autobiography which originally appeared as an answer to the calumnies
of Charles Kingsley, and was entitled "_Apologia pro Vita Sua_,"
republished in a neat and attractive manner by the Appletons. We
earnestly recommend all our readers, whether they be Catholics or not,
who have not procured and read the "_Apologia_," to do so without
delay, if they wish to give themselves a rich intellectual treat. The
American edition is decidedly to be preferred, on account {140} of the
complete history it furnishes of the controversy with Mr. Kingsley
which led to the composition of the book. In England, this controversy
is already well-known to the entire religious and literary world, and
may be supposed by this time to have lost its interest. Dr. Newman's
autobiography will never lose its interest and value while the English
language remains; and for this reason, it was no doubt a wise thought
in the author to prepare it for posterity in a form wherein the local
and personal controversy which occasioned its being written should no
longer be connected with its proper subject-matter. No doubt, too, the
author felt some reluctance to perpetuate, in close connection with
his own personal history, the memory of the severe castigation which
he administered to his opponent. This is honorable to his delicate and
charitable sentiments. At the same time, the castigation was
necessary, it was just, it was not one whit too severe, and we owe a
debt of gratitude to Dr. Newman for having applied the terrible lash
which he possesses, but which he employs so seldom and usually so
lightly, in this case with all his strength to the shoulders of a
delinquent. There is a certain small class of writers in the English
Church, some of whom are Puseyites, others more or less broad in their
views, who violate all the laws of honorable and courteous warfare in
their attacks on the Catholic Church. They take the line of charging
fraud, forgery, lying, and utterly unprincipled and wicked motives and
maxims upon the hierarchy, priesthood, and other advocates of the
Catholic cause. One of the first and foremost of these was Mr.
Meyrick, of Oxford, the author of a disingenuous work against Catholic
morals, and one of Mr. Kingsley's defenders. This work of Mr.
Meyrick's was republished in this country with a more offensive
preface, by the Rev. A. C. Coxe, now the bishop of Western New York, a
person who has abjured all regard to the rules of common civility,
both in his public writings and speeches concerning the Catholic
clergy, and also in his private demeanor when he has happened to be
thrown into contact with them personally. This class of writers adopt
what Dr. Newman happily styles a mode of warfare which consists in
"poisoning the wells." That is, they seek to forestall all debate on
the merits of the Catholic question, by accusing the advocates of the
Catholic side of being liars by principle and on system; infamous
persons, who have no claim to decent treatment or even to a hearing.
There is but one course to be taken with opponents of this sort.
Argument, explanation, courtesy, are alike thrown away upon them. They
must be treated like guerrillas, and summary justice must be done up
on them, as the only means of self-defence, and as a salutary example
to others. They must be taught that they cannot have free license to
calumniate and vituperate the Catholic Church or its members with
impunity. How effectually this lesson was read to them by Dr. Newman,
is shown by the hearty applause which his book received from all
England, the evidence of which may be seen in the review of it which
appeared in the principal English periodicals.
We wish to be understood that the language we have used above has no
application to any but a few offending individuals, whose spirit and
manner are even more severely condemned by a large class of the
non-Catholic public than by Catholics themselves. It is very
gratifying to observe the respectful, moderate, and courteous tone
which many of the most illustrious of the recent advocates of the
Protestant side maintain toward the Church of Rome and her
distinguished and worthy members. Copying after Leibniz, the greatest
genius which the Protestant confession can boast of, we have, among
others, Guizot, Ranke, Dr. Pusey, Palmer; and in this country, William
R. Alger, who, albeit he has inadvertently repeated some of the
current misstatements of Catholic doctrine, has always shown a
fairness and generosity of spirit and a readiness to correct mistakes
which make him conspicuous among our honorable opponents. In this
species of candor and courtesy the most eminent writers of the
continent are still far before the most of those in England and
America. Dr. Newman himself and his compeers in the early Oxford
movement, even in their strongest and most pronounced expressions of
opinion against Rome and against various form of dissent, furnished
the most perfect specimens of the truly Christian and gentlemanly
style of polemics which English literature had yet {141} seen. Never
was there a man who kept his intellect and his varied gifts as a
writer more completely under the discipline of a strict conscience,
one who was more scrupulously just and fair, truthful and frank, yet
guarded and cautious, than John Henry Newman. He has the soul of
knightly chivalry in him; religious, fearless, modest, and
compassionate; loyal to the death to every sacred obligation, and
scorning a mean or deceitful act more than common men do treason and
perjury. Such a man ought to have been secure of honorable treatment;
and yet he has not been spared in the strife of tongues; and if he has
at last triumphed over calumny, it has only been by overpowering his
enemies with the superior weight of his armor and strength of his arm,
and not because his holy retirement and spotless name have been
respected. However, after long years, during whose lapse the English
people have disdained and slighted the man of genius and the pure
Christian who is one of the greatest ornaments of their literature, on
account of their intense hostility to his religion, their love of fair
play, and admiration for intellectual greatness and prowess, has
gained a signal victory, and we give them due credit for it. The
demand for the "_Apologia_" on its first publication in successive
numbers was so great that the Longmans were unable to keep up with it.
That it has not been unappreciated also in this country is proved by
the fact that four editions of the American reprint have been
exhausted. Of the book itself, it is almost superfluous to speak at
this late day. It will bear to be read and re-read, and the repeated
perusal, instead of wearying, only brings out new charms and occasions
an increasing delight. We have read and admired Dr. Newman's writings
for more than twenty years, but have never so fully appreciated the
wonderful subtlety and vigor of his intellect as we have done since
reading his last book. It is like the keen, bright, dexterously
wielded, and irresistible scimeter of Saladin. At his conversion
Anglicanism lost a champion far more capable than any other of coping
with its stoutest antagonists, and the Catholic Church gained over the
most formidable of her foes who wields an English pen. Even as now
reproduced by himself, as a mere history of the past, his method of
defending the Church of England against Rome appears to us so much
more subtle and plausible, and adroitly managed, not through any
designed artifice on his part, but from the acuteness with which his
mind detects all the most defensible points of his own position and
the most assailable ones of the opposite, than that of any other
writer, that we instinctively say, no man but John Henry Newman could
fully refute himself. Each successive post at which he pauses in his
gradual approach to the Catholic Church seems as defensible as the
others which he has abandoned as untenable. At his very last halting
place, he has the air of a man who is about to defend himself there to
the last, and is not to be driven further. Indeed, he was not _driven_
by any mind more powerful than his own; for although the arguments of
Cardinal Wiseman had considerable weight with him, neither he nor any
other Catholic writer really answered the difficulties which were in
his own mind, or fully refuted, in a manner consonant to his
intellectual convictions, the plausible arguments by which he
justified to himself and recommended to others a continuance in the
Anglican communion. He was driven only by his innate love of truth,
his conscientiousness, his logical fidelity to his own first
principles, and the grace of God. Humanly speaking, his conversion was
one of the most unlikely events which has ever taken place. Ten years
before it occurred he was at an immense distance from the Catholic
Church, and advancing toward it by a most circuitous route, with the
greatest apparent, reluctance. We rise from the perusal of his own
record of his journey with a sentiment of astonishment that he ever
reached his destination. When we remember the light in which Dr.
Newman was regarded by his own school in the days of his leadership at
Oxford, it appears to us that the estimate formed of him was both
singularly just and singularly incorrect. It was just in one way,
inasmuch as, whatever his modesty may suggest to the contrary, he was
more than any other man the leader of the movement. It was incorrect,
inasmuch as a far greater originative force in causing this movement
and a far greater comprehension of its principles were attributed to
him than he or any other man possessed. The {142} movement itself
created its own agents, and bore them on with a power infinitely
greater than they possessed of themselves. Dr. Newman was a master to
inferior and more backward scholars; but was himself only a scholar,
who began with the first and simplest rudiments of Catholicity. His
merit consisted in this, that while many paused at various stages of
elementary and partial knowledge, he pushed on to the mastery of final
results and completed his curriculum. Considering what he had to
learn, and that he had in great measure to be his own teacher, the
space of ten years was really a short rather than a long period for
the process.
