CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

During the progress of these events, the health of George Wingate had been gradually failing, but so imperceptibly as to create no serious alarm; and he could not be prevailed upon to abandon his studies, or the hope that he would live to consecrate his young life to his God in holy orders, until it was near its close. Henry Howe and Johnny Hart devoted themselves tenderly to him, and watched his decline with the grief which under such circumstances always attends friendships created and cemented by religion. He began at length to fail so rapidly that his family were sent for, and he never returned to the home of his childhood, but sleeps in peace under the shadow of the "Holy Cross" which he so dearly loved.

His mantle seemed to have fallen upon his devoted friend, Johnny Hart, who in due course of time entered upon the vineyard from which his beloved companion had been withdrawn while the dews of the morning still lingered upon his head, and the labors of the day were hardly begun.

Soon after the death of George, his oldest sister, Mary, joined the Sisters of Charity.

In the same year, Henry Howe took his father's place in the mercantile business, which was rapidly increasing in importance with the growth of the village, and Dennis Sullivan went into partnership with him.

After Michael reached San Francisco, he arranged his affairs, and opened an office in one of the best locations in the city, without delay. He found a home in James Tracy's house, and one of the best friends in that worthy man, who took a pride and interest in the son of his lamented friend scarcely less than that of a father.

Frank Blair became importunate in his solicitations for the hand of Julia Plimpton. Her mother steadfastly declining to consent until he should have established a character for sobriety and stability, he became exasperated, and abruptly left the navy. His disconsolate family could get no trace as to the course of his flight.

One day, as Michael Hennessy was passing down the street to his office, he observed a young man walking rapidly in advance of him, and, accidentally catching a side glimpse of his face, what was his astonishment to recognize Frank Blair.

"Why Frank, my lad, where in the world did you come from?" he cried out.

"Rather answer that question on your own account!" replied the astonished Frank. "How in the world do you happen to be in San Francisco?"

"If I could have seen you as I passed through New York, you would have known all; but I could not find you, and had no time to spare for a long search," said Michael. "It is a long story; so come with me to the office, and you shall hear it."

When the friends were seated, Frank told Michael that he had left the navy without a discharge, and shipped as seaman on board a vessel bound for Panama; and that he supposed his friends were wild with anxiety about him.

Michael communicated the details relating to his own affairs, with which our readers are already acquainted. He then wrote to Mr. Blair the story of Frank's arrival in safety, and that if he had no objections Frank would study law with him in San Francisco. Upon receiving the letter, Mr. Blair obtained an honorable discharge for his son from the navy, and consented to his remaining with Michael. In the course of time he went into partnership with his friend--now his brother-in-law--who has become one of the most celebrated criminal lawyers in that city.

Two years after the marriage of Michael, Frank was permitted to claim the hand of Julia Plimpton. At the same time, Henry Howe was married to Mrs. Plimpton's youngest daughter, Mary, and her mother came to live with them.

Mrs. Plimpton's son Charles is a lawyer in Massachusetts, and it is said he is coming for Lucy Wingate soon.

The people of M----, having noticed the frequent visits of Dennis Sullivan and Patrick Casey at Mr. Hennessy's, and that two beautiful cottages are building on lots purchased by that gentleman each side of his own, have settled the question that two more weddings are soon to take place in M----, but have not yet "named the day."

READING HOMER.

How my dreamy childhood pondered On that old heroic tongue! Then, the dream-land where I wandered Was the Olympus Homer sung; The cloud-cleaving peaks that trembled When the mighty gods assembled.

Dazzled saw I blue-eyed Pallas Throned by Zeus on golden seat, Sipped from Hebe's nectar chalice, Plucked Cythera's roses sweet-- Breathless watched, as from those portals Battleward clashed down the immortals.

Naiads from Scamander's fountain Lifted to my lips the cup; Oreads skimming Hæmus' mountain To the tryst-place caught me up; Gleamed athwart the forest's grace The white light of Dian's face.

Burst upon my ear the townward Thunder of Achilles' wheel, When the fair long locks trailed downward, And the shriek made Ilium reel. Conquering torches, steep to steep, Flashed along the wine-dark deep.

But my heart--that restless roamer-- Quit those fields of kingly strife, That old world of Greece and Homer, For the world of love and life. Dead, like leaves on autumn clay, Those old gods and wonders lay.

O the spirit's aspiration, Glorious through all nature's bound! The soul yearning through creation-- All the sought, and all the found! Oh! what is--and what shall be In far immortality?

For truth's marvels well are able All of fiction to eclipse, And the wine of classic fable Tasteless palls upon the lips. From the living fount of truth Wells the soul's immortal youth.

Still at times when basks the river The long summer afternoon, When the broad green pastures quiver In the rippling breeze of June, I unclose the Iliad's pages, To unearth those buried ages.

But no Ilium now, nor tragic Plains I find in Homer's lay; With a new and stranger magic Now it leads another way-- Whirls me on a sudden track To my merry childhood back.

All that fresh young joy rejoices, Beats the child heart as of yore, And again I hear--oh! voices That I thought to hear no more, Till--the dusk has round me grown; Close the book--the dream has flown.

C. E. B.

THE WORKS OF GERALD GRIFFIN.[208]

Of the works of fiction in the English language of which the first half of this century has been so prolific, Ireland has contributed at least a fair proportionate share. Her writers in this department of literature are numerous, and their productions have been generally received with due favor on this side of the Atlantic as correct portraitures of the habits and manners of a people in whom we take so deep an interest, and whose very contradictions of character render them interesting studies for the curious and philosophic. Of so large a number four at least deserve special notice, standing, as they do, prominently in the front rank of Irish authors and exhibiting in a marked degree a pleasant diversity of talent and invention, as varied as the peculiar characteristics of the provinces to which they belong. Carleton, for example, was an Ulster-man, rugged and ungraceful, yet possessing a deep vein of caustic humor, while his figures are struck out as distinctly as if his pen had some of the power Of Michael Angelo's chisel; John Banim was the embodiment of Leinster propriety and stability; Lever is never so much at home as at the mess-table of the "Rangers," or when endangering the neck of his hero or heroine over a Galway fence; while through Gerald Griffin's pages flow, now gently as a meandering stream and anon with the impetuosity of a mountain torrent, the poetry and passion of Munster. Still, in the strictest sense, none of these novelists can be considered national; yet all are true to Irish character. To those unacquainted with the radical difference of mind, temperament, and even physique, which is to be found in so comparatively small a country, this may seem paradoxical; but it is nevertheless true. Mickey Frees and Lowry Lovbys are plentiful enough in Ireland, but only in their respective sections; while Valentine McClutchy terrifies the northern tenant each recurring gala-day, and Banim's Paddy Flynn, to use the pithy remark of Sir Philip Crampton, "is hanged twice a year regularly in the south of Ireland."

If any of them be entitled to the term national, that honor should be awarded to Griffin, who in his _Invasion_, _Duke of Monmouth_, and some minor stories, has travelled out of his favorite province with some degree of success. But even in his wanderings in Wicklow, Taunton dene, and the wilds of Northumbria, we are constantly catching glimpses of the Shannon and Killarney. The reason of this is obvious. He aimed to be a strict and minute copyist of nature; and nature to him was bounded by the lovely scenery of Munster and the people with whom he had been in daily intercourse for almost the whole of his short life. His power of observation, thus limited, became intensified, and what he lost in breadth of view and amplitude of knowledge, he gained in the distinctness and fidelity of his pictures. Besides, the merits of the true novelist, like those of the painter, should never be estimated by the square of the canvas, but by his faithfulness, either to human figure, action, and circumstance, or to the embodiment of noble ideas. It is not so difficult as it may seem to call up imaginary kings and princes, noble lords and ladies, clothe them with all the gorgeous panoply so easily found in the pages of dear old Froissart, or in the latest book of fashions, and make them speak and act in the most approved manner of our modern romances, because few of us care to inquire into the correctness either of design or execution. Cervantes and Goldsmith painted the men and manners of their day with rare fidelity, and their works will be read by the learned and unlearned as long as the languages in which they wrote shall exist; and no one can doubt that two of the most popular authors of our time, Balzac and Dickens, no matter how inferior in some respects to the authors of _Don Quixote_ and the _Vicar of Wakefield_, have truly held up to us panoramas of modern society in the two great cities of Europe. For Gerald Griffin we may not, perhaps, claim the universality of those great masters; but in purity of expression, truthfulness to nature, and delicacy of moral perception he is the equal of any of them.

There are some persons conversant with Irish character who maintain that its essential element is neither gayety nor combativeness, but melancholy, and sustain their apparently singular theory by reference to the national music and poetry. Griffin's writings would afford an additional argument in favor of this position. His genius was decidedly tragic, his muse sad and retrospective. His pauses to give us a glimpse of fireside enjoyment appear to be more as tributes to old home memories, than as arising from any natural desire to linger over the recollections of such tranquil scenes; and his snatches of humor and merriment seem thrown in artistically, not so much to relieve the sombre shading of his picture as to give its most prominent figures greater depth and boldness. He also labored under the disadvantage of all tragic minds; for, though he never can be said to have ignored the "eternal fitness of things" in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked, we close many of his volumes with a feeling more akin to sorrow than rejoicing, and while admitting the righteousness of his judgments, we sigh to think how God's best gifts to man may be turned to his own destruction. It seems to be the law of tragedy that the bad men must be more men of action than the good, in order to produce the proper effect. They dress better, talk more persuasively, and display high mental and physical qualities which, say what we may, will generally provoke a certain sympathy for them, evil as may be their acts. This inherent defect Griffin labored to modify, if he could not entirely eradicate. His moral heroes are good enough in their way, but their virtues are of too negative a character. Kyrle Daly, in the _Collegians_, and young Kingsly, in the _Duke of Monmouth_, have all the qualities we could desire in a friend or brother; but while we honor and respect them, a something akin to sympathy is clandestinely stealing out to the proud and wilful Hardress Cregan, and even to the cool malignity of that unparalleled scoundrel, Colonel Kirke. O'Haedha, in the _Invasion_, is an exception. He is _sui generis_ in Griffin's pantheon, being not only a man of pure morality and well up in the lore of his times, but he is also a chieftain governing wisely and firmly, a man of war as well as of love and peace, strong in his affections and hatreds, living, moving, and breathing like one who has a subtle brain, warm blood, and a powerful arm to enforce his authority. He is decidedly not only Griffin's grandest conception, but will stand in favorable comparison with any we can recall in historical romance.

The _Collegians_ is Gerald Griffin's best known and most popular novel; and, when we consider the early age of the author at the time it was written, and the circumstances amid which it was composed, we are equally surprised at his knowledge of the springs of human action, and at the excellences of the book, both as regards correctness of style and completeness of plot. Though the working of some of the strongest passions of our nature is portrayed in it--love, hatred, revenge, ambition--there is nothing about them sensational or melodramatic; and though many different characters are introduced, and incidents necessarily occur in a short space of time, there is nothing hurried or disjointed, one character acting upon another and each event following and hinging on the one preceding so gracefully and naturally that the reader is borne along on an unbroken current, as it were, from cause to effect till he reaches the final catastrophe. It is related that a portion of this admirable book was written in court while the author, who had attained considerable proficiency as a short-hand writer in London, was engaged in reporting an important law case. During an interval in the proceedings, Griffin took out his manuscripts, and, as was his habit, when a moment of leisure presented itself, proceeded to continue his story, regardless of his surroundings. It happened that Daniel O'Connell was employed professionally in the suit, and not knowing the writer, and supposing him to be occupied transcribing his notes, looked over his shoulder to read the evidence; but finding that it was something very different from the dry question and answer of counsellor and witness, the great advocate turned away in silent indifference. He little thought at the time that the quiet, industrious young reporter was Gerald Griffin, and that the work upon which he was so intently engaged was the _Collegians_--a work which, from the day of its publication, was ever the favorite solace of the hours of relaxation of that illustrious statesman.

The moral of the book, however, is its greatest merit. The character of Hardress Cregan is inimitably drawn. Young, gifted both in person and mind, with a disposition naturally inclined to good, but warped and misled by a fond, proud, worldly mother, and the example of a dissolute father and his associates; early left to his own guidance and the indulgence of his whims and fancies, he descends from the high position in which we find him at the opening chapter, through all the stages of crime--parental disobedience, ingratitude, deceit, debauchery, and finally murder. Through each step in guilt we can trace the cause of his ruin--moral cowardice, false pride, absence of self-control, alternating or uniting, but always with disastrous effect, until in the culminating scene, in which, torn by remorse and conscious guilt, he leaves his native shores a condemned felon and dies at sea, we feel that the punishment, no matter how severe, is but in strict accordance with our highest sense of retributive justice. Nor are the almost equally, though perhaps unconsciously, guilty parents forgotten. Like a just judge, Griffin not only punishes the actual perpetrator of crime, but metes out penalties to those whose duty it is to correct the excesses of youth, restrain their passions, and lead them by precept and example to the practice as well as the knowledge of good, and who neglect the sacred trust. What parent, after reading the _Collegians_, can contemplate without a shudder the pangs of the haughty mother and the utter hopelessness of her dissipated husband, when they found their only child, so tenderly nurtured and so thoroughly schooled, torn from their arms in chains, and dying the death of an outcast and a convict. Their punishment abided in their parental hearts, and the author goes no further. Many years ago, we casually overheard one of the most thoroughly read, as well as one of the most profound thinkers in America, say, upon being asked his opinion of the _Collegians_, that he considered it the best novel in the language; for, while it made you hate the crime, it did not take away your charity for the criminal; an opinion which we think will be concurred in by all who have attentively read the book and applied the moral it contains. Kyrle Daly is an antipode of his friend and fellow-student, Hardress Cregan. His filial reverence and moral rectitude are depicted in his every action, and his whole character is as beautiful and lovable as that of the other is dark and fraught with terrible warnings. Not that young Daly is presented as a model lackadaisical individual, by any means; but as a strong man of matured mind and deep feelings, true in friendship and trusting in love; yet withal guided by the dictates of his religion and directed by the authority and advice of his father and mother, a weakness, if it be one, we are sorry to say, not often indulged in at the present day.

Did the limits of our article permit, we might furnish many extracts from this remarkable novel in testimony of the high opinion of the merits found in its pages by so many distinguished scholars, but the _Collegians_ is now so generally read that this is hardly necessary. We transcribe, however, the following brief sketch of a morning on the Shannon, and a breakfast scene, as a specimen of the author's power of minute description of rural scenery and felicitous rendering of social life:

"They had assembled, on the morning of Eily's disappearance, a healthy and blooming household of all sizes, in the principal sitting-room, for a purpose no less important than that of dispatching breakfast. It was a favorable moment for any one who might be desirous of sketching a family picture. The windows of the room, which were thrown up for the purpose of admitting the fresh morning air, opened upon a trim and sloping meadow, that looked sunny and cheerful with the bright green after-grass of the season. The broad and sheety river washed the very margin of the little field, and bore upon its quiet bosom (which was only ruffled by the circling eddies that encountered the advancing tide) a variety of craft, such as might be supposed to indicate the approach to a large city. Majestic vessels, floating idly on the basined flood, with sails half-furled, in keeping with the languid beauty of the scene; lighters burdened to the water's edge with bricks or sand; large rafts of timber borne onward toward the neighboring quays under the guidance of a shipman's boat-hook; pleasure-boats with gaudy pennons hanging at peak and topmast; or turf-boats with their unpicturesque and ungraceful lading, moving sluggishly forward, while their black sails seemed gasping for a breath to fill them--such were the incidents that gave a gentle animation to the prospect immediately before the eyes of the cottage dwellers. On the further side of the river arose the Cratloe hills, shadowed in various places by a broken cloud, and rendered beautiful by the checkered appearance of the ripening tillage and the variety of hues that were observable along their wooded sides. At intervals, the front of a handsome mansion brightened up a passing gleam of sunshine, while the wreaths of blue smoke, ascending at various distances from among the trees, tended to relieve the idea of extreme solitude which it would otherwise have presented.

"The interior of the cottage was not less interesting to contemplate than the landscape which lay before it. The principal breakfast-table (for there were two spread in the room) was placed before the window, the neat and snow-white damask cloth covered with fare that spoke satisfactorily for the circumstances of the proprietor, and for the housewifery of his helpmate. The former, a fair, pleasant-faced old gentleman, in a huge buckled cravat and square-toed shoes, somewhat distrustful of the meagre beverage which fumed out of Mrs. Daly's lofty and shining coffee-pot, had taken his position before a cold ham and fowl which decorated the lower end of the table. His lady, a courteous old personage, with a face no less fair and happy than her husband's, and with eyes sparkling with good nature and intelligence, did the honors of the board at the further end. On the opposite side, leaning over the back of his chair with clasped hands, in an attitude which had a mixture of abstraction and anxiety, sat Mr. Kyrle Daly, the first pledge of connubial affection that was born to this comely pair. He was a young man already initiated in the rudiments of the legal profession; of a handsome figure, and in manner--but something now pressed upon his spirits which rendered this an unfavorable occasion for describing him.

"A second table was laid in a more retired portion of the room, for the accommodation of the younger part of the family. Several well-burnished goblets, or porringers, of thick milk flanked the sides of this board, while a large dish of smooth-coated potatoes reeked up in the centre. A number of blooming boys and girls, between the ages of four and twelve, were seated at this simple repast, eating and drinking away with all the happy eagerness of youthful appetite. Not, however, that this employment occupied their exclusive attention; for the prattle which circulated round the table frequently became so boisterous as to drown the conversation of the older people, and to call forth the angry rebuke of the master of the family.

"The furniture of the apartment was in accordance with the appearance and manners of its inhabitants. The floor was handsomely carpeted, a lofty green fender fortified the fireplace, and supplied Mr. Daly in his facetious moments with occasions for the frequent repetition of a favorite conundrum, 'Why is that fender like Westminster Abbey?'--a problem with which he never failed to try the wit of any stranger who happened to spend a night beneath his roof. The wainscoted walls were ornamented with several of the popular prints of the day, such as Hogarth's Roast Beef, Prince Eugene, Schomberg at the Boyne, Mr. Betterton playing Cato in all the glory of

'Full wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair;'

of the royal Mandane, in the person of Mrs. Mountain, strutting among the arbors of her Persian palace in a lofty _tête_ and hooped petticoat. There were also some family drawings done by Mrs. Daly in her school-days, of which we feel no inclination to say more than that they were prettily framed. In justice to the fair artist, it should also be mentioned that, contrary to the established practice, her sketches were never retouched by the hand of her master, a fact which Mr. Daly was fond of insinuating, and which no one who saw the pictures was tempted to call in question. A small book-case, with the edges of the shelves handsomely gilded, was suspended in one corner of the room, and, on examination, might be found to contain a considerable number of works on Irish history, for which study Mr. Daly had a national predilection, a circumstance much deplored by all the impatient listeners in his neighborhood, and (some people hinted) in his own household; some religious books, and a few volumes on cookery and farming. The space over the lofty chimney-piece was assigned to some ornaments of a more startling description. A gun-rack, on which were suspended a long shore gun, a brass-barreled blunderbuss, a cutlass, and a case of horse-pistols, manifested Mr. Daly's determination to maintain, if necessary, by force of arms, his claim to the fair possessions which his honest industry had acquired.

"'Kyrle,' said Mr. Daly, putting his fork into a breast of cold goose, and looking at his son, 'you had better let me put a little goose (with an emphasis) on your plate. You know you are going a-wooing to-day.'

"The young gentleman appeared not to hear him. Mrs. Daly, who understood more intimately the nature of her son's reflections, deprecated, by a significant look at her husband, the continuance of any raillery upon so delicate a subject.

"'Kyrle, some coffee?' said the lady of the house; but without being more successful in awakening the attention of the young gentleman.

"Mr. Daly winked at his wife.

"'Kyrle!' he called aloud, in a tone against which even a lover's absence was not proof, 'do you hear what your mother says?'

"'I ask pardon, sir--I was absent--I--what were you saying, mother?'

"'She was saying,' continued Mr. Daly, with a smile, 'that you were manufacturing a fine speech for Anna Chute, and that you were just meditating whether you should deliver it on your knees or out of brief, as if you were addressing the bench in the Four Courts.'

"'For shame, my dear! Never mind him, Kyrle; I said no such thing. I wonder how you can say that, my dear, and the children listening.'

"'Pooh! the little angels are too busy and too innocent to pay us any attention,' said Mr. Daly, lowering his voice, however. 'But, speaking seriously, my boy, you take this affair too deeply to heart; and whether it be in our pursuit of wealth, or fame, or even in love itself, an extreme solicitude to be successful is the surest means of defeating its own object. Besides, it argues an unquiet and unresigned condition. I have had a little experience, you know, in affairs of this kind,' he added, smiling and glancing at his fair helpmate, who blushed with the simplicity of a young girl.

"'Ah sir!' said Kyrle, as he drew nearer to the breakfast-table with a magnanimous affectation of cheerfulness, 'I fear I have not so good a ground for hope as you may have had. It is very easy, sir, for one to be resigned to disappointment, when he is certain of success.'

"'Why, I was not bidden to despair indeed,' said Mr. Daly, extending his hand to his wife, while they exchanged a quiet smile, which had in it an expression of tenderness and of melancholy remembrance.

"'I have, I believe, been more fortunate than more deserving persons. I have never been vexed with useless fears in my wooing days, nor with vain regrets when those days were ended. I do not know, my dear lad, what hopes you have formed, or what prospects you may have shaped out of the future; but I will not wish you a better fortune than that you may as nearly approach to their accomplishment as I have done, and that time may deal as fairly with you as he has done with your father.' After saying this, Mr. Daly leaned forward on the table, with his temple supported by one finger, and glanced alternately from his children to his wife while he sang in a low tone the following verse of a popular song:

'How should I love the pretty creatures, While round my knees they fondly clung! To see them look their mother's features, To hear them lisp their mother's tongue; And when with envy time transported, Shall think to rob us of our joys, You'll in your girls again be courted, And I--'

with a glance at Kyrle--

'And I go wooing with the boys.'"

We cannot close this imperfect sketch of the _Collegians_ without commending the treatment of the humbler personages introduced, equally free as they are from that stilted phraseology and broad caricature which too often disgrace Irish novels and so-called Irish plays. Poor Eily O'Connor, in all her simple innocence and ignorance of the world, is a beautiful creation; and though travestied in three or four different forms on the stage, she still holds a lasting place in our affections. Her meeting with her discarded lover, Myles Murphy the mountaineer, presents us a scene of touching pathos such as only, we imagine, an Irish peasant could express in his native tongue:

"'There is only one person to blame in all this business,' murmured the unhappy girl, 'and that is Eily O'Connor.'

"'I don't say that,' returned the mountaineer. 'It's no admiration to me you should be heart-broken with all the persecution we gave you day afther day. All I'm thinking is, I'm sorry you didn't mention it to myself unknownst. Sure it would be betther for me than to be as I was afther, when I heerd you were gone. Lowry Lovby told me first of it, when I was eastwards. Oh ro! such a life as I led afther. Lonesome as the mountains looked before, when I used to come home thinkin' of you, they looked ten times lonesomer afther I heerd of that story. The ponies, poor crathers--see 'em all, how they're lookin' down at us this moment--they didn't hear me spring the rattle on the mountain for a month afther. I suppose they thought it is in Garryowen I was.'

"Here he looked upward, and pointing to his herd, a great number of which were collected in groups on the broken cliffs above the road, some standing so far forward on the projections of rock as to appear magnified against the dusky sky, Myles sprang the large wooden rattle which he held in his hand, and in an instant all dispersed and disappeared, like the clan of a Highland chief at the sound of their leader's whistle.

"'Well, Myles,' said Eily, at length collecting a little strength, 'I hope we'll see some happy days in Garryowen yet.'

"'Heaven send it! I'll pack off the boy to-night to town, or I'll go myself, if you like, or I'll get you a horse and truckle, and guide it myself for you, or I'll do any thing in the whole world that you'll have me. Look at this. I'd rather be doing your bidding this moment than my own mother's, and heaven forgive me, if that's a sin! Ah Eily! they may say this and that o' you, in the place where you were born; but I'll ever hold to it, I held to it all through, an' I'll hold to it to my death, that when you darken your father's door again, you will send no shame before you.'

