PART VII.

I.

The clergy still kept away from the grotto and aloof from all share in the movement. The orders of Mgr. Laurence were strictly observed throughout the diocese.

The people, cruelly harassed by the persecuting measures of the administration, turned with anxiety toward the authority charged by God with the conduct and defence of the faithful. They expected to see the bishop protest energetically against the violence offered to their religious liberty. A vain hope! His lordship kept absolutely silent, and let the prefect have everything his own way. Shortly afterward, M. Massy caused to be circulated in print a report that he acted according to agreement with the ecclesiastical authority; then astonishment became general, for the bishop did not publish a line in contradiction.

The heart of the people was troubled.

Hitherto the ardent faith of the multitude had been at a loss to explain the extreme cautiousness of the clergy. At the present juncture, after so many proofs of the reality of the apparitions, the springing up of the fountain, and so many cures and miracles, this excessive reserve of the bishop during the persecution of the civil power seemed to them like a defection. Neither respect for his private character nor even his office could restrain the popular murmurs.

Why not pronounce upon the matter, now that the elements of certainty were flowing in from all quarters? Why not, at least, order some inquiry or examination to guide the faith of all? Were not events which might suffice to overthrow the civil power and raise a sedition worth the attention of the bishop? Did not the prelate's silence justify the prefect in acting as he did? If the apparition were false, ought not the bishop to have warned the faithful and nipped error in the bud? If, on the other hand, it were true, ought he not to have set his face against this persecution of believers, and courageously defended the work of God against the malice of men? Would not a mere sign from the bishop, even an examination, have stopped the prefect from entering upon his course of persecution? Were the priests and the bishop deaf to all the demands for recognition which came from the foot of this rock, ever to be celebrated as the place where the Mother of our crucified God had set her virginal foot? Had the letter succeeded in killing the spirit, as among the priests and Pharisees of the Gospel, so that they were blind to the most striking miracles? Were they so occupied with the administration of church affairs, so absorbed by their clerical functions, that the almighty hand of God outside the temple was for them an affair of little account? Was this time of miracles and persecution a proper season for the bishop to take the last place, as in processions?

Such was the clamor that arose and daily swelled from the crowd. The clergy were accused of indifference or hostility, the bishop of weakness and timidity.

Led by events and the natural bent of the human heart, this vast movement of men and ideas, so essentially religious in spirit, threatened to become opposed to the clergy. The multitude, so full of faith in the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin, seemed about to go where the divine power was plainly manifest, and to desert the sanctuary, where, under the priestly vestment, the weaknesses of men are too often to be found.

Nevertheless, Mgr. Laurence continued immovable in his attitude of reserve. What was the reason that made the prelate resist the popular voice, so often taken for the voice of Heaven? Was it divine prudence? Was it human prudence? Was it shrewdness? Or was it mere weakness?

II.

It is not always so easy to believe, and in spite of the striking proof, Mgr. Laurence still retained some doubts, and hesitated to act. His well-instructed faith was not as quick as the faith of the simple. God, who shows himself, so to speak, to souls who cannot pursue human studies, is often pleased to impose a long and patient search upon cultivated and informed minds who are able to arrive at truth by the way of labor, examination, and reflection. Even as the Apostle St. Thomas refused to believe the testimony of the disciples and the holy women, so Mgr. Laurence desired to see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands. Exact, and far more inclined to the practical than to the ideal, by nature distrustful of popular exaggeration, the prelate belonged to that class who are chilled by the passionate sentiments of others, and who readily suspect self-deception in anything like emotion or enthusiasm. Although at times he was startled by such extraordinary events, he so feared to attribute them rashly to the supernatural that he might have put off his acknowledgment of their true source until it was too late, were it not that his natural bent had been well tempered by the grace of God.

Not only did Mgr. Laurence hesitate to pronounce judgment, but he could not even make up his mind to order an official inquiry. As a Catholic bishop penetrated with the external dignity of the church, he feared to compromise it by engaging prematurely to examine facts of which he himself had insufficient personal knowledge, and which, after all, might have no better foundation than the dreams of a little peasant and the illusions of poor fanatical souls.

Of course the bishop never had counselled the measures taken by the civil power, and warmly disapproved them. But, since the wrong had been committed, was it not prudent to draw from it an accidental good? Was it not well--if, perchance, there were some error in the popular stories and belief--to abandon the pretended miracle, and allow it to sustain single-handed the hostile examinations and persecution of M. Massy, the free-thinkers, and scientists leagued together against superstition? Was it not proper to wait, and not to hasten a conflict with the civil power which might prove entirely unnecessary? The bishop privately answered after this manner all who pressed him to interfere: "I deplore as much as you the measures which have been taken; but I have no charge of the police, I have not been consulted with regard to their proceedings, what then can I do? Let everybody answer for his own acts.... I have had nothing to do with the action of the civil power in reference to the grotto; and I am glad of it. By-and-by the ecclesiastical authority will see if it is necessary to move." In this spirit of prudence and expectation, the bishop ordered his clergy to preach calmness and quiet to the people, and to employ all means to make them submit to the prohibitions of the prefect. To avoid all disturbance, not to create any new difficulties, and even to favor, out of respect for the principle of authority, the measures adopted in the name of government, and to let events take their course, seemed to the bishop by far the wisest plan.

Such were the thoughts of Mgr. Laurence, as is manifest from his correspondence about this time. Such were the considerations which determined his position and inspired his conduct. Perhaps, if he had possessed the strong faith of the multitude, he would have reasoned otherwise. But it was well that he reasoned and acted as he did. Because, if Mgr. Laurence, with the prudence becoming a bishop, looked from the standpoint of possible error, God with infinite wisdom saw the certainty of his own acts and the truth of his work. God willed that his work should undergo the test of time, and should affirm itself by surmounting without human aid the trials of persecution. If the bishop had from the start believed in the apparitions and miracles, could he have refrained from a generous outburst of apostolic zeal and energetic interference in behalf of his persecuted flock? If he really had believed that the Mother of God had appeared in his diocese, healing the sick and demanding a temple in her honor, could he have balanced against the will of heaven the pitiful opposition of a Massy, a Jacomet, or a Rouland? Certainly not. With what an ardent faith he would have set himself with mitred brow and cross in hand against the civil power, as St. Ambrose of old met the emperor at the church-door of Milan! Openly and at the head of his flock, he would have gone without fear to drink at the miraculous fountain, to kneel in the place sanctified by the footsteps of the Blessed Virgin, and to lay the corner-stone of a magnificent temple in honor of Mary Immaculate.

But in thus defending the work of God at that time, the prelate would have infallibly weakened it in the future. The support which he gave it at the start would hereafter render it suspected as emanating from man and not from God. The more that the bishop kept aloof from the movement, the more rebellious or even hostile he may be showed to have been to the popular faith, so much the more clearly is the supernatural manifested by its triumph, singly and in virtue of its truth, over the hatred or neglect of all that bears the name of power.

Providence resolved that so it should be, and that the great apparition of the Blessed Virgin in the nineteenth century should pass through trials, as did Christianity, from its very birth. He wished that universal faith should commence among the poor and humble, in the same way as, in the kingdom of heaven, the first were last and the last first. It was then necessary, according to the divine plan, that the bishop, far from taking the initiative, should hesitate the longest, and finally yield last of all to the irresistible evidence of facts.

See how, in his secret designs, he had placed at Tarbes on its episcopal throne the eminent and reserved man whose portrait we have just sketched. See how he had kept Mgr. Laurence from putting faith in the apparition, and maintained him in doubt in spite of the most striking facts. Thus, he confirmed in the prelate that spirit of prudence which he had bestowed upon him, and left to his episcopal wisdom that character of long hesitation and extreme mildness which, in the midst of their excitement, the people could not comprehend, but whose providential usefulness and admirable results the future was about to manifest to the eyes of all.

The people had the virtue of faith, but in their ardor they wished to force the clergy into premature interference. The bishop possessed the virtue of prudence, but his eyes were not yet opened to the supernatural events which were taking place in the sight of all. Complete wisdom and the just measure of all things were then as ever in the mind of God alone, who directed them toward the end and made use both of the ardor of the people and the prelate. He willed that his church, represented by the bishop, should abstain from taking an active part, and keep out of the struggle until the supreme moment, when she was to step forward as the final arbiter in the debate and proclaim the truth.

III.

Less calm and less patient than the bishop by their very nature, and now carried away by enthusiasm at sight of the miraculous cures which took place daily, the people could not bear themselves so indifferently toward the measures of the administration.

The more intrepid, braving the tribunals and their fines, broke through the barriers, and, flinging their names to the guards, went to pray before the grotto. Among these same guards many shared the faith of the crowd, and commenced their watch by kneeling at the entrance to the venerable spot.

Placed between the morsel of bread which their humble employment procured and the repulsive duty which was demanded by it, these poor men, in their prayer to the Mother of the weak and needy, cast all the responsibility upon the authority which controlled their acts. Nevertheless, they strictly fulfilled their duty and reported all the delinquents.

Although the impetuous zeal of many believers caused them to expose themselves willingly in order to invoke the Blessed Virgin in the place of her apparition, nevertheless the jurisprudence of M. Duprat, whose fine of five francs could be raised, as we have explained, to enormous sums, was sufficient to terrify the great mass. For most of them, such a condemnation would have been utter ruin.

And yet a great number endeavored to escape the rigorous surveillance of the police. Sometimes the faithful, respecting the barriers where the guards were stationed, came to the grotto by secret paths. One of the number watched and gave notice of the approach of the police by an appointed signal. It was with the utmost difficulty that the sick could be transported to the miraculous fountain. The authorities, being notified of these infractions, doubled the number of sentries and intercepted all the paths.

Still, many swam across the Gave to kneel before the grotto and drink at the holy fountain. Night favored such infractions, and they multiplied continually in spite of the vigilance of the police. The influence of the clergy was greatly lessened and almost compromised on account of the reasons which we have set forth.

In spite of the efforts which they made to carry out the orders of the bishop, the priests were powerless to calm the general agitation or to cause their flock to respect the arbitrary measures of the civil power. "We ought to respect only that which is respectable," such was the revolutionary motto which everywhere found echo. The personal ascendency of the curé of Lourdes, who was so universally loved and venerated, began to give way before popular irritation.

Order was threatened by the very means that were taken to maintain it. The people, wounded in their most cherished beliefs, wavered between violence and submission. While on one hand petitions to the emperor were signed in all parts demanding the withdrawal of the orders of the prefect in the name of liberty of conscience, on the other hand the planks which closed the grotto were several times torn off during the night and thrown into the Gave. Jacomet vainly strove to find out these believers, so wanting in respect for the civil power as to abandon themselves without shame to a crime hitherto unknown to our laws, nocturnal prayer with trespass and breach of enclosure.

Sometimes they prostrated themselves at the stakes which formed the boundary of the forbidden ground--a mute protest against the measures of the government, and a mute appeal to Almighty God.

On the day which saw the sentence of the tribunal of Lourdes set aside by the court of Pau with reference to several women who were prosecuted for innocent conversation about the grotto, and two others who were acquitted, then an enormous crowd gathered around the stakes, they shouted victory, and passed the barriers in compact masses without a word in answer to the cries and efforts of the police. The latter, disconcerted by the recent check at Pau and overpowered by the multitude, gave way and let the torrent pass. The following day orders and remonstrances from the prefect came to comfort them and to prescribe a stricter watch. The force was increased. Threats of dismissal were bruited by the agent of the government, and vigilance redoubled.

Sinister reports of imprisonment absolutely false, but cleverly circulated, were readily accepted by the multitude. The real penalties not being sufficient, it was necessary to resort to imaginary ones in order to make a stronger impression on the souls of the faithful. By such means they succeeded in hindering for a time any renewal of the open infractions of the law.

Occasionally, unfortunate victims of blindness or palsy from a distance, who had been abandoned by the physicians and whose ills God alone knew how to cure, would come to the mayor and entreat him with clasped hands to give their lives one last chance at the miraculous spring. The mayor was inflexible, showing in his execution of the prefect's orders that energy of detail by which feeble natures so often deceive themselves. He refused in the name of the superior authority the desired permission.

The greater number then went along the right bank of the Gave to a point opposite the grotto. Here on certain days an immense throng collected, beyond the reach of the prefectoral power; for the land belonged to private parties, who believed that the benediction of Heaven would fall upon the footprints of the pilgrims, and gladly permitted them to kneel upon their land, and to pray with eyes turned toward the place of the apparition and the miraculous fountain.

About this time, Bernadette fell sick, affected by her asthma and also fatigued by the number of visitors who wished to see and speak with her. In hopes of quieting souls by removing every cause of agitation, the bishop availed himself of this circumstance to advise Bernadette's parents to send her to the baths of Cauterets, which are not far from Lourdes.

It would serve to withdraw her from those conversations and inquiries which served to increase popular emotion. The Soubirous, alarmed at her state, and observing the bad effect of these continual visits, confided Bernadette to one of her aunts who was about to go to Cauterets, and who undertook the care and expenses of her little niece. The cost of such a visit is considerably less at that time of the year than any other, as the baths are almost deserted. The rich and privileged come later in the season. Here, as an invalid seeking repose and quiet, Bernadette used the waters for two or three weeks.

IV.

As the month of June draws to a close, the fashionable watering season begins in the Pyrenees. Bernadette returned to her home at Lourdes. And now, tourists, bathers, travellers, and scientific men from a thousand different parts of Europe began to arrive at the various thermal stations. The rugged mountains, so wild and lonely during the rest of the year, were peopled with a throng of visitors belonging for the most part to the higher social class of the great cities.

By the close of July, the Pyrenees became suburbs of Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin.

Frenchmen and foreigners met in the dining-halls, jostled one another in the _salons_, rambled among the mountain-paths, or rode in every direction, along the streams, over the ridges, or through the flowery and shaded valleys.

Ministers worn out by labor, deputies and senators fatigued by too much listening or speaking, bankers, politicians, merchants, ecclesiastics, magistrates, writers, and people of the world, all came to provide for their health, not only at the famous springs, but in the pure and bracing mountain air, which gives energy to the pulse and fills the mind with vigor and activity.

This motley society represented all beliefs and disbeliefs, all the philosophic systems, and all the opinions under the sun. It was a microcosm. It was an abridged edition of Europe--that Europe which Providence thus wished to place in presence of his supernatural works. Nevertheless, as of old in Bethlehem he showed himself to the shepherds before his manifestation to the Magian kings; so at Lourdes he first called the humble and the poor to behold his wonders, and only after them the princes of wealth, intelligence, and art.

From Cauterets, from Barèges, from Luz, from St. Sauveur, strangers hastened to Lourdes. The city was filled with rattling coaches, drawn, according to the custom of the country, by four powerful horses, whose harness and trappings are of many colors and adorned with strings of little bells. The greater proportion of the pilgrims paid no attention to the barriers. They braved the law and went into the grotto, some out of motives of faith, and others led by mere curiosity. Bernadette received innumerable visits. Everybody wished to see and could see the persons who had been miraculously cured. In the _salons_ at the baths, the events which we have recounted formed the universal topic of conversation. Little by little, public opinion began to be formed, no longer the opinion of an insignificant nook at the foot of the Pyrenees, and extending only from Bayonne to Toulouse or Foix, but the opinion of France and Europe, now represented among the mountains by visitors of all classes, of every intellectual shade, and from every place.

The violent measures of Baron Massy, which vexed curiosity as much as piety, were highly censured by all. Some said that they were illegal, others that they were misplaced, but all agreed that they were utterly inadequate to suppressing the prodigious movement of which the grotto and the miraculous spring were the centre.

The evidences of this total inefficiency drew upon the prefect severe criticism from those who shared his horror of the supernatural, and who at the start would have loudly applauded his policy. Men in general, and free-thinkers in particular, judge the acts of government rather by their results than by philosophic principles.

Success is the most certain means of winning their approval; failure, a twofold misfortune, since universal blame is added to the humiliation of defeat. M. Massy was subject to this double mishap.

There were circumstances, however, which put the zeal of the police and even the official courage of M. Jacomet to a rude test. Illustrious personages violated the enclosure.

What was to be done in such embarrassing cases?

Once they suddenly halted a stranger, of strongly marked and powerful features, who passed the stakes with the manifest intention of going to the Massabielle rocks.

"You can't pass here, sir."

"You will soon see whether I can or cannot pass," answered the stranger, without for a moment arresting his progress towards the place of the apparition.

"Your name? I will enter a complaint against you."

"My name is Louis Veuillot," replied the stranger.

While the process was being drawn up against the celebrated writer, a lady crossed the limits a short distance behind him, and went to kneel before the planks that shut up the grotto. Through the cracks of the palisade she watched the bubbling miraculous spring and prayed. What was she asking of God? Was her prayer directed towards the past or the future? Was it for herself or others, whose destiny had been confided to her? Did she ask the blessing of Heaven for one person or for a family? Never mind!

This lady did not escape the watchful eyes of him who represented at once the prefectoral policy, the magistracy, and the police.

Argus quitted M. Veuillot, and rushed towards the kneeling figure.

"Madame," said he, "it is not permitted to pray here. You are caught in open violation of the law; you will have to answer for it before the police court. Your name?"

"Certainly," replied the lady; "I am Madame l'Amirale Bruat, governess to his highness the Prince Imperial."

The terrible Jacomet had, above all things, a respect for the social hierarchy and the powers that be. He did not pursue the _procès-verbal_. Such scenes were often renewed. Certain of the _procès-verbaux_ frightened the agents, and may possibly have frightened the prefect himself.

A deplorable state of things: his orders were violated with impunity by the powerful, and cruelly maintained at the expense of the weak. He had two sets of weights and measures.

V.

The question raised by the various supernatural occurrences, by the apparitions--true or false--of the Blessed Virgin, by the breaking out of the fountain, and by the real or imaginary cures, could not remain for ever in suspense. Such was the conviction of everybody. It was necessary that the matter should be submitted to severe and competent inquiry.

Strangers, who spent but a short season in the place, who had not witnessed from the first the miraculous events, and who could not form a conviction from personal knowledge, as could the inhabitants of the surrounding country, amid the various accounts and opinions that were to be heard from all quarters, were unanimous in their astonishment at the apparent indifference of the clergy. And, while they blamed the inopportune meddling of the civil power, they also censured the prolonged inaction of the religious authority, personified in the bishop.

The free-thinkers, interpreting the hesitation of the prelate to their own advantage, felt confident of his final verdict. The partisans of Baron Massy began to announce an entire accord between the sentiments of the bishop and those of the prefect. They cast the entire responsibility of the violent measures upon Mgr. Laurence.

"The bishop," they said, "might, by a single word, have put a stop to this superstition. It was only necessary for him to deliver his judgment on the matter. But in default of his action, the civil authority has been forced to proceed."

But in view of the evidence for the miracles, the faithful considered the final judgment as certainly favorable to their belief. Moreover, a great number of strangers who had no conviction nor party prejudices, sought to be relieved of their uncertainty by a definitive examination. "Of what use," said they, "is religious authority if not to decide such matters, and to fix the faith of those whom distance, or lack of documents, or other causes, prevent from examining and settling the question for themselves?"

Continual demands reached the ears of the bishop. The murmur of the crowd was swelled by the voice of those that are usually styled the "enlightened class," although their lesser lights sometimes cause them to lose sight of brighter ones. Everybody demanded a formal inquest.

Supernatural cures continued to manifest themselves. Hundreds of authentic affidavits of miraculous cures, signed by numerous witnesses, were daily received at the bishop's palace.[100]

On the 16th of July, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Bernadette heard again within herself the voice which had been silent for some months, and which no longer called her to the Massabielle rocks, then fenced and guarded, but to the right bank of the Gave, to the meadow where the crowd knelt and prayed beyond reach of _procès-verbaux_ and annoyance of the police. It was now eight o'clock in the evening.

Scarcely had the child prostrated herself and commenced to recite her beads, when the divine Mother appeared to her. The Gave, which separated her from the grotto, had no existence for her ecstatic vision. She saw only the blessed rock, quite close to her, as formerly, and the immaculate Virgin, whose sweet smile confirmed all the past and vouched for all the future. No word escaped her heavenly lips. At a certain moment she bent towards the child as if to take a long farewell. Then she re-entered paradise. This was the eighteenth apparition: it was to be the last.

In a different or opposite sense, strange facts now took place which it is necessary to notice. On three or four occasions, certain women and children had, or pretended to have, visions similar to those of Bernadette.

Were these visions real? Was diabolical mysticism endeavoring to mix with the divine in order to trouble it? Was there at the bottom of these singular phenomena a mental derangement or the ill-timed trickery of naughty children? Or was there a hostile hand secretly at work pushing forward these visionaries in order to cast discredit on the miracles at the grotto? We cannot tell.

The multitude, whose eyes were fixed on all the details, and who eagerly sought to draw conclusions from what they already knew, were less reserved in their judgment.

The supposition that the false visionaries were incited by the police immediately took possession of the public mind as being very consistent with the policy of the authorities. The children who pretended to have had visions mingled their accounts with most extravagant incoherencies. Once they scaled the barrier which enclosed the grotto, and, under pretence of offering their services to the pilgrims, of procuring the water for them, and of touching their beads on the rock, they received and appropriated money. Strange to say, Jacomet did not interfere with their proceedings, although it would have been quite easy to have arrested them. He even affected not to notice these strange scenes, ecstasies, and violations of the enclosure. From this surprising behavior of the shrewd and far-sighted chief, everybody concluded the existence of one of those secret plots of which the police, and even the administration, are sometimes thought capable.

