On the branches, then, that entwine the staircase leading up on

the side of Eve, he placed a peacock, symbol of pride; a

squirrel, symbol of destruction; a cock, symbol of noise; and an

ape, image of malice; of all which defects, poor Martha, as the

angels well knew, was as innocent as an infant.

Of the statue of Adam, Verbruggen made a _chef d'oeuvre_--a

figure full of dignity and manly beauty. The figure of Eve is

inferior, and has less grace and animation.

And now to complete his sculptured marital spite, on Adam's side

he carved an eagle, symbol of genius.

Thus far had he progressed when poor Martha sickened and died. In

his motherless household Verbruggen soon discovered the extent of

his misfortune, and learned, as Shakespeare has so well told the

world, that

"What we have we prize not to the worth;

But being lacked and lost,

We then do know its value."

And now came the reaction. Verbruggen deeply mourned Martha. He

sincerely deplored her. Her admirable qualities came fresh upon

his memory, and he bitterly reproached himself for his unkindness

and neglect.

Soon he fell into fits of despondency. Discouragement took

possession of him, and his pulpit, begun with so much energy,

stood unfinished.

Accustomed to find his home in order, his table spread, he soon

discovered their loss, as well as the want of a thousand little

attentions and kindnesses which none could now give him; and in

short, as he was in the high road for discoveries, we may safely

conclude that he found out, with Ben Franklin, that a lone man is

but the half of a pair of scissors.

Twelve months passed by. Verbruggen's friends counselled him to

remarry. "You are but thirty-six," said they. "You have sincerely

mourned Martha's loss, and have done full justice to her

excellent qualities; but you can yet do as well, if not better.

There is Cecily Van Eyck, talented, a painter, an artist, like

yourself. Your dispositions accord, and if she consents to have

you, she will be a mother to your little girl and make you an

admirable wife."

Henry listened to his friends, thought over what they said, and

followed their advice. He became Cecily's suitor, and was

accepted.

Now Cecily Van Eyck was very smiling, very sweet, very charming;

but Cecily had a will of her own.

Scarcely had the honeymoon gone by, when she enlightened Henry

with some new ideas, and gave him several very distinct notions

as to the proper distribution of domestic power in a household.

In a more propitious age Cecily would have made her mark in a

_Sorosis_, and been a leader of the most advanced radical

wing of a woman's rights party.

{828}

Her mastery over Verbruggen was complete, and the poor artist

even kissed his chains.

One day she said to him, "What are you doing? Your apathy is

complained of, and I am taunted with it. Remember, if you please,

that Van Eyck is a name not unknown. Let me not lose, I pray you,

by changing it for that of Verbruggen. Where is the pulpit, that

_chef d'oeuvre_ you so long since announced?"

In reply he led her to his studio. Cecily had an artist's eye,

and more--a woman's.

"What mean," said she, "these emblems by the side of Eve?"

The sculptor blushed.

"When I made them," he answered, "I did not know Cecily Van

Eyck."

"'Tis well. But after these emblems of defects, which perhaps

women have not, what do you intend to bestow upon your own sex?"

"I had already commenced," stammered Verbruggen--"you see the

eagle. 'Twas perhaps somewhat vain."

"Vain! Oh! no; not at all. The eagle--a bird of prey and rapine,

the symbol of brutal tyranny--nothing could be fitter. Well, and

what further do you intend?"

Verbruggen could find no reply.

"Well, then, listen," continued his wife, "to render full justice

to your sex, near the eagle you will place a fox, emblem of

deceit; a parrot, emblem of noisy chatter; a monkey eating

grapes, symbol of intoxication; and a jackdaw, emblem of silly

pride."

Verbruggen executed her orders with a docility most edifying. The

pulpit was soon finished, and, fortunately for us, has been

preserved intact through years of war and revolution. Higher

teachings have been proclaimed from it, but to those who know its

story even its dumb wood speaks a salutary lesson.

"Ah sir!" ejaculated the old sexton, when he had finished the

story of the pulpit, "if I had known the history of that pulpit

before I married a second time, I--"

Just then I came away.

----------

The Future Of Ritualism.

We propose to devote a few pages to the consideration of

Ritualism and its probable future, because it is an interesting

religious movement which is of great importance to many souls,

and because it seems to us to have reached its crisis. A writer

in the _Churchman_ (an Episcopalian journal of Hartford,

Ct.) wonders that Catholics take such an interest in his

communion and its members. "Our bishops being no bishops," he

says, "our clergy only decently behaved laymen, our laity a

perverse generation whose only chance of salvation lies in the

charitable hope of their invincible ignorance, surely it is

wasting powder and shot upon us to criticise our doings when we

are thus only playing at being a church." It is certainly true

that in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and also of every

ecclesiastical body which has the apostolic succession, the

bishops of the Episcopal Church are no bishops, and the clergy

are mere laymen.

{829}

It is also true that the extreme High-Churchmen are "playing at

being a church." But cannot the writer understand our zeal for

the salvation of souls and our honest desire to help those whose

religion is only a logical farce? We assure him that if he does

not appreciate our sincerity, he does injustice to the feelings

which should animate every Christian heart. We see that which

every intelligent and unbiased mind can see, a party in the

Episcopal Church holding opinions which are suicidal to every

species of Protestantism, and which lead directly to the Catholic

faith, and we know that those who belong to this party cannot

long continue in their present position. They must come honestly

forward to us, or go backward to lose what little faith they

have. Is it wonderful that for the love of Christ we beg them to

be truthful to their convictions, and manly in their profession?

Is it strange that we attempt to show them that the doctrines

they profess to hold have no home in Protestantism, and that the

church they pretend to venerate is only a fiction of their

imagination?

In this spirit we write now a few words which will, we hope, fall

into the hands of Ritualists, and help at least some to the

knowledge of the truth. Let us say at once, and in all candor,

that our sympathy is with the movement which is called Ritualism,

and that from its beginning we have earnestly prayed to God to

bless it to the conversion of many souls. We hope it will go on

and prosper, and be truthfully developed; for we can think of

nothing so fearful as "playing church," when the question is one

of salvation. There is, however, among some of the leaders of

this movement, a want of honesty and a direct untruthfulness

which surprise us greatly. If this dishonesty be not wilful, it

is owing to an obliquity of mind which it is hard to comprehend.

The object of this article is to show that Ritualism can have no

standing in the Episcopal Church, and that they who would

propagate it had better lay down the weapons of insinuation and

falsehood and be brave enough to look the truth full in the face.

There is nothing gained by attempting to skulk away under the

_general_ meaning of the name which the world has applied to

a particular signification. "There can be no religion without

external ceremonies, say the High-Churchmen, "therefore,

Ritualism is proper and necessary." This argument is as

fallacious as the following "There is no man without a body,

therefore the negro is a necessity to the human race." The

question, honest friends, is not whether the religion of Christ

demands ceremonies, but whether it demands the particular

ceremonies advocated at St. Alban's and other ritualistic

churches. And Ritualism does not mean the adoption of any rites

in the service of God, but the use of the peculiar ones which are

recommended by the leaders of the movement in the Episcopal

Church. Why, then, not say so at once with manliness? A man will

make little progress in our day who is afraid to avow his creed.

Ritualism means a good deal more than mere rites and ceremonies.

We do not take our good friends who put on Catholic vestments as

automatons who are dressed up by the tailor to show off his art.

They are not so senseless as to play for the benefit of the

dress-maker alone. There is doctrine beneath all this external

ritual which is intended to show forth the sacrifice of the mass,

and the real presence of our Lord in the holy Eucharist.

{830}

It includes the whole sacramental system, and the power of the

priesthood. There is little outward distinction between the

tenets of the Ritualists and the creed of the Catholic Church.

They may pretend to draw a line for the satisfaction of fearful

disciples, but really there is little difference. As far as we

can see, they are willing to accept our faith, so long as they

can enjoy it without submitting to the Catholic Church. They go

to confession, and invoke the saints, and pray for the dead, and

believe in the seven sacraments, and kneel devoutly before the

bread and wine which they elevate for the adoration of the

people. "You can have," said a leading Ritualist of this city,

"everything in the Episcopal Church which you can find in the

Catholic communion, and why therefore should you go away from the

fold in which you were born?" We ought, therefore, to define

Ritualism as a movement toward the actual faith and worship of

the one church of Christ, which were rejected by all Protestants

at the Reformation. This is its true definition before every

honest mind, and any attempts to hide under generalities, are

attempts at deception. It will perhaps bring our remarks to more

clear conclusions, if we show, first, that these doctrines which

underlie the whole movement can have no status in the Episcopal

Church; secondly, that any attempts at disguising the truth, only

injure the leaders in their enterprise; and lastly, from the

indications of the present, conclude the future of Ritualism.

Little time need be spent to persuade any honest mind that the

sacramental system can have no home in the Anglican communion.

First of all, the great body of the people reject it, and can

never be made to accept it, while they say with sincerity that

they see no distinction between it and the teachings of the

Catholic Church. If it be deemed worth while to profess

substantially all the doctrines of Trent, why not undo the

Reformation and go back at once to the fold which their

forefathers forsook? And, as Bishop Lee remarked at the opening

of the late Episcopal Convention, what right had the church

organized by Queen Elizabeth to set forth articles of faith, or

in fact to be a church at all, if not on the Protestant principle

of private judgment? The majority of Episcopalians have the

greatest possible aversion to anything that can be called

Romanism, and will, as a body, never allow themselves to be

catholicised. In this country there is great liberty of speech,

and great pretensions are easily tolerated; but when it is

understood that such pretensions mean more than words, the spirit

of Protestantism, which is the only living thing in the Episcopal

Communion, shows itself in full armor. Individuals daily come to

the one fold of Christ, but the body will never move from its

hostile attitude. It will stand consistent to its own principle

until the hour of dissolution. If any Ritualist doubts this, let

him actually practise all he preaches, and openly avow all he

believes. His eyes will soon be opened sufficiently to see that

the antagonism between himself and his surroundings can never be

removed.

Our friends, the High-Churchmen, are zealous upholders of church

authority; but where is the authority to which they submit? Their

own church ought to be an authority to them, yet we find that its

decisions have no weight for their minds. The articles are

against them, and every doctrinal judgment that has been made

throughout the history of the controversy is distinctly adverse

to their views; yet they insist on holding on, and appealing from

the stern present to the impossible future.

{831}

The thirty-nine articles are really the doctrinal standards of

the English Church and truly express the belief which formed and

animates their communion. When these articles are given up, if

such an event should ever take place, the Episcopal brotherhood

will commit suicide and vote itself out of existence. These

remarkable canons of doctrine condemn the whole sacramental

system, deny any real presence of Christ in the blessed

Eucharist, and cut away, root and branch, any encouragement which

the Ritualists might find in the other portions of the

Prayer-Book. Whatever authority therefore the Episcopal Church

has, is most decidedly against the unnatural children who profess

great fondness for their mother, call her by great names which

she disowns, and still never obey her. We have before us a

declaration of principles made in the year 1867, in which are

contained the very doctrines which the articles condemn, and

which the bishops, whenever they have spoken, have rebuked. One

sentence particularly pleases us by its great frankness and

amiable sincerity. "We heartily and loyally _obey_ the

authority of our own particular church, receive _every one_

of her doctrines, and adopt, as our own, her every act of

devotion." Article xxviii says, "The sacrament of the Lord's

supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about,

lifted up, or worshipped." The declaration of these _loyal_

children declares that "Christ is _really present_ in the

Holy Eucharist, and being present, is of course to be adored."

Now, if the bishops of the Anglican communion have any right to

decide in litigated questions, they have spoken with sufficient

plainness. The "Catholic school" in England has had a hard road

to travel while one after another their favorite positions have

been condemned. The last decision of the Privy Council is adverse

to the ceremonies of Ritualism, and of course to the doctrines

which underlie them. Twenty-eight bishops of the American

Episcopal Church have published an open protest against the new

movement, and the late Pastoral of the Convention reasserts the

principles of the Reformation, denies the presence of our Lord in

the Eucharist, and concludes the subject by saying: "We would

most earnestly deprecate those extravagances in Ritualism,

recently introduced, which tend to assimilate our worship to that

of a church hostile to our own. And we must urge you to remember

that the reverent obedience to their bishops and other chief

ministers, promised by the clergy at their ordination, would, if

faithfully rendered, prevent these evils." We are not aware that

anything more explicit be required by our friends who "love their

own particular church" so well; but if the above be not enough,

we imagine they will not wait very long for something more.

The most painful feature, however, in this movement, is an

apparent want of truthfulness and a disingenuousness which are

inconsistent with the earnest desire to know the faith of Christ.

It is very hard to comprehend the course of some of the leaders

in this "Catholic revolution," unless their aim be to maintain a

cause without any regard for truth or justice. They are sometimes

very insincere in their condemnations of Romanism before the

people, when in their hearts they must see that they are making

dupes of the ignorant.

