did. And when Angiolina, with her eyes full of tears, begged her to

prevent her dear Zia Gina from going away, all Stella’s firmness gave way for an instant, and she burst into tears.

Oh! how strongly I then felt, in my turn, the difference there is between the sacrifice of exterior objects and the interior sacrifices that rend the soul! The infinite love that tempers all the sufferings of this world exempts no one from these trials. I might even say it increases them, for it enlarges the capacity of our affection and pity: it makes us fully realize what suffering is, and gives it its true meaning.

I could not, therefore, look at Stella in her present mood without being overcome by a sadness I had never felt before at the thought of our separation. Her tears, which she was generally so well able to suppress, continued to flow, as she rocked her child in silence. She remained thus without uttering a word, even in reply to my questions, until little Angiolina, after quietly weeping a long time, fell into a heavy, profound sleep in her mother’s arms.

It was the first time I had ever known Stella to lose courage. Mine failed me at the sight, and this hour—the last we were to pass together on the terrace so full of pleasant associations, and so often trod by Angiolina’s little feet—this hour was sad beyond all expression, and in appearance beyond all reason. The serenity of the soul, like the sky of Italy, is thus obscured at times by clouds that trouble and afflict the more because the light they veil is habitually so bright and serene! Neither Stella nor I, however, were disposed to believe in presentiments. Besides, our sadness was too well founded to be surprising. Nevertheless, something darker hovered over us than we foresaw at the moment: the morrow already threw its gloom over this last evening!

The sun was going down. Stella suddenly started from her reverie and awoke Angiolina. It was time to take her home. But the child’s eyes, generally so bright, were now heavy. She hardly opened them when I approached to embrace her. Her little mouth made a slight movement to return my kiss, and she fell asleep again immediately. Her mother, surprised, and somewhat alarmed at her unwonted languor, hastily wrapped a shawl around her to protect her as much as possible from the evening air, and carried her away.

The following day, of sorrowful memory, rose bright and radiant for me; for when I awoke, I found a letter from Lorenzo awaiting me—a letter which put an end to all my perplexities, and justified, beyond all my hopes, the confidence with which I had expected it.

“Ginevra, you have prevailed. I venture at last to beg your forgiveness, for your letters have inspired the hope of some day meriting it. I no longer fear, therefore, to meet you again. Come! It is my wish. I am waiting for you.

“LORENZO.”

These last lines contained the surest promise of happiness I had ever received in my life, and I kissed them with tears. I longed to start that very hour, and it will not seem surprising now that I looked around the sumptuous dwelling I was about to leave for ever without regret, and even at the enchanting prospect my eyes were never weary of gazing at! It was by no means these exterior objects that inspired the deep, unalterable joy of my soul. I did not owe to them the vision of happiness I thought I now caught the first ray of. My only regret, therefore, was that I could not start as soon as I wished. All my preparations were made, and I longed to take my departure at once. But I had to wait three days before the first boat on which I could embark would leave for Marseilles—a delay that seemed so long! Alas! I was far from foreseeing how painful and short I should find them!

Stella had passed every day with me for the last few weeks, and I now awaited her arrival to communicate my joy. But the usual hour for her to come had gone by. She did not appear. I was surprised at this delay, and, instead of waiting any longer, I proceeded on foot to her house, which was only at a short distance from mine. The previous evening had left me no anxiety, and its sadness had been dispersed with the joy of the morning.

When I arrived, I found the door open. No servant was there to announce me. I went through the gallery, a large drawing‐room, and a cabinet, without meeting a person. At length I came to Stella’s chamber, where Angiolina also slept in a little bed beside her mother’s. I entered.... Oh! how shall I describe the sight that met my eyes! How express all my feelings of amazement, pity, affection, and grief!

My dear, unhappy Stella was seated in the middle of the room with her child extended on her knees, pale, motionless, and apparently without life!

She did not shed a tear; she did not utter a word. She raised an instant her large eyes, which were unusually dilated, and looked at me. What a look! O God! it expressed the grief that mothers alone can feel, and which no other on earth can surpass!... I fell on my knees beside her. Angiolina still breathed, but she was dying. She opened her beautiful eyes a moment.... A look of recognition crossed them.... They turned from her mother to me, and from me to her mother, and then grew dim. A convulsive shudder ran over her, and it was all over. The angel was in heaven. The mother was bereft, for this life, of her only child!...

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The longest years cannot efface the memory of such an hour, and time, which at last subdues all grief, never gave me the courage to dwell on this. Mothers who have been pierced by such a sword cannot speak of it; others dare not. The woman who has no child, in the presence of one who has just lost hers, can only bend in silence and respect before the sovereign majesty of grief!

I will merely state, with respect to what preceded, that the drowsiness of the child the night before was a symptom of the violent malady which suddenly attacked her in the middle of the night. After abating towards day, it came on again an hour later, and kept increasing without any relaxation to the end.

As for me, who had given Angiolina the place that had remained vacant in my heart, the excess of my grief enabled me to form an estimate of hers whose heart was filled with far greater anguish at being so suddenly robbed of her all by death. I shuddered at the thought of a sorrow greater than mine, and did not dare dwell on my own troubles in the presence of a grief that cast into the shade all the sufferings I had ever witnessed before. What a remedy for the imaginary or exaggerated woes of life it is to suddenly be brought to witness the reality of the most terrible of misfortunes!

What a price was I now to pay for the journey I had so long looked forward to—the reunion I had longed for with so many prayers and obtained by so many efforts!

To leave Stella in her affliction was a trial I had not anticipated, and one which the most imperious duty alone could have induced me to consent to. I had to do it, however, but not till I had succeeded in gratifying the only remaining wish of her broken heart—“to leave the world for a few months, that she might be alone, free to abandon herself entirely to the dear, angelic memory of her lost joy....”

Stella uttered no complaint. Her grief was mute. But she had expressed this desire, and it was granted. Livia obtained a place of retreat for her in a part of her convent that was not cloistered. It was there I left her, in the shadow of that sweet sanctuary, near the tenderest, strongest heart she could have to lean on, in presence of the magnificent prospect before her, and beneath the brilliant canopy of that glorious sky, beyond which she could follow in spirit the treasure she had been deprived of, but which she felt sure of some day finding again!

XLIII.

I was filled with solemn emotion when, having taken leave of my brother and all the friends who had accompanied me on board, I at length found myself alone with Ottavia on the deck of the boat, gazing at the receding mountains, hills, villas, and the smiling, flowery shores of the Bay of Naples as they vanished away. Two years had scarcely flown since the day when this prospect met my eyes for the first time. But during this short period so many different feelings had agitated my heart, and so many events had crossed my path, that the time seemed as long as a whole life.

Joys and sorrows, ardent hopes and bitter deceptions, severe trials, dangerous temptations, a deadly struggle, grace—to crown all! grace luminous and wonderful—had all succeeded each other in my soul. And to all these remembrances was now added the new sorrow which set on these last days a mournful, heartrending seal! The death of a child, it is true, would seem to the indifferent to seriously wound no heart but its mother’s. Mine, however, bled profusely, and the sudden death of the angelic little creature I had so much loved, as well as the separation that so soon took place, cast an inexpressible gloom over the hour of departure I had so eagerly longed for, and which I had obtained at the price of sacrifices which till now had not seemed worthy of being counted. Truly, the words already quoted do not apply less to earthly affections than to the divine love that overrules them and includes them all: “There is no living in love without some pain or sorrow.” This is indubitable. The more tender the affection, the more exquisite the suffering it entails. But by way of recompense, in proportion as these cruel wounds are multiplied, the never‐failing supreme love affords a remedy by revealing itself more and more fully, and thereby supplying the place of all these vanished joys. This love alone assures the promise, the pledge, of their restoration and immortal duration!

Therefore, whatever the sadness of this hour; whatever the desolation of heart with which I gazed at the convent on yonder height where I had just parted from Stella and my sister with so many tears—in short, whatever the emotions of all kinds that seemed combined to overwhelm me, I felt, in spite of them, I lived a truer, freer life than when for the first time, surrounded with illusions and deceitful hopes, I crossed this bay in all the intoxication of radiant happiness!

These thoughts, and many others of a similar nature, passed through my mind while the boat was rapidly cleaving the waves, and little by little the last outline of the coast of Italy faded away and finally disappeared from my eyes for ever.

Night came on, the stars appeared, but I remained in the place where I was, without being able to make up my mind to leave it.

This solitude of the sea—more profound than any other—speaks to the soul a language peculiar to itself. I listened to it with undivided attention, blessing God for having inclined me to hear his voice, to give heed to no other during the period of inaction and repose which separated the portion of my life just closed from that which was about to commence under new and unknown circumstances.

I did not stop at Marseilles, for I was impatient to arrive at my journey’s end. And yet, in spite of the summons I was now obeying, I was not without anxiety as to the reception I should meet with. I knew the mobility of Lorenzo’s feelings, and that the letter I had so recently received from him was not a sure guarantee of the disposition in which I should find him. In fact, when I met him on my arrival at the station, I did not at first know what to think. He was pale, agitated, and gloomy, and could scarcely hide the suffering his face expressed much more clearly than joy at seeing me again. I felt the arm tremble on which I was leaning, and I remained silent, confounded, and anxious. He hurried me through the crowd, placed me in a carriage, made Ottavia take a seat beside me, then closed the door with an air of constraint, saying he wished to arrive before me.

At first I was astonished at finding myself so suddenly separated from him, after barely seeing him for a moment. But I saw, by the embarrassment and painful agitation he manifested, what was passing in his mind, and was extremely affected. Poor Lorenzo! it was not in this way he had once led his young bride beneath his roof. This was not the future he then took pleasure in depicting, or what he had promised. The immense change of fortune he had undergone was now for the first time to be realized by the wife he had outraged, and from whom he did not dare expect an affection which would overlook all and render every sacrifice light. I felt he regretted now that he had consented to my coming.

After a long drive we at last came to the end of a street at the extremity of the Faubourg Saint‐Germain, where we entered a small court, and the carriage stopped before a door of very unpretending appearance.

But the house to which it gave access, covered on the outside with climbing plants that concealed the reddish tint of the walls, had a picturesque appearance seldom found in any house in Paris, large or small. Lorenzo, with his artistic eye, had discovered it, and understood also how it should be arranged interiorly. Consequently, when he ushered me into a _salon_ opening into a little parterre filled with flowers, beyond which rose the trees of an adjacent garden, which made it seem like some rural solitude; when he took me all over the ground‐floor, where everything was simple, but nothing vulgar; when on all sides I found evidences both of his taste and his solicitude for me; above all, when I saw in his cabinet and studio all the indications that he had resumed his habits of assiduous labor and serious study, so great a joy filled my heart and beamed from my eyes that he could no longer feel any doubt, and I saw the cloud that veiled his brow totally disappear.

“Is it possible?... Is it true?” said he. “You are satisfied, Ginevra? And I can welcome your presence without remorse?”

I was affected to tears.

“I assure you,” said I, with a sincerity of accent that could not be mistaken, “this so‐called great catastrophe has only taken away the things I did not care for: it gives me here all I love, and nearly everything I desire.”

I looked at him hesitatingly, not yet knowing how far to go. But his look inspired me with courage, and I continued, with emotion:

“Tell me, in your turn, that you regret nothing, that my presence suffices, and I pledge you my word, Lorenzo, this hour will be the happiest of my life.”

Instead of replying directly, he knelt down beside the little divan where I was sitting, and I saw his eyes beaming with the expression that once used to flash from them for an instant, not uncertain and transitory as then, but calm, stable, and profound.

“Ginevra,” said he, “in assuring you to‐day that my reason has been restored to me, that I have for ever recovered from my detestable aberration, that I again look upon you as I did when you first effaced every other image, that I love you as much, yes, a thousand times more than ever, this is not saying enough, this is not telling you what you would perhaps listen to far more gladly than all this.”

I opened my eyes and looked steadily towards him. He felt my soul was trying to read his, and he continued in a low, agitated tone:

“You have made me love in you what is better than yourself. Listen to me.... Long years of indifference had effaced the memory of divine things I had been taught in my childhood. Did you think they could ever be recalled? I had never felt the slightest desire. It is you, Ginevra, who caused their return. Can you realize it?”

O my God! this hour was too happy for earth! It left me only one wish more. It realized to the fullest extent all the cherished dreams of the past, and made me touch at last the summit (alas! always threatening and uncertain) of earthly happiness! No cloud has ever obscured the bright, blessed remembrance! No suffering, no trial, has ever checked the effusion of gratitude I still feel, and which will be eternal!

It will not be difficult to understand that, in this new state of things, our life speedily and sweetly resumed its course. Strange to say, this calm, simple life, exempt from splendor, luxury, and worldly _éclat_, was the precise realization of the secret desire I had always cherished in my soul, the signification of which had been revealed to me in that great day of grace which I may call that of my _true birth_!

It would, therefore, have been an absurdity to speak of sacrifice in the situation in which I now found myself. But Lorenzo did not yet see things in the same light.

“I acknowledge,” said he one day, after some weeks had passed by—“I acknowledge we lack nothing essential, that the waifs from our wreck even afford us a comfortable support, but I wish more than that for you, my Ginevra. I must work for the means of restoring all my folly has deprived you of. The public receives my productions with marked favor. They have all been sold at a fabulous price, except one which I will never part with. Let me alone, therefore, and I promise you the day shall arrive when I will place on your brow a diadem even more brilliant than the one you have lost.”

I made a quick gesture, and was about to express the repugnance such a prospect inspired. But I stopped. It was better, no matter in what way, he should be stimulated by some object to be attained by the laborious efforts to which he devoted all his faculties. I allowed him, therefore, to dream of the jewels he would adorn me with, and enlarge on his plans for the future, while I was sitting beside him in his studio, sometimes reading to him, and sometimes becoming his model again. Whenever he spoke in this way, I smiled without trying to oppose him.

Mme. de Kergy and Diana hastened to see me the day after my arrival. We continued to meet almost daily, and I found in their delightful society the strongest support, the wisest counsels, and an affection which inspired almost unlimited confidence.

As to Gilbert, he was still absent, and not expected to return till the autumn of the following year.

When his mother gave me this information, my first feeling was one of relief. It seemed to me my relations with his family were simplified by his absence, and I could defer all thought as to what I should do at his return. But, when I saw my dear, venerable friend secretly wipe away a tear as she spoke of her son; when she added in a trembling voice that such a separation at her age was a severe trial which afflicted her more than any she had ever known; when Diana afterwards came to tell me with a full heart that Gilbert’s absence was shortening her mother’s days, oh! then my heart sank with profound sorrow, and I felt an ardent, painful desire to repair the evil I had caused—an evil which (whatever may be said) is never altogether involuntary!

Ah! if women would only consider how far their fatal influence sometimes extends, even those who add hardness of heart to their desire to please would become indifferent to the wish. They scarcely hesitate sometimes to sacrifice a man’s career, his abilities, his whole existence. Vanity and pride take pleasure in ravages of this kind. But if their eyes could behold the firesides they quench the light of, the maternal hearts they sadden, the families whose sweet joys they destroy, their trophies would seem bloody, and they might be brought to comprehend the words of the Psalmist which I had humbly learned to repeat: _Ab occultis meis munda me, et ab alienis parce servo tuo._

Lorenzo’s celebrity increased by the productions he now exhibited to the public. The singularity of our position in returning to Paris, under circumstances so different from those which surrounded us when we made our first appearance in the _grand monde_, drew upon us the attention of this very world which would have enticed us from our retreat. But, thank Heaven! I did not have to exert my influence over Lorenzo to induce him to decline it. His pride would have been sufficient, had not his whole time been absorbed in his labors, and it was even with difficulty he consented to accompany me one evening to the Hôtel de Kergy.

From that time, however, he willingly repeated his visits, attracted by Mme. de Kergy’s dignified cordiality and simplicity of manner as well as by the charm of the intellectual circle of which her _salon_ was the centre—a charm he would have always appreciated had he not been under the influence of another attraction. Now there was no counteracting influence, and he took fresh pleasure every evening in going there to repose after the fatigue of the day and seek something more beneficial to his mind than mere recreation.

A person endowed with noble gifts, who returns to the right path after long going astray, experiences an immense consolation in finding himself in his true element. It would, therefore, be impossible to tell how great Lorenzo’s joy now was, or how eloquently he was able to express it. And nothing could express the feelings with which I listened to him!

The only shadow of my life at this time was my separation from Stella. A thousand times did I urge her to join me, as she was no longer under any obligation to remain at Naples. I felt that the only possible solace for her broken heart would be to leave the place where she had suffered so much; her courageous soul would find a salutary aliment in the great charitable movement at Paris, at that time in all the vigor of its first impulse, given a few years before. I therefore continually urged her to come, but I begged her in vain. An invincible repugnance to leave the place of refuge where she had hidden her grief prevented her from yielding to my wishes.

Thus passed days, weeks, months, yes, even a whole year and more of happiness. The satisfactory life I had dreamed of was now a reality, and the world I once fancied I could reveal to Lorenzo unaided he had discovered himself. It had been revealed to him by trials, humiliation, and labor. The absolute change in his habits, which Lando had once indicated as the only remedy, had, as he had foreseen, produced a beneficial, efficacious, and lasting effect.

But we know one of the anomalies of the human heart is to expect and long for happiness as its right, and yet to be incapable of possessing it a single day in its plenitude without trembling, as if conscious it was not in the nature of things here below for it to endure a long time.

Lorenzo experienced more than most people this melancholy of happiness, which was often increased by too profound a regret for the errors of his life. It partook of the vehemence of his character, and it was sometimes difficult to overcome the sadness awakened by the remembrance of the past.

“Ginevra,” said he one day, “I am far too happy for a man who merits it so little.”

He said this with a gloomy expression. It was the beginning of spring. The air was soft, the sky clear, the lilacs of our little garden were in bloom, and we sat there inhaling the perfume. He repeated:

“Yes, my life is now too happy—too happy, I feel, to be of long duration.” A remark somewhat trite, which is often thrown like a veil over the too excessive brightness of earthly happiness! But I could not repress a shudder as I listened to it. And yet what was there to fear ... to desire ... to refuse ... when I felt the present and the future were in the hands of Him whom I loved more than anything here below?

To Be Concluded Next Month.

A Bit Of Modern Thought On Matter.

We have now accomplished the first portion of our task, by establishing on good philosophical and physical grounds the fundamental truths regarding the essence and the properties of material substance as such. We might, therefore, take up the second part of our treatise, and begin our investigation about the nature of the metaphysical constituents of matter and their necessary relations, in order to ascertain how far the principles of the scholastic doctrine on matter can nowadays be maintained consistently with the principles of natural science. But we think it necessary, before we enter into the study of such a difficult subject, to caution our readers against some productions of modern thinkers, whose speculations on the nature of material things confound all philosophy, and tend by their sophistry to popularize the most pernicious errors. The number of such productions is daily increasing, owing to the efforts of powerful societies, and the philosophical imbecility of the scientific press and of its patrons. The heap of intellectual rubbish thus accumulated, both in Europe and in America, is quite prodigious; to sweep it all away would be like purging the Augean stable—a task which some new Hercules may yet undertake. We shall confine ourselves to a small portion of that task, by scattering to the winds some plausible quibbles we have lately met with in an American scientific magazine.

J. B. Stallo is the author of a series of articles published in the _Popular Science Monthly_ under the title “The Primary Concepts of Modern Physical Science.” He is a clever writer; but his conclusions, owing to a lack of sound philosophy, are not always correct. Some of them are altogether unfounded, others demonstrably false; and many of them, while attempting to revolutionize science, tend to foster downright scepticism. We shall single out a few of those propositions which clash with the common doctrines of modern physics no less than with the common principles of metaphysics; and we hope to show, by their refutation, the incomparable superiority of our old over his new philosophy.

_Indestructibility of matter._—“The indestructibility of matter,” says the writer,(181) “is an unquestionable truth. But in what sense, and upon what grounds, is this indestructibility predicated of matter? The unanimous answer of the atomists is: Experience teaches that all the changes to which matter is subject are but variations of form, and that amid these variations there is an unvarying constant—the mass or quantity of matter. The constancy of the mass is attested by the balance, which shows that neither fusion nor sublimation, neither generation nor corruption, can add to, or detract from, the weight of a body subjected to experiment. When a pound of carbon is burned, the balance demonstrates the continuous existence of this pound in the carbonic acid, which is the product of combustion, and from which the original weight of carbon may be recovered. The quantity of matter is measured by its weight, and this weight is unchangeable.”

So far all is right; but he continues: “Such is the fact familiar to every one, and its interpretation equally familiar. To test the correctness of this interpretation we may be permitted slightly to vary the method of verifying it. Instead of burning the pound of carbon, let us simply carry it to the summit of a mountain, or remove it to a lower latitude; is its weight still the same? Relatively it is; it will still balance the original counterpoise. But the absolute weight is no longer the same.... It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force. In the case of gravity, the forces of attraction are directly proportional to the masses, so that the action of the forces (_weight_) is the simplest measure of the relation between any two masses as such; but in any inquiry relating to the validity of the atomic theory, it is necessary to bear in mind that this weight is not the equivalent, or rather the presentation, of an absolute substantive entity in one of the bodies (the body weighed), but the mere expression of a relation between two bodies mutually attracting each other. And it is further necessary to remember that this weight may be indefinitely reduced, without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed, by a mere change of its position in reference to the body between which and the body weighed the relation subsists.”

The aim of the author is, as we shall see, to prove that “there are and can be no absolute constants of mass”; hence he endeavors at the very outset to shake our opposite conviction by showing that there is no absolute measure of masses. Such is the drift of the passage we have transcribed.

But we beg to remark that absolute quantities may be known to be absolute independently of any absolute measurement. Three kinds of quantity are conceivable: intensive quantity, which is measured by _degrees_; dimensive quantity, which is measured by _distances_; and numerical quantity, which is measured by discrete _units_. Of course dimensive quantity is altogether relative, inasmuch as it entirely consists of relations, and cannot be measured but by relative and arbitrary measures; but intensive quantity, though measured by arbitrary degrees, is altogether absolute, because it consists of a reality whose value is independent of correlative terms. And in the same manner numerical quantity is altogether absolute, because it consists of absolute units, by which it can be measured, absolutely speaking, though we may fail to reach such units, and are then obliged to measure it by some other standard. Now, the mass, or the quantity of matter in a body, is a numerical quantity; for it consists of a number of primitive units, independent of one another for their essence and for their existence, and therefore absolute in regard to their substantial being. Consequently, every mass of matter has an absolute value corresponding to the number of absolute units it contains; and thus every mass of matter is “an absolute constant of mass.” It is true that we have no means of ascertaining the absolute number of primitive units contained in a given mass; hence we are constrained to measure the quantity of matter by a relative measure—that is, by comparing it with an equal volume of another substance, whose density and weight we assume as the measure of other densities and weights. But does our ignorance of the absolute number of primitive units contained in a given mass interfere with their real existence? or, can our method of measuring change the nature of the thing measured?

We are told that “the weight of a body may be indefinitely reduced without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed.” Would not this show that, contrary to the author’s opinion, the body weighed possesses “an absolute constant of mass”? We are told at the same time that “the weight of a body is a measure of its mass.” This cannot be true, unless, while the mass remains unchanged, the weight also remains unchanged. Hence the author’s idea of carrying the pound of carbon to the summit of a mountain in order to diminish its weight, is inconsistent with the law of measurement, which forbids the employment of two weights and measures for measuring one and the same quantity.

The atomists measure the quantity of matter by its weight, because they know that every particle of matter is subject to gravitation, and therefore that the weights, all other things being equal, are proportionate to the number of primitive particles contained in the bodies. Thus, if a body contains a number, _m_, of primitive particles, and each of these particles is subject to the gravitation, _g_, while another body contains a number, _m´_, of primitive particles subject to the same gravitation, the ratio of the weights of the two bodies will be the same as the ratio of the two masses; for

_mg_ : _m´g_ : : _m_ : _m´_;

and if the two bodies were carried to the summit of a mountain, where the gravitation is reduced to _g´_, the weights would indeed be changed, but their ratio would remain unaltered, and we would still have

_mg´_ : _m´g´_ : : _m_ : _m´_.

Hence, whether we weigh two bodies in the valley or at the summit of the mountain, so long as we keep the same unit of gravitation for both, the ratio of their masses remains the same. This shows that the quantity of matter existing in those bodies implies “a constant of mass” _independent_ of the intensity of gravitation, and that the ratio of the two masses is the ratio of two “absolute” quantities—that is, of two numbers of primitive material units.

It is not true, therefore, that the weight is not “the presentation of an absolute substantive entity,” as the author pretends. Weight implies mass and gravitation, and presents the one as subject to the other. Now, the mass is an “absolute substantive entity,” as we have shown. Nor is it true that weight is “the mere expression of a relation between two bodies mutually attracting each other,” as the author imagines. The pound of carbon is a pound not because of an attraction exercised by the carbon upon the earth, but merely because of the attraction exercised by the earth on the mass of the carbon. Were it otherwise, the mathematical expression of weight should contain, besides the mass of the body weighed and the action of gravity upon it, a third quantity representing the action of the body upon the earth, and the gravitation of the earth towards the body.

The writer proceeds: “Masses find their true and only measure in the action of forces, and the quantitative persistence of the effect of this action is the simple and accurate expression of the fact which is ordinarily described as the indestructibility of matter. It is obvious that this persistence is in no sense explained or accounted for by the atomic theory” (p. 708).

We admit that, owing to our inability to determine the absolute number of primitive elements in a body, we resort to the persistence of the weight in order to ascertain the persistence of a certain quantity of matter in the body. But this does not show that the action of forces is the “only measure” of masses. A mass is a number of material units; its true measure is _one of such units_, and it is only in order to determine the relative number of such units in different bodies that we have recourse to their weights. It is not the quantity of matter that follows the weight of the body, but it is the weight of the body that follows the quantity of matter; and therefore, although we determine the relative quantities of matter by the relation of their weights, it is not the weight that measures the quantity of matter, but it is the quantity of matter that measures the weight. In other terms, the persistence of the mass is merely _known_ through the persistence of the weight, but the persistence of the weight is itself _a consequence_ of the persistence of the mass. Hence the persistence of the mass is perfectly accounted for by the atomic theory, notwithstanding Mr. Stallo’s contrary assertion.

He says: “The hypothesis of ultimate indestructible atoms is not a necessary implication of the persistence of weight, and can at best account for the indestructibility of matter if it can be shown that there is an absolute limit to the compressibility of matter—in other words, that there is an absolutely least volume for every determinate mass” (p. 708). Both parts of this proposition are false. The first is false, because the weight of a body is the result of the gravitation of all its particles; and, therefore, it cannot persist without the persistence of the gravitating particles. The second part also is false, because the persistence of the weight implies the persistence of the mass independently of all considerations concerning a limit of compressibility or an absolute minimum of volume. Hence, whatever the author may say to the contrary, it is quite certain of scientific certainty that there can be, and there is, in all bodies, “an absolute constant of mass.”

_Atomic theory._—The writer objects to the atomic theory on the ground that it does not explain impenetrability, and that it misconceives the nature of reality. He begins by remarking that “the proposition, according to which a space occupied by one body cannot be occupied by another, implies the assumption that space is an absolute, self‐measuring entity, and the further assumption that there is a least space which a given body will absolutely fill so as to exclude any other body” (p. 709). We think that the proposition implies nothing of the kind. The space occupied by one body cannot _naturally_ be occupied by another, because all bodies are made up of molecules which at very small distances repel one another with actions of greater and greater intensities, thus preventing compenetration, while successfully struggling for the preservation of their own individuality. This the molecules can do, whether space can be filled or not, and whether space is a self‐measuring entity or not. Hence the remark of the author has no foundation.

But he continues: “The atomic theory has become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability of matter, since it has been pressed into the service of the undulatory theory of light, heat, etc., and assumed the form in which it is now held by the majority of physicists. According to this form of the theory, the atoms are either mere points, wholly without extension, or their dimensions are infinitely small as compared with the distances between them, whatever be the state of aggregation of the substances into which they enter. In this view, the resistance which a body, _i.e._, a system of atoms, offers to the intrusion of another body is due not to the rigidity or unchangeability of volume of the individual atoms, but to the relation between the attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be endowed. There are physicists holding this view, who are of opinion that the atomic constitution of matter is consistent with its compenetrability—among them M. Cauchy, who in his _Sept Leçons de physique générale_ (ed. Moigno, Paris, 1868, p. 38), after defining atoms as material points without extension, uses this language: ‘Thus, this property of matter, which we call impenetrability, is explained when we consider the atoms as material points exerting on each other attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that separate them.... From this it follows that, if it pleased the Author of nature simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract or repel each other, we might instantly see the hardest bodies penetrate each other, the smallest particles of matter occupy immense spaces, or the largest masses reduce themselves to the smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it were, in a single point’ ” (p. 710).

We think that the author’s notion of the form in which the atomic theory is now held by physicists is not quite correct. The chemical atoms are now considered as dynamical systems of material points, so that the atomic theory is now scarcely distinguishable from the molecular theory. That such a theory “has become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability of matter” is not true. Of course two primitive elements of matter, if attractive, would, according to the theory, as we understand it, pass through one another; as nothing can oppose their progress except repulsion, which is not to be thought of in the case of attractive elements. But the case is different with molecules; for every molecule of any special substance contains a number of repulsive elements, and possesses a repulsive envelope(182) which resists most effectually all attempt at compenetration on the part of other molecules. Hence the impenetrability of _bodies_ (not of _matter_, as the author says) is a simple result of the molecular constitution of bodies, as explained in the atomic theory of the modern chemists.

That the resistance which a body offers to the intrusion of another body is due “not to the rigidity or unchangeability of volume of individual atoms, but to the relation between the attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be endowed,” is an obvious truth. We do not see by what kind of reasoning the author can infer from it that “the atomic theory has become next to valueless as an explanation of impenetrability.” We rather maintain that the theory is correct, and that no other theory has yet been found which explains impenetrability without assuming much that philosophy condemns. As to M. Cauchy’s views, we remark that, when he defines atoms as “material points without extension,” he does not speak of the chemical atoms, or equivalents, but of the primitive elements of which such atoms or equivalents are composed.

The author says: “The assumption of atoms of different specific gravities proves to be not only futile, but absurd. Its manifest theoretical ineptitude is found to mask the most fatal inconsistencies. According to the mechanical conception which underlies the whole atomic hypothesis, differences of weight are differences of density; and differences of density are differences of distance between the particles contained in a given space. Now, in the atom there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space; hence differences of density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms” (p. 715).

This conclusion would be quite inevitable, if it were true that the atom of the chemists contains no multiplicity of particles and no void space; but the truth is that chemical atoms are nothing but _equivalents_, or _molecules_—that is, dynamical systems of material points intercepting void space. Hence the author’s argument has no foundation. The very fact that men of science unanimously agree in attributing to different atoms a different weight, should have warned Mr. Stallo that the word “atom” could not be considered by them as a simple material point.