"Baron Massy," so they said, "sees that public opinion is withdrawing from him, and, convinced that open violence is insufficient to put a stop to these events, has sought to dishonor them in principle by encouraging the false visionaries, full accounts of whom we shall soon see in the journals and the official reports. _Is fecit cui prodest._"

Whatever might have been the truth of these suspicions, perhaps incorrect, such scenes could not but disturb the peace of souls. The curé of Lourdes, moved by these scandals, immediately expelled the pretended seers from the _catechisme_, and declared that, if similar occurrences took place in the future, he would not rest until he had exposed their true instigators.

The position and threats of the curé produced a sudden and radical effect. The pretended visions ceased at once, and nothing more was heard of them. They had only lasted four or five days.

M. Peyramale notified the bishop of this occurrence. M. Jacomet, on his part, addressed to the authorities an exaggerated and romantic statement, of which we will have future occasion to speak. This audacious attempt of the enemy to destroy the true nature and honor of the movement only added to the reasons which called peremptorily for action on the part of the bishop. Everything seemed to indicate that the moment for interference had come, when the religious authority should set about examining and giving sentence.

Men of distinction in the Catholic world, such as Mgr. de Salines, Archbishop of Auch; Mgr. Thibaud, Bishop of Montpellier; Mgr. de Garsignies, Bishop of Soissons; M. Louis Veuillot, chief editor of the _Univers_; and persons less widely celebrated, but of national reputation, such as M. de Rességuier, formerly a deputy; M. Vène, chief engineer of mines, and inspector-general of thermal waters in the Pyrenees; and a great number of eminent Catholics, were at that time in the country.

All had examined these extraordinary facts which form the subject of our history; all had interrogated Bernadette; all were either believers or strongly inclined to believe. They tell of one of the most venerated bishops, that he was unable to control the emotion awakened by the _naif_ statement of the little seer. Gazing upon the open brow which had received the glance of the ineffable Virgin Mother of God, the prelate could not restrain the first movement of piety. The prince of the church bowed before the majesty of that humble peasant.

"Pray for me; bless me and my flock," he cried, choked with emotion, and sinking on his knees.

"Rise! rise! my lord! It is yours to bless her," said the curé of Lourdes, who was present, and instantly seized the bishop's hand.

Although the priest had sprung forward quickly, Bernadette had already advanced, and, all abashed in her humility, bowed her head for the blessing of the prelate.

The bishop gave it, but not without shedding tears.

VI.

The entire course of events, the testimony of such grave men, and their evident conviction after examining, were facts which made a lively impression on the clear and sagacious mind of the Bishop of Tarbes. Mgr. Laurence thought that the time had now come to speak, and he came forth from his silence. On July 28, he published the following orders, which were immediately known throughout the entire diocese, and produced intense excitement; for every one understood that the strange position which he had hitherto assumed was now about to have its solution:

"ORDER OF HIS LORDSHIP THE BISHOP OF TARBES, CONSTITUTING A COMMISSION TO REPORT ON THE AUTHENTICITY AND NATURE OF CERTAIN FACTS WHICH HAVE, FOR SIX MONTHS, BEEN TAKING PLACE ON OCCASION OF A REAL OR PRETENDED APPARITION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN IN A GROTTO SITUATED WEST OF THE TOWN OF LOURDES.

"Bertrand-Severe-Laurence, by the mercy of God and the apostolic favor of the Holy See, Bishop of Tarbes.

"To the clergy and faithful of our diocese, health and benediction in our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Facts of grave importance, and intimately connected with religion, have been occurring at Lourdes since the eleventh of last February. They have stirred our whole diocese, and their fame has been re-echoed in foreign parts.

"Bernadette Soubirous, a young girl of Lourdes, fourteen years of age, has had visions in the Massabielle grotto, situated west of that town. The Blessed Virgin has appeared to her. A fountain has risen on the spot. The water of this fountain, having been drunk or used as a wash, has operated a great number of cures, which are considered miraculous. Many persons have come from parts of our own and from neighboring dioceses to seek, at this fountain, the cure of various diseases, invoking the Immaculate Virgin.

"The civil power has been alarmed by this. The ecclesiastical authority has been urged by all parties, since the month of March, to make some declaration concerning this improvised pilgrimage. We have delayed, up to the present time--believing that the hour was not come for us to deal successfully with this matter, and also that, to give due weight to our judgment, it would be necessary to proceed with wise moderation, to distrust the prejudices of the first days of popular enthusiasm, to allow agitation to quiet itself, to give time for reflection, and to procure light for an attentive and clear investigation.

"Three classes appeal to our decision, but with different views:

"First are those who, refusing all examination, see in the events at the grotto, and in the cures attributed to its water, only superstition, jugglery, and deceit.

"It is evident that we cannot, _à priori_, share their opinion without serious examination. Their journals have, from the start, cried, and loudly too, superstition, fraud, and bad faith. They have affirmed that the affair of the grotto has had its rise in sordid and guilty cupidity, and have thus wounded the moral sense of our Christian people. The plan of denying everything and of accusing intentions seems to us very convenient for cutting off difficulties; but, on the other hand, very disloyal to sound reason, and more apt to irritate than to convince. To deny the possibility of supernatural facts is to follow a superannuated school, to abjure Christianity, and to proceed in the ruts of the infidel philosophy of the last century. We, as Catholics, cannot take counsel in such a matter with those who deny God's power to make exceptions to his own laws, nor even join them in examining whether a given fact is natural or supernatural, knowing in advance that they proclaim the impossibility of the supernatural. By this, do we shrink from thorough, sincere, and conscientious discussion enlightened by advanced science? By no means. On the contrary, we desire it, with all our heart. We wish these facts to be submitted to the severest tests of evidence compatible with sound philosophy, and, accordingly, to determine whether they are natural or divine, that prudent men, learned in the sciences of mystical theology, medicine, physics, chemistry, geology, etc., etc., be invited to the discussion, in order that science shall be consulted and give her sentence. And we desire, above all, that no means be neglected to ascertain the truth.

"Another class neither approve nor condemn the events which are everywhere recounted, but suspend their judgment. Before pronouncing definitely, they wish to know the views of competent authority, and earnestly ask for them.

"Finally, a third and very numerous class have become thoroughly, though perhaps prematurely, convinced. They impatiently look to the bishop to pronounce immediately on this grave affair. Although they expect from us a decision favorable to their own pious sentiments, we know their obedient spirit well enough to be assured that they will agree with our judgment, whatever that may be, as soon as it is known.

"It is, therefore, to enlighten the piety of so many thousands of the faithful, to correspond with an urgent public appeal to settle the uncertainty and quiet the agitation of souls, that we yield to-day to instances repeated and continued, from all parts. We desire light on facts in the highest degree important to the faithful, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, and religion itself. To this end we have resolved to institute in our diocese a permanent commission for collecting and reporting upon the facts which have occurred, and which may hereafter occur, at or concerning the grotto of Lourdes, in order to make known their character and supply us with the means indispensable to arriving at a true judgment.

"WHEREFORE,

"The holy name of God having been invoked,

"We have ordered and hereby order as follows:

"Art. I. A commission is hereby instituted in the diocese of Tarbes, to examine the following points:

"1. Whether cures have been worked by drinking, or by bathing with the water of the grotto of Lourdes; and whether these cures can be explained naturally or are to be attributed to something above nature.

"2. Whether the visions which are said to have been seen by the child Bernadette Soubirous have been real; and, in the latter case, whether they can be explained naturally or are to be invested with a supernatural character.

"3. Whether the object which is said to have appeared manifested its intentions to the child; whether she has been charged to communicate them, and to whom; and what were the said intentions or demands.

"4. Whether the fountain which is now running in the grotto existed before the alleged visions of Bernadette Soubirous.

"Art. II. The commission will present for our consideration only facts established by solid evidence, concerning which it will prepare minute reports containing its own judgment on the matter.

"Art. III. The deans of the diocese will be the principal correspondents of the commission.

"1. They are desired to call attention to facts which have taken place in their respective deaneries.

"2. The persons who are allowed to testify concerning such acts are:

"3. Those who, by their science, can enlighten the commission.

"4. The physicians who have had charge of the sick before their cure.

"Art. IV. After having received notices, the commission will proceed to examination. Evidence must be rendered under oath. When investigations refer to localities, at least two members of the commission must visit the spot.

"Art. V. We earnestly recommend the commission to invite to its sessions men well versed in the sciences of medicine, physics, chemistry, geology, etc., in order to hear them discuss the difficulties which may arise on points familiar to them, and in order to learn their opinion. The commission will neglect no means of acquiring light and arriving at the truth, whatever that may be.

"Art. VI. The commission shall be composed of nine members of our chapter, the superiors of the great and little seminaries, the superior of the missionaries of our diocese, the curé of Lourdes, and the professors of dogmatic and moral theology and physics of the great seminary. The professor of chemistry in our little seminary shall be often consulted.

"Art. VII. M. Nogaro, canon-arch-priest, is hereby named president of the commission. The Canons Tabariés and Soulé are named vice-presidents. The commission will appoint for itself a secretary and two vice-secretaries from its own number.

"Art. VIII. The commission will immediately enter upon its labors, and meet as often as it shall deem necessary.

"Given at Tarbes, in our episcopal palace, under our sign and seal, and the countersign of our secretary, July 28, 1858.

"✠ BERTRAND-SRE, "Bishop of Tarbes.

"By command, FOURCADE, "Canon-Secretary."

His lordship had scarcely issued this order when he received a letter from M. Rouland, Minister of Public Worship, entreating him to interfere and arrest the movement.

In order to comprehend the full meaning of this letter, it will be necessary for us to turn back a short distance.

VII.

Whether the police or administration had incited the false visionaries or were the innocent victims of universal suspicion, it is impossible to know with certainty; it is still more impossible to establish either opinion by authentic documents. In such cases the proof, if there be any, is always destroyed by interested hands. There are, consequently, no other means of getting at the truth, except the general appearance of things and the unanimous sentiment of the contemporary public, sometimes assuredly just, though often tinged by passion or infected with error. In view of this chaotic state of the elements, the historian can only relate facts both authentic and alleged, express his own doubts and scruples, and leave the reader to determine upon the most probable explanation.

Whatever the cause or hidden hand might have been which pushed forward two or three little ragamuffins to make seers of them, M. Jacomet, M. Massy, and his friends felt bound to magnify and spread their silly story. They endeavored to attract the attention of the people, and withdraw it from such grave events as the divine ecstasies of Bernadette, the bursting forth of the fountain, and the miraculous cures which had laid hold of popular faith. When the battle had been lost on one point, these able strategists sought to lure the enemy on to a field surrounded by ambuscades and mined in advance; in short, to make a diversion.

The sudden disappearance of the false visions and visionaries before the threatened scrutiny of M. Peyramale upset, for several days at least, the fond hopes of the free-thinking strategists. The common sense of the public remained firm on the true ground of controversy, and did not permit itself to be deceived. The enlightened intellect of Minister Rouland did not fare so well. What follows will explain how this independent spirit was overthrown.

MM. Jacomet and Massy were striving against a triumphant and irresistible force, and taxed the utmost resources of their genius to make out of these slight events a final pretext for repairing their losses and reassuming an offensive part. They sent to the Minister of Public Worship an exaggerated and fantastic account of these childish scenes.

Now, by an illusion barely conceivable in a politician acquainted with ordinary practice, M. Rouland placed blind confidence in their official reports. He was not without faith, although injudicious, one may say, in selecting the object of his trust. The philosopher Rouland had no faith in Our Lady of Lourdes asserting herself by cures and miracles, but he had perfect faith in Massy and Jacomet. These two gentlemen made him believe that, under the shadow of the Massabielle rocks, children officiated as priests, that the people, represented by creatures of dishonest life, crowned them with laurels and flowers, etc., etc.

They did not disguise the uselessness of violent measures against the general excitement of spirits. According to their account, material force was vanquished and the civil authority completely brought to naught. The religious authority alone could save the day by energetic action against the popular belief. Desperate as to their own straits, and little considering the dignity of a Christian bishop, they presumed to think that strong pressure from the upper heights of the administration could force Mgr. Laurence to condemn what had transpired and to follow their views. Accordingly they signified to the minister their judgment that the solution of all difficulties would be the direct interference of the prelate.

This was to push his excellency in the direction towards which, as is well known, he naturally inclined, viz., to mix himself in religious questions, and to foster the desire of making out a programme for the bishops.

The minister, although he had once been _procureur-general_, did not think of asking how it was that the police had not prosecuted in the courts the profanations which they reported. The strange abstinence of the magistracy in view of the pretended disorders did not occasion him the slightest suspicion.

Accepting with more than ministerial candor the romance of the police and the prefect, and imagining that he saw the whole truth; moreover, believing himself nothing less than a theologian, and, because Minister of Public Worship, something more than an archbishop, M. Rouland settled the whole affair in his cabinet, and wrote to Mgr. Laurence a letter, in all respects a worthy mate of the one he had formerly addressed to the prefect, and which we have cited. It was strongly impregnated with the same official piety, and whilst we read it to-day by the light of true history, we cannot restrain a smile at the manner in which rulers are sometimes hoodwinked and mocked by their inferior agents. Indeed, it is not without a sad irony that one sees the following letter written by the very minister who, in a short time, was to sign the permission to build a splendid church on the Massabielle rocks in eternal memory of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

"My lord," wrote M. Rouland, "the recent advice which I have received about that affair at Lourdes seems to me calculated to afflict deeply the hearts of all sincerely religious men. This blessing of rosaries by children, these public demonstrations in the first ranks of which are to be seen women of doubtful character, this coronation of the visionaries, and other grotesque ceremonies which parody the rites of religious worship, will not fail to open a free avenue of attack to Protestant and other journals, unless the central authority interferes to moderate the ardor of polemics. Such scandalous scenes degrade religion in the eyes of the people, and I feel it my duty again to call your most serious attention to them.... These deeply to be regretted demonstrations seem to me of such a character as to summon the clergy from the reserve which it has hitherto maintained. On this point I can do no more than to make a pressing appeal to the prudence and firmness of your grace _by demanding if you do not think it proper to rebuke publicly such profanity_. Receive, etc.,

The Minister of Public Instruction and Worship,

"ROULAND."

VIII.

This missive reached Mgr. Laurence just after he had issued the ordinance already known to the reader, and had appointed a commission to examine the extraordinary works wrought by the hand of God.

Although singularly astonished and indignant at the fantastic account so gravely offered by the good minister as the truth itself, nevertheless, the bishop answered his letter in measured terms. Without expressing a complete judgment, in order not to hasten a premature solution of the matter, he rehabilitated the facts which had been so shamefully misrepresented. He set forth with great frankness the line of conduct which he and his clergy had pursued, until events had got to such a pass that it was necessary to interfere and order a commission of inquiry. To the minister, who, without knowledge or examination, had said, "Condemn," he answered, "I will examine."

"Monsieur le Ministre," wrote the prelate, "great was my amazement on reading your letter. I also am informed as to what takes place at Lourdes, and, as a bishop, deeply interested in reproving all that can harm religion and the faithful. Now, I can assure you that no such scenes as you describe exist, and, if there have been any occurrences worthy of regret, they have been transitory and have left no traces behind them.

"The facts to which your excellency alludes transpired after the grotto was shut up, and after the first week in July. Two or three children of Lourdes pretended to have visions, and behaved extravagantly in the streets. The grotto being then shut up, as I have said, they found means to get into it, and to offer their services to visitors stopped at the barricades, in order to touch their chaplets on the rock inside the grotto, and to appropriate the offerings received from them. One of them who was most remarkable for his eccentricities was a choir-boy in the church of Lourdes. The curé rebuked and drove him out of the _catechisme_, and excluded him from the service of the church.[101] The disorder was only transitory, and amounted only to the mischief of a few boys, which ceased as soon as it was reprehended. Such are the facts which _overzealous_ persons have magnified into permanent scenes.

"I would be much gratified, M. le Ministre, if you would seek a fair statement of what has occurred from honorable persons who have remained here for some time in order to make personal observations of places, and to interrogate the child who is said to have had the vision. Such are Mgrs. the bishops of Montpellier and Soissons, Mgr. the Archbishop of Auch, M. Vène, inspector of thermal waters, Madame l'Amirale Bruat, M. L. Veuillot, etc., etc.

"The clergy, M. le Ministre, have up to this time maintained a complete reserve with regard to the occurrences at the grotto. The clergy of the town have shown a most admirable prudence. They have never gone to the grotto to give credit to the pilgrimage, nor, on the other hand, favored the measures of the administration. Nevertheless, they have been represented to you as encouraging superstition. I do not accuse the head magistrate of the department, whose intentions have always been good; but in this matter he has had an exclusive confidence in his subordinates.

"In my reply to the prefect, dated 11th of last April, which has been submitted to your perusal, I offered my hearty concurrence with the magistrate in order to bring this affair to a happy conclusion. But I have not been able to do what was desired of me, namely, to condemn from the pulpit, without examination, inquiry, or apparent reason, the persons who go to pray at the grotto, and to forbid all approach to it, especially when no disorder had been noticed, although on certain days the visitors amounted to thousands. Moreover, while the church has always some motive for her prohibitions, and while I myself was not sufficiently posted as to facts, I was also certain that amid the general excitement my words would have passed unheeded.

"The prefect, during the council of revision at Lourdes, on May 4th, caused the chief of police to remove the religious emblems left at the grotto, and, in an address to the mayors of the canton, stated that he had taken this measure by agreement with the diocesan bishop, an assertion which was repeated a few days afterward by the official organ of the prefecture. I was informed of this measure only by the journals and the curé of Lourdes.

"I hastened to write to the latter to cause the prefect's order to be respected. I made no complaint at that time or afterward of having been made an apparent party to a measure of which I had been left in ignorance. Although numerous letters were addressed to me entreating me to disclaim any share in it, I have refrained from adding any difficulty to the situation.

"After the religious objects had been removed from the grotto, we might have hoped to see the number of visits diminish, and the pilgrimage, so inconsiderately improvised, brought to an end. It was not so, however. The public rightly or wrongly pretended that the water from the grotto worked marvellous cures. The concourse became more numerous, and crowds came from the neighboring departments.

"On the 8th of June, the mayor of Lourdes issued a prohibition forbidding all access to the grotto. This was stated to be in the interest of religion and public welfare. Although religion might have been encouraged by it; and, again, although the bishop had not been consulted, he published no reclamation against these assertions; he kept silence for reasons above stated.

"You see, M. le Ministre, by these details, that the reserve of the clergy has not been complete in this matter; it has been, in my judgment, prudent. When able, I have lent my aid to the measures of the civil authority, and, if they have not met with success, it is not the bishop who is to blame.

"To-day, yielding to the petitions which have been addressed me from all quarters, I have concluded that the time has come when I can interest myself to good purpose in this affair. I have named a commission to collect the elements necessary for me to form a decision on a question which has moved the whole country around us, and which, judging from reports, seems likely to interest the whole of France. I am confident that the faithful will receive it with submission, since they are aware that no effort will be spared to get at the truth. The commission having been at work for some days, I have determined to render my ordinance public by having it printed, in hopes that it may help to calm spirits until the decision shall have been made known. I shall soon have the honor of sending your excellency a copy.

"I am, etc.,

"B. S., Bishop of Tarbes."

Such was the letter from Mgr. Laurence to M. Rouland. It was clear and decisive, and left nothing to be said by either party. The Minister of Public Worship did not reply. He re-entered his former silence. This was very wise. Perhaps, however, it would have been wiser for him never to have come out of it.

IX.

At the very moment when Mgr. Laurence, in the name of religion, ordered an inquiry into the unwonted events which the civil authority had condemned and persecuted and wished to reject _à priori_, without condescending even to examine; on the very same day on which the bishop's letter was mailed for the minister, M. Filhol, the illustrious professor of the faculty of Toulouse, delivered the final verdict of science on the water from the grotto of Lourdes. The conscientious and perfectly thorough labor of the great chemist reduced to nothing the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie, the expert of the prefecture, about which Baron Massy had made such a noise. M. Filhol testifies as follows:

"I, the undersigned, Professor of Chemistry to the Scientific Faculty of Toulouse, Professor of Pharmacy and Toxicology to the School of Medicine of the same city, and Knight of the Legion of Honor, certify that I have analyzed the water from a spring in the neighborhood of Lourdes. From this analysis it appears that the water of the grotto of Lourdes is of such composition that it may be considered good for drinking purposes, and of a character similar to that which is generally met with among those mountains whose soil is rich in calcareous matter.

"_The extraordinary effects which are said to have been produced by the use of this water cannot, at least in the present state of science, be explained by the nature of the salts whose existence in it is detected by analysis._[102]

"_This water contains no active substance capable of giving it marked therapeutic qualities._ It can be drunk without inconvenience.

"TOULOUSE, August 7, 1858.