{832}

A very vapid book has been handed to us, entitled

_Conversations on Ritualism_. The Rev. Mr. Wilson

(Ritualist) instructs Mr. Brown, and opens his eyes to see that

there is a pure Catholicity all unknown to Rome, and even to the

(beloved) East, which is now about to revive and do wonders. Mr.

Brown is informed that the American Church has not yet been put

together. The elements of which it is composed are floating

around; but so sure as the sun rises some bright day, the chaos

will be one beautiful scene of order and unity, when all shall

think alike, and the brilliant altars shall blaze with candles

and smoke with incense. Now, Rev. Mr. Wilson "doubts if there are

many of his bishops and priests who know more than the mere A, B,

C, of the real question of the church worship." They will,

however, be enlightened, because the world is to see the

"gorgeous Ritual without the doctrinal errors and corruptions of

Rome," and to take a "pill which is not to be gilded." Puritanism

comes in for a terrible malediction. "If ever an evil spirit has

appeared on the earth, of such a character as to put men out of

patience with its inconsistencies and absurdities, that spirit is

Puritanism." O Puritanism, Puritanism, thou that abhorrest

pictures and flowers, stained glass and altar-cloths, thou that

lovest whitewash and blank hard-finish, with what amazement shalt

thou hereafter discern the glories of the heavenly city, the New

Jerusalem! "This Puritanism is a very subtle and persistent

poison; I have known it to crop out where least expected; I have

even known of mitred heads which seem in some way turned by it."

But, bad as it is, it is not worse than Popery, which good Mr.

Brown is taught to distinguish well from Ritualism. Then Rev. Mr.

Wilson, speaking _ex cathedra_, defines what this Popery is.

Its errors are "the cultus of the Blessed Virgin; adoration of

the cross, images, and relics; the doctrine of purgatory,

Transubstantiation, Papal pardons, indulgences and dispensations,

supererogatory merits, and forbidding the clergy to marry." Pope

Wilson, who rejects the authority of Pius IX., pronounces these

doctrines and practices as grave errors. There can be no doubt,

therefore, of the clearness of his vision, and discussion were

useless and certainly inappropriate. But, behind the scenes, what

is the practical difference between the Catholic doctrine

condemned, and the belief symbolized by the Ritualists? Mr. Brown

has gone home quite satisfied, and he will not hear our

conversation, and we can afford to talk our honest convictions.

The cultus of the Blessed Virgin and the saints is nothing more

than the devotion which our friend, Mr. Mackonochie approves

under another name. Catholics do not _adore_ the cross, nor

images, nor relics. They treat them with veneration and religious

respect, and so do the Ritualists. Rev. Mr. Wilson prays for his

departed friends, though for the world he would not say out loud

Purgatory. Transubstantiation he does not accept, though he

believes that the bread and wine are the body and blood of

Christ, and to be adored with every outward symbol of devotion.

Pardons are very good in themselves, if the Pope has nothing to

do with them; and as for forbidding the clergy to marry, he would

leave that an open question. Many of the Ritualists have evinced

a preference for a single life, and a desire even to establish

convents and monasteries. Mr. Brown is sleeping quietly on his

Protestant pillow while Mr. Wilson prays before his crucifix, and

is a Romanist at heart though not in name.

{833}

We fear there are many Mr. Browns, and Madame Browns, and Misses

Brown, who are likewise deceived. In religion we would prefer

more manliness and outspoken honesty. These _Conversations on

Ritualism_ are only an example of what we have often seen and

heard with much pain. We have great hopes of any man who is

truthful; but when there is a desire to deceive, and an

unwillingness to follow truth to its just conclusions, there is

little chance for argument. But some of the Ritualists are as

unfair toward their own church as they are toward us. It cannot

condemn them; for whatever language it may use, they will

interpret it to suit their own case. When Tract No. XC. appeared,

the entire English communion scouted its attempt to reconcile the

articles with Catholic doctrine. Now, there is no difficulty in

explaining away every objectionable point and making those

thirty-nine daggers inoffensive. The _Baptist Quarterly_

says: "The twenty-fifth article declares, 'The sacraments were

not ordained to be gazed upon,' an unquestionable interdiction of

eucharistic adoration. But this, we are told, must mean that they

are not to be looked upon without reverence and devotion. So

article twenty-eight says, 'The sacrament of the Lord's supper

was not by Christ's ordinance lifted up or worshipped.' This, it

is said, may mean that elevation may not be practised, on the

ground of its being done by Christ's ordinance, but it may be

done on some other ground. What may be the casuistry of men who

can so defend their principles, it is difficult for minds

accustomed to frank and straightforward actions to comprehend."

If the Privy Council forbids the practices of the Ritualists, the

_Church Record_ tells us that "they must indeed be

short-sighted who suppose that the disuse under compulsion of the

ritual expression of a doctrine will hinder it from being taught

and believed." If the whole house of American bishops distinctly

deny any presence of the body and blood of Christ in the

Eucharist, and forbid any worship of the elements, on the ground

that Christ is not there, then these loyal churchmen are

"cheered," and take refuge under the incautious use of a term

which in one sense might be objected to even by Catholics. Say

the bishops, "Especially do we condemn any doctrine of the holy

Eucharist which implies that, after consecration, the proper

nature of the elements of bread and wine does not remain; which

_localizes_ in them the bodily presence of our Lord." The

prelates meant to say that our Lord is not really in the

sacrament, and had no idea of the theological objection which

Catholic doctors might find to the use of the word localize. The

_Catechism_ of the Council of Trent tells us that our Lord

is not in the sacrament "_ut in loco_" that is, he is not

limited or circumscribed by the ordinary laws of quantity and

extension. This is evident, because our Lord is present by

miracle and according to the conditions of his glorified

humanity. "When the Pastoral is examined," says the

_Churchman_, "it turns out to be a denial of a physical or

carnal presence, which the writer (in _The Catholic World_)

not having the fear of the Council of Trent before his eyes,

declares must be _local_." The Pastoral says nothing about a

physical or carnal presence, the precise meaning of which in

high-church casuistry we do not know; but it denies any "bodily

presence." Now, if our Lord's body is there at all, there is a

bodily presence, and that presence is localized, that is to say,

he is within the species of bread and wine.

{834}

To use the words of St. Cyril, "That which appears to be bread is

not bread, but the body of Christ; and that which appears to be

wine is not wine, but the blood of Christ." It is hard for us to

believe that the author of the above stricture on the Pastoral

knows what he means himself. If by "physical" he means according

to the ordinary laws of physics, he need not beat the air any

more. If by "carnal" he intends to say that our Lord is not in

the Eucharist, as when in the days of his sojourn on earth, he

was subject to all the natural conditions of flesh and blood, he

will find no adversary in the Catholic Church. The substance of

the bread and wine is changed into the substance of the body and

blood of Christ, and he is in the Eucharist sacramentally, but as

truly and really as he is at the right hand of the Father in

heaven. Two substances cannot coexist at one time in one and the

same space, and so, according to the plain definition of our

creed, the Incarnate Word is miraculously present, whole and

entire in either form, and under every consecrated host in the

world. That the bishops meant to deny distinctly any true

presence of Christ in the sacrament, is evident enough to any

mind, and we cannot admire the candor of the writer who would try

to escape from it by a quibble upon a word whose common

acceptation is quite plain. The _Church Record_ would have

us believe that anything can here be tolerated, provided you do

not use the word "Transubstantiation."

But what shall we say of the following language taken from the

_Churchman_? "The Romish Church does not, comparatively

speaking, care one fig for transubstantiation, the celibacy of

the clergy, the employment of her particular liturgy and

ceremonial. She has sacrificed these for dominion in times past.

She will do it again. She will explain away transubstantiation,

she will admit the marriage of the clergy, she will make almost

any other concession, if she can get her penny's worth in return.

But one thing she does care about, and that is the Pope's

supremacy." The author of this famous passage is unsafe in any

community, and ought to be continually watched by detectives. It

is easy to write falsehood, and not very hard to speak it; but it

avails very little those who have the hardihood to use it. We

have come to the conclusion, from a long experience, that

high-churchmen will never be driven from their ground by any

decisions of their own church, and that many of them are

exceptions to the ordinary laws of humanity. They are

inaccessible to reason. On this ground they will excuse us if we

pray the more earnestly for them, or endeavor to point out to the

world their wonderful inconsistency. They advocate a kind of

infallibility which, to be sure, is not within the reach of any

one, and yet when the Catholic Church is called infallible, they

find the very idea inconsistent with their reason. "So long as

Rome keeps to itself, it is grand, imposing, and may pass for

powerful. But when it appeals to argument and ventures into the

province of reason, it admits the possibility of an adverse

conclusion. Infallible men must not reason, they can only

pronounce." Perhaps it was a hoary head that indited these words

in the _Churchman_, or it may have been a young and

inexperienced warrior. Is there any objection to show the grounds

of our faith to one who asks for them, and may not even the

writer of the above enter upon an argument to prove the existence

of God, "without admitting the possibility of an adverse

conclusion"?

{835}

It is something new to us that we can only defend by argument the

things that we doubt. We do not reason on the _intrinsic_

credibility of the doctrine proposed to our belief, but upon the

extrinsic evidence that God, the only revealer, really proposes

the doctrine. And we are quite ready to show to any honest mind

the proofs that the Catholic Church is the one and only church of

God. Nay, this has been done by our fathers and doctors from the

beginning. Every Catholic is infallible so far as his faith goes,

because he relies upon the church which is infallible; but this

does not prevent him from defending by reason the creed which he

holds. The same luminous author asks if "Rome will stand equally

well the daylight which will be let into her secret places." So

also the accusation has been made, that "the Romish Church has

one set of doctrines for the public and another for the

initiated; that to converts she always showed her best face, and

did not reveal her true features until she had fairly caught them

in her iron grasp." In reply to these nursery tales, meant for

crying children only, we say briefly that Rome has no "secret

places" whatever; that the daylight shines in her, and through

her; and that all she holds and teaches is in her catechism,

which is taught to young and old. Any one who wishes to know her

creed can easily find it out, and it is as much in the possession

of the unlettered peasant as it is of the learned philosopher. It

is barely possible that they who write and speak such silliness

as the above may be honest; but surely, if they are in their

right minds, there is no excuse for their ignorance. Dear

Ritualists, when you wish to keep your friends or parishioners

from going Romeward, pray tell the truth; for when they find out

that you have tried to deceive them, they will all the faster run

from a system which cannot bear honesty and plain-dealing.

There is another point in which our good friends who like to call

themselves Catholics are manifestly either ill-informed or

disingenuous. They profess to see a great distinction between the

schismatic Greek communion and the Catholic Church, and speak as

if there were the slightest hope of any intercourse between

themselves and the Eastern sects. The separated Greeks are

certainly in a lifeless state, owing to their schism and their

slavish subjection to the state; but their standards are as

decisive against Protestantism and the English pretensions as

even the canons of Trent. To speak otherwise, and to represent to

an unlettered person that there is any approximation between

Anglicanism and the East, is only an attempt to deceive. The

position of the schismatic Christians of the East is quite simple

upon our views of Catholic unity; but we venture to again urge

our brethren of the Episcopal Church, to prosecute their

investigations and do something more than pass resolutions such

as are every year triumphantly carried at the sessions of the

American and Foreign Christian Union. "Why not quietly wait,"

says the _Churchman_, "and let us be snubbed?" We are quite

willing to wait; but in this day of telegraph and steam

improvements, may we not beg the committee to move a little

faster? In the mean time, we would place in their hands a little

manual, by Dr. Overbeck, a Russian priest, who speaks only the

sentiments of his whole communion.

{836}

We quote from the English edition of his work on Catholic

orthodoxy. Speaking in the name of the Greek Church, he says in

answer to Dr. Pusey's _Eirenicon_, (page 97,) "We do not

want your power nor your riches; these are no baits for us. We

are content with our poverty and our pure faith, which nobody

shall sully; and are we to commune with a church _so replete

with heresy_ as the English Church is! Are we to expose our

only treasure, our pure faith! You have installed heresy in your

pulpits; you do not cast it out; nay, you cannot cast it out,

because your church is historically a Protestant Church, and

Protestants framed your articles which you contrive in vain to

unprotestantize. God forbid! _No communion with an heretical

church! No communion with the English Church--it would be the

grave of orthodoxy_." Again, (page 89,) "The Orthodox Church

does not recognize the English Church to be _achurch_, in

her own meaning of the word, any more than the Lutheran,

Reformed, or any other Protestant Church. If we, nevertheless,

use the term _church_ in the controversy, it is only a

conventional mode of speaking, while disproving the fact, and

denying the truth of the underlaid idea." "The English Church is

not, and never was recognized by any Catholic Church."

From what we have seen, the prospects of Ritualism are not very

bright. Whatever authority the Episcopal Church possesses will

undoubtedly be used to prevent its growth and influence. It is

quite certain that it can never be grafted upon the service or

discipline of a communion whose very existence depends upon its

Protestantism. The bishops are in a directly hostile attitude

toward the movement; and if some of them let it alone, it is,

perhaps, because they think that it will the sooner die out.

