A long time after the fall of the Roman empire the island of Rhodes

was conquered by the general-in-chief of the Caliph Othman, in the

seventh century of the Christian era; and then mention is once more

made of a colossus in metal. "This last memorial of a glorious past

was not respected by the conqueror," says the Byzantine history. "The

general took down the colossus which stood erect on the island, and

transported the metal into Syria, and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980

camels with the materials of his purchase."

We should refer any who may be curious for further details on the

Colossus of Rhodes to a remarkable work on the subject by Carl

Ferdinand Lüders, in which the fiction of the gigantic outstretched

limbs is completely disposed of; but with such an array of learned

accessories, _more germanico_, that few will perhaps read it

throughout.

------

{547}

From The Month.

PUBLIC LIFE OF ST. CATHARINE OF SIENA.

No one can expect to find the history of the Church free from

vicissitude; as it has its bright and glorious periods, so also it has

its times of gloom and darkness, when a superficial observer might

almost interpret the disastrous character of the more salient facts

that meet his eye, as the evidence of a suspension of the vital

activity and healthy vigor of the whole body. But the life of the

Church is essentially internal, and depends on the free action of

divine grace, penetrating and animating the whole community--an action

that is perpetually kept up by the most common and unobtrusive

ministrations of sacramental strength, which are going on in full

frequency and efficacy, while the political fortunes of the hierarchy,

or of the supreme power, are crushed by oppression or persecution; or

even while scandals are seen in high places--when bishops become

courtiers, when cardinals are truckling to kings and emperors, and

popes are in captivity or exile. And it often happens that these dark

times are most prolific of the noblest fruits of the interior life;

and that at such seasons the choicest treasures of the Church--the

souls on whom great and special graces have been bestowed--are

providentially brought out into unusual prominence, so as to exercise

great influence and give a character to the period, or a direction to

some of its most important transactions. Even if it be not so, at all

events we have only to go a little below the surface in order to find

plentiful indications of the rich veins that are contained in no soil

but one. Thus, in Italy, at the time in which this paper treats, there

were a number of saintly souls, whose names have since taken rank in

the calendar of the Church. The secular historian sees little more

than a set of quarrelsome states, restless in their mutual discord and

aggressive ambition, and distracted, ever and anon, by the most

furious domestic strife, which would slake itself with nothing but

blood. St. Andrew Corsini once showed his audience, as he was

preaching in the Piazza of Fiesole, looking down on Florence, an

immense flight of hawks, kites, and other ravenous birds, battling

with one another over the city. They represented, he told them, the

number of evil spirits that were engaged in stirring up the

inhabitants to intestine discord. Florence was not worse, but rather

better, and more thoroughly Catholic, than its neighbors; yet when we

take up such a life, for instance, as that of St. Giovanni Colombini,

of Siena, the founder of the Gesuati, we find ourselves at once in an

atmosphere of calm and fresh simplicity, of happy peace, fervent

devotion, and loving faith; and it is only by the chance mention of

public calamities--the sufferings of the peasants, whose fruit-trees

had been cut down by the German "company"' of marauders, and the

like--that we are reminded of the Italy of the day, with its endless

disturbances and hopeless insecurity. We have not merely the beautiful

picture of Giovanni himself, and his immediate followers and friends;

of his good wife, for instance, who begged him to read her pious book

while she kept him waiting a few minutes for his dinner, and who,

though he had at first thrown it on the floor in a fit of impatient

anger, could not persuade him to leave it, when all was ready, till he

had read to the end the story of St. Mary of {548} Egypt. She had

prayed that he might be more given to almsgiving than he was, and then

had to complain that she had prayed for a shower, not for a deluge,

when he began to give away everything in the house; and she had to

yield at last to his saintly fervor, and release him altogether from

the obligations of the married life. It is not only Francesco

Vincenti, the other rich and noble gentleman of Siena, who caught up

the example of Giovanni, began to give great alms, dress shabbily, and

serve the poor, and at last joined him in giving up the world

altogether, and placing himself under religious obedience; or

Giovanni's cousin Catarina, the first of the nuns whom he established,

whom he could not persuade to embrace the state of poverty, though she

had given up the idea of marriage, till he called her to a little

window in the wall between their two houses, one night, as she was

going up to bed with her lamp lit, and talked to her in so heavenly a

strain that her heart was perfectly changed; and when she turned to go

away at last, she found that she had been listening all night, and the

morning rays were streaming through the shutters, though, as he bade

her observe, the little stock of oil in her lamp was unconsumed. These

might be accidents of piety and simple faith in particular families;

but we cannot so account for the great number of followers that

enlisted themselves under Giovanni--so many, that the worthy

magistrates of Siena thought fit for a time to banish him and his

companions from the city, lest every one should join them; nor for the

ready and enthusiastic welcome that he met with wherever he went

throughout Tuscany, the joy with which his preaching was received, and

the rapid fruit that it produced. The beautiful account of him and his

early followers, written in the century after his death by Feo

Belcari, is full of details and anecdotes that seem to prove the

powerful hold that faith and religion retained upon the mass of the

population in those seemingly black and miserable days. The mere

number of his followers, as we have said, is an evidence of this, the

proofs to which the novices were put were very severe indeed; yet when

Urban V. came from France to Italy, Giovanni went to meet him at

Corneto with a company of seventy, all of whom had joined him within

two years. The same conclusion is forced upon us when we take up the

life or the letters of the still more famous child of the same fair

city, St. Catharine of Siena, of whose public influence we hope to

give presently some short account. The family of religious disciples

whom she collected around her in the course of her short life, from

all ranks and classes, could never have been furnished save by a

population thoroughly penetrated with religious feeling, and familiar

with the loftiest principles of faith. Her own home, too, is a

charming picture. There is the good pious father, "a man simple and

without guile," as Father Raymond tells us, "fearing God, and keeping

free from vice;" a man so moderate in speech, that for no occasion

whatever, of disturbance or trouble that was given him, did unbecoming

words escape his lips; rather, when others of his family felt

bitterly, and he heard them break out into angry words, he set himself

at once, with a joyous countenance, to comfort them, saying, "Ah, God

give you good luck! don't fret yourself, or say things like that,

which don't befit us." He let himself be injured and brought to the

brink of ruin by a false charge, and yet would never allow any one in

his presence to speak against his accuser, leaving his cause entirely

to God; and in due time all was wonderfully set right. His large

family of children were brought up with so much modesty, and with so

great a hatred of anything licentious, though only in word, that one

of the daughters, whom he had given in marriage to a young man who had

lost his parents when a child, and learnt bad language from the chance

companions he had picked up, made herself ill with {549} grieving over

her husband's bad habit in this respect, and could never be well or

happy till he had given it up. We hear less of the rest of the family.

Catharine was one of twenty-five children; but though they opposed for

a while her resolution not to marry, and tried to make her give up her

excessive penances, they seem to have been good, fervent Christians;

and her mother, with her natural love for her child, struggling

against the sacrifice of giving her up entirely to the service of God,

is delightful in her simplicity, and her character gives a charming

air of truthfulness and reality to the whole picture. But there is no

reason for supposing that the family of the good Jacomo and Lapa were

far above the level of their neighbors in virtue and piety, except in

the instance of the one chosen soul whose wonderful graces and history

have alone saved them from being altogether forgotten, like the mass

of their daily companions in the streets and the churches of Siena.

What we are told of them reveals that which escapes the notice of the

superficial historian--the daily life of a Catholic people, however

politically unsettled, and subject to violent outbreaks natural to its

hot temperament and passionate disposition--though the character of

the Siennese was said to be comparatively gentle and sweet--still

thoroughly leavened and penetrated by the faith that had been handed

down through an unbroken succession of generations, since the city's

first martyr consecrated its soil by his blood. Such, in general, was

the population of Italy, and, of course, of great parts of Europe, at

that time; and such a population constitutes a resource, as it were,

for the Church, that it must take, it would seem, many generations

thoroughly to corrupt or to destroy. From the depths of such a people

springs ordinarily the ever-fresh crop of eminent saints, who form the

chief glories and supports of the Church in their successive

generations; and the wide extent to which the principles of Christian

faith and practice influence the mass from which they themselves rise,

makes it possible for them to gather followers around them, to touch

the springs of public action and thought, and to exercise the

wonderful influence upon the men of their day which is so strange an

enigma to the uncatholic historian. [Footnote 81]

[Footnote 81: Thus Dr. Milman ("Latin Christianity," t. v., p.

891-2) is fairly upset by what he calls a "most extraordinary

letter" of St Catharine. It is that in which she relates her

assistance of Nicola Tuldo, when under sentence of death and on the

scaffold. He adds at the end of his note: "St. Catharine had the

stigmata. And this woman interposed between popes, princes, and

republics." We may see, perhaps, whether she "interposed," or was

entreated to do so; whether her influence was sought by herself, or

forced on her by others. ]

The singularly beautiful life of St. Catharine of Siena, written by

her friend and confessor, Raymond of Capua, gives us as perfect an

account as we could wish to have of the personal and, as it were,

private history of the saint, and sets her character before us in the

freshest colors, like a picture of Fra Angelico. But it is deficient

in that very part of her life to which it is our purpose more

particularly to attend. The public influence exercised by St.

Catharine was fresh in the recollection of those for whom Fr. Raymond

wrote: they wished to be told the antecedents, as it were, of a person

whom they had seen brought forward by Providence in so remarkable a

manner to support the papacy in an hour of severe trial. A complete

life of St. Catharine would have to include a great many points which

have been omitted by Raymond; and much that he has mentioned or

alluded to would have to be fixed more accurately as to time and

place. Nor could any one hope to draw up such a work with success

without the fullest acquaintance with the ample collection of her

letters. It is from these last that many most important features of

her public life would have to be drawn. [Footnote 82] We owe them,

probably, to {550} the care with which her disciples or secretaries

copied them before they were sent, for it is hardly likely that they

could have been otherwise recovered from the persons to whom they were

addressed.

[Footnote 82: One of the best sketches of St Catharine's action on

public matters with which we are acquainted is contained in the

introduction to M. Caltier's recent translation of her letters into

French. The "_Histoire de Ste. Catharine_," published many years ago

by M. Chavin de Malan, contains a great deal of extraneous matter,

and does not scene to as to use the letters as they might have been

used. M. Christophe, in his "_Histoire de la Papauté pendant le XlVe

Siècle_," falls entirely in giving sufficient importance to the

saint. There is a good Italian "_Storia di Sta. Catarina da Siena_,"

by Fr. Capecelatro, an Oratorian, published a few years ago, in

which much use is made of the admirable notes of Fr. Buramacchi to

Gilgli's edition of the letters.]

It is not easy to say at what precise time the public action of

Catharine began. She was in the twenty-fourth year of her age at the

time of the death of Urban V. She had already passed, for about four

years, from that life of prayer, mortification, and contemplation with

which her saintly career had begun, to one of greater intercourse with

others; and she had already brought about some very wonderful

conversions, of which Fr. Raymond has given us an account. She had in

several cases been successful in obtaining reconciliations between

families hostile to one another through the hereditary feuds and

traditions of revenge which have always had so baneful an effect on

Italian society; but it does not appear that she had had any personal

intercourse with Urban V., or any of the great prelates or princes of

the time; and perhaps her fame had not travelled far beyond the

frontiers of Tuscany. Giacomo Orsini, who passed through Siena in the

year following the death of Urban to receive the dignity of cardinal

from Gregory XI., may have made her acquaintance in her native town,

and carried the report of her wonderful sanctity to the court of

Avignon. The next year, 1372, we find her already in correspondence

with important persons. War had again broken out between the Holy See

and the restless Barnabo Visconti. Barnabo had usurped the dominion of

Reggio, a fief of the Church, and had proceeded to other excesses,

such as to force Gregory XI. to excommunicate him in 1371. War was now

declared; but it was at first favorable to the Milanese tyrant. A

league was then organized against him, in which the emperor, the King

of Hungary, and the Count of Savoy took part. John Hawkwood, moreover,

with his famous English lances, was engaged on the Pontifical side.

The success was now chiefly on the side of the league, and Visconti

once more betook himself to intrigues and negotiations at Avignon,

where he obtained a truce in 1374. We find St. Catharine writing, in

1372, to two great French prelates, the Cardinal Pierre d'Estaing, who

had just been appointed legate at Bologna; and the Abbot of

Marmontier, a relation of the Pope, who was sent at the same time to

govern Peragia and discharge the office of nuncio in Tuscany. Her

letters to the cardinal seem to show that she was already known to

him. The first contains little but spiritual exhortation, though there

is a hint at the end to the saints favorite subject at this time, the

crusade against the infidels. In the second she speaks strongly for

peace among Christians. The letter to the abbot--who afterward became

a cardinal, and died on the schismatical side--is evidently an answer

to a letter from him, asking advice for himself and also for the Pope.