"'You are right in that, Myles.'

"'Didn't I know I was? And wasn't it that that broke my heart! If one met me afther you flitted away, an' saw me walking the road with my hands in my pockets and my head down, an' I thinking; an' if he sthruck me on the shoulder, an' "Myles," says he, "don't grieve for her, she's this an' that," and if he proved it to me, why, I'd look up that minute an' I'd smile in his face. I'd be as easy from that hour as if I never crossed your threshold at Garryowen! But knowing in my heart, and as my heart told me, that it never could be that way; that Eily was still the old girl always, an' hearing what they said o' you, an' knowing that it was I that brought it all upon you--O Eily! Eily!--O Eily O'Connor! there is not that man upon Ireland ground that can tell what I felt. That was what kilt me! That was what drove the pain into my heart, and kept me in the doctor's hands till now.'"

Altogether different in design and scope is the _Invasion_, a historical novel intended to describe the institutions, manners, and ways of life of the ancient Irish, and it is much to be regretted that it is so little read by the descendants of that peculiar people, especially by those who turn aside from the difficulties of nomenclature presented by the actual history of Ireland. With the same motive that actuated Scott to present the otherwise unattractive and obscure facts of the early history of Britain in the fascinating garb of romance, our author, always deeply imbued with love of country and reverence for the past, sought in this book to give a complete picture of the public, social, and religious life of his ancestors as it was known or supposed to exist in the eighth century, before the repeated incursions of the Northmen had desolated their valleys, razed their towns, and pillaged their churches and seats of learning. To most men of a fine imagination and poetic temperament like Griffin, the study of laws long disused and customs forgotten centuries ago, wrapt up as they were in a language almost unintelligible to modern scholars, would have presented insuperable difficulties; but to him it seems to have been a labor of love, and it is a source of lasting regret that his opportunities for research were not in proportion to his diligence. The invaluable records of Irish history and antiquities since brought to light through the labors of O'Curry, Pietrie, O'Donovan, and others, were then slumbering in the mouldy archives of Trinity College, or scattered in inaccessible places over England and the continent; nor are we aware that the author of the _Invasion_ had such thorough knowledge of his native language as would enable him to decipher those ancient manuscripts, even had he the facility for so doing. The barbarous policy of the dominant power, which formerly not only sought to destroy the language of the conquered people by prohibiting its being taught in colleges, but made it penal to allow it to be spoken in the humbler country schools, was equally interested in keeping from the world at large the Irish people's records and book of laws, the evidences of their former glory and greatness and the muniments of their nationality; and even in this advanced age we owe mainly to local enterprise and private generosity whatever contributions to ancient Irish history we have been favored with for the last twenty years. The government of England is willing to spend annually tens of thousands of pounds sterling to facilitate the discovery of the sources of the Nile or to encourage the translation of the high-flown vagaries of East Indian poets; font it cannot afford, it appears, a miserable allowance to rescue from obscurity the annals of one of the most ancient and civilized nations of Europe; a nation, too, that has the misfortune to be called an integral portion of the British empire.

This necessarily limited knowledge of the epoch which he proposed to illustrate, while it in some degree unfortunately lessens the authority of the novel in an antiquarian point of view, does not impair its harmony of design, or weaken the moral and intellectual beauty of its entire composition; and even its technical defects are, to a great extent, corrected in the edition before us, by the insertion, in the form of an appendix, of the very valuable critical notes of the late Professor O'Curry. The principal figure in the book is O'Headha, (O'Hea,) a young chieftain born on the day of his father's death in battle. It describes the ceremonies of the marriage of his parents and of his own baptism, as introductory to his career. His education is supposed to be conducted at Mungharid (Mungret) Abbey, then famous for the number and rank of its scholars; and this gives the author an opportunity of describing the monastery, a description which may be taken as applying equally to the many similar institutions of piety and learning which at that time, and for centuries before, dotted the then happy island:

"Unlike many of the religious foundations of that period, which were constructed, after the national manner, of wood, the college of Muinghairid was a damhliag, or stone building, and its grouted fragments, diffused at this day over an extensive tract of ground, demonstrate the masonic skill of its founders. The religious, who were of the order of St. Mainchin, the founder of the abbey, and of prodigious number, had, as is usual in such establishments, their various duties appointed to them. Some devoted themselves wholly to a life of contemplation and of manual labor. Others employed themselves in the care of the sick, the entertaining of strangers, the giving of alms, and the instruction of the numerous youth who flocked hitherward in great numbers from different parts of the island, from the shore of Inismore, and even from those of some continental nations. Those who were skilled in psalmody succeeded each other in the choir, night and day, which for many a century sent forth its never-ceasing harmony of praise; while far the greater number were employed in cultivating with their own hands the extensive tracts of ground which lay around the convent and the neighboring city. Morn after morn, regular as the dawn itself, the tolling of the convent-bell, over the spreading woods which then enriched the neighborhood, awoke the tenants of the termon-lands, warning them that its cloistered inhabitants had commenced their daily rule, and reminding them also of that eternal destiny which was seldom absent from the minds of the former. The religious, answering to the summons, resumed their customary round of duties. Some aided the almoner in receiving the applications of the poor and attending to their wants. Some assisted the chamberlain in refitting the deserted dormitory. Some were appointed to help the infirmarian in the hospital. Some aided the pittancer and cellarer in preparing the daily refection, as well for the numerous members of the confraternity as for the visitors, for whose accommodation a separate refectory was furnished; and after the solemn rite of the morning, at which all assisted, had been concluded, the great body of the monks departed to their daily labor on the adjoining tillage and pasturage lands.

"Sometimes at this early hour the more infirm and aged, as well as the more pious of the neighboring peasantry, were seen thridding their way along the woodland paths to mingle in the morning devotions of the religious. The peasant as he trotted on by his car, laden with the produce of the season, paused for an instant to hear the matin hymn, and added a prayer that heaven might sanctify his toil. The fisherman, whose curach glided rapidly along the broad surface of the river, rested on his oars at the same solemn strain, and resumed his labor with a more measured stroke and less eager spirit. The son of war and rapine, who galloped by the place, returning with sated passions from some nocturnal havoc, reined up his hobbie at the peaceful sounds, and yielded his mind unconsciously to an interval of mercy and remorse. The oppressive chieftain and his noisy retinue, not yet recovered the dissipation of some country _coshering_, hushed for a time their unseemly mirth as they passed the holy dwelling and yielded in reverence the debt which they could not pay in sympathy. To many an ear the sounds of the orison arrived, and to none without a wholesome and awakening influence."

Arrived at manhood, the future chieftain is duly installed in office according to the prevailing customs of the sept, and henceforth we find him performing all the duties appertaining to his high position, including his attendance at the triennial assembly of Tara, _à propos_ to which we have an elaborate and highly interesting account of that historical gathering of all the estates of the kingdoms into which the island was then divided. A romantic adventure, ending in a love scene, of course, brings him among the Hooded people, the last remnant of those who, rejecting the teachings of St. Patrick and his disciples, continued to practise the Druidical rites in seclusion; and, as a consequence, we find a detailed description of the objects and forms of that extinct species of idolatry. The invasion itself, the first descent of the Northmen on the coast, successfully repulsed by O'Hea's forces, naturally leads to a disquisition on the gloomy superstition and uncouth manners of those terrible barbarians. Thus we find grouped together, gracefully and artistically, the leading historical features of the period, the old superstitions and the beneficent fruits of the new faith, the faults and follies, virtues and graces of the christianized Celts, contrasted with the physical prowess and ferocious temperament of the hordes who were so soon to deluge with blood, not only Erin, but the adjacent isles and the greater part of the coasts of Europe. Strange to say, the _Invasion_ is the only Irish historical novel ever written, and, as Augustin Thierry was induced to write his celebrated history of the _Norman Conquest of England_ by reading Scott's _Ivanhoe_, may we not hope that some present or future writer may be inspired by the _Invasion_ to give us a detailed and intelligible account of the Danish wars in Ireland?

The _Duke of Monmouth_ is also a historical novel, but more modern in its character and incidents. It is intended to describe the condition of the people of the rural districts in the west of England about the close of the seventeenth century; and the principal events upon which the story depends are the invasion of England by the ill-starred Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II., during the reign of the latter's successor, the fatal battle of Sedgemoor, and the execution of the adventurer and his principal followers. The style is faultless, the prominent actors mostly taken from real life, though few are truthfully drawn. Still, we cannot but regret for the sake of poetical justice that Griffin chose this subject for a novel, from the fact that the truth of history compelled him to let the notorious Kirke, who figures so largely in his pages, go unwhipped of justice. The portrait of this infamous soldier, whose vices were proverbial, is thus briefly sketched:

"He beheld before him a man somewhat over the middle size, and rather spare than otherwise; his features not ill-looking, but marked by that expression of malign placidity which is no less characteristic of the genuine tyrant than all the ogre-like contortions and grimaces vulgarly associated with the idea of habitual cruelty. There was something like a smile upon his lips; but it was a smile that spoke not of benevolence of the heart, and held out no light of promise to the hope of the supplicant. His very courtesy, all easy as it was, seemed the refined dissimulation of a callous nature. There was a kind of sternness in his very courtliness of manner, a severity even in the smoothness and gentleness of his demeanor and discourse, that was more withering than the open violence of the unmasked and ruffian oppressor. At times, too, it was said he could be all the savage; but it was only when the security of his position afforded a free scope to license. His hair was already tinged with gray, though in so slight a degree as to be scarcely perceptible. His complexion had much of the sallowness, but little of the languor, usually acquired by long residence in tropical countries; and, as he stood glancing rapidly over the paper which he held in his hand, it might be judged from the keenness and concentration of his look that his mind, in like manner, had lost nothing of its activity beneath the enervating influence of an African sun."

Notwithstanding the fault referred to, the book is one that merits attention both as being the production of the author's more mature years and as furnishing us an insight into the modes of life, manner of living, and unreasonable preconceptions of politics and religion of the humbler classes of England at the period immediately preceding the downfall of the house of Stuart. The so-called reformation in that country, while it deprived the peasantry of all the attractions and consolations of true religion, as well as of the innocent sports and pastimes so much encouraged by the church, left nothing in their stead to lighten the heavy burden of labor save the sensual attractions of the ale-house, or the more invigorating, if more hazardous, luxury of rebellion. Deprived of the refuge always afforded by the eleemosynary institutions of the monks to the deserving needy and afflicted, the wants of the widow and the orphan were neglected, the poor became poorer and more discontented, and the nobles more haughty and overbearing. The reformers succeeded in unsettling the religious faith of the masses, as the wars of the Commonwealth destroyed their ideas of authority and obedience. Hence followed in rapid rotation the restoration of Charles II., the dethronement of James, the Scotch rebellions of 1715 and 1745, and many if not all the evils which have afflicted the people of Great Britain up to the present time--evils which have become so glaring that a thousand acts of parliament cannot hide them, and distress, ignorance, and its attendant vices, so gross and general as to be beyond the cure of the poor-house and the penitentiary. Considered in the aggregate, England is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Individually, her people are the poorest in Christendom; for she contains within her boundaries a larger percentage of paupers and those who live by crime of various degrees than any civilized country on the face of the globe.

It was while in this transition state, from "merrie" England in Catholic times to her present anomalous condition, that the Duke of Monmouth, relying on the ignorance and anti-Catholic prejudices of the rustic population, resolved to dispute the possession of the throne with James II., whose only fault, in the eyes of his enemies at that time, was his desire to concede some degree of toleration to his dissenting and Catholic subjects. Monmouth's miserable failure is a matter of history; but in this book we have likewise a glimpse of the feeling of the people who followed his standard, and which afterward led to the elevation of William of Orange, and of the sentiments which actuated the British portion of that prince's army in his subsequent wars in the sister island. The author also gives a very just idea of Monmouth and his subordinate rebels. The duke himself is represented as possessing all those exterior graces which are said to have distinguished the Stuarts, with more than all their vices and instability of character--false to his friends, cringing to his enemies, superstitious without faith, and ambitious without the courage or capacity to command success. Fletcher, his chief counsellor and best officer, is a keen, hard-headed, but passionate Covenanter, a theoretical republican of the Roundhead school engrafted on the antique; Lord Grey and Ferguson are simply respectable adventurers, equally destitute of honesty or brains, and worthy instruments in so desperate an enterprise. In comparison with those men, the devotion of young Fullarton to a hopeless cause becomes less blamable; and even the ultra loyalty of the old cavalier, Captain Kingsly, is respectable.

In addition to what we have before remarked of the design of this work, there is a feature in its composition which by some readers may be considered a grave defect. The interest which surrounds the heroine, Aquila Fullarton, from the very beginning of the tale deepens by degrees until it becomes painfully intense, and the scene between her and Kirke, wherein that monster perpetrates one of the greatest crimes known to humanity, and she in consequence loses her reason, though founded on well-authenticated facts, and described with all the delicacy of diction possible, is almost too horrible to receive mention. The necessarily gloomy pages of the story are occasionally enlivened by the introduction of two Irish characters--brothers--Morty and Shamus Delaney, who, like so many of their countrymen, then and since, have left home to seek their fortunes, and find themselves in Taunton on the eve of the stirring events related in the novel. Morty, being of a practical turn of mind, forthwith enlists in "Kirke's Lambs;" but Shamus, whose tastes are also pugnacious, but whose ambition is to wear epaulettes, takes service on the other side, and raises a company of ragamuffins not unlike that which shamed the redoubtable Falstaff at Coventry. There are many exquisite bits of humor scattered through Griffin's works, which might be quoted as evincing his keen appreciation of the ludicrous; but we prefer to extract the following address of Captain Delaney to his command, for the benefit of our military readers who have neglected studying the articles of war. Shamus _loquitur_:

"'Well, I see ye're all here, exceptin' those that's absent. Well, then, fall in, fall in, an' much good may it do ye! An' now attind to my ordhers, an' mind 'em well. Every man is to fight, an' nobody is to run; that's plain enough. Secondly, any man that wants arms, is to fight hard _for_ 'em first, an' to fight _with_ 'em at his aise afther. Thirdly, any booty whatsomever that any o' ye may take in the war, such as goold rings, watches, sails, valuable clothing, an' the likes--but above all things, money--ye're to bring it all to me. Do you hear me?'

"'Ay, ay, ay!'

"'Very well. Because I'm captain, ye know, an' best judge how it ought to be divided. For it is one o' the maxims of war, that it's the part o' the common sodgers for to fight, an' for the ladin' officers for to have all the call to the booty an' the likes, how 'tis to be shared, an' what's to be done with it. Do ye hear?'

"'Ay, ay!'

"'An' if there's any thing that's very dangerous--certain death, for instance--as a place where one would be blown up, an' the likes, it's the custom o' war for the common sodgers to have it all to themselves, an' for the officer to give 'em ordhers for to face it, but to stay behind himself, bein' more valuable. Do ye hear?'

"'Ay, ay!'

"'An' if there be a scarcity o' food or clothin', or beddin', an' the likes, or a dale to do, sech as diggin' threnches an' the likes o' that, then it's the custom o' war for the officer to have the first o' the victuals an' things that way; but the sodgers is to have the first o' the labor always. Do ye understand?'

"'Ay, ay!'

"'Very well, why. Now, mind the word! Shoulder your picks! Quick, march!'"

Of Griffin's minor works, included under the titles of _Tales of the Munster Festivals_ and _Tales of my Neighborhood_, the _Rivals_, _Barber of Bantry_, and _Shuil Dhuv_ are decidedly the most entertaining. The latter particularly, though irregular in composition, is a story evincing great dramatic power and knowledge of the human heart. The dark-eyed hero, if such he may be called, who gives the title to the tale, stands out before us in all the enormity of his guilt as distinctly as if he had been an actual acquaintance, and we venture to say that there are few who have read the book but have experienced that feeling. In this story, also, Griffin departs from his usual custom of avoiding personal description of his female characters, and gives us an elaborate picture of his heroine, which, whether it be drawn from life or the creation of his own imagination, calls up before us an image of surpassing loveliness.

Griffin's other tales, such as the _Half-Sir_, _Card-Drawing_, and _Tracey's Ambition_, have all much merit, and, though not so prolonged as those we have mentioned, exhibit in a greater or lesser degree the skilful hand and rich imagination of the author. The _Christian Physiologist_, comprising a series of beautiful tales intended to illustrate the use and abuse of the senses, is worthy a place near the writings of that friend of childhood, Canon Schmidt.

As a poet, Griffin is remarkable for the beauty of his delineations of natural scenery, his elevation of sentiment and purity of conception. His lyrics remind us of Moore, and are scarcely inferior to some of the best of that immortal bard's in feeling and choiceness of metaphor; but being somewhat deficient in rhythm, they have never found much favor in the drawing or concert-room, "A Place in thy Memory, Dearest," "My Mary of the Curling Hair," and one or two others excepted. Many of his poems were from time to time contributed to the London journals, while he was yet a literary drudge in that city; others are to be found interspersed in his novels, and not a few were written to gratify his friends, and were first given to the public when his entire poetical works, as far as it was possible, were collected together in book-form, and now fill a large volume, not the least important of the present edition. We are not aware that he ever attempted an epic or any thing more extended than the beautiful ballad of _Matt Hyland_, of the merits of which we can only judge by the fragment which has been preserved, the original having been destroyed by the author immediately previous to his joining the order of Christian Brothers; nor do we think his ambition ever soared to higher flights than songs and short descriptive poems. The most meritorious of these, or, at least, the one which has obtained the greatest popularity, is the _Sister of Charity_, written on the occasion of a dear friend becoming a religious; and, though several gifted pens have been employed on the same subject, we know of none who has embodied so true an appreciation of the self-denial and entire devotion which mark that order--the boast and glory of all womanhood. Several of his best pieces, indeed, are written in the same devotional spirit, particularly the following verses, in illustration of a seal, representing a mariner on a tempestuous ocean who, reclining in his bark, fixes his eye on a distant star, with the motto--

"SI JE TE PERDS, JE SUIS PERDU.

(IF I LOSE THEE, I'M LOST.)

"Shine on, thou bright beacon, Unclouded and free, From thy high place of calmness, O'er life's troubled sea! Its morning of promise, Its smooth seas are gone, And the billows rave wildly-- Then, bright one, shine on.

"The wings of the tempest May rise o'er thy ray, But tranquil thou smilest, Undimmed by its sway; High, high o'er the worlds Where storms are unknown, Thou dwellest, all beauteous, All glorious, alone.

"From the deep womb of darkness The lightning flash leaps, O'er the bark of my fortune Each mad billow sweeps; From the port of her safety By warring winds driven, Had no light o'er her course But you lone one of heaven.

"Yet fear not, thou frail one, The hour may be near When our own sunny headlands Far off shall appear; When the voice of the storm Shall be silent and past, In some island of heaven We may anchor at last.

"But, bark of eternity, Where art thou now? The tempest wave shrieks O'er each plunge of thy prow; On the world's dreary ocean Thus shattered and lost-- Then, lone one, shine on, If I lose thee, I'm lost."

Of his dramas but one remains to us, _Gisippus_, and enough dramatic ability is displayed in that to make us regret that Griffin abandoned writing for the stage so early in life. We are inclined to imagine that a young man, scarcely twenty years of age, who was capable of managing so successfully a subject that required the highest powers of Boccaccio, could in his maturer years have effected even greater things. However, we must console ourselves with the reflection that what has been lost to the drama, we have gained in the excellent works before us; and as the drama is necessarily limited to the few, the world is also the gainer by the change.

FOOTNOTE:

[208] _The Life and Works of Gerald Griffin._ 10 vols. 12mo. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL, BY JANUS.

III.

Of all arguments brought forward by _Janus_ to undermine what he would term the historical groundwork of papal supremacy, and the prerogatives exercised by the successors of St. Peter, none seem to have greater weight, or more forcibly convince his admirers, than the long narration on "Forgeries;" and hence throughout his work the "Isidorian fabrications" play a great _rôle_. Ostensibly these forgeries are developed at great length with a view of merely overthrowing and combating this "powerful coalition" of ultramontanism, but in reality the arguments deduced from these forgeries go far beyond this _avowed_ intention of our authors.

Up to the ninth century no change had taken place in the constitution of the church, as they readily admit:

"But in the middle of that century, about 845, arose the huge fabrication of the Isidorian decretals, which had results far beyond what its author contemplated, and gradually but surely changed the whole constitution and government of the church." (P. 76.)

1st. In our first article (p. 330) we have already pointed out this illogical inconsistency of _Janus_, when assuming a lawful development of the constitution of the church in the first eight centuries; whereas he by no means defines what he understands by a _lawful_ development of the _divine_ constitution of the ancient church. How can he, therefore, decide that the Isidorian decretals wrought an entire and unlawful development of the rights and privileges of the primacy?

2d. If the _picture of the organization of the ancient church_ is quietly, and as a matter of course, presented as one of _divine_ origin,[209] we have no hesitation in declaring that picture a false one, and contrary to the most ancient history of the church. It cannot even claim apostolic origin in so comprehensive a meaning as _Janus_ would have it. The different grades of the hierarchy, established between the primacy and episcopacy, is the result of a _historical_ development, whereas _divine_ institution can only be claimed for the _primacy_ and _episcopacy_ themselves.[210]

What difference is there between bishops as to power and jurisdiction over one another by _divine_ right? If patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans have exercised certain prerogatives _greater_ than those enjoyed by other bishops, will _Janus_ tell us that this is owing to divine origin? How, then, will he account for the fact that no such distinction was universally acknowledged[211] until the _third_ century in the east? nay more, that in the west there were no metropolitans before the latter half of the _fourth_ century, if we except Africa, and even in this latter country many bishops were exempt, and directly subject to the see of Rome?[212]

It is a notorious fact, though _Janus_ elsewhere so boldly denies it, that the bishops of Rome deputed other bishops as their representatives in many provinces, who by that very fact exercised authority over other bishops, because to them the popes delegated the exercise of primatial prerogatives. Thus, the Bishop of Thessalonica is constituted, by the pope, Primate of Illyricum, and the Bishop of Arles, Primate of Gaul.

There are still many letters of the popes addressed to the bishops of Thessalonica as early as the fourth century, by Innocent I., Boniface I., Celestine I., and Sixtus III., wherein instructions are given concerning the exercise of the _special_ power conferred on them.[213] Hence it came to pass that certain episcopal sees retained that high rank granted to their first incumbents, either as primates or metropolitans, after having acted in the beginning in the quality of apostolic legates. St. Leo the Great, in his letter to Anastasius of Thessalonica, says:

"We have intrusted our charge in such a way to you that you are called on to _share_ our solicitude, _not_ possessing the plenitude of power."[214]

To grant to the Bishop of Rome the honor of being the "first patriarch," is nothing less than ignoring or setting aside numerous and indubitable facts _long before_ the existence of the Isidorian decretals.[215] We should like to be informed by _Janus_ and his abettors where the documents exist proving the rights of patriarchs as of _divine_ institution? All canonists of any repute maintain that the preëminence of rank and jurisdiction accorded to patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans is _not_ due to the episcopate by _divine_ institution; but, on the contrary, all agree that this is a concession, whether _express_ or _tacit_, on the part of the popes of Rome as successors of Peter, being admitted by them to a _participation_ of their primatial prerogatives. Hence all are the representatives of the primacy, whenever they are appealed to as a _higher_ tribunal, and as such can only lawfully hold this preëminence among their brother bishops as long as they do not come in conflict with the divinely established order in the church, which consists in the principle that the pope possesses, by _divine_ ordinance, _jurisdiction over the entire episcopate_. Pope St. Leo the Great gives a beautiful portrait of this organization in the church very dissimilar from that of _Janus_.[216]

"The connection of the whole body demands unanimity, and especially unity among the prelates. While the dignity is common to all, there is no general equality of order; because even among the blessed apostles, though sharing the same honor, there was a difference of power, (_quædam discretio potestatis_,) and while all were equally chosen, yet to one was given the prerogative of presiding over the others.[217] From which precedent also arose a distinction among bishops, and with perfect order was it enacted that all should not in like manner assume all powers, but that there be in every province some who exercise the right of _first_ judges among their brethren; and again, that there should be some (bishops) in the larger cities possessing more ample powers, through whom the care of the universal church devolves upon the one chair of Peter, and that in this manner there may never be any separation from the head."

