"Would any of these youths who hear me," added he turning round,

"like to break the fine-looking steed at the games, before all the

people, instead of Claudius?"

No one replied.

"It will be a distinguished act," persisted he.

Dead silence still.

"Then I will do it myself," he said. "Magister, make a formal note of

the matter in your tablets; and be so good as to inform the Cæsar of

it, in order that I, on my side, may learn place and time."

The magister, with a low bow and a face expressing the most generous

and boundless astonishment, grasped his prettily-mounted stylus,

and taking the pengillarin from his girdle drew a long breath, and

requested Paulus to favor him with his name and address.

"I am," replied he, "the knight Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, son of one

of the victors at Philippi, nephew of the ex-triumvir. I reside at

Crispus's inn, and am at present a promised prisoner of Velleius

Paterculus, the military tribune."

While the steward wrote in his tablets, Benigna uttered one or two

little gasps and fairly fainted away. The slave Claudius saved her

from falling, and he now placed her on a bench against the wall.

Paulus, intimating that he would like to return to Crispus's hostelry

before dark, and having learnt, in reply to a question, that Claudius

could procure from Thellus, the gladiator, a vehicle for Benigna, and

that he would request Thellus himself to convey her home, turned to

take leave of Dion.

The Athenian, however, said he would show him the way out of the

palace. They went silent and thoughtful. In the impluvium they found

a little crowd surrounding Augustus, who had returned from his

promenade to the camp, and who was throwing crumbs of bread among

some pigeons near the central fountain.

Two ladies were of the company, one of whom, in advanced age, was

evidently the Empress Livia, but for whose influence and management

Germanicus--certainly not her ungrateful son Tiberius--would have

been the next master of the world. The other lady, who was past her

prime, had still abundant vestiges of a beauty which must once have

been very remarkable.

She was painted red and plastered white, with immense care, to look

some fifteen years younger than she truly was.

Her countenance betrayed to a good physiognomist, at first glance,

the horrible life she had led. Paulus, whose experience was little,

and, although she fastened upon him a flaming glance, which she

intended to be full both of condescension and fascination, thought

that he had seldom seen a woman either more repulsive or more

insanely haughty.

It was Julia, the new and abhorred wife of Tiberius. Not long before,

at the request of Augustus, who was always planning to dispose of

Julia, Tiberius had given up for her the only woman he ever loved,

Agrippina Marcella.

Tiberius so loved her, if it deserves to be termed love, that when,

being thus deserted, she took another husband, (Asinius Gallus,) he,

mad with jealousy, threw him into a dungeon and kept him there till

he died, as Suetonius and Tacitus record.

"Ah my Athenian!" said the emperor to Dionysius, placing a hand

affectionately on the youth's shoulder, "could you satisfy me that

those splendid theories of yours are more than dreams and fancies;

that really there is one eternal, all-wise, and omnipotent spirit,

who made this universal frame of things, and governs it as an

absolute monarch; that he made us; that in us he made a spirit,

a soul, a ghost, a thinking principle, which will never die; and

that I, who am going down to the tomb, am only to change my mode of

existence; that I shall not wholly descend thither; that an urn will

not contain every thing which will remain of me; and all this in a

very different sense from that which poor Horace meant. But why speak

of it? Has not Plato failed?"

"Plato," replied Dionysius, "neither quite failed nor is quite

understood, illustrious emperor. But you were saying, if I could

satisfy you. Be pleased to finish. Grant I could satisfy you; what

then?"

"Satisfy me that one eternal sovereign of the universe lives, and

that what now thinks in me," returned the emperor, while the courtly

group made a circle, "will never cease to think; that what is now

conscious within me will be conscious for ever; that now, in more

than a mere poetical allusion to my fame--and on the word of Augustus

Cæsar, there is no reasonable request within the entire reach and

compass of my power which I will refuse you."

"And what sort of a hearing, emperor," inquired Dion, "and under what

circumstances, and upon what conditions, will you be pleased to give

me? and when? and where?"

"In this palace, before the games end," replied Augustus. "The

hearing shall form an evening's entertainment for our whole circle

and attendance. You shall sustain your doctrines, while our

celebrated advocates and orators, Antistius Labio and Domitius Afer,

who disagree with them, I know, shall oppose you. Let me see. The

Cæsars, Tiberius and Germanicus, with their ladies, and our host

Mamurra and his family, and all our circle, shall be present. Titus

Livy, Lucius Varius, Velleius Paterculus, and the greatest orator

Rome ever produced, except Cicero" (the old man 'mentioned with

watery eyes the incomparable genius to whose murder he had consented

in his youth)--"I mean Quintus Haterius--shall form a judicial jury.

Haterius shall pronounce the sentence. Dare you face such an ordeal?"

"I will accept it," replied the Athenian, blushing; "I will accept

the ordeal with fear. Daring is contrasted with trembling; but,

although my daring trembles, yet my trepidation dares."

"Oh! how enchanting!" cried the august Julia; "we shall hear

the eloquent Athenian." And she clasped her hands and sent an

unutterable glance toward Dion, who saw it not.

"It will be very interesting indeed," added the aged empress.

"Better for once than even the mighty comedy of the palace," said

Lucius Varius.

"Better than the gladiators," added Velleius Paterculus.

"An idea worthy of the time of Virgil and Mæcenas," said Titus Livy.

"Worthy of Augustus's time," subjoined Tiberius, who was leaning

against one of the pillars which supported the gallery of the

impluvium.

"Worthy of his dotage," muttered Cneius Piso to Tiberius, with a

scowl.

"Worthy," said a handsome man, with wavy, crisp, brown locks, in

the early prime of life, whose military tunic was crossed with the

broad purple stripe, "worthy of Athens in the days of Plato; and as

Demosthenes addressed the people after listening to the reporter of

Socrates, so Haterius shall tell this company what he thinks, after

listening to Dion."

"Haterius is getting old," said Haterius.

"You may live," said Augustus, "to be a hundred, but you will never

be old; just as our Cneius Piso here never was young."

There was a laugh. The Haterius in question was he to whom Ben

Jonson compared Shakespeare as a talker, and of whom, then past

eighty, Augustus used, Seneca tells us, to say that his careering

thoughts resembled a chariot whose rapidity threatened to set

its own wheels on fire, and that he required to be held by a

drag--"_sufflaminandus_."

Dion now bowed and was moving away, followed modestly by Paulus,

who desired to draw no attention to himself, when the steward, or

_magister_, glided quickly up the colonnade of the impluvium to the

pillar against which Tiberius was leaning, whispered something,

handed his tablets to the Cæsar, and, in answer to a glance of

surprised inquiry, looked toward and indicated Paulus.

Tiberius immediately passed Paulus and Dion, saying in an under tone,

"Follow me," and led the way into a small empty chamber, of which,

when the two youths had entered it, he closed the door.

"You are going to break the horse called Sejanus?" said he, turning

round and standing.

Paulus assented.

"Then you must do so on the fourth day from this, in the

review-ground of the camp, an hour before sunset."

Paulus bowed.

"Have you any thing to inquire, to request, or to observe?" pursued

Tiberius.

"Am I to ride the horse muzzled, sir?" asked the youth.

"The muzzle will be snatched off by a contrivance of the cavasson,

after you mount him," replied Tiberius, looking steadfastly at the

other.

"Then, instead of a whip, may I carry any instrument I please in my

hands?" demanded Paulus; "my sword, for example?"

"Yes," answered Tiberius; "but you must not injure the horse; he is

of matchless price."

"But" persisted Paulus, "your justice, illustrious Cæsar, will make

a distinction between any injury which the steed may do to himself

and any which I may do to him. For instance, he might dash himself

against some obstruction, or into the river Liris, and in trying to

clamber out again might be harmed. Such injuries would be inflicted

by himself, not by me. The hurt I shall do him either by spear, or by

sword, or by any other instrument, will not be intended to touch his

life or his health, nor likely to do so. If I do make any scars, I

_think_ the hair will grow again."

"He will not be so scrupulous on his side," said Tiberius; "however,

your distinction is reasonable. Have you any thing else to ask?"

"Certainly I have," said Paulus; "it is that no one shall give him

any food or drink, except what I myself shall bring, for twenty-four

hours before I ride him."

Tiberius uttered a disagreeable laugh.

"Am I to let you starve Sejanus?" he asked.

"That is not my meaning, sir," answered Paulus quietly. "I will give

him as much corn and water as he will take. I wish to prevent him

from having any other kind of provender. There are articles which

will make a horse drunk or mad."

"I agree," replied Tiberius, "that he shall have only corn and water,

provided he have as much of both as my own servant wishes; nor have I

any objection that the servant should receive these articles from you

alone, or from your groom."

Paulus inclined his head and kept silence.

"Nothing more to stipulate, I perceive," observed Tiberius.

The youth admitted that he had not; and, seeing the Cæsar move, he

opened the door, held it open while the great man passed through, and

then taking a friendly leave of Dion, hastily quitted the palace.

Tiberius, meeting Sejanus, took him aside and said,

"We have got rid of the brother! You must have every thing ready

to convey her to Rome the fifth day from this. And now, enough of

private matters. I am sick of them. The affairs of the empire await

me!"

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[160] Suetonius, Pliny, and Seneca all attest the currency of this

and similar jokes against Tiberius during his very lifetime.

THE ANCIENT IRISH CHURCHES.

BY W. MAZIERE BRADY, D.D.

It was proposed, in the first draught of Mr. Gladstone's bill for the

disestablishment of the Irish Church, to erect some of the cathedrals

into national monuments, and to set apart toward the cost of their

future repair a portion of the fund derived from the sale of church

temporalities. This clause, however, was set aside; but even if it

had been retained, it would not have given satisfaction. If it be the

sincere desire of Mr. Gladstone to do justice to Catholic Ireland,

and to conciliate her people, but one course remains open to him

in regard to the ancient shrines of Catholic worship, namely, to

restore them to their original owners. Many of these cathedrals and

churches are altogether unsuited to the requirements of Protestant

religious service. Some of them are too large to be maintained by

the tiny congregations which occasionally visit them. Others require

a costly annual outlay too great to be undertaken at the expense of

the few families in whose neighborhood they lie. Would it not, then,

manifestly tend to the benefit alike of Catholics and Protestants,

that the latter, on terms advantageous to themselves, should yield

to the former the possession of those buildings which Protestants do

not require for _bona-fide_ ends, but which possess, in the eyes of

Catholics, a peculiarly sacred, and, at the same time, a perfectly

legitimate value?

Some ancient Catholic temple is perhaps situated in a district

inhabited by twenty or thirty Protestants, and five thousand or

ten thousand Catholics. The Protestants cannot fill a corner of

the spacious fabric. They attach no value to it as the shrine

of a venerated saint. Its very capabilities for an ornate and

splendid Catholic ritual render it only the less fit for the simple

requirements of Protestant worship. Protestants can gain nothing

by retaining such a temple, save the privilege of keeping it as a

trophy of a bygone and ill-omened ascendency. But if the British

Parliament were to ordain that such temples should be purchased

from Protestants, who scarcely require them, and given to Catholics

to supply their evident wants, then a visible proof would at once

be afforded to the Irish nation that disestablishment was no

coldly conceived or niggardly administered instalment of justice,

but a ready instrument for cordial reconciliation of creeds and

nationalities.

It is ridiculous to urge as an objection, that Protestants in

general attach a value, other than a pecuniary or political one, to

the sites of the shrines of ancient Irish saints. Few Protestants

have any veneration for St. Patrick, St. Brigid, or St. Nicholas.

Not one Protestant in a thousand has so much as even heard of the

names of St. Elbe, St. Aidan, St. Colman, or St. Molana. Irish

Protestant bishops often deny the sacredness of holy places, and,

when consecrating a site for the erection of a church, take the

opportunity to explain such consecration to be a mere form of law.

Some Protestant bishops entertained objections to the selection of

any titles for churches, save those of Christ and his apostles. They

thought it allowable to celebrate divine service in a building called

Christ church, or St. Peter's, or St. John's, but conceived it to be

scarcely tolerable and semi-popish to dedicate an edifice for worship

under the invocation of St. George, St. Patrick, or St. Michael. In

some dioceses in Ireland, during the last century, the consecration

of Protestant churches was on several occasions designedly omitted

in deference to such scruples of conscience. But the very names of

the ancient Irish saints are precious household words with Catholics,

who dearly prize the holy shrine, the sacred well, the hallowed ruins

consecrated by the lingering memories of the virgins, confessors,

and martyrs whose lives were devoted to the conversion of Ireland.