St. Catharine urges him to prevail on the Holy Father to put down the

nepotism that prevailed among high ecclesiastics, to discourage the

luxurious worldliness of the prelates, and to choose good and virtuous

men as cardinals. A little later we find her writing to the truculent

Barnabo himself, the man who made papal legates eat the missives of

excommunication which they were charged to deliver to him--who

declared that he was Pope in his own dominions, and dressed up a mad

priest in mock vestments to excommunicate the Pope in return, and made

the monasteries under his rule take charge of his hounds. This letter,

again, was in answer to a message brought to Siena from Barnabo by

{551} one of his servants. Catharine sets before him the crime he has

been guilty of in going to war with the Pope, and exhorts him to make

amends for it by taking part in the crusade. The letter seems to have

been written after the peace granted to Visconti in 1374. The same

date, or perhaps an earlier one, seems to belong to a long letter of

the saint to Beatrice della Scala, the wife of Barnabo, in which that

lady is urged to become more religious herself, and thus to influence

her husband, especially to peace and obedience toward the Holy Father.

This letter, also, is in answer to a message.

Catharine's life became still more active than before about this time.

She was sent for to Florence by the general of her order, and seems to

have gone about to several other cities, such as Pisa and Lucca, and

to have exercised great influence everywhere. Her presence had before

this begun to attract crowds wherever she went: they came to speak to

her, to consult her about the affairs of their souls or their family

troubles; and her burning words wrought numberless conversions. The B.

Raymond, speaking of this part of her life, tells us in his simple

way, "If all the limbs of my body were turned into so many tongues,

they would not be enough to relate the fruit of souls which this

virgin plant, that the heavenly Father hath planted, did produce. I

have sometimes seen a thousand persons or more, men and women, come at

the same time, as if drawn by the sound of some unseen trumpet, from

the mountains or from the villages in the territory of Siena, to see

or to hear Catharine. These persons--I don't say at her words, but

even at the mere sight of her--were suddenly struck with compunction

for their misdeeds, bewailed their sins, and ran to the confessors, of

whom I was one; and so great was the contrition with which they made

their confessions, that no one could doubt that a great abundance of

grace had descended from heaven upon their hearts. This happened not

once or twice only, but very often. For this reason Pope Gregory XI.,

of happy memory, who was both consoled and rejoiced at this great

fruit in souls, granted letters apostolic to me and to my two

companions, giving us power to absolve all those who came to see

Catharine and to confess their sins, in all the cases for which the

bishops of the dioceses had faculties. And that truth, that neither

deceives nor can be deceived, knows well that many came to find us out

who were laden with great sins, and who had never before made

confession, or never received as it ought to be received the sacrament

of penance. We--that is, my companions and myself--often remained

fasting till evening, and were too few to hear all those who wished to

confess; and indeed, to declare my own imperfection, and the influence

of this holy virgin, so great was the throng of people wishing to

confess that many times I found myself quite worn out and wearied by

the excess of fatigue. But Catharine went on praying incessantly; and

when the holy prey was won, she rejoiced fully in the Lord, as one who

had won a victory, ordering her other sons and daughters to wait upon

us, who were tending the nets that she had spread. No pen can express

the abundance of the joy in her mind, nor even the signs of gladness

that she gave, which indeed gave us so much internal delight as to

make us forget the recollection of any sadness whatever we had to

undergo." [Footnote 83]

[Footnote 83: _Legenda_, ii. ch., 7.]

Gregory XI. seems before his election to have been well acquainted

with St. Bridget, for he was the cardinal through whom she had wished

to communicate to Urban V. the message that she had received to

deliver to him. He kept up a correspondence with her as long as she

lived, and received some tremendous warnings from her about the return

of the Holy See to Rome. At the time of which {552} we are speaking,

1374, in the fifth year of his reign, he sent St. Bridget's confessor

to Catharine to recommend himself to her prayers. This may have been

the opening of the intercourse between them. Of the fourteen letters

to Gregory that remain to us, none seem to bear an earlier date than

1376. [Footnote 84] It does not appear certain, therefore, whether

she had any direct influence upon the Pope's desire to set on foot a

new crusade, which he urged on with much vigor about the time of the

peace granted to Visconti. But it was one of St. Catharine's three

darling projects; the other two being the reform of the prelacy and

the restoration of the papacy to Rome. The fact that her confessor and

friend, Fr. Raymond, was appointed to preach the crusade seems to

imply that she had been in communication with Gregory upon the

subject. We have already said that she proposed to Barnabo himself to

take the cross. The idea of sending all the turbulent spirits in

Europe to fight against the Turks was not a new one; Urban V. had

proposed it to the "companies" who ravaged France and even insulted

him by exacting a ransom for Avignon; but the freebooters naturally

preferred the less dangerous, though less glorious, life that they

were living in France. They were at last persuaded to enlist against

Peter the Cruel. In St. Catharine's time there was a proposal of the

same kind, with regard to the "bands" in Italy, whom we shall

presently see the instruments of the greatest possible mischief to

that unhappy country. We have a letter from her to Sir John Hawkwood,

from which it appears that he and his followers had actually Engaged

to serve in the crusade. Other letters on the subject of the same

expedition show that she was now in a position to address herself with

effect to the sovereigns of great states. She writes at this time to

Queen Joanna of Naples, and to the queen-mother of Hungary, in hopes

of her assistance in persuading her son, King Louis. But if the peace

with Barnabo had made the crusade once more possible, fresh troubles

soon ensued in Italy which prevented it, and which occasioned the

still greater prominence of St. Catharine as an earnest advocate of

peace.

[Footnote 84: Four of these letters (7-10) were written while

Catharine was at Avignon, and were only to be found in Latin among

the papers of B. Raymond, who was, it appears, interpreter between

the saint and the Pope, who did not understand her Tuscan dialect.

M. Chavin de Malan (ii., 369) conjectures that the first three of

them may be summaries of _conversations_ that passed at Avignon,

taken down afterward by B. Raymond. But internal evidence is against

this supposition; and it is not at all unlikely, as the opposition

to her influence was so strong, that the Pope preferred that she

should communicate with him by letter.]

The disturbances were not, this time, the work of the Visconti.

Barnabo turned them to his own advantage, but he was not their author.

Historians concur in attributing a feeling of general discontent with

the internal administration and external policy of the pontifical

government in Italy to the conduct of the French legates. We find very

strong charges against them; for example, in the chronicle of St.

Antoninus, written in the following century; but it may be questioned

whether he did more than repeat what he found in other Florentine

writers; and, in this case, the testimony of a Florentine is hardly to

be admitted without suspicion. But it is very likely that many of the

charges of tyranny, ambition, extortion, and luxury are not unfounded.

Still, the internal administration of the States of the Church had

been settled by Albornoz, and his system might have carried the

government through without an outbreak, even under the trial of

administrators quite unworthy to succeed him, had it not been for the

suspicions that arose, in cities external to the pontifical territory,

that its governors aimed at the subjugation of their neighbors. It

thus seemed to become their interest not only to defend themselves,

but to anticipate the danger by raising revolts in the States of the

Church. It is quite clear that Gregory XI. had no such design {553}

himself, and that he would not have tolerated it in his subordinates.

Neither are the acts of the latter such as cannot be explained on

other grounds. But what is clear to us at a distance was not

necessarily so clear to the contemporaries of St. Catharine. Certain

measures of the legate at Bologna, and of the governor of Perugia, had

an unfortunate look. In the first place, it seems that the diplomacy

of that time did not insist, in the case of a confederacy of a number

of powers against a common enemy, that peace should not be made by one

member of the league without the consent of the remainder. The peace

with Barnabo had been made, it appears, without the concurrence of

Florence, Pisa, Siena, and the other allies of the Pope. Another cause

of soreness was a measure adopted about the same time by the Cardinal

Legate of Bologna, which pressed hardly upon Tuscany. The last two

years had been years of great scarcity in that part of Italy, and he

now forbade the exportation of grain from the Legation. He was no

doubt afraid of relieving his neighbors at the risk of suffering

himself. But there was more to come. Sir John Hawkwood and his

followers had to be discharged on account of the peace; they were no

sooner dismissed than they invaded the Florentine territory, attempted

to make themselves masters of Prato, and ravaged the country up to the

gates of Florence itself. Thus soldiers, only a few days before in the

pay of the Holy See, were attacking one of its allies with fire and

sword. It looked very like an attempt to enslave Tuscany. At the same

time Siena had a complaint of the same sort against the abbot of

Montmajor at Perugia. The powerful family of the Salimbeni were at

that time in exile from Siena, the last revolution of which city had

put the supreme power into the hands of the popular party. The

pontifical governor of Perugia leagued himself with the exiles, and

thus appeared to be aiming at the destruction of the liberties of

Siena.

_Ergo omnis furiis surrexit Etruria justis._Nothing had indeed been

done which did not admit of explanation; And, if his legates had

really been guilty of aggression, Gregory XI. could, have readily

disavowed them. Indeed, he ordered the edict against the exportation

of grain from the Romagna to be revoked; in which, however, the

cardinal at Bologna refused to obey him. But this conciliatory order

came too late. Under such provocation men, and especially Italians,

would not wait for explanations. They were jealous of their liberties,

and they hated the idea of foreign domination; the representatives of

the pontifical government at the time were foreigners to them, and

seemed to be seeking to enslave them. Florence flew to arms: she had

been long devoted to the Holy See; now she gave herself over to the

rule of the faction within her, who had ever been the minority,

because they were the enemies of the Pope; and these men, feeling

themselves still in reality the weaker party, lost no time in plunging

into the most frantic excesses, that they might alienate their country

from the Holy Father beyond hope of reconciliation, and wreak their

own vengeance on their personal enemies so fully as to leave them no

chance of again recovering their power. Hawkwood was soon disposed of;

he was bought off for a large sum. The movement in Florence became a

revolution, with all its accompaniments of blood, spoliation, and

terror. The inquisitors were massacred, the prisons destroyed; the

prior of the Carthusians, who presented himself as papal envoy with

overtures of reconciliation, was torn to pieces, and his flesh thrown

to the dogs. The clergy were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the

Pope; the nomination of benefices assumed by the magistrates of the

republic. These, however, were all changed; a committee of eight, a

sort of Comité du Salut Publique--called, in derision, the Eight

Saints--seized the helm of government; it was a {554} complete reign

of terror. But they were not content with turning Florence against the

Pope; they sent envoys throughout the whole of Tuscany and Umbria,

inviting all the cities to join in league against the pontifical

government, and bearing with them red banners inscribed with the word

"Libertas." The conduct of the French governors had but too well

prepared the subjects of the Pope for these invitations. Citta di

Castello led the way; Perugia, Narni, Viterbo, Montefiascone followed;

before the end of 1375 nearly the whole of the pontifical territory,

the Patrimony, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the March of Ancona, were in

open revolt. All that Albornoz had done for the Holy See seemed to

have been done in vain. Bologna, almost alone, remained faithful; but

even there the government of the legate was very insecure.

It was felt at Avignon that something was now to be dealt with very

different even from a war against the Visconti. Some "companies" of

Bretons were then ravaging or ransoming cities in the south of France,

under two famous captains of the day, Jean de Malestroit and Silvestre

de Bude; they were enlisted under the flag of the Church, and prepared

to descend on Italy. But Gregory XI. determined to try the method of

conciliation before letting them loose. He sent envoys to Florence,

who offered terms to which no prudent person could make objection.

Perugia and Citta di Castello were to be free, but the Florentines

were to cease in their revolutionary propaganda in the States of the

Church, and particularly in Bologna. The "eight saints" had all that

was reasonable and good in Florence against them, and they dared not

openly refuse to entertain terms such as these. But they sent secret

instructions to their commander in the field while the negotiations

were being carried on; he marched on Bologna, raised the people in

revolt, and made the legate a prisoner. They succeeded in their

ulterior object: the Papal envoys left Florence without concluding any

peace.