"(Signed) FILHOL."[103]

Thus, all the pseudo-scientific scaffolding, on which the free-thinkers and wise counsellors of the prefect had painfully built their theory of the extraordinary cures, on the examination of this celebrated chemist toppled and fell. According to true science, the water of the grotto was by no means mineral water, and had no healing property. Nevertheless, it did heal. Nothing was now left for those who had so rashly put forward imaginary explanations, but the confusion of their attempt and the impossibility of withdrawing their public acknowledgment that cures had been effected. Falsehood and error were taken in their own net.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[100] We find in a letter of Dr. Dozous, who had followed closely the course of events, a list of the various chronic maladies of which he testifies the extraordinary cure by the water of the grotto.

"Continual headache; weakness of sight; amaurosis; chronic neuralgia; partial and general paralysis; chronic rheumatism; partial or general debility of the system; debility of early childhood. In these cases the healing action was so sudden, that many who had not previously believed in the reality of such cures were forced to accept them as real and incontestable.

"Diseases of the spine; leucorrhea, and other diseases of women; chronic maladies of the digestive organs; obstructions of the liver, and bile.

"Sore-throat; deafness from feebleness of the auricular nerves," etc., etc.

[101] Every one will understand the reserve which prevents the bishop from mentioning the universal suspicion at Lourdes, Cauterets, Barèges, and Tarbes, of the secret action of the police in the affair of the visionaries.

It would have been somewhat difficult for the prelate to say to the minister: "The pretended scandal, which you lament and magnify out of all natural proportion to the point of making it a pure romance, is nothing more nor less than yourself in the persons of your agents."

[102] Letter from M. Filhol to the Mayor of Lourdes, transmitting his analysis.

[103] We give complete details of the analysis contained in the report of M. Filhol. The eminent chemist continues:

I certify to having obtained the following results:

PHYSICAL AND ORGANOLEPTIC PROPERTIES OF THIS WATER.

It is clear, colorless, odorless: it has no decided taste. Its density is scarcely greater than that of distilled water.

CHEMICAL PROPERTIES.

The water of the grotto of Lourdes acts as follows, with reagents:

With _Red Tincture of Turnsol_.--It becomes blue.

_Lime-water._--The mixture becomes milky; an excess of the water of grotto redissolves the precipitate first formed.

_Soapsuds._--It becomes very cloudy.

_Chloride of Barium._--No apparent action.

_Nitrate of Silver._--Slight white precipitate, which partly dissolves in nitric acid.

_Oxalate of Ammonia._--Scarcely any sensible action.

Submitted to the action of heat in a glass retort communicating with a receiver, the water yielded a gas partly absorbed by potassa. The portion thus left undissolved was partly absorbed by phosphorus; finally, there remained a gaseous residuum possessing all the properties of nitrogen. At the same time that this gas was disengaged, the water was slightly clouded and precipitated a white deposit, slightly tinged with red. Treated with hydrochloric acid, this deposit was dissolved, producing a lively effervescence.

I saturated the acid solution with an excess of ammonia; this reagent caused the precipitation of several light flakes of a reddish color, which I carefully separated. These flakes washed with distilled water I treated with caustic potash, which took nothing from them. I washed the flakes again, and dissolved them in chlorhydric acid; then I further diluted the solution with water, and submitted it to the action of several reagents, whose effects I will proceed to indicate:

_Yellow Cyanide of Potassium and Iron._--Blue precipitate.

_Ammonia._--Reddish brown precipitate.

_Tannin._--Principally black.

_Sulpho-Cyanide of Potassium._--Blood-red color.

The liquid, separated from the flaky deposit, gave with oxalate of ammonia an abundant white precipitate. Having separated this precipitate by a filter, I threw phosphate of ammonia into the clear liquid; this reagent determined the formation of a new white precipitate.

I evaporated to dryness five litres of the water, and treated the dry residuum with a small quantity of distilled water in order to dissolve the soluble salts. The solution thus obtained was turned blue by red tincture of turnsol. I again evaporated the solution thus obtained, and poured alcohol over the dry residuum; this being set on fire, gave a pale yellow flame, such as is produced by salts of soda. I again dissolved the residuum in a few drops of distilled water, and mixed the solution with chloride of platina; a slight canary-colored precipitate was formed in the mixture.

Having acidulated two _litres_ of the water of the grotto of Lourdes with chlorhydric acid, I evaporated it to dryness, and found the residuum taken by the acidulated water to be but partly dissolved. The insoluble part presented all the appearance of silica.

I submitted to evaporation ten _litres_ of the water of the grotto of Lourdes, in which I found a very pure carbonate of potassa had been previously dissolved. The result of the evaporation was moistened with boiling alcohol, and, again evaporated to dryness, the residuum was heated to a dull red.

The product of this operation was dissolved, after cooling, in a few drops of distilled water, and mixed with a little starch paste. Carefully treating this mixture with weakly chlorated water, I saw the liquid take a blue tint.

Submitted to distillation, the water of the grotto of Lourdes gives a slightly alkaline distilled product.

From these facts it follows that the water of the grotto of Lourdes holds in solution:

1. Oxygen.

2. Nitrogen.

3. Carbonic acid.

4. Carbonates of lime, of magnesia, and a trace of carbonate of iron.

5. An alkaline carbonate or silicate, chlorides of potassium and sodium.

6. Traces of sulphates of potassa and soda.

7. Traces of ammonia.

8. Traces of iodine.

The quantitative analysis of this water, made according to the ordinary methods, gives the following results:

Water, 1 kilogramme.

Centig. Carbonic acid 8 Oxygen 5 Nitrogen 17 Ammonia traces.

Gr. millig. Carbonate of Lime .096 " Magnesia 0.012 " Iron traces. " Soda " Chloride of Sodium 0.008 " Potassium traces. Silicate of Soda, and traces of Silicate of Potassa 0.018 Sulphates of Potassa and Soda, traces. Iodine " ----- 0.134

KING CORMAC'S CHOICE.[104]

A LEGEND OF THE BOYNE.

Beside the banks of Boyne, where late The dire Dutch trumpets blared and rang, 'Mid wounded kernes the harper sate, And thus the river's legend sang:

Who shall forbid a king to lie Where lie he will, when life is o'er? King Cormac laid him down to die; But first he raised his hand, and swore:

"At Brugh ye shall not lay my bones: Those pagan kings I scorn to join Beside the trembling Druid stones, And on the north bank of the Boyne.

"A grassy grave of poor degree Upon its southern bank be mine At Rossnaree, where of things to be I saw in vision the pledge and sign.

"Thou happier Faith, that from the East Slow travellest, set my people free! I sleep, thy Prophet and thy Priest, By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree."

He died: anon from hill and wood Down flocked the black-robed Druid race, And round the darkened palace stood, And cursed the dead king to his face.

Uptowering round his bed, with lips Denouncing doom, and cheeks death-pale, As when at noontide strange eclipse Invests gray cliffs and shadowed vale;

And proved with cymball'd anthems dread The gods he spurned had bade him die: Then spake the pagan chiefs, and said, "Where lie our kings, this king must lie."

In royal robes the corse they dressed, And spread the bier with boughs of yew; And chose twelve men, their first and best, To bear him through the Boyne to Brugh.

But on his bier the great dead king Forgot not so his kingly oath; And from sea-marge to mountain spring, Boyne heard their coming, and was wroth.

He frowned far off, 'mid gorse and fern, As those ill-omened steps made way; He muttered 'neath the flying hern; He foamed by cairn and cromlech gray;

And rose, and drowned with one black wave Those twelve on-wading; and with glee Bore down King Cormac to his grave By southern Boyne, at Rossnaree!

Close by that grave, three centuries past, Columba reared his saintly cell; And Boyne's rough voice was changed at last To music by the Christian bell.

So Christ's true Faith made Erin free, And blessed her women and her men; And that which was again shall be, And that which died shall rise again.

He ceased: the wondering clansmen roared Accordance to the quivering strings, And praised King Cormac, Erin's Lord, And Prophet of the King of kings.

AUBREY DE VERE.

FOOTNOTE:

[104] According to the old Irish chronicles, Cormac, King of all Ireland, renounced the worship of idols about two centuries before the arrival of St. Patrick, having received in a vision the promise of the true faith.

THE APOSTASY OF DR. DÖLLINGER.

The formal and public act of renunciation of the Catholic faith by Dr. Döllinger which has been looked for as a probable event for many months past, has at length been made. In itself, such an act cannot be regarded by any sound Catholic as of any moment whatever to religion or the church. It is only one suicide more, which destroys an individual, but does not hurt the stability of the church, whose life is in God, and, therefore, immortal. It may have more or less of accidental importance, however, on account of its effect upon certain persons who are weak or ill-instructed in the faith, and the use which may be made of it by the enemies of the church. We think it proper, therefore, to make some explanations concerning the past and present acts and opinions by which Dr. Döllinger has gradually but surely approached and finally reached his present position of open, declared rebellion against the infallible authority of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Döllinger has been living, until a recent period, upon the reputation which he had acquired during his earlier career as a professor and an author, supported by his high rank in the church as a mitred prelate, and in the state as a member of the Bavarian House of Peers. His great intellectual gifts and extensive learning in the department of history have never been questioned, and he was deservedly honored through a long course of years as one of the chief ornaments and ablest advocates of the Catholic religion in Germany. The relative superiority very commonly assigned to him, however, we are inclined to think, is only imaginary. Even in history he has met with some very severe defeats from antagonists more powerful than himself, and in philosophy and theology he has never shown himself to be a master. He is now an old man, seventy-three years of age, having spent above forty years of this period in his professorial chair at the University of Munich. During the earlier part of his life, as is proved by unimpeachable testimony, he was a strict Ultramontane in his theology. The gradual progress by which he went slowly down the declivity towards his present position we cannot pretend to trace accurately. It is certain, however, that no public expression of opinions having a heterodox tendency, on his part, excited any general notice before the year 1861. Even then, although the murmur of dissatisfaction which has been growing louder ever since began to be heard, and the sure Catholic instinct began to make its wounded susceptibilities known, the substantial orthodoxy and loyalty of Dr. Döllinger were not questioned or even doubted. This is proved by the language used by the editor of _Der Katholik_ at that time, in which he says that the book which had given offence, namely, the celebrated "Church and Churches," "is imbued with the genuine color of sincere Catholic faith and immovable fidelity to the church _and her supreme head_."[105] From that date to the present time, these first indistinct intimations of what now appears as a full-blown heresy can be seen in their successive stages of clearer manifestation in the writings and acts of Dr. Döllinger. The language used by him is ambiguous, and generally capable of being understood in a good sense, and his steps are cautious. There is nothing to compromise him seriously, before the time of the intrigues which went on under his direction for the purpose of defeating the Vatican Council. Looking back, however, upon the dark ways in which he has been walking, and the dark sayings which he has been uttering, in the light which his present open declaration of rebellion casts behind him, everything becomes clear and apparent to the day. There is a continuity and a logical sequence manifest in those ambiguous utterances, when explained in a schismatical and heretical sense, which they otherwise could not have. The acts and expressions of Dr. Döllinger's disciples in Germany, France, and England appear in their coherence and in their relation to the instruction which they received from their master. Moreover, a series of historical facts, in connection with the University of Munich and with Dr. Döllinger himself, show themselves in their proper bearing; and among other things of this kind, the secret end and object of the famous scientific congress of Munich become perfectly manifest. In a word, Dr. Döllinger has had an idea which has gradually supplanted the Catholic idea in his mind, and for the sake of which he has at last sacrificed the last lingering remnant of honor, conscience, loyalty, and divine grace in his soul, and stooped so low as to write his name at the bottom of that long and infamous list of traitors and heretics against whom none have ever pronounced sterner sentence of condemnation than himself. This great idea has been nothing less than the reunion of Christendom on a basis of compromise between the Catholic Church and the Eastern and Western sects, excluding the supremacy of the Roman Church and Pontiff. This is no new idea of Döllinger's. The only thing which was new and original in it was the particular scheme or plan of operation for carrying it into effect. Even this was not originated by Döllinger himself, but first planted in the mind of Maximilian II., King of Bavaria, during his youth, by Schelling. When this able and enterprising prince ascended the throne, he undertook the extraordinary task of effecting a universal intellectual and moral unification of Germany, of which Munich should be the radiating centre. The union of the different religious confessions formed a principal part of this plan. Moreover, Germany was to become the mighty power, after being united in herself, to bring all the rest of Christendom into unity in a perfect Christian civilization, which would then extend itself triumphantly through the rest of the world. The great lever by which this mighty work was to be accomplished was to be a society of learned men and able statesmen, directed by the sovereign authority of the king himself. The gathering point for these learned men was naturally the University of Munich, and from the chairs of this university would proceed that teaching and influence which should train up a body of disciples ready to sustain and carry out in their various professions and posts of influence the grand project conceived in the philosophic brain of Schelling and eagerly adopted by his royal pupil. As a matter of course, those professors of the university who were thoroughly loyal to Rome must either submit to the royal dictation or be removed. Phillipps and several other distinguished professors sacrificed their places to their conscience. Döllinger submitted. This was the fatal rock on which he split, the one which has caused injury or total shipwreck in every age of the church to so many eminent ecclesiastics. It was necessary to choose between unconditional loyalty to the spiritual sovereignty of the Pope, or subserviency to the usurpation of the temporal prince. This was the real question from the outset, and hence Dr. Döllinger's utter abjuration of the Papal supremacy is but the last logical consequence of this weak yielding at the beginning. Bossuet yielded to Louis XIV. in a similar manner. But Bossuet was a thoroughgoing theologian, priest, and bishop. He yielded against the grain, and his heart was always Roman and on the side of the Pope. Therefore Bossuet only marred but did not destroy his character and work as a great bishop and a great writer. His Gallicanism is only a single flaw in a majestic statue. But in the case of Döllinger, the German, the ambitious scholar, the courtier has predominated over and finally cast out entirely the Catholic, the theologian, and the priest. He has not been a passive tool, but a most active and energetic master-workman in carrying out the plan of Schelling and Maximilian. Nevertheless, he has been cautious, secret, and indirect in his method of working, not attacking openly, but artfully undermining the citadel of the faith, throwing out hints and scattering seeds which he left to germinate in other minds, in his published works, and chiefly intent upon privately initiating certain chosen persons into his doctrines. In this way, a subtle and deadly poison has long been spreading its baleful influence among a certain class of intellectual Catholic young men not only in Germany, but also in France and England. Thank God! this secret poisoning by concealed heresy has been stopped. The poison is now openly exposed to view, and advertised as a pleasant refrigerant or gentle purgative medicine, but is likely to deceive no one who is in good faith, for its color, taste, and smell betray it; and whoever has made his head dizzy for awhile by hastily swallowing a few drops by mistake is likely to be trebly cautious for the future.

We have already described in general terms the Munich heresy, but we will make a more precise and analytical statement of its principal component elements. As we have already said, it proposes certain principles and methods for the reconstruction of Christendom. First, the Catholic Church must be reformed in doctrine and discipline. The Œcumenical Councils as far back as the Seventh are to be set aside. The authority of any Œcumenical Council is only final in so far as it is a witness of the traditional belief of the whole body of the faithful. The authority of the decisions of the Holy See must be set aside, and the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff be reduced to a mere patriarchal primacy. The state is completely supreme and independent. Sacred and secular science are exempt from all control except that of the dogmas of faith. When the Catholic Church is purified in doctrine and discipline, the other portions of Christendom are to be united with it in one grand whole, combining all that is good in each one of them, and itself more perfect than any. The supreme and ultimate judgment in regard to religious dogmas is in the universal Christian sentiment or consciousness, enlightened and directed by men of science and learning.

To certain minds, there is something specious and high-sounding about this theory. It is, however, a mere Russian ice palace, which melts when the direct rays of the sun fall upon it. It is essentially no better than the doctrine of Huss and Luther. It is very nearly identical with that of Dr. Pusey. It is old Protestantism revamped, and varnished with a mixture of rationalism and orientalism. The supreme authority of the Holy See being set aside, and the decrees of general councils submitted to the judgment of the great body of the clergy and people, where is the rule of faith? Pure Protestantism gives us, in lieu of the infallible teaching authority of the living church, the Bible, interpreted by the private judgment of each individual. The Munich theory gives us the Bible and apostolic tradition, interpreted by the public judgment of the aggregate mass of the faithful. But how is the individual to determine what that judgment is? The historical and other documents by which the common and universal tradition of all ages can be ascertained are voluminous. Moreover, it is a matter of controversy how these documents are to be understood. Only the learned can fully master and understand them. The common people must, therefore, be instructed by the learned. But the learned do not agree among themselves. What, then, is left for the individual, except a choice among these learned doctors or among several schools of doctors which one he will follow? This choice must be made by his private judgment, and, if not a blind following of a leader or a party, it must be made by a careful examination of the evidences proving that this or that man, Dr. Döllinger, for example, thoroughly understands the Scripture, the Fathers, and ecclesiastical history, and truly interprets them. Is there any hope of unity by such a method? Is there any hope of any individual, even, arriving at certainty by it? It is a return at last to the old Protestant principle of private judgment, with a substitution of something far more difficult than the Bible in place of the Bible which Luther substituted for the church.

Practically it amounts to this: Dr. Döllinger is the greatest and wisest of men; he knows all things. Take his word that so much and no more is the sound orthodox doctrine handed down from the apostles and believed in all ages, and you are right. Let the Pope and the bishops and the whole world believe and obey Dr. Döllinger. It is Luther's old saying repeated by a man of less strength and audacity, but equally absurd and insupportable pride. _Sic voleo, sic jubeo: stet pro ratione voluntas._[106] Pius IX. and the bishops in the Vatican Council, so far from complying with the modest desires of Dr. Döllinger, have condemned the very radical idea of his heresy, and all other heresies cognate with it, have crushed his conspiracy, and blown away into thin air the painted bubble of a reformed Catholic Church, and a reunion of Christendom on a basis of compromise. There was no alternative for Dr. Döllinger and his partisans except submission to the decrees of the council, or to the anathema by which they were fortified. Ample time for reflection and deliberation was allowed him, and now, seven months after the solemn promulgation of the decrees of the Council of the Vatican, he has deliberately and coolly refused submission, thereby openly and manifestly cutting himself off from the communion of the Catholic Church. His manner of doing it is a signal illustration of the ridiculous attitude which a man of sense is often driven to assume when he has given himself up to the sway of pride. He desires the Archbishop of Munich to permit him to be heard in his own defence before a council of German bishops, or a court formed from the Cathedral Chapter. If this is to be considered as an appeal from the Council of the Vatican to another tribunal, whose decision he is willing to submit to as final, nothing can be more absurd. An appeal from the supreme tribunal to an inferior court is certainly something unheard of either in civil or canon law. The dogmas denied and rejected by Dr. Döllinger have been thoroughly examined and discussed in a general council. Judgment has been pronounced, and the case is closed for ever. The Archbishop of Munich and the German prelates are bound by this judgment, have assented to it, and have proclaimed it to their subjects. They have no authority to bring it under a new examination, or reverse it, in a judicial capacity. If they sit in judgment on Dr. Döllinger, or any other individual impeached of heresy, that judgment is their paramount law, according to which they must decide. The only questions which can come before them in such a case are, whether the person who is a defendant before their court has contravened the decisions of the Vatican Council by word or writing, and whether he is contumacious in his error. It can scarcely be supposed that a man who refuses submission to a general council and the Holy See could have any intention or disposition to submit to a national council or an episcopal court. The only alternative supposition is that he desired to prolong the controversy, to gain time, to inflame the minds of men, to create a party and inaugurate a schism. Really and truly, his demand amounts to this: "The majority of the bishops of the Catholic Church, having been misled by their theological instruction, have made an erroneous decision in a matter of dogma. I therefore request the bishops of Germany to permit me to give them better instruction, and persuade them to recall their adhesion to that decision. If that cannot be done, I request the Archbishop of Munich to do me that favor." The silliness of such a demand is only equalled by its effrontery. Dr. Döllinger must be very far gone indeed in pride to fancy that the Archbishop of Munich or the German prelates could think for an instant of making themselves his docile disciples, or entertain the thought of following him into schism and heresy. It is an act of parting defiance, the impotent gesture of a desperate man, whose last stronghold is crumbling under his feet, but who prefers to be buried under its ruins rather than to repent and return to his allegiance.

The appeal to German national sympathy and prejudice is worthy of a man whose worldly and selfish ambition has extinguished the last spark of genuine Catholic feeling in his bosom. It is a cry for sympathy to the bad Catholics, the Protestants, and the infidels of Germany. It is a repetition of that old saying of Caiphas against Jesus Christ, "The Romans will come and take away our place and nation." Nothing can be more unhistorical than the assertion that Papal supremacy wrought division in the past German Empire, or more contrary to sound political wisdom than the assertion that the same threatens division in the German Empire of the present. Martin Luther sowed the dragon's teeth from which sprang civil war, disastrous foreign war, internal dissension, and all the direful miseries which have come upon Germany since his inauspicious rebellion against the Holy See. The so-called Reformation turned the Protestant princes against the Emperor, stirred up the revolt of the peasants, inspired the treachery which opened the gates to Gustavus Vasa, and instigated that alliance with Louis XIV. which lost Lorraine and Alsace to Germany. That infidel liberalism which is the legitimate offspring of the revolt against Rome is the most dangerous internal enemy which the present empire has to fear. It is summed up in the list of errors condemned by Pius IX. in his Encyclical and Syllabus. On the contrary, the complete restoration of Catholic unity and Papal supremacy in Germany would bring back more than the glories of the former empire, and renew the epoch of Charlemagne.

