Let us not lose sight of our argument. We were seeking a

practical and popular way to solve the great problems of our

destiny, and we have proven that human science alone is unequal

to this task. We have seen that there is only one way for man to

attain this end, that satisfactory solutions can only be derived

from faith, that wonderful gift which under the authority of a

superhuman witness makes us believe with certitude things which

neither the eyes of the body nor the eyes of the mind could

immediately comprehend. Has the witness which lies at the

foundation of Christian convictions the wished-for authority? In

other words, is it truly divine? We believe that we have

established it, and the most hasty reading of a single page of

the Bible will demonstrate it far more clearly than we have done.

See also the admirable harmony of the Christian system, and the

responses, as clear as they are sublime, it gives to questions so

long unanswerable. It is by its capacity to penetrate mysteries

to read the invisible, to explain the obscure, not less than by

its miraculous victory, that Christianity demonstrates both the

true character of its origin and the sincerity of its divine

Founder.

We remember on this subject some moving sentences that we will be

permitted to quote. They are from an author who recently received

an eloquent tribute of regrets and praises, and who, for the past

twenty years, has been remembered with grief by all the friends

of sound philosophy. In a well-known lecture, when considering

these same problems of human destiny, M. Jouffroy spoke thus:

"There is a little book that is taught to children, and upon

which they are questioned in the church. Read this little book,

which is the catechism. You will find in it a solution of all

the questions I have asked--of all, without an exception. Ask a

Christian the origin of the human race, what is its destiny,

and how it can attain it, and he can answer you. Ask that poor

child, who has scarcely thought of life and its duties, why he

is here below, what will become of him after death, and he will

make a sublime answer which he may not fully comprehend, but

which is not the less admirable. Ask him how the world was

created and for what end; why God has put animals and plants

upon it; how the world was peopled, if by one family or by

several; why men speak different languages, why they suffer,

why they combat, and how all these things will end; and he

knows it all.

{474}

Origin of the world, origin of man, questions about the

different races, destiny of man in this life and in the other,

relation of man to God, duties of man toward his fellow-men,

rights of man over creation, he is ignorant of none of these

things; and as he becomes matured, he will not hesitate to take

advantage of his natural and political rights, for he knows the

rights of the people, for these come, or, as it were, flow of

themselves, from Christianity. This is what I call a great

religion. I recognize by this sign that it leaves none of the

questions which interest humanity without an answer." [Footnote

102]

[Footnote 102: _Mélanges Philosophiques_,

par M. Th. Jouffroy. Vol. i. 1833, p. 470.]

We love to read again these words of a master and a friend, who

in his youth was nourished with Christian truths, and who,

perhaps, would have tasted them again if the trials of life had

been prolonged for him. Without doubt, it is necessary to avoid

indorsing opinions which are no longer our own sentiments; but

certainly it can be permitted to preserve a faithful and complete

remembrance of their spirit. Even at the time when M. Jouffroy

doubted, when he left his pen and told us with assurance how

Christian dogmas would die, there would have been but very little

necessary to teach him to his cost how they perpetuate

themselves! Faith has its evil days; its ranks seem decimated and

its army dissolved, but it can never perish. In order to replace

deserters, to recruit its strength unceasingly, has it not the

sorrows and miseries of this world, the need of prayer, and the

thirst of hope?

Let us leave this sweet and profound thinker whose brilliant

career we love to trace; let us return to that great and firm

soul who now engages our attention, and to whom we are attached

by so many friendly ties and remembrances. Without having

followed him step by step, we have not lost sight of him. We have

taken a hasty glance at his work in trying to express its spirit.

We must now return to each of these meditations in detail. What

things have escaped us! What brilliant passages, what keen

observations, what profound thoughts! At most, we have only taken

account of that part of the book where the limits of science, the

belief in the supernatural, and especially the marvellous harmony

between Christian dogmas and religious problems, that are innate

to man, are treated with so much wisdom and authority. That which

M. Jouffroy, in the remarks we have quoted, indicates in a single

glance, M. Guizot establishes with convincing arguments by

comparing each dogma with the natural problem to which it

corresponds. No one has yet so accurately explained the

harmonious relation of these questions and these answers. There

are two _morceaux_ which demand particular attention: they

are the two _meditations_ on the revelation and inspiration

of the holy books. There are here ideas and distinctions of rare

sagacity which point out what justly belongs to human ignorance,

without allowing the reality of inspiration of the Bible to

suffer the slightest suspicion. But the chief triumph of this

work, that which gives it at once its most charming color and its

sweetest perfume, are the last two meditations, _God according

to the Bible, Jesus Christ according to the Gospels_.

{475}

These two pictures are in as different styles as the subjects

they contrast. Nothing could be bolder, more striking, more truly

Biblical, than the portrait of the God of the Hebrews; of that

God "who has no biography, no personal events," to whom nothing

happens, with whom nothing changes, always and invariably the

same, immutable in the midst of diversity and of universal

movement. "I am he who is." He has nothing else to say of

himself; it is his definition, his history. No one can know more

of him, even as no one can see him. And if he were visible, what

a misfortune! His glance is death. Between him and man what an

abyss!

It is a long distance to traverse between such a God and the God

of the New Testament--from Jehovah to Jesus Christ. What novelty,

what a transformation! The solitary God goes out from his unity;

he completes everything, yet remains himself; the provoked God

lays aside his anger, he is affected, he is pacified, he becomes

gentle, he gives man his love, he loves him enough to redeem his

fault with his Son's blood, that is, with his own blood. It is

this victim, this Son, obedient even unto death, that M. Guizot

endeavors to paint for us. Sublime portrait, attempted many

times, but always in vain! Shall we say that he has succeeded in

this impossible task? No; but he has made a most happy effort. He

makes us pass successively before his divine model, by showing

the attitudes, if we may be allowed the expression, which enable

us to see the most touching aspects of this incomparable figure.

Sometimes he places him amid his disciples only, that chosen and

well-loved flock; sometimes in the Jewish crowd in the Temple, at

the foot of the mountain, or on the border of the lake; sometimes

among the fishermen or the sedate matrons; sometimes with artless

children. In each of these pictures, he gathers, he brings

together, he animates by reuniting them, the scattered

characteristics of Jesus Christ. His sober and guarded style,

powerful in its reasoning, brilliant in its contests, seems to be

enriched with new chords by the contact with so much sympathy and

tender love. It is not only the impassioned eloquence, but it is

a kind of emotion, more sweet and more penetrating, that you feel

while reading his thoroughly Christian pages.

We understand the happy effect that this book has already

produced upon certain souls. Its influence, however, cannot

descend to the masses. Its tone, its style, its thoughts, have

not aspired to popular success; but from the middling classes and

the higher circles of society, how many drifting souls there are

to whom this unexpected guide will lend a timely aid! Such a

Christian as he is must work this kind of cure. He is not the man

of the workmen; he has neither gown nor cassock. It is a

spontaneous tribute to the faith, and more than this, for it

declares that he too has known and vanquished the anxieties of

doubt. Every one, then, can do as he has done. No one fears to

follow the steps of a man who occupies such a position in the

empire of thought, who has given such proofs of liberty of spirit

and of deep wisdom. It is not a slight rebuke to certain

intelligent but careless Catholics to see such an example of

submission and faith come from a Protestant.

There is yet a greater and more general service that these

_Meditations_ seem to have fulfilled. During the eight or

ten months since they were published, the tone of antichristian

polemics has been much depressed. One would have expected a

manifestation of rage, but there has been nothing of the kind.

{476}

The most vehement critics are reserved, and their attacks have

principally consisted in silence. Hence a sort of momentary lull.

Many causes, without doubt, contributed in advance to this

result, if it were only the excess of the attack and the

impertinence of certain assailants; but the book, or to speak

more properly, the action of M. Guizot, has, in our opinion, its

own good part in this work. So clear and vigorous a profession of

faith could not be lightly attacked. In order to answer a man who

frankly calls himself a Christian, it would be necessary to have

resolved and to declare openly that one is antichristian; but

those who are, no longer care to acknowledge it. It is well known

that our day is pleased with half-tints; it has a taste for

shadows, and is always ready to strike its flag when it sees an

opponent's colors. Christianity itself gathers some profit from

the little noise that is made about these _Meditations_. It

is not the least reward of their author. May he continue in the

same tone, compelling his adversaries to persevere in their

silence. He will embarrass them more and more, while he will

always add fresh courage and power to those who are sustaining

the good cause.

--------

Saint Mary Magdalen.

From The Latin Of Petrarch.

The following lines were written by the great Italian poet,

Petrarch, on the occasion of a visit to Sainte-Baume, near

Marseilles, where tradition points out the tomb of Saint Mary

Magdalen. He inscribed them on the grotto, in which she is said

to have passed the last thirty years of her life.

Dulcis amica Dei, lacrymis inflectere nostris,

Atque meas attende preces, nostraeque saluti

Consule: namque potes. Neque enim tibi tangere frustra

Permissum, gemituque pedes perfundere sacros,

Et nitidis siccare comis, ferre oscula plantis,

Inque caput Domini pretiosos spargere odores.

Nec tibi congressus primos a morte resurgens

Et voces audire suas et membra videre,

Immortale decus lumenque habitura per aevum,

Nequicquam dedit aetherei rex Christus Olympi.

Viderat ille cruci haerentem, nee dira paventem

Judaicae tormenta manus, turbaeque furentis

Jurgia et insultus, aequantes verbera linguas;

Sed maestam intrepidamque simul, digitisque cruentos

Tractantem clavos, implentem vulnera fletu,

Pectora tundentem violentis candida pugnis,

Vellentem flavos manibus sine more capillos.

Viderat haec, inquam, dum pectora fida suorura

Diffugerent pellente metu. Memor ergo revisit

{477}

Te primam ante alios; tibi se priùs obtulit uni.

Te quoque, digressus terris ad astra reversus,

Bis tria lustra, cibi nunquàm mortalis egentem

Rupe sub hâc aluit, tarn longo tempore solis

Divinis contenta epulis et rore salubri

Haec domus antra tibi stillantibus humida saxis,

Horrifico tenebrosa situ, tecta aurea regum,

Delicias omnes ac ditia vicerat arva.

Hìc inclusa libens, longis vestita capillis,

Veste carens aliâ, ter denos passa decembres

Diceris, hìc non fracta gelu nec victa pavore.

Namque famem, frigus, durum quoque saxa cubile

Dulcia fecit amor spesque alto pectore fixa.

Hìc hominum non visa oculis, stipata catervis

Angelicis, septemque die subvecta per horas,

Coelestes audire choros alterna canentes

Carmina, corporeo de carcere digna fuisti.

Translation.

Sweet friend of God! my tears attend,

Hark to me suppliant and defend--

O thou, all-potent to befriend!

Not vain that care thou didst accord--

Thy hands, uplifted o'er thy Lord,

Upon his head sweet odors poured,

And touched his feet with unguents rare--

The kiss of love imprinted there--

And wiped them with thy beauteous hair.

Not vain, when he in majesty

Rose up from death, 'twas given to thee

The first to meet, to hear, to see.

This glory did the Lord divine,

The Christ august, to thee assign,

Made this unending splendor thine.

Unto his cross he saw thee cling,

Unawed by threat and buffeting--

The taunts the furious rabble fling;

For him he saw thee lashed with scorn,

Yet clasping, faithful and forlorn,

Those feet with nails now pierced and torn.

{478}

He watched thy tear-drenched face below--

Thy bosom stricken in thy woe--

Thy long fair hair's dishevelled flow.

All this he saw, while from his side

His other loved ones scattered wide,

And left alone their Crucified.

'Twas therefore, mindful of those sighs,

He, deigning from the tomb to rise,

Sought his first welcome from thine eyes.

And heavenward when from earth he sped,

Through thrice ten years for thee here spread

A feast by angels ministered.

This rugged cave obscure and lone,

Black rock-dews dripping down the stone.

For thee a regal palace shone.

No fields with harvest wealth besprent

Accord such manna as was sent;

Thy needs did heavenly gifts content.

Here through December's frost and sleet.

Thy long hair, falling to thy feet.

Enrobed thee in a robe complete.

No fear appalled; love made thee bold;

Love sweetened sufferings manifold.

The rock, the hunger, and the cold.

Here, hid from mortal eyes, to be

Cheered with celestial company.

Angelic bands encompassed thee.

And still a dweller in our sphere.

Seven hours each day rapt hence, thine ear

The alternate choirs of heaven could hear.

C. E. R

-------

{479}

Glimpses Of Tuscany.

Santa Maria Del Fiore--The Duomo.

I.