The Catholic peasant, as he sorrowfully gazes upon the desecrated

remains of some fallen abbey, or upon the mouldering walls of a

roofless oratory, often breathes a hopeless prayer that an unexpected

turn of fortune would once again fill with robed monks the arched

and pillared cloisters, and replace the solemn solitary hermit in

his peaceful cell. The reconsecration of their sacred shrines and

temples, long defaced and profaned by neglect, would realize one

of the fondest dreams of Irishmen. Why do not British statesmen

utilize, for the general benefit of their country, the pious

sentiments which, in a religious point of view, they as Protestants

may fail to appreciate, but which, in a political aspect, it seems

a criminal blindness to disregard? The legislators who freely vote

imperial funds to provide Catholic priests and altars for Catholic

soldiers, sailors, convicts, and paupers, cannot possibly entertain

religious scruples against applying a portion of the ancient Catholic

endowments of Ireland towards the purpose of restoring to their

original uses some of the sites and shrines whose traditions are

still potent enough in Ireland to sway the national sympathies.

No injury can result to Protestantism from the adoption of a course

which would not merely increase the pecuniary resources of their

church, but also tend materially to promote peace and good-will

between men of different creeds. There are many ancient churches in

Ireland which could be specified as almost useless to Protestants,

but yet most precious and valuable if placed in the hands of

Catholics. Many of the old Irish cathedrals are entirely, and some

are almost entirely deserted. Ardagh, founded by St. Patrick,

was reckoned among "the most ancient cathedrals of Ireland." Its

first bishop--St. Mell--was buried "in his own church of Ardagh,"

wherein worship a few Protestants who care but little either for

St. Mell or St. Patrick. The entire Protestant population of Ardagh

parish is less than one hundred and fifty, while the Catholics

number nearly two and a half thousands. There is but a scanty

congregation of Protestants at Lismore, where St. Carthage, or at

Leighlin, where St. Laserian was interred. At Howth, near Dublin,

are the ruins--still capable of restoration--of a beautiful abbey

and college. The college is occupied by poor tenants. The abbey is

roofless, standing in a graveyard, choked with weeds and filth,

of which the Protestant incumbent of the parish is custodian. St.

Canice--the patron saint of Kilkenny--was buried, toward the end

of the sixth century, at Aghadoe. "Aghadoe"--so wrote the Rev.

M. Kelly, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Maynooth, in his

_Calendar of Irish Saints_--"at present is a ruin, its walls nearly

perfect, but, like too many similar edifices in Ireland, all profaned

by sickening desecration. Around it still bloom in perennial verdure

its far-famed pastures, in a plain naturally rich, and improved by

the monastic culture of a thousand years. The buildings are now used

as ox-pens which were once the favorite home of the pilgrim and

stranger." There are a score of other ruined temples like Aghadoe,

which in their present condition are a disgrace to civilization; and

yet are possessed of traditions which render them sacred in the eyes

of Catholics, who would gladly rescue them from further decay and

restore them to their ancient use.

Every tourist in Connemara has doubtless visited the famous

collegiate church of St. Nicholas, in Galway. It is a vast temple,

capable of containing six or seven thousand worshippers. Its size,

the style of its architecture, and its historical traditions combine

to render it eminently suitable to be the cathedral church of the

Catholic population of Galway. It anciently was, not precisely

a cathedral, but the church of the Catholic warden--a dignitary

who possessed episcopal jurisdiction, being only subject to the

visitation of the Archbishop of Tuam. It is now the church of

the Protestant warden, or minister, who performs divine service,

according to the Anglican ritual, in a portion of the transept, for

the benefit of those members of the Anglican Church who inhabit the

immediate neighborhood. There is now no Protestant bishop resident in

Galway, nor has any such functionary since the era of the Reformation

made Galway his headquarters. So that this once splendid building

is absolutely thrown away upon Protestants, being above ten times

too large for a parochial church, and being utterly useless to them

for a cathedral. The fabric of this grand relic from Catholicity

has been allowed to fall into decay to such an extent that about

five thousand pounds are now required to restore it or put it into

permanent repair. It is unlikely that the Protestants of Galway will

contribute this sum, or take steps to prevent this noble national

monument from sinking, at no distant period, into hopeless ruin.

The population of the entire county of Galway consisted, in 1861,

of 261,951 Catholics and 8202 Anglicans, only a few hundred of the

latter being residents in the town of Galway and its suburbs. The

Catholic wardenship was changed into a bishopric by Pope Gregory

XVI., in 1830, when Dr. French, who was then Bishop of Kilmacduagh

and Kilfenora, and also Warden of Galway, retired to this diocese. In

the same year, Dr. Browne who was subsequently translated to Elphin,

became the first Bishop of Galway. Neither Bishop Browne, nor his

successor Bishop O'Donnell, nor Dr. McEvilly, who became Bishop of

Galway in 1857, were able to provide a suitable cathedral for the

Galway Catholics. The present pro-cathedral affords accommodation to

about four thousand persons, and upon the occasion of missions is

thronged to a dangerous excess. The Catholics of Galway would gladly

avail themselves of any opportunity which would render it possible

for them to obtain St. Nicholas, the church of their forefathers,

for a cathedral. The restoration to Catholic purposes of that

edifice, which is a world too wide for Protestant wants, would confer

a singular benefit upon an immense number of Catholics, without

inflicting the least injury upon Protestants. The present Anglican

Warden of Galway is not young enough to enable him, by means of

commutation under Mr. Gladstone's bill to do much toward providing an

endowment for his successors. The payment of a few thousand pounds,

out of the funds of the Commissioners of Church Temporalities, to the

Galway Protestants, in compensation for the loss of a fabric which

they find too large for use and too costly to repair, would enable

them not only to obtain a more convenient place of worship than the

corner of the spacious transept they now occupy, but also would help

them to provide the nucleus of a local endowment for Protestant

ministrations after the decease of the present warden.

The inhabitants of "the city of the tribes" entertain no higher

veneration for the church of St. Nicholas than is felt by the men of

Munster for the celebrated Rock of Cashel of the Kings. In ancient

years the "Rock" was a natural fortress, standing high over the

surrounding plain, and proudly overlooking the thronged city which

lay beneath its shelter. Upon the elevated plateau which crowns the

submit of the "Rock," now stand the ruins of the former cathedral,

and other ecclesiastical buildings, including the famous chapel of

King Cormac, all of which, to the infinite discredit of England, have

long since been deliberately abandoned to decay. The Protestants

of Cashel ceased, somewhat more than a century ago, to occupy the

old Catholic cathedral as a place of worship. Their archbishop, an

Englishman named Price, disliked the fatigue of ascending the gradual

incline which leads to the "Rock," and removed his throne to the

present cathedral, a barn-like edifice which stands on the level

ground near to the episcopal palace. In 1838, Dr. Laurence, the last

Protestant Archbishop of Cashel, died, and the see being reduced to a

bishopric in union with three other dioceses, the Protestant bishop

selected for his residence the city of Waterford in preference to

Cashel. The beautiful cathedral, left roofless by Archbishop Price,

and exposed since his time to the ravages of more than a hundred

winters, is nevertheless still capable of restoration. The fabric,

and the site whereon the cathedral and the other ruins stand, are

at present vested partly in the Protestant dean and chapter, and

partly in the Vicars Choral of Cashel. Upon the death of these

officials, their rights will revert to the Commissioners of Church

Temporalities. But these disestablished functionaries may perhaps

find it to their personal advantage, as well as to that of their

church, to make an earlier surrender of their territorial privileges.

Whenever the Commissioners of Temporalities shall have become the

owners of the Rock of Cashel, they will have to consider what they

will do with it. They may determine to sell it, or else may transfer

it as a burial-ground to the local poor-law guardians. Either

alternative will be in the highest degree discreditable to British

legislation. There is something atrocious in the idea of offering by

public sale the temple whose almost every stone was marked by the

pious workmen with the mystic tokens of their craft, and upon whose

decoration kings were wont to lavish their choicest treasures to make

it worthier for the worship of the Most High. It will be sacrilegious

to submit to auction the soil wherein lies the mouldering dust of

countless priests and prelates, chieftains and princes. On the

other hand, it will be miserable and pitiable in the extreme to

consign what may be termed the _Terra Sancta_ of ancient Ireland

to the care of a pauper burial board. The zeal of rural guardians

guided economically by the country squire, or his bailiff, would be

worse even than the scornful vandalism of Archbishop Price. If the

dead themselves could speak or feel, they would doubtless shudder

in their tombs at the ring of the salesman's hammer, and protest

with equal horror against the indignity of including the repair of

their graves amongst the items of the county poor-rate. They would

accept, in preference to such degradation, the rude guardianship of

the elements. Nature, even when she destroys, is reverent, flinging

a green pall of ivy around the tower which her disintegrating arms

encircle, and spreading a rich carpet of moss over the dust of those

whom she draws with the embrace of death to her bosom. The winds and

waves, the floods and storms, may bring a more rapid dissolution upon

deserted monuments of heroes, but at least they inflict no dishonor.

But why should the British Parliament suffer the national memorials

of Ireland to perish without an effort to preserve them? It can be no

gratification to the vanity of Great Britain thus to perpetuate, so

long as a trace of the ruined temple or broken altar may be spared,

the tokens of a policy able, indeed, to insult and to hinder, but

powerless to supplant or destroy the faith of the Irish people.

It cannot, alas! be denied that England seized by force upon that

Catholic church of Cashel, banished its priests, and employed, for

three centuries, its revenues to teach a hostile religion. That

policy has been reversed. It would be a mode, no less honorable

than wise, of confessing the folly and guilt of such a policy, were

England to give back the ruins which have survived it, and allow the

Catholic archbishop and clergy to restore and reconsecrate their

ancient cathedral and celebrate again Catholic worship upon the Rock

of Cashel.

Let us turn from Galway and Cashel to the metropolis of Ireland.

It was felt, so far back as the reign of Elizabeth, that two

Protestant cathedrals were too many for Dublin. "Here be in this

little city"--so wrote the lord-deputy to Walsingham in 1584--"two

great cathedral churches, richly endowed, and too near together for

any good they do; the one of them, dedicated to St. Patrick, had

in more superstitious reputation than the other, dedicated to the

name of Christ, and for that respect only, though there were none

other, fitter to be suppressed than continued."[161] And a few months

later, the same chief governor of Ireland again reminded the queen's

secretary of state of the uselessness of retaining St. Patrick's as

a cathedral. "We have beside it," remarked Perrott, "in the heart of

this city, Christ church, which is a sufficient cathedral, so as St.

Patrick's is superfluous, except it be to maintain a few bad singers

to satisfy the covetous humors of some, as much or more devoted to

St. Patrick's name than to Christ's."[162] The rabid Puritanism of

Lord-Deputy Perrott, who hoped that "Christ would devour St. Patrick

and a number of his devoted followers too,"[163] was not utterly

devoid of truth and common sense. The maintenance of the cathedral

of St. Patrick has rather proved a hinderance than a benefit to

Protestants. Its revenues have not been sufficient to keep up a

separate choir of singers; for most of the St. Patrick's choirmen

belong also to Christ church, and their efficiency is impaired by

being divided between two cathedrals. But whatever may be the value

of St. Patrick's as a place for the performance of church music,

its inutility as a place for Protestant worship is notorious. Its

situation is remote from the fashionable quarter of Dublin and from

those streets which Protestants inhabit. Many Protestants flock

to St. Patrick's to hear the choral music, or, as they sometimes

profanely term it, "Paddy's Opera;" but very few, if any, attend

that cathedral for the purposes of prayer or worship. In fact, St.