The author in his second article (November, 1873) argues against the _actio in distans_. We have given his words in one of our own articles, where we undertook to show that _actio in distans_ cannot be impugned with any good argument.(183) The author, however, we are glad to see, honestly acknowledges that “the transfer of motion from one body to another by impact is no less incomprehensible than the _actio in distans_” (p. 96); which shows that, after having rejected the action at a distance, he is at a loss how to account for any communication or propagation of movement. A little later he quotes a passage of Faraday, which we have given in another place, and in which the English professor considers the atoms as consisting of a mere sphere of power, with a central point having no dimensions. Then he gives his own view of the subject in the following words:

“The true root of all these errors is a total misconception of the nature of reality. All the reality we know is not only spatially finite, but limited in all its aspects; its whole existence lies in relation and contrast, as I shall show more at length in the next article. We know nothing of force, except by its contrast with mass, or (what is the same thing) inertia; and conversely, as I have already pointed out in my first article, we know nothing of mass except by its relation to force. Mass, inertia (or, as it is sometimes, though inaccurately, called, matter _per se_), is indistinguishable from absolute nothingness; for matter reveals its presence, or evinces its reality, only by its action, its force, its tension, or motion. But, on the other hand, mere force is equally nothing; for, if we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts, until it vanishes—or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great, and that the ‘thing’ (if under these circumstances a thing can still be spoken of) is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere—that is, there is no real presence. It is impossible, therefore, to construct matter by a mere synthesis of forces.... The true formula of matter is mass × force, or inertia × force” (p. 103).

The author is greatly mistaken in assuming that those who consider the atoms (primitive elements) as centres of force totally misconceive the nature of reality. That Faraday, notwithstanding his saying that “the substance consists of the powers,” admits with the power the matter also, is evident from his very mention of the _centre_ of the powers; for such a centre is nothing else than _the_ matter, as we have proved above. He says, indeed, that the nucleus of the atom “vanishes”; but by “nucleus” he means the _bulk_ or the continuous material extension of the atom. This bulk, says he, must vanish, inasmuch as the centre of the powers must be a mere unextended point. He therefore denies, not the matter, but only its intrinsic extension.

Mr. Stallo volunteers to show us “the true root” of all our _errors_. According to him, we totally misconceive the nature of reality. “All the reality we know,” he says, “is not only spatially finite, but limited in all its aspects.” About this we will not quarrel, for we admit that all created substances are limited; yet we would ask the author whether he thinks that the range of universal attraction has any known limit in space; and, if so, we would further ask where it is; for we admit our full ignorance of its existence. “We know nothing of force,” he continues, “except by its contrast with mass, or, what is the same thing, inertia.” Our readers know that mass and inertia are not the same thing; the mass is a quantity of matter, while inertia is the incapability of self‐motion. A writer who can confound the two as identical is not competent to correct our _errors_ and to teach us the nature of reality. As to the contrast of force with mass, we have no objection; yet, while speaking of the nature of things, we would prefer to contrast matter with form rather than force with mass. The term _force_ applies to the production of phenomena, and is usually confounded with action and with movement, neither of which is a constituent of substance; whilst the term _mass_ expresses any quantity of matter from a single element up to a mountain; and thus it does not exhibit with precision the matter due to the primitive material substance.

“Mass, or matter _per se_, is indistinguishable from absolute nothingness.” Of course, matter _per se_—that is, without form—cannot exist. In the same manner “mere force is equally nothing”—that is, the material form, which is the principle of action, has no separate existence without its matter. This every one admits, though not on the grounds suggested by Mr. Stallo. “If we reduce,” says he, “the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts, until it vanishes—or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great.” We deny this consequence, as well as the supposition from which it is inferred. Masses are numbers of material elements, or units. When such units are reached, the division is at an end, because those primitive units are without dimensions. Hence the extreme limit of the reduction of masses is not an infinitesimal quantity of mass, as the author imagines, but an absolute finite unit; for this unit, when repeated a finite number of times, gives us a finite quantity of mass. But, even supposing that the hypothesis of the author might be entertained (and it must be entertained by all those who consider matter as materially continuous), his consequence would still be false. For, let there be a continuous atom having finite dimensions. If such an atom is acted on, say by gravity, it will acquire a finite velocity. Now, it is evident that, when the atom has a finite velocity, every infinitesimal portion of it will have a finite velocity. Therefore the action which produces a finite velocity in the finite mass of the atom, produces a finite velocity in the infinitesimal masses of which the atom is assumed to consist. The error of the author arises from his confounding quantity of movement with action. A quantity of movement is a product of a mass into its velocity; and evidently the product cannot remain constant, unless the velocity increases in the same ratio as the mass decreases. The action, on the contrary, is _directly_ proportional to the mass; and therefore, in the author’s hypothesis, the consequence should have been the very opposite of that which he enounces; that is, the velocity acquired by an infinitesimal mass would still be finite instead of infinitely great. But, as we have said, the hypothesis itself is inadmissible, because only continuous quantity can be reduced to infinitesimals, whilst masses are not continuous but discrete quantities.

That it is impossible “to construct matter by a mere synthesis of forces” is undeniable; but there was no need of arguing a point which no one contests. The author should rather have given us his ground for asserting that “the true formula of matter is _mass multiplied by force_.” This assertion can by no means be made good. All physicists know that mass multiplied by force represents nothing but a quantity of movement; and the author will not pretend, we presume, that matter is a quantity of movement. The true formula of matter is its essential definition; and it is not a mathematical but a metaphysical product, or rather a metaphysical ratio, as we have shown in another place. Material substance is _matter actuated by its substantial form_, and nothing else.

The author continues thus: “We now have before us in full view one of the fundamental fallacies of the atomic theory. This fallacy consists in the delusion that the conceptual constituents of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities. The corpuscular atomists take the element of inertia, and treat it as real by itself: while Boscovich, Faraday, and all those who define atoms as _centres of force_, seek to realize the corresponding element, force, as an entity by itself. In both cases elements of reality are mistaken for kinds of reality” (p. 103).

It is rather singular that a man who is so little at home in questions about matter should undertake to point out the fallacies and delusions of the best informed. Is it true that Boscovich, Faraday, and others of the same school, consider force as an entity by itself? And is it true that the corpuscular atomists treat the element of inertia as real by itself? There is much to be said against corpuscular atomists for other reasons, but they cannot surely be accused of maintaining that the element of inertia—that is, the mass of the atom—can exist separately without any inherent power, as they uniformly teach that their atoms are endowed with resisting powers. The accusation brought against Boscovich, Faraday, and others, is still more glaringly unjust. They do not seek to realize force “as an entity by itself”; on the contrary, when they define the atoms as centres of force, they manifestly teach that both the force and its centre are indispensable for the constitution of a primitive atom. And, since by the word _force_ they mean the principle of activity (the form), and in the centre they recognize the principle of passivity (the matter), we cannot but conclude that the accusation has no ground, and that the fallacy and the delusion is on the side of Mr. Stallo himself.

Moreover, is it true that _mass_ and _force_, or, to speak more accurately, the matter and the form, are nothing more than “the _conceptual_ constituents” of material substance? This the author assumes as the base of his argumentation; yet it is plain that, if the constituents of a thing are only conceptual, the thing they constitute cannot be anything else than a conceptual being—that is, a being of reason. We must therefore either deny the reality of matter or concede that its constituents are more than conceptual. Could not the author perceive that, if mass is a mere concept, and force another mere concept, their alliance gives nothing but two concepts, and that the reality of the external world becomes a dream?

We live in times when men of a certain class presume to discuss metaphysical subjects without previous study and without a sufficient acquaintance with the first notions of metaphysics. One of these first notions is that all real being has real constituents. Such constituents, when known to us, are the object of our conceptions, and consequently they may become conceptual; but they do not cease to be real outside of our mind. Were we to conceive matter as separated from its form, or form as deprived of its matter, nothing real would correspond to our conception; for nowhere can real matter be found without a form, or a real form without its matter. Hence form without matter and matter without form are at best beings of reason. But when we conceive the matter as it is under its form, or the form as it is terminated to its matter, we evidently conceive the real constituents of material substance as they are in nature—that is, as metaphysical realities contained in the physical being. Does it follow that “elements of reality,” as the author objects, “are mistaken for kinds of reality”? By no means. The constituents of physical reality are themselves metaphysical realities, but they are not exactly two kinds of reality, because they belong both to the same essence which cannot be of two kinds. Hence the matter and the substantial form, or, in general, act and potency, notwithstanding their real metaphysical opposition and distinction, are one essence, one kind, and one being. But let us go back to our author.

In his third article (December, 1873) he says: “The ordinary mechanical explanation of the molecular states of matter, or states of aggregation, on the basis of the atomic theory, proceeds on the assumption that the molecular states are produced by the conflict of antagonistic central forces—molecular attraction and repulsion—the preponderance of the one or the other of which gives rise to the solid and gaseous forms, while their balance or equilibrium results in the liquid state. The utter futility of this explanation is apparent at a glance. Even waiving the considerations presented by Herbert Spencer (_First Principles_, p. 60 et seq.), that, in view of the necessary variation of the attractive and repulsive forces in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances, the constituent atoms of a body, if they are _in equilibrio_ at any particular distance, must be equally _in equilibrio_ at all other distances, and that their density or state, therefore, must be invariable; and admitting that the increase or diminution of the repulsive force, _heat_, may render the preponderance of either force, and thus the change of density or state of aggregation, possible, what becomes of the liquid state as corresponding to the exact balance of these two forces in the absence of external coercion? The exact balance of the two opposing forces is a mere mathematical limit, which must be passed with the slightest preponderance of either force over the other. All bodies being subject to continual changes of temperature, the equilibrium can at best be but momentary; it must of necessity be of the most labile kind” (p. 223).

This argument against the atomic theory would be very good, if its premises were not deceptive. Mr. Stallo, unfortunately, relies too much on the terminology of physical writers, which is not always correct. Thus, it is not true that the solid form is the result of an actual preponderance of attraction between the molecules. If attraction prevailed, the molecules would not remain in their relative position, but would move in the direction of the attraction. The truth is that molecules, whether in the solid or in the liquid form, are in equilibrium of position; accordingly, neither attraction nor repulsion actually prevails between them.

Their position of equilibrium is determined by their own constitution, and may change; for the molecules admit of accidental changes in their constitution. Hence the distance of relative equilibrium is not necessarily constant, but changes with the change of state of each molecule. This shows that bodies, whether solid or liquid, can retain their solid or liquid form while subjected to considerable molecular changes, and that therefore neither the solid nor the liquid form is necessarily impaired by “the changes of temperature” or other molecular movements. The molecules of bodies attract each other when their distance is great, and repel each other when their distance has become very small; whence we immediately infer that there is for every kind of molecules a distance which marks the limit of their mutual attraction and repulsion, and that at such a distance the molecules must find their position of equilibrium. A body will be solid when, its molecules being in the position of relative equilibrium, from a small increase of their distance an attraction arises, which does not allow of the molecules being easily separated or arranged in a different order around one another. A body will be liquid when, its molecules being in the position of relative equilibrium, from a small increase of their distance a weak attraction arises, which allows of the molecules being easily separated or easily arranged, without separation, in a different manner around one another. A body will be expansive and fluid when its free molecules are at a distance sensibly less than that of relative equilibrium, and therefore repel each other, and are in need of exterior pressure to be kept at such a distance. But we must not forget that the distance of relative equilibrium varies with the intrinsic dynamical variation of the molecules, and that therefore “the exact balance of the two opposing forces is _not_ a mere mathematical limit,” but is comprised between two mathematical limits determined by the amount of the variations of which each species of molecules is susceptible before settling into a different form.

Having thus disposed of the main argument by which the author wished to show “the utter futility” of the ordinary mechanical explanation of the molecular states of matter on the basis of the atomic theory, we may add a few words concerning Herbert Spencer’s argument alluded to by the author. The law of actions inversely proportional to the squares of the distances is true for each primitive element of matter, but it is not applicable to molecules acting at molecular distances, as we have proved in another place.(184) Hence Spencer’s argument, which assumes the contrary, is entirely worthless. On the other hand, were the argument admissible, we do not see how the proposition, “The constituent atoms of a body, if they are _in equilibrio_ at any particular distance, must be equally _in equilibrio_ at all other distances,” can justify the conclusion that “their density or state must be invariable.” It seems to us that a change of molecular distances must entail a change of density; but, of course, we are behind our age.

_Relativity of material realities._—“It has been a favorite tenet, not only of metaphysicians, but of physicists as well, that reality is cognizable only as absolute, permanent, and invariable, or, as the metaphysicians of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries expressed it, _sub specie æterni et abroluti_. This proposition,” Mr. Stallo continues, “like so many others which have served as pillars of imposing metaphysical structures, is the precise opposite of the truth” (p. 223). Do you understand, reader? Metaphysicians and physicists of all centuries count for nothing; they were blind, every one of them; but a great luminary has appeared at last, a Mr. J. B. Stallo, whose superior wisdom, if not philosophical infallibility, opens a new era of thought, and dispels the darkness which has been thickening around us up to the present day. Yet even the sun has spots; and Mr. Stallo will permit us to remark that his statement of the metaphysical doctrine of the ancients is not altogether correct. They did not teach “that reality is cognizable _only_ as absolute, permanent, and invariable”; they well knew and taught that there were realities cognizable, both relative and changeable. Substance, of course, was considered by them, and it is still considered by us, as an absolute reality; but they never imagined that the essence of such a reality was cognizable except through its constituent principles as related to one another, and therefore through an intelligible relation. This relation, as intelligible, was considered necessary and invariable, but, as an actual reality in nature, was considered contingent and changeable; the intelligible essence of things was known _sub specie æterni_, but their existence was known _sub specie contingentis_. Now, on what ground does Mr. Stallo impugn this doctrine? How does he prove that it is “the precise opposite of truth”? Alas! we should be exceedingly simple were we to expect proofs. Progress consists nowadays of stout assertions on the part of the writer, and of a silly credulity on that of most readers. Hence our author, instead of proving what he had rashly asserted, gives us a strain of other assertions equally rash and ridiculously absurd.

He says: “All material reality is, in its nature, not absolute, but essentially relative. All material reality depends upon determination; and determination is essentially limitation, as even Spinoza well knew. A thing ‘in and by itself’ is an impossibility” (_ibid._) Spinoza! a great authority indeed! But we should like to know how the proposition, “Determination is essentially limitation,” can lead to the conclusion that “a thing in itself and by itself is an impossibility.” To make a logical connection between the two propositions, it would be necessary to assume that “nothing finite can be in itself and by itself.” But the assumption is so foolish that even Spinoza, who based on it his revolting system of Pantheism, could never support it except by a false definition of substance, and by giving to the phrases “in itself” and “by itself” an extravagant interpretation, which proved, if not his malice and bad faith, at least his profound philosophical ignorance. Let Mr. Stallo consult any good philosophical treatise on this subject, and he will see how stolid a man must be to fall a victim to the gross sophistry of the Jewish dogmatizer.

What shall we say of the other assertion, “All material reality is, in its nature, not absolute, but essentially relative”? Can anything be _relative_ without at the same time being _absolute_? Can relation exist without two absolute terms? Relativity connects one absolute thing with another; the things thus connected acquire a relative mode of being, but they do not for that lose their absolute being. Thus Mr. Stallo may be an American citizen without ceasing to be a man, though he cannot be a citizen without being endued with a relation not involved in his nature as roan. So, also, husband and wife are essentially relative; yet we hope the author will not say that the relative _Husband_ annihilates the absolute _Man_, or that the relative _Wife_ excludes the absolute _Woman_.

These remarks apply to all relations, whether merely accidental or founded in the essence of things. Pantheists imagine that creatures cannot have any absolute being, because their being is essentially dependent, and therefore relative. They should consider that a creature is a _created being_—that is, a being related to its Creator. Such a creature, inasmuch as it is a being, _is_; and inasmuch as it is related, _connotes_ its Maker. Now, to be and to connote are not identical. The first means _existence_, the second _dependence_; the first is perfectly complete in the creature itself, the second is incomplete without a correlative term; and therefore the creature is in possession of absolute being, while it is endued with an essential relativity. Take away the absolute being; nothing will remain of which any relativity may be predicated.

Perhaps the author, when pronouncing that “all material reality is in its nature essentially relative,” alludes to the essential constitution of material realities, and to the essential relation of matter and form. If such is his meaning, the utmost he can claim is that the reality of the form is essentially connected with the matter, and the reality of the matter essentially connected with the form. This every one will concede; but no one will infer that therefore the reality which results from the conspiration of matter and form is not an absolute reality. For as the matter and the form are the principles of one essence, and as their mutual relativity connotes nothing extrinsic to the same essence, but finds in it its adequate consummation, it is evident that the resulting reality is intrinsically complete, and subsistent in its individuality. Hence this resulting reality is an _absolute_ reality; and only as such can it become the subject of relativity, and acquire the denomination of _relative_.

Our author, entirely taken up by Spinoza’s views, proceeds in the following strain: “All quality is relation; all action is reaction; all force is antagonism; all measure is a ratio between terms neither of which is absolute; every objectively real thing is a term in numberless series of mutual implications, and its reality outside of these series is utterly inconceivable. A material entity, absolute in any of its aspects, would be nothing less than a finite infinitude. There is no absolute material quality, no absolute material substance, no absolute physical unit, no absolutely simple physical entity, no absolute constant, no absolute standard either of quantity or quality, no absolute motion, no absolute rest, no absolute time, no absolute space.... There is and can be no physical real thing which is absolutely simple” (p. 225).

This string of blunders needs no refutation, as no reader who has a modicum of common sense can be deceived by what is evidently false. Yet, as to the assertion that “there is and can be no physical real thing which is absolutely simple,” it must be observed that there are two kinds of simplicity, as there are two kinds of composition. A being is physically simple when it is free from physical composition; whilst it is metaphysically simple, if it has no metaphysical components. Now, God alone is free from metaphysical as well as physical composition; and therefore God alone is absolutely simple. Hence, created beings, though physically simple, are always metaphysically compound.

What follows is a curious specimen of Mr. Stallo’s philosophical resources. He says: “Leibnitz places at the head of his Monadology the principle that there must be simple substances, because there are compound substances. _Necesse est_, he says, _dari substantias simplices, quia dantur compositæ_. This enthymeme, though it has been long since exploded in metaphysics, is still regarded by many physicists as proof of the real existence of absolutely simple constituents of matter. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it is nothing but a vicious paralogism—a fallacy of the class known in logic as fallacies of the suppressed relative. The existence of a compound substance certainly proves the existence of component parts, which, _relatively to this substance_, are simple. But it proves nothing whatever as to the simplicity of these parts in themselves” (p. 226).

Our reader will ask when and how Leibnitz’ enthymeme has been “exploded.” We shall inform him that it has _not_ been exploded, though the attempt has often been made; because in the whole arsenal of metaphysics no powder could be found that would produce the explosion. The enthymeme, therefore, is as good and unanswerable now as it was in Leibnitz’ time; and it will be as good and unanswerable hereafter, notwithstanding Mr. Stallo’s efforts against it. He says that “it is nothing but a vicious paralogism”; but he himself, while endeavoring to prove this latter assertion, resorts to a paralogism (_vicious_, of course) which we may call “fallacy of the suppressed absolute.” The existence of a compound proves the existence of its component parts, as the author admits. These parts are either compound or simple. If simple, then there are simple substances. If compound, then they have components; and these parts are again either compound or simple. We must therefore either admit simple substances, or continue our analysis by further subdivisions of the compound substance without any chance of ever coming to an end. But if the analysis cannot come to an end, the compound has no first components; and thus it will be false that “the existence of a compound substance proves the existence of the component parts.” The fallacy of the author consists in stopping his analysis of the compound before he has reached the first components. If the parts he has reached are still compound substances, why does he not examine their composition and point out their components? For no other reason, we presume, than that he did not wish to meet with an _absolute_ substantial unit, which he was sure to find at the end of the process. His argument is therefore nothing but a despicable fraud.

In his fourth article (January, 1874) Mr. Stallo remarks that “the recent doctrine of the correlation and mutual convertibility of the physical forces, as a part of the theory of the conservation of energy, has shaken, if not destroyed, the conception of a multiplicity of independent original forces” (p. 350). Of course, there are men whose convictions can be shaken, or even destroyed, by the sophistic generalizations of the modern school; but there are men also whose convictions rest on too solid a ground to be destroyed or shaken; and these latter have ere now challenged the abettors of the “recent doctrine” to clear up their case with something like logical precision—a thing which modern thinkers must have found impossible, since they have constantly ignored the challenge. We have proved elsewhere(185) that “the mutual convertibility of physical forces,” as understood by the champions of the theory, confounds movement with action and the effects with their causes. The facts on which the theory is based are true; but the theory itself is false, for it attributes to the powers by which the phenomena are produced what exclusively belongs to “the phenomena”, besides deforming the nature of the phenomena themselves by denying the production and extinction of movement. It is plain that such a theory can have no weight in philosophy; and it is no less plain that no philosopher will, for the sake of the new theory, renounce his firm conviction concerning “the multiplicity of independent original forces.”

“I have endeavored,” says the author, “to show that there are no absolute constants of mass; that both the hypothesis of corpuscular atoms and that of centres of forces are growths of a confusion of the intellect, which mistakes _conceptual_ elements of matter for _real_ elements; that these elements—force and mass, or force and inertia—are not only inseparable, as is conceded by the more thoughtful among modern physicists, but that neither of these elements has any reality as such, each of them being simply the conceptual correlate of the other, and thus the condition both of its realization in thought and of its objectivation to sense” (p. 350).

As we have already discussed all the points which the author vainly endeavored to establish, we shall only remind the reader that the matter and the form have no separate existence; and therefore have no reality in nature, unless they are together. The author, therefore, is right when affirming that neither of them has any reality _as such_; but he is wrong in inferring that they have no reality _as united_. As action has no reality without passion, nor passion without action, so also matter has no reality without form, nor form without matter; but as action producing passion is real, so also is a form actuating matter; and as passion is no less real than the action whence it proceeds, so matter also is no less real than the form by which it is actuated. Both are, of course, only metaphysical realities.

The author says: “The mathematical treatment of mechanical problems, from the nature of the methods, necessitates the fiction that force and mass are separate and distinct terms” (p. 351). By no means. It is not the nature of the methods, but the nature of the things that compels the distinction of the two terms. Their distinction, therefore, is not a “fiction.” But the author’s remark has no bearing on the question of the constitution of matter; for mechanical forces are not substantial forms.

He adds: “A material object is in every one of its aspects but one term of a relation; its whole being is a presupposition of correlates without.... Every change of a body, therefore, presupposes a corresponding change in its correlates. If the state of any material object could be changed without a corresponding change of state in other objects without, this object would, to that extent, become absolute. But this is utterly unthinkable, and therefore utterly impossible, as we have already seen.... Mechanically speaking, all force, properly so‐called—_i.e._, all potential energy—is energy of position.... Whatever energy is spent in actual motion is gained in position; ... thus we are led to the principle of the conservation of energy” (p. 351).

This is a heap of absurdities. If a material object is the term of a relation, it is absolute in itself, as we have shown. Again, the change of a body presupposes only the exertion of active power, and not the change of another body, as the author imagines. That the absolute is unthinkable he has failed to prove. Lastly, mechanical force, properly so‐called, is the product of a mass into its velocity, whilst “energy of position” is a myth.(186)

But the author says: “Force is a mere inference from the motion itself under the universal conditions of reality, and its measure, therefore, is simply the effect for which it is postulated as a cause; it has no other existence. The only reality of force and of its action is the correspondence between the physical phenomena in conformity to the principle of the essential relativity of all material existence. That force has no independent reality is so plain and obvious that it has been proposed by some thinkers to abolish the term _force_, like the term _cause_, altogether. However desirable this might be in some respects, it is impossible, for the reason that the concept _force_, when properly interpreted in terms of experience, is valid; and, if its name were abolished, it would instantly reappear under another name.... The reality of force is purely conceptual; ... it is not a distinct and individual tangible or intangible entity” (p. 354).

Here the author treats us to a luxury of contradictions. Force is “a mere inference from motion,” yet it causes motion; for it is active. Hence the causality is a mere inference of its effect. It is therefore the effect that gives existence to its cause, and the cause “has no other existence” than that which may be imbibed in the effect for which it is postulated. What, then, becomes of the “force, properly so‐called”—that is, of the potential energy, or of the energy of position, which has no actual effect? Again, “the reality of force, is purely conceptual.” This means that the reality of force is unreal; which would just amount to saying that Mr. Stallo’s intellect is unintelligent or that his writings are unwritten. Again, the “reality of force and of its action is the correspondence between the physical phenomena”; but, if the reality of force is merely conceptual, the correspondence between the physical phenomena must be merely conceptual; which would prove that the concept “force,” when properly interpreted in terms of experience, is _not_ valid, though the author maintains the contrary. Moreover, what can the author mean by “the action of force”? Is this action real or unreal? If unreal, it is no action at all; and if real, it implies a real active power. We defy Mr. Stallo to conceive a real action of an unreal force. We are informed that “some thinkers” wish to abolish the term “force,” like the term “cause,” and we are told that this proves how plain and obvious it is that force has no independent reality. This, however, proves only that some so‐called “thinkers” are either lunatics or knaves. After all, if force is purely conceptual, as the author pretends, its reality must be denied without any restriction. Why, then, does he deny merely that force has an “independent” reality? Has it any “dependent” reality if it is “purely conceptual”?

But we must come to an end. Mr. Stallo’s conclusion is that “the very conception of force depends upon the relation between two terms at least,” and that therefore “a constant central force, as belonging to an individual atom in and by itself, is an impossibility” (p. 355). In this argument the term “force” is used equivocally. It stands for _active power_ in the consequence, while it stands for _action_ or for _movement_ in the antecedent. Hence the conclusion is worthless. “I have shown,” says he, “that there are and can be no absolute constants of mass. And it is evident now that there are similarly no constant central forces belonging to, or inherent in, constants of mass as such” (p. 356). We say in our turn: No, Mr. Stallo, you have not shown what you imagine; and, if anything is evident, it is not that there are no constant central forces, but that philosophical questions cannot be solved without good logic and a clear knowledge of metaphysical principles.

The Blind Student.

When Ernest D’Arcy left the University of ——, all the glorious possibilities of life seemed to unfold themselves invitingly before him. He was young, he was clever, he was ambitious. Unlike too many American students, he had not wasted the golden hours of college life in idleness, dissipation, or even social enjoyment. He had been a hard, indeed, an enthusiastic, student; but on commencement day, when his brow was bound with victorious wreaths, he felt rewarded for having scorned the seductive pleasures of youth, and rejoiced that he had lived laborious days and nights.

But D’Arcy did not consider his education finished because he had passed through the university brilliantly. He well knew that the college was only the vestibule to the temple of learning. Through this vestibule he had passed; and now he wished to enter the noble temple itself. But on its very threshold he found himself suddenly stopped. A dangerous disease attacked his eyes. The most eminent oculists were consulted at once; absolute rest alone could save him from total blindness. He was forbidden to read or write a line. This was indeed a terrible blow to the ambitious young student. His golden hopes left him; his sweet dream of fame faded away; his bright career was blighted in the very bud. Unsustained by the holy influence of religion, a deep and dangerous despondency seized him; he abandoned himself to despair, and could not follow the advice of Burke, “Despair, but work even in despair,” for the affliction that caused his despair prevented him from working. So depressed was he at times that he contemplated suicide as a happy relief.

The D’Arcy family were of Norman origin. The grandfather of Ernest escaped from France in the early days of the Revolution, bringing with him to the United States the fortune that had descended to him through a long line of ancestors. Like so many French gentlemen of the last century, M. D’Arcy had imbibed the fashionable scepticism of the time of Voltaire and the Encyclopædists. After coming to America, he married a Catholic lady, and his scepticism gradually settled into a form of mild indifferentism. Ernest’s father was a devoted Catholic, but he died while his children were in their infancy. His wife was a Protestant, a woman of fashion, whose highest ambition was to be a leader of society. Her children, Ernest and his sister Mary, were brought up from their infancy on the Chesterfieldian model: _to shine in society_. To this end everything else was sacrificed. From the nursery they went to the dancing‐school, and had masters to teach them all those superficial accomplishments which make up a modern fashionable education. Ernest’s clever and original mind saved him from the evil effects of such an education. But, unfortunately, he did not escape a worse danger. With no one to direct his studies, at the susceptible age of seventeen he began to read the infidel French literature of the XVIIIth century, which formed a large part of his grandfather’s library. Fascinated by the diabolical wit of Voltaire, Ernest’s young and undisciplined mind mistook sophistry for argument, ridicule for reason, wit for wisdom. The fashionable religion of his mother had never possessed any charm or interest for him, and now, rejecting all belief, he became a free‐thinker.

Ernest entered the University of —— in his eighteenth year, eager for distinction and determined to succeed. Succeed he did; and when he graduated, four years later, he was the first student of the university and unanimously chosen the commencement orator. No student ever left the University of ——, which has been the Alma Mater of so many distinguished men, with a brighter future before him than Ernest D’Arcy. But it was a future for this world, and for this world alone. Fame was the god of his idolatry. His residence at the University of ——, which boasts the absence of all religious teaching, had strengthened his scepticism. But the scepticism of Ernest D’Arcy was a scepticism of the head, not of the heart. His natural love for the true, the beautiful, and the good had kept him pure, even at the most dangerous period of youth, when the blood is warm, the passions strong, and the will weak. While the heart is good and pure, however the head may err, there is always hope. The unbelief of Ernest D’Arcy was not the cold, heartless, satisfied unbelief of the hardened scoffer rejoicing in his infidelity. It was the natural result upon an eager and active intellect of an education without religion, a home without God.

The same year that Ernest left the university his sister “finished” at the Academy of the Visitation of ——. Mary D’Arcy was not a brilliant girl, but very sweet, gentle, and interesting. Three years at the convent school had removed all traces of her unfortunate home education. Mary’s most intimate friend at the convent was Edith Northcote, a young Catholic girl from the South. When they parted on distribution day, it was with the understanding that Edith should pass the next winter with Mary, and the two young ladies enter society together.

One morning, towards the end of October, Ernest was sitting in the library, surrounded by the most enchanting literature of the world, and not allowed to read a single line. D’Arcy was no sentimental dreamer or aimless student.

“To sleep away his hours In desperate sloth, miscalled philosophy.”

He wished to be a man among men. His ambition was first to teach himself, and then to teach the world. He wished to elevate the tone of society; to raise it from its fallen state. His was no splendid dream of revolutionizing the social world; he had no fond hope of creating an Utopia out of this busy, bustling America of the XIXth century. But he knew that life was too precious to be dedicated solely to the one selfish, absorbing pursuit of wealth; that the entire surrender of mind and heart and life itself to the accumulation of money was corrupting our people and exercising a baleful influence over the whole nation. Our merchants rival the merchant princes of Italy in wealth and enterprise; why should they not rival them also in their princely tastes? The palaces, the gardens, the galleries, the libraries, of Florence, Venice, and Genoa, “all tell the story of great thoughts and noble tastes which gold and trade may nurture when nobleness and greatness deal with them.” We should take time to cultivate the beautiful as well as the useful; the poetical as well as the practical. The artist should be patronized as well as the artisan. Time should be given to the refinement, the grace, the sweetness of life. We have followed too long and too earnestly the false philosophy taught in “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” that money‐getting is a sort of secular religion, and “there will be sleeping enough in the grave.” Our American life is one long “fitful fever.” We give no time to rest. Repose, a cultivated leisure, is not idleness. An elegant essay on this subject—leisure(187)—by a distinguished Baltimore lawyer, should be read and pondered by our eager and restless people, who are devoured by their business as Actæon was by his own dogs. “I mean,” says this writer, “the rest which is won and deserved by labor, and which sweetens and invigorates it and furnishes its reward. Whence comes this doctrine, that life, to be anything, must be for ever in motion? There is no process of physical development which does not need and depend upon repose. To all the green and beautiful things that deck the earth—the flowers that give it perfume, and the fruits and foliage that make it glad—there is needful the calm sunshine and the peaceful shade, the gentle rain and the yet gentler dew. Not a gem that flashes but has been crystallized in the immovable stillness of the great earth’s breast. I believe that to be false philosophy which denies to individuals their seasons of leisure and meditation; teaching them that existence was meant to be nothing but a struggle.” Our very amusements are unwholesome and dangerous: the midnight “German,” the lascivious drama, the race‐course, the steamboat excursion, the political meeting. The priceless time of youth should have some better employment than dancing and novel‐reading. Our young men should be taught that life is too valuable, time too precious, to be frittered away in idle pleasures, in frivolous amusement, in heartless dissipation. Our young women should be taught that there is something nobler in life than the passing triumphs of the ball‐room, gay flirtations, and dazzling toilets.