As for the vain and feeble effort of two or three cabinets to prohibit the promulgation of the decrees of the Vatican Council, it is too absurd to argue about, and too harmless to excite any alarm or indignation. Neither is there any danger that Dr. Döllinger's apostasy will cause any serious defection among the Catholic people of Germany. The professors of the University of Munich have been appointed by the king. Some are Protestants, others are infidels, and others have been hitherto Catholics in profession, but followers of the heresy of Janus in their heart. There are many laymen and some clergymen of the same sort among the professors of Germany, and a certain number of persons in other walks of life, whose faith has been undermined and corrupted. We have always expected that the Council of the Vatican would cause a considerable number of defections from the communion of the church. But we have no expectation that this defection of individuals will consolidate into a new concrete heresy. John Huss and Martin Luther have exhausted the probabilities of pseudo-orthodox reformation. Its race is run. The time for heresy is past. Organized opposition to the Catholic Church in these days must take a more consistently anti-Christian form. Pius IX. and Garibaldi represent the only two real parties. Döllinger is nobody, and has no place. That a great many baptized Catholics have totally renounced the faith is undoubtedly true. But the Catholic people who still retain the principles and the spirit of their traditional faith are with Pius IX. This is true of the Bavarian and other German popular masses, as well as of the people of other nations. The German prelates, the clergy, the nobility, are strong and enthusiastic in their allegiance to the Holy See. The orthodox theologians and _savants_ can wield the ponderous hammer of science with as much strength of aim as any of the scholars who have been fostered in the sunshine of royal favor. The boast made by Dr. Döllinger at the Congress of Munich of the pre-eminence which Germany will gain in Catholic theology and sacred science will probably be in part fulfilled, though not in the sense which he had in his mind. It will be fulfilled, not by men who bid a haughty defiance to the saints and doctors of the church, who utter scornful words against the scholars of other nations, who are governed by narrow-minded national prejudice and unreasoning obstinacy, and who are faithless in their allegiance to their spiritual sovereign, while they are servilely obsequious to a temporal monarch. It will be done by true, genuine Catholics, the legitimate offspring of the great men who founded, governed, taught, and made illustrious the old church and empire of Germany in past ages.

The gist of the entire quarrel of Dr. Döllinger with the Archbishop of Munich consists in an appeal from the supreme authority in the church to the principle of private judgment. In form, it is an appeal to the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, but this is only an appeal to Dr. Döllinger's own private interpretation of the true sense of Scripture and the Fathers. It is the same appeal which heretics and schismatics have made in all ages: Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, Huss, Luther, Cranmer, Photius, Mark of Ephesus, the Armenian schismatics of Constantinople, and all others who have rebelled against the Holy See. It is the essence of Protestantism, and in the end transforms itself into rationalism and infidelity. The ancient heretics, the Oriental schismatics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, Unitarians, all have a common principle, all are Protestants. That principle is the right of private judgment to resist the supreme authority of the Catholic Church. So long as private judgment is supposed to be directed by a supernatural light of the Holy Spirit, and to possess in Scripture and tradition, or in Scripture alone, a positive revelation, Protestantism is a kind of Christianity. When the natural reason is made the arbiter, and the absolute authority of the doctrine of Jesus Christ as taught by the apostles is denied, it is a rationalistic philosophy, which remains Christian in a modified and general sense until it descends so low as to become simply unchristian and infidel. The Catholic principle which is constitutive of the Catholic Church as a body, and of each individual Catholic as a member of it, is the principle of authority. There is no logical alternative between the two. One or the other must be final and supreme, the authority of the church or the authority of the individual judgment. If the authority of the church is supreme, no individual or aggregate of individuals can reject or even question its decisions. It is the Catholic doctrine that authority is supreme. The church is constituted by the organic unity of bishops, clergy, and people, with their Head, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter. He is the Vicar of Christ, and possesses the plenitude of apostolic and episcopal authority. His judgment is final and supreme, whether he pronounces it with or without the judicial concurrence of an œcumenical council. This has always been the recognized doctrine and practice of the church. It is nothing more or less than Papal supremacy as existing and everywhere believed, as much before as after the Council of the Vatican. The word "infallibility," like the words "consubstantial" and "transubstantiation," is only the precise and definite expression of that which has long been a dogma defined under other terms, and always been contained in the universal faith of the church based on Scripture and apostolic tradition. The first Christians were taught to obey implicitly the teachings of St. Peter and the apostles, because they had received authority from Jesus Christ. There was nothing said about infallibility, because the idea was sufficiently impressed upon their minds in a more simple and concrete form. Their descendants, in like manner, believed in the teaching of the successors of the apostles because they had inherited their divine authority. Whoever separated from the Roman Church and was condemned by the Roman Pontiff was at once known to have lost all authority to teach. The teaching of the bishops in communion with the Roman Church, and approved by the Roman Pontiff, was always known to be the immediate and practical rule of faith. Whoever taught anything contrary to that was manifestly in error, and, if contumacious, a heretic, who must be cast out of the church, however high his rank might be. Moreover, the Roman Pontiff decided all controversies, and issued his dogmatic decrees to all bishops, who were required to receive and promulgate them under pain of excommunication. This unconditional obedience to an external authority evidently presupposes that the authority obeyed is rendered infallible by the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost. Hence, the express and explicit profession of the infallibility of the church as a dogma of faith has been universal ever since it has been made a distinct object of thought and exposition. It is nothing more than a distinct expression of one part of the idea that the church has divine and supreme authority to teach, with a corresponding obligation on the faithful to believe her teaching. In like manner, the divine and supreme authority of the Pope to teach includes and implies infallibility, as the vast majority of bishops and theologians have always held and taught. The erroneous opinion that the express or tacit acquiescence of the bishops is necessary to the finality of pontifical decrees in matters pertaining to faith and doctrine, was tolerated by the Holy See until the definitions of the Council of the Vatican were promulgated. The infallibility of the church itself produces this agreement of the episcopate with its head. In fact, therefore, and practically, the pontifical decrees were always submitted to by good Catholics, and the Holy See did not formally and expressly exact any more than this as a term of Catholic communion. Dr. Döllinger and others of the same stamp took advantage of this toleration of an illogical and erroneous opinion to undermine the doctrine of Papal supremacy and the authority of œcumenical councils. The Pope cannot possess the supreme power of teaching and judging, they argued, without infallibility. He is not infallible, therefore, he is not supreme. Moreover, the only certain criterion by which we know that a council is œcumenical is the sanction of the Pope. If he is not infallible, he may err in giving this sanction. Thus, the way was opened to dispute the authority of the Councils of Trent, Lateran, Florence, etc., and to rip up the whole texture of Catholic doctrine, just so far as suited the notions of these audacious innovators. The event has proved how opportune and necessary was that distinct and precise definition of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff which has for ever shut out the possibility of sheltering a fundamental heresy like that of Döllinger behind an ambiguous expression. There is now no more chance for evading the law and remaining ostensibly a Catholic. The law is clear and plain. All dogmatic decrees of the Pope, made with or without his general council, are infallible and irreformable. Once made, no pope or council can reverse them. There is no choice left to the prelates about enforcing them on their clergy and people. No clergyman holds his position, and no one of the faithful is entitled to the sacraments, on any other terms than entire submission and obedience. This is the Catholic principle, that the church cannot err in faith. She has declared it to be an article of faith that the Roman Pontiff, speaking _ex cathedrâ_ as the supreme doctor of the church, is infallible. It is therefore a contradiction in terms for a person who denies or doubts this doctrine to call himself a Catholic. We cannot too constantly or earnestly impress this truth on the minds of the Catholic people, that the rule of faith is the present, concrete, living, and perpetual teaching of that supreme authority which Christ has established in the church. We believe, on the veracity of God, by a supernatural faith which is given by the Holy Ghost in baptism, those truths which the holy church proposes to our belief. The church can never change, never reform her faith, never retract her decisions, never dispense her children from an obligation she has once imposed on them of receiving a definition as the true expression of a dogma contained in the divine revelation. To do so, would be to destroy herself, and fall down to the level of the sects. The idle talk of writers for the secular press, whether they pretend to call themselves Catholics or not, about the church conforming herself to liberal principles and the spirit of the age is simply worthy of laughter and derision. No Catholic who has a grain of sense will pay any heed to opinions or monitions coming from such an incompetent source. The church is the only judge of the nature and extent of her own powers, and of the proper mode of exercising them. The pontiffs, prelates, pastors, priests, and theologians of the church, are her authorized expositors and interpreters, her advocates and defenders. Those who desire to be her worthy members, and those who wish to learn what she really is, will seek from them, and from them only, or from authors and writings which they have sanctioned, instruction in the true Catholic doctrine. The unhappy man whose defection has called forth these remarks has lost his place in the Catholic hierarchy, and henceforth he is of no more account than any other sectarian of past times or of the present. The ecclesiastical historian will record his name in the list of the heretics of the nineteenth century, and his peculiar ideas will pass into oblivion, except as a matter of curious research to the scholar.

FOOTNOTES:

[105] See the second volume of this periodical for 1861, and also the number for March, 1870.

[106] Thus I will, thus I command: let my will stand for a reason.

FALSE VIEWS OF SAINTSHIP.

We often hear the saints spoken of as men of another race and stature than ourselves, splendid masterpieces of perfection meant to be admired from a distance, but certainly not to be copied with loving and minute care.

Now, this is a mistake--the most fatal mistake for ourselves; for we thus tie down our faculties to commonplace life, and refuse to give them the wider scope that nature herself meant for their exercise; the most unfortunate mistake for religion, because in making her heroes inaccessible and almost unnatural, we deter others from laudable efforts, and attach to our faith the stigma of present sterility.

Not only can each one of us become a saint, and that by a simple and ordinary course of life, but the canonized saints themselves bear witness that they reached heaven in no other way, and attained their crowns by no other means. The saint, be assured of it, is the truest gentleman, the pleasantest companion, and most faithful friend.

He is no morose misanthrope, no disenchanted cynic; he is a man with all the natural feelings of humanity, all the amiable traits of good-fellowship, all the nameless graces of good society. There is no pleasing, amenity of human intercourse, no rational exchange of human sentiments, no harmless relaxation of a refined mind, that need be foreign to his nature, and a stranger to his heart.

All men prize honor and straight-forwardness; they welcome cheerfulness and vivacity; they admire a strong will; love of nature and art, sympathy with suffering and with poverty, zealousness in the cause of learning, are all passports to their favor, and incline them to seek the friendship and trust the advice of those in whom these qualities shine.

Now, if we show them that canonized saints and great men well known in the annals of the church have always been distinguished by these traits, will they refuse to admit that the more a man loves his God, the fitter he is to win human sympathy and command human imitation?

The saints have not seldom been unfairly treated, and chiefly by their overzealous biographers; for their holiness has been distilled into such ethereal and miraculous abstractions that we no more dream of grasping it as a means of encouragement than we do of seizing for nourishment upon the summer clouds whose lovely shapes entrance our eyes in the western heavens.

Every one of the saints had an individual character, touching weaknesses of disposition and innocent partialities of nature. Every one of them went to heaven by a separate road, and his specialty of human and natural character alone determined that road. Some were kings and emperors, princes and popes, and great men of the earth; they had to wear soft garments and ermine robes, and spend much time in the display their state required. Now, many sanctimonious persons would have us believe that such display is absolutely and in itself wrong, and can under no circumstances be allowable. The church thinks otherwise, and more generously, and has canonized these men.

Some were beggars or servants, mechanics or husbandmen; passed their days in menial pursuits, and apparently had their minds occupied only by the sordid necessities of their humble degree. Many presumptuous people like to tell us that servile work deteriorates the mind, that beggary is invariably a criminal state, that poverty dwarfs the understanding and hardens the heart. The church thinks otherwise, and more charitably, and these too she has canonized.

Again, some were statesmen and scholars, and the wranglings of courts, the tumult of embassies, the disputes of universities, were the daily atmosphere they breathed. Some officious persons tell us plainly that solitude is the only nurse of holiness, and that, with these surroundings, it is impossible to live unbewildered by the world's noise and untainted by the world's corruption. The church thinks otherwise, and more liberally, and has canonized these men also.

No station in life is too low or too high for God to look upon, and therefore not too low nor too high for God's saints to thrive in.

The secret of saintship lies in the power of a man to fashion his surroundings, and mould the circumstances attendant on his lot in life, till he makes them into a ladder wherewith to climb to heaven.

Suppose a man is born to high destinies, and a great fortune: they are ready-made instruments in his hand for the glory of God and the good of his neighbor. Let him recollect that Jesus was of a royal race, and was visited by Eastern kings.

Suppose, on the contrary, he is born poor, and sees no means of future advancement all his life: there again are his weapons chosen for him to fight the good fight. Let him remember that Jesus was born in a stable, and lived in a carpenter's shop.

If a man is clever, intellectual, talented, his road to heaven lies in the good use he makes of these gifts of mind; if he is cheerful, good-humored, well-bred, his road to heaven lies in the charitable use he makes of his natural attractiveness; if he is placed in circumstances that grievously try his temper and his patience, long-suffering, resignation, and gentleness will be the evident path for him; if surrounded by difficulties and occupying a responsible position, discretion and delicacy will be his appointed road.

There is no forcing the spiritual life; it grows out of the natural life, and is only the natural life, shorn of self and self-love, supernaturalized.

Life is a battle; we all have to fight it, but even in a material combat, what general would arm all his soldiers alike? Are there not cavalry and infantry, lancers and riflemen? Do not some wield the sword, others man the guns? So in the combat whose promised land is paradise; we fight each with diverse weapons, and our one thought should be, not to envy others their arms, but do effectual service with our own. Men fight one way, women another. Both can fight as well; but only by using their own weapons.

There is an old French fable that speaks of the frog who sought to swell himself to the size of the ox, forgetting that he could be as happy and as useful in his small fish-pond as the larger animal in his spacious meadow. He _would_ not be a frog, but of course he _could_ not become an ox, so he died of his effort, and the world counted one worker less. Just so do some of us act when we sigh over the life of some great saint of old, and, putting down the book in sentimental admiration as barren as it is useless, cry out, "If only _I_ could be an Augustine, a Theresa, a Thomas Aquinas!" To such might we answer: "Do you know why they were saints? Because they acted up to the lights they had. If _you_ act up to your inferior but no less true lights, you too will be a saint." If Augustine, and Theresa, and Thomas Aquinas had spent their lives in sterile sentimentality, calling upon the dead saints before them, where would _they_ have been, and who would have heard of their names? At that rate, there would have been no saints at all after the twelve apostles, and even they would have sat down in profitless discouragement because their holiness could not equal that of the Son of God!

Did not the Creator say to all things living, vegetable or animal, "Increase and multiply," and "Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree bearing fruit _after its kind_"? In that one commandment lies the secret spring of the energy and fruitfulness of every created thing, spiritual no less than temporal. Let each one of us bear fruit _according to his kind_, and God will be satisfied. Augustine and Gregory, Thomas and Bonaventure, Francis of Assisium and Francis of Sales, Charles Borromeo and Vincent of Paul, Philip Neri and Ignatius Loyola, were men, very _men_, and, had they not been men, they could not have been saints. We mean, their sanctity would have been other than it actually was; it would have been even as the holiness of the angels, the untempted steadfastness of pure spirits. Had they been born as the Blessed Virgin, immaculate in the very initial moment of existence, they would not have been the saints they are, the imitable, human, weakling beings we yearn over and love with a natural and sympathetic love.

Nature, whatever people may say of her, is not contrary to grace: not in this sense at least, that she is the field, and grace the plough. The plough does not alter the earth it furrows; it only prepares it, stirs it, turns its better surface uppermost, and displays its richest loam to receive the grain. As neither rain, nor dew, nor manure can turn one soil into another, so can no efforts of overstrained piety, no devices of ambitious perseverance, re-create the soul and portion it anew. As God made us, so we stand: by taking thought, we cannot add to our stature one cubit, neither can we force a foreign growth to bloom on the low-lying lands of our soul. One sort of grain grows best in one sort of earth. Would any husbandman dream of planting the wrong grain in it? God is a husbandman, and shall he do less well than mortal man, and shall he endeavor to force one soil to bear the crop it cannot nourish? No, no! God gave us one nature as well as the graces he plants therein, and we may trust to him to see the harvest reaped. It is men, it is ourselves, who interfere with our sowing and reaping time; it is ourselves, who ambitiously seek to grow grain we can never rear, or it is others who maliciously sow tares in a soil they too quickly overrun. Then the world will see in us her saints, men going simply through the round of their daily duties, very unostentatiously, very quietly, never boasting, because to have time to boast they must needs leave off their work; never lamenting, because to lament they would have to leave off their prayer; but letting their nature fill itself to the brim with God, and, when it is full, letting it quietly overflow to their neighbor.

That sounds very simple, does it not? Yes, because everything that belongs to God is simplicity itself, and the more simple a man is, the nearer God he is.

All the great men and women whose names stud the calendar of the church owed their greatness to their simplicity, and the words of the greatest saint that ever lived, the words of her, were they not the simplest ever found on record: "Be it done unto me according to thy word"?

Saints of our timid generation, saints of our half-hearted century, saints of our hitherto barren civilization, start up, and fill the plains and the valleys of all lands, fill the offices of the city and the homes of the citizens, fill the church, the courts, the universities, fill the lowly serried ranks of the poor, fill the more burdened and more responsible phalanx of the noble and the rich!

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE OF ST. THOMAS OF AQUIN. By Father Vaughan, O.S.B. London: Longmans, Brown, Green & Co. Vol. I. For sale by The Catholic Publication Society, New York.

This is a good stout volume, like St. Thomas himself. It is a book for its outward appearance such as we seldom see. We have many well-printed books, but this one is remarkable for its large, clear type, which makes it pleasant and easy to read. The subject is one of the greatest interest and importance. The life and times of St. Thomas have a peculiar charm about them, aside from the history of his genius, and of his philosophical and theological system. The two together make a theme which far surpasses in grandeur and attractiveness even the history of the majority of great saints. St. Thomas is the great doctor of the church. His intellectual sway is something without a parallel. The study of his works is on the increase, and he is likely to acquire even a greater and more universal sway than he enjoyed before the Reformation. We have never before had a really good biography of St. Thomas in English. Father Vaughan has taken hold of the work with zeal and ability. It is only half published as yet, but the first volume presents so large a portion of the angelic doctor's life before us that we can estimate its value as well as if we had the whole. An analysis of some of the principal works of St. Thomas is given by F. Vaughan, and he endeavors to present to the reader a picture of the times when he lived, as well as to describe the events of his personal history. Every student should have this book. It is indeed a wonderful thing to see such a specimen of genuine old monastic literature issuing from the English press. It makes us hope that England may yet become once more the merrie Catholic England of the olden time.

MY STUDY WINDOWS. By James Russell Lowell, A.M., Professor of Belles-Lettres in Harvard College. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1871.

Met with in the pages of a review or magazine, Mr. Lowell's prose is always sure to be more or less pleasant reading. His wit, his refinement, and a certain something which we are only unwilling to call his delicacy of appreciation, because, in spite of his generally acknowledged merits as a critic, he seems to us not always perfectly reliable in that capacity, always find him willing and amused readers. But when he shuts up too much of his work at once between a pair of covers, and gives whoever will a too easy opportunity of comparing him with himself, we doubt whether even his admirers--a class in which we are not unwilling to include ourselves--do not find him a little wearisome, and discover in him a poverty of suggestion and a timidity of thought which gibbet him as a book-maker, although, being in a measure counterbalanced by an abundance of lighter merits, they would have left him an easy pre-eminence over most of his contemporaries as a magazinist. Nor, if we may for once adopt a method of criticism from which our author himself is not averse, and trust our instinct to read between the lines, is Mr. Lowell altogether free from a suspicion that such may possibly be the case--and that, as affecting his own culture and habit of mind also, it was a far-reaching mistake in our Puritan ancestors to cut themselves quite asunder from the traditions of the past before they came here to establish free thinking and free religion along with a free government. However it may be with government, neither thought nor faith seems to flourish well without having its roots in the past. Like their transcendentalist sons, our New England progenitors were themselves "Apostles of the Newness," and simply antedated them by a few generations in the experiment of throwing overboard a great deal of valuable freight, and trying to right themselves by laying in a supply of useless ballast. The sentiment which they dignified by the name of trust in Providence appears nowadays under a less equivocal disguise as self-reliance; and while it produces certain easily appreciable results both in society and literature, it makes instability, a want of solidity, and an absence of germinative force permanent characteristics of both of them. Not, however, to make an essay on a sufficiently suggestive topic, but to confine ourselves to the particular matter in hand, it is perhaps Mr. Lowell's _thin-skinnedness_ as an author, and a characteristic modesty as to the value of his utterances, none the less apparent for being put carefully out of sight, which give him, to our thinking, his best claim to the liking of his readers--while at the same time it is a modesty so well justified by the actual state of the case as to explain why it is that one is always more ready to accept with satisfaction what he has to say about an author whose claims have been tested by more than one generation of critics, than to trust him for a thoroughly reliable estimate of a literary workman of to-day. Even in the former case one inclines to believe that he may sometimes feel a just preference for his own opinions in contradistinction to those of Mr. Lowell--who is not, for instance, likely to elicit much intelligent sympathy with his verdict on the poetical merits of the "Rape of the Lock." By far the pleasantest portions of the present volume are the three opening essays, in which Mr. Lowell quite forgets that he is a critic, or, at least, that he is a critic of books. The essays on Carlyle and Thoreau contain also a good deal of sound, if not particularly subtle, criticism; and in general, although the book does not show Mr. Lowell in his most characteristic vein, it pleases us all the better on that account, as giving us what substance there is in his thought, with much less than ordinary of the technical brilliancy which wearies quite as often as it entertains.

