of the United States, and in the family of Gov. Lee, of Maryland. After the death of Father Frambach, he took charge of the mission of Frederick in Maryland, of which mission he may be said in reality to have been the founder. When he arrived there, he celebrated mass in a large room which served as a chapel, and afterward built the first church. But though Frederick was his headquarters, he did not confine himself to it, but made stations throughout all the surrounding country, at Montgomery, Winchester, Hagerstown, and Emmettsburg, everywhere manifesting the same earnest zeal and indomitable perseverance. Bishop Bruté relates, as an instance of his activity and zeal, that once, after hearing confessions on Saturday evening, he rode during the night to near Montgomery, a distance of thirty-five to forty miles, to administer the last sacraments to a dying woman, and was back hearing confessions in the morning, at the Mountain, singing high mass and preaching, without scarcely any one knowing that he had been absent at all.

"In 1808, the Rev. Mr. Du Bois, having previously become a member of the Society of St. Sulpice, in Baltimore, went to reside at Emmettsburg, and laid the foundation of Mount St. Mary's College, which was afterward destined to be the means of so much usefulness to the Catholic Church in America. From this point, now surrounded by so many hallowed associations in the minds of American Catholics, by the sound religious education imparted to so many young men from various parts of the United States, 'by the many fervent and holy priests, trained under his direction,' and by the prudent care with which he cherished the rising institute of the Sisters of Charity at St. Joseph's, he became the benefactor, not of any particular locality, but of the whole Catholic body throughout the United States."

On coming to his diocese after his consecration in Baltimore in October, 1826, he found three churches and four or six priests in New York City; a church and one priest at Brooklyn, Albany, and a few stations elsewhere. But the trustee system fettered the progress of Catholicity.

Long devoted to the cause of education for secular life or the service of the altar, Bishop Du Bois's fondest desire was to endow his diocese with another Mount St. Mary's, but all his efforts failed. A hospital was also one of his early projects; but these and other good works could spring up only when the way had been prepared by his trials, struggles, and sufferings.

During his administration the number of Catholics increased greatly, and new churches sprang up in the city and other parts of the diocese. Of these various foundations and the zealous priests of that day many interesting details are given, to which we can but refer--the erection of St. Mary's, Christ church, Transfiguration, St. Joseph's, St. Nicholas's, St. Paul's at Harlem. The services of the Very Rev. Doctor Power, of Rev. Felix Varela, of Rev. Messrs. Levins and Schueller, and other clergymen of that day are not yet forgotten.

The excitement caused by the Act of Catholic Emancipation in England had its counterpart here, stimulated too by jealousy at the influx of foreign labor. The church had had her day of penal laws and wild excitement; now war was to be made through the press. About 1835 it began in New York. The use of falsehood against Catholicity seems to be considered by some one of the higher virtues. Certainly there is a strange perversion of conscience on the point. The anti-Catholic literature of that period is a curiosity that must cause some cheeks to tingle if there is any manhood left. They took up Fulkes's _Confutation of the Rhemish Testament_, reprinted the text from it, and affixed to it a certificate of several clergymen that it was a reprint from the original published at Rheims. It was not. They caught up a poor creature from a Magdalen asylum in Montreal, and concocted a book, laying the scene in the Hôtel Dieu, commonly called the Convent of the Black Nuns, at Montreal. The book was so infamous that the Harpers issued it under the name of Howe & Bates. It was published daily in _The Sun_ newspaper, and had an immense circulation. Colonel William L. Stone, a zealous Protestant, went to the spot, and, there convinced of the fraud, published an exposure of the vile slanders. He was assailed in a satire called _The Vision of Rubeta_, and the pious Protestant community swallowed the filthy details. At last there arose a quarrel over the spoils. A triangular lawsuit between the Harpers, the Rev. Mr. Slocum, and Maria Monk in the court of chancery gave some strange disclosures, more startling than the fictitious ones of the book. Vice-Chancellor McCoun in disgust turned them out of his court, and told them to go before a jury; but none of them dared to face twelve honest men.

A paper called _The Downfall of Babylon_ flourished for a time on this anti-Catholic feeling, reeking with lewdness and impurity. At last their heroine and tool, Maria Monk, cast off and scouted, ended her days on Blackwell's Island.

Among the curiosities of this period was a work of S. F. B. Morse, (we used in our younger days to think the initials stood for Savage Furious Bigot,) entitled _Brutus, or a Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States_. The queen of France had given the Bishop of St. Louis some altar paintings, and herein was the conspiracy. We saw a picture the other day of Mr. Morse with the stars of several foreign orders of knighthood on his breast; he has received many, some from Catholic sovereigns, and, we believe, one from the pope. Brutus should certainly take him in hand; for some of these orders require knights to swear to things that would be rather awkward for a zealous Protestant to undertake. _Et tu Brute!_

The controversies of that day would furnish matter for an article in themselves. They were the topic of the day, and led to many curious scenes. Among the Catholic controvertists, the Rev. Mr. Levins was particularly incisive and effective; Rev. Mr. Varela dealt gentler but heavy blows, being keen in argument and sound in learning. A tract on the five different Bibles of the American Bible Society was one of those occasions where, departing from the defensive, the Catholic apologist assumed the offensive. And this time it was highly offensive. At that time the Bible Society published a Spanish Bible, and Testaments in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, all Catholic versions, merely omitting the notes of the Catholic translators. _Appleton's Cyclopædia_ asserts that "the American Bible Society, made up of materials more thoroughly Puritanic, and less Lutheran and continental, ... has never published any other than the canonical (Protestant) books;" but this is not so. The Spanish Bible of 1824 contains the very books which in other editions they reject absolutely. It is true that in the edition of 1825 they left them out of the body of the book, but kept them in the list of books. After that they disappeared, while the title-page still falsely professed to give the _Bible_ translated by Bishop Scio de San Miguel, without the slightest intimation that part of Bishop Scio's work was omitted. We once bought Bagster's edition of the Vulgate, and found ourselves the victim of a similar fraud.

Mr. Varela exposed the inconsistency of their publishing in one language as inspired what they rejected in another; of translating a passage in one sense in one volume, and in another in a Bible standing beside it. The subject caused a sensation. After deliberating on the matter, it was determined to suppress all these Catholic versions; they were accordingly withdrawn. The stereotype plates were melted up; and the printed copies were, as we were assured, committed to the flames, although it took some time to effect this greatest Bible-burning ever witnessed in New York.

Meanwhile New York was not without its organs of Catholic sentiment. _The Truth-Teller_ was for many years the vehicle of information and defence. The editor, William Denman, still survives to witness the progress made since that day when he battled almost alone among the press of the land. _The Catholic Diary_, and _The Green Banner_, and _The Freeman's Journal_ followed.

While the controversy fever lasted, some curious scenes took place. Catholics, especially poor servant-girls, were annoyed at all times and in all places, in the street, at the pump--for those were not days of Croton water--and even in their kitchens. One Protestant clergyman of New York had quite a reputation for the gross indecency that characterized his valorous attacks of this kind. The servant of a lady in Beekman street--people in good circumstances lived there then--was a constant object of his zeal. One day, report said, after dining with the lady, he descended to the kitchen, and began twitting the girl about the confessional, and coupling this with the grossest charges against the Catholic clergy. The girl bore it for a time, and when ordering him out of her realm failed, she seized a poker and dealt her indecent assailant a blow on the head that sent him staggering to the stairs. While he groped his way bewildered to the parlor, the girl hastened to her room, bundled up her clothes, and left the house. The clergyman was long laid up from the consequence of his folly, and every attempt made to hush the matter up; but an eccentric Catholic of that day, Joseph Trench, got up a large caricature representing the scene, which went like wild-fire, attack being always popular, and an attack on the Protestant clergy being quite a novelty. Trivial as the whole affair was, it proved more effective than the soundest theological arguments, and Mary Ann Wiggins with her poker really closed the great controversial period.

It had its good effects, nevertheless, in making Catholics earnest in their faith. Their numbers were rapidly increasing, and with them churches and institutions. Besides the Orphan Asylum, an institution for those who had lost only one parent, the Half-Orphan Asylum, was commenced and long sustained, mainly by the zeal and means of Mr. Glover, a convert whose name should stand high in the memory of New York Catholics. This institution, now merged in the general Orphan Asylum, had in its separate existence a long career of usefulness under the care of the Sisters of Charity.

Bishop Du Bois was unremitting in his efforts to increase the number of his clergy and the institutions of his diocese. The progress was marked. Besides clergymen from abroad, he ordained, or had ordained, twenty-one who had been trained under his own supervision, and who completed their divinity studies chiefly at the honored institution which he had founded in Maryland; among these was Gregory B. Pardow, who was, if we mistake not, the first native of the city elevated to the priesthood. Five of these priests have since been promoted to the episcopacy, as well as two others ordained in his time by his coadjutor.

In manners, Bishop Du Bois was the polished French gentleman of the old _régime_; as a clergyman, learned and strict in his ideas, his administrative powers were always deemed great, but in their exercise in his diocese they were constantly thwarted by the trustee system. But he was not one easily intimidated; and when the trustees of the cathedral, in order to force him to act contrary to the dictates of his own better judgment, if not his conscience, threatened to deprive him of his salary, he made them a reply that is historical, "Well, gentlemen, you may vote the salary or not, just as seems good to you. I do not need much; I can live in the basement or in the garret; but whether I come up from the basement, or down from the garret, I will still be your bishop."

He had passed the vigor of manhood when he was appointed to the see of New York, and the constant struggle aged him prematurely. It became necessary for him to call for a younger hand to assist. The position was one that required a singularly gifted priest. The future of Catholicity in New York depended on the selection of one who, combining the learning and zeal of the missionary priest with that _donum famæ_ which gives a man influence over his fellow-men, and that skill in firm but almost imperceptible government which is the characteristic of a great ruler, could place Catholicity in New York on a firm, harmonious basis, instinct with the true spirit of life, that would insure its future success. Providence guided the choice. Surely no man more confessedly endowed with all these qualities could have been selected than the Rev. John Hughes, trained by Bishop Du Bois at Mount St. Mary's, and then a priest of the diocese of Philadelphia, where his dialectic skill had been evinced in a long and well-maintained controversy.