3d. According to _Janus_, Nicolas I., by means of the Isidorian forgery,

"opened to the whole clergy in east and west a right of appeal to Rome, and made the pope the supreme judge of all bishops and clergy of the whole world." (P. 79.)

That "bold but non-natural" torturing of the seventeenth canon of the Council of Chalcedon attributed to Nicolas I., is nothing else but a pure fiction on the part of _Janus_. The letter sent by the pope to the Emperor Michael III. is a document evincing the learning, sagacity, and prudence of Nicolas I., in that grave disturbance caused by Photius and corrupt courtiers against the lawful patriarch, Ignatius of Constantinople.

When the latter, for the conscientious discharge of his pastoral duty and vigilance toward a licentious court, had been violently deposed, and Photius, a relative of the emperor, put in his place, recourse was had to Rome to obtain sanction of these proceedings. The pope sent legates to Constantinople to investigate the matter laid before him; these in their turn, being partly misled, partly bribed, ratified all that had been done. Pope Nicolas, upon hearing this, excommunicated the legates and annulled the election of Photius. The latter, seconded by the intrigues of the court, protested against this act of the pope whose authority he had previously invoked. Hence, Nicolas I., in the above-mentioned letter, reasons by _analogy_ that the seventeenth canon of the Council of Chalcedon, respecting appeals to primates or to the patriarch of Constantinople, was in a higher sense applicable to the _Bishop_ of Rome.[218] It clearly follows from the canon in question[219] that it merely intended to regulate the several instances of appeal for clerics, and alluded to the special privilege of appealing to the Patriarch of Constantinople.[220]

In the present instance, however, is it not evident that the patriarch could not be his own judge, and, since a final decision was demanded, on whom did this right devolve, we may ask, if not on the Bishop of Rome? A similar and even more striking argument may be seen in the letter addressed by Nicolas I. to the Frankish king, Charles the Bald. Rothad, Bishop of Soissons, having been deposed by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, appealed to Pope Nicolas, who, after examining, caused the bishop to be restored; and in his reasons for doing so sustains, first, the _divine_ right of the chair of Peter to receive appeals and to act as supreme judge; and then goes on stating that, as the canon of Chalcedon granted the right of judging to the primates or to the see of Constantinople, in like manner also, and with much more reason, must the same rule be observed regarding the right of the see of Rome. If, therefore, adds the pope, Rothad of Soissons appealed to the chair of Peter conformably to the Synod of Sardica, this action was perfectly lawful, and there were many precedents for this in history; as, for example, the appeals made by St. Athanasius to Julius I. and St. John Chrysostom to Innocent I.[221] Here, then, the reader will judge of the _historical_ fairness of our authors, when asserting that Pope Nicolas I., by torturing a single word against the sense of a whole code of law, "managed to give a turn to a canon of a general council."

Are we to believe, upon the sole word and authority of _Janus_, that the whole constitution of the church underwent a change by means of these Isidorian decretals, when so many men, distinguished for their learning and deep researches, have exploded this theory long ago advanced by the Magdeburg Centuriators? It is certainly nothing else than presumption and arrogance to disparage the knowledge and science of so many eminent men,[222] who unanimously agree on the following points: 1. That the pseudo-Isidorian decretals were not written with a view of exalting the papal power, but rather that of the bishops. 2. That the contents of this collection are, for the most part, taken from ancient and genuine documents. 3. That the fictitious decretals contained therein are quite generally known, and even these imply nothing novel or contradictory to the then established discipline of the church. 4. It is certain that this collection was _not_ compiled at _Rome_, and much less known or used by Pope Nicolas as a _genuine_ document of binding force.

It will be necessary to support these points by a few and, we hope, unexceptionable arguments. _Janus_ might have indeed spared himself the pains of such a minute and tedious disquisition on these Isidorian forgeries, as many[223] of similar disposition with himself made extensive use of this unauthorized collection of pseudo-Isidore, in order to show upon what grounds were based the principles of the present constitution of the church, and particularly that the prerogatives exercised by the Roman see rested on these forged documents. If the power of the Bishop of Rome had no other foundation but the Isidorian forgery, then indeed might we be obliged to join in the triumphant chorus of _Janus_ and his abettors; but the question, not to be misplaced or adroitly shifted, is simply this: Did the prerogatives exercised by the popes need these forgeries to establish the lawfulness of their claims? It is to no purpose to conceal and cover up, as it were, the principle in question by tedious and showy digressions--whether these decretals were fictitious and whether they were used; but the whole problem to be solved is, Has the pseudo-Isidorian collection introduced or enforced an _innovation_ in the _ancient_ constitution of the church, as it was in vigor at that period, or were the principles enunciated by pseudo-Isidore conformable to the doctrine of the church and in accordance with the canons of former councils, or not? What does it matter whether one or another theologian, and even a pope, made use of these decretals, not doubting of their genuineness, and consequently deceived, provided nothing new and unwarranted by previous tradition was thereby acknowledged or enacted? If such a theologian as St. Thomas Aquinas was deceived as to a spurious passage of St. Cyril, and followed herein by Bellarmine, is that enough to condemn their whole system or to impeach their honesty?

We might by such a method of arguing overthrow the entire historical edifice of the first thousand years of the church, and begin to build up a new system on this _tabula rasa_ with the aid of this hypercritical process of _Janus_ and his school, and we scarcely doubt but that he himself would be in the worst plight.

It is certainly true that the author of the Isidorian decretals, as he himself avows in the preface, wished to give a complete code of ecclesiastical laws to the clergy, though for the greater part he insists on such points of discipline as were at that time greatly endangered and often neglected.

"The immediate object," says _Janus_, "of the compiler of this forgery was to protect bishops against their metropolitans and other authorities, so as to secure absolute impunity." (P. 77.)

This should be effected, of course, by the right of appealing to Rome, and, consequently, making the pope the supreme judge of all the bishops and clergy, that is, of the entire church. These are the principles that worked their way and became dominant; and that they "revolutionized the whole constitution of the church, introducing a new system in place of the old on that point," our authors assert "there can be no controversy among candid historians." (P. 79.) With all deference to the historical erudition of our authors, we cannot refrain from interrogating history and assuring ourselves of the truth of these grave charges.

Having once granted that Christ intrusted Peter and his successors with the chief care of his flock--both pastors and people--it is impossible to suppose that in this supreme charge should not be included the right of hearing appeals and giving final decision; for where could this preëminence find any application, if the whole church be thus cut off from communicating with its head?

The Synod of Sardica had formally defined this right of hearing appeals in several of its canons, as our authors acknowledge, though their efforts to cancel this ancient testimony and to do away with the binding force of these canons are useless and unavailing; for the canons of the Council of Sardica[224] did nothing more than solemnly acknowledge what had been handed down from _apostolic_ times, attesting the doctrine of the church as fully practised long before. We may be permitted to signalize two most remarkable and indubitable instances from history. Marcianus, Bishop of Arles, having espoused the heretical doctrine of Novatian, was denounced by Faustinus of Lyons, and other bishops, to the see of Rome; at the same time Faustinus also informed St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who, in his turn, begged Pope Stephen to terminate this affair by his power as supreme pastor of the church, requesting the deposition of Marcianus and the appointment of another in his place.[225] Another no less conspicuous proof we find in the fact of the two Spanish bishops, Basilides and Martial, in which case St. Cyprian[226] approved of the action of Pope Stephen, and saw no usurpation of power when the latter restored Basilides to his bishopric, and only regretted that by a false statement of facts the pope was misled and deceived.[227] Our argument becomes more conclusive from the following great event in the eastern church, where the jurisdiction in the _greater causes (causæ majores)_ appears in most resplendent light. In the case of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, when the Eusebians,[228] supported by the weak and tyrannical Emperor Constantius, drove him from his episcopal see, we find, first, that a numerous assembly of Egyptian bishops who met at Alexandria appealed to Pope Julius I. After the Arian Synod of Antioch in 314, Gregory, a Cappadocian, was forced on the episcopal see of Athanasius, and the latter, with the Bishops Marcellus of Ancyra, Lucius of Adrianople, Asclepas of Gaza, Paul of Constantinople, and many others, fled to Rome, imploring the protection of Pope Julius, who caused a synod to be held in 343, at which a great number of _eastern_ prelates from Thrace, Cœlésyria, Phœnicia, and Palestine attended. The case of St. Athanasius and his fellow-exiles was examined, and they were declared innocent of the charges brought against them, and reinstated in their sees, from which only violence and force kept them for some time. Here, then, we have another argument for these high prerogatives exercised by the Bishop of Rome _four years before_ the Synod of Sardica. Confront this fact with the following passage from our authors:

"Only after the Sardican Council, and in reliance solely on it, or the Nicene, which was designedly confounded with it, was a right of hearing appeals laid claim to."[229]

We have to deal with men of far too _evasive_ minds, in the authors of this "contribution to ecclesiastical history," to limit ourselves to any one point of their argumentation. If, on the one hand, we adduce from history long _before the existence_ of the Isidorian forgeries, the testimony of such great and holy popes as Innocent I.,[230] Zozimus,[231] Boniface I.,[232] Celestine I., Leo the Great,[233] Gelasius I.,[234] and even before, Julius I.,[235] (337 to 352,) who all claim, assert, and exercise the right of final decision as supreme judges for both east and west, from whom there is no appeal, and this, too, in all great and weighty matters, (_graviora negotia_,) as Pope Gelasius says; then we are told that this right rests only on the canons of Sardica, and that the "fathers gave the see of Rome the privilege of final decision." If, on the other hand, we show ourselves satisfied with so ancient and indubitable an authority as the great Synod of Sardica, why, then, does _Janus_ resort to the simple _expedient_ of declaring that the "Sardican canons were never received at all in the east"? Nor can his _bon-mot_, in styling _greater causes_ (in which final decision is reserved to the Roman see) an "elastic term," supply the want of logic and historical accuracy. A slight acquaintance with the historical incidents connected with the Council of Sardica[236] will at once convince every unbiased mind that the opposition came from a party of reckless Eusebians, who withdrew from the synod when they could not attain their nefarious object, and repaired to Philippolis in order to crown their treacherous proceeding by excommunicating such holy and illustrious prelates as Athanasius and the aged Hosius, legate of Pope Julius, and even the pontiff himself, who remained steadfast in their defence of the Nicene doctrines. And such are the reasons, let it be observed, which cause _Janus_ to say that the canons of Sardica were not at all received in the east. What can be a more convincing proof than their insertion into collections or codes of law compiled by official authority,[237] having been inserted not only in the Latin collection of Dionysius,[238] under the pontificate of Anastasius II., about the year 498, and later in the Spanish code called _Liber Canonum_, commonly attributed to Isidore of Seville, but also in the _Greek_ collection of canons by John Scholasticus, and in the _Nomocanon_ compiled by the same author, who died Patriarch of Constantinople in 578.[239]

From these premises we arrive at the following conclusions: 1st, that the right of appeal to Rome and her jurisdiction, in all _greater causes_, was taught and practised in the church at _least_ four centuries before the Isidorian decretals were known; 2d, that the jurisdiction of the pope as supreme judge of the whole church is triumphantly attested by historical documents of the same age; 3d, that the canons of Sardica acknowledged a _divine_ right of the bishops of Rome--merely introducing a new _form_ that affected the _application_ and _exercise_ of this right, from which, however, the popes could deviate for reasons of wise and prompt administration.[240]

In this connection we must briefly notice another charge made by _Janus_, namely, that on the fabrication of pseudo-Isidore,

"was based the maxim that the pope, as supreme judge of the church, could be judged by no man." (P. 78.)

In this maxim our authors discover the foundation of the edifice of papal infallibility already laid. If such be the case, let us inquire whether this maxim was not known before pseudo-Isidore. A synod of Rome held in 378, under Pope Damasus, declared in a letter to the Emperor Gratian[241] that it was sanctioned by ancient custom that the Bishop of Rome, since his case was not submitted to a general council, should answer for himself before the council of the emperor; _but this was only to be understood in accusations of civil and political offences_. The highest judicial authority in the church having been vested by Christ in Peter and his successors, their voice was the judgment from which there was no appeal; neither did any bishop or any assembly of bishops receive power over the head of the church. This principle, acknowledged by civil codes in temporal principalities, was likewise solemnly affirmed by the Roman synod in the year 501, which was called by King Theodoric to examine the complaints brought against Pope Symmachus, and to judge him accordingly. But behold the declaration of the assembled bishops, protesting that it belonged to the bishop of the apostolic chair of Peter to convene a synod; for it was a thing unheard of that the high-priest of the aforesaid see should be placed in judgment before his own subjects.[242] The bishops pronounced that he was innocent before men, and left all to the tribunal of God. An apology, written for this Roman synod by the Deacon Ennodius,[243] afterward Bishop of Pavia, declared that a council on the more important affairs could be assembled only by the pope, or at least must be confirmed by him. Another striking passage illustrating this principle is to be found in the letter of Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, addressed to the senators of the city of Rome in the name of the bishops of Gaul, as follows:

"That the pope, as superior, could be judged by no one according to reason or law; and that if this privilege of the pope be called in question, the whole episcopacy would be shaken."[244]

_Janus_ likewise lets Pope Nicolas assert, on the strength of the Isidorian forgery, "that the Roman Church keeps the faith pure, and is free from every stain." (P. 80.) Now, who does not know that beautiful testimony of St. Irenæus, according to which "the whole church, that is, all the faithful, must be in union with this church, on account of its more powerful principality; in which communion the faithful of the whole world have preserved the tradition that was handed down by the apostles"?[245]

That the words in question employed by St. Irenæus, _propter potentiorem principalitatem_, are by no means capable of the construction as meaning _greater antiquity_, is clearly demonstrated by Dr. Döllinger.[246] St. Irenæus likewise concludes from the uninterrupted succession of bishops in the Church of Rome by saying, "When, therefore, you know the faith of this church, you have learned the faith of the others." St. Cyprian, too, uses the following expressive language, "He who does not preserve the unity of this church, how can he hold the faith?"[247]

Theodoret, about the year 440, calls the Roman see

"That most holy see which possesses the supremacy of the churches in the whole world, in virtue of many privileges, and above all others, of this one, that she has always remained free _from the stain of heresy_; nor has any one had possession of it holding any thing contrary to faith, but she has preserved entire this apostolic privilege!"[248] "Nec ullus fidei contraria sentiens in illa sedit, sed apostolicum gratiam integram servavit."

We might multiply our references[249] on this point to exhibit the _historical_ fabrications of _Janus_ and his school; but we trust that all judicious and discriminating minds will have come to the conclusion, from the testimonies already adduced, that the pseudo-Isidorian principles have neither changed nor _revolutionized_ the _ancient_ constitution of the church, and that the papal prerogatives, at which our authors seem so very much incensed, did not stand in need of forgeries--least of all, of those that came from the "Isidorian workshop;" and we, at the same time, apprehend that they will have to go further back--perhaps to the apostolic fathers--to trace _another_ history of the constitution of the church and the prerogatives claimed by the successors of St. Peter.

As to the materials from which these Isidorian decretals were formed, we may briefly state that they were ancient documents to which the author had access. In many instances he attributes some _genuine_ letters of popes to others than their real authors, and many other spurious documents had already been inserted in private collections, as the brothers Ballerini have demonstrated most clearly by their profound researches. Sixteen pieces of this kind are enumerated by them.[250] According to the most ancient code, this collection of pseudo-Isidore is divided into three parts, as we find in the _Codex Vaticanus_, n. 630, recorded by Ballerini; and in more recent times,[251] this codex being brought into the library of Paris, Camus compared it again with four other manuscript _codices_.[252] Part I. comprises the fifty apostolic canons which were compiled about the time of the Council of Chalcedon, as is generally supposed; fifty-nine spurious letters of the first thirty popes, from Clement to Melchiades;[253] the introduction to the whole is taken partly from the old Spanish collection, which circulated under the name of St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville. Part II. gives, after a brief preface, the false act of donation by the Emperor Constantine;[254] two introductory pieces, one taken from the _Spanish_ code, the other from the _Gallic_ code;[255] lastly, the acts of Greek, African, Gallic, and Spanish councils, as the Spanish code of the year 683 recorded them. In the third part we find another introduction copied from the Spanish collection, and then follow in order of time the decretals of the popes, from Sylvester (died 335) to Gregory II., (died 731.) Among these latter there are thirty-five _forged_ letters and several false councils, though, let it be clearly understood, in many portions the _contents_ of these forged decretals corresponded to _genuine_ documents which the author extracted for this purpose.[256] Two councils are falsely attributed to Pope Symmachus. All these records of pseudo-Isidore cover the whole field of ecclesiastical discipline; they are partly dogmatical, directed against the errors of the Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites; partly they contain moral precepts and exhortations; partly they refer to liturgy, giving the accompanying ceremonies to the administration of the sacraments; another no less conspicuous part is the enactments of papal decrees and canons of councils, regarding the protection of the clergy against arbitrary oppression, accusations, and depositions, the security of ecclesiastical property, the dignity and rights of the Roman Church, the appeals to the apostolic see, and the prerogatives of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops. From all this we can infer, that the object of the author in compiling this code was a very comprehensive one, and he drew quite copiously from the Scriptures, from the Roman pontifical book,[257] the historical books of Rufinus[258] and Cassiodorus, the author of the _Historia Tripartita_;[259] also from the writings of the Latin fathers, and from many collections or commentaries of Roman law. By a subsequent multiplying of copies, several changes and additions were made during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.[260]

Having already produced testimonies to prove that the principles--which are said to have "surely but gradually changed the ancient constitution of the church" by means of these Isidorian fictions--were known and acknowledged long _before_ pseudo-Isidore, we have thereby made good our third point, and we can fully concur in the following conclusion of a learned historian, who says of the pseudo-Isidorian code:

"Had his book been in open variance with the chief points of the prevailing discipline, it would at once have awakened suspicion; examinations would have been instituted, and in an age which possessed critical acumen sufficient to detect the falsity of the title of a book (the _Hypognosticon_) which was circulated under the name of St. Augustine, the imposition would have been detected--an imposition which, such as it really was, lay concealed, because the principles and laws of ecclesiastical discipline of the age corresponding with the contents of the work, they excited no surprise."

That the Isidorian collection was not compiled at Rome, is admitted by all historians[261] and canonists of any standing;[262] nor did _Janus_ dare to revive an antiquated and unfounded opinion of this import. However, we have to deal with another no less hazardous, nay, we might state at once, _false_ assertion in the following lines:

"About a hundred pretended decrees of the earliest popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods, were then fabricated in the west of Gaul, and _eagerly seized upon by Pope Nicolas I. at Rome_,[263] to be used as genuine documents in support of the _new_ claims put forward by himself and his successors." (P. 77.)

In order to judge fairly of this whole question raised by _Janus_, and by others before him, we may be pardoned for premising that the collection of pseudo-Isidore became first known in Gaul about the middle of the ninth century. The most recent document which has been traced is the Synod of Paris, of 829, from which extracts are made. Other researches have led Ballerini[264] and others to suppose that the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle, held in the year 836, was known to the author, since he dwells at great length on the rights of primates or apostolic vicars, which dignity was restored in France, or western Gaul, after a long interruption, in the year 844. Mention is first made of these decretals at the Synod of Chièssy,[265] in 857, so that the time of their compilation must certainly be assigned between these last-named dates of 845 and 847. We might arrive at a more precise time by the fact that a collection of _Capitularies_,[266] made by Benedict, _levita_ or deacon of Mainz, between the years 840 and 847, contains entire passages _identical_ with those in the pseudo-Isidorian code. The only explanation of this similarity is either to be sought in the fact that both collections come from the same author, or that the Capitularies of Benedict have copied from the Isidorian code; and in that issue, the latter must have been compiled before the year 847.[267] The correspondence between Pope Nicolas I. and Hincmar of Rheims attracted general attention to the pseudo-Isidorian collection, and in this way Pope Nicolas I. was first apprised of their existence, as is evident from his letter to the bishops of Gaul,[268] where he upholds the authority of the papal decretals in general, independently of their insertion in any collection. The pope mentions the sources from which the Roman Church took its ecclesiastical discipline, alluding to the codex of Dionysius. The objection usually brought forward, that the pope says that these decretals were preserved in the _archives of the Roman Church_, does not refer to the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, since there is only question of the authority to be attributed to those documents in general.[269] Hincmar, who had previously appealed to the pseudo-Isidorian collection, later rejected the authority of those decretals which seemed to condemn his own views and position in the affair with Hincmar, Bishop of Laon.[270] To leave no doubt on this head in the mind of the reader, we submit the very words of Nicolas I.:

"We do not unreasonably complain," (addressing the bishops of Gaul,) "that you have set aside the decrees of several bishops of the apostolic see in this matter. Far be it from us of not receiving with due honor either the decretals or other enactments concerning ecclesiastical discipline, all of which the holy Roman Church has preserved and given over to our care, retaining them previously in her archives and in ancient and genuine monuments."[271]

A few lines further the same pope exhibits the inconsistency of Hincmar and other bishops, when acknowledging only such decretals as favor their own position, and rejecting others merely because they were not found in the code known to themselves. The principle, as though the authority of a decree of the popes or a synod was not to be recognized unless it has been received into some code, is combated and the whole issue comes to this, whether such decrees are authentic and genuine. In fine, the pope in this epistle combines an extraordinary knowledge of the ancient canons with great force of logic and historical accuracy. Our conclusion is that Pope Nicolas I. has never appealed to the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, though he frequently had occasion to do so. This is admitted by the reformed preacher Blondel,[272] and by Blasco,[273] and, among other modern historians, by Dr. Döllinger, who remarks that Pope Nicolas I. "makes no use of the Isidorian collection, adduces none of its decretals, and it may be even doubted whether he had seen the work."[274] During the eleventh century only, the popes begin to quote from pseudo-Isidore. Here, then, we have given another specimen of the "historical fairness" and "canonical erudition" of _Janus_ and associates; and if our authors imagined that it was enough to _impose_ on their readers by the mass of "original authorities," they have indeed succeeded to some extent, and we have but one restriction to make, that is, that they cannot be saved from the charge of _deliberate falsification_. For, singularly enough, and much to the credit of the historical erudition of _Janus_, let it be remarked that there is always something in the authorities quoted bearing on the point under discussion. Who is there who does not see that _Janus_ stamps himself as a falsifier of history, whenever he mutilates and distorts the contents of authorities quoted by him? In conclusion, we wish to allude to one more insidious passage of our authors, when they say,

"The spurious character of the Isidorian decretals had been exposed by the Magdeburg Centuriators, and no one with any knowledge of Christian antiquity could retain a doubt of their being a later fabrication." (P. 319.)

Alas! Nothing easier than to claim this merit for such _candid_ and _impartial_ historians as the avowed champions of Lutheranism! Besides the doubts entertained by Hincmar and other bishops in the ninth century, a writer of the twelfth century, Peter Comestor,[275] called the genuineness of this collection in question. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the learned Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus[276] and such an eminent divine as John de Turrecremata[277] proved the fictitious character of the most ancient papal decretals contained in pseudo-Isidore; they were followed in these investigations by other eminent scholars, both in Germany and France, _before_ the dawn of the sixteenth century, and hence no trophies on this field could have been won by the _historians_ of Magdeburg!

If, notwithstanding all these elucidations, a certain Jesuit, Turrianus, wrote in defence of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, we do not see how from this fact _Janus_ concludes that the "Jesuit order were resolved to defend them." (P. 319.) Did not the illustrious Jesuit Bellarmine acknowledge the fictitious character of pseudo-Isidore? And yet our authors thus boldly continue as follows:

"Bellarmine acknowledged that without the forgeries of the pseudo-Isidore, ... it would be impossible to make out even a semblance of traditional evidence." (P. 319.)