The history of this process constitutes the direct object and the
principal value and charm of the "_Apologia_," and the "History of My
Religious Opinions." The mind of the author is, however, one of those
full streams that overflows its bounds, and whose _obiter dicta_ are
frequently the richest and most precious of its effusions. There are
several passages in this work falling within the scope of this remark.
We can only call attention to two, without quoting them. One is found
on pp. 266-273 of the American edition of the "_Apologia_," and
relates to the doctrine of original sin. Another, on pp. 275-291,
concerns the question of the relations between faith and science and
reason and authority. In the very act of giving a reason for avoiding
the discussion of these questions, the author has given in a short
compass, one of the most admirable disquisitions we have ever read.
There is no passage in all his writings which exhibits better the fine
discrimination of his thought, and the perspicuity and beauty of his
style, and in both these respects it is a specimen of the most perfect
logical and rhetorical art.
We feel bound, however, to enter one _caveat_ against a part of Dr.
Newman's philosophy, which we regard not so much as being a positive
error as a defect, and which has been quite distinctly brought out by
the _Westminster Review_, as a part of his defence of Catholicity
which presents a weak side to the infidel. This defect is one
originating in the philosophy which has prevailed in England, and in
which Dr. Newman was educated; one which has always been conspicuous
in the writers of the Oxford school, and which appears to us to leave
a great _hiatus_ in their theology. This defect may be described,
though it is not defined, as the doctrine _probability_, We have no
hesitation in agreeing with Dr. Newman in the maxim, that in most
matters "probability is the guide of life." We have heretofore
thought, however, that he extended this principle into the domain of
natural and revealed religion so far as to agree with those writers
who consider their fundamental verities as being merely more probable
than their logical contradictories. After carefully weighing his
words, we have come to the conclusion that he does not use the word in
this sense, when he speaks of the great truths of religion. That is,
he does not admit that there is any real probability, though a lesser
one, in the infidel negations, but only a metaphysical possibility. He
allows of a moral certainty which admits of no prudent doubt to the
contrary, but does not reach to a metaphysical certainty. Here again
we agree with him partially, and if we understand rightly the
ecclesiastical decisions on the point, we think his doctrine is one
that has official sanction. That is, we regard, with him, the evidence
of revealed religion and of the authority of the Catholic Church, as
apprehended by the light of our natural intelligence in that act which
theologians call "the preamble to faith," as being in the order of
probability and incapable of generating more than a moral certainty.
That certitude of belief which excludes possibility of error, we
regard as an effect of the gift of faith imparting a supernatural
firmness to the intellectual assent. We dissent from Dr. Newman, when
he extends this doctrine to our ultimate belief in God, and we think
it necessary, in order to give a firm basis even to a true
probability, that we should affirm the absolute intuition of that idea
of God, from which we are able to deduce his attributes; and,
moreover, affirm also the perfect metaphysical demonstrability of all
these attributes as expressed in the Christian conception of God. We
dislike very much any form of expression which implies that we believe
in God on a probability, which is tantamount to saying that "it is
probable there is a God." Even if we say that the being of God is
morally certain, we still leave it possible that there is no God. If
we deduce {143} the being of God from the ultimate principle of the
certainty of our own existence, we make our self-consciousness, our
reason, the laws of our own being, the standard of right and truth
which we establish within ourselves, more certain, and to us more
ultimate than God. We become our own centre and stand-point, our own
ultimate judge, a light and a law to ourselves, really subsisting in
an intellectual independence of God. This is ceding, in our view, to
the pure infidel rationalist all the ground he wants, which is simply
liberty for every one to speculate about the cause of all things, and
their procession to the ultimate end, as he lists. It is true he will
do it without our leave, whatever our way of stating Christian truth;
but if we admit, or do not clearly repudiate, his first principles, he
will point out a logical defect in our argument, and show that we are
inconsistent; and then the philosophical proof of Christianity, which
consists in demonstrating the conception of God from first principles
intuitively certain, and showing that none of the Christian doctrines
which we received from testimony are incompatible with these first
principles, will, in our hands, be defectively managed.
It is proper to state, however, that Dr. Newman does not propose
anything dogmatically on this important question, but rather indicates
that he has not yet obtained a solution which satisfies him.
A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH; FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE
CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.
By M. l'Abbé J. E. Darras; First American from the last French
edition. With an Introduction and Notes by the most Rev. M. J.
Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Vol. I. 8vo., pp. 675. New
York: P. O'Shea.
The appearance of this volume realizes very fully all we were led to
expect from its prospectus. The first impression made upon us by its
exterior dress is that this is an attractive and readable book; two
qualities of a work on history which, whatever be the learning,
accuracy, and completeness displayed in its more intimate perusal, are
not to be despised. We are glad to meet with a life of the Church
which does not look like a catalogue of dried and dead specimens for a
scientific museum. The majority of the volumes which issue from the
press now-a-days like a literary flood, owe their success a vast deal
more to their beautiful typography, chaste binding, and other general
attractive features, than to the solid merit of their contents. As
there are certain orators whose appearance alone captivates their
auditory, and excites in us a curiosity to hear what fine things such
a fine-looking man has to say, so there are books which feel well to
the touch, look good to the eyes, and prejudice one's judgment in
their favor. We will listen to a stupid-looking speaker, or read a
commonplace featured book, on the testimony of their friends, provided
they give us strong recommendations; but a speaker "of a commanding
presence and a winning air," or a book that is well gotten up, we
think worthy of notice at the first introduction.
It is difficult to write an interesting history. Simple facts of the
past stated in dry statistical style, like the reports of an insane
asylum or a poor-house, are about as interesting as they, and appear
to the general reader to be of about equal importance. We may be
thought weak in judgment to say it, but we should like to read history
for the same reason we like to read the last novel by Dickens, in
which the author wields his magic pen to paint life-pictures of the
events of the world before our mind, and compels us to be living
witnesses of the past in the realm of imagination. To insure a deep
interest and a lasting impression all the faculties of the mind should
be engaged. Our imagination must not be told to step out of doors or
go to sleep whilst our memory takes an inventory of facts consigned to
its storehouse by a historian. The senses of sight and of taste are
given to man that he may be guided in supplying his stomach with the
proper quantum and quality of the food it craves. What these senses
are to the stomach, the imagination is to the mind, and if it have no
hand in the choice of mental food there cannot help but be an
indigestion; the brain, indeed, holding the crude mass, but unable to
make any use of it.
We may sum up in a few sentences the application these remarks may
have to the history before us. The volume {144} comes to us with uncut
edges. Let the reader open it at random. He finds before him a fair
page, printed in large cool type, with broad generous margins, looking
as a page ought to look, like a goodly field of wheat or corn, and not
like a stiff, prim, pinched, and gravelled parterre. Let him read down
one page, and he will surely bring his paper-cutter into requisition
and follow the author to the beginning of the next paragraph. He will
find the style, if we mistake not, like one of those charming, shady,
winding, country roads, which always entice you to go just as far as
the next turning; an agreeable contrast to the ordinary page of
history, which to us is so like a grievous paved military road in
France, straight enough, wide enough, and direct enough, but
lamentably monotonous, dry, dusty, and tiresome. There is a little
stiffness and dull regularity about the division of the
subject-matter; but this is inevitable to any history of a long
period, and may be regarded as the signboards and finger-posts on the
road, making up in convenience what they detract from the romance.