The final overthrow of the trustee system gave the church freedom, and new institutions of every kind which had been imperatively required sprang up. A college at Fordham, the forerunner of the several Catholic colleges of the State, was soon founded; a convent of Ladies of the Sacred Heart, for the education of young ladies; Sisters of Mercy with their various important labors came to help the good work. But now a large German Catholic immigration began. Bishop Hughes saw the want and the means; a development of the German churches, especially under the care of the Redemptorist fathers, soon followed.

The position of the Catholic children in regard to their participation in those educational advantages next attracted his care. The prevalent spirit in those institutions for which Catholics as well as Protestants were taxed was essentially anti-Catholic; the books used were often vile in their character, whenever Catholicity was touched upon. Think of Huntington's Geography with a picture at Asia of "Pagan Idolatry," and at Italy of "Roman Catholic Idolatry." Think of an arithmetic--Pike's, we believe--with a question like this, "If a pope can pray a soul out of purgatory in three days, a cardinal in four, and a bishop in six, how long would it take all three to pray them out?" A Catholic girl in the Rutgers Female Institute, when the geography was given to her, happened to open to Italy, and, outraged at the wanton insult to her feelings, threw the book on the floor, burst into tears, and left the school; but Rutgers Female Institute could use such books as they chose, and Catholics could send there or elsewhere. It was not a State creation, supported by taxes drawn from all; but did any right exist to force Catholics to the alternative of submitting to such degrading insults or keep aloof from schools which they were taxed to support? or rather, the question was, Could Catholics in the State of New York be compelled to support the Protestant church and aid in its extension?

Bishop Bayley sketches briefly the other important acts of the administration of Bishop Hughes, and concludes,

"But though much has been done, much remains to be accomplished. The 'two hundred Catholics' of 1785 were better provided for than the two hundred thousand who now (1853) dwell within the boundaries of the city of New York. It is true that no exertions could have kept pace with the tide of emigration which has been pouring in upon our shores, especially during the last few years. The number of priests, churches, and schools, rapidly as they have increased, are entirely inadequate to the wants of our Catholic population, and render it imperative that every exertion should be made to supply the deficiency. What has been done so far has, by God's blessing, been accomplished by the Catholics of New York themselves. Comparatively very little assistance has been received from the liberality of our brethren in other countries. And while we have done so much for ourselves, we have contributed liberally toward the erection of churches and other works of piety in various parts of the United States.

"Though the Catholic Church in this country has increased much more largely by conversions than is generally supposed, yet, for the most part, its rapid development has been owing to the emigration of Catholics from foreign countries; and, if we desire to make this increase permanent, and to keep the children in the faith of their fathers, we must, above all things, take measures to imbue the minds of the rising generation of Catholics with sound religious principles. This can only be done by giving them a good Catholic education. In our present position, the school-house has become second in importance only to the house of God itself. We have abundant cause for thankfulness to God on account of the many blessings which he has conferred on us; but we will show ourselves unworthy of these blessings if we do not do all that is in our power to promote every good work by which they may be increased and confirmed to those who shall come after us."

And though we may now rate the number of Catholics in the city at four hundred thousand, the language is still applicable.

There are now, we may add, forty Catholic churches on the island, with parish schools educating twenty-one thousand children of both sexes; houses of Jesuits, Redemptorists, Fathers of Mercy, Paulists, Franciscans, Capucins, Dominicans; convents of the Sacred Heart, houses of Sisters of Charity, Sisters of the Good Shepherd, of Notre Dame, of the order of St. Dominic, of the Poor of St. Francis, and of the Third Order of St. Francis; several orphan asylums, two hospitals, reformatories for boys and girls, a house of protection for servants, a home for destitute children, a home for aged women, and a foundling asylum just begun. Yet it is but true that all this is little for the wants of four hundred thousand Catholics.

Glancing back to the early history, we see in all the work of the many. In comparison, we have had fewer men of wealth than those around us; but it must also be added that among those few there have been still fewer, in proportion, to identify their names with the great religious works. As we look around through the country, we see great institutions, churches, colleges, libraries, asylums, each the act of a single man of wealth; but we cannot show in New York a single such Catholic work. There are monuments in our great cemeteries, on each of which more money has been expended than would erect a church in some neglected part of New York. Which would be the nobler monument?

We trust that this work, full of interest as it is to all, will circulate widely among the Catholics of New York and bring home to all that respect to their predecessors, respect to themselves, requires of all to take in hand earnestly what yet remains to do to give us what are absolutely required for worship, for instruction, for the works of mercy.

CHRISTMAS HYMN.

BY POPE ST. DAMASUS.[127]

Christe potens rerum, redeuntis conditor ævi, Vox summi sensusque Dei, quem fundit ab altâ Mente Pater, tantique dedit consortia regni, Impia tu nostræ domuisti crimina vitæ, Passus corporeâ mundum vestire figurâ, Affarique palam populos, hominemque fateri. Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater Arcano obstupuit compleri viscera partu, Auctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda Artificem texere poli, mundique repertor Pars fuit humani generis, latuitque sub uno Pectore, qui totum latè complectitur orbem; Et qui non spatiis terræ, non æquoris undis, Nec capitur coelo, parvos confluxit in artus. Quin et supplicii nomen nexusque subisti, Ut nos surriperes letho, mortemque fugares Morte tuâ: mox æthereas evectus in auras, Purgatâ repetis lætum tellure parentem.

TRANSLATION.

Christ, sovereign of all things that be, Wisdom and Word of God! we see A new-born world spring forth from thee.

God born of God, and who dost share His reign supreme, how didst thou bear The vesture of our dust to wear?

Unto our race thou didst belong-- Didst speak and mingle with the throng, To bear--to triumph over wrong.

A Virgin's bosom did accord Repose to Him whom she adored; In wonder she brought forth her Lord.

Who spread aloft the heavens, the day, Who built the world--lo! clothed in clay Hid 'neath one human bosom lay.

Whose hands the universe uphold, Whom earth, nor seas, nor heavens enfold-- Lo! compassed by a mortal mould.

What anguish didst thou undergo; What woe, to shelter us from woe; What death, from death to save us so;

Ere from a world redeemed by grace Thou didst return aloft through space To seek the Blessed Father's face.

CONSTANTINA E. BROOKS.

FOOTNOTE:

[127] St. Damasus was of Spanish extraction. He was elected pope in the year 366, being then sixty years old. During the latter years of his life the celebrated St. Jerome acted as his secretary, and mentions him in his epistles as "an incomparable person and a learned doctor." He is classed by writers with Basil, Athanasius, Ambrose, and such like men, who have been eminent for their zeal, learning, and holy lives.

Through his care many valuable public works were executed. He repaired and beautified the church of St. Laurence near Pompey's Pillar, and the paintings with which he decorated it were admirable four hundred years afterward. He also drained some of the impure springs of the Vatican, and repaired and adorned with epitaphs in verse many of the tombs of the martyrs interred in the Catacombs. A collection of nearly forty of those epitaphs is still extant, and justifies the praises which St. Jerome bestows on his poetical genius. He is also known as the author of many longer poems.

After a life of humility, benevolence, and purity, he died in the year 384, having filled the papal throne eighteen years. He was buried in a small oratory near the Ardeatine Way, and his tomb was identified and described in 1736.

A further interest is thrown around this prelate and poet by recent investigations. In 1851, Pope Pius IX. employed the distinguished Chevalier G. B. de Rossi to prepare a work illustrating the cemeteries which underlie the vineyards of the Via Appia, on each side of which are some of the most extensive and most important. M. de Rossi found here in fragments, which he put together, an inscription in honor of Eusebius, the authorship of which is distinctly ascribed to Damasus--_Damasus Episcopus fecit Eusebio Episcopo et Martyri_.

The slab of marble on which this was engraved had been used (as was seen by marks on the other side) for some public monument in honor of the Emperor Caracalla.

THE TRUE ORIGIN OF GALLICANISM.[128]

A curious book has lately appeared in France. It is not so much the production of the pen as the result of the judicious industry of M. Gérin, judge of the civil tribunal of Paris. In his introduction to the work he says that it is not his intention to write a book, but to put together materials for history and for the better understanding of a vital question, which has agitated the French world especially for three hundred years--the infallibility of the sovereign pontiff and his superiority to a general council of bishops. It would be difficult to exaggerate the speculative value as well as the practical importance of this doctrine. M. Gérin has rendered an inestimable service to historic truth and to the church by showing the origin of the so-called Gallican doctrine, which denied the infallibility of the pontiff, contrary to the practice and opinion that had prevailed among Christians for fifteen or sixteen hundred years. It is not our intention to prove the possessive or prescriptive right of this doctrine. This has been amply done in our day in English by several authors, while the work of the brothers Ballerini and Zaccharia's reply to Hontheim, the well-known Anti-Febronius, are open to the study of the learned. What we shall do will be to follow M. Gérin in showing the base origin of a teaching which no array of brilliant names can make legitimate.

At the outset we acknowledge the difficulty of the task. The work is so tersely and so logically compiled that one is at a loss how to break in upon so connected a recital, lest it should impair the effect of what he selects, by detaching it from its antecedents as well as from its consequents. But as all may not, at least for some time, have it in their power to read a translation of this interesting volume, we shall risk something for their information.