Thoughts like these occupied Ernest D’Arcy on that bright October morning—thoughts that stirred his heart and mind, and made him eager for the glorious work. With a soul longing to “be up and doing,” he was compelled to sit idle in the golden prime of his manhood. These were the moments of his greatest despondency, when all the brightness seemed gone from his life, and all the hope from his soul. Sitting there in the library that morning, D’Arcy recalled the beautiful lines of Miss Procter in “My Picture”:

“He had a student air, With a look half sad, half stately, Grave, sweet eyes and flowing hair.”

The library‐door was opened, and there came in one who was always welcome—Mary D’Arcy.

“Ernest, I have a letter from Edith Northcote,” Mary said. “She will be here to‐morrow.”

“I am glad to hear it. From all you have told me about Miss Northcote, I think I shall like her.”

“I am sure of it,” returned his sister. “If you don’t, my opinion of your taste is gone for ever.”

“She is nothing of the bread‐and‐butter miss, I hope? I have all Byron’s antipathy, you know, for that class.”

“Byron himself could have found no fault with Edith on that ground,” said Mary.

“Well, I am relieved of no little apprehension,” said Ernest. “I have a perfect horror of the common run of girls, who haven’t an idea above the last novel and the last fashion.”

The next day Edith arrived, and her appearance certainly realized all of Ernest’s expectations. She was nineteen—an age when the sweet graces of girlhood still linger and lend an additional charm to the blooming woman. Her features were not regularly beautiful, but her face possessed a charm and an interest which no faultlessly beautiful face ever had. If a true woman’s soul, full of the sweetest sympathy, ever brightened and beautified a human face, it was that of Edith Northcote. Then, her voice was so sweet and cordial and warm—and what is more attractive than a low, sweet voice in woman? Edith was scarcely the medium height, but exquisitely formed, and perfectly natural and graceful in all her movements, in charming contrast with the trained glances and artificial manners of our fashionable society belles. Like Alexandrine, in _A Sister’s Story_, there was an air of refinement about this lovely girl as rare as it was delightful; she had all the freshness and fragrance of the rose without the rose’s thorns. Mrs. D’Arcy, who was a female Turveydrop in the matter of deportment, said she had never seen in any society manners so elegant and at the same time so sweet and natural as the manners of Edith Northcote. Such praise from such a woman was in itself fame.

Edith soon became the life and joy of the house; she was an elegant lady in the parlor, an intelligent companion in the library, and the charming, sweet girl everywhere. The influence of her bright presence pervaded the whole household. Even stately Mrs. D’Arcy yielded to the general enthusiasm, and declared that Mary was fortunate in having such a friend. But of all the family, Ernest felt the influence of Edith’s society the most. The library, where he had passed so many hours in gloom and despondency, was now brightened by her daily and hourly presence. She read beautifully, and with a voice and manner that threw a charm around everything. Her true, womanly heart sympathized deeply with Ernest in his great affliction, and she at once determined to do all in her power to relieve it. So it soon became the custom for Ernest and Edith to retire to the library every morning after breakfast, where she read the morning paper to him while he smoked his cigar. Then two or three hours were devoted to serious study. The books, so long neglected, were again resumed. The literary work, which Ernest loved so well, was again taken up. Edith was his librarian, his reader, his amanuensis. He had the true student’s dislike of any person touching his books and papers; but Edith’s touch seemed to have magic in it, for she could do what few ladies can ever do—put papers in order without putting them out of place.

But not only as his literary assistant was Edith serviceable to Ernest; she was his sweet and gentle companion, his kind and sympathetic friend, ever ready in all things to make him forget his blindness and his consequent dependence. Inspiring and stimulating him to renewed exertion, she also directed his ambition to the noblest ends. She opened a new life to the brilliant young student—a life full of love and sweetness and humanity. Her bright and joyous influence banished from his soul the dark despair that had been enthroned there so long, and again there was raised in his heart

“A hope That he was born for something braver than To hang his head and wear a nameless name.”

Edith found time for everything; duty, as well as pleasure, had each its allotted place in her daily life. Before the rest of the family were awake she was up and off to early Mass. In the winter twilight, when other young ladies were returning from the fashionable promenade, Edith could often be seen with a little basket on her arm, carrying delicacies to the sick, or more substantial food to relieve the necessities of Christ’s suffering children. Ernest sometimes accompanied her on these errands of mercy, and it was a new revelation to him to see Edith, so gay, sparkling, and fascinating in society, visiting the humble homes of the poor, cheering and comforting the sick and destitute. Her very presence seemed like a sunbeam in their dreary dwellings. Edith did not think she was performing any heroic virtue by these things. She knew she was only following the injunction of Him who loved the poor so well that he became like one of them. She knew the Catholic poor were the blessed inheritance of the Catholic Church. Many Catholic young ladies, delicately nurtured and fastidiously refined, are daily doing what Edith did.

Ernest was benefited by attending Edith on those missions of love. His warm heart was touched and all the latent sweetness of his nature brought out by the distress which he witnessed, and of which he had never dreamed amidst the luxuries of his own elegant home. There was one case that particularly interested him; unfortunately, there are many such in this age of boasted religious liberty. It was that of a Mrs. White. She was a woman of education and refinement, and had been accustomed to all the comforts of life in her father’s house. Early in life she married a poor but worthy young man. He was a clerk, and labored for his wife and children with an industry that knew no flagging. By constantly bending over his desk he literally worked himself into consumption. After lingering a few months, during which all his little savings were spent, he died, leaving his family in utter destitution. During his sickness he had been visited by several Catholic ladies, who attended to his wants with so sweet a charity that his heart was touched, and he longed to know more of a religion which taught such blessed humanity. As the Author of all truth has declared that he who seeks shall find, so Mr. White found the truth which he sought, and died a most beautiful and edifying death. His wife soon afterwards became a Catholic, converted by the example of the good ladies who had so kindly ministered to her dying husband. In the extremity of her distress Mrs. White appealed to her father, who had refused to have any intercourse with her since her marriage. What do you think was the answer of this father to a daughter whose only offence was that she had left _father and mother to cleave to her husband_? We blush for the humanity that could send to a grief‐stricken and desolate daughter so brutal a message as this:

“Now your chosen husband is dead, I will receive you back, provided you give up, at once and for ever, the Catholic religion, which you have recently professed. Otherwise, you may die as you have lived—a pauper and an outcast.”

And so she lived and died a pauper and an outcast; but, so living and so dying, her lot was more enviable than that of her cruel and unnatural father. Her last moments were comforted by the promise of Ernest D’Arcy to provide for her two children. The elder, a bright little fellow of thirteen, he placed in a lawyer’s office; the other, a boy nine years old, was admitted into a Catholic orphan asylum.

Thus visiting the sick and relieving the poor, and frequently meeting Catholic priests and Catholic Sisters in pious attendance on death‐beds, the conversation of Ernest and Edith naturally took a religious turn. One evening, after returning from one of their charitable visits, they were sitting in the library before the great wood‐fire (for Ernest would not allow that abomination, miscalled a modern improvement, a furnace‐flue, in his _sanctum_), as they generally did before tea. Ernest was unusually thoughtful that evening, so much so that Edith observed it and asked him the cause.

“I am thinking about you and myself—about all your goodness to me,” he said; “about what I was before I knew you, and what I may be by your noble example. Edith, the daily beauty of your life makes mine ugly. My father was a Catholic, and I am—nothing. The cold and fashionable religion of my mother neither satisfied my mind nor interested my heart. I became a free‐ thinker, an infidel, but never a scoffer at religion. I did not believe, because I did not know what to believe.”

“We must read together Chateaubriand’s _Genius of Christianity_—that magnificent tribute to the truth and beauty of the Christian religion,” Edith replied. “You know the story of his conversion: in his extreme youth he yielded to the gay scepticism which at the time controlled French society, and he, a son of the Crusaders, became a disciple of Voltaire, and wrote in the interest of infidelity. The death of Chateaubriand’s mother, whose last moments had been saddened by his scepticism, and whose last words were a prayer for his conversion, recalled him to a sense of that religion in which he had been educated. ‘_I became a Christian_,’ Chateaubriand wrote. ‘_My conviction came from the heart. I wept and I believed._’ He resolved to devote to religion the eloquent pen which had been used against her. The result was his immortal work the _Genius of Christianity_. The beautiful style, the vast information, the glowing descriptions of art, scenery, poetry, and music cannot fail to delight and interest you.”

The next day Edith commenced Chateaubriand’s great masterpiece. As, day after day, the reading continued, Ernest grew deeply interested. He saw clearly demonstrated the noble and inspiring fact that “the Christian religion, of all the religions that ever existed, is the most favorable to liberty and to the arts and sciences; that the modern world is indebted to it for every improvement: from agriculture to the abstract sciences; from the hospitals for the reception of the unfortunate to the temples reared by the Michael Angelos and embellished by the Raphaels.”

Other books were read, all breathing the same divine spirit, the same exalted Christian charity, the same sweet human sympathy. The warm, tender heart of Ernest D’Arcy was fascinated by the beautiful and noble sentiments expressed in the volumes which were now a part of his daily reading. He compared them with the false philosophy of a Voltaire and the senseless sentimentality of a Rousseau, which taught how to destroy, but not how to save; whose end was the destruction, not the amelioration, of society. These books certainly opened a newer and a sweeter world to the student. But it must not be supposed that the young D’Arcy saw immediately the truth of Catholicity in all its divine beauty. Few, like S. Paul, are miraculously changed from the enemy to the friend of God’s church. Few, like Chateaubriand, can say: “I wept and I believed.”

With the opening of spring Edith returned home, and Earnest was again left alone with his books. But how changed seemed everything! The brightness was gone from the library. The pleasure was gone from his studies. He sadly missed her who had been his constant companion for so many months. Fortunately, about this time his eyes improved sufficiently to allow him to read for a short time every day. He continued the reading to which Edith had introduced him. This was some consolation to him, now that he was separated from her. But, alas! it was a consolation not long allowed to him. If that stern old moralist, Dr. Johnson, acknowledged that he found it easier to practise abstinence than temperance in wine, it will not be surprising that so ardent a student as Ernest D’Arcy found it absolutely impossible to practise temperance in reading when he read at all. And now he had a greater incentive to work than ever before. He felt that he must make himself worthy of the sweet girl whom he loved. The delicately refined nature of this perfect gentleman would not allow him to make a formal declaration of love to Edith while she was a guest in his mother’s house, but that unerring, never‐failing instinct which belongs to woman enabled her to see plainly that he was deeply, fondly interested in her. Nor was Edith insensible to the many attractive qualities of Ernest D’Arcy; his cultured mind, his noble heart, his high ambition, his exalted sentiments of honor and morality, claimed her enthusiastic admiration, while the romantic character of their constant intercourse pleased her girlish fancy.

D’Arcy’s Catholic reading had enchanted his impressible mind. As an historical institution, the church delighted and astonished him. He saw it rise triumphantly on the ruins of the empire of the Cæsars; he saw it conquer and civilize the barbarians of Germany and the North; he saw it tame the fierce passions of the Franks and Goths; he saw it in the middle ages standing between the people and princely despots; he saw it always on the side of right and always against wrong, always raising its powerful voice in favor of the oppressed; he saw it in the XVIth century successfully sustain itself against the most formidable religious revolution the world had ever known; he saw it in the XIXth century serene in the midst of tumbling thrones and political convulsions, teaching one faith and one doctrine, while heresy was broken into a thousand indistinguishable fragmentary sects.

With his mind fresh from these new and interesting studies, Ernest D’Arcy began to write the story of his mental life, which he called _From Darkness to Light_. Like Milton, he became so engrossed in his work that his eyes grew rapidly worse; and, like him also, he was unwilling to discontinue his studies, until at length study was impossible. Edith Northcote heard of this new trial through Ernest’s sister Mary; for Ernest himself was too manly, too considerate, to annoy Edith with his troubles. She determined at once to make a Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes to obtain the cure of Ernest’s eyes. She procured some of the celebrated miraculous water, and sent it to Ernest, telling him that on a certain day she would commence the Novena, requesting him to apply the water to his eyes each day, and say the prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes contained in the little book recently published. The account of the apparition greatly interested Ernest, and, though not yet a Catholic, he did not hesitate to comply with both of Edith’s requests.

Thousands of unrecorded miracles have been wrought by the water of Lourdes, and the restoration of Ernest’s eyes was one of them.(188) As the darkness left his eyes, the divine light of faith entered his soul; and he who had been both mentally and physically blind, now saw with the eyes of the body and saw also with the eyes of the soul. He saw the truth, the beauty, and the goodness of the Catholic religion; seeing, he believed; believing, he professed; professing, he practised. Ernest D’Arcy became a Catholic—a devout, a zealous, a fervid Catholic.

Ernest did not inform Edith by letter of the happy effects of the water of Lourdes. He visited her in her Southern home. Simply saying a friend wished to see her, he awaited her entrance with no little impatience. At length she appeared. Ernest advanced to meet her. The few words he spoke explained everything: “_Edith, I am a Catholic._”

The next few weeks were the sweetest Ernest had ever known—sweeter than he had ever dreamed of. He had found what he had so long sought in vain—the true religion; and in finding the religion which was to make him happy in heaven, he also found the being who was to make him happy on earth.

Turning From Darwin To Thomas Aquinas.

UNLESS in thought with thee I often live, Angelic Doctor! life seems poor to me. What _are_ these bounties, if they only be Such boon as farmers to their servants give? That I am fed, and that mine oxen thrive, That my lambs fatten, that mine hours are free— These ask my nightly thanks on bended knee; And I _do_ thank Him who hath blest my hive And made content my herd, my flock, my bee. But, Father! nobler things I ask from thee. Fishes have sunshine, worms have everything! Are we but apes? Oh! give me, God, to know I am death’s master; not a scaffolding, But a true temple where Christ’s word could grow.

The Future Of The Russian Church.

By The Rev. Cæsarius Tondini, Barnabite.

III.

In presence of the melancholy reality of to‐day, and in expectation of a yet sadder morrow, those Russians who are sincerely attached to their church, and who have at heart the interests of their faith, will perhaps ask themselves if it be not needful to labor in some direct manner to deliver the Russian Church from a protection which has been so fatal to her.

The question is a very serious one; we do not venture to decide upon it.

As Catholic, and precisely because we are Catholic, we must, in a question of this kind, consider souls. Now, to work _directly_ to overthrow the religious autocracy of the czars might easily, considering the actual circumstances of Russia, hasten this morrow we have been considering, and that without any efficacious remedy being at hand to accompany or to follow quickly upon so great an evil. If it were not to be feared that, under present circumstances, the overthrow of the official church would cause the unbelief of the higher classes to descend also among the lower, thus rendering it general, and endangering the existence of every faith in the Russian people, the question would be easy to answer; but so long as this doubt exists it is quite a case to which to apply the principle that of two evils we must choose the least. From this point of view we prefer the continuance of the present state of things, because it seems to us the lesser evil.

There exist, however, other doubts, and their existence is of an extreme gravity, in determining the attitude of Russians toward their church; they are these:

Will the czars, even should they change their policy and show themselves for the future true protectors and not masters, be able long to continue to the Russian Church the support of the laws?

Again: Will Russia much longer have the czars?

These doubts are not chimerical.

In the first place, it appears to us unlikely that the czars should be able to continue indefinitely to refuse liberty of conscience. Already, at this present time, the Russian authorities shut their eyes to many infractions of the laws relating to the different religious communions; the ever‐increasing and multiplied relations of Russia with other countries, and of her people with foreigners, and foreigners with Russians, might easily create serious embarrassments, and even give rise to political complications, if there were a desire to apply the religious laws in all their rigor.

Nevertheless, it seems to us equally difficult to imagine that Russia should, at one bound, arrive at declaring the civil law to be atheistical, and to repel all solidarity between material interests and the religious interests of the people. During some time Russia will probably offer to us the same spectacle as in England, the classic land of religious license, where every one, _except the sovereign_, is free to believe what he pleases, and where at the same time _convenances_ and multiplied interests keep the official church standing. But the Anglican Church has a far different past and far other memories—above all, a very different literature—from the Russian Church. In continuing this comparison the reader will find an explanation of the vitality shown by the state‐church of England, and at the same time the motives which do not allow us to predict for that of Russia either able defenders or even a lingering death.

If, then, the Russians ought not to labor directly to overthrow the religious autocracy of the czars, seeing that, in present circumstances, the overthrow of this autocracy might be the cause of still greater disasters than those of the past, they nevertheless ought not to fold their arms and contemplate with indifference the probability that this overthrow may be brought about at no distant period by the mere force of circumstances.

There remains the other doubt: Will Russia much longer have the czars?

This doubt, considering the epoch in which we live, scarcely needs to be justified. What sovereign is there who can promise himself that he shall end his days upon the throne? One alone—the Pope, because even in a dungeon he is obeyed just as if he were upon a throne.

Let Russians who have at heart the interests of their faith boldly face this second doubt and the fears to which it gives rise. Never, perhaps, could history offer us a more remarkable spectacle than that of an orthodox church, and a perfect automaton; to‐day receiving speech, movement, and action from an orthodox emperor, and to‐morrow receiving them from the head of a Protestant government, perhaps a Jew, perhaps an atheist. In fact, the organization of a church reckoning nearly fifty millions of adherents cannot be changed in twenty‐four hours, especially if this organization is identified with the state to the degree of confusing herself with the latter. What will then become of the Synod we do not know, but neither do we know whether the new government will readily consent to lose the profit of so powerful an _instrumentum regni_ as the church organized by the czars.

In presence of these eventualities, which, on account of the rapid march of modern revolutions, are far from improbable, and may take place any day, is there anything the Russians can do in order to save orthodoxy? There is one thing, and, we believe, one only. We will say what that is, though we greatly doubt whether it will be accepted; too many prejudices, too many objections, will oppose themselves to it; everything else will be tried, rather than have recourse to it; a great confidence especially will be placed in the triumph of the panslavist idea; but each new attempt will but prove this one plan to be the only efficacious one, and the ill‐ success of all the others will gradually lead minds to ally themselves to it. In the alternative of accepting this, or else of letting orthodoxy perish, Russians sincerely attached to their faith will not indefinitely hesitate. Besides, a Providence watches over states and peoples; in that Providence we place our trust, and it will not be in vain.

If, calling things by their names, we were to say plainly that this only way is the reunion of the Russian with the Catholic Church, a Russian who might do us the honor to peruse these pages would perhaps throw down the book, and, however well disposed he might be, would see nothing more in it than vain and dangerous imaginations. This alarm, however, would prove, more than anything else, the exceeding power of the words. We will endeavor to express the same idea in another manner; and, without flattering ourselves that we shall gain acceptance for it, we hope at least to obtain for it serious examination.

What is Russian orthodoxy? It is the collection of the dogmas accepted and taught by the Russian Church. Now, these dogmas, with the exception of some few misunderstandings,(189) are the same as those of the Catholic Church; the point which really separates the two churches is the denial, on the part of the Russians, of the jurisdiction of the Pope over the universal church. At the utmost, a real doctrinal disagreement should be admitted respecting the infallibility of the Pope defining _ex cathedrâ_ on faith or morals. But however important this disagreement may be in the eyes of Catholics, it has no importance in the eyes of Protestants and rationalists. Those who admit no revelation would not certainly prefer orthodoxy merely because there is in it one article less to believe. As to Protestants, the difficult point is to make them admit a visible authority taught by God himself, and having the right and mission to explain the Scriptures and to make a practical application of them to our lives. Now, is it likely that, in their eyes, an authority residing in the dispersed church, without the necessary bond which unites the bishops to each other, would be much more acceptable than a central authority, always living, always ready to declare its oracles, and, by that very fact, independent of the obstacles which an inimical government or any other adversary might raise against it to prevent it from declaring itself? For the rest, the _Spiritual Regulation_ will let Protestants know whether a church organized as is that of Russia at the present time can alone make a free word to be heard.

Protestants and rationalists are, then, common adversaries of the Russian and also of the Catholic Church. Common adversaries also, on doctrinal grounds, are all those who cannot be exactly classed with either Protestants or rationalists, but against whom the Russian Church will no less have to defend herself—Jews, Mahometans, and, lastly, the Raskolniks also, unless, indeed, a portion of the latter should not prefer to ally themselves to the Catholic Church rather than to the Synod, if only they can be persuaded that in becoming Catholics they do not by any means cease to be Russians. Now, when in the XVIIth century the heresy of Calvin was for a moment seated on the patriarchal throne of Constantinople in the person of Cyril‐Lucar, and when that patriarch had published his _Orthodox Confession of the Christian Faith_,(190) which was full of Calvinistic errors, the gravity of the danger to orthodoxy was then sufficiently powerful to render the Greeks far from being disdainful of the support offered to them by Catholics, and even by the Pope himself, for the purpose of guarding in safety the articles of the common faith.

Nothing was found too hard to be said against Catholics and Rome, because of their intervention in the deposition of the heretical patriarch and the condemnation of his doctrine. For their justification we may be permitted to refer the reader to a publication which, upon its appearance, had the importance of a great event, and this is No. 42 of the _Tracts for the Times_, which, in England, opened the way to the Catholic faith.(191)

This historical precedent will not, we hope, remain without its consequences in history. Already Catholic theologians unconsciously afford a solid support to orthodoxy, with regard to the defence of the dogmas which are common to us with the Russians. Our theological works find entrance into Russia, and are there studied and quoted; whilst it is rarely, if ever, that we find modern authors of the Greek Church quoted, unless it be to draw from them arguments against the primacy of the Pope, and to perpetuate the misunderstandings relating to the Procession of the Holy Ghost and to purgatory.

From the time of Peter the Great orthodoxy has done nothing but lose ground in Russia; neither the patriarchs of the East nor the other heads of the various branches of the Orthodox Church appear to be solely occupied with it. One might say that any heresy inspires them with less horror than the Catholic doctrine about the Pope, and that they consider the rejection of this doctrine a sufficient proof of a healthy orthodoxy. But the day will come when every Russian who loves orthodoxy above all else will no longer regard with so much horror as now a church which is far better calculated than the Greek Church to furnish him with arms wherewith to defend the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Real Presence, the sacraments, the veneration of Mary and the saints. The same horror with which we Catholics still inspire many orthodox Russians we formerly inspired Anglicans. Relations with us, and _study_, have disabused many credulous minds; in Russia, moreover, the double sentiment will operate in our favor of the danger to which orthodoxy will be exposed, and the insufficiency of the succor which can arrive to it from any quarter except the Catholic Church alone.

But Protestants, rationalists, Jews, Mahometans, and Raskolniks are not the only adversaries which the Russian Church must prepare to combat, and against whom she will find no help more efficacious than that which Catholics can afford. Among her adversaries she may reckon the government, atheism in the legislation, obstacles of every kind created against the propaganda of orthodoxy, compulsory irreligious instruction, unbelief and materialism “crowned” by the academies—in a word, all the constituted authorities upon which the people depend. Can the Russian Church promise herself that she will be able successfully to contend against such adversaries? No one will maintain that the past history of this church offers a certain guarantee that she will; her existence, especially since Peter the Great, has been too monotonous, and has had a sphere of action too circumscribed, to allow her to make trial of her strength. Alas! there is something more; however monotonous may have been her existence, it nevertheless offers one characteristic feature, and this is, the facility with which she has permitted the czars to impose their laws upon her, and to obtain from her that which nothing would have forced from the great doctors and fathers of the Greek Church. Now, if the Russian Church has been so feeble in presence of the czars, is it very certain that she would instantaneously recover her energy, were she to find herself face to face with a government inspired by principles the most hostile to Christianity, and the declared enemy, no longer of the whole Christian church only, but of Jesus Christ himself? We are no prophet; but, after all, it is not absolutely impossible that, at a period more or less distant, some Russian socialist may find himself seated in the place of the czars.

Thus the past history of the Russian Church is far from being a sure warranty that she will know how to wrestle with impious governments. What succor, in fact, can she expect from churches which, in presence of the sultan, and of the sovereigns of the other countries where they are established, have shown themselves fully as feeble as the Russian Church has been in presence of the czars? The sultan—to speak of him only—has not he himself settled the Bulgarian question? And, besides, will not these churches have enough to do to defend themselves at a time when political importance decides everything? What influence in the religious affairs of Russia can be exercised by little states occupying scarcely the third or fourth rank among the states of Europe?

Should the Russian Church accept the aid of the Catholic Church, it will be a very different matter. In the same way that history shows us the latter as having already had to deal, on doctrinal ground, with every sort of error, and of having fought against it, thus offering, with the weight of her experience, the aid of a science as vast as the variety of errors against which it has combated; so also has the Catholic Church already encountered, on practical ground, every sort of obstacle, and has passed through storms and tempests which would a thousand times over have submerged her were she not divine. The number, variety, and gravity of the struggles she has maintained also against governments and nations give her the right to repeat with a calm security, each time that the signs of a fresh persecution appear: _Alios vidi ventos aliasque procellas_—“Other tempestuous winds and other storms have I seen.” She possesses institutions born of these struggles and adapted to those of the future, which will also create new ones in their turn. Her missionaries and her priests present us with the spectacle of an army as numerous as it is varied, answering to all the needs of war and to all the possible eventualities of the field of battle. Still more: in the existence of the church warfare is, so to speak, the normal condition, and peace the exception; it thus follows that the powers of the Catholic Church are kept in continual exercise, and that the science of the means of victory is never reduced to simple memories.

This, from the history of the past, is what may be with certainty foreseen, whether with regard to the inefficiency of the help which the Russian Church may promise herself from the various branches of the orthodox communion, in a struggle against unbelief and impious governments, or with regard to the solid support which, in this case, she would find from the Catholic Church. But this prevision is not only justified by history. History has done nothing more than throw light upon that which had been foretold to us by a terrible declaration of Jesus Christ; and it is in this declaration that lies the deep reason and the true explanation of that which history causes to pass before our eyes. _Omne regnum in seipsum divisum desolabitur_—“Every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation” (S. Luke xi. 17), Our Lord has said.

The Orthodox Church is a divided kingdom—divided into as many branches as there are states in which she counts her adherents; divided to such a degree that, without the consent of sovereigns, no communication is possible between these divers branches; so divided that it is also the will of sovereigns which regulates and measures the relations which the bishops of the eparchies (dioceses) of one self‐same state may hold among themselves. The Orthodox Church is a kingdom divided against itself—so divided that nowhere is there to be found an authority which, being itself the source of jurisdiction, can terminate the litigations about jurisdiction without appeal; so divided that a little boldness and obstinacy sufficed to enable Greece to withdraw herself from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople; that a little boldness and obstinacy sufficed to gain the cause for Bulgaria, when, not long ago, she also shook off the authority of the same patriarch; and that a little boldness and obstinacy always suffice to enable the revolted definitively to shake off the yoke of their pastors.(192)

Alas! it is not even here that the desolation of this kingdom ends. Of the Orthodox Church it may be truly said that the desolation has no bounds. It has no bounds because already the principle has been established that the church of each state ought to be independent, and that each separate nation also ought to have its distinct and independent church. It is endless because to these principles—subversive of all order and all stability, and which make ecclesiastical jurisdiction depend no longer upon the laws and customs of the church, but on the chances of war, the valor of conquerors, and the craftiness of conspirators—the Orthodox Church can oppose nothing but vain protestations; it is endless because the very bishops themselves of the Orthodox Church take the lead in upholding these principles, and are the first to treat with contempt the complaints of those of their brethren whose jurisdiction is injured.

And, in fact, it was by invoking its political independence that the recently‐formed kingdom of Greece declared itself, in 1833, freed from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. This declaration was made and carried by _all_ the bishops of the kingdom, assembled at Nauplia; not a single voice appears to have been raised to require that the patriarch should at least be first consulted. The patriarch appealed to the canons of the church, and protested—and they let him protest. For seventeen years he went on protesting, until at last, in 1850, his successor recognized the accomplished fact; had he not done so, he would have been allowed to protest to an indefinite period, as long as he might be inclined. It was by appealing to the principle of nationality (_phyletism_) that the Bulgarians shook off the authority of the same patriarch. Their bishops nominated an exarch, and long before the sultan had definitely settled this affair they gave no more heed to the patriarch’s protestations than for seventeen years had been given by the bishops of the Hellenic kingdom. In the hope of leading back the Bulgarians to obedience, the patriarch, in 1872, convoked a great council in the Church of S. George at Constantinople. He made his complaints against his rebellious children, and without apparently considering the effect which might be produced by the publicity given to his words, he there related that, having summoned the recalcitrant bishops to return to obedience, one of them had answered him, _by the telegraph_, that he should go and receive the reply from the exarch.

The council thereupon proceeded to excommunicate the Bulgarians, who had already so willingly excommunicated themselves, sure beforehand that they would none the less continue to be considered members of the Orthodox Church— a certainty which could not fail to be realized. The example of Greece had borne its fruit. Besides, this council was not œcumenical; amongst others, the Russian bishops did not sit there at all; a letter of the Synod had the mission of representing them, probably unknown to themselves, and certainly without their permission. By what right, then, could the council separate the Bulgarian nation from _the whole_ church? By what right did it speak in the name of _the whole_ church? It had so much the less right, also, from the fact that the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cyril, who happened to be then at Constantinople, determinedly refused, for reasons which gave evidence of more than unwillingness, to appear at its sittings.(193)

Will it be said that the Bulgarians were excommunicated by virtue of the canons of the church; that the council applied to them an anathema already decreed by the fathers and the œcumenical councils against those who violated the canons? We have some acquaintance with these canons; and, if they are to be taken literally, we would not take upon ourselves to prove that the whole Orthodox Church has not long ago fallen under some excommunication pronounced by her own canons; such, at any rate, would be the case with regard to the Russian Church, which forms its principal portion. To escape this somewhat embarrassing conclusion, it becomes necessary to admit that the canons must be understood, as it is commonly expressed, _cum grano salis_, and that they are susceptible of a mild interpretation. It is this which the Bulgarians believe themselves to have done. They have found in the past history of their church _several_ examples authorizing an interpretation of the canons conformable to their wishes; amongst others, that of Peter the Great, who, _without ever ceasing to be considered orthodox_, abolished the patriarchate of Moscow, instituted the Synod, made it the principal authority of the Russian Church, and declared himself to be the “Supreme Judge” thereof; after which he informed the Oriental patriarchs of what had happened, and demanded of them an approbation which he was fully determined to do without, in case it should be refused. The crime of the Bulgarians consisted in interpreting the canons as they had been interpreted by the numerous bishops who had not on that account been, by any means, expelled from the church; and if the letter of the Russian Synod, the mandatory of the Russian episcopate at the council of 1872, blamed them, besides that, in their revolt, they were sustained by Russia.(194) The Bulgarians called to mind that it was Russia, too, which had the most strenuously labored to induce the Patriarch of Constantinople to recognize the independence of the Church of the Hellenic kingdom as an accomplished fact. With memories such as these, the anathema of the Council of Constantinople of 1872 could scarcely disquiet the Bulgarians.