We are sorry to say that we have not been able to discover any such admission on the part of Cardinal Bellarmine; but on the contrary, when answering the objection of the Centuriators concerning the fictitious letters of the first thirty popes to Melchiades, we find the following clear view on this subject:

"Although I do not deny that some errors have slipped into these letters, nor do I dare to claim for them undoubted authority, yet I doubt not but that they are of very ancient origin."[278]

It was not precisely on the faith of the Isidorian collection or its compiler that Bellarmine used any of these documents; but he endeavored to demonstrate their authenticity according to the rules laid down by historical criticism. It is simply false that he made "copious use of the Isidorian fictions." None deserve greater credit for the clear and elaborate elucidation of this great question of pseudo-Isidore than the brothers Ballerini, who have supplied an immense material whence the eminent canonists and historians of our days have been enabled to weigh every thing carefully, and the result has been a glorious one to _Catholic_ learning and science. The attempts which have been made for three hundred years, and more, to create a fictitious foundation for the present constitution of the Catholic Church, and to brand it with the specious appellation of _forgery_--these inglorious attempts, we say, have in our days been renewed by _Janus_ and his deluded admirers. If _Janus_ hoped to strengthen his position by a novel method, we dare assert his signal failure--indeed, our enemies have secured a poor and feeble leader. Should the present contribution produce further curiosity, and lead to more extended and serious researches on this subject, we are confident enough to express the hope that many unfounded prejudices will be thereby dispelled, and the triumph of _ancient_ and _present_ Catholic doctrine be hastened.[279]

FOOTNOTES:

[209] P. 69.

[210] Thomassin, Vet. et Nov. Eccl. Disc. l. i. capp. vii. xlv.

[211] See Canon vi. Council of Nice in 325, which recognizes the patriarchal rights of Antioch and Alexandria, in the east, introduced by ancient custom. (τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη.)

[212] Schelestrate, Eccl. Afric. sub prim. Carthag. Thomass. l. c. c. xx. n. 8.

[213] Constant. Ep. Rom. Pontif. Inn. I. ep. 13. Bonif. I. ep. 4. Coelest. I. ep. 3. Sixt. III. ep. 10.

[214] "Vices enim nostras ita tuæ credidimus caritati, ut in partem sis vocatus sollicitudinis, non in plenitudinem potestatis." Ep. 14. ad Anast. Thessal. edit. Ball. tom. i.

[215] The name of _patriarch_ is first mentioned in the Council of Chalcedon, Act 3, where Pope St. Leo is thus addressed: "Sanctissimo et universali Archiepiscopo et _Patriarchæ_ magnæ Romæ." (Labbe, Col. tom. iv.)

[216] Leo M. ep. 14, cap. 11.

[217] "Quum omnium par esset electio, uni tamen datum est, ut cæteris præemineret."

[218] Mansi, xv. col. 202.

[219] Cf. canon ix. of the same council.

[220] That is, in the East. Pithœus, Codex Canon. Vetus, p. 102, (edit. Paris.)

[221] Mansi. l. c. p. 688.

[222] Thomassin, Ballerini, Devoti, Walter, Philipps, Schulte, Döllinger, Blondel, Luden, Schönemann, the last three Protestants, all of whom, says _Janus_, betray a very imperfect "knowledge of the decretals." (P. 78.)

[223] Launoy, Arnould, Febronius, Baluze, De Marca.

[224] Held A.D. 447.

[225] Epist. 47.

[226] See Epist. 45, ad Antonian.

[227] Döllinger, Church Histor. vol. i. pp. 260, 261, 262.

[228] Named after the ambitious Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, an ardent follower of _Arius_.

[229] P. 66.

[230] Apud Constant. Epist. Rom. Pontif. Epist. 37, ad Felic. col. 910.

[231] Epist. I. ad Episc. Gall. col. 938.

[232] Epist. ad Episc. Illyr. col. 1038.

[233] Epist. ad Episc. Vienn. Prov. (Baller Opp. tom. i. col. 634.)

[234] Epist. ad Episc. Dardan. (Hardouin Concil. tom. ii. col. 909.)

[235] Epist. ad Euseb. col. 385, ap. Const.

[236] Döllinger, _Hist. of the Church_, vol. ii. pp. 103, 109.

[237] The code of Dionysius presented by R. Hadrian to Charlemagne, known hence in Gaul as the Codex Hadrianeus.

[238] Biblioth. Jur. Canon. tom. i. p. 97-180. Fr. Pithœus, Codex Canon. Eccl. Rom. Vet. pp. 119, 120, can. iii. vii. (edit. Paris.)

[239] Biblioth. Jur. Canon. tom. ii. pp. 499, 603.

[240] Döllinger, _Hist. of the Church_, vol. ii. p. 229, gives several remarkable instances of such exceptions.

[241] Concil. Rom. ad Gratian. Imperat. cap. 11.

[242] Mansi, tom. viii. p. 247.

[243] Libell, Apologet. Ennod. apud Mansi, tom. vii. p. 271.

[244] Epist. ad Senator. Urbis Rom. ann. 502. Mansi, viii. col. 293.

[245] "In qua (Eccl. Rom.) ab his qui sunt undique conservata est ea, quæ est ab apostolis traditio." Adv. Hær. l. iii. c. 3.

[246] Hist. vol. i. p. 257. If "potentior principalitas" signified only _greater antiquity_, how could the church of Rome claim preëminence above the churches of Antioch and Ephesus?

[247] "Hanc Ecclesiæ unitatem qui non tenet, _tenere se fidem credit_?" De Unit. Eccl. p. 349. (Edit. Wir.)

St. August, in his 43d epist., says of the church of Rome, "Semper viguit apostolicæ cathedræ principatus."

[248] Epist. cxvii. ad Renat. Presbyt. Rom.

[249] The very words of pseudo-Isidore on the purity of the "faith of Rome" are literally transcribed from the epistle of Pope Agatho to the Emperor Constantine in the year 680. (Mansi, tom. xi. col. 239.)

[250] De Antiquis Collect, pars iii. capp. iv. Gallandi, Sylloge. tom. i. p. 528 sqq.

[251] About 1809, under Napoleon.

[252] _Notices et Extraits des Manuscr. de la Biblioth. Nation._ tom. vi. p. 265 sqq.

[253] Died 313.

[254] Which was already known from its being inserted in former collections.

[255] Known in the fifth century. (Quesnel's edit.)

[256] Blondel. Prolegom. cap. 12. Blascus, De Collect. Canon. Isid. Mercat. cap. ii. Gallandi, tom. ii. p. 100.

[257] Muratori's edit. tom. iii. pars i. Rer. _Italic._ Script.

[258] Rufinus translated nine books of Eusebius, to which he added two more.

[259] Edit. Ven. 2 vol.

[260] Blondel, Proleg. cap. 18.

[261] See Alzog's Hist. vol. i. § 186.

[262] Philipps, Compend. of Canon Law, vol. i. p. 52.

[263] The italics are our own.

[264] Ball. Part. iii. cap. 6. n. 13. Galland, t. i. p. 540.

[265] Mansi. tom. xv. col. 127.

[266] Laws of the empire of Charlemagne, divided into _Capitula_ or chapters.

[267] Baller. de Canon. Collect. p. iii. cap. cit.

[268] Epist. 42. ad Univ. Episc. Gall. in the year 865. (Mansi, xv. col. 695.)

[269] Mansi, xv. col. 693, et sqq.

[270] Epist. ad Hinc. Laudun. tom. ii. (edit. Sirmondi,) Paris.

[271] "Sancta Romana Ecclesia conservans, nobis quoque custodienda mandavit, et penesse in suis archivis, et vetustis rite monumentis recondita veneratur." (l. c. col. 694.)

[272] Prolegom. cap. 19.

[273] De Collect. Isid. cap. 4.

[274] Ch. Hist. vol. iii. p. 202.

[275] Blasc. De Collect. Canon. Isidor. (Galland Syllog. tom. ii. c. v. p. 30.)

[276] De Concordia Cath. lib. iii. cap. 2.

[277] Summa Eccl. lib. ii. cap. 101.

[278] De Rom. Pontif. lib. ii. cap. xiv.

[279] The English translation of Dr. Hergenröther's complete and masterly refutation of _Janus_, which we reviewed some time since in the original German, is announced in the English papers as nearly ready, and will be for sale at the office of this magazine as soon as it is issued.--ED. CATHOLIC WORLD.

THE SUPERSTITION OF UNBELIEF.

When an age has abandoned God, sensuality delivers it over, like Faust, to the devil, and he becomes its deity. Unbelief is everywhere followed by superstition. Where the gods are not, the demons reign, says a modern German poet. "We are ready to believe every thing when we believe nothing," remarks Chateaubriand. "We have augurs when we have no longer prophets; witchcraft when we have no longer religious ceremonies. When the temples of God are closed, the caves of the sorcerers are opened."

It is certainly a monstrous pairing when, with boasted enlightenment, fortune-telling, card-divining, and the other superstitions of darkness go hand in hand. But it is nevertheless an old and well-known fact-one constantly demonstrated by human experience--that unbelief is invariably associated with the grossest superstition. A rapid glance at the history of peoples in all other essentials most widely differing from each other will readily prove this.

Beginning with the Hindoos, the oldest people on the earth, we find that A. W. Schlegel has already effectually refuted the theories of modern writers on religion by demonstrating to us a steady retrogression from the spiritual to the sensual, from belief to unbelief and superstition. Dubois, who had spent thirty years among the Brahmins, and studied their philosophy, traces the degrading superstition into which the Hindoos have lapsed to their having lost faith in the religion of their ancestors. Once their schools taught the maxim, Before earth, water, air, wind, fire, Brahma, Vishnu, Chieva, sun, and stars, there was the only and eternal God, who had sprung out of himself. These pure ideas of religion have long been abandoned for an atheistic materialism. A superstitious demonology, spirit-raising, sorcery, and magic have grown out of this unbelief, and the same people now adore Kapel, the serpent, and Gamda, the bird. They observe annually a feast in honor of Darhba, an ordinary weed, and offer up sacrifices to spade and pick. To kill a cow is by them considered a crime more heinous than matricide, and their philosophers esteem it a great piece of good luck, a sure passport to paradise, if they can catch hold of a cow by the tail instead of the head, when dying. "Modern materialism," observes Dr. Hæffner, comparing the unbelief of the Hindoos with our own, "has closely approached the abyss of Buddhism." Manifestations like Mormonism, or the spiritualism of New York, Paris, and Berlin, already suggest to us the religious and moral practices of the Hindoos, and we bid fair soon to reach their lowest and vilest forms--the Lamaism of Thibet and Ceylon. As in the opening of the present century, admiration of genius led men to adore the poetical genius of Schiller and Goethe, so, changing their idols, they will eventually worship those who have deified matter. The Buddhas of modern atheism can only be the materialistic notabilities of the day; and for this reason a humorous writer recommends Carl Vogt for Delai-Lama, he being not only a high scientific but a great political authority.

Passing from the east to the west, we find, and especially in Roman history, that the increase of superstition has steadily kept pace with the diminution of faith. The religious decadence of ancient Rome dates from the close of the Punic wars and the domestic commotions of the republic, at which period we first notice that strange hankering after what is obscure and mysterious in paganism, and which attained its zenith under the Cæsars. This remark applies, however, more to the cities than the country; for, from the days of Augustus down to those of the Antonines, the latter had not yet been so generally corrupted as the former. Sulla, the dictator--to cite a few examples--put the utmost confidence in a small image of Apollo, brought from Delphi, which he carried about on his person, and which he embraced publicly before his troops with a prayer for victory. Augustus, who allowed himself to be worshipped as a god in the provinces, regarded it as an evil omen to be handed the left shoe instead of the right when he rose in the morning. He neither set out on a journey after the Nundines nor undertook any thing of importance during the Nones. When one of his fleets had been lost at sea, he punished Neptune by excluding his image from being carried in procession at the Circensian games.

After the doctrine of Polybius, that religion is nothing more than a tissue of lies and traditions, began to prevail at Rome, the phenomena which usually attend the decadence of a people became plainly apparent. Those who are familiar with the epidemic capers of the fanatics of that age, who jerked their heads and distorted their limbs while pretending to utter the will of the gods, will be reminded of that moral and religious degradation which has produced the same effects in all countries and times--effects distinctly visible among all Christian peoples into whose life the ancient heathenism still enters, or where false civilization once more tends to barbarism. The story of Alexander of Obonoteichos shows the extremes to which superstition may lead men. This audacious impostor buried in the temple of Apollo, at Chalcedon, but so that they could be easily found, a set of bronze tablets, promising that Esculapius and his father Apollo would shortly come to Obonoteichos. He also secreted an egg containing a small snake, and mounted the next day the altar in the market-place to proclaim as one inspired that Esculapius was about to appear. He produced the egg, broke its shell, and the people rejoiced over the god who had assumed the form of a serpent. The news of this miracle attracted immense crowds. A few days later, Alexander announced that the serpent-god had already reached maturity, and he exhibited himself to the public in a partially darkened room, dressed as a prophet, with a large tame serpent--secretly imported from Macedonia--so twisted around his waist that its head was out of sight, and its place supplied by a human head of paper, whence protruded a black tongue. This new serpent-god, Glykon, the youngest Epiphany of Esculapius, received the honors of temple and oracle service. Alexander became a highly respected prophet; Rutelia, a noble Roman, married his daughter, and the prefect Severian asked him for an oracle on taking the field against the king of the Parthians.

If we wish to see how the same impostures are reënacted in our own times, we need only read the accounts of certain evening amusements at the Tuileries. There sat one night the Emperor Napoleon III., the Empress Eugenie, the Duke de Montebello, and Home, the medium. On a table before them were paper, pens, and ink. Then appeared a spirit-hand, which picked up a pen, dipped it into the ink, and wrote the name of Napoleon I. in Napoleon's handwriting. The emperor prayed to be permitted to kiss the spirit-hand, which advanced to his lips, and then to those of Eugenie. This _séance_, and one of a similar kind at the Palais Royal, where the Red Prince, known for his hatred of the church, devoutly watched the ball which Home caused to move over a table, remind us involuntarily of the Jesus-contemning apostate Emperor Julian, as he followed Maximus, the Neo-Platonist, into a subterranean vault for the purpose of seeing Hecate, and looking credulously on when the former secretly set fire to a figure of Hecate, painted in combustible materials on the wall, and at the same time let fly a falcon with burning tow tied to his feet. Fuller information on this subject the curious may glean from the stories published in the French journals, of hands growing out of table-tops and sofa-cushions, which furnish the Paris _élite_ with the only luxury of terror it seems still capable of enjoying; or they may consult the numerous patrons of the fashionable clairvoyants and physiognomists, the Mesdames Villeneuve, of the Rue St. Denis, as well as the successors of Lenormand, the famous coffee-grounds seer, toward whom Napoleon I. felt himself irresistibly attracted, (though he sent the luckless Cassandra occasionally to prison,) and whom the Empress Josephine held in high esteem.

The eighteenth century furnishes some striking illustrations of our theory. An epidemic tendency to unbelief, like that which characterizes this century, is without precedent since the dawn of Christianity. Its fruits recall the worst abuses of the Manichæans and the Albigenses. We do not here allude to the thousands of innocent superstitions, which Grimm says are a sort of religion for minor domestic purposes, and may be met with in all ages, but to those more glaring ones which show how inseparable are an arrogant unbelief and the grossest superstition. Hobbes, who labored already in the seventeenth century to undermine the Christian religion, was so afraid of ghosts that he would not pass the night without candles. D'Alembert, the chief of the Encyclopædists, used to leave the table when thirteen sat down to it. The Marquis D'Argens was frightened out of his wits at the upsetting of a salt-cellar. Frederick II. had faith in astrology. At the court of his successor, General Bishopswerder imposed on the king by magic tricks, and his accomplice, Wöllner, who raised spirits by the agency of optic mirrors, became minister. The custodian of the National Library at Paris related to Count Portalis that some time previous to the great revolution books on fortune-telling and the black arts were in general demand. Oerstedt speaks of a man who paraded his atheism with great insolence, but whom nothing could have tempted to pass through a graveyard after dark. Napoleon I. dispatched, in 1812, a special messenger to Beyreuth, with instructions not to be lodged in the apartments which the "white woman" of the Hohenzollerns was reputed to haunt. In the same way we see by the side of this league of unbelieving philosophers spring up such superstitious sects as the Butlerians, whose head, Margaret Butler, with Justus Winter for God the Father, and George Oppenzoller for God the Son, represented herself to be the Holy Ghost.

The alleged miraculous cures on the grave of Paris, the Jansenist deacon, in the first, and the exorcisms of the devil by Gassner, in the second half of the eighteenth century, form another instructive chapter in the history of superstition. While the Archbishop of Vontimiglii, the Bishop of Sens, and other distinguished prelates, denounced the cures performed with the earth from the grave of Paris as a cheat, Montegon, the atheist, wrote three volumes to prove their authenticity. While the Archbishop of Prague and the papal chair, by a decree of the Congregation of Rites issued in October, 1777, condemned the miraculous pretensions of Gassner, Walter, Leitner, and other deistic physicians, upheld them. While the mountebank Cagliostro, who pretended to have learnt in Egypt the secret of generating magical powers from reflecting surfaces, was called to account at Rome, the Free-Masons of Holland made him visitator, and _fêted_ him in their lodges. The unbelief of the eighteenth century reached at last its culminating point during the French revolution in the abolishment of the Supreme Being, though the rites of Mlle. Aubry or Mme. Momoro were as silly as the worship of the cotton plucked from Voltaire's _robe de chambre_. The names in the philosophical calendar remind us strongly of the Hindoo worship of the spade and pick, and who knows but some super-enlightened atheist may be prepared to subscribe to the Brahminic dogma about the ox, an animal which has already played a prominent _rôle_ at a red-republican festival? Burke's prediction has been fulfilled, "If we discard Christianity, a coarse, ruinous, degrading superstition will replace it."

This war against faith and every thing spiritual has continued into the nineteenth century, until once more gross materialism is found on every side. Already, during the fourth decade, the darkest superstition threatened to overwhelm the so-called intelligent world with the manifestations of magnetism. The campaign against the supernatural opened with the trial of the devil. As the Strasbourg _Catholic_ satirically observed, the very day and hour had been fixed when it was required that he should establish his own existence by tangible proof. Disregarding the summons, the scamp was promptly declared _in contumaciam_ outlawed and cashiered along with the entire host of unclean spirits. The same summary mode of treatment was pursued with the opposite side, and the same judgment was passed on the angels, cherubim, and seraphim. All were pronounced to be equally tasteless, scentless, inaudible, and imponderable, and declared to be mere creatures of the imagination. Their Lord and Master was next put on trial; at first very considerately with closed doors and in a secret inquisitorial manner. The results of the trial were put on record, and for a while imparted only to the initiated, who gradually divulged the news to the masses. At last the spirituality of our own soul was arraigned, and its activity explained as the result of a mere change of matter. The Beelzebub of ancient superstition was thus exorcised and expelled; but he soon returned to the house which the besom of criticism had cleaned, and brought back with him seven other evil spirits, so that nothing was gained by the proceeding. The age, having cut loose from the invisible, naturally plunged into a most abject dependence on the visible. As the negro races kneel before their fetiches, trees and serpents, so this century kneels before sleeping somnambulists, dancing and writing tables, and mixtures and nostrums from the apothecary shop.

Should civilization much longer continue on the present road, the most deplorable consequences must follow. As in all former times, so in this age unbelief has led where it always will lead--to superstition. Man, created for immortality, needs the wonderful, a future, and hope. When such a sceptical enlightenment as distinguishes modern philosophy has sapped the foundations of religion, its absence leaves in his thoughts and feelings an immeasurable void which invites the most dangerous phantoms of the brain. The moment man boldly declares, "I no longer believe in any thing," he is preparing to believe in all things. It is high time that so-called philosophy should again draw near to that religion which it has misunderstood, and which alone is capable of giving to the emotions of the heart a generous impulse and a safe direction.

REFORMATORIES FOR BOYS.--METTRAY.

It needs but a slight glance at the condition of things around us to discover, as a consequence of the criminal and most deplorable neglect of the moral education of a large proportion of our children, that if they be not already on the broad road to ruin, they give, at least, little hope of becoming useful members of society. This remark is intended chiefly, but not exclusively, for boys, whose constantly increasing lawlessness, connected with the steady growth of crime among us, cannot fail to awaken the most serious apprehensions in the mind of every attentive observer of passing events, while nothing adequate to the emergency is offered to check this growing evil; yet on the children of the present generation are based our hopes for the future of our country. Every one knows with what facility these young, fresh minds may be guided toward what is truly good; for, though the tendency of our human nature to the descending scale in morals as well as in physics is sufficiently evident, the one may be counteracted with almost as much certainty as the other, if judicious measures be early taken to give them a right direction. The writer has had much experience in the domestic training of boys, and yields the heartiest adhesion to the precept, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." This training, however, is not by means of pampering animal appetites or self-will, but by inculcation of strict though gentle laws of obedience and self-denial. These habits once acquired, a solid basis is laid for good principles and conduct, and these can, I venture to say, _always_ be fairly established within the first ten years of life, which have been justly pronounced the most important period of human existence, for they contain the germ from which the future character is formed. A profound thinker remarks, that "in the education of the family is concentrated the strength of the nation;" an observation which may well be applied to these United States, where the moral character of every individual, through our system of universal suffrage, assumes a certain weight, and thus, to a greater or less extent, influences the best interests of the whole country. We may here be permitted, in view of the immense importance of this education of early childhood, to suggest a hint of a strange inconsistency which is scarcely ever noticed in the systems of education adopted to prepare the fathers and mothers of our posterity for their respective callings. Everywhere, even where _moral_ influences are neglected, means are provided for the preparation of boys for their career in life; yet, notwithstanding the multitudinous volumes of philanthropy expended upon "woman's sphere," "her rights," etc., etc., we have scarcely heard of a single well-directed effort, beyond the _chances_ of the domestic circle, to educate young women in the supreme, the inexpressibly momentous knowledge of the vocation that must surely be the lot of nearly every one of them. They are destined to be mothers--to train up tender minds for time and for eternity! To them is confided the most precious of our earthly treasures; for what is untold gold but dust in comparison with the well-being of our children? Why are they not imbued with the most profound respect for the dignity of motherhood, as well as instructed conscientiously in its practical duties and responsibilities?

When the mother's work is ill done, or, as is but too often the case, totally neglected, of what avail are the labors of the professor, but to make a bad man intellectually strong and more capable for the accomplishment of his evil designs? Who can predict the safety of the noblest structure if superimposed on a false or insecure foundation? Knowledge is a power equally available for good or evil purposes, according to the direction given by the moral force that applies it. May the Almighty disposer of events teach us even at this late day to learn wisdom from the experience of the past. If, for example, a single volume were prepared and placed among the closing studies of the course in girls' schools, embracing instructions in the duties of woman--as mistress of the family, as the wife, the mother, whose highest faculties are requisite in the early training of children--and if the whole were placed in so attractive a garb as to win their love and admiration for these womanly duties and perfections, might we not hope that many young and guileless minds would be gained from the mazes of folly ever ready to obscure their true instincts and affections? Craving pardon for this digression, we proceed to the primary object of this article.

A VISIT TO THE AGRICULTURAL AND REFORMATORY COLONY OF METTRAY, NEAR THE CITY OF TOURS, FRANCE.

This admirable institution, which has received the highest stamp of public approbation in the form of more than eighty kindred institutions that have adopted its rules and practice as their models, in France, Belgium, and other countries, was founded about thirty years since, by the venerable M. Demetz, at that time a distinguished magistrate, in union with a saintly man[280] whose honored remains repose in the neighboring cemetery. M. Demetz still lives to bless and guide this noble monument of his early wisdom and beneficence.