As to the character of the work of M. Darras as a history--as one in
which we can learn the actual life of our mother, the Church; one
which we can quote with confidence in public, and not be obliged to
contradict to its back as it stands on our shelves; one which we can
give to our friends, of all classes and opinions, as a good, reliable,
and respectable Church history--we are content to take it as such upon
the warm approbation it has received at the hands of the Holy Father,
the use that is made of it in colleges and seminaries in Europe, the
approval it has obtained from the Rt. Rev. bishops there and in the
United States, and the good opinion universally expressed concerning
it by scholars whose critical judgment is worthy of reliance.
Certainly we have no Church history equal to it in the English
language, and we bid this translated French one welcome, and hope it
may receive an hospitable reception amongst us.
The dissertation on the perpetuity of the Church, and the immortality
of the Papacy, from the pen of the Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding,
which embellishes this edition under the form of an introduction, is
both appropriate and well deserving of perusal. The learned prelate
puts us at once on reading acquaintance with the work of M. Darras,
and enkindles in us the desire to know more of the eventful course of
the existence of Holy Church.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
CAPE COD. By Henry D. Thoreau. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1865.
12mo., pp. 252.
COMPLETE WORKS OF THE MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D., late Archbishop of
New York. Comprising his Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc.
Carefully compiled from the best sources, and edited by Lawrence
Kehoe. Two vols. 8vo., pp. 670 and 810. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.
PASTORAL LETTER OF THE MOST RET. J. B. PURCELL, D.D., Archbishop of
Cincinnati, to the Clergy and Laity of the archdiocese, on the late
Encyclical Letter of his Holiness Pius IX. promulgating the Jubilee of
1865, with the Bull of Pius IX. authorizing the Jubilee of 1846.
Printed at the "Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph" Office.
NATURAL HISTORY. A Manual of Zoology for Schools, Colleges, and the
General Reader, by Sanborn Tenney, A.M. Illustrated. New York: Charles
Scribner & Co. 12mo., pp. 540.
From D. & J. Sadlier and Co., New York, we have received the
following: BANIM'S COMPLETE WORKS. PARTS 1, 2, 3, AND 4; THE OLD HOUSE
BY THE BOYNE, by Mrs. Sadlier; CATHOLIC ANECDOTES. Part 1. Translated
from the French by Mrs. Sadlier; THE LIVES OF THE POPES, from the
French of Chevalier d'Artaud, Parts 1 and 2; CAECILIA, a Roman Drama,
and THE SECRET, a Drama, by Mrs. J. Sadlier.
------
{145}
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL, II., NO. 8.--NOVEMBER, 1865,
From Revue Générale, Bruxelles.
REV. DEMETRIUS AUGUSTIN GALLITZIN,
AND THE CATHOLIC SETTLEMENTS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
The events of which the United States have, during late years, been
the theatre of action, have revived in the recollection of the editors
of the _Historisch-politische Blätter_ of Munich the name of Loretto,
a small and unpretending town of Pennsylvania, the founder of which
was Prince Demetrius Angustin Gallitzin, the son of the remarkable
woman of whom Germany has a right to be proud. The occasion has
suggested to them a biographical sketch, which, full of interest and
appositeness, will unquestionably be read in Belgium and France with
as much avidity as in Germany.
Twenty years have elapsed since Prince Gallitzin, who had exchanged
the luxuries of princely courts for the poverty of those who herald
the glad tidings, slept in the Lord, after forty years of apostleship
in the wild regions of the Alleghany mountains. The work set up by the
pious missionary yet remains, marked by all the elements of thrifty
life, and the little oasis will long continue to be what it was at its
origin--the cradle of a Christian civilization, which will go on
spreading its blessings to the remotest boundaries, still retaining
the unobtrusive modesty which moved its founder's thought. Indeed, had
the matter rested with Gallitzin's own wishes, his very name would
have passed into vague tradition in those extended regions. It might
even have slept in oblivion; for the prince, so careful was he to
avoid anything that could attract the attentions of the world, lived
and exercised his holy ministry for many years under the borrowed name
of Schmidt.
In Father Lemcke, however, and fortunately too, a canon of the abbey
of the Benedictines of St. Vincent in Pennsylvania, was found a man
who, better than any other, had it in his power to preserve the
reminiscences of the noble missionary, and accurately to depict for us
the traits of his manly character. Not only did the biographer of the
prince know him personally, but he was also his friend, his confidant,
his confessor, and his co-laborer in the missions. After Gallitzin's
death, Father Lemcke came into possession of his papers, letters, and
memoranda, which supplied him with desirable data on the period of
life preceding their ministerial connection. He, and he alone,
therefore, was in a condition to write a true biography of the prince,
and he deemed it a duty to {146} rescue from oblivion the memory of
this distinguished man. In connection with this subject, Father Lemcke
indulges in a judicious remark: "The life of Gallitzin," says he, "is
so intimately inwoven with the events which occurred during his own
times, that it holds out to future generations an interest like to
that which is offered to us in the life of a Bonifacius or of an
Ansgarius, by reason of the facts which have characterized the epochs
in which they lived."
Gallitzin belonged to the phalanx of missionaries who, in the United
States, scattered the seeds of spiritual life. When the prince stepped
on the soil of that vast territory, there was but one prelate, Rt.
Rev. John Carroll of Baltimore, the first bishop of the United States,
who, from the circumstances of the Church, had been obliged to seek
Europe for his episcopal consecration. [Footnote 23] He had been but
two years installed--from 1790--and had but uncertain and broken
intercourse with his flock. His surroundings, restricted in numbers,
but devoted to the holy cause, were mainly composed of, French
priests. In this infant church Gallitzin was the second priest
consecrated by the Bishop of Baltimore, and missioned, as a true
pioneer of civilization, to carry the cross through the untouched
forests of the New World, There is an unvarying likeness in all great
undertakings; yet it required but a short time--a relatively short
time--considerably to increase the number of those men who had devoted
themselves to the task. In contrast with the bishop, who, in the
course of five years, could ordain and rely on two priests only to
feed the flock of the Lord, "The Catholic Almanac" of the day exhibits
to us, for the United States, seven archbishops, thirty-six bishops,
and four apostolic vicars, with the ministry of two thousand priests,
with the addition of convents of various orders, of seminaries, of
colleges, of numberless benevolent institutions, with over 4,000,000
of Catholics living under the protection of the laws, in the practice
and enjoyment of their faith.
[Footnote 23: There are new details on this distinguished man in a
recently published work: "_Die Katholische Kirche in den Vereinigten
Staatm von Nord Amerika_," etc., etc. Regensburg. 1864.]
The Germans delight in recalling to mind that one of those who helped
to lay the foundations of the Church in North America was the
offspring of a princely house of the Fatherland. Gallitzin was a
German on the maternal side; and the noble parent could well claim
both the spiritual and natural motherhood of her son, the latter of
which was, perhaps, glory enough. How magnificent a mission was that
of Princess Amelia Gallitzin! While gathering around her circle the
choice spirits which seemed destined to keep bright the torch of faith
in Germany, and its living convictions in the midst of a superficial
society without belief and without its guiding lights, the princess
was rearing for the New World a son who was about to turn aside from a
career which his birth and his wealth justly reserved for him, and
take up the arduous and thankless labors of the apostleship. This very
son it was who, through the work of faith, was destined to be the
founder and civilizer of a now flourishing colony.
Strangely enough, nothing in young Gallitzin gave earnest of such a
vocation. His almost feminine nature had marked him for a timid,
shrinking child; but what was still worse, and a source of deep
anxiety to his mother, to this was added a lack of decision, which
seemed so deeply rooted in him that not even the iron will of the
princess could, during the course of many years, draw out any
perceptible results. We have a letter of the princess of the date of
1790, two years before the departure of Demetrius for America, in
which she reiterates on this ground her former complainings, her
exhortations, and her admonitions. It is proper, however, to advert
that the incipient {147} method of training pursued by the princess
herself was not free from defect; for, daring the nonage of her son,
she herself wavered and hesitated between various systems of
philosophy--a course which necessarily must have drawn her into many
an error.