Ritualists will go forward to a certain point, and High-Churchmen

will stand ungenerously behind to take any advantage of their

success, and to disavow all responsibility when the hour of

trouble comes.

After a while, the whole revolution will cease, and while many

will become Catholics, others will return to indifference, and to

greater torpidity than at the beginning. Already there are signs

of division among the movers in the drama. They are not agreed on

the question of quantity, some proposing to go much further

Romeward than others are willing to follow. English Ritualists

are dissatisfied with their American friends, and accuse them of

cowardice or want of frankness. The bishops snub them at every

opportunity, the powers of the state fall down upon them, and

they cannot come to any settled conclusion what to do. In this

country they can act as they like, untouched by civil authority,

and yet the whole land can boast of only one or two churches

where ceremonies are carried out according to the code. It is

doubtful how long these churches can be supported on the

voluntary principle. Our own judgment is, that a few years will

see the end of a movement which ought to result in many

conversions to the Catholic faith. If there were strict honesty

among the leaders, we should be more hopeful; but when false

statements are constantly made, and the "No Popery" cry is held

up as a blind by even the advance-guard who wear chasubles and

hear confessions, what encouragement have we for the future? It

is so easy to retrace one's steps and to look unconscious of all

harm if the tide of battle turns. We know of more than one

bishop, and many ministers in the Episcopal Church, who have

recanted their errors with more or less manliness, and are now in

the surgeon's tent, far away from all danger.

{837}

The lawn-sleeves and the fair heritage have proved too much for

their faith in things eternal. They who once were ready to accept

all the decrees of Trent and utterly reject the articles of their

own church, have become doctors of divinity, with large families

of children, and the pangs of conscience have ceased. Monasteries

well organized have been broken up by the marriage of nearly all

the reverend monks, and communities of sisters have been

seriously embarrassed by the drafts the clergy have made upon

their number. We mention these facts in sorrow; for it is a sad

proof of the inconsistency of man in matters of religion. Why

should we expect any more from the Ritualists than we have

realized from their cotemporaries or progenitors? Especially,

when we behold among them a self-sufficiency and untruthfulness

which have no parallel in ecclesiastical history, what shall we

dare hope?

The Anglican communion can never be unprotestantized. It may in

the course of time fall to pieces, and every living moment within

its bosom will help its dissolution. As a body, it never can take

any Catholic position, nor wash off the birthmarks which prove

its parentage.

Those who really wish for a divine church and the rites which

speak the old unchangeable faith, will come one by one "to the

pillar and ground of truth." Having tried shadows long enough,

being wearied by "playing at church," and tired of holding up a

religion by their own strength, they will come where God hath

established his covenant in Zion and his mercy in Jerusalem. No

honest man can long hold the doctrine of the Real Presence and

remain away from the altars where alone the Holy of Holies can be

found. No man can seek to confess his sins and often kneel to one

who is afraid to hear him openly, who presents at best a doubtful

code of morals, and plays, like a foolish child, with tools whose

proper use he knows not. The end will soon come. The Catholic

Church would have perished long ago, if her life had not been the

life of God, and no counterfeit of her august creed can survive

the changes of time. Ritualism will pass away, and something else

will take its place. The Holy Spirit of truth speaks through this

movement to honest hearts who will hear and obey. Many are like

the young man in the gospel, who went away from Christ because

the sacrifice was too great. He was "not far from the kingdom of

God," neither are our Ritualistic brethren far distant from the

portals of the true Zion. God grant that they may be not

unfaithful to the truth they know, nor lastingly unwilling in the

day of the divine power.

----------

{838}

Ireland's Martyrs. [Footnote 292]

[Footnote 292: _Memorials of those who suffered for the

Catholic Faith in Ireland in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and

Eighteenth Centuries_. Collected and edited from the

original authorities.

By Myles O'Reilly, B.A., LL.D.

New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1869. 12mo, pp. 462.]

The Catholic Church in Ireland, oppressed from the days of the

Norman invasion, became, from the time of Henry VIII., a living

martyr; her sufferings having no parallel in Europe from the time

of the three centuries of persecution under the Roman emperors.

It was not so much the persecution and martyrdom of individuals

so much as of a race and nation. Hence, while the _Acts of the

Early Roman Martyrs_, formally drawn up, have long since been

collected by Ruinart; while a Challoner, for England, collected

records of the martyrs of the faith in his _Missionary

Priests_, that all-absorbing favorite of our earliest days;

while even the memorials of the missionary martyrs in our own

land had been collected, no one seemed to think of selecting the

records of Ireland's martyred priests from the harrowing tale of

the suffering and unconquerably faithful people amid whom they

perished.

It has been well that this pious task has at last been

undertaken, and so well accomplished. This work of Mr. O'Reilly

is a plain, unvarnished collection of contemporary accounts, with

no attempt to make, from the simple details given, a graphic and

affecting picture. Brief, too brief, indeed, many of these

records are; but further researches, unexplored archives,

correspondence not hitherto consulted, will, we trust, ere long,

give more extended and edifying memorials of these faithful

clergymen, these bishops, priests, secular and regular, of the

Isle of Saints.

During much of the period of the great Irish persecution, during

that long interval between 1540 and 1701 it was scarcely possible

to draw up and send out of Ireland, much less preserve in it,

extended accounts of the martyrdom of those who died for the

faith. Research or inquiry into their births or early lives was

out of the question.

The chief sources where we can now seek information as to these

heroic men are the historical writings of the religious orders

who labored in Ireland. Among the Franciscans, the great annalist

of the order is Father Luke Wadding, an Irishman, who has

preserved many valuable accounts relating to his native country.

Colgan, another Irish writer of the same order, in the preface to

the _Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae_, gives an account of the

death of two of his literary associates, Fathers Fleming and

Ward.

De Burgo, of the order of Preachers, published a well-known work,

_Hibernia Dominicana_, devoted to the history of his order

in Ireland.

The Jesuit, Father Tanner, in his _Societas Jesu Militans_,

records the lives of many of his order who died for the faith in

Ireland, and, in another work, not cited by our author, his

_Mortes Illustres_, while treating of distinguished Irish

members, enters into the persecutions of the church in their

native land.

{839}

Then there were special works on the various persecutions: the

_Relatio Persecutionis Hiberniae_, by Father Dominic a

Rosario, published at Lisbon in 1655; Bruodin's _Propugnaculum

Catholiae Veritatis_, issued at Prague in 1669; Bishop Rothe's

_Analecta Sacra Nova et Mira de Rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia

pro Fide et Religione Gestis_, published at Cologne, in 1617,

under the assumed name of Philadelphus; and the _Processu

Martyrialis_ of the same author, which appeared two years

later; the _Persecutio Hiberniae_, 1619; Morrison's

_Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica, sive Planctus Universalis totius

Cleri et Populi Regni Hiberniae_, published at Innspruck, in

1659; and Carve's _Lyra_, Sulzbach, 1666, with other works

of more general scope.

Besides these printed works, Mr. O'Reilly cites several

manuscripts preserved in the Burgundian Library at

Brussels--_Magna Supplicia_, written about 1600; an account

of the martyrdom of Bishop Dovany in 1612; Mooney's account of

the Franciscan Province in Ireland; and unpublished letters of

Irish Jesuits.

The first blows at the Catholic Church in Ireland were struck

under Henry VIII. at the monasteries; then came the intrusion of

men, as bishops, who acknowledged that monster as head of the

church, and the expulsion of those who refused to admit this new

power in the crown. In the reign of his daughter Elizabeth came

the doctrine that the sovereign, provided always, nevertheless,

that he be not a Catholic, is not only head of the church, but

empowered to make creeds and a ritual for worship. In a few

reigns more came the doctrine that the Calvinists in a nation are

the head of the church and state, may behead kings, make and

unmake worships and creeds, and put to death all who gainsay

them.

The persecution under Henry was comparatively bloodless; the

plunder was too plentiful for men to stop to slay. Only one

instance is recorded--that of the beheading of the guardian of

the Franciscan convent at Monaghan, and of several of his friars;

but we can scarcely credit that under so sanguinary a tyrant so

little blood was shed in Ireland, where no scruple ever held back

the English sword from slaughter, only a few Irish families or

bloods being recognized as men whom to kill was murder.

England had her illustrious martyr, Cardinal John Fisher, Bishop

of Rochester; Ireland in her hierarchy had an illustrious

confessor in William Walsh, Bishop of Meath, a Cistercian, born

at Dunboyne, and a monk in the Abbey of Bective, till its

suppression.

"Whatever doubt there may be about the place of his birth and

his early history, there is none whatever as to his eminent

virtues, distinguished abilities, and the heroic fortitude with

which he bore numerous and prolonged sufferings for the faith.

His unbending orthodoxy and opposition to the innovations of

Henry VIII. and Edward VI. marked him out for promotion after

the accession of Mary, and accordingly we find him associated

with the zealous primate, Dr. Dowdall, in the commission to

drive from the sanctuary all such as were faithless to their

trust.

"Dr. Walsh was consecrated about the close of 1554, and

immediately applied himself with zeal and energy to reform

abuses, and to heal the wounds which during the last two reigns

had been inflicted on faith, morals, and discipline. The period

of his usefulness was, however, destined to be brief, and he

had time merely to stimulate his priests and to fortify his

diocese when the gathering storm burst over the Irish church,

and sacrificed the Bishop of Meath among its first and noblest

victims. Queen Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by

Elizabeth, who at once publicly embraced the reformed tenets,

and proceeded to have them enforced on all. In 1560, an act was

passed, under the deputyship of the Earl of Suffolk, which

ordered all ecclesiastical persons, judges, officers, justices,

mayors, and all the other queen's officers, to take the oath of

supremacy under penalty of forfeiture, and also enacted that if

any person should, by writing, printing, teaching, preaching,

by express words, deed, or act, maintain any foreign spiritual

jurisdiction, he should for the first offence forfeit all his

goods and suffer one year's imprisonment, for the second

offence should incur the penalty of praemunire, and for the

third be deemed guilty of high treason."

{840}

He was first imprisoned in 1560, and after a brief respite, was,

in 1565,

"reconducted to his former prison; this was 'a subterraneous

dungeon, damp and noisome--not a ray of light penetrated

thither; and for thirteen years this was his unvarying abode.'

During all that time his food was of the coarsest kind, and,

with the exception of rare intervals, when the intercession of

some influential friends obtained a momentary relaxation, he

was allowed no occupation that could cheer the tedium of his

imprisonment. In all this lengthened martyrdom, prayer was his

resource, and, as he himself subsequently avowed, he

often-times passed whole days and nights overwhelmed with

heavenly consolations, so that his dungeon seemed transformed

into a paradise of delights. To preclude the possibility of

idleness, he procured a bed made of twisted cords, and

whensoever his mind was fatigued with prayer, he applied

himself to untie those cords, and often was he well wearied

with the exertion before he could reunite them to compose

himself to sleep.

"His persecutors, overcome by his constancy, and finding his

fervor in spiritual contemplation a continual reproach to their

own wickedness, at length, about Christmas, 1572, connived at

his escape."

Reaching the continent, he died at Alcala, in 1577, bearing to

the grave the marks of his thirteen years' imprisonment.

Next in importance among the sufferers for the faith was a most

remarkable man, David Wolf, a native of Limerick, a priest of the

Society of Jesus, whose labors, perils, sufferings of every kind,

while acting as nuncio to the Pope in Ireland from 1560 to 1578,

form the matter for a most interesting volume--not only from the

personal interest attaching to a man of his ability, learning,

and courage, but from the influence exercised by him in

perpetuating the episcopacy, and, consequently, the priesthood

and the faith in Ireland. The first martyr of whom we have any

details is the Franciscan, Daniel O'Duillian, of the convent of

Youghal, put to death in 1569. Indictment, trial, judge, or jury

seem to have had no part in his cause. Father Mooney thus

describes his death as he obtained authentic information within

fifty years after its occurrence:

"When one Captain Dudal (probably Dowdall) with his troop were

torturing him, by order of Lord Arthur Grey, the viceroy, first

they took him to the gate which is called Trinity Gate, and

tied his hands behind his back, and, having fastened heavy

stones to his feet, thrice pulled him up with ropes from the

earth to the top of the tower, and left him hanging there for a

space. At length, after many insults and tortures, he was hung

with his head down and his feet in the air, at the mill near

the monastery; and, hanging there a long time, while he lived

he never uttered an impatient word, but, like a good Christian,

incessantly repeated prayers, now aloud, now in a low voice. At

length the soldiers were ordered to shoot at him, as though he

were a target; but yet, that his sufferings might be the longer

and more cruel, they might not aim at his head or heart, but as

much as they pleased at any other part of his body. After he

had received many balls, one, with a cruel mercy, loaded his

gun with two balls and shot him through the heart. Thus did he

receive the glorious crown of martyrdom the 22d of April, in

the year aforesaid."