It has been commonly supposed that the Gallican doctrine was generally held by the French clergy during the reign of Louis XIV., and that in ordering it to be taught throughout his kingdom that sovereign only seconded the desire of his prelates and people. Never has a more unfounded idea been foisted upon credulity. No one ever heard of any such doctrine before the Chancellor Gerson at the Council of Constance hesitatingly broached it, in order to apply it, if possible, as a remedy and preventive of schism in the church. Like all opinions not well ventilated and examined, it found some who favored it, and at the schismatical assembly of Basle it acquired a number of followers. These, however, were soon obliged to yield; and in the Council of Florence a dogmatic decree was drawn up and adopted by the fathers, and confirmed by the sovereign pontiff, which declared the latter to be possessed of the _full and supreme jurisdiction of Peter_, and the doctor or teacher of the universal church--a phrase that implied the infallibility of the pope; for a teacher is rightly so called only when he possesses the principles of his branch in such a way as to impart the degree of certainty peculiar to it. The church possesses the assistance of Christ, and is, therefore, infallible; and the organ or teacher of that church must have that same assistance which shall make him infallible. Otherwise we would have the, to say the least, strange consequence that ordinarily the church is liable to be misled; extraordinarily only--for councils must from their nature be unusual--is she to be regarded as free from error. It should be borne in mind that this definition of the oecumenical synod, A.D. 1439, was made after due consultation; for when Eugenius IV. had caused his rights and prerogatives to be discussed before him by the Greek and Latin theologians, the Greeks, on leaving the presence of the pontiff, went to the emperor of Constantinople, then in Florence, and renewed before him the examination of the question. The result was, that they did not oppose the teaching of the papal doctors, but merely required two rights for their party: one, that no council should be called without the emperor; and the other, that in case of appeal the patriarchs should not be obliged to present themselves for judgment, but that legates should be sent into the province in question to try the cause. Not a word was said against the doctrines. The pope refused to grant these requests, and the emperor broke off negotiations. Still, through the mediation of influential prelates on both sides, they were resumed again immediately; and the Greek fathers acknowledged the Roman pontiff "locum gerentem et vicarium Christi, pastorem et doctorem omnium Christianorum, regentem et gubernantem Dei Ecclesiam"--to hold the place of Christ and to be his vicar, the pastor and doctor of all Christians, the ruler and head of the church. A few days afterward, the formal dogmatic definition was given by the united fathers of both churches, confirmed by the pope, and subscribed by him, by the cardinals, the emperor John Paloeologus, and the Greek and Latin fathers of the council, with the exception of one, Mark, Bishop of Ephesus, whose bad faith in quoting the Greek manuscripts was accidentally made known to the whole council. His servant had erased the wrong passage, which fact the bishop did not discover until he was reading the code in public. The words of the definition are these:

"We define that the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold the primacy throughout the whole world; that the same Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, and the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole church, and the father and doctor of all Christians; that to him, in blessed Peter, was given by our Lord Jesus Christ full power to feed, rule, and govern the universal church, as is contained, also, in the acts of oecumenical councils and in the sacred canons."

It was impossible for Gallican theologians to ignore the force of these words. To elude it they had recourse to the last phrase, "_as_ is contained in the acts of oecumenical councils and in the sacred canons," and appealed to tradition to explain the meaning of the fathers of Florence. Their meaning, however, is clear from what they determined on a few days before the decision. In their written declaration that phrase is not found. Moreover, the phrase itself is in corroboration of the decision; for in reality tradition bears out fully the doctrine it contains. The Greek text of Cardinal Bessarion has this phrase, ~kat' hon eropon~--"according to the manner"--and it is this that the Gallic doctors thought favored them. This wording does not, however, alter the sense we have given. With regard to the phrase itself, learned men, and among them the author of _Anti-Febronius_, state that in the original document such an appendage had no existence whatsoever. With this decision before them, how did it happen that such teaching as at a later date obtained the ascendency in France, and in some other parts of Europe, could have met with favor? The work of M. Gérin answers this question clearly, and shows that intrigue and royal influence and power did the work.

The documents with which he opens his collection refer to the year 1663. They, for the most part, have hitherto been entirely unknown, and were found by M. Gérin among the MSS. of the time of Louis XIV. in the Bibliothèque Impériale--MSS. Colbert. At that time ill-humor existed between the French and Papal courts, growing out of a quarrel between the servants of the French ambassador at Rome. This was settled for the moment; but on the appointment of the Duc de Créqui, the feuds were renewed, owing to the disposition of that ambassador, whose pride had been wounded by his having been obliged to pay the first visits to the relatives of the pope, who were in the first places of the government. The retainers of the duke on the 12th of August, 1662, attacked and beat the Corsican guard in the service of the pope. The pope sent an envoy to visit the duke, who pretended that an attempt had been made on his life. Instead of receiving the messenger of the pontiff graciously, he threatened to throw him out of the window, and refused all apologies. This was a spark thrown into other inflammable matter that brought on an invasion of the papal territory, and other still worse disasters to the church. The king, as a consequence of his difficulties with the pope, became surrounded with evilly-disposed counsellors, whom, to do him justice, he sometimes curbed. It was during this political trouble that the enemies of Rome sought to deal her a blow fatal to her influence. The Jansenist opinions had received a severe condemnation in the decrees of the sovereign pontiff and through the action of Louis XIV. Those who professed them were obliged to sign a formula of submission to the church, and receive the doctrine of Rome. There were many who, while they did so, still held to the erroneous teachings of their sect. Among these there was an Abbé Bourseis, a man of some ability, but of more tact in courtly life. In 1661, on the 12th of December, a bachelor of theology defended the following thesis:

"We acknowledge Christ head of the church in such a manner that he, on ascending to heaven, intrusted the government of it first to Peter, and afterward to his successors, and gave them the same infallibility he himself possessed, whenever they should speak authoritatively, (_ex cathedra_.) There is, therefore, in the Roman church an infallible judge of controversy regarding faith, even apart from general councils, in questions both of right and of fact."

About the same time, the Abbé Bourseis seized upon this opportunity and gained over the minister Colbert; while the son of the minister Letellier brought over his father. The thesis was represented as an attempt of the Jesuits against the government. About the same time, Drouet de Villeneuve, a bachelor of the College of Navarre, defended the same doctrine in substance. The advocate-general was instructed to proceed in the case. The parliament having been informed of what had occurred, issued a decree against the thesis, on the 22d of January, 1663, forbidding any one to write, hold, or teach such propositions under penalty of being proceeded against by the courts; and commanded this decree to be placed on the register of the said faculty of Paris. The parliament deputed two counsellors of the court, and Achille de Harlay, the substitute of the _procureur-général_, to have the decree registered. These persons repaired to the Sorbonne on the 31st January, 1663. "Despite the menaces addressed to the indocile doctors, by Talon, the advocate-general, and Harlay, the faculty refused to obey; and only agreed to take the matter into consideration."[129] M. de Mincé and M. de Breda, favorable to the government, said the faculty had not changed its sentiments and did not approve the thesis. No conclusion was come to; the discussion was adjourned to the 1st. Nothing, however, was done on the first nor on the 5th of February. On the 9th, the archbishops of Auch and of Paris were present. The first spoke against the decree and action of the parliament; the second said no opposition should be made to the decree, but that the faculty would be able to arrange things in a satisfactory manner if they discussed the matter amicably with the first president of the parliament. The Archbishop of Auch said that general councils were necessary only against schism; the rest, against heresy as well as schism, but for nothing else. No conclusion was reached. On the 15th of February, M. de Breda reported, and read the answer of the first president, and, hearing a great uproar, said he was astonished to see those present so excited against the parliament. M. Grandin, syndic of the faculty, to justify himself for having signed the thesis, spoke for a long time, and tried to give a good meaning to the thesis, and explained the third proposition, touching the need of general councils, in the same way as the Archbishop of Auch. M. de Mincé wished the decree registered. M. Morel thought it ought not to be registered before the thesis had been censured. He quoted some text of St. Gregory Nazianzen, adding that, if it were registered, the faculty would be like the statue of Memnon. He was followed in his opinion by M. Amiot. The Rev. P. Nicolai, MM. Bail, Joisel, Chamillard, and all the doctors of St. Sulpice, and of the house of Chardonnet, were of the same opinion, and declaimed strongly against the harangue of the substitute, Achille de Harlay. M. Lestocq, professor of the Sorbonne, wished to prove the decree null both in matter and form. M. Chamillard the younger said the Council of Constance was not received, and that its doctrine was only probable; but the greater part of the doctors having risen against him, he was obliged to say it had been received in part. M. Bossuet[130] here made a feint of bringing forward a new project; upon which Leblond, professor of the Sorbonne, Bonst, also professor, Joisel and Blanger, of the Sorbonne, following the advice of the Père Nicolai, left their places in an indignant manner, saying that the harangue of the substitute ought to be censured. All the professors of the Sorbonne, without exception, the fathers Louvet and Hermant, Bernardines and professors in their house, spoke bitterly against the parliament; and when the Père Hermant undertook to prove the infallibility of the pope and his superiority over a council, he was followed by nearly all the monks.

On the 15th, MM. Pignay, Bail, Nicolai, Chaillon, dean of Beauvais, Joisel, and all the professors of the Sorbonne without exception, as also MM. Magnay and Charton, opposed the registering.

The chief instructor of the bachelor Villeneuve, the Abbé de Tilloy, who had signed the thesis, and M. Joisel wished the decree registered with the explanations of M. Grandin. M. Leblond, professor of the Sorbonne, and M. Lestocq concluded that it was agreed on that the registering should be accepted with these explanations. M. Guyard, of Navarre, said that to do so was to accuse the good faith of those who had drawn up the conclusion, which had passed by advice of MM. de Mincé and de Breda. The Rev. Fathers de la Barmondière and Leblanc, of St. Sulpice, accused the faculty of mortal sin, and the latter said it was through cowardice and fear of the temporal power that the decree was registered. M. Cornet, the head professor of Navarre, was not present at these assemblies.

At the end of this memoir are the list of doctors who took part in the discussions, and confidential notes regarding each of the members of the faculty.

"List of doctors who have acted badly, or are suspected, on the subject of the decree of the parliament, (that is, opposed the king.)

MM. Cornet, Grandin, professor, De Lestocq, " Chamillard, " Leblond, " Bonst, " Despérier, " Joisel, Chamillard, brother of the professor, Pignay, Morel, Charton, Gobinet, Amiot, Rouillé, Alleaume de Tilloy, Demure, Magnet, Quatrehommes, Bossuet, De la Barmondière, Leblanc, Dez de Fontaine, Bail, Du Fournel, De Pinteville.

"Doctors who have acted well on this same occasion, and who particularly distinguished themselves, (that is, favored the king.)

MM. De Mincé, curé de Gonesse--very well. De Breda, curé de St. André--admirably. Duzon, Vaillant, Faure, Fortin, Cocquelin, Caspin."

"SKETCH OF THE DOCTORS WHO HAVE ACTED BADLY OR ARE SUSPECTED.

"Before making remarks on these gentlemen, I protest sincerely that I consider them all good men, full of true ecclesiastical zeal, but, to my mind, in this affair not bearing themselves according to knowledge.

"M. Cornet,[131] a fine mind, a very able man, of irreproachable life, with so great a reputation among those of his party that he is their head beyond dispute, and the soul of their deliberations. Those most attached to him are MM. Grandin, Chamillard, and Morel--the first two with more reserve and management, the last more openly and frankly.