And this is not all. This council made a decision which is, in truth, a _doctrinal_ decision by declaring that the exterior constitution of the church is independent of the principle of nationality, and in condemning the application of this principle to the church, as being contrary to the Scriptures and to the Fathers. By what right did this council, not being ecumenical, make a decision of this kind, and what value could it possess? Will it be said that this council did nothing more than define and affirm what was contained in the Scriptures and the Fathers? It was precisely this to which the Bulgarians would not agree, and of which the Patriarch of Jerusalem—to mention him only—was by no means convinced; in short, that which only a truly ecumenical council could _authoritatively_ decide. In presence of a merely nominal doctrinal authority, it was perfectly natural that the Bulgarians should keep their own view of the matter.

But still more embarrassing by far would be the consequences resulting to the Orthodox Church if it were admitted that this council possessed a really doctrinal authority, and that its decisions were obligatory on the consciences of the orthodox faithful. In this case the Orthodox Church would have added yet another definition to those already recorded in the seven Ecumenical Councils allowed by her. This church has always boasted of having _added nothing_ to the doctrine expressed in the seven Ecumenical Councils, in which, according to her, the Holy Ghost has deposited, _once for all_,(195) whatever it is necessary to believe. She is so persuaded that nothing can be added to them that she takes pleasure in recognizing in these councils the seven pillars of wisdom, the seven mysterious seals, spoken of by S. John—pillars and seals which will eternally remain seven in number, without any possible chance of reaching even to the number eight. Therefore it is that she throws in our faces our western councils and their definitions, and therefore that she reproaches us with _new dogmas_. But the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the doctrinal Infallibility of the Pope—these two dogmas which the church has found in the Scriptures and in the Fathers—were they newer in the eyes of the Bulgarians than the dogma defined at the Council of Constantinople in 1872, that “the church, in her exterior constitution, is independent of the principle of nationality”—a dogma condemned, implicitly at least, by the previous practice of a large portion of the Orthodox Church?

Finally, why should the Bulgarians have submitted to the decision of a particular council—a decision, carried by the Greeks _judices in causâ propriâ_, when the Russian Church, as all the world knew, thought so lightly of the doctrine and practice of the whole Greek Church in a matter of far greater importance, _the validity of baptism_? Baptism by infusion is in fact recognized at St. Petersburg and Moscow as valid, while at Constantinople it is null and void. A Protestant or a Catholic baptized by infusion, who should ask to be received into the Orthodox Church, would be accepted unconditionally in Russia: but at Constantinople he would be required to be rebaptized. A Christian in the dominions of the czar, he would become a pagan at Constantinople; and yet this is one and the same church!(196)

Yes, the shock has been given. The Council of Constantinople of 1872 has not been able to hinder the defection of the Bulgarians, but it has attracted the attention of the Christian world to the fact that the Orthodox Church has no authority which can force consciences to reject as heretical the application to the exterior constitution of the church, either of the principle of nationality, or any other principle upon which might be based the political constitution of nations. And further, the acts of the Council of Constantinople of 1872 give evidence of the hesitation and uncertainty existing among the representatives of the orthodox faith(197) with regard to a question so momentous, and which concerns the very life of that church. The shock has been given. Error has a terrible logic. Where will the divisions, the sub‐divisions, and the parcellings‐out of the orthodox communion end?

And what consequences may result from the want of exterior unity, not only for the independence, but also for the faith, of the church, we have just glanced at; but it will be revealed by the _Ecclesiastical Regulation_ in a manner more convincing and more sad.

Assuredly the future had not been foreseen when, in the _Confession of the Orthodox Faith_, the great catechism of the whole Oriental Church, it was considered sufficient to explain as follows the unity of the church:

“The church is one, ... according to the teaching of the apostle: _For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ_ (2 Cor. xi. 2). For even as there is but one Christ, even so his spouse can be but one; as it is written in the fourth chapter of the Epistle of S. Paul to the Ephesians (iv. 5, 6): _One Lord, one faith, one baptism: there is but one God, the Father of all._”(198)

Nor was the future any more foreseen when, in the catechism of Mgr. Philarete, the unity of the church was defined:(199)

“Q. Why is the church one?

“A. Because she represents one _spiritual_ body, animated by one sole and only divine Spirit, and having one head only, who is Christ.”

Let us now turn away our gaze from the Orthodox Church, in which the terrible declaration of Jesus Christ finds only too fully its accomplishment. Another church appears before us. She is not a divided kingdom: on the contrary, if there be one characteristic mark by which she may be at once recognized by all who seek for her, it is the imposing unity of her exterior organization. The pope forms this unity. Let us ask of history what the pope has done for the church.

And history answers: The pope has saved the church. The pope alone has been able to hinder this church from breaking up, as the Orthodox Church has done, into so many national churches, at first under the protection, then under the authority, and finally under the rod, of sovereigns who were at first kings, then presidents of a republic, sometimes Robespierres. It is the pope, and the pope only, who has maintained, not merely the vague notion, but the living sentiment of Catholic fraternity—a sentiment which inspires the adversaries of the church with a fear which, in spite of themselves, they betray. It is the pope, and the pope alone, who has caused the sap of Christian piety to circulate in the whole Catholic world, by the honors of the altars accorded to the saints of every land, and by those institutions which, originating in one country, belong to all countries, as powerful, in the realization of their vast aspirations, as zeal and charity themselves. It is the pope who makes the treasures of virtue and learning which he discovers in any particular locality the common property of the world—in a word, it is the pope who causes the church always to survive, not only the enemies who desire her death, not only the false prophets who, for centuries past, have gone on announcing this death as imminent, but all kingdoms and all empires, their institutions, and even their remembrance. This is what the pope is for the Catholic Church.

Thus we see, on the one side, division, and, as its consequence, the dissolution foretold by Jesus Christ; on the other side, unity, and, with unity, victory and strength. This is the signification of the church having or not having a pope. Besides, the unity of government is so necessary to arrest the indefinite parcelling out of one church into a number of independent churches, and as a safeguard to the common faith, that each separate branch of the Orthodox Eastern Church has not been able to maintain its integrity without the aid of a supreme and central authority. Instead of the pope, this is a patriarch, or it is a synod, or it is the sovereign of the country, but everywhere and always the very adversaries of the Papacy themselves render an involuntary homage to the Catholic dogma which declares a visible head, a pope, necessary to the church.

Yes, a pope is necessary for the church—necessary to her existence, and necessary for the fulfilment of her mission.

Let us consider it with regard to the most powerful of the various branches of the orthodox communion—the Russian Church. Even could this church (by hypothesis) maintain herself alone, and could she continue her work without the operation of the laws; could she alone combat unbelief, and alone make head against impious governments, the pope would be none the less necessary for her. And why? Because the Russian Church calls herself _Catholic_; that is, _universal_. Now, it is not enough for a church which calls itself Catholic, and the one church of the Saviour of all, to be able to maintain her ground in that part of the world in which she is now enclosed; it is not enough that she should combat unbelief in the empire of the czars, nor that she should be able to resist an impious government which may succeed to theirs.

If she is Catholic, she ought, the Russian Church herself, to be equal to penetrating _everywhere_, and everywhere to maintain herself; to combat _everywhere_ heresy and unbelief, and everywhere to sustain collision with the government. If she is Catholic, let her issue from the limits of the country of the czars, and at least _attempt_ the conquest of Italy, Germany, France, England, all Europe; America, the whole world; let her, in the name of Jesus Christ, utter words of authority to the conquerors of the earth, brave the hatred which the consciousness of her rights would draw upon her, and dare to declare to crowned heads that all Christians belong to her; let her not confine herself to raising in capital cities Russian temples for the use of the Russian embassies, but let her require every government to recognize the orthodox worship; let her missionaries penetrate, whether welcomed or repelled, into all the countries of the earth with the sole credentials of the apostles, and, strong in this single right, let them return whither they are driven out, and sprinkle with their blood the soil wherein they sow the seed of orthodoxy. Then, and only then, will the Russian Church show herself Catholic; that is to say, universal; that is to say, the church of the Saviour of all. Until then in vain may she call herself Catholic while the title is denied by the fact.

But these things the Russian Church will never be able to accomplish without a pope.

From whom, in fact, will her priests hold their commission? To whom will they recur for counsel, protection, and support? In whose name will they speak to governments and kings? To whom will they refer the latter to authenticate the validity of their mission, to propose objections, or to lodge complaints? If we except Russia, Turkey, the Hellenic kingdom, Roumania, Servia, and some provinces of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, the rest of the world is missionary ground for the Orthodox Church, just as much as is China for the Catholic Church. Let us suppose the Russian Church wishing only to undertake the conversion of France. Paris already possesses a Russian temple; it is now the Synod, in concert with the government, which nominates the persons attached to this temple. When the official church shall have fallen, and all the Russian bishops shall be canonically equal, or at least independent of each other, to which among them will the charge of this mission belong?

Paris is a place to stimulate the zeal of many bishops. It is allowable to believe that a settlement will not be very quickly made. Let us suppose it made, however, and moreover that even there is established a college _De Propaganda Fide Orthodoxâ_ at St. Petersburg or Moscow. What would be the attitude of the Greek Church of Constantinople? Will the latter possess, or will she not possess, the right to evangelize France, and there to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction? If it be allowed that she has this right, the same question presents itself also for the three patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem; it also presents itself for the Greek Church of the Hellenic kingdom, for the Church of Roumania, for that of Servia, for the Orthodox Church of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, and even for that of Montenegro. Here is already an accumulation and intermingling of jurisdictions liable to give rise to numerous contests. Who shall decide amongst them? Will they come to a mutual agreement? But an agreement will be everlastingly impossible between the Greek and Russian Churches, at least so long as the question of the validity of baptism by infusion remains undecided. We will say Catholics are to be “converted” to orthodoxy: the Russian ministers will not rebaptize them. The Greek Church knows it—this church, as we have just said, which regards baptism by infusion as null. If the Greek Church consents that the Russian missionaries shall evangelize France, it declares, by that consent, that baptism is no longer necessary for belonging to the church. If, however, she opposes their so doing, who is to decide between them? And the simple ones who had previously let themselves be incorporated into the Russian Church—would they be very certain that they really belonged to the church? Which, then, will be the true missionaries?

We confine ourselves to this example. Let us apply ourselves carefully to realize, in imagination, what would be the situation of a church attempting to do without a pope that which must be done by a church believing herself divine, and invested by God with a commission to convert the world—wishing to do, without a pope, what is done by the Catholic Church every day. Then it will be easy to understand whether there can be a divine church without a pope.

And this pope, without which the Russian Church will never be the universal church of Jesus Christ nor fulfil the mission of that church—where would she seek him? Would she, on account of the needs created by her new situation, confer upon one of the bishops all the authority which is now concentrated in the hands of the Synod? Will she say to him, Help me to fulfil the mission of converting the world? But this charge, this part, would it not with greater right belong to the Patriarch of Constantinople, who, so powerful is the need of unity, has already declared, upon one solemn occasion, that on him rests the _care of all the churches?_(200) We are supposing in the Russian Church, and in the other branches of the orthodox communion, enough self‐denial to consent to this. But when this great event shall have been accomplished, what will have been done?

It will have been acknowledged before the face of all the world that it is not Rome who made the schism. It will have been confessed that during ten centuries it has been charged as a crime upon the Catholic Church that she has not sacrificed that which, after ten centuries of disasters, the Eastern Church has found it necessary to force herself to regain under pain of ceasing to exist. There will have been rendered to the Catholic Church the most splendid of testimonies, in confessing that she alone possesses the true sense of the words of Jesus Christ, and that the rock on which Jesus Christ has built his church is Peter.

Indeed, from that day forward there will be no more excuse for schism. Between a rock designated by men of the XIXth century, and that rock of which the manifest existence goes back to Jesus Christ himself, and has been pointed out by him, who that but knows how to read and write can hesitate for an instant?

Such, therefore, is the alternative: either the Orthodox Church will be forced to give herself a pope, to show that she is really that which she entitles herself, “Catholic,” or universal, and to fulfil the mission imposed by this name, or she will never be able to justify her appreciation of this title. What will happen in the former case, we have just said; if, on the contrary, the Orthodox Church delays to give herself a pope, the rapid march of events, and the revolutionary storm from which neither Russia nor the East will by any means be preserved, will, before very long, prove to us that it is not upon the sand that Jesus Christ has built his church.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

Burke And The Revolution.

Bacon’s grand testamentary vindication of his life, “bequeathing his name and memory to foreign nations and his own countrymen after some time be passed over,” might have been written with even greater justice of himself—because free from any imputation of moral weakness—by the master‐ mind of the XVIIIth century in England in the domain of political philosophy—Edmund Burke, the illustrious orator and statesman, the author of _Reflections on the Revolution in France_. To‐day, when France, “incessantly agitated by a propaganda of the most pernicious doctrines,”(201) still vindicates the sagacity which foresaw the disastrous course of the Revolution, while England, which he saved from the same propaganda, uninterruptedly illustrates the “beneficial influence of the regular action of the public powers,” it may not be amiss to recall some of the opinions to which he gave utterance at the beginning of the storm. Burke’s genius, like Bacon’s, was indeed too refulgent not to be acknowledged even in his own day. But the burning questions upon the discussion of which and their solution, so far as human reason can go, he has built up an enduring fame—_monumentum ære perennius_—lighted up passions too gigantic and furious in the tremendous conflict then inaugurated to allow of contemporary justice being done to his labors. Nor did their negatory influence upon his fame end with his death; two allied causes have conspired to partially obscure the clear and immortal flame of his genius, even to our time:

First, the jealousy of the political and literary followers of Charles James Fox.

Second, the inimical spirit of the Revolution.

Burke, as it is well known, had to contend, during his parliamentary career, not only against the Tory prejudices of the country party, represented by such men as William Lord Bagot and Col. Onslow, but also against the ill‐concealed jealousy and oligarchical exclusiveness of his nominal allies, the Whig aristocracy. But this influence of caste, which in his lifetime placed over his head his political pupil, Charles Fox, as the representative of the Whig family compacts, has been succeeded since his death by a more acrimonious spirit of personal jealousy in defence of the fame of his younger rival. The partisans of Fox have never been able to forgive Burke’s renunciation of his alliance with the eloquent Whig leader; and so large a share of literary and political criticism during the last half‐century has come from the pens of that small but popular band of writers who took their inspiration from the traditions of Holland House, that the acknowledgment of Burke’s profound and prophetic genius has been unduly circumscribed by the desire of elevating the “great man” of the family. Macaulay and Earl Russell have given expression to this feeling; the former by covertly insinuating a doubt of Burke’s judgment, while lavishly extolling the splendor of his imagination; the latter by open denunciation of his course at the outbreak of the Revolution; Earl Russell with unconscious self‐satire quoting these lines from La Fontaine:

“L’homme est de feu pour le mensonge Il est de glace pour la vérité.”

The efforts of a powerful literary and family connection to elevate its idol, Charles Fox, at the expense of Burke, have had, however, but small effect in limiting the measure of the latter’s fame, compared with the hostile spirit of revolution animating the current periodical literature of England and America. If the apostles of the Revolution, who steal Burke’s thunder without acknowledgment, when it suits their purpose, against the despotism of power, could bury out of sight his protests against that worse despotism of unchained human passions, which is their ideal of liberty, they would gladly place him in their Pantheon. But the mind of the great political philosopher was too grandly comprehensive to be narrowed within the grooves of that fashionable “liberalism” which covers even the basest tyranny, if directed against the Catholic Church. His humanity was too broad and true not to be aroused into flaming denunciation of the abuse of power, whether it assumed the shape of “opulent oppression” in India or democratic priest‐slaughter in France. Hence it is that Burke holds but a half‐allegiance of the Liberal party; that his fame has been, as it were, truncated, so far as they have been able to effect it; and that his magnificent vindications of the cause of liberty, bounded by no limitations of race, government, or creed, are circumscribed in their minds by his ante‐revolutionary labors.

But it is not in the power of any class of critics, least of all of the light artillery of “liberalism,” to narrow or permanently diminish Burke’s kingdom over human thought. His fame will not be dependent upon the fashion of this or any single age. The _consensus_ of humanity has crowned him among the Immortals. When Macaulay and Russell shall have become obscure names, the works of Burke will endure as monuments of our civilization. His place will be with Demosthenes and Cicero, and in the estimation of a more remote posterity he will probably overtop them both.

The long, lean figure, with spectacles on nose, once familiar to the caricaturists of the third George’s reign, has faded a good deal from the eyes of the present generation. We now turn over with a smile the prints of the “concealed Jesuit” from S. Omer’s, _barrette_ on head, and long _soutane_ clinging to his heels; or the more portly figure of the highwayman, blunderbuss in hand, waylaying, in company with North and Fox, the “savior of India” (Warren Hastings); or the “Watchman” of the constitution, in heavy cloak, lantern in hand, and spectacles on the formidable nose, ferreting out the revolutionary preacher, Dr. Price, in his midnight study. The gravers of Gilray and Sayer have yielded to those of the caricaturists for _Punch_. The figures of Gladstone, Disraeli, and Bright have supplanted those of Pitt, Fox, and Burke. The great orator and statesman has taken his place as a classic on the shelves of all libraries, but is popularly known only by a few rounded extracts from his speeches, or by Macaulay’s description of the entrance on the parliamentary stage of Lord Rockingham’s young Irish secretary, “who to an eloquence surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and an industry that shamed the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension to which neither Pitt nor Grenville could lay claim.” But if Burke has shared the fate of all great writers not strictly popular in being conventionally admired but practically neglected by the general reader, no political author is more diligently studied by the “middlemen” of thought, the makers and leaders of public opinion. He is the private tutor of public teachers; the _vade mecum_ of the orator and politician. Most of the questions of political ethics which have been the subjects of discussion during the present century have been profoundly treated of by him. Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, the freedom of the press, ministerial responsibility, the relations of church and state, the abolition of the slave trade, the amelioration of the criminal law—all have received from him their most ample and brilliant illustration.

Of all the events of his time, however, the Revolution of 1789 gave the chief exercise to his powers. Born in 1730, he was then at the zenith of his fame, in the full maturity of his massive yet acute intellect. Earl Russell’s senile complaint in his life of Fox of “the wreck of his (Burke’s) judgment” betrays only the dotage of his own. Advancing age had better fitted him for the contest. His mind had, as Macaulay truly says, bloomed late into flower, although the rhetoric of the essayist has caricatured the sterility of his youth. The giant trunk was now crowned with a luxuriant and graceful foliage, which added to its beauty, while it detracted nothing from its strength. The experience of “his long and laborious life,” the accumulated stores of his prodigious industry, furnished him with weapons of finest temper and irresistible force. Thus armed, stepping to the front as the champion of civilization and religion against the Giant Despair which had broken its bonds in Europe, it was with striking appropriateness that his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, applied to him, at the moment of his rupture with Fox and the opposition, the lines written under the engraving of 1790 from the portrait of 1775—lines in which Milton describes the faithful Abdiel striding forth, solitary, from amid the rebel host:

“So spake the fervent angel, but his zeal None seconded: ..... ...... Unmoved, Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; Nor number nor example with him wrought To move from truth, or change his constant mind, Though single. From amidst forth he passed Long way through hostile scorn, nor of violence feared aught; And with retorting scorn, his back he turned On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.”

The efforts of Burke’s single mind at this critical moment decided the course of events in England. His speeches in Parliament and the publication of his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ aroused a national feeling that all the efforts of the revolutionary propagandists were unable to stem; which Pitt followed rather than led; and which enabled England to carry on without flinching, to a triumphant close, the long and bloody war in national self‐defence into which she was driven by the aggressive spirit of the Revolution. Pitt only gave utterance to the national feeling when he declared at the close of Burke’s speech on the Army Estimates, in which he flung down the gauntlet to the Revolution, “that not only the present generation but the latest posterity would revere his name for the decided part he had that day taken.”

It was Burke’s fortune to witness the temporary triumph, but not the succeeding repulse, of the first outbreak of the Revolution. He died at the full tide of its fury. Yet the tremendous blows he dealt its principles, single‐handed, before all that was mortal of him was laid at rest at Beaconsfield, undoubtedly saved England from succumbing to its influence in his own day, and their conservative force is still felt in the government of that country. “This man,” said Schlegel, “has been to his own country and to all Europe—and, in a particular manner, to all Germany—a new light of political wisdom and moral experience. He corrected his age when it was at the height of its revolutionary fury; and without maintaining any system of philosophy, he seems to have seen further into the true nature of society, and to have more clearly comprehended the effect of religion in connecting individual security with national welfare, than any philosopher or any system of philosophy of any preceding age.” True words, and worthy of attention at this moment, when Germany has entered on a new and dangerous course of political action.

From the first mutterings of the revolutionary storm Burke had distrusted its character and future violence. Alarmed by what he had seen of the undisguised levity and scepticism of Parisian society during his visit to France in 1772, he had taken occasion in one of his speeches, as early as 1773, to point out “this conspiracy of atheism to the watchful eyes of European governments.” The outrages in the name of liberty which were simultaneous with its outburst determined his course, although his keen political vision had long before penetrated the hollowness of its professions. The old political gladiator, “in whose breast,” as he proudly and truly said of himself, “no anger, durable or vehement, had ever been kindled but by what he considered as tyranny”; whose potent voice had re‐ echoed across the Western ocean in support of the American colonist, had pleaded for the African slave and Hindoo laborer, and had instilled fresh hope, in the broken heart of the Irish “Papist,” roused himself now to his last and most powerful effort in defence of the fugitive French “aristocrat” and hunted priest.

“I have struggled,” he said, “to the best of my power against two great evils, growing out of the most sacred of all things—liberty and authority. I have struggled against the licentiousness of freedom, I have contended against the tyranny of power.” Nearly ten years before, in his speech on the Marriage Act, defending himself against the charges of “aristocrat” and “radical” which had been alternately levelled against him, he had predicted his course in these noble words:

“When indeed the smallest rights of the poorest people in the kingdom are in question, I would set my face against any act of pride countenanced by the highest that are in it; and if it should come to the last extremity, and a contest of blood, my course is taken. I would take my fate with the poor, and low, and feeble. But if these people come to turn their liberty into a cloak for mischievousness, and to seek a privilege of exemption, not from power, but from the rules of morality and virtuous discipline, I would join my hand to make them feel the force which a few united in a good cause have over a multitude of the profligate and ferocious.”

Burke’s theory of true reform, illustrated by the honorable labors of his whole public career, was in fact so radically opposed to that of the French constitution makers that no standing‐ground common to both could be found. He foresaw plainly enough what were the secret aims and aspirations of the revolutionary leaders from the first, whatever might be their humanitarian professions; that whatever their changes of leaders or watchwords, their goal would always be the same—the destruction of existing society; not reparation, but ruin. He would have seen in M. Gambetta’s programme of a _nouvelle couche sociale_, enunciated at Grenoble in 1872, only a new reading of M. Marat’s schemes of universal confiscation in 1792. Neither would have found more favor in his eyes than in those of any English reformer from S. Thomas à Becket to Hampden. He believed with Bacon that there could be no wise design of reform which did not set out with the determination “to weed, to prune, and to graft, rather than to plough up and plant all afresh.” Sixty years afterwards another writer, after an elaborate and prolonged study of the _ancien régime_, and a lifetime’s experience of the results of the Revolution, arrived at the point from which Burke started. The writer was Alexis de Tocqueville. Those who are familiar only with the _Democracy in America_, the work of his inexperienced youth, would do well to read his _Memoir and Letters_ by De Beaumont. Writing to M. Freslon in 1853, after the events of 1848‐51 had pretty well cured him of liberalism, he said:

“When one examines, as I am doing at Tours, the archives of an ancient provincial government, one finds a thousand reasons for hating the _ancien régime_, but few for loving the Revolution; for one sees that the _ancien régime_ was rapidly sinking under the weight of years and a gradual change of ideas and manners, so that, with a little patience and good conduct, it might have been reformed without destroying indiscriminately all that was good in it with all that was bad. It is curious to see how different was the government of 1780 from that of 1750. One does not recognize the government or the governed. The Revolution broke out not when evils were at their worst, but when reform was beginning. Halfway down the staircase we threw ourselves out of the window, in order to get sooner to the bottom” (_Memoir and Remains_, vol. ii. pp. 242, 243, Eng. ed.)

Burke had an invincible distrust of the crude theories and rash speculations of the _doctrinaires_ of the Revolution. “Follow experience and common sense,” he says in a hundred different ways; “these are the arguments of statesmen! Leave the rest to the schools, where only they may be debated with—safety.” “In politics,” he says, “the most fallacious of all things is geometrical demonstration.” Again: “The majors make a pompous figure in the battle, but the victory of truth depends upon the little minors of circumstances.” He compares the socialist theorist ready to plunge into the volcano of revolutionary experiment to the Sicilian sophist—_ardentem frigidus Ætnam insiluit_. The atrocious principles of the literary and philosophical guides of the Revolution seemed to him almost more portentous than the brutalities of the mob. “Never before this time,” he says, “was a set of literary men converted into a gang of robbers and assassins. Never before did a den of bravoes and banditti assume the garb and tone of an academy of philosophers.”

Remarkable sayings then, and true of experience anterior to his time. But had Burke lived in our day, he would have witnessed with astonishment the full development of the spirit he denounced, in the terrible spectacle of an aggressive infidel philosophy, and an almost universal infidel press, sometimes truculent, sometimes frivolous, but always shamelessly boastful of its pagan principles. He would have seen a school of pseudo‐philosophy professing its open design to destroy the foundations of revealed religion; filled with the spirit of the apostate Julian; as audacious and boastful as he, but destined to meet as shameful an end.

Let us compare, then, Burke’s theory of true liberty, and his opinion of what France might have gained by a large and loyal measure of reform, with the desperate counsels and futile outrages which followed the surrender of the movement by the French conservatives into the hands of the Jacobins. “You would,” he says, had such a course as he recommended been pursued, “have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed despotism from the earth by showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but, as when well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and recognize that happiness is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walks of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality which it never can remove.”

Burke’s frequent definitions of true liberty are as beautiful as they are true. “You hope, sir,” he says, writing to De Menonville, “that I think the French deserving of liberty. I certainly do. I certainly think all men who desire it deserve it. It is not the reward of our merit or the acquisition of our industry. It is our inheritance. It is the birthright of our species. We cannot forfeit our right to it but by what forfeits our title to the privileges of our kind. I mean the abuse or oblivion of our natural faculties, and a ferocious indocility which is prompt to wrong or violence, destroys our social nature, and transforms us into something a little better than a description of wild beast. To men so degraded a state of strong restraint is a sort of necessary substitute for freedom, since, bad as it is, it may deliver them in some measure from the worst of all slavery, that is, the despotism of their own blind and brutal passions. You have kindly said that you began to love freedom from your intercourse with me. Permit me, then, to continue our conversation, and to tell you what that freedom is that I love. It is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish liberty. It is social freedom. It is that state of things in which the liberty of no man and no body of men is in a condition to trespass on the liberty of any person or any description of persons in society. The liberty, the only liberty, I mean, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with virtue and order, but which cannot exist without them.”

“Am I,” he asks, in answer to the shibboleth of the “rights of man,”—“am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the case of the criminals condemned to the galleys and their heroic deliverer, the knight of the ’sorrowful countenance.’”

If we turn from Burke’s satire upon the revolutionary actors to his opinions on its probable onward course and changing fortunes, we shall find a series of the most remarkable political prophecies on record. At a time when Fox and the opposition hailed the Revolution as already accomplished, with nothing before it but a future of ideal progress and happiness; when Pitt and the government seemed lulled into a still more fatal inaction, Burke proclaimed in decisive tones that the contest between socialism and all constituted governments had only begun. We group together a few of these remarkable predictions, which time has so amply verified: “He proposed to prove,” he said in his _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_, “that the present state of things in France is not a transient evil, productive, as some have too favorably supposed, of a lasting good; but that the present evil is only the means of producing future and, if that were possible, worse evils. That this is not an undigested, imperfect, and crude scheme of liberty, which may be gradually mellowed and ripened into an orderly and social freedom; but that it is so fundamentally wrong as to be incapable of correcting itself by any length of time.” Again: “We are not at the end of our struggle or near it. Let us not deceive ourselves; we are at the beginning of great troubles.” Predicting the changing features of the Revolution, he said: “In its present form it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may have to pass, as one of our poets says, ’through great varieties of untried being,’ and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and sword.” The very spirit of the Commune is thus foreshadowed in a letter to M. de Menonville, 1790: “But if the same ends should hereafter require the same course which had been already pursued, there is no doubt but the same ferocious delight in murder and the same savage cruelty will be again renewed.” _Tous les évêques a la lanterne_ was the watchword of both outbreaks of the Revolution.

Compare with these sayings the remarks, fifty years later, of another observer, of great acuteness, but moulded in less heroic proportions than Burke. “This day fifty‐one years,” writes De Tocqueville, the author of _Democracy in America_, “the French Revolution commenced, and, after the destruction of so many men and institutions, we may say it is still going on. Is not this reassuring to the nations that are only just beginning theirs?”(202) De Tocqueville, it is well known, during the early part of his career, was tainted with the prevalent liberal Catholicism of his day in France. He wished to unite the church with the Revolution—chimerical task, of which advancing years and experience convinced him of the sinful folly! Happily for himself, he died a good Catholic in the bosom of the church.

“I scarcely dare hope,” he says, “to see a regular government, strong and at the same time liberal, established in our country. This ideal was, as you know, the dream of my youth, and likewise of the portion of my mature age that has passed. Is it possible still to believe in its realization? For a long time I thought (but long before February this belief had been much shaken) that we had been making our way over a stormy sea, on which we were still tossing, but that the port was at hand. Was I not wrong? Are we not on a rolling sea that has no shore? Or is not the land so distant, so unknown, that our lives and those of our children may pass away before it is reached, or, at least, before any settlement is made upon it?... I am indeed alarmed at the state of the public mind. It is far from betokening the close of a revolution. At the time it was said, and to this day it is commonly repeated, that the insurgents of June were the dregs of the populace; that they were all outcasts of the basest description, whose only motive was lust for plunder. Such, of course, were many of them. But it is not true that they were all of this kind; would to God that they had been! Such wretches are always a small minority; they never prevail; they are imprisoned or executed, and all is over. In the insurrection of June, besides bad passions, there were, what are far more dangerous, false opinions. Many of the men who attempted to overthrow the most sacred rights were carried away by an erroneous notion of right. They sincerely believed that society was based upon injustice, and they wished to give it another foundation. [Compare Gambetta’s _nouvelle couche sociale._] Our bayonets and our cannon will never destroy this revolutionary fanaticism. It will create for us dangers and embarrassments without end. Finally, I begin to ask myself whether anything solid or durable can be built on the shifting basis of our society? Whether it will support even a despotism, which many people, tired of storms, would, for want of a better, hail as a haven? We did not see this great revolution in human society begin; we shall not see it end. If I had children, I should always be repeating this to them, and should tell them that in this age and in this country one ought to be fit for everything, and prepared for everything, for no one can count on the future.”(203)

A conversation apropos of a Benedictine survivor of 1789, given from Mr. Senior’s _Journal_ (_Memoir_, vol. ii. p. 1), illustrates the final opinion of the author of _Democracy in America_ upon the Revolution. It took place only one year before his death:

“And what effect,” I asked, “has the contemplation of seventy years of revolution produced on him (the Benedictine)? Does he look back, like Talleyrand, to the _ancien régime_ as a golden age?” “He admits,” said Tocqueville, “the material superiority of our own age, but he believes that intellectually and morally we are far inferior to our grandfathers. And I agree with him. These seventy years of revolution have destroyed our courage, our hopefulness, our self‐reliance, our public spirit, and, as respects by far the majority of our higher classes, our passions, except the vulgarest and most selfish ones, vanity and covetousness. Even ambition seems extinct. The men who seek power seek it not for itself, not as a means of doing good to their country but as a means of getting money and flatterers.”(204)

What more remarkable testimony to Burke’s prophetic vision could be offered?