We are approaching Florence by rail from Pisa, a dismal, dripping

February morning. It is twelve years since I first saw that

famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I came suddenly upon it,

as I was trying to find my way alone to the opera at the Pergola,

the first night I got to Florence. I shall never forget the

impression it made on me--an honest, original impression, for I

had never read or heard of the Piazza and its wonders. I only

knew Giotto by his "O." Orgagna, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi, were

names utterly unknown. But the beauty and immensity of that

mighty square, asleep in the starlight, overwhelmed me. It was

like a step, unawares, from time into eternity. No Pergola that

night for me. I crept back to the hotel, bewildered and awed into

something like earnestness; for the Lord seemed enthroned in that

consecrated place, and I was afraid of him as he sat there,

stern, conscious, omnipotent.

But I was younger then; disposed to go into raptures over

everything artistic, especially Italian art. The decade between

thirty and forty diminishes one's enthusiasm dreadfully. I am

almost afraid to meet my old favorite now, lest the spell of a

fine remembrance should be broken for ever. But the train is

rushing on, the road curves, and there's the same Duomo, looking

as if Our Lady of Flowers herself had settled down on the city,

with Giotto's campanile, like an archangel, standing guard beside

her. There she sits in her gray mantle, grayer through the mist

and snow, queen of all the landscape--grander, lighter, lovelier

than ever.

Here we are at the station, and now driving past the baptistery;

but, far or near, that cupola ever full in view like a guardian

presence. You do not wonder here, as before Saint Peter's, what

has become of the cupola; you are not obliged to fall back a

league to see what is nearly overhead. Nave, transept, and

tribune go swelling up, with buttress and demi-cupola diminishing

as they ascend, and all converging into one enormous drum from

which springs the central dome. Dante could see it from his chair

in its very shadow. Arnolfo and Brunelleschi may see it from

their seats of marble scarce twenty yards from the

foundation-stone. Angelo may see it from his home in Santa Croce.

The masons of Fiesole can see it from their hills, the peasants

of San Casciano from their vineyards; and, far down the Arno, the

boatmen from Pisa look up to it as they plod wearily along.

I am domesticated in Florence; the slow Tuscan spring is passing

into summer; and, from being simply a joy, this great cathedral

has become a study. Arnolfo, son of Lapo, or Cambio, was the

great stone-poet who traced that ground-plan, itself an epic. He

was commissioned by those wonderful republicans to construct a

church, as worthy as man could make it of the glory of God and

the dignity of the city of Florence.

{480}

The inclination of Arnolfo's genius was toward the Gothic; but he

was a many-sided and myriad-minded man. His walls of Florence

suggest the Egyptian, his court of the Bargello the Saracenic,

his Palazzo Vecchio a perfectly new idea. He has all the

versatility of Shakespeare. Arnolfo's first conception of Santa

Maria del Fiore may still be seen in fresco, copied from the last

wooden model, in the Spanish Cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Up

to the first cornice, the cathedral, as it now stands, is almost

as purely Gothic as the campanile; and, by reference to the

fresco, you will perceive that Arnolfo's original idea was to

carry this Gothic treatment up to the very cross that crowns the

lantern. For instance, the lantern in the fresco is without

either ball or scroll, the clerestory buttressed, and with

pointed instead of circular lights, the windows of the cupola

pointed. Yet, as it is certain that Arnolfo lived to finish the

clerestory, and to unite (_serrare_) the smaller cupolas and

tribunes, it is clear these variations in his plan, these

departures from the pointed, these approximations to the round,

were deliberately made by Arnolfo himself, or by his direction.

As the work advanced, he felt that something more must be

conceded to the coming cupola. It was not enough to have it

octagonal instead of spherical, and enrich its eight marble ribs

with Gothic tracery; the antagonism between the two styles must

be met and softened from the start. See how gradually this is

done, and at what an early stage these concessions begin. In the

fresco, the blind arches, both over the lower tribunal windows

and just under the lower tribunal cornice, are slightly pointed;

in the building itself they are round; the niches above the

cornice, also, are pointed in the picture and round-topped in the

stone. It is more than probable that these concessions were

dictated by the greater prominence which the cupola was assuming

in Arnolfo's new vision of his temple. Now is it impossible, that

he might have nearly anticipated the exact plan of the heir of

his inspiration and partner of his glory? The tendency is that

way. But, with the completion of the clerestory and the

unification of the smaller cupolas, Arnolfo departs, and, after

an interval of a century and a quarter, Brunelleschi enters.

There they are, seated side by side in marble, close to the stone

that marks where Dante, too, sat gazing at their Duomo. Arnolfo

looks more like a dreamer than a doer, although he was both; in

Ser Brunelleschi's face there is more of the mathematician than

the poet. He could never have traced that ground-plan, never have

dreamed that shining archangel called the campanile; but he did

what neither the pupil of Cimabue nor the son of Cambio could

perhaps have managed as well, he built that matchless cupola.

Brunelleschi had his one great dream, the solution of a vast and

novel architectural difficulty. What Arnolfo had hinted became

his grand ideal. He nursed his dream for years at Rome, communing

with the spirit of classic art; at last he told his dream in

Florence, and with infinite difficulty got leave to act it out.

Since that noble _carte blanche_ to Arnolfo, Florence had

declined; she was no longer up to the proud standard of that

earlier day. The superintendents are slippery and slow in

engaging Filippo; and Filippo himself must _finesse_ more

than a little to secure the engagement.

{481}

There is this difference, to be sure, that the Duomo was the

culmination of Arnolfo's professional career and but the

beginning of his successor's; that the latter, like all gallant

adventurers, had to win his spurs before he could be fully

trusted. Still, the two inseparable elements of self and gain are

more conspicuous here than in the purer Christian ages, whose

architects disdained or forbore to register their names; whose

works preserve no personal memorial of their masters; "so that,"

says Vasari, "I cannot but marvel at the simplicity and

indifference to glory exhibited by the men of that period." There

is, unfortunately, no such simplicity to marvel at now.

As early as 1407, Filippo submitted an opinion to the

superintendents of the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, and to the

syndics of the guild of wool-workers, (powerful gentlemen in

those days,) that the edifice above the roof must be constructed,

not after the design of Arnolfo; but that a frieze, thirty feet

high, must be erected with a large window in each of its sides.

This suggestion, together with the additional thirty feet for the

gallery, comprised the single, sublime conception to which the

Duomo owes its crowning beauty; the rest of the task is chiefly

mechanical. But such immense mechanics require immense genius.

Filippo had supplied the idea, but there was no one found wise

enough to execute it. The wardens and syndics were much

perplexed; and Filippo, after laughing at them in his sleeve,

returned to Rome. He had hardly gone before they wrote him to

return. He came; and after patiently listening to the long array

of difficulties which mediocrity always opposes to the

inspiration of genius, admitted that the most enormous dome of

ancient or modern times must present certain difficulties in its

erection, like other great enterprises; that he was confounded no

less by the breadth than by the height of the edifice; that if

the tribune could be vaulted in a circular form, one might pursue

the method adopted by the Romans in erecting the Pantheon; but

that following up the eight sides of the building to a

convergence, thus dove-tailing, and, so to speak, enchaining the

stones, would be a most difficult and novel undertaking.

"Yet"--and this touch is worthy of Arnolfo's age or any

other--"yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God

and the Virgin, I confidently trust that, for a work executed in

their honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is

now wanting, and bestow strength, wisdom, and genius on him who

shall be the author of such a project." Nothing can shake

Filippo's joyous trust in himself; he acts as if he carries a

divine commission in his pocket to finish what Arnolfo began, and

can therefore afford to laugh at all human appointments or

interference. With amazing confidence and magnanimity, he

concludes his interview with their worships by exhorting them to

assemble, on a fixed day within a year, as many architects as

they can get together; not Tuscans and Italians only, but

Germans, French, and all other nations, "to the end that the work

may be commenced and intrusted to him who shall give the best

evidence of capacity." The syndics and wardens liked Filippo's

advice, and would also have liked him to prepare a model for

their edification. But with all his piety and self-reliance, Ser

Brunelleschi was a Florentine like their worships, and therefore

keen enough to keep his model to himself. It then suddenly

occurred to these grave gentlemen that money might be an object

to Filippo, as it occasionally is to other men; and so they voted

him a sum, not stated by Vasari, but not large enough to justify

his remaining in Florence. So back to Rome once more marches the

Ser Brunelleschi.

{482}

Meanwhile that noble city of Florence has ordered her merchants

resident abroad to send her at any cost the best foreign masters.

In the year 1420, these best foreign masters, and best Italian

masters besides, and the syndics and superintendents, and a

select number of distinguished citizens, and little Filippo

himself, just returned from Rome, are all assembled in the hall

of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore. After listening to a

hundred absurd plans, Brunelleschi unfolds his own at full

length. Whereupon the assembled syndics, superintendents, and

citizens, instead of being at all edified by his remarks,

proceeded to call him a simpleton, an ass, a madman, and bade him

discourse of something else. Which he, instead of doing, stuck to

his point, and finally lost his temper and flew in their faces.

Whereupon they called him a fool and a babbler; and considering

him absolutely mad, arose against him as one man, and

incontinently turned him out of doors by the head and heels.

Imagine the rage of Arnolfo the Goth, after such treatment; or

Angelo the mighty, stalking down the Via Romana; or Dante,

wandering ghost-like into eternal exile! The indomitable,

practical Filippo did none of these things, but prudently shut

himself up at home lest people in the streets should call out,

"See where goes that fool!" "It was not the fault of these men,"

says the sympathetic Vasari, "that Filippo did not break in

pieces the models, set fire to the designs, and in one half-hour

destroy all the labors so long endured, and ruin the hopes of so

many years." But Filippo was less a poet, enamoured of an inward

vision of beauty, than an architect determined to solve an

architectural problem. Plainly enough, since Arnolfo had set the

example in the clerestory, the windows of the cupola were also to

be circular instead of pointed. His inventive faculties were

therefore restricted to the organization of that vast dream, to

the determination of the ascending curves and the conception of

the lantern. It was not the offspring of his soul, but of his

mind, that Filippo had offered the syndics and superintendents;

and the inventor of new combinations and possibilities of matter

is apt to possess a more elastic temperament than the creator of

new forms of beauty. Instead of fretting himself to death or

cultivating the princely revenge of silence, Filippo, strong in

his mission and calculating on the proverbial caprice of his

native Florence, began to experiment on individuals instead of

assemblies; so successfully, too, that another session was soon

convened. Profiting by discomfiture, Filippo modified his

tactics. He salutes the superintendents as "_magnificent_

signors and wardens," and condescends to be more explicit about

his still hidden model. He even goes so far as to prove the

dome-within-a-dome, which had so enraged their excellencies, a

possibility. He spoke with such emphasis and confidence, that "he

had all the appearance of having vaulted ten such cupolas." In a

word, they surrendered at discretion; and, rather in despair than

hope, made him principal master of the works. The man of talents

was victorious where a mere man of genius would have been badly

beaten. But--in these artistic complications there is always a

but--Lorenzo Ghiberti, just famous for his doors of Paradise, was

a favorite in Florence; so Florence resolved to associate Lorenzo

with Filippo. This was a bitter pill to Ser Brunelleschi, but he

swallowed it; and for two years they worked together at the

twelve braccia to which their labors were limited by the wardens.

{483}

But--there was also a 'but' on the right side--when the closing

in of the cupola toward the top commenced, and the masons and

other masters were wailing in expectation of directions as to the

manner in which the chains were to be applied and the

scaffoldings erected, it chanced on one fine morning that Filippo

did not appear at the works. On inquiry, it turned out that he

had tied up his head, called for hot plates and towels, and gone

to bed complaining bitterly. An attack of pleurisy. Most

inopportunely; for at this most critical moment in the enterprise

the whole burthen fell on Lorenzo. Lorenzo was besieged by

practical questions; Lorenzo was persecuted with a thousand

interrogatories; Lorenzo waded completely out of his depth into a

sea of troubles; the masons and stone-cutters came to a stand,

and finally the work stood still. At this juncture, the syndics

and wardens resolved to pay the sick man a visit. They condoled

with him in his illness and also lamented the disorder which had

attacked the building. "Is not Lorenzo there?" asked the

sufferer. "He will not do anything without you," replied the

wardens. "_But I could do well enough without him_,"

murmured the invalid. The wardens withdrew, and sent Filippo a

prescription in the shape of an announcement of their intention

to remove Lorenzo. Filippo instantly recovered, but only to find

his rival still in place and power. Whereupon he made one more

prayer to their worships, namely, to divide the labor as they

divided the salary, and give each his own separate sphere of

action. This was granted: the chain-work assigned to Lorenzo, the

scaffolding to Filippo. The scaffolding proved a miracle of

success, the chain-work a monument of failure. The wardens, and

syndics, and superintendents, and influential citizens, fairly

driven to the wall, made Filippo chief superintendent of the

whole fabric _for life_, commanding that nothing should be

done in the work save by his direction. How much richer the world

would now be in every department of art, had half its men of

genius but possessed a tithe of Brunelleschi's elasticity and

determination.