"Nothing can be expected from the Carmelites, Augustinians, and Franciscans."

"COMMUNITIES TO BE FEARED ON THIS OCCASION.

"That of the Jesuits under the Père Bazot.

"That of St. Sulpice, where, to tell the truth, ecclesiastics are educated in a spirit of perfect regularity; but we are assured that every one there is extremely in favor of the papal authority.

"That of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet.

"That known as the Trente-Trois, at the Hôtel d'Albiac, near the College of Navarre, under M. Charton.

"That of M. Gilot.

"There are several _dévots_ who aid these in a work which good Frenchmen and true subjects of the king strive to prevent. The principal are MM. Dalbon, De la Motte, Fénélon, and M. d'Abély named for the bishopric of Rodez."

The decree, says M. Gérin, was registered on the 4th of April; but on the same day a thesis similar to the one it condemned was maintained, with the approbation of the syndic of the faculty, in the college of the Bernardines, by the Frère Laurent Desplantes. On the 14th of April, in consequence of this being denounced by royal agents, the parliament cited before it M. Grandin, the syndic, the professor presiding at the thesis, the disputant, and the superiors of the Bernardines. Talon, the advocate-general, spoke with great warmth. "Strange," he said in his prosecution,--"strange, that, with unexampled rashness, they have dared to renew these evil propositions on the very day the decree was registered in the faculty." Grandin held out against the storm, and the parliament suspended him from his duties. This rigor frightened the timid, and some days afterward the court received a number of equivocal propositions, subscribed by sixty-six doctors only. The whole number was over seven hundred. M. Deslions, of the Sorbonne, in his MS. journal,[132] lets us into the secret of the way in which these six propositions were gotten up. They are as follows:

"1. It is not the doctrine of the faculty that the sovereign pontiff has any authority over the temporal rights of the most Christian king; on the contrary, the faculty always opposed those who favored that authority, even understood as indirect only.

"2. It is the doctrine of the faculty that the most Christian king acknowledges and has no superior at all in temporal matters except God; and this is its ancient doctrine, from which it will never recede.

"3. It is the doctrine of the faculty that subjects owe fidelity and obedience to the most Christian king in such a way that they can be dispensed from them under no pretext.

"4. It is the doctrine of the faculty that they neither approve nor have approved any proposition, contrary to the authority of the most Christian king, or to the genuine (_germanis_) liberties of the Gallican Church and canons received in the realm, v. g., that the sovereign pontiff can depose bishops in despite of these canons.

"5. It is not the doctrine of the faculty that the sovereign pontiff is above an oecumenical council.

"6. It is not the doctrine of the faculty that the sovereign pontiff is infallible if no consent of the church support him, (_nullo accedente ecclesiæ consensu_.)"

With regard to these propositions, M. Deslions writes:

"M. Bouthillier, doctor of the Sorbonne, and later member of the assembly of 1682, and Bishop of Troyes, told me that, in the conference held among the doctors deputed to draw up the six articles presented to the king on the part of the Sorbonne, in the first article, which concerns the deposition of kings, the phrase 'on no pretext,' (_nullo prætextu_,) was purposely inserted; and that thereupon some one present objected the case of heresy. M. Morel then said that this would be a _reason_, and not a simple _pretext_, for deposing a king. He told me, also, that he had seen in the MS. of M. Grandin, at the sixth article, that the pope is not infallible _if some kind of consent_ of the church do not support him. They resolved to put instead of this, _if no consent_ support him; which is the same thing, and in some way less even. So true is it that these articles were drawn up in the most equivocal language the framers could suitably employ. M. Bouthillier learned this of M. Gobinet, one of the deputies."

In confirmation of this, M. Gérin quotes a comment on these articles made by Pinsson, advocate of the parliament, by order of Colbert. He qualifies all the propositions as equivocal or captious. He says:

"1. This first proposition is captious; it should have been general, affirmative, specific, etc.

"2. The king did not need the avowal of the faculty to prove that he knows no superior in temporal matters, this avowal being much more advantageous to the popes themselves, who have recognized it, as does Pope Innocent III., cap. _Per venerabilem_, in the decretals.

"3. This repetition too often made of the words 'most Christian king' was unnecessary for Frenchmen, and it would have been less suspicious and more advantageous if, in speaking of the king, they had given to him no title, etc.

"4. This fourth is equivocal and suspicious, etc.

"5. The affectation of framing the fifth article in negative expressions cannot but be suspicious, etc.

"6. The last article should not have been conceived in negative terms, but in affirmative; to wit, that the pope of himself is not infallible without the consent of the universal church. And the phrase, 'If no consent of the church support him,' is too equivocal in this place," etc.

The offer, in the name of the faculty, of these propositions put a stop to the difficulty for the time, and the settlement of the question of redress so unjustifiably and tyrannically urged by Louis XIV. against the holy see brought with it an external appearance of peace, while it left a rankling wound that was to break out afresh in the contests concerning the _regale_, or so-styled "royal perquisite," seventeen years later.

"This question of the _regale_," says M. Gérin, "was of a date much anterior to the time of Louis XIV." It consisted in the vindication by the crown of a presumed title to the revenues of certain dioceses, and to the nomination of persons to hold benefices in the same, upon the death or removal of the bishop, and until the newly nominated bishop had taken the oath of fealty, and had registered it in the chancellor's chamber, this act being styled the closure of the royal right, or _regale_. The Council of Lyons had authorized this custom with regard to bishoprics in which it had been established as a condition in their foundation, or had existed as an ancient practice; while it expressly forbade its introduction with respect to those dioceses in which it had not been received.

"The parliaments undertook, however, to make the custom one of universal application, compelling the dioceses claiming exemption to prove their title to be free from it.

"Henry IV. by an edict of 1606, art. 27, declared, 'We do not intend to enjoy the right of royal perquisite (_regale_) save in the manner in which we and our predecessors have done, without extending it further to the prejudice of churches exempt from it.' This edict was registered in the parliament of Paris without modification; but on the 24th of August, 1608, the same parliament pronounced a decree conceived in these terms: 'The court declares the king to have a right to the royal perquisite from the church of Belley, as from every other in his kingdom;' and forbidding advocates to put forward any proposition to the contrary. The clergy complained to the king, who by letters of 1609 yielded the execution of the decree. Louis XIII. seemed favorable to the rights of the church; but after the accession of Louis XIV. these rights were menaced more than ever, and 'there was no assembly of the clergy,' particularly after the year 1638, in which a special commission was not named to attend to the subject of royal perquisite."[133]

That of 1670 presented a remonstrance to the king through the Archbishop of Embrun; but in 1673 and 1675, two royal declarations appeared to the effect that all the churches of the kingdom were subject to the right of royal perquisite; and that the archbishops and bishops who had not yet closed it by registering their oath should go through that formality within six months.

Caulet, Bishop of Pamiers, and Pavillon, Bishop of Alet, standing on their rights as secured by the custom of exemption, and by the canons of the general Council of Lyons, refused to obey. The result was a contest between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, in which Rome of necessity became engaged. Unheard-of harshness, and cruelty even, were used against the clergymen who opposed the government. One vicar-general was condemned to death. Unhappily, there were many ecclesiastics, who had been provided with benefices by the government, who not only took sides with it, but, being interested, were active in keeping up a quarrel the solution of which, in accordance with the views of Rome, would have proved ruinous to them. They sold Christ for a few pieces of money. The deputies of the clergy in 1680, in their regular quinquennial assembly, at the request of Louis XIV., wrote a flattering letter in favor of his claims and against the pope. This caused Madame de Sévigné to criticise them caustically. When speaking of the two prelates mentioned above, she says, after referring to the then Bishop of Alet, who had succeeded Pavillon, "But the shade of his saintly predecessor, and M. de Pamiers--have they signed that letter of flattery?"

But what were the means used to bring about the assembly of 1682, in which the four articles of which so much has been said were framed? That which we have recounted up to this was only the preparation of the soil; the seed was now to be sown, and fostered with all the care of royal interest. M. Gérin quotes from the _Procès Verbaux du Clérgé_, t. v.

"The general agents or procurators of the clergy" (these agents resided permanently in Paris to protect the interests of the church in case of collision with the state, or in matters partly ecclesiastical and partly secular) "were counselled to present a memorial to the king, and to pray his majesty to allow them to call together the prelates who were in Paris, on business connected with their churches, in order that through their singular prudence they might find means to restore peace and put every thing in order. The king having permitted this assembly, it was held during the months of March and of May, 1681, in the archiepiscopal palace of Paris."

It is humiliating to a Catholic to have to make the avowal, but it is well known that royal patronage had well-nigh ruined the French Church, and that not a few bishops unworthy of the name occupied high and influential places. This assembly, known as "the Little Assembly," (_La Petite Assemblée_,) met the day after the order was given. Fifty bishops, of whom the great majority ought to have been at their posts of duty, were basking in the sunshine of royal favor, and it was these Louis XIV. called on for advice. Racine has a sarcastic epigram on them, which M. Gérin quotes:

"Un ordre, hier venu de S. Germain, Veut qu'on s'assemble; on s'assemble demain; Notre archévêque et cinquante-deux autres, Successeurs des apôtres, S'y trouveront. Or, de savoir quel cas S'y traitera, c'est encore un mystère. C'est seulement chose très claire Que nous avions cinquante-deux prélats Qui ne residaient pas."

The advice these prelates gave was what might have been expected from the state of things at the time.

They indorsed the action of the government on four points of discussion with the holy see:

1. The royal perquisite, which Fleury and Bossuet could not approve.

2. The book of the Abbé Gerbais, censured by Rome as schismatical, suspected of heresy, and injurious to the holy see; but which they found full of good doctrine and of deep learning.

3. In the affair of Charonne. This was a case of exemption from royal nomination in which the king had violated that right. The religious women of the convent of Charonne, near Paris, which belonged to the Augustinian rule, enjoyed the privilege, recognized by the civil power, of electing every three years their superior. Louis XIV., however, in 1676, named for their superior a Cistercian nun, whom the Archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Champvallon, acknowledged, and to whom he gave the position. The religious appealed to the sovereign pontiff, who, by a brief dated August 7th, 1680, annulled the act of the archbishop, and ordered them to proceed to the triennial election, and take for their superior one of their own number.