If any were needed, it would be found in an opposite quarter, in the revelations of Cluseret and his accomplices as to the premeditated burning of Paris and the destruction of the Vendôme Column in 1871, viewed in connection with Burke’s positive and reiterated assertions that the worst excesses of 1789 were not the result of sudden passion, nor accidental, “as some believed or pretended to believe, but were systematically designed from the beginning.” It is known that among his correspondents in 1789‐90 were the notorious Tom Paine and the eccentric cosmopolite, Anacharsis Baron de Clootz, both of whom strove to enlist Burke in the defence of the revolutionary cause before he had decisively pronounced himself. Paine and Clootz, congenial birds of prey, had both flown to Paris (anticipating the course of their disciples in 1871), smelling the approaching carnage afar off; and from them there is reason to believe Burke gathered ample hints of the full measure of the revolutionary programme. Striking also is Burke’s remark that the revolutionary subdivision of France would induce a demand for communal or cantonal independence. “These commonwealths,” he says, “will not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris”—a prediction wonderfully verified by the attitude of Lyons and Marseilles during the late war and the period of the Commune, as well as by the cantonal programme of the Spanish revolutionists.

Burke’s theory of the true basis of government was as moderate and well conceived as the revolutionary schemes were destructive and unsound. “We know,” he says, “and, what is better, we feel, that religion is the basis of society and the source of all good and all comfort. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than as he finds it; but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing constitution of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.” His defence of the cause of religion in France, and his glowing tribute to the virtue and learning of the French clergy, then, as now, the mark of the deadliest shafts of the Revolution, are eloquent and inspiring, but too long to quote in this article.

Equally remarkable with Burke’s prophetic warnings of the successive crimes and follies of the Revolution and its offspring, the Commune, are his speculations on a supposed restoration of the monarchy. More than a quarter of a century after his death their wisdom was illustrated in the events of the inglorious reign of Charles X. His words are almost startling in their applicability to the present posture of French affairs, the Septennate, and the conflicting aspirations of the Comte de Chambord and the Prince Imperial:

“What difficulties,” he says, referring to a Restoration, in his letter on the policy of the allies, “will be met with in a country, exhausted by the taking of its capital, and among a people in a manner trained and actively disciplined to anarchy, rebellion, disorder, and impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is; who may have occupied themselves in revolving in their minds what they were to do if it fell to their lot to re‐establish the affairs of France. What support or what limitations the restored monarchy must have may be a doubt, or how it will settle or pitch at last; but one thing I conceive to be far beyond a doubt—that the settlement cannot be immediate, but that it must be preceded by some sort of power equal, at least in vigor, vigilance, promptness, and decision, to a military government. For such a preparatory government no slow‐paced, methodical, formal, lawyer‐like system; still less that of a showy, artificial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or men like ladies; least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry—none of these ever will, or ever can, lay the foundations of an order that will last.”

“A judicious, well‐tempered, and manly severity in the support of law and order”—this was Burke’s advice to princes. He advocated freedom of the press as understood in England; “but they indeed,” he said, “who seriously write upon a principle of levelling, ought to be answered by the magistrate, and not by the speculatist.” We conclude our quotations by the following portrait of the “Legitimate Prince”:

“Whoever,” says Burke, “claims a right by birth to govern there, must find in his breast, or conjure up in it, an energy not always to be expected, not always to be wished, in well‐ordered states. The lawful prince must have in everything but crime the character of an usurper. He is gone if he imagines himself the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after an apparent conquest as before. His task is to win it. He must leave posterity to adorn and enjoy it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to be always—I speak nearly to the letter—on horseback. This opinion is the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no event is likely to alter.”

Burke’s tremendous onslaught on the Revolution drew forth swarms of opponents in his own day, most of whom are now forgotten. More than emulating the besotted conceit of those early apologists of anarchy, “liberal” writers are still to be found so infatuated with hostility to the Catholic Church, so purblind to the experience of nearly a hundred years—of the bloody chapters of 1793, of 1830, of 1848, of 1851, of 1871—so unawakened by the ruin the same accursed spirit has wrought in Spain, as to be heard chanting the glories of the Revolution and bewailing the possibility of “a priestly reaction” as the “destruction of all that has been gained by the national agonies of the last century.” What has been gained which would not have been gained in the gradual progress of society? What rather has not been lost in national honor and domestic virtue and happiness which would have been retained “if men had not been quite shrunk,” as Burke said, “from their natural dimensions by a degrading and sordid philosophy”? Let a witness like De Tocqueville answer!

The great political philosopher’s warnings against the real spirit of the Revolution are still worthy the attention of all governments. Time has added to their value, not diminished it. “Against these, their ‘rights of men,’ let no government,” he says, “look for security in the length of its continuance or in the justice and lenity of its administration. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but on a question of competency and a question of title.”

His advice is vigorous and plain. “Never,” he says, “succumb to the enemy. It is a struggle for your national existence. If you must die, die with the sword in your hand! But I have no fear for the result!”

Robert Cavelier De La Salle. Concluded.

On the 6th of April La Salle discovered that the river was running through three channels. The following day he divided his company into three parties, of which he led the one that followed the western channel; the Sieur de Tonty, accompanied by Father Membré, took the middle channel, and the Sieur Dautray took the eastern channel. Father Membré relates that these channels appeared to them “beautiful and deep.” The water began to get brackish; then two leagues further down it became perfectly salt; and now, O glorious sight!

“The sea! the sea! the open sea, The blue, the fresh, the ever free,”

was spread out before the eager and enchanted eyes of those brave and noble voyagers. Their first impulse was to return thanks to the King of kings for the protecting arm of his providence, that had thus guided them safely to this glorious consummation of their hopes; their second was to honor the King of France for his favor and protection. For these purposes, on the 9th of April, a cross and a column were erected with appropriate ceremonies. The entire company, under arms, joined with the minister of religion in chanting the hymn of the church, _Vexilla Regis_, and the _Te Deum_, and then followed a discharge of their muskets and shouts of “Long live the King!” The column bore the following inscription: “Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, reigns; the 9th of April, 1682.” At the foot of a tree La Salle caused a leaden plate to be buried, bearing the arms of France and a Latin inscription commemorative of the first navigation of the Mississippi, from the Illinois to its mouth, by La Salle, Tonty, Membré, and twenty Frenchmen. An authentic act, in the form of a _procès verbal_, was drawn up by La Metairie, the notary of the expedition, and signed by La Salle, Father Membré, Tonty, and the other principal members of the company. La Salle took formal possession of the country, which he was the first to call Louisiana, for the King of France; also of the natives and people residing therein, the seas, harbors, and all the streams flowing into the Mississippi. The great river itself he called the St. Louis.

In the midst of their rejoicings they were suffering for food. They found some dried meat prepared by the Indians, of which they partook with relish, and, as the good missionary says, “It was very good and delicate.” What must have been their feelings when they discovered that they had partaken of human flesh! Scarcity of food compelled them to turn their canoes up‐stream. La Salle paid a visit to the hostile Quinipissas, with whom he resorted to his usual address to propitiate their friendship, and, though invited to a banquet, his men partook of it with their guns at their sides. A treacherous treaty of peace was entered into, but was used as a cover for an attack next morning upon the Europeans. But the ever‐ watchful La Salle was prepared for them. The two parties were engaged in a contest of two hours, in which the Quinipissas were worsted, and sustained a loss of ten men killed and many wounded. This is the only occasion in which the hostile dispositions of the natives did not yield to skill and diplomacy. His men, exasperated at the conduct of the treacherous natives, urged him to allow them to burn their village; but he adopted the wiser and more humane policy of refraining from alienating still more by unnecessary cruelty those whom he wished to make devout worshippers of the King of heaven and loyal subjects of the King of France. During the remainder of the return voyage, with the exception of the Koroas, who had now become allies of the Quinipissas, he met with the same hospitable treatment from the tribes on the banks of the river as he had received while going down. They were now regaled on the fresh green corn of the fields. La Salle with two canoes pushed forward from the Arkansas, in advance of his party, as far as Fort Prudhomme. Here he became dangerously ill, and could advance no further, and on the 2d of June was joined by the entire company. His malady became so violent that he was compelled to send Tonty forward to convey early information to the Comte de Frontenac of the great discovery. Father Membré remained with La Salle, doing all in his power to alleviate the sufferings of his cherished leader, whose illness continued forty days. The expedition by slow advances reached the Miami late in September, where they learned of several of Tonty’s military expeditions undertaken after he left the main body. Intending to make the voyage of the Mississippi again in the spring, and plant colonies along its shores, La Salle appointed Father Membré his messenger to the king; and this zealous man, accepting the commission with promptness, proceeded to Quebec, and on the 2d of October sailed for France, to lay before the French court accurate information of La Salle’s discoveries. During the next ten or twelve months La Salle remained in the Illinois country, cementing his friendly alliances with the Indians, and pushing forward his trading interests. Having seen Fort St. Louis completed, he left Tonty in command of it, and for his plan of colonization he substituted the project of applying to the French government for co‐operation in a much more extensive one. He reached Quebec early in November, and sailed for France to render an account of his fulfilment of the royal orders, and to enlist the good offices of the government in his future plans, and landed at Rochelle on the 23d of December, 1683.

The following allusion to La Salle’s services to France in extending the province of New France by the exploration of the Mississippi, by Gov. Dongan, of the rival English province of New York, is interesting. Alluding to a map of the country which he was sending home to his superiors, Gov. Dongan writes: “Also, it points out where there’s a great river discovered by one Lassal, a Frenchman from Canada, who thereupon went into France, and, as it’s reported, brought two or three vessels with people to settle there, which (if true) will prove very inconvenient to us, but to the Spanish also (the river running all along from our lakes by the back of Virginia and Carolina into the Bay of Mexico); and it’s believed Nova Mexico cannot be far from the mountains adjoining it, that place being in 36° North Latitude. If your lordships thought it fit, I could send a sloop or two from this place to discover that river.”(205)

La Salle now conceived the plan of approaching the mouth of the Mississippi by sea, exploring the country, and founding powerful colonies therein. The evil reports of his enemies had preceded him to France, and these were strengthened by the disparaging representations which De La Barre, Frontenac’s successor as Governor of Canada, had been sending home. But the Marquis de Seignelay, the son of the deceased minister Colbert, again favored La Salle’s enterprises, and secured for them the favor of the king. The government provided a fleet of four vessels for the expedition: the _Joly_, a royal ship, a frigate of thirty‐six tons, commanded by Capt. de Beaujeu, a Norman gentleman, who was also commander of the squadron; the _Belle_, of six tons, a present from the king to La Salle; the _Aimable_, a store‐ship of three hundred tons burden, on board of which were the goods, implements, and effects of the expedition; and the _St. Francis_, a ketch containing munitions and merchandise for San Domingo. M. de Chevalier d’Aire was lieutenant to Capt. de Beaujeu, and the Sieur de Hamel, a young gentleman full of fire and courage, his ensign. Father Le Clercq, the narrator of the expedition, exclaims: “Would to God the troops and rest of the crew had been as well chosen!”

A new commission was issued to La Salle, by which he was authorized to found colonies in Louisiana, and to govern the vast country and its inhabitants from Lake Michigan to the borders of Mexico. The commander of the squadron was to be subject to his orders, except in navigating the ships at sea—an arrangement which the jealous and sensitive mind of Beaujeu permitted to embitter him against La Salle, and which led to difficulties between them. Besides marines and one hundred soldiers, the company to embark in the expedition amounted to about two hundred and eighty persons, amongst whom were several persons of consideration. The Sieur Moranget, and the Sieur Cavelier, nephews of La Salle, the latter only fourteen years old; Planterose, Thibault, Ory, Joutel, Talon, a Canadian gentleman with his family, and some other families, consisting of men and young women, also joined the expedition as volunteers. One of La Salle’s first cares was to provide for the spiritual wants of his followers and colonists and the conversion of the heathen nations he expected to visit. For ten years the zealous Recollect Fathers had seconded and promoted the efforts of La Salle to Christianize the natives of the New World, and he now made it an essential point to obtain some of these holy men to accompany his great expedition. His application to their superior, the Rev. Father Hyacinth le Febvre, was cordially complied with, and accordingly Fathers Zenobe Membré, Anastace Donay, and Maxime Le Clercq were selected from this order for the task. M. Tronçon, superior of the Sulpitians, was not behind the Recollects in zeal for the good work, and accordingly three secular priests, Cavelier, the brother of La Salle, Chefdeville his relative, and Majulle, were chosen. These constituted the ecclesiastical corps of the expedition. Nothing was left undone, either by the superiors of the Recollects or of the Sulpitians, nor by the Holy See, for carrying the faith of Christ to those remote and benighted regions. Ample powers and privileges were conferred upon the good missionaries, so as to relieve them from the necessity in emergencies of resorting to the distant ordinary of Quebec.

But in selecting soldiers, artisans, and laborers, the most culpable disregard of duty was chargeable to the agents of La Salle, who, while he was engaged at Paris, filled up the ranks by receiving from the streets of Rochelle worthless vagabonds and beggars, who were wholly ignorant of the trades for which they were chosen. La Salle was only partially able to remedy this evil before sailing. Bancroft thus describes the composition of this part of the expedition: “But the mechanics were poor workmen, ill‐ versed in their art; the soldiers, though they had for commander Joutel, a man of courage and truth, and afterwards the historian of the grand enterprise, were themselves spiritless vagabonds, without discipline and without experience; the volunteers were restless with indefinite expectations; and, worst of all, the naval commander, Beaujeu, was deficient in judgment, incapable of sympathy with the magnanimous heroism of La Salle, envious, self‐willed, and foolishly proud.” La Salle arrived at Rochelle on the 28th of May, 1684, and during his stay of some weeks the unhappy misunderstanding between him and the commander of the squadron, which proved so great a drawback on the enterprise, began to manifest itself. The four vessels sailed from Rochelle on the 24th of July, but the breaking of one of the masts of the _Joly_ in a storm caused them to put in at Chef‐de‐Bois, and finally, on the 1st of August, they set sail again, steering for San Domingo. During the voyage to San Domingo, La Salle and Beaujeu could not proceed together with cordiality or harmony, and the former was unfortunate in gaining the ill‐will of the subordinate officers and sailors by interfering to protect his own men from what he regarded as an absurd and unnecessary procedure. It was the custom among sailors to require all who had not before crossed the tropic to submit to the penalty of being plunged into a tub of water by their veteran companions for the amusement of others, or pay liberally for a commutation of the penalty. La Salle peremptorily forbade his men being subjected to this alternative; hence the hostility of those who failed to realize the usual fun or fine at their expense. After a prosperous voyage a storm overtook the squadron as they approached San Domingo. It was agreed that the _Joly_ should put in at Port de Paix in the north of the island; but Beaujeu changed his course of his own will, and carried her to Petit Gonave, far to the south. In four days the _Belle_ and _Aimable_, which had been separated from her by the storm, joined her there. The _St. Francis_ was surprised and captured by two Spanish pirogues, which was a serious loss to the expedition and a sore affliction to La Salle.

At Petit Gonave La Salle did all in his power for the relief of the sick. He was, however, stricken down himself by a violent illness that for a while rendered his recovery hopeless. He recovered in time sufficiently to attend to the prosecution of the voyage. He and Fathers Membré and Donay, Cavelier, Chefdeville, and Joutel, were transferred to the _Aimable_, and thus the two commanders were happily separated. In their misunderstanding Beaujeu was greatly at fault in accepting a command inferior to that of La Salle, as he well knew it to be, and in embarrassing by his petulant and jealous course an undertaking which his instructions and his obvious duty obliged him to promote. La Salle, too, would have acted more wisely and discreetly in conciliating one whose good‐will and co‐operation were so necessary to his success. The squadron, now reduced to three vessels, sailed from Petit Gonave on the 25th of November.

After pursuing their course safely along the Cayman Isles, and anchoring at the Isle of Peace (pines), where they stopped to take in water, and at Port San Antonio, in the Island of Cuba, they entered the Gulf of Mexico on the 12th of December. Sailing ten days longer, they descried land at once from the _Belle_ and _Aimable_. So utterly unknown was the latitude of the coasts, and so erroneous the sailing information given to them at San Domingo, that no one could tell where they were; but it was conjectured after much consultation that they must be in the Bay of Appalachee, which is nearly three hundred miles east of the Mississippi. On the contrary, they were near Atchafalaya Bay, about one hundred miles west of the main mouth of the Mississippi. Guided by the general opinion as to their locality, they now coasted to the westward, going still further from the object of their search. No information could be obtained from the natives on the shore, and finally, after twenty days’ sailing, it was ascertained that they were approaching the borders of Mexico, near Magdalen River and the Bay of Espiritu Santo. The _Joly_ now came up, and the unfortunate misunderstanding between La Salle and Beaujeu was renewed, in consequence of the latter charging that he had been designedly left behind. The superior sailing capacity of the _Joly_, and Beaujeu’s evident indifference about keeping company with the other vessels, flatly contradicted this irritating charge. All now desired to return in the direction of the Mississippi, except Beaujeu, who would not go without a new supply of provisions. La Salle offered a supply of fifteen days, the best he could do; but Beaujeu rejected the offer as insufficient. In the meantime the vessels proceeded twenty miles along the coast, reaching the outlet of the Bay of St. Bernard, to which La Salle gave the name of St. Louis, now called Matagorda Bay. Joutel and Moranget were sent to explore the bay, and afterwards La Salle joined them at a river they could not cross without a boat. The pilots having reported insufficient depth of water, the _Aimable_ was lightened and her captain ordered to run her into the bay. The pilot of the _Belle_, knowing the harbor, was sent to his assistance; but the captain of the _Aimable_ refused him admittance on board, saying that he knew how to manage his own ship. The _Aimable_ was soon upon a shoal. She bilged, and was a ruin. A portion of the cargo was saved, Beaujeu himself sending his boats to assist, but most of the implements and tools intended for the colony were lost. There was no doubt, says Joutel, of the treachery of the captain of the _Aimable_ in this affair. La Salle from the shore had the mortification of seeing all his orders disobeyed, and witnessed this deplorable accident to the store‐ ship. He was embarking, in order to remedy the false movements of his vessels, when over a hundred Indians made their appearance. First putting them to flight, and then offering them the calumet, he made them his friends. He also gave them presents, purchased some of their canoes, and all seemed to promise a lasting friendship, from which great advantages would have resulted to the expedition. But, alas! all upon whom La Salle had to depend did not possess his prudence nor always follow his injunctions. By the imprudence of some of his men a serious difficulty sprang up with the Indians. A bale of blankets from the wreck of the store‐ship was thrown ashore and seized by the Indians. La Salle ordered his men to recover it by peaceable means; but they pursued just the opposite course, by demanding its restoration with pointed muskets. They became alarmed and fled, but returned at night, and, finding the sentinel asleep, attacked the camp, killing the Sieurs Ory and Desloges, two of La Salle’s most valued friends, two cadets, and dangerously wounding Moranget. This and the numerous other disasters which they encountered caused many a heart that started out full of hope and courage to falter or despond, and many talked of abandoning the enterprise. But La Salle’s example of calm determination and unflagging spirit sustained them under the appalling gloom and ill‐luck that seemed to hang over the adventure. But Beaujeu, whose hostility to La Salle and his enterprise increased with the misfortunes of the latter, now resolved to return to France. All the cannon‐balls were in his vessel, and he refused to deliver them, because it would be necessary to remove a part of his cargo in order to get them out. Thus the cannons were left with the colony, and the balls carried back to France. He took on board the treacherous captain and crew of the _Aimable_, and the 12th of March sailed for France. In the meantime the company left at the fort sustained a severe loss in the death of the Sieur de Gros from the bite of a rattle‐snake. Also, a conspiracy was set on foot in the fort, with the design of murdering Joutel, and then escaping with such effects as they could carry off. But the designs of these traitors were discovered in time to be defeated. The colony now consisted of about one hundred and eighty persons besides the crew of the _Belle_, and their own faithful guns were their only means of obtaining food in that vast and distant wild. A temporary fort was erected with the _débris_ of the _Aimable_ for their protection, and Moranget was left in command of it. La Salle, accompanied by Fathers Membré and Le Clercq, started out with fifty men to explore the shores of the bay, ordering the _Belle_ to sail along to make soundings. Anchoring opposite a point—where a post was established, to which Hurier gave his own name (being appointed to the command of it), serving as an intermediate station between the naval camp and that which La Salle intended to establish further on—in their course a large river was discovered, to which La Salle gave the name of Vaches, or Cow River, from the great number of cows he saw on its banks; and here the intended station was erected. Holy Week and Easter intervening, were celebrated with solemnity and fervor by these Christian colonists in the wilderness, “each one,” as Father Membré remarks, “receiving his Creator.” About the middle of July the entire colony, with their effects and whatever could be of service, were transferred to this encampment from those of Moranget and Hurier, which were destroyed. Here the men were employed in cultivating the soil and in sowing seeds brought from France, which, however, did not succeed, either because they had been injured by the salt water or because the season was not suitable. They were next engaged in erecting a habitation and fort, which was a work of huge labor and hardship, as the trees for the timber had to be cut three miles off and dragged to the spot, and many of the men sank under the toil. The Sieur de Villeperdy and thirty others were carried off within a few days by disease contracted at San Domingo, and among them was the master‐ carpenter, whose services could not well be spared. While under these calamities the spirits of all around him were sinking, La Salle remained firm and cheerful. Setting them the example himself, he kept all the healthy men at work. He took the place of architect and chief carpenter upon himself, marked out the beams, tenons, and mortises, and prepared the timbers for the workmen. The fort occupied an advantageous position, was soon finished, mounted with twelve pieces of cannon, and supplied with a magazine under ground. It was called St. Louis, and placed under the command of Joutel. The insolence of the Indians compelled La Salle to give them a proof of his power. For this purpose he waged war upon them, but only with sufficient rigor to make them respect him and his companions. Among the captives was a very young girl, who was baptized, and died a few days afterwards; of whom Father Le Clercq said: “The first‐fruits of this mission, and a sure conquest sent to heaven.”

Detained some time by the sickness of his brother, La Salle did not resume his exploration of the bay till towards the last of October, when, putting his clothes, papers, and other effects on the _Belle_, he ordered the captain to sail along the western shore in concert with his movements. Wishing to ascertain how near the shore the _Belle_ could approach, he sent the pilot and five men to make soundings, with instructions that all should return on board at night. Attracted by the peaceful beauty of the country, and proposing to cook and enjoy the supper on shore, the pilot and five men, leaving their arms and canoe at low water, advanced a gun‐ shot on the upland. After their supper they fell asleep. La Salle, becoming uneasy at their absence, went in search of them, and to his horror found them all lying on the ground murdered, their bodies half devoured by wild animals, and their arms and canoe destroyed. It was with sad hearts that the survivors paid the last honors to their slaughtered companions; for disasters followed in such quick succession that no one could foresee the time or circumstances of his own fate. Of the colony now described Bancroft remarks: “This is the settlement which made Texas a part of Louisiana. In its sad condition it had yet saved from the wreck a good supply of arms and bars of iron for the forge. Even now this colony possessed from the bounty of Louis XIV., more than was contributed by all the English monarchs together for the twelve English colonies on the Atlantic. Its number still exceeded that of Smith in Virginia, or of those who embarked in the _Mayflower_. France took possession of Texas; her arms were carved on its stately forest‐trees; and by no treaty or public document, except the general cessions of Louisiana, did she ever after relinquish the right to the province as colonized under her banners, and made still more surely a part of her territory because the colony found there its grave.”

La Salle now determined to seek the mouth of the Mississippi by land around the eastern part of the bay. Leaving provisions for six, he set out with his brother, the Sieur Cavelier, and twenty men. He explored in canoes every stream that might prove an outlet of the great river, and was enchanted with the beautiful region which he traversed. But all was in vain. After an absence of four months, and satisfying himself that none of the outlets of the Mississippi emptied into the bay, and after losing twelve or thirteen of his men, he returned in rags to Fort St. Louis. He now sent out a party in search of the _Belle_, whose long absence caused him great uneasiness; for in her were centred all his hopes of reaching the mouth of the Mississippi by sea, of procuring assistance from San Domingo, or of sending information of their forlorn condition to France, or, perhaps, in his extremest necessity, of saving his colony from a horrid death by famine or at the hands of the savages.

La Salle, with his characteristic courage and perseverance, now resolved to undertake a journey to the distant Illinois, in order to obtain relief from the faithful Tonty, whom he had stationed there on departing for France. He selected as his companions on this dangerous and toilsome journey his brother, Cavelier, Father Anastasius Donay, Father Le Clercq, Moranget, Behorel, Hurier, Heins, a German surgeon who joined him at San Domingo, and Nika, the Indian hunter, who was ever at his side, and others, making in all twenty persons. The preparations for this great journey consisted of four pounds of powder, four pounds of lead, two axes, two dozen knives, as many awls, some beads, and two kettles. They first repaired to the chapel, where the Divine Mysteries were celebrated and the blessing of heaven invoked upon their undertaking. Committing the colony left behind to the care of Joutel, La Salle and his companions set out on the 22d of April, 1686, from Fort St. Louis. Their route lay in a northeasterly direction and through a country of immense prairies and mighty rivers, inhabited by various Indian tribes, who were exceedingly friendly and hospitable; even the women, who were usually timid and undemonstrative, coming forward to greet the wayworn, mysterious travellers. In some instances they found that the Indians had had some intercourse with the Spaniards. La Salle and the zealous Father Donay endeavored on every occasion to instil into their minds some knowledge of the one true God. It is supposed by some that La Salle was attracted in this direction by the fame of the rich mines of Santa Barbara, the El Dorado of Northern Mexico. They found large quantities of wild cattle, which supplied them with meat. They crossed numerous rivers, such as the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity, which they knew by different titles, and upon which they bestowed new names in honor of members of the party. They endured incredible exposure, hardship, and toil, and many faltered and gave out under their sufferings. In crossing the Brazos (which they called the river Misfortune) on a raft of canoes, with one‐half of his party, including his brother, La Salle and his companions were hurried violently down the current, and almost immediately disappeared from sight. The interval between this and evening was one of intense anxiety to those who witnessed the accident; but at nightfall the raft and its occupants were discovered safely disembarked on the opposite bank, their onward course having been providentially arrested by the branches of a large tree in the river. Those who remained on the other side had to cross over and join La Salle on a raft of canes, the men having to wade into the water and draw the raft ashore. Father Donay says: “I was obliged to put my Breviary in my cowl, because it got wet in my sleeve.” He also says: “We had not eaten all day, but Providence provided for us by letting two eaglets fall from a cedar‐tree; we were ten at this meal.” The manner in which they crossed these mighty rivers was to make one of the men swim to the other side and fell trees across the stream, while those who remained did the same, so that the trees from the opposite sides, meeting in the centre, formed a bridge, upon which they crossed. This was done more than thirty times during their journey. The Indians were in most instances friendly and hospitable, and La Salle’s discernment and prudence always enabled him either to conciliate their friendship in the first instance, or to overcome by force of character and courage any hostile feeling they might exhibit. Many of the tribes displayed evidences of civilization in their dress, implements, and dwellings, and in the ease and cordiality with which they received and entertained strangers. Horses were abundant among them, and La Salle procured several, which proved of great service. Among the Coenis Indians they found Spanish dollars and smaller coins, silver spoons, lace, and clothes of European styles. One of the Indians became so enamored with Father Donay’s cowl that he offered the father a horse in exchange, but the good religious preferred to walk rather than to part with the cherished habit of S. Francis. After crossing the Trinity River La Salle and his nephew, the Sieur Moranget, were attacked by a violent fever, which brought them very low and greatly retarded their march. Just before this four of the party, unable to endure the fatigues and hardships of the journey, deserted and retired to the Nassonis Indians; another was swallowed by a crocodile while crossing a river; and Behorel was lost. Their powder now began to give out; they had not advanced more than one hundred and fifty leagues in a straight line, and one thousand miles of travel lay before them; sickness, delay, and desertions had impaired their ability to proceed; and they had no food except what the chase afforded. Under these circumstances La Salle resolved to return to Fort St. Louis. The extreme terminus of their travel is supposed to have been midway between the Trinity and Red Rivers, near the head‐waters of the Sabine, and fifty or sixty miles northwest of Nacogdoches. On the return the party were greatly assisted by the horses procured from the Indians. After a full month’s march they arrived on the 17th of October, the feast of S. Bernard, and were welcomed by their friends at the fort with mingled feelings of joy and sadness. Father Donay remarks: “It would be difficult to find in history courage more intrepid or more invincible than that of the Sieur de La Salle; in adversity he was never cast down, and always hoped with the help of heaven to succeed in his enterprises, despite all the obstacles that rose against him.”

Sad events awaited La Salle on his return. In a few days he saw to his astonishment a canoe approaching in which were Chefdeville, Sablonnière, and some others from the _Belle_. In this fact he read the sad story of the vessel’s destruction, which was soon confirmed by their own lips. That vessel, his last hope, had, by the negligence of the pilot, stranded on the beach of the southern coast of the bay. The returning men, providentially finding a canoe on the shore, were able to escape. In the _Belle_ were lost thirty‐six barrels of flour, a quantity of wine, the clothes, trunks, linens, and most of the tools. Among the few things saved were the papers and clothes of La Salle. The good Father Le Clercq closes his narrative of this sad accident, which completely disconcerted all of La Salle’s plans, with the remark: “His great courage, even, could not have borne up had not God aided him by the help of extraordinary grace.” “Heaven and man,” says Bancroft, “seemed his enemies; and, with the giant energy of an indomitable will, having lost his hopes of fortune, his hopes of fame; with his colony reduced to about forty, among whom discontent had given birth to plans of crime; with no Europeans nearer than the river Panuco, no French nearer than Illinois, he resolved to travel on foot to his countrymen at the north, and return from Canada to renew his colony in Texas.”

During his absence Joutel had been under the necessity of guarding against savage attacks upon his hunting parties from without, and against disaffection from those within, the fort. The false Duhaut returned to the fort, where he incited the men to mutiny—a task of no great difficulty among men who had endured so many disappointments and hardships. And though Joutel succeeded in suppressing the mutiny, disaffection lurked behind. But the routine of the fort was occasionally relieved by gayety and merriment, as was the case on the marriage of the Sieur Barbier to one of the young women who came out with the expedition. The gentleness, prudence, and experience of Father Membré went far to ameliorate the condition of the company and make easy the duties of Joutel. Before leaving them, La Salle provided for the greater comfort and accommodation of those at the fort. As he was about to depart he was again stricken down with illness, and was retarded ten weeks.

On his recovery La Salle selected from seventeen to twenty companions, amongst whom were Father Donay, Cavelier the priest, young Cavelier the nephew, Joutel, Moranget, Duhaut, Larcheveque, Heins, Liotel, Toten, De Marle, Teissier, Saget, and the Indian hunter Nika. La Salle addressed them in thrilling and encouraging words, and, as Father Donay says, “with that engaging way which was so natural to him,” and on the 12th of January, 1687, their simple preparations being made, it only remained for them to turn their steps northward,

“And, like some low and mournful spell, To whisper but one word—farewell.”