In the midst of a beautiful and highly cultivated rural district, the pretty village of Mettray is built in the form of a spacious hollow square, and consists of some twenty or thirty detached cottages of brick, symmetrically placed on two opposite sides of the quadrangle, each having pendent roofs to protect the walls. A circular basin of running water occupies the centre, and the open space is planted with fine shade-trees. Between each of the cottages there is a gallery about thirty feet wide, and roofed to protect from rain the plays of the inmates of the adjoining cottages. All are white and of two stories, chiefly covered with climbing vines and flowers.

The entrance is on the side opposite the fine church, which, with the school-house and grounds, fills that portion of the spacious quadrangle. On entering, between two houses of larger dimensions, (one being appropriated to the use of the director, the other to the normal school, in which the future teachers of Mettray are trained in their work,) the visitor is a little startled at the view of a large ship with all its spars and rigging, moored in the solid earth. This is intended for the instruction of boys who manifest a taste for the sea. The view of the whole is most pleasing. Every cottage bears an inscription on its front, which on inspection makes known the interesting fact that each building is the donation of the individual lady or gentleman whose name is inscribed thereon, or of some benevolent association. Thus the expenses of building, usually so great as in many instances to render such a foundation hopeless, are here readily and piously assumed by various benefactors. The manifest advantages of these separate buildings, each adapted for the occupation of some thirty to thirty-five boys, will appear in the sequel. In the architecture,[281] all is of the simplest kind; for it is thought best not to awaken luxurious tastes or habits among a class destined to earn their living by the sweat of their brow. The boys are not crowded together in large masses, but enjoy a free and open circulation of air, conducive to health and energy; and the inmates of each cottage are under the permanent government of a director and sub-director, who are regarded as the fathers of the household, and live with them, eating, sleeping, etc., in the same house, and to whom the boys become devotedly attached, and they thus enjoy, so far as it is possible, the blessing of the family relations. Sisters also are there, in their separate apartments adjacent to the church, prepared to nurse the sick in the infirmary, and to give their invaluable influences and aid, especially to the little ones, on every proper occasion.

The village is adapted to receive seven hundred boys,[282] from seven or eight years of age and upward. The "colony," as it is termed, is chiefly agricultural, but many of the children, from various causes, being better adapted to indoor employments, are applied to trades, and in winter, when the farm work is interrupted, all the boys are employed in the shops, to acquire the art of manufacturing their own tools. In these shops, where, as we have said, the boys are permanently associated in separate families, they are taught to be tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, agricultural instrument manufacturers--in short, any or every trade that may be made useful or profitable.

In the rear of the village are the farm buildings, the stables, cow-houses, etc. etc., with the gymnasium and a small pond of running water for bathing and swimming. Further on is the cemetery, with its alleys of cypress and well-kept gardens, (for gardening is a prominent branch of industry here;) and we may well imagine that nothing is neglected to beautify the surroundings of the honored tomb of their first benefactor, and of the lowly graves of the departed who were once their companions. Flowers--beautiful flowers--are strewed everywhere, and with their fragrance seem to hallow the sacred place.

Neither walls nor ditches nor any means of restraint or confinement are resorted to for the compulsory seclusion of these seven hundred juvenile culprits, who have all been adjudged as fit subjects for this penitentiary; yet escape is so rare as to be almost unknown. As we entered the square, the boys, ranging from seven or eight to twenty years of age, were enjoying their midday recreations--leaping, playing, laughing, or shouting at their pleasure. Within a few minutes, at the sound of a clarionet, their sports suddenly ceased, and a moment later, at a second call, they separated, each to join his "family" at its allotted ground, to prepare to march; and then a lively quick-step was heard. This was the signal of the band, composed of their comrades most expert in music, who had meantime taken their post near the centre of the square, at which the various groups, joined by their two directors, filed off cheerily, each to its home. The musicians then laid aside their instruments and hastened after their companions. They partake of their frugal but wholesome and cheerful meals in the second story of their respective cottages, accompanied by their directors, and in the evening, when the last repast is ended, the tables are expertly suspended against the walls, and a single row of hammocks, which were laid aside after the same fashion before breakfast, are again placed in order for the night. The rooms are perfectly well ventilated, and there is a great gain in economy from this double arrangement. After each meal there is recreation, and the hour being past, music again recalls each family to the square, from which, to the sound of lively airs, they move off in high spirits to their various employments. Here goes a class of farmers, there are the gardeners, and further on, the carters, etc. etc., all on their way to the farm, while the lesser numbers of shoemakers, tailors, and others turn their steps in the direction of their various shops, and a goodly class wind their way to the school. Thus the children are accustomed to repair to their allotted labor as if on a holiday. Music salutes their departure, and its notes leave a joyous impression on the mind. The lower floors of the cottages are all occupied as workshops.

From this brief sketch may be inferred the regularity that prevails in the colony. Every thing is done to habituate the boys to a willing and cheerful performance of their duty. No harshness is permitted that might again chill these young hearts, that have once been abandoned to vice before they were capable of discrimination. The system of rewards is quite original, and serves its purpose admirably. For grave offences confinement in a cell is the only punishment found necessary. Lying is regarded as the worst of faults.

Within the narrow limits prescribed for this article it would be impossible to give any adequate account of an institution which, wherever it is known, is recognized as being equalled only by such others as most closely obey its spirit and maxims. Its founders have aimed, so far as possible, to restore and cultivate the family affections, prematurely shattered through vicious examples, by dividing, as we have seen, into groups this large mass of youthful humanity, and forming them into families under regulations tending to establish a sincere and lasting attachment among its members. In their respective cottages they live and work together, in the interchange of mutual kindness and regard, and are inspired with the idea that each, in a certain sense, is responsible for the good conduct, the respectability, the happiness, of his brothers. The ever-ready sympathy and motherly counsels of the sisters must not be forgotten. The directors at Mettray are, thus far, laymen; but in many other like institutions it has been found impossible to dispense with the aid of religious orders. In this country we should be obliged to have recourse to them for want of laymen possessed of the needful qualifications; for they must give their entire lives to the work.

The success achieved by this institution during its thirty years' existence in the entire reformation of the youths subjected to its wise and wholesome discipline, is unexampled. The statistical tables of France, unsurpassed in exactness, inform us that an average of 96.81% of the youth brought up at Mettray are restored to society, thoroughly reformed, and continue to fulfil their parts in life as useful citizens. They are usually detained in the colony to the age of twenty-one, when suitable situations having been provided, according to the trade of each, they are allowed to depart. Still, a sort of guardianship is maintained for years over those within reach; and the young men who find employment among the neighboring farmers are expected to pass the Sundays at their old home; a privilege which they relish in the highest degree. Nearly half their number engage in agricultural work. Others enter the army or navy, in both of which several have attained honorable distinction. Many are married, and present good examples in domestic life. An honorary association has been formed, which affords additional incentives to good conduct after leaving Mettray. Two years of an irreproachable life entitles each who merits it to a diploma; and this secures him a membership.

It is really difficult to do justice to this admirable institution without being suspected of exaggeration. To understand the wonder-working power of the wisdom that pervades it, that transforms the juvenile criminal into a sober-minded, industrious, and devout man, it must be seen and closely scrutinized. Christian education has taken the place of the penal code, and the boy is "trained in the way he should go," on the firm basis of religious principles of faith and practice. The general expression beaming on every countenance, of cheerful confidence, even of the gentle and affectionate temper that prevails, affords an affecting contrast to that of the newly-arrived boy, fresh from the haunts of vice. His pale and haggard looks betray evil propensities, as well as wasted health. His little heart is already filled with hatred, restrained only by the fear that he betrays, either by attempts at a hypocritical humility or an impudent daring. Years pass on, and this incipient wild beast becomes benevolent, frank, and good.

* * * * *

Within a few years a kindred institution has grown up, adjoining the village, but skilfully concealed from the public gaze by thick shrubbery. This is the "Paternal Home," for the reformation of the disobedient sons of families in the higher walks of life. A close white wall, behind which trees and climbing vines appear, is pierced in the centre by an equally close door. A small bell-pull is touched, and the visitor enters a pretty court laid out with flowers and shrubs. Through this the home appears at the distance of a few paces. We enter a narrow hall, furnished with simple elegance. Doors on either side lead into small rooms, containing a bed, table, book-case, etc. Engravings representing some generous or noble action adorn the walls. As the youth becomes more docile and studious, a singing bird in a cage is given him for a companion; and, finally, he is permitted to occupy two rooms. During all this period, the boy is made to understand that he is the object of the tenderest affection of his family, who inflict the greatest pain upon their own feelings in subjecting him to this temporary punishment, which is solely for his own good. Professors attend him, and continue, without interruption, the collegiate course which has been interrupted, and he has the daily benefit of fresh air on foot, or on horseback, attended by a professor.

It must be understood that this sojourn at the Paternal Home is unknown to all but the family. M. Demetz alone is made acquainted with his name.[283] To others who approach him, he is simply Mr. A----, B----, or C----. Gradually this isolation produces its effects--and the intractable spirit in this seclusion begins to meditate, to reflect, to examine himself--to condemn his former vices, and to love the studies that alleviate the weariness of solitude. Two or three months usually suffice to effect this favorable change. He finds relief in occupation, and as he carries on the course of the classes he has left, he begins to take an interest in competition. Let it not be imagined that this seclusion, though severe, is allowed to affect the health of the recluse. This would be entirely to misunderstand the parental foresight of the founder. The boys take long walks in the country, each in turn, as we have said, accompanied by a professor. They visit the neighboring farms, and sometimes enter a cottage on a visit of charity; practise gymnastics, or take lessons in fencing and when their conduct is unexceptionable, they are invited to dine with M. Demetz. If, after returning home, they are tempted to relapse into bad habits, they are sent back again, but to a more austere _régime_. Such is the effect produced by this system, at once tender and severe, that very often his former pupils request of M. Demetz the privilege of again passing a few days of calmness in peaceful retreat, or to finish some task that demands seclusion, at the Paternal Home. To them, the retreat where they were restored to a sense of duty is really a home of the heart, and the hand that raised them up is blessed as that of the father, who spared neither severity nor tenderness for their complete restoration. What wonder that he is the object of their devoted affection? Is there no American capable of imitating such a model?

FOOTNOTES:

[280] Viscount Bretiznières de Courteilles.

[281] The church only is handsomely decorated.

[282] Insubordinate female children are confided by the government to the care of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, in their vast establishment at Angers, where they are subject to rules similar to those at Mettray, and with at least an equal success.

[283] The chapel is so constructed that, though each individual is in full view of the altar and the priests, not one of the recluses can have even a glimpse of another. Two brothers once passed some time in this house, and neither was aware of the proximity of the other.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.

NUMBER SEVEN.

The preamble and first four chapters of the dogmatic constitution _de Fide Catholica_ having been irrevocably disposed of in the public session held on Low-Sunday, are now before your readers and the world.

The withdrawal of the veil of secrecy from this portion of the _schema_ has removed from the eyes of many, the scales of doubt and misgiving, blinded as they were by the repeated statements of certain newspaper correspondents; and as future decrees come to light, they will equally confound the pretensions of the false prophets, and amply reward the patient hope of the faithful.

The Vatican Council took a fresh start on the following Friday, April 29th. In the general congregation of that day, the fathers passed from faith to discipline, and began to discuss the reformed _schema_ on the _Little Catechism_.

After the mass, which was said by the Archbishop of Corfu, the council was addressed by Mgr. Wierzchleyski, Archbishop of Leopoli, in Galician Poland, who spoke in the name of the deputation on discipline, of which he is a distinguished member.

Speeches were afterward made by the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Rauscher of Vienna, and by the Bishops of Guastalla, Saluzzo, and St. Augustine, Florida.

The next morning, Saturday, the 30th, the discussion was resumed. The Archbishop of Avignon, and the Bishops of Luçon and Parma made some remarks on the general features of the _schema_. These prelates were followed by the distinguished Bishop Von Ketteler of Mayence, the Bishops of Plymouth and of Clifton in England, and the Bishop of Trèves in Germany; all of whom confined themselves to some particular points of the document. Bishop Von Ketteler, who belongs to a baronial family in Germany, before becoming a chief in the church militant, served his country with distinction as colonel in the German army. He must be at least six feet high, has quite a soldierly bearing, and is concise and to the point in his remarks. The last speaker was the Bishop of Seckau in Germany, a member of the deputation.

As the rules of the council authorize the members of the deputation to reply to the observations of the fathers at any stage of the discussion, the committee avail themselves of that privilege by making the final speech, which in ecclesiastical convocations, as well as in civil meetings, is generally the most telling one.

At the conclusion of the remarks by the Bishop of Seckau, the president declared that the debate on the _Little Catechism_ was closed, and that the vote would be taken on the following Wednesday, on all the amendments proposed.

In the congregation of Wednesday, May 4th, the Bishop of Tyre and Sidon celebrated mass in the peculiar and impressive form of the Maronite rite. The president asked the prayers of the fathers for the venerable Bishop of Evreux in France, who died in his seventieth year, and survived only two days after returning home from the council.

Permission was granted to nine foreign bishops to return to their sees. Among them were the Bishops of Arichat and Charlottetown, in British America. The regular business commenced with a second speech by the Bishop of Seckau, who reviewed all the amendments proposed in the preceding congregation. The final vote was then taken on the _Little Catechism_ as a whole. Each bishop voted _viva voce_. The term _placet_ was used by the prelates who gave unqualified approbation to it; _placet juxta modum_ by those who had some modification to propose, while assenting to its general features; and _non placet_ by those who dissented from the measure. The total number of votes given was 591.

The _Little Catechism_, which has received no small share of public attention, now "lies over" till the final seal of approbation is stamped upon it at the next public session.

The general congregations were resumed on the 13th. After the usual religious exercises, leave of absence without the obligation of returning was granted to the following prelates:

The Bishop of Gezira, Mesopotamia, Syriac rite; the Bishop of Merida, Venezuela, South America; the Bishop of Ferns, Ireland; the Bishop of Goulbourne, Australia; the Bishop of Puno, Peru; the Bishop of Santiago, Chili; the Archbishop of Marasce, Cilicia, Armenian rite; and the Bishop of Mardin, Chaldea, Armenian rite.

The oral discussion then commenced on the great and fundamental question _de Romani Pontificis Primatu et Infallibilitate_, which is comprised in a preamble and four chapters, and which forms the first part of the dogmatic constitution _de Ecclesia Christi_.

These four chapters had already passed through several manipulations before being submitted to oral discussion. First, the text had been distributed to the fathers, who in due course of time transmitted their observations upon it to the deputation _de fide_. These observations were then maturely examined by the members of the deputation, and a printed report of their views on them was sent to the residence of each bishop.

The Bishop of Poitiers, in the name of the deputation, opened the discussion with a lucid exposition and vindication of the substance and form of the text. With this lengthy and learned speech closed the congregation of the 13th.

Next day, the debate was resumed. The Venerable Constantine Patrizzi, Cardinal Vicar of Rome, and, with the exception of Cardinal Mattei, the oldest member of the Sacred College, commenced the discussion. He was followed by the Archbishop of San Francisco, United States; the Archbishop of Messina, Sicily; the Archbishop of Catania, Italy; the Bishop of Dijon, France; the Bishop of Vesprim, Hungary; the Bishop of Zamora, Spain, and the Bishop of Patti, kingdom of Naples.

On Tuesday, the 17th, Archbishop Dechamps, Primate of Belgium, addressed the fathers in the name of the deputation. Speeches were also delivered by the Bishops of St. Brieux, France; Santo Gallo, Switzerland, and of Rottenburg, Würtemberg. The president announced the death of the Bishop of Olinda, in Brazil, and recommended him to the prayers of the council.

Wednesday, the 18th. The Archbishop of Saragossa opened the discussion, representing the deputation. The other speakers in the congregation were all cardinals, namely, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, Archbishop of Prague, Bohemia; Cardinal Donnet, of Bordeaux, and Cardinal Rauscher, of Vienna.

Thursday, the 19th. Cardinal Cullen of Dublin was the first speaker, and was succeeded by the Cardinal Archbishop of Valladolid, Spain, and by the Greek-Melchite Patriarch of Antioch.

Friday, the 20th. The Primate of Hungary had the advantage of the opening speech. The venerable Dr. McHale came next. "The Lion of the fold of Juda," as he is called, looks as _hale_ as a man of forty-five, though he is a bishop since 1825. The Archbishops of Corfu and Paris occupied the pulpit during the remainder of the session.

Saturday, the 21st. Bishop Leahy, of Cashel, reviewed some of the preceding speeches as a delegate of the deputation, and was followed by the Bishops of Strasburg, Forli, and Castellamare, Italy.

Intense and unwavering interest was manifested in each of the foregoing congregations, both on account of the grave character of the subjects under deliberation, and the eminent prelates that took part in the discussion. I wish that, together with the names, I were permitted to give also the living words which fell from the lips of these learned and eloquent prelates. They would prove to you that the Christian oratory of the fourth and fifth centuries is reëchoed in the nineteenth, and that it is confined to no nation, but extends over the length and breadth of the Catholic world.

The longest speech yet pronounced in the council was delivered by the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, who spoke for an hour and forty-two minutes. Its length was the more remarkable, as Cardinal Cullen trusted to his memory, and illustrated his discourse by an abundance of facts and figures.

It is well known that all the bishops not only have the same faith, but speak the same language in council; and, with the exception of the orientals, and members of religious orders, they wear the same episcopal garb. Yet it is worthy of remark that, in spite of this uniformity in dress and language and outward mien, scarcely has a prelate opened his mouth from the pulpit when his nationality is at once discovered. He utters his _shibboleth_, which reveals him to his brethren as soon as Ephraim was betrayed to Galaad.

You will hear a bishop whisper to his neighbor, That speaker belongs to the Spanish family of nations. He hails either from the mother country or from one of her ancient colonies of South America, or Mexico, or Cuba. How does he know? He forms his judgment not merely from the little green tuft you see on the crown of the speaker's _birettum_ or cap, but chiefly from his pronunciation. He will detect the Spaniard at once by his guttural sound of _qui_, and his lisping _placet_, besides many other peculiarities of utterance.

The Spaniards and their South American and Mexican cousins, though models of episcopal gravity, have not acquired the reputation in the council of being generally the best models of elocution. Their delivery is said to be sometimes indistinct, and their pronunciation so peculiar that, like the rose in the wilderness, they waste the odor of their wisdom on the desert air. Gems of thought fall, indeed, in profusion from their lips, but they escape occasionally in the too rapid current of words.

There are several bishops of Spanish origin, however, who have distinguished themselves alike by distinctness of utterance and by a remarkable fluency. Among others, I might mention the Bishop of Guamango, in Peru, and the Bishops of Havana, and S. Concezione, in Chili.

The next speaker is evidently an Italian. You know it from the musical sentences, which flow from his lips in such a smooth and measured strain that he almost appears to be reciting a select piece of Virgilian poetry. He might seem, were not his classical style so natural to him, to be aiming at making a good impression not only on your mind and heart, but also on your ear. Whenever the letter _c_ is followed by _e_ or _i_, he gives it the soft sound of _ch_, as in our English word _cheerful_; and he is careful to soften down every word which would sound harsh or grating. Sometimes, indeed, a prelate of another country will adopt for the nonce the Roman style of pronunciation; but nobody is deceived. Jacob's voice is recognized, though he tries to clothe his words in the form of his brother's.

It is almost impossible for an Italian bishop to make a speech without a formal introduction and peroration, either because of his respect for his hearers or for the great classical masters. He may protest he will be brief, but that word has a relative meaning. But it must be admitted that, for delicacy and refinement of thought, for fecundity of ideas, and clearness of exposition, some of the Italians have seldom been surpassed.

The prelate now before you, as you can tell at once, belongs to the Teutonic family. He is an Austrian, or Prussian, or Bavarian, or perhaps a Hungarian. The German pronounces _g_ hard before _e_ or _i_, contrary to the usual practice of Latin speakers. He makes _sch_ soft before the same vowels, pronouncing, for instance, the word _schema_ as if it were spelled without a _c_. Hence the gravity of the English-speaking bishops is occasionally relaxed, on hearing _schematis_ sound as if it were written _shame it is_.

The German is more tame in delivery than either the Italian or the Spaniard. His colder climate tends to subdue his gestures, as well as to moderate his sensibility. He is not so fond of dealing in compliments as the Italian speakers, but goes at once _in medias res_. He is generally short and precise, and more inclined to appeal to your head than to your heart. At the same time, religious and logical, the sublime superstructure of his faith is built upon the solid foundation of common sense.

If a French prelate were not known by his _rabat_, he would be easily distinguished by his utterance of Latin. He has a strong tendency to shorten the infinitive in the second conjugation, and to lay a particular stress on the last syllable. There is indeed no bishop in the council who is so readily recognized by his voice as the Frenchman. Every one can say to him what the Jews said to St. Peter: "Surely thou art one of them, for thy speech doth discover thee." But, like Peter, he has no reason to be ashamed of the discovery; for his speech is not less pleasant than peculiar. He is no exception to the cultivated taste of his countrymen. He is generally well understood, because he speaks distinctly, and listened to with pleasure, because to solid learning he unites an animated and a nervous style.

For obvious reasons, a continental writer would be the fittest person to pronounce a correct judgment on the style and Latinity of the English-speaking prelates of the council.

I will venture, however, an observation. Though the style of the American, English, and Irish prelates may have less claim to merit for polish and studied classical Latinity, their discourses will certainly compare favorably with those of their episcopal brethren from other parts in strength of argument, in clearness of expression, as well as in their telling effect upon their discriminating audience.

The bishops of these countries adopt what is called the parliamentary style. They are usually concise, and always practical. They are in earnest. They look and talk like men fresh from the battle-field of the world, who have formidable enemies to contend with, and come before the council well stocked with experimental knowledge. They content themselves with a brief statement of the measure they propose, and a summary of the reasons best calculated to support it, without occupying the council with elaborate disquisitions.

The number of English, Irish, and American bishops up to the present, who have delivered oral discourses before the Vatican Council is comparatively small. It must not, however, be inferred from this that the other prelates of these nations have all remained inactive spectators, for many of them have handed in written observations on the subjects under deliberation.

The following are the English-speaking fathers who, up to the present date, (June 2d,) have addressed the council:

Archbishops Spalding, Kenrick, and Purcell, and Bishops Whelan and Verot, United States; Archbishop Connolly, Nova Scotia; Archbishop Manning, and Bishops Ullathorne, Vaughan, Clifford, and Errington, England; Cardinal Cullen, and Bishops Leahy, McEvilly, and Keane, Ireland.

None of the Scotch or Australian bishops have as yet spoken.

Three hundred years have elapsed since the close of the Council of Trent. Of the two hundred and seventy bishops who assisted at that council, only four were from the British Isles, of whom three were Irish and one English; and we think it doubtful if these three Irish bishops spoke the English language.

The Council of the Vatican has upward of one hundred and twenty English-speaking prelates, representing not only Great Britain and Ireland, but also the United States, British America, Oceanica, and the East Indies; and should the twentieth œcumenical council be called within the course of another century, judging from the past, it is not unlikely that the English tongue will then be what the Italian is to-day--the language of the majority.

Comparisons have been drawn between the Council of the Vatican and the United States Congress. Perhaps it would be easier to point out the lines of divergence than those of resemblance between these two deliberative bodies.

As to the relative ages of the members of the Council and the members of Congress, the former are decidedly in advance of the latter. I have taken the pains to refer to the _Annuario Pontificio_ for 1870, which gives the age of nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world. From this book I learn that the oldest bishop in the council is in his eighty-fifth year, while the youngest bishop, the Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina, is thirty-five. The Archbishop of Lima, who was prevented by infirmities from coming to Rome, is the dean of the entire episcopacy, being now in his ninety-sixth year. Thus we see that both extremes of age meet on the American continent; North America having the youngest, and South America the oldest representative of the episcopal hierarchy.

Of the thousand bishops now in the church, fully three fourths are between the ages of fifty-five and ninety-six. The ages of the other fourth range between thirty-five and fifty-five. Scarcely half a dozen of these prelates are more advanced in years than the Holy Father, who yet exhibits more physical endurance and mental activity than any bishop ten years his junior.