Left to himself, Filippo worked with so much zeal and minute

attention, that not a stone was placed in the building which he

had not examined. The very bricks, fresh from the oven, are said

to have been set apart with his own hands. So conscientious were

the builders of those days when art was supreme and religion a

practical inspiration. The energy and resources of this model

architect are inexhaustible. Nothing escapes him. Outlets and

apertures are provided, both in security against the force of the

winds, and against the vapors and vibrations of the earth.

Wine-shops and eating-houses are opened in the cupola. High over

Florence, Filippo is undisputed lord and master of a small town

of his own.

And so, for twenty-six years, they wrought under his eyes at this

architectural miracle. He lived to see the lantern carried to the

height of several braccia: it was not finished till fifteen years

after his death. He left plans for the gallery, which were either

lost, stolen, or destroyed. That great, broad belt of dingy brick

and mortar clamoring to earth and heaven for completion, ruins

the effect of the dome and gives the whole edifice a shabby

appearance. Only one of the eight sides is finished.

{484}

This was done in Carrara marble by Baccio d'Agnolo, and would

have been carried all around the dome but for the interference of

Michael Angelo, then omnipotent in Italy, who denounced it as a

mere cage for crickets; adding that he himself would show Baccio

what he _ought_ to do. The old art-dictator made a model

accordingly, which, after long debate, was rejected. So our Lady

of Flowers still lacks her girdle. It is much to be regretted,

since Michael could suggest nothing better, that he did not hold

his peace. The present model may not be faultless, but it is

infinitely better than nothing; and no one else has suggested

anything as good. It was condemned, not as defective in itself,

but unequal to the magnificence of the building; and, also,

because it seemed to violate some secret purpose of

Brunelleschi's in cutting off, as it did, the line of stones

which he had left projecting. Be this as it may, Filippo's

purpose has never been divined and never can be; all the plans of

the great masters are lost; and there seems to be small use in

continuing the interdict of a much over-estimated authority till

doomsday. That cestus of alternate head and garland just under

the colonnade is abominable, but it is difficult to see how the

present design could otherwise be improved. It harmonizes with

all the windows, and niches, and arches in the tribune; it

relieves the blankness of the perforations, and is in sympathy

both with the windows of the lantern and the upper window of the

campanile. It is the sub-dominant without which the blended

Gothic and classic is a discord. Arnolfo might have done it

better, but no one else. It is a poem which Baccio was as well

qualified to trace as any of the rest of them.

Apart from his glorious consummation of the Duomo, I do not like

Brunelleschi. He did more than any other man to repel the Gothic

influences, which, under Arnolfo and others, were penetrating

Tuscany; he insured the triumph of the round arch over the

pointed, and paved the way to the monstrosities of the

Renaissance. But his cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore is the

supreme miracle of architecture. It exceeds the cupola of the

Vatican, both in height and circumference, by eight feet; and

although supported by eight ribs only, which renders it lighter

than that of Saint Peter's, which has sixteen flanked buttresses,

is nevertheless more solid and firm. Unlike the Roman dome, it

has stood unassisted and unstrengthened from the first; so firmly

grounded by the forethought of Arnolfo, so closely knit by the

energies of Filippo, that it has not sunk or swerved an inch in

four centuries. The noblest speech that Buonarotti ever made was,

that he would not copy, but could not surpass it; the finest

compliment ever paid by one man of genius to another was his

dying wish to be buried where he might arise, not in sight of his

own Pantheon in the air, but in full view of the vaulted tribune

of Santa Maria del Fiore. Another name, however, is associated

with the growth of the Duomo--a name not inferior to either

Arnolfo or Filippo. Just beside the vast cathedral is the

wondrous bell-tower Giotto reared--his solitary, or only

conspicuous architectural feat. Before Giotto's time, the modern

painters copied nature about as closely as most actors and

orators now do; that is, their men and women bore only a weak,

conventional resemblance to humanity. The son of Bondone

inaugurated the naturalistic movement which culminated in Da

Vinci and Raphael; unquestionably a most honorable distinction.

But what can all he ever painted, judged as a living fact, amount

to when weighed against the startling splendor of this divine

campanile?

{485}

I have seen something of Giotto, far from all, but enough to know

that, save as undeveloped germs and hints, his pictures are

little more than crudities belonging to the infancy of art,

amazing at his time, but not more than curious at ours. But this

campanile, into which he suddenly ascended without an effort, is

the transfiguration of architecture--the product of an art at its

best and highest. Architecture never had advanced, never has

advanced a step beyond it. It might be added, never can advance;

for beyond a certain recognized point in the realization of

beauty, human genius is not permitted to push its way. Vasari

devotes thirty pages to the consideration of Giotto's pictures,

and but one to the campanile. Yet these pictures are mouldering

in convents or shrouded in chapels, or buried in dim galleries,

scattered far and wide over the world; and, save over some

ambitious student or patient virtuoso, they no longer exist as a

spell or a power. But this lofty campanile is a perpetual

influence; an influence as indestructible as the Iliad--a joy as

unceasing as the joy of sunrise--the joy of a work that is

perfection of its kind. So fair, so frail, and yet so firm! It

does not need the glass case suggested by imperial condescension.

It knows how to take the lightning and the storm. It knows how to

bear the weight and thunder of its mellow bells. Its beautiful

head is at home in the skies, and seems to belong to heaven as

much as the flowers belong to earth.

Giotto's plan would have crowned it with a spire of a hundred

feet; but, whether for true artistic considerations, or because

it was Gothic, or because it was too expensive, succeeding

architects have always advised its omission.

Besides its own independent loveliness, this bell-tower exercises

an important influence over the group to which it belongs, not

only by the development of form, but also by the subtler

qualification of style. But for the pure Gothic of Giotto, the

predominance of the round in the tribunes and cupola would

overwhelm Arnolfo's pointed witchery beneath the clerestory. As

it is, the supremacy of the classic at one end of the stately

pile is balanced by the ascendency of the Gothic at the other.

High up in air the pious rivalry between the two great styles is

continued, each lifting its choicest offering to the very

footstool of the Padre Eterno, each doing its best in honor of

our Lady of Flowers.

The facade of Santa Maria is wanting, like her girdle. Giotto is

said to have finished two thirds of it, subsequently torn down

_to be restored in a more modern style!_ The fresco in the

cloister of San Marco gives only part of it, and I could make but

little of that. As I remember the fresco of Arnolfo's facade, it

was meant to be composed of statues, niches, and

pillars--something as deep and rich as the façade at Pisa.

Whoever may finish it, let us trust that the shallow mosaic of

Santa Croce will be avoided. The baptistery completes this

memorable group; faded, unattractive without, sombre and majestic

within.

The interior of Santa Maria is a disappointment. Glorious stained

glass, splendid arches, but none of the light, the joy, the

shining paradise of Saint Peter's. If we may believe Vasari, the

interior, like the exterior was to have been crusted with

Florentine mosaic, even to the minutest corners of the edifice.

But the days are dead when such a deed was practicable.

{486}

Instead of colored marbles, we have a pale olive overspreading

all the edifice; instead of the mosaic for which Filippo had

provided iron supports, the lack-lustre frescoes of Vasari and

his successors, which Florence ought to have summarily

whitewashed, as suggested in Lasca's madrigal. Fortunately, these

frescoes are the only pictures. Pictures in large churches are

distracting and insignificant; and moreover, you can rarely more

than half see them, try your best. Least of all, has a picture

any business in a Gothic church. For my own part I would as soon

see the pyramid of Cheops hung with pictures as the Duomo. In a

church, you want all the superhuman you can get--nothing human

but human souls. Angels and dragons and effigies are more in

keeping there than the best statues; those ghostly groups and

faces in the old stained glass look better than if they were a

thousand times more natural. The old mosaics harmonize because

they are not only typical, but imperishable as the structure

itself. The decisive objection to a picture in a church is its

apparent fragility.

The outer robes of our Lady of Flowers are dull with the dust and

wear of five centuries. See how those new bits of marble which

the workmen are inserting, green, white, and red, flash and

sparkle in the sun! What a celestial vision it must have been

when all that world of mosaic was fresh and stainless! But even

as she is, faded and unfinished, what an invaluable possession!

What would Florence be without it? It is a central magnet that

holds together her present, past, and future; that unites all her

children in one vast family, making her, in the truest sense of

the word, a community. It stands before her everlastingly, a

memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present

greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her

fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn,

visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to

Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas

of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the

Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound

of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. For four

centuries, the generations that people that fair amphitheatre

have found it the most unchanging feature in their landscape. It

is as much the portion of their lives as the stars, their river,

or their own vineyards. In the first blush of every morning, it

rises before the sun; and when the stars and moon are shining,

the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore takes its place amongst them

as part of the pageantry of the skies.

----------

{487}

The Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England.

By An English Catholic.

Surrounded as we are on all sides by apostles of progress, ever

ready to taunt and ridicule those who linger in the shadows of

the past, it would be distressing indeed to Catholics in general,

and especially to English Catholics, if they could with justice

be reproached as stationary or retrograde. Happily they are of

all men least open to the charge. They advance on a double line.

They share in the common march of society; they adopt every

latest improvement; they fully accept and reciprocate the

blessings of civilization; but their religion also, which is in

itself progress, increases and multiplies throughout the globe,

and particularly in the British empire. It has derived strength

from the world's social and political changes; it is inspired

more than ever with the breath of freedom; and the very means

which accelerate science and commerce supply it with wings and

coat it with mail. It not only advances on a double line, but it

has likewise a twofold nature and a duplex power. This wonderful

religion is both old and new; it unites the weight and authority

of age with the freshness and vigor of youth. To the English it

is both ancient and modern. It _was_ the venerable faith of

their ancestors, and it is, by a gracious revolution in the moral

world, the old religion revived, with all the charms of

novelty--a second spring revisiting the long desolate and wintry

land. It comes back to us with all its time-honored appliances;

with its sacred symbols and solemn rites; its orders,

congregations, and retreats; its colleges, institutions, poor

schools, homes, orphanages, almshouses, hospitals, and

libraries--but it comes, moreover, with means and advantages

proportioned to its difficulties, and such as in old times it

could not boast. It has now in its hands the mighty machinery of

the press, with the Scriptures, the Missal and Church Offices in

the vulgar tongue. It flourishes amid liberal institutions, and

acquires no little vigor from free discussion, persuading where

once it ruled. It affiliates to itself all physical truths, all

discoveries in science, as affording fresh evidence of the power

and wisdom of God. It engages in historical research with

impartiality formerly unknown, relying on documentary proofs, and

scrutinizing all that is legendary. It joyfully accepts and

utilizes the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. It finds

in them fresh instruments of good, new links to knit nations

together in a common faith, swift convoys of Christian missions,

and electric tongues of flame to spread the gospel of Christ.

During the last forty years the Catholic _renaissance_ in

England has been rapid beyond all that could have been expected

or was even hoped. It is not to the emancipation act of 1829, to

the increase of the episcopate in 1840, nor to the creation of

the hierarchy in 1850, that this surprising growth is mainly to

be ascribed.

{488}

The removal of political disabilities gave Catholics in England,

no doubt, a respectability and courage which they had not before;

but they would still have continued, on the whole, a despised and

scattered remnant--mere "pebbles and _detritus_" as Newman

says, [Footnote 103] "of the great deluge"--if there had not

arisen in the very heart of the Established Church a little band

of learned and pious men, who, strong in genius and in prayer,

valiantly defended many distinctively Catholic doctrines, and

ended by professing openly or virtually their adhesion to our

entire system of faith and morals. This it was which caused

English Catholics, when they emerged, as it were, from the

catacombs, [Footnote 104] to lift up their heads, to challenge a

new investigation of the grounds of their belief, and to submit

them confidently to every test that history, Scripture, reason,

and experience could apply. The Tractarian movement infused fresh

blood into the church's veins, and it has, during a period of

thirty years, swollen our waters with a confluent stream.

[Footnote 103: _Sermons on Various Occasions_, p. 232.]

[Footnote 104: Card. Wiseman's _Address to the Congress of

Malines_, p. 9.]