As they journeyed on they had to cross many large rivers—resorting to the same means as in their trip towards New Mexico—and to traverse vast prairies, to visit and be entertained by the Indian tribes on the route, to conciliate their friendship, to secure most of their food by hunting, and, in fine, encounter similar scenes and incidents as on their previous excursions. On the 15th of March they arrived at a place where La Salle had caused a quantity of Indian corn and beans to be buried, and he sent Duhaut, Heins, Liotel, Larcheveque, Teissier, Nika, and his footman, Saget, for it. The corn and beans had disappeared, discovered, probably, by the unerring scent of the Indians; but the gun of Nika supplied their place with two buffaloes. They sent Saget to request La Salle to allow them horses to bring the meat, and he accordingly despatched Moranget, De Marle, and Saget with two horses for that purpose. On arriving at the scene Moranget found that the meat, though quite fresh, had been smoked, and that the men had selected certain parts of it and set them aside for their own enjoyment, as was usual with them. In a moment of anger Moranget reproved them, took away both the smoked meat and reserved pieces, and threatened to do as he pleased with it. Duhaut, in whose heart an old grudge against Moranget still survived, became enraged, and adopted the guilty resolve of ridding himself of his enemy. He enticed Liotel and Heins into a conspiracy to murder not only Moranget, but also Saget and Nika, whose faithful gun had so often saved them from famine. Liotel was the willing instrument to do the horrid deed; at night, while they were buried in sleep, he despatched his victims. A blow extinguished the life of Nika; a second that of Saget; but Moranget lingered for two hours, “giving every mark of a death precious in the sight of God, pardoning his murderers, and embracing them,” till De Marle, who was not in the plot, was compelled to complete the bloody tragedy.

“Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell! That my keen knife see not the wound it makes; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, Hold! hold!”

The bloodthirsty desperadoes did not, alas! stop at this triple murder; adding treason to their horrid purposes, they resolved upon the death of their commander, the great and good La Salle, who had ever been to them a father no less than a leader. Three days elapsed, and the dark purpose was only the more firmly fixed in their guilty souls. In the meantime La Salle became alarmed for the safety of Moranget, and, as if anticipating what had happened, he asked in the encampment if Duhaut and his associates had not shown signs of disaffection. He resolved at once to go in search of his faithful friend. The remainder of this bloody tragedy we will give in the language of Father Donay, who was an eyewitness of it:

“Asking me to accompany him, he took two Indians and set out. All the way he conversed with me of matters of piety, grace, and predestination; expatiating on all his obligations to God for having saved him from so many dangers during the last twenty years that he had traversed America. He seemed to me particularly penetrated with a sense of God’s benefits to him. Suddenly I saw him plunged into a deep melancholy, for which he himself could not account; he was so troubled that I did not know him any longer. As this state was far from being usual, I roused him from his lethargy. Two leagues after we found the bloody cravat of his lackey (Saget), he perceived two eagles flying over his head, and at the same time perceived some of his people on the edge of the river, which he approached, asking them what had become of his nephew. They answered us in broken words, showing us where we should find him. We proceeded some steps along the bank to the fatal spot where two of these murderers were hidden in the grass, one on each side, with guns cocked; one missed M. de La Salle, the other at the same time shot him in the head. He died an hour after, on the 19th of March, 1687.

“I expected the same fate; but this danger did not occupy my thoughts, penetrated with grief at so cruel a spectacle. I saw him fall a step from me, with his face all full of blood; I watered it with my tears, exhorting him to the best of my power to die well. He had confessed and fulfilled his devotions just before we started; he had still time to recapitulate a part of his life, and I gave him absolution. During his last moments he elicited all the acts of a good Christian, grasping my hand at every word I suggested, and especially at that of pardoning his enemies. Meanwhile his murderers, as much alarmed as I, began to strike their breasts and detest their blindness. I could not leave the spot where he had expired without having buried him as well as I could, after which I raised a cross over his grave.

“Thus died our wise commander; constant in adversity, intrepid, generous, engaging, dexterous, skilful, capable of everything. He who for twenty years had softened the fierce temper of countless savage tribes was massacred by the hands of his own domestics, whom he had loaded with caresses. He died in the prime of life, in the midst of his course and labors, without having seen their success.”

It has not been precisely ascertained where the place of La Salle’s death is located; but it is supposed to have been on one of the streams flowing into the Brazos, about forty or fifty miles north of the present town of Washington, in the State of Texas.

As soon as Father Donay re‐entered the encampment, the good and apostolical Cavelier, the brother of the deceased, read the sad tragedy in his friend’s countenance, and exclaimed: “Oh! my poor brother is dead.” The grief of Cavelier, Joutel, and the other faithful companions of La Salle was uncontrollable. When the assassins entered the encampment to plunder the effects of their murdered commander, they found these faithful men on their knees, prepared for death. But the sight of the venerable Cavelier, and perhaps some regret at the deed they had committed, stayed their bloody work; and these were spared, on condition that they would not return to France, though they several times afterwards heard the murderers say among themselves that they must get rid of them, in order to save themselves from the avenging arm of justice. The assassins seized upon the effects of La Salle, elected Duhaut their leader, and resolved to return to the Coenis Indians. During several days they travelled together, these wretches treating the missionaries and friends of La Salle as servants, imposing upon them every hardship in crossing the many rivers they encountered. “Meanwhile,” says Father Donay, “the justice of God accomplished the punishment of these men, in default of human punishment.” A dispute arose between Duhaut and Heins over the stolen property of La Salle, in which the various guilty members of their party took the one side or the other. Heins, two days afterwards, seizing the opportunity, shot Duhaut through the heart with a pistol in the presence of the whole company. He died upon the spot. At the same moment Ruter shot Liotel, the murderer of Moranget, who survived several hours; and, while thus lingering, another fired a blank cartridge near his head, which set fire to his hair and clothes, and he expired amidst the flames. Heins now assumed command, and would have killed Larcheveque, a third member of the band of assassins, but for the intercession of Joutel. On reaching the Coenis camp they found these warriors about to start with a large army against the Kanoatins, and Heins, dressed in the rich mantle of La Salle, to the great disgust of his surviving relatives and friends, went with them to join in fresh deeds of carnage and crime. Father Donay, Cavelier the priest, Cavelier the nephew of La Salle, Joutel, De Marie, Teissier, and a young Parisian named Barthelemy, now took their departure for the Illinois, and, after journeying till the 24th of July, they were greatly relieved at beholding on the opposite side of the river a large cross and log hut, at the junction of the Illinois and Mississippi, and in a few moments they were united with a small detachment stationed there by Tonty. After remaining a few days for rest and refreshment, they started again on the 1st of August, and on the 14th arrived at Fort Crevecœur, where they were led immediately to the chapel, and chanted the _Te Deum_, in thanksgiving for their safe deliverance from so many dangers, to which others had fallen victims. Tonty was absent from the fort on their arrival, on a visit to the Illinois; but on his return he received them with great kindness, and supplied them with every assistance. They concealed from the faithful and devoted Tonty the death of his beloved friend and commander. In the spring of 1688 they left the fort for Quebec, whence they sailed for France in August, arriving there in October.

The fort in St. Bernard’s Bay was, after the death of La Salle, attacked by the Indians, and the whole company massacred except three sons and a daughter of Talon and a young Frenchman named Eustace de Breman, who were led into captivity. The Spaniards also, hearing of La Salle’s movements and of the presence of Frenchmen among the Coenis Indians, sent out a military force, who captured Larcheveque and Grollet, who were sent to Spain, where for some time they were confined in prison, and afterwards sent to Mexico to work in the mines. The Talons were rescued and sent to Mexico. The two elder brothers entered the Spanish navy, but were afterwards restored to their country by the capture of their vessel. The younger brother and his sister were retained some time in the service of the Viceroy of Mexico, and afterwards accompanied him to Spain. Nothing further is known of Breman and the others who were taken captives by the Indians.

The will of La Salle, bearing date the 11th of August, 1681, leaves his property to his cousin, M. François Plet, in gratitude for his kindness and the assistance he rendered to the great explorer in his expeditions.

The following notice of La Salle is given by a Catholic writer:

“Robert Cavelier de La Salle, the first explorer who navigated Ontario, Erie, Michigan, and Huron, deserves to be enumerated among the great captains. A native of Rouen, early employed in the colonies, he had been instigated by the reports of missionaries to seek, through the northern lakes, a passage to the Gulf of Mexico. Building a schooner on the Cayuga Creek, he ascended the lakes in 1679, chanting the _Te Deum Laudamus_. Carrying his boats over land from the Miami to a branch of the Illinois River, he forced or found his way into the upper Mississippi. For many years, with most heroic constancy, this soul of fire and frame of iron was devoted to the task of opening routes between the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and of Mexico, until he perished in his enterprise by the hands of two of his own unworthy followers, on an excursion into Texas, in 1687. The Catholic character of La Salle is marked in every act of his life. He undertook nothing without fortifying himself by religion; he completed nothing without giving the first‐fruits of the glory to God. He planted the cross wherever he landed, even for an hour; he made the western desert vocal with songs, hymns of thanksgiving and adoration. He is the worthy compeer of De Soto and Marquette; he stood, sword in hand, under the banner of the cross, the tutelary genius of those great States which stretch away from Lake Ontario to the Rio Grande. Every league of that region he trod on foot, and every league of its water he navigated in frail canoes or crazy schooners. Above his tomb the northern pine should tower; around it the Michigan rose and the southern myrtle should mingle their hues and unite their perfumes.”(206)

In reviewing the history of the last great enterprise of this remarkable man, we can but recognize three principal reasons of its failure: first, the inferior character of the men selected at Rochelle by his agents to accompany the expedition—a cause of disaster which the virtues and capacity of a Tonty, Joutel, and Moranget could not neutralize; second, the hostility and narrow‐minded jealousy of Beaujeu, upon whose co‐ operation so much depended; and, third, the misinformation in regard to the Gulf of Mexico which he received at San Domingo, and the prevailing ignorance of the times of the bearings of the coast and of the latitudes, which caused his expedition to miss the object of its search. Mr. Sparks, while according to him the possession of the highest qualities of mind and soul, considered him wanting in those qualities which are necessary in order to secure the hearty co‐operation of men, to win their affections as well as their obedience, and, by yielding a little to their weaknesses, secure the benefit of their faithful services. It may be said, however, that no man ever had more faithful, self‐sacrificing, and devoted followers than he, and those who did not sympathize with him were too ignorant and sordid to appreciate his noble character or his magnificent plans. The learned historian at the same time remarks that La Salle labors under the disadvantage of having to be judged from the accounts of others, not all of whom were his friends, and knew little of his plans; for “not a single paper from his own hand, not so much as a private letter or a fragment of his official correspondence, has ever been published, or even consulted by the writers on whose authority alone we must rely for the history of the transactions in which he was concerned.”

Mr. Sparks then pays the following well‐merited and eloquent tribute to the character and services of the illustrious commander:

“On the other hand, his capacity for large designs and for devising the methods and procuring the resources to carry them forward, has few parallels among the most eminent discoverers. He has been called the Columbus of his age; and if his success had been equal to his ability and the compass of his plans this distinction might justly be awarded to him. As in great battles, so in enterprises, success crowns the commander with laurels, defeat covers him with disgrace, and perhaps draws upon him the obloquy of the world, although he might have fought as bravely and manœuvred as adroitly in one case as in the other. Fortune turns the scale and baffles the efforts of human skill and prowess. In some of the higher attributes of character, such as personal courage and endurance, undaunted resolution, patience under trials, and perseverance in contending with obstacles and struggling through embarrassments that might appall the stoutest heart, no man surpassed the Sieur de La Salle. Not a hint appears in any writer that has come under notice that casts a shade upon his integrity or honor. Cool and intrepid at all times, never yielding for a moment to despair, or even to despondency, he bore the heavy burden of his calamities manfully to the end and his hopes expired only with his last breath. To him must be mainly ascribed the discovery of the vast regions of the Mississippi Valley, and the subsequent occupation and settlement of them by the French; and his name justly holds a prominent place among those which adorn the history of civilization in the New World.”

The Log Chapel On The Rappahannock.

Erected A.D. 1570—The First Christian Shrine In The Old Dominion.

Virginia is proud of her antiquity. She assumes the title of Old Dominion; she was long styled the Mother of Presidents. But really her antiquity is greater than many know. Before the English settlers landed on the shores of the James, Stephen Gomez and other Spanish navigators had entered the waters of the Chesapeake and consecrated that noble sheet of water to the Virgin daughter of David’s line, as the Bay of St. Mary, or the Bay of the Mother of God.

The soldier of the cross followed hard on the steps of the explorer. As early as in 1536 St. Mary’s Bay is laid down on Spanish maps. Oviedo mentions it in 1537, and from that time pilots ranged the coast, David Glavid, an Irishman, being recorded as one who knew it best. All agree as to its latitude, its two capes, the direction of the bay, and the rivers entering into it, identifying beyond all peradventure our modern Chesapeake with the St. Mary’s Bay of the early Spanish explorers. Though his attention was called to it, the latest historian of Virginia, misled by a somewhat careless guide, robs his State of the glory which we claim for her. The sons of S. Dominic first planted the cross on the shores of the Chesapeake, and bore away to civilized shores the brother of the chief of Axacan or Jacan, a district not far from the Potomac. Reaching Mexico, this chief attracted the notice of Don Luis de Velasco, the just, upright, disinterested Viceroy of New Spain—one of those model rulers who, amid a population spurred on by a fierce craving for wealth, never bent the knee to Mammon, but lived so poor that he died actually in debt. This good man had the Virginian chief instructed in the Christian faith, and, when his dispositions seemed to justify the belief in his sincerity and faith, the chieftain of the Rappahannock was baptized, amid all the pomp and splendor of Mexico, in the cathedral of that city, the viceroy being his god‐ father, and bestowing upon him his own name, Don Luis de Velasco, by which the Virginia chief is always styled in Spanish annals.

Meanwhile, Coligny’s French Huguenots attempted to settle Florida, but their colony, which was doomed to early extinction from its very material and utter want of religious organization or any tie but a mere spirit of adventure, was crushed with ruthless cruelty by Pedro Melendez, a brave but stern Spanish navigator and warrior, in whose eyes every Frenchman on the sea was a pirate. Soon after accomplishing his bloody work, which left Spain in full possession of the southern Atlantic coast, Melendez, who had sent out vessels to explore the coast, began his preparations for occupying St. Mary’s Bay. The form of the northern continent was not then known; much indeed of the eastern coast had been explored, but so little was the line of the western coast understood that on maps and globes the Pacific was shown as running nearly into the Atlantic coast, as may be seen in a curious copper globe possessed by the New York Historical Society, but which once belonged to Pope Marcellus II. Believing that the Chesapeake, by the rivers running into it, would easily lead to the western ocean, Melendez spent the winter of 1565 studying out the subject with the aid of Don Luis de Velasco and Father Urdaneta, a missionary just arrived from China by the overland route across Mexico. Combining all the information, he was led to believe that, by ascending for eighty leagues a river flowing into the bay, it was necessary only to cross a mountain range to find two arms of the sea, one leading to the French at Newfoundland, the other to the Pacific. To many this will seem wild; but it is evident that Don Luis referred to the great trail leading from the Huron country through the territory of the Five Nations to the land of the Andastes on the Susquehanna, by which the last‐named tribe sold furs on the upper lakes, which went down to the French at Brest on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while the upper lakes were the arm of the sea stretching westward, as was supposed, to China. An adventurous Frenchman, Stephen Brulé, some few years later followed this trail from the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna. Melendez, however, misinterpreted it. To his mind the upper waters of the Chesapeake, the Potomac and Susquehanna, then known as the Espiritu Santo and Salado, were to be the great carrying place of eastern trade.

Anxious to secure for his own country so important a pass, Melendez, in 1566, despatched to St. Mary’s Bay a vessel bearing thirty soldiers and two Dominican Fathers to begin a station in Axacan or Jacan, near the Chesapeake. These pioneers of the faith were escorted or guided by Don Luis de Velasco. Of these missionaries we seek in vain the names. Perhaps their fellow‐religious now laboring on the banks of the Potomac will be stimulated to trace up these early labors of the sons of S. Dominic; though we must admit that Spanish chronicles do not speak of them with praise. In fact, they assert that these missionaries, corrupted by an easy life in Peru, had no taste for a laborious mission in Virginia, though perhaps they learned the real state of affairs in that land, and, taught by Father Cancer’s fate, felt that the attempt would be fatal to all. Certain it is that the whole party took alarm. They forced the captain to weigh anchor, and, leaving the capes on either hand, steer straight to Spain. The Dominican missions in Spanish Florida, which began with the glorious epic of Father Cancer’s devoted heroism, closed with this feeble effort to plant the Gospel on the shores of the Chesapeake; yet they, too, like the earlier discoverers, undoubtedly consecrated to Mary and the Rosary the land which in its names, Virginia and Maryland, yet recalls the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the bay was first consecrated.

Four years later saw Melendez himself in Spain, full of his projects, and bent on carrying them out. The sons of S. Ignatius Loyola, full of the early vigor of their institute, were in Florida. The new mission, begun in 1566, had already a martyr in Father Peter Martinez, of Celda, in the Diocese of Saragossa, who was shipwrecked on the coast, and put to death by the Indians not far from St. Augustine. It had its devoted laborers in Father John Rogel, of Pamplona, Father Sedeño, and Brother Villareal, who sought to win to Christ the Indians near St. Augustine and Port Royal, and who had established an Indian school at Havana to help the great work, Brother Baez being the first to compile a grammar. To extend these missions as far as the Chesapeake was a subject which Melendez laid before S. Francis Borgia, then recently made general of the order, after having acted as commissary of the Spanish missions. A letter of S. Pius V. encouraged Melendez, and with the co‐operation of these two saints the projected mission to the Chesapeake took form at last. Perhaps some of the clergy in Maryland and Virginia remember the personal interest of these saints in the field where they are now laboring; but we fear that the fact has been forgotten. Let us trust that more than one church of S. Pius V. will be monuments of his interest in the land where the next pope that bore his name established the first episcopal see on the coast—that of Baltimore—and religion has taken such gigantic steps under the fostering care of Popes Pius VII. and Pius IX.

When the founder of Florida was thus earnestly engaged in Spain in promoting the spiritual welfare of the colony, Don Luis de Velasco, the Virginian chief, was still beyond the Atlantic, a grave, intelligent man of fifty, well versed in Spanish affairs, to all appearance a sincere and correct Christian and a friend of the Spaniards. With every mark of joy he offered to return to his native land of Axacan, and there do all in his power to further the labors of the missionaries who should be sent to instruct his brother’s tribe. So powerful a coadjutor was welcomed by all, and ere long Don Luis stood on the deck of a staunch Spanish ship, with a band of Jesuits destined to reinforce those already laboring on the Florida mission. This pious party consisted of Father Luis de Quiros, a native of Xerez de la Frontera, in Andalusia, with Brothers Gabriel Gomez, of Granada, and Sancho de Zevallos, of Medina de Rio Seco, all selected for the great work by S. Francis Borgia himself. In November the vessel anchored before the Spanish fort Santa Elena, which stood on the island of South Carolina’s famous Port Royal, that still bears the name of the sainted mother of Constantine.

The Jesuit mission of Florida had been erected into a vice‐province under Father John Baptist Segura. This estimable religious was a native of Toledo, who had, while pursuing his theological course of study, entered the Society of Jesus at Alcalà on the 9th of April, 1566. S. Francis, who knew him well, entertained the highest esteem for Segura’s virtues and personal merit, and took him from the rectorship of the College of Vallisoleta in 1568 to assume the direction of the vice‐province of Florida. For two years had he labored with sad discouragement in the forbidding field among the Floridian tribes, cheered by letters of his superiors rather than by any hope of success that as yet seemed to dawn on his exertions.

He was at Santa Elena when Father Quiros arrived, bearing the instructions for the establishment of the new mission on the shores of the Chesapeake.

That missionary had become discouraged and disheartened. All his labors and those of his associate missionaries among the Calos Indians, on the southern coast of Florida, had proved utterly unavailing. No impression could be made on the flinty hearts of those treacherous and cruel tribes, which, indeed, to the end resisted the calls of divine grace. The labors of the Jesuit missionaries on the coast of South Carolina were scarcely more encouraging. The attempts to civilize and convert found hearers only as long as food and presents were given.

Father Segura resolved for a time to abandon the unpromising field, and turn all their energies to an Indian school at Havana, where children from the Florida tribes could be carefully instructed, so as to form a nucleus for future Christian bands in their native tribes. But the voice of S. Francis recalled him to sterner labors, and he resolved to go in person to the new field opened to them in Axacan, where the influence of Don Luis and the character of the tribes seemed to promise more consoling results. He accordingly directed the experienced Father Rogel to remain at Santa Elena in charge of the missions there, and selected eight associates for his new mission. These were Father Luis de Quiros, Brothers Gabriel Gomez and Sancho Zevallos, already mentioned, with Brother Peter de Linares and John Baptist Mendez, Christopher Redondo, and Gabriel de Solis, who with Alphonsus, destined to be the sole survivor, seem to have been four Indian boys from their school at Havana, and regarded as novices, trained already to mission work as catechists. Such was the missionary party that was to plant the cross in Axacan and open the way for Christianity to China by a new route.

With the influence and support of Don Luis they would need no Spanish aid; and as experience had shown them that soldiers were sometimes a detriment to the mission they were intended to protect, these devoted missionaries determined to trust themselves entirely, alone and unprotected, in the hands of the Indians.

On his side Don Luis made every promise as to the security of the persons of the missionaries confided to his care by the adelantado of Florida. “They shall lack nothing,” he declared. “I will always be at hand to aid them.”

On the 5th of August, 1570, this little mission colony sailed from Santa Elena, and in that enervating heat must have crept slowly enough along the coast and up the Chesapeake; for it was not till the 10th of September that they reached the country of Don Luis, which is styled in Spanish accounts Axacan or Jacan.

Where was the spot termed “La Madre de Dios de Jacan”?—Our Lady of Axacan (or, as we should write it, Ahacan or Hacan). Precisely where no map or document has yet been found to show. It was evidently near the Susquehanna (Salado) or the Potomac (Espiritu Santo), the two rivers at the head of the bay known to Melendez, and by which he hoped to reach China. That it could not have been the Susquehanna seems clear from the fact that, being to the eastward, it would not naturally be the shortest route; and, moreover, that river was in those days, and till far in the ensuing century, held by a warlike tribe of Huron origin, living in palisaded towns, while the tribe of Don Luis, who dwelt at Axacan, were evidently nomads of the Algonquin race.

We are therefore led to look for it on the Potomac, the Espiritu Santo of the early Spanish navigators. The vessel that bore the devoted Vice‐ Provincial Father Segura and two other Spanish vessels some time afterwards ascended this river for a considerable distance to a point whence they proceeded to the country of Don Luis, which, as letters show, lay on a river six miles off, and which they might have reached directly by ascending that river, though it was always passed by the pilots, being regarded, apparently, as less navigable and safe. The Rappahannock at once suggests itself as answering the conditions required to explain the Spanish accounts.

On the Potomac there is to this day a spot called Occoquan, which is near enough to the Spanish Axacan to raise a suspicion of their identity. Not far below it the Potomac and Rappahannock, in their sinuous windings, approach so closely as to increase the resemblance to the country described.

The land that met the eyes of the missionary pioneers in the wilderness of Virginia was not one to raise fond hopes or sustain delusions. A long sterility had visited Florida and extended even to the Chesapeake. Its effects were even more striking. Of all that the descriptions of Don Luis had prepared them to find in Axacan there was absolutely nothing to be seen. Just come from Florida and its vicinity, with its rich, luxuriant vegetation, with fruits of spontaneous growth, they beheld a less favored land, bare and parched with a six years’ sterility, with the starving remnants of decimated and thrice decimated tribes. The wretched inhabitants looked upon Don Luis, their countryman, as if sent from heaven, and, seeing him treated with honor, they received the Spaniards with every demonstration of goodwill, though they were so destitute that they could not offer the newcomers any fruit or maize.

With the winter fast approaching, it seemed almost madness for Father Segura and his companions to attempt to establish themselves in this unpromising land; but the previous failure of the Dominican Fathers, the almost chiding words of S. Francis Borgia, and the deep interest manifested by Melendez in the success of the attempt, apparently decided the question against all ideas of expediency or mere worldly prudence.

The researches of the late Buckingham Smith in the Spanish archives not only brought to light many points tending to fix the position of Axacan, but were also rewarded by finding two letters written at this point by these early apostles of Virginia. The father provincial wrote to the king; his associate, Father Quiros, addressed his letters to Melendez, and Father Segura added a few words, urging prompt relief. These last have fortunately thus reached us. Father Quiros wrote: “Seeing, then, the good‐ will which this people displayed—although, on the other hand, as I said, they are so famished that all expected to perish of hunger and cold this winter, as many did in preceding winters, because it is very hard for them to find the roots on which they usually sustain themselves—the great snows which fall in this land preventing their search—seeing also the great hope there is of the conversion of this people and the service of our Lord and his Majesty, and a way to the mountains and China, etc., it seemed to the Provincial Father Segura that we should venture to remain with so few ship‐stores and provisions, though we ate on the way two of the four barrels of biscuit and the little flour they gave us for the voyage.”

They resolved to stay, seeing no danger except that of famine; for they urged speedy relief. “It is very necessary that you should endeavor, if possible, to supply us with all despatch; and if it be impossible to do so in winter, at least it is necessary that in March, or, at the furthest, early in April, a good supply be sent, so as to give all these people wherewith to plant.”

The pilot of the vessel, short of provisions from the time lost on reaching Axacan, put the missionaries hastily ashore on the 11th of September, and the next day sailed, “leaving us in this depopulated land with the discomforts already described,” say the missionaries.

It was arranged between the missionaries and this pilot that, about the time of his expected return, they would have Indians on the lookout, apparently at the mouth of the river, who were to build signal‐fires to attract attention. On seeing these beacons he was to give them a letter for the missionaries.

The little band of Christians beheld the vessel hoist her sail and glide down the river. They stood alone in a wild land, far from aid and sympathy. Two priests, three religious, Don Luis, and four other Indian converts, formed the little Christendom. But their destination was not yet reached. Guided by Don Luis, they took up their march for the river six miles off, Indians bearing some of their scanty supplies, the missionaries themselves carrying their chapel service, books, and other necessaries. After this portage they embarked on the river—which they might have ascended, and which seems evidently the Rappahannock—and thus penetrated some two leagues or more further into the country to the villages of the tribe.

Yet, even before they left the banks of the Potomac they were called upon to commence their ministry. “The cacique, brother of Don Luis, having,” says Father Quiros, “a son three years old very sick, who was seven or eight leagues from here, as it seemed to him to be on the point of death, he was instant that we should go to baptize it; wherefore it occurred to the vice‐principal to send one of us by night to baptize it, as it was very near death.”

The Indians on the Rappahannock did not dwell in palisaded towns, like the Conestogas on the Susquehanna, and their kindred, the Five Nations, in New York. From the Spanish accounts they dwelt in scattered bands, each forming a little hamlet of a few cabins, each house in the midst of its rude garden; for they cultivated little ground, depending on the spontaneous productions of the earth: acorns, nuts, berries, and roots. Such were they when Smith described them thirty years later, when Powhatan, residing on the James, ruled over the scattered bands as far as the Rappahannock. It was evidently among that tribe, so well known to us by Smith’s descriptions, that Father Segura and his companions began their labors, and Powhatan may well have been a son of the cacique, brother of Don Luis.

The accounts of the subsequent proceedings of the little mission colony are derived from Alphonsus, one of the Indian boys, and are somewhat obscure. They make the journey to the hamlets of the tribe a weary one through wood and desert and marsh, loaded with their baggage, and living on roots, and not the short journey which Father Quiros anticipated. His letter stated that the Indian canoes were all broken; it was probably found impossible to attempt to repair them, and the whole party trudged on by the riverside to their destination.

The hamlet first reached was a wretched one, tenanted only by gaunt and naked savages, who bore the famine imprinted on their whole forms. Here amid the tent‐like lodges of the Indians, made of poles bound together and covered with mats and bark, Father Segura and his companions erected a rude house of logs, the first white habitation in that part of America—first church of the living God, first dwelling‐place of civilized men; for one end was devoted to their chapel, while the other was their simple dwelling. Here doubtless, before the close of September, 1570, the little community recited their Office together, and, under the tuition of Don Luis, began to study the language. Here, at this modest altar, the Holy Sacrifice was for the first time offered by the two priests. Nowhere on the continent to the northward were the sacred rites then heard, unless, indeed, at Brest, in Canada. Greenland, with its bishop and clergy and convents, was a thing of the past; Cartier’s colony, on the St. Lawrence, had been abandoned. The Chapel of the Mother of God, at Jacan, was the church of the frontier, the outpost of the faith.

As Father Segura had foreseen that he must winter there, and might not receive any supplies before March or April, he doubtless began, like his Indian neighbors, to lay up a store of provisions for the long winter. Acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, and chinquapins were regularly gathered by the natives, as well as persimmons and a root like a potato, growing in the swampy lands. Game must have been scarce on that narrow peninsula between two rivers, and they had no means of hunting. Though the rivers of Virginia teemed with fish, we find no indication that the missionaries were supplied with means of deriving any food from that source.

For a time Don Luis remained with them, showing all deference and respect to Father Segura. In his letter to Melendez Father Quiros gives the impression he had made upon them up to that time, and from which it is evident that they had no suspicion of his treachery. “Don Luis,” says he, “acts well, as was expected of him, and is very obedient to all that the father enjoins on him, with much respect as well for the provincial as for the rest of us that are here, and he commends himself earnestly to your worship, to all his other friends and masters.”

This good disposition may have been sincere at first, but, as too often happens in such cases, old habits returned; he became Indian with the Indians, rather than Spanish with the Spaniards. Ere long he abandoned the missionaries altogether, and went off to another hamlet, distant from it a day’s journey and a half.

The mission party were not yet sufficiently versed in the language to dispense with the aid of Don Luis as interpreter, and his influence was constantly needed among the lawless natives. Feeling this, Father Segura several times sent one of the young men to urge Don Luis to return, but he put them off constantly with false statements or unmeaning promises. In this way the winter wore away, with gloomy forebodings in the hearts of the pioneer priests in the log chapel on the Rappahannock. The only hope that cheered and sustained them was that the ship would speedily return from Santa Elena with the supplies they needed for themselves and the seed‐corn for the natives, whom they hoped to persuade to cultivate more, and depend less on the precarious means of sustenance. Meanwhile, as January, 1571, was drawing to a close, Father Segura resolved to make a last effort to move the heart of the recreant Don Luis. He sent Father Quiros, with Brothers de Solis and Mendez, to the hamlet where he resided, to make a last appeal. The priest, who had so long known him, endeavored to recall him to higher and better feelings. The unhappy man made many excuses for his absence, and continued to beguile the missionary with promises; but his heart was given up to deadly malice. He had renounced Christianity, and doomed its envoys to death. As Father Quiros and his two companions turned sadly away to depart from the place and rejoin their suffering companions, a shower of arrows whizzed through the air. Quiros and his companions fell, pierced by the sharp flinty arrows of the apostate and his followers. Virginia had its first martyrs of Christ. Their bodies were at once stripped and subjected to all the mutilations that savage fancy inspired.

Father Segura, with the three brothers and two other Indian youths, had spent the interval in prayer, anxiety deepening as no sign of Father Quiros appeared. On the fourth day the yells and cries that were borne on the chilly air announced the approach of a large party, and in a short time Don Luis appeared, arrayed in the cassock of Father Quiros, attended by his brother, the cacique, and a war party armed with clubs and bows. He sternly demanded from the missionaries their knives and axes used for chopping wood, knowing that with them alone could they make any defence. These were surrendered without remonstrance. Father Segura saw that the end was come. The long‐delayed ship would be too late. He prepared his companions to die. They doubtless gathered around the altar where the Holy Sacrifice had just been offered. Then the apostate gave a signal, and his warriors rushed upon the defenceless and unresisting mission party, and slaughtered all but Alphonsus, who was protected by a brother of Don Luis, more humane than that fallen man.