4. In the affair of the diocese of Pamiers, of which we have spoken above.

"On the 2d of May the assembly resolved to ask the king to call a national council, or general assembly of the clergy, composed of two deputies of the first order and two of the second from each province, the latter to have a consulting voice only. The other details were to be arranged according to the advice of the commissaries."[134]

The action of this assembly was much criticised and was disapproved by the people, as can be seen, according to M. Gérin's statement, in the MSS. of St. Sulpice, i. ii. iii.; Bibl. Mazarine, MSS. 2392, 2398 fr. From these he makes several long and interesting extracts.

In consequence of this resolution of the Little Assembly, "the king, on the 16th of July, 1681, addressed letters of convocation to the agents of the clergy, through whom the archbishops of the territory subject to his majesty were charged to hold provincial assemblies and cause to be chosen two deputies of the first order and two of the second, for the general assembly assigned for the 1st of October, 1681."

Before entering upon a history of this body, M. Gérin gives a clear idea of the question at issue between the king and the pontiff, and shows that it was of the same nature as that which caused the struggle, in which the church was finally victorious, between Gregory VII. and the German emperor, Henry IV. The appointment of proper pastors for the flock was at stake. Rome sought likewise to put a stop to the abuse by which laymen were pensioned on dioceses, whose funds ought to have been devoted to supplying the spiritual wants of the people, and relieving the poor and orphans. The church was in imminent danger of servitude, spiritual and temporal, as Fleury himself states. So far had the usurpation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction gone that, when Louis XIV., at Strasburg, gave audience to the bishop of that place, the act of the king in putting his hand on the crozier of the prelate as he leant forward to hear him was interpreted as a resumption of investiture by the ring and crozier. Pelisson, however, the intimate friend of the king, tells us this was not the case, as he heard him say afterward that such an idea had not occurred to him; but as the prelate spoke in a rather low tone, he bent toward him and leaned for support on the crozier.

The government of Louis had wished this assembly for its own ends; it was therefore determined that nothing should be left undone to secure a favorable result. The temper of all the members of the French hierarchy was known: there were some who were feared--these were to be passed by; some who were doubted--these were to be allured to compliance; others there were whose worldly spirit and indebtedness to the crown left no uncertainty as to their course--these were to be put forward, honored, and made the leaders in the movement against Rome. Colbert, ably seconded by the worldly Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris, set about the work. His master was all-powerful; every thing but true virtue was to bend before him. Canonical forms were to be superseded if found to be trammels, and persons who contradicted were to be made to feel the weight of royal displeasure. The legislative bodies even had been reduced to a state of passive instrumentality, so that, in 1672, a conscientious bishop of Languedoc complained to Colbert that votes were given without discussion, and protested that explanations should be made in regard to the advantages or the necessity of the expenses the states were called on to vote. In this state of things, the Little Assembly had been convened and had acted the part we have seen. Before closing its sessions it named a commission under the presidency of Harlay, without whose bidding it was to do nothing. This commission drew up the project of procuration, and, by order of the king, no mention was made of the part he had had in it. On the 16th of June, 1681, Colbert writes to the archbishop:

"SIR: You will find accompanying this a copy of the letter of the king, as approved by his majesty, for the convocation of the general assembly of the clergy, in which you will remark that no mention is made of the plan of procuration, placed by you in my hands. His majesty has thought that nothing should appear as coming from him that might determine the matters to be acted on in the said assemblage; but he has resolved to give orders on this subject _by word of mouth_ to the general agents of the clergy, and to direct that this project or plan of procuration be sent to the archbishops, with the explanation that it has been drawn up by commissioners named at the late assembly, for the purpose of being sent to all parts; to make known what ought to be treated of in the said assembly, and to bring about uniformity of powers; and in order to cause the provincial assemblies to give powers of procuration to the deputies of the general assembly, conformably to the project, his majesty will direct that the intendants of provinces be written to, to command them to impart to the archbishops his intentions on the subject of the procuration."

M. Gérin gives us here the text of this plan of procuration; it is from a MS. annotated by the _procureur-général_ De Harlay, brother of the archbishop. The deputies are

"To repair to the said city of Paris, according to the letters of the king and of the said agents, and there deliberate, in the manner contained in the resolution of the said assemblies of March and May, (the Little Assembly,) on the means of reconciling the variances respecting the royal right of perquisite (_regale_) between the pope, on the one side, and the king, on the other; to determine on all the acts which they shall deem necessary to put an end to these variances, with the deputies of other provinces, the same to sign the clauses and conditions that the assembly shall judge fitting; they are likewise charged and expressly commanded to employ all proper means to repair the infractions committed by the court of Rome in the decrees of the concordat _de causis et de frivolis appellationibus_ in the affairs of Charonne, of Pamiers, of Toulouse, and others which may have or shall have transpired; to preserve the jurisdiction of the ordinaries of the realm, and the various degrees of it in the form sanctioned by the concordat; to cause the pope, in case of appeal to Rome, to depute commissaries in France to judge it; to procure, by all sorts of due and proper means, the preservation of the maxims and liberties of the Gallican Church; to pass the resolutions by a plurality of votes, and, for the reasons explained above, to frame all acts that shall be required, even though there be any thing demanding a more special commission than is contained in these presents, promise being given that all that shall have been granted and signed by them shall be agreed to and observed inviolably in every particular, according to its form and tenor."

The government foresaw that the second order of the clergy, the simple priests, would make an attempt to vindicate their right to a voice. For this reason it determined to have a precedent by which to act. The Archbishop of Rheims, who was in the interest of the government, convoked his provincial assembly at Senlis; the second order protested; its voice was stifled, and the plan of procuration accepted. An account of the proceedings was made out and sent to the king, by whose command copies were immediately transmitted to the intendants of the kingdom with orders to instruct the archbishops to do the same in like cases.[135] As for the choice of deputies, that was to be made without any appearance or direct proof of royal intervention. But the names of the deputies show the pressure that must have been brought to bear by the court. M. Gérin quotes here a number of documents in which the royal interference is manifest. Thus Colbert writes to the Archbishop of Rouen:

"FONTAINEBLEAU, Sept. 21, 1681.

"The king, being persuaded that the Bishop of Lisieux can be of more use in the next assembly than any other of your suffragans, his majesty has ordered me to write you that you will please have him chosen," etc.

From page 115 to 153 M. Gérin demonstrates this pressure unanswerably; and from page 153 to page 261, he shows from the character of the persons chosen, the nature of the assembly, and its obsequiousness to the sovereign. On page 260 he asks,

"Why were not seen there Mascaron, Fléchier, Bourdaloue, Fénélon, Huet, Mabillon, Thomassin, Rancé, Tronson, Brisacier, Tiberge, La Salle, La Chétardie, and so many others, still more glorious in the sight of God than in that of men?... Cease then from saying that the assembly of 1682 was the _élite_ of the clergy of the day!"

One of the most interesting features connected with the history of the assembly is the new phase put upon the part acted in it by the famous Bishop of Meaux--Bossuet. His position here contradicts what we have seen him do in the year 1663. But from all the documents M. Gérin brings forward, it is evident that he was drawn in against his will. In one place he writes:

"The assembly is about to be held; and they desire not only that I should be present, but that I should preach the introductory sermon." (Letter to the Abbé de Rancé.)

Fleury in his notes says,

"It was the will of the king that the Bishop of Meaux should be present."

It is true that the articles were drawn up by him; but it was because he saw that extreme opinions were about to prevail, to prevent which he took the propositions into his hands, and did the best he could under the circumstances. This, however, does not excuse him entirely; for there are times in which we should be ready to suffer for the cause of truth, and if necessary even to give our lives. The fault of Bossuet was, that he was weak, and could not resolve to forfeit royal favor for the glory of suffering in a just cause. After a careful and thorough perusal of the chapter on Bossuet and the assembly, it is impossible to come to any milder conclusion than this. The articles were drawn up and passed by the assembly. It is not our purpose to go into an examination of these articles. It will suffice to state that their aim was to limit that fulness of power belonging to the sovereign pontiff which we have seen implied in the definition of the Council of Florence, without seeming to do or say any thing that could be noted as heretical or schismatical; and in the third article there is an indorsement of the decrees of the fourth and fifth Council of Constance, which it is well known were never approved by the sovereign pontiff, and have therefore no authority. These decrees proclaim the superiority of a general council of bishops over the pope, and strike a direct blow at his infallibility and supremacy. They were the very decrees that caused the decision of the Council of Florence, though the occasion of the definition was the union of the Greek and Latin churches. How were these articles received? On the 19th of March they were adopted by the assembly. On the 11th of April, Innocent XI. censured them in his brief. Louis XIV. was so much impressed by this act of the pope that he prevented the bishops of the assembly from sending a circular to the prelates of the kingdom, by way of protest. On the 9th of May, he suspended the sessions of the assembly; and on the 29th of June, he sent orders for its immediate dissolution, without allowing it to go through with the rest of its programme. Count de Maistre says of him, "He broke up the assembly unceremoniously, with so much wisdom and fitness, that one almost pardons him for having called it together."[136] He did not even allow the minutes of the sessions to be put in the archives of the clergy.[137] M. Gérin tells us that the people were opposed to this assembly from the outset; and when the members were about to depart, the following epigram sped them on their way,

"Prélats, abbés, séparez-vous; Laissez un peu Rome et l'Eglise! Un chacun se moque de vous, Et toute la cour vous méprise. Ma foi! l'on vous ferait, avant qu'il fût un an, Signer à l'Alcoran."

The ministers of the king were very much irritated; they dared not then, as they did in 1688, appeal to a general council, because this would bring upon them the censures of the bull _Execrabilis_ of Pius II. It was determined, therefore, by the king to permit the _procureur-général_ to make a protest privately, in the hands of the _greffier_ or keeper of the archives of the parliament, without the knowledge even of the first president. In the mean while the clergy, far from acquiescing in the decrees of a body which had falsely assumed to represent them, were giving evidence in a marked manner of their disapprobation. Like all those who try to compromise between right and wrong, between the service of God and the good-will of the world, the framers of the four articles had become unacceptable to both.

"A Dio Spiacenti ed ai nemici sui."