Similar disregard of all law and forms of justice appears in the

terrible martyrdom of the Franciscan Father O'Dowd, who died like

Sir John Nepomucen, a martyr of the seal of confession.

With some other prisoners, he fell, in 1577, into the hands of

the soldiers of Felton, then president of Connaught.

{841}

"They pressed a certain secular, who was one of their captives,

to tell them something of the plots which they said he had made

with others against the queen of England; but he protested he

could tell nothing but the truth, and that there were no plots;

so they determined to hang him. When they said this, he begged

he might be allowed to make his confession to Father O'Dowd;

this they granted the more readily that they thought the

priest, if he were tortured, would reveal what might be told

him. As soon as the confession was over, the secular was hung;

and then they asked the priest, who was also to be hung, if he

had learned aught of the business in confession. He answered in

the negative, and, refusing to reveal anything of a confession,

they offered him life and freedom if he would reveal, and

threatened torture if he refused. He answered he could not, and

they immediately knotted a cord round his forehead, and,

thrusting a piece of wood through it, slowly twisted it so

tightly that at length, after enduring this torment for a long

time, his skull was broken in, and, the brain being crushed, he

died, June 9th, 1577."

Father Mooney recorded this horrid statement from the lips of

some of the very soldiery who perpetrated it.

When Dr. Patrick O'Hely, Bishop of Mayo, and his companion,

Father Cornelius O'Rorke, were arrested in the County Kerry, soon

after landing, they were loaded with chains and imprisoned in

Limerick till Sir William Drury arrived.

"The two prisoners were first placed on the rack, their arms

and feet were beaten with hammers, so that their thigh-bones

were broken, and sharp iron points and needles were cruelly

thrust under their nails, which caused an extreme agony of

suffering. For a considerable time they were subjected to these

tortures, which the holy confessors bore patiently for the love

of Christ, mutually exhorting each other to constancy and

perseverance.

"At length they were taken from the rack, and hanged from the

branches of a neighboring tree. Their bodies were left

suspended there for fourteen days, and were used in the interim

as a target by the brutal soldiery."

Here began, it will be seen, a sort of process, or at least

arraignment, torture, and execution; although anything like a

trial is wanting.

But in the fearful deaths of Rev. Daniel O'Nielan, (March 28th,

1580,) Rev. Maurice Kinrehan, Rev. Maurice Scanlan, and his

companions, [Footnote 293] in the same year, no pretence of

examination was made; the soldiery either killing them on the

spot, or wreaking on them any and every cruelty that wanton

malignity could devise or suggest.

[Footnote 293: These three in 1580, and the three

Franciscans, of the same names, nearly and at the same places

in 1582, must be identical.]

In the case of the heroic Cistercian, Abbot of Boyle, Father

Gelasius O'Quillenan, and his companions, arrested while in

Dublin, in 1580, there was not the wanton cruelty of lawless

soldiers, or the mere bloodthirstiness of officers accustomed to

every barbarity. Here the action proceeded from the very highest

English authority in Ireland, in the days of Lord Coke, who tells

us in those legal treatises which have come down to us as

oracles, that he never knew of torture having been used in

England.

The abbot and his companions underwent preliminary examinations.

"John O'Garvin, then Protestant Dean of Christ Church, was

among those who assisted at his first interrogatory, and,

having proposed many inducements to the abbot 'to abandon the

popish creed,' Gelasius in reply, reproved him for preferring

the deceitful vanities of this world to the lasting joys of

eternity, and exhorted him 'to renounce the errors and iniquity

of heresy by which he had hitherto warred against God, and to

make amends for the past by joining with him in professing the

name of Christ, that he might thus become worthy to receive a

heavenly crown.' The holy abbot and his companion were then

subjected to torture, and, among their other sufferings, we

find it commemorated that their arms and legs were broken by

repeated blows, and fire was applied to their feet. The only

words of Gelasius during all this torture were, 'Though you

should offer me the princedom of England, I will not forfeit my

eternal reward.' Sentence of death being passed against them,

they were led out with all possible ignominy to execution.

They, however, were filled with consolation; the sight of the

joyous sufferers excited the admiration of the assembled

multitude, and many even of the heretics declared that they

were more like angels than men.

{842}

It was on the 21st November, 1580, that they were happily

crowned with martyrdom. The garments which they wore, and the

implements of their torture, were eagerly purchased by the

Catholics, and cherished by them with religious veneration."

Nor can it be said that in the use of torture thus used to wring

from the Irish clergy admissions to justify their execution, the

authorities in Dublin acted without the knowledge or consent of

the queen. Any such pretext is at once scattered to the winds by

English records in the case of one of the most illustrious

martyrs in the whole honored list of Ireland's witnesses for the

faith--Dermod O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel.

"The birthplace of this glorious martyr was a little village in

the diocese of Limerick, less than three miles from that city,

called Lycodoon, where his parents lived respectably by

farming, both of tillage and cattle; they were held in good

estimation by their neighbors, both rich and poor, especially

James Geraldine, Earl of Desmond.

"Having then been raised to the episcopacy by Gregory XIII.,

and named Archbishop of Cashel, he took his route toward

Ireland."

At Waterford he was detected by a Protestant named Baal, on whose

information he was pursued to the Castle of Slane, where he had,

indeed, taken refuge for a time, but had proceeded further. When

Lord Slane found himself in danger, he joined in the pursuit of

the archbishop, and, overtaking him at Carrick-on-Suir, induced

him to proceed to Dublin, where his arrival is noted by

Archbishop Loftus and Sir H. Wallop, in a letter to Robert Beale,

temporary chief secretary to the queen, dated Oct. 8th, 1583, and

still preserved in the Public Record Office in London. In a

subsequent letter, on the 10th of December, addressed to Sir

Francis Walsingham, they say: "Among other letters directed to

us, and brought by this last passage, we received one from your

honor declaring her Majesty's pleasure for the proceeding with

Dr. Hurley by torture or any other severe manner of proceeding to

gain his knowledge of all foreign practices against her majesty's

state, wherein we _partly_ forebore to deal till now." Then

they remark, "for that we want here either rack or other engine

of torture to terrify him ... the Tower of London should be a

better school than the Castle of Dublin ... we do wish that we

had directions to send him thither."

The pretext here was shallow; there was wit enough in the

dominant party in Ireland to invent any necessary racks.

Walsingham evidently directed them to proceed in Dublin, and

himself suggested the mode of torture. On the 7th of March, 1584,

they again write, "We made commission to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr.

Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture _such as your honor

advised us_, which was, to toast his feet against the fire

with hot boots." What these Walsingham boots were, we learn from

contemporary statements taken down from eye-witnesses. "The

executioners placed the archbishop's feet and calves in tin boots

filled with oil; they then fastened his feet in wooden shackles

or stocks, and placed fire under them. The boiling oil so

penetrated the feet and legs that morsels of the skin and even

flesh fell off and left the bone bare. The officer whose duty it

was to preside over the torture, unused to such unheard-of

suffering, and unable to look upon such an inhuman spectacle, or

to hear the piteous cries of the innocent prelate, suddenly left

his seat and quitted the place." (Pages 91-2.) All this failed to

extort from him anything to justify his arraignment even, though

the torture was continued till the executioners believed life

extinct, and hastily endeavored to restore animation; for he

"lost all voice and sense, and when taken out lay on the ground

like dead." (Ib. 93.)

{843}

The lords justices were in great perplexity. The judges, on being

consulted, had positively declared that, as no act of treason had

been committed by him in Ireland, he could not by law be

arraigned. Their opinion, still preserved in the Public Record

Office, is given by our author, (p. 109.) Again they apply to

Walsingham, and the whole passage is so curious that we cite it

at length:

"And herein we thought good to remember your honor by way of

our opinion that, considering how _obstinate and wilful_

we find him every way, if he should be referred to a public

trial, his _impudent and clamorous_ denial might do great

harm to the ill-affected here, who in troth have no small

admiration of him. And yet, having had conference with some of

the best lawyers in the land, we find that they make a scruple

to arraign him here, for that his treasons were committed in

foreign parts, the statute in that behalf being not here as it

is in England. And therefore we think it not amiss (if it be

allowed of there) to have him executed by _martial law,

against which he can have no just challenge_, for that he

hath neither lands nor goods, and as by that way may be avoided

many harms, which by his presence, standing at ordinary trial,

and retaining still his former impudence and negative

protestations, he may do to the people."

The idea of any man impudently objecting to submit to the honor

of being executed by martial law, when a trial at law must result

in his acquittal, is indeed extraordinary, and sufficient to

disquiet Christian rulers.

Elizabeth relieved them. A letter of April 29th, 1584, announced

her majesty's resolution for the course to beholden with Hurley,

namely, "that they should proceed to his execution (if it might

be) by ordinary trial by law, or otherwise, by martial law."

Loftus and Wallop, accordingly, on the 19th of June, 1584, gave

warrant to the knight-marshal in her majesty's name to do

execution upon him." (Letter July 9th, 1584.)

Accordingly, on Friday before Trinity-Sunday, Hurley--whose

wounds had been so skilfully treated by a Jesuit who was enabled

to reach him, as to enable the holy sufferer to regain sufficient

strength to sit up and even rest on his feet--was ordered to

prepare for execution. He was taken out at early dawn, amid the

cries of his fellow Catholic prisoners, proclaiming his

innocence, one bishop, who was expiating in fetters a guilty

pusillanimity, exclaiming that he himself, for the scandal he had

given, deserved to die, but that the archbishop was an innocent

and holy man. He was drawn on a hurdle through the garden gate to

a wood near the city, and "there he was hanged on a withey,

calling on God, and forgiving his torturers with all his heart."

At evening his body was buried in the half-ruined church of St.

Kevin. So great was the veneration felt for this holy man, that

the church was restored to satisfy the devotion of those who

flocked to the spot to recommend themselves to his prayers, and

many of whom averred that miracles were wrought there.

Elizabeth and the ministers of her godless tyranny, in thus

trampling on law and justice, had gained nothing toward the

advancement of the new doctrines in Ireland. The death of Dr.

Hurley but confirmed the Irish Catholics more immovably in the

faith.

{844}

In another case, Dr. Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, who

escaped from the Tower of London in 1565, but, after two years'

labors in Ireland, was seized in Connaught in 1567, the

government ventured on a trial at law; but the jury acquitted

him. Little did this avail: he was kept a prisoner, but at last

effected his escape, and, for a short time, labored to console

the afflicted Catholics. Falling again into the hands of the

persecutors, he was sent to England, and died of poison in the

Tower of London, (Oct. 14th, 1585,) leaving one of the most

venerated names in the annals of the Irish church. Another

prelate, Murlagh O'Brien, Bishop of Emly, died the same year in

prison, at Dublin, after undergoing tortures.

The interesting biography of another martyr, Rev. Maurice

Kinrechtin, gives a picture of a Catholic Easter during these

dark ages in Ireland that is too touching to omit. It is in a

letter from Father Robert Rochfort:

'I send you an account of the glorious martyrdom of a friend of

mine, Maurice Kinrechtin, a pious priest, chaplain to the Earl

of Desmond, whom you know. He was for this cause taken prisoner

by the English, and taken to your native town of Clonmel, where

he lay in prison for more than a year. On the eve of Easter,

1585, Victor White, one of the principal citizens of Clonmel

and a pious Catholic, obtained from the head jailer permission

for the priest to pass the night in his house; this the jailer

agreed to, but secretly informed the President of Munster, an

English heretic, who chanced to be in the town, that, if he

wished, he might easily seize all the principal citizens while

hearing mass in the house of Mr. White at daybreak; at the same

time he bargained to be paid for his perfidy. At the hour

agreed on, the soldiers rushed into the house and seized on

Victor; but all the others, hearing the noise, tried to escape

by the back-doors and windows; a certain matron, trying to

escape, fell and broke her arm. The soldiers found the chalice

and other things for mass; they sought everywhere for the

priest, (who had not yet begun the mass,) and came at length to

a heap of straw, under which he lay hid, and, thrusting their

swords through it, wounded him in the thigh; but he preserved

silence, and, through fear of worse, concealed his suffering,

and soon after escaped from the town into the country. But the

intrepid Victor (who, although he had for this reason suffered

much, could never be induced to attend the conventicles of the

heretics) was thrown into prison because he would not give up

the priest, and would, no doubt, have been put to death, had

not Maurice, hearing of the danger of his friend, voluntarily

surrendered himself to the president, showing a friendship

truly Christian. The president upbraided him much, and, having

sentenced him to death, offered him his life if he would abjure

our Catholic faith and profess the queen to be head of the

church. There came to him also a preacher, and strove long, but

in vain, to seduce the martyr; nor would he on any account

betray any of those who had heard his mass, or to whom he had

at any time administered the sacraments. At length he was

dragged at the tail of a horse to the place of execution as a

traitor. Being come there, he devoutly and learnedly exhorted

the people to constancy in the faith. The executioner cut him

down from the gallows when yet half alive, and cut off his

sacred head, and the minister struck it in the face. Then the

Catholics by prayers and bribes obtained of the executioners

that they should not lacerate his body any further, and they

buried it as honorably as they could. Farewell, and peace in

the Lord, and be ye imitators--if occasion offers--of the

courageous Maurice Kinrechtin, and till then prepare your souls

for the trial. Your devoted servant, dated from the College of

St. Anthony, 1586, 20th March, Robert Rochfort."