There was, therefore, a defectiveness in the main foundation of the
training of young Gallitzin, who was reared in a sort of religious
indifferentism. But a complete revulsion took place when, after
leaving Münster, the princess was led to rest her convictions, not on
this or the other system of philosophy, but on the rock of Christian
faith--when, from her relations with such men as Furstenberg and
Overberg, she herself had gained a greater degree of firmness and
steadfastness. This reacted on the education of the son, in the
greater decision and authority exerted by the mother; and it was not
without fit intention that Demetrius, in the sacrament of
confirmation, received the surname of Angustin.
Born on the 22d of December, 1770, at the Hague, where his father, a
favorite of the Empress Catherine, was accredited as ambassador of
Russia, young Gallitzin saw before him the opening of a career bound
to lead to the highest dignities of either military or administrative
service. Nothing, therefore, was spared in giving him a complete
education, according to the requirements of the world. This education,
developed and closed under his mother's eyes, must be perfected by
travel; but whither to direct it was a question of moment. The
aristocratic banks of the Rhine were ravaged by the revolutions and
war had converted Europe into a vast battle-field. It opportunely
happened, at that time, that a young priest, by the name of Brodius,
whom the princess had known through the family of the Droste, and who
had been admitted to her circle, was about crossing the Atlantic as a
missionary to America. The princess had had occasions to value the
rare endowments of this priest, and knew how justly her confidence in
him could extend. She therefore proposed to him the companionship of
her son in a journey which seemed to her to be the only practicable
one warranted by the times. The princess, fortunately, met with no
opposition on the part of the prince, her husband. An admirer of
Washington, and still more so of the philosophic Jefferson, he readily
agreed that his son should devote a couple of years to a visit to the
United States, so as to judge for himself of the institutions all that
country. He earnestly charged him to be introduced to these two great
men; while the princess on her part armed him with a letter of
recommendation to the Right Reverend Bishop Carroll.
In August, 1792, when twenty-two years of age, young Gallitzin took
ship at Rotterdam on his way to America. No one could, certainly, have
then stirred him with the idea that the land of America was marked out
as a theatre for the evolutions of his existence. Was there a
presentiment in that parting hour which, he could not know, was to
mark an eternal farewell? Was it a last return of the original
indecision of character which made him linger at the roadstead to
which his mother had accompanied him? No one can now tell; but what we
can say is that when, on the crests of the foaming billows, he caught
sight of the yawl which was to carry him on board, his heart failed
him, and he turned back to retrace his steps. Then did his mother turn
back to him and, with a look of disappointment, "Dimitri," said she,
"I blush for thee"--and, grasping his arm, she urged him on to the
boat. In a moment, and how no one could tell, the young prince was
engulfed in the waves. As quick as thought the practised hands of the
sailors fished him up from the waters, and wafted him to the vessel
that was to bear him away. Such was his farewell to Europe; but this
sea baptism had regenerated him into a new man, as, at a later period,
he told the story to his biographer.
{148}
On the whole, a noted change had taken place in young Gallitzin. In
him every weakness and every irresolution had disappeared, and made
room for a firmness, a determination, and an inflexibility which, to
his family, became a source of greatest astonishment. Two months had
hardly passed by in the intimacies of life with the Bishop of
Baltimore, when he already felt, within himself, what soon became a
clearly defined resolve. With the close of the year 1792 he wrote to
Münster that he had devoted himself, body and soul, to the service of
God and to the salvation of souls in America. He wrote that this
resolution had been determined by the urgent call for laborers in the
vineyard of the Lord; for in the country in which he was then
sojourning, his priests had to travel over a hundred and fifty miles
of territory, and more, to bring to the faithful the word and the
means of salvation.
These were the first news of him received in Münster, and they were
disseminated with the rapidity of lightning. From all sides sprang up
objections, doubts, and remonstrances against the scheme of the young
prince and the boldness of his undertaking. His mother, however, who
had at first been alarmed and steeped in agony at the idea of such a
vocation, soon reasserted her unerring judgment, and looked into the
matter with her wonted greatness of soul. From the moment that, from
letters of distinguished persons, and especially from those of the
Bishop of Baltimore, as well as from those of her son, she became
satisfied that his was a real and substantial calling, she felt
perfectly secure, and all human considerations vanished from her
sight. She therefore wrote to Dimitri that if, after having tried
himself, he was sure that he had really obeyed his vocation, she
willingly accepted the reproaches and troubles which could not fail to
shower upon him; and that, for herself, she could not desire a
consummation dearer to her heart--a greater reward--than to see the
child of her affections a minister at the altar of God. And, indeed,
not light was the burden of reproaches and afflictions which she had
to bear for the love of that son--especially on the part of her
husband, it was anything but light. Her letters to Overberg more than
amply inform us on that subject Gallitzin, however, seemed to have
left his European friends to the indulgence of their astonishment.
Heedless of his former social relations, in firmness and resoluteness
he trod the path which he had marked for himself, and prosecuted his
theological studies with such fervency that his superiors, in view of
his failing health, deemed it their duty to interpose. After two years
of study, however, he became a sub-deacon, and, on the sixteenth of
March, 1795, he was ordained to the priesthood.
There was no lack of labor, however, in the vineyard of the Lord, and
the young Levite, the second one who came out of the first Catholic
seminary in North America, was immediately put to work. At Port
Tobacco, on the Potomac, Gallitzin entered his apostolical career. His
fervor, no doubt, carried him too far into those proverbially malarial
regions; for, stricken down by a spell of fever, he was ordered by his
bishop to return to Baltimore, where Gallitzin was subsequently
directed to ascend the pulpit and preach to the German population
which had settled that portion of the state of Maryland.
The democratic spirit of American manners, which, with its innumerable
abuses, had permeated even religions existence itself, was
diametrically opposed to the just conceptions of the priesthood and of
the organization of the Church which Gallitzin had formed in his mind.
For the primitive morals of which he was then in quest he turned to
the unsettled portions of Pennsylvania. "I went there," he tells us at
a later period, "to avoid the _trustees_ and all the irregularities
which they beget. For success, I had {149} no other warrant than the
building of something new, that could escape the routine of inveterate
custom. Had I settled where the hand had already been put to the
plough, my work would have been endangered, for it had been soon
assailed by the spirit of Protestantism."
In the apostolic trips which frequently took him into the then far
West, on the table lands of the Alleghany range, near Huntington,
where the waters of the Ohio fork away from those of the Susquehanna,
Gallitzin had alighted on a settlement made up of a few Catholic
families. In the midst of this Catholic nucleus he resolved to
establish a permanent colony, which he destined in his mind as the
centre of his missions. Several poor Maryland families, whose
affections he had won, resolved to follow him; and, with the consent
of his bishop, he took up his line of march with them in the summer of
1799, and travelled from Maryland with his face turned to the ranges
of the Alleghany mountains. And a rough and trying journey it
was;--hewing their way through primitive forests, burdened at the same
time with all their worldly goods. So soon as the small caravan had
reached its new home, Gallitzin took possession of this, as it were,
conquered land; and, without loss of time, all the settlers addressed
themselves to the work before them, and worked so zealously that,
before the end of the year, they had already erected a church. The
following is Father Lemcke's account of the humble origin of this
establishment:
"Out of the clearings of these untrodden forests rose up two
buildings, constructed out of the trunks of roughly hewn trees; of
these, one was intended for a church--the other, a presbytery for
their pastor. On Christmas eve of the year 1799, there was not a
winking eye in the little colony. And well there might not be! The
new church, decked with pine and laurel and ivy leaves, and blazing
with such lights as the scant means of the faithful could afford,
was awaiting its consecration to the worship of God! There Gallitzin
offered up the first mass, to the great edification of his flock,
that, although made up of Catholics, had never witnessed such a
solemnity, and to the great astonishment of a few Indians, who,
wrapped up in the pursuit of the chase, had never, in their life,
dreamed of such a pageantry. Thus it was that, on a spot in which,
scarcely a year previous, silence had reigned over vast solitudes, a
prince, thenceforward cut off from every other country, had opened a
new one to pilgrims from all nations, and that, from the wastes,
which echoed no sounds but the howlings of the wild beast, welled up
the divine song which spoke: 'Glory to God in the highest, and
peace, on earth, to men of good will!'"