The parliament protested because the prelates had not gone far enough; the _procureur-général_, De Harlay, put in a formal declaration on this subject, and it was registered by permission of the king. But these men were not the clergy, not the people. M. Gérin gives us witnesses who testify to what these thought and said. The first is one above suspicion, a man favorable to the court, the Abbé Le Gendre; he says,

"At first the declaration of the clergy was by no means applauded. Far from doing so, many attributed it to cowardice, saying that it was the effect of the servile obedience of the bishops to the will of the court. Others thought it was neither prudent nor honorable to rise with levity against the pretensions of the pope, at a moment when he was risking every thing to sustain theirs. This movement of opposition, which was almost general, gave birth to spicy writing, in which Mgr. De Harlay was the most ill-used, as he was regarded as the first inciter, and almost as the only author of all that was done in the assembly."

The edict of the 30th of March ordered that the four articles should be registered in all the universities, and be taught by all the professors. If this doctrine, remarks M. Gérin, had been but generally received, it would have been hailed with rejoicing. What happened? It was opposed by the most numerous, the most learned, and the most pious portion of the clergy. The faculty of Paris was composed of seven hundred and fifty-three members, as appears from the MSS. Colbert, Mél. t. vii. Of these, one hundred and sixty-nine belonged to the Sorbonne. The "_Plan for Reforming the Faculty_," in 1683, (Pap. Harlay,) says,

"The house of Sorbonne, with the exception of six or seven, have been educated in sentiments contrary to the declaration. The professors, the syndic excepted, are so opposed to it that those even who are paid by the king have not been willing to teach any of the propositions presented to his majesty in 1663, etc.... The principal of the College of Plessis, and those whom he employs and protects, in his college and out of it, are absolutely one with those of Sorbonne."

As to the College of Navarre, the MSS. Colbert, t. 155, tell us that its principal, Professor Guyard, was entirely devoted to Rome, etc., and others prominent, Saussay, Ligny, Vinot, were of like opinion. In 1682, none of the professors except Doctor Lefèvre taught the maxims of the kingdom.[138]

Of St. Sulpice, St. Nicolas de Chardonnet, and the Missions Etrangères, we read,

"Those of St. Sulpice, of St. Nicolas de Chardonnet, and of the Missions Etrangères, who have given their opinion in this affair, (of the four articles,) hold the same views as those of Sorbonne."

Of the religious orders and communities, it was written in 1663,

"Nothing can be hoped for of the Carmelites, Augustinians, and Franciscans, who make profession of favoring his holiness in every thing," etc.

The parliament, therefore, and the grand council had, by an abuse of power, decided that _each one_ of the mendicant orders should have but _two votes_ in the faculty, so that thirty-four Franciscans, thirty-eight Dominicans, thirty-three Augustinians, and nineteen Carmelites had only eight votes in the faculty.

"Forty-three Cistercians and six canons regular, who are all for Rome, are to be treated as the above friars."

That, besides being the most numerous, the opponents of the articles were the most learned, is evident from the details we have given; all the professors of Sorbonne, with the exception of Pirot, all the professors of Navarre, except one, Lefèvre, taught the ultramontane opinions. The MSS. Colbert prove this also beyond the possibility of doubt.

That the opponents of the declaration were also men most remarkable for their piety, is acknowledged by those who were engaged in giving information to Colbert.

To show the exactness of the facts given us here, M. Gérin quotes the words of a famous anonymous book, _La Tradition des Faits_, that appeared in 1760, by the Gallican Abbé Chauvelin, clerical counsellor to the parliament of Paris. The abbé writes,

"When it was resolved to oblige the ecclesiastics to profess the maxims of France, what difficulties stood in the way? It was necessary to extort from many of them their consent. Others opposed obstacles which all the authority of the parliament could only with difficulty remove. It became necessary to use all the zeal and light of several prelates, and of several doctors, who were favorable to the true teaching, to bring back the great number of ultramontanes in the French clergy.... The ecclesiastics did not cease from resistance until the parliament used its authority to restrain them.... The university and the faculty of law submitted without difficulty, _but they were obliged to proceed by way of authority to make the faculty of theology obey_."

The facts given above, the testimony of witnesses above suspicion, of those whose interest it would have been to conceal what they say, the action of the parliament, and the petty ways adopted to coerce the professors, v. g., withholding their pay,[139] all evince that the maxims known as Gallican were forced upon the clergy and people of France. But not only is this the case, but so fully were the king and the bishops themselves convinced of their falsity that they retracted them. Before showing this, we will add a curious and precious document from the hands of the wily Achille de Harlay, _procureur-général_, addressed to Colbert on the 2d of June, 1682. After saying that the proposed visit of the parliament to the faculty would have been unfortunate, because it would have revealed to Rome the divergence between the latter and the government, he goes on to add that "of the assembly of the clergy, the greater part would change to-morrow, and willingly, if they were allowed to do so."[140]

The act of the assembly, as we have seen, drew from the sovereign pontiff an authoritative censure. This was not all; the pope refused the bulls of consecration for those who had taken part in it, unless they made their formal submission to his decision. The king, who at heart was a sincere Catholic, opened his eyes to the danger of the church. As we have said, he withheld the minutes of the proceedings in the first instance, although he allowed a private protest to be made. Later he revoked his decree ordering the doctrine of the four articles to be taught in the French schools. Page 454 has a letter of Louis to the sovereign pontiff, in which he informs his holiness of this, September 14th, 1693. A posthumous work of Daguesseau[141] says,

"This letter of Louis XIV. to Pope Innocent was the seal put upon the accommodation between the court of Rome and the clergy of France; and conformably to the engagement it contained, his majesty did not any longer enforce the observation of the edict of March, 1682, which obliged all who wished to obtain degrees to sustain the declaration of the clergy made that year with regard to ecclesiastical authority; ceasing thus to impose, on this point, the obligation existing, while the edict was in force, and leaving for the future, as before the edict, full liberty to sustain the doctrine."

L'Abbé de Pradt, in his work, _Les Quatre Concordats_, speaks of the letter of Louis XIV., and says that Pius VII. had it with him--"an old scrap of paper," as Napoleon expressed it--and wished the emperor to sign it. This, however, Napoleon declined to do, until he could consult his theologians. On their advice he refused to sign it. He did more. The abbé says,

"When the archives of Rome were brought to Paris, Napoleon went one day to the Hôtel de Soubise, in which they were kept. There he obtained the letter of Louis XIV. He took it with him, and, on his return to the Tuileries, threw it into the fire, saying, 'We'll not be troubled hereafter with these ashes.'"

Montholon tells us in his _Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France_, that Napoleon dictated to him these words concerning the book of the Abbé de Pradt,

"'This work is not a libel: if it contains some erroneous ideas, it contains a great number which are sound and worthy of meditation.' He afterward dictated six notes upon different points contained in the work; he takes notice in them of all that appeared to him deserving of censure; but he has not a single word to say against the story of the destruction by himself of the letter of Louis XIV."[142]

With regard to the bishops who had taken part in the declaration, they had the good sense and virtue to submit to him whom Christ has named his vicar and the pastor of pastors. On the 14th of September, each one of them wrote to Innocent XII. in the following terms,

"Prostrate at the feet of your holiness, we profess and declare that we grieve deeply from our heart, and beyond what we can express, on account of what has been done in the assembly, so greatly offensive to your holiness and your predecessors; and therefore whatever may have been deemed (_censeri potuit_) decreed against ecclesiastical power and pontifical authority, we hold, and declare that all should hold it, as not decreed. Moreover, we hold as not determined on whatever may have been deemed (_censeri potuit_) determined on in prejudice of the rights of churches; for our intention was not to decree any thing nor to do any thing prejudicial to the said churches."

The following passages from MSS. and works of the day add confirmation to this letter.

A memoir on the liberties of the Gallican Church, composed by order of "Monseigneur Louis, Dauphin de France, Duc de Bourgoyne, mort en 1710," says,

"This court (Rome) continues always what it has begun, and often obliges us to retract or alter what we have judiciously and necessarily done against her. Nothing proves this better than the history of the assembly of 1682."

Adrien Baillet, writing his _Démêlé de Philippe le Bel avec Boniface VIII._, tells us,

"In the first variance, (between Philip and Boniface,) it was the court of Rome that gave satisfaction to that of France; in the second, (of the assembly,) it is the court of France that has just rendered satisfaction to that of Rome."

Bayle, _Dictionnaire_, art. "Braunbom," writes,

"France was so far from having broken with the pope, from the year 1690 to the year 1701, that she became, on the contrary, more papist. It is known, moreover, that Innocent XII. gained the day, in having things put again on their old footing in 1693."

We have tried to give the substance of M. Gérin's work. We feel that we have given but a meagre idea of it. Still, this much is evident from what we have written, that the doctrine known as Gallican was not the doctrine of the French clergy. That it afterward became so, in great part was owing undoubtedly to the influence of the assembly of 1682, and of those who in high positions lent their aid to its propagation among the rising generation of students. They, early imbued with these maxims, were far less to blame than the men who first broached such principles. Let us hope that the comparatively few who hold to these opinions, seeing the origin of what they profess, will understand the worthlessness of them, and unite with the universal church in professing belief in the infallibility of the See of Peter.

FOOTNOTES:

[128] _Recherches Historiques sur l'Assemblée du Clergè de France de 1682._ Par Charles Gérin, Juge au Tribunal Civil de la Seine. Paris: Le Coffre. 1869.

[129] There is in a secret report made to Colbert, "Memoir regarding what passed in the faculty with respect to the thesis," a curious account, hitherto unknown, of these debates.--MSS. _Cinq Cents, Colbert,_ vol. 153.

[130] Afterward Bishop of Meaux.

[131] Bossuet's master.

[132] Bib. Imp.--MS. Sorbonne, 1258.

[133] _Procès Verbaux du Clergé_, l. v. p. 377, sq.

[134] MSS. 9517 fr. Bibl. Imp.

[135] P. 128. The letter conveying the orders is given in full.

[136] _De l'Eglise Gallicane_, t. ii. c. xi.

[137] _Procès Verbaux_, t. v.

[138] _Projet du Réforme_, Pap. De Harlay.

[139] P. 376, from MS. letters 10,265. Bibl. Imp. fr.

[140] Bibl. Imp. MSS. Harlay, 367, vol. v. p. 145.

[141] Vol. xiii. p. 423.

[142] Montholon, _Mémoires_, vol. i. p. 113. Paris, 1823.

PUTNAM'S DEFENCE.