Thus it went on during the reign of Elizabeth. The year 1588

witnessed many hanged, drawn, and quartered--the Rev. Peter

Miller, at Wexford; Peter Meyler, at Galway, and Maurice

Eustace--both candidates for the priesthood, the Franciscan

fathers, O'Molloy, Dogherty, and Ferrall, at Abbeyleix. The next

year another of the same order at Clonmel.

Curry, in his _Civil Wars in Ireland_, thus sums up other

examples:

{845}

"John Stephens, priest, for that he said mass to Teague McHugh,

was hanged and quartered by the Lord Burroughs, in 1597; Thady

O'Boyle, guardian of the monastery of Donegal, was slain by the

English in his own monastery; six friars were slain in the

monastery of Moynihigan; John O'Calyhor and Bryan O'Trevor, of

the order of St. Bernard, were slain in their own monastery, De

Sancta Maria, in Ulster; as also Felimy O'Hara, a lay-brother;

so was AEneas Penny, parish priest of Killagh, slain at the

altar in his parish church there; Cahill McGoran; Rory

O'Donnellan; Peter McQuillan; Patrick O'Kenna; George Power,

vicar-general of the diocese of Ossory; Andrew Stritch, of

Limerick; Bryan O'Murihirtagh, vicar-general of the diocese of

Clonfert; Doroghow O'Molowny, of Thomond; John Kelly, of Louth;

Stephen Patrick, of Annaly; John Pillis, friar; Rory McHenlea;

Tirilagh McInisky, a lay-brother. All those that come after

AEneas Penny, together with Walter Fernan, priest, died in the

Castle of Dublin, either through hard usage and restraint or

the violence of torture."

To whom may be added the Rev. George Power; Rev. John Walsh;

Bishop Brady, of Kilmore, and his companions, whose sufferings

are here most touchingly given; the Rev. Donatus O'Mollony, so

tortured by iron boots and thumbscrews, as well as the rack--of

all which there was now, apparently, a full supply in

Ireland--that he died a few hours after.

But single executions were not prompt enough. In 1602, the

authorities intimated that such of the clergy as presented

themselves to the magistrates would be allowed to take their

departure from the kingdom. Forty-two, secular priests and

fathers of the Dominican and Cistercian orders, believing that a

Protestant government would keep faith with Catholics, accepted

the offer, and assembling, as directed, at Inniscattery, were put

on board a vessel of war to sail for France. But no sooner had

they reached the broad Atlantic, than the whole of these priests

were thrown overboard. On the return of the vessel to port, great

indignation was pretended by the authorities, and the queen

cashiered the officers; while they were, in fact, secretly

rewarded.

This martyrdom, fearful for its treachery, and the number of the

priestly victims, closed, so to say, the reign of bloody

Elizabeth. The hatred of Catholicity was intense; but yet there

was apparent from first to last, a sense of respect for the

opinion of the Catholic powers, an attempt to justify the

executions by color of law, or excuse them as unintended acts of

severity in putting down revolts or conducting military

operations.

When the son of Mary, herself a martyr and sufferer, ascended the

throne, his accession was hailed by the Catholic Irish with a

burst of joy. A prince of their own race, they could regard him

with feelings never awakened by former sovereigns of England. The

memory of his mother would have bound them to him. He might have

rendered Ireland a happy country. Led away by this vision, the

Irish Catholics openly celebrated the long proscribed worship;

but they soon were rudely awakened from their delusion. The

glorious army of martyrs under James I. begins with Redmond

O'Gallagher, Bishop of Derry, hacked to pieces by a party of

horse in 1604.

Among all the martyrs of this reign, however, the most

illustrious was Cornelius O'Dovany, Bishop of Down and Connor,

put to death at Dublin, February 1st, 1611. At an early age he

embraced the rule of St. Francis, and became a model of piety and

patience. Raised to the perilous dignity of the episcopate, he

labored strenuously to fulfil its duties. At last, he was

arrested and sent to Dublin Castle, where he nearly perished from

want of food and of all comforts. As the persecutors admitted

that they could not legally compass his death, he was at last

released. But it was only for a time. Seizing as a pretext his

presence in the district held by the Earl of Tyrone in his rising

against the crown, they again, in June, 1611, committed him to

his former prison. He was then brought to trial, and, although he

pleaded the Act of Oblivion, which clearly covered his case, the

government, grown wiser in its malice, packed a jury, and

obtained a verdict.

{846}

Our author thus describes his martyrdom from contemporary

narratives:

"The 1st of February, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he was

called to mount the cart which, surrounded by guards, stood at

the prison door. When the holy bishop came in sight of that

triumphal chariot, he sighed and said, 'My Lord Jesus, for my

sake, went on foot, bearing his cross, to the mountain where he

suffered; and must I be borne in a cart, as though unwilling to

die for him, when I would hasten with willing feet to that

glory? Would that I might bear my cross and hasten on my feet

to meet my Lord!' Turning to his fellow-sufferer, Patrick, he

said, 'Come, my brave comrade and worthy soldier of Christ, let

us imitate his death as best we may who was led to the

slaughter as a sheep before the shearer. Then bending down and

kissing the cart, he mounted up into it, and sat down with his

back to the horses, and was thus drawn through the paved

streets to the field where the gallows was erected.

"Cornelius, when he was come to the place of sacrifice, being

solicitous for the constancy of his colleague, begged that

Patrick might be put to death first; for he feared lest, by the

sight of his death and the wiles of the Calvinists, Patrick

might be induced to yield to human weakness. But as his wish

would not be granted, Father Patrick assured the bishop he

might lay aside all fear for him. 'Though,' said he, 'I would

desire to die first, and be strengthened in my agony by your

paternal charity, since we are given up to the will of others,

go, happy father, and fear not for my constancy; aid me by your

prayers with God, by whose help I am sure that neither death

nor life, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor

things to come, nor any other creature, shall separate me from

the love of Christ, or from my companionship with you.'

Rejoiced at these words, Cornelius threw himself on his knees,

but had only breathed a hasty prayer (which yet reached God in

heaven) when the councillors, the captain and guard called out

to make an end quickly. The field, situated to the north of the

city, which would easily hold 3000 persons, was crowded. The

executioner was an Englishman and a Protestant, (for no

Irishman could be found who would stain himself with the blood

of the bishop,) who was condemned to death for robbery, and was

promised his life for acting as executioner on this occasion.

Yet, though he had thus purchased his life, he was touched with

reverence and compassion for the gray hairs of the bishop, and

prayed his pardon, and with trembling hands adjusted the noose.

The moment the bishop mounted the first step of the ladder, and

his head was seen above the crowd, a great shout and groans

burst from all the spectators.

"Then the minister Challoner, furious at the cries of pity

raised by the people, said to the bishop: 'Why delude ye the

ignorant people? Why end ye your life with a lie, and a vain

boast of martyrdom? Tell the multitude that ye are traitors,

and that it is for treason and not for religion ye suffer.' To

these unjust words the bishop answered: 'Far be it from us, who

are about to appear before the tribunal of Christ, to impose

upon the people. But also far be it from us to confess

ourselves guilty of crimes of which our conscience tells us we

are innocent. Nor yet do we vainly ambition the title of

martyrs, though for us to die for Christ is gain. You know that

you are yourself guilty of that prevarication of which you

accuse us; for but a few hours ago, sent as you said by the

viceroy, you offered us life and freedom if we would subscribe

to your heresy. Leave us, then, son of darkness, and calumniate

not our innocence.'

"Then the minister departed and left the martyrs in peace. As

they mounted the middle of the ladder, again there rose the cry

of the people; and a third time, when he was about to be thrown

off, the groans of those who beat their breasts rose louder

than before. Thrice he prayed, as he stood there: once for all

the bystanders; secondly, for the city of Dublin, and all the

Catholics of this kingdom, that they may serve God piously,

faithfully, and perseveringly; a third time he prayed for all

heretics, and for his persecutors, that they might be converted

from the evil of their ways.

"The Bishop's head was hardly cut off when an Irishman seized

it, and, rushing into the centre of the crowd, was never found,

although the viceroy offered a reward of forty pounds of

silver. The Catholics gathered up his blood, and contended for

his garments, despite the resistance of the soldiery.

{847}

The priest Patrick followed the same road, singing, as he

mounted the ladder, the canticle of Simeon, 'Now, O Lord!

dismiss thy servant in peace,' and, after the example of the

bishop, he prayed for the bystanders, blessed them, and

forgave all his enemies. The rope being put round his neck, he

hung for a short time, was then cut down half alive,

mutilated, and cut in pieces. The soldiers, warned by the loss

of the bishop's head, resisted the unarmed crowd, who strove

to catch the martyr's blood and other relics, and wounded

many. The day after, the bodies were buried at the gallows'

foot, but in the stillness of the night were removed by the

Catholics to a chapel."

We cannot enter on the other sufferers of this reign whose

records are carefully collected in the _Memorials_.

The reign of Charles I. opens with the deeply interesting life of

Francis Slingsby, showing how, even amid all the terrible

persecutions of the church, God called his own elect to the light

of his truth, and endowed them with firmness. He was a son of Sir

Francis Slingsby, an English knight settled in Ireland, and was

born in 1611. After being educated at Oxford, he travelled on the

continent, and at Rome was converted to the faith; and, at the

tomb of St. Aloysius, firmly resolved to enter the Society of

Jesus. At the earnest entreaty of his father and mother, he

returned to Ireland; but after an interview with Archbishop Usher

and Lord Strafford, he was thrown into prison. Cardinal Barberini

exerted his influence with the queen of England, and, in May,

1635, he was admitted to bail. His stay in Ireland was not

fruitless; for he converted his mother, his younger brother, his

sister, and several others. This increased his dangers, and, the

General of the Society urging him to come at once to Rome, he

proceeded thither in 1636; but learning that his friend Spreul,

whom he had converted, and won to the order he himself had

chosen, had been struck down by disease, he returned to Ireland,

tended him in his illness, and then both reached Rome in 1639.

Renouncing all his worldly prospects in favor of his brother, he

began his studies, and, after his ordination, entered the

novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1641; but died at Naples

before he could return to Ireland to labor in the field where his

words, example, and fetters had preached so eloquently. The

sketch of this heroic young man, and that of Maurice Eustace, son

of Sir John Eustace, and a novice in the Society of Jesus, who,

returning to his family by permission of his superiors, was

seized, tried, hung, drawn, and quartered, on the 9th of June,

1588, form a most interesting addition to our biographies, and

show us in Ireland, two young imitators of St. Aloysius and St.

Stanislaus, whose virtues and example can be held up to the young

with the power that flows from the fact that they lived among

scenes and trials so familiar to us.

When the civil war began between the Puritans and Charles I., the

persecution, bitter already under the king, became fiendish under

the Parliament. Hitherto some form, some limit, had been

observed; but the Puritans revelled in blood with all the

ferocity of tigers, and with as little scruple.

"The Parliament of England resolved, on the 24th of October,

1644, 'that no quarter shall be given to any Irishman, or to

_ayn papist born in Ireland;_' and their historian,

Borlase, adds, 'The orders of Parliament were excellently well

executed.' (_Hist, of Rebellion_, p. 62.) Leland and

Warner refer to the letters of the lords-justices for the fact

that the soldiers 'slew all persons promiscuously, not sparing

even the women.' Cromwell declared on landing in Dublin that no

mercy should be shown to the Irish, and that they should be

dealt with as the Canaanites in Joshua's time. It is impossible

to estimate the number of Catholics slain in the ten years from

1642 to 1652. Three bishops and more than 300 priests were put

to death for the faith.

{848}

Thousands of men, women, and children were sold as slaves for

the West Indies; Sir W. Petty mentions that six thousand boys

and women were thus sold. (_Political Anatomy of

Ireland_, p. 187.) A letter written in 1656, quoted by

Lingard, puts the number at 60,000; as late as 1666 there were

12,000 Irish slaves scattered among the West Indian Islands.

(Letter of Rev. J. Grace, written in 1669, ap. Moran, p. 147.)

40,000 Irish Catholics fled to the continent, and 20,000 took

refuge in the Hebrides and other Scottish islands. (Moran, p.