Patrick's, in 1870, is what it was three hundred years ago, not

only a superfluous cathedral, but one whose atmosphere is unsuited

to the genius of Protestantism. There is no place in the Anglican

ritual for the apostle of Ireland. His memory is not an object of

religious veneration; nor was any day set apart for his honor by the

compilers of the Protestant liturgy. His name, like that of any other

saint, acts as a repellant, not as a stimulant, upon the devotion of

Protestants. Sir Benjamin Guinness, who rescued from ruin the fabric

of St. Patrick's, preferred to say his prayers and hear sermons

elsewhere.

Now that disestablishment has come upon the Protestant church, the

evil of having two cathedrals in Dublin appears greater than ever.

How, possibly, can funds be provided by Protestants to maintain

both churches, Christ church and St. Patrick's? The latter had

nearly fallen to decay but for the munificence of an individual.

The former is now in want of substantial repairs, absolutely

necessary to preserve it from ruin. Yet it is clearly the pecuniary

interest of Protestants to give up St. Patrick's rather than Christ

church, because the money value of Christ church, such is its

present condition, is insignificant; while that of St. Patrick's

is considerable enough to defray the charge of restoring Christ

church, and to leave over and above a wide margin of surplus, which

the church body may employ as a Protestant endowment fund. The sum

expended by the late Sir Benjamin Guinness on St. Patrick's is said

to have been £100,000; and, according to a recently printed estimate

of Mr. Street, a London architect of eminence, the sum of £8000 will

be sufficient to rebuild one of the side aisles of Christ church, and

put the rest of the building into a condition of permanent repair.

But there are other and more important considerations which make

Christ church the more desirable cathedral for Protestants to

retain. It is the old Chapel Royal of Dublin, the place where the

deputies and chief governors were formerly sworn into office, and

where the state sermons were preached before the lords and commons

of the Irish parliament. The lord-lieutenant's pew is at present

frequently attended by members of the viceregal staff and other

government officials. The situation of Christ church in the immediate

vicinity of the castle renders it suitable to be preserved as the

state church in Dublin for the accommodation of royal visitors and

Protestant viceroys. Christ church, moreover, is beyond question the

chief cathedral of the Protestant archbishop and clergy of Dublin.

The members of its chapter are few in number, consisting of a dean,

archdeacon, treasurer, chancellor, and three prebendaries. The

Protestant church body, if it determines upon supporting cathedral

functionaries at all in Dublin, may find it practicable to do so

with efficiency and some show of dignity in Christ church, without

breaking up, or materially altering, the present constitution of

the chapter. It is likely, moreover, that the Duke of Leinster,

the head of the Protestant nobility of Ireland, who will receive a

considerable sum of money under the church act, in compensation for

the loss of his church patronage, will be glad to contribute toward

the support of Christ church as the Protestant cathedral, especially

as it is the ancient burial place of many of his ancestors, so

famous in Irish annals under their historical title of Earls of

Kildare.

To Catholics the gift of St. Patrick's would be precious, as the

restoration to them of a cathedral which from its traditions has

surpassing claims to their veneration. Their present pro-cathedral

is regarded only as a temporary one, and possesses no historical

memories to stir the feelings of its congregation. The constitution

of the Catholic diocese of Dublin follows the model of St. Patrick's

as far as regards the number and titles of the prebendaries; and

little, if any, change would be necessary to render that cathedral

fully answerable to the requirements of Catholic worship. And very

glorious, truly, are the memories and traditions which cluster

around the spot whereon St. Patrick himself erected a church, and

hallowed it by his name. Near it was the fountain in whose waters

the apostle baptized Alphin, the heathen king of Dublin. Usher,

the learned Protestant antiquary and divine, tells us that he had

seen this fountain; that it stood near the steeple; and that, a

little before the year 1639, it was shut up and inclosed within a

private house. The temple, built by Archbishop Comyn, on the site

of the ancient church of Patrick, was styled by Sir James Ware

"the noblest cathedral in the kingdom." It was dedicated to God,

the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Patrick. It was the burial-place

of many Catholic prelates. In it were interred Fulk de Saunford

and his brother John, and Alexander de Bicknor. Richard Talbot,

brother to the famous earl, had his last resting-place before the

high altar. Near the altar of St. Stephen lay Michael Tregury.

Three other Catholic archbishops, namely, Walter Fitzsimons,

William Rokeby, and Hugh Inge, were entombed in St. Patrick's in

the early part of the sixteenth century--the last-named prelate

dying in the year 1528. When the Reformation came, and when Henry

VIII. attempted to force it upon Ireland against the will of the

hierarchy and people, the cathedral of St. Patrick became exposed

to the hostilities of the English despot and of Archbishop Browne,

his agent. The new doctrines were urged in vain by that prelate,

who is described by Ware as "the first of the clergy who embraced

the Reformation in Ireland." The king's commission was as little

respected as the homilies of Archbishop Browne, who advised the

calling of a parliament to pass the supremacy by act, and wrote to

Lord Cromwell, in 1638, complaining that "_the reliques and images

of both his cathedrals took the common people from the true worship,

and desiring a more explicit order for their removal_," and for

the aid of the lord-deputy's troops in carrying out his unpopular

designs. The clergy of St. Patrick's made so vigorous a stand against

the reforming archbishop, that many of them were deprived of their

preferments, and the cathedral itself was suppressed for nearly

eight years, during Browne's incumbency. On Queen Mary's accession,

St. Patrick's again resumed its Catholic splendor and dignity, but

only to lose them once more when her successor, Elizabeth, thought

it necessary for the security of her throne to remove utterly, if

possible, the Catholic faith from her dominions. Thus the fortunes of

St. Patrick's cathedral were, in a measure, identified with those of

the Catholic religion in Ireland.

"The name of no apostle or evangelist," as was well remarked by Dr.

Manning, the Archbishop of Westminster, in his sermon at Rome on

the anniversary of St. Patrick, "carries with it a wider influence

than that of the Apostle of Ireland, if we except only St. Peter,

the prince of the apostles. No apostle or saint--Peter excepted--has

so many millions of spiritual followers as Patrick. The Catholic

hierarchy in England owes its origin to Patrick, through the Irish

immigrants into Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, London, and other

great manufacturing and commercial cities. The vast Catholic

hierarchies in America, Australia, New Zealand, and other colonies

of Great Britain, trace, in like manner, their spiritual lineage to

Ireland and St. Patrick. Within the hall of the great Council of the

Vatican St. Patrick counts more bishops for his children than any

other saint, save Peter; for the prelates deriving their faith from

Ireland are more numerous than those of any other nationality. And

no apostle (Peter always excepted) has his anniversary celebrated in

so many countries and with such demonstrations of joy as Patrick."

Such indeed is the magic power, if the expression be permitted,

which the very name of St. Patrick exercises over Irish Catholics

in all parts of the world, that the restoration of St. Patrick's

cathedral would be regarded by them as something far greater than

the mere donation of a cathedral to the Dublin diocese. It would be

received as a convincing sign that the demon of envenomed distrust

has been exorcised, and that thenceforth English Protestants, as

they have already long ceased to persecute Irish Catholicism by

penal laws, would likewise abandon the indirect mode of persecution

which consists in suspicion, falsification, and slander, in

withholding cordiality, and in retaining, after the dog-in-the-manger

fashion, what is useless to Protestants, for no apparent reason

but to manifest a dislike to Catholics. It is with nations as with

families or individuals. Two families, formerly at enmity and but

lately reconciled, can hardly be said to enjoy a solid or thorough

friendship so long as one of them causelessly keeps back the family

pictures or sacred heirlooms of the other. France and England never

could have entertained mutual sentiments of respect, if England had

been so foolish or so malicious as to keep in St. Helena the body of

Napoleon. The heirlooms whose restoration would have the happiest

effect in bringing about amity between the English and Irish nations,

are the ancient sacred places of Ireland.

FOOTNOTES:

[161] See _State Papers concerning the Irish Church in the Time of

Queen Elizabeth_, etc. By W. Maziere Brady, D.D. London: Longmans.

1868. Page 90.

[162] Ibid. page 92.

[163] Ibid. page 91.

A LEGEND OF THE INFANT JESUS.[164]

In a small chapel, rich with carving quaint

Of mystic symbols and devices bold,

Where glowed the face of many a pictured saint

From windows high, in gorgeous drapery's fold,

And one large mellowed painting o'er the shrine

Showed in the arms of Mary--mother mild--

Down-looking with a tenderness divine

In his clear shining eyes, the Holy Child--

Two little brothers, orphans young and fair,

Who came in sacred lessons to be taught,

Waited, as every day they waited there,

Till Frey Bernardo came, his pupils sought,

And fed his Master's lambs. Most innocent

Of evil knowledge or of worldly lure

Those children were; from e'en the slightest taint

Had Jesu's blood their guileless souls kept pure!

A pious man that good Dominican,

Whose life with gentle charities was crowned;

His duties in the church as sacristan,

For hours in daily routine kept him bound,

While that young pair awaited his release

Seated upon the altar-steps, or spread

Thereon their morning meal, and ate in peace

And simple thankfulness their fruit and bread.

And often did their lifted glances meet

The Infant Jesu's eyes; and oft he smiled--

So thought the children; sympathy so sweet

Brought blessing to them from the Blessed Child!

Until one day when Frey Bernardo came,

The little ones ran forth; with clasping hold

Each seized his hand, and each with wild acclaim,

In eager words the tale of wonder told:

"O father, father!" both the children cried,

"The _caro_ Jesu! He has heard our prayer!

We prayed him to come down and sit beside

Us as we ate, and of our feast take share:

And he came down, and tasted of our bread,

And sat and smiled upon us, father dear!"

Pallid with strange amaze, Bernardo said,

"Grace beyond marvel! Hath the Lord been here?

"The heaven of heavens his dwelling--doth he deign

To visit little children? Favored ye

Beyond all those on earthly thrones who reign,

In having seen this strangest mystery!

O lambs of his dear flock! to-morrow pray

Jesu to come again to grace your board

And sup with you; and if he comes, then say,

'Bid us to thy own table, blessed Lord!'

"'Our master too!' do not forget to plead

For me, dear children! In humility

I will entreat him your meek prayer to heed,

That so his mercy may extend to me!"

Then, a hand laying on each lovely head,

Devoutly the old man the children blessed:

"Come early on the morrow morn," he said;

"To meet--if such his will--your heavenly Guest!"

To meet their pastor by the next noon ran

The youthful pair, their eyes with rapture bright;

"He came!" their happy lisping tongues began;

"He says we all shall sup with him to-night!

Thou too, dear father; for we could not come

Alone, without our faithful friend--we said;

Oh! be thou sure our pleadings were not dumb,

Till Jesu smiled consent, and bowed his head."

In thankful joy Bernardo prostrate fell,

And through the hours he lay entranced in prayer;

Until the solemn sound of vesper bell

Aroused him, breaking on the silent air.

Then rose he calm, and when the psalms were o'er

And in the aisles the chant had died away,

With soul still bowed his Master to adore,

Alone he watched the fast departing day.

Two silvery voices, calling through the gloom

With seraph sweetness, reached his listening ear;

And swiftly passing 'neath the lofty dome,

Soon side by side he and his children dear

Entered the ancient chapel consecrate

By grace mysterious. Kneeling at the shrine,

Before which robed in sacerdotal state,

That morning he had blessed the bread and wine,

Bernardo prayed. And then the chosen three

Partook the sacred hosts the priest had blessed,

Viaticum for those so soon to be

Borne to the country of eternal rest;

Bidden that night to sup with Christ! in faith

Waiting for him, their Lord beloved, to come

And lead them upward from this land of death

To live for ever in his Father's home!

In that same chapel, kneeling in their place,

All were found dead; their hands still clasped in prayer;

Their eyes uplifted to the Saviour's face,

The hallowed peace of heaven abiding there!

While thousands came that wondrous scene to view,

And hear the story of the chosen three;

Thence gathering the lesson deep and true--

It is the crown of life with Christ to be.

FOOTNOTE:

[164] Frey Luis de Sonsa, in the _History of the Dominican Order in

Portugal_, relates this legend. The legend of the Infant Saviour

coming to play with a child has been embodied in the poetry of many

languages, especially the German.

PHASES OF ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM.