DION AND THE SIBYLS. A Classic Christian Novel. By Miles Gerald Keon, Colonial Secretary, Bermuda, author of "Harding the Money-Spinner," etc. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1871. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 224.

_Dion and the Sibyls_ is a work of uncommon merit, and may be classed, in our opinion, with _Fabiola_ and _Callista_, which is the highest compliment we could possibly pay to a romance of the early period of Christian history. The Dion of the story is Dionysius the Areopagite in his youth, and before his conversion. The Sibyls are introduced in reference to their predictions of a coming Saviour of mankind. The object of the author is to exhibit the fearful need which existed in heathen society for a divine intervention, and the general, widespread desire and expectation of such an event at the time when our Lord actually appeared on the earth. This is done by means of a plot which is woven from the personal history of a nephew of Lepidus the Triumvir, a young Roman noble of Greek education, and an intimate friend of Dionysius, who came to Rome with his mother and sister at the close of the reign of Augustus, to claim the sequestrated estate of his father, one of the generals who helped to win the battle of Philippi. The appeal of the young Paulus Æmilius Lepidus to Augustus at a time when the latter was visiting the wealthy Knight Mamurra at his superb villa at Formiæ, and a plot of Tiberius Cæsar to carry off Agatha, the young man's sister, afford an occasion of describing the principal persons of the Roman court. This is done in a graphic and masterly manner. The representation of the aged Augustus is something perfect in its kind. The portraits of Tiberius, Germanicus, Caligula, then a child, the royal ladies, Sejanus the Prætorian prefect, Velleius Paterculus, Thellus the chief of the gladiators, and a number of other persons representing various classes of Romans, are admirably and vividly drawn. The breaking of the ferocious Sejan horse by the young Æmilius at the public games of Formiæ is a scene of striking originality and power. The campaign of Germanicus against the Germans is also well described. In fact, Mr. Keon makes the old Roman world reappear before us like a panorama. He shows himself to be a thorough and minute classical scholar and historian on every page and in every line. But beyond and above all this, he exhibits a power of philosophical reasoning, and an insight into the deepest significance of Christianity, which elevate his thrilling romance to the rank of a work of the highest moral and religious scope. The description of the demons by the Lady Plancina is an original and awfully sublime conception surpassing anything in the _Mystique Diabolique_ of Görres. The author's great masterpiece, however, is the argument of Dionysius on the being of One God before the court of Augustus, a piece of writing of which any professed philosopher might be proud.

The history of Paulus Æmilius, who is really the hero of the work, brings him at last to Judæa at the time of the murder of St. John the Baptist, and the closing scenes of the life of our Lord. This gives the author the opportunity of describing a momentary glimpse which the brave and virtuous Roman was favored with of the form and countenance of the Divine Redeemer, as he was passing down the Mount of Olives. Mr. Keon undertook a difficult task, one in which many have failed, when he ventured on introducing the august figure of our Lord into his picture. We are fastidious in matters of this kind, and not easily satisfied by any attempt at giving in language what sculptors and painters usually fall short of expressing in marble and on canvas. Mr. Keon's bold effort pleases us so much that we cannot help wishing he would try his hand at some more sketches of the same kind. We should like to see some scenes from the evangelical history and the Acts of the Apostles produced under an ideal and imaginative form with an ability equal to that which our author has displayed in his pictures of the Augustan age. The success of Renan's _Life of Jesus_ is due not so much to the popularity of his detestable and absurd theories, as to the attraction of his theme and the charm of a vivid, lifelike representation of the scenes, manners, and events of the period when our Lord lived and taught in Judæa. A similar work, produced in accordance with the true Catholic idea of the august, divine person of the Son of God made man, would do more to counteract the poison of the infamous infidel literature of the day in the popular mind than any grave argumentative treatise. We pronounce Mr. Keon's _Dion and the Sibyls_ without hesitation to be a dramatic and philosophical masterpiece, and we trust that he will not allow his genius to lie idle, but will give us more works of the same sort. Whether the vitiated taste of the novel-reading world will appreciate works of so classical a stamp, we are unable to say. But all those who relish truth conveyed through the forms of the purest art will thank Mr. Keon for the pleasure he has given them, if they shall, as we did, by chance take up his book and peruse it attentively, and will concur with us in wishing that a work of so much merit and value might be better known and more widely circulated.

LITERATURE AND LIFE. Edwin P. Whipple. Enlarged Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1871.

The essays contained in this volume are ten in number: Authors in their Relations to Life; Novels and Novelists; Wit and Humor; The Ludicrous Side of Life; Genius; Intellectual Health and Disease; Use and Misuse of Words; Wordsworth; Bryant; Stupid Conservatism and Malignant Reform.

Of these the first six were originally delivered by Mr. Whipple as popular lectures many years ago, and were collected and published in 1849.

The last four articles are later productions of the author, and are first published together in this enlarged edition of his early work.

In a somewhat extended notice of Mr. Whipple's essays on the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" more than a year ago, we pointed out some of his excellences and defects as they appeared to us. Both are perhaps even more apparent in this book.

Its style is marked by that command of expression for which the author is always so remarkable, and is at the same time clear, pointed, and unaffected.

Yet the essays sometimes bear marks of the object for which they were written, and one cannot help wishing that the author had not been so evidently restricted in the materials he used and in the characteristics of his style by the necessity of their adaptation to the audience of lecture-goers to which they were addressed.

The distinctively critical essays are the best, and it is in literary criticism that Mr. Whipple is always most at home.

His appreciative estimates of the genius of Dickens and of Wordsworth have, we think, been very seldom equalled in force and justice by any of the numerous criticisms of those authors which have been published.

Those who are familiar with Mr. Whipple's essays will be glad to see them republished in so elegant and convenient a form, and those who are not cannot now do better than to make their acquaintance.

FIFTY CATHOLIC TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. First Series. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871

The wish so often expressed of seeing "The Catholic Tracts" in a book form has been met by this volume. The variety of its contents makes it a book for circulation among all classes of society. Short, popular, and conclusive answers are given on questions of the day, making it of great value as a work of actual controversy, while not a few of the tracts are instructive and devotional, rendering it equally important to Catholics.

The volume is printed on good paper, and its price brings it within the reach of every one. We recommend it to the attention of clergymen, and the confraternities, sodalities, and Rosary societies, as a book for distribution among a reading and thinking people seeking after religious truth. We give the preface entire:

"In the spring of 1866, the Catholic Publication Society issued its first tract. Since that time it has published fifty tracts on different subjects. More than two and one half millions (2,500,000) of these short and popular papers have been sold and circulated. This is sufficient evidence of their value and popularity.

"Some of the ablest writers in our country have contributed to this work. Although we have never given the names of the authors, we feel at liberty to say that eminent prelates and learned theologians--men who have a world-wide reputation--have written many of these tracts. A well-written tract often costs more labor than an essay or an article for a magazine.

"Nor have these tracts been written and circulated without good effect. We know of Protestants converted and received into the church by their means. Countless prejudices against our religion have been removed, even when persons have not been led to become Catholics. Their minds have been thus prepared for accepting the truth at some future day. In addition to this, we must remember that many of the tracts are written for the instruction of Catholics. Numerous letters from those in charge of hospitals, asylums, and prisons, in various sections of our country, bear testimony to their value in this respect.

"An objection is sometimes made to the word 'tract.' We do not altogether like the word ourselves. If any friend can suggest a better, we will cheerfully adopt it. Until then, we must continue to use it. Surely Catholics have a right to any word in the English language. Sometimes an objection is made to the tract form of publication. Those who have scruples on this score are relieved by the publication of this volume. These tracts now form a book. No one can fairly object to the matter it contains.

"We trust, therefore, that they who find benefit from this little volume of tracts will endeavor to increase its circulation. To the clergy we recommend Tract 50 as one intended to place before them a practical method of circulating Catholic literature among their people. We cannot close without expressing the strong desire to see this volume spread over the length and breadth of our land."

MEDITATIONS ON THE LITANY OF THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN. By the Abbé Barthe. Translated from the French by a Daughter of St. Joseph. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1871.

This handsome work supplies a want long felt. It contains meditations on each phrase of the Litany from the _Kyrie eleison_ to the _Agnus Dei_. These meditations are of suitable length for May devotions, and are admirable for their solidity no less than for their piety. The Abbé Barthe is an honorable Canon of Rodey (France); and we cannot do better than quote the letter of his bishop. He says: "I rejoice that a priest of my diocese ... has given to learned and Christian France a work which will be widely diffused, and which will make the august Mary loved, admired, and venerated in these lines, when, more than ever, we need to place ourselves under her glorious protection."

There are also letters of commendation from Cardinal Giraud, Archbishop of Cambria, and his grace the Archbishop of Paris, to which is added the approbation of the Bishop of Philadelphia.

May this "Monument to the Glory of Mary" (as it is called) meet in this country with the circulation it deserves, and be the means of spreading wide and deep the love and worship of her whose Immaculate Conception is our patronal feast.

THE WONDERS OF THE HEAVENS. By Camille Flammarion. From the French, by Mrs. Norman Lockyer. With forty-eight illustrations. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1871.

To those who take a delight in reading about the planets and stars, this work will prove both instructive and interesting. The illustrations are very fine, and the work is got up in uniform style with the other volume of "The Library of Wonders," noticed in these pages before, of which it is one of the series.

THECLA; or, The Malediction. By Madame A. R. De La Grange. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: P. O'Shea.

This is an interesting story descriptive of a family living in the Roman province of Cappadocia in the fifth century, giving quaint pictures of life in those early days, and lovely glimpses of the natural beauties of the country. The object of the tale is to illustrate the special judgments of Almighty God on disobedient children and an overindulgent parent, who out of a weak fondness put no restraints upon her children in their youth. The terrible retribution that follows a parent's curse, and the remorse and bitterness of heart that must be the portion of neglectful parents, are well portrayed by Madame De La Grange. The volume will be an excellent addition to our Sunday-school libraries.

We would suggest to the publisher the propriety of a thinner and better paper. It does not look seemly to print books on common paste-board.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE PARABLES. By Father Coleridge, S.J. With an Arrangement of the Parables, by Father Salmeron. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.

This is a paper of no great length, but of great service to the cause of faith. It is in every respect worthy of the pen of Father Coleridge. He sets before us the parables in quite a new light, as meant to teach us the ways of God to men. Why our Lord chose the parabolic form of teaching and why he said so much about his Father are shown with great force and clearness.

NATURAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK. PALÆONTOLOGY. Vol. IV. Part. I. Albany: Printed by C. Van Benthuysen & Sons. March, 1867.

This is a continuation of Professor Hall's able researches on the fossils of this state. It contains descriptions and figures of the Brachiopoda of the Helderberg, Hamilton, Portage, and Chemung groups. The plates are admirably executed, like those in the previous volumes, and the name of the author is a sufficient proof of the accuracy and value of the descriptions which they illustrate. The work is a solid and valuable contribution to science.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From JOHN MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: The Child's Prayer and Hymn Book. For the use of Catholic Sunday-schools.--The Expiation. A Drama in Three Acts. Translated from the French by James Kehoe. Paper.

From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia, Pa.: The Virginia Forest. A Handbook of Travel in Virginia. By E. A. Pollard. 1 vol. 16mo, paper.--History of Florida from its Discovery by Ponce de Leon in 1512, to the Close of the Florida War in 1842. By George R. Fairbanks. 1 vol. 12mo.--The Conservative Reformation and its Theology: as Represented in the Augsburgh Confession, and in the History and Literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. By Charles P. Krauth D.D. 1 vol. 8vo.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIII., No. 76.--JULY, 1871.[107]

AN IRISH MARTYR.

Towards the close of the year 1645, the venerable oratorian, Father Peter Francis Scarampo, who had spent two years in Ireland on a special mission from the Holy See, was permitted to resign his position and return to Rome. He was accompanied thither by five young students whose relatives desired that they should complete their theological studies in the colleges of the Eternal City. Of these, the most distinguished for early proficiency and gentleness of disposition was a youth named Oliver Plunket, then in his sixteenth year, having been born at Loughcrew, county of Meath, in 1629, a near relative and protégé of the Bishop of Ardagh, Doctor Patrick Plunket, and closely connected by ties of kindred with some of the noblest families of Ireland, and with many distinguished ecclesiastics at home and on the Continent. Father Scarampo had borne himself so wisely and with so much charity and discretion while in Ireland, that his departure was regarded as a public misfortune, and his retiring footsteps were followed to the sea-coast by thousands of pious and grateful people; and, though his humble spirit would not allow him to accept the distinguished post of Papal Nuncio, and so remain among them, he never ceased to remember their hospitality and long-suffering and to befriend their cause at Rome upon all occasions. On the young men entrusted to his care he bestowed every possible favor, and especially on young Plunket, in whom he took a fatherly interest up to the day of his untimely death on the plague-stricken Island of St. Bartholomew, even to the extent of defraying that student's expenses for the first three years of his novitiate.

Soon after his arrival in Rome, Oliver Plunket entered the Irish College of that city, then under the charge of the Jesuit Fathers, and for eight years devoted himself with great industry and success to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and theology, subsequently attending the usual course of lectures on canon and civil law in the Roman University. Previous to his appointment to the See of Armagh, the Rector of the Irish College, in response to an enquiry of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, presented the following honorable testimony of the character and abilities of the future Primate:

"I, the undersigned, certify that the Very Reverend Dr. Oliver Plunket, of the diocese of Meath, in the province of Armagh, in Ireland, is of Catholic parentage, descended from an illustrious family; on the father's side, from the most illustrious Earls of Fingal; on the mother's side, from the most illustrious Earls of Roscommon, being also connected by birth with the most illustrious Oliver Plunket, Baron of Louth, first nobleman of the diocese of Armagh; and in this our Irish College he devoted himself with such ardor to philosophy, theology, and mathematics, that in the Roman College of the Society of Jesus he was justly ranked among the foremost in talent, diligence, and progress in his studies; these speculative studies being completed, he pursued with abundant fruit the course of civil and canon law under Mark Anthony de Mariscotti, Professor of the Roman Sapienza, and everywhere and at all times he was a model of gentleness, integrity, and piety."

Having at length received his ordination in 1654, Dr. Plunket was obliged by the rules of the college either to proceed forthwith on the Irish mission or to obtain leave from his superiors to remain to further perfect his studies. He chose the latter course, and at his own request the General of the Society of Jesus, to whom he applied, permitted him to enter San Girolamo della Charità, where for three years he quietly devoted himself to the accumulation of knowledge and the duties of his sacred calling. Marangoni, in his life of Father Cacciaguerra, speaks of Doctor Plunket's conduct while in that secluded retreat in the following eulogistic terms:

"Here it is incredible with what zeal he burned for the salvation of souls. In the house itself, and in the city, he wholly devoted himself to devout exercises; frequently did he visit the sanctuaries steeped with the blood of so many martyrs, and he ardently sighed for the opportunity of sacrificing himself for the salvation of his countrymen. He, moreover, frequented the Hospital of Santo Spirito, and employed himself even in the most abject ministrations, serving the poor infirm, to the edification and wonder of the officials and assistants of that place."

The disturbed condition of his native country has been alleged as the cause of Dr. Plunket's delay in Rome, and this in itself would be sufficient reason, if we reflect that at that time the soldiers of Cromwell were in full possession of every nook and corner of it, and that hundreds of priests, left without congregations, were obliged to fly for their lives to the Continent, or to seek refuge in mountains and morasses; but it is more than probable that the young ecclesiastic had an additional motive for remaining longer in the Holy City, and, having a forecast of his future eminence in the church, and of the vast benefits he was capable of rendering to the cause of religion and his country, desired, as far as possible, to qualify himself for the glorious task to which he was afterwards assigned at the fountain-head of Catholicity, before undertaking a labor which he must have known would be accompanied by many trials and dangers.

But even from the seclusion of San Girolamo his fame as an accomplished and profound scholar soon spread to the outer world, and in 1657 Dr. Plunket was appointed professor of theology and controversy in the College of the Propaganda, a position which he held with great credit for twelve years, until his departure from Rome. Though thus occupied in the responsible and laborious duties of his professorship, he was also consultor of the Sacred Congregation of the Index and of other congregations. In the performance of the high trusts thus imposed upon him, the young professor was frequently brought in contact with many of the most exalted personages of the Roman Court, some of whom subsequently filled the chair of St. Peter, from all of whom he experienced the greatest kindness and repeated proofs of affection, as he frequently mentions with gratitude in his correspondence. Still the confidence reposed in him and the companionship of so many holy and erudite men failed to satisfy the cravings of his soul or reconcile him to his enforced exile. Of a highly sensitive and even poetic nature, his patriotism and attachment to his family were second only to his love for learning and religion, and his mind was constantly tormented by the accounts daily received in Rome of the barbarities practised on his compatriots and co-religionists by the licentious soldiery of the English Commonwealth. In writing to Father Spada, in 1656, on the occasion of the death of his friend and counsellor Father Scarampo, he exclaims in the bitterness of his spirit:

"God alone knows how afflicting his death is to me, especially at the present time, when all Ireland is overrun and laid waste by heresy. Of my relations, some are dead, others have been sent into exile, and all Ireland is reduced to extreme misery: this overwhelmed me with an inexpressible sadness, for I am now deprived of father and of friends, and I should die through grief were I not consoled by the consideration that I have not altogether lost Father Scarampo; for I may say that he in part remains, our good God having retained your reverence in life, who, as it is known to all, were united with him in friendship and in charity and in disposition, so as even to desire to be his companion in death, from which, though God preserved you, yet he did not deprive you of its merit."

But, notwithstanding his own afflictions, he was ever ready to succor by his slender purse and powerful influence such of his destitute young countrymen who sought an opportunity in Rome to procure an education, of which they were so systematically deprived at home; and it was doubtless from a just perception of his great repute and thorough acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs in Rome that, in the early part of 1669, he was requested by the Irish bishops to act as their representative at the Papal Court, an office which he cheerfully accepted and filled to the entire satisfaction of his venerable constituency.

But he was not long allowed to occupy this subordinate position in connection with the church in Ireland, nor even to retain his chair in the Propaganda. He had now entered on his fortieth year, his mind fully developed and stored with all the sacred and profane learning befitting one called to a higher destiny, and his soul imbued with a zeal so holy and so far removed from worldly ambition that no temptation was likely to overcome his faith, and no persecution, no matter how severe, to shake his constancy. He was therefore appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, to succeed Dr. Edmond O'Reilly, recently deceased in Paris. Like the great apostle of his country, of whom he was about to become the spiritual successor, he had spent a long probation in the society of men remarkable for the purity of their lives and the extent of their knowledge, and as St. Patrick longed to revisit the land of his adoption, he also yearned to be once again among the Irish people. Yet his appointment to the primacy of Ireland was neither sought nor anticipated by Dr. Plunket at this time, as we learn from a letter from the Archbishop of Dublin to Monsignor Baldeschi, Secretary of the Propaganda, in which he says:

"Certainly, no one could be appointed better suited than Dr. Oliver Plunket, whom I myself would have proposed in the first place, were it not that he had written to me, stating his desire not to enter for some years in the Irish mission, until he should have completed some works which he was preparing for the press."

The names of many clergymen distinguished for piety, devotion, and learning had been forwarded to Rome, from which to select a fitting successor to Dr. O'Reilly; but, while their various merits were under discussion, the Holy Father, Clement IX., it is said, simplified the matter by suggesting Dr. Plunket as the person best qualified to fill the vacant see, and to govern by his experience and force of character the hierarchy, and, through it, the priesthood of Ireland. The views of the Pope met with unanimous approval, and, the selection being thus made, it was out of the power of Dr. Plunket, no matter how diffident he might have been of his own abilities to fill so elevated a position, to decline. We have seen how this important decision of the Sacred Congregation was viewed by Dr. Talbot, of Dublin, and his opinions seemed to have been shared by all the bishops and priests in Ireland. Dr. O'Molony, of St. Sulpice, Paris, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe, writes:

"You have already laid the foundations of our edifice, erected the pillars, and given shepherds to feed the sheep and the lambs; but, now that the work should not remain imperfect, you have crowned the edifice, and provided a pastor for the pastors themselves, appointing the Archbishop of Armagh, for it is not of the diocese of Armagh alone that he has the administration, to whom the primacy and guardianship of all Ireland is entrusted. One, therefore, in a thousand had to be chosen, suited to bear so great a burden. That one you have found--one than whom none other better or more pleasing could be found; with whom (that your wise solicitude for our distracted and afflicted country should be wanting in nothing) you have been pleased to associate his suffragan of Ardagh, a most worthy and grave man."