99.) In a word, as Sir W. Petty writes, the population of

Ireland in 1641 was 1,466,000, of whom Catholics were about

1,240,000; in 1659, the whole population was only 500,091, of

whom Irish were only 420,000, so that very nearly or quite one

million must have perished. (Sir W. Petty, _Polit. Anat._

p. 13, ap. Moran, and Hardinge's _Census of 1659_.)"

In this general and fearful slaughter of priest and people,

records were impossible; and of many of the priests and religious

who perished no trace remains. At the sight of such appalling

massacres the mind shrinks back to seek refuge in doubt; but that

doubt vanishes before the records of the butchers, who, reeking

with slaughter, asked mankind to admire their work as a mercy of

God, and even in our day, their descendants ask us to praise them

as champions of religious freedom.

We can scarcely be accused of being too severe in our language

when Merle d'Aubigné, a professed eulogist of Cromwell, admits

that he used "a greater severity than had perhaps been exercised

by the pagan leaders of antiquity."

Although, necessarily, for many of their victims there are no

details whatever, nevertheless nearly one-fourth of this whole

work of Mr. O'Reilly is devoted to memorials of those who

perished by the hands of the Puritans in the brief period of

twenty years; and he might well close it by the formula at the

end of each day in the Roman martyrology, _Et alibi aliorum

plurimorum Martyrum et Confessorum_, etc.--"And elsewhere of

many other martyrs and confessors," whose names, though

unrecorded on earth, are written in the Book of Life. Cromwell,

Ireton, Inchiquin, and Coote marked their path in blood.

Drogheda, Wexford, Cashel, Limerick, witnessed general massacres,

where neither age nor sex could rouse a spark of human feeling in

the insatiate butchers. The intense and cruel fanaticism seems to

have been either a diabolical possession or a mental disease.

A grandson of Sir Charles Coote, become Earl of Bellomont, was,

some years after, made Governor of New York and of New England,

and was strongly suspected of complicity in the piracies of

Captain Kidd. He certainly showed the fierce anti-Catholic spirit

of his father and grandsire, having introduced and forced

through, both in New York and Massachusetts, laws to punish with

imprisonment for life, or, on recapture, with death, any Catholic

priest entering those colonies.

Among the more illustrious martyrs we notice the Most Rev.

Malachy O'Queely, Archbishop of Tuam, who was overtaken at Clare,

near Sligo, in 1645, by some Puritan cavalry. They hacked off his

right arm, and then cruelly mangled his body, cutting it into

small pieces. In 1650, Boetius Egan, Bishop of Ross, a holy

Franciscan friar, appointed to that see in 1647, on the

recommendation of the Nuncio, Rinuccini, left the retreat in

which he had been hidden for months, to visit some distant and

abandoned parts of his diocese, although Ludlow's Puritan bands

were laying waste the country. After performing the apostolic

duties that had called him forth, he was returning to his lonely

hiding-place, when he was overtaken by a troop of horse hastening

to join Cromwell in besieging Clonmel.

{849}

The commander of this troop, Lord Broghill, whom our readers may

not recognize as Robert Boyle, subsequently Earl of Orrery,

offered him life,

"If he would deny his faith and join the Parliamentarians, but

he rejected the temptation with disdain. He was then abandoned

to the soldiers' fury, and, his arms being first severed from

his body, he was dragged along the ground to a neighboring

tree, and, being hanged from one of its branches by the reins

of his own horse, happily consummated his earthly course in

November, 1650."

The fall of Limerick enabled Ireton to revel in the blood of

Catholic priests. The martyrs were led by Terence Albert O'Brien,

Bishop of Emly, born in Limerick in 1600, and nurtured piously by

a devoted mother. At an early age he entered the order of St.

Dominic, and, after pursuing his studies in Spain, returned to

labor in his native city. In 1643, he became provincial of his

order, and attended a general chapter at Rome. Four years

afterward, he was consecrated Bishop of Emly, and labored there

earnestly till he joined the rest who took refuge in Limerick.

"Knowing the fate that was reserved for him, Dr. O'Brien

retired to the pest-house, in order to devote the last hours of

his life to the benefit of his suffering fellow-citizens, and

to preparing himself for death. Here he was found by the

officers sent to arrest him, and brought before Ireton, who

told him he was to be tried by a court-martial, and imprisoned

till the sentence was pronounced. The bishop heard this

unmoved, and when asked did he want counsel, calmly replied

that all he required was his confessor. This boon was granted,

and Father Hanrahan, a member of his own order, was suffered to

pass the whole day and night of the 30th of October in his

prison. On the following evening he was led out to execution,

and, as Father Hanrahan related, walked as joyfully to the

place as to a feast. His contemporary, De Marinis, relates his

execution thus: 'He went with joy to the place of execution,

and then, with a serene countenance, turning to his Catholic

friends, who stood in the crowd inconsolable and weeping, he

said to them, "Hold firmly by your faith, and observe its

precepts; murmur not against the arrangements of God's

providence, and thus you will save your souls. Weep not at all

for me, but rather pray that in this last trial of death I may,

by firmness and constancy, attain my heavenly reward." The head

of the martyr was struck off and placed on a spike on the

tower,' ('which is on the middle of the bridge.'--_A

Rosario_,) 'and long after seemed to drop fresh blood, and

uncorrupted and unchanged in aspect, flesh, or hair--a tribute,

as may be thought, to that virginal purity which it is

universally believed he preserved to the end.' Thus he went to

his reward, on the vigil of All Saints', 1651. De Marinis and A

Rosario relate that the holy bishop summoned Ireton to the

judgment-seat of God to answer for his crimes; and on the 18th

day afterward that bloody persecutor was seized with the

plague, and, after sixteen days, expired in great torments. Dr.

Moran mentions that the spot where this holy bishop was

martyred is yet pointed out and venerated by the Catholics of

Limerick."

Another Dominican martyr of this scene, Father James Wolf,

"was an old man, and preacher-general, who had before been a

long time in prison for the faith, and in this last persecution

was as a wall against the enemies of the faith. He was taken in

Limerick while offering the mass, and in a few hours afterward

was sentenced to be hung, and brought out into the market

square, where he made a public profession of his faith, and

exhorted the Catholics to constancy in the religion of their

ancestors, and that with so much ardor that it moved his very

enemies. Standing on the top step of the ladder, and about to

be swung off, he joyously exclaimed, '_We are made a

spectacle to God and angels and men--of glory to God, of joy

to angels, of contempt to men._' Having said this, he was

hung, and so went to his crown."

It is a strange fact, and one that we must regret, that England

should owe the final conquest of Canada to one who should have

honored this martyr of his family, but who was really intensely

English, and rivalled Ireton by his bloody march up the St.

Lawrence, butchering priests at their own church doors with as

little compunction as Ireton felt for Father James Wolf.

{850}

That martyr had a brother George, an officer in the Irish army.

Although doomed, he managed to escape, and reaching England,

finally settled in Yorkshire. His grandson Edward fought under

Marlborough, and rose to the rank of general. His son, a namesake

of the Limerick martyr, was General James Wolfe, who died in the

arms of victory at Quebec, having struck the blow that seemed to

crush for ever Catholicity in Canada.

Another bishop, Arthur Magennis, a Cistercian, Bishop of Down and

Connor, was, in spite of his infirmities and years, dragged on

shipboard, to be carried to some other land. Death was, however,

the object of his tormentors, not exile: and, as he lingered too

long to please their impatience, they dragged one of the ship's

cannon beside his berth, and, firing it, caused such a shock to

the invalid that he expired.

The clergy who suffered met death in every form. Some perished of

starvation in the mountain, like the Rev. John Carolan; some were

starved to death in prison, like the Dominican father, John

O'Laighlin; some, tracked to their hiding-places, were shot in

their caves, like the Franciscan father, Francis Sullivan; some

were stoned to death, and flung into rivers, like the Dominican

father, John Flaverty; many cut down by the roadside, or shot and

hacked to pieces, like Stephen Pettit, the Dominican fathers,

Peter Costello, Dominic Neagan, Lawrence O'Ferral; others more

deliberately hanged on sea or land, like the Franciscan fathers,

Fergal Ward, Denis Nelan, Rev. Peter Higgins, the Dominican

Bonaventure de Burgo, and many more; or drowned at sea, like the

Trinitarian fathers O'Conor and Daly; or tied to stakes and shot,

like the Jesuit, Father Bathe, and his brother at Drogheda.

"Of the many thousands of Irish men, women, and children who

were sold into slavery in the West Indies, the names of very

few have been preserved. Among these was Father David Roche,

Dominican. Full details of this infamous traffic are given by

Prendergast, _Cromwellian Settlement_. Thus, a government

order, published on March 4th, 1655, states that, in the four

preceding years, 6400 Irish, men and women, boys and maidens,

had been disposed of to the English slave-dealers. On the 14th

September, 1653, two English merchants, named Selleck and

Leader, signed a contract with the government commissioners, by

which a supply was granted to them of 250 women and 300 men of

the Irish nation, to be found within twenty miles of Cork,

Youghal, Kinsale, Waterford, and Wexford. Roger Boyle, Lord

Broghill, (afterward Earl of Orrery,) deemed it unnecessary to

take such trouble in visiting different parts of the kingdom,

and undertook to supply the whole number from the county of

Cork alone; hence he received an order empowering him to search

for and seize upon that number, 'and no person, being once

apprehended, was to be released but by special order in writing

under the hand of Lord Broghill. In the month of November,

1655, all the Irish of the townland of Lackagh, county of

Kildare, were seized on by the agents of the government. They

were only forty-one in number, and of these four were hanged by

sentence of court-martial; the remaining thirty-seven,

including two priests, were handed over to Mr. Norton, a

Bristol merchant, to be sold as bond-slaves to the

sugar-planters at the Barbadoes.' Again, on the 8th December,

1655, we find a letter from the commissioners to the Governor

of Barbadoes, 'advising him of the approach of a ship with a

cargo of proprietors, deprived of their lands, and seized for

not transplanting.' They add that among them were three

priests, and the commissioners particularly desire that these

may be so employed that they may not return again where that

sort of people are able to do so much mischief, having so great

an influence over the popish Irish."

{851}

Of their sufferings at sea our author gives no record; but

Anderson, in his _History of the Colonial Church_, (ii. p.

52-3,) describes, from a petition to Parliament, the sufferings

of English prisoners "crowded into close holds amid horses,"

"sold, on arriving, to the most inhuman persons," and treated

worse than beasts; "sleeping in styes, worse than hogs in

England, and many other ways made most miserable beyond

expression of Christian imagination." And nothing in the annals

of history will justify the supposition that the Irish fared

better.

During long examinations of early records and manuscript matter

relating to the colonies which formed the American Union, no

allusion has met our eye relating to any of these priests sold as

slaves in America by the Puritans. It is doubtful, therefore,

whether any ever reached our shores. But it seems to us that

researches will yet lead to some clue or trace in the West India

Islands, that favorite mart for the Puritan slave-dealers, who

sold alike there the Irish Catholic, or the Christian or Pagan

Indian of New England. It is, however, a curious fact that the

first victim of the witchcraft excitement in New England was one

of the Irish slaves, a poor woman, who though able to repeat the

Lord's Prayer in Latin and Irish, failed to pray in the to her

unknown English tongue, was adjudged a witch, and put to death.

Of the Irish transported to St. Christopher's we find some

account in the Jesuit Father Peter Pelleprat's _Relation des

Missions des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus dans les Isles et

dans la Terre Ferine de l'Amérique Méridionale_, (Paris,

1655.) Part of the island belonged to the French, and Father John

Destriche (Stritch?) an Irish member of the Society, was sent in

1650, to the boundary. His long-forsaken countrymen flocked

around, braving all dangers from their cruel task-masters; and he

spent three months hearing confessions, baptizing, instructing,

consoling and fortifying with the sacraments these poor exiles.

He then, in the disguise of a merchant, visited Montserrat, which

was, for a time, an independent Irish isle, and so laid down on

maps, and where even the negroes spoke Irish. But, at this time

of Puritan rule, the English had reduced them to slavery. Here he

raised a little chapel in the depth of a forest, and the Irish

every day, under pretext of cutting wood, made their way to the

spot, and, after giving the day to religion, cut some wood to

carry back.

Returning to St. Christopher's, he found the English renewing the

persecution. One hundred and twenty-five of the most fervent

Catholics were carried off and set ashore on the barren island of

Crabs or Boriquen. Here some undoubtedly perished of starvation;

a few reached St. Domingo, but, on the refusal of the Spaniards

to receive them, managed to find transport to Tortugas, then in

the hands of the French.

Father Destriche then collected all the Irish he could, and

conveyed them to Gaudeloupe, making excursions from time to time

to bring in others to swell this settlement; and visiting in

disguise the various English islands.

No allusion is made to any priest among these exiles; but this

father was not probably alone. Research in this field may yet

enlarge the touching memorials which Mr. O'Reilly deserves so

great credit for presenting to us.

The persecution may be said to close with the Puritan rule;

Archbishop Plunkett, whose life is well and concisely given,

having been a victim to the infamous fiction of plots in the

reign of Charles II., and brought to the scaffold by the false

testimony of men of his own country and faith.