A man with the peculiar turn of Dr. Temple[165] for finding results

of the past in the present, might perhaps be inclined to trace

the time-honored cry of the English Protestants, "No popery!" to

the temper of Henry VIII., who retained the whole of the Catholic

doctrine in his creed except the supremacy of the pope. A Catholic

will with good reason see in it a testimony from enemies to the unity

of the church through the successor of St. Peter. The historian

will point to the fact that Protestants have from the beginning

agreed only in one thing, hostility to the church. The _Protest_

of 1529, from which they take their name, is the first example we

have in history of a thing with which modern times are familiar--an

arrangement on the part of those who, as the phrase goes, "agree in

essentials," to act together for a time in order to accomplish some

common end. In a similar way we saw Dr. Pusey take part in 1865

with the liberals, in order to promote the election of Mr. Gladstone

as member for the University of Oxford. He afterward coquetted

unsuccessfully with the Methodists. And last year he offered to join

with the evangelicals in a protest against the elevation of Dr.

Temple to the see of Exeter. Yet whatever may have been the case

in times past, we should have supposed that the futility of such

coalitions in these days had been long sufficiently evident. Dr.

Pusey, we imagine, now feels little pleasure at having Mr. Gladstone

at the head of affairs; and if the evangelicals had accepted his

offer instead of rejecting it, he would have found out in the end

that he had paid much for their help, and got very little by it.

By looking back to the circumstances in which Protestantism began,

we find an explanation of its marked features--the variety of its

differences, the fact that these find some common ground in the cry,

"No popery!" and the inevitably logical tendency of Protestantism

to dissolve into latitudinarianism. Of these the first two scarcely

require to be illustrated; yet we may notice one singular illusion

which has done more than any thing else to give a fictitious unity

to the Protestant sects, and to invest their protest with a certain

air of virtuous indignation; we refer to the common belief that the

Bible is in some sense their peculiar possession, which springs from

the doctrine that, so long as a man professes to get his creed out of

the Bible, and the Bible only, it matters little of what articles his

creed consists. This fiction has done good service in its day; but

the Protestants are now likely to be worried by the fiend with which

they used to conjure. They received the Bible from the church, and

they turned it against the church. Now they find it in the hands of

the modern critical school turned against themselves.

That the Protestants who separated from the church should have been

able to accept Scripture as binding upon them, is not strange;

although to a philosophical mind at the present day, the Protestant

theory must present insurmountable difficulties. When men break

off from a system in which they were born and bred, they cannot,

if they would, make of their minds a _tabula rasa_, freed from all

prejudices and associations, ready to receive whatever can be proved

purely _a priori_. To attempt this would be to attempt to move the

world without a fulcrum. The question, What can be proved _a priori_?

is one which requires the course of many generations only for its

statement; as for its solution, that may be said to have proved

itself impossible. Men are obliged, when they change their opinions

in some respects, to allow their conduct to be influenced by those

opinions which they do not change; and in some cases it happens that

it is impossible, upon any _a priori_ ground whatever, to draw the

line between what they keep and what they reject. So it was at the

foundation of Protestantism; and the effects of the modern "universal

solvent" are due to what we have just stated, that, taking what

_a priori_ ground you will, there is none which will support the

Protestant without landing him at last in contradiction or absurdity.

Thus, men in the sixteenth century could easily accept theories of

Scripture interpretation which are now found to be untenable; and the

result is fatal to those who are so deeply committed to the untenable

theories that the loss of them involves the loss of their whole

intellectual groundwork.

For the Protestants cannot, as the Catholic can, point to the

striking fact of a general agreement extending over many centuries.

We know that the Protestant critics profess to pick holes in the

Catholic claim to general agreement; but what a beggarly appearance

these attempts present when they are contrasted with the whole extent

of the subject! What is the value of the few specks they point out

in the vast current of ecclesiastical history? They find so little

to say, that what they say is proved to be the exception and not the

rule. But if we turn to their own case, what a difference do we find!

There we have no question of pointing out flaws here and there; it

is all one mass of flaws. Protestants may attack the claim of the

church; but they themselves are not able so much as to put forward

a claim. Nor do they venture to claim unity; some even avow their

preference for diversity. Yet in practice we find them all acting as

though each thought himself infallible.

This is the result of a very common human weakness. Just as the

founders of Protestantism could quietly acquiesce in many things

which they had imbibed from the Catholic world in which they were

educated, so their successors quietly acquiesce in what comes to them

from their fathers; and in both cases there is much which cannot be

systematically exhibited without contradiction. But very few men care

to set about the systematic exhibition of all that they profess to

believe or to act upon. If it were otherwise, the Protestant theories

of Scripture would never have been set up; and they are now falling

before the exertions of men who insist upon having a clear view of

what they are called upon to believe. When the reformers made their

appeal to Scripture, it was impossible for men of different tempers,

habits, and associations to agree upon matters of interpretation,

even if the appeal had been made in good faith. As it was, the appeal

was made subject to certain foregone conclusions, none of which,

perhaps, could have been deduced from the mere text by any scientific

process of exegesis. Servetus could not find the doctrine of the Holy

Trinity in the Bible; and though he was little if at all to blame,

according to Protestant principles, Calvin thought this failure

worthy of death. Luther found in the Epistle of St. James much more

than he wanted, and therefore he ejected it from the canon. Thus the

appearance of an appeal to a common standard is an appearance only.

It has been found to cover the widest variations both of doctrine

and ritual. The only result of professing to be bound by the Bible

is, that the text is wrested to mean any thing. No single system of

exegesis, strictly applied throughout and deprived of all external

suggestion or comment, will elicit a consistent whole from the

declarations of Scripture. All sects can produce some texts in their

favor, and all find some texts which they are obliged to explain

away. Inquirers are supposed to bring to the task of examination a

previous reservation in favor of the doctrines of their peculiar

sect. If they do not, they are denounced as traitors and unbelievers,

in spite of the ostentatious demand for a free inquiry. When Mr.

Jowett proposed to use for the elucidation of Scripture those aids

and methods which scholars have applied with great success to the

profane classics, he was met with something more than outcry; he

was actually persecuted. Yet his persecutors, who kept his salary

as professor of Greek down to forty pounds per annum when the other

similar professorships were raised in value to four hundred pounds,

had nothing to offer by way of reason against his proposal. They

stooped to effect their object by using the blind prejudices of

country clergymen.

While the name of Scripture has always commanded respect, and in

this way a sort of pretended unity has seemed to bind together the

sects of Protestantism, every generation has seen less and less

ground for establishing any thing like real visible communion.

Scripture is useless to this end, because every party insists that

it has Scripture on its side. Since Luther and Melancthon conferred

at Marburg with Œcolampadius and Zwingli, the futility of

conferences has been growing more and more manifest. But so soon as

men despair of establishing union by convincing their opponents,

they are driven, if they desire union, to propose compromise as the

basis upon which to found it; and in religious matters, compromise

means the surrender of faith to expediency. Many attempts have been

made to induce the sects to coalesce by declaring only that to be

obligatory in dogma which is common to all, leaving every thing else

in the region of pious opinion; but a very natural and even laudable

party obstinacy has always brought these attempts to nothing. The

only persons who can approach such compromises with a safe conscience

are latitudinarians, whose fundamental principle is the denial that

any dogma is of necessity to salvation; and to the latitudinarian

this privilege is useless, because his overtures are superfluous if

made to latitudinarians, while they are sure to be rejected by the

dogmatists. Yet it is hard for the dogmatic Protestant to justify

the religious scruple which makes him unwilling to treat with the

latitudinarian; for he is cut off from the appeal to the "faith

once delivered to the saints," and forced to take up his position

on ground which can equally well be claimed by his opponents. The

scruples of either side are called prejudices by the other; and

neither can rebut the accusation upon solid grounds of reason. A

position like this is unstable; and though habit will enable a given

set of men to hold their ground firmly against mere argument, yet

argument does tell in the long run, and an unreasonable position

cannot with security be handed on to the next generation. For the

next generation is not born under the same circumstances as the

former; and so it often happens that the habit which swayed the

fathers is not formed in the children. Bit by bit the ill-established

creed rots away, as the "universal solvent" is brought to bear upon

the whole; and thus successive generations of Protestants are apt to

be pushed nearer and nearer to latitudinarianism, sometimes without

any notice being taken of the change. At length, perhaps, we see

matters culminate in some portentous vagary, like that society which

now exists, or existed not long since in London, which proposes to

unite upon the basis of assenting to nothing at all.

The connection between faith and reason, and the influence which

intellectual processes may lawfully exercise upon religious belief,

are questions of profound difficulty. But without attempting to

draw the line exactly between what is right and what is wrong, it

may be possible to assert with confidence of particular cases that

they lie on this or that side of the line. We would not rashly

encourage persons who have been brought up in any dogmatic system,

however ill-grounded or erroneous we may think their belief, to

set about mocking their hereditary faith upon the strength of a

shallow scepticism; still less would we employ ridicule against

errors which cannot be ridiculed without shocking deep convictions;

because we think that the cause of truth, in the long run, loses

more than it gains by such means. But the logical weakness of the

Protestant position is made apparent by the fact that it always does

give way before reason. England has passed through many phases,

and one of these was a phase of rationalism, that is, of appealing

to reason only as the ultimate ground of religious belief. During

that period the popular religion sank into a vague deism, together

with a practical code of moral decency. Yet, during that time--the

eighteenth century--the Church of England was peculiarly rich in

men whom she esteemed great divines; but theology is excluded from

the pages of these theologians. We find little beyond exhortations

to the practice of virtue, grounded upon appeals to good feeling

and the hope of reward; and what ought to be the dogmatic side of

their teaching is occupied with proofs of the reasonableness of

Christianity, or with statements of the evidences of Christianity--a

Christianity which, in the popular mind, had lost all hold upon the

divinity of Christ. Here, then, the old Protestant dogmatic position

had gone down before reason; and its fall is the more notable because

reason was not polemically directed against it. The men who had

renounced the dogmatic position were the champions of the church,

nor had they the least suspicion that they had surrendered every

thing to the other side except an empty title. Circumstances had

forced them to take their stand upon reason; and dogma was quietly

and instinctively dropped out of sight, simply because it could not

be defended by them in their position upon that ground. We shall see

presently how close, at this time, was the resemblance between the

orthodox and the deist.

But in the change of circumstances, which is the result of the course

of time, there is something to compensate for this sinking and

loosening of the dogmatic foundations of the Protestants. Something

is gained in the greater ease with which later generations can shut

their eyes to the presence of certain troublesome facts; and this is

what Catholics mean when they speak of the children of schismatics

as being less responsible than their fathers for the schism in which

they find themselves. While the old Protestants were quite ready

to take the Bible upon trust, they felt the force of certain texts

which do not at all trouble their successors. No modern evangelical

or Presbyterian feels any qualm of suspicion when he reads the

words, "This is my body," nor does he trouble himself to seek out a

plausible explanation. Macaulay said that "the absurdity of a literal

interpretation was as great and as obvious in the sixteenth century

as it is now." But, at all events, there is this great difference

between the two centuries: that in the sixteenth, men felt bound to

give some meaning to the text, while now, in the nineteenth, they

feel able to pass it over without giving to it any meaning at all.

Œcolampadius and Zwingli were at the head of the two principal

sections of the sacramentarian party, who denied all real presence,

and reduced the eucharist to a mere commemorative rite. There stood

the text, and they felt bound to explain it somehow, so that it might

agree with their opinions. They assigned the same general meaning to

the whole, but they could not agree on the question whether "is" or

"body" must be interpreted by a kind of metonymy, that is, saying one

thing and meaning another. The subject is not a fit one for laughter;

but it is hard to read without laughing that Andrew Carlstadt

thought our Lord pointed to his natural body, when he uttered the

words of the text. Men must be sore pressed before they will execute

such wrigglings as these; and there are many signs of the existence

of similar pressures at that day, from which modern Protestants

are more or less relieved. Thus, Calvin was obliged for the sake

of consistency to declare that Scripture shines by its own light;

while the moderns can act as if it did without being obliged to say

so. Again, when Archbishop Heath and his fellow-sufferers protested

against their deprivation by Queen Elizabeth, she felt bound to make

some attempt to argue from the fathers against the supremacy of the

pope, though she could have found no pleasure in the task, because

she had so little to say for herself. Now, when a modern Protestant

uses arguments of this sort, it is only to satisfy his own private

whims or scruples; but Elizabeth was peremptorily called upon to

defend herself against adverse public opinion.