The cost of this spiritual and material colonization was at first
individually borne by Gallitzin. Captain McGuire, an Irishman, one of
the early settlers of the country, had acquired 400 acres of land,
which he intended for the Church. These he conveyed to Gallitzin, who
divided into small tracts the lands, which he had purchased with his
own means, and distributed them among the poorer members of his
colony, on condition of reimbursement, by instalments, at long
periods--a condition, however, which, in a majority of cases, never
was complied with.
The wilderness soon put on a new aspect. The settlers followed the
impulses of the indefatigable missionary, who kept steadfastly in view
the improvement of his work. His first care was to set up a
grist-mill; then arose numerous out-buildings; additional lands were
purchased, and in a short time the colony was notably enlarged.
In carrying out his work, Gallitzin received material assistance from
Europe. In its origin, sums of money were regularly remitted to him by
his mother; for he kept up a correspondence, which his devotion to her
made {150} dear to his heart In these relations his father took
little, if any, interest, as the determination of his son--his only
son--had proved to him a source of bitter disappointment. Still he
anxiously desired to see him return to Europe. So engrossed, however,
was the young missionary by his work, that such a trip seemed next to
an impossibility. Several years had thus glided by, when the idea of
visiting Europe earnestly engaged his mind.
In the month of June, 1803, he wrote to his mother, in apology for a
long silence; telling her that he is seriously contemplating seeing
her once more, but that he is trammelled in his desire by the want of
a priest to take his place;--indeed, that his work has so grown under
his hands, that he doubts whether he will ever again be privileged to
clasp his mother in his arms. "I may not think of it," he adds; "my
heart is fraught with affection for you, and it seems to me that I
should absolutely see you once more, so as to borrow courage to follow
the path which is marked out for me in this perverse world." The
letters from Overberg are witnesses of the tears shed by the mother,
so anxious again to look upon her son, as well as of the unmurmuring
mournfulness of her resignation.
The announcement of his father's death again brought up the subject of
his visit to Europe. Indeed, his presence was required in the
settlement of his inheritance; but now, as before, the joy of once
more treading his native soil, and the happiness of embracing his
mother, had to yield to what he considered his duty to his infant
colony. The just and plausible reasons which he alleges to his mother
for his course, allow us at the same time fairly to appreciate the
extent of his work, and the hopes built upon its success. Hence he
suggests the consideration due to those families that his advice had
influenced, for the greater honor of religion, to follow him in the
wilderness;--the money obligations, contracted with various friends,
who had trusted him with large sums to speed the development of his
scheme, and whose confidence, therefore, might be seriously wronged by
his departure;--the interests of so many others, who had committed all
their worldly hopes into his hands and whom his absence might leave an
easy prey to heartless speculators;--and, finally, the pending
questions, started by the scheme of erecting into a county the
territory to which the lands of the colony belonged. All these
motives, to which others were added, were sufficiently weighty to
press on the conscience of Demetrius the duty Of remaining at his
post. This final resolution his mother learned with the firmness of
Christian heroism. She wrote to the prince: "Whatever sorrow may have
panged my motherly heart at the idea of renouncing a hope that a while
seemed within reach, I owe it to truth to tell thee that thy letter
has afforded me the greatest consolation that I can look for upon
earth." It is a touching picture to behold, in the sequel, this
zealous mother continuing her interest in the mission founded by the
prince, and providing for its success in keeping with the inspirations
of her heart. Thus it was that, through the channel of the Bishop of
Baltimore, she transmitted to her son a bill of exchange for a
considerable amount, a box of books--a treasure in those
days--rosaries for the settlers, linen for himself and friends,
garments, and even baby-clothes, for the poorer members of the
settlement, sacerdotal vestments, embroidered by the princess herself,
by her daughter, and by Countess de Stolberg, and, lastly, a
magnificent present, which the missionary during his life valued
beyond all price, and with which, in accordance with his wishes, he
was laid to slumber in the tomb.
In the meantime Gallitzin's colony, settled in the midst of those wild
wastes, had expanded and become a town, to which he gave the name of
Loretto, the beginning of which are {151} thus described by our
missionary's successor: "The colony was composed of individuals who
generally purchased considerable tracts, varying from one to four
hundred acres in extent, which they cleared and converted to
cultivation. In proportion as the population increased, they gradually
emerged from the savagery of the earlier periods, and soon experienced
the wants of a growing civilization. The indication of those wants
suggested to Gallitzin's mind the necessity of converting the humble
settlement into a town. Mechanics, of every useful trade, rapidly
gathered around the nucleus--blacksmiths, millers, carpenters,
shoemakers, with even storekeepers, and Loretto soon assumed the
position which its founder had designed.
"Here, then, stands the town; but, with its new dignity, came a host
of vexations. It marked for Gallitzin a period of struggle against
every imaginable difficulty, which brought his firmness to the sorest
trials, and which indeed might have jeoparded the very existence of
his work. In fact, the means of reducing, under the control of a
single hand, the heterogeneous components of such a colony was no easy
problem to be solved. Gallitzin efforts to bring it under a normal
organization had to meet many an antagonizing element, whilst the
peculiar American spirit, which had even then permeated those
solitudes, reared up obstacles to his scheme. Gallitzin, however,
proved unshakable, and exhibited an unbending energy of character. At
one time there was an actual crisis in the prospects of the colony. A
member of the community, with a fair allotment of the goods of this
world, with the excitable American brain and a marked tendency to
speculation, suddenly conceived the idea to set up a competition with
the growing colony and to lay the foundations of a rival one in the
neighborhood. He went to work accordingly, and, with the assistance of
a few Irishmen, actually laid the foundations of village, which he
named Munster, after one of the provinces of Ireland. This rival of
Loretto immediately became the headquarters of the _propagators of
light_, in other words, of those who had little relish for the zeal of
Gallitzin and the inconvenient discipline of the Church. Satisfied not
only with putting the prosperity of Loretto in evident peril, the
seceders also assailed the character of Gallitzin, and through these
means derived an unexpected help. It happened fitly for their purposes
that at the time two German vagabonds--one a priest of most
questionable character, and the other a nobleman, whom the crime of
forgery had driven from the Old World--presented themselves to
Gallitzin, and anything but pleased, no doubt, with the welcome which
they received, resolved to swell the party of malcontents. With
cunning malice, they soon disseminated reports injurious to their
countryman, gave a pretended substance to unfounded suspicions,
feeding the animosities of the common herd. The fact, also, of
Gallitzin's having assumed a borrowed name was a means of shaking the
settlers and sowing distrust in their minds. Things went on from bad
to worse, and a catastrophe seemed to be imminent, when came the
upshot, so much the more ludicrous because the less expected. The
Gordian knot, after the expeditious American fashion, was cut by an
Alexander who rejoiced in the name of John Wakeland. He was an
Irishman, a giant in stature and strength, famed in the settlement as
a wolf and bear killer; and in reality one of the kindest men in the
world, and one of the hardest to stir from his natural proprieties.