Our readers will remember, we presume, that _Putnam's Magazine_ for July last contained an article which attracted some attention, under the title of "Our Established Church," and to which we replied in our number for the August following; the same magazine for last month, in an article entitled "The Unestablished Church," comes out with its defence, of which we should be uncivil not to take some notice.

The July article, written in an unsuccessful vein of irony, was directed against the honor both of the church and the city and State of New York, and was designed to show that the church, grasping at wealth and power, and skilfully availing herself of political passions and party divisions, had obtained from the State and city governments endowments for herself and subventions for her educational and charitable institutions out of all proportion to any granted to similar Protestant institutions. We replied that the endowments are imaginary, for the church here is unendowed; that the subventions are greatly exaggerated; that several alleged had never been made, while others said to have been made to Catholic were in fact made to Protestant institutions; and that Catholics had never received a tithe of what was requisite to place them on an equality in regard to subventions from the public with non-Catholics. The _Magazine_, though with exceeding ill grace, concedes nearly all that we denied, abandons its assumption that ours is the established church, confesses that it is unestablished, and disputes us, except with sneers and exclamation-points, only in regard to two statements in our reply, one of which is of no importance, and the other is one in which it is decidedly, not to say maliciously wrong.

The two points disputed we proceed to dispose of. The _Magazine_ charged the corporation of the city with granting leases of valuable sites for Catholic institutions for a long term of years at a merely nominal rent. We replied that only one such lease had been granted since 1847, which is not technically exact, and we overlooked the fact that the lease for the site of the Catholic Orphan Asylum between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets bears the date of 1857; but by the _Magazine's_ own showing, though technically a new lease, and so recorded, it was really only a change in the tenure of the old lease. Catholics had held and occupied the site under a lease from the city, and at the same rent as now, for years before 1847. So much for the first point.

The _Magazine_ charged that the State paid out, in 1866, for benefactions under religious control $129,025.14, of which $124,174.14 went to the religious purposes of the Catholic Church. Not being able to find any proof of this, and regarding the unsupported statement of the writer as presumptive evidence of falsehood rather than of truth, we let the charge pass without any attempt at a specific refutation. The _Magazine_ reiterates the statement, and refers to the report of the comptroller of the State. We have the comptroller's report before us; we have examined and reëxamined it; but we do not find the statement in it or any thing to warrant it; and it has been more than once pronounced on the highest authority, and proved to be a forgery, as the _Magazine_ well knows or is inexcusable for not knowing.

We did not meet this statement for the first time in _Putnam's Magazine_. It had been previously made, and we supposed sufficiently refuted in the journals, especially in the _Utica Herald_, whose editor, Mr. Roberts, had been a member of the Legislature and of the committee of ways and means in 1866. Mr. Roberts under his own name, pronounced it a forgery. For honest and fair-minded men this was conclusive. But the charge was embodied in an anonymous memorial, and laid on the desks of the members of the New York State Convention, held in 1867 and 1868, and was again pronounced in open debate a forgery, without a single voice being raised in its defence. The Hon. Mr. Cassidy, of the Albany _Atlas and Argus_, declared it false from beginning to end. The Hon. Mr. Alvord, the distinguished member from Onondaga County, did the same. The Hon. Erastus Brooks, member of the Convention from Richmond, and one of the editors of the New York _Evening Express_, would not go quite so far, but regarded it as an admirable example of one of the many ways of telling a lie. He exposed its disingenuous character, by showing that the $8000 stated in it to be appropriated to St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, was expressly declared in the statute making the appropriation to be for the support of soldiers under the supervision of Dr. Backus, the surgeon of the post. The soldiers were supported and taken care of in St. Mary's Hospital, as the only proper place, in the judgment of the military authorities, that could be obtained. Mr. Brooks also gave, as another instance of the disingenuousness of the statement, its omission to count $25,000, appropriated to a Protestant institution in Elmira, we suppose for a similar purpose. Mr. Alvord not only pronounced it false from beginning to end, but, statute in hand, showed from the act of the Legislature itself, which he read, that instead of appropriating for charitable purposes nearly $130,000, it appropriated only $80,000, to be divided among the several counties according to their assessed valuation.[143] What has become of our friend, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, who sometimes writes for _Putnam_, and who has such delicate scruples about Protestants using forged documents against Catholics?

So much has been said about the partiality of the Legislature to the Catholic Church that it may be well to look at the conditions on which it grants and distributes its aid to charitable institutions. The act of 1866, so bitterly denounced, appropriates from the State treasury $80,000 for orphan asylums, to be apportioned to the several counties according to their assessed value, and distributed to the several asylums according to the number of inmates received and cared for in them respectively, without the slightest reference to the fact whether they were Catholic or Protestant. Nothing could be fairer, and if Catholic asylums received more of the benefaction than those under the charge of non-Catholics, it was simply because they received and cared for a larger number of orphans. We see no ground of complaint here against either the Legislature or the church. It is very possible that Catholics have a larger number of orphans in proportion to their population than have non-Catholics, and it is not unlikely, also, that they are more ready to make sacrifices for their support.

In the list of benefactions of the State to Catholic institutions in 1866, the _Magazine_ places the item of $78,000 to the Catholic Protectory. This was a special grant to enable the society to purchase a site and erect suitable buildings for its purpose. This protectory corresponds very nearly to the Protestant societies for the protection and reformation of juvenile delinquents, and which the State is accustomed to aid by its benefactions. The appropriations for its support are justified on the ground that it is of great public utility and protection of the public from a class of destitute children not unlikely, if not taken care of, to grow up vicious and criminal, to fill our alms-houses, our jails and penitentiaries. The community at large, rather than the church specially, is benefited, and there is no good reason why grants for its support should be objected to or regarded as made for special Catholic purposes. The only thing that a Protestant can object to, if any charitable institution is to receive aid from the State, is, that by aiding a Catholic protectorate to take care of and reform destitute children of Catholics without the loss of their Catholic faith, it so far fails to aid Protestants to bring them up in Protestantism, or, what is perhaps worse, in no religion.

As a matter of course, _Putnam's Magazine_ dwells on the public grants to certain Catholic schools in this city. We do not deny those grants. We conceded and defended them in our former article, and the _Magazine_ has in no respect invalidated our defence; it has only stared and sneered at it. Give us either schools to which we can send our children, or divide the schools equitably between Catholics and Protestants, and we will solicit no special grants of the sort. As it is, neither the city nor the State gives back by way of subvention to our schools more than a pittance of what it takes from us for the support of schools to which we cannot with our Catholic conscience send our children. If the State taxes the whole community alike for the support of public schools, it is bound to provide schools for Catholics as well as Protestants, and for both such as leave the conscience of each free, sacred, and inviolable. If it refuses to do so, the least that it can do is to make liberal grants to the schools Catholics are obliged to establish for themselves.

What we have thus far said disposes of the _Magazine's_ statistics, and sufficiently relieves the State from the charge of discriminating in favor of Catholics, as well as the church from the charge of intriguing for special favors. She has never asked or received any special favors from the Legislature. The other matters in the article merit no special reply. The writer attempts to be witty, but succeeds only in being abusive. Wit does not appear to be his strong point, and his attempts at it only provoke a smile at his expense. His strong point is hatred of the church. He hates her with a hatred equal to that of the wicked Jews for our Lord whom they crucified between two thieves. Her very presence annoys him; her independence enrages him; and nothing appears able to appease him but her subjection to the state, and the subjection of the state to the intolerant Protestantism of which he is a mouth-piece.

The _Magazine_ is hard to please. It condemned, in July last, the church as our established church; we made answer that she neither is nor wishes to be the established church. It now, in December, condemns her no less as the unestablished church. It blames us both for opposing and for not opposing the common schools, for agreeing and for not agreeing with our own church, and for opposing and for not opposing religious liberty. Both the church, and we, personally, must be wrong anyhow. If its specific charges against her are false, then the contrary must be true and equally charges against her. If she is not the synagogue of Satan, she is the church of God, which is just as bad. Nothing can disconcert it or prove it in the wrong, since it sees no inconsistency in urging charges that refute each other. Yet it represents and speaks for the _enlightened_ portion of mankind!

The _Magazine_ labors at length to prove that the church opposes, and quotes the _Syllabus_ to prove that she must oppose, the common school system as it is; and yet sees in this fact no reason why Catholics cannot, with a good conscience, send their children to them. We are opposed to the common schools as they are, because our church condemns them; that is, because founded on what we hold to be a false principle, and hostile alike to religion and society; but if Protestants want them for themselves, they can have them; for the church legislates only for Catholics, not for non-Catholics who reject her authority. Hence, we oppose the system as a system for Catholics, not as a system intended for Protestants. We do not approve the system even for them, any more than we do their heresy and schism, which we account "deadly sins;" but if they insist on having godless schools for their children, they can have them; we cannot hinder them. The system might be modified so that we could accept it; but it depends on them so to modify it or not, for they have the power.

The _Magazine_ withdraws its false statement as to the millions of property held in fee-simple by the five bishops in the State, but blames the law of 1863, which incorporates the church in the several New York dioceses, as securing to her advantages of which the non-Catholic religious denominations are deprived. This is a mistake. It only secures to her the rights secured to these under the general law for creating, continuing, and reviving religious societies and parishes, and which are not secured to her under that general law. That law proceeds on the assumption that in ecclesiastical organizations the parish is the unit, which is not true with regard to the church. With us the unit is the diocese, and the bishop, not the parochus, is, strictly speaking, the pastor. To proceed on the contrary supposition would be to interfere with the internal constitution and discipline of the church, and to deprive her of that control over her own temporalities which is possessed by every Protestant denomination in the State. The law objected to only secures to the church equal rights with the sects--only it does it by another method made necessary by the fact that the diocese, not the parish, in her constitution, is the unit. The law only places the church on a footing of equality, before the state, with the Protestant sects, and no friend of religious liberty can reasonably object to it. It secures the public against abuses, the application of the property held to church purposes, and the church the free management of her own temporalities.