The Bishop of Ferns, also, in addressing the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation, says: "Applauding and rejoicing, I have hastened hither from Gand, to the Most Reverend and Illustrious Internunzio of Belgium, to return all possible thanks to our Holy Father, in the name of my countrymen, for having crowned with the mitre of Armagh the noble and distinguished Oliver Plunket, Doctor of Theology;" and Dr. Dowley, of Limerick, adds, "Most pleasing to all was the appointment of Dr. Plunket, and I doubt not it will be agreeable to the government, to the secular clergy, and to the nobility."

These warm expressions of esteem and regard, if known to the new primate, must have inspired him with renewed courage to accept the grave responsibilities imposed upon him, and truly, if ever man required the support of friends to nerve him to encounter dangers and unheard-of opposition, he did. But he seems to have had within himself a courage not of this world, but superior to all earthly considerations. It is recorded on the very best authority that, when about to leave Rome, he was thus accosted by an aged priest, "My lord, you are now going to shed your blood for the Catholic faith." To which he replied, "I am unworthy of such a favor; nevertheless, aid me with your prayers, that this my desire may be fulfilled."[108] The condition of the country to which the primate was hastening fully justified this prophecy. It was to the last degree forlorn and full of discouragement. The sufferings of the Irish people at this period defy description; and were it not that we have before us the penal acts of parliament, numerous authenticated state papers, and the published statements of some of the highest officials of the crown and the agents of the Commonwealth, we would be inclined to believe, if only for the credit of human nature, that the relation of the atrocities at this time perpetrated by English authority on the Catholics of Ireland was the work of some diseased mind that delighted in horrors and revelled in the contemplation of an imaginary pandemonium. The Tudors and the Stuarts as persecutors of Catholics were bad enough, but their ineffectual fires paled before the cool atrocity and sanctimonious villany of the followers of Cromwell; men, if we must call them such, who, arrogating to themselves not only the honorable title of champions of human liberty, but claiming to be the exemplars of all that was left of what was pure and holy in this wicked world, perpetrated in the name of freedom and religion a series of such deeds of darkness that not even a parallel can be found for them in the annals of the worst days of the Roman emperors. So deep indeed has the detestation of the barbarities of Cromwell taken root in the popular mind of Ireland, that, though more than two centuries have elapsed since his death, his name is as thoroughly and as heartily detested there to-day as if his crimes had been committed in our own generation. Previous to the Reformation, though wars were frequent and oftentimes bloody between the English invaders and the natives, they were generally conducted in a certain spirit of chivalry and with some degree of moderation, which usually characterize hostile Catholic nations even in times of the greatest excitement. Churches and the nurseries of learning and charity were respected, or, if destroyed through the stern necessities of warfare, were apt to be replaced by others. But the followers of the new religion knew no such charitable weakness, for from the first they seemed actuated, probably as a punishment for their sin of wilful rebellion against the authority of God's law, with an unquenchable hatred of everything holy, and a craftiness in devising measures to destroy the faith and pervert the minds of the Catholics so preternatural in its ingenuity that we can only account for it by supposing it the emanation of the enemy of mankind. That any people stripped of all worldly possessions, debarred so long from religious worship and the means of enlightenment, outlawed by the so-called government, ensnared by the spy and the magistrate, and ground to dust beneath the hoofs of the trooper's horse, should not only have preserved their existence and the faith, but have multiplied amazingly, both at home and abroad, is one of the most remarkable incidents in all history, as well as one of the strongest proofs of the enduring and unconquerable spirit of Catholicity.

There were probably at this time in Ireland nearly a million and a half of Catholics, though Sir William Petty estimates their number at about 1,200,000; the native population having been fearfully reduced by the late war and the pestilence and famine which succeeded it, by the emigration of forty or fifty thousand able-bodied men to Spain and other countries, and by the deportation of an equal number of women and children, as slaves, to the West Indies and the British settlements on our Atlantic coast. Yet, notwithstanding the immense loss of life occasioned soon after by the Williamite war, the constant drain on the adult male population in the latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, to fill up the decimated ranks of the Catholic armies of Europe, amounting, it is said, to three-quarters of a million, the periodical famines to which the peasantry were constantly exposed, and the great famine of 1846-7 and 1848, which swept away at least two millions, the Irish Catholics of to-day and their descendants in all quarters of the globe number at least fifteen million souls. It is a singular and interesting fact that the Irish Catholics resident in London out-number the entire population of the city of Dublin; that in the cities and towns of England and Scotland there are more Catholics of Irish birth than existed in every part of the world two hundred years ago; and that, while the children of St. Patrick count nearly five millions on the soil which he redeemed from paganism, many more millions of them and their descendants born within the present century are planting the cross of Christ everywhere in America and Australasia. This indestructibility of the Irish race seems to have raised an insurmountable barrier against the designs of the reformers. James I. having planted part of Ulster with some success, the Long Parliament determined to follow his example on a more comprehensive scale, and to utterly exterminate the people who persisted in adhering to their ancient faith. Accordingly, in 1654, all Catholics were ordered under the severest penalties to remove before a certain day from the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, and take up their abodes in Connaught, the least fertile and most inaccessible division of the island. In their front a strip of land some miles in width, following the sinuosity of the sea-coast, and another in their rear along the line of the Shannon, were reserved for the victors and protected by a cordon of military posts, the penalty of passing which, without special license, was death. Thus encompassed by the stormy Atlantic and the broad river, with an inner belt of hostile settlements, it was fondly hoped that the remnant of the gallant Irish nation, completely segregated from the world, would speedily perish, unnoticed and unknown, among the sterile mountains of the west. A more diabolical attempt on the lives of a whole people is not to be found recorded in either ancient or modern history, and, to do but justice to the canting fanatics who conceived the plan, no means were left untried to carry it out to a successful issue. But Providence, with whose designs the Cromwellians assumed to be well acquainted, decreed otherwise, and no sooner had their leader sunk into a dishonored grave, and the legitimate sovereign been restored to the throne, than every part of the country swarmed again with Catholics, who seemed to spring, as if by magic, from the very soil. The people, it was found, had actually increased in numbers, and the clergy, who it was supposed had been effectually destroyed by expatriation, famine, or the sword, still amounted to over sixteen hundred seculars and regulars, as devoted as ever to the spiritual interests of their flocks.

The restoration of Charles II. in 1660 was hailed by the Catholics as a favorable omen. They had faithfully supported his father, and had lost all in defending his own cause, and hence they naturally expected, if not gratitude, at least simple justice. But Charles was a true Stuart. Opposed to persecution from a constitutional love of ease and pleasure, as much as from any innate sense of right, he had neither the capacity to plan a reform nor the manhood to carry out the tolerant designs of others. He was, moreover, weak-minded, vacillating, and insincere, more disposed to conciliate his enemies by gifts and honors than to reward his well-tried friends by the commonest acts of justice. The greatest favor that the Catholics could obtain was a toleration of their worship in remote and secret places, and even this qualified boon was dependent on the whim of the viceroy, and was soon withdrawn at the command of parliament.

But the evils of the English Protestant system did not stop here. The death or involuntary exile of most of the Irish bishops and the dispersion of the clergy created a relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline, particularly among the regulars, and the impossibility of obtaining proper religious instruction at home, and the difficulty of procuring it elsewhere, necessarily lowered the standard of education among the priests of all ranks. Left for the most part to their own guidance, and only imperfectly trained for the ministry, many friars, particularly of the Order of St. Francis, so illustrious for its many distinguished scholars and eloquent preachers, were disposed to rebel against their superiors when the least restraint was placed upon their irregular modes of living, and some were found base enough to lend the weight attached to their sacred calling to further the designs of the worst enemies of their creed and country. Ormond and other so-called statesmen, while avowing unqualified loyalty to their sovereign and a secret attachment to the church, were insidiously betraying the one by placing him in a false position before Catholics and Protestants, while vainly endeavoring to strike a blow at the other by using these apostates to create a schism in her ranks. In the latter scheme they signally failed, and their defeat was mainly due to the untiring energy and profound foresight of the Archbishop of Armagh during the ten years of his administration. The very announcement of Dr. Plunket's appointment seems to have struck terror into the secret enemies of the church in Ireland, and to have given new hope to the friends of religion. This event occurred on the 9th of July, 1669, when the bulls for his consecration were immediately forwarded to the Internunzio at Brussels. Dr. Plunket was desirous of receiving the mitre in Rome, and even made a strong request to be granted that privilege, but the prudential motives which induced the Sacred Congregation to select Belgium in the first instance still remained, and the favor was reluctantly refused. As his first act of obedience, the archbishop bowed cheerfully to this decision, and after presenting his little vineyard, his only real property, and a few books to the Irish College, he bade a final adieu to his Roman friends in the following month, and commenced his homeward journey--his first step to a glorious immortality. He arrived during November in the capital of Belgium, and was cordially welcomed by the Internunzio, who was not unacquainted with his extensive learning and unaffected piety. At the request of that prelate, the Bishop of Ghent consented to administer consecration to Dr. Plunket, and the solemn ceremony was duly performed on the 30th of November, in the private chapel of the episcopal palace in that ancient city. Dr. Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, one of the few persons present on the occasion, thus describes it:

"I present a concise narrative of the consecration of the most illustrious Archbishop of Armagh. His excellency the Internunzio wrote most kind letters to the bishop of this diocese requesting him to perform it, and he most readily acquiesced. But I, on receiving this news, set out at once for Brussels to conduct hither his Grace of Armagh, bound by gratitude to render him this homage. A slight fever seized our excellent bishop on the Saturday before the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, which had been fixed for Dr. Plunket's consecration; wherefore that ceremony was deferred till the first Sunday in Advent, on which day it was devoutly and happily performed in the capella of the palace, without noise, and with closed doors, for such was the desire of the Archbishop of Armagh. Remaining here for eight days after his consecration, he passed his time in despatching letters and examining my writings."

After this short delay, the Primate continued his journey, stopping long enough in London to see his friends at the English court, and to present his credentials to the Queen, who was a devout Catholic, and who received him with great cordiality. He had also leisure to become somewhat conversant with the policy and views of the leading public characters in the English capital, and to study the workings and temper of the parliament. After a tedious and fatiguing journey, he at length landed in Ireland, in March, 1670, having been absent from that country a quarter of a century, where he was joyously received by his numerous relatives and friends. Great was the change which had been wrought in his life during those twenty-five years, but, alas! how much greater had been the alteration in the circumstances of his countrymen. As a lad he had left them in the full enjoyment of their religion in almost every part of the island, their nobility in the possession of their estates, the peasantry and farmers prosperous, the clergy respected and freely obeyed, and all full of hope for the future, and sanguine of yet attaining their independence. As an archbishop and primate, he returned to find nothing but desolation and ruin, sorrow and dejection. The nobility had either been banished or reduced to the condition of mere tenants on their own property, so that only three Catholic gentlemen in the province of Armagh, which embraces eleven dioceses, held any real estate; the original cultivators of the soil who had been spared by the sword and had not been transported or compelled to emigrate were formed into bands of plunderers, and infested the highways under the name of _tories_, while such as remained of the bishops and clergy were to be found only in bogs and mountains or in the most obscure portions of the larger towns and cities.

Undaunted by the scenes of woe and destruction around him, the Primate, like a diligent servant of God, had no sooner set foot on his native soil than he proceeded to the performance of his pastoral labors. Writing to Cardinal Barberini, Protector of Ireland, an account of his journey from Rome, he says:

"I afterwards arrived in Ireland in the month of March, and hastened immediately to my residence; and I held two synods and two ordinations, and in a month and a-half I administered confirmation to more than ten thousand persons, though throughout my province I think there yet remain more than fifty thousand persons to be confirmed. I remarked throughout the country, wherever I went, that for every heretic there are twenty Catholics. The new viceroy is a man of great moderation; he willingly receives the Catholics, and he treats privately with the ecclesiastics, and promises them protection while they attend to their own functions without intriguing in the affairs of government."

The nobleman here alluded to was Lord Berkeley, who held office in Ireland for a few years, and under whose politic and tolerant, if not very sincere, administration the Catholics enjoyed at least comparative security. Personally, he, as well as his successor, Lord Essex, entertained a very high respect for the primate, and treated him with great kindness, when it was possible to do so without incurring the displeasure of the ultra-Protestant faction. Indeed, Archbishop Plunket, well aware of the difficulties which constantly beset his path, and feeling the futility of defying the government authorities, set his mind from the first to conciliate those whom he knew had the power to thwart or second his efforts, without yielding anything of his episcopal dignity or compromising his character as an ardent patriot. His long probationary course in Rome and his intimate association with so many of the best and most accomplished minds at the Papal court must have eminently qualified him for dealing with the leading British officials in Ireland. In his voluminous correspondence with the Holy See, he frequently alludes to his interviews with the lord-lieutenant and other noblemen, and to the judicious use he was able to make of his influence with them for the benefit of his less fortunate or more demonstrative brethren in the ministry. In a letter addressed to Pope Clement, dated June 20, 1670, he says:

"Our viceroy is a man of great moderation and equity: he looks on the Catholics with benevolence, and treats privately with some of the clergy, exhorting them to act with discretion; and for this purpose he secretly called me to his presence on many occasions, and promised me his assistance in correcting any members of the clergy of scandalous life. I discover in him some spark of religion, and I find that many even of the leading members of his court are secretly Catholics."

Again, to Dr. Brennan, his successor as Irish agent, he writes:

"In the province of Armagh, the clergy and Catholics enjoy a perfect peace. The Earl of Charlemont, being friendly with me, defends me in every emergency. Being once in the town of Dungannon to administer confirmation, and the governor of the place having prevented me from doing so, the earl not only severely reproved the governor, but told me to go to his own palace, when I pleased, to give confirmation or to say Mass there if I wished. The magistrate of the city of Armagh, having made an order to the effect that all Catholics should accompany him to the heretical service every Sunday, under penalty of half-a-crown per head for each time they would absent themselves, I appealed to the president of the province against this decree, and he cancelled it, and commanded that neither clergy nor Catholic laity should be molested."

It is not, however, to be supposed from these isolated instances of toleration that the new primate was allowed the full exercise of his functions in the land of his nativity, and where his flock so vastly outnumbered their opponents. On the contrary, we learn from a letter of Lord Conway to his brother-in-law, Sir George Rawdon, that even before Dr. Plunket reached Ireland orders had been issued by the lord-lieutenant for his arrest as being one of "two persons sent from Rome, that lie lurking in the country to do mischief;" and even when he had taken possession of his see, his labors for the most part were performed in secret or in the night time. This was more particularly so after 1673, when the persecution was renewed against the Catholics, that we have his own authority and that of his companion in suffering, Dr. Brennan, Bishop of Waterford, for saying that at the most tempestuous times he was obliged to seek safety by flight, and frequently to expose himself to the horrors of a northern winter and almost to starvation in order to be amid his people, and ready to administer spiritual consolation to them.

"The viceroy," he says, writing in January, 1664, "on the 10th or thereabouts of this month, published a further proclamation that the registered clergy should be treated with the greatest rigor. Another but secret order was given to all the magistrates and sheriffs that the detectives should seek out, both in the cities and throughout the country, the other bishops and regulars. I and my companions no sooner received intelligence of this than, on the 18th of this month, which was Sunday, after vespers, being the festival of the Chair of St. Peter, we deemed it necessary to take to our heels; the snow fell heavily mixed with hail-stones, which were very hard and large; a cutting north wind blew in our faces, and the snow and hail beat so dreadfully in our eyes that to the present we have been scarcely able to see with them. Often we were in danger in the valleys of being lost and suffocated in the snow, till at length we arrived at the house of a reduced gentleman, who had nothing to lose; but for our misfortune he had a stranger in his house, by whom we did not wish to be recognized; hence we were placed in a large garret without chimney and without fire, where we have been during the past eight days. May it redound to the glory of God, the salvation of our souls, and the flocks entrusted to our charge!"

So great indeed was the danger of discovery at this time, and so watchful were the emissaries of the law, that he was compelled to write most of his foreign letters over the assumed signature of "Mr. Thomas Cox," and was usually addressed by that name in reply. He even tells us that he was sometimes obliged to go about the performance of his duties in the disguise of a cavalier with cocked hat and sword.

Dr. Plunket is represented by his contemporaries as a man of delicate physical organization, highly sensitive in his temperament, and disposed naturally to prefer the seclusion of the closet to the excitement and turmoil of the world. The contrast between the scholastic retirement in which he had spent so many years of his life, and the circumstances by which he now found himself surrounded, must have been indeed striking, but like a true disciple he did not hesitate a moment in entering on his new sphere of usefulness. Shortly after his arrival in Dublin, on the 17th of June, 1670, he called together and presided over a general synod of the Irish bishops, at which several important statutes were passed, as well as an address to the new viceroy declaring the loyalty and homage, in all things temporal, of the hierarchy of Ireland to the reigning sovereign. Two synods of his own clergy had already been held, and in September following a provincial council of Ulster met at Clones, which not only reaffirmed the decrees of the synod of Dublin, but enacted many long required reforms in discipline and the manner of life of the clergy. In a letter from the assembled clergy of the province of Armagh, date October 8, 1670, and addressed to Monsignor Baldeschi, they thus speak of the untiring labors of their metropolitan:

"In the diocese of Armagh, Kilmore, Clogher, Derry, Down, Connor, and Dromore, although far separated from each other, he administered confirmation to thousands in the woods and mountains, heedless of winds and rain. Lately, too, he achieved a work from which great advantage will be derived by the Catholic body, for there were many of the more noble families who had lost their properties, and, being proclaimed outlaws in public edicts, were subsequently guilty of many outrages; those by his admonitions he brought back to a better course; he moreover obtained pardon for their crimes, and not only procured this pardon for themselves, but also for their receivers, and thus hundreds and hundreds of Catholic families have been freed from imminent danger to their body and soul and properties."

But the good pastor was not contented with these extended labors among the laity. To make his reforms permanent and beneficial, he felt that he should commence with the clergy, who as a body had always been faithful to their sacred trust, but, owing to the disturbed state of the country for so many years past, had been unable to perform their allotted duties with that exactness and punctuality so desirable in the presence of a watchful and unscrupulous enemy. He therefore ordained many young students, whom he found qualified for the ministry, and, taking advantage of the temporary cessation of espionage consequent on the arrival of Lord Berkeley, he established a college in Drogheda, in which he soon had one hundred and sixty pupils and twenty-five ecclesiastics, under the care of three learned Jesuit fathers. The expenses of this school he defrayed out of his slender means, never more than sixty pounds per annum, and frequently not one-fifth of that sum, with the exception of 150 scudi (less than forty pounds sterling), annually allowed by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda. When, in 1674, the penal laws were again put in force in all their original ferocity of spirit, the college was of course broken up; but Dr. Plunket in his letters to Rome was never tired of impressing on the minds of the authorities there the necessity of affording Irish students more ample facilities for affording a thorough education. His suggestions in regard to the Irish College at Rome, by which a larger number of students might be accommodated without increased expense, though not acted upon at the time, have since been carried out, and it was principally at his instance that the Irish institutions in Spain, previously monopolized by young men from certain dioceses of Ireland only, were thrown open to all.

In the latter part of 1671, we find Dr. Plunket on a mission to the Hebrides, where the people, the descendants of the ancient Irish colonists, still preserved their Gaelic language, and received him with all the gratitude and enthusiasm of the Celtic nature. In 1674, notwithstanding the storm of persecution then raging over the island, he made a lengthy tour through the province of Tuam, and in the following year we have a detailed report of his visitation to the eleven dioceses in his own province, every one of which, no matter how remote or what was the personal risk, he took pains to inspect, bringing peace and comfort in his footsteps, and leaving behind him the tears and prayers of his appreciative children.

If we add to this multiplicity of occupations the further one of being the chief and almost only regular correspondent of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda in the three kingdoms, we may presume that the primate's life in Ireland was fully and advantageously occupied. The number of his letters to Rome on every subject of importance is immense, when we consider the difficulty and danger of communication in those days. He was also in constant correspondence with London, Paris, and Brussels, and, though he sometimes complains of the weakness of his eyesight, caused doubtless by exposure and change of climate, he frequently regrets more his poverty, which did not enable him to pay the postage on all occasions. At one time, indeed, he avers that all the food he is able to procure for himself is "a little oaten bread and some milk and water."

The last important act of the primate was the convocation of a provincial synod at Ardpatrick, in August, 1678, at which were present the bishops or vicars-general and apostolic of all the dioceses of Ulster. Many decrees of a general and special nature were there passed with great solemnity, and upon being sent to Rome were duly approved. It was upon this occasion that the representatives of the suffragan diocese of Armagh, deeply impressed and edified as they were by the labors and sanctity of their archbishop, addressed a joint letter to the Sacred Congregation, eloquently describing the extent and good effect of his constant solicitude for his spiritual charge.