These miserable intrigues and base machinations aroused his
indignation, and he immediately came to the conclusion to put an end
to them by the interposition of the logic of the strong hand. The
agitators had concocted a plan, which was devised to extort from
Gallitzin some sort of an assent, and the {152} prince could hardly
have escaped their intended violence had he not sought sanctuary in
the chapel of Loretto. But the mob had merely adjourned their intended
excesses; and they were preparing for extreme means to achieve their
ends when John Wakeland, brandishing a sturdy hickory in the midst of
the infatuated mob, declared that, he would "settle," on the spot, any
one who durst threaten the good priest. There was a magical spell in
the _hickory_. The timidly good men, who there, as everywhere else,
had shrunk into a circle of impassive inaction, feeling the influence
of a sturdy support, borrowed courage from the hour; and had it not
been for the interference of Gallitzin, his detractors, to use an
American phrase, would have had 'a rough time of it' From that moment,
a complete revulsion of feeling took place in behalf of the
missionary; while the bishop succeeded in ultimately restoring order
and peace in the little parish. He carefully inquired into all the
facts, and then addressed to the parishioners a letter which was
posted at the church door, and recalled the faithful to the regular
order of things.
"Difficulties, however, of another kind, and of a more serious import,
waited on Gallitzin. From the death of his father, he had been
suddenly cut off from the pecuniary assistance which he had
periodically received from Europe. He himself, as a Catholic priest,
had been, by the laws of Russia, excluded from his paternal heritage;
while his mother, who had exhausted her means in litigations, was
compelled to forego the assistance which, from time to time, she had
extended to her son. In satisfying his boundless charities, and in the
achievements of his plans, the founder of Loretto had somewhat relied
on this inheritance, which thus passed away from his hands. This
disappointment, therefore, brought upon him a new burden of anxiety
and cares. Destitution and poverty might have been easily borne by
him; but he could not make up his mind to give up the idea of founding
an imposing Catholic colony--to abandon the undertaking which he had
initiated--to be compelled to relinquish lands which had been
reclaimed by so much toil and so much care--and, especially, to face
impatient creditors, who might accuse him of thoughtlessly going into
debt, and from such an accusation justify their expression of
contempt."
As a crowning development to all of these tribulations, the European
mail brought to Gallitzin the news of his beloved mother's death. On
the 17th of April, 1806, in the city of Münster, the excellent
princess had closed her eyes for ever, comforting her disappointment
that she had not been permitted to see her son on earth by the hope
that she would surely meet him in heaven. The narrative of the last
moments of the Princess Gallitzin, received, by the stout-hearted
missionary, through the letters of his sister, of Overberg, and of
Count de Stolberg, supplied a fund of inexpressible comfort; but from
that hour the temporal claims and requirements of his position bore
terribly on his endurance. It required unheard-of efforts to save his
undertaking from the burden of indebtedness, and if, at the hour of
his death, he quit-claimed the property of the Church and left it free
from all and every charge, the blessed consummation came with the
sunset of life only, and that, too, after miracles of constant energy.
And here, especially, looms up the secondary phase of Gallitzin's
character, which had not escaped his father's more searching eye. In
fact, and in answer to a letter of his wife, in which she bitterly
complained of the inertness of their son, then sixteen years of age,
he wrote to her that "deep waters run still; that, to his mind, she
misconceives the disposition of Demetrius, and that he is ever running
against wind and tide." And indeed, to struggle against the torrent of
time and of events was the whole work of his life. And against this
torrent he heaved up the bulk of {153} his writings that have come
down to us. It is easy to conceive that it required no common reason
to induce a man of his temper of mind to write. We have the motive of
this reason in the fact that a Presbyterian preacher of Huntington had
thought fit to assail and calumniate the Catholic Church as an
institution dangerous to the country and to its liberties. Gallitzin
immediately took up the pen in answer, and the necessities of the
controversy turned him into a polemica writer.
There are in America, no less than in other countries, fanatical
sectarians who follow their congenial instincts in sounding the
alarm-cry whenever the Catholic Church marks out new limits of lawful
conquest. In this instance, the state was declared to be in peril; but
Gallitzin lost no time in confounding the slanderers of Catholicity by
the publication of his "Defense of Catholic Principles," which
appeared in Pittsburgh in the year 1816. This work, written in
English--for the author wielded the English with as much facility as
he did the German language, his mother tongue--was, on both shores of
the ocean, greeted with success. Father Lemcke made a German
translation of the "Defense of Catholic Principles," of which two
editions were published in Ireland and four in the United States,
ranking "in popularity with 'Cobbett's History of the Reformation,' to
which it bears a resemblance in putting a probing finger on the
plague-spot of Protestantism."
The start being once made, Gallitzin followed up his first work with
other publications of an entirely practical character, directed
against certain prevalent moral diseases of the day, which mark an
epoch in the monography of American ideas. Gallitzin was perfectly
familiar with the mode of treatment of the feverish exuberance of
American notions, and he handled them with all the cautious skill of a
prudent practitioner. Everything which he published on these matters,
both in elucidation of his views and as a muniment against the evils
which he denounced, is written in the winning and popular style which
was familiar to his pen. Hence his works were crowned with success,
even amongst the higher classes of society. "Gallitzin's
publications," says his biographer, "exerted an immense influence in
the period when he lived, but especially so among the humbler members
of the community, for whom they were destined. They were found, and
they may still be found, in the form of unpretending pamphlets, in the
hotels and steamboats of the West, for he had them printed at his own
expense and distributed as the Protestant colporteurs disseminate
their Bibles and tracts. The curiosity of the readers enlarged their
circulation everywhere; and I myself have found them as perfectly
thumbed as any spelling-book in spots where I never dreamed of meeting
with them."
In the meantime, Gallitzin, who had hitherto labored under the
protecting shadow of his humility, had begun to attract the attention
of the American world around him. The manner in which he had marked
his entrance in social life--not so much by the power of genius as by
that integrity of character which commanded the respect of public
opinion--had carried his reputation far beyond the limits of the
frontiers, and secured for him an esteem, the proofs of which came
back to him in numerous testimonials gathering from all sides. It was
at this time that he published various pamphlets signed with his real
name: "Demetrius Augustin Gallitzin, Catholic curate of Loretto."
It was natural, when the question of creating a new bishopric came up,
that all eyes should turn to such a man as Gallitzin. There was a
desire, therefore, more than once expressed to see him called to the
episcopal chair; but he persistently repelled the intended dignity,
and exerted his every power to counteract the efforts of {154} those
who were anxious to have it conferred upon him. He asked for one favor
only--that of remaining at Loretto; and, with this view, he consented
to accept the functions of vicar-general to the Bishop of
Philadelphia, which had been recently raised into a diocese.
Since the earlier period when Gallitzin entered on the discharge of
the holy ministry, those regions had witnessed a great development of
the Catholic faith. From all sides arose new parishes, while the field
of labor went on enlarging under the tireless zeal of our missionary.