{852}

The last of the martyred clergy was the Dominican Father Gerald

Gibbon, sub-prior of Kilmallock, killed by some of William III.'s

roving cavalry at Listuahill, in the County of Kerry, in 1691.

Mr. O'Reilly has done an excellent work. The records of the lives

and deaths of these illustrious men should be familiar to all

their countrymen, not to excite feelings of hostility and

vengeance against the descendants of the wrong-doers; for, as in

the case of Wolfe, the later generations fall away at times, and

the priest we revere may trace his descent from a persecutor. But

the lives of these martyrs remind us in these days of insidious

prosperity, that we should struggle as manfully against the

persecution of religious indifference as they did against the

persecution of rack, and sword, and halter, and show that we deem

the religion they died for worthy of a life of love and

sacrifice.

----------

De Profundis.

O weary, weary heart, O fainting soul!

Thy struggle is in vain;

The fiery waves of woe that o'er thee roll

O'erwhelm with fiercest pain.

There is for thee no rest, for thee no peace

Till thought and mem'ry, life itself shall cease.

"Rest for the weary"--words that flatteringly

Promise thy heart relief;

The words of peace are meaningless to thee,

They mock thy endless grief.

Think not thy soul from further woe to save,

Seek not for rest, or seek it in the grave!

----

Sweet rest, sweet peace. O Jesu! thou canst give

E'en in my mortal woe;

Thou bidst my struggling, dying soul to live,

And lead'st me gently through

The waves that dash against my tired feet,

To fields of living green and verdure sweet.

Jesu! sweet Jesu! in my darkest hour

On thee alone I call;

Though waves may dash and dark'ning skies may lower,

And raging storms appall,

I heed them not--I look beyond, above,

And find my refuge in thy Heart of Love!

K. A.

----------

{853}

From La Semaine Liturgique De Poitiers.

The Legend Of St. Michael And The Hermit.

"Consummatus in brevi, explevit tempera multa."

--_Book of Wisdom_.

A poor but venerable hermit, wearing the habit, sandals, and cord

of St. Francis of Assisi, travelled, from dawn till the going

down of the sun, over the flowery highways of verdant Normandy,

passing through boroughs and villages, castles and towers. Was he

a palmer from the Holy Land, come to rekindle the ardor of noble

and valiant men of arms with tales of the woes of the Christians

in Palestine? No, the times of Philip Augustus and Louis IX. had

passed away. Yet our hermit kept steadily on, allowing himself

not a day of rest but the Lord's day, seeking some one or

something.

"What art thou seeking, pious traveller? Thy ardor is greater

than that of a knight-errant longing to break a lance in honor of

the fair lady whose color he wears."

"I am seeking a soul," replies the hermit, "because St. Michael

the Archangel has made known to me that a throne in the eternal

mansions awaits some soul from earth, a throne of dazzling

beauty, resplendent with sapphires and diamonds, and the golden

palms of the heavenly Jerusalem. But the soul thus summoned to a

throne on high must not be _too young_."

"Keep on thy way. Old men are to be found in every country on the

earth."

And the hermit kept on his way from the earliest dawn till

eventide. At last he finds an aged abbot beneath the Gothic

arches of an old Benedictine abbey. His reputation for sanctity

and his great age, which was fourscore years, made our pilgrim

hope that he had found the object of his search. So, on Sunday,

after the hour of lauds, the hermit joyfully offered St. Michael,

on bended knee, the name of the venerable abbot, with an account

of his exemplary life; but, in the evening, after the hour of

compline, the archangel said unto him, "Continue thy search. The

abbot Fulgentius, worthy as he is, merits not this high reward.

That servant of the Lord is still _too young_."

"He is fourscore years of age, of which sixty-four have been

spent in the monastic state and in the same monastery."

"He has not yet lived twenty years as years are reckoned by the

guardian angels. Pursue thy way, good hermit, and continue thy

search."

After three months the pilgrim worn by fatigue and prolonged

vigils joyfully brought four names to St. Michael. It will be

understood that these names were chosen from among thousands by

the zealous pilgrim. The first bright name on the list was that

of a Lord of Falaise, illustrious through his ancestors, and

still more so for his own charity. His castle with its square

towers, surrounded by crags, deep moats, and high walls, was

always hospitably open to all pilgrims and strangers as well as

to the unfortunate. There he himself waited upon them at table,

after having washed their feet with his own hands, count and

baron as he was, and he never suffered them to depart till he had

given them alms and chanted the divine office with them in the

nave of his chapel of St. Prix.

{854}

A numerous progeny reverenced him, and all his vassals proclaimed

his fatherly kindness. What more could be asked that he might

exchange his feudal power for a throne in heaven?

The second on the list was the mother of fifteen children, seven

of whom served their king as brave soldiers, seven others served

the altar as priests or monks, and the remaining one, a daughter,

had many children, who were reared under the careful and vigilant

eye of their grandmother of pious renown. What more could be

asked that she might pass from family honors to a throne in

heaven?

The third was a noble warrior of the Knights of Malta, covered

with wounds and scars gained in the service of God. Having been

made, at the age of thirteen years, knight of his order and page

of the grand master, he was appointed, at the age of twenty-two,

to the command of three war-vessels which he armed at his own

expense. He made himself formidable to all the Turks on the seas

of the Levant. Being appointed captain of one of the galleys of

Malta, our knight took twenty-two vessels from the paynim and

delivered many thousand Christian slaves. The Emir Fraycardin,

who held sway over the Druses of Mount Lebanon, and boasted of

his descent from Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, conceived so high an

esteem for him that he came forth from the town of Sayeda to

visit him on board of one of his vessels, and on that occasion

gave him a scimitar from Damascus, with a scabbard of wrought

silver, inlaid with diamonds and rare pearls, which our hero

presented to the king of France, in presence of the same emir of

illustrious memory.

The escutcheon of our knight bore a chevron gules, on a field or,

charged at the bend with a flower-de-luce or, and surmounted by

the silver cross of the Order of Malta. [sic]

He seemed truly endowed with valor and sanctity, which made up

for want of age, for he was only twenty-nine. What more could be

asked that he might pass from the midst of combats to the bosom

of everlasting peace, and from the triumphs of victory to a

glorious throne in heaven?

Finally, the fourth name was that of a widow, like the prophetess

Anna, who departed not from the temple of Jerusalem, by fasting

and prayers serving God day and night. Like her, she was devoted

to good works, to the care of the sick, the help of the infirm,

and the charge of orphans. She was called "the eye of the blind,"

and "the consolation of the afflicted," and throughout old

Neustria with its green orchards the echoes of the manor-houses

and the huts alike knew of the wondrous deeds of good Dame Lois.

Proud of all these names, the hermit at the early hour of lauds

presented the list to St. Michael; when evening had brought the

hour of compline, the holy chant being ended, St. Michael gave

back to the hermit the precious paper, all perfumed with the

incense of paradise, and said to him: "Faithful servant, continue

thy search: all these names are dear and precious in the eyes of

God; but they who bear them are still too young."

"But the sire of Falaise has seen almost a hundred years pass

over his now bald head, and his beard is whiter than the snows of

Mount Saint Bernard!"

"That noble lord of a hundred years is only reckoned fifteen by

the calendar of the guardian angels," replied the archangel.

{855}

"But this mother of fifteen children and twelve grandchildren who

are her crown and her glory? ... And the pious widow?"....

"The mother will only be eight years old come the festival of the

Assumption of Our Lady, her holy Patroness; and the pious and

chaste widow is hardly older than the sire of Falaise."

"And the Knight of Malta? Illustrious and brave above his

fellow-knights, he is only twenty-nine years old according to the

record of his baptism; but these few years have been well

employed in defending Christendom against the infidel Turks who

tremble before his Damascus blade."

"The knight has made progress, it is true, in the way of real

life. He is almost old enough to reign; but his guardian angel

demands yet a space of time before imprinting on his soul the

seal of the eternal and heavenly life. Go thy way, and continue

thy search."

The hermit, in the silence of his cell, was terrified to see how

hard it was to attain length of years according to the reckoning

of the angels; but he redoubled his zeal to discover the rare

treasure demanded by St. Michael. Seven Sundays having passed

away weeping and praying in the undercroft of the church of St.

Gerbold, shepherd of Bayeux, of learned memory, he saw the

archangel with his sword of gold coming toward him resplendent

with light. Troubled in the depths of his heart, the hermit said

to him humbly: "I have only one name to present thee, and this

name offers but little that is worthy of relating; yet I lay it

before thee." And he held forth the paper wet with his tears to

St. Michael, who took it, smiling meanwhile on the trembling

hermit.

The paper had hardly been placed in the angel's hands when the

sombre crypt was filled with a soft light; an unknown perfume

embalmed the air, and the hermit, almost ravished with ecstasy,

at once understood that the chosen one so long sought after was

at length found. ...

The elect soul rose like a blue vapor above the tower of the

church, above the lofty mountains, beyond the stars: it rose

luminous and full of majesty, till it came to the courts of the

New Jerusalem to take its place upon the dazzling throne awaiting

it among the angels.

"How old, then, is this soul according to the calendar of eternal

life?" were the first words addressed St. Michael by the hermit,

still on his knees.

And St. Michael graciously replied: "This saint was only

twenty-one years old according to the reckoning on earth, but he

was a hundred by that of the guardian angels who watch over

souls. Not one hour of his short life was lost for eternity. It

was not only not lost, but--which is necessary to attain length

of years that are meritorious and venerable in our eyes--not one

hour failed to be reckoned twice or thrice, and sometimes a

hundredfold, by the merit of his deeds of faith, hope, charity,

and mortification. Nothing is lost which is pleasing in the eyes

of the Lord. A glass of water given with love in his name becomes

a majestic river flowing on for ever and ever; while a treasure

given without love or from human motives is counted as nothing in

the great Book of Life! To really live, thou must love God while

exiled here below, as we love him in the home of the blessed.

Thou must also love thy neighbor, whose soul reflects the image

of its Maker."

With these words the angel disappeared, leaving behind him a long

train of light in the dim vaults of the crypt of St. Gerbold.

{856}

"O Lord!" cried the hermit "grant me a true knowledge of the

Christian life--the only life really worth the name--that at my

last hour I may not hear resounding above my head the terrible

words, _Too young!_ Teach me, O my God! the value of time,

which is only given us that we may lay up treasures for heaven.

Time is the money of eternity! time is the price of the Saviour's

blood! time, so fleeting, which we seek to kill, and which will

surely kill us; time, the inflexible tyrant who spares no one!

Oh! that I might in turn triumph over time by making it serve to

the sanctification of my soul and the winning of an eternal

crown."

----------

New Publications.

Dissertations, Chiefly On Irish Church History.

By the late Rev. Matthew Kelly, D.D.

Dublin: James Duffy. 1869.

Rev. Matthew Kelly, a canon of his native diocese of Ossory,

Ireland, and a Professor in Maynooth College, was one of the most

accomplished of the contemporaries of Dr. John O'Donovan,

Professor Eugene O' Curry, George Petrie, Rev. Dr. Todd, Very

Rev. Dr. Renehan, and the few other truly great Irish scholars of

the past and passing generations. He was a native of Kilkenny

City, and was barely in the forty-fourth year of his age when

called to his reward, Saturday, October 30th, 1858. He was a very

able writer on and investigator of Irish history, in all its

branches, particularly in the ecclesiastical and ethnological

lines, of which his editorial labors for the Celtic and

Archaeological Societies of Dublin, his editions of White's and

O'Sullivan's writings relative to Ireland, as well as of the

Martyrology of Tallacht, and his contributions to the Dublin

_Review_, Duffy's _Catholic Magazine_, the London

_Rambler_, etc., etc., have given abundant proof. He is more

widely known by general readers through his remarkable

translation of Gosselin's great work, _On the Power of the Pope

during the Middle Ages_. His friend and fellow-laborer, Rev.

Dr. McCarthy, has collected from the periodicals named, chiefly

from the _Dublin Review_, into this volume--for a copy of

which we are indebted to the Catholic Publication Society--

several dissertations by the lamented Dr. Kelly, chiefly on Irish

church history--an examination of which makes us deeply regret

that he was not spared to complete the labors in which he was

engaged, and which he had in contemplation at the time of his

death--which included nothing less desirable than a new and

thorough edition of the _Acta Sanctorum_ of Colgan; a new

edition and a continuation of Rev. Dr. John Lanigan's

_Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_; and the completion of

the publication, under such care as he was capable of bestowing,

of the Very Rev. Dr. Renehan's _Collections on Irish Church

History_. The volume before us should find a place in every

private as well as public collection that aims to have

represented in it the genuine scholarship of Ireland.

----

A Few Friends, And How They Amused Themselves.

A Tale in nine chapters; containing descriptions

of twenty Pastimes and Games and a fancy-dress party.