Nothing seems simpler to a modern Protestant than that a man should

take his stand on "the Bible, and the Bible only;" nothing seems more

strange to any one who has considered the various ultimate grounds

and hypotheses upon which religious belief may be supposed to rest.

It is not necessary to be always obtruding the question of ultimate

grounds upon men's notice, because it is not required that all who

believe shall be able to produce an accurate statement of the true

ultimate grounds of their belief. But such grounds must be supposed

to exist, and to be capable of accurate statement; and the statement

of them is, at any rate, fatal to the Protestant position. We have

seen how dogmatic theology disappeared from the popular mind under

the rationalism of the eighteenth century. And at the time of the

French revolution, it was found that when men deserted the church,

they did not take their stand upon the Bible, but on atheism; and

that when they ceased to be atheists, they became Catholics again,

not Protestants; nor has Protestantism ever made any large number of

converts, except in the sixteenth century. This was a sore puzzle

to Macaulay, as he himself declares; but it is easily explained on

the principles we have laid down. In the sixteenth century, men

had no thought of inquiring about ultimate grounds of belief; they

were determined to believe something, and they looked about for any

proximate ground which was near at hand and plausible in appearance.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the question of ultimate

grounds had occurred to many, and they had answered that there were

ultimately no grounds for believing any religion at all. When they

changed this opinion, and determined to have a religious belief, they

did not take up the Protestant position, because it was exploded;

and the proof that it was exploded lies in the fact that they did

not take it up. They could no longer play the part of arbitrary

eclectics, selecting what they chose and rejecting what they chose

from the Catholic system. They could not follow the example of

Calvin, who first stopped short where he did, and then helped

to burn[166] Servetus for going a few steps further. The French

revolutionists were without any of those convenient traditional drags

which hamper movement, and enable men to stop short at arbitrary

points. They ruthlessly carried out their principles into the wildest

and most ferocious excesses, things for which no logical consistency

will compensate; but they _did_ carry them out. Therefore they were

in some sense incapacitated for becoming Protestants, because they

had once known what it was to carry out principles, and there is no

set of principles whatever, which, if vigorously carried out, will

land a man in Protestantism.

Men who found their belief upon the Bible alone, have first to

determine the canon, then to settle the text, and lastly to interpret

it. They have three questions to answer: 1. How is it known that

the Bible is, as a whole, the word of God? 2. How is it known that

the text is free from material corruption? 3. When men differ about

its meaning, as they notoriously do, who is to decide between them?

Until a reply is found to these questions, their position is open to

attacks which cannot justly be stigmatized as the result of a shallow

scepticism; and the best proof of this is the fact that it always

goes down before reason. One or two men of learning and ability may

be found to abide by the ancient ways; but they are deserted by the

great majority of their fellows, and therefore they are the exception

and not the rule. Who can pretend to doubt in what direction the

whole of the learning and ability among the undergraduates of Oxford

has been moving of late years? With hardly an exception, all the

most promising among the young men have been moving away from those

stand-points which Dr. Pusey finds necessary to his position as a

Protestant; and if there be any exception to this general movement,

he only marks the motion of the stream by standing still himself.

This is because our three questions remain unanswered, while those

who attempt to find such an answer as shall be acceptable to a

rational mind, are denounced and persecuted. Yet these so-called

liberals have a right to demand to be heard, and to be allowed to

make out what they can by fair argument; nor has Dr. Pusey any right

to be shocked when they find things in Scripture which he does not,

except upon grounds which, if he would rigorously carry them out,

would make him a Catholic. In his present position, we cannot guess

how he would attempt to answer Charlotte Elizabeth, that great

departed light of the extreme evangelicals. An acquaintance once

suggested a doubt about the inspiration of the book of Revelation

in these words: "You are a person of too much sense to believe that

the binding up of certain leaves between the covers of the Bible

makes them a part of it." This, in fact, raised the question how the

canon is to be determined; and Charlotte Elizabeth was staggered

for a moment, as she herself tells us. But the battle was turned

by the following reply, which she piously believed to be dictated

by God: "If you can persuade me that the book of Revelation is not

inspired, another person may do the same with regard to the book of

Genesis; and so of all that lie between them, till the whole Bible

is taken from me. That will never do," etc. Having thus determined

the canon, she promptly provides the interpreter. "Man can tell me

no more than that God has clearly revealed" the Calvinistic doctrine

of election and reprobation; "therefore, man cannot strengthen a

belief founded on the sure word of God; _or if he tells me it is

not revealed, I know that it is; because I have found it so, and

relinquish it I never can_." (_Personal Recollections of Charlotte

Elizabeth_, third edition, p. 134. The other passage quoted is at

p. 130.) Charlotte Elizabeth, upon the strength of this, deals out

the most uncompromising damnation to those who _have found that it

is not_. And Dr. Pusey's estimable friend, Mr. Burgon, is equally

ferocious toward those who doubt whether every syllable, point, jot,

tittle, and full stop in the Bible is the express act of God. It

would be impossible, we suppose, to convert the wood-and-leather man

of Martinus Scriblerus, even though he "should reason as well as most

of your country parsons."

Political circumstances have given such peculiar interest to the

career of the Church of England that it deserves to be placed in

a class by itself, apart from the other schismatical bodies which

sprang up at the Reformation. Amid the storms of theological

controversy she has always found a dubious sheet-anchor in the state,

which secured to her a certain stability of political position, while

it allowed her to drift through many widely different doctrinal

phases. The tameness with which she veered about at the bidding of

successive sovereigns, and the ease with which great changes were

effected in her constitution, show that, in puritan phrase, her heart

was not in the work. Historians are equally astonished at the power

of the crown and the pusillanimity of the people. And there is ground

for astonishment, though the facts are often described in terms of

exaggeration. We are not to suppose that the passing of an act of

parliament, or the "devising" of an ordinal by Cranmer, made a change

in religion which was instantly felt through all corners of the

kingdom. Multitudes had very vague notions of what was going on, and

the only people who were thoroughly well informed, the courtiers, had

their eyes fixed on church lands, not on theology. In some parts of

the country, as in Lancashire, the change was little felt, and the

Catholic religion remains there to this day a common heirloom. But in

the mass of the people we quite miss that delicate spiritual sense,

so keenly alive to the slightest variation from the faith, which

gives such interest to the struggles of the church with the early

heretics. When all has been said in their favor, it cannot be denied

that the English have always shown themselves somewhat supine and

spiritually sluggish. It is only the "right to tax themselves" which

appeals to their energies with force enough to stir up a rebellion.

The Scots took their religion into their own hands; but the English

were contented to be led like sheep by Cecil and Parker.

The fundamental profession of faith of the Church of England, the

Thirty-nine Articles, labors under this disadvantage, that it has

never secured to the Established Church any closer union or more

uniform dogmatic tradition than has been secured to Protestants in

general by their common possession of the Bible. Very significant are

those words in the _King's Declaration_ prefixed to the articles, in

which his majesty finds so much comfort from the fact that nobody

refuses to sign the articles, in spite of "some differences which

have been ill raised;" and that, when they differ, "_men of all sorts

take the articles of the Church of England to be for them_." What

is the value of a formula which has been found compatible with the

primacy both of Whitgift and of Sancroft? Only once did the spirit

of the nation question the right of "men of all sorts" to "take the

articles to be for them;" and that was when Dr. Newman took them to

contain the Catholic faith. But this was due to the national hatred

of popery, not to the stringency of the articles. Their weak blast

has never blown either hot or cold. They look like the offspring of

a union between inconsiderate haste and the latitudinarian hankering

after conversions made by compromise. They limit their confidence

like the sagacious Bottom. "Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but

ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian."

The Elizabethan pacificators were of that sort who turn a country

into a wilderness, and then boast that peace has been happily

restored. Their Established Church was not a religion, but a

machinery for enabling men to dispense with religion in their

daily lives; and every attempt to graft religious feeling upon its

sapless stock has ended in discord. Having no efficient discipline,

no central authority, no energetic corporate action, no audible

dogmatic voice, and no intelligible symbols of faith, and receiving

its hierarchy from the state with abject submissiveness, it has

never got so far as to attempt to fulfil any of the functions

of the church. Its usual condition has been that of a bundle of

differences held together by some fleeting economy or the presence

of the state. Scarcely had it settled down into any thing like an

organized polity, when the Puritan schism became formidably apparent;

and by the accidental bias of political association, the Churchman

and the Puritan became the champions respectively of prerogative

and of liberty. The church rallied round the monarchy, because the

favor of the crown was the breath of its nostrils; and persecution

made the Puritans ripe for rebellion, and therefore ready to fight

for the cause of liberty in any shape. The men who began the Great

Rebellion were politicians, not religious enthusiasts; but they

gained the day by enlisting on their side that religious enthusiasm

which afterward declared that "the Lord had no need" of the Rump

Parliament. When the intolerable government of the saints had made

inevitable the restoration of Charles, the Established Church came

back with the crown almost as naturally as the court of chancery and

the privy council. Nothing could be more in keeping than that the

ecclesiastical loyalty which had blossomed into the divine right of

kings under the earlier Stuarts, should bear its fruit in passive

obedience after the restoration. This much had been claimed by Henry

VIII. in that edifying manual, _The Pious and Godly Institution

of a Christian Man_; and it now became the touchstone of Anglican

orthodoxy, almost to the exclusion of dogmatic considerations. It

is true that Archbishop Laud had long before begun what he meant

to be a theological reaction; but in his scheme the position of an

altar or the use of a vestment counted for more than the gravest

doctrinal questions, and he did not scruple to act cordially with men

whose theological views differed very widely from his own. Whatever

claim the Established Church may seem to have made to doctrinal

infallibility or to magisterial decision, we think that it will be

found on closer inspection to resolve itself into this, that every

preacher was allowed to propound his own crotchets as infallibly

true, provided only that his fidelity to the great dogma of passive

obedience was beyond suspicion. Yet the prominence of this one

proposition, and the vehemence of the clergy in preaching it, gave

a certain aspect of unity to the church, and somewhat resembled the

energy with which divine truth should be taught. The establishment

has grown up into a great and conspicuous edifice, imposing from its

majestic appearance and the apparent solidity of its foundation,

and endeared to many by the recollection of sufferings endured in a

cause with which it seemed to be inseparably bound up. Her ministers

"agreed in essentials;" that is to say, in the fundamental rules

of morality and passive obedience. It was the very strength of the

church's position which made the violence of James II. so disastrous

to her influence. The clergy found themselves before the horns of

a fatal dilemma, when they were compelled to choose between their

church and their king. The people, long used to hear that passive

obedience was the first duty of a Christian, saw with a sceptical

shock the defection of the clergy from their most sacred tenet. The

non-jurors set up a fresh schism, and the shattered establishment

could offer no effectual resistance to the phlegmatic William and his

latitudinarian primate.

By the revolution the Anglican was finally and for ever cut off from

all appeal to the living authority of the church; and it is well

worthy of note that when the high Anglicans of this century, after

the tractarian movement had set in, began to appeal to authority,

they could find no living authority whither to carry their appeal,

and were forced to set up the dead authority of books and records.

At the close of the seventeenth century, there would seem to have

been a good opportunity for anticipating by a hundred and fifty years

the tractarian revival; and perhaps we may regard the career of the

non-jurors as a proof that Sancroft and his brethren were utterly

removed from every breath of the Catholic spirit. Cut off at that

time from all appeal to authority, yet forced to lay down some ground

of belief, it remained for the establishment to choose between reason

and the witness of the Spirit, or the purer light manifesting itself

to the separate conscience of the individual. This latter had been

the basis of independency, and of those still darker sects which

sprang from independency during the commonwealth. It had appeared

that this guidance might be made to lead anywhere, except in any

direction that a sane man would choose, and therefore it remained to

put reason on its trial. Thenceforth the appeal of the Anglican was

addressed to the reason of his hearers, and the reasonable was the

basis of argument between parties. Different men believed different

things; but each admitted that his creed must stand or fall according

as it should or should not approve itself to reason. That knowledge

of God and of his will which could be discovered by unaided reason

was styled natural religion; and this was the whole of religion,

according to the deists. According to the orthodox, natural religion

was an outline, true as far as it went, the details of which were to

be filled in by revelation. It was an obvious consequence of this

view, that such parts of Christianity as could not easily be foisted

in upon natural religion, came to be rejected as popish corruptions;

and thus the distinction between the orthodox and the deist became

at last very shallow. Bishop Butler, a man of fervid piety and with

a natural bias toward asceticism, whose disposition made him an

exception in many ways to the common tendency of the age in which he

lived, complains that religion had in his day become too reasonable

to have any connection with the heart and the affections. The least

deviation in any direction from the surrounding dead-level was looked

upon with suspicion; and Butler's _Durham Charge_ caused him to be

accused of "squinting" toward the superstition of popery. After his

death, it was said by many that he had died a Catholic; and Secker

came forward with indignant zeal to defend his memory from the

"calumny."