After this fresh provocation, nothing remained for the Pope but to

attack the Florentines with every weapon at his disposal. The Breton

companies were ordered to march, under the general command of the

Cardinal Robert of Geneva, a man, it seems, with more of the soldier

than the priest about him, who was to be, within three years from the

time that he began his expedition, the first of the miserable line of

Antipopes who opposed themselves to the legitimate successors of

Gregory XI. His present campaign was distinguished chiefly by two

events, neither of which cast credit on the pontifical cause: a treaty

he made with Visconti (who had before allied himself with the

Florentines), by which the Guelfic party in the north of Italy were

sacrificed to the enmity of the tyrant; and the awful sack and

massacre of Cesena by the Breton troops. But the Pope used spiritual

weapons also against offenders like the Florentines; and in their case

the temporal consequences of the solemn excommunication under which

they fell made themselves far more swiftly and keenly felt than in

that of a great seigneur like Barnabo. Their merchants and agents were

in every country of Europe: the sentence of the Pope exposed them

everywhere to confiscation, imprisonment, and slavery; their commerce

was ruined, and it is said that the immediate loss to the city

amounted to three million florins. At all events, early in the year

1376, and but a few weeks aft«r they had chosen not to avail

themselves of the moderate overtures made by the Papal envoys, the

Florentines began to desire peace. It is probable that there had

always been but a narrow majority in favor of the violent measures of

which we have spoken; now, the great misfortunes of the state made

even its revolutionary rulers look about them for a mediator, for

their first attempt at negotiation had proved a failure. They had sent

two {555} ambassadors to Avignon; but instead of apologizing for their

undeniable aggressions, they laid all the blame on the pontifical

delegates, and were dismissed by Gregory with a confirmation of their

sentence. A mediator, therefore, was necessary; and instead of asking

the kind offices of the emperor, or the king of France, or some other

of the sovereigns of Europe, they determined to seek the help of

Catharine of Siena.

Catharine had been in the midst of the tumult, doing what she could

to maintain peace. It seems that Gregory XI. had begged her to go to

Lucca, where she was held in great veneration, to keep that city from

joining the league against the Church. She had also exerted her

influence at Pisa, and seems to have succeeded in both places, though

with some difficulty. From Pisa she wrote the first of her series of

letters to the Pope. She was still there when the magistrates of

Florence invited her to undertake their cause. She visited the city,

conversed with the principal men of all parties, and it was agreed

that they should send another and a humbler embassy to Avignon, on

condition that she should precede the envoys, and endeavor to soften

the heart of the Holy Father toward his rebellious children. She was

already sending letters to Avignon imploring peace, and urging the

Pope to return to Rome, and to raise the standard of the crusaders, in

order to unite all discordant elements by directing them to a common

object. She had sent her most intimate confidant and confessor, Father

Raymond, to plead the cause of the Florentines; and soon followed him

herself, accompanied by a number of her "disciples," arriving at

Avignon about the middle of June, 1376.

As is so often the case in the lives of the chosen instruments of

Providence, Catharine was to do a great work at Avignon, but not the

work for which she apparently went there. She was received by the Pope

with the greatest kindness and distinction; she was even intrusted by

him with full powers to make peace with the Florentines. But Gregory

XI. knew the men with whom he was dealing better than she. The

government of Florence was still in the hands of the eight; they did

not really desire peace, at least on any terms that the Pope could

grant them. They had yielded to the vast majority of their

fellow-citizens in seeming to wish for what would be in reality the

end of their own power. The envoys delayed their journey to Avignon:

when they did arrive, and Catharine proposed to use the full powers

the Pops had given her, they replied that they had no authority to

treat with _her_; nor were they more honest in their dealings with the

Pope himself. The time, then, for the particular task that Catharine

had undertaken was not yet come; but she was at Avignon now, at the

side of Gregory XI., and she was to decide him to a step far more

important than the granting a peace to Florence.

The character of Gregory XI. is so constantly represented in the same

colors by historians of every grade, that it would seem almost rash to

suppose that they could all have been mistaken in the picture. It has

a softness and beauty about it that are extremely touching, when

viewed in the light of his many misfortunes and early death,

overshadowed as it was by the threats of the still greater troubles

from which it saved him. He had been marked out for high

ecclesiastical dignity from the very first, and was but eighteen when

his uncle, Clement VI., made him cardinal. His career after his

elevation justified his premature advancement; he made himself famous

for learning, and even more so for his tender piety and the unsullied

purity of his life. His humility and sweetness won all hearts: perhaps

the more because his frail health, his pale countenance, and evident

delicacy of constitution, gave a kind of plaintive charm to his very

{556} appearance. Though he was barely forty years of age at the death

of Urban V., he had been elected Pope after the conclave had lasted

but a single night. He had refused at first, but at last had been

forced to accept the crown of St. Peter as a matter of duty. He was

then only in deacon's orders. No one has ever questioned the purity of

his aims, or even the rightness of his views and the soundness of his

judgment. We have already said, with regard to one great paramount

question of the time, that he had secretly vowed to take back the

papacy to Rome, if he ever should be elected pope. But, inheriting as

he did the traditions of Clement VI., surrounded in France by noble

and powerful relatives, and by cardinals almost exclusively his

fellow-countrymen, and with health and constitution that were almost

sure to be ruined at once by the air of Rome, everything seemed to

forbid him to make the effort that was required. The earlier years of

his reign had passed away, not indeed without many thoughts and even

declarations on the subject, but without any steps being taken to put

the design in execution. In 1374 he had announced his intention of

visiting Rome to the emperor; in the following January he had written

in the same sense to Edward III. and to other kings of Europe. But

that summer and autumn saw the outbreak at Florence, and the great

revolution that arrayed almost the whole of the Ecclesiastical States

in rebellion against the Church; and the advocates of the French

residence of the papacy must have thought themselves safe now that

Italy had risen against Gregory. He was not, like Urban V., a pope

elected from outside the College of Cardinals, with little sympathy

and but few ties with them. He was of one of the great Limousin

families, the nephew of the most brilliant of the Avignon popes,

surrounded by powerful relatives, all of whom were interested in

keeping him where he was. The quiet security of Provence suited him,

and he was one of those gentle characters, not wanting in ordinary

firmness and decision, which still are more fitted for tranquil times

than for days of disturbance, and are more capable of suffering and of

patience than of initiating bold measures and breasting the waves of a

great emergency. Family and personal influence had much weight with

him; not from any active ambition or spirit of nepotism, so much as

that it had become at Avignon a matter almost of course that many of

the splendid prizes in the gift of the Popes should be bestowed on

their relatives. He himself owed his position originally to that

custom. At a time when reform was much needed in the prelacy, and many

abuses and scandals existed which required to be sternly rebuked and

punished, he could see what was wanting more easily than carry it out

with a severity alien to his nature. He was influenced by the

atmosphere around him. In the same way, notwithstanding his own strong

inclination to grant peace on any terms to the Florentines, he seems

to have yielded as to his actual policy to the more violent and

relentless counsels of the French cardinals, headed by Robert of

Geneva, who led the Breton companies over the Alps. It might well have

been thought that such a pontiff would not now act against the advice

and the wishes of all around him, and that the actual state of Italy

would be enough to make him adjourn indefinitely his promised journey

to Rome.

To such a character it is sometimes everything to have support and

companionship--the mind and the voice of another, however inferior,

that seem to give body and life to thoughts and designs not new

indeed, but which seemed before to belong rather to the world of

dreams and imaginations than of possible realities; to change wishes

and longings into practical resolutions; to chase away phantom

difficulties, and nerve the will to efforts and sacrifices which the

conscience {557} has long prompted. With all of us our own ideas and

designs seem sometimes to date their real existence from the moment

that we found they were shared by some one else. In the case of

Gregory XI., he seems, before the arrival of Catharine at Avignon, to

have been almost alone in his wish to return to Italy; and he had

already seen something of St. Bridget, and learnt from intercourse

with her what the personal influence of great sanctity might be.

Catharine at once won his perfect confidence, and her presence gave

him the courage to follow out the course which he had long felt to be

the right one. It is this which makes it historically true that she

had so great a part in the final return of the Holy See from Avignon.

It is easy to find reasons why Gregory should have returned; it is

easy to show that there was danger that an attempt might be made by

the Romans to give their city a bishop of their own creation; or, on

the other hand, that Gregory had intended to take the step long before

he took it. If these things are alleged to show that the influence of

St. Catharine has been exaggerated by her historians, they are beside

the point. Her providential mission at Avignon was not to put new

considerations before the mind of Gregory, but to strengthen his will

to act upon considerations already familiar to him.

The esteem in which the Pope held her was not only manifested by the

reception he gave her, and by his inviting her even to speak in public

as to what she thought to be required for the best interests of the

Church; it also shielded and defended her from the dislike with which

her unwelcome presence was viewed by many a magnificent prelate and

many a brilliant official of the court of Avignon. The reforms that

she spoke of as so necessary, and the return to Rome that she

recommended, were equally distasteful to them. Three of the most

learned prelates asked leave of the Pope to visit her, and began to

catechise her most severely both as to her presumption in coming as

the envoy of Florence, and as to her preternatural gifts of prayer and

her extraordinary mode of life. But they left her overwhelmingly

convinced of her sanctity and wonderful gifts. The fine ladies about

the court--the sisters, nieces, and relations of the Pope and the

cardinals--looked on her with instinctive dread. Some of them even

tried to patronize and make her the fashion; but she either exhorted

them plainly to conversion, or turned from them with that stern

silence with which her Master received the overtures of the

blood-stained paramour of Herodias. One of them--a niece of the Pope--

knelt beside her in apparent devotion, as she was rapt in prayer

before communion, and plunged a needle or bodkin into her bare foot,

to see whether she could feel it. When her state of abstraction

ceased, Catharine could hardly walk, and her sandal was full of

congealed blood. The French king heard of her influence with the Pope,

and sent his brother, the Duke of Anjou, to dissuade Gregory from

listening to her; but Catharine won the respect and admiration of the

duke, prevailed on him to offer himself for the crusade, and suggested

him to the Pope as its captain-in-chief. Then an attempt was made to

influence Gregory by means of the deference that he paid to the advice

of saintly souls. A forged letter was sent him--as it appears, in the

name of the holy Peter of Aragon--telling him that if he went to Italy

he would be poisoned. Catharine showed him that the letter was not

such as a servant of God would write, and that poison could be given

him in France as well as in Italy. After all, the Pope still

hesitated; he made preparations and issued orders, but it was with

slowness and reluctance; and at any time a change might come over the

state of affairs in Italy that might be the occasion of indefinite

delay. One day again he asked her opinion. She said she was a poor

weak woman; how should she {558} give advice to the sovereign Pontiff?

"I do not ask you to counsel me," he replied, "but to tell me what is

the will of God." Again she excused herself; and Gregory again urged

her, commanding her at last, by virtue of her obedience, to tell him

what she knew of God's will as to the matter. She bowed her head--"Who

knows the will of God better than your holiness, who have promised him

by vow to return to Rome?" Gregory had never revealed his vow to

living soul; and from that moment his determination was taken. Still

the opposition was great and powerful. The cardinals urged him with

the example of an excellent Pope, Clement IV., who had never done

anything without the approval of the Sacred College. Catharine met

their arguments, she even went so far as to urge the Pope to depart

secretly, so obstinate and so influential was the party that wished to

retain him in France. At length, on September 13, 1376, amid the

remonstrances of his family and the tears of his aged father, as well

as the sullen complaints of the whole court, Gregory XI. left Avignon.

Catharine had remained to the last, and then went on foot with her

companions to Genoa, whither the Pope was to pass by sea. It seemed as

if every kind of influence that could beat down his courage was to be

allowed to work upon the failing heart of Gregory. Everything that

could be turned into a bad omen was carefully noted. His horse refused

to let him mount; then it became so restive that another had to be

brought. As he passed by Novis, Orgon, and Aix to Marseilles,

everywhere the inhabitants were in tears and gloom. Marseilles itself,

when he came to embark, was the scene of a grand explosion of grief.

Then there came the terrors of a dangerous voyage, from the extremely

severe weather encountered by the fleet. The grand master of the

Knights of St. John himself took the helm of the galley in which the

Pope sailed--a weather-beaten veteran, accustomed to perils of all

sorts, who had to exert all his skill under the storm that came on as

they made across toward Genoa. They were obliged to put into

Villafranca for some days. It was not till the 18th of October,

sixteen days after leaving Marseilles, that Genoa was reached. Here

the Pope was met by bad news from Rome and from Florence; the

Florentines, alarmed at his approach, were preparing for the most

desperate hostilities; the Romans seemed quite unwilling to put the

government of the city into his hands. A consistory was held (the

greater number of the cardinals were with the Pope), and the

resolution was adopted not to proceed further with the journey. All

seemed lost; but Catharine with her company was in Genoa. The Pope

sought her out--it is said, by night; and from her calm and fervent

words gained fresh strength and courage to pursue his journey to the

end. [Footnote 85]

[Footnote 85: See Capecelatro, "_Storia di Santa Catarina_," lib.

v., p. 222, 2d ed.]