"It may be safely affirmed," says his biographer, "that during the
protracted years through which he administered to the district of
country which now constitutes the sees of Pittsburg and Erie, he
filled the place and discharged the duties of a bishop." In order to
form a correct judgment as to the importance of his labors, we must go
back, in imagination, to the exordium of the Catholic Church in those
countries, where the pastors were cut off from all sustaining
advice--from all diocesan organization--and where elements the most
discrepant, and prejudices the most stubborn, were found in daily
conflict. How many difficulties, therefore, to be encountered and
overcome in the discrimination, in certain cases, between falsehood
and truth! What prudence of action was required! How many and delicate
problems presented to the decisions of a tender conscience! Gallitzin,
however, was the man for the situation. "The writings," says his
friend, "which his charge as vicar-general had compelled him from time
to time to publish, bear witness not only to his vigilance and zeal,
but also to the great charity which characterized the performance of
his duties." His was a peculiar solicitude for the persecuted and the
oppressed, because he knew from experience how readily, in America,
they may be made the sport of falsehood, of malevolence, and of that
thirst of revenge which exists everywhere. Hence the not
inconsiderable number of persons, both ecclesiastics and laymen, who
looked up to him for protection, and who might, but for its
interpositions, have been for ever lost. His benevolent bearing won
for him the confidence of the other priests who, like himself, had
consecrated their lives to the salvation of souls. The pastor who from
among them became at a later period the archbishop of Baltimore,
having been in 1830 appointed coadjutor and administrator to the
diocese of Philadelphia, immediately wrote to Gallitzin--whom he
styled the propagandist of the faith--to ask the assistance of his
experience and of his prayers, and to advise him that he not only
confirmed his existing powers, but that he also authorized him to use,
without the necessity of any previous application, those with which,
as coadjutor, he was himself invested. These two men were bound till
death by the closest ties of friendship.
All of Gallitzin's actions were stamped with the characteristics of
candor and uprightness. Should the honor of the Church, or the dignity
of her priesthood, be called into question, he knew no such word as
compromise. He shrank from familiarity with that species of half
education of which presumption is a leading feature; and ever, and
everywhere, stood unshaken in his love and assertion of truth--a
persistency which, on more than one occasion, called down upon him the
imputation of an aristocratic and domineering spirit. Those, however,
who, admitted to the closer intimacies of his life, were best
qualified to judge, soon became convinced of the futility of the
charge. If there were any note of distinction about him, it was to be
traced in the loftiness of his conceptions; for he had long cast off
all princely frippery; and the privileged society in which he
especially delighted was that of the poor and the lowly, with whom he
would kindly converse after possessing himself of their wishes and
needs. {155} In the circuit of his missions, it was his pleasure to
pass by the dwellings of opulence and seek the hospitalities of the
humble cottage. There would the prince sit down to rest, surrounded by
joyous children, distributing pictures among them and sharing in their
humble fare.
Such was Gallitzin, shepherd of souls, polemic and vicar-general, at
Loretto, whence the peaceful work of Christian civilization went on
quietly progressing and gradually enlarging the circle of its
benefits. Years had thus passed on, and the pioneer could already mark
the slanting shadows of declining life, when a young missionary came
over from Europe to share in his toils. This was Father Lemcke, a
Benedictine, who, after having been his assistant, became his
successor. Gallitzin was then sixty-four years of age. Father Lemcke
has left us a picturesque account of his first meeting with the
venerable missionary. He had set out from Philadelphia, and after
several days of rough traveling reached Münster, where an Irish family
gave him hospitality. From that village he procured a guide, and at
this point of his narrative we find him with an Irish lad piloting him
to Loretto. "As we had gone," says he, "a couple of miles through the
woods, I caught sight of a sled, drawn by a pair of vigorous horses;
and in the sled a half recumbent traveler, on every lineament of whose
face could be read a character of distinction. He was outwardly
dressed in a sort of threadbare overcoat; and, on his head, a
peasant's hat, so worn and dilapidated that no one would have rescued
it from the garbage of the streets. It occurred to me that some
accident had happened to the old gentleman, and that he was compelled
to resort to this singular mode of conveyance Whilst I was taxing my
brains for a satisfactory solution of the problem, Tom, my guide, who
was trotting ahead, turned round and, pointing to the old man, said:
"Here comes the priest" I immediately coaxed up my nag to the sled.
"Are you, really, the pastor of Loretto?" said I. "I am, sir." "Prince
Gallitzin?" "At your service, sir," he said with a laugh. "You are
probably astonished"--he continued, after I had handed him a letter
from the Bishop of Philadelphia--"at the strangeness of my equipage?
But there's no help for it. You have no doubt already found out that
in these countries you need not dream of a carriage-road. You could
not drive ten yards without danger of an overturn. I am prevented,
since a fall which I have had, from riding on horseback, and it would
be impossible for me now to travel on foot Beside, I carry along
everything required for the celebration of holy mass. I am now going
to a spot where I have a mission, and where the holy sacrifice has
been announced for to-day. Go to Loretto and make yourself at home,
until my return to night; unless, indeed, you should prefer to
accompany me. You may be interested in the visit."
Father Lemcke accordingly followed Gallitzin, and after a ride of
several miles they reached a sort of a hamlet, where there stood a
good Pennsylvania farm, in which all the Catholics of the vicarage had
gathered as on a festive day. The cabin had been transformed into a
chapel, and the good people were there, crowding; some standing,
others kneeling under the projecting shed; and others again, in small
huts or under the foliage of the grand old trees, were awaiting the
appointed hour. All had their prayer-books in their hands. At a sign
from Gallitzin, Father Lemcke proceeded within to receive the
confessions of the faithful; after which the prince celebrated mass,
preached, and administered the sacrament of baptism. For his pious and
good people it was a very festive day. The dinner which followed, and
in which all shared, was a repast marked by the cheerfulness and the
charity of the agapae of the primitive Christians.
{156}
By nightfall both priests had reached Loretto. On The Sunday
following, Gallitzin introduced his assistant to his German
parishioners, and then, with a quizzical smile, invited him, without
any further ceremony, to ascend the pulpit. Father Lemcke had to
undergo the ordeal, and it proved not to his disfavor. He had
naturally supposed that the same roof which sheltered Gallitzin would
also protect him. The old priest, however, could not see things in
that light; and a few days after, he took him to Ebensburg, the
principal county town, and there installed him as the pastor of the
parish.
Each of the two missionaries who had thus halved the goodly work still
had a respectable circuit to perform. There were stations fifty and
even seventy miles apart, and over this immense extent of territory,
which now constitutes the Pittsburg and Erie bishoprics, there were,
with them, but three or four priests to attend to the work of the
Lord. To Gallitzin was reserved the deep gratification of witnessing
the branching off, from Loretto, of various Catholic parishes, which
were formed in the very manner in which Loretto had been. Twelve miles
north of the primitive colony, up to the head-waters of the
Susquehanna, where lay cheap and rich lands, some of the more
prosperous members of his parish purchased tracts for themselves and
their families, and there laid the grounds of a settlement, to which
they gave the name of St. Joseph, borrowed from the invocation of the
church which Gallitzin had consecrated on that spot. It is now known
on the maps as Carrollton. Among the early settlers and the heads of
families were sturdy John Wakeland, whom the reader may not have
forgotten, and his six sons, as tall and as stalwart as himself, and
all, like him, devoted to the Catholic faith. On the very road to
Loretto, and before the death of the prince, sprang up a rural parish
under the name of St. Augustin. Another was formed with the
appellation of Gallitzin--after the death of the missionary, be it
understood; for his humility during his lifetime never could have
consented to this endowment.
In 1836, Father Lemcke fixed his residence at St Joseph--urged
somewhat to this course by Gallitzin, whose favorite idea had, for
some time, been to witness on that spot the rise and growth of another
Loretto. The old priest, growing into closer intimacy with the younger
missionary, periodically came in his sled to St. Joseph, rejoicing to
behold "a second edition of what he himself had created thirty years
before." So thoroughly had he become linked to this new friend from
far-off Europe, that he never but reluctantly parted from him, and
even shed bitter tears on once hearing that the bishop contemplated
changing Father Lemcke's residence.
Thus was it given to Gallitzin, in the decline of life, to behold
trackless forests converted into fruitful fields. The transient cares
and annoyances of life had disappeared, and a numerous Catholic
population grew around him in the joys of contented toil. The early
settlers who with him had shared the sweat and borne the burden of the
day, had long bidden farewell to their humbler log-cabins. Well
appointed farms, substantial barns, commodious dwellings, surrounded
by beautiful gardens and smiling meadows, wooed the eye as the
rewarding product of their privations and their toils.