The depressing results of this prevailing tone are well shown by

its effect on the religious views of such men as Sydney Smith. A

touch of fanaticism has great claims upon our respect, when it is

seen in contrast to the heathenism which regards a good education

and gentlemanlike manners as the most necessary qualifications for

the spiritual guide. Those evangelicals, the "patent Christians" of

Sydney Smith, were the representatives inside the Church of England

of the feelings and aspirations which animated the Methodists

outside; and if the church had been the same in the days of Wesley

that it was in the days of Wilberforce, there would have been no

separation. We remarked that the close of the seventeenth century

seems to have presented a good opportunity for anticipating the

tractarian movement; but the times were not ripe for it, and

the attempt was not made. Wesley did attempt to anticipate the

evangelical movement; but the times were again not ripe, and the

attempt ended in extensive schism. The evangelicals were the true

forerunners of the tractarians; and perhaps the Methodists had

opened the way to both. And as the Church of England first drove out

the Methodists, but acquired by the process a certain capacity to

endure Methodism, so, perhaps, she drove out the Tractarians, and

acquired thereby a certain leaven which enables her now to endure

with comparative equanimity the presence in her bosom of men who

profess Catholic doctrine. The church had no fixed spirit; she was

put in motion by the clamors of unstable popular opinion; and popular

opinion is liable to be modified by the views with which it is

brought into contact, even when it attacks them most fiercely. Yet

we think we see signs that a time is coming when the comprehensive

shelter of the establishment will no longer be open to all who

choose to stand under it.

During this century three great movements have at different times

made inroads upon the dead-level bequeathed by a former age. The

evangelical movement has had its day, and its force is now spent; it

no longer does active work, but only serves as a protest and drag.

The tractarian movement has passed into a second phase; but it is

still so far vigorous that it makes progress; that is, it increases

continually the number of exoteric members who hang upon its skirts,

while the esoteric members become more and more thorough-going in

their assertion of Catholic doctrine and practice. The third and last

movement is the critical, which is an attempt imported from Germany,

and in England supported with great ingenuity and learning, to set

up a criterion of religious truth and error apart from the reception

of the Catholic scheme. For a long time there was room enough for

all these parties to exist together; and if they quarrelled, it

was rather because they had a taste for quarrelling than because

they were brought into collision. But now there is no longer room

for them, and collision is imminent. We may expect soon to see the

battle fought out between them; nor would it have been delayed so

long had there been any ground solid enough for pitting one against

another. The English ecclesiastical law is so vague that men hardly

dare to invoke it, even when they hope to find it on their side; for

it is impossible to predict its course with certainty, when once it

is set moving. But recent decisions have tended more and more to

bring out this much, that an exact compliance with the present law,

so far as it can be fixed, would be equally distasteful both to the

evangelicals and to the tractarians. It is, in fact, a compromise

constructed with unusual clumsiness, which is now for the first

time being exposed to a searching examination; and it is likely

to meet with the just fate of compromises, by being found equally

hateful to both of the parties whom it was meant to reconcile. The

critical school, who greatly outweigh the two others in learning

and ability, are more evidently outside the letter of the present

law, though its machinery is too clumsy to be used against them with

any great effect. But the matter will not long be left in the hands

of the present law; and it is hard to foretell the legislation of

the future. Nobody, we think, can now doubt that a few years will

see some great change, either of secularization, or at least of

redistribution, in the ecclesiastical revenues. A large section of

the tractarian party now cries out for disestablishment, as the only

way open to them by which they may keep the Catholic faith.

When the catastrophe to which we are looking forward does come, no

doubt there will be some splitting up of parties. Some, we hope

many, of the tractarians will be received into the Catholic Church;

and then it will be seen whether the remainder will be able to set

up a free church, according to their darling scheme. Many of the

evangelicals will doubtless join the various dissenting bodies; and

some, perhaps, will coalesce with the liberals, (whom we called the

critical school,) and it is possible that these latter may be left

for a little while in possession of the whole of the temporalities

of the church. This, however, we do not think likely; it is probable

that disestablishment will be itself the occasion of a general

dissolution. But the liberals have this great advantage on their

side, that they are under no temptation whatever to split up. The

agreement which holds them together is an agreement to differ; and

their bond of union is a protest against all persons who consider

dogmatic opinions of any kind to be a sufficient ground for breaking

communion. Upon this understanding they are ready to shake hands with

the whole world. And the opinions which are held by the esoteric

members of the party (for some of them have opinions) are always

embraced subject to the admission that they may possibly be false.

They find truth everywhere, and close resemblances between things

which are totally different. A bigot, according to the old joke, is

a person who says that he is in the right, and that every body who

differs from him is in the wrong; but a liberal is afraid to say that

he is in the right, lest he should be obliged to say that somebody

else is not. They avoid mistakes by saying as little as possible,

and by using the vaguest terms they can find; and, above all, by

cheerfully admitting that there is always a great deal to be said on

both sides. As certain of their own poets have said,

"Methinks I see them

Through everlasting limbos of void time

Twirling and twiddling ineffectively,

And indeterminately swaying for ever."

But it is only fair to say that here they are seen in their weakness,

not in their strength. This vague and undecided habit of mind is the

result of the circumstances in which they had their beginning. The

spectacle of a great number of sects, each in practice arrogating

to itself infallibility while they teach incompatible doctrines,

produces different effects upon different minds. Its natural effect

upon the shallow, who are just deep enough to find out that other

sects exist beside the one in which they were brought up, is to breed

scepticism. They know that two contradictory propositions cannot

both be true, and they think that the one is as well supported by

evidence as the other; and out of these premises, by the help of bad

logic, they draw the conclusion that both must be false. But sounder

intellects set about investigating more closely the criterion of

truth and falsehood; and to such we owe the critical theory, which is

not only ingenious, but even true so far as it goes. Something of the

indecision of men who have seen so much of error that they now hardly

believe in the existence of truth, clings to these critics; and this

makes their proceeding seem to be sceptical when it is not really

so. Their theory may be briefly summed up as follows: "Interpret the

Scripture," says one,[167] "like any other book." This in his mouth

was a brief way of bidding us measure religious truth by the same

tests, while we seek it by the same methods, as other truth. It is

well known that the labor of successive generations of scholars,

following the same main rules of criticism, has made a great

approach to uniformity in the interpretation of profane authors; and

nobody doubts that the common consent of the critics, if it could

be obtained, would be the best possible evidence to the unlearned

of the true meaning of an obscure passage. It is inferred that the

same critical methods may be applied to the Bible, and that the same

approach to uniformity of interpretation may thus be secured.

This is a plausible theory; and it is sound so far as it goes. But

it completely ignores the Catholic theory of the interpretation of

Scripture. Its authors evidently suppose, for example, that if a

text quoted by the Council of Trent in support of a doctrine could

be critically proved irrelevant to the purpose, then the doctrine

would be seriously shaken in the minds of Catholics. But this opinion

rests on a profound misapprehension of the Catholic view. We accept

the doctrine on the authority of the council, as the voice of the

church, without criticising the source from which the words are

drawn; and although the church in her decisions is guided by her

unalterable tradition, yet it is a possible case that she might

be quite assured of the fact of the tradition, and yet (to speak

reverently) erroneously quote a document in evidence. A Catholic

would be very cautious about attributing critical errors of this

kind to a general council; but no theologian will deny that such

a thing might happen. The function of the church in interpreting

Scripture is by no means limited to ascertaining what the words

written represented to the mind of the writer; the question is

much wider than this, including all that was intended by God to be

conveyed or suggested by the written words to the church at large.

It does not follow that, because a given meaning is the only sense

which the words could appropriately bear at the time when they were

written, therefore no other additional sense was intended to be

conveyed at some future time. In proportion as we exalt the degree

in which a passage or a book is supposed to be inspired, so much the

more probable does it become that its words will bear more than one

meaning. In the higher sense of the word inspiration, the human agent

becomes a mere instrument to convey a message, which he himself may

possibly not understand at all. The meaning then lies wholly in the

mind of God; and it is to be sought out by the divinely appointed

interpreter. Hence is apparent the reasonableness, when they are

taken together, of the two elements which make up the Catholic theory

of Scripture--the inspiration of the written word, and the commission

of the church to interpret. Both these things are ignored or denied

by that school of criticism about which we have been speaking. Their

view is quite incompatible with the Catholic view of inspiration, and

they at the same time naturally deny the right of interpretation to

the church, in order to give it to the scholar. And they therefore

limit the function of interpretation to that which the scholar can

reasonably attempt--the discovery of the meaning appropriate to the

circumstances under which the words were uttered.

The theory, as it stands by itself, is a plausible hypothesis,

much better able to bear examination than any other theory

which Protestants have ever put forward. We do not think that it

will fulfil the hopes of its friends, by securing the wished for

uniformity of interpretation. And we cannot help thinking that its

adherents ought to be on their guard against their peculiar faculty

of finding out likenesses in dissimilar things, lest they should

deceive themselves by fancying that they have secured uniformity when

they have not. At present, they are rather apt to mistake the progeny

of their neighbors for their own--

... "simillima proles

Indiscreta suis gratusque parentibus error."

A few years ago, one of them placed on record his pious delight at

the closeness with which Dr. Pusey's theological system resembled

that of Mr. Jowett. He seemed to think that we are all of us getting

year by year into closer agreement, and that the golden mean toward

which all are gravitating is that hazy creed which looms vaguely upon

the inner vision of Dean Stanley.

FOOTNOTES:

[165] Now Bishop of Exeter. He was the author of an ingenious but

whimsical essay, styled, "The Education of the World," in _Essays

and Reviews_, where he parcelled out the elements of our present

civilization among different nations of antiquity. He almost seems

to have thought that Turner owed his knowledge of painting, in some

vague way, to Zeuxis and Parrhasius.

[166] To give Calvin his due, he was only for chopping off the head

of Servetus. He called eagerly for his blood; but he was willing to

temper justice with so much mercy as lies in substituting the axe for

the fagot.

[167] Professor Jowett, _Essays and Reviews_, ninth ed. p. 377. This

essay contains several jokes, which to us seem rather out of place.

"Even the Greek Plato," says the professor, (p. 390,) "would have

'coldly furnished forth' the words of 'eternal life.'" The reader

will remember the words of Shakespeare,

"The funeral baked meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,"

meaning (as is shown by the preceding words, _Thrift, thrift,

Horatio!_) that the marriage had followed so close upon the funeral

that the pasties which had been hot at the one came up cold at the

other. The new turn given by Mr. Jowett to his original has, we

admit, a very humorous effect; but we cannot help thinking that he

has been unseasonably witty.

THE SAGACIOUS WIG.

I.

A wig may be said to have two lives--the one with its own head, the

other with its adopted head, or rather the head which adopts it; it

has, therefore, a double chance for wisdom, and might be expected to

profit accordingly. Generally speaking, this is the case, and wig and

wisdom are almost synonymous.

Such wonderful tales had been told in a certain shop, by wigs

that came back to be _fixed a little_, of the glory of their new

abodes--wigs shorn from the very dregs of the people--from heads

that had never been combed or petted or cared for--from heads

houseless and hatless, that had been rained on and hailed on, and

now in their second life dwelt in splendor unmitigated--that their

discourses fairly curled up tighter every wig in the place. The shop

had proved but a stepping-stone to blissful companionship with wits

and statesmen; they reposed on the brows of sages and philosophers,

shared the applauses of the multitude with popular orators, listened

to the eloquence born of champagne and gaslight, and won the

smiles and flirted with sweet ladies on Turkish divans and velvet

_fauteuils_; all this and more, the wigs who came back had to relate.