So, after ten days spent at Genoa, the fleet once more put to sea, to

be driven again into Porto Fino, where the feast of All Saints was

kept. It arrived at Leghorn on the 7th of November, and there again

lingered ten or eleven days. As far as Piombino all went well. When

the galleys left that port, another storm--the most violent of all

they had met with--arose, and drove them back shattered and disabled;

three cardinals were seriously ill, one of whom died at Pisa a few

days later. At last Corneto was reached on December 6, more than two

months after the departure from Marseilles. Gregory remained there for

several weeks to regain his strength, and then sailed up the Tiber,

landing near the basilica of St. Paul on January 17, 1377, the day

before the feast of the Roman Chair of St Peter. His entrance was a

triumph that seemed to promise him every security for peace and

tranquillity; and the joy and devotion of the Romans may {559} have

taken away for the moment the mournful feelings with which he had

turned his back on France. Thus, a year and a half after the

revolution at Florence, which, had caused so rapid and widespread a

defection among the cities of the Pontifical States, and seemed to

threaten the very existence of the temporal power of the Church, these

very events, which might have seemed likely to furnish reason for the

prolonged exile of the papacy, brought about, under the providence of

God, the fulfilment of the resolution to return to Rome which the Pope

had so long delayed to accomplish. The instrument of the deliverance

of the Holy See from its dangerous position was the envoy of its

rebellious children, the humble maiden from Siena.

------

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

Primeval night had repossess'd

Her empire in the fields of peace;

Calm lay the kine on earth's dark breast;

The earth lay calm in heaven's embrace.

That hour, where shepherds kept their flocks,

From God a glory sudden fell;

The splendor smote the trees and rocks.

And lay like dew along the dell.

God's angel close beside them stood:

"Fear naught," that angel said, and then,

"Behold, I bring you tidings good:

The Saviour Christ is born to men."

And straightway round him myriads sang

Loud song again, and yet again,

Till all the hollow valley rang

"Glory to God, and peace to men."

The shepherds went and wondering eyed,

In Bethlehem born, the heavenly stranger.

Mary and Joseph knelt beside:

The Babe was cradled in the manger!

------

{560}

From The St. James Magazine.

LAW AND LITERATURE.

Notwithstanding the seeming incongruity, there subsists a very

intimate connection between law and literature. To the legal

profession, more than any other, we are indebted for the magnitude and

splendor of our literature. Nor is it only with one or two branches or

divisions of literature that the connection exists. On the contrary,

there is scarcely a single department in which the legal profession is

not represented. History, biography, philosophy, metaphysics, poetry,

the drama, fiction, oratory, criticism, and even theology, have all

been contributed to by men who at one time or other were connected

with the legal profession. Nor is the literature which has emanated

from that source of a superficial or evanescent nature. Much of it has

passed away, and is now almost unknown; but a great deal still

remains, forming some of the best and most endurable of our classics.

And these contributions have been--and still are being--made in spite

of the opposition and discountenance of the legal profession itself.

There is an opinion very prevalent among the public generally, and the

legal profession in particular, that the study of literature is at

variance and inconsistent with the study of law; that the more the

former is indulged in, the more the latter will decline. In support of

this opinion we are told that very few men have distinguished

themselves in both avocations; that men of great literary attainments

have seldom risen to eminence in the legal profession. That is, no

doubt, true; but I attribute it to a very different cause. I consider

that the study of literature must have a beneficial effect upon a

lawyer, provided that it is made subservient to the business of his

profession.

The duties which lawyers are called upon to discharge are many and

various, and consequently a vast deal of general knowledge is

indispensable to the formation of a really good lawyer. It is not

sufficient that he is well versed in legal principles and precedents.

Without these he cannot succeed in his profession; but they are not

the only requisites. There are many cases in which legal principle and

precedent are only of secondary importance. It is when he is called

upon to deal with such cases that the lawyer feels the advantages of

varied information. If he is ignorant of almost everything but law, he

must be painfully aware of his utter incompetence to do justice to his

client. He is compelled to grope his way like a man in the dark; he

wanders at random, stumbling over everything that lies in his path,

and ends, it may be, by falling into a ditch from which he vainly

attempts to extricate himself--every attempt only causing him to sink

deeper--and is at last compelled to call for help. But it is different

with the man who, in addition to his legal knowledge, is possessed of

much general and varied information. He can always see his way, and,

if assistance is necessary, he knows where to seek for, and seldom

fails in obtaining it. It is only to a lawyer of this latter stamp

that any man with his eyes open would intrust the care of interests

which involved other than strictly legal questions.

Now if it be true that a large amount of general knowledge is

necessary to the formation of a really good lawyer, then it must be

admitted that the study {561} of literature is an indispensable part

of his professional education. The arts and sciences are all

represented in literature; and it is only in the study of literature

that the requisite general information can be gained. The error

appears to me to consist in confounding the term _literature_ with

_amusing literature_. This confusion of terms is very common; but it

is also very absurd. When I speak of "literature," I use the word in

its most comprehensive sense; and if I were to be understood as

meaning solely "amusing literature," my meaning would be grossly

perverted. There is no ground for accepting a limited interpretation

unless the term used is expressly qualified.

Ease, fluency, and polish, not only in speaking, but also in writing,

are likewise indispensable to a lawyer, particularly in the higher

walks of the profession. In order to attain these requisites,

conciseness, concentration, and arrangement of thought must be

diligently studied. There is nothing which tends more to the

acquirement of such qualities than the careful examination of them as

displayed in the writings and speeches of others, and the frequent

expression of our own thoughts, both in writing and in speech. Law

treatises, it need scarcely be said, are not conspicuous as models of

either ease, fluency, or polish; and therefore the lawyer who aspires

to these accomplishments must seek elsewhere for his models. In this

respect, also, the study of literature is beneficial to the lawyer;

and if attentive reading be accompanied with frequent careful writing

and speaking, he cannot fail ultimately to gain the objects of his

desire. If the members of the legal profession would bestow more pains

than they do to the acquisition of a good style of writing and

speaking, the advantages which would accrue to them would greatly

outweigh all the trouble incurred. I have seen letters and even

pleadings written, and heard speeches delivered, by men of eminence in

the legal profession, which displayed either the grossest carelessness

or the most lamentable ignorance of the rules, not only of

composition, but also of grammar; and such as would have been almost

inexcusable in a schoolboy. It is a common notion that elegance is not

required, and is out of place in law papers and in letters. I for one

cannot agree in that opinion. An elegant style is always desirable. It

is preposterous to assert--as many people do--that attention to style

begets a habit of neglecting the substance for the sake of the shadow.

On the contrary, an elegant style adds to the effect both of speech

and writing; and therefore it ought to be cultivated by every lawyer.

So much for the general objection that the study of literature is

incompatible with the study of law. I think I have said quite

sufficient to show that it ought to form a part of the education of

every lawyer. But with reference to the proof of the assertion, that

men of distinguished literary attainments have seldom risen to

eminence in the legal profession, I could name many men who have

rendered themselves conspicuous for their literary abilities, and, at

the same time, gained the highest honors of their profession. Yet I

admit that overwhelming evidence of a contrary nature might easily be

adduced; but I do not admit the reason to be that the one profession

is incompatible with the other. I maintain the reverse. The reason why

comparatively few lawyers have risen to eminence, both in literature

and in law, appears to me to be simply this, that whenever their

literary leanings became known, the opportunity was denied them of

distinguishing themselves in their profession; the consequence of

which was that they abandoned the study of law altogether, and betook

themselves to the more agreeable and less laborious occupation of

literature. And it must also be borne in mind that law is not always

studied with the view of engaging in its practice; but often with the

{562} sole purpose of gaining admission to the bar for the sake of its

social advantages, or with the aim of acquiring such a knowledge as

will be useful in legislative discussion.

I now proceed to consider the causes which lead to the intimate

connection between law and literature. I do not think they are

difficult of explanation. Speaking generally, it may be said that the

lawyers who have distinguished themselves in literature have been for

the most part members of the bar. Comparatively few have been members

of the other branches of the profession. In England intending

barristers must be students of an inn of court for three years,

[Footnote 86] during which time they are not permitted to engage in

any business. In Scotland, too, every applicant for admission into the

faculty of advocates must have graduated either in arts or in laws; or

undergo an examination in Latin, Greek (or in his option, in lieu of

Greek, two of the following languages, viz., French, German, Italian,

and Spanish), ethical and metaphysical philosophy, and logic or (in

his option) mathematics, beside an examination in the civil law and

the law of Scotland; and one year must be passed without an

occupation. Having been called to the bar, a few years generally

elapse before much business is intrusted to them, and often it never

comes at all. During all this time something must be done--An

occupation of some kind must be found either for pleasure or to kill

time; or it may be to earn a means of subsistence. Literature--to

which their previous training inclines them--is the only employment

which is available; and accordingly literature is resorted to. A taste

for letters is thus fostered. Its gratification has a twofold

advantage, it affords both pleasure and profit. It becomes a habit,

and is indulged in on every available occasion. There is always plenty

of leisure, at least for many, years, and that leisure is devoted to

literature. The employment is so seductive that in many cases its

legal votaries are drawn away from their regular studies--which

unfortunately often happen not to be profitable in a pecuniary sense--

and adopt literature as a profession. Even lawyers with a large

practice can occasionally find time for indulging in literary

pursuits. During vacation they have plenty of leisure, and as they are

accustomed to constant hard work in session, they experience a want

and a craving whenever the have nothing to do, and this they endeavor

to satisfy by devoting themselves to literature. Many of the most

eminent men at the bar occupy the greater portion of their spare time

in literary studies.

[Footnote 86: Now, before being admitted as _students_ they must have

passed a public examination at an university, or undergo an

examination in Latin, English language, and English history.]

The practice of law eminently qualifies a man for attaining

distinction in literature. It engenders rapidity of thought,

systematic arrangement of arguments and ideas, and facility of

expression. Lawyers in the enjoyment of any considerable practice are

almost constantly called upon to form their opinion and give it

expression, apparently without time for even the most superficial

reflection. Continual exercise renders these easy to them. In setting

forth their arguments both in written and in oral pleadings they are

trained to habits of carefulness and close reasoning; because they

know very well that any inconsistencies or false reasoning will at

once be discovered by the judges whom they are addressing, or by the

opposite counsel. What would impose upon a jury, or upon an ordinary

reader or listener, will not impose either upon the judges or opposing

counsel. They are thus led to say what they wish to say in the

clearest manner, and in the way which is most likely to succeed in

gaining the object in view. As they are compelled to avoid false

reasoning and inconsistencies themselves, so they are ever on the

outlook for them on the part of {563} an opponent--it becomes, in

fact, a habit. Again, the various duties which they are called upon to

discharge enable them to pass from one subject to another with ease

and readiness, and compel them to acquire a vast amount of general

information which is carefully stored up for future use. The habits

thus engendered and constantly exercised, either in written pleading

or in oral debate, are easily transferred to literature when that is

indulged in. As perspicuity, arrangement, and close reasoning are the

very qualities which lead to literary success, and as these are more

exercised and consequently more perfect among lawyers than among any

other class of men, the reason why they occupy such an eminent

position in literature is easily understood.

There are two departments of literature to which the foregoing

observations are applicable only to a limited extent--poetry and

fiction. In many respects poetry and fiction are analogous: and the

old adage, "_Poeta nascitur, non fit_," may, therefore, with almost

equal propriety, be applied to the writer of fiction. However true it

may be that the poet _is born_, there can be no doubt that the

development of the poetic faculty is quite as much a matter of hard

study and practice as the development of any other inborn faculty. The

study of law is the opposite of poetical; but this very antagonism

begets in the lawyer, by comparison, a keener relish for and

appreciation of poetry, when he turns to it in his hours of leisure.

And if he is gifted with the "faculty divine," the delight taken in

its cultivation will be greater, because it is to him a relief from

the dry details of his ordinary pursuits. He sees, too, so much of

human life--of character and passion--in the course of his

professional career, that he is enabled to delineate with truth, with

strict adherence to reality, the feelings and emotions which he

attempts to exhibit in the creatures of his imagination. These,

combined with the habits of continuity of thought and forcible

expression engendered by his professional studies, must contribute in

no slight degree to his success as a poet or novelist. I do not mean

to say that any lawyer may write a good novel or poem if he will only

apply himself to the task. All I assert is that if he is gifted with

the poetic faculty, his professional studies, when properly attended

to, will contribute materially to his success as a poet or novelist.