The tide thus set in a right direction does not cease to flow,

and it is fed by sources external to ourselves. Scarcely a week

passes but some persons knock at the gates of the church for

admittance, who have learned the elements of Catholicism from

alien teachers. Several high-church periodicals, widely

circulated, such as the _Union Review_ and the _Church

News_, lay down, with extraordinary boldness and precision,

doctrines which the so-called reformers labored to explode.

Rumors are ever afloat of important conversions about to take

place, and thus Catholics in England are constantly encouraged,

while Anglicans are proportionally unsettled and alarmed. The

Establishment is dying by the hands of its own pastors. Three

hundred of them have quitted its pale, forfeited their position

in society, forsaken a thousand comforts, prospects, and

endearments, to follow the church in the wilderness and the

pillar of fire. The largest-minded and the largest-hearted man

Anglicanism ever produced, has long since taken his seat among

the doctors in the true temple, and one whom Anglicans esteemed

for his piety from boyhood upward, is now the primate of the

English Catholic Church, and regarded among its bishops as

_facile princeps_ for learning and ability, both as a

speaker and writer. The talents which were employed in promoting

schism are thus turned into a healthier channel; and a multitude

of able and ingenious converts in every literary guise operate

beneficially on the public mind. The loud demand for unity of

doctrine, a fixed standard of belief and morals, authority in

matters of faith, primitive antiquity, asceticism, symbols,

sacraments, and aesthetics, is being supplied. Catholic

missionaries are covering the face of the land, and they are

welcomed wherever they pitch their tent. Thirsting souls, weary

of broken cisterns, gather round them, and ask eagerly for living

water from deeper wells. Abbeys are raised on ancient sites;

convent-walls crown the hills; church-bells tinkle in secluded

vales; and in the towns and cities, fanes richly adorned and well

served invite with open doors the docile to be taught and the

penitent to be shriven. The genius of the two Pugins, the father

and the son, has revived the love of mediaeval architecture; and

the new churches vie with each other in majestic structure and

ornate detail. The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone.

{489}

The flowers have appeared in our land; the voice of the turtle is

heard. The fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in

flower yield their sweet smell. [Footnote 105]

[Footnote 105: Canticles, ii, 11-13.]

What a contrast within forty years! then the heavenly dove flying

over England scarcely found where her foot might rest. The waters

were abroad on the whole land, and she returned into the ark. In

1830 only 434 priests ministered through the entire country; and

these were attached, for the most part, to obscure chapels in low

quarters of the town, or to gloomy, old-fashioned houses in the

country. Four hundred and ten unsightly buildings were then

called churches; and England (which in the olden time, before the

Reformation, owned 56 convents of the Dominican order alone

[Footnote 106]) could not at that date claim a single religious

house consisting of men. Sixteen scanty communities of nuns there

were, who sighed and prayed in secret, being but the skirts of

the garment of the Lamb's Bride. A change has come over the

scene; and how great that change is, the following table will in

some degree show:

In 1854. 1864. 1867.

Catholic clergy in England 922 1267 1438

Catholic clergy in Scotland. 134 178 201

Churches, chapels,

and stations in England 678 907 1082

Churches, chapels,

and stations in Scotland 134 191 201

Communities of men in England 17 56 67

Convents in England. 84 173 210

Convents in Scotland. 0 13 17 [Footnote 107]

[Footnote 106: _Fr. Palmer's Life of Cardinal Howard._

Introd. 41-58.]

[Footnote 107: _Statesman's Year-Book for 1867_, p. 238.

_Catholic Directory_, p. 267.]

In the Diocese of Westminster alone there are more than twice as

many religious communities of women as there were in the whole

kingdom (Ireland excluded) forty years ago. The population, it is

true, multiplies rapidly and in an ever increasing ratio, but the

spread of Catholicism does far more than keep pace with this

advance. It outstrips it in a striking degree, and gives

continual promise of further increase. The distance between

churches lessens; the means of grace are more copiously supplied;

the discipline of the church is more fully carried out; the

prejudices of our foes are partly dispelled; their attacks become

less violent; the press is more civil; the state more

conciliating. In many localities, such as Bayswater,

Notting-Hill, Kensington, Brompton, and Hammersmith, in the West

of London, the number of Catholic churches, convents, and

charitable institutions is greater than would be found over an

equal area in many countries where the church is supreme. The

number of persons attached to the congregation of the Oratory in

Brompton exceeds 8000, and upwards of 13,000 attend the services

of St. George's Cathedral in Southwark. The English

"Reformation," happily, did only half its work, and the tap-roots

of Catholicism have never been thoroughly eradicated from the

popular mind. New suckers are ever springing up, and persistent

culture soon obtains its reward.

The vast metropolis is not all included in one diocese. The

Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Southwark both reside

in London, and divide the pastoral care of the great city between

them. One hundred and sixty priests, secular, regular, and

unattached, minister under Dr. Grant, while 221, including

Oratorians and Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo, serve under the

primate. The average attendance of children at the poor schools

of the Diocese of Westminster was, in the year 1857-8, 8648; and

nine years later, in 1866-7, it amounted to 12,056.

{490}

This increase sufficiently proves that great efforts are made to

instruct the Catholic poor children in London. Many of them,

especially those of Irish extraction, pass their days in rags,

filth, and beggary, living like little "Arabs," as they are

familiarly called. In 1866 it was estimated that from 7000 to

12,000 Catholic children were thus wandering through the streets

of the capital; but the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and

Archbishop Manning have produced the happiest results, and

diminished the evils which want of funds and the difficulties of

the case leave for the present without adequate remedy. It is

certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English

bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous

monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their

efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the

flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in

proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be

ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but

superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy

in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the

mind. It is almost as vain to teach religion without secular

knowledge, as it would be presumptuous and profane to impart

secular knowledge without religion. Nature and grace alike ordain

that they should go together, and on this principle the Poor

School Committee, or Council of Catholic Education, invariably

acts.

There is in England, at the present moment, a strong tendency to

compulsory education. The leading thinkers of the day incline to

this plan, and press on the legislature the expediency of

providing a state system of education, of which all the poor,

Catholics as well as Protestants, should avail themselves. The

secular instruction would, in this case, be common to all the

children, while the religious instruction would be in the hands

of the ministers of the several religions which the parents might

profess. The Catholic bishops and clergy look with fear and

suspicion on such a project, believing it impossible safely to

separate secular and religious instruction. They are of opinion

that the system would work badly, and prove a failure; that

non-Catholic teachers would insensibly instil false doctrine and

wrong views into the pupils' minds, and that the denominational

system, which provides separate schools for each section of

professing Christians, is the best, and, indeed, the only good

one for Catholic interests. They point to Ireland, where the

"national" education is regarded as a national grievance. They

bid you remark how, in that valley of tears, both Catholics and

Protestants separate their children if they can. They prove to

you that, in national schools with Presbyterian masters,

thousands of Catholic children are taught the Protestant religion

from the lips of Protestant teachers. [Footnote 108] They

complain that while the English receive from the state important

help toward denominational education, to the Irish all such help

is persistently refused.

[Footnote 108: Archb. Manning's _Letter to Earl Grey_,

1868, p. 22.]

It remains to be seen how far their remonstrances will be

attended to, and how far the national education in Great Britain

can be made to harmonize with Catholic. Happily, there is no

disposition on the part of the state to force on any portion of

the people a measure obnoxious to them; and the scheme of

national education introduced into Ireland under the auspices of

the Catholic and Protestant Archbishops of Dublin, (Drs. Murray

and Whately,) having proved abortive, it is the less likely that

Catholics in England will be obliged to accept any conditions to

which they may be decidedly adverse.

{491}

There is, however, great difficulty in adjusting state

concessions to Catholic wants and demands. It is almost

impossible for Protestant rulers to understand our feelings, and

they often run counter to them, even when they are trying to

satisfy them with the best intentions. Thus, for instance, though

the government has thrown open the Universities of Oxford and

Cambridge to Catholics, allowing them to matriculate and proceed

to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, difficulties have recently

been raised by ecclesiastical authority respecting their availing

themselves of this opening. The Catholic bishops, in fact, have

recommended parents and guardians not to send their sons and

wards to Oxford and Cambridge; and though their advice does not

amount to a prohibition, it has, nevertheless, a deterrent

effect. Catholic noblemen and gentlemen of large property have,

at present, no other means of giving their sons an education

suited to their rank, and such as will form their minds and

manners for parliamentary and diplomatic service, except by

sending them to these universities, where science is, so far as

they are concerned, entirely divorced from religion, and their

personal faith is in great danger of being compromised. The

Catholic colleges at Oscott, Ushaw, Stonyhurst, and the like,

though admirable for ordinary purposes, do not meet these

exceptional cases. They have not, they do not, and they cannot

produce men equal to the times--men who carefully get up

subjects, read much and study deeply, write and speak in public

with authority, and leave deep "footprints on the sands of time."

[Footnote 109] Such laborious and efficient servants of their

country are not likely to be formed by any _régime_ less

strict and comprehensive than that of our universities; and the

consequence is that, at this moment, there are about a dozen

Catholic young men studying at Oxford (not to mention Cambridge)

in spite of episcopal discouragement.

[Footnote 109: _Dublin Review_, October, 1867, p. 398.]

The principle of mixed education being absolutely condemned by

the church, the want of a Catholic university in England is felt

more and more. But it can only be the result of time, since the

cost of endowments and professorships, not to speak of buildings,

would, as yet, be out of proportion to the number of Catholics in

England and the means they possess. The matter, however, is now

under consideration at Rome, and it is expected that means will

be devised shortly to meet the existing want. Before the

Reformation, sixty-six universities covered Europe, and most of

them sprang from small beginnings, and were built amid

difficulties quite as great as any we shall have to encounter.

[Footnote 110]

[Footnote 110: See _Christian Schools and Scholars_,

vol. ii. chap. i. and ii.]

In the mean time, the government of Mr. D'Israeli favors, to a

certain extent, the denominational system, and proposes [Footnote

111] to charter the Dublin Catholic University, to endow it from

the public treasury, and to grant it the right of conferring

degrees.

[Footnote 111: March, 1868.]

This plan, if carried into effect, will materially aid the Irish

portion of the church, but will not supply the want of university

education which is felt in England. Already the benefits

resulting from the state endowment of Maynooth College for

priests are clearly manifest, and the present race of

ecclesiastics in Ireland differs entirely, in several important

particulars, from that of the past generation.

{492}

They are less Galilean than they were when educated in France,

less disposed to accept of state pensions, improved in manners

and appearance, more priestly, and perhaps more firmly attached

to the Holy See. The old-fashioned "hedge-priest" has

disappeared, and if one of our bishops now dines at the Castle in

Dublin, he has not, as was sometimes the case in days of yore, to

borrow a pair of episcopal small-clothes for the occasion.

The system of mixed education has not taken root in Ireland,

though backed by all the influence of the state. The following

table will prove that neither Catholics nor Protestants there

approve it, and that, though they sometimes submit to it as a

kind of necessity, they avail themselves of it as little as

possible. The table exhibits the entire number of schools in

Ireland under the control of the National Board, and it ought to

be remembered that in these it is not allowable to teach the

Catholic religion, to use Catholic emblems, to talk of the holy

father, use the sign of the cross, or set up a crucifix or an

image of Our Lady. [Footnote 112] The schools are, in fact,

secular, so far as Catholic children are concerned, and their

religious instruction is left to the zeal and labor of their own

pastors.

[Footnote 112: Speech of Card. Cullen.]

Catholic Protestant

Children. Children.

Schools.

2,454 with Catholic teachers. 373,756 none

2,483 with Catholic teachers. 321,641 24,381

1,106 with Protestant teachers only. 29,722 114,726

184 with Protestant teachers only. none. 18,702

131 with mixed teachers. 13,690 13,305 [Footnote 113]

[Footnote 113: _Report of National Board of Education_,

1866. _Report of Meeting of Clergy of Dublin_, 18th Dec.

1867, p. 14.]

In England, grants are made from time to time by the Privy

Council of the Queen toward defraying the expenses of Catholic

poor-schools, for it is only in a hobbling way that public

opinion in this country moves toward religious and political

equality. The oppression of minorities by majorities has been in

vogue so many centuries, that the Houses of Parliament can with

difficulty be induced to administer even-handed justice to all.

The Poor-School Committee, composed entirely of Catholic noblemen

and gentlemen, conducts the affairs of Catholic poor-schools with

the concurrence of the bishops and clergy. The schools which are

subsidized by government are subject also to government

inspection. But this causes no inconvenience, because the

inspectors are Catholics, approved by the bishops, and

comfortably salaried by the state.