No wonder hopes were raised in each that went forth--hopes often

delusive.

II.

If the few hairs which made a kind of rim round the head of Martin

Tryterlittle had chosen to speak when he first clapped a wig on his

bald crown, (bald though not yet old,) they could have told a long

story, or rather a succession of many stories, of hope, expectation,

and disappointment in the three great walks of life--money-making,

love-making, and fame-making. Striving, ever striving, he hardly

paused to look back at the profitless path he had trodden. The

meeting accidentally with an old school-chum in fine broadcloth,

or the ultra urgency of his landlady or some other disagreeable

creditor, gave him occasionally more vivid views of things, and at

such times he indulged in indignant and certainly very disrespectful

language toward mankind in general and some individuals in

particular; but generally his mood was patient endurance.

Success in life was an enigma. There was Job Lovemee, who began

his career by ridiculously marrying a girl as poor as himself, and

blessed since with six children, was getting as rich as a nabob;

"while I," said Martin, "with no such drawbacks, am as poor as a

church mouse."

It was a pleasant bright spring morning when Martin Tryterlittle

suddenly resolved to turn over a new leaf in his book of life and

mend its story.

"No wonder I cannot succeed," said he; "look at me!" So, as no one

was by, he looked at himself, bit at a time, in the little cracked

mirror which adorned his attic lodging-room. As the fortunes of

Martin had been gradually sinking in the scale of social existence,

he had physically been rising; that is, from occupying the first

floor handsomely furnished, as the advertisement set forth, he had

ascended to the attic, so nearly unfurnished that a bed, a table, a

chair, and a broken mirror comprised its whole inventory.

"Look at me!" said Martin to himself, "threadbare and bald! No

wonder I find nothing to do and no one to woo, and stay lagging

behind in this march of mankind! I'll buy a wig to-day if I have to

sell something to pay for it; for every body can see my head, but

nobody--well, I'll button up my coat!"

It was no one's business how it was accomplished, as Martin truly

said, but it _was_ done; the wig was bought and paid for, and rested

now on his table in happy anticipation of the triumphs of the ensuing

day. "No one will know me," said he. "I hardly know myself! O my wig!

how happy we shall be; to thee shall I owe friends and fortune!"

It may startle some old-fashioned people to hear me assert that there

was a responsive chord in the wig which answered to all this; but

those familiar with modern metaphysical speculations will easily

credit it. The wig, be it remembered, was once part and parcel of a

sentient being; nor have we any reason to suppose that baking and

boiling, in the process of wig-making, could in any way touch the

spark immortal and invisible which once pervaded it. It is true

that counter arguments might be advanced, and so there is no end to

controversy; but there is a shorter way--and having demonstrated how

the thing _might_ have been, we are satisfied to believe that so it

_was_. Martin felt that his wig understood him. He was no longer

alone in the world; companionship is something even with a wig, and

he realized it as he laid his purchase carefully on the table and

betook himself to his bed.

It was a long night; but day dawned at last, and, in the mean

time, the whole future had been mapped out in the mind of Martin

Tryterlittle. He rose early, made a careful toilette of such

materials as were to be had, and sallied forth in thoughtful mood.

"Fame, wealth, love"--he conned them over in the order of valuation.

"Fame (said he) I must first secure, and then I can command my own

price in every thing else. Wealth will follow; and as for love, I

need not go after that. Lord! there is no end to the love that comes

tumbling in upon fame and money!"

_C'est le premier pas qui coute_--the problem was, how to be famous.

There was a military and a civil career. There was invention in all

the arts subservient to human needs. Could any wheels anywhere be

made to go faster or smoother or with less smashing up? Well, as

far as he saw, every thing was as good as it could be. Literature?

Ah! that is a long track; besides, publishers are "lions in the

way"--they cannot or will not always appreciate merit; fame seldom

comes to the scribe till after he is beyond the reach of earthly pain

or blame. "No," said Martin, "I must be famous living; what matters

it after one is dead?"

"What is all this jabber about?" thought the wig; "surely my master

has so many ways before him he cannot tell which to choose; but so

jauntily I sit on his brow, he cannot fail of success whichever he

takes."

This cogitating mood brought them step by step to a corner--one of

those comers peculiar to great cities; where, while down one wide

avenue the mighty human tide goes rushing and roaring, the narrow

side street, like a little sluggish stream with scarce a perceptible

ripple, joins it and empties its trifle into it. At this moment the

usual tide in the great thoroughfare was swollen to a torrent; in

plain words, at the corner Martin encountered a mighty mob. Hark!

what a rabble shout! pell-mell--something had happened. Somebody had

sinned, and very vindictive seemed the sufferers. Martin was caught

in the current and twirled into their midst. Then was heard, "Oh! the

man had a wig on!"--"wig!" "man!" "man!" "wig!" It went from mouth to

mouth. Well, here was a man with a wig on in their midst; this must

be he. The logic was conclusive; so Martin was seized and hurried

along.

"What have I done?" cried he.

"Oh! yes, you know what you've done; and we know what you've done,"

shouted a dozen tongues. So, pinioned close, he was borne onward to

the halls of justice, or injustice, as the case might be.

"Well, well!" thought the wig; "I little expected to get in such a

fix with my gentleman, or I should have clinched his bald pate till

he would have been glad to leave me for some other customer. It is

disgraceful!"

"It's villainous! it's outrageous!" roared Martin.

"Shut up!" said a looker-on.

Now came a medley of questions and cross-questions, and ejaculations,

and assertions, and confirmations, and contradictions, and, in short,

the usual path of law and order was trodden over, till they settled

down to unanimity on one point: the evil deed, whatever it was, (and

very few seemed to know exactly what it was,) had been done by a

man in a wig; but then it was a yellow-white, frowsy, sunburnt sort

of a wig. Who could ever suspect that mass of dark, glossy curls of

concealing a rogue? No one. So Martin was dismissed with the galling

consciousness that for the great wrong done him there was no redress.

A great wrong, too, he felt it; for what was he henceforth? Why, the

very boys in the street would point to him as "the one wot was took

up." He shrank from being seen; he had been too famous already.

He turned his steps homeward to collect his thoughts and rearrange

his dress.

"This comes of a wig," said he; "a wig is deception, deception is

rascality. A man guilty of one deception must not take it in dudgeon

that he is suspected of another. I scorn fame! I go for money; and

money shall make me famous. I began at the wrong end."

"Yes," (chimed in the wig,) "we'll be rich and loved; and the rest is

all bosh."

It took Martin Tryterlittle a long time to put himself again in

presentable order; one more such adventure, and he would be obliged

to cease intercourse with that portion of creation who walk in

sunlight, and join the human owls who, from choice or necessity, fly

only by night. Their ways are not so widely different as a casual

observer might suppose. Money is dear to both, and both are fond of

taking short roads to it. Only in one thing they differ vastly--the

day-worker sighs and seeks for notoriety, and often fails to obtain

it; the night-prowlers have it thrust upon them, though they shun it.

Martin had shared their hapless luck, and his ideas were changed;

henceforth he scorned fame in all its phases, and exalted that other

idol--money.

III.

A second time day-dawn called up Martin and his wig for new projects.

It was a glorious morning. There was something exhilarating in

that yellow flood of light which promised success. It was so

cosmopolitan--that sunlight! It gave to all things such a gloss of

delicate beauty. First, it just touched with gold the spires, and

tallest trees and chimney-tops; then it slid down the house-side

to peep in my lady's chamber; then it poured a glow all over the

pavement, and made merry and warm all the little things, animate and

inanimate, which but for that would have been dark and cold. Into

this atmosphere of joyousness walked forth now Martin Tryterlittle to

find something to do, some fellow-creature with a want unfilled.

It is surprising that any one ever begins to do any thing in this

world, where every avenue to success is crowded, every necessity

supplied, and every evil surrounded by a belt of antidotes; it takes

immense penetration to discover where there is left any thing to be

done.

"I must find a _want_," said he. And he turned to that dragon ever

watchful of human interests--a newspaper. The _wanted_ there were

many--workers for metals, accountants for wealth, delvers for the

riches of earth; but all these anticipated a certain previous

training. _Wanted, a teacher._ "That's it," said Martin. "I think

I am fitted for that." So he moved on to the field of action--the

institute.

The building was easily found--a large brick pile surrounded by

grass, or rather, what would have been grass had juvenile footsteps

permitted. To point the searcher for knowledge to the proper

entrance, its name was displayed there in conspicuous letters.

The master was not so accessible; and he sat a long time in the

parlor with several other visitors, and listened to the tinkling of

sundry little bells, and saw passing in the distance sundry little

processions armed with books and slates, until they were all properly

impressed with an idea of the extent of the establishment and the

awful responsibility of conducting it. At length, slowly and with

dignity, entered Mr. Pushem.

"A teacher, you want?" modestly inquired Martin.

"Yes, sir," was the laconic reply; and a little silence ensued.

"For what, sir?" again modestly asked Martin.

"Well, sir, for several things; in fact, sir, for most any thing."

So, as Martin announced himself _au fait_ on all subjects, and the

salary, without decided specification, was declared by the dignified

principal to be unquestionably liberal, and the duties could not well

be defined until he entered upon them; and as the only positive point

was that he was to be niggard never in either time or labor, for the

reason that time and labor were dust in the balance compared with

the progress of immortal minds, the applicant was regularly enlisted

under the banner of the INSTITUTE. He was to pay his board and

lodging of course, said Mr. Pushem; and, of course, Martin did not

expect to board and lodge without pay, though he had some remembrance

of having done so occasionally; and so the matter was settled, and he

returned home.

It took him small time to pack his bundle. His trunk had been

detained a long time ago by a savage old dame for rent; and, knowing

that the same gulf yawned ever for all succeeding trunks, he had

never replaced it. So, packing his little bundle, I say, and leaving

a kind message for his landlady with a fellow-lodger, to the purport

that he would come back and pay her as soon as he could, he vanished

from his old abode as effectually as if he had gone to another

planet.

Loving parents tell us there is nothing so delightful as watching

the daily progress of children in learning the alphabet of life.

Not that villainous regiment called A B C, which merits execration

as the first herald of toil and sorrow to the infantile heart, but

that beautiful alphabet of rosy hues and rainbow colors, stamped on

leaf, and flower, and fruit, and wave, and hill-side, and which, in

conning over, the little eye learns to see, and the ear to hear; and

the touch refines itself, and fragrance grows to be an idea; and

the little gourmand makes its first essay in luxurious living on

peaches and berries. Every little incident here is delightful. But

not so pleasant is it to note the later wanderings of human beings in

quest of that vague thing--_a living_. The traveller on the highway

of life has grown weary now, and stumbles and plunges ankle-deep in

all things disagreeable. He has heard the bird of promise sing so

falsely, he knows how little the song is worth--he has grown sad

while growing wise; and thus plodded on Martin Tryterlittle.

Some months had passed now since the roof of the institute first

sheltered him; and the bread and bones and watery tea of the

institute first nourished him; and the boys harassed him, and made

fun of him; and twigged his wig, and put nettles in his bed in more

than a metaphorical sense. His master had kept him like a toad under

a harrow, (to use an inelegant but expressive phrase,) always doing,

never done; the salary was yet unsettled, and the duties undefined,

when one night the wig claimed a hearing.

"I am growing shabby," said the wig, "and you are no richer."

Not that these words were uttered in an audible tone, but the thought

passed to Martin and was comprehended.

"You are growing shabby," sighed Martin, ruthfully gazing, "and I am

no richer."

"O master mine!" quoth the wig, "do you see how you are walking on?

You are growing poorer, not richer! What is to you all the glory of

this concern, when you own not even a nail in the wall? You are just

the stone they step on who mount up over you. What do you get for it?

O master mine! you are an ass to stay!"

Martin was not inaccessible to reason; he was impressed daily more

and more with the good sense of his old friend Horace.