By M. E. Dodge, author of Hans Brinker and

the Irvington Stories.

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

{857}

The author in this little book makes a happy effort to revive

amongst us again those pleasant, home-like games that give such a

charm to the fireside. Many of these pastimes are new, and all of

them interesting and amusing, requiring enough thought and wit to

keep one's faculties in pleasant activity. Society, it is true,

will scarcely condescend to be amused in so simple and cheerful a

way; but as it is a question whether it is ever heartily amused,

we can very well afford to set aside its ruling, and enjoy

ourselves with the pleasant pastimes of our "Few Friends." A

picture-gallery, such as is described in its pages, although it

might not provoke such artistic and wonderful criticisms as the

Academy of Design, would not yet fail to be very amusing. The

great charm of these games, as the author remarks in her preface,

is the bringing together the old and young, in the common pursuit

of pleasure.

----

A Short Grammar Of Plain Chant,

for the use of schools, seminaries, and

religious communities.

Troy, New York: P. J. Dooley. 1868.

It is with the sincerest pleasure we meet with any evidences of a

desire to return to the use of the Gregorian chant in the offices

of the church. Perfectly rendered, we know of no modern

compositions in figured music which can equal it in fitness or

grandeur. The best that can be said of timed music is, that it is

pleasing; that its varied harmonies delight the ear; and that in

the most worthy of such compositions there are pathetic, joyous,

and at times sublime expressions. But of the Gregorian chant only

can it be said that it edifies, compels to prayer and praise, and

never hints at the world, the flesh, or the devil. Like the

sacred vestments of the priest and the solemn ceremonies of

Catholic worship, it is a part of the outward expression of the

church's homage to God. It is the befitting song of the

sanctuary, and we are thankful the church has never sanctioned

any other.

To sing Gregorian chant as it should be sung is a science of its

own; a fact not a few of our musicians appear to be ignorant of;

and although the present little handbook does not pretend to be a

treatise on the subject, yet it may perhaps be found, in the

present state of our knowledge, a work better adapted to our

wants than a more extended and philosophical treatise would be.

It is a first book on chant for beginners, and gives in a concise

form all the preliminary notions upon which a further study may

be based. The author has divided it into three parts: the first

treating of the notation of plain chant; the second, of the

structure and peculiarities of the modes or tones; and the third,

or psalmody.

A convenient appendix has been added containing the different

intonations for High Mass and the Divine Office. The whole will

be found in strict conformity with the Roman Missal and Office

Books, a matter which we deem of no slight consequence. The

author, we observe, has followed the ordinary method (a faulty

one, we think) in the matter of the division of the Psalm tones

and the corresponding adaptation of the words. According to the

system commonly adopted in our choir-books and in works on plain

chant hitherto published in this country, the different

mediations and cadences would require at least four different

divisions or pointings of the Psalms. In fact, the rules laid

down by all masters in Gregorian chant for accentuation and the

adaptation of dactylic and monosyllabic words require only one

pointing of the Psalms for all the tones and their various

conclusions. We think this important point can be demonstrated,

although it would be out of place here.

As a book of first principles of the chant, we most heartily

commend this little volume to those for whose use it has been

prepared, and have no doubt that it will find its way into all

our seminaries and religious communities, and, we venture to hope

as well, into our schools. To our Catholic youth the song of the

church ought not to be an unintelligible jargon of sound. Let us

add, that the effort of the publisher in putting out a work of

this kind is deserving of the highest praise, and we trust will

be fully appreciated. The work bears the imprimatur of the Rt.

Rev. Bishop of Albany.

----

{858}

The Law Of Love And Love As A Law;

or, Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical.

By Mark Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., President of Williams College.

New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

This volume, albeit of moderate size and pretensions, would

require an elaborate review to do it justice. The brief notice we

bestow on it must not therefore be taken as a criterion of our

estimate of its ability, or as a full and matured judgment upon

its doctrines and arguments in detail or in reference to special

points. Its general scope and tenor of thought and reasoning, we

can say without hesitation, are in accordance with Catholic

doctrine in respect to those matters which are clearly defined,

and in accordance with that system of moral philosophy which we

regard as the soundest and most rational on matters which are

open to discussion. The tone and spirit of the work are elevated,

its thought is strong, its style limpid and tranquil, its

sentiments generally moderate and conservative. The author

demolishes the wretched system of utilitarianism and several

other sophisms, by a few blows as quietly yet as effectually

given as those of a polar bear. He establishes also the freedom

of the will as the necessary condition of obligation, and thus

cuts up Calvinism root and branch. We should be glad to see a

more distinct statement of the absolute right of God over his

creatures as the author and preserver and sovereign Lord of the

creation, as the basis of the obligation to obey his laws and

those of his delegates even in things indifferent in themselves.

This would in no wise conflict with the doctrine of the author

that the reason of the eternal law is situated not merely in the

free determination of the divine will, but chiefly and radically

in the divine intelligence. The argument proving that all

morality is determined by the final cause, or the relation of

human acts to the ultimate end of man and creation, is admirable.

So also is the resolution of all the ends and motives of creation

into the _amor entis_, which is really the dominant idea in

the author's philosophy and forms the character of his book. It

is chiefly on account of this noble and elevated view that we

take occasion to commend it, and expect a very great good to be

done by it within the circle of the distinguished author's

influence.

----

Mental Science.

A Compendium of Psychology and the History of Philosophy.

Designed as a text-book for high-schools and colleges.

By Alexander Bain, M.A., Professor in the

University of Aberdeen, etc.

New York: Appletons. 1868.

We are willing to believe that this book may contain much

valuable information in regard to the history of philosophy,

physiology, and psychological phenomena. But as a text-book of

"Mental Science," it is an utter absurdity, since its fundamental

principle destroys all metaphysical certainty. It is the

quintessence of the worst and most absurd opinions of the

empirical school of Herbert Spencer and Mill, and therefore

simply a dose of intellectual strychnine. For the refutation of

this miscalled "Mental Science," we refer to all the

philosophical articles of this magazine.

----

Light On The Last Things.

By William B. Hayden.

Publishing House of the New Jerusalem.

20 Cooper Union. 1869.

We are rather surprised not to see on the title-page of this

book, "published by order of the archangel Gabriel." It gravely

informs us that the "Last Judgment foretold by Daniel, and in the

book of Revelation, took place as described in that book, in the

World of Spirits, in the year 1757, upon those who had

accumulated there since the Lord's first appearing thus finishing

the dispensation in _hades_. The last judgment once

inaugurated, continues to 'sit,' as expressed in Daniel; it

constantly proceeds hereafter, as explained in chapter vii.; the

vast accumulation of the evil communities there will no more be

allowed; it takes effect upon the multitudes who arise, at

longest, in a very few years." (P. 188.)

{859}

We are glad to have authentic intelligence of such a gratifying

nature. But this is not the best of it. "This removed evil

influences, for the most part, from the intermediate world,

replacing them with good influences. The heavens by the increase

of numbers, and by an increased endowment of love and wisdom from

the Lord, became more powerful, and began immediately, as a

consequence, to shed down their influences more powerfully upon

mankind, the church and the world. And they were moved nearer to

men by the Lord that they might effect this purpose." We shrewdly

suspect that our author has taken a moonlight ride on Mohammed's

_Alborac_. Whoever has the curiosity to seek for a brief and

easily readable summary of that fantastic system called

Swedenborgianism will find it in this little volume. In point of

credibility and reasonableness the doctrine of the New Jerusalem

Church is about on a level with that of the Koran and the Book of

Mormon, though more elevated and pure in its morality. There was

never anything more ridiculous than the pretension of its adepts

to be the true gnostics or spiritual men, and to look down on

Catholics as the psychical or half carnal. Their doctrine of the

incorporation of the Godhead is a crude and gross notion

incompatible alike with the principles of reason and revelation,

and rendering the formation of either a sound theology or a sound

philosophy impossible. The rest of their system is a tissue of

dreams and fancies resting on nothing more solid than the

imagination of Swedenborg, and without the slightest claim on the

attention of any reasonable man.

----

Life Of The Blessed Charles Spinola, S.J.,

with a sketch of the other Japanese Martyrs beatified on the

9th of July, 1867.

By Joseph Brockaert, S.J.

New York. John G. Shea. 1869.

The subject of this memoir was a Jesuit missionary in Japan in

the seventeenth century, illustrious by birth but still more so

by his virtue. Interwoven with the sketch of his life and

martyrdom are many incidents of the history of Christianity and

its glorious confessors in Japan, and an interesting account of

the recent discovery of many thousands of Christians who have

preserved the faith handed down by their ancestors from the days

of persecution until the present time. The history of Japanese

Christianity will compare with that of the first ages of the

church, and is by itself a sufficient and overwhelming proof of

the divine truth of the Catholic religion. Such books as this

might be read with profit by every Catholic and by all who

profess the name of Christ.

----

The Conscript: A Story of the French War of 1813.

By MM. Erckmann-Chatrian.

Translated from the twentieth Paris edition. With eight

full-page illustrations.

New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

Those of our readers who have already perused this story in our

pages, will doubtless be pleased to learn that it is at length

issued in a permanent and separate form. The volume needs no

commendation from us; and we believe that many American readers

will find in its pages new ideas of war and its horrors, even

although our own battle-fields are yet scarcely green.

----

Outlines Of Composition.

Designed to simplify and develop the principles

of the Art by means of Exercises

in the preparation of Essays, Debates,

Lectures, and Orations. For the use

of schools, colleges, and private students.

By H. J. Zandee, and T. E. Howard, A.M.

Boston: Published by Robert S. Davis & Co.

New York: D. & J. Sadlier, and Oakley & Mason.

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.

St. Louis: Hendricks and Chittenden. 1869.

We take pleasure in noticing this Manual as an effort in the

right direction. In all the experience of school-children there

is nothing more difficult or perplexing than the art of

composition; and few, even of the most diligent, attain to any

degree of ease in its exercise until maturer years have taught

them the lesson which these outlines are intended to convey,

namely, that knowledge precedes speech, and thought goes before

expression.

{860}

The years which elapse while the young writer is learning "what

to say, and how to say it," will, in our view, be materially

diminished by the use of such works as this, and we are glad to

see, by its imprint, that publishers appreciate its value.

----

Gray's School And Field Book Of Botany.

Consisting of "First Lessons in Botany,"

and "Field, Forest, and Garden Botany,"

bound in one volume.

By Asa Gray, Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard

University.

New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co.

Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. 1869.

The works of Professor Gray have been too long before the public

and enjoy already too wide a reputation to make necessary any

extended notice of this new and collected edition. The volume now

before us is a fine octavo of more than 600 pages, and contains

both the principles of the science, and the classification and

description of various plants, to the number of nearly three

thousand species. The illustrations are very numerous and of

superior character; and the care which is displayed in the

revision of the work, and its adaptation to the latest

advancements of science, as well as the mechanical execution of

the book itself, recommend it to all lovers of "the Field, the

Forest, and the Garden."

----

Charlie Bell, The Waif Of Elm Island.

By Rev. Elijah Kellogg, author of

_Spartacus to the Gladiators_,

_Good Old Times_, etc.

Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1868. pp. 325.

This book will assuredly suit those for whose special pleasure it

was written. It abounds in stirring incident and thrilling

adventure on sea and shore, which, though sometimes some what

exaggerated, will not render it less acceptable to its juvenile

readers. A good moral lesson, although not made obtrusively

prominent, is taught in the gratitude of the orphan Charlie to

his kind protectors. How true, too, and how boylike his remark to

his "mother," on her expressing doubt as to his ability to

accomplish a certain project, "O mother! when a boy gets anything

in his head, he is bound to do it, by hook or by crook."

----

The "Catholic Publication Society" will soon publish a new volume

for youth, entitled, _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, by the

authoress of the _Life of Mother McAuley_, etc. It will be

beautifully illustrated and got out in the best style of the art.

The same Society will also soon publish

_Why People do not Believe; or, the Cause of Infidelity_,

translated from the French of Mgr. Lapot, of Louvain

University;

_Not Yet: A Story of To-Day_, by Miss Oxenham;

_Impressions of Spain_, by Lady Herbert, illustrated;

_Tales for the Many; The Life of Father Ravignan_;

Aubrey de Vere's _Irish Odes_;

and the third series of

_Illustrated Sunday-School Library_,

will be ready in a few days.

----

Books Received.

The Triumph Of Faith. A Lecture delivered in the hall of the

Cooper Institute, by the Rev. Thomas S. Preston, on the First

Anniversary of the Church of the Epiphany, Sunday evening,

January 10, 1869.

New York: Robert Coddington, Publisher, 366 Bowery. 1869.

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Report Of The Secretary Of The Treasury On The State Of The

Finances For The Year 1868. Washington: Government Printing

Office.

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Tales of a Grandfather.

By Sir Walter Scott,

Bart. Second Series. A.D. 1603 to 1707.

W. W. Swayne, New York and Brooklyn.