"We therefore declare (say those venerable men) that the aforesaid Most Illustrious Metropolitan has labored much, exercising his sacred functions not only in his own but also in other dioceses; during the late persecution he abandoned not the flock entrusted to him, though he was exposed to extreme danger of losing his life; he erected schools, and provided masters and teachers, that the clergy and youth might be instructed in literature, piety, cases of conscience, and other matters relating to their office; he held two provincial councils, in which salutary decrees were enacted for the reformation of morals; he, moreover, rewarded the good and punished the bad, as far as circumstances and the laws of the kingdom allowed; he labored much, and not without praise, in preaching the word of God; he instructed the people by word and example; he also exercised hospitality so as to excite the admiration of all, although he scarcely received annually two hundred crowns from his diocese; and he performed all other things which became an archbishop and metropolitan, as far as they could be done in this kingdom. In fine, to our great service and consolation, he renewed, or rather established anew, at great expense, correspondence with the Holy See, which, for many years before his arrival, had become extinct. For all which things we acknowledge ourselves indebted to his Holiness and to your Eminences, who, by your solicitude provided for us so learned and vigilant a metropolitan, and we shall ever pray the Divine Majesty to preserve his holiness and your Eminences."

Had the distinguished body of ecclesiastics who thus voluntarily testified to the merits of their archbishop anticipated the awful catastrophe that was soon to remove him from them and from the world, they could not have epitomized his career in more truthful and concise language for the benefit of posterity. The end, however, was now at hand. In the same year that the provincial synod was held, the persecution against the Catholics, intermittent like those of the early ages of the church, broke out with redoubled violence. Forced to the most extreme measures by the parliament, the English court sent the strictest orders to Ireland to have arrested and removed from the country the entire body of the bishops and the clergy. The statute of 2d Elizabeth, declaring it _præmunire_ or imprisonment and confiscation for any person to exercise the authority of bishop or priest in her dominions, was revived, and liberal rewards for the discovery of such offenders were publicly offered, to stimulate the energy of that class of spies known as "priest-hunters." Dr. Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, was arrested and thrown into prison, where during a long confinement he languished and finally died. Dr. Creagh, Bishop of Limerick, the Archbishop of Tuam, and several of the inferior clergy, were also imprisoned and subjected to many annoyances and indignities previous to being expelled the kingdom. Dr. Plunket, who hoped that the storm would soon blow over, while prudently seeking a place of safety in a remote part of his diocese, frequently avowed his determination never to forsake his flock until compelled to do so by superior force. Learning, however, of the dangerous illness of his relative and former patron, Dr. Patrick Plunket, he cautiously left his concealment, and hastened to Dublin, to be with the good old bishop during his last moments, and it was in that city, on the 6th of December, 1679, that he was discovered and apprehended by order of the viceroy. For the first six months after his arrest he was confined in Dublin Castle, part of the time a close prisoner, but, as the only charge openly preferred against him was, to use the expression of one of his relatives, "only for being a Catholic bishop, and for not having abandoned the flock of our Lord in obedience to the edict published by parliament," and as the punishment for this at the worst was expatriation, his friends did not fear for his life. They were not aware then that a conspiracy had been formed against him by some apostate friars under the patronage of the infamous Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the English fanatics, with the object of accusing him of high treason, and thus compassing his death. On the 24th of July following, he was sent under guard to Dundalk for trial; but so monstrous were the charges of treason against him, and so thoroughly was his character for moderation and loyalty known to all, that, though the jury consisted exclusively of Protestants, his accusers dared not appear against him, and he was consequently remitted back to Dublin. But his enemies on both sides of the Channel were thirsting for his blood, and, in October, 1680, he was removed to London, ostensibly to answer before the king and parliament, but, actually, to undergo the mockery of a trial in a country in which no offense was even alleged to have been committed, where the infamous character of his accusers was unknown, and where he was completely isolated from his friends. The result could not be doubtful. Without counsel or witnesses, in the presence of prejudiced judges and perjured witnesses, and surrounded by the hooting of a London mob, he was found guilty, and, on the 14th of June, 1681, he was sentenced to be executed at Tyburn, a judgment which was carried out on the 11th of July following, with all the barbaric ceremonies of the period. During the trial and on the scaffold, his bearing was singularly noble and courageous, so much so, indeed, that many who beheld him, and who shared the violent anti-Catholic prejudices of the hour, were satisfied of his perfect innocence. He repeatedly and emphatically denied all complicity in the treasonable plots laid to his charge, but openly declared that he had acted as a Catholic bishop, and had spent many years of his life in preaching and teaching God's word to his countrymen. His life in prison between the passing and the execution of the sentence is best described by a fellow-prisoner, the learned Benedictine, Father Corker, who had the privilege of being with him in his last hours. In his narrative, he says:

"He continually endeavored to improve and advance himself in the purity of divine love, and by consequence also in contrition for his sins past; of his deficiency in both which this humble soul complained to me as the only thing that troubled him. This love had extinguished in him all fear of death. _Perfecta charitas foras mittit timorem_: a lover feareth not, but rejoiceth at the approach of the beloved. Hence, the joy of our holy martyr seemed still to increase with his danger, and was fully accomplished by an assurance of death. The very night before he died, being now, as it were, at heart's ease, he went to bed at eleven o'clock, and slept quietly and soundly till four in the morning, at which time his man, who lay in the room with him, awaked him; so little concern had he upon his spirit, or, rather, so much had the loveliness of the end beautified the horror of the passage to it. After he certainly knew that God Almighty had chosen him to the crown and dignity of martyrdom, he continually studied how to divest himself of himself, and become more and more an entire and perfect holocaust, to which end, as he gave up his soul, with all its faculties, to the conduct of God, so, for God's sake, he resigned the care and disposal of his body to unworthy me, etc. But I neither can nor dare undertake to describe unto you the signal virtues of this blessed martyr. There appeared in him something beyond expression--something more than human; the most savage and hard-hearted people were mollified and attendered at his sight."

About two years afterward, this pious clergyman, upon being liberated, disinterred the body of the late primate, and had it forwarded to the convent of his order at Lambspring in Germany; the trunk and legs he had buried in the churchyard attached to that institution, and the right arm and head he preserved in separate reliquaries. The former is still preserved in the Benedictine Convent; the latter is in Dundalk, in the Convent of St. Catharine of Sienna, a nunnery founded by the favorite niece of the martyred prelate.

Dr. Plunket's judicial murder was the source of great grief to the friends of the church throughout Europe, and even many contemporary Protestant writers expressed their regret at his unmerited sufferings, while the unfortunate agents of his death, becoming outcasts and wanderers, generally ended their lives on the scaffold or in abject poverty, bemoaning their crimes, to the pity and horror of Christendom. The memory of Dr. Plunket, one of the most learned and heroic of the long line of Irish bishops, is sacredly and lovingly preserved in his own country and in the general annals of the church; and let us hope, in the language of the Rev. Monsignor Moran, who has done so much by his researches to perpetuate the name and fame of his glorious countryman, "that the day is not now far distant when our long-afflicted church will be consoled with the solemn declaration of the Vicar of Christ, that he who, in the hour of trial, was the pillar of the house of God in our country, and who so nobly sealed with his blood the doctrines of our faith, may be ranked among the martyrs of our holy church."

FOOTNOTES:

[107] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[108] Marangoni: _Life of the Servant of God_, Father Buonsignore Cacciaguerra.

MARY CLIFFORD'S PROMISE KEPT.

It was the day after a storm. The morning had been cool, almost cold; banks of cloud were piled up on the horizon; the summits of the friendly Franconias were shrouded; the White Mountains were invisible, and the wind whistled and howled, reminding one of "the melancholy days" to come. By afternoon, however, there was a change. Every cloud had magically disappeared, the wind had gone down, fields and young maples seemed to have renewed their early green, and everything stood out in clear relief, bathed and steeped in September sunshine. Not a red-letter day, but a golden day; one to be remembered.

I believe I shall remember it all my life, even if there should be days as bright and far happier in store for me. I was in an open buggy with a gentleman named Mr. Grey, I driving and he calling my attention to one thing after another, and both of us rejoicing in a light-hearted way in the sun, and sky, and yellow leaves, and roadside trees laden with crimson plums; in the golden-rod, and purple asters, and the bee-hives, and picturesque, bare-footed, white-headed children; and in ourselves and each other, and in our youth and strength; and in the sunny present, and the mysterious, enchanted future.

"I never knew the animal go so well before," said Mr. Grey; "you seem to understand how to make him do his best. Only remember that the faster we go, the sooner we shall get home. Will you not sacrifice your fancy for fast driving, to my enjoyment of the drive? Give me time to realize how much I enjoy it."

"You always seem to feel as if stopping to think about it will make the time go slower," I said.

"It does to me, I assure you, at least at the moment. Yet I do not find, in looking back, that this past month has flown any less fast, for all my little arts to detain it. Here comes the stage, crowded as usual, inside and out. I wonder whether we make a part of the picture to them, and whether they will remember us with it? The mountains before them--look back, Miss Clifford, and see; that crimson maple on your side of the road; and this green hill with its firs and rocks on mine."

I laughed. "I don't believe they will ever think of us again."

"Then they are not appreciative. Don't think I mean to take any of their supposed notice to myself, except so far as I am with you. To me, all the rest, all that we can see and admire, is the frame, the setting as it were, to your face. It has been so ever since I came here."

I found this somewhat embarrassing, of course, though Mr. Grey spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact way, that had the effect of veiling the compliment. He did not seem to expect an answer, and continued, "That reminds me of 'In Memoriam.' Do you recall the lines about the 'diffusive power'?"

"No; I don't know what you mean. Repeat them, won't you?"

"I have no doubt you will find them familiar, yet I will repeat them, because I like them so much." And he recited these lines, which I write down, because they bring before me the whole scene, and I seem to hear again the low voice and the appreciating accent with which he spoke:

"Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run: Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.

"What art thou, then? I cannot guess; But, though I seem in star and flower To feel thee some diffusive power, I do not therefore love thee less.

"My love involves the love before; My love is vaster passion now; Though mixed with God and nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more.

"Far off thou art, but ever nigh; I have thee still, and I rejoice, I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee, though I die."

"Can you imagine feeling so about any one?" asked Mr. Grey.

"I can imagine it. Do you suppose that Mr. Tennyson's friend was really so much to him?"

"Perhaps," he said gravely. "I'll tell you, Miss Clifford, what I think about that. It is not right to feel so about anybody, because that is exactly the way we ought to feel about God. Don't you see that it is? If everything reminded us of him, it would be just right."

"I can't believe it would be possible to make God so personal to us. We think naturally of what we know and have seen, not of what we merely believe in."

"Ah! but God may be 'personal to us,' as you say. You forget that he is near us, with us, and even in us. That would be the only way, it seems to me, of loving him with our mind, and soul, and strength, because we can't help loving all this beauty in everything. Just as Tennyson says,

'My love involves the love before, I seem to love thee more and more.'"

There was a bough of deep-red leaves overhead, and I looked longingly at it, for they were just the color that I liked to wear in my hair; yet I did not want to ask for it, lest Mr. Grey should think that I had not been attending to him. He must have seen the look, though, for he jumped out of the buggy and ran up the bank to get the branch. I stopped the horse, thinking, as I watched the capturing of the prize, "I might have known my wish would be anticipated. Every one but he waits to be asked and thanked." When he came back, I told him I was tired of driving, and asked him to take the reins.

"May I spin the drive out?" he asked. "You are not in a hurry to have it over, are you? Do you know it is the only time we have ever driven together?"

"Why, I thought we had taken a great many other drives. What are you thinking of?"

"We have driven often, as you say, with parties of other people, but have we ever taken a drive by ourselves before?"

"No," I returned; "you are right."

"It is a part of the whole," continued he. "I have been in a kind of dream for a month. I dread the awakening, though everything reminds me of it now. It has been a new experience to me, this boarding with other people and seeing them so familiarly. There is no way of getting into easy and friendly relations with others in a very short space of time so effective as this; and, as the household has happened to be a very pleasant one, I have enjoyed the experiment greatly; though it is strange to think that I may never see any of our number again."

"You are really very flattering, Mr. Grey," I said, a little hurt. "Then I am never to see you again! I am glad you have given me warning, or I might have invited you to visit us in Boston, next winter."

"You are kind, very kind," he answered hastily; "nothing would give me greater pleasure than to meet you, but I shall not be in America next winter. I hope to be in Rome."

"Really!" I exclaimed. "Why are you going to Rome? To be a priest?"

"No, I am not so fortunate as to have that vocation. I am going abroad to try to find a wife, singular as it may appear."

"It does seem strange that a man with such strong American feelings as you should wish to have a foreign wife."

"I want to marry a Catholic," he said, switching off the tops of the golden-rod with the whip.

"And are there no Catholic wives to be obtained here?" I asked, smiling.

"No doubt; though I have not yet found the one I am looking for. Among converts there are girls who suffer for their faith, who are called upon to make sacrifices, to lose position, and the approbation, even the affection, of their friends. 'It is so odd!' they say, 'so unnecessary, to break away from early associations, and from forms of worship which have been sufficient for all their friends--and very good people too--and embrace a foreign religion.' Haven't you heard such remarks?"

I acknowledged that I had, adding, "And I don't wonder at it."

"Among these brave girls," he continued, not noticing my remark, "one meets heroism, fervor, and a practical recommendation of the religion for which they are proud to suffer; but I also want to see what I shall find in other countries--women who have grown up in a Catholic atmosphere, and acquired their faith unconsciously, as the breath of their lives. These have developed into beautiful forms of grace and piety, as delicate as flowers, and, like them, breathing innocence and purity such as no other education can give or even preserve."

"Do you mean to say that innocence and purity cannot be found among Protestant girls?" I asked sarcastically.

"I am sure I hope they can," he answered earnestly; "yet do not be offended if I say, not in the same degree. You cannot conceive, Miss Clifford, of the beauty of a soul which has been guarded and sustained from infancy by the graces and sacraments of the church, and has kept its baptismal whiteness without stain. It is not often found, even within the church, and is, I believe, nearly impossible outside it."

"I hope you'll find this angel next winter. Please let me know when you discover her, for I should like to see her."

He was silent, and as I was thinking about a good many things, we drove on very quietly for some time.

It may seem strange that I should remember so well what Mr. Grey said to me that golden September afternoon, and as I think I know the reason of it, I will write it down as frankly as I have written the description of our drive so far, and as I mean to put down all I recall of it to the end.

Mr. Grey had boarded for a month in the same house with me and my sister, and a dozen other people, all of whom we met for the first time. My sister and I were the only persons whose society he seemed to seek, and as she, not being strong, was obliged to keep quiet, I had seen more of him than any one else. He was very polite and pleasant to every one, and the whole household liked him; yet he never talked to the other ladies as he did to me, nor paid them the same watchful little attentions. He thought me pretty, and had a curious, unconscious way of alluding to it that did not seem offensive like common flattery, and there was a delicacy and appreciation about his treatment of me that was original and very, very pleasant.

True, he was a Catholic, and a very devout one, having his religious books and papers always with him, and talking of his faith with real enjoyment to any one who showed the smallest interest. Rose, my sister, had talked with him once or twice, and to her he very soon expressed his disapproval of marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics (as he called them), and declared his determination never to marry at all if he could not have a Catholic wife. Rose had alluded to this in my presence, so he knew that I understood what his intentions were. On account of this understanding, there was more freedom and less constraint in our intercourse than would otherwise have been; and as he was a gentleman, and an educated one, I found great pleasure in being with him and in his sympathy. His attentions, unobtrusive, thoughtful, and constant, were not only acceptable to me, but in that short month I had come to depend upon them more than I was aware of, forgetting that when they ceased it would be harder for me than if I had never received them.

Mr. Grey had never talked to me exactly in the way that he did that afternoon, and because I thought it unusual I have been able to recall what he said in nearly his very words.

We were on our way home, walking up a long hill, when he said:

"I have thought a good deal of you lately, and of a feeling I have had about you from the first--as if it were a great merit in you to be so lovely, and sweet, and charming, and that any one who felt and appreciated your loveliness as I have owed you a kind of debt, as it were, which it would be an honor and a happiness to try to pay."

His face was turned from me, and he trailed the whip-lash in the road, while I, leaning back, could not help looking at him, and, because I did not know what to say, I laughed.

He continued: "Yet with that thought came the realization of its injustice; for you cannot help your prettiness, and you are clever because it is natural to you; and I thought, 'Now, if I am just, I shall pay my debt not to her, who did not make herself, but to God, who made her. I shall love not only the beauty, but also the Giver and Perfecter of it.' Would not that be better, Miss Clifford?"

"Yes, I suppose so. I understand what you mean. Only, then, why have you been so good to me?" I had to look away, for my voice trembled and my eyes were suddenly full of tears.

"Why? Because it has made me happy, and I have been unjust; because I have said to myself, 'This is a dream--a sweet and charming dream. Soon I shall wake and go back to real life; for the present, let me be weak and enjoy it.'"

The glory of the sunshine was departing, the hills were in deep shadow, and the slanting rays were no longer warm and cheering. Mr. Grey wrapped my shawl round me, just as I remembered that I had one in case I should need it.

When I could speak steadily, I remarked: "Something that you have said makes me think of the parable of the talents. It has always perplexed me. Will you tell me if you think I have a talent, and what I am to do with it? I don't want to bury it in the ground."

"Your talents are clear enough, I am sure," he answered. "Your power of pleasing and making yourself loved is one."

"And what am I to do with it?"

"Why, do good with it. You have done me good."

"Ah! but that is because you are good, not because I am," I said sadly.

"I am not good, though perhaps the _reason_ why you have done me good lies more with me than you. I don't suppose--forgive me for saying it--that your beauty was given you only to win men's hearts, because that does not make them happy, or better."

"You are thinking, I suppose, of Mr. Falconer. I am sure I did not want him to fall in love with me, and make such a fuss. It was very uncomfortable."

"And don't you think you might have helped it? Really, now, Miss Clifford?"

"Well, yes, I might perhaps have stopped him if I had been rude and disagreeable to him."

"I don't believe you are ever that to any one. You try to please everybody."

"There! that is just it!" I exclaimed. "Why, isn't that using my talent, taking for granted I have it? What ought I to do with it?"

"I know what a Catholic girl would think of, because Catholics are taught in all things to acknowledge God, and to refer all to him. Think what this gift of beauty is--the key to all hearts; it challenges and receives love as soon as seen. Don't you feel instantly attracted by a beautiful face, and turn with pleasure and affection toward the possessor, before she has given any evidence of other claims to be loved?"

"Yes; and for a person who can't help wanting to please and to be loved, it is an advantage, isn't it?"

"It is more than that, it is the gift of God; and therefore intended for good. The saints were in the habit of saying, 'God created all this beauty in order to lead me to love him.' Now, if a woman thinks of this, she will not prize her beauty for the purposes of vanity, but to lead her admirers to something higher than herself. I grant you this is not common, nor would a woman think of it, unless she had been taught to think of God as the first principle of her life. But I will not preach any more."

"You remind me of my little 'Mrs. Barbauld.' How long it is since I have thought of it! 'The rose is beautiful; but he that made the rose is more beautiful than it. It is beautiful; he is beauty.'"

"I have been unusually serious, perhaps because I have felt the end of the dream drawing very near. I am going away the day after to-morrow."

The sunset clouds had faded away, and the stars were coming out above our heads. We had reached the top of one more long hill, and there was the little meeting-house before us, and we saw beyond our own white cottage, with a light in the parlor-window, showing that tea-time was passed. Mr. Grey spoke again.

"Have you enjoyed this drive?"

"I have very much."

"Have I said anything to hurt or offend you?"

"No, indeed, Mr. Grey. On the contrary, you have given me something to think about. No one ever spoke to me in this way before."

"And do you think you shall be likely to remember this afternoon? and with pleasure?"

"I shall not be likely to forget it."

"Well, then, I have an odd fancy, and it is this. I want you to promise me, after I have left this beautiful place and you, that you will write a description of this drive, as if to an unknown third person, with the details and necessary explanations. I will do the same. Then, if we meet again, you can read mine and I yours, if we like, and look back to this time. Will you promise?"

I considered a minute, and then said, "I think I can see that such a description will not be an easy thing to me; yet, if it is your wish, of course, Mr. Grey, I promise."

"We may meet after many years, you an old lady and I an old man; and these accounts will bring back to us this perfect day, and all that we have seen and felt."

I looked at him and smiled. "Mr. Grey, I have been invited to spend a year abroad with some friends, and my father says I may go if I choose. We may meet next winter, in Rome."

* * * * *

And in Rome we did meet, sure enough--that Rome to which "all roads lead." I began to take one of those roads soon after Mr. Grey's departure. I found it a road "so plain that a fool could not err therein," a "path of peace." And when we stood side by side in the Rome of the Seven Hills, he made up his mind to share the seventh sacrament with a "convert girl."

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.

TRANSLATED FROM THE "CARITA."

I.

So great and painful are the sufferings and terror now weighing upon the nations of Europe that, setting every other subject aside, it is toward that the mind necessarily turns, and we will accordingly lay before our readers the deeply rooted convictions we entertain, not merely in reference to the year gone by, but to that on which we are just entering. These convictions take within their scope the present most deplorable and shameful condition of Europe, and a future that cannot be very far distant. But which of these subjects shall we undertake to discuss? Or, were we to satisfy the necessity there seems for the treatment of both, should we be thereby exceeding the limit of our obligation as journalists? Nothing is easier, nothing more agreeable in our case, than to satisfy both the one and the other. For, if we place before our readers our reflections on the present and future of the Christian nations of Europe, we shall be at the same time defining and specifying the principal field of our studies.