The _Magazine_ complains that the law is no longer equal, because it is not the same for all religious denominations. Has it never occurred to it that one and the same law for all would operate unequally, for all have not the same internal constitution? The law very proper and just for Presbyterians, whose organic unit is the parish, could in no manner secure the same rights to the church, whose organic unit is the diocese. Here is precisely where Protestants usually err in their legislation, and violate the equal rights they profess to approve. They overlook the fact that the same law can bear equally only on denominations that are organized after one and the same model, and that for the state to set up a model, and outlaw all denominations that do not, or in so far as they do not conform to it, is a violation of religious liberty and of equal rights. It is practically to establish one form of church organization and deny its protection to all churches that do not see proper to adopt it. Religious liberty requires that each denomination be left free, so far as the civil power is concerned, to adopt such form of church organization in relation to its own temporalities as well as spirituals as it chooses; and the equal rights of all require the state to respect and protect each in the full possession and enjoyment of its own particular form of organization. The law must not be simply the same for the Catholic and the Congregationalist, but must be so framed as to give each the same rights; to the church, with her constitution and discipline, all the freedom and protection that it does to the Congregationalist, with his congregational organization and discipline. This is what the law of this State enacted in 1863 attempts to secure, and partially, if not wholly, succeeds in doing. The Protestant, that is, the rabid Protestant, objects to that law, not because it discriminates in favor of Catholicity, but because it gives to the church the same legal protection that it does to non-Catholic churches, and does not discriminate in favor of Protestantism as all previous legislation on the subject had done, at least in its practical operation.

We are accused, because we say the church here desires no establishment by law--for she has what is better than such establishment--of contradicting the _Syllabus_, and going against the supreme pontiff. We accept the _Syllabus_ without the slightest reserve, though probably not the _Magazine's_ sense. The _Syllabus_ condemns those who demand the separation of church and state in the sense of the European liberals; but not us for not requiring the church to be established by law as the state church. Those liberals mean by the separation of church and state the independence of the state, and its right to pursue its own policy irrespective of the rights and interests of religion. In that sense we also condemn the separation, and are continually warring against it as political atheism. But we deny that in that sense, or in the sense of the _Syllabus_, we do or ever have advocated the separation of church and state. That separation does not and ought not to exist in this country. This is not an infidel, a godless country, though it may be fast becoming so; and Christianity is, as it should be, the supreme law of the land, as it is part and parcel of the Common Law. An act of the Legislature of the State or the nation forbidding Christianity or authorizing acts directly against it would be null and void from the beginning, and be treated by the courts as would be a _jus muncipium_ in violation of the _jus gentium_.

The rights of Christianity are by our civil institutions recognized as paramount to all others. They are called by us the rights of man, rights which are held not from the state, but immediately from the Creator, and therefore are more properly called the rights of God than the rights of man. These rights limit the rights and authority of the state; for it is bound to respect them as sacred and inviolable, and to protect and defend them for each and every person within its jurisdiction to the full extent of its power. Among these rights is the right of conscience, which, in fact, is the chief, the very basis of all our so-called natural and inalienable rights. My right of conscience is the law for the state, and prohibits it from enacting any thing that violates it. My conscience is my church, the Catholic Church; and any restriction of her freedom, or any act in violation of her rights, violates or abridges my right or freedom of conscience, which, where equal rights are recognized, the state has no right to do in my case any more than in that of any other.

My church, the Catholic Church, is, by virtue of my citizenship and my right of conscience, the law of the state so far as her own freedom is concerned, and as is necessary to protect and defend her in the free and full enjoyment of her rights. The church is free in and to the full extent of my freedom of conscience; and though I have no right to impose my conscience on another, I have the right to protest against any and every act of the state that is repugnant to it or contrary to my church. The state is just as much bound to respect, protect, and defend the Catholic Church in her faith, her constitution, her discipline, and her worship, as if she were the only religious body in the nation. Other religious bodies exist and have, not before God, but before civil society, equal rights with her; and if the state can do nothing to violate their rights of conscience, it can do nothing to violate hers, as it in fact does in its legislation in regard to marriage and divorce, both here and in nearly all European states and empires. It cannot violate the Catholic conscience in order to conform to the Protestant conscience.

Here is the way in which we understand the separation of church and state, as it exists in this country, and we feel quite sure that we do not incur the censure of the _Syllabus_. We have here done nothing but set forth in its true light the religious liberty recognized by our American system of government, and which forms the basis of our civil liberty. Our church is here with all her freedom, in all her integrity, by right, not merely tolerated; and by a right which is not a civil grant and revocable at will, but by the irrevocable grant of God. Her full and entire freedom is recognized by the fundamental principle of the American state, and we demand that the civil law respect and protect her freedom against all gainsayers. So much we demand on the ground of equal rights and in the name of inviolable conscience. When we go farther and ask more from the state than equality with the sects, we give _Putnam's Magazine_ full liberty to denounce us, and to condemn us as the enemies of religious liberty.

FOOTNOTE:

[143] See Debates in the New York State Convention, 1867 and 1868, vol. iii. pp. 2736-2744.

A POLISH PATRIOTIC HYMN.

In an obscure corner of the Mazarine Library, at Paris, was lately discovered by its director or librarian in chief, Mr. Philarète Chasles, a small black prayer-book; an oblong duodecimo, gilt-edged, although printed on poor gray paper. It was in the Polish tongue, with the exception of the vesper-hymns and some canticles of the church in Latin. No catalogue chronicled its existence, and it was, evidently, a despised waif, rejected as of too little importance to be entitled to a place in the dignified alcoves.

On examination, it was found to contain the following original Latin ode--a remarkable composition in many respects, touchingly beautiful in a simplicity at once tender and vigorous, and an exquisite combination of piety and patriotism.

It was doubtless sung in the churches of Poland about the year 1740, when Europe stood aloof in silent ingratitude to those who, following Sobieski's sword, had saved her from the Turk; when England was of course indifferent to the fate of a Catholic nation; when France was without sympathy for the faithful, and her kings proved then, more than ever, that Catholicity would have been better off without their aid; when Catharine of Russia gilded her cupidity with philosophical maxims, and Frederick of Prussia, called the Great, calumniated those he robbed.

As we read the hymn, we can well imagine the crowd in front of the altar, covered with flowers, in some rude, white-walled village church. They kneel before the infant Jesus in his mother's arms. Peasants in their national costume--a long, white blouse reaching to the knee, the curved sabre in the belt--children, soldiers, women, young girls. They chant one of those peculiarly wild Slavonic rhythms in 6/8 or 3/8. There, prostrate, with clasped hands, their weeping eyes on the infant Saviour, the child Liberator, they intone these beautiful Latin strophes, a rare specimen of spontaneous and popular poetry:

AD PARVULUM CHRISTUM CONTRA HOSTES PATRIÆ.

1.

Benevolus audi Quæ tuæ sunt laudi, O Parvule delicate! Patriam defende! Tu solus es agnus Et fortis et magnus! Qui perfidum Turcam Compellis ad furcam! Patriam! patriam! patriam Defende!

Mercifully listen to those who praise and implore thee, O tender Infant! Defend our country. Thou alone art the Lamb, alone powerful! alone great! Exterminator of the treacherous Turk. Our country, our country, ah! defend our country.

Barbarous and artificial strophes, perhaps you think? Yes, measured by Lucretius and Virgil, they may be; poor, thin, leonine verses like those of the twelfth century Benedictine monk who wrote,

Gloria factorum temere conceditur horum,

singing verses without prosodial measure, their vehement and rapid rhyme answering for every thing. And yet this learned barbarism, borrowed from the seventh century, from a poetry in ruins, gives life to the ardent flame and the tragic sorrow it expresses. It is a deep cry of anguish from the innermost depths of a stricken people's heart.

We hear the divine and child-like victim invoked in his feebleness by a vanquished nation, and appealed to in his shivering nakedness (_et friges et taces_) by the oppressed in tears, and these cries form a sad though sublime harmony. The unknown ecclesiastical minstrel--for the poetry is anonymous--continues:

2.

O nefas! O crimen! Mors transit limen! O Parvule delicate! Patriam defende! Jam victima sumus, Et pulvis et fumus. Patriam! Patriam! Patriam defende!

O injustice! O crime! Death advances! O tender Infant! defend our country. Already are we victims, naught but smoke and dust. Our country, etc., etc.

3.

Tu nudus hic jaces Et friges et taces! O Parvule delicate! Patriam defende! Minusculum pectus, Duriusculus lectus! Nihilominus telo Pugnabis e coelo! Patriam! Patriam! Patriam defende!

All naked as we see thee, and cold and silent! O tender Infant! defend our country. Delicate is thy breast. Hard is thy couch! And yet, from heaven on high, wilt thou combat for us! Our country, etc., etc.

This people's poet and clever Latinist is liberal of his diminutives, _minusculum_, _duriusculus_, and displays, withal, a curious affectation of rhyming richness, _Turcam, furcam_; _lectus, pectus_; _laudi, audi_; _magnus, agnus_. And yet there is deep emotion and profound lyric agitation compressed into the shortest possible strophes, all vigorously concise and eloquently expressive. We omit several beautiful verses:

4.

Grassantur, Furantur, Prædantur, Bacchantur! O Parvule delicate! Patriam defende! Nil tutum Nil ausum, Nil satis est clausum! Nil foedera valent. Cum hæreses calent. Patriam! Patriam! Patriam defende!

Devastating, raging, slaying, in orgies they ruin. O tender Infant! defend our country. Naught is safe with us, naught withholds them. Heresy triumphs! Treaties are trampled upon! Our country, etc., etc.

5.

Polonia perit Et spolium erit. O Parvule delicate! Patriam defende! Tu fregeris nisi Vim hostis invisi, Oppresseris facem Et dederis pacem! Patriam! Patriam! Patriam defende!

Poland perishes. A prey she becomes. O tender Infant! defend our country. Sealed is her fate, unless thou breakest the force of the enemy that crushes her; unless thou givest peace. Our country, etc., etc.

6.

Est tempus, est hora Ne, quæso, sit mora! Parvule delicate! Patriam defende! Vicini laborant, Et aliud orant! Quod perfidus hostis Nos, superi, nostis! Patriam! Patriam! Patriam defende!

The time and the hour have come. Oh! delay not, I implore. O tender Infant! save our country. With other things our neighbors are occupied. Thou, O God supreme! knowest the designs of the enemy. Defend, defend our country!

How admirable the popular simplicity preserved here--an infantine tenderness, a Slavonian murmur, a solemn melody resembling the moaning sigh of weeping willows, an echo of those charming Lithuanian ballads finding voice in the grand old ecclesiastical Roman idiom.

THROUGH DEVIOUS WAYS.