The reformatory schools are most useful and interesting

institutions. They date from 1854, when a law was passed to the

effect that juvenile offenders should, after a few weeks of

imprisonment, complete their term of punishment in a reformatory

approved by the secretary of state for the Home Department. By

the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and others, reformatories were

established for Catholic children, in order that they might be

kept separate from those of other religions, and be duly

instructed by Brothers of Mercy, or other pious and charitable

persons, under the direction of a priest. Reformatory schools

have been followed by schools of industry, to which magistrates

send vagrant children, found by the police in the streets without

shelter or home. These schools also are recognized by the

secretary of state, and the members of the Conferences of St.

Vincent of Paul watch over the children's interests and provide,

as far as may be, for their welfare.

{493}

Allied to these are such schools as St. Vincent's Home for

destitute boys, at Hammersmith, [Footnote 114] where eighty poor

boys are boarded, clothed, and educated for four shillings a week

each, with thirty shillings on entrance for outfit, etc. The

Catholics of England do not wait till they become a rich and

powerful body before they engage in extensive works of charity.

On the contrary, the number of their charitable institutions is

immense, considered in proportion to their means.

[Footnote 114: Now removed to Fulham.]

During the Crimean war the want of Catholic chaplains in the army

was felt painfully. Soldiers and sailors are, of all men, most

careless about their souls, and Catholic soldiers were doubly

abandoned in the hour of sickness and death, having no minister

but a Protestant one to attend them, while in his ministrations

they had no faith. A few volunteer chaplains were therefore

allowed to accompany the troops, and this has led to their being

regularly appointed, and to such chaplains being placed on an

equality with the Protestant in rank, salary, and retiring

pensions. Vessels, also, are moored in the great harbors and

prepared for Catholic worship. A chaplain is specially appointed

to the service of such ships, and to provide for the Catholic

sailors' spiritual wants. The spirit of the Irish tar is no

longer vexed with the thought that he must live, fight, and

perhaps die for a government which abhors his religion, and

deprives him of its consolations. The captains of men of war in

the neighborhood of the floating churches just spoken of, are

obliged to see that the Catholic seamen attend Mass, and are not

now, as formerly, compelled to assist at the Church of England

prayers. The field of labor of Catholic army chaplains gradually

extends; besides being attached to many home stations, such as

Aldershot, Chatham, Portsea, Woolwich, etc., they are found in

foreign stations also, such as Bermuda, Halifax, Mauritius,

New-Zealand, St. Helena, and Malta. The Catholic chaplains, it

may be added, live on the best terms with the officers and with

the Protestant clergymen in the same barracks. "We never

interfere with each other," said one of the former a few days

since to the writer; "indeed, for my part, I would not think of

trying to convert the Protestants; I would rather spend all my

time in striving to convert the Catholics. I am sure that, out of

every hundred of our own men, there are eighty that need to be

converted."

The prisons and union work-houses also, which used to be the

scenes of so much injustice toward Catholic prisoners, paupers,

and children, [Footnote 115] have now assumed a more liberal and

Christian aspect.

[Footnote 115: _The Workhouse Question. Lamp_, Aug. 19,

1865.]

Chaplains are appointed to the larger houses of correction to

minister to Catholic inmates, and Catholic children in the

workhouses enjoy the benefits of instruction in the religion of

their parents. There is in the _Catholic Directory_, which

appears annually, a list of the charitable institutions in each

diocese, and nothing can be more cheering and hopeful than the

view it presents. Thus, in the _Directory_ for 1866, we find

in the Diocese of Westminster alone 3 Almhouses; 1 Asylum for

Aged Poor; 1 Home for Aged Females; 1 Hospital served by Sisters

of Mercy; 1 House of Mercy for Servants out of Place; 1 Night

Refuge; 1 St. Vincent of Paul's Shoe-Black Brigade; 2 Refuges for

Penitents; 1 Reformatory School for Boys; 7 Industrial Schools

for Boys, and 11 for Girls.

{494}

The impression made on society by these admirable institutions is

very great. They receive much countenance and support from

non-Catholics; they instruct and console the ignorant and

afflicted members of our own body; they call forth an abundance

of self-denying labor and charity on the part of our own people,

and tend more powerfully than any arguments to propagate the

ancient faith. They prove that our religion emanates from a God

of love, that we are not mere political schemers nor

superstitious devotees, but sober-minded, practical Christians,

battling with sin, and relieving misery in every shape. The

English public is peculiarly alive to the services of Sisters

devoted to works of Charity. You cannot walk through the streets

now, or travel by railway, without meeting them, and everywhere

they are respected. Their costume provokes no ridicule, their

youth and good looks (if such they have) are secure from insult.

Their crucifix and beads are badges of which all know the import,

and involuntary blessings attend their steps. They are, in their

way, the apostles of England. Their devotion to the sick and

wounded in the Crimea won for them the favor even of their foes.

Few will refuse them alms when they ask it for the poor. They are

types of self-sacrifice, daughters of consolation, angel

visitants. They impersonate the Gospel. Many of them come from

abroad, from France, Italy, and Belgium, impelled by an

invincible desire for the conversion of England. Their looks

bespeak their mission no less than their garb. They are calm,

collected, gentle. Children yearn toward them with instinctive

fondness, and vice itself is shamed by their silent purity. The

names of their several orders tell plainly on what their hearts

are fixed. They belong to the "Good Shepherd;" they are the

"Faithful Companions of Jesus;" they are handmaids of the "Holy

Child Jesus," of "Notre Dame de Sion," of "Jesus in the Temple,"

of "Marie Reparatrice." They are "Sisters of Mercy," of

"Providence," of "the Poor," of "Nazareth," of "Penance," of the

"Holy Family," of "St. Joseph," of "St. Paul," of "the Cross."

They address themselves to the heart rather than to the

understanding, but they are not on that account less powerful

instruments in the work of social improvement. They have broken

down many of the barriers which prejudice had raised against the

Catholic religion, and helped more than any logical triumph to

subdue the hostility and soften the language of the press.

That mighty engine is, on the whole, an auxiliary to the Catholic

cause in England. If it promulgates many falsehoods respecting

us, it is almost always ready to publish their confutation also.

It reproduces our primate's pastorals and all other documents of

public interest that emanate from our bishops. It helps us, in

the main, in the battle we are fighting for the attainment of

equal political privileges, and employs the pens of many Catholic

writers. No respectable periodical taboos a contributor because

he is a Catholic, nor excludes him from its staff if his writing

be up to the required mark, and his conduct in reference to

controversial matters be discreet. Many non-Catholic journals are

edited or sub-edited by Catholics, and this accounts in part for

the altered tone of the press toward us of late.

{495}

Our own literature has recently been marked by fewer

controversial books and pamphlets than it was some twenty years

ago. Then, every convert of distinction, when admitted into the

church, thought it incumbent on him to publish those reasons

which had influenced him most powerfully in so momentous a

change. The library tables in Catholic families were covered by

the writings of Wiseman, Newman, Faber, Renouf, Lewis, Dodsworth,

Northcote, Allies, Ward, and Thompson. Each presented his plea

for Catholicism from a different point of view, and each added

something to the aggregate of arguments derived from Scripture

and antiquity. The controversy is now taking another turn. The

church's historical ground is less violently contested, and she

is drawing from her inexhaustible armory weapons to meet subtler

foes. She faces the sceptic; she probes liberalism with

Ithnriel's spear; she establishes from the very nature of things

the necessity of an infallible standard of faith and morals. She

draws up her line of arguments with a more compact front and

extended wings. She appears at the same time more unbending and

more liberal. She recognizes more freely and joyfully than ever

the workings of the Holy Spirit in communions external to her

pale, while she insists with extraordinary earnestness on her

exclusive possession of the entire and incorrupt deposit of the

faith. Such was the purport of a remarkable letter addressed to

the Rev. Dr. Pusey by Dr. Manning, now Archbishop of Westminster,

in 1864. Never were orthodoxy and liberality more happily united

than in this pamphlet. Never did a Catholic prelate and divine

make larger admissions without sacrificing a particle of Catholic

theology. It is marked by the charity of an apostle and the

accuracy of a logician. The same remarks apply to the

archbishop's work on _England ana Christendom_. "We will

venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of

eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than

he--we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal

emphasis--on the piety and salvability of persons external to the

visible church." [Footnote 116]

[Footnote 116: _Dublin Review_, July, 1867, p. 110]

The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous

associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics

enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for

social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do

these flourish more than in that of Westminster. The Archbishop

personally promotes social intercourse by throwing open his

drawing-rooms every Tuesday evening, during the London season, to

such gentlemen as may think proper to attend his receptions.

There, may be met, from time to time, prelates from distant

countries, ambassadors, members of parliament, noblemen, heads of

colleges, artists, men of science, converts, and old Catholics,

with now and then a non-Catholic guest, whom curiosity, respect

for the primate, or yearning toward a calumniated church, draws

into company to which he is little used. The Stafford Club is

another centre of union, comprising about 300 members, and

including among them a large part of the titled and moneyed

Catholics of England, Wales, and Scotland. The archbishops and

bishops of England and Ireland are _ex-officio_ honorary

members, and they frequently avail themselves of the privilege. A

middle class club has lately been opened in the city under the

primate's patronage, and at this lectures are delivered, to

which, as well as to all other advantages, non-Catholic members

are admissible.

{496}

The only condition required of such members is, that they shall

observe the rules of courtesy, and abstain (together with

Catholic members) from unbecoming controversy on religious and

political questions. Lecturing is not so popular a form of

instruction in England as in the United States, yet it is much

more generally in vogue than it was, and it is destined, we

believe, to exert a wide influence hereafter in propagating anew

the Catholic faith through the British empire.

What we need and hope for is the reaction of Catholic Ireland on

Catholic England. Centuries of cruel misgovernment have retarded

the civilization of that unhappy country, and the loss which it

sustains is not its only, but also ours. In knowledge, education,

manners, commerce, industry, liberty, in all that constitutes

national maturity, it is behind England. Reading, lecturing,

mental activity, in Ireland are all in the back ground; and

consequently the church, which there keeps alive the faith in the

heart of a peasant and small farmer population, does not act

indirectly on English Catholic society with that force which

would belong to it under more favorable circumstances. "The

centuries which have ripened England and Scotland with flower and

fruit, have swept over Ireland in withering and desolation;"

[Footnote 117] she has therefore little to give us, much to

receive from us. If England had been bountiful to her, she would,

in return, have been bountiful to England. If we had shared with

Ireland our material prosperity, she would now be imparting to us

more spiritual blessings, communication between the two churches

would be more brisk, and their relations would be marked by more

complete unity of feeling and purpose.

[Footnote 117: Archbishop Manning's Letter to Earl Grey. p. 17.]

The time is probably drawing near when this healthy and

reciprocal action of the Irish and English Catholic Church will

be fully restored. If England is to retain Ireland at all as a

part of the empire, it must be by establishing equal laws,

repealing all penal enactments against Catholics and their

religion, resolving the national system of education into

denominational schools, disestablishing and disendowing the

Protestant Church, and placing on Irish landlords such

restrictions in the tenure of land as will secure the tenant from

misery and hopeless serfdom. She must stanch the bleeding wounds

of emigration, and wipe away the tears of ages. Then, and then

only, can we hope to see Ireland a prosperous nation, her people

thrifty and happy, her civilization raised to a level with other

Christian countries of Europe, and her church putting forth all

its native might to console and instruct its own congregations,

and to aid in the work of recovering England to the faith of the

Apostles. Political and social degradation, such as that which

afflicts Ireland, is incompatible with a free and flourishing

church, with a high moral tone, religious zeal, and exemplary

lives on the part of its victims. Cottiers, and "tenants at will"

of absentee landlords, having no security that their outlay is

their own, and that they will ever reap the advantage of it;

barely earning their potatoes and buttermilk by the sweat of

their brow, and looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the

comparative wealth and luxury enjoyed by five millions of their

fellow-countrymen in America; liable at any moment to be evicted

for political motives, or that their rent may be raised; galled

and maddened by the remembrance of 50,000 evictions in one year;

[Footnote 118] such persons, we say, deprived of the protection

of the law, must be more than human if they do not in many

instances prove themselves lawless. But the day of redress is at

hand, we trust. May the day of retribution be averted!

[Footnote 118: 1849. _Butt's Land Tenure in Ireland_, p.

34.]