I will then examine into the reasons of the present condition of the church and of civilization, and I will do so with a mind as free as may be from prejudice and the heat of passion. After judging of events by the great laws of history, I will endeavor to trace out the path which ideas and facts must follow at no distant period. My words will indeed be addressed in an especial manner to the true children of the church, but I do not doubt that they will indirectly reach some who are removed and even separated from us. Neither do I deny that I am animated by the hope of helping to sustain the courage of my brethren, so that each one may be able to say to himself, _Modicæ fidei quare dubitasti_.

II.

Towards the close of the year 1869, and the commencement of the year that followed, two solemn utterances resounded through Europe and agitated the nations of the universe. The first of these proceeded from the Roman Pontiff, the convener of the Œcumenical Council; the other was the cry of modern civilization, proclaiming its own power and its ideas of universal progress. Both utterances were of solemn import, but the one was in contradiction to the other. The first, or that of the Pontiff, with all the weight of his divine authority, laid open to view the true principles of the other, and strove to reclaim it to Christ with the new and more effulgent light of truth and the more ardent fire of charity. Such words ought indeed to have found an echo and penetrated through every fibre of the universe, for they were in substance the language of love; from love they came, and to love they tended. Had they thus been accepted by the nations, we should not have had now so many sufferings to undergo, nor been menaced by a future still more calamitous. The other utterance, that of modern civilization, inspired by the idea that it was an invincible and independent power, spurned the thought not merely of supernatural aid, but even of supernatural authority. Moreover, in proof of its power, it collected then under distinct heads all the evidences of the progress of the present age, proffering them as an infallible guarantee of new and still greater progress in the immediate future. Thousands listened with credulity to such language, and, opening their hearts to glorious dreams of the future, exulted over the hopes they had conceived with a joy whose folly was unquestionable, though it would be hard to pronounce whether it proceeded most from impiety or pride. It is, however, a satisfaction to speak with boldness and candor, calling things by their right names: such joy was foolish, because it was at once both proud and impious. The words of the Supreme Pontiff were derided, and abuse and calumnies of every description were heaped with a lavish hand on the acts of the Œcumenical Council.

Now, assuming the active opposition of these two powers, what consequences must result from it in the domain of facts? The problem is unquestionably an important one, and we must treat it by first going back and tracing it downward from first principles.

III.

The decree of the Pope when summoning an Œcumenical Council may be defined as the supreme exercise of his authority; and the council so assembled is the greatest and most universal act of the power of good with which the church has been invested; she who is the City of God, yet a pilgrim upon earth. Reasoning on these same questions, a year ago, I recollect having thus expressed myself: "Assuming that the life of the Catholic Church is _charity_ both in its source and its organization, and that the Papacy is the central seat of charity; what, then, is the Œcumenical Council, that supreme act of the Papacy and the church? The answer is not difficult: it is the supreme act of charity peculiar to Catholicity, and is therefore that power of supernatural love which is alone strong enough to combat with and put to flight the gigantic and many-sided egotism of the times we live in."

Now, such an act of this all-powerful charity did the church initiate on the 8th day of December, 1869--a day that will live for ever in the memory of posterity, and never fail to be spoken of with blessings. To the eyes of Catholics, the Council of the Vatican appeared--and such it is--a new and living fountain of hope. It seemed as if the yearnings of three centuries and many generations were at last to be gratified by this council. It seemed, in a special manner, as if the tendencies and wants of the nineteenth century converged toward this council, like rays to a common centre. And here, the better to understand the truth of these sentiments, we trust it will not be unacceptable to our readers if we lay before them what we ourselves--partakers in and witnesses of the universal conscience--published on the very day on which the Œcumenical Council opened in the Vatican:

"And, in truth, what is the council in relation to the nineteenth century? It is the desire of all, a something longed and sighed for by all minds and all hearts, the ideal of the noblest and most generous aspirations that now assert their sway over the spirit of man. Nor is it that only, but it is likewise what was needed to meet the most urgent and widespread want of our age. It will doubtless appear strange to very many that the council should be styled the desire of all men, but such is nevertheless the fact; consciously or unconsciously, all longed for it: all, those who hail it and those who curse it, those who believe in it and those who despise it. Yes, all; he who exalts our age, and he who bewails its errors, he whose heart is rejoiced, and he who sheds tears over the events of our century; princes and people, the priesthood and the laity, religion and civilization, faith and science. Assuredly, were any additional proof necessary to demonstrate to conviction, by the evidence of reason and history, that the Papacy is the heart of humanity, the heart in which all the aspirations of humanity converge and unite, here would be the proof in the summons that convened this Œcumenical Council. For, from the various and opposite judgments passed upon our age, some in adulation, others in blame, one thing is evident, and all agree in admitting it, that the tendencies of our age are directed by a twofold attraction toward union and liberty. These guiding influences are in themselves most powerful, noble, and exalted, because they mirror the infinite, absolute, and supreme unity of God. Liberty is the image and proof of the Infinite Being, for he alone is truly free, and the spirit which tends by love toward him is adorned with liberty, and possesses the power of reducing its free will to act. Union is the shadow and effect of the divine union, because the one God, one Truth, one Good, one Beauty, can alone sweetly and strongly bring into accord the wills and understandings of men, and cause them to harmonize in the limitless range of space, and the vicissitude and diversity of time."

Now, two such qualities and tendencies of humanity, acting in an especial manner, or, in other words, more powerfully and universally than ever before, rule over and exalt our age. He who should say that these two tendencies, naturally common to all men, all times, and all places, had become the passions of the age, and even its most ardent passions, would express our ideas on this subject, and give an adequate description of the times in which we live.

Liberty, then, and union, are the cry from every quarter, the thought, desire, hope, strength, and occupation of all intellects, of all classes, of everything that belongs to man, from the highest to the lowest. Trades, business, and commerce cry aloud for liberty, and for union with liberty. The free co-operation of the industrial arts and workmen's societies, of societies of merchants and banking-houses, are ideas and facts so common in these days that the dominion of the two tendencies referred to above is clearly made manifest in the lower order of civilization. And this order, quickened by such ideas and making use of such aids, becomes the instrument of new liberty and still greater union. Thus, the power of steam triumphing over the obstacles of matter, and the speed of electricity overcoming the resistance of space and time, favor the free expansion of nation toward nation, and make, I might almost say, one single society out of the most distant nations.

Rising from this lower order of civilization, the industries of every kind, to what is far nobler, that of science, we observe the same aspirations, perhaps more universally diffused and more passionate in degree toward liberty and union. Freedom of thought, freedom of education, freedom of speech and of the press, seem to be the idols of the day; for, strange to say, freedom of the intellectual life is deemed by very many not as the dowry of science, but the fundamental principle of all human instruction. There exists, also, with this desire for intellectual freedom, a craving after union. Scientific congresses, either general or confined to some particular branch of knowledge, succeed each other at no distant intervals, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, so as to unite men of intellect whom distance of space had kept asunder. The literary journals, whose number is so great as to excite amazement, have become the arena for the free diffusion of thought; they keep alive the work of the scientific congresses, and spread its knowledge--spreading it in such a manner as to complete the intellectual union of the human race, by making the speculations of the great men of science familiar to the most ordinary intellects.

Turning our gaze from the industrial and intellectual to the moral life, that is to say, to the life of society, the two aspirations appear stronger and more manifest; so strong and manifest that we might be tempted to call them insane and mischievous. To the cry of liberty, the civilized nations of earth respond with transport, and rise in rebellion against whatever can be shown to be in any way opposed to freedom. Never in previous times were such social changes witnessed, so unexpected, so general, so profound, and carried through with so much enthusiasm, as those just enacted and initiated with the cry of liberty. The political organization of nations, the administrative control of provinces and municipalities, have all been regulated by the principle of free election, freedom of vote and opinion. The slavery of man to man, a lamentable relic of paganism, has been abolished in many places by legal enactment, and is universally looked on with more repugnance than heretofore. After the hard-fought battles in North America on the question of slavery, the negroes there have been raised to the dignity of freemen.

No less vigorous and resistless has been the tendency toward social union. The principle of nationality has traversed all Europe with the rapidity of lightning, kindling as it passed the minds of men, exciting and agitating them in a wonderful manner. Even as we write, the cry for unions still more comprehensive--the union of races--strikes upon our ears.

It is, then, an indisputable fact, a fact whose evidence is clear to all and is admitted by all, that the aspirations of our age are towards union and liberty.

We shall therefore hail the council as the final goal of these aspirations of the human race. And yet, in saying this, we have not stated all that the council implies; for it serves also to satisfy an essentially human want that equals those twofold aspirations, or, to speak more correctly, is still stronger and more universal than they. What, then? Shall it be said that the aspirations and wants of the human mind are not directed to the same object? Most assuredly; the end, but not the immediate object, is the same. They proceed from different impulses: the one arises from the tendencies of the age, but without any regard to the good or evil qualities inherent in such tendencies; the other is the result of a vice that modifies and corrupts such tendencies, a vice that may prove fatal to nations, alluring them by the cry of liberty and union to slavery and desolation. The want we refer to argues a vice to be corrected, an infirmity to be healed, a danger to be shunned, express it as we will; but let us not deny the fact, a most sad and painful one, for which the council furnishes a sovereign and most efficacious remedy.

But what, it will be asked, is this vice which degrades the noble aspirations for liberty and union, and causes such misery to nations? It is the rejection of authority--a rejection absolute and unlimited, that has penetrated into every relation of human life. The better, however, to make our sentiments clear on this subject, and to bring under consideration, not the existence of such a vice, but the cause that produced it, we must trace the question back to its source.

The fundamental dogma of the Protestant Reformation gave birth at the same instant to a double negation--the rejection of liberty and of union--so that the servitude of the human will and individualism were exalted to the dignity of a principle. It seems like a contradiction that the basis of Protestantism, namely, private interpretation, which is the rejection of a supreme authority, should have led in its consequences to servitude. But the contradiction disappears when we reflect that so necessary is authority to man that he will bow to fatalism or force if he has no legitimate authority to which to turn. History bears evidence that two centuries and a half of debasing servitude and cruel separations followed. Such a long period of slumber must necessarily have had an awakening; for the innate tendencies of humanity may for a time grow faint or dormant, but they can never be extinguished. Moreover, should they, for any length of time, be checked in their natural expansion, this necessity grows to gigantic proportions, till it sweeps before it every obstacle like a torrent in its impetuous course. Such was the result to be expected, and which really took place, at the close of the eighteenth century. But the minds of men having been seduced by the sophistries of the Reformation, the new era of liberty and union must of necessity reflect its deceitful philosophy. Therefore, liberty and union, when they arose, cast aside the principle of authority, as Protestantism had done at its first appearance. Liberty rejected religion to become atheistical, and fraternity or union affiliated itself to pantheism.

And, in truth, atheism and pantheism--two systems that harmonize because they are convertible--have penetrated into and made conquests in every condition of life. Fourierism and the abuse of industrial unions, while rejecting authority, have touched materialism on the one side and communism on the other, and are the atheistic and pantheistic forms of labor. Freedom of speculation, by spurning at every authoritative principle, has ended in rationalism; the systematizing of science has fallen into pantheism or syncretism; rationalism and syncretism are the atheistic and pantheistic forms of the intellectual life. The modern code of morality and justice, by stripping liberty and the brotherhood of mankind of legitimate authority, have ended in naturalism and socialism, the atheistic and pantheistic forms of society.

Now, these two vices, atheism and pantheism, the leading errors of the day, have changed the universal movement toward liberty and union into matter for the deepest and keenest sorrow. In the midst of the immense riches that our age has been accumulating through its free and associated industries, there seems to be nothing that man touches that can cheer or console him in the solitude of his heart, and, free lord as he is of matter, yet he feels himself its slave, because he has made it the grave of his noblest aspirations. It might almost be said that matter, subjugated in so many ways by the liberty and union existing among men in these days, was secretly tyrannizing over and dividing them, denying man's authority over it because man has himself cast off the true and supreme authority raised over him. In the same manner, in the life of thought all our knowledge is felt to be, as was said of old, but vanity, and a vanity that crushes and keeps us asunder from one another. Many, yes, very many, agree in crying loudly for liberty and the union of intellect, but theirs are merely outward words--words which do not respond to the real life of man's intellectual powers. We shall proclaim openly that it is a falsehood, and a falsehood by which man strives to deceive himself, and, if possible, conceal his sorrow. Without fear of error, we can say that modern science tyrannizes in secret over the intellects of men, and divides them, because liberty and the union of intellects rejected or rather usurped the supreme control over the minds of men. Rationalists and pantheists cannot deny this; we appeal to the truthful testimony of their own consciences and of history; we appeal to the candid avowal of Frederick Schelling. Is it not true that, beneath the pompous appearances of liberty and union, the inner powers of thought are under the grievous yoke of so-called systems, and, in addition, are slaved and tormented by secret and constant doubts? Is it not true that great differences exist among men of intellect, who reject to-day what was believed yesterday, and that there is no agreement whatever in the greatest and most important principles? To sum up: the intellectual life of the nineteenth century has neither interior liberty nor union, because with Protestantism it has denied the principle which could alone give freedom and unity to the minds of men, and this denial is the only instance of that liberty and union of which it makes so great a boast.

Neither in regard to the moral and social life of nations is the case in any way different. From the atheistical liberty of an independent morality has resulted the interior servitude of the will, which means the truly despotic empire of passions most degrading to the mass and the individual and the despotic atheism of states. And from the pantheistic union exhibited in the practice of centralization and the theory of socialism, there resulted a sanguinary war in the heart of Christendom: a war of the state with the church, of the people with monarchy, a war of everything in subjection against everything in authority. Hence we see in the most civilized countries the despair of its noblest citizens, men like the younger Brutus and Cato; hence the despondency of the higher station, blended with scorn and indignation; hence the frantic aims of the populace breaking forth into rebellion; hence the enormous standing armies; hence amidst the shouts for liberty and fraternity the nations are arming, and every citizen is enrolled a soldier.

If such, then, is the condition of the age and the ferment in the minds of men, if such is the condition of the populations, what, let us ask, is at present the great, the urgent want of mankind? To contradict the sentiment of union and liberty would be madness; to contradict the atheism of liberty and the pantheism of union is wisdom and true charity, and therein safety is to be found; for, take away pantheism from union, and atheism from liberty, there will remain union and true liberty both exteriorly and interiorly. And assuming that the deadly principles of atheism and pantheism sprang from Protestantism, which rejected the Papacy, the supreme personification of power, the return to authority, the true and only source of liberty and union, is the great and universal want of the present age.

IV.

To satisfy so great a want, the City of God, exercising the most perfect act of its power of goodness and love, convoked the Council of the Vatican. But in opposition to the City of God in its exercise of this supreme act of love and goodness, stands the City of Satan, which has always combated it, and will continue to do so to the end of time. It was, therefore, an easy matter to predict that the City of Satan would assuredly put forth its utmost powers of evil in opposition to that supreme effort of the church of Christ. Such a conclusion would be warranted both by reason and history. By reason, inasmuch as humanity may well be likened to a battle-field, wherein the powers of good and evil contend for mastery, falsehood, and truth, the old Adam and the new, Cain and Abel, Satan and Christ, so that a state of warfare may be said to be the law of this life; and as no real progress can be made but as the result of a hard-won victory, it follows logically that our own age, being subject to the same law, must pass through a terrible conflict. History bears evidence to the same effect, how at critical times the whole powers of evil rose up in terrible conflict against the great undertakings of the church. And I will add that as the work of the Vatican Council was to bring to light in a special manner the naturalism of modern civilization, which deduces its origin from atheism and pantheism, and afterwards to strengthen and exhibit in a clearer light the supreme authority of the Pope, so, on the other hand, modern civilization had to put forth all the strength it derived from naturalism to crush the Papacy.

All this might have been and was foretold. Two periods are to be distinguished in the brief existence of the Vatican Council: they are those which correspond to the two sessions which the Pope presided over in person. The first was directed specially against those monster errors from which naturalism springs; the second, after not a hasty but a long and comprehensive discussion, decreed the universal supremacy of the papal authority, the supremacy of his teaching, that is, the infallibility of the Pope, when he speaks (to use the language of the schools) _ex cathedrâ_. You might have said, then, that the great task of the council was ended, and time will perhaps show that you would not have judged amiss.

However, the City of Satan was meanwhile no idle spectator, but exerted its powers in many and various ways, yet so that it may be said with truth that two of these corresponded singularly to the two important periods of the council. In the first place, there was witnessed a great and portentous gathering of free-thinkers from all countries of the earth, and to this was assigned the title of _Anticouncil_, to signify in the most open way possible the war which the naturalism of the day is waging against the church and the Papacy. But this gathering failed to accomplish anything, so that, as was justly said, the infant cries of the new-born _Anticouncil_ were also the last gasp of its mortal agony. In vain, besides, were all the efforts of the irreligious press, its sarcasms and calumnies; in vain the intrigues of anti-christian diplomacy. In vain, too, was that last effort, those appeals of discord flung into the camp of the assembled bishops. Nor do I say all when I affirm that such guilty efforts accomplished nothing against the council. I might have added, and I do so without hesitation, that they shed additional lustre on it. For, if they prove nothing else, they prove at least these two truths: first, that all the efforts of the world and hell shall not prevail against the church; _et portæ inferi non prevalebunt adversus eam_; secondly, that the freedom and fulness of discussion that took place in the council before defining dogmatically was greater than its adversaries expected or even desired. A new proof, were any such needed, that the church of Christ is neither an opponent nor a weakener of the powers of human reason, but is the harmonizer of the human element with the divine, of science with faith, of liberty with supernatural authority.

This was the first great effort of the adversaries of the council, but there soon followed a second. Peaceful opposition having failed, it was easy to foresee that modern civilization would change its mode of warfare, and instead of moral force would call to its aid physical force and violence. But for this it was necessary that some opportunity be given, and the invasion of Rome by ruffian bands as contemplated was too hazardous an undertaking, so long as the French eagle cast the shadow of its protection over the Vatican. The opportunity wanted was not long in presenting itself. Strange coincidence! At the very time when papal infallibility was added to the dogmas of faith, and almost on the very day, war broke out unexpected between France and Prussia. How Satan must have exulted with ferocious joy at that terrible hour! Such a war seemed to supply his city with the means of renewing its assaults on the City of God.

The Prussian minister Bismarck, the chief representative of modern civilization, had been for a long time in closest alliance with the double atheism of authority and modern liberty, that is to say, with the autocracy of Russia and modern revolution, which both desired the triumph of the German arms. In consequence of this alliance, France came single-handed into the contest, while Prussia drew with her all Germany. The Northern armies won astonishing victories, and their allies shared in the advantages of them. Preponderance in the East was again made practicable to the atheism of authority, and the atheism of liberty took possession of Rome--Rome from whose walls, through a blunder or a crime, the French government had withdrawn its troops. As a consequence, the Pope was stripped of his temporal power, and the council suspended.

This was the result of the war against the Papacy; this was the crowning effort of the City of Satan against the City of God--an effort in relation to which modern civilization showed more clearly than before both its character and the end at which it aimed. All the organs of the press that have sold themselves to the false spirit of the age--and their number is very great--all with unanimity of sentiment and in one chorus extolled the shameful outrage to the skies, and made it the subject of a senseless triumph. And what deserves notice, in as far as it goes to show the truth of our opinions, is that all pronounced this exploit as the greatest victory of modern civilization against Catholic superstition and the theocracy of the middle ages.

Was it a real victory? And will it be lasting? Will it be in our power, reverentially and with due timidity, to withdraw a little the veil that covers the designs of Providence in reference to these facts, and predict the future? The answer to these questions cannot be briefly given, and must therefore form the subject of a future article. Nevertheless, to close this article and prepare the minds of our readers for what is to follow, I think it necessary to draw a conclusion from the matters discussed, and it is this: that our brethren in the faith have no reason in the world to be astonished at the painful events happening in these times. Such things were necessary--so necessary were they that we ourselves, a year ago, ventured to predict this contest, when the political atmosphere was still unclouded, and all around breathed an air of peace. "This new year," said we on the first day of January, 1870, "will be doubtless one of the most memorable of all recorded in history. In it, not two ages, but two great eras meet and trace broadly their distinction one from the other--an era that is closing, and one that is about to begin. And in this same year, a momentous struggle will correspond to the meeting of the two eras--the struggle of two contrary principles which aim at the conquest of the human race. The two eras are, that of Protestantism religious and civil, and that of Christian revival in all the orders and relations of the Catholic Church. The two principles are egotism and charity--egotism, which begot and animates Protestantism, and charity, which is the life of Catholicity." The conflict, fierce, terrible, and waged under different forms, was a necessity; why, then, be astonished that what was to take place has really happened? Is not the spouse of _him who espoused her with his sacred blood_ sent forth to combat? Had this conflict not taken place, we should have been tempted to say that it would be necessary to call in question the great law of human history--_progress through suffering_.

Away, then, with astonishment, which would be folly! Away with vain fears! The church has combated and overcome all the moral force brought to bear against the Papacy and the council, and shall it tremble before brute force? Is not the first victory a most certain pledge of the second?

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.