The bodies of his victims, Father Segura, Brothers Gomez, Linares, and Zevallos, and the Indian novice, Christopher Redondo, were then, we are told, buried beneath their chapel‐house. The shrine of the Mother of God was doubtless pillaged, perhaps demolished; the lamp of Christian light was extinguished, and pagan darkness again prevailed in the land.

As nearly as could be ascertained, the martyrdom of Father Quiros occurred on Sunday, the 4th of February, 1571; that of Father Segura a few days later.

Why had their countrymen in Florida so cruelly neglected them, in spite of the urgent letters taken back by the pilot? It was probably because, Melendez being absent, the letters were sent to Spain, and the pilot did not fully reveal the destitute condition in which he had left the mission colony. Brother Vincent Gonzalez was urgent to bear relief to the vice‐ provincial, but he was put off with the pretext that no pilot could be found to run along the coast from Port Royal to the Chesapeake. It was not till spring that the good brother succeeded in getting a vessel and some Spaniards to proceed to the relief of his superior, as to whose welfare great anxiety was now felt. They ran up the Potomac, and reached the spot where Segura had landed. Indian runners had descried the vessel when it entered the river, and, when the Spanish craft came to anchor, Indians were there to meet them, and the garb of the missionaries was seen in the distance. But the treacherous red men failed to lure them ashore with this device, although some came forward, crying, “See the fathers who came to us. We have treated them well; come and see them, and we will treat you likewise.”

On the contrary, suspecting treachery from the fact that the pretended fathers did not hasten down to meet them, the Spaniards not only avoided landing, but, seizing two of the treacherous natives, sailed back to Port Royal.

Melendez, soon after returning from Spain, heard their report, and with characteristic energy resolved to punish the crime. Taking a small but staunch and fleet vessel, with a sufficient force, he sailed in person to the Chesapeake in 1572, bearing with him Father Rogel and Brother Villareal. He evidently ran up the Potomac, as the other vessel had done, to the spot already familiar to the pilots. Here he landed the Spanish soldiers, and unfurled the standard of Spain on the soil of Virginia. Marching inland, this determined man soon captured several Indians. They were interrogated, and at once confessed that the whole mission party had been cruelly murdered, but they laid the blame of the terrible crime on the apostate Don Luis. Apparently, by one of them Melendez sent word to the tribe that he would not harm the innocent, but he insisted on their delivering up Don Luis. But that false Christian, on seeing the Spanish vessel, fled with his brother, the cacique, and all attempts to arrest them failed. The brother who had saved the Indian boy Alphonsus, however, came forward to meet Melendez, bringing to him the only survivor of Father Segura’s pious band. The adelantado received him with every mark of pleasure.

From this boy was obtained a detailed account of all that had happened after the departure of the vessel which left the missionaries on the bank of the Potomac. The statement is, of course, the basis of all the accounts we possess of the fate of the log chapel on the Rappahannock and the little Jesuit community gathered to serve it.

The Spanish commander arrested a number of Indians; and when Alphonsus had pointed out those concerned in the tragedy, Melendez hung eight of them at the yard‐arm of his vessel. Father Rogel prepared them all for death, instructing them, we presume, by the aid of the young survivor, and had the consolation of baptizing them.

After this summary act of retributive justice, the founder of St. Augustine, with his mail‐clad force, embarked, and the Spanish flag floated for the last time over the land of Axacan.

Father Rogel was loath to leave the country without bearing with him the precious remains of his martyred brethren; but Melendez could not venture so far from his ship, and his force was too small to divide. The Jesuit Father could bear away, as a relic, only a crucifix which had been in the log chapel. Divine vengeance is said to have overtaken those who profaned the sacred vessels, and especially an attempt to injure this crucifix; first one, then two others, having been struck dead. It was subsequently placed by Father Rogel in the College of Guayala.

Some thirty‐five years later an English colony entered a river, to which they gave the name of Mary Stuart’s son. The Indians from that river to the Rappahannock were ruled by Powhatan; and it is worthy of remark that Raphe Hamor, one of the earliest settlers, states that Powhatan’s tribe were driven from their original abode by the Spaniards. They were Algonquins, and did not come from Florida. They were, in all probability, the very tribe among whom Father Segura laid down his life. Powhatan, represented as then a man of sixty, might, at twenty‐five, have witnessed or taken part in the martyrdom.

Such is the history of the first community of the Society of Jesus in the Old Dominion, of which they were the first white occupants. Dominicans began the work by converting Don Luis, Jesuits followed it up by actual possession, by erecting a chapel, by instituting a regular community life, by instructing, baptizing, and hallowing the land by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The flag of Spain and the flag of England have alike passed away, but on the banks of the Potomac Jesuit and Dominican are laboring side by side three hundred years after the martyrdom of Segura, Quiros, and their companions.

Fredericksburg, which cannot be far from the early Chapel of the Mother of God, revives its name in her Church of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception; and other churches of the same invocation seem to declare that, as of old, so now we may say, “This is indeed the Blessed Virgin’s land.”

New Publications.

A LETTER ADDRESSED TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NORFOLK, ON THE OCCASION OF MR. GLADSTONE’S RECENT EXPOSTULATION. By John Henry Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1875.

This _Letter_ has two aspects. It is a reply on behalf of the Catholics of England to Mr. Gladstone’s charge. It is also a polemical pamphlet respecting a domestic controversy with other leaders of the Catholic body in England. In its first aspect it is not only masterly in style and argument, and marked with the evidence of rare learning, as anything from the author’s pen is sure to be, but, to a certain point, conclusive and unanswerable. It proves that Mr. Gladstone’s appeal to English Catholics to separate themselves from the doctrine and polity of their spiritual sovereign, the Pope, is an arrow shot in the air. It proves that his charge against the Catholic hierarchy of having changed in spirit and principle, in dogma and in action, in attitude and in aims, is baseless and absurd. It refutes the charge that Catholics are intellectually and morally in a state of servile bondage. Several other minor and incidental things are proved, and on the whole it makes an important point in the controversy about the relation of the Catholic religion to civil sovereignty, and the civil rights and duties of the temporal order, as distinct from the spiritual. It does not, and could not be expected to, establish the great fundamental truth opposed to Mr. Gladstone’s error, viz., the positive Catholic doctrine of the relation of the church to the state, _in se_, and the firm, immovable basis which that doctrine places for just political sovereignty and corresponding subjection to rest on, while securing the divine rights of the church and her members, and the duties correlative to those rights.

It is Dr. Newman’s misfortune that a base and dishonest act of some one of the pestilent set of detectives of the press, or the other sneak‐thieves who prowled about the purlieus of the Vatican Council, filching secret information in order to make eligible paragraphs in newspapers, placed him in a position before the world embarrassing both to himself and to many of his warmest friends. The embarrassment of which we speak did not imply any falling away from the faith of a Catholic or the holiness of a religious priest. Yet it left a sentiment of disappointment, which the present pamphlet does not altogether remove, that Dr. Newman failed to add lustre to his arms, instead of merely preserving unstained what he had already acquired.

The fading impression of this disappointment would have been wholly effaced if Dr. Newman had not, in his reply to Mr. Gladstone, renewed it by a certain manner of vague and general expression of discontent with a number of his fellow‐Catholics considered by him as extreme or injudicious in their doctrine, or way of expressing it, or their measures for promoting the growth of the Catholic Church. There may, very well, be individuals deserving his severe language. We have occasion in this country to lament at extravagant representations of Catholic doctrines, harsh and unjust censure of persons or opinions, and other excesses on the part of individuals professing to be specially orthodox and devoted to the Holy See. We think, however, that Dr. Newman’s language will be understood to apply generally to those persons and those writers for the press in England and Europe who were active and zealous in promoting the definition of infallibility by the Vatican Council. If it is true that it has this extension, we feel bound to express our painful sense of the wrong done to a body of the best and truest advocates of the Catholic cause who are to be found among our ranks.

In respect to the infallibility and supreme authority of the Pope, we consider that Dr. Newman, whose doctrinal soundness was always really unquestionable, has given new and explicit evidence which must satisfy every careful reader of the pamphlet who is competent to judge of theological matters. We have carefully scrutinized every phrase and proposition, and find nothing which in our judgment is contrary to Catholic doctrine. In respect to the theological opinions and the tone of argument and expression of the venerable and illustrious author, we think he is sometimes open to criticism, as at least ambiguous, if not inaccurate; and in respect to one point, which does not occur as a direct statement of opinion, but as a record of a doubt in his mind expressed in a letter to a friend written several years ago, viz., the famous question of “moral unanimity,” that the position there taken is altogether untenable.

Dr. Newman frankly assumes the _rôle_ of a “minimizer,” in which his _confrère_, Father Ryder, figured with so much ability in his controversy with Dr. Ward. We have always thought that Father Ryder proved fairly that his own positions, essentially considered, are within the limits of that liberty of opinion which the Catholic doctrine permits. To a certain extent we approve of “minimizing.” That is, we approve of not exacting as a test of orthodoxy, and as _per se_ obligatory under pain of sin, belief in more than the law _certainly_ requires. But we are most cordially hostile to the system of economy in teaching and practice, which inculcates and recommends only the minimum in doctrine, pious opinion, or devotion. We do not attribute the advocacy of such a system to Dr. Newman, yet we think it important to caution the readers of his pamphlet against drawing such an inference from his language.

In speaking of the Syllabus, in particular, we fear that he has spoken in such a way that some readers will infer that they may disregard it altogether. He says it has no dogmatic authority. That it has not, by itself, the quality of a complete and independent dogmatic document, we may concede. It is a supplement to a whole series of doctrinal pronouncements, of the nature of a catalogue of the errors condemned in them. Yet all the errors enumerated are really condemned by virtue of the sentence pronounced against them in the whole series of pontifical acts. It is not lawful for any Catholic to hold any one of them. Their interpretation is to be sought, by those who are competent to do so, in the original doctrinal pronouncements of the Holy Father, and by the rest of the faithful in the explanation of their pastors, and others who explain them under their sanction. So also, although a condemnation of some particular system of mixed education—_e.g._, in Ireland—does not involve infallibility, but only authority to which obedience is due, yet an _ex cathedrâ_ judgment of the Pope defining as a general proposition that mixed education is dangerous, is an infallible judgment on a question of morals.

Moreover, although the condemnation of errors frequently leaves a margin for discussion respecting the full import and extent of the condemned error and the precise limits of the contradictory truth which is affirmed, there is always something positively and certainly decreed, over and above the fact that there is an error of some sort. Frequently, the meaning is obvious; and, at least generally, it is soon settled by the agreement of theologians, so far as its essence is concerned. We cannot criticise in detail every particular statement or expression in this pamphlet which, in our view, falls short of a clear and unmistakable and complete expression of correct theological doctrine. Dr. Newman’s particular line has led through so many caveats, exceptions, limitations, so much subtle balancing of opposite weights, and of what he consents to call “minimizing,” with which ordinary readers are not familiar, that he leaves the impression that truth, infallible teaching, the authority of the church, even the Catholic faith, is something to be afraid of, to be guarded against, somewhat as Englishmen feel about a standing army. We would prefer that, instead of being apparently so solicitous to assure weak brethren and timid converts that they need not believe so much as they are afraid of being made to, he would speak out with a more clear, ringing, and full note of his own peculiar, unequalled melody, to persuade and encourage them to believe and confide in the church of God and in their prelates, joyously, fearlessly, enthusiastically, with the noble spirit worthy of the children of God. We do not like to hear our enemies call Dr. Newman the head of a party of liberal Catholics in England, and set him over against his archbishop, and pervert his language into a weapon against the Council of the Vatican. We do not like to have to vindicate him from the praise of anti‐Catholic writers, and to qualify the approbation which we would like to give to the productions of his subtile and erudite genius by “minimizing” criticism. He once wrote of himself,

“Time was, I shrank from what was right, For fear of what was wrong.”

Something of the same mood seems to have come over his sensitive heart in his seclusion from active, ecclesiastical life, during the Council of the Vatican, and to have not quite withdrawn its penumbra. We are reminded of S. Gregory Nazianzen, complaining of councils and of S. Basil, as he went away weary from Constantinople into retirement; and of S. Colman, gathering up his relics to quit Lindisfarne and escape from S. Wilfrid. These were weaknesses of saints, but still weaknesses, and it was their heroism and not their weakness which made them worthy of our veneration. We trust that Dr. Newman will remember that there are some others to be thought of besides those who are weak in the faith and his own _petite clientele_ in England; and that he will not close his career without one more deed of prowess, which shall discomfit the enemies of the Holy See and the Catholic faith, and show that his pennon still flutters beside those of his fellow‐champions.

FATHER EUDES, APOSTOLIC MISSIONARY, AND HIS FOUNDATIONS, 1601‐1874. By the Chevalier De Montzey. With a brief of approval from his Holiness Pius IX. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1874.

We have read this book with pleasure, and have been glad to learn something of the Congregation of Eudists—one which deserves especial honor for its loyalty to the Holy See and the glorious death of some of its members at the massacre of the _Carmes_ in Paris during the French Revolution. The author, who is a grand‐nephew of Father Eudes and of the famous historian Mezeray who was his brother, is a soldier by profession, and his style has a freshness and novelty about it quite refreshing in hagiography, and contrasting very favorably with some other specimens, which reflect more credit on the piety than on the literary qualifications of their writers. Father Eudes was originally an Oratorian; but after the death of Father de Condren, when the Oratory became infected with Jansenism, he left it to found a new congregation of priests, living in community without religious vows, and devoted to missions and the instruction of young ecclesiastics in seminaries. He was a truly apostolic man, and his work was crowned with success. Dispersed by the French Revolution, his congregation has been since revived, and appears to be at present chiefly engaged in the work of secular education. The history of the French Oratory is both singular and instructive. An institute formed by Cardinal de Berulle, and including among its members such men as Malebranche, Massillon, Mascaron, Father de Condren, and Father Eudes, would seem to have promised a most complete success. Yet it perished utterly and ignominiously through the deadly contamination of Jansenism. It has been restored within a few years past, and is now as strongly marked by fidelity to the Holy See and to the spirit of its saintly founders as it was by faithlessness to both in the period of its dissolution. Yet its past history will ever remain a grave and warning lesson of the deadly effects of tampering or compromising with unsound doctrines, and deviating into new and dangerous ways. Father Eudes succeeded in accomplishing what the founders of the Oratory attempted but did not carry out, though at the cost of much persecution, and in a way comparatively obscure and humble. His character was an original and admirable one, his institute seems to have been judiciously and solidly organized, and we both trust and desire that his successors may carry out the excellent work which he commenced to the most ample results. We recommend this life particularly to all who are engaged in similar undertakings.

THE RELIGIOUS STATE ACCORDING TO THE DOCTRINE OF S. THOMAS. By Jules Didiot, D.D. Translated from the French. London: Burns & Oates. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

THE PERFECT LAY‐BROTHER. By Felix Cumplido, S.J. Same publishers.

THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES ENLIGHTENED UPON HER DUTIES. By M. L’Abbé Leguay. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.

The first of these three books, specially intended for religious, needs no other recommendation than its title. The second is considered by the Jesuits to be one of the best of its kind, and is equally useful for that most excellent class of religious persons, the Lay‐Sisters, as for brothers. The third will be welcome to the ladies in charge of the numerous and crowded novitiates which are the most beautiful feature in our American Catholic Church, and, from the recommendations it has received, we have no doubt will prove satisfactory, though we have not had time even to glance at its contents.

MARGARET ROPER. By Agnes Stewart. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Miss Stewart is one of our best female writers. The sketch she has given of Margaret Roper, in her usual felicitous style, is in the main historical, with a little fictitious coloring to give it life.

CHARACTERISTICS FROM THE WRITINGS OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. Arranged by W. S. Lilly, with the author’s approval. New York: Scribner, Welford & Armstrong. 1875.

The American publishers have imported their edition at the retail price of $2.50. It is a London‐printed book, which is all that need be said for its typography. The selections are miscellaneous and made with taste and discrimination. The volume must be welcome to thousands of admirers of the matchless writings of a man who is one of the modern glories of English literature, as well as one of the brightest ornaments of religion and the church in the present century. One of the best portraits of Dr. Newman which we have seen, an admirably‐executed engraving from a recent photograph, is a welcome addition to the volume.

THE COMPLETE OFFICE OF HOLY WEEK, according to the Roman Missal and Breviary, in Latin and English. New and revised edition. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.

This little book will be found very useful to those of the laity who have an opportunity of attending the Holy Week services, and it will also be interesting to those who may wish to know what those services are which so occupy the church during the “Great Week,” as the work contains all the devotions of Holy Week, with the day and night office. There is an abundance of spiritual reading in the Scripture lessons and prophecies, so that those whose duties prevent them from attending the services may reap much profit by a perusal of the offices at home. Each day is preceded by an Introduction, explaining the meaning of the principal ceremonies. There is also added the ritual for the blessing of the holy oils, which is performed by the bishop on Holy Thursday.

PEACE THROUGH THE TRUTH. SECOND SERIES. PART I. By Rev. J. Harper, S.J. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This ponderous volume is employed with the topic of the Levitical impediments to matrimony, and its weight of learning and argument is in proportion to its size.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUALISM, AND THE PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF MEDIOMANIA. Two Lectures. By Frederic R. Marvin, M.D., Professor of Psychological Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence in the New York Free Medical College for Women. Read before the New York Liberal Club, March 20 and 27, 1874. New York: Asa K. Butts & Co., Publishers, No. 36 Dey St. 1874.

Asa K. Butts & Co. have published this small book with a long title in a very cheap and economical manner, very well suited to its scientific and literary value. It is decidedly the production of a medio‐monomaniac.

ON THE WING: A SOUTHERN FLIGHT. By the Hon. Mrs. Alfred Montgomery, author of _The Bucklyn Shaig_, _Mine Own Familiar Friend_, _The Wrong Man_, etc. London: Hurst & Blackett. 1875.

Those of our readers who enjoyed this “flight” during the summer and autumn in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will need no assurance from us regarding the pleasure of the trip. To others we will simply say that the volume contains some admirably‐told travelling experiences, graphic descriptions of Italian life and scenery, together with romantic episodes in which sundry characters, real or imaginary, pass through a variety of piquant incidents.

ANNOUNCEMENT.—In addition to the new serial already commenced in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, we shall begin in the April number the publication of another story by the author of “Laughing Dick Cranstone,” “How George Howard was Cured,” etc.

[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]

FOOTNOTES

1 We say “indefinite,” because this virtual sphere in its continuous expansion wanes away insensibly, and has no definite limiting surface.

2 That the matter of a primitive element is mathematically unextended will be rigorously proved in the next following articles.

3 “A Speculation touching Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter.” _Philos. Magazine_, 1844, vol. xxiv. p. 136.

4 THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August, 1874, p. 584.

5 He says: “What do we know of the atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which may be called _a_, and surround it by forces which may be called _m_: to my mind the _a_, or nucleus, vanishes, and the substance consists in the powers of _m_. And, indeed, what notion can we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought remains on which to hang the imagination of an _a_ independent of the acknowledged forces?”

We answer that there remains the _inertia_, the _passivity_, and the _local position_, which are not the property of the _m_, but of the _a_. The _a_, even according to Faraday, is the real centre of a sphere, and therefore it cannot vanish while the sphere exists, except inasmuch as it must be conceived without bulk, according to the theory of simple elements which he adopts.

6 Opusc. _De Principiis Naturæ._

7 Aliquid esse semper et ubique potest intelligi dupliciter. Uno modo, quia habet in se unde se extendat ad omne tempus et ad omnem locum, sicut Deo competit esse ubique et semper. Alio modo, quia non habet in se quo determinetur ad aliquem locum vel tempus. _Summa Theol._, p. 1, q. 16, a. 7.

8 Universale est ubique et semper; materia etiam prima, quum sit in omnibus corporibus, est ubique. Neutrum autem horum est Deus. Ergo esse ubique non est proprium Dei.—Ad primum dicendum, quod universale et materia prima sunt quidem ubique, sed non secundum idem esse. _Summa Theol._, p. 1, q. 8, a. 4.

9 _Questi che mai da me non fia divizo._

10 Formerly September was the 7th month.

11 This is the title of a remarkable poem by the Rev. John Keble, unpublished until after his death.

12 Dr. Irons, in his book entitled _New Legislation for the Church: Is it needed?_ says: “The most discreditable because the most insincere of all the pleas for new legislation is the cry that the ritualists are encouraging popery amongst us. To say that we are in danger of becoming papists is about as rational as to say that we are becoming ‘Plymouth Brethren,’ ” (one of the many new sects which have sprung up of late years in England).

13 At a meeting of a High Church society, called the English Church Union, recently held, a member of this Low Church association who was present rose and informed the assembly that that body further existed “for the purpose of teaching the bishops the law”—a statement which must have been interesting to the Bishop of Lichfield and his two coadjutor‐bishops who were present.

14 Upon this the _Times_ remarks: “There can be no department of administration ... without a large deposit of discretionary powers in the best hands that can be found. The Church of England has always had to submit to that law, for it sees its prelates appointed alternately by the opposite political and religious sides, and has had to see the ecclesiastical patronage of populous counties bestowed for a whole generation on men of one school, and then as long on men of the other.” Could any words more graphically depict the shuttlecock existence of Anglican ecclesiastical arrangements than these?

15 See _Peace through the Truth_, by the Rev. F. Harper, S. J., whose words we occasionally venture to adopt, as expressing so much more completely the state of the case than could be done by any of our own: “In the authorized formularies of the Church of England there is only one single instance in which confession is distinctly alluded to, namely, in the Service for the Visitation of the Sick.” But let us hear what is said by the great Anglican authority, Archbishop Whately, with regard to the rubric to which we refer, his work being a text‐book which nearly every Anglican bishop recommends to his candidates for ordination. After quoting Marshall and Potter as authorities in his favor, he says: “No authority can be urged from thence for the applying of God’s pardon to the conscience of a sinner, or for absolving him from any otherwise than from the censures of the church,” (_Whately on the Common Prayer_, ch. XI., sec. 5, p. 430, London, 1840). And the late Bishop of London, Dr. Blomfield, in one of his charges (1842) speaks of auricular confession as “a practice wholly unknown to the primitive church, one of the most fearful abuses of that of Rome, and the source of unspeakable abominations.” From all which it ought to be clear to Anglicans themselves that, if they would find authorized confession and valid absolution, they must seek it elsewhere than from the self‐authorized confessors of their own communion.

16 F. Harper.

17 See “Our Paris Letter” in the _Church Times_ for June 12, 1874, which might be fitly described as two closely printed columns of exasperating mendacity.

18 We are told that “one striking feature of the evening as regards the tone pervading the assemblage was the manifest repudiation of the idea ... that, if the bill were pressed, the extreme men would secede and free the church from their annoying presence.” When Mr. Hillyard, of S. Lawrence’s, Norwich, who presented himself as one of the “extremest of the extreme,” told how a parishioner of his had said to him, “Sir, if fifteen years ago there had been such services and spiritual privileges at S. Lawrence as there are now, I should never have turned Roman Catholic,” he “fairly brought down the house.” The idea of “sorrowful departure,” ... when referred to by one of the speakers, was received with _shouts of derisive laughter_. Another clergyman stated that he had “reconciled a great number of Roman Catholics to the church” (!), which announcement was received with “great cheering.”

19 And Mr. B., moreover, would be able for his part to appeal to the “Black rubric” (so named by the Tractarians), and which is appended to the Communion Service, and Art. XXVIII. The former, apologizing for the order contained in the office for communicants to receive _kneeling_, declares that “thereby no adoration is intended or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread or wine there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood. For the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very natural substance, and therefore may not be adored (for that were idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians).” Article XXVIII. declares that “Transubstantiation cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but it is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.... The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.”

20 Mr. H. Wilberforce.

21 “As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.”—Art. XIX., _Book of Com. Prayer_.

22 “Ludens in orbe terrarum,” Prov. viii. 31.

23 Animorum nulla in terris origo inveniri potest, nihil enim est in animis mixtum atque concretum, aut quod ex terra natum atque fictum esse videatur nihil ne aut humidum quidem, aut flabile, aut igneum. His enim in naturis nihil inest, quod vim memoriæ, mentis, cogitationis habeat, quod et præterita teneat, et futura provideat, et complecti possit præsentia: quæ sola divina sunt; nec invenietur unquam unde ad hominem venire possint, nisi a Deo. Singularis est igitur quædam natura atque vis animi, sejuncta ab his usitatis notisque naturis.—_Tusc. Quæst_, lib. 1, c 27.

24 Laguile, in his _History of Alsace_, regards these apostles as the real disciples of S. Peter. He finds a proof of it in the writings of S. Irenæus (who lived in the IIId century), which allude to the churches of Germany.

25 An old tradition attributes the foundation of this château to the Emperor Maximin, and declares that the rotunda was formerly consecrated to the worship of the pagan divinities. This rotunda was destroyed in 1734. An inn now stands on the spot.

26 This abbey, at a later day, adopted the rule of S. Benedict, and in the VIIIth century became of great importance, being rebuilt and endowed by Duke Garnier.

27 The remains of St. Deodatus have been preserved in this church. Formerly they were borne in procession with great pomp around Ebersheim‐Münster on the 19th of May, the festival of this saint.

28 S. Odile was particularly attached to Ebersheim‐Münster. After the foundation of the Convent of Hohenbourg she appointed the abbot director of her community, and made to it some donations on condition that some of the monks of Ebersheim‐Münster should celebrate divine service at Hohenbourg on certain festivals, and the abbot himself on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Déobald, Abbot of Ebersheim‐Münster, had the particular confidence of Charlemagne. He travelled with him to Saxe in 810.

29 The remains of Adalric were, long after his death, removed from Hohenbourg to Ebersheim‐Münster, and were for a long period venerated by the pilgrims.

30 Chroniclers speak particularly of the wonderful beauty of Odile’s fair locks.

31 “If Pilatus wears his hood The weather surely will be good; But if Pilatus dons his sword, Then rain will soon be the award.”

32 “To the fidelity and courage of the Swiss.”

33 See Spelman’s _History and Fate of Sacrilege_.

34 _Les Premières Civilisations: Études d’Histoire et d’Archéologie._ Par F. Lenormant. Paris.

35 Cf. Isaias xxxix. 1.

36 Renan, _Livre de Job_, Introd., p. lxiii., 1860.

37 Lenormant, _Premières Civilisations_, tom. ii. p. 21.

38 See Genesis. x. 10.

39 Cf. Isaias xxxvii. 38.

40 Is. xlvi. 1.

41 This is the value of the ideographic sign by which the abode of the dead is designated. It also bears two other names, which are of great importance, as proving that the Semites, far from borrowing from the Greeks their belief in another life, have, on the contrary, furnished the latter with the names which they have bestowed on the regions of the departed. In the poem of the descent of Istar into hell this region is, in fact, denominated _Eribus_, probably meaning “the house of darkness,” from _Ereb_, “evening,” from whence the Erebus of the Greeks; and _bit edie_, “the house of the eternities,” from _ed_, “eternity,” from whence comes doubtless the Greek Hades. The etymology αίδης is not historical, and may easily be an arbitrary invention. Acheron, also, seems very probably derived from _Acharon_, the West, the place of darkness, the land of the dead. (See Talbot, _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_.)

42 _Prem. Civ._ The original text of this poem is given in _Choix de Textes Cuneiformes_, pp. 100, 105.

43 _Transactions of the Soc. of Bibl. Archæol._ vol. i., p. 107, and partially translated by Lenormant, _Prem. Civ._

44 See the two articles by M. Renan upon, or rather _against_, the “Expédition en Mesopotame” of M. Oppert, in the _Journal des Savants_, 1859.

45 “Let my mouth be filled with thy praise, alleluia, that I may sing, alleluia; my lips shall greatly rejoice when I shall sing to thee, alleluia, alleluia.”

46 The Germans call a graveyard God’s acre.

47 A street of that name.

48 The old man.

49 Tiberius’ leap.

50 _New American Cyclopædia_, v. Spiritualism.

51 The Strada di Toledo, where the maskers assemble, and the combats with _confetti_ take place during the Carnival.

52 _Bals masqués._

53 The name of the place where large public and private balls are given by the Neapolitan nobility, to whom one must belong to have the right to subscribe.

54 Thursday before Lent.

55 The girls.

56 An enclosure planted with maize, vines, and orange‐trees.

57 “That is, Dennis O’Flinn, with whom was this book during a year, namely, from the seventh month of the year 1815 to the eighth month of the year 1816, _i.e._, viz., D. O’F., of Shandon Street, in Cork, of Great Munster, and that put it carefully in this form, as say the stanzas above.”

58 The writer acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. James O’Farrell for this translation and other valuable assistance.

59 Pronounced Karr.

60 _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, canto i. st. vi.

61 _History of Westmoreland and Cumberland_, Introd.

62 “In world is naught, nature has wrought, that shall stay. Therefore serve God, keep well the rod, thy fame shall not decay.”

63 The chronicles do not say how she passed her time at Brisgau. They merely state that she lived there about a year as a hermitess and mendicant.

64 S. Attale became the superior of the chapter of S. Etienne at Strasbourg, founded by her father and composed of thirty canonesses. She lived to a good old age, and died in the odor of sanctity, her soul wafted to heaven by a troop of angels and their Queen. Her feast is celebrated at Strasbourg on the 3d of December.

65 S. Eugénie succeeded S. Odile as abbess of Hohenbourg, and died in 735. She was buried in the Chapel of S. John, and her tomb remained entire till the Lutheran soldiers of Mansfeldt broke it open in 1622. Her relics were collected by the clergy, and afterwards restored to the convent. Later, the Swedes cast them to the winds. Only a portion is preserved at Oberehnheim, and still exposed on her festival, Sept. 16.

S. Gundeline became the second abbess of Niedermünster. Her remains were once in a shrine of silver beside the grand altar, but were mostly lost in the Thirty Years’ War. What remain are at Einsiedeln.

66 Roswinde, who had renounced the world before the Monastery of Hohenbourg was erected, lived holily under the direction of her sister. She was buried in the chapel of SS. Peter and Paul. The name of S. Roswinde is found in an ancient litany formerly chanted in the Diocese of Strasbourg.

67 To endow this monastery with relics, he made a pilgrimage to Rome. Pope Adrian I. gave him the bodies of S. Sophie and three other saints, which he solemnly enshrined at Eschau. He died March 20, 783, and was buried at Eschau. He is revered as a saint.

68 This chalice was still at Hohenbourg in 1546. All the chronicles declare that no one could ever tell of what it was composed. The Abbey of Hohenbourg had a chalice on its coat‐of‐arms.

69 Probably about the year 720. The year is disputed. A popular legend says she lived to be one hundred and three years old, which would make the year of her death 760.

70 This will is to be found in the _Histoire de l’Eglise de Strasbourg_, by Grandidier.

71 This precious work was carefully preserved in the Library of Strasbourg until the late siege. It is greatly to be hoped that it was transferred to a place of safety, and did not share the fate of that noble library. The manuscript throughout is by the hand of Herrade. It is composed of three hundred and twenty‐four leaves of parchment. It is especially interesting because it shows the state of the sciences and literature, the manners, and the public and private usages of the XIIth century.