{497}

It is, perhaps, matter for regret that English Catholics have now

no political leader. Since the voice of Daniel O'Connell was

hushed by death, no representative of their interests in

parliament has appeared gifted with genius and eloquence of a

commanding order. Mr. Pope Hennessy has been excluded from the

House of Commons by his Irish constituents in consequence of his

conservative principles, which are not popular among them, and

has accepted the governorship of Labuan. His talents are thus

almost lost to the Catholic cause; and though there are more than

thirty Catholic members in the Commons, their influence is not

what it should be. It is neutralized by the many Irish Protestant

members who represent landed interests; and valuable as are the

services of Mr. Maguire, Mr. Monsell, Mr. Blake, and Major

O'Reilly, it is to Protestant rather than to Catholic champions

that we look now for advocacy of Irish tenant claims, and the

redress of Irish wrongs. In the House of Lords we are most feebly

represented. Out of twenty-six Catholic peers, seventeen only

have seats, and none of these are distinguished as debaters.

[Footnote 119]

[Footnote 119: See _Lord Mahon's Hist. of England_, vol.

i. p. 16.]

In the time of Charles II. the Catholic peerage was more numerous

than it is now in proportion to the commoners. Long after that

period, also, the lords and gentry held a higher position than

was in harmony with the scanty number of their poorer

co-religionists. Indeed, we have not yet recovered the blow which

was inflicted on us by the expulsion of the peers [Footnote 120]

under the rule of a sovereign who was even then a Catholic by

conviction, and avowed himself such on the bed of death. But

though the heads of old Catholic families in England do not, as a

rule, shine as public characters, they have a title to respect

which none others can claim. They represent those who suffered a

long period of banishment for conscience' sake, treasuring in

their hearts a faith more precious than courtly splendor. For

this they were outcasts and pariahs, bowed beneath invidious

disabilities and penal laws, deprived of all the material

advantages which spring from good education, brilliant careers,

and fine prospects. Despair of this world had become a part of

their inheritance, and it is no wonder that their successors to

this day are somewhat rustic and unskilled in the ways of

cabinets and courts.

[Footnote 120: _Flanagan's English and Irish History_, p.

665.]

The Catholic revival, in short, in England--a revival of whose

reality and strength we daily see the proofs--is not to be

ascribed to external causes. No zealous autocrat, no lordly

oligarchy, no foreign invasion, no laws, no concordats, have

brought it about. Everything was against it, and everything seems

now to favor it. Penal statutes, as decided and almost as deadly

as those of the Caesars, forbade it; the Revolution of 1688

excluded from the throne any sovereign professing it; George III.

fought against it as stoutly and more successfully than he did

against the American Colonies; Pitt succumbed in his efforts to

obtain for it some measure of justice; Fox abandoned its cause

politically as hopeless; [Footnote 121] and the Grenville

cabinet, with all the talents, was dismissed, because it planned

a trifling concession to Catholic officers in the army and navy.

[Footnote 121: Pellew. _Life of Lord Sidmouth_, ii. 435.

_Jesse's George III_. iii. 476.]

{498}

George IV., like his father, frowned on Catholic emancipation,

and yielded to it only under the pressure of a threatened

rebellion. But though political privileges were granted to

Catholics, it was deemed impossible that their dark, decrepit

superstition should ever regain its footing in England. The book

of common prayer witnessed against it; the preface to the

Protestant Scriptures called its head antichrist; a thousand and

ten thousand pulpits thundered against it Sunday after Sunday;

dissenters scorned and trampled on it as the worn-out garments of

the Babylonish harlot; millions of tracts and volumes pointed out

its supposed errors, and cart-loads and ship-loads of Bibles were

dispersed through the land as antidotes to its poison. Yet it

spread. It triumphed over obloquy. It appealed in its defence to

that very Bible which was believed to condemn it. It courted

inquiry. It asserted its own divinity. It baffled the law, bent

the will of kings and parliaments, scattered the arguments of its

enemies like chaff, and advanced steadily as the tide, sapping

every dam, and levelling every breakwater that opposed its flow.

In the bosom of the adverse church it found advocates, and in

almost every family it made converts. New concessions are made to

it in every session of parliament; higher and higher offices in

the state and in the magistracy are entrusted to its members; the

paltry restrictions which yet remain in force will soon be swept

away, and having once obtained social and political equality, we

have not the remotest doubt that it will obtain, also,

superiority approaching as near to supremacy as will be

consistent with the liberty of every other portion of society.

There is an increasing disposition among sectarians in England to

make common cause with Catholics on a variety of grounds. One of

these grounds has already been mentioned. They would willingly

see national education everywhere made purely denominational, and

many of those among them who are strongly attached to their own

particular form of belief would concur with the Catholic primate

in asking that the schools endowed by the state may, in each

place, be given over to the majority, whether Catholic, Anglican,

Presbyterian, or Dissenting, and that schools required by the

minority may be supported on the voluntary system. [Footnote 122]

There is, however, a difficulty in this proposal which would give

rise to endless jangling. In some places there is no majority,

religious persuasions are equally divided. In others the majority

is small and fluctuating. What is the majority this month may be

the minority in the next. How could their rival claims to

endowment be adjusted in such cases?

[Footnote 122: Letter to Earl Grey, p. 20.]

But again, there is a growing disposition among religious men of

all denominations to make common cause with the Catholic Church

in her warfare against infidelity and social crime, particularly

drunkenness. Their ministers now are constantly coming in contact

with our priests, sitting with them on committees, and speaking

side by side with them on platforms on subjects affecting the

general weal. They are beginning to recognize the great fact that

our war with infidelity is not of yesterday, that we have from

age to age maintained the fundamental truths of revelation in the

face of a world of scoffers, and that if the banner of the cross

could fall from our hands, it would lie in the dust.

{499}

Ritualists imitate our solemn rites; sedate churchmen have a

friendly feeling toward us because we hold the apostolic

succession; Biblical scholars in all sects defer to us as the

mediaeval guardians and copyists of the Bible; Low-Churchmen

endorse our doctrines of grace; Dissenters hold out to us "the

right hand of fellowship," because we also are non-conformists as

regards the Established Church; and even Quakers [Footnote 123]

see in us some hopeful features when they hear us declare that we

are affiliated in spirit to all who desire to know and obey the

truth, and who err only through invincible ignorance.

[Footnote 123: See speech of Mr. Bright in the House of

Commons, March 13th, 1868.]

As time goes on, they will give us more credit for spiritual

acumen. They will see how justly we have estimated the claims of

each successive pretender to religious inspiration and knowledge

of divine mysteries. They will ratify our decision on the

_isms_ of this as of former centuries. They will admit, for

example, that we have divined the true nature of animal

magnetism, with all those extraordinary phenomena which perplex

so many minds in England and elsewhere. To some persons these

manifestations appear wholly impostures, to others they seem real

and useful, and to others again, indifferent, absurd, and

unworthy of attention. The church, on the contrary, after sifting

the evidence adduced concerning them, pronounces them real in

many instances, useless, unlawful, and Satanic. Theologians like

Perrone and Ballerini have devoted long attention to them, and

laid bare their wickedness in its most deadly aspects. Under a

mask of mingled absurdity and terror, they reveal just so much of

the invisible world as may deceive and ruin souls. They are

horrible mimicries of the angelic and spiritual economy of the

church. In all these phases of mesmerism, somnambulism,

clairvoyance, table-turning, table-rapping, and evocation of

spirits, they testify to the truth of divine revelation in

respect to the spiritual world. So far they are of some

advantage, for the evil one is always rendering involuntary

homage to the Gospel which he seeks to pervert. But in exchange

for this, they draw deluded multitudes away from the true and

lawful way of holding communion with the dead, piercing the

mysteries of the world unseen, obtaining divine guidance, mental

illumination, cure of bodily infirmities, signal answers to

prayer, visions, ecstasies, and knowledge of future events. From

none of these things are the faithful debarred in the church, but

in spiritism, or demon-worship, they are attracted to them in

ways which are generally fatal to their morals and their faith.

We have heard from an intimate ally of Mr. Home, now a convert to

the Catholic Church, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred

those who put themselves in communication with spirits by means

of table-speaking, lose their belief in the Christian religion

and adopt a loose mode of life. The political grievances of which

English and Irish Catholics have still to complain, are of old

not of recent origin. They belong to a system now virtually

exploded, and if our statute-book were a _tabula rasa_ they

could not be written in it again. There is full proof of this in

the fact that Great Britain legislates for her colonies more

justly than for Ireland, or even for England. In Sydney and

Melbourne, in Australia, there are Catholic colleges endowed by

the government, and in Canada there is an endowed Catholic

University. Yet Ireland, with 4,500,000 Catholics, has hitherto

asked in vain for the like favors.

{500}

The colonies, moreover, are not burdened with a Protestant

establishment, but lie open to the exertions of Catholic and

Protestant missionaries alike, who receive from the state equal

encouragement and occasional subsidies. The consequence is, that

in almost every colonial dependency of Great Britain the true

church is in full activity, and gives ample proof of her divine

mission. The following table of our episcopate will show how wide

is the field of action afforded to it by the tolerant system

which England has pursued of late years. If she had not at the

Reformation fallen from the faith, there would not perhaps at

this moment be an idol temple in the world. If she should ever

return as a nation to the fold of Christ, her mighty influence

may, with the help of other Christian people, suffice to break in

pieces every fetish and exorcise the races possessed by demons.

The figures here given are of the year 1867; and it may be

observed that in all the twenty vicariates of India, Burma, and

Siam there was an increase of the Catholic population over the

preceding year, with the exception only of those which are under

the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. In his province there was a

small decrease. [Footnote 124]

[Footnote 124: _Catholic Directory_ 1868, p. 19 to 26.]

Archbishops Bishops Vicars Apostolic

England 1 12 ...

Ireland 4 24 ...

Scotland ... ... 3

Malta |

Gozo | ... 2 1

Gibraltar |

Quebec |

Halifax |

Oregon |

British Columbia | 2 17 2

Harbor Grace |

St. John's, |

Newfoundland |

West-Indies 1 1 2

Africa ... 1 4

India, Burma, ... ... 20

Australia 1 10 ...

New Zealand ... 2 ...

Total 9 69 32

From this it appears that there are now no Catholics in the

British empire invested with the episcopal office. The number is

little short of that of the Anglican Bishops, with all the power

and influence of the state, and a vast Protestant population to

give effect to their exertions. Yet, poor and comparatively

unaided as our bishops are, the results of their labors in the

colonies and among the heathen far exceed anything which rival

missionaries can boast. As to the Russian clergy, their torpor in

regard to idolatrous nations has often been commented on, and

they are strictly forbidden by imperial edicts to endeavor to

make converts among them. [Footnote 125] It is therefore with

Protestant missionaries only that we have to vie, and these,

through their disunion, lose, in great measure, the fruits of

their zeal. The two millions sterling _per annum_, which

their societies in the British isles alone expend, [Footnote 126]

do not enable them to make head against the rapid extension of

the Catholic faith. In China, India, Ceylon, the Antipodes,

Oceanica, Africa, the Levant, Syria, Armenia, and America, they

have signally failed in converting the heathen, and in rivalling

the happy results of Catholic missions. [Footnote 127]

[Footnote 125: Wagner's _Travels in Persia_, vol. il.

204.]

[Footnote 126: _The Times_, April 19, 1860]

[Footnote 127: Marshall's _Christian. Missions_, vol. i.

9-15.]

Every Catholic nation is a vast missionary society, and if

England had been such to this day, her Indian possessions would

be basking in the full light of the gospel. But, alas! how

awfully has she betrayed her trust. The speeches of Burke, the

lives of Clive and Hastings, bear witness against her. Rapine and

cruelty marked the earlier stages of her Indian government.

{501}

During long years she left the Indians to their idols, and then

recruited her treasury by a tax laid upon them, and commanded her

troops to pay homage to the demons of the land. Her efforts for

their conversion, if they can be called hers, are feeble and

unsystematic, while Catholic missions in every part of British

India are steadily conducted on a uniform plan. Eleven years ago

there were about a million Catholics in the wide territory, and

the spirit which guided S. François Xavier, Robert de' Nobili,

John de Bretto, and Laynez, prospered the work of their hands.

Since that time the Madras Catholic Directories show that

constant progress has been made. In some dioceses from 500 to

1000 souls are reclaimed annually from Hindooism, Mohammedanism,

and Armenian sects. The lives of the converts are often most

edifying, and though much ignorance and superstition has to be

weeded out of them, they show forth on the whole the glory of Him

who has called them out of darkness into marvellous light.

Registries of adult baptisms being kept at each of the stations,

it is easy to ascertain the progress made. In 1859, 2614 adults

in the province of Madura were received into the church, and the

native college of Negapatam, frequented by young men of high

caste only, had produced seven priests, eight theological

students, a large number of catechists and school-masters, with

several government officers. The Jesuit fathers had founded five

orphanages and three hospitals, beside convents of Carmelite and

Franciscan nuns, where Hindoo women, under the constraining

influence of divine grace, led devout and austere lives.