So much for a comparison as to age. Next as to the speeches in both assemblies. The bishops embrace a wider field in their discourses than our senators. They are circumscribed by no limits of country. They make laws which bind the consciences of two hundred millions of souls--Europeans, Americans, Australians, Asiatics, and Africans; while Congress legislates for scarcely one fifth that number, and these confined within a portion of a single continent. Hence, in this single aspect of the case, the great ecclesiastical synod as far excels the Federal Congress of the United States as Congress itself surpasses the New York Legislature, or this latter the city council.

The speeches of the Vatican Council are usually much shorter than those delivered in Congress. The addresses of the fathers seldom exceed half an hour,[284] except those of the members of the deputations, whose remarks generally embrace a critical analysis of the questions before the council and a review of the amendments proposed by the bishops, usually occupying about the space of an hour. The reason for this brevity is obvious. No prelate would wish to be guilty of the bad taste of occupying unnecessarily the precious time of his brother bishops. He is fully convinced, on ascending the pulpit, that every word he says will be carefully weighed in the balance by a discriminating body of judges, who are influenced only by sound logic, and not by plausible rhetoric.

Besides their brevity, perhaps I might also add that the speeches of the fathers are characterized by more personal independence, sincerity, and earnestness of tone, than those of our legislators in Washington, while it must be admitted that public opinion commonly attributes to the episcopal character a higher order of virtue. Yet, apart from this consideration, we may find a reason for this difference in the fact that our national representatives have more temptations to sin against singleness of purpose than the prelates of the council. Besides the members on the floor of the House and Senate, there are often well-filled galleries ready to hiss or to applaud, according to the prejudices of the day, and we know how human nature dreads the finger of scorn and loves the popular plaudits. There is a political party which must be sustained _per fas et nefas_, and though last, not least, there are dear constituents to be pleased.

The fathers of the council have no such temptations to withdraw them from the strict line of duty which conscience dictates. All their general congregations are so many secret sessions. There are no frowning or fawning galleries to allure or to intimidate. There is no party lash hanging over the bishops' heads; for they have no private measures to propose in behalf of their "constituents." Indeed, one of the rules of the council requires that every bill brought before it must necessarily affect the general interests of the church, and not the special wants of any particular diocese or country.

The consoling unanimity which marked the public session held on Low-Sunday, seems to have put an effectual quietus on the erratic correspondent of the London _Times_; for he no longer, like another Cassandra, utters his prophetic warnings to the council, since the fathers, on the occasion alluded to, by a single breath demolished all his previous predictions about the threatened rupture of the assemblage.

Directed, no doubt, to view every thing in Rome with distorted vision, this writer literally fulfilled his instructions. If he met bishops walking to St. Peter's, he would despise them as a contemptible set. Should they prefer to ride, they were, in his estimation, pampered prelates crushing poor pedestrians under their Juggernaut. Should a _schema_ be approved by the bishops after a brief discussion, they were pronounced by our seer a packed jury, the obsequious slaves of the pope. If the discussion happened to be prolonged, he would solemnly announce to his readers the existence of an incipient schism among the fathers. The truth is, the gentleman could never ascend high enough to comprehend the true character of the bishops. He could not associate in his mind independence of thought and the fullest freedom of debate with a profound reverence for the Holy Father.

Upon every question, from the beginning of the council, there has been prolonged and animated discussion. A council necessarily supposes discussion ever since that of Jerusalem. Deprive an œcumenical synod of the privilege of debate, and you strip it at once of its true character and the bishops of their manhood. No stone was left unturned that the whole truth might be brought to light.

But if there has been "_in dubiis libertas_," there has been also "_in necessariis unitas_." There is no Colenso in the Council of the Vatican. With regard to doctrines of the Catholic faith already promulgated, there has not been a whisper of dissent. A bishop might as well attempt to pull down the immortal dome of Michael Angelo suspended over his head, as touch with profane hands a single stone of the glorious edifice of Catholic faith.

There has been also "_in omnibus caritas_." Never was more dignity manifest in any deliberative assembly. A single glance at the council in session, from one of the side galleries, would at once impress the beholder not only with the majesty of the spectacle, but also with the mutual respect which the members exhibit toward each other, and the patient attention with which the speakers are listened to, often under a trying ordeal of several hours' continuous session. As for violent scenes, there have been none, except in the imagination of some correspondents; nor bantering, nor personalities; nor collisions between the presidents and speakers. Since the commencement of the discussion on the present _schema_, upward of sixty fathers have already spoken, only one of whom was called to order--and he at the end of his discourse, because, in the judgment of the president, he had broached a subject foreign to the debate. In a word, there is learning without ostentation; difference of sentiment without animosity; respect without severity; liberty of discussion without the license of vituperation.

May 23d, the congregations were resumed. The opening speech was delivered by the Armenian Patriarch. The Bishops of Mayence, Angoulême, and Grenoble occupied the attention of the fathers during the remainder of the session.

On the following day, permanent leave of absence was granted to eight prelates, among whom were two Canadians, namely, the Bishop of St. Hyacinthe, and the coadjutor of Dr. Cooke, Bishop of Three Rivers, lately deceased. The council was then addressed by the Bishop of Sion, Switzerland, one of the deputation, and by the Bishops of Urgel, Spain, S. Concezione, Chili, and Guastalla, Italy.

In the congregation of the 25th, England and Ireland had the whole field to themselves, the only speakers being Archbishop Manning, and Bishops Clifford and McEvilly. Dr. Manning's reputation as an English speaker is established wherever the English language prevails. His Latin oration in the council, which was but three minutes shorter than that of his eminence of Dublin, exhibited the same energy of thought and the same discriminating choice of words which are so striking a feature of his public discourses. Dr. Manning has a commanding figure. His fleshless face is the personification of asceticism. His sunken eyes pierce you as well as his words. He has a high, well-developed forehead, which appears still more prominent on account of partial baldness. His favorite, almost his only gesture, is the darting of his forefinger in a sloping direction from his body, and which might seem awkward in others, but in him is quite natural, and gives a peculiar force to his expressions. His countenance, even in the heat of an argument, remains almost as unimpassioned as a statue. He knows admirably well how to employ to the best advantage his voice, as well as his words. When he wishes to gain a strong point, he rallies his choicest battalion of words, to each of which he assigns the most effective position; then his voice, swelling with the occasion, imparts to them an energy and a power difficult to resist.

The next congregation, the sixtieth from the opening of the council, was held on the 28th, the speakers being the Bishops of Ratisbonne, St. Augustine, Csanad and Gran Varadin in Hungary, and Coutance in France. At the close, the president announced that the fathers henceforth would meet at half-past eight A.M. instead of nine.

The fathers assembled again on the 30th. The Archbishop of Baltimore delivered the opening speech, which lasted about fifty minutes. He spoke without the aid of manuscript, confiding in his faithful and tenacious memory. He was succeeded by the Bishops of Le Puy in France, Bâle in Switzerland, Sutri and Saluzzo, Italy, Constantina, Algiers, and the Vicar Apostolic of Quilon, on the coast of Malabar.

The following day, indefinite leave of absence was granted to Bishops Demers of Vancouver, and Hennessy of Dubuque, and the newly consecrated Bishop of Alton was permitted to remain at home. The Archbishop of Utrecht commenced the debate, being the first of the bishops of Holland that has addressed the council; the other speakers were the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Bishop of Trajanopolis, the Archbishop of Cincinnati, who spoke without notes, and the Archbishop of Halifax. The death of the saintly and apostolic Archbishop Odin, of New Orleans, was announced. The venerable prelate finished his course among his kindred near Lyons, on the auspicious festival of the Ascension.

The sixty-third general congregation was held on the 2d of June. The speakers were the Archbishop of Fogaras, Transylvania, Roumenian rite, and the Bishops of Moulins, Bosnia, Chartres and Tanes.

At the close of the session, the death of the Rt. Rev. Thomas Grant, Bishop of Southwark, England, was announced. Dr. Grant was born of English parents in Ligny, in the diocese of Arras, France, November 25th, 1816, and was promoted to the episcopal dignity June 22d, 1851. He was much esteemed by his English brethren in the episcopacy for his profound learning and solid judgment, as well as for his amiable disposition. He was one of the deputation on oriental rites.

Thus far, fourteen general congregations have been held on the four first chapters of the _Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ_. Sixty-one fathers have already spoken on the general aspects of the question, leaving forty-nine prelates who have declared their intention to speak on the same subject. As soon as the draught of the _schema in general_ has been sufficiently discussed, the debate will commence on each particular chapter.

As our readers would like, no doubt, to form a more intimate acquaintance with the venerable bishops now assembled in council, especially with those who play a more conspicuous part in its deliberations, we propose in the present number to give a brief sketch of a few of the twenty-four fathers who constitute the committee on faith.

It is quite unnecessary to our present purpose to speak of the two American prelates belonging to this deputation, namely, the Archbishops of Baltimore and San Francisco, who are well known in the United States, and whose learning, zeal, and piety are not only gratefully acknowledged at home, but fully appreciated here, as the merited honors conferred upon them testify.

We will commence with Aloysius, Cardinal Bilio, president of the deputation on faith, and one of the five presiding officers of the council. He was born May 25th, 1826, at Alexandria, the celebrated fortified town of Piedmont, which of late years has played so important a part in the history of northern Italy. His father was of a noble family. At the early age of fourteen the youth, already remarkable for great piety and a maturity of character beyond his years, asked to be admitted into the congregation of St. Paul, founded by the venerable Antonio Zaccaria. He was received as a student and postulant, and devoted himself to study with an earnestness which soon broke down his health, apparently never very strong. He was obliged to suspend his studies for several years. In fact, for a time it was thought his health never would rally. At last, however, he did recover, and at once returned to the purpose from which his mind and heart had never wandered. Having finished his course and received ordination, he was made in turn professor of Greek, of rhetoric, and of mental philosophy in the college of Parma, and afterward in the university of the same city.

It is the custom of the religious orders and congregations which devote themselves either entirely or in great part to teaching, first by a long and thorough course of study to prepare carefully their younger members for future labors in the professorial chair, and then in their early years of teaching to appoint them from one chair to another, through the whole cycle, perhaps. So Father Bilio was sent from Parma to Caravaggio, and then to Naples, occupying various chairs, and finally was made professor of theology and canon law in the Barnabite College at Rome. His professorships were for the world outside his congregation. Within it, his brethren recognized his high personal qualifications, and elected him to various offices in their congregation, until at length he was made assistant-general.

Rome could not fail to appreciate qualities and talents like those of this learned and exemplary, religious and able man. He was pressed into service in many of the departments for transacting religious affairs, and finally, June 23d, 1866, he was named cardinal. He presided over one of the sub-commissions of theologians, who studied out and prepared the draughts for the council, and he is, as was said in a former number, chairman of the special committee or deputation of twenty-four prelates to treat of all matters relating to faith.

With the single exception of Cardinal Bonaparte, Cardinal Bilio is the youngest member of the Sacred College.

France, the eldest daughter of the church, is represented in the deputation by Bishop Pie of Poitiers, and Archbishop Regnier of Cambrai.

Louis Francis Desiré Edward Pie was born at Pontgouin, in the diocese of Chartres, the 26th of September, 1815. Ordained priest in 1839, he exercised at first the functions of curate of the cathedral church of Chartres; and in 1845, the bishop of that diocese appointed him vicar-general, notwithstanding his comparative youth.

From that period, the young priest was ranked among the most distinguished preachers of France, and was heard with great success in different cities of that country. His panegyric of Joan of Arc, which he preached at Orleans, is one of his best discourses.

Named Bishop of Poitiers under the presidency, he took possession of his see in December, 1849. He was then only in his thirty-fourth year, an unusually early age for conferring the mitre in Europe.

Bishop Pie directed his eloquence and zeal on various occasions against two sorts of adversaries: those who sap the foundations of faith itself by reducing every thing to naturalism, both in religion and society; and those who attempt to weaken Catholicity by the ruin of the temporal power. Against the former the bishop issued three _Synodal Instructions on the Principal Errors of the Present Time_. Against the latter he wrote, three years before the last Italian revolution, his _Synodal Instruction on Rome considered as the See of the Papacy_, in which he ably refuted the sophistries of those who sought the demolition of the temporal power.

Those best acquainted with the Bishop of Poitiers say that his pulpit oratory is characterized by an authority, brilliancy, and force of argument worthy of St. Hilary, whose successor he is.

In personal appearance Bishop Pie is prepossessing. His round, full face without a wrinkle, and his auburn hair, make him seem much younger than he really is. Though stout, and even inclined to corpulency, he is quick and active in his movements.

He speaks with admiration of the late Bishop of Boston, with whom he studied at St. Sulpice, Paris. The Sulpician fathers have been accustomed to select as catechists in the parochial church some of their ablest and most promising students. To both seminarians a class was assigned, and the Bishop of Poitiers says that his American friend, afterward Bishop Fitzpatrick, always excelled in his position.

Emmanuel Garcia Gil, Archbishop of Saragossa, in Spain, was born in St. Salvador, March 14th, 1802.

Having completed his literary studies in his native city, he passed through his philosophical and theological course in the diocesan seminary of De Lugo. In 1825, he entered the order of St. Dominic, in which he made his religious profession November 1st, 1826.

He was ordained the following year, and immediately after the responsible position of professor of philosophy and theology in the convents of the order at De Lugo and Compostello was assigned to him.

Expelled in 1835 from Spain, with all the members of his order, he soon returned to his post at De Lugo, where for thirteen years he filled the chair of philosophy and divinity in the seminary of which he was successively director and vice-rector.

Having subsequently devoted himself to the more active pursuits of the ministry, he labored with great success in preaching the word of God, and in the administration of the sacraments.

Appointed to the see of Badajoz in December, 1853, he was consecrated in the city of De Lugo by the Archbishop of Compostello; and five years later, at the request of the Spanish government, he was transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Saragossa.

Among his fellow-members of the Committee on Faith, Mgr. Garcia Gil has the merited reputation of being profoundly conversant with the writings of his great master, the "Angel of the Schools," and hence is called among them the St. Thomas of the deputation.

Another prominent member of the committee is Mgr. Hassoun, Patriarch of Cilicia for the Armenians. He was born in Constantinople, June 13th, 1809, of Armenian parents. He passed through his elementary course in his native city, and completed his studies in Rome, where, in 1832, he obtained the degree of doctor of divinity. A few months later, having been ordained priest, and named apostolic missionary, he was sent to Smyrna, where he devoted himself to the Armenian Christians of that city. Removed thence to Constantinople, Father Hassoun exercised the ministry in several churches, and filled the office of chancellor in the archiepiscopal palace. Chosen by the primate as vicar-general and visitor of the diocese and province, the young Armenian priest was unanimously elected by the assembly of his nation civil prefect of the Armenian church, in which office he was confirmed by the Ottoman Porte.

In 1842, he was appointed coadjutor to the Primate of Constantinople, with the right of succession; and on the death of the latter, in 1846, he was chosen to fill the vacant see.

On the 16th of September, 1866, the Armenian archbishops and bishops assembled in council proclaimed Mgr. Hassoun Patriarch of Cilicia, with the title of Anthony Peter IX. The holy see confirmed the nomination, and decided that in future the patriarchal see of Cilicia and the archi-primatial see of Constantinople, which hitherto were separate and independent, should form one patriarchate, under the title of Patriarchate of Cilicia, with residence at Constantinople.

By his exertions the episcopal hierarchy was reëstablished in 1850 in the ecclesiastical province of Constantinople, and a special see for the Armenians erected in Persia. He has succeeded in building in the Turkish capital, and endowing a seminary to serve for the whole ecclesiastical province. In 1843, Mgr. Hassoun founded the first female convent in the same capital; and we may well imagine the degree of pious audacity that was required to plant this colony of virgins in the midst of the sultan's seraglios. This institution is devoted to the education of young girls, and to the instruction of women abandoning schism. The convent has sixty nuns, who educate three hundred poor girls, besides some resident scholars.

The patriarch, by an imperial firman, is charged with all the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the Armenians who are subjects of the Ottoman empire. He gratefully acknowledges the kind disposition always manifested toward him by the government of the Sublime Porte, which has extended to him every facility for carrying out the works of his ministry.

Victor Augustus Isidore Dechamps, one of the most prominent members of the deputation _de fide_, was born at Melle, Eastern Flanders, in the château of Scailmont, December 16th, 1810. His early education was intrusted to private tutors, under the eyes of his father, who was a laureate of the ancient University of Louvain. He afterward completed his studies of humanity and philosophy with his brother Adolph, who was successively Belgian minister of foreign affairs and minister of state.

In the national movement, from which sprung the independence of Belgium, the two brothers, though yet young, distinguished themselves as publicists during this glorious epoch of patriotism.

In 1832, M. Dechamps entered the seminary of Tournai, studied afterward in the Catholic university of Mechlin, and concluded his theological course at Louvain, where he was ordained priest, December, 1834, by Cardinal Sterckx.

Having soon after joined the Redemptorist congregation, Father Dechamps made his novitiate in 1835. Five years later, his career as a preacher began, and in this capacity he greatly distinguished himself.

After the death of Queen Louise of Belgium, in obedience to the express desire of that pious princess, he was charged with the religious instruction of the royal princes, and of the Princess Charlotte. Rev. Father Dechamps was named Bishop of Namur, September, 1865. Two years later, he was transferred to the archdiocese of Mechlin, in which Brussels is included; and since the opening of the council he has been elevated by the holy see to the primacy of Belgium.

Monsgr. Dechamps has written several valuable works, the most important of which are: 1st. _The Free Examination of the Truth of Faith_; 2d. _The Divinity of Jesus Christ_; 3d. _The Religious Question resolved by Facts; or, Certainty in Matters of Religion_; 4th. _Pius IX. and Contemporary Errors_; 5th. _The New Eve, or, Mother of Life_, all of which have been translated into most of the languages of Europe.

The style of Archbishop Dechamps is calm, concise, and profound, blended with an attractive unction. His round and pleasing countenance bears upon it the stamp of intellect and energy. Like so many of his gifted countrymen, the prelate of Mechlin unites in his person the mental activity of the Frenchman with the solidity of the German.

John Baptist Simor, Archbishop of Strigonium and Primate of Hungary, was born August 24th, 1813, in the ancient Hungarian city of Fehervar, which is memorable in history as being the place where the kings of Hungary were formerly crowned and buried.

He pursued his philosophical course in the archiepiscopal lyceum of Magy-Szombat, and his course of theology in the University of Vienna, which honored him with the title of doctor of sacred theology. After the successful completion of his studies, he was ordained priest of the archdiocese of Strigonium in 1836.

Appointed, first, assistant pastor of a church in Pesth, Father Simor soon after received a professor's chair in the university of that city, and subsequently filled several responsible positions, both in the government of souls and in instructing the more advanced candidates for the ministry in a higher course of theology.

On the 29th of June, 1857, he was consecrated Bishop of Györ, and ten years later, on the demise of Cardinal Scilovszky, Bishop Simor was chosen to succeed that eminent prelate as Prince-Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Strigonium.

Besides his ecclesiastical eminence, the Primate of Hungary has had distinguished state honors conferred on him. He is the first member of the king's privy council. By established law, the ceremony of crowning the king devolves exclusively on the primate. Otherwise the coronation is not considered legitimate. The Bishop of Veszprim crowns the queen. The present Emperor, Francis Joseph of Austria, received the crown of the kingdom of Hungary from the hands of Archbishop Simor, on the vigil of Pentecost, 1867, in the presence of an immense assembly of people from all parts of the kingdom. The primate is moreover _ex-officio_ chief secretary and chancellor of the sovereign of Hungary. He is also first magistrate of the county or department of Strigonium. Hungary contains fifty-two of these departments, each presided over by a chief magistrate.

He has also a seat in the general assembly or parliament of Hungary, a privilege which is enjoyed in common with him by every Catholic bishop of the kingdom. Many other prerogatives were inherent in the primatial dignity till they were swept away by the revolution of 1848.

Monsgr. Simor informed us that the faithful of his diocese number a million of souls, comprising three distinct nationalities, Hungarians, Sclaves, and Germans, who speak as many distinct languages.

The primate is consequently obliged, in the visitation of his diocese, to employ these three tongues. In corresponding with his clergy, whether Hungarian, Sclavonic, or German, he invariably uses Latin, of which he is a perfect master, and which, till a recent date, was the common language of the greater part of Hungary.

ROME, June 2, 1870.

* * * * *

We add to the remarks of our correspondent the following items of information concerning the doings of the council since the date of his letter. Between June 2d and June 18th ten general congregations were held. The preface, and the first two chapters of the _schema_ on the Roman Pontiff, were voted on and adopted; the discussion of the third chapter, was closed, and on the 15th of June the discussion of the fourth chapter, concerning the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, was opened. At that date, seventy-four fathers had inscribed their names as intending to speak, and this number had been increased to one hundred at the general congregation of June 18th.

FOOTNOTE:

[284] The speeches on the _Primacy and Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff_ have exceeded in length those delivered on the preceding subjects, their average duration having been forty-three minutes up to the present date, June 2d.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

Within the past six months the literary bulletins of France, England, and Germany are full of notices of new works on the subject of the Apostle St. Paul and his writings. One of the latest in England is by Dr. Arnold, who--Anglican as he is--takes direct issue with an opinion of the French rationalist Renan, which on its first appearance gave great gratification to the Protestant world. In his work on St. Paul, Renan said in his flippant way:

"After having been for three hundred years, thanks to Protestantism, the Christian doctor _par excellence_, Paul is now coming to the end of his reign."

On this remarkable opinion, Dr. Arnold thus comments:

"Precisely the contrary, I venture to think, is the judgment to which a true criticism of men and things leads us. The Protestantism which has so used and abused St. Paul is coming to an end; its organizations, strong and active as they look, are touched with the finger of death; its fundamental ideas, sounding forth still every week from thousands of pulpits, have in them no significance and no power for the progressive thought of humanity. But the reign of the real St. Paul is only beginning; his fundamental ideas, disengaged from the elaborate misconceptions with which Protestantism has overlaid them, will have an influence in the future greater than any which they have yet had--an influence proportioned to their correspondence with a number of the deepest and most permanent facts of human nature itself."--_From St. Paul and Protestantism, by Matthew Arnold._

* * * * *

One of the most important events of the reign of Louis XIV., and, indeed, in the entire religious history of France, was the assembly of the clergy of France in the year 1682. Numerous works have been written and published concerning it, the best and most exhaustive of which are the two last. In 1868, M. Charles Gérin, a judge of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine, published his _Recherches Historiques sur l'Assemblée du Clergé de France de 1682_. The author brought to his task great learning, decided ability, and an industry that proved itself by the number of original documents from the public archives for the first time presented by him. The result of M. Gérin's labors was generally accepted in France as final. With this verdict, however, Monseigneur Maret, Bishop of Sura, did not agree, and protested against it in his work, _Du Concile et de la Paix religieuse_, intimating therein that the documents cited in M. Gérin's book needed fresh revision and interpretation, which they should receive. This announcement was naturally accepted as signifying that a new work on the assembly of 1682 might be looked for. That was indeed its signification, and early in 1870 appeared an announcement of the publishers, Didier & Co., Paris, of a book entitled, _L'Assemblée du Clergé de France de 1682 d'après des documents dont un grand nombre inconnus jusqu'à ce jour_. Par l'Abbé Jules-Théodose Loyson, Docteur et Professeur en Sorbonne. 8vo, 530 pages. To this, Judge Gérin soon replied in his _Une Nouvelle Apologie du Gallicanisme, Réponse à M. l'Abbé Loyson_. Outside of the historical statements concerning the events attending the assembly of 1682, these works are, in fact, a rather animated polemical discussion of the questions of the temporal power and the papal infallibility.