In 1839 the old missionary's health began to fail. The load of years
much less than the thousand hardships inseparably connected with the
devotions of apostolic life, weighed heavily on a frame attenuated
indeed, but still erect and resisting. Yet the burden went on pressing
still--the body gradually bent--the step unsteady--the divine fire
which always kindled still animated him; but the voice would refuse
the assistance of its sounds, and the close of his sermons turn into a
peroration of silent {157} tears a thousand times more eloquent then
his spoken words. And yet, with all these warnings, he rejected every
suggestion of precaution and care of himself. To this he would answer,
in his own energetic language, that "as the days had gone by when, by
martyrdom, it was possible for us to testify to God's glory upon
earth, it was our duty, like the toil-worn ox, to remain hitched to
the plough in the field of the Lord." And the event harmonized with
his wish. On Easter Sunday, 1840, Gallitzin, being then seventy years
of age, had early in the morning taken his seat in the confessional.
After the discharge of its duties, he had braced up the remnants of
his strength to ascend the altar for holy sacrifice. He was, however,
compelled to forego the sermon of the day to betake himself to his
bed, from which he was destined never again to rise. The attentive
care of Dr. Rodriguez, his intimate friend, prolonged his existence
for a few weeks; but it was soon ascertained that the noble missionary
was fast sinking under exhausted energies. With the rapidity of
lightning, the sad news was carried abroad. From far and near, old and
young gathered around his dwelling, once more to receive the blessing
of the man whom they revered. So great was the affluence of the
people, that in order to secure a few quiet moments for the glorious
veteran of faith, absorbed in the last meditations and prayers of
earth, it became necessary to warn away the increasing throng of
visitors--and this without his knowledge; for it was his wish to
receive every one of them, and to each to speak the last farewell
which welled up from his loving heart. Yet some did come for whom no
such words passed his lips, which on the contrary moved in utterances
of reproof and blame. Among others came in one of the parishioners, to
whom the dying pastor had been particularly kind. He, however, had
proved ungrateful, and had, indeed, been a cause of much annoyance to
the missionary by habits of drunkenness and other excesses of an
unregulated life. As he entered the room, the venerable pastor turned
to him with a reproachful look and shook his head. This silent
sermonizing produced a deeper impression than had any previous
admonition of Gallitzin. The self-accusing culprit fell upon his
knees, melted to tears, confessed his errors, and promised
thenceforward to amend. The evidence of his sincerity is found in the
statement of Gallitzin's successor, who informs us that he stoutly
held to his promise.
The last scene of this eventful life closed on the sixth of May, when
the missionary prince left this world, accompanied by the prayers of
his parishioners gathered around him; for every apartment of the
house, and every portion of the chapel attached to it, was literally
thronged by a wailing, weeping, and praying community. This supreme
hour revealed the depth and the sincerity of the love which dwelt in
every heart for this man of God. On the day of his burial, whole
populations swarmed from every point--from distances ranging fifty and
sixty miles--to pay to the good father a last tribute of that
affectionate respect which had attended him through life.
The most respectable men of the parish contended for the honor of
bearing his body to the cemetery. In the body of the church, it was a
perfect contest among the congregation to look for the last time on
the feature of him who was thenceforward for ever lost to earth. Those
who were lucky enough, through the pressure of the crowd, to reach the
coffin, kissed in tearful love the icy hands of the missionary; while
the attendants were compelled to resort to force in order to close the
coffin for the final rites of the Church.
It were no easy task, without reference to the work of his
biographer--an ocular witness of Gallitzin's labors--to convey a just
conception of their bearing and extent "When," he says, "we come to
consider the {158} theatre on which Gallitzin inaugurated his immense
labors in so obscure and modest a manner, we realize the amount of
substantial good that can be achieved by an apostolic missionary in
America when, like Gallitzin, he conceives the practical sense of
things and leads them on to their crowning development with the zeal
and perseverance which marked his course. The small county of Cambria,
in Pennsylvania, created in 1807, which is indebted to Gallitzin for a
majority of its settlers, is everywhere, and with every reason,
characterized as the Catholic county. Indeed, when the traveller on
business, or the tourist for pleasure, strikes this point from other
districts of Pennsylvania more controlled by Protestant influences, it
seems to him that he has passed from a comparative desert into a
smiling oasis. This may be easily understood. For all their
journeyings for whole days, over counties twice and thrice more
opulent than this little Catholic county, there is no indication to
tell them what religion is there professed. Not till they have pressed
the soil of Cambria county do they feel that they are in a _truly_
Christian land, as they catch sight of ten Catholic churches and three
monasteries--all of which cropped out of Loretto under Gallitzin's
creative and fostering hands."
From all these results we can frame an accurate judgment of the
prince's career, which was but one continuous struggle--a glorious
struggle, teeming with usefulness. When Gallitzin opened his mission,
the vicar of Christ was persecuted and proscribed. A prisoner, torn
away from his spiritual family, Pius VI. heard the voices of a
_philosophic_ world applauding his abduction, as, ten years later, it
applauded the violence inflicted on the person of Pius VII. It was
just at that dark period which overshadowed the Holy See that the
Church inaugurated her peaceful labors in the United States, and, at
the end of ten years, had marked her beneficent influences by a
progress so rapid that its result could not escape the eye of even the
least observant. While Europe was organizing a settled persecution of
the papal power, the Church in America was growing up and expanding in
influence. Her very adversaries were compelled to bear even reluctant
witness to her triumphs. In one of the meetings of a Bible society
some years ago. Lord Barclay exhibited a summary, in which he lamented
the spread of Catholicity in a country in which he said that in the
year 1790 there was not even a bishop. "Strange," he said, "that
while, in Europe, the power of the see of Rome is overthrown, the Pope
is a prisoner, and Rome is declared to be the second city of the
French empire--strange, I say, that, at this very moment, the power
of the Pope should be rooted in America in this still stranger
manner." Ay! strange indeed, my Lord Barclay; but in no way strange
for those who know that martyrdom is the life of the Church, and that
she woos triumph in persecution. Gallitzin's life is a living,
convincing proof of her triumphs and her hopes.
------
{159}
From The Sixpenny Magazine.
"DUM SPIRO SPERO."
(AN APOLOGUE.)
My soul was restless, and I sought
The elf's wild haunt, and breath'd sweet airs:
I track'd the river's devious route:--
In vain!--my heart was vext with cares.
I wandered from the noble park,
The trimly gay parterre to view;
Thence pluck'd a rose, without one mark
To rob it of its faultless hue;
And, home returning, quaintly placed
My trophy in a tiny tray
Of antique silver curious traced;
Then, charg'd with odor, turn'd away.
* * * * *
I enter'd yestermorn the room
Where, all forgotten, dwelt my flower
Unhappy fate! that tender bloom
Fell, fainting for the genial shower.
Vanish'd all vigor had; and now--
The perfume fled--the tints grown dull--
It had been sin, I did allow,
For this so choice a bud to pull.
Then, with sore heart, I brought a stream
Of clearest water to its cup.
What wonder if new life 'gan gleam,
And care restored what hope gave up?
Lo! leaf by leaf was slowly raised,
Till olden flashes came at length:
Each plaintive petal oped, and gazed.
And thank'd me with its growing strength.
* * * * *
Our hearts are like thee, little Rose;
They quicken what time love-beams shine;
But under dismal clouds of woes
How can they choose but droop and pine?
If sympathy with lute attend
To lull with some resistless psalm,
Misfortune's darts can never rend:
Friends soothe, hope cheers, and heaven anoints with balm!
------
{160}
From The Month.
CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.