[Footnote 128] It has hitherto been the policy of our rulers to

avoid interfering with the religion of the natives, [Footnote

129] but the time, we may hope, is at hand when more righteous

and merciful principles will prevail in the councils of state.

By promoting schism, England delays the conversion of the

heathen. Friends and foes alike testify to the inefficacy of

English Protestant missions. They can destroy faith, but never

inspire it; and those who desire to read the true records of the

triumph of the cross in heathen lands, and especially in the

dominions of Great Britain, must seek them, not in the

publications of London Missionary Societies, but in the Annals of

the Propagation of the Faith, and the writings of Mr. Marshall

and Father Strickland. [Footnote 130]

[Footnote 128: _Mission de Madurt_, par L. Saint Cyr,

S.J. (1859.)]

[Footnote 129: Marshall's _Christian Missions_, vol. i.

412-419.]

[Footnote 130: _Catholic Missions in Southern India_ to

1865.]

The present Earl Grey, though an Anglican, once said to a

gentleman from whom we heard it, that he wished, for his part,

that Catholic bishops only were supported in the colonies by the

English government; for that they alone, in his opinion, were

actuated by pure motives and self-sacrificing zeal. Earl Grey

does not stand alone in his truly liberal sentiments. Indeed, it

is wonderful how generous and enlightened many of our statesmen

have become suddenly, since the Fenians have threatened their

English homes. Impossible as it is for us to defend their

conspiracy, it seems to bear out the assertion that no people

ever obtained their rights by mere remonstrance and petition. The

injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment in Catholic

Ireland now flashes upon our rulers like light from heaven,

though they have been told of it before a thousand times. Now

they are as eager for its destruction as they were for its

support. Now they see the matter as all Europe, all the civilized

world except themselves, saw ft long

ago.

{502}

Now they quote with approval the question proposed by Sir Robert

Peel: "This missionary church of yours, with all that wealth and

power could do for her, can she in two hundred years show a

balance of two hundred converts?" Now they endorse the opinion of

Goldwin Smith, that "No Roman Catholic mission has ever done so

much for Roman Catholicism in any nation as the Protestant

establishment has done for it in Ireland." [Footnote 131] It has,

to use Mr. Bright's words, "made Roman Catholicism in Ireland not

only a faith, but absolutely a patriotism." It has made the Irish

"more intensely Roman than the members of their church are found

to be in almost any other kingdom in Europe." [Footnote 132]

"Don't talk to me of its being a church!" exclaimed Burke. "It is

a wholesale robbery." "It is an anomaly of so gross a kind," said

Lord Brougham, just thirty years ago, "that it outrages every

principle of common sense. ... It cannot be upheld unless the

tide of knowledge should turn back." "Irish Toryism," wrote John

Sterling, in 1842, "is the downright proclamation of brutal

injustice, and that in the name of God and the Bible!" All this

English statesmen, who long obstinately resisted truth and

justice, now see and acknowledge from a conviction too prompt to

have been inspired by anything but fear. Terror has been known to

turn the hair gray in a night, and to fill the mind with wisdom

in a day. In saying this, however, we do not mean to express any

approval of Fenianism, knowing it, as we do, to be a detestable

conspiracy, secret, unlawful, and condemned by the church.

[Footnote 131: Letter in _Morning Star_, March 30,

1868.]

[Footnote 132: Speech in the House of Commons, March 31.]

The disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church will directly

affect the condition of the Catholics in England. It will place

their Irish brethren on a social level with Protestants, and thus

add to the respectability of the entire body of Catholics in the

three kingdoms. It will diminish the number and influence of

those Irish Protestant clergymen who cross the channel year by

year to declaim on the platforms of our halls and assemblies

against the supposed corruption of the Church of Rome. It will

remove ten thousand heart-burnings from the people of Ireland,

and enable them, though differing in religion in some districts,

to live together in peace and harmony. It will increase

self-respect in both sections of the community--in the

Protestant, because they will no longer be grasping oppressors;

in the Catholic, because they will no longer be fleeced and

oppressed. The relative merits of their creeds will then have to

be discussed on even ground, and no weapons but those of the

sanctuary will avail in the fight. The voluntary system by which

their ministers will be supported will throw them entirely upon

their moral resources, and every adscititious aid in propagating

their belief will be happily rescinded. The settlement of the

Irish Church question will soon be followed by legal improvement

in the condition of tenants as regards their landlords; and thus

the two crying evils of our Irish administration being redressed,

speculation will be encouraged, commerce will thrive, fortunes

will be made, emigration will be arrested, and emigrants

recalled. The church of Catholics will share in the general

prosperity, and chapels now little better than mud hovels will be

razed to the ground to make room for buildings stately and fair

as the collegiate churches of Windsor, Middleham, and Brecon, in

the olden time, or as the Priory of Stone, the Orphanage of

Norwood, and the College of St. Cuthbert, near Durham, at the

present day.

{503}

There is at this moment a concurrence of events favorable to the

Catholic religion in the British empire, such as never was seen

before since the Reformation. No fires of Smithfield, no renegade

queen like Elizabeth, no Spanish Armada, no Gunpowder Plot, no

Puritan ascendency, no despotic house of Stuart, no Pretender, no

Titus Oates, no French or other foreign invasion, no Lord George

Gordon, no rebellion like that of Robert Emmett and Lord Edward

Fitzgerald, is looming in the distance, marring the prospect, and

nearing us to turn hope into despair. Even Fenian outbreaks are,

we believe, anticipated and virtually undone. Every sun that

shines is ripening the harvest, and were it not that the enemy is

more busy than ever in sowing tares, we might expect that within

a century the whole, or at least the larger part, of the

population of the three kingdoms would be included in the domain

of the church.

What we have most to dread is the spread of unbelief in its

subtlest and most engaging form. It comes among us with stealthy

tread, and with the smile of hypocrisy on its face. It professes

respect for the Christian religion, but with homage on its lips

carries contempt in its heart. It regards all religions as

superstitious, and the Christian as the best among bad ones. It

pervades every branch of our non-Catholic literature, and offers

fruit slightly poisoned to every lip. It combats dogma and the

supernatural in every shape, appeals in all things to the senses,

sets up humanity as its idol, and studiously confounds the

distinction between right and wrong. It maintains the authority

of Scripture, provided all that is supernatural and miraculous be

eliminated. It reveres Jesus Christ when placed by the side of

"the mild and honest Aurelius, Cakya Mouni, [Footnote 133] and

the sweet and humble Spinoza." [Footnote 134] It cites as

examples of men "most filled with the spirit of God," Moses,

Christ, Mohammed, Vincent of Paul, and _Voltaire_. [Footnote

135] It inscribes the name of Christ on volutes in tapestried

drawing-rooms, [Footnote 136] together with those of Socrates,

Columbus, Luther, and Washington. It affirms that "_we can

never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a

false opinion,_" [Footnote 137] and that "no one can be a

great thinker who does not recognize that, as a thinker, it is

_his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions

it may lead._" [Footnote 137 (sic)] It approves of "hearty

good-will evinced toward all persistence of endeavor, whether the

object of that persistence be _good or evil_ according to

moral or religious standards," and it is drawn strongly into

sympathy with such poets as Robert Browning in their "keen love

for humanity as such, a love which is displayed toward

_weakness and evil_ as much as toward strength and goodness,

provided only the attribute be human." [Footnote 138] Such

sympathy with all that is human it accounts "divine." It

worships, in short, the creature more than the Creator; it feels

no need of grace, and still less of atonement. It relapses,

consciously or unconsciously, into the frozen zone where Comte

reigns supreme master of a system of icy negatives called

philosophy--negatives the more specious because veiled under the

term positivism--where all but facts attested by the senses must

be renounced, and all final causes, all supernatural

intervention, scattered to the wind. [Footnote 139]

[Footnote 133: The fourth Buddha.]

[Footnote 134: Renan. _Vie de Jesus_]

[Footnote 135: _Autobiography of Garibaldi_. Edited by

Alexandre Dumas.]

[Footnote 136: In Victor Hugo's House in Guernsey. See his

_William Shakespeare_, p. 568.]

[Footnote 137: John Stuart Mill on _Liberty_, p. 19.]

[Footnote 138: John T. Nettleship's _Essays on Robert

Browning_. Preface.]

[Footnote 139: _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, 1839.

_Politique Positiviste_, 1851-4.]

{504}

Toward this the Protestant mind in England is daily tending with

increasing proneness, that portion only excepted which looks

upward toward Catholic ritual and dogma. Its presence is more and

more apparent among educated men, in Parliament, the

universities, the learned professions, the reviews and journals

of the day. It is an enemy that meets us in every walk, and is

more difficult to grapple with than any definite form of error.

It objects not merely to this or that part of our Creed, as

Lutheran s and Calvinists did on their first appearing, but it

meets us _in limine_ with doubts which pagans would have

been ashamed to profess. Even writers on the whole Christian,

like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, have aided in forming it; but

Neology, Strauss, Comte, Mill, Carlyle, Sterling, Hugo, have

brought it in like a flood. Mazzini propounds it openly in

_Macmillan's Magazine_, while the _Saturday Review_ and

the _Pall Mall Gazette_ adapt it weekly and daily to the

palate of the million. Not that the free-thinkers are agreed

together; they often jeer at each other. "Singular what gospels

men will believe," cries Carlyle, [Footnote 140] "even gospels

according to Jean Jacques." But _this_ is the language of

each, "Adieu, O church; thy road is that way, mine is this. ...

What we are going _to_ is abundantly obscure; but what all

men are going _from_ is very plain." [Footnote 141]

[Footnote 140: Thomas Carlyle's _French Revolution_, ii.

70.]

[Footnote 141: Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_, p. 286.]

These, then, are the two great antagonists, the Catholic Church

and Infidelity in its last and most popular shape of Positivism.

People in England are choosing their sides, and drawing nearer

and nearer to one or the other of these champions. Minor

differences are merging into the broad features which distinguish

the two. To the positivism of Comte there stands opposed the

positivism of the Church. She alone speaks positively,

authoritatively, uniformly, and permanently, respecting the

invisible world, the First Cause, the revelation of God in

Christ, in the Gospel, the Scriptures, and the Church. She bears

witness at the same time of God and of herself, and even those

who cannot accept her testimony admit that of all the enemies of

infidelity her presence is the most imposing, and her language

the most unwavering and distinct. None can accuse her of

hostility to science, for the Holy See in this, as in all past

ages, has repeatedly declared with what favor it looks on really

scientific labors. "It is _impudently_ bruited abroad,"

wrote Pius IX. to M. Mahon de Monaghan, [Footnote 142] "that the

Catholic religion and the Roman pontificate are adverse to

civilization and progress, and therefore to the happiness which

may thence be expected." "Rome," says the _Dublin Review_,

[Footnote 143] "does not aim directly at material well-being; she

does not teach astronomy or dynamics; she propounds no system of

induction; she invents neither printing-press, steam-engines, nor

telegraphs; but she so raises man above the brute, curbs his

passions, improves his understanding, instils into him principles

of duty and a sense of responsibility, so hallows his ambition

and kindles his desire for the good of his kind and the progress

of humanity, that, under her influence, he acquires insensibly an

aptitude for the successful pursuit even of physical science,

such as no other teacher could impart.

[Footnote 142: See _Rome et la Civilisation_. Paris,

1863.]

[Footnote 143: April, 1866, pp. 299, 301.]

{505}

.... It is manifest to all whose thoughts reach below the surface

of things, that the services which Lord Bacon rendered to

philosophy, and Newton to science, were indirectly due to the

Catholic Church."

If the Catholic Church is ever to be rebuilt among us in anything

like its ancient power and splendor, it must be raised on a broad

basis. We do not mean that its real foundations admit of change

or extension. They are the same from age to age. But they must,

to meet the wants of the age, be made to appear as comprehensive

as they really are. Happily, tolerant maxims now prevail in

religion, and liberal views in politics. The divine right of

hereditary kings is exploded, and persecution is no longer held

up as a sacred duty. The Catholic Church, rightly understood, is

the most liberal of all institutions. It is the source and

security of true freedom, and it is only when perverted that it

can serve the cause of despotism. It has everything to gain from

liberty, and everything to lose by adopting tyrannical

principles. Its best friends in England are those who labor to

develop and exhibit its alliance with all that is true in science

and good in mankind, and who rely more upon its heavenly powers

of persuasion than on any excommunications and anathemas, who

conciliate to the utmost without compromise, and relax rules

without ever breaking or warping them. Anti-catholic writers have

labored hard to prove that our religion is the enemy of progress,

and it is therefore our duty and interest to show by word and

deed how utterly false their assertions on this subject are. It

will be a greater triumph for the church to have demonstrated her

superior philosophy after fair discussion, than it would have

been to suppress that discussion or to shirk it. We have really

nothing to fear. Catholicism lies at the root of all sciences,

and it alone makes progress possible.