* * * * *

When St. Patrick entered upon his great apostolic work in Ireland, he was careful not to offend the attachment borne by his converts to their ancient national traditions, the songs of their bards, and the laws by which they were governed. On the contrary, he advised Lacighaise, king of the country, to have reduced to writing all the ancient judicial decisions, and, with the aid of two other bishops, commenced the work himself. To the body of laws thus collected was given the title of _Senchus Mor_, (collection of ancient knowledge.) Written A.D. 440, this book served as the Irish code before the departure of the Romans, and was in legal force up to the period of the accession of James I., traces of its influence being to this day plainly visible. The most authentic manuscripts containing the _Senchus Mor_ formerly belonged to an English literary amateur, and through the efforts of Edmund Burke were acquired by the English government. Their publication was commenced in 1852, and has been resumed, as we perceive by the following announcement: _Ancient Laws of Ireland. Senchus Mor._ Part II. Edited by W. Neilson Hancock, LL.D., and the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony. Dublin: Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1870. 8vo.

* * * * *

Some curious information and revolting details concerning the continuation of the slave-trade in Africa are furnished in a work lately published at Paris, _La Traite Orientale_. The Mussulman still needs slaves and concubines, and three great slave marts still exist to supply them. These are the Island of Zanzibar, the southern portion of Egypt, and Arabia. At Zanzibar a healthy man sells for $42, while the women bring $80, and more, if good-looking.

* * * * *

During the past ten years the history, geography, and topography of the biblical countries have been studied with immense activity, and the best travellers and scholars of Germany, France, Italy, and England have contributed their offerings to the common fund of our knowledge concerning these most interesting regions. Successful research on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Nile and the Jordan, not to speak of many other points, have all in turn confirmed the perfect veracity of the writers of the Old and of the New Testament. And to these, the broken walls, the palaces, the towers, and the sculptures of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Persepolis, of Jerusalem, and of Samaria, rising in testimony of the truth from the gathered ruins of ages, bear also their testimony. A learned German ecclesiastic, Dr. Gratz, uniting and fusing all the information on this subject, composed an admirable geographical history of oriental and occidental countries, with special reference to the biblical period. Dr. Allioli, the celebrated scriptural commentator, recommended the work of Dr. Gratz as marked by so much erudition and exactness that the readers of his commentary are recommended to it for information on all points touching biblical localities. An excellent French translation of Dr. Gratz's work has just been published: _Théâtre des Evénements racontés dans les divines Ecritures, ou l'ancien et le nouvel Orient étudié au point de vue de la Bible et de L'Eglise_. 2 vols. 8vo.

* * * * *

Here are two new works on the Council of Trent: _Histoire du Concile de Trente_, par M. Baguenault de Puchesse; 1 vol. 8vo. _Journal du Concile de Trente, rédigé par un secrétaire Vénitien présant aux sessions de 1562 à 1563._ This Venetian secretary was Antonio Milledonne, attached to the embassy sent to the Council of Trent by the republic of Venice. To the diary of the secretary, which forms the body of the latter publication, are added several original documents of the period heretofore unpublished, among them a summary of the dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors to the council. M. Baschet, the editor, suggests that the publication of the French diplomatic dispatches relative to the council would be of the highest interest. These dispatches would certainly form one of the most curious literary monuments of the sixteenth century, and, in point of fact, the history of the latter period of the council cannot well be written without them.

* * * * *

Baron Hübner, formerly Austrian Ambassador at Paris and at Rome, and well known in the diplomatic and literary world, has just presented the fruit of many years' labor among the state archives of Paris, Vienna, Florence, Venice, Simancas, and the Vatican, in the shape of a work entitled _Sixte Quint_; 3 vols. 8vo. Written on an epoch already well investigated, and upon a life which has been the subject of many pens, Baron Hübner's life of Pope Sixtus V. is by far the most remarkable and the most trustworthy we have had. And yet it is not perhaps exact to call his work a life of Sixtus V. The author does not so style it, and takes up Cardinal Montalto at the conclave where he is elected pope. He scarcely refers retrospectively to the early years of his life, and pays not the slightest attention to the semi-fabulous stories which tradition has interwoven with the name of the great Sixtus. If he finds documentary evidence for any part of them, he gives it. If not, silence falls upon them. At the outset of his work he merely mentions the three great names connected with histories of Sixtus--Leti, Tempesti, and Ranke. But he merely mentions them, and in no case quotes them. As to more modern historians of Sixtus--Segretain and Dumesnil, for instance--he does not appear to have the slightest idea of their existence. Baron Hübner has written his work exclusively from original materials, and appears to have used them conscientiously and with excellent judgment.

* * * * *

For nearly ten months an animated historico-ecclesiastical discussion has been going on in France, which, according to the reports of literary journals, has passed the stage of "_vive polémique_," and reached that described as "_la controverse passionée_." The subject matter of the discussion is Pope Honorius. Father Gratry (of the Oratory) led off with a pamphlet entitled, _Mgr. l'Evêque d'Orléans et Mgr. l'Archevêque de Malines_, and gave the texts of three councils which condemned Honorius, and the confirmation of their sentence by Pope St. Leo II. To this came a reply by M. Chantrel, _Le Pape Honorius, Première Lettre à M. l'Abbé Gratry_, in which he presented an abridged text of the letters of Honorius and testimony in his favor. Archbishop Dechamps also answered Father Gratry in _La Question d'Honorius_, citing an interesting passage from St. Alphonse de Liguori. Then, in its numbers of the 10th and 25th January, and 10th February, _Le Correspondant_ gave an extract from the fourth volume (not yet published) of the _Histoire des Conciles_, by Bishop Héfelé, in which the prelate-author is severe on Honorius. Father Colombier, on the contrary, defends the orthodoxy of the incriminated letters of Honorius in a series of articles published in the _Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires_. Dom Guéranger also treated the question in his _Défense de l'Eglise Romaine contre les Erreurs du R. P. Gratry_, published in the _Revue du Monde Catholique_. Then comes _L'Univers_ with a letter from M. Amédée de Margerie, Professor at Nancy, in defence of Honorius. We can merely enumerate other defenders of Honorius who have entered the lists. They are the Abbé Constantin, (_Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques_,) the editors of the _Civilta Cattolica_, Canon Lefebre, (_Revue Catholique de Louvain_,) Abbé Larroque, Abbé Bélet, Father Roque, and Father Ramière. The _Avenir Catholique_ endeavors to demonstrate that Honorius wrote the letters in dispute not as pope, but as a simple doctor. M. Léon Gautier published a series of articles on the question of infallibility, the last of which is specially devoted to Honorius. These articles collected have lately been published by Palmé in a pamphlet, entitled _L'Infaillibilité devant la Raison, la Foi et l'Histoire_. Then comes a second letter from Bishop Dechamps, and, finally, the Bishop of Strasburg issues an energetic condemnation of the letters of Father Gratry.

* * * * *

The history of the city of Milan is, in Italian history, one of great importance; for it is the history of Lombardy, and of nearly all of the north of Italy. Of chronicles and histories of the great Lombard city there were many, but none so good in its day as the four large and beautiful volumes of the Chevalier Rosmini de Roveredo, which is now in its turn surpassed and superseded by the admirable work of Cusani, _Storia di Milano, dall' origine ai nostri giorni_. Vols. I. à V. à 8vo, Milano, 1861-1869.

* * * * *

Ricotti's great work on the history of the Piedmontese monarchy still approaches completion. The sixth volume, just out, brings the work down to the end of the seventeenth century. The _Storia della Monarchia Piemontese_ is no mere dry record of dates; but presents an animated picture of the legal, intellectual, social, and artistic life of Piedmont at the different epochs of its existence.

* * * * *

Professor Ferdinando Ranalli's new work on the history of the fine arts, _Storia delle Belle Arti in Italia_, 3 vols., attracts much attention.

* * * * *

Professor Ciavarini, of Florence, has published an interesting work on the philosophy of Galileo, _Della Filosofia del Galilei_, and on his scientific method. The Italian press does not vomit forth the flood of yellow-covered literature with which some countries are afflicted; but the number of serious and meritorious works in history, literature, and science constantly published would surprise most persons who suppose that the Italian mind is at a stand-still.

* * * * *

Almost simultaneously in Germany and in England appear two works on the Epistles to the Corinthians by St. Clement of Rome. They are _Clementis Romani ad Corinthios Epistola_, by J. C. M. Laurent, published at Leipsic; and _S. Clement of Rome: the Two Epistles to the Corinthians_, a revised text with introduction and notes, by J. B. Lightfoot. They are mainly valuable for their discussion as to the merits of the texts of the various MSS.

* * * * *

The most interesting archæological discovery of our age, incomparable for its antiquity and its historic and philological interest, is unquestionably the one lately made by M. Clermont-Ganneau, dragoman of the consulate of France at Jerusalem. It is that of a Hebrew inscription of the year 896 before Christ, cut on a monolith by order of Mescha, King of Moab, a contemporary of the kings Joram and Josaphat. The stone on which the inscription is graven is in dimension three feet four inches by about two feet. The inscription itself is in thirty-four lines, each line containing from thirty-three to thirty-five letters. It is said that there is no known Hebrew monument comparable in antiquity with this. M. le Comte de Vogüé lately presented a memoir concerning it to the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, which is now published by Baudry, Paris: _La Stèle de Mesa, Roi de Moab, 896 avant Jésus Christ_.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LIFTING THE VEIL. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870. Pp. 200.

This book was probably suggested by _Gates Ajar_. It is an attempt to say something about the future state of the human race. In some respects the volume is more valuable than Miss Phelps's endeavor to convey an idea of the happiness of paradise. It is not so materialistic. Yet both works are very defective, because of the simple fact that neither of the authors know any thing of that which makes heaven to be heaven--the beatific vision. Their highest ideal is perfect intellectual contentment, with unimpeded exercise of our natural capacities and the companionship of our friends and our blessed Saviour. Yet it is encouraging to see that Protestants are writing such books as these. They are the expression of the deepest wants of the human soul. They prove that the Protestantism of to-day has failed to answer these wants. If we were not already perfectly convinced, they would convince us, that when the truth is adequately presented to these souls, they will gladly accept it.

* * * * *

PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. 2 vols.

One great charm of these two volumes lies in the fact that they were never written for publication. But we regret the omission of certain passages. The editor of the volumes thought it wise to withhold a portion of the notes which were afterward absorbed into one or another of the romances or papers in _Our Old Home_. Yet surely it would have been a pleasure to contrast the rough sketch contained in his notes with the elaborate and finely-finished picture which Mr. Hawthorne afterward presented to the public. The editor tells us that these cartoons were carefully finished even "at the first stroke." However, the volumes will always be valuable, because they give a clear insight of their author's character. If one writes his every-day impressions of places, persons, and events, he gives the world a picture of his mind. Thus when these series of notes are completed by the notes upon America and Italy, we shall be enabled to form a far truer estimate of this distinguished American writer than we could possibly do from those works which have given him a name in literature, both in his own country and in more critical and fastidious England.

* * * * *

HIDDEN SAINTS: LIFE OF SŒUR MARIE. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1870. Pp. 215.

In many respects this is a useful contribution to our Catholic literature. It tells the story of a workwoman who attained a very high degree of Christian perfection. In its matter, the book reminds one of _Marie-Eustelle Harpain_, but it does not greatly resemble it in its composition. A religious biography can do good in two ways. It can edify the readers with the history of remarkable piety and virtue. And it can also elevate and refine our minds, if it be written in pure and correct English. Unfortunately, this biography does not possess this character. Its very title is an example of a fault which is frequently seen throughout the volume. It is the "Life of _Sœur Marie_," not Sister Mary. When this good girl addresses her director, she does not say "Father," but it must be "_Mon Père_," and without the accent to which that word is lawfully entitled. Surely it is absurd affectation to ruin a beautiful thought and a good English sentence by mixing with it two or three French words. But this is not the only fault of the volume. It speaks of "promises of milk and water," an expression which contains no definite idea. It informs us that Sister Mary "went _straight_ to church." Who can tell whether the author intends to say that she went to church _immediately_ or went there by the most direct way? Then, too, if this book be intended to form one of a series of biographies of persons who are not canonized, why call them "Hidden _Saints_"? The holy see has always wished us to be most careful in the use of this word. But these faults do not destroy the value of the book. They are only blemishes, and in a future edition we hope to find them completely removed.

* * * * *

MARION. A Tale of French Society under the Old Régime. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870. Pp. 176.

Marion is a woman of "stiff figure, bony hands, bloodshot eyes, and innumerable wrinkles, always reminding one of stories about vampires and ghouls." (P. 4.) This sentence gives a fair idea of the style and literary value of this novel. It is filled with similar nonsensical and overdrawn descriptions. We must, therefore, beg leave to differ from the very modest opinion expressed in the preface, that the book has a character "which stamps it as one that the young may read with profit." On the contrary, it is a shame that such a story should be translated and allowed to live in another language than the one in which it was originally written. However, we will do it justice. There is one mark of common sense about the book. It is this--both the author and translator have concealed their names.

* * * * *

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. By Captain W. F. Lyons. New York: D. & J. Sadlier. 1870. Pp. 357.

We do not believe the sentiment which Shakespeare has put in the mouth of Mark Antony, that

"The evil which men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."

It is not true that men delight in recalling the faults of their fellow-men; and especially do the dead claim our forgiveness and compassion. We are truly sorry, therefore, to find in this volume speeches which reflect no credit from a literary point of view upon General Meagher, and which, moreover, contain doctrines most clearly condemned by the Catholic Church. Out of respect to the many good qualities of Meagher, we wish to forget his faults. We would wish also to remember, and we wish his countrymen to remember, his manly virtues. But until the speech beginning on page 280 of this volume is omitted, we cannot recommend this book to the Catholic public, or consider it a worthy monument of Thomas Francis Meagher.

* * * * *

HISTORY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER OF THE VISITATION. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870. Pp. 271.

Few books issued by Catholic publishers are more interesting and useful than this history of the Order of the Visitation. Besides the history of their foundation, it contains the lives of several members of the order; among them Mademoiselle De La Fayette, a relative of the general so distinguished in our war for independence. The book merits a wide circulation.

* * * * *

ALASKA AND ITS RESOURCES; By W. H. Dall. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1870.

Mr. Dall was "the director of the scientific corps of the late Western Union Telegraph Expedition." His book is the result of great industry, and is highly creditable to him every way. Those who desire to know something worth knowing about this singular region will find this work very interesting. The writer says in his introduction that he "has specially endeavored to convey as much information as his scope would allow in regard to the native inhabitants, history, and resources of the country. This end," he adds, "has been kept steadily in view, perhaps, at the risk of dulness." We think he has succeeded admirably, and have no fear whatever that any one capable of appreciating the book is likely to find it dull.

* * * * *

PARADISE OF THE EARTH. Translated from the French of Abbé Sanson by Rev. F. Ignatius Sisk. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1870. Pp. 528.

This book was originally written for religious, though we presume it is now intended to have a wider circulation. The means of finding happiness is treated under a two-fold head: First, Removal of obstacles; second, Practice of the solid virtues. The chapters which treat of the mortification of the passions are carefully written. Indeed, the author has wished to present the teaching of the saints and doctors of the church rather than his own opinions.

* * * * *

LORETTO; OR THE CHOICE. By George H. Miles. New and enlarged edition. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870. Pp. 371.

This story presents a very fair picture of Southern Catholic society. The characters in it are mostly well conceived. They are not impossible persons. Nothing extraordinary happens to any one of them. They speak in a natural manner. The plot, too, though simple, is very pleasingly developed, and the interest of the reader constantly maintained. For all these good qualities, so rare in modern works of fiction, the book deserves a hearty recommendation. But beyond all this, the story merits praise for the sound principles of morality which appear on every page, and which the author presents in a manner at once pleasing and truthful.

* * * * *

DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. By Secondo Franco, S.J. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1870. Pp. 305.

This manual of devotion makes a very handsome appearance in its dress of blue and gold. Its object is to explain clearly the essence of the worship of the Sacred Heart. Yet this book is not in any sense a controversial work. It is written for devout Catholics. It will be of service to any one who wishes to gain a knowledge of the interior life of our Redeemer by studying his sacred heart. The book is filled with fervent sentences and devout aspirations, which will help the reader to become like Him "who was meek and humble of heart."

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BEECH BLUFF: A Tale of the South. By Fannie Warner. Philadelphia. P. F. Cunningham.

In this volume we have what purports to be the experience of a Northern lady in the sunny South, during a three years' residence as governess in the State of Georgia. The tale, which is written in a pleasing and natural style, is entirely free from all sensational incidents, and has a strong under-current of sound practical Catholicity. It will be none the less acceptable to many as being descriptive of a phase of society which is now (happily, in some respects) "among the things that were."

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WONDERS OF ARCHITECTURE. Translated from the French of M. Lefevre. To which is added a chapter on English Architecture. By R. Donald, 1 vol. 12mo. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

A beautiful little book, containing illustrations of some of the finest creations of the great architects of the world. It is both entertaining and instructive.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XI., No. 66.--SEPTEMBER, 1870.

HEREDITARY GENIUS.[285]

Mr. Galton is what in these days is called a _scientist_, or cultivator of the physical sciences, whose pretension is to confine themselves strictly to the field of the sciences as distinguished from science; to assert nothing but positive facts and the laws of their production and operation, ascertained by careful observation and experiment, and induction therefrom. Their aim would seem to be to explain all the facts or phenomena of the universe by means of second causes, and to prove that man is properly classed with animals, or is only an animal developed or completed, not an animal transformed and specificated by a rational soul, which is defined by the church to be _forma corporis_.

Between the scientists and philosophers, or those who cultivate not the special sciences, but the science of the sciences, and determine the principles to which the several special sciences must be referred in order to have any scientific character or value, there is a long-standing quarrel, which grows fiercer and more embittered every day. We are far from pretending that the positivists or Comtists have mastered all the so-called special sciences; but they represent truly the aims and tendencies of the scientists, and of what by a strange misnomer is called philosophy; so-called, it would seem, because philosophy it is not. Philosophy is the science of principles, as say the Greeks, or of _first_ principles, as say the Latins, and after them the modern Latinized nations. But Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, and the late Sir William Hamilton, the ablest representatives of philosophy as generally received by the English-speaking world, agree with the Comtists or positivists in rejecting first principles from the domain of science, and in relegating theology and metaphysics to the region of the unknown and the unknowable. Their labors consequently result, as Sir William Hamilton himself somewhere admits, in universal nescience, or, as we say, absolute nihilism or nullism.

This result is not accidental, but follows necessarily from what is called the Baconian method, which the scientists follow, and which is, in scholastic language, concluding the universal from the particular. Now, in the logic we learned as a school-boy, and adhere to in our old age, this is simply impossible. To every valid argument it is necessary that one of the premises, called the major premise, be a universal principle. Yet the scientists discard the universal from their premises, and from two or more particulars, or particular facts, profess to draw a valid universal conclusion, as if any conclusion broader than the premises could be valid! The physico-theologians are so infatuated with the Baconian method that they attempt, from certain facts which they discover in the physical world, to conclude, by way of induction, the being and attributes of God, as if any thing concluded from particular facts could be any thing but a particular fact. Hence, the aforenamed authors, with Professor Huxley at their tail, as well as Kant in his _Kritik der Reinen Vernunft_, have proved as clearly and as conclusively as any thing can be proved that a causative force, or causality, cannot be concluded by way either of induction or of deduction from any empirical facts, or facts of which observation can take note. Yet the validity of every induction rests on the reality of the relation of cause and effect, and the fact that the cause actually produces the effect.

Yet our scientists pretend that they can, from the observation and analysis of facts, induce a law, and a law that will hold good beyond the particulars observed and analyzed. But they do not obtain any law at all; and the laws of nature, about which they talk so learnedly, are not laws, but simply facts. Bring a piece of wax to the fire and it melts, hence it is said to be a law that wax so brought in proximate relation with fire will melt; but this law is only the particular fact observed, and the facts to which you apply it are the identical facts from which you have obtained it. The investigation, in all cases where the scientists profess to seek the law, is simply an investigation to find out and establish the identity of the facts, and what they call the law is only the assertion of that identity, and never extends to facts not identical, or to dissimilar facts.

Take mathematics; as far as the scientist can admit mathematics, they are simply identical propositions piled on identical propositions, and the only difference between Newton and a plough-boy is, that Newton detects identity where the plough-boy does not. Take what is called the law of gravitation; it is nothing but the statement of a fact, or a class of facts observed, and the most that it tells us is, that if the facts are identical, they are identical--that is, they bear such and such relations to one another. But let your positivist attempt to explain transcendental mathematics, and he is all at sea, if he does not borrow from the ideal science or philosophy which he professes to discard. How will the geometrician explain his infinitely extended lines, or lines that may be infinitely extended? A line is made up of a succession of points, and therefore of parts, and nothing which is made up of parts is infinite. The line may be increased or diminished by the addition or subtraction of points, but the infinite cannot be either increased or diminished. Whence does the mind get this idea of infinity? The geometrician tells us the line may be infinitely extended--that is, it is infinitely possible; but it cannot be so unless there is an infinite ground on which it can be projected. An infinitely possible line can be asserted only by asserting the infinitely real, and therefore the mind, unless it had the intuition of the infinitely real, could not conceive of a line as capable of infinite extension. Hence the ancients never assert either the infinitely possible or the infinite real. There is in all Gentile science, or Gentile philosophy, no conception of the infinite; there is only the conception of the indefinite.

This same reasoning disposes of the infinite divisibility of matter still taught in our text-books. The infinite divisibility of matter is an infinite absurdity; for it implies an infinity of parts or numbers, which is really a contradiction in terms. We know nothing that better illustrates the unsoundness of the method of the scientists. Here is a piece of matter. Can you not divide it into two equal parts? Certainly. Can you do the same by either of the halves? Yes. And by the quarters. Yes. And thus on _ad infinitum_? Where, then, is the absurdity? None as long as you deal with only finite quantities. The absurdity is in the fact that the infinite divisibility of matter implies an infinity of parts; and an infinity of parts, an infinity of numbers; and numbers and every series of numbers may be increased by addition, and diminished by subtraction. An infinite series is impossible.

The moment the scientists leave the domain of particulars or positive facts, and attempt to induce from them a law, their induction is of no value. Take geology. The geologist finds in that small portion of the globe which he has examined certain facts, from which he concludes that the globe is millions and millions of ages old. Is his conclusion scientific? Not at all. If the globe was in the beginning in a certain state, and if the structural and other changes which are now going on have been going on at the same rate from the beginning--neither of which suppositions is provable--then the conclusion is valid; not otherwise. Sir Charles Lyell, if we recollect aright, calculated that, at the present rate, it must have taken at least a hundred and fifty thousand years to form the delta of the Mississippi. Officers of the United States army have calculated that a little over four thousand years would suffice.

So of the antiquity of man on the globe. The scientist finds what he takes to be human bones in a cave along with the bones of certain long since extinct species of animals, and concludes that man was contemporary with the said extinct species of animals; therefore man existed on the globe many, nobody can say how many, thousand years ago. But two things render the conclusion uncertain. It is not certain from the fact that their bones are found together that man and these animals were contemporary; and the date when these animals became extinct, if extinct they are, is not ascertained nor ascertainable. They have discovered traces in Switzerland of lacustrian habitations; but these prove nothing, because history itself mentions "the dwellers on the lakes," and the oldest history accepted by the scientists is not many thousand years old. Sir Charles Lyell finds, or supposes he finds, stone knives and axes, or what he takes to be stone knives and axes, deeply embedded in the earth in the valley of a river, though at some distance from its present bed; and thence concludes the presence of man on the earth for a period wholly irreconcilable with the received biblical chronology. But supposing the facts to be as alleged, they do not prove any thing, because we cannot say what changes by floods or other causes have taken place in the soil of the locality, even during the period of authentic history. Others conclude from the same facts that men were primitively savages, or ignorant of the use of iron. But the most they prove is that, at some unknown period, certain parts of Europe were inhabited by a people who used stone knives and axes; but whether because ignorant of iron, or because unable from their poverty or their distance from places where they were manufactured to procure similar iron utensils, they give us no information. Instances enough are recorded in history of the use of stone knives by a people who possessed knives made of iron. Because in our day some Indian tribes use bows and arrows, are we to conclude that fire-arms are unknown in our age of the world?