This work is a systematic collection of extracts taken from ecclesiastical history and from the fathers, mingled with reflections and observations on astronomy, geography, philosophy, history, and mythology, naturally introduced by the subject the author is treating of. To these are joined the poems of Herrade. It is illuminated with naïve and charming miniatures.

This work is dedicated by the illustrious abbess to her spiritual children. She explains in the preface, written in prose, the object she had in view in undertaking it. “Like a bee,” she says, “I have amassed in this book the honey drawn from the sacred and philosophical writings, that I may form a honey‐comb to delight you and lead you to honor our Lord and the church. Seek herein an agreeable food for the soul, refresh hereby your fatigued minds, that you may always be occupied with your heavenly Spouse,” etc., etc.

She then enters upon the work. After speaking of God and his attributes, the angels and their fall, she comes to the creation, discusses man before and after his fall, passes in review the Old Testament in its relations with the New, with the history of the human race, the development of the arts, sciences, and philosophy.

She comes finally to the mystery of the Redemption, to which she joins the genealogy of our Saviour, traced upon a mysterious tree planted by the Divinity. She gives an account of the life, miracles, teachings, and parables of Christ. Then follow numerous extracts from the Acts of the Apostles, to which are annexed very curious paintings.

The history of the Roman emperors is naturally connected with the development of the Christian Church, and there are ingenious miniatures representing allegorically the virtues of the faithful followers of Christ, the hideousness of sin, the vanities and temptations of the world, the assaults of hell, and the means we should use to oppose them.

Finally, Herrade represents, in a series of considerations and paintings, the dignities, rights, and obligations of the ecclesiastical state.

This work, by the Abbess of Hohenbourg, is the production of a thoughtful mind, and is one that required much time. She very carefully indicates the numerous and authentic sources whence she draws her materials.

Herrade has also left a list of all the popes from S. Peter to Clement III., and several astronomical works, which also are, or were, in the Library of Strasbourg.

72 The relics of S. Odile venerated in other places are not of our saint. There are three other saints of that name—one a companion of S. Ursula; a second, Abbess of Hohenbourg in the XIth century; and a third, who was a widow of Liege.

73 See Silliman’s _Principles of Physics_, n. 20.

74 The word “matter” ordinarily signifies “material substance”; but among philosophers material substance is that in which one of the constituents is _the_ matter, the other being the form. Physicists also take the word “matter” in the sense of one of the constituents of material substance, whenever they distinguish _the_ matter from the active power of matter. We are surprised to find that Father Tongiorgi denies in his _Cosmology_ (n. 102, 103) that the primitive atoms are constituted of matter and form. Of what, then, are they constituted? He replies that those atoms have no constituents. “Philosophers,” he says, “ask what are the constituents of the atoms; and we answer that constituents of the atoms there are none, whether with regard to their essence or to their quantity”—_Quæstionem proponunt philosophi quœnam sint constitutiva atomorum. Cui respondemus, constitutiva atomorum nulla esse, nec quoad essentiam, nec quoad quantitatem_ (n. 119). This is a curious doctrine indeed; for it admits that a thing may be constituted without constituents, and not only ignores the metaphysical analysis of the primitive being, but implicitly declares it to be absurd. That all created substance essentially consists of act and potency we have shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, p. 824.

75 We propose to treat this question separately.

76 THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

77 Itaque ubi habetur distinctio unius ab altero, ibi habetur unitatum pluralitas, seu multitudo, etiamsi quæ distincta sunt, unita sint, atque adeo communi termino copulentur, ut in continui partibus contingit.—_Cosmol._, n. 174.

78 _Cosmol._, n. 59.

79 Mysterium philosophicum; est hæc difficultas in qua ratio plus probat, quam possit intelligere; plus objicit, quam possit solvere.—Goudin, _Philos._

80 Quando dicitur continuum esse divisibile in partes in infinitum divisibiles, hoc intelligendum est mathematice, non physice; id est considerando, quantitatem præcise secundum se, ut eam sumit mathematicus, non vero ut est proprietas formæ corporeæ, sicut eam considerat physicus; nam perveniri tandem posset ad partem ita minimam, ut minorem nulla forma naturalis pati posset. Attamen, mathematice loquendo, in illa minima parte adhuc essent duæ medietates, et in illis duabus medietalibus aliæ medietates, et sic in infinitum.—_Ibid._

81 A childish amusement resorted to the evening of the first Sunday in Lent, as a kind of supplement to the Carnival.

82 Carey’s _Dante_.

83 A prolongation of the Carnival peculiar to Milan, where it lasts four days longer than elsewhere.

84 Claudio Monteverde, an Italian musician, born at Cremona in 1565; died at Venice in 1649. The age of modern music can easily be computed.

85 _Résumé Philosophique de l’Hist. de la Musique._ Par M. Fétis.

86 _Dictionnaire de Plain Chant_, art. Tonalité.

87 We were surprised to find that we had written “_diminished_” seventh for the chord _Sol, Si, Re, Fa_, in our last article. The accompanying example, however, showed our meaning, and, for musicians, corrected the error.

88 We would also like to know why “church music” introduced by composers into their operas is so unlike the music they have composed for the church.

89 A marked characteristic of Gregorian chant, Rousseau, in his _Essai sur l’Origine des Langues_, examining the influence of music, observes: “Thus melody, beginning _to be less adherent to speech_, took, insensibly, a separate existence, and music became more independent of the words. As a consequence, little by little those prodigies which it had produced while it was only the accent and the harmony of poetry, and which gave to it that power to subdue the passions which it would in the future exercise only upon the reason, ceased.”

90 “And when they had said a hymn, they went forth unto the Mount of Olives.” “Id est, hymno cantato,” says Estius; and also S. Augustine: “Ubi non est cantus, non est hymnus;” and S. Chrysostom: “Hymnum cecinit, ut et nos similiter faciamus.” Suppose the Passion to have taken place in our day, would our Lord and his disciples have sung their “Communio” _à la_ Mozart, _alla_ Palestrina, or in the style of Gregorian Chant? “_Et nos similiter faciamus._”

91 Come to his assistance, all ye saints of God; meet him, all ye angels of God; receive his soul, and present it before the Lord. May Jesus Christ, who called thee, receive thee, and may the angels conduct thee to the bosom of Abraham.

92 Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord! and let perpetual light shine upon them.

93 May the angels conduct thee to paradise; in thy coming may the martyrs receive thee and lead thee into the holy city Jerusalem. May the chorus of angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, once poor, mayest thou obtain eternal rest.

94 _Bothwell: A Tragedy._ By Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto & Windus. 1874.

95 _Alexander the Great_: A Dramatic Poem. By Aubrey de Vere. London: H. S. King & Co. 1874. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

96 _Brownson’s Review_, July, 1874, pp. 301, 304.

97 Some of Des Cartes’ works were, however, required to be corrected, and placed on the Index with that note.

98 _Défense de l’Ontologisme_, p. 1.

99 _De Orig. Idearum_, art. v. obj. 3.

100 CATHOLIC WORLD, vol iii. p. 294.

101 Meaning the _understanding_.

102 Ib. p. 519.

103 Ib. p. 520.

104 Ib. vol. iv. p. 660.

105 Carlyle, _French Revolution_, vol. i.

106 Neapolitan for a nervous attack.

107 _Catholic Orthodoxy._ By Rev. Dr. Overbeck.

108 _The Elements of Molecular Mechanics._ By Joseph Bayma, S.J., Professor of Philosophy, Stonyhurst College. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1866.

109 THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August, 1874, p. 581.

110 _The Elements of Molecular Mechanics_, pp. 28, 29.

111 Tongiorgi, _Cosmol._, n. 53.

112 In olden times it was the custom to ring on the chimes the hymns of the church, not the worldly or vulgar airs now too often heard.

113 _On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_: A series of Lectures delivered by the late Eugene O’Curry, M.R.I.A., Professor of Irish History and Archæology in the Catholic University of Ireland, etc., by W. K. Sullivan, Ph.D., Secretary of Ireland, etc. Edited, with an Introduction, Appendixes—the Royal Irish Academy, Professor of Chemistry to the Catholic University, etc. 3 vols. London: Williams & Norgate. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

114 Harps.

115 Otherwise known as Finn McOoul, General of the Militia of Ireland A.D. 283.

116 Oghams.

117 Félempesi, _La Vérité toute Entière_, p. 173.

118 Jourgniac, _Thirty‐eight Hours in the Abbaye_.

119 Mme. de Montasson, second wife by a morganatic marriage of the late Duke of Orleans, Egalité’s father.

120 “Until the day dawn and the day‐star arise in your hearts.”—2 S. Peter i. 19.

121 The technical term for a scarlet coat (worn by fox hunters) when it has seen service, and the tails have become _pink_ through exposure to the weather.

122 _Saturday Review_, Feb. 21, 1874, art. “Highland Constituencies.”

123 “Welch eine höchst weise Einrichtung! Wie glücklich ist Russland vor vielen Römisch‐Katholischen Ländern!”—_Hupel_, “Die kirchliche Statistik von Russland,” in the _Nordische Miscellanien_, part XI., Riga, 1786, p. 88.

124 First Series, vols. iii‐vii.

125 See Pékarski, _Learning and Literature in Russia under Peter the Great_. (In Russian) St. Petersburg, 1862. Vol. ii., pp. 469‐481.

126 Amongst the various writings in which Prokopovitch develops this thought might be noticed one which has for its title _An Historical Disquisition on the quality of pontiffs or high‐priests of idol‐ worship possessed by the Roman emperors, both pagan and Christian; for what reason, and in what sense they possessed it, and whether, in the Christian law, Christian sovereigns can be called Bishops and Pontiffs, and in what sense_. St. Petersburg, 1721. See _Pékarski_, _op. cit._, vol ii., p. 519.

127 Mgr. Plato, _Orthodox Doctrine; or, Christian Theology Abridged_. (In Russian) St. Petersburg, 1st ed., 1765; 2d ed., 1780.

128 See “The Act of Succession to the Throne of Russia,” April 5, 1797, _Compl. Coll._, Vol. xxiv. (17,910).

129 See the Ukases of the 3d Nov., 1798 (18,734), and of the 11th Dec., 1800 (19,684). See also on this subject our book: _The Popes of Rome and the Popes of the Oriental Church_. London: Longmans, 1871, pp. 78‐81.

130 _La Russie sera‐t‐elle Catholique?_ Par le Père J. Gagarin, S.J. Paris: Douniol, 1856.

131 See the _Ukases_, Nos. 18,734 and 19,684.

132 In the eastern provinces of the Russian Empire the Mahometans carry on an active propagandism at the expense of orthodoxy.

133 _Code of the Laws of the Russian Empire_, vol. xiv. “Statute for the Prevention and Extirpation of Offences against the Faith,” Arts. 92 and 97. Ed. 1857, pp. 18, 19.

134 To mention only the _Panslavists_, whose formula is well known: “Orthodoxy and nationality are synonymous.” If all Russians thought the same, the Catholics might spare themselves the trouble of any further controversy.

135 _Réglement ecclésiastique de Pierre le Grand, etc._, part i., p 16. Paris: Library of the Bibliographical Society, 75 Rue de Bac, 1874.

136 “The emperor, as a Christian sovereign, is the supreme defender and protector of the dogmas of the dominant faith, the guardian of orthodoxy and of all that concerns good order in the holy church.”—_Code of the Laws of the Russian Empire_; Fundam. Laws, art. 42, ed. 1857, p. 10.

137 We have it from an authentic source that the emperor had had made for himself, for this purpose, a set of (sacerdotal) vestments of sky‐blue velvet, and was so bent upon carrying out his intention that his principal favorite, Count Rostoptchin, only succeeded in dissuading him by reminding him that he had been twice married, and was therefore, according to the canons of the church, disqualified for offering the Holy Sacrifice.

138 Father Gruber, General of the Jesuits, who was in great favor with Paul, presented to the czar a project for reunion. By command of the czar the Archimandrite Eugenius (Volkhovichinoff), afterwards Metropolitan of Kieff, published in 1800 an answer to this project, in the form of a canonical dissertation, _On the Authority of the Pope_. See _The Russian Clergy_, by Père Gagarin, S.J., pp. 118, 119.

It appears that this affair was under consideration for several years, and even in the reign of Catherine II. And in fact Hupel, in a note of the manuscript in which we found the opening passage of this essay, mentions the rumors read by the newspapers that a complete (_pollige_) reunion of the Russian with the Catholic Church was about to be accomplished, and attributed these same rumors to the ex‐Jesuits. Hupel wrote in 1736. See _op. cit._ p. 88, note.

139 Schnitzler (J. L.), _Histoire intime de la Russie sous les Empereurs Alexandre et Nicolas_, Paris, Renouard, 1847, vol. i., note xiii.; _Dispositions religieuses de l’Empereur Alexandre_, p. 463, note xi.; _La Sainte Alliance et Mme. de Krudener_. See also a writing by the Protestant pastor, Empaytaz, _Notice sur Alexandre, Empereur de Russie_. Geneva, 1828.

140 We have endeavored to elucidate this point of history, without having arrived at any definite result; we have some reason to believe that all which was known of the last days of the Emperor Alexander has not been made public. The notes which we had collected upon this subject would here be out of place.

141 It was in consequence of this event that, not long afterwards, appeared the two works, respectively entitled _Persécutions et souffrances de l’Eglise Catholique en Russie_. Par un ancien Conseiller d’Etat en Russie (le Comte Arsène d’Harrer) Paris: Gaume, 1842; and _Vicissitudes de l’Eglise Catholique des deux rites en Pologne et en Russie_. Par le P. Theiner, prêtre de l’Oratoire. The French edition of this last work appeared in 1842, preceded by a remarkable introduction from the pen of Count de Montalembert. Paris: Sagnier and Bray.

142 Statute for the prevention and extirpation of offences against the faith, _Code_, etc., vol. xiv., ed. 1857, art. 97, p. 19.

143 See _Description of the Country Clergy in Russia_ (Paris, Franck, 1858); _The Russian Clergy_ (in Russian), Berlin, 1859; _Of the Organization of the Ecclesiastical Schools in Russia_ (in Russian), Leipsic, Wagner, 1863; _Of the Orthodox Clergy, Black and White, in Russia_ (in Russian), Leipsic, Wagner, 1866; the Père Gagarin on _The Russian Clergy_ (London, Burns & Oates, 1872); Eckardt, _Modern Russia_ (London, 1870), etc., etc.

144 Schédo‐Ferroti, _La Tolérance et le Schisme Religieux en Russie_. Berlin: Behr, 1863, pp. 292, 293.

145 _Id._, _ib._, p. 293.

146 The reader will find in the _Réglement Ecclésiastique_, just brought out in Paris, the passage to which we allude (p. 192, note).

147 _Schédo‐Ferroti_ (_op. cit._, pp. 328 and 318).

148 During the last few years endeavors have been made to raise the _status_ of the Russian clergy, and although it remains fundamentally the same, the government has given proof of no less good will than intelligence in its endeavors. In fact, terrible reprisals are in store for the upper classes whenever the people shall have lost all faith.

149 NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR.

CURRAGH CHASE, ADARE, IRELAND, Nov. 24, 1874.

REV. AND DEAR SIR: The public has taken recently such deserved interest in the _Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge_ that it has struck me that the last of the letters which I wrote to her before making my submission to the Catholic Church, in which I stated fully my reasons for taking that step, might be of use to many enquirers.

Readers of Sara Coleridge’s _Letters_ have often asked me, “But where is your part of the correspondence?” They may perhaps be glad to read at least one of those letters, to which many of hers were replies.

That letter I send you, with some preliminary remarks, this day, by book‐post. It is quite at your service, if you think it worth publishing in THE CATHOLIC WORLD....

I remain very truly yours, AUBREY DE VERE.

150 This statement is ambiguous. There are doubtless many persons, who have been brought up Catholics, who have never formally renounced the Catholic profession, and who are ready to declare their belief of many Catholic doctrines, but who doubt or disbelieve some one or more articles of faith, and have ceased to give unreserved allegiance to the authority of the church. Such persons have lost faith, and are not really Catholics, though they may call themselves by the name, and still enjoy some of the rights of members of the church. But every baptized member of the church has, at least, the habit of faith, if he has not destroyed it by a contrary act, _i.e._, by a formal sin against faith.—ED. C. W.

151 _Lehrbuch der Universalgeschichte_, von Dr H. Leo, 3d edit., vol. i. pp. 13, 14.

152 As a case in point, we may cite the law of the Pontifical States, which leaves the regulation of marriage among Jews to their own synagogue.

153 O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son!

154 _Following of Christ_, book iii. chap. v.

155 _The History of New South Wales._ With an account of Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand, Port Phillip, Moreton Bay, and other Australasian settlements. By Roderick Flanagan. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low. 1862.

_Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales and Victoria._ With a supplementary chapter on transportation and the ticket‐of‐leave system. By R. Therry, Esq., late one of the judges of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. London: Sampson Low. 1863.

156 See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, p. 828.

157 See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, p. 831.

158 By a strange irony of fate the same grotesque coat he had worn on the feast of the _Etre Suprême_ exactly six weeks before!

159 Shea.

160 _Narrative of Father Memôré._

161 With regard to the Anglican clergy, it may be observed that the state church of England is almost entirely for the benefit of the aristocracy, which sees its younger sons enter her “orders” all the more gladly because their subsistence is thus provided for without the patrimony of the head of the family being much diminished—the children of the aristocracy thus aiding to maintain an institution to which in a great measure its influence is owing. As to the German Protestant clergy, they are neither so influential nor so respected as the Anglican.

162 “Sir Galahad.”

163 Martinet, _L’Emmanuel, ou le remède à tous nos maux_. Paris; Lecoffre. 1850.

164 _Schédo‐Ferroti, op. cit._ ch. xv. p. 293.

165 It is not without reason that we insist upon this circumstance of being _in contact with the people_. If indeed the Russian Church were to unite herself to the Catholic Church, and the latter, following the toleration granted to the united Greeks, allowed the secular Russian clergy liberty to marry, the inconveniences we have noticed would be less felt, for the reason that, besides the fact that the Catholic Church would merely _permit_—never, either directly or indirectly, _compel_—priests to marry, there would always be a regular and celibate clergy side by side with the secular and married priests, and equally with them in contact with the people.

However, the barrenness in apostolic labors, and the inferior condition of all the Christian communities of Oriental rite among whom a married priesthood is permitted, oblige us to recognize in this permission a simple concession to human frailty; and their condition is a powerful argument in favor of the immense advantages, if not of the moral necessity, of ecclesiastical celibacy.

166 Tennyson, _Poetical Works_, “Sir Galahad.”

167 _Schédo‐Ferroti, op. cit._ p. 293.

168 _Schédo‐Ferroti_, _op. cit._ pp. 295, 296.

169 There are times, in the history of nations, when the moral necessity of certain institutions in the Catholic Church makes itself felt, even by the most incredulous. It is in Germany, as is well known, that the ecclesiastical law of the celibacy of priests has been most eagerly attacked; and it is from Germany that has come to us the most splendid apology for the firmness displayed by the Catholic Church with regard to this point of discipline. Those priests who are at this moment so valiantly wrestling against persecution and braving the loss of income, braving fines, prison, exile, and death itself—can one suppose they would be equally intrepid, did the existence of a wife and family depend upon their own?

170 We shall be excused from considering as an universal history of the Orthodox Church certain little manuals which we have found indicated in the catalogues of Russian bibliography. Besides, it is not only of Russia, but of all the countries of the Orthodox communion, that we ask for one single ecclesiastical history like those of Fleury, Rohrbacher, Henrion, the Abbé Darras, etc. (to quote French names only.) The Εκκλησιαστικὴ Ἱστορία (_Ecclesiastical History_) of Mgr. Mcletius, Metropolitan of Athens (Vienna, 1783‐95), cannot certainly be compared to them.

171 Voltaire, _Histoire de Pierre le Grand_, part ii. ch. xiv.

172 In the greater part of the country‐places the popes have not been in any seminary at all. They have been taught to read and write, to make themselves acquainted with the ceremonies of the church and the regulations of the czars, and then they have been ordained priests.

173 Mgr. Eugenius, _Historical Dictionary of the Ecclesiastical Writers of the Græco‐Russian Church who have lived in Russia_. (In Russian) St. Petersburg, 2d. ed., 1827.

174 We are so far from objecting to the exercise of censure upon writings which treat upon religious matters that, in a note to the _Réglement Ecclésiastique_ (p. 178), we in some sort express a desire for it, even with regard to what is uttered in the pulpit. Only we require as a condition that this censure should be exercised by a _competent authority_. Now, in Russia it is no longer the bishops, but the state, which, not as protector, but as lord and master of the church, rules and measures the manifestation of religious thought. It is against this illegitimate censure that we contend. Very far removed is the sentiment which bows its head before the religious autocracy of the czars from the submission of the Catholic, who bows before the church _because he owns in her a divine authority_. The submission of the Catholic is that which is due to the truth and to God. It elevates and ennobles.

175 We could mention cases in which the pope who wishes to speak to his bishop must fall on his knees at the door, even, of the room, and drag himself along thus to the prelate, to whom he must only speak kneeling.

176 _Statuti Generali ed altri documenti dei Framassoni pubblicati per la prima volta con note dichiarative._ Roma: 1874.

_Rituali Massonici del primo e del trentesimo grado detti di Apprendista e di Cavaliere Kadosh, per la prima volta pubblicati e commentati._ Roma: 1874.

177 The French Reformers were reproached for inserting this article, but it is found in the statutes of the Scottish Rite printed at Naples, the centre of Italian orthodoxy. Perhaps it was left an innocuous relic of bygone servitude, when royal Freemasons insisted on fettering the craft with this clause. But its value was as well understood then as now.

178 It is also explained, but not at this stage, that the invocation of S. John as patron of the lodges is a deception, _Janus_ being the real protector.

179 A living member of the French Academy, famous for his anti‐Christian writings, on his admission to this grade, struck the Pontifical mask with such violence that the poniard broke and wounded his hand, which he carried bandaged for some time after.

180 Eugénie de la Ferronays.

181 October, 1873, p. 707.

182 See the _Elements of Molecular Mechanics_, p. 147.

183 THE CATHOLIC WORLD, October, 1874, p. 1.

184 THE CATHOLIC WORLD for September, 1874. p. 729. Mr. Stallo might also see the _Elements of Molecular Mechanics_, book vi., on the constitution of molecules.

185 See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, p. 757. Also, August, 1874, p. 644 et seq.

186 See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, pp. 764, 765.

187 _Leisure: Its Moral and Political Economy._ By Severn Teackle Wallis. Baltimore: Printed by John Murphy & Co.

188 A fact.

189 At the incorporation of the Uniates of Lithuania into the Orthodox Church, under the Emperor Nicholas, the Synod of St. Petersburg declared in its celebrated decree of March 5, 1839, as follows: “The solemn confession expressed in the synodal act (of the apostate bishops), that the Lord God our Saviour Jesus Christ is alone the true Head of the only and true church, and the promise of dwelling in unanimity with the most holy orthodox patriarchs of the East, and with the most holy Synod, _leaves nothing more to require of the united Greek Church for the veritable and essential union of the faith_, and, for this reason, there remains nothing which can oppose itself to the hierarchical reunion” (_Persécutions et Souffrances_, etc., p. 118). Now, if there existed between the Catholic Church and the Russian Church a veritable doctrinal disagreement with regard to the Procession of the Holy Ghost, the Synod of St. Petersburg, in not requiring of the apostate bishops any retractation on this point, would have been guilty of an inconceivable compromise of the faith. We leave to orthodox Russians the task of defending it.

It has been stated also that there is a disagreement between us and the Russians on the subject of purgatory. We here give what we find in the catechism of the late Mgr. Philarete, in use in the schools. We make use of the French translation, which appeared in Paris, with the concurrence of the Russian government and the Synod.

Q. “What remark remains to be made respecting the souls of those who have died in the faith, but whose repentance has not had time to bear fruit?

A. “That, to obtain for them a happy resurrection, the prayers of those who are yet on this earth may be to them a great assistance, especially when joined to the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass and to the works of mercy, done in faith and in memory of the departed” (_Catéchisme détaille de l’Eglise Catholique orthodoxe d’Orient, examiné et approuvé par le Saint Synode de Russie._ Paris: Klinsiock, 1851. On the eleventh article [of the Nicene Creed], p. 89).

190 Ανατολικὴ Ομολογία τῆς χριστιανικῆς πίστεως. The first edition appeared in Latin, at Geneva, in 1629; the second, four years later, in Greek and Latin. The _Confession_ of Cyril‐Lucar was inserted by Kimmel in his work _Libri Symbolici Ecclesiæ Orientalis_. Jenæ, 1843. (Second ed. under the title of _Monumenta Fidei Ecclesiæ Orientalis_. Jenæ, 1850.)

191 The title of this tract is, _Protestantism and Churches in the East_. The cause of its appearance was the pretension of the Church of England—which, not without analogy with the Russian Church, recognized the sovereign of the country as its head, after Jesus Christ—in giving to the East a bishop invested by a mandate of Queen Victoria, with a jurisdiction embracing the whole of Syria, Chaldæa, Egypt, and Abyssinia. Finally, its object is to examine the formula, “No peace with Rome, but union and agreement _at any price_ with the Syrians, the Abyssinians, and the _Greeks_,” and to prove the absolute impossibility of the Anglican and the Orthodox Churches being able honestly to agree together in point of doctrine.

If it be true that, in consequence of the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, a great sympathy with the Anglican Church has taken possession of the aristocracy of St. Petersburg, No. 42 of the _Tracts for the Times_ ought to be reprinted in English, translated and printed in Russian, and widely disseminated in the two languages. It is the honesty itself of the two churches which is at stake.

192 The reader will not take it amiss if he should find here several points already developed in our former essay, _The Pope of Rome and the Popes of the Oriental Orthodox Church._ (London: Longmans, 1871.) It is almost impossible, in touching upon the same subject, entirely to avoid repetition; and, besides, there are certain ideas which require to be put forward pretty frequently, if they are sufficiently to arrest public attention.

Well, then, there is one idea, which we would willingly call the “providential idea” of the times, of so decisive a tendency does it appear to us for hastening the end of the schism and the return of the Græco‐Russian Church to Catholic unity. It is the idea to which we now return, and which forms the subject of the entire third chapter of the essay just mentioned. We live in a century of revolutions; now, whilst the Catholic Church, in presence of the general overturning of thrones, dynasties and political constitutions, only strengthens, with her marvellous unity, the powers of her government, the Orthodox Eastern Church is given up defenceless to all the chances of political revolutions, and condemned, in her various branches, to submit to the form of government which these revolutions impose upon her. This fact alone is of a nature to lead back a goodly number of our separated brethren. We have not here to discuss lofty and abstract matters; we have to reflect whether Jesus Christ could thus have given up his church to the mercy of political revolutions. The man of the people, the illiterate, the workman, whose every moment is precious because he must live by the labor of his hands, can decide this question as easily as the theologian, the philosopher, and the statesman. It is a reflection which requires neither study nor any form of reasoning, nor even time; it is an argument self‐evident to all—the “popular argument,” which must decide between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Eastern Communion.

After this our repetitions will be treated with indulgence, as will also our inability to make any promise not to recur, even more than once, to this same subject—in short, our desire will be found legitimate that the _religious press of every country_ should make the idea which we have just expressed its own; that it should develop and popularize it, and make it really “the providential idea of the times.”

193 This patriarch was afterwards deposed _on account of his refusal to sign the declaration of the council_, and the Sublime Porte was obliged to nominate a successor.

194 Scarcely was the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cyril, arrested and imprisoned, before Russia began to take reprisals against the Greek Church.

195 Expression of the manifesto of the Synod of St. Petersburg, _On the Reunion of the Uniates with the Orthodox Church in the Russian Empire, printed by order of the Most Holy Synod of St. Petersburg_. Synodal Press, 1839. See _Persécutions et Souffrances_, etc., pp. 157‐166.

196 From what we have been able to ascertain, the conduct of the Russian Church upon this point is not so invariably uniform as to make it impossible to quote some exceptions to what we have just mentioned. It is very certain, however, that these exceptions do not regard great personages, who are always dispensed from submitting to baptism by immersion. To mention a recent example: the Princess Dagmar was admitted into the Russian Church without being required to receive a second baptism. The same thing was done in the last century. Voltaire having shown himself persuaded that the Russian Church baptized Protestants, baptized by infusion, was reproved by Catherine II. in the following terms: “As head of the Greek Church, I cannot honestly leave you unrebuked in your error. The Greek Church does not rebaptize at all. The Grand Duchess, etc.” (Vide _Kegl. Eccles._, p. 86, _note_.) What Catherine here calls the Greek Church is the Russian. Besides, Catherine herself had been received into the Russian Church without being rebaptized, and it was of this example that William Frederick Lütiens, the Lutheran author of the _Dissertatio de Religione Ruthenorum Hodierna_, did not fail to avail himself, in maintaining that upon this point also the Russians were in agreement with the Lutherans. “If the Russians of former days” (_Rutheni veteres_), writes Lütiens, “did not recognize as valid the baptism (by infusion) of our church, it cannot be attributed solely to their belief in the necessity of their ceremonies, but also to the hatred which, from the calumnies of the Romanists, they nourished against our Lutheran Church ...” (_Dissert._, etc., pp. 86, 7).

Besides, we find the following in the _Russian Clergy_ of Father Gagarin: “The _Ecclesiastical Talk_ (Doukhovnaia Beseda) of Sept. 17, 1866, was seeking for a means of reconciling on this point the Greek and Russian Churches. Nothing is stranger than the idea it has entertained. If we are to believe the _Ecclesiastical Talk_, the Greek Church fully admits the validity of baptism otherwise than by immersion, but has been obliged to exact a new baptism from those Latins seeking admission into her bosom, _in order to draw a deeper line of demarcation between Greeks and Latins, from fear of a reconciliation_, and to this end has attempted nothing less than _to make the Greeks believe_ that the Latins were not Christians. We should never dare to attribute to the Greek Church such a proceeding. Lying, calumny, profanation of a sacrament that cannot be repeated—all this, according to the _Ecclesiastical Talk_, the Greek Church would knowingly and willingly do! Reading this, we cannot believe our eyes. And this journal is published by the Ecclesiastical Academy of St. Petersburg, under the eye and with the approbation of the Synod!” (_The Russian Clergy, translated from the French of Father Gagarin, S.J._, by Ch. Du Gard Makepeace, M.A. London: Burns and Oates, 1872; p. 272.)

197 The Council of Constantinople of 1872 has been acknowledged by one portion of the Orthodox Church, and rejected by the other. The church of the Hellenic kingdom maintains the authority of the council; a portion of the Russian Church rejects it. The Orthodox Church is thus divided into two camps; and, according to the tenor of the acts of the Council of 1872, all that portion of the Russian Church which does not admit the authority of the council is, therefore, at this present time excommunicate.

198 _Confessio Orthodoxa Fidei, Catholicæ et Apostolicæ Ecclesiæ Orientalis._ Quæst. lxxxiii. in Kimmel’s work, _Libri Symbolici Ecclesiæ Orientalis_, p. 153.

199 _Catéchisme Détaillé._ On the ninth article, p. 95.

200 It is thus that Anthimus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, expressed himself in a document concerning the independence of the Orthodox Church of the Hellenic kingdom. See _The Pope of Rome_, etc., p. 142. French ed., p. 227.

201 Message of Marshal MacMahon to the French Assembly.

202 Letter to M. Stoffels, Nov. 30, 1841 (_Memoir and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville_).

203 Letter to Stoffels, July 21, 1848.

204 Mr. Senior’s _Journal_, April 26, 1858.

205 _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, v. i. p. 158.

206 McGee’s _Cath. Hist. America_.