------

MISCELLANY.

_Fossil Wood in Flint_.--An interesting specimen of this kind, which

is in the Oxford collection, has lately been described and figured in

a paper by Professor Phillips. The nodule of flint, which, when broken

across, disclosed the contained wood, was of an elongated oval form,

and had the uneven and knotted surface which frequently indicates

aggregation on a sponge. The fractured surface showed partial change

of color by watery action from without, and many variations of tint

within, arising from some original differences in the composition of

the mass. The color was, on the whole, somewhat lighter than is common

in flints of the "Upper Chalk." Examined with a lens, it showed traces

of spicula and other organic bodies; but it was impossible to trace

through the mass a distinct spongy structure. The wood lay in the

centre, and the figure of the flint was, in a general sense, conformed

to it, and embraced it equally on all sides. There was a certain

distinctness of color in the flint {564} where it lay in contact with

the wood. The wood was a fragment worn and rounded in some of the

prominent parts, and looked like a small portion of a pine branch

which had been exposed to rough treatment, so as to present a wasted

surface deprived of the bark. It was entirely siliceous, and exhibited

its vegetable structure most perfectly. Traversing the woody fibres

were several short, tubular masses swollen at the end, and marked more

or less plainly with transverse rings. These Professor Phillips

supposed to be flint moulds of cavities left by boring shells,

probably _Teredinidae_. It would appear that these animals must have

begun their operations in a young state on the wood, when it was

reduced to its present form and size; for the moulds which remain in

their holes appear to be quite small at the surface, and to expand

internally. The writer of the paper becomes absolutely poetical in his

speculations upon the remnant of extinct vegetation which he

described. He writes: "Far away from the Cretaceous Sea of Albion,

among the mountains previously uplifted in the West, from which had

flowed the great river of the Wealden, we see a forest of coniferous

trees. Whirled and broken to fragments by the rushing stream which

received their decaying stems, the ruins of the forest reach the sea,

and some few pieces float far from the shore beyond the area of

deposited mud and drifted sand. Attacked by xylophagous mollusks, and

sinking to the ocean bed, one, at least, serves as the nucleus for

organic growth and accretion." Professor Phillips does not here refer

to ordinary accretion; he conceives of the block as first surrounded

by organic matter, and then, when buried in the cretaceous deposit,

serving as a centre of attraction for siliceous solutions, such as

have more than filled to solidity the tissues of sponges.--_Popular

Science Review_.

_The Removal of Neuralgic Pain_.--It has lately been stated in some of

the French journals that Dr. Caminiti, of Messina, has discovered a

remedy for certain forms of neuralgia. A patient of his had long been

suffering from trifacial neuralgia; she could not bear to look at

luminous objects, her eyes were constantly watering, and she was in

constant pain. Blisters, preparations of belladonna, and hydrochlorate

of morphine, friction with tincture of aconite, pills of acetate of

morphine and camphor, subcarbonate of iron, etc., had been employed

with but partial success, or none whatever. At length Dr. Caminiti,

attributing the obstinacy of the affection to the variations of

temperature so frequent in Sicily, adopted the expedient of covering

all the painful parts with a coating of collodion containing a certain

proportion of hydrochlorate of morphine. This treatment was perfectly

successful; the relief was instantaneous and permanent, and the

coating fell off in the course of one or two days.

_The Maltese Fossil Elephant_.--The curious pigmy pachyderm whose

remains were some time ago discovered in the Maltese bone-caves, has

been indefatigably investigated by its original discoverer, Dr. Leith

Adams. This gentleman has recently met with further relics of the

fossil elephant in several new localities. He met with its teeth in

great quantities in a cavern near Crendi. In a gap, evidently at one

time the bed of a torrent, he has discovered the teeth and bones of

thirty more individuals. The skeletons are met with jammed between

large blocks of stone in a way which shows clearly that the carcases

must have been hurled into their present situations by violent floods

or freshets. Dr. Adams has now almost completed the skeleton of this

wonderful little representative of an order which, till this discovery

was recorded, had been commonly termed gigantic. Dr. Adams concludes,

from his numerous inquiries, that the Maltese elephant did not exceed

the height of a small pony.

_The Volcanic District of Chili_.--Some short time since, M. Pissis,

the great explorer of South American geology, transmitted to M. Elie

de Beaumont an elaborate description of the volcanic regions of Chili.

He found the volcano of Chillans again in a state of eruption. This is

a very rare circumstance in the volcanoes of the Andes, where the

eruptions generally succeed each other only at very long intervals.

The present eruption, which is much more extensive than the last one,

commenced toward the end of last November, at a new point, situated

about 200 metres below the summit of the grand cone, the new cone

having toward the end of January attained a height of fifty {565}

metres. The lava, escaping by two apertures near the summit, had

already reached the vast glacier surrounding this massive volcano. The

grand cone, which was covered with snow during the eruption, had the

appearance of being completely bare, yet the snow had not been melted,

but was covered with a great quantity of projected substances, which

formed a layer over the snow of many decimetres in thickness. The

alternation of glaciers with layers of scoriae are frequently met with

in the volcanic cones of the Andes; wherever natural clefts occur, a

great number of these layers may be seen successively superposed. The

volcano of Antuco, visited last year, had been in eruption on a small

scale in 1863. As no solid bodies were being projected at the time of

his visit, M. Pissis was enabled to examine the interior of the

crater, and, favored by a strong westerly wind, to observe it without

being annoyed by the acid vapors which escape in abundance. The

principal column of vapor proceeded from an aperture nearly circular,

being recognized as that through which the lava had escaped. Its

diameter was only from four to five feet.

_Transferring Photographs to Metal for Printing_--Some months since we

called attention to some very promising experiments in this direction,

conducted by Mr. Woodbury, of Manchester. These have resulted in a

process recently patented, which is likely to assume a very important

position in the arts. Mr. Fox Talbot has the merit of first pointing

out the facta upon which it is based. This gentleman, to whom

photographers too often forget how much they owe, discovered in

connection with one of his photo-engraving processes that gelatine

when dissolved in hot water, if mixed with bichromate of potash or

ammonia, dried, and exposed to the action of light, would become

insoluble--a result due to the decomposition of the alkaline

bichromate and the liberation of chromic acid. It will at once,

therefore, be seen that a coat of the bichromated gelatine on a glass

or metal plate placed under a negative and exposed to light, would,

when subjected to the action of hot water, be dissolved away in some

parts, and in other parts unaffected, thus producing a photographic

positive _in relief_. Acting on these facts, Mr. Woodbury takes the

image in relief so produced, and either by mechanical pressure with

some soft metal, such as type metal, or by the usual process of

electrotyping, produces an _intaglio_ impression therefrom. A properly

prepared ink, formed with gelatine and some black or other colored

pigment, is then passed over the plate, with which the impression is

filled up even to the surface. Of course the gradations of _relief_ in

the bichromatic gelatine print form gradations of _depth_ in the metal

intaglio, in which again the ink, being transparent, forms gradations

of blackness proportioned to its varying thicknesses. When this ink is

transferred to paper, delivered as a jelly is from its mold, the

delicate tints, the deepest shadows, and the intermediate gradations

of the photographic negative are faithfully reproduced. In preparing

the relievo, two ounces of gelatine are dissolved in six of water, and

to this is added three-quarters of an ounce of lump sugar. Four ounces

of a solution containing sixty grains of bichromate of ammonia to the

ounce being added to this, the whole is then, while quite warm,

strained. A plate of glass is next covered with a sheet of talc

temporarily fixed by a few drops of water; the talc is coated with the

above, and being sensitive to light, is placed in the dark to set.

This done, the coated talc is removed, a negative laid over the talc,

and exposed to light in the usual way, the only change being that of

causing the light to pass through a glass condenser and fall on it in

a parallel direction. The hot water is then applied as above stated.

In order to insure perfect flatness while the cast is being taken, the

talc side of the film should be again fastened to a plate of glass

with Canada balsam. Mr. Woodbury calculates that with three or four

presses going, these mechanically printed photographs could be

produced at the rate of 120 per hour. Apart from ordinary purposes,

the process can be applied to glass for transparencies; to china for

burning in with enamel colors; to the production, at a cheaper rate,

of porcelain transparencies, etc., etc. At present the prints

exhibited are said to lack clearness; and the high relief of the

extreme darks is also objected to.--_Popular Science Review_.

{566}

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

MEMOIR AND SERMONS OF THE REV. FRANCIS A. BAKER,

Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul. Edited by the Rev. A. F.

Hewit. Crown octavo, 504 pp. New York: Lawrence Kehoe.

Now and then, in our way through this world, we encounter persons of a

peculiar character, so placidly gentle in their manners, so unworldly

in all their ways, that they do not seem fairly to belong to this

world at all. Not that they are melancholy, reserved, and unsocial. On

the contrary, they play their own part in society thoroughly and well;

so well, indeed, so thoroughly do they harmonize in every circle where

they may be thrown, so little they display of that roughness and

rudeness, that froward importunity, that obstinate self-will,

self-conceit, and self-devotion which are so common among us, although

we acknowledge them as blemishes upon our nature--in fine, so much

more perfectly do they wear the garment of humanity than we ourselves,

and so easily, that they seem like better creatures from a better

world, mingling among us like good angels sent hither to exhibit

before our eyes the perfect type of a true manhood. Of course, all men

have their temptations and imperfections, but the ordinary life of

some rare men is such as we have described; so they appear before the

world, and so they live in the memories of their friends. So will

Father Baker long live in many memories. That joyous face, that sweet

smile, that gentle voice, that soft step, have passed away. One may

visit the Paulists still in their convent, and a thousand attractions

lead us there, but we shall miss Father Baker. So quietly, so easily,

so naturally he dropped into his place--and everyplace was his that

charity, and courtesy, and Christian zeal found open--no one could

appreciate how much he did, what large areas he occupied on this scene

of life, until he was taken away. Who will now make up the loss to his

brethren? Who will take his place in the missions? Who will comfort

and sustain that long line of penitents? Who will guide the feet of

those converts? Who will supply in the churches that silver voice, now

soft as the flute, now thrilling like the trumpet, that roused us and

warned us, that pierced our hearts betimes as with a sword, and yet so

kindly that we would not wish to escape unwounded? Our sorrow for such

a loss can find no refuge but in resignation. "The Lord gave, And the

Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

In this volume of memoirs F. Hewit has undertaken a far greater task

than merely to respond to the fond recollection of friends, or to pay

a tribute to the memory of a good priest. He has made a most valuable

contribution to the Catholic literature of this country. One of the

most pregnant periods in the history of our American Church is that

during which Father Baker was either a student or a Protestant

preacher. That aspiration toward Catholicism called Puseyism

(although, in truth, Dr. Pusey was not its chief ruling and guiding

spirit) which swelled in the hearts of so many members of the Church

of England, so called, who struggled for a reformation, or

restoration, until their great water-logged craft, timbered, and

tinkered, and coppered by so many sovereigns and parliaments, shook

and trembled in every joint, and which finally burst forth in a flood

of conversions to the Catholic Church--that memorable movement gave

birth to a parallel agitation here, and with the same results. In no

part of the country perhaps, New York excepted, was the storm greater

than in the diocese of Baltimore, where Father Baker and his

biographer then resided. In these memoirs we see graphically portrayed

the rising, the swelling, and the various fluctuations of that storm.

All this belongs to Catholic history, and Catholics ought to know it.

Episcopalians are glad to forget those days, and no writer of theirs

will dare to recall the stirring scenes which displayed their own

religion in its poverty and helplessness, and drove so many gallant

but tempest-weary souls into the haven of the true Church. Those,

however, who like Father Hewit participated in this revival of true

faith, and had the courage to follow the truth which it {567}

unfolded, have no reason to be ashamed of the history, and he gives it

in life-like colors. This part of his task is charmingly done. We have

here descriptions of Baltimore and its churches, both Anglican and

Catholic; early rambles of the author with Father Baker through the

city, when a secret impulse led them so often to visit the Catholic

sanctuaries, especially that quiet little Sulpician church of St.