What the scientists offer as proof is seldom any proof at all. If an hypothesis they invent explains the known facts of a case, they assert it as proved, and therefore true. What fun would they not make of theologians and philosophers, if they reasoned as loosely as they do themselves? Before we can conclude an hypothesis is true because it explains the known facts in the case, we must prove, 1st, that there are and can be no facts in the case not known; and, 2d, that there is no other possible hypothesis on which they can be explained. We do not say the theories of the scientists with regard to the antiquity of the globe and of man on its surface, nor that any of the geological and astronomical hypotheses they set forth are absolutely false; we only say that their alleged facts and reasonings do not prove them. The few facts known might be placed in a very different light by the possibly unknown facts; and there are conceivable any number of other hypotheses which would equally well explain the facts that are known.

The book before us on _Hereditary Genius_ admirably illustrates the insufficiency of the method and the defective logic of the scientists. Mr. Galton, its author, belongs to the school of which such men as Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, and Professor Huxley are British chiefs, men who disdain to recognize a self-existent Creator, and who see no difficulty in supposing the universe self-evolved from nothing, or in tracing intelligence, will, generous affection, and heroic effort to the mechanical, chemical, and electrical arrangement and combination of the particles of brute matter. Mr. Galton has written his book, he says, p. 1, to show

"that a man's natural abilities are derived from inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and the physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses, gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing any thing else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race [breed] of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations."

Mr. Galton, with an air of the most perfect innocence in the world, places man in the category of plants and animals, and in principle simply reproduces for our instruction the _Man-Plant_, from which there is but a step to the _Man-Machine_ of the cynical Lamettrie, the atheistical professor of mathematics in the university of Berlin, and friend of Frederick the Great. The attempt to prove it is a subtle attempt to prove, in the name of science, that the soul, if soul there be, is generated as well as the body, and that a man's natural abilities are derived through generation from his organization. The author from first to last gives no hint that his doctrine is at war with Christian theology, with the freedom of the human will, or man's moral responsibility for his conduct, or that it excludes all morality, all virtue, and all sin, and recognizes only physical good or evil. He would no doubt reply to this that science is science, facts are facts, and he is under no obligation to consider what theological doctrines they do or do not contradict; for nothing can be true that contradicts science or is opposed to facts. That is opposed to actual facts, or that contradicts real science, conceded; for one truth can never contradict another. But the author is bound to consider whether a theory or hypothesis which contradicts the deepest and most cherished beliefs of mankind in all ages and nations, and in which is the key to universal history, is really science, or really is sustained by facts. The presumption, as say the lawyers, is against it, and for its acceptance it requires the clearest and the most irrefragable proofs, and we are not sure that even any proofs would be enough to overcome the presumptions against it, founded as they are on reasons as strong and as conclusive as it is in any case possible for the human mind to have. The assertion that man's natural abilities originate in his organization, and therefore that we may obtain a peculiar breed of men, as we can obtain a peculiar breed of dogs or horses, is revolting to the deepest convictions and the holiest and most irrepressible instincts of every man, except a scientist, and certainly can be reasonably received only on evidence that excludes the possibility of a rational doubt.

Mr. Galton proves, or attempts to prove, his theory by what he no doubt calls an appeal to facts. He takes from a biographical dictionary the names of a few hundreds of men, chiefly Englishmen, during the last two centuries, who have been distinguished as statesmen, lawyers, judges, divines, authors, etc., and finds that in a great majority of cases, as far as is known, they have sprung from families of more than average ability, and, in some cases, from families which have had some one or more members distinguished for several consecutive generations. This is really all the proof Mr. Galton brings to prove his thesis; and if he has not adduced more, it is fair to conclude that it is because no more was to be had.

But the evidence is far from being conclusive. Even if it be true that the majority of eminent men spring from families more or less distinguished, it does not necessarily follow that they derive their eminent abilities by inheritance; for in those same families, born of the same parents, we find other members whose abilities are in no way remarkable, and in no sense above the common level. In a family of half a dozen or a dozen members one will be distinguished and rise to eminence, while the others will remain very ordinary people. Of the Bonaparte family no member approaches in genius the first Napoleon, except the present emperor of the French. Why these marked differences in the children of the same blood, the same breed, the same parents and ancestors? If Mr. Galton explains the inferiority of the five or the eleven by considerations external or independent of race or breed, why may not the superiority of the one be explained by causes alike independent of breed? Why are the natural abilities of my brothers inferior to mine, since we are all born of the same parents? If a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance from organization, why am I superior to them? Every day we meet occasion to ask similar questions. This fact proves that there are causes at work, on which man's eminence or want of eminence depends, of which Mr. Galton's theory takes no note, which escape the greatest scientists, and at best can be only conjectured. But conjecture is not science.

This is not all. As far as known, very eminent men have sprung from parents of very ordinary natural abilities, as of social position. The founders of dynasties and noble families have seldom had distinguished progenitors, and are usually not only the first but the greatest of their line. The present Sir Robert Peel cannot be named alongside of his really eminent father, nor the present Duke of Wellington be compared with his father, the Iron Duke. There is no greater name in history than that of St. Augustine, the eminent father and doctor of the church, a man beside whom in genius and depth, and greatness of mind as well as tenderness of heart, your Platos and Aristotles appear like men of only ordinary stature; yet, though his mother was eminent for her sanctity, his parents do not appear to have been gifted with any extraordinary mental power. Instances are not rare, especially among the saints, of great men who have, so to speak, sprung from nothing. Among the popes we may mention Sixtus Quintus, and Hildebrand, St. Gregory VII.; and among eminent churchmen we may mention St. Thomas of Canterbury, Cardinal Ximenes, and Cardinal Wolsey. The greatest and most gifted of our own statesmen have sprung from undistinguished parents, as Washington, the elder Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Webster, Calhoun. Who dares pretend that every saint has had a saint for a father or mother; that every eminent theologian or philosopher has had any eminent theologian or philosopher for his father; or that every eminent artist, whether in painting, architecture, sculpture, or music, has been the son or grandson of an eminent artist?

Then, again, who can say how much of a great man's greatness is due to his natural abilities with which he was born, and how much is due to the force of example, to family tradition, to education, to his own application, and the concurrence of circumstances? It is in no man's power to tell, nor in any scientist's power to ascertain. It is a common remark that great men in general owe their greatness chiefly to their mothers, and that, in the great majority of cases known, eminent men have had gifted mothers. This, if a fact, is against Mr. Galton's theory; for the father, not the mother, transmits the hereditary character of the offspring, the hereditary qualities of the line, if the physiologists are to be believed. Hence nobility in all civilized nations follows the father, not the mother. The fact of great men owing their greatness more to the mother is explained by her greater influence in forming the mind, in moulding the character, in stimulating and directing the exercise of her son's faculties, than that of the father. It is as educator in the largest sense that the mother forms her son's character and influences his destiny. It is her womanly instincts, affection, and care and vigilance, her ready sympathy, her love, her tenderness, and power to inspire a noble ambition, kindle high and generous aspirations in the breast of her son, that do the work.

Even if it were uniformly true that great men have always descended from parents remarkable for their natural abilities, Mr. Galton's theory that genius is hereditary could not be concluded with scientific certainty. The hereditary transmission of genius might indeed seem probable; but, on the empirical principles of the scientists, it could not be asserted. All that could be asserted would be the relation of concomitance or of juxtaposition, not the relation of cause and effect. The relation of cause and effect is not and cannot, as the scientists tell us, be empirically apprehended. How can they know that the genius of the son is derived hereditarily from the greatness of his progenitors? From the juxtaposition or concomitance of two facts empirically apprehended there is no possible logic by which it can be inferred that the one is the cause of the other. Hence, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, Sir William Hamilton, Professor Huxley, and the positivists follow Hume, and relegate, as we said, causes to the region of the unknowable. In fact, the scientists, if they speak of the relation of cause and effect, mean by it only the relation of juxtaposition in the order of precedence and consequence. Hence, on their own principles, though the facts they assert and describe may be true, none of their conclusions from them, or hypotheses to explain them, have or can have any scientific validity. For, after all, there may be a real cause on which the facts depend, and which demands an entirely different explanation from the one which the scientists offer.

We refuse, therefore, to accept Mr. Galton's hypothesis that genius is hereditary, because the facts he adduces are not all the facts in the case, because there are facts which are not consistent with it, and because he does not show and cannot show that it is the only hypothesis possible for the explanation even of the facts which he alleges. Even his friendly and able reviewer, Dr. Meredith Clymer, concludes his admirable analysis by saying, "A larger induction is necessary before any final decision can be had on the merits of the question." This is the verdict of one of the most scientific minds in the United States, and it is the Scotch verdict, not proven. Yet Mr. Galton would have us accept his theory as science, and on its strength set aside the teachings of revelation and the universal beliefs of mankind. This is the way of all non-Christian scientists of the day, and it is because the church refuses to accept their unverified and unverifiable hypotheses, and condemns them for asserting them as true, that they accuse her of being hostile to modern science. They make certain investigations, ascertain certain facts, imagine certain hypotheses, which are nothing but conjectures, put them forth as science, and then demand that she accept them, and give up her faith so far as incompatible with them. A very reasonable demand indeed!

Press these proud scientists closely, and they will own that _as yet_ their sciences are only tentative, that _as yet_ they are not in a condition to prove absolutely their theories, or to verify their conjectures, but they are in hopes they soon will be. At present, science is only in its infancy, it has only just entered upon the true method of investigation; but it is every day making surprising progress, and there is no telling what marvellous conclusions it will soon arrive at. All this might pass, if it did not concern matters of life and death, heaven and hell. The questions involved are too serious to be sported with, too pressing to wait the slow and uncertain solutions of the tentative science which, during six thousand years, has really made no progress in solving them. The scientists retard science when they ask from it the solution, either affirmative or negative, of questions which confessedly lie not in its province, and dishonor and degrade it when they put forth as science their crude conjectures, or their unverified and unverifiable hypotheses. They, not we, are the real enemies of science, though it would require a miracle to make them see it. Deluded mortals! they start with assumptions that exclude the very possibility of science, and then insist that what they assert or deny shall be accepted by theologians and philosophers as established with scientific certainty! Surely the apostle must have had them in mind when he said of certain men that, "esteeming themselves wise, they became fools."

Genius is not hereditary in Mr. Galton's sense, nor are a man's natural abilities derived by inheritance in the way he would have us believe; for both belong to the soul, not to the body; and the soul is created, not generated. Only the body is generated, and only in what is generated is there natural inheritance. All the facts Mr. Galton adduces we are prepared to admit; but we deny his explanation. We accept, with slight qualifications, his views as summed up by Dr. Clymer in the following passage:

"The doctrine of the pretensions of natural equality in intellect, which teaches that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort, is daily contradicted by the experiences of the nursery, schools, universities, and professional careers. There is a definite limit to the muscular powers of every man, which he cannot by any training or exertion overpass. It is only the novice gymnast who, noting his rapid daily gain of strength and skill, believes in illimitable development; but he learns in time that his maximum performance becomes a rigidly-determinate quantity. The same is true of the experience of the student in the working of his mental powers. The eager boy at the outset of his career is astonished at his rapid progress; he thinks for a while that every thing is within his grasp; but he too soon finds his place among his fellows; he can beat such and such of his mates, and run on equal terms with others, while there will be always some whose intellectual and physical feats he cannot approach. The same experience awaits him when he enters a larger field of competition in the battle of life; let him work with all his diligence, he cannot reach his object; let him have opportunities, he cannot profit by them; he tries and is tried, and he finally learns his gauge--what he can do, and what lies beyond his capacity. He has been taught the hard lesson of his weakness and his strength; he comes to rate himself as the world rates him; and he salves his wounded ambition with the conviction that he is doing all his nature allows him. An evidence of the enormous inequality between the intellectual capacity of men is shown in the prodigious differences in the number of marks obtained by those who gain mathematical honors at the University of Cambridge, England. Of the four hundred or four hundred and fifty students who take their degrees each year, about one hundred succeed in gaining honors in mathematics, and these are ranged in strict order of merit. Forty of them have the title of 'wrangler,' and to be even a low wrangler is a creditable thing. The distinction of being the first in this list of honors, or 'senior wrangler' of the year, means a great deal more than being the foremost mathematician of four hundred or four hundred and fifty men taken at haphazard. Fully one half the wranglers have been boys of mark at their schools. The senior wrangler of the year is the chief of these as regards mathematics. The youths start on their three-years' race fairly, and their run is stimulated by powerful inducements; at the end they are examined rigorously for five and a half hours a day for eight days. The marks are then added up, and the candidates strictly rated in a scale of merit. The precise number of marks got by the senior wrangler, in one of the three years given by Mr. Galton, is 7634; by the second wrangler, 4123; and by the lowest man in the list of honors, 237. The senior wrangler, consequently, had nearly twice as many marks as the second, and more than thirty-two times as many as the lowest man. In the other examinations given, the results do not materially differ. The senior wrangler may, therefore, be set down as having thirty-two times the ability of the lowest men on the lists; or, as Mr. Galton puts it, 'he would be able to grapple with problems more than thirty-two times as difficult; or, when dealing with subjects of the same difficulty, but intelligible to all, would comprehend them more rapidly in, perhaps, the square-root of that proportion.' But the mathematical powers of the ultimate man on the honors-list, which are so low when compared with those of the foremost man, are above mediocrity when compared with the gifts of Englishmen generally; for, though the examination places one hundred honor-men above him, it puts no less than three hundred 'poll-men' below him. Admitting that two hundred out of three hundred have refused to work hard enough to earn honors, there will remain one hundred who, had they done their possible, never could have got them.

"The same striking intellectual differences between man and man are found in whatever way ability may be tested, whether in statesmanship, generalship, literature, science, poetry, art. The evidence furnished by Mr. Galton's book goes to show in how small degree eminence in any class of intellectual powers can be considered as due to purely special faculties. It is the result of concentrated efforts made by men widely gifted--of grand human animals; of natures born to achieve greatness."

We are far from pretending that all men are born with equal abilities, and that all souls are created with equal possibilities, or that every child comes into the world a genius in germ. We believe that all men are born with equal natural rights, and that all should be equal before the law, however various and unequal may be their acquired or adventitious rights; but that is all the equality we believe in. No special effort or training in the world, under the influence of the most favorable circumstances, can make every child a St. Augustine, a St. Thomas, a Bossuet, a Newton, a Leibnitz, a Julius Cæsar, a Wellington, a Napoleon. As one star differeth from another in glory, so does one soul differ from another in its capacities on earth as well as in its blessedness in heaven. Here we have no quarrel with Mr. Galton. We are by no means believers in the late Robert Owen's doctrine, that you can make all men equal if you will only surround them from birth with the same circumstances, and enable them to live in parallelograms.

We are prepared to go even farther, and to recognize that the distinction between noble and ignoble, gentle and simple, recognized in all ages and by all nations, is not wholly unfounded. There is as great a variety and as great an inequality in families as in individuals. Aristocracy is not a pure prejudice; and though it has no political privileges in this country, yet it exists here no less than elsewhere, and it is well for us that it does. No greater evil could befall any country than to have no distinguished families rising, generation after generation, above the common level; no born leaders of the people, who stand head and shoulders above the rest; and the great objection to democracy is, that it tends to bring all down to a general average, and to place the administration of public interests in the hands of a low mediocrity, as our American experience, in some measure, proves. The demand of the age for equality of conditions and possessions is most mischievous. If all were equally rich, all would be equally poor; and if all were at the top of society, society would have no bottom, and would be only a bottomless pit. If there were none devoted to learning, no strength and energy of character above the multitude, society would be without leaders, and would soon fall to pieces, as an army of privates without officers.

There is no doubt that there are noble lines, and the descendants of noble ancestors do, as a rule, though not invariably, surpass the descendants of plebeian or undistinguished lines. The Stanleys, for instance, have been distinguished in British history for at least fifteen generations. The present Earl Derby, the fifteenth earl of his house, is hardly inferior to his gifted father, and nobly sustains the honors of his house. We expect more from the child of a good family than from the child of a family of no account, and hold that birth is never to be decried or treated as a matter of no importance. But we count it so chiefly because it secures better breeding, and subjection to higher, nobler, and purer formative influences, from the earliest moment. Example and family traditions are of immense reach in forming the character, and it is not a little to have constantly presented to the consideration of the child the distinguished ability, the eminent worth and noble deeds of a long line of illustrious ancestors, especially in an age and country where blood is highly esteemed, and the honorable pride of family is cultivated. The honor and esteem in which a family has been held for its dignity and worth through several generations is a capital, an outfit for the son, secures him, in starting, the advantage of less well-born competitors, and all the aid in advance of a high position and the good-will of the community. More is exacted of him than of them; he is early made to feel that _noblesse oblige_, and that failure would in his case be dishonor. He is thereby stimulated to greater effort to succeed.

Yet we deny not that there is something else than all this in blood. A man's genius belongs to his soul, and is no more inherited than the soul itself. But man is not all soul, any more than he is all body; body and soul are in close and mysterious relation, and in this life neither acts without the other. The man's natural abilities are psychical, not physical, and are not inherited, because the soul is created, not generated; but their external manifestation may depend, in a measure, on organization, and organization is inherited. Mr. Galton's facts may, then, be admitted without our being obliged to accept his theory. The brain is generally considered by physiologists as the organ of the mind, and it may be so, without implying that the brain secretes thought, will, affection, as the liver secretes bile, or the stomach secretes the gastric juice.

The soul is distinct from the body, and is its _form_, its life, or its vivifying and informing principle; yet it uses the body as the organ of its action. Hence, De Bonald defines man, an intelligence that serves himself by organs, not an intelligence served by organs, as Plato said. The activity is in the soul, not in the organs. The organ we call the eye does not see; the soul sees by means of the eye. So of the ear, the smell, the taste, the touch. We speak of the five senses; but we should speak more correctly if we spoke, not of five senses, but of five organs of sense; for the sense is psychical, and is one like the soul that senses through the organs. In like manner, the brain appears to be the organ of the mind, through which, together with the several nerves that centre in it, the mind performs its various operations of thinking, willing, reasoning, remembering, reflecting, etc. The nature of the relation of the soul, which is one, simple, and immaterial, with a material body with its various organs, nervous and ganglionic systems, is a mystery which we cannot explain. Yet we cannot doubt that there is a reciprocal action and reaction of the soul and body, or, at least, the bodily organs can and do offer, at times, an obstacle to the external action of the soul. I cannot by my will raise my arm, if it be paralyzed, though my psychical power to will to raise it is not thereby affected. If the organs of seeing and hearing, the eye and the ear, are injured or originally defective, my external sight and hearing are thereby injured or rendered defective; but not in other psychical relations, as evinced by the fact that when the physical defect is removed, or the physical injury is cured, the soul finds no difficulty in manifesting its ordinary power of seeing or hearing. So we may say of the other organs of sense, and of the body generally, in so far as it is the organ of the soul, or used by the soul in its external display or manifestation of its powers.

No doubt the organization may be more or less favorable to this external display or manifestation, or that, under certain conditions, and to a certain extent, the organization is hereditary, or transmitted by natural generation. There may be transmitted from parents or ancestors a healthy or diseased, a normal or a more or less abnormal organization; and so far, and in this sense, genius may be hereditary, and a man's natural abilities may be derived by inheritance, as are the form and features; but only to this extent, and in this sense--that is, as to their external display or exercise; for a man may be truly eloquent in his soul, and even in writing, whose stammering tongue prevents him from displaying any eloquence in his speech. The organization does not deprive the soul of its powers. My power to will to raise my arm is not lessened by the fact that my arm is paralyzed. And in all ordinary cases, the soul is able, at least by the help of grace, freely given to all, to overcome a vicious temperament, control, in the moral order, a defective organization, and maintain her moral freedom and integrity. It has been proved that the deaf-mute can be taught to speak, and that idiots or natural-born fools can be so educated as to be able to exhibit no inconsiderable degree of intelligence.

We do not believe a word in Darwin's theory of natural selection; for all the facts on which he bases it admit of a different explanation, nor in its kindred theory of development or evolution of species. One of our own collaborators has amply refuted both theories, by showing that what these theories assume to be the development or evolution of new species, whether by natural selection or otherwise, is but a reversion to the original type and condition, in like manner as we have proved, over and over again, that the savage is the degenerate, not the primeval man. It is not improbable that your African negro is the degenerate descendant of a once over-civilized race, and that he owes his physical peculiarities to the fact that he has become subject, like the animal world, to the laws of nature, which are resisted and modified in their action by the superior races. We do not assert this as scientifically demonstrated, but as a theory which is far better sustained by well-known facts and incontrovertible principles than either the theory of development or of natural selection.

Yet the soul as _forma corporis_ has an influence, we say not how much, on organization; and high intellectual and moral culture may modify it, and, other things being equal, render it in turn more favorable to the external manifestation of the inherent powers of the soul. This more favorable organization may be transmitted by natural generation from parents to children, and, if continued through several consecutive generations, it may give rise to noble families and to races superior to the average. Physical habits are transmissible by inheritance. This is not, as Darwin and Mr. Galton suppose, owing to natural selection, but to the original mental and moral culture become traditional in certain families and races, and to the voluntary efforts of the soul, as is evident from the fact that when the culture is neglected, and the voluntary efforts cease to be made, the superiority is lost, the organization becomes depraved, and the family or race runs out or drops into the ranks of the ignoble. The blood, however blue, will not of itself alone suffice to keep up the superiority of the family or the race; nor will marriages, however judicious, through no matter how many consecutive generations, without the culture, keep up the nobility, as Mr. Galton would have us believe; for the superiority of the blood depends originally and continuously on the soul, its original endowments, and its peculiar training or culture through several generations.

It is in this same way we explain the origin and continuance of national characteristics and differences. Climate and geographical position count, no doubt, for something; but more in the direction they give to the national aims and culture than in their direct effects on bodily organization. It is not probable that the original tribes of Greece had any finer organic adaptation to literature and the arts than had the Scythian hordes from which they sprang; but their climate and geographical position turned their attention to cultivation of the beautiful, and the continual cultivation of the beautiful through several generations gave the Greeks an organization highly favorable to artistic creations. Then, again, Rome cultivated and excelled in the genius of law and jurisprudence. But under Christian faith and culture, the various nations of Europe became assimilated, and the peculiar national characteristics under Gentilism were in a measure obliterated. They also revive as the nations under Protestantism recede from Christianity and return to Gentilism, and are held in check only by the reminiscences of Catholicity, and by the mutual intercourse of nations kept up by trade and commerce, literature and the arts.

The facts alleged by Mr. Galton and his brother materialists are, therefore, explicable without impugning the doctrine of the simplicity and immateriality of the soul, and that the soul is created, not generated as is the body. They are perfectly explicable without supposing our natural abilities originate in or are the result of natural organization. They can be explained in perfect consistency with revelation, with the teachings of the church, and with the universal beliefs of mankind. Thus it would be supreme unreason to require us to reject the Gospel, or our holy religion, on the strength of the unverified and unverifiable hypotheses of the scientists, and degrade man, the lord of this lower creation, to the level of the beasts that perish. The quarrel we began by speaking of is in no sense a quarrel between faith and reason, or revelation and science; but simply a quarrel between what is certain by faith and reason on the one side, and the unverified and unverifiable hypotheses or conjectures of the so-called scientists on the other. We oppose none of the real facts which the scientists set forth; we oppose only their unsupported theories and unwarranted inductions. We conclude by reminding the scientists that others have studied nature as well as they, and are as familiar with its facts and as able to reason on them as they are, and yet have no difficulty in reconciling their science and their faith.

FOOTNOTE:

[285] 1. _Hereditary Genius, its Laws and its Consequences._ By Francis Galton, F.R.S., etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870. 8vo, pp. 390. 2. _Hereditary Genius._ An Analytical Review. From the _Journal of Psychological Medicine_, April, 1870. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1870. 8vo, pp. 19.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.