Such are the views of the wisest and best of those English

Catholics who work in the literary hive. They heartily adopt the

words of M. Cochin, in his speech at Malines. "Christianity is

the father of all progress, of all discoveries." "Every science

is one of God's arguments, and every progress one of God's

instruments." Modern science is but an offshoot of the Gospel, a

result of the Incarnation. It redeems our bodies from a thousand

disabilities and discomforts, as the Cross has redeemed our

souls. The discovery of America, the art of printing, the

telescope, the microscope, the clock, the mariner's needle, the

steam-engine, superseding the slaves who were once the machinery

of the world, gas, telegraphic wires, what are they but minor

gospels and temporary redemptions for the toiling and weary sons

of men? The Church views such improvements with delight, and sees

in them the means, when rightly employed, of restoring the broken

alliance between earthly and heavenly blessings. Is this what you

call material progress? No, no; it is all moral improvement. You

might as well call the press a material improvement as the

railroad and the telegraph. As the one brings thought into

immortal life, so the others redeem man from the sorrows of

intervening distance. The Church affiliates them gladly to

herself, and traces a moral advance in every material gain, a

development of redemption by Christ in the progress of

agriculture, improved machinery, in chloroform, in short-hand,

lithography, photography, the respirator, and ever implement and

utensil which makes labor less irksome and pain less poignant.

{506}

In the science of political economy especially, English Catholics

are anxious to rectify prevalent mistakes, and place that

delightful study on its proper basis. The writings of Ricardo and

Adam Smith, of McCulloch, Senior, and Mill, have familiarized

persons' minds with the subject, but they have failed to show how

every principle and statement of sound political economy rests on

some maxim of the Gospel or of the church.

The Utilitarian doctrines of Jeremy Bentham were as bald and

selfish as those of Malthus on Population were immoral and

absurd. Self-restraint and self renunciation are the soul of

thrift, the source of wealth, the element of labor, the

main-spring of exertion, the corner-stone of the social edifice,

the health of the community, the rectifying principle which keeps

the whole machinery of society in active and harmonious

operation. It would make the rich poor in spirit, and the poor

comparatively rich. It would place a happy limit to the extremes

of wealth and indigence. It is, or should be, the fundamental

principle of the production and distribution of wealth. If duly

carried out, it would promote solidarity in all its branches to a

wonderful extent, and secure liberty as the condition requisite

for the very existence of property and the only possible sphere

of mutual exertion. M. Perin [Footnote 144] has shown with

admirable force and precision how Catholicism establishes

self-renunciation as "the corner-stone of all social relations,"

and guarantees "the greatest freedom to man, and the greatest

security to property." The _Dublin Review_ [Footnote 145]

also has done good service in popularizing M. Perin's arguments

and supplying an antidote to the defective teaching of John

Stuart Mill, and other non-Catholic political economists.

[Footnote 144: _De la Richesse dans les Sociétés

Chrétiennes_.]

[Footnote 145: April, 1866. _Christian Political

Economy_.]

The Academia of the Catholic Religion, founded by Cardinal

Wiseman in 1861, continues to be productive of happy results. Its

main design was to exhibit, in the lectures delivered at its

meetings and published afterward, the alliance between sacred and

secular science. It is affiliated to the Academia in Rome, and

two volumes of essays read before it have already appeared in

print. [Footnote 146] The rich and varied learning of Cardinal

Wiseman, the clear, incisive style of Dr. Manning, the minute

mediaeval lore of Dr. Rock, the calm and affectionate tone of Mr.

Oakeley, the acumen and exhaustive faculties of Dr. Ward, render

these publications very attractive to Catholics who are fond of

argumentative writing. They keep up active thought and

speculation in a highly influential circle, and are valuable

landmarks in the history of the Catholic revival in England. The

meetings of the Academia are held at the Archbishop's residence

in York Place, London.

[Footnote 146: First Series, 1865. Second Series, 1868.

Longmans.]

It is a remarkable fact that at this moment [Footnote 147] there

are two political parties in the state, each of which is bent on

advancing Catholic interests, though in different ways.

[Footnote 147: April, 1868.]

Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, the heads respectively of the

Conservative and Liberal parties, are seeking to redress one of

the great evils of Ireland, the former by _levelling up_ and

the latter by _levelling down_. The government would, if it

were able, raise the Catholic church in Ireland to a footing with

the Establishment by endowing a Catholic University and the

Catholic priesthood, while the opposition proposes simply the

disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Protestant church.

{507}

In both cases the result would be religious equality in Ireland,

though there can be no doubt that the plan suggested by the

Liberals is the more rational and feasible one. It is the one,

moreover, which is sanctioned by the Cardinal Archbishop of

Dublin and by the Archbishop of Westminster. On Sunday, the 12th

of April, the faithful in London signed a petition in favor of

Mr. Gladstone's resolutions by the Archbishop's express

recommendation. It is pleasant to see the Catholic Primate and

the future Prime Minister of England thus cooperating in the

interests of the Catholic religion, especially when we remember

that they are old friends and were at college together.

The Easter of 1868 has been marked by great increase of spiritual

activity in the churches of large towns. Numbers of Catholics who

had neglected the sacraments have been restored to the use of

them, and Protestants come Sunday after Sunday to hear the

sermons delivered in our churches. [Footnote 148]

[Footnote 148: _Weekly Register_, April 11, 1868.]

The public mind is stirred on the subject of our religion, and

curiosity in very numerous instances ends in conversion. A recent

clerical convert has placed £5000 in the hands of a prelate for

the good of his diocese, and a whole community of Anglican

Sisters of Mercy have yielded to the direction of clergymen who

are priests indeed. The Ritualist parsons are busy fraying the

way for Roman missionaries. Their altars are draped in colors

according to the season, acolytes bend before them and serve,

water is mingled with their sacramental wine, lights are burning

at their communions, the host is elevated, their robes are

gorgeously embroidered, and dense clouds of incense mount before

their shrines, as if they were dedicated to the God of unity

under the patronage of Catholic saints. Many of their flock are

deluded by this empty pomp, but many also are led by it to the

true springs of faith and the observance of a better ceremonial.

During the first half of the present century 260 religious houses

and colleges have been raised in England to repair the loss of

681 monasteries of men and women uprooted at the time of the

Reformation. If we continue and end the century with equal

exertions--and it is probable we shall exceed rather than fall

short of them--we shall by that time have nearly as many

religious institutions as our forefathers could boast after the

sway of the church in England had lasted 800 years under royal

protection.

-------------

{508}

Sketches Drawn From The Abbé Lagrange's

Life of St. Paula.

In Three Chapters.

Chapter II.

God had given great compensation to Paula in the rare natures of

her children. The eldest, and perhaps the most gifted, Blesilla,

combined with delicate health an ardent soul, quick wit, and a

charming mind. Her penetration astonished even St. Jerome. She

was full of those characteristics that make one hope everything

and fear everything. She was but fifteen when she lost her

father, and seventeen when St. Jerome first knew her, in the

first bloom of her youth and beauty. She spoke Greek and Latin

with perfect purity, and the elegance of her language was

remarkable, as well as the quickness of her intellect.

Paula, full of anxiety for such a nature, sought to give her the

counterpoise of solid piety. But Blesilla, though capable of

exalted virtues, was intoxicated by the splendors of the sphere

in which she was born and educated. Like all young girls of her

rank, she loved dress, luxury, and entertainments, and neither

the death of her father nor her mother's example had detached her

heart from the world, neither did her early widowhood; for Paula

had given her in marriage to a young and rich patrician of the

race of Camillus, who died in a short time after, leaving

Blesilla a widow and without children. But even this blow did not

suffice, and, after the usual time given to mourning, the worldly

and frivolous tastes of the young widow again rose to the

surface. She passed many hours before her glass, busy in adorning

herself, surrounded by her slaves occupied in dressing her hair

and waiting on her, and entertainments of all sorts were her

delight.

Paulina, the second daughter of Paula, was, as we have already

said, a great contrast to her sister. Less brilliant, but not

less agreeable, great good sense was her chief attribute, with

sweetness of disposition. Less captivated by the world than

Blesilla, she was more inclined to be pious. The equilibrium in

her nature was excellent. But there was nothing in any way

uncommon about her. She seemed born for the ordinary destiny of

woman. She was now sixteen, and Paula, with an instinct truly

maternal, felt that what she had to do for her child was to give

her a protector worthy of her, in a husband of sound character

and amiable disposition.

But the pearl of Paula's children was her third daughter,

Eustochium, who was sweetness and candor itself, and all

innocence and piety. Her distinguishing feature was her love for

her mother, whom she never for a moment quitted. Marcella kept

her with her for some time, and when the child returned to Paula,

she clung more than ever to her mother, like a young vine. Her

only wish was to follow in the footsteps of Paula and to be like

her, and to consecrate herself also to the service of God with

her young virginal heart. Soft and silent, but hiding under this

veil of timidity a remarkable mind, Eustochium was formed for

high purposes. She was not fourteen when St. Jerome came to Rome.

{509}

Rufina was then only eleven or twelve years of age, and the time

had not yet come for anxiety about her. It was, however,

different with Toxotius, who was younger still, but had not

received baptism, his father's family having assumed his

guardianship; and they were pagans, which grieved Paula, who

hoped to make her son a fervent Christian.

Such was the family of Paula. Her many duties to them had excited

the interest of the austere monk, who, together with Marcella,

wished to do everything possible to aid Paula in her cares.

Blesilla at once filled the mind of St. Jerome with the ardent

wish to save her from the career of worldliness on which she

seemed bent; but in vain did he try to bring her to grave

thoughts. Paulina was easier to guide, for Providence aided the

pious efforts of her friends in the husband chosen for her by her

mother, who was Pammachius, of whom St. Jerome has said that he

was "the most Christian of the noble Romans, and the most noble

of the Christians." He was also the old and tried friend of St.

Jerome, to whom this marriage gave great happiness, as well as to

Paula and Marcella.

As for Eustochium, she continued to expand and bloom under the

influence of her mother. In vain were the rich dresses of her

sisters and their shining jewels spread out before her. Her taste

for religious life was becoming more and more decided every day.

Notwithstanding her great youth, none of the maidens of the

Aventine surpassed her in prayer, or in following St. Jerome in

his laborious studies of the Scriptures. She had learnt Hebrew,

and, like her mother, had inspired St. Jerome with singular

devotion and interest. The increasing vocation of Eustochium

aroused opposition in her father's family; for it was not

possible that the progress of monastic tendencies among the

patrician women should be allowed to take root without resistance

in Rome, where opposition was made by law to anything like

celibacy for men, with open advocacy of matrimony and the honors

of maternity for women.

St. Jerome undertook to modify these ideas with his powerful pen,

and, in his answer to the attack of one named Helvidius, came off

the field completely victorious.

It was about this time, 384 A.D., that Blesilla fell ill of a

pernicious fever, which for a month threatened her life. This

illness brought her wisdom. The following is the story of her

conversion, from St. Jerome: "During thirty days," he says, "we

saw our Blesilla burning with a devouring fever. She lay almost

bereft of life, panting under the struggle with death, and

trembling at the thought of the judgments of God. Where then was

the help of those who gave her worldly counsels? of those who

prevented her from living for Christ? Could they save her from

death? No. But our Lord himself, seeing that she was only carried

away by the intoxication of youth and the errors of her century,

came to her, touched her hand, and cried out to her, as to

Lazarus, 'Arise, come forth and walk!' She understood this call,

and she arose and knew that she owed the boon of life to him who

had given it back to her." She was then but twenty years of age,

when she shone in her new-born beauty of holiness.

{510}

She, who formerly passed long hours at her toilet, now sought

only to find God; and, instead of the ornaments in which she had

liked to appear, she now covered her fair head with the veil most

becoming for a Christian woman. All the money that had been spent

for adorning herself now went to the poor. And this ardent soul,

once consecrated to God, gave itself up entirely, and, passing

with a great flight beyond ordinary natures, at once reached the

summit of human virtue and perfection.

Eustochium and Paula had not more ardor. Jerome was admirable in

his manner of seconding this generous enthusiasm. He now

instructed her in the Scriptures, and she studied first

Ecclesiastes, then the gospels, and Isaiah. She learned Hebrew to

read the Psalms. Her energy was wonderful, for her steps still

tottered from illness, and her delicate neck drooped under the

weight of her young head. But the divine book was never out of

her hands.