Mary's--sweet and holy spot it is indeed; the amusing efforts of the

Protestant bishop and his disciples to ape Catholicism, at least in

its exterior dress, with their long cassocks, crosses, their profound

bows before naked altars draped in broadcloth or velvet, like

drawing-room tables; the very natural wrath of the Low-Churchmen--all

this is placed before us very naturally, and with a life-like

simplicity. Our biographer has had, moreover, the good judgment to

recognize what great questions are involved in the life of a convert

such as Father Baker, and he takes them up directly and boldly. The

pretensions of Anglicanism to be a branch of the universal Church, and

a representative to the world of Catholicism, are exposed with a

straightforward, nervous logic which leaves poor donkey little room to

sport the lion's skin.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of these valuable memoirs is that

which contains a series of letters, written by Father Baker to an

intimate friend, during the last ten years before his conversion.

There are chasms in this correspondence, but they are well filled up

by the explanations of his biographer. We have here a glimpse of his

inner life, and a chart is given us, imperfect, of course, but deeply

interesting, of that pathway by which he was led to the Church. It

commences with the pleasing delusions of a young _Puseyite_ who looked

upon his own insulated communion as the great Church Catholic, and his

little table within the chancel as an altar of sacrifice, and his

cross, and candlesticks, and other clandestine playthings, as

legitimate heirlooms of Anglican devotion. Thus he writes: "Your

brother told me of his intended repairs in his church. I am delighted

to hear it. It will not be long, I hope, before such is the universal

arrangement of our churches. Only one thing will be lacking (if he has

a cross), the candlesticks. I have come to the conclusion that we have

a perfect right to them, for they will come in by the Church

common-law, as the surplice did" (p. 71). By-and-bye comes a change.

"The workings of a mind and heart struggling with doubt and

disquietude, weary of a hollow and unreal system, weaned from all

worldly hopes, detaching itself from all earthly ties, and striving

after truth and after God, become more and more manifest, until at

last, after seven long years, the result is reached." The result is

announced in the following brief and startling communication to his

friend:

BALTIMORE, April 5, 1858.

MY DEAR DWIGHT: The decision is made. I have resigned my parish, and

am about to place myself under instruction preparatory to my being

received into the Catholic Church. I can write no more at present.

May God help you. "Your affectionate friend,

"FRANCIS A. BAKER."

Three years after this, namely, in the summer of 1856, commenced

Father Baker's career as a Catholic priest and missionary, which

continued until his death. During this time his active life was bound

up with that of his associates, first in the Redemptorist order, and

then in the new congregation of St. Paul, formed by himself and his

fellow-missionaries. His biographer, therefore, furnishes us a

description of those protracted spiritual exercises called "Missions,"

with a brief history of their introduction into this country. Then

follows an account of those missions in which Father Baker took part,

or rather it is a portfolio of pictures in which the more serious

labors of the mission are shadowed in the perspective, while gay

groups of various kinds and colors are made to figure in the

foreground. Father Hewit has given himself a great latitude,

accommodating himself to the literary tastes of our day, and his

readers will certainly thank him for it. When these missionary

campaigns were actually going on, it was hard toil all the year round,

and little play; but in retracing their course with us our author

avoids the dry details, which would involve much repetition, and

recalls in preference the sunshiny hours of relaxation, and the

pleasing incidents which befel them on their way and relieved their

labors. Turning away, therefore, boldly from the regular highway of

biography, we are conducted hither and {568} thither in a professional

ramble around the United States. "Follow my leader" is the word, and

down the lanes we go, and over the fences, and into the green fields.

Now we find ourselves in Savannah, chatting with the old negro

preacher as he sits "in the sun, on a little stool, holding his cow by

a rope around her horns, while she nibbles the grass that grows along

the streets." Now we are gazing on the gentleman hermit of Edgefield,

in rags, and bare-footed, fasting on bread and water, and reading the

"Fathers of the Desert," "Brownson's Review," and other ascetical

books good for hermits. Now, again, we mingle with a motley company on

a coasting steamer, while the philosopher and the spiritualist are

discussing the question, "Can God annihilate space?" The next moment

we are at St. Augustine, in the casemates of the old fort or castle of

St. Marco, and take a look at the narrow loop-hole through which,

after a course of rigid fasting, the Seminole chief Wild Cat was

enabled to escape to his home in the everglades. Presently we follow

Father Baker and his comrades to Charleston, where, then, "all was

peace, Sumter solitary and silent, untenanted by a single soldier."

Soon, again, we are in New York, then in New Jersey, then among the

coal mines of Pennsylvania, and then (seriously and not profanely be

it said) we go to Halifax. Kalamazoo, Covington, Quebec, St. Louis,

are visited in their turn, and a host of other places huddled together

in that small area to which these wandering apostles restrict their

labors. We like this seven-year trip with Father Baker and the

Paulists, and we like the free, off-hand, and original way in which F.

Hewit curries us through it, with all his digressions. These

digressions may be sins against the rules of biographical composition,

but if so they are "capital" ones.

The last fifteen pages of the memoirs contain the story of Father

Baker's sickness and death; a sad story, indeed, but sadly sweet to

those who knew him well. Their eyes will be watered with tears as they

read it, but happy tears, such drops as form the rainbow when the sun

smiles on the summer shower. There was a light from heaven on the

death-bed of Father Baker that is stronger than our grief.

The volume contains twenty-nine sermons of Father Baker, chiefly

parochial discourses, with a few others selected from those he was

accustomed to preach on the missions. It is unnecessary for us to make

any comment on these. His eloquence and his style are well known. He

was a model preacher, as well as a model Christian and a model priest.

The art of sacred eloquence is little understood among us, and

therefore we hail this contribution to it with enthusiasm. It will

show the young pulpit orator how the Word of God will admit of

legitimate ornament, which is neither derived from the theatre, the

lecture-room, nor the political rostrum. We never listened to a

preacher of whom it can be more appropriately said: _"How beautiful

upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, and

that preacheth salvation."_

This work is well printed on super-fine paper and handsomely bound. We

have no doubt that the numerous friends of Father Baker will be glad

to obtain this delightful memoir of his life and labors.

THE TEMPORAL MISSION OF THE HOLY GHOST.

By Henry Edward Manning, D.D., Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D.

Appleton & Co.

The Messrs. Appleton have again rendered a great service to the

reading public, especially the Catholic portion of it, by republishing

a standard work in English Catholic literature. The author of this

work, Archbishop Manning, was formerly a dignified clergyman of the

Established Church of England, and one of the leaders of the Oxford

movement. He was the Archdeacon of Chichester, a position in the

English Church next in rank to the episcopate, and conferring a

quasi-episcopal dignity and jurisdiction. He is said to have possessed

in the highest degree the confidence of the English government, and to

have been the person most frequently consulted concerning political

measures relating to the interests of the ecclesiastical

establishment. The _London Weekly Register_ states, on what it claims

to be authentic information, that he was marked for promotion to the

episcopal bench. But, far beyond the distinction conferred on him by

hierarchical position, was the influence which he wielded by the

simple force of his intellectual and moral superiority. His writings,

especially a treatise {569} on "The Unity of the Church," raised him

to the first rank as an advocate of the principles of the High-Church

party. In the first stage of the Oxford movement, he was considered a

more safe and judicious advocate of its principles than Dr. Pusey and

Mr. Newman, and his name and opinions had more weight with the bishops

and the superior clergy on account of the calm, moderate, and

thoroughly ecclesiastical spirit and tone of his character and

writings. After Mr. Newman's conversion, Archdeacon Manning succeeded

in a great measure to his vacant throne, and held it for about six

years. He led the second great movement from Oxford to Rome, and his

conversion, which occurred in 1851, made nearly as great a sensation,

on both sides of the Atlantic, as that of Mr. Newman had done in 1845.

Six months after his reception into the Catholic Church he was

ordained priest. Some time after he joined the "Oblates of St.

Charles," a religious congregation founded by St. Charles Borromeo,

and established a house in London, of which he was appointed the

superior. He received also the appointment of provost of the Cathedral

of Westminster and was decorated by the Holy Father with the title of

a Roman prelate. During the thirteen years of his priesthood he has

been most actively and zealously employed in laboring for the

advancement of the Catholic faith, chiefly by preaching, writing

books, and privately instructing converts from the educated classes,

in which latter work he has been remarkably successful. It is probably

for this reason that, in spite of his remarkable amenity of mind and

character, and the extreme courtesy and gentleness which characterize

his controversial writings, he has been regarded and spoken of by the

English in so hostile a manner, and that his appointment to the see of

Westminster seemed to awaken a feeling of resentment. The mind and

character of Archbishop Manning are sure, however, to command, in the

long run, the respect of all classes of men, however widely they may

differ from him in their theological opinions; and although certain

English susceptibilities may have been unpleasantly irritated by his

elevation, yet the general verdict will agree that the Holy Father has

placed a most worthy successor in the vacant chair of the illustrious

Cardinal Wiseman.

In the book before us the author treats of the office of the Holy

Ghost, as sent by the Father and the Son in the temporal order; that

is, in the order established in time, through which the principal

operation _ab extra_ of the Blessed Trinity is accomplished, viz., the

redemption of the human race. In a very interesting introduction he

takes occasion to explain in part the motives of his conversion, by

pointing out the connection between the Catholic doctrines which he

held as an Anglican and their complements in the full system of

Catholicism. In the body of the work he discusses the office of the

Holy Ghost in relation to the Church, to Reason, to Holy Scripture,

and to the Divine Tradition of the Faith. This includes a very wide

scope of doctrine, embracing revelation, the medium through which

revealed truths are proposed, explicated, and defined; the formation

of Christian theology and philosophy; the relation of faith to

science, and the whole subject of the inspiration and interpretation

of Scripture.

If we may be allowed to express a modest opinion on the subject, we

should say, that the principal merit of Dr. Manning, as a theological

writer, lies in his ability to unfold the analogy of faith, and expose

the _inter-communion_, so to speak, of the great truths of natural and

revealed religion with one another. He shows pre-eminently in his

writings that gift which is denominated in theology "the gift of

intelligence;" that is, the gift by which the mind penetrates the

interior essence of the doctrines of faith, and their interior

relations. His exposition is in the highest degree luminous, and his

style corresponds in this regard to his thought, so that his treatment

of the great doctrines declared by the Church appears like a statement

of self-evident propositions, or a geometrical demonstration in which

the problem is proved by simply describing the figure. We have never

read anything which has given us more satisfaction than his statement

of the four grand fundamental propositions on which the entire fabric

of the Catholic doctrine rests. It appears to our mind that in his

statement of the nature of the evidence by which reason apprehends the

{570} being of God, and the credibility of revelation, and afterward

the real meaning and contents of the revelation, he has marked out the

outlines of a sound and correct philosophy of religion, which is so

much needed, and without which the antagonists of revelation cannot be

adequately refuted on rational principles. We desire to quote one

sentence, short but pregnant, in illustration of our meaning. After

stating that he always uses the word "rationalism" in an ill sense, he

proceeds to say:

"By rationalism, I do not mean the use of the reason in testing the

evidence of a revelation alleged to be divine.

"Again, by rationalism I do not mean the perception of the harmony

of the divine revelation with the human reason. It is no part of

reason to believe that which is contrary to reason, and it is not

rationalism to reject it. As reason is a divine gift equally with

revelation--the one in nature, the other in grace--discord between

them is impossible, and harmony an intrinsic necessity. To recognize

this harmony is a normal and vital operation of the reason under the

guidance of faith; and the grace of faith elicits an eminent act of

the reason, its highest and noblest exercise in the fullest

expansion of its powers." (Introd., p. 4.)

The eliciting of this eminent act of the reason to the utmost possible

extent is at present the great desideratum in theology. It involves

the exhibition of the intrinsic harmony between faith and science;

that is, of the conformity of revelation, not only as to its extrinsic

motives of credibility, but also as to the intrinsic credibility of

its doctrines to reason. It appears to us that Dr. Manning appreciates

the first half of the desideratum more perfectly than the second; and

that, in regard to the second, he appreciates more completely what is

necessary to convince Anglicans and Orthodox Protestants than what is

requisite for rationalists, with whom the chief contest has to be

carried on. The main drift of his reasonings goes to establish, in an

admirable manner, that Christianity is credible, and that Catholicism

is identical with Christianity. Orthodox Protestants already believe

the first, and whatever difficulties they may have on the subject are

easily answered by a lucid statement of the grand external proofs of

that which they have been educated to accept as a first principle. Of

the second, they can be convinced by the exposition of the analogy and

harmony of the special Catholic dogmas which they have not been taught

with those they already believe. Difficulties raised on the side of

human science against the intrinsic credibility of revelation, they

can easily dismiss by reverting to their first principle of the

well-established verity of divine revelation, as resting on extrinsic

evidence. Establish in their minds the infallible authority of the

Church, and they are content to receive a doctrinal exposition of all

that she teaches which is made by way of deduction from revealed

principles, without seeking for a reconciliation of this exposition

with the deductions of purely rational principles. This is no doubt a

very sound and Christian method, and it were to be wished that all

would be willing to follow it. Experience has shown, however, that

those who have been brought up in the more advanced and rationalistic

Protestantism, are with difficulty induced to adopt it. They exact an

answer to the difficulties and objections lying in their minds against

the intrinsic reasonableness of revealed doctrines, before they will

attend to their extrinsic evidence. The exposition of this intrinsic

conformity between revealed and rational principles forms for them a

part of the requisite moral demonstration of the credibility of the

Christian revelation. Nor is it altogether without reason that they

require this. They are obliged to learn a great deal which a

High-Church Anglican has already received from his early education.

They have the same incapacity of apprehending correctly the most

fundamental Catholic verities which the Anglican has of apprehending

certain specific dogmas. Both must have these misapprehensions removed

in the same way, only it is a shorter and more restricted process for

the one than for the other. The account given by our illustrious

author of his own interior history shows that the extrinsic proof of

the claims of the Roman Church to supremacy over all portions of the

Christian fold did not convince him before they were illuminated by

the discovery of the intrinsic relation between this supremacy and the

essential spiritual unity of the Church in {571} Christ. His mind

demanded an apprehension of the _rationale_ of strict, external,

organized unity of administration under one ecclesiastical head. It

was enough for him that this _rationale_ was made evident from

revealed principles, because he already possessed these principles as

a part of his intellectual life. Those who have lost in great measure

the Christian tradition, or who have never had, must find the

_rationale_ further back in their reason.

A Jew, for instance, apprehends the doctrines of the Trinity and the

Incarnation as follows: "God is divided into three portions, one of

which became inclosed in human flesh." A Unitarian will apprehend

these doctrines, and others, such as original sin, atonement, etc., in

some form almost equally repugnant to reason. Many Protestants

apprehend the doctrine of the real presence to be that God is made a

piece of bread, or that a piece of bread is made God. It is evident,

according to the rule laid down by Dr. Manning in the passage above

cited, that it is impossible for the human mind to assent to such

irrational propositions on any extrinsic authority. Even supposing

that a person admits the proofs of divine revelation and the authority

of the Church to be irrefragable, he cannot submit to either while he

believes that they require him to assent to such absurdities. Hence

the necessity of exhibiting the Catholic dogmas in their analogy to

the truths of reason, as a part of the evidence of their credibility.

A large portion of nominal Christians are so completely imbued with

rationalistic and sceptical notions, and so full of misconceptions of

Catholic ideas, that they are persuaded of the validity of a thousand

objections derived from reason, science, history, etc., against the

Catholic religion. They cannot be reached by a line of argument which

lays the principal stress on the extrinsic proof of the Christian

revelation proposed by the Catholic Church, and rules out their

objections and difficulties by the principle of the obedience due to

legitimate authority. It seems to us, for this reason, requisite to

make every effort to exhibit the interior conformity between faith and

reason, theology and science, and to prove that faith is really "an

eminent act of reason." All Catholics must agree in this general

statement, for all the advocates of the Catholic religion have from

the beginning of Christian literature aimed at this result. In regard

to the method of doing it, however, there is some diversity of

opinion. Dr. Newman, for instance, regards the progress of theological

science as a movement from below upward, and from the circumference to

the centre. That is, science is elaborated by the reflection of

individual minds, especially the gifted and learned, on the dogmas of

faith, under the supervision and subject to the judgment of authority.

Dr. Manning, if we understand him correctly, regards the movement as

one which proceeds in a reverse order; he represents the Church as

proceeding in a more direct, positive, and magisterial manner; not by

collecting the accumulated, elaborated, and clarified products of

study, thought, reasoning, and meditation, and giving them her implied

or express approbation, but by continually giving forth utterances of

inspired wisdom received from a divine source. He apprehends that in

adopting the other view, there is danger or subordinating the Ecclesia

Docens to the Ecclesia Discens, and making reason a critic on divine

revelation. Those who adopt the latter view have a tendency to elevate

theological opinions and arguments which have gamed a wide acceptance

to a species of authority binding on the mind and conscience, and

limiting the freedom of investigation. They desire that all arguments

on doctrine should follow the traditional track and merely emulate and

elucidate what has been already taught by the great doctors of

theology. They extend the sphere of authority and infallibility to the

utmost possible limits, and many of them seek to extend the protecting

aegis of the Church over philosophical systems. Those who adopt the

other may often err in an opposite extreme. Yet, we think, they have a

principle which is justified by sound reasons, and by the actual

history of the formation of doctrine and theology in the Church. That

principle is stated by Möhler in these words: "For a time _even a

conception of a dogma_, or an opinion, may be tolerably general,

without, however, becoming an integral portion of a dogma, or a dogma

itself. There are here eternally changing individual forms of an

universal principle which may serve . . . for mastering that universal

principle by way of reflection {572} and speculation." (Symb. Introd.,

p. 11, London Edit.)

On this principle, they seek continually to scrutinize more deeply the

inner essence of dogmatic truths, and to investigate its relation and

conformity to the principles and deductions of philosophy and science.

We think history shows that this is the way in which theology has

actually advanced, and the Catholic Church herself attained more and

more to that reflective consciousness of her own dogmas by which she

is enabled to enunciate from time to time her solemn definitions. St.

Thomas made an immense advance, beyond St. Augustine and the other

fathers. The great Jesuit theologians, Bellarmine, Suarez, and Molina,

struck out a new and bold path in theology. Take, for instance, the

great doctrines of original sin, predestination, and efficacious

grace. The conception of these dogmas, and the scientific explication

of their contents, has been greatly modified in the process of time,

and chiefly through the influence of a few original thinkers. These

have generally met with a strong opposition from the established

schools of theology, and the most strenuous efforts have been made to

decry them as unorthodox and to procure their condemnation by

authority. The names of Catharini, Sfondrati, and Molina will serve as

a sufficient illustration. Yet, their method of stating Christian

doctrine on important points has gained a great predominance in the

Church, and the supreme authority has frequently intervened, not to

enforce these opinions, but to protect those who hold and advocate

them from censure. Not only theologians, but even teachers of natural

science, have brought about great changes in current theological

opinions. For instance, Galileo, and those who followed him, have, by

the force of scientific demonstration, compelled theologians to modify

their interpretation of Scripture where it speaks of natural

phenomena. Geology has caused a similar general change of the method

of interpreting the Scriptural accounts, of the creation and the

deluge. The old Swiss proverb is verified in the perpetual effort to

discover the harmony between faith and science: "God gives us plenty

of nuts to crack, but does not crack them for us." One of these hard

nuts, not yet cracked, is the question concerning the extent of the

influence of inspiration in preserving the sacred writers from error

in matters of purely human knowledge. The well-known opinion of Holden

on this subject, it appears to us, is a little too summarily condemned

by our learned author. The opinions of Bellarmine and Lessius were

severely censured in their time, but nevertheless are now acknowledged

to be tenable and probable. We think the opinion of Holden deserves at

least a very thorough examination and discussion before it is put

under the ban. Dr. Manning admits that "it is evident that Holy

Scripture does not contain a revelation of what are called physical

sciences," and that "no system of chronology is laid down in the

sacred books" (p. 165, Eng. Ed.) Nevertheless the sacred writers speak

of physical phenomena and of chronological dates. The Holy Spirit

allowed them to speak of the former in accordance with their own and

the common opinion even, when that was erroneous. He has allowed their

statements respecting the latter to fall into such inextricable

confusion, through accidental or intentional alterations either in the

Hebrew or Greek text, that we cannot tell with certainty what they

intended to record on the subject. Does not this show that revelation

was not intended to teach chronology? And if it was not, how does it

militate against the Catholic doctrine of inspiration to maintain that

the sacred writers were originally left to follow the best human

authority they could find in chronology as well as in science? If the

end of revelation did not require that an infallible system of dates

should be _preserved_ in the sacred text, why should it have been

given at first? Why are minor historical facts, relating to the

numbers who fell in particular battles, etc., within the cope of

infallibility any more than matters of science and chronology? It

appears to us, that until some authoritative decision is made, this

question is open to discussion, and the opinion of Holden tenable

without prejudice to orthodoxy. Very probably the distinguished author

meant to express simply his judgment as to what is the sounder view of

inspiration, without denying that the other is within the limits of

orthodoxy. However this may be, this is the only instance in which

there is any appearance of {573} severity toward those whose

theological opinions on matters _extra fidem_ differ from his own. It

were to be wished that some other writers, who are disposed to censure

their brethren severely and throw suspicion upon their loyalty to the

Church, on account of theological differences, would imitate the

admirable model placed before them by the illustrious chief of the

English hierarchy. We commend to their attention the following extract

from the _London Weekly Register_, which is a portion of an excellent

and well written review of' Dr. Pusey's _Eirenicon_. When severely

pressed by an able antagonist, one frequently finds himself driven to

defend the Catholic cause upon the common, certain ground where all

Catholics stand together, and to sink domestic controversies. This is

very well; but the same language ought to be used _toward_ opponents

in these domestic controversies, when they are discussed _inter nos_,

which is used _respecting_ them when we are fighting the exterior

enemy. If one takes certain ground because it is available against

non-Catholics, he ought to allow other Catholics to stand upon that

ground at all times in peace without having his fidelity to the Church

called in question. We give the quotations now, without further

comment, and leave the intelligent reader to make his own reflections

on them:

"The greater part of the remainder of the volume is taken up with

proving what most Catholics would be ready to admit, that many

exaggerated things have been said by Catholic writers of name

concerning the Pope's personal infallibility, on the prerogatives of

the Blessed Virgin, and on many other subjects. No doubt, viewed

from without, there is much matter for perplexity in this whole

subject. We know that many persons, now Catholics, have been kept

back from seeing the Church's claims on their absolute allegiance,

because of the hold these exaggerated statements had obtained on

their imagination, and the repugnance they felt to the aspect of

doctrine thus presented. This, we think, has arisen partly from

their having attributed to such statements an authority which they

did not possess, and from their not distinguishing between matters

of faith and matters of pious opinion. . . . . Catholics, on the

other hand, . . know that the Church, while requiring _unitas in

necesaariis_, is most free in conceding _libertas in dubiis_; . . .

does not aim at creating a dead and soulless level of uniformity,

but tolerates great liberty of opinion in matters of opinion," etc.

"Even though we might ourselves hold that what are commonly called

the Ultramontane opinions are the more logical, the legitimate

deduction from Scripture, the true development of patristic

teaching; and however much we might wish for a union of all

Christians on this basis, we should nevertheless hold most strongly,

until otherwise taught, that a reunion on the principles of Bossuet

would be better than perpetuated schism."

Archbishop Manning's work will, of course, take its place in our

standard Catholic literature, and we earnestly recommend it to all our

readers.

THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. Vol lxxix.

We observe by a notice appended to its last number, for November,

1865, that this long-established periodical has been transferred from

Boston to New York, and will hereafter be conducted under the

editorship of the Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. This is a significant

fact, but precisely what it signifies time only can reveal to the

uninitiated. So far as we can conjecture its significance, the change

of location and editorship bodes a change in its prevailing tone and

spirit. It is, however, announced that the former editors will

co-operate with the new one in the conduct of the Review, which leads

us to suppose that the different schools of Unitarians will be allowed

fair scope for expressing their views in its pages. Those who are

acquainted with the writings of Dr. Bellows may fairly expect that if

he devotes his time and energies to the task of contributing articles

on the great topics which are just now occupying the attention of

Unitarians, there will be a great improvement in the general spirit

and tendency of the Review. It will become less extreme in its

rationalism, and more positively Christian. Dr. Bellows has come the

nearest to Catholic doctrine in some of the fundamental points of

religion of any rationalist with whose writings we have happened to

meet. We shall look with {574} interest for the result of the movement

which has placed this powerful medium for influencing minds and

shaping the course of events in the sphere to which he belongs under

his control. Meanwhile, we have some criticisms to make on certain

portions of the number which closes the Boston series of "The

Examiner."

The first article contains a critique upon Mill's "Examination of the

Philosophy of Hamilton." We are delighted to have that overrated and

inconsistent disseminator of sceptical principles, Sir William

Hamilton, demolished, no matter who does it. One of his pupils, Mr.

Calderwood, has attacked him on the side of positive philosophy,

showing his sceptical tendencies. Mr. Mill has countermined him by a

more subtle scepticism than his own, and has shown the baselessness of

the positive and dogmatic portion of his philosophy. Very good! The

most dangerous of all errors is semi-scepticism. It defends all that

it retains of philosophical and theological truth in such an illogical

manner that it brings it into doubt and discredit with logical

thinkers. It covers up its scepticism so adroitly that the unwary are

deceived and poisoned by it unawares. Let the contradiction between

its two elements be shown, let both be pushed to their legitimate

consequences, and a great advantage is gained. Those who push through

the sceptical principle, like Mr. Mill, bring it to such a patent

absurdity, that every right-thinking mind will reject it at once.

Those who take the other side, are forced upon a better and more solid

basis for both science and faith. The reviewer of Mr. Mill seems to

have given himself up completely to his sway, and to be unable to do

more than echo his thoughts. He gives up transcendentalism, the grand

philosophy of Boston and Cambridge which was to supersede

old-fashioned Christianity and inaugurate a new epoch, as an exploded

and obsolete system. This formidable iron-clad has blown up and gone

under, like the famous _Merrimac_; and it appears that Dr. Brownson

need not have levelled his artillery against her, but might have

waited patiently for her own magazine to be set fire to by her crew.

We are no longer even sure that two and two do not make five, or that

two parallel lines cannot inclose a space! The writer anxiously

endeavors to show that in spite of this Mr. Mill will still allow him

to believe in a God, and in the difference between right and wrong.

Let him, however, if he will persist in believing something, do it

_with trembling_. For, if two and two might, for anything we know,

make five, one might possibly become equal to nothing, and then some

day we may all find ourselves annihilated. Mr. Mill's mine can be

countermined as easily as Sir William Hamilton's; for, when once the

perception of absolute and necessary truth is questioned, there is no

stopping short of nihilism.

The article on Dr. Newman's "_Apologia_" is well written, and shows a

candid and respectful appreciation of the intellectual and moral

greatness of the illustrious convert. The author, however, makes a

sweeping, wholesale charge of having adopted a system of equivocation,

chicanery, and sophistry upon the Jesuits, and the whole Catholic

Church, which has nothing to sustain it but an _on dit_. The charge is

false. But apart from that, in saying it the writer struck a foul

blow, unworthy of an honorable critic. Here is a great question, on

which men's minds are divided, and on which there are most weighty and

important testimonies to be examined. The writer does not profess to

enter the lists for the discussion of it, but merely to criticise the

particular statements of Dr. Newman. If he had anything to say about

it, he should have taken up Dr. Newman's statements and arguments, and

made some rejoinder. It is always a sign that a man is either weak or

disingenuous, when he throws a wholesale assertion of the general

badness of your cause in your face, because you have successfully

defended it in respect to one particular item. It is also very

_schoolboyish_ to repeat continually the stale generalities that one

has read in his books or in the newspapers about the Jesuits. Cannot

our antagonists "_invint some other little bit of truth?_" We are

tired of hearing this one so often.

The writer fairly admits that if any other guide to truth is

necessary, beside the individual reason, that guide must be the

Catholic Church. There is no alternative except to follow your own

light, or be a Roman Catholic. Every man, he thinks, has for himself a

light, which is infallible for himself {575} alone, and only for the

time being. We would like to ask him whether this is a certain,

necessary, and universal truth, true for all times, and every

individual? Is it so? Then by the same process which proves it to be

so, you can establish a complete system of universal truths, and among

them the universal or Catholic principles of the Catholic Church. We

admit the infallible light of reason, excluding his limitations, which

are _ipso facto_ destroyed if he answers our question in the

affirmative. If in the negative, the assertion he has made is true

only for himself, as a kind of provisional arrangement--a sort of dark

lantern borrowed for the evening. It is quite probable that by-and-bye

the sun may rise, and the dim rays of his lantern blend with its

brighter beams. The infallible light within may tell him that he needs

the revelation of God, and the instruction of the Catholic Church.

Decidedly the most valuable article in the number is the one on

"English Schools and Colleges." It is evidently written by one who is

perfectly familiar with the English system of education, and contains

many valuable hints and suggestions for the improvement of our own

colleges. We recommend all those who are engaged in the higher

branches of instruction to procure and read it; and, indeed, the

author would do them a great service by publishing it separately as a

pamphlet, with such additions as he might think suitable to enhance

its value.

OUR FAITH, THE VICTORY; OR, A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL

DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

By Rt. Rev. John McGill, D.D., Bishop of Richmond. Baltimore: Kelly &

Piet. 1865.

This new edition of a work already noticed in our pages is well

printed, and, if the paper were of somewhat finer quality and the

binding a little better, would be a very handsome volume. The

extravagant price of paper at present is a very fair excuse for the

first defect, although we cannot help regretting that a work of such

high merit and permanent value should not be brought out in a style

completely worthy of it. If our copy is a fair specimen, however,

there is no excuse for the binding, which, though handsome enough, is

so loosely and carelessly executed as to endanger already some of the

leaves falling out. We recommend our Catholic publishers to show a

little more of the enterprise and thoroughness requisite in

first-class houses. Mr. O'Shea has given them a good example in Dr.

Brownson's "American Republic," which we trust will not be without a

good effect. We again recommend this admirable work to our readers as

one of the best in the English language on the great topics of which

it treats.

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny.

By O. A. Brownson, LL.D. 8vo. New York: P. O'Shea. pp. 435. 1866.

This is a work brought out in a very superior style of typography

which does great credit to the enterprise of the young publisher, Mr.

O'Shea, and is worthy of its great subject and its equally great

author. We have only had time to read the preface, which breathes the

exalted philosophical wisdom, the noble, magnanimous spirit, and the

pure Christian faith of the illustrious Catholic publicist and

American patriot who wrote it. A more extended notice of the work

itself will appear in our next number.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL

OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OP ELIZABETH.

By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.

Vols. III. and IV., 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

The fourth volume of Mr. Froude's work ends with the death of his

hero, Henry VIII. The portion of the history embraced in the

instalment now before us includes, therefore, many picturesque

incidents, which the author narrates with his most charming and

brilliant pen, and with that quick eye for dramatic effect which lends

such a fascination to his style. In a notice of the first and second

volumes we expressed with sufficient clearness our judgment of Mr.

Froude's faults and merits, and we see no reason to modify our

previous statements. He professes to have originally approached his

subject without prejudice or any purpose of running counter {576} to

the commonly received opinions of the world; but he does not deny that

he has come to take a very different view of Henry and his times from

that accepted by the rest of mankind. He has this advantage over his

critics--that, as he makes use of state papers and other manuscript

records which are not accessible to the world at large, it is not

always possible to test the correctness of his quotations or the

justness of his inferences from official documents. We can only say

that in the few instances in which it has been in our power to follow

him in his researches, we have learned to distrust not only his

accuracy but his honesty. We must wait until some other and

dispassionate historian shall have explored the same fields before we

can detect all his misrepresentations and rectify all his errors.

HUMOROUS POEMS.

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, with illustrations by Sol. Eytinge, Jr.

Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865.

A cheap but neat edition, bound in pamphlet form, forming one of a

series of "Companion Poets for the People, illustrated." Dr. Holmes is

our Thomas Hood, in some respects more to our taste than his English

compeer. His humorous poems, though steeped in the double distilled

oil of wit, have no poison in them, and are wholesome and delicious,

when taken laughing in small doses.

THE PRACTICAL DICTATION SPELLING-BOOK,

in which the spelling, pronunciation, meaning, and application of

almost all the irregular words in the English language are taught in a

manner adapted to the comprehension of youth. For the use of schools.

By Edward Mulvany. New York: P. O'Shea.

The plan of this book is excellent, and will, we have no doubt, be

generally adopted in our schools. It has evidently been compiled with

much care and attention. The scholar that masters its various sections

will not be apt to make those ridiculous mistakes in spelling and

writing which are so prevalent m the community. In the next edition

the typographical errors ought to be attended to. The present one

contains too many such errors.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, announce for publication at an early

day the following works: A new improved and enlarged edition of

Archbishop Spalding's "Miscellanea;" a new edition of "The Evidences

of Catholicity," by the same author; "The Apostleship of Prayer," a

translation from the French of the Rev. H. Ramière, S.J.; "The Manual

of the Apostleship of Prayer;" new editions of "Ellen Middleton,"

"Lady Bird and Grantly Manor," by Lady Fullerton; and of "Pauline

Seward."

P. O'Shea, New York, announces: "The Life of St. Anthony of Padua;"

"The Life and Miracles of St. Philomena;" "The Christian's Daily

Guide," a new prayer-book; the second volume of "Darras' History of

the Church."

P. Donahoe, Boston, announces the publication of a new illustrated

magazine for the young folk. It is to be called "Spare Hours," and is

to appear early in December. There is room for such a publication, and

we hope it will prove a success, and that Mr. Donahoe will make it

equal to anything of the kind published in this country. A good

magazine for the young has been a want long felt. The subscription

price is two dollars per year.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY,

New York: "Aurora Floyd," by M. E. Braddon. 12mo., pp 372. "The Ordeal

for Wives." A novel, by the author of "The Morals of Mayfair." 12mo.,

pp. 448. "Rebel Brag and British Bluster: A record of unfulfilled

prophecies, baffled schemes, disappointed hopes, etc., etc. By

Owls-Glass." Paper, pp. 111.

We have also received a neat little pamphlet, of twenty-four pages,

entitled: "Notes on Willson's Readers," by S. S. Haldeman.

From the Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington:

"Diplomatic Correspondence for 1864. Parts 3 and 4."

From CHARLES SCRIBNER, New York: "Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects," a

series of popular lectures. By J. G. Holland. 12mo., pp. 835.

From P. O'SHEA, New York: Numbers 14, 15, and 16 of "Darras' History

of the Church."

From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York: Parts 5, 6, and 7 of

"D'Artaud's Lives of the Popes."

--------

{577}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 11.--FEBRUARY, 1866.

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques et Littéraires, par

des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

CHARLES II. AND HIS SON, FATHER JAMES STUART.

Of all the Stuarts who reigned over Great Britain only one, if

historians can be trusted, abandoned Anglicanism and became a child of

the Catholic Church. It is true that to the name of James II. that of

his elder brother, Charles II., has sometimes been added; but the

general opinion is that Charles had no religion whatever, and scoffed

at all creeds alike. Documents, however, which have lately been

brought to light, enable us to prove that both the sons of Charles I.

abandoned Protestantism, and that in their persons Catholicism

occupied for more than an twenty years the throne of Henry VIII.

To understand how the religion of Charles II. could remain so long an

historical enigma, we must recall to mind the peculiar circumstances

in which he was placed. Surrounded by fanatical sectaries, who yielded

him a kind of insubordinate obedience, and kept him in continual fear

of the axe by which his unfortunate father had suffered, he felt

constrained to observe in public the forms of worship which he had

solemnly renounced before the altar. And to this we must add another

reason. Far from reforming the disorders of a licentious youth, he

prolonged his excesses to the very eve of death, and his unbridled

passions tended to extinguish in his naturally weak and timid soul all

the energy alike of the man and of the Christian. So, though a

Catholic at heart, Charles never had the courage during his whole

reign to avow his sentiments. Some thought him a zealous Presbyterian;

others, a devoted Anglican. Those who knew him better declared he was

nothing but a bad Protestant, and for that declaration they had more

reason than they supposed.

There is no question that he died in the bosom of the Church; but that

he had returned to it long before he died is a fact which has only

lately {578} been established. After lying for two hundred years among

the dusty archives of a religious order in Rome, a remarkable

correspondence has been brought to light between the sixth successor

of Henry VIII. and Father Paul Oliva, the general of the Jesuits. The

occasion of this singular interchange of letters between Whitehall and

Rome was the presence in the Jesuit house, in the last named city, of

a young novice whom all the fathers, even the general himself,

believed to be a French gentleman. Charles informed Father Oliva who

this young man was. By the right of paternal authority he demanded

that James Stuart, the eldest of his natural sons, should be sent back

to him. He wished to keep him for some time about his person, and by

his assistance to instruct himself more thoroughly in the Catholic

faith, and so finish the work which he had long ago commenced. After

reading these letters, and penetrating the hidden thoughts and mental

tortures of the conscience-stricken king, who knows his duty, and

fears, yet wishes, to fulfil it; a crowned slave, bearing beneath his

royal robes a yoke of iron, and sighing in vain for liberty to believe

and worship after the dictates of his heart, we cannot resist the

conclusion that Charles II. was neither a deist nor a waverer; he was

a Catholic--a timid and a bad one, if you will but firm in his

convictions.