"Et genus et virtus, nisi cum re, vilior algâ est."[168]

His rusty garments and diminished bundle told him that the wig

spoke truth, and he prepared, not for a hegira, but for an official

resignation. It took no long time for this, and his little hard bed

in its windy corner was left empty the very next night. The boys

felt that a great source of amusement had departed, and sincerely

regretted his loss; and Mr. Pushem, after due astonishment at such

blindness to advantages, disbursed to him the smallest possible sum

as balance due, and advertised for another teacher.

O gold, gold! _Slave of the dark and dirty mine!_ what need to record

how often thou didst beckon on luckless Martin Tryterlittle, only

to flit from him further than ever? What matters how he slept in

back offices and front basements, dreaming of mines somewhere at

the antipodes, of which he was to have such a glittering slice--or

of lovely landscapes away off in the vast wilderness of which he

would one day be landed proprietor?--that is, as soon as he could

persuade certain people into certain projects which seemed in theory

mighty attractive, but proved in practice to have no attractions

whatever--suffice to say that at last, quite desponding, he invested

most part of his few remaining coin in the prepayment of an attic,

and seated himself sadly at its window.

"I shall never be rich," quoth he; "fame and fortune!--well, let them

go." His heart threw a sigh to the other one of the trio, and the wig

took it up. "I was born for love," said the wig; "the first sweet

words I remember came from the rosy lips of our pretty shop-girl,

_What a love of a wig!_ I have never yet had a fair chance in life.

What care those bankers and old money-scrapers for good looks? They

are all gray and bald and wrinkled before their time. Put me on my

own field, master, and SEE what _I_ can do!"

Perhaps this prompted Martin to lean further out of his window, and

thus give his wig the full benefit of sunlight and the chance of

making acquaintances; at least he did so; and doing so, he glanced

across the street to a window nearly as high as his own, and saw

there--what? Why, two bright eyes looking intently at him! He drew

back; for Martin was diffident with the fair sex, and being, besides,

innately a gentleman, it did not occur to him to embarrass the

damsel with a rude stare. So he retreated; and the bright eyes also

retreated and what was worse than all, a little, plump, white hand

came out and closed the shutters.

Nothing more was seen all day; but he had ample occupation in

conjecturing who it could be. No toil-worn seamstress ever had such

a laughing glance and such a plump little hand; no, it was evidently

a maiden quite above care for the morrow. Most anxiously he awaited

the following morning, when about the same hour--that is, early

day--could he believe his senses?--again the shutter was opened,

and the bright eyes glanced up at him as if they too remembered.

The little fairy was evidently a household fairy engaged in some

fairy-like duties about the chamber, and ever and anon, as these

brought her near the window, she glanced up at Martin.

That any loving and lovable woman should bestow a thought on _him_

was a leaf of paradise painted in dreams sometimes on the far-off

days to come, when he should be rich and renowned; but that such

bright, happy eyes should seek and rest on poor Martin Tryterlittle

was hardly credible; as soon would he have expected Luna to step down

from her orbit, peep into his attic, and say, "Good evening to you,

Martin;" but so it was.

"It is _my_ doing," said the wig; "all mine!"

One day was the story of the next, and the next, and several more

beyond. It is surprising how much may be learned of the inhabitants

of a house from its exterior. As the beatific vision lasted but a

short time each morning, a long day and night was left him to study

its surroundings, and in a brief space of time he read the whole

plain as a book. It was a handsome mansion, and a private one.

There was a sensible housekeeping mistress there; for the railings

were black and the knocker bright, and the steps were clean and the

housemaids tidy; even the pavements were a pattern to the neighbors.

There were order and industry throughout the establishment,

evidently. All this and more besides he deciphered by processes whose

intricate premises laughed to scorn quadratic equations, and yet he

was never tired.

Martin had done, here and there and everywhere in his lifetime,

a deal more head-work than he had ever been paid for, rather by

compulsion; but now he labored _con amore_ on the loveliest subject

life affords; and so far from wearying him, his wits grew brighter,

his ideas received a new impetus, and, strange to say, the beneficial

influence extended to his purse.

"I must have some honest occupation now," cried he; "it will never do

to introduce myself as lounger in an attic window!" Yes! he really

dreamed of an introduction.

"Let me see," (and he picked up his old dragon friend the newspaper;)

"_wants, wants_--small salary, etc.; well, I will try." So he

speedily bargained himself away to--no matter what, so it was honest,

and went to work with a good-will.

It was pleasant, too, (strange he had never thought of it before;) it

was pleasant to have a defined place among his fellow-mortals, and

to feel that he could not now, as heretofore, be blown away on some

windy day, and no one miss him.

Great changes are not wrought in a day. It took him some time to

straighten out his line of existence and untie all the knots he had

always been tying in it; to settle up scores with the past, and open

accounts with the future--but it was all accomplished; and see now

the life of Martin Tryterlittle.

He rose betimes, drank an elixir from those bright eyes perfectly

intoxicating, and speeded to business. At eventide--where think you

he spent his evenings? Why, in the back-parlor of that same handsome

mansion, with little household fairy at his side, and papa smiling

approval. He was no longer threadbare and shabby, and the only bit

of deception about him--his wig--had been long ago confessed and

forgiven.

"I'm a deal better than any hair that ever grew on any man's head,"

said the wig; "for if you live to be a hundred years old, I shall

never be bald or gray."

"You will never be bald or gray," said Martin.

"It will never be bald or gray," laughed the little fairy.

On a certain evening about a year after this, Martin and his wig sat

down for the last time to their dual converse; the next day a little

lady was to be admitted, and the partnership would be a trio. Martin

reclined on a sofa in his own domicil this night, and looked on a

soft, bright carpet. His purse had filled up; nor was he unknown to

fame--at least to a holy fame born of benevolence, which in after

years lighted up many a desolated heart and hearth, and carved his

name on structures where the homeless were sheltered and the hungry

fed.

"Master mine," said the wig, "we mistook our track. Human life was

not bestowed for the hoarding up of money--or men would have been all

born with pockets; nor yet for a chase after fame. There are innate,

loftier, and purer aspirations to be satisfied--the living soul

craves something to love, and craves to be loved; and like sunshine

to earth, that brings forth golden grain and sweet flowers, so pure

love, the household sunshine, calls out wealth of thought and energy

of action; and so comes fame, and so comes money!"

"Just so," said Martin; "you talk like a book!"

FOOTNOTE:

[168] Hor. Bk. ii. Sat. 5. Both birth and virtue, without money, are

more worthless than seaweed.

THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL, BY JANUS.

II.

As the reader will have seen in our previous article, it became

necessary to interrogate history at some length in order to elucidate

and substantiate our arguments on the two points we have already set

forth, namely, the real purpose of _Janus_, and the orthodoxy which

the authors of this work profess. We have thus prepared the way for

our examination of the historical and critical parts of _Janus_, for

which he has found so many ardent admirers who would assign him a

"position in the very front rank of science."

_Janus_ is principally hailed as a work of history, and as such,

makes by no means ordinary or modest pretensions. That promiscuous

array of matter presented to the reader in the third chapter,

subdivided into thirty-three paragraphs with those numerous

references to "_original authorities_," has dazzled so many eyes

and overpowered so many minds, that they could not "help feeling

convinced of its veracity." He has been held up as a "thorough

Catholic" and a "learned canonist," and whether or not by any

legitimate and scientific criterion _Janus_ merits these encomiums,

the reader can infer from the unexceptionable authorities we have

advanced.

We now ask the simple question, Has _Janus_ shown himself to be "a

faithful and discriminating historian"? Having already appealed to

the verdict of history on points of the very first importance, we may

confine ourselves exclusively to the historical merits of _Janus's_

work. It cannot be expected that, within the space allowed to such

an examination, we can touch upon every point; yet we trust to be

able to make such selections as will be sufficient to clear up the

most important historical questions upon which _Janus_ himself lays

most stress. The following extract gives the key to the historical

edifice of _Janus_:

"In this book the first attempt has been made to give a history

of the hypothesis of papal infallibility, from its first

beginnings to the end of the sixteenth century, when it appears

in its complete form." (P. 24.)

To take away all historical basis from "ultramontanism," the authors

go over the whole field of ecclesiastical history, and particularly

the lives, both private and public, of the popes, together with their

acts of administration, whether referring to the religious or civil

government; in short, any thing and every thing is gathered "to

bring forward a very dark side of the history of the papacy." The

authors pledge themselves to oppose what they term the "ultramontane

scheme," to which they will never submit, and hence their appeal

to history, which should show that, since the ninth century, the

constitution of the church has undergone a transformation neither

sound nor natural, because in contradiction with that of the "ancient

church." But the question which naturally suggests itself is, Who

is responsible for this movement in the church, "preparing, like

an advancing flood-tide, to take possession of its whole organic

life"? A "powerful party which, in ignorance of past history or by

deliberately falsifying it," is now about to complete its system and

surround itself with an "impregnable bulwark," by the doctrine of

infallibility. To ward off so fatal a catastrophe, _Janus_ enters

this protest, based on history.

"Only when a universal conflagration of libraries had destroyed

all historical documents, when easterns and westerns knew no

more of their own early history than the Maories in New Zealand

know of theirs now, and when, by a miracle, great nations

had abjured their whole intellectual character and habits of

thought, then, and not till then, would such a submission be

possible." (P. 26.)

We have thus fairly stated the whole issue. True enough, the

ultramontanes were not wise when they did not give over to the flames

all libraries, with the exception of the Isidorian decretals, as the

Mohammedans are known to have done with the library of Alexandria.

Yet we are happy to say that such an expedient measure has not been

resorted to, being thereby enabled to trace the truth or falsehood of

this "mighty programme" of ultramontanism which _Janus_ is pleased to

honor with the name of "Papalism."

We can easily dispense with the alleged historical misconceptions of

the middle ages, and draw upon the very same historical documents

with which _Janus_ so confidently proclaims his victory. Attention

has already been directed to the peculiar mode of warfare pursued by

_Janus_, namely, to its purely negative and destructive character.

The third chapter bears the title of "Papal Infallibility," (pp.

31-346,) and hence we are led to expect a clear, authentic, and fair

exposition of the doctrine in question, and then all other arguments

which, either from scripture and patristic authority or from history,

could be brought to bear against such a doctrine. No reasonable man,

much less a theologian, could object to such a mode of proceeding.

The authors of _Janus_, wishing to cede to none in their loyal

devotion to Catholic truth, could make ample use of that liberty of

scientific discussion and historical investigation for or against the

question of infallibility, and no charge of "radical aversion," as

they seemed to apprehend, could be brought against their work.

Since _Janus_ openly avows his purpose of disproving the doctrine of

infallibility, why does he not give such an explanation of it as is

taught by its most able and acknowledged defenders? What right has

he to produce a version of it to suit his own fancy? Why bring up

arguments militating, indeed, against his _own_ theory, but in nowise

conclusive against the doctrine as laid down by its own exponents?

That it may not appear as if we made unfounded charges against

_Janus_, we will subjoin his own definition and development of the

doctrine he sees fit to attack:

"When we speak of the church, we mean the pope, says the Jesuit

Gretser. Taken by itself as the community of believers, clergy

and bishops, the church, according to Cardinal Cajetan, is the

slave of the pope." (P. 31.)

Apparently, our authors would make this the ultramontanist tenet:

henceforward the "_l'église c'est moi_" would be the genuine

expression of papal infallibility. We know of no theologian who

sustains any such thesis as the above, and we had expected a

_reference_ to the authorities quoted; but none is given, and we

little heed the utterances attributed to them. Nothing, indeed, is

easier than to place a question in a false point of view, either

by exaggeration or misrepresentation, in order to make it appear

ludicrous and absurd.

"It is a fundamental principle of the ultramontane view that,

when we speak of the church, its rights and its action, we

always mean the pope, and the pope only." (P. 31.)

There is no treatise on the church in which any such definition is

to be found, or any author who declares the pope alone to be the

church, in any possible sense or conception. _Janus_ delights to cite

Bellarmine as one of such ultramontane view. Now, we confidently

assert that nowhere in his elaborate treatises on the _Roman

Pontiff_ or the _Church Militant_ any similar definition to the one

alleged can be found. Who is there who does not know that clear and

concise notion given by Bellarmine, in which he has been followed by

all